Sawadee And welcome to our last blog from Thailand.Today our hotel manager Sunny treated us to a ride around several shopping emporiums with our own private driver to boot. He whisked us off at 10am and we visited where they make paper umbrellas, like big versions of what you would put in your cocktails!!! We also squeezed in a visit to a silk factory and learnt again how they kill the silk worm to make silk plus we visited a woodcarving factory and a silverwar...

Sawadee And happy Loi Krathong festival to everybody.Today in Chiang Mai has been a major festival but things didn't really get started till dusk so we spent a few hours on the Ping River.This river goes all the way South to Bangkok and over a few hours we visited a farmers house and looked at all the things he grew and also got to sample ginger and Longan juice which was tasty. As we moved up the river there were plenty of people in the water, including 6 guys...

Sawadee Well what a day we have had today it has been a real adventure and full of action. We had the day mapped out and first was our elephant trek, this was so much fun.The elephants used to be used for logging but are now part of a conservation project where they still work as it is what they know. Our elephant was a lady and as soon as we were on board she sprayed Mel with what can only be described as muddy snot, she was covered from head to toe. As we went...

Sawadee Today has been a sensation of tastes for our mouths and tummies. We took a 1 day Thai cookery course with Baan Thai (means Thai House) to learn how to prepare and cook Thai food. As with any good food you start at the beginning which means visiting the market to get ingredients and supplies for the days cooking. Off we went with our baskets, we spent an hour looking around the market touching and feeling the produce and having a good sniff at things. K...

Sawadee everybody and hello from Chiang Maii here in Northern Thailand. I know you must have all missed our blog yesterday so I will bring you up to speed with what has been going on. Our train journey from Bangkok was an experience shall we say the 1st class compartment was excellent and we got a meal in our room (at extra cost,there was no dining car) the whole trip was going well and nice and relaxed. We turned in early and neither of us could get to sleep. ...