Rice forms the staple diet of both countries, no surprise given the amount of the land that is given over to rice paddies. In Vietnam rice paper is used to wrap meat (usually minced pork or crab) and vegetables into delicious spring rolls, which are usually extra fun as they require rolling by the diner once they have been served! The Vietnamese are also extremely keen on pho, rice noodles that are available all over the country. They can be eaten at any meal, but are especially delightful in the south where they are served with cups of green tea for breakfast, a surprising yet tasty proposition to the western visitor.

The long coastline of Vietnam makes it no surprise that the seafood there is amongst the finest in the world. Pretty much anywhere along the coast it is possible to enjoy fantastic seafood meals at kerb-side restaurants for next to nothing, savouring the unique atmosphere while you’re at it. Take your pick from crabs, clams, shrimps, cuttlefish, eels and numerous species of fin fish, or mix and match for the full Vietnamese seafood experience. Pork is also exceedingly popular, while chicken and beef are also available.

is less well known for its cuisine than its neighbours, but its food is still remarkable. Rice is as crucial as it is in Vietnam try rice porridge, available for breakfast, lunch or dinner and equally appropriate in every situation.Samlor, a type of soup, is served with most meals, though some are more desirable than others! The stand-out dish is amoc, a fish dish which comes served in a whole coconut, and deservedly so. Fish is as regular in Cambodia as it is in Vietnam, and almost as good. Cambodian fruit is as weird and wonderful as you would expect, too. Try a mongkut or a sao mao and you will not be disappointed.

Beer connoisseurs in this part of the world will lip their lips with glee. The national beer of , Angkor, is better than most on offer in the west, while Beer Lao, imported from neighbouring Laos, is probably the pick of the bottled or draught options. Vietnam’s offerings are good value too, but the stand-out option there is Bia Hoi, drank on the same day it is made, 7p a glass and preservative-free.

The braver traveller can also delve into the stranger culinary delights of these two countries: dog, cricket, snake or rat anyone? With so much already to enjoy, the food and drink in the Far East doesn’t disappoint either. If you’re looking to book some accommodation for a trip to this part of the world, Hostelbookers.com has details of lots of hostels in both countries. Also, I was shopping for travel insurance recently, and found that Go Travel Insurance offered some of the best deals for backpackers, so it’s worth checking them out if you’re thinking of having a Far Eastern adventure.

Finding out the problem was a bit of a rude awakening, but then trying to get the problem sorted out was another. I’ve never had any contact with my landlord, so getting hold of them wasn’t exactly ideal. I had to go back home and wear a couple of more layers until my flatmate came home and then we could sort it out. We finally got in contact with the landlord, who said that they’ve got home care cover with British Gas. They sent an engineer the next day when I was in and he could diagnose the problem straight away. He said that because our boiler was so old, it was only running at about 65% of its efficiency anyhow, but now it was ‘on its last legs’ to use the British term. Basically we needed a new boiler.

In the meantime I put on another pair of socks and walked around the house in my ski jacket, but the engineer came back two days later to install the new boiler. It took him a couple of hours to fix it all, but afterwards everything was back up and running again – not bad, I thought, especially as I didn’t have to pay anything. Then again, it is my landlord’s responsibility.

It's not just the Credit Crunch, or indeed the overuse of the term, that has made consumers worried either. Sometimes journalists are incredibly liberal in their summaries, especially when they do it quickly. Take this from the BBC, for instance: (It's about people being worried about house price falls)

'As a result, house prices are falling, interest rates are still relatively high and people are feeling the pinch.'

Now I wonder about the first point. Prices always fluctuate, and not much always goes up and up and up permanently. You'll always get someone who'll be willing to sell something for less than it's actually worth according to the rest of the market. Practices such as this can drive prices down by themselves - it's effectively why trading on the stock market works.

Different sources will also tell you different things about property prices, because no one has a complete set of data. A lender like the Halifax releases statistics based on the information that it holds in its lending database, so it will be different from another lender, like Nationwide. The Halifax will tell you that house prices rose in December, while Nationwide will say that they fell, the complete averages - what every lender says happened - is not revealed in the media.

In reality overall house price fluctuations are difficult to nail down at the moment. If you've been a homeowner for a year or more, then there's no reason to panic - your home has risen in value much more than inflation, so you've made money in real terms. In total, house price inflation in 2007 was 4.2% according to Nationwide (although other sources will tell you different) so this double the inflation rate - you made money on your investment.

Rather than taking what the media says and believing that house prices are 'falling' I'd read from numerous original sources that they're fluctuating. According to the Halifax, this is evidence of a 'subdued' market. I guess it's about time house prices calmed down a bit in the UK, but you'll find that across Europe, they've risen pretty drastically over the same time period.

I'm not a homeowner, and I'm not absolutely sure about buying in the UK unless I get totally settled here, but a friend was looking for mortgages and ended up taking one out with Alliance and Leicester, and he said it was the best he found.

I recently thought that if I was in a relationship then this month could end up just as expensive as Christmas. Relationship's are supposed to be worth their weight in gold, but I'm pretty happy about not having to consider the cost of Valentine's Day on my wallet. I recently read that people in a relationship spend about £750 a year on their partners, and February comes as one of the most costly months - along with December. People are prepared to fork out big sums for their Valentine's gifts, especially on traditional gifts like flowers, chocolate and lingerie, all of which see sales shoot up around this time of year.

