Singapore, it's not poor

Shimmying into Singapore we waved goodbye, temporarily, to grit, grime and sweat. From the airport we took an air-conditioned train to the city centre, disembarked into a cold, clean shopping mall and walked to our hotel through various other malls, without stepping outside for more than a minute at a time.

It was time for some VIP treatment. Our home for the next couple of days was the majestic Conrad Centennial – a much-appreciated gift from my dad. An entire wall of our room was made of glass, peering out onto the aptly-named Fountain of Wealth and a never-ending sea of skyscrapers. Our bed was big and luxurious, with an actual sprung mattress and a pillow-menu; the bathroom was large and shining; the air-con worked; there were no grubby marks on the walls, no cockroaches…it was nothing like anywhere we’d stayed so far on this trip.

We also had access to the executive lounge on the top floor so could help ourselves to tasty breakfasts, evening canapés and drinks. The view was even more startling from up there. Lounging by the pool, staff are on hand to pour cold drinking water whenever our glasses were empty. We paid a visit to the hotel bar to sip Singapore Slings which probably cost more than an entire week’s food budget elsewhere in Asia.

Of course, we still ventured out to Singapore’s Little India every day for a ma-hoosive veg thali, which fueled us up for more loafing.

But it seems that Singaporeans’ favourite activity is shopping. The Lonely Planet’s walking tour of Singapore is a mall tour. Their equivalent of a high street is a row of shopping malls, each one glitzier and harder to navigate than the last. So our main task was shopping for Aussie-appropriate attires and haircuts.

Suitably relaxed and polished, we exited Asia and flew across the skyscrapers to the other side of the planet.

Simply simian

We arrived in Kuching, capital of the Sarawak side of Borneo, in darkness and were welcomed into Nomad, our home for the week.

Nomad is like a big house-share: a large living room scattered with giant cushions where inhabitants can sprawl out in front of the giant TV , a grubby little kitchen for making tea and toast, and free pancakes every morning. Chris, the tribally-tattooed owner, is like a kind uncle and his friends are all smiles and laughter.

We spent a couple of days ambling around Kuching, concluding that there wasn’t really much to do. There were some quaint old Chinese buildings, a riverside esplanade and a buzzy little Indian street but, shockingly, no Indian restaurants. Everything seemed to be shut for Ramadan so it was Chinese or nothing.

Oh, apart from Top Spot, a huge and bustling food court specialising in creatures of the sea, discreetly located at the top of a multistorey car park. We tucked into some delicious pomfret and prawns among the madness up there.

The real fun is to be had outside the city where the apes and monkeys live, so we went to visit the orang utangs in their post-rehab jungle playground. They’re amazing, orang utangs. Their name means ‘people of the forest’, and they really do look like people in orange monkey suits, swinging between the trees with their big hairy arms and stuffing bananas in their mouths.

We spent a night at Bako National Park, a pastel-coloured wilderness by the sea inhabited by bendy-nosed proboscis monkeys, ugly bearded pigs and cheeky macaques. We did a few short treks through the jungle, ending at twinkly little coves and cliffs. A night walk brought us to glow-in-the-dark mushrooms, snakes, a sleeping kingfisher and a sodding rainstorm.

Heading out for a walk at dawn, I was eating a small packet of biscuits; suddenly a stern-faced macaque leapt out in front of me and glared. I threw my biscuits at him. Mugged by a monkey.

We caught a bus out to the seaside and kayaked around a pretty jungly coast, all these little islands shrouded in mist and sea-sparkles in the distance. We found a teeny little soft-sand beach so stopped to frolic around there for a bit, then went back, sat in a cafe and watched the most ridiculously amazing luminous orange sunset ever while monkeys clambered around on the roof.

All monkeyed out, we jetted off to Singapore, our final Asian destination.

Food glorious food

My body reacted to being dragged from the beach to the chilly Cameron Highlands with horror and a groggy cold. It was Sapa all over again.

Nevertheless, we basked in the coolness of the small town surrounded by aromatic forest, strawberry and honeybee farms. In between sampling every Indian canteen in the town we hiked in the jungle, sliding down muddy slopes and sheltering from spluttery rain showers. Then dried off with scones, cream, strawberry jam and Chinese tea.

We headed back downhill and across the water to the island of Penang. We based ourselves in the city of Georgetown, which quickly became one of my favourite places of the entire trip.


Georgetown is full of lovely old shuttered Chinese houses, shops shaded by painted wooden blinds and colourful retro signs. Everyone who lives there seems to be old – where are all the young people? – skinny, graceful old Chinese people float around the streets and incense pours out of the spangly temples. There’s an elegant seaside esplanade peppered by grand colonial buildings. And then there’s Little India, which is just too exciting for words.

It could be India, if the roads weren’t so nicely paved and there were a few beggars and cows about. But it smells, sounds and tastes exactly right. Pounding Bollywood music, glittering sari shops, towering temples, intoxicating incense and delicious, scoffable thalis…it doesn’t get much better.

We escaped the city for a day with a motorbike and a terrible map to guide us to the beaches, jungle canopy-walks and hilltop temples around the island.

Penang is so proud of its famous street food that there are leaflets guiding visitors to which hawker stalls sell what. So we planned our days around our meals, getting fat on more roti canai and sampling tasty laksa (a fishy noodle soup), powdery Indian sweets and Sri Lankan curry.

Turtle power

We caught a clean, comfortable night train from KL to Kota Bharu, the state capital of Kelantan in north-eastern Malaysia. This was mainly a stopover for the Perhentian islands, but we stayed a couple of nights at Zeck’s, another eccentric little guesthouse full of kittens and friendly staff, discovering another amazing Indian canteen, wandering round the markets and malls.

In Kota Bharu they love birdsong so much that they play recordings of it from the rooftops, and gather with caged birds for singing competitions. Pretty spooky when the chirping is mixed with the eerie calls-to-prayer wafting out of the mosques.

Then it was time for our tropical dreams to come true. We arrived on Perhentian Kecil on a juddery, vomit-inducing speedboat which plonked us at D’Lagoon, a small private beach and guesthouse. The sea was a startling deep turquoise, teeming with colourful fishes.

The wildlife on land wasn’t bad, either: giant monitor lizards would amble across the rocks, owls would swoop down to hoot outside our room, and tiny baby turtles flipped around in a pond, waiting to be released when they were strong enough to defend themselves. A sign on the wall threatened: ‘Dear guest, we are going to knock on your door when turtle come to lay eggs on the beach. Thank you.’ There was also a monkey on a string and a mouse in our room.


But there was no time to laze around – we had come to learn to dive, so we signed up for an open-water course. We spent the first night cramming half a textbook’s worth of mindboggling theory before we met Pierre, our smouldery Swiss instructor. He informed us that we would be diving to 12 metres that very morning, and I nearly ran off crying, scared of panicking underwater and drowning.

But I was glad he threw us straight in because it gave me less time to worry. Once underwater, the obscene weight of the air-cylinder and weight-belt vanished and we floated in slow motion around the coral alongside parrotfish, barracudas, angelfish, tiny bobbing clownfish and shoals of glittering silvery jewels. It was like flying, or floating through space.

Over the next few days we saw stingrays, turtles and sharks skulking in the depths between learning to save each other if our air ran out, navigate underwater and perform fin-pivots. It was excellent fun, and we recovered from three exhausting days in true beach-bum style.

