Koh Tao. Turtle Island. The cheapest place to scuba diving in the world. And diving we did. We left the boat pier behind and headed straight for Sairee Cottage, the company we'd chose to take the underwater plunge with and gain our first PADI licence. Since the outline of the trip started to take shape, Koh Tao and Scuba diving were a must. Taking your first breathe underwater is supposed to take your breathe away, in my case, that was quite literal. It took...

Touchdown! We (as backpackers) strive to discover the new. We seek the untouched and we search for the unspoilt. That said, it is nice to mix new with the familiar, the comfortable and the known. It may have been years, but I was back in Samui. Back where the backpacking dream came alight and in many ways, became a reality. Our flight from Bangkok departed an hour late which meant the darkness had arrived on Samui before ourselves. We stayed half way between th...

A new day, another long bus journey, this time to Chiang Khong, a small town that lies on the Thai-Lao border. We left the guesthouse at 7:40am ahead of the 8:30am bus to Chiang Khong (north) via a handful of other stops, (some of which were for close to an hour) meaning the journey took 7 hours. We arrived around 15:30 and headed straight to our guesthouse which overlooks the Mekong River and Laos. A private room with an ensuite for 300 baht. I hope this tre...

Just when I thought yesterday was the highlight of my trip to northern Thailand, today smashed it out of the water. We were picked up by a songtaew in the morning for our one day elephant trek. The shops sold two day and three day treks but we thought these were a bit too long (and pricey) for our liking. We arrived at the least cruel looking elephant park we saw at 09:30, an hour later. No babies tied up with 1m chains, no elephants left in the sun and an e...

What to do today, what to do today, lets go play with tigers! Around 15 km outside of Chiang Mai lies Tiger Kingdom, a somewhat zoo like experience, but somewhere which allows you to actually get in the exhibition and interact with tigers. Rather than paying 300 each for a hired songtaew from our hostel, we decided to rent a scooter for 200 which when we filled it up to the brim with fuel cost 80 (and we only used half)! After frantically trying to google di...