Monthly Archives: October 2018

Three Countries in Three Days

It sounds a bit mad, and wasn’t actually too hectic, but for logistical reasons we had to travel through Thailand to get from Laos to Myanmar.  Before we did this, our last stop in Laos was right up in the north in Luang Nam Tha.  We had travelled from the beauty of Luang Prabang to […]

A Country of Contrasts

After the delights of Four Thousand Islands, our next few stops were quite a contrast – both to the islands and to each other. After an overnight stop in Tha Khaek, we arrived in the capital, Vientiane. Being about the size of Bristol, it is quite a small city to be capital; but unlike Bristol […]

An Introduction to Laos

After three weeks in Cambodia, we headed north across the only land border with Laos. The crossing was relatively straightforward, if a little slow; but what happened next was not a great introduction to the country. We saw everyone from our minibus get off and head for two local islands, but we were told to […]

Eastern Cambodia

What a contrast to the rest of Cambodia. The area to the east of the Mekong is a land of indigenous people and jungle. We started at Kampong Cham, which was the gateway to Koh Paen island. This is really how most of Cambodia lived until relatively recently. We cycled down roads which had traditional […]

Northern Cambodia

Our move to the north of Cambodia showed us another, very different side to the country. Our first stop was the lovely town of Battambang. It was on a river and had some lovely shops and cafes along the riverfront. This is the arts centre of the country, and it has plenty of French colonial […]

Islands and Lakes in the Fast Changing Cambodia

Cambodia is a beautiful country with lots of jungle amongst the paddy fields, and apart from Phnom Penh, the population is mostly rural.  However, it is also a bit of an enigma as areas go through massive change, whilst others remain as they have been for decades.  The next few places we visited in Cambodia […]

Phnom Penh – from Killing Fields to Modern City

We have spent two short spells in Phnom Penh, and both were very different.  The first few days were settling into the Khmer (Cambodian) culture, while the second was more for exploring the history of the city and country.  After Vietnam it was good to see a different country with different people and way of […]