The train arrived in Chaing Mai at 8.30am and the night train journey was a lot better than I expected. I managed quite a bit of sleep on and off and made friends with a Thai girl who shared her sweets with me. We were taken to our guest house and we had some breakfast. The guest house is nice although you have to shower over the toilet and we have a room with no air con which in future I think id pay for.

The five of us decided to go to the temple which was about 30 minutes away. We got an air conditioned taxi up this huge steep hill and arrived at the temple. The views would have been amazing but Chaing Mai is very smoky at the moment as the farmers are burning their fields as it's the end of the farming season so we couldn't see much. We walked around the temple, looked at the buddah's, ed photo bombed as many Chinese people's photos as he could and a man from Bali asked Harry for a photo with his daughter as they thought he looked like Justin Bieber. Haha.

We arranged to meet at 6 and go for dinner and to the night market. The night market was huge and soooo many different stalls and things to buy. If I didn't have my backpack and wasn't traveling for another two months I would have bought loads, instead I settled on a pair of elephant trousers, notebook and a couple of purses. We bumped into the guy from Bali in the market and lost our guide 'Bun' as he stopped to look at something and there were thousands of people.

After that Bun took us to the ladyboy show, I wasn't sure what to expect but I loved it! That's a ladyboy in the blog photo if you didn't guess, not just any ladyboy through, miss Chaing Mai! Haha. We ordered drinks and then the ladyboy demanded a tip and got quite angry about it. Then the show started, they impersonated Britney, Rhianna and Beyoncé as well as doing various dance and singing acts. At one point they stripped an English guy and gave him a lap dance. The costumes were amazing, but the shoes were awful. Haha. So after the show ended we were going to go for another drink but the tuk tuk and our guide took us to the wrong part of town so we ended walking for ages and then we all went to bed.

Today (17th March) we got picked up at 9am to go to the 'we cook' Chaing Mai cookery course. There were 10 of us in the group. First we went to the market (look in the photo section ) which was amazing. Soooo much food, 50% of it I didn't recognise and what terrified me was the basket full of toads, I shrieked and ran away! Gross. We had to pick which six dishes we wanted to cook at the market so all the ingredients could be bought.

After that we went to the cookery school, we made spring rolls and chicken and cashew but first and then went upstairs and all sat around a table and ate them. One of my spring rolls was a lot larger than the other but indefinitely got better on the second one. After feeling like I couldn't eat anymore we went back down to the outside kitchen and made the curry paste for our chosen curries. After that we all made curry, soup and mango sticky rice. It all tasted amazing and I have put the photos up of the food. Although not of the soup as the minced chicken made it look a bit like brains...it didn't taste like brains though. :)

We were at the cooking school until 2pm and then got a tuk tuk back to our accomodation. Just as we were leaving the chef lady was waving and jumping up and down excitedly. I think it was Ed who commented how happy she was and nice. It wasn't until we were a bit further down the road that we realised we had left our guide at the cookery school and she was trying to get our attention to stop and go back for him!!

So back in the hotel now and tonight we are going to a Thai boxing match. Apparently it's very popular here so I will update you on what it's like.

Enjoyed my time in Chaing Mai and tomorrow we leave to stay in Chaing Rai which is a step closer to the Laos border.