As mentioned in our last blog, after the scamming and thieving in Cambodia we decided to head to Koh Chang in Thailand a few days earlier than we originally planned. We booked our transport through the hotel we were staying at as they offered a free drop-off to the bus station for our 7:30am bus. We weren’t looking forward to the journey as last year when we did it the road was still being constructed and we had to use a series of ferries to cross the 4 rivers along the way which meant getting on and off the bus in [View Full Entry]

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Our plan was not to do any more blogs for a while as we are re-visiting places which we have already been to and we thought it would be boring for all concerned. However, after visiting Sihanoukville exactly one year after our last visit we decided we needed to write a new blog to highlight some changes which have occurred in Cambodia in general over the last year. There are therefore no pictures of Sihanoukville, probably a good job as the beach and water were a mess with glass bottles, plastic bags and polystyr [View Full Entry]

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We expected that the bus journey to Lemut (the port near Pangkor) would take much longer than the 6 hours we had been told, so we correctly engorged ourselves on an unhealthy Mc breakfast which we knew would keep our energy levels going for some time. The only problem was that we had a huge cup of coffee and coffee makes us wee like crazy...so we spent most of the journey with crossed legs hoping for a toilet stop! The journey turned out to be 9 hours long with a surprise stop in Kuala Lumpur. Lemut was our transit point onto [View Full Entry]

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We used Singapore as a transit point into Malaysia. This time we would do an overland crossing to Melaka. Because of our good experience with our last visit to Malaysia, we decided to see a little more of what the country could offer the backpacker. We used Melaka as a half way stop to the beach island of Pangkor. Melaka has a lot of colonial history relevant to our English heritage; most of which is centred around Jalan Hang Jebat (Jonkers Walk) and the port area of the city. This area was great for good value accommodation, we got a small [View Full Entry]

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We booked our transport out of Ubud, relieved we were leaving and hopefully looking forward to some nice weather at the beach for Christmas. We were more prepared this time around for the journey to be a hassle but it actually wasn't as bad as we expected. We arrived in plenty of time for the ferry and even had time to have a banana jaffle for breakfast. For those not acquainted with jaffles, they are simply toasties...the Indonesians though take toasties to a whole new level putting bananas, pineapple, egg and various other things in them. Banana jaffles, in our opinion, [View Full Entry]

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We decided to do a combined blog for the whole of Bali as we didn't do much there and didn't take many pics (all of them are of Ubud!) as we wanted a nice place to relax for Christmas and New Year. Lovina We waited in Probolinggo for 2 hours before the air con tourist bus turned up to take us to Bali during this time Neil kept himself amused by teaching a 16 year old boy some funny and rude English phrases and slang. In response the boy wrote everything down very carefully in his little notebook and promised to [View Full Entry]

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We were promised an air con minibus to pick us up at 8am for our long journey to Gunung (Mount) Bromo. What did we get? A rickety old minibus with an exceedingly grumpy, madman, chain smoking driver and air con which was warm and as strong as a baby's sigh! What made it worse was that whenever the driver wanted a fag (which seemed to be every 10 minutes), he rolled down his window thereby cancelling the effect of the very weak air con. Thanks to the crazy weaving in and out of traffic and high speed driving over speed bumps [View Full Entry]

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Our train was 2 hours late leaving Jakarta, if we'd have known we could have had an extra hour in bed! The train journey was ok, we got water and a meal included but half way through the journey it started raining and of all the seats the leaky carriage roof could have leaked on it had to be Donna's, so she spent half the journey sat forward on the edge of her seat, making Neil feel incredibly uncomfortable and uneasy! So we arrived into Yogyakarta (or Yogya as the locals call it) to rain...pouring rain. We looked like drowned rats [View Full Entry]

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After a marathon 24 hours train journey to Guangzhou and a very luxurious bus to the Macau-China border (3 hours) we arrived at what must be the strangest border crossing we have ever went through. It was basically a large shopping centre and when we asked which way to Macau the Information lady replied '3rd floor'...we thought it was a mistake on her part, how could Macau possibly be located on the 3rd floor of this massive shopping complex? After going up two sets of escaltors, it seemed that Macau was indeed on the 3rd floor and after a long drawn [View Full Entry]

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The bus journey to Kunming was indeed 'executive'...well it had reclining seats, arm rests and a TV onboard. Kunming seemed to be like most other Chinese cities except with more of a South East Asian feel. This meant more street food/hawker stalls, dirtier streets, less conservative people and the locals looked less Chinese. A lot of expats and English teachers seem to live in Kunming and there was even Western music, something which we had not heard in China since leaving Hong Kong. We stayed in a place called the Hump, although we quickly re-named this hostel 'the Dump' because it [View Full Entry]

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