Lordy is it hot? 38 degrees is mighty warm. And we have just visited a charcoal factory - my heart goes out to the workers. They are muslim women, and it is too hot for them to wear their scarves, and they work in appalling conditions for around 20 RM a day - around $7NZ. Criminal and dreadful working conditions too. No photos - it made me feel sick. On the other hand, we started the day at a butterfy farm, we thought it might be a bit tacky/ho hum, but it turned out to be seriously interesting with a range of critters - including snakes, (lots of them), scorpions, hamsters, rabbits, buttterflies of course, scarab beetles, stick and leaf insects and in a carefully tended, if chaotic, garden. Lots of the expected pix of brave ... read more

KL has been interesting, largely for the sights and the shopping. However it is a very hot, sticky city infested with foul belching ancient buses, too many people and too many cars. Pedestrians are hardly catered for - unusual in such a developed city. Of course we did their sky tower thing, and our hotel is directly opposite the very beautiful and elegant twin towers - once the highest buildings in the world. There are lots of memorials to various people and events here, ranging from independence, the Brits' military exploits and sultans, and the buildings - the ones we are supposed to look at anyway - many of them are simply lovely. The eastern and Indian influences are strong with all sorts of lovely arches and cleverly designed windows, also lots of porches even in ... read more

No wifi in Melakka. Or, at least there is wifi in Malakka if you go to the hotel cafe and pay for it. I can wait, I reckon. The train had been somewhat primitive and then we discovered we were the only people on the tour with a large van and a large Indian man whose name has still to be discovered. It was the old story, driving for ages, and then rush rush rush when we got somewhere. Our little plaintive demands for a stop for water, lunch and an ATM (we still only had Singapore dollars) were swept aside with difficulties of the one way road system i.e. too difficult to stop seeing as there were no parks. It was, Brian and Mary, like the 'view the Munich Games Venue' when we were on ... read more

Halong Bay - it is as beautiful a we were told, and is nowhere as dirty and polluted as we were led to believe. It is truly stunning scenery and the boat is as luxurious as the Avalon European river vessels, just in a different way. We left Hanoi early - ish, and the usual van trip with lots of horns beeping, alarming inside passing, and the most extraordinary (and often huge) loads on motor bikes. Sadly, along with the usual chickens, pigs, sacks, boxes and so on we also saw two bikes with cages packed with German Shepherd pups destined for the cookhouse Not for us! Also, unusually, we saw two accidents - these are rare despite the somewhat casual nod to road rules. It is rice harvest time up here in the north of ... read more

We travelled by train from Hoi An to Hue. It is supposedly one of the world's great train rides - but the haze, smog, dirty windows and fact that we were on the wrong side of the train facing backwards made it a little difficult to work out why. But hey, we weren't at work, and had a packet of Oreo cookies to console us. It was dark in Hue, but the drive from the airport was interesting - much cleaner and some pretty smart street lighting here. Rooms at the Huong Giang Hotel are gorgeous, but staff look at me blankly when I ask if this was once a school. I read a great book recently by Uyen Nicole Duong, called Daughters of the River Huong (the first of an interesting trilogy) talking about her ... read more