Chiang Mai

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We hired scooters for the day after russ's b-day and went up into the mountains of Chiang Mai, absolutly beautiful, amazing views. It was so weird, we were up 1500 metres yet we could still hear car horns and roosters roosting from the village below. The air was so cool up there too, a nice relief from the heat.
We planned on going into the royal palace up there which had some impressive gardens, but we were too late, so we stoped for lunch in a rickety wooden shack and then carried on up until nearly the top to do a nature trail walk. We started to walk into the forest until we saw a sign saying beware of leeches, so quickly headed back!
On the way down we ran over a little snake accidently, we didn't even notice until we heard Jakki screaching like mad, it slithered away so I think it was ok, poor snake...poor Jakki!
We had one more day of just bumming around the pool, before we left for Prachuap khiri Khan at around 4pm. This was whilst Russ did his mountain biking. Me Jakki and Tony had breakfast together and then Jakki treated me to a thai massage, we both had to put on these big thai fisherman pants, spent about 5 minutes giggeling, trying to figure out how the hell to put them on. The ladie who did my massage was a tiny little thing ( thank god as they later climbed up our legs and back on their knees), Jakki's wasn't as small. They did a lovely relaxing foot massage, and then legs and then well and truley pummeled our backs and shoulders, Jakki enjoyed hers and I did too but felt slightly abused too!
The night train wasn't as great this time. It was going to bangkok first and then we planend to get another train to Prachuap khiri Khan, but we got the compartment next to the sliding doors which banged constantly and were, I think slightly malfunctioning as we witnessed about 15 people including little kids get slammed shut in the doors, and they didn't shut slowely like the english ones they slammed, whack bam, few hours of entertainment I guess.
The stroppy lady who worked in our carraige eventually understood us asking to have them left open, which gave us some peace and a nice whiff of the toilets too, we also had to convince the staff that everyone was wearing jackets and was shivering and that they really should turn down the aircon. No one slept appart from me and then when we got to Bangkok at 7am, all baggy eyed we found out there wasn't a train untill 3pm, so we got a taxi to the southbound bus station and luckly a bus was leaving in 10 minutes. This was one hell of a bus, it looked like it was about to break, as if some one could poke it and it would fall to peices. It did though, have lots of leg room and reclining chairs. The aircon didn't work though so it was a long 6 hour sweaty journey. We had a ten minute stop where me and Russ ran and found some KFC for us all to fill up on, we took a while and so gave the driver a big cold coca cola, which he looked at suspicoulsy, sniffed, sipped and grinned and on we went, along the highway.

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