So we had a day of planning on Wednesday! Then Ruby, Julie and I went out for a thai bbq with "Taki" who was a girl working in the hostel! Yes, we made fun of her name, but she gets it all the time so wasn't too impressed with us taking the mick! lol. Our first Thai bbq...and it was so much fun! These places we eat in are more like street food, you don't really see restaurants around. Most of them are just kitchens and then you eat outside right next to the busy road. It's odd but you forget where you are when you get talking and eating and the cars and motorbikes going by don't seem too bad! The table has its own built in bbq so once we sat down, the waitress put hot coal in the middle of the table and covered it over for us to start cooking. It was an all you can eat style where you just go up and pick which meats you want and cook it how you want to! We literally grabbed everything, chicken, pork, liver, shrimp...it was all rather tasty too! I was a little worried as we put the roar meat on the bbq with our chop sticks then just ate from our chop sticks too, but I wasn't ill from it the next day so was quite happy with that! We just kept eating and eating until we were completely full! Ruby seemed to get her appetite back as she carried on with Taki for quite some time after Julie and I dropped off! We then decided to make the most of having a Thai friend, so asked her to show us some dessert that she would eat. We went down the road to an outside stool where this old lady was making dessert. Just decided to grab everything and try it. The most wierd dessert was a poached egg thrown into a warm sweet coconut sauce with small balls of fried bread and flour. It was very unusual but lots of people were buying it so it must be a pretty popular dish. I didn't hate it, I ate it...but I must admit I wouldn't choose it again! We had 2 other dishes that had florecent bite sized food in a cold and lighter cocunut sauce. The other dish had very sticky, bright green stringy jelly with cocunut milk. I'm not too keen on any of the texture of these desserts but glad I tried them! Thais do eat wierd things. We then headed back as we were all pretty tired.

Thursday was a fun filled day. Ruby and I got up at half 8 and jumped in a tuk tuk to see the Tiger Kingdom and Julie headed off to do her 3 day trek. We could choose which size Tigers we wanted to see so went with the smallest and the biggest :) The smallest tigers were in a pen sort of thing about 10m x 10m wide. They were just strolling around with visitors trying to get their attention and play with them. They all seemed pretty tired of attention and just wanted to sleep. But the carers were helping the tourists get good pictures with the tigers so were trying to get them to play with you. Our carer wasn't very good with this but I didn't mind, I felt bad for the baby tigers so we just sat by them and stroked them and took pictures that way. They were just like big cats but with crazily massive paws! They were cute. We had about 15mins with them then went to see big tiger. The big tigers were just chilling in the shade, really relaxed and jst letting visitors stroke them and lay beside them. It was really sereal to be honeset - I didn't really think about what these Tigers were capable of doing, as animals can sometimes to unpredicatble things. We just went straight into the big cage where they were chilling and sat by them, had a few photos and stroked them for a bit. We had to approach them from behind and were told not to touch their head. They were pretty much the only rules we were given! Very odd but it seemed to work fine. We had a walk around and saw some new born tigers in an incubator sort of thing which was cute and saw a lion sitting on a table just chilling and people watching! You'll see some cool pictures of him when I upload them. He looked powerful and actually reminded me of the Lion King with his big main! hehe. I think we paid about 1200 baht, which is about £24. Not bad really, but I did feel a little sad that they were stuck in these cages for the rest of their lives, not living like real tigers should. It was definitely an experience and now I have a seen and touched a tiger!

We jumped back in the tuk tuk and headed back to the hostel, took a shower, chilled on the roof top which is pretty damn cool with pillows, a parosol, seats and a chill out area to lye on which is where I am currently sitting along! :) It's so peaceful and I just look up to see a lovely view of a mountain in the distance. Its beautiful.

