Recently on Twitter we were asked if we had taken part in the “My 7 Links” feature from Tripbase. A week or so later we appeared in Wired2theworlds post and they nominated us to do exactly the same. So we both sat down together and decided what previous posts fitted the following criteria…

Your most beautiful post…

The post that sprung straight to our minds was our Koh Kong Island tour in Cambodia.

We loved everything about this part of our travels through Cambodia…Bartering with Mr T to arrange our own personal tour with two other travellers Carl and Ali, we arranged a tour that doesn’t usually happen over 2 days. We had two devoted locals one acted as our tour guide, the other as the boat driver. We visited the most desolate, untouched beaches either of us have ever experienced and swam in crystal clear blue water. We had every beach completely to ourselves and ate amazing fresh seafood, barbecued and prepared by our two trusty Cambodian friends. To top this off we stayed at a very local floating fishing village, played with the children, visited their school, played pool with the locals and eventually stayed in one of their family homes. This was a truely authentic Cambodian home-stay experience, far far away from any tourists.

The second part of the blog post for Koh Kong is featured here, just in case you didn’t see enough beauty in the first one!

Your most popular post…

We were pretty happy to discover that our most popular post (according to Google Analytics) was from our Yuanyang Rice Terraces visit in Yunnan Province, China. The bus journey from Kunming was as ever a little scary in parts and often delayed along the narrow mountain roads, and when we arrived in Yuanyang there were no views, only fog! This is very normal for this part of the world though, often the valleys are deep-set in very thick fog, but when the fog lifts the rice terraces reflect all the light around in their pools of water stretching out for miles. This is a breathtaking part of the world, with a very strong traditional and cultural heritage stemming from ancient hill tribe minorities. It is one of the highlighted things to do in China so perhaps this explains why it has been our most popular blog post. Sunny’s Guesthouse is also recommended in the Lonely Planet so this may have helped!

Your most controversial post…

We haven’t really gone into too much controversy whilst travelling through Asia, there are many areas we could have touched on with regard to Communist run governments but we weren’t there to be political journalists! However whilst we were in Vietnam staying in Mui Ne on the coast we did experience first-hand a little bit of uneasy Police action. Two policemen decided to stop us not long after we had set off on a hired motorbike for the day. Their reason being that we didn’t have a Vietnamese drivers license! To cut a long story short, TET was one week away and we were told after our shared $50 dollar fine with the bike owner that this sort of thing does happen quite frequently around the National Holidays as the Police are in effect collecting their beer money in the form of fines!! Thanks for that one! This story features in the second part of the post.

Your most helpful post…

We’ve written a few tips and tricks posts, reviews and recipes from our cooking course experiences and even offered the chance for one lucky follower to win a print from our travels! But the most helpful post would be our Top 5 tours in Asia. We’ve gone into who we booked it with and why, the costs, what we thought was good, bad and so on. We didn’t always choose the obvious tour with the obvious tour operator so we were really happy with the tours we chose and wanted to share this with the rest of the travelling community.

A post whose success surprised you…

Not an obvious choice when it comes to written content and the response we received, but the post focusing around our stay in Luang Prabang, Laos has proven to be very successful. This is down to the imagery that we shot whilst we were staying there. We ended up staying longer in this quaint World Heritage town, and shot some really atmospheric photography centred around colour, texture and mood along with some great documentary work of locals and tourists in and around the place. We’ve also had one image accepted for an International Award and our first print sale came from some imagery contained within this blog post.

A post you feel didn’t get the attention it deserved…

We were blown away by how magical a place The Summer Palace really is. We loved our imagery from our day here, very atmospheric with layers of mist encompassing ornate hand carved palaces, bridges and pagodas. Very easy to get to if you take the metro there which means it only costs 20p each way!! The site is huge, and we could have easily spent 2 days if not longer to capture the sheer essence of the Summer Palace site. Most people visiting Beijing will focus on the Great Wall, Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City but we think The Summer Palace should be way up there on that list!!

