The first sign that we are moving up to a more luxurious standard of trip comes when the courtesy bus provided by Koh Phangan's Santhiya Resort picks us up from our Koh Samui hotel 15 minutes ahead of schedule. In the last 4 months we have never had an on-time pick up, never mind an early one. Unfortunately bad weather means the hotel's speedboat cannot take us and instead we join the Cattamaran along with what feels like most of the tourists on Koh Samui. The boat is full and we end up sitting on a vent, the first wave to [View Full Entry]

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Anybody with an interest in the 1990's Manchester music scene, would have been as pleasantly surprised as I was to see who jumped into the back of our minivan as we left Koh Lanta bound for Koh Samui. No.....not Sean Ryder, Bez or even Morrisey but Tim Booth - the lead singer of the band James. Me and Tim had a good chat, although he wasn't for discussing Rock 'n' Roll and 'Madchester' , mainly I think, because he had his well to do wife and little son 'Lukes' in tow. But he took a great interest in our trip and [View Full Entry]

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After an emotional goodbye at Phi Phi Hill Resort, including a hug from a staff member for me as well as a gift of a purse made from coconut (possibly out of the lost property box) we made our way to Ko Lanta, our final stop on Thailand's West coast. Checking into the Pavilion Resort we were pleased to see the place lived up to the brochure we had seen in Phi Phi. Set right on the beach and with a pool, we even managed to do a deal with the hotel which kept us under our 10 quid budget. Ko [View Full Entry]

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Getting from A to B in Asia has finally become something I look forward to. We jump aboard boats of varying size and safety standards and head straight to the front, lean back, hang our legs over the side and start singing “her name was Rio and she dances…etc….etc.” People look at us a little funny but we don’t care - ‘we’re on our holidays!!’ The pace of our trip has slowed right down and although the prices have gone right up, we spent so little of our budget in the first three months that we ain’t gonna complain at paying [View Full Entry]

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We are slowly moving down in our standards of overnight train journeys. Our latest (11 hours from Bangkok en route to Krabi) was a compartment/dormitory with around 20 beds each with a curtain; this was Matt’s favourite so far as he felt like he was in a den!! Our fellow passengers were a friendly enough gang though the relaxed atmosphere was ruined somewhat by the middle aged German couple who stood drinking in the area just outside our compartment shouting “it’s only Rock ‘n’ Roll and I like it” whilst throwing beer bottles onto the tracks, later they actu [View Full Entry]

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Most people leave Siam Reap bound for Bangkok and to be honest so would we have done, but although stories of 18 hour journeys and over turned buses seem to tick the boxes of some travellers, nearly 3 months into our adventure and we still find the A to B element boring and slightly stressfull, so if an alternative to break up a journey presents itself then we are tempted to take it. We hadn't had a boat trip since Laos and had even started to look back on that particular adventure with some affection, so a 4 hour boat trip [View Full Entry]

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.....population 60,000,000" say the kids selling postcards, bangles and books in Siem Reap. It's pretty repetitive but is done by such sweet kids that it's impossible to get angry.....and it beats the adults whose response is to say "Lovely jubbley" or reel off a list of Premiership players. Siem Reap is a fascinating place, its main pull is the temples of Angkor including the most famous Angkor Wat. The temples bring in masses of tourists ranging from backpackers to rich western tour groups. The hotels, restaurants and bars cater for such diverse groups with $10 guesthouses alongside famou [View Full Entry]

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On April 17th, the year before I was born a guerilla army named the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh. The country had been through years of civil war leading up to this point so its people took the arrival of Pol Pot's army as a new beginning and the start of peace. Like in our last stop in Saigon, the Americans had involved themselves so when the Khmer Rouge soldiers told the innocent people of Phnom Penh to evacuate the city for the countryside they did so fearing US B52 bombings. The truth was that the Americans had left Cambodia as [View Full Entry]

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Arriving in Saigon hotel-less seemed a pretty bad idea when we got there at 8pm (2hrs later than our 2 quid bus promised but at that price what can you do??)and guesthouse after guesthouse was full. Eventually we found a decent place $5 over budget (even after bargaining). The Southern Hotel is a tall thin building that looks like a strong breeze would knock it over, but it was home for the duration of Saigon and even had a lift!! We have met people doing the opposite journey to us who said that Saigon is even busier than Hanoi, first impressions [View Full Entry]

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Firstly in response to comments regarding our experiences in Vietnam so far. We have been away for 2 months now so can hardly call ourselves seasoned travellers, but we will refuse to see the world through 'rose coloured spectacles' like so many travellers we meet. We experience the good the bad and the ugly and the number of times we see people pointing at a pile of ugly bricks announcing "How wonderful and Beautiful it is!" simply baffles us. Still so early on in our travels we have already seen sights that will stay with us for the rest of our [View Full Entry]

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