It was an easy journey from CM to Krabi. Everything went well, a quick check in, plane on time and miraculously our bag was the first off the carousel. We walked into the arrivals hall bought 2 tickets for the bus and jumped on behind a towering pile of rucksacks and bags. 30 minutes later we were in our accommodation, easy peasy.

Everything is so different here. The people look different, a different tribe of people than in the north and more Muslims live here, you are very close to Malaysia. Which means different food and a much more tropical climate, it often rains a little in the afternoons which is lovely. The traffic is not as intense as CM which is more relaxing and again we have hired a bike.

The food is more expensive but you seem to get much larger portions. The Thais don’t understand why we regulate ourselves in the West to 3 meals a day they just eat when they are hungry!! The seafood here has a huge variety with lobster, crabs and prawns aplenty as well as lots of interesting fish. The accommodation is also more expensive but after all this part of the world is tourist central with lots of package holidays coming here.

The really attractive thing about Krabi are the magnificent karst hills which are everywhere, on land and also in the sea it is spectacular. The coast, beaches and islands are just beautiful and magical, the water is lukewarm and welcoming. A lot of these parts are covered in palm oil and rubber plantations, vast swathes of them, the wet and tropical weather just perfect for it. A very nice change to the city.

We went on a trip on the bike to the ‘Tiger Temple’ and caves (Wat Tham Sua) about 25 miles away. It is a big complex with a cave where allegedly a tiger used to rest in the morning.

To get to the temple on top of the hill there are 1,237 steps to climb. To access the stairs you first have to pass at least 50 monkeys which want to jump all over you and steal anything they can. They are fun to watch. The stairs are something again. Some are very steep where you have to do a monkey climb, some uneven and after the first 200 or so I thought someone had stolen my lungs. After many air stops, 45 minutes later we eventually got to the top and it was worth the pain. Fantastic views, a cooler breeze and time to recover. The descent was much easier until I stopped at the bottom where my legs were very shaky for at least 20 minutes.

We returned to the guesthouse and the heavens opened. The owner Bandhit (who is Indian not Thai) asked us what we had planned for the day and wondered if we wanted to go out with him for a drive in his car. We went and drank chai tea with a friend who has a local restaurant and looked at a very nice hilltop resort with fantastic views to the coast and inland. He took us for a long drive down the coast and we watched sunset on the beach at a posh resort called Tubkaek, fantastic.

We have booked a transfer to an island called Ko Lanta a little further south of Krabi. It was 300 baht for the bus and ferry ticket to the island (about £7) and takes about 3 hours. Once there we can relax, unpack and enjoy the sea and sand. Looking at what you can do on the island we noticed there was an animal shelter where you can take dogs for walks and cuddle cats, we’ll be there no doubt. We are staying here for a week and the accommodation costs the same as for a month in CM. This is our holiday within a holiday, no expense spared!!

I would like to add another speed to the mini bus; HYPER warp factor 9!!. We are now sat on the ferry waiting for the short trip to the island after what can only be described as an exhilarating 2 hour journey. The driver is friendly but wouldn’t have been out of place in the film ‘one flew over the cuckoo’s nest’, bonkers.

A couple of friends told us about a programme on U.K. tv based on the film ‘The best exotic marigold hotel’ about a group of retirees who go to India, it’s a great film. The television programme, a spin off of the film, has a group of celebrity retirees who go to different cities to check out how it would be to live and retire there. The reason I am mentioning this is because they have just filmed in Chiang Mai. We downloaded the programme and watched it a couple of nights ago. They filmed at Worrorot market, ate lots of food, had a health check with different Thai style treatments and went on a Buddhist retreat for a day. The 2 ladies who went on the ‘silent retreat’ never stopped talking and I found myself (all mindfulness training out of the window) shouting shut the f*** up very loudly at the TV. Even the monk in charge looked brassed off, grrr. Anyway rant over, they went to a market, bought a few catfish (alive) and went to a local temple called Wat U Mong just out of the city. To a Buddhist, releasing an animal back to the wild is an honourable thing to do and earns merit.

