Not long after arriving in Siem Reap we were loaded on the bust and taken to our first temple to watch the sunset. After a 20 minute walk to the top of a hill it became apparent that sunsets are a popular pastime in Siem Reap. There was easily 1000 people standing on anything they could to get a better view of what admittedly was an amazing sunset.

I wish I could say the same about the sunrise over the main Angkor Wat temple which we had to be up at 4am to watch along with a hell of a lot more tourists. The whole temple complex (of which there are over 100) feels a little like a theme park although I guess if you go to some of the smaller less popular temples you’d have a lot more of a personal experience. Most of us went on a balloon ride that looked a lot cooler from the temples than it actually was. You stand inside a large circular cage attached to a helium balloon and then a winch lets you up to about 200 meters high and then straight back down again. It cost $15(US) each, but only lasted about 10 minutes. We spent the rest of the day touring round more temple ruins which were all very interesting, but after 5 or 6 hours I have to admit that I got a little boarded.

We did stop off at a museum setup by a former Khmer Rouge child Soldier who defected to the Vietnamese army and now spends all his time detecting and disarming landmines, something he does for free as opposed to the UN that charges $5,000 per mine.
That night we headed to Bar Street (guess why it’s called that) and found a Mexican restaurant that sold cocktails for $2. Three tequila sunrises, three margaritas and an argument about the US/UK/Australian healthcare systems later we called it a night and took a tuck-tuck back to the hotel.

There were a few sore heads the next morning as we headed out to our last temple, Ta Prohm – the one used in the movie Tomb Raider. It’s really overgrown and atmospheric, but unfortunately overrun by Japanese and Korean tourists, all more interested in Angelina Jolie than the temple. Looking back, I was really grumpy that morning, maybe I had more of a hangover than I thought.
We also went for a little boat trip on the Tonle Sap Lake the biggest lake in Asia. There are an entire floating village of Vietnamese people. When I say floating village I mean that everything is on the water, there’s a floating hospital, church, shops and cafes. I made friends with a little kid who took great delight in scaring Frank, the German guy on the tour with a crayfish he had picked up. On the way back we saw freshly skinned rainbow snakes hanging in the sun to dry, tasty.

On our last evening we went for dinner with a family who where friends of our guide. We were collected by a pickup truck with seats along the back and taken to a tiny little suburb of Siem Reap where we were treated to a banquet followed by games and dancing with all the kids in the village.

Next stop Battambang

To be honest, my first impressions of Cambodia weren’t that great. We caught a public bus from Saigon n to Phnom Penh , during which the driver made friends with a six year old Dutch kid and thought he’d like to play with the PA system. One hour of Dutch nursery rhymes later I was ready to wrap the chord round his neck. We stepped off the bus into a throng of tuck-tuck drivers each trying to carry your bags and get you into their tuck-tuck. There was even a guy with a bamboo stick to try and control them.
Cambodia is a lot poorer that Vietnam and it’s really apparent buy the amount of rubbish on the streets. Because of the genocide that took place during the Pol Pot regime in the late 70’s (more on that in a bit) about half the population is under 18 and the majority of the population is illiterate. Also crossing the road is a little more difficult because the moped riders don’t seem to have the same instinctive way of dealing with pedestrian. Whilst in Vietnam I didn’t see a single crash and on the fist afternoon in Phnom Penh I saw two.
We got up early the next morning to visit S21 and the Killing fields. S21 was the converted school that was used by the Pol Pot regime to interrogate and torture anyone they felt may pose a threat to them along with all their families. It was really quite heartbreaking to walk around, the worst I found was all the rooms in building A that each contained a bed, a set of leg irons, maybe a ammunition box that was used as a toilet and a photograph on the wall taken by the Vietnamese army of the victim in each room when they captured the place. You could sometimes see stains on the floor under the bed. About 17,000 people passed through this place before being taken to the killing fields for execution, no one was ever released. It’s hard to believe that most of this happened just 30 years ago and is still happening now in countries like Darfur. Next we went to the killing fields which if you didn’t know any better is a series of small ditches and a large monument containing thousands of sculls. Each one of the ditches is what remains of a mass grave containing between 50 to 200 bodies that had been beaten with sticks and buried alive, there was also a tree that was used to batter babies against before tossing them in a grave.
To lift our spirits a bit that evening we visited a restaurant that is run by and in aid of a local orphanage. The food was great and the kids even do a couple of dances for you.
Up bright and early again we took a 6 hour bus ride to Siam Reap which is home to the famous Ankor Watt temple complex and I’ve got to be up at 4am tomorrow so that I can go and watch the sunrise.

