We love Chiang Mai! It's lovely here, definitely our favourite place in Thailand. There's a great chilled-out vibe about the place. We're staying in the old town, which is surrounded by ancient brick walls and filled with ornate Wats. There are fantastic street markets on at the weekend so on the first two nights we took a stroll around them. They have decent stalls with handcrafted goods, rather than the usual tourist tat, and lots of street performers: singers, musicians, puppeteers and dancers etc. If I was on holiday rather than travelling I could have spent a fortune at the markets!

On Sunday we went on a day tour where we spent an hour or so riding and feeding elephants, an hour trekking to a waterfall and an hour bamboo rafting down the river. All three activities were fun although the elephant riding was the best. There were five of us on the tour and we had two elephants, each with a small wooden bench strapped to their backs. These seated two people so Jak had to ride the elephant bareback, or bareneck to be more precise, in order for us all to fit on. It's pretty comfortable to ride an elephant but when they go up or downhill it is SCARY. We were clinging on to the bench for dear life to stop ourselves sliding out and Jak was clinging on to, well, nothing, because there was nothing for him to hold on to. But he was clutching the elephant's neck extra hard with his thighs and hoping. After we got down we fed the elephants bunches of bananas, which they gobbled up indecently fast. There was a cheeky baby elephant who kept stealing bunches of bananas when no-one was looking and who kicked Jak on the leg, quite hard...

On Monday we went on a Thai cookery course where we learnt how to cook various dishes (Pad Thai, Green Curry, Massaman Curry, Chicken with Cashew Nuts, Sweet and Sour Mixed Vegetables and Spring Rolls - delicious!) We got to eat everything we made so we were pretty stuffed by the end of the day :-) Good times.

Today we slept in, for the first time in days. After lunch we hailed a tuk-tuk and for £5 got someone to drive us to Tiger Kingdom, 30 minutes away, wait two hours for us to finish up there AND drive us back. The tuk-tuk ride in itself was fun, we pootled along the highway at around 30 miles an hour in our converted moped whilst every other vehicle whizzed past us.

The Tiger Kingdom was fairly small but had quite a few tigers there, grouped by category. We paid 1,040 baht each to play with the smallest tigers (1-3 months old) and to get in with the biggest ones (18-24 months old). The baby tigers were so bloody cute!! They were really warm and soft, and when you put your face up against their bellies you could feel their heartbeat. Amazing. One of them nipped at me playfully when he was climbing on me and even though it didn't hurt he had a surprisingly large bitespan. It was easy to think of them as kittens until then.

Whilst we were waiting to go in with the big tigers we watched the people in front of us posing with sedentary, bored-looking tigers - big but not too intimidating. But when our number was called we were led around the corner to another cage with two very active tigers pacing around, growling and generally looking menacing. It went against all our natural instincts to get into the cage and chase the creatures around to try to get a picture with them. Thankfully one of them calmed down after a while and flopped to the ground so we crept up behind her and took lots of pictures whilst the other tiger was kept at bay by a trainer. The tiger we posed with didn't seem to mind us being there at all and didn't even bat an eyelid when I trod on its tail on the way out (let me tell you, realising you're standing on a tiger's tail is a heart-stopping 'ahhhh f**********k!' moment). We tuk-tukked it back into town feeling humbled and awed that we'd been able to get so close to such amazing animals.

Once back in Chiang Mai we stumbled across a stall selling fish food and spent some time feeding the fish in the moat surrounding the old town. There were heaps of ugly fish and the occasional catfish that went mad every time we chucked the food in, scrambling and squirming out of the water and over one another in an attempt to reach the pellets. We were surrounded by pigeons too and could have had a right feed-the-birds moment if we hadn't been put off by all the bird crap everywhere. Tonight we had curry and are now relaxing in our room. Tomorrow - Chiang Khong, where we will be making the crossing into Laos.