The last week has been crazy. We came to Chiang Mai and spent a few days at our hotel, before we were taken into the jungle for three days to go trekking and to ride elephants, and stay with local villagers who live in the mountains.
It was an amazing experience...but I will say this, the jungle is the most vicious, nasty, unforgiveable and tiring place.
3 hours of trekking in this kinda heat, with malaria tablets making you feel dizzy, is not the nicest experience. It was all worth it though in the end.
I even had red ants climb into my shoes and go up my trouser legs and bite the hell out of me during this time. It was HORRIBLE.

Once we'd finished all the trekking, we then went to a wooden house in the mountains, and stayed there for the night. We had a matress on the floor and a mosquito net that draped over the mattress which was hanging from the ceiling, but we were sharing this room with about 10 other people who were on the same trip. It was really cold at night, which was suprising because it was so hot in the day!
The locals from the village came up to where we were staying and were playing guitar and encouraging us to sing along with them... they were really funny.

The elephant ride was amazing although we both kept thinking we were going to fall off! The elephants are so playful and friendly. This is something i've always wanted to do and absolutely loved it, we got to see more elephants at Chiang Mai zoo the other day, and they were just as awesome!

At the end of the trekking trip, we also got to go white water rafting, and bamboo rafting!

Luke loved trekking more than I did, he thought it was like The Krypton factor! lol. I was more scared of being on the edge of a walkway which had a huge drop and no barriers, along with huge spider webs and massive poisonous spiders on the other side of me. Not your average weekday.
Luke kept stopping to look at the spiders and take photos of them, but after hearing "Liz,come see this!" and "Liz! Look at this spider" the fourth or fith time I decided I didn't want to know anymore...I don't care if they are there,I don't care how big they are, and I don't want pictures of them coming back to haunt me.He managed to get one picture though, the little b*****.

We went for a few drinks, played some pool and Luke managed to watch a lot of the Man united game which was showing in the bar we were in.
We went for a nice mexican last night, was really cheap for what we had... enchiladas, tacos, rice and beans...and a big banana sundae, came to about 10 pound between us. That was a nice end to our time in Chiang Mai.

We've now got a gruelling 18 hour trip to get to Cambodia... we have to go back to Bangkok first, on the train which we have bunk beds in, and then a bus from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia...
We'll update again as soon as we find an internet point in Cambodia!
Luke & Liz

xx