One of the best things the French left behind (for backpackers anyway) was the 10,000kip baguette. 80c in other words for a full baguette. The choice of filling is simple and revolves around chicken or bacon and a bit of simple salad! They fry the bread first before filling it, just to make it extra tasty. Luang Prabang has more baguette roll stands than it needs. This does not take away from the place and this town is an excellent place to introduce yourself to the Laos way of life. We got a really nice room with TV and nice big red wood floors for around €3. You cant beat that. Tim, Sarah and Marc from our boat journey stayed there as well and we all headed out for something to eat that evening. After a ... read more

Our 2nd class train journey from Phitsanluk was a bit unadventurous. The air-con was flowing and the fans running overtime, so it was a case of trying to keep warm more than anything else. We also got dinner included with our ticket just to make the journey that little bit more unadventurous. The train arrived as usual about an hour late. A nice security man came from his office to tell us this in English as the announcement was made in Thai. He obviously felt sorry for us and said ‘come, VIP room’. We followed and he brought us to a nice air conditioned room and left us in there. This train journey was certainly a lot easier than the 3rd class trip we last took! We arrived in Chiang Mai and got a tuk tuk ... read more

We had two options to get to Ayutthaya from Kanchanaburi. One was €20 for the two of us directly to it and the other was €4 and not so direct! We decided to take the €4 option. The first bus we got on was cramped and busy and had five seats in a row (2 & 3) where most buses have four (2 & 2). We sat in the three seater part and hoped no one would want to sit beside us. We were wrong there! The journey was funny and Thai transport amuses me as much as it annoys me. The bus leaves the station 40mins late then drives 100m and stops to pick up another load. Then another 100m until you lose count of the amount of times it stops. Maybe and just maybe ... read more

We were glad to be leaving Malaysia after spending nearly a month there. Not that there is anything wrong with the country, its just not the best place we have been. There aren’t many sights to see and everything involves doing an expensive tour. The tours though are excellent, but with a budget in mind there were a bit out of our range. We did do some but probably not as many as we would have liked too. The food was also very repetitive with the option of fried rice, fried noodles or chicken curry. Ok, it wasn’t that bad, but it was quite boring. The people were not as friendly as other countries we have met and we weren’t quite sure was that because they were reserved or just plain unfriendly. We didn’t come across ... read more

After our freezing cold bus trip to Miri we had a quick look on the air Asia website and got a 45min flight to Kota Kinabalu instead of a 10hr bus journey. It wasn’t worth another bone crunching, artic cold night, travelling through the Borneo jungle. Although a little more expensive it was worth it. It was strange getting a flight for 45mins, if that’s what it even was! We got our taxi outside the airport and like all Asian taxi drivers before him, he hadn’t a clue where we wanted to go. Three or four phone call later (on my phone), and a lot of searching he finally got us there. We were quickly checked in and soon out again in search of food. Fed and watered we returned to the hostel and watch a ... read more