The overnight bus had been pretty quiet with most people sleeping, or at least attempting to sleep.

On arrival at Chiang Mai we had a short wait for our mini bus transfer to the main area of town before setting off in search of some decent accommodation, which took us one hour to find and by which time with the heat and heavy bags we were more than ready for a shower and swim in the pool.

A day later we had an idea of what we wanted to do in Chiang Mai but had moved guest houses as the one we were at had been convenient on first arrival but too expensive for a long stay, plus they messed almost every food order up for everyone at breakfast! Our new place called 'Libra' was half the price and family run so we had loads of help planning stuff.

Two days in to our stay and rested up we fancied something new on the activity scene so decided on a bit of a mixture over a few days, the first of which meant us going back to school. But this was no ordinary school this was Thai cooking school, yes that's right Carina was actually going to learn to cook!

There was another couple on the course with us so we had met in the reception awaiting our pick up, if you can call it pick up as we would be walking. But this was with good reason as we were to go to the local market and buy our ingredients for the seven dishes we had chosen to learn. Now the market is a very very interesting place, they don't have refrigerators, or closed cabinets in which the food is kept. It is either on ice/in water or just sat out on the stalls and if you choose fish or eel its from a bowl of water and killed and gutted before your very eyes. So obviously we got the usual picture proof as we are sure you wouldn't want to miss this. Luckily for us it was early so everything was still fresh and we were taught about the types of fruit and vegetables we would use and how to pick them. The smells of the market though we could live without as there is not very much to separate the fruit and veg sections from the fish and meat sections, but hey when in Rome and all that.

The cooking school was built from old dark teak wood and had floor cushions with low tables, which would be where we would sample the results of our lessons. The cooking area was out back under the cover of a leafy tree canopy, we each had our own chopping board and utensils and gas stove with wok. So straight to work we were chopping, bashing and crushing our ingredients, but everything other than mashing paste was done with nothing less than a meat clever!! Interesting but effective. The simplicity of Thai cooking amazed us, the only difficult part at home will be getting some of the ingredients but we can substitute some stuff.

The course ran from 9:30 am to 3pm and we did manage all seven dishes and ate them as well with only one that we weren't keen on. We really enjoyed our day and the tastes and smells were a flavour overload, but well worth it as we wouldn't want to eat for the rest of the day.

Now just to skip back to the start of the day we went cooking, we had both been sick in the morning but had put it down to the Malaria tablets and been fine all day since. But come the evening things were about to be very different. We had booked to go to Muay Thai which is commonly known as Kick boxing and up to arriving at the stadium had been okay. Shortly after the first fight David was up and down more than the fighters, but his reason was to visit the toilet which is not a good place to be ill as it's a hole in the floor! He managed to stick it out until the second to last fight which was good as it turned out to be the best. An English guy called George who we think by his movements was probably a boxer before he was a kick boxer won the fight with a knock out. It had gone four rounds with George defending more than attacking, but then as the attacker weakened he stepped in with some stinging jabs to the face, followed up by hooks to the temple. He varied the combination and used little kicking, the attacker tried some brutal elbow movements to the head but was greeted with a right hand upper cut rattling the guys chin like a bowl of jelly. The result by this point was inevitable as it had become a one horse race.

Swiftly after the knockout we left the stadium and hauled a taxi back to the guesthouse, the result of which was a sleepless night of upset stomach at both ends and we are sure you don't need help with that explanation. Things got worse when Carina started with the same thing in the early hours, which with both of us ill meant it was fend for yourself and don't hog the bathroom.

8am and we were due to meet in reception for a trip we had booked but there was no way we could attempt it in this condition, so we had to go give the bad news and try and reschedule. On doing so we found out the couple we had been out with weren't going as the girl 'Jackie' had suffered the same fate. At this point we suspected the food from the cooking school but had not all had the same thing so weren't sure. A day later when Jackie's boyfriend Emmett got ill it confused things even more, but when the people who did go on the trip returned two days later we learned two of them had also fallen ill with exactly the same thing. Our guess now was some sort of a bug was sweeping through the guesthouse, but as it turned out it was sweeping Chiang Mai.

