The sweetest drop

ASIA must be the best place for non-drinkers to holiday.

Sure, there are lots of intoxicating options when it comes to quenching one's thirst, but the alternatives are endless and delicious when it comes to ordering a drink without an alcoholic kick.

The fruit is magnificent in this part of the world – the pineapple is unbelievably sweet, every piece of watermelon explodes with abundant pink flavour, and the mango tastes exactly like its colour suggests – which means the fruit juice is just divine.

I order a watermelon juice with every meal with a splash of "syrup" just adding to the sweetness, and a tall glass of mango juice tastes more like a dessert than a beverage.

I've also come across some other delicious drinks including a combination of pineapple and ginger that was served before lunch yesterday and a sweet lemongrass beverage that I savoured before my cooking class with Tam earlier in the week.

We had lunch yesterday at a trendy new hotel in Hua Hin called Let's Sea – an unfortunate name for a sophisticated property that has villas built around a pool designed to look like a Thai canal – and dessert featured the most delectable scoop of sorbet I've ever sampled.

It was young coconut sorbet and was just yum.

Fortunately one member of my group doesn't eat sweets, so I took one for the team and ate her scoop as well, only because we didn't want to seem ungrateful to our hosts.

 Let's Sea, Hua Hin

Cooking up a storm

TODAY I learnt the difference between hairy basil and holy basil.

Come to think of it, before today I didn't even realise basil came in so many varieties.

But after a very informative morning in the garden and kitchen with an elegant Thai lady called Tam I have not only discovered there are different types of basil but that each will improve the health of different internal organs.

For a few hours today my little group of travel writers got to learn more about Thai food by attending the Amita Thai Cooking Class at Tam's family compound beside one of Bangkok's winding canals.

A traditional longboat took us to the school and we started the ride at wharf in downtown Bangkok and then crossed the wide and busy Chao Phraya River before navigating a maze of big and small canals to reach Tam's place.

The land once belonged to the cook's great, great grand parents and has been divided up over the generations so each of the children got a plot to build a house on.

Now her cousins, siblings, nieces and nephews live in the buildings that surround Tam's house and outdoor kitchen -- a gaggle of relatives also work at the cooking school -- and there's a temple across the canal on land that her family donated to a band of monks a few years ago.

The monastery provided a harmonious soundtrack, with the monk's soothing chanting drifting across the water and calmly serenading us as we secured our aprons.

The experience starts with a stroll through the garden, where Tam snips herbs and flowers so students can sample the different fragrances, with instruction on how to use the different ingredients in traditional Thai dishes.

Then it's in to the kitchen, which is only big enough to accommodate 10 aspiring chefs at a time each working at their own station with a little stove and work bench, where Tam and her team run through the dishes to be prepared.

The boss stands at the stove, spilling ingredients into the pan, and then her assistants give each student a sample to get a better idea of the flavours being used.

Then a tray of ingredients, each finely sliced and in its own little dish ready for cooking, are placed at each station and we start to prepare our own lunchtime feast.

Less than an hour later we have three yummy dishes to be consumed -- phat Thai, stir-fried chicken with cashews, and chicken in coconut soup which proved to be a taste sensation with every mouthful providing an explosion of delightful flavours.

I surprised myself, not only being able to prepare three exotic dishes that I would never have attempted on my own, but that fact that I liked the fragrant meals that usually don't appeal to my taste buds.

For a moment I even entertained the idea of cooking this feast for my family, until I realised I would have to locate the mysterious ingredients in Melbourne, chop all the ingredients myself, and then do the cooking without a friendly Thai lady telling me telling me when to stir and simmer.

We finished our feast with lots of local fruit, and even with a full tummy I managed to eat my way through a big plate of mango, pineapple and watermelon.

Bangkok is an interesting destination, not always an easy place to play tourist, but starting my visit with a morning at Tam's cooking school was a delightful way to kick off a stay in Thailand.

