The last post

After a needlessly long and complex journey from blissful Koh Jum, Amanda and I arrived in Phuket Town - which is nowhere near as awful as we'd been told.

Everyone we met along our travels warned us about Phuket: 'Horrible. Horrible!'

But I'm pretty sure they were talking about Patong, the island's main beach. It's supposed to be Thailand's answer to the Gold Coast or Benidorm. But Phuket Town, the island's capital, has its charms.

It's not on the beach at all, and is a Thai city for Thais rather than a resort for tourists. We were reminded of a Chiang Mai-On-Sea, and it was nice to end our trip in a real Asian city - with busy streets and bustling markets.



Phuket also has a colonial past - both Chinese and Portuguese - and that's left a nice little legacy of streets packed with pretty and historic little shophouses and fading, European-style hotels.




Admittedly, it's only a few streets and a couple of hours is all it takes to see them. It's interesting that Phuket makes little noise about these lovely buildings - preferring to point tourists straight to the beach. You get the feeling that perhaps they'd really rather keep Phuket Town for themselves. I don't blame them.

We wandered about for a day, taking our time and going nowhere in particular until it came time to jump aboard a taxi for the airport and fly out of Phuket, out of Thailand, and out of Asia.

Leaving one Asian town seemed familiar enough, but not arriving in a new one was a strange feeling after six months on the road. The Asian adventure was finally at an end.

While it's a little sad saying good bye to Asia, there's a lot to look forward to: seeing my native Australia for the first time in seven years, catching up with friends and, best of all, enjoying my first family Christmas in 13 years.

And Amanda and I have some memories to treasure. The past six months has been the greatest of our lives, an eventful and thrilling adventure through some of the most interesting and exotic places in the world.

Highlights? It's tough to pick some favourite moments, but if pressed to pick a top three it would probably be the slow boat down the Mekong, Hanoi and Angkor Wat.

But then there was also tooling around the DMZ with a former South Vietnam soldier, climbing Thailand's third-highest mountain (and somehow surviving) and, of course, spending nearly two months actually living in Chiang Mai - immersing ourselves in genuine Thai culture.

I could go on and on like this, but I won't. As for lowlights, well, the only one I can think of is Hoi An, and at least that was a learning experience - Amanda and I learned never to go there again!

Even the travelling itself has been fun, mainly thanks to the astonishing variety of local transport we've found along the way. We've been on planes, trains, boats, cars and motorbikes. Small planes and big planes, long boats, speed boats and row boats, buses, song thaews, tuks tuks and motorcycles. For a while, it seemed as though every town or city we arrived in had found a new and novel way of getting us about.

We learned a lot about Asia and Asians along the way. We discovered that travelling around Asia is a lot easier than you'd expect - we felt as safe there as anywhere in Europe, and often a lot more welcome. On the whole, the people of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are the friendliest, warmest and most generous people you could meet anywhere.

Up until July, neither Amanda and I knew the region at all - I had been to Bangkok for a few days and Singapore for a weekend, and that was it - and now we've been all over South East Asia.

And this fascinating new region we've discovered is not a long-haul destination for us any more, to be visited only ocassionally. Now that we live in Australia, Asia is in the neighbourhood - like the Continent was when we were living in the UK.

So we're looking forward to coming back again and again, and discovering somewhere and something new every time.

And so now I'm coming to the end of my final blog post. I've enjoyed writing it even more than I expected, and I hope you enjoyed reading it, too. I've not won an Oscar, but I feel I should thank some people for the whole experience...

I think I've already thanked Asia and Asians for giving us a such a great time and welcoming us into their countries, their cities and their homes.

I should also thank a certain online media corporation for inadvertently and reluctantly paying for the whole thing - they know who they are!

And thanks to Amanda for sharing the whole trip with me, and making it all so exciting and worthwhile. If you're looking for a travel partner, you couldn't find a better one than Amanda - except she's mine, so go get your own.

And thanks to everyone who regularly read our blogs (Amanda's got one, too, but I'm sure you know that!), especially to the many people who took the time to leave comments. A special thanks goes to one Dominic Greves, who made the effort to leave insightful and witty comments on practically every post I wrote - Dom, it was like you were with us at times!

And foreign adventures aren't over for good. There are still many other places to visit in the world and I know one day we'll visit them - and blog about them.

So does anyone know how much a one-way ticket to South America costs?

The rocks of Ting Rai Bay

When Amanda and I arrived at Ting Rai Bay, we were disappointed in one aspect of the place. The welcome was warm, the weather was perfect, the bungalow was comfortable and the beach was beautiful - so it wasn't any of those.

No, it was the rocks. As our longtail pulled into the beach after one very long journey, the water was so shallow that it couldn't quite reach the beach.

As we climbed out and into the inches-deep waters, one of the staff warned us to keep our shoes on - we looked down and saw why. The floor of the sea was positively carpeted with rocks. Big ones, little ones, sharp ones and flat ones.

I turned to Amanda and said 'this place is great, but we won't be able to swim'. We were feeling a little disappointed.

We can't have been the first to think this, because Tam, the lovely owner, immediately told us not to worry. The tide was especially low right then, she said, because the moon was full. Wait until the next morning and everything will be perfect, she said.

We smiled but we doubted her - the tide would have to come a long way up the beach to cover all those rocks. But the next morning, I woke up and stepped out of the bungalow and onto our balcony to look down on a welcome sight.

The tide had come in and, as promised, it had come in a dramatically long way and all we could see was dreamy clear blue waters lapping a now much, much smaller beach. We walked down for a dip and found the rocks had receded to the depths of the sea - you'd need diving equipment to reach them now.



