Bit wet up north...

As we’ve only been up to north Thailand once since we’ve been here (once in 6 years for me), we thought that we should use this long July bank holiday to go up to Pai. Pai is in the north west of Thailand in the Mai Hon Son region and is famous for its relaxed feel and richness of culture. Due to Pai’s remote location, it was many years before this area, previously dominated by hill tribe people, was reached by the modern world of business and tourism. This makes it one of the more unusual areas in Thailand to visit. It has definitely retained some of its old world charm, even after becoming an increasingly popular backpacker hangout in the past few years.

To get up to Pai, we took our new favourite mode of transport to Chiang Mai; the Thai first class cabin sleeper train. It wasn’t so punctual this time however, and we were 2 hours late before we even left the platform in Bangkok. Meant to leave at 7.30, instead we sat on the train for 2 hours not moving. This added to the normal Thai railway delays meant that rather than arriving at 8.30 the following morning, we ended up arriving at 12.30. This is more like standard practice than freak occurrence. It’s hard to get annoyed however, when you have a bed to lie on and the views are nice. Definitely beats being delayed in an airport anyway.

Once we arrived in Chiang Mai, we were supposed to meet up with a car hire representative. Those who have been to Chiang Mai train station know it has the standard gathering of touts that miraculously appear in every 3^rd world country wherever you get tourists gathering. You have 10 people shouting 'taxi taxi!' at you, and just as many shouting ‘mini-bus', or 'tuk tuk’. After fighting your way through them with a cry of ‘Mi Owe’ (don’t want), you’re faced with the guest house touts and their ‘where you stays?’. It is really annoying, and you’re never given a chance to think. You always end up taking a deep breath, barging through, and becoming super rude. It also gives a those arriving a really bad impression of the locals in the area. Anyway, to stop ourselves getting as irrationally annoyed as usual, we thought we’d have some fun winding up the touts. Every time they came over to us shouting 'taxi' or 'tuk-tuk', we just repeated whatever they said. This got them really excited as they thought there luck was in. They all ran through the entrance following us. Sadly, after they all worked out what we were doing, and walked back annoyed, I made a spectacular fall down the front step (yes, that is in the singular form) and landed on my face in the dirt. Suppose some would call that Karma. Whatever it was, I ended up with stiff bruised knees and schoolyard scraped fingers for the rest of the trip.

We had been warned by many that the minibus journey from Chiang Mai to Pai is one of most tortuous ever, with more than 100 near hairpin bends on the way. We heard stories of domino affect vomiting and over cramped, steamy buses. For this reason we had decided to hire a car. We thought we had been really resourceful and found a great deal from a small Internet site, getting a jeep for about £10 a day. However when we arrived at the rental shop (pride still smarting from my graceful fall), we were advised that only moments before, the jeep we were supposed to hire had been involved in an accident, and our only other rental option was a pick up truck at nearly twice the price. This was told to us with the standard ‘Sorry, no have’ and Thai smile. When we refused to pay the extra price they miraculously found another jeep, covered in a tarpaulin in the backyard. They did however question it’s capabilities for getting us up the road to Pai, ‘were we sure we didn’t want the pick-up…?’

Not ones to enjoy an attempted rip off, we set off with Nick wrenching through the gears and wrestling with the unassisted steering. The car probably hadn’t moved for a long time and everything was extremely rusty and seized up. We had been advised repeatedly before departing that if we didn’t put water in the radiator every time we stopped, the engine would blow up. Fill us with confidence why don’t you.

Once Nick got hang of the car it wasn’t too bad. It did take us 3 hours instead of 2, and there were a few moments of concern when we searched for something lower than first gear to get us round some particularly steep bends. We were exhausted by the time we got to Pai, me from praying we would make it, Nick from heaving a very heavy car round over 100 bends. Not sure how the gear box survived either. When we arrived at the resort we parked the jeep, and it didn’t move again until we left. It was easier for us just to pay extra to hire a motorbike. Definitely a case of you get what you pay for.

One of the main reasons for going to Pai was to use it as training for our October treks in Nepal. There isn’t a hill to be found near Bangkok, and Pai has some great trekking. We also wanted to go tubing down the river (like a pub crawl on water apparently). We hadn’t really looked into the seasons too well, and we had no idea that we were going up for the start of the rainy season. It must have rained nearly 80% of the time we were there. Luckily we had booked into a really nice place so it didn’t matter that we ended up spending so much time chilling in the room. It had a huge day bed in the window overlooking a pond and the hills, so we got to appreciate the scenery without getting soaked. Shame I didn’t get to top up my tan by the pool though.

