After a short flight from Vientiane we were in Hanoi. We had chosen a hostel to stay at and they offered free airport pickup so we thought that was pretty decent, especially because we were arriving at night. Sure enough there was a young guy waiting for us with a big sign saying Miss Fiona. When I say young, this guy looked about 14 and drove like he had never driven a car in his life. It was a 45 minute white knuckle ride with this guy dodging in and out of cars beeping his horn constantly and at one point overtaking onto the opposite side of a motorway with a truck coming straight for us, oh did I mention that he was also on his mobile phone laughing hysterically the whole time. Andrew was pretty ... read more

So we're one hour from China, a short flight from Kunming yet it feels like we've travelled a million miles from our last stop. Although we've only been here for two days I can honestly say that I've never met nicer people in a more tranquil and beautiful setting, and we're in the capital city - this is meant to be the worst part of the country! Laos is known as the country of a million elephants and has the unfortunate tag of being the most bombed country is the history of warfare. It is part of the Ho Chi Minh trail and borders Veitnam to it's East, Thailand to it's west, China and Burma to it's North and Cambodia to it's South. It's a land-locked country that has a similar population to Scotland (5.4M) but ... read more

After an uneventful time in Xian we were looking forward to moving on to Chengdu and we were not disappointed. We arrived at night and began our journey on foot to our hostel. We got pretty lost but 4 different locals along our way approached us to offer help and were very friendly, instantly we knew this was a great place. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province located in southwest China, and bordering Tibet. There are two main attractions that the tourists flock to: the Giant Panda Breeding Centre and the Biggest Buddha in the World. So off we went to visit both of them. Over eighty per cent of the world's pandas live in Sichuan province with only an estimated 1000 remaining in the entire world. The current goal at the Giant panda Breeding ... read more

We couldn't wait to get to Beijing and escape Seoul after hearing and reading some great things about the future Olympic host city. It's Fiona here giving you the rundown on our first week in China. What a place Beijing is, quite simply the best place we have ever been to (yet), maybe that anyone has ever been to? It was a pleasent flight from South Korea to Beijing despite a rather strange experience in the plane toilet. You know what plane toilets are like, when you really need there are always loads of other people queing before you, typical. Anyway, I waited and waited and finally I was next in line, then an old Korean lady came towards the toilet and tried to get in. I explained as best I could to her in sign ... read more

Well not really, we're really doing a bit of Seoul searching more than anything else............. Meanwhile back at the ranch............. So Seoul huh, that'll shock your system, for sure (as my new dutch mate says, all the time. I dinnae ken his name so I just call him 'Dutch Guy', he doesn't seem to mind). We were speaking to some dude in Australia about Korea, he said he went to Seoul and lasted a day before getting the first flight out, his reason was that it was dead big and busy and noisy and polluted and that but we though that after being in Japan for the month before that it would be a breeze, WRONG! It is brutal, huge, noisy, polluted yeah, and it stinks, big time. It really hit us for six when we ... read more