Week 61 - Ko Ngai, Ko Lipe (Thailand)

When we’d been to Ko Ngai before it had been a glorious sunny day with a white sandy beach and turquoise sea. This time we arrived in the rain and it didn’t stop. We tried to leave after three nights but none of the boats were running and we ended up staying a fourth. It wasn’t the end of the world because they gave us a free nights accommodation and we were in a bargain giant tent right on the beach, we’ve been burning money since we got to Thailand so it gave us a chance to catch up a bit. Since it pretty much rained non-stop for the whole while we were there we had plenty of time to read, sleep, drink rum, play computer games and watch films. It was a great opportunity to recharge. Ko Ngai is pretty small though and there was only one restaurant that was open in our price range and we ended up structuring our days around lunch and dinner times. On one occasion we tried to make it to the other side of the island to visit some little coves but the cross island forest route was slick with mud and infested by mosquitoes so we ended up turning back. We managed to swim once in the sea, and then it was cold, and one night we stole in to the swimming pool of the resort next door for a quick dip but that was about the extent of the excitement - other than a massive hornbill with a huge beak eating berries from a tree by the beach. It’s a shame because it was such a beautiful place, off the tourist track with a beautiful crescent of sand and it would have been great to have spent time there when it was at its best, not when we were rained in and the beach was scattered with jellyfish.

Me outside our giant tent, hiding from the rain, Ko Ngai

When the boats were finally running we decided that we’d head straight for Ko Lipe. Our original plan had been to hop through the Trang islands from Ko Lanta to Ko Lipe, spending 10 days on 4 different islands. As the weather forecast predicted nothing but grey skies for the next week we thought it better to be in a more touristy place. The whole 2 1/2 hour bumpy (think rollercoaster bumpy) journey on the speedboat we were heading towards a patch of blue sky and our hopes were high. When we arrived it took us a while to find somewhere decent to stay in our price range, wading through huge puddles and walking along sandy tracks in the midday heat, and ended up in a little bamboo bungalow in the centre of the island. After lunch and a walk along the main beach, Pattaya beach, we found some cheaper bungalows and booked a room for the rest of our stay.

That evening the Spurs game was being shown in the sports bar so we wandered across to lay on the mattresses and watch, surprised how many Spurs fans were there. After an embarrassing defeat we decided to turn in for the night to find a crazy cat sitting in wait outside our room.

The next morning we grabbed a fresh fruit shake and walked across the island to Sunrise Beach (the island is tiny so no where is far away). We stayed there enjoying the sun until the afternoon, whiling away the day wandering along the shore, swimming and reading. We had a late lunch and had a couple of hours out of the sun back at our bungalow before heading out again, this time to Sunset Beach, the smallest of the three main beaches on the island. We propped ourselves up in some deckchairs outside a beach bar and waited for the sunset. It was the best sunset we’ve seen in a while and after finally having the beach day we’d been craving all week we were happy. We ate in town again that night and had a walk on the beach before bed.

Sunrise Beach, Ko Lipe.

Sunrise Beach, Ko Lipe.

Rhys watching the sunset, Sunset Beach, Ko Lipe.

Sunset over Ko Lipe.

We were moving to the room near the beach the next day so we were up and packed and took our backpacks with us for our breakfast fruit shakes and pancakes. The walk was hot and sticky and we’d forgotten how far it was but we made it, dropped off our bags and headed to the beach just out front. Pattaya Beach isn’t as nice as Sunrise Beach, it feels less remote and there are lots of bars and bungalows, saying that, it still has beautiful white sand and turquoise blue sea so we’re not really complaining. Rhys wasn’t feeling well so after a swim he stayed out of the sun in the restaurant with the laptop. For lunch, Rhys popped in to town and came back with crisps and pizza and we spent the rest of the afternoon split between the beach and our room. That night we ate at the restaurant attached to our resort. All up we’re impressed with Ko Lipe, it’s like a smaller version of Ko Phi Phi but on a sedative, lots of places are fully booked but it still feels quite quiet and chilled, although it doesn’t have the limestone karsts that Phi Phi has, the beaches are stunning and more than make up for it.

Week 60 - Ko Phi Phi, Phuket, Ao Nang (Thailand)

We decided it was time to leave Ko Phi Phi and caught a lunchtime ferry to Phuket. The ferry was delayed an hour and it was late afternoon by the time we checked in to our hotel in Patong. We’d found a great deal and the hotel was amazing, boutique rooms all with their own theme and sofa area - Karen’s was chitz with a four poster bed and ours was a sailor theme. Rhys and Karen were desperate for Macdonalds so we tracked one down, had a bite to eat and turned in for an early night to enjoy our snazzy rooms.

