We spent three nights in Luang Prabang before getting the minibus from hell (more on that later) down to Vang Vieng. Luang Prabang is a very pretty UNESCO World Heritage City with lots of temples, French colonial buildings and flower-draped archways, definitely worth a few nights. They offer elephant treks and trips to waterfalls but we'd done both in Chiang Mai so gave the organised tours a miss. Instead we set out to spend a day exploring the town, finished at...

Our minibus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong took about six hours, with a couple of stops along the way: at a cashew nut factory for an enforced lunchbreak (I wonder how much commission the driver gets for that) and at Chiang Rai's White Temple. The temple was indescribably lovely and ornate, even if it did look a little like a giant marzipan wedding cake. When we pulled up outside our hostel for the night we were pretty pleased with ourselves. The hostel's resta...

We love Chiang Mai! It's lovely here, definitely our favourite place in Thailand. There's a great chilled-out vibe about the place. We're staying in the old town, which is surrounded by ancient brick walls and filled with ornate Wats. There are fantastic street markets on at the weekend so on the first two nights we took a stroll around them. They have decent stalls with handcrafted goods, rather than the usual tourist tat, and lots of street performers: singers,...

On our first day in Bangkok we were so jaded after all the late nights in Koh Phangan and the 25 hour journey we had just undertaken that we couldn't be bothered to do much. We just went to Boots on Silom Road and stocked up on a few things that we needed, such as several packs of immodium (the shame), travel sickness pills and malaria tablets. We were in bed by 9pm and slept for around 11 delicious hours. The next day we went to the Mo Chit bus station to book ...

On the evening of the 8th (Full Moon Night!) we dined with a few of the people we'd met in Langkawi before heading back to the hostel to cover ourselves in fluorescent paint and put on the brightest clothing we could find. When we finally managed to tear ourselves away from fingerpainting each other we made our way down to the beach. The party was already in full swing and the sand was covered with thousands of people dancing and drinking from brightly coloured b...