Anyhow, we were out and about on the bikes heading for Wat U Mong as we decided it looked lovely with a big lake and we had never been before. We stopped at a little local market showing our friend Andy around and buying some ice cold coconut water and snacks to take with us on our day out when we noticed a woman with a big bowl full of catfish and decided we would also earn some merit and good luck. We asked if we could buy one and had to quickly say ‘alive’ before she dispatched it. She laughed a lot and spoke to other stall holders and they all had a good chuckle and gathered round. This is obviously where they marigold hotel group had bought theirs. After much splashing the now named Colin the catfish was in the bag with a little water heading off to the Wat. It was less than 10 minutes to the Wat and we parked the bikes and headed for the lake to the exact spot where the other fish had been released. We left him in the bag a little while longer to acclimatise him to the lake temperature and let him go. He wasn’t keen at first and kept swimming back, we thought he might be hungry so found rice left for the pigeons and threw it at him which he gratefully munched. We all felt quite good about the whole thing. As we walked round the lake we noticed lots of enormous catfish and hoped that Colin wasn’t going to be lunch for something else………he was only little.

Wat U Mong is really different to most temples. It is a unique 14th century temple built into the side of Suthep mountain and is a series of underground tunnels in a forest. It is magical and quite unlike anything I have seen here. In some of the enclaves, in the tunnels, are Buddha statues and on the ceilings are early paintings of elephants and temples There is a monastery and many monks live around the grounds surrounding the lake. There is a meditation retreat centre and on a Sunday, in English, you can talk to the monks, monk chat, and have discussions about Buddhism. As well as huge catfish in the lake there are enormous turtles which are supposed to be good luck if you spot them, we saw loads. Feeling lucky.

This brings me to a story told to me by a friend David who lives and runs a guesthouse in CM. David’s brother was visiting him and had taken his dogs out for an early morning walk by the river. He had seen a fisherman about to kill and use as bait a turtle, so had bought it off him to save its life. He excitedly rang his brother and told him he had a turtle and where could they let it go. David suggested the big moat which runs round the city. They got to the moat and with due ceremony they dropped the turtle into the moat and it sank never to resurface. The words for turtles and tortoises in Thai, land turtle and water turtle, are the same and sadly this was a land turtle (tortoise) who couldn’t swim. Whoops. Good intentions, language breakdown.

Many people retire here. The climate is perfect, it’s cheap to live here and the people are friendly. To get a retirement visa here you need about £1000 a month coming in or £20000 in the Bank and you need to renew every year, it costs £44. There is a 5 year multiple entry retirement visa which will save people having to renew every year and costs £11000, expensive, and more for wealthy retirees who can’t be bothered to renew If you want to come for a shorter time a 30 day visa works which you get on arrival, no charge for 30 days. A 60 day visa costs £35 which you apply for from the U.K. You can renew once at the immigration office for about £30 and it gives you another 30 days. If you leave the country for a few days, you get 30 days when you come back in on a waiver visa. There are lots of options depending on how long you want to stay.

It is cheap to live here if you live like a local. It gets expensive if you want to drink lots of alcohol and eat western food. Condos can be expensive £400-500 a month when they have gym’s and pools but if you look around you can find fabulous accommodation for £150 a month plus water and electric. If you can resist the air con you can save money. The money you save not being in a posh condo buys you a gym membership and lots of days out and all your food. Entertainment can be reasonable. The cinema on a Wednesday is 100 baht (£2.25) and more high tech than our new local cinema at home, reclining seats and very plush. We have seen every new Star Wars film on the day of release. To compensate for seeing Star Wars, I make Chris watch Disney films with singing animals, the more the merrier, brilliant!!! There is plenty of live music in bars, for free. Lots to do. If you want to meet ex pats there are lots of groups that meet and play bridge, go fishing and lots of different activities just like at home. Not for us really we would rather meet and chat to locals.

Tomorrow we are leaving for Krabi and the islands. Chris wants to see the James Bond island and the unusual rock formations in the sea. We are also hoping to see dudongs which are similar to manatees on one of the smaller remote National Park islands. I am looking forward to swimming, reading and just chillin……..

I know the zoo isn’t for everyone but we like to go when we are in town. I am generally not a lover of zoos but CM Zoo has a certain charm to it and it has a very natural feel and big enclosures for the animals. The weather is perfect for it. You can feed hippos and giraffes, you just buy a small bowl of carrots or beans for a few baht, it helps to pay for the feed and is a small price to pay. It is great fun seeing the head and long neck of the giraffe coming towards you, tongue reaching out because it has noticed you are buying green beans……and not many places where you can stroke a hippos chin!! There seem fewer animals this time and money has been spent on infrastructure, new animal compounds and better toilets. It’s £4 entrance to the zoo, it is a huge site and takes at least 4 hours to walk round, it’s a really good walk. A lot of the enclosures are huge and natural and others scrupulously maintained modern buildings like the pandas which are on loan from China and a big attraction. One of my favourite animals and one I haven’t seen before is a binterong. It has the face of a cat, body of a bear, long black fur and a big bushy tail. It’s about the size of a large Alsatian dog and just seems to sleep, lying along a sturdy branch. Fascinating.

