Wat Ounalom is the HQ of Buddhism in Cambodia. We expected big things, but discovered a muddle of buildings and temples spread over a whole block in Phnom Penh. The guidebook didn’t say much apart from the fact that there was an eyebrow hair, just one, belonging to Buddha, in one of the stupas. […]
Vientiane, the capitol of Laos……….. a curious place. The guide book said it was ‘languid to say the least’….? A friend told us that we really only needed to stay there for one night, but we had already booked for three. So we stayed for three nights and calmly looked for places of interest
The town of Luang Prabang, or at least the bits of the old town that we walked around, came as a pleasant surprise in Asia. There were real pavements, which made it easier to walk around and look at things, other than your feet. Constantly avoiding mud, puddles, lumps of concrete, drain holes, bits
The written sign next to the fruit bowl had the helpful words “Banana is for service”. Hmmm, we won’t go there…..? We were verbally informed that there were two toilets on board, one for men and one for women, but there was a complete lack of a signage to say which was which. Hence
In contrast to the previous day, an ancient Toyota Crown Royal saloon, circa 1970s, with red plush velvet seats and a driver who continually fidgeted for nearly two hours, turned up to take us to the Thai border. He dropped us off around 11am and we wandered through an archway, had our passports stamped
On Thursday a brand-new Hyundai eleven-seater minibus turned up on the hotel driveway, and it was all ours. Trouble is, it came with a young driver who thought he was in a Formula One Grand Prix race, all day. He certainly didn’t like having anyone in front of him, but he smiled constantly; though
The Chayadol Boutique Resort in Chiang Rai, or to be more accurate, on the outskirts of Chiang Rai, had signs in some of the very best of strangled English. In the ‘dinning room’ you could get ‘all day refreshment and snacked’. It even had rooms that were ‘air conditional’; not sure on what? Our
After being bedridden for a couple of days, I woke up feeling a bit better today, but not really tough enough to do a full-day tour to numerous places around Chiang Mai. So we decided to grab a rough red metal ‘taxi’ to take us out to just a few places that interested us.
Rodney was up at 6:15am and therefore, so was I. He was picked up at 7am for a much-anticipated trek into the hills of Northern Thailand. Being a card-carrying, non-rucksack carrying wimp, I passed on the experience, but I had my own agenda plotted for the day. After a slow, quiet breakfast I wandered out
The taxi took a longer (though faster) route right around the airport, yes literally right around the airport and that’s a big area! We passed the runways, the warehouses and the terminal buildings from every side. When we finally arrived at the entrance, it was a quick check in and not too long a wait
Now I’m not sure why, but for some crazy reason, maybe a lack of serious consideration, or maybe the potential for something exciting, I agreed in January to trail around three countries in Asia for four weeks in November with my constantly travel-restless husband. After our six months trip in Europe, we only arrived in Sydney
Now I know I called the last entry ‘The Last Blog’, but we’ve decided to keep a little bit of scribbling going, along with some photos, so that you can see where we’ve been and at least we’ll know where we went. But it won’t be such a daily diary, just postcards or snippets
Home is all about the funny little things that please you and make you who you are. To travel is to live and experience a different culture from your own. For that we need to drop our current way of life and our expectations and, wherever we travel to, it shouldn’t be treated like
Experience is the art of not making the same mistake too many times…….. Kath, Terry, Lindy, Paul and Wendy headed off to Nevers at 8am to pick up hire cars for a trip to Spain. Pete and Virginia shared a taxi with us to Nevers station to catch the train back to Paris. They
Yet more glorious days to be thankful…… On Saturday 5 September some folk travelled first class, on seats that looked exactly the same as the seats that some of us sat on in second class. And we all arrived in Briare in time to pile into two cars that whisked us all
Il a été bon, à très bon. It was 10:30am when we stepped out of Andy and Carole’s house and dragged our wheelie bags down to Hertford North Station to catch the train to London’s Kings Cross station. The bags were then dragged across the road to St Pancras station where we flashed our
It’s up to you to have fun and be happy; you can’t wait for it to just happen. Thatched cottage, complete with thatched pheasant in Heydon, Cambridgeshire And that’s what we have done as we’ve travelled around England in Eileen. It has been a somewhat zig-zagging route, but we’ve filled our days with as many friends and
It would be a shame to miss a potentially new, or different, or spectacular sight….. but there’s too much to see!!! From Plouegat Guérand, we drove north through Lannion to Trégastel where we got stuck in traffic; please note this is the first time this year that I have had to write those words.
