For various reasons, I am now in Bangkok. I was forced to raise the white flag at the Buddhist retreat after only a couple of days. The experience was an interesting one though, and not one I will soon forget. I spent the entire time in silence and slept on a concrete slab with a wooden pillow. The area is surrounded by jungle and various streams so the mosquito's were large and numerous - they ate me alive! It would have been okay if the monks had not insisted that I refrain from killing anything whilst on the monastery grounds... but [View Full Entry]

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This may be a little garbled as it’s 2 in the morning and I’m due to wake up at about 7 for the beginnings of another adventure. We looked around all night for a good boat company in Halong Bay, but found nothing that inspired us. No one ever pays the same price for something in Vietnam and you don’t always get what was originally promised - so it’s best to have a good look around. This normally ends up in lots of frowning and failed haggles. In Cambodia everyone haggles, even if it’s just to make their day slightly more [View Full Entry]

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Hi, From Mui Ne we travelled by coach to Nah Trang, a slightly larger town situated further up the coastline. We weren't suprised to find a beautiful beach there and the place had a similar kind of vibe to it. Couple of hippies/surfer types and other beach-goers of a similar vein. We were pretty stressed out from the crazy amount of hours we had built up in coaches, taxi's, moto's and bicycles - so we took the rational option and decided to go for a mud bath. When in Rome. We were asked to take a shower before entering the baths [View Full Entry]

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Hello - We've just travelled for 22 hours non-stop to reach Halong Bay. I'll get this up to date tomorrow...until that time: I will begin with this; A few days ago I was stood happily upon the picturesque beachfront of Mui Ne, Vietnam. No cloud dared obscure the sky with distracting shapes or sun-blocking drifts. It was perfectly and unanimously blue. The white sand shone just a few steps from our bedroom and beyond this the sea lapped upon the shore in time with the gentle breeze... A couple of umbrellas lolled in the heat. They reminded me of drooping wild [View Full Entry]

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Ho Chi Minh City is pretty incredible. We've been here a couple of days now and have had the chance to visit the National War Museum and today we saw the Chu Chi Tunnels, which is a couple of hours outside the city. The food here is quite different from Cambodia, and I might be tempted to say I preferred it... but I haven't yet been physically able to sample some of the spicy food. About 5 days ago I awoke in the middle of the night with indigestion like no man has previously endured. My body felt as though all [View Full Entry]

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Hello The other night God was taking photographs in Sinahoukville with a high quality Japanese camera. It illuminated the sky with such prescence that I angrily looked up from my meal to see who had actually taken a picture of me. I then saw the second lightning bolt flash in a threatening looking arc across the sky and then settled back down to my very average "chicken with noodle fodder" arrangement. A short while later, we stood from our seats with the intention of moving on to another bar, when I noticed the sky again. For two nights previous we had [View Full Entry]

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Hello, The night dogs nearly had our bones last night... I believe they've been following us in an increasing pack since the early days of Siem Reap. I believe their number stands at around 400. This figure is based upon the inevitable snowball effect of a moving, pack multiplied by the number of provinces we've gradually passed through. We have moments of relief where there appears to be complete silence... then we hear it. The erratic and bone-chilling howls of deranged and demented street animals. We share a glance and then with eyes wide open...pupils shrinking we declare in sunken v [View Full Entry]

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Hi, Time is currently a train sparking down the tracks of our lives. I feel we are running to keep up. After Kampot we headed to Kep, a nearby fishing village known for it's impressive crab market. It was once the main holiday retreat for the Cambodian upper class and it once boasted numerous mansions from the French colonial period. Unfortunately, when the Khmer Rouge took power they shelled Kep into the ground taking with it all its former glory and reduced many of the houses to rubble. I'm not certain, but I believe the shelling took place whilst the villagers [View Full Entry]

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Hello, We've finally left Siem Reap and have safely made the trip to Phnom Penh. Me and Rich only just made the coach as we were naturally slightly late and also a car crashed into our Tuk-Tuk in some of the worst reverse driving I've ever seen. There were literally four people banging on the back windscreen of the car but it just kept on going until we heard a hideous crunch around the front wheel. I genuinely thought that was us for the day... but I forgot you don't bother about trading car insurance details in Cambodia. In fact, the [View Full Entry]

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Hi, The other night I was waiting in the reception of a friend’s guesthouse, when I heard a strange slapping sound on the tiles behind me. I presumed a mop or something had fallen from the wall, but you have to have a check don’t you? Turns out two Geckos had absolutely decked it off the roof. They didn’t look injured, more just very embarrassed. I never thought lizards could look sheepish; their faces don’t particularly lend themselves to much expression…but they were definitely doing it. The male fled the scene, trousers round his ankles. I honestly didn&rsq [View Full Entry]

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