Hello people, we have been having far too much fun to stop and send post cards but we are sorry for our silence and will now fill you in... We are now in Thailand although our map seems to have a mind of its own and appears to insist we are still in Hangzhou- weird! After catching the plan from Hong Kong by the skin of our teeth, we started off our Thailand adventures in Bangkok. We would like to say that this was an amazing culturally stretching experience, but to be honest we got a bit Buddha'd out after 3 Wats. To be fair they were all beautiful. One was made entirely of porcelain and another contained a reclining Buddha which was about 46 feet long and 15 feet high. A bit excessive we feel! To see the sights up the Chao Phrayer river we had to get a hop on hop of boat. No we haven't changed...we managed to miss several stops because we were nattering too much about our next destination...Chaing Mai via Ayutthaya. The decision made we jumped on a tuk tuk to buy our train tickets. Somehow the tuk tuk/ travel agency alliance duped us again! Having paid well over the odds for adjacent bottom bunks on the sleeper train, we later discovered we had been double duped with top bunks that weren't even next to each other- grrr! Half way stop was Ayutthaya where we aimlessly wonderingly stumbled across the ancient ruined city- yay another Wat, but in actual fact this was our favourite yet and half of it was missing. All the Buddhas minus one that has been restored have been beheaded. The 12 hour journey to Chaing Mai was well worth the double dupe. We stayed at Banana guest house- another recommendation- we haven't actually needed a guide book in Thailand we just go from recommendation to recommendation and so far it's worked a treat! Through Banana we went on a 3 day trek into the jungle to visit some hillside tribes- what an experience! The people were so welcoming, and colourful, and they had the cutest babies! We trekked from village to village up the steepest mountainsides but we were always the leaders of the pack (especially on the way down!). We can now say that we have both been on elephants, but it's not something that we would do again because it was very upsetting to see how badly the elephants were treated. If we hadn't been clinging on for dear life as our elephant either reversed into or ate every tree it passed, we would have demanded to get down there and then. We met some really cool people on our trek and sat around the camp fire each evening eating Mr T's (our guide) amazing culinary concoctions and drinking Thai whiskey-yum yum! Sadly it came to an end after a farewell night out with our fellow trekkers- cocktails and lady boys included naturally!