Thailand - Chiang Mai [again] (20-22 June)

Extremely comfortable night bus from Laos border to Chiang Mai to meet Heather an Chris and watch England give another see-saw performance in the World Cup. At the bus station they had monkeys as pets; on the bus we had more legroom than on an aeroplane and got old fogie blankets to keep of the air conditioning chill. Best of all, we got free water, yoghurts and cakes.

By some weird twist of fate we ended up staying at not only the same guest house as Heather and Chris did a week ago, but also the same room. After an incident with a bin that we won't speak about, Heather and Chris were unwelcome there and were staying at a much nicer place instead.

Watched the footie at 2am behind possibly the only group of Swedish fans in Chiang Mai. We were ready to sing Abba's 'The Winner Takes It All' to them but England's shoddy defending gave the unusually vocal Swedes something to shout about at the end. Got up a couple of hours later to book tickets to watch England win the Ashes in the Melbourne Boxing Day test match - woo-hoo!

Did an Indian cooking course (where better than Thailand to do it?) run by an old Indian couple in their Indian restaurant. The kitchen as fairly ramshackle and the woman bossed us around a bit (poor Caroline wasn't allowed to do much cos the woman kept correcting her!). A big fat ugly lizard crawled across the kitchen wall and the owners took fright and shooed us out of the kitchen and looked genuinely scared. Ended up making about 18 dishes and our own samosas and nan bread - really good stuff, though we got the feeling we were cooking rather large amounts for them to sell in the restaurant that night.