The bus to Chang Mai wasn't the greatest. The leather sleeper seats were knackered and mine just squeaked for 12 hours straight, this meant no sleeping happened. We arrived in Chang Mai just outside of the city and managed to get a free lift in to the center after promising a Thai guy we would stay in his hostel. It was a dive so we decided to go and check out Dee Jai's which was meant to have a really good backpacker vibe.
We settled in here nicely and spent the day exploring the city and markets with a few pub stops along the way. The city is surrounded by mountains and a beautiful temple which you can see from our room is high up in the clouds, for the first time in Thailand i feel like we have found a bit of culture.
We were a bit tipsy by the afternoon but had successfully booked ourselves in to a cookery class the following day on an organic farm, I was overly excited about this as was Olly. We miss cooking so much.
In the morning we met at a market and were shown all the various types of rice, herbs spices etc, we didn't buy any here as we were going to use all the ingredients fresh from the organic garden which was a 40minute drive into the countryside.
When we got there our teacher called 'Gay' showed us around the garden it was so well maintained and full of all sorts of goodies. I decided there and then I want to have a little patch of land with fresh veg and fruit growing in it when I'm older :) She had 3 different types of basil, sweet, hot and lemon - they tasted AMMMAZING.
Eating the yummy lemon Basil... With my authentic cone hat :)
Believe it or not this fruit is actually related to the cucumber, although I forget the name ... oops!
We spent the day cooking all sorts from appetizers to curry's which we made fresh pastes for. It was really good to have a knife back in our hands and to learn how to cook authentic Thai food (It's impossible in the UK due to certain ingredients which you just can't get) Olly made his curry so hot Gay couldn't even handle it, personally i thought it was spot on.
This is me making the filling for spring rolls!!
We wen't out in the evening with a group of people we'd met in the hostel, but the following day we had the famous 'Flight of the gibbon'. 15 Ziplines carry you through the jungle, comprising of the longest one in the world at about 850m, 2 abseiling drops and a no-handed zipline. This was so scary.. they basically hook you onto the line from behind and you have to jump off the edge of the platform, you can't hold on and you can't see how your attached. I have a good video of me freaking out before hand, sweaty palms and all!!!
The infamous Gibbon himself!!
Our group from the day!
Below is the platform that you abseil from, I'd never abseiled before it was really good fun :)
Olly spotted this on the way back, it made us laugh...
The first thing we did was elephant trekking, I was really excited about this but it turned out to be a bit upsetting as they bash the elephants with sticks and you ride them sat on a cage, I felt sad about the mistreatment of the elephants but we had a big bag of sugar cane and we kept feeding them, which I think made them a little happier!!
We found this little cheeky monkey, he loved my necklace and squealed when i tried to take it off him.
QUICK, take the sugar cane!!!!!
We trekked for 3 hours into the jungle, our tour guide made us all walking sticks with his machette, we saw some strange bugs, beautiful plants and mind blowing views across the mountains and jungle. I have never sweated so much in my life, I didn't know it was possible ....
We visited a bat cave too, not much to write home about.. it smelt funky..?
This tree is so beautiful, they call it the tree of love, all its leaves are heart shaped and all turn pink eventually. Awwwww
HOT ASS CHILLIS!!!
Found this furry fella too...
When we finally arrived at our cabins for the night we had a beautiful view and the sunset was lush. They cooked us some amazing food and we played games all night before going to bed where we found Mr toad hiding under our mattress.
The next day we woke up early and had breakfast, we hiked for another 2 hours to a waterfall where there was a 10m jump into a pool below, it was a bit scary as you had to clear the rocks below. It took me 20mintes to pluck up the courage and then i went for it. I paved the way for some of the other girls in the group to have a go, there was also a slide carved naturally out of the rock from the water, you sit on your bum and down you go, weeeeeeee. I don't really have any good photo's of this but some brilliant videos.
After this we trekked for another hour, it was much easier than the day before! We got to our hut in the woods, pigs were sleeping underneath and chicken and dogs ran around everywhere. We had a nice selection of warm beers, so we made a camp fire and sat up chatting and playing games. We drank all the beer I think our tour guide was annoyed he didn't have more. I don't think he is used to hiking with such alchies haha.
The following day we hiked for another hour, it absolutely pissed it down and we had to hide under a tree for a while, although the path started to turn into a river so we decided to move on before we were washed away!!
This is a view of the waterfall we'd been jumping in the day before from above!
A friendly Gecko K had just grabbed out of a tree, as you do!
In the afternoon we went bamboo rafting down the river, it was a really relaxing way to finish off the 3 days trekking. Brilliant!
Chang Mai was brilliant, onto the tiny hippy town further north of Thailand that is Pai.
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