Joeandnicky

Our flights back were delayed or cancelled - it was not exactly clear - but this had two outcomes: the airline paid for a night in a hotel near Colombo airport; we were a day late arriving back to the UK. We felt so excited arriving back in familiar Colombo with its gloriously lackadaisical approach to everything. A 5 minute chat with the immigration officer in which he did everything short of inviting us round for dinner would be impossible to imagine anywhere else, especially in the States. Hotel rooms were soon organised, but then we had a half hour wait in the airport for a taxi to take us to the hotel. The hotel was part of the Ramada chain and was by a long way the poshest hotel we stayed in Sri Lanka (you ... read more

Siem Reap is the town closest to the magnificent 11th- 15th Century temples of the Khmer civilisation. Built by God-Kings they are huge, magnificent and undoubtedly one of the wonders of the world. The town itself is clearly fundamentally a small town that has sprawled in recent times with the incoming tourists, and yet it retains a charm, even in the obvious tourist traps such as Pub Street. On our first day there we did very little more than relax by the pool and wander into the town discovering a new favourite ice cream parlour/bakery: The Blue Pumpkin. In the evening we ate, and then ambled around a night market some of the profits from which support the work of the Red Cross out here, making it the obvious choice for the place from which to ... read more

The days after leaving the tranquil idyllic Phu Quoc could not have contrasted more with the lazy days we spent there. Planes, taxis, buses, taxis, boats, taxis, minibuses, cyclos, tuk-tuks and taxis all blur together as we look back at it. With less forward planning that usual (Nicky had decided it was time for some hardcore travelling and refused to consult our lonely planet bible for this section of the trip) we have been more at the mercy of the touts hanging around at the bus stations. Some of the lies have been hilarious such as the guy trying to fill the last places in his battered bus telling us that Mai Linh (a huge transport operation with buses, taxis and minibuses all over SE Asia) had no buses on a given day, or the cyclo ... read more

From Hoi An we returned to Hue on a slow train. We had supposedly paid extra for a tourist train, but suspect that all we got was tourist prices. The carriage was crowded with resigned looking locals, who unlike us seemed unfazed by the state of the compartments or the fact that most of the chairs were broken. The ones in front of the boys were jammed in the reclined position, and although ours looked upright if you leant on them they offered no resistance but fell back. We saw several cockroaches, but it was not until we got off the train that Elliot cheerfully announced that he had seen a rat on the floor beneath our seat. On reflection we were pleased not to have known about it at the time. Once in Hue we ... read more

The train was clean and provided sheets pillows and duvets unlike our inter-rail experiences and being crammed into a hard sleeper for the 6 of us was quite a pleasurable (one off) experience. Grandad’s neck was suffering a bit post kayaking, and he lay down and was asleep almost immediately. The boys were up and down to the top bumk where eventually they settled too excited to sleep and the rest of us gradually drifted off to sleep, Granny having perfectly organised her belongings in the little pouch provided like the good Girl Guide she was. We all slept well, waking intermittently to peer at the scenery (Brown Animals in Green Stuff according to Granddad) before being lulled back to sleep by the clickety clack rock a bye action of the train on the tracks. Just ... read more