What do you get when you cross a long term traveller with a person on a short holiday? Can their needs ever be married in a harmonious fashion? Well I can tell you, because I recently spent a couple of weeks with a friend, who was in much need of a break and had always said she might be up for linking up somewhere on my route. We were texting one day in June and I asked her to join us in Thailand. Like magic, four weeks later she arrived!Leaving Jean in Pai, I ma...

On Sunday 28th June, a month after arriving, I finally left Pai. A good friend was coming to Thailand for a holiday and we had planned to meet in Bangkok before making our way South West, to the islands. Rather than come galavanting with us, Jean stayed on in Pai for an extra week, which meant I was alone with my thoughts and feelings as I set off on the long and winding road back to Chiang Mai, and then the capital. And lo! Those those thoughts gave birth to a p...

You know how sometimes you go to a place and it feels almost like you've been there before, like you somehow belong there? I'm in one of those places now. It's a small hippy town set in a valley 135 km north of Chiang Mai (and the journey from one to the other, which involves winding round no less than 762 bends up, over and down the mountains, is deeeelightful). I almost don't want to reveal its name, but then the title of this post wouldn't work, and anyway,...

This bit isn't the diary entry, to which the blog title refers - I just want to get that in now. But below, you will find a few snippets from my personal travel journal. This is partly for the purpose of variety in my blog, but it's mainly because I've not been able to use any electronic equipment very easily, as we've either been on the move or stranded on an island over the last ten days. Since leaving Bangkok, we've travelled almost the full length of the c...

I've decided it's time to play the game and update my blog more than once every few weeks (or months!). I also intend to make my posts shorter. Shorter, but more frequent. I'm inspired by my latest geographical discovery, Bangkok - a city so overwhelmingly full of stuff. b***** quality, when you can have quantity! Actually, that's unfair - there's a whole load of good stuff on offer here. So I shall attempt emulate the city's ability to provide both quality and q...