Vix and Al World Trip Travel Blog

Where are Vix and Al now?

2012-01-06T10:51:00.002Z

After returning from their world trip Vix and Al moved to Barcelona for a year, before getting married in Edinburgh. They then moved to Zurich where Al works in finance and Victoria works for the UK's leading drug and alcohol rehab treatment clinic, Castle Craig. They have continued to travel enjoying their honeymoon in Mozambique and Botswana, and holidaying in Egypt, Ibiza, the USA (NYC, Texas and Florida), Cape Verde and various places in Europe - Switzerland being quite a good central spot in between countries. Despite settling down they both hope to continue travelling to exotic and exciting places.

Trip of a lifetime!

2009-03-09T23:38:00.013Z

Our round the world trip has been, for both of us, the best experience we have had in all our short twenty-something years. We can't stress how much we wish everyone would make time for such an enriching, rewarding life experience.

We've been back for a couple of weeks and have been meeting family and friends and fielding scores of questions on our adventures (does no one read the blog?!). So we sat down with Pepe, our Mexican companion, with us from the beginning:
and put together a definitive list of the positive and negative, the highs and the lows.

So what did we learn?

Nationalities:
- Which nationality travel the most? The Swiss! Yes tiny Switzerland seems to churn out more travellers than cheese. We met them everywhere, from Mexico to Cambodia. We also met a lot of Israelis in South America.

- The most eco-friendly nation was... New Zealand. Most other countries we visited seem to see planet earth as one huge rubbish dumping ground.

- The prize for the friendliest travellers? The Canadians, we love them!

- The booby prize for the least friendly travellers? The French... sorry I love La France but they need to smile more.

- Anyone can travel at any age with children. We've seen old men hobbling up Machu Picchu and parents with small children at local markets round the world.

Countries:
Our favourite country? That's a really really difficult one. But since everyone has asked us this question since we arrived back home we have had to come up with an answer. But it's so difficult! So we need to rephrase the question into: which countries do we want to visit again?
Peru, Australia and China (and Mexico too for Vix). All these countries have so much to offer and we really only scratched the surface with Australia and China.

People Around the World:
- The people in all the countries we visited are poorer than us in London but they smile more.
- Everyone around the world loves football. The Vietnamese definitely give the English a run for their money.
- People around the world think that in order to have a successful restaurant you need to play the Beetles to tourists. We heard a lot of Beetles tunes!
- The prize for the world's cutest kids goes to... Cambodia!

Money and Spending:
- Always ask how much something is before you touch it.

- The best way to get a fair price? Walk away. It generally brings the price down about 50%.

- Try not to pay for anything in advance.

- Always ask for a receipt, especially if you have cleverly bargained for a lower price on a hotel room. You don't want to get caught out the next day when they ask you to pay a higher price. Also always get a receipt for any belongings you put in a hotel reception safe.

- Overnight bus journeys aren't as bad as they sound and are a great way of saving money on a hotel room. Just don't forget your earplugs!

- It's often best not to haggle down to the nearest 20p. Just think of it as a donation to the local economy.

- Cash is king. Don't rely on your credit card in the middle of the Amazon jungle.

- US dollars are king, especially in South America and Asia. Always have at least $50 on you.

General Activities:
- You get what you pay for. So if you opt for the cheapest tour don't be upset that you are with 50 other tourists and a non-English speaking guide.

- Go for it! Even if it means eating beans on toast for a week because you hadn't budgeted for that bungee jump/sailing trip just do it because you will probably regret it later if you don't.

- Do rent a motorbike if you can, it's such fun!

- Our most valuable possessions on our travels? Wax or silicon earplugs. Don't leave home without them.

We hope you enjoyed reading the blog and sharing our experiences and most of all we hope it will inspire other people to do the same thing. Break the mould, travel the world!

The journey home

2009-02-10T22:15:00.001Z

Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh, a flight to Bangkok and a plane the same evening back to London. Need I say more?
We were both exhausted when we eventually landed in a cold and rainy London at 6am the next morning. It was pretty sobering to be back on the tube in rush hour. All I wanted was to have a good cup of tea and a hot bath (two things I had missed while being away).

Sihanoukville, Cambodia

2009-02-07T17:55:00.002Z

After our twelve houre spent one night in Phnom Penh and the next day we caught another bus (a luxury one this time) down to Sihanoukville on the coast. Sihanoukville is Cambodia's Phuket/Bali/French Riviera. The town centre itself isn't much to rave about but a short moto ride to the beach area gives most beach-hungry travellers what they are looking for. Like Thailand, the beaches are lined with bamboo beach huts selling cheap cocktails and $3 fresh fish BBQs, firejugglers and groups of young tourists. But unlike Thailand it still retains much of its 'local' vibe - less the resort, more the backpackers' hangout. Women wander the rows of reclining deck chairs offering fresh fruit, back massages and manicures; beggars sift through the crowds requesting spare change and children approach tourists in the evenings with bracelets and fireworks for sale. Al was himself a victim of a small boy's sales pitch: after insisting we didn't want a beaded bracelet the boy struck a deal with Al - if the boy wins a round of tic tac toe (noughts and crosses) we buy two (rather overpriced) bracelets, if we win we keep them for free. Al entered this deal because he was sure he could win at the game. Well he lost (even though he insists that he let the boy win) the kid was ecstatic and we had to splash out on two bracelets we didn't really want. Oh well - it's good to support the local economy I always say.

The next day, in true Cambodian style, we hired a motorbike for the day and did some exploring. We drove to a beach 5kms east of town that was recommended in the guidebook. This beach was incredibly beautiful and traquille. We passed the day relaxing on our deck chairs, swimming in the warm sea and generally enjoying the sunshine.

Scuba Diving
The highlight of our trip to Sihanoukville was a a day's scuba diving with a night spent on a 'desert island'. We went with Eco Sea Dives who were very professional and good fun. We met the group early in the morning, got kitted up and jumped in a minibus to the port of Sihanoukville. The port was a fascinating place. We'd never seen such an undeveloped port before. Most of the buildings rested on bamboo stilts and there was a small dockyard where wooden fishing boats were being repaired or repainted. Next to this were houses on stilts and next to this again was an area for loading and unloading ships.

We helped pile all the gear into our dive boat and off we sped with nutella baguettes for breakfast.

The diving was great, we didn't see anything spectacular but it was very beautiful indeed. (Unfortunately we haven't yet developed our underwater camera film). In the late afternoon we were dropped off on the island of Koh Rong and shown to our basic, but really nice, cabins. We wondered around the island's deserted beaches, had a dip in the warm, crystal clear sea, and checked out the local village. As we walked through the village for the first time (down the sandy 'high street' just next to the beach) we noticed a huge pig which lying fast asleep... at least it looked that way at first, but on closer inspection it was dead. The saw us looking and came over. They hadn't known it was dead but weren't too surprised - apparently it had been castrated the day before (although the desire remained it couldn't perform its manly functions and so in order to prevent any testosterone-fuelled rampages they had castrated it.... but then it died. Very sad. Anyway, on our way back the villagers had already started shaving the pig in the middle of the street and the whole village had turned out to watch the spectacle. We decided to grab a beer from the bar (more like a shop with a table and 2 chairs) and sit to watch the gruesome sight. The pig was shaved of its hairs, then one man picked up a knife and sawed the head off while another gutted it. Nothing was wasted and everyone seemed very excited - Christmas had come early to this small impoverished community! We left the gory scene and went back to the beach huts for dinner and to get an early night before our boat back early the next morning. Sadly I left my camera in someone else's bag and it was taken back to the office, I took a couple of photos with our underwater dive camera but haven't developed it yet.

On arrival back in Sihanoukville we relaxed with the usual beach activities such as getting a lady to thread the hairs from both of your legs - OUCH! And I hasten to add that she persuaded me to get it done which she clearly regretted two hours later when she had eventually finished with a crick in her neck!

The usual pina coladas in the evening the best cocktail to drink on a tropical beach!

and watched yet another beautiful Cambodian sunset.

We really enjoyed our time in Sihanoukville. It was our first taste of beachlife since Australia and we liked the fact that it wasn't as developed as Thailand - more like what Thailand would have been 10-15 years ago. There were a couple of downsides though. Unfortunately the beach was really dirty with rubbish strewn across the sand, plastic bags often spotted in the sea and beachside restaurants not doing their bit to keep their part of the beach tidy. If you dared to walk round the back of any beachside hotels/restaurants you would spot rubbish dumps, overflowing bins and dirty kitchens/bathrooms. It was a real shame as a cleanup effort by the council would surely result in a more pleasant experience for everyone but walking down to the beach was often a hazardous, even dangerous, pursuit and no one seems to care. We also discovered that the main beach (and others in the area) are marked for massive developments by large Chinese-owned hotels. The main beach where you see us sipping our cocktails and playing with local kids will soon only be enjoyed by a privileged few and the buzzing, fun, hippy atmosphere will be gone. Well maybe if they clean up the beach it would at least be better for the environment... but the damage to the local economy would be higher and anyway, much of the coastline of Cambodia is a rubbish dump because the hotels there haven't made any effort to do their bit.

So if you want to have the same experience we had you'd better get there quick before the beach life disappears! But no doubt the beach huts, their deckchairs and the hip, young tourists will just find a new stretch of coast.

Ban Lung, Ratanakiri

2009-02-02T11:58:00.002Z

We arrived in Ban Lung to be greeted by a crowd of hotel owners, all vying for our attention. We picked one and off we went to the Tribal Guesthouse. We took one of the higher priced rooms as the cheaper ones were pretty dingy and ended up with a great room in a chalet separate from the main hotel. Once we had negotiated some clean sheets (they try to get away with giving you dirty sheets in most budget hotels in Cambodia) we set out for supper. We decided to go it alone (without the guidebook) and ended up in a pretty interesting little place with a funny menu, well just take a look at the picture below, fancy some "pregnant egg", "tin mushroom" or simply "?" (see last option)... we had a good laugh and ended up ordering chicken and noodles.

The next day we took a short walk around the centre of town (which consisted of just a few sandy 'streets') , walked around the local market and watched the local life go by. The people here wear pyjamas as well and as you can see the children start from a young age! All very laid back.
We decided that the best way to get around the surrounding countryside would be to rent a motorbike. Our hotel was charging double the price on the street so we found some guys with an old motorbike who were willing to rent it to us for $4 for the day. We filled up with petrol at the nearest 'petrol station':
decided on a route and off we went!

Our first visit was to a famous volcanic crater with a lake inside that you can swim in! We had in fact specifically come up to this area to witness this spectacular natural treasure. We were very excited. We zoomed off on our bike, the wind in our hair and masks covering our faces from the dusty roads.
I couldn´t see a volcano on the horizon but presumed that it may be covered in jungle. We reached our destination, parked the bike and ran down to the lake. We reached the 'volcanic crater' aka 'just a big lake':
and tried not to be too disappointed as we realised that there was no volcano, not even a crater, just a lake. On the positive side it was still a very nice lake and we made the most of it. We walked around the whole lake, through the forest which was beautiful, watched some local children playing and relaxed for half an hour in the sunshine. Swimming was ruled out as an option as the edge of the lake was covered in rubbish and we didn´t fancy swimming with the it.

Still we loved our moto and sped down the road to a nearby waterfall which was really impressive.

We had an awesome lunch of burger and chips (just what we needed after days of noodles) at the hightly recommended Sal´s restaurant, where Sal herself served us in her nightdress (I kid you not - she hadn't had time to get dressed she said) and headed off for a jaunt around the countryside. We passed wooden houses on stilts:

Villages where people shouted hello to us as we passed them:

Groups of kids playing and wondering who we were:

And rather unpleasantly I witnessed a pig being beaten to death with a stick as we passed by. I didn´t take a photo of that but urged Al to speed on to escape the noise of the pig´s screams.
Onwards we drove, up a hill near to the town where children were playing near a Buddhist monument
and I tried out my skills on the bike

For sunset we took the bike down to a big lake on the outskirts of the town where we watched locals fishing and water buffalo eating grass on the shore.

The perfect way to end a day of motorbiking in Ban Lung? A warm shower to wash off all the red dust that has turned your skin orange!

We awoke at sunrise the next day and made our way into town for a very long bus journey. The bus came and we began the 10 hour slog back to Phnom Penh with a couple of baguettes to keep us company. Amazingly the bus only stopped to refuel at a petrol station and didn't stop at any restaurants. (As we were at this crowded petrol station we saw one very smart guy throw a lit cigarette onto the ground right next to someone refuelling their car - maybe a sign that this country still has a long way to go to educate its people and through this become more developed).

We only spent one full day in Ban Lung. It is certainly interesting to see these off-the-beaten-track parts of the country but we decided that maybe it isn´t always for us. We could have stayed longer, gone trekking in the forest or something, but this part of Cambodia is really underdeveloped which makes tours like this difficult as you don't always know what you're getting. We were also a bit annoyed with Lonely Planet for recommending the 'volcanic crater' which doesn't remotely resemble a volcano or a crater - just a lake. We've learned to not always take what guidebooks say as the gospel truth, sometimes in their enthusiasm for a country they hype up the mediocre and turn it into a 'must see' attraction. We would recommend a visit to Ban Lung for those visiting Cambodia with time on their hands (the bus journey here is very long indeed and it's the only road from the south) and it's a good place to go if you want a taste of typical Cambodian rural life. Although poor, the people here are relaxed and friendly, there are good hotel options and some surprisingly good restaurants.

Bus journey from HELL

2009-01-30T22:08:00.001Z

The next morning we awoke early to book our bus ticket to the north-east of Cambodia, a town called Ban Lung in the Ratanakiri Province - off the beaten track! We booked a ticket from a little man who had a make-shift office (i.e. a table) next to the Red Sun Falling cafe. He spoke perfect English and assured us that he was the real deal - luxury bus, no diversions, no restaurant stops. Great!
Little did we know that we were embarking on the world´s worst bus journey ever!

We turned up at 12.10 to catch our bus in 20 mins. 12.30 came and went and our ticket salesman came over to tell us that he had just heard the bus would be an hour late as they had to stop for lunch because the passengers were very hungry... yes, he said that the bus stopped because the passengers were very hungry. Yeah right!! It was ridiculous, we´d seen him sitting in the same place for the last half hour without picking up a phone. "Maybe", he said to us, "you would like to buy lunch here while you wait?" We were very frustrated by this. The bus clearly always makes that stop so that the bus company can rake in the commission, our ticket salesman just decided to omit telling us that or else we may have taken an earlier bus with a different company and we would not have bought those drinks at his restaurant next door. God I could be the next Miss Marple. So if you ever go to Kratie and see this man don´t buy a ticket from him!: Anyway, the bus eventually arrived at 14.20 but we had to wait half an hour before we could get on. When we boarded chaos awaited us. The stench of rotten fruit and odorous bodies hit us like a minesweeper! This bus had clearly never seen a mop and dettol before. We walked down the aisle stepping carefully over the piles of debris, stepping on people´s luggage and pushing over stools where people were sitting in the aisle - no seatbelt laws here! We sat down in our hard leather seats to await the 8 hour coach journey. We began speaking to two tourists near us, they said they were heading to Stung Treng, a town which required a diversion from our course. We confronted our ticket salesman about this as he had promised us "no diversions", all of a sudden he couldn´t understand us. A man was sitting across from me eating an orange like an animal, chomping and chewing loudly and obscenly. I put on my ipod and tried to block it all out.

As we drove we noted how the colour of the earth changed from a light dusty beige to a deep red sandy colour.
A couple of hours into the journey a crazy lady with a moustache came and stood next to us screaming and laughing at the men sitting behind us for an hour. We thought she might be a hooker/ a druggie - she certainly looked like either. Not only this but a child infront of me was sick on my foot and we watched as a little girl stood up and peed into a plastic bag in the aisle. Another child was sick in the aisle and the parents mopped it up with a jacket. We were slowly being driven insane, it felt like a scene from the Far Side. After stopping at the town of Stung Treng and at a restaurant for half an hour we continued on an unpaved (very bumpy!) road for three hours. The sunset was at least beautiful as were the trees which were caked in red dust whipped up by the tyres of passing vehicles. We were quite concerned by this stage as we would be arriving in a strange town after dark which always makes things that little more difficult. As we neared Ban Lung down a narrow, dusty road, flanked on either side by forest, we noticed small fires all around us. At first we thought they might we controlled fires to clear the ground but as we drove on we could see that houses were surrounded by blazes and whole trees and even parts of the road were on fire! This made the journey even more eery. "What kind of a place are we coming to?!" we wondered in alarm...

Kratie, Cambodia

2009-01-29T20:01:00.001Z

Leaving Siem Reap
After a day of chilling out in Siem Reap, getting foot massages and recovering from our extensive exploration of the temples of Angkor, we decided that it was time to move on. The original plan had been to get the bus from Siem Reap to Bangkok but as we had enjoyed Cambodia so much we decided to discover more. We consulted the guidebook and caught a bus from Siem Reap to Kampong Cham, a long bus ride of 6 hours with Cambodian pop songs blasting in our ears. At the end of this bus ride we jumped into a tuktuk to the nearest place where a bus ticket to Kratie could be booked. The ticket was surprisingly expensive but we paid anyway (we didn´t have much choice) and awaited the bus which of course was late. While we were waiting Al nipped off to buy a couple of baguettes to share as we hadn´t eaten breakfast. The bus agent kindly offered to take our money and go to the local market to buy us some food but we politely declined. "Do we look like complete mugs!" we said to ourselves "here, take our money... no no infact take our credit card and pin number at the same time!" (as mentioned earlier - never pay for anything in advance!). Eventually the bus came so we bought some monkey nuts from a local sales woman and sat back in our seats munching away and watching a comedy show involving a midget castrati and actors dressed as European peasants - don´t ask.

Kratie
We eventually arrived in Kratie and headed to a budget hotel recommended in the guidebook. Kratie is pretty small but a number of guesthouses have sprung up to cater for tourists visiting the famous Irawaddy Dolphins. We settled into the You Hong guesthouse and ordered some food, only to discover how dirty the hotel actually was - ants crawling everywhere, dirty sauce bottles, a kitchen where dishes were washed on the dirty floor and a squat toilet (used by the staff) which didn´t have loo roll or soap (work that one out yourself). Not nice! We did however have a great view of the market from our window:

The next day we arose early and explored the town. We investigated the mighty Mekong river and the busy market area outside our hotel.

