Oldies Gap Year

As I write this we are heading to Brunei for the weekend ( as you do.....) to see some friends, having stayed here in Kuala Lumpur for the past 3 nights. After that we are heading back to Bangkok for a couple of days, and then coming back to the UK for a week or so to experience what it is like being cold for a short time! We left our bikes in the guest house that we used in Chiang Mai, so when we get back there mid December we are heading for Laos and probably Vietnam after that. The last blog had us heading into Burma for the day. The border town of Tachilek whilst in Burma really appears to be an outpost of Thailand and uses the Thai currency throughout. Sian was a little nervous about being stamped out of Thailand and not being allowed into Burma, therefore spending her days in perpetuity on the bridge over the Mekong between the two countries. Fortunately ( and rather surprisingly) the Burmese immigration officials were a very smily friendly bunch. We got to sit on some seats,...

We have had a busy few days, and thus the lack of blogging! We arrived rather late in Bangkok on the 23rd October. This delay was due to us being involved in more Japanese Typhoon malarky, namely Typhoon Lan. This was quite a belter, and involved us sitting on the aircraft in Tokyo whilst the airport was shut for 20 minutes due to some quite vicious squalls during which the aircraft rocked quite noticeably from side to side, complete with rain lashing down! Eventually we got clearance to push back, but there was now a large delay of departing aircraft so it took about an hour of taxiing before taking off. That was quite hairy, with severe turbulence for about an hour or so after departure during which all of the crew were strapped in their seats. I notice later that instead of taking a route around the storm, the aircraft flew directly into the typhoon. I guess these people know what they are doing...... We stayed overnight in a hotel close to the airport, and then flew on to Chian...