It was rather last-minute, the decision to come to Chiang Rai. I'd planned two weeks in Thailand - the first alone and the second with my friend Carolyn who was working in Bangkok. I was due to spend the first week at an eco-village near Udon Thani, but that fell through. No regrets! After 4 months in Bali, which have flown by (and which I will get round to blogging about at some point!) I flew to Bangkok and then on to Chiang Rai on Saturday 8th March. Let the...

And here we go! I think I've managed to post a picture and a map showing where it was taken. Am on a roll! Thank you to Prue for recommending this site/app for blogging. It seems to be fairly idiot-proof. Hope I don't end up undermining that statement in the near future! OK so here I am in a cafe in Sanur, Bali, sipping green tea in the hope it will cancel out the burger I had earlier. I'm about 3 weeks into my 6-ish month "career break". I enjoy using that ter...

Chapter 8 - dolphins and a massive fin whale! 9th November, cruising along on a beautiful, totally flat sea between Ambon and Banda. Adele soundtrack, books & Kindles out, digesting banana pancake. No idea what day of the week it is. And that's fine. Another 2 or 3 hours to go till our next destination. Just filling time, reading, chatting, napping, scanning the water's surface for a glimpse of our friends beneath. And Wakatobi Phil spots something. Ev...

Chapter 9 - going to the loo Well, first of all, apologies for the big delay! A few reasons... 1. I was ill, and lost the desire to blog for a while 2. I got quite behind. And the more behind you get, the more difficult it is to pick things up again 3. My next chapter was all about toilets,and I wasn't really sure I wanted the first post of 2014 to be about toilets. But I've got over that now. Hurrah! So, you may be wondering why toilets merit a whole chapte...

Chapter 7 - Meeting Tilikum's free cousins (orcas!) *** Remember remember the 7th of November! *** Early on in the trip, the Wicked crew tell us that there are sometimes orcas in the area, which surprises me as I always thought of them being in colder waters, and the water here is at least 26 degrees. My fascination for orcas has been growing over the past few months as I've been following the progress of "Blackfish - the movie" and all the hype around it and ...