We took a quick one hour flight down from Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City. As I stepped of the plane it felt like opening the oven door. The heat and humidity here are unbelievable. It soon dawned on me that I need to get used to it because in the next two months it’s only going to get hotter.

I had heard the there was quite a difference between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam’s largest city) but I didn’t expect it to be so apparent. HCMC has a lot more of western feel to it, our guide Bien explained that the people in the north prefer to save money whilst in the more affluent south they have a more “live for the moment” philosophy and prefer to spend more. There are department stores and neon signs all over the place.

In the afternoon of our first day we had a cyclo (3 wheeled bikes with a seat in the front) tour of the city including the War Remnants Museum (interesting, but incredibly bias against the Americans), the cathedral (based on Notre Dame) and the Reunification Palace. I felt very awkward being on a cyclo, it sort of feels like I’m being put on display.
The following day we headed for a boat trip along the Mekong Delta, stopping off at a workshop that makes coconut candy and a bee farm where we had lunch. We also had a little ride down one of the canals in a little rowing boat and the boat trip back to the bus turned into a bit of a Karaoke session, Good times.

Since that was the end of the first part of the tour and we would be losing a couple of people as well as changing guides, we all went out for a big meal (I had a pizza which is the first time I’d had western food since leaving the USA). The night ended up quite messy once we’d found a bar selling cheap gin & tonics and cocktails. People seem to find it hilarious when they see me drinking from a cocktail glass.

Unsurprisingly the next day started with a few bad heads. After we had said goodbye to Bien we headed out to have a bit more of an authentic Vietnamese day. We had lunch in a real Vietnamese cafe, which had only one thing on the menu, pork noodle soup. I found the pork and the noodles, but I’ve got no idea and nor do I ever want to know what the other pieces of meat in the soup where. I slightly underestimated the strength of the chilli sauce which whilst turning my mouth into the surface of the sun, it did the trick curing my hangover. We also had a last Vietnamese coffee in the local cafe down the street. It took a few goes at ordering but was well worth the hassle. You are given a glass half full of condensed milk with what looks like a metal teacup on top, this parts the filter. It takes about 5 minutes to come through and once you mix it in wit milk it becomes really thick. I’ve bought a couple of filters to bring home with me.

I’ve now left Vietnam for Phnom Phen, Cambodia. Our new guide Dave told me that the rest of the tour form here to Bangkok is pretty much Temples, Torture and Genocide, so lots to look forward to.

I don’t really have a lot to say about Hoi An, it’s basically about six or seven streets of tailors, souvenir shops, bars and cafes. The Tailors are really cheap and I think everyone in the group had at least one thing made, some of the girls had about £500 worth of clothes and shoes made up. I only got a couple of pairs of lightweight trousers with legs that zip off.

Since I wasn’t running around trying to get to multiple fittings I used the time to take a rest from sightseeing (I’m not complaining by any means, but sometimes it feels like a job). I spent a good part of the day reading, sleeping and playing on the internet.

A few of us in the group had a bit of a messy night, after drinking all the alcohol we could find in the hotel we decided to find a bar. This involved snaking past the security guard who was sleeping in reception and then jumping the gate. Somehow we managed it (despite breaking the gate) but once out on the street it quickly dawned on us that there was a distinct lack of bars (or anything) open. We wondered the streets for a short while passing only the occasional rat, before coming across two street vendors alone on the pavement. This made for some good haggling as we got them fighting each other on price for cheap beer. We ended up breaking back into the hotel and sitting by the pool until the wee hours drinking our well earned beer.

I liked Hoi An, once you get used to the calls of “you by something form me” or “you look in my shop” and lean to block them out it’s got a really nice chilled out feel to the place.

Next stop Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

We took an overnight train down to Hué, we had 4 berth cabins which felt a little like a prison cell, although quite comfortable I could have done without the 7am wakeup song that was blasted over the PA system.