Malaysia truly Asia

A short flight, a hefty ‘departure tax’ and a pot noodle later, we landed in Kuala Lumpur, all excited like.

The excitement was snuffed out the moment we laid eyes on the room we’d booked in the highly-recommended Wheeler’s guesthouse: a tiny windowless cell. Our first meal in Malaysia was in a gloomy KFC. Not a good start. But once we’d switched to a room with actual windows, we were won over by Wheelers’ unique charm.

It was run a jolly gang of gold-earringed, one-eyed or transvestited jolly-boys who kept tanks of giant, terrifying fish in reception; a family of sleepy kittens lived in the rooftop bar; and we were joined at breakfast by a monkey wearing a nappy.

The food got much, much better too. KL’s cuisine reflects its multi-Asian population – there’s Chinese, Malay and Indian restaurants crammed into every street. Malaysia is, as the cheesy advert says, truly Asia. After our first silly night we headed straight to Little India for a proper south Indian thali. Absolute heaven. We walked it off through the bazaars to the sound of Bollywood beats.

KL is the embodiment of that old cliché about old-meets-new: crumbly Chinese shopfronts, pastel-painted terraced houses and incense-clouded temples nestle beneath soaring skyscrapers and gleaming shopping malls. Ancient Tamil men in lunghis hobble alongside strutting Malay women in bright headscarves and stilettos. We explored it all on foot, when we could stand the heat, or by shiny air-conditioned monorail.

But mostly, we ate. We tore ourselves away from the Indian canteens to eat chilli-sodden fish, giant bowls of noodles and what would become a staple of our Malaysian diet: the amazing roti canai. Mmmm.

Two wheels good

We headed east, back to the mighty Mekong, to two towns perched on the riverbanks which were almost exactly the same. Kompong Cham was first: muddy streets, a riverside promenade and a big indoor market. It was surprisingly touristed so we ended up in a gloomy ground-floor hotel room where we remained trapped for most of our visit – the rain absolutely hammered down. We escaped during a short reprise in the downpour to cycle through a friendly Muslim village, but soon got soaked and pedaled back to the comfort of our room and Animal Planet TV.

In Kratie, all faded colonial elegance and Mekong sunsets, the rain held off. We rented bikes and rumbled up the river bank in search of Irrawaddy dolphins. We pedaled through pretty villages shaded by swaying sugar palms and creaky bamboo, tiny children lolling in doorways shouting “hello!” at us. An hour later we boarded a boat and scooted across the wide river, perching among grassy islets to watch the dolphins frolic.

We set out again the following day, crossing the river to loop around Koh Trong, through gleaming rice fields, meadows of velvety cows and orchards.
The food in Kratie’s restaurants and riverside stalls was inexplicably bad. Thankfully, the local market delicacies were a treat: sticky rice mixed with coconut milk stuffed into bamboo sticks and steamed, and banana-leaf parcels of spicy, raw fish. Most excellent picnic food.

Over sunset beers by the river one night we were befriended by an eccentric German hippie named Johnny Twilight. He was funny and entertaining at first, obsessed with crap British films and full of silly stories. But five hours later we were still listening to his monologue – he was intense and full of probing questions. We somehow ended up back at his room looking at pictures of his ex-girlfriends before finally making a run for it. We spent some time in Kratie avoiding Mr Twilight.


Our final stop in Cambodia was Phnom Penh. It was alarming to be back in a big city with roaring traffic to navigate and tuk-tuk drivers begging for our custom every couple of steps. Young Khmer people gather in the evenings in grassy spaces to dance in choreographed groups to blaring pop music, and well-dressed NGO workers dash between slick bars. We visited all the sad sights: the horrific S21 torture museum and the killing fields, with its monument filled with skulls and gaping mass graves. The Khmer Rouge atrocities were so scarily recent; you can tell Cambodia has had its spine ripped out.

On that happy note, we bid adieu to Indochina and boarded a plane to Malaysia.

Angkor and more

After building up our strength lazing on Koh Rong, we boarded a night bus to Siem Reap for the obligatory visit to Angkor Wat. We were fully expecting Siem Reap to be an aggressive, hassly place, as these tourist hotspots tend to be, but, once we’d recovered from a 5am deposit into a ditch swarming with eager tuk-tuk drivers, we discovered it was a nice, friendly little town. There’s a couple of sprawling markets, a lazy river and a road called Pub Street which is exactly what it says it is.

It was scorching hot in Siem Reap, so we headed to the Angkor complex as early as we could manage. Despite the searing heat radiating from the crumbling grey rocks, we had a good old explore. Angkor Wat itself, while beautiful, was the least interesting temple: Bayon, with its giant looming faces and Ta Prohm, all mangled with jungle roots taking over the stone, were the best. There's lots of Hindu symbolism mixed in with the headless Buddhas and fierce stone snakes.

The hordes of children and raggedy women selling bracelets and fans and water across the grounds were a constant niggle. Even more saddening, we discovered that the entire Angkor complex is rented out to private companies each year, so Cambodian people don’t actually make any money out of the whopping entrance fee. Unless they’re employed to cut the grass by hand in the beating sun, or drive us around in tuk tuks, or beg us to buy their trinkets. Or simply beg.

We bumped into Doug and Hannah again, waiting for the sunset on Phnom Bakheng hill. So we revived our flagging spirits with strawberry frozen margaritas and Mekong whisky that night, then spent a relaxing day at Aqua, a wide open-air swimming pool across town.

The monsoon kept up a steady presence, flooding our hotel in Siem Reap in a flash storm then holding us hostage at various points in our onward journey. In Battambang, a friendly town downriver from Siem Reap, we avoided it just long enough for to ride the delightful Bamboo Train. This is literally just a small platform of bamboo which rattles along the old railway tracks into the countryside – most fun, if you don’t mind a few bangs and judders.

We also took a cooking class in Battambang. We started in the market, gathering vegetables and herbs, then watching semi-conscious fish having their heads and scales lopped off for us. We learnt to cook delicious coconutty amok curry, a less-delicious chilli and basil dish, and fresh spring rolls. It was nice just to cook, we both miss it; eating out for three meals a day gets tiring!

Monsoon island

So, Cambodge. We headed straight to Sihanoukville, a coastal town which is a bit like Vang Vieng-on-sea: it’s set up exactly like any Thai island resort but the beach is less nice and the town is more scruffy. In the evenings the thin strip of Serendipity Beach is taken over by barbecues serving up mounds of delicious fish and cheap draft beer under twinkling lights, with squidgy chairs to curl up in and listen to the waves lapping.

During the day, dark clouds loomed overhead and the beach was crawling with children and young Khmer people selling bracelets, fireworks and offering pedicures. On top of them are gangs of oh-so-cool young Brits on their gap years handing out flyers, pouting and imploring you to go to their bar tonight for free shots. It’s sad really - all the bars advertise for western staff while the locals are stuck on the beach hawking wares that no one really wants.

So we escaped to Koh Rong, a couple of storm-swept hours away on an old fishing boat; a peaceful little tropical island with a bare strip of village, a dive shop and only a couple of guesthouses. Here, of all places, we bumped into my school friend Doug, who happened to be staying in the bungalow next door. I knew he was travelling with his girlfriend Hannah, but we didn’t think our paths would cross, so didn’t try. So it was right lovely to catch up with them.


