Chiang Mai

The journey up north can only be described as unpleasant. We arrived in a garage in the middle of nowhere after a 12 hours on a cramped bus (with broken aircon and no suspension) to be tranferd to some dodgy little taxis which then took us to a hostel in the middle of nowhere from which we had to walk into the centre. It was 7 am by the time we found a hostel but an hour of walking around lost came up trumphs- this place is awsome! Next day we headed straight on on a trek with 5 english guys, to promiscuous dutch girls and a guy from prague- again it was a case of walking in on the meeting and being 'why not?'. It was brilliant- we headed out first to shower under a waterfall then headed over to some hot pools. After this it was a hard four hours walk into the very heart of the jungle, passing through hilltribe villages to where we eventually stopped for the night. This trek was particualerly good because it wasnt big or touristy. The villages genuinly had no electricity apart from the odd solar power..they wash in the river but wow can they cook. In the evening we sat around and drank 'happy water' ( rice wiskey) very potent stuff and sang with the villagers on guitars. Our guide was quite the character and soon had us eating chilli peppers, fresh cucumbers and other bizzar things. next morning we groggly woke up from our surprisingly comfortable floor beds and headed out for our elephant trek.. Such beautiful creatures we named ours dame farnu trumphs-alot she was very amusing and a pleasure to have riiden on her back- these elephants really belong to the village but now in a cadged way..they are free to roam then the villagers track them down when they are needed the next day. Half way down our river path we switched from animal to bamboo raft for a bit of rapid riding. Again brilliant fun, especially as up in arms about the fact that only the guys were supposed to steer i took over control and epic failed as i crashed us into a rock which sent me and 3 ours sprawled flat on our faces in the river and raft wedged so much we had to get our and try and lift it against the current. such a blast a we spent the next 2 hours crashing falling in..tipping the raft ..throwing each other in and trying to do tricks with the bamboo sticks..so much so that our raft actually broke and we had to hold it together!! sadley the trip came to an end as we headed back into chiang mai, all falling asleep in the back of the truck em had us in hysterics as she performed an impression of a nodding dog in her sleep!
Last night we met back up withg the 5 english guys and we headed over to this bar called river side where they had some awsome live music. Back in at 2.30am ( well most of us ) we were up early again this morning to spend the day at a cooking course. This was a mixed bag..the food and instruction was very interesting but we didnt really get properly hands on till later in the day where we had great fun fryinmg with fire (and throwing food about the place) still i can now make a good selection of curries, spring roles padthai and make a flower out of mango skin..useful? hmm still cant wait to try out my new skills!