As we said we had shunned the tourist bus trip to Mt Bromo in favour of doing it ourselves for less money so we had a target to reach and there was no way we were going to be beaten! Our night train from Yogya reached Surabaya at 7am, from there we needed to get to Probolinggo, the nearest main town to the Mount Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park. From the station we got a bemo which we thought would take us to the main bus station but he clearly had other ideas and we were dropped in the middle of nowhere with him just pointing to another road and us having no idea what he was trying to tell us. Thankfully there was a policeman on a pedestal directing traffic so we waved him down with no ... read more

We included Sumatra in our Indonesian itinerary for the sole reason of visiting Bukit Lawang where they have a conservation programme reintroducing Orangutans back into the wild, as many as 5,000 wild ones are also thought to live in this area. Here they have a good opportunity to see them when they visit the feeding platform twice a day which is just inside the Gunung Leuser National Park. Our friends had visited it earlier in the year and said it was lovely and we were keen to see as much of Sumatra as possible so it was included as our first Indonesian stop. Our 7.30am flight from KL to Medan meant us getting up at 2.30am to get the first bus from central KL to the airport. We had thought it would be easy walking at ... read more

Our next stop was the Perhentian Islands which are raved about from everyone you speak to who has visited them. We left Ko Tao with a plan on how we were going to get there ensuring we avoided the trouble area in South Eastern Thailand where shooting & bombings have occured as recently as April. We got off the bus at the train station and our trip through hell began... Our first problem was that the Thais thought it would be a good idea to employ a ticket seller who spoke no English at all in one of the main tourist stations at Chumphon. This may sound really ignorant of us but it's rare to find a tourist who can speak more Thai than the real basics so it's very unlikely that anyone will be able ... read more

After the disappointment in Mae Sot we were both feeling a bit low but visiting the Kanchanaburi area had been on our list of things to do since leaving the UK so we hoped that this would pick up our spirits a little and get us back on track.. it certainly did that and a whole lot more! After hanging in the Bangkok bus station for 3 hours from 3.30am and being amazed at just how busy this place is at this time of the morning we booked a bus to kanchanaburi for 6am. It was only 3 hours away but we were both so tired from a long nights travelling we slept all the way and woke up in the bright sunshine in the town at just gone 9am. After a bit of a sleepy ... read more

We'd made a snap decision to head straight up to Chiang Mai the evening before we intended to leave so this meant a morning of rushing around to the train station to get tickets then back to our guesthouse to pick up bags and be on our way. Luckily for us there were lots of seats available on the train we wanted to catch so we picked the second cheapest option of 2nd class fan seats (391B each) which we thought would be comfortable enough for the 14 hour journey up there and booked ourselves on the 2.30pm train out of Bangkok. The train journey was quite comfortable in the seats due to lots of legroom, the only downside being that they don't turn off the lights in the seats so you don't really get that ... read more