Home Sweet Home!

Back in Hackney and very happy to be so, especially given the sunshine and blossom!

To complete the record of our travels, after Krabi we took a boat to Phi Phi Island

Phi Phi island

The Phi Phi isthmus

on the Andaman coast which is, thankfully recovering after the December 2005 Tsunami. We saw and sailed in a number of the long boats that ferry tourists from island to island. Perhaps we even went in one built by a lovely American guy called Will we met in Laos and who had spent the previous two years helping to re-build long tail boats which had pretty much been destroyed.

Whilst rather touristy, there are still parts of the island that give it a well-deserved reputation for being a stunning island (albeit that one has to trek through the jungle and up and down some rather precipitous slopes to get there). Whilst we didn't go to any full-moon parties or drop out on "The Beach", location for the hippy escapist film with Leonardo de Capri, we were delighted to witness literally thousands of bats at dusk, (known locally as flying dogs), streaming out of a mountain cave. Impossible to photograph, but a vivid memory nonetheless.

After about a week, we returned to Bangkok and attempted to shop. We weren't particularly successful in this mainly because, by now, the daily temperature was pretty extreme but we did drop by the famous Chatuchak weekend market where we came across these policemen

Thai police

. Alan says the American cops used to use these gyroscopic contraptions until Dubya, one of the only people in the US to do so, fell off. Once again, we stayed at The Buddy Lodge Hotel in the backpacker area of Khao San Road

Khao San road

which was getting ready to enjoy the annual Song Kran water festival. As ever, the King of Thailand

was omnipresent although we were shocked to learn that a Swiss national had been given a 10 year prison sentence for de-facing his image on a poster one night after an unfortunate drinking session.

And so our re-entry to Hackney after a marathon 28 hour journey involving a hairy pitstop at Amman in Jordan and two very much last-minute aborted attempts to land the plane (the pilot announced he couldn't see the runway in thick fog and pitch blackness - eeks!)

This is our last posting, so thanks to everyone who kept in touch and armchair travelled with us. You can, perhaps be thankful that this technology negates any need for us to bore you with our holiday snaps!

Apr 16, 2007

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