CHIANG MAI!

This weekend in Thailand was the Queen's birthday and Mother's day. It was also my mum and dad's birthday on the 10th, and all my family were getting together in England. To top it off, one of my closest friends is jetting off to Chicago for a year and had her leaving party on the 10th as well, so all in all was feeling very homesick this weekend!

HOWEVER, the Royal Family are a massive deal in Thailand (there are posters of the King and Queen everywhere and I even have a clock with them on in my bedroom!), meaning that the Queen's birthday is also a bank holiday. Yippee! We decided to embrace this extra day off school by making the loooong (18 hour) journey to Thailand's 2nd biggest city, Chiang Mai.

We finally reached our destination after taking the night bus, which I luckily slept the majority of the way on, and being the classy Brits we are, headed straight to Maccy Ds for a coffee and brownie stop..then made our way to our hostel. We found out we were staying a 5 minute walk from Chiang Mai's oldest temple, Wat Chiang Man, which we explored before grabbing some lunch.

After lunch, we met up with Charlotte and Sally and hired bikes to explore the city. We had a few hairy moments getting stuck in traffic around the market area, but we all arrived in one piece (apart from the chain coming off my bike at one point, and finding out that I couldn't use my debit card as someone was using my bank account).

Before coming to Chiang Mai, I had found out that one of my fellow Winchy students Issy was here for the weekend so it was great to meet up with her for a drink and share some funny stories about our adventures so far,

 turns out Issy has been doing a lot of meditating and 4 am starts! 

Sunday was definitely the highlight of the weekend for me, we had booked a day trip which picked us up from the hostel at 8.30 am, took us to the countryside where we did elephant trekking to the jungle, zip wired in a cage across the river and then white water rafted back to the beginning. Best £20 I have ever spent. 

The elephant riding was fun - quite scary getting on them as you just climbed from a platform over their neck , but once we were on it was very relaxing plodding through the jungle. Felt a bit sorry for Sian who was riding it Mowgli style, clinging on to its neck which looked a bit risky!

White water rafting was definitely the highlight of the weekend, it was so much fun and we all got absolutely soaked. I wish we were able to do the bamboo rafting as well , but a lot of the area has been flooded so it wasn't safe enough. Definitely was great thing to do though!

After heading back to the hostel to shower and wash the mud off us, we went to the night market where I picked up a couple of souveniers and practiced bartering skills , before heading out for a drink. By the end of the night it was only me and Meg up for carrying on, and on our way home we stumbled across a bar/club with loud music. After a few moments deciding whether to go in (bearing in mind we had just bought ice creams in 7/11) R.E.S.P.E.C.T came blasting out and we knew it was the place for us. We had some crazy dance moves and just had a lot of fun, even bumped into a few ETAs travelling for the weekend. Was a good night to top off a great day.

Monday we began the slow journey back to Sisaket, and after a few funny conversations on the bus (aaaaaaaaah memories ;)) we all managed to drift off and get a few hours sleep before school the next morning.

Chiang Mai was an awesome city, definitely my favourite part of Thailand yet, and would love to go back (if only it wasn't such a trek away!) to explore some more. Next time, jungle flight is definitely part of the plan!