Chang Rai and the Burmese border

We spent a nice few days in Chiang Rai, where Seamus caught up with us with his mate Xander in tow. Diane, still being the ace tour guide she said she wouldn't have time to be, checked us in to a great travellers hang-out and guest-house - with pool!

The little girl Rosa's fishing with (above right) was keen to make friends and hung out with us a bit over several days. The day before we left she checked out with her Swedish mum and mum's boyfriend - two people none of us had ever seen before. There's hands-on parenting for you ...

Chang Rai's night market was a good place to haggle for beautiful things - but there was still more shopping to be done for Di's shop (yes, they do mail-order). Shay and Xander needed visa extensions, so we lit out for the border:

Elephants, and a temple up a hill

Well, we've been having a very good time, we've been up to Chang Mai (on a Thai train, which was really nice).

We went up to a temple which was at a top of a mountain; we went up by cable car (we did not want to walk), and up at the top there was a really nice view.

We have also been to see elephants painting. Yes real elephants, painting really nice pictures, and also playing football.

Then we have just hung around our hotel for a bit, but me and rosa kept going to the internet a lot which was cheap and next to the hotel.

Then we got a VIP bus to Chang Rai which is a bit smaller than Chang Mai but nice. We've been up to the Myanmar (burma) border so Seamus could get his visa, so while Seamus was doing that we were shopping for Di's shop which was really fun.

We're now getting ready to fly up to Bangkok tomorrow, where we are going to meet Jo, which is also goin to be fun

speak to ya soon - missin ya loads

- Melissa

First week in Thailand

We've now been in Thailand for a week and it's certainly a nice place to be. We spent four days in Bangkok (which we really liked, so different from what I expected). Much of the time we just lazed around the very nice hotel pool. It has been great to be with my sister and nephew.

We took an overnight train up to Chang Mai in the north and arrived here yesterday. The train was really comfortable and we have found a lovely cheap place to stay and we are definitely being tourists for a while. Since being here (one day), we have been up a mountain (in a car) to visit a beautiful Buddhist temple and today we went to an elephant camp to watch elephants doing all sorts, including painting pictures!!! - it's really true and they are good too. I now want to find out all about elephants to find out if they enjoy being trained and used by humans or not. Mark will put up pictures in due course.

Food is fab and most things are incredibly cheap. Last night we visited a huge market that was at the end of our road - lots of great stuff to buy cheap and we all had foot massages (our second since being here). We could easily overspend just because everything is so cheap, it seems a shame not to buy buy buy - trying to keep my materialistic urges in check! Wanted to buy an elephant painting, but Mark said he could do better himself - philistine!

By the way, Mark had his sim card stolen in Bangkok so he has bought a Thai sim - if you want to text or phone us the number is +6669822157, Rosa also has one, her number is +6669822154 (but remember the seven hour time difference please - 6pm in the UK is 1am here!). My number - for texting only - has reverted back to my English number +447808002005. Keep in touch and I hope you've all looked at our beautiful Kenya photos.

Lots of love

- Heather

Happy at the Atlanta

We enjoyed our twenty-four hours return to Mumbai:

The Hotel Atlanta's great - nice foyer, nice pool, nice food, nice "no monkey business" policy:

Bangkok is full of interesting sights, as you walk around ...

After all that walking, we had a great foot massage. We had a team of five young men to ease our aches - it was quite like being massaged by a UK boy band - except boy bands sing, and they usually try to include one straight one ...

- Mark

Safe in Thailand

Hi all

This is just to let you know that we're safe in Thailand, at the very comfortable Hotel Atlanta, where we slept a full twelve hours last night, after a pleasant 24 hours in Mumbai and a lot of flying about. More blogging will follow soon - and the pictures from Kenya will be up in the next few days, but I'll date them at the end of January (so if you can't see them, just click January in the menu on the right).

- Mark