Thailand - Chiang Mai and the Islands

The UK's Foreign Office website states that "Travel by Lao Airlines is strongly discouraged". So it was with some relief that we safely touched down in Chiang Mai (Thailand) aboard Lao Airlines flight QV645. We made the short journey from the airport to the Seven Suns guesthouse and were somewhat bemused to discover that we'd been given their rainbow-themed room. Clearly Gaz must have sounded somewhat camp on the telephone when he made the room booking. The guesthouse was also somewhat unique in that it seemed to actively encourage guests to bring back any Thai ladies (or lady-boys for that matter) whom they'd met whilst out on the town. Whilst in Chiang Mai, we indulged in some traditionally backpacker excursions such as a Thai cookery course, and a Muay Thai boxing evening. The cookery course was a lot of fun and we learnt to cook a number of delicious dishes including Green & Red Thai curry, Pad Thai, Chicken with Cashew Nuts, and Chicken with Basil. However, la creme de la creme of our cooking exploits was Tara's spring rolls, which no doubt she will be forcing you all to try upon our return. The Muay Thai boxing was somewhat disturbing as the first three fights involved children no older that 12 kicking lumps out of each other. This was then followed by an exhibition bout where they blind-folded six fighters and then left them to blindly punch each other until only the victor was conscious. Even the referee of this bout was on the receiving end of some vicious blows. When we thought it could get no worse they then brought out some female fighters, which was when things got really ugly. Once all the fighting was over, it was then the turn of the lady boys to take to the blood soaked boxing ring and entertain the crowds. A fitting end to a bizarre yet strangely riveting evening.




From Chiang Mai we then flew down to the island paradise of Ko Samui. We checked into a hotel called Montien House, which is by far the most luxurious place that we've stayed thus far, with the only downside being that we had to share our room with some particularly hungry mosquitoes. We spent our first day lounging around on Chaweng beach and also made good use of the pool in our hotel. On the second day we rented a scooter and went beach hopping around Ko Samui. We also managed to coax our wheezing two-wheeler up to the Na Muang waterfall, and some of the highest points on the island. According to the Thailand Lonely Planet, the only noteworthy site on Ko Samui (excluding the beaches) is a mummified monk at Wat Khunaram, so naturally we had to go and see him. The monk is preserved in a glass case and sits in the lotus position with a pair of sunglasses perched on his nose. Outside the temple a Buddhist monk insisted on throwing some holy water on us, before charging us 50 baht to tie some string around our wrists. We were told that the string would protect us whilst we are travelling, so we were somewhat disappointed when a local man pointed out the flat tyre that our scooter had acquired whilst we were being blessed. Conveniently the local man that pointed out the flat tyre also knew of a repair shop next door where they could repair our tyre for us. The bike was unrideable (is that a word?) though so we had no choice but to make use of his conveniently located repair shop, and we were pleasantly surprised when they only ripped us of to the tune of 150 baht (GBP 2.50).





From Ko Samui we caught a catamaran over to the neighbouring island of Ko Phangan, and made another valiant attempt to "rough-it". We checked into the cheap and cheerful Same Same Lodge on May 9th, and the promptly checked out of it again on the morning of May 10th. The room was infested with Geckos which were feasting on the dead flies on the underside of our mattress. So we doubled our accommodation budget and moved into the comfortable and clean Sea Breeze bungalows. We had intended to travel onwards to the island of Ko Tao within a day or two, but we've enjoyed Ko Phangan so much that we've thus far not managed to get on the ferry. Ko Phangan is home to some of the best scuba diving sites in Thailand, so we decided it would be a good venue to undertake our PADI Open Water Diving qualification. Gaz had completed his Open Water diving course 8 years ago, but had not been diving since so we decided it would be more fun (and safer) if we enrolled on the course together. The course took three days, the first two of which were traumatic for Tara as she struggled to clear her mask without swallowing half the swimming pool or bay that we were in. She struggled through though, and had mastered the skill by the end of the second day. She was struggling to see the point of diving though, as visibility on our first two dives was never more than 2-3 metres. On the third day, it was Gaz's turn to be traumatised. We boarded our dive school's boat and sailed out to the dive site at Sail Rock. Our boat was somewhat ill-equipped for the conditions though (mainly because it was a river boat and never designed to travel on anything rougher than than a boating lake), and by the time we'd swayed our way across the Gulf of Thailand Gaz had turned a nice shade of green. Gaz discovered that the fun is quickly taken out of diving when you're sick in your regulator. Somehow we both survived the experience and managed to successfully complete our PADI course. We now intend to become fair-weather divers and will only be adorning ourselves with scuba gear when the ocean is as flat as a pancake and the underwater visibility is in excess of 20 metres. To celebrate our diving achievements, we decided to head into the jungle and party the night away at the Half-Moon party. This was without doubt the best night out that we've had in Thailand, and we didn't stumble home until the sun started to rise at 5am. We paid the price of burning the candle at both ends the next day though. Tara didn't make it out of bed all day, and Gaz would have stayed in bed as well if he hadn't found some strength in the bottom of two or three bottles of Chang beer.




