Hat Yai, a one night stop over, connecting our bus from (the nearest mainland port to) Koh Lipe, to another that’ll take us into Malaysia, is purely getting a mention for blog map accuracy. Otherwise it’d look like we’d had a boat ride very much longer than an hour and a half, maybe even entering Malaysia secretly and illegally. And there’d be no need to do that, as we get a free ninety day tourist pass, being a fellow member of the Commonwealth. I’m ra...

I think if the Encyclopedia Britannica had a reference for “tropical paradise”, there might just be an accompanying photograph of Koh Lipe! I gather the picture would have been of Koh Phi Phi ten years ago, but that tourist bombardment, in part thanks to its selection as a setting for the film “The Beach”, and concrete subsequently descending by the tonne, has put an end to that. And we were told, in fact, that Koh Lipe was heading in the same direction, ...

From Phuket, Ed and I took a wonderfully scenic ferry across the Andaman Sea, past various picture postcard Thai islands, and mainland bays with equally eye-catching steep, jungle-capped cliffs and arcing white beaches, to Koh Lanta, where some serious diving was to be the focus of our stay. Prior research seemed to suggest that the island itself wasn’t renown for outstanding beauty, but as a centrally located departure point to great dive sites both to the nor...

My first thought on arrival, having had a quick wander around: what must Ed have been thinking? Is he of the opinion that our ideal holiday day will consist of a greasy fry-up in the morning, maybe even followed by a pint of lager, steak and chips for lunch (and none of that salad garnish please waiter, can I have a few extra chips instead?), definitely with a pint of lager, a "special massage" early afternoon (I thought I'd struck gold this morning, ha...

You know when you need to go to the toilet at half past six in the morning, but you haven't properly woken up, so when you get up to go you're actually sleepwalking, and with the added factor of it being your first night in new, unfamiliar surroundings, instead of opening the door, you open the window of your first floor guesthouse room, climb out, and drop down onto the roof of the adjacent, single floor building, where the guesthouse owners live, which it turns...