So we are now out of the gutters of Bangkok and into the streets of Hong Kong. We arrived in the early evening and flew through customs before catching the MTR train into the city itself. It was unbelievably easy to do and everything is so clean. I don't know where Singapore gets its reputation from, but I think you get a $10,000 fine plus jail time here for even having any rubbish! That first night after marvelling at so many huge buildings, we headed out for tea. Unsure of the area we ended up being slightly overcharged for a pizza [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Ko Samui late afternoon and of all places, headed to Tesco because our leader said that things were a bit pricy here and it would be good to stock up on food. We all hit the beach as soon as we got to the hotel and it was so nice to soak up the sun and swim in the sea after the previous weeks trecking. That night a few people wanted to go to see one of the ladyboy shows on the island (I was an exception). So we went to the main strip and had dinner before [View Full Entry]

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So aftyer the trecking we arrived back in Bangkok at 7am on the night train and bid a semi-goodbye to part of our group (we were going out again with them that evening). We spent the afternoon in the MBK shopping centre which was a confusing version of one of those shopping malls at home. Vicky went off with a couple of the girls and I went for a wander with one of only two other guys on the trip looking at all the electrical stuff I can't afford! That evening we went for a meal in a bar called Gullivers [View Full Entry]

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So the night we arrived in Chiang Mai we all decided to sample some Muay Thai Boxing at one of the local stadiums. I think some of us enjoyed it more than others! The stadium happens to be in the seediest part of town down a back alley. It turned out to be fine though and we saw six fights, each getting progressively more fierce than the last. The next morning we were up to begin our trecking. We stopped in a market on the way to sample some local delicacies (I think mine was a locust - tastes very salty!) [View Full Entry]

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So we landed in Bangkok for our tour thing and it was certainly a culture shock after Laos!!! Our room was dearer and consisted of four walls and the hardest bed ever, plus it was more expensive than the last place (at least it was only one night). We then hit Khao San Road. Now people saty things about Vegas and Blackpool, but this place makes them look like the perfect nunnery! Greeted by a swarm of greasy tuk-tuk drivers and masses of underdressed westerners everywhere it was quite overwhelming. There is even a guy who stands in the road with [View Full Entry]

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So we spent our last day in Laos doing one of the most populat touristy things, we went to the Pak Ou caves. It is basically two caves on the edge of the Mekokg River and they are only accessible by boat. It is some kind of shrine and there are hundreds of buddah images everywhere. We got the mini-bus early in the morning with only two other people on our tour and headed foir the caves. On the way we stopped at a paper making willage where they made paper the old fashioned way and put petals ect in it. [View Full Entry]

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So first blog entry from this city I think? You can probably tell from that that Laos is a pretty laid back place! Not that we havent been busy but they definately have a very laid back lifestyle. Plus as you know we paid a visit to the plain of jars for a couple of days in the middle. The first day here we went on a walking tour which is in the Loas travel book we bought. It took us all around the city and past all of the important monuments/temples though we did get a little off track towards [View Full Entry]

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So on one of our first days in Laos we booked our trip to the 'Plain of Jars' Near a town called Phonsovan. It is one of the main reasons we wanted to go to Laos so we were both really excited. After a long drive (around 6 hours) we arrived at our guesthouse and checked in. We then were invited to dinner by the other two people who went on the trip, a dutch guy and his mum. We went for a walk first to see what was in the town and went up to the local temple where the [View Full Entry]

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Well, it took some getting here, but we made it! Several days after setting off from Kota Bharu, we are finally in Luang Prabang in Laos. As I previously metioned, we couldn't take the overland route into Thailand so we decided to fly (much easier than it sounds!) This involved getting to the bus station in Kota Bharu via a lift from our hostel owners, then an 8hr bus journey to KL (we set off at 9pm and arrived at 5am the next day). Being in KL now, we thought great, this is easy from here, but not so the airport [View Full Entry]

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To anyone reading this. As you may have noticed, travelblog suffered a large crash recently promptly ending with all of my blogs being lost. I have managed to recover a certain number of them if not partially, then completely but there remain sevaral which I may have lost forever. If anyone has a copy saved or printed or anything like that I would be so relieved/happy to be able to fully recover all of the time and effort which has gone into this. Thank you Aaron [View Full Entry]

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