Les plans du Lonely Planet sont d'une efficacite redoutable, on a eu l'occasion de le constater une fois de plus. Le terminal de bus etant sense etre a 200m du centre-ville, on y va gaiement a pied et on marche. On marche, on marche... Pour se rendre finalement compte que les 200m etaient en realite 6km ! Tuk-tuk, s'il vous plaiiiit ! Ubon Ratch...

Ubon Ratchathani was to be my base for visiting Prasat preah Vihear, as they call it in Cambodia, or khao phra wihan in Thai. This is the temple had wanted to make the excursion to whilst i was in Siam reap, but due to the wet season it had proved too difficult and costly at the time. I knew this journey was gonna be expensive, but i really didn...

Hallo zusammen, vorgestern bin ich in nach einem problemlosen Grenzuebertritt in Bangkok angekommen und der Unterschied zu Kambodscha war gewaltig. In der Strasse, in der die meisten Billigurlauber uebernachten geht es zu, wie in der Fussgaengerzone an Weihnachten. Ich habe an einem Abend mehr Touristen gesehen, als in gesamt Kambodscha, Angkor ...

The border crossing from Laos to Thailand was one of the quickest and least painful I can remember. It took no time at all, and before we knew it we were back in Thailand. Quite suddenly, our surroundings changed: we were cruising on smooth, paved, multi-lane highways, being passed by scores of cars and trucks - definitely not Laos. The bus ride...

Back in Thailand. That was a complicated journey. From Pakse i decided to walk 2kms to a market where the Sawngathaew left from to the border. I realised this was a mistake after 10 mins as it was so hot and amazingly a moped pulled up along side me and offered me a lift with all of my stuff! This is typical of the friendly Laos people and i am ...

Over the first 8 weeks of my trip, whenever I would tell a Thai person i was coming to Issan, their first response was a puzzled "Why?" There are some nice national parks up here but there isn't a whole lot of tourist stuff. The economy is agriculturally based and its 2 main crops are rice and bar-girls. The majority of Thailand's commercial sex...

I started the day in Bangkok, which by several measures is as cosmopolitan and international a city as you will find. All races, colors and creeds have place in the City of Angeles. It greets all comers with a knowing smile and an outstretched palm. Then I went to the airport to catch a plane to Ubon Ratchatani. A mere one hour flight later, I w...

Sorry everyone if we dropped off the face of the earth for a while there- Laos's a bit like that :) But we're back in civilisation, Thailand, and now I've got to update what we've been doing since jan 17, if i can remember. From Vang Vieng we bussed it to Vientiane, the capital, which was nice as far as capitals go- not too big, and there were p...

Volunteered for an exercise that included a "bag drag". Turned out that exercise was no exercise and ended up in Thailand for three months.