The Granary Resort Chiang Mai

... more walking and then we were done! YAY. Lunch stop and then off for some white water rafting. (although i would use the term white water rather loosley!) Was good fun though and Elliot loved it for his first time. We then went on a bamboo raft which was a little boring! Although i did have another snake come to greet me! thank goodness i didnt see this one but apparently a little water snake popped his head out of the water and was staring at me! One on the girls knoecked it out of ...

... of fried mealworms and cockroaches. They are a normal delicacy for the Akha people. I had really wanted to try one for the fun of it, but when I was about to, I just couldn't. I would like to know more about the Akha, and am hoping the group can pay a 2nd visit together as a group before leaving Chiang Mai, 

After everyone rested for a bit, we went to have dinner together in a very nice ...

... enjoyable though especially the elaborate rituals they perform before each fight.

The next day was probably the best. We went on an organised tour which included elephant riding, a 2 hour trek through the jungle up to a waterfall, white-water rafting and trip on a bamboo raft. On the elephant ride our guide let Sarah ride on the elephants neck (no-one else was allowed do this) which was really cool. The trek ...

... will) we will kabob ourselves on them.   There is also so much beauty, we hike through bamboo forests and teak forests and to the top of misty hills and through a place that looked just like the shire. We eat the lunch our guide prepared for us (noodles still warm wrapped in banana leaves) at the Karen hill tribe. There is nothing touristy about these places. These people happily live their lives up here in such simplicity and beauty. They build their houses out of bamboo and ...

... far from a foreign border and figure it out when we get there. We're Katie & Phill. We've got this far haven't we? On our third morning in Jomtien, after our second sleepless night thanks to the bar below, we decided to pack our bags and head North to Chiang Mai. If the worst came to the worst whilst we were there, we'd do a visa run to Laos. We've been told it's nice there anyway, so we would even consider spending a few days there before heading back to Thailand. The ...

... Its really shameful to watch. I wont expand on this subject any more but will say I think starting a website called "whatsmyhusbanddoinginchiangmai.com" would be very informative. Jessie was off to a cooking class and I went walking for a little bit. We are off jungle trekking tomorrow. The plan is to bamboo raft, white water raft, go to waterfalls and ride elephants. I found out that you can ride on the elephants neck, which is my goal. Oh yeah and the frog ladies....

... cried, and I hurried, but they must not have been hungry cos they paid us little attention. Then hyena, same ditch, and very interested in us. They always look kind of evil a bit to me. We hurried round the rest of the trail, and jumped on a safari truck to see the big predators as night closed in. They are much more fun at night, and active. We saw everything up close under the pancake moon, lions ...

... fairly early in the day, the middle set were the hardest although the last set, just outside Lampang, were a bit of a surprise and therefore unwelcome. Having lunched in Long we followed the road through the town thinking that it would reconnect with the road we were on when we came across the fork that took us left to Long and straight on to Lampang. Wrong, but we carried on regardless because the road was so lovely. We knew we were ...

We were planning to attending church with our American friends, Steve & Krista; however, we found out that they were going to be out of town today. So, we decided to sleep in a little this morning. We met together at 10 am for an hr. of worship, singing and sharing. Following our hour of worship we spent time discussing the course and the Management & Delegation piece of the course. We ate lunch on campus and headed out for an afternoon of shopping. We went to the Ban Tawai Sanpatong ...

... famous night market.

Activity-wise, we wanted to visit one of the local elephant sanctuaries, maybe do a bit of trekking, and we were open to anything else really.

We were torn between a one day tour with some trekking, visits to a hill tribe, elephant riding and bamboo rafting, or an ...