Suzanne here... We'd treated ourselves to a nice little resort for Christmas, booking months before, and were quite excited about it. Nothing too flash, just twelve villas in a garden with a pool and bar / restaurant but it looked lovely online. We arrived at Alona Royal Palm early and the room wasn't ready so had a couple of beers by the pool. It was a beautiful setting but unfortunately a staff meeting was in progress and the owner was having a right moan. Not very professional, it made us feel a bit uncomfortable. Actually this bad first impression wasn't representative of the rest of our stay as he turned out to be really nice. In any case, we decided to make ourselves scarce and explore the area. Alona Beach semed nice, decent sandy beach and ... read more

David here... We arrived at the Cebu North bus terminal later than anticipated due to the excessive traffic all around the city. It was so bad that we contemplated tackling the 1 hour walk to our hotel however that would've been stupid in the heat, even though it was early evening. We got off the bus and joined the queue for the white metered taxi's and it was not long until we were near the front. When second in the queue, we were ushered forward by the attendant and given the taxi that had just pulled in. We didn't think much of it at the time but we were behind 2 local women and we wished we had insisted that they took the taxi regardless of what the driver wanted, but we weren't that on the ... read more

David here... We got up at 07:30 for breakfast, which was actually pretty good at The Gallery. Decent coffee, different choices each day, the cheesy mash, pork in mushroom sauce and chicken in black pepper sauce being my favourites. No idea why they kept the lids of the food open and the air conditioning blasting at it to make it cold. Anyway, we packed up our things and headed down to check out at 08:30 so we would be ready for our pick up 10 minutes later. No sooner had we checked out than our minivan arrived. There were no seats together available but we could sit one in front of the other. Suzanne quickly realised that she would be better off in the front seat instead of next to the 2 Japanese girls who had ... read more

David here... We arrived at Bangkoks Don Meung airport after a short and pleasant flight. We made our way to immigration and this is where the airport rage started. We joined a queue but quickly spotted that there was only one desk open so decided to move to another queue. As we joined a much smaller queue the attendants opened up a barrier and a swarm of Chinese people made their way over to where we now were. I don't mind waiting in line, I am British after all and consider myself an expert queuer. What I do mind is people pushing in front, which appears to be exactly what these particular Chinese people thought queues were for. 3 'gentlemen' in particular tried to push past us despite other people in the queue behind us. I ... read more

Suzanne here... Most people get the night bus from Inle to Bagan, and on reflection perhaps we should have done too. But we'd already booked and paid for the Bagan hotel and didn't want to waste a night. Plus we fancied seeing the scenery. There was a morning option, a mini bus, leaving at 7am, so we booked it. In fact, as this Asia, it didn't pick us up until 7.30am, collected a few others, then parked up at their office around the corner from our hotel for no apparent reason for 20 minutes. We departed at about 8.20am, with me cursing the loss of the extra hour I could have had in bed (I really am not a morning person). The journey was bearable. A mini bus is never going to be as comfortable as ... read more