We did get out to do a few things. On the first night out in town we were given a flyer inviting people to come help at an organic farm planting rice. We went down the next day expecting some kind of cheesy guided tour where we would be dressed in wellies and given a few plants to stick in a muddy paddy, but we thought it’d be worth a go so we could tell the kids at school about it (they eat rice everyday and have very little concept of where it comes from). When we got there we found a self sufficient farm where tourists stayed and got cheap rooms for helping out. There weren’t many of us and we spent the morning pulling juvenile rice plants out a dry nursery area, to be planted into the paddy fields in the afternoon. We spent a few hours pulling up the plants but decided to call it a day early, as wading around in the muddy fields before site seeing didn’t seem like a good idea.

As the rain and cold put an end to the other planned activities (yes we are pathetic excuses for travelers, but I’m sorry we don’t have 6 months of bumming around to do, this was a weekend off work). We ended up just doing a lot of relaxing at the resort. On our last day there the rain cleared for long enough for us to go off exploring on the bike and see one of Pai’s many waterfalls. Even though we didn’t do much, the scenery is so nice there that it’s just cool to drive around and take in the views.

As a place to chill out and see a different kind of Thailand, Pai is well worth the arduous drive. I would however recommend checking out what season it is before you head up there. And paying for a car that is either automatic or has power steering, or even better, both.

Posh Weekends...

Since we've come back to Thailand our standard of accommodation when we travel has changed a lot. Gone are the £3 bamboo huts with slats for air conditioning, 2 hours of electricity, and a 5 minute scramble in the dark to a hole in the ground for a toilet (you gotta love Rock Garden). Now we seem to have developed a taste for a few more luxuries when we travel.

When I lived here before I was never interested in Hua Hin, it isn't blessed with nice beaches, and it gets overrun by Thai families. It never had the appeal of Koh Samet or Koh Tao. When we went down for a change we were pleasantly surprised to find that it was really cool. It's not like anywhere else I've been in Thailand, it's not all about girly bars and partying and there are lots of really cool bars and restaurants. It's a very relaxed place and everyone who lives there is friendly and chilled out, not like many of the areas where you get locals mixing with tourists.

Devan Dhara Resort

When we first went down there we stayed in the Devan Dhara Resort. This is a really pretty place out of town. It is made up of lots of private villas in a variety of styles ranging from garden villas, 1 bed pool villas and super sized exec villas. We stayed in a garden villa minus pool. Thought having a villa to ourselves was treat enough!! We did however get a bit of villa envy as we peered through the gate of some of the vacant pool villas.

AKA Resort

The next time we went down to Hua Hin, we decided we would treat ourselves with a stay in a place with a private pool. Seems extravagant, but we book everything through http://www.agoda.com/ and we get some really cheap deals. A private pool villa at AKA resort about 10 minutes outside of Hua Hin centre cost only £75 a night. A little pricey, but not too bad for weekend treat when you compare it to what you'd usually pay for a private pool, and you even get an outdoor tub.

Another great little beach retreat is Petchaburi. Slightly closer to Bangkok it's only a hour and half drive so can be more tempting for a weekend away than Hua Hin. It does however lack the nightlife options of Hua Hin, only having a small selection of restaurants. We stayed in the Fisherman's Village, a beautiful small resort right on the beach. Like Hua Hin, the beach is not so nice and definitely not inviting enough to go for a swim, because of this resorts in both places have had to make themselves extra special, offering budget 5 star spa style accommodation at a reasonable price. Neither Petchaburi or Hua Hin would be a place I'd choose to take a tropical holiday, but for weekends away where you're not after white sand and coconut palms, they are the perfect place.

Fisherman's Village Resort

Hong Kong...the city that's got it all

For the Teacher's Day long weekend in January, we decided to take one of my students mothers up on her very generous offer of a place to stay in Hong Kong. She works as a first class flight attendant for Cathy Pacific and although she lives in Thailand most of the time she also has an apartment near the airport in Hong Kong.

We got cheap flights with Air Asia to fly out on Thursday afternoon and arrived in Hong Kong when it was dark and we could seethe lights of all the enormous buildings near the airport. We had been told that the apartment we were going to was in one of these new big developments. Little could have prepared us for the scale of the condos that have sprung up on Lantau Island near Hong Kong airport. When we pulled up alongside a group of 16 high rises each about 75 stories in height, all that went through my head was to wonder how often Hong Kong experienced earthquakes or tremors. Letting ourselves in to the beautiful 2 bed apartment on the 53^rd floor, I became a little disturbed by the height. I know we've been in bars higher than this, but we didn't have to sleep there.

