Beautiful beaches and testing travels Finally getting into Krabi after the previously mentioned uncomfortable sleeper coach we organised our hostel and transport to and from the island of Ko Phi Phi for the following day. Carrying on our effort of trying new foods, especially fish Paul ended up trying a nice crab dish, with the irony of eating crab in Krabi completely lost on him until much later in the evening. (Bless). We hired a hog for the day and after a shaky start (driving off down the wrong side of the road as the lady who rent us the bike shouted after us and we turned around and thought she was wavig at us) we ended up visiting a nearby beach resort which, although expensive, was well worth the trip just to have an afternoon ... read more

Welcome to Thailand Another flight and another airline (the prestigous state-run Laos Airlines, ahem...) and we were into the Northern town of Chian Mai which felt like a bit of a return to civilisation (well, McDonalds and wi-fi Internet at least). After settling in at our nice hotel we checkde out the amazing and frankly enormous night markets, with an incredible choice of outdoor restaurants and street vendors. We also spent some time during the day checking out some of the temples (the town boasting an incredible amount of temples considering its size), we checked out a few that had been recommended to us, including one inside a huge monastrey, nearly being ran over by a convoy of monks as we entered the grounds. Thai boxing and transvestites We were slightly apprehensive when considering whether to ... read more

Southern Laos The small town of Pakse didn't hold too much to capture our attention for too long so it wasn't long before we rented a hog and hit the road in search of some countryside. Although we did have a chance meeting with M-Dog of all people and we headed for a curry at a restaurant which had been recommended by Jamie who had just been through this area a few weeks before. We set off for the smal village of Tadlo, 100km or so north of Pakse. The ride there went smoothly without a single wrong turn which was pretty good for us, although did include some classics such as asking in pretty much every single village along the way if we were going in the direction and just being stared or laughed at ... read more

Temples and temples and temples The trip to Siem Reap really corrected some preconceptions we had of Cambodia. We thought we'd go along a dirt road, through a desert with the occasional poverty-stricken village the only dot on the map for miles but what we actually saw was a green countryside, and a mix of affluent and basic villages. Siem Reap was a nice resort-like town and made a great base from which to explore the grand Temples of Angkor. The multitude of plush restaurants and alleys of nice bars (one street, amazingly called 'Bar Street' you couldn't make it up) was a good reflection of how much money the Temples must me bringing in to the area, it seemed that it wasn't just the backpacker scene that was here visiting the temples. The Temples themselves ... read more

Following the Mekong We left Ho Chi Minh City evetually to go on a two day tour of the Mekong Delta which would take us into Cambodia straight through to it's capital of Phnom Penh. We would eventually follow the river for a thousand or so miles all the way up to Northern Laos and it was to be a constant feature throughout the next month or so of our trip. The first day we started out early (another 6am start, yawn) and the first part of the trip involved visiting a floating market before heading to another market area where we were shown how to make all kinds of Vietnamese deserts and delicacies and were given as many free samples as we wanted (lots) we managed to cram a lot of free popcorn into our ... read more