this blog has been somewhat neglected but just wanted to post a few of new zeland if i can without the internet crashing...!! [View Full Entry]

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Met Tom in Sydney! More to come, havent got time now! [View Full Entry]

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My trip in Australia goes a bit all over the place now just because of the time I had and the things I wanted to do! After arriving in Sydney I then caught a plane back down to Melbourne the next day as I really wanted to go and see my friends Olivia and Georgie (who I met in S.A. and also the full moon party) who are living in melbourne now for 3 months to earn some money. I stayed in Melbourne for a week, a couple of nights in a youth hostel in the town centre and a few [View Full Entry]

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Drove 2800km in 9 days with Mark from Adelaide to Sydney through mountains, towns, ghost villages, outback, rainforest, beaches, snow-capped mountains etc etc....!!! Went to the Grampians mountains National Park, one night in Melbourne at his brother's house, Wilson's Promontory National Park, Snowy Mountains (which had early snow on the top!), half a day in Canberra, then a few places along the coast up to Sydney. Had a really good week although it was pretty cold a lot of the time until we got to the coast, saw so much though, kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, emus, possums, no koalas though : [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in Adelaide to beautiful weather and NO humidity! Really nice town although not so much to do, was just nice to be able to walk around outside without it being so humid like it was in asia, went to a few museums, botanical gardens, bit of shopping, nothing particularly exciting to be honest!! The beach at Glenelg was cool altho we picked the one cloudy day to go there, never mind! ENded up staying in Adelaide for a week cos a guy called Mark who I met originally in bangkok turned up in the hostel with some friends he'd met [View Full Entry]

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I left mum, dad and michelle in bangkok airport on the saturday night and got another overnight train down south again, this time to Phuket which is an island off the western coast of the mainland. Arrived at the hostel which was in the middle of nowhere and pretty much empty which was rubbish, it wasn't even near the beach so i didnt really know what to do! Got chatting to 4 people in reception after a few hours and went for dinner and a drink with them so that was fine but they were moving on the next day so [View Full Entry]

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So a quick update on thailand so far - spent the first 2 days in bangkok while i waited for michelle to arrive, stayed on khao san road which is backpacker central, lots of cheap places to stay (3 pounds a night!!) I arrived late at night from the airport but the bus dropped me off at the top of the road and there was so just so much life!! It was also St Patricks Day but there were so many people everywhere so i walked all along the street just people-watching before i went to bed! Ho Chi Minh City [View Full Entry]

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We spent the last few days in Ho Chi Minh City which was about 35 degrees everyday and no rain - very different from the rest of our trip so far! We went to visit the Cu Chi tunnels which were built before the french invaded Vietnam and then extended for the vietnam war in the 1960s. It is basically an underground tunnel network that stretches for 200km that the vietnamese built so that they could live and hide underground away from the americans. The tunnels were so narrow that they had to crawl on their stomachs for most of the [View Full Entry]

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Unfortunately we had to sit for 9 hours on a day train from Hoi An to Nha Trang which wasn't particularly fun, it was pretty noisy and very busy. We either tried to sleep, read books, played cards, ate bread and fruit (all we could really find in Hoi An to take with us!) and watched Vietnamese TV on overhead flatscreen(?!) tvs! By the time we arrived at 9pm there were little cockroaches crawling in and out of the window frames on the train and the carriage was pretty dirty...we were glad to get off!! When we got to the hotel [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Hue and it was absolutely tipping it down and didn't really stop for the 2 days we were there which was a shame. It's quite a big city but is mostly famous for the temples and pagodas in the near-by area. The first afternoon it was still spitting a bit but we went to the Hue Citadel Imperial City which is a huge fortress over 10km squared, built in 1805 by the emperor at the time. It has temples, palaces, the old royal theatre, library, and lots of statues etc, although most of these things were derstroyed during [View Full Entry]

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