Rob Donna

Vietnam on the Real Cheap! Hi everyone, we are off again on another trip around Asia. This time the exchange rate is in our favour – in Vietnam we are getting 22,000 dong to the AUD. When we first started coming to Vietnam in 2003 we were getting 11,000 dong to the AUD! Everything is now so incredibly cheap now . A special hello to Tebby and Brian in Mexico, and Robyn and Gene who should be in Thailand by now. Sorry we have been so remote in the last couple of months but we have run into very serious trouble with what is left of our investments – we now have a rogue fund manager who is shredding us and the regulators will do nothing about it, and after 2 years in the Federal Court ... read more

To add insult to injury after a long all day bus trip and excruciating border crossing into Vietnam we were severely ripped off by a taxi driver on our late arrival into Hanoi. Amid the confusion of securing our bags from the clutches of a marauding throng of thieving taxi drivers and accommodation touts at the bus company’s drop off point some distance from the old quarter of Hanoi. We reluctantly decided to go with one driver who had a taxi that was large enough to accommodate our baggage - a fatal mistake! Taxi flag fall in Hanoi is between 8 - 10,000 dong depending on the taxi company and type of vehicle. Bags loaded, and Donna in the back seat Robert settled in to the minimal space in the front seat. A quick glance at ... read more

One thing we forgot to mention about our arrival in Guangzhou was the large illuminated notice board at the immigration entry which was displaying two pages of vital information for visitors - a detailed explanation about the emergence of the BLACK PLAGUE in town. The board contained a very detailed history of the PLAGUE in Europe and the necessary information on recognizing the symptoms and what to do for medical treatment. The importance of this information hit us when we discovered large rat traps strategically placed along the hallway near our room at the hostel (didn't see and captured rats though). We left Sanya on a drizzling Sunday morning, caught a taxi right in front of the hotel for 50RMB ($8.50 yes the local Sanya rip-off price - “no the meter does not work!!”) and headed ... read more

We are running behind with the blog so we will do a couple of updates covering the last few very busy weeks. On our last day in Bangkok we were able to get into the centre of the city with the military blockade lifted in most areas. We started off at MBK the amazing discount shopping centre, with a wonton soup and Singha beer lunch (140Bt $4.60). Walking up to Siam and Central World shopping centres revealed just how much damage had been done - see the pics. Zen is completely gutted and we passed 6 other centres in the central shopping district which had been torched by the departing Red Shirt protesters. Much of the mess left by the protesters had already been cleaned but the extent of the damage was staggering. On our last ... read more

After the much publicised Red Shirts acceptance of the Government’s commitment to dissolve the Thai Parliament and call elections in November, we thought that all would be quiet in Bangkok - well that’s not how things have turned out. As we write this blog the 3pm deadline for the demonstrators to cease has arrived - we are waiting to see what happens now with troops poised to move in on the demonstrators. More on this later. We had another great flight with AirAsia from Phuket to Bangkok - $40 each just the average price. We ended up getting a “taxi” to the airport rather than the bus from the bus depot (85Bt) - it was b bit of a walk from the hotel and we were just lazy. At the airport we used the AA automatic ... read more