Sawatdee bai mai everyone!!! (Happy New Year!!!) ... we have just finished with 3 days of crazy Songkran celebrations! Where do I even start?! Its a bit of a blur... and yes I am sooo behind in my blogs.. Songkran is the Thai New Year and they celebrate by having massive water fights in the street for 3 days - you do get a bit over the whole water thing after about... hmmmm.... 24 hours but hey its all part of the experience!! They also have a high death/injury rate during this time... In the first two days of celebrations there were 97 deaths and almost 1000 injuries! IN JUST TWO DAYS (statistics courtesy of Bangkok Post newspaper!) Water Fights and Weird Rashes I woke up on Saturday to a couple of weird looking bites on ... read more

Our last day in Bangkok was spent touring around the Grand Palace (yes my 3rd and last time...), Wat Po, Wat Arun, Chinatown and the Amulet Markets. We hired my friend Nok, who is a tour guide in Bangkok. She is the same Nok that we will be attending the wedding of in a couple of weeks in Surat Thani. After a breakfast of Banana pancakes, Nok arrived and we set off. The tour we were doing was a walking tour (as well as just using local transport such as the local bus and tuktuks). We caught the ferry down to Chinatown where we wandered around checking out all the food stalls. We decided to try some of the local street foods. First up were these deep fried potato cakes, served chopped up in a plastic ... read more

Welcome to my first blog... its been a crazy 48 hours.. and I am struggling for downtime to just do nothing! Where do I even start?! Flying High... Literally Our adventure started bright and early Sunday morning when we flew out of Adelaide, heading for Melbourne for our 'not so cheap' Jetstar flights... I decided that I would brave the hour flight without my newly prescribed Valium so that I wasn't a zombie for the morning in Melbourne Airport... and I must say I was very brave! Upon arrival at Melbourne, we collected our bags, walked the short distance to the International Terminal where we realised that you couldnt check in for your flight until 3 hours before... we lugged our bags to a cafe and the food fest began! Eggs Benedict for brekkie, Champagne for ... read more

After heading back to Bangkok early from Chiang Mai on the Overnight train, we headed to Khao San Rd to drop off our luggage at our friends Tong & Chang's shop for the day, and decided to get some last minute shopping done. By this stage we were feeling really crusty having not had a shower for 24 hours, and knowing that we wouldn't get a shower until later that night... We left our stuff with Chang and headed straight for Siam Paragon Shopping Centre. Last time we were in Bangkok we had wanted to visit the Aquarium that is in the basement of the shopping centre, but had run out of time, so this was on our 'to do' list before we left Thailand. Siam Ocean World & Last Minute Shopping For 850 baht we ... read more

Sorry for the delay between blogs, but I was pretty sick for the last 7-10 days of our trip, and now that I am home (a few days earlier than planned) I can sit in the comfort of my own bedroom and update the last week of our blog.. which I intend to do over a couple of blogs. This blog is based purely on our day at the Elephant Nature Park... We were meant to do an overnight stay the day after we arrived in Chiang Mai but due to me being sick, we made the decision to spend the first day taking it easy and then go for a day trip the following day to the Elephant Nature Park.. for those who have read my blogs from my previous trip you would know that ... read more