Hello Friends! Thanks for all of your messages - apart from making us feel pretty goddamn popular, it's really nice to hear from you all - keep 'em coming! We are currently in the North of Thailand in a city called Chiang Mai - we revised our plans once we actually bothered to look at a map in any detail and realised that going to the coast would mean we would have to end up going back on ourselves in the end - doh! We stopped off in Sukothai for a couple of days where the ruins of the ancient former capital of Thailand are. We hired a couple of push bikes and cycled around them all day like a pair of nine year olds complete with falling off and getting grazed - courtesy of Paul of course! The ruins were pretty impressive but, at the risk of sounding completely ignorant, Paul and I are starting to suffer from Buddha fatigue - gold ones, emerald ones, lying down ones, sitting up ones: We've seen them all. Enough culture already - bring on the lady boys! Chiang Mai is a welcome break from the mania of Thailand we have experience so far. Today we just chilled out in this really beautiful landscaped park in the city and it was the first time we have properly relaxed since we have been here. Our inner children (never far from the surface) were most impressed by the 2-3ft catfish which you can feed in the ponds (no manky ducks for the Thais). You buy bags of pellets and chuck them in the water and a couple of seconds, loads of gigantic gaping fish mouths start hoovering them all up - wicked! The day after tomorrow we are going on a trek into the hills to see some of the native tribes and laugh and point at the hideous freaks (not really - have probably seen more bizarre folk in Chans on a Friday night)! We've been told we will have to dress very modestly so we won't offend them - which for any of you who are familiar with my prolific collection of micro skirts - will realise will be quite traumatic! In all seriousness though - I've been quite surprised at how modestly we have to dress and act - no mean feat for two natives of Chingford! We also get to ride elephants and do some rafting in the jungle which we are really looking forward to. We will hopefully be posting some pictures when we return from the jungle (provided we haven't been turned into stew for mortally offending the indigenous peeps)! Take care all, Linda and Paul.