BlogMonster

Dear All. Hello, and welcome from Australia, the worlds most expensive country to do anything. Australia is a land where foreign people stumble around trying to figure out literally the cheapest way there is to survive whilst having fun. Basically, every traveller here carries with them a blue cool bag (always blue...we have two) full of bread, nutella and pasta, and a 2l box of wine they call 'goon'. This is all that anyone foreign eats and drinks here it seems. Its pretty tragic. On average it costs about $25-30 to stay in dorm rooms with loads of other people, where we have to fight in dirty kitchens over dirty pots and pans so that we can cook pasta for the tenth time in a week. If I'm being honest, I don't really think this represents ... read more

Hello All. We left off last time having just about landed in Christchurch after 3 days of transit from Bangkok. Luckily we had the foresight to pre-book our camper (and we also had the foresight to take out liability reduction, but we will come to that later...) but we landed at 3am and couldn't pick up the van until 8am...so Alex slept on a bench for an hour or so (maybe) until we got told that we had to sit up! By this point we were just exhausted, and Alex didn't feel well so it wasn't the best experience ever. Eventually 8am arrived and we went to the camper van place. We used Mighty Campers, and we booked a tiny little camper which basically had a bed and a cool box and a gas stove...so we ... read more

Hello All. After leaving Vietnam on 6th March we arrived in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh at about 6pm after a long, sweaty busride. I'm sure I read somewhere that Phnom Penh was once known as the pearl of Asia - hmm, well things have changed it seems as it is now just a sprawling, dirty town. We found it difficult to find a central location to stay close to anything so we were a bit isolated in what I presume was the red light district since every time I walked up the street I was offered Boom-Boom (Shag) and Yum-Yum (Blow-job). Sadly I had to decline. We did eventually find some bars and restaurants near the riverside area offering draft beer for 50c which is pretty good really. We only wanted one full day in ... read more

Hi All, After the last blog we spent 2 days in the mad city of Hanoi. It rained constantly the whole time we were there, which as I hadn't planned to be cold and wet in Asia meant I had to find a rain coat! After forcing a grumpy Jonny to walk up and down a damp busy street in the centre I did the typical girl thing and went back to the first shop we'd seen and bought a "North Face" jacket for 800,000VD (about 25GBP.) The rest of our time in Hanoi was spent gawping at the ridiculous traffic whilst trying not to get run over. Neither of us have ever seen anything like it. At first glance it's a mess of unorganised, selfish driving and you think it's astounding that they don't all ... read more

Hello All. I am writing this from Chiang Khong, which is the border town before we head into Laos tomorrow. Its been 5 days since our last blog, and what a manic 5 days it has been. We left Bangkok last Saturday morning on the 8:30 train to Chiang Mai...we were told this would last 12 hours - but it turned out to be 13....13 hours of dodgy A/C, dodgy cold sweetcorn soup, dodgy men playing with cap guns, dodgy things falling off the train, and just about dodgy everything really. But we did eventualy arrive in Chiang Mai at c. 9:30pm....unfortunately it didn't get much better very quickly. We eventually rocked up at Green Tulip House in Chiang Mai at around 10:30pm, and I have to say that in all my travels it was pound ... read more