Hello!

We arrived in Chang Mai on Saturday by bus. It poured with rain pretty much from when we got up until just after we arrived. We dropped our stuff off and headed straight down to the 'Night Bazaar' a market that springs up every evening along the same street and sells everything from clothes to locally handmade souveniers. we had some local dishes for dinner at the food centre there, a bizarre place where we had to get vouchers to order food from a line of different eateries. After a bit more souvinnier shopping, we headed back to where we were staying,dodging the rain that had returned... Almost like being back in the UK.

On Sunday we went for a mooch around town, first impressions of Chang Mai by daytime were positive - a pretty little city that's not too over developed but enough to accomodate for its inhabitants and tourists. We stopped at a little sidestreet cafe called "Elliebum" for a drink, and got some local info off the very friendly owner then headed up the main street in search of the day-trip booking office. We booked an elephant trek and Holly was highly amused that their advert for this trip was a big picture of two elephants humping!! (I guess it's not everyday you see that eh?!) On Sunday evening we went for our first roast dinner in 5 weeks, it was pure heaven! We watched the F1 (well, Pete did) and afterwards made our way to the walking street Sunday market. The market was filled with beautiful home made arts and crafts and the atmosphere was pretty cool - everyone was really chilled out just watching the world go by! After the market we headed home and as we were passing some of the bars, we came accross a baby elephant wondering along the pavement, seemingly without an owner. We were a bit shell shockedd by it, but i guess back home we take pet dogs for a walk so you never kno...

On Monday we were picked up for our elephant trek and we were taken to the market to collect 20 bags of banana's and sugar cane to ply the elephants with! When we reached the elephant park after an hour or so driving along some very bumpy roads we had to navigate accross a very narrow path, sometimes covered in bamboo over some rice paddys to get to the elephants. There we were given a rather sexy outfit to change into followed by an hour or so lesson on controlling the elephants - this involved several practical lessons on mounting, dismounting, walking forwards and backwards, steering left and right, and most importantly - stopping the elephant! After we were deemed competant at controlling (sort of) the elephants, we were assigned one per pair - we got a lovely 56 year old lady elephant called Coco; a mother to five who was also 4 months pregnant! Holly drove her first and Pete was passenger then half way round the trek we swapped over. The Mahouts (elephant keepers) make it look so easy steering/riding an elephant - we assure you its much more complicated than it looks! We were riding bareback for about two hours (and have the friction burns to show for it, damn they need a good moisterising!) Being a passenger was by far the hardest task though - as you're perched on the elephants bony back and have no idea what is happening infront. Thankfully, Coco was a very cautious lady and she wasn't keen on getting her toes dirty either - so we missed out most of the sliding down a 45 degree angle mud slope and hedged for tip-toeing down the 45 degree stepping stones option instead! We stopped for elephant snacks several times along the way (elephant snacks consist of whole young-ish tree's) which was quite scary at times as tree's tend to be fairly well routed into the ground... Still, as long as Coco was happy then we were cool with stopping for snacks!! After treking for about 2 hours we headed back to camp and were greeted by a bucket and two brushes... it was time to wash the elephants! It's quite a challenge bathing an elephant, it's not like washing your car on a Sunday afternoon! First the Mahout got the Elephant to lie down in a shallow lake of water then we waded in and scrubbed her all over whilst the mahout threw buckets of water over her. It was really good fun and after a quick shower we headed back to town.

In the evening we did some boring general errands such as laundry and packing up some parcels / getting dinner etc and aas we had to be up early, we made the most of an early night.

On Tuesday we'd booked on to a quad biking trip. We had a couple of test laps around the circuit at the centre to make sure we were competent enough. We then headed off on the ATV bikes along the road for about 20 minutes until we reached an uphill dirt track. We drove up there for a while before reaching the jungle "path" where we did a bit of off-roading. At the top of the path we stopped at a viewpoint which was at the top of the 5th tallest peak in Thailand - and the 3rd tallest peak in Chang Mai. We made our way back down the mountain through the jungle and back onto the road home... Holly got sunburnt here. In total we covered about 43km.

We had another big adventure in the afternoon - a haircut. It's at this point we should add that not many Thai businesses like hairdressers speak English. A few sign language actions later and Holly has a bob-style haircut, while Pete has lost his sideburns, got a very short back and sides and still a bit of a mop on top!! Oh well, better luck next time eh?! (Helen your tickets are in the post..)

On Wednesday we made our way to the airport for a flying-tastic day, on our way to Phuket via Bangkok so we've got a few planes and buses to catch!

See you in Phuket!

Hol and Pete

xXx