Dear STA Travel Journal Website: WHY oh WHY oh WHY do you insist on forcing me to choose a photo for each country from YOUR file photos, and then offer NO BLOODY PHOTOS from that country? Here's a picture of some elephants for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. Never mind, back to the travels. The bus journey from Cambodia, as expected, offered turbulence undreamed of by even the most nervous flyer. After crossing the border we returned to Thai roads (and switche...

This may be a bit of a tetchy update. I've spent the last hour trying to upload ONE SINGLE PHOTO to put up here, and it hasn't worked. If there's one thing I'm not going to miss about the arse-end of Asia, it's the internet connection speeds. To make matters worse, all the while I've been trying to persuade one photo to wing its way across the net, I'm surrounded by Edinburgh University students. They're easy to spot, even if they hadn't been talking abou...

It's been an eventful few days... First of all, we travelled to Hue (approximately pronounced "whey", although it's endless fun trying to get the different nationalities in our group to say it), which is roughly in the centre of Vietnam. The optional trip we all took was for a motorbike tour. This involved sitting on the back of a motorbike and hanging on as the driver zoomed up dirt tracks, past obstacles such as bicycles or people. Much like the motorbi...

[Updated - the attached picture is now the dog one - see below for description] Well, this is a bit of a culture shock. Laos was a lovely country, pretty laid-back and gentle on the weary traveller. As the time came to leave Laos, though, things started to get interesting... Remember last time I said that this could be some kind of reality TV show and somebody would get voted off? We're now down to 10 people. Cath and Chris have had to go back to En...

I have just about got the hang of uploading photos, so here's the snake we had in Luang Prabang. I'm in Vientiane, but we must return our story to just after the bikes had been hired... The group dynamic (if I can use a poncey phrase like that) has developed as we've all got to know each other a bit. When it comes to free time, we tend to gravitate into different mini-groups with a similar approach, although people drift freely from one mini-group to anoth...