There is a huge tribe of small clawed otters which are very vocal and fun to watch. The only thing I don’t like is the tiger compound where the tiger paces up and down, he doesn’t look happy. A lot of the animals do look happy and content and it’s more like a petting zoo where you can stroke goats and pot bellied pigs and a whole menagerie of small animals. In the U.K. you are so far away from everything and definitely no touching or feeding. They are unnatural and the animals are rarely out because it’s so fricking cold.

We have also visited an insect zoo just out of the city where you can hold iguanas, spiders, scorpions and other assorted insects. I held a scorpion as a 6 year old sweet looking girl had just done the same and I felt obliged to not look scared witless. It’s only when I handed it back to the keeper that she said it was only ‘slightly’ poisonous!!

We have just been again to the Siam Insect Zoo with a friend and driving through the mountains saw a very poisonous centipede in the middle of the road, we had just seen them at the Zoo. They are up to 8” long and it is an active, aggressive predator that prays on any animal it can overwhelm. It tends to try to eat any living animal it encounters that is not longer than itself. It has a venomous bite which will put you in hospital and can kill the young and infirm. We also saw last week driving around, a vine snake just on the side of the road not harmful this time. Whew!! It’s a wild, wild place.

On the way back from long drives in the countryside we often see elephants. After they have finished being with tourists they are in corals eating and relaxing and we have spoken to the mahouts and been able to say hello. I always feel very emotional around elephants. You can usually smell them before you see them, they have a rich, earthy distinctive aroma. I like just being near them. Some are really inquisitive, I have had trunks delving about in my shorts pockets and twisting my tea shirt round and round. We often give the mahouts a few baht for letting us near them and take a few photos, they always seem surprised and happy with the small gift and hopefully they will let us do it again. It feels like such a privilege it makes me very happy and I cannot get enough of them!

There are lots of other animals in the region which do not fare quite as well. Up near Chiang Rai, in the golden triangle, just inside the border with Myanmar there is a market where you can buy animal parts which are used in traditional Chinese ‘medicine’. You can buy bear paws, bear bile extracted daily from black bears kept in horrendous conditions, tiger skin and bones, pangolins which are almost extinct and sadly lots of body parts of other unfortunate animals. I am not even sure that all these medicines even work, it’s disgusting but will take many generations to hopefully one day be a thing of the past. The Chinese government has just banned the sale of all ivory, its a step in the right direction but the traditions of Chinese medicine will be harder to eradicate.

On a lighter note on every street, in the cities and villages, outside shops and temples there are lots of dogs and cats. Most look homeless but unlike the U.K. they are just out and about in the daytime and have homes. You realise this when the weather gets cold as you then see them with little fleecy coats on. Our local shop has 3 pure white cats. One is always on top of a tall shelving unit, one in a box on a shelf and one sprawled out on the counter. The temple dogs are fed by the monks and other people who bring food for them. The locals bring unwanted dogs to the temples to be looked after. The Thais mostly have dogs for security, cats as rat catchers and aren’t as soppy generally as we are with pets. They all have a purpose. Most of the dogs are friendly but I have been surrounded by snarling dogs at one of the temples and needed a monk to rescue me.

Traffic here is intense. It is one of the most polluted cities in Thailand, its only real downside. Many people wear masks if they are on a bike, as when you stop at a red light it can easily be 5 minutes until it changes, you can taste the pollution. The cars stop and build up in the queue the bikes weave their way to the front and wait in ever increasing numbers waiting for the green light. Then they are off, everyone trying to get ahead of the cars which eventually catch up and overtake until the next red light where it all happens again. It is strangely exhilarating and frightening at the same time. Thailand has the worst death rate on the roads in the world and the holiday periods especially New Year is when most fatalities occur. They only count deaths not the many thousands injured, it’s horrific. If you are here in the holidays you see lots of young Thais enjoying themselves and drinking beer with shots and then jumping on their motorbikes to go home. Car drivers are the same, lethal. We don’t venture out on the bike at this time it’s not so bad in the middle of the day but never at night it’s too dangerous.