Tomorrow we travel from the idyllic island of Ko Phangan to the hustle-and-bustle of Singapore. Re-adjusting to city life is bound to be difficult.

Bangkok, Cambodia and Laos

After a great last day in China, we packed our bags and headed again for the airport. Beijing airport is amazing (well...as amazing as airports can be anyway), and we caught a flight firstly to Hong Kong and then onto Bangkok. Our first experience in Bangkok was to be a sign of things to come, because despite following the Lonely Planet's advice of getting a metered taxi from outside the terminal we still managed to get ripped off. Our fare was twice what it was supposed to be, and I'm still none the wiser as to how the driver managed to con us. Bangkok itself was a welcome break from China though. Everybody speaks English, the hostels are lovely, and it has restaurants from every corner of the globe. We booked into a lovely hostel near the Khao San Road, with a massive air conditioner and a stunning roof-top pool. We spent our first day ticking off a couple of the standard backpacker experiences in Bangkok; a river "cruise" aboard three planks of wood with a V6 engine stuck on the back, and a tour of the Royal Palace. The following day we decided to get to know the real Bangkok, so firstly we got ripped off by a Tuk-Tuk driver and then hopped on the SkyTrain and made our way over to the Nana Plaza to gawk at some sex tourists. We were not disappointed. The place was crammed with old men and young Thai girls. We decided to take refuge in an Irish bar (surely Catholic morals would prevent such carry-on in there), but discovered it was as sordid as anywhere else we'd seen. We made friends with some ex-Pats over a game of pool though, and drank the night away with them.

The following day we caught our Asia Air (Thailand's Ryanair) flight down to Phnom Penh, and booked into a grimy guesthouse in the centre of town. Cockroaches were crawling over the bathroom floor, the sheets were dirty, and the air conditioning unit didn't work because of an alleged power cut in the area (we later discovered that it wasn't working due to some underhand cost-cutting by the landlady). We discovered when we'd arrived at the guesthouse that we'd left our South East Asia Lonely Planet book (or the LP as we refer to it) in the taxi. This proved to be a blessing in disguise though, as good quality blackmarket copies of the Lonely Planet books are in abundance in Phnom Penh. This meant we could upgrade from our On-A-Shoestring version of the South East Asia LP, to the more upmarket LPs for each of the countries that we are visiting on the section of our trip. The individual books include more upmarket hostels, so with a little bit of luck we'll be able to avoid any further cockroach-infested guesthouses.

We had a great time in Phnom Penh. We hired a car for the day so as to see as much as we could in the time we had. Our first stop was a shooting range north of Phnom Penh, where Gaz took up the opportunity to fire an AK47 (although opting for just a sheet of paper as a target, instead of the goats and cows that we're on offer as live targets). We then visited the sombre sites of the Killing Fields (where Pol Pot and his cronies murdered many thousands on innocent victims), and Toul Sleng (the jail where the victims were tortured prior to their deaths). We were also involved in a car accident, when the lady behind crashed into us as she was focusing on her mobile phone instead of the road in front. Fortunately nobody was hurt and hopefully that will be the only road collision that we experience during our travels. Our final stop was the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, after which we decided we deserved a beer. What then proceeded was one of the more obscure nights of our trip so far. The bar was owned by an alcoholic Irishman called Rory, who'd fallen in love with an older woman whilst travelling in Cambodia and had married her (most probably the only instance of a young westerner marrying an older Cambodian woman). He was trying hard to drink his profits, but as pointed out to me, "its very (hiccup) hard (dribble) to drink your profits (burp) when 24 cans of beers cost $4". The other friend that we made in the bar was an Irish mercenary, who'd been hired to fight in Cambodia 14 years previously and had never left. We lost track of both time and the weather whilst talking to these two characters in the bar, and it wasn't until we tried to leave the bar that we realised the street outside had flooded up to our knees. We decided to drink another couple of cans whilst the water subsided, but it just kept rising. Eventually we had to bite the bullet and wade through the knee-deep rain and sewage. The road to our hostel was flooded up to our waists' though which made it inaccessible by foot, but a plucky Tuk-Tuk driver managed to find a route through the floods (and half way round the city) for just $2.



