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Mads and Lucy do South East Asia
The WORST bus journey so far....should have been 15 hours but took over 20. The bus kept breaking down so we were sat by the roadside for a hours with no air con, hardly any leg room and my ipod had broken! Bad times!!
We arrive on the 16th at about midday into Chiang Mai. Back to the land of tuk tuks and the Thai Baht. We had booked to stay at a guesthous recommended to us, and were meeting my brothers' friend Laurence there who had traveled from Bangkok the same day. Nice to see a familiar face from home, but think it's going to be quite different travelling in a 3 having spent the last 5 weeks together just as me and Luce.
We've had a very busy time here in Chiang Mai, on our first day we visited the Tiger Kingdom - said to be better than the one in Bangkok, although the conditions weren't as good as I'd hoped! Met some very cute 7 month old tiger cubs and some big adult tigers called oliver, Leonardo and Edward. We've later found out that the tigers are in fact drugged...but we were able to touch them and interact with them really closely so I imagine if they hadn't been drugged they could have very easily wipped my head off!
The other night we did a Thai cooking course - food was delicious! I am now a pro at making a Panaeng curry...I was really surpised to see that they put sugar in everything out here! Not quite as healthy as I thought?
Me and Lucy discovered the night market here the other day, and yes we did go a little mad!...it's currently the Loy Krathong (light festival) out here in Thailand, so the market the other night was just crazy! Not only were we trying to concentrate on the market stalls, but there was a huge parade going through the centre of the road at the same time! So busy...
We went on a 2 day trek into the jungle, which was a lot of trekking and pretty hardcore! We were in a group with 6 other, a brother and sister that we had met the day before at the cooking course and group of 4 french. The first day consisted of a 3/4 hour trek up to a waterfall and then onto our camp. We were staying in the middle of no-where next to a hill tribe. Below the camp was a big waterfall which the boys jumped straight into when we arrived back from the trek. we slept in a big wooden shack which was next to the kitchen - another small wooden shack, and then about 60 feet away was the 'bathroom' again in it's own little wooden shack.
We spent the evening around a fire, listening to music, drinking chang beer and the boys messed around with fireworks they had bought at the market. After dinner, lucy took the torch and walked down to the toilet. The rest of us were sat talking, listening to the music....about 5 mins later I heard a squeel and then my name being shouted over and over again 'Mads Mads MADSSSSSS'....I panicked and grabbed a torch, then suddenly realised - what if there's a snake or she's been bitten, I can't go down there by myself, so I asked everyone else to come too!
I shouted down to Luce we were on our way, she was screaming and crying her eyes out....I got down to the loo with one of the french guys when Chai, our trek leader came running down and booted the door open...I stepped back when I heard the word ' spider'...suddenly as I held my torch shining on the toilet door, I saw a massive black, long legged tarantula crawl across the wall and under a piece of wood.
Apparantly there were about 5 spiders in the toilet with luce, but she'd frozen in panic so much that she physically couldn't move out of there...Chai picked the spiders up and threw them far across into the forest..I heard a thud as they fell into the grass! Brrrggghhh...that was it for me and Luce, we went to bed, obsessing about whether there would be any more in our room...luckily there were'nt and we managed to sleep o.k!
The next day we went to an elephant home, and rode them up into the mountain for an hour, both me and Luce felt really guilty sitting on them, they were'nt treated well and if they didn't do as they were told, the keeper poked them in the eye with a stick! I felt so bad and upset for the poor things! Before heading back to Chiang Mai, we went bamboo rafting...lots of fun!!
will update more with Chiang Mai soon... xx
- comments
Janice Booth Your blogs are getting more vivid by the day... you'll certainly never be scared of one of our small and harmless spiders when you get back to the UK will you? Look forward to some more pics and hope the islands are a dream. x