On Sunday my tour group reached its final destination of Singapore. Our guide Hannah made sure we all had a taxi or knew where we were going and then legged it off to the airport back to Bangkok so she could start all over again, ouf! My hostel was lovely, not a bunk bed or cockcroach inside, and wonderful air conditioning! After a bit of lunch and a chat to the girl in my room, I headed off to Sim Lim, a big building that mostly just sold electronics. I thought I'd look for a camera, but in the end I [View Full Entry]

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After our Chinese breakfast in Penang we made our way to the bus station from where we caught our "luxury" coach to Kuala Lumpar. Considering my tour was a basix trip, the bus was indeed rather luxury! It had massive seats (big enough for an American!) that reclined nearly all the way back. My seat was over the wheel though, so as I lay back on my side, the bus kept throwing me up into the air a bit, which was not very relaxing! It was stinking hot in KL, I made the mistake of touching a black rubber bollard and [View Full Entry]

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On Sunday 22nd February our group made the 9 hour drive to Panang, Malaysia. It was nowhere as bad as one might think! I spent the first half of the journey chilling out, listening to Harry Potter and the second half lying across 3 seats sleeping - so no worries! Not long had we been in Malaysia that it started bucketing it down with rain. It had gotten rather tropical in Krabi in the last couple of days, but it really started to rain across the border! In the afternoon we landed into Georgetown, Panang and had a little potter. Panang [View Full Entry]

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Sadly I got my camera stolen in Kuala Lumpa, so I don't have very many pictures for you, I have kind of borrowed these ones from facebook... I may some more in a few weeks, maybe. This partly explains the long delay in writing the final section of my blog. On Monday 16th Feb I took my third night train in 8 days, the novelty was wearing a bit thin... The group got off at Surat Thani and took a two hour van drive to Khao Sok National Park. We stayed in an awesome tropical jungle hotel, - great views, cool [View Full Entry]

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On my last day in Chiang Mai I spent the time having a walk with a retired French man (practising for my job which starts in about 5 weeks), getting my toe nails painted green and sitting in a sauna. We all took the night train back to Bangkok, for some reason the seats were designed for 1 and a half people to sit on them, not two, so this time our card games were rather squished! We arrived back into the big city around 7:30am, checked into our hotel then went off in search of cheap and yummy breakfast I [View Full Entry]

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So after our night out in Chiang Mai, we had to summon the energy to get up and at 'em. It wasn't too hard really, I think it was just Dong who was concerned. *He's* the one who can't take his beer... We got into a dodgy taxi/bus with our packs with our stuff in for the next three days. We had to stop by the police to let them know where we were going, in case anything untoward happened to us! We then popped to a little town to get crickets (I didn't fancy one) and oreos, then did lots [View Full Entry]

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After our early start on this second day we arrived at a tiny village, maybe it wasn't a village, I'm not sure... anyway, we got there a little before lunch time. We sat and chilled for a while, watching the elephants, Thai people jumping and then had noodles for lunch. They were literally packet ramen noodles with a bit of cabbage thrown in, actually quite good, if a little carby... After lunch we climbed onto our elephants. They were well kept I thought, in their natural habitat and not tied up or painted. I saw some kept in very bad conditions [View Full Entry]

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This was one of the best things I've done in my whole trip. So much fun and yummy, but useful and educational too! When I travelled in India I had an opportunity to do a cooking class, but it was the one day I lay in bed all day because of Delhi Belly. Better luck this time though (so far). At the start of the morning each member of the group had to pick three dishes from the "menu," lots of yummy Thai stuff. We then all toddled of to the local market to get everything we needed. Thankfully we didn't [View Full Entry]

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I didn't do too much on my third day in Bangkok, just got to know my group a bit before we had to take the night train to Chiang Mai. Now I love night trains, I think they're a brilliant idea and this one didn't disappoint. We got on the train fairly early, so there was plenty of time for card games, Lizzy's iPod disco (TM) and a feast! Some people didn't appreciate it but I got chowing down quite happily. I couldn't really sleep that well when it came to it though, the carriage lights don't get turned off so [View Full Entry]

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And the world's your oyster, according to the musical Chess. I'm still not sure about that, but I definately love Bangkok and it certainly hasn't been as scary as I thought it might be! I arrived on Friday 6th after a rather boring flight from Japan. My flight time had been pushed back about 8 hours and I'd forgotten to tell the transfer company this, in revenge for this they made me wait 2 hours for someone to share a taxi with into Bangkok after I made them get to the airport for 5am only for me to not show up. [View Full Entry]

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