Chiang Mai

I've just opened this new post and realised I can't quite remember where the last one finished, but I guess we'd probably arrived in Chiang Mai, been bundled into a truck at the train station and taken to a guesthouse with a lovely big swimming pool. My first impressions were good - the temperature seemed lower for starters which was a grest relief, and the pool was the icing on the cake.
The first day there we went for dinner with a nice Dutch couple who had been staying for a few weeks as she had broken her foot just one week into their trip. Having just talked to someone else (whilst swimming lengths inthe pool) who had had a nasty motorbike accident we began to realise just how lucky we've been so far! Back to the dinner though - Kev had a steak pie with mashed potato and gravy and I have to admit I was very jealous as I ate my papaya salad and sticky rice. I guess we're ready for some good English food...
The next day we decided to go to Tiger Kingdom, about 20km outside Chiang Mai. Now, Kev has been desperate to stroke a tiger ever since he learnt about Tiger Temple close to Bangkok, but after a newspaper article and some online comments I read I was very uneasy about this - reports of mistreatment and drugging of the tigers seemed all too likely to be true. However, most of what I could find about this place was much more favourable, and I decided I was happy to see what it was like. And really wanted to play with a baby tiger... Having now been there twice (once to go in with the tigers, once on the way back from trekking just to look at them and read more about the place) I feel confident that they are well treated and certainly not drugged. Whether they should be bred there as a tourist attraction in the first place is another matter, however I can be as self righteous about this as much as I like but the truth is I loved tickling a tigers tummy.
The next day we decided to start planning the rest of our trip, both in Chiang Mai and for the rest of our year abroad. This included the big move of booking flights back to England for February 16th. Now we really will have to make the savings last until then! Over the next few days we also booked flights to the Phillipines, Indonesia, Borneo and to Kuala Lumpar. God Bless Air Asia! We then found a tour operator to book us a tour into the jungle for the following 2 days, including trekking, elephant riding and bathing and whitewater/bamboo rafting.
The tour was great - we started with a trip to a butterfly and orchid farm, then to a market before being dropped off at the start point of our first day trekking. 4 hours through the jungle, across streams and up hills left me covered in bites (despite 4 applications of spray!), hot, sweaty but feeling good. On the way, our guide caught a tarantula. Later he barbequed it. Kev ate 3 legs.Our trek finished at the elephant camp where we would be spending the night in an open air bamboo hut overlooking the camp. After a dip in the lake (well, pond), we went to meet the elephants and took a 50 minute ride. Not the most comfortable experience ever! That night we sat around the camp fire (complete with tarantula) and chatted and sang some songs with a couple of Chang beers, before headin gup to the hut to sleep. Unfortunately the hut wasn't too waterproof as we discovered when it started to rain very heavily about an hour later...
The second day began with a bath with the elephants, where I got to experience sitting on an elephants head scrubbing it whilst it stood up and walked back to it's home with me still clinging on! Great fun, and very muddy. The morning's trekking took us to a waterfall, after clambering over many rocks and streams and makeshift ladders. The waterfall was beautiful, but very, very cold. I went under it. Kev didn't. Then it was time for whitewater rafting (really good fun) and bamboo rafting (less good fun as it kept sinking) before heading back to Chiang Mai. A really good couple of days.
We wanted to do more in Chiang Mai (for example a cooking course) but decided that, as we would be back in Thailand in 2 weeks time we would leave it until another time. We met up with James and Amy again for a few drinks and games of pool, spent some time in the markets and booked ourselves a bus to the Laos border. We arrived yesterday and crossed the river to take us from Thailand to Laos. Great border - it actually feels like entering a new country for once. Being used to slightly scary officials and borders, we were taken aback by the passport control man teaching us some Laos on our way through. Our first experience of the notoriously friendly Laos people.