It is strange coming back to a place you have visited before and being both surprised by the changes and surprised by how little has changed. It also still surprises me how different adjoining countries can be. A matter of a few kilometres and a border and even a casual glance out a window of the bus reminds you that you are now in a different country.

It has been a very long time since either of us were in Malaysia, or Penang, or even Thailand if you ignore a single week in Phuket 1o years ago. Singapore is somwhere we have been more recently but it is also changing rapidly.

We chose to travel in a small group with a tour company so someone else deals with the logistics of travel- transport, accommodation, entry fees etc leaving more time and energy to explore. It needed to be a small group as the down side of big groups and big buses and waiting for people is not worth the convenience of a tour leader. It needed to be the sort of tour with plenty of free time to do your own thing. Intrepid with this overland trip from Bangkok to Singapore, using a mix of transport ticked those boxes.They also mainly cover just breakfasts allowing people to do their own thing at other mealtimes.

Whether a group tour works or not has two other big variables. One is the group. Ths time we were certainly mixed - a couple of retired teachers from NZ, a single woman from Belgium, a single young man from Ireland, a mother and daughter from the US, a single woman from Perth and another NZ woman living on the Gold Coast. Ages ranged from low 20's to high 70's.

The other is the calibre of the tour leader. Our Thai guide was delightful, and the Malaysian guide was quite different, personality wise, but very knowledgeable and caring. How either of them managed ten quite different people without losing some of us, getting mad at some of us or just quietly despairing about people not listening is something I can't imagine being able to do.

We had nearly a week on tour in Thailand and we had a couple of extra nights there before the tour started. Bangkok is a big city but the central part is made up of small neighbourhoods, often centred around the canals or temples and had more the feel of a village. Rural Thailand was very, very, beautiful.

One kilometre into Malaysia and the vegetation was more tamed, the road verges neat, the traffic more orderly, but the rows of concrete box houses and clumps of high rise flats and industrial complexes made it clear this was a very different culture. I have been to KL 4 times over 40 years but I still don't warm to the place. Penang is different, especially when you can escape the town and get into the surrounding countryside. Melaka is different again. World heritage listing has some big drawbacks but it does help preserve some aspects from being obliterated by progress.

We were warned to "pack our patience" and be ready for lengthy border crossings but both times, it all went smoothly. The public bus travel days were long and boring as express buses take major highways and hurtle along, not stopping. The wet season dumped a few hours of flooding rain on us also. The overnight train from Bangkok south was an experience. It is much more modern and organised than the overnight train in India but I think we were all glad to be in a proper bed the next night.

One of the best bits of group travel is the end of the tour. It adds something getting to know people, fellow travellers and guides, and understand their views and values but it is tiring and sometimes frustrating. I am very glad we had some nights on our own at the start and again in Singapore between tours.It has been an interesting couple of weeks and it conforms my prejudices - Thai and Vietnamese flavours are more to my liking than Chinese or Indonesian, I prefer being in the country to any big city and I really don't like shopping, or people on their phones all the time.

Simon's Journal