So after finishing my final tour with Intrepid, I headed over to Bangkok on a 12 hour bus journey. I crossed the border into Thailand and thought I'd come home! The wee stops actually had service stations with toilets you could flush! The roads had tarmac! I was like a country girl in the big city, eyes wide, as we drove into Bangkok watching the sunset over the city skyline. I say we, I mean me and the couple of other travellers that had crossed the border by land. We arrived into Bangkok 6.30 and were were dropped off near the [View Full Entry]

---

---

So, my blogging following, (Mum) you may be wondering why it has taken me so long to update my blog. This time it wasn't (completely) my lazy fault. I managed to get 3/4 of the way into writing (which is about 3 hours and 10,000 words because i'm THat keen) and somehow managed, with a slip of the finger, to over-ride all the auto saving that the blog program does for you and wipe the entire blog except for one lowercase c left on the page. And then the blog helpfully autosaved. I was not impressed. Who in their right mind [View Full Entry]

---

---

These past 8 days have wizzed by... The first few after arriving in Phnom Penh were spent getting my barings, checking out the markets and going to the local park; Wat Phnom. This was home to Phnom Penh's only resident elephant; Sambo, who i was not expecting to run into to be honest! I was getting over excited about the monkeys that are scattered around before I ran into him! Quite a few of the first days i got caught in the sudden downpour that occurs at roughly the same time in the afternoons until i finally cottoned onto the wet [View Full Entry]

---

---

Oh dear...its been so long since i last blogged...this is going to be huge! Oh and those of you dissin' my spelling (MUM!) I'll have you know that its all typo's and i can spell when i want to! There's just not enough time to proof read anything!! The next stop on our itinerary was Hue (pronounced Hwey for those of you that care!) which was a 14hour overnight train journey on the mankiest train Í've been on yet. The chinese trains were immaculate where as the vietnam trains, although 4 berth insted of 6, were not clean at all; you [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day Six in Hanoi and I'm feeling like I've seen as much of the loud, bustling city as you can. The roads are crazy and crossing the them simply entails closing your eyes, crossing your fingers and steping out into the omcoming traffic. So far this has been sucessful and the motorcyclists just weave around you- the key being walking slowly and not paniking. Yesterday we left our hotel at 7.30am to head for Halong Bay. We had a few stops along the way, the first being at the Blue Dragon Institute for breakfast with some of the children the charity [View Full Entry]

---

---

The first day in Hanoi and last day with an intrepid group for the next couple of days was spent recouperating and sorting out stuff I'd been leaving until i got to Hanoi...(internet, new simcard, laundry, and sending home 5kg of stuff I would never need that was taking up valuable space in my bag!) Then went-a-wandering to get my barings amongst the numerous allyways and streets that make up Hanoi. Wierdly, seeing as Hanoi is not a small place, I ran into Nick and his friend Burnsey. (Nick my rugby coach who's travelling round Asia aswel) But I was quite [View Full Entry]

---

---

Bye Bye China, we were now in Vietnam. No more insane chinese supermarkets with no sensible bread (everything has added sugar, or colourants. They sell Purple bread!) No more pitiful attempts at fresh orange juice or failed pilgramages to find cerial... Although Vietnam does have the mosquitos...(written while trying not to scratch my bites!) We had arrived in Sapa the previous night into the small french style hill station and were staying in the Mountain View Hostel which overlooked the a vast valley and rolling mountains. None of this we has seen yet as everywhere was shrouded in mist. In the [View Full Entry]

---

---

After being abandoned my good friends, (sniff) I thought I'd better enjoy the one and only day that was scheduled in Hong Kong. The only problem being that without Carl to do the map reading, I was dependant only on my own poor map orientation skills... It can't be that hard I thought... sea to the left, town to the right, pritty big landmarks making it easy, for any normal person maybe. I still managed to get it wrong! To be fair, I did set off to find the most obscure little backstreet market among the syscrapers and Harvey Nicolas's. So [View Full Entry]

---

---

The next morning in Yanshou, Carl, Amanda and I spent rock climbing in the sunshine; a brilliant, exhilarating experience! I was amsaloutly pooing my pants all the way through (my amazing lack of balance playing a large part in this) but the adrenaline got me to the top of three climbs before i could no longer use my arms for anything except crawling back to the bus. Our friendly (and rather attractive) Instructors then took us for lunch proving once again that unless you look/speak chinese, you won't get the local price for anything as our lunch with them cost us [View Full Entry]

---

---

From Xi'an we took a train to Shanghai, a city which seems to reveal a version of china we were expecting, rather than the immaculate show we have been exposed to so far. Walking down the Bund we saw the skyline that Shanghai is famous for and took some much needed famous-building-growing-from-head photos. It was grey weather but that didn't dampen our mood, we strolled among the kites, 1930's style buildings and inevitable chinese tourists. It took us a while to decide where to eat that night but we finally settled on a restaurant by half 9 - a very unsociable [View Full Entry]

---

---