It rained cats and dogs on Koh Rong. Literally – we found a kitten curled up in by backpack one night. There was nothing much to do except lie around reading and watching dragonflies swirling around while the storms gathered over the sea. And, occasionally, run down the beach for a rainy swim. Proper relaxing.

Eight things I like about Vietnam

My last post might have been a bit too negative. I did like a lot of things about Vietnam, such as...

1. Eating prawns. Sweet and tasty
2. Zooming around on the back of scooters instead of in taxis or tuktuks
3. The super cute bike helmets they all wear
4. Bia hoi. Cheap, light, refreshing beer which costs about 15p
5. Drinking coffee. Strong and mixed with condensed milk for a zingy wake-up call
6. Cone hats, everywhere
7. Comfortable, well-behaved overnight train journeys
8. Watching all three Twilight films in one week.

Good night Vietnam

I really wanted to like Vietnam, and I did start off liking it.

We blitzed southwards down the east coast armed with open bus tickets as we didn’t have much time to get off the very beaten track before our visas ran out. In Hue we walked around the ruined Citadel, took a boat down the river and visited crumbling tombs and pagodas. In Hoi An we wandered the sweaty but picturesque streets, ate the delicious local dish, Cau Lau, and got tailor-made dresses, sandals, shirts and shorts. Beautiful China beach was only 15 minutes up the road so we lay under wizard-shaped umbrellas and swam in the sparkly sea. Nha Trang was more of the same with a drunken beach party thrown in.

It was all lovely but it was all starting to blur into one. Everywhere there are hordes of tourists, identical tall, thin hotels and little ladies in cone hats and face masks begging you to buy something, anything from them. Everywhere felt a bit tense.

Up in the highlands, Dalat stood out a bit – farmy and cool with an immense market that swamps the town centre. We joined forces with Dan, a New Yorker we’d met in Nha Trang and Brooke, a New Zealander whose wonderful swallow tattoos caught my eye, for a day with the Easy Riders. The Easy Riders are friendly, crinkly-eyed old locals with motorbikes who will whizz you around the surrounding highlands. Our day was clear blue and glorious. We drove around with the wind in our faces, taking in the lush scenery and stopping off at little workshops, flower-gardens and dramatic waterfalls. The best bit was a silk factory where we watched the whole process, from worm to cocoon to fluff to shiny patterned fabric.

After that brief respite we spent a couple of unremarkable days in Saigon before heading into the Mekong Delta. This wasn’t as nice as I imagined it would be. In Can Tho city we sat down for some fresh local fish by the river, got driven into the makeshift kitchen by the rain and sat for over an hour watching all kinds of fragrant dishes being cooked – none of them the ones we’d ordered – before leaving, hungry and cross.

We got up at dawn for a boat ride round the famous floating markets, which was all very nice until we veered off into the smaller canals, expecting tranquil backwaters and finding murky channels strewn with litter and floating dead pigs. We headed to the bus station that afternoon to discover the only bus with spare seats in the direction we wanted to go was a rickety rust-bag with a weasely little conductor determined to charge us double the price printed on the ticket. We arrived in Mytho, the border town, cramped and hungry at 9pm, only to discover the only places serving food were the kinds of stalls with barbecued rat out front.

By this time I was kicking to get out of Vietnam. We juddered across the border to Cambodia.

The sea and cake

We based ourselves in Hanoi – close to the clinic where Joe could get his numerous rabies injections – for a couple of weeks, dipping out to see what northern Vietnam had to offer.

You can’t visit Vietnam without a trip to Ha Long Bay, so we duly set off on a three-day tour. “Descending Dragon” Bay, as it translates, is stunning, a smattering of limestone karsts jutting casually out of the ocean. It’s like an underwater Laos. We boarded one of many junk boats and set off, munching fresh seafood and peeping out of the shaded cabin to enjoy the view, which got more impressive as the crowds of boats thinned to nothing and the sun sank into the sea. After a sweltering night in a sealed cabin bedroom – we should have slept on the roof, really – we landed on Cat Ba island.

We felt like part of a nasty ant-trail of tourists on Cat Ba. The downside of being on an organized tour is, well, being part of a tour. We were prodded in this and that direction, told who to follow, when to eat, when to sleep. We were granted “free time” in the afternoon so headed to a small beach which was almost empty till abut 4pm when the sun slid behind the rocks and the Vietnamese tourists descended in droves. Instead of baking in the sun like bonkers western tourists would they had the time of their lives, shrieking into the waves and posing for pictures. It was a pretty funny show from the cliff above.

Back in Hanoi, we decided we had sweated enough, so boarded a night train to Sapa during an almighty thunderstorm which soaked our backpacks inside and out. The train was great – padded beds, duvets, darkness, and the Vietnamese are so well behaved, sleeping rather than gaggling around the hallways like on smelly Indian trains.

Sapa, a gleaming green hill-world of paddy fields and chattering Hmong tribeswomen, was foggy and sopping wet nearly the whole time. None of our stuff dried and it was too rainy to venture out for any proper trekking. We were soggy, but enjoyed the fresh air and jumper-temperatures and we ate a lot of cake. Finally the mist cleared and we could appreciate the views – just in time for our return train.

Bites and bumps

Vietnam has been eventful – many of the events involving pain and panic. Less than 24 hours after crossing the border, a spiteful yellow dog sank its teeth into Joe’s ankle for no obvious reason. It was early, it was hot, no one in Than Hoa spoke English – as we scrambled around looking for a doctor, I watched Joe closely for signs of madness or foaming at the mouth. Luckily we found someone willing to give him the first of many rabies injections, and made our way to Hanoi.

Hanoi! Hanoi is great. It’s a giant beehive buzzing with scooters, as flighty young Vietnamese people zoom around in cute, shiny helmets looking for fun. The French definitely left their mark here, with stately buildings framing lakes, wide boulevards and cake shops. The old quarter, as always, is the best bit, the crumbly East End of Hanoi, a maze of streets crammed with food stalls, shoe shops, hawkers and alluring little boutiques and restaurants.

Once settled we met up with Ian, a Hanoi-residing friend we met in Thailand. Ian and his friends introduced us to the pleasures of Bia Hoi – perching on miniscule plastic stools on a busy corner in the heart of the old quarter drinking cold, weak lager for about 15p a glass, talking to randoms and avoiding chancers with a superglue stick and a radar for your broken sandals.

Have I complained about the heat in Asia much yet? Hanoi is ridiculous. With humidity hovering around 60% a ten minute walk feels like doing aerobics in a sauna. It feels like someone wrapped the world in a sleeping bag and left it in the desert. Not pleasant. That’s why, after trudging through Ho Chi Min’s mausoleum to eyeball his waxy corpse in the swelter – we decided to spend the afternoon at Hanoi Water Park. It was a bad idea from the start: hard house blaring, children running around screaming. But we decided to chill in the swimming pool after one go on the slide.

For some reason I decided to do this head-first, gripping the solid handles of my mat. At the end, I plunged face-first into the pool and the handle smacked me in the face, almost breaking my nose and making blood gush out of my face. I’ve just about recovered, but won’t be trying that again.

Communists, caves and chocolate mousse

You’d expect the capital city of a country like Laos to be ravishing, but Vientiane was just OK. It had its charms – sparkly wats, a gleaming golden stupa, labyrinthine markets and some delicious restaurants. Other than that it’s a little bit ugly, all office slabs and grey government buildings. Plus it was muggy as hell, so we bezzed around the sights, ate some incredible Belgian chocolate mousse and fecked off out of there.

