Not long arrived in Chiang Mai after a 10 hour day travelling....very tired but excited as its my birthday tomorrow...bit gutted as i will be replacing my usual bbq for something a lil bit more asian but iv got some excellent people to celebrate the day with so its okay!!!

Woke up to a very sunny day which is always good news and went for a birthday breakfast at a nice pub called 'The Wall' (we have actually made this our local), we had all decided to sign up fro a three day trek so today was just a day to take it easy....and shop!! Me, Beka and Nic hit the markets while the boys went sight seeing, I bought 2 skirts with birthday money lovely Emma had sent to me x. We roamed the streets for a bit and spent quite alot of time in a large 7/11..its like an American 'Spar' shop...we did the usual exciting thing of buying some western sweets and cosmetics...my life is so sad these days  Chiang Mai is a very built up tourist city...much the same as any large asian city but for us we could note the differences ie. people speaking very good english and alot more cars and less bikes!! At 5pm we had welcome meeting with trekking group...the leader is crazy crazy crazy!!!!! The group consisted of us 5 plus our American friend Amber, 5 irish boys, two couples and 3 single girls. We were all from English speaking countries which lead to no one being left out as sometimes can happen. At the end of the meeting i had the surprise of my life when the hotel came out with a lovely birthday cake with my name on...the guys were gutted they hadn't had a hand in it but it was all the hotels idea...they're all so lovely...I shared around the cake and then we went for dinner back at the 'local'. After many cocktails and a few live music venues...i was sang happy birthday by a reggae band and produced with another little cake (this time the guys had requested)...in due course plotting off who was going to hav the cake in the face began...it seemed everyone wanted to get someone!!! Poor Nic was the sod who had it in the end...Shane doing the throwing and her boyfriend Ben holdng her down!!! It was so funny I actually thought I'd wee myself  We all ended up with bits of cake down us and all went to bed laughing to ourselves.

Bright and early Monday morning we woke, breakfast at the local and then set off in large tuk tuks to the mountains......................more to follow xxx