Lucy Crockert

Flying into Carcassonne airport we made out way to a little town outside Quillan, in the Languedoc Roussilon region in the South of France. After a couple of days, i soon discovered my French was worse than basic and my 'wrong side of the road' driving was also a bit dodgy. "Parlez-Vous Anglais?" - the answer to this question would determine the length of my conversation, the amount of hand gestures involved and speed/volume at which i would speak at (because speaking loudly, slowly and waving hands about naturally helps with the language barrier..and isn't annoying in the slightest). Despite my language/driving limitations we headed out to explore the cathare country, lakes and countryside. Amongst all our exploring we did manage to paint the house and ourselves (one of the reasons for our trip) and some ... read more

With a couple of months camping, hostelling and sleeping on friends sofas, we drove 40 minutes up the road to Palm Cove for some 'luxury' in a Novotel apartments. In 30 degrees, the air con was the biggest luxury. We spent the next week visiting the fish on the Great Barrier Reef and the remote outback towns. Despite having rented a lovely apartment, we roughed it in the bush camping for a night or two. With 2 weeks touring around, we had pushed George as far as he would go, we left him at a recycling plant to be repaired for another lucky driver (or that's what they told me..). After George was 'put down', we moved onto the confines of a camper van and made our way from Mission Beach to Brisbane stopping along the ... read more

Four months since arriving in Cairns, it's fair to say we have drank and partied too much and saved very little money (who am I kidding? Saved NO money). Having been fired from first restaurant job for not smiling enough - I'm sure that can't be right (well, there may have been a few broken glasses too...), I have moved onto a new job, housekeeping. I know what you're thinking, living the dream eh? Ha yes, I have those thoughts everyday whilst cleaning hotel rooms. However, I am reassured my Business Management degree is being put to good use. When I'm not working I lead a pretty hectic life. I've managed to travel to some small Aussie villages that consist of a general store and a pub - what more do you need? We've camped in ... read more

A few weeks into our Australian experience and we haven't made it past Victoria. Distracted by the mostly nice weather (we've gotten a bit fussy now), local vineyards and never ending beaches we forgot our plans for finding work (ok, our memories not that bad) and instead had a great holiday! After all, we couldn't leave Victoria without seeing a koala. Luckily for our friends (who we were meant to stay with for only a few days), we spotted our first koala a few days ago in a tree by the road - a missed photo opportunity unfortunately. Local pubs sit in every town with green surrounding gardens and live music playing. Driving between the towns, there are a number of vineyards each with their own restaurant and wine tasting. Living with a local, our time ... read more

From Sri Lanka to Singapore, we crossed the line dividing the Sri Lankan Rupee and the Singapore Dollar, the cheap with the expensive and the chaotic with well, a different kind of chaos. From the ramshackle streets of Sri Lanka we arrived in the clinically clean and organised, busy world of Singapore. With a fast and efficient train line, getting from A to B was a lot easier (and airconditioned) than the buses in Sri Lanka. Everywhere we explored, there was mass of people - tourists trying to navigate the subways and locals rushing to work. We explored Orchard Road for the (window) shopping, China Town for great food, Little India for the markets and Sentosa Island for the beach. Doing Singapore on the cheap has its difficulties. Instead of staying at the Marina Bay Sands ... read more