Chiang Mai, Thailand: kick-boxing and cookery.

We caught an overnight sleeper train from Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai, setting off at 9pm and arriving at 10am. It proved to be a great way of passing a long journey, as the bumpy train soon lulled us both to sleep in our narrow but reasonably comfortable beds. I had a top bunk, with Jacqui in a bottom bunk about 5 metres down the carriage.

We're staying a superb guesthouse called Green Tulip, which was recommended to us ages ago by a Dutch girl we met in Koh Chang. I'd highly recommend it to anyone staying in Chiang Mai. It's nicely decked out with lime green rooms, the Thai food coming out the kitchen is delicious, and the Thai lady in charge is endlessly helpful with enquiries about Chiang Mai and onward travel.

We spent our first night haggling hard at the night market. A decent amount of the stuff on sale looks locally produced and of decent quality. Many of the other markets we've been to in Thailand offer China/Taiwanese-made tacky stuff. Our code for such produce has become 'padded hats', as a result of my mishearing Jacqui describing one such stall as a 'pile of tat'. Bangkok markets in touristy areas are particularly prone to being largely full of padded hats.

On our second day we visited the Tribal Museum to learn about hill tribes. There's bags of info about them on the internet so I won't repeat it here, but the museum was reasonably interesting if a little dated. I especially enjoyed the following comment written in a five-year-old's handwriting in the comments book, accompanied by a large smiley face that said infant had drawn: "I Lick This Plase. Plese Do Somthing to mAck this PLAse evin Nicer." Bless.

Yesterday we went to a Thai cooking school for the day. It's called Siam Rice, and is already rated the number one in Chiang Mai and number four in Thailand less than two years since it started. We had a brilliant day - starting with a market tour to buy ingredients - learning to cook Thai curries, soups, salads, stir fries and desserts, and we got given all the recipes so hopefully we can replicate the tasty fodder we created here. Assuming we can find some of the more unusual ingredients such as shrimp paste, fresh turmeric and holy basil. I doubt Asda does a roaring trade on these items. In the evening we went to watch Thai boxing, which was good fun, though a few more Thais in the audience would have made it feel more authentic. I assume they prefer to attend boxing venues away from the tourists. Thailand has 60,000 professional boxers, so there's no shortage of little stadiums dotted around.

Today, we've largely been wandering around the city's excellent temples, with the highlight being Wat Chedi Luang, where the main dome (chedi) was heavily damaged by an earthquake in the 16th century. It's been restored to a point these days, but is a most striking site in the flesh. Cracking elephants around one of the lower levels too. Tomorrow we're off to Pai, a hippyish village about three hours from here.