Chiang Mai

We took a five minute boat ride across the Mekong River from Laos to Chiang Khong in Northern Thailand. The border crossing was a breeze for us, while there were hoards of travellers in huge queues waiting to cross the border in the other direction. We jumped straight onto our bus headed for Chiang Mai.

Our first task was to find a Thai meal and a bottle of Chang - we missed Thai food while travelling in the rest of Asia, so it was definitely good to be back in Thailand! Our entertainment for the rest of the night was Thai Boxing. We paid a bit extra for VIP front row seats and placed our bets. There were 5 matches in all, including a comedy interval match where there were 10 blindfolded contenders, all fighting it out at the same time!

After the fighting was over the arena bars stayed open til late, so we had a few more Changs and played some pool, before Steven and Marc jumped into the ring for a Thai boxing match of their own. Both came away a bit bruised!

We spent the next day exploring the city with it's plethora of Buddhist temples.The whole city centre was surrounded by a moat and ancient city walls, so it was a really picturesque place to stay.

In the evening, Gareth and Amy went for a plush three course meal, whilst Steven and Marc  played drunken connect four at an Irish bar, before going back to the Thai boxing bar to booze it up with the bar staff from the night before.

The following day, we met a fellow Cardiffian who we strolled around the city with for the afternoon. In the evening we decided to book ourselves into a Thai cookery class where we learned to cook Pad Thai, Panang curry, Massaman curry and Tom Yum soup. The only downside with learning to cook so many dishes was that we then had to eat all four! We spent the rest of the evening walking around Chiang Mai's huge night market and buying souvenirs.

The next night was our final night in Chiang Mai, so we decided to book ourselves a night in one of the fancier hotels in the city and went for an amazing fish dinner in the restaurant opposite:

After dinner we went for a few drinks at a rooftop bar in the city center. When the bar closed at midnight we were left standing outside with an American bloke trying to decide where the remainder of the night should take us. We ended up returning to the Thai boxing bar, where the staff were so happy to see us again that they gave us free shots of  LaoLao and "Sandy's Special" which was a shot of Sangsom mixed with sodawater that you slam on the table for an exploding effect. Shortly after, we realised that the American guy who'd been tagging along was actually batshit crazy, so we hastily escaped his company.

As in Vietnam, clubs in Chiang Mai have a curfew, so the next place we headed for was a place (we heard on the grapevine) that flouts the laws of the curfew! Unfortunately  as we approached the bar, we saw flashing blue and red lights, followed by the barman shouting "run!", so we made a speedy exit, admitted defeat, and headed back to the hotel for the night.

We spent our final day in Chiang Mai lounging by the pool before catching the long overnight coach back to Bangkok for our last two days in South East Asia. In Bangkok we visited the world's largest outdoor market where we bought lots of nice new clothes, and then went out for one last night out on Kaoh San Road. At midnight we watched the Six Nations live final from a bar with an eccentric woman from Llanelli, which made the Wales win even more enjoyable!

The next day we said our goodbyes to Asia and boarded our flight heading Down Under!

Bangkok Revisited

We got a taxi from the airport to the hostel that we booked just off Kaoh San Road.  The hostel was above an Indian restaurant, and looked okay from the outside, but turned out to be the most horrible place
we've seen so far!

We had two private rooms with en suites, but there were no windows, there were holes in the walls and ceilings, everything looked generally dirty, the beds were rock hard and there were lots of crawly things! We had booked the rooms for 3 nights, but after one night we decided we definitely didn't want to stay any longer!

We headed to Kaoh San Road and found a much nicer place to stay, at a not much higher price. We found it on a nice street running parallel to Kaoh San Road, which we didn't even know existed the last time we
were in Bangkok.

One of the things that we didn't get a chance to do the first time round was visit the floating markets, so we booked a day trip and did this on our second day in Bangkok before checking into our new nice hotel.

This is a guy cooking our lunch!

On our second night back in Bangkok, we thought we'd head away from the main tourist street for a night out in Silom. The next day we nursed our hangovers with some retail therapy at the markets.

