Chiang Mai

It's Wednesday and we are now in the capital of the North - Chiang Mai. We caught a bus yesterday whcih took around 5 and a half hours from Sukothai. The guesthouse we had hoped to stay in was full but seeing as there seem to be literally hundreds here we had no doubt we would find one. and just in time too before the rain. Yay, rain!! It's much cooler here.

We chose our guesthouse - Baan Sabai Sabai - because the girl running it was so friebndle and helpful. We have a fan room with shared bathroom for next to nothing. Soon after we arrived she orgainsed our washinf for us, rang a travel agen to orgqanise some trips we want to do and recommended places to eat and get massages.

After eating we spent an hour at the travel agent and organised a cooking course for Thursday and a day white water rafting on Friday. Then we had our second thai massage before hitting the enormous night market. This is seriously huge and has heaps of very cool crafty things and jewelery

We also stopped at yet another travel agen and organised flights to Laos (which means unfoprtunatly we have to overstay our visa for 2 days so hope they don't shoot us at the border) and visas to Vietnam.

So far loving chiang Mai

Thursday

Today we went on our master chef cooking course. Lucky for us it was just us and a lovely Israeli couple who are on their honeymoon

First we went to the market to get our ingredients. We were making green curry, penang curry (my favourite), pad thai, vegetable spring rolls with plum dipping sauce (chris' favourite), stir fry vegetables, yum tom soup and sticky rice with mango!

He taught us how to make each dish one by one and we were chopping, stirring, mixing and stir frying in no time!

And then we got to eat it all - well we tried!

Friday
Today we went white water rafting down the Mae Tang river north of Chiang Mai.
The rapids were grade 4 and we rafted for around 2 and a half hours in the poaring rain. Heaps and heaps of fun. Got stuck several times, 2 people from our boat fell out in the rapids, we got saturated and I screamed a lot! Great fun. Very keen to go again!

Saturday
Today we didn't get up to much. Slept in, watched rugby and a couple of movies on TV before heading to a traditional Thai dancing show and dinner. The food was fantastic and everytime we finshed a dish a new full one would appear again within a few seconds. The costumes were amazing and Chris even got to show off a few moves of his own when a thai girl pulled him up to dance!

Tomorrow we are travelling to Pai which is North East of Chiang Mai.