People flooded the streets. Voices were raised. The crowd was at fever pitch... That's when the explosions stared. We took a deep breath and entered the fray. If this is how Chiang Mai celebrates its Lights festival*, I'd hate to see it riot! Seriously, closest to a war zone I have ever come!! Saying that, there were pockets of tranquility. What struck me the most was the juxtaposition between the calm elegance of vast numbers of paper lanterns being rele...

After some frustration, we finally work out the fasted and cheapest way to get from Thakek, in Laos, to Northern Thailand: we've just crossed the boarder, over the shiny new Friendship Bridge which connects Thakek to Nakhon Phanom in Thailand, and have booked ourselves a flight to Bangkok from its tiny airport, using Nok Air. We'll have to spend the day in the airport (we are holding out for a Mac Donald's or a Subway... or even... a Krispy Kreme) but...

Stand still for too long and you become fair game for the monkeys! After a 40 minute delay (and you thought English trains were bad!), but only 20B each (amazing!) we took the hour-long train journey North, to Lopburi — a town dotted with small temples. The main attraction: the monkey residents.Although a little wary to start — after warnings from our Lonely Plant to just look at the bite marks on the young tour guides' arms — we became mor...

Top tip 1: unexpected tours – beware them!Considering we have four whole days in Ayutthaya to explore their 'Island' of Temples, you can imagine we were slightly confused…and then not best pleased… to find ourselves trapped on a tour with 20 other people — rather than driving straight to our hostel, which is what we’d paid for.After pointing this out to our guide, we got "yes, go to hostel next". He lied. lol. Four temples la...

I love Bangkok for one reason...massages!  We've had a foot massage for 120B (approx. £2.50); you lie back in a beach chair at the road side so you can people watch. As you may have anticipated, David's size 14 feet did get commented on. We've also had one of the most up-close-and-personal massages I have ever had: an oil massage. It was 300B (approx. £6), they give you a disposable pair of black undies to change in to (apparently the same size fo...