The post that you are most proud of…

Perhaps an obvious choice but we are truly proud of our very first post from Japan! This shows us setting off from the UK and records our first day as we arrived in Tokyo. We were both jaded from jetlag and the Leica was still an exciting new tool for us to photograph with. On the Tokyo metro we snapped away discretely at our fellow passengers, managed to go the wrong way, and had our first taste of authentic Japanese noodles! It was all so new and exciting back then and we were on a high with street photography, getting the first travel blog-post out and starting our journey.

Thanks to wired2theworld for the nomination, we both hope you enjoyed our 7 links. Here are our five nominations…

• Totaltravelbug.com

• Worldtravelguide.net

• blog.networkosaka.com

• Good.Is

• weblogtheworld.com

Hello and welcome…

This is part three of our top tips for travelling which we learnt whilst on our first five months away in Asia. Not long now until we head off to Los Angeles USA for some yoga teaching training workshops and exploration of Venice Beach. New travelling posts will start appearing in August. Here’s part 3 of 3! We hope you find something useful…

Whilst on our travels we heard tales of survival and health remedies from lots of fellow comrades and we wanted to share the hints, tips and advice that we now take for granted. Part 3 of 3!

Bus Journeys!
Throughout your travels you will travel overland using buses, as these are a great way to see the country and also save some pennies as they are normally cheaper than trains and definitely planes! Vietnam has a good value ticket that allows you to travel the whole length of this surprisingly long country. This open ticket allows you to choose from a selection of places along the way you might want to stop at and then jump back on and head to the next destination.

We went from north to south (Hanoi, (Hue – a few hours stop over waiting for the next bus), Hoi An, Nha Trang, Mui Ne, Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City) for $49 USD. You give them 24 hours notice and if the bus isn’t full then you can normally get a seat for the following day! The ticket is valid for three months.

From our experience in many places in South East Asia buy the cheapest ticket that you find. There may be two options for a slightly better “VIP”/”King of Buses” bus, but at most times you will buy a ticket and no matter the price from various sales offices you will be on the same bus as everyone else! Bus journeys that advertise breakfast included – Avoid!! Also your ticket does not guarantee you a seat, sometimes when the bus is oversold or they ram the bus with locals, you may end up sitting in the aisle on a plastic stool or your backpack!

Security!
We did not have any issues whilst travelling through Japan, China, Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos. Common sense will get you through most situations without too much fuss. Thailand, relatively well off in financial terms compared to some of the other countries, was the only place we had a problem. At Surat Thani, where you get a short bus journey to the port to access Koh Pha-Ngan, Ko Samui and To Tao islands, the bus drives suspiciously slowly and when we got to the port we realised that our backpacks in the underneath luggage hold had been tampered with.

Confrontation of the bus driver, assistant (thief) and port staff just made them all do a vanishing act and loose all memory of the English language. On the boat across to the islands we learnt of other peoples fate, £200 missing and a gold ring missing! Luckily our bags had padlocks and any valuables were in smaller backpacks which we kept with us at all times. A document wallet which goes around your waist keeps passports and money safe.

Exactly the same happened on the way back after we had visited the islands, same bus driver and two assistants this time. Be careful and don’t leave anything expensive in your main backpacks when they are separated from you.

Hiring a scooter.
Make sure that your insurance covers you for the power of the scooter as it can be less than 125cc only etc. Also make sure that you wear a helmet and follow all the rules of the road and local laws. Scooters are a great way to travel around the local area, although we did see lots of people in bandages and hobbling around so be careful.

The only issue that we had was during TET, Lunar New Year in Vietnam, when we got pulled over by the police. No speeding, helmets on heads and driving safely we proceeded to stop when instructed to. The bike was impounded with the reason that the UK licence was not appropriate and we should have a Vietnamese licence (all excuses under the sun come out)! We had to walk back to the hostel luckily only about 3km.

We soon learnt that three weeks before TET and two weeks afterwards the police stop lots of people and impound bikes to basically get beer money. Lots of people were driving around, we were just one of the unlucky ones. Frustrating at a $50 USD fine which we split $25 each with the owner of the bike!

Mosquito Net.
A simple one this but take your own net that can stretch over a double bed, lots of provided nets have holes and tears in which most mosquitoes will find!

