From Siem Reap we caught a bus to Bangkok where we spent a few days before flying to Bali. We stayed on the Khao San Road, and having just been in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia we were definitely back in the land of the 'Golden Arches' with avengeance! The street was swarming with Western tourists and neon lights. Bars and stalls lined the street, selling t-shirts, jewelery, pirate DVDs and CDs, hair braiding, pad thai and souvenirs. Perhaps because of its notoriety as a "crazy" place, Khao San (and as it turned out, Bangkok in general) seemed to us to be [View Full Entry]

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Our bus into Cambodia was a welcome smooth and short journey - only 6 hours to Phnom Penh and the bus conductor handled the border crossing admin for us. We stopped just over the border at a rather dodgy looking roadside cafe with a canteen style set up of prepared food in a glass cabinet. All the other tourists headed for the snack counter, but we had decided that the best approach to bus journeys is to eat a meal when the bus driver eats and you'll feel much better than incesently snacking on crisps and peanuts! We arrived in Phnom [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Hue, we were picked up soon after breakfast on foot to go and catch the bus to Hoi An and walked through the streets in a crocodile line style, picking up extra tourists from various accommodation on route. The bus itself turned out to be a really comfy sleeper bus - laughable that we only had it for a 4 hour journey, after the grotty night bus we had had a couple of days earlier we certainly weren't complaining! We stopped off halfway (a strangely long 45 minute stop as it wasn't a meal time and the journey was so [View Full Entry]

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The border crossing into Vietnam was an experience! We climbed off the bus and walked up the road to Laos customs. Inside the building we joined a scrummage of people, the ones from our bus were all scrabbling to give their passports to the bus conductor who threw them over the counter to get stamped. We then waited in the crowd til they were returned one by one and passed through the crowd of people. We walked back to the bus where we were told not to get back on but to walk to Vietnam immigration. So, along with one or [View Full Entry]

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Our first day in Luang Phabang was drizzley, so we spent it wandering the little streets and tiny alleyways getting a feel for the place, thinking that it would be better to save any "sights" for a sunnier day. The whole city felt a lot like a sleepy French town with wooden shutters on the windows and a sedentary pace of life. We walked to the end of the Old City where the river bends back on itself and the land forms a point. Here we saw lots of young orange-robed monks having their lunch break in a Wat and it [View Full Entry]

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We took a flight from Singapore via Bangkok to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. Our guesthouse was a really great place, it had a swimming pool and lovely terrace, all for 3 pounds each, which after the place in Singapore was a dream. We had a Singha beer on the terrace before catching a tuk-tuk to the night markets -a huge network of stalls selling souvenirs of all sorts - textiles, t-shirts, jewellery, fake Luis Vuitton bags etc. We were really pleasantly suprised - the markets were pretty chilled out with no hassle from the stall holders and lots of interesting [View Full Entry]

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After the Perhentian Islands, we caught a sleeper train to Singapore which meant a 2 hour wait on Wakaf Baru station with literally no Malaysian Ringits to our name (there are no ATMs on the Perhentians), we were hoping that Singapore dollars were accepted on the train, as otherwise we would be going hungry without dinner or breakfast (this didn't seem promising as the man at the ticket office said that only Ringits were accepted!) When it arrived the train was great - we had a little bunk each with fresh white sheets, curtains, and a little window to outside. It [View Full Entry]

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Having flown back to Kuala Lumpur late at night, we were picked up the next morning for our Elephant tour! We were expecting a bus or minibus but a man came to drive us by car. We went first to the Batu Caves which are a Hindu place of worship on the outskirts of KL. You can see the giant gloden statue from miles around and we climbed a huge staircase next to it to reach the mouth of the cave. Inside, once we'd passed the souvenir stalls, the caves were a very dramatic space , like a natural vaulted cathedral. [View Full Entry]

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We could see almost nothing of Kuala Lumpur until we touched down on the runway due to a thick heat haze sitting over the city! The airport is about 45 minutes from the centre and it was very strange to be traveling on such an orderly, British looking road network - driving on the left on tarmacked roads with cars actually giving way! After checking in to a little guesthouse we went in search of food to a nearby shopping centre which again seemed very Western, but as soon as we reached the food court on the top floor there was [View Full Entry]

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From Puerto Pricessa on Palawan we flew to Cebu City where we stayed for one night before heading to the pier early the next morning to catch a ferry to the island of Bohol. At the ferry terminal, we were pretty suprised to hear cockadoodledoos as soon as we sat down - various passengers had cardboard boxes with holes in at their feet and were constantly fussing over their prize fighting cocks. The ferry turned out to be another fine example of "Filipino Time" (the philosophy in the Philippines, similar to the Spanish "manjana" but more extreme, ie meaning maybe sometime [View Full Entry]

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