We are family

I've got all my sisters with me. Well that is to say I did have. We also had our parents with us. This of course means that most, if not all, of my blog audience was here to witness the events of this blog and so I shall keep it short and sweet.

5 Nights in Bangkok
And you've got a whole lot of worldly oyster action on the go. It also gives you time to do a bit of online job hunting/applying which took up the couple of days we had there before meeting up with the family. We had one day with the folks in Bangkok for which we had left the sightseeing- boat trip, King's palace and Wat no.'s 11494-11528 (we've seen a fair few of them now)-that said Bangkok has it's fair share of sparkly and more interesting Wats.
Then it was on up to Phitsanaluk for a couple of nights and a day trip to the historic park of Sukhothai -the original capitol of the first Thai Kingdom. We hired bicycles to explore the area and had a thoroughly enjoyable day in doing so.

The life of Pai
From Phitsanaluk we headed North to the much talked about Chiang Mai. To be honest I was a little disappointed with Chiang Mai, I mean fair enough it's got a shed load of Wats to visit and a village nearby which seems fairly good at making pretty umbrellas (ellas, ellas), but apart from that its nothing to rave about.
Pai on the other hand is. Set in the mountains with clean crisp air, Pai has a lively and yet chilled ambiance and activities that could see you entertained for a month. S adly we had but 4 nights. Still we found a 2 day trek/white water rafting trip that was just the ticket. The first day we headed into the jungle to a camp on the river. After a quick dip in said river Myself, Em and Dad went to a nearby cave with Jacka (our guide). I was expecting to just walk around in a cave a bit admiring a few stalagmites and stalactites, so I was pretty pleased when it turned out to be more pot-hole stylee caving. Tho as I was squeezing through gaps I thought I might not be able to make it back through, I couldn't help but think about the people who drowned in Thai caves a few weeks ago. All adds to the excitement tho hey.
The second day was white water rafting. Although the rapids weren't as wild as they could have been it was a really fun day which included a spot of cliff jumping as well as some damn hot hot springs. At this point I should big up my Mum for going white water rafting as she was a tad scared and to be fair you don't see a whole lot of 54 year old women white water rafting.
The next day we hired motorbikes to explore the surrounding area, take in the views and get hugged by an elephant (see photos). Sadly that was all we had parsley sage rosemary and thyme for before going back to Chiang Mai to see M, D + L off for their week down in railey beach.

I went to Tha Ton and all I got was this lousy blog title
From Chiang Mai Em and I headed North to Chiang Dao. The plan had been to do some walking but the elements, they say no. So we looked in the big ol' caves a bit and did a load of reading. Today we went to Tha Ton, decided not to stay, turned back and came to Chiang Rai which is where I am typing this now. We're off to Laos tomorrow. Pip Pip, Cheerio.

xx Matt xx