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Location:Soi Mahatlek Luang 2,Lumphini,Thailand

Captain Snooze

I THINK I might have found the world's most comfortable bed.

I'm spending three nights at the brand new Hansar Hotel in Bangkok and the few hours I get to spend snoozing are fast becoming the highlight of the trip.

The mattress is blissful, it's a king which means I can sleep across the bed without my tootsies ever finding an edge, and I seem to sink indulgently into the foam so it feels like I'm sleeping on a perfect pile of cotton wool.

The oversized pillows are mysteriously magical, they feel limp when I handle them to make the best sleeping arrangement but as soon as I rest my head them seem to be firm and supportive.

And the sheets, oh, the sheets.

The thread count is so high that the covers almost have that dense and furry feeling of sleeping in silk.

I had dinner with the hotel's owner tonight, an urbane 20-something by the name of Nithikorn Chayavichitsilp, and he told me he spent many hours getting the bedding combination just right.

He personally slept on 13 different mattresses to get the comfort level correct and then had the Hansar's beds custom made.

Nithikorn also wanted silk sheets, but the laundry bill to maintain that bedding would have been outrageous, so he had his manufacturer experiment with the thread count to get the extravagant texture.

The young entrepreneur studied business at the University of Technology in Sydney but wasn't planning to work in hotels until his uncle secured a patch of land in central Bangkok, just around the corner form the Four Seasons and a block from the main shopping district, and asked him to help out.

The result is a luxurious five-star hotel that does everything right.

I was lucky enough to have a suite at the front of the building and when I opened the door it found a vast foyer with slate floors and a glass wall that looked onto an outdoor light well with a beautiful flowering wall garden.

There was a big mirror on the opposite side of the foyer and, when I was reclining in my blissful bed, I could look through my suite and see a reflection of the flowers.

I'm always so impressed when I stay in a hotel like the Hansar, impressed there are architects and interior decorators out there pushing the boundaries of design and creating accommodations that provide surprises and discoveries from arrival until check out.

By the way, for anyone planning a holiday in the Thai sunshine, there's another Hansar in Koh Samui which also looks just divine.

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Location:Soi Mahatlek Luang 2,Lumphini,Thailand

Trip #5

SO, here are the stats for my jaunt into the Outback which was my fifth trip of the year.

Flights – Two in six days

Kilometres flown –1282km...from Melbourne to Adelaide and back

Total Kilometres flown in 2011 – 43,640km

Hotels – Standpipe Golf Motor Inn (Port Augusta), Marree Hotel (Marree), Wilpena Pound Resort (Wilpena Pound)
Total number of hotels in 2011 – 15

New stamps in my passport –My passport didn't even make the trip

New countries – Not a one, but lots of new South Australian settlements

I'm off again this weekend, for eight days in Thailand -- with stops on Bangkok, Hua Hin and Pattaya -- and I will start blogging about my Siam adventures as soon as I am inspired.

I will also post my Outback SA gallery when I get back to Australia and have time to sort my photos.

Another day in the office

I THOUGHT I would post a picture to show where work has taken me today.

I'm in the Flinders Ranges, doing a big lap of Wilpena Pound, and this was one of the stops we made during our drive this morning.

Wilpena Pound is a natural ampitheatre formed by a ring of rocky peaks that's 400km from Adelaide, and it's the most northern point in the Flinders Ranges you can get to on the sealed roads.

Visitors can walk into the homestead that once sheltered a pioneering family that was trying to farm the land inside the Pound, or navigate the dirt roads through the properties that surround the Flinders ranges National Park to enjoy views like this.

Not a bad place to spend a day in the office.

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Hot and cold

I ONLY brought one memory card for my camera on this trip, and it was almost full of images from my last big adventure when I arrived in South Australia on the weekend.

Not very professional, I know, and I have spent the past couple of days deleting images from my time in the UK two months ago to make room for pictures from up here in Outback SA.

