Well it has been an awful long time since a last did a blog! I think if I tried to tell you all we have been upto you will be reading for hours. TIme in Asia has been amazing and we have done some wonderful things. I hope you have been looking at my photos.

So we travelled up through Vietnam, first off in Ho Chi Minh City and then into the hills of Dalat. Did a wonderful tour their with a man who was born into a hill tribe. He took us back to his village and explained the tribe culture as well as alot of information about normal Vietnamese life. He had an amazing garden growing all sorts of fruits. We ate grasshoppers (a local delicacy apparently!)
From Dalat we went up to Hoi An via Nha Trang. Nha Trang is a beautiful beach resort and I can see how people get stuck there for days. Lazing out on the beach all day and then fun bars at night. We were only there for about 6 hours in between buses, but it was enough to catch some rays and have a little wonder.

Hoi An is a beautiful town set on the river. It is the home of silk tailoring, to which Barney took full advantage of and had 3 suits made. They are so well made and only took 24 hours to complete. Really amazing how we walked in at midday and by 10am the next morning they were basically done, just without button holes! It is also the culinary town of Vietnam so we did a cooking course there and learnt how to make various Vietnamese traditional dishes. We were lucky as our group was so small that the restaurant chef made some extra dishes that he was thinking of adding to his menu for us to try and review! we were so stuffed!!!

From Hoi An upto the capital city Hanoi. Another crazy, busy Asian city but really fun and has a beautiful setting around a big lake. We did a trip from Hanoi out to Halong Bay and spent a night on a boat cruising around the most unbelievable scenery. I think it was the most stunning place I've been yet. Recommend visiting there to anyone! But theres so many boats to choose from - a nightmare for someone as indecisive as me..nope that hasn't improved!

umm then wat! o ye we moved on into Laos. O my wat a journey that was. We left Hanoi at 6.30pm and didn't arrive into Vientiene, Laos until 3.30pm the next day. The border crossing was at about 7am so we all got woken up (thats if we were lucky enough to be able to sleep on the bus!) at 6.30am to queue up. The bus was jammed full of people, so much so that there were locals sitting in the aisles!
There isn't much to Vientiene so we decided to get the 6pm bus straight on to Vang Vieng the same day. Huge thunder storm as we made our way up the windy roads.
Vang Vieng is a party town. You go tubing all day (hire a big ring and float down the river stopping off at bars along the way) and then party all night, drinking bucket-fulls (literally) of Lao whisky and mixer - yuk. Lots of backpackers get stuck here too!

We moved on to Luang Prabang, which we really enjoyed. Laos is so much quieter than the other Asian countries and you just don't seemed to get hassled as much by market sellers. It has a great night market for food and all sorts of handicrafts. From here we visited the Elephant Village and did our mahout training! Now I have the very useful skill of being able to control an elephant..sure I will use that at home alot. THey were so cute though. We got to bathe them in the river too...so good.
There's a stunning waterful in Luang Prabang. It has big clear turquiose water pools with waterfalls flowing all around. Barney and I found a secret pool too which was really lovely and private.

We decided on taking the slow boat down the Mekong river into Thailand. It was a long 2 day trip on a very basic boat (wooden seats and nothing to do but very beautiful scenery). Felt like a very backpackerish experience. On our night stop at the border, there was a power cut in the town of Huay Xai and we were left to just sit in our room in the pitch black, sweating with heat, and not knowing what to do!! We did laugh though!

Now we are in Chiang Mai and loving Thailand already. THere is no signs of any trouble here so no one worry!! So far we have been to some temples and went to play with tigers yesterday. They were adorable! And today we did some more elephant riding and white water riding (not sure if you can call it that as there were so many rocks we kept getting stuck!). O and we also went to see the Karen Long neck tribe - those women who wear loads of rings round their necks.

So we're having a great time. Can't believe we only have bout 4 weeks left. Its rushing past. But still alot of fun to come. We are heading south down into Bangkok and then our last 2 weeks will be spent relaxing and diving on the Thai islands. Sounds idyllic eh?! x x