In the two-and-a-half weeks we were there, we got very used to the dramatic differences between the low and high tides: the high waters perfect for swimming and the low tide transforming the beach into a bleak but beautiful rocky landscape.



And there's a story behind those rocks - they are the scars of the small part this little beach played in very recent and very traumatic history. Once this beach boasted nothing more than blonde sands, no matter how low the tide was.

Then the Tsunami came.

On Boxing Day in 2004, not even three years ago, while the guests of the bungalows slept or ate breakfast up on the hill, a wave of unimaginable force pounded the pretty little beach, bringing with it countless thousands of rocks from the depths of the ocean.

Tam told us how the staff first noticed that the waters were rapidly receding and a high tide suddenly turned into the lowest tide any of them had ever seen. The approaching Tsunami was sucking the waters ahead of it, but they didn't know that.

Tam said she and a few others walked a little way down the hill to investigate, and then they saw it. Far offshore was a thin but solid band of white breaking water, forming a long line that reached from one end of the horizon to the other.

And it was moving towards them very, very quickly. They continued to watch until it hit, first from the right of the beach, then from the left of the beach and finally right through the centre. This last one was the most powerful but, Tam told us, they didn't see that one - they were fleeing up the hill as fast as they could run by then.

Fortunately for all on Koh Jum, the island is steep and even a wave that powerful couldn't make it very far inland. Nearby Koh Phi Phi was not so lucky - built on a flat sandbar, the wave hit from the front and the back and at least 2,000 people died.

Besides a few broken arms and legs, no one on Koh Jum was hurt - but much was still damaged. At Ting Rai Bay, a longtail was deposited in the branches of a tree that is now high above the water.

Further down the beach, a longtail lies high on the beach - destroyed by the killer wave. It now looks like the skeleton of a long dead dinosaur, languishing among the new rocks of Ting Rai Bay. Destroyed with it was someone's livelihood.



And at the other end of the beach lie huge dead trees, roots and all. They were ripped out of the earth and dragged back to the beach as the tsunami eventually retreated into the sea.



At Ting Rai Bay, only the beach-side bar was close enough to the waters to be touched - and it was destroyed. Replacing it must have been expensive.

Expensive, too, was clearing the beach of rocks. They were everywhere - far more than there is now - and many couldn't be lifted even by several burly locals. Earth-moving equipment had to be hired.

And when the climate here means you can only open for six months of the year, this is not the sort of expense that's easy to bear in the middle of the high season. Even worse, the guests who were there at the time left immediately and tourists stayed away for years. They're only now beginning to come back.

Times have been tough since the Tsunami.

But that's nothing compared to the personal toll of the Tsunami. Mango, the older of the three brothers who serve and entertain everyone at Ting Rai Bay, told me sadly that he lost one of his closest friends at nearby Kao Lak.

Although no one died at Koh Jum, Mango told me that everyone he knows - and everyone in this huge part of Thailand - knows someone, or was related to someone, that was killed by the wave. Most know many more than just one.

Homes and businesses were destroyed by the tsunami or by the disappearance of the tourist trade that followed it. Many locals had to move away from beaches and islands and lives they loved.

But now things are getting better. New longtails have been launched, destroyed buildings have been replaced and people are moving back to the Andaman coast. And the tourists are returning in droves.

It's almost as if the Tsunami never happened. But when the tide is low, those rocks reappear, and they will never go away.

I'm a tourist, get me out of here!

I'm beginning to think Amanda and I have recently angered the gods of travel, if our ill-fated day-trip to Koh Phi Phi is anything to go by.

After enjoying a week on our secluded and tranquil beach – doing little more than swimming, reading and eating, we decided it was time to see the local sights. The place to go around here is Koh Phi Phi, a little chain of islands – a national park - famed for their almost supernatural beauty.

So on Saturday morning we climbed aboard a longtail boat for the hour's journey from our island of Koh Jum, along with a charming Dutch family – the children are our age on a year-long sojourn around the world, and their parents joined them for a sunny holiday in Thailand.

It was a windy day and the hour-and-a-half trip to our first stop, a place called Bamboo Island, was a little on the rough side – but fortunately uneventful. We arrived to find an island straight out of central casting: brilliant white sands rising out of stunningly turquoise waters and fringed with palm trees. And Bamboo Island is not even the prettiest place we would see that day.

All the islands around Koh Phi Phi are famed not only for their beauty, but for the swarms of tourists who come to appreciate it. But on that morning we were alone on the beach but for some friendly local fisherman tending to their catches of crabs.



We all went snorkelling for a while, but the water was very shallow and there's not much to see. All these islands were hit very hard by the tsunami three years ago, and where there used to be abundant living coral there is now just a vast bed of shattered dead coral. There's new life poking through here and there, but I suspect it will be years before this part of the sea has fully recovered.

After lounging around on the fine, white sands, we got back in the boat for an hour's journey to Koh Phi Phi Leh. Koh Phi Phi is made up of two islands, the main one is Koh Phi Phi Don – where you can eat and sleep – and the smaller is Koh Phi Phi Leh, which is not inhabited.

If you've seen The Beach, then you've seen Koh Phi Phi Leh. It's the where Leo Decaprio finds his backpacker's paradise. But the film put it firmly on the tourist map, and no one who comes near here misses it.

And with good reason. If you've seen the film and wondered if they made it look as spectacular as they did with a little creative effects, then I'm here to tell you that they didn't. If anything, it's even more beautiful in real life.

