We arrived in Chiang Mai (in the north of Thailand) at 7 am having had hardly any sleep! We found our way to a cheap guesthouse and slept for most of the morning. When we eventually made it downstairs in search of food, we were captured by the tour organiser at the guesthouse, and blagged into agreeing to a three day trek- which he did sell very well!! The trek left a couple of days later, so we spent the time mostly spending lots of money at the night bazaar! And discovering a local university wine project- meaning we could buy cheap lychee and strawberry wines! This was some of the first wine we'd had in months, unfortunately we had to go party style out of the bottle, due to a lack of glasses in our room!! We decided that our old falling apart trainers were unsuitable for jungle trekking, and so treated ourselves to new ones! We left the old ones in the room, and on return from the trek one of the guys who worked in the hotel seemed to have adopted mine! The day before we left we took a short cooking course which included making our own curry pastes, and Will learnt to make his favourite- Massaman curry.

There were eight people on our trek- which aimed to go further afield than the many other treks in the area, in order to avoid other groups and visit vilages and hill tribes that hadn't been changed by tourism (yet!). Our guide was Jungle Jim- a completely insane Thai man, who was very hard to understand and yet taught us loads and was hilarious. On the first day we visited a Hmong tribal village to have traditional tea with the witch doctor- who also showed us all his musical instruments and gave us all a bong with some tree bark to smoke- apparently its like medicine (?)!! We did about an hours walk before meeting up with two elephants in the jungle, half the group including us rode the elephants to the camp where we spent the night.Our mahout (elephant trainer) Mouley Mouley jumped off almost straight away, and left me and Will to ride the elephant on our own while he walked behind! Bit scary- but he did teach us the sound to make the elephant move- we weren't that successful as every bamboo plant we went passed she had to stop to eat most of the tree! We spent the evening at a camp, where one family lived. We went hunting- to the traps the locals had set- and two had caught rats. They were really small rats and looked more like mice. Since you have to eat everything you catch in the jungle... we enjoyed (ish) trying some bbq rat- although was a bit disgusted when one of the guys with us ate the whole head- brains and all!! yummy! We spent a lovely evening with amazing food, Jim playing guitar around a fire and the most stars we've even seen! It was beautiful.

After not a great deal of sleep... we woke to the longest trekking day. We walked up and down mountains for about 6 hours. stopping for Jim and Mouley Mouley (who was our porter carrying the food for the day!) to make chopsticks out of bamboo, and had lunch using huge leaves as plates. Whilst walking Mouley Mouley showed us different plants- branches you could cut down to drink water from, and bitter nut- a really yukky tree that the locals like to chew. We spent the evening in a Karen tribe village, had freezing cold showers, helped prepare dinner, and learnt how to use their wooden machines which remove the husk from rice. Again we spent the evening around the fire.

On the final day we walked for a few hours, Will playing with his new slingshot that Jungle Jim gave him; before going bamboo rafting. We visited a waterfall before heading back to Chiang Mai. Jim told us the most random thai joke- took about 20 mins, had the punch line no danku and no one understood much of it at all- but was so hilarious the way he tried to explain!! We had dinner that evening with everyone from the trek, followed by drinks, and an elephant visiting the pub- random!!

After a days recovery we rented a motorbike each and drove 3 or 4 hours to Pai. I had a really nice automatic bike (called Gregory) and Will had a clutch bike (James). The roads were all mountainous with loads of hairpins, and we had loads of fun! We arrived in Pai in early evening. The following day we explored Pai and the area around by bike. We visited some hot springs- which were interesting but quite small and no one was swimming. You could boil eggs in the highest pools! On the way back, we saw a small tornado in the road- it blew all the dust and leaves really high in the sky- unfortunately we missed a picture! We also saw some small beaver like things- although not sure exactly what they were. We spent the afternoon in a swimming pool, and visited Pai Canyon in the evening for sunset- it had really thin high up pathways around it- very scary but WIll made me go all the way round! In the evening we had the cheapest steak ever- 130 baht (about 2 pound 60) and it was really good with yummy sauce! We rode back to Chiang Mai yesterday and had to say bye to Gregory and James. We caught the night bus to Bangkok (and actually slept a bit!) arriving at half 5 this morning. We now have the day here before catching a train back down south this evening- meaning we're trying to entertain ourselves all day whilst carrying our packs around! Thus lots of time in the internet shop!!! Thats all for now- will update again soon xx