We arrived into Fiji airport to music, singing, flowers and plenty of  “bula’s” – the most widely used word in Fiji and soon leant pretty quickly that things moved a lot slower around here -it was time to start getting used to not being in the western world again and to get used to ‘Fiji time’!  After a quick stop in Nadi we made our way to the marina to catch a boat to the Yasawa islands. These islands are to the west of the mainland and are remote but accessible by the fantastic big yellow boat ‘the yasawa flyer’ that does a return trip everyday to the most northerly islands, a journey of 5 hours, and back again to Nadi stopping at all the islands on the way..

Our first stay was at Nabua Lodge on the island of Nacula, the most northerly point of the boat’s itinery. The lodge’s small boat took us from the yellow boat to a very rustic little place with a few bures (a fijan house), a dormitory, no electricity and no people! There was just us and a german guy who had caught the boat with us. We sat down to a lunch of sausage stew ( until David realised he had got food poisoning from our Nadi hotel and ran off!) and wondered whether the travel agent had fixed us up at her family’s home or something.  We later went down to the beach and realised all of the other people staying at the resort were in hammocks  scattered along the beach – this was one sleepy place. Dinner time came round and David felt ill so I went on my own and discovered there were in fact nine of us staying at Nabua altogether and it was pretty cool bunch of people with a few crazy characters – in fact over our 5 nights there we realised this was the place where the crazy people seemed to congregate! Nabua was a great little place and you felt as though you were almost living in a Fijan village as the locals walked through the resort after school and work to get back to the main village greeting you with a friendly “bula”. The evening entertainment consisted of a communal dinner, the bula song which was sang to us by the staff and the bula dance which we had to do (unfortunately) and then if we were lucky some excruciating games of musical statues or the snake dance.

During the daytimes we went on lots of nice relaxing little trips including hand-line fishing when David caught the only fish of the day. This was a very proud moment as he caught it using a coke bottle and a piece of fishing line – although we couldn’t eat the fish as it was a non-edible one and was used as bait for next day (when they caught four fish!).

catch of the day (the fish that is!)

 We also sailed to the blue lagoon where the movie was filmed and did some superb snorkelling and drinking of pina coladas!

Our next stop was a resort called White Sandy Bay and we ended up meeting up with others that had stayed at Nabua. The place was also lovely and quiet but a few more people than Nabua and an amusing evening entertainment programme that was similar in organisation to a school play and presented by a woman who got the unfortunate nickname of ‘Shaft’ due to her stylish afro and side burn combo! Life on the islands started to make us very lazy getting into a routine of breakfast, sleep on the beach, lunch, sleep on the hammock, dinner then bed! We did take a trip out to swim with the manta rays though which was cool except for the strong currents that meant you get up drifting out to sea if not careful. As I’m a big wuss and hung to the boat for fear of drifting off to New Caledonia I only spotted one but David managed to spot three spaceship looking mantas.

After 3 nights at white sandy we got back on the yellow boat and headed for Naqualia lodge, a little dubiously as no-one we had met had ever heard of it before and you pretty soon get to know all of the islands and that becomes the main evening conversation topic. On our transfer boat we were told it was very quiet, and new and not quite finished yet. We were amused to find that we were the only people staying there and had the place to ourselves, hammocks, beach and dining room and all. Dinner time was particularly romantic with a Fijian band playing only for us! Our bure was amazing with a balcony overlooking the sea and we ate fresh fish every day we were joined by 3 others for the following two nights , a couple that had stayed at Nabua and white sandy and guy from  Canada.

Our ocean adventures here took us swimming with reef sharks and then on to a trek up a very steep mountain in about 35 degree temperatures.

Our final destination on the islands was Bounty Island. The island was the location for Celebrity Island 2 but lucky for us there was no Calum Best or Abi Titmuss in sight (apart from a few proudly displayed photos on the wall). The island is a small caye that is surrounded by a white sandy beach a looks the epitomy of paradise island. The resort was a bit more luxury than the other islands with a bar, swimming pool and electricity! However we actually missed the rustic life back on the other islands and although it was nice to have a cocktail on the beach you can’t beat a nice beach all to yourself in the day and a good Bula dance performed by the Bula boys in the evening!

Back on the mainland we travelled down to the Coral Coast where we stayed at a very cool hostel called the beach house which is about as luxury as you get for £30 a night and took mad jungle trek and swim in water falls. We spent our final week in Nadi as our flight was delayed for a few days which meant we had no option but to chill by the pool for a few days…it’s a hard life (actually David had to work but at least I enjoyed it anyway!).

Onto Samoa……….

Well coming from the happiest, sunniest, smiliest place in the world it was going to be difficult for Samoa to top our Fiji experience and our arrival at the airport certainly didn’t match that of the Fiji one.  Its ashame that your views of a place are sometimes impacted by where you have come from or your individual experience.

The next day we took a ferry over to the island of Savaii where we spent the journey rammed up the side of a boat

Our fale over the lagoon

 hemmed in by SUVs which was interesting. We stayed 2 nights a beautiful little place where we slept in a Fale (traditional Samoan house) over a lagoon. We snorkelled in the freshwater lagoon and saw a turtle come up for air when we sitting on the deck. Our first morning there we could watch England vs USA match and realised for the first time that the Miss Samoan photos next to the TV were of the daughter of the owner of the place who was sitting at the next table. A very weird experience sitting watching the footie in a tiny place in the middle of the Pacific with Miss Samoa!

We also almost gatecrashed a wedding a hotel in the town only to find out a few days later it was the wedding of a Samoan national rugby player – It’s not hard to mingle with the who’s who of Samoa it seems!

We decided to spend the next 4 nights in Apia as we assumed that we would find some cheaper budget accommodation – this involved a boat journey back (with Miss Samoa) and the funkiest bus we have ever seen . A monster truck style wooden creation painted red and yellow, wooden seats, no windows and very loud samoan pop music – UK bus companies take note – this is the way to travel!

Apia is strange place with lots of colonial buildings of German, USA, British and New Zealand influences. The road along the harbour ‘Beach Road’ is home to lots of hotels and bars and we settled in a hotel there for 4 nights. We had expected Samoa to be cheap and had budgeted for this however it turned out to be the most expensive country we had been to yet with budget accommodation options few and far between on top of this the accommodation is generally not that good compared to what we had been used to say in Asia or Fiji or even New Zealand which was also cheaper. We managed to get some good snorkelling in though and a visit to the former home of the author Robert Louis Stevenson, perhaps Samoa’s most famous resident, which was nice.

But it was fair to say  after a very expensive, very rainy grey week in Samoa we were glad to be packing our bags and heading off to the airport to Hawaii!

Aloha Hawaii (By David)

We only spent 4 days in Oaha Hawaii, but two of these days go down as some of our top days so far in our year trip. The first was our Lost trip, which featured a hummer tour of the island taking in all the locations of the series ‘Lost’ as well as other films such as Jurassic Park and 50 first dates.

Kualoa Ranch

 Being Lost geeks it would have been hard to meet our expectations of the scenery featured in the series, but Hawaii is actually as beautiful as you imagine it to be if not even more beautiful. One of our favourite places so far is the Kualoa ranch on Hawaii that features an unbeatable backdrop of mountains that has been used for many different films as well as loads of Lost scenes.

Our next day we went to Hanauma Bay, which is a protected coral reef and beach in Hawaii where you can snorkel and see a huge variety of massive fish. And I mean massive, the biggest we have seen on our trip so much so that they were scary at times. The highlight of the snorkelling though was our unexpected sighting of a large green sea turtle that was feeding on the coral just about 20m off shore – amazing! This was definitely the best snorkelling day of our trip so far and there’s been a lot of them!

Waikiki

We stayed in Waikiki, which itself was so much fun we did not want to leave. Although it was a lot more modern and westernised than the other pacific islands we had been to there was really nice vibe and Waikiki beach is great for watching surfers, sunsets and swimming in the gorgeous pacific ocean and we kicked ourselves for only booking 4 days here and 7 in Apia, which could not be more opposite.

So after a fantastic 6 weeks island hopping across the Pacific it was time to head to the North America. We were sad that we hadn’t given ourselves just a bit more time and would really miss the way of life on the islands that was so friendly and fun – even the airlines are fun with the staff being the friendliest in the world and wearing flowers in their hair. Our highlights were definitely the Yasawas in Fiji where we enjoyed the get away from it all experience of no electricity, no shops, few people and just lots of palm trees, hammocks, friendly locals and snorkelling and we’ll always remember our trip out to Kualoa Ranch in Oahu- one of our top most beautiful places in the world.

