It took about 5 hours to get to Chiang Mai on the bus from Sukothai, we arrived after a very heavy downfall and the bus station was pretty flooded. We had prebooked a room at Junior guesthouse and they offered free pick up, the couple that run the guesthouse were so lovely and were interested in our travels and when they showed us our room they said welcome home! It was a really nice room in the old part of the city.

We had been to Chiang Mai on our last trip and it hadn't changed much, the old part of the city is within a moat and there is a very busy road that also goes around the moat and crossing the road is like trying to cross the grand prix circuit! In the old part there are many temples and little places to eat, we just wandered around as soon as we got there and as we were hungry, set of to find somewhere that served khao sawy which is a northern thai speciality of chicken curry noodles. We found a lovely little local place that was really cheap. We had a chicken leg in a chicken curry soup with noodles and it was topped with crispy noodles, it was accompanied with fresh lime and red onion and fresh chillis. We really enjoyed it! Chiang Mai also had a night market which is out of the old part and a bit of a walk but lots of fun to look around. Its very touristy and I bought some very 'authentic' haviania flip flops!

The following day we arranged to meet up with Jenny and Adrian Oliver from our home church - they have lived in Chiang Mai for a few years now. It was so nice to see familiar faces when we met them at our guest house, they took us out for a mexican which was really yummy and afterwards we went for a drive to a local student market where there were no tourists at all!

We decided to hire a moped the next day and go up this big hill that over looks the city - there is a temple up there - Wat Phra That Doi Suthep but we had vistited it before and decided to carry on driving past it to the Kings summer palace gardens. The road snaked up the mountain and we had to take it really slowly but the views over the city were great. When we arrived at the gardens the ticket office was closed for lunch so we decided to carry on the road for a bit and go to a hill tribe village nearby - we sort of drove into all these shacks with people hanging around and on one of the floors there were people blowtorching a dead black pig!!!! We just turned around and drove back to the gardens and the ticket office was open this time. You are not allowed to show your knees or shoulders in the gardens out of respect so we bought jeans and t shirts with us to change into. The gardens were very pretty and relaxing. We got very hot in our jeans though! We then snaked all the way back to our guest house and then set of to see Jenny and Adrian again, we were going to meet them at their house which is a little bit out of the city. We set off in rush hour which was a bit nerve racking but Kam drove well! After going up and down one road a few times we finally found their estate which was very nice, alot of the families who live there are missionaries and their kids go to the Grace International school which is also on the estate. Jenny and Adrian said we could go swimming at the school so we set off round the corner to the schools outdoor pool which was massive! It was so nice to be in the pool and as it was near the airport we could see all the planes taking off, there was also a thunderstorm in the distance that the planes were flying into!! Jenny kindly made us dinner back at their lovely house and we had pasta bake and real bread and butter which went down very well - to top it off they had real english dairy milk chocolate which was amazing!! We had a lovely evening chatting with them and we both felt quite sad as we left at nearly midnight (and got chased down the road by some angry dogs!)

Our last day in Chiang Mai we spent eating more curry noodle soup and we had an amazing hour foot massage in a temple for just over two pounds each!

Next stop Chiang Rai...................................