The 3 things we had wanted to do in Chiang Mai were the cookery course, meditation and go to the tiger reserve, which is what our plan was to do today. However a lot of people seemed to think that they were cruel to them and gave them drugs to sedate them, contrary to what the leaflet said about it. To cheapen things we were going to go to 7-eleven to get some cereal or something but got talking to people in the hostel, and so were there when 3 of the girls ...

Today we got up early as the plan was to go to a temple on hired bikes to do a meditation course. The smoothie place we have been going to a lot serves egg benedict so I wanted to go there and try it for breakfast but it wasn't open so we went to Starbucks. It's outrageous to think we spent more on breakfast than our accommodation last night! The bikes we rented were cheaper than the one the other day, however they were a lot more unstable and squeaky! We se...

Today we had our Thai cooking course, which although was more expensive than the Indian one was definitely a lot better. He picked us up from our guesthouse, and somehow managed to squeeze 12 of us into his vehicle that was kind of like a truck with a roof. He took us to a market and told us that to check if an egg is fresh, you shake it and if it is silent then it is good, if not it has water in it. He showed us 1000 year old eggs (I don't think they are actua...

We woke up quite late, and so only had one meal. I had a Pork Samurai from McThai ad Alice had a tuna and pepper Panini. Alice had her camera stolen last night so we went to the bar to ask if it had been handed in, but the reggae bar wasn't open.

We hired bikes today which was a good way to get around as you feel like you see more and can get to know the place better. En route to the train station we stopped at a café for coffee and fruit mixed with muesli and yoghurt (pineapple, mango, melon, banana, and dragon fruit). They only had seats for the overnight train to Bangkok so we went to the bus station- our first reservation for long distance travel without using a travel agent! We tried to find th...