We arrived in Auckland on March 18^th and our first mission was to go and collect our transportation and accommodation for the next few weeks, ‘Gina’ our VW campervan.  Angela had found a company that hired out VWs which was good for us as we would be a group of five travelling together and there were enough seats – (they would give us a tent as well so didn’t all have to sleep in the van!)  However the VW Company were also based in the middle of nowhere (not Auckland as we thought) requiring me and Angela to make an amusing journey of a walk, ferry, walk, taxi and then a further 800m walk down a winding country lane.

When we arrived at our destination (a house in the middle of nowhere surrounded by VWs in various states of disrepair) there was no-one in although there was a set of keys in the front door. After about 10mins of calling ‘yoo hoo’, ‘helloooo?’ and deciding whether or not we should just let ourselves in, we attracted the attention of a lady who apparently lived in what looked like the garage. She kindly went to find the VW man who appeared from the other side of a hill with spanner in hand, oil on forehead greeting us with ‘G’day…. guess what we’re working on?’ Um – hopefully not our van we thought  ‘still got a bit of work to do on the van – the beds only arrived yesterday so should just be another 45 mins’ He asked us to make ourselves at home in his back garden and help ourselves to tea and drinks.

An hour and half later we still saw no sign of the VW man or our van so we went to investigate. We found them both along with as team of mechanics (all under the age of 18) working away on an orange VW combi that didn’t look remotely ready for a road trip the length of NZ.

After a bit of umming and erring we agreed to take a different vehicle for now and they would deliver the VW to our campsite in Cambridge that night as we had to pick up the David, Ray and Jane and get to Cambridge. We were told we could take the Bongo only problem being that the suspension needed changing, so we had to wait while he sent ‘Logan’ one of his apprentices out to the nearest Bongo garage.  So as we sat there in the middle of nowhere watching 13 year olds change suspension on a vehicle Angela was about to drive, and looking at our VW van (which we had now christened ‘Gina’) covered in tools, screws and bolts we wondered what the hell we had let ourselves in for!

A mere four hours after arriving to pick up our van we finally escaped the mad VW farm in a different van and headed to Auckland to pick up David, Ray and Jane and make our way to Cambridge.  That night, as promised Logan brought us Gina, only in the darkness of a supermarket car park change over our laptop was accidently left in the bongo that was now headed to the other side of the country! Next morning after our first sleep in Gina me, David and Angela headed out to retrieve the laptop from the other side of the country and practice 12 point turns and pushing Gina down country lanes… it was all fun and luckily the laptop was rescued and we never had to repeat those manoeuvres in the van again! We got back to Cambridge in time to find a pair of charity shop shoes for me and David and then get back to the campsite to get changed for the wedding. Busy day!

The wedding was of a friend we used to work with at Atkins – Nathan and his lovely fiancée and now wife Helen. It was probably one of the nicest weddings we had been too and the venue and weather were gorgeous and Nathan and Helen were very generous in the unlimited wine, beer, entertainment and food they provided for their guests. It seems that maybe David and Ray may have had more of the unlimited wine than anyone else though and us brits were named and shamed for nicking wine glasses and bottles of wine and drinking them whilst being drunken disorderlies on the guest bus back to Cambridge… sorry again Nathan and Helen!

The following day we awoke to sore heads and a desperate need for a full English breakfast before we went over to the Day After wedding BBQ. Full English accomplished we went to Nathan’s parents beautiful house near Cambridge to top ourselves up with excellent steaks and more red wine. We were also given a guided tour of Nathan’s parents’ dairy farm and got to milk some cows.. until they all started pooing on us!

We stayed over at Nathan’s parents for two nights and in this time we said sad goodbyes to Ray and Jane who were heading back to Australia and hello’s to our new travel buddies Angela’s friends Hannah and Jenna who were joining us on a road trip of New Zealand in Gina. We were given a tour of the local area by Nathan and taken to Waitomo Caves where we did some black water rafting which was fun but very cold as my wetsuit kept opening.  It was cool though when we got to float along on our tubes in pitch black with only glow worms lighting up the caves.

The first stop on our road trip with Gina was to Rotorua where we visited the smelly but fascinating (for geography graduates anyway) geothermal park complete with hot pools and rock formations caused by geothermal activity.  That night we attended a Maori Hangi and concert performed at our Maori village which gave an insight into traditional Maori culture, songs and dances followed by a feast of a meal cooked in an underground oven (Hangi).

After leaving Rotorua we set off on a mammoth journey in Gina to Wellington where we would catch the ferry to the South Island. Our journey took us past Taupo and the Desert Road and (what we think is) Mount Doom. The weather was pretty bad, either raining or very windy which can be a problem with no power steering on the desert road! We stayed overnight at Himitangi beach – possibly the windiest place in the world and travelled down to Wellington stopping for a very nice and very generous lunch at Jenna’s mom’s lovely friend’s house on the way where we also excitingly got some freshly picked lemons (easily pleased!).

The South Island……..

At Wellington we caught an early morning ferry to Picton on the south island. We were fortunate enough to get a sunny day as the views from the ferry as it enters Marlborough Sounds are beautiful and we stood out on the top deck catching some long awaited sunshine. We arrived in Picton and drove the short distance to our campsite in nearby Blenheim where we were getting picked up to do a cycle tour of the Marlborough region wineries. We were equipped with bikes, helmets, wine bottle carriers, water and a map of the area and off we went to sample a few wines.  We soon discovered cycling gets slightly more difficult/more fun as you taste more wine! We sampled some nice sauvignon blancs which is the variety that the area is famous for and stopped at the not shabby Highfield estate for a full glass of wine each and a cheeseboard…….very nice. We visited four wineries and made some good purchases (again) and struggled on back to the cycle tour shop. We made it back in time though unlike the couple who arrived late a bit worse for wear and embarrassed claiming they were late because they missed the turn off for the road!

The following day me and Angela fulfilled our geeky train fix by taking the Coastliner from Picton to Blenheim (Hannah came too but she probably wouldn’t appreciate being called a train geek!). The journey was only 30 mins but was worth it for the stunning views from the windowless viewing carriage of the mountains and coast.  We spent the afternoon taking a walk around Picton and along the Sound, stopping at a small beach for lunch. We got the best weather we had had in New Zealand so far and we finished off with ice cream and cold beers.

After getting fully refreshed at Blenheim with wine and good food we set off for the second mammoth journey to the Glaciers on the west coast of the south island. The scenery and views en-route were stunning mountains, lakes  and rivers and as we reached the west coast we got views of temperate rainforests along the coast.  The journey was made all the more interesting when the speedometer decided to stop working in the van and a quick call to our helpful friendly VW man informed us not to worry about it and just go as fast as the car in front! We stopped for lunch at a deserted beach and then visited the very cool pancake rocks with weird rock formations and blowholes.

We arrived into Franz Josef and unfortunately I still had that uni work to finish so motel it was for me and David which was probably for the best considering the size of the plots at the campsite where Gina and the girls were staying.  Franz Josef town was cool with a mix of alpine scenery and rainforest. We took a half day hike on the Franz Josef Glacier and it was probably our favourite activity that we did in New Zealand. The ice up close was really blue and it was fun (though sometimes a bit claustrophobic) squeezing through the crevasses. We followed our hike with a dip in the hot pools and then the other rewarded themselves for good days exercise with shots while I finished my assignment (why would anyone study and travel at the same time?!).

The next day we set off for Queenstown another stunning journey so good that at one point we stopped every ten minutes just to get out and get a better look. We broke the journey up by having lunch in Haas which is perhaps the strangest place ever and feels like the end of the world. We also stopped at Wanaka puzzling world which was fun especially the maze which me, David and Jenna managed to solve in a record time (sorry Hannah and Angela!). There are some other cool things like holograms and weird rooms that made you look very tall or very short (um.. the photos probably explain this a bit better).

Queenstown has a gorgeous setting on the shore of a lake and surrounded by mountain ranges. We camped in the centre of town and did some pottering around town, went up the cable cars, took part in the kiwi pub crawl and watched Angela, Hannah and Jenna paraglide off the top of a mountain.  The town is so nice that we contemplated staying there for a few weeks as we were looking to settle somewhere so that I could revise for my exams which I was taking in Auckland in May. However our laptop’s monitor decided to die and the only place that we could get it fixed in the whole of the south of the south island was Dunedin.  So we travelled our final journey with Gina, Angela, Hannah and Jenna to Dunedin, Edinburgh of the South. The city does feel very Scottish with streets named after those in Edinburgh, cold weather  and even a slight Scottish dialect. For our last activity together we took a trip out on the Taieri Canyon railway which departs from Dunedin rail station (another geeky train fix!) having another lovely sunny day with yet more beautiful scenery. 