From Phnom Penh we caught a bus up Siem Reap. We'd undertaken a few shorter bus journeys in China, but this was our first long haul journey by road. The LP reported that the road between Phnom Penh was well tarmacked, but I think this is a relative term and is a comparison only to the other roads in Cambodia. After six hours of bouncing along at the back of the bus, we were both quite glad to be getting off. Our friend Jeremy (you may remember him from our China posts) met us at the bus station, and from there we made our way to the floating village in Siem Reap. We'd heard mixed reviews about the village, but we were all amazed by it. The village is in the middle of a large lake called Toule Sap, and has everything from floating Churches to floating pig pens. Our accommodation in Siem Reap was the best that we've experienced so far (The Siem Reap Hostel if you are ever in the area), with multiple communal areas, a swimming pool and large comfortable rooms. As well as Jeremy we also met up with Steve and Meghan (our Yangtze River cruise compadres), and had some great nights out Siem Reap. The Angkor What bar and Warehouse bars were our a favourite haunts, but the town is full of good cheap restaurants and bars. Whilst in Siem Reap we visited the Angkor Wat temples which were breath-taking, although we're becoming somewhat blase when it comes to temples as we've seen far too many of them in the past few weeks.



From Siem Reap we caught a flight to Luang Prabang in Laos with Jeremy only to discover that it was full of more Wats (temples). So we decided to take to the countryside on a tour. The first part of the tour involved mountain biking 15km along winding, hilly and muddy tracks to an Elephant Lodge. From the lodge we caught a boat to a waterfall and then hiked for two hours in the baking midday sun to a mountain village where we became the evening entertainment for the local village children. After a few well earned beers we adjourned to our sleeping quarters, which was the floor of a wooden hut with a mosquito net overhead. On the second day, we hiked back to the lodge and went on an elephant trek through the jungle, before getting into a Kayak to paddle four hours back towards Luang Prabang. Tara and Gaz started off in one kayak, but the tour guide decided our pace was too leisurely so Jeremy and Tara swapped positions. This was when things all started to go wrong. The bung had been removed from the back of Jeremy and Gaz's kayak, so when we hit the first set of rapids we started sinking fast. Our tour guide had paddled off downstream with Tara so was unaware of the trouble we'd gotten into. Two local fisherman tried to help us get the boat afloat again, but they were unsuccessful. After 20 minutes of fighting the current, we eventually gave up and left the kayak to float down river without us. We'd lost our flip-flops in the current so after fighting our way out of the river we had to traipse along the rocky river bank barefoot. By the time we reached Tara and the tour guide they'd managed to collect most of our possessions from the river (with the exception of Jeremy's flip-flops), and fix our kayak. We were exhausted by this point though, and we still had another hour and half of paddling until we got back to the town. Somehow we managed to make it back to town, but we were all wrecked from the experience. We treated ourselves to fillet steaks in the best restaurant in Luang Prabang and some strong gin & tonics that night to help us get over our ordeal.




Tomorrow we head off to Chiang Mai in Thailand aboard Lao Airlines. They are reputed to have one of the worst air safety records, so wish us luck!

China - The Great Wall and our final impressions

On our last day in Beijing, we took a bus up to Badaling to see the Great Wall of China. It was raining and miserable again in Beijing, but as we drove north towards the wall the day began to brighten-up. As with virtually all Chinese tours, this involved being forced in a 70-minute excursion into a Jade "Museum". The museum turned out to be a large room with 400 stalls trying to force us to purchase some Jade, before eventually being herded into another room and fed dog. The Great Wall was amazing though, and a great end to our travels through China. The wall itself is truly breathtaking, both to look at and to walk-along. The Chinese had felt the need to enhance the experience by caging some bears in tiny enclosures at the bottom which took from the experience some what, but on the plus side the trip down involved sliding down on a large mechanical helter-skelter/tobaggan-run.



