The Bullet train ride up from Kyoto to Tokyo was like ticking off one of the final boxes of things I wanted to do on this trip. The Nosomi express was cool and I have to admit to a slightly embarrasing interest I hold with trains. It was a lot of fun, with the scenery of a two and a half hour trip flashing past the windows like a video screen on fast forward. My mate Dan once said that the Dutch double-decker trains were like the Rolls-Royce of locomotives - debatable - but if thats true, then this Japanese Shinkansen [View Full Entry]

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Let me just clear my throat, I have something to announce...: "I LOVE JAPAN!" Everything about it (apart from customs)! It's awesome! I've even forgiven my 'Midnight Express' welcome to this captivating and incredible country. Before leaving Bangkok, I had laboured carefully and patiently to unpack and repack my disaster of a backpack into a military precise formation of perfectly arranged gear. So when asked (it was more of an order really) to "walk this way" to an interrogation room by a stuffy and accusatory expressioned official, I knew what was coming. A series of loaded strategic [View Full Entry]

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Crossing the Lao-Thai border over the Friendship Bridge that handshakes the two countries across the vast Mekong River, I arrived for the second time on my journey to the Kingdom of Thailand. I got yapping to German Ulrika on the bus and while we waited on the platform at Nong Khai for our nighttrain, it was like a travellers reunited with familiar faces popping up all over the place. First the French folk from the elephant trekking who ive seen at every city since then. They cant keep away from me! ; ) Then American Blake from the minibus to [View Full Entry]

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With the night train to Bangkok full up, I had little alternative but to spend a bonus day in laid back Vientiane, the capital city of Laos. For a capital, its a fairly easy going place and it was a pretty good stop to rest and recouperate following the mayhem of Vang Vieng. While enjoying the time away from both other travellers and the accompanying revellry and beer, I sat in an open air restaurant at a table by the pavement with my book and enjoyed the peace and quiet and early evening ambiance of the town. After a while, I [View Full Entry]

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The 4 hour minivan ride alongside 11 other tourists was a wriggly drive way up and into the sunny Lao mountains. It was cramped and uncomfortable but the views across the valleys and peaks were very dramatic and brilliantly emerald green. As we decended down the other side into central Laos, the van's breaking was really struggling with the steep and sharp hairpin curves and my fellow passengers and I started to get nervous as the smell of burning brake discs filled the van as the driver resorted to tactical hand-break-assisted 'control'. Seriously, we did not want to leave the [View Full Entry]

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So after nearly crashing on the way to Hanoi Airport as my taxi driver caught some winks at the wheel, I made my flight into Luang Prabang, Laos in one piece. Now here is a tale of the good samaritan. On arrival at Laos Customs, my fiscal firepower was a mixed arsenal of: 600,000 Vietnamese Dong, 2,000 Thai Baht and one crisp Scottish tenner, that I've been carrying in my wallet throughout this adventure and is destined for my first pint of Tennents (yes, I said Tennents, I admit it, I miss that watery fizz!) when I get back home. All [View Full Entry]

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The 8 hour night train from Hanoi to Lau Cai was perfect. I was completely gubbed when the train pulled out of Vietnam's capital after the time in Ha Long Bay and I was asleep before I new it, indifferent to my new couchette mates and unaware of the train's bumps and jolts along the way up to the mountain town of Sapa. On arrival at Lau Cai train station at 6am, I jumped in a minivan for the 30km windy ride up the 'S' shaped chicane of a mountain road. On arrival, the minibus did the rounds of prospective B&B's [View Full Entry]

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I arrived into Hanoi, in North Vietnam, at 9pm and took a moto to my hotel which turned out to be all booked up. On agreeing a price with the moto driver, I was surprised to hear him turn around half way through the journey and quote a different price altogether, 20,000 Dong more expensive. Not much in terms of value but nevertheless, a total ‘Chancer’ if ever there was one! Anyway, I put him straight but it turned out to be a recurring episode here in Hanoi. I suppose some tourists just say ‘OK’ in fear of being driven [View Full Entry]

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Once the 20hr epic night trail from Saigon finally arrived in Hue', on the East coast of Vietnam, I was enthusiastically set upon by hungry taxi drivers and moto men all of whom had a lot more energy than I did after the long journey up the coast. After playing them off against each other (let them barter for me) I opted for a leasurely taxi and was quickly in my hotel. En route, as is very common so far in Asia, the taxi driver had been insisting on taking me somewhere else, to a "very good hotel he know" but [View Full Entry]

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We took a bus into Vietnam, leaving Phnom Penh in Cambodia and arriving in Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City or "Motorbike City"). There's apparently 3,500,000 motorbikes in this place of a population of 5,000,000 and it's a believable statistic - the roads and traffic are completely out of control. The other thing out of control is the return of the dreaded mosquito's to our lives and in Saigon, they're biting hard and fast. Trung counted 60 of the itchy, irritating bumps on his right calf and ankle alone! Thank goodness I'm on Malaria pills for this stint... Saigon was [View Full Entry]

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