Taking advantage of the round the world plane ticket we decided to stopover in Australia and visit my brother Alan and his wife Louise in Adelaide. To make the most of the stop we arrived in Melbourne, took the Overlander train to Adelaide, and drove back from Adelaide to Melbourne, before flying onward to New Zealand. It was strange being back in a western city and there were some readjusting to do. Crossing the road was no longer an adventure but routine. Being able to flush the toilet paper down the toilet was an everyday luxury. Taxi drivers were not insulted [View Full Entry]

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Ko Samui, a great place to sunbathe, scuba dive and practise your Swedish. The last because it is very popular with Swedes who easily outnumber other nationalities on holiday there. This is also why you can order meatballs in some local restaurants. It seems to be recovering well from the tsunami, which hit it badly. We saw physical evidence of this in the resort we were staying in. The chalets were well away from the beach, but you could easily walk to them barefoot because of the thick sand leading to them. It turns out that the sand had been deposited [View Full Entry]

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A few photographs of the later stages of out trip to Thailand attached. [View Full Entry]

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Ko Phi Phi was one of the beach resorts most severely hit by the tsunami. However, you would not know it unless you were told or you happened upon the memorial commemorating those who died on that day. No. Ko Phi Phi is well and truely open for business again. There are only a few streets but each and every one is crowded with bars (including an Irish one). restaurants and souvenir shops. There are even stalls selling buckets of cocktails. Not ready mixed cocktails. Each bucket contains the various bottles of alochol and mixers required to make a particular cocktail. [View Full Entry]

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Phuket, one of the most popular destinations in Thailand for western tourists. Why. The beaches, the sun, the snorkeling, the beer. We thought that there must be some reason why so many people went there so we decided to have a look for ourselves. We started in Phuket, which is very popular with package tour companies etc. Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes a place is a tourist trap for good reasons. Being tourists as much as anyone else we were looking forward to a break from having to fend for ourselves. We stayed in Phuket town itself, planning to use it [View Full Entry]

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After Pai we went to Mae Hong Son which is a town not far from the Burmese (Myanmar) border. It was quite an adventure getting there, and not because you had to pass through several Thai army checkpoints on the way. The adventure was the transport itself, an ancient rickety bus. We thought that there were two types of bus going from Pai to Mai Hong Son, the normal daily bus and a more expensive mini van. We had planned to use the mini bus, which although more expensive would be quicker, more comfortable and could be booked in advance. Alas, [View Full Entry]

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For New Year 2007/2008 we made our way to Pai, which is a small town in the Thai highlands. The first night we were there we saw unusual lights in the sky. They were pale yellow and they drifted slowly across the sky. It turned out that they were festive lights, set aloft as a prayer to the gods. The actual light was a cylinder made out of paper, with a small burner at one end. You lit the burner, waited till the cylinder had gained some buoyancy from the hot air, and then hoisted it aloft. Hoist too soon and [View Full Entry]

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A [View Full Entry]

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We were in Chiang Mai over the christmas period 2007, including christmas day. Deprived of the opportunity to sit around all day, eating, drinking and watching television, we decided to go on an Asian cookery course. This turned out to be a better decision than we had anticipated. A number of restaurants in Chiang Mai were offering "traditional" christmas dinners and we subsequently met a couple of American girls who had decided to opt for one of these. They said they should have asked exactly what was meant by "traditional" as the dinner bore no resemblence to any festive meal that [View Full Entry]

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On arriving in Thailand we immediately went to Chiang Mai in the north of the country. We had intended to do some trekking but it was so hot and humid we gave up on that idea and just hung around the bars and cafes, of which there are a good number in Chiang Mai. We did drag ourself away from the air conditioning for the occassional venture into the countryside, one of which was a visit to the Royal elephant centre. As the centre rehabialites injured elephants for free it helps to cover its costs by allowing visitors to see [View Full Entry]

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