Leanne and Simon

April 26 - April 30 It's most disconcerting to travel around a city and encounter armed military at every turn. This is the second time we have been in Bangkok during the red shirt protests and the mood is very different now to what it was over the Songkran festival when we were last in the city. Silom Road which was the scene of the great water fight to celebrate Thai new year is now under siege as the red shirts have barricaded themselves in their camp with piles of tyres and razor wire. Outside of the camp there are riot police along the road, military and swathes of barbed wire which you have to walk around to get along the pavement. But people are still going about their routines and we have had no problems ... read more

April 13 - April 19 We all know Bangkok is bonkers but the craziness enters a whole new level when Songkran comes around. This is Thai new year and is celebrated with a mass water fight that basically involves getting completely drenched. It was totally insane and one of the most surreal and fun experiences of our travels. Armed with a cheap water pistol from the 7/11 we headed out along Sukhumvit where gangs of kids gathered on Soi corners with massive buckets of water to pour over passers-by. We made it on the skytrain to Silom Road which was thronging with masses of people. The atmosphere was like a carnival but a whole lot wetter. Water came at us from super soakers, buckets, sprayed from hoses, thrown from the back of trucks that were cruising ... read more

Hoi An, March 26 - March 29 Nha Trang, March 29 - April 2 Hoi An is a quaint little city famous for its old town (a Unesco World Heritage Site no less) and the numerous tailor shops that line every street. We arrived just after midnight following 10 hours on a train and an hour long taxi ride and felt a bit guilty about waking up the hotel staff who were asleep under mozzie nets in the lobby. Then we felt just plain stupid when we had to go down 30 minutes later to ask how to turn off the lights in the room. It had been a long day! Foregoing a much-needed lie-in we were up early on Saturday and borrowed bikes (I got a cool pink one) to go on a cycling tour ... read more

March 18th - 21st Arriving in Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City as it is called now we were agog at how western it all is. Driving through the sprawling metropolis we saw department stores, ‘proper’ shops, car showrooms and restaurants that wouldn’t look out of place in London. Not to mention traffic lights and roundabouts! It even has a Vietnamese version of Starbucks, Highlands Coffee, which serves great coffee but at very un-Asian prices. Crossing the road is a bit of a mission in Saigon. I have never seen so many motorbikes in one place as there are on the streets here. It is completely bonkers. They are everywhere. Some carry just one passenger while others are piled high with families and their shopping. Traffic doesn’t stop for pedestrians and to cross the road you ... read more

March, 8th - March, 10th During the three years, eight months and 21 days of the Khmer Rouge regime soldiers committed many atrocities but the most depraved in my mind is taking babies by the legs and smashing their tiny heads against a tree before throwing the bodies into a mass grave. The tree still stands in the Choeung Ek Killing Fields and is no longer stained with blood just as the graves where more than 8,000 bodies were discovered now lie open and empty. Well mostly empty. As we walked around the Killing Fields we saw pieces of bone protruding from the ground and bits of clothes worn by the victims. It is a heartbreaking place and it is astonishing to think that all this went on within Simon’s life time. But of course genocide ... read more