The White Temple

On our way to the slow boat to Laos, we stopped off at Wat Rung Khun temple, famous for being white. It was pretty impressive, and reminded me of something from Narnia. They had a pretty strict one way system, and if you so much as took two steps back the way you came from, a man with a megaphone proceeded to shout at you pretty aggressively. So much for a peaceful temple environment!

Parts of it were a little creepy e.g. hands and heads (below).

Even the traffic cones were sinister...

In and around Chiang Mai

We loved exploring Chiang Mai, and found it a much more manageable size than Bangkok! It was nice to be a bit further north where it was much cooler. First things first, we scouted out the best spot for tea.

Tea, tea, and more tea!

Lovely bookshop/cafe

We spent an afternoon lazing in a local park. At about 6pm, some guy starting rigging up a big speaker system in the trees. Then it started...Katie Perry. Cheryl Cole. The works. Out of nowhere people starting jogging around the park and it turned into a hub of exercise (we stayed lying on our rug.)

Warming up

Foot volleyball?!

Onwards to some temples for a spot of sight-seeing... 

Bells often line the temple fences

Elephants in Chiang Mai

We headed in to the countryside and spent a morning doing "Mahout training" in Chiang Mai. One word: amazing!!! 

I have to say we (well, mainly me!) were a bit dubious about the elephants at first. So huge, yet so very friendly. The first stage in our mahout training was to get changed into our elephant outfits (below).

Tickle tickle

Say "aaah"

They had some stairs which people used to mount the elephants. We duly noted these and moved on. During elephant school, the mahouts showed us, in a lot of detail, how they mount the elephants. We wondered why they were explaining this so thoroughly, as there were stairs, weren't there?! However, it became clear that this was how we were expected to get onto our elephants too. Below is how NOT to climb onto an elephant gracefully... My second shot was a lot better, but maybe not so entertaining to watch.

Trying to be brave and feed two at once.
My face pretty much sums up how I felt about this.

Getting a bit braver...

We went for a trek on our elephants. Ours was called Mefou and he was pretty chilled. He only sprayed us once with muddy water (and it became clear why they give you special clothes...) Our trek was for an hour, which, in my opinion, is plenty of time on an elephant. Not the most comfortable of rides! 

There was a baby elephant in the group. His Mum was doing a trek so the little Dumbo followed us around, constantly running under the legs of our elephants and generally causing all sorts of mischief.

The trek ended up in this river where we bathed Mefou using a natural shampoo (made out of wood??) One clean elephant, and a great day had by all.

Sleeper trains

Our next destination was Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. This involved: a taxi, a ferry, a bus, a taxi, 10 hours on a train to Bangkok, 16 hours on another train to Chiang Mai, then a taxi... 2 sleeper trains in a row seemed like a good idea at the time of booking it, and, actually wasn't as bad as it sounds. Ears plugs have transformed my life.

Tim marvelling at the fold-out ladder

We had about 6 hours to kill in Bangkok and I'm afraid to say we had a bit of a Western splurge. We started in Starbucks for a cuppa, onto Burger King for lunch, then McDonalds (for the free wifi, of course). After this, we were re-fuelled ready for another 3 weeks away from such culinary delights. 

Stay a little longer...

We didn't intend on staying long on Koh Samui, but 5 days soon turned in to 2 weeks. We found this little beach bungalow. It's very basic but has everything we need, including a cafe next door with a good bananagrams table and they serve tea in a pot...just the way it should be.

Can you spot Tim?

View from our bungalow

We seemed to have aged by about 50 years, and spend a lot of time sitting on our porch watching the world go by. We have two canine friends for company, Molly and Maisy. Tim has grown very fond of Maisy and has even been caught sharing his food with her (something he reluctantly does with me). Perhaps they have bonded over their matching haircuts?

Tim, the dog whisperer

We spent a day snorkelling at a nearby island, Koh Tan. The snorkelling itself was amazing, and we saw a whole range of fish, including angel fish, sargeant majors, sting rays, and many others which I don't know the names of. For someone who has a bit of an (irrational) fish phobia, I was quite proud of myself for coming eye-to-eye with so many. Other parts of the day were, well, pretty interesting. The trip we'd wanted to go on was fully booked, but the tour manager, keen to not miss out on some money, arranged for us to go with him and a potential investor from Singapore. He would take us with him on the proviso that we pretend we're journalists who needed to go out on that day (as he couldn't be seen to be taking riff-raff out on his private trip with the investor). Turns out this man (the manager) is a multi-millionaire who rubs shoulders with Richard Branson, and was keen to fill us in on his multi-national enterprises and his 7 wives. He also mentioned his nickname as the "butcher of Kashmir", as he holds the world record for the greatest number of amputations (253!) in 72 hours, which he achieved when the landslides occurred in northern India and he was an orthopaedic surgeon in the Australian army. Quite an impressive life story (starting with him robbing a bank in Tasmania at 14!)

Beautiful Koh Tan

Busy doing nothing

We passed on the 7:30am complimentary yoga class on the beach, and had a leisurely start to each day. This started with a 3 course breakfast; Tim was rather getting used to eating steak for breakfast. 

While, Tim was busy lounging in the pool watching the world go by, I was doing something a bit more active.

Keeping up with this kite surfer to take photos was exhausting...

The limit to our water sport activities

I left the gym to Tim, and made use of the spa. My 'relaxing' thai massage was excruciatingly painful, and it caught me by surprise by ending with her french plaiting my fringe (also very painful)...a look I could probably do without! 

Other activities we did included motorbiking around the island, kayaking, synchronised swimming (as inspired by the Olympics...but perhaps not as graceful) and perfecting the all important wet hair flick, as captured below. Not as straight forward as it seems.

Can't beat this view at dinner.

Late night fishermen

Island retreat

We headed over to Thailand, to the island of Koh Samui. Months ago, we saw an offer on trusty Groupon for this amazing hotel and managed to get a whopping 70% off. A bit of luxury in the midst of our backpacking...yes please.

While I was marvelling at every surface in the bathroom being covered in orchids and the towel in the shape of an elephant, Tim was oggling at the coffee machine and freshly ground coffee.

We had a little premature celebration of our 5-year anniversary.

Beautiful pool

View from our balcony