Chiang Mai..Yes, I'm still here!

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Hi People

Tonight is our last night in Chiang Mai, so thought I'd take the opportunity to update those of you who are interested in what Lou, Fiona and myself have been up to. Since my last update, we visited a cultural night. It was nice, but a little bit lame, in that half the hill tribe preformee's really didn't want to be there, so you felt pretty stink for them.

We have spent a day at cooking school. Wow-ee..what a day. We finally figured out what all these strange fruit we had been looking at were (oh so yum!), we spent the entire day cooking and eating. The food was fantastic. Pad Thai, Tom Yum soup, Tofu (or chicken) salad, green curry, water chestnut desert....can't rave about it enough. The school was really small and intimate, with really funny tutors. They took some pictures which they say will be on the website in a few days - http://www.baanthaicookery.com/ Then the photo album area.

Last night we visited the night markets... I wish I was here just for a shopping trip. The prospect of carrying all the beautiful things you could buy in your backpack for 3 months kept the shopping to a minimum, but it still wasn't hard to part with all the cash in your wallet.

Today we did the tourist trip. An organised thing where we watched elephants work (after 30 seconds of moving logs they went onto the important work like dancing, and balancing on two feet, and painting pictures with their trunks). After the elephant show we got to ride them through the jungle. Got to see first hand some slash and burn agriculture. We had local tribes people trying to sell us food for the elephants and handicraft from elephant hight stalls. This was followed by bamboo rafting, which was great for the 1st 5 minutes, until we reached the gauntlent of more hawkers in the river trying to sell us stuff. It certainly pulled on the guilt strings, as these poor kids tried selling stuff in water over some of their heads whilst their parents lazed around in the shade on the river banks. The next part of our trip was Ox Cart riding, which would have been good if it hadn't been for the next batch of kids trying to sell us stuff. On the way home we visited an orchid farm which was really beautiful...but overall, I think we felt a bit stink for the elephants, and were so hounded by people trying to sell stuff that we might stay away from the tourist things in the future.

Tommorow morning we are catching the 1st bus up to Chiang Rai...ouch, early mornings.

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