Hello all,

The sleeper train up from Ayuttaya was very peaceful and it was a good job the train was 30mins late arriving because we were still fast asleep in our PJs when the train was supposed to pull in to Chiang Mai station! Chiang Mai is a cool place with a moat around the old city and plenty of markets to stroll around, but most of all it is generally more chilled out than Bangkok so it suits us fine.

That night we went to the night safari (the ex-presidents HUGE budget zoo) It was really good they had every animal I can think of! You go around in a little open sided tram and the animals just walk around. Saw tigers, lions, rhinos, zebras, panthers, elephants and of course everyone's favourite the Llama!!

The next day we set off on a 3 day trek up in the jungle. We started with an elephant ride with a very mischievous elephant who kept reaching his trunk up over his head to spray snot on my (Rich's) t-shirt while he tried to grab our bananas!! (What is it with my T-shirts and wild animals!!!) We then continued by foot on a 3 hour exhausting uphill hike through thick jungle, stopped to cool off at a waterfall and got good pics of the amazing views. We arrived at a hill tribe village for a delicious dinner and a camp fire after entertaining the mischievous little tribe kids. What an exhausting day - we slept very well that night covered in insect repellent in our bamboo hut!!

The second day we hiked to another tribal village and cooled off in various waterfalls along the way. I (Rich) felt pretty ill all day (I blame a dodgy egg for breakfast) but it didnt stop me enjoying the day. I skipped tea and had a little evening nap which seemed to sort me out. We stayed in a jungle camp by a waterfall that night with even more insect repellent on! Our shower was a stick of bamboo positioned to allow some of the river to run through it into a nice little shower area, what luxury!! It was exhilarating!

Day three was our reward for all the hiking. We went white water rafting down the rapids followed by relaxing bamboo raft trip. The white water rafting seemed fairly tame until we hit a strong rapid and our raft half mounted a large rock. We we left stood in the near vertical raft, which was full of water as we clinged to the rock (hard to imaging I know, wish I had some photos) We climbed onto the rock so we could empty the raft but the rapids swept it away leaving us stranded on a rock surrounded by white water with no vessel!! Our captain just laughed!! We had to struggle to land by pulling ourselves through the rapids past and over rocks - looking back it might have been a bit scary if we had stopped laughing about it the whole time!! Anyway we made it to land safely and back into our raft to continue our journey down stream. All in all a very enjoyable rafting experience with some extra excitement thrown in for free!!

We headed back to civilisation that night and spent one more night with Ben in Chiang Mai (who also came on the trek) in a very cool roof top bar drinking Chang and listening to Drum and Bass.

We arrived in Pai this morning, only just arrived so will update again soon!

Bye for now! x x x