If Thailand is known as the land of smiles, then what do they call Laos...the land of more smiles than Thailand? Laos possibly by chance, has the happiest greeting in the world in “Sabaai-dii-” (hello), said by women and children as “sabaai-diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii”. They also have the happiest form of thank you in the world with “Khawp jai lai lai”. This too is said with cheer and extension “Khawp jai lai laiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii”. It really adds to your experience when the locals offer these small parts of their culture to you with great big smiles! We began in Luang Prabang, a UNESCO World Heritage listed town in the central north. It is possibly one of our favourite places to visit on our trip to date. Luang Prabang somehow manages to successfully mesh the old with the new, the ... read more

We arrived late into Manila airport from Brunei and given our flight to Palawan was very early (in about 6 hours or so), we decided to spend the night at the airport rather than battling the famed Manila traffic and moreover raising our chances of having something bad happen. Manila has a reputation you see. By the time we got on our morning flight we were stuffed. The cold granite floors of the airport might look beautiful but......We were so stuffed in fact that after finally boarding we both slept through an hour of waiting on the runway. The wait was due to a local typhoon that was causing a bit of havoc. We were later told by another traveller that the wind was so strong at one stage that the stairs to the plane were ... read more

We kicked off our latest back-packing adventure in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This was for 2 reasons: 1) The flight from Frankfurt was one of the cheapest we could find (maybe because it was on September 11 and flying with Gulf Air?) and 2) the big man, Darren Altenhofenburger of 539 Darling Street fame, now lives there and could offer us a great place to stay along with a safe place for us to store most of gear whilst we were travelling. With Mercedes transport for “Mr. Cliff and Christina” organised by “Mr. Darren” we had a very non-back-packing type start to KL. Fair enough really. His apartment is ridiculously large with views (on a nice clear day) that take in amongst other things, the impressive KL city skyline. Our first touristy thing was the following day ... read more

God dag! 7 days and 7 days of Norway were ahead of us. Don’t read it again....you have read correctly. If half of a day is “day” and the other half is “night” then yes, we had 7 days and 7 days ahead of us. Put simply it just doesn’t get dark where we were headed and night time as we know it was not going to be with us for at least a week. Having no darkness is pretty much the premier attraction to Norway and indeed all Scandinavian countries at this time of year. Our quest was to reach Nordkapp, the most northerly point on mainland Europe. I kind of make it sound like we were explorers trying to be the first to do it however it was as easy as hiring a car ... read more

So this month has been a rather quiet travelling month by comparison to the past 8 or so but we still managed to keep the “2 or more countries per month visited” thing alive! We took a day trip to Garmish Partenkirchen, the home of the German ski fields in the deep south of the country. Big name yes, and big snow yes. It seems a rich kids hot spot to me and it was very pretty to say the least. The week following our visit GPK was hosting a world cup skiing event so there were plenty of grand stands and fencing and stuff going up. It was good to see the giant ski jump surrounded by grand stands. It gave us an idea of how it would look at the Olympics. Let me tell ... read more