We arrived in Ayuthaya at about lunch time after a 2 hour train journey, that was exactly the same as the trains in India, with people walking up and down the aisles selling food and drink constantly. It was none eventful apart from a dear old lady opposite us praying to every wat we went past and there was at least 10 and one food seller with the most revolting smelling fish ever. She came through our carriage at least 5 times too, nice! We found a room no prob...

We have not really mentioned our journeys so far in Southeast Asia and that's because they have all been fairly easy, until this one. It was a long one, over 24 hours in total including a taxi to the ferry jetty, a ferry across to Saturn in southern Thailand and then a 14 hour bus journey up to Bangkok. Everything was ok until the bus journey. The bus was in a lot better state than the onces in India, and it was air conditioned. The bus did stop for a couple of t...

Completely covered in mozzie bites we decided to go for more beach relaxation as we knew we would have a hectic schedule ahead. Again not much to say really as we didn't do much. The beaches were very quiet again and were almost perfect. Long wide stretches of white sand for us to choose from, it was great for a few days to sunbathe and go swimming in the sea, although we had to be careful as a few tourist had been stung by jellyfish the week before...i didn't w...

Feeling a little more rested we decided to make our way further North to Penang Island and it's Capital George Town. This is an old colonial town which was the first place the English took as a vital part of their plan to dominate the spice routes. We have got to say we had'nt yet fully recovered from our exsertions of 4 days ago, but we had no choice if we were going to stick to our route and timings. Now we thought we had found a bit of a bargain for accomodat...

Still battered and bruised we managed to carry our backpacks and get to Pangkor Island for some well deserved relaxation. Not much to say about this place apart from the island is nearly the same size as how far we walked the previous 2 days. We found the beach with no difficulty at all, which could'nt be said for other people as it was deserted. Well not quite but this being the low season in Malaysia it was'nt very busy, there were only about 5 couples on the ...