From all of the islands in the Andaman Sea there is a network of ferries operating between the different islands. In most cases, these are wooden vessels of varying sizes, depending on the popularity of the route.

The ferry from Ko Phi Phi to Ko Lanta is one of the smaller ferries, as this route is not nearly as busy as some, such as Phi Phi to Phuket. All the ferry journeys seam to be similar in costs, between 400 and 600 baht, depending on the distance.

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The Phi Phi to Lanta ferry was 400 baht each, and was quite a comfortable ferry. Single level, and all below deck, witch luggage stored on the top. Seats were all quite comfortable soft bucket types, and seated probably about 100 if necessary. Interestingly, many touts from accommodation on Ko Lanta ride the journey, promoting their rooms. This was actually quite useful as they were not too pushy, and appeared to offer good quality accom, at a much cheaper price than Ko Phi Phi!

Journey only took about 1.5 hours, and arrived at Lanta port town of Ban Sala Dan on the north end of the island, where transport to the beaches can be easily arranged. Incidentally, we got mobile coverage all the way between Ko Phi Phi and Ko Lanta!

View Point on Phi Phi Island (Ko Phi Phi Don to be precise), is a bit of a step climb, but one that is well worth the effort for anyone wanting to get a great view of the island. We headed up the 100+ steps about an hour and a half before sunset, and arrived with about an hour to spare. It is a fairly tough little hill climb, especially considering the humidity on the island, even at 4.30, but well worth it!

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Most notable from the View Point is the extreme vulnerability that settlement on the island has to the sea, and hence, why it was so devastated by the 2004 Tsunami. From the height of the view point it is clear to see the thin sandbar Isthmus that joins the two sides of Ko Phi Phi Don together. In the middle this sandbar would be only 50 meters of so wide, and only marginally above sea level. It is horrifying to see how all the buildings are again located on this narrow sand bar. A similar Tsunami in the future will have the same result in Ko Phi Phi, horrifically. All we can do is hope this never happens! 

Usually touts pushing their accommodation are a real pain in the arse, and generally you are going to get pushed very average and usually overpriced accommodation, that you could have got easily yourself when you reached your destination.

Well, we found the touts on the ferry from Ko Phi Phi to Ko Lanta to be quite the opposite! About 10 guys and girls were offering their different hotels on the boat, as soon as we got on board. We were determined to ignore then, until they started talking their prices. The were offering their rates at about half what we were paying on Phi Phi. In addition, they had a good set of pictures and maps to show what their places looked like. In addition, they offered a free lift to their hotels to have a look before committing! Clearly, it was a strong offer, and one we were unable to resist!

Incidentally, we found the resort we had selected from the boat to be everything that was promised! But that is another post!

A couple of years ago, I went to one of those giant book clearance sales at the convention centre, and picked up a pile of books, at 10 for $20 type of offer. As usual, most of these then sit in a corner of the spare room and never get looked at again!

The other day I was scratching for something to read on a two hour flight I had, and grabbed Farewell Hippie Heaven, by Jack Parkinson, off this neglected pile.

It appealed a little, as it was about the authors travels in a lot of the places I had recently visited on my latest trip - main interest being Kathmandu and Nepal, and Goa.

What interested me after reading the book, is how different some of the other places on his “hippie trail” now, as to when he visited. However, I was unable to ascertain from the book, when he actually visited! My guess was early 1970’s, but I am not sure. Although Nepal doesn’t read a lot different than now, south east Asian places he and I have visited (but in a different era) Ali, Singapore and Penang are completely changed

I would love to know two things -

1. When was Jacks travels?

2. where are the frontier places that the hippies, and off the beaten track travellers go now? They definitely would not be spending long in Singapore, and I think disappointed with Penang and Bali. Are there places in South east Asia that are still “off the beaten track”, or has lonely planet killed it all?

I had been looking on EBay at some lonely planet guidebooks, but found it impossible to tell which edition was current, or if not current, how old a particular edition is. Given the fast changing nature of the guidebooks, it is great they do a different cover for each edition. However, it is odd that although Lonely Planet do a new cover for each new edition of each and every one of their guidebooks, but do not have any details of their chronological order on their website, or anywhere else that I can find.