We caught the overnight bus north-eastwards. An unrelaxing night rumbling along under speakers blaring out Thai ballads ended in the spooky morning gloom of Phonsevan, a gritty town surrounded by hills scarred by the acne of American bombs. Phonsevan was our first proper glimpse at the wreckage caused by the “secret” war on Laos – nine years of vicious bombing during the Vietnam war to stem the spread of Communism. The Americans actually set out to bomb this area “back to the middle ages” and local folk took – and still take – the main brunt of that. Little tennis ball-sized bombs are still tucked away under farmland, exploding in the faces of innocent farmers and children.

Phonsevan got even more spooksome when we visited the Plain of Jars. There are thousands upon thousands of these weird olden-days stone receptacles sprinkled across the hills and no one really know why. They could have been built for funeral rites or to brew whisky.

We made our way up towards the Vietnam border, taking in battle-hardened Sam Neua and gorgeous Vieng Xai. The communist Pathet Lao hid out in caves for nine entire years in Vieng Xai, building up burrow communities with printing presses and hospitals and everything. They bore out the war with sheer determination and thank god they did, because you will never meet sweeter, more welcoming people than the inhabitants of Vieng Xai. They’re breeding like crazy to re-establish the population – the place is crawling with little squidgy people.

Within about two hours of arriving we were beckoned into a bar where a group of young Lao men were merrily drinking shots of Beerlao and playing table tennis – loser buys the beer, so of course Joe got involved and ended up buying plenty. Despite the language barrier we communicated fine for hours, them laughing at our noses and (Joe’s) body hair, us prodding their long fingernails in awe. The following night we were lured once again, this time to a village summer school to help the shy teenagers with their English pronunciation.

I felt a bit sad when we eventually boarded the rickety little bus to Vietnam. Laos was good to us. We made friends, had loads of fun in the rivers and jungles, learnt a lot and got well and truly into the horizontal pace of life.

In Vang Laos the tubing Vieng

And so to Vang Vieng, another riverside beauty, this one famous for booze buckets, mushroom shakes, “happy” pizzas and bars showing endless Friends and Simpsons DVDs to monged backpackers. We decided to take this place with a pinch of salt. But while the town centre might be a 19-year-old gap year kid’s wet dream, all inviting bars and grammatically incorrect souvenir vests, the rickety bamboo bridge transports you into another world, a gleaming green village inhabited by giant butterflies, kittens and smiley fisherfolk. Over there, everything smells of baby cows.

The monsoon well and truly arrived in Vang Vieng, so each night we picked our way cautiously across the slippery bridge and along the gooey bank in the moonlight while flashy storms raged, giving the Nam Song river a much needed drink.

The other thing Vang Vieng is famous for is tubing. You hire an old tractor inner-tube, jump in and float down the river, stopping at various riverside bars to drink and play on immense rope swings, slides and mud pits. It sounds like hell, but it’s not. We’d found Aimee, Rick, Audrey and Herman again, from the trek, so we faced the blaring music and frightening rope swings together, got tipsy, rolled around in the mud then floated on down the river back to town admiring the view. It were grand.


A couple of days later we went back for more, this time starting further up river with kayaks, exploring caves along the way. The caves were a bit of a disaster. We were just strapping giant torches to our heads and climbing into the tubes we would float into the first watery cave in when we heard an almighty banging sound. It sounded an awful lot like bombs so when the Lao guides yelled RUN, we ruddy well ran for our lives like mad people, thinking of all the unexploded American bombs sitting around Laos waiting to go off. But it was “just” an enormous rock tumbling down the mountain and crash-landing at the cave’s entrance. A minute later and someone would have been under that rock. “That’s never happened before,” a guide mused. Needless to say I waited outside the cave playing with ducklings while some brave souls went in.

Kayaking was fun though. The sky clouded over and there was a huge thunderstorm; we learnt what Forrest Gump meant by “Little bitty stingin' rain... and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.” And then we capsized.

Riverside

I don’t like making sweeping statements about an entire nation, but it seems to me Lao people like to sleep. Walk into a market and half the stall-owners will be asleep under their tables, or at least their children will be. We saw a man splayed out in the middle of the road, head under his lorry, snoozing – as if he just got bored fixing it and fancied a nap. If a shop or café is empty, the owners will nod off. If you need help, or want to buy something, people are happy to oblige; if not, they’ll just carry on sleeping. It’s not surprising the currency is called Kip…

Laos also seems like a very fertile place. There are squidgy babies everywhere, dangling from their mums’ hips or dancing naked in the rain. Then there are bumbling puppies, flimsy kittens, velvety calves and wobbly ducklings to make you smile all over the place.

After our visit to the jungle, we spent a few days winding up and down the Nam Ou river, staying in pretty wooden villages in picturesque valleys. First stop was Nong Khiaw, a tranquil little place sandwiched between jagged karsts which glower down at the river. Clouds of white butterflies swarm around the muddy banks, children splash and giggle in the water and longboats glide past.

An hour up the river on a longboat is Muang Ngoi Neua, more remote and more delightful. Electricity is scarce and farmyard animals are plentiful; there’s very little to do except gaze at the mystical moonlit mountains fading into the horizon. The moon was so bright we could barely see the stars. We walked an hour or so away from the river along butterfly-strewn paths and sleepy paddy fields to an even more remote village to eat garlicy noodles, play petanque and laugh at bouncy little children.

After all this time in the sticks it was time to investigate a Laos city, so we caught a bus down to Luang Prabang, a charming cluster of shuttered French villas, glittering wats, wide, flowery streets and tempting restaurants splattered on a peninsular between the Mekong and the Nam Ou. It was no less pretty and peaceful than everything we’d seen so far in Laos. We ate delicious cheap food from the night market, hired bikes to swoop between river banks and got completely drenched in a rain storm. We gorged ourselves on crepes and baguettes, a welcome change from sticky rice.

Our last day in Luang Prabang me, Joe, Jean-Phillipe and Anne-Laure decided to cycle 35 km to some waterfalls outside town. We’d been told it was mostly a flat road, so we snubbed mountain bikes for the cheaper gearless ladybikes. What a mistake! Gentle hills were agony on those heavy lumps of metal, and with the midday sun blaring down, the three hour journey almost killed me. The waterfalls were worth the journey – cold, clear turquoise water, nibbly fish and rope swings for the brave people. After basking in that for a couple of hours I stuck my bike on the roof of a tuk-tuk and chugged back to town. Joe and the Frenches made it back on the bikes though, crazy fools.

Fireflies, frogs and leeches of Laos

After one last night of Thailandness, supping Chang and slurping spicy fish soups with some friendly Australians, we slid across the Mekong river in a longboat and set foot in Laos. It was immediately different to Thailand. We were dumped at a gloomy bus station with two hours to wait till our cramped, rusty bus would depart, feeling a little bit sulky; we’d become too accustomed to air-conditioned efficiency of Thailand.

Luckily, Laos is even more beautiful than everyone says it is. As the bus wiggled its way through the tangle of green trees, lazy brown rivers and jagged peaks, we soon forgot how squashed and sleepy we were.