First on our rather extensive to do list on our 3 day visit, was to go and see the pandas in Ocean Park. I have loved pandas for quite a while and we'll often flick on the the Thai Panda Channel to check out what cute stuff the new baby panda at Chiang Mai is doing. Although I don't like looking at animals in captivity, this is one of the only opportunities I was going to get to be close to the pandas. The ones at Ocean Park are housed in a large softly lit quiet building. You are not allowed flash cameras, and if you make too much noise you'll be scolded by the ever present guards. Pandas are such quiet peaceful animals, I bet they can't understand what all the fuss is about. They sleep about 70% of the time and when they are not sleeping they're stuffing themselves with grass and trying really hard to pretend they can't see you. It's not like they are active and show off, they don't jump through hoops or balance balls on their noses. They just eat, sleep, and look cute. Apparently they are not even that friendly, even as far as bears can be friendly.

While at Ocean Park we went to the huge aquarium there. To get there you have to take a long and breathtaking cable car ride along the rocky somewhat precipitous coast. It's quite a view and a great way to see the Hong Kong coastline, you dangle over the blue green ocean with a great expanse of blue sky and the odd bird of prey circling above. At the aquarium we were quite relieved to not encounter a whale shark, or something equally ridiculously over sized in a tank. Instead, we got to walk through a really impressive hall of jellyfish, all lit up with colour changing lights.

From Ocean Park we took a taxi up to The Peak. This is the area on the hill looking down over the high rise area of central Hong Kong. It is the top of an area known as Millionaires Hill. Judging by the impressive homes spread across the hillside its name is meant in quite the literal sense. The views from this area are spectacular, not only do you get to look down on the amazing collection of high rises, but you also get nearly 360 degree ocean views from some places. We went up there both day and night so we could fully appreciate the view. I treated Nick to a tasty but rather overpriced meal for his birthday, overpriced for the size of the meal and its one accompanying beer, but not overpriced for a seat next to a window looking down on one of the most iconic views in the world.

There are a number of other things in Hong Kong that should be done both day and night, this is one of the reasons why it's so hard to fit all the activities in and you end up so exhausted from trying. Taking the cheap Star Ferry between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, and walking down the Avenue of Stars in Kowloon being two of them. We got to see the daily sound and light show when doing the latter. A huge tourist attraction and incredibly bad for the environment, but non the less very impressive. To look out across the water and see all of those huge buildings, in so many different shapes and sizes, all with different stuff going on inside, light up in coordination with multicoloured lights and patterns, flashing in time with the music. We went back to the Avenue of stars the next day so we could get pictures of the life size bronze of Bruce Lee silhouetted against the city skyline.

While you can spend time in Hong Kong and avoid spending too much money (a day can be lost just exploring the markets and admiring the buildings), it is also quite easy to start burning through cash at an alarming rate. Unlike most other places in Asia, not only can you find market stalls selling western sized clothes, shoes and boots, but also most of the shops you get at home can be found in Hong Kong. I don't think I've ever been so excited to see a H+M store. There is also a huge outlet mall selling loads of top designer brands at really tempting prices. Finally, while trawling the streets shopping or just looking around, there are lots of interesting food stalls or rest stops to try. One of my favourites was afternoon dim sums in a rather grand and very full dim sum hall.

With all the sightseeing most days we got back to the apartment a bit exhausted and with no desire to head back out to check out the nightlife. Hong Kong is however, one of those places where you just have to keep going and try and see as much as you can. As well as going up to The Peak to check out the night views, we also went down to Lan Kwai Fong. This is an area similar to Temple Bar in Dublin. It has Irish/English pubs on every corner, hip street bars, and just about every type of cuisine you could think, apart from that is, Chinese food which strangely we couldn't find. This is definitely the international area. It was just like being at home when people pile out of work and head straight for the pubs, there were suits everywhere. What I liked most about this area, was the fact that all the girls were wearing boots and warm clothes. Often you go out in Thailand and you wonder why the girls even bother with the dress if they're going to wear it that short, and on heels so high they can't walk. It was nice to see girls thinking more about comfort than ridiculous trends.

Hong Kong has to be one of the best cities in the world to live, if you can afford it. You are only ever about 30 minutes away from the coast and it has tree covered hills that drop dramatically into the ocean for hiking and diving. It has all the best things about Asia; the weather, the food, the markets, and all the best things about the UK; the infrastructure, the organization, and the fact that people not only know how to queue, but miraculously they know how to get on and off escalators.

Bolaven Plateau, Loas

For the Christmas break we wanted to go somewhere cold. A friend had recommended the Bolaven Plateau in Southern Laos. This is one of the quieter areas of Laos, and due to the elevation of the Plateau it meant that we were likely to get some woolly hat weather.

