A light cumulus nimbus cloud playing in the foreground; a nice line of fair weather cumulus in the distance, across the valley in Heputale, Sri Lanka.

Dad joined me for ten wicked days in Thailand. We stuck to the South, exploring the islands & bays, in fact Dad didn’t spend one night on the mainland!

We travelled light and along the way took creeky mopeds around town (all three of us on that, really…?), ultra-slick speedboats to the Full Moon party and hitch-hiked to the airport.

Although it was out-of-season we met a lot of brilliant people: locals who wanted to share their regional dishes; little’uns who wanted to share our wallets; backpackers who wanted to drink; honeymooners who wanted to chat; walkers who, er didn’t want to walk; hosts and guides who wanted to help, laugh & hang.

Games, eats and giggles from the days at Baan San Fan.

I visited back in December, and as part of my travels in Asia ‘popped in’ to say hi. I’m so glad I did, and I wish I had scheduled longer. But no worries, I’ll be back…

This is a diary post, so it’s a stream of thoughts, reactions and ideas. I’ll write some proper reflections and insights shortly.

Jan colouring, sticking, stamping outside House #2, Volunteers’ House

So I’ve got this new camera, and aside from taking pretty cool photos it’s also WiFi enabled. Which means that last night I emailed this photo directly to someone (lucky Mark) and also uploaded it directly to Picasa, and I uploaded another (Bintang+FourPInes) directly to Facebook. That’s without connecting the device to laptop, anything, straight from camera online. Cool eh.

Seven days on the glorious island of Bali. An immediately calming but strengthening environment.

This time I saw more of the beaches and ventured inland to Ubud – a cruise-y, spiritual town.

Fun times were had on surf board, bike, yoga mat and dance floor. And there was plenty of fuel from the nation’s superb Bintang and anything-with-peanut-sauce dishes :)

I hope I make it back again some day…

Jason, another volunteer who worked at Baan San Fan after me has completely upgraded their website and it’s awesome.

See more here.

Baan San Fan have launched their Facebook page
…
Read more here.

An outstanding start to the year. Two weeks in Thailand with my most experienced partner in crime…

After leaving Baan San Fan it was time to head north and discover more of Thailand. We did a few days in Bangkok and then ventured around the country. First of all hitting some of the ‘usual’ spots – Kanchanaburi and Ayuthaya – then getting more remote and out to some of the pretty and fun fun fun islands.

It was a beautiful, easy, thoroughly unwholesome two weeks.

Following two-ish weeks in Bang Wan, I had two-ish weeks with Lise seeing ‘the rest’ of Thailand. With no agenda at all we could have gone anywhere and yet Bangkok was magnetic for us, we just kept coming back.

I know it’s a big messy, metropolis city. I know the tourism isn’t always savoury. And yet I also know that we had the most fun, easy time here, both sight-seeing days and smashed up nights out.

No-one is more surprised than me but I’d recommend a trip to Bangkok in a heartbeat!