Day 110. Hat Yai, Thailand. Lost in translation.

Tempted to enjoy the tranquility of the highlands for a while longer, but the call of the beach proved too strong and we opted to press on. Ten tedious hours on a couple of maddeningly slow buses saw us dropped off on the outskirts of Hat Yai, the largest City in southern Thailand.

We soon discovered this is a no nonsense town that doesn't pander to namby pamby tourists. Firstly, in a good way when we couldn't find anything that resembled a conventional restaurant and ended up in a large open-ended canteen where no-one - staff or customers - spoke a word of English. The food though, was the absolute nuts, and a mammoth scoff with four beers cost us about six quid.

We then encountered a similar language barrier at a late night Barbers. I performed what I thought to be a pretty foolproof mime of a buzzing set of clippers, then held up three fingers to indicate I wanted a #3 cut.

Cue, lots of smiling, nodding and laughing (the Thai's are partial to a giggle, so I wasn't unduly worried at this point).

The girl holds up some clippers and I smile and nod back. She then proceeds to shave my hair right down to the bone - her take on the three finger thing obviously being let's see if we can get this done in under 3 minutes.

For the next few days I'll therefore mostly be looking like a cross between that nutty Italian football ref with the mutant eyes and Nosferatu.