We arrived at this large beach town on 30th May and immediately Stuart signed up for his PADI open water course over three days so he can become a trained scuba diver. At $174 it was an absolute bargain, more than twice as cheap as you will get in Thailand so why bother to wait? DAY 1 The morning was spent watching three DVD's in the morning explaining much of the theory involved in diving. The afternoon was spent in a local swimming pool where I did tw...

We arrived here by bus from Mui Ne on the 27th and the first thing we noticed on the journey and on arrival that the temperature was a fair bit lower than we had got used to as we had climbed to an altitude of around 1500 metres. We can't say that we were exactly unhappy about this as we've had 2 1/2 months of sweltering conditions so this was somewhat of a blessed relief. On our first day we organised a trek up the Lang Biang mountain which we though would ...

After finishing our war tunnels trip in Saigon we headed out of the city on an evening bus to the beach town of Mui Ne, arriving a little bleary eyed at nearly 1am on 24th May. Mui Ne has only been developed as a beach resort over the last few years so it's not overly touristy and as it's low season it's really quiet. After a couple of nights on the north end of the beach we found an excellent place on the more sandy, southern part of the beach for just $14 ...

After our brief one day stopover in Chau Doc it was time to take the first leg of our unbelievably cheap country long bus trip to Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City). It was a good day to travel as it chucked it down with rain all day long although we did have to get wet by being forced to take a cycle tuk tuk first thing in the morning to pick up our mini bus. One of the quirks of travelling in this region is that how you get from A to B is never made v...

We could have taken a relatively easy bus from Phnom Penh to Saigon but we opted instead for the more scenic route of a boat to the border town of Chau Doc sitting on the Mekong River. After phaffing around with bus transfers for over two hours we got on our rather worn looking boat at around 10am. It chugged away for a couple of hours untill we got to the border which was quite the most leisurely and rustic crossing we've had. We didn't even have to bother ...