My last few days in Thailand were great. Howie is staying on an extra week to do a Muay Thai Boxing Camp, but for now, my Thai adventures are over.

After the wonderful day with the elephants, we stayed up to watch the woeful 6 Nations grand slam decider. The only place showing it was, unfortunately, an Irish pub, so with England playing really badly, the usual Irish idiots filled the air with nastiness. I wasn't very happy. What it meant was that the next morning we slept in, because of the last night we had had the evening before.
What is great about being in Chiang Mai on a Sunday, however, is the Sunday Walking Street, possibly the best market anywhere. The whole main road running through the centre of the old city is blocked off and the street is lined with stalls - from food stalls to clothes, to dodgy souveniers, to handmade handicrafts from the women from the hilltribes. Everyone in Chiang Mai seems to congregate there, and we were no different. It was surprisingly difficult to walk around all the stalls because of the sheer volume of people there, so it took a whole afternoon and evening to get round them all. We bought some lovely things and had some scrummy food and while Howie went off to watch thr Liverpool match, I finished scouring the stalls in the main square by the Taepae Gate for some final bargains.

The following day we were up early to be collected at our hotel by the Thai Farm Cooking School. This cooking school is on an organic farm out in the rice paddies surrounding Chiang Mai and all of the fruit, vegetables and herbs are grown on their organic farm. We were in a group of ten and had our own cooking station in the classroom. The lady we had was called Nice and she showed us how to make several Thai dishes so we could then make them ourselves. In the morning, we had been to a market to collect some of the food (where Howie tried a bamboo worm... eugh). We then looked around the garden at the different herbs and veg we would be using, before getting down to the serious stuff - cooking. Howie and I opted to make different things, so that we would have lots of things to make when we got home. First we made our curry paste (I made green, Howie made red), then our Thai curries. After that we made our soups (I made Thai vegetable, Howie made chicken in coconut) and our stir-fries (I made chicken and basil, Howie made chicken with cashew nuts). We sat down with everyone to scoff our feast with jasmine rice and sticky rice, and it was so delicious. There was so much food that a lot went to waste unfortunately, but it was wonderful to have made the food ourselves and then get to eat it (and my Thai green curry was perfection).
After lunch, we had the appetizers and desserts to make. I made mango and sticky rice, while Howie made pumpkin in coconut milk, and luckily Nice gave us some diggy bags to take it all home in, as we were so full from lunch. We then made appetizers - Howie made Pad Thai, one of his favourite thai dishes, and I made spring rolls. Spring rolls are actually quite complex to make, so they took some time folding and frying, but I was so good at it that Nice asked me to help her make the banana spring rolls for the group to share :)
All in all, a fantastic day of cooking was had and we can't wait to get home and try out some of our new cooking skills.

Back in Chiang Mai, it was my last night in Thailand, so this called for my last massage. We went back to Lila, the massage place where the ladies from the women's prison are employed and I had the best massage yet - it was brilliant and I wish I could afford to keep up with the Thai massages back at home.

For dinner we had our appetizers and desserts that we had made at the cooking school and I can attest that my spring rolls were delicious.

This morning I left at about half 6. I took a tuk-tuk to the airport, after saying goodbye to Howie, and caught my flight to Kuala Lumpur after a rather nasty incident with a watery hot chocolate and the world's worst blueberry muffin (which could have been used as a doorstop). I'm in the Concordee Inn at Kuala Lumpur airport which - it must be said - is one of the strangest plces I've stayed in. Checking in, you'd think it was a 5 star resort, with concierges in Malay dress and shiny marble floors. Then you check into your room, which is in a strange tiled outdoor complex. The walls are very stained, yet the rooms are enormous and there are Sky TV channels. It's all very odd. Nevertheless, I am assured that I have a 7.30am wake up call in the morning and a shuttle will be whisking me to KLIA to catch my Blighty-bound flight.