Hello everyone,

We are actually in Laos now but I'll fill you in on what we did during the rest of our time in Chiang Mai!

We had quite an interesting experience last Thursday night... we were in our room at about 11pm and there was a storm outside. Ryan was in the middle of skype-ing his dad when there was suddenly a massive bang and a sound of something crashing to the floor just outside, then the power went off. Lightning had struck the electric pylon which is just a couple of metres away from the front of the guesthouse and a piece off it fell to the floor and smashed. When we went to see what was going on there was a smell of burning downstairs and someone said that the lightning had hit the building as well. The people from the guesthouse were very apologetic though it's not like they could have prevented it!

On Friday we pretty much just had a chill out, saving-money day. We still had the scooter so had a bit of an explore on that. Ryan was keen to go and play a round of golf but you had to wear long trousers and a collar so we gave up with that!

The next day we used our birthday present from mum and went to Elephant Nature Park, yay! We got picked up in the morning and got driven about an hour or so out of town during which time we watched a DVD about the park. It was set up by a woman called Lek who wanted to provide a sanctuary for elephants who she has rescued from logging and tourism industries. She is pretty amazing and has won lots of awards for her work. It also provides jobs for local people, helps to support the elephants mahouts who are mostly from Burma and helps to protect the forests. Our guide gave us lots of information bout the elephants, a lot of which have got horrible background stories. Many are blind or have broken bones from where they have been mistreated. Despite elephants being such an important symbol of Thailand, they have little to no protection. We got to feed the elephants with fruit lots of times throughout the day, they need a lot of food! We also got to stand in the river with them and throw many buckets of water over them. It was really nice to see them all at peace in a place where they're not made to work, do tricks or trek with people on their backs all day. I would love to go and volunteer there sometime in the future! We also saw some more wildlife in the form of the biggest spider i've ever seen! It was bigger than my hand and had yellow markings on it. Ryan freaked out a little bit. On the way back we saw that lots of trees surrounding the park had pieces of orange cloth wrapped around them. It's because the monks have said they'll help Lek by blessing some of trees. This means that no one will ever cut through them as it would be as bad as cutting through Buddhism itself. All in all we had an amazing day, thanks mum!

On Sunday we decided to go mountain biking! After being picked up from our guesthouse and being taken to the shop in town we got geared up with protective gear. Then we got driven up to the top of Doi Suthep mountain just outside Chiang Mai. It was a long and windy ride in the back of a songthaew. At the top we were provided with bikes and split up into groups with different guides. I picked the easiest route which Ryan did with me though he could have done the hardest one. As we were going down the only section of tarmac road on the route, right at the start, the girl in front of Ryan managed to stop on the side and put her foot down on what she thought was hard ground but went straight through it and ended up falling off the edge. It was quite a steep bank but because it was covered in bushes she didn't fall very far. I emerged round the corner to see her boyfriend dive down after her. Luckily she was only shaken up with a few cuts but it looked like it could have been much worse. The rest of the journey was a lot of fun as we were cycling down dirt tracks through the jungle with amazing views. It was a lot more challenging than I thought, especially as it had been raining so it was really slippery. I only fell off once though. Our guides were really funny and the other people in the group were really nice as well. Ryan was a bit of a show off, especially when he got to do some harder single track sections, the guides were impressed and said he should come back and do the hard routes. He was a the teachers pet once again, who would have thought! When we got to the bottom we had lunch next to a lake on a little floating bamboo huts. Ryan went in for a swim but I just dangled my legs in. We were exhausted by the time we got back!

On monday we had to check out of our guesthouse. The people who run it are so nice and said we must come back. They even took our picture for some reason! We spent the rest of the day having a look around and relaxing in bars and restaurants since our minibus to the border wasn't until the evening. I'll talk about that journey in the next blog...

Lots of love,

Jo and Ryan

Xxxxx