After a short train journey of a bit more than 3 hours from Ayutthaya I arrived in Nakhon Sawan. The train station is about 6 ks out of town. The minute I stepped out of the train I was surrounded by tuk-tuk drivers selling expensive rides to town. I decided to take a songthaews together with some locals which turned out much cheaper. Well, I did not have a map nor did I know where my hotel was which I had booked the night before. So it was difficult to know where to get of the songthaew. Nakhon Sawan is rarely visited by tourists. And no tourists - no maps - and no english. This city seems to be fun for me ;-). On the songtaew I got to know Sonja, a german traveller. But she ... read more

By the end of july we felt like working machines - it was time to escape for a short holiday break. As I, Nina, had an operation by the beginning of may and could not work for 1 month (well, I could not even walk further than 200 meters on my own), Markus had been working day and night even on weekends to keep everyhting running (we run 2 companies). Still in july I did not feel fit, Markus was getting worse - no question what to do. We packed our backpacks and off we went to Austria. From Switzerland it is a short drive to Tyrol - nevertheless it is a different country, they speak german with a different dialect, they have different food and a different landscape. We know, we do have beautiful mountains ... read more

When we booked our flight tickets in October, we did not even know when Chinese New Year would be. We just decided to take the cheapest return flight. Then, we thought it would be nice to end our trip in Penang. I had been there last year and loved it - but for Markus it was something new. Furthermore, it is a good place for some decent shopping before going back to expensive Switzerland. In December, we told our friend Serena in KK (Malaysia) that we will be in Penang and we asked her to join us - and she told us that it is CNY and she has no time to join us. That was a surprise. Well, we were sad, not to meet her. But, we were up to celebrate Chinese New Year in ... read more

Wow, we have just realised that this is already our blog number 101! But do not worry, we will not stop writing some more as we have planned already interesting trips in the future. But let's come back to our short trip to Malaysia/Thailand. Our next island on our "self organised" island hopping tour was Koh Lipe. From Koh Bulon we took a speedboat which brought us to the shores of Koh Lipe in 2 hours. We arrived at Pattaya beach and were really shocked by the crowded beach and the noise. Coming from the peaceful island of Koh Bulon with only few tourists and great nature, this was too much for us. Quickly we took our backpacks and walked away from the beach to a hostel which was recommended to us by a lot of ... read more

Having been warned by a lot of travellers about recent delays of Air Asia and an overcrowded, chaotic LCCT in Kuala Lumpur we arrived quite early for the check in of our flight to Hat Yai in Thailand. And, what a surprise: empty departure halls at the LCCT, a quick check in and a flight that was even 5 minutes earlier! Not bad, not bad. The flight itself was nice and an hour later we arrived in Hat Yai. Being the cheapies we are, we did not want to take a cab to town. So we were looking for some public buses which should take us to the bus terminal in town. And we were lucky. As the buses are some small, blue songthaews, we had to wait for some more passengers which is quite hopeless ... read more