We have spent the last few days relaxing (as much as we can) on Cat Ba Island. It's a lot more peaceful here than in Hanoi, although there are still one or two mopeds whizzing around to keep you on your toes. We have been having some tasty seafood at a small restaurant a couple of doors down from our hotel. The owner is very friendly, and cooks all of the dishes himself, and the seafood swims around in tanks outside the front of the restaurant until it's called u...

Hello from country number 14 (if you count Hong Kong and Macau). This website has a very poor selection of photos for our postcards so there are some random photos of Japan in here. Hanoi is an interesting city, more colourful than a lot of the places we visited in Thailand. Seems much more like China than the other countries we have visited in south-east Asia. We have found some nice French-ish food to eat, and have a TV showing the football in our room so a...

Hello, we are now in Ayuthaya. We flew down from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, and avoided the capital by getting the train straight to Ayuthaya from the airport. Ayuthaya is a historic old capital full of ruined temples, and we spent an enjoyable day visiting the main sites by bicycle. It is currently the Thai New year, Song Kran, which entails soaking passers-by with water (preferably iced water) by bucket, water pistol, hose-pipe or elephant trunk, whichever is most ...

We've been in Sukhothai for two days. We arrived late in the afternoon, and luckily for us there was a local food festival in full swing, complete with live music and dancing. We sampled various items from the stalls, including crispy pork, noodles and prawns. Unfortunately we had to have a day off sight-seeing yesterday due to a bout of stomach upsets, but we are better now. Don't think that it was anything to do with the food festival, but you never know. T...

We only arrived in Chiang Mai this lunchtime, and we're leaving tomorrow, but we managed to fit quite a lot into our half day. We'll be coming back here in a few days to see some more. We visited five wats (temples). At one of them we participated in "Monk Chat", which is a scheme designed to allow visitors to find out more about monks and monks to improve their English and find out more about us. They were shocked and surprised to find out that we have no geck...