Easy Riders! (Hoi An - Dalat - Ho Chi Minh City) As promised more on our amazing Easy Riders tour. We want to remember every little detail so I (Charlie) have done a bit of a blow by blow daily account here. My apologies that it reads like a list. For a more rounded (and readable!) overview of our Vietnam experience, please see the previous blog. The Easy Riders are a group of motorbikers based in Dalat city who will take you from north to south of the country ...

Louise has entrusted me with the blog again and promoted herself to editor. So here is Vietnam (minus our Easy Riders motorcycle diaries which will follow soon) 1. Overall impressions of Vietnam It is hard to ignore one's preconceptions of a country and the more we travel the more I realise that along with the news media many of these preconceptions come from Hollywood – none more so than in Vietnam. For anyone who has grown up in the UK (let alone the US) si...

Japan (part II) - Nara, Shimanami Kaido, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Osaka Did I mention that Japan is a great country...? Ok, so maybe I did already, but we really loved our time there and I just can’t say enough good things about it. So, here goes part two of our amazing three weeks in the land of the rising sun... Japan is an archipelago of more than 6000 islands (another revelation for both of us) dominated by the four biggest - Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku and Hokkai...

Japan (part I) - Kobe, Tokyo, Nikko, Hakone/Mt Fuji & Kyoto If I'm honest, Japan wasn't at the top of my list of places to visit when we started planning this trip, but it just seemed like a good idea as we were going to be in this part of the world. In fact, it turned out to be the biggest surprise of the trip so far and I am so, so glad we came... We both love the place. From the people, to the food, to the beautiful "changing colour leaves", we discovere...

Charlie here. Having had only a small editorial role on our previous blogs, I thought it was high time to switch roles and write one. So here is our 3 day trip Beijing to Kobe .... I was gutted. I had sneaked out of our room in Lucy's house at 6:30am to go and watch the tai chi in the park, and I stepped outside into a wall of strong wind - stronger than I had felt for ages. This was worst case scenario. We were going to be on a ferry for the next two days, p...