Aoife and Vinny

Aoife and I arrived in Penang island, connected to mainland Malaysia by bridge, on the evening of January 12th by ferry from Langkawi. Upon arrival, the taxi drivers swarmed the area putting pressure on people arriving. We planned to get a free shuttle bus as it was our understanding that the guesthouse was less than ten minutes away. The taxi drivers told us that the shuttle was not running at this time of year which turned out to be untrue. Then another taxi driver hounded us asking where we were going. He was adamant that our guesthouse was 20 minutes away and we agreed a fixed price. Turned out it was just over 5 minutes around the corner. I questioned his earlier lie and he just got angry with us. "Keep your f##king money" he said ... read more

On January 4th Aoife and I arrived in the island of Koh Lanta. We stayed in a hotel called the Ailf Apartments for around $20 per night. The hotel is about a 10 minute walk from the beach up a back road in the middle of nowhere. However, they provided us with a motorbike during our stay for free and we were allowed to use the beachside pool in their sister hotel, the Garden Hotel. This was where we spent most of our time in Koh Lanta! Koh Lanta is by far the least developed Thai island that we've been on and there was a very relaxed vibe about the place. It was exactly what we looking for from Thailand. The hotel worked out well with the free motorbike and the use of the swimming pool ... read more

We are about 6/7 weeks behind on our blog and have now left Asia. We arrived in Auckland, New Zealand today from Singapore (with an 8 hour layover at night in Brisbane) and we plan to travel around till March 15th when we fly to Sydney. The end of our Asian adventure was a miserable one! We both got Dengue fever, an illness passed by mosquito. It was an awful experience and we're now glad to be out of Asia. The way we're still feeling, weak and tired, we probably would have taken a flight home rather than to New Zealand if we had the choice back in Singapore. I'm sure after a good week of recuperation and seeing what New Zealand has to offer we'll be rejuvenated and more upbeat about travelling. My symptoms first ... read more

When myself and Vinny were leaving Chiang Mai to head to the airport, our guesthouse called us a tuc tuc. What arrived can only be described as a Celine Dion fanclub on wheels! The tuc tuc was decked out with a massive flat screen TV that came down in front of us, with a Celine Dion concert on and the music blaring from speakers on either side! It was hilarious, being driven through the city streets with Celine Dion classics blaring from the tuctuc causing many people to stop and just stare!! Vinny took a really funny video of it! We got to the airport and had to wait hours as our flight was delayed. Upon arrival in Phuket airport in the middle of the night, we were surrounded by taxi drivers who were quite aggressive. ... read more

Bangkok. The word conjures up images of ladyboys, 'massage therapists' and hangovers! And we were interested to see if it would live up to expectations!! First things first though, we had to get there from Siem Reap, Cambodia. We decided to get a private car to take us to the border (I know, very flashpacky! but we had been advised that the bus could take six hours). When we booked it, we were told "new car, very nice" but this is Cambodia so when a beat up old 1994 Toyota Camry pulled up, we were not that surprised! As long as it had seatbelts, which it did, we were ok! After a fairly hairy two hour ride to the border, we queued up to get across the border. Once we had officially left Cambodia, we had ... read more