While in the market we were approached by a tuktuk driver offering to take us to the river to see the dolphins. After some light haggling we agreed on a price and hit the road, 14 kms, upriver. We arrived, bought a ticket and were directed to a boat for our own private boat ride. Irrawaddy dolphins are incredibly rare, there are only about 70 remaining in the Mekong River and the small port of Kampi, near Kratie is the best place to see them. We were lucky. The dolphins are incredibly shy, unlike their show-off, Sea World counterparts, and don´t hang around much for photos. Through sheer patience we got some spectacular shots:

It was a lovely opportunity to relax on the river and soak up some rays too
Our driver was a funny one. Life can´t be too hard when all you do is sit around all day, waiting for tourists to be brought to your boat and taking the odd nap between rides... however we never met anyone lazier and more unwilling to do their job. We stayed in the same area for ages, which was good while the dolphins were there, but when they moved on we wanted to explore some more. "You want to go to the waterfall?" our guide asked. When we replied in the affirmative we were told "two dollar". Feeling a bit hard done by we declined but asked him to go further afield so we could see more dolphins. He revved up the engine, surely scaring the dolphins away, and headed a little up river. We circled around a small island and came back to the port. "No no no!" we called, "we paid for an hour not 40 minutes!" He didn´t look too happy but nevertheless turned off the engine and drifted us back to the middle of the river. He really didn´t look happy though and we soon found out why as he suddenly threw his head over the side of the boat and started vomitting. Eeewww!! We were sympathetic of course and told him he could go back to the port. We were also a bit worried, if the locals get sick from the food here what hope is there for us?!

We sat for 15 minutes by the side of the river watching the dolphins playing and the odd boat heading out into the river. As we waited we came across a rather bizarre sign stuck to a notice board - we couldn´t make out what it was trying to warn but if any of our readers have any ideas then please please comment and let us know!

On the way back the driver pointed out a famous ´mountain´with a temple on top. I wanted to have a closer inspection - mainly for comedy value as this truly was a mountain for the very flat Cambodian countryside, but by our European standards it was more like a small hillock. We climbed the mountain to the temple at the top. There wasn´t too much to see but we did come across this loo which should definately win a prize for the world´s worst toilet competition!

We headed back to our dirty hotel where the staff were lazing around in hammocks in their pyjamas watching wrestling on TV. It´s a fact of Cambodia that everyone here wears bright coloured pyjamas during the day - they are that laid back here! I actually think it may be because pyjamas are cheaper than normal clothes... either way it certainly reflects the relaxed and happy attitude of the people here. But the people who ran our hotel... they were just lazy!
We whiled away the rest of the day in a cafe by the market
We also wondered through the inside of the market, a maze of clothes/shoe/food stalls - although with flies buzzing over the meat and vegetables being cut on the floor it didn´t look like the most hygenic place to eat!
and sat with a cool beer watching the sun setting over the banks of the Mekong.

Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom

2009-01-27T22:19:00.001Z

We awoke early (4.30am, still dark) wondering why on earth we had decided to get up so early, but excited about seeing one of the world's most famous temples - Angkor Wat. We found our tuktuk driver and bundled into the back for a ride through in the pitch dark. As we left Siem Reap we became aware of a number of other tuktuks on the road - presumably all with the same idea in mind. We passed cyclists who still had an hour of hard graft ahead of them before they reached the famous temple. As we arrived at the entrance of Angkor Wat I was surprised to see some coaches parked and about fifty tuktuks - clearly a few people had had the same idea as we did. Luckily at such an early hour there were no children thrusting scarves or books into our faces.

We headed through the magnificent entrance and across the causeway over the moat, crossed a field past a separate building and moved towards the edge of the lake where the crowds had gathered. We still couldn't make out the temple as the sun had not yet risen, but that didn't deter people from trying to take pictures in the dark, which was quite funny. We stood at the lakeside with hundreds of people - I had envisaged us standing, almost alone, watching the sun rise - I didn't know that, for the Chinese especially, sunrise and sunset is seen as a prime time to view the temple. There was no peace and quiet, no time for meditation or appreciation of the view - just fighting for a space at the lakeside and listening to the noisy chatter all around. This (as well as Ta Prohm) was probably one of the first times I had witnessed the effects of mass tourism - and it wasn't pretty. We hung back from the crowds and watched as the sun began to rise.

We then decided to head into the temple itself to escape the crowds and get a feel for the place on our own. We didn't realise that we needent have worried - many coach loads of tourists head to Angkor Wat for sunrise and then go back into town for breakfast.

We walked through the huge entrance and into the corridors of the temple, listening to the squeaking bats that were settling down to sleep. We made our way to the back of the temple and stood watching the first of the sun's rays light up the facade.

Here I am appreciating the quiet moment we had in the world's most famous temple:
We found some more beautiful aspara carvings and were able to find someone to photograph us together

One of the temple courtyards contained a shrine to Buddha and we saw two orphan boys, who had benefitted from the care of the monks, playing there:

As we headed outside and round the front of the building, in search of breakfast, we looked across the lake where the crowds were still gathered. I began waving and making an Oscar acceptance speech as it seemed like the natural thing to do with all these adoring fans photographing us... and then we headed an area containing small restaurant/cafe stalls for some breakfast. As we neared we saw scores of stall owners standing near the entrance to this area and shouting and gesticulating at us and the other tourists... "oh my gosh - which stall do we go to then!" we wondered... we decided to go with the first person who shouted at us and headed with him, ignoring the others, to his stall. We ordered a delicious breakfast of eggs and bacon which was of a really high standard considering it was being cooked right in front of our noses on a tiny hob. We also watched them making ice - the old fashioned way!
Some cunning children tried to trick me out of 1000R (25p) as I headed to the loo in the nearby monastry, 'toilet costs 1000riel! you pay me!' - but I'm a wily traveller now and I know full well that you don't pay anything for a dirty squat toilet (with no light) in a Buddhist monastry.

Back in the temple we made a small offering for the orphanage and continued with our explorations.
We walked past dozens of asparas (which made Al happy) - for some reason the stone on their chests was highly polished, leading us to believe that they are often the victims of groping assaults.
Some of the carvings in the temple were beautiful and we spent hours wandering round taking everything in.

We finally decided to tear ourselves away from Angkor Wat and explore Angkor Thom (the ancient city of Angkor). Our driver dropped us off at the entrance where we walked around, dodging the tuktuks and elephants and coming face to face with the guardians of the city - you don't wanna mess with these guys... but we did anyway - haha!

Just as we started thinking it couldn´t get better than Angkor Wat... we were taken to the magical Bayon. This temple was one of the best we had seen. Each tower was covered in huge faces, smiling benevolently at the crowds of people milling around.

It really made you think how amazing it would have been to be one of the first explorers to discover this temple in the jungle, stone faces smiling down at you through the wild vegetation.

We took time to appreciate some of the detailed wall designs and temple architecture:

We walked round to another temple tucked away within Angkor Thom - Bauphuon. It looked amazing but unfortunately much of it was under restoration so we were unable to have a look closeup.

Next, within Angkor Thom, we walked to the Terrace of Elephants: a wall covered in detailed carvings of battle scenes, fighting animals and huge sculpted elephants.

We entered a narrow maze of high stone walls known as the Terrace of the Leper King. The structure of the walls had protected the engravings from the weathering elements and their quality was superb.

The only problem with Angkor Thom is that it is very open and we were being fried by the midday sun from which there was little cover. This, along with the early start and hectic schedule of the last few days, left us really tired and we decided to head back to Siem Reap for a late lunch before heading to our final temple to watch a beautiful sunset. We thanked our tuktuk driver and paid him for his service, arranging to meet him at 4.30pm. However we then made a mistake which we only realised after we walked away from the driver - we paid in advance for the evening trip. Biiiig mistake. Don´t ask why we did it - we didn´t have the right change on us or something... we should have known better. Anyway by the time 4.30pm came we were waiting eagerly in the hotel lobby for our driver. Tuktuk drivers are generally very punctual so we thought it was unusual that he wasn´t there waiting for us. Fifteen minutes later we complained to the hotel staff who knew the driver. They said they had spoken to him and he was on his way. Fifteen minutes later and still no sign of our driver, we were pretty worried - we had a sunset to catch you know! Eventually the hotel staff told us that our driver had been ´held up´while on another job in Angkor and they went onto the street to find us a different driver. We were preeeety p-d off by this point, especially as we had to take a new driver who we didn´t know and we had felt that we´d got to know the previous driver quite well. We felt betrayed... no just kidding, but there you go, tuktuk drivers are promiscuous, just don´t pay in advance for their services.

So off we headed (with our new driver trying hard to sell us a boat trip that we didn´t want) to Phnom Krom, an ancient ruin at the top of a steep hill, right next to a working Buddhist monastry.
We passed the monks on the way up, labouring on the road:

and, once we had reached the top of the hill, we cracked open our cans of Angkor beer and perched on a small outcrop to take in the view and the beautiful sunset that illuminated the paddy fields below.

And thus ended the visit to our final temple. Our time in Siem Reap and viewing the temples of Angkor was truly magical and we will always remember it. We saw so many amazing temples, all of them different, and despite the sometimes large groups of tourists, it wasn´t hard to find a corner or a rock to sit and relax - although it could be difficult to escape from the ubiquitous young souvenir sellers. We would definitely recommend the temples of Angkor to anyone of any age. There are plenty of budget accommodation options in Siem Reap, as well as a plethora of luxury, five star hotels for the more affluent traveller. The same goes for restaurants - you can eat noodles at the market or steak in the top restaurants. Siem Reap is easy to reach from Bangkok or Phnom Penh by aeroplane, or from Phnom Penh by coach.

Tuktuk to Angkor - day 2

2009-01-26T21:08:00.000Z

We were up bright and early, a bacon baguette in one hand and our recent purchase of 'Ancient Angkor' from a young book salesman in the other. The plan was to make our way towards the beautiful Banteay Srei, stopping off at Banteay Samre along the way. We arrived before most of the big coachloads of tourists and set about exploring the temple on our own. It was very peaceful and nice and cool before the sun rose fully in the sky.

On the road to Banteay Srei - spirits high! At 20km north of Siem Reap the journey took an hour, but we enjoyed it thoroughly, whizzing past small villages and markets along the way and trying to capture the moment.

Banteau Srei was crammed with coaches and tuktuks which took us by suprise but we fought through the crowds to get to the best spots. The temple is small but extremely beautiful, decorated throughout with intricate carvings which are almost perfectly preserved.

The main temple was closed off to tourists which was a bit of a shame, but you could still make out the ape-men that guarded the entrance... no not Al, the statues behind him!
We had a bit of a celebrity moment - as we walked around admiring the carvings a group of Japanese guys approached us and asked if they could take a photo of us. 'Of course' we said, handing them our camera not realising that they wanted to be in our picture too! It was a little odd to say the least, it must have been Al's cool hat that did it.

On our way back to the main Angkor Wat area we popped in to the Landmine Museum, where the funds go into raising awareness of landmines and supporting local orphans. It is full of displays on the use of landmines during the Khymer Rouge era and the attempts to dismantle them. Designed to maim rather than kill, around 6 million landmines still exist in the Cambodian countryside and peoples' lives are still being destroyed by them.

After a delicious Cambodian Amok curry for lunch we had a quick look at Srah Srang, a lakeside temple (baray).

We crossed the road and entered the temple of Banteay Kdei. The entrance is guarded by a huge face cut into a tower, very imposing. We entered and walked through a pasageway full of dancing apsaras - as you can see I did a rather good impression:
This temple was in a state of ruin which added to the atmosphere there. You could almost imagine how the explorers came across it hidden in the jungle.

Our penultimate temple of the day was the spectacular Ta Prohm. Famous for the trees that cover the ruins and its 'romantic' atmosphere - the only problem was that every Tom, Dick and Harry from California to Beijing had decided to come to visit that afternoon so the romantic atmosphere was somewhat missing. We still managed to get some great photos, and at times escape the crowds.

Here you can see a a number of tourist groups crammed into a tiny area all taking photos of each other infront of a tree. We just sat watching them for a while until they moved on and we had a small window of opportunity to take an uninterrupted photo.

Al ensured that I took another photo of him with one of the apsara girls before we left the temple:

After dodging the crowds of Ta Prohm and picking up a few silk scarves along the way we ended the day on top of the magnificent Ta Keo, a huge mountain-like temple built entirely of sandstone. It looks like a huge legoland creation, due to the fact that it was never completed and the stones were not carved into shapes.

The stairs were the steepest and narrowest we had climbed yet and we made our way up the mountain-temple on all fours, being careful not to lean too far back...

After catching our breath we watched the sun as it began to fall in the sky, covering the giant blocks in dark red shadows, and chatted to local children selling stone carvings.

This was our tuktuk driver outside Ta Keo, a nice and quiet man, and 37 years old - we couldn't believe it, he looked about 20 - but that's Cambodians for you! On the way home he stopped the tuktuk and pointed at the sun - there was a partial eclipse, we were careful not to stare directly into it but it was very exciting to see and ended the day on a very special note!

Tuktuk to Angkor - day 1

2009-01-25T21:00:00.001Z

The next morning we found a tuktuk driver and headed off to the famous temples of Angkor. We bought a three day pass and decided to leave actual Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom (the 'city') til the third day, building up to a grande finale. But we did catch this glimpse of the entrance gates to the Angkor Thom area on our way to the other temples - pretty incredible!

At our first temple we were slightly taken aback by the amount of people and children who run up to you and try to sell you everything from postcards to bracelets to t-shirts to pineapples. We strolled around the first temple, Preah Khan, munching on pineapple pieces and making new friends:

Built in 1191, the immense Preah Khan was formerly a Buddhist university and city, much of it in ruins but amazing to behold nonetheless. We weaved in and out of the various rooms and corridors, some blocked off as they had caved in, walked around the ponds, relaxed on the ruins

contemplated the fearsome guardians of the temple
wandered through the hall of dancers (apsaras) to which Al formed a strange kind of attachment to, requesting photographs everytime he saw one.
and photographed the amazing trees which have made the temples their home (and in the process have contributed to their ruin).

Our next stop was the beautiful Preah Neak Pean, set in the middle of a lake:
and we found a small chapel where Alex nearly lost his hand to a hungry dragon

There were quite a few tourists in each temple and as we were there during the Chinese New Year period many of them were Chinese. There were always rows of tuktuks lined up outside each temple (which made it quite hard to recognise our tuktuk driver at times!).

On the road again, this time to Tasom, a small but stunning temple with great faces, partly hidden by the the huge tree roots that have taken hold:

We stopped for lunch in a slightly touristy, but very tasty, restaurant before moving on to the fantastic East Mebon, a huge temple built in 953BC, which you can climb to see panoramic views of the surrounding countryside.
Huge stone elephants stood at the corners of the temple

as well as lions guarding the entrance.

Next we headed to Pre Rup
...a temple with a very steep climb! We crawled up on our hands and knees, Al feeling a little dizzy from the height
After catching our breath we walked around the towers, admiring the views and stone carvings: I took the opportunity to cover up from the hot Cambodian sun:

We ran the gauntlet of underaged souvenir sellers and restauranteurs, jumped into our tuktuk and sped on to Preah Ko, part of the 'Roulous Group' of temples, some of the oldest temples, built in the late 9th century. These temples are based about 7 kms south of Siem Reap and not as frequently visited as those that are nearer to Angkor Wat. As we entered we gave some money to a group of children collecting for a local orphanage and spent time watching the ancient temples beautifully reflecting the golden afternoon sun.

Our last stop for the day was the amazing Bakong temple, also part of the Roulous Group, it is still used as a Buddhist monastry. We climbed up the neverending flight of steps and walked around taking in the beautiful views as the sun descended in the sky.

We watched Buddhist monks playing football and climbing palm trees to pick coconuts

As we left the temple we decided to buy two coconuts - a simple thing to do you might think. But no, we were beseiged by screaming women and girls all trying to persuade us to buy their coconuts. In the end it was a toss up between an older girl who was shouting the loudest and a machete-wielding woman to ran towards us - machete in one hand, coconut in the other, screaming like a banshee - we didn't dare to refuse!

We were exhausted as we headed home - so much culture in such a short day! As the sun set we entered Siem Reap, watching the truck loads of workers making their way back into town.
We paid our tuktuk driver and arranged to meet with him the next morning. We then had a shower as we were covered in dust from the journey and headed into town for a market meal with a few cold beers.

Siem Reap

2009-01-24T21:15:00.006Z

The bus ride to Siem Reap was pretty cool. We usually complain about the long stopovers at the restaurant of the bus driver's sister's husband's second cousin, but this time we were loving it - fresh fruit, water, food, fried tarantulas.... did I just say friend tarantulas! Yes, they eat them here, along with cockroaches, crickets and a host of other bugs.
This girl is actually playing with a live tarantula (one that escaped the frying pan) she's pulling at it's legs, putting it on her head, in her mouth - usual behaviour for a ten year old girl in Cambodia I'm sure...

We arrived in Siem Reap, a vibrant little town in the West of Cambodia, a few hours later. The centre of town is very tourist-orientated, with lots of good restaurants, bars, internet cafes and market stalls. It's great fun. If you walk about five minutes down the river though you can see where most people live - a lot poorer than the five star hotels along the river, but far more picturesque.

We found a great little hotel located just off the main drag, next to the river - Angkor Park. It was a new hotel and really good value, extremely clean and seriously comfy beds with an ensuite bathroom, for only $9 a night. Round the corner we found a little cafe which did delicious breakfasts which we ate every morning, and right below our hotel was a little food shop that sold us bottled water at a different price every day - this just added to the charm.

There is quite a lot to see here. There are a few markets - the central market and night markets, these are geared towards the tourists and the stall holders are reluctant to haggle as there are enough tourists who pay without haggling. The markets are colourful though and there are a lot of high quality tourist goods.

I cannot fail to mention the not-yet-world-famous but immensely tickly fish exfoliators:
Yes - for just $3 these tiny little fish will eat the dead skin off your feet - brilliant! You get a tickly dead skin removal treat and the fish get fed! Everyone benefits!

We also came across the local's food market, hidden in the depths of the central market. Here the ladies sat on top of the tables where they sold fish and other meats:

As it was Chinese New Year the streets were alive with music, drums, parades, dragons and bright colours - really lively!

On our first evening we walked along the main tourist drag, people watching, peering into small boutique shops, donating money to landmine victims and purchasing counterfeit copies of Lonely Planet. We stumbled across a rather brilliant restaurant called ´Cambodian Barbeque´ where you are presented with a small, round aluminium hot plate and a selection of different meats which you marinate and place on the grill. The cool thing about it is the types of meat on offer - we sampled crocodile and snake and I have to say they were delicious! Better than chicken!

