28 November 04 Selamat Detang! Malaysia!!! I'm not sure what images it conjures up for you lot but I have certainly been in dreamland. So often you hear of the long white sandy beaches with crystal clear waters - hmm - then you would wonder why we spent 7 days by the pool. I was appalled that even at a 4* resort there was rubbish littering the beach. We ended up at Damai Laut on the West Coast of Malaysia in Perak Region. And as I said spent 7 laz...

Greetings from Malaysia! Since we last wrote we have skipped through Cambodia, spent less than 24hrs in Thailand, and we now find ourselves on a small island which has virtually shut down due to an Islamic public holiday!!! We arrived into Cambodia by boat, this time heading north on the Mekong Delta. We're tired of boats now. Perhaps it was one river journey too far as it seemed to go on for ages but to pass the time we made good friends with a couple ...

06 November 04 Hi from Ho Chi Minh, formerly Saigon. We are sweltering in the heat, down to 2 meals a day, getting bitten by mosquitoes and our bones are weary but otherwise we are in good health and loving Vietnam. We had a nice 2 days in Hoi An, once an important trading destination and now a Unesco World Heritage Site. It was glorious walking around the old town, over the Japanese covered bridge, through old family homes and generally taking in the ni...

Hi again, since we last wrote we have whizzed through Laos and are now in Vietnam. Laos was a slow paced underdeveloped country - our introduction was a two day slow boat ride down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. LP was a lovely chilled out town, once an important French outpost and the mixture of temples and colonial buildings was quite special. We took an excursion out to a waterfall and generally soaked up the atmosphere of river life and the nig...

21 October 2004 Sawadeekah!!!!!!! We have now been in Thailand for 6 days. Bangkok was just one big stress trying to organize our flights within Asia and Laos visa with only a smidgeon of time to check out the Palace and Jim Thomsons House. We were both glad to leave the big smoke and thankfully the stresses with it. We took the overnight train to Chiang Mai in a sleeper carriage whereby instead of compartments of four or six it is just one open carria...