Since our last update, we made it into Thailand! We bussed from Vientiane to Udon Thani in Thailand and caught a flight up to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. We flew with Nok Air http://www.nokair.com and we would highly recommend it. The staff were lovely, they were a fraction of the price of any other airline, the seats were comfy and they gave us some food during our less than 1 hour flight.
We arrived in Chiang Mai and quickly found a decently priced place to stay. We checked out the night life here, they have a huge Night bazzar every night, which was worth checking out. They have a Sunday market in the main back packer area which has cheap and very good massages.
We went to an elephant conservation which was started by a lady who decided to create a place for elephants to be treated properly and not abused for the tourist market. They offer places to volunteer there for 1-5 days where you can do various jobs around the elephant park which currently has 39 elephants.

We also did a day of zip lining here which was pretty cool. There are several set up around the Chiang Mai area as it is quite a big attraction. It would be an excellent place for kids. We enjoyed it, but I think it was not as extreme as we thought it would be.
We hired some motorbikes and did a 3 day trip around the north, it was a lot quicker than we have been on our old Honda wins, which made things a bit more exciting. We headed on a bus to Pai after we returned back to Chiang Mai.
Pai is a hippy town north of Chiang Mai where people go to relax in the sun. There aren’t too many attractions bringing people there other than the chilled out vibe. We stayed at a hostel called the “Circus School” where you quite literally learned how to juggle, slack line, dance with fire and plate spin in your spare time. It was a very good place to learn some skills, the accommodation was all bamboo huts which was back to basics for us, but I would recommend it as a good place to stay.

We are back in Chiang Mai now. Matt and Ian are off to Chiang Rai tomorrow, and I am heading off to Burma for a visa run! I am quite excited to spend a few hours in Burma. I look forward to travel it properly some time soon.
We will be headed to do some volunteer work at the Bamboo school in the next week. I have been looking forward to returning there since I left in 2009. I’m sure we will be kept very occupied while spending time there.