So we’ve made it to Bangkok: we got a tuk-tuk to the train station, just past the Laos-Thai Friendship Bridge, and were happy to find there were first-class tickets left — not too expensive, and after the “hard sleeper” in China and “chicken bus” in Laos we weren’t in the mood to find out what second-class bunks were like in Thailand.
We’ve been a bit quiet on the journal since we got to Laos, but it is because we’ve been doing a whole lot o’ nothing: days relaxing/lazing at the hotel, reading book after book or watching (often bad) movies on HBO.
Our last full day in Budapest was all about the tourist attractions. Neither Dee nor I are particularly drawn to large crowds of photo-snapping foreigners in plaid shorts and polo shirts, strangely enough, but there was much of Buda left to explore and so we once more boarded the Big Red Bus and headed over the bridge.
A late post (on a train to Warsaw) about the rest of our time in Budapest — what, you were expecting something as mundane as linearity? Seriously, from me? Okay, I’ll back-date it so it appears in the right place in the timeline, eh, that should just about do it.
We’re in Strasbourg, on the Franco-Deutsch border! We caught our morning train from Paris without issue, taking le Metro to Gare de l’Est on the free tickets Martin and Helen left us (thanks guys) with plenty of time.
Time is simply flying by: this time last week we were cleaning the flat and packing up the last of Dayna’s stuff; now we’re staying at Dayna’s place (she’s in Wales) and have finished off just about everything we need to (“closing the loops” as Dee says)!
As our time left in London grows ever shorter, we seem to be cramming more and more into each moment. Only natural, I guess, but it’s been hard on our sleep patterns!
It’s been a week of sci-fi for me this week: the Sci-fi London Film Festival. Our good friend Anthony is visiting, and I caught up with him on Monday night down by the river.
On Tuesday night we finished our Real Ale Trail cruise and got a t-shirt each, woo-hoo! It all started because a guy that Dee works with is stranded in London thanks to volcanic ash — Ivan, from the Ukraine, who is here with his girlfriend Natalie.