Pepe really enjoyed Siem Reap. However we ate in a cheap food stall every evening and he was upset that we wouldn't go to the touristy Mexican restaurant down the road. We tried to explain but found that while you can take Pepe out of Mexico, you can't take the Mexico out of Pepe.

On the way back to the hotel each night we passed the local ladyboys, looking for a bit of business. Don´t worry girls, they aren´t as good looking as the real deal.

Cambodia - Phnom Penh

2009-01-22T09:24:00.017Z

Cambodia we love you!

The bus journey from Saigon to Phnom Penh (PP) (the capital of Cambodia) went smoothly, despite being minorly scammed out of a couple of bucks at immigration, but we're used to that kind of thing after Vietnam. As you enter Cambodia you can immediately see an increase in poverty and a drop in living standards.

PP is a large, vibrant city and there's lots to see and do. Along the riverside you find the expensive hotels and tourist restaurants and bars, set, slightly uncomfortably, next to a rough stretch of ground which is a lot poorer. I pictured this guy near our hotel - yes there is actually a man and a bicycle under all that stuff!

One thing we did notice immediately was the increase in poverty (families living on the streets, children playing naked on the roadside). In the west of the city is the lake where you find houses and cafes on stilts and backpacker hangouts. It's really cool here, great vibe and sunset views, however we learned that sadly the lake is going to be drained to make way for a large development... it will be a huge loss to Phnom Penh.

The Cambodians do everything (apart from short moto rides and some drinks) in US dollars, presumably because their own currency (the reil) is so fragile. We didn't know this however, and spent our first couple of hours trying to find a cash machine that gives out reil instead of dollars - that doesn't exist however so we eventually resigned and are now quite comfortable using the green stuff.

We immediatley found the people here to be MUCH nicer than in Vietnam. Despite their turbulent history they smile more and they don't shout at you in the streets or hassle you. There is a lot more begging though and it breaks your heart to see small children leading their blind or crippled fathers/mothers round, approaching tourists for money.

We went to see the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where 17,000 innocent people were brought to die. At the centre of the sight stands a tall pagoda which houses thousands of human skulls, dug up from the mass graves which surround it. Some skulls are broken – these were the people that the Khmer Rouge decided to batter to death in order to save bullets.

As we wondered around the site we could hear the voices of children singing songs in the nearby school and we watched butterflies floating in the warm sunny air. It was strange to see this beauty and then read the information about the terrible things that happened there. We saw a tree where the soldiers attached a loud speaker which blasted out music so that the screams of the victims could not be heard.

Learning about these monstrosities that took place so recently was really disturbing, but we wanted to learn more and so moved on to the Tuol Sleng Museum. It was to this old school, known as Security Prison S-21, that the soldiers took thousands of people – old, young, male, female, babies, disabled/disfigured and anyone with an ounce of intelligence (even people who spoke foreign languages and wore glasses) – for detention, interrogation and torture. Some foreign nationals, unlucky enough to be caught up in the troubles, were also pictured.
Each person entering this place had their photograph taken – some of them even smiled for their picture unaware of their fate. It was completely heartbreaking staring into the eyes of the people whose photographs lined the rooms. Many of the victims were photographed after their torture and these gruesome pictures were also on the walls. Some rooms contained one metal bed and the sickening instruments of torture that were used there, on the wall of each of these rooms was a disturbing picture of the last prisoner who had been tortured in that room.
In another block we found rows of box-like cubicles where prisoners were detained. We both felt completely depressed after going here and I couldn't take my mind off it for days. How could something so terrible as this happen only as recently as the 1970s? And in such a beautiful country with such lovely people?

One room contained detailed information on everything that happened during the Khmer Rouge era. It was interesting to learn that Pol Pot was himself educated in France, that the Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh and other cities in Cambodia in just a couple of days by telling the people that the Americans were going to bomb them, and that they destroyed much of Angkor and its temples. We also learned that they received their weapons from Thailand and China and that the Western powers allowed the Kymer Rouge to retain its seat at the UN general assembly until 1991.

The children in the next door school came out as we were leaving and as we drove past them in our tuk tuk they shouted "hello!" to us.

On our way back to the centre of town our tuk tuk broke down - in the middle of rush hour traffic!!! He had to dismount, trying to rev the engine while all the cars and bikes beeped at us.

That evening we went down to the lake to enjoy the sunset

and buy a book from our new friend

I bought a book called "First they killed my father", an autobiographical account of the Kymer Rouge era through the eyes of a child.

After a couple of days we decided to up the cultural stakes and move on to Siem Reap to see the famous temples of Angkor.

Hoi An and bye bye 'Nam

2009-01-21T13:11:00.014Z

WE LOVE HOI AN! This charming little town has restored our faith in Vietnam. The streets are lined with clothes clothes clothes! Tailor shops, ready to wear or custom design, are inexpensive, good quality and fast. The daily market, set on the banks of the river, is a colourful feast for the eyes and the senses, complete with karaoke competitions booming out from loud speakers. The restaurants here are really good and many of them also offer cooking courses in the evenings. And it's a great place to just sit on the balcony of a riverside cafe and watch the world go by – which usually involves watching Vietnamese women harassing the tourists to take their boat rides and eat in their restaurants!
The buildings along the river front flood by a few feet each year, it’s obviously not all that great for the restaurant owners but it does give each little place an amazing, artistic, derelict atmosphere.

The old Japanese-style bridge, leading from the old town to the artists quarter

Road works ‘Nam style

CDs as reflectors on bikes – genius!

I decided that I wanted a dress and jacket made and Al wanted some new shirts made, so off we went in search of a good place. It was a little daunting with a million places to choose from, but in the end we found a great little place with lots of material and enthusiastic staff. We had a couple of fittings and were both really pleased with the finished products. (Thinh Thanh, 53 Le Loi street).
Me and my dressmaker with brand new, made to measure dress:

In the evening we attended a cooking course (at Cafe 96) and learned how to make spring rolls, green papaya salad and steamed fish in banana leaves. It was really good fun and a great way to learn the basics of Vietnamese cooking.

Here’s one we made earlier:

We also had a private boat ride on the river, a great way to see the town (and not have to pay for taking pictures of people :-)

The local ferry:

Preparing for Tet (Vietnamese New Year):
our guide was pretty friendly but she did try and sell us extra tours, postcards and pictures... we politely declined each time – unable to run away down the street as we usually do.

Staying here was fun and relaxing. We really enjoyed ourselves. We took a cheap ($30each) flight to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) where we spent a day before catching the bus to Phnom Penh - Cambodia. Saigon is a biiiig city!
Al was still on the hunt for his Cannon D450, he's tried nearly every shop since we arrived in Asia but found them to all be more expensive than prices on the internet so he's resigning to wait until we get back to the UK. My little camera should hopefully do for now, though it's battery life is slowly diminishing as we use it all the time.

Saigon may be big but it has charm and we found the people to be much friendlier down here than in the north - something which took us by suprise and ended our trip to Nam on a good note.

'Nam in a nutshell:
We've had a real love-hate relationship with Vietnam. We heard quite a few reports beforehand from people who left after a few days, or people who were relieved to leave. It is definitely not the place to come for a relaxing holiday! The locals see you as a walking ATM (everyone wants a withdrawl) and you are constantly trying to avoid being scammed or fending off people trying to sell you stuff (whether someone shouts at you from across the street, or walks by your side for half a mile asking you a multitude of quesitons about where you are from, what tours you've already bought etc) it happens every time you step outside your hotel room, even in the hotel lobby (how long you here for? You want I book tour or taxi?) or in restaurants when you're trying to relax with a drink (we've been handed a few of the old 'little black books' full of travellers' written thoughts about a tour they're trying to sell). We learned to accept it, but it's just that the Vietnamese people aren't always friendly about it either, unlike the neighbouring countries where a smile is always for free.
All the kids here are very cute, but for some reason they ALL collect foreign money... funny that is't it?! Al cottoned on to that one early on and we haven’t added to any 'collections'.
We've slowly been getting used to the amazing sounds that come from Asian gullets, a sort of snorting/gagging/coughing sound, especially shocking when it comes from a female. It's hard to understand why people feel the need to clear their throats so vociferously, however it's just one of those things you just have to accept.
Plus, what is it with the long fingernails on men here... just creepy!

All in all we loved the vibrant lifestyle in Vietnam but found it challenging at times and we wouldn't really recommend it if you want to relax on the beach and find an 'escape'. Unfortunately you have to deal with a lot of people who think that every tourist is rich and willing to spend a lot of money. If you’re travelling on a tight budget this becomes a problem. But it is totally worth it for experiencing the colour, noise, hustle and bustle, and real gritty S.E.Asian way of life, best done with a backpack, camera, your bargaining hat, and a sense of humour.

Hue

2009-01-19T13:05:00.008Z

The night train turned out to be good fun. We shared a cabin with a quiet Vietnamese guy but met our new friends outside in the corridor – a German girl (Anette) and two Spanish guys (Carlos and Jordi).
Anette was heading the same way as us and the guys were getting off the train a couple of stops after us, renting motorbikes and heading to Hue as well. We went to the restaurant car and ordered some beers and noodles to help pass the time. We stayed up til around 10.30 when we were kicked out by the yawning staff and then headed off to our carriages to bed. Surprisingly we slept really well, it's amazing what a difference some earplugs and an eye mask make – trains are the way forward in Vietnam – much better than bus drivers who beep their horn every second of the journey and drop you off at their cousins' restaurants. Luckily we were able to avoid getting a taxi upon arriving in Hue as our hotel sent us a free pickup (www.ngocbinhhotel.com) – it was a cheap and cheerful place in a nice part of town.

Hue town is a UNESCO world heritage sight so we decided to take a day tour to take in the sights of three temples, the citadel, a famous pagoda and a boat ride on the river.
The group was quite large and Al and I were among the youngest there, but it was still a great way to spend the day and see all the sights for a couple of dollars.

This was our singing tour guide who, half way through the trip, announced that he would sing for us, whipped out his microphone and gave us a rendition of the latest Vietnamese number one!

Al relaxing in a cafe/market stall after a hard day's temple gazing::
The temples were really impressive but the citadel, which had been heavily bombed in the war, was very run down and they were rebuilding it with plastic (plastic columns and statues) which looked really tacky. Our guide told us that the inner section of the temple was a private area for the king and his concubines, the only other males allowed in here were eunuchs. Our guide made sure that he carefully explained to us what a eunuch is: “There are two types eunuch – one is man who has cut off his valuables. The other is same as a homosexual – you know homosexual? Person who is born with both a lady's bit and a man's bit.” He clearly hadn't been listening in biology class.

Our evenings in Hue were spent playing pool and sampling different happy hours with our Spanish and German friends. We have been really impressed with Vietnamese food – it is seriously the best we have had on our travels so far. Each town has its own specialities and they are all imaginative and delicious. So all of the weight that we lost in China has been added on... back to the gym when we get home!

Our bus to Hoi An (the next stop on our trail), 4 hours away, was definitely interesting... you never quite know what you are paying for in this country until you are actually in the middle of it and cursing the travel agent. We booked a bus to Hoi An, complete with hotel pickup for a great price. However the hotel pickup consisted of a man coming to our hotel and leading us to the bus station... not quite what we had envisaged. And the bus turned out to be a sleeper bus, complete with fully reclined bunk beds and a 'no shoes' rule - which meant stinky feet all round.

Al was good enough to warn the bus driver: “are you aware that if I take my shoes off people will die!” but to no avail. Despite all this the bus ride went smoothly and we arrived on time (little detour of course to the cousin's restaurant included).

Haiphong – Cat Ba Island - a tale of woe...

2009-01-16T12:21:00.014Z

We soon discovered that there isn't much going on in Haiphong. We found a cheap hotel, a noodle restaurant and whiled away the evening. The next morning we headed to the ferry terminal and jumped on a ferry to Cat Ba island... it wasn't straight forward, nothing seems to be straightforward here, but we managed to arrive within a couple of hours. Unfortunately we didn't see any of the scenery that Halong Bay is famous for, but hey you can't always win in life... we began to wonder if we'd ever start winning in Nam. Again there wasn't much going on in Cat Ba town... as it was off-season every building seemed to be under construction and it was pretty dead :-( We were a little miserable at this stage, but did cheer up after a stroll along the waterfront, a few beers and a beautiful sunset.
All we wanted was an adventure! We decided to book a ticket back to Hanoi via Halong Bay and we were told that it would take only three hours – awesome!

The next morning we boarded a bus with a group of other tourists and headed to catch the ferry. We ended up in a junk boat (old fashioned Vietnamese boat) on what was part of a tour. We enjoyed the boat ride very much and at last got to see the beautiful Halong Bay with its 3,000+ islands. Magnificent scenery - the islands just seem to rise up out of nowhere.
Half way through we had to change boats and ended up on a different tour – pretty confusing and by this time we realised that we may not be getting back to Hanoi within 3 hours.

On reaching Halong City, and dodging about a million sales people, we were told that we would have to wait for the rest of the group to eat their buffet lunch. It would take 40 minutes we were told. We waited for an hour and a half for the group to finish... then we had to wait for the bus driver to eat. By this point it was 2pm (we had planned to be back by 11.30am) and we hadn't eaten anything. We boarded the bus pretty p-d off and headed for Hanoi, via a cousin's pottery shop for half an hour, and arrived back at 4pm. Our plan to catch the night train down south that day was pretty much out of the window and we were so angry and the whole experience that we decided we wanted to leave Vietnam immediately. If they had only told us at the travel agent that the journey would take 8 hours, rather than lying to us and telling us 3 hours we would have been ok – it's just the constant lying, no respect, not giving you a straight answer and stopping by all the shops and restaurants that gets to us.

We booked into a hotel, another issue arose – our bed sheets were all dirty. They hadn't changed them from the last person who slept there! We asked for them to be changed which they did... by turning the pillow cases inside out and leaving us with no top sheet, just a dirty quilt. Then... wait for it... the little man looks at Alex and holds out his hand “tip for me! tip for me!” We just couldn't believe it and started laughing, the man was laughing too, until we told him "no tip!" (Hanoi Spirit House – not recommended if you like clean rooms!)

We looked into crossing the border then and there into Laos, but were told the bus journey would be 20-22 hours long... a bit of a nightmare, so we decided to reconsider, give Nam another chance and book a sleeper train down south to Hue.

The next day we took a tuktuk to the market area in the old town, we were strolling around taking in the sights when I felt a sharp tug on the side of my daypack. I turned round quickly to see a small Vietnamese guy in a black jacket, hands in pockets right behind me, at that point trying to walk past me. I confronted him – I won't repeat what I said cos my parents read this blog – he just stared at me. Al was way ahead of me and I shouted to get him to come over to help me, but by this point the guy had walked off. A side pocket of my rucksack was open but thankfully nothing missing. We've never had this in any other country we've been in! It's so annoying because we've been really really careful, but they're pretty sneaky over here so from now on I wear my day pack or handbag on my front. We walked to the lake in the old town which is home to some legendary turtles that no one ever sees. It was a sunny day and Al was talking to a caretaker of the temple at the lakeside. The caretaker pointed to the lake and showed Al where the turtles were sunbathing – pretty cool! This means we will have good luck for the rest of our lives!
Maybe it means that Vietnam will start to treat us more kindly...

Hanoi, Vietnam

2009-01-13T11:57:00.014Z

Me love you long time!

Vietnam, well what can I say. It's been a turbulent ride so far – we've been scammed, lied to, cheated and pickpocketed... and that was just Hanoi. But we're surviving thanks to our savvy traveller hats which we are always wearing and enjoying ourselves in the process.

Let me start with our first experience on setting foot upon Vietnamese soil. The hostess on the bus kindly offered to help us with our taxis to our hotel. She even offered us accommodation at her great hotel should we need it – how kind of her. The bus from the border dropped us off, not at the bus station as one may suppose, but several kilometres outside of the town centre in a carpark – full of taxis. 'Well that's lucky!' you might think... you would be the same as our other fellow passengers in that case, spending $12 on a taxi which should cost $4. We tried to bargain down to this price but the drivers they weren't interested – so we made our way out onto the street to find a taxi, with the hostesses' yells echoing after us 'Why you not want my taxi? You want hotel, I have hotel!'

Our hotel, in the Old Quarter, was really nice – huge room, two beds, huge balcony with a view of the cathedral (Especen Hotel) at a reasonable price. We spent the rest of the day exploring the nooks and crannies of the old quarter, dodging the masses of motorbikes on the road and declining offers of food, photos, moto hire and copied books (you can buy your lonely planets around the country - they cottoned onto a good one there).

Crossing the road is one of the greatest delights of Hanoi... the hundreds of motorbikes, mixed with taxis, cyclists, men with carts, whizzing past you from every direction seems at first like an impassable obstacle. However we discovered that the best way to tackle this is by simply walking slowly straight into the traffic, one foot in front of the other, watching the traffic dodge around you. This is the closest you will ever come to feeling like Moses when he parted the Red Sea.

We had our first taste of Vietnamese food, which is delicious, at the Little Hanoi restaurant. It's pretty hard to find restaurants here as there are many impostor restaurants which name themselves after the more successful ones – so while we were searching for Little Hanoi we came across about 4 others with the same name.

Even better... the beer costs only 30p here for a glass! It's craaazy, it really is cheaper than a small bottle of water! Needless to say our evenings were spent relaxing in rooftop bars: and checking out the mayhem below!

We took time to visit the Hanoi Hilton – the prison where John McCain and other American POWs were imprisoned and tortured during the Vietnam war. There were exhibitions detailing the history of the prison under French rule and punishments administered to the Vietnamese revolutionaries. However when it came to reading about the treatment of the American prisoners it was a very different story – photos showing the Americans receiving letters from family, eating a hearty Christmas dinner, receiving attentive medical treatment and socialising and relaxing.
Captions read: “You can see how well they were fed”, “they didn't want for anything”, “a home away from home”... we looked at the internet that night to see what it had really been like and read a comment from John McCain on revisiting the prison: “that's entertainment”...

We wondered the streets getting lost in the old French alleyways and marvelling at how many electric cables can fit on one pylon:
We also went to the Temple of Literature where ancient scriptures chiselled into stone were stored next to giant stone turtles.