The famous beach is surrounded by enormous rocky cliffs that rise high in the sky, and which circle the beach almost completely to form a sort of tropical lagoon. As our boat rounded the cliffs and entered the lagoon, we all gasped. I've seen a lot of beautiful beaches – I'm Australian, after all – but I've never seen one to match this.

The water is so clear it could have been shipped in by the Evian people, but at the same time manages to be a shade of turquoise that doesn't even seem possible. The sands of the beach are the whitest I've ever seen – in the bright sunlight it's almost blinding.



And, of course, it's packed with boats like ours filled with sightseers like us. And being a national park, there's a fee to get out of your boat and onto the beach. We hadn't been told this and didn't have enough cash on us (we were planning to get some money out at the town on Koh Phi Phi Don).

But the beach was so crowded with sunbathers and – sadly – rubbish that we weren't fussed. We jumped aboard the boat and our boatmen headed back to the centre of the lagoon so we could snorkel. The water is so clear that you can see all the coral as if it were inches below you, even though the water is actually some four or five metres deep. And the coral was largely untouched by the tsunami, thanks to the sheltering arms of the surrounding cliffs.

And diving in, we discovered that the lagoon is teeming with life. There were hundreds of fish just inches in front of my face – completely unafraid of us. We counted dozens of kinds of brightly coloured tropical fish, jellyfish and coral. As Don, one of our Dutch friends said, it was more like an aquarium than the sea.

Our new friends had an underwater camera, and shot some great photos of the local aquatic wildlife....



And the lagoon is easily large enough to accommodate a lot of people snorkelling in it without feeling crowded or busy. We spent a long time there, and found it hard to pull ourselves away.

Incidentally, one of the people staying in our bungalows caused a little local ruckus when he came here on the same tour a few days before us. This guy, a vaguely creepy Norwegian who may or not be the navy diver he claims to be, took it upon himself to dive to the ocean floor here and chisel a huge clam off the coral and bring it back with him.

While it didn't concern him that clam was an endangered species and this is a national park, it certainly outraged an older Canadian guy who is also staying here. He wrote a long J'accuse-style notice condemning all who went on the tour and demanded the staff post it in the restaurant. They did – but only while he was there. As soon as he left, they'd hide it so none of the accused guests would see it. A little soap opera can enliven any holiday.

But the clam got its revenge in the end: the Norwegian got the staff to barbecue it and he ended up spending a couple of uncomfortable days with acute food poisoning.

We weren't tempted to take anything away with us apart from photographs, and were soon on our way to Ko Phi Phi Don – and that's when it started to get a little hairy. The wind had picked up and our wooden boat was being mercilessly bullied by big waves. Each wave would smash into the side and we would all hold our breath as it shuddered. It wasn't far to go, but we all got off the boat relieved and soaking wet.

Koh Phi Phi Don is also a stunningly beautiful place – two mountainous islands connected by a big sandbar and a gorgeous beach – but it's all rather ruined by Koh Phi Phi town.

The town is actually built on the sandbar itself, and has everything you'd never imagine could possibly be built on mere sand: Bars, multi-story hotels, paved roads, ATMs and plumbing.

All of this was destroyed by the tsunami in 2004 – which swept over the town from both sides and killed thousands – but it was very rapidly rebuilt. Now the only sign of the recent disaster is the 'I Survived' shirts on sale at every shop.

Which is a shame, because it's a horrible place. It's packed to the gills with young party people. It boasts German bars showing German football and serving German food to German people, and English pubs showing English football and serving English food to English people. And French bars... well, you get the picture.

There's nothing Thai about it - you could be at any beach resort anywhere in the world, which is why we nicknamed it Koh Ibiza.

Koh Ibiza is also terribly expensive. There's no doubt it's catering to young Europeans who have saved up all year to go on a raucous two-week bender in the sun.

But we were meant to be there only for a couple of hours, so the cost wasn't bothering any of us much. A couple of beers, a chat and back on the boat home, that was the plan.

So much for the plan. We had barely put Koh Phi Phi behind us when our boatmen decided to turn around and go back. And we thanked our stars he did – that short voyage felt like a scene from The Perfect Storm.

OK, I'm exaggerating. But the wind was fierce and the waves were even bigger and more threatening now. We would watch in fear as a wave picked up the boat until the prow was pointing up at the sky, and hold it there for a frightening moment that seemed never to end. Then the boat would be thrust back into a deep trough between the waves with bone-rattling force. Over and over and over.

So now we were stuck in Koh Ibiza. Amanda went to hunt down some rooms for us – not so easy at the end of the day, and in the high season. Standards were low, but prices were high. At first she couldn't even find a room anywhere, but eventually three materialised – for a whopping 2100 baht each. Ouch.

It was officially the most expensive hotel room of our entire trip. And the worst. In the rest of Thailand, 2100 baht will buy you a palatial suite, with a a big TV, luxury breakfast and all the conveniences you can imagine. On Koh Phi Phi, it didn't even get us a complimentary bar of soap in the shower. But, hey, the loud nightclub next door and the 100% pure nylon bed sheets were a nice touch.

At least we got to eat dinner watching a beautiful pink-and-orange sunset over the many dozens of longtail boats parked on the beach.



The next morning we all gratefully clambered aboard the boat – in which our poor boatman was forced to spend the night – as the sun was coming up. The family with us were catching a flight out of Krabi that very afternoon, and Amanda and I were just as keen to get the hell out of Koh Phi Phi.

