Wat! Buses, Snakes and Elephants (Sian)

Just thought I would add a blog to let eveyone know what we have been up to. Steve wrote a blog minute ago but it magically disapeared in to the computer system!

Bangkok was fun and uneventful, although we managed to replace Steve's lost phone and buy a couple of Tshirts and the general stuff you do in a city we have already visited twice! Still there must be something good about the place as we ended up staying for another 2 nights!

Anyhow, the 12 hour bus journey to Chang Mai went suprisingly fast, I wore the fetching eye mask Jess gave me from her flight in to Thailand which meant that I slept better than Steve and awoke feeling rather chirpy.

We were met at the bus stop by some friendly taxi drivers who took us to their friends guest house, thought it was a bit of a scam but hey the rooms only 2.85 a night and includes hot water.

Whilst out exploring the city we came across a friendly tuk tuk driver who offers us a tour of the city, saying no at first then realising we have nothing better to do we agree to go along with him for 2 quid. The tour takes us around a load of temples with Buddah in and we make the most of getting some good pictures. Steve also gets to set some birds free from a cage, an ancient Buddist thing. I do wonder who captures the birds in the first place though? The tuk tuk driver magically changed his vehicle and we ended up touring Chang Mai in a lovely air conditioned Mitshubishi car! Feeling templed out after an hour we head to a snake farm, just in time for a stupid show of a silly man playing with Cobra's and such like. The snake farm was rather pointless but did house some really scary snakes. Strange that most of the cages were unlocked though. Even stranger that some of the unlocked cages held some deadly snakes which were missing! After the snake farm our driver took us to a Monkey training school, which was rather a sick thing to see. Most of the monkeys had chains around their necks and during the 'show' they were coaxing them to walk on two feet instead of four, most bizare. I also managed to fall out with a couple of monkeys who I think must've taken a dislike to my t shirt, they kept on leaping at me, luckily they were behind bars. (kind of)

The highlight of our day was by far the elephant training camp. It was brilliant. We saw Elephants of all sizes and ages having a bath in the river, they were so cute! We also got to see the show, wich was much better than the other two we'd seen. The elephants came on in a parade, linking trunks and tails together. I thought I was watching a live version of Jungle Book or Dumbo. The Elephants also painted pictures, played football and showed their strength by lifting huge chunks of wood. We managed to get close enough to the elephants to sit on their legs, but as yet we still haven't riden one.

On the way back in to town we stopped off at a butterfly farm and orchid nursery, it was really pretty although the butterfly snaps didn't come out too great.

We had a relatively relaxed evening, drank a few glasses of wine and crashed out by 11.00.

Today we have shopped and shopped and shopped, we are going shopping again this evening in Chang Mai's famous Night Market, should be fun!