Me and the girls were so excited about finally reaching Thailand, the one place we were told by everyone we'd met was like true paradise. We arrived in Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand after a scenic but dull 2 day slowboat and it was so so amazing, there was just too much to do. The first day me and the boys did a thai cooking course, and no joke, I was incredible. I finished chopping and grounding my ingredients before everyone else and the teacher said that my curry paste was the best. I can now make THE BEST thai chicken coconut soup ever [if someone buys me the coconut milk, lemongrass, galangal, chicken, kaffir lime leaves, fish sauce, black chili paste, and coriander leaves..] It was such a cool course starting off at a local marketplace to learn about traditional Thai ingredients, then being driven to a farm and walking around their garden sniffing at loads of strange smelling leaves, and spending the whole day learning how to make red curry, chicken coconut milk soup, chicken and cashew nut stir fry, pad thai, and desert - best part: eating everything.

Then the next day I booked onto a jungle trek by myself because the girls had done one when we did our cooking course and the boys were feeling lazy and were leaving that night anyway, and that was INCREDIBLE! I was with such a funny french couple and then four scottish guys who our Thai guide kept calling "scottie rambows". The thing that made the day were all the Thai guides who'd put lizards on their legs and shout "Eh! Crocodile! Crocodile!" and who'd say things like "And for lunch, we let you try special delicacy: elephant eggs!" We rode on elephants [I got the pregnant, hormonal elephant and I also got the phwoarest guide riding with me who was from Burma and spent the whole time listening to his ipod and singing along in thai and shouting "Waterfall waterfall!" whenever the elephants weed], then we did a jungle trek to a waterfall and swam a bit [except I didn't actually swim because I got my exercise spots/heat rash after the trek and was too embarrassed to expose my rashy body to the world under a beautiful waterfall, much to the delight and constant piss-take of the "rambows"], then trekked back in the rain slipping and sliding on wet rocks with the guide holding my hand down the dangerous bits whilst asking if I had a boyfriend.. and then catching a massive toad and making it croak next to our ears unexpectedly and freaking us out, then we did white water rafting and then rode down the river in a bamboo raft - and the guide put me with the 4 "rambos" for the last bit so they could look after me but all they did was splash water at me and try and capsize our bamboo raft..

The final day I moved in with the girls at Julie's hostel which was such a travellery commune, low tables with cushions on straw mats layout, dark wood bedrooms with just mattresses on the floor etc. It was just me and the girls eating lots for the whole day, shopping in Chiang Mai market with amazing fabrics and three quarter length fishermans trousers and cool silver jewellery etc, and I got my very first Thai massage [one of many many to come] and it was half painful but half exactly what I needed from the trek, and again a lot of weird bending and sorting yourself out in positions to reach muscles you didn't even know you had or needed to be massaged.