Re-hydration… (Tip from Corinne Walker)
It is possible to make your own rehydration solution. Put four teaspoons of sugar and one teaspoon of salt in one litre of water. It is very easy to do and the ingredients are easily accessible from almost any guesthouse. (Good for a hangover cure too!)

Part 1 is here! Part 2 is here! Do you have any top tips? Comment below or drop us an email and we can add your suggestions to this post.

This is the first in a series of reviews taken from our experiences of several cooking classes that we participated in whilst travelling through Asia. We’re both foodies and love to explore new cuisine, this could have something to do with creativity. We both love to photograph and create nice imagery and design and we both like to design and create new and exciting food, and then photograph it! It all seems to be very complimentary!!

Whilst on the road, living out of our bags, on buses, trains and in hostels we didn’t get to cook and prepare our own food nearly as much as we would do on an ordinary day back home. In China we were really luck whilst staying in Beijing, we had an apartment for a month which mean’t we could go out and choose our ingredients from the local farmers market, this in itself was such a fantastic experience. Eating out all the time does take it’s toll but this is also part of the experience of exploring a country and it’s delights.

Taking part in a cooking class every so often mean’t we could explore further into the way the region or the country works with their local ingredients and taught us about the principles of their cuisine.It also mean’t we could eat everything we cooked!

We’re going to start with a course that we both loved and rate very highly in our travelling and food experiences. This was at The Yangshou Cooking School in Yangshou, Guangxi Province, China.

Their location on the banks of the Li River is stunning surrounded by karst peaks, bamboo rafts, and tourists! The course we did was a half day class starting at 8am with a local market tour. This is something that is very consistent with cooking courses in Asia, always starting with a market tour to give you an insight into where they source their ingredients from, what is local to the region and the atmosphere of a busy market place can be absorbed. Our chef and guide Kelly picked up on key ingredients that we would use such as bamboo shoots, chilli, chinese mushrooms and chinese eggplant before taking us back to the school.

We were informed about the morning, what we would be cooking and how we would do it. We each had our own cooking station with a wok on a gas stove, our own chopping boards, knives, bowls, oils and sauces for cooking with. The ingredients were portioned out for us and we would then prepare each dish before cooking it. Kelly demonstrated and then we cooked, and then we ate! For the final 4 dishes though we cooked them one by one and then had our own little banquet sat outside with the riverbanks below us – pretty idyllic!

Chinese cooking is all about sharing and dishes are served as a matter of balance. Hot and spicy dishes such as chicken with ginger and chilli should be offset by cooling preparations such as steamed fish or stir fried vegetables. A little bit of Yin and Yang occurs and equal attention should be paid for the balance of the food’s taste, texture, size, shape and aroma.

We had previously noticed how much oil was used in Chinese cooking, but on this particular course there wasn’t quite so much oil used and the dishes were very tastey and true to the Guangxi region. Not all Chinese food is the same, as we travelled from region to region we experienced subtle and strong differences in the presentation, spice, and taste.

There were around 10 of us in the class with a good mixture of young and old, and vegetarians were catered for equally. All in all we learned a lot about the values of Chinese cooking as well as picked up on some new and exciting recipes, which we think we could cook when we’re back in our own kitchen again.

Below are a few of those recipes! We hope you enjoy! Please do let us know if you manage to cook any!

Steamed Stuffed Vegetables

50gms minced pork / use finely chopped firm tofu for vegetarian option
1 tablespoon of Chives – chopped
One quarter teaspoon of salt
Mixed vegetables – peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, courgette,

Mix the mince/tofu, salt and chives together. Stuff vegetables and steam for 15 minutes in a steaming basket. (Can use boiling water in a pan with an oven proof glass bowl instead and place vegetables in the bowl and then cover)

This dish is great as a starter and would be good at a barbeque or for a little tray of canapes!

Beer Fish

100gms fish (firm white with skin on)
2 tablespoons of peanut oil
Half tomatoe – chopped
Half green, half red pepper – sliced
1 tablespoon of sliced garlic tops or spring onions
1 tablespoon ginger – sliced
2 cloves of garlic – crushed
1 tablespoon of soy saice
Half teaspoon salt
Half glass of beer

Heat the wok, add oil and leave on full heat. Turn down the heat, put fish into work skin down, add salt on top of fish. Fry on each side for about 3 minutes making sure skin is brown. Put all veges, garlic and ginger on top of fish. Pour on soy sauce and beer. Cover with lid and cooking for 5 minutes. Remove lid add spring onions, reduce liquid for 2 minutes. Serve.

