We actually have a free afternoon for the first time for a while so i'll take the opportunity to write a bit about our adventure so far!

I'm enjoying Thailand very much and i'm glad Sam gave in to my pleas to come here! It's such a wonderful place with much to see and do, the general atmosphere everywhere you go is always great and the people are very friendly and welcoming.

Sam is also having a great time and enjoying all the activities, so i hope she's glad she came here now! She is currently enjoying a well deserved afternoon nap so she can confirm her enjoyment in due course, hopefully!

Talking of courses, i took a Thai cookery course today which involved 4 traditional Thai dishes - Pad Thai, spicy Thai soup, spring rolls and red Thai curry, a 4 course lunch! All of which was lovely, especially as i made it myself, haha. Sam's only problem with Thailand, as you probably all would expect, is the food. She has tried lots of dishes but not many suit her taste buds. But fear not, she is eating well enough and thrives on our occasional McDonalds visits!!

Whilst i was cooking, Sam and Danielle - from our tour group - went white water rafting and had the whole boat to themselves!

We start our trek through the hills on Monday for 3 days which should be interesting! It rained today but it's generally been very warm and dry since we got to Thailand. We both got our first taste of sunburn yesterday but it wasn't too bad.

Probably the highlight so far was the elephant riding yesterday. It was such a surreal moment and something we'll never forget. Thankfully, the grey giants seem to be really well treated and are not in captivity as such. We fed them bamboo and bananas and i jokingly offered some bamboo to our guide and he accepted, stripped away the bark and proceeded to much on the flesh. Then it was my turn! It was very very juicy and quite sweet. You couldn't eat/drink much of it as it was quite rich but it was good. You don't eat the flesh raw, you spit it out when you've had the juice! Thai's often use bamboo flesh for cooking. While most of us had to be content with sitting on the seat on their backs, Sam actually sat on the neck of her elephant as you'll see in the photo's soon.

Following the elephant riding, most of us went bamboo rafting. This was a lot of fun as we were quite happy to push each other in the river - being only shallow - as well as navigating the rapids.

We've visited many temples and they're all well looked after and well decorated but they start becoming too "samey" once you've visited 2 or 3.

After we left Kanchanaburi, we had a 4 hour bus journey to Ayuttaya - the former capital. We were only here for the afternoon but it was enough time to visit temples and ruins sites. The journey from Ayuttaya to Chiang Mai was via a sleeper train which promised to be interesting but actually turn out to be a lot of fun. 35 beds to a carriage and we were the 12 noisiest, in the middle, who were up latest! Some of the other passengers were not too happy to say the least.

Our tour guide, Rong, is very good and a lot of fun and the group we are with are a good old lot!

So that concludes the first week of our three week tour. Here's to the next!