For example, I was interested in getting hold of the 1st edition of Lonely Planet Thailand, as I thought it would be interesting to compare with the current edition. I thought I might even start trying to collect their first editions. However,  I have been unable to find out what it looks like, that makes it very hard to look for. The current guide tells when the first edition was published, but that is all. I don’t think there is any way to find out when the second and third editions were published, or what the cover looked like (IE - what to look for at booksales etc).

It has made me think I should contact Lonely Planet get more information - having read ‘Once while travelling, the Lonely Planet story” there is some information on the early books, so they must have a chronological list available?

I am also thinking of putting together a website with all the covers, so others can work out how old each edition is. Does anyone think that would be a good idea? I may contact lonely planet to see if this is OK, even selling early editions? I would love to hear if anyone else out there has come across anything similar.

We flew on two Paramount airlines flights quite recently, primarily as they were the only airline that could offer us flights from Goa to Tiruchirapalli, with only the one connection, in Chennai. As we had searched all the other Low Cost carriers operating in India, and had previously flown with a couple, we were very surprised about this airline.

Firstly, it was the only one that flew the route we were after, so that was a good thing!, but also, it was promoted as a business class only airline, but the two hop flight was very reasonable indeed, similar prices to the Low cost flyer’s! Also, it advertised as having no middle seats, which made us think it would be a very small plane.

 We were pleasantly surprised, after speculating at Goa airport as we waited on its arrival, as to how small the plane would be! We were surprised that is was not too bad at all, a reasonably long, but slender plane, apparently a Embraer 170/190, a Brazilian made aircraft? Anyhow, once we were loaded it as a very comfortable plane, with good quality seating, and as advertised, no middle seat. With two seats either side of the aisle, it was very comfortable indeed.

Although both flights were only just over an hour, we were very surprised to find we were offered a meal on both flights, and the meal was genuinely presented Business class style, with tablecloth and napkins. We got a choice of Indian Veg or Non Veg\, as well as continental Veg or Non-veg meals. Unfortunately, they didn’t actually have the continental non veg we wanted, but that was not too disappointing. All other passengers were Indian, so I expect they serve mainly Indian food!

Both flights were very comfortable, and in addition, the check-in at Goa airport was extremely good. Staff grabbed our bags very early, and processed them through security for us, as well as escorted us to the check in counter.

They advertise has having a business lounge in major airports, but we were disappointed to find they didn’t at Chennai, as this was their head office.

All in all, it was two excellent flights. They were very comfortable ride, and the service was excellent. I would recommend Paramount to others flying in Southern India! Check out their website, at  http://www.paramountairways.com/index.aspx

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We needed to get Goa to Tiruchirapalli recently, as we had booked our flight home to Australia and out of India from Trichy (short for Tiruchirapalli). I know this is an odd choice, and we only booked this as it was the only Air Asia flight out of India. Also, when we looked at our maps it didn’t look too far from Goa. In hindsight, this was a bad move, but to get a transit visa through India, we needed to have an outgoing flight booked. (the 15 day transit visa was available same day from the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu, as a tourist visa took a week!).

Anyhow, we found ourselves in Goa, and needed to be in Trichy.

A search of every Indian airline we could think of, didn’t come up with any results that didn’t involve 3 flights! We tries all the airlines we could think of - Jet, Kingfisher, Indigo, Go, Spice-jet, Air India and Indian Airlines. From what we could work out none that flew to Trichy had a single stop from Goa.

On consulting with a local travel agent, they suggested that a specialist Business class airline - Paramount Airlines - was the only airline that flew to Goa to Chennai, and also flew from Chennai to Trichy. We hadn’t heard of this airline at all, but found their prices to be very reasonable, especially considering they were business class only!

Thier web site is http://www.paramountairways.com/, and I will give a full review of the flights in one of my next posts

If you are travelling to Phuket, you will not doubt see a lot of advertising for various day trips to Phi Phi Island. A lot of times this will be promoted at visiting “the beach” from the Leonardo DeCaprio movie, The Beach.

These day trips vary considerably in price, depending what is being offered as included. Usually that are going to be from about $AUD80.00 starting price or the day. I think it is a much better idea to catch a general ferry to Ko Phi Phi Don,and explore the two islands at your leisure.

A Ferry to Ko Phi Phi Don goes from Phuket port at Phuket town, on the eastern side of Phuket island. The main beach towns are on the west coast. We booked a ferry, and this included minibus pickup from our hotel in Karon, and the transfer of about 1 hour. Although we had seen the ferry advertised for 400 baht, we booked ours for 450baht each, including the minibus.

