We arrived in this city and, almost instantly, were pleased we had sacrificed the not-oft-recommended Hue in favour of another night here. The town is not huge, and although it has a large tourist population, the locals still clearly overwhelm. The centre of the town is made of many old buildings (probably from some time in the past), and cars and coaches are banned from driving around it - only annoying locals on mopeds and annoying tourists on bicycles plague the streets. After finding a place to stay, we ventured into this old area to look for something to eat. It became quite clear, quite quickly that there was a large party going on, that everyone was invited to. This, it turns out, was the full moon party in Hoi An, where everybody stays up late ... read more

Currently am sitting in a small (and possibly the only) internet cafe in Hanoi. The only other one I could find was actually a 'Playstation 2 Cafe' that I resisted the urge to enter. The journey here was a long one, but thankfully we made the right choice in getting out of Laos, by flying. Where we made the wrong choice was by choosing an airline that apparently doesn't publish their safety records. Telling the story even more in reverse, we took a third and final coach journey out of Vang Vieng and back to Luang Prabang, for our airport rendezvous. This turned out to be the worse of the three because, despite being only (!) nine hours, I had left my inflatable neck cushion in my big bag that was somewhere else on the bus. ... read more

This is quite a difficult town to spell. It starts off quite hard, but now I'm not actually sure of the exact spelling, so far I've seen Luangprabang, Luangphrabang, Luang-prahbang, Louangprabang, making it all that more difficult. This is one of the main attractions in the country of Laos. Quite a small town, apparently a haven for those tourists who just want to come and enjoy the slow boat before coming and enjoying nice food. Thus, there are more than the average number of middle age people here compared to Southeast Asia in general. Since we decided to do something cultural for once, we wanted to spend a day visiting the Plain of Jars, a large field in the middle of nowhere full of big concrete containers. Nobody knows how they got there. However, after doing ... read more

And so, a nice early morning at 9. Which wasn't too bad because we had been sensible the previous night and only stayed up till 1. The walk home was a little interesting/unnerving. We encountered two gangs of possibly rabid dogs that thankfully distracted each other allowing us to make our escape. Also got locked out because the hotel person didn't tell us how to get in when it's late. Were saved by someone just leaving for a night out, and managed to sneak in through the door. Note to self - there's no point in spending extra on air conditioning if you turn it up to 25 degrees anyway. But anyway. Got on the taxi (back of a truck) only an hour after meeting and tried to settle down for the hour or so journey. ... read more

Here we are again, a new summer and back where I was a year ago. I could mention the amazing flight. Seeing as we were flying with an Indian airline, we were naturally served copious amounts of curry. Of course they were all pretty good. For airline food. Although the one that came up around 3am Indian time was a little unnecessary. So. By time we got to Bangkok we had had about 3 then 3 hours of sleep in around 48 hours. Although aren't too sure about the actual time because we still haven't worked out the time difference. Naturally, first thing we wanted to do was find a nice place to have a nap. But first, some administration - we needed our headache inducing Vietnamese visa, from the embassy on a place called Wireless ... read more