Dan's Adventure

credit: Alain76

After completing the PADI open water course I was hooked, I wanted to keep on diving. I started to look into options for diving in both the Great Barrier Reed and the Galapagos and unsurprisingly I found that the cost of diving in both locations was astronomical in comparison to Koh Tao. My cousin currently works as a dive master out in the Galapagos so I turned to her for some advice. Her recommendation was to take advantage of the cheap diving on Koh Tao so I decided to …

Before I left the UK I knew that I wanted to learn to scuba dive at some point during my trip but I didn’t know where or when. Both the Great Barrier Reef and the Galapagos Islands were on the cards for diving, but learning in either place would cost a fortune and I wouldn’t see as much as I would if I could already dive.
In most places in order to dive you need to either have completed a recognised introductory course, or you can sign up for a discovery …

At each of the entrances to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha complex stands a pair of giant guards. Brightly coloured and almost as tall as the walls behind them, they really stand out and were infact the most impressive thing that I saw in Bangkok.

Bangkok is the largest and busiest city that I have visited in quite some time. Its hot, it smells and it has something for everyone. From sites such as the Wat Pra Kaew and the Grand Palace, to the ultra modern malls, to the backpacker mecca of Khao San Road, Bangkok has it all.
Temples

Bangkok has many temples but to be perfectly honest, I’m templed out. I only visited a couple whilst in Bangkok and even then, my visits were very brief due to the sheer number of people there. Even …

Before Bangkok the most backpacker centric place that I had been was Vang Vieng in Laos. It was filled with bars and cafes, companies offering activities and a lot of drunk tourists. That wasn’t a patch on Khao San Road.
Along the length of Khao San Road are stalls selling fake name brand clothing, sunglasses and flip flops, everything that a tourist may need. In between are small food stalls selling everything from banana pancakes to pad thai, and people selling beers from cooler boxes for less than the surrounding bars …

When we stopped for lunch on the first day of the Nam Ha trek this butterfly came to join us.

When travelling for a long time there are certain tasks that need to be done once in a while that break you out of the tourist zone as you need to rely on local services to accomplish them. Although simple, sometimes they can prove to be a challenge, whether its going for a hair cut, buying new clothes or getting laundry done, its often more difficult than it should be.
Hair cuts
After almost 6 months, I’ve not managed to get the dreadlocked traveller look, I’ve been for a few haircuts along …

Chiang Mai surprised me at how big it actually was. It was the busiest city I had been in since Phnom Penh a month earlier. Theres something about it though, one of those places that its very easy to spend a long time in due to the all the activities on offer and the draws of the city itself.
History

The old city was once surrounded by a wall, the only remains of which are gates on each side and the corners, the rest of the wall is gone, but the moat …