Because of the little matter of the unrest in Bangkok, Singapore Air were kind enough to change our tickets for us so we were able to spend a few more days in their fine city rather than risk getting shot at. As we mentioned in our earlier blog Singapore isn’t cheap so we were back to hostels. This time we tried Sleepy Sams, in the Arab Quarter, as little India disappointed a bit last time, and what a good choice it was. Nice rooms, great little cafe, nice staff, a really chilled place. We caught the MRT (Underground) from the airport and the hostel was a 5 minute walk from the station but, as would become the norm for the next few days, it was chucking it down. One thing we have noticed in Asia, especially ... read more

We were off to Sukau, our rainforest adventure and our base for 3 nights would be the Sukau Greenview B&B located on the banks of the Kinabatangan River, which is Sabah’s longest river, measuring in at 560km. The area is Malaysia’s largest forested flood plain and has oxbow lakes, mangrove swamps and grass swamps. Although Kinabatangan was designated a wildlife sanctuary in 1999 villages and agricultural development merge with the protected areas, but despite this there was apparently a host of wildlife to see along its banks. Once again the tours we looked into for going up river and jungle trekking seemed really expensive, but by booking the B&B we could please ourselves which river boat tours we took and how many over the three days. The B&B was good enough, with an adequate bedroom and ... read more

The flight from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur, KL from here on in, was uneventful other than the amusing sight of Hanoi’s main international airport check-in which was more like Tenerife airport during my holidays as a kid rather than an ‘international hub’ as they claim. After you check in, huge queues despite having checked in online, a little man pops up and picks your bag up off the carousel and walks off to another part of the airport, will we ever see them again? Doubtful. We paid the extra couple of pounds for Air Asia’s ‘Hot Seats’ which usually results in a row to yourself. Nice on a 5hr flight. We landed in KL and, hold on a minute, are we still in Asia? It was remarkable, as soon as we stepped out of the airport ... read more

For our journey from Hue to Hanoi we decided to forsake the really uncomfortable overnight bus and try the overnight train - but obviously selected the soft bunks in a cabin of 4. With a view to still making the bus if the train turned out to be really awful, we made our way to the station to inspect our next form of transport. To our suprise it actually seemed quite comfortable, even though our bunks were the two upper ones and being slightly vertically challenged this could prove interesting. As we made our way to our cabin we passed some 4 berths which held families of 8 or 9 people and hoped that we would not be crammed into one of these. Lucky for us it was only a family of 4 on the bottom ... read more

We had booked an open bus ticket (on a VIP bus!) to take us from Ho Chi Minh City up through Vietnam as this meant we could get off the bus at our chosen stops and we didn’t have to worry about booking onward transport. We chose the option that would take us to Da Lat, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hue and finally Hanoi. This would involve two stages being undertaken at night on a sleeper bus, so we were keen to see how good these would be. Our first destination for a couple of nights was the city of Da Lat, nestled amongst the hills of the Lang Bian Plateau and formed around the man-made Xuan Huong Lake, which would see us at an elevation of just under 1500m. Unlike the steamy Ho Chi Minh ... read more