Happy New Year! Meant to blog today, but hotel suffering multiple power cuts. Sorry.

Merry Christmas from Thailand! My journey to Ko Samui was reasonably uneventful. One thing I've been discovering is the Language-Game. Thailand is the first country I've visited which hasn't had English as an official language. Everywhere else I've been has had all its signs in English and lessons are taught in English, so the level of English has been consistently very high. However, the level of English in Thailand seems to be a bit more patchy. My surp...

Arrived at Varinda Garden Resort, Lamai Beach - this place is weird but wonderful.

Today I left Bangkok, so time for some notes. The first hotel I stayed in was in Chinatown where the shops overflow onto the streets. In the west, the shop sits besides the road with a frontage displaying their wares to the passing pedestrians. In Bangkok Chinatown, the building structure is used mostly for storage, and the "shop floor" is the pavement outside. This is just as true for cafés where the cooking and eating both take place on the pavement. Pe...

Country #7: arrived in Bangkok.