Donna and Neil
Donna and Neil Joined: August 19th 2006
Logged in: February 13th 2012
Logged in: February 13th 2012
We saved for 3 years and then went Hoff to travel the world. Chris Columbus and Magellan eat your heart out...do you reckon other people will have already discovered the places we are going to? You bet!
About Us
Neil, originally from Hartlepool, UK and Donna, originally from the Wirral, UK have known each other for 15 years. We bought a house, got cushy jobs in Nottingham and always had a passion to travel and see what more was out there in the big wide world (sounds corny or what?). The opportunity came when we were both made redundant and given nice redundancy packages and so we rented out the house and set off into the unknown.
If anyone has any questions or comments on our blogs please contact us through our blog.
Date we left the UK 29th September, 2006
Expected date of arrival back into UK The end of never....
Highlights of our trip so far
- Sitting under the stars drinking smuggled vodka and sprite on the top deck of a Chinese junk in Halong bay, Vietnam.
- Seeing the sun rise over Macchu Picchu, Peru and the clouds lift to reveal the Incas hidden city.
- Cruising on a slow boat in Laos and meeting some very good friends along the way.
- Staying in beach side cottages in Palawan, Philippines and wondering if paradise can get any better?
- Showing Donna's parents how to travel backpacker style in SE Asia...even with the pink and silver wheelie suitcases!
Lowlights of our trip so far
- Donna getting the squitz in the middle of the Inca Trail, Peru and running out of immodium.
- Getting kicked out of a hostel in Tupiza, Bolivia at 3am because we refused to be extorted for more money from the nasty owners!
- Travelling around the Philippines on a bus, boat, bus, taxi, trike, boat, bus combination whilst having very bad flu.
- Realising that Thailand was no longer the paradise we once thought it was.
- Getting stuck in typhoon after typhoon in the Philippines.
What we have learned from our travels so far...
- Asians love Karaoke or rather ....why doesn't the rest of the world enjoy Karaoke..after all what harm can there be?
- The less rules there are on the road the less accidents there seems to be
- Immodium should be carried on any journey over 1 hour.
- Transport cartels are rife in SE Asia...particularly around transportation hubs (airports, ports etc) so prepare to haggle like crazy in these places or follow the locals and see how they escape the hubs!
- Transport cartels are our number 1 HATE in SE Asia....GRRRRrrrrrr
- Package tourists are generally the enemy of many backpackers because they spend too much for the local market and out price backpackers and also the locals causing a nasty love/hate relationship of tourists versus locals.
- A good comparison of how good value a country is can be determined by the price of beer in a bar!
- Some hoteliers have no business sense whatsoever..they would rather a room be empty than give a discount in low season...WHY?
- If you cant ride a manual bike then getting around can sometimes be very difficult!
- Being on the road for a long time highlights who your true friends are back home.
- Cadbury's chocolate is not as good outside of the UK as it is inside the UK!
- You can never get bored lying on a beach everyday.
- Most of the beggars that will ask you for money are not as hard up as the poor people which don't ask for money. As a backpacker if we gave money to every beggar which asked us for money we would have been home 6 months ago!
- As a spending tourist or backpacker you are very welcome in most countries but you will never belong to that country and get the same respect as the locals....so don't expect it!
- You should try and keep the really good places to yourself and not write a travelblog about them as no doubt they will be ruined in no time at all. Does that mean we visited places we haven't wrote about on here?.....you bet!
- Always back up your travel blog as sometimes server problems can result in you losing half of your blog entries.
- The scourge of reality tv has spread everywhere....
We'd like to ask you - based on the following - have we been in Asia too long?
1. We think squat toilets are great...the position makes the poo come out faster. But Neil can't read his book on a squat it's too difficult to balance (yes, he has tried!)
2. We now think why walk in a straight line when we can zigzag and stop dead randomly in front of people, thus making our walks more enjoyable and fun.
