Monday 18th June

We got up nice and early, checked out and walked down the street to where we had brought our ticket from. The lady walked us to the border check out, which was a further minute down the road, put us on a tiny long boat and we passed across the Mekong to Thailand. We disembarked and walked up the ramp to check in to Thailand. A grand total of less than 15 minutes from one country to another! Must be a record for us! We went to find a tuk-tuk, which none were around instead, properly the most un-safest thing we had done so far, we jumped onto a moto each to take us down the road, with our giant backpacks on! Sorry mum & dad! I chose the chunky guy, plenty to hold on if I fall off! Stu had a women and all I heard as we shot off before them was her screaming…! I later found out Stu nearly toppled the bike while trying to climb on!

We got dropped off at a hotel to wait for our pick up at 10:30 am, wow! It was 9:15 am…how did we manage that? We got comfy and I watched another episode of gossip girl and who did we bump into? Adam and Sarah from Cambodia! We had an enjoyable ride to Chiang Mai, four and a half hours and I managed to have two seats to myself! Three hours into the ride I woke up and was highly concerned that we had been overtaking a car/lorry for a long time (I couldn't see out the window next to me due to all the bags I had). I looked for the driver to be shocked and couldn't see him; it took a further five minutes in my dozy state that Thailand drive on correct (left) side of the road! Took about being slow!

We got dropped off at a guesthouse and it was ok, so booked ourselves in. We (I) decided that it would be a great idea to do another trek (clearly not learning anything from Laos!) and we booked one for the next day. We then realised we had no clean clothes due to them being dirty from the gibbon experience, so we had to get them all expressed washed!

We went out for dinner with Adam and Sarah and found a street vendor and sat down and had a green curry! It tasted amazing! Unlike Stu's mouth burners he makes! We then found a suitable bar (with pool table) to sit and had a drink. I was getting really good at pool at one point until I got over confident and started to fail miserably! It was quite late by the time we got back, and I was struggling to keep my eyes open, even after the really sugary coffee I had at the bar!

We still had to pack our day bag for our two day one night trek, which I did in super quick time and passed out in bed!

Tuesday 19th June

We woke up bright an early (an hour too early) never mind! It actually gave us time to have a proper breakfast instead of the amazing 7-eleven pineapple pies I have discovered (heaven in a pastry!). We returned back to the guesthouse to wait for our pick up, as with most tours you get carted around to all these 'side attractions'.

First was the lotus farm, which was full of…lotuses! There was a butterfly house that contained a grand total of one butterfly. It was the only thing I was looking forward to! We then got carted off to the long-neck tribe, there tradition of having metal hoops round their necks to make them longer. Some of the women did had humongous necks, once placed on they couldn't be removed without help from a doctor, as their necks would collapse. Our guide said it was ok to take pictures as they were Thai citizens and are refugees from Burma. I felt a bit rude so kept my camera hidden away to respect them, Thai citizens or not.

Our next stop was the snake farm, with the snake show. I was a bit iffy with this at first, but turned out to be the funniest thing ever. First we walked around looking at the snakes (and their next meal) in cages. One of the employees found scaring us all very funny, he kept poking people with a stick to make them think it was a snake. It worked like a charm and most of the boys were screaming! He also thought it was a good idea to open to cage for the cobras up and pulled one out. I scampered off when he invited me to join him. No thank you! We then had to endure the snake show. This was the best part, the 'snake man' kept getting the cobras to bite him and playing with the rat snakes etc. He did the kiss of death, i.e. kissing a cobra, he also put the head of a rate snake in his mouth. The best parts, snake man brought the cobra around the crowd scaring people, these two girls were making such a scene. I thought they were going to jump the decking a leg it, if it wasn't for the spiders web they walked into and started freaking about that! (HILARIOUS!). He also grabbed the leg of one of the boys pretending he was going to get the snake to bit it. The guy was kicking and screaming as much as the two girls it was highly amusing. He then decided to bring it over to us and kept bringing the snake closer and closer to Stu's groin! Stu didn't scream, but did push the guy away! This continued for another 30 minutes which included dropping snakes infront of the two girls mentioned, scaring the Canadians girls next to me so all three of them were actually (no really actually!) sat on top of me! This was top off by the funny commentator saying things like; 'don't eat him snake man, he's not spaghetti', 'oh so sorry', 'you so sexy'. All said in what I could mildly describe as a camp accent!

