Happy New Year everybody! Hope you have all recovered from your celebrations and the final excesses of 2006. Thanks to Tom's friend Toby, who owns a bar out here, we were able to celebrate the New Year not just as a couple but with a group of people who live here on Phi Phi and know the ropes. Our celebrations started earlier than usual, at 12 in the afternoon, when we boarded a private speed boat so we could go cruising around the bays here in style. A lot of snorkelling, swimming and beer consumption was had and we watched the [View Full Entry]

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If you're coming to Krabi in the next two weeks be warned, Ao Nang is full! Prices are high... very high! Crowds of holidaying families litter the beach (literally as well as metaphorically), the locals are unfriendly (who can blame them - so many complaining tourists) and you'll struggle to find a room below 2,000 Baht for a night! On the bright side I hear it's not so bad after high season so withold your cash for now and postpone your visit for a month. You shouldn't avoid it completely, Krabi is nice, the cliffs are spectacular, the beach isn't bad [View Full Entry]

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To break up the long journey from Chiang Mai back to Bangkok, and for a change of scenery, we stopped off in Ayuthaya (pronounced: A-yoo-tay-a), Thailand's historic former capital city. Ayuthaya is a mid-sized modern city interspersed with relics of a dominant past. Historic temples and palaces, are scattered throughout the city dating back to 1350 when it was the capital of Siam, up until 1767, when it was sacked by Burmese invaders. We chartered a tuk-tuk for a couple of hours to see the best preserved and most magnificent of the sights. The city is an island, surrounded by three [View Full Entry]

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Hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas day; that the Queen's speech was to the point, the turkey was thawed properly and that this year's film on the Beeb is one you haven't seen before. RIP Pauline Fowler.... We are missing you all incredibly and wish that we could be whisked back to Blighty for this week particularly. We've chosen to spend Christmas in Pai in Northern Thailand. It's a lovely hillside town with a distinctly Green Fields at Glastonbury vibe. As we've opted for the hills, its very cold here at night (fleeces, gloves and hats) so its feeling [View Full Entry]

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Quite possibly we completed our longest day of travelling on our trip so far, when we made the journey from Phnom Penh to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. We were up at 5.30am to catch a morning flight to Bangkok and on arrival, transferred to the central train station to buy our rail tickets. We killed 5 hours by getting lost in the back-streets of Bangkok, travelling on the river taxis on the murky Chao Phraya river to the Royal Palace and even squeezed in a visit to the National Cultural Centre before closing time. At 19.30 we boarded the night [View Full Entry]

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Whilst Siem Reap offers the opportunity to glimpse the glorious past of the ancient Khmer empire, Phnom Penh (PP) is the gateway to the much more recent evils of the Khmer Rouge regime, under the leadership of Pol Pot. Understanding what Cambodian people have had to face only 25 years ago, set all the emotions going - anger that is could be allowed to happen, the deepest of sympathy that the poeple had to endure such evils and anguish in the knowledge that despite the lessons we've learnt, genocide still continues to rear its ugly head, right now in Darfur, and [View Full Entry]

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The most practical way to reach Battambang from Siem Reap is by bus - the road is mostly tarmacked (unlike the notorious Poipet to Siem Reap road) so the journey isn't too arduous. But, if like us you want to do it the rewarding way, you have to go by boat. Admittedly it's a little more expensive at $12, which is certainly not the local price and you have to endure between 6 and 12 hours on a hard bench or plastic chair with nowhere to move (it's sardines). Or, as one of our shipmates suffered, have a 1 year old [View Full Entry]

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First off some quick lessons from the Khmer lexicon. The word Wat is Khmer (Cambodian) for Temple and Angkor is the name of the city and seat of the great Khmer Empire that once ruled most of South East Asia with its centre in what is now, Cambodia. Next we'll start from the beginning, not as far back as the Khmer empire but to 8 months ago when we were still in the UK making our last minute travelling plans. Back then, Cambodia did not figure, despite friends (namely Pete and Adrian Rands) telling us that we'd be missing out if [View Full Entry]

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Entering Penang's Georgetown is like stepping into a different world - a world away from the Malaysia we'd come to know, that is. It's like stepping back in time to a town with a very chaotic and cramped, Chinese heart - it is the only part of Malaysia where the Chinese ethnic group is in the majority. It's really bustling and congested but that gives it a certain charm. It also has a full-on party-fuelled atmosphere and weekends are noticeable. With a Chinese majority, alcohol is the fuel of choice and big bars and clubs are prominent - it's a long [View Full Entry]

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Even before visiting the small beach fringed island of Pangkor, I knew this entry would be brief. "We came, we lazed, we...." - no that's about it really. We descended upon Pangkor Island (Pulao Pangkor) off the west coast, as a last minute change of plan. We'd originally hoped to head east to the Perhentian island but wise Malays warned us that due to the seasonal monsoon weather on the east of the peninsula, we'd be wise not to. A quick phone call confirmed that everything had shut down until after December. Our scuba diving, PADI hopes were dashed but on [View Full Entry]

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