Oldies Gap Year

Happy Christmas to those with sufficient endurance to still be following this! You can see where we are at the moment - maybe about half way between Chiang Mai and Bangkok, but we are now heading roughly due east to get to Laos. Today was a little bit of a surprise - not only raining but rather cool - an uncalled for 23 degrees, which whilst sounding warm enough was considerably colder when you are soaked through! I thought people might be interested in some aspects of cycling in Thailand. I think I've already said that accommodation is pretty cheap, and we have been using more and more what are termed "resorts". You can't generally find these on the booking agencies like Agoda or Booking.com, but they show up consistently on google maps. It's a bit of a leap into the unknown just rocking up without prebooking but so far we haven't failed. My suspicion is that it's a first come first served situation, and as long as you are there before 3 or ...

We had a relatively uneventful journey back to the UK, and had Christmas dinner with our two children, as well as attending to various other admin tasks. One of which was having our hair cut - neither of us were man enough to submit to this in a foreign country, with the risks of miscommunication rather high! Britain at it's best- a fine but clear day walking to Wisley Our flight back to Bangkok was from Amsterdam, via Doha in Qatar. You might ask why we were flying from Amsterdam - the answer being quite simply that it is cheaper. The UK authorities charge quite punitive departure tax, which other countries don't- and it's sufficiently cheaper to cover the cost of getting to your EU departure airport (err- usually) There is of course, a downside to this. If you don't make your flight, then you are generally well and truly scuppered, as these cheaper tickets are pretty inflexible and cannot be changed or cancelled without losing most , if not the  whole valu...