Heyta Guys. Hope you're all having fun in the scorching heat of England. Have been getting bits and pieces of news from the UK (Michael Jacksons DEAD. OMG!). We've had an absolutely wickewd time in Chiang Mai. We arrived in Chiang Mai on 30th June. Went and stayed at this brilliant Guest House called SK House. Guys there were really friendly. Just chilled for the first couple of days, explored the city, had a swim in the pool, etc. We also hired a motorbike and explored the countryside (getting hideously lost on the way).

Then on Wednesday Night we went and saw a Muay Thai match. Was great fun but absolutely brutal. There were even some kids fighting. Must have been about 7 or 8 and competing professionally and they were going at it full contact. Was really savage.

On Thursday we booked ourselves onto a Jungle Survival Cooking Course. That was brilliant. We were shown around the local market and shown all the stuff that you can get in the jungle . Each plant has some kind of use - herbs, medicines, etc. We then were asked if we'd like to try any of the unusual Jungle Animals. We went to this stall around the corner where they had live fish, animals, insects, eveything. We decided on having Catfish and Frog as well as grilled chicken and fish curry. We told the stallholder what we wanted and they just picked the animals up and killed them in front of us. I think this traumatized Sarah a little bit. We then went to this little hut where they had built a jungle area in the city. We cooked everything over a large fire using bamboo as pots and cooking the curry inside coconuts. Was really good fun just chilling with the guide. The 'jungle master', a guy named Pong, kept making various things for us to use also. A slingshot, a blowgun, showed us how to weave bamboo. Was a great experience. After this we then headed to Tiger Kingdom. Here we were able to hold tiger cubs, lion cubs, stroke full grown tigers and even met a camel called herbert.

Next day we decided to go mountain biking. We were driven to the top of the mountain (the highest mountain in Thailand!) and from here we would mountain bike down to the bottom (in theory). We chose the easy route as Sarah wasn't over confident and started decending. However, we quickly discovered that mountain biking wasn't Sarahs sport. After falling off 4 times she decided to walk the majority of the way down the mountain and eventually got picked up. Me and the guide continued down an intermediate track - this was absolutely terrifying but a real adrenaline rush. We came home rather battered and bruised but we both enjoyed it.

We're now heading to a little town in the mountains called Pai. Will let you know more when we get there.

All the best

James and Sarah

xx