……..and so our journey with Gina and our travel buddies came to an end and after a goodbye dinner we said our farewells and watched them depart travelling (who knows how fast!) up to sunny Christchurch.

Life after Gina……….

We ended up staying in Dunedin for two weeks so that we could get the laptop fixed and do lots of revision and work in the very quaint 1970’s style local library and get used to not living in a van. We found a B&B where the owner Simon gave us cheap rates, a monitor for our laptop, yummy breakfasts and use of the spa suite only downside was it was at the top of a very steep hill  – I mean almost vertical! After two weeks in Dunedin we started to feel very cold as it was now getting on for winter (and knackered climbing the hill everyday) and we realised we needed to head north for some sun (it confusing in the southern hemisphere!).  We found out that our laptop was not repairable ,in NZ anyway, and had to go and buy ourselves a new one so we are now carrying around two laptops.

We travelled over to Te Anau and Milford Sound for a few days to do some hiking and sightseeing and then headed up to Christchurch which reminded us a lot of Cambridge. We then travelled on the Tranzalpine train cross country to the west coast from which we travelled to Nelson. Our stay in Nelson was at the most impressive hostel in the world. It was basically like staying in your mate’s mansion. Each room was done out like a five star hotel room complete with four poster beds and chandeliers. There were only a few people staying there and everyone had their own luxury room to themselves. The lounge and kitchen were both kitted out in designer ranges and everyone just sat around drinking wine…..Crazy luxury backpacking!

Anyway we sadly had to leave the luxury of the Golden Lodge and head for Wellington where we had a cheap apartment with free internet (a rarity in NZ) booked for two weeks so that we could have our final revision and work session before my exams and leaving for Fiji. It was nice to have our own apartment and we took walks around the city of which the best attraction is the giant colossal squid at the Te Papa Museum – I love it!

Our last week finally arrived and time for the dreaded exams – we made our way to Auckland where we stayed with Nathan and Helen at their new home for the week. Again, it was great being in a real home and spending time with Nathan and Helen and also being able to catch up on Lost Series 6! The exams went well (I think) and we celebrated my last one with a trip up the skytower and much wine at a bar in the city centre.

The following day we said yet more sad farewells to our friends as we made our way to the airport and waved bye to New Zealand -the country where we had spent the last two months and have got so used to it feels like home – thanks for having us NZ!

The shop was also full of cork hats and boomerangs which I’m sure was meant for tourists but amusing nonetheless.  Another sign was the slogans of the t-shirts of the people waiting in the airport lounge ‘ I couldn’t give a castlemaine xxxx for ‘ and ‘my liver is my enemy’ . We had worries leaving Asia for Australia as we thought it might be a bit too much like home – we needn’t have worried as it was definitely very Australian, and we knew we were in for a treat.

So we managed to escape Darwin without getting eaten by crocodiles or getting tempted into buying a cork hat and got our transfer flight to Brissy (as the Aussies and us like to call it). We were met at the airport by our friends Ray and Jane who had moved to Brisbane in January. I It was great to see them and a very nice welcome to Australia. We stayed with them at Ray’s moms house in Cleveland which is nice quiet suburb of Brissy where we were very well  looked after by Ray, Jane and Annette. We were treated to the classic Australian BBQ and beers, and very happy to be in a real home for a change.  The afternoon we arrived we headed straight for the Castlemaine XXXX brewery tour (well come on we were in Australia and we were with Ray and Jane what else would we start with!). The tour was well done and nicely topped off with four free beers at the end which delayed the jet lag for a bit.

The following day we were given a guided tour of Brissy which seems like a great place to be and did some shopping to get some smart clothes for David so that he didn’t look like a scruffy backpacker for the wedding we were going to the following week in New Zealand.

Cute Koala!

The four of us then set off on a four day road trip to Sydney where we going to catch our flights to Auckland. Our first stop was the end of Ray’s mom’s street where we were lucky enough to spot four cute koalas in the trees, living in a small patch of parkland. We didn’t get to hug one but it was a really cool experience to see the koala’s just out in Surburbia! Our next stop was the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise which was good to see but very windy so no swimming for us. We decided to head inland and visit the Springbrook National Park, an area of rainforest to the west of the Gold Coast. We arrived to rainy weather but that didn’t stop us getting out for a picnic lunch and venturing out to the various lookouts (we are British after all!) The National Park was cool and even though it was raining it was still beautiful, even the ‘best of all’ lookout that was just a big mass of white cloud. We got back in the car and David realised he had been attacked by a leech which was quite amusing and the leech decided to join for the whole journey suctioned to David’s window!

We stayed the night at a seaside town called Ballina in a lovely cabin by the lake. We almost forgot about the time zone difference entering into New South Wales though fortunately me and Jane did a runner to the shop and got some wine and beers in five mins before closing – should be used to crossing time zones now as we have crossed each one since the UK by land!

The second day of our trip we were headed to Port Macquerie and we decided to stop off at Red Rock on the way. We arrived at Red Rock to a massive expanse of beach with weird red rock formations that would make excellent photos. Its a shame then at this point I realised we had left the camera at our last hotel, 6 hours back. A few calls were made and we located the camera back to the cabin at Ballina and agreed to get it sent on to Ray’s brothers in Sydney.. phew! Anyway after getting over my annoyance at myself for leaving the camera I then got used to being free from the camera and able to enjoy without looking at everything as if it were a photo- that was one advantage anyway. We pushed on through the day so that we could arrive in port Macquerie while it was still light as we finally had some lovely Australian sunshine and got there in time for a swim next to a cool surf beach. The waves were rough but we braved them anyhow (well the others did – I just kind of paddled near the shore a bit!). That night we had some of the best pizza’s ever (nacho pizza anyone?!) and some yummy red wine which acted as a warm up for our destination the next day  - wine tasting in the Hunter Valley.

We are all big wine lovers and the weather was beautiful so we decided to get up early to get there in good time and make the most of it. We arrived in the gorgeous Hunter Valley and had a big lunch to line our stomachs and said bye to Ray who was going to pick up our friend Angela who would be joining us. The rest of us headed off on our own walking tour of the wineries. The region is good for Shiraz, our favourite wine, so every tasting we did was fantastic. We ended up probably drinking and buying more than we should have done but it was a great afternoon and one of the highlights of our trip. We met up with Ray and Angela (probably at bit more drunk than they were!) and did a bit more wine tasting and then caught with a nice swim in our campsite pool, BBQ and more wine that we’d purchased that day.

The next day we headed to our final destination, Sydney. We got dropped off a station where we caught the train into the city showing us an impressive view over the harbour as the train travelled over the bridge. As we only had an afternoon in the city we worked out a walking tour and saw the sights including the Opera House, Harbour Bridge, Botanical Gardens and the Rocks. It was all pretty nice and again we were lucky enough to get a hot sunny day of 27 degrees (not bad for Autumn).  Our trip ended there and we were sad to leave as we had really enjoyed Australia, its friendly warm people and laid back atmosphere. We really really wish we had given our selves more than a week there – but hey…. just means we have to go back another time!

We locked our bags away and went exploring KL using the fantastic LRT system (sorry I know I’m a geek but it’s been ages since we used a good urban transport system!). The city was lovely, really really clean and modern but with a real mix of Asian cultures. It’s also very very hot and sticky and there is thunder and lightning 312 days a year which meant we had to get used to the storms!

We had decided to get ourselves an apartment for a few nights as I needed to catch up with some MSc work and David also had work to do and also we actually missed cooking as we’d not stayed anywhere with a kitchen for 3 months and so wanted the luxury of our own kitchen. We found a great place on the edge of the city and we settled in for catching up on work… until I was ill again! It was just flu this time and not a food poisoning related illness but still meant I spent 4 days in bed. We extended our stay for a couple of days so we could see more of the city and spent time eating lots of excellent and cheap Indian food, riding the LRT and going to the cinema and shops. After KL we headed for Melaka as it was a highly recommended historic town to visit. It was a fairly odd place and after about an hour there I think we had seen everything – you have to worry about a place when its river boat tour’s most interesting fact was that the piece of land to the left is the site of the old cinema that was open from 1962 to 1994! However the detour to Melaka was certainly worth it if not just for the crazy hostel we stayed at. A live music duo played in the bar at night and the male singer sang an Audioslave song. We told him he sounded like the Malaysian Chris Cornell (he did as well!) and he was so impressed as that’s who he models himself on that he dedicated three Audioslave/Soundgarden songs to us in their final set. It was quite funny as we don’t think he had ever played to anyone who knew who Chris Cornell was before – as he usually sings on cruise ships where he only gets requests for the Beatles and Robbie Williams!