It’s a different way of driving here, you never just stop because things will run into the back of you, you weave your way around and everything seems to flow. There are many police roadblocks where they will fine you 500 baht for not wearing a helmet and if you are a foreigner and don’t have an international driving licence then another fine. Some cynics say the police do this towards the end of the month (before they get their wages) but who knows, they stop a lot of people and police wages are poor. On a couple of a occasions we have been stopped 3 times in one day.

There are lots of different ways to get around. You can hire a motorbike, not for the faint hearted, which costs about £3 a day and a tank of fuel is about £2. You can rent a pushbike for £1 a day, I fancy that even less!!! To rent a car is about £30 a day and marginally safer. The easiest way to get around the city is in a songthaew the open backed red buses which are 30 baht round town. The trick is to tell the driver where you are going and just get in, don’t ask the price as it will always be more expensive, act like a local. There are also yellow buses which go on fixed routes to the outlying villages and are very cheap. Then there are tuk tuks which race around the city and you can bargain with them to get the price down. There is one price for locals, one for a Thai person with a foreigner and then a price for foreigners. If you go on a tour with a company, of which there are hundreds, they use mini buses which go at one speed only, warp factor 9, it’s a proper white knuckle ride. The main roads are very good and straight it’s only when you get into the mountainous areas that they twist and turn. For example the road to Pai which is 76 miles has 762 turns and extreme switchbacks. There is stunning scenery, if you dare take your eyes off the road, or open them in my case. If you are a biker there are some fantastic roads. One of the most famous is the Mae Hong Son loop which takes 4 days and passes through rice fields, forests and mountains and has some spectacular scenery and friendly people. It is an experience you will never forget. The one thing that is so different here than the U.K. there is no road rage. People are very calm, no gesturing or shouting it’s so much better everyone just sits and waits with no problems, I wish I could take that home with me it’s so refreshing.

There are many tours you can do in CM. If you like the wild outdoors you can zip line through the jungle, go white water rafting, wash and walk with elephants, go trekking to tribal villages, visit waterfalls, kayaking, bicycle tours the list is endless. There are 3 National Parks very close to CM to explore. Most guest houses/hotels have racks of leaflets to tempt you. Some tours are a few days and some a few hours. For the not so adventurous there are cooking courses, mindfulness retreats, massages, temple tours, museums. You are never short of something to do. Some of the tours have changed I am pleased to say. The elephant tours no longer let you ride in metal chairs on them and a lot of the tiger tours have been shut down, it’s getting better. There are still monkey and snake shows but animal welfare is improving slowly. This is because the tourists do have a voice and it counts. There is a lot of money generated by animals in tourism and there is still a long way to go.

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Markets are held every Saturday and Sunday all over Thailand. As well as copious amounts of food and drink stalls there are clothes, jewellery, leather goods, soaps and potions for every conceivable illness and photographs of said diseased body parts (not for the squeamish), wooden items, drawings, paintings, musicians playing, the list of what can be purchased or eaten is infinite. There are even places to have a foot massage if you tire of walking. I love the Sunday night walking market in Chiang Mai, but I like to go in early. The police close the roads to traffic at 4pm and the stall holders set up their wares. What I do like about the markets here is their non pushy approach, no hard sell just big smiles even when you say no. By about 7 it becomes very busy, imagine being outside a Wembley cup final 10 minutes before kick off, it’s crazy!! I am well on my way home by this point happy and exhausted full of Thai snacks and purchases.

There are lots of more general everyday markets and the biggest one in CM is called Worrorot Market or Kad Luang. The original market was destroyed by fire in 1968 and subsequently rebuilt into 2 big buildings. It is huge, 3 floors of everything you can imagine. Lots of food and cooking ingredients including live frogs in nets and live fish in bowls as the Thais like everything really fresh. There are clothes, pots and pans, seeds, fishing equipment, toiletries, sweets and cakes with gold sellers/ jewellery stores ringing the outside. Outside the market there are tuk tuks, rickshaws, red buses, motorbikes with side cages for transporting goods and throngs of people milling around. The market is by the Ping river, a big wide river which flows through the city.

