We crossed over the border to Thailand and headed to Ubon Ratchathani which was probably the best border crossing yet. We booked our bus to Chiang Mai for that evening and had a 6 hour wait. Pete had seen a McDonalds as the bus entered Ubon so we headed straight there for some lunch as we had been craving a Maccy D's for some time as the food in Laos was pretty lousy. after filling our bellies we then found an Internet cafe which had the fastest Internet connection we had used in months, in Laos it's quicker to send a postcard home than an email. We spent the afternoon catching up on uploading photos and booking flights.

Our bus to Chiang Mai was 17 hours but we had booked with a company called Nakthonchai Air. It sounds like a flight company and we're pretty sure that's what they were trying to achieve. The bus was very luxurious, we had big reclining seats which had a massage button, over head lockers, a plane style toilet, and an attendant who came round and gave us drinks and snacks, it was exactly like being on a plane, it was brilliant. The only down side was that, like planes, you couldn't control the aircon and it was bloody freezing! Luckily they gave us blankets and we managed to get some sleep and 17 hours later jumped off in the scorching heat of Chiang Mai.

We managed to find a cheap guesthouse and headed out to explore the city. We soon realised that the first Grand Prix was on so we changed our plan and found a pub instead and enjoyed the race with a cold beer. This was when we realised that it was St Patricks day, we were in an Irish pub so you couldn't miss the advertising. We went back in the evening for their party where they had some Irish singers, or shouters you could say. Pete had one Guinness, only one because we realised that it cost £5, we then drank Sangsom and coke as it was less than a pound a glass. Sangsom is the Thai whiskey and its very cheap, Kate has grown to love it. It was a good night lots of singing and foot stamping!

The following day we walked round Chiang Mai for a few hours stopping off to cool down in one of the many cafes. The town it full of temples, theres not a lot else to see other than these, and as you can imagine by now we are pretty templed out so we just looked at the ones we happened to be passing.

We visited the night market which was huge, some of the Thai's are amazing artists and paint pictures that are so realistic they look like photos, there were lots of these at the market, we watched some of them paint, it was so impressive! We spent a good while relaxing in Chiang Mai, we didn't want to blow our budget on activities that are expensive so it was nice to just wander round and eat and drink. The only activity we wanted to do was white water rafting but it's the wrong time of year.

We booked on to a cookery course for the Tuesday, there are hundreds of different ones here so we found a good one on the Internet. We were picked up early to go to the market, our tutor explained to us about all the different ingredients in Thai cooking. The one that really stuck out was Tamarind, they use the sauce in many dishes but you have to be careful not to drink cold water afterwards as it acts as a laxative, a very fast one.

We were in a group of 8 and had 6 dishes each to cook, we chose these from a list and both had a different stir-fry, curry, noodle dish, starter and desert. We made Pad Thai, stir-fried chicken and cashew nuts, spring rolls, sticky rice with mango, deep fried bananas and many other dishes. We got to eat everything we made and after a couple of dishes we were both stuffed. Luckily Pete managed to finish everything off. We collected our certificates and cook book and headed back for a lie down, we could hardly move but this was the best Thai food we have had.

That evening we headed back to the market to barter for some bits before heading home.