If  Hoi An with its lantern lit streets and colourful candles floating down river is the Shambala Festival of South East Asia, then Pai, in northern Thailand is what would happen if the people decided not to leave the festival, stayed put and set up shop. This is a very special place. There is very little to do other than sit in relaxed cafes and bars, read books, be inspired, have a massage, do some Tai Chi  or maybe go for a trek in the hills. It is great. We've already stayed here twice the amount of time we planned to (lets hope the guy we left our big bags with in Bangkok hasn't sold all our stuff!). We're staying over the river from the main part of town, it's very peaceful. We have only the noise of the geckos,birds and the occasional downpour of early monsoon rain on the roof of our little bamboo hut to listen to. [caption id="attachment_1390" align="aligncenter" width="449" caption="Bridge to our hut"][/caption] We've discovered a few things while we've been here, the first of these discoveries is that we both have an amazing ability to sit in a cafe for over 5 hours without really realising an hour ...

After nearly a month in Hoi An sadly the amazing contract on our flat stating that we should resolve any conflicts with the "spirit of comradeship" had come to an end and it was time to move on. We packed up our bags, said our goodbyes, hopped on a train and waved farewell to this friendly place that had been our home for the last few weeks. Spending a little more time there allowed us to get to know people just that bit better. The lady down the road who did our laundry, the smiley lady and her daughter on the market who made our breakfast fruit shakes and all the other people from places we frequently cycled past who always had a smile and a wave for us, we'll miss them all. But most of all we will miss the people from Karma Waters who were so good to us while we were there. It really was a treat to meet them and to spend so much time chatting, sharing stories and ideas. [caption id="attachment_1185" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Karma Waters"][/caption] We did so much during our time there. Kayaking, cooking lessons, speed boat trips and an exciting, though unsuccessful trip out on ...

If you want something a bit more than sight seeing and sunbathing from a trip then Karma Waters is definitely the place to be. The home page of the website opens with the statement, "At some point we understood and accepted that life is Karma and this is our place", from there follows an explanation of their "Busi-ness" (that activity that keeps you busy) model of Karma Investment, "Karma Investment is to consciously invest in improving your own life and that of all others (people, environment, animals, etc.) by consciously making the focus of all "investments" (time, energy, knowledge, etc.) to improve personal & collective karma" Regular readers may recall we came here on one of our first days and ended up in a conversation with the owner, Paul, which somehow convinced us Hoi An should be our home for the month. We've since been back many times and enjoyed inspirational conversations covering, as you can probably imagine, life, the universe and everything. Aside from the spiritual guidance we received here, another draw, if you need one, ...

So as promised, here are "a few" photos from the rest of the stay in Harbin. Mainly from the market, which was amazing. Deffo recommend popping in there for a stroll if you happen to be passing... erm. Here's a map to find it if you do fancy checking it out. Planning on updating this with other restaurants/interesting food places as we go around, so keep an eye out. Also there are pics from the ice festival, which wasn't quite what we expected. It seems from this year it has been taken over by Disney. You can imagine our joy when we were greeted by a huge Mickey Mouse, lots of merchandise and general selling out of a previously independent event. Booo. Still, we had a good time. Well actually it got 3.5 out of 10, but you know we had as good a time as we could at -23 surrounded by plastic Disney characters when we were expecting world famous ice sculptures. I have to start the post off with this though: It is the breakfast from the hotel we were staying at, The Lungmen, which was just opposite the station. Have you ever seen anything like it?! There was a ...

I had drafted a post about how all the travelling was, in a subtle but effecting way, a lot more tiring than I was expecting. I'm sure anyone who's been away for a long time will know what I mean - never being quite sure what will happen in any given situation, being unable to communicate even very simple ideas to people blah blah blah. However since arriving in China we have been met by such a friendly reception all seems twinkly and nice so the post seemed completely inappropriate for now. As a bonus now we have moved a little further south it has warmed up somewhat too. It is now -1. Feels like t-shirt weather! So anyhow the depressing post has gone in the bin for now and instead here's an update on our shiny happy trip from last week, the end of Russia and the beginning of China. Our last stop in Russia was a couple of days in Irkutsk, including a day trip to Listvianka on Lake Baikal. The lake was amazingly beautiful. It is the largest fresh water lake in the world at around 400 miles in length, so looking across the lake was more ...