We took the overnight sleeper train to Ubon Ratchathani. As a Christmas treat we booked first class so we had a bunk bed cabin to ourselves. This is definitely the way to travel on the trains in Thailand. You can control the temperature so they don't freeze you with aircon, and you have lights you can turn off it's possible to get some sleep. Apart from the shunting which can send you across the bed, you generally wake up feeling like you've had a proper night's sleep.

Once we got to the border and dealt with the scheming border officials who find miraculous extra charges for it being the last Tuesday in the month or something equally stupid, you enter Laos and jump in a minivan to the town of Pakse. Pakse is a small dusty concrete town with a number of overpriced guesthouses, but we needed to go there for a few supplies and to rent a motorbike to take us the 40 kilometres up onto the Plateau. We were lucky enough to get a bike without a footwell, so this meant we had to tie our 3 bags onto ourselves or balance them precariously on the bike. After the first kilometre it started to get uncomfortable. After 10 it was hell. Then it started to rain. Then as we crawled our way up the hill for fear of unseating the bags, it got cold. Instead of stopping and digging out woolly hats and jumpers, we just carried on in grim determination, getting stuck behind the slow tractor like contraptions that were piled high with sensibly dressed warm smiling locals. As you can imagine, we were very glad to reach the hotel.

Tad Fane resort overlooks the tallest waterfall in Laos. The Tad Fane waterfall is a twin stream waterfall that plunges 200 metres down into a deep gorge. The resort was opened as a

way of offering locals an alternative and more sustainable income than logging and hunting. The area is becoming increasingly popular with tourists, and many people can now work in guest houses, as guides, or making traditional handicrafts. This is giving the forests and the animals chance to recover.

There are about 10 waterfalls in the area, and also some really unusual land formations on the plateau. We did a number of guided and unguided walks while we were there. On the first walk we did, our guide took his role as 'coffee plant educator' very seriously (we were still being quizzed on the croprotation and prices per kilo of the different coffees three days later). We then visited a coffee making house and were shown the process of turning beans into coffee. While there we were offered refreshments of tea or coffee. Nick decided to join the locals with a few shots of Laos whiskey, standard breakfast apparently.

For one of our unguided walks we went round the gorge to the top of Tad Fane waterfall. This was the shortest walk we did, but by far the hardest. Sliding down slippery mud tracks while clinging to slimy tree branches of questionable strength, all the while knowing that when you slip and lose your footing you're heading straight for a 200 metre drop, is a bit exhausting. Still, it's a lot easier than climbing back up! We had been told that if you cross the first head of the waterfall, thatit is possible to continue through the forest some way to the other head where you get a better view. We crossed the water by jumping boulders and then got completely bogged down in undergrowth on the other side. Thinking that it's best not to wander aimlessly around in the bushes when near the edge of a gorge, we turned around and headed back. Predictably, when crossing the water to get back, I fell in. It sounds quite dramatic falling in 10 metres up stream from a 200 hundred metre drop, but when the water is only about waste high, you're never in any great danger of getting swept over.

New Year at Tad Fane was quite quiet. Most people only stayed at the resort for a day or two, so we hadn't had chance to make many friends. The open sided resort restaurant was the only place to eat in the area, and they made it nice with a small open fire in the corner. We ended up sitting with the locals while they sang Laos songs around the fire. As New Year approached we bought them all a big bottle of Beer Laos each and they gave us some of their Laos Laos (paint stripper like hallucinogen inducing local alcohol...sip don't glug!) The staff started drinking really quickly, and more and more beers were produced. At the end of the night when we went to pay, we were charged not for 5 staff beers, but about 12. Sadly we entered the new year trying to explain to people that if you ask you'll probably get, if you try and cheat or con, it'll end up costing you. It was a bit of a bad end to the night and left us feeling a little bit disappointed with the new 'friends' we had made.

New Years day we blew out our hangovers with a walk up onto the plateau. We were taken there a few days before on a guided walk and had wanted to go back to get more pictures. It's a crater pocked volcanic area with odd rock formations all over it. The locals go up there with their cattle or to burn down (yes, 'burn down'... a questionable way of getting trees to fall down as they are not allowed to cut them down) and steal the teak trees. One of the things you can see up there is the damage done by the American bombs that got dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War. The plateau is one of the places the American planes dropped the bombs so they had fuel to make it back to their base.

The only other unusual experience we had while in Laos, was the drive in a taxi back to the border. 70% of the hour and a half journey was spent on the left hand side of the road. This is somewhat scary when they actually drive on the right hand side of the road in Laos. All drivers there seem to have a rather fatalist approach to driving. It made Thai drivers look sensible, something I never thought possible.

