sharonleftwich

After the fun n frolics we had on the last scooter adventure, I decided to do the Boloven Plateau in Southern Laos the same way. The main drop off point for Boloven is Pakse, so having recovered all my stuff from Paksong, I headed there. I was in two minds whether to head straight off on the bike the day I arrived, but feeling pretty knackered after the overnight bus journey (which was actually much better than the daytime one!) I decided to stay one night in Pakse instead. Having walked around the guesthouses in town, I decided to treat myself to a night at The China Wall. It was about 10 pounds for the night, but incredibly good value. Considering some really small, dirtyish places go for around 7 pounds here, paying the extra few ... read more

I found Vientianne pretty disappointing. Considering it's the Capital City, there's not much to see .......a few wats, a lookout tower in the middle of a roundabout, a stadium....nothing you haven't seen a hundred times already in SE Asia. There was a Buddha Park you could go to, but it meant a bus ride a couple of hours out of town there and the same again on the way back. Maybe I'm getting pretty lazy about travelling now, but a couple of hours on a bus just to see a few buddha statues didn't really appeal. Instead I hired a bicycle for a day and tried desperately to find something worth seeing. Not much joy! I did manage one constructive thing whilst there.....extending my visa for a couple of weeks. It's only $2 a day, and ... read more

The guys from the gibbon x stayed in Luang Prabang (LP) for Christmas and Boxing day, so I spent most of the time there with them. LP is a beautiful place. Laos was a French Colony and you can really see it in the architecture here. It's really pretty and very arty. There are lots of shops selling wonderful art work at even more wonderful prices!! I believe it's a World Heritage site as well. It certainly has many wats (monastaries) and lots of monks, many of whom don't look much older than 14 or 15. The other lovely thing is the bakeries! One, called 'Joma' is well recommended....specially the pizza and hot chocolate with whipped cream .........mmmmm to die for! When you walk in, it's just like a coffee shop back home! Very nostalgic......especially this ... read more

Wow, what an amazing experience that was! The name 'gibbon experience' may be a bit misleading though......our guide hadn't seen one for 10 months.......perhaps they should call it the 'zipwiring experience' instead. It was fab though..... despite the lack of monkeys.... and I'd definitely recommend it, but book ahead because there's rarely a space last minute. I wasn't exactly sure what I'd signed up to as things weren't too clear when I called. The website had said there were two different experiences....classic and waterfall, the latter having more walking involved. Turned out it was the waterfall I was down for. There were 8 of us in the group. Two groups of 8 set off every other day. It's a 2 day, 3 night thing, so you spend one night in one treehouse and then on the ... read more

Sangkhla buri was one of the nicest towns I was lucky enough to visit in Thailand. There's not an awful lot happening there and it's pretty unspoilt by tourism as yet, but that's the beauty of it. Don't go there for a party, but if you want to chill out, or, if you want to get involved in some volunteer work, it's one of the nicest places you can be. Coming across Whispering Seeds was fantastic. Meeting Jim was a very humbling experience for me. He's the same age as I am and he's done so much good with his life. The kids there had the worst possible start in life and yet now, they have opportunities they would probably never have dreamed of. Good luck to them all. In addition, I got to learn hands ... read more

When I left the boat in Kao Lak I was going to head down to Hat Ton Sai Beach, but on the way down it absolutely chucked it down with rain. After a very wet visit to the James Bond Island in Pagna Marine National Park, I decided to give the beach a miss and head back up north. Hopefully, I'll come back and do the beaches after the Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam circuit. Instead I decided to head back north to Kanchanaburi...the weather had been getting better up there, so maybe it was just on and off monsoon still down south. This was the trip I was going to do with Bev from the elephant camp.....hiring a scooter and heading north from Kanchanaburi up to the Burma Border. The weather was good in Kanchanaburi. I even ... read more

After a couple of weeks of silence, I didn't fancy joining the other guys at the full moon party on Ko Pangan. If I'd heard good things about the parties I'd probably have gone anyhow, but from what I hear, it's a load of pissed up tossers on a beach getting lairy and a load of thai policemen trying to catch people doing drugs. Not a great scenario for fun fun fun ! Instead, I decided to go do some underwater meditation instead......diving! I was really close to Ko Lak where a lot of dive boats operate from which seemed an ideal opportunity. On the last day of the retreat I'd spoken to a girl who'd been a dive master for a few years on the andaman coast in thailand. She'd said the closer you got ... read more

I was suprised and really pleased to find another person sat in the bus shelter on the other side of the highway. It was another participant for the retreat. Before long, a few more coaches pulled up on the other side of the highway and more people sauntered across the road to join us outside the monastary gates. There were about 100 people on the retreat all in all as it turned out. When it got to about 5.30 we were told we should head down to the retreat centre which was a few kilometres away from the monastary.......and the main road, which meant it was nice and quiet down there too. Luckily enough it was still too early to be getting hot, or it would have been quite a hike with the back pack. I've ... read more

Hello again! Hope everyone back home is ok ......... All I hear in the news is doom n gloom and have to say, I'm pretty glad I'm out of it right now. Having said that, the bank I invested some of my equity in has gone under, but from what I hear, the FSA has guaranteed people's savings, so hopefully all will be ok. Anyhow, hope you guys are all doing ok. So where did i get to? ......... oh ok, back to Pai. Having found a nice place to stay again, I got into those 'good Pai days' once more. It's very easy to do very little in Pai. I found a place which had movie rooms and nachos, so you could go choose a dvd to watch and munch out for an afternoon / ... read more

Thailand.......the land of smiles! That's what they call it. I have to say, in Bangkok, I couldn't see it. All I could see in Ko San Rd was bars, 'brits abroad' and old western men draped in young thai girls. It wasn't pretty. I did find a silver lining though......shopping! Thai people do it better than the english! On my first night, I spent about 45 minutes in boots on Ko San road, trying to pick my jaw up off the floor.....after nearly a year in India and Nepal, I couldn't believe I was in Boots! Then, finding the shopping malls a few days later was mind boggling. For those that haven't been, the shopping malls over here are amazing! Modern, glass lifts, spotlessly clean, shops that you can't even afford to look in......they even have ... read more