3. Why should we walk on the boring old pavement, we walk on the road giving a sense of adventure to any journey and it also gives Donna an opportunity to push some annoying moped drivers off their bikes
4. When a person tells us the price of something we immediately respond 'discount?' (we even did this in KFC once)
5. We *quite* like Westlife's new CD (?)
6. Neil likes to sing 80's love songs loudly to Donna (or anyone else around) whilst walking down the street!
7. If there is neon/flashing lights/loud music, we are drawn to the pretties like bees to honey
8. We don't queue any more
9. We don't hold doors open for people any more, we just let them slam shut in people's faces
10. We are happy to shoulder barge anyone in our way, particularly when getting to the front of a queue
11. We are mesmerised by TV in shop windows, karaoke places and fights in the street.
12. Opening an umbrella inside a shopping centre is no problem for us, it won't bring you bad luck...you never know when those fire sprinklers will go off!
13. We cross roads not caring if a car is heading for us at 40mph - he'll swerve you know! Green man means cross the road; red man means cross the road, no man means cross the road
14. We are not shocked at how bad toilets are - troughs and open cubicles are no problem for us!
15. We accept where there is a wall, there is wee...just hold your breath
16. We don't mind Asian's wanting their pictures taken with us...of course we'll charge a nominal fee
17. If a car almost hits us, Donna just thumps and dents the backside of the car...but we always remember to run if the driver gets out the car!
18. We treat all people who say hello to us with suspicion (they are probably trying to sell us something) and take a swing at them with our rucksacks if we feel so inclined.
19. We know how to say 'no I don't want any' in 17 different languages and dialects
20. We no longer look at long journeys in terms of hours spent travelling but rather how many food vendor and toilet stops we'll have and whether we'll have goats or chickens sat on our laps!
21. The first things we ask strangers we meet are - what is your name, how old are you, where are you from and how much do you earn without even thinking!
22. We no longer shut our eyes for fear of death on fast and furious taxi journeys...we quite like the adrenalin rush
We have now been travelling for...
Travel Blog Posts
Food stalls in Bangkok...this was a whole pig
Panting and frantic, we anxiously looked between Donna’s watch and the Air Asia check-in man, who simply giggled and said ‘calm down, calm down’, much to our disappointment it wasn’t in a scouse (Liverpudlian) accent. But let’s rewind 3 and a half hours…we sat waiting for the minibus to pick us up chatting with the owner of our guesthouse, arriving 20 minutes late we weren’t too bothered as the journey to Krabi airport was only 2 hours or so from Koh Lanta, we had plenty of time. We stopped to pick up a Thai lady in Klong Dao (the beach just north of Long beach) and we were on our way happily to the car ferry. We knew there was something wrong straightaway when the queue for the car ferry was tailed right the way back ... read more
Longtail parked on Koh Kraden beach
So, after crazy travel agent lady shouting at us and sitting waiting until 10:15am for our minibus to turn up, it finally did. The problem was it was pretty full when it collected the three of us and the idiot driver tried to cram us onto the back two seats which had absolutely no leg room. After we climbed over to the seats in front of us and the driver consulted his list several more times, we proceeded to drive around Krabi Town (3 times), picking more people up and ending up back at the hotel next door to ours…it was really weird! So when the driver had stopped giving us a random tour of Krabi Town, we were finally on our way the only problem there were 13 of us and bags (and bloody big ... read more
'Restaurant' at the food night market near the river
This next stop was just an overnighter, before we continued our onward journey for Christmas. This is a slightly shorter blog and looking now at the pictures we have uploaded, this stop was very much about food Kuala Lumpur to Krabi town We made our way back to KL Sentral station so we could catch the Air Asia Skybus to the Cheap Charlie terminal to catch our flight to Krabi. This part of the journey went nice and smoothly, the problems arose at the Cheap Charlie terminal. All we have to say about that terminal is that is has gone from bearable to completely unworkable in the space of 18 months – we have heard that a new Cheap Charlie terminal closer to the proper airport is opening soon…let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later. The ... read more
Train to Singapore
We had been planning our Christmas trip away for a few months, unlike our usual last minute preparations because one of our old uni friends from the UK, Dave, was coming to visit us. We set off for Singapore on a 7am flight with a full day of travelling ahead of us. Our source of amusement for the majority of the 3 and a half hour flight was the announcement that it was one of the cabin crew’s birthday…the laughter from us wasn’t because it was her birthday but because her name was 'Pringles'. We had an interesting discussion as to what her middle name might be – sour cream and barbeque were the main contenders. Singapore to Kuala Lumpur We breezed through the Swiss clock that is Changi airport, Dave was there waiting to meet ... read more