The ocean that morning was not the one that forced us back the afternoon before. It was still a little choppy, but the waves were more playful than menacing. An hour and a half later and we were back on our beach in Koh Jum – no ATMs, no faux-English pubs, no thumping dance music.

No wonder I kissed the sands of Koh Jum as I finally tumbled from the boat.

As usual, there are lots of my photos of Koh Phi Phi right here

The long way to paradise

Kanchanaburi over with, it was time to set sail for Koh Jum, the paradise island where Amanda and I were planning to spend the last few weeks of our trip.

It was always going to be a long haul south, but it turned out to be much harder than we'd imagined.

You see, Koh Jum is remote. It's a little off the usual Thai-beach tourist trail, unlike the islands around it that are said to be as beautiful, but crowded and expensive. Koh Jum – also known as Koh Phu – barely rates a mention in any guide book.

Best of all is the arrival: the regular tourist ferries only pass Koh Jum, they don't stop there. So a small longtail boat is sent out to meet the ferry that plies its way between Krabi and Koh Jum, and you climb off the big ship and into the little boat for the short cruise to the island.

Amanda and I thought this would be a great way to arrive. The romantic vision of leaping off a crowded ferry and waving goodby to bemused tourists as we headed for our own private tropical island kept us going through the cramped, two-hour minibus ride back to Bangkok.

But it was not to be.

Unlike our last trip south, we got to the train with plenty of time. We even had the time to buy novels for the beach and check the internet – to discover to our unalloyed joy that that vile racist reactionary John Howard had been resoundly beaten in the election back home.

We celebrated with a few beers on the train and climbed into our beds with dreams of sunsets over the white sands and blue waters of Koh Jum.

And that's where it started to go wrong. I woke up at three in the morning to find that our mobile dormitory on rails had transformed itself into a very stationary hotel on the tracks. The train had broken down.

For nearly four long hours it stood there, going nowhere, and our chances of catching the ferry from Krabi to Koh Jum were slowly evaporating.

When the train finally arrived at Surat Thani – at 10.30am instead of 6.30am – the buses to take us further south to Krabi were still waiting for us. But that was the last piece of good news we were to get in a while.

The coach took us some of the way, but we were soon crammed into the back of yet another minibus, for yet another two hour drive. We knew we'd never catch the 11am ferry from Krabi, but the 2pm version looked a definite possibility.

We arrived in Krabi – now with two other Australians we met on the train, who liked the sound of Koh Jum and joined in the fun – at 1.30pm and headed straight for the ferry terminal. We were elated... we could still catch the 2pm ferry!

Except that the 2pm ferry didn't exist. Apparently, the second boat is in dry dock at the moment.

Amanda got on the phone to the Ting Rai Bay Resort, where we were supposed to be staying for the next couple of weeks (Incidentally, it's not actually a resort, just some bungalows on the beach). The owner told us to get a taxi south, from where a boat would be sent to pick us up.

So we piled into a taxi for an hour's trip south. We arrived in a scruffy little town which boasted a wooden pier. The boat to pick us up was 10 minutes away.

That would have been perfect, had it not been for two insane and hysterical older French women (it's always the French), who were intent on muscling in on our ride.

They weren't staying in the same place, but somewhere else on the same island, and they didn't want to catch the normal express boat to the main port of Jum. Instead they wanted to divert our boat to save themselves the princely sum of 100 baht.

OK, fine. We were all too tired to argue. If only the same were true for our French friends, who continued to argue the toss with the bemused staff at the pier. They wanted to continue to bargain down the price, and confusion reigned.

Suddenly a man appeared with a sunny smile. 'Ting Rai Bay Resort?' he asked. That's us! We followed him down the pier and onto his boat. It was only 20 metres or so, but the French women insisted on being driven there, which further slowed us down.

And while we sat on the boat, they continued to argue and argue and argue. The staff at the pier got annoyed. Our boat driver got annoyed. The passengers on the express boat next to us – the ones the French women refused to pay an extra 100 baht to get on, even though it was going precisely where they wanted to go – were getting annoyed.

And we were getting very, very annoyed.

As this dragged on, our boatman gave us a knowing grin. We understood immediately and all four of us urged him to go – just go! He pushed away the boat, started the engine and, with the French woman screaming after us, pulled away from the pier and into the open ocean.

For good measure, we all gave them a cheery wave goodbye from the boat. They looked furious. And then, just to add to our joy, the express boat – their only remaining chance to get to the island – decided to do the same, and left them fuming on the pier, boatless.

We rounded Koh Jum and in an hour were jumping off the boat and wading through the water and onto a tranquil and secluded beach. It was everything we had hoped for: beautiful and peaceful.



There are only 14 bungalows, so not a lot of people around. The electricity is from a generator and only comes on in the evening (but somehow you can always get a cold beer, so someone has their priorities straight). And the sunsets are the most beautiful we've seen.

And it only took 28 hours, two minibuses, two taxis, a coach, a train and a boat to get here.

Riding the Death Railway

For such a pretty little town, Kanchanaburi has a very nasty history.

North of Bangkok and nestling against the picturesque River Kwai, Kanchanaburi was the setting for The Death Railway. Here, during World War II, imperial Japan sacrificed hundreds of thousands of prisoners to build a vital rail link to its conquered Burmese territories.

As is the way with these things, what was once the site of such misery is now the source of fascination for millions, and tourists flock here every year to see the famous bridge over the River Kwai and to ride the Death Railway.

Amanda I hopped onto a packed mini-bus for the two-hour ride to Kanchanaburi from Bangkok yesterday. Many travellers just visit for the day, leaving the capital early in the morning and returning late in the evening.

