Hello again, And can I just say that this site doesn't inform me when I get new messages or comments and they're quite hard to find, so imagine my surprise when I just stumbled across the whole lot of them from you all for the first time and I'm now sitting on the computer in hotel reception with my eyes streaming xxxx Anyway, I'm now in Nha Trang, which a fairly non-descript, soul-less beach town a bit like any other you'd find by any stretch of beach in Europ...

So, blog entry 'proper' number 1.... Well, guess I did feel a bit silly asking for assistance at Heathrow to get me to the gate, but when they bumped me up to the front row of Premium Economy, it didn't seem so bad, especially not with all the burly (though slightly camp) Aussie stewards fussing over me and pulling at my dimples! Overnight in Bangkok was pretty uneventful, ate dinner with a retired Swedish guy who was travelling to Burma for a month on his own,...

Today we went to Ha Long Bay, a three hour hair-raising drive from Hanoi. We arrived at the docks where there were hundreds of big brown tourist boats waiting to take the hundreds of people queuing off the various tour buses. As we headed out into the bay our boat had to jostle through the hundreds of others all heading the same way. We eventually broke free from the heard and headed for a few of 3000 mini islands which dotted the bay. We were served a sea-foo...

Arriving in Hanoi city center by car is the most bizarre and scary experience. I was luckily quite safe in my new Volvo people carrier taxi, but everybody else in Hanoi, and I mean EVERYBODY drives mopeds and scooters. I think the general idea is that they drive on the right, but if there is something in front of you, you just go round it, onto oncoming traffic on the other side of the road. You don't indicate - ever. And scooters and bikes don't have mirrors. T...

Well 6 weeks to go before I fly! Eeekkk! I have never felt so unprepared for anything in my life. Though I have a passport, a bag to carry my stuff, jabs, visa's, money, and flights obviously, so what else do I need? I have also decided to scrap Mexico from the itinerary as I don't have enough time to do that and America fully. And apparently I also need conversational Spanish, and I only know paella and patatas bravas, so not quite there with the lingo. My ma...