We left Chiang Rai by bus, a journey of 3.5 hours and reasonably comfortable apart from the air conditioning leaking and occasionally get slightly wet. On arrival there was a taxi desk at the bus station so we hopped in a cab to our hotel based just on the outside of the old city wall which surrounds the old city.

We had been to Chiang Mai before, about 16 years ago, but didn't recognise anything. A lot of expansion including high rise chain hotels, McDonalds, Starbucks, Hard Rock Café etc and it was very, very busy. Our small hotel was in a small, quiet, local street so was a nice retreat at the end of the day.

We took it very slowly over the next few days, especially as we still wanted to plan our route and book our accommodation for Myanmar and finish off the itinerary in Sri Lanka, especially the 2 weeks that Kim and Louis are coming over. We had also got behind with our blog, updating our budget spreadsheet - so a day's work was in order.

Chiang Mai has about 30 temples within the old city and we went to explore two of them, both beautiful. We also walked the Sunday night market which is 1km of stalls, local musicians, dancing and lots of street food - we had "mac and cheese" and was tasty. Heather also had strawberries on a stick dipped in chocolate. We did eat local Thai food the other 3 evenings and Heather developed a huge crush on the sticky rice and mango with coconut cream which she ate at every opportunity. Slimming World is calling on our return.

Our highlight evening was an open-air bar on a raised mezzanine in the middle of a market, called Boy Blues Bar which was opened in 2010 by a Thai Blues enthusiast called Boy. We went on Monday night which was open mic night and listened to some great music, varying from Blues to rock and even a little bit of rap. Great way to spend an evening with a few beers.

Our last day was fairly quiet and was a buddhist holiday called Magha Puja day - the first full moon day in March. We visited yet another temple (only another 6 weeks of temple visiting to be done), called the Silver Temple first founded in 1501. As the name suggests, it is a silver coloured building which shimmers in the sunlight and is full of intricate details. Most of the work is carried out using alloy and zinc with precious silver being reserved for the holy images.

Women are not allowed to enter the main hall and there is a sign saying "Beneath the base of Ubosotha in the monastic boundary, many precious things, incantations, amulets and other holy objects were buried 500 years ago. Entering inside the place may deteriorated the place or otherwise the lady herself. According to this Lanna belief, ladies are not allowed to enter the Ubosotha". Dan went inside and took some photos and then 3 German ladies asked him if he would do the same for them, so off Dan went with 3 cameras.

We walked back to our hotel and finished the day off with a swim. It's a public holiday and no alcohol is allowed to be served so all the bars were shut. However, we enjoyed fresh smoothies - Heather had passion fruit and Dan kiwi fruit and some more local Thai food to round off our short time in Chiang Mai.

We will be back in England in 6 weeks but still have more adventures to come.