The bus dropped me off at 6am at Khao San Road the famous tourist road in Bangkok, full of market stalls selling fake designer goods and touristy souvenirs. Only problem was that nothing really opens til 8ish so managed to find somewhere open at 6.30am to grab a banana smoothie and wait for a bit until things started opening. After depositing my bag with a tourist booking office and arranging a bus to the airport to catch my flight to Sydney I was free to wand...

Arriving back in Houy Xai after the Gibbon Experience managed to steal a shower in Sandra's hotel room and then off over to Chiang Kong, Thailand. A cute 2 minute ferry ride across the Mekong and I'm officially in Thailand. After some yummy Thai spring rolls its back onto a bus and then a 5 hour bus ride all the way to Chiang Mai arriving there at 11.30pm. The minibus of course stopped right outside a hotel (the driver's friends no doubt) and although I had the i...

Wow, it's been three weeks already since I first arrived in Nong Khai to teach at Isara.I've been really enjoying myself here, Nong Khai is a tiny little town with all the shops you'd need including a huge Tesco Lotus which I hate to admit has become a good friend for two reasons really: for starters it has a/c!!! Here you really need it, it's so hot just getting an hours relief in the store is blissful, and secondly they have provided me with delicious banana mu...

Waking up in Ayutthaya we were given fresh Thai fruit for breakfast and eggs. We grabbed a tuk tuk to have a look at the temples (too hot to cycle!) and visited Wat Chaiwatthanaram which is just on the outskirts of Ayutthaya. It was absolutely stunning and after paying the entrance fee (50 baht) we wandered around the stupas and marvelled that a building built in the 1600s could look this good- minus a few now headless buddhas. As a UNESCO world heritage site it ...

Up really early to catch the minibus at 6.30am to Surat thani airport! Caught our flight to Bangkok and arrived midday. We checked into an 800 baht hotel near the international airport called Romance Mansion. A comedy hotel where no one spoke much English so us asking if anyone would be around at 4am the next morning for us to check out was lost in translation until a guy helped us out. After cooling down we figured we'd go shopping and again more comedy ...