gross [inter]national happiness

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 ...

Sabai Sabai = Take It Easy We weren't supposed to be here. This wasn't part of the plan. We weren't even supposed to be talking! But as we'd made our escape from the silent meditation retreat, of course we were going to head to a nice beach. We may not have lasted the 10 days, but we'd earned this. Said beach was to be on Koh Phayam , a small relatively un-touristed island off the west coast of Thailand, just south of Myanmar, which came highly recommended by Jo's friend Marta. After a brief stopover in Ranong, and a quick check on Tripadvisor, we jumped on a ferry and set our sights on Sabai Sabai Bungalows . This turned out to be a great choice... properly chilled beach front huts, but with enough going on around the bar at night to have a laugh and make some new friends. Sawadee Karp (that's hello in Thai) to Kevin, Fiana, Alan, Michael, Lawrence, Sharon, Travis and Miles... and James, Mr Sabai Sabai. We ended up spending almost 2 weeks t...

Image "borrowed" from the Suan Mokkh website Duncan and I had long talked about meditation. We both have friends who meditate and rave about the benefits. So, what better an opportunity than on this trip to book ourselves into a 10 day silent retreat? We opted for Suan Mokkh an international hermitage attached to a local Buddhist monastery in southern Thailand. It came recommended and fitted well with our travel plans. Bloggers who had been to the retreat recommended that we take up the offer of staying the night before registration at the monastery, so that was the plan. We booked an early train for the 8 hour journey south from Bangkok. For the first time on our entire trip I set the alarm wrong. A whole hour later than we were supposed to be up, ie. 7.15 instead of 6.15. So a crazy last minute rush to the train station ensued on empty stomachs as we had no time to eat the breakfast we'd arranged with the hotel. On arrival at the station, the tanoy announced t...