Colourful is the key word to describe Thailand's temples. The base colour of most everything being gold, then layered on top with bright colours and all set against deep blue skies - Thailand is certainly not the place to try out black & white photography!

Our northern base was Chiang Mai, a 13 hour train ride away from Bangkok and Thailand's number two city. With a population of a mere 1.5 million, it's just an oversized village compared to Bangkok's teeming masses. 

We found it much more traveller friendly, being smaller and not so hectic, but will all the amenities you'd need including numerous American fast food chains.

More traditionally, Chiang Mai has a popular night market which bustles with activity from locals and tourists alike. We stocked up on souvenirs here, after having spent most of the day at an elephant training camp in the forests an hour away from the city. 

There were over 20 Asian elephants at this particular camp, each with their own life long trainers. The elephants are trained and still used for work in the forests. 

After they put on a show for us, we went on an hour long ride through the trees and back through the river on elephant-back. The elephants moved along very gracefully allowing us to sit back and enjoy the ride.

After our hill tribe trek we went as far north as you can go in Thailand, to the Golden Triangle. The area where the mighty Mekong, and another smaller river make the natural border between Laos, Thailand and Burma, is physically the Golden Triangle. Here we stood at a well located viewpoint and aimed our camera sights into neighbouring Burma and Laos. 

The area is more famous, or actually infamous, because of the illegal production of opium, mentioned earlier, which still makes its way to the drug dealers of the West. The Thai government is doing everything in its power to curb this production, as our guide Sam kept telling us.

Halfway between Chiang Mai and Bangkok, we boarded our transportation for the last leg of our journey. As a relaxing end to the trip, our group spent two nights and a day cruising slowly down the Chao Phraya River aboard a converted rice barge! 

The barge had it's own crew who cooked us more of the spicy Thai food we'd all become accustomed to during our stay. 

We didn't do much on the barge except resting those tired bones from the treks. We stopped at a temple or a village here and there, but most just took advantage of the sunbathing opportunities in the near 100 degree heat before the inevitable return to the hustle and bustle of civilisation.