Hello everyone : ) It’s been about a week since the last update as we’ve been dashing around Vietnam with the aim of getting to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) for Christmas. Anyhow, I’ll carry on from where Dave left off - we gladly left Hanoi for a three day tour of Halong Bay. Halong Bay is a UNESCO world heritage site that covers an area of 1500km² comprising of just under two thousand limestone karsts (or ‘big rocks that jut out of the water’ to you and me). We were looking forward to getting away from the ‘you buy something??’ [View Full Entry]

---

---

As we got on our Lao airlines flight to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, I was thinking how much I was looking forward to getting to another capital city. There’s something reassuring about a big city, easy to get around, plenty to do, lots of places to eat… However, as with Bangkok, I was soon struck with the downsides of these towns in Asia. The smells, the congestion and, oh god, the traffic. Having successfully completed our flight, which again left and arrived early, we went through immigration and went to collect our bags. I got Helen’s bag fine, but when [View Full Entry]

---

---

Dave said in the last entry that nothing interesting happened on our last day in Chiang Mai. But I for one beg to differ. On the last day in Chiang Mai boys and girls - I bought a hairdryer!!! For three weeks I suffered the plight of letting my hair “naturally”. Three long weeks. So I got myself a neat little Panasonic “turbo dry 1000” for the bargain price of £8 and have never been happier. Armed with my new best friend, Dave and I travelled to the local airport to board a flight to Luang Prabang in Laos. We flew [View Full Entry]

---

---

After having a week in Chiang Mai so we could meet up with Pao (the owner of the apartment we were staying in) and drive up to Chiang Dao together, we got some bad news. Pao was planning on getting to us by catching a flight from Bangkok, which for obvious reasons, he could no longer do. This meant that we had to ring us the place we were staying in Chiang Dao and organise transport to the accommodation through them. Though all in all it wasn’t a problem, it was a shame to not meet up with Pao as it [View Full Entry]

---

---

As Dave mentioned at the end of the previous blog, we did a full day cooking course on one of our last days in Chiang Mai. This may seem an odd choice, given neither of us do a whole lot of cooking at home (something I’m sure Dave’s Mum will attest to!) but the dishes sounded really tasty and you get to eat them once you’ve made them. No doubt we were hungry when we opted to do the 7-hour course. We were picked up from the apartment at 8.30am (I can’t tell you how difficult it was to get up [View Full Entry]

---

---

Having had our buffet breakfast (which consisted of noodles, rice and hot dog sausages, among other things), we got a lift to the train station so that we could catch the 10-hour train north to Chaing Mai. Due to the length of the journey we had to travel on an express, air-conditioned train (costing us £20 each!) rather than the usual cheap train (that had been costing us 20p per trip) we had been using before. Though we were paying a lot more, the train was probably worse. For the 10 hour journey we had to sit in fairly cramped seats [View Full Entry]

---

---

Having got up fairly early and taken a tuk tuk to the train station, we got on a train to go to our next destination - Lopburi, a town an hour's journey North of Ayutthaya. Once on the train we met a couple of very friendly Thai people who (as seems to happen a fair bit) were interested in what we were doing, where we were from and keen to just talk to us about anything at all (despite their English not being fantastic). Due to a lack of the Internet in the previous hostel (and a lack of options to [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hello kind followers of our travel blog, Firstly, no that's not a spelling mistake in the title. Ayutthaya, the old capital of Thailand, has many wats and temples. And also many ants. Some that made their way into my bag and onto my clothes ('ants on my pants' was the second choice of blog title). Anyhow, I'm getting ahead of myself. The last time David posted a blog we were in Bangkok staying in China Town. The morning we were due to check-out our alarm didn't sound so we were awoken by a nice lady calling us from reception at 1.30 [View Full Entry]

---

---

Our trip hasn't got off to the best of starts.. I managed to pick up a cold the day before we left (and have now given it to Helen) and Helen woke up a couple of days ago not feeling well and was promptly sick.. All in all this has ended up being pretty frustrating. There was a huge ceremeny going on the other day (in aid of the Princess's cremation), but Helen had to spend the day in bed trying to sleep off her sickness so we missed the whole thing. Still, we're both feeling better now and have moved [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hello everyone, After a fairly gruelling 11 hour flight through the night - not helped by my (Helen) regretful decision to watch Sex and The City followed by Mamma Mia (why did she marry him and what...? respectively) - Dave and I have been rewarded by a room that is, essentially, a prison cell. A clean prison cell though. With air conditioning. And a safety deposit box. Not so bad afterall then. We arrived at the airport and got a taxi to the hostel. Then after a quick shower went on the scrouge for food. We found a nice little restaurant [View Full Entry]

---

---