Here we are, we arrived to Thailand, back to civilisation and western world. But the arrival was a bit more tricky than expected. Immigration headache You would think that Thailand is a hassle free country to travel to, you can get in visa-free or get your visa on arrival. This was in our mind when heading towards immigration at Bangkok airport. Yes, we knew that the immigration rules got stricter 2 weeks ago, as the financial/travel crisis is over, so Thailand restored its immigration rules that were in place pre-crisis... Being an Eastern European proved to be a disadvantage this time. While citizens of most Western countries still get in visa-free, we, last joiners of the EU got pushed back to the non-exempted list. All right, applying for a visa on arrival does not sound a ... read more

Ok, we're now more than a week further and basically all we did was visiting an English school in Mandalay and cruising to Bhamo Myanmar style... Guess this latter was a trimmed down or budget version of a similar trip we might do later when pensioners on the Mediterranean... Let's Enjoy English! On our cycling around in Mandalay we got lost at a point one day while looking for the teak monastery, but a nice local guy helped us out. Actually he offered to guide us there. Very kind we thought so we went off. On the way we stopped at his home, he offered some cold drinks (goood!!) and he told us that he runs a private English school in the evenings for the kids in the neighbourhood. This is a really great thing as ... read more

Dear Friends, This is our final entry about India as tomorrow we fly to Myanmar. Baby buttocks? We are in Kolkata now, and the last few days were pretty adventurous. We left Varanasi towards Daltonganj in good faith, expecting to arrive around 9 pm by train. However, a delay occured to our train schedule (as always), and honestly in the darkness we had no clue anymore which station is Daltonganj due to the poor station indications and the fact that we could be there sometime between 1 am and 3 am. We have to add that Jharkhand district of India is infamous due to some security issues, so the conservative selves told us to stay in the train and see what happens in the morning. When we woke up next day our travel companions were surprised ... read more

TATA, WE SALUTE YOU! Hail Tata, ohh omnipresent Indian force. Having acquinted to you in far and humble Luxembourg, where your tentacles of power and force could be felt. Being here in Tata motherland decided for me that a proper salutation to your might empire is only justified, if not the only logical and dignified tribute a humble traveler like me could do.... This is my tribute, this is my humble salutation to: Tata Group, India's largest business group and multinational company. After some limited traveling around in India my little eye spied more and more of the Tata force. Therefore I decided to take pictures where and when I could, just to show what's possible and what it had. As our camera was stolen, I couldn't upload my latest treasures which were picked up on ... read more

India is Great... So after our too short stay in Paki, we're settling down in India. We think it will be approx for one month, as our Myanmar (a.k.a. Burma) visa will expire the beginning of March. So India wil become a bit of a rush job, that's the way things are going apparently. And we should not forget that instead of long stay in India, we got Tibet, Nepal and Pakistan, not a bad deal... So after crossing the land border with Pakistan in Attari, we crossed one of the lamest border checks ever: "Do you have illegal substances, like drugs on you?" No "Ok, that's ok, you can go on" and that was our Paki/Indian customs experience. Knowing that Paki and India are officially not that close to each other it kinda surprised us. ... read more