Good food is always a fine antidote to most of life’s tribulations On the road again, shuffling down the road again…. Saturday started a little damply, but the huge heads on the numerous hydrangea plants are so cheerful and colourful that they brightened up the morning. And when the sun came out their colours
Cosy (koh-see) adj: comfortable, warm, snug, a little home…….Eileen. After a day of sad reflection and a fun and friendly evening, we decided to make Wednesday a day to put some mileage under our belts. The temperatures had dropped considerably on Tuesday evening and when we woke up it was only 18°C; the heatwave
Silence speaks when words can’t. On Monday evening, we didn’t cook and we had no salad items, but Camping des Alouettes prepares a three-course dinner twice a week and Monday happened to be one of those nights. So we had booked ourselves in. Eight of us sat down to eat a meal of salad,
We were both completely beside ourselves and each other…. The campsite at Beaulieu was so nice; right in the village, shady, good sized pitches, the sound of the river running past, good bathrooms and free wi-fi; we were tempted to stay another day. But knowing how much further we had to travel and with
Dream about tomorrow, but live for today…. By the time we fell in to bed on Tuesday, the cicadas had thankfully finished their noisy concert, but Eileen just couldn’t cool down. Her temperature inside hit 35°C and then hovered around 31°C; her velvet lining was warm to the touch and staying warm. When we
Where does inspiration live when you’re in a hurry? Happy birthday to Eileen! Well, it was Auntie Eileen’s birthday on June 28th, so we have made it Eileen The Campervan’s official birthday too and she is all of fourteen today. Her birthday started with a drive across the flat lands of the southern end
You have to like a person very much to be able to go traveling with them…… We packed up the patio the night before, with the plan to get moving a bit more speedily. We had two things to see on Thursday and then a bit of a drive to the next campsite; no more
‘Life is like a book. If you haven’t travelled you’ve only read the first chapter’. Told to us in Tarascon sur Ariège As it was a Saturday, we were expecting another noisy night, perhaps with fireworks, rather than fire, but thankfully it was all quiet and we enjoyed a peaceful night. The next morning,
Climb every mountain…….”but do I have to”, said Laura We woke up from our last sleep in Spain, had our last shower in Spain, did a quick last shop in Spain; we knew the Mercadona Supermarket sold pasteis de nata and very good cherries. It feels like we’ve seen so many facets and assets of
‘Happiness is not a goal, but a by-product’. Eleanor Roosevelt I think we started Monday in France, no, sorry, it was Spain. Was it? Yes, it was definitely Spain. The Camprodon campsite was about 13kms south of the border and we drove further south from there, then south-west to Ripoli, a small town that
If you get bored just open your eyes The main road north was only a couple of kilometres from the campsite and we were zooming up it. Okay, not exactly zooming, more like tootling, but at least it was a straight road and Eileen seemed happy with that. Except, she wasn’t completely happy. When
Life in retirement is no longer a race to be run; we’re enjoying just idly wandering and jogging along. In the morning Eileen looked a bit sad; the rain had turned her dusty exterior to a grubby smudge and the patio was a muddy sodden bit of plastic. Time to move on back to Spain.
