"Taxi?" Means "hello" in Balinese... Spent the first 3 nights in a beachside area called Seminyak. This is just outside the bustling clubbing centre called Kuta. We spent our days enjoying the beach and the surf. We hired a surfboard and I gave Shelly a surfing lesson. The surf wasn't great and quite closed out, but was enough to play around in. We are used to being stopped by locals who want to sell us stuff, but we find the Balinese are particularly pushy, ...

We have finally gotten used to seeing so many people wearing face masks in Vietnam, mainly women with their faces almost completely covered with a facemask, sunglasses and hat. We found out the biggest reason for wearing face masks, pollution aside, is to protect their faces from the sun. Dark skin is a big no-no here and there are skin whitening products avaliable everywhere; its just not cool to be tanned here ( so im REALLY uncool right now and Dom is super co...

After a voyage on the starship enterprise night bus we arrived into the ancient city of Hue. We then walked 2 miles to our hotel with our backpacks. Shelly has a small fold up trolley for her backpack, so she normally walks with a smug grin, however when we come across some stairs the smugness is all mine. Hue is an ancient city and used to be the home of the emperor. This imperial city used to be the capital of Vietnam until communism gained strength and the ca...

Xin chao! After a very early and tiresome journey with taxis and a flight we finally arrive in Hanoi, Vietnam. We are staying in the old quarter part of town and find it surprisingly picturesque. Never seen so many scooters. 60% of the Hanoi population own a scooter and the pavements are used to park them. Means you have to walk in the road and avoid more scooters. Scooters are used to carry everything, trees, massive boxes, .....pigs. Carol and Shaun, we s...

What a mental 24 hours travelling involving 1. 4 hour jeep ride 2. 10 hour train 3. 45 min taxi ride 4. 2.5 hr flight 5. 45 min taxi+ lots of waiting around and queuing Luckily our Bangkok hotel is a palace. Perhaps anyone who's been to Bangkok would expect me to say how noisy, crazy and manic it is. Sorry to disappoint, but we found it to be clean, quiet and stress free. That's what 6 weeks in India does to you. We also found it to be very expensive by comparis...