Arrived in Perth with monster hangovers after our big night out with Saz in Bangkok. So bad that we even had a Burger King on the way - eughhhh! ....to be met by the Mercers (Ronnie's family) which was absolute heaven, and put up in the spare bedroom which was SO CLEAN and a bathroom with the best shower I have ever had!! Yes, we had been neglected for a while. But no more - we ate Roz and Bruce out of house and home for the next few days and caught up...

Up north. Accessible only by boat we visited the local villages where there is no electricity and no phones, just plenty of chickens and other farm animals. It was great. We stayed up here for five days. During which we went on a two day trek further into the hill country. This was a challenging walk given the high temperatures and humidity, walking through rivers and jungle, and up seemingly verticle hills. Fortunately we had a great group to travel with f...

We arrived right at the start of the Laos New Year. They have an unusual way of celebrating this festive occassion. Custom dictates that they have massive water fights for a three day period instead of raising the more traditional glass of champagne. So we got wet, very very wet. Everytime we went out. Taking the approach, if you can't beat them, join them, we armed ourselves with water pistols and helped man the guesthouse hose. This lead to a very fun thr...

Hanoi - much more grown up than Saigon and the people more reserved - but still the same old crazy traffic. We negotiated it with enormous hangovers and managed to find somewhere really horrible to stay - poor old (and I say 'old' in the 'now you're 31 and you cant take the piss out of me anymore' sense) Mike. Not much of a birthday, although the night before made up for it to some extent. And i didnt even get him a present, although i was suitably guilty and ...

This was only a transitional stop over between our travels from Sri Lanka to Vietnam. What to do with two days in this city? Fortunately we had met up with some other travellers in Sri Lanka who were going the same route to Bangkok and suggested that we go for a night out in the Pat Pong district (i.e. the red light district). How easily we were led astray!! As part of our nights excursion we went to one of the highly entertaning (and a little mystifying)...