We woke late and spent the morning making the most of staying in a decent hotel with a pool. Around lunchtime Rhys and Karen headed out to explore Patong and check out the beach, I stayed by the pool as I had caught Rhys’s bug. They passed through a fish market, ate some BBQ ribs and sat on the crowded beach watching the acrobatic parascenders and sun burnt tourists. From the way they tell it, I didn’t miss out, Patong is not somewhere any of us would recommend unless you’re a dirty old man looking for a Thai bride or a lady boy or if you’re on an 18-30’s holiday. That night we headed out to Bangla, the main bar street in Patong. We visited the obligatory free ping pong show where we had to pay £18 for a beer and were pretty disappointed in the lack of theatrics, other than darts being fired at a balloon Rhys was holding, it all seemed a bit suss and we could even see a padded nappy contraption one of the girls was wearing to pull needles out of. After the ‘show’ we stopped by another bar where we played the Austrian hammer and nail game before deciding to call it a night.  

Cocktails and nails in Patong, Phuket.

We had a transfer to Ao Nang booked for 8am the next day but Karen went missing. She turned up an hour later and we sent her out to buy tickets for the next minivan, leaving at lunch time, going to Krabi from where we could get another van to Ao Nang. The drive was uneventful but uncomfortable, Karen spent the three hours with a very chatty Danish guy sitting next to her when all she wanted to do was sleep and me and Rhys had the hot engine and no leg room to deal with. Once in Krabi we were told the next bus wasn’t for an hour so we jumped in a taxi along with the Danish guy who kindly paid for the trip for us. Our hotel was decent, me and Rhys had a huge room and Karen had a roof top terrace with views out over the bay. It took us a couple of hours to get up to date on all our chores then we wandered out for a cheap dinner and had an early night.

We booked a boat trip for the following day and were picked up and taken to the pier where after a lot of faffing around we were finally allocated to a long boat with twenty other people. We all squashed in and the boat started out for our first stop at Phranang Cave in Railay. Although heaving with tourists, there was a beautiful beach with crystal clear turquoise waters and towering limestone karsts. The base of the cave itself had become a fisherman shrine and was filled with phallic statues of all shapes and sizes and the rockface had huge stalactites stretching down to the sea. Back in the boat our next stop was a photo opportunity at Chicken Island (surprisingly enough, an island in the shape of a chicken). We then moored up in a cove by the side of Chicken Island for snorkeling. Although the visibility wasn’t great the marine life was good, lots of interesting coral and brightly coloured fish. Next, we headed to Tup Island, a tiny little island joined to another and to the backside of Chicken Island by sand banks, the latter only being visible at low tide. We had a couple of hours to eat lunch, wander along the sand banks and relax before our boat headed to the last stop of the day, Poda Island. The last island had a long curving sandy beach and views across to some craggy limestone towers. We had ice creams and beers and sat enjoying the last of the sun before we headed back to Ao Nang. 

Karen grabbing breakfast from a floating cafe, Railay.

Rhys and Karen enjoying the sun, Tup Island.

White sand beaches, Poda Island.

In town, Rhys headed back to the hotel and me and Karen finished off her souvenir/gift shopping. After showers, we congregated in our room for a pre dinner rum and coke before ambling across the road for an Indian banquet, we ordered so much we had enough for breakfast the next day. As it was our last night with Karen we throught we should end it with a few drinks and headed to a little alley lined with bars and found a biker bar. We were all so stuffed the only thing we could manage were shots (and Karen and Rhys couldn’t even manage that...). We didn’t give up and instead headed to another bar with live music for a final nightcap before bed.

The weather had turned and we woke to rain the next day. Instead of the beach day that we’d anticipated we ended up wandering around Ao Nang. There isn’t that much to see in town and before long we found a bar with cheap wine and stopped for a couple of glasses and a pizza. Rhys went back to the hotel and me and Karen decided to get massages. We started with a back, neck and shoulder and it was so good that we ended up getting foot massages too (although i’m still a bit confused as to definitions, the first included face, legs and bums and the second included hands and shoulder?!). Two hours later and we went to check on Rhys who was waiting in our new accommodation, a shed at the bottom of garden of some smart bungalows. We had a couple of hours to spare before Karen’s airport transfer would arrive to collect her so we found another bar with cheap wine and settled in. Karen headed off at 6pm, we were very sorry to see her go although glad that our livers would have some recovery time, we’re definitely not as hard core as Karen. She was a great travel buddy and couldn’t have been easier, just going with the flow and filling in gaps entertaining herself. There is talk of another Thai adventure in April...

