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Thursday 1st February
We arrive in Chiang Mai after a good nights sleep on the train and got a tuk-tuk to our hostel called 'Nice Place 1'. Chiang Mai means 'New Town' as the people moved here from Chiang Rai due to the severe droughts they suffer from up there.
We came to the conclusion today that we just haven't allowed enough time to do everything we want to here in Asia. So we decided to put our flights to Australia back by 2 weeks.
The people are very friendly here. They will just stop and ask if they can help you or just chat with you for no reason at all. It's lovely.
In the evening we headed to the Night Bazaar which is a huge market area with so many lovely things for sale. I'm going to have to come back when I have money to spend! It's also a lot less pushy than Bangkok which makes a nice change.
There's also a large food court which puts on free thai dancing and some very bad thai karaoke too which you can sit and watch while eating delicious thai curry followed by banana pancakes. Mmmmm.
Friday 2nd February
We went on a thai cookery course today with the Pad Thai Cookery School - it was one of the highlights of my trip so far. We started the day at a local food market where Nochi, our teacher talked us through all the wonderful fruits, herbs, vegetables and spices you can use in thai cooking.
Then we headed off to the classroom where we made several dishes over the course of the day including red curry and green curry. I also made my own spring rolls from scratch which I'm quite proud of and we flombed a chicken and cashew nut dish. Check out the photo's - I look slightly scared and hysterical at the same time.
Nochi was so funny - she really made the day. Every time someone went to take her photo she would stop what she was doing and pose just repeating the word 'sexy, sexy, sexy....' as her mantra while looking all pouty and sultry through her fake eyelashes. Did I mention that she had burnt her eyelashes off the week before!!!!
We finished the day with a foot massage and had our toenails painted - ahh what luxury. And it only cost us around 7 pound! Bargain.
Saturday 3rd February
Every year Chiang Mai hosts a flower festival and today was parade day! Each of the districts prepare a float and some have a beauty queen on there too. There were marching brass bands playing some very british music - quite bizarre.
There were flower stalls selling mostly orchids and there was so much food for sale on the streets you would have thought people were stocking up for an impending famine!
We headed down a side street and passed a man in his back yard who had lots of cockrels kept within wicker cages. He had one of the birds in his had and was waving it from side to side infront of another cockrel. He explained to us that he was training the bird for fighting. They get around 10,000 Baht per fight if they win (around 140 pounds) which is a huge amount of money here considering the daily wage is 169 Baht! Plus he gets whatever he bets himself on the sly!
He explained that they don't fight the birds to the death - a common misconception held by tourists - and they look after them really well. They only let them fight around 5 rounds as the birds are too valuable for them to be killed.
We then ran into another man who just wanted to chat and he explained he worked for one of the Bangkok newspapers and was here reporting on the flower festival. Everyone is so friendly.
We visited various Wat's and at one of them we chatted to two students who asked for help with their english. They were studying to be tour guides. It's a 2 year university course here and you have to major in one language and study a second as well.
One of the students was majoring in Japanese and we asked him what they were like when they came to visit Thailand because in the UK they tend to pitch up, take mass group photo's and get back on their tour bus again. He said that they look down on the Asians and in particular the Thai's because they occupied the country in WWII. But when they are around the americans, apparently they are particulary subservient and deferent. It was an interesting insight certainly.
Later that day I headed off to have my first thai massage. Firstly I was offered a man - erm, I don't think so - then an old lady proceeded to pummel me for an hour. It was an experience I won't be repeating in a hurry.
Sunday 4th February
We booked ourselves on a 2 day trek to see the hill tribes and headed off with our guide Dyo and six swedes - two couples and two girls. We were dropped off in our mini van halfway up a mountainside at around 1100metres and walked up to the top which was around 1800metres. The scenery was stunning with lots of bamboo and banana trees.
We passed through the village of the Lisu people where the children used us as swings. Then we stopped at the village of Lahu and even though the two are within walking distance they both speak different dialects.
Further along the path we passed 3 hunters with guns. There were also places where the hill tribes use the water to pound rice. They have a large pestal and mortar system with a mechanism that raises the pestal and then drops it to separate the rice from the kernel.
Our final stop was at a Lanna household where we stayed with a family overnight. We washed in the waterfall which was freezing cold but very exhilarating. The women were pounding the rice to cook for our dinner. Our guide, Dyo, cooked one of the best meals we'd had since arriving in Thailand - potato curry with a side order of longbean and chicken, and sticky rice. Mmmmm.
We shared our outdoor dining experience with numerous black pigs, chickens, a cat and 2 dogs that looked like foxes.
