The daytime flight to Sydney was brilliant. Looking out of the porthole of the 747 400 transported us into the mysterious world of oddly shaped salt lakes, myriad acres of desolate red desert and a clear view of Ayers Rock. We arrived yesterday at about 20.00hrs. having gained a couple of hours. Joe (Rod's nephew) and Kim, who shared Christmas 2006 with us back home in Bury, had kindly agreed to collect us from the airport. They live a ten minute drive from the...

You'll remember we started our travels in Accra and stayed with Rachel. At the time we knew that Rachel's husband, Henry, was working in Singapore. So when we arrived in Singapore, Henry met us at the airport. That was yesterday. This evening we're going to do the well known Night Safari with Henry, as soon as he's back from work. We flew to Singapore on our first 747. It was a little ambition of ours to travel on one of these large planes. Journey time was onl...

28th July and we're back in Bangkok for the fourth time. Someone said Bangkok was a good base from which to visit various places. The journey from koh Chang was rather fraught. We think we were scammed. Not much in terms of cost to us, but a lowering in our opinion of some Thais. For some reason 28th July became a day full of lies. The result was, we missed the ferry, we missed the bus, we had to pay for a taxi we didn't want, we were told to go to the wrong bu...

Koh Chang will soon be another memory! The chef really excelled this morning. Breakfast food at this resort is outstanding. Each morning we have been presented with different choices. An English palate would normally welcome some of the dishes more for lunch than breakfast, but the taste, fantastic. And the food sculpture merited careful study. It's nearly time to catch the ferry to Trat and then the bus to Bangkok. Shanghai Inn here we come, for the nth time. ...

As we needed cheering up after saying goodbye to Kate, what could better than an elephant trek in the blazing tropical sun?Ana bravely exchanged places with the mahout as we squelched our way through the dense rain forest! You see, Koh Chang has only been in the tourist trade for a few years; it's rather wild.On the way to the 'Paradise Resort' on the west coast of the island, the taxi had to negotiate three sections of the road that had been washed a...