Mistake 1 - turn up on an island around 7pm on saturday night with no reservation... ''Room full'' Room Full'' Loom Full'' This place is a weekend hang out for the hoardes of Bangkok and everywhere there are crowds of Thai families and friends, drinking Johnnie Walker, singing kareoke and filling up the rooms. Mistake 2 - Decide to settle for the first sleeping option that come along, whatever the price. Which is a tent on the beach. Very romantic I think at first, and a steal at 200 baht, a view of the ocean, a shadey area on the sand. [View Full Entry]

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.. blah blah... East meets west... one night of partying... blah blah...bright lights... centre of the world.. blah blah... cheap rooms and pad thai on the street... leonardo de caprio.. blah blah.. hangover... buckets.. blah blah... Don't change this place. Its great as it is. [View Full Entry]

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24 hours to go until I head off to the airport with a bag of things i will wish I had never bought in about 4 days time... and war is on. My plane's destination - Bangkok - is a normally happy place, where I have made great friends in the past. But these past weeks, politcal protesters have surrounded the government buildings, demanding an end to the parliament, forcing the Prime Minister to flee in a helicopter and trying to install a non-democratic goverment! Not content with a Political Coup, i also seem to be heading off to a War [View Full Entry]

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The first people I met in this millenium were 3 porn actresses. Sprawling on a sofa, they were mocking my English accent - and I was totally unaware of their careers. Like demure, nervous school girls they were almost shy and they stuck close together. No flashy cleavage, short skirts or outrageous boob-jobs. Just 3 good friends who happened to work in what they mentioned as 'adult movies'. Me, I was riding high from a mixture of recreational drugs, the reek of gunpowder in my nostrils and a day-long champagne marathon that started about 14 hours ago with the chiming of [View Full Entry]

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Its exactly 7 days till I board my flight... One week to go and the world is on the brink of collapse: ''Hundreds of Billions of pounds'' "Global meltdown" "Historic times" "Society on the brink of collapse" Apparently, the year 2008 will go down in history as the year western capitalism came off the rails, so what a great time for me to escape to peaceful cultures abroad? Somewhere to unwind, relax and absorb ancient cultures? Not for me! "Brink of anarchy" (bangkok post) 'Bloodbath' (BBC) "Calm returns to Bangkok after bloody rioting" (CNN) oh dear. I've h [View Full Entry]

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"Backpackers" carried packs on their backs. They traveled the world and followed the aromas of banana pancakes, dreams of remoteness and the Lonely Planet's recommendations. Of this, we all agree These days the "Flashpackers" roam the earth. Decked with electronic gear and assorted power chargers, internal flight bookings and reservations at hidden spa-resorts. They have a different outlook to the laid-back rovers of the past. Snap it, log it, blog it. We are all Flashpackers now, we cannot avoid the inevitable upward pressure of the digital world, no matter how much of hobo we try to be [View Full Entry]

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A journey of a thousand miles starts with one footstep? Wrong! The journey starts long before the plane taxis down the runway with its doors crossed-checked and ready for take off. Long before the bag is packed, unpacked and repacked lighter. Long before the credit card details are carefully typed into a flimsy website promising a flight cheaper than anyone else. Long before maps are poured over, train times figured out or photos of palm trees and blue skies are longed after. Its starts with a plop of rain on ones head. A squeeze of a body in an already over-packed [View Full Entry]

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Last run of the day, fading light, a quick joint and then drop into untouched snow between dark green trees. Powder fizzes as your board cuts over it, and we were riding fast, snaking tight, blind corners through trees. Fizz- Turn - Swoosh - Cut - my stomach was up in my throat, gripped in concentration as me and Oli raced down the dense forest. Oli shot off to the left, i took a right hand swerve around a clump of trees. As I carved fast, i came up against a wall of tree trunks - Instantly my brain calculated i [View Full Entry]

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Heaven had no ski lifts. Heaven had no piste maps, queues or cafes. But Heaven did have a dull, groaning, grinding Bulgarian Army Tank. It was a roaring metal dragon that broke the silence of the dark green forest with its black smoke fumes and crunching tracks that clunked and bashed through the foot-deep snow. Perelik Mountain - March 1997 (part I - ) (part II - ) Heaven lies on the border of Bulgaria and Greece in the Rodopi mountain range, once a part of the Iron Curtain and a strategic point for the former communist countries. This is wh [View Full Entry]

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(part1 - ) The map arrived on a cold, dark, wet London morning in January. The map was a glowing ray of adventure and mystery on a cold, dark, wet London morning. An Adventure that would see me facing death in a cold, dark, snowy paradise. Bulgaria - March 1997 They say that a journey of a thousand miles starts with one small step, but that's not true - a journey starts long before a shoe is tied, before a bag is packed or a ticket booked. Travel starts in your head. When an idea grabs you and you know that [View Full Entry]

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