But we thought it deserved a little more time than that and, fortunately, we were right.

Our first stop was the Death Railway Museum, a short walk from our guest house. There are several museums devoted to the infamous railway in town, but this one is supposed to be the best. It's small but fascinating and informative.

The atrocities committed by the Japanese are many and varied, and recounted in full in the museum. It tells of how thousands of captured Allied soldiers were shipped here and to Burma to build the railway, living and working in the most inhumane conditions possible to build a railway through some of the toughest terrain and in the most squalid conditions imaginable. Very few survived.

The whole Death Railway experience tends to focus on the ordeals of the Allied soldiers, mainly Brits, Australians and the Dutch – 16,000 Allied POWS died building the railway. But, and I didn't know this, the museum informed me that the number of Asians killed was far, far greater – something like 100,000.

Most of them were labourers left unemployed and desperate by the war raging around them, and were tricked by the Japanese into coming to work on the railroad. They were told there would be work for them. Of course, there was no shortage of work – there was just no pay, no days off, and no escape.

Next to the museum is the beautiful and poignant Don Rak cemetery, where 6,982 POW graves are set out in neat rows. The Thais are deeply respectful people and they take great care to look after these graves and keep the cemetery immaculate. It's very touching.



It's sobering and sad to wander the grounds of the cemetery and read some of the thousands of names of young men who died unwillingly serving the Japanese war effort. As we walked among the graves, the sun began to set and all was missing was the distant strains of The Last Post.

When the cemetery closed, we grabbed a song thaew and raced upriver to see the sunset over the River Kwai and its famous bridge. It doesn't look much like the one in the film, but it turns out the film wasn't all that accurate, anyway.

Instead of being destroyed by commando sabatoeurs, the bridge was badly damaged by Allied bombers towards the end of the war. But it was long ago repaired and is still authentic and in regular use – it even has wooden guard posts with Rising Sun flags at regular intervals. And unlike most rail bridges, you're welcome to wander across it when the trains aren't using it.

Amanda and I strode on to it, and it's a bit of a hairy crossing. The tracks are only a metre wide, and then there is an unguarded and very long drop into the river on both sides. That wouldn't be a problem if there weren't thousands of people trying to cross it and, inevitably, take photos of themselves while they do it.

I would be very surprised if tourists don't regularly fall off the bridge. Particularly annoying are the busloads of Japanese tourists – I know they have as much right to be here as anyone else but I was surprised to see them here, frankly – who push and shove anyone and everyone aside in their haste to see the bridge and leave. Anyone would think they built the bloody thing.

We didn't even make it halfway, fleeing the bridge and instead watching the sun set over it from the banks below. It was a beautiful sight.



The next morning we did what every tourist who comes to Kanchanaburi does – we rode the Death Railway.

We headed for the station to catch the 10.30am train and bought our tickets. You wouldn't know it, but you can ride the route with the locals for just a few baht, but the staff want you to buy the 300 baht tourist ticket. Fair enough, you get a guaranteed window seat and the ride is pointless without one, so we paid the full fare.

The train takes you across the bridge and to a place called Nam Tok, about two hours away. The route is often described as Thailand's most scenic train ride. I can't be certain of that, but it's certainly very pretty – through rice paddiesand farmers' crops, and past pretty little towns and stations. And always with some impressive mountains marking the Thai/Burmese border in the distance.

The tourist carriage is identical to the one used by the locals – wooden seats facing each other – but 300 baht buys you some comfortable cushions and some free coffee and snacks. You even get a certificate to prove you rode the railway. And see if you can resist whistling Colonel Bogey as you cross the bridge.

The words on the certificate are as charming as they are incomprehensible: 'The train ride passes the sorrow of the nation to the era of beauty and peaceful moments given lovingly by Mother Nature.' And: 'The voice of the jungle brings back memories from the real soul of the human nature out of this busy world.'

It's hot outside but the windows are down and the breeeze is blowing through the carriage. The view is varied and spectacular. All in all, it's a grand day out.

Which seems ironic given the horrendous cost of building this picturesque stretch of railway - endless suffering and countless lives.

The POWs who were forced to build it didn't get comfortable cushions, free coffee and snacks, or a certificate suitable for framing. They got dysentry, typhoid, cholera and malaria. They got the life beaten out of them by brutal Japanese soldiers. They got buried.

It's impossible to forget the horrors of the Death Railway as you take the two-hour ride. Especially when you pass some of the more shockingly tough terrain. At one point, we travelled through thirty-metre-deep solid rock cuttings, dug at a place called Arrow Hill. Someone had to dig through that solid rock, against their will and with little more than a pickaxe. Few who did survived.

Even more spectacular is a spot near the end of the line where POWs had to build an enormous wooden trestle bridge high above the river, clinging to a bare stone cliff for some 300 metres. I could hardly believe it would even have been possible. Every man who worked on that bridge died.



Finally, we reached Nam Tok, a one-horse town that probably wouldn't exist if the train didn't terminate there. There's lots to see around there in the way of waterfalls – Thais are obsessed with waterfalls, I don't know why – but you really need your own transport or the local song thaew drivers will positively gouge you.

So we turned around and headed right back.

It sounds like a long journey that gets you nowhere, but the Death Railway is the classic example of one of those trips where the journey is the entire point, and the destination is irrelevant.

After all, you get an unbeatable view of some breathtaking scenery, as well as some free coffee and a certificate. And, even better, you're rewarded with a brief glimpse into the brutal cruelty of which people can be capable, and the indominatible resilience with which others can respond.

