Woke up at 5:30am on a rocking train (and not the music/cool type) and we didnt get to Chiang Mai until like 9am! It seemed to take forever. It was good to be off but the 10 minute taxi ride from the trainstation to Hotel Serenity took more like 50 minutes! Lots of traffic as there was a Flower Parade (Photos coming soon). We went to a great Thai Cooking course, it was 3 hours and $24AU however it included 4 meals cooked by us and eaten hungrily by us (we hadnt had lunch) and came with a full glossy color recipe book. We will cook thai food for everyone when we come back to our suprise welcome home party that you are throwing us :p.We then went to a treking shop for renting supplies and it reminded me of a tupperware party. We got 2xSleping bags, 2xBackpacks and 1xSarong for Eriko to bath in the cold water stream (Women arent allowed to wear bikinis, among other things). We then went to the night markets where we finally found good knockoffs and great buys. We are now super duper awsum spectacular bargainers (Well Eriko is pro, Mannan is still newb).
We bought our first high quality/real bag & purse but it was around $80AU. Eriko bought one for $35AU but Eriko says, "Its crap and cheap." But we had a few great wins like belts and shirts. We bargained them down to less then half price, special requests and even below cost price (their first sale so they say). We then got a taxi back to the Saturday markets, which we had walked through earlier (very souveniry and strange) and then snacked on our train food.