After a very long day of travelling, which ended with us being dropped off an hour's walk away from our hotel in the pouring rain, we arrived in Koh Samui. The half-moon party was the following day on the next island along, Koh Pha Ngan, so we booked a pickup from our hotel. Although we were sitting outside reception for about an hour before the pickup time we somehow managed to miss it, but it didn't really seem to matter, since the boat didn't leave Koh Samui f...

"A flattened anthill" I've been reading Paul Theroux's 'The Great Railway Bazaar' and his description of Bangkok as a flattened anthill is right on the mark - just one day's intensive walking around the city was enough to give that exact impression. That's not to say that I didn't like it - there's lots to like, especially the constantly surprising contradictions - but it's definitely not a city in which I could spend a long time. We made the uninform...