The music started at 5am after which, sleep was almost impossible. It came from a loudspeaker mounted on a dilapidated building facing the square. Sunrise was still an hour away but - by the time it was light - the market square was already busy with people going about their daily business. Market traders who had spent the night asleep at their stalls were re-arranging produce or chatting with their neighbours. Barrow boys with wooden carts laden with fruit, sacks of rice or tins of paint, ferried purchases or stock to and from the market. Cows walked nonchalantly through the streets, and in amongst the crowds of people and piles of rank smelling rubbish weaved the ever present motorcycle taxis, known locally as "moto-dop" or more simply as a "moto". The music that had started at ... read more

Vientiane was hot: almost unbearably so. Even sitting at a street cafe sipping a cold drink, I could feel the sweat running down my chest and soaking uncomfortably into the waistband of my trousers. A stop in the nation's capital - home to a surprisingly small population of around 200,000 people - was almost inevitable on the long trip south but for us, it was a necessary evil as we wanted to organise onward visas for Cambodia. The Laos / Cambodian crossing at Voen Kham was not an officially recognised border entry or exit point by the Governments of either country. Increasingly however, adventurous travellers were managing to get through and - since Thailand had introduced new immigration laws from early November that would affect us - we had decided to extend our stay in Indochina ... read more

There is a saying in travel that says, "It is not the destination that matters but the journey" and nowhere on our trip so far has this been more true than on the 2-day boat trip down the Mekong in Laos. We had left Thailand on a fish-tailed ferry boat for the short crossing over to Hauy Xai, lugging our packs up the boat ramp with a last, fond look back at Thailand before going through customs procedures and entering Laos. I had wanted to do the Mekong boat trip ever since reading Dervla Murphy's account of a similar journey undertaken in the nineteen nineties. Admitedly, things had changed since then - it had become a lot more popular and commercialised for one thing but the same old rice barges were still being used today and ... read more

2nd NOV : Doi Kong, Mae Hong Son The air at the top of the hill was much cooler than it was down below and the view extended out across the mountains of Myanmar (Burma) to the west. We had hitched a lift up to the mountaintop temple of Wat Doi Kong Mu with a Thai couple, who like us, were visiting to participate in festival celebrations at the temple. The celebrations were part of Loy Kratong, the "Festival of Light", and Thai visitors were sending up paper balloons beneath which hung a small cup with a candle inside. Make a wish or a prayer and send it to the Gods in a hot air balloon, that was the general idea anyway. "Look at the balloons Laurie", said Viv pointing upwards at the little trail of ... read more

No matter how prepared I thought we were Bangkok was still a shock to the system - particularly after the cool, leafy confines of home in Cornwall. The temperature is the first thing you notice. You feel it the moment you step outside the air-conditioned halls of the airport: it’s like walking into a solid wall of wet heat. Within minutes, you’re sweating profusely and wondering if you’ll ever get used to the humidity. As if that isn’t enough to contend with, you quickly realise that you’ve somehow got to cope with Bangkok as well, no mean feat when you’re lugging a backpack that suddenly feels like it’s full of bricks. Bangkok is somewhere you either love or hate. Home to around 6,000,000 inhabitants, the city is noisy, polluted and choked with traffic day and night. ... read more