11th February - last day in Chiang Mai

Packed and ready to go down south.

We have just spent two days up in Chiang Dao at a place called 'The Nest' - beautiful. It is run by an Englishman, Stuart and his Thai wife, Wicha. There are about 10 wooden huts and a restaurant surrounded by hills and mountains.

It is a bird watchers paradise, you could hardly move without tripping over huge telescopes on tripods.

We walked up to a Temple and noticed a group of Japanese with their telescopic cameras trained on something just round a corner, so we crept up only to find they were watching a poor monk trying to meditate about 20 yards in front of them, were they trying to see if he had anything interesting stuck between his teeth?!

We climbed the 500 odd steps up to the Chedi at the top. It was so peaceful, just some wind chimes tinkling and a fantastic view. There was nobody about but we both found ourselves walking round on tiptoes and talking in whispers.

A group of Thai school children finally made their way up as far as the temple area below us, making the sort of noise only excited school children can make. We walked down and saw a pile of shoes outside the temple, which was really a cave, but we couldn't hear a sound, they were so quiet.

There was an interesting nature walk too, which was more like a jungle safari up a steep mountain. At one point we had to go under a branch which caused much amusement as Sue tried not to get 'dirty' (I was far too busy taking a photograph to help), we blundered raucously round the corner and came across a 'twitcher' in full 'twitch' peering intently into some bushes, we whispered our apologies and went on our way. Later we talked to him and he told us he had been in that spot for two hours - oops.

Since we have been in Thailand we have been waiting to bump into someone we know, just one of those coincidences that seem to happen. Well we came close - we spent the evenings talking to a couple (Jayne and Jackie) from Sheringham, just up the coast from us who know our friends Debbie and Roy, who live in Cromer!

On the bus journey home, we were stopped at an army checkpoint where they checked documents. Most had ID cards, which made me think of the proposal in our country. I wasn't sure I wanted to carry around an ID card all the time, now I know I don't. It was quite intimidating and I know I would never remember to have it with me. One poor girl, with a baby, produced loads of pieces of paper and it took ages for them to satisfy themselves that these were in order. Sue told me that she had read that some of the Hill Tribe people are not citizens of Thailand even though they may have spent most of their lives in Thailand. They have to apply for visas just like we do, how awful not to belong anywhere. Apparently the 'Karen' (Long Neck) tribe fall into that category. So it's ok to exploit them for the tourist trade but they are not allowed any rights!