Bali is insane. It's almost as bad as Istanbul for people trying to sell you things, although I'm simply ignoring them all now. It makes life a lot easier. I'm even refusing to buy stuff I like, just because the aggressive selling annoys me. It's very hot here, but apparently it's 40 degrees in Darwin (!!!!!). Hopefully it'll cool down as we head South. Have been swimming a lot to cool down since our hotels have been fairly nice. OzBus pool parties are fun especially as one guy has bought a guitar. Patrick actually surpassed himself and brought a three piece [View Full Entry]

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Don't know if I'll be abe to email you on the fourth so I'm going to say it now: Happy Birthday Have a great day, eat lots of cake and know that I'm going to be thinking about you. I'll give you your present in New Zealand Loving and missing you Kate PS: Will someone please show this to Mum if she's still suffering from internet illiteracy. [View Full Entry]

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Sorry I haven't been updating: there's been too many distractions and not enough internet terminals along the way, but I'll start filling in the blanks soon. Too save time entries will now be listed by different places, not day by day, which works well as we're staying longer in the same places now. Missing you all Kate [View Full Entry]

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We were staying outside Varanasi (thank god) in a relatively green and surburban area which seemed to house the city's Tibetan population, in a hotel that will remain nameless, because after the long list of complaints I've racked up against them they might well choose to sue me. They had no change whatsoever, which meant if you wanted to buy something you got an IOU. Not trusting in their ability to magically become organised overnight this meant I didn't get anything to drink and was even crabbier than I normally would have been after being subjected to a hyper active three [View Full Entry]

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Lucknow was fun; we got their too late to actually do anything so we sent Patrick (half of the bus's Canadian population; likes walking, food and walking to get food and/or beer) to get us some twenty ruppee (fifty rs to the dollar) noodles which were very good and bigger portions than most restaraunts. We messed around in the party room for so long that the actual residents chucked us out and we had to go next door. It was one of the best OzBus nights so far, which was good, seeing as someone left my key in the other room [View Full Entry]

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Can't believe I forgot about Aggra. Where the Taj Mahal is. Aggra is actually very nice, if you discount the crazy people outside the Taj and the Red Fort who will in some cases follow you and scream at you to buy stupid crap you don't want for ten million times the proper price. NEVER EVER EVER buy something from one of them, because you will be swarmed by all the others and they will not leave you alone until you've escaped inside. And they will invariably offer you the thing you just bought for half price, making you feel even [View Full Entry]

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Delhi was intense. Very intense. We got in on the first night to be surrounded by noise, dirt and people. Before we'd even got off the bus people were feeling crowded and spooked. India can be pretty spooky: beggars hold their babies and/or injured limbs upto the bus windows to beg whenever you stop, men urinate in the street without raising any (local) eyebrows, stray animals wander around eating rubbish. We got the the hotels (confusingly most of the hotels in our street had names that where variations on Sunstar and we were spread over two of them), dumped our bags [View Full Entry]

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While Amritsar was intense it was less so than everyone had been warning us it would be. The highlight was definitely the Golden Temple, which I enjoyed more than the Taj Mahal when we saw it two days later. The temple is a building covered in gold in the midde of a huge pool of water, surrounded by beautiful white buldings. There were mostly locals there, or at least tourists from different parts of India, so it felt more like it belonged to the city rather than just being a tourist attraction. It was so beautiful that I went twice, once [View Full Entry]

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The first night in Lahore was fun. We went to Pizza hut for Sinead's birthday and after Happy Birthday and For She's A Jolly Good Fellow (Australians seem to love this song) we sang Jibey Pakistan (the speeling is pure guesswork), which translates as Long Live Pakistan. The locals loved it; the waiters and a lot of the diners joined in, which I can't imagine happening to a bunch of foreigners singing Rule Britania in an English Pizza Hut. On the second day we visited the Lahore Fort and Red Mosque, which were both beautiful. The mosque had an interesting room, [View Full Entry]

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Sukkur was fun. We had armed guards following the bus and guarding the hotel and, after some people had had a few drinks, two or three people got their photos taken holding AK47s (can you imagine that happening back home!). One of the girls I was sitting with was half convinced that she saw a sniper on the roof next door. It turned out to be a man with a chair, but, as someone pointed out, the chair coud be so he could shoot us all in comfort. The second day was brilliant; we went to an old ruined city called [View Full Entry]

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