In these couple of weeks I've biked down a mountain, taken part in a 5 day water fight and fallen off the back of a truck. I'm covered in mosquito bites and bruises (surprisingly only one from falling off said truck!) but its been one of the best weeks so far!

We arrived in Chiang Mai a day earlier than we were supposed to after deciding we didn't have enough to do in Suckothai so decided to splash out and go for a nice guest house (£8 a night for a twin room!) before checking into our hostel the following day. It was a bit of a suprise for Leigh as we bumped into one of her friends whos also travelling so we went out for some lunch. Unfortunately, we didn't realise that in Chiang Mai, Songkran starts early so we were a little wet by the time we reached a restaurant. So, we decided to retaliate and armed ourselves with supersoaker 5000's for the walk home. However, this only seemed to make us a bigger target and by the time we got back to the guest house, we were absolutely soaked!

The next morning we took a taxi to our hostel for the next week. Dispite being dropped off right opposite the entrance to the estate the hostel is in, we managed to not notice the sign so spent the next 5 minutes walking away from the hostel and had to stop in a travel agency to find out where to go! We eventually made it and were told that everyone would be going out in the two trucks for Songkran so we dumped our bags and it was into the back of the truck for another soaking! We bought a bin to put in the back of the truck and filled it with water as well as a huge block of ice! The following day we went to the hostel owners village where we helped to make traditional thai desserts of sweet sticky rice that would be taken to the local temple later on. Well, we helped out for about 10 minutes until it started pouring with rain and the fire pit got flooded! It was a good excuse to stop for some food so we sat undercover with our bowl of noodles watching the rain come down. Once the rain eased off we were taken to Noom's family on his mothers side instead where they still had a fire burning. When the rain finally stopped, the water drained quite quickly although left a lot of mud in its wake which everntually resulted in a mud fight between some of the guys!

After a quick stop at the hostel to change into some slightly dryer and warmer clothes, we were back out again- one of the roads had been closed for a huge music festival which suprisingly also involved people with firemans hoses on the stage, making sure that noone attending the show stayed dry! We ended up getting on one of the smaller stages and danced the day away with water fighting in between until the music finished at sunset. I've never seen a place so crowded before, I'll post some photos up soon that should show the number of people that were there!

After a day off from water fights, we were back on the streets for our last hurrah. Unfortunately, it wasn't very sunny but everyone still had buckets of ice water so I was freezing by the time we got round to where the music festival was. When the truck stopped to let eveyone off I was still on when the people who weren't staying for the music told our driver to go. Unfortunately, I was mid getting off when the truk started moving so very ungracefully fell flat on my arse in front of a street full of people!!! Luckily, I managed to fall pretty well so managed to get away with it scrape free dispite only wearing shorts and a t-shirt and only one small bruise on my arm! Maybe I should think about a career as a stunt woman! :P

The final day of Songkran, we couldnt hake any more water fights so stayed in the hostel during the day. In the evening we drove back to Noom's village and joined everyone there for their new year's celebrations. First we had dinner while the people in the village took part in some kareoke, with the singing being blasted out of 4 huge speakers that had been strapped to the back of a truck. Most of the people from the village that we met were already pretty drunk but everyone got progressivly more so as the dinner went on. When everyone had finished eating it was time to start the procession to the temple, about 500m down the road. The truck with the speakers followed us playing music to dance to and occasionally someone came around with a microphone to interview everyone. As none of us speak much Thai, when they got round to us it would generally be us shouting "Sawadee Pee Mai" (happy new year) or doing song requests. We went extreamly slowly and it must've taken about an hour and a half to travel the 500m to the temple. We then watched the monks take the offerings that had been brought along before walking the short distance back to the top of the street (a lot quicker this time) to catch our ride home.

Now that Songkran was over, we decided to get some activities done and first choice was some mountain biking. When we arrived at the centre and everyone else said they had mountain biking experience, I knew I was in trouble! After making the right decision to join the slow group, we made our way down the mountain with a few stops on the way. One of the stops was at a Lychee farm where we picked fresh lychee off the tree and ate them there- they are the best lychee I've ever tasted and I've been trying to find some to by ever since then! It took us about 3 hours to get down to the lake which we were quite pleased with, we were about 40 minutes behind the fast group although we'd taken a lot more stops. That was until our guide told us he usually gets down that route in about 30 minutes!

The following day was spent at a Thai cooking school where I've mastered the art of several dishes! :P I'll have to cook for everyone when I get home- I now make an amazing chicken satay and peanut sauce and yellow thai curry among other things. After that we left Spicy Thai hostel for a few days to spend some time in Pai.

We'd heard from other people that the road to Pai was very windey but you can really visualise it until you go yourself. I felt like I was in a permanent state of deja vu. Every 30 seconds or so we'd be going round a bend that looked exactly like the one we'd just been round! Three hours later, we'd made it and lucily our guesthouse wasn't too far from the drop off point so we were soon settled into our bungalow. The place we were staying was amazing. it was a little village of bamboo huts with a stream in between the huts. There was also a small fish pond at the top with places to lounge around. Needless to say, we didn't do very much during the day while we were there apart from chilling out and doing a bit of shopping! The jorney back to Chiang Mai was much the same as the one up apart from a slightly crazier driver which meant that even I was feeling a bit car sick by the time we stopped for a break half way through!

When we got back to Chiang Mai, we went back to our favourite hostel for a few more days before Leigh and I would spilt up for the week, Leigh going to Utaraditt and me to do some volunteering at elephant nature park