babmoo rafting? yes please

ahh, thailand of the technology - look, i actually get to write more than once a week, amazing.

sooo... what's been happening? we headed north on a 17 hour train ride to chiang mai. sleeper trains are the way to travel. you wake up in your destination refreshed and ready for sightseeing. yea - we've been doing a lot of that. walking everywhere, my feet don't know what's hit them. i crash every night at about 10pm. not that that means much when askea drags me out of bed at 6 or 7. well... it's not that bad.
anyway, enough ranting.

chaing mai is a small city, nicely contained with most of the sights within an easy distance of eachother. so we spent the first day taking in 3 wats (temples) and i must say: if you've seen one wat, you've seen them all. they are beautiful, and interesting, but ultimately it's like visiting every parish church in ireland. anyway.
the other day in chaing mai was an adventure of small proportion. we booked a trip elephant riding, trekking and bamboo rafting. elephants are cute and lazy, trekking is gross and sweaty in this weather, but bamboo rafting - now that is something to write home about. it's just about the most fun i've had on our trip so far. i laughed the whole way down the river. excellent.
you sit onto this long narrow raft, held together by some rope and stuff and hold on as the river sweeps you downstream; around rocks, along bushes, into swells - brilliant stuff. we almost capsized at one point - the raft tilted dangerously over on its side, but the rafter dude straightened us and all was well again. we went just after a night's rainfall too - so the river was swollen, adding to the adventure value. brilliant. the only problem was that it didn't last long enough. ah well.

we're off to "the bridge over the river kwai" tomorrow, after going to see the grand palace. then onwards to the famed beaches of thailand. i can't really wait to get to the sea. i miss salty air. i actually bought a bikini too. me owning a bikini - there must be something wrong! anyway - it's a nice one, i feel somewhat comfortable in it.

right so.