Strangers on a train ...

Our journey north out of Bangkok was via the sleeper train to Chaing Mai. While the first class passengers got individual cabins and smartly dresses porters to carry their luggage aboard those of us in the cheap seats at the back had to throw our bags up the carriage steps and prepare to sleep with a bunch of strangers. The carriage had pairs of seats all the way down both sides but when night came bunks would be pulled down from the ceiling and the seats below pulled together to make another bed. Thin curtains were all that separated you and your best pyjamas from the rest of the passengers. But before sleeping it was time to hit the karaoke bogie car. Sadly the karaoke was only a name and not a chance to murder a few classics but the dining car cum bar had some disco lights and enthusiastic waiters who were up for a bit off a bop.

One shandy was enough for me before the lure of the bottom bunk called and I clambered behind my little curtain. For a night of no sleep. It was, oddly, a rather pleasant night though - lying back and listening to the rhythmic bumps and clangs of the train and the snoring of other curtain shrouded travellers. Watching the sun rise through the misty haze of northern Thailand while quietly cocooned in my own little bunk was also just a little bit magical. The following attempt to use a squat toilet with a door that wouldn't lock on a fast moving train was a little less special.

Chaing Mai is Thailand's second city and you'd certainly believe that from the main road outside our hotel which, if you wanted to visit the old town on the other side, involved playing a game of chicken with the endless stream of cars, lorries, scooters and tuk tuks. Why did two red headed tourists cross the road? To see more temples of course! I have to confess that I found Chaing Mai a bit of a disappointment but that might be because I have a European preconception about 'old towns' and city centres. Thailand doesn't have the grand open squares of the European capitals and while the dusty warren of this city's small roads held some charm, the modern way of life with it's accompanying cables, plastic litter and neon signage distanced you from any real sense of the place's tradition or history.

An early evening tour of the Doi Suthep temple high on a mountain above the city provide a good dose of tradition though as we rang the temple bells for good luck, were blessed with a sprinkling of holy water and given woven bracelets which we need to wear until they fall they off to ensure good karma. As the sun set over the temple, and our last night in Thailand, the huge golden stupa started to glow in the dusk light, and echoing with the chanting of the monks at evening prayer the temple was suffused with an air of isolated serenity.

At the opposite end of the scale was Chaing Mai's night market. More handicrafts, silver jewellery, wooden carvings, pashminas than you could shake a stick at plus a strange demonstration of ice cream making which used a flat plate like those used to make crepes but supercooled rather than superheated. We dined outside at a market restaurant packed with fresh fish and live crabs and lobster. My squid dish was so fresh it melted away in my mouth unlike the chewy fare you often get in the UK.

The evening ended at an outdoor bar complete with ladyboy cabaret. The performers had been parading round the market to promote the show with their elaborate feathered headdresses and revealing sparkly costumes. The show ran the well established canon of iconic gay cabaret songs - Dancing Queen, I Am What I Am and It's Raining Men - and while it was all good fun I couldn't help thinking that some of the dancer boys looked so young they should have been at home with their mums.

A road trip was next on the itinerary as we headed further north east to the Thai/Laos border. Our long journey - full of naps and iPod time - was broken twice. Once when we stopped at a cashew nut producer. We were shown the nuts growing from their fruits in the trees. Only one nut per fruit, which has to go through a long process of drying, heating and more drying before it can be cracked carefully open by hand, trying to avoid the poisonous film of rubber which warns off predators. I'd always wondered why cashew nuts were so expensive. Now I know.

Our second stop took us to an elaborate modern temple designed and built in the 70s by a now exiled artist. It's a strange beast of a temple - white stucco, studded with silver and pieces of mirror - which from a distance looks like a fantasy fairy tale castle with peaked roofs and dragon gates. But on closer inspection it's a whole lot more macabre. Severed heads hang from nearby trees, in a pit disembodied hands reach up to the sky as if clamouring to escape and twisted snakes swallow other snakes in a reptilian version of 'The Human Centipede'. Inside, the mural paintings depict the usual Buddhas and monks but amongst them are littered some monsters of the modern world - George Bush and Bin Laden, Freddie Krueger and the burning Twin Towers. And Michael Jackson?

Stories as to why the creator of such a twisted fantasy was exiled are contradictory - some say the King feared the man's growing popularity especially when he espoused a less traditional view of Buddhism. Others that the king still loved him and the exile was self-imposed. Either way he's certainly left a talking point behind him.

After more minibus time we finally hit the Thai border with neighbouring Laos. After going through Thai immigration control we had to cross the No Man's Land of the Mekong river by tiny paddle boat to enter Laos on the opposite bank. First impressions of a new country should never be taken from its border towns and the dusty one street strip of Huay Xai was no exception. Dinner at a local riverside restaurant included a barbecue where some of the group cooked their own chicken or beef on a metal pan above a charcoal fire pit, filling the pan's dipped edge with broth, noodles and veg which soaked up the meat's flavour. It was theatre and dinner Rolled into one. Our guesthouse for the night consisted of small bamboo wicker huts on stilts where every noise outside seemed to be right in the room with us but it offered the deepest, most peaceful night of sleep I've had on this trip so far. Things bode well for Laos.

Next up - a slow boat down the Mekong.

Photos below: on our sleeper train to Chaing Mai; monks at evening prayer at Doi Suthep; Ladyboy cabaret at Chaing Mai night market.