This is a really tastey dish indeed!! It’s so easy but we found it’s all about timing, adding the ingredients at the right time. A useful hint on the crushing of garlic – all we did was smash it with a large flat knife and that was that – no extra chopping required.

Eggplant Yangshou Style

100gm eggplant
2 tablesppons of peanut oil
Half red pepper – sliced
One quarter teaspoon of ginger – sliced
2 cloves of garlic – crushed
2 spring onions – sliced
Quarter teaspoon of salt
One teaspoon soy sauce
Half teaspoon oyster sauce

Heat wok and add oil. Heat until oil is smoking and then add eggplant and fry until browned and cooked. Move eggplant to side of wok, reduce heat and fry garlic, ginger and pepper for one minute. Mix eggplant with vegetbales, salt, soy sauce and oyester sauce. Add spring onions. Serve.

All of these dishes are for 2 persons, so double your quantities if you’re cooking for 4!

Here are our top FIVE tours from our Notworkrelated adventure in Asia…

1: Cambodia – Boat trip, beaches and fishing village, Koh Kong Island

Company: Koh Kong Eco Tours, organiser Mr T booked from their office next to the Dug Out Guesthouse in Koh Kong.

We met Ali and Carl and the 4 of us wanted to visit Koh Kong Island – our main reason for travelling to the area. After much discussion and debate Mr T customised a tour for us the night we arrived for a departure the following day. We paid $55 each for a 2 day 1 night tour over to the Island, with 2 bbq lunches. one evening meal, one breakfast and a home stay. The Island was breathtaking, with around 6 beaches to explore, on which stood no other tourists other than us, we had the place to ourselves! With one guide and one boat driver they cooked us excellent fresh seafood, taxied us from one beach to another and delivered us back to Koh Kong via a rare and huge Mangrove forest arriving safe and sound.

The reason this was our number one tour is that it was so personal to what we wanted to do and we had the most authentic experience of Cambodian hospitality in the form of a floating fishing village homestay. The children loved us being there, we ate with the families, played pool on a snooker table and slept in their home. A true homestay and a very humbling one. The beaches are also idyllic on the Island.

This tour was excellent value for money, we received great hospitality and it was a wonderful experience.

We booked the tour once we arrived in Koh Kong at Koh Kong Eco Tours office based at The Dug Out hotel on street 3 (although we wouldn’t recommend the Dug Out for customer service they do have a great tour company positioned right on their doorstep) A bus from Phnom Penh took 5 hours and cost around $10 each. Our blog post for this tour is featured here.

2: China – Trekking and exploring The Great Wall

We booked our Great Wall tour through the Chinese Cultural Centre based in Bejing and paid around £22 for a one day trip with no food. We visited a remote part of the wall called JianKou Great Wall and we only passed 3 other people the entire time we were there! It’s 73km north of Beijing and is a truly wild and beautiful section of the wall and described as being one of the most dangerous parts of the entire Great Wall.

Why did we put this as number 2? We had a local tour guide from the village from where the walk started who provided us with information about the history of this part of the wall and what it meant to the village. We walked for around 3-4 hours taking in the immense scale of the wall in a very autumnal landscape. Afterwards sitting in the tour guides home with his family was a great way to finish the day. You can view our full write up on this tour along with a few other China Highlights here.

3: Vietnam – From Ho Chi Minh City, cycling in The Mekong Delta

A 3 days 2 nights cycling tour booked through Sinhbalo Adventure taking us through the  Inner Mekong region. A fantastic tour that saw us take in wonderful parts of the Mekong in a way that most people don’t – on a bike. Most tours tend to operate in the form of bus and boat transport and we fancied something different. There were 4 of us on the tour with one tour guide named Du-at, a driver and our own bikes. Our bags were transported from one destination to the other which was a great help when cycling.