The main part of Hué is within a citadel which was home to all the Emperors from 1802. We visited the inner imperial part of the citadel on the first day. It is quite an impressive complex of buildings with temples and statues all over place. Unfortunately I was quite tired and didn’t really take it all in.

Our second day in Hué was a lot more interesting, we all hired mopeds (with drivers, I don’t think anybody would be brave enough to chance the roads alone) and had a tour round the city starting off in at a local market there was a museum nearby showing how the locals live as well as a covered bridge with a sweet old lady who read the palms of some of the American girls.

We had lunch at what I think was a monastery and then headed over to the tomb of one of the kings. It reminded me a lot of tomb raider as the area hadn’t had any restoration done to it at all. By then it had started raining which I think had brought us down a bit because we went on a little cruise up the perfume river to a pagoda but nobody seemed to be very interested. One thing I did notice at the pagoda was an old American car that I actually recognised from the cover of a Rage Against the Machine album cover. It was actually the car used by a monk called Thích Quảng Đức who drove it down to a busy junction in Saigon and burned himself to death in protest of the treatment of monks by the government.

It took a little while to get my confidence up on the moped and ease by vice like grip of the handle on the back, especially at the fist junction we past, but it was great fun in the end, even managed a few Paparazzi type shots from the back.

My first real day with the Intrepid tour started with a breakfast at a restaurant staffed by street kids (sort of like Jamie Oliver’s one but without all the media attention and backing). The service was really nice and the food was gorgeous. Saying that, all the food in Vietnam is gorgeous, you could give a newspaper to a Vietnamese chef and you’d be tempted to lick the plate.

An hour later we where on the road for a four hour ride to Ha Long Bay for our little mini cruise aboard a Junk boat. Ha Long bay is a stretch of water with over 2000 little limestone islands dotted everywhere. The postcards and travel agents make it sound so secluded and romantic, the truth is that of the four million tourists that visit Vietnam each year over two million of them visit Ha Long Bay and sometimes it felt like they all chose to visit on the same day we did. Aboard we had lunch and sat around on the top deck admiring the view for a few hours before we were dropped off at the entrance to some limestone caves. The cave’s where quite interesting, lots of stalactites and stalagmites that if you squint hard enough might bare a slight resemblance to an animal.

That evening a few of us had a swim and got into a little bit of trouble for jumping in from the top deck of the boat which was about 25ft high before dinner followed by many hours of cards.

It took most of the morning to get back to Hanoi where we had the afternoon to do what we wanted. I joined a few people for a quick look around the Hanoi Hilton (the prison where a lot of POW’s where kept including presidential loser John McCain). It was all very interesting, but there seemed to be a lot of propaganda especially about how the American pilots were treated. I also had to go to the post office to send a few xmas presents back home which turned out to be a little complicated since I didn’t have a Vietnamese address and had to fill in 5 different forms.

After another amazing dinner we met up again at the hotel to catch the overnight train down to Hue (pronounced h’way as in “h’way the lads”). The 4 bed sleeper compartments where a little prison cell like, but not too uncomfortable and didn’t stop me sleeping.

Crossing a road in Hanoi

• Wait until the road you are going to cross is mostly mopeds and fewer cars.
• Take a deep breath and step off the curb (avoiding the river of god knows what in the gutter)
• Keep a constant pace, don’t speed up or slow down no matter what happens, just let the traffic deal with you.
• Arrive at the other side and change your underwear.

I arrived in Hanoi from a very brief overnight stay in Singapore. I ‘d love to write all about Singapore, but I was feeling really rough and all I really saw was the inside of the 20 bed prison like dorm I was staying in. I was up at 5am (again for the second day running) to catch my flight to Hanoi.

Still feeling quite bad I missed out on the Singapore airlines plane food (which actually looked quite tasty) and arrived in Hanoi some time in mid afternoon. I was bundled into a tiny minibus which for US$4 will take you the hours drive from the airport to anywhere in the city. The drive from the airport was terrifying, I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of times a moped nearly ended up under our wheels, you also soon get used to the sound of horns. Once at the hostel I went back to bed for a few hours then decided I should make an effort and go for a walk, but roads at night made me think again and I only ended up walking around the block.