The next day was the beginning of our Roam Cambodia tour with G Adventures. The first night of the tour was a night the Bangkok Centre Hotel and we met the group that we'd be travelling with for the next
10 days.  After a briefing from our tour guide called "Bank" (a nickname we later found out was given to him by his mum as they had to go to the bank when he was born to pay for the birth!) we went to dinner.

There were 16 people on the tour, a mixture of Icelandic/German/Norwegian/British people who fortunately were all very nice! We all went for a meal together and then had an early night ahead of our 5.30am start in the morning for our 6 hour journey to Cambodia.

Khao San Road & Travelling to Samui

On our second full day in Bangkok we moved from the Royal Hotel to a hostel on Khao San Road to be right in the heart of the main tourist street; perfect for shopping at street markets, eating out and clubbing! When it came to moving to our new accommodation, we realised that Khao San Road was actually only a 5 minute walk from our previous hotel, despite our funny taxi journey the night before, in which Marc had to direct the taxi driver after going the wrong way!

The night out was really fun. We drank beer from towers and cocktails from buckets.  The final club we went in  was called Cliff Club.  It seemed to be very popular amongst locals and we were practically the only westerners in there, probably because it was one of the only clubs with an entry fee! We managed to haggle free entry for Amy though.  There was a Thai band playing very Hoobastank sounding music, which was a bit of a change from the usual club music.

At the end of the night we bought some pad thai, which we proclaimed to be the best pad thai that we'd ever eaten. I imagine this was more to do with the alcohol though! Still, very good drunk food!

The next day, we spent our hangover doing a bit of shopping at the markets and then in the late afternoon we headed off to catch a coach to the South, where we would then get on a ferry to Koh Samui. A predicted journey time of thirteen and a half hours!

Our bus turned up and we were a little surprised to see a minibus rather than a coach. We got on, along with several other people, and off we set.  We were only travelling for 5 minutes when the driver pulled over and opened the door. He told us to make room for another two people in the already full bus! Every seat was taken and all of the floor space was full of luggage, so all we could do was squeeze up.  A couple of people were unfortunate enough to have a random person half sitting on their lap. We set off again, but 10 minutes or so later, the driver pulled over again and opened the door.  Everybody half laughed at the prospect of further co-passengers for this 13 hour journey (either laugh or cry!), but to our relief, the driver said 'everybody out, wait for bigger bus!'.  There were lots more people waiting and we were all stickered up to help herd us into groups.  

We eventually boarded a double decker coach with comfy seats and air con, so we had a much better journey than we were anticipating when we squeezed into the minibus!  However, at 6am, the coach pulled into an undisclosed location and we all had to get out and wait with no further information.  We took every opportunity to try to get some sleep!:

4 hours later another bus that looked like it came straight from the 60s turned up and this took us on the final hour and a half of the trip to the ferry port.  We were quickly ushered onto the ferry and we finally arrived at our beach bungalow in Koh Samui at about 12.30, after 18 hours of travelling!!

Bunnies and Buddha's

We've arrived!

Looks like we left just at the right time with the snow falling just after. It's sunny and 30 something degrees here :)

We arrived in Bangkok at around 7pm on 17th, after flying via Dubai. Shame we couldn't leave the airport there as it looked pretty cool. We were only there for 2 hours though so maybe another time. We dropped all of our stuff off and headed to a local night market, where we had our first street food which was lush.

We had a wander around the market, where you can buy literally anything...from guitars to squirrels (!). They also sold tiny bunnies dressed in skirts (not sure why) for 200 Baht, which is about £4.

On our first full day we visited some temples that were full of Budha's. It was interesting, but there's only so many Budha's that you can see in a day.

Last night we headed to the famous Kohsan road in Bangkok for food and drinks which was fun. We got a taxi back to the hotel and Marc had to step in and direct him. There might be a career in Bangkok taxi driving for him!

Amy, Marc, Gareth and Steven
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