Insearchofsun

And so we've reached our last stop.... I was excited about visiting Beijing especially with the countdown to the Olympics well underway. However when we arrived I was surprised that this was the host city for one of the biggest sporting events in the world. With only 80 days to go the city was still like a construction site. A lot of the old buildings in the hutongs were being pulled down and being replaced with new, modern buildings. New hotels, restaurants etc. were in the process of being built everywhere. The strange thing was that many of the construction sites were not closed and members of the public could just wander through- health and safety regulations obviously not in existence! The city itself is also very polluted- like all the other big cities in Asia. ... read more

We both had high hopes for Thailand having heard mostly good things.... We took a flight from Luang Probang to Chiang Mai. It was pretty clear as soon as we landed that Thailand was alot wealthier than the last few countries we visited. For the first time since Singapore cars out-numbered bikes and mopeds on the road. Traffic law is in place and is adhered to, and there is no beeping of horns. It seems this was only acceptable in Cambodia and Vietnam. We spent a few days in Chiang Mai wandering around the walled part of the city and losing count of the number of temples- they all begin to look the same after a while. We also did a one day cookery course which was good fun, but by the time I feel like ... read more

Over the last few weeks I'd say we've developed a bit of a love-hate relationship with Vietnam. We took a bus from Phnom Penh to Saigon. The bus journey was not unlike the one we took within Cambodia although things did improve slightly when we crossed the border. There seemed to be some degree of traffic law in Vietnam, unlike in Cambodia, but the relentless beeping and braking didn't stop. First thing we noticed was that the motor cyclists wore helmets and the number of passengers per bike was rarely more than two. This was a big improvement on things in Cambodia where nobody wore helmets and it was fairly common to see entire families (4 or 5 people) on one moped. As well as these differences we noticed a fairly significant improvement in peoples' living ... read more

So this is going to be a really short entry as we only paid a flying visit to Singapore. We flew from Perth to Singapore last Friday and just spent 2 days in the city. It was definitely a bit of a change from Australia, especially the sparsely populated state of WA. Singapore is a strange city with so many different cultures living side by side. It's a real mix of east and west. The evening we arived we took a stroll around little India and the area north of the river. Little India was cool- very alive. The following day we spent wandering around China town, the CBD and the shopping district of Orchard road. The shopping seemed really good- could spend lots of money here if you wanted. That night we went to the ... read more

All refreshed after our holidays, we flew back to Melbourne, picked up a little campervan and hit the road again. It was smaller than our Jucy van in NZ but surprisingly Eddie managed to avoid hitting his head as much as he did when we had her. We headed west from Melbourne towards the Great Ocean Road. Our first stop was Geelong where we spent some time wandering around the pretty waterfront. The larger than life figurines made the walk fairly interesting. There were probably close on 100 of them, each having some significance in Geelongs' history. From there we took a drive around the Bellarine Peninsula before stopping for the night in Torquay- the surf capital of the region. The beaches were really pretty with beautiful blue water. From Torquay we started the trip along ... read more