Next to Wororot market is the only fresh flower market called Ton Lamyai, a riot of scents and colours. It is open 24 hours a day and most deliveries are done early morning, presumably to all the big posh hotels and homes. You can see lots of Thais and tourists taking pictures of the stunning exotic blooms.

Just across the river by a new pedestrian bridge is a wat called Wat Ket Karam. Within the grounds of the Wat is a really quirky museum called Uncle Jacks History Museum in a restored Lanna teak house which is 500+ years old. It’s aim is to preserve old Lanna culture and has a (dis) organised exhibition of old artefacts. There are fabrics and old gramophones, cooking utensils, furniture, ceramics, farm tools, carved wooden objects, coins and bank notes a real eclectic mix all covered in a generous helping of dust!! The best part for me was the hundreds of old photographs of Chiang Mai. There are some from the early 1900’s which look like the Wild West with people on horseback. I especially like one taken at what became Thae Pae Gate. Its a fantastic glimpse of a bygone era and is run purely on donations.

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Food in Thailand is a national passion, everywhere you go there are dozens of food carts selling all manner of things. Meat and veg on sticks which they bbq, and are very cheap….

Then there are smoothie carts, coffee carts, fruit sellers, white fluffy Chinese style buns filled with black bean paste or shredded pork or custard. People who sell deep fried spring rolls and bags of crispy things and then all the blue plastic tablecloth eateries, they all seem to make a living. People on motorbikes taking home plastic bags full of unknown liquids and styrofoam packed takeaway food. They must have a squillion chickens somewhere because there are eggs a plenty on every stall and every shop. Everybody eats all the time, why are they all so skinny? There must be 50 places in our small village to get good food. If they are not selling food they are eating it!!!! It’s so cheap, for less than a £1 you can have a sit down dinner, it’s brilliant. The aromas of food are intoxicating as you stroll around….

You can do cookery courses here. We have been on 2 so far and they are good fun but definitely don’t eat breakfast before you go. Whatever you cook you eat and that is often a soup, salad, main course and dessert. Before you start cooking they take you to a local market and explain all the different types of rice and show you a myriad of exotic fruit and veggies. We love the markets, they are so colourful and beautifully presented and the stall holders are happy to chat. The only bit I don’t like is the meat sections which just smell of blood and offal. On one stall we noticed they were selling crispy things but when we got closer they were deep fried chicken heads, no thanks. It is good that everything is eaten, every part of every animal but not always appealing to European taste buds…

After 2 weeks of eating and not much exercise, we decided we needed to do something. We had already returned to Satva yoga, Freddy and Nit, which is an excellent class and we both enjoyed but needed more. We joined Fitness Thailand a gym 5 minutes walk from our abode. After looking round and looking at class schedules we joined. We ummed and aarghed a little and both got a reduced student rate for a month of 1500 baht each (£37). They have 8 zumba classes a week and 14 yoga classes so am going to try them all. I have been to 2 zumba classes so far and have already made friends. The Thai people are very inclusive. I have had my photo taken in a group shot, the only farang there but made to feel very welcome even though I looked like a blonde sweaty tomato by that point! These 2 pictures are from Satva yoga class…

The weather here is unusually cold at the moment especially in the mornings and after 5. It still gets to the late 20’s in the middle of the day and is still better than most ‘hot’ English summer days. It’s funny to see the locals with woolly hats and jackets and complaining bitterly about the cold. The security guard Mr Bum must have 3 coats on every night. It makes it easy to sleep at least and having lived in northern England all my life it’s not really cold, a fleece over your t shirt is fine. Even the dogs have jumpers !!

We went to a local reservoir called Huay Teng Tao, only 20 minutes from town. The entrance fee was 50 baht, just over £1. It’s a beautiful space, we drove around it on the bike and found ‘The little bees cafe’. We sat in a little reeded hut overhanging the water and had a cold beer, it’s thirsty work sightseeing! The mountains are the backdrop and we just sat and watched dragonflies fighting/mating over the water and lots of little fish. Bliss. The menu was interesting. One item was hawk moth, horse blankets, I think it might have got lost in translation, I really wanted Chris to order it. Happy days.

It’s been 2 weeks now since leaving dreary and wet Manchester with a light heart for our second long winter escape. Yippee.We had always wanted to spend winter somewhere warm with blue skies, friendly people and fabulous food. For us Chiang Mai is that place.

