Arriving on the overnight sleeper train from Yangon. We arrived shaken AND stirred, just like the ubiquitous martini. To say the train ride was bumpy would be very much an understatement, and it certainly made for an interesting time when nature called. There was just no way you could keep your bottom fixed to the seat, and you had to time pulling up your underwear with exact precision to avoid being thrown headlong into the metal wall surrounding the toilet ar...

We are here in Myanmar. It's only 3-4 years since the country opened its doors to foreigners but they have agreed to let us in. They obviously don't share information between the countries we visit or they might not have been so keen to have two semi-aged backpackers meandering on their turf. For those old enough to remember the country was once known as Burma, and Yangon (where we made our first stop) was previously known as Rangoon. The country was a favourit...

Where do I start? We seem to have fitted so much into our nine days here in Chiang Mai, and much to John's delight he even managed some golf. He did venture into both Delhi and Bangalore golf clubs, to look for pitch markers and suss out the playing details, but returned from both empty-handed - Chiang Mai however turned up trumps. The course was even walking distance from our accommodation - so it was a winner on all counts. Five months without striking a golf c...

We headed north from Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai, the second-largest city in Thailand with a population of around 200,000 depending on whose stats you read. It's a popular place on the tourist trail so has its share of cafes, temples and visitors. Despite that, it's an interesting place and we had no problem filling our nine days. When we booked the accommodation we weren't too sure whether nine days might be stretching things, but we knew we had to organise our ...

Wats, Wats everywhere, and lots of temples too. The historic city of Ayutthaya is a UNESCO world heritage site, being a collection of ancient ruins from the time when Ayutthaya was the second capital of the Siamese kingdom. We were fortunate to find a small hostel-type accommodation close to the centre of the historical area, which meant we were able to walk around much of the area. The ruins are distributed over a large area, with a number of streams and lake ...