The fabled 'Road to Mandalay', it turns out, (from the 8km stretch that we took from the airport to our hotel) to be a rickety potholed affair that would have taken us a whole day to drive to from Rangoon. And it was only completed a few months ago, which apparently says more for the levels of corruption in this country than the workmanship; by the time all the government officials, their brothers and their cousins had taken a cut of the road building budget there was only sixpence left over for tar.

We, however, flew to Mandalay on a plane that our itinerary told us was promised to be flown 'mainly by expert pilots'.

We re-read the sentence. Oops, it actually said 'expat pilots'. Phew.

Mandalay is not as romantic a town as the name might suggest. It's large, noisy and heavily Chinese influenced, i.e. big and brash and plastic. But it is a good base to take a trip on the Irrawaddy river to see an old stupa that was struck by an earthquake in 1838 and has been gradually allowed to fall into a genteel state of collapse and disrepair ever since. We climbed to the top of and then scrambled around leaping over chasms and clambering around fallen bricks in order to get some stunning views of the countryside, whilst trying not to fall off and break our necks. Helpful guides attached themselves to us and showed us which bricks were safest and how far to jump and would no doubt also have called an ambulance for us too if it had all gone horribly wrong. Or indeed if such a thing as an ambulance exists in this country.

At the end of our rock climbing expedition they hit us up not only for tips but to change money for them - they had been given dollar bills by some tourists and had no way of changing them as someone had thoughtlessly folded them before handing them over. So we have now become unofficial Burmese money changers. Let's hope they don't hear about that at immigration or I really will be in trouble.

As you know, every tour throws up a challenging travel companion. This time it's an Essex boy, or rather old man. Sorry TOWIE fans, it's not only fake tans, boob jobs and vajazzles that come out of Essex, it's irascible old men too. This one, who I have nicknamed Mr Grumpy, joined us late suffering from a heavy cold, that he has since thoughtfully shared with some of us, including me. Blast, that's my second cold of the trip. If he's not being unpleasantly argumentative, he's singing 'Row, row, row your boat' or attempting to chat up young Burmese girls. It may not surprise you to learn that he and Brian have already argued and fallen out.

Late one day we went to the famous U Bin bridge, it's a long rickety wooden bridge that dog legs across a lake and is constantly in use by monks and locals. It has the same levels of health and safety maintenance as the earthquake stricken temple. No balustrade, rotting boards and a worrying creakiness, but we all seemed to manage not to fall off. At sunset we took a boat ride out across the lake to watch a procession of magenta clad monks and bicycling locals criss cross the lake as the setting sun slowly sank into the sky behind them.

We've been eating dinner in this restaurant where the locals gather to eat, drink Royal Standard whisky, smoke cigarettes, watch some garishly loud kick boxing and hold some even louder conversations. First we choose from a cabinet full of uncooked skewered foods - prawn, chicken, broccoli, garlic cloves, mushroom, whole stuffed fish, pigs trotters, duck claws, cows nostrils, sheep wings and the like. Then they plonk it into a plastic tray, tell us that we owe them £2.50 and we take a seat in the bustling restaurant, order a large Mandalay beer and sit back and watch the world go by as five hard working girls in red aprons cook our food over the worlds largest barbecue. Food then turns up haphazardly, along with rice, more beer and a selection of satay and chilli sauces. It's delicious.

One night, after dinner, Brian went to see a Burmese 'comedy' act called the Moustache Brothers whilst I returned to the hotel to languish in bed with yet another blasted cold. The older brother has been imprisoned a few times for making jokes about the current regime and is now no longer allowed to perform to Burmese. However he and his family are making a reasonable living from tourists, who seem to appreciate the t shirts he sells after the show, probably more than they do the actual jokes.

I took my sniffly little nose to the Mandalay marionettes the next night, with another couple from our group, David and Sharon from Toronto. He's a doctor and I'm hoping he might be useful if my cold passes on to Brian, as we all know how serious man flu can be.