Sitting down today, we realised that we hadn’t updated our blog for a long time, and that we have been stamped in and out of six countries since our last update, so apologies in advance if this one is a long one! Our last entry was from Caye Caulker off Belize, just after the hurricane took a diversion away and saved us from having to rearrange our plans. We had a great time relaxing on Caye Caulker, Alex went out snorkelling for the day and was lucky enough that a couple of manatees decided to come and check him out - [View Full Entry]

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oops -text misplaced [View Full Entry]

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We were keen to get to Antigua in Guatemala but we clearly weren’t as keen to get there as the driver of our bus who obviously wanted to demonstrate how well he knew the road between Copan Ruinas and Antigua. It was a six hour journey during which we found lots of handholds in the back seats of the bus. After crossing the Honduras/Guatemala border, and paying the obligatory bribes, we were again having to work out another exchange rate and were constantly asking each other what something cost in ‘real money’. We passed Guatemala City at speed, although through the [View Full Entry]

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Our journey to Central America was an epic to say the least. First was a 13hour flight from Singapore to London on a full plane (we luckily managed to get ok seats, though sadly not up the sharp end) changed planes and terminals at Heathrow (and nearly died converting the prices of everything in pounds.. SG$10 for a coffee?!?) and after 4 hours flew on to Miami. Another nine hours later we were ‘stateside’ where we negotiated the bus and train to transfer to Fort Lauderdale airport and had a seven hour wait (naturally, the plane was delayed) before we got [View Full Entry]

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Well you’ll all be pleased to know that after we disgraced ourselves with the worlds longest-blog-on-one-single-subject-that-interests-only-the-writers that this blog will be short and sweet. We really haven’t got a whole lot to report from the last 2 weeks. We moved onto Flores full of hope as Lise has been there before and couldn’t wait to show it to Al. We arrived in Labuan Bajo which admittedly has the charm of dog poop on your shoe but it has the redeeming feature that it’s the land base for diving in Komodo National Park (oh, and it was the only destination we [View Full Entry]

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Warning - best get a cup of tea and ensure the boss isn’t looking over your shoulder, this is a long one! Fully refreshed and restocked after our couple of days in Singapore, we caught a flight to Manado which is in the north of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Travelling much lighter now after having left much of our dive gear and random unnecessary bits and bobs in Singapore was a dream and meant that we didn’t have to blag our way out of excess baggage at the check in desk. We were met at the airport (our flight [View Full Entry]

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We were met in Kuching by Wesley, one of the owners of a hostel we’d booked into via their website. He gave us a mini tour of the city on the way to the hostel, showing us some great restaurants and giving us local tips- very kind of him! At the hostel we signed in as guests numbers 7 and 8 in their register. The hostel was only 2 months old and we were the only guests!. Wesley gave us the keys, maps of the city (and he marked everything on them we could possibly need) told us he may [View Full Entry]

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Touching down in Kota Kinabalu (KK) in the Malaysian side of Borneo we both were struck at how clean and tidy everything was. After a month in the Philippines we had become used to seeing everything being cobbled and bodged together - for instance, the sink drain in one of our rooms was the top half of a soft drink bottle funnelled into a hollow piece of bamboo. All the cars in the Philippines were customised jeepneys belching out smoke, home-made-looking cars and tricycles with too many passengers, also belching out grey or black smoke - by contrast in KK [View Full Entry]

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Our trip to Manila from Coron was quite interesting. We got a bus to YKR airport which is on yolo king ranch in the middle of the island. It is a cattle ranch but we didn’t see much livestock, however it is flat enough to have a dirt airstrip which perhaps is more lucrative than cattle. We went through security (a man peered half heartedly in our bags) and checked in with SEAir which involved paying excess baggage as they allow a measly 10kg check in (although gave us 15kg each on presentation of our dive cards) then weighing us [View Full Entry]

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We got to Cebu and it rained. And rained. We’ve been lucky with the weather so far but the rainy season is making its grand entrance. In the taxi to our accommodation -picked by the close your eyes and point a finger at the page method (it turned out to be a bit scummy but you get what you pay for..) a road had flooded and the local kids, in partial and total undress were running and splashing alongside the jeepneys and taxis, clearly having the time of their lives. Cebu City was fairly disappointing on the whole, not that [View Full Entry]

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