Singapore…

The next day we headed off to Singapore where we decided to spend our last week in Asia (and catch up on that work!) before we got our flight to Australia. Like KL, Singapore was very clean and incredibly safe. The safest place we have ever been. I am sure the death sentence for almost everything aides this. We were reading that two men received the death sentence for discharging a firearm in an internet cafe holdup. Even the intention of murder receives the death sentence. Which did not calm me as I unwittingly committed a crime on entering Singapore! We were walking through border control looking at all the signs that read ‘The sentence for drug trafficking is the death sentence’, when suddenly I realised I had chewing gum in my bag. Chewing gum is strictly banned in Singapore and all the signs read you are not allowed to enter Singapore with it. Oh dear, but we were in the border control cue before I realised and a sudden sense of panic fell on me as I struggled to think what to do with the banned substance. Should i confess and take the punishment or conceal the banned substance. I took the chance and put the chewing gum at the bottom of the back and squeezed through security with a nervous smile on me, and David Laughing at me. Luckily I made it through after a 10 minute ordeal. Then we read the sign more carefully and it said dental chewing gum was actually allowed, which the gum was. Oh well, all that panic for nothing.

However, the massive shock to us was the price of alcohol and we must have looked pretty cheap bartering over the price of a glass of wine at the bars on Clarke Quay! We did have the obligatory Singapore Sling in Raffles though as it has to be done and was a good ending to our time in Asia and marked the end of our overland journey.

We spent our last day at the airport as it had been recommended to me to spend some time there and we weren’t disappointed with the rooftop swimming pool, cinema, guitar hero and DJ hero mixing room, shops, cafes and the really cool Harry’s bar where you can sit on the terrace and drink beer or Singapore slings while you wait for your flight.
So, it was really sad to leave Asia but we looked forward to the next part of our trip going to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands of Fiji, Western Samoa and Hawaii.

The first three months of our trip were excellent and it’s really difficult to say which were our favourite moments though the places that would go back to right now are the Thai islands and Cambodia and the trans-siberian is highly recommended! We also decided that we might possibly come back to Asia after doing the USA and Central America part of our trip in September as there are still so many things we want to see. So our itinerary might change slightly – watch this space!

On top of that we managed to leave our camera in Ballina, NSW which is now safely with our friends in Brisbane only they cant post it to us with the battery in because its illegal. Our laptop also got left in a van which meant a bit of detour of a 100 miles or so to go fetch it and then it broke and can only be fixed in the UK! We bought another one though so we are now carrying around two laptops! So after 3 months travelling ascross Asia where we left behind nothing more than a bottle of shower gel we manged to misplace our most expensive items and break them. So anyway just a bit of excuse as to why we have been slack………and why we dont have photos for the following blogs (except for those kindly donated to us by our friends)….Hopefully we will be up to date very soon. So here goes the big catch up……….

Journey to Thailand

Well it’s fair to say we didn’t get off to a great start in Thailand. First of all we bought bus tickets to get there with the world’s most weird bus company.  One thing we have learnt about South East Asian people is that generally they do not like walking. Any distance you suggest walking that is over 10 metres is met with a look of shock and cry of ‘this is too far!!’. So for this reason when you buy a bus ticket to anywhere you always get a transfer from your hotel to the bus station/ticket shop/layby included. Leaving from Siem Reap on the 6am express bus (6 hours to Bangkok) we got picked up at our hotel in a minivan transfer bus which proceeded to take us all around Siem Reap and then drop us off at the bus which was parked literally 20 metres across the road from our hotel! It then went and got the rest of the passengers all of whom got on the bus (late by now) saying ‘well if I knew if it was this close I would’ve walked!’ Anyway after much faffing we finally left an hour late at 7am and took the journey to Poipet on the Cambodian/Thai border.  We arrived at Poipet, got shunted off the bus and stranded whilst the bus driver drove off. A sea of backpacks followed each other through the rather dubious town of Popiet in search of the border. We finally found where we should be – a window next to a smelly meat shop – and got stamped out of Cambodia. We then walked down a strange street of casinos to enter Thailand. Our first annoyance on the thai side was that we were only allowed 15 days in Thailand without a visa as we were entering overland. If you fly you get 30 days – we asked if we could get longer but no can do. This put us in a slightly bad mood with Thailand thinking how unfair it was that if you flew in you got longer but if you were doing the sustainable route travelling overland and supporting local economies around the borders you were done out of 15 days! We decided to revise our trip, originally thinking we would have 3 or 4 weeks in Thailand and decided we would spend more time in Malaysia and Singapore that didn’t require us to have a visa full stop. So there!

Once we got our stamp we then had to wait for our bus at a very smelly layby next to the world’s most awful toilets (costing 30 baht!) where we were all given a nice yellow sticker in exchange for our bus tickets by a shifty looking guy in a trilby. We then sat … and sat some more and sat some more until this rather scary northern Irish girl started yelling at the man demanding to know where the bus was. The man didn’t seem to know but after about 10 minutes led us all down the road so that we could then sit at the side of the road instead of the smelly toilet where we were a source of much amusement to the thai and Cambodian lorry drivers crossing the border. Eventually a sangthew ( a car with an open back thing with 2 benches on came) and picked up 10 of our group of 30. The rest of us waited for 20 minutess until it came back to up another 10 and then 20 minutes later still us final 10 were shunted into the back of the vehicle. We drove about 10 minutes until surprise, surprise we arrived at a restaurant, conveniently owned by the bus operator which was full of our fellow group members eating and drinking away – bags of goodies bought for the rest of the journey! I remember reading somewhere now that this is a classic scam in which the bus company makes more money by delaying the journey so that you spend loads of money in their restaurant. We worked out it probably doubles what they get from the fares! We got off and were directed to the restaurant  …’ go eat , drink, buy something!’

One of the Northern Irish girls asked what time we would be leaving and you can imagine the response from the weary, sunburnt travellers when the guy responded that we would leave in 1 hour! Funnily enough 5 minutes later our mini-van turned up! However there were no space for bags so three guys didn’t even mange to get a seat on the bus as we had to pile up our bags on one row of seats – they all looked pretty hung-over anyway as we waved goodbye to them en-route to Bangkok – hope they made it there eventually!…… Welcome to Thailand!

 Bangkok

Arriving at Bangkok was a scary culture shock of an experience. We hadn’t realised how long it had been since we had seen so many cars or flyovers or traffic lights that meant something to someone. There rows of skyscrapers and shops with actual fronts walls and windows. We almost asked the bus driver to take us back but remembered the stupid journey we’d done to get there!

The bus dropped us somewhere near to the Khao San road and we all followed this Canadian guy off the bus who said he knew where it was – he didn’t but we found it in the end… unfortunately. Of all the great things we had heard from people about this place we couldn’t help but feel it was a bit like Bilston market in the sun… with less friendly people… and more wannabe crusties! We found our hotel which was right on the Khao san road and enjoyed the fact that we had a rooftop swimming pool but not the fact that every time we left the place we had to walk through a mass of people selling overpriced tourist merchandise and annoying dreadlocked ‘travellers’ (that just stayed there and there went nowhere else).

Bangkok - from the rooftop pool

The following day we decided to walk out a bit and found a very nice area with a market and no tat and then headed over to the shopping area to check out siam square and sukhumvit and also to the station to buy some train tickets. Unfortunately train tickets weren’t available for the day we wanted so we had to spend an extra night in Bangkok. We soon shifted over to nice hotel just off Sukhumvit and much preferred it over there spotting all the ugly old white men with their stunning Thai girlfriends and walking around the Arab quarter where we had some very yummy food.

We left Bangkok on an overnight train to Trang in the south of Thailand. The train was pretty cool as we had 2^nd class sleepers which were basically 2 seats that turned into upper and lower berths with curtains across so they were quite comfortable, private and very cheap. Our plan was just to turn up in Trang and hope that we could be on an island by that afternoon without actually booking anything. Sure enough as soon as we got off the train there was a lady with a large board with all the names of places that her company could take us to- she informed us we could do to Ko Lanta in an hour’s time so off to Ko Lanta we went!