There are always worse ways to spend your time… By Sunday morning, I had at least 30 itchy bites all over me and that’s the trouble with etangs and rivers, they seem to encourage bitey things to take up residence. It was also incredibly hot and we either needed some sea breezes, or a
Be happy in this moment. This moment is your life…. The sun was shining yet again for Rodney’s birthday and that was probably his best present. He’s a man who just doesn’t need, or want, anything but to travel the world…….and we’re doing that. So his wardrobe has expanded a little and I gave
And that’s a whole other box of monkeys My head survived the night after, what we’ll call the ‘Tuesday night incident’, but my brain got further confused on Wednesday morning. Rodney had done a fair bit of packing up the night before, so we still managed to get away from Roses fairly early. But when
When you get tired, just take the time to stop and smell the roses. Rodney spent our 23rd anniversary morning cycling around Santa Margarida and Roses, while I tried to catch up on ‘stuff’. He came back with two tickets for a cruise up the Costa Brava coast. Nice. After lunch, we hopped on our
Consistently sunny weather is such a blessing…… One rest day at Gavà, turned in to two rest days, but on Thursday afternoon Rodney got a little restless. “Let’s go into Barcelona and see the city at a different time of day”. It seemed like a grand idea. At 5:30pm the bus dropped us at the
‘So in the end, a line and colour are all that’s needed to create a painting’. Joan Miro Barcelona; it’s a long time since we were last here; 1992 in fact. Back then the city was readying itself for the Summer Olympics and the Sagrada Familia was still growing. Twenty-three years later, there we were,
Every passing minute gives you a chance to turn around It was a sad moment saying goodbye to Nicky and David after such a great week together, but we managed it; the teary moment came later. One positive note of leaving Camping Eden – we won’t miss the mulberry trees with their horrible, squishy,
Thank you, Nicky for a great title….. We must be getting older, or something has changed. We checked in to Peniscola and couldn’t really decide when to check out. We got comfy. The plots were nice, the swimming pool lovely, the showers were fine and the toilet paper descended from heaven in the loos.
The world always looks better from behind a smile Pre breakfast on Wednesday, we made the decision to leave the campsite; it was more of an overnight stop place than somewhere to hang out for a day. But first we took a look at the beach, a ten-minute walk over the road, just to
When you get bored, open your eyes….. After six enjoyable days, I felt a little sad when we drove away from Calpe. The weather had been absolutely perfect, the campsite was really nice; the next place was an unknown. But we needed to get back on the road and it felt a little like
Two hours of Wednesday morning was spent watching the washing dry, yes, it’s a tough life. In the heat of midday, we cycled across to the promenade and turned right into town. There’s not a lot of the old town remaining, most of it has been modernised, but I found a very nicely painted
A laugh is a smile that has burst. How many steep, winding, twisting, turning roads are there in the world? On Tuesday we found yet another one. We gladly packed up and left Camping Costa Blanca after one night, it was not a great site and I was sick of watching commuter trains
Everything is tickety boo. The long weekend was over, so we headed further up the coast to a huge shopping centre where we had sourced an Orange telecommunications shop. “Habla inglés?”, smile……. “No”, was the answer. Dang! Here we go again. But as always, the lovely young lady spoke far better English than we
The secret to a happy life lies in small, kind gestures. Geraldine and Caroline flew back to England on Tuesday evening, leaving four of us at Casa Carisma to clean up and close down. So Wednesday morning was spent doing just that, then after lunch Rodney and I said our farewells to Russell
Abundant. Yes truly abundant. As we shot through Murcia on the A7-E15, we passed an orange ‘factory’. There were massive containers full of shiny, bright oranges and just a second later, we could smell their beautiful aroma. We were aiming for Paul and Geraldine’s holiday house which hides somewhere between Lorca and Puerto Lumbreras.
We’re both a bit nutty at times, but…… Cats fighting, a sheep bleating, dogs howling and barking all night, a cock crowing pre-dawn and then a man with a small generator on wheels making a horrible early morning noise; all had us very ready to leave our campsite driveway plot and move on. Almansa,
To travel is a wonderful way to be alive. As we set up at each campsite, we always wonder what it will present in the way of electricity supply. In the UK it is consistently 15amps with an earth, but in Europe it has been as low as 4amps. It has been so low
It’s sunny. Yes, it’s Sunday. So am I. Let’s have a cup of tea. Sunglasses were needed for the 90km drive across the flat land that spread as far as the eye could see. Ahead of us the ground gradually developed a mound and Eileen slowly climbed a small hill covered in scrubby, rocky
We’re indulging in a Happiness Project…….. On a rainy, wet Thursday, with the clouds hanging low in the sky, Eileen pointed her nose due west and we headed along the Duero Valley towards Valladolid. We passed more vineyards stretched across the wide valley and up the slopes on either side. And the drizzle kept
More moments into memory….. We floated smoothly across the Bay of Biscay for exactly 20-hours and 30-minutes; the Pont Aven ferry left on time and berthed not a minute late. We watched a movie, read the paper and slept very well in our little tiny cabin, no 6134, at the very front of the