gross [inter]national happiness

The Tiger's Nest (aka Taktsang Palphug Monastery), Bhutan What's in a name? One of the inspirations for our decision to go away travelling was an article entitled  'Find a Kingdom of Happiness' in Colors magazine about a small Himalayan country called Bhutan . It introduced us to a country that uniquely bases its policy-making and measures its success on Gross National Happiness (GNH) rather than Gross National Product (GNP). Suitably inspired by this wonderful piece of fresh thinking , and more than a little depressed by the state of the economies of the western world, we decided it was a fine time to jack it all in and head east in search of mysterious cultures, beautiful scenery, friendly people, peace and quiet, hustle and bustle, new flavours, sights and smells... and our very own slice of happiness. We departed the UK on 18th October 2012 and returned on 4th June 2013 having visited  Nepal, Bhutan, India, Burma,  Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos,  Vietnam

Bangkok looking typically futuristic (& photographed beautifully by Jo) Hello and welcome to the last post (if you listen carefully you can hear a sole trumpet playing solemnly somewhere in the distance). We've now sadly been back in the UK for almost as long as we were away (which was 7 & a half months fact fans) so this post is ridiculously late. Which also means i can't really ensure the total accuracy of it, particularly as it's meant to cover all 5 times that we were in Bangkok during our Asian adventure. But i'll give it a good crack… here we go! Bangkok, Bangkok, Bangkok, Bangkok, Bangkok (so good we went there 5 times) So Bangkok is a major transport hub in Asia and our first encounter with its charms was on our way from India's Andaman Islands to Yangon in Burma (Myanmar) when we stopped by for a few days to arrange our visas at the Myanmar embassy. Our visit coincided beautifully with Julia and Sinead so we arranged to stay in the