There was also some kind of graduation ceremony going on, girls in bright dresses posing for their boyfriends, which was fun to watch:

After a couple of days we decided to head to Halong Bay and Cat Ba island, the bay contains 3,000 islands and Cat Ba offers a national park and trekking. We decided to go on our own instead of with a tour group and jumped in a taxi to the bus station. The taxi driver told us that his cab had a meter so we sat back and relaxed... He kept telling Al how cool his hat was – alarm bells began to ring (people only show interest in things like that or ask you where you are from when they want to distract you from something). It didn't take long to realise that we'd gone on a little detour... still nothing major... but it was the meter that didn't make sense, it was displaying the price at about 3 times what it should have been. Al began questioning the driver who seemed to panic and dropped us off in the middle of nowhere with no bus station in sight – bastard! We paid him what we thought he was due and stormed off in search of the station. We eventually found it and jumped on a bus to Haiphong. We paid on the bus, the correct price, and then we were told we would have to pay to bring our bags on the bus... we began to wonder what we might have done to piss off the people of Vietnam so much. After a couple of hours we arrived at a bus station in the middle of nowhere and told that this was Haiphong – great. We were greeted by a group of motorcyclists, keen to rip us off. We headed in search of the town centre, cursing our Lonely Planet for not providing us with a map or some idea of what a taxi should cost. After an hour of wondering the wrong way and turning many Vietnamese heads, we bumped into a German who told us where we should be going and how much a taxi should cost. Lucky! We jumped into a taxi and were taken to the town centre, the driver practising his English on us along the way.

China - summary

2009-01-10T04:24:00.002Z

China is such an amazing country – we really only touched the surface and found so much to enjoy! It was certainly an adventure - we were often in towns and cities where we were the only Westerners, not a blonde hair in sight, and although at times it could be difficult we did pretty well on the whole. Everyone here wants to say “hello” to you so that you turn round, but most of them are quite shy and wouldn't sit next to you on a bus unless there was no choice. It is funny hearing little “hello”s wherever you go. Those who do speak a bit of English are extremely friendly and happy to help and really curious about where you come from, what you are doing in China – it's also a good chance for them to practice their Engish a little. During our time in China we met some really genuinely friendly people who really wanted to talk to us. Al had lots of women staring at him and lots of people – both men and women telling him how beautiful his eyes are – though on one occasion his 'strange' looks shocked a little toddler so much that he looked at Al and burst into tears.

There were a few not so great things of course – dog obviously, skinned, boiled, honey-glazed always made me sick to the stomach, and the spitting and nose emptying on the street is something that you just can't get used to, although you get that all over Asia.

Eating in China was quite difficult. We had made the decision to be vegetarian while we were here, but that went out the window pretty quickly – it's impossible to avoid meat here, it's sneaked into everything – dumplings, spring rolls, and the stock that vegetables are cooked in. We just made sure that whenever we ate out we either stuck to seafood or ate somewhere with an English menu (and Al avoided any more suspicious 'Chinese dumplings'). It's a good place if come if you want to go on a diet!

The people here don't seem to be as oppressed as we read in the English news, there were hardly any police officers anywhere unlike in Britain where you have them on every street corner and many Chinese we spoke to talked of holidaying or moving to different countries. Due to the one-child policy we hardly saw any children running around with their parents which was strange, in South America nearly every woman is carrying a child. There are definitely restrictions on what the people see on TV, all Chinese TV, even the English channel, only focuses on travel or history in China and is only produced by Chinese TV companies. But we were able to view hotmail and BBC Online with no problems, however Youtube was a no go.

The country is great to travel in because the transport systems are straight forward and easy to figure out, even if you don't understand the language you can ask for a ticket by simply saying your destination name and looking at the numbers on your ticket to work out the time, platform, seat etc. It's a very well organised country.

All in all we were very impressed by China and would have liked to explore some more, unfortunately we decided that summer time would be a better time to do this, when it is warm and the skies are clear... and maybe next time we'll speak a little of the language.

Pottering round Guanxi Province

2009-01-10T03:48:00.002Z

At Guilin we said goodbye to Theo and jumped on a bus to Longsheng with the hope of reaching the Dragon Back Rice Fields before sunset. We didn't make it that far unfortunately and had to spend the night in Longsheng – a very untouristy town (i.e. nothing to do there and nowhere to eat), we ate pot noodles in our hotel room that night.
Al decided to take me on a walk and escorted me to what we later decided must have been a brothel, (dimmed lights, men wandering from room to room, over-attentive female staff) the lady of the house made some polite English conversation with us (“You are very beautiful”) and then overcharged us for coffee as we clearly weren't paying for anything else. We went back to our hotel room a little dejected and ate some more noodles.

Retreat:
Unfortunately the next morning it was raining and we decided that rather than getting wet and muddy and freezing to death even more it would be best to head back south – we had cleverly posted all our winter clothes home in Australia without thinking that it might be winter in China. So south we went, to the town of Nanning. It was our intention here to catch the a bus the next morning to Vietnam, however we discovered that we would need to buy a visa for the overland crossing so ended up staying another day to sort that out. There wasn't too much to see in the town but we did stumble upon the daily park activities of the Chinese: salsa lessons in the park - both men and women partook in this, although the majority of men were sitting round small tables playing cards and draughts in another park.

Massagey?
That night, as we were preparing for bed at the Railway Hotel, the phone rang. Al picked it up to hear a lady's voice on the other end: “hello, massagy?” “what?” “massage in room?” “Uh, no thanks, we're fine thank you.” We knew that the hotel offered massages but thought it a little weird that they were phoning us up at night for one. Then there came a knock at the door, Al went to answer it to see a lady standing there. “Hello” he said, “We don't want massage.” “Toto!” she said, “you want toto?” “What's toto, I don't understand?” “Toto!” she said again, making the international symbol for sex with her fingers. “Uh no thanks!” stammered Al. “Oh, but you so cute!” she said disappointed. Al quickly closed the door and ran back inside the room where I was laughing. Gotta admire her entrepreneurial skills.

Street Food:
On our second day in Nanning we were preparing for more noodles in our hotel room when we bumped into a friendly local girl who directed us to a 'famous' restaurant street. We followed her instructions and came across an amazing maze of streets, hidden away, serving an array of foods from their market stalls. We walked along taking in the sights and smells of this place – live fish swimming in tanks, bright coloured fruit stalls, displays of meats, vegetables and fish outside restaurants, live crabs and lobsters... and dead, skinned (and sometimes honey-glazed) dogs hanging from hooks, some of them even set in a position where they look like they are snarling at you! – enough to give anyone nightmares. Al, who knows a good place to eat when he sees one, pulled me towards a little stall where four chefs were busy frying fresh squid kebabs – we bought a selection of tentacles on sticks, coated in spicy honey and sesame sauce, and ate them while walking around checking out the rest of the market. We chose from one of the many places to eat and sat down. A waitress brought us a menu, which was written in Chinese, so we opened our lonely planet book at the food section and ordered off-menu. It worked out pretty well and we got some of the best food we'd had in China so far. We tried to leave a tip at the end of the meal but as we walked away they came running after us with the money – we tried to explain and they eventually understood, although I think they thought we were crazy.

Crisis:
Unfortunately we had a bit of a crisis that evening – a computer in an internet cafe corrupted my USB stick which had ALL my blog for Hong Kong and China as well as copied photos to upload... needless to say I was gutted and it took me a few days to recover and begin writing all over again.

My Chinese photo pose (they're all into the peace sign over here):

China - an epic adventure

2009-01-09T05:40:00.003Z

Lost:
We arrived in Guangzhou to find ourselves in a large square amid what seemed like millions of people – all staring at us as if we were aliens.
We needed to find the bus station but there were no signs in English and no one there spoke any English, at this point we were cursing lonely planet for not supplying us with a map of the city. We approached some policemen and pointed at the Chinese symbols for 'bus station' in our book, we slowly made our way in the direction people pointed and eventually found the station. We bought a ticket and hoped fervently that it was the right bus and we wouldn't end up in Outer Mongolia somewhere. We had a few hours to wait and decided to explore the town a bit. We strolled around a few blocks away from the train station, but were disappointed to only find shoe shops – nothing else – literally. It was very odd. We stumbled upon a mall but even that only contained shoe shops. Luckily we didn't have to eat shoes because there was a KFC... yes I know, it's shameful, but we did eat there, it was either that or shoes. While waiting in the bus station I began chatting to a friendly Chinese businessman who wanted to practice his English. While we were chatting a girl ran over and threw herself at Alex's feet shouting “What is your name?! What is your name?! You are looovely! You have beautiful eyes!” She then got him to sign his signature in her book and ran off again.

Harassed in Yangshuo!
The bus journey was fairly comfortable, but very bumpy so we didn't sleep too well.
We ended up arriving in Yangshuo a few hours earlier than we thought we would, at 6.15am. We stepped, bleary eyed, out of the bus and into the freezing, dark air. A small man was helping us with our bags, “Welcome to paradise! I have paradise hotel!” he announced smiling. We weren't so sure and just wanted to find a hotel on our own terms and catch some sleep. We said no politely and brought out our guide book to look up the hostel we wanted. “Hey you stay with me! Student paradise!” “No thanks”, “Ahhh... honeymoon paradise!” “Uh, no thanks, we are going somewhere else”. He reached over into our book and pointed at a hostel listed there, “Where you going? Hey, there it is, that is my hostel!” Too tired to argue we agreed and followed him to the hotel. We were shown a decent room and he asked for a ridiculous price for it, showing us a little book which he had asked (forced probably) people to write in saying what a great stay they'd had. Rather fed up with the whole thing I bargained well and brought him down to a reasonable price. Matter sorted, or so we thought. Downstairs Al mentioned that we were interested in a tour... big mistake. He started a long sales pitch for two days of activities at a ridiculous price. When we said we'd think about it (i.e. no thanks not interested) he brought the price lower, however I wasn't even interested in what he was offering (cycling for a day – it was freezing!) and wanted to get some decent sleep before entering into any further bargaining. We said we'd let him know in ten minutes and ran upstairs before he could protest. We checked the guidebook to find that he was grossly overcharging us and Al went downstairs to say no. A few seconds later I heard a knock at the door... I opened it to see Al standing there with an apologetic look on his face, the tout (or manager if you can call him that) standing next to him. He pushed his way in and made himself comfortable on the bed (!) “I give you good price. You make decision now!” Al said “ok then, decision is NO” “no no you think about it and make decision now” “ok, decision is no!” We were going round in circles and managed to persuade him that we would make a decision in the morning and after a while he gave up and left. We went to bed for some well-earned rest in a freeeezing cold room. A couple of hours later a loud knocking at the door roused us from our slumber. We lay there frozen in shock – “you're kidding“, I whispered, “it isn't him again is it! I'm not letting him in here in my pyjamas!”, “don't worry”, whispered Al, “I double-locked the door so he can't get in!”
We stayed quiet until the knocking stopped and decided to get up to face the music downstairs, and attempt an escape to actually discover some of the town by ourselves. As we crept down to reception we saw that he wasn't there, just his non-English speaking receptionist, so we made a break for it out the front door. “Hey! You!” came her loud voice. She handed Al a phone with the irritating manager on the line. Al laid down the price then and there for one and a half days of activities. It was good, the deal was done.

Doggy Dumplings
We went to celebrate with breakfast. Unfortunately as we had been told that we were staying in a certain hotel in our guidebook (which was a lie) the map didn't make any sense to us and we ended up walking round the streets for a while wondering why the map was wrong. Eventually we stumbled upon the main tourist drag and found breakfast in a Westernised Chinese restaurant. I sensibly ordered toast, egg, jam and tea. Al ordered the Chinese dumpling breakfast – an interesting choice and one he was later to regret.... when the dumplings came there were about 12 on the plate – so many for such a cheap price! How lucky! Al picked one up in his chopsticks, took a bite and a look of complete disgust overcame his face. That was the last bite of his DOG DUMPLINGS that he took. He said it tasted unlike anything he had ever tasted before and felt sick for the rest of the day. I didn't know who to feel more sorry for, Al or poor Lassie who ended up as a dumpling.

Stunning Yangshuo
Yangshuo is a really beautiful place, the town is surrounded by the magnificent Karst countryside and mountains just rise out of the ground, seemingly from nowhere.
The old part of town is crammed with gift shops, restaurants and guest houses. It is a really pretty place and a great place to experience a taste of China with Western comforts – apart from seeing skinned dogs hanging off the back of motorbikes every now and then – well this is China after all!

Cave Escapades
In the afternoon we met the manager at the hotel to take us on our tour to the famous Buddah Water Cave near by. He sullenly escorted us to the train station (no longer chatty and friendly now that he had our money) and put us on a minibus. We weren't sure where we were really going and what we were really doing but we just sat back and went along with it.
We somehow (after being dropped off, getting on another ramshackle bus, picking up more people along the way) managed to arrive at the cave (the real cave apparently!) and enjoyed a tour – boat first through the caverns and then by foot. It was a huge cave and pretty fascinating, they tried to sell us a photo in a cold mud bath at the end of it which we politely declined.

Cormorant Fishing
Later that evening we met the manager again who escorted us via motorbike to the river. Two tourists on the back, mobile phone in one hand, cigarette in the other, navigating the crazy Chinese roads. We jumped on a boat and joined the cormorant fishing tour. This ancient Chinese custom sees fishermen using cormorant birds to catch fish with a rope tied round their neck, when the birds catch a fish the rope prevents them from swallowing it and the fishermen drag the bird back into the boat to empty the fish into their basket.

That evening we went to a pretty cool bar (Kaya Bar) and learned how to play the Chinese dice game with an American and a Chinese girl. It's a fun gambling or drinking game and a good way to spend an evening. On the way home we stopped by a supermarket to buy some pot noodles. Al was very anxious to avoid eating dog again and brought his pots to the counter to inquire whether they were beef or dog. The girl there didn't understand what he was saying so he began to make animal noises: “This is MOOOO, not WOOF WOOF?” The people at the supermarket were in hysterics, and one of them who spoke English came forward to give Al a break.

Li River Cruise
The next day we woke up early to embark on our cruise of the Li River. We went with a German guy, Theo, who was also staying in our hotel. Theo didn't speak much, but we hung out with him for that day and the next. He had arrived on the same day as us, but earlier in the morning. He was meant to take the bus to Guilin, a city two hours north of Yangshuo, but was woken up in the middle of the night to be told he had arrived at his destination – Yangshuo... and he even speaks Mandarin! He was met by the same tout as we were and brought to the YHA hostel in Lonely planet (at least he thought he was) and then coerced into booking a tour as well. Poor guy. We had to point out that our hostel wasn't the YHA in Lonely Planet and show him round town as he wasn't really orientated and had completely missed the nice parts.

We reached the River Li by minibus and tuktuk, a great journey that took us through the Karst countryside and some small villages where we were able to observe people going about their everyday lives.

We had the boat to ourselves which was great and the views of the countryside from the boat were spectacular. We saw the amazing mountains, local women washing their clothes
and water buffalo crossing the river. The mountains were stunning in the winter mist, it looked magical. We figured that summer is the best time of year to come here as it's very cold in winter, however on the plus side we there weren't many other tourists around and the river wasn't crammed with boats.

Cruise on the Li River, China

After the boat tour we returned to town in another minibus - we witnessed the capture of this poor piggy (someone's having sausages tonight!):
and climbed one of the big hills to get a great view:
It's winter here at the moment so you can imagine how beautiful it is in summer.

Gambai!
That evening, after some Chinese dumplings (not dog this time), the three of us went back to Kaya bar to play some more dice game with another Chinese girl we met there.

Al attracted the attention of a rather drunken Chinese man who bought our table a bottle of beer... (beginning to sound like Bolivia all over again). He then came over and filled up our small glasses shouting “Gambai!” We were a little confused by this but our Chinese friend, Frang Fang, informed us that this meant “Finish” and is what Chinese say in place of the English “down it!”. Al obliged the man and swiftly finished his beer. “Gambai!” he shouted again, this time it was a race, Al won. “Gambai!” this time it was Al shouting... it went on for a while like this and by the end our new Chinese friend (Wan, “number wan!”) was completely inebriated. Al was pretty merry but seemed to be able to hold his drink a lot better. The rest of us were just laughing and Al found an out of tune guitar and began to play and sing for our Chinese friends, much to their amusement. In the end we had a drunken little karaoke going, sustained by delicious barbequed beef and spicy tofu kebabs that Frang Fang bought from her restaurant next door. We were also introduced to her dog, Shushu, a very cute labrador, I was glad to see that not all Chinese want to eat dogs.

Moving on to Guilin
The next day we decided that we'd seen enough of Yangshuo, beautiful as it is, we wanted to continue the adventure elsewhere. We met with Theo and we all had lunch at Fang Fang's restaurant which turned out to be the best food we'd had in all China (restaurant called Fang Fang's Special Yangshuo Food, just opposite the English school). We hurried along to the bus station and jumped on our bus to Guilin, the nearest big town. The following bus journey was an interesting one. We were all sitting in the front seats watching the road and the crazy Chinese driving. Suddenly the bus swerved to the left and crossed to the opposite side of the road! It then quickly swerved back again. We all looked up in alarm to realise that our bus driver had actually fallen asleep behind the wheel! We watched him as he struggled to keep his eyes open, every now and then his head would drop to his chest waking him up again. He opened the window, shuffled around, trying to stay awake. We were all fearing for our lives, especially as truck after truck headed towards us on the other side of the road. We started talking very loudly, and every now and then shouted at him when his eyes looked like closing. It was probably the most hair-raising bus journey we've had yet.

Hong Kong

2009-01-01T13:57:00.011Z

We were amazed by the vibrancy, noise and bright lights of Hong Kong. After being in Australia and New Zealand for so long it was good to be in the hustle and bustle of an Asian city.

We stayed in a rather overpriced hostel on Hong Kong Island on the first night which set the tone for most of our time there. The hostels here are different from other countries – due to lack of space everything is built 'up' and the hostels are spread over different floors and different buildings in the same area – our hostel reception was on one street and the room on another. On our first evening we walked around our local area, full of shopping malls and teenagers beat-boxing/rapping on the streets (that photo is taken at night, believe it or not, it's 24/7 hrs 'daylight' here!)

The next day we decided to move to Chung King Mansions in Kowloon (the mainland across from the island and only a couple of tube stops away from the island) where the accommodation is much cheaper, although very basic and the beds as hard as a rock. Great area though, alive with markets, shops, restaurants and lots and lots of people.

One thing we noticed about Hong Kong is that everything looks great from the ground, but when you look up you notice the real state of the buildings which contain apartments, restaurants, guesthouses or small shops.

