wow so we're already at the top of thailand! Chiang Mai was seriously probably one of our favorite places in thailand, it was awesome. The actual city centre is quite small and really relaxed, the markets were brilliant and we ate some interesting food there too! But the whole purpose of us going to this place was to do a huge 3 day trekk to the corners and experience living with burmese and chinese hill tribes.

So we set off on our trekk with team sweden (four swedish guys we met, cant really remember their names right now lol) our 3 american friends, jess, ilana, and of course john and a french couple.

We drove 1 hour into the mountains to begin our trekk starting from a small hill tribe village we walked around to get familiar with our aurroundings. We ended up stumbling across the happiest most amazing thai kids ever. There was a huge bunch of them just playing around the village in the mud followed by jumping and scrambling onto our backs for piggy back rides! me, rick and the rest of the gang played and explored with the kids for a good hour and a half before starting the trekk, i think we had more fun with the kids than anything else!! it really opened our eyes to see these kids in a small village with practically nothing (not even shoes on the hard dry mud floors) so happu and playful. They didnt know any different though and all they wanted was people to play around with. They were a lot happier and more greatful for what they had than ANY western child we'd ever seen and it made us happy to feel like we entertained these kids for an hour in their day.

So when we began our trekk me nd rick instantly realised we had not (as always) prepared properly for what we were about to experience. I thought i was a little better off as i atleast had a pair of trainers to walk in (oh how i was wrong) and rick (being the wonder than he is) packed a pair of flip flops to go trekking in lol! Believe me this is a lot more funny now than it was at the time for both of us. For a start, it rained a lot, and when your trekking through mountains and mud slides with a pair of flat trainers with absaloutly no grip what so ever and a pair of flip flops you fall, slip, slide and hurt yourself A LOT! haha i was on my arse before you could ever say go! rick managed to hold himself up quite well considering his footwear, but they did infact break within the first 15 mins of walking. I guess we love giving ourselves a good challenge!

So the first part of the trekk was a 2 hour walk to the first hill tribe where we would stay for the night. When we finally made it through the terrential rain to our destination our tour leader (formally known as "beckham" as he wouldnt tell us his real name... and non other than our other legend of a tour guide 15 year old "Tom Cruise") decided we play a game of football in a big mud pitch between two locals hut houses. The topless team (excluding ilana) lost :( and ricks team (tops) won by one goal!

That night we showered and sat down to dinner with our tour guides and a small burmese hill tribe who were amazing. The children of the tribe dressed up in traditional burmese uniform and displayed 5 or 6 song and dance routines they had made up, which me and rick got up and joined in with of course! :)it was awesome, we really felt far away from home again.

The next morning after several beers and a fight between the swedish hang in which the girly looking one got his finger broken lol we set out on a 2/3 hour trekk to the waterfall. Rick had managed to gain some proper walking shoes (several sizes too small so much that his feel actually broke through them at the end of the trekk lol) whilst i was still sliding down the slopes on my arse, great fun mind you!

When we arrived at the waterfall we sat down for a really nice noodle soup that our tour guides had cooked up for us! The special ingredient was ants off the table... i wasnt complaining as i heard their good for you! then we climbed the hill to a nice waterfall on the otherside where we bathed and relaxed from the morning walk.

The afternoon was awesome, we trekked another 1 hour and a half through rain and sun with spectacular views to the elephant sanctuary. This is where we had our main taste of asia. We picked the biggest elephant and rode him for 45mins through the rain forest past rivers of buffalo and plenty of mud. Our friend jess has more photos of this but we need to get them off her facebook so they will be posted up on here soon enough. There was a baby elephant riding by the side of its mommy and when we got off it charged at us haha i think it just wanted to play but it could have trampled on us so we just ran away.

That night we got to our base camp at another hill tribe. We didnt get to see the locals unfortunatly but we got told they were from tibet. We ate a big feast then played a game the swedish taught us called Zoomy. It was a drinking game, pretty fun but we came out worse for ware haha Beckham also taught plenty of puzzle tricks to us which were pretty fun, we'l have to try them on you all when we get home ;-)

Our last day of treking was probably the best day to be honest, we walked through huge fields and FLAT land (this is me thinking thankgod im not gonna be falling today). We eventually got to a brige overloking a murkey river with several bamboo rafts waiting our turn. We ate food on the bridge first then stripped down to our boardies and got on board the raft, there were 3 rafts and a leader at the front guiding the thing. It started out pretty calm and relaxing, a few falls on the raft here and there but nothing serious, but then the heavens opened and things just got a little crazy lol our raft started to fall apart in which we all eventually fell into this river with a pretty fast current scrambling back onto the raft so we didnt die we swam over to over peoples rafts and pushed them off and had a proper laugh, we all got soaked and our rafts were a total mess it was awesome. We didnt get any photos unfortunatly because otherwise i dont think our cameras would have survived!

So that was the end of our trekk, we drove back to Chaing Mai from Pai in our cold wet clothes dying for a warm shower!

The next evening before the americans left we attended a cooking class in which we were taught by the most obvious ladyboy in the world (see photos) her voice was deeper than mine! but she was great and she really fancied rick, infact she gave him her phone number hahaha! we learnt how to cook a full meal including curries, pad thai noodles, soups and deserts (sticky rice mmm) it was pretty fun!we even got a little book with the recipies in to take away so we dont forget! how cool is that, so we're all gonna cook you a big thai meal when we get home! wooo

anyway that was it for chaing mai i think, we will now get a slow boat down the mekong river for two days with 100 other backpackers to the new adventure that is LAOS!!! we shall speak to you there :)

love adam x x