Most of the people we've met along the way have said that China was the toughest travelling experience they've had so far, so we're looking forward to an easier ride in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. China is still a very much closed country, and the Chinese people are brainwashed by their media. The Chinese media's portrayal of the Tibet problems is disturbing to say the least. According to CCTV9 (the English language Chinese TV channel) the Tibetans would be stuck in a life of Serfdom if the Chinese hadn't "saved" them. The Chinese people as a whole are a very pushy nation, which I suppose is a by-product of the fact that there are a few too many of them (the one child policy should sort that out in about fifty years though). They are also the phlegmiest people in the world. You can't walk ten paces in China without somebody loudly clearing their throat and depositing it on the pavement. This isn't a hobby of just old men though. Many a time I've seen a pretty young Chinese girl stop in the middle of the street, and loudly hock up the contents of her nose and throat in front of me. Charming!



All in all though, we really did enjoy China. Their culture and history is amazing, and we met some great people along the way. If you stop and look lost for even a moment in China, then nine times out of ten somebody will come up to you and offer their help (albeit it in Mandarin).

We've now arrived in Bangkok, and already we feel that we're on a much more well-trodden backpacker router. Everybody speaks English, and organising trips/tours/travel are proving to be much easier already. We went to the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew, before embarking on a river tour of the city. We've braved a couple of Tuk-Tuks as well, and thus far we've come away with our lives. We've one more day in Bangkok, before heading off to Phnom Penh in Cambodia on Friday.

China - Xi'an (part 2), Hangzhou, Shanghai, Qingdao and Beijing

As we've moved further north, we've really started to warm to both China and the Chinese people. We had a great last day in Xi'an and made some friends whilst visiting the Terracotta Warriors. We made our way to the Muslim Quarter together in the evening and ate our fill of random meat sticks (goat, dog, and rat probably) from the street vendors. I think its fair to say that I (Gareth) may have had one two many beers in the bar that night, as I threw all of my toys out of the pram when Tara tried to drag me to the airport the next morning. I'm still not quite sure how she managed to drag my moaning hungover carcass to the airport that morning and onto the flight to Hangzhou.



Hangzhou is a beautiful city just south of Shanghai. Our hostel (4eyes backpackers hostel) was just south of the city on the edge of the large West Lake that borders one side of the city. Hangzhou is considered one of the tourist hotspots for Chinese people, and our strolls along the lake would have been slightly more romantic if we didn't have to share the place with a trillion Chinese people in matching red tour baseball hats. Much to Tara's distaste, we discovered that Hangzhou is an ideal city to cycle around. So we took to two-wheels and cycled around the West Lake and also to the LingYin temple (where we procured a chubby Buddha), and yet-another giant Chinese pagoda. Our friend Jeremy joined us for the weekend in Hangzhou, and accompanied us up to Shanghai on the high-speed train link.



We only spent a couple of nights in Shanghai and hit the typical tourist sites. We went for a stroll along the Bund (the old side of the city) and then hopped on the obscure and tacky sight-seeing tunnel that crosses the river onto the new side of the city (Pudong). Jeremy and I convinced Tara that Hooters was the best option for lunch, before heading down the main shopping street in search of Chopsticks (surprisingly difficult in China) and Lemsip (unsurprisingly difficult in China). We spent our second morning in Shanghai in the stunning Yuyuan Gardens and Old Town (which is rapidly being destroyed), before heading over to the well presented yet exceptionally dull Shanghai Museum.




We flew to Qingdao on April 15th, and back to our beloved Jeremy. This started off quite badly as Jez insisted on giving us a 2-hour guided tour of the train that he is engineering, but things quickly improved when we arrived at his palatial apartment. Qingdao is a beautiful German City on the east coast of China, and is considered to be the premier seaside resort in China (imagine Blackpool with 15 million people). We indulged in Jeremy's lifestyle whilst in Qingdao and treated ourselves to foot massages, full-body massages, authentic Indian food, traditional Qingdao hotpot, and several gallons of Tsingtao beer (brewed in Qingdao) and a couple of large Whiskeys. Jeremy proved to be the ultimate host. He gave up his bed for us, and drank with us until the wee small hours despite having to drag himself to work at 7:30am each morning. Qingdao was also interesting as we experimented with the Chinese Postal service (where we encountered the finest parcel-packer in the east), and confused the hell out of a travel agent by trying to buy some rail tickets (a ludicrous idea in China).