On New Year's eve we had a couple of overpriced Hong Kong beers:

and then headed down to the river to see the fireworks. Hong Kong island looked amazing from across the channel, the skyscrapers were illuminated with bright neon lights and there was an air of festivity.
Al and I bought a couple of beer cans from the local 7/11 (we seemed to be the only people drinking which was a bit weird) and squeezed through the crowds, dodging policemen who were attempting to send people away, to get a good view. The fireworks were a little disappointing... we were expecting something to blow our minds, instead we got a few shoots of light from the tops of the buildings, the biggest building (with a few more lights) being hidden from our view.

Should have stayed in Sydney maybe, we saw their display later on TV and it looked amazing. But hey, it was great to be in such a vibrant, colourful city for the start of 2009.

The next day Al decided that he wanted to buy a professional camera, and where best to buy one that in Hong Kong?! We spent much of our time over the next couple of days like this:
and traipsing round various camera dealers – until we realised that there is no such thing as a good bargain in Hong Kong. Al went into one shop on Nathan Road, was offered a ridiculously low price for a camera, accepted and asked to see the camera in the box before he handed over his credit card (to check that a). it was there and b). it was the right camera). The shop assistant started to get angry and shouted at Al calling him a fraud! Needless to say Al had a lucky escape from this con-artist. Another place he went into offered him the camera at a good price but it turned out that they didn't have it in stock and then they wanted to try to sell him something else at a higher price. Ridiculous, we wasted an hour of our time in that shop waiting for them to get the camera that they didn't have. All the recommended shops we went into offered us the camera at a higher price than Dixons online, so after all the searching and bargaining Al decided to leave it until he gets back home. The lesson learned – people who say Hong Kong is good for buying cheap electrical goods (especially cameras) either haven't been to HK or got ripped off and still don't realise it.

On one of our walks round the city we saw hundreds of people camped out in a cardboard city, eating noodles and chatting with their neighbours. It didn't look like they were homeless people as many of them had Louis Vuitton bags, it seems they were just waiting for the train

We also saw an anti-communist protest - controversial!

On New Year's day we caught the ferry across to HK Island
and headed up the mountain on Hong Kong island by tram to get some great views of the city:

And that night we went to a non-English speaking restaurant for some (Japanese) Shabu Shabu – you are given a pot of boiling stock and a plate of raw meats, fish, tofu and vegetables. you place the raw food into the boiling water and it cooks in front of you – genius! The staff were more than happy to help us choose the most expensive type on the menu of course ;-)

On our last night we went to the night market, strolled round looking at the various stalls and restaurants and had some nice noodles.

The next day we decided that we needed to move on from Hong Kong, to somewhere a bit more economical. We jumped onto the tube and headed up to Shenzen which is the frontier between HK and China. We just about passed through immigration – I was stopped at passport control as they didn't believe that my passport photo was a convincing enough look-alike... I haven't had any problems at any other countries so was surprised about this. They asked to see some different ID and as my driving license was in the bottom of my backpack I took out my PADI diving card and showed them the photo on that. He looked at it, looked at me... and waved me through! Entering China using my PADI card – not bad!

So we entered China at Shenzen, checked out the big communist square

walked round looking into dentist surgery windows (oddly enough) and found the train station. We queued up at a machine and (with a bit of help from the lady behind us) bought a train ticket to Guanzhou... please bear in mind that everything here was written in Chinese symbols and we managed to find our way around with the smattering of English that was on the ticket machines and the numerical system (Chinese numbers are thankfully the same as Western numbers so deciphering your train departure time, carriage number and seat number is actually possible even if you can't translate any of the writing on your ticket!).

The express train was pretty comfortable and we gazed out of the window at the beautiful communist countryside... haha! Luckily not all China was like this, we saw some pretty spectacular countryside, but that's in the next chapter...

OZ in a nutshell

2008-12-29T20:43:00.002Z

Goodbye Australia

It is with heavy hearts that we say farewell to Australia... it is such a beautiful country, there is so much to see, so much to do, the people are really friendly and the food is by far the best in the world. We can't wait to come back.

Some general observations have taught us a few things too:

The locals love to wind you up – you have to look out for those ones... I fall for it every time.
They especially love to tell you stories about poisonous or man-eating animals.
Not everyone is always that friendly... sometimes you'll only get monosyllabic answers or a cocky reply to your question.
Quite a few people here look very weird indeed (as in scary! - mainly found this in petrol stations in the bush).
They love their fish and chips here – and they should too cos the fish displays in the local chippies put any European fish market to shame.
Every second word anyone says is a swear word (if you are the sensitive type then don't bloody come here).
Everyone waits patiently at road crossings here and they don't jay-walk.
Backpackers hostels aren't always as backpacker-friendly as they make out to be (lots of hidden costs usually – someone out there is making loads of money!)
The food is amazing – apart from the chocolate.
Crocodile is delicious.
They're not very patient with you if you don't speak English well.
They do like the English (despite calling us 'whinging poms').
There are millions of English, Scottish and Irish tourists here will be glad to leave them behind.
This country is seriously big! Bigger than Europe.
It isn't always sunny like in Home and Away - it even rained when we were in the Outback!
There are giant bats everywhere.
There aren't as many snakes as everyone makes out (we didn't see one!)
...And the deadliest animals here are drop-bears... watch out, they'll get ya.

Fraser Island

2008-12-29T02:51:00.006Z

Fraser Island... a stunning island made completely our of sand and home to pure-breed dingos, untouched rainforest, deserted sand dunes, several beautiful freshwater lakes... and hundreds of huge, powerful 4x4s roaring up the beach... it's awesome!

Al and I were slightly apprehensive as we had booked onto a 4x4 self-drive tour with eight complete strangers. What would they be like? Would we have boy racers who would crash the car? Maybe a group of nine people who all knew each other or who spoke the same foreign language? A group of vegetarians?! We discussed these thoughts over and over as we waited for the day of the tour briefing to approach. We had booked with Koalas, a group who have a number of backpacker hostels in Queensland and who were recommended to us by 'Wicked' travel agency. Our 4x4 tour included two free nights accommodation at Koalas in Hervey Bay (the starting point for the tour), we were pretty pleased about this until we realised that Koalas is a pretty dingy, dirty place and you have to pay extra for bedsheets, so after our two free nights we hot-footed it next door to A1 Fraser Roving – an awesome backpackers which is cleaner, friendlier and cheaper than Koalas.

Anyway on Christmas day we attended the briefing at the hostel and met our new travelling companions of the next three days – two Kiwis, two French, one other English, one Columbian, one Irish and one German. The three people who stepped up for driving the monster trucks through the sandy island were Clary (Kiwi guy), Al and... me! Our first of two briefings comprised of a quick chat explaining the basics of the itinerary and a video on the history of Fraser Island, conservation of the sand dunes and lakes, how deep to bury your poo if you're camping and how to avoid a dingo eating your baby. We chatted to our new friends, briefly discussed some food shopping, but decided that as it was Christmas day we would leave buying the food until the following morning.

The next morning at 6.30am we met at the Koala garage. Col, the slightly unhinged depot boss introduced himself to us: “Now i've got two daughters – one a thems the World kick-boxing champion, the other's a gold medal boxing champion, they're in their 30s – and they know that if I'm talking they don't dare interrupt me or they know I get ANGRY... I come from the outback and I'm old-fashioned and if yous speak over me I'll feed ya to the crocs – Hahaha!” Crikeys! A little alarmed by this prospect we set to work checking the itinerary, checking the tents for damage, counting our cutlery and loading up the car. Two girls and a boy were sent off to buy the food and came back with sausages, mince, pasta... and about three large bags of salad items and 10 litres of milk (not the most practical for a three day camping trip, but at least very healthy!). Col took us inside for a DVD on how to drive on the island – he was very insistent that if we so much as looked at the clutch it would burn out and we would lose our bond, if we got ANY salt water on the vehicle we would lose our bond, if we drove on the main roads to the ferry in 4x4 we would lose our bond, if we were caught driving after dark we would lose our bond, if we returned the car late because we went to McDonald's on the way home we would... yes you guessed it... lose our bond. Col's menacing laughter echoed in our ears and at this stage we all felt pretty sure that we would indeed lose our bond.

Eventually we piled into our Toyota Land Cruiser, Clarry at the wheel and headed to the ferry to cross to Fraser. Everything went without a hitch and we enjoyed the ferry trip. Once we reached the island we put the car into 4x4 drive and off we went! We made it a few hundred metres up the road before being stuck in our first Fraser traffic jam. This occurs when someone gets stuck in the sand, no one can overtake and everyone generally jumps out to help with the digging and pushing. After they managed to rescue their car the line started up again and everyone moved on as before. Then it was our turn. We stopped in the middle of a soft-sand road, the sand got quite deep in places, around a foot or so, and if you stop in it it gathers round your wheels and then you have problems. What ensued was an hour or so of revving our engine, reversing and attempting to go ahead again. We were helped by quite a few big Aussie guys from the cars behind us (who were just as keen for us to move on!) and we pushed and pushed up the hills of sand. Then we decided to do what we had done at the beginning. We lowered the tyre pressure to 20... and hey presto! We were zipping along over the sand dunes like the best of them!

Our first stop was at Lake Biraboon, a really beautiful lake and our favourite of the trip. Absolutely stunning.
The white sand beach was uncrowded and the water was cool and clear. We walked out into the shallow water, fresh water not salt, and swam around in the sunshine, diving down every now and then to take a gulp – completely fresh and tasted amazing. It was like paradise and I really think swimming in fresh water is better than salt water.

The next lake we stopped at was a little less inviting. Lake Boomanjin is brown/red coloured from leaf decay and although Col had tried to persuade us that it is very inviting and very healthy to swim in, we didn't really fancy it.

Onwards we drove, Al behind the wheel this time. We were a little concerned after our delay that we wouldn't get to the campsite in time. However, with our newly deflated tyres and Al's confident driving we had no problems and we began to find ourselves getting out to help other cars that were stuck.

We hit the beach... wooo!
It was stunning, over 100 kms long and white sand all the way. Unfortunately we were told not to swim in the sea as Fraser Island is home to a host of tiger sharks... I didn't need to be told twice, but we did see other people dipping their toes in and they seemed to survive.

We saw our first (and only) dingo of the trip... and yes, I spotted it.
He was just running around on the beach, walking up to the cars to have a sniff. He was very skinny and looked a bit wild, bit of a recluse from the pack I think. We sadly didn't see any more, but we could hear them around the campsite at night and rummaging around in the morning.

We found the campsite, just off the beach, and found a place to park and set up camp. Barbequed sausages were on the menu and these were accompanied by bread and salad... definite crowd-pleasers.
As we were all quite tired we went to bed pretty early, no sitting round the camp fire playing the guitar for us... but we had a long day ahead of us. But Al did manage to get up early enough to take this pic of the sunrise:

We were up early, after a pretty uncomfortable night's sleep all round. Koala hadn't provided us with ground sheets and Al and I had been too tight to hire sleeping bags so it was a very uncomfortable night on the lumpy, hard sand.

After breakfast we jumped into the car and headed off to the nearby Lake Wabby. According to Col this lake will not be around in a couple of years as the sand dunes surrounding the lake are slowly filling it up, so it was quite high on the 'must see' list. After a hair raising drive down some very dodgy sand roads we parked the car and walked down a steep hill through the rainforest

until we hit the sand dunes that make this lake famous.

Al had a few issues with his flip flops which both decided to break during the trip, he managed to tie them into place with some of the local plantlife:
We ran down the dunes and splashed straight into the water. The lake is the deepest on the island and a dark green colour. It is surrounded by sand on one side and forest on the other. Really beautiful. We were also the first to arrive and beat the crowds.

After this it was my turn to drive (!)

I took the wheel and got us back up the nightmare road. It was tough, especially driving fast over the soft sand in case we became stuck, but I managed. However just before we reached the beach we came across a traffic jam, two cars ahead of us, two behind us and five or six cars trying to get through from the other direction – all on a one lane, soft sand road. We had to mount the side of the road... very tricky in our top-heavy car (everyone was leaning to one side incase we tipped over) and wait for several cars to come through. We were then able to get through and get to the beach before anymore cars came.

Along the beach we sped and all the way to Indian Head, the peninsula at the top of the island. We climbed up to the top of the lookout and looked over the beaches below and into the sea.

It was really amazing and we even spotted a hammer head shark in the waters below (really glad I decided not to swim!). It was great. We wanted to drive further but we were told that if we attempted this we would lose our bond :-( we thought about it... the road ahead was extremely soft sand but we could have made it... but then some cocky Aussie dude came over and started giving us some cheek “what were you told at your briefing?... weren't you told you couldn't drive up there... everyone knows Koala vans can't drive up there...” Grrrr... with growing protests in the back of the car from the French girls we turned around and headed back south.

We stopped at the shipwreck to take a look.
And then we headed to Ely Creek. It's a freshwater creek which runs onto the beach. It has been developed and seemed to be a favourite with the children. Most of the visitors to the island gather here in groups, sitting in deck chairs in the water and drinking beer. We wondered why people gather here and not at the beautiful lakes and asked a local why – apparently drinking and eating is banned at the lakes so this is the only real place they can come.

It was late and we headed back to the campsite to cook up some burgers and pasta. Michelle, the slightly crazy Irish girl in our group, ran over to a group of Aussie guys and asked them to put their music up, instead they drove their car over to us, opened the doors and put the sound system on full blast – party time!

People from camps all around came to join in and we partied until the wee hours – that is until 10.30... it seems a lot later when you are camping for some reason... anyway it was good fun.

The next morning, with Al nursing a hangover, we headed over to the famous Lake MacKenzie. The weather wasn't as great as it had been the previous days but the lake was still very nice.

We decided that Lake Birraboon had been more beautiful, probably because it was far less crowded.

It was soon time to head back to the ferry and return the car. We got our bond back – yey! And promised to stay in touch with each other on facebook. We ended the evening with some cheap food, some possum spotting:
and Al and I headed for our last night bus journey to Brisbane, another bad night's sleep for us!

Fraser Island was my favourite experience in Australia. We were lucky to have such a great group, the car driving was good fun, and the lakes and scenery was out of this world. It's a great place to come with your own 4x4, with a group of friends maybe, and we definitely want to return.

Merry Christmas from Oz!

2008-12-25T08:50:00.001Z

Merry Christmas!!! We're a little behind on the blog but wanted to get our Christmas wishes to you in good time!!

We had a really relaxed day chilling in the pool at our hostel and having a proper Aussie barbie complete with bundy and coke...

Pepe drank quite a lot of the bundy and fell asleep before dinner:

Whitsundays with Samurai

2008-12-22T03:00:00.009Z

We arrived in Airlie Beach fairly exhausted from our overnight coach journey. We checked into local backpackers Magnum's and crashed out for a couple of hours. Once we'd revived we headed out to check out the town. Airlie Beach is a small town and mostly geared for tourists with loads of cafes, restaurants, tourism agencies and hostels. We liked it. We strolled along the beach, went to the internet cafe and generally chilled.

Our tour was booked with Whitsundays To The Max and after a day of chilling at the beach we headed down to check in and board the boat. Our boat was called 'Samurai' and was a 68ft, ex-racing yacht, now used to take up to 20 young things who want to see a bit of the Whitsundays, do some diving and generally party. We hadn't really been up for a party boat but we ended up on one, so no worries, we decided to enjoy ourselves. There were other boats out there crammed with up to 50 people so ours was relatively small. Sleeping conditions were cramped to say the least and we all got extremely hot below deck with lots of people on the edge of suffocation and opting to sleep on the deck. The boat was manned by a skipper, first mate/dive instructor and two deck hands. The dive instructor was our main guide and he was a little crazy looking, having had his head shaved by some friends while drunkenly passed out the night before. There was a fun atmosphere although at times the guide did speak to us as though we were 18 year-olds (quite a few people were actually near to that age anyway).

We sailed (or motored depending on the wind) round the beautiful Whitsunday islands, covered in forest and surrounded by bright blue waters.
On our first night a dolphin swam up to our boat to investigate which was cool and every time we anchored huge batfish would come and hang around the hull, waiting for bits of food to fall into the water. We went to the famous Whitehaven Beach (National Geographic top 3 beaches in the world) – it was absolutely stunning. We swam (in stinger suits as it's jellyfish season) and walked around on the fine, white sand.

After this we went scuba diving at another beach which is part of the great barrier reef. We had to dive with the guide which was no problem apart from the fact that he liked to dive at a ridiculous speed, leaving us far behind and struggling to keep up in our crappy hired fins, not really my kind of diving, but it was fun to see another part of the reef. [Some underwater pics coming soon...]

On our second night we had a bbq and party, some dressing up (university-style fancy dress – one team in bin-bags and the other in togas
– the pervy skipper started telling the girls that the team wearing the least would win...hmmm...), some singing/shouting, and general disorderly behavior. Everyone enjoyed themselves until a slightly random game invented by our guide where we had to stand in line and pass a rope through our clothes. Bizarre... our group managed it no problem but the other group didn't do quite as well and ended up squashed close together, some people got a bit upset as they felt that they might fall into the water and the game ended with no one really knowing what the point of it all was. The next morning Al and I were up nice and early, around 6.30, as the skipper started the engines to change location. We sat on deck surveying the mess from the night before... beer cans, wine bags, cups, cigarette butts, clothes, a pile of wetsuits, some food scattered around and ready to fall overboard... it wasn't a pretty sight and as the crew clearly weren't in a rush to do their jobs we cleaned most of it up... the crew didn't bother to clean the boat once while we were on board, it was pretty gross by the third day and we were pretty unimpressed.

But despite the lack of cleanliness we enjoyed our scuba diving and swimming that day and the general fun and relaxed atmosphere continued.

We really enjoyed the Whitsunday's – it is such a stunning part of the world and amazing for sailing. Next time though (with a bit more money), we think that we will charter our own yacht so we can be more independent... and less Club 18-30.

Great Barrier Reef, Diving with the Cairns Dive Centre

2008-12-19T04:14:00.007Z

The night before our dive trip we went to a presentation called 'Reef Teach' which was great. They told us about all the fish we would be seeing and some interesting stories about them: the clown fish (aka nemo) if the mother is killed the baby fish will turn themselves into females and mate with their father to produce more babies. There are fish that have penis fights... the loser is forced to carry the babies. Fish that queue to be cleaned by a cleaning wrasse fish. Trigger fish that get mad when you invade their territory and will chase you for ages armed with their poisonous spike on their head. Octopusses that take photographs of themselves. - So you see that fish aren't boring as some people think, they have a lot of character and we were looking forward to seeing them in their natural habitats.