Bangkok Christmas

For Christmas this year we decided to stay in Bangkok. Christmas is always a bit of a let down in the tropics. You're faced with 2 choices. Spend out a fortune for an overpriced meal in hotel, restaurant or pub, where there will be little atmosphere, garish decorations, bad music, no parsnips or sprouts, and they'll more than likely run out of gravy. Or, you stay home, close the curtains, turn the aircon up high, pretend you're somewhere cold and cook yourself a proper Christmas dinner.

We decided to opt for the at home version, decorated the tree, searched high and low for cranberry sauce and stuffing, spent £5 on one parsnip and £4 for eight sprouts and bought a duck for roasting.
Now the only other time I attempted a Christmas dinner was in Roatan when we all had a particularly bad island hangover and the gas ran out after half an hour of cooking. This time I was determined to be more successful.

I suppose the plan was always a bit flawed with the fact that we went out and started drinking straight after work on Christmas Eve. It became even more flawed when we stared ordering cocktail and shooter combinations and wrapping tinsel round our heads while doing the YMCA dance. I should have realized at the point where we had to stop the taxi on the way home 3 times, that Christmas day wasn't going to go as planned.
Christmas morning Nick was green when he woke up, and we had to take a sick break during the unwrapping of presents. By lunchtime all thoughts of food had been written off for Nick and Christmas day was 'postponed' until boxing day. Not one to let a hangover get me down I did a mini roast chicken dinner and ate my mince pie on my own.

For all it's delays, the dinner next day was delicious. It was however, a good job we postponed it, as it came as a surprise to me when unwrapping the duck, that while it had had all the necessary inside bits taken out, it was still sans feet and head. I wasn't strong enough to dislocate and chop through all the bits, and there was no way that green Nick would have been able to do that they day before.

Not sure what the best plan for Christmas in Bangkok is...maybe just don't stop drinking, then the hangover doesn't arrive and you don't care what you eat for Christmas dinner.

To Burma on a bike...

...or, maybe 'the least relaxing 'relaxing weekend' ever' would be more appropriate.

I may have mentioned before that Thailand has possibly the most public holidays of any country I've ever been to, apart from the obvious fact that it seems that every time I need something urgently from another country's embassy and there seems to be a holiday causing delays, Thailand is definitely up there with the best for 'any excuse for a day off'. Some months in Thailand we can have up to 4 days off for various festivals, including a 'Royal Ploughing Day'.

So, after a rather stressful few weeks back at school, where incompetent bosses, infuriating kids and a daily conundrum of finding a working computer that happens to be installed to a working printer, Nick and I were more than ready to head out of Bangkok for a break on the King's birthday long weekend. We decided to head out into the hills outside Kanchanaburi where we could escape the hordes of tourists and the horrendous noise of the karaoke disco boats that make their way up and down the river when you're trying to sleep.

Sadly these weekends never end up being quite as relaxing as planned, and more than partly to blame due a big 'girls night' the evening before, the quick and easy taxi ride was slow, hot and constant test of concentration to stop myself from throwing up in the juddering, stop starting, holiday traffic. 2 hours turned into 3 and a half, and by the time we arrived all I wanted was a bed.

Due to our great idea of staying outside town, we also had to arrange a motorbike so we could get out there. The directions seemed simple and we followed them to the letter. Directions were correct but we were told to start at the wrong junction so finding the place took a lot of irritating phone calls and wrong turns.

The place we were staying in was really nice with it's own lake and pool. We were shown to our wooden air con hut with a view of the lake. The air-con was broken so we had been given a fan. The wooden room felt and smelt like a sauna in the midday heat so we turned on our over-sized fan and collapsed on the bed. The fan must have been a jet engine in a past life and the whole hut vibrated and rattled when it got going. No catch up sleep that afternoon.

Somewhat tired and cranky, we went out to meet up with friends that evening in town. Not only was it the King's birthday, but it was also the sound and light festival at the Bridge over the River Kwai, so Kanchanaburi old town was looking more like Piccadilly Circus. Buying tickets for the sound and light show was your usual chaotic affair where you have to clamber through hundreds of people to 3 different stalls telling you completely different things before you actually walk away with a ticket in your hand.

The sound and light show was very well done, even though we'd had no other choice than buying the expensive tickets and seemed to have ended up with the worst seats in the house. The display is done with lights and fireworks along the bridge and on a shiny old steam train the goes over the bridge. It tells the story of what prisoners of war went through to make the bridge and how it got destroyed in bombings. They actually have it set up so they can blow chunks of flaming debris off the bridge into the river. Not too environmentally safe, but quite impressive non the less.

