hello from Chiang Mai (northern Thailand)!!!

We have been here for about 5 days now recovering from the worst bus journey imaginable, i know now why most people opt for the slow boat between Luang Prabang (Laos) and the border of Thailand.

sick of doing things the touristy way we decided we save ourselves a few kip (Laos currency) and take a tuk tuk to the bus station and then purchase a ticket there which would be cheaper. at the bus station we got our ticket and were told by the ticketman that we wouldnt have proper seats as we hadnt booked through a tour operator. unsure what this meant we climbed aboard the bus and looked for seas 47 and 48 only to find out that the numbers only went to 45. at this point i was slightly worried that they might put us on the roof so we sat in the last 2 seats right at the back and decided that if we were told to move we wouldnt. an hour of anxious waiting later and all the seats had filled up and plastic garden chairs and stools were put down the aisle of the bus - bear in mind that this was a 15 hour journey overnight.

conveniently we couldnt understand english when told to move to the garden chairs and so spent the journey sitting on the back seat of the bus which seats 5 but had 6 of us squished in together. the roads in Laos are seriously bad and the bus jumped and jolted around, sometimes almost falling sideways into large holes.

the low point of the journey was when the woman infront of me started to be sick out of her window and i had about a second to close my window before being covered in it(gemma do you remember that night and the taxi on the way home?) i think during the 15 hours i got about 1 hour of solid sleep and woke up to find the guy next to me curled up asleep and i was leaning with my elbow on his head!

finally a boat ride across the border (Mekong river) and a 6 hour minivan ride which was positively luxurious we arrived in Chiang Mai.

Most people come here to go trekking, visit hill tribes and learn to cook Thai style. of the 3 we have only done the Thai cooking which was so much fun and i cant wait to cook a 10 course banquet when i come home. we decided not to visit any tribes as after reading literature at the tribal museum i dont really want to be a part of a group who go on day tour and have no real understanding of the tribe or of the impact visiting has on them. trying to get any information from the tourist agencies on the relationship they have with the tribe, whether any profit from the tours goes to them, group size, etc has been really hard to get so we decided that without that information we would rather not go.

the best thing we have seen so far in Chiang Mai was when we visited a wat and a monk came over to talk to us. i was really nervous because even though he was younger than me i felt he was really spiritual and i was worried i would do or say something wrong - or so i thought! he invited us to watch the monks chant and pray which was amazing, we sat at the back of the wat with about 9 monks kneeling infront of us all chanting. the sound was beautiful and filled the room and i just felt incrediably calm and peaceful.

afterwards the monk came to chat to us and told us we could ask him questions about his life and he in turn could learn from us. we asked him about his daily routine - gets up at 5am and prays and then goes to get alms from the people in Chiang Mai and then comes home and does some chore like sweeping. it was really difficult trying to get this small bit of information out of him as he was far more interested in telling us about all the dvds he'd watched and music he liked (pussycat dolls, madonna and justin timberlake) - we left after giving him out email addresses so we can learn more from each other he said.

tonight we are leaving for Bangkok where we are only staying overnight and then somewhere south, not sure yet but we have decided to go to maybe 2 more places in Thailand before Malaysia.

lots of love to everyone x