Month: March 2012

Day 19 and 20 – Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng is the religious center for all travellers in South East Asia. If you aren’t wearing a dozen or two string bracelets on your wrist, given out at each of the innumerable Vang Vieng bars, then you are automatically shunned and cast out as a heretic. For Vang Vieng is the summation of the
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Day 16 to 18 – Vientiane

You would think a train advertised as going to Vientiane would terminate in Vietiane. Hell, you would think it would end up in the right country. But my train from Bangkok decided to stop just short of the border, where several dozen tourists and I had to wait around for an hour for another train
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Day 14 and 15 – Bangkok

This amazing collection of buildings is the Grand Palace, built by the first king of the Chakri dynasty Rama I, and where I spent the morning and early afternoon of my second day in Bangkok. There was so much to see, from the Wat Phra Kaew (temple) with the most sacred of all Buddhist sculptures,
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Day 13 – Bangkok

I woke up late on my night train. My occupation of the bed had prevented the bunkbeds being converted into normal train seats, leaving the woman below me horizontal and therefore annoyed. I tried to apologise the best way I could, with exaggerated sympathetic expressions, but I don’t think it helped. After a few minutes
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Day 12 – Surat Thani to Bangkok

Tha Kham – the town I stayed the night in Surat ThaniĀ  – really was a no horse town. As such, I had to take a tuk tuk back to the largest city in the area – confusingly also called Surat Thani. This place was similarly devoid of attractions, but I saw on the map
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