Well, the trip into Thailand wasn't as bad as it could have been. I guess that's saying something. At least the roads were sealed. Have I succeeded in frightening you all away from trips to Laos? Anyway, a tuk-tuk arrived at my guesthouse right on schedule to bring me to the Northern Bus Station. I arrived, changed my receipt into a bus ticket - presto! - loaded my bag onto the bus and tried to find the most comfortable place to sit. Technically, everyone is assigned a seat, but no one really abides by this in practice, especially when the bus is less than half-full. This is a blessing, as sleeper buses are just generally uncomfortable even when everyone has two seats to themselves to stretch out on.

As I mentioned, the road was sealed, but there were patches that were in desperate need of repair. I woke up every time we hit one of these patches because they caused my head to thunk against the window with enough force to bruise. The road was also very twisty-turny, which made the ride even more unpleasant for those unfortunate people on the bus who were inclinded toward motion-sickness. Add to all this, if you will, the three or four Lao men employed by the bus company to assist with loading luggage, making repairs, whatever might be needed, who decided to take advantage of the trip to call every single person they have ever known. They finally stopped chatting at around 3 am when a group of us who were sick of the noise ganged up on them and told them to stop! talking! it's 3 am! In addition, the air-con on the bus was broken. Now, I've found that this is quite common on South-East Asian buses, but this usually means that the air-con won't turn on. Not so on this bus. They couldn't turn it off. And it was on full-blast all night. The bus was freezing. We were all in agreement on this - it was freezing.

Finally, we arrived at the bus station outside of Huay Xai at about 6:30 am. We lumbered off the bus to thaw out and lumbered into tuk-tuks that were waiting to take us to the border. However, the border doesn't open until 8 am, so we all sat down for some breakfast at a nearby restaurant. Lao immigration was no problem, so long as you had your departure card and you hadn't overstayed your visa. Then we had to cross the Mekong to Thai immigration. This was more of a problem. Several of us had purchased tickets from Luang Prabang to Chiang Mai and we were assured that every step of the journey was included in the price, from the buses to tuk-tuks to the ferry across the river. We explained this to the ticket sellers at the ferry dock, who immediately clammed up and pretended not to speak any english (I say "pretended" with certainty because as soon as they thought our backs were turned they went right back to conversing in english). So, much to our disgust, we were forced to pay for the ferry ticket. We crossed the Mekong and went through Thai immigration without any problems, then those of us with onward tickets caught a complimentary ride to the travel agency at which we could catch our minibus to Chiang Mai. The minibus left at around 10:30 am and we arrived in Chiang Mai at about 4:00 that afternoon. I wandered into the backpacker area and found a place to sleep before going out and tracking down dinner.

So, what have I been doing with my time in Chiang Mai? I took a Thai cooking class, which was something I had been looking forward to this entire trip. It was fantastic! Anyone heading to Chiang Mai, I highly recommend the cooking classes offered by Gap's House. We were driven out to a beautiful open-air kitchen in which to work and were given bound cookbooks with more than 30 recipes. The instructors were fantastic and the menu selection was excellent. With most of these courses, you only cook 5 dishes in a day; our course covered 9 dishes in one day.

I also did the "Flight of the Gibbon" - it's a 3 km zipline course through the rainforest canopy. I did the afternoon trip, so I was picked up at my guesthouse after noon, then we drove to the site in Mae Kompong. After signing a disclaimer we were outfitted with our gear and given a safety briefing. Then we drove to the beginning of the course and we were off! My group had 8 people, including myself, plus our two guides. We went platform to platform over the jungle. The course lasts about three hours, and is so much fun! Afterward, we went on a waterfall trek through the forest and had a late lunch in the village before heading back to Chiang Mai.

What else did I do? I did a trek into Doi Inthanon National Park, visiting Karen and Hmong hill tribes along the way. The trek was a good one - it didn't have that "human zoo" aspect that affects so many of the treks. We spoke with the village women (all the men are out tending to crops during the day; the women remain in the village and weave beautiful fabrics to sell at the markets) and then hiked through the park to a waterfall. After the waterfall we hiked to the edge of the park and hopped in the van to go to an elephant camp where we rode elephants through the jungle. It was pretty impressive how delicately these massive creatures moved. The elephant camp was alongside a river, so we then boarded bamboo rafts and cruised along for the rest of the day. I also went rafting yesterday, but this wasn't as sedate as the bamboo rafts. I was picked up from my guesthouse early yesterday morning and loaded into a van with the rest of the group. From Chiang Mai it was about two and a half hours to the point along the Mae Taeng river where we had lunch and then were given our equipment and a safety briefing. Then we boarded our rafts for the 10 km trip down the river. It was quite exciting - a few of the sections were grade 4, though we were told that as we get into the dry season these sections become more of a grade 3. There were two Brits in my raft, Caroline and Jish, as well as our skipper and myself. Ours was the last raft to leave, so we were also the last raft to attempt each sections of rapids. The other three rafts in our group would be waiting for us as we came hurtling down the rapids, laughing wildly. No one else laughed when careening over rocks and rapids, defying both gravity and the river in our attempts to stay upright and inside the raft - I wonder why.

Anyway, in the gaps between the activities listed above, I've wandered around the city's temples and markets, cursed the heat during the so-called "cool season", tried various fruits that look more like instruments of torture and sampled the amazing food. Tonight I head back to Bangkok, where I will have two days before I board a flight home!