At around midday we finally arrived in Chiang Mai. We caught a tuk-tuk to the walled city and checked into the Rose Guest house, near the Tha Pae Gate. There was only one other person in our 6-dorm room, an obnoxious French man who had nothing good to say about any of the places he had been, and hated all the food in every country as it was nothing compared to France. I couldn't understand why he was still travelling, and why he hadn't just pissed off back to France already. 

We said we were off out to do some shopping, to which he replied "nowhere will be open, it's a Sunday". As it turns out, he was 100% wrong, on a Sunday night in Chiang Mai almost an entire quarter of the walled city becomes a dazzling night market, so large you can become completely lost in it. We stocked up on a few pieces of clothing we required, filled up on delicious street food, and headed in for an early(ish) night.

The next day we rose early to visit Doi Suthep, a temple in the mountains next to Chiang Mai. At the North gate we found a queue of Songthaews cramming as many people as they could fit in the back of their converted trucks to take them up the mountain for 50 Baht each. Once at the base of the Naga-lined staircase, we bought a bottle of water and began our climb. It wasn't that exhausting a climb, and the view from the top was spectacular. 

The temple however, was the same as most temples, very shiny and filled to the brim with Buddha statues. This is likely to be one of the last temples I will see in Asia, they are all very similar, and the most spectacular parts are the roofs. Once we got down the  stairs we caught another Songthaew further up the mountain to the H'mong tribal village. We had heard this village was heavily commercialised, but it was no where near what we expected. The town was basically a market, with sleazy guys showing you "diamonds" they had to sell, which looked like dried glue gun dots. It was kind of upsetting to see what must have once been a beautiful wee village destroyed by commercialisation. This said, at the back of the village there is a lovely flower garden with a small waterfall and a few traditional huts.

We got back to our hotel to find Frenchie still lingering in this city he hated so much, asking us what we were up to and if he could join.

Reluctantly we remained polite and that night he came out with us to watch some Muay Thai boxing. This was quite an exhilarating experience. The boxers punched and kicked with such ferocity you could almost feel the pain as the blows rippled through an opponents body. They were also extremely agile, one guy knocked another out with a knee to the chin. How he didn't split his ass I don't know. 

We saw four knockouts in total, three were spectacular, one however was disappointing. This slight and speedy Thai man was up against a large and slow Western guy, who fought like any other western boxer. The Thai guy was quick and skilled, he dodged all the punches and landed many blows. Alas, these blows were not enough for the western guy to even notice, and one he landed one good punch to the face, the Thai guy was on the floor, out cold. After this we went to look for Chiang Mai's night life, Frenchie insisted there was none and wandered off without saying bye - his loss. We found a bar called Spiceys which stays open past the curfew, but you have to drink out of bottles in brown paper bags and leave quietly through the back door. We partied away with a bunch of other travellers and woke up the next morning in our beds to find we had a room mate - an American girl. We all went out for breakfast (including Frenchie, who hopelessly tried to chat up the lass) and started drinking the day away. We lost Frenchie fairly early on, much to everyone's relief, when once again he wandered off without saying bye. In the afternoon we booked a day of river tubing for all three of us before meeting a group of lads - two Estonian, one Dutch, and one Finnish - that the American girl knew from Bangkok. We bought a bottle of Sangsom (Thai rum) and hit the streets.

The next day we just about managed to get ourselves up and to our pickup point for the river tubing. It was me, Dave, the American girl and two guys and a girl from Nottingham. Being British we all hit it off fairly quickly, and the American girl, who had met a lot of Brits on her travels, had no trouble blending in either. Once at the river they set us off all strapped together in our inflated tubes along with one tube which carried a cooler full of beers. The river was shallow so we were never in any danger of drowning (like you hear of in Vang Vieng) and we had a great day floating along, getting steadily drunk. On the night we booked a bus to Pai for the next morning to spend Christmas in the little hippy town in the Mountains with our new group of friends - the American and the lads we'd met the previous night.