On the ferry where those just being transferred to the island (us), as well as others who had signed up for day trips. They had paid 3-4 times as much, and were transferring to a longboat for a quick whip around, and a lunch.

Meanwhile, we got off at Ko Phi Phi, and enjoyed several days on the wonderful beaches!

I have been on so many different holidays over the years, and never had a “card” problem, so I guess in hindsight, I was about due. Any ways, this is what happened!

Unbeknown to us, our Bank decided to change the credit card promotion we were on, as the reward program Visa we had was no longer a current offer, and they were obviously trying to wind up a cost centre. So, they sent us in the mail new cards, on the banks current frequent flyer Visa card. As this was a new program, our credit card numbers changed. The bank did a redirect on our old card, for a month after they issued the new ones.

Of course, we are overseas at the time, on a 3 month holiday, so we don’t receive this mail.

On our last day in Kathmandu, about an hour before we need to leave for the airport to catch our flight to New Delhi, we try to pay our hotel bill, and, alas, the card is declined. In a panic, we rush off and fire up the laptop thinking we need to transfer money, but balance is all OK?

So we ring our bank, from our hotel room. $100 later, we finally get to speak to a customer service representative, who advises us that , yes, our card has been changed to a new, better one. Great, we said sarcastically, but we still need to use the old one. Sorry, nothing we can do about that, call Visa international on blah blah number if you want an emergency card, have a nice day. Thanks for nothing National Australia Bank!

So we called Visa International, and were very relieved to find we didn’t have to wait in a Queue. Fantastic when you are calling from a payphone in Kathmandu!

They were keen to help, and offered us both an emergency card, as well as emergency cash! Fantastic, how long will that take?we asked. and how do we pay for our room bill, due in 10 minutes?

Fortunately, they were able to advise us the new visa card number, and we were able to the Kathmandu hotel with them inputting the number manually. Next problem was were to send emergency cash and card to, as we were flying out within hours. Unfortunately we were unable to advise where to send it all to, so they gave us a reference number, and a toll free phone number to call back on, once we got to a destination we were going to stay at for a couple f days.

We then flew to New Delhi, only overnighted there, and then on to Goa. This caused us to not be able to reach Visa again for two days, just because of flight times (early, late etc). When we reached a hotel in Goa, we called them again, quickly got through, quoted our reference number, and got immediate offer of help. This was 4pm so it would be too late to get cash that day, they would organise for the next day (that turned out was election day in Southern India, so banks were not open). The nearest affiliated bank to Visa international, as at Margao, approx 1 hour from where we were in Calangute, but, what do you do, we were running our of cash!

So on the Friday, 4 days after our card failed on us, we were finally off to Margao to pickup some money to see us through until the emergency card came though! Indian banks, of course, are even worse than National Australia Bank, so it took some time, and more phone calls back to Visa International, but they finally managed to force it through, and at 2.30 pm (we arrived at the bank at 10.00am), we finally walked away with money!

Once we had the emergency cash, we got back onto them, to organise a card. This, they said, would arrive in 3 business days. This was longer than we intended to stay in our hotel, but we said, oh well, we need a card, so we will wait (this was Friday, so 3 business days would be the following Wednesday).

To our surprise, the card arrived at our Goan hotel, on the Monday, only 3 days ( 1 business day) later. Finally, we were OK to travel again.

The only down side, was that the temporary card has no security number, so we could not use it online - and all the cheap airlines only sell their tickets online! But ever mind, things could have go a lot worse!

So, Thanks Visa International, you saved our bacon. An no thanks to National Australia Bank, you cost us hundreds of dollars, and put us under enormous stress when we should have been enjoying our holiday!  

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We stayed at this guesthouse on the 6th and 7th of March, 2009

At this time the guest house appeared very new, and this was one of the reasons it appealed to us. As we arrived to Karon Beach on a rental motorbike, we were looking around fairly widely for suitable accommodation, having decided to get away from Patong Beach. We spent a lot of time tolling the road on the beach without success, and eventually came across a couple of suitable looking smaller hotels on Patak Rd, off the end of Luang Pho Chuang Rd, the “Bangla rd” of Karon Beach.

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