Day 113. Hat Ton Sai, Thailand. Getting high.

From the minute we landed on Ton Sai we couldn't help noticing the disproportionate number of honed and toned sixpack lovelies on the beach. Honestly, it's like being stuck in the middle of an epic Calvin Klein undie commercial involving a cast of thousands.

Not that we're bothered mind - we just keep our shirts on and order more curry and lager.

Anyway, we were relieved to discover this morning that it's not vanity keeping all these pec's in trim, it's the fact that this stretch of coast features some of the world's most challenging rock climbing, and we're sharing sunbathing space with some fairly hardcore athletes.

The cliffs range in height from about 80 to well over 200 metres, and as well as looking great, all have one thing in common - they're completely sheer. We were talking to a bloke from the Lake district who reckons there's nothing comparable back home and that only the top 5% of climbers in the world would attempt the some of the overhangs.

Hardcore indeed.

So yes, they're all gorgeous and musclebound, but I bet we could kick their collective ass if they were brave enough to take us on at Scrabble.

Day 112, Hat Ton Sai, Thailand. A tale of two beaches.

Arriving as the sun went down yesterday we experienced two very different sides to Thailand.

The boat from Krabi dropped us at Rai Leh beach, a gorgeous stretch of fine white sand bordered by picture postcard palm trees and cliffs. Very nice, you think at first, until it dawns that the place is actually devoid of charm, soul or indeed anything that would suggest it's sitting in the middle of southeast Asia - scenery aside, obviously.

Three or four exclusive nobby resorts dominate proceedings, and unless you've the wallet of an Oil Baron, you'd better get out of town.

So we did.

We took another boat around the headland to the altogether cooler HatTon Sai, a magical place that in terms of scenery is the equal of its neighbour, but which has accommodation starting at two and a half quid a night.

Quiet and peaceful throughout the day, it becomes something far funkier after dark, with a string of ramshackle beach bars pumping out the finest music we've heard anywhere since leaving home.

Significantly, all the business's appear to be Thai owned and managed too. The food is deliciously authentic, the beer's cheap and the people - visitors and locals alike - are extremely easy going.

We love it. We're staying for a week.

Day 111. Hat Ton Sai, Thailand. Dull, dull, dull.

A frustrating day. We left Hat Yai at 9am expecting to be on one of Krabi's beaches by lunchtime.

Thanks though, to a dodgy mini-van, an obstinate boatman and Wend leaving - and retrieving - her hiking boots under a back seat, we didn't arrive until dusk.

Seems like a nice place though, and after the non-stop travelling of the past few weeks, we think we might stay here and do quite a lot of nothing for a few days.

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.

Day 109. Tanah Rata, Malaysia. The mackem and the fork.

Now here's a thing that'll teach me not to be so judgemental in future; the mackem - Phil, turned out to be a top bloke.

Being an organised kind of a chap, he'd spent a good part of the morning poring over maps and guidebooks to plan himself an interesting hike. And the Smiths, not wishing to sully their day with anything as mundane as research, decided to tag along.

An enjoyable and eventful walk it was too. Zig-zagging up one of the large hills overlooking Tanah Rata until we reached a lookout at almost 1900 metres where Wend served an improvised lunch of dried peas, Bombay mix and pitted prunes (tastes better than it sounds folks - honest).

Descending the other side of the hill we came to a bamboozling fork where one track suddenly became two. Much scratching of heads until Phil opted to take the right-hand track.

"Hey, if I've chosen the wrong one, you're not going to write anything derogatory about people from Sunderland are you?"

As if.

Of course, given a 50/50 chance of success, a mackem will inevitably blow it, so we ended up heading into thick, perilous jungle until someone of superior intelligence (a geordie) managed to beat a heroic track back to civilisation.

Shared a few beers in the evening to show there were no hard feelings and Phil whetted our appetites for a trip to South America with tales of his adventures in Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Equador.

Day 108. Tanah Rata, Malaysia. Tea for two.

A disconcerting start to the day when I realized the bloke sitting across the aisle on our bus to the Cameron Highlands was a dodgy mackem (I'd recognize that ludicrous accent anywhere). Tried not to dwell on it though, and things perked up once we turned off the motorway onto the scenic road to the mountains.

This is a gorgeous part of the world. Possibly as pretty as anywhere we visited in the Philippines, but without the oppressive humidity. It's also one of the places Wend had got herself all excited about when we first started planning the trip, so she was especially chuffed when we checked into our hilltop guesthouse.

The good news was that we were just in time to take the afternoon tour to one of the area's big Tea plantations. The combination of rich, fertile soil and a sunny, temperate climate means stuff grows at an alarming rate up here - any old stuff - and roadside stalls are piled high with every kind of fruit and veg imaginable.

It's Tea, however, that's the undisputed top of the crops, and it was a treat to be shown around the BOH (Best Of Highlands) plantation. Not least, because we enjoyed our first decent cuppa in months at the adjoining cafe.

Founded in 1929 by a Scottish entrepreneur by the name of Russell, the company is now run by one of his great-grandchildren, and ships it's top notch brew all over the tea drinking world.

Bizarrely, the tour ended with a visit to the nearby Insect and Butterfly farm.

To be honest, we weren't expecting to be overly tickled by this. But I was thrilled with the buttock clenching experience of picking up



a huge Rhino beetle, an even bigger Leaf crawler and - the daddy of them all - a monstrous Emperor scorpion. Wend being Wend, bottled it and ran next door to see the girly, pretty butterflies.