Chiang Mai

We have now moved on from Chiang Mai and are now in the sweet little town of Pai which is a small town in the mountains about 3 hours from the Burma border.

It came to our attention that we had not really blogged about what we have been up to in Chiang Mai, other than the day we spent at the Elephant Nature Park.

Chiang Mai is actually the second larges city in Thailand but compared to the hustle and bustle of Bangkok it certainly doesn't have that feel to it. Traditionally an old city set within a moat, the town has now expanded to what it is today. The moat and old city wall are still a feature surrounding the old city.

Well we had the fantastic time in Chiang Mai and defiantly now feel a lot more relaxed after five days of not really doing much. We stayed in the most amazing guesthouse called Diva (Not a gay bar or hostel with a name like that) within the old city. It is owned my a Swiss gentleman called Steffen and his thai wife. They are the most perfect hosts you could wish to meet, who go totally out of their way to help make your stay more relaxing. Steffen's wife was lovely and she owned the little massage house just across the road. Staying at Diva entitled us to some nice discounts on treatments and with a 1 hour Thai Massage costing the equivalent of £2.60 it seemed rude not to have a treatment nearly every day.

On the first day in Chiang Mai we decided to go for a walk through the town and along the river. It was amazing to see the river just a couple of weeks after the horrendous floods that the city had suffered, as i'm sure you may have seen in the news. The concrete barriers and sand bags still lay all around the town and every time it rains you can see the concern on the locals faces. On deciding to return back to the hostel we got 100% lost and ended up walking around for at least another hour. Our feet and bodies ached from walking around in the 34 degrees, so we decided that an hours massage was in order.

I know that we both had brilliant fun at the Elephant Nature Park but this was something that Amber predominantly wanted to do. So i felt it was only fair to take her to a evening of Professional Thai Boxing. There were 8 fights and i know that she wasn't very keen on going to watch, but i think she will even admit that she had a good time watching the fights take place. It is an incredible sport and we will be posting some videos of some of the fights online soon.

On the Friday we decided to pay a visit to the Chiang Mai Zoo, which is set high in the mountains over looking the city. We had the most fabulous time seeing all the animals. It was especially nice to see the three Panda Bears that they have at the zoo and seeing how a breeding programme they have in place is being successful, already producing one cub.

On our last night we decided to go to the weekly night market. I can honestly say that its the biggest market that I have ever seen, selling everything from hand made bags to all sorts of fried insects. Unfortunately having just eaten the most massive of meals we honestly could not fit one more thing in so we opted to pass on the bugs.

Like the rest of Thailand we had the most amazing time in Chiang Mai and should we return here we will defiantly be paying Chiang Mai another visit.

In other news very quickly, as mentioned earlier im sure you have seen on the news all the flooding that has taken place here. Unfortunately that has meant that we couldn't get the train back down to Bangkok, where we were then going to catch a flight to Hanoi (Vietnam). This would mean that we would have to pay for a flight to Bangkok and then on to Vietnam. Instead, as we are in the north of Thailand we have opted to go through Laos. We will be catching a bus to Chiang Kong, then catching a slow boat to Laung Prabang (Laos) where we will then fly to Hanoi. We are leaving for Chiang Kong on Thursday evening. All together this will probably take us about 3 or 4 days, but we will let you all know when we arrive.

Hope all is well at home. I hear Reading had a good result against Burnley at the weekend and followed that up with a good draw against Derby. Brighton were unlucky not to win against Hull.