Andaman Islands

The part of Thailand we spent the most time in was the Andaman islands off the west of the mainland this was apparently the best place to go at this time of year weather wise and was also supposed to be a bit less full moon partyish (we have discovered we aren’t really backpackers!) and there are more places for peace and quiet if you avoid Phuket. Our first stop was Ko Lanta which was a shock at first, as its really been a long time since we saw real holidaymakers and its strange to say this but we felt guilty for being on holiday – it’s like that we got into such a frame of mind of travelling and roughing it that when you get to somewhere as beautiful as the Thai islands and its full of people on their annual two week holiday it feels odd! We also realised that actually we were so relaxed and away from it all that we didn’t really need the relaxing break of a two week holiday and that actually all those western tourists made us feel as though we were back in the western world. It also felt like we were going home soon as all the Thais we spoke to thought we were getting a flight home every time we were moving on or checking out a hotel!

So it took us a while to adjust but then we got ourselves some snorkels (well 1 snorkel as we are so poor and Ko Lanta was too

Us at Ko Phi Phi Ley

 expensive for us!) we had a great time. We went to Ko Phi Phi after Ko Lanta staying in this secluded and very basic resort place with its own beach which involved a very bumpy boat ride to get to – it was beautiful though and full of some strange characters. We took the resort’s boat out to Ko Phi Phi Ley famous for where the film the Beach is set ….. wow! The island was absolutely gorgeous, we got there really early so there were very few people there and the beach was gorgeous white sand, clear and turquoise water and a stunning backdrop. It’s a national park which is really good as  no development is allowed and all visitors there are on daytrips. We also did some snorkelling which actually turned David into the world’s most enthusiastic snorkeller as we saw amazing fish (don’t know what they were but David is buying a book so he can find out and will let you know!) and went swimming in the blue lagoon waters. We were so lucky to do the trip with just 3 other people on a traditional longtail boat early in the morning as when we were leaving we saw huge ferries crammed full of Chinese tourists all wearing lifejackets (even to snorkel!) and screaming a lot, struggling to see anything over the top of each other.

Our resort owned its own jungle as well which had a trail to an island viewpoint. The jungle was amazing with monkeys running around on the trail in front of you and baby monkeys high up in the trees, there was no one else around and it was pretty cool to be on such a busy island and get that all to ourselves. That was until we got to the top and found out that about 100 tourists coming up from the other direction had decided to watch the sunset as well!

Ko Lipe... gorgeous

After a few days on Ko Phi Phi we got a 5 hour ferry down to Ko Lipe which is in the Ko Taratou national park but not part of it so it’s the only island with any development in the whole of this area of south Thailand. Ko Lipe was gorgeous, no cars, no real roads, and you could walk around the island in about an hour.  The snorkelling was great and right off the beach and I think we found our favourite ever beach there looking over to Ko Adang which is an undeveloped island. We stayed 5 days in Ko Lipe managing to find a place for £8 night (which to be far was worth about £8 a night!). The island itself is very expensive which is understandable as they have to get everything from the mainland but prices were 3 or 4 times higher than what we had been paying so not many nights of vodka bucket drinking for us!

So the time came when we had to leave Thailand as our visa ran out and our room on Ko Lipe was starting to become disgusting (no cleaning for 5 days with a toilet with a bucket of water as a flush!) and we were thinking we may get dysentery. We headed off to the mainland to get a train to Kuala Lumpur – we could have got the boat to Langkawi in Malaysia from our island but we decided we needed a break from the sun! We left Thailand with mixed feelings on the place as on the one hand we were a bit disappointed as we had heard how friendly and cheap it was which we didn’t really find it to be  – but we also know we visited a very small area of Thailand and we can’t really judge it on this alone. We found that we had more interaction and banter with locals in other countries that we visited as well than in Thailand. We also found it to be very touristy but then why wouldn’t it be as it’s beautiful. But asides from us just be very anti-social people ; ) – it’s obvious that tourism is doing quite a bit of damage environmentally, socially and probably to an extent on the very local economy and you get the feeling this is ignored by the Thai authorities.

On the plus side the islands were the most beautiful we had ever been to, with clear waters, white sand and tall palm trees. The weather was amazing and it’s a beautiful place to get away to. They have the best fruit shakes ever in the whole world and also the best chocolate banana pancakes and there is nothing better than lying back on a mat on the beach bar at sunset and into the night with a cocktail or an ice cold Chang……..

Of all the countries that we planned to visit over the following year Cambodia was one that we probably knew the least about. An experienced and wise traveller friend of ours (the ever insightful H) once said that travelling was all about expectations and how right he has turned out to be. You can be really expecting a place to be amazing and then it falls a bit short or you can know nothing about it and its turns out to be fantastic. Cambodia is a country with such an compelling recent history, people,  landscapes, coastline and architecture that were way above our expectations.

Border Crossing to Cambodia on our boat via the Mekong Delta

We arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, by boat along the Mekong River from Chau Doc (the sleepy coastal village of Vietnam) which is the only way to arrive in Phnom Penh we think (after experiencing its horrid bus station a few days later!). As the boat approaches the shores of Phnom Penh you feast on an impressive skyline, at least compared to Vietnam’s, and a City that looks more modern but still has bags of authenticity and character that make it Cambodian. As soon as the boat arrived we were ambushed by around 50 moto tuk tuk drivers literally climbing through the windows to encourage us to choose them to take us to our hotels. With all 50 constantly asking ‘ You want tuk tuk?, You want tuk tuk?, only 1 dollar’. After a stressful 5 minutes we rescued our bags, found a nice tuk tuk driver and he took us to a nice cheap guesthouse (AKA Guesthouse $15 / night) right next to the Royal Palace. Quite a location.

Phnom Penh – ‘Moto Tuk-Tuk, only 1 dollar’

First things we noticed about Phnom Penh – the moto tuk tuks are great and there is nothing equivalent to this in Vietnam as its either motorbike or taxi so we enjoyed the experience. Our second thought was how much quieter and laid back Phnom Penh was than the Vietnamese big cities we visited – we might actually be able to cross the road! The third thing we noticed that whereas Vietnam was technicolor Cambodia was all about golds, oranges and yellows. The fourth thing we noticed was the amount of SUVs and more precisely ‘Lexi’  SUVs – not what we were expecting from what we thought was the poorest country in SE Asia. But an interesting side effect of its recent history as we would later learn…

A nice stroll along the river showed us loads of western bars and ex-pats, English pubs and the like. A major difference to the Vietnam cities. Our first day there we took a tuk-tuk out to Cheung Ek. We organised this through our original tuk-tuk driver for an inflated price of $22, the reason they only charge 1 dollar originally is so that they can try to organise all of these extra tours and take commission from the hotels.

Cheung Ek is the site of the killing fields museum and also where 17,000 men women and children were killed by the Khmer Rouge between 1975-1979. The field has been made into a memorial for those that were killed and there are similar memorials all over the country in memory of the 2 million people (out of a population of 9 million) that lost their lives during this short and bizarre period. Its only in the last 10 years that Cambodia has seen peace; even though the Khmer Rouge lost control of power in 1979, there was much civil unrest and rebel clashes across a lot of the country until 1998. The memorial features thousands of skulls all looking outwards sombrely; taking pictures somehow did not feel right. And the killing tree where they used to swing babies into head first to kill them.  Some of the Khmer Rouge leaders are currently facing a very long trial in Phnom Penh for their role in the killings and we read this week that the trial is likely to last until 2015.

It’s difficult to understand the clear reasoning behind the extreme purges of the Khmer Rouge, I but in essence they wanted to bring Cambodia back to its simple and basic state that has no influence from the western world and kill any one that opposed them or theoretically could oppose them. This meant killing all intellectuals, destroying all systems and records, getting rid of the currency system and generally doing whatever they liked to destroy a modern society.

Other sights in Phnom Penh included the Wat Phnom and Royal Palace as well as generally wandering around the city and eating some very good food – yummy amok has definitely become our favourite asian dish!

 Kep

Our original plan was to head straight to Siem Reap to visit the temples of Angkor and then straight to Thailand. However as we hadn’t had much sun and we were in need of a good break from cities and crowds we decided to spend some time on the south coast. We headed first to a very sleepy little town called Kep which was wonderful and has become one of our favourite places. As soon as we arrived we just relaxed. We stayed in a bungalow (Vanna Bungalows) set on the base of a jungle type mountain overlooking the seas and facing west so we could watch the sunset in the hammock!

Kep used to be a resort for wealthy French colonists and claims that it used to be the first resort n South East Asia. The town was formerly full of old colonial villas which have now been left to ruin which means that there are just lots of old burnt out buildings. As we were told, after the Khmer Rouge lost power there was no currency in Cambodia for 5 years. This meant that the people had to trade items in order to live and the villas were stripped bare for this purpose. During the 1990’s the derelict villas were handed out to government officials and senior Khmer Rouge officers as a type of peace agreement. A law in Cambodia means that if a building is not gated you lose right to the building and therefore Kep is full of derelict buildings surrounded by modern walls and gates. Creating an amazing but strange experience to walk around the Town.

