During our stay in Hanoi, we paid a little visit to the Chinese embassy where we expected to pick up a pair of visas and then be on our way to the land of the red dragon. However, it seems from the Chinese, you must expect the unexpected. After queuing for a morning and then being turned away before we even got into the office, we decided to be extra early the following morning to beat the crowd. This time, after another 2 hours of queing in the heat, we got into the office but on application, we were shown the road as we were not eligible to apply for a Chinese visa while we on a tourist visa in Vietnam. Gutted, without self worth and unsure of how to go on, Barry lent a hand and picked up the spirits of the distraught pair by suggesting that they travel to Bangkok as he was also headed in that direction. He enticed us with promises of knock off handbags, pirate DVDs and nightclubs brimming with lady boys. With the thought of breaking the lady boy market in Ireland, I told him we were sold and booked our tickets to leave on the same date.

On arriving into Bangkok, the culinary capital of south east Asia where every bite of the local cuisine is a taste bud adventure, the three gastronomists head first to Subway and without skipping a beat followed it up with a Burger King. This is not to say that we were not trying to embrace the culture of the city, in fact we were going above and beyond the normal tourist. We figured for the week we were there, the average home grown Bangkok resident wouldn’t visit any of the main tourist attractions. Instead they would head to the shopping centres, the markets, eat street and fast food and spend a large proportion of their time online. So keeping in line with their example, that’s what we did.

Barry parted our company after 5 days. Laden with handbags, size zero jeans and a wealth of ideas to bring back to the IDA, he parted like smoke in the wind. To get over this loss, we packed our bags and travelled to Koh Tao, a small island of the east of Thailand where the cheapest scuba diving can be found in the world.

On Koh Tao, we signed up for our advanced Padi qualification. It consists of 5 dives. Three aren’t worth mentioning but the night and the photography dives were the most interesting as they were the very different to our previous dives. Please enjoy - one of the photographers (she will remain nameless...) suffered 24 sea urchin stings in the knee for the sake of her art. She blames nitrogen narcosis at a depth of 26mm but the only sure thing is that the poor urchin will never be the same again. Check out the photos page. So anyway, you will be happy to hear we both passed the course although after the attack-on-the-wildlife incident Lesley had to slip the instructor a couple of sheckles... All in all we did 11 dives, however there were no sharks, whales, turtles or mermaids. The biggest/most dangerous fish we saw was the titan trigger fish. Apparently these creatures of the deep don’t attack humans anywhere in the world except Koh Tao but they mustn’t be too bad as they didn’t come near Lesley even when I stuck a bit of tuna under her weights belt.

Our final stop in Thailand was Phuket where we took to the surf boards and went wave riding. September is supposedly the best time to get surf at this location and it didn’t disappoint, four days there and four days of surf. I didn’t expect the water to be loaded with surfers but how wrong I was, there were about 5 surf sections on the beach and in each section, about 30 surfers lay in wait for the next tube. The majority of surfers were locals who looked like they were born with boards on their feet. They were light, quick and knew the waves inside out. The lumbering whities on the other hand weren’t at the races. Big boards, miss timed entries and wipeouts were the order of the day. Only Lesley held her own, catching a few crisp waves to the acknowledging nods of the local crew.

Our last activity was a Thai cookery course. This was held in a very posh hotel by a very important and highly decorated chef. The first day was a bit of a let down, we spent the day watching dishes (mainly starters) being cooked. However, the second day was more hands on where we got to cook 2 main courses each. I can say I can cook a very tasty Thai dish as long as I have all the ingredients premeasured, in handy little dishes and under the strict supervision of a top chef. Any one for a red curry?