Well...sos far Chiang Mai has been AWESOME! We arrived on the saturday two weeks ago. Our host family's son is a a student at Chaing Mai uni so they gave us a lift on their way to visiting him. It was sooooo nice to see all the other vols again after a whole month. We went out for a meal that night and had a really great catch-up. We didn't have to start the language course until monday so on the sunday we met back up with Chat and Tay (our host's) and they took us to Wat (temple) Doi Suthep. It is a temple on the top of a mountain just outside Chiangmai, the views were amazing and the temple is supposed to be over 700 years old. In the centre is a great big golden spire, at the top it is pure 24 carrot gold and it's supposed to hold some of the Buddha's hair and bone. My camera ran out of battery that morning so I didn't get any pics but Cammy is taking loads if you wanna check out his facebook page (Cameron Rathie).
The Thai learning course is really good but seriously hard as well. Our teacher (Joy) prefer's what she calls the 'forced natural approach', which meens she uses as little English as possible and we have to guess the meanings of all the words she tells us. Which I think is great but it does'nt half make you wanna cry sometimes!! Not too mention the fact that everything is written in phonetics instead of English. For example for the word 'jan' which means plate, in phonetics is caan. AHHH!!!! But the course is excellent, hust hard.
Chiang Mai itself is AMAZING! I didn't like Bangkok that much because its soo busy and loud. Not that Chiang Mai isn't those things either but Bangkok is very in your face while Chiang Mai has a charm about it that makes it sooooo much more welcoming, not to mention extremly fun! It has a huge Night Market full of literally everything ypu might ever want to buy at a market and more. Just finding it is the tricky part. I like to think I'm a pretty good haggler and must admit I quite enjoy it to. Chiang Mai is full of temples (Wat's) everywhere you go. All of which a stunningly beautifull. All of them are covered in sparkling blue, gold. red and silver stones, bells hang of the roofs and the statues of mythical creatures and buddha images line their walls. When I can i'll take some pictures of the Wat's in Tak so you can see.
It was Cammy's birthday last friday which was pretty immense. We went to a reggae rooftop bar first and ended the night a Monkey Club which plays mostly Thai pop music, but we had a pretty good time. That day as well me and Cammy wore our silk, custom made shirts to the language course. Both of us are extremely happy about those.
I no there's more that I want to write about but I honestly can't remember. I get brain waves when I think of somethiong really good to say but then forget it. I really should start writing stuff down... Anyway, so far I'm having a fantastic time!
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