Not another bleeding travel blog...

Hello all

Here is the beginning of my long promised and not yet delivered blog.

I won't bore you with my usual diatrabe against travel and most other blogs [self-aggrandizing rubbish nobody wants to read] as that would be hypocritical and I willing to be anything most days except that. I will promise, especially to those who have in the past had to read my work emails, to keep postings short [250 words max] though as usual sentences may be Germanic in construction. I will also strive to make the postings topical. Spelling might suffer sometimes partially becasue I'm not a proofreader and partially because of SE Asian keys.

We are currently in Hanoi, Vietnam, having arrived a few hours ago. I won't bore you with every dusty detail of the bus here, bus there tedium. Suffice to say we got here by flying from London to Bangkok on 12 Oct, a week later we took an overnight train to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand stayed for a few days, bussed to Chiang Khong on the Mekong River, crossed on a fast longtail to Huay Xai on the Laos side of the river and then a dusty mini van up a half built or half disintegrating road to Luang Nam tha, down a worse road to to Luang Prabang then to the Laos capital of Vientiane and then a short 1 hour turbo prop flight to Hanoi [instead of a ball breaking 32 hour bus ride].

My posts will start from here. Please feel free to comment or email me - rwestinlondon@gmail.com and to pass this link to anyone you want.