Well hello its em again.

Sooo much has happened since I last wrote. We have been so busy moving around but loving every moment and havent really found the time to update the blog, so sorry about that!

Since Hoi An in Vietnam we contiunued to travel north to Hue and Hanoi and we went to Halong bay. We stayed over on a boat for the night and went kayakaing there. It was absolutely freezing but was really beautiful at the same time. We had to wear our coats!

After that we travelled on a night bus from Hanoi to Vientiane, the capial of Loas and this journey was horrific! Very comical looking back on it but at the time was a nightmare. It took just over 24 hours and the bus was ridiculous. It was meant to be a sleeping bus but the beds must be built for very small asians as we were all way too long to fit in them. We couldnt get our rucksacks in the boot as it was filled with thai noodles so had to stack them in the gangways. We all dropped off to sleep for a while lonly to be awoken by the bus driver loading the gangways with yet more dried noodles, mens shirts and other randon boixes of stuff. Although there was a loo it was near impossible to reach due to the noodles!! Not good when you have a dodgy stomach!

Then..... around 20 extra vietnamese people were bundled on to the bus to sit in tnhe gangways. It was so stupid. I had three men pretty much trying to sleep in my bed, ben had a guys legs in the space where his legs are meant to go and lily had a woman breast feeding her baby and sharing her pillow all night. Simply beacuse the journey was so long it was so stressful, we couldnt sleep as we thought people would steal stuff from us! Was an experience to say the least!

We met 6 girls from london on the bus and 2 guys from Oz. We ended up travelling with them through Loas. Loas is the most beautiful place with really lovely poeple. Its our fav place so far I think.

We left Loas and headed to Chiang Mai, another long bus journey of 20 hours! I think we love the punishing journeys!

We went to see the tiger kingdom where you can touch and hug the tigers. They have been hand reared and so arent drugged or chained. It was so amazing we went and literally hugged 2 big tigers! Very surreal.

We also went on trekking. We had to trek for three hours in the blistering heat and I was feeling really unwell again, was sick at one point as was exhausted from the heat! Saw loads of jungle creatures including a green tree snake. We stayed at an the elephant camp in the mountains and got to ride them. As we were a three there was only two spaces on the saddle so I had to ride around the neck without anything to hold me on! was so difficult I constantly felt as thought I was going to fall off and the elephant kept spraying us with mud and all sorts! When they walk they flap their ears and it was like getting slapped around the legs for the whole ride. We had the most naughty elephant that kept trying to go off everywhere but the route we were meant to be going! We also went to see a hill tribe called Akha.

Since then we went to Bangkok for a night and now we are in Koh Samui. It is surprisingly ok seeming it had severe flooding just a few weeks ago. We are going to be staying on the islands including koh phangan and koh tao for the next week or so and then we will be heading in to malaysia.

Well... that is just a very small insight in to what we have been up to. We are having an amazing time! Missing everyone lots though.

Lots of love em, lily and ben xxx