CHIANG MAI 21/10/11 - 28/10/11 After almost 2 days of travel from south to north Thailand we finally arrived in Chiang Mai, tired but happy to be back on track with our original itinerary! Our hostel in Chiang Mai was simple but really nice, run by Keith - salt of the earth Englishman who was suffering from terrible Bronchitis whilst we were there, not that you'd know it from his daily morning fry up and incessant smoking, and his partner in crime Ratti - t...

13/10/11 - 20/10/11 The train pulls in half an hour late and we hastily clamber aboard still fuming at having to pay for new tickets. We stumble through with our bags and locate our....BEDS! On a train?!? The carriage was lined with bunk bed style cubby holes, with a couple of leather straps to stop you from falling out (not to strap you in though..) and a curtain to protect your privacy. We awoke the next morning in our seperate bunks feeling that the whole t...

KANCHANABURI TO NAKHON PATHOM Day 1 - Markets, Museums A minibus picks us up later than scheduled and drives through the streets of Bangkok until we reach the outskirts where we travel through waterlogged roads to reach the 'Damnoensaduak' floating market, which these days is just for us tourists. The torrential rain from the morning has been replaced by scorching sun by the time we reach the canals of floating shops and narrow boats selling various tourist tat...

We landed in Bangkok at 7pm local time, just barely making it off the plane before we were greeted by a wall of heat. Heavy, clammy heat - completely unlike the fresh rays of the sun that beamed on us through much of South America, this was an in your face, humidity factor HIGH, even-when-the-sun's-gone-down, oppressive heat. It represented the beginning of a very different chapter in our travels. We hopped in a taxi and steamed straight to our hostel (with ...