http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Dave-and-Coz/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Dave and Coz en-us Sun, 27 Dec 2009 02:18:17 +0000 Sun, 27 Dec 2009 02:18:17 +0000 From Ayres Rock we flew to Cairns to experience one of the natural wonders of the world the Great Barrier Reef. Upon arriving in Cairns we were surprised by how Floridian it was with lots of beautiful wooden beach houses wide open roads fish restaurants bars and parades of shops. Surprisingly Cairns doesn't have a beach and the Great Barrier Reef is quite a long boat ride from the shor http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/New-South-Wales/Sydney/Bondi-Beach/blog-461916.html Perth and West Coast We flew from Singapore to Perth where we met Dave's brother Mike who was in Australia on holiday for a week. Arriving in Perth was a strange feeling everyone spoke English drove on the left and the streets and houses all looked similar to England. Long lines of flat roofed shops set back on the side of the roads felt very American. We'd been in Asia for so long with http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Western-Australia/Perth/Perth-City/blog-455757.html Our second month in Indonesia was spent in Bali Lombok and Java. We first flew to Kuala Lumpur to renew our Indonesian visa and buy a new camera We then headed to Denpasar in Bali and decided to go to the popular Kuta Beach in the south west. It's a favourite party beach area for Australians and is packed full of bars restaurants fast food chains shopping and surfingAfter having been http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/blog-452443.html We've been in Indonesia for the past 2 months with little or no access to the internet so haven't written a blog in quite a while Indonesia is such a diverse country spread out over 17000 islands We spent our first month in Sulawesi and Maluku then our second month in Bali Lombok and Java. Here's our first month.....Sulawesi Part IFrom Kuala Lumpur we flew to Manado in the North of Sul http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/blog-450431.html After an overnight flight and very little sleep we arrived in Tokyo from Bangkok. We got on a train to the city centre and the first thing we noticed was how clean everyone's shoes were Professionals children skater boys it didn't matter they all had meticulously clean shoes. The second thing we noticed was how familiar the outskirts of Tokyo looked just like a Scandinavian city. Our http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Tokyo/blog-440661.html We took a 6 hour bus ride to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. The coach was nice and crossing the boarder was surprisingly efficient. After checking into a hotel we took a walk towards the river through the embassy district. The houses were beautiful and the tree lined street was full of boutique shops and French bakeries We took the opportunity to sample the pastries Fantastic food and coffee http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Cambodia/North/Siem-Reap/blog-431837.html Our ArrivalOn August 7th we arrived in the captial of Vietnam Hanoi which is found in the north of the country. Already 50 dollars lighter courtesy of our visa payment we shared a taxi with a French couple to the city centre.We were hugely impressed. A bit battered but with bags of class we found a heady blend of colonial French and traditional Vietnamese architecture in a maze of streets a http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/blog-429201.html As tourism in Myanmar is a bit controversial we thought we'd give a bit more background than on the blogs we've done before now. It's a bit long but we hope you enjoy....Myanmar OverviewMyanmar lies in a strategic location bordering some of the fastest growing economies in the world such as India China and Thailand. It has a wealth of ancient mainly buddist history some of the best beaches an http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Burma/Mandalay/blog-426902.html We haven't managed to write a blog for a while as we've been in Myanmar Burma where communication is tough to say the least. So we're a little behind Before getting into the wonders of Myanmar here's our Thailand blog...The only flight between Delhi and Bangkok was at 3.30am So we took it and arrived in Bangkok on 24th June. From Bangkok we got a bus straight to Pattaya to see my d http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Thailand/South-West-Thailand/Railay/blog-426855.html We took an overnight bus from Delhi to Manali up in the Himalaya's. It was beautiful......stunning mountains with rivers streams and waterfalls. We stepped out of the coach and noticed the lovely temperature for the first time. It was 1520 degrees in the day and about 05 degrees at night. Perfect. We even had to buy a jumper hat and gloves.The town of 'New' Manali isn't anything special. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Himachal-Pradesh/Manali/blog-415832.html We got an overnight train from Varanasi to Agra. Arriving in Agra we were immediately impressed with its cleanliness. It's readymade for a quick sight seeing tour and doesn't feel the same as the rest of India. There's lots of big roads shopping malls and fancy hotels. Our hotel was close to the Taj Mahal in a place called Taj Ganj an area established by the people working on the Taj Ma http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Uttar-Pradesh/Agra/blog-412818.html We arrived in Varanasi after the longest train journey in the world 42hrs The Lonely Planet book warned that as soon as you arrive you'll be pounced on This was definitely the case with rickshaws and tuktuk's fighting to take us to our hotel. They were bidding for our business and we took the lowest bid. We agreed a price and got into the tuktuk. After 10 metres the driver turned a http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Uttar-Pradesh/Varanasi/blog-409363.html From Madurai we took an overnight train to Pondicherry a lovely coastal town which was once colonised by the French. As a result there's lots of French style houses and restaurants and the locals all speak at least basic French. It was a nice place to relax and finally eat some nonIndian food We hired a moped for a couple of days to explore the area and travelled north by about 15km. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Tamil-Nadu/Chennai/blog-408369.html Munnar is set up in the mountains 1600 metres. The town of Munnar isn't particularly pretty. The real beauty of Munnar is the miles and miles of tea plantations that surround it. Every hill side has been taken up with beatifully manicured tea plants. The plantations are owned by TATA who employ 12000 people in Munnar. We stayed 20 miles outside of the town in a resort called Dew Drops. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Kerala/Munnar/blog-404219.html After a hair raising bus ride through the night we arrived in Cochin or Kochi as it's now called. It was a big overcrowded place so we got straight on a little ferry and went to Fort Cochin. A lovely little island just off the coast and connected by a large bridge. Fort Cochin has EnglishPortugueseDutch influence and is very quaint. There's lots of parks quiet streets churches and http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Kerala/Kochi-/blog-404207.html We left Palolem as the place was shutting down for the monsoon and with the intention of going to Cochin in Kerala. But we couldn't get on a train and decided to go by night bus to Bangalore. This was truly horrible. The sleeper bus was 1hr 45mins late. When we got on we were shown to our cabin which was too short to lie down and too low to sit up. To make matters worse the lights went out http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Karnataka/Bangalore/blog-400203.html We arrived in Margao in Goa and headed for the nearest beach a place called Colva. Big disappointment as it was really tacky. We didn't even get out of the taxi and instead headed south to a place called Palolem. We'd read about it in the Lonely Planet book and it sounded fantastic just what we were looking for. We arrived and were immediately impressed Palolem beach is in a half moo http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Goa/Palolem/blog-399978.html We arrived in Delhi on Tuesday morning and after having to get a 'letter of permission' from the airport manager as we didn't have a print out of our so called eTicket we managed to get to the domestic terminal. From there we boarded a plane to Mumbai. We had to take a 2 hour dusty hot and hectic taxi journey finally arriving in the Colaba district of Mumbai and checked into the Hotel Vol http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Maharashtra/Mumbai/blog-397691.html Well we are finally off tomorrow on our world tour. I think wersquore as ready as we can be travel insurance 9 series of Southpark on the iPod nothing but the essentialsThe first phase of the trip is as followshellip. 4 days seeing friends in the Netherlands then on to India. Starting in Mumbai and going down the west coast via Goa and Kerala and over to the east via Maduri and on to http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Hampshire/Lymington/blog-395245.html