Bangkok and Chiang Mai

We spent our first few days in Bangkok, eating delicious thai food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and visiting a few of the sights including the Reclining Buddha which is ridiculously huge. In Latin America we could buy a meal for less than US$5 between us, but the food here is just as cheap and far more interesting and delicious.

We were very happy to meet up with our friends from home, Rob and Jocelyn, who were on their way through Bangkok to go kite-surfing in the Philippines. The four of us jumped on an express boat down the river to the Grand Palace, only to be stopped at the gate by a man telling us that our clothes didn't cover our shoulders and knees, so weren't suitable. He added that the monks were praying at the moment but if we came back at 1pm we could borrow clothes for our visit. He organised a cheap tuktuk for us in the meantime to show us some of the other sights, what a kind man. After a quick visit to another shrine, the tuktuk then stopped at a suit shop, then a jewellers ... the oldest trick in the book, the tuktuk drivers give you a bargain price but you have to pretend interest in having a suit made so the driver gets a commission from the shop. After some negotiation the tuktuk took us back to the palace and we were quickly kitted out in suitable clothes. The palace was huge and we were pretty tired by the time we'd walked round most of it and taken 346327846 photos, so it was time for a nice cold beer or three before we had to leave our friends for the overnight train to Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand.

The train seemed pretty nice, with wide seats which turned into bunk beds. We were both in upper berths, which meant we were right next to the air conditioning vents and the fluorescent lights which stayed on all night. Not a great night's sleep and then the train was five hours late, so we arrived in Chiang Mai sleepy, hungry and grumpy. After the first hot shower in several days, we went for a "welcome dinner" our tour agent had thrown in for us, which included a show of traditional Thai dancing. The food wasn't like the Thai food we'd previously had, it had more fried things and less chilli and coconut milk but was still good.

The next day we started our three day trek with our new friends James, Conny and Emelie, and our crazy guide Joe (all Thai people seem to choose themselves a western name as well as their thai name). We walked through the bamboo forest with Joe chain smoking and hacking at random things with his machete, and arrived at a Karen Tribe village in the afternoon. We stayed in a traditional house outside the village, showered in the nearby stream and ate a lovely dinner russled up by Joe. I headed off to bed early, but the boys stayed up around the fire drinking beer and listening to Joe's tall tales. The next day Joe decided to take us on a "short cut" which involved fighting our way through brambles along a non-existent path. After backtracking several times, stopping to pull thorns from our legs and eventually finding Chris and Conny who decided to take their own short cut into nowhere, we finally arrived at a beautiful waterfall where we spent the night.

The final day of the trek was a lot of fun. We walked back to civilisation for lunch before going to the elephant camp where we went for a ride on an elephant. Our elephant was huge and stubborn, with an enormous capacity for bananas and a charming way of spraying us with snotty water. I have never been so close to an elephant before and we were surprised at how dry and leathery their skin is. I'm not sure quite how kind the camp is to the elephants, we didn't see any obvious mistreatment but we've probably lost all our ethical credentials now anyway. Finally we went bamboo rafting. Our guide was clearly related to Joe as his motto was "no wet no fun" and we flipped the raft several times and all fell in, no lifejackets or safety talks here but the water was shallow and we didn't stop laughing the whole way.

On our last day in Chiang Mai we went to cooking school. They took us to the market and explained all the weird and wonderful ingredients before showing us how to make six dishes. We would prepare each dish, then eat what we'd made before moving on to the next one. Chris and I chose different things for each course so in total we made twelve different things. By the end, we were both so full we thought we'd never need to eat again. Then it was off to the overnight train back to Bangkok, and tonight onwards to the beach ...