Oi Hanoi

Am writing this having just arrived in Hanoi. We got here from Chiang Mai via a night in Bangkok airport. I would not recommend this, we essentially rested (not slept) on wooden benches with freezing air conditioning. Please excuse any spelling mistakes etc. as a result of that. Hanoi so far is impressive, but crazy! By far the hardest place to cross the road so far. Much noisier and quite a lot of pollution. However, we are about to go to Halong Bay followed by Sapa (hills), so probably can't complain too much! After that, Cat leaves to go to Nepal and I'll be in Vietnam on my own for a bit! Slightly daunted by this at the moment.

After elephanting, we did a cookery course in Chiang Mai. This was really good fun. We went to a market and learnt about different rices etc. then went to the farm and picked our own ingredients, most of which I can't remember the name of, but fortunately they gave us a book, then we cooked and ate an AWFUL lot. I now know how to cook green curry (and make my own curry paste), soup, pad thai, various stir fries, papaya salad, spring rolls and pumpkin or banana in coconut milk (both delicious!). I have to say, this whole trip I have been rather surprised by the amounts of chilli in Thai food, but with the fresh ingredients, it was delicious. I had been getting rather bored of similar dishes, but this reignited my enthusiasm! I now need to learn massaman curry... Was obviously a very coupley thing to have chosen to do judging by the people we were with, but they were quite fun and all round a good day.

Chiang Mai seemed to be a visit of day trips, because the following day we went hiking up a mountain and biking down again. Hiking up, whilst extremely sweaty, was quite good fun. We were faster than they predicted (always part of the fun), and it was nice walking through the jungle and then seeing bits of coffee growing, as well as lychees and macademia nuts. The region used to grow a lot of opium, but there have been a lot of efforts to replace this with coffee or other forms of income.

Biking down was a bit different. Anyone who has cycled/walked down Lynch Lane with me will know that downhill is not my strong point. Combine this with what was not beginner's mountain biking, the rain meant that we seemed to have to balance on tiny paths with lots of ditches, rocks and ridges everywhere. At first, we were spectacularly slow, but I reckon we did quite well by the end, and actually started enjoying it (eventually!). We did this in the predicted time... This was followed by food by a lake with lots of Thai swimmers in and wandering around markets in the evening.

Our final day in Chiang Mai was spent mostly museum chasing. Of the four that were recommended, two had closed (obviously the two that we had chosen first) and by the third one we arrived at we didn't mind that it was half closed, we went for it anyway. This meant we missed out on some tribal knowledge/arts/textiles but we learnt a bit about the early history of Northern Thailand just up to where it joined up with the South in the eighteenth century. We also found some more good temples. Unfortunately we were not skilled enough to spot the difference between Lannic (northern) architecture of temples and elsewhere, but still impressive and filled with monks waiting for their lunch!

After lots of stops for cold drinks and an amazing last Thai meal we made our way here, to Hanoi, via Bangkok. Both Cat and I have been surprised by how un-touristy Thailand has been compared to what we were led to expect. We were here in the low season, but have come across relatively few Westerners, which has been quite nice! I feel as though we've only really seen the three main tourist attractions (Bangkok, islands, Chiang Mai) but I have really enjoyed what I have seen and would come back for more. Much more laid back that I was expecting and a nice place to travel around.