The other attraction of northern Thailand is the opportunity to visit the Golden Triangle. Basically this is a particular spot where you can stand in Thailand and see Burma on your left and Laos on your right - hence the triangle! We took a songtheow to the Burma border (Mae Sai) where you can cross for a few hours have a wander around, get a stamp in your passport of course and then come back - easy right?!

Well it would have been except a couple of us suddenly realised once we got to the border that we had visas for our stays in Thailand becuase we were visiting for more than 30 days. Only these visas were now in use and once we were officially stamped out of Thailand they would no longer be valid...We tried to explain this to the Thai immigration who just smiled and waved at us saying it would be fine just go through. So somewhat dubiously we walked into no-mans-land and over to the Burmese immigration, which is where the fun really started. They take a picture of you, hand you a piece of card with your picture and some other offical info and then take your passport...yep they kept our passports and told us to move on. So now even more panicky we entered Burma and were immediately surrounded by taxi drivers all trying to sell us trips to anywhere and everywhere. We battled through and eventually found a local market and spent our time looking for bargains, distracted by the array of fake everything on offer, even viagra if you wanted it...yet all the time wondering whether we would be stranded in Burma forever....

But fear not, it was fairly straightforward and we got back into Thailand no problem (with our passports too!), just a few kilos lighter from sweating so much. Burma isn't exactly somewhere I'd like to get stuck! So to calm our nerves we went back to the Golden Triangle for lunch and some time to relax before we embarked upon our next adventure - a short trip to Laos too!

This one was thankfully less stressful. We took a short boat ride up the Mekong river that separates the three countries and then got off on a small island that is part of Laos. There was some time just to wander around and of course get another stamp in the passport, before it was back to Thailand and back to the sanctuary of our hotel and another thai curry!