The answer, I found out, is 27. This is providing you squish 6 people on 4 seats at the back and drive along with the boot door open and force 3 people to ride on the luggage. Oh, and pay bribes to all the police at the checkpoints along the way, police whose job is no doubt to prevent such deathtraps traveling along the roads of Cambodia. This is how I traveled from Sen Monorom in eastern Cambodia. Initially I was quite amused by it all but then the English man sat next to me kept going on about how all the additional weight meant that the suspension was "f**ked" ( I'm guessing this isn't the technical term) and how our risk of a blow out was therefore increased. Didn't help. Still, no chickens on board ... read more

Whoever you are Thailand will provide you with some unforgettable experiences. I can promise you that. I began my stay in Thailand near Khao San Road, the backpacker district of Bangkok. On my first night I found several places where I could obtain various false IDs and certificates claiming that I had graduated in any discipline I fancied from a university of my choice. Tattoo shops along the road advertised and promised that ' we use a clean needle every time'- always a little disconcerting- and at night several ladies pushed carts of cooked scorpions, cockroaches and all manner of hideous insects for your consumption. Insects aside the food in Bangkok was great. Probably one of the most bizarre yet unique experiences I had in Bangkok was visiting the Siriraj Medical Museum at Siriraj Hospital in ... read more

After my last blog you'll be pleased to know that things have been considerably less eventful since I left Hanoi. This may have been due to the guidelines in my hotel in Hue, which advised that I should not "drink too much, do drugs or influence others". The guidelines also stipulated that prostitutes were not allowed in the room. I still can't decide whether it was a good thing that the hotel had this rule or disconcerting that they felt the need to mention it. However, since then I've seen the same rule in everything from hotels to restaurant toilets and a surprising number of signs asking me not to take my explosives in to museums. My first stop after Hanoi was the city of Hue, a 12 hour train south of Hanoi. The citadel city ... read more

At the beginning of the week I took an overnight train from Hanoi to Sapa, a town just a 2 or 3 kilometres from the border with China. Sapa is one of the most popular tourist destinations in northern Vietnam and it's easy to see why. The scenery is beautiful- green rice paddies, mountains and waterfalls. We started our walk at about 9.30 with our guide who was a member of the local Hmong people. The walk took us through the town, up and down some fairly steep hills and alongside rice paddies. In one particularly rocky steep part I thought I'd use the bamboo trees that lined the path to help me down. Little did I know that they would cover my arms and hands with splinters. Probably some sort of survival mechanism to stop ... read more

For my last full day in Seoul I decided to visit the city of Incheon. Incheon is South Korea's third largest city and also an important port situated about an hour away from the centre of Seoul by metro. Incheon is also a city of historical significance as, during the Korean war ( yes, here she goes, droning on about the war again), it was the location of what is now considered one of the greatest military manoeuvres in history. By September 1950 the North Korean People's Army had occupied most of the country and had pushed the Allied forces down the a small corner in the south east, around Busan. General MacArthur's plan was to launch an amphibious landing on the heavily defended, geographically and strategically challenging Incheon coast, correctly assuming that landing behind enemy ... read more

So after my last entry I took a one hour bus journey north to the city of Gyeongju. Gyeongju is a bit of a treasure in South Korea as it is the country's most traditional city. This is because during the 1970s and 1980s, during Korea's boom years, the then President of South Korea introduced height restrictions on anything built near the city centre and passed a bill requiring almost all buildings to have a Korean traditional roof so that the city would remain traditional. For this reason you don't see any of the skyscraping hotels and apartment blocks that you see in cities like Seoul or Busan. More recently the rules have been flaunted and there are now big banks and office buildings but still nothing like in the other cities and on the outskirts ... read more

It was curry for breakfast after all. Chicken and veg curry with rice. And some red things in a sauce that I didn't try in case they were spicy or fish. Actually it was very tasty but way too early for someone who usually has a weetabix and a banana for breakfast. Yesterday I visited the UN cemetery in central Busan. When the North Koreans initially invaded this south eastern corner of the country was the only part they didn't manage to occupy and therefore it was here that the cemetery was created after the war. I was surprised that there are as many as 885 British soldiers buried here, the largest of any nation that fought as part of the UN response ( most of the other nations repatriated their soldiers). There was an interesting ... read more

I did indeed. Though it's not as trampy as it sounds. With some other people from the hostel I had a night out in Itaewon, Seoul's expat district, which, on a Saturday night, was teeming with Westerners. There are a huge number of bars and restaurants catering for the expat community including the obligatory Irish pub and, my personal favourite, 'Foreigner's Restaurant'. They obviously didn't worry themselves thinking up a name. After a lovely Thai meal we wandered around the main streets looking for somewhere to go for the rest of the evening. At night Itaewon's streets come alive with roadside bars usually operating from someone's converted vehicle. One couple had converted their rather nice looking black van in to a roadside diner/bar- he grilling sausages in the back while she served drinks from the converted ... read more

So.....that was intense! I'd read in a few reviews that the atmosphere at the border was supposed to be quite tense but it is definitely one of those things that you have to experience in person. And on a plus it turns out I'm the perfect height for tunnel warfare. We travelled by coach from the USO office in Seoul, based next to the US base, and drove for about an hour and a half to the DMZ (Demiliterized Zone) to begin the tour. There was no mistaking that we were in the right place. The road is a mass of wire fences, barbed wire, road blocks and is heavily armed by South Korean soldiers. Once through the checkpoint we drove over a bridge known as 'Reunification Bridge'. There was a lot of perhaps over optimistical ... read more