“Where are you going to spend Christmas and New Years?” - it's a question that when travelling at this time of year everyone is asking and asked. After the exhausting Muay Thai training in Chang Mai, two days do nothing on a very slow boat meandering down the very slow Mekong River into laid back Laos and to Luang Prabang really appealed to me. The slow boat lived up to it's reputation, it was slow, but fun, mainly because of the company and new friends I made. You get a lot of time to chat when spending two days on a boat. Day one, river, limestone hills and cliffs, and a stop at a small riverside village that I won't remember the name of. A hundred small children ran out to the boat to greet the ... read more

Current capital of Myanmar, bustling port town on the flat plains alongside the Yangon River. The Myanmar regime was in the process of moving the capital to a secret alternative destination when I arrived, possibly the 5 mile column of army vehicles that were heading away from Yangon as our luxury bus made it's way towards the city was related to this move. Possibly. Or it could have been another inexplicable military movement, redeployment or reinforcement. This blog entry will be short. I spent an entire day in Yangon, problems with the travelblog server meant that I had to get back to Bangkok as quickly as possible. One day to change my ticket and visit Shwedagon Paya, one of the most holy sites in the entire Buddhist world. Shwedagon Paya is impressive, beautiful and gaudy, covered ... read more

The journey from Bagan to Inle was another bus based nightmare, 16 hours on a “mini-bus”. A “mini-bus” in Myanmar is not what the rest of the world would call a “mini-bus” - it's basically a bus where everything has been halved in size, including the space for the passengers, tie that in with 40 years of abuse on Myanmar's terrible roads, and add in a broken seat in front where the entire weight of the passenger is supported by my knee, and this becomes my worst ever bus journey. I emerge from the bus temporarily crippled, some how negotiate a taxi from the bus stop, to the village of Nyaungshwe 11km away. The Remember Inn is our base for the 4 days we stay in and around Inle, it wins the “second best breakfast” in ... read more

Looking south-east from the tropical island of Gili Trawangan the Rinjani Volcano towers disturbingly, dominating Lombok. Clouds gather around it early each afternoon, shrouding the summit from view, thunderstorms rumble and flash distantly, forbidding trespass. The summit of Rinjani is a large crater, remnants of a prehistoric eruption that took the volcano down from heights of around 8,000m to today's 3,726m. Still impressive, and still very high. Nearly 3 times the height of Britain's highest peak. (Ben Nevis 1,343 m) I'd asked everyone I'd met on Gili Trawangan about climbing the volcano. The few that wanted to climb it conveniently had other commitments. Maybe hanging out on a beach is not the best place to meet adventurers prepared to spend three days climbing a very wet and very high volcano. I went across to Lombok alone ... read more

ap·pre·hen·sion (ăp'rĭ-hĕn'shən) pronunciation n. 1. Fearful or uneasy anticipation of the future; dread. 2. The act of seizing or capturing; arrest. 3. The ability to apprehend or understand; understanding. 1. Fearful or uneasy anticipation of the future; dread. (well not dread - too strong) 2005 October 1st - I was sitting in another crumbling hostel in Kuala Lumpur, killing a day or two with movies and shopping, waiting for my flight to Bali. In Kuta, Bali's main tourist center Islamic extremists were carrying out suicide bombings. 27 people died as a result, and hundreds were injured, many seriously. I had a ticket to fly to Bali on Monday 3rd October, not much time to make a decision and a tough one as well. I spent Sunday researching, reading the reports, scouring the forums, and trying to ... read more