We decided to stay in the nice hotel in Chiang Mai, so vicci could relax by the pool (not that we ever used it! doh!) I booked a trekking trip and we both booked a trip to see the elephant nature park. On the 19th I went trekking whilst vicci went to hospital. I saw an orchid and butterfly farm, then went for a short elephant ride, there was a baby there too which was so cute so i fed them lots of bananas!! We went to see a few tribes which were more modern than I expected, some even had a church and school, and most people were asleep, but we saw some of their clothes which had small wings on the back because they believed they could fly lol! but im glad i paid more pennies to see the long neck tribe which was awesome, i even tried some of the rings on myself. I also saw some of the tribes that stretch their ears-freaky! We then went white water rafting which was good fun, so scared about falling out though! followed by bamboo rafting...which was funny cos we just sunk!! Then we headed back home, and I saw vic who said she went to the wrong hospital lol! But it was lucky she did becuase the first one said her cut was fine, the second hospital (which was much more efficient) said she had an infection and she had to return every day to get it cleaned! We then met my trekking group for dinner and headed to the busy night market!

20th Me and vic and 2 others from our Gap group went to the elephant nature park. This is where you don't ride or see any shows, you just see them running around freely and each elephant is looked after by a different person or mahout. We watched a documentary on how people treat elephants that are used for labour or riding and I had to hold the tears back, it was horrendous, and made me fall in love with the ethic of the nature park even more. It was so nice to see the elephants happy and loved! We got to feed, bathe and touch them -even get a kiss! There was an english guy working there, and I spoke to him about it. I am so tempted to go back an volunteer for a month because it was just amazing!! The elephants were chained up at lunch for feeding and at night to stop them crossing onto other farmers land and getting shot so it was for there own gd! That evening we said goodbye to sarah and david and changed to the cheaper hostel, and accompanied vic to the hospital. We were going to see some thai kick boxing but were too tired! never mind! another funny thing was that because we didnt pay for A/C in our room we didnt get loo roll lol!!

21st Nov - we went to hospital again, by this time they knew her well lol! and went straight in! After we went to the tiger kindom and saw some small ones and big ones and stroked and got some really nice pictures. It was also nice to read that they werent drugged like rumours say and the reason we can go near them! It was my unlucky day though as I lost my zen music player :( think it was stolen from the nice hotel, thats wen i last saw it anyway! We then got the overnight train to Bangkok which was pretty nice even though it only had curtains and no doors! We also hanged with some of the other group from the Gap group ahead of us.