Chiang Mai

Before leaving Asia for good, we headed up the north of Thailand to check out the mountains and spend a few days in the city of Chiang Mai. The overnight bus we caught was so good it even had a hostess on-board who handed out free food! Despite this and also having a nice reclining chair, I just couldn't get to sleep so just watched the new Karate Kid movie (which is awesome) until the hostess came back around with breakfast.

Chiang Mai is a great city to visit, quite small and very chilled, which was a welcome change coming from Bangkok . There was a great little hostel that had a market stall opposite where you could get amazing fruit muesli every morning. There was also a giant street market which we raided nightly for tasty treats and bargains!

Our friends from Bangkok put us in contact with a couple who work with YWAM in Chiang Mai, Prin and Sarah. We met them one night for a pizza and it turned out that Sarah was from Belfast! Crazy small world, hopefully see them back home some day!

One day we hired some motorbikes and decided to ride to the top of Doi Inthanon, which is the highest mountain in Thailand and has a road all the way up to the top! We set off with no map and eventually realised that it was a few hundred miles away. A couple of hours later we started to climb, but as we did the temperature dropped like crazy!  When we reached the summit there were some Buddhist temples and the views from up there were breathtaking. We sat for as long as we could, but got so cold that we had to race back down to the mountain to reach the warmer air!

We also signed up to do an overnight jungle trek where you rode some elephants and then stayed with a tribe in the mountains. It cost us about £20 and was possbily the most fun you could ever have in two days!

We were in a group with eight girls from all over the world (alright!) and had a Thai guide called Puzaa who was an absolute hero. Riding the elephants was up first and was great as long as you had a steady stream of bananas at hand to keep the big boy moving! We then hit the jungle and trekked up to this little waterfall which turned out to be the best rock-slide ever! 

We got up to the village and Puzaa cooked up a storm while we met the locals and settled in. Later that night we hung out and watched the stars and one of the locals arrived with a guitar. He taught us some Thai reggae songs, including one classic about a guy who gets left by his woman and she even takes all his Bob Marley CDs, hilarious!

Riding back to town on top of a jeep. Awesome.