Hue is the historical capital of Vietnam and has some major tourist spots which take a day to see including the Citadel, Forbidden Purple City, war museum, boat trip and the Thien Mu Pagoda. I was only there for 2 days and to be honest the sights and the city itself were a disappointment. The DMZ tour however was great and although it was a long day (6am-6pm) it gave you a good picture of how the Vietnam War was fought in this region by visiting the Khe Sanh US firebase which had a museum, crashed helicopters, old shells and bombs and a bunker. We also saw the Ho Chi Minh trail but the best sight was the Vinh Moc tunnels. These tunnels gave an excellent picture of how the local population dealt with and survived ... read more

Hi everyone. Thanks for your comments and messages over the last few weeks. Its great to hear from you all and that the blogs are coming out ok and readable!!. Keep them coming and also let me know how things are going back home and any gossip!!. Well surprise surprise I'm about 3 weeks behind again on blogs and have got ones on Hoi An, Hue and Saigon to publish but I'll get there soon enough. So Sapa seems a vague and distant memory but I'll try and describe what it was like, with the help of my trusty guidebook. Quote from guidebook 'SAPA is a magical combination of alpine landscapes, ethnic cultures and bracing mountain air' It was discovered by a Jesuit missionary in 1918 and in the 1920's the French decided to develop SAPA. ... read more

Vientiane has been my favourite city so far. Its small with a population of only 200,000.00. We spent 2 days there and on the first night had a great meal on the river where you cook your own food on these barbecues they put in the middle of the table. There is not much to do in terms of sightseeing but its great to just wonder the streets and soak up the local atmosphere. The hotel was central and had a nice courtyard where you could hang out. Purchased a Beer Laos t-shirt and a few souvineers. The rucksack is starting to get full now I'll have to send some stuff back from Bangkok before I head down to Oz. This was also the part of the trip where it started to get cold! After a ... read more

After CM we drove to Chiang Khong in order to cross the border into Laos. CK is a small town with not much there but we found a nice place to eat and a hippie bar. The hotel overlooked the Mekong river and had fab sunrise views at 5.30am. It was soon time to pile into some Tuk Tuks and clear Thai immigration to cross the Mekong to Laos soil and join our boat crew for a 2 day journey down the Mekong. Clearing Laos immigration was pretty quick and then we changed some Thai Bahts into Laos Kip ( 20,000 kip to 1 dollar so you get lots of notes!!). The scenary along the Mekong was superb and we stopped off at Pak Beng for the night which is a nice sleepy town. On the ... read more

Hi hope everyone back home is doing ok. Its taken me ages to upload pictures in this internet cafe so I'll keep the text short on this one and do some longer blogs from Bangkok next week. Ko Lipe is in the Ko Tarutao National Marine Park and is an amazing place! After a 7 hour boat journey from Ko Lanta through stunning scenary to the Maylasian border it was more sun, sea and sand! The accomodation at the Varin was superb, the people are really friendly, barbecues and bars on the beach, lovely little village with shops and no sign of any rain so far! Its Friday morning at the moment and I'm back in Lanta on Long beach, going on a trip to the Emerald Cave 2moro on Ko Mook then its a big ... read more