Chiang Mai to Sukothai to Bangkok to Cambodia to Ko Chang to Shanghai

Hi all,

Currently I'm sitting at my desk in the office of Shanghai Talk, the lifestyle magazine I'll be working for for the next three months. It seems rather relaxed here - I haven't exactly been given a brief or a job description, and despite the fact that I turned up at 10am on my second day, I was still in a clear hour earlier than anybody else on the editorial team (including the boss). Also, they don't seem to mind if I just play around on the internet all day - come to think of it, playing around on the internet seems to be what my job consists of.

Despite the relaxed nature of the job, it seems to be going ok so far. I have a few responsibilities e.g. finding trivia for the quiz page and other little things like that, and I'll soon have a couple of articles on the go for the June issue. They have recently started an environment page so I'm thinking of focussing on that and e.g. profiling some green businesses here. To that end I went to an Eco Design Fair on Saturday to network a bit.

Shanghai itself is rather a bewildering place. You would of thought that after growing up in London, one big city would be rather like another, but that doesn't seem to be true here where every other building is a skyscraper or apartment block. London's skyline (and I imagine also New York's) have nothing on it for sheer grandiose overstatement.

There are over 20 million people living in Shanghai (unlike London's measly 12 mill) and on my first day when I woke up in my flat on the 14th floor of a hi-rise apartment building, I swear I could hear the low hum of several million of them talking below me, along with numerous carhorns and intermittent firecrackers; apparently these are good luck for e.g. when someone is moving house. Also, not sure I'll get a haircut here as most hairdressers seem to be thinly disguised fronts for brothels.

I had a really great time with Mum and Lucy while they were over and managed to top up my tan to a healthy glow that I will undoubtedly lose in the next week or two because it has been a rather miserable, cold, early spring here in Shanghai. (Although actually it's warmer today and will soon be hitting highs of 40 degrees so I should take as much advantage of cool breezes as I can while they're still around).

I think last time I wrote, I was in Chiang Mai preparing to go to Sukothai the next day. The bus there (compared to others I've taken) was relatively painless. I met a retired couple while I was waiting who were travelling round Asia for a month. The woman and I got talking after we both couldn't help laughing at a bus company employee who was trying to put hundreds of empty water bottles into the luggage hold. He had slotted the containers holding these in sideways, but then needed to fit in another item and so pulled them out which inevitably sent cascades of empty bottles onto the floor. This process was repeated several times, much to our amusement, and I'm almost certain we left at least one bottle behind that had rolled under the bus.

For the first half hour I was sitting next to a young Thai man who had just left university and was on the way to look for a job. He told me how brave I was to go off to another country and travel on my own, and seemed to wish he could do the same. Unfortunately for him, Thai culture not only seems to infantilise young people and make them scared to go out into the world alone, but also makes them tied to the older generation in a way that is both positive and negative. This young man explained to me that even if he could earn enough money to travel, he would have to look after his parents instead of following his dreams. He also asked me lots of questions about England, like "Do you have all kinds of weather in one day just like in films?" and seemed particularly fascinated to know if the real world beyond Thailand's borders matched up to the imaginary one he'd seen portrayed on the screen.

After half an hour he got off the bus, and since he was a stereotypically smiley Thai person, I was glad of the chance to relax my facial muscles. The unaccustomed effort of relentlessly smiling back got to me after a while.

Sukothai itself was very interesting - full of the remains of ancient city temples. I got splendidly sunburnt and dehydrated however, because the only way around the site is to cycle from temple to temple - no mean feat in the heat of the day.

The next day I got on yet another bus to Bangkok, again not to bad. I treated myself to the more expensive bus with the toilet for the 6 hour journey and was literally just in time - the bus actually started moving as I was leaping onto it.

In Bangkok mum and Lucy and I all went to the Grand Palace again which was slightly less sparkly due to cloudier weather, but still mighty impressive. We also popped into Wat Pho and saw the huge, gold, reclining Buddha there. We then went to the enormous Chatuchak market where Lucy could fulfil some of her urge to shop (and incidentally Mum and I also managed to obtain a couple of items).

Monday was an early start as we flew to Siem Reap and relaxed in our hotel for a while before checking out sunset at a temple on a hill with a great view of different temples around Angkor Wat. This was very nice but even towards sunset it was very warm indeed - not sure how people make it round lots of temples in one day.

The next day was mine and Lucy's birthday (yay) and we got up at 5 am to go see sunrise at Angkor Wat itself. Lucy generously conceded that we should probably wait until later in the day to exchange presents - not sure I would really have appreciated mine that early in the morning. When the sun was up, we walked round the temple and took in the amazing reliefs there. Next, we went to Angkor Thom where we were pretty gobsmacked by the Bayon, a ramshackle collection of blue-grey towers with almost Mayan looking faces on them. This building, although compact, was certainly a highlight of the trip. We then walked by another couple of temples in Angkor Thom that I forget the names of, before having a wander along and around the Leper King's Terrace and the Elephant Terrace. The former was carved with lots of images of people, and the latter (unsurprisingly) featured quite a few elephants. Katie would've loved it - in fact Katie, from an elephant-themed point of view, you'd like quite a lot of southeast Asia.

