Sue Perkins returns to Channel 5 with latest travel show Lost In Thailand

Perkins – known for her partnership with Mel Giedroyc, with whom she formerly hosted The Great British Bake Off – explores three regions of Thailand.

First, she heads north to Chiang Mai, kicking off her journey by abseiling from the Crazy Horse Buttress into a limestone cave deep underground. Next, on the island of Phuket, Sue helps clear detritus from a coral reef – “litter picking does not get any better than this!”.

In Bangkok she pops into a Buddhist Hell Garden to explore the potential wages of sin, has a driving lesson on an electric tuktuk in a monsoon and picks the world’s most aromatic coconut with secateurs 20 feet above her head.

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Sue learns to sing lullabies to recovering elephants and discovers the secrets of a gibbon ‘love tunnel’.

What most excited her about filming the series?

“I particularly love how this trip to Thailand stood in such stark opposition to my previous show in Alaska,” she says.

“The series in Alaska was about breaking new ground in the wilderness, the pioneer spirit – whereas Thailand isn’t exactly the final frontier and there’s not a lot of new ground to break. It’s a destination which has been visited a billion times by slightly unkempt tourists, such as myself.

“To find places and activities which haven’t been done to death was hard, but the team did a great job; with off-the-beaten-track experiences like abseiling near Chiang Mai.

"Descending into a cave isn’t the first thing you think of when visiting there. When you think of Thailand, you think of shorts and beach parties, and we do cover beaches and parties, but you don’t think of people in hiking gear and carabiners.

"The team wanted a show which takes a familiar place, but pushes at the margins of the traditional experience of it. They wanted to explore the road less travelled, with sequences that physically and mentally stretch you a little. They obviously had a meeting and thought ‘Who do we think is physically up for the challenge? Sue - she’s a legendarily fit, peak performance athlete’. That this old dough-ball was picked to go to Thailand made me laugh, and the trip was absolutely brilliant.”

As well as caving and diving, she tries Muay Thai - the country’s popular martial art.

“Muay Thai is horrendous,” she says. “I was at the gym for three hours and I was amazed to have kept going for that long. I am a bit fitter than I used to be and I really like fighting, and I can hook and punch reasonably well. What I can’t do, for all sorts of reasons, is kick.”

Episode one of Lost In Thailand is set to air this Friday at 9pm on Channel 5 and My5.