Up at 730 for our day of trekking in chiang mai! Thankfully not feeling too hungover we got on the minibus with our friendly tour guide Pon and headed for the elephant farm. With only 2 seats on the elephants back Pon told us that we would get a special ride and one of us could sit on its neck. Leanna and Nikki were excited by the idea until their mode of transport was revealed and they quickly handed the reins over to zak! Our elephant seemed to be the greediest, wolfing down our bunch of bananas and swinging its trunk back every few seconds for more, almost knocking zak off from its neck! We all had to hold on pretty tight at times but it was a great experience.

Next we did some trekking, stopping at some hill tribe villages on the way and with Pon pointing out the local wildlife including a nest of biting red ants and massive spiders! We arrived at a waterfall, described as a place to cool off and have a swim, but none of us really fancied risking our lives in the torrent of water.

Next stop was lunch at a street side restaurant where locals cooked us up some good thai food. Zak was quite agitated when he realised there was no meat on the menu, 'what's the point of vegetables?!' After lunch we boarded our bamboo river raft and had a peaceful journey down the river. We were helped along by the rapids and a thai man (with very strong arms) propeeling us along with a bamboo pole. He immediately put the girls at ease with his warnings about river snakes and found it amusing to splash his steering pole into the water every few minutes splashing us and shouting crocodile!

A sleepy bus ride back to the guest house and an early night ready for our departure to Laos...