After that, it was back to the hotel for a relaxing afternoon and a nice meal out in a restaurant/bar unappetisingly named Deadfish. This was actually a pretty cool place, with tables on platforms at different levels, performers demonstrating traditional dance, nice food and crocodiles. Yes, that's right. Crocodiles.

The next day (Wednesday) we satisfied Mum's desire to see an overgrown jungle ruin and visited Ta Prom, where huge blocks of stone intermingle with enormous trees, their roots twisting around and through the structure, holding it together. It was great. Then it was onto a LonelyPlanet recommended Butterfly Garden restaurant for a tasty lunch surrounded by butterflies which (as is usual for such occasions) refused to sit still and pose for photographs.

Thursday saw us heading back to Bangkok, and falling into the trap of searching for a better deal on a longtail boat when we should have just gone with the first one. Once we eventually made it onto a longtail, though, we had a lovely time gliding through the Thonburi canals, and provided entertainment (in the form of something to wave at) to locals as we passed. We then had a short wander through Chinatown and headed back to the hotel.

Friday was another early start as we flew down to Trat and were chauffered from there to our hotel on the island of Ko Chang. This hotel (the Dewa) was my first 5* experience and I sincerely hope not my last. It was a stylish and relaxing place, although it was marred slightly by the occasional smell of drains. However, it's not so surprising that Thai drains are unable to cope especially at the hottest time of year, and it didn't detract from the experience.

There followed several days of relaxing, eating, swimming (in the sea and the funky pool), watching films, and drinking cocktails. You could even swim over to a pool height bar to order your cocktails and drink them in the water. What will these crazy kids think of next.

As well as not doing much, we also managed to go elephant trekking, which was just as good the second time around, although extremely terrifying as I spent half the time riding on the elephant's neck, feeling like I was going to be flung to the ground and trampled. With my limited Thai, I could tell that Lucy and I were the main topic of conversation among the mahouts for practically the whole journey. This may have been mainly the fault of my Laos beer t-shirt.

The journey to and from the elephant trekking was invigorating, because we were in the middle of Songkran festival - the Thai New Year. This involves several days of locals (and tourists), children, drunken teenagers, and grown adults who should know better, throwing water and occasionally talcum powder at passing pedestrians and vehicles. Our driver cooperated by slowing down and honking his horn every time we passed a group of people with a tank full of water so that they would wake up and splash us. This was quite fun at first, but I soon began to worry for my camera (whose predecessor you will remember had already been overloaded with moisture). Also, some of the water was icy cold, which even in the middle of the Thai summer is an unpleasant shock.

This mostly made us glad that we weren't in Bangkok for the festival, especially because our hotel there was right next to Khao San road, the centre of much drunken revelry even without water-throwing festivals as an excuse. I don't think it would have been as relaxing an experience as Ko Chang turned out to be.

We also went snorkelling which was wonderful, although Mum managed to stand on a spiky black sea urchin and bring even more attention our way than we already received as the only white family on a very full boat. Mum also declined to marry us off to one of the men working on the boat. This, I feel, is probably for the best.

Unfortunately the time came when we had to leave our idyllic island, and we were driven back to the tiny Trat airport, where we got to take of in one mother of a storm (which I thought was quite thrilling, but on which Lucy, who is scared of flying, wasn't so mad keen). Back in Bangkok, we had a last shop on Khao San Road and our last evening together, before Lucy and Mum left the next day to fly home.

I still had another day in Bangkok so I went to visit the Vivanmek Teak Mansion, a palace built by the great grandfather (or similar) of the present king in the early 20th century. This is the largest teak mansion in the world and would have been impressive, only they'd taken all that lovely, hard wood, with it's beautiful grain that would tell the tales of centuries, and painted over it in various baby-puke shades of pastel.

My goodbye taxi through Bangkok to the airport on Sat 19th April was a little sad. This would be the last time I would see Thailand for (presumably) a very long time, and I realised I was very fond of it as a country, for all its flaws. How could you not love a place where, even while they're ripping you off, they smile at you affectionately?

I wished the Thai Airways plane journey to Shanghai would take longer than the 4 or so hours it lasted, because I was on a swish new plane with a personal entertainment system instead of the group screen I'd had on the way over from England all those weeks ago. It had everything - dozens of films, tv programmes, music, games. You could even learn a language while you were ferried from one country to another. I was genuinely disappointed that we landed so soon.

So now here I am in Shanghai - so far, a far more expensive, alcohol-fuelled environment than Thailand. A modern, vibrant city (albeit with the odour of raw sewage never far away). Here I am surrounded by Chinese people with inconveniently small figures (so that no clothes here will fit me except for those from H&M) and absolutely no conception of personal space, queueing, or the notion that it's rude to stare at foreign people. It's great.