The arrival by train into big cities has never quite been the way I imagined when dreaming of this trip many months ago. The only time I remember a distinct change from country to city was pulling into KL from Singapore. We left behind a green and tropical Malaysian rural setting to be greeted by gritty action, neon lights and fast-paced business men and women vying for spots on the ultra modern metro. So when we pull into Moskwa Train Station on 15 June, I am not surprised to encounter an ordinary looking platform and not much else. We grab our [View Full Entry]

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10 June - after many months of research and mixed reports from travel agents, helpful and not so helpful acquaintances, fellow travellers and random internet-based bloggers, we finally make our way to Beijing Railway Station and find our train - the Chinese Trans-Mongolian K3, destination Moscow! We meet our friendly carriage attendants who point us in the direction of our cabin. After some backpack maneuvering through the narrow corridor, we get a chance to take in our home for the next five nights. It’s decked out in dark wooden veneer with two bunk beds, a good sized table in the [View Full Entry]

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3 June - the carriage attendant knocks on our door and lets us know Nanning is here! This means food. YES! We gulp weird noodle soup with funny floaty bits - it’s possibly the best weird noodle soup with floaty bits I’ve ever tasted. We stock up on fruit and hope we can make it until Beijing tomorrow at midday. Around 3pm, Victor has had enough and decides there must be some food somewhere on our train. He arms himself with my iSpeak Chinese-loaded iPod and goes in search. He returns minutes later with a very wide grin. There’s food, of [View Full Entry]

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30 Mayo. Llegamos a Hanoi sin espalda nuevamente. Asi que nos vamos a dormir directamente. Por la tarde damos un paseo por uno de los barrios de Hanoi, Old town y conocemos un poquito mas la vida de los de Vietnam. 31 Mayo. En un tour nos vamos a Halong Bay, una zona en el mar donde esta llena de islas pero que son montanas. Ver fotos. Todo muy bonito en un barco 'delux' ya que la habitacion tiene aire acondicionado y todo, que a las 6 de la manana del dia siguiente cortan. Aqui nos encontramos con otra pareja de [View Full Entry]

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26 Mayo. Cojemos un sleeper-bus (autobus con camas) a las 8 am que nos llevara hasta Hoi An, unos 1000km. El viaje llevara unas 24 horas. Hasta la hora de dormir todo muy bien, leemos, etc. Llega la hora de dormir. Great party. Eso era un terremoto constante. Unos baches en las carreteras de Vietnam. No recomendamos estos Sleeper-buses a nadie. Las camas estan hechas a medida de los asiaticos. Asi que imaginate, entre eso, el terremoto constante y lo locos que estan cuando conducen... No pegamos ojo!!! Aunque los de Vietnam se pegan toda la noche durmiendo. Estos Asiaticos duermen [View Full Entry]

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23 May: We arrive in Ho Chi Minh City (otherwise known to everyone as Saigon, including me from now on) in the evening and are so very happy that our kind bus driver has actually brought us directly to the backpacker area. We don't have to negotiate our way around a dark and dirty bus station to find the centre of town - what a nice surprise. With a spring in our step, we go in search of a hotel and find a very reasonable place. A visit to 'Pho 24' is just what we need and we ponder the meaning [View Full Entry]

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20 May: The alarm rings at 5:30am and we reluctantly drag ourselves out of bed to begin the infamously painful and lengthy border crossing to Siem Reap in Cambodia via Poipet. We have done lots of research about this ‘crossing’ and know there will be con artists about so we take a deep breath and dive into our day. Our first stop is Aranyprathet, which is as far as you can go using an organised bus service. We have read tuktuk drivers here are renowned for having visa touts as friends and ours is no exception. Lucky for us, we already [View Full Entry]

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18 May: Today, Victor and I say goodbye to Koh Tao and head for Bangkok via Chumpon in a very slick speedboat - just slightly superior to the bumpy and ancient night ferry we caught from Surat Thani a few days earlier… Due to our last experience with agent-planned trips, we opt to organise each step of the journey ourselves but actually find it would have been easier, this time, to get a ticket all the way to Bangkok from cosy Turtle Island. It’s all in the name of the quintessential ''backpackering'' (I had to put it in somewhere, didn’t I?) [View Full Entry]

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13 May 2009 - Today begins and we know it’s going to be a long 24 hours. We jump on a ferry going to Satun in Thailand and discover once we arrive that most foreigners are only allowed a 15-day entry visa. This does not affect us but many other travellers are rather disgruntled. Incidentally, travel agencies in Thailand have cashed in on this and now advertise ‘visa trips’, presumably to Burma. Our next leg seems only possible by using one of the many travel agents at the ferry station so we pay way too much for a supposedly seamless trip [View Full Entry]

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Hola de nuevo a esa gente que nos sigue en nuestra escapada por Asia. Os voy a soltar un rollete que tratare que sea leve pero intenso, que se entienda de que estoy hablando. Ahora mismo estoy en un cyber de estos en Pulau Langkawi, en Malaysia. Tocare los puntos que mas me han sorprendido de esta maravillosa isla al norte de Malaysia, muy cerquita de Thailand, y tocare cuatro puntos sobre otra isla que estuvimos anteriormente llamada Pulau Pinang, un poquito mas pabajo que Pulau Langkawi. Pulau Pinang, es una isla que la comida, los zumos naturales son super baratos [View Full Entry]

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