Andy and Emma

Kaddidiri is the island we stayed on last time and we wanted to go back here for familiarity then move to Bomba where there is a more basic place to stay. At this point though we just didn't want to stay in Ampana for more than one night. They told us that we could go with the owner on her speedboat straight to Kaddidiri and it would take 1 hour instead of 5, but we would have to stay at their resort Paradise and pay up front on card as we didn't have enough cash to cover the full cost. We didn't like the idea of this as we were stuck staying there if we paid up front and last time we had looked at the rooms there they weren't as nice as Black Marlins. Again ... read more

So the morning Emma had been looking forward to had finally come. We hired a bike each to take us to the airport - again one building next to a runway about the width of a dual carriageway.But before this we had to get through checkin. We had read some of the small print on the ticket over the last few days and started worrying over the *no change of name* clause in it. We started to think that the fact our names showed as Friedrich and Christina might cause a problem. As it was a domestic flight our passport shouldn't be needed but so far we usually got more attention at airports than most as we were Bulé (the local word for foreigner which is usually shouted to alert everyone we are in a shop ... read more

Ambon was not great but it had the two things we would need - an immigration office and ATMs so we could stock up on cash as there were no reliable ones south of here. Just like our last trip we got lucky and met an English speaking person to help us through the minefield that is Indonesian bureaucracy. William was an Indonesian businessman who was staying in the same guesthouse as us. He got us to the office and back easily and managed to get an explanation on how the visa extensions work from the immigration office where only a few words of English were spoken. They told us that we would need to come back after 25 days when our current visa ran out. This done we maxed out our cards and got a ... read more

Singapore was clean. And that's not a slur against other countries in south east Asia it's immaculate compared to most western places as well. It's illegal to sell or us chewing gum and the fines for littering are actually enforced here. The country itself is tiny and the main city takes up a lot of it. Because of this it is very easy to control and the traffic and lack of crime shows. There are very few beggars and the like and because of this many travelers joke that Singapore is not actually part of south east Asia. Another reason for this is the obvious wealth. People are richly dressed and drive nice cars. All this to us meant that we would struggle to live on a budget here. And get horribly depressed due to everyone ... read more

We arrived back in Bangkok in the morning and went straight back to the same place as last time. It was relatively cheap and we knew where we stood with it. And it had HBO By this point the riots with the red shirts were getting worse and had moved from up by khao San road to the finance district and the paragon shopping centre. After a fairly tame view of them last time we had heard from people in Yangon that it had escalated and was now a bit more gritty. We had no real plans and our next deadline wasn't for almost 2 weeks when we flew from Singapore. Everything we had read about the city was expensive and so we aimed to spend as little time there as possible and just be efficient ... read more