Arrived in Chiang Mai today and have just checked into the hotel and it's absolutely lovely! We got a great deal on it because we booked a whole load of things such as cooking, elephants and white water rafting at the same time.

Spent yesterday on a tour to Kanchanaburi. Went to the floating market in the morning on a wee paddle boat going around the stalls, everybody sells the same things which means you can get quite a good deal. I bought a little fan because the weather is so hot and humid at the moment and a lovely hand made photo album to put my Thailand photos in. After that it was off to the bridge over the river Kwai and the war museum. The museum has next to nothing in it but for only 40B (80p) it's not too bad. The market stalls around the bridge were full of 'precious' gems but not entirely sure how legitimate this claim is and a baby leopard being shown off to raise money for the zoo and wild lizards a couple of feet long roaming around the streets. The bridge itself didn't mean a whole lot to see as I haven't seen the film,but the story about the death railway is sad.
Finally after that it was off to the tiger sanctuary. It was a little bit of a disappointment because it wasn't quite what we were expecting but to be that close to so many tigers was incredible. I had photos taken with about 3 or 4 and then a baby one but sadly the baby tigers are not so young anymore as they were almost a year old.

Great trip followed by a mad rush to get to the train station for the 7:30 train. We got a tuk tuk because in rush hour traffic its the only way to get around but since it had been torrential rain (luckily while we were in the mini bus back) we went through a puddle on the tuk tuk and were soaked head to toe! Once at the station though we found out that in Thailand a 7:30 train means about 9pm leaving.

The sleeper train was a 14 hour ride but for £14 we got bunkbeds and aircon which actually made for quite a pleasant sleep and a long lie in this morning as we arrived 12ish.