Restaurant overlooking the lily pond
We were quite nervous about this trip to Thailand, we hadn’t been to Koh Samui for 10 years and we had been wondering if we had made the right decision to revisit since we booked our flights! Again, our flight arrived close to midnight so being the tight arses that we are, we waited in Bangkok airport until it was time for the first flight to Surat Thani. This time we were fully prepared for the transport mafia on arrival at Surat Thani as we had pre-researched our options. After our night in the airport with little sleep, we decided to go for the faster ferry option to Koh Samui. It was expensive at 650 baht each (£13) but it was half the journey time and we just wanted to get there at this point. We ... read more
Towards the northern end of Long beach
Ok, so it’s kind of becoming a weird tradition now that whenever we are going somewhere we end up spending the night in an airport and guess what…our Christmas trip away starts with an overnighter in Bangkok’s airport! We will warn you now, this is quite a long blog as we had a very, let us say, eventfultime with transport on this Thailand trip. About the panorama...it makes the beach look like we are on a tiny, deserted island, which we weren't - for some reason it distorted as we stitched it together and looks a bit strange. Can we have an A for effort though? Our entertainment for the evening was taken care of almost immediately by some Italian tourists who didn’t speak English trying to order their sandwiches at the newly opened airport Subway. ... read more
The little bit of beach at our resort
After a day and a half of food poisoning in Cebu city, we were hoping that the bus journey over the hills of Cebu wouldn’t be too arduous on our stomachs or bowels! As it was, the bus journey was ok…apart from the signs saying ‘Slow down, accident prone area’ which gave the driver the impression that he should speed up and drive like a complete maniac. The warp speed we went on the winding roads (with some sheer drop offs too we might add) and the few near misses with other buses well and truly kept our mind off the possibility of the food poisoning coming back to haunt us! Three hours later we arrived in Moalboal town, although quite why the 89km journey took so long with the warp speed we reached we will ... read more
Entrance to the 'National Park'
Our flight landed in Suvarnabhumi airport close to midnight and we were disappointed to see that the airport was still as grey as ever (whoever designed this airport thinking it would look nice needs a slap!) and then we waited for what seemed like forever to get through the Immigration queues. We seem to be making a habit of sleeping in airports; secretly we enjoy torturing ourselves with the stiff backs and necks from lying on the hard, cold floors and the feeling of eye dropping tiredness the next day! Feeling a little worse for wear, we went to get the shuttle for the transportation centre, the lack of sleep is probably why we spent ages looking for the shuttle bus stop until the information desk pointed us in the right direction! What follows is a ... read more
Neil and Nissen hut
Sorry there has been a bit of a gap between the last blog and this one…we have been too busy lying and basking on a paradise tropical beach and booking flights to our next paradise tropical beach - jealous? Anyhoo, instead of getting up at the crack of dawn and getting a Rapid Penang bus to the bus station and then onto a big bus we decided getting up at the crack of dawn and being picked up from our guesthouse with a smaller minibus was the better option for the (supposed) 4 hours journey to the Cameron Highlands. Of course our 7:30am pick-up was late and we were the last ones on the bus…we swear with this minibus journey we really had to bite our tongues with our fellow travellers. They were so damn rude! ... read more
Lily pond at the Tropical Spice Garden
First of all, sorry for showing our geeky sci-finess by doing a Star Trek title for the blog, we just couldn’t resist it! It was only a short (air conned!) bus ride to Batu Ferringhi, a beach resort town on the north coast of Penang. Because of the heat Neil had insisted that his Cadbury’s chocolate be packed very carefully into our backpacks, to provide the most protection from melting in the heat! We managed to find the right place to get off the bus and walked away from the big resort hotels down a side street which lead to the beach and the budget accommodation; although the word ‘budget’ to describe the rooms is definitely not the one we would use! Cue a hot and sweaty hour or so walking around the few guesthouses asking ... read more
where we are from! 
Wish list for immediate future 
Previous travels 
Where we have been so far 
future, future travels! 
