The hustle and bustle of Luang Prabang Kate Sorry for the shortage of blogs over the last week, we were in Laos and internet access was both expensive and slow, not a great combination. So now we will bombard you with blogs on Laos. We flew from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang in Laos with Lao Airlines. It only took an hour, in which time they managed to feed us (a strange combination of two battered crab sticks, a croissant and a green and purple cake) and give us drinks. We flew over lots of mountains covered in trees, and when the pilot announced that we were about to land, we could see no city to land in, it was still all forest. It was only when we got very low that we saw houses. The ... read more

Kate We went from Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai by train, 10 hours through some pretty spectacular scenery, it was no Trans-Pennine Express I'm telling you. We travelled 2nd class which meant a soft reclining seat, air con and food. It was abit like being on an aeroplane, people fed us every 3 hours or so! We also got in flight entertainment from a little baby sat in front of us who seemed to think that Kris was the hairiest man he had ever seen (Thai's dont tend to be very hairy) and pulled faces and pulled Kris's leg hair for the whole journey. We got to Chiang Mai pretty late and got a taxi to try and find somewhere to stay. Loads of places were closed already or full so we got a room in the ... read more

YOU!!! Kris Note: A farang is a foreigner like me and Kate. So we left Kanchanaburi to visit the "Elephants & friends foundation" just outside the town. Its a titchy little camp in the middle of nowhere where a gang of mahouts (or elephant trainers/drivers) look after elephants rescued from mistreatment in various forms from dodgy tourist camps to industry. There are 6 elephants there in total - 5 old females and one randy 20 year old male called Sidoh. We got there and were shown to our hut (it really was a hut in the jungle) by one of the non-english speaking staff. Then we met the semi-english speaking owner, Phot. He was very enthusiastic about everything! He immediately told us that John, the long-term Australian volunteer was not around cos he was riding a ... read more

Kate Well on day 3 in Thailand we have finally been to see some real Thai sights. We set off this morning to explore some of the must sees of the part of Bangkok we are staying in. The Grand Palace is only a 10 minute walk from our hotel so we decided to go on foot. In the guidebook we had been warned that people would try and stop you going to the palace and try to get you to go in their tuk tuk on a shopping trip to various tailors and jewellery shops which generally turn out to be a complete con, but we werent prepared for how persistent they could be. After ignoring the first few tuk tuk drivers who promised to take us to lots of other temples, we were stopped ... read more

KRIS: Okay, we didn't actually tour Qatar, but given we changed planes in the capital and that we were bombarded with adverts for the country through the entire journey, I feel it deserves a mention. All I know about the country is that when I was younger I had a Comodore 64 footy game called striker in which Qatar were the crappest team and ran really slowly. Now I know so much more. Did you know there are more oryxes than anywhere in the world in Qatar?? Well there are. You can visit an oryx farm if you stay in Doha. For those of you who are a bit ignorant an oryx is a goat-thing. Kate loves them. She learned all about the successful captive breeding project in her degree and masters. Yawn. We landed in ... read more