My Name is Pete or as many of you will know me as, Chuff. I finished Uni and wasn't ready for heading straight to work so took a year out to try and figure out what I want to do after, AND, mainly to have some fun and see some new places! Welcome to my TravelBlog. It is set up so that my family, home crew and new friends can see keep up to date with my movements and see what I've been up to. Enjoy!
So after the success of my last blog...I thought I would start again with the important info that I'm sure I missed out last time. I'm still in Sydney, have been here since the middle of August...and I intend to be here for at least the next 4 or 5 months. I have a job. And have been in it for the last month. I'm working at a health insurance company checking insurance claims. It isn't the most exciting job in the world....but its getting me money whcih is good, and i'm with some pretty nice people so thats ok. I'm meant to be working there for the next 5 months. I keep myself awake using a combination of coffee, and other caffeine drinks, nuts and banana. Fun times for petey. But can't complain, I work ... read more
Ok, so I know I only just posted a blog from my times in Asia. But seeing as I haven't got work today, I decided it would be about time to tell you what i've been up to for the month that I've been in Sydney. Yeah, month. I can't quite believe I've already been here that long...and haven't got too much to show for it. Or is that true. I guess not. I mean, I came back to OZ with pretty much no reserve funds, having stretched my budget to spend a few extra weeks in Asia. And managing to survive here a whole month is a sign that I have managed to get something done. So, I arrived here, and came straight to ChiliBlue hostel. Its pretty much the cheapest in Sydney, and includes ... read more
So this has been a long time in coming. Strange how I managed to go through my whole trip regularly writing blogs and it that last couple of weeks I floundered and found other things to occupy my time, rendering me unable to blog. I did try to write it once, but the net failed and wiped away my attempt. Oh well, I'm sure you're all excited to see that I'm back up and running and here is my final installment of my 6ish month trip away. Kev and I met up for our bus journy from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. This went horribly wrong as the woman had booked us onto separate buses with different companies. Despite knowing we were travelling together. Fool. So I missed out on DVD action, but they did show 'Old ... read more
I've had a really wicked couple of days. Treking was the name of the game and it started bright and early when i was picked up from 'Banana Guest House' who i'd booked my trek through. After collecting the rest of the group, 7 of us in total, we headed in our pick up truck to the local market, about 30 mins away to buy supplies for our three days. Well, we only had to buy essentials we may've forgotten, but our guide had to collect our food for the trip. Tres essential. We then had another 30 min drive to the elephant camp. I had been slightly concerned for the welfare of the elephants which are used for trekking purposes as i had been told they were not particularly well treated. This made me nearly ... read more
Well I saw a different side of Bangkok whilst I was there this time. I met up with Alex and we ended up going back to where he will be living for the next few months whilst he is teaching. The area is in the far North of the city and I actually spent most of the weekend travelling back and forth from Khao San to there. We went out in Sukumvit on the Saturday night...which was relatively fun, although many of the places there were very expensive so we jsut stayed at one bar. No mental clubbing experience was had, but it was cool to see Alex. I then stayed at his and in the morning had to get the bus back to Khao San to check out of my hotel, grab my stuff before ... read more
So my time in Laos has certainly not been boring. After our epic journey over the border from vietnam. We continued our travels wanting to get to Vang Vieng ASAP so that we could get back up North to do some fun stuff in the rainforest. We spent a couple of nights in Vang Vieng. The first was pretty chilled, just went to a bar for a bit, but I was so tired after all the travelling that I ended up wimping out and going to bed pretty early. The second day we had decided to go tubing. I was having money issues after being charged for cash i didnt receive in Luang Prabang, and so had to sort that out, but once i'd got some dollar together, we got our tubes and proceeded to the ... read more
i don't think I've ever hd an epic a journey s the one Kev and I have just completed from Sapa in North Vietnam, to Luang Prabang in North West Laos. I had envisaged it taking us a while, but three days later, we've finally arrived at our destination, but because it's taken so long, we have to move on from here tomorrow if we're gonna get chance to do the tubing thing in Vang Vieng, which of course is a must if you visit Laos!! We began our journey by being marched to the bus by someone from our Hotel in Sapa. She got the place where we were catching the bus wrong, so we had to double back on ourselves and walk for ages to get to the bus, this was rubbish, but en-route, ... read more
Well we've definitely had some of the greatest few days of our time in Asia. We had organised our trip with 'The Drift' Backpackers hostel in Hanoi. It's a new hostel run by some really friendly Aussies who pride themselves on organising good tours (not your average Asian run affair), but at a slightly higher price than you would normally pay, to ensure everything goes smoothly. We decided to go on this having been on other tours (Sihanoukville for example) which weren't so brilliant and wanted our Ha Long experience to be really good. We were hurried out the door at 7.50am to catch our bus to Ha Long Bay. We had a nice tour guide and a few cool people on our bus and to be honest, i snoozed the whole journey. We arrived at ... read more
...this is gonna be my last post for a week or so. I am finally in Hanoi and have met up with Kev. The journey was loong as i had a few hours on the bus from hoi an to hue then six hours walking around hue (not that impressed tbh) - the citadel was missable and i didn't get to see the tombs, and my feet hurt from my new taylor made leather flip flops. Joy. Then I had a 12 hour sleeper bus (not as nice as my first one!) to Hanoi. Today, we tried and failed miserably to go to some museums - afternoons on friday is when they are closed! So we wandered around the city a bit and then went to see Tranformers (woo woo). It was pretty awesome. Once again ... read more
In all my haste to relate my hospital times to you, i forgot to tell you about our trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels near Ho Chi Minh. I have also now added even more pictures to my Ho Chi Minh blog hope you enjoy! These were the tunnels that the Viet Cong used to hide, and make war upon the 'American Agressor'. Kev (being a fan of vietnam war fims and interested in the war itself) was really looking forward to this trip - especially because you could fire an M 16 and the end of it. woop woop. We set off and had the most amusing vietnamese man as our guide, who, interestingly was a child of an ex republic soldier (on the american's side) and therefore he didnt necessarily have the 'american's are ... read more
