We arrived at Mae Sa Valley, in Chiang Mai, on Valentines Day (ahhh!). We were staying in bamboo bugalows, tucked away in the hills of Mae Sa. It was beautiful and really relaxing, as we were the only guests that we saw!

We spent a couple of days just lazing by the pool and visited the Mae Sa Elephant training camp, just down the very steep road, as we found out, on the way back up! The camp was started with 5 elephants in 1976, by a man who wanted to protect elephants that were bred in captivity. They now have over 70 happy elephants. We saw them being bathed, fed them bananas and sugar cane and watched them play football and paint pictures! We then had a ride on one of the elephants around the camp, seeing the nursery with the all babies! It was a really great day.

After a couple of days in the hills, we headed down into the city of Chiang Mai to see the sights. We checked into our hotel (Holiday Garden) and after a brief panic over a lost passport (suprisingly it was Laura who caused a panic and almost near heart failure and a day at the Tourist Police station - it was found on our flight to Chiang Mai!), we went to the Chiang Mai night bizarre. The market was very big, but not as bustling as we expected, quite a quiet affair!

We also visited Wat U Mong (as you can imagine we had a few laughs with this one!), which is a forest Wat, first used in 14th Century and has brick-lined meditation tunnels which were built for Thera Jan, a clairvoyant monk! It is still used today and monks still live on the site.

On our last night in Chiang Mai we decided to try a local delicacy...any number of fried bugs! The pictures say the rest, but they weren't quite your Manzil's on a Friday night!