Meg the Belcher

It seems like a life time ago that I wrote my last blog and am now kicking myself as to how much I have to write about. Sorry if it's has a bit of a lack of detail but I shall do my best. Last time I was making my way down to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) which seemed slightly industrial from the bus window but that turned out to be just the outskirts. When entering the city center it could have been like any other. It had the cleanness and craziness of Bangkok but just on a smaller scale. The main tourist/backpacker area was easily explored in minutes. We arrived in the evening and commenced our exploration of the local bars. Of course as is the case in most areas of south east Asia ... read more

It's the first of the month which marks my 15 day countdown to jetting off on my final journey home. Been thinking about it A LOT recently and am gearing myself up for seeing everyone and catching up on 9 months of lost time! Our last stop from the last blog was Nimh Bihn. This was more of a quick stop off on our way to Hoi An but turned out to be really lovely. We had some trouble on our way there with a really aggressive taxi driver and some men on the bus who couldn't seem to control their outrageous staring but we got there in the end. It's a pretty sleepy town with not much to do and not that many people around but true to form we rented our trusty bikes and ... read more

Dear All, Before I start I am going to have to give you another long-whinded, overly complicated and probably quite boring story about one of the many extravagant bus journeys we've been on. I seriously under estimated how long this one was going to be and in the end totaled 29 hours! This bus was definitely the worst I'd seen as the back was ripped out and had old spare tractor wheels and dirt sprawled all over it. The seats were tiny and filthy and the men on the bus snored louder than any other I had heard. We arrived at the Laos border at 2:30 a.m. where a light was then shone in our faces and we were told to hand over our passports and money to 'get them stamped'. We refused naturally and said ... read more

Dear All, From Vientiane (vietnamese visas in hand) we took an over night bus down to a town called Pakse. The bus is worth mentioning as we had these amazingly cushty beds with duvets and air con and fluffy pillows and people walking around handing out snacks - so all in all quite luxurious! When I said before I was still yet to see the sleepy towns of Laos people kept telling me about well this was definately it. It is quite literally a ghost town where even the locals don't seem to be on the streets. The whole town consists of one road with a fruit market at the end of it. We were happy however to be here so checked into a nice little guesthouse on the mekong river. When seeing our friend Lea ... read more

Heellooooooo, Am currently sitting in an internet cafe in Laos' capitol city of Vientiane. Our first pit stop in northern Laos (Luang Prabang) was a nice place to start of our experience of the country as its quite a chilled out little town on the Mekong. Daily life is pretty slow, people tend to laze around in cafes alot and there are more than a few temples which are nice to pop into every now and again. Other than this however there is not much to do. We explored for a day, eating in one of the many baguette stalls and visited the waterfalls the following day. The waterfalls were INCREDIBLE. Obviously having visited many in Africa and Thailand my standards were aimed high but the one we visited here blew the others out of the ... read more

Dear All, It feels like alot has happened since my last blog in Koh Tao as we have been to such a variety of different places. We spent around 4 days in Koh Tao which was really nice, really chilled. Al got on with her diving course and managed to see a 5 metre whale shark! I think I may have had a mini heart attack if I were to see it. In Koh Tao we also waved goodbye to our friend Lea which was sad. We then decided to make the mammoth journey (and it definately was mammoth) to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. The journey went like this: a three hour boat ride to chumpon, mini bus to the bus station, three hour wait at the bus station, over night 10 hour ... read more

Having logged onto this page i've realised there is a whole blog missing. I wrote one a week ago including our adventures in Bangkok and Koh Samui and I'm sad that they are gone but will take a whole day and half to re-write and explain so apolagies but I will start off where I previously left off as per usual. We arrived in Koh Phanghan after a nice relaxing stay at Lipa Lodge on Samui. We stayed a beach away from where the actual full moon party was taking place so we could escape the craziness if we needed to. We ended up spending our whole time in Haad Rin (the party beach) contantly meeting people and making friends. We met with my friend Lea from back home which was so nice as I hadn't ... read more

Dear All, The time has come as near the end of my India journey. That journey ends at midnight this evening as I board the plane to Bangkok. I will as ever start where I left off. Mammallapuram was a pretty average tourist spot of Tamil Nadu. It's a sweet little beach side town with an abundance of restaurants, cafes and niknack shops selling the usual hippy attire at an inflated price. As the temperature measures are soaring up at the moment this means the low season for places like Mammallapuram as people leave to escape the heat and don't really visit either. This meant the town was likened to a ghost town and it felt like we were the only ones in it as we saw the shops slowly start to close down for the ... read more

Dear All, There was no crazy dancing street party for Tamil New Year. Instead just a couple of miles long queue of people waiting to enter the temple. Not fun when we ourselves are trying to see it. All was not lost however as we went the next day to the humungous closed in area of the hindu temple. It is apparently the largest temple in southern India and is made up of four massive towers covered in rock carved gods from every spectrum of the rainbow. To see it up close is quite overwhelming as it has such intricate detail on such a large scale. When you enter to walk around there are various halls and coridoors with large pillars and detailed ceilings. There were some restricted areas where we were not allowed not being ... read more

Dear All, For the last ten days I have been travelling from place to place quite a bit and am finding it hard to get time on the internet as I am squashing every last thing possible into these last two weeks of India - I can't beleive it! We left off in Varkala and since then we took the bus south to the city of Trivandrum which is slightly inland from the coast. We were told it was a horrible sprawling city and not to go there but of course it was on the way so we had to see for ourselves. Having spent more than enough time in cities such as Calicut and Kollam, Trivandrum came as a pleasant surprise. Although relitively large and relitively sprawling, Trivandrum had quite wide roads and cool markets ... read more