Dalat, home to Easy Riders, Dalat wine, flowers and when we were there plenty of rain!!!! After a few weeks on the coast, we decided it was time to head inland to the Central Highlands. It was gorgeous up there apart from the rain. We didn’t do much when we arrived, we really wanted to do the Easy Rider Tour from Dalat to HCMC but it was 3 to 5 days which we didn’t have. The Easy Rider Tours are local chaps who take you from one destination to another along the Ho Chi Min Highway across the Central Highlands on [View Full Entry]

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Ahhh the Heat, Sun and Gorgeous Beach of Nha Trang. We spent 3 nights here, and moved every night, for many reasons, one being the first place we stayed was $22 where everywhere else was $10. We booked because G got nervous that there would be no where, it turned out we were offered rooms for $5 on our walk to our $22 place, Backpackers Hotel. This was nice but they wouldn’t let us check in till 2pm, having arrived at 6am we weren’t that impressed, luckily we were so excited about getting to the beach we said okay, donned our [View Full Entry]

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We headed to Hoi’ an after another early start and annoyingly spending 2 hours driving around Hue picking people up! We arrived in Hoi’ an at the usual hotel the bus decides to stop at with both us being quickly woken up and a bit disorientated with a woman waving a map of Hoi’ an in our faces showing where her hotel (the Grasslands) is in relation to Hoi’ an - ‘300 metres” she continually assures me. Half of the bus was alighting and walking down the road, so we decided to look at this room she’s selling, the hotel has [View Full Entry]

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After a 15 hour journey on the lovely sleeper bus from Hanoi - note the sarcasm these sleeper buses are not lovely, your feet lay in a enclosed box reminiscent of a coffin and if you are taller than 5 foot its rather uncomfortable, if you are a large chap /chapess you will discover that it is rather narrow, T opts for the centre aisle as the window seats offer a view but only the movement of one arm as the other is pressed against the window but for $15 you can’t complain too much! The bus is a coach and [View Full Entry]

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We spent some time in Hanoi just chilling and taking in the madness that is the motorbike capital. Our first day few days were spent getting to know the old quarter and finding the best places for a good beer and snack. For some reason we have got lazy and have no eagerness to visit places of interest. We bumped into Jake the Aussie who did our magical mystery tour with us on our second day and he showed us to a fab Bia Hoi place, this place is 3,000 dong more than the place all the tourists go too, so [View Full Entry]

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The event started off in a pretty normal manner we booked an overnight bus to take us to the border town of PingXiang from Yangshou. We found the notion of not ‘needing’ a ticket a tad strange but not completely unheard of. So as the clock struck 18:30 our taxi van arrived; we boarded the van with Jake an Aussie dude and headed to Yangshou. We arrived in Yangshou and the taxi driver walked us around to the CITS ticket office and relayed our information to the woman and then leaves, the CITS women (number 2 in the chain) gives us [View Full Entry]

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After our first experience of a hard sleeper which wasn’t as bad as we were expecting, and was a bit more than half the price of a soft sleeper, we arrived in Guilin. We jumped into a taxi and headed to our home for the night, Backstreet Youth Hostel 120yn per night for a big double and en-suite. After a quick freshen up we headed out into the heat excitedly in our shorts (it had been a few weeks since we had been able to don these items of clothing). We weren’t really up for much sightseeing so we had a [View Full Entry]

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After lunch following our trek of the Tiger Leaping Gorge, we boarded a private mini bus and headed 2 hours south to Lijiang. The bus journey was pretty uneventful and upon arriving in Lijiang we followed the Sarah and Callum the aussies to the hostel they were booked in. Panba Guesthouse, 120yn for a massive double room and ensuite, it was lush but reminded us we were back on the tourist trail, where were our 60yn rooms???? Unfortunately it chucked it down when we arrived and pretty much stayed that way the entire time we were there. Lijiang however is gorgeous [View Full Entry]

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Our next adventure was to head to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. The gorge one of the deepest in the world, measures 16km long and is 3900m from the Jinsha River that cuts its way through to the top of the Haha mountain. We were determined to do this 2 day trek as we have read that surprise surprise the Chinese want to build at least 8 dams along the Yangzi river. Once the proposed dams are completed the dams will flood more than 13000 hectares of prime farmland, force over 100,000 people to relocate and wash away local culture, history, unique [View Full Entry]

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The government restrictions imposed on Tibet has made the journey a pain in the arse and expensive. The government has imposed a permit system thus making travelling to Tibet illegal without a permit, on top of this they stipulate that you have to go on a private tour which is expensive. After finding all this out plus the fact that you can’t go off and do your own stuff, you are herded thought racing from one check point to the other, we decided to abandon our Tibetan adventure till another time. Instead we decided to travel from Chengdu through western Sichuan [View Full Entry]

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