It occurred to me today, when I was deleting some photos from my visit to Scotland, that I couldn't have had two more different travel experiences in this first third of 2011.

In January I was exploring Scotland, rugged up against the sub-zero temperatures in my bright red coat, and now, just weeks later, I'm hiding under a sun hat while exploring Australia's burnt red heart.

Here's a couple of photos so you can see what I mean...the top three were taken in the Sottish region of Ayrshire towards the end of the north's frigid winter, and the bottom images were snapped today near the Flinders Ranges settlement of Beltana at the end of a scorching summer.

Beltana is, by the way, an interesting little spot.

It was established in 1870, with the development of the Overland Telegraph, and boomed when copper ore was discovered at Sliding Rock 20km from town.

Reverend John Flynn, who went on the establish the Royal Flying Doctor Service, was stationed at Beltana for a while and it was during his stay he realised there was a need for some medical service to help the people of the Outback.

Beltana boomed for a few years but the decline started when coal mining started in nearby Leigh Creek in 1941, and the final nails in the town's coffin came in the 50s when the original Ghan and main road were both moved further west.

Today the once-great settlement is basically a ghost town, with just a couple of the buildings still occupied by stoic residents, and signs placed around town paint a picture of what the hamlet once looked like.

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Outback digs

THE last time I mentioned my accommodations I was staying in a salubrious suite at Craig's Royal Hotel in Ballarat.

A sweeping staircase climbed from the hotel's lobby to the suites on the second and third floors, enormous vases stuffed with bright blooms sat on every table in the hallways, I slept in a canopy bed, and enjoyed a long soak in an enormous bath before sliding between fine cotton sheets and drifting away to Snoozeland.

For the past two nights I have been sleeping in what I can only describe as accommodations that fall somewhere up the other end of the comfort scale.

No, not a Budget Motel by a country back road, something clean and comfortable, just considerably more simple than Craig's.

I've been sleeping in a donga - the portable cabins that typically house the folks working at remote mines - in the side yard at the rustic Marree Hotel.

My donga had two single beds complete with doonas dressed in smart covers, a shower with lots of hot water, and a window that looked east to the sun rising over the dilapidated railway buildings at the old Ghan station.

Marree is 390km from Port Augusta, and just 90km from the southern edge of Lake Eyre, and today it's dust-blown hamlet that's home to just a couple of dozen people.

But between the 1880s and the 1970s, when the original Ghan ran through the settlement, this place was a thriving hive of activity with the scorched streets crowded by railway workers and their kin.

When the last train rolled down the track from Oodnadatta in 1980 the families moved away, the stately buildings began to fall apart, and now the town basically exists to support the tourists who pass through on the way to Lake Eyre.

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Mr Eyre's magnificent lake

TODAY has been all about Lake Eyre.

This morning we flew over it, and this afternoon we drove to its southern edge and gazed at the silver water stretching all the way to the horizon.

I've been lucky enough to see the iconic Australian feature twice in the past 12 months, and it's amazing how much the region has changed since this time last year.

When I was here last Easter with my Dad we flew from William Creek to Innamincka, and then back to our starting point via the Warburton Groove, and got to see the Cooper Creek in flood and the water crawling into Lake Eyre.

This year North Lake Eyre is almost full -- the locals tell me it's up around 80 per cent at the moment -- but the Cooper hasn't broken its banks yet and the track is still open to Innamincka.

But what was most profound was the different colours in the Lake's water this year.

There's an algal bloom in the southern end of the lake, which has turned the water a dramatic blush colour, and the deeper water up northern basin ranges from an opaque lime green to a reflective shiny blue.

There are still streaks of murky brown, where the water is moving swiftly down the channels, and there are strong lines in the salt that mark the evapouration of last year's floods and look like a rainbow of ochre tones.

