On Sunday we got a bus from Ninh Binh back to Hanoi where we had a few hours to kill before catching a train that evening. We arrived at about 2pm and me and Amy decided to split off from the group for a few hours to have a nice romantic meal to ourselves. We found a lovely restaurant called Green Mango and sat down for an excellent couple of pizzas before meeting back up with the group at about 6pm and heading to the train station to catch our sleeper train to Lao Cai city. We had been joined by [View Full Entry]

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We arrived back in Ninh Binh on Friday for some some free time over the weekend. On Friday night me and Amy just chilled out because we were still exhaused from our trek and Amy had the beginnings of a cold. On Saturday morning Amy was still feeling a bit ropey so I joined the rest of the group and set out for the day's activities while Amy tried to sleep off her bug in the room. We had heard about some hot springs near Ninh Binh that sounded cool so Giang had organised a minibus to pick us up from [View Full Entry]

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On Monday 29th we left the hotel in Ninh Binh and drove for about five hours until we reached the town of Da Lat. At the top of a mountain just outside Da Lat is Truc Lam Temple, a temple that is apparently famous throughout northern Vietnam and was to be our home for the next two nights while we learned about Buddhism and meditation. For most people in the group this was their first experience of temple life but for me and Amy (plus a couple of others) it was a chance to brush up on our mind-clearing and leg-crossing [View Full Entry]

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After leaving Hanoi we drove for a couple of hours through scenic rice fields to our second destination, Ninh Binh. We checked into our rooms and had some food before going to a local pub for a couple of beers, followed by an early night. The next day we had language lessons with Giang (I now know how to spell Andy's proper Vietnamese name!) and learnt how to say all of the basic words, plus some useful phrases and how to count all the way to a million - very useful when even a bottle of water costs 5,000 dong! We [View Full Entry]

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On Sunday 21st June we checked out of the Sports Hotel and walked a couple of streets away to Classic 1 Hotel where we would meet the rest of the group on our program. The tour organiser had already booked rooms for us and Amy was in a girls dorm while I was in with two other guys. We went to our respective rooms and met the only two other people who had arrived, Doug and another Amy. After introductions we decided to head out to City View Cafe for a cold drink and to get to know each other. By [View Full Entry]

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When we had landed in Hanoi, collected our bags and been through airport immigration (Vietnam deserves kukos as the only place that immigration have even looked twice at me now I have long hair and my passport photo still shows a skinhead), we went outside to arrange transport to the centre of town. The minibus run by Vietnam Airlines was only two dollars, or the equivalent in the brilliantly named Vietnamese Dong, so we jumped in. When it came to paying however, the guy told me that two dollars was 50,000 dong. Luckily I had done my homework and knew that [View Full Entry]

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Arriving back in Siem Reap on the 10th June we checked back into Popular Guesthouse (getting a free t shirt seeing as it was our third time!) and went out for a final meal and drink before taking Diane to the airport for an arduous sounding journey back to the UK the next morning. We had previously organised our Vietnam visa to start on the 19th June, 2 days before the start of a 4 week program we had previously booked onto, so still had 8 days to spend in Cambodia. We had debated going to Kep or Kampot on the [View Full Entry]

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After a fairly comfortable five hour bus journey from Sihanoukville we arrived in the centre of one of the craziest places we have been to yet, Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh. The bus company had fenced the tuk tuk drivers and hotel touts off like caged animals for us while we got our bags off the bus so once we had sorted ourselves out we went to select one of the baying mob and asked to be taken to a lonely planet recommended place, yet another Royal Guesthouse. As expected it wasn't the kind of place you would find royalty staying in [View Full Entry]

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After a busy couple of days touring round the temples we thought it would be a good idea to spend a couple of days chilling out by the beach before heading to the chaotic capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. Only the south east corner of the country has a coast line and the most famous beach area is Sihanoukville, a port town with several beaches and deserted tropical islands a few miles out to sea. We booked onto a fairly comfortable night bus and managed to sleep most of the 11 hour journey there. When we arrived at around 7am we [View Full Entry]

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The Temples of Angkor are the heart and soul of Cambodia and are a source of enormous pride and inspiration to all Cambodians. The main temple, Angkor Wat, is on the national flag, the national beer, bottles of water, the national cigarettes and pretty much anything else that is made in Cambodia and even some things that aren't. The temples were built mostly between the 9th and 13th centuries and served as capital of the vast Khmer Empire that stretched between Burma and Vietnam. The city of Angkor contained one million people at a time when London was a little town [View Full Entry]

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