I arrived at Phuket airport wondering if perhaps if I should have gone to the other side of the country instead because I was torn between heading to Phuket, Koh Phi Phi (P P Island) and Krabi or to the full moon party in Ko Pha Ngan, on the other side of the country. Whilst it's easy to get from one side to the other, I needed to choose what I was going to do and keep heading south towards the border with Malaysia. I can't do everything so have to choose and I want to allow time to stop off in Malaysia on the way to Singapore... Phuket airport is about 30kms /18 miles from Phuket town, towards the other end of the island. I had planned to simply get the airport bus to the ... read more

I arrived from the bus ex the Cambodian border with three nights accomodation booked, just around the corner from the bedlam of Kaosan road to the edge of central Bangkok, a main meeting point in Southeast Asia for mainly backpackers. If your on a big trip around Southeast Asia or just around Thailand, there is no doubt that you have to stop here for a night or two! However, I arrived late with a banging headache, hot, needing lots of water, totally tierd and not really in the mood for changing hotels. The hotel room was shocking, so I abandoned it and found a better place just around the corner at the other end of Kaosan road. Funnyly enough, in the same hotel as two Australians I met on the bamboo train just a day before! ... read more

The bus journey to Siem Reap was an interesting one. Although I was secure in my own seat, the bus kept stopping for locals to hop on and hop off. I think it doubles as a bus services for the towns it passes through but there weren't enough seats for everybody, so from nowhere littles plastics stools appeared for people to sit on in the isles lol... it was funny... but he was driving pretty close to the edge sometimes... Siem Reap is a small town to the North of Cambodia. It provides a base for a visit to the Temples of Angkor and as a result there is a hotels, bars and resturants district for people to entertain themselves in the evening, this is a buzzy area that revolves around 'Pub Street' and you'd never ... read more

After staying in Vietnam for a bit longer than anticipated I still hadn't done the Mekong Delta. I decide that perhaps a faster way to do this and get to Cambodia would be to do a tour. I found a two day tour that could show me around the area, get me across the border and finish in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Whilst this was a two day tour, I was the only one doing it so they combined my tour with the one day tour, which returned everyone else to Ho Chi Minh City in the middle of the afternoon on day one. I had my own tour guide for the rest of the first day which finished at Chau Doc, close to the border on the Vietnam side and for a couple ... read more

The next stop south along the Vietnamese coast was Hue, pronounced 'H Way'. The experience getting there on the over night sleeper train for 12 hours was moderately ok. The four bunk 'soft sleeper' compartments had sold out leaving only the three level six sleeper hard sleepers. I opted for the bottom bunk which was the best of what was left. But twelve hours on a 600KM train journey for about GB20.00/USD30.00 Isn't bad, I guess?!?! Hue, itself wasn't a particular tourist spot, although the beer and food in the western / hotel area is more expensive. It was more westernised here than in Hanoi but the only thing here particularly worth seeing is the Citadel, a former imperial city. It was heavily bombed during the Vietnam war by the Americans and they are still doing ... read more