“Alright mate”, “Innit”, “F**kin' 'Ell”- Welcome to Koh Phangan. The island is world famous for it's Full Moon Party (a beach rave fuelled by psychedelic drugs and cocktails in beach buckets) and disembarking from our boat, this is all you hear from numerous touts, trying to sell you their rooms. Spotting the English man isn't too hard and I had had enough of the cliches and colloquialisms so told everyone to get lost. We finally took one guy up on his bungalows and went off to have a look. They were tucked away on a private stretch of beach, just 10 [View Full Entry]

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Coming from our deserted beach with 6-8hour electric every day, it was a shock to see neon lights beckoning the ferry into Port on Samui. The rain hammered as we disembarked and jumped onto a minibus to the North coast on Maenam beach. We looked at a variety of bungalows and settled for the cheapest one! A short walk to the beach, a cool little Rasta Bar tucked under the rocks at the end of it, and silence! We hired a motorbike to explore the island and spent our first day touring and winning a free holiday. After taking in a [View Full Entry]

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We flew into Krabi airport on a special offer flight, after the night train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. It turned out the shuttle bus had already left, so we had to pay the earth to get a taxi to Ao Nang. Getting out of the taxi we found it was the wrong pier, so had to sprint, backpacks and all, yelling for the taxi to come back. 2nd time lucky, we got to the right place, where we waited to catch a longtail boat to our destination, Hat Ton Sai. Hat Ton Sai, a secluded beach cutoff from the world [View Full Entry]

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Our border crossing from Cambodia is notoriously the most grueling route in SE Asia. The “road” from Siem Reap turns to dirt, dust and bunkers, almost as if bombed in a recent air strike. The car attacked the road at 80km/h for just over 3 hours to get us into Thailand. I would have shares in suspension and tyres if I drove that road daily! Once at the border we managed to get onward tickets to Bangkok, but bartered with the driver to drop us at the airport en route. We spent our time in the nations most expensive restaurant repacking [View Full Entry]

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Stunning doesn't start to sum up the huge remains of the Angkor temples just North of Siem Reap. We took a tour by tuk-tuk out into the jungle in search of the ruins, famed on the backpacker circuit and an icon of Cambodia itself. We saw so many temples in the one day, each slightly different from the one before, on all scales and stages of delapidation. The Angkor Wat grounds were huge and after 1 1/2 hours we had navigated the main entrance inner walls and the summit towers overlooking the spectacular remains of one of humankinds greatest architectural achievements. [View Full Entry]

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The bus to Phnom Penh was quite good, and due to a lack of people onboard, we could fully recline our seats into an almost horizontal position. There was a little phaffing at the border, but we had come to expect this of Vietnam. Luckily, our second encounter with Vietnamese immigration officials was considerably faster and less worrying than the first. There was an instant stark contrast between the two countries. Many people were farming rice in the open flats. The land was quite flooded and lots of kids ran around beside the road, wearing either tops or bottoms. Despite the [View Full Entry]

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We took a day trip to the mekong delta from HCMC. It was arefreshing change to have an enthusiastic guide, who spoke good English, and to only pay the price LISTED on the wall...ahhh. The bus ride out to Mekong City was filled with factual information from our guide. We arrived and clambered onto very small, very worn old wooden boats. The water is a filthy brown, due to running through a number of countries before meeting the sea in Vietnam. People seem to have very little respect or care for the water. It was quite common to see floating rubbish [View Full Entry]

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Ho Chi Minh City, aka. Saigon. South Vietnam's capital, renamed in 1975 after a tank crashed into the government palace ending the North South War. We have only had two days and one very late night, but for a city allegedly notorious for crime, prostitution and hassle, we have found it quite the opposite. Our flight left Danang over 1 hour late. We arrived in Saigon somewhere around 1.15 in the morning. Our taxi driver looked delighted to finally have his fare, and took us through the deserted streets, running red lights, weaving the streets to our guesthouse. After a minimal [View Full Entry]

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We took a morning bus from Hue to Hoi An, calling in at a Vietnamese beach resort and 'Marble Mountain', another not-so-great tourist attraction on route. The drive in parts revealed some spectacular scenery, of paddy fields complete with people in conical hats, lagoons strung with huge fishing nets on bamboo poles, small villages, bomb damaged buildings... and in the distance the mountains over the Laos border. We arrived in Hoi An at midday, and walked around a few hotels until we got a decent price. We found out that by asking in Vietnamese (Alex is becoming quite a pro at [View Full Entry]

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Our friends Christine and Mathieu had decided to stick around and we all hired a driver and private taxi for the day, travelling back North to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). After the French occupation, Vietnam was divided in half on the 17th paralell. North was run by the Republic of Vietnam, and the Americans came in to try and maintain democracy in South. The war blared ironically, with particularly bad consequences, vividly captured in B&W photos, in the DMZ. Our tour stopped first for a Vietnamese Coffee. The stuff is like refined rocket-fuel. If the water's safe, you have about 30 [View Full Entry]

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