Day 2 - Chiang Mai

---

16/03/2008 5:51pm (local time)

where do we start? for starters everything is fine and we got here ok. it was a long journey but worth it in the end. we arrived in Chiang Mai yesterday and we were collected at the airport by the son of the owner of the place we are staying at. a short journey to the outskirts of the city and we arrived to our accommodation. Fern Paradise is the name of the place and it is unreal. our room/tree hut is surrounded by all sorts of tree's and wildlife( when we fell asleep for a while we were both awoken and scared s**tl**s by some sort of large bird squalling ). we then got up and headed into the city but not before the resort owner rang us a taxi and gave us a history lesson on thai culture.

he sent us to a cool restaurant by the river (where Hillary Clinton once ate) called Gallery. for a little over 10 euro we had 2 courses and 2 drinks! I (Darren) had deep fried pumpkin which was the nicest thing I've tried for a while. after that we headed into the night market where you can find any cheap knock off stuff you want. everywhere we went all we heard was "cheap cheap belly good belly good".

breakfast was a 9 am this morning and we had it down by the river which is a really nice. they then arranged a taxi for us and he took us to a temple (doi suthep) in the mountains. its a pretty cool place and respect must be shown at all times, no shoes in the temple, shoulders must be covered and no public showing of affection!
while in the temple we decided to burn some incense and of course i started to burn the wrong end of the sticks and didn't find out till a local showed me how( i wouldn't mind but all the sticks were clearly burnt at the other end). then we headed back to our taxi driver who waited for us and he had bought us lunch for our trip to the zoo. it was sticky rice and mango with coconut milk, quite nice. the zoo was pretty cool. they have a panda on loan from china and we caught them at feeding time. i also got to feed a leopard, all be it through a fence and with a big stick but it was fun. saw a few more temples after that and now were heading to the Sunday night market which all the locals come out for so its meant to be good. Michelle got 2 cool tops for less than 5 euro which even penneys couldn't beat!

tomorrow we head to the jungle for some elephant trekking and we get to meet a local hill tribe. stay tuned!

thats it for now. we'll keep ye posted!!!

p.s. the weather is great. its not too hot and it gets cool in the evening. and the aul migdes have kept clear so far! to everyone at home i have loads of photos already and hours on the camcorder! be warned!

Michelle here just a quick hi to everyone. i havent killed darren just yet but we will see how the next two weeks go. more like the other way round.

oh ya the place is full of old white men with thai wives(if thats what you call them!)

---