We travelled on a variety of boats to various parts of the Mekong, visited a traditional Mekong Delta house and kitchen, ate seasonal fruits, tea and rice cakes, had 3 lunches, 2 evening meals and 2 breakfasts included in the price, as well as our own branded Sinh Balo cycling top! Our tour guide had excellent knowledge of local routes and trials through the delta and villages. Accommodation comprised of one night in an eco-lodge and one night in a hotel in Cantho city.

On day 3 of the tour we were up early for a visit to the Cai Rang Floating Market, if you ever have the chance it’s best to get there early as many tourists make their way from 9am onwards. Children followed us and ran shouting ‘Hello’ at the top of their lungs. It’s a very welcoming place indeed and this type of tour certainly offers an alternative route through the Delta.

If your wallets can stretch that little bit more and you fancy the exercise we’d highly recommend it. 3 days, 2 nights starts at $165/person. View our Notworkrelated write up for this tour here.

4: Laos – Trekking in Tha Khaek

We booked this 2 days one night tour through the Thakek tourist information, our guides were called Mii and Sawadee (me and Hello in English) we think they might have made their names up!!

The Tha Kek tourist information office is listed in the Laos Lonely Planet and are far cheaper than rivals Green Discovery Laos. We went to Phu Hin Bun NPA for 2 days including transfers, food, eco-lodge accommodation, cave exploration, hiking and an amazing blue lagoon. The food wasn’t as good as any on the top three tours but we did have 2 very cheeky tour guides who provided us with lots of local knowledge and new card games.

We stayed at a village in the national park and participated in a traditional Baci ceremony. The people on the tour with us were loads of fun too which always adds to the enjoyment factor. We paid $70 per person for this tour. There is no official website for the tourist information office but you can compare similar tours with Green Discovery Laos for the area. For more of how we got on visit the blog post here.

5: Thailand – Boat trip, jungle trek and cave discovery, Khao Sok

A wonderful tour booked at the end of our travels in Asia from our accommodation at Nungs house in Khao Sok National park. The tour cost 1500 Baht each which is around £32, it was difficult to find anything cheaper in the area.

The tour comprised of a one hour transfer to Chiaw Lan Lake where we had an hour long boat journey on a long tail boat via various wildlife and amazing karst peaks. An excellent lunch, kayaks and snacks were included along with a 2 hour jungle trek and exploration of the Tham Nam Thalu Cave. The cave was fantastic, we had no idea what to expect and it certainly thrilled and excited us with rivers flowing throughout, bats and spiders to scare us and a spot of swimming!

This again was a great value tour arriving back at our lodge at around 8pm so we certainly got good time out of it. The tour guide was another cheeky chappy who entertained us along the way. Getting to Khao Sok is fairly easy, we arrived on an overnight train from Bangkok to Surat Thani and ended up getting a minibus to the national park, you can also get a local bus if you don’t mind hanging around and being packed in! Our write up for this tour is feature here.

If you have any comments or further Top Tour Tips you’d like to add, we’d love to hear from you!

We started the day off once more with the cost effective filling breakfast provided by K’s before checking out to start the first leg of the journey. We anticipated around 5 hours of travel so we were keen to get an early start. Our first train with the JR pass took us out of Kyoto on an express train to Osaka where we changed to go to Shimamiya. From here we had to buy train tickets for another train company which included a long winded train journey into the mountains and finally a cable car connection from Gokurakubashi up to Koyasan. The cable car took around 10 minutes and was a steep track up to a small station which still had the same ticket operating gates you’d see in the metro. You tend to find technology in the most unusual places such as vending machines on your way up to a historic temple, or right on the drive of someone’s house, this is something that always amuses us.

So with a short bus journey to complete our travel to this world heritage site we landed at what we thought was our temple accommodation for the evening. The only problem was that Helen had printed off the wrong temple information, when booking this the agents sent through a list of temples even though we had booked only one, others in Koyasan were included in the email, so we realised we were in the wrong place and they sent us up the road to what they thought was our temple. This was around 15 minutes walk up hill with all of our backpacks with us, arriving at the second temple and we found out that this one wasn’t ours either! Nightmare!! Finally we found our temple and it was right near the site entrance, so it would have been the first stop off the bus and the cheapest fare too!! We managed to laugh about it though.

