Goodbye Chang Mai

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A very busy last few days. Woke up early and got driven, with multiple stops, to the jungle. We stopped at some orchid gardens, no doubt you parents will be pleased! However the next stop was much more interesting as it was the Snake Park which basically included multiple poisonous and non-poisonous snakes. Will ended up being tricked by one of the staff into a cage of Cobras...he told him that they were friendly petting snakes but as soon as he entered their necks popped out and he made a swift exit. Afterwards they were caught and proven that they still had venom in them! There was also a show before we left where the staff did some crazy things like putting snakes to sleep, kissing them and swimming with boa constrictors.

After this we eventually made it to the jungle, a bit under prepared to say the least. Will forgot his rain jacket and the monsoon weather beat down on him as he scaled the mountains in his white primark t-shirt and ripped swim shorts - Tom was ashamed. After sweating buckets and arriving in a local village, we had dinner etc but as soon as it turned dark thousands of hordes of flying insects appeared attracted to our lights. Thank god for mosquito nets!

We ventured down the mountain the next day, kindly woken up by multiple cockerels, and arrived at the elephants where we climbed onto Gary (Garietta?) the elephants back as he off roaded slowly along the side of the river. After this we had lunch and then began white water rafting, which was not too strenuous (Tom says it was similiar to Nepal) and afterwards ended up on bamboo rafts.

We fly to Phuket tomorrow, hope to see Will's friends Chris and Adam - just hope the old thai woman who is doing our washing for 30p a kilo finishes as we need to leave by 11am (5am UK time) and we have been pretty stinky.

Lots of love, Tom and Will

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