Four hours later we arrived in Luang Nam Tha, a small town in the north of Laos. We jumped straight in, embarking on a three-day trek in the jungly hills that join Laos to China the following morning. We were joined by another English couple, Aimee and Rick; four Frenches – Anne-Laure, Jean-Phillipe, Herman and Audrey; and our silly, bouncy guides, Bien and Syvon. The guides braved the jungle in flip-flops, knew how to make just about anything from a stick of bamboo, burst into lung-curdling song every five minutes or so and laughed a lot at us sweaty “falangs”.

By day we traipsed through the dense, pulsating jungle, scrambling up muddy slopes and slip-sliding down the other side, teetering across streams and yanking leeches out of our socks. This is what you imagine travelling to be – charging through the jungle with a backpack and a giant stick, cooling off under waterfalls. But it was bloody hard work.

At lunchtime we would stop in a clearing while Bien and Syvon cooked up and laid out a feast on giant banana leaves: sweet gooey pumpkin curry, banana leaf soup, fried fish and sticky rice. Around 4pm each day we’d collapse at a village, our home for the night. The villages were like small farms, home to Akha and Black Tai tribes and their populations of chickens, ducks, pigs and dogs. The villagers live in wooden huts suspended in the sky on sticks. Like them, we bathed in streams before dinner, splashing around and scrubbing ourselves under sarongs.

The first village had no electricity so after a candlelit dinner we passed around shots of Lao-Lao, a rice whisky which makes your chest burn and freeze at the same time, then set off with Bien and Syvon for a spot of frog-hunting. We tiptoed around marshy rice-paddies in the starlight, listening to the frog chorus and blinking at the glimmering fireflies. It was quite lovely until Bien’s holler pierced the darkness: “Falang! How many frogs you have!” Er, none, obviously. Bien had his latest victim in his hand – we covered our eyes as he shoved a long metal stick through its head and threaded it down to join the pile of squirming frogs dangling below. You can guess what was for breakfast. Snails, chicken heads and bugs were all offered up throughout the trek, too – free-range organic wildlife that Joe gobbled up and made me glad to not eat meat.

Still, it was lovely waking up in the middle of nowhere to the mad beeping of fluffy chicks, cackling of a million ducks and grunting of happy pigs. The shy village people were much less vocal but smiley and accommodating.

We were all a mess by the time we arrived back at Luamg Nam Tha with aching legs, scratchy bites and with Bien’s favourite songs ringing in our ears: “I lose control! Because of you! Baby! …Dot dot!” and “I’m not a girl! Not yet a woman!”

Northern delights

Thailand got a lot more fun as we headed northwards. A slidey-seated bus and midnight Seven-Eleven breaks brought us our best friends for the next couple of weeks: Stephan, a bright-eyed Canadian bear; Sammy, an Australian trance-pixie; Julie, a sleepy Norwegian puppy and Anna, a Nottingham lass whose accent reminded me of home-home. We pulled up in Chiang Mai, bleary-eyed at 7am, at a guesthouse which just happened to be really cheap with nice rooms and a ruddy swimming pool. Thailand is so easy!

Chiang Mai is delightful - a nice small city, all clean and friendly and easy to walk around, with an “old city” marked by a moat, dotted with spangly temples, monasteries and markets. The city feels a bit European in places, with canals, a big river and tons of little coffee shops and cocktail bars. The ever-present sleazy sex-tourist bars, 40 degree heat and stray dogs remind you that this is Thailand.

We spent a couple of days exploring the wonderful markets and temples, eating deliciously cheap food and bonding over beers in bars that smelt of dog poo and wee or on the scruffy rooftop of our guesthouse.

We decided to explore the north by scooter, chugging 100-odd miles over the hills to Pai. The trip was really fun and scenic, only marred by Dave falling off and smashing up his scooter when he swerved to avoid a cow. But Pai was beautiful – a twinkly little hippie town tucked into the hills by a lazy river. We stayed in the aptly-titled Golden Huts, right by the river, with a lovely green garden full of flowers and hammocks. We could have stayed for weeks, but alas we had to return the scooters so bezzed it back to Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai was starting to feel like home, and it was too easy to loll by the pool in the stifling 42 degree heat. So for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to book a day’s downhill mountain biking. We chose a trail for “beginners", but it was a complete nightmare. Scary and uncomfortable, I spent the whole route gripping the brakes in terror, skidding around, bumping into rocks and whimpering. Joe had the time of his life though, so it was worth it…and the scenery was pretty nice. We celebrated surviving with lots of red wine back in the old city.

Dave, Joe and me took a sweaty bus to Chiang Dao, a small jungly town a couple of hours from Chiang Mai which seems to be run by women. Taxi drivers, guest house owners, tour guides...they're all ladies. We stayed there for a night, visiting some damp and tangly caves full of bats and bat poo, then relaxing in the garden of our guest house with only foot-long geckoes for company. We were tucked up in our bungalows by 9pm.

Our friends had slowly gone their separate ways, and Dave was soon flying home. There was only one thing for it – we went to a fish spa. We sat with our legs dangling in tanks of water while shoals of small fishes nibbled the dead skin off our feet. It ticked like hell! Then we undid all the good work with a last night out in Changers, starting with football and margaritas, ending in a trashy, vomit-fragranced club called Spicy with a bottle of Sangsom, surrounded by trendy Thais, drunk sex tourists and dazed travelers humping each other to terrible music.

It’s time to go. I’m ready for a new country and excited about Laos.

Sun, sea and Sangsom

After one final brain-meltingly spicy Bengali breakfast with Hollie and one last eye-boggling taxi ride out of Kolkata - being winked at by rickshaw drivers and marvelling at skinny men shampooing themselves in the gutter in the morning sun - we were on our way to Bangkok.

We were soon happily ensconced in the clean, air-conditioned restfulness of my uncle Andrew, aunty Ros and cousins Chloe and Toby's house in Bangkok. It was just what we needed - a comfy bed, homemade cookies courtesy of Toby, cold beer, a big swimming pool and trashy TV.

Two days later we made our way to Ko Samet. This is the closest little island to Bangkok, so was a perfect place to await delayed-by-Icelandic-volcanoes-Dave's arrival. It's hard to find a beach in Thailand which isn't beautiful, but Ko Samet's must be way up there: powdery white sand, warm, clear sea, shade from palm trees, fruit and pancake sellers ambling by. We spent our days lazing under the trees, and our nights doing what you do on a Thai island - sitting on cushions listening to bad music, drinking cocktail buckets and making friends.

It is ruddy hot in Thailand - I don't know why I thought it would be cooler than the subcontinent! And giant snappy mosquitoes add to the discomfort.

We scurried back to Bangkok to meet Dave, staying in sleazy sex-tourist-land, Sukhumvit, in a hotel with a very retro swimming pool and a staunch anti-sex-tourist policy. We peeked at the Red Shirt protests, and it was hard to see what all the fuss was about - it was more like a little festival, with peaceful protesters selling souvenir t-shirts and DVDs. We didn't hang around, though - we headed to Ko Chang for a few more days of seaside.

Ko Chang is (obviously) beautiful - sea as warm as a bubble bath and jungly hills rising to meet the hazy blue sky. More of the obscene heat, though. It's hard to relax when your brain is constantly melting and seeping out of your face. Chang is even more of a party town than Samet, and the music is slightly better, so we enjoyed some delicious ice cream cocktails and disgusting free Sangsom.

We escaped the heat one day by scootering to a waterfall with a pool of cold, dark water underneath, perfect for swimming in and if I sat on the slippery rocks for long enough, little fish came to nibble my feet. We also spent a day on a boat snorkelling between islands. That was when the monsoon chose to poke out a teasing oar - we ended the day shivering under towels as thunder crashed around us. It was bloody lovely.

