I spent New Year’s Eve on Phi Phi Don, which was pretty cool. Travelled down there for a week with a friend from England and relaxed amongst the bars and beaches, although the mood was slightly tempered by some pretty horrific sunburn acquired in between my arrival on the island and my purchasing some sunblock. If you have an Irish complexion (thanks Mum), sunblock is your friend.

Altogether I managed two weeks away from work, and even squeezed in a night up in Vientiane before Christmas.

Christmas dinner back in Bangkok featured too few brussels sprouts and roast potatoes, alongside far too much beer, before the trip down south.

Sunburn in December, whilst painful, is certainly preferable to being freezing cold back in the UK, and it was good to see a little more of Thailand.

I love Bangkok, but I think I owe it to myself to see a little more of the country when possible. So I’m tentatively planning a trip to Chiang Mai in April for Songkran, and perhaps a weekend in Hua Hin next month.

I also want to try and get to Bali this year (I’m tentatively looking at a trip in June), have booked a bargain long weekend in the Philippines in mid-March, and intend to get back to England for a week or two in August, for my third trip home to England in three years.

It still feels like about three months. I think I might be here for a while.