Yes, yes, yes. This post is very late, I know. We’ve been in Australia for a well over a month and I’m just getting around to writing a new post. Slapped wrists and all that. But what can I say? We’ve been busy… and you’ll find out more about that in our next post.

We had just over a week to spend in Malaysia, after Cambodia had to be culled from the itinerary – sorry again Nino! – and our plan for that week-and-a-bit was shaped by an old uni friend of mine, Lenny. We hadn’t seen each other for over 10 years but after catching up on Facebook and then letting him know about our travels, he insisted that we pop by Malaysia to visit. We did, and quickly realised that it was a great decision.

We were met at Kuala Lumpur airport by a smiling, waving Lenny, who got a parking ticket for his troubles. We offered to pay it but he told us he’d ignore it and responded to our shock by saying ‘Welcome to Malaysia!’ This would not be the last time we’d hear that line.

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We arrived in Vietnam with only 6 days left on the visa we’d bought in Australia in December. As we’d underestimated how long we’d need in Nepal we had to rethink this stage of our trip. Initially we had hoped to spend two weeks in Vietnam and two weeks in Cambodia, but once we worked it out we were only going to have ten days to see as much as we could in both places. Once we looked at the logistics and costs of getting around we realised we were going to have to miss either Vietnam or Cambodia. As we already had flights to Hanoi and a visa paid for, Cambodia missed out – much to our dismay. We decided to spend the 6 days in Hanoi to get a taste for Vietnam and are now planning to come back to this part of the world to see more of Vietnam and Cambodia.

Our flight landed at Noi Bai at about 8am local time and within 5 mintues of our taxi journey we’d seen rice paddies populated by people wearing traditional Vietnamese conical hats and plenty of people on bicycles also wearing the aforementioned hat! We liked it already! We were pretty knackered after our 3.30am start in Bangkok so we slept and wrote the Pokhara blog post until late afternoon.

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Oh yes… Pokhara was the big pouffe of our trip. The place where we decided to visit and put our feet up for a while after our trek up that little hill you may have read about in our last post. As it’s only a short bus ride from Kathmandu – well, 8 hours, but we’re used to those sorts of journeys now – we were planning to pop over for a couple of days after the trek. We’d heard so many good things about it from people we met while we were trekking, that we decided to sacrifice a couple of side treks on the way down to be able to relax there for a little while longer. I have to admit that the decision was slightly influenced by a few mornings of waking up at 5am in a tiny timber room to the sight of my own breath condensing in front of me, exhausted after only getting about three hours sleep, with dry cracked lips and a very sore throat. The thought of chilling out at a lakeside restaurant with a beer and a pizza was somewhat attractive at 5500m, and we booked our bus tickets straight away once we got back to Kathmandu. We could’ve flown a 30 minute flight but the only time we wanted to brave Kathmandu airport again was to get out of Nepal. The following morning, we we’re on the bus heading for Pokhara!

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