The next day I was determined to see more of the city so I followed other people until I got the hang of the road crossing thing. I got ripped of buying a photocopied lonely planet guide book (that smells of fish), I thought I was paying £1 for it when I actually paid £10. Got a much better grasp of the exchange rate now (around 25,000 dong to the pound).

All the streets in old town Hanoi have a different theme: silk street, toy street comb street, clam worm street etc. each selling exactly what it say on the tin. This didn’t make it any easier to find my way around, I managed to get lost for about 2 hours after I popped out to the supermarket for shower gel.

I spent the rest of the day at the Hoan Kiem Lake getting hassled by the street touts who try and sell you anything they can and once they get up close and out of earshot of anyone else they offer a whole different range of products (I’m sure you can guess).

I also watched the water puppet show which turned out to be really funny. Seven puppeteers stand waist deep in a very smelly green pool and operate puppets from behind a screen whilst a live band plays along, I don’t think there was much of a plot to the storey, but it was really enjoyable.

I’ve met up with the guys I’ll be spending the next few weeks with on the first of my tours. They all seem nice enough, there’s 2 young Australian couples, an Australian mother and daughter, an American mother and Daughter and a family of Americans. We all went out for quite a posh Vietnamese dinner which came to all of £4

Next stop is Hanlong Bay which looks amazing from the photo’s I’ve seen. Hopefully I’ll get a couple of good HDR’s.

I met some Australians in Hiroshima who informed me that there was a Universal Studios in Osaka and that it had a proper full on Jaws ride. After the emotional roller-coaster that I had been through at the A-Bomb Museum and the Peace Park I jumped on an early train over there.

I was a little disappointed with park, although I had just visited the same place in Hollywood which had updated a lot of it’s rides. The jaws ride was great though, you go on a guided tour of Amity Island, then you get a call from another boat in distress. As you go through the rest of the ride Jaws get closer and cloaser to the boat and you get more and more wet. It ends with him chewing on a powerline and being blown up by a nearby oil drum, shot by the guide.

The other problem was that it was so cold, I’ve managed to get this far on my travels just wearing a hoody, and I didn’t really want to buy a coat to last the last 3 days before I head to SE Asia where a coat would definitely not be needed. I ended up mainly going on the rides that where indoors and using the time in the queues to warm up.

That night I met back up with the 2 Australian girls and anther Australian guy back at the hotel. It was decided that we should have a real Japanese night out and go to a Karaoke bar. I managed to murder the pixies, blur and underworld and we all had a go at chanting along to tubthumping.

The next morning the 2 Aussie girls an myself went to the Dotobori district of town which must have been an inspiration for Bladerunner. Lots of industrial buildings covered in neon signs. It looks like quite a trendy place to hang out, it was full of big groups teenagers all dressed up as though they where going out for the night. I head back into Tokyo for the evening and just went straight to bed.

For my last day in Tokyo I decided that I would just catch the subway to Akihabara, then just walk in a random direction until I found something interesting or I got bored. I found a cool market selling all sorts for weird stuff as well as a whole load of fish. They also seemed to sell a hell of a lot of octopus which I’ve never really seen on sale before.

I ended the night at a restaurant with an English guy I was sharing a room with, he showed me Okonomiyaki which is like a pancake, cabbage and whatever other fillings you like. I had shrimp, they also topped it with a special Okonomiyaki sauce which tasted just like HP brown sauce to me. We had a really interesting conversation about how you meet people and have this weird little relationship with them where they become like your best friends and then a couple of days later one of you has moved on and all of sudden your doing the same thing with someone else. I’m sort of looking forward to doing an organised tour where I’ll be with one group of people for a few weeks.

I had to get up early to catch my flight to Singapore where I’ve got an overnight stop before I get to Hanoi. I flew on the new double decker super jumbo A380, Economy class was pretty much the same as on any other plane, but I did walk through business class which looked wicked. You get a double seat and a 21″ TV. Unfortunately I’ve been feeling a little rough since last night and didn’t sleep at all, to top it all off I was sick a few times on the plane. Hopefully it’ll not last to long and I’ll be good for my first Tour starting on Tuesday.

