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Vietnam Part 3 – Dalat
An Exciting Bus Ride Turning up at the Ho Chi Minh City Western Bus Station was slightly overwhelming, where hundreds of buses were lined up in neat rows. We walked through what felt like several different terminals saying the name of our bus company to the various people who noticed us wandering along through the…
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Vietnam Part 2 – Bright Lights, Big City in Ho Chi Minh
A Short Flight A 6am start meant we could eat a quick breakfast before being picked up at 7.30am for the short journey to the airport. The flight from Phu Quoc to Ho Chi Minh City was short and sweet. After collecting our bags, it was straight onto the free McDonald’s wifi at the airport…
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Vietnam Part 1 – Phú Quôc
Crossing the Border to Vietnam We were collected by a tuktuk from Kep Lodge after breakfast and taken into town to Kampot Transport, where a little bus pulled up about 15 minutes later and we climbed aboard to find the most fabulous decor for our journey to the border. The trip went without a hitch, and…
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Cambodia Part 5 – Cruising Around Kep and Kampot
A Nightmare Road After stocking up on snacks at the 7-Eleven at the Sihanoukville port, and a quick lunch of a ham and cheese toastie (the first one since Thailand!), we walked down the road to catch our van ride to Kep. We only needed to wait about 20 minutes before our driver arrived, and…
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Cambodia Part 4 – A Blissful Break on Koh Rong Sanloem
By Land and Sea To get to our next destination of Koh Rong Sanloem, we arranged a van journey through our hotel in Phnom Penh, and then our resort booked our fast ferry tickets for us. It took three hours to travel from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville, where we caught the fast ferry out to…
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Cambodia Part 3 – Phnom Penh
Making Our Way to Phnom Penh The journey to Phnom Penh by van was straightforward, although it took slightly longer than expected, arriving at 4pm instead of 3pm. First, we were dropped off by Rath at the bus station in the AKD tuktuk. It was amazing that we managed to squeeze all our luggage in…
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Cambodia Part 2 – Helping out at AKD School, Battambang
A Volunteer Opportunity We had heard about AKD School in Battambang from another family travelling through SEA. It is a not-for-profit school offering free English lessons for local children. When Tess told me about her eight days there with her two boys, Shaun and I decided that it was something that we’d like to do…
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Cambodia Part 1 – Soaking Up the Sights in Siem Reap
The journey to Siem Reap from Don Khone in 4000 Islands involved a boat back up the Mekong to Nakasong, a van to the Lao border, crossing the land border on foot, another van to Stung Treng, a change to a third van to Siem Reap before getting a tuk tuk to our hotel. All…
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Laos Part 5 – The Mekong’s 4000 Islands
Our van journey from Pakse took about 3 hours, and it was enjoyable watching the countryside fly by out the window. We arrived in Nakasong around 3pm, where we found our awaiting boat about 200 metres from where we were dropped off. We crossed the loading platform to the boat that would take us to…
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Laos Part 4 – The Bolaven Plateau
A Flight to Pakse Having done a lot of research on how to make our way south to Pakse from Vientiane, we finally reached the conclusion that it was going to be much more straightforward to fly instead of doing a 13 hour bus journey on rather average roads. Shaun and I had seriously considered…