LANCE: I'm writing this while overlooking our tropical bay on Koh Tao Island, in the Gulf of Thailand - genuinely, the most idyllic place I've ever experienced. I pop my head up from behind the laptop occasionally to be thrilled by the view. (The boys however thought it was "just like Swanage in Dorset". Oh well...)We're reaching the end of the Asia leg of our trip, almost half way through our travels and there's asense of sadness to be leaving.Thailan...

CLARE: Once again in Japan we have been so lucky with where we’ve been staying. Rupert (my cousin) had booked us into a business hotel very close to them so for the first part of the week we explored Musashi Kosugi – a suburb not unlike Teddington, low-rise (though densely packed) with young professional families, little independent shops and the river, which we spent Sunday afternoon by, watching baseball and sitting in the sun. Spent lots of time cuddling...

CLARE:My overwhelming impression of China is that of vast scale. I wasn't prepared for it and it's met us everywhere ...The enormously wide expressways leading into Beijing, flanked by modern skyscrapers outdoing themselves in design; Tianenmen Square - too vast to see across; The imposing walls and endless roofscape of the Forbidden City; the Great Wall disappearing across ridges into the distance; the endless classical beauty of the limestone hills in Yangshuo;...

CLARE:Well - clichés are not enough to describe the mountains! We weren't lucky for the first couple of days out of Pokhara - the sky remained resolutely cloudy. But on Day 2 as we got up for breakfast from our simple wooden beds in the tea house, we caught a glimpse of one of the faces of Annapurna South - fearsome, awesome, mysterious. You have to tilt your head back half as much again as you thought to see the peaks. It is as if they are not of this earthly w...

From Clare: Written in haste before a power cut ... and without contributions from all ... but just so you know what we're doing. We'll write more about this leg soon! I don’t know if it was a touch of ‘travel weariness’ or a bout of Delhi belly (probably acquired in Kenya but got worse as soon as I saw the Delhi sign at the airport) ... but I’ve felt a bit disengaged from Asia so far. In Nepal we are staying with old friends who are here with the Briti...