After dinner with our friends (no alcohol mind as it's bad to celebrate the King's birthday with a drink...where's that old hair of the dog when you need it...?) we climbed on our motorbike and started to make our way out of town. We quickly became aware of a problem with the bike as it was bumping along and the steering had gone. We drove straight to the rental place (open till 12.00) and found that at 11.30 it was closed with no answer from their mobile phone). We decided it was best to make it to the nearest garage where somebody might be able to help. Driving past the first garage (closed!) the tire finally popped and we admitted defeat. Now away from all signs of life, we didn't want to leave the bike in case it got nicked and we got into no end of trouble, and we had to sit on the side of the road and wait for our most understanding guest house to send a pickup truck to come and get us. It's worth taking note that not one but two policemen drove past us without stopping to ask if we were ok.

Getting back late to a cool room we climbed into bed and fell asleep, only to be woken an hour or so later when a drunken mob of uni exchange students came back from town and gained access to the music system in the restaurant and put on dodgy 80's songs at full blast. A new kind of rattle for the hut.

The next day, after a later than planned start, after the bike had been collected and the tire replaced, we took off into the hills to avoid the busy tourist areas. Beginning to enjoy ourselves as we got out of town, we get that bumpy feeling on the bike again and another flat tire. Now we hire bikes all the time so I'm pretty sure we are not wrecking tires due to bad driving or even over-wieghting, I've put on a few pounds but I'm not at the blowing tire point just yet. We had to sit and wait an hour for the rental place to come, this time with a whole new wheel, before we were on our way again. We thought that as the bike was so obviously fixed what with having a complete change of wheel, we would head of in the direction of the hills that border with Burma or Myanmar as it is now known.

The official border crossings between Thailand and Myanmar are further north so we didn't really expect to see much, but there were some remote Thai villages near the border that we thought might be interesting.

It took us about an hour and half to of driving past rice paddies, small wood hut villages and a few bemused and waving guard posts before we started moving up into the hills near the border. It was around this time that we saw a signpost saying that we were about 18 kilometres from the Thai-Myanmar border. Quite surprised that there was a border post that nobody really new about we thought we might as well check it out. The road got quieter and quieter the further up into the hills we went. Eventually we followed the road around a bend and straight into a rock face. They obviously built the road as far as they could and then just stopped. 100 metres back down the road was a hand-painted sign on a old plank of wood saying something in Thai and '400' with an arrow pointing up the bank to the left. With some difficulty Nick managed to get the bike up the steep narrow track (obviously not a border crossing for cars) which disappeared off into the bushes. We followed it for about 200 metres before I bottled it and said we should turn around. I didn't like the idea of being faced with angry border guards and trying to explain that we drove off road and through the bushes 'just for a look'. I especially didn't like the idea of potentially getting into trouble without my passport which was in the British embassy at the time getting replaced due to an unfortunate incident with a washing machine.

Anyway, after nearly making it all the way to Myanmar, we turned around and drove back to Kanchanaburi. It took us 2 tires and a rather frustrating phone call to the bike shop before we eventually got back into town. The kind mechanic who kindly replaced the inner tube half way home for 100 baht (about £2, for the inner tube and no charge for labour) told us the tire was bad and showed us how it had been put back on incorrectly. Needless to say we won't be hiring bikes from that shop again, and made them drive us back out of town to our guest house. We then enjoyed a quiet evening until being woken up in the middle of the night again by our friendly Canadian neighbours coming back from town and continuing a raucous birthday party all night. Love it! Relaxing weekend all round then!

October hol Part 3

After our time in Chiang Mai, we flew back down to Bangkok for a few days before heading off to different beach locations. Bill and Val were out here for three weeks so they went down to Railay Beach for 6 nights, my mum only had ten days so we went closer to Bangkok to Samed Island. Before going off to the beach we had one more Bangkok institution to see...Thai Elvis at Radio City on Patpong. There are a number of Thai Elvis impersonators in the city, but the one at Radio City is apparently the best, and you also get to see Tom Jones at the same time.

We went down to Patpong after a posh dinner at the Arun Residence and a walk down through the flower market. Walking down Patpong has to be one of the things that every visitor does. While most people have little interest in actually going in the famous girly 'go go' bars, they are a part of Bangkok that everyone is always curious about. Patpong is one of the best places in Bangkok to get high-quality copied bags, watches and shirts, so you can walk through the market while also getting to glance in some of the bars. It's not a place for kids, but they can be shepherded along the middle if you're worried about protecting their innocence!

