It has been our staple breakfast meal for the last 2 months. It would be a lie to say that we had eaten it every day, but I recon over the last 2 months we must have eaten this dish at least 40 times! Crazy. And we never got bored of it. In fact after only a few days in Cambodia we've found ourselves desperately hunting down an authentic Vietnamese Pho. Each place has it's own little variation on the dish, but the essential base is always the same. Flat rice noodles are heated in a big pan of boiling water and then popped in a bowl with some stock and sprinkled with chopped spring onion (or "onion leaf" - maybe chives?). The bowl is brought to your table along with a side plate of fresh herbs, bean sprouts, limes and chilis for you to add to taste. Amazing! It becomes a bit of a ritual. Before the bowl arrives you start picking the leaves off the herbs ready to drop into the soup when it arrives. Then it's time to stir in a few bean sprouts, maybe a squeeze of lime, a dash of chili and then you're off. It ...

If you want something a bit more than sight seeing and sunbathing from a trip then Karma Waters is definitely the place to be. The home page of the website opens with the statement, "At some point we understood and accepted that life is Karma and this is our place", from there follows an explanation of their "Busi-ness" (that activity that keeps you busy) model of Karma Investment, "Karma Investment is to consciously invest in improving your own life and that of all others (people, environment, animals, etc.) by consciously making the focus of all "investments" (time, energy, knowledge, etc.) to improve personal & collective karma" Regular readers may recall we came here on one of our first days and ended up in a conversation with the owner, Paul, which somehow convinced us Hoi An should be our home for the month. We've since been back many times and enjoyed inspirational conversations covering, as you can probably imagine, life, the universe and everything. Aside from the spiritual guidance we received here, another draw, if you need one, ...

After two months of fast paced moving going from place to place every couple of days I think we've finally found our perfect speed and yesterday signed a lease on a flat in Hoi An which will be our new house for the next 20 days. Hurrah! I'm not really sure what made us decide to take root here. It was all quite random. We were just looking for a new hotel for a couple more nights and happened to notice a a small sign for a house to rent. More out of curiosity we went to have a look around one. Well I say curiosity I mean I was feeling nosey and wanted to look round a Vietnamese house (is that bad?). Although we'd just gone in for fun we realised actually it wasn't such a bad idea. Within a couple of hours we'd decided to stay longer and found a place to live. During the time between finding the place and deciding to stay we had an encounter with an interesting chap who runs a vegetarian restaurant called Karma Waters. We'd gone to talk to him about snorkling courses he runs, and if the weather would be good ...

Hanoi is hectic! The pace of life there is far too crazy. There's a constant stream of bikes zooming around every corner loudly tooting their horns on average every three seconds, or less. And the streets are packed full of little shops each with their owner trying to entice you in to buy something. If you walk down the street a Xe Om (motor bike taxi) will ask if you want a ride. If you stand still a cyclo will will hunt you down and insist that you must want a tour. As if that wasn't enough if you sit down anywhere for a 'quiet' drink, guaranteed within 5 seconds someone will come and ask you to buy a book/hat/banana or any number of other things. Despite all this we really liked it. We had a lot of fun there. In fact maybe too much fun. In true "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" style we hopped on the back of a scooter and zoomed over to "Beer Corner" (a crossroads with small bars on each corner, marked C on this map) where Bia Hoi the local brew is sold for only 3000d (12p) a pint. It was a respectable start, ...

Almost forgot, just one more thing to mention before I move on finally from China. That is the Guilin rice noodles we had every day for breakfast while we were in Yangshuo. The area is famous for them. All the locals also seem to eat the everyday for breakfast and I can totally understand why. The noodles are special type, only made in this area. They a round long, round noodles, a similar shape to spaghetti, but made of rice flour. Usually they are served with a few pieces of finely sliced pork (obviously we missed this bit off) and a sprinkle of peanuts or toasted soy beans. Then a spoon each of some sort of oil and a type of sauce flavouring (something like soy?) is added before you take your bowl away to a table with a selection of different things to add yourself. Usually this is kelp (our favourite), some other small cubed vegetables, maybe a radish ( I think it was mooli), maybe cucumber, other different small pickled veg, coriander, chives and chili. After all this you add a scoop of stock and sit down with your bowl of noodles and a boiled egg and a ...