We left crummy Dalat behind wishing we’d never bothered and headed straight for the Vietnamese coast to a town called Mui Ne. The bus journey was much like all the rest, long, hot, the bus driver trying hard to travel at the fastest speed possible and no toilet stops. On arrival we were greeted by the bluest of sunny blue skies and tallest palm trees beautifully placed along the seas edge, wonderful. We quickly came to realise that Mui Ne is a holiday resort and one that is aimed at the wealthier traveling westerner. As such there is an abundance of [View Full Entry]

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After spending 10 days in the UNESCO heritage city of Luang Prabang, Loas where no one was allowed to beep their horns we took a flight with Loas airlines on a plane which looked something like a WW2 bomber, propellers on the outside... that kind of thing. Luckily inside was brand new. After a quick, calm hour long flight we landed in Hanoi to begin the next leg of our journey.....Vietnam. The calm, continued when we got off the plane, a hassle free jaunt through customs, visa checks and hardly the hordes of taxi drivers - known here as the taxi [View Full Entry]

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Be prepared this is a biggie! So I'll pick up where I left off and that is in a small town called Phonsavan in North East Laos where in lies 'The Plain of Jars'... Across dozens of sites these ancient 'jars' are scattered with no particular design, they vary in size and shape and only a few of their lids remain - the others presumably destroyed one way or another. The jars themselves are interesting enough, dating back 2500-3000 years, there has been no discovery of their use. A few guesses are that they once contained human remains, or were perhaps [View Full Entry]

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After putting the final full stop on the last blog entry it was full steam ahead to Northern Thailand and a town called Pai (pronounced pie). Only a few hours on a mini-bus from Chiang Mai on a particularly winding road through the mountains. As it was roasting hot when we arrived we decide to go in search of a swimming pool nearby. This turned out to be a quite a mooch, we walked about 5 miles in the midday sun up snake pass (as i nicknamed it after seeing 2 dead snakes along the way - not good!) before realising [View Full Entry]

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Since leaving Kanchanburi and our last cultural excursion it's been full steam ahead across Thailand via lots and lots of ruins: First we headed further west to Sangkhlaburi, which felt much like an end of the road town, not surprising as it is on the border of Burma, it's very quiet compared to our previous places of interest and kind of like a scene from texas chain saw masacre. After a scenic bus journey through the hills of Thailand and past the banks of the river Kwai we arrived and commenced the 2k march in the blistering midday sun at the [View Full Entry]

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Since our last blog..... We said goodbye to Susan's sister who had popped in for a short visit on her way back to England on the evening of the 2nd and then headed to the train station to get the night train to Surat Thani in order to ferry it over to the islands. The journey was pretty long and not quite as plush as expected but we got beds and covers and a chance to chill out a bit. We arrived at Surat Thani around 5am and got a bus to the docks where we were herded on to [View Full Entry]

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So we made it through Indonesia's many forms of transport and meetings with Orangutans and here we are in Bangkok, we've been here for a week so here is the run down of the major points of interest: Storms - Its the wet season here in south Asia and from the bus journey into Bangkok and every night following there has been down pours, deafening thunder and lightning that lights up the whole sky. Last night the Khao San Road was about two feet deep all the way along and all the surrounding streets and bars were almost the same. Its [View Full Entry]

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19th - 21st Still lots more chilling going on at Lake Toba and not an awful lot else. Bought ourselves some little souvenirs and decided the 22nd would be out last day here as we were starting to feel restless. 22nd We decided to head to Bukit Lawang - a jungle area in the North of Sumatra with an Orangutan sanctuary. As it was a two leg journey of 3/4 hours a piece we decided to stay a night in Medan en route - Sumatra's capital. It took us 4 hours in another cramped, sweaty mini-bus to get there. Medan was [View Full Entry]

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11th Aug We were a bit anxious about our 15 hour journey today especially as we'd also booked this one with our friend 'Jake', the Indo Del Boy/Con-man. Before we set off we booked out flights to Bangkok setting off on the 27th for the next leg of our adventure in Thailand. Back to the journey.....We were hoping to leave a little later in the day so that we could arrive at Lake Toba in time to get the ferry rather than be stranded in the middle of the night but when the driver turned up at 12 with a car [View Full Entry]

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hello all, as another week bites the dust it is time for another installment from the past week and its adventures. 4th Aug We decided we'd have a lie in for once, unfortunately we were woken once again at 4.30 for another prayer session so that was that out the window. We headed to the local markets for a couple of hours to see if we could see anything worth purchasing, there wasn't - unless we wanted a giant bag of dried fish with eyes. Later on we headed to a local park called Panorama Park, so called because of it's [View Full Entry]

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