The Elvis in Patpong performs 6 nights a week complete with sequins, flares and dodgy pelvic thrusts. He must be at least 60 and still manages to put on quite a show. The evening we took our family we got more than we bargained for, not from Elvis but from other members of the audience. We had been there about 45 minutes and had managed to get a good table with a view. Just as Elvis came on 6 drunken guys and their 'girlfriends' came and moved high stools in front of us. Nick politely asked them to move, then not so politely after they refused, and the guys absolutely flipped and started shouting and pushing Nick. Bill was in the toilet so it was only Nick and three of us ladies with these 6 guys getting aggro, Bill got back and backed up Nick while the pushing and shoving escalated, to the point where one of the guys started to threaten Nick with a bottle. While this was happening one elderly guy was leaning over the table and hurling abuse at our mums, not at me, but at the two most certainly respectable ladies in the bar. You will be pleased to know that the staff did absolutely nothing while all this was happening, just looked on from the door. The whole experience left me really shocked, even after peace had been made. In Thailand, to show any form of aggression or any emotion for that matter, is a complete loss of face. It is for this reason that outside of gang related issues, there are very few incidents of violence or even verbal conflict. What was stranger was the fact that these guys looked like professional business men, all middle aged or nearing retirement yet were out staring fights like young English yobs. Very, very odd experience.

I didn’t want my mum coming all the way from cold dreary England without getting some beach time, so we also managed two nights on Koh Samed while Bill and Val went down to Krabi. We stayed somewhere new on Samed; Mooban Talay Resort. Nice place, slightly more up market than I’m used to on Samed, and definitely pricier, but thankfully, not a cockroach in site. http://www.moobantalay.com/

We returned to Bangkok and took my mum to the airport. Nick and I then had one day to recover and do nothing before starting school and facing Semester 2 and the horror of the Variety Show. Bill and Val came back from Railay, and the following weekend we went up to Kanchanaburi to show Bill the museums, cemeteries, bridge and Hellfire Pass, all in 24 hours. More rushing around, eating lots and being tourists, Kanchanaburi has a lot of history to take in. If you visit Kanchanaburi check out the ‘Oriental Kwai Resort’, a bit out of town, but really nice. http://www.orientalkwai.com/rientalkwai.com/

After all this, Nick and I were just about done. Bill and Val had more in them though and took a day trip up to Ayutthaya to visit the old temples. They also did a bike ride around Bangkok on the wettest day of the year, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much water fall out of the sky. This was definitely one of those trips where you needed a holiday to recover from the holiday.

A continuation of the busiest holiday ever... October hol Part 2

For the rest of our October holiday, we had decided to do a bit of a tour of Thailand with visiting family. It seems that every opportunity we have we are leaving the country to go visit some other countries point of interest instead of enjoying what we have right here. According to many people who have traveled around Thailand, all the best stuff and friendliest people are 'up north', yet in 5 years I've not made it up there. So with Nick's mum and step-dad, and my mum visiting it was a good excuse to go see the best bits we've not been to.
As well as visiting Chiang Mai, we planned to go to the beach, visit the bridge and Museums in Kanchanaburi, and do all the normal tourist stuff in Bangkok, all in about 10 days.

All three of our guests had been here before, so they kind of new what to expect. Nick's mum Val, stayed with us last year so already has the hang of Bangkok and the other two had visited the islands. Sadly my mum's previous experience of Thailand was not so great and left her jaded and 15lbs lighter. She didn't like the food, got seasick for the first time in her life, got chased by trigger-fish on every dive and was subjected to my idea of stylish accommodation (a thatch hut....with it's own toilet). As well as that, the night before we flew back to Bangkok for her connection to London, our room got over-run by cockroaches in a rain storm so we walked out and caught a taxi in the rain to the airport (a taxi which stopped in the middle of nowhere and demanded lots of money off us to take us any further). The airport was closed so my mum spent her last night in Thailand sheltering in on open-sided motorcycle taxi stand outside the airport gates, sleeping across two wooden chairs. Very glamorous indeed.

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With so little time, this holiday was always going to be a little hectic and we had pretty much cram-packed every day as full as possible. That is apart from the first day, which was a good job as my mum put her bags down and promptly fell asleep for the day. That evening we went out on one of the old rice barges for a dinner cruise. Starting at the Marriot Riverside it has sufficient parent 'wow factor' and then heads up river past all the glitzy hotels and the Grand Palace. The nice thing about the river by night is that you can't see how dirty it is and only see the lights shining on the surface instead of any unidentified odd stuff floating by (the occasional dog or cow has been seen in the past). Also the constant supply of slightly spicy 'fragrant' Thai food helps to mask the odd river smells.