The Asian adventure is very nearly over. On Saturday, we leave Kanchanaburi for Bangkok - our fifth and final visit to the capital - to catch the overnight train south to Surath Thani. From there, it's a bus to Krabi and a ferry to Koh Jum, a remote island off the Andaman Coast. There Amanda and I will end the trip the way we started - spending a few weeks doing very little on a beautiful beach.

The dawn of happiness

So it was 'bye bye' to Chiang Mai and 'hi' to Sukhothai.

After a seemingly endless coach trip from the northern capital, we arrived in Sukhothai in central Thailand, once the ancient capital of the nation. It was also the first capital of Thailand, founded in the 1200s.

Once upon a time, swathes of Thailand – along with much of South East Asia – was ruled by the Khmers, with Angkor as their administrative capital. So ancient Angkor was once to Asia what ancient Rome was to Europe.

And just like the Romans, the Khmers' powers eventually faded, and the ancient Thais leapt at the opportunity to strike out on their own, founding Sukhothai as their first capital. Thais now consider this the very beginning of modern Thailand and Thai-ness – which is why it's called Sukhothai, literally 'dawn of happiness'.

While the town is still a thriving one, it's moved several kilometres away from its original site to a place called New Sukhothai, leaving a collection of ancient ruins crowded into a beautiful park at the centre of Old Sukhothai.

The park is justly popular with tourists, foreigners and Thais alike, and most stay in New Sukhothai and are ferried in by car or bus to the ruins each day. But Amanda sniffed out a guest house well away from New Sukhothai, and it turned out to be a great choice.

The Mountain View Guesthouse is just a few kilometres away from the ancient city, but still too far away to walk to. Fortunately, the owner is a very helpful guy who is happy to ferry guests to and from the site as often as you want.

In fact Malcolm, who hails from Colchester of all places, is about the most helpful person we've met in Thailand – he just can't do enough for you. He picked us up from the bus station and drove us to the guest house – a beautiful and appealing place, but still cheap, with nice rooms and a great swimming pool, set amid rice fields and pretty paddocks. There were even cows grazing nearby. I highly recommend it.

That night he organised dinner for us, driving into town to pick it up and serving it right there on our terrace. The next day he gave us an invaluable run-down on what to see in the ancient city – he's been here the best part of a decade and knows everything you need to know about Sukhothai – and then drove us there, even organising cheap bike rentals for us.

Sukhothai may sound like the same deal as Angkor Wat, but it's much more compact, and if you're pressed you can probably see all you need to see in a day. But it's not so compact that you can easily walk about, so rent a bike.

We rode ours to the ticket office – unlike Angkor, tickets are embarrassingly cheap – and then on to the main part of the site, Wat Mahathat. Wat Mahathat is a very large collection of well-preserved ruins, mainly the remains of temples and other religious buildings that were at the heart of the ancient capital.



When Sukhothai was founded, the new rulers spurned the Khmers' fascination with all things Hindu and went for Buddhism in a big way. And it shows – there are more Buddhas in this one site alone than seems feasible. Seated Buddhas, standing Buddhas, teaching Buddhas, meditating Buddhas, small Buddhas and big Buddhas. Mainly bloody big Buddhas.

Most of these Buddhas are in superb condition, and are still being worshipped today. Their feet and hands are adorned with floral offerings, and incense sticks and candles sit before each of them.



With lakes and moats all around, all in a very peaceful and verdant park, the historical site is a truly beautiful and serene place. We cycled about all day, stopping every few minutes to take in one ancient temple or another.

At one, I stumbled across a couple of monks who had travelled down from Chiang Mai and were taking in the sights with the rest of us. The foreign tourists were all standing at a respectful distance and snapping their photos with long lenses, but I just bounded up to them and started chatting.

These two were very friendly guys. I took photos of them with their digital cameras (for an order that eschews all things material, monks have a lot of modern gadgets), and they took photos of me with mine.



Obviously karma actually works, because I then got to wander around one of the temples snapping photos of them to my heart's content – they didn't mind at all. I got some very jealous looks from the other foreign tourists, though.



Later in the day, we left the main historical park and headed north – there are various ancient sites dotting the countryside around the old city as well. The north zone is the most interesting and, fortunately, it's only a short ride from the rest of the site.

We wandered through one set of crumbling ruins that pre-dated most of Sukhothai. It was built by the Khmers and it shows – it wasn't just reminiscent of some of Angkor's ruins, it was exactly the same. You could even see some fading Hindu imagery and signs of various Buddhas being built over the top of them.

These ruins had the added attraction of a herd of cows grazing among them – a very picturesque scene. Amanda managed to coax a few over and was soon patting a cow for the first time. It was a blissful friendship until the cow tried to nibble on her toe. Ouch!



Back on our bikes, we rode a little way to Wat Sri Chum. There's not much in the way of ruins here, just a seated Buddha. But what a Buddha. This guy is enormous – something like 11 metres from knee to knee and 15 metres high. One of his hands was as big as any of the people looking up at it.



By now, the heat of the day – and it was very hot – was getting to us, so we rode back to the Mountain View for a swim and some beers. Malcolm went and got us dinner again that night.

The next morning we followed a route that Malcolm had marked out for us on a map, taking us to some of the more remote temples to the west of Sukhothai. Well, we tried to follow the route. There was nothing wrong with Malcolm's map, but a lot wrong with our ability to read it, and we ended up cycling for a long way down the wrong road.