After dinner we sang songs around the campfire as Dyo rightly protested that he couldn't sing but continued to howl away to Bryan Adams, Nirvana and Metallica. Not exactly an all thai experience but they do love their karaoke.
One of the boys from the family was very entertaining. He had begun to learn some english words and a bit on the guitar. He ostentaciously produced an english paper for us and proceeded to point at things and give them their english name. Football is truly an international language, as is Theirry Henry! He was a bright boy and it was good to see him learning a language that will clearly stand him in good stead in later years.
Monday 5th February
Lots more walking again today and even more beautiful scenery. We saw henna flowers and the tarantula's cousin. It's a web spinning spider which is apparently not poisonous to us as it needs to use a web to catch it's prey - well that's what Dyo told us anyway. There was also a massive group of Daddy Long Legs crawling all over a plant. I've never seen so many in my life!
In the fields they were planing rice and growing chives, oranges and of course more bananas.
We trekked to an elephant camp and went on an hour long ride. The mahoute's didn't even need to ride on our elephant as she responded to voice commands. Kate and I do seem to have a habit of getting on the one that wants to be on the front and should have go-faster stripes down the side. So we took off on Maemoo with one of the babies following close by.
The mahoutes were playing with her and teasing her by jumping on her back, then she'd try to shake them off and sulk for a little while. Then they would look like they were having fun so she would come running up to them and push them to join in. It was a very funny game to watch. They clearly cared for the elephants and enjoyed playing with the baby.
At one point the two mahoutes sat on a vine that was shaped like a swing and the baby elephant came up to them and tried to put her leg over the vine to get on it - so cute.
Next was bamboo rafting and I guess I was expecting a similar thing to last time - a nice sedate float down the river. Hee hee - I couldn't have been more wrong. We were split onto two separate rafts and stood up to balance them as we floated down the river.
Halfway into the trip the guides started using their bamboo poles to throw weeds and algae at each other and us and then the splashing started. We had such a laugh - by the end the raft I was on was coming apart and sinking and I was up to my waist in water.
Tuesday 6th February
I woke up at 5.30am to find a small thai woman standig in the doorway. When I asked her what she was doing she tried to convince us that she was the cleaner and had found Kate's bag outside the room door. She then handed the bag to us and scuttled off.
Kate got dressed and went downstairs to find her trying the handles on the doors there so she went to security who stopped her and had her arrested. Fortunately they had video surveillance on the floor downstairs and had her on camera.
While waiting for the police Kate saw her stuff a necklace and some money down her trousers which the tourist police discovered.
So after that exciting and early start to the day we headed off to meet Kate's Mum. We jumped on her tour bus and headed off to the elephant conservation camp. We rode a boy for the first time today (apparently they are more difficult to control) and he was our first white elephant, called Poo Boonsong.
There was then a show where the elephants played football and painted pictures which were a whole lot better than I could ever hope to achieve. it was a little odd to see the elephants doing things like this but the place seemed like it really cared for them and there was an abundance of food you could buy to feed them.
Apparently they used to use the elephants for work like hauling logs amongst other things but they didn't have any use for them nowadays with modern machinery so they had kept the camp going but more to protect them.
Our guide had been with his elephant for 6 years and they were left to roam in the surrounding forest freely every night. I'm also quite sure that if the elephants didn't want to come down to the camp every morning then they wouldn't.
We then went to an orchid farm and to watch various local crafts being made such as silverware, lacquerware, pottery and silk.
One silk worms cocoon can produce 300metres of silk. It's just unfortunate that they boil the worms in their cocoons to soften the silk so they can unravel it. Then they eat the worms - boiled or deep fried - nice.
Finally we drove to Wat Phrathat at Doi Suthep. The temple was just beautiful and on a good day you can see out over the whole of Chiang Mai. Unfortunately today it was just too hazy. The steps leading up to the temple remind me of those at Montmartre in Paris, except this has two dragons wending their wayup each bannister.
Wednesday 7th February
The tourist police arrived to take our statements about the attempted robbery. So we spent the next 4 hours at the police station. Kate had to identify the old woman by walking right up to her and then she had to have her photo taken with her - all a bit strange.
We then had to head back to 'Nice Place' and have our photo taken pointing at the door and with Kate's bag. Lots and lots of photo's. So I thought I may as well ask if we could have our photo taken with the very stiff Lieutenant Colonel in his tight fitting police uniform and the camp chap who was the interpreter in his equally tight fitting woolly jumper.
They were very happy to pose for us, but only after the Lieutenant Colonel had gone and checked his hair in the bathroom mirror! Hee hee. What an odd experience.
We headed back to Bangkok on the overnight train ready to fly to Vietnam tomorrow.
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