The Family Hotel Chiang Mai

... new eyes I wandered down it, now a journeyman of its ways. I ordered a meal from a stall and conversed in such fluent (but basic, granted) Thai that two Italians immediately rose from a nearby table and said to the woman serving "I'll have what this man just ordered". I smiled again, and continued my basic chat with the Thai woman, who gave me some extra food and her seat to use (she wanted to stand, she said!). I felt very comfortable on this crazy road today, and hung ...

... had to throw in the Lakers because I know the season has started without me. You get the idea though, the party goes non stop with 1,000s of hot air balloons lighting up the sky and an equal amount of krathong ...

... and I had all my luggage with me so my options were a little limited. Gotta say that the seating in the official "In transit" area is a lot more comfortable than outside where I was. I was very impressed however with the poor buggers working to take the luggage trolleys up and down – they worked like dogs.

It was of course wonderful to see Matt but I was surprised that it didn’t seem like 3 ½ months since I had last seen him. The last ...

... have easily come from a restaurant. Although it was remarkable how different our two curries and soups tasted. A slightly larger pinch of sugar or teaspoon of fish sauce and the balance of a dish completely changes.

The first two courses went down with ease, complimented by a fragrant lemongrass tea, but we were now completely stuffed and had 3 more courses to come. I think most of us worried, but the chef brought ...

... reading this, is the reason for that stench coming through from the Thai room in that Indian cookery course we did. Literally the WORST smell ever). We were allowed to tour the market just to get a taste for it then shuffled back into the tuktuk to be taken to the cooking HQ. The course was amazing, the organisers had clearly put a lot into their presentation and had jokes flying ...

... again and have strongly encouraged and passed on the word to everyone we’ve spoken to since. After an amazing but heart wrenching day, we were taken back to our hotel and treated ourselves to a fancy night out at a nearby upper class restaurant. We had delicious dinner for less than $8 each including appertisers and drinks then headed home for an early night in. I’d started reading Twilight and was keen to get absorbed back into my book ...

Sat 10 May: Hamish completed the Chiang Mai Challenge (Adventure Race: hours running, Kayaking, Mountain Biking and swimming in 27 degrees). Can barely walk the next day. www.chiangmaichallenge.com It all started on Thursday when we went on a mountain biking tour and the leader told us he was doing an adventure race on Saturday, and suggested that Hamish and Gav (his soon to be Welsh team mate) could do it. Well a silly spur of the moment decision was made and I was in. I then ...

... a few to feed the baby that we saw at the start. We made it in and out of the river without getting completely soaked. I was sure our elephant was going to protest more by spraying us! There are 2 young elephants here and were able to get very close to a 3 month old elephant. It is incredible how tiny they are! While all the adult elephants were around the baby they were grumbling and trumpeting. It was very cool. The sound that they make is like a guttural rumble ...

... was quite short, but had legs like tree trunks) started playing some obscure kareoke tracks including the Eagles and some country and western ones which the Yanks knew better than us. Then, out of the blue, comes Ronan Keating's 'Nothing at all' [You say it best etc]. How completely random! How would he have have learnt this!?

The Lahu men were also drinking Happy Water, which I tried. Wow. Moonshine at its most potent - some was thrown on the fire and a 5ft ...

Despite sleeping like a baby for 9 hours, I woke up feeling fairly drained. Having been to Chiang Mai far too many times in the past, I immediately made the decision that I wouldn't be doing much today. Having spent a month in male dominated China, the thought of spending the day getting an oestrogen fix was appealing, especially as Alison and Katie (the Canadian girls) seemed like good fun. That's how it panned out really. Spent the morning eating ...