Bangkok and a tuk tuk or two

We arrived at Bangkok station early in the morning. Well 8 ish. Negotiating the ranks of taxi's and tuk tuk drivers we hopped aboard the Thai metro system and headed over to the Sukhamvit area. This is where our friends over for a wedding were staying and as we were invited to the stag and hen do's this was easier to organise than commutes between here and the usual backpacker ghetto of the Koi San road.

We opted to spend our first night at the Atlanta hotel situated on Sukhamvit Soi 2. Sukhamvit, Bangkok's longest street, has a huge number of smaller streets or Sois branching off. With the wedding party situated on Soi 11 a 10 minute walk away. The Atlanta is largely unchanged

since the 50's and features a nice pool, well priced restaurant and somewhat surly staff. The next day we moved to the Grand President where the others stayed, nice enough but a bit over budget for more than a couple of days for us.

The main focus of our Bangkok stay was of course pre wedding celebrations, won't go into too much on that! In order to look a bit more the part we whipped over to Platinum fashion mall. Jumping aboard our first tuk tuk of the trip we sped through Bangkok's busy streets weaving between cars and benefitting from the diminutive size of the tuk tuk. Our driver trying the usual patter of offering a discount for taking a pit stop at a friendly tailor, which we politely rebuffed.

Platinum mall is a sprawling place, full to brim of small shops peddling clothes of all shapes sizes for wholesale or retail at keen prices. The rub is many of the stores do not allow you to try on the clothes or return them, which made Em and Jo's task of sourcing hen do clothes more tricky. However they successfully negotiated some suitable purchases, as did I.

The next day we navigated the usual hen and stag shenanigans in one piece, with avoidance of ladyboys, facial tattoes and other potential disasters successfully achieved! Some images I may never successfully erase from my mind however.

The other highlight of our stay was meeting up with Em's dads old university friend Chai. Chai kindly fed us lots of food and took us on a tour of the city with his driver and travel companion Tong, as well as regaling us with interesting stories about David's university days and travels. We are of course tremendously grateful to Chai for charting us a successful course through the swelling tide of Chinese tourists and adding essential insight to our tour. And of course it was a lot of fun as well just relaxing with a cold beer and chatting to Chai and also one evening with Oak, Chai's son, who Em last saw a good 15 years ago.

As well as enjoying such sights as the spectacular reclining Buddha at Wat Po, the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace we also visited a fascinating exhibition showcasing Royal Thrones and other works commissioned for Royal Jubilees. One of the most striking features was the extensive use of irradescent green beetles wings, delicately inlaid into wood and gold panels with painstaking precision. One of the queens projects to grow traditional craftsmenship the works were impressive and help maintain traditional skills albeit posed the question of "blimey how much did this all cost?"

Chai also treated us to some time in the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, with it's racecourse, golf course, and polo fields, complete with veritable condiminiums for the horses a perfect place to escape the maddening hordes. The club is somewhat of a closed shop, membership being hereditory, so not something usually available for tourists.

We had now had invites kindly extended to Sam and Nina's wedding so hitching a lift with West Virginian expat and Sam's friend Mark, we all sped off down to Koh Chang for the wedding, as luck would have it en route for us for our next country Cambodia.

Tuk tuk fact for our disgruntled home counties readers: The name tuk tuk is onamatapeic, deriving from the sound of the two stroke engines originally used.

Bangkok and a tuk tuk or two

We arrived at Bangkok station early in the morning. Well 8 ish. Negotiating the ranks of taxi's and tuk tuk drivers we hopped aboard the Thai metro system and headed over to the Sukhamvit area. This is where our friends over for a wedding were staying and as we were invited to the stag and hen do's this was easier to organise than commutes between here and the usual backpacker ghetto of the Koi San road.

We opted to spend our first night at the Atlanta hotel situated on Sukhamvit Soi 2. Sukhamvit, Bangkok's longest street, has a huge number of smaller streets or Sois branching off. With the wedding party situated on Soi 11 a 10 minute walk away. The Atlanta is largely unchanged

since the 50's and features a nice pool, well priced restaurant and somewhat surly staff. The next day we moved to the Grand President where the others stayed, nice enough but a bit over budget for more than a couple of days for us.

