What a week we've had! Its hard to know where to begin... but as is customary, I'll start from the start. After Sukhothai we headed north to Chiang Mai, 6 hours by coach. After all the travelling of the previous week we had a chilled out few days, going out drinking, watching Chelsea beat Liverpool and ruin my evening, and we met up with Kez, a friend I worked with over the summer. The highlight of those few days quite possibly being standing on the back of a tuk tuk as it drove us to a club! Then a few days ago we went white water rafting which was so exciting! The 4 of us plus our thai captain speeding down rapids and over rocks. The danger element added to the excitement and sense of achievement at making it out alive at the end, quite like standing on the back of the tuk tuk! The particularly interesting part of the last week has been the last few days spent trekking through the mountainous jungle and meeting the hilltribes. The hilltribes we visited were the Karen, and our two guides were from the villages. Chai was the main guide, and is quite possibly the coolest, funniest guy ive ever met, and Gogo was possibly the nicest man ive ever met, they were amazing guys. The 12 travellers thrown together were: Paul- English, garderner in his 50s, long white beard, long white hair, quickly assumed the name Gandalf. Till- German, early 20s, very nice guy. Matt- Late 20s/early 30s, from New Zealand, lovely guy, performed the Mauri Haka by the camp fire, came with his Thai girlfriend, Sao. Chris and Lynda- lovely english married couple who we got on really well with, and me and mince ended up sharing a mosquito net with Lynda as their's smelt of wee and had rat droppings in! Eirich- 36, Polish, nice funny guy, had wounds on his ears from being beaten with a stick by Thai guys. Tim- 21, German, looks about 30, not surprising when you consider he started drinking beer at 9am, whiskey throughout the day, then slept early cos he was drunk, only to get up again at 4am and get back on the whiskey! Got so drunk on the last night that he walked over the camp fire (singing his leg hair), and thought my voice was amazing when i sang hotel california! Great value though... and then other 4 members were us lot, obviously. The group was cool and we got on really well, both nights spent sitting around the camp fire drinking and chatting. The second night Chai got a guitar out and a song book, and we started singing some classic songs... i say 'singing', i mean butchering really...'Let it be' became 'Lady boy' (lady boy, lady boy, there will be an answer, lady boy). No woman no cry became No Lady boys please! And Chai taught us 'The elephant Song': Elephant elephant elephant, have you seen elephant? Elephant is really big, has big poo poo, big b******, has big ear, very very long tail What a masterpiece! John Lennon would have been proud! We also learnt the Jungle equivalent for Cheers which ill definately be using now: Chooka dung-dung-dung. One of my favourite moment of the whole trip so far was playing football with the Karen kids in the village. We were playing in flip flops on an awful surface with trees in the way, but they loved playing with us and we connected with them despite having no common language. The other part of the trek which stands out was the elephant riding. We've done it before, but somehow me and mince managed to land the Che Guerva of the elephant world. While all the other elephants were walking in line, our bohemian rebel of an elephant would go wherever he wanted. And when he started griding down bits of clay so that he could snort it in his trunk only to shoot it and me and mince sitting innocently on him, we realised he was in serious need of some sort of elephant boot camp. I wanted so slap an ASBO on him there and then. I will upload photos as soon as I can, I yet again find myself at a computer which insits on eletrocuting me whenver i go near its USB. Right, I will bid you farewell for the time being, we're off to visit a temple on a hill. Keep posting on the msg board, and ill try and send some email replies next time im on. Take care all, Chooka dung-dung-dung