Although Kep is getting more touristy we had still had every bar and restaurant we went to all to ourselves. This included an amazing crab market where we feasted on freshly caught crab with black pepper (the black pepper is also local) and some of the best pizza we have ever had cooked in a wood fired stove at Eldorado’s. Although the chef is a bit crazy!

Koh Tonsay (Rabbit Island)

We also took a day trip over to Koh Tonsay (Rabbit Island) which was just stunning and beautiful. So much better than we thought it would be, with no hawkers, few tourists and a beautiful strip of sea and sand. Kep and Rabbit Island, we both agreed, were our favourite places we had been to so far on the trip and neither of us wanted to leave. There are bungalows on the beach at Rabbit Island for $5 a night and some travellers had set up home there – we were quite tempted to do the same. We heard some scary plans that a Korean company were going to build a 600 room hotel and casino on the Island and build a 4 lane bridge over to the island – crazy! It even had David almost turning eco-warrior at the thought of it.

 Kampot

We reluctantly left the sleepy and friendly town of Kep; for the first time on our trip, neither of us wanted to move on. We travelled by moto tuk tuk to Kampot which is a riverside city just down the coast from Kep. We only stayed the night though as we realised we were in need of yet more relaxation and so headed for Sihnoukville, Cambodia’s most well known and popular beach resort.

 Sihnoukville

We were expecting a rowdy kind of Benidorm by all accounts, but it wasn’t like this at all and was actually a very nice laid back resort. We walked over to the quiet beach of Otres during the day and walked back along the deserted end of the main beach during sunset. This was mostly free from westerners but had loads of Cambodian families swimming and having bbqs on the beach. This was much more interesting than watch westerners drinking happy hour sunset vodka buckets!

 We had 3 days here, enjoying the sun, sand and sea. We had become so accustomed to the relaxed coastal way of live that we had to convince ourselves to go back inland and head north to the temple viewing sights of ancient Angkor, as opposed to following the coastal route around to Thailand. We so nearly didn’t; but not going to Angkor, would be like going to Egypt and not seeing the pyramids. So we headed north by bus (lots of them which took about 12 hours in total and meant staying over again in Phnom Pehn) and prepared ourselves for the hordes of tourists we had been warned about by everyone.

 Angkor  

Built between the 8^th and 13^th centuries by the Khmer civilisation to celebrate the God of their time, the temples of Angkor were rediscovered deep in the jungle by the western world in the late 19^th century and mostly renovated. And it takes quite a lot of planning to decide exactly what you are going to do with your time. As there are many temples, not just Angkor Wat, spread out over many miles.

 Initially on arriving that day, we went to see the sunset at Phnom Bakheng, which you can for free after 4.30. On doing so we also caught a glimpse for the first time of Angkor Wat peeking through the forest, looking menacing and imposing. Truthfully the sunset was disappointing as we thought it would set over Angkor Wat, not the forest. And the thousands of slow and inept package tourist groups tramping on every ancient rock they could find grinded on us slightly. We then decided to do the opposite of what the guide book suggested, and go the places at different times of the day to what they recommended, which is a great plan to avoid the crowds.

 So we bought our tickets for the next day ($20 each) and arranged for our moto tuk-tuk driver to take us round all day ($15). So we were all set for the following day for our Angkor experience, or so we thought. This was until Laura woke at 5 and ran to the toilet, never a good sign based on previous experience! Several minutes and some strange noises later she emerged with the news she is not feeling very well. Oh dear. So instead of Angkor, we spent the next 3 days in the same smelly room with Laura eating very little and doing not much more than waiting for Laura’s stomach to get better. At least they had the HBO movie channel!

We finally made it to Angkor 3 days later, after re buying the tickets and a getting ourselves a good deal with a tuk-tuk driver. First we went to the main attraction, Angkor Wat itself. Pictures describe it better than words, but its intricate detail and massive scope make it something very special, and worth all the effort. Next we headed to the Bayon which is a more of a spiritual temple, and has eerie carved faces looking out at you everywhere. Next we went to the temple famous for where Tomb Raider was filmed, Ta Phrom. No reconstruction has been done at Ta Phrom so you can see the jungle still entangled in the temple as they lived side by side for the last 1000 years untouched. We enjoyed Ta Phrom as it was cool to see how the jungle had taken over when the temples have been deserted.  We finished off our tour with a couple of the smaller sites which were also amazing and surprisingly peaceful.  There are however a LOT of hawkers all around Angkor shouting sir ‘you wanna buy water’ sir..you wanna buy coke?’ ‘sir you wanna buy guide book? You wanna buy fruit? Painting? Icecream? Handbag? Strange frog thing that makes a noise when you scrape it? We managed to get away with only being forced into buying some postcards from the best salesperson in the whole of SE Asia an 11 year old girl. You shouldn’t really buy from the kids but they are relentless and very very good and what they do – they’d definitely give the winner of the Apprentice a run for their money!

So after seeing Angkor we could finally get on our way to Thailand on a very slow ‘express’ bus…… as with Vietnam we were sad to leave Cambodia as even with the various food poisonings and stomach ailments and the continuous hounding of the hawkers cries of ‘you wanna buy something?’ we really enjoyed our time there.  Maybe the Cambodians are not as entrepreneurial, confident or dare I say it ‘clever’ as there Vietnam neighbours. But they certainly are as friendly, welcoming and maybe even more laid back. It’s got a crazy history and it will be really interesting to see how it develops over the next few years…. we’re hoping it won’t too much though as we like it just the way it is!

8th January – Vietnam Border Crossing

We arrived in Vietnam 3 weeks ago – on the 8th January and we knew from the moment we reached the border that good times were ahead. We’ve found border crossings to be very strange experiences – you would think there would be more of a slow transition between landscapes and cultures etc between borders but in our experience the change is pretty sudden. For example we left China which was cold, a bit grey, had lots of chicken feet for food and had a very organised and official passport and visa control to exit where everybody queued in a very efficient and overly controlled way.

We were then put into yellow golf buggies and whisked away to the colourful Vietnam side (all of 5 mins away from the Chinese office). Here the temperature was about 10 degrees warmer, the passport control office had no queues, no rules and a lot of waving and smiley faces. It is more a case of pushing to the front and shouting the loudest to get your passport and visa stamped. You could have easily just walked through without anybody checking! After we worked out how to get our passport stamped we stepped into the Vietnam sun and were surrounded by jungle covered hills and vendors wearing traditional Vietnamese hats and asking us ‘buy something!’.

8th January – Hanoi

Our bus journey to Hanoi was beautiful. With palm trees, wide open landscapes of green lush lands and children waving to us at every chance that could get. We were dropped off in the very authentic cit of Hanoi and it was an extreme culture shock as neither of us had ever seen so many motorbikes, mopeds and electric bikes in one place before – the many estimates we were given ranged from 4-6 million bikes in the city. We got a taxi to our hotel and realised that we were one of only about 5 cars in the city and everyone else was on a motorbike. There were whole families on motorbikes, mom , dad and 2 kids, babies on bikes, a couple with a live cow on the back of their bike (no joke!). Our hotel was in the old quarter which is an area in the centre of Hanoi made up of narrow old streets. These were full of bikes and you could also not use the pavements as they were full of parked motorbikes! So you ended up walking down the road with thousands of motorbikes whizzing past you at either side, with no rules. Well actually there is one rule. The bikes never look behind them when they pull out or turn anywhere, they just keep moving forward. So if a bike or car sees that somebody else might pull out in front of them, they beep them. This in turn leads to a sea of beeping that gives you a headache after a couple of hours, but is truly astonishing to witness. It certainly is the craziest city we have ever been.

This meant that walking anywhere was a mission and required a lot psyching ourselves up. Crossing the road took some getting used to as any official crossings are ignored and vehicles tend to use both sides of the road to travel in both directions! Anyway apart from the crazy traffic we realised that Hanoi had very good food and we soon gorged ourselves. You must try the I-Box restaurant if you go there. Hanoi also had gorgeous lakes and coffee shops, nice botanical gardens and old colonial buildings and we spent a good few days there walking around and avoiding bikes! Would recommend everybody go to Truc Bach lake (next to the west lake) for some relaxing and great food with a sunset. Many people we met didn’t like Hanoi, but personally we loved the authentic but hectic non-western City, it is like nowhere else.

