Chiang Mai/Laos/Songkran

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From Bangkok we got a sleeper train to Chiang Mai, which we were pretty excited about as we had been told that we would meet a lot of other travellers, however due to our bad luck we met none! There were a few European looking people but they consisted of fat old men - not exactly what we were hoping for. After 14 hours on the train (which was actually pretty comfortable but we didn't get much sleep) we arrived in Chiang Mai and went straight to a hostel recommended to us by Tanya and Dom and then pretty much passed out. The weather in Chiang Mai was absolutely boiling so we decided to have a chilled day and relax by the pool and try and get a tan (which we have still failed at).
Because we arrived on a Sunday they had a HUGE night market where we got dinner from stalls and resisted the urge to buy many things. We also got ourselves a cheeky foot and hand massage!
The next day we signed up for a Thai cookery course, where we were able to pick 5 dishes each. It was really interesting as at the start of the day they took us to the market to buy all the ingredients fresh and spoke us through what the ingredients were, what they were used in and the different ways they can be cooked. So between us we chose to cook: green thai curry (where we made the paste from scratch), pad thai noodles, stir fried chicken and cashew, spring rolls, sweet and sour prawn soup, seafood and coconut soup and deep fried bananas. The whole course was really interesting and the food was delicious but by the third meal we were all completed stuffed. Luckily they gave us an hour break to recover! We were also each given a recipe book so be prepared for a Thai masterchef evening! Some New Zealand girls were also on the course so we met up with them later for a night out at a Reggae bar.
The next day we treated ourselves to another pool day, however yet again still no tan 😞! Finally the day arrived for our elephant trek, where we signed up to a day tour which consisted of elephant trek, jungle trek, white water rafting, bamboo rafting and visiting the long neck/big ear tribe! The elephant trek was amazing however slightly sad as when the elephants weren't being used they were chained up to trees and when riding on them the chains are still wrapped around them. We rode them through forested area and across a river, it was very sweet as the whole journey we were accompanied by a baby elephant following its mother around. The jungle trek was quite disappointing as it was actually just walking up a dirt track and then up by a river, it was also boiling hot so quite exhausting. The white water rafting was amazing, the river had lots of big rapids and we were very close to falling over a few times! After doing the white water rafting we had a peaceful bamboo rafting experience floating down the river, it was ok but after the white water rafting we did find it a bit boring. At the end of the day we visited the long neck/big ear tribe, it was interesting learning about the history, apparently they wear the rings around their neck because when they used to walk through the jungle they would get attacked by tigers so the rings protect their neck. However it didn't feel like a proper tribe, more just for show as they all had stalls selling the same things and if we wanted a photo we had to buy something from them.

Next we got an 20 hour minivan ride to Laos, normally we would dread this but we had some pretty cool people in the van that we made friends with. When we finally reached Vang Vieng we all decided to find a hostel together where we ended up sharing a room with Ashlie (a girl who had been in our minivan). We headed straight down to the river to check out the tubing where we were greeted by hundreds of drunk travellers! Tamara managed to do a swing that swung over the river - it was ridiculously high and she decided once was enough! Overall the whole weekend was amazing, we met lots of people and it was one of the best parts of our trips so far.

Currently we are in Bangkok for the Songkran festival (which is their public holiday New Year water festival). Compared to the last time we were in Bangkok there are thousands more people here, but it has been a lot of fun. We each got big water guns and spent the whole day spraying every passby and when we eventually headed back to our hostel we were drenched! Our original plan was to stay here until the 16th however we have decided one day was quite enough for us so instead tomorrow we plan to head to Krabi which is south Thailand right next to the islands.

Sorry this has been such a long blog! The last couple weeks have been very manic, the next couple of weeks should be more chilled out so the blogs won't be massive essays!

Lots of love

Tamara and Emma
xxxxx

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