We managed to escape and jumped into the car once more and head to our trek starting point. We had some lunch and set off for a two/three hour walk. Before setting off, I think one of the snakes from the snake show had escaped and I saw one slithering around the garden! It was OK at first, nice a steady with a little hill, then it got worse, a lot worse! It was really steep at one point, I was struggling so much that I started having a mild asthma attack, which lead me to panic more, which only made it worse! Luckily the guide came back down, he took my bag bless him and we both walked up slowly taking a break every five minutes! He was really good, I made it to the top, finally and had a rest and a lot of water! Once I had my breath back we continued going up steeper, but only for 15 - 20 minutes to our home for the night! I collapsed into a heap when I got there! The trek was so hard, I couldn't appreciate how beautiful the countryside was, but the view from the top of the hill was brilliant! You could see Chiang Mai below us. Our hut was on stilts balancing on the hillside with a brilliant view from the balcony. All made out of bamboo, very impressive how they make these houses!

I had a well earn, cold shower and felt beautifully clean again! We sat outside and had our dinner which was delicious and sat around and talked and played games. Our guide taught us many trick card games, which will impress you Chris! I went to bed earliest, not before sharing the toilet with a gigantic spider, which I am no way exaggerating. It hard to here, everything in Asia is MASSIVE compared to the UK! After my pleasant experience I got into bed, which was comfy and I fell into a deep coma of sleep!

Wednesday 20th June

We woke up earlyish, and had breakfast which included toast before starting our day with a little uphill walking! We walked past all the farmers' fields, lord knows how they actually manage to farm on an incline like this! After reaching the top, it was downhill sailing, it had clearly rained a bit last night as it was extremely slippery which my bum found out on more than one occasion. The way down was as steep as the way up, but this was worse, huge steps down and slippery rocks did not make an easy passage. We stopped briefly at a waterfall, which was too cold to get in, the weather was over cast with drizzle! We continued our passage down and reached our finish line! Woo hoo!!

We had our lunch, which again was delicious! Our next activity was elephant riding, not before explaining to the seemly deaf German girl what we were doing three times. It started to rain so I put my poncho on while Stu stole an umbrella! We must have looked so stupid! Our elephant had her baby with her, which followed her around wherever she went! We had about 30 - 45 minutes of riding before starting our next activity white water rafting! We removed our ponchos and shoes and placed them with our bags into the car before getting kitted out into our lifejackets and helmets. Not before reading the signs saying if you cannot participate if you have a disease (pregnancy). Its official, pregnancy is a disease!

After another spat with the now no common sense German girl explaining that you shouldn't put your shoes on the driver's side by the pedals is the stupidest thing I have seen, we got in our boats. Another boat further upstream was trying to splash us before we had even started which resulted in our boat starting to move down stream, the guide noticed at the last minute and made an impressive jump into the boat before we were classed as a runaway boat! We got out paddling on and started hitting the (tiny) rapids. We listened to our guide telling us when to paddle and when to stop. He guided us through the rocks, which we did get stuck a couple of times! There was one point I nearly fell out, instead the next boat down one of the guys did fall out. It was a fun 45 minutes of splashing and drifting down the river. We got onto our bamboo rafts, no chairs this time, and took a more leisurely pace down the river! As we were still sitting in an inch of water I was shivering at this point.

Sooner than expected we disembarked and I got changed out of my wet clothes into some dry ones and we set off home. It was an uneventful journey, until another car overtook us gliding through a puddle which half of it ended inside the car, luckily I was on the opposite side and everyone else got wet. After that, precautions were taken and the windows shut!

We arrived at the same guesthouse and checked in again for a long awaited hot shower. I managed to get rid of the German girl who clearly wanted to join us for dinner, call me a b****, but she was irritating the life out of me and Stu. If she listened in the first place then maybe!

We sneaked out and went for dinner, we found a random street stall and sat down for our food. Once again it didn't disappoint, maybe it's because Chiang Mai has been voted the world's best street food. I couldn't agree more! We then ventured into the night bazar, which actually sold very normal things. We found a typical, if maybe, a little tacky of a pink tuk-tuk! We headed back home for an early night as we were off for early for our cooking class!

