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Thailand is a great place for a holiday.

After the Laos experience it was great to be back in an Asian country exhibiting that strange blend of first world and third world. It’s so easy in Thailand - the people are naturally friendly and used to tourists.

We liked Bangkok for its built up bustle while you are still blown away by sights like the Royal Palace and the world’s largest reclining Buddha. We made it out the day before the city started flooding. It wasn’t the greatest idea to build a massive city at the bottom of a vast alluvial plain but Bangkok has disappeared off the news since we left so we hope and assume the city is getting back to normal.

Two of the strangest sights were seeing the locals building knee high brick walls in front of all the shops to keep the water out and the other was relaxing in the main park to be surprised by massive monitor lizards crawling out of the water around us.

Once we were city-ied out, we headed for the famous Thai beaches.

All your life you hear about Phuket but once you get there you find it has been overdeveloped so it is now the Asian equivalent of Magaluf/Kos/Kefalonia/Aya Napa etc. It’s bad enough having these places in Europe, so after a few days we headed to Ko Phi Phi.

Ko Phi Phi village itself was not really our scene – full of rough party hostels overflowing with white douchebags in dreadlocks disappointing their fathers with every breath they take and girls with hummingbird tattoo’s on their legs going out with aforementioned white buffalo soldiers and worrying their fathers with every step they take. So we took a very exciting “Longtail” boat to one of the secluded bays further up the island. These boats are crazy - they take five year old car engines from Bangkok and strap them to a wooden boat with propeller swinging wildly all over the place out the back.

The beach we were at was stunning and incredible value – eight pounds a night for a double room bungalow twenty metres from the beach! Check out the pictures – just awesome. The sea was like walking into a warm bath and the weather was perfect every day.

We did a day trip snorkelling and visiting the beach where they filmed, er, “The Beach”. At this point, most people start beach hopping and playing top trumps on all the Thai beaches they have visited. However, our spot was so perfect we knew shifting anywhere else was only going to be, best case, as good as what we already had – so we extended our stay there and chilled out for ten days in a truly magical spot. If you’re super nice – just might tell you where it is ;-)

Once we were so relaxed we could hardly stand up, we packed up and headed onwards to Malaysia!

So, if you want a fantastic holiday, fly to Bangkok/Phuket and take the easy transfer down to the beaches – you won’t regret it. Thailand is a great place for a holiday.