After talking to a few people I was a little worried about Battambang, one guy called it the whore house of Cambodia and judging by the initial drive through the city and the hotel we stayed in it looked like they might have been right. Turns out they were wrong, we had another moped tour organised similar to the one we had done in Hue. The tour visited small out of town family run operations that make rice paper, grind rice, catch and cook water snake (we all tried a bit, tastes like fishy chicken) and a fish market. It was [View Full Entry]

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To be honest, my first impressions of Cambodia weren’t that great. We caught a public bus from Saigon n to Phnom Penh , during which the driver made friends with a six year old Dutch kid and thought he’d like to play with the PA system. One hour of Dutch nursery rhymes later I was ready to wrap the chord round his neck. We stepped off the bus into a throng of tuck-tuck drivers each trying to carry your bags and get you into their tuck-tuck. There was even a guy with a bamboo stick to try and control them. Cambodia [View Full Entry]

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We took a quick one hour flight down from Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City. As I stepped of the plane it felt like opening the oven door. The heat and humidity here are unbelievable. It soon dawned on me that I need to get used to it because in the next two months it’s only going to get hotter. I had heard the there was quite a difference between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam's largest city) but I didn’t expect it to be so apparent. HCMC has a lot more of western feel to it, our guide [View Full Entry]

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I don't really have a lot to say about Hoi An, it's basically about six or seven streets of tailors, souvenir shops, bars and cafes. The Tailors are really cheap and I think everyone in the group had at least one thing made, some of the girls had about £500 worth of clothes and shoes made up. I only got a couple of pairs of lightweight trousers with legs that zip off. Since I wasn't running around trying to get to multiple fittings I used the time to take a rest from sightseeing (I'm not complaining by any means, but sometimes [View Full Entry]

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We took an overnight train down to Hué, we had 4 berth cabins which felt a little like a prison cell, although quite comfortable I could have done without the 7am wakeup song that was blasted over the PA system. The main part of Hué is within a citadel which was home to all the Emperors from 1802. We visited the inner imperial part of the citadel on the first day. It is quite an impressive complex of buildings with temples and statues all over place. Unfortunately I was quite tired and didn't really take it all in. Our second day [View Full Entry]

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My first real day with the Intrepid tour started with a breakfast at a restaurant staffed by street kids (sort of like Jamie Oliver's one but without all the media attention and backing). The service was really nice and the food was gorgeous. Saying that, all the food in Vietnam is gorgeous, you could give a newspaper to a Vietnamese chef and you'd be tempted to lick the plate. An hour later we where on the road for a four hour ride to Ha Long Bay for our little minicruise aboard a Junk boat. Ha Long bay is a stretch of [View Full Entry]

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Crossing a road in Hanoi * Wait until the road you are going to cross is mostly mopeds and fewer cars. * Take a deep breath and step off the curb (avoiding the river of god knows what in the gutter) * Keep a constant pace, don't speed up or slow down no matter what happens, just let the traffic deal with you. * Arrive at the other side and change your underwear. I arrived in Hanoi from a very brief overnight stay in Singapore. I 'd love to write all about Singapore, but I was feeling really rough and all [View Full Entry]

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I met some Australians in Hiroshima who informed me that there was a Universal Studios in Osaka and that it had a proper full on Jaws ride. After the emotional roller-coaster that I had been through at the A-Bomb Museum and the Peace Park I jumped on an early train over there. I was a little disappointed with park, although I had just visited the same place in Hollywood which had updated a lot of it's rides. The jaws ride was great though, you go on a guided tour of Amity Island, then you get a call from another boat in [View Full Entry]

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I spent my first night in Hiroshima drinking in the hostel with three Austrailians that I was sharing a room with. We got a bottle of Saki between us, because none of them had tried it before. I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy another. We spent the night playing games. They showed me Uno and I showed them Othello. Hiroshima seems like quite a cool city, there's a lot going on and it seems like it has quite a vibrant night-life, but I guess it's hard to come here and not spend the day immersed in the city's [View Full Entry]

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Kyoto's, home to Temples, Shrines, Gisha's, Parks, blah, blah, blah. When I arrived in kyoto I only had one thing on my mind: Monkeys. There is a monkey sanctuary/park in the Arishiyama area of town. It takes about 20 minutes to climb up a quite a steep hill to the park. At the top of the hill you get ushered into the resting area where there is a cage on one side, from which you can feed the monkeys, but you can also go outside and wonder amongst them. I think I stayed there a bit too long, a couple of [View Full Entry]

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