Our first night in Thailand was unremarkable, except we noticed a lot more smiles and a much nicer attitude towards foreigners in the north than we did in Bangkok. The following morning, a few buses later, we found ourselves in Mae Sai facing the border with Myanmar and decided it was worth popping over to Tachileik for a look around. Interesting Day Trip 'Pop' over is all you are actually allowed to do. The military government, ever so graciously permits tourists a one day pass from this border, as long as you hand over a crisp $10 bill each of course. [View Full Entry]

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A VERY Long way To Go Nong Khiaw is miles from anywhere. Well, not so much miles, as hours. What is the difference we hear you cry? Well....we are sure the helpful distance marker showed it was less than 250kms from Xam Nua to Nong Khiaw, a mere 4 hours journey on any normal road, but this was no ordinary road. It was sealed in parts and in others had a very hard concrete kind of surface. In other areas it was just dirt. Strangely the sealed parts were worse than the dirt because they had big holes all over them. [View Full Entry]

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Ok, instead of some witty or poignant beginning to this blog we're simply going to lay it out there and say.... WE! LOVE! LAOS! After ten months of amazing adventures and wonderful people, our time in Laos has been three of the best weeks ever. It is a country that right now and for a few more years, is at that perfect moment in history, the moment that foreigners living in today's Thailand, Prague or The Costa Del Sol would whistfully call "The Good Old Days". The irony is, by writing this we are also helping to advance mass tourism, but [View Full Entry]

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Easy Peasy Arriving in Vietnam was as easy as pie. We'd been expecting the worst after our horrible arrival in Cambodia but exiting the country was simple and the road to Ho Chi Minh City was lovely. Our bus company even dropped us off right at the end of the road where all the budget hotels are located, which meant no tricky taxi negotiations on arrival - fabulous. HCMC is hectic. There is no other word for it, especially when it comes to the traffic. There are thousands of motorbikes and scooters everywhere you look and everyone riding them wears face [View Full Entry]

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Warning This is a story of total happiness and abject horror... Of gruesome violence and great views. In this blog you'll swim with rare dolphins and drown horrifically in electrocuted waters. Ancient Buildings will take your breath away... Human bloodlust will sicken you to the stomach. We're not joking. It's The End Of The World As We Know It With Bangkok firmly in the rear mirror, a rather nice bus whizzed us eastwards along the motorways of Thailand. All was going well with this journey. David was engrossed in three new Time magazines - a [View Full Entry]

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People, People Everywhere Whoa, what a culture shock. After the great people and amazing places we have experienced over the last 8 months, arriving in Bangkok was like being hit in the face with a Monty Python sized stinky wet fish. It was horrible. From the 'I'd rather be anywhere but talking to you' bus sales woman at the airport, to the smiling-as-I-rip-you-off taxi drivers, to the trying-a-bit-too-hard-to look-like-a-hippy travellers on Khao San Road, our first impressions of Thailand we not at all favourable. It didn't get any better. Hotel staff could barely bri [View Full Entry]

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Send In The Heavies Friday night, 9pm, and as Kota Kinabulu heated up for a three day harvest festival (Gawai) we boarded our Air Asia flight to Johur Baru. Mind you, we were pretty hot ourselves. Air Asia has a 15kg luggage limit... not good when your whole life is in your backpack... so we had stuffed our carry-on bags to the limit and were wearing our hiking boots and thermal clothing. Given it was still 30 degrees we probably looked like a Monty Python sketch, but it worked. Our two packs sneaked in at 29.4 kilos avoiding the excess [View Full Entry]

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In the Navy After our brief boredom break in Brunei it was exciting to be catching a boat back to Malaysia. Our destinatian was Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Malaysia's far eastern province of Sabah. To get there you take a boat to the Malaysian island of Labuan, clear immigation and then catch another boat to KK. Labuan is a funny place. It is officially an international offshore financial centre which basicially means it's a fun filled, duty free tax haven full of banks, holiday resorts, cheap booze, casinos and (we are reliably informed) prostitutes (do ladies of the night pay [View Full Entry]

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Remember not to lick the stamps It is something of an irony that the best bit of Brunei - one of the richest countries in the world - is its most run down area. Being such an oil rich country it is hard to find cheap accommodation in the capital city of Bandar but we were lucky and bagged the last rooms in the government run hostel. The only drawback was that women slept in one wing, men in another. This was the first hint we got of just how strict a Muslim country Brunei is, although the fact that the [View Full Entry]

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This blog is dedicated to all the primates, living and dead, who made our trip to Sarawak so memorable! We arrived in Sarawak on THE most environmentally unfriendly flight. There were only 9 passengers on the entire plane as Air Asia had just started flying the route that day. It did mean our luggage came out quickly though! We found a great hostel in Kuching after escaping an older man who had latched on to us on the plane and spent the whole trip talking about himself. We should have known he was bad news when his opening line was "I [View Full Entry]

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