Chiang Mai, Thailand

Chiang Mai was our first stop, apart from an obligatory night in Bangkok (yuk!), on our trip to Thailand! We spent 4 jam-packed days there and absolutely loved it. But boy, we definitely needed the beaches of Koh Tao afterwards.

First course- Pad Thai

On our first day we did a morning cooking course with Tomyumthai Cooking School . It cost us £15 each for 4 and a half hours and transfers from our hotel. We cooked four dishes in total, I think. A pad thai, a choice of curry, spring rolls and mango sticky rice.. and I'm now VERY hungry after typing that. My love of thai food has grown a lot since our trip. We collected the ingredients from a local market, had our own work stations to make the food and then stopped to devour each course. It was such a fun morning and they even gave us a recipe book to take away, what babes!

Here are some more pictures of us looking like complete professionals...

The next day was spent up in the hills of Chiang Mai at the home of a local man who inherited about 6 elephants. Oh my gosh, it was a beautiful day. What an experience to touch an elephant, let alone feed and bathe with them. 

The only issue I had with this day was..and I'm going to sound like a boring old woman when I say this...health and safety does not exist in Thailand! We travelled up to the house standing in the back of a pick up truck and then whilst following the elephants we were always a slip of a foot away from falling down the hill. So I did feel a bit emotionally exhausted at the end of the day when I realised I'd survived the experience hahaha. 

However, I still could not recommend doing something similar to anyone who is lucky enough to go to Chiang Mai. Plus, they gave us funky outfits to wear..bonus!

In our tribal outfits with the baby elephant.

 On our last full day we went rainforest zip-wiring...for the life of me I can't remember the name of the company despite getting a free t-shirt in our package deal. Unfortunately, we could not control the weather and, as soon as we reached the first zip-wire platform, the heavens opened. We all got covered in muddy rain water from the rainforest, but somehow I managed to get the worst of it. To the extent of all the Chinese people in our group, pointing and laughing at me continuously. It was a really fun experience, apart from crashing in to a thousand trees. The next day I also woke up to some b-e-a-utiful harness bruises on my thighs...mmm-hmmm.

Evenings in Chiang Mai were some of the best of our trip. There was a great range of western and asian restaurants at cheap prices. However, our favourite part was the night market which we went to every night to scout out everything we wanted to buy on our last night there. We did have to limit ourselves slightly due to the backpack situation...otherwise I would now have a room full of lanterns and little buddhas. What a shame eh?!

The night market also led us to discover the most wonderful jazz bar, Boy Blues Bar, where we would retire to after we'd finished shopping. It was open-mike, but the people who performed were generally  really good. They also started to recognise us on the third night, gave us 'VIP' seats and knew our order...Spy Wine. Which was scrummmmy and is basically summer fruit cider because wine doesn't appear to exist in South-East Asia.

We also stayed at a really great hostel called Luna Guesthouse for a day, who organised all our trips and gave us a great room. But we could only get it for a day and ended up at a hostel called MD House for the rest of the time, which was basically a prison cell of a room with no natural light, sad times. So go to Luna Guesthouse if you ever get the chance to go to Chiang Mai.

Hope you all enjoy hearing about my Asian adventures.

XOXO