Eventually, some local men – apparently drunk at 11 in the morning – set us straight and we found ourselves touring crumbling ruins with barely a tourist about. To be honest, few were that exciting in themselves, but it was a nice ride among lovely rural scenery.

But one of the temples was interesting – another vast Buddha, but this time perched atop a hill. We parked our bikes at the bottom and climbed a stone path up to the top. It wasn't a very tough climb, but after the whole saga of my mountain ascent, I hope never to climb a slope of any kind ever again.



From there we rode back into Old Sukhothai for lunch – despite most of the town being in New Sukhothai, the old version still has enough shops and restaurants to keep you going. Malcolm came and fetched Amanda while I went to get some sunset shots. Sadly, the clear skies vanished for the first time in two days, but I still managed to get a few interesting pictures.



And the next day we were off again, this time to Bangkok. It was a whirlwind visit, just two full days in the end, and a place as lovely and as fascinating as Sukhothai probably deserves more than that.

But at least now we have an excuse to return.

See lots and lots of my Sukhothai photos here. If you like Buddhas, you'll love this!

Climb every mountain

I wanted a serious trek, and I got one. Maybe a little too serious.

I don't know what I was thinking when I decided I would climb all the way to the top of Thailand's third-highest mountain. Have I ever been mountain climbing before? No. Am I particularly fit or athletic? No. Do I even enjoy camping? That's right... no.

But, like most bad ideas, it seemed a good idea at the time.

It began early Sunday morning when a song thaew pulled up outside my hotel to take me to Chiang Dao, a town an hour and a half north of Chiang Mai, from where the trek up Doi Chiang Dao would begin.

The mountain is at the centre of an untamed and largely untouched national park, and the peak is 2,245 metres high. Nearly two-and-a-half kilometres. What was I thinking!

I climbed into the song thaew and met my two fellow travellers on this trek, a great couple from Brooklyn. Chaim and Jen had only just arrived in Chiang Mai less than hour before, from Bangkok on the overnight train.



I was worried I might be teamed with a couple of athletic fitness freaks who climb mountains before breakfast, and who would make me look like the unfit fool I am, but I got lucky. Both Chaim and Jen were fit and sporty, but they were friendly and found the climb a challenge. Not as much of a challenge as I did, but a challenge all the same. And they were fun to spend three days with.

It wasn't long before we caught sight of the mountain. And I thought it looked big in photos. In real life, it was more than impressive, towering miles above us. We tried to pick the very summit, our destination, but it was obscured by clouds. Now I was getting nervous. What had I got myself in to?

Soon we were at Chiang Dao Nest, the guest house at the foot of the mountain that was organising the trek. I didn't stay here, but I think I can safely recommend the place anyway. Beautiful views, attractive bungalows, friendly and helpful staff and great food.

The first day of the trek didn't involve the mountain at all, except to look at. Instead, we were kicking off with a gentle wander around some of the Lisu hill-tribe villages that live beneath the shadow of the mountain.



After breakfast we were driven to the first one, where we were met by one of the villagers and taken on an hour long journey through the forest to see a cave. One of the owners of Chiang Dao Nest told us they only hire local guides for the hill-tribe treks, because outsiders tend to look down on the villagers. Instead, their guides are villagers.



The countryside was pretty, the walk not too taxing and the cave spectacular.

It was in the middle of nowhere and not one of the many caves around the area that are visited by busloads of tourists. It was just us, two local guides and some torches.

We walked, crawled and clambered through the hot and dank caves, admiring dripping stalactites and stalagmites - apparently made of some kind of iron ore, judging by their metallic feel and appearance - and the ocassional bat.

We went deep into that cave - it took us about an hour to get to the deepest point possible, before we turned around and headed back the way we came.

Back in the village, we enjoyed a tasty lunch (all the food on this trek was simple but satisfying fare) before embarking on a long hike by and through a pretty little stream to an even prettier waterfall.

After splashing about in the ankle deep, and refreshingly cold, water for a bit, it was off the the next village - where we would be spending the night.

Here's where the trek started to get tough. The path between the two villages was through the jungle and straight uphill. That's the problem with hill-tribes - they tend to live on hills.

After an hour and a half of hiking, we emerged from the forest and into a village with a spectacular view. It was built onto the side of a steep hill and directly faced the mountain - a stunning sight.



I might have enjoyed it a lot more if my heart wasn't filled with dread at the thought of climbing the damn thing. Already my muscles were aching and I was out of breath - how was I going to climb all the way up there?

I drowned my worries in a couple of cold beers and a long chat with the lovely woman who hosted us that night, Alima. She spoke little English and I speak no Lisu, but we still managed to establish that Alima was the sister of the villager who guided us through the caves and to the waterfall, and that they were two of seventeen children.

She kept pointing to the very top of the mountain and asking 'you go up?'. That's right, she couldn't believe I was going to do it, either.



We had an early start the next morning so, after half an hour of sitting on a little deck in front of my comfortable room looking at the most spectacular blanket of stars I've seen in many years, I went to bed.

As I dozed off, I wondered if I was really going to be able to hack this climb. I was about to find out.

The next morning we were driven a short way to the bottom of the mountain to meet our guides and begin the serious trekking.

We had three guides taking us up. An older guy called Lun was in charge, assisted by a young Burmese fellow called Han and another guy whose name I can't remember - mainly because we didn't see much of him.

Lun was particularly impressive. He must have climbed that mountain a thousand times, and you could see every single trek etched into his face. He was friendly but serious, and made sure every aspect of the next two days went smoothly. He was a pro, and we always felt safe with him around.



