Your host
Hi and welcome to my website. I’m Peter and this site goes under the title of Marches Travel. ‘Marches’ appears repeatedly for a reason. My place of birth is Hereford, West Midlands, UK and Herefordshire is one of the counties collectively known as the Welsh Marches; English counties bordering Wales. However this site is now only about travel in the area of Indo-China. Your host is TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) qualified.
Content
Actually this site has sprung to life largely out of my personal desire to learn webpage coding in HTML. It’s not the first time I’ve written a computer program but for many years I simply immersed myself in other things. You will notice immediately that I have travelled well in Southeast Asia in recent years but my association with Thailand goes back a long way; 1986 to be precise. My recent travels have provided a platform for development of this site. Of course it may appear just a personal record for posterity of my adventures. However, it is hoped that prospective travelers to this fascinating part of the world will find something here of interest to them. You will notice that some familiar names are not included, notably Pattaya, Phuket and Samui. Nor will they be!! All you need for these is your Google search engine. If you need to know more about other lesser known destinations please stay with this site!! One thing I should stress is that being in the pension zone I don’t have unlimited resources. But in this era of national and corporate troubles most who would aspire to travel here will be in a similar situation. I endeavor to travel on a budget of £30, about 50 US dollars per day. This could accommodate two travelers but wouldn’t allow shopping for souvenirs or non-essentials. It roughly breaks down in three equal parts: transport, accommodation and food. Are you still paying attention!!!
Future developments
My intention is to continue development of this site. I do regard it as dynamic and fluid but I apologize in advance if the site lacks certain professionalism that is associated with advanced web design. However familiar features will gradually appear as the site develops. Presently the site features tours and trips mostly in Thailand but also in Northern, Central and Southern Laos, Northern Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia. For tours I will endeavour to keep a travel log as well as tour summaries. Recently I have added Google maps within 'review' pages and generally made it easier to navigate. I also intend to develop and expand the State Railway of Thailand website opening up further options for travellers. By the Autumn of 2015 my site had expanded beyond my wildest dreams despite a number of health issues that had threatened to restrict my travels. Even so while I’m not on tour I continue to develop my site, adding flesh on bones that I’ve unearthed on tour. I sincerely hope you find something interesting in these pages and offer my thanks for visiting this site. If you have any questions or constructive suggestions I would be very pleased to hear from you.
Acknowledgements
Firstly I wish to extend my sincere thanks to Miss Weerawan Inyanual (Katoon) for being a companion on my tours. A university graduate (Ramkangheang, Bangkok), she has brought a wealth of knowledge and understanding about these tours without which a great number of my tour sites could not be effectively reviewed. A lot of evidence has been gathered by word of mouth and my Thai is not fluent enough to extract most of it. Miss Inyanual has also played a big part in indentifying some important individual sites I would have missed. I’m also so grateful to have her around during some of the dark days when I’ve been struck down by bad health.
Naturally there are other sources of information to call upon. An essential tool is my camera. Photographic evidence forms a large part on this website and where possible, onsite information boards, tickets and brochures supplement this data. When carrying out the site reviews I also use online sources. I am most grateful to information provided by Wikipedia and to Google for maps. The Tourist Authority of Thailand also has a website which has proved most useful in providing a local perspective on a number of occasions. Finally the local people I have met on tour have been amazing. I have hardly come across an individual who has not been friendly and most willing to assist me when required, even amongst the apparent chaos of Bangkok.