Well I'm finally here. It has taken me about 6 weeks (6 awesome weeks I might add) but I am finally here in Österreich. I arrived at the airport on the 12th of February to an extremely warm welcome from my 'Buddy', Clara. (The University assigns each exchange student an Austrian student to help us find our feet when we first arrive) Clara had brought her Dad's car so I got chauffeur driven to my student accommodation. My room is on the 5th floor of a 17 storey building. It is all student accommodation so there are lots of cool facilities [View Full Entry]

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I arrived in London on Australia Day at 6am and spent the next two hours struggling with all my luggage to Joyce's apartment in South East London. (Joyce is my half Aunt and she moved to London about 3 or 4 years ago.) Sadly my only celebration on this great and allustrious day was to have a VB on the flight from Bangkok to London. Once I had arrived I did actually go into central London in search of some fellow Aussies (apparently they had filled Leicster Square with sand and had a barbeque there the year before) but couldn't find [View Full Entry]

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A few days after I arrived in London, I met up with Faraaz and his cousin Shaz and we went on a very quick 5 day trip to Stockholm and Budapest. Stockholm (Sweden) We caught a cheap flight to Stockholm and met up with Justin there. It didn't snow while we were there but there was a lot of fresh snow everywhere and we had a lot of fun sliding around and having snow ball fights! It was quite strange for me because I had already visited Stockholm, when Michael was studying in Uppsala, so I was recognising buildings and streets [View Full Entry]

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I actually only spent about 4 full days in Bangkok, so can hardly say that I got to know it very well, but from what I did see I can say that it does live up to its reputation of being a busy and polluted city. People who spend more than a few minutes on the street actually wear surgical masks. (This was a bit worrying at first considering the recent bird flu outbreaks.) However that is not to say that it is entirely bereft of interesting things to see and do, there are just a lot of places in Thailand [View Full Entry]

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Our first view of Koh Chang was at about 6.30pm when we arrived by bus from Bangkok. The sun was just setting and the island was sillhouetted against a purple sky. We all just sat for a few minutes watching in awe. By the time we arrived, by speed boat, it was dark and we caught a taxi to White Sands Beach where we found a nice bungalow for the night. I got up about 7 the next morning and went exploring. The beach our bungalow was on was amazing! It seemed that everywhere you looked there was a postcard photo [View Full Entry]

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The last week has been awesome! Chiang Mai is such a beautiful city with so much to see and do. It was such a refreshing change after the hustle and bustle of Bangkok. This is not to say that Chiang Mai is a small quiet city, on the contrary it is quite large and doesn't seem to sleep, but it has certain qualities that Bangkok lacks, such as personality and charm. If I was ever to come back to Thailand, and I'm sure that I will, I would definitely put aside a large proportion of my time to explore the area [View Full Entry]

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Well it's only a few days now before I head off on my 14 month adventure. The last few days have been pretty busy getting all of those last minute things done but I think I'm pretty much ready now. I thought that I would add an entry now firstly just to make sure I know how it all works and secondly to let you all know what I have planned for the next year or so. Well for the first part of my trip I'll be flying out on the 6th of Jan to Bangkok, Thailand, to meet up with [View Full Entry]

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