thelondoner

Hey all I've finally finished my stint as volunteer and have embarked on the travelling 100%. I have seen the ancient cities of Ayutthaya (A UNESCO world heritage town) and Old Sukhothai (a UNESCO world heritage sight). The ruins of the temples were amazing and loved seeing them. Very beautiful and i had a sense of peace whilst walking through them. Old Sukhothai, also known as Sukhothai historical town, is rather big and my friend and I rented bicycles to cycle around. I loved it all despite the heat. Getting browner was a bonus ;-) From Sukhothai we headed for Chiang Mai and arrived there on the evening of my birthday. We found a place to stay, dumped our bags, changed, and headed for town. We were recommended a place called Spicy which had a sign ... read more

Hi All I arrived in Ayuthaya today and met up with the crazy girl, aka Anisha Patel. We are embarking on a 6-day "cultural journey" (Anisha, 2009) around central and northwest of Thailand. Can't wait! We'll be going to Sukhothai tomorrow, the best preserved ruins in Thailand, then we'll head to Chiang Mai and the last stop is Pai for some party schmarty to celebrate my birthday (rather belated, but I can wait for some a good club scene!). I'll keep you posted! ... read more

Phu Kradung - a mountain that takes 4-6 hours to ascend. Sounds great, I thought to myself. A great challenge which would then allow me to see some wonderful views and sunsets/sunrises. So I decided to do it. The other 2 girls volunteering, Elaine and Lara, decided to join in the fun, too. At the base of the mountain, after a looooong journey, we bought our tickets and paid for our accommodation (a tent) and we went to the trail. After 5 minutes I was starting to regret my aspirations of getting to the top of the mountain. It was seriously hard work, and I was sweating. After 4 and a bit hours we finally reached the top. My bottoms were all wet from sweat - sexy I know - and my top wasn't too dissimilar. ... read more

I spent this weekend in Cambodia, seeing the temples of Angkor with the other Starfish volunteers - 19 nurses from Oz. I have totally mixed feelings about the trip...let me fill you in. The trip started on Friday morning at 7am. This may not seem that early, but considering I'd been out the night before and didn't get home 'til 4am, I was rather knackered! The first leg of the journey was getting to the Cambodian border. This was fine. Next we had to get a taxi for all of us to get to the nearest town to the Angkor Temples, Siem Reap. We managed to bargain a price of 20 quid return. Not bad considering Siem Reap was 4 hours from the border. After managing to sort out our Visas, which took about an hour ... read more

Surin - Town of Whisky-drinking Elephant Riders Today I said goodbye to Bangkok and embarked on a journey to a little town in the Northeast of Thailand called Surin. The project organiser, Steve, had booked me and a fellow volunteer, Jessie, a train ride in the second class compartment. Now my friend from Bangkok had told me little horror stories about second class train compartments - smelly, squashed, don't trust the food, so I was a bit wary of it all. But on lighting the train, there was no nasty smells, and whilst we had to push through to get to our seats, once we were sat down and the other passengers had settled down, there was plenty of space. So the 7-hour train journey began. It was all going smoothly and Jessie and I were ... read more

Arrived in Bangkok So this is technically my second day in Thailand. After sitting in the plane for over an hour, we finally lifted off and I touched down in Bangkok at 4:35pm. It was hot and humid and I had so many bags that it took me forever to organised all the stuff I'd bought at Heathrow (nearly an hour in fact) and then I actually went through customs. Next step was to contact my mum and nan to let them know I'd arrived safely. Having bought some water, I was armed with pennies for the telephones, only to find to my frustration that I couldn't use them. So there I was standing there having a blonde moment. I asked a few staff at the airport how to work them, but that didn't help either. ... read more