Chiang Mai

Next stop - a cheeky flight to Chiang Mai, in view of our impending week of doing nothing in Koh Phagnan we decided to cram as much as possible into the week leading up to it.

We were only there for two days but that was enough time for me and Amy to become professional Thai style chefs (we got a certificate and everything!)! The day of the cooking course was wonderful…our teacher was called Nokky and she was the biggest, brightest, loudest character you could ever imagine! We learnt to cook spring rolls, Thai green curry, chicken with cashew nuts (which we have since successfully recreated!), noodle soup and the sickliest sweet dessert ever – then we ate it all! Suffice to say by the end of the day we were the size of a tuk tuk :)

Chiang Mai was a lot bigger than we both imagined and thus slightly more expensive (and I mean expensive in Thailand terms) we booked into a (recommended) hotel for ten pounds a night…fifth floor?! Can’t be bad…oh yes it can, when there is no lift to get you to that fifth floor! We lasted one night in this place then decided to hot-foot it to the hostel down the way where we knew Alex (from Halong Bay) was staying. A slight downgrade but there was a pleasingly distinct lack of stairs to climb to get to the room!

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to do a trek while we were there, so in the absence of walking for days on end to meet some tribal folk we visited the tribal museum and looked at the photos instead. We also visited the infamous night market which you are told is huge but don’t quite believe until you see it! We managed to find the massage stall which turned out to be a most amusing experience, between the woman cracking my toes and barely touching Amy's feet to make her jump, the chubby cheek and head massage - we looked like dumb and dumber just having arrived in Aspen! The comedy duo looking their best :)