Well lodged

So here's the bit of my trip that is work. Yeah, yeah, I know, staying in stunning traditional style accommodation with all expenses paid. But hey, I ask a lot of questions and take a lot of notes, okay. So here's my first room at the Lisu Lodge – palm fronds at the window and the bed fabulously swathed in muslin. The second place we stay, Khun Lanna is a masterpiece in teak and bamboo.

The story about this company, Asian Oasis, is that they approach their tourism offering in an environmentally responsible way and have a code of ethics that sees them consult the local tribal elders over every new development. We visit the local village, for example, and meet the "shaman" who carries out a consultation using some chicken bones, while we are drinking bamboo cups of his wife's bitter green tea. The villagers, who are ethnically Chinese originally, are dressed up and celebrating Chinese New Year, throwing bangers and generally making merry – or not so merry if you happen to be one of the cocks below.

But eco and community efforts aside, these are among the most "touristy" few days of my stay in Thailand...

Ride in an ox cart, check (at the back leaning out).

See an elephant show and ride on the back of one, check (on the left in first pic + my green Converse).

Float down a river (the Ping) on a bamboo raft, check (complete with handy drinks stall).

Take a Thai cookery course, check (from a true pro).

Oh yes, and full Thai body massage with a herbal wheatgerm compress, check.

Most fascinating of all, however, is my encounter with the Chans from Hong Kong, and their completely captivating five-year-old Jasmine, who adopt me as a temporary aunt.

We're officially penpals now and by the end of the trip even the granny was referring to me as Auntie Cate. Here's me and gran on the bamboo raft.

Other highlights include a bike trip to a local market, setting off before sunrise so that we see dawn break over the rice fields that we pass along the way. At the market we marvel at plates of fresh locusts, and drink bitter coffee that tastes as if it has been strained through earth. The roadside shop with strange liquids for sale through an assortment of tubes turns out to be petrol station.

For comedy value I also love our night with the local village kids, who look as if they've had their pocket-money taken away. Our girls are much happier in the headresses.

And the photogenic packed lunch we're served on our grand day out. The banana-leaf parcels contain portions of sticky rice and chicken. While we're enjoying this a coachload of tourists cross a bridge just up river, off to gawp at a village of long-necked women. I'm quite happy with my sticky rice.

As a farewell treat, I let the kids massage spices into my chicken in the final cookery class (I may be eating a bit of it on this trip but I draw the line at direct contact).

I get quite choked up saying goodbye, especially to Jasmine...

Chordial relations

One of the joys of my stay in Thailand is having the chance to sing a few Bulgarian songs, one or two with my cousin Clare from a mountain top or two, and a few old favourites with the choir she has started here, Global Harmonies. I first meet them the week I arrive, at singer Jean-Pascale's house on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. It's a large, cool, shady Thai-style house with all the living space on the upper floor, bedrooms in the two wings and the kitchen/living room as the centrepiece, a lovely setting in which to hear them sing for the first time.

The choir is made up of ex-pats, among them French, American, Norwegian, Syrian and Brits. They're rehearsing for a performance at a small music festival in a couple of weeks. The festival, Harvesting Melodies, is being organised by Laurent, another of the singers, on his farm north of Chiang Mai.

It's hotter than hot when the day of the festival arrives. Laurent and his volunteers (his farm is entirely organic and the organisation works with local communities educating them in the ways of responsible farming) have taken great trouble to set the scene, from creative sign-making...

... to inventive bartending. There are cocktails – the Farmito (their take on the Mojito) – and giant jars of fresh Roselle and Sun Hemp tea.

The performances take place in a "sala" or open but covered barn with hay bales for audience seating. The day's programme begins with a brilliant Brazilian guitarist, followed by a colourful collection of acts drawn from northern Thailand, from a Karen tribal band, to Hmong dancers, to a couple of guys with swords whose moves remind me of my niece Sula's Highland dancing. Global Harmonies, below singing sweet Georgian song Chela, go down very well and will be singing long into the night, on the stage and off it.

  

I join in on the Bulgarian numbers, hovering at the back. Just when I think she's forgotten Clare calls me to the front to sing a duet of Ogreyala y Mesechinka, shakes, hiccups and all.

In the late afternoon we're all asked to move down by the rice fields where a children's orphanage puts on a Chinese New Year show and introduces a shy little boy, who does a few Tai Chi moves then sits on a hay bale and sings a solo, tentatively at first, finally shouting out the lines at the top of his voice.

The house provides welcome shelter from the heat until the sun goes down, when the singing moves to a candlelit spot by the paddy fields.

And still the performers continue on stage. A troupe of young dancers in vibrant costumes have us spellbound, and a local band complete the festival set by torchlight.

One of Laurent's Thai neighbours, a little old lady who looks as if she'd keel over in a light breeze, holds court in the house, giving massages. I manage to manoeuvre myself into position in front of her and am treated to a grip so firm my knees go weak. It's worthy of Mr Spock. I'm still spaced out on the drive home. Clare plans to go back and book a session, not to mention a cuddle with the farm's pet cat...

Reasons to be cheerful in Chiang Mail (part two)

• Wat ever...

...you do in Chiang Mai there's a temple, or wat, just around the corner. In the old city inside the square moat there are dozens. Wearing in my easiest slip-on-slip-off shoes I manage to notch up ten in a day. No, it's 11, I think.

The first, and the most visited, is Wat Phra Singh, a blaze of sumptuous gold stencilling and rich coloured paintwork.

Round the back is the most perfect white chedi, built in 1345, and a reclining buddha, the back of his head seen here through a window.

Then there was a temple outside the gated old city, across the Ping river, with a small museum showing off a mystifying collection of bric-a-brac gathering dust in the gloom. I mean, what is a display case of old typewriters doing here?

There are three ornate temples that were designed by Shan and Burmese artisans, financed by Burmese teak merchants who arrived in Chiang Mai a century ago – peacock motifs are a tell-tale sign apparently.

There's the Chinese temple in Chinatown, looking completely different from all the Thai wats.

Here's another impressive reclining buddha, and a chubby fellow with an interesting story to tell. He is Tan Pra Maha Kajjana, who was born so handsome that when monks caught sight of him they either mistook him for the Lord Buddha, or were inclined to imagine him as a woman and to dream of marrying him/her. So, to avoid tempting monks with his good looks he changed himself into a fat ugly monk. I think he still looks quite fanciable myself.

For anyone born in the Year of the Dog, this temple has a pooch sitting over the door. That's me. Woof.

• It's mountain...

...is sacred and to make merit and earn their Buddhist stripes on Doi Suthep, most people drive or catch a bus to the top and visit the temple. There's a staircase of about 200 steps to tackle. I decide to walk from the foot of the mountain. It's a scramble in parts but there are plenty of diversions along the way, apart from getting lost a couple of times – this banyan tree is big enough to walk through.

The temple is worth the climb, but it's a weekend day so it's noisy and crowded when I eventually emerge from the bush onto the stall-lined approach to the temple staircase. Nevertheless I find some peace and quiet away from the bustle in a cloister facing the gleaming gold chedi. I also find a lone statue meditating on a trolley, some curious collection boxes and a posse of pint-sized performers having a break from the tourists... or their mothers (often to be seen lurking behind a wall keeping a beady eye on their miniature money-makers)...