OK, attempt number two at writing this, seeing as this computer from the dark ages just crashed and deleted my whole blog post just after I'd finished! So, last week we headed across Borneo to Kota Kinabalu, a lively city by the South China Sea. We had a bit of fun and games trying to find a hostel - no one at the bus station seemed to agree as to which bus we should get, and then said bus didn't turn up. The buses here are worse than in Bristol which is really ...

For the last ten days or so we have been based in Kuching, a city in the Malaysia side of Borneo. It couldn't be more different to Vietnam if it tried. For a start, it is just unbelievably humid - I guess that's what being an island on the Equator covered in tropical rainforest will do. In Vietnam there was a distinct tourist trail (or gringo trail as a Spaniard put it), and we kept bumping into the same people heading from North to South. But over here, there se...

Our last few days in Vietnam were spent in Saigon, or rather Ho Chi Minh City as it is now called. We found that the city itself was nowhere near as interesting as Hanoi with its crazy mopeds and street sellers. It is very Western in comparison, with tall skyscrapers, KFCs and lots of shops. For the first time since we arrived though, the weather was actually hot, so that came as a bit of a shock. We met up again with some of the people we'd been traveling throug...

We have now arrived in the mountain town of Dalat. In the week since I last wrote, we've traveled from Hanoi to Hue, Hoi-An and Nha Trang, for the most part on some pretty hairy sleeper buses. In Hue, we only stayed for the night, and visited some beautiful tombs. Hoi-An is a very quaint, picturesque little town, full of tailors, where we sampled some pretty awespme patisseries. Nha Trang is a beach city, where we decided we needed a bit of TLC after much lugging...

I am having a marathon blogging session here! So today we went to Tam Coc, which are river caves, and Hoa Lu, which used to be the capital of Vietnam. Our first stop was Hoa Lu, which is esstentially a temple dedicated to an important king, who is credited with unifying the five peoples of Vietnam. Inside the temple, local people were chanting. I wish I know what they were chanting about! It actually felt quite chaotic, rather than serene as you might imagine. A...