Dels

Just so you don't worry, I'm still alive. Frantically trying to see as much as I can...only have 3 weeks left. Looking forward to having a bit of sleep then. In the mean time, I am taking Pingaus advice and spending time doing rather than at an internet cafe writting about it. Just so you are not completely out of the loop, since my lasat blog entry I have been to Galway, Aaron islands, causeway coast, Belfast, Flew to Berlin (Germany now), went out to Potsdam, and Sanchenhause, then down to Dresden, then over to Prague (Czech Republic), then down to Munich. See you soon!!!... read more

After leaving Canterbury, I decided a little adventure was in order. Instead of catching the eurostar from a station 5 minutes down the tracks from Canterbury, I decided to head down to Dover, and catch the ferry across to Callias. The weather was pretty poor, so visability wasn't fantastic, but it was nice to be on the ocean, and to see the beaches of France. From Callias I ended up catching the eurostar to Paris...a highspeed 200km/hrplus luxury train. I was super lucky to be meeting friends in Paris - they were able to show me all the best parts of the city, interpret menus, pick the "dity pickpockets" a mile off, and explain strange sites, and local jokes (sorry Fiona, I forgot to ask who owns the walls when buildings are built onto each other). ... read more

Hey everyone...looks like I have fallen into the old too busy to update blog syndrome again. Luckily it is so cold here in Canterbury, a chance to warm up in the internet cafe sounded pretty appealing. Hong Kong...Cool city. We ended up staying in a really nice joint across the road from the space museum/avenue of stars area, after looking at some pretty eye opening more affordable places (at least they made us open our wallets a bit more). Hong Kong was a good stepping stone to europe, very multicultural, a lot more expensive and busy. Fiona and I had the fun of visiting a non-english speaking hairdresser...risky business at the best of times. We caught the longest escalator in teh world, visited the zoo/botanical gardens in the middle of town, cable car up to the ... read more

We spent another day looking around Guillen. This included the seven star park. Not only where there a whole lot of cool hills and plants in this park, we saw racoons running around in trees, monuments, man made waterfalls and a zoo. The best thing about the zoo was that it had a panda there, which was an unexpected and wicked find. The worst thing about the zoo, was that they had beers and monkeys dressed up in funny outfits heavily chained and were charging visitors money to have their photo with these unaturally contained animals. The non-panda beer cages were really small as well. We spent the night checking out the lights of the place. Even the "small" cities of china blow us away. So many amazing lights. We went into a bar, but it ... read more

I'm not 100% sure where I last tied things up, and too tired to go back and check...so as a quick overview, Hoi-Ann involved lots and lots of shopping, with a cooking class, and visit to the ancient ruins "My Son". We flew back to Hanoi, and squezzed in a quick meal, and a beer with Geoff Morris, an Aussie forester working in Vietnam and friends with Timo. It was so bizzare having someone who could actually just ask how much something cost instead of acting it out. He also introduced us to the art of drinking beer with ice (sorry Mum, I know not drinking drinks with ice was your number one advice, but I have been finding it a bit hard to stick to in this kind of heat!). After dinner we jumped on ... read more

After Phonsavan we jumped on a local bus to Sam Neua. This was one of the highlight bus journeys of our whole trip - 11 hours on goat track roads in poor condition and hot weather is probably not everyones cup of tea, but will stay in my mind as a pretty special journy. The bus was run by a family of three. Dad drove the bus, Mum collected the money and fed son. Son (around 8 years old) sat next to dad proudly, fed dad, and tied luggage onto the roof as people came on (There were a lot of people getting on, and occasionally off, during the journy). Mum and son fed water into the radiator of the engine throughout the journey. All three smiled the whole day. Other locals talked (or should I ... read more

Hi all - I'm still alive and kicking, thanks for all the emails checking! Internet access was not fantastic in Laos, and where it has been available it has been painfully slow, with poor computers. We have also been extremelly busy doing stuff, so haven't had so much time to spend telling everyone else about it...I hope I can remember everything! OK, so where do I start...Luang Prabang is where I last finished off. We spent the last 3 days of our time in Luang Prabang at a silk weaving course. It was excellent. We learnt all about the whole silk extraction process, chose some colours, and got dying. All the dyes we used were natural, I had green, pink and yellow. The green was from an indigo bush. I had to pound a whole lot ... read more

It's my third time lucky updating this blog entry...the internet connections haven't been super reliable here, and I have lost my entries a couple of times. We caught the bus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai..I've lost track of days, so can't tell you when. Australian and NZ bus services could learn a lot about bus service from these guys. We were the only Farang (white people) on the bus, but they had movies (Thai), complimentary snacks, water, and freshener towels. My heart almost stopped when the police stormed on for a passport cheque (we were kindly informed by a guy across the isle with limited english). The police officer said a lot in Thai, then to my great relief (but probably not his) dragged off the guy sitting next to me...the joys of entering the ... read more

Hi People Tonight is our last night in Chiang Mai, so thought I'd take the opportunity to update those of you who are interested in what Lou, Fiona and myself have been up to. Since my last update, we visited a cultural night. It was nice, but a little bit lame, in that half the hill tribe preformee's really didn't want to be there, so you felt pretty stink for them. We have spent a day at cooking school. Wow-ee..what a day. We finally figured out what all these strange fruit we had been looking at were (oh so yum!), we spent the entire day cooking and eating. The food was fantastic. Pad Thai, Tom Yum soup, Tofu (or chicken) salad, green curry, water chestnut desert....can't rave about it enough. The school was really small and ... read more

It is only day 3. That seems absolutely amazing as we seem to have done so much since arriving in Thailand, and everything is starting to seem really normal. On our second day in Bangkok we visited the grand palace and the emerald budda - We have some beautiful photos, which are probably exactly the same as those of every visitor to Bangkok, however i will endevour to get my camera down to an internet cafe and upload them. After a bit of shopping with the street hawkers who hover around outside the grand palace we jumped on a ferry up the river to the nearest stop to the train station. The river was pretty awesome to see, as we hadn't at that stage seen all the little shanty houses (for lack of a better name), ... read more