LivLiv

So that was it. As I write this, we have been back in London a couple of weeks and have snapped back into our normal lives. But what a truly unforgettable trip this was. From our very first night in Asia where we held hands and settled into our massage chairs in Ho Chi Minh City, to when we had our first taste of pho sat on tiny stools on the corner of a Ho Chi Minh street and breathed in the smells of Vietnam; when we first encountered the seedy, ridiculously OTT metropolis that is Bangkok, when we rode on the motorbike through Samui, had the best massage of my life (shimmery bum!) and dodged snakes falling from trees; when we saw in the New Year in Phnom Penh and visited the horror that is ... read more

Overnight train from Vientiane to Bangkok, 4-5 February I've always loved the idea of overnight trains. The whole idea of waking up with the world rushing by and travelling through exotic lands while you sleep reminds me a bit of a fairytale. The last (and only) overnight train I've taken was in Egypt where my friend J and I were ridiculously excited about every little thing, from the train conductor's hat to the belly dancer who came to the 'entertainment' carriage. This time I was just as excited, perhaps even more so to see the look on C's face, my princess of a boyfriend who loves a bit of a luxury. First of all, he couldn't fit into our cabin. He was too tall for the door frame so had to do a comical, John Cleese-style ... read more

Chiang Mai, 28–31 January Luang Prabang, 31 January–3 February Chiang Mai is one of those places that conjures up all sorts of images in my mind – thick jungle, elephants treading over muddy rivers and an exotic wonderland. In reality, when C and I arrived we were greeted by a very drab, very grey city that did not seem to live up to any of our expectations or, indeed, anything we had heard about it before. We headed out from our guesthouse (at £16 a night, we had a balcony, hot water and a gorgeous room - I love a bargain) into the warm, humid afternoon to explore the town. We wandered through the gateway in the Old City walls as we figured this would be the prettiest part of the city, at which point it ... read more

Bagan, 21-25 January The sun was setting as we landed at Nyaung U airport, Bagan. It says a lot about how unspoilt Burma is that the airport at one of its main tourist attractions is so tiny there are not even any baggage carousels and the entire departure lounge consists of two small-ish rooms. Our flight from Inle Lake had travelled via Mandalay – as there are so many flights every day in Burma and distances between destinations are very short, it's common to take indirect flights and just wait on the tarmac for 15 minutes while people get on and off before setting off again. It was in this way that we ended up taking the shortest flight of the trip, and indeed my entire life - the entire journey from Mandalay to Bagan including ... read more

Inle Lake, 17-21 January We landed at Heho Airport in Inle Lake from Yangon after my very first flight in a propeller plane. I had made the mistake of reading many nightmare stories about planes crashing in Burma as their internal aircraft is not approved by international safety standards due to sanctions. However, after C reassuring me ("you wouldn't not drive on the M25 because of a crash") it was all good again and soon after taking off from Yangon, I was completely transfixed by the views of the country below us as it transformed from sparse, flat, green expanse into rice and paddy fields dotted by pagodas into a towering mountain range (still dotted by pagodas). I have never seen a country with quite so many pagodas in my life. Heho airport was, without doubt, ... read more