We had left Kuala Lumpur with two stowaways a.k.a Rachel & Ellie (admittedly they weren't stowaways but now our party had doubled) on the 9am coach to Singapore. Our coach to the border was a relatively luxurious one with more leg room than a Quantas Airbus A380. After a brief food stop at the Malaysian equivalent of Little Chef we filled in our departure and arrival cards for the impending border crossing. Now I say impending because as we were filling in the cards the supporting information states that you are not allowed to bring in certain goods that include alcohol and tobacco. I think the theory being that it stops people from Singapore doing alcohol runs i.e. Dover-Calais runs before Summer and Christmas and as it is a border control it alleviates the illegal smuggling ... read more

After our umptienth bus, taxi, ferry, bus, taxi journey from destination to destination we arrived in Penang. We had booked a guesthouse earlier on in the day, well we had booked three just in case as it was the weekend of Chinese New Year, but we had told all of them we would be there before 6pm. Yet due to the usual delays we arrived later than we expected so we were frantically making calls from the ferry trying to ensure each of the guesthouses didnt sell our reservation. The guesthouse we were keen on had sold our room so we were left with two other options. We arrived in the centre of Penang and got dropped off at our first guesthouse. We had provisionally booked a dorm room but what we found was a dozen ... read more

On our original trip to KPN we had planned to make our way north to Ko Tao but Pong our Blue lotus properitor warned us against it as there was a huge storm brewing. This was the reason we changed our plans and at the time we all thought that we had missed out on a chance to go to an Island famous for its scuba-diving. Fortunately for Kate and I our new dalliance with Thailand had meant we could re-visit the places we loved and go to the places that we missed out. In this instance it was Ko Tao. The island is only 3 hours from KPN and due to a free pick-up from the docks we were booked into our room by lunch time. We had booked into a place called Freedom and ... read more

We arrived on West beach nice and early as that is where we were getting out boat to Phi Phi. We waited outside one of the posh hotels on the West beach as the boat was running late and ate our breakfast of fruit and yoghurt bought from the 7-11. As Phi Phi is about 45 minutes round the Pennisula from the West beach you can see the boat coming round the headland; as the boats cannot come in that close to the beach we had to get long tail boats out to the bigger boat. The journey to Phi Phi was really nice and we managed to squeeze a seat on top deck and enjoyed the views whilst reading books and listening to music. I had given up on trying to find space on the ... read more

After the short but very enjoyable stay in Siem Riep and a new tattoo in tow it was off to Bangkok and the much anticipated arrival of Papa Brough. As Kieran and the rest of the gang will tell you I had been looking forward to seeing my Dad for so long and knew that the departure of Cambodia and arrival of Thailand meant that I was going to be seeing him very soon-I was so excited! We searched (as we always do) around all the travel companies and bus companies in Siem Riep for the cheapest price to Bangkok. We finally settled on booking it through the hostel we had stayed at as they picked us up from the hostel and there'd be no lugging round the rucksacks which made things a hell of a ... read more