Hello!

I've just come back to Chiang Mai after spending the last few nights in the hills.

We left Bangkok on an over night train. The train was fantastic. The seats had detachable tables for dinner time (dinner and breakfast was brought to you!!), and then turned into bunk beds at night time. The train was cleverly designed. However, we were on the train 3 hours longer than expected, an no reason was given for the delay (similar to British rail) on what should have been a 13 hour journey.

When we got to Chiang Mai the hotel rooms weren't ready so we got the tour guide called Chai to organise a truck to take us up the mountain to get a good view of the city. When we got to the top of the mountian we found that there was a spectacular temple there. It was really nice to walk around although we had to walk up alot of steps to get there.

That night we went to the night market for dinner and a look around. Dinner was delicious and very cheap. We also went to a Thai kick boxing match that evening!! I'm not keen of boxing but I thought when in Rome ...... The night consisted of 9 matches starting with kids that looked about 8 years old up to very fierce adults. I only stayed for the first 4 matches as I was tired (and it went on a bit) but I think that by the 9th it would have been very violent. It was quite an experience.

The next morning we got in a truck and went up to a waterfall on the way to the start of our trek. We got to swim in the water fall - it was lovely! Although to avoid insulting the locals us girls all had to go in fully clothed even though the boys just got to wear their swim shorts as usual (I don't understand the logic!).

After a 2 hour trek through lovely wood land, stopping ever now and again for a rest and for Chai and Rambo (the assitant tour leader) to point stuff out to us, we got to the village we were staying in for the night. The village was not like any I had been to before. There was no electicity supply or running water, and the villagers all lived in basic stilt houses. The villagers made their living from farming ginger and from providing accomodation to us, and grew rice and kept animals to feed themselves.

The accomodation was basic but great. All 12 of us slept in a big room (we had hired sleeping bags and stuff in Chiang Mai), and ate delicious food cooked for us by Rambo.

The next day we went on a 4 hour trek. I thought I might struggle as alot of it was up hill so I hired a porter to carry my bag - one of my better ideas, especially as it only cost me 3GBP. At the end of the trek was the elephant camp. The elephants lived in the woodland, and the people would go and fetch them for tourists to ride as a source of income.

The elephants were lovely. When we got there there was a family (mum, dad and baby) already in the camp, so we fed them bananas, and I got elephant slava all over - yuk!! After lunch we were to ride the elephants to the village where we were staying for the night. Getting on an elephant is a bit strange - you have to walk on their heads to climb into the basket attached to their back. Once on the elephant the one only safety precaution was a bit of rope acting as a dubious seat belt (there were no precautions for those people riding on the elephants necks.........which is fine when you are going on the flat but when you are going down hill it gets interesting.

At the village we swam in the river to clean off (the girls having to wear a fetching sheet thing), then got ready to play in a football match with the local kids. After Chai negotiated with the kids I was allowed to play in goal. Even if I do say so myself I was quite good - I made 3 good saves, and only let in one goal in about 30 mins!!

Today we got up and wnet bamboo rafting. The rafts were literally made in front of us! It was a lot of fun, and we all fell in once or twice.

Now, I'm going to get some dinner then go to bed - I'm tired!

Tommorrow night I catch the train back to Bangkok. I have one night there then I go to Cambodia.

Louise x.

PS photos to follow - I need more time to upload them than I have now (as the internet access here is very slow).