Our final stop in China has been Beijing. A city of 42 million people, half of whom try to get onto a metro carriage at the same time whilst the other half are trying to get off. I've never seen carnage quite like it. We spent our first morning in the Forbidden City, then marvelled at the vast numbers of soldiers marching backwards and forth across Tianamen Square (which is closed far more often than it is open), before heading over to the Temple of Heaven in the afternoon. On our second day we made our way over to the Summer Palace (the place where the emperor and his ladies hung out in the balmy summer days), and then met up with Meghan and Steve (the friends we made on the Yangtze River Cruise) for Peking duck and some beers in their hostel. Much of today has been spent getting wet. It has rained continuously since last night, but that didn't stop us. The Irish and English are more adept at dealing with water than your average duck. We caught the subway over to the Lamastery (a monastery for Lamas) first thing this morning and then made our way over to the Olympic site. We also had the honour of watching a glorious british sporting victory (much to Tara's delight), as Allison & Randall romped to victory in the second heat of the Olympic qualification tournament for Synchronised Swimming. I feel that an Olympic gold may be beckoning. The Olympic site is amazing and the Birds Nest and Aquatic Centre are both jaw-dropping, but there still seems to be a considerable amount of work to be done away from the venues if they are to be prepared for the games (a metro line to the site might be a good starting point!). All that's left to do in Beijing is the Great Wall of China, and come rain or shine that is where we will be tomorrow.

China - Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Yichang, and Xi'an

I'd like to say that we've seen a lot of beautiful things in China, but I can't. All we've really seen so far is mist and fog.



All three days that we spent in Hong Kong were shrouded in fog which made it hard to appreciate that impressive skyline that the city is known for. We did however take advantage of the nightlife in Hong Kong and got reasonably drunk in the Soho bars. We took the funicular railway up to Victoria peak on the second day, which was a bit of a waste of time as we could barely see our hands front of our faces. By the third day, the fog was starting to get us down, so we were quite glad to be hopping onto the KCR East train across the border to Shenzhen. Shenzhen proved to be quite a culture shock for us both. The first noticable site that we happened across after leaving the station was a corpse. Some desperate chinese guy was using his apparently dead father as a begging tool. Being the caring sharing people that we are, we hurried away along the street and into our 5* hotel (a bargain at 30 pounds per night). Shenzhen was a reasonably grim city overall, but we did find a nice park and treated ourself to a western dinner in the evening.



From Shenzhen, we flew up to Chongqing and met up with our friend Jeremy. The three of us then started our voyage down the Yangtze river on the Oriental Emperor cruise ship. This was a wonderful three days, and we made some great new friends on board. We spent most of our time sipping cold Tsingtao beer on the sundeck and playing an old man's Irish card game (Tara ... "my Dad would be so proud, passing on his love of 25s"). Our cruise lasted three days and three nights, and took us through the three gorges. This is a section of the river that has been flooded by an enormous dam. Essentially when the dam project is finished, the water level of the river will have risen to 175m. This is good news for the electricity supply in China as the dam generates a huge amount of power, but not such good news for the 2 million people whose homes have been submerged. The Chinese propaganda machine seems to be working well though, because all but one tour guide claimed that everybody was delighted with their homes being washed away (and their resettlement into ugly highrise concrete flats). It was still a really good trip and so worthwhile (even if alot of cool historial stuff and all the little farms are now submerged under water), the scenery was amazing and we got to do some worthwhile little trips off the boat along the way.





When we arrived in Yichang, we decided against using the ferry-supplied coach because we'd convinced ourselves that the crew were trying to rip us off. This proved to be somewhat of a mistake, as the taxi drivers at the port were far more adept at ripping us off. After 30 minutes of haggling and arguing (via Jeremy's chinese interpreter) in the baking mid-day sun we eventually managed to arrange some transport into the centre of town. Yichang was another typical "small" Chinese city of 5 million people, so we decided to make our way to the airport a little early and onto Xi'an.

