The 2hr bus from Chiang Rai to Chang Khong cost us a whopping 65 THB...or AU $2.20. The entire distance was travelled with both doors wide open and our fingers crossed our bags didn't fling out on the corners. Once in Chiang Khong we took a tuk tuk for 30THB each to Thai immigration, got stamped, jumped on a longtail boat for the 2 minute journey across to Laos. Immigration there is quite straight forward. You apply for a visa on arrival, hand them 1300 THB (1500 THB for other nationalities) and a passport photo. We timed it well and arrived [View Full Entry]

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Auf dem Balkon sitzend, den Geräuschen der vielfältigen Tierwelt lauschend und gewärmt von den Sonnenstrahlen schreibe ich euch diesen Blogeintrag. Vieles ist geschehen seit dem letzten Blogeintrag, soviel, dass es gar nicht in einem Eintrag Platz hat. Ich bin in einem gut klimatisierten aber eher unbequemen Bus in ca. 7h von Bangkok nach Sukothai gereist. Zu Beginn schaute ich noch interessiert aus dem Fenster, doch das Bild von Bangkok war mir dann doch etwas verleidet. Eine Stadt halt. Da war ich so am vor mich hindösen, als Plötzlich Wasser aus dem Dach des Buses kam. Nicht ein bischen, [View Full Entry]

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The elephant ride was slow and bumpy. We got roped in to buying bunches of bananas to feed our elephant....it's the only way we could get it to move! It would raise its stinky trunk up over its head to where we were perched and blow air on us 'till we bought another bunch. They can eat around 250kg of bananas a day, so we had no fear of over feeding it. We drove further into the mountains to a small Karan Hill Tribe Village. An old woman sat weaving, her teeth blackened from chewing beetle nut. Little chickens roamed free [View Full Entry]

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Nestled in the mountains of North West Thailand is an adorable little town called Pai. The first thing to day about our favourite place yet is that it is definately best to get the local bus from the Arcade bus station. We decided to do this to save money and sweated our arses off walking half an hour in the midday sun, with our backpacks, to the bus station. It was the most gorgeous bus journey! The bus had fans and it was cool enough in the mountains that they weren't needed anyway so an air conditioned minibus really isn't necessary. [View Full Entry]

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Chiang Mai - Chiang Rai - Pai OK, so we organised our trekking trip. Twas awesome. Met an elephant, did the bamboo rafting thing, which got a bit boring after a while coz you have to stand up the whole time. We were a group of 6, a Czech couple, another American, and a Dutch guy. We stayed in a village next to the river and just after we arrived some of us hopped in to wash off the sweat from the steep uphill climbs. One of the guides threw us a bottle of liquid soap which seemed to be intended [View Full Entry]

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Hello Everyone, Here I am again. This time I am writing to you from Chang Mai. And I am very exhausted right now. I did something crazy. I went on a 3 day trek trough the jungle. However before I go and tell you about that, i will first tell you about what happened before that. I took an overnight bus from Ayuthaya to Chang Mai, and that was horrible, it was way too long. So without any sleep I arrived in Chang Mai, the first thing they did was wake is us and shove us in pickup truck. I got [View Full Entry]

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Today we did all our laundy. More correctly we paid people 50 baht per kg of washing (normally only 25 baht per kg -but we needed it to be done express) to do it for us. They got all of the stains out - it was great and clothes feel so soft. They even folded it all after they washed and dried it. After this we set out for Doi Supthet National Park to see another famous Wat. This was very elaborate but very crowed. It was also undergoing maintainence work, so that was a bit of a bummer. But it [View Full Entry]

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So, after falling in love with Chiang Mai, we changed our plans and rather than spending 3 days traveling to get to Vietnam, we stayed where we were. Spent a lot of time chilling out in the sun, went to the Night Bizarre and a few other markets - just the usual. Minus one day when we paid a bargainous 8 pounds (can’t find the pound sign on this keyboard!) with another couple for a taxi driver to take us round to various animal places. We went to the Tiger Kingdom, where you can pay to go into little enclosures with [View Full Entry]

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After a very long bumpy 10 hour stop/start night bus from Luang Prabang to the border town of Huay Xai we disembarked and caught a tuk tuk to the boarder. It was once again a simple border crossing with a pleasant 5 minute river crossing on a long boat half way through. After 10 minutes from when we got to the Laos border we were in Thailand with a very excitable G (she’d waited for this moment for far too many years)!!!! With G jumping around in excitement, T heard a bloke shouting mini bus to Chiang Mai for 250B (less [View Full Entry]

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We had a horrible sleep, with hard mattresses and pillows (i think they were lined with dried out rice) and a bamboo floor that bowed time you shifted your weight. The roosters also started crowing constantly from about 3 am. We woke about 7:30 and got ready for the day. Breakfast was as good as our sleep. Inedible scrambled eggs and cold toast. Lucky the tea was good. We set of down to the river to put our bags on our bamboo raft. The raft was about 20 or so metres long. It was a couple metres wide and was made [View Full Entry]

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