The temple we were checking into is called Rengejo-in, more expensive than some of the others in town but we had read some good reviews and it was a kind of birthday treat for Dave. We couldn’t get into our room until 3pm so we set out in search of some local world heritage sights. We weren’t disappointed and the light was fantastic with blue skies, bright sunshine and red autumn leaves teasing us all the while. The site closest to our accommodation is called Garan and is a temple complex with several halls and pagodas. The Dai-to (Great Pagoda) is the most impressive and beautiful Pagoda we have so far seen on our travels in Japan. It towers above you in strong golds, oranges and reds and glowed in the sunlight whilst school children sketched their surrounding landscape. There were many pilgrim tours taking place as well as tour groups dropping into the site for the day. We loved photographing around this site and with the addition of red leaves against a blue sky it definitely captured our imaginations.

Walking up from Garan we retreated to the temple as we were keen to get our monies worth here. We were introduced to our grand, traditional Japanese style room by a friendly monk who spoke good English. He informed us about the do’s and don’ts, bath-times, ceremonies taking place and so on. We had an hour or so to settle in before the first ceremony which was a 45 minute meditation session. We drank some tea and kept our legs under the table which sneakily had a heater fixed into it, we had noticed the drop in temperature in Koyasan and the paper thin walls weren’t keeping us any warmer. At 5.30pm we attended the meditation session along with other temple guests. It was a really insightful experience as you only ever go into a temple rather than being part of any kind of Buddhist ceremony. The lead monk introduced the session and told us we would meditate until the incense stopped burning some 40 minutes later. Helen has some experience of meditation from her yoga class back in the UK and a few other retreats but for the most part around 10-15 minutes would be the longest. It was a very long 40 minutes but equally we were surprised that it didn’t feel longer. He finished the ceremony by telling us a few tales about the mountainous area, the importance of meditation and a few other more Buddhist related facts. It was something we will both never forget. Afterwards we were led into the dining room where we sat with the other westerners staying the night. We had something like 9 dishes placed in front of us from fruit, to miso soup, several kinds of tofu, pickles, squash, rice and other things we can’t quite remember.

After a quick chat with a nice Dutch couple we went back to our room, used the onset baths and then settled into our beds for an early night. We were due to rise at just before 6am for the morning ceremony. Not before passing the time by light-painting with our head torch and some fairy crazy moves. Much laughter followed!

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

We just wanted to write a quick post regarding the visa & camera insurance for the trip. It’s been really difficult getting insurance for a full year from either of our own camera insurers; Photoguard & Towergate. Although they offer great insurance for UK & worldwide, their trip coverage is limited to either 90 days or 6 months & so this has left us with an issue of finding a company who will insure us for what we want for as long as we want. After some research I came across Aaduki camera insurance who were really helpful & guess what…? They offer insurance for a year worldwide. They also have a very comprehensive cover that enables us to backpack, train travel, walk, drive, run, cycle etc & not be too worried about how our cameras are being ported around! Downsizing has also given us a little freedom on the cost front, yes we still have equipment to cover, but by not having 3 lenses each & two professional DSLR bodies with us means that the cost of our gear is less, along with the size, the weight & the premium for insurance!

With regards to the visas, we just wanted to point out how easy it was to file our own visa applications for China & Vietnam. We printed off the forms from the embassy websites & sent off with our passports, within 2 weeks of sending for both we have both visas sorted & at a much lower price than going through a 3rd party or travel agent. The Chinese forms were far more comprehensive than the Vietnamese one & the only thing that came up is that when traveling into Hong Kong from mainland China & then back into mainland means that you need 2 entries. It also means that each entry is valid for 60 days! It is more costly to have a multiple entry visa, but this gives us the flexibility of going in & out of mainland China.The Vietnamese tourist visa is for 30 days single entry, for Cambodia & Laos you can have up to 30 days on entry & for Thailand we’ll be sorting out a 90 day visa once we reach Laos.

So that’s the informative part done with! I hope it’s been insightful!