After an exhausting four days of, erm, shopping in Hoi An we decided to recharge our batteries and our credit cards with a brief stop at China Beach, since it’s only 18km away on the coastal road to Danang. It turned out to be a great decision and a one night stop over turned into a four day seafood, surf and beer frenzy at what has got to be one of the best beaches ever.

Read the rest of this entry »

I apologise for the lame blog title.  Even after two beers and a mojito (in a fetching little courtyard under a bamboo tree – how very Graham Greene)  neither Jeannie or I could come up with anything better.

I can’t believe it’s nine days since we blogged last – we’ve covered a lot of Vietnam since leaving the comfort of our luxurious hotel in Siagon. We’ve also met up with Rob and Jade, who we first met in Jodhpur in March, and we’re now working our way though Vietnam together.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re very gloomy this morning as we prepare to leave the little cocoon of luxury we’ve been nestled in for the past week and return to the world of cold showers and hard matresses. We arrived in Vietnam last Sunday and proceeded directly to Saigon to meet my old dears (mum and grandma), who’d just arrived for a two week visit, and found them in a very pretty colonial hotel smack in the centre of the posh district. When they offered to book us a room for a couple of nights it would have been rude to say no…’We’ll move out to the backpacker area in a day or two though’ we said, conscious of the room rates…eight days later we’re still here, having become almost a permanent fixture by the swimming pool every afternoon. Whoopsy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quickie – our map is now working again – http://www.jamespoyser.com/travels/our-map/

We’ve just spent a couple of nights in Siem Reap – a bustling colonial town in north west Cambodia.  It’s a charming, welcome change from the chaos of Phnom Penh.  It’s still rather hot here but do not fret dear reader, the 30 pence pints of Angkor Beer are proving just the tonic.  However, as Jeannie keeps reminding me we’re not in Siem Reap for the cheap beer and scrumptious food (nor the ‘happy’ massages).  We’re here to visit the temples of Angkor – a spectacular legacy of the once formidable Khmer empire.

Read the rest of this entry »

Phew – it’s a whole lot more energetic and frenetic here; from the inexhaustible attempts of restaurants owners, tuk tuk drivers and tour guides to extract our cash (through fair means and foul) to the bonkers traffic that we for some reason decided to cycle through on our first day, we’ve had a bit of a culture shock since we finally tore ourselves away from Laos last week.

The morning after my monkey attack I wasn’t experiencing any rabies symptoms so we embarked on another truly shit thirteen hour journey from the Laos border to Phnom Penh, arriving at about midnight in a stinking mood – getting into unfamiliar cities late at night is always quite unpleasant and Phnom Penh’s cheap guesthouse area is not at its best in the dark – but within ten minutes of getting off the bus we’d been offered opium, hash, coke and speed so we soon perked up again. Actually we didn’t purchase any, we just had a good night’s sleep and woke up to a less scary looking city.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, sorry for the radio silence, we’ve been running around like headless chickens recently, mainly on horrible buses, for which I blame the French, who couldn’t be bothered to build any railway lines here.
We had the journey from hell back from Northern Laos. Even though we took the VIP bus from Sam Neua to Vientiane (apparently to be a VIP in Laos you only need to throw up a great deal on public transport or be a screaming three year old) it took 23 hours, one break down, sixteen bags of sick, 8405 mosquito bites and a ruptured coccyx to travel 600km to the capital. Read the rest of this entry »

North eastern Laos is rugged, mountainous, remote and a bit tricky to navigate – until a few years ago, parts of it had no proper road links with the rest of the country and a couple of provinces were still not entirely safe due to anti-governement insurgency by Hmong guerillas. Also, it’s littered with unexploded bombs, so in recent years it hasn’t really attracted the visitors in droves. The roads are there now though, just about, and the guerillas are gone, and the bombs aren’t under any footpaths, so we’ve been able to spend the past week or so in this gorgeous, peaceful area – an absolute bugger to get to but well worth the effort.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve just finished a 23 hour bus ride from hell.  I tried to distract myself from deadly boredom by calculating some trip facts, and here they are:

• We’re on day 114
• We’ve visited 6 countries so far
• We’ve covered 5,865 miles by air
• We’ve covered 8,514 miles by bus, train and boat
• We’ve covered 456 miles by foot (thanks Voda friends for the Teva’s, they’re going strong)
• We’ve eaten 4,323 miles of noodles

Ok, one of those stats is fictitious, but the other 5 are correct.  We’ve now travelled a total of 14,835 miles.

Our next stop in Laos is Nong Khiaw, a small rural town set on the banks of the Nam Ou river, nestled amongst jungle covered limestone mountains. Our bamboo bungalow faces west offering amazing views of Nong Khiaw’s spectacular sunsets. It’s the end of the dry season here so it’s hot and the river is still low, but now it’s starting to rain some days. We covered the town on foot before hiring a guide for a few days to explore the countryside further.

Read the rest of this entry »