Lucky for us the lovely ladies at BAP set us up with their cousin across the river in Thai Chang Kong. We spent a day by the pool and caught the evening bus to Chang Mai. 6 hours later we were dropped of randomly in the centre of Chang Mai and an hour later we had a hostel.

What to do in Chang Mai, a world of opportunity - elephants or tigers, snakes or monkeys, ping pong or paintball, quad bikes or quaint hill tribe trekking the options were endless! So we umm'd and we argh'd and umm'd some more until we had a firm plan for the coming week. First on the agenda was a long overdue "fancy" meal followed by some entertainment. Tapas with a bottle of red and some Muay Thai boxing would do. The gap in the bouts when several fighters enter the ring blindfolded and start flaying punches as if fending off an attacking swarm of bees was particularly entertaining!

Off to Eagle Track the following morning as it turned out the poor mans overly safety conscious version of the Gibbon Experience and one best avoided, think staff training day at Butlins. We did however have a good laugh and met some cool people. That evening we perused the night markets and had a rooftop dinner in old town. The following day was our adventure day, hired some motorbikes and let the day write itself. We snuggled tigers, kissed crocodiles, smiled at snakes and made friends with macaques. Sufficiently safaried out we headed to the Wat Doi Stupa, perched high atop the eastern mountains it sits watchfully over the historical town, a Buddhist guardian. The winding roads to the top were like Top Gear porn and despite our somewhat amateurish biking skills the ride was both exhilarating and at times terrifying. The views were as with any mountain top stunning and panoramic, they provided a welcomed moment of reflection on a well lived day, and to top it all an amazing view of Chiang Mai. Daringly in the dark we did just dodge disaster during the decent. Fun times! All we had to do was follow one straight road back into town, easy for most, we made a hash of it and a few hours later we arrived home having done an epic circumnavigation of the town mainly on the heavily trafficked motorways!

Back to the adrenaline action white water rafting was on the cards followed by a spot of quad biking. Well the awe inspiring epic landscape and the shape and scale of the river in Nepal was not equalled, but the veracity of the river with the jungle background was a good rival and sufficiently different as to be a new experience. The recent end of the wet season meant vicious category 4 rapids, so we bounced, banged, bobbed and bashed our way for 3 hours down the river arriving as smiling rag dolls from a washing machine! After a quick lunch and a change of clothes we endured rather than enjoyed a lacklustre attempt at a quad biking circuit, maintain 20mph mainly on a main road was not our expectation.

Our by now almost professional speed tourism meant Chang Mai could be supplanted with Koh Chang, and early morning flight to BK following by a 6 hours bus and we had a little slice of paradise for a week.......or so we thought...