Blogs from Thailand, Asia - page 2622

My crossing back into Thailand was evidential that geographical proximity bears no neccesary reference to cultual similarities, as the shock I received, was apparent: -- Border crossing: Huay Xai Laos to Chiang Khong Thailand -- In the morning, we stamped out of Huay Xai and went across the river to Chiang Khong; the border on the Thai side. The friendly immigration official on the other side stamped our re-entry visas and arranged for two motorbikes to carry us free of charge to the bus station. The buses were all full and so we purchased tickets on the local bus to Chiang Mai. Seven hour journeys have become a thing of normality and we were happy to board the bus. What we did find bizarre however, was the reverse culture shock we were experiencing. After a whole ... read more

Well we made it to the divers paradise of Koh Tao (actually been here for a week enjoying ourselves sorry if we’ve been neglecting you!). Not such a gruelling journey as last time though, only an hour and a half by high speed catamaran, but the choppy weather left Mrs Fraser a little the worse for wear (sick as a dog to be precise - we’ll be going back on the slow boat). We’d booked ourselves in with New Way diving (www.newwaydiving.com) to spend 3 days doing our PADI Open Water dive course and one of the staff - Pom - met us at the pier on arrival to whisk us off to the dive shop on the back of an open topped pick-up (thankfully the torrential rain had almost stopped by this point!). Get welcomed ... read more

Delarmi and I had the worst day so far on our travels….. We had to leave Thailand as our visa expired... now we planned to leave the day before, but the taxi didn’t pick us up... so we scheduled for the next day, cutting it fine with our visa. Anywhoo anything that could have gone wrong did.... company messed us about, missed the main bus in the small shanty town, we paid way over the odds to get us to the border... WAY OVER... but as we had 2hrs to get out... we had no choice... so we thought! When we do finally get there we get drenched. The bloody sea flipped upside down and launched down on us. The random thing is that we were in a poxy tail boat... no roof or cover ... read more

Well all good things must come to an end. Bangkok was our last stop before finally getting a flight home. We shopped. and shopped. and shopped. Then we ate. and ate. and ate. The reason I've put this entry on here is more because we wanted to put up this image of the pub on the petrol forecourt. Imagine that in the UK!! ... read more

So I finally got out of Bangkok and made it out to the Island of Ko Pha Ngan. The trip here was pretty ridiculous, I bought the ticket from the travel agent at my guest house, and she told me I was going to be picked up at 5:00 and will arrive at the island at 11:30 the next day. So i spent the rest of the day walking around some of the side street of Bangkok and they are a lot different then the backpackers area. So after touring around I finally made it back to the guest house for 5:00. If I have learned one thing the Thailand are very relax and are never on time. I was expecting a van, bus or car to pick me up, and at about 5:40 a 15 ... read more