The drive to Dalat was nauseatingly pleasant. We spent the better part of the afternoon winding our way up and around up and around up and around the highlands working our way into the city. Motion sickness aside the views were amazing, and the amount of lush forested areas made us reminiscent of home. We had a plan for Dalat; book a one day tour with a group called the easy riders, spend another day biking around ourselves, and then head to Nha Trang on our open ended bus ticket. We pulled into the Sinh Cafe hotel (the company we booked our bus tickets with) and agreed that we would check out the ‘Peace cafe and hotel’ and walked out onto the street, only to be greeted by two of the easy riders! They took ... read more

We arrived in Sihanoukville after a 13 hour journey; Kratie to Phnom Penh, changed buses and then Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville. Arriving after dark we caught a tuk tuk, and after checking out a few places wound up at ‘Coasters’ right on the beach. We had hopes of staying in Sihanoukville for 5 or 6 days, enjoying some of the world cup, catching some sun on the beach and checking out the islands. We wound up staying for three days, sleeping in late the first day, we woke up to overcast skies that lead to rain and spent the day on our balcony staying dry. Our second day we rented a motorbike, hoping to explore a bit of the area and get our Vietnamese Visa’s processed. We made it about 5 minutes away from our guesthouse ... read more

The trip from Bangkok We left bright and early at 8am for our trip into Cambodia. We traveled by bus for about 5 hours to the border town of Aranya Prathet (better known for the Cambodia side of Poi Pet) and were quickly hassled out of $35 US each for our 3 month visa’s (as opposed to the $20 US that the guidebook and most other people we had spoken with told us it would be). We went through Thai customs, walked for about 20 minutes in no man’s land past a massive casino, entered Cambodia and were transported to the local bus station where we waited for an hour before finally leaving for Siem Reap. The bus ride into town wasn’t as bad as I had remembered, they had improved the condition of the ... read more

Our trip from Langkawi to Ko Lanta was interesting to say the least. We thought the trip would be 6 to 8 hours, it turned into another all day affair. We were stamped out of Malaysia on Langkawi and boarded a boat made for midgets with assigned seating, there was zero leg room (imagine Scott, 6”2’ crammed into a window seat with no leg room) we waited until the boat got moving and found an empty row near the back where we could stretch out a bit more. The boat ride lasted about one hour and we were shuffles through Thai immigration with no problems. About a half an hour wait and we were taxied to the Bus station in Satun where we had a two hour wait mixed with confusion as to which bus we ... read more

Everything in Malaysia is Aircon. Guesthouses offer mostly aircon rooms, stores are aircon, buses are aircon, and it’s hard to escape. Our bus from Georgetown left at 11am, we hoped on to the sound of ‘Hammertime” and rocked out to the soundtrack from Pretty woman three times over on the journey up to the Cameron Highlands in our aircon minibus. We didn’t feel the change in weather until finally arriving because of the aircon, and were surprised to find that it was just as cool outside as inside, of course we were at about 1500 m above sea level. The Cameron Highlands were amazing. Beautiful rolling hills filled with strawberry fields and thousands of acres of tea plantations in every direction. We stayed at a place called Father’s guesthouse in an old metal framed ‘nissin hut’ ... read more