Getting there.

I have just turned up at the restaurant B works at for a quick coffee before I go home from work, as is the tradition when he is working a late shift, for him to excitably tell me he has completely re-planned our entire route to Australia.

Our previous plan as I have outlined before involved a month of travelling around Indo-china in a logical anticlockwise direction from Thailand to Cambodia, to Vietnam and finally ending up in Laos. We would then spend the second month at our house in Indonesia. This route would at first glance look the most logical but we have encountered several problems. Firstly flights from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia are extortionately expensive, and the overland route is beautifully scenic but long and filled with touts and rip off merchants. Secondly there are no direct flights from Laos to Jakarta, meaning we would have to fly back to Bangkok, something we would want to avoid if possible.

So our new proposed route is:
London to Singapore
Singapore to Bangkok
Bangkok to Krabi
Krabi to Bangkok....(this bit hasn't changed)
Bangkok to Phnom Penh
Then by boat to Siem Reap
Siem Reap to Vientiane
Vientiane to Hanoi
Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh to Jakarta
Jakarta to Singapore
Singapore to Melbourne

It seems a very Zigzaggy route but the flights are all cheaper, and avoid a lot of the problems associated with touts at land border crossings. It also helps that you can get a direct flight from Saigon to Jakarta.

We will have to get all this booked up on Wednesday when we have time off together, provided the flights haven't changed price too much. It also means we will have to change our hotel booking for Siem Reap for the 4th time. luckily we haven't had to pay a deposit yet.

Adam