The main focus of our Bangkok stay was of course pre wedding celebrations, won't go into too much on that! In order to look a bit more the part we whipped over to Platinum fashion mall. Jumping aboard our first tuk tuk of the trip we sped through Bangkok's busy streets weaving between cars and benefitting from the diminutive size of the tuk tuk. Our driver trying the usual patter of offering a discount for taking a pit stop at a friendly tailor, which we politely rebuffed.

Platinum mall is a sprawling place, full to brim of small shops peddling clothes of all shapes sizes for wholesale or retail at keen prices. The rub is many of the stores do not allow you to try on the clothes or return them, which made Em and Jo's task of sourcing hen do clothes more tricky. However they successfully negotiated some suitable purchases, as did I.

The next day we navigated the usual hen and stag shenanigans in one piece, with avoidance of ladyboys, facial tattoes and other potential disasters successfully achieved! Some images I may never successfully erase from my mind however.

The other highlight of our stay was meeting up with Em's dads old university friend Chai. Chai kindly fed us lots of food and took us on a tour of the city with his driver and travel companion Tong, as well as regaling us with interesting stories about David's university days and travels. We are of course tremendously grateful to Chai for charting us a successful course through the swelling tide of Chinese tourists and adding essential insight to our tour. And of course it was a lot of fun as well just relaxing with a cold beer and chatting to Chai and also one evening with Oak, Chai's son, who Em last saw a good 15 years ago.

As well as enjoying such sights as the spectacular reclining Buddha at Wat Po, the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace we also visited a fascinating exhibition showcasing Royal Thrones and other works commissioned for Royal Jubilees. One of the most striking features was the extensive use of irradescent green beetles wings, delicately inlaid into wood and gold panels with painstaking precision. One of the queens projects to grow traditional craftsmenship the works were impressive and help maintain traditional skills albeit posed the question of "blimey how much did this all cost?"

Chai also treated us to some time in the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, with it's racecourse, golf course, and polo fields, complete with veritable condiminiums for the horses a perfect place to escape the maddening hordes. The club is somewhat of a closed shop, membership being hereditory, so not something usually available for tourists.

We had now had invites kindly extended to Sam and Nina's wedding so hitching a lift with West Virginian expat and Sam's friend Mark, we all sped off down to Koh Chang for the wedding, as luck would have it en route for us for our next country Cambodia.

Tuk tuk fact for our disgruntled home counties readers: The name tuk tuk is onamatapeic, deriving from the sound of the two stroke engines originally used.

Koh Phayam, faith restored

If Koh Phi Phi left the sour taste of overdevelopment, Koh Phayam brought the sweet relief that not everwhere is the same. We took the slow boat option from Ranong, cheaper than the speedboat a leisurely 2.5 hour trip cruised through unspoilt islands before docking in Phayam.

We decided to head to long beach, offering a range of bungalow options and the promise of some lazy hammock swinging days. The first mini adventure was getting there. The island is car free so the only viable option is a motorbike taxi. With bags perched between the legs of the driver and us perched perilously behind, our bikes took off at a fair lick causing a suitable degree of buttock clenching terror. My bike whipping past Em's and into the distance, low hanging branches causing some scary moments as my helmetless head sat clear above the drivers, however we made it in one piece and sought out suitable accomodation.

For 500 baht per night we secured a nice bungalow at Coconut resort with a suitable balcony for hammock stringing and set about relaxing! A Thai dye, geddit, hammock was procured from a local shop for this purpose.

We had also made a new friend on the boat, Astrid from Germany, who was cycling from Bangkok to Singapore. It was especially nice for Em to have some female company to chat womenly things with. Her tales of the journey to date making cycling sound a good option for a future trip.

Long beach offered what we'd been after, nice accomodation with a beach front location, and a nice balance of small local run restaurants and bars, which melted into the palm fringed shore rather than jutting too obstrusively onto the beach.