4pm we got picked up from the hostel with a Canadian couple and headed to a food market with a Thai girl who was taking the course. She took us around the food market and explained what some of the odd looking foods were and tried a few. We choose which dishes we wanted to make too and her assistant/van driver went to buy the food. We were given baskets to put the food in to avoid wasting plastic bags. Jumped back in the van and headed to her house which was just outside the city. It was really sweet, she had a vegetable garden and took us through what she had and what Thais used them for. A fair amount of plants were used to heal the body in some way. Some leafs you would put in hot water and drink it to help with diarrehoa, colds, dizzyness and some leafs you would rub on your body to help rashes or bites! So not only did she have her own veg/herb garden, but it was almost a pharmacy too! Much cheaper than buying pills in boots so might take that up! The Thai lady was so sweet. She was so enthusiastic and full of information. Her English was fab too! The Canadian couple who were on their honeymoon on the other hand were very anoying, very fake so Ruby and I ended up in giggles most of the time laughing at them. She had a table set up in the middle of her garden ready for us to sit down and eat and at the enf of her garden was the kitchen station. It had 8 stoves so her maximum group would be 8. We sat down and she talked us through the dishes, showing us how to cut things and what went in each dish! Then we cooked and enjoyed the food thoroughly. Infact, I don't mean to brag but that was one of the best Thai dinners I have had here so far :) Not sure if thats a little dissapointing as many people told me to get exicted about the Thai food, and I haven't been too enthusiatic about it so far! The couple were feeding each other across the table, Ruby and I were so tempted to imitate them but refrained from doing so. We didn't want to ruin their last day of their honeymoon. I cooked a green thai curry and made the paste too, then made Pad Thai and finished with a Thai soup - can't even remember what it was called but it had a nice coconut sauce! Once we finished eating, we were given a Thai cooking book to take home and then lighted a chinese lantern together in the dark to celebrate her first month of the business. We were running late and had arranged to meet Stew, Jack and Rezza at a temple for some drinks. We were about 40 mins late but they were still there waiting for us thankfully as we jumped in a tuk tuk to get there quicker and booked a zip line session for the next day. Jack was ill so Stew left him back at the hostel. He was constantly on the WC - I won't say any more! Stew and Reza were starving so we went to find some food and beer. Ruby and I stopped along the way to grab our first banana and nutella pancake - omg what a good move that was! Delicious. The boys weren't happy as they were starving and there was us tucking into this yummy pancake! hehe. It was 40 baht which was 80p! I could have had 20 of them :) It was great catching up with them as Reza had already been in Chiang Mai for a few days and Stew was a step behind us and had just got the train up from Aythuya (however you spell it!) in a sleeper train. He had a bed though and managed to get 10 hours sleep, unlike my 4 hours on a chair. We headed back to our own hostels about 1pm to get a good nights sleep ready for the zip wire session in the morning!

8am rise for the zip wire - so Reza and Stew had already been picked up. Got in the mini van to find that Reza was in his flip flaps! I mean seriously, it was a go ape sort of session and he was wearing flip flaps. That sums up Reza for you, he is just hillarious. I am constantly laughing when I am in his company, he is 28 but you would not think it! He's rather ditzy. I feel good when I'm with him...actually reliable! haha. I attempted to speak to the driver to see if maybe we could go back and get his shoes, so I was swinging my flip flaps in the air and then my walking shoes - he wasn't getting it so we gave up and hoped for the best they had spare shoes when we arrived!

40 mins later we arrive at our destination and Reza is told that he's ok with flip flaps!! Mental but glad he could join in. We were grouped with some chinese people, put our harnesses on and jumped on the back of a truk. We headed into the forest. It was a good morning. We went down zip wires and from tree to tree via bridges, and planks and laughed at the old chinese lady who looked horrified every time she went down a zip wire! Scenery was great, I was just taking it all in! There was a cool waterfall so we had our photo taken and headed back for some food. Food was good - green curry, rice, omlette stuff, soup! So we ate like we'd never eaten before as it was another all you can eat style included in the price of the adventure so we tucked in!

Back at the hostel, we booked a 2 day trek for Sunday (tomorrow) and discussed what we could do until then. I thought we could go up to this temple of the top of a mini mountain and watch the sunrise...then we said we could bike up there in the morning together. We booked the get the bikes at 5pm..they arrived and we tried them out. Oh god, what a bad idea...all of us looked so wobbly on them, i didn't feel safe at all just going down the quiet road, so we concluded to give that a miss and Taki also told us it would be really tricky to bike up to the mountain - now if a Thai person is saying that, it must be dangerous. So we said sorry to the bike guys and told them to take them back. ops! We walked down the road in search for some food instead before we went to the cinema. We ended up in a Japanese restaurant, acutally inside which was nice for a change although it was set up very much like a mcdonalds but we did get served. We didn't know what to order so decided to pick a random number and that would be our food that we would all share. Ended up with 7 main courses in the middle and all tucked into them. We ordered some very wierd sounding dishes (apart from a spaghetti carbonara which Rezas number was!) We were all pleasantly suprised - I actually enjoyed all of them and even the 2 spicy ones :) I think I am building up a tolerance to spice - get in! And there I was drinking Singha beer too. Changed woman me...now a ladette. lol.

We headed to the cinema on the top floor to find that Skyfall and Twilight were only in Thai so off to the bar it was instead. Played some pool and enjoyed the cheap drinks all night. We did get lost heading back home so just decided to jump in a tuk tuk instead- he took us to the wrong hostel....ours is "A Little Bird 2" but he took us to guesthouse 1...and there was Steve chilling outside with a group of people. He showed the tuk tuk driver on the map where we were staying and we eventually arrived back at the hostel.

It's now Saturday, 1pm and I have been chilling on the roof top all morning writing this pretty much! It takes a while so not sure how long I can keep at this for but will try my best! We have a light festival to experience tonight, it's a annual Thaii event and is meant to be quite big so should be good fun. Will keep you updated!

Miss you all, and let me know what you are up to some way or another

xx