Once Karen left we retired to our shed to watch TV. At about 8pm, it being full moon, we decided we should really make the effort to at least walk to the beach even if we didn’t intend to join the party. We bought floating flower candle/incense things on the way and made our offering to the sea with a piece of hair, a nail and some coins. It was quite magical seeing all the chinese lanterns being set off and the floating candles (although they didn’t stay lit for long and most ended up being washed back ashore).

Our floating candles, Ao Nang.

We had a lazy day the next day and didn’t even leave our shed until it was time for our pick up to take us to our Thai cookery course at 4pm. When we got there we realised we were the only people booked on to the evening course so we had the tutor to ourselves, jackpot. We were give a choice of dishes and each chose six, starting with spring rolls and pad thai, followed by chicken in coconut soup and tom yum soup, then papaya salad and a seafood salad, next came stir fried chicken in ginger and sweet and sour chicken, then we made curry paste from scratch and made panang curry and red curry (Billy and Ian would be jealous) before finishing it off with bananas cooked in coconut milk. We got to eat everything that we cooked and by the end of the course we were completely stuffed. We will definitely be trying our new recipes when we get home.

Engrossed in our Thai cooking class, Ao Nang.

We had another trip booked for our last day in Ao Nang, half day rock climbing in Railay. After we were picked up in a truck ad transferred by boat we picked up our equipment and headed to an inland rock face were we would spend our morning. All up we only did 3 climbs each but that was enough, it was so tiring and the routes were so much longer than any indoor climbs we’ve done in London. Two of the routes were quite technical and required a lot of perseverance. At lunch we left the people who had booked on to a full day and headed to the beach to pass the time until the boat back to Ao Nang. We were a little jealous because the afternoon climbs were on the beach as the tide had gone out. That night we’d worked up an appetite from climbing and ended up having pizza before bed.

Rhys rock climbing, Railay.

Relaxing on Railay beach.

Week 59 - Ko Lanta, Ko Phi Phi (Thailand)

The train steward woke us at 6:30am to fold away our beds although we had another 4 hours before we reached Trang. When we finally arrived, Alex the helium filled zebra in tow, we were pounced on by tour agents at the station offering us minivans to Ko Lanta Yai (the biggest island in the Ko Lanta group). The van took a couple of hours and took two short ferries before we finally reached the island and were met by our pick up truck to take us to our beach cottage. The 12 hour journey we’d prepared Karen for took 22 hours door to door. The cottage we were staying in was great, in it’s own little bay Klong Nin with only a couple of other hotels and small restaurants nearby. Our hotel bar was on top of a hill with views out to sea and we spent the first night there just enjoying being by the sea and out of the city. After me and Rhys went to bed Karen ended up checking out the bar next door and along with a new found drinking buddy ended up whiling away a couple of hours waiting for the storm to pass so she could make it back to the cottage.

As we’d not stopped since Karen arrived we left her at lunch time the next day to relax on the beach and headed out on a rented scooter to explore the island. It’s pretty big at 6km wide and 30km long and doesn’t have a road going all the way around so it took us a good 5 hours with a couple of stops, at the national park to swim and see the lighthouse, at a viewpoint restaurant for dinner, and at another viewpoint bar for a smoothie, to get back to the hotel. We passed through Lanta Old Town and the sea gypsy communities and Ban Saladan, the main tourist area which really didn’t look all that appealing (although Rhys stayed there last time and had a blast) and we were glad we’d chosen a cottage further south where it was more hilly and jungly. Back at the hotel, Rhys dropped me at a cocktail bar overlooking the beach and went to pick up Karen on the scooter, the trip home was masterfully done with three of us squashed on the bike. Later that night we headed onto the beach for a bonfire and to open the belated anniversary champagne Rhys had asked Karen to pick up in duty free, backpacking is a hard life! 

Rhys in the National Park, Ko Lanta.

Rhys on our scooter, Lanta Old Town pier, Ko Lanta.

1st Anniversary champers on the beach, Ko Lanta.

