Cedric was larger than life, in more ways than one. His French characteristics resembled those of Inspector Clousseau from the Pink Panther (with a few more expletives thrown in for good measure). His dislike of anything British or in fact anything that wasn't french could usually be heard from several miles away as his booming french accent condemned yet another of our opinions, "Zat izz booulesheet! eet iz fo**keng boule sheet. wat dzoo you know? you har h...

The river was a murky brown as the little long tailed boat slipped through the water, its hull low with the weight of the heavy farlang and all our luggage. It was in this manner that the 7 of us that our traveling party now consisted of, crossed the Mekong river and the border between Thailand and Laos. We were greeted on the Laos side by a small man holding a bottle of Beer Laos. It was only 7 am but out of politeness we took a swig each and thanked him befor...

Pai was full of interesting people, all with their own stories as to why they were there. One of the best friends I made was an austrain man called Harry. A self diagnosed alcoholic, every morning I would find him sitting there with his bottle of samsung and we would have a chat. He would be there until early evening. I think thats one of the reasons he became such a good friend-I always knew where he would be if I needed some advice! On our first meeting he had ...

I can't remember my exact first impressions of the place but the streets of hippy shops and dreadlocked inhabitants were uninterupted by the sounds of persistant tuk tuk drivers or of pushy street vendors. It was eerily quiet for asia. Peaceful. The rickety bridges which crossed the river to villages of bamboo shack guest houses looked like they had seen better days, infact a couple were now uncroosably, hanging off one leg whilst the rest dangled in the water. A...

So I appear to have fallen behind on the blog again in all the excitement so I may have skim over some details but I will start from where I left off: in an old budhist settlement called Sukothai... Sukothai is a town made up almost entirely of Budhist temples, the three of us hired bicycles and rode around the moat and across the many dodgy looking bridges admiring stone elephants and huge golden statues, gazing in awe at the beauty of cross legged budhas sprin...