When I decided to return to Thailand six months after leaving, it would have been easy to head straight to Chiang Mai and spend two weeks revisiting my favourite haunts. However, I always like to visit somewhere new each time I return to a country and there’s a whole area of Thailand between Bangkok and Chiang Mai that I’ve never seen. Ayutthaya and Sukhothai, two ancient cities were the first... 
If you’re a travel blogger and planning on spending several months working in Chiang Mai as most of us seem to do, chances are you’ll end up living at Smith Residence. Located just outside Chiang Mai gate towards the south of the Old Town, Smith is a travel blogger haunt and the majority of travel bloggers who were in town in 2010/11 were living there, including Dave. I met Dave in Chiang Mai... 
I’m tormenting my OCD and disrupting my usual strict chronological order of Never Ending Footsteps to bring you this photo essay. I attended the Yi Peng floating lantern festival in Chiang Mai a few days ago and it was so magical that I couldn’t bear to wait 3 months (I know. I promise I’m trying to catch up!) to share the photos with you! My sole reason for returning to Chiang... 
Working on Koh Phi Phi for two weeks had both Dave and I exhausted and desperate for a break from our productive yet soul-destroying work routine. After deciding that we needed a digital detox and to spend a week offline on a beach, we set about trying to find the perfect island. A few searches for “Thailand paradise” brought up the island Koh Hong repeatedly and it looked absolutely stunning.... 
I wasn’t expecting to like Koh Phi Phi. In fact, I wasn’t even planning to go there. I’d read hundreds of articles in the past describing how it’s overrun with obnoxious tourists. That it’s dirty, smelly and polluted; that it’s extremely expensive for Thailand. It didn’t sound particularly appealing. But when Dave and I screwed up with our boat schedule when... 
“Hey, look at that island in the distance! We should totally rent a kayak and paddle out there! It will be so much fun.” After spending two hours canoeing on a lake in Bali, I now consider myself to be an expert in all sports that require you to wave sticks in a body of water. Looking out towards the tiny island of Koh Nok, I estimated that it would take no more than five minutes of fierce... 
If I ever wanted to stop travelling for three months or so and do absolutely nothing but lie on a beach all day and hang out at beach bars playing non-stop Bob Marley at night then Koh Chang would be the perfect place to do so. I stayed there for just five nights and during that time I decided that this was the perfect chill-out island and that I definitely needed to spend a lot more time there in the... 
“Why you go there? Very hard and so expensive to get to. No tourists go. Only one boat a day.” Dave and I exchanged glances and I knew he was wondering if we were making the right decision. We’d travelled to the Thai islands a month ago and I had expected so much more; Koh Chang, Koh Phi Phi, Koh Lanta – I’d enjoyed my time on them but they weren’t the vision of... 
Koh Chang was the first Thai island I visited and it was the perfect introduction to this part of the world. I was hoping to discover something close to paradise and I certainly found it. Spending my days lying on Lonely Beach and working on my tan, my evenings were spent watching the sunset and drinking 500 buckets at any one of the bars lining the beachfront. Those are some of my fondest memories of Koh... 
Lauren Vs. Food is my attempt at overcoming my food neophobia by forcing myself to eat new and intimidating foods as I travel around the world. Living in Thailand for the past five months has been a life-changing experience, for many reasons. I’ve had to learn how to cross the road with five thousand scooters, three hundred tuk tuks and and twenty nine songthaews simultaneously racing towards me.... 
It was the final day of our Northern Thailand road trip. I had ridden close to 1500km on a scooter over the space of a week and I was delighted that the end was finally in sight. Even so, when I awoke on that final morning I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of sadness in my heart. This adventure had grown to be such a huge part of my life over the past week, and I was worried about returning to the... 
I can’t believe I’ve now been travelling for almost a year! At the end of my last update I was getting ready to fly back to Thailand where I was planning on spending a month on one of the islands. I couldn’t decide between my original plan of Koh Lanta or my new idea of Koh Phi Phi. Although I feel like I didn’t really give Lanta a chance, I went with Phi Phi. I feel comfortable... 
It’s 4am on the 12th April. I am sat in Phuket airport and I’ve been staring at the same spot on the floor for two hours, desperately trying to make sense of what has just happened to me. Today, I was convinced I was going to die. At 3:30 pm on the 11th April 2012, a huge earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Right now, that’s the only information I have. At the time,... 
Nan is a town bordering Laos in the remote valley of the Nan river in Northern Thailand. It marked the mid-way point of our Northern Thailand road trip and after having travelled 700km on the back of a scooter I was exhausted and in desperate need of a rest. Up until now, we had been arriving in towns late in the afternoon, staying a night and then leaving the following morning. This routine was really... 
We stayed in Phayao for one night on our Northern Thailand road trip and aside from staring at the scenic lake and watching a strange aerobics class dance around a giant statue of a snake, there wasn’t too much to do there. Not that I actually wanted to do anything after having been sat on the back of the bike for ten hours that day. Except drink beer. We did that really well. However, the next... Posted by .
In July 2011 I left England for what was supposed to be a one year trip around the world. Within a few months of leaving I knew that a year would never be enough. I now work online and travel permanently, seeking misadventures in unique, beautiful and fascinating places. Read more.
I'm here to show you how not to travel. Since I've been on the road I've been "poked" during a massage in Bangkok, punched a scammer in Shanghai, been attacked by monkeys in Bali, sat next to a dead woman on a boat in Laos and so much more. I call these The Incidents and you can see a full list of them here.
