Pailyn Sukhothai

... absolutely exquisite! (Our friend Sandrine would appreciate why i'm going on and on about bananas.) For 10 Bahts (33 cents), the lady at the street stall kept putting more and more bananas in the bag. I had to tell her to stop, wouldn't want to overdo it. This was my favourite snack of all time when I was living in Bangkok and my Mom used to send our maid to ge me some after I would awake from my afternoon siesta. Such sweet memories ...

... have do not divulge in the joys for fear of mass tourism.<br>"This is Burma" Kipling said " It is quite unlike any place you know about"<br>The evening after viewing the Grand Palace and temples in Bangkok the question loomed in my mind. I had to ask myself why I was going to Myanmar, yes it would be nice to see the temples of Bagan, but as I had now discovered Temple Fever took it's hold on me quicker than I had imagined, the symptoms blurring the ...

... insist that they move on and give them all a chance to collect some fares). Only then do we get going. On our return the first day we were surprised to be picked up by a bus who set off with us as the only passengers. After a few desultory tries at recruiting new fares in the old city the bus sped away. A few kilometres down the road however, we drew up in a line of buses outside a large school; it was clearly school closing time and the driver wanted to fill his ...

... a "work in progress." Already, there is food growing, land for the elephants to graze and streams for them to drink in and bathe. There are shade trees to protect them from the hot Thai sun, too. Late at night, Anon took me out to see Tong Jai, who was in musth. When a male elephant is in musth great care must be taken approaching them. This was a very rare sight for me! It was amazing to see Anon feed Tong Jai, from a distance. From my photos of Tong Jai, taken with just ...

... around this setting that I think equals or surpasses my visit to Angkor Wat in Cambodia.(The bicycle was a must. There are many exquisite Buddhas at sites several kilometers apart, and with a bicycle on these uncrowded roads, you can see more of the sites and enjoy the park setting too.) I spent a wonderful day with my new travel friends from Montana, Hohanna and Doug. Unlike the Angkor sites, my two friends and I were at times the only people at a particular ...

... the message. Several minutes later the daughter came to where we were sat with a mobile phone and was handing it to me. I thought 'who on earth could be calling me here?', 'say hello' she said, so I took the phone and said 'hello', turns out she had phoned her friend who spoke good English and she was going to translate our order. We wondered what we would have done in the UK, faced with a Thai person turning up ...

One of the reasons i chose to make a border run to Myawadi is that it's fairly close to the ancient city of Sukhothai. Sukhothai was the first capital of Thailand and has a large number of historical ruins and temples. Hitting both stops on the same trip seemed convenient enough. After crossing the border from Myanmar back into Thailand we took a 3 hour mini bus to Sukhothai. We were both exhausted from the Myanmar trip so we quickly found a cheap little bungalow, went out for dinner, and went ...

... I arrived about 30 minutes prior to my departure. This guy made out good. Not only was he earning 340 baht from me, but my plane was arriving full of passengers. He was the only songtaew at the place and now he could fill up his truck full of budget transport seekers.<br>Luckily this airport ahd all sorts of snacks, rinks, newspapers and internet available. I ate some snacks and had some drinks before we took off. Easy flight to Bangkok.<br>

... and then it was back to the sweat/noise fest that was our room. At least we didn't have to sleep there another night! <br><br>When we got back we packed for Chiang Mai, walked to the station and sat there for 30 minutes (as expected) for our late-arriving train. <br><br>The train was absolutely packed but this time we had reclining ...