Chiang Mai is in the north surrounded by lush farm land and jungle, we stay in Chiang Mai old town, which is surrounded by a moat. Out to explore this great place when Ryan's Mr Phillop breaks, now normally you walk past a hundreds of flip-flop shops, but no not now Mr Phillop has died!! After sorting the crisis out eventually, we book a jungle trek and are off for some food. We find this great little place, where we are sit down and over comes Rochelle! A middle aged man fabulously dressed with feather earrings and long pink nails, we have a very informative/funny hour, where she tells us her life story and how she is writing a book, you know, I would buy that book!!

After walking around the city visiting a few Temples, we manage to gatecrash a huge ceremony in one of the temples, where a 100 boys training to become Monks turn into men, a beautiful site of golden orange. In Thailand, training to become a monk is like a national service, then you can choose whether to carry on practicing or not. We found out that the rich can buy themselves out of it, or you can pay a poor child to do it for you and you then get the honours' at the end. So watching closely you have your very dedicated students, meditating at the front, then you have late comers and the fidgets at the back that are busy whispering to their friends, boys are the same even if you're training to be a monk :)

We ventured out of the old town into the new town to the night market, overwhelming the thousands of stalls selling the same sorts of tourist stuff over and over again.

Next day we take a walk around the towns Art and Culture centre and then take a bus to the top of the hill that overlooks the old city, to see the most beautiful temple covered in gold, the Doi Suthep, where I had to wear a beautiful green sarong to hide my legs.

Sunday night market, a much more chilled out affair, filled with so many different crafts people making and selling their products, from fabrics, jewellery to wooden carvings, hence to say we spent some money on things for when we settle down (yes mum that will happen one day). Food stalls galore, sushi on the menu for us.

But best purchase for me was a jade ring that took 5 stalls (Ryan says more like 50) to find the right size, and Ryan a fake green casio watch that has a disco light setting, brilliant!

Start of our jungle trek, picked up by Mr Cool tours, love that name, and first stop to the long neck tribe before we start our 3hr walk through the jungle up hill. Was very intrigued to see the long neck women, who start to wear rings around their neck from the age of 5 and have them added through each year they are alive and for various special occasions. Their necks are so reliant on the rings and starched, that by the time they are old women, if the rings were to be removed for long periods of time their necks would snap. When we got there it was just off a main road and you could tell they were shipped in for tourists and they actually live miles away in the hills, after an uncomfortable 15mins and a few photos our guide said we were off.

We drove further into the jungle to the start the first days walk, which took us through lush landscape and various tribe villages, swam/slide in/off waterfalls and walked past elephants. Then the route took a steep incline all the way to our Tribes village at the top of the hill. Amazing views across the jungle, a small wooden hut is where our group stayed with no electricity. We were cooked a delicious meal and sat and watched the sun go down with a well deserved Chang beer. We were later on in the evening treated to all of the tribes children (even the toddlers) coming to our hut where they sang traditional songs, an experience I will never forget.

Noon our guide, under the amazingly bright moon, told us about the village and sang and played the guitar. Noon explained to us why our tribe guide was the one to look after his youngest children and not the mother. The Tribe were traditionally from Burma and came across the border illegally to grow opium, so the women at night, whilst the men looked after the children smoked opium, all though this doesn't happen now, men are still the lead careers for the youngest children, which are normally strapped to their backs.

Woken up early for breakfast and a steep walk down the next hill, had a thrilling shower in a huge waterfall, then finally made our way to the elephant camp. Where we took an elephant trek. Ryan and I had the mother elephant which was followed closely by her 2 year old baby! These elephants are greedy so the bananas we brought for them didn't last long, not that mama elephant and her baby realised as she kept feeling us with her trunk. After taking them for a water bath that we ended up getting wetter than them, we said our good bye's and now of to do white water rafting and bamboo rafting!!!! Brilliant.