well.....now im in chiang mai for mid project break with jon, george and richard - we decided that some luxury was needed and after scoping out the net we found a bloody good deal with asia rooms and have 5 nites in 4* hotel with pool, bath etc for 51 squid - a verdadera ganga (bargain!). So i guess u'll all wondering how the hell i can justify that money well it just turns out that mum and dad were looking for a bday pressie to get me so they have paid for that for me (thanks mum and dad - its a really lovely treat!)! So the days before the break went quite quick as the workin at the school now which has been a bit slower as too many people to work on one site so on wed i taught some classes instead then played games with them in the afternoon! Have had a few probs with the bridge due to flash floodin which has slowed stuff down as part of the banks on either side have eroded a bit but we'll fix it! We have now moved onto building a dining room for the lil kids at the school while we wait for the concrete on the bridge to set and the rendering on the tank so be finished. The school is about 20 mins walk so its good exercise in the morning - which is what i need! I mentionned before about my falling over bamboo incident - well it turns out that fallin over is something that has come second nature to me and im gettin quite good at it now! When we got to chaing mai we got the normal song taw (wrong spelling) and i decided that climbin in with the rucksack still on the back was a very bright idea so i climbed it hit the roof with my rucksack and fell right back again just managing to keep my large arse on the floor bit and according to jon i looked like an upside down tortoise tryin to stand up!! We headed out on thur for a meal and a few "quiet drinks" but after ordering 1 half bottle of sang som our evening went down hill from there. Therefore, after takin over the restaurant and keeping them open hours after they wanted to close, drinking 2 bottles of sang som, and playing guess the nationality game (well done george on that one - how the hell did u know they were israeli - (i went for german and lost)), we grabbed a tuk tuk home! The pictures are really funny and ill put them on here prob on mon. So on fri we tried out mountain biking - i really thought we were gonna die on the way up there as the crazy driver was speeding up the hills without a care in the world while us ion the back were prayin not to see our breakfast again! Mountain biking was fun but i was a bit slower than the others - what happened to those days in the new forest where i wouldnt care what hill to take poor fiona down (sorry again bout that fi!!)! The instuctors were cool and the day was beautiful and as we were going down hill the scenery was pretty awesome too! I managesd to stay on my bike while all the others fell off - thats only because they were being more daring than me!! After the bikin we stopped at a lake in the national park area and had lunch - they had bamboo rafts almost over the river where u could sit and have some lunch which was really different. Yesterday we did a thai cookery course - so much fun. The other people were really nice - some of them french so i got to practice a lil bit and the teachers were nutty but very good. I made pat thai, spring rolls (i got 100 points for mine as they were nice and firm!), thai green curry, an oyster sauce thing and a mushroom thing and bananas in coconut sauce - it was all so tasty but after i felt very full. Last nite was a bit of a big one (suffering for it now - god i feel s*** - i think my downfall was havin only 6 potato wedges for dinner - but i was still full from the cookery day) we started at some mexican style bar as george wanted to watch the England Wales match sp saw a bit of that then moved on and played pool - who ever was doubling with me lost as didnt have much hand eye coordination i think. So we went round load of dif bars and drank copious (u can pronounce that any way u like emma!!!) amounts of sang som - v leathal stuff - i think its illegal in Uk for some reason! We avoiding some bars which had about 6 thai women to every westerner well i say thai women but some of them were definately lady boys! We ended up at some random club dancing my arse off and prob makin fool of myself but i had fun. On the way home we created havoc in a car park and started leap froggin and just generally runnin around. We stopped at 7/11 to buy some sprite to go with some sang som we had left in the hotel - big mistake - i didnt actually drink anymore as had quite enough by this point. Well i think thats all for now - yay only 5 days til my bday! Hope you all are well love nikki xxxx