Pete Townshend

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 I set about booking our mini bus back to Chiang Mai then catching a sleeper train direct to Bangkok where we would stop briefly and hop over to Kanchanaburi. We said our worried goodbyes to ... read more

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 do with the fact everybody was truly exhausted from the previous three days’ exertions. It consisted of a few beers and a chat to the soundtrack of Gary and James’ guitar playing, not to mention some interesting Spanish guitar ... read more

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 called Wat Jom Khao Manilat. This temple is set at the top of a large hill overlooking the town. It is accessible via a large ‘naga’ flanked staircase. The temple itself is very nice and ... read more

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 sit in any seat, he promptly shooed the mother and child out of our seat and made them sit elswhere. At the time I felt quite bad about it, however it was certainly worth it ... read more

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 very much at all, just preparing ourselves mentally for what deep down we all knew was going to be a disastrous trip! At around 6.15pm we were finishing off some dinner and saying our goodbyes ... read more