All too soon we were moving on again, but the early start was more than offset by the prospect of sitting on a tropical island in a few hours time. A minivan, a bus, a ferry and a ride in the back of a pick up truck found us on the island of Koh Tao. The island is beautiful, despite the hordes of tourists that flock there to dive in the immaculate surrounding waters. It was here that it struck us how much of our trip so far had been relatively tourist-free. We fo...

After a brief return to Bangkok, we caught a night train to Chumphon. The city lies about 15kms from the coast and is the main port for getting to the diving Mecca of Koh Tao. As we hailed a tuk tuk to the hotel, everyone else that disembarked waited at the station for the transfer to Koh Tao. It seemed that Chumphon wasn't a tourist destination in itself. But we had a couple of days to explore before heading to the island. Chumphon has some amazingly beautiful...

The overnight train journey to Chiang Mai was long and in the main uncomfortable. The journey was made a little more uncomfortable by the couple that we shared a cabin with. The guy babbled like a small child whenever he opened his mouth and was only pacified when his partner babbled back to him in similar whinging tones or when he was drinking the neat whiskey from the bottle, which he finished around 10am, maybe we were jealous for not having a bottle ourselve...

Back down at ground level, we wandered around the Silom area of Bangkok, the area contains the financial hub and many of the international embassies. It also contains the sleazy Patpong night market, which from what we could tell was the centre for table tennis... The familiar signs of McDonalds, Starbucks and Boots and a whole host more line the busy streets, they rub shoulders with huge air conditioned malls and run down independent shops alike. Most of the sh...

A very long journey by bus found us back in Negombo. We left Unawatuna at midday and arrived at our hotel at around 8:30. The 200km journey was arduous as both buses were choc-a-block and the day was hot and muggy. The plan to celebrate our scuba achievement went out the window as we were just too tired to do anything but have dinner. We had a quiet last day in Sri Lanka, a couple of hours at the beach, a nice walk and then lunch. Then back to the hotel for a fi...