It would be three days until we finally got off on our trip as there weren't enough people to send it, but on the morning we set off a further three had taken ill and cancelled so the bug still wasn't done yet. Our trip was actually a trek, a jungle trek to be exact and not your ordinary walk through the woods to a place set up for tourists to go. We had searched for a trek that was the opposite, one that went where no other tourists went and we had found it.

An hour and half journey by pick up truck placed us at the foot of the jungle at a rock face hidden by the tumbling white roaring waterfall coming down from the hills, the beauty of this one was we were going swimming in it. We had around thirty minutes swimming and messing around in the fall and small lake, standing under the water fall is quite difficult as the water pounds you like a ton of bricks falling from the sky. It gets the circulation going tough!

Next stop was for dinner and a toilet stop, the so called restaurant was no more than a stick hut at the road side with benches in the garden area, the chef was our guide! But he actually did quite a good job of the rice and yellow curry, the biggest event with this meal though was the discovery that someone had taken on a passenger from the waterfall in the form of a leech! Painless as it was for the guy who it got, his foot was a bloody mess from where the leech had had its fill and fallen off unable to absorb anymore blood.

Fed and said foot cleaned up we were back on the road and an hour later at the last stop with the vehicle which was the hot spring. Here we could have taken a dip in the hot spring pool but they were cleaning that day so no such look, but we later found out that this was extra so was no great loss as we had made our own at 'Hot water beach' in NZ if you remember. We did dip our feet in the stream coming down the hill, then it was time to change into trekking clothes and get stuck into the jungle. You will see from the picture how dense some of the jungle was as it was as we wanted off the beaten track and did require some machete chopping by our guide to get a path. We passed by the thermal area that created the spring which was bubbling and steaming as you would expect, from here we continued on for a couple of hours under the leafy canopy until we got to the hill tribes. The tribes are named so because they live in the hills and are literally in the middle of nowhere, if you look closely you can see the small village in the centre of the forest on the picture taken from the top of the jungle.

The tribes are self sufficient taking water from springs, breeding chickens and cows and growing vegetables in the village. The houses are built on stilts to avoid flooding when the rains are bad and probably some of the less desirable animals of the jungle, they did have some cute kittens as well and they quite clearly liked the big steps to the stilt homes for playing on.
Four hours later we arrived at another village by the river, this one would be our home for the night. We too would sleep in a bamboo hut on stilts, on blankets on the floor which had gaps big enough to fit your hand through as bamboo is not straight, but it did have mosquito nets of sort. The showers were very interesting as they too were a bamboo hut but had little privacy as the slits in the walls again were big due to the dogs hind leg shaped bamboo. The pipe feeding the water was dependant on the pressure it ran down from the hills at so it was make do with either a trickle or a gush of icy cold yellow verging on brown water, or do as you were. The loo well it's the jungle so you work It out. But this is what we wanted, we know what the inside of a hotel, guesthouse, campervan, campsite, hut in Fiji and anything else we have done look like, but living in a hill tribe jungle village is a new one. The Inca trail was the nearest we had got but tents here would be the Ritz, we had more curry and rice along with some fresh fruit for tea and followed by guitar sing a longs and moonshine! If you don't know what that is its normally clear alcohol that is made in remote places and would never be legal anywhere else.

The night brought down three more people with the bug confirming that it was definitely not food that was doing it. Morning brought some comfort as there was no more walking to be done today, instead a group of four elephants had arrived at the village along with a lot of bamboo lashed together with leaves to make rafts! Yes leaves and sticks of bamboo for rafts. So we loaded our bags which had our stuff inside wrapped in plastic bags onto the rafts, positioned on a tripod of sticks to keep them away from the water and off they went down the river with the guides. We meanwhile were loaded onto the elephants but as the guides had gone down the river some of us had to become Mamhood's for the day. These are the people that ride on the elephants necks and directing them and looking after them, the alternative was to sit in the seats on the elephants back. So Caroline and David volunteered for this job while everyone else was happy with the seats, which left one elephant with no Mamhood meaning it was behind one so it would follow and the fourth had the only real Mamhood that was coming.

The elephant locks your legs behind its ears so it can feel where you are and keeps you secure, you nudge its right ear with your knee to go left and left ear to go right and both together for straight on, there is a word for stop and go but its in Thai and getting the spelling from the guides was impossible. Our elephant though we know was called 'Puay' and due to been ill previously he had lost a tusk but at least he had survived the illness that can kill them out here. It made him one of those more appealing animals because he had lost a tusk giving him the cute factor. He looked after us very well taking us down muddy riversides that he sometimes slid down by just locking his legs and waiting until we stopped in the river, then we would trudge down the river and cross onto the banking when it got too deep then back in when it was not higher than his belly again.

