Steph and Catherine

The border journey was interesting as we left around 8am and the bus didn't come until around 9.30. The bus then went off road down a tiny dirt track that led to the Official Cambodia-Vietnam border. We crossed easily with our pre-bought Vietnamese Visa and were soon travelling to the port town ready for our ferry to the next stop on our trip, our island retreat. Oh the way our driver told us that there had been an armed police raid of the ferries...this was a complete lie and it turned out he had just failed to call the ferry and tell them to reserve our seats. After some pretty serious fist-banging at the hands of a French couple we decided there was nothing we could do except book into a hotel and the wait the ... read more

From Laos we crossed the border with not a penny to our name as there were no cash points on the islands. As we had to pay for the Cambodian Visa we had to borrow money from our coach driver with a $10 charge! The border crossing was a cheeky affair as you had to pay for everything. $1 for the stamp out and then in, $1 for a health check etc. We then had a pretty long bus journey to our first stop: Siam Reap. After leaving our cell at around 8am we arrived in Siam Reap at mid-night. We were exhausted and so went to bed for an early night and a lie in. We spent the following day looking around the city which was pretty small and relatively quiet. There was a river ... read more

The bus to Vang Vieng was a disgusting 6 hour affair going around winding and twisting roads that lined the hills and mountains of the area. I did not enjoy the journey and took a fair few travel sickness tablets to help! Although, it has to be said that the scenery was beautiful which meant that Anna took a few of the infamous out of the window photos! We finally made it after what seemed like hours to Vang Vieng, a small town that has been completely over-run by tourists. The main attraction for the area is the Tubing (an activity that involves hiring a huge rubber ring and floating down river stopping on the way at riverside bars that have a collection of zip-lines, rope swings and slides) and as such a lot of travellers ... read more

We set off for the border after an insect-free lie in and a quick stop at the bakery for breakfast. The bus took about 2 hours until we arrived in Chiang Khong. We got a tuk tuk to the river where we went to passport control and officially left Thailand. We crossed the river by a long boat to get to Laos where we walked up the hill to get our Laos Visa. From here we found a guesthouse and booked onto ‘The Gibbon Experience’ - a three day trip into the jungle to live like gibbons! We were to stay in a tree house and zip-wire from platform to platform around the jungle! We had to stay a day and night in Huay Xia, the border town which turned out to be pretty dull! The ... read more

We left Kanchanaburi in a minibus for Ayuthaya (the old capital of thailand)having had to bypass Bangkok due to the troubles! we only had a few hours there but we managed to efficiently locate a steak restaurant for dinner! then it was onwards to chiang mai on the overnight train which was not the best of nights as the train jostled about really badly so it felt like we were being just thrown about in our bunks! as we arrived in chiang mai we saw lots of red flags and people at the train station and found out that as the troops had stormed the bangkok barricade they had now come here and there was a curfew in place! brilliant! to add insult to serious injury the main cinema complex was shut down completely so watching ... read more