As we got ready to go we were each given sturdy bamboo stick - and that stick saved my life. If you ever attempt the same climb, make sure you get one. You can use it to keep you from sliding down slopes or for hauling yourself up them. You can use it to push away branches in your path or test out the ground in front of you in the dark. Best of all, you can lean against it and whimper when you feel you can't go on any further. If I could have, I would have adopted that stick and taken it home to raise as my own.

All we carried up that mountain was a small pack each and our trusty sticks. The same could not be said of the guides. They got up to leave and started hauling enormous loads on to their backs.

Only Lun had anything that approached a proper pack on his back. The other two had enormous plastic sacks tied together, old towels strapping them to their backs.

We were a little shocked. As Chaim said, 'I feel like a slave owner here.' I knew what he meant but, short of quitting the trek, there wasn't much we could do about it. So we tried to put it out of our minds.

To give you an idea of the size of the packs these guys carried, here's a photo of Lun, and this was taken on the way down, so it doesn't include the food or the - count 'em - twelve bottles of water he carried up the mountain.



Amazingly, none of our guides seemed to have a problem with these huge loads. They practically skipped up the mountain - Lun even rolled and smoked a cigarette every time we stopped for a breather!

While Lun lead the way, the other two guides fell behind, which was great. I wasn't quite keeping up with Chaim and Jen, but I didn't need to as long as two guides were somewhere behind me. It meant I could stop and catch my breath whenever I needed to. Which was often.

In my defence, I'm not that unfit. But this trek was tough. Very tough. How could it not be - we were trekking a 10-kilometre uphill path to reach the summit of a mountain nearly two-and-half kilometres high.

Some parts of the walk were difficult, some were nigh on impossible. But for the next six hours I hauled myself up a narrow and steep dirt track through the jungle with nothing but grim determination and a bamboo stick to keep me going.

The countryside we travelled through was as diverse as it was stunning. We seemed to experience new kinds of terrain every 10 or 20 minutes. First it was jungle, then it was a vast expanse of tall grass growing higher than our heads, then meadows full of pretty flowers, flat fields of black rock, and heathery gorse straight out of the Scottish highlands.



I noticed none of it. All I could concentrate on was placing one foot in front of the other - my concentration ocassionally broken by looking up to see the frighteningly high peak of the mountain, which never seemed to get any closer.

My heart was pounding through my chest, my muscles screaming in pain, my feet aching with every step, my mouth getting dryer by the second. So, I thought, this is exercise. Perhaps I should do more of it - and before I attempt to climb a mountain, not after it.

At least I was distracted by an entertaining soap opera, as it slowly dawned on the three of us that the youngest guide had somehow disappeared. We had stopped in a clearing, about four hours into the trek, when we realised.

The two younger guys had fallen so far behind that we hadn't seem them for at least three hours. Lun motioned us to stay where we were - no need for that, I was already lieing on the ground trying to work out how much it would cost to call for a helicopter to get me out of there - while he went to find them.

He returned with Han, but without the other guy and we pushed on. We managed to work out that the young guy - who had looked a bit distressed after just a few minutes of the trek - was not coming with us.

Later we were told he'd got lost. We never did quite work out what happened. But we never saw him again, at least not until we returned to our starting point the next day and the trek was over.

Finally, after six hours of solid trekking, we reached a field of tall grass in the shadow of the summit itself. By the time we got there, a beautiful sunny day had turned into a grey and overcast one - and the main reason I'd come was to take photos of the the sunset. Depressing.

Much to my relief, Lun got across to us that the day's trek was over. With no sunset, there was little point in climbing the summit that day and that field of flat grass was our base camp.

In the blink of an eye, Lun had set up our tents and started a fire for dinner. We fell in a heap on the ground. We couldn't believe we were here, at the base of this intimidating mountain. I couldn't even believe I was still alive.

Lun and Han cooked us a simple but delicious dinner. But we were concerned because, as far as we could make out, the missing guy had left the trek with their dinner, and they weren't going to have enough to eat.

We tried to share our food with them, but they politely but firmly declined. We felt bad about it, but we weren't sure what else we could do.

So we crawled into our tents and went to bed, me praying that the clouds above would break long enough to show us a spectacular sunrise the next morning - and that I could get some great shots that would make this whole thing worthwhile.

I woke up several times that night and looked out the tent flap each time. And each time, I saw no stars. But, at 5am, we were roused by Han and I stepped out and looked up. Above me was that same spectacular blanket of stars that I saw the night before, and my heart lifted.

Torches in hand, we began the final ascent. This was the toughest part of the journey. There was little in the way of path, and a lot in the way of rocks. At times, we were climbing them almost vertically.

But as first light began to creep into the sky, we could see the summit just feet above us. My arms and legs found new energy, my lungs new air - it was so close.

With one heave up and over a large rock, I was there with the others. I had hauled myself up to the top. There was no further to go. I had finally arrived.

I felt, literally, on top of the world. I raised my arms and whooped in delight with Chiam and Jen. I thought the mountain was going to conquer me, but I conquered it.



And it was worth it. The view was astonishing - but the sense of achievement, of rising to the challenge was even better.

It didn't even matter that we still had to make our way back. And don't let anyone tell you that walking down a steep hill is any easier than going up - it's not.

But my muscles fed on elation, and I all but skipped the 10 kilometres back - this time drinking in the view, enjoying the varied terrain and all the time looking up at the daunting peak behind us, pointing at it and smiling and cheering.

'I've been up there! I've climbed a mountain!'