It takes a bit of organising, especially if you still want your job on your return, but it’s not impossible. We felt like headless chickens (much like everyone else was but for different reasons) giving our contact details to neighbours, checking I had covered all my classes, sorting out cars and vans and emptying the fridge. Making sure we had the visas and copies, spare photos and money. Lots of mundane things to do but worth it!!

As we landed at CM we felt we were home. It just felt easy and familiar and our friend David picked us up. We spent the first few days sleeping in late. We felt no guilt that we should be ‘seeing things’. When you come away for more than 3 months those pressures drop away. We sorted out a motorbike for getting around, got a local Thai SIM card and got Thai baht. Now we’re cooking.

We visited our favourite blue plastic table eatery and had what we had been yearning for since we were last here in February. Pad see u, slippy noodles and pork for Chris and pad tai gai for me, yum. Both dishes and 2 large beers for less than a coffee and cake in our local costa. Result.

The traffic in CM can be fierce but Chris now drives like a local weaving in and out of the cars, trucks and motorbikes. When the lights are on red (often for 5 minutes, an extraordinary long time) the bikes build up at the front like a swarm of bees waiting for the green light and then we are off, formula 1 style. I found it really disconcerting last year but have relaxed more this time………mostly.

We stayed with David and Nuy at their guesthouse, Funky monkey, for the first 5 days which is just on the outside of the moat and very accessible to the centre. CM is a medieval moated city, not too big and full of little alleyways teeming with life and not just tourists. Great places to eat, shops, museums and the most wats and temples I have ever seen in one small place, over 300. There is a temple walking tour you can do, we did it a couple of years ago and it takes all day.

In one corner of the city inside the moat is a lovely green space called Buak Hard Park. All around the edges are places to exercise with all sorts of machines, pull up bars, weights and stuff I have no idea what they do, it looks like torture equipment! In the centre is a lake with huge fish. There are lots of little bridges over the water, fountains, places to sit and read or do yoga, or just watch the world go by. Last year they had the most fantastic flower festival here, we hope it happens this year. It’s the lungs of the city.

Last year we stayed in quite a posh condo in the trendy part of town called Nimman. This area is full of middle class Thai students, digital nomads (mostly American or Canadian) and retirees from all over the world. We liked it there but didn’t want to go back this time. On last years wanderings we found a little area which feels more like a proper Thai village, only 10 minutes from where we were, which we preferred. We spoke to a guesthouse owner took a card and that is where we are now and love it. We have a big room, huge bed, balcony, flat screen tv, fridge and very friendly owners. It is much quieter, cheaper and more authentic. It costs us £160 a month plus electric and water.Although we had a full kitchen last time we decided we didn’t want one this time, a fridge would suffice. We only need stuff for breakfast and we are happy with yoghurt and muesli. I don’t go anywhere without my kettle and supply of tea bags, so that all works. It is so cheap to eat out it’s not worth cooking, although sausage, mash and baked beans was a must after 2 months of rice and noodles last year. I’ll live!!

We like to escape into the local hills on the bike. CM is surrounded by huge national parks, mountains and valleys of breathtaking splendour only 20 minutes from the centre of the city. We especially like the projects which is where all the local produce comes from. These small settlements, often hill tribes, grow fruit and veg and many wonderful things. It feels like you are in a forgotten world. The late King started this initiative to try and stop the growing of opium. He gave the farmers a very good price for growing cabbage, cauliflower, strawberrys etc and they all have huge new 4×4’s so they can’t be doing too badly. I think they still sneak the odd field of their previous crop in…….

I also have a bit of an addiction to a local band that plays in a bar called Loco Elvis. Never understood the name until I noticed a picture on the wall of the late King meeting Elvis in army uniform in the 50’s. It’s a young band who play classic rock tunes and the guitarist plays like an angel. He is so talented I can’t believe he plays for just a few quid. In this bar they also serve mugeritas which is a margarita in a mug, another attraction for a good night out. Rock on. We are now on speaking terms with the band, their English groupies.

Just out of the old city is Doi Suthep, a very famous temple greatly revered by Buddhists. It is on top of a hill overlooking the city up a very windy road. We actually prefer the small temple halfway up in the forest. It is the most serene of places. You can walk up to the top. We are going to attempt this 12k walk as a bit of practise for our walk in India. Once a year, at New Year, hundreds of monks walk up on the road like a long orange train to the temple, a wondrous sight.