As soon as we stepped off the bus we fell in love with Vang Vieng. The beauty of the surrounding karst cliffs, the green fields and the general sleepiness of the town and we hadn't even seen the river yet. The hotel was a 10 minute walk from the bus depot and every single shop or stall owner nodded a greeting and smiled as we passed, no selling, no hassle of any kind. Bags dumped, and off we went. We were so excited about being here. The town gained a bad repu...

It was a long journey from Bangkok to Nong Khai on the Thai border. The 12 hour journey ended up being 15 hours but thankfully it was in the main comfortable. As we passed through immigration the Thai officer stated that we had overstayed, we were sure we hadn't, but he was adamant. So was this a fine, imprisonment or both? He sucked his teeth and shook his head. We thought we were in deep trouble. It turned out he thought it was 18th when in fact it was 15th. A...

We had a day in Bangkok and arriving in the city was like visiting an old friend. It felt familiar and relaxing and was a fitting end to our Thai experience. We had a few bits and pieces we wanted to get and so we spent several hours wandering around the local district of Sukhumvit. It's a nice area that apparently is home to a large expat community, but there were few signs of this. Really, we were just wasting time before our train departed for Laos, a spot of ...

The journey from Phangan to Phuket should have taken 5 hours or so, our journey took 12 hours. We don't want to talk about it. Our hotel was about a kilometre away from the town centre in a quiet side road, we had to will ourselves to make the walk back to town after our journey. The night was humid and sticky, but seeing a new place for the first time provides simple pleasure. The all too familiar neon signs on restaurants, bars and massage parlours are begrud...

We were going to Koh Phangan for one reason and one reason only, the Half Moon Party and we were going to have it LARGE, well maybe MEDIUM. The ferry from Samui to Phangan took about 20 minutes, we barely had time to get comfortable, and after another mix up with the transfer, we arrived at the hotel. We were pretty isolated and it felt just what we needed after the chaos of Samui. The hotel had its own small private beach, which led to the cloudy water in milky ...