The culture has begun! So we arrived in Phuket from Fiji where we just spent two nights before heading over to Kho Phangan which is an island on the East side of Thailand. Phuket was very toursity and felt like any European city to be honest so we it wasn't the best, although there are lots of bargains to be had!

WE arrived in Kho Phangan and met one of my friends from uni who we spent a week with. Kho Phangan is an island which hosts a party every month for the full moon - called the Full Moon Party! We went straight to Kho Phangan first to make sure we didn't miss it. Its great fun and everybody dresses up in neon clothes and its held on the beach. They have amazing fire displays and music which are great. The weather unfortunately was awful and rained the entire time we were there. There were lightening storms and torrential rain! It all made for the atmosphere though so we enjoyed it.

Next we wanted to make our way up to Chiang Mai which is in northern thailand. Thai travel is interesting to say the least so the entire journey took us 50 hours and a lot of headaches! We had to get a taxi to the port, a ferry to the mainland, a bus to Bangkok (which was overnight and took 12 hours). Once in Bangkok we decided against another overnight bus, which we had already booked, and upgraded to a sleeper train. It was great - you get your own bed with air con! However the train stopped about 5 hours from Chiang Mai as there had been a mudslide and the tracks were covered so at this point we then had to get a replacement bus the rest of the way. Just our luck our bus broke down about half an hour into our journey so we had to wait for another bus to pick us up! All in all it was very long but eventually we made it.

We booked onto a cooking course as soon as we were here and spent Monday night doing that. It starts with a trip to the market to explain all the different foods and spices used in their food and then you arrive at the cooking school. They only allow small groups so there were just 8 of us. We learnt to cook fried rice, a green thai curry paste (which has 14 ingredients in!), a massaman curry (Which is a vegetable curry with potatoes, peanuts and cocunut milk - so yummy) and sweet and sour vegetables. It all tasted incredible but they have so many ingredients we don't have at home like cocunut sugar and tamarind paste that im sure it wont be as tasty when I try again!

Yesterday we went to an elephant nature park which is one of the only parks to look after elephants rather than use them for tourism. It was founded by a thai lady in 1995 with 4 elephants - now there are 34 and also 300 rescued dogs. Some of the elephants have been really abused by their previous owners, so quite a lot are blind and have broken legs or hips - which never heal. They have a huge park to roam in which has no fence and they each have their own trainer or mahout which they listen to. It was amazing as we got to feed the elephants and bathe them. You're not allowed to ride them as they don't believe in tourist acts like that. WE got to meet the lady that ran the whole park and she was lovely. We paid 50 pounds to go and this money all goes towards the elephants food, medical care etc. All in all a very fun day.

We leave for Laos tomorrow and we are taking a 2 day slowboat to get there which is very scenic. WE are visiting a famous white temple along the way so that should be good.

Lots of love Ve xxx