We took a 2hr boat ride to meet the larger motor yacht we were to be staying on overnight on the reef. The crew are young and the atmosphere is fun, it's all go! Boarded the large boat and checked into our cabins (ensuite, pretty good) and had a briefing and quick lunch – in true Australia style we are being served real slap-up meals, definitely what you need to build up your energy for diving. The water is so warm here so we don't have to wear wetsuits, we do have to wear stinger suits though (all-in-one lycra suits) as it's jellyfish season and they have some pretty mean jellyfish here!

Al's dives:
He has yet to add this in... am trying to persuade him...

Al's course mates:

[Underwater photos still to be developed and added... coming soon!]

Vix's dives:
18.12.08
1pm: First dive was with a group of certified divers (7 of us in total) and a divemaster to get us up to speed again. We weren't under for too long as one of the group used up his air quite quickly which was a bit disappointing for the rest of us. The weather wasn't too great and visibility reduced. Still we saw loads of small amazingly coloured fish, some nemos: bright coral, a giant clam and parrot fish and held a sea-cucumber.

4pm: Second dive it was just me and two guys to be my buddies. My first dive without a divemaster/instructor to guide the way. We saw a turtle and reef shark: among other fish and I got to try out my new camera. My air consumption is pretty good these days – my buddies were down to 70bar of air when I still had 130.

7pm: Third dive of the day – night dive! And my first dive with Al as my buddy – yey!! We went with an instructor and saw some amazing coral formations, whole cliffs made of coral and huge 'giant fingers' of blue coral sticking up from the ground. We held a 'spikey' sea-cucumber. We saw a puffer fish puffed up – pretty rare, I stroked him but he didn't look too happy. Poor thing, puffing up is a form of defense for them and they are only able to do it around 3 times in their lives apparently. We also saw a blue spotted ray (twice) and a parrot fish asleep. The sea was a lot quieter at night time with most of the fish sleeping. Tried to look out for a shark but to no avail. Apparently one of the other groups saw one though. Held Al's hand underwater which was nice.

The day ended with a few drinks on deck and to bed by 10.30 for our early start...

2nd day: 19.12.08
6am (we got up at 5am!!), 9am, 11am
What a day! Three dives in a row, separated by an hour for breakfast, tea and lunch.
Al and I dived together for the first and third dive. His third dive was as a CERTIFIED diver!! It was up to me to navigate... I did quite well considering this was the first dive I've led I did pretty well and we saw lots of fish and I managed to bring us back to the boat ok – yey!
Later on we watched dolphins swimming beside the boat and a group of small fish jumping out of the water to escape them. It was pretty awesome.

Oh and Al would like to introduce you to his new hat - wild kangaroo leather and crocodile teeth, you'll be seeing quite a lot of it:

Soon it was time to leave the reef and depart from Cairns. Everyone slept on the way back, exhausted from their awesome trip.

We reeeeally enjoyed this part of our trip. The great barrier reef is amazing and there's too much to explore in a lifetime. Apparently there are other, even more spectacular parts, which you can go to see (bit more pricey but worth it) so there will have to be a 'next time' here. There were some people on the boat who just snorkeled and even they loved it. The dive company (Cairns Dive Centre) are great, the staff and crew were helpful, professional and great fun, (they do give a few sales pitches trying to get you to buy their videos/masks/more dives etc which can be annoying, but we would totally dive with them again! Definitely recommended!!!

Cape Tribulation - rainforest and reef

2008-12-17T08:35:00.008Z

As Al was having a great time on his diving course, I decided to take a little day trip of my own, to Cape Tribulation – the very north of the east coast, were the rainforest meets the reef. I jumped on my tour bus with about 16 other young people and headed north. The journey took us past sugar cane plantations, past stunning coastal scenery and past the tablelands – large mountains covered in rainforest.

Our guide seemed pretty keen to give us all the crocodile stories he could - little old ladies going for a morning dip in the sea only to discover a large 'log' floating next to her stuck in the stinger net (jellyfish barrier)... and men walking their dogs next to the local pond and only returning home with the lead. Kind of puts you off swimming anywhere.

Our first main stop was at the Daintree River – a large, salt water, crocodile-infested river about 150kms north of Cairns. We hopped out and awaited our croc-watching tour. We were welcomed with a cup of hot tea (seriously wierd – it was around 35c and extremely humid – whoever said tea cools you down started one of the greatest myths of all time), so after we had all melted from the tea we boarded our croc-spotting boat, cameras at the ready and off we set. There were a few calls of “crocodile!” when in fact it was “a log putting on a very wooden performance” as our guide said. And after hovering around several mangrove trees and dark looking corners we eventually found the big guy – 3 metre croc nick-named 'Fat Albert' (kind of takes away the scare-factor doesn't it?). He was hiding under a tree and everything apart from his head was submerged. This is because they need to cool down in the heat. Apparently the best time to come is May/June when it's cooler (25c) and the crocodiles are sunbathing on the banks and rocks – you can see around 12 in a 30 minute boat ride. People have seen the adult male crocs devouring whole cow carcasses and fighting for territory on the river. There are 3 large adult males on the river (we were lucky enough to see one) and loads of females and younger ones too. We saw two crocs – the other was a bit smaller but we could see him more clearly on the bank of the river – I spotted that one! As we disembarked on the other side of the river our guide told us a story about one tourist, a Belgian, who had been so annoyed on not seeing any crocodiles that he decide to walk up to the waters edge with his camera and splash around. He was then attacked by a massive crocodile who took a huge chunk out of his leg and luckily he was rescued before it got him into a death roll. But anyway I don't have much to worry about because apparently Germans are the crocs' favourite dish – (this may be because it is the Germans who are most likely to camp or hang out by the waters edge?) so all you Germans out there beware!

On the other side of the river we continued north in the van. The forest was a lot more dense now and the sounds and humidity really reminded me of the Amazon – although we were still driving on a paved road and there were little houses in the forest every few hundred metres. So a lot more developed. We stopped at a little walkway which took us into the forest and around the mangrove swamps. These were amazing. The swamps were vast and the sun shining on them acted as a mirror, perfectly reflecting the shapes of the trees. Apparently the rainforest in this area is the oldest in the world at 20 million years old, it also has a unique wildlife descended from the prehistoric times when Australia was joined to Asia. Just one hectare of rainforest hosts around 100 different species of plant life... and lots of spiders!: The guide found some green ants and some of us were brave enough to try them – they tasted of really acidic, like concentrated lime – it reminded me of when I was little and used to stick my tongue onto batteries... if anyone else was crazy enough to do this then you will know perfectly what I mean. Anyway my tongue went sort of numb for the rest of the day, but apparently there are chefs out there who actually cook with them and our guide recommended barramundi baked with green ants, or a salad with green ants instead of balsamic. We also passed a large tree, it had been strangled by vines and they had only left a sort of shell of the tree. I was hoping to see a casowary – these huge prehistoric birds exist only in the rainforest of Australia and Papa New Guinea. Unfortunately they are on the critically endangered list and only 1,200 of one species survives in Australia. They actually help to build the rainforest as they semi-digest and disperse seeds from the trees in a special way that fertilises the ground. There are road signs everywhere warning about them.

Eventually we reached Cape Tribulation, so called because when Captain James Cook landed here in the Endeavour (after being stuck on the Great Barrier Reef for a few months) he found it to be a rather unwelcoming place, what with all the crocodiles, sharks, spiders, snakes, etc, so he named it this. Nearby there is also Mount Pity and Mount Sorrow... a bit of theme here... our guide said that most Australian's put it down to Capt Cook being a 'wingeing pom'. We stopped at a backpackers hostel for lunch and I took the time to run down to the beach. It was really beautiful. The sand was pure white and the rainforest fell all the way from the mountains to the beachside. The sea was a beautiful aqua-marine turquoise but unfortunately you are not able to swim here in the summer months because of jellyfish.

On the way back we nearly ran over a huge monitor lizard. He was standing in the middle of the road inspecting his friend who had been flattened to a pancake. They aren't much cleverer than chickens though and instead of running to the other side of the road he ran between our wheels. I was sure I felt a bump but when the driver got out to check there was nothing there.

We crossed the Daintree river again on a small ferry. Our guide told us that up until a few years ago if you wanted to join the Cape Trib community you had to swim across the river as an initiation test. That was until one girl was eaten by a crocodile as she attempted the swim – pretty stupid really.

So we headed next to the Mossman Gorge where we had time for a quick dip in the crystal brown waters – it had just rained so the leaves had turned the water a pleasant dark orange colour – but it was perfectly clean so I jumped in. It was one of the best swims ever, in cool fresh water (no crocodiles), and just what I needed to cool down from the heat and humidity.

Just before we arrived at Cairns we stopped at Port Douglas, a very upmarket town, lots of 5-star resorts etc. It was nice but a little expensive for my backpacker budget. There was a nice view out to sea and a few hippy shops to browse round - including this one with a cassowary hanging out with rudolph:

It was a really great tour, our guide was really cool and the people were nice. And it was pretty cheap which is always a bonus. Cairns is such a cool place and I would love to stay longer, there is so much to do around here! But the Great Barrier Reef beckons and I met up with Al and his diving friends that evening to celebrate on land before heading out to the deep sea.

Tropical Cairns

2008-12-15T04:29:00.004Z

The next morning, after our night of partying in Sydney, was quite a shock to the system... we missed our alarm clock and overslept... not too clever considering that our plane departed at 9am. We awoke at 7.15 and leaped out of bed, stuffed our rucksacks and ran for a taxi. We made the 8am check-in deadline but found that we were in the wrong terminal – for some reason Qantas' flight to Cairns left from the international terminal. But they assured us it would be ok and we boarded our flight. A couple of hours later we found ourselves staring forlornly at the baggage carousel waiting for our bags to turn up. They didn't. So we were stuck in the blistering heat of tropical Cairns (around 34 degrees and humid) in our hiking boots, jeans, now sweaty t-shirts and quite p-d off at Qantas who, we have decided, are pretty useless if they can lose two bags on a two hour domestic flight. Al had ripped jeans and smelled like a hobo from the night before - luckily no one was sitting next to us on the flight!

Anyway spirits still high we booked our hostel from the airport and awaited our free airport transfer. We waited and waited but it didn't come. Of course we realised much later that Qantas had delivered us to Cairns international terminal and our transfer had presumed we would be at the domestic terminal – ahhh! So we coughed up $17 for a taxi instead. The hostel is really nice, we have a fridge in the room and A/C which is pretty vital. There is also a pool, but the water is a kind of murkey blue and you can see bits of loo roll floating around in it, plus I saw one charming guy blow his nose into it... I suspect that some guys use it as an alternative to a shower in the morning – so I haven't been in... Al did but then saw a piece of loo roll floating towards him and ran to the shower. Cairns has a very nice public swimming pool on the esplanade though, it's such a good idea to have something like this for everyone:

So we went shopping for some new clothes, as cheap as we could find, so we didn't have to endure the heat in our winter clothes. That evening we treated ourselves to a meal out – we shared a plate of crocodile – it tastes really good!!! And I had barramundi fish – an Australian fish, a bit like cod. Cairns is a touristy town and so quite pricey so unfortunately we can't really eat out anymore here.

That evening, at 11pm, we finally got our first bag back – the other was still in Sydney. Unfortunately it was the rucksack with all our winter clothes in and the other rucksack with our toiletries and summer clothes was still missing. The next day we finally got our bag back at 2pm but Qantas refused to pay us any compensation for the new clothes, shoes and toiletries we had had to buy, even though we waited over 24 hours for our bags.

But apart from the bag drama our time in Cairns has been really relaxing. The town is situated amid mountains covered in rainforest and mangrove swamps. We've strolled along the waterfront watching out for crocodiles - Al got unlucky and has lost a leg:
and watching the fruit bats in the trees (they have them here too!), sunbathing a bit and generally chilling out which is great. There isn't a beach here but the waterfront looks pretty cool when the tide is out. Last night there was a huge tropical thunder storm. We had heard that this part of Australia is one of the most hit by lightning and we can see why – the lightning was constant, every second huge flashes and strikes of lightening! We ran outside at midnight to the beachfront to watch the storm over the mountains which was amazing and we watched the fruit bats flying around too, lit up by the lightning – spooky! And in the morning the thunder was so loud that it woke me up at 5am!

This morning Al is off doing his PADI Open Water course and I am taking time to chill, do the blog etc and tomorrow will be taking a day tour to Cape Tribulation - where the rainforest meets the beach. In a couple of days we'll be on a boat to the reef to see one of the seven wonders of the natural world - can't wait!

Sydney

2008-12-10T04:18:00.005Z

We had a great time in Sydney, unfortunately though it rained constantly for the whole of our 3-day stay there which did dampen our spirits slightly. There's lots to do but most of it is outdoors-based and when it rains you have to spend a lot of money to entertain yourself. The first evening was spent in Darlington Harbour with some friends, Sarah and Phil, they showed us around the best bars and we had some amazing mussels to eat. We have decided that the food in Australia is probably the best in the world, they have the best quality produce here and they know what to do with it. It was a great evening and the rain did subside a little so we could take some photographs of the amazing skyline.

The next day we firstly changed from a dorm to a double room because one Scottish guy from Perth had decided to wake the whole room up when he came back to the pub shouting and swearing at 2am. Doubles are more expensive but we've decided that we want our sleep and are too old for this communal thing. After moving we hot-footed it to the famous Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.
Both were as amazing as we had hoped and we took about a billion photographs.

We walked around an area of town called The Rocks which has some small winding streets which are pretty and also gives some great views of the opera house and bridge. Sydney reminded us very much of London, big streets, busy, lots of traffic. However we weren't too impressed with Sydney's transport system, it's pretty hard to get from A to B – there aren't really any buses and the metro system doesn't have many stations in town so we walked a lot, which in the rain is quite difficult.

As we walked back from the bridge and opera house, through Hyde Park, Al pointed to the sky “Oh look”... I stopped and looked up to see Batman flying towards me!!! Literally!! A huge fruit bat, about the size of a small dog with huge leathery wings was flying towards his perch in a tree. We sat and observed the tree which was covered in fruit bats – crazy! You can look at the Sydney sky in the evening and you will see flocks of what look like birds but in fact they are giant bats just flying around! It's pretty spooky and gives me the shivers!

On our third day we had to tackle the Chinese Embassy to get our visa for the next leg of our journey. Apart from paying a rather extortionate fee it wasn't too bad and we managed to get the visa on the same day. As it was raining again there wasn't a lot we could do, so we splashed out on an expensive hot chocolate in the Lindt shop at Darlington Harbour and headed back to our hostel to relax before the evening.

That evening we met up with a friend from London, Natalie, who was over visiting her family. A group of us went out to a brilliant Thai restaurant called Spice I Am. We moved on to a few bars, partying until the wee hours.

OZ - Melbourne to the Outback!

2008-12-09T04:51:00.007Z

OZ

The much anticipated arrival in Melbourne, Australia was somewhat stressful for us but we eventually arrived in our hostel on the very cool Chapel Street and had ourselves a well-deserved Aussie beer to celebrate.
The next morning we awoke early and headed out to get our new campervan – a Spaceship campa. This little beauty is smaller than our last van but comes with a DVD player and fridge, it's also easier to drive. On our way to pick it up we stopped by the centre of town and had a quick look around. Melbourne is really nice, very open, attractive buildings and a lot of character. The people are really friendly and the food is good and quite cheap so we're happy.

We jumped in our new campa and headed off in search of a map to guide us out of town in the right direction. You would think this would be easy... but for some reason finding a map of Victoria in Melbourne proved to be very difficult. We stopped at about ten shops and petrol stations before finally finding one and realising we were half way out of town already but in the wrong direction! We picked out our route and headed for Maldon, near Castlemaine, (original home of Castlemaine XXXX (beer) and home of Lou (my cousin), Nick, Angus and new arrival Dulcie (and my auntie Rosalie who was visiting) at Steam Train Cottage.

We arrived around 6pm and settled in with a beer and greetings all round. Nick drove Al, Rosalie and I to their farm ten minutes away. They have bought a patch of land, about 6 acres in size and Nick has been hard at work planting a vineyard, avocado trees, peach trees, plum trees, cherries... the list goes on, and a dozen others. They also have a “choock shed” – chicken hut (without chickens at the moment) and a large pond with crayfish – which Al and I did some kayaking on. They also have a plot for a house marked out. It will be really amazing when its completed and Al and I will be back in a few years to sample some of the homemade wine and goodies.
On the way back we stopped off to view a field of kangaroos – this was our first proper viewing of a mob of kangaroos and it was pretty amazing – finally we really felt like we were in Australia! Lou and Nick's dog Jindi decided to jump out of the window and made it across the field at lightning speed to catch the kangaroos – luckily for the kangaroos she wasn't successful and luckily for her she wasn't given a kicking. On the way back a black wallaby jumped right in front of the car – amazing! Apparently this happens a lot and it's really easy to hit them. We really hope this doesn't happen to our nice shiny rented campervan...

The evening was wiled away playing the dijeridoo
cuddling sleepy babies and checking out Nick's skull collection – kangaroos, dingos, possums, dolphins, you name it; and staring at the creepy poisonous spider in the bathroom – luckily it doesn't really move beyond the curtain rail.

The next couple of days were spent chilling out with the Aussie cousins, spotting steamtrains with Angus driving round the area and playing with the children – such a nice change from the usual backpacker routine... oh and more dijeridoo - Al was becoming quite a pro:

We went on a pub crawl of Maldon's three local pubs – one is named the Kangaroo Hotel which we liked and it was our first taste of a real Aussie country pub.

We were also introduced to Bundaberg Rum – Australia's national spirit.
The next day we visited a town called Bendigo. It has an old colonial town centre, complete with a street called Pall Mall (which we thought was quite funny):

On our last night Lou and Nick treated us to a proper Aussie barbie at the farm
and Nick took us hunting for a huntsman spider, which we found under a dead tree trunk, fishing for yabbies (crayfish), we also got to plant our own tree (a judas tree) which we can come back to see in a couple of years. Later on we went up the local watch tower overlooking the whole region – we could see all the way to Melbourne. Later on and after a few more beers Al discovered some of Nick's more unusual house decorations: (can you spot the huntsman spider behind Al's head?)

We had an amazing time with Lou, Nick and the family but it was soon time to hit the road again. On their advice we decided to head to the outback, rather than see Victoria's coast. The coastline is meant to be amazing but we decided that we would rather get a feel for the real Australia as we will be seeing a lot of coastline later in our trip.

The roadtrip was fantastic! We drove up to the Murray river and checked out a town called Echuca which has an old-fashioned port with paddle boats. We continued along the river and came to Mildura where we checked out the locals and wiled away Friday night in a bar and then camped in the town (not actually sure if that's allowed but no one noticed!)

