Rat Race Escapees

If the tour of Rajasthan we'd booked with Smyle wasn't a complete rip-off, there were certainly some generous profit margins being worked into their sums! The hotels we stayed at were not all too the standard we'd expected and our driver just seemed to be booking them on the fly, much as we could have done ourselves, probably for half the price we'd already paid. The 'sight-seeing' included sales pitch also seemed a bit dubious, as what it actually meant was that our driver would drive us to all the sights, but we'd still have to pay on average Rs250 per person to get into most temples, forts, etc. Over the 12 days, this amounts to a considerable extra cost. Luckily for Smyle however, we had an excellent trip - our driver was so polite ... read more

On a print out of our flight itinery we'd noticed that our flight from Hong Kong to Mumbai was status ‘wait listed’ despite the fact that our actual ticket said we were confirmed, so on arrival to Hong Kong we thought we better check with Cathay Pacific. It turned out that we were wait listed, and due to the excessive demand for this flight the waiting list had been cancelled!! All flights to Mumbai for the foreseeable future were booked solid as well! What to do? There was serious consideration given to changing our plans altogether and heading for a sunny destination somewhere in Europe. India was giving us real trouble anyway, the pending monsoon rains had thwarted our plans to visit Goa to spend a couple of weeks on the beach and travel was ... read more

The BBC website was telling us otherwise, but we refused to believe it could be raining on Thailand's famous beaches in the south. But as usual, the Beeb were right. Our first port of call was the island of Ko Phang Nang. We got there using practically every mode of transport available to us - taxi, plane, bus, boat and then a taxi again. The full moon party was about to kick off, which sounds about as much fun as a point in the eye, so we headed to Chalok Lam in the north, which is nice and secluded and not to busy. On arrival the usual 'see how much money we can scam from the tourists' competition began, so we took shelter in the nearest bar and probably made ourselves a little too comfortable, ... read more

Our bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap was along a rare and beautiful section of paved road. Siem Reap is the town found nearest to the Angkor Archaeological Park - a collection of temples and ruins built by the Khmer empire between the 9th - 13th century by successive kings each trying to out do the others. Angkor means ‘capital city’ and this is the capital city of an empire that ruled from Burma to Vietnam. Its quite impressive. We'd arranged to meet David and Rebecca, who we’d travelled with through Laos, at a guesthouse called The Prince Mekong. It’s a nice guesthouse offering lots of free extras…bikes, laundry, breakfast etc, but was quite new and had yet to invest in air conditioned rooms meaning sleep was rare and fitfull. Erich the owner was ... read more

We were picked up from our hostel in Vietnam on the best bus we'd ever travelled on in South East Asia - its was brand spanking new, and had air-con and super comfy seats. As it was Paul's birthday, Vicki explained - lying through her aching teeth - how she had had this bus put on especially. Immediately, the bubble burst. We were suddenly told to get off the bus. A couple of minutes of confusion and we were told we'd been picked up by the wrong bus. We were ushered into the back of a mini-bus and transported down the road to our real bus. Gutted. It was a knackered, rusting old jalopy, full of screamings kids and a TV blurting out a Cambodian karoke video. It was supposed to be a 6 hour ... read more