Chiang Mai

We arrived in Chiang Mai feeling refreshed as we'd had a good night's sleep on the train. It was nice to get off the buses and back onto the more comfortable sleeper trains. Got to our hostel and were very pleased to see it had a pool. We walked through the town and little markets both of the mornings we were here and then came back to the hostel for a swim in the afternoon. One of the mornings when we'd stopped for a drink from a little shop, a Thai man started talking to us. He was asking Colin about England and he said that he'd been to London a few times and some parts of Europe too. Then he asked us what we thought of Thailand and what we had done so far and what we were going to do next. Then he started asking about shopping and if we like to buy things and what sorts of things we look for. Up to this point we thought, or should I saw hoping, he was just a nice man that wanted to talk to us, but then he mentioned precious stones that he takes to London to sell. We'd just read the story in the Lonely Planet which mentions this exact scam... usually turns out that the "precious stones" are coloured pieces of glass. He ended the conversation pretty quickly once we told him that we'd read about the "precious stones". We've found that we've become so sceptical when people talk to us, we know they're either trying to sell us something or scam us and a few times we've felt guilty for thinking the worst first, but so far we've often been right.
On the first evening, after coming back from dinner, we went down a little side street (soi) and saw an elephant in the road. It was with 3 guys who seemed to be having dinner on the road and this elephant tried to grab their food and was wacking them on the head with its trunk. Then the men would shout at the elephant and make it turn around and face the wall, it was so funny.
The next evening we went to Chiang Mai night market and wandered through the stalls. After a while they all sell the same thing, but we did see a few bits that we'd love to have gotten if we had the space in our already heavy bags.
Our third and fourth days here we organised a trek in the jungle round Chiang Mai, but now we leave for Luang Prabang in Laos, where we plan to spend the next few weeks.