First up was a walk in criminally high temperatures to the Grand Palace. Gemma was wearing her new top from the market that closely resembles maternity wear. Ed was wearing shorts and so had to borrow some long trousers to enter the temples. There is a lot of treasure crammed into the palace, and plenty of it is gold. Everywhere you look there are brightly coloured stones and intricate carvings, mosaics and pictures. All very impressive if a little hard to establish their purpose. The main attraction though is the Emerald Buddha, a little green guy sitting atop an ENORMOUS [View Full Entry]

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After breakfast we waved farewell to Meredith and wished her safe travels back to the US. Then we hit the market at Chatuchak, following the good advice of Stuart and Nicola. It’s an incredible place, mostly because it’s massive, and getting lost is definitely part of the experience. You can buy basically anything in there, including a surprisingly wide range of live animals. It’s lucky that we’re backpacking and live a long way from Bangkok because we could have bought an awful lot of stuff if getting it home wasn’t such a stumbling block. They even have little [View Full Entry]

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Our 4 days on Ko Tao feel like a lot more, which has to be the sign of a good break. We checked-out full of energy and ready to hit the sightseeing challenges in the cities again. We travelled to the port in the back of a pick-up truck with an irritating Israeli we’d had the misfortune of talking to before. He sneered at Ed (who was wearing his ‘Argentina’ t-shirt), “Are you from Argentina?” with a look of disgust on his face. Ed said no, and asked if he was. He didn’t like this. Weirdo. We caught the ferry to [View Full Entry]

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Another quiet day so not one that takes much effort to recount. Plenty of time by the pool, in the sea and on the beach. Our last sunset on Ko Tao turned out to be our best sunset, and Gemma has now taken over a zillion photos since we left the UK. [View Full Entry]

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Most people choose Ko Tao over its more popular neighbours, Ko Samui and Ko Phagnan, for 2 reasons - less people and better diving. At least that’s the broad, generalised impression we’ve got from the people we’ve spoken to. This afternoon we went out diving, but at risk of relapsing into negativity (again) we didn’t really think much of it. The best way to sum up our experience would be ‘lots of people and not many fish’, which is precisely what you don’t want! Yesterday’s storm had reduced visibility so we didn’t come across many interes [View Full Entry]

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Koh Tao is an wonderful place. It’s beautiful, cheap and geared towards a relaxing time. The only criticisms are that it’s crowded - although there are places where you can get away from the masses - and there is plenty of construction work going on. And in places it smells, but it’s Asia so what do we expect? For our first full day here we walk along the beach, look around the harbour area and try to book a yacht charter (without success). We swim a bit, read a bit and doze a bit. Basically, we don’t do a great [View Full Entry]

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The boat docked at 7am and we got off to be met by people trying to sell accommodation. Luckily we’d booked ours the night before in that Italian restaurant so just had to find a taxi to our home for the next 4 nights, Ban’s Diving Resort. We had breakfast and realised we’d picked a great place because the food (homemade muesli and porridge) was absolutely delicious. And when we saw our room, with double bed, balcony and most important of all air-con, we knew we were in for an excellent break from the stresses and strains of travelling. The [View Full Entry]

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The day began on the train and before long we arrived at the Malaysia / Thailand border. This crossing was another straightforward one although we did take a moment to check that noone had stuffed anything into our bags that could have seen us involuntarily checking-in to the ‘Bangkok Hilton’. Once we got to Hat Yai we just had to find a bus to a town called Surat Thani which was 7 hours away. After an hour or so we were heading north on a bus with a mysterious cargo of dozens of large cardboard boxes taking up literally half [View Full Entry]

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Following yesterday’s aborted attempt, this morning we arrived at the Petronas Towers earlier and joined the already quite long queue for tickets. The twin Petronas Towers (named after the Malaysian state oil firm that completely occupies one of the towers) are joined at their 41st floors by a 2-storey ‘Skybridge’ which featured in the Catherine Zeta-Jones film ‘Entrapment’, and free tickets are available every day for 7 minutes (yes, really) on the Skybridge. The whole trip takes an hour or so, plus queuing time. For anyone who likes skyscrapers it’s a defi [View Full Entry]

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So it’s St. Patrick’s Day and the Irish have got even more excuses than usual to get drunk - their new status as one of cricket’s top sides and Darryl’s stag weekend. Little sign of it here in Kuala Lumpur though - it’s a Muslim country and so much so even our hostel is alcohol-free. We were up early and went to the Petronas Towers, the ex-tallest buildings in the world, but when we saw the size of the queue we decided it would be best to return the following morning even earlier. Our advice would be to get there at [View Full Entry]

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