BillandSue

We travel from Kota Kinabalu to Hong Kong airport and decide to get the airport express train to Kowloon. Twenty Four minutes later we arrive at Kowloon Station and jump onto a free shuttle bus to our hotel, the Shangri-La Kowloon - where we have booked an Horizon Harbour View room - a last treat after the low level accommodation of the last couple of weeks! We get the key to our room, which is on the 21st floor. It far exceeds our expectations; it is huge with a big floor to ceiling picture window give a spectacular view overlooking the harbour. We get a welcome pot of china tea which we drink while looking over the water. After relaxing for a while we make use of a great shower and head to the Horizon lounge ... read more

We left Bangkok early to catch our flight to Borneo via Hong Kong, after travelling for 12 hours we reach our hotel The Shangri-La, Tangjun, Kota Kinabalu. The hotel is huge and after checking in we go to our room to freshen up and then off to find some food. We decide to eat in the hotels Cantonese restaurant, which on entering decide it has no atmosphere but not quite sure why. We order and find crispy duck can only be ordered whole so we settle for a different duck and pancakes which they seemed to be able to serve half a duck to us!! We also ordered for our main course two dishes, one was stir fried beef with black bean sauce, very nice and the other we ordered deep fried grouper with soy sauce ... read more

First proper day of our Intrepid Tour of Northern Thailand. We start by walking to the river pier, jumping into a larg longtail boat which sets off for a tour of the canals on the Thornbury side of Bangkok. These canals are used like water versions of roads, with main canals, side canals and very narrow sois. We pass residential areas and the temple area where we feed 'lucky' bread to the fish - for a small donation of course. We also see a longtail construction barge and a garbage longtail !! We are then of to another Wat - this one is very famous - The Reclining Budda - and it is absolutely huge. Golf (our tour guide) is very knowledgable and explains all about the temple, its construction and what all the various buildings ... read more

Today we are off to the Khao Sok National Park for 4 days and 3 nights. We get picked up from our hotel by a private 4wd air con pick up truck - very nice - for a 2 1/2 hour drive to a place called Treetops which is on the edge of the National Park. After driving for about 1 1/2 hours we pass a resort where our driver tells us about 4500 people died in the tsunami. We drive past a 20 metre or so police boat that was washed 1.5km inland by the tsunami and is now a memorial. The boat is very large and you realise how bad the destruction was even though most places have now been rebuilt. Another feature we saw on the drive was many large pictures of the ... read more

We boarded our ferry from Ko Mook to take us to Phi Phi at 13.45 and arrived eventually at Phi Phi at about 17.30 a bit later than scheduled as when we stopped at Ko Lanta for passengers to get off the captain made a right hash of docking, it took him about 20mins. When we got off the ferry Chris was waiting by the dock for us, it was great to see his smiling face after 4 months away. Unfortunately there was no transport, boat or trolley to take us and our heavy backpacks to our accommodation so we set off walking, glad Chris was with us to help with bags. We finally reach Andaman Beach Resort where we are staying for the next 6 nights - after dumping our bags in our room Bill ... read more