And so to Chiang Rai..... Our journey began with our first encounter with the Thai buses. After establishing which queue to join we inched our way forward over the next 30mins! As we took our seats on our VIP bus we were gifted with a strawberry swiss roll and a glass of rola cola (one for all you Peter Kay fans!). And on arrival in Chiang Rai we were also provided with wet wipes! Slightly different to National Express. We headed to the bakery opposite to work ...

And so back to Chiang Mai - and to our trusty guesthouse (Namkhong, Soi 4) - to finish what we started.Our first stop was the Sunday walking market.  Although starts during the day, doesn't really come to life until the evening.  Absolutely packed in fact, like walking in a river of people.  A wider range of gifts and souvenirs than the other markets - plus the trusty street vendors selling ridiculously cheap, yet tasty food.  Having ...

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...