Rather excitedly I boarded my flight to Bangkok (my 5th flight in 10 days) with a strange sense of relief after the constant travelling of the previous few weeks. I was looking forward to chilling out in (now familiar) Bangkok and then relaxing even more on a beach somewhere with some much needed female company! Typically, my flight from Shanghai was delayed by 30 minutes but we managed to land almost on time and I whizzed through arrivals to meet Sarah who had b...

My original plan to fly to China directly from Laos was a non starter as there were no flights out of Luang Prabang so my only option was to return to Bangkok airport (for the third time in 6 weeks) and take a connecting flight from there. Due to limited flights to Hong Kong, I had a 7 hour wait in Bangkok but at least I knew my way around the place! In addition to the long stopover, I was flying to Bangkok with Laos Airlines who are one of the only commercial ai...

So after waving a tearful goodbye (her not me obviously!) to Sarah, I was back to travelling solo. Once Sarah's bus had gone I had 4 hours to kill in Central Station so I spent a little while online before McDonalds opened and then indulged myself with a big breakfast and peoplewatched for a couple of hours. Once aboard the train I was slightly disappointed with the first class carriage but it looked much better than the standard and bench seats in the other ca...

My visa for Laos finally arrived and I booked my bus ticket immediately for the very next day. I was up early to be greeted by more rain and when the bus eventually turned up, the driver putting chains on the wheels to make sure we stayed on the road! Bags stored and covered with a tarpaulin, we set off with the usual Cambodian 'more people than seats' rule in full effect. Despite the rain and muddy roads, the bus journey was fairly non-eventful and we arrived at...

Hello again folks! It's once again been far too long between updates so prepare yourselves (assuming you're still interested that is) for another lengthy update! After being rained off the day before I was up early to take a motorbike taxi to the Thap Ba hot spring for a bath in hot thermal mud. I arrived at the same time as two coachloads of Vietnamese tourists so opted to pay a little extra and have my own personal bath. There were no available changing rooms ...