The next morning we reached the outback area – red sand and shrubs stretching as far as the eye can see – amazing and very beautiful. We saw wild goats, wild emus, kangaroos and lizards.

We reached Broken Hill, the old mining town of the area and had a look around. It was decorated with Christmas decorations which looked quite funny against the blue sky and desert heat.

From there we drove as far as the road would take us to a small town called Silverton.
Here we really felt like we were in the wild west. There were a few buildings scattered around the dusty roads – an old gaol, a church, a museum and a couple of houses. Best of all was the Silverton Hotel (pub) which we popped into for a quick drink – I noticed a very cool looking car outside and Al remarked that the pub looked like all the typically Australian hotel/bars he had seen in the beer commercials. We entered to find that we had actually stumbled across a very famous little pub. The walls were covered with memorabilia from the numerous films and adverts that have been filmed there – Mad Max, A town called Alice, Castlemaine XXXX beer... and many more. It was pretty awesome and we were thrilled that we had ended up in such a cool place.

We spent the night camped at a scenic viewpoint 5km north of town and in the desert. We thought it would be deserted but as we were cooking 15 cars pulled up and parked at the viewpoint next to us. It was a vintage car club on their weekly get together. They pulled our tables and chairs from their cars and started laying out picnics. They were very friendly and it was nice to see all the old cars lined up against the outback sunset.

The next morning we awoke to see a kangaroo hopping just metres from the car. The sky was a beautiful blue against the red sand of the outback. We took time to relax for a while in Broken Hill and then set off again to find our way back home, back through the outback - time to take some final pictures of the stunning red sand against the blue sky:

On the way back we spent the night off a small country road next to some fields.

The flies here were terrible, everyone knows that the flies in Australia are bad but we hadn't expected them to be this annoying! They try to fly into your eyes and up your nose and just don't leave you alone. The next morning we awoke to find that we had a slight problem... the car battery had died. We were slightly concerned as we were in the middle of nowhere. Al had a fiddle with the engine but to no avail. We had no choice but to flag down some cars and ask for a jump lead. All three cars we flagged down stopped for us (again showing that Aussies are very friendly people) and luckily the third guy was able to start our car for us – phew!!

On the road again, we headed back to Melbourne via my cousins' house where we were able to have a very welcome shower and relax with the children in the sun. Nick took us yabby fishing again

and this time we caught something – wooo!!

9 little yabbies and we took them home, cooked them up and ate them – yummy!

The next day we had to return the car by 4pm so we headed off early to get to Healesville Sanctuary – an animal sanctuary just outside Melbourne where you wlil find loads of Australia's native animals. We fed a kangaroo and a wallaby, saw koalas,
tazmanian devils, platapus, emus, saw crazy giant pelicans, fresh water crocodiles, wombats, dingoes howling, and... fruit bats – ewww! They reminded us of dracula and were pretty creepy!

All in all our trip to Victoria was excellent. We really liked Melbourne, Maldon and the outback, it was great to see my cousins and everyone we met was very friendly.

Next stop Sydney...

New Zealand - South Island

2008-11-30T08:01:00.014Z

The ferry ride to South Island lasted 3.5 hrs, we waved goodbye to Wellington and North Island and eagerly sat outside until the winds grew too strong and the air too cold for us to handle. At one point a gust so strong nearly took Al off his feet, so we decided to retreat inside, emerging when we approached the Marlborough Sounds and the port of Picton. We disembarked at around 4.30pm and drove for the Sounds which were just round the corner.

The Marlborough Sounds are a series of inlets and islands, where the sea cuts into the mountains and has formed little white sand beaches and shallow pools. It is stunning on a clear day with the blue sky and blue sea illuminated by the sun. We drove up a small peninsula called Kenepuru Sound looking for somewhere to spend the night. We found a small layby on a quiet country road and pulled in. The cliff overlooked a small village, dwarfed by the rolling hills which shone with the setting sun – as you can see from our lovely photo – and a perfect place to cook dinner. Unfortunately by the time it came to washing up it was dark and so I had to make do with washing up without the nice view.

We had the usual cull of the pesky sandflies that managed to sneak in when the doors were open. For those of you who haven't been to NZ our biggest problem with camping has been these nasty little buggers called sandflies. You park up your campervan at a beautiful white beach and jump out to take in a breath of fresh air. However as soon as you relax you begin to notice several small black dots all over your skin? Strange. You brush over these black dots with your hands and they fly away leaving a painful small red bitemark as evidence. They're a real pain. I've been bitten a few times, however Al has again been unlucky – as in Peru – and become their main victim. He must have sweet blood, they don't like me much though. The main problem is that when campervanning for free, the best places to stay are by the by the sea, so we have to do a nightly cull when the doors are closed to ensure that we don't get bitten while we sleep.

The next morning we headed round the sounds. We stopped by a well-known track called the Queen Charlotte Track and set off for a couple of hours trekking. However the best view of the coastline was actually from the road and so we drove round to a couple of inlets to admire the beautiful view.

After a day on the sounds we decided that our next stop would be a nearby national park – the Abel Tasman. We headed west with a mission to arrive in time to book a kayaking tour of the park's coastline for Al's birthday, 21st November. We arrived at the small town of Marahau and found a great local kayaking company called Kahu Kayaks. We pre-booked the tour for the next day and asked them to recommend a nearby 'free camping spot', we were directed to a spot covered in signs forbidding 'camping' but, we reasoned, campervanning is not really camping is it?!
Another van pulled up nearby and two Canadians came over to chat, they happened to be on the same kayaking tour as us. They were a bit worried about not being able to park in the same spot overnight, but, as we discovered, about 20 other campervans and cars had decided to ignore 'no camping' the sign. The next morning we awoke early and met the group at the kayaking office at 8.30am, the sun was shining and the wind was light. In the carpark we all piled into a boat (that may sound strange) being towed by a tractor which was towed straight into the sea.

We sped off across the sea further up the coast to a large white sandy beach where we all jumped out of the speed boat and into our kayaks with our guide. I took up the front of the kayak and Al took up the rear, commanding the steering peddles.

We steered around the coastline watching the seals and penguins playing in the water. We were able to row right up close to the rocks and the seals swam around and under our boats. We stopped on a deserted sandy beach for a coffee break (we had a choice of cappuchino, mocha, latte... top notch service) and relaxed in the sunshine. The guide informed us about the history of the area (Abel Tasman was a Dutchman who first sailed to the shores of NZ to attempt to start trade links with the Maoris. As his ship anchored a group of Maoris rowed out in their canoes to determine whether they were friend or foe. The Maoris blowed a message into a conch shell and Abel Tasman responded by blowing into a trumpet – unfortunately this was a war signal for the Maoris and they attacked a group of officers sent over in a small boat. He named the bay Murderer's Bay (now renamed Golden Bay) and left. Abel Tasman never set foot on the shores of NZ but the park is named after him).

We continued rowing round the shoreline, through the rocks, until we came to another beach for lunch. We were so hot by this time that we all quickly changed and jumped into the sea to cool down. It was freeezing! But very refreshing.

Lucas, one of the Canadians, went on a walk and found some treasure around the rocks – he actually found an old NZ shilling with the face of King George V on it. Pretty amazing! After lunch and a cappuchino we jumped back into our kayaks and proceeded down the coast. A brisk wind picked up and we hoisted the spinnaker (the tablecloth held up with two oars from the guys at the back and the corners held up by two of us girls at the front). We sailed along at top speed, water rushing into our boats and the waves lifting us up. We covered a lot of ground like that and gave our aching arm muscles a small rest in the process. After a further hour paddling round we put down our oars for the day and sped back to the port by speedboat.

Al and I enjoyed some spring rolls from this cool little stall near the office which sold 'Cow Pat' and 'Ewe Beut' burgers. It was a brilliant day and a great way to spend Al's b-day.

The next day we awoke to strong winds and rain... really unpleasant when you're camping, but we were thankful that it had held off for Al's birthday. We had a mission - to get down to the West Coast of NZ – a place described in our guide book as the 'real NZ'.

We drove down in the rain, windscreen wipers on full blast. It took a few hours to get down to the West Coast from the North. We took the coastal road from Westport and headed south to Tauranga Bay, Cape Foulwind where we had dinner at a little restaurant (green-shelled mussles - a local speciality), took a look at the local seal colony and found a place to camp up for the night.

The next day we followed the coast road south in the persistant rain, our clothes and van a little damp by now. The guidebook described the road as 'one of the world's top roadtrips' but unfortunately due to the rain and cloud and mist we couldn't see the mountains or the best of the coastline. Apparently that weather is typical for the west coast and it can rain non-stop.

We drove on to the famous Pancake Rocks – rocks which are formed of layers stacked up like pancakes and which form blow holes that the sea rushes into and spurts out of at the top. Along the way Al noticed a small puncture in the tyre, just enough to begin to deflate the wheel slowly. Al dealt with it swiftly, showing off this competence at these things that I have no idea about. He managed to change the tyre and find someone to repair the old tyre for a very reasonable price – bingo, I have a great boyfriend! We had however... encountered another problem.... a rather large chip at the bottom of our windscreen which we watched slowly forming into a crack of about 7cm. At first we debated telling the hire company (maybe they won't notice?!) but it soon became apparent that it would be unavoidable. We took the car to a glass-fitter who said that we would probably have to fit a whole new windscreen :.-( $350 down the drain, we were pretty upset, Al had even seen the stone coming, flying out from the wheels of another car but there was nothing we could do. So our trip wasn't without it's little dramas... the final one which hit us on our last evening of camping, but I'll leave that til later.

On our third day on the west coast it still hadn't stopped raining. It rained constantly (although there was one two hour reprieve one evening which gave us a chance to do some cooking), our clothes were all moist, the floor of our car dirty, and we caught colds. We invented a new way of getting from the driving seats to the back compartment without having to step outside but when you gotta go outside, you gotta go outside... and toilet trips where a bit of a nightmare. We were also worried that our car would get stuck in mud in one of the campsites, a fear very well founded as we drove past numerous houses that were floating in their gardens, completely flooded.

Our aim on the west coast was to get to the Franz Joseph glacier to do a sky-dive, but after three days of rain we decided 'that's it, we need sunshine and a chance to dry our clothes' and we turned tail and fled across the mountains to the east coast sunshine. 'Cowards' you're probably thinking... but we would have persisted had we not actually discovered that we were very short on time now – yes New Zealand turned out to be a lot bigger than we thought it would be, and traversing the high mountains on small winding roads in a bulky campervan took a lot longer than we had anticipated. We were disappointed to have missed some of the main attractions that the south island has to offer, but it gives us a good excuse to visit again!

As soon as we passed the main mountain range dividing west from east the weather improved. The rain stopped, the sky cleared, the temperature soared – we had just entered into an east coast heat wave – some of the hottest weather they've had for a while apparently. And according to the same news report we had just left behind some of the worst rain and flooding that the west coast has seen for a very long time. We were treated to one of the most beautiful roads we have driven on in our travels so far (from Greymouth to Kaikoura) – mountains, fields, rainbows – it was stunning and a welcome change.

We arrived in Kaikoura and set up camp in a small patch of unused land near the sea (it took about half an hour of driving round to find). It is always a bit of a challenge to find somewhere before the sun sets. We cooked up some pasta and slept, ready for our big day of whale watching. We awoke to a glorious day of sunshine and set off to our campsite. After a few days of not showering we decided that we would treat ourselves to a powered campsite with kitchen facilities and hot showers. It was gooood! We went to book the whale tour but found that unfortunately the sea was too rough and the tours canceled for the day. 'No worries' we thought, booked the tour for the next day and took off to spy on the local seal colony. It was fun watching the seals sunbathing and swimming. Al says that seals are his new favourite animal.

We spent the rest of the day strolling along the beach and chilling in the sun.

The next day we woke early and sped off to the whale watching departure point. We hopped in a bus which took us to a boat and boarded (along with about 50 other tourists). We were both very excited as this was something we have always wanted to do. The tour was very good and told us about the whales we would be seeing (sperm whales), about the geology and ecology of the area complete with video displays. The team used a detection devise to discover the whereabouts of the whale and we waited... for a long time... eyes staring out watching for the whale. Apparently the whales dive to the bottom of the sea for around an hour to feed before surfacing for ten minutes or so to fill their lungs. After waiting quite a while we began to worry that the whale had swam off in another direction maybe, bored of being stared at by tourists. We waited in anticipation... and then there was a shout from Al “there it is!” and everyone started gasping as the whale rose above the surface, his nose and head in the air. He was actually quite far away so our boat had to rush, full speed ahead, to catch up with it. We hovered nearby, out on deck watching the magnificent animal. Most of its body was below the surface but we could see the head, the surface of its back and the spout ejecting water. It was beautiful and a moment to remember. Slowly the whale took its last deep breath and dived under the sea again, waving its tail at us as it went.

Kaikoura was our last major stop before the great journey back up north. We returned on the ferry to Wellington and headed up north. We spent the night at a beautiful beach which it took us a while to find, but which had an amazing sunset.

And Al did the washing up - a rare sight...

On our way up to Auckland we decided that we can't leave NZ without seeing a kiwi. As they are nearly impossible to see in the wild (being endangered and nocturnal) we stopped by a bird sanctuary to inspect. The were a lot bigger than we thought they would be but very cute and cuddly looking. We weren't allowed to take pictures but I took a bit of a hazy one without a flash:

We also detoured through a stunning national park to see Mt Ngauruhoe – those Lord of the Rings aficionados among you might recognise this as the famous Mount Doom.
On our last evening of camping we ran into a spot of bother. We were trying to find a place to park at and sleep but we were quite near to Auckland and therefore space for free camping is scarce. We drove off route 1 and deep into the countryside in an area populated mainly by Maori people. We ended up in a remote logging area which wasn't quite what we had envisaged and so Alex made a three point turn on a narrow dug-out road to turn back. As he was preparing to finish the turn the car stalled and stopped... strange as it is an automatic and hasn't stalled once. We couldn't restart the car. Al tried and tried but it wouldn't start. We started to panic, we were blocking off the whole road but luckily there were no cars coming for miles – or was that maybe a bad thing?! We ran round to the back of the car to find that our exhaust had embedded itself in the clay soil piled up on the sides of the road. It was a thick, gooey soil and the exhaust was completely stuck. In desperation Al got a spoon and began digging around the exhaust, but to no avail (unsurprisingly). Just as we were about to give up I saw a trailer speeding our way. Hope!
It stopped next to our car and before we could explain the problem three large Maori men and a dog jumped out, took a chain from the back of their trailer hooked it to the underside of our car and began to pull us out of the sand – all with about three words muttered. We then saw two bicycles whizzing up the hill towards us, the local children had come to watch the evening's entertainment.
The next issue was to expel the soil which had become lodged in the exhaust pipe. We tried with the spoon but it proved just as useless as before – spoons are really not made for this kind of thing. “Jus' press on the accelerator mate!” said one guy. Al pressed hard on the accelerator and the soil shot out from the pipe like a bullet, much to the glee of everyone watching. We were back in action! We chatted to the guys for a bit, they lived round the corner and had seen us in difficulty. Their accents were unlike any we had heard before – almost South African sounding, very peculiar. So they jumped back in their trailer and off they went and we continued on our merry way and found a great place to sleep a few minutes later and we slept very well in the knowledge that we didn't have a thousand pound debt to pay to the car hire company.

The ride into Auckland wasn't entirely straight forward as there was a Christmas parade on and the whole of the centre of town was closed to cars. We eventually found our way to our campervan office and dropped it off. We showed the man our cracked window screen and he called a mechanic for a second point of view. Luckily for us they decided that it could be repaired and so we were only charged $75 (still a bit of a dent to the already diminishing wallet, but not as bad as it could have been). We checked into our backpackers and the lady at reception handed us a key “Room 101” she said... we have just finished reading 1984 together and so this was a little daunting for us,. We headed up the stairs with trepidation and opened the door to Room 101... a smell, a terrible smell of rotting feet hit our nostrils... “hi!” called out one of our new roomies, “welcome to the room that smells of dead goat!” After settling into Room 101 (aka Dead Goat Room) we headed outside to check out the Auckland Christmas Parade.

The main streets were lined with children and parents cheering at the floats and marching bands passed by. At first we thought nothing of it, we cheered with everyone else, then we began to notice that the 'Christmas' parade was nothing more than a carefully planned marketing scheme – and a not too subtle one at that. The main sponsor was Farmers supermarket and their logo was emblazoned everywhere, there were floats with people dressed in Farmers t-shirts waving to the crowd and a float with a giant birthday cake saying 'Happy Birthday Farmers – 75!' There were also adverts for mobile phones, Mcdonald's hats for kids, ads for cars and a huge float for Nickelodeon with a giant Spongebob Squarepants waving at the crowds of children who cheered “Spongebob! Spongebob!” It was quite sickening and we left as soon as we could – very disappointed with Auckland's council for allowing such an unashamedly tacky event to take place. Having said this I did like the bagpipe parade which made me feel 'at home'.

We next made our way to the Sky Tower – tallest building in the southern hemisphere – and took the lift up to the top floor. At 230m above the ground it was an impressive view. We could see the whole of Auckland below us at 360 degrees, complete with glass floor. Al was running around pretending to leap out of the window and jumping on the glass floor, I took more of a backseat, a bit dizzy at the prospect of getting too close to the edge – heights aren't my thing. We had a little coffee in the restaurant, staring at the hundreds of sailing boats out on the bay and departed for our next treat of the day the new James Bond - 'Quantum of Solace'.

New Zealand is an amazing country and we definitely want to return. 2.5 weeks isn't enough to see everything but we crammed in a fair deal. There is a great quality of life here – even the brickies eat in nice cafes and read broadsheet papers: We hope that next time we can catch up on the bits we missed – there will definitely be a next time – we're definitely returning to this awesome country.

New Zealand - North Island

2008-11-17T21:00:00.009Z

I have a theory – that when God created the world he decided to create a little piece of paradise in the corner of the world and blessed it with the greenest, quirkiest and most serene countryside in the world. And for some reason only 4.1m people live here?! What's going on! Well if I had my way it would be 4.1m + 2 people because this country has to be the most amazing place ever.