We booked a day trip for the following day and were picked up and transferred to a beach further south to board our long tail boat. The boat was pretty crowded after we picked up some extra passengers whose boat had broken down stranding them out at sea. We made four stops. The first was at Ko Kraden for snorkeling with hundreds of jellyfish tangling around your legs as you swam and giving little stings like stinging nettles. The second stop was at Ko Muk to swim through an 80m cave to an Emerald Lagoon in the centre of the island. Next was Ko Rok for more snorkeling with slightly less jellyfish and finally Ko Ngai for lunch and a bit of beach time. Ko Ngai was a stunning palm tree lined golden arch of sand dotted with basic bamboo huts, after a lot of talking we decided me and Rhys would return in a couple of weeks after Karen left us. By the time we were back at our cottage on Ko Lanta we were all pretty tired and found spots in hammocks and under bamboo shelters in our little cove to nap in the late afternoon sun. That night we headed back to the cocktail bar for a posh fish dinner, between us we tried shark, blue marlin and barracuda. With an early start the next day we headed to bed.

Karen swimming in to the Emerald Lagoon, Ko Muk.

Long boats on the beach, Ko Ngai.

Chilling back at our beach, Ko Lanta.

At 7:15am our expected 7:30am pick up turned up. Rhys rushed to get Karen out of bed and I collected our breakfast in takeout boxes (soft boiled eggs and toast, not ideal picnic food). After a downpour drenched our bags on the roof of the truck we made it to the Ko Phi Phi ferry with minutes to spare. The ferry ride was short and after a sudden shower making us all run inside for cover we arrived at the pier. Rhys’s bag was saturated to the point where, when he put it on, the runoff made him look like he’ wet himself (quite amusing for me and Karen, not so for Rhys). We propped Karen up in a cafe for breakfast while we went to the tourist booths to find somewhere to stay. We ended up in little cottages on top of a hill at the edge of town where we could just about see the sea and the windows didn’t quite fit. After drying out Rhys’s bag, Karen climbed over her balcony and on to ours to start the vodka to help cheer a wet Rhys up. 

We walked back into town to explore and stopped for a quick drink at the Irish Bar before a quick afternoon nap to prepare for a night out. The main town on Phi Phi is sandwiched between two mountains and two beaches, one beach is used as a port and the other is lined with bars. The warren of paved streets in between are a maze of bars, restaurants, cafes, shops, markets and tattoo shops with hundreds of tourists strutting around in swimwear and cyclists mowing them down. That night we visited the beach bars for cheap buckets and fire shows. The fire twirlers (for want of a better name) were incredible and had us mesmorised for an hour or so before we walked further down the beach to a quieter bar with mats out on the sand and two very friendly french bulldogs. Some BBQ chicken on the way home and we were in bed by 3am.

The next morning me and Rhys left Karen to potter around the cottages and went to the beach. Within 10 minutes of sitting down Rhys was bored and went for a walk to see what was in the next bay - apparently not much. He then headed off to find Karen who was chilling over a late breakfast in a beach bar. After lunch, me and Rhys wandered back for another afternoon nap and Karen returned to the beach before treating herself to a massage. The Spurs game was on at 7pm so we walked in to town to find a bar to watch it and ended up staying, spending the night playing Jenga with an Australian couple. 

Feeling a little fragile the next day we checked out of our cottages at 11am and set up camp on the beach to pass the time until we had to board our boat to Phi Phi Lei. For our wedding present Karen treated me and Rhys to a night on a sleep-a-board boat in Maya Bay. Since there’s no camping on the island it’s the closest you can get to overnighting on the beach from the movie ‘The Beach’. The boat left Phi Phi Don and made a short stop at some unexceptional Viking Caves, where there are apparently paintings inside but you can’t go in because it disrupts the swallows and they collect the birds nests to sell to the Chinese for soup. We then stopped at a little bay for snorkeling with thankfully less jellyfish than had been in Ko Lanta. The marine life was brilliant, a great array of fish and luminous patches of coral but the long tails roaring around with their engines made it a little scary. 

On route to Maya Bay, near Ko Phi Phi.

