The journey to Pai is only 130km from Chiang Mai, yet takes nearly 4hrs to get to due to the extreme bends in the mountain road.  Definitely not advisable to have a heavy night before taking the bus.  And to add to the already rough journey we had the pleasure of the road being tarmacked - basically the whole of the left side was closed and ALL traffic was on the right - great fun!!!  But on to Pai, the chillout town of the north east, quite l...

Finally arrived into Chiang Mai after 15hrs on the sleeper train from Bangkok - what an experience that was!  Our first misdemeanour was having separate seats on the train and having the only unfriendly Thai in the country opposite me - absolutely no swapping, and off to bed within an hour of departure leaving Hayley seat-less.  Our only option, the buffet cart.  However this was no ordinary buffet cart, more like a rocking, flashing, singing and d...

Hello from Bangkok!  It's taken almost as long to update this page as it did to get here Our journey began on 10/10/06 from Heathrow, 11.5hrs later we arrived in Bangkok.  After much confusion with our taxi driver over our destination, we headed off for our hotel.  2hrs later and absolutely no English spoken he dropped us off at the end of the Khon Sarn Road as he didn't know where our hotel was.  After about an hr wandering the v...

Te Anau part 1 And so we arrive in Te Anau direct from our night of luxury in Doubtful Sound, and check in at our campsite! After settling in (!) we head into town for the much hyped film Ata Whenua, aka Shadowlands. For a film that has recieved no advertising or marketing it is all anyone talks about around the fjordland area, and for good reason. The film has been made by a local helicopter guide who decided that it was about time that everyone got to see w...