AprilLord

Hello! So I realised that I neglected to mention in my last post that i went out on a day trip to the Great Wall of China- kind of a big thing to miss off my list of things I've done! The trip on the Yangtze was good fun and I learnt a Chinese game called Mah jong. I was pretty rubbish at it to be honest, good job we weren't betting for real! After the boat we had three buses, a bullet train and one overnight train to our next destination, Yangshou, which is where I am now. It's a village in Chinese terms- only 300,000 inhabitants. Chongqing, the largest city, has 32 million!! We arrived here midday yesterday and went to a Chinese cookery class in the afternoon. We made egg dumplings, yangshou style ... read more

Hello again all! My last two days in New Zealand were spent in Wellington where I spent over 5 hours in the national museum and had quite a few coffee and cakes. Oh and I did some laundry. Pretty much it! On the Wednesday (20th June) I flew from Wellington to Auckland and Auckland to Beijing. I arrived in Beijing at 7 am on the Thursday morning. I was in Beijing for a week and left on the following Wednesday for Shanghai. While I was in Beijing I went to the Olympic Stadium, Tian'anmen Square, the National Exhibition Arts Centre, the Temple of Heaven, the Silk market, the pearl market, the forbidden city and a water park in the old Olympic swimming pool. I met some great friends in the hostel where I stayed when I ... read more

Hi all! Well I've been on a bit of an adventure. After my last blog, I went on from Mount Cook to Rangitata. The bus stops there because there is some amazing white water rafting but unfortunately, because it's Winter in New Zealand now, that was shut and we spent most of the day watching DVDs and playing board games. I flew from Christchurch to Auckland a couple of days later and during my time in Auckland I managed to watch a film at the cinema (on my own - a new experience!), go on a bus tour of the city and bungy jump off the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Yes, that's right, the one thing I said I would never do. But I have to admit that it was great fun. I was absolutely terrified before ... read more

Well, it's been a while. My only excuse is that I really haven't had a chance to update the blog because I've been enjoying myself a bit too much. Seems fair enough to me. Anyway, think the last time I checked in was in Brisbane so I shall tell you my story from there. After I left mike's I went down to Surfer's Paradise for a day where I took a surfing lesson for a couple of hours and spent the rest of the day working on my tan! The next day I moved on down to Byron Bay and I really loved it there. It was quite a small little place but was really relaxed. No one was in a hurry and I just chilled out for most of the time i was there. I ... read more

Hi all. Not too much to report since last time. I joined my boat tour on Saturday afternoon and we all walked out to the boat which was called the Atlantic Clipper. The first thing that caught my attention was the water slide! We headed out towards the Whitsunday Islands and stopped for the night near Hook Island. Our dinner was hake with mashed potato and coleslaw, yum. We spent the evening getting to know the rest of the people on the boat (and as there was 36 people there were plenty to get to know). The next morning we were awoken by the crew shouting at us at 6:30 am. After breakfast we took the small boats that were being dragged behind the Clipper to the beach (no I don't know what they're properly called ... read more

Okay so I have been a little rubbish on the updates. I can only apologise but I have been squeezing an awful lot of touristing in! After I finished the tour in Bangkok, I said goodbye to all the amazing people I had met on the tour and took a spontaneous trip down to Krabi in the South West of Thailand. I spent two days there with some friends I had made in Ho Chi Minh City and I had a lovely relaxed two days spent on the nearby beaches and islands. The seas and islands were truly beautiful and the whole thing was so relaxing that I managed to fall asleep in the sun and burn even with SPF 30 cream on. Woops. I left Krabi on Wednesday morning and flew back to Bangkok and ... read more