The Secret Garden

Since Friday we are staying at the Secret Garden 12km outside Chiang Mai. It's fairly much in the countryside and we hear lots of weird animal noises like from Geckos. In fact there are small lizards all around including on the bedroom walls and surprisingly the kids haven't freaked out.

This place is run by a German man Peter and his Thai wife Pai, and consists of about 10 bungalows around a nice garden with small lake and swimming pool. They have a big open air kitchen and eating area which is very relaxing, lots of books and CDs we can use, etc. All of their business comes via TripAdvisor reviews; the other guests are American, Spanish, US, Australian. Pai cooks Thai food for dinner each evening and the guests are welcome to join in. There's a trust system for drinks - we take what we want from the fridge and write it down. The kids love the pool so yesterday I stayed here with them while Gyorgyi went off to look at silk production factories and naturally she came back with another few metres of silk!

I went for a longish run yesterday along the main road and got stared at a lot by the locals. Almost got lost on the way back when I took a wrong turn.

Today we are off to see some elephants and tigers.

We have 3 more nights here before going south.

I got all our photos written onto a DVD, unfortunately the PC at his resort doesn't have a DVD drive so I can't upload them.