lots of new photos now up on our blog arrived in vietnam 2 days ago. in saigon/ho chi minh city at the moment (all the locals call it saigon so we do too). we thought the traffic in phnom penh was nuts but it's nothing compared to here. the road is a sea of motorbikes all day long. during rush hour alot of drivers decide to take a shortcut by driving their bikes on the footpath. crossing the road is nearly always an adventure. i blame the french for building such wide streets. yesterday we went to the war remnants museum. [View Full Entry]

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Phnom Penh is a hectic hectic place - traffic zooms up and down the streets, paying little or no attention to road markings or signs - mental. There's not much I can say about the places we've been over the last couple of days that I'm sure a lot of you don't know already or at least you could get a better picture of by googling or enclyopeding (IT'S A WORD) ...anyway, here's my 2 Riel: Tuol Sleng - this was originally a High School in Phnom Penh but during Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's evacuation of Phnom Penh ( [View Full Entry]

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greetings from cambodia. on thursday we made the short journey from don det to the border (where i nearly left my guitar in laos) and then a longish journey to a small town called kratie for the night. the next day we travelled to the town of siem reap. the main attraction here is an area to the north of the town called angkor. it used to be the capital of the old khmer empire centuries ago, it's 400 square miles in area with loads of indiana jones type ancient temples dotted around it. it looks really cool and the several [View Full Entry]

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Well - we just love it here. We've spent the last 3 days cycling round Don Det (island where we are staying) and Don Khon which is the one connected by the old railway line. Our bikes are fairly Retro with handy baskets on front - picture Maria Von Trapp cycling round the streets of Salzburg and you've got a clear picture. Don Det is mainly farmland - yesterday we cycled around the whole island - our side is well developed compared to the other! All we passed were paddy fields, Water Buffalo, pigs, chickens (I nearly killed one - silly [View Full Entry]

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we've nearly reached the end of our time in laos. very close to the border but we think we'll stay where we are for another 5 days or so. arrived early this morning in an area called si phan don which means 4000 islands (slightly less islands now it's the rainy season). we're on don det, a small island about 4km long and 2 km wide in the mekong river. we found a great bamboo hut on the riverside (you can actually swim underneath our house), there's no fan and no shower but for 75 cents a night and 3 hammocks [View Full Entry]

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OK - I have just spent half an hour writing this blog out TWICE only for it to dissapear on me TWICE. So , third time lucky. We arrived in Vientiene yesterday - no tubing in Vang Vieng , torrential rain every day. Vientiene is the capital and much more obviously a relic to French colonisation than the other places we've been in Laos. All street signs and most shop signs are in both Laos and French and there are a lot of petit-chateau style buildings around. Baguettes and Croissants are abundant but that is true of Laos in general. It's [View Full Entry]

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hello all, we arrived in vang vieng 2 days ago but haven't got to do any tubing yet. it rained very heavily from wednesday afternoon until friday morning, the water level of the river rose by a metre so they're not letting anyone do it at the moment. it's sunny at the moment so hopefully if there's no rain for a while we'll get to it before we leave. there were a few mudslides on the journey from luang prapang to here but we got through easily enough. we met a few irish guys and an english couple who travelled yesterday [View Full Entry]

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Once more folks - we forgot the USB cable for the camera so cannot upload photos no matter how many times you ask us to. We are working on a way of getting them up and believe me, we are as frustrated as you! Yesterday we went kayaking on the Mekong - hard work I can tell you - the water was very still so as soon as you stopped paddling you stopped completely - our wee arms had to keep going. I was in a double kayak with a girl from Tipp (Sarah) and Paul and her boyfriend (Ted) were [View Full Entry]

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We left Pai on Friday morning. On the Wednesday night we went to a bar where a fantastic band - mixture of Thai and Ferang (foreigners) played - Paul described them as Asian Kila and that's about right - there were a plethora of instruments - guitar, Bongos, Skin Drum, Didgeridoo, Bouzouki, Greek lyre, mandolin, Thai flute - anyway , they were great. The next night we went to a place just across the road where a 3 piece band played the hits of yesteryear and today with great enthusiasm and dubious lyrics. We were up early the next morning to [View Full Entry]

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today we are finding it very hard to do anything. we ache all over and find moving our muscles very difficult. yesterday was probably the highlight of our holiday so far, we visited thom's elephant camp (very disappointed to find out it wasn't run by thom yorke, lead singer of radiohead, the only person i know who spells their name that way). we got up at half seven, ate our breakfast, and got a lift in a jeep to the camp about 5 km outside pai. when we arrived one of the first things we saw was an elephant playing the [View Full Entry]

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