I heart Chiang-Mai

Somehow nearly a week has passed since we came to Chiang-Mai and settled into a routine of temple admiring and market shopping.With so many different local and tourist markets (some good clothes bargains and enough food to keep us happy here for months) our time and stomachs have been filled just wandering around.The best market has been the Sunday walking market, which was enormous.Chiang Mai is a very relaxed city and easy to walk around - everyone's still trying to sell you something or get you in their tuk tuk but you're not hounded when you say no.The guest house we found has been fantastic - the cheapest and 10 mins walk from the main area but extremely helpful and friendly with a roof kitchen we have breakfast on.Today we went up to Doi Suthep, a temple up on the hill 15km out of the city, which was an impressive finish to the ones we visited in the old city (this included going to 'Monk Chat' where you get to do exactly that!).

Although the general feel if this city is enough to make a visit worthwhile, our biggest highlights occurred from Friday - Sunday giving us the most 'normally' structured weekend we've had in a while.On Friday we took a cooking course at a Thai farm outside of the city and after visiting the local market and looking at their organic plants we set to work at preparing our 5 dishes.By lunchtime we were enjoying plates of curry, rice, soups and stir-fry (luckily all that we didn't eat was bagged up for us to take home) and we still had to make pudding of sticky rice and mango and have a go at spring rolls and Phad Thai.It was good fun and quite easy (as long as you can get the ingredients!).We returned to our guesthouse stuffed, still with bags of food (enough for dinner and lunch the next day).It was the start of the World up so we headed out to see how many bars were showing it - quite a few as well as every single market stall holder having a portable TV plugged in.With the time differences it was becoming quite confusing as to when England were actually playing here so it took a while to work out that our first match against USA was the following night but at 2am.With this we headed home with the decision that we would try and stay up the next night.

Saturday panned out as you often hope it would at home - a lay-in and late breakfast, a bit of time spent on the internet and snacking on ice cream and my delicious spring rolls in the afternoon.Sam decided that he had to get his beard and head shaved and since his clippers had broken back in Fiji we would have to find a barber.It was at this point that I looked properly in the mirror at the scraggly ends of my own hair (which hadn't been cut in 6 months) and decided I would join him on his haircutting mission.Within a few minutes of walking we found a hairdresser with broken English who said she'd shave Sam's beard and hair plus wash, cut and blow-dry my hair for £10 - you wouldn't get close to the sink in London for this so I was in the chair, magazine in hand in a instant.An hour later we left the small salon on cloud nine - able to see the shape of Sam's face again (and how much weight he'd lost) and my hair actually hanging straight (to my delight she'd got the straighteners out) with ends not matted together.I was so happy I decided that we should have dinner out rather than our usual market trip.We were leaving for Heather and Simon's recommendation of the Riverside restaurant (only a few minutes from the guesthouse) when the owners who we had seen every day started proclaiming " Beautiful girlfriend" in Sam's direction - my hair must have been even worse that I thought before!The meal and drinks were so good and we finished up at the Riverside with enough time to walk via the night market (I made an interesting and slightly beer-fuelled purchase of some jingly trousers) to choose a bar for the early morning football.Despite many of the 'pubs' having screens they weren't willing to stay open to the early hours so we joined another group of Brits in a small open-fronted Thai bar with bar stalls that went out into the road.The bar must have made a killing that night, as they had to keep sending staff up and down the road to fetch more big Changs.We could have been at home if it wasn't for the lady selling cooked bugs behind us and the Thais shouting "England, England" but not having much other conservation. Being patriotic in another country is great fun (even when the football isn't really up to standard) but the headache we had on Sunday wasn't - hangovers aren't much fun in this humidity.It didn't matter though because Sunday was spent at the walking market and for a grand total of £5 we snacked all day on every thing from Curry Wraps to steamed buns and chocolate waffles.

We're finishing up in Chiang-Mai tomorrow to head to a Lisu Hilltribe near Soppong for a couple of days but will be back at the GoodWill Guest House for one final weekend before we go to Laos (even if it's to get more cheap Tim Tams from the supermarket).Mr Sam (as he's known to the owners) and his beautiful girlfriend will be very sad to leave!

Liz