Me on the Jet Ski in Phuket
Ali on the speedboat we were parasailing from
Either me or Ali patrasailing.. It's kinda hard to tell! lol
I don't know why i was pulling this face..
Shortie and Tara Reunion. House wave girlies... now GET OUT HERE!

The goregous island of Phi Phi :)

Hey peeps,

Ali and I have gone separate ways for a bit.. meeting back up in Bangkok for our tour thru Malaysia and Singapore.. Quite honestly.. I don't know how i looked at his face everyday for 74 days but now I don't have to! WA HEY! Ahh love u really Ali.. and expect a similarly stupid insult in return.. but i will never be shitleg and so's ur face :p Besides you CAN taste the ginger and if u argue with me i'll get the Viatnamese bus dude to come see you again ;) Mwah ha ha ha!

Phuket was nice.. we both tried Parasailing and jet skiing.. but mostly it was too touristy for us so Ali headed to parts unknown in the direction of Bangkok.. and I headed to Phi Phi.

Phi Phi is much better, although still has a roaring nightlife. It's the best of both worlds really.. beautiful! but much more expensive than anywhere else i've been in Thailand, esp now its peak season. Ali - you would actually have cried. Short's cabin was 2000 a night! I met some Canadian dude tho and we took over his cabin when he left for only 700. Still.. u wud have had to sleep on the beach :p

Anyhoo.. its excellent having a beach reunion with Shortie.. Ollers.. u must have gone INSANE with jealousy by now!

Mum.. have sent u an email.. didnt know u guys were all going to see Jamie.. no one tells me ANYTHING! Who's Brooke by the way? Maybe u could ask her.. lol. Thanks for sorting out my phone bill. I blame anyone reading this... cuz i probably called you at some pouint b4 leaving the UK so u can ALL put in for my 200 quid phone bill! Oops.. now i'm kinda glad i lost my phone at v fest..

Best go now.. me and the Short one are off to a Black moon party.. we've been pretty lazy so far but plan on doing a couple of tours in the next 3 days.

Love you all
Tara xxx

P.S. I think Ali is planning on motorbiking to Burma! But so far.. he hasn't got up early enough so is in kanchanaburi! hahahahaha!

Hey guys,
Back in Thailand now.. Phuket to be exact. Should be meeting up with Shortie tonight or tomorrow.. WA HEY! That's right welsh one, blonde one and Bromley wiggle.. house wave reunion minus Ol of the wyn.. Bek of the blonde, BooBoo and Hannah (where is she?!)
Yeah so just me and Short one then...

Vietnam and Laos were fantastic.. in different ways.
Vietnam was crazy busy in Saigon.. traffic everywhere.. but after Cambodia it was quite welcome. People were much friendlier, and although by the end of Cambodia we'd learned to love it, Vietnam was much preferred by all.
From Saigon we ventured out to the coast.. Mui Ne, still with our Swedish buddies, Anna and Olof.. who - for the record - are NOT from Switzerland! (lol)
The beach in Mui Ne was pretty crazy.. the waves were really high right up to the shore, and it was quite mental trying to swim in it! Mostly we stuck to the pool in our hotel.. less crabs and sharks!
While we were there, we took a trip to the yellow sand dunes.. amazing! As you can see, it's like the middle of the desert! The sand is SO hot it burns your feet.. but braved it ;) and had fun sliding down the dunes. Still, it was too hot to stay long!

From Mui Ne, we headed to Hue on a sleeper train. This was NOT as nice as the Thai trains..
Firstly there wasn't enough room to swing a cat (not that ANYONE would EVER try this.. sickos..) and secondly we shared a 6 bed cabin with about 9 other people! Add to this that for some reason the train was playing the most awful squealing Vietnam 'music' till late and from 5 in the morning! It actually nearly killed me. I don't think it could have been called music.. on second thoughts.. maybe I was wrong about the cats...

Got off the train and on to a Cyclo (Ali is modelling one above - how lovely) He calls them shitlos.. he's an idiot. I owe him a coke if they're actually called that apparantly :p ooh and apparantly it's spelt Chit Lo (he's being pedantic today - and a git). They're actually quite fun to ride around in, although you can't help but feel bad for the guys riding us around.. oh yeah that sounds wrong.. lol. Hung about in Hue for the day then hopped on a bus to Laos.

The minibus to the Laos border was a little odd..

... basically we were the first on it. And as we drove around in what was essentially a big circle.. the driver and his companions jumped off the bus and dragged random Vietnam locals onto it!
Not all of these passengers came aboard willingly.. infact one man tried to get off at least 3 times only to be dragged back on! Eventually he managed to escape but it was a close one.
We felt uncomfortable to say the least.. especially since there were at least 25 people squeezed onto this 10 seater bus for quite a long time! I think we somehow got involved in a kidnapping ring, but once at the border we quickly forgot about the victims we'd left behind ;)

Laos was amazing. We stayed in Savannakhet and didn't have time to move around, which was a shame. We would have liked to have gone to Vietienne and Luang Prabang. Anyway, Savannakhet was lovely and not remotely touristy, which gave us a real taster of true village life in Laos. We don't have many photos which is a shame, but it's not really about walking around taking photos of people living their everyday lives! Still the photo above is of a typical house that we saw in this area.
The people were really friendly, and the place was incredibly cheap. The food was FANTASTIC! Went twice to a restaurant that did fondue.. such a novelty getting to cook our own food, having eaten out every day for the last 2 and a half months! We stayed a day longer than planned, and both of us would like to go back and spend more time in Laos at some point. The only reason we didn't was a malaria tablet shortage.. shame...

