Dear Barbara, Alexandra, Greg and Kerrie

Thank you very much for your very kind wedding gift. We decided to spend the money on a Something Different Tour around the countryside near Chiang Mai.

Something Different Tours are a unique tour operator; formed from a collective of ex-tour guides who decided to offer something different from the normal 'get on a bus, get off the bus, take a photo, get back on the bus' tour operators that seem so prevalent around here.

The something different element is very small groups (just me, Donna and the tour guide Kuad) driving around on 125cc semi automatic motorbikes. Well I say drive around, I mean I drove around, Donna sat on the back of Kuad's bike and got driven around.

This is one of those things that we didn't really tell our parents too much about before we went as they would only worry needlessly about us driving around on motorbikes in the Thai countryside. Now it is over and we are safely back in Chiang Mai we can go into the details.

The tour lasted 3 days and was amazing, hard work but amazing. The countryside around here is stunning; full of mist shrouded mountains, pine forests, corn fields and cute little villages where the friendly people wave and the shy school children nervously say hello before collapsing in a fit of giggling.

The roads were perfect for driving; empty winding roads up and down over the hills and countryside and the pace of driving was set at a fairly gentle pace, always feeling safe and being able to appreciate the views.

The first day was spent driving to get to the most remote of accommodations.

First task was to get out of Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai is a lovely little city but it is still a city and the roads are a little bit crazy. Thai drivers are very chilled bunch. There is none of the road rage you get back home. Everyone just sort of accepts that themselves and everyone around them are bad drivers and gets on with it.

If someone cuts you up or there is an articulated lorry driving on the wrong side of the road straight at you, you don't get angry, you just shrug your shoulders and get on with it.

There is no arrogance either, no belief that it is so important for me to get to my destination quicker than everyone else. Everyone slows down and gives way to anyone. It makes for fun driving, slightly scary at times but still fun.

Next we started to climb into the mountains, stopping at several waterfalls along the way. The first one was particularly impressive. Donna doesn't think she has ever seen such a big waterfall before. It was lovely and refreshing, standing at the bottom with the spray soaking us while the sun made rainbows in the water.

Later we had to do our first off road driving experience. Luckily, it wasn't raining so the road was quite easy. This was the part where we first started to appreciate how we were doing something different, as we drove far from the rest of the tourist trail, riding through the magical vistas.

We stopped in Kuad's home village and see his home. Kuad's whole family are corn farmers and they all live in a little enclave together, like the Thai version of Brookside but with more chickens.

Only his gran was home. She didn't seem overly happy to see him or us but, like all good grannies, she insisted on sitting us down and feeding us out of date biscuits and snacks, all of which tasted fairly disgusting.

Finally we arrived at our accommodation; a homestay in the middle of nowhere. They had built a little bamboo hut for us to sleep in (well not us specifically but for anyone who was staying), complete with a couple of very thin unwashed mattresses and a large mosquito net that was fairly good at keeping out the mosquitos but not so efficient at keeping out the snails.

It didn't really matter that it was uncomfortable though because all the cockerels and chickens woke up at 4am so we wouldn't have got a good night's sleep anyway.

The bathroom was a corrugated iron building with a small toilet in the corner which again seemed to attract the snails. I suppose there are worse things in the world then having to check under the toilet seat for snails before you sit down.

There were two big tubs of water, one was for pouring down the toilet to flush and the other was for throwing water over yourself in a sort of makeshift shower sort of way. Given the water for flushing the toilet and the water for the shower came from the same source, I am not sure it was necessary to have separate tubs but, hey if it makes them happy…

The reason for staying somewhere so remote was apparent the next morning. It meant we were very close to river we were going 'tubing' on the second morning. Tubing is sitting in an old tyre and floating down a river. It has been made famous by the tubing in Laos where there are lots of bars along the waterway and everyone gets drunk and has accidents. This is a different sort of tubing. We didn't see another human being the whole time, let alone a bar.

After a bad night's sleep and with the weather looking cloudy and chilly, the idea of sitting in a rubber ring on a freezing cold river wasn't that appealing but we persevered and were so glad we did.

As we drove to the river, the clouds magically cleared to reveal a brilliant sunny blue sky, perfect weather. This wasn't an organised tour. The truck dropped us by the side of a road and we had to carry our rings down a steep incline to the river ourselves and then back up again when we reached the end.
The river was stunning, completely unspoilt jungle surrounding, the right amount of rapids to make it exciting and relaxing stretches to chill out.

Perfectly happy and relaxed, we headed back to the homestay for lunch and to take photos of the chickens. When I say we, I mean we both had lunch, Donna took the photos of the chickens.

When I was 7, we went on holiday to Brittany in France and I got a bit over excited at seeing lizards for the first time in my life. I therefore spent most of the holiday dedicating my time to take as many photos of lizards as possible. The problem with taking photos of lizards is that they tend to move too quickly. What I thought was a budding career as a wildlife photographer took a bit of a knock when I got the photos developed to find I had taken 24 pictures of rocks, not very interesting rocks at that.

I only mention that because I have not seen that level of enthusiasm at wildlife photography since until I got to watch Donna capturing pictures of chickens.
Now, chickens don't move quite as fast as lizards so at least some of the chickens were actually caught on camera but still chickens are almost as interesting as rocks.

In the afternoon, Kuad mentioned that we would be doing a lot more off road driving, he didn't mention that this involved going over the top of a very scary mountain. 30 minutes into the drive, I have to admit that I was not enjoying it at all.

'Is it much further?'

'Yes, we have only done 10%'

'Bugga, is there no other way?'

'Yes but it is too late to go the other way'

'Where are we going again?'

'Another homestay, more basic than last night'

'What are our other options?'

'We could go back to the place we stayed last night or we could go to a town and stay in a hotel with a swimming pool in a little town with a nice bar'

Can you guess which option we chose?

In our defence, the swimming pool even had a slide and the town had a 7-11 so we could get some beers and chill by the pool while the sun set…and the bar was really nice.

It was perched over a cute little pond with lots of pretty lights Everything was made of the obligatory bamboo. It was also completely deserted apart from us. It had a musician playing Thai folk music accompanied by a dwarf with dreadlocks on bongos who also seemed to be owner of the establishment. The place also did the most amazing food, although it was too dark to know what we were eating.

Imagine if David Lynch was trying to design a bar.

The next day, after possibly the best night's sleep so far on our trip (the hotel option was definitely the right decision), we woke early and refreshed to drive to elephant riding and bamboo rafting.

The elephant was grumpy.

The rafting was fun. It was a national holiday in Thailand so lots of Thai families were having picnics along the river banks.
One particular group pulled us in to force feed us moonshine and unidentifiable meat. Donna enjoyed the moonshine, i enjoyed the unidentifiable meat.

Unfortunately we didn't manage to take many photos of the elephants or the rafting because Donna had used up all the battery on our camera taking pictures of chickens

And so it was back to Chiang Mai, happy and tired. As I unpeeled myself from the motorbike, I could count at least 8 different parts of me that ached, were sore or in some pain or other but it was all worth it.

There was just enough time to shower, grab a McDonald's (after 3 days of authentic Thai food, six McNuggets and salty chips is definitely needed) and head out into Chiang Mai to join in the national holiday celebrations.

Love

Jim and Donna