Good afternoon everyone this is your Captain speaking, we will shortly be descending on the land of all things western, many things fake, lots that’s cultural and where the temperature is a sweaty 32 degrees C with 80% humidity and all this some distance away from a tuk tuk driver or a local washing his prize cow! Welcome to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. A brisk walk alongside the tarmac, a speedy customs check and forex change and we were out of the door and on a bus headed for the city. It’s difficult not to notice the marks of a truly capitalist [View Full Entry]

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Because there are too many to lump with the other photos for Phnom Penh and Siem Reap here are picks from Angkor Wot :-) [View Full Entry]

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I have travelled to and through many boarders in my life, so far, but none have been quite as original as my border crossing between Chau Doc and Phnom Penh. We parted the fishing village in Chau Doc on board a slow boat where we parked off, took in the sights along the river banks while filling out customs forms, exchanged currency and getting in some last minute reading about the country we were bound for. I could truthfully have admitted, at that point, that I knew little to nothing about Cambodia. True to our guides word three hours went [View Full Entry]

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A quick fill up on a standard Vietnam backpackers free breakfast aka; bananas, baguettes and tea, and we headed for the tour company via the street backer (the giant choc chip peanut biscuits looked too irresistible not to be sampled) and joined a group of people all bound for a touristy day on the Mekong. While anything is possible on your own, tour companies have been clever and they offer tours at prices that are sometimes cheaper than what you would end up paying if you tried to replicate the trip on your own so you are almost left with no [View Full Entry]

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Note to self, if you plan on catching the 1am bus between Mui Ne and Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) don’t overlook the day before confirmation process like we did otherwise you will also have the bus company laugh at you when you arrived at 10am the morning of the bus departure expecting to get a couple of seats. Initially we were a bit annoyed at our stupidity cause it did mean we could only get on the 8:30am bus the following morning resulting in is having to pay for an additional nights accommodation and it meant we would be traveling on [View Full Entry]

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For the first time on our trip Ken and I had called a couple of guesthouses to try and pre book our accommodation. Usually we just rock up at a spot and take it from there but our bus was due to arrive in Mui Ne at 1:30am so be though we best not take our chance and rather book a spot. Some five bumpy hours later we arrived in Mui Ne where we were hurriedly ushered off the bus before it made a speedy departure leaving us in its dust on the very dark, deserted street at the completely wrong [View Full Entry]

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Traveling in Vietnam is great, in fact traveling South East Asia is great, it’s like a giant Contiki tour only there isn’t just one bus carrying only 30 people but rather 100’s of buses carrying as many people all eager to explore and have a party. As a result you meet people in one place, part ways for a bit and then meet up again a city or a country later having collected a couple more new friends along the way, it’s brilliant. It just so happened that we ended up sitting next to a British couple that Andrew had become [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Hoi An shortly after lunch time really excited at the sight of blue sky! As is customary, the bus deposited us outside a random hotel on the outskirts of town so we hopped off and since we principally avoided being trapped into taking a room at the first hotel we saw, even before orientating ourselves, we rather loaded ourselves like pack mules with all our luggage and started down the street (managing to pick up a travel buddy, Andrew, in the process) in pursuit of a sleeping haven for our three day stay. Admittedly our initial impression of [View Full Entry]

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We arrived back in Hanoi at 5:30am after a very jarred night’s sleep aboard the rickety night train from Lao Cai with a plan to spend a day chilling and that’s exactly what we did, chill: watch movies, get laundry done and general recovery from five days of activity. While chilling and getting laundry done are always a charm particularly when the weather is cold and all your warm clothes are either caked in mud or smelling like the inside of a coal factory there is one mission you have to think twice before handing in your laundry (including buffalo chocolate [View Full Entry]

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4pm saw us back from Halong Bay and in Hanoi leaving just enough time for us time for a quick warm up, freshen up and repack before heading for the train station to catch the somewhat rickety yet comfy over night train to Sapa, way up north nearing the Chinese boarder. Once we’d prized our way through the barrage of helmeted scooter taxi drivers congesting the station exit we hopped on a bus that would wind us all the way up the mountains to the quaint town of Sapa. “Hello, Where you from?, What’s your name?, You buy from me?”…..welcome to [View Full Entry]

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