Xi'an is by far our favourite city so far. We've happened across a fantastic hostel, and have enjoyed our first day exploring the city bell towers, pagodas and temples.

Goa, Mumbai, and the start of Hong Kong

The one thing that any would-be Indian traveller needs to know is that a large bottle of Kingfisher (we're talking 650ml) costs just 60 rupees in a bar. That's just 75p!!!! For that reason alone, everybody should go and visit India right NOW! Other than that the country also offers kind and genuine people, beautiful scenery, year-round 30 degree weather, and good-value tasty food. But that's neither here-nor-there when you consider how cheap the beer is.

We spent a week lounging around the beaches and bars of Goa, but highlight of the week was when we rented a scooter and made our own way up to Arambol. After 30 minutes of arguing with the local wheeler-dealer, we managed to convince him to give us a helmet each (one helmet seemed crazy to him, let alone two!) for our daytrip on the mad roads of India. It cost us an extra 50% to have two helmets, but at just 4 pounds for the day's bike hire and both lids it was still a bargain. We then hit the open road....and a taxi. It turned out that my motorbiking skills had worsened somewhat in the four years since I last climbed aboard a two-wheeler. Nobody was hurt though, and after 30 minutes of wobbling across the Goan roads, I managed to re-master the two-wheeler. Despite it being illegal not to wear a helmet, we were the only covered riders that we saw all day.

At the end of the week, we were very sad indeed to be climbing into Ravi's (one of the Indian friends that we made in our week) taxi for the journey up to the airport. Having said that, we were also very happy to be climbing out of Ravi's taxi, because he almost killed us four times on the way there. We took a short flight up to Mumbai, and then had half-day to kill there so we took a cab into the centre of the city. This was one of the most depressing 45 minutes of our lives. The roads of Mumbai are lined with poor people living on the poverty-line in shacks. There was no beautiful Goan countryside during that journey, and at one point a hungry Indian man tried to break into our taxi using his wooden leg. Without doubt the most disturbing point of our trip so far. Our taxi driver took us to the Gateway of India, a supposed highlight of Mumbai, which turned out to be a construction site. After being mauled by the local sellers and gypsies, we decided to adjourn to the fanciest restaurant in town and blow our daily budget. The restauraurant, Indigo, was glorious and without doubt the best way to waste five hours of your life in Mumbai (Bill Clinton ate there and yet it was still very affordable).

After dinner, we returned to Mumbai airport and camped out for our 5am flight. This was a fairly unpleasant experience due to the lack of A/C on the check-in side, but we made use of the time to call home, and we were delighted to discover that Mumbai airport had lounger/beds and A/C on the departure side of the airport. Without wanting to appear poetic, this was almost a mirror on the city itself which seemed to be a city divided by wealth. The majority seemed to have very little, but a lucky few seemed to be very affluent indeed.

Hong Kong has proved to be a refreshing change from India. Our hotel was a lucky selection on expedia, and is far far nicer than we'd expected. We have spent today visiting the "largest outdoor sitting bronze buddha". Suggesting that there are much larger standing non-bronze buddhas. Nonetheless, it was quite a sight and the cable car up the mountain afforded some great views of Hong Kong.

Goa - The land of cows and the slightly bonkers

So after a traumatic few days of packing, cleaning and fish resuscitation, we finally made it to Goa. After an uneventful flight, we arrived into a somewhat dilapidated international terminal in Mumbai. After much pointing and confusion, we were eventually ushered onto a shabby bus for a tour of the airport perimeter. Other than the close call with a jumbo jet, the only noticable site we saw in Mumbai was the sad shanty town spilling onto the end of the runway. We then arrived in a spanking new domestic terminal with shiny "no spitting" signs. After a quick lunch, we boarded our SpiceJet flight to Goa and eventually landed safely amid a thunderstorm. Not a great start......luckily the weather now is VERY hot. Tara is not coping well!
Goa is beautiful and the people are wonderful (if slightly insane). The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel was fifty minutes that I will never forget. We almost crashed into a bus, a moped, four cows, a goat and an elephant....I kid you not.....but for 10 pounds you can't expect much. The hotel is beautiful, and nicely secluded. Everything is amazingly cheap. Our dinner cost a grand total of 8 pounds tonight and at that we dined in style. Here is the end of day 1 on our 6 month holiday.