I spent my first night in Hiroshima drinking in the hostel with three Austrailians that I was sharing a room with. We got a bottle of Saki between us, because none of them had tried it before. I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy another. We spent the night playing games. They showed me Uno and I showed them Othello.

Hiroshima seems like quite a cool city, there’s a lot going on and it seems like it has quite a vibrant night-life, but I guess it’s hard to come here and not spend the day immersed in the city’s horrific past.

I spent the day at the Peace Park and A-Bomb Museum, it was quite an emotional affair and there was a couple of times that the room got a little dusty.

First off visited the A-Bomb dome. The bomb exploded almost directly above it and is one of only a handful of buildings that survived the attack. As I was wondering around I walked past a group of Eastern European tourists who where taking smiley, happy photo’s of themselves pointing at the building, I got so angry, I felt like screaming at them.

Next I walked over the bridge into the peace garden. There is a monument with an origami crane on top of it. There is a story about a girl called Sadako Sasaki. She was only 2 when she survived the initial explosion, but 10 years later fell ill with leukaemia. Spurred on by an old Japanese saying that if you fold 1000 cranes, the gods will grant you a wish. She folded well over 1000 (although wikipedia says she only folded 644) but her wish to get better was not granted and she died a few months later. Now the crane has become a symbol for peace in Japan and Japanese children fold them in the millions and are delivered to hang in the peace garden. Whilst I was there a group of kids came and sung a song around the monument and whilst I was watching a much younger girl came up to me and gave me a crane. Cue more damp eyes.

There is also an A-Bomb museum in the park which I spent most of the day wondering through. It go’s through the history of Hiroshima, before and after models, the science of the bomb etc. The most heart wrenching though is all the torn,burnt blood soaked clothes and personal items, complete with the story behind each of them. The one that really got me was the skin and finger nails of a boy called Noriaki Teshima who was at school when the bomb went off. He somehow made it home despite his skin dangling in tatters. He died a day later, but is said to have been so thirsty he sucked the pus from is nail-less fingers

The Museum also exhibits the letters of protest written by the mayor of Hiroshima to the leader of a country following any nuclear testing they do. So far there has been well over 600 letters, the last one being to Kim Jong Ill in North Korea.

I’m back at the hostel now feeling a bit moody, but I’m hoping to go to Osaka early tomorrow and hopefully go to the Japanese Universal Studios which will be quite a contrast from today.

Kyoto’s, home to Temples, Shrines, Gisha’s, Parks, blah, blah, blah. When I arrived in kyoto I only had one thing on my mind: Monkeys. There is a monkey sanctuary/park in the Arishiyama area of town. It takes about 20 minutes to climb up a quite a steep hill to the park. At the top of the hill you get ushered into the resting area where there is a cage on one side, from which you can feed the monkeys, but you can also go outside and wonder amongst them. I think I stayed there a bit too long, a couple of them came right up to my leg a started grooming each other.

I spent a couple of hours wondering around the gardens of the Tenryuji Temple which was quite nice, but I suspect that it’s quite similar to the hundreds of other temples that are found throughout Kyoto. I also went down to the Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine which is a series of small temples linked together with pathways which are lined with thousands of Torii (the red gate things). I got a bit lost wondering around and once it was dark the shrines got a little bit spooky.

I lso spent a day in a city called Nara which apparently was Japan’s first real capital (back in 710). It has a large temple and park complex which is inhabited with hundreds of wild deer that have lost their fear of humans and will happily walk up to you (especially if you have handful of crackers that the street vendors sell). Alson in Nara is Todai-Ji, which is a temple that houses the Daibutsu-den Hall, the largest wooden building in the world. Inside is a 15m high Bronze Buddha (I’m about as big as one of it’s fingers). The place was packed with school kids and tourists, but I think it’s funny how people go to places like this and never seem to take their eyes away from the the viewfinder of their cameras. Maybe I’m a little guilty of that as well, but I try to put my camera away for a bit every time I visit somewhere.

I took most of today off to do washing etc. and also to travel down to Hiroshima which is about 2 hours south-west by bullet train. I’m going to have a look around the A-Bomb museum and Peace Gardens tomorrow and possibly go down to Miyajima.