Tiger Time!
Early morning this morning, too early by far: our travel alarm (very useful thanks Dayna) exploded in an electronic tintinbulation at 6:02am precisely, shattering our slumber into little shards of activity.
Travel
Big hopes for Bangkok
We arrived in Bangkok with big hopes: our hotel, The White Orchid, looked great in the photos, with a jacuzzi, spa and massage room and a roof-top restaurant overlooking the city from the 12th floor.
But yeah, now she sleeps
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.
Goodbye Vientiane; Bangkok, here we come!
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.
Budapest Day 3: Tourist time
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.
Budapest Day 2: I love the nightlife!
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.
Haggis
I awake fully clothed, sans shoes, face down on a mattress of calico stuffed with porridge, my drool-patch soaking in nicely to combine with the drool-patches of a thousand backpackers before me.
Skye High Tour – booked
With Chris Kendrick coming to visit, I went ahead and booked a Haggis Tour: Skye High. This should see us travelling around Scotland and Skye on a bus for a few days, with plenty of opportunities for walking (Chris’s idea) and drinking whiskey (my idea), as well as a chance to meet some new people on the bus itself.
Cleared for landing
I have my entry clearance!! This is a really, really good thing, and has been a point of stress for both Dee and I, as if I didn’t get my VISA then I wouldn’t be allowed on the aeroplane without a return ticket.