The route back into the old French empire of Indo-China has to be the worst border crossing we have experienced to date - by far. The bus journey to the Cambodian border town of Poipet from Bangkok, was painless enough, even though we had to make a 4.30am start. Even getting across the officialdom of the border was not too difficult. The official price for a visa is $20, but we endied up having to pay 1000 Thai baht (about $28) and the difference goes into...

Kho Tao (KT) is an island in the Gulf of Thailand, part of a chain of 3 islands along with Koh Samui and Kho Panyang. KT, meaning turtle island in Thai is only 21 square kilometers in size but in the last 15 years has developed from a sleepy fishing island into a busy dive resort. In fact we are told that approximatley a quarter of all the worlds divers come to KT to learn how to dive. Our journey here from Bangkok was very eventful. We weren't able to get ...

Lampang is the second biggest city in the north of Thailand and is only 70km south of Chiangmai along the superhighway (it is 2 lanes and that is a big deal around here) back to Bangkok. Despite it being the second biggest city we were still able to walk around the main centre in the space of 30 minutes. Much to our amazement, for a country that is still developing, just about every other shop was a jewellers and about a third of the rest were junk shops. ...

Oh My God!!!!!! We are alive but only just - white knuckle doesn't even begin to describe the journey on the speedboat from Laos to Thailand along the Mekong. There were 6 of us crammed into a boat 3 feet wide and the seats were no more than 2 feet deep per couple. With our knees almost wrapped around our necks this was the most uncomfortable journey we have had. And we sat like this for 7 hours. At least they took some care with the safety angle, as ...

Well, we have had a little exposure to the celebrations for New Year, but nothing quite prepared us for the intensity that was to follow on the first day of Pii Mai. Thankfully, people allow you to wake up without too much of a jolt and there were no water fights or soakings during the early morning. However, it seems that all the locals put up a stall, with anything and everything to sell. All the main roads into and out of LP were cordened off by the very ...