Next stop: Malaysia. Our first port of call will be the Perhentian Islands, two tiny specks off the coast of Terengganu Province on the eastern side of peninsular Malaysia. The trip from Koh Tao is quite straightforward (in principle...). Back on mainland Thailand in the city of Chumphon, Alex and I catch another southbound sleeper all the way to the Thai-Malaysian border. The train leaves Chumphon at about midnight and is due to arrive in Sungai Kolok (the Thai border town) at about noon the following day. After our night on the train I wake up and look out of the [View Full Entry]

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It's time to leave Viet Nam...what an adventure this country has been ! From the busy waterways of the Mekong Delta to the soaring peaks of Ha Long Bay, passing through the crumbling palaces of Hué, our time in Viet Nam has been a continuous stream of colour, flavour and noise. This country has more than a smidgen of the Wild West to it which, although at times overwhelming, has made the past three week an exhilarating ride. On our last evening in Ha Noi we went to see a performance at the Water-Puppet Theatre - a ancient and uniquely Vietnamese [View Full Entry]

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A certain guidebook describes Hà Nội as "assuming the role of capital of the Socialist Republic of Việt Nam with style and dignity". We therefore felt justified in expecting a visit to the city to put a finishing touch of calm to the all-consuming craziness that is this nation. Fat chance. We had barely stepped out of the minibus that took us to the city centre from Nội Bài airport that we realised our expectations were a bit off...The short walk to our hotel took us through a veritable cloud of mopeds, trishaws and bicycles, emitting as a group a symphony [View Full Entry]

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More than 600km separate Huế and our next destination, Hà Nội, largest and capital city of the Socialist Republic of Việt Nam. As we have already found out 600km equals overnight bus, except one even longer than the Nha Trang - Hội An leg. It is also a route that gets very bad press from visitors to Việt Nam for appalling service, slow buses, exceptionally horrific driving (even for here) and so on...Another option is the train, which thunders to Hà Nội at an exhilarating average speed of 35km/h. Ho ho ho...We know when to cut our losses so all the [View Full Entry]

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Hurrah ! We have come to the last long-distance bus journey in Việt Nam - the four-hour drive from Hội An to Huế. We have found the bus system here to be quite well-organised, but it puts you in contact with nothing but other travellers and does not give the opportunity to meet any Vietnamese people. Ultimately though, given Việt Nam's appalling driving conditions, these buses represent the safest way of getting around the country. We leave Hội An on the same day as our visit to Mỹ Sơn, which had us up at 5am to see the ruins before it [View Full Entry]

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It's six in the morning. Fresh (or not-so-fresh) off our night bus from Nha Trang, we set off on a couple of xe ôm to find our hotel, which I had booked the day before. We are staying in a tiny five-room hotel going by the name Minh A. It is a 17th-century house which up until a few years ago was inhabited by the descendants of a Hội An merchant family. Because commerce is what Hội An was, and is, built on. Also known in those early days as Faifo, Hội An was an important commercial hub in the 16th [View Full Entry]

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Time to leave the Mekong Delta - it has been a truly fascinating experience. We have observed a way of life so different from our own, and very different even from the rest of Việt Nam. Our next stop in Việt Nam are the beaches of Mũi Né and Nha Trang, but these are too far away from the Delta to make a direct hop possible. Thus it is with a smidgen of trepidation that Alex and I decide to pause for one night in Sài Gòn (hereafter HCMC). We have read, and heard, some interesting stories about this city. "The [View Full Entry]

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We got back to Cần Thơ from our trip to the floating markets around lunchtime. After a quick bite in Cần Thơ, we caught a minibus heading towards Sài Gòn (the Vietnamese are adamant that their language is monosyllabic so I'll stick to their spellings) a.k.a. Hồ Chí Minh City. Unsurprisingly, government employees and policemen aside, Southern Vietnamese people prefer the name Sài Gòn. We don't intend to go to Sài Gòn though - our intended destination is Vĩnh Long, a small city located one Mekong-branch along from Cần Thơ. At Cần Thơ bus [View Full Entry]

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There isn't a huge amount to see and do in Châu Đốc. The morning after our arrival, we catch a minibus to Cần Thơ pronounced c'n-ter), some three hours or so away from Châu Đốc. Which brings me to another thing...when it comes to trying out new languages I'm usually quite adventurous, but with Vietnamese I think I might as well give up already. As soon as we arrived from the border, the switch from Indian-derived scripts (as in Thai, Lao and Khmer) to Latin alphabet was particularly striking...Even though we couldn't even begin to guess what anything [View Full Entry]

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Today we head across the border into Việt Nam, a country neither I nor Alex have visited before. I am looking forward to this part of the trip immensely, in spite of warnings I have been given regarding travel in this country (on which more in the next few entries). We have slightly more than three weeks here, as we have a flight booked out of Hà Nội to Bangkok on 12th August. There are three land border crossings between Cambodia and Việt Nam, of which one is located on the Mekong River. Crossing the border at this point involves a [View Full Entry]

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