We had a great trip in Halong bay - mostly due to the great company in our party. 4 a typical 20' something Irish guys on their way to Brisbane to work for a year, Indiana Jones and his wife (Belgium archaeologist), Citron car dealer from Somerset (Tony), 2 ladies from Hong Kong, 2 lively Argentinian students and us. Thien our guide was somewhat typical of vietnamese that we've experienced - on the surface polite and nice, but when it gets down to it somewhat b...

Overnight train up to a hill town called Sapa where the French used to come to escape the madness of Hanoi (as we have). So much for sleeping on the overnight train - too noisy, too slow. Anyway we arrived at 5am in the dark, but as we drove along the very bumpy road, realised that we were going to a very special place. Rice terraces were cut into al the hills, and many of the local people were from tribes and dressed in traditional clothes. The town is on the ...

Woah - place is crazy, if we're not being ripped off by touts, there are motorcyclist to run you down if you're not killed by the pollution, holes in the road or other hazards! Although we appear to be the tourist attraction around here with LM as the star. Everywhere we go, people point at us and say hello - try to touch him or make him smile And its not cheap either - we haven't got the hang of the money and appear to be handling over literally 1,000,000's of...

Arrived in the city of Angels at 5am in the morning after a journey and a half. We were determined not to be beat by the touts and Rip off merchanges this time (see earlier Khoa Sok to Koh Phangan). Having bought separate tickets for the boat (leavingat 1pm) the bus to Surat Thani (leaving at 4pm) we got off and were accosted. Still we persevered and got in a tuk tuk with a thai/english couple and demanded to be taken to the Government bus station- agreed 20bt...

How do you get to these places? This time - we climbed on to a mini bus - not quite a tourist one, but not the public one - it stopped quite oftent picking up thais along the way. We got dropped off at a travel agents paradise - touts, and travel experts everywhere. The con was on and having travelled 3 hours on a bus knowing there was 4 hours on the boat and we didn't have any where to stay we needed to get sorted. We hadn't realised that Surat Thani was not th...