Halong Bay

From Hanoi we took the obligatory trip to Halong Bay – a protected world heritage area in north Vietnam with 3000 limestone kursts out at sea. We took an organised tour which meant we had one night on a boat and a nights stay on Cat Ba Island. Arriving at Halong bay was certainly a spectacular sight – thousands and thousands of tourists all being led around in an organised chaos to their boats. There were also loads of boats, more than we ever expected to see – 700 tourist boats apparently as well as the tender boats. Our boat was the Phoenix and although the weather was pretty grey it was good timing for us as there were only 20 of us on a boat for 48 which meant loads of space and access to the sun loungers on top deck. We sailed out into the bay feasting on a seafood lunch (great), we then went sea-kayaking (fantastic fun even if we always end up paddling the opposite way to each other!) and then to the surprise caves (um.. ok but not so great! – they were caves). We spent the night docked out in the bay with more food, many drinks and some rather bad karaoke!

The next day we took a smaller boat out further into the bay to Monkey Island and then Cat Ba Island where we spent the night. Our guide ‘King’ (highly recommended guide from South Pacific Travel) organised a tour to the VIP cave hospital. Where hundreds of injured VIPS were treated during the Vietnam (Or American as they call it) war. And then a guided tour from a war veteran up to one of the peaks in Cat Ba national park which ended in his house (which was given to him after the war by the government) in the national park. The Vietnamese housed war veterans were housed in a beautiful and isolated village at the bottom of the park. However, not so nice was our accommodation on the island which was in Cat Ba Town – a place a bit like Torremolinos though (except without the sunburnt drunk brits!).

Sleeper Train to Danang

After the Halong Bay tour we headed back to Hanoi were we went straight to the rail station – this involved a very amusing peak hour walk along the busiest streets in Hanoi with our many bags and no map. It was so bad we even gave up trying to cross one road and went a different way instead! At the station we bought what we (or more precisely Laura!) thought were 2 sleeper tickets to Danang. The train set off about 6.30 pm and once on the train we realised that we would be travelling for 16 hours on a very rickety old seat with a very loud TV above our heads playing a strange Vietnamese version of teletubbies. Using Laura’s best miming of sleeper cabin she tried to ask the guard if we could quickly go and change our tickets to which the guard mimed back to Laura that she would sort this out later for us – (good miming!)

So anyway about 30 minutes into our trip one of the train staff comes over to us with a picture of the special posh tourist train sleeper cabins saying that he can get us beds in these for $15 each – we grabbed at the chance – Laura’s research and geeky train knowledge knowing those tickets cost $59 each. Our Austrian cabin mates were not so happy about our arrival however as 1) they thought they had the place to themselves and 2) had paid at least twice what we had and 3) not impressed that the guard had just pocketed $30 on the side by filling the empty cabin himself. Oh well we got a very nice sleep and they got off at 8 am so we were on our own until Danang at 11am. The journey was beautiful – the thing about any journey Vietnam is you cannot take your eyes off the view out the window for even a second – there is always something to see whether its the landscape, the buildings or the people and this is also changing and always beautiful. The Vietnamese have a knack of even making rubbish look arty and every single scene looks as though it has been purposely put that way for a postcard shot.

Hoi An

We arrived in Danang and got a share-taxi to Hoi An for $3. Hoi An is this amazingly lovely little town on the coast. It’s very quaint and soooo laid back. Here we did some shopping where you could pick up real silk tie sets , tailor-made outfits, bags and purses for very cheap. You are supposed to barter with them but often the initial price they ask is lower than what you were thinking anyway. As long as you think it is fair price then that’s all that matters, rather than trying to barter it down another few pence and taking money from the hard working sellers. We also had some of the best and cheapest food we have ever had at the local food market – outstanding. Where Mrs Quyaun amongst others cooked you a massive fish in a banana leave for 50,000 Dong. About £1.60, and tasted better than any fish you have ever had. Hoi An also has a close stretch of beach and the town is a heritage site (You can instantly see why) so it is protected from development. We really loved the authentic town of Hoi An and would recommend it to everyone for a great place to unwind and even casually party to the early hours. We stayed there for 4 nights and after headed on south to the beach resort Nha Trang.

The dreaded sleeper bus to Nha Trang.

We decided to take the bus instead of the train for this stretch as it was a lot cheaper and more convenient as it saved us going back to Danang. Big mistake. The ‘luxury’ sleeper bus that we were booked on was possibly the worst example of ergonomic design we had ever experienced. The ‘beds’ had a plastic encasing for which to put your legs in except they were obviously made for people with very small pencil thin rubber legs. There was no room for your bags so these also had to fit in this compartment. The seat lowered back but only far enough to give you severe back ache all night long. On top of this was blaring loud Vietnamese pop (which the driver refused to turn down despite being asked several times by everyone). A blue tv screen that lit up the whole coach and was pointlessly kept on all night, a toilet that didn’t work and a driver that though it necessary to stop every 30 minutes to do something we could not work out. Plus beep his horn constantly when driving and a random assistant (non of whom spoke English at all despite most people on the bus being westerners) who kept on walking up and down the aisles looking very shifty. You would think that the purpose of a sleeper bus was to sleep, and for the company to create a sleepy atmosphere. But instead they did everything possible to keep you awake and feel like cattle being herded on and off. We initially thought that $12 each was cheap, but soon changed our minds to being over priced for the service. We managed a few hours sleep but can safely say that where possible it’s back to trains from now on!

Nha Trang

We were thankful to arrive early (6.00 am) in Nha Trang where we went straight to our hotel and they very kindly let us check in so we could get some sleep. However, Nha Trang really was a big disappointment. Partly because it was raining but also because we were led to believe it was a pretty beach resort, but really it was a desperately built up city next to the sea with an average strip of sand- not really what we were expecting. They are building more and more hotels here, and the restaurants are serving more and more lacklustre meals that were over priced for Vietnam and gave Laura food poising. Probably the weather effected it but the City seemed to be over developed without the tourists to fill it, and the staff seemed to be less friendly as they came from other places rather than local enthusiastic waiters that love their City (like so many other places in Vietnam). It does have one nice stretch of restaurants and bars however and I am sure it would be better in the sun.
After looking at the weather forecast – (rain for the next 5 days!) we decided to head on to Saigon and treat ourselves to a nice posh hotel with a pool, as the forecast in Saigon was a hot and sunny 30 a degrees. Nice.

Saigon

We took a very lovely long train journey to Saigon, with amazing coastal and landscape views.We quickly got ourselves checked into Hotel Equitorial, but a bit disappointed it was raining there as well! Not long after checking into our very posh hotel Laura got very bad food poisoning (from cuttlefish in nha trang) and David got a horrid cold – not the best few days of our trip! Luckily the next day the weather changed and we got some sun so we lazed around the pool and had little trips into busy Saigon.

Saigon is in stark contrast to Hanoi and is truly a built up western city. A bit of a letdown after the unusualness of Hanoi, but at least you could cross the road. And actually have a pavement that you could use to stop and look at things. Our last night in Saigon we decided to properly hit the town and ended up at 17 saloon a crazy place full of very stunning women and not so stunning Chinese business men! It had a great local band playing all our fave tunes like Shakira (for Laura) and Woman in Love by Barbara Straisend (for David!)

Chau Doc

Our next journey took us to Chau doc, on the border to Cambodia which involved a 7 hour journey in a very small minibus. The journey was well worth it though as it took you through stunning Vietnam jungle backdrops through to pretty and inviting villages that were lit up wonderfully at night. With rivers dotting through the villages and many of the houses protruding out of the water on stilts. Vietnam is all about colours. Everywhere you look there is colour – in the landscape, every house is painted a different colour, and even when it rains all the motorcyclist wear different coloured ponchos.
Chau Doc is a quaint little riverside town on the Mekong Delta full of the friendliest people and no pushy vendors or moto drivers like the rest of Vietnam. The highlight was getting a boat out on the river with one of the locals who took us around a real floating village (seemed a lot more authentic than the Halong Bay one) and to a riverside Cham village. Many of the children ran up to us to practice their English when the boat reached the village.

We also sat and watched the local children take tae Kwando and dance lessons along the riverside which is when met the smartest 10 year old kid possibly in the world. He just finished his tae Kwando lesson and came over to us to enquire ‘Do you mind if I talk with you for 10 minutes or so?’ – he learns English at school and his English was amazing – we had the most comprehensive conversation we had had in the whole of Vietnam and he was only 10 – we asked if he was the cleverest in his class and he replied ‘yes – sometimes the other children even call me master’ – genius!
We sadly left Chau doc and Vietnam on a speed boat to Cambodia a very pleasant (if not slightly noisy) way to cross the border.

