We headed one island South to Koh Pah Nyang, famous for its monthly full moon parties on a beach in the south of the island. We headed north, though, to a quieter beach called Hat Yao which had just a few restaurants and a couple of hotels. It's still the rainy season here and when we arrived on the ferry the rain was incredible. Taxis on the island are just pick-up trucks with a makeshift roof which wasn't up to the job of keeping us dry. By the time we got to the hotel the rain had stopped, but I looked [View Full Entry]

---

---

It took 18 hours and a tuk-tuk, a plane, a bus, a train, another bus, a boat, a pickup truck and a 20 minute walk along a beach to get to our hostel in Koh Tao from Phnom Penh. The island is off of the East coast of Thailand and is known as one of the best scuba diving and snorkeling sites in the world. We stayed in a beautiful cabin/bungalow with a huge balcony perched up on a cliff overlooking the bay of Chalok Baan Kao. We spent a lot of time here just sitting on the beach. We haven't [View Full Entry]

---

---

Our bus journey into Phnom Penh wasn't as eventful as the previous bus journey, but we did break down. I think the bus overheated. All the Cambodian men stood around the back of the bus looking at the engine. Maybe they thought the power of positive thought would get the bus going again.... After a while someone turned something with a spanner and the bus started up. We got into Phnom Penh about an hour late - which is pretty good by Cambodian standards. Phnom Penh itself is quite a nice city. It has a huge palace complex and some nice [View Full Entry]

---

---

Our hostel arranged a tuk tuk driver for us to visit the Angkor temples. The tuk tuks here are a motorbike that tows a sort of carriage behind it. It's a surprisingly comfortable way to get around. The Angkor temples are the remains of a vast city that, in the 13th century, had 1 million people when London had about 50,000. The area covered by the ancient city is incredible. Whilst Angkor Wat is famous around the world as the world's largest ever religious building, it's actually quite small in terms of land coverage compared to some of their other achievements. [View Full Entry]

---

---

We arrived in Bangkok on the night train from Chaing Mai and found a nice hostel a few streets away from the well-known Kho San Road. We spent a day here looking around the temples and some of the monuments. Whilst visiting the Grand Palace our guide explained that the Thai King's sister had recently died and was lying in state in the palace. That's when we noticed that all of the Thai people were all wearing black. There were hundreds of people all lining up to see her before her funeral in a few days time. The Grand palace is [View Full Entry]

---

---

Chaing Mai is our first stop in Thailand. The 5 hour trip from the Laos border was a world away from the country we'd left behind. The roads were dual carriageways with no potholes, the houses that lined the roads all had metal or tiled roofs instead of reeds and the amount of traffic had significantly increased. We spent a few days in the city before heading to an elephant sanctuary. Our first day we both had a traditional Thai massage. Chaing Mai is supposed to be very good for this. It's supposed to be very relaxing. My experience was something [View Full Entry]

---

---

Luang Prabang in Northern Laos is a Unesco world heritage sight. It sits on the Mekong river and has an amazing mix of Buuddhist temples and French colonial architecture (Laos used to be part of French Indochina). We spent a lot of time here just wandering around the temples and the streets of French houses. It also has a great market as the tribes from miles around come here to sell anything they can to the tourists. Our hostel here was right on the flight path to Luang Prabang airport. As there were only a few flights a day this wasn't [View Full Entry]

---

---

We hadn't originally planned to go to Phonsovan, but we met a French/Laos couple who had worked as tourguides in Laos during the 70's before fleeing to Laos during the revolution. They suggested we should go here to learn some interesting history - and we certainly did. Phonsovan's regular attraction is the Plain of Jars, a series of huge stone jars scattered across various sites. The one we went to had over 300 jars. Nobody is really sure what they are for or indeed who put them there. The most common view is that they are burial jars and that the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Arrived in Vang Vieng after a 6 hour bus trip (that, of course, took 7 hours). It's a small town on the Nam Song river that's famous for it's karst mountain scenery and for being a bit of a backpacker party town. The scenery here is quite similar to Guilin in China. The land between the mountains is very flat so we did a bit of cycling - and I did a bit of falling off of my bike as a stick got stuck in the spokes of my front wheel (nothing that a Beer Lao couldn't cure!). People in the [View Full Entry]

---

---

When our plane landed in Laos the air hostess should have said: "Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to Laos. The local time here is 9am...... but that's totally irrelevant as you are now on Laos Time!" Laos works on "elastic time". This means when a bus is scheduled to leave at 9am it will leave around 10. If you ever go to Laos then take a good book! The one exception to "Laos Time" was getting a visa. We landed in Vientiane airport ready to spend some time arranging our visa (which you can get on arrival). Turns out that there is [View Full Entry]

---

---