Boracay It was hard to leave Manila. I had tried once and already missed a flight and seriously considered missing another. I had met some good people at the hostel and had fallen into a routine of relaxing days and relaxing nights - but I had not come for this and finally dragged myself to the domestic airport bound for the raucous resort of Boracay via Caticlan. There is no airport on the small island of Boracay (9km long and 1km wide) and to get there you must use a pump boat from Caticlan on the island of Panay. Once on the island I used one of the motorbike taxis to haul my rucksack and myself to the ‘back packer’ style accommodation (bamboo huts). For 700 pesos I got a large room with two double ... read more

Xmas in Samui Well it was that time of the year - full of merriness and good cheer, not to mention a load of beer! It was a little odd spending Christmas away from home and family, but the guys that I was there with were the next best thing. Cheers Tony, Delarmi, Tom, Gaz and Su. Xmas isn’t celebrated by the Thai’s but their happy to accommodate and get into the spirit of things (especially when there’s a fast buck to be made!) and we easily found a restaurant serving traditional English Christmas dinner. It was all good fun with me being on the end of a joke and finding my apple crumble spiked with Viagra. I then learned they'd been up to this for the last 2 days as well. Hmmm...great friends I ... read more

Kuala Lumpur After our 4 hour ‘luxurious’ bus journey from Penang we finally arrived at the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. The transport in Malaysian is excellent and is something we really weren’t used to travelling around other countries in Asia. As with the majority of Malaysia you can instantly tell that there is a meeting of cultures here with the mix of races from Indian, Chinese and Malayan decent and this is shown in the varied architecture of Western, Asian and Islamic styles. After a fair degree of hassle from hotel touts we finally found somewhere to stay in China Town opposite the well known Reggae Bar. That night we checked out the local night life and overall had a great night, however this feeling was short lived when we checked our wallets in the morning. ... read more

Ngwe Saung We had read about the unspoilt deserted beaches which lined the east coast of Myanmar. For once we were not disappointed with hardly any other tourists there we had this lovely pristine beach to ourselves and the loan gun boat anchored out in the ocean. There’s very little to do here and we spent four very relaxing days soaking up the rays. This has to be one of my favourite beaches. It is definitely an ideal place to sit and do nothing - something which I'm becoming very good at! The town itself is charming in a small off the beaten track sort of way, full of curious friendly locals. There are a handful of family run restaurants which for the first time in Myanmar served up some great local seafood. We still managed ... read more

Bagan Bagan is one of my favourite ancient cities of Asia, although it's relatively unknown to much of the world, it's an awesome cluster of 1,000 year old Buddhist temples and monuments covering an area that is measured 40 square kilometers, you can find dozens... no, hundreds... oh well, in fact over four thousand temples, stupas, and other strictly religious buildings, resulting from the millenium-old Burmese frenetic habit of trying to buy a better reincarnation. Sat in the back of a cart, pulled by horse power we set off to explore in the blistering heat. Bagan is often compared to Angkor Wat in Cambodia as a major south-east Asian historical religious site. The scale is not the same, here in Bagan buildings are smaller, but ridiculous in number and they often house century-old wall paintings. The ... read more