Today I am going Siem Reap which is a city near the temples of Angkor this is the world’s largest temple complex, I will be traveling by Bus as there is no train between Vietnam and Cambodia the journey will take 12 hours and it starts at 7am. From what I saw Cambodia is very flat…it seems to have very tropical plants with many palm trees, there are also a lot of rice fields, the vast majority of buildings outside of the towns are built of stilts I think this is due to regular flooding, Most of the buildings in the countryside are built of wood it looks as though many of the homes have a small fruit farm around them and some have a small stall outside the front selling what they have produced. I ... read more

Today I am travelling to Saigon on the train it is 31hrs 2 nights and one full day. I am sharing my 4 bed cabin with 2 50/60 year old Vietnamese with a young I assume grandson of about 4 or 5. They don’t speak English but from what we can communicate they have been visiting there children who work in Hanoi, they live in the suburbs of Saigon. During the day I played with the child and communicated with the man, we traded some money, I think he was happy to get some US Dollars…I’m not sure why but he seem to want his wife to change all her Vietnamese Dong for my dollars, I only changed 6 dollars with them. I think at one point he was trying to convince me to take his ... read more

Today was Hanoi, I Took a tour of the city which included the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum he was the founder of the Vietnamese communist movement we also visited the presidential palace a museum of Vietnamese ethnicity and an old city palace. Generally the buildings in Hanoi are poorly maintained the main exceptions I saw were the presidential palace and Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum. Most of the buildings seem to date back to when the French ruled Vietnam and it seems not much maintenance has been carried out since the communists took over. Most buildings look rather run down. The food in Hanoi was of a lower quality that in china and on average costs approximately 3 times more, The people are not all that friendly and I get the feeling they would rather scam you ... read more

Today I took a tour of Shanghai, we had a bus which took us around to see most of the sights including 'Longhua Temple' Which is a Budist temple with some very good carvings of budda's, French Concession which is a trading area originally set up by the french when the chinese gave a concession to allow france to trade in that area, it is now made up of small shops with an old french colonial type style...we saw the Bund which is the Old financial area where the original banks set up in the early 20th centary. ... read more

This is the Small Goose Pagoda which is outside the city walls of Xian in a small private Park it was built in 707AD by Budist Monks...you can climb to the top which is 13 storys high. It gives quite nice views of the south of the city, there is also a museum of the history of Xian which has some interesting information and models about how the city was planned and built.... read more