How you afford the constant stream of gift giving is, however, something that not all of us give enough consideration to. A survey by Moneyexpert found that people could save as much as £547 a year if they changed their accounts to the five best financial products. Recently I've noticed one of the best ways to save is through getting one of Alliance and Leicester's current accounts. It's got an interest free overdraft for twelve months (which can be agreed to be up to £2500) - you can also get 8.5% AER for balances up to £2,500. Seeing as I don't have a whole lot of savings, I'd say this is pretty much incredible.

This all sounds good for the healthy relationship between the States and the United Kingdom, and it's definitely had a positive effect on tourism. New York, for obvious reasons, suffered a huge downturn after 9/11, but it's since reinvented itself and enjoyed a massive influx of visitor numbers.

However, things aren't looking too rosy for the future, after yet another draconian 'national security' proposal by the Bush administration. The latest measure by Dubya is to press all of the governments in the European Union - that's 27 of them - to sign up for a a number of security measures for travel across the pond, including putting armed guards on all flights between Europe and the US by US airlines.

I read an article in the Guardian about all of this, and I think it's pretty unnecessary. The EU already supplies the US authorities with 19 items of information on every traveller flying from the US, now they want more, including data on people who are allowed beyond departure barriers to help elderly young, or ill passengers to board aircraft flying to America, or even over its airspace.

I think it's increasingly sad that such measures are brought in, because it's not exactly clear if they do anything particularly useful other than make America look increasingly isolationist, fussy and, to some, bordering on totalitarian. It seems particularly strange seeing as the attacks of 9/11 were carried out from flights within the US, not external flights. Fair enough, I get that the authorities want to know who's coming into the country, but there's got to be other ways other than totally encroaching on everyone's privacy, guilty or not.

I hope that the latest measure's don't discourage visitors from the UK heading over to the US. One thing's for sure, you'll be missing out on some great travel adventures when you go. Last time I went back I booked some cheap flights to New York from comparison website - Cheap Flights. I also like Travelzoo a lot, it gets some of the best bargains from the internet, including cheap flights, and sends them to you in a weekly top 20 bargains email.

Stock market turmoil seemed to force the Federal Reserve to cut its target rate substantially last month. It now sits at 3%, although just one month prior it had been at 4.25%. In the short term, a little more positivity has returned to the world markets, but they haven't made a full recovery to pre January levels, having endured a terrible start to the year. Things look as though they might get ugly again soon as well, with stock markets regularly going into the red this month. The Dow Jones has a massive loss on Tuesday (5th) and it makes me a little worried about things.

If, like me, you've got some stocks, then you might be looking for a good moment to pull the plug. I know I am! I want to have my money out for about this time next year, and with things being forecasted to be bad in 2008, I'm not feeling too good about the whole venture. I bought some in mining company Rio Tinto after they received an offer from BHP in November, and it's been quite a roller coaster ever since! Basically, if my stocks break even again, then I'm out of the market. I kind of wish I'd just stuck my savings into an ISA or something for the longer term, but I'll always say that in retrospect.

While the interest rate cuts will probably help the stock market momentarily, I'm sure it'll also be music to the ears of many people who own property over here. Mortgage rates have been going up with interest rate rises over the last few years, and with house prices getting a bit ridiculous lots of people are paying more than they can afford. It also means that loans will probably get cheaper, so things might get rosier for those with good credit histories who are likely to avoid the worst of the Credit Crunch. Alliance and Leicester offer some pretty cheap loans, so I'll be keeping my eyes open if their prices go down further over the next couple of months.

The crazy house prices mean that most people have to borrow eight to ten times their annual salary to make a house purchase, and banks have continued to dish out the mortgages - although the country is seeing something of a slowdown. I read a paper from PwC, the big accountancy firm, that predicts that there will be record numbers of insolvencies in the country this year. Not many people seem to think it will be anywhere near as bad as the subprime crisis back home, but things are definitely going to get a little sticky. For starters, 1.4 million people will be coming off their low fixed rate mortgages later in the year and their monthly outgoings will rise by an average of £140 unless they refinance. For people who are already on the fine line when it comes to making ends meet, it seems likely that this will tip them over the edge.

The report's subtitle is 'The end of the housing market boom is in sight' and it made predictions for 2007 and beyond. Now I've been reading quite a few things on what people are saying about the current British property market, and it looks like it's reached a ceiling because things have got way too expensive. Judging from what most people are saying (I wouldn't want to make my own conclusions yet!) things look like they're going to flatten out. I read from the Motley Fool's David Kuo that they're going to collapse by 20%, but this seems pretty ridiculous judging from what everyone else is saying. Capital Economics said that 'demand (is) set to cool, but not collapse' in 2007. It wasn't far wrong, because price growth was stemmed in the latter half of 2007, and it seems to agree with almost everyone else about the coming year. In the long term, it says, things are likely to decline, although not by much. I guess if you've made wild profits out of the housing boom, then you can't complain, but I feel sorry for the first time buyers who first got their own place in 2007, and consequently look as though they won't get much out of it.