Other than 1 day of diving the majority of the time was spent swimming, snorkelling and kicking back. On the dive day I set out at 6am for the dive shop and a 4 hour boat road to the Surin Islands. After some deliberation on our part Em opted to spend the day with Astrid, cycling around the island, the diving option being very expensive due to the long boat trip, around £140. In Em's relatively newbie diver status this was a lot for another intro dive.

A real untouched tropical paradise the Surin islands offer some of Thailand's best diving. Our dive sites, either side of a tiny rocky island, proved excellent. The first dive offered me the highlight of a banded krait, sea snake, gently gliding through the corals. The second amongst a jumble of huge coral boulders, a large octopus changing colour amongst the rocks.

Meanwhile Em and Astrid completed a cycle tour of the island. Em's rickety bike proved interesting with iffy brakes on narrow roads and the odd steep descent. They explored the island's buddhist temples and shrines learning a bit about buddhist life along the way.

With a rendezvous with friends in Bangkok drawing near we donned packs and began our journey saying good bye to Astrid and the delightful Koh Phayam.

Ranong Visa run

As anybody who has backpacked in Thailand will know the on arrival visas are limited to 30 days for flying arrivals and 15 days for overland arrivals. There are two options for extending this, either paying for a visa extension or crossing a border. With our 15 days expiring we opted for the latter.

As luck would have it charting a course from Phi Phi to a visa run to Bangkok via another island is quite a straigtforward route. We originally decided to go to Ranong for the visa, borders with Myanmar/Burma, then onwards to Chumphon and Koh Tao, a popular diving destination. This would allow us to double back to Chumphon and an overnight train to Bangkok to meet some friends, Jo and Jason, Paul and Plai, for stag/hen related shenanigans on the 16th.

The visa run is fairly straightforward, get to Ranong Pier, charter a boat to Myanmar, stamp out of Thailand, arrive and stamp into Myanmar and return to Thailand. You need  passport photocopy and $10 US in mint condition. A $20 was fine for the two of us. The will sell a $10 bill at the pier for a very poor exchange rate so aquire in advance. It should be possible to complete all this for less than 400tb, plus the dollers, however we payed a little more for an organised trip wanting the quickest option.

There's not much else to Ranong, we stayed at the Kiwi guesthouse which was very friendly and cheap, the owner being an arch sales women will help with organising anything, for a fee of course, although other than our visa run we organised our own onwards travel to make a saving. With a last minute change of plan we opted to travel from Ranong to Koh Phayam, reputedly one of the least developed Thai Islands and hopefully offering the quiet slice of island life seemingly harder to find nowadays.

Koh Phi Phi, paradise pretty much lost

We picked our way through throngs of reddening europeans, packing Koh Lipe's main beach, then took a dip in clear waters, clear enough to reveal some rather unsavoury items bobbing gently across the sand. It was clear Phi Phi was not the island for us. Whilst we kind of knew this already we decided it was still worth a view, as the development won't rewind and a day trip to 'The Beach' is kind of a tourist trail must do.

Accomodation on the island was clearly much pricier than other places we'd stayed. However we managed to bag a clean and fairly modern room for 700tb which featured poolside bar and free wifi, about the cheapest available.

Signing up for half day tour by longtail boat of the main tourist spots the next day we packed on said boat and our whistlestop tour began. First monkey beach for 5 minutes, litter strewn, and featuring a small clutch of monkeys who would run off with tourists water bottles, drain the contents and leave them in the sand, the same tourists not worrying about retrieving the empty bottle.

Next up a fly past Viking Cave. Featuring cave paintings, landing is not allowed I think due to it's importance to nesting swiftlets, and therefore birds nest collectors. The cave appeared well decked out with the bamboo trellises and ladders of bird nesters.

Birds nests are big business. One of the only things more lucrative than tourism and therefore taking priority. With the saliva based nests commanding thousands per kilo armed guards patrol important nesting sites and you don't mess with these guys. Reputedly political and police connections mean things also come down very much on the nesters side if there is troble.

With the long tail loaded down with twenty punters we couldn't enter any of the shallow snorkeling spots, so headed to Maya beach, setting for the film adaptation of Alex Garlands late 90s best seller, The Beach.                                 Undoubtedly beautiful at least 20 boats of differing sizes filled the bay. The snorkelling was also pretty good. As we have found in Thailand generally damaged corals being some what made up for by quantity and variation in fish life.

