P: On the 7.11.11 we returned to Chiang Mai, we came back from Pai in preparation for the la krathong festival which was taking place on the 10th and 11th. We ended up staying in the Libra guesthouse on the 7th and the 8th, we initailly tried to get ourselves to a guesthouse with a swimming pool... unfortunately they only had expensive rooms left, so we decided against it. On tuesday the 8th we went and visited Doi Suthep temple, located high up in the mountains surrounding Chiang Mai, we got a songtaew up there costing us 100baht each(approx £3) , this was for a return too! Once up there the songtaew driver gave us 90mins to explore the temple and surrounding areas. The place was really busy, lots of tourists and locals up there. Lots of stalls lined the side of the streets. After the stalls, we looked up towards the temple, hundreds of steps infront of us, filled with people trekking up and down. We finally reached the top, greeted by a sign saying FOREIGNERS 30Baht to enter. The temple was quite amazing, lots of gold arcitecture, and different buddha's located around the temple. We took a few pictures as we made our way round the outside, on the far side we came to a viewing platfrom, looking out you could see all of the city of Chiang Mai, stunning view. Mr Bean also enjoyed the day, getting his picture snapped a couple of times around the place! We then entered the temple itself, was lovely inside, but felt abit weird as lots of people were praying and worshiping... felt as though we were intruding abit. Lovely place though. You could go in some rooms where monks were blessing people, large signs outside saying no photos and standing up.... we respected these. Unlike some tourists, just wandering right in and taking photos... disrespectful. We made our way back down the stairs towards the market stalls. A few little children dressed up in their tribes outfits near the bottom, people taking photos with them.... then they hold their hands out and say MONEY!! haha... mothers near at hand, demanding cash! We didn't want to pay, so Lucy slyly took some pictures stood back abit. We grabbed a cup of strawberries and bag of watermelon and made our way back to Chiang Mai. That night we ate at a local thai restaurant, looked good food... i just went for the cheeseburger and chips.... very authentic thai cuisine!!!!!

L: Thanks for that lovely story there Peter, now on to something a little more interesting. So on Wednesday 9th November we had arranged to do a Thai cooking course in the afternoon. We got picked up from the lady who were going to be teaching us that day and to our delight found out we we're the only two booked on for that afternoon... YES means we got more attention and involvement with the teacher. First things first when we headed to the local market to pick our ingredients and we had a little talk about certain fruits and vegetables we hadnt even heard of before. We then got 20 minutes to walk around the market, taking photos of things we werent sure of, so we could ask our teacher. I have got to say i dont think Food Hygiene exists in Thailand, as we walked past the meat counter with flys all over the chicken and beef,Never in a fridge and the only thing keeping it cool was a metal bar and a cloth wrapped around it swinging above the meat. We then found some PINK eggs and took a photo for you to see, they called them 'HORSE PEE EGGS' Peter thought this was hilarious. They were black inside and smelt very strong like horse pee. Not nice. After doing our shopping we headed for the kitchen.

P: We got given our aprons, and choose the dishes we wanted to make. Lucy made hot & sour king prawn soup, stir fry chicken with cashew nuts, red curry, and sticky rice with mango. I think her favourite was defiantely the stir fry. We got to eat our dishes after we made each one. Was good fun. We didn't always like the dishes we made.... I made chicken coconut milk soup, pad thai, green curry (very hot), and vegetable spring rolls. Most of the dishes were very hot and spicy, we drank lots of water to stomach some of the dishes, haha. I would of prefered it if i could have made spring rolls with some meat in! As it was approaching the la krathong festival, we got a extra bonus of getting to make la krathongs! Basically they place la krathongs on the river, and light the candle and let them sail downstream. They also place a 1 baht coin, a strand of hair and a nail in it, as this is supposed to look after and protect them! They make them out of materials like bamboo, leaves, flowers, materials that will eventually degrade and won't rubbish the river. We received a certificate on completion of the cooking course, along with a recipe book for future use. Would recommend doing a cooking course if in the chaing mai area.

P: Also that day we had a slight problem with our accomodation, we had originally payed for 2 nights and when we came to extend our stay, we were informed they were fully booked and we couldnt stay any longer!! So we went looking elsewhere.... Everywhere was fully booked or way way too expensive!! Panic set in, but luckily we found a guesthouse online called Mandela, ended up being in a good location near the parade streets and the river for the festival, but think it was the gay area in the city.

Thursday the 10th arrived, this was the main night in the festival, but firstly we visited the zoo during the day. This was lots of fun and alot cheaper than visiting british zoos! The main attraction was the panda's... neither us had ever seen a black and white panda before. They are so cool and you just want to go cuddle and play with them. Got some good pictures of them. We fed a leopard some meat through the fencing which was good, I wanted to feed the black leopard but he was being lazy and just stayed in the shade. Lucy fed a cute little elephant some food. Lucys favourite part was when we got to the orangatan, she absolutely adored him. It was also quite funny when we saw some black bears, there was one stood up on a wall, about 2 metres across from us. Only thing inbetween us was a big ditch... it jumped down into ditch and started to attempt to climb this bigger wall on our side, we got abit nervous and scooted of! haha. Lucky the wall was obviously too high for the bear to climb. The zoo didnt seem as secure as you would think though, as you could quite easily fall into the pits where crocodiles were!! All in all we enjoyed the afternoon at the zoo.

Night time came and we quickly got ready, grabbed our la krathongs that we had made and headed towards the river. The roads were really busy with traffic and people. You could see lotsd of lanterns going up into the night sky. We found a space at the side of river and released our krathongs down the river, hundreds of krathongs lit the river, was a lovely sight. People carried on letting them into the river all night long. Don't know how far ours got, maybe Bangkok, maybe just round the corner! We then made our way to a very busy bar restaurant called Riverside, we had to wait about an hour for our table but was well worth the wait. Our budget went to pot that night, we decided just to treat ourselves... Lots of chang lager, starters, mains and even desserts! I even got a steak, which was fantastic. We had a brilliant view from our table, overlooking the river full of kratongs floating by, lanterns and firworks filling the night sky. Was a lovely evening. We later left the restaurant and joined in the festival atmosphere on the streets. Lucy at one stage came very close to wetting herself as we couldn't find any toilets, haha! Think she was happy to pay the 5baht usage charge! All over the city people filled the streets, lanterns everywhere. Was a brilliant to witness such a wonderful festival and atmosphere.

On the friday the festival continued, the main attraction being a parade down the main street heading towards the river. Full of different floats, costumes, and music. Only disapointment was that it was far too busy to get good views. After watching for about an hour we went to get some food of the very cheap food stalls, and went and found a bar called Johns Place. Ended up being brilliant, it had a large open topped roof bar, where we spent the next couple of hours supping chang lager and looking out over the city, watching lots more fireworks and lanterns in the night sky.

Im so pleased we were in Chiang mai for the festival, out of this world!!