Hi, and welcome to my brand new travel blog.

Not easy to write about travel stories (easier to talk!), but sometimes and somehow I had to start:

I left home on Monday, Sept 23th, 2013 towards Bangkok, Thailand.
I managed to spend some days with a friend that I met in China during a business trip. We stayed at the famous Khaosan road, which is also known as the backpacker's mecca.
Indeed, Khaosan road is full of American, Australian and European young people wearing flipflops and huge backpacks (if there was a championship about who's got the biggest one I will certainly not have won). Not to mention street vendors trying to sell every kind of imaginable thing: from tuk-tuk rides to massages, and from wooden statues to ready-to-eat fried scorpions. I heard many stories about Khaosan road in the past, and I must say I was not disappointed at all, although spending only few days here was more than enough, as it quickly felt being in a huge amusement park, with no way of escaping from usual tourist activities. Only thing I couldn't resist to: having a leg massage consisting in tiny fishes beating your skin! First 5 minutes just felt like torture, but afterwards I just couldn't take my legs out of water!

On our second day we moved towards Bangkok's grand palace, which was even more crowded than Khaosan, only difference was that here most of visitors were Chinese people part of organized tours. Architecture was really amazing, even though sometime hard to properly enjoy because of the huge crowd within the temple.

We kept walking around Bangkok for hours, with no particular goal. We finally ended up at the snake farm and watched some snakes, including huge pythons and the royal cobra.

The day after we left towards Ko Chang: an island about 400km south of Bangkok. 6 hours bus and 1 hour ferry bought us to a very peaceful bay where we found a great bungalow on the beachfront. Because of the raining season going on right now in Thailand, sea was not suitable for snorkeling (due to very low visibility), therefore we focused our activities on the land-side.
First of all I rented a motorbike to move around, price was low and avoided us taking a taxi everytime we wanted to move. Problem is that I realized that Thailand drives on left-hand side of the road minutes after hitting the road. So it took a while before getting used to that. It became usual to meet monkeys, wild pigs and other friends along the road making things pretty dangerous. Surpisingly I have not seen (and had!) any accident despite Thai way of driving, which is very close to anarchy. It seems like the more rules you state for driving leads to more accidents: 0 rules in Thailand = 0 accidents, 1000 rules in Europe = 1000 accidents.... Considering that roads are in a way worst shape here! Of course, after feeling more confident with my ride, I started challenging local drivers on the very sloped hills of the island ;)

We then opted for a ride on the back of an elephant, which turned to be pretty boring because the elephant was more interested in eating tree leaves rather than taking us around. But was still good experience. Specially when elephant decided to go for a bath (...and shower) in a river: even by being seated on the elephant's back, we could bath our feet! We also had the chance to watch the feeding of baby elephants, which was free of charge and way more funny than the ride itself;)

After finding that our Bungalow's owner borrowed canoes for free, we spent hours paddling around the coast and resting on some great desert beaches.
Despite low season in Thailand, the island was pretty crowded with tourists, we luckily stayed on the most remote part of Ko Chang, a small bay named Bang Bao, which owns a very peaceful fisherman's village.

After 3 days on the island, we came back to Bangkok from where my friend flew back to China.

I spent three more days in Bangkok, basically practicing the most common sport on Khaosan road: walking down the street, refusing scorpions, massages and elegant custom made 3-piece suits, having Chang beers, eating fried noodles, meeting people from all over the world and sharing life stories.

Today, Oct 3rd, I am still seated in a Khaosan road bar, writing these lines and waiting for my bus towards the airport. Tonight I'll fly to Colombo, Sri Lanka, hoping to find less touristic routes, which should not be difficult when leaving Khaosan!

That's hit about my first 10 days on this Asian trip, thanks for reading me!