We arrived in KL at 6:30am, which appears to have been a good time for us to arrive! Very few customs officials had appeared for work at that time and so we were passed through passport control in record time! Then it was straight through to collect our bags and we were on a bus to the city within 45 mins! An hour later and we had hit the city, big problem was, we hadn't really looked properly as to where our hostel was!! Sasha could remember a rough direction from the bus terminal, and we had an address of sorts to help us out, so with backpacks on we headed out to where we thought our bed should be! After walking for 30 mins with our 13kg bags on our back, and the temperature already hitting 32'C at 9am in the morning, we (Sasha) bit the bullet and asked in a local shop (Ollie given the chance would have been wondering for another few hours!! Men and not asking for directions and all that!!), and it turns out that we weren't far, but had just taken one wrong turn. So back tracking slightly, we found it easily, and climbed the three flights of stairs up to the hostel. Our room was not yet ready, and would not be ready until midday, and so we dumped our bags and headed off for our first experience of having noodles for breakfast!! And delicious it was too!! After finally checking in we headed to bed for a nap, and woke refreshed to head for a bit of sightseeing and window shopping at the Petronas Towers before heading for dinner and then a walk around the crazy, crazy place that is China Town! A couple of streets totally lined with stalls selling everything and anything, and none of which is genuine!! :0)

Up early the next day we caught the train to Batu Caves, a totally amazing, if not slightly surreal sort of place! A huge, beyond all possible decriptions, statue, painted gold, standing in front of the entrance to a cave only accessible by an enourmous flight of stairs. Which yes we climbed, only to find that the stairs and cave are inhabited by monkeys!! Monkeys that see you as suppliers of bananas, eyeing you up for any possible rustle of a plastic bag containing the delicious yellow fruit!!

Catching the train back, we headed straight to Butik Bintang to grab lunch, which was DE-LIC-IOUS!! However we found that the language barrier meant that a joke about the food being so good, "if only we could have eaten the bones we would have", resulted in the waiter apologsing and passing on our "complaint" to the chef!! Whoops!!

Anyways, we headed back to Bukit Bintang for the evening too, soaking up the energetic atmosphere there before heading back for an early night due to our early flight to Bangkok!!

Bangkok is, as all the guides tell you, crazy!! It's very organised on some fronts, but on others it is totally chaotic!! Getting to our hotel was a breeze, catching a train from the airport to the city, and then a couple of changes to our stop, and a short walk from there. Exploring our surroundings was something else!! Heading out to find food that evening we walked straight into a street market selling everything, and anything that could possibly be edible!! But most of which we would never consider being even close to edible! So after walking through stall after stall of fruits, vegetables, identifiable meats, intestines, fish (both alive and dead) and tubs of live turtles, we opted for a restaurant selling just noodles!!!

The following day we headed out to the Grand Palace and Reclining Budda, trying wherever possible to avoid the tuk-tuk drivers trying to scam us with talk of the Grand Palace being closed for the morning, but that they would happily take us to other sights, as well as their uncle's silk factory etc etc etc!! No thank you!! Oh and unsurprisingly, when we did arrive at the Grand Palace, it was open!!! ;0) We were both totally blown away by just how big the reclining budda was, we had seen pictures, but until you are standing next to it, you just can't grasp how big it actually is!! After much walking it was time to find Kho San Road for cheap eats and a refreshing beer before we headed on back to our hotel to freshen up and to head on back out!

Over the next couple of days we filled our time with chilling out by the pool, cooling off in the malls in Siem, and eating out in Silom! Silom, of course, being home to the red light district Patpong where we were invited to see women use ping pongs to do all manner of things!! . . . .

It was much relief to arrive in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand with it's relaxed atmosphere, no hassle hassle (well, less of it!!), and everything in a walkable distance!

And it was here, of course, that we got to experience a day with the most AMAZING animals!! For a whole day we rode and bathed elephants belonging to a hillside Mahout tribe!! After much research, we found a trip that did not involve sitting on a seat on the elephant (which we had read, to train them to allow people to do so, the elephant's "spirit is broken"), did not involve the elephants performing tricks for us, and did not involve the trainers beating the elephants to make them perform.

Our trip was a very relaxed day, which involved a pick up from our hostel, meeting our fellow companions (3 Aussies), and an hours drive north to the mountains. Upon arriving, three elephants were making their way down to meet us, and upon closer inspection we soon realised that it was actually four! One of the elephants had given birth 7 months ago, and had baby in tow!!

Before arriving we had stopped off at a market to buy some bananas, and these were supposed to last the whole day!! However, these clever animals had seen these tourists arrival many times and realised exactly where the bananas were kept, resulting in a couple of them trying to devour the lot, even while they were still in their bags!! After much wrestling however, the trainers were able to rescue at least some of the bananas to be able to use as a treat later, as well of course as the bags!!!

With little time to become acustomed to the huge beasts, we where instucted to climb aboard our elephant and were walkd up to the tribes home, where we were then given a brief background to the tribe, and then thrown back into climbing aboard and learning the Mahout instructions used to direct the elephants. We then set off on a little trek around the bush, leading back to the tribes base where lunch was waiting for us.

After a lazy lunch, and a bit of a play with a couple of the elephants, it was time to trek up to the waterfall for a bit of bath time!! This was hilarious as one of the elephants we were with was still fairly young, and so when getting to any stream would suck up some water and throw it over his Australian passenger, and of course always wanted to be first and so upon finding the waterfall and pool, plunged himself and Emma the rider straight into the water! Our elephant, thankfully, was far more graceful, and allowed us to disembark before submerging!!

Cleaning the elephants was amazing, well in fact the whole day was amazing! Just being able to stand looking into the eyes of these magnificent animals was out of this world, and something we will remember forever!!

The rest of our time in Chiang Mai was taken up with temple visiting, relaxing and researching the next stretch of our trip, Cambodia. That and of course the whole day Ollie spent on the toilet due to food poisoning!! But we are pretty sure you don't want the full details of that experience!!! :0) And so we will leave you here and will shortly update you on our time in Cambodia!!