There's only one right way to cross the roads in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, or any other asthma inducing SE Asian metropolis. The wrong way is to wait patiently by the road for a break in the traffic. This will never happen. The right way is to walk across with the idea that you're surrounded by a force field where nothing can harm you. With that attitude thankfully the motorbikes kind of flow around you a bit like when you're scuba diving through a shoal of fish...

Shortly before I left Laos, I headed up to the Pakou Caves which is a retirement home for hundreds of unloved and unwanted Buddha statues. Ahhh. The caves weren't anything special, but they did give me my first taste of real begging that i've not really experienced anywhere else in SE Asia yet. Sure, there's people trying to sell you tourist crap that you don't need everywhere, and thankfully your ears after a while stop registering the frequencies of 'Tuk Tuk?' ...

And so, temporarily leaving Thailand behind, it was an overnight journey on the 'VIP' bus up into Laos. 'VIP' means you get a toilet; they don't half push the boat out in Thailand. There was an interesting old fella called David sat in front of me loudly supping some beers he'd brought on board to pass the time. I say loudly as the guy was almost totally deaf and so spoke at a volume as if everyone else was. He liked to talk and was quite an interesting fella, wh...

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It's a long old 20 hour journey on the train from Penang, Malaysia up to Bangkok. It's not actually more than about 600 miles, but the trains go so slow you can hang out from the doors and touch the passing trees if you like. When you do finally get into Thailand the locals turn the style k*** up a notch or two thankfully. A hot food carriage gets attached so you can sample your first tastes of thai curry, but better than that you can wash it down with ice cold S...