Darjeeling limited and shivering

Joe, Hollie and me decided to leave Bangladesh through its northern catflap, heading towards Darjeeling for some much-needed brr. This involved two bleary overnight buses - with a final Dhaka day inbetween with Abi and Chris on a whistlestop sightseeing tour of the old town markets, sitting in taxis and raging at Indian beaurocracy as we prayed for our re-entry passes.

Once we'd climbed the hills in a jeep, we were in Darjeeling. It was ruddy freezing, to our delight, but also very steep and higgledy-piggledy so we collapsed in our hotel gasping before heading out to drink beer in Joey's Pub. It had been a long time! It was lovely, and a dog fell asleep in my lap. It turns out we hadn't really remembered the way up the hill back to our hotel though, and were left to navigate during a pitch-black powercut, a thunderstorm and some very spooky clanging noises (the gadanga man...). We made it, and huddled down in our dank rooms marvelling at how early everything closes in these parts.

We rode the fabled Darjeeling toy train, explored the markets and beauty parlours, ate cake and, of course, drank tea. Darjeeling feels, and looks, more like Nepal than India, as do the people. We discovered a nice homely little restaurant run by a friendly family including a spiky-haired Radiohead-obsessive with brilliant English, so ate a lot of tasty curry and momos to the sound of Creep on repeat. The weirdest moment was walking past a convent school and spying a hall full of Indian children dancing in sombre rows to Peter Andre's Mysterious Girl.

Anyway, that was enough fresh air - we plummeted back to Kolkata amid a thunderstorm. It was good to be back, but to damn hot to even contemplate doing anything except sitting in an air-conditioned cinema watching 3D animation, or reading Bollywood and cricket gossip in the papers over mango lassis. I was developing an obsession with Shah Rukh Khan, which meant it was high time to leave India.

Cox's bizzare

It was high time to get to the seaside. Hollie, Joe and me were reunited with Abi and Chris in the un-charming seaside resort of Cox's Bazaar, home to the longest natural beach in the world. Hotels are being thrown up on every spare centimetre of the place, and a stinking black stream runs parallel to the beach. But once you get to the beach, it all melts away.

It is a strange place indeed. The sun beats down, but the galeforce winds make it feel more like Norfolk than Bangladesh. People walk fully clothed into the warm, lolling ocean - Hollie and me wear our pyjamas. A man emerges from the waves brandishing a giant jellyfish. Two lifeguards lie together on a sun bed, stroking each other's faces. Huge dried fish hang on market stalls, the smell mingling with the putrid black stream which runs parallel to the sea to linger in our memories forever. Young men gallop past on ponies and, at one point, an elephant. We pay a boy of about 12 for sunbeds and umbrellas - whenever a small crowd gathers to stare at us, he beats them away with a stick. One girl fights back with a brick. On the third day we sit in someone else's patch by mistake, and our boy cries.

Like the rest of Bangladesh it's nigh-on impossible to buy alcohol anywhere. It just feels a bit more wrong by the sea. We do manage to find overpriced Gordon's gin and tonic in a hotel bar, served by a surly, judging barman and forced to listen to an Ace of Base album on loop as punishment for our wicked ways.

Seven layers of sunshine and sweat

Srimongol sounded great - tea plantations, coolness and peace. It definitely wasn't cooler, but it was pretty. We were scooped up straight away by Khaled, a pint-sized, cowboy-hat-toting camp little fellow with an endearing stammer. Khaled runs a tour company which once owned a map, but lost it. We were allowed an afternoon on our own once we'd promised to spend the following day being shown around by him.

We went off on pedal bikes in search of the world-famous seven layer tea - I read about it in a tea magazine in Nottingham, no less - it's a top-secret family recipe only to be supped in Srimongol. It was delicious - each layer had a different taste, from ginger to lemon to extreme syrupy goo. Rejuvinated, we cycled through rice fields to be greeted by shy women and a mob of children, who shoved goats into our arms and chased us down the fields as we departed.

The next morning we set off with K-k-k-khaled in a rickshaw. Our first stop was a rainforest where pungent gibbons swung from trees and terrifying spiders the size of my hand strung webs across the path. We drove through lemon, pineapple and tea gardens and visited a picturesque lake full of l-l-l-lotus flowers. It was lovely but all too much for three weaklings from blustery grey isles - we were collapsed in our beds with chronic heat exhaustion by 4pm. Yikes.

Leaving Srimongol was pretty funny. We sat on the train platform with our bags to wait, and were soon surrounded by a circle of gawping faces, a crowd three deep. They just didn't know what to make of us. It would have been fine if the crowd hadn't been slowly increasing the temperature to about 50 degrees, but thankfully the station manager rescued us. He plonked us in his office behind his board of nonsensical flashing lights, sneered at our third-class tickets then made sure we were upgraded to a nice private carriage on the train. That barely stemmed the stares - cheeky little faces kept peeping through the millimetre of gap in the door, while some sneaksters just hauled it back to take pictures of us. There are a lot of sweaty mobile phone photos of us floating around Bangladesh now, that's for sure. So this is what it's like to be famous...

Bangles

Kolkata turned out to be my favourite big Indian city. It's green and higgledy-piggledy, full of beautiful buildings and smiling people. We spent an afternoon walking up the Hooghly, gobbling ice cream cones before they melted then wandering around the botanical gardens. The gardens are shady and free of traffic, and the world's biggest banyan tree is there: it's so big that all its wiggly trunks have separated to become its own little forest.

Sweaty and starving, we stumbled upon the mouldering staff canteen, begging for sustenance. The kind staff obliged: the four of us managed to eat lunch for a grand total of 32 rupees (50p) - egg, curry, bread and tea. Fit for a king.

Leaving India on the Maitree Express was a lovely experience. The Maitree is a shiny new train with private cabins, padded bed-seats and a constant supply of food (Indian or Bangla, depending which side of the border you happen to be on). We had to get off and wait around for a couple of hours on both sides of the border, which was long but entertaining.

Once we got moving through Bangladesh the scenery was stunning, all juicy green fields and glassy rivers with tiny brown heads popping out.

The peace ended at Dhaka, another big smelly city. Here, we were completely engulfed in the love of the Bangladeshis; the concrete chaos didn't seem too much of a drag when the people were so wonderful. Everywhere we walked there was a little ripple of smiles, squeaks of "How are you!" and people rushing over for a chat. Banglas are so sweet and friendly and silly that the constant stares and questions aren't annoying. They also seem to love having their picture taken, which is fine by me.

The best bits of Dhaka were in the little lanes of the old town, all fragrant markets, grand mosques, decorated rickshaws and colourful bazaars. We walked down to the bustling riverside ghat to see the boats and the Pink Palace, and found ourselves in a frantic melon market. Ruddy enormous melons!

The food in Bangladesh is a bit tricky for a non-meat eater; the restaurants we go to don't have menus or much English so we mainly have to pick mutton, chicken or fish and see what arrives.

After a few days we were more than ready to leave the city. Abi and Chris left for Chittagong to visit Abi's childhood lands, while we met up with Hollie and got on a train to Srimongol.

