The more astute among you may have realized that during a (rare) moment of brain freeze I misnamed the last blog entry. It should of course have been titled Ayutthaya and this is the authentic one and only Chiang Mai blog post so please don't confuse yourselves and get in a pickle. We arrived in Chiang Mai feeling refreshed and awake after a superbly comfortable 12 hour overnight train ride up north from Ayutthaya. After being duly cornered by a horde of trave...

After a bumpy two hour ride in a minibus we arrived in Ayutthaya and got dropped outside a row of guesthouses. For the first time on the trip we hadn't pre-booked our accommodation but it was no problem and the first house we asked had a room for the bargain price of 200 Baht (about £4.) However when we got into the room we understood the bargain bucket rate. The room was tiny and furnished with only a bed, the fan on the ceiling when we managed to turn it on sp...

We arrived in Kanchanburi from Bangkok after a 3 hour train ride on what was certainly an authentically retro style train. With its wooden seats and lack of aircon we were glad that 3 hours was all we had to spend on it but it was great to be getting out of Bangkok and into the countryside finally. There was much excitement at spotting real banana trees but not enough to stop me having a lovely nap to while away a fair part of the journey. We arrived and found ou...

We have been basking under the Siam sun for over a week now so this update is more than a little overdue. We landed in Bangkok after a fabulous final day in Japan exploring previously undiscovered corners of Harajuku and finally made some purchases of the obligatory tourist t-shirts which are obviously at the forefront of edgy Japanese fashion. The chaos of Bangkok was rather a shock to the system and at first glance certainly appeared to be the anathema of Tokyo...