We arrived in Chaing Mai early in the morning, and after bumping into Lyndsay, a girl from Salisbury, at the station (!) we took songthaews to the hotel. These are like tuk tuks but are normal cars at the front with kind of trailers on the back with two benches on either side. They carry about 8 people in each and are a rather bumpy ride! The hotel had a gorgeous swimming pool, but as our rooms weren't ready we headed up to Doi Suthep, a temple on the hill about ...

Today we decided to return to Chat Chu Chak market with 3 other tour members, though this time we took a tourist boat which allowed us to see even more of the city sights. We did loads more shopping, barely having time to stop for lunch, before heading back to the hotel to leave for the sleeper train to Chaing Mai at 4.30pm. The station itself was a maze of food stalls, and the train was very comfortable with massive seats which turned into huge beds with curtain...

This morning we met everyone from our tour group, a really nice group of people. Afterwards we took the river boat to the skytrain station which took us right through the city centre (Siam Square), a brilliant view up with the skyscrapers! It really made us realise what a tropical climate Thailand has, parks break up the bustle of the city and banana and palm trees stand in between the buildings. We took the train right to Chat Chu Chak market, a massive built-up...

We tried to sleep in this morning, but after seeing the sun and feeling the warmth from our balcony we had to get up to a breakfast of fresh pineapple! We decided to head to the Grand Palace, which was a lovely walk away, giving us a chance to get a feel for the city streets, and chat to the friendly Thai people. We walked past monastries and temples, and lovely big parks, and saw huge portrait photographs of the King up all over the buildings and roads, they lov...

We boarded our plane to Bangkok very early in the morning, another good flight with every possible cd we could ever want to listen to on our handsets, we could even make our own in-flight compilation! Our transfer was fun, we had a huge minibus which gave us a good view of the lovely modern city! We actually felt like we were in civilisation again! Our hotel was lovely, right on a river and a 5 minute walk from the main backpacking street, Kao San Road. We spent ...