Puay liked to swing his trunk around a fair bit and a few times looked like he was going to give us a wash down, but never did do. If he had though we wouldn't have minded as after all he was the one doing the work. Now for anyone who thinks sitting on an elephant could be cruel we can assure you its not, the elephants like any other animals wont do anything they don't want to and will lift the Mahmood onto their necks with their trunks! They like people as they feed them and care for them, the elephants in many countries were made redundant in a sense when the logging trade around the world was halted. Although to save the forests and planet it meant the animals were obsolete from work and open to hunters that had turned from logging to poaching to make money. The fact the hill tribes look after the elephants in small numbers and us the travellers go on treks without turning the area in to a tourist haunt keeps them safe and gives them a happy well fed lifestyle.

Having rubbed his neck and back of his ears for him it was time to leave Puay and the walk he had taken us on through and down the river as we were near the rapids, which is obviously not a place for the elephants. What do you think we were going to use to get down the rapids then??!!

Yep we were transferring onto the Bamboo rafts, normally you tackle rapids in an inflatable raft with a life jacket, paddle, helmet, rescue kayak and all that jazz but not in the jungle. You balance your weight, the guide at the front with two men at the back (women are not allowed to control in this culture) all with long Bamboo poles for steering but as it happens are mainly used to avoid smashing the raft up on the rocks!

The first ten minutes on the raft was pretty easy going on a steady down river flow with no rapids, a quick stop at another riverside village for the guide to drop something off then we were underway again. By now we had gotten used to how and where to position the poles to push off rocks and the river bed and weren't getting we feet to badly, just the occasional slosh of water if someone moved. A turn of a corner though and things became a little more adventurous, we steered around a couple of large rocks then had to pull the canes in and flow over a small rapid pretty smoothly. A little after we were navigating an overhanging tree as the guide had got us a little too close and he was telling David at the back to push the rear away, not quite getting the gist that the river bed was too uneven, consequently David did as asked and the bamboo cane got lodged in-between rocks on the river bed. As the guy in front of David looked round David was dancing around the raft getting ever near to edge trying to dislodged the cane, a change in the current shifted the raft separating David's feet from it as the lodged pole scooped him up by the neck like some crazy stunt in an India Jones film. In keeping with this he swung round the pole landing back on the raft with a bump causing a wobble that made everyone look round, to which he quite clearly informed the guide the pole had gone due to getting stuck in the rocks!

A stroke of look that the previous shift in current that caused David to do a rendition of the river dance had dislodged the cane and was sending toward us, with this we stopped against a rock and waited to retrieve the cane before continuing. Consequently to avoid further mishaps David chose to avoid a repeat performance by steering the rear of the raft at his leisure regardless of what the guide was doing, which meant he got to keep his head attached to his shoulders!

Another fifteen minutes of leisurely rafting and taking in the jungle sights we came to the real good stuff, boulders above the water the size of cars were zigzagged in the river making for a slalom type course to steer. The ones below the water that cause the rapids are the fun ones you have to watch for though, as if they cut the leaves the raft will just become single floating bamboo canes.

Having picked our course down the biggest of the rapids we lined the middle of the raft to balance and plunged down the first part, within a second we were knee deep in the river unable to see the raft other than the bags sticking up on the tripod, but were still stood on it! Very disorientated by been stood on a raft we couldn't see, racing for the next rapid we were frantically pushing off with the canes to re-align our course and avoid the next rocks. Bouncing over some underwater rocks before tipping over the rapid the raft plunged another foot deeper putting us just short of waist height deep in water and been tossed about all over. Before we came out of the other side two people fell over and got completely submerged but hung on just long enough for the raft to bob up at the other side of the rapid.

We arrived at the drop off/pick up point of the river where our dinner was waiting, exhausted and soaked but fulfilled with our adventure we ate our dinner before our pick up truck journey back into town. We hadn't seen anyone else on our trek which was what we had hoped for and at the same time completed more ambitions by riding Puay the elephant in the river and riding the rapids jungle style.