You know where you are...

You're in the jungle baby! Today we took a full day trekking adventure about 1 1/2 hours outside Chiang Mai into the jungle. Our day started with a visit to a local orchid and butterfly farm. We then continued some 80 km to the elephant camp where Lauren and I rode one of the beasts for about an hour and then hiked down to the river and zip-lined across. From there we hiked a bit in to find a nice little waterfall which we were able to slide down. After we were wet already, we white water rafted down some brown river and then took a bamboo boat the rest of the way. Whew! We're beat. Going to grab some dinner and probably a Chang beer or two. See you in a few days. Love, us. BTW...our elephant farted really loud and everyone behind us thought it was Lauren.

The Best Thai Cookery School

On a whim, we decided to take an evening cooking class. Our lead chef/market guide/taxi driver was named Mr. Perm and he took us through all the ins and outs of the local market ("the best way to tell the difference between the red curry, the panang curry and the chiang mai curry is to read the sign"), before driving us all out to his home north of the city. We spent a good three hours cooking, drinking Chang beer, dodging fire and of course, eating. We all proclaimed it the best Thai meal we'd had so far.

Chiang Mai

We arrived in Chiang Mai on the 5th and Lauren is excited to be back in her old neighborhood. We immediately met John and Lisa at the Irish Pub and talked about the upcoming week where we plan to take a few day trips, rent some mopeds, visit temples, and eat plenty of good food. Chiang Mai is a backpacker's haven and should be a very nice end to our 4 week trek in which we took 9 flights already!

Kuala Lumpur

We spent 4 nights in KL and enjoyed roaming the city on the fairly complicated mass transit system. The highlight had to be the Petronas towers which stand as the 2nd tallest buildings in the world.