Living like a Thai in Chiang Mai...

Chiang Mai, Thailand

After 14 hrs of travel and an encounter with a retired Canadian Journalist who had specialised in the war in Burma we finally had made our way to Chiang Mai. The city that is the most culturally significant in northern Thailand. The most popular part of the City is based within the walls of the old Moat. After an early morning walk about we stumbled upon SK House Guesthouse which we then checked into for our 4 day stay. http://sk1.theskhouse.com/ SK House was great, with an awesome pool, only downside you had to pay for WiFi which is a little greedy on their part!

That night we decided to explore around the various areas. At this stage of our trip we have no quips with eating the local street food, it's usually a third cheaper than restaurant prices, decent sized portions and very tasty!

Later we made our way to the local Muay Thai Boxing that is on every Tuesday and Friday night close to the Night Bizaare. They are 6 fights on a night, each fight contains 5 rounds lasting 3 minutes. This was exciting high energy fighting with two knockouts.

They was also one international fight of the night were a Thai Boxer took an Irish Boxer. Happy to report it was a win for the Irish...

We were up early the next morning to set out on our 'One Day Trek' which included a trip to a butterfly sanctuary, 'Karen Village', a 2 hr trek to a waterfall through the jungle, lunch in a local village, elephant rides, white water rafting and a trip down the river on a traditional bamboo boat.

We then proceeded onto Karen Village which is the home of 'Long Neck Karen'. Women in this village wear various gold neck extensions which gradually over time extend the length of their necks...

The two long neck Karens!

The trek begins...

Nelly extending the trunk of friendship to Karen...

We decided to sit out of the Elephant Rides. Since we have started our travels we have seen some tragic cases of animals (elephants inc) being badly mistreated so we felt better just feeding and interacting with them. It was then time to white water raft and lazily bamboo down the river and reflect on what had been a jammed pack day of fun!

That night we hit China town and the night bizarre to sample a few new dishes and pick up a few choice buys from the various stalls.

The next morning we had a well deserved lie in before going on our Thai Cooking course with Bann Thai Cookery School.http://www.cookinthai.com/ This was something i was REALLY looking forward to the whole trip!

We started off with going to the local market and buying the produce that we would need for our four Thai dishes we had chosen to cook.

Stir fried Chicken, veg and Cashews...

Chicken & Coconut Soup and Veg Spring Rolls

My Panang Curry

That night to walk off the four Thai dishes we had eaten each we hit the the infamous Sunday night Chiang Mai Market with our new mates Dana and James. This Market was fabulous, it had absolutely everything you could ever want and it went on for miles!

Karen was up to her usual trying to steal cute puppies!

A little locust/silk worm snack along the way!

Jame's quality buy!

On our last day we chilled by the pool and had a little swim too in the morning...

We then hired bikes to cycle round the old town and the various Temples that surround the city.

We finished off our cycle by stumbling across an Irish Pub O'Malley's that we had a great Irish Fry in and a few games of pool.

This set us up for the night ahead and our sleeper train to Bangkok. Where we would then transfer to make our way to the Thai Islands...

Next stop Kho Tao...