Our lasting impressions of Vietnam is of a nation full of proud, together, friendly and happy people that seemed to have found the secret of a good life. The poverty gap appeared to be a lot less than in other countries we had been to and we experienced very little begging. Everybody seems to want for nothing, and the children are exceptionally bright , content and confident in talking to anyone. They do try to sell to you, but not in a desperate way and you get used to it after a while. We thought it is one of the most together nations we have ever visited and all our initial thoughts of a war torn nation have certainly been eradicated.

We love you Vietnam and we will be back!

We decided to cut our journey time in China short as it was experiencing its worst winter in 50 years and call us wimps but this is our holiday and we only had 359 days left of it and so we wanted to enjoy it in the warm (and we had just been across Siberia. And I lost my hat and gloves in Beijing).

two minutes later there was a queue of people wanting their photo taken with us!

 So any way we headed south - first getting a night train from Beijing to Guilin and then a train from Guilin to Nanning to get our visas for Vietnam. We had a few days in Nanning waiting for the visa and the bus out of there, along with loads of other cold travellers with the same mission!

China surprised us in many ways and we found at times quite challenging to understand what was happening which made for some amusing situations.  It was amazing how popular we were as foreign tourists. We were constantly asked to be in people’s photos, stared at for up to 10 minutes at a time and even got asked for our autographs. Although it was quite amusing living the life of a z-list celebrity for a week it was also a little weird. We stuck out like a sore thumb outside of Beijing and were the only foreigners on all the trains and buses we used between Beijing and the China/Vietnam border which was both a source of amusement and fascination for all. Though I also have to say that the Chinese are also the loveliest, friendliest people and that we would have been very stuck without the kind help of some people on our bus/trains who made sure we getting on and off  the right vehicles at the right times and were telling us how to fill in our visa forms etc

Our main struggle in China though (apart from the scams!) was the food.

Now anyone that knows me well enough knows that I’m a girl who loves her food.  I’m also proud of the fact that I’ll try anything strange or unusual (except for roll mop herring ). So I was not expecting to be totally turned off food on our trip – not to the point where my trousers were all too big for me and the only thing I could stomach was a big mac (I don’t really class this as food – I have not been to a MacDonalds in 4 years and yet I managed 3 times in one week in China!).

It all started with some dubious buffet food at the silk street market, some strange tea boiled eggs and chicken sausages  from our hotel’s attempt at an English breakfast and things just got progressively worse from there. On our night train from Beijing to Guilin we were encouraged to buy a chicken in a bag by the guy we were sharing our sleeper compartment with.  ‘They’re made in my home town’ he says, ‘very tasty’ he says. It’s probably just like those chickens you get from the asda we thought so we bought 2 noodle pots and a chicken in a bag from the trolley in the hope of constructing a Chinese feast for our journey. However, on opening the chicken in a bag we are confronted with a rather strange cat food smell and on further examination of the contents of bag found a jellified, alien baby looking object which we understood to be the chicken. We pulled chunks off and it just broke into crispy bits – Dave was close to gagging by this point and we had to make it look like we had eaten and enjoyed it.  It was lucky that our Chinese friend was not in the compartment at the time as we may have caused great offensive to his home town’s contribution to the culinary world!

Our next train journey found us sat opposite 3 teenage girls who were constantly eating on the 5 hour journey from Guilin to Nanning. The train pulled into a station where there were hawkers on the platform and one of the girls got off to grab yet more food. She got back on the train with a stick of dangly objects that I couldn’t make out and handed her 2 friends a stick each. Its only when I noticed the claws that I realised they were sucking chicken feet kebabs and spitting out the claws and putting them onto the tray next to me! I’m ashamed to say I almost vomited there and then and was so relieved where they moved over to another table. It took me about 5 days to get over this – days  in which we saw dogs in cages ready for cooking and when we also tried to eat a chicken curry made of bones and little else. Oh and then there were the vacuum packed jellied chicken feet for sale in the snack shop….eeuuughh!

 Please don’t worry about me wasting away though as Vietnam is truly  a wonderful food heaven and my appetite is well and truly back to normal – along with my pre-China waistline unfortunately!

Laura

St Basils, Red Square

We took in all the sights…Red square, St. Basils, the Kremlin, Gum, and the very cool Trevotsky Gallery (if you go to Moscow go here!). However it got so cold there was only so much time we could spend outdoors and we found ourselves whiling away the afternoon in the cheapest restaurant/bars we could find. Our best place had our favourite waitress who would come over to our table when noticing that we had finished our beer to ask ‘you vould like repeat beer?’ to which we replied ‘da!’ many times. ‘Repeat Beer’ as you can imagine becoming a bit of a catch phrase for our trip.
However, although the city was much nicer than we expected we started to get tired of a few things there. It was a strange place full of OCD levels of cleaniness and fixation on clearing the city of snow. There must have been 20,000 snow shovelers just in the centre of Moscow, all moving the snow from one place to another equally pointless place. Maybe an adage to the old communist ideology of jobs for people. What is most striking about the most expensive City in the world, is that they are not shy in showing off their wealth and style (although 20 years outdated by Western standards). They seem almost brazen in showing it off. The whole of the city centre, and this is not an exaggeration, has been taken over by designer shops with intimidating security staff. If you multiply the size of New Bond Street in London by 1000, then you are somewhere close to Moscow center. Not sure how long this exaggerated wealth can last, surely there are not sufficient amount of rich people in Moscow to sustain these shops?
So we bid farewell to Moscow deciding we were far too poor for the city (even executive David!) and prepared ourselves for our long awaited journey across Siberia to Beijing on the Trans-Mongolian.
The Trans-Mongolian journey was amazing and we think it will most definitely be one of the highlights of our year long trip…. you can read about it on the Trans-Siberian page.
So after 7 days of little contact with any but each other and a few Trans-Siberian travellers, losing all concept of time and routine and forgetting all about the big wide world works we stepped off the train and into Beijing……Within about 5 minutes of being there we became victim to our first scam. Having used 5 different currencies in 13 days and no idea where our booked hostel was we managed to end up spending 150 yuan on a ‘taxi’. Yes we worked this out as being £15 to take us 5 minutes down the road and real fare of £1.40. Nevermind, we though it’s a good lesson to learn and we will learn and we won’t get fooled again!
Anyway our time in Beijing has been great. It’s actually nothing like we thought it would be and although quite polluted with busy traffic it was quite laidback and the people ever so nice. The Chinese people seem to share a very similar sense of humour (which we couldn’t find with the Russians we met). Their mainstream comedy does seem to be strangely slapstick, wacky and 20 years outdated to the Western style. Timmy Mallet would have made a fortune! Although you see Western influences slowly creeping in, mainly due to international students we learned, it is still very state controlled. And we were disappointed to learn that Facebook, Youtube, some Google applications are still blocked following the pro-democratic riots earlier in the year. TV is so censored and cut that I totally lost the plot of Batman (The Dark Knight).
In comparison to Moscow, where the locals appear to have no interest in you (as a tourist does not have enough money) the Chinese are the opposite. The majority tend to view Western tourists as very wealthy and that they can afford to spend (and be scammed in our case!) out of any amounts of money.
We spent our first full day window shopping around the main shopping area on Wangfujing and then checking out lots of other shopping areas looking for some hiking boots for Laura as we had booked our trip out to the Great Wall. We decided on our way back to the hostel to quickly check out Tiananmen Square and this is where we got scammed yet again……..Read about the Beijing Tea Room Scam on our scams age - it’s such a wildly elaborate scam and we think it wont be the last time something like this happens to us so we have created a scams page!

The Great Wall was more beautiful than we expected, and as we signed up for a tough 10k hike from Janshinling to Sameti, and it was certainly a challenge. There are thousands of steep stairways up and down.

On the Great Wall

 It was so peaceful and the views from the wall were outstanding. It is a lot more impressive being on the wall and looking out at the miles of seemingly pointless constructed wall that was easily climbed over by every enemy.Also, we learned that you cannot actually see the wall from space, that’s just a lie.
Our last few days were spent holed up in a hotel whilst Laura completed her MSc assignment. Who would have thought that Laura would be the one spending 4 days solid at the laptop whilst David lazed around watching HBO, making full use of the hotels pool and sauna and drinking beer…Laura will get her own back though I’m sure.
Well our last day in Beijing saw the greatest snowfall in 50 years and the place is chaotic (we now understand Moscow’s obsession with shovelling as Beijing is now one big brown sludge of a city) and…… cold! We are done with snow and cold now so heading out on a sleeper train to South China in search of some warmth and a Vietnamese Visa……..