It was mid October in Bangkok. As per normal it was hot, busy and congested. In addition, the wet season was kicking in with a vengeance. We had a week’s holiday. We wanted to stay in Thailand but wanted to get away from it all and be as dry as possible. Generally the driest place in Thailand is Ko Samet, but we went there last weekend. We decided on Nan, an obscure province up north which had been a hideout…
Overall our trip to Ko Samui was a little disappointing. It certainly wasn’t paradise island. Maybe at one time, but rampant overdevelopment have meant those days were long gone. As you will see from the photos the sand is still wonderful, but the backdrops of swaying palms have become construction sites and the green lush hillsides become bare red scars soon be covered with tourist developments. First the good news – the beaches are still lovely, some more crowded than…
Cambodia is home to everything Khmer, right? Well actually when the Khmers were at their peak, building Angkor Wat etc, they also ruled plenty of Thailand and in May 2006, I went to see some of the lesser known, but really impressive Khmer ruins, close to the Cambodian border in Buriram province. (There is another interesting Khmer ruin – Prasat Meuang Singh in Kanchanaburi province – which is covered on that page of my website) The best of these are…
The Similan and Surin Islands are supposed to be one of the top dive spots in South East Asia if not the world, and we weren’t disappointed. We had decided to visit them on a 5 day liveaboard with Seadragons, a dive company operating out of Khao Lac. Jackie had dived with them before. They are highly recommended as they are very professional, reasonably priced and as they operate out of Khao Lac rather than Phuket and so closer to the…
Kanchanaburi is best known as the location of the original Bridge over the River Kwai (the real one – not the film location – which was shot in Sri Lanka). It is therefore firmly on the tourist trail. The bridge itself is right in the middle of town – which like many modern Thai towns is ugly, unplanned and a riot of concrete. The main drag (pictured below) could be worse – at least it’s not on the main road…
Ayuthaya was the Siamese royal capital from 1350 to 1767, when it was destryoed by the Bumese. In its prime it was home to over a million people and international commerce flourished. In fact most of the evidence of its splendour come from accounts of European travellers who described it as the most splendid city on Earth. Those days are now well gone and Ayuthaya, the ruined city, is a pleasant excursion from the traffic clogged streets of Bangkok which…
What better time to explore Bangkok’s chinatown than Chinese New Year? Here are a few snaps and a bit of info covering our wanderings in January 2006. Chinatown is a densely packed area of ‘downtown’ Bangkok which hugs one of the main thoroughfares and therefore also often takes its name – Yaowarat. All year long red is the defining colour of the area most notably in the gold shops lining this main road. But during Chinese New Year, it goes…
This is the photojournal of an exciting trip me and Jackie did around New Year 2005/06. We hired motorbikes in Chiang Mai and headed off to the Myanmar border at Mae Sariang. Here we found a guide and he took us up to a Karen hilltribe village where we stayed for New Year’s Eve. It also describes our hazardous trek back to civilisation. A six lane highway is not quite what I expected from a trip to the Thai-Myanmar border,…
Sukhothai is one of the top World Heritage sites in South East Asia. We spent a weekend in December 2005 exploring the wondrous ruins.
The first time I visited Penang Island was in 1989 on a backpacking trip through South East Asia. Returning in 2005, I was a bit concerned that the charming old town of Georgetown might have been bulldozed in line with the headlong development taking place in the rest of Malaysia. My worries were beginning to be confirmed in the taxi from the airport as we were whisked along concrete scalextric tracks with views of the latest Tesco Lotus superstores and…