Climbing Ton Sai and Cycling from Chiang Mai

hello!

So... from Bangkok we went straight to Ton Sai, for a bit of relaxation and of course climbing! After a pretty long journey on bus and boat we were happy to get to a beach not only beautiful but surrounded by climbing heaven! thinking we would only stay for a week, we eventually ended up there for 2(would have been much longer if Nils got his way!). We did a lot of climbing, bouldering,deep water soloing and kayaking. maybe not the most relaxing beach holiday! think we will re visit this beautiful part of Thailand as there is definatley much more rock un climbed or found.

After, much discussion we decided not to stay down south, we could have easily blown our budget on more climbing, snorkling,diving ... but decided we wanted to get on our bikes before our visa's ran out, so back to bangkok it was. Thankfully the bikes were still neatly kept in the storage room as we left then, and we head off that day to the train station(which is not as easy as it sounds with the Bangkok madness of traffic). This then lead to a 15hr journey in 3rd class to Ciang Mai, however uncomfortable it was a great way to see the countryside around you and experience proper thai travel.

Chiang Mai is a really lovely city, easy to get around by bike, lots of temples and markets to visit, very arty and lots of culture, very different to the south. We visited the zoo and saw many animals that we learnt will be in the wild in laos, so we are on the look out now for approaching tigers, pumas, elephants,bears,snakes and crocodiles!! Still a city is a city...lots of traffic and people and we quickly got on the bikes and started to cycle up(up,up,up...) to the countryside. Wow this just got better and better, we cycled through remote farming villages, hill tribes,lush jungle, steep rice fields on the hills and for a week we were the only white people we saw. The heat of the day time is amazing and venturing up nearly 2000meters in the increasingly hot weather was to say the least challenging! but the people egged us on chearing and waving as we passed, sweating like pigs on a barbie and trying to conserve water, we made it! i could not describe how lush and beautiful the scenery is , its just breath taking, and views like i have never seen before. we came very close to the burmese border, and finally hit the mekong where we looked over and could see laos only a few meters away across the river which flows all the way from Tibet. Something we both found amazing and hard to comprehend. Once we reached the boarder town we travelled down this river for 2 days, to Luang Probang(laos). Again this journey is pretty slow and hard on the bum, but well worth it. And here we are, in laos, chilling in the world heritage city for a bit and then back on the bikes to head south. We hope you like the pictures( these will be added soon when we find an internet cafe that lets you upload). Life is good,and we are getting increasingly brown and getting into the asian life style. Love to you all the Pumpkins! x x x