Jen and Nick

It seems like we’ve done so much since our last blog! After the Everest trek we took a few days to travel to Pokhara, stopping at the beautiful, out of the way village, of Bandipur where we were pummelled by two whopping big storms. We know it’s a cliché but the hailstones really were the size if golf balls, we got caught in an open field and they hurt like hell. 2 hours later, when we finally made it back to the village the locals had swept up the hailstones from the street and the kids were building little snowmen. We continued on to Pokhara, a pleasant town on the banks of the Phewa Lake and in the shadow of the Himalayas. We chilled out for a while, met up with our guide from Everest then ... read more

Thought we’d give you a quick update on the past few weeks in Laos… As you know, we did southern Laos on our bikes and we loved it so much that we thought we’d come and see northern Laos too. It’s more developed than the south and consequently gets more tourists so we’ve been more like regular backpackers since the last update. We crossed the Thai-Loas border at Houay Xay and got a slow boat down the Mekong River to Luang Prubang. We’d heard great things about the 2 day journey and it sounded idyllic, romantic even. However, it was 2 very long days sat on a wobbly wooden bench and we’d have enjoyed it more if our arses weren’t aching. Luang Prubang was nice though. It’s a mix of colonial French and Laos architecture ... read more

We’re still alive! 3 countries and god knows how many miles we’ve rode or strange beds we’ve slept in since we last updated the blog! We left you in Nha Trang, Vietnam where we enjoyed some R&R time off the bikes. We did proper tourist things and even had a mud bath to cleanse the Vietnamese road grime away. Nick claims it took years off him (yeah right!) From there we escaped to Dalat. A lovely town in the highlands where the French used to go in colonial times to get away from the heat on the coast. The town still has the feel of an alpine village, it’s beautiful and unlike anywhere else we saw in Vietnam. We spent the Lunar (Chinese) New Year in Saigon and, as we missed the western new year, we ... read more

It seems ages since we last wrote to you and we’ve covered several countries since our last update. We flew to Singapore on Nick’s birthday and celebrated with a few in-flight Singapore slings. The city was predictably hot, humid and occasionally sterile but we also saw a different side. With Krishna temples in the middle of Chinatown, Buddhist temples in Little India, huge sky scrappers towering over poverty, and strong Malay, Chinese and western influences we found the city to be full of contrasts and great food. We saw the sights and filled our stomachs with cheap scoff from street vendors. Nick tried the pig’s organ soup and we regularly had no idea what we were eating. On one occasion we went to a local’s restaurant in Little India but there was not a plate or ... read more

So we last updated you from Hervey Bay when we were about to leave for Frazer Island, the largest sand island in the world. We got together with 8 other random backpackers and hired a 4x4 between us complete with all the camping gear. The Island has no tarmac roads and it didn’t matter who was driving, we got stuck in the sand and often had to get out and push. That was all part of the fun and we spent 3 days there, driving around, camping on the beach and having a laugh. The island is truly beautiful, particularly the stunning Lake McKenzie where the water takes 30 years to filter through the sand and so is incredibly pure. We made a few friends on the Fraser Island trip and we all stayed together travelling ... read more