So with our brief visit over we headed to Ranong and the practicalities of a visa run. Our 15 day Thai visa's nearing their end. It's a long days travel from Phi Phi, a 2 hour ferry to Phuket followed by a 5 hour bus but not expensive, self organised the journey costing around 400TB each.

p.s. man from surrey - still no tuk tuks, but more gin.

Snakes on the pan, Krabi

We arrived in Krabi late in the afternoon, Ao Nang to be precise. A developed tourist town with not a lot going for it beyond offering the gateway to the beautiful Ton Sai and Railay areas, both famous climbing areas.

We decided to stay at the less developed Ton Sai, which still offers a nice range of accommodation and restaurants but a suitably rustic feel. Our first night was a bit too rustic, a bamboo hut with a caved in wall and a mosquito net more holy than the vatican. We subsequently moved the next morning to a slightly less rustic hut albeit one with a panapoly of wildlife thrown in. Highlights included a small toad, mouse, numerous geckos, the ubiquitous mossies and a snake, all in the 'bathroom'. This constituted  toilet + hose although we fashioned a showerhead from a travel size shampoo bottle.

The snake was the most entertaining visitor. Em screeched something about a snake on my toothbrush and low and behold a small black snake was gliding along the base of the bamboo wall. My attempts to shoo it away sadly ended with it lodging itself in the wall behind the toilet whilst we (me and snake) both eyed each other suspiciously. Needless to say this made Em a bit nervous whilst on the bog. I reassured her it was more interested in our other visitors than her bum.

The main draw of the Krabi area for me was the climbing. World famous, steep limestone cliffs, festooned with tufa systems and stalagites thrust up either side of Ton Sai and Railay and will necessitate a proper climbing trip at some point however I contented myself with some bouldering, and a deep water soloing trip.

The deep water soloing was a fun day trip organised by the Base Camp climbing shop in Tonsai. The format was  a trip to the first crag, lunch and a snorkel on the beach and a few more hours at another. The first crag offered a range of routes, french grades, from 5 on up. The second crag offered a stiffer proposition with the easiest route finishing at about 40ft. Opting out of this jump, i took the wussy downclimb option limiting falls/jumps to 25ft or so. The only person in the group opting to take the big jump putting her back out. However a range of routes/traverses up to 6b gave my arms plenty enough workout and only a minor salt water enema when forgot to clench buttocks on landing.

Em opted for a day spent relaxing including her first Thai massage of the trip. Whilst appropriately painful, highlights included the thai lady sitting on her whilst flicking out muscle knots with her knuckles , she did seem more upright and to enjoy the experience. We've also been recommended a world leading blind masseure in Chiang Mai to go to work on Em's various back issues.

We also took a stroll to Railay beach, however decided to stay on the Ton Sai side as Railay was much more developed, even featuring an ATM, the beaches festooned with large and sunburnt Europeans. Still a spectacular and beautiful place however.

Lowlight was our second beach bungalows proximity to the beach. This may seem counterintuituve however with one of the beach bars booming out tunes at nightclub level until 2am, despite being empty, a good nights sleep, even with ear plugs, was impossible. Grumpy old man hat firmly on!

So we moved to the excellent Pasook Bungalows up the hill 5 minutes. As well as being clean, comfortable and spacious for the same price, they were situated beneath a nice looking crag and Em even spotted a gibbon whilst I was on my climbing trip.

After 5 nights then onwards to Phi Phi. Although we were planning to skip Phi Phi it offers an outwardly preferable stop gap on our Visa run to Ranong than Phuket. The boat from Krabi to Phi Phi was organised in Ton Sai for 400tb (£8) each including longtail to the ferry.

Koh Lipe

Home to the Chao ley, sea gypsies rehomed from Phuket, this small crescenct shaped island hunkers down in clear turquoise waters beneath its bigger sister Koh Adang.

