For us, the 'road' to Mandalay took many forms, carrying us through the Burmese landscape in a variety of vehicles, from local buses and pick up taxis to horse carts and finally, a boat that took us up the mighty Irrawaddy River to Mandalay. We joined the good ship "Shwe Kiennery II" at the Nyaung Ou jetty at the ungodly hour of 4.45am one Monday morning. No clapped out old fishing boat this one, the "Shwe Kiennery" was a modern, purpose built passenger vessel equipped with two V8 engines, an air conditioning system and a bar. She was capable of a [View Full Entry]

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Acre upon acre of temples, scattered across a dusty plain in the very heart of Myanmar - that was Bagan. Last of the ancient 'lost cities' that we had still to see, it captivated us in a way that Cambodia's Angkor had been unable to do. Perhaps because it was not over run with visitors and there was still space to breathe and enjoy a spiritual moment but it was also an amalgam of things; the dry desert climate - hot by day, cold by night. Cactus bushes and acacia trees. Days spent wandering or cycling among temples where, apart from [View Full Entry]

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The following are a series of extracts from our journals, verbal sketches if you like, that attempt to capture our first impressions of Myanmar. To those unfamiliar with this little known country, I should perhaps try and draw a brief introductory picture. Formerly known as Burma, Myanmar is an inward looking country ruled by a military Government that has a well earned reputation for human rights abuses. For years it has cut itself off from the outside world and its people know very little of what is happening beyond the restrictive confines of their own country. Much is changing but [View Full Entry]

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The sun came up shortly after 6am and most mornings we were up with it, wandering along the beach as the fishing boats came in to offload the night's catch. It was one of the simple joys of staying in Mui Ne, a place many travellers overlooked, prefering instead the glitzy, high rise attractions of Nha Trang - 300kms further up the coast. Round coracles and the bigger squid boats would be out most of the night, the squid boats equipped with long booms festooned with lights to bring the squid to the surface. The squid boats usually moored offshore from [View Full Entry]

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The bus dropped us at a Chinese restaurant overlooking the border. Outside it was hot and the restaurant stood on its own in what looked like a field of dust. Not for the first time, I wondered if dust was a major crop in Cambodia. We were certainly going to be exporting a fair amount of it in our clothes when we crossed the border into Vietnam but first, we were going to have to get to the border. The bus driver didn't speak any English but it was clear from his brief mime that he wasn't going any further and [View Full Entry]

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If the years under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge represented Cambodia’s darkest hour, Angkor Wat was undoubtedly its finest. Cambodian’s talk with great pride about their ancient city and with good reason for it is easily one of the world’s great wonders. Angkor was almost unknown to the western world until it was ‘discovered’ - lost in the Cambodian jungle - by the French naturalist and explorer Henri Mouhot in the 1860s. Over time, Angkor was gradually reclaimed from the clutches of nature and finally awarded World Heritage status in 1992. Such is the nati [View Full Entry]

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The music started at 5am after which, sleep was almost impossible. It came from a loudspeaker mounted on a dilapidated building facing the square. Sunrise was still an hour away but - by the time it was light - the market square was already busy with people going about their daily business. Market traders who had spent the night asleep at their stalls were re-arranging produce or chatting with their neighbours. Barrow boys with wooden carts laden with fruit, sacks of rice or tins of paint, ferried purchases or stock to and from the market. Cows walked nonchalantly through the streets, [View Full Entry]

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A bumpy ride down an unmade dirt road culminated finally in a swirling cloud of dust outside a crude collection of shacks in the village of Ban Nakasang. Jumping down from the truck that had taken us there, seven of us - two Brits, two Australians and three French guys - stood looking around ourselves, squinting in the harsh light of mid day. It was like a scene from a spaghetti western; the unshaven jaws - or legs, in Viv's case - the sidelong glances, the settling dust. All it lacked was the Morricone soundtrack. Where did we go now, we [View Full Entry]

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Vientiane was hot: almost unbearably so. Even sitting at a street cafe sipping a cold drink, I could feel the sweat running down my chest and soaking uncomfortably into the waistband of my trousers. A stop in the nation's capital - home to a surprisingly small population of around 200,000 people - was almost inevitable on the long trip south but for us, it was a necessary evil as we wanted to organise onward visas for Cambodia. The Laos / Cambodian crossing at Voen Kham was not an officially recognised border entry or exit point by the Governments of either country. [View Full Entry]

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Striking off across rice paddyfields amid stunning limestone karst scenery - unfeasibly shaped mountains with saw-toothed ridges all around us - we revelled in the sense of freedom and drama our new surroundings afforded. We were in Vang Vieng in central Laos and it felt good to be able to wander unrestricted across the fields and not have to worry about landmines. Bombs, Mines and Stone Age Jars Only a few days before, landmines - and other forms of unexploded ordnance (UXO) - had been a very real concern. We had been in Xieng Khuang province, close to the borders of [View Full Entry]

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