Hi all, just a quick update from the last few days, it's not been quite as action packed as the North, the South is a lot more chilled and most of the activities revolve around the gorgeous beaches and scenery. The flights to Phuket were short and sweet. I slept (of course, much to glen's growing annoyance :-\ ) and we arrived in Phuket about 4. Our hotel, despite being cheap was lovely, and such a big difference from the tiny crappy room without proper windows from Chiang Mai! We quickly changed and then headed down to check out the beaches, which were about a minute walk from our place. We were absolutely stunned by how beautiful they were and how happy we were to be in the sun and sea! :-D We grabbed a late ... read more

After leaving the waterfall we made our way back towards the elephant camp where next to it is the bamboo rafting place. We were told to leave all our belongings in the bus and not to wear our shoes, we thought this might have been a bit much as we only expected to get our feet a little wet. We were very wrong! The bamboo rafts were approximately 10-12 meters long and tied together with, what appeared to be, old cut up bike tires! Our little Thai guys shot them in the water and we went 5 per raft with the Thai guy leading at the front steering us with a large piece of bamboo he stuck in to the water and one of us at the back steering from there in the same fashion. The ... read more

Hi All, arrived in Chiang Mai this morning at about 6 our time. The ''VIP'' bus was so far from VIP, it was probably the rockiest ride ever and resembled a ferry on wheels, pretty much felt sick the entire 11hours, especially when we stopped at a 'service station' where the food choices were various pieces of meat in soup, eggs floating in gravy, or a whole leg of some unidentified animal. Glen and I decided to go to the shop and opted for some crisps and biscuits... very adventurous. :-) We tried to get some sleep, but it was just so hard cos we were being thrown about and we had a fat little baldie Thai man sat next to us who made the weirdest and loudest noises in his sleep, waking us up every ... read more