We woke up on our first morning in Ubud to the cockrels and the ducks and a whole world of animal noises but we were very glad to be there. We found ourselves a gorgeous organic cafe called (wait for it!) Kafe which served amazing food which agreed with my tablets, brown rice, porridge etc. thank goodness. It's been an absolute pain being in asia and not being able to eat white rice, I used to love chow mein but i think my love affair with noodles is well and truly over!!! So we spent a few days wandering around the [View Full Entry]

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As we arrived at Hanoi airport we were treated to a beautiful sunset as a final farewell to Vietnam, the photo's aren't the best and due to my recent photo/blog jealousy issues we decided that as we were passing through no less than four airports in the next day that we would buy ourselves a lovely shiny new camera at one of the many duty free shops i would no doubt make Tel walk around! From Hanoi we had a short hour and a half flight to Bangkok, it was our 7th Air Asia flight during our trip so far and [View Full Entry]

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Hi, apologies for the very long delay in blogs, Indonesia has been pretty short on wi fi!! Anyway, rewind back to Vietnam for the meantime. We arrived back in Hanoi from our Ha Long bay trip and spent our last few days in Vietnam exploring the city. We visited a couple of museums; one of which was the Hanoi Hilton, the name the American Prisoners gave to "La Maison Central". The prison had been used to house Vietnamese revolutionaries in the early and mid 20th century and then American Prisoners of War during the Vietnam war; one famous resident of which [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Hanoi pretty early and shared a taxi from the airport with an Aussie guy we sat next to on the plane and a Canadian couple we had seen on and off through our Highlands trip. All of the guidebooks warn you about the various hotel and trip scams in Hanoi and of course our taxi tried to get us into his hotel as is usal in asia. Eventually we managed to get dropped off by the lake and after an hour and a half of lugging our bags about we found an ok hotel that didn't cost the [View Full Entry]

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We were quite sad to say goodbye to TiTi and Sam but after another amazing lunch it was time to part company and they dropped us off at a very sweet hotel in Hoi An. When we got out of the car we realised it was a lot hotter there than the highlands so we were glad to have a pool and a nice air conditioned room to escape from the heat. Just as we were heading to the pool an almighty storm started and so our first night in Hoi An was spent eating won ton soup in our room [View Full Entry]

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Day four was spent whizzing along the west Ho Chi Minh trail enjoying the views; stopping off for coconuts and visiting waterfalls, pagoda's, war memorials, brick factories and various other little stops along the way. At our overnight stop in Kon Tum we enjoyed an amazing vietnamese barbecue of wild boar, venison and goat to name but a few (I was assured none was dog or cat!), 17 beers and all for the princely sum of £4. Our first stop on day five was to a catholic wooden church and the orphanage attached to it; the Banna tribe in the highlands [View Full Entry]

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Unfortunately the hot water was also broken in Dalat Towers so we were treated to an early cold shower and a quick breakfast before we were back on the road. We spent the morning at a Pagoda or two and then we went to see what is known in Dalat as the crazy house, a mental boutique treehouse hotel a Vietnamese architect has created, it was very cool and i so wished we had tried to sleep in the treehouse instead!!! We drove for about 3 hours before stopping for an incredible lunch that cost about 50p (Roll your own spring [View Full Entry]

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We arrived prompt (The Vietnamese are very punctual, not like Thai, Laos and Cambodia) and met our guide (Titi) and our driver (Sam) who would be with us on our 6 day trip. When we left there were a group going out on bikes and I was slightly gutted I hadn't managed to conquer my fears and get on a bike, that would all be gone pretty quickly after i realised just how hot it would be on a bike in 34C, aaaahhhhh - a whole airconditioned car to ourselves driving through the most incredible scenery with the ipod on full [View Full Entry]

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We left Saigon at abot 8pm and made our way to the train station. When we found our carriage we were quite pleasantly surprised (way better than India but not quite Thailand) and up until about ten minutes before the train was due to leave we had the cabin to ourselves; we hoped that might be the case for the 10 hour journey but just as the train was about to pull away we were joined by a very sweet Viatnamese family and their two kids. We settlled ourselves into the top bunks with the world largest bags strategically placed and [View Full Entry]

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We left Saigon at stupid o clock in the morning and set out on the three hour bus journey to the Mekong Delta. The scenery was very pretty and the journey passed pretty quickly. We got off the bus and went on a boat to see a floating market, it wasn’t that busy as it was getting on for midday but now the real magical mystery tour began. When we booked the trip (Again, why have we not learned by now!!) we were given a choice of three different options, basically, they were all the same and our two days involved [View Full Entry]

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