Sheila writes: We've now been in Chiang Mai for six days and have come to love the city. It's easy to avoid busy touristy bits and good to immerse in crowds and fun when we want! The loved the Soi Duthep Temple - which is by far the most spectacular location and setting we've seen anywhere. It's about 1000ft up in the mountains north west of Chiang Mai, in the Soi Duthep/Pui National Park. The views out from the temple are fantastic. There are so many golde...

Clare writes: Bliss! Back in Thailand after a couple of weeks in the internet black holes of Cambodia and Laos so can finally update the blog - will try and do some backdated ones... but if not, here's a summary... We spent an enjoyable week in Siem Reap, base for the temples of Angkor Wat - don't know if our lengthy blog made it onto these pages before we lost connection but will cut and past them back in when we're back on our own machine. Then because it's a...

Clare writes: Perhaps f there are enough monks in a town they can affect the ambience and make it more calm and serene, less grasping. Something in the power of prayor after all. We're still staying in the Phonemalee Hostel where we were unceremoniously dumped at by the taxi driver wehn we arrived - after a lengthy trawl around other possibilities we decided that we had a good deal. There are cheaper, but much less nicer, and there are nicer much more expensive...

Clare & Sheila write... Well, we've been in Cambodia for a few days now, but internet connections are slow and unreliable so we still haven't been able to upload any pics... especially frustrating as we spent today in the temples of Angkor Wat (library picture here). Cambodia is an amazing country - although we have only seen a small part of it - and the most touristy... which makes you wonder what the rest is like! It's very poor, but lovely people. We'll...

Clare writes: Here's the beauty of our location - we got out on the river straight away as the Phra Arthit pier is just a few feet from where we were having breakfast. The regular river boats zig zag up and down the Chao Pra river for a flat fare of 15baht (about 25p) so we went to the end of the line past the palaces and wats of old Bangkok. I hadn't remembered it really - just vague impressions of traffic so bad you couldn't cross the road, a smoggy air, p...