Crumbling Kolkata

We crossed the border from Nepal to India by pony and trap, and had the pleasure of staying the night in a grotty hole called Raxaul. This place is like hell. Foggy, dusty, sleazy disapproving men everywhere and chickens being slaughtered at the side of the road. We couldn’t get on the train to Kolkata fast enough.

I was right about the heat. Koltaka is like a sauna, muggy and damp even when the sun isn’t out. Finding a hotel room has been a pain – for some reason we thought we could do better than the nice, clean air conditioned one we booked – we wanted something cheaper and more central and moved into one with rotting walls, a leaking air conditioner and snooty staff. We moved back quickly to the nice place.

All of Kolkata is rotting with damp. It looks cool on the crumbling colonial buildings with trees growing out of their sides, but not next to your pillow. It’s like nature is taking over and there’s nothing the city can do about it. Once we’d settled, we actually got to explore the city and found it quite lovely. The architecture is wicked and the people are friendly once you get away from Shudder Street.

Everywhere you turn you might trip over a bony man with a wise old face, squatting on the floor mending shoes or chopping cucumbers. Either that, or a group of skinny boys shooting heroin in the gutter. But with the honky yellow taxis and grand old buildings, there’s lots to like about it.

Having said that, after a nasty incident with a cockroach and some inedible food, on Friday night we retreated to a cold, clean shopping mall to watch Alice in Wonderland and eat Subway among the cute well-dressed Kolkatans out on dates or family trips. We felt a bit scruffy but relieved to not be reduced to sweating rag-dolls on the floor every ten minutes.

So today Abi and Chris are arriving for a three week holiday, from here to Bangladesh and back again.

Last days of Nepal

We're still in Kathmandu and have been enjoying it tremendously. A lot of people we've met along the way have been here at the same time so we've had lots of fun and spent too much money, but it has been Joe's birthday week after all. After a nice day in the Garden of Dreams, a haven of prettiness among the stink of the city, we ended his birthday at a casino in the early hours. It was a shifty strange place but we didn't lose much money and tucked into a big and tasty free buffet at 2am, so mustn't grumble! Even the booze was free.

The former prime minister died this weekend and we've just been watching his open cremation live on TV. Seems like people really liked him, a lot of men have shaved their heads in mourning. His ashes are going into the sacred "river", which is the truly the most disgusting river I've ever seen - a chasm filled with rotting rubbish and sniffling pigs with a trickle of black sewage running through it. If I could record the smell I'd bring it back as evidence...shudder.

So we're heading back to India in two days. I'll miss Nepal - we've seen a lot and the people are totally lovely. But I'm looking forward to more varied food and - oh yeah, ridiculous heat...

Treks and the city

Over the last week or so we've gone from teeny mountain villages to the jungle to the chaotic backstreets of Kathmandu. We were all over the place in Pokhara, climbing to the World Peace Pagoda via lostness and biting ants, cycling around the old town and embarking on a three-day trek in the hills for gawping views of the snowy Anapurna mountain range. The trek was hot but very pretty - the only downside was on the last night, discovering we were staying in a hotel run by children. That felt a bit wrong. We taught our waiter to play Snap after dinner - he was ever so excited. Watching the sun rise all gold and glowing over the snowy peaks was pretty cool, though.

After relaxing back in Pokhara we headed to Chitwan National Park to get cosy with some wildlife. The jungle is green and steamy and tigers live there. We saw their very pawprints. We got up early the first day for a canoe trip down the misty river, spotting all sorts of fancy birds like maribou stork, kingfishers and love-birds, and a couple of crocodiles. We got out to walk in the park. This was a bit scary as our guide started by explaining what to do if any animals decided to attack us. For rhinos, climb the nearest tree. For sloth bears, get in a group and shout and clap. For tigers, make eye contact and back away. I was eyeing every tree, figuring out how I'd climb it, but I needn't have worried. Everyone else saw a rhino, I did not.

The next day we rode elephants through the jungle. Like the camels, this isn't something I ever thought I would want to do, but it's a safe and silent way to see animals, aside from just being a lush way to see the park. Elephants are everywhere in Chitwan - they plod past as you're eating breakfast, and you can jump on their backs while they're being bathed in the river by their mahouts. Anyway this time I saw the rhinos - a little crew of them chilling out in a pond.

It was time to leave the peacefulness behind and brave a big city again. Kathmandu is total hippie-land - the traveller bubble is rammed full of shops selling hideous cyber-crusty wear and tiger balm. Once you escape this though it's brilliant - tiny paved streets teeming with people and things. There are big pigeon-poo splattered temples, grubby little shrines and intricately carved courtyards on every corner. There's a dark side as well - street kids inhaling solvents and shifty-looking men everywhere. And we saw a dismembered cow-hoof discarded at the side of the road.

Buddhas, balloons and bumps

We fell off the edge of India and landed in Lumbini, the perfect antidote. Lumbini is a village just across the border in Nepal where actual Buddha was born. On one side of the village there are green fields dotted with yellow mustard plants, to the other is the Buddhist Development Zone. Most importantly, it is quiet! The roads are nearly empty and people just float around on bikes. We spent the first day there recovering and it was a good day for it - Holi hit.

Hindus (and everyone around them) celebrate Holi by dancing in the street and dousing each other with brightly-coloured water. We woke up to the hotel's host family giggling in the courtyard below and throwing neon water balloons, and watched the madness from the balcony throughout the day. Well, that's moderate madness, Nepal-style, all scrubbed and tucked up in bed by 8pm.

The next day we hired rickety, rusty bikes and explored the temples and monasteries. All countries of Asia are represented in Lumbini with a sparkling monastery in their own style.

Our next stop was Pokhara, a "deluxe" bus trip across the mountains. The bus was typically shabby and there was a goat in the boot. I really felt for the goat - I felt like a human milkshake by the end, after eight hours rattling around with no proper stops. The poor goat got out halfway, at a butcher's shop.

Pokhara is nice. There's a lake and there are mountains, and there are momos to eat. I think we'll stay here a while...

Exit India

We started the journey up to Nepal with a brief stop in Agra. Not to see the Taj Mahal, which we've seen before, but just to rest. It was worth it for some good south Indian food and a visit to Fatahpur Sikri, an ancient Mughal city which is now ruins, a gigantic mosque and some stunning old palaces. We spent the afternoon wandering around there, then waited for the bus back to Agra, which never turned up. We squeezed into a jeep with eight other foreigners, feeling a bit tricked and missing the sunset over the Taj. Never mind.

The missing bus turned out to be the beginning of a theme. Or train from Agra to Lucknow was delayed by two hours, so we were frantic we would miss our connection to the border town, Gorakhpur. We shouldn't have worried - that train was delayed by two, then three, then five-ish hours. The whole of India was journeying home for Holi festival. Trains were pulling out of the station with three-deep men hanging out of the door. They're braver than me, but they probably just wanted to escape the station, which was more like a zoo. There were rats fighting in the tracks, scruffy monkeys foraging for banana skins, all kinds of human and cows lumbering down the platform. And the accompanying smells.

Just in time, before we ran screaming to the nearest airport, our train rocked up and we were soon settled in our nice air-con carriage with a delicious dinner, ice cream and a friendly soldier. Phew.

