Our hotel, the "Blue Star Guesthouse", is located on River Khwae Road, which runs parallel to the river. We pick a beautiful little wooden bungalow on stilts at the back of the hotel. Our balcony looks over to the river. I'm a bit worried we'll be flooded with mozzies but it turns out there aren't any really at all round here... I'll try not to waffle on in this entry - the photos will speak for themselves. Suffice to say that Kanchanaburi is a town with a fascinating albeit painful history, but one which has an awful lot going for it. [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Kanchanaburi on 22nd June. Leaving Bangkok immediately after writing the previous entry, we got a taxi to Thonburi, an old district of Bangkok on the other side of the Chao Phrayaa. An interesting note - did you know that the word "Bangkok" doesn't exist in Thai ? In Thai the capital is somewhat optimistically named Krung Thep, or "City of Angeles". Bangkok is apparently the deformation of the name of a place somewhere around Thonburi. Try Googling "full name of Bangkok" and you'll see it's quite a mouthful. Anyway, we get to Thonburi. Thonburi makes Ekamai lo [View Full Entry]

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Actually the internet here is very cheap and we've a few hours to kill before our bus to Kanchanaburi...we had a little wander 'round Banglamphu. It's an amazingly active commercial district that's completely mind-boggling. The Thais all buy their breakfasts and snacks (in Thai gin len or "eating for fun" !) at little roadside stalls. We eschewed the ubiquitous and rather boring hotel breakfasts for some more traditional fare. I had a sandwich made from slices of buttered brioche, dipped on one side in sugar and grilled over coals, then slathered in condensed milk (swoon) and sandwi [View Full Entry]

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We're back in Bangkok. We caught the bus from Koh Chang back to Bangkok at 2pm and only pulled into Ekamai Station in Bangkok a couple of hours ago. The trip from Laem Ngop to Bangkok took us through the lush countryside of Trat, Chanthaburi and Rayong Provinces. These are major fruit growing areas of Thailand and for most of the way the roads were lined with markets selling all manner of exotic fruit. Most in abundance were durians and rambutans (neither of which are our favourites), which were being sold in mountains ! We were also constantly being overtaken by [View Full Entry]

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Hello all ! We've been in Koh Chang...how long ? It's strange but I've lost all concept of time things are so laid back here. Any more laid back and everyone would be comatose...4 nights, I remember now. This is a perfect place to acclimatise and unwind before we start a 6-week period of much movement around the region. Koh Chang isn't the hippy paradise it once was, the guidebook tells us. Well I'd like to have seen what it was like then in that case ! We're staying in a small group of bungalows going by the name of "KB [View Full Entry]

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Alarm went off at 5.20am...Groan...Super-efficient that I am I packed the bags last night so we could wake up as late as humanly possible. If you call 5.20am late ! Based on the time it took us to get to the bus station halfway across Bangkok yesterday, we needed to be in a taxi at 6.15am heading for Ekamai Bus Station. We were expecting the traffic to be appalling. According to the lady who sold me the tickets yesterday we would have to contend with the city's legion of civil servants going to their offices by car. As it turns out, [View Full Entry]

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We wake up to the first full day of our trip. It's now dawning upon us that we are going to be away from home for a long time ! A fantastic and frightening thought at the same time...Still, there are things to be done today, mainly organising our trip to Koh Chang, where we intend to head tomorrow. The entails catching a bus from Bangkok to Laem Ngop (interesting one to pronounce, that one) in Thailand's extreme eastern Trat province, and from there a ferry to the island itself. We hop in a taxi to Ekamai Bus Station in the [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Bangkok this afternoon. The flight was pretty uneventful, although I did feel cheated since I slept through most of it and therefore couldn't use the personal video system! Bangkok is hot as always, and especially humid now it's rainy season. We took a taxi into town (the driver mistook my ability to state in Thai our destination for fluency and proceeded to talk to me rapidly in Thai for much of the trip - I managed to understand that it has been a big week in Bangkok due to the presence of dozens of kings, queens and heads [View Full Entry]

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It's 10pm on Saturday night. More or less exactly 48 hours to go until we leave the UK on the first leg of our ten-month trip. Anticipation is gradually turning into mild nerves ! What is to constitute the entirety of our possessions for the next 10 months is laid out on the floor and looks remarkably scant ! [View Full Entry]

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