Keen to get out to Ha Long Bay, we decided to steer away from the main tourist route and took a boat out to Cat Ba Island and book a tour from there. Getting to Cat Ba was yet another difficult experience travelling independently. We took a bus to the ferry port (no problems) and literally had to argue with a woman to get a reasonable price for a boat ticket to Cat Ba. Eventually we got on the slow boat, which turned out pretty well as we met a young Vietnamese s...

From Chiang Mai we bought a ticket all the way to Luang Prabang in Laos via mini bus and the 2 day slow boat, staying over night in 2 different places. We met some really nice people and had a cool time travelling with them. Some funny Kiwis and Ozzies, and another couple doing the same as us but moving to Sydney. The slow boat down the Mekong was very picturesque and the first day we enjoyed it, played a bit of Yatzhee and chatting with everyone, the next day ...

Haven't blogged in a while, so this will be brief whilst we play catch up. We landed in Hanoi in the evening after a very easy 1 hr flight (the alternative would have been a36hr bus ride!). From the moment we landed, everything we wanted/needed to do seemed like such a struggle, from getting a taxi to the city to finding a hotel room. After 3 hrs, we eventually found a place to stay for the night and sorted ourselves out with a good meal.It was a veggie restaura...

Greetings from Chiang Mai, We haven't written a blog in a little while, so just to update you, we arrived in Phuket and went straight to Sala (the twin hotel that we stayed at on our honeymoon) and had a very nice stay, albeit a wet one!) the rain looked like it had set in on the islands, so we decided to head North the next day. This was more involved that it sounds! We had to take a bus from Phuket to Bangkok (13hrs), arriving at 4am, having very little sleep....

Hi again, So, from Krabi we went to Koh Lanta, which wasn't on our original itinerary, but we read it was a beautiful island, not quite discovered by backpackers-sounded ideal. We managed to score a great place in a lovely resort for 300 baht (around 6 pounds), which surprisngly came with air con-yes!! It was right on the beach, albeit a rocky one, but the waves were cool (see the video once we upload it-we're having technical difficulties) and it gave us a chan...