Before we got to Chiang Mai we had to go to Bangkok for one night so we could get the train the next day from the station. We went out boozing again on the last night with Mitch - got hammered and saw a few fights... just another night in Bangkok really! The next day I said goodbye to my long term, pale skinned, grey haired friend... haha!

Update for the city of Chiang Mai:

Well, we arrived in Chiang Mai after the overnight sleeper train from Bangkok and, to be fair, it was a pretty smoothe journey. As always, you get the nob-ends on the train and this time it was the turn of the classic Private School I've gone travelling off of Daddy's money' bellends!

We got to the train station and went straight to the tourist info bit and got them to book us a room in town; it was only 450 baht (9 quid) and had a swimming pool, air con and the standard pretty good location.

1st day we chilled out and went to a Thai cooking course in the evening which was the nuts.. we learnt how to cook Pad Thai, Thai Green Curry, green curry paste, chicken and cashew nuts and also fried bananas in a caramel sauce....... essence.

2nd day we went into the jungle to do something called Jungle Flight - basically it's where you zip line from tree to tree round the jungle; the longest one was about 300m! We've got a video to put on here at some point! There was a bit of drama where some Japanese lad didn't bother using his break on the line, despite the instructor shouting at him in Japanese and English to use it, causing him to smash into a tree head first at about 15mph, breaking his glasses into his eye (Japs eye hahahah), cutting a hole in his eye lid....whoops!! This was a quality day out for about 45 quid per person, but I don't think he'll be doing it again!! Bloody Japs! in the evening we went to a few bars, watched a bit of Muai Thai (Thai boxing). Then went to a bar called Paradise bar where we got talking to the owner and started to perfect our Thai speaking - as I knew anyway, he told me that he understood me very well and I have a very good Thai accent!

3rd day - Tiger Kingdom - the photo says it all....we went into the tiger sanctuary and got photos taken with massive tigers with massive teeth! You can go into different sanctaurys with all tigers of different ages, it's up to you. We chose the baddest! It was quite a smart place and they're all kept in really good conditions. Later we went back to the pool and went out boozing again with a couple from Northampton who stayed at our hotel, and a lad we met on the jungle flight trip who was from the states.. mega messy night and was sunlight wen we left the bar!

We got woken at 10 by reception knocking our door telling us our bus was here to take us to Pai (this our next stop- about 3.5hours away)... Room in a s*** state, clothes everywhere, we chucked everything into our bags and checked out.. all in about 5min. Needless to say we were still tripple turbo'd. Don't really remember the journey.. pretty much just woke up in Pai!

next update Pai

Lord of the manor JT Bray