Even arriving by boat to the Island of Phi Phi was breathtaking; Phi Phi has it all...beautiful white sand beaches, turquoise waters and limestone cliff backdrops. Of all of the islands I've visited in Thailand, this is by far the most beautiful. Most of you will have heard of Phi Phi as it was used as the location for the film 'The Beach,' but that's the glamorous stuff....it also suffered horrendous devastation at the hands of the Tsunami that struck on Boxing day in 2004. Although on the outer surface you would never guess, you only have to walk a few [View Full Entry]

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At the end of my last entry, I was suffering at the hands of yet another journey glitch!! Anyway, the bus did EVENTUALLY turn up at midnight, not at 8.30pm as expected and we all fell asleep quite quickly once we got on, only to awake at 7am feeling thoroughly grouchy and having to board at catamaran... Arriving on the island of Koh Tao, we made our way to one of the main beaches and walked along it with our rucksacks to find some cheap beach bungalows. We settled with a place we liked and basically grabbed our bikini's and hit [View Full Entry]

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Even though we all thoroughly enjoyed our time in Laos and Cambodia, we all said we kind of missed Thailand in a strange way, I guess when you've spent 6 weeks in a country you feel like you know it well, you get used to the currency etc...(let me just tell you that in the last 2 weeks I've gone from Bhat, to Kip, to Riel and US Dollars thrown in for good measure! You start to lose track of what's a good deal and what isn't!) Anyway, so we left Siem Reap and knew we had a mammoth journey that [View Full Entry]

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After a well earned rest by the Coast, we were ready for some more sightseeing and journey-ing so we firstly made the pleasant enough 4 hour journey to Phnom Penh. Having only seen Cambodias capital at midnight on our whistlestop journey a few days previously we were quite suprised to see how run down it was. I mean, Cambodia is extremely poor but we weren't quite expecting dirty rubbish strewn streets and accommodation that looked as though it couldn't possibly be inhabited. The thing that struck me the most was the motorbike-pile-up; in the sense of motorbikes everywhere weaving in and [View Full Entry]

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After our absolute mammoth journey all the way through Laos and into Cambodia, we decided another 4 hour bus journey wouldn't make much difference, so went to the coast; south west Cambodia's main point for exploring the area is Sihanoukville. Laos was a much poorer country than Thailand, but Cambodia seemed even worse. There were children everywhere in ragged clothes (some as young as 2 or 3!) carrying bags and collecting empty cans and bottles - presumably to get a little bit of money. We were lying on the beach one day, Wiz and I had shared some chips but couldn't [View Full Entry]

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I left Chiang Mai to make my way accross the border into Laos to meet Afra and Wiz; 2 of the girls I had done my project with. The journey seemed pretty straight forward, a flight to Udon Thani and then an hours bus ride to the border, cross the border and meet the girls the other side, in Vientianne. Getting to Vientianne was the easy part. Basically my phone decided to work sporadically and I couldn't get hold of the girls even when it did work. I was tring to find out what guest house they were in so I [View Full Entry]

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Well, I left the comforts of the eco house and went on my merry way to Chiang Mai which is in the north of Thailand. I went to stay with a friend from my village back home for a couple of nights and helped out in the school she was the Principle of. The school was amazing, set in the mountainous scenery about 20km outside Chiang Mai and the kids and the teachers there were very welcoming and friendly. Wanting to see a bit more of Chiang Mai before I left, I went to stay a couple of nights in a [View Full Entry]

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A little history lesson for those of you that have never heard of Kanchanaburi and 'The bridge over the River Kwai' which was a famous book and was also made into a film (for those who already know, or do not wish to know, skip to the next paragraph): Kanchanaburi became a POW (Prisoner of War) camp during WWII when Japanese military leaders chose the River Kwai basin as the route for the construction of the 415 kilometre Thailand to Burma Railway. Work began in June 1942 and they used 60,000 allied POW's and also conscripted (forcefully) 200,000 Asian labourers to [View Full Entry]

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This week we have been hard grafting it at an orphanage in Singburi. I joined this programme specifically so I could go and help out in an orphanage for 4 weeks. When I arrived in Thailand in February I was informed that during the time of my volunteer project in the orphanage there would be no children there as it was the 'school holidays' in Thailand(?)...this seemed a little strange to me and at the time I decided to cut my time down to 2 weeks instead of 4 as there would be no children. When we arrived at the orphanage [View Full Entry]

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You'll be pleased to know that I've been back on my home territory: the beach! We've just had the best week on the island of Koh Samet which is one of the closest islands to Bangkok. We were afraid for this reason that it would be over-run with backpackers heading there but it was absolutely fine, quite quiet and serene even though we were based on the main beach on the island. Our accomodation was conveniently located for the main bars/restaurants and most importantly the beach so we were really pleased. Most days were filled with sunbathing and going into the [View Full Entry]

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