We made our way back to Bangkok airport and boarded our 6th Air Asia flight to Ho Chi Minh City clutching a crumpled bit of paper proving we were supposedly allowed to enter the country and collect our visa's on arrival. After some confusion and form filling in and $50 we exited the airport to find our giant bags on the floor all alone, i guess the entry process wasn't that quick after all!! After quite a while bartering with taxi drivers we got a cab through rush hour Saigon (I have never seen so many bikes) and made our way [View Full Entry]

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We spent a lovely few days lying by the pool and at the beach; on our first trip to white sand beach, when we were eating lunch, mum got bitten by a very hairy and mean looking spider, considering that’s how Peter Parker became Spiderman I think mum may now be SpiderNan!!!! As we hadn’t seen much of the island we booked ourselves onto an unknown Koh Chang day trip, it started off with a trip to a Mahout village and an hour on an elephant. Mum was quite hesitant to start with but took to it pretty quickly, I however [View Full Entry]

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We got to the airport very early as we wanted to get out the motel from hell ASAP so wandered around for about 4 hours waiting for mum and Peter. We weren’t allowed to wait right outside arrivals but after a bit of confusion Judith and Alan appeared from the crowds! It was so lovely to see Mum and it was hard to believe it had been almost six months since I had seen her. We got a cab and made our way to the Millennium Hilton that mum had booked for our stay in Bangkok. The evening was spent eating [View Full Entry]

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Apologies for the very long delay in our blogs, after spending a few days around the temples we decided to stay in Siem Reap for another few days and just soak up the atmosphere and take advantage of the amazing bars and restaurants there! After a total of 11 stormy but lovely days in Siem Reap we decided it was time to move on to Pnomh Penh before heading back to Bangkok to meet Mummily. The bus journey passed very quickly and the roads were pretty impressive in comparison to the north and we arrived in PP to a sea of [View Full Entry]

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We started day two at the much more reasonable time of 8, again Mr Lucky had some sort of illness and was unable to take us himself but, he has now decided we can build him a website for his tuk tuk services, so, we were dispatched with his brother to take lots of photo’s of his tuk tuk for his website! Weird man! We started off at Pre Rup and a few of the smaller temples which were all very beautiful but we felt what we had seen on day one had spoiled it for the rest!! From the main [View Full Entry]

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The bus journey the second day was pretty uneventful and after a quick toilet/water/banana break we were in Siem Reap bus station within about 7 hours. Now the real hard work started; finding somewhere to stay. We have started to notice over the last 4-6 weeks that the numbers of our fellow travellers has decreased somewhat, we aren't sure whether it's because of 'the global economic recession' or because it is now rainy season but we thought that this might bode well in our search for a hotel. On arrival at the bus station we were greeted by a slightly over [View Full Entry]

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We left 4000 islands at eight on another little boat and made our way across (again!) to the mainland. We waited around for ages for another boatload of people and were then squeezed into a little minibus for the bumpy fifteen minute trip to the border. We had to give our passports to Laos customs so they could stamp them to say we had left and then we walked abot 200m across no man's land and then into Cambodia. First we had to fill in our visa form and hand over the $20 fee along with an extra dollar for the [View Full Entry]

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We left early the next morning on a double bamboo raft type ferry type thing with all the daily commuters who were going to work - scooters and all! We then got a mini bus (we ended up on the end of row ejector seat type things again!) to 4000 islands in the very south of Laos. The roads were petty bumpy and things had gotten a lot less developed since we had left Pakse and it was really lovely to get see real local life and talk to proper villagers. Because of the massive storm the night before, when we [View Full Entry]

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We were joined on our two hour boat road by a French couple and we sailed along the Mekong in the little boat to Champasak. It was lovely to see the small villages by the river, which are totally different to the north and see the hundreds of fisherman who were at their office for the day, looked like very hot hard work to me! We arrived at the jetty (A bamboo raft with a chair on) in Champasak and could quickly see it was a pretty tiny place, the reason we had stopped there was to go and see Wat [View Full Entry]

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The tuk tuk drivers were quite fierce and we got the impression straight away that there are a lot of people here trying to make money from not a lot of tourists. After looking at about 6 different rooms we settled on the Hotel Sala Champa which looks lovely but is pretty soulless (another lonely planet recommendation!). We spent the day trying to sort onward transport and accommodation and to book a trip to the nearby Boloven Plateau for the next day. After much to-in and fro-ing and some very high prices (£120 quid for a trip to a waterfall with [View Full Entry]

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