Hi. Kate here!

This is just a quick update on Chaing Mai so far, I will post a longer blog in a few days as we are heading off on a 3 day trek into the jungle! We are doing a mix of trekking, elephant riding, white water rafting and bamboo rafting as well as swimming in some waterfalls and sleeping in a tribal village and a jungle hut! We are leaving tommorow morning for this!

We arrived in Chiang Mai yesterday, it is in the mountains, a little cooler than bangkok (not much though!) but the air is much cleaner and it is much more chilled out. Our hostel is really nice, we have our own bathroom and a swimming pool for $4 each! We took the night train from bangkok which was very bumpy and only got 2 hours sleep!, but it was a fun journey.

Today we went to a thai cookery school, it was brilliant! We made 6 dishes each as well as a curry paste and carved vegetabels into flowers. I made- papaya salad (spicy!), masaman curry paste and curry, stir fry big noodles, mango and sticky rice, spicy thai basil soup and ginger and chicken stir fry...

Tom made different dishes so between us we have made lots! There should be some photos up in a couple of days on the website apparently, take a look at http://www.siamricethaicookery.com/. Was a great day :)

After the trek, we are going to have a relaxing day here again, possible a massage (but foot not thai, that was painful!) and some sight seeing... then onto Laos slow boat down the river Mekong!

Thats all for now!