Well it's now been two days since leaving civilisation behind us ... we boarded a bamboo raft put together by two Thai locals ... and we've since been 'floating' down the Tom Lae Sap river on our way to Chiang Rai where we will reside for this evening. It was a blissful two days just floating, we stopped off at a village and had a fire on the beach prepared by our guides ... wonderful barbequed chicken and vast quantities of local beer, Chang!! I think the two guides had a sneaky bottle of whisky as I discovered the remnants the next day!! We had a 'dip' in a thermal pool ... OUCH! The water was about 40°C ... took a while for me to get in but once in, I was there to stay! Beautiful! We stayed overnight in our raft, there was 4 of us on board, and Englishman and his Polish g/f. We covered ourselves in disgusting DEET and put the nets up for the night. Felt a bit strange just floating there, but very relaxing and as far away from the stress of the city life as one could possibly ask for. The next morning I awoke to an extremely sore stomach ache ... and not wanting to use the 'toilet' on board (which was basically going straight through the floor and into the river) I had to get the men to pull over a few times .. nasty! A few tablets later and bug under control .. we arrive in Chiang Rai, raft and crew in one piece. We arrived to thousands of people wanting us to stay in their guest houses ... we chose one from the guide book and no sooner had we stepped foot in our room did the heavens close in and hail stones the size of golf balls billowed in through the gaps in the 'bathroom'!! If we'd have been on the raft still, I probably wouldn't be writing this today!!! We're both exhausted, but head out for another Chang. A dodgy soup later, I left mine ... we went to bed ready for exploration round the small town the next day. We will make our way to the Laos border tomorrow afternoon.