DandyTravel

Andy says: So this is my second attempt at writing this after spending an hour on it yesterday only for something random to happen and I lost it all!! I wasn't going to bother doing it again but I had a bit of spare time while we're in the middle of an apocalyptic thunderstorm! So when we last left you we were getting ready for a day of canyoning in Dalat. It was AWESOME with a capital AWESOME!!! I'll let Dan go in to further detail about it but after completing the 2 dry abseils and the 25 metre waterfall abseil I definitely want to do more of this!!! I guess I should probably move somewhere with mountains for a while - would be awesome if I had a job in the French Alps waiting for ... read more

Andy says: So I've finally got on to a PC where we can update this thing but it's 1.23am and I'm not sure we're going to be able to do the last week or so justice! Hopefully the photos will instead! This is our last night in Hoi An having been here for 4 nights but I'll get to that in a bit, we have some catching up to do... So we left Cat Ba Island on the morning of my birthday and spent the whole day travelling on various buses and boats. Made it to Haiphong and needed to wait 3 hours for the night bus to Dong Hoi - luckily on the drive to the bus station I had scoped out a KFC so we headed straight there to find it was 'Burger Tuesday' ... read more

Andy says: So we're now leaving Hanoi to head to the hills of Sapa - it's been fun being in the city but am looking forward to getting all native with the hill tribes! Had a good tour of the city yesterday whilst looking for a new camera lens for Dan and then followed it up with finding 'Bia Hoi' junction which is an intersection where street sellers have beer for 12p a glass. You'd think it would taste rank but it's really good and you get to meet all sorts of characters. Met a couple of guys from the States and had 36p worth of beer with them! While we were sat there we got given a flyer for a bar that was advertising an open mic night which sounded right up Dandy's street! Jumped ... read more

Andy says: Apologies for the delay in posting another blog but our time since Kanchanaburi has been mainly taken up with travelling, snorkelling and drinking! We went to Hua Hin from Kanchanaburi after our train was delayed by 4 hours (guess that's typical over here!). It is a pretty nice beach town but not too much to do there apart from visit Monkey Mountain which, unsurprisingly, is full of wild monkeys. I found the whole thing pretty unnerving since they looked a little bit rabid and the males seemed hell bent on raping everything in sight (I did learn some new techniques though...). From Hua Hin we travelled to Koh Tao which was the part of the trip I'd been waiting for. A paradise island with amazing beaches and beautiful weather if you ignored the afternoon ... read more

Andy says: So we are now 4 days into the trip and I think it's safe to say the jetlag has subsided and we are now getting into the swing of things here (my hangover tells me that much!). Travelling here is a bit of a blur but both flights were decent and I would definitely recommend Etihad. We got in to Bangkok a day after we left England and somehow managed to negotiate the metro system on no sleep and found our hotel on Soi 20 of the Sukhumvit Road. The heat here is pretty intense so clothes don't stay clean very long! The hotel looked nice but the room wasn't ready so we dumped our bags and decided to take a tuk tuk tour of the city to get our bearings. Being novice Bangkok ... read more