I returned from Luang Prabang to Chiang Rai (north of Chiang Mai, and close to the Golden Triangle - Thai, Laos and Burma borders) for my second week of the summer schools. As it turns out, this was a whole lot more difficult than the first week, so I’m glad that at least I had that prior week’s teaching experience behind me. We had a total of 24 children for this session (names being Oil, Tine, Pai, Joom, Net, Ying, Ton, Tom, Peem, Pop, Nok, Pet, Ten, Gig, Nuei, Beer, Pol, Wiw, Q, Golf, Dan, Jip, Pat & Nice), ranging in [View Full Entry]

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So school was out let early on Friday (since I’m the headmaster!) and by mid-afternoon, I was winging it over to Luang Prabang, courtesy of Lao Airways, an hour’s flight from Chiang Mai. Not as scary as it might sound, as the aircraft was quite new, and the reservations clerk did me a big favour by putting me in seat 1A (not first class, I can assure you!), but which let me be first in line of the 30 or so foreigners (‘farang’) seeking ‘visa on arrival’. I hadn’t booked any accommodation up front, but they fixed me up with something [View Full Entry]

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Well, here I am back up in the far north of Thailand, back "on duty" for a couple of weeks for the Dr Sem Foundation, my first visit here since August last year (see blog#1 below). For those who subscribed to our travel blogs late last year, and expected to see something more exciting, please hit the exit button straight away. But I had a number of requests to document my travels and experiences up here in Thailand, so this is for those lucky viewers. Basically, I have been asked to help out at two different summer camps this time round, [View Full Entry]

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One of the great disadvantages of the various TV travel documentaries on channels such as Discovery and National Geographic is that there aren't too many surprise venues left in the world these days. As an example, while we loved our visit to Machu Picchu, it wasn't a total surprise, as I guess we had viewed that location many times previously on telly. But I'm pleased to report a pleasant surprise on our first viewing of the Iguazu Falls. Not only was the scope and magnitude of them greater than we had anticipated, but no TV channel can quite reproduce the thundering [View Full Entry]

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The only reason I have included this as a seperate blog is that it is another country! Before travelling to Buenos Aires, we had a number of people telling us we "must go" over to Colonia in Uruguay for a day trip from BA, because it would take you back "several centuries" in time. Given that it was only a 1 hour cruise on a hydrofoil across the Rio de la Plata, and we were advised that Uruguay customs would be no hassle, we decided to take the advice. Well it certainly seems to be a popular spot, judging from the [View Full Entry]

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Well, after the hustle and bustle of La Paz, we were looking forward to a more laid back time in Buenos Aires. We certainly were happy to be able to hop into a clean taxi, pay on the meter instead of haggling over prices, and have a relatively honk-free trip, and while we enjoyed the change of pace, there were a couple of elements of life here we struggled slightly with. Initially, we toured the main city area, focussing on the triangle of Plaza de Mayo, Plaza de la Republica and Plaza San Martin, since we were staying near the latter [View Full Entry]

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So at long last, we finally start to move downhill again - that is if you call a reduction of 200m to 3,600m going downhill. La Paz is quite different from those places we have visited over the last few weeks. It is a big bustling city, all wrapped up in its own needs, and with barely a thought for the tourist apart from one very small area. It reminds me in some ways of the Indian sub-continent, and especially my recent trip to Bangladesh, with people, animals, transport and produce all appearing to be fighting for the same small piece [View Full Entry]

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Hard to believe, but our trip out of Cusco to Puno, which is situated on the shores of Lake Titicaca, was to actually take us to a higher altitude, with the lake at around 3,800m the highest navigatible lake in the world (any dispute this time, you statisticians?). Our trip down was on a very comfortable bus called the Inca Express, and while the total journey took around 9 hours, it did include 4 scenic stops and 1 for a buffet lunch. The stops included ruins and markets at Raqchi, photos of which were shown in the Cusco blog; a great [View Full Entry]

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Further to the note below, I have managed to get around the loss of my notebook computer and have today published two blogs - one covering Cusco and the Sacred Valley, and the other the famed Machu Picchu. Because the dates of these visits were last week, they are behind these last two ´advisory´ blogs, so you will need to scroll back a couple of entries to read them. Unfortunately, I have run into a further problem due the loss of my computer. The photos taken by my new camera are too large (3,200 x 2,400 = 3,500KB each photo) and [View Full Entry]

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Hi folks, I regret to advise it has not been a good week for the old farts on the technical front. Firstly, we lost our camera a few days ago, and today our notepad computer has died on us. Wrt the camera, we had just finished a tour of the Inca ruins of the Sacred Valley near Cusco,when we took a motobike taxi over a heavily cobbled road to our hotel. Given we had the camera (with a hundred or so photos from the ruins that day) at the end of the days travels, but not later at the hotel, we [View Full Entry]

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