Finally our luck is changing when it comes to delays - we touched down in Bangkok on time which was handy as we had a mad dash across the city to the train station as soon as we landed. We didn't see much of Bangkok - as we hopped from one metro to another - but we were there long enough to make a few observations. First: Thailand is HOT - even in the evening. Second: the people are so friendly and they don't stare at Nat's freaky orange hair and ghostly pale skin either. Third: we're never going to be able to speak or understand Thai.

Anyway, we made it just in time to board our train and what a far cry it was from the ones in India. The station was clean; with no one sprawled across the floor. The signs were clear and we quickly understood which train was ours. On board the berths were wide and comfortable, and a little Thai man in a very smart uniform even made the beds for us with freshly laundered sheets and a mattress - no pre-used bed sheets and curry stained seats here.

As we made ourselves comfortable, a very smiley Thai lady came round taking food orders from everyone. The other passengers were mostly tourists like us and they seemed to be ordering food, so we did too... As usual, we had no clue what we were doing and somehow managed to order about eight dishes of various Thai curries and soups. It was really tasty though so we realised all the weight we lost in India would not stay lost for long.

After 15 hours we finally arrived in Chiang Mai in the North of Thailand. We know it's fairly obvious but this place is just so different to India - it's pretty clean, easy to navigate, there's no noticeable poverty, and although the pollution levels are probably fairly high - after India we feel we can finally breathe deeply again. We checked into our charming little guesthouse then went off to explore the area (i.e. find food). Our Lonely Planet picked out a restaurant serving American-style burgers… this sounded too good to be true, but thankfully it was every bit as tasty as we hoped. We ordered TGI-style loaded potatoes and cheeseburgers and chips and Tiger beer (finally no crazy taxes on alcohol!). Our poor bellies couldn't cope with so much fatty goodness though, and even after much persistence we couldn't actually finish it all - how things have changed since we emptied everyone's kitchens back home at Christmas…

Feeling full, and having caught up on some decent sleep we explored the temples the next day. The city is pretty tiny and we stumbled across another temple with every corner we turned. Of course, this is Thailand so these temples are Buddhist temples - or Wats, as the Thai's call them.

The first one we went to is probably the main one - atleast it's certainly the biggest - and it's called Wat Pha Sing. It was established by the 5th king of Mangrai dynasty and owes its popularity to the fact that it houses the city's most revered Buddha image - Phra Singh. Apparently it came to reside at the temple in the 1360s.

Anyway, each of the Wats were really impressive though, and it was so lovely just walking in and out of them all - taking breaks every now and again in shady spots in the peaceful surrounding grounds.

After learning so much about Islam and Hinduism in India, it was a job to get our heads round Buddhism all of a sudden, but we are getting there. It was nice to see the monks roaming around the city and the Wats. Sometimes we saw them meditating and they were so still, we could barely tell whether it was a real person or not!

We later used our Christmas money from Shirley and Grandma and Grandad Stallwood to book ourselves onto a Thai cooking course for Valentine's Day the next day, before heading on to a women's prison for a massage. This is no joke…. While massage is very popular among tourists here in Chiang Mai, one very interesting place to have a treatment is at the local women's prison - where the massage centre was set up to provide vocational training for the inmates. We're not sure whether having a massage by an angry Thai woman is wise, so it was probably a good job it was fully booked…

So after an amazing Thai dinner of eyes-and-all prawn curry for Bret and green chicken curry for Nat, it was off to bed with achy limbs.

The next day we were picked up nice and early for our one day cooking course. We were taken out of the city to the chef's country home, via the local market to learn about the Thai ingredients we'd be using. At the house, we were each assigned to a cooking station and given a lovely pink apron to wear. We then went into a classroom, where the chef (who is apparently a Thai TV chef) demonstrated cooking the first dish - chicken in coconut milk soup. He was quite a funny character - typically Thai and very smiley - which meant we were laughing at him instead of taking in the instructions, but somehow we both managed to produce an edible replica when it was our turn.

We actually made six dishes in total throughout the day, and ate them all…. Needless to say we were very full by the end of it. At one point Nat thought she'd need a fire extinguisher though, when she forgot how to make the red thai curry and Bret rather kindly told her to put in all the chillies we were given - seeds and all. It was so spicy, it gave her hiccups - much to amusement of the other people in the class.

It was such a lovely day though, and they even gave us a recipe book at the end so we'll be making you all try our new specialities when we get home!

We've now just booked up on to a two day jungle trek to visit the hill tribe villages tomorrow. It involves lots of hiking, bamboo rafting, and elephant riding… as well as sleeping with a hill tribe village in a glorified shed and lots of iggly wigglies. Sounds lovely...