We are in our second day in Chiang mai and it is by far our favourite place yet. It has a good night lifeand we have been on an amazing trek today! There is plenty to do here and yet it is not as frantic as bangkok...

We went on the day trek in the jungle today, riding the elephants first and then visiting hill tribes, taking a bamboo raft down the river and then to a waterfall in the hills. The elephant riding was good but seemed a little unnatural to me and I don't think that I would do it again. It seemed very cruel and demoralising for such amazing animals. I suppose its a bit like seeing animals in the circus, you know that they should be in the wild and something sems a bit wrong. Especially as the guys who 'look after' them were either hitting them with sticks or tapping them on the head with what looked like a pick, it just had a handle with a bit metal spike on it. And they were chained up hen we saw them beforehand aswell. The sad thing is there is nothing anyone can do except not pay to ride them!!! And I can't see that happening.
Next the hill tribes, who we didn't learn to much about really, they were trying to sell us things but were very friendly. The bamboo rafting was great, it was very peaceful and relaxing (although I got bitten to hell by the insects) and the waterfall was amazing, wasn't quite brave enough to don the bikini and jump in though!
We had a great group aswell, the were good fun and in general we have met some cool people so far just in the bars and around the place.
We have two free days after this before our trip to Chiang Rai and the Golden Triangle so we are going to do a Thai cooking course and then maybe an activity day, like white water rafting or something..we'll see!!