As part of a marine national park, development is limited on all other islands but Koh Lipe has suffered slightly from over development. Not that it isn't still a home to beautiful beaches, teems with marine life, and proffers a relaxed go easy vibe. A wander inland, not that there is much inland, hides a little too much rubbish, a few too many tourist bungalow construction sites and even motorbikes zipping around. However you spin it though still a beautiful and relaxing place to spend a few days.

We stayed 4 nights in airy and pleasant bamboo huts for around 800baht (£16), Lipe Beach resort and Varin Village for 2 nights each. Our preference being the first although we moved to save some money by taking a 3 bed bungalow in the latter with Jamie, Erlend having said his goodbyes and headed to Krabi.

As to be expected more relaxing on the beach followed. The Pattaya beach side where the long tail boats abound and biggest bars sit, whilst naturally beautiful, is too busy to be ideal for daytime relaxation so we located on the sunrise beach side. With clearer waters and better snorkelling much nicer and just a 5 minute walk over the island.

Koh Lipe also afforded us the opportunity to enjoy some diving. For me to pick up a few more dives being already certified and Em to give it a go for the first time. Em opted for a Padi intro to Scuba and me 3 dives with Koh Lipe Divers. Situated half way down 'Walk Street' they were keen to reassure Em and proved happy to work through any concerns with her.

As it happened Em completed her dives, time spent practising core exercises in shallow water helping build confidence and was happy to see her calmly swimming past on the first dive alongside her instructor. Lipe is not an ideal destination for those seeking the big stuff, sharks, barracuda etc. however offers some great macro life. Highlights for me included sea horses, pipe fish, a large stone fish and some moray types had not see before. Em's were lionfish, porcupine fish, lots of anemome fish (nemos), christmas tree worms and barrel sponges.

We decided to head off to Krabi on the ferry although the slightly misleading trip sold as a ferry all the way to Krabi with Tigerline ferries turned out to be a 2.5 hour ferry ride to trang, confusing wait where people didn't really know what was going on and finally another 2.5 hours on a minibus to Krabi. Given buying the combo speed boat and minibus journey is cheaper to start with more recommended than our trip.

From Krabi, it's 15kms to Ao Nang and a 100 baht for a long tail boat to Ton Sai our next stop.

Langkawi, Malaysia

Our first taste of the beach and warm waters of the Andaman sea came in Langkawi. Duty free since the eighties, Langkawi is a favourite holiday destination for tourists and Malaysians alike. With fine white sandy beaches, heaps of restaurants and even an airport this is not quite a secluded tropical paradise although pleasant and relaxed. Whilst certainly a worthwhile destination in its own right, not up there with the best of Thai beach destinations.

We stayed at the Rainbow Lodge, 5 minutes from the beach and offering air-con, en-suite  doubles for 80MR (£16). A minor bit of a treat. Activities on the island primarily evolve around the beach and watersports of which we partook although the snorkelling direct off the main beach was poor, both cloudy and lacking features. However not a bad place for Em to practice.

Our most interesting day was centred around hiring scooters for a trip around the island. Although we would certainly baulk at scooter hire in anywhere busy, Langkawi's smooth tarmac roads, almost traffic free off the main drag, made this the cheapest and best way to see the island. Jumping on three bikes, newly made friends Jamie and Erlend on the other two, we headed off. With the cable car, to the islands high point closed, due to wind, the journey itself was the highlight, especially enjoying the smooth winding road to Langkawi's other high point, a cool and relaxing climb through monkey and bird rich rainforest.

As well as plenty of beach bumming, the food on Langkawi provided some hidden delights. An evening spent wandering a small local night market which shifts around the island offering a feast for two for 16RM (£3 ish). Crunchy spring rolls, tasty stuffed murtabak bread, barbequed whole squid and smoky satay all featuring. With a desert of coconut coated rice balls hiding a sweet cane sugar syrup centre providing the dessert. After dinner drinks in the Babylon bar, with its beach front real estate, mats nestled around coffee tables in the sand, cheap beer and house band reggae was a popular way to end our Malaysia leg.

Em and I, as well as Jamie and Erlend boarded a speed boat for our first taste of Thailand courtesy of Koh Lipe.