We touched down at 4am after a 13 hour flight... after our numerous overnight coach journeys in South America this was no problem for us and we slept for pretty much the whole thing. There was a gruelling customs process to contend with (my Chilian honey was confiscated and my walking boots sprayed) and we then sat down with our Lonely Planet to see what on earth we were going to do here. We soon realised that there is more than enough to keep even the most restless person entertained. The main feature of our New Zealand trip is the fact that we have decided to rent a CAMPA VAN!! Yes Vix and Al are turning into trailer-park trash and doing New Zealand in a mobile home – yeeha! We had found a suitably cool company on the internet (Escape) and went to their offices as early as we could to pick up our new home on wheels. This company graffitis all their vehicles with different designs and we have a cool purple and gold one called Pearly (apparently the design is meant to represent the 'pearly gates' – as long as that is not some kind of omen I'll be quite happy).

It's kitted out food storage, a sink, utensils, dining table and seats and then you can dismantle everything to create your comfy doublebedded bedroom. Perfect for us. So in we hopped and off we went. Time to tackle Auckland's five lane motorway – yippee! Al was having kittens while I was attempting to navigate without a map (we hadn't really planned that one too well) and he was trying not to damage our new campa. Just to spice things up the van is an automatic and in NZ they drive on the left (like any sensible nation in my opinion) whereas we had grown very comfortable with the right side of the road from Chile by now. We managed to stumble upon a petrol station and get directions to a large supermarket where we stocked up on all the basics necessary for any fine camping trip – pasta, tomato sauce, beans, noodles – you get the picture – we are broke after Chile. No actually the plan was to stock up on the basics and buy the fresh goods as we went along, excellent considering that many enterprising New Zealanders sell fresh fruit and vegges from their backyards. After our stock up we picked up route 1 southbound and were on our merry way. The plan for NZ is to focus on South Island. But after seeing how beautiful North Island is as well, and because we want to do this at a fairly relaxed pace, we decided to spend a few days up north. We headed East from Auckland to an area called Coromandel where the countryside looks as if it has come straight from The Shire (aka Hobbit land). Very beautiful and quite unlike anything we'd seen before. The hills rise up and down in a very perky manner, unlike in England where the hills roll smoothly. And the fields are a magnificent shade of bright green, against the blue sky it is really beautiful. We stopped off at a beach along the way and went for a walk. It was really stunning, white sands and crashing waves. We walked along the sands to the end of the beach, observing a sign which said 'birds nesting'. On we walked happily lost in the beautiful scenery, when suddenly out of nowhere we saw a seagull heading straight for us... with a mean look in its eye... We were wondering what to do – run into the sea? face up to the savage beast? - when, just before it hit us, it veered upwards with a loud, high-pitched squawk, and then turned around and came right back at us! Despite my slightly irrational fear of birds (mainly pigeons – rats with wings) I found this all very amusing while Al was more worried that his eyes might get pecked out. We took a little video: (to be added later as takes aaages to upload) and ran on until the bird gave up and returned to its nest. Some of the other birds are much cuter though and they prefer to walk rather than fly which is funny. And they always hang out in pairs too - very sweet.

So our first night of camping brought us to a small campground in a national park. We parked up and set about cooking straight away on our small gas stove. Al whipped up a pasta feast and we both congratulated ourselves on our choice of transportation/accommodation and great cooking. The only slight downside were that the toilets were little more than a hole in the ground (I contended with this in the middle of the night with my little head torch on, trying not to look at the many spiders that had gathered in the cubicle for the night) and the shower was only hot for 3 minutes after inserting a NZ$ coin. That was certainly interesting. But the experience was a good one and in the morning, after a hearty breakfast, we took a little tramp (NZ lingo for a hike) through the national parkland to a waterfall.

The weather was glorious sunshine, blue skies and the forest was incredible, made up of giant ferns, palm trees and normal trees. We walked along a river that was so clear we could see right to the bottom and climbed up the hill to the waterfall which took around an hour in total. The waterfall looked great but I wanted a closer look so climbed down to the base of the fall on my own. I climbed onto a large rock and from there hopped on lots of different rocks in the pool to get a better view. It was so tranquil down there I could have stayed all day. On my way back I leaned over a rock to see how far I had to jump when, shock horror, Alex's precious sunglasses, with which I had been entrusted, fell from my head into the river. Ahhh! So I had no choice but to jump in after them. It was annoying because I had spent so much energy hopping around keeping dry but I was also rather pleased that I had an excuse to get wet as it was such a hot day and the water was so inviting. Al wasn't too pleased that I nearly lost his sunglasses but he's found it in his heart to forgive me I think.

So we continued up the coast to a small place called Cathedral cove where there is a beautiful cove surrounded by cliffs and a cave that goes straight through the cliff to another beach. The sea was beautiful aqua-marine blue and the Southern Pacific Ocean waves crashed on the beach.

After 2 months in South America we are still in awe at the first-worldness of this place. Every town we pass through makes us stare in amazement at how advanced it is here, and every cafe we pass is like 'wow, real coffee!' But I don't think it's just because we've been travelling, they really have a great quality of life here. It's very comparable to Britain here – the countryside, the people, the towns; but it is a bit different i.e. the hills are green and in parts look very much like the Scottish Borders where I come from or the Scottish Highlands, but with the exception of palm trees amid the forests and the colour of the sea being a beautiful aqua-marine from anywhere on the island; the weather is a lot better – at least it is actually sunny in summer; the towns all have fish n chip shops and cafes but somehow they look much nicer than in the UK; and the people, who essentially are of the same stock as the British, look more relaxed and are much friendlier and chattier than the Brits – although not necessarily healthier and sun-exposure has taken its toll on quite a few of the older people.

Al's new 'fro from a windy NZ hilltop:

Another beautiful beach where Al made himself comfy on the sand dunes:

We've had a lot of fun giggling at NZ road signs. It seems that everything in writing (be it a sign, a shop name etc) is a message written to rhyme or in slang. E.g. instead of simply saying 'stop at red light' the sign will say 'Red means stop, end of bloody story!' Instead of saying 'don't drink and drive' they say 'Drink + drive = Grave result!' Instead of 'mind the pedestrians' they say 'Don't burst their bubble!' (with a pic of a bubble around some walkers or cyclists) And they like to say 'Merge like a zip' (with a picture of a zip) when your coming onto the motorway. However our favourite so far has to be 'C'mon guys, get firewise!' written outside every town's fire station. Alex has adapted it for general everyday use 'C'mon guys, get streetwise' (which we say to bad drivers and generally anyone who crosses our path) - it's a very versatile slogan. There are many street signs in NZ telling people how to drive, but there is a reason for this – the people here are terrible drivers. They speed around corners, driving over the central line, they overtake on corners and they drive on your ass when they want to overtake. Driving a campa is very different to driving a car, for the obvious reason that you are the enemy. Manys the time I have cursed caravan drivers on the small winding Scottish roads, desperately trying to find a space to overtake on. Well now that's us! Although I do hasten to add that our campa is more like a van, less like a whole house on wheels. Still although we're considerate campies, leaving plenty of space for overtaking, we're sure we can see the poor kiwis who are stuck behind us mouthing the words “rattle yer dags mate!” (i.e. get a move on!)

As we want to concentrate on the South Island we have had to do a fair bit of driving through the north. We've tried to sleep outside camping parks as it's free and we're extremely poor after having been raped so much in Chile, however occasionally it's been unavoidable i.e. when we've needed power or when we haven't been able to find somewhere to park. The first camping ground we stayed in was in a town called Napier and we really needed to charge some of our electrics and have a decent shower etc. We marveled at how some people live, those whose homes are caravans which remain parked in the same camping ground for years (you can always tell cos the grass is longer around their wheels). And we also marveled at the size of some people's campas, which literally dwarfed our small van. Whole houses on wheels, complete with bathrooms, living rooms and probably a jacuzzi on the roof if you look hard enough.

We, however have been managing fine with our little bed/kitchen/dining room conversion:

We were a tad disappointed to find that campers aren't as friendly as we thought they'd be, probably cos most of them are tourists (the English are the most unfriendly) and unlike my preconception of joining up barbies with your neighbour and clinking beer bottles as the sun goes down over the caravan rooftops, it's more like doing your washing up in silence and getting up early to beat the race to the showers. But hey, we enjoyed our campa van trailerpark trash experience, but we probably won't make a habit of it. Unfortunately the next night we had to stay in another camping park. We had finally made it down to Wellington for our ferry, scheduled for the next day, but couldn't find anywhere suitable to park up. The sea was too rough for us to stop at a beach lookout and we were worried we would be swept away and we didn't want to sleep at a motorway lay-by. Plus it's quite built up around Wellington and all the small country roads only led to private properties.

After two hours of driving round, with the sun getting lower and lower on the horizon, we stopped at a proper trailer-trash camping ground. I hopped out to inspect, privately praying they would be full, and went to the manager's office to inquire. I rang the bell and was greeted by a huge man, skin-head, tatooed down both arms and wearing a wife-beaters vest and a snarl on his face – I had just interrupted his T.V dinner – a grave offense as far as trailer-trash ar
e concerned.
“Hi!” I beamed brightly and falsely “Do you have any sites available?”
“Ur, yuh.” he grunted (in trailer-trash speak this means 'yes').
“Oh great! And how much is that for an unpowered site?”
“Twenny-sux” (NZ's pronounce the number six as 'sux').
“Ok, is that per person or per van?”
“Er, yuh for the two a yuz”.
“Ok well could I let you know in a minute?”
Big mistake to ask this question as it involved the prospect of disturbing his T.V dinner again.
“No!” he barked, “You can tell me now, are you gunna take it or not?” Yikes!
“Oh... ok” I stammered, “but I must check with my boyfriend first...” but by then he had slammed the door in my face.
I scuttled back to Al and opened the door shouting “drive! let's get the hell outta here!” and off we sped as fast as our little campa could take us.
We eventually found a camping place at a nearby happy clappy 'Christian' camping ground where alcohol was banned and the sounds of a guitar strumming kumbaya could be heard on the wind. We cooked up a tomato-rice dish, enjoyed a furtive beer and settled down for the night, happy campers and ready to hit the South Island the following day.

Torres del Paine / Punta Arenas

2008-11-10T08:40:00.018Z

Southern Patagonia is a very cold place! The weather seems to change every ten minutes from freezing wind, to rain, to sunshine and back to wind again. The wind from the south is particularly vicious and no amount of thermal underwear or Peruvian woolly hats seems able to keep it out.

We arrived at the Torres del Paine national park, checked into our ridiculously overpriced hostel (fiscal rape is the new term we like to use, we have been raped quite a bit in Chile) and set off on our merry way to the base of the torres (towers). I had mistakenly thought that it would be an easy dander across rolling hills in the sunshine, oh how wrong I was.

We began a stiff climb upwards, which never really got any easier. Half way up our first hill the spring in our step was quickly extinguished when a fierce snow storm began. The Torres that we had been admiring just minutes earlier disappeared behind a thick dark cloud. Oh dear, we hadn't been reckoning on not being able to see them – that's what we were here for!
On we ploughed, through the strong wind which whipped through our woolly hats, and the snow which smacked into our faces until we couldn't talk because our mouths were so numb. Around us the trees bent from the wind and the pathways we were following quickly became slushy and impossible to walk quickly on.

Our trek took us through snowy forests which reminded me of Narnia, across rapid icy rivers and down muddy banks. After 4 hours of this – Al galloping ahead like a hardy mountain goat and I trying to keep up with his pace with the odd call of “what's the bloody hurry?!” - and a little grumbling from me (actually a lot of grumbling from me) we reached the foot of the mountain we had to ascend before we were at the base of the Torres. It looked impossible, it had snowed so hard that we couldn't even see the track ahead of us and in places the path was marked out by rivlets and waterfalls which we had to climb up. After pulling ourselves up the mountain side in the snow for an hour and a half we finally made it to the base.
The clouds cleared slightly and we had quite a good view of the magnificent 3000ft granite towers above us. A small pond sat picturesquely below the towers – we later found out that this 'pond' was in fact a 2km long lake – it just looked small in comparison.

The way down was even more fun, I slid down on my bum (was wearing waterproof trousers which came in very handy for this) and Al clung onto trees and rocks along the way. At one point he decided to rest on a signpost which promptly came away in his hands causing a landslide and a huge boulder to crash down the mountainside and a booming sound to echo through the mountain range. We stood in shock for a minute or two, if anyone had been in the way they would certainly have died, but thankfully no one was there and no one saw. As our own mortality became all too clear to us we decided to get out of there as soon as possible and rushed, slipping and sliding on the ice to the safety of the forest.

Back at the hostel we warmed our freezing fingers and dried our boots on the fire. We were sharing a dorm with two Australians and an American, all really nice and it was fun. The Aussies had been traveling for two years and were coming to the end of their travels. We figured that the extortionate cost of the dorm (C$24,500 pp inc. bedsheets which are extra – to give you a comparison our average stay in other places has been around C$5,000 pp) was due to the great view that we had of the Torres. The clouds suddenly cleared and Alex took this great picture.

Why did we bother climbing all the way there to see them when we could have stayed in the warmth and looked out of the window! We spent a freeeezing night in the hostel, they make you pay extra for bed sheets (seriously!) which are only an inch or two thick, in an unheated dorm at zero degrees celcius outside. But hey, it was either that or camp outside and we didn't fancy that too much.

The next day we joined our tour bus which was to take us around the rest of the park in the comfort of a heated van. Unfortunately we had very little time on our hands and so this was the most time-economical way of doing things.
It was great though, we didn't spend much time in the minibus at all and went on walks to see waterfalls and mountains and the lakes of the park – Lago Pehoe, Lago Torres, Lago Azul and Lago Grey and of course the glacier at Lago Grey and the icebergs that come from it - freeeezing! And very windy! It was very strange to see icebergs in the middle of a park and we ran over in anticipation. The wind was very strong here and we struggled to hold onto our cameras as we took photos.

There are also lots of condors in the park, they are such amazing birds and we watched a group of ten of them gliding in circles searching for food.

We also saw this llama carcass which had been eaten by a puma:

On the way home we came across two hitchhikers, standing next to their overturned car. They had skidded on the road, lost control and flipped their 4x4 over and come out of it relatively unscathed.

We suffered a sad loss on the way home. I misplaced my red Peruvian alpaca hat at a restaurant... I'm extremely saddened by this loss as it has come a long way with us and has kept my head very warm on numerous cold occasions. If anyone reading this happens to go to a cafe at a cave near Puerto Natales where there is a big statue of a bear, please return it to me :.-(

That night we stayed in another freezing hostel in Puerto Natales, they don't believe in central heating here so both Al and I are sniffing away like crazy. Puerto Natalies is a nice little touristy town, strangely everyone here looks the same – it's a bit creepy actually... especially all the women, they are all small, with pale skin, dark long hair, dark eyes and small noses and mouths... it really is a bit odd – I thought that maybe 20 years ago or so there was a man in town who seduced a lot of women and had a lot of love children? Probably not, but everyone here is probably related in one way or another.

So we moved on and caught the 7am bus the next morning... in the rain with our rucksacks again... to Punta Arenas on the Straights of Magellan. Here is me in the rain, sans red woolly hat - sniff sniff. A very historically interesting area. The city is three hours south of Puerto Natales and even colder! We stayed in a great, clean, homely little backpackers hostel here called Hostal Independencia run by a really friendly guy and at a great price (although the room was a little cold as usual). We spent the day in the natural history museum which was extremely interesting. They had decided to stuff every bird and animal in the area so we were treated to an exciting aray of stuffed puma, rat, fox, hare and even... most distastefully... vulture and condor. Really gave me the heeby jeebies, especially as they were really badly stuffed and a bit mouldy. Anyway, there were interesting sections on the first settlers from Europe to the area, the early sea-farers including Magellan, Drake, Shackleton and Cavendish and the local tribes people in the area. The natives used to run around naked (in this weather!) and paint their bodies in strange stripes, it looked really freaky and we bought a few postcards to hang on our wall when we get home – just to scare us a bit every now and then.

Later we visited the local penguin colony. I was particularly excited about this having been a big fan of the movie March of the Penguins.

The colony contained 10,000 Magellanic penguins however most of them were out swimming but we still got a good view of a group of them. They are very funny creatures and it was awesome to see them swimming and waddling about in the wild.

Punta Arenas was a great town and we would have liked to explore the area more but our onward travels beckoned and the next day we flew to Santiago on the strangest flight ever... we had bought a ticket to Santiago on the internet, however once we boarded we found out that the plane was also making stops at two other cities along the way! So our plane journey was a bit like a bus journey, we took off and touched down three times in total and different people came on and off the plane. we sadly suffered another tragic loss - Al's new fishing rod, we left it at the hostal by mistake. Al was very sad, esp as he hadn't even caught something with it... we decided to leave the fishing until we're next in Scotland.
Anyway back to the plane journey - funnily enough we actually had one of our best meals in Chile on that plane, this may sound strange to you since it is widely known that aeroplane food is nothing to get excited about... however it is if you have had to put up with the terrible Chilian cuisine for three weeks. Apart from a couple of exceptions which I mentioned in the blog the food in Chile is absolutely dire. I would say that it's on a par with Bolivia. For a country that has probably the longest stretch of coastline in the world you would think that they know a thing or two about cooking fish... well we had better fish in Bolivia which has only one lake and NO coastline, than in the WHOLE of Chile (bar Santiago where it seems all the good fish goes to). The wine was good, I'll give that to them, but when you get to a city at the end of a long day's driving and there is only a hot dog/pizza place open you wonder what is going on here. I'm ashamed to admit that we actually resorted to McDonald's and Pizza Hut on a couple of occasions... it was that bad, and this has been the only country in which we've done this.
Many other travelers we spoke to complained about being fiscally raped, it wasn't just us, people really felt that Chile was an overpriced country – budget accommodation was also an issue with most 'hostals' being stuck in a 70s time warp, complete with bathrooms that make you feel dirtier when you exit than when you enter. On our tour in the Torres del Paine park we met an American girl who was married to a Chilian and living in Valparaiso. We discussed the situation in Chile and brought up the very valid question – where does all the money go? The people here are certainly poor despite the amounts we spend in their hotels/restaurants, so it is a mystery to us. She told us that there are about 70 of rich families who own all the land and big businesses in Chile and that basically all the money goes to them and the ordinary people on the street have no chance at setting up any kind of competition. It all sounded rather corrupt to us and helped to explain things a bit better e.g. high prices, monopolisation and poor standard of living despite high prices. Chile is a geographically amazing country and we saw so many amazing things here, however I wouldn't rate it as a country that I want to revisit anytime soon. Al on the other hand really loved it and wants to come back... so... each to their own I say.

Anyway Santiago to Auckland... the adventures continue. And to make matters more exciting we're rebooking our flights so that we return early March after visiting Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand – woooooo!!!!