Chiangmai - the city of culture and adventure!
My first thoughts were that it was a lot bigger and more developed than I had expected. the town was set out in a square surrounded by forests and the river ran through it.

We arrived a lot earlier than expected that morning and when we we got to Big & O's guest house eveybody was still asleep.

It is a family run house on the south gate of old town. Big - the owner was a really nice helpful guy. He had just woke and even though check in wasn't until 12 he let us into his lounge and set up a mat and pillow on the floor so we could nap for a couple of hours. After the long night of travel anywhere to lay horizontal was good for us. When we woke we got a free coffee and Big set us up with 2 tours for the next 2 days. One was ATV, rafting and waterfalls, the second was a day at the elephant sanctuary.

That afternoon we went to see Doi Suthep one of the north's most sacred temples which overlooks the city from its mountain throne.
We shared a taxi to the top of the mountain with a few monks and up we went. The temple is reached by climbing the 306 dragon steps staircase intended as an act of meditation apparently! It was really big and beautiful and the view was amazing. We intended to see a few more temples that day but the taxi ride back down took a lot longer than expected. In this time we met a Spanish guy who talked a lot and a nice Dutch couple. Also after seeing quite a lot of temples in Asia already they all begin to look the same, even though each one has its own unique appearance.

When your traveling there are certain home comforts you miss a lot. Some of these are: a good shower, your own bed, clean clothes, familiar foods and other Luxury's like TV. This night we craved a good film so we seeked out a cinema and went to watch the new mission impossible as there was only 3 choices and this one was in English. Before the film started everybody started standing up! We looked at each other as if to say "is something wrong, is everybody leaving?" The next minute the queens national anthem come on and everybody starts singing. We couldn't help but laugh but we stood in respect and waited for it to finish.
We went to bed fairly early that night in our hot 3 bed dorm covered by our mosquito nets ready for our day of adventure starting bright and early the next morning.