- Sat 26 to Thursday 31st May 2007 - I'm not sure what route Hee had planed to take after Kangding but it didn't take long to persuade him to come north with me up to Dege where the Bakonk Scripture Printing Lamasery (which according to Lonely Planet is revered as one of the three most important Tibetan Lamaseries) is located. The trip would take us at least 5 days and we would reach an altitude of over 5000m. We would travel ‘right into the heart’ of the Tibetan area of Sichuan and the number of other none Chinese/ Tibetans we [View Full Entry]

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- Thurs 24th to Fri 25 May 2007 - One of the reasons for coming to Chengdu again on this trip was to use Chengdu as a gateway to travel to the remote parts of Sichuan province near the Tibetan "Autonomous" region border area. Large areas of western and northern Sichuan and nearby Gansu province are largely populated by Tibetans and have been out of bounds for most foreigners until fairly recently. As a consequence these areas have reportedly retained a more traditional Tibetan culture than you would experience in Tibet itself due to the lack of the tourist industry that [View Full Entry]

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- Wed 16th May 2007 - At last my passport containing a Chinese visa finally arrived from Hanoi and thankfully only one day later than the travel agency had promised me. Once I'd picked the passport up from the Sapa Mountain Hotel where I had previously been staying, the hotel kindly telephoned for a mini bus to take me to the Chinese Border. Unfortunately, in true South East Asian style, after picking me up from the hotel the bus drove around Sapa for another 2 hours trying to fill up before actually leaving town. However, once we had set off, the [View Full Entry]

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"What is your name?"..........."What is your Country?"............."How old are you?".............. "Are you married?"................"How Many Children?" Thurs 10th May - Tuesday 15th May 2007 My first taste of rail travel in a while - a hard sleeper carriage over-night from Hanoi to Lao Cai. On overnight trains in Vietnam you can either travel ‘hard sleeper’ or alternatively for a bit extra you can purchase a ‘soft sleeper’ ticket. However ‘hard sleeper’ has always proved good enough for me in the past in China and so it proved to be on this trip. [View Full Entry]

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- Fri 4th May - Thursday 10th May 2007 - After another night journey on the bus between Hue and Hanoi (660km), the bus arrived in Hanoi at around 5:30 in the morning. Again it was the usual scramble at the bus drop off point as everyone wanted you to stay at "their" hotel. A few hours later and after several visits to hotels and waiting around for rooms to be “made-up”, I found a place in the old part of Hanoi which is where the majority of backpacker places are. Like the western way of spelling 'Vietnam', the western way [View Full Entry]

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- Wednesday 25th to Saturday 28th April 2007 - The big thing in Vietnam that all the Travel Agents try to sell tourists are 'Open Bus' tickets. These tickets are for buses that follow a set route between Saigon and Hanoi and vis-vesa and which stop off at a number of places along the route. After purchasing the ticket all you have to do is confirm your journey the day before you intend to depart and you can get off at any of the places that the bus stops at. They end up being a very cheap way of getting around [View Full Entry]

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- Saturday 21st - Tuesday 24th of April 2007 - I set off from Phnom Pehn (Cambodia) by bus in the morning heading to Saigon in Vietnam, or to use the official Vietnamese Government name for the city, Ho Chi Minh City. There’s not much to say about the journey itself as it was fairly uneventful except for the condition of the road to the border which was dreadful being full of pot holes every few meters and not being surfaced. However, there were no problems at the border like previous border crossings on this trip although I still had my [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday 10th - Friday 20th April 2007 Two things I've noticed about travelling in Cambodia more than anywhere else on this trip so far is (1) that there is rubbish everywhere, and (2) that the poverty is a lot worse in Cambodia than I've experienced anywhere else so far on this trip. Travelling by bus up and down the country you notice that the roadside is lined with rubbish, plastic bags, plastic bottles - you name it - everything just seems to get thrown by the roadside. There are no bins and by the look of it, no organised rubbish collection [View Full Entry]

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- Wednesday 4th to Monday 9th April 2007 - After an uneventful afternoon evening and night in Stung Treng it was a 6:30am start to catch the bus to Siem Reap the closest town to Angkor Wat and the Temples. The bus journey took about 12 hours during which I had to endure the usual Cambodian Karaoke music blaring out from the bus stereo and also a sort of Cambodian ‘comedy sitcom’ which stars a particular comedian who seems to be very popular in Cambodia as his shows seem to be played on every bus journey you go on. After 12 [View Full Entry]

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- Tuesday 3rd April 2007 - - Laos/ Cambodia Border Crossing The crossing of the Laos/ Cambodian border again turned out not to be a straight forward exercise. After catching a small motor boat from Don Det with a few other people first thing in the morning we travelled for 5 to 10 minutes across the Mekong River to a small town on the main land where we were taken to a small travel agency. After a bit of confusion over what was happening we were then bundled into two mini buses with around 8 people in each. We then set [View Full Entry]

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