Tickled but not pink

We said goodbye to Jodhpur after an amazing lightning storm and a backgammon lesson (at last). Jaipur was a bit of a shock. What a revolting place. Maybe it was arriving at 5am, finding the hotel to be a bit depressing, or maybe it was the fact that its inhabitants treat Jaipur like a massive rubbish dump crossed with a urinal. There's rubbish everywhere, a stench of piss and rot, and traffic blaring in every direction. People live on those streets, too - little dusty children running in the traffic begging and families choking on the fumes. We hid on a rooftop restaurant for a few hours, where we bumped into some scousers we met in Jodhpur, then braved the outside world.

Actually, old Jaipur is very nice - the "pink city" (it's not pink) is a grid of quieter little roads where you can peer into tiny workshops where they make statues, jewellery and textiles. We even found a nice rooftop with a nice view to escape from the fuss.

On our second day we put ourselves in the hands of Raja and his rickshaw. He took us on a tour of all Jaipur's sights - the palace of the winds, a bizarre garden of giant sun dials and the amazing Gaitor cenotaphs. These beautiful carved marble domes are the best thing in Jaipur - there was noone around, just silence and shade. We ate samosas by the Lake Palace, looked around the Amber Fort from the outside then climbed up the simiam-strewn hill to the Monkey Temple to watch the sun set into the smog.

So we saw the nice bits, but were quite happy to leave Jaipur.

Desert cats

Fwor, we went on an amazing camel trek in the Thar desert. The plan was to find a camel trip in Jaisalmer, but we heard this one was good and decided to skip Jaisalmer so we can get to Nepal sooner. I love camels, mincing along with their big lily pad feet and their noses in the air. It was just me, Joe and a dreadlocked Norwegian lady called Gro, three guides, two grunty slobbery boy camels and my nice lady camel. I think the boy camels wanted to smooch with mine - they kept blowing disgusting bags of flesh out of their mouths. I had a boy called Vishnu sitting behind me steering the camel, texting and occasionally clucking the camel into a lollopy trot.

The Thar desert is scrubby on the outside and scattered with little settlements, getting sandier as you go inwards. It was ruddy hot - I had a big scarf on but still got a bit burnt. We stopped for lunch, a delicious thali served from tiffin boxes, then lay in a cool hut for a snooze. Not for long though, we soon had a gaggle of little boys glaring at us from the doorway. They were fun though, like all the kids round here they were mad for having their pictures taken and had a crazy time taking pictures of camels and goats with my camera. We met the women and younger children hanging around the shadows of the house next door, they were lovely. There was one gobby 13 year old girl who wanted to be in every picture, decorate me with rings and henna and steal my scarf for a sari.

After we watched the sunset from a sand dune and Joe rested his aching bum we went to the main guide's family village for another tasty thali and to sleep. We made a nest on the roof of the house and slept under the stars. It must be the most peaceful place in the whole of India, it's amazing - no horns, no dogs, no calls to prayer or blaring TVs. Just stars and stars and the occasional mobile phone ring (of course).

The blues

I was struck down. Nasty nasty tummy bugs! Not even a week in, pft. I couldn't even keep water down, which was a bit worrying. I blame a disgusting fruit korma I ate, and the thought of paneer makes my stomach turn still. Thankfully the main yuckiness only lasted 24 hours and I was in a nice cosy cool room, but it extended our stay in Udaipur.

When I surfaced, we finally visited the palace which, while quite stunning from the outside, is a bit disappointing inside. And the boat trip we'd been looking forward to turned out to be a bit of a rip off. Udaipur is a pretty place for monkeys, honeymoons and tour groups, but it was time to move on.

We left early for a six-hour bus to Jodhpur. At the bus station street people begged and clawed us, dusty little people who live on the scrap of park opposite. It was a bit much for such an early hour. The bus journey was so bumpy I thought my stomach was going to jump out of my mouth and at one point I whacked my head on the ceiling. When a woman in front puked out of the window, it blew backwards spraying everyone inside. But the long road wound through the desert and there was plenty to look at, so I clung on gawping at the skinny men in overgrown turbans, the stately camels and the huge slabs of marble being chopped and sold.

Jodhpur is blue. The old town, where we're staying, is made of glowing Brahmin-blue buildings all cobbled together along winding streets which lead up the hillside to the fort. The fort is incredible, it looks like it just sprouted out of the mountain when someone dropped a magic bean.

It all looks a lot nicer from above than it feels from inside - Jodhpur is choked with fumes, deafening with horns and stinky with open sewers. It's charming anyway. The crazy market is full of delicious smells of spices and guava and glinting colourful saris. There's even a world-famous omelette man in the main square: a tiny shack stacked with white eggs and a friendly little dude selling masala cheese omelette sandwiches for less than 50p.

We wandered around the town and took a tour of the fort, and even watched Macbeth in a cool green garden within the fort. Aside from that our guest house roof was a perfect place for being lazy, staring at the fort and talking to people.

Mumbai to Udaipur

There's a suspiciously big mosquito flying around me as I write this. I hope it's not hungry.

We finally got here, after a long flight with good food but bad films. The Time Traveller's Wife was boring enough to put me to sleep, and that's saying a lot: I don't usually sleep on flights.

We spent the first few days in Mumbai catching up on sleep on an insultingly hard mattress and exploring the massive rambly city that it is. There are some amazing old crumbling buildings - the university, police headquarters, train stations - harking back to colonial times but cut through with stinky, blaring roads. We left the main roads behind to wander around the shadier bazaars and markets which feel more like villages. While there are still plenty of naked children shitting at the side of the road and dusty beggars sleeping on traffic islands, Mumbai is also full of glamorous ladies in skinny jeans and rich folks sipping champagne in air conditioned restaurants.

We set off to Rajasthan after a couple of days. That's an eight hour train through Gujarat to Ahmedabad, then an overnight train to Udaipur. I was looking forward to some good scenery. The friendly lady at the booking office messed up, though - our first journey was booked for the day before, which was just great. With 20 minutes to go, I waited on the platform with the bags while Joe ran off to try to sort it out, being passed from desk to desk. I thought I was going to go into a trance, craning to see all the dark-haired men bobbing up the platform towards me, none of them Joe. But just like in a film, he appeared as the train was rolling away, just in time - we jumped on and resigned ourselves to eight hours' standing in the jam-packed carriage. Our seats, of course, were booked for the previous day. Our flight was eight hours, for god's sake.

Lucky we happened to be crammed in amongst the sweetest, most big-hearted bunch of people ever. They wouldn't have me standing, so a young guy gave me his seat and joined a gaggle of little men around Joe. A bearded fellow next to me pointed out, "Everybody like your husband!" Oh, to be a man in India.

So it wasn't the most relaxing journey but I did get so see some of that lush Gujarati landscape and we made some friends. Soon the train was packed to bursting with passengers, chai sellers worming their way through nonexistent gaps, and a scary eunuch who stomped through demanding cash to avoid curses and pinching our young friends' cheeks.

Udaipur is beautiful, all picturesque buildings and ghats set around a lake and a fairytale palace looming over it all. We headed straight for the rooftop resuaurant in our guesthouse to take it all in and were delighted to observe baby monkeys playing on the roof of the temple opposite - fittingly, a temple to the monkey-god Hanuman. We've got a lovely little room with battenberg-coloured curtains and stained glass lamps and - the best thing - a soft bed. We slept well. The weather here is good too - hot enough in the day but cool at night. Typical Indian traffic though, you risk your life trying to walk anywhere. We even saw a famous person today, Julian Rhind-Tutt of Green Wing fame, floating around like a tall, lion-haired hippy.

I’ve just killed that mosquito.