From Laos, we headed through Bangkok to Phuket. It took 2 days of pretty much constant travelling.. exhausting! So we're having a chill for a few days :)

Oh.. Bean.. that's for Hannah and Johanna.. I couldn't resist it when I saw in in Bangkok! Got some pretty wierd looks for taking photos of a shop sign tho! lol...

Missing you all, email us or leave comments cuz we wanna know what YOU'RE doing too!
Much love
Tara and Ali xxx

Found these and HAD to add them. Its the 'road' we were talking about. I think now you have a better idea of what we mean! And at some points we (I say we - but i didn't and Ali did) had to get OFF the truck and PUSH! Still I think he was more comfy pushing than on the roof for 10 hrs! lol!
Also I forgot to mention that in Cambodia there are still loads of undiscovered landmines! So everywhere you go, you have to make sure you stay on the beaten track and don't stray. You don't forget because the victims of landmines are everywhere you look, and to think they're the lucky ones! It's awful. It didn't cross our minds for a second to stray anywhere!

Just also wanted to say before I go... HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEB! Sorry i can't celebrate it with you mate but know i'll be thinking of you. Love to Felix - hope you enjoy the fireworks kiddo. Don't be playing with sparklers! xxx

Hey guys,

In Vietnam now.. got here yesterday from Cambodia.

Cambodia.. what a place. Neither of us have been anywhere like it and it's virtually impossible to describe it and our experience of it. The photos don't come close to showing the truth of Cambodia, they're of us at beautiful temples.. and the money - well we're millionaires in Cambodia, and Vietnam for that matter. It's what we couldn't photograph that was the real experience of Cambodia.

Firstly, the journey there was incredibly bad. Terrible infact, and at times terrifying. We travelled from the border to Siem Reap on a 150-200 km road on a pickup truck. It took 10 hours... it wasn't a road, it was a pothole, and in some places - a river. Water came in to the truck, we broke down numerous times, got stuck, got towed and all this time there were about 25 of us on the truck plus random locals hopping on and off. Ali had to sit on the roof! The whole way we were lied to and scammed for money. Forced to change dollars into Cambodian Riel at a ridiculous rate only to find out that it was dollars we needed most places. Everytime we asked how much longer the journey was, we were told 4/5 hrs. We gave up asking anyone anything and just hoped we'd make it. Fortunately the trip was a bonding experience for us travellers and we fought the scammers as a group and got ourselves to a nice hostel. We stuck together throughout Cambodia and have come to Vietnam with Olof and Anna, a lovely Swedish couple who we feel like we've known for years although it's only been a week! At some points I think we all would have given up and gone back to Bangkok if we hadn't stuck together!

The people in Cambodia were not friendly and we couldn't trust anyone. We were stared at and laughed at, made to feel guilty for not giving to everyone we saw, hassled constantly, and scammed by anyone we came into contact with. Of course there were a few exceptions, I can think of 3! But hey, that may have been stressful for us but if you saw the conditions in which these people live, and the poverty everywhere - u'd forgive them. It's expensive in Cambodia, seeing the temples for 1 day cost 20 US dollars and all that money goes to the oil company that owns them, not the temples. It's no surprise that Cambodia was declared the most corrupt country in the world in 2005.

Still, we're glad we went and relieved to have left. By the last day we had settled in and had fun. The temples were beautiful - Angkor Wat, and Ta Phrom where tomb raider was filmed. In between we stopped to see monkeys living wild on some grass by the side of the road. That was amazing as most monkeys we've seen (not all) have been in captivity. Fed them and watched them for a bit, saw a mother with a baby hanging on to her tummy as she walked, and 2 monekys making more monkeys! lol. So we did have a good time mostly. Just had to learn how to get about in such a place. We saw a couple arriving the night before we left and they looked terrified. Just as we must have when we got here. We tried to help them out but they has 'rabbit stuck in the headlights' syndrome so couldn't do much for them! To them, we must have looked like the most confident travellers in the world and they probably didnt think we understood how they felt. it's amazing how quickly you adjust to the place your in and before you know it you're enjoying it all!

Again, once we crossed the border intro Vietnam it was like being in yet another different world. It felt at least like being back to civilisation of some degree. This place is like a cross between Hong Kong and Thailand.. I can't believe how countries can be joined together by land and yet be so drastically different. I guess coming from an island explains why I have trouble with that!

Anyway, off to hit the beaches of Vietnam with Olof and Anna now (bottom pic.. the 2 in the middle - the girl on the left is Gina from melbourne, we're hoping to catch up with her in Oz) so hopefully will have an easier time of it. Then off to Laos, but we've had to cut this part of our trip short and will be heading back to Thailand earlier than expected cuz i'm running low on malaria tablets and it's not worth the risk (at 3 quid a tablet i'm not buying more!)

Hope everyone is well.

Tara and Ali xxx