Bangkok & Chiang Mai

We managed to stick it out for four days in a hot, sticky, smelly Bangkok which I'm quite proud of. The hotel we were staying at was nice with good aircon which made the experience a bit better. Most days were spent walking around markets and malls with Diesel rip-offs and fried chicken everywhere. We caught up with Anna's friend, Kristal, and her travel buddy, Rachel. The four of us decided to celebrate Anna's B'day at an open-air bar on the 64th floor of the State Tower, however only being armed with t-shit, jandals and jeans we were politely told (as soon as we got out of the lift) that we were not suitably attired (I suspect the cheeky doorman on ground floor tipped off the maitr'd (sp?)). After trying another open-air bar, and this time seeing a picture of jandals with a line through them, we settled for a up-market thai restaurant with only one floor. In Bangkok we tried to piece together our itinerary for Asia and decided that planning a week in advance was enough so we booked a flight for Sunday to Chiang Mai (an hour and half north of Bangkok by air) for four days. Chiang Mai is reputably the "cultural capital" of Thailand and so far it has lived up to our expectations. Today spent the day in a Thai cooking class. They took us shopping at the food markets for all our ingredients and our guide gave us a lesson on all of the different foods which was really interesting. We cooked Panang curry, Tom Yum soup, beef and oyster sauce, spring rolls and chicken in panda leaves (our first chicken as we are trying to avoid it) and also banana in coconut milk. And then, yum, we got to eat it all. We are going on a hill trek to the Karen Village (one of the tribes in the hills surrounding Chiang Mai) recommended to us by Anna's friend Lairdy. We spend the day walking up to the village, stay the night (with no electricity....how adventurous are we?!) and then head back down on Wednesday by elephant and on the river on bamboo rafts.