After nearly breaking my toe on the way into my guesthouse after I arrived (inherent risk of open toed "flip flops" in SEAsia), with fireworks and traffic blaring from every direction at 11:00 at night, I said to myself, I'm outta here tomorrow. Well, after I got a bit of sleep (after 4:00am), I came to my senses and paid for another night. This...

Today was a busy day at school. We were learning 1 new techniques in one day! Lots to take in but I managed ok. I just seem to be able to rememeber eveything on the course really well. I think it's probably because I've got nothing else on my mind, which makes a change. I'm sure the daily meditation, yogi exercises and good food are all helping ...

After 3 days in Bangkok, I needed to get out! Everything from the city was starting to bother me. Bangkok is a great place to go, however not a great place to start your trip. I booked a ticket on a night train, that had a sleeper bunk and air conditioning for about 900 Baht. The train ride was about 14 hours and it only went about 600 km. Lots ...

Chiang Mai was like a big reunion. Our British friend from TEFL, Charlie, had recently moved there to teach. The night before Mike and John arrived the two of us went out on the town and partied until about four in the morning. The next morning we took my motorbike to the park and read books while listening to an extremely drunk group of Thais ...

After Kanchanaburi I came back to Bangkok to take an overnight train to Chiang Mai. By now I feel as though I have had plenty of practice of taking overnight trains. The alternative is a 10 hour bus ride during the day - no thank you. The train was fine with little curtained off bunks to sleep in with relatively comfortably bunks. Arival into Ch...

Ah, just walked out of pub trivia night at the good ole UN Irish Pub in Chiang Mai. It of course does not deserve the "good ole" due to exorbitant beer prices -- just imagine paying almost C$3 for a big bottle of Tiger! Shocking! Where is my lovely cheap Beerlao? The Kid and I were a team of two among the trivia wolves, which is to say muchos, m...

Songkran is the Thai new year. The traditional activities are many but they are 'drowned' by the main activity which is splashing water at one another. History anecdote - this strange way of celebration is an evolution of the tradition (that is still practiced today) to wash the Buddha statues at this day, gathering the water which are now holy,...

After a lazy start to the day, we went out in search of a taxi to take us to the Elephant Camp around 30kms from town. Normally there are several thousands of taxi trucks offering this service but now that we were actually looking for one they had all disappeared. We finally settled on a tuk-tuk for 500 baht and off we went. Tuk-tuks are general...

After leaving the beauty of Pai, I am now en-route back to Chiang Mai (again!!) to look into a Thai massage course - after doing some research around Pai, it would seem the best schools are back in Chiang Mai. So about turn and back track for another visit... I travelled with Obi (Canada) and we settled into a tiny room at Panda Guest House and ...

Marianne here for a change. After arriving in Chiang Mai Wednesday morning, we took a tuk tuk into the old city to find accommodation. It was a pretty cheap ride, and then the driver wanted to take us his sister's place "Five Stars House" and told us it was 100Baht per night, NZ$4! We thought it might be a bit of a con but seemed in the right ar...