Thursday 21st June

We got up and ready to be picked us for our cooking class. We were greeted by the ever so friendly Durian (not the fruit but pronounced the same! Same-same…but different as the saying goes here!). She took us to the local market and explained about chillies, rice and curry paste, it was all very fascinating. We had some free time to have a little look around before heading back to the car to go to the farm. The cooking class we picked was out of the city in the countryside, it was beautiful. Durian took us around the farm, in our fetching hats, and explained all the fruit and veg they grew. We then headed back to the class room to set about making our first of five courses! We got pounding away mixing ingredients to make the curry paste. Apparently Stu's technique would make him a good Thai bride! We decided to make separate courses, Stu made green curry while I made yellow curry. We all had the option of how many chillies we wanted to put in! Stu went a bit more dangerous than me by putting one more than me each time!

We also made, sweet and sour, tom yam soup, chicken and cashew, coconut soup we cooked and ate these for our lunch. I was stuffed, we also got a free papaya salad (so technique we had 6 courses!). We had an hour to spare, I chose wisely and had a nap due to the amount of food I ate!

I got rudely awaken to make our finial dishes, pad Thai, flat noodles (which we took home for dinner) mango and sticky rice and fried banana which we ate at the farm. It was delicious. We got given recipe book with all the options available for home.

We got back into the car, a lot heavier than this morning and went home! We got dropped off and I nearly had to get Stu to roll me up the stairs. We managed to save a lot of money as we certainly didn't need dinner that night.

I had an early night due to all the food I had eaten and went into a food coma. It was heavenly day!

Friday 22nd June

We had a really lazy day today, we did get up, eventually and went to see the scared temple Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, after some hard core bargaining by Stu! The temple is 18 km from town, sitting at a 1,073 meters elevation on the slopes of Doi Suthep. Built in 1383 during the Lanna Thai period, legend has it that the temples site was selected by an elephant sent to roam the mountain side, where upon reaching a suitable spot, it trumpeted, circled three times, knelt down and promptly died - which was interpreted as a sign indicating an auspicious site. We took a tuk-tuk to the top, which was a very long and twisted road.

We got the cable car up, only because we couldn't find the stairs and went up. It was beautiful, the temple was covered in gold and was beautifully decorated. There was a lot of people up there praying and looking around. We had to do the customary of removing our shoes before entering the temple and retrieving them once exiting the scared ground.

We walked around the outside of the temple and got a good view of Chiang Mai, which is Thailand's 5th biggest city, looked considerably small. We could see the old city walls and could just about work out where we were staying!

We found the stairs, and walked the short distance down to the bottom, where the entrance of the stairs was decorated with Nagas. According to the Vinaya or Buddhist Monastic Rule, an animal cannot become a monk. At one time, a Naga was so desirous of entering the Order that he assumed human form in order to be ordained. Shortly after, when asleep in his hut, the naga returned to the shape of a huge snake. The monk who shared the hut was somewhat alarmed when he woke up to see a great snake sleeping next to him! The Lord Buddha summoned the naga and told him he may not remain as a monk, at which the utterly disconsolate snake began to weep. The snake was given the Five Precepts as the means to attaining a human existence in his next life when he can then be a monk. Then out of compassion for the sad snake, the Lord Buddha said that from then on all candidates for the monkhood be called 'Naga' as a consolation. They are still called 'Naga' to this day.

Most temples are decorated with Naga along the walls and roofs, all decorated in gold and jewels.

We stopped off at the bottom for some well needed snack, I found some BBQ corn on the cob, which was delicious! Stu had a local Chiang Mai spicy sausage, which was actually quite spicy! In Thailand the Thai's find it funny when foreigners cannot handle the spice!

We found our driver and went back home, and found some lunch, we had a wonder found the city before bumping into Sarah and Adam at their hostel. Stu played some pool with Adam while I sat and talked with Sarah. I have got a love/hate relationship with pool.

We went off to book our train ticket to Bangkok after some advice from Sarah and Adam that the train gets booked up quickly. We found a travel agent (that didn't look dodgy) and booked our tickets for 3 days time from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. We went back to the hostel to relax before dinner!

We went out to our local haunt, but was not there, in fact, most places were closed. How strange! We had a chicken kebab from the street vendor and then some BBQ food from another vendor. We had chicken, pork skewers and some chicken legs all heated on this make shift scooter come BBQ! It was very tasty! Something I would have been scared to do when I first arrived in Asia but now seems the normal!

We later found out that there is local elections and everything by law has to shut down.

We went back to the hostel to pack out bags ready to leave for Pai tomorrow morning.