Hello Fellow Compatriots! Here's a wee update of where we are and what we've been up to over the last couple of weeks...

We are now in our forth destination. A small town in north Thailand called Pai. We had a three hour journey in a mini bus from our previous stop-over, Chiang Mai. The journey was the worst experience we've had so far. Lea had the runs, I felt sick and the bus driver decides to take us down the most winding road possible. A journey that should've taken four hours took only three because of the way that k*** head decided to take the corners! I've also never known a minibus leap off the road when there has been a minor bump in the tarmac (or what was left of the tarmac). The amount of times we cracked our heads of the ceiling, the chair in front and each other's heads was unbelievable! I even managed to bash my head off the floor at one point!

But we got here safe and sound… well, we got here…

So we've been here seven nights now and we've done practically the same thing every day. Wake up, eat, walk around, lie in a hammock or two, eat, siesta, get up and then eat, bars, and then sleep. It's been PERFECT!! It's the most relaxed place we've ever known. It's the hippy capital of Thailand and there are all sorts of cool clothes, music, bars, vespas and people. We are staying in a small bamboo hut for next-to-nothing (in fact we've still not paid for it) and we're right on the river bank. The river is beautiful and nice and cool. We got hold of a couple of giant rubber rings and the current took us down the river for a bout a mile. Then we realized that we had to walk back!

We've even participated in a quiz night. It was a bar call The Pub which has drunken scumbags left, right and centre! It was us two against the world! Er, we lost… literally… we came last! It was solid though! People were getting only about half the questions right. We got less. But we did get a booby prize which was a bottle of Thai whiskey. We were supposed to drink it there and then but Leanne got her 'Solihull' posh face on and demanded that she wouldn't be "touching that stuff coz I'm from Sullihill". So we 'politely' declined, and made a fast exit. I tried the whiskey later on. I'd prefer to go to prison than drink the rest of it.

We hired a scooter the next day and went toddling off looking for a waterfall which had been recommended to us. We'd been riding for about an hour and realised we had no petrol and that we'd gone the wrong way! We had to follow this little old lady who was on a tiny scooter with two huge baskets on each side. She EVENTUALLY got us to a petrol station just in time and she set us on our merry way yet again. This time in the right direction. With Leanne this time riding the bike with me on the back we followed signs to the waterfall. When we got there she tried parking up (oh dear). She was swaying and bouncing and rockin and rolling all the place. She was trying to stop the bike with her feet as opposed to the brakes and, inevitably, the bike crashed and went to ground! With dozens of onlookers already laughing, Leanne managed to stay on her feet but I went tumbling with the bike! I washed the blood off in the waterfall.

We've really started to fit in here and it's gonna be ever so sad to leave but we've said this with every place we've been to so far. Leanne loves the late night stalls and I love finding a bar to watch the footy in when she's doing her shopping. I managed to catch the Villa game too. We've met some good friends here that we may or may not stay in touch with but I guess that's just what happens when you're travelling. We'll miss the cheapness and the great food. This one place called Country Pai is our favourite and the staff know us by name, plus they play some good music dvds for us.

Well, we're off to Bangkok again in the next day or two so that we can catch our bus down to the South Islands. We're looking forward to getting some beach time as we obviously deserve it after being so busy around here!? We've got some quite nice hotels booked up too for reasonable prices so I might actually have a warm shower and be able to poo without ghekkos crawling up my bum.

We hope you're all taking care and we'd love to hear from some of you on here.

Lots of love

Dave & Leanne