Last year the most colour was in the water flooding out of the Cooper, from a light latte hue to a deep shade that reminded me of melted dark chocolate, and the shallower water in the lake looked a bland sandy shade.

The locals are expecting Lake Eyre to be full again this year, with the bulk of the water due to arrive in June or July.

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Familiar face

IT'S a small world.

I know that's an overused phrase, but in this case I think it's very apt.

This time last year Dad and I were visiting William Creek, using the isolated country pub as a base for our aerial tour of Lake Eyre, and we got talking to an Adelaide girl who was working behind the bar.

This person, I can't remember her name, was taking a break from her studies and helping out at the William Creek watering hole during the busy season when the Oodnadatta Track was busy with tourists keen to see water in Lake Eyre and the Cooper Creek in flood.

We chatted as we drank of hydrating beverages, talking about what it was like to live and work in such an isolated place.

It seems this person enjoyed the experience because, almost 12 months later, she has returned to Outback South Australia to work at another isolated hotel.

This mystery blond, who I remembered because of the bow in her ponytail and the oversized pearls in her earlobes, was behind the bar at the Parachilna pub when I walked in this afternoon.

It seems she finished university last week and headed straight out of Adelaide to man the taps at this surprisingly chic watering hole halfway between Port Augusta and Marree.

We chatted for a minute, she took my money for the afternoon gelato I was consuming, and I told her I would see her next year at another some other Outback hotel.

The Prairie Hotel used to be just another country pub, sitting beside a long stretch of road in the middle of nowhere.

But an enterprising couple took over a few years back, did some renovations, built a handful of swanky new motel rooms, put in a couple of dining rooms and found a creative chef to work in the kitchen, and now the spot is an oasis of style on the long road to Marree.

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Location:Marree Hotel, Marree, South Australia

Going south

IT occurred to me last night that South Australia is this country's least interesting state.

Let me qualify that, it's Australia's least interesting state when travellers are listing reasons to plan a holiday

But that's what I was thinking last night, today I have a very different opinion.

Of course there's Adelaide and Kangaroo Island, but I've discovered another reason to visit this state is because Australia's red heart is literally at the capital city's back door.

To visit the icons of the Outback in NSW, Queensland, the Northern Territory and WA you have to fly and/or drive for long hours.

But to find red dirt in this part of the world you only need to do an hour-long flight from Melbourne, and then drive a couple of dozen kilometres from the city limits and you're walking in the footsteps of some of our greatest explorers.

So, when you think about it, South Australia is pretty unique -- underrated rather than uninteresting -- because it doesn't take long to clear the city and suburbs and see the wide-open spaces where salt bushes grow like stubble.

I'm in South Australia doing an APT tour of the state's Outback, which includes a visit to Lake Eyre and Wilpena Pound, so that's why I'm thinking so much about this place's cool rating.

I've been wanting to see the Flinders Ranges for years -- since Dad and I drove home from Perth in 2002 and gazed at the distant mountains as we motored through Port Augusta -- but now I'm here it's not at all what I expected.

I thought the feature would be more like the Blue Mountains, and perhaps it will be when we leave the bitumen and start climbing, but from the asphalt of the B83 road north its looks more like a desert out here.

Long lines of red gums mark the dry creek beds, clumps of olive green spinifex and salt bushes dot the vast stretches of red dirt, and the bald hills at the northern end of Flinders' mountains take on a nondescript grey colour as they recede to the horizon.

Today we're driving from Port Augusta to Marree and the view has been enchanting.

If you can't imagine it, think back to the last time you saw Gallipoli.

Remember the start of the movie, when Archie was still at home with his family, and he raced through the family property without shoes while a jackaroo galloped towards the homestead on his horse.

That sunburnt landscape is exactly what I'm looking out the right side of the APT bus.

Low scrub and dry creek beds, red dirt and stoic plants, and the western slopes of the peaks that make up the walls of Wilpena Pound filled my window for a couple of hundred kilometers.

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