Last night in Chiang Mai so getting an early night after a busy few days.

Went and did Flight of the Gibbons on Thursday which is ziplines and rope bridges through the jungle which was loads of fun, even with a hangover! Thursday night when we got back we met a guy called Tommy from hong kong whose family own the hostel where we're staying and he took us to the night market.

Friday morning we got up early and were picked up from our hostel and driven to the jungle to start our 3 days of trekking. On our trip there were around 20 of us with people from Argentina, France, Egypt, Germany and one really annoying 62 year old bloke from Lebonon who didn't realise that the jungle trekking involved any walking and took great pleasure in telling the group about his sexual tour of Thailand!

We walked for about 4 or 5 hours until we got to a small village where the some of the Karen Longneck tribe live. They cooked us dinner in the evening and I was nackered so I went straight to sleep but woke up at about midnight and couldn't sleep because of the noise of the jungle and was pretty much awake all the way through until the morning.

The second day we got up and had a breakfast of cold toast and hard boiled eggs (my favorite) and set off back into the jungle. We walked for about an hour before being picked up by a van to go to the elephant trekking. The van was too small for the size of the group so naturally me and Nathan, being easily the two heaviest people on the trip, sat on the roof, which was pretty fun albeit a bit bumpy!

I didn't really thing too much of the elephant trekking, it all seemed a bit rushed and the drivers steered the elephants by hitting them in the head with a metal spike. The bamboo rafting wasn't that great either - I though that we would be paddling the rafts but we just sat on then and were gondolia'd down the river by the staff.

After the bamboo rafting we had lunch and were set to trek for a few more hours back into the jungle but we decided not to bother and stayed with the 2 day Trekkers They were spending the afternoon doing what we were going to be doing the following day, so we would only miss out on another night in the jungle and get to Laos a day earlier.

We went to visit a waterfall where we could have a swim and do some rock jumping and then went to do some White water rafting - definitely the best part of the 2 days.

We got a van back to Chiang Mai and arranged to meet some of the group for drinks later that night. When we got back to our hostel we were sharing a room with a guy called Michael who had been living in Australia for the last two and a half years and was travelling through Asia on his way back to England so we invited him out with us.

We went to a rooftop bar, imaginatively called "The Rooftop Bar", which was really nice and chilled out. I got a little bit tipsy and left in somebody elses flip flops on the way to a nightclub. We got to the nightclub and it was empty so we passed the time with a few more drinks, making me so drunk that nathan had to send me home! Michael, also smashed at this point, decides that he wants to go home as well so we jumped into a tuk tuk, 150 baht, done deal. The tuk tuk driver then drives us to every brothel in Chiang Mai trying to get us to go in before eventually bringing us home and trying to charge us 1000 baht (about £20). Obviously we refuse and he starts shouting at me, waking up other guests at the hostel. In the end I put 200 baht in his hand and walked off. Problem solved. The stupid thing was that the nightclub we were in, Spicy, is only about a 10 minute walk from the hostel!

We woke up today an the three of us went for breakfast then I went for a massage with one of the French guys from the trekking who is staying in our hostel as well and then we all went to a fish spa, where you sit with your feet in a fish tank and loads of little fish eat all of the dead skin off your feel - really ticklish but strangely nice! We then had a look around the weekend market before getting some food and coming home.

We are getting a bus to Chiang Khong tomorrow to get our visas sorted out and catch the slow boat to Loang Probang in Laos.

Week 1 done.