Hello all. Right, I know that this is over a year late, I know that I’m now safely back in sunny Colchester, I know that most of you have probably heard half of the following stories already, but I don’t care. It seemed criminal not to at least round off the South East Asian leg of my trip so I’ve added one last blog (for the time being) to tell you all about my final few weeks in Thailand. If you read it excellent, please leave a comment, if not no worries, it’s more for my benefit that anyone else’s!! The [View Full Entry]

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We decided on a grand plan for the rest of Asia. It took a lot of discussion and debate at the time. There was talk of seeing Central Thailand, Koh Samet and Koh Chang, stopping off at Coral Bungalows for a few days, then a week or two in the Perenthian Islands in Malaysia, however as more drinks flowed we managed to whittle it down to a day trip in Kanchanburi, then directly to Coral for a few more legendary Haad Rin parties with a view to heading down to Malaysia at the end of the trip. Rich James and [View Full Entry]

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Unfortunately the railway from the south ends at Chiang Mai, therefore the only way to get to Pai is by road. During our many an hour at the local internet café we noticed a poster offering a VIP aircon minibus to Pai and at 250 baht it sounded like a steal. We wasted no time in booking it up for the following morning. We boarded to join one other couple and our initial thoughts were that for the first time in South East Asia we might even get the luxury we were promised! We set off and after about half an [View Full Entry]

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Hello Ladies and Gents! Contrary to popular belief, I’m not dead. I am alive and well and certainly not locked up in a Thai prison being charged with sex crimes. I sincerely apologise for the lack of contact over the past……..shit has it really been 6 months!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!? I’ve finally got my arse into gear and started updating the blog so here goes continuing on from where I left off: The evening’s well deserved beer drinking session was great fun, however somewhat subdued compared to our previous South East Asian track record. I think it was mainly to [View Full Entry]

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First things first I am so sorry this has taken so long. First we were waiting for photos, then my diary ran out and I couldn't find another one, then there was a hurricane, then a tank ran over our local internet cafe. Also, I just got lazy. Apologies for that. Right, this one is a big bastard so I don't blame you if you can't be asred to read it, but you should do because it's taken me all day to write!!!!!!!!! One more thing before I start - You see those little icons at the top of the page [View Full Entry]

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After finding out that we weren’t booked onto the Gibbon experience, we basically had to sit tight and hope that we could capitalise on somebody else’s misfortune. We were told to come back and check on the evening of the 26th. The night before was spent stewing over the whole situation and by lunchtime on the 26th we had all pretty much come to terms with the fact that we couldn’t do it. I decided to kill some time by having a wander round Huay Xai to see if there was anything that took my interest. I stumbled across a temple [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Luang Prabang and the first thing that struck me was how continental it felt. The main reason for this is the French colonial architecture. As a city it oozes character. It almost feels like you are in a time warp as you can imagine the former capital looking exactly the same now as it did 50 years ago. Luang Prabang as a city is on the World Heritage list which has helped it maintain its sleepy charm. We checked into a reasonably new and very clean guesthouse located in the Historic Temple area of the city. There are [View Full Entry]

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Woke up early on the morning of the 12th and had to rush around buying tickets for Phonsavan with only half an hour to spare. This suited me rather well, as I wanted to make a reasonably sharp exit after checking out of the guesthouse due to the damaged fan. Made it away safely and arrived at the bus station with very little time to spare. After loading our bags onto the roof, we were hurredly ushered onto the bus only to find that our seats were taken. After speaking to the driver, just to ask whether it was ok to [View Full Entry]

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Vientiane as a capital city is amazingly quiet, especially after coming from the chaos that is Hanoi. There is hardly any traffic, the Tuk Tuk drivers take no for an answer the first time you say it and there are hardly any street vendors and beggars tugging at your shirt every 5 minutes. It is like a quiet town by Thai standards, let alone English. We really should have stayed a while longer to have a proper look around, but we all agreed that we wanted to get to Vang Vieng as quickly as we could and spend more time there [View Full Entry]

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We arrived back in Hanoi and booked up our bus to Vientiane in Laos. We had previously considered flying after hearing horror stories from several people about the bus journey between to two cities. After checking our bank balances we found that we really couldn't afford it, also we had received an email from Kiwi Paul to say that his journey was a reasonably comfortable 21 hour trip. The bus was due to pick us up at 6.30pm and we were to arrive at Vientiane at 3.00pm the following day amounting to around 20 hours. We spent the day doing not [View Full Entry]

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