Relaxing in the capital of Laos, and it is a welcome oasis of calm after the frenetic pace of Vietnam, especially Hanoi. We have hardly heard a car horn and crossing the road is no great adventure. Also, we are appreciating the warmth and glad to see the sun again after so long in cold grey climates - I don't think any of us travellers had expected it to be so cold in northern Vietnam. And the fog and mud in the mountains was something else (photos to follow)....

We have moved on from Cambodia to Vietnam and the frenetic pace and heat of Hoi Chi Minh City followed by the more gentle pace in Hoi An. We only spent 2 days in HCM City but it felt longer. I guess that it is no worse than other big Asian cities, but it came as a bit of a shock after New Zealand and Siem Reap. The streets are continually full of thousands of vehicles, mostly motorbikes, and probably the most memorable thing about the place will be the experie...

Happy Christmas from Cambodia! It is very hot here for us tourists. No sign of any snow, and little evidence of Christmas, except a few Reindeer and santas in the hotels - looking a bit out of place. We haven't been totally unaffected by the bad weather and travel delays in the UK. Our flight to Bangkok was cancelled, so we had an unscheduled stopover in Sydney. They put us up in a hotel for the night, so no great hardship, except for the uncertainty of knowi...

Writing this from a quiet, no-frills campsite run by the Department of Conservation on the east coast of the South Island. No warden, just put your money in the box. Since the last posting, we have walked the Milford Track, cruised on Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound, and seen lots of wildlife along the southern coast: sea lions, seals, penguins, and albatrosses. The Milford Track took us just over 3 days. It proved to be a fairly easy walk, because the wea...

We've arrived in the adventure capital of New Zealand, and no, we haven't been bungy jumping, but there is so much more to NZ than that. We have flown in a helicopter, landed and walked on Fox Glacier, kayaked amongst the penguins and seals in the Abel Tasman National Park and jet-boated near Queenstown. And that is before you mention the scenery. The scenery on the south island gets better and better the further south you go. Down the West Coast the coastline i...