Hanoi is very noisy - full of motobikes with loud and excessively used horns. The place is quite cute and eacg street has a them - toy terrace, shoe street, rucksack road. The first cafe we went to had brain, kidney and heart on the menu so we left there quite quickly! We went to see the water puppet show which was excellent - the vietnamese found it hilarous. We visited the temple of literature where all the exams and documents are on huge stone plaques on st...

So to summarise Bangkok: Bangkok Bummers:1 - the corrupt tourist information2 - silly taxi system3 - spitting4 - noise and traffic5 - no ATM at the brand new airport so if you want to eat you must pay Credit card fee! Bangkok Bizarres:1 - everyone wears yellow tshirt on monday to celebrate the King2 - everyone wears blue tshirt on friday to celebrate the queen3 - Mel means cat4 - wearing PJs in the street After Alexa missed her flight out of Bangkok because of...

An Epic Tale of Tummies and Transport Mel woke in the middle of the night, completed overheating and suffering from d and v so she spent the night alternating between the shower and the toilet. Thankfully in Laos these were in the same room so it is very easy to have both simultanously. This of course came at the time when we had 30 hours of bus journey to complete over the next few days.Step 1 - get a bus with a toiletThis would have made the journey slightly be...

Next choice for Day trip was he old capital of Ayuthaya, where we spent the day traipsing around old temples. Sounds boring but was actually quite spectacular because it is basically a whole city leveled by the Burmese 200 years ago and left undisturbed, so the ruined temples are huge complexes with big voids of countryside between them! The above picture is of a tree which has grown around a Buddha head. Noone quite knows how it happened, but they love the ...

So an early start for our first day trip out of Bangkok - nearly took us to the border again so lots of driving. Our first stop was the famous floating markets just outside the city, where we took no hesitation in hiring ourselves a shallow boat with steering lady and head off around the stalls. Although we didn't buy anything (about 4 times the price of anywhere else in Thailand!) it was a very sedate way to spend the morning. Then it was all the way up to ...