The next day we were back on the river in all it's brown, murky, and daytime, smelly splendor, heading up to the Grand Palace and Wat Po. With guests in tow it's always best to avoid the roads at all costs, there's nothing quite like the horror of Bangkok traffic to put a person off the city. The Grand Palace is a truly beautiful place and is a 'must visit' site for anybody coming to Bangkok. However, for those visiting us in the future, you are on your own for this trip. Twice, or in Nick's case three times, is more than enough to get over the 'wow' of the place and replace it instead with great annoyance at the heat and all the people walking into the perfect picture.

After the Grand Palace and a very brief look at the reclining Buddha in Wat Po, we hired a long tail boat to take us on a tour of the canals and through old style Bangkok. This is the only time you get to understand why people call Thailand the Venice of the east, and it's a really great way to see how life used to be. Shops that you pull up to in a boat, kids jumping and playing in the water, and little old ladies with boats full of junk that try and sell you everything you don't want or need.

After a few days of exploring Bangkok, we flew up to Chiang Mai for the 'cultured' part of the holiday. We stayed in De Naga Hotel, a really nice new boutique hotel. Staff are really helpful, rooms are amazing, and the food is really good (even though nobody seemed to eat there in the evenings).

http://www.denagahotel.com/

Our days in Chiang Mai were mainly spent eating, drinking, shopping, playing with animals, and trying to get 5 felangs and a driver in a tuk tuk. The first day we went out to one of the elephant camps outside the city. Here tourists get to feed the elephants and watch them perform all manner of tricks. I'm not usually a fan of anything like this, but in Thailand, although the elephant is a national symbol, many elephants are badly treated. People breed elephants in the hope of getting a rare white elephant (all white elephants belong to the king), which the king will purchase and then make sure the family have money for many years. This means that there are a large number of gray elephants are bred by default and usually end up being brought into the city so their owners can take money of tourists foolish enough to pay to pat and feed them. The mahout camps in Chiang Mai are a safe way for locals to make money while ensuring the elephants are really well cared for. Each elephant has it's own mahout who looks after it and helps train it to do various things like kick a football into a goal, play basket ball and even paint pictures. The odd thing about all this is the elephants actually look like they're enjoying themselves.

After the elephant camp, we enjoyed a leisurely float down a river on a bamboo raft before being taken to a hill tribe village.

Perhaps the best thing about Chiang Mai for me was the 'Tiger Kingdom'. At 5 months old, this a reasonably new addition to the well trodden tourist loop of attractions. It is a centre that allows people to interact with tigers. Again, this isn't something I would normally agree with but I am sorry to say that the draw of baby tigers is too great for me to make my moral excuses. Also that and the fact that Asiatic tigers are very nearly extinct in the wild, so if they can help breed them in a reasonably nice captive environment, hopefully one day they can start a breed and release program.
The centre is a collection of large compounds where tigers of different ages are kept. You can choose to go in with the babies, the 4 month olds or the 1 year olds. The tigers aren't doped and you have to sign liability waivers before you get anywhere near them, but at the moment as it still new, the centre is being really professionally run and you go in with the carers of the tigers.

The baby tigers we went in with were only 4 weeks old and have to be some of the cutest animals I've ever handled. They were squawking for milk when we got in there, and quickly fell asleep after they got fed. Mum, Nick and I liked the little ones so much we decided to go in with the 'big ones' while Bill and Val watched from the safety of the coffee shop. It's quite easy to forget, when playing with 4 week old tigers, just how big and powerful they get. We had been quite blasé about going in with them, but when you get to the entrance and you see them tearing around after each other and play fighting, all teeth and huge great paws, it is a test of your nerve. I have seen doped animals many times before, and these were definitely wide awake. It was an incredible experience to walk around and sit with such beautiful and powerful animals.

On the last night in Chiang Mai I got to do something I've wanted to do for a very long time. After dinner at a restaurant on a hill overlooking the lights of the city, we had arranged a surprise for the others with our taxi driver of three days, and had him take us to a place where we could let off paper lanterns. He took us to a deserted car-park, not my choice of venue, but when I saw how awkward it was to get them off the ground without bursting into flames, especially in the wind, I realized a wide open car park was not a bad idea. It was a bit of luck and a lot of running and jumping from our driver that got all 5 lanterns away successfully. Our folks liked it so much we had to go shopping for some before we left the next day. Ten lanterns taken back to the UK with the aim of being released on New Years eve. Not sure how easy that's going to be with all the alcohol that's generally involved!