Luke and Lily's Travels

Hi Guys, A few of our friends have travelled around Vietnam and had lots of recommendations for things for us to do and see so we left Chiang Mai very excited and ready to get on with then next leg of our journey. Two flights later and a short taxi ride we were checking into a   ‘Chien Hostel’ in Hanoi. To our horror it was a 20 bed dorm room, essentially a chicken coup. Hanoi was a sprawling metropolis, street food vendors everywhere you looked, small tables and stools everywhere outside of restaurants and hundreds of motorbikes racing past you at every junction. We had a great day wondering around the sites and taking it all in. We stopped by at the prison or now quite commonly called ‘Hanoi Hilton'. It was used during the French Revolution to capture Vietnamese rebels and imprison them in the worst conditions you could imagine, bound by the ankles unable to move. The prison was again used in the Vietnam war, captured American pilots were taken from all over nort...

Hi All Sorry for a bit of a gap between posts, we have had a couple of obstacles in our journey. Firstly Lily being laid up for a few days in bed due to some strange illness and the lunacy of  Thai New Year or Songkran festival starting just as we landed in Bangkok.  We left Sri Lanka pretty heavy hearted wishing we could have stayed an extra week and arrived in Bangkok ready to tackle the next leg of our journey. We navigated the train from the airport into town rather easily and hopped in a cab to the eclectic Koh San Road. Our accommodation was quite nice (we found out that it featured in Jack Whitehall's netflix series with his Dad) and had the best duvet of the trip so far. We landed on Wednesday evening and although we were told Songkran was going to start on Friday it had already begun on the streets outside our hostel. For those who don't know, Songkran is a bank holiday in Thailand for the celebration of their new year. Its basically a huge water fight on the str...

Hello Guys, After arriving in Tangalle, we confirmed our thoughts that Sri Lankan hospitality is possibly the greatest on earth. We arrived super late to our guest house, where a lovely older couple were waiting for us. They brought us tea and then showed us to our room. They only have the one room in their guest house and it was well equipped with everything you could need, including a beer fridge well stocked. A small kitchenette, a basic but clean bathroom and a lovely comfortable bed. This room cost us £5 a night, a real bargain. The only downside was no air-con in the staggering heat of the coast, not ideal but defiantly not the end of the world. We had a little walk around the town and popped down to the beach the next morning. It is a lovely little place to stay but as it was absolutely baking we chilled out at the guesthouse for most of the day before going on a little adventure in the evening.  Tangalle is not too far from Rekawa beach where turtles are known to ...

Hi Guys, We rocked up to the train station four hours early in the hope of bagging a precious second class reserved seat for the 6 hour journey up to Ella. Alas, the tourists with the big bucks on their pre-booked tours all ready snapped up all the seats which left us with a nervous wait on the platform for a seat in 3rd. As the train arrived we leapt up like Gazelle's and fought our way onto the train and were lucky enough to bag two window seats so we could take in the views. It was well worth the stress!  The views were spectacular as the train wound its way through the Sri Lankan hill country. We arrived in Ella, a bit shocked to find such a busy lively town! It was quite refreshing to be in a town with a bit going on. A few pints and an excellent rice and curry later we headed to bed with big ideas of hiking up Little Adam's Peak for Luke's birthday the next day. The hike was incredible, we're not natural hikers by any stretch of the imagination s...

Hi Guys, We landed in Colombo to Lily violently vomiting on the tarmac, a great start! After slowly navigating our way into the city centre we checked into our hostel, met a rather abrassive older man who tried to force us to watch some dancing and headed into the town centre for some food. This time rather than embracing the culture, we craved some western fayre and headed towards a cricket themed resturant. WE had read about it and heard through family that it was cricket themed menu which Luke was throughly excited about, Lily less so. Much to our disappointment after a 20 minute tuktuk (enough time to dream about a juicy steak) we found this. We settled for a weird Harvester wannabe and headed back to ready ourselves for our 5am train the next morning to Habarana. The train was a slow, tranquil plunder through the Sri Lankan countryside, we got our first glimpse of what a beautiful country was going to be. Habarana was our base for the cultural triangle, we s...