Our last stop of the day was at Maya Bay. It was a shame the sun wasn’t shining but it was still warm and it couldn’t take away from the beauty of the place despite the thousands of day trippers there. Luckily, we had until 10pm on the beach and slowly scenes from the movie were coming back to us. By about 6:30pm all the day trippers had left and the 26 of us sleeping in the bay were left. We had dinner and supper in a clearing behind the tree line and played drinking games and a vicious balloon popping game until we were packed back into our little speedboat and taken back out to our sleeping boat. We had 20 minutes to swim by the boat with the plankton, a bit like fairy dust that trails you in the water before we got back on board. It was then that the storm hit and we all had to crowd in to one of the two covered areas splitting mattresses one between two (fine for me and Rhys, but quite cosy for Karen with a random we’d only just met!). The bar closed and a few covert operations led only to the discovery of a bag of bread which the 11 of us up top munched down before turning in for the night.

Karen and Rhys at 'The Beach', Ko Phi Phi Lei.

We woke early at 6:30am with the sky a little clearer (Rhys had spent the last hour sitting on the front of the boat enjoying the sun rise). After a quick cup of coffee we were back in the speed boat and on the beach with only the park rangers for company. It really was a little slice of heaven. An early morning swim and a wander across the thin strip of jungle interior to a view point the other side and we were back on our main boat by the time the day trippers started flocking in. After breakfast, we fed the scraps to the fish by the boat and jumped in for a last snorkel. Again, there were so many different fish and all swimming so close to you that you barely even noticed the jellyfish stings. The boat headed back to Phi Phi Don and we were at our new hotel by 10am (next door to our last one but with windows that fit the rooms and a pool). 

Karen at day break overlooking Maya Bay, Ko Phi Phi Lei.

Us on 'The Beach', Maya Bay, Ko Phi Phi Lei.

Me and Rhys slept by the pool until check-in while Karen headed into town for a liquid breakfast. Once we checked in it was time for more sleeping. When we woke, Rhys was starting to feel a bit ill and decided to skip dinner. Me and Karen popped out for food and to wander around town then I left her in a bar with a boxing ring and headed back to check on Rhys. By that point he was really ill, the worst he’s been since we’ve been away (thankfully it turned out to just be a 24 hour thing), we stayed in the rest of the night. Karen was trapped out by a super strength storm and ended up staying in the bar watching the boxing for a couple of hours before having to wade back through the stream that had broken it’s banks near our hotel.

Week 58 - Nyaungshwe (Inle Lake), Yangon, Bangkok (Myanmar (Burma), Thailand)

We had to check out of our hotel at Inle Lake before heading to the sports field where we rented bikes. We took the track out of town, over the bridge and headed down to the lake past stilt houses and floating tomato fields. We intended to stop at the hotsprings but it was really expensive so we kept going, heading further south until we found a little pier and a guy with a long boat to take us across the lake. Just as our boat headed into one of the reed channels a boat coming the other way speeded past us and sent a tidal wave sweeping over the boat drenching us and our camera, no lasting damage luckily. We pulled up by a pier on the other side and lifted our bikes out of the boat before heading off to a forest monastery (up a very steep road) then on to a vineyard, the Red Mountain Estate, only the second vineyard in Burma, selling wines from 2010, managed by a french guy. We had a free tour before paying a bargain £1.25 for 4 samples of different wines. After lunch at the vineyard, with views over the valley and to the lake we grabbed our bikes and headed back in to town in time for our pick up and transfer to Shwenyaung junction to meet the overnight bus to Yangon. 

Stilt house, Inle Lake

Rhys ad the bikes in a long boat crossing Inle Lake

The road was pretty windy and despite the comfy lazy boy seats and the box of cakes they handed out we didn’t get much sleep. The Yangon bus station is quite a way out of town so we jumped in a cab and headed to our guesthouse where they let us check in and we got straight in to bed for a couple of hours nap. For lunch we wandered to the Bogyoke market where we ended up buying an oil painting that we’d spotted on our first trip to Yangon. That evening we decided to treat ourselves to happy hour cocktails at The Strand, a British colonial building that is one of the poshest hotels in Myanmar. It was such a contrast to the dirty streets outside and once they started bringing out bar snacks we were in our element. We were sensible and didn’t stay out late as we had a 6am taxi to the airport the next day.

The flight back to Bangkok was painless and we ended up picking up some stragglers at the airport and there were 5 of us on the bus to the Skytrain heading to Khao San Road. We had booked into a 16 bed dorm for Karen’s first 3 nights and had decided to break her into dorm living slowly and chose somewhere where the beds were all enclosed in these little cupboards with their own TV and sliding doors. We had a couple of chores and then headed back to the hostel to wait for Karen. A couple of hours after she was due to arrive, after we’d been checking the computer non-stop to see if we had any messages, finally a message came through to say she was on Khao San Road, couldn’t find the hostel and needed a drink (the directions even had photo instructions!). We ran out and tracked her down and brought her back to check in to her top bunk cupboard. We’d picked up some 80p rum in Myanmar and ended up sitting in the hostel drinking and catching up since there was a good common area and decent crowd. Tired from the journey, Karen took herself off to bed around midnight and we headed out to Khao San Road to watch the football with a bucket of vodka red bull.

