How Learning Thai helped us to speak French It’s been 3 years since we spent any time in France and since then we have spent a fair chunk of time in South East Asia and, most especially, Thailand Every time we visit a country we Google the standard 10 words,Read More →
Introducing the Bum Gun The thought of running out of toilet paper is enough to induce deep anxiety nightmares in the western world but, in South East Asia, toilet paper is a rarity that is confined to areas with a large tourist presence. In the countries of Thailand and around,Read More →
I started writing this entry with the intent that it would be a summary of Cambodia but it was difficult to expound on the experiences in Cambodia without repeated references to both Vietnam and Thailand. So, instead, I thought that it might be more informative to do a collective “Same,Read More →
That’s Phase One done! 1400km from Nha Trang back to Pattaya, more about that later, but today was a tough day. It’s our first consecutive 100km day and today was a lot tougher than yesterday; we are more than a little bit broken and our arses are in tatters. TooRead More →
Is it really only 3 days since I wrote about our perceptions from Phnom Penh? So much has changed since then and we are also 224km away. And yet, all those observations remain valid. There’s a lot about Cambodia that we don’t understand and won’t even pretend that we’ve gotRead More →
It’s day 5 in Cambodia and nearly 48h in the capital of Phnom Penh and we still haven’t settled our thoughts except to say that Cambodia is not comfortable. It’s difficult to describe how we feel because it’s so heavily prejudiced with our privileged western perspective. We’re white, middle-class withRead More →
Traffic Etiquette in Vietnam People warned us about the dangers of the traffic in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City); I’d like to offer an alternative view. It’s soooo civilised. Yes it’s busy as hell and yes it’s extremely intimidating to those of a Western culture because of the seemingly lackRead More →
Some Thoughts on Vietnam Forgive me friends for I have sinned, it’s been 5 days since my last confession…. I’ll talk about our feelings on Vietnam shortly but it’s been a busy 5 days. One thing that we had forgotten from last year is how much ‘management’ is required onRead More →
Riding down the Vietnamese Coast For the first time on this part of the trip we set an alarm. The heat is slowing us up and 10:30 departures are taking us straight into a mid-morning inferno. So last night we got ahead of the game and prepped the bikes andRead More →
Leaving Phan Rang this morning was slower than it should have been but we needed the rest. The 2-star, £12 hotel was a model of cleanliness and hospitality. The staff had about the same number of English words as we have Vietnamese, but everybody got where they needed to beRead More →