Happy New Year! Goodness, I haven't written a blog entry since last year....

I realised in my last entry I forgot to mention my train journey up from Bangkok to Chiang Mai - for me it sums up the friendliness of the Thai people! Firstly, the conductor made several attempts to start a conversation - despite the fact he spoke very little English. After covering the basics (family, home country etc) he explained that he wanted to improve his English but had no English friends. I asked if there were many other Brits in Bangkok and he answered by telling me something about the train - I'm not sure he quite understood.... Towards the end of the journey another one of the staff came and pressed 3 mandarins into my hand, and then then invited me to the end of the carriage where all the staff were having drinks and snacks after the 11hrs or so on the train. The rest of the staff spoke even less English than the conductor, but delight in trying to guess which city I came from (Manchester, Liverpool, Chelsea...) and looked bemused when I finally told them I was from Oxford (Oxford United obviously doesn't make Thai TV often enough...) All in all it was a good laugh, even if our conversation was rather limited!

For those of you who are still wondering what my secret santa gift was - I got a pair of Thai fisherman pants. (For those who are still wondering - fisherman pants are basically enormous trousers which work on a one-size-fits-all basis, you gather them in until they fit. They look riduclous, but are very cool in the hot weather!) After leaving Chaing Mai, I headed north to Chiang Rai - this time travelling by bus. The lady who sat next to me spoke no English at all and my Thai, let's face it, rather limitied...but she still insisted that I shared half her rice roll, and spent much of the journey trying to feed me fruit, sprite and all kinds of other goodies she had in her bag!

Chiang Rai was lovely, and much less touristy than Chiang Mai. The night market was smaller than in Chiang Mai, but great fun as few of the stallholders spoke English and so I got a chance to practise my small amount of Thai! I've so far managed to learn "hello", "thank you", "how much?" and most of the numbers - although as it's a tonal language I've raised a few smiles, I don't think my pronounciation is quite there yet! While in Chiang Rai I took a day trip up to the very top of Thailand to see the Golden Triangle, stopping on the way up at a tea plantation and on the way down at the Opium museum...

After a few days in Chaing Rai I headed back down to Bangkok for a night before heading out to Kanchanaburi. For those of you into history, this is the site of the famous bridge over the river Kwai (which I didn't visit, I'm told it is just a small, metal bridge - and it's not even the original!). However, I did go up to see Erawan falls - which is an absolutely stunning 7 tier waterfall. You can walk up through the forest to each tier and swim wherever you wish! While in Kanchanaburi I also visited the Tiger Temple - a rather contraversial Wat outside the city. The monks there take in orphaned tiger cubs and hand raise them, with the result that they are "tame". For a few hours during the afternoon you can go and have your photo taken with the tigers and pet the smaller ones. This was a great experience, although sadly a bit too touristy - I suppose it's inevitable when you have something so unusual.

I'm now staying at a lovely homestay about 50km from Kanchanaburi in the middle of nowhere! It's run by a german and his thai wife (she is learning german, and he's learning thai, but they mostly talk to each other in English....) The area around is really beauriful, we went out for a bike ride this morning and saw nothing but rice fields, sugar cane plantations and the odd farmer! This afternoon Anna took me to the market - a real thai market rather than one selling souvenirs for tourists, and there were serveral cries of "farang!" (foreigner!), it's so unusual to see white people here! Although one of the women remarked "farang, beautiful" - apparently because of my pale skin, which thai women are very envious of. They even have "whitening cream" - puts our fake tan in perspective doesn't it....

Hope you are enjoying the next batch of pics - more to follow....at some point!

Lots of love, and hope you all have a great start to 2008. Interestingly, the Thais celebrate new year 3 times - on the 31st Dec, on Chinese new year, and on 15th April (thai new year). Does that mean that by may it will be 2010 here? :-p

xxx

PS - apologies for any crazy spelling, this computer has a german keyboard and it means I keep typing "z" instead of "y"....