Back to the craziness once again!

Noisy streets full of choking traffic, street sellers filling up the pavements, roaming street dogs covered in dirt, strange smells... Sound's familiar doesn't it? It may even sound horrible but that's not how it appears to us at the moment; funnily enough, it even makes a nice change from the ordered routine of the last months.

Bangkok rightfully has a reputation as being a hot, sticky, sprawling city. In spite of this though, it's amazing to see how this place functions and we are constantly amazed and surprised by what we witness. Over the course of two weeks, we see our very first Buddhist temples, go to a Thai Boxing match, and get lost in the huge amount of malls and markets.

One day while walking around, we turned a corner to see a haze of smoking incense and fantic people laying flowers around a shrine known as the Erawan shrine (it's been linked to a few lottery wins so maybe there's more to it than meets the eye). On another occasion we see an elephant, being rode by a trainer, crossing through the traffic in the street. All just the ordinary daily goings on in this intriguing place!

Admittedly, we probably wouldn't have been able to last so long in this chaotic environment without our sanctuary. This, we were able to find in one of the best hostels/guesthouses we've encountered in the whole trip so far, Suk 11. With many verandas, terraces, roof gardens and lounges to chill out in, we felt totally at home here. The running cast of guests were an interesting set as well and we had good times getting to know some of them during our stay.

Once the itchy feet starting tickling us to move on again, we set our sights on Northern Thailand (silently promising ourselves to come back to Bangkok a see the things that we didn't get around to this time). Chiang Mai is known as the cultural capital, and with the huge array of bookstores and courses on offer seemed quite true when we arrived here.

Unfortunately, overdevelopment of the tourism industry may be evident here though, and turned us off a lot of the tours, elephant shows and trekking on offer. One thing we couldn't pass up on though was doing a Thai cookery course so that we could learn how to nail that famous Green Curry! We also were glad to have made the trip to see the most impressive Buddhist temple we've layed eyes on yet, perched on a hill high above the city at Doi Suthep.

While Chiang Mai is not nearly surrounded in as much mayhem as that in Bangkok, we are still feeling that it's quite a hectic place. At the moment we are thinking that it would be a good time to find a nice quiet spot to relax for awhile (the road sure takes it out of you after awhile). From what we've heard, this is easy to find in neighbouring Lao.

A few days more sould take us in this direction and that's about as concrete as our plans get right now!