If Ko Samui was our haven of peacefulness and relaxation, Ko Pha Ngan (pronounced Pah-Nyang) was the polar opposite. Had Rin was our destination for the culmination of our journey to Thailand and was the home of the world famous Full Moon Party. 30 years ago this year, two guys had the idea to have a birthday party on the beach for one of them in Had Rin. They organised a few friends and a DJ to provide the tues and partied on into the night and then most of the morning. It appears that quite a few more people than [View Full Entry]

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And so with every great gathering there must come a parting of the ways !! Our little group of intrepid explorers were to go their seperate ways and discover new and exciting things........to tell each other about when we met up again in 6 days time!! Yes folks, it was not so much "farewell" as "see you next Wednesday" for the twelve of us. Lee and I were going to stay on in Bangkok for a few nights once we had returned frfom Chiang Mai, while the others were heading of to Koh Phi Phi (pronounced pee pee for all you [View Full Entry]

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It's fair to say that you know that your not on any normal "holiday" when the day after you have been sitting stroking a 300 pound striped moggy, you're waking up to the fact that you are boarding an overnight train to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand to go for a two day trek through the jungle to stay with the hill tribes in that region of the country. Chiang Mai is 15 hour train journey north from Bangkok, so as an internationally recognised backpacker law, this means getting an overnight train there to avoid paying for a nights [View Full Entry]

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After the exertions of our trip to The Grand Palace the day before we decided to go on a day trip to see the sights outside of Bangkok. Given that it takes a particular brand of psycho to drive in Bangkok, car hire ain’t such boom industry as in other cities so you need to enlist the services of a tour guide and suitably unstable bus driver. Our trip was to consist of a trip to the floating market about two hours outside Bangkok, then a trip to see the Bridge over the River Kwai and the death railway. A stop [View Full Entry]

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Darwin to Bangkok via Singapore isn't the worst journey you could undertake. The flights are only two and a half hours long and you get a nice wee break in Singapore to have a look around the airport. If you're flying with Tiger Airways however, you get probably the plane with the least amount of leg room ever built. In Singapore too, you also get your own special terminal. You see, all the people who have a bit of cash and fly Thai or Singapore Airlines, companies with a bit of clout land at the normal airport terminals. Tiger Airways passengers [View Full Entry]

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The Ghan is one of the most famous railway journeys in the world. It runs from Adelaide in the South of Oz to Darwin in the North and took about 30 years to complete. Our leg of the journey took us from Alice springs in the middle, the rest of the way to Darwin at the top end of Australia. Darwin also drinks the most beer per head of any major town or city in the world. Amazing what you can learn off the bottle top of a XXXX Gold stubbie. Alice Springs station is a fairly inauspicious setting to be [View Full Entry]

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Absolute euphoria I think best describes our mood getting on the bus to Cairns. Drunk as skunks describes it pretty well too but we'll go with euphoric for just now. We arrived in Cairns at about 6 in the morning, after 7 hours on the bus and little or no sleep on account that i was folded up like an old clothes horse behind Lee, who had commandeered the chair I was supposed to be sitting on during the night. We put our bags in storage in Cairns and once again headed off for breakfast to saok up the previous nights [View Full Entry]

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"Las Vegas of North Queensland", "Queenslands hidden gem !!", "Paradise Found !!". Just some of the comments that will never, ever be written about Home Hill !! The signs were there of course. When we got on the bus in Airlie Beach and told the driver we were going to Home Hill, he looked at me like I'd walked into his house on Christmas Day and peed on his kids. "Home Hill ?? Are you sure ??". "Er, yeah I'm sure". "Well I don't have any baggage tags for Home Hill, no-one normally gets off there". It should really have set [View Full Entry]

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I think we were a bit breathless still from the Fraser Island trip to be honest that we didn't really notice the fact that we had a 14 hour bus trip from Rainbow Beach to Airlie Beach. Oz is so big that the bus journeys seem to blend into one another and you get used to it. "Just down the road" to a North Queenslander means anything between 2 and 12 hours. Understatement is a way of life in these parts. We'd booked 3 days and 2 nights abourd The Atlantic Clipper for Lee's birthday, and so any trip to The [View Full Entry]

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There was a point during our trip to Fraser Island where we were sitting on a beach with nothing but the moon for light and nothing to see but sand for 20 miles either side of us and I was feeling really frustrated for some reason and couldn't figure out why so I told the rest of the group to see if anyone else was the same. One of the girls in the group said, "it's because unless you're here, you can't tell anyone else how amazing this is" That pretty much sums up Fraser Island. Fraser Island is the [View Full Entry]

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