Blogs from Thailand, Asia - page 2654

I left Chiang Mai, there was just nothing left to do there....apart from thai boxing but I'll go back to try that out in a while. Songkran, the water festival, was the coolest thing I've ever seen happen in the streets anywhere. The first official day of the holiday, I took a cruise around the inner city moat (nothing like a moat full of water for the festival) in the back of a pickup truck. I went with the lady (who I found out is a ladyboy) that ran the guesthouse, a bunch of her friends, a dude from california and a german woman. The truck was packed and everyone was drinking whiskey and dancing. It was absolutely nuts. There were thousands of vehicles jammed in the streets around the moat and people running all over. ... read more

Well, we are back in Bangkok and staying at our home away from home - Asha Guesthouse. We went to Soi Cowboy district last night. It was certainly interesting with its epilepsy inducing flashing neon and assortment of odd and unsavoury characters. I must say it has to be one of very few places on earth where you'll see hookers, elephants and children all in the same space. Soi Cowboy houses your run of the mill strip joints. If you want to see the infamous, crazy sexshows (complete with pingpong balls) you need to venture out to Patpong - which we didn't. Apparently it is illegal in Soi Cowboy to have strippers go more than topless - they need to keep their g-strings on. Of course there are a number of places there that flout the ... read more

Dear all, we are currently sitting in the office of our new dive school awaiting our first ever dive lecture! Its just like being back at school!! which is strange! We left Koh Phan gan yesterday during rainy weather, however it was still extremely hot! The ferry ride was also quite choppy and we were very glad to arrive on dry land again The last few days in Koh Phan gan was spent pretty much on the beach on the largest town on the island, Haad Rin. The beach was beautiful and we have some great pics of them. It was quite bizzar to lie on the beach and see the jungle in the hills just a few hundred meters behind us! anyways here are a few pics from the beach and of Koh Phan gan ... read more

(Dave and Gem write...) Well, the time has come for us to catch a flight home. To pre-empt a few questions people might have, and for our own benefit, we decided to do one last blog entry with our thoughts on the trip, cleverly divided into headings as below... Best Moments Here's a few highlights from each place we've been to (not exhaustive!): - Boston: Spending time with Donna & Joe, especially drinking Joe's chocolate frappes! - New York: Seeing 'Chicago' on broadway - Fiji: Drinking Kava in a traditional Fijian village in the mountains. - Australia: Sleeping under the stars in the desert, sailing around the Whitsunday islands, and completing our scuba diving course. - New Zealand: Hiking over volcanoes in Tongariro National Park. - Bali: Climbing Mount Batur for sunrise. - Singapore: Living and ... read more

From Ayuthaya we took two buses to Kanchanaburi. We saw the 'death railway' and the bridge on the river Kwai. Also museums about the railway and the POW cemetary for the prisoners who died building the railway. From there we took 2 trains to Chumphon, where we stayed overnight. From there we took a boat to the island of Ko Tao (about a 2 hour boat trip from the mainland). We stayed there for four days. One day Matt went Scuba diving. The next day we moved to a quiet place where we rested and went swimming and snorkeling. It was very pretty but it was not close to anything so we left after a few days. From Ko Tao we took another boat to the island of Ko Samui. This was also a 2 hour ... read more