Yesterday we decided that we fancied seeing the pandas at the Chiang Mai zoo. It's one of only a handful of places that you can see them outside of China so it's a pretty rare opportunity. The zoo was great and in a good condition, it just needed a little bit of TLC around the edges and a lick of paint. The panda was very impressive although very sleepy but we were both excited that we had got to see one. Another highlight was that we got to feed the clouded leopard through the fence with a large piece of meat. Something you can't do it to many places either!

After the zoo we decided to walk back to Chiang Mai which took about 40 minutes. We broke up the journey with a coffee and a brownie as it really hot and humid. We then settled into the bar and enjoyed happy hour with some other people at the hostel. We ended up all going for dinner at a local place around the corner which had some great food.

Today we did our cooking course with a guy called Sammy on his organic farm, about 45 minutes outside of the city. We started off with a tour of a local market where he explained to us what some of the food was, how they made coconut milk and the different types of rice you can get. You got a choice of various things to cook and between Sarah and I we made red and green curry, tom yam soup (spicy prawn soup), hot vegetable soup, phad Thai (noodles with peanuts and chicken), chicken and cashew nuts, spring rolls and then for dessert mango with sticky rice and pumpkin custard. Needless to say we are pretty full! The day was broken up really nicely and there was loads of time to relax in the hammocks overlooking the padi fields which almost put us both to sleep as it was so peaceful.

We got back to the hostel around 5pm and had a nice long nap before having some dinner. Tomorrow we are unsure of what we are really doing and then Thursday we are heading to the border with Laos before crossing on Friday.