Chiang Khong 13/10/07 & 14/10/07Chiang Khong is pretty much a one road town purely in existance for the border crossing to Laos and the back packers who travel this way. There are only about 9000 people here, & most of them seem to work in either a bar, guest house or at the border crossing port. Despite the lack of people, the standard 20 or so tuk tuks met us at the bus station & we followed another reccomendation that we'd got on the bus over here...

Saturday 13th October - Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Chiang KongWe made an early start to catch an uneventful bus to Chiang Rai. The Thai buses aren't crowded like in India, but the seats in this one were definately made for much smaller Thai bodies - they were almost like the chairs in junior school... four or so hours practically sitting on each other's laps later, we stopped off in Chiang Rai for a pizza lunch and to change some travellers cheques before heading...

After being stuck in traffic for ages driving back into Bangkok, we arrived at the visa place at 6pm on the dot, just as they closed. Relievedly clutching our passports and shiny new visas, we had some food and headed for the train station to catch our 10pm 14 hour sleeper to Chiang Mai.The sleeper bunks were larger and more comfortable than India, and although Dave managed to lose his ticket through a gap inside the window (after a small debate and some tooing a...

Wednesday 3rd OctoberAnother train, this time slightly west to Kanchanaburi (which I'll never be able to spell, and Dave will only be able to pronounce once we've been there!). We've got a couple of days here before heading back to Bangkok, but there's plenty to keep us busy while we're here.There were loads of tours to choose from, but we decided to stick to our own schedule and use local transport as we're finding that it's quieter and more friendly than being ...

Tuesday 2nd October After our monkey dalliance, we caught another train, this time a couple of hours south to Ayutthaya to check out the temples. We booked into a cheap guesthouse, and arranged to go on a boat trip around some of the temples on the outer perimeter of the town, as it worked out cheaper than paying a tuk-tuk and was too far to walk. We visited a mixture of newish temples and old ruins, seeing a fair few monks and buddha images on the way, and th...