The North East of Thailand is known as the Isan region and from what we saw, its also the rice bowl of Thailand. It was rice fields as far as the eye could see with enough rice to make an Isan farmer salivate. Hidden around the rice fields the giant and docile water buffalo splashed around in muddy puddles while cows wandered across the fields and the road. Kat & I took a bus out of Nong Khai, stopped in Naka and took another bus to the heart of the region, ...

After leaving Vientiane we bussed it over the Friendship bridge and into northern Thailand to a town called Nong Khai. We were excited to find out that this town was rated as one of the top ten places in the world to retire to, we knew we were in for a great time. The town itself is pretty small, but has all the amenities you could wish for if you had recently joined the Saga side of life - a nice promenade alongside the river, a market, a hospital and ...

Chiang Mai is cool. The city centre has a huge moat around it keeping the hippies and backpackers circled in around a feast of restaurants and cheap hotels, we found a large on-suite room with cable tv, air-con and a fridge/freezer for a backpackers price. I signed up for a day cookery course to learn the difficult art of Thai fairy cake decorating. Those wings can be so tricky. (joking) I picked the Baan Thai cookery school, because the menu was extensiv...

We get into Bangkok in the early hours of the morning and the first thing I notice is the audible change. Seven years ago the traffic communicated with each other using their horns. The more beeps of the horn signified the greater the potential danger of a collision. First time out of Europe, it was 2001, and I left Bangkok airport in a taxi to the centre. The noise of the car horns was my first memory and experience, a massive cacophony of beeping from everyone...

We didn't expect to get a job offer back on Ko Phangan, however the project and the contract were favorable, and the deal clincher was the welcome news the building site served Earl Grey tea! Back on Ko Phangan we checked into the Blue sea bungalow and after a couple of hours, Harry and his wife Leam pulled up with a yute load of Thai decorations they had been buying in Chiang Mai. The four of us drove over to Harry and Leams Thai mansion currently being built...