We left Vietnam on the sleeper train, all comfortably settled into the middle and bottom bunks and nervously waiting to cross the Chinese border in the middle of the night. We had heard many tales of guards with big guns confiscating tourist’s guidebooks - due to Taiwan being listed as an individual sovereign state. So with the guide books buried deeply within all of my underwear, we apprehensively rolled into the border, to see what this country, that has a somewhat tinged international reputation, was really like. Firstly, the border crossing went extremely smoothly. The guards completely ignored us (perhaps due to the fact that it was 3am) and we returned to our beds feeling a little bit silly about the underwear precaution but nonetheless, officially in China with guidebook in tow. We finally arrived at ... read more

After another uncomfortable journey on the sleeper bus we arrived in Hoi An, which boasts a very authentic, French feeling, old town and more importantly (being the culture fanatics we are) a glut of shops selling very cheap tailor made clothing. When we got off the bus a small, but very fierce and rather scary, young girl with arms the size of tree trunks, quickly dragged us to a guesthouse (we were a bit too scared to argue.) It turned out to be lovely and was far enough from the main strip to be peaceful but still only a quick walk away. The girl then tried to drag us straight to her tailor shop to show us all the materials and that she had, we managed to escape promising to visit later, a promise we had ... read more

So the next day we awoke at 7.45am to the realisation that we had slept though our alarm and the bus to Mui Ne was leaving at 8am. In a blind panic, we hurriedly packed all of our bags (the contents of which being spread out all over our room - tidiness still not being a strong point of ours.) We arrived at the bus station with about 2 minutes to spare and were greeted by our very first experience of a sleeper bus. The bus was set out like a normal bus with the exception that instead of having seats it had narrow little bunk beds stacked on top of each other. We were shown to the top back bunk beds where we had to work out how to stow our little bags, before settling ... read more

After spending a couple of days in Phnom Penh browsing around the bustling city we decided to head down to Sinnokville on Cambodia’s coastline for a little holiday away from the holiday (... such a hard life.) We arrived in the evening, and after dumping our stuff in a very basic little bamboo hut, we grabbed some dinner before heading down to a bar on the beach. The beach was beautiful, even at night, we sat right by the water’s edge with a 25 cent beer and my first glass of red wine since Australia and watched as the biggest, orange moon arose over the water, feeling completely relaxed. The next morning, we booked a trip to Bamboo Island for the following day, before heading to the beach to sunbathe and swim. The beach seemed much ... read more

The journey from Vientiane to Siem Reap was fairly trouble free, despite the not quite knowing when to get off the train in Bangkok and a troublesome tuk-tuk driver we had to take us to the Thai-Cambodian border, trying to rip us off at the Cambodian embassy. He insisted we couldn’t get a visa on arrival which we had been told we defiantly could and that we would have to pay an extra $10 to sort it out at the embassy. We nearly relented, thinking back to our past experiences of us believing people are trying to hustle us when they are in fact telling the truth and being helpful, however we (nervously) stuck to our guns and went straight to the border where we easily got our visa on arrival and felt rather triumphant ... read more