We had a bit of a lie in the next day, I was feeling pretty ropey, before heading out to the Chatuchak weekend market. We wandered around the thousands of stalls, Karen bought some beautiful elephant trousers for temples and stopped for lunch before heading back to the hostel. After dropping Rhys off, me and Karen headed out to find a massage place (parlour makes it sound dirty). Around Khao San Road chairs line the streets spilling out of massage places where for a couple of pounds you can choose from a number of different massages. We went for 1/2 hour foot and 1/2 hour head, shoulders and back. I was laughing so much at Karen squirming, while the woman poked her feet with plastic sticks, that tears were rolling down my face. After we were done being pummeled from toe to groin (a foot massage?!?!) they took us into the back room where we laid on mattresses on the floors while the women straddled us, pushed our legs into positions they were never made to be in, then sent us on our way. It was all a little confusing, a little relaxing, a little painful and just all a bit unexpected. That night we ate street food then watched the Spurs game in a bar just off Khao San. On the way back to the hostel we stopped by a deep fried bug cart and bought a pick-a-mix of bugs, from wormy things to crickets. Karen and Rhys had a bug eating competition and washed it all down with copious amounts of rum. 

Another early start and I was given the ‘wake Karen’ duty, not easy when she’d only had 4 hours sleep. By 7am we were on a minibus for the 3 hour drive to an elephant camp. About an hour away we hopped out of the minibus and transferred into a private car. Once at the elephant camp me and Rhys climbed aboard an elephant and Karen clambered on top of hers. We only went off for a short walk and a paddle in the river, our elephant eating everything it could find along the way, before we changed in to our bikinis and joined another elephant down by the river for bath time. We climbed on top of him and spent the next hour being squirted and holding on to his ears playing ‘rodeo’ where he threw his head back and forth until we flew off, elephants are surprisingly graceful for such big, heavy animals. Back in the car we made a quick lunch stop before heading to Tiger Temple. We’d heard mixed reviews about the tigers, about how there are all drugged and dozy but it seemed to us to be a load of rubbish, they’re just happy, content tigers with no fear of humans as, the ones you can touch anyway, are hand reared. There are plenty of other tigers that you can’t go near because they don’t have the right temperament or relationship with humans. We had a great time and even paid extra for a ‘special’ photo shoot, a quick game of rock-paper-scissors to decide who got to craddle the tigers head and Karen came away with a snazzy fake tiger tooth necklace to prove how brave she was! On the way back to Bangkok we stopped at the bridge over the River Kwai for a leg stretch then spent the last hour of the journey watching the most bizarre music video ever. 

Elephant riding, near Bangkok.

Elephant bathing, near Bangkok.

Karen cuddling a tiger Tiger Temple, near Bangkok.

Rhys and a tiger tiger, Tiger Temple, near Bangkok.

We checked out of our hostel the next morning before heading off to find a tuktuk to the Grand Palace. The driver tried to tell us it wasn’t open until the afternoon so he could take us on a little tour of some shops but we headed over to the area anyhow and foudn out he was lying. After buying our tickets we were told Karen needed to buy a longer sleeve top and Rhys had to don some very fetching elephant pants (that he then wore for the next 24 hours). The palace was very beautiful and worth the £10 entry, lots of gold and painted tiles and sparkly bits. After a hour or so we grabbed lunch in the market by the river then walked over to Wat Pho, a huge reclining Buddha in another beautiful, peaceful complex, a real oasis of calm in a crazy city. Back at Khao San we stopped for beer and buckets, Rhys ate a fried scorpion and then it was time to pick up our bags to head to the train station. We had an overnight train to Trang, 16 hours away, having old Karen it was 12 hours. The train was perfectly comfy, we had bunk beds along a corridor with curtains and sheets. After a few drinks and some new eyebrows for Karen it was time to sleep.

Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Bangkok.

Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Bangkok.

Karen enjoying a few buckets, Khao San Road, Bangkok.

Rhys eating a scorpion, Khao San Road, Bangkok.

night cap on the train from Bangkok to Trang.