Just had 3 great days on Ko Tao which is an island out 45km north of Koh Samui. Getting there was less fun as it took an hour and a half on a very choppy catamaran. The weather was not great and it was very windy. We are staying on Hat Sai Ree which is the main beach. It is 1.7km long so there is plenty of sand! The day we arrived the weather was pretty poor and it rained a lot including a few torrential down pours. We did go for a very wet walk down the beach. It did brighten up though and we were able to go for a swim in the late afternoon. The sea is so warm here, it is like being in a bath! The next two days were much ... read more

So we have just had 2 days in Penang and although it was not our favourite place on the trip we had a good time. We did wonder if we were missing something though as everyone else seems to love Penang. To be fair anything would have been a bit of a let down after Luang Prabang. Penang did have some plus points though. Firstly where we were staying was extremely cool. It was a restored Chinese Mansion (Choeng Fatt Tze) that had been converted into a hotel. It is quite a tourist attraction and there were groups of people on guided tours twice a day! The great thing about staying there was that you got free run of the place and you could take photos wherever you liked which was good for me. We started ... read more

Yesterday we went trekking and kayaking. There was a slight change of plan as someone had died in one of the villages we were going to visit so understandably they did not want to bring a group of tourists there. It worked out well for us as the kayaking was great and we ended up paying less then everyone else as the trekking was cheaper than the combi tour. We walked for about 3 hours and stopped off at one village before having lunch. Then we got into the kayaks and kayaked down river for about 10Km. The kayaking was great and even thought the water was pretty low and therefore not many rapids it suited me fine. The rapid sections we did were rather on the tricky side and we very nearly capsized! It was ... read more

We are now in Luang Prabang in Laos and it is cold! Well maybe not cold exactly but considerably chillier than Chiang Mai. When we arrived it was 19 degrees and now it is a lot cooler than that. I have got my jeans on and a warm top. Being that we don't really have any warm clothes we can only hope that it does not get any colder! Due to time and the fact we did not want to spend two days on a boat we flew to Luang Prabang. The plane was pretty small and because of that the flight was a bit on the rough side. Definitely not for the nervous flier! When we got out of the airport we paid $5 for a taxi only to find that the lao definition of ... read more

We are now in Chiang Mai which is in the north of Thailand. We opted to fly rather than take a 10 hour bus or train trip. We went with AirAsia which is Asia's answer to Ryanair. Apart from the fact the flight was delayed for an hour it was good. We had a pretty lazy day on our fist day as we had to get up early to catch the flight. We did visit one temple - Wat Chiang Man Today we went to the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery school which was really good. The day started with a tour of the market showing us some of the things we would be cooking then it was back to the school to cook. We cooked a lot of food! I think it is fair to say ... read more