Many of the posts I wrote during our round the world journey included descriptions and pictures of meals we had, but these were often of special restaurants or unusual foods. I took a lot more food photos, especially in Asia, and now that we are home and missing some of the things that were available…

To say we were a bit travel weary when we left our guesthouse in Sukhothai would be an understatement. We had been on the road for four and a half months, much of that time coping with crazily hot weather, moving every few days to a new location and taking buses, trains, cars and planes…

We left our flat in Chiang Mai early in the morning, saying goodbye to its pretty courtyard, little shrine, and resident Tokay gecko (I never heard another one for the remainder of our time in Thailand) and set off for the train station. We hadn’t ridden a Thai train yet, so were curious to see…

We repeated the bus ride we had taken five days earlier in reverse, travelling from Chiang Rai to Chiang Mai. While waiting for our bus we watched many very old rickety buses come in from the Laos border. Thankfully we were not riding in one of these but a newer, more comfortable and cooler vehicle…

We were sad to leave our perfect villa at the end of our week on Koh Phangan, but we had more exploring to do in Thailand, so we reluctantly left the island and returned to Koh Samui for a night before flying off to Chiang Mai the next morning. We again stayed in a hostel,…

We flew from hot, hot Siem Reap to Bangkok in the evening, and at 10 pm checked into our room in a hostel near the airport for what was probably my shortest stay ever in a booked room—6 hours. We had a 6 am fight to Koh Samui the next morning, and got up at…

After our brief respite from the heat in Hanoi, we were greeted in Cambodia by temperatures of 39C/103F. We landed in Siem Reap’s huge brand new (and completely empty) airport about an hour outside the city, breezed through customs and immigration and met our pre-arranged taxi outside. The drive into Siem Reap goes down a…

Although we took a car from Hanoi to Ninh Binh, we decided to go by train on the way back, for cost, time and other reasons. From prior experience, I had become concerned over the two weeks we had been in Vietnam that I might have a DVT in my leg and wanted to see…

It’s not often one is happy to get a message from their airline the night before a flight informing them of a schedule change, but when we found out our plane from Da Nang to Hanoi was going to take off two hours later, we were overjoyed. Instead of having to leave Hoi An at…

Our unique train ride took us to Da Nang, where we were picked up by a taxi and driven about an hour south to the ancient trading town of Hoi An. Da Nang is a big city, full of the usual rush and activity we’ve come to expect in Vietnam. Da Nang was also the…