18 March Up at 5:45, dazed and confused, and puttered to Periyar National Park. Our driver said he’d seen tigers crossing the road some evenings - but sightings are very rare. We did notice a deer sleeping peacefully on our way in. We arrived at daybreak. An English couple, two avid ornithologists, joined us. Our trek started with a view of the dense cloud rising from a bottomless pot of mist into a South Indian jungle. We saw loads of Great Indian hornbill, kingfishers - both brown and the regular blue sort. At dawn, a strange migration of a billion frogs [View Full Entry]

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March 20th Around noon, we set out for the tip of India. The hotel graciously allowed us to leave the majority of our luggage free of charge, so we swept around at high speeds and generally revelled in the lightness on our shoulders. Oh, how many sweaters have I been hauling around all this time that I haven’t even looked at (2)!? From Trivandrum, we changed buses in Nagercoil and rode with the local pilgrims to Kanyakamuri, India’s point. It’s an important pilgrimage destination; we went to see the sun set and rise from the same vantage point, and to dip [View Full Entry]

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March 21st Back on the beach, we haggled hard with the most enterprising of the hawking locals. This man had purchased a large (and extremely varied) assortment of body-boards, and was renting them out by the hour. The waves were relentless. Our book informs us that despite the recent introduction of blue-shirted lifeguards, a couple of tourists still drown every year. The lifeguards lead a harried existence, blowing their whistles every time they think someone doesn’t see the next massive wave that’s about to crash on their head, or swims too close to the rocks. The un [View Full Entry]

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February 26th After being delayed by six hours, we finally arrived in Bangkok as the clock was closing on midnight, local time. Thai Airways’ motto is “Smooth as Silk” but it was pretty rough going. We hopped into a cab after a bit of negotiating and decided upon a place to stay en route. We wanted to stay on the Khao San road as we had heard so much from so many. We decided on the Sawasdee Banglumpoo after looking at a standard room and strolled a bit of the famous road before crashing. February 27th Waking up in our [View Full Entry]

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February 28th Today’s mission was to buy a camera, as I kept putting it off expecting to find something cheaper elsewhere. Yesterday taught me that I was missing too many fantastic shots, as George gets all artistic direction with his camera (bought in Mongolia). As we couldn’t be bothered to get into another argument with a potential tuk-tuk driver, we headed for the canal. The tuk-tuk drivers will take you anywhere free as long as you go into a couple of shops and pretend to be interested so that they can get a free petrol voucher from the shop owners. Water [View Full Entry]

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Once back we had a wicked day doing a lot of what Manila has to offer: Intermuros and coconut palace. In Manila airport at the mo and they over booked the flight, so we've been delayed 6 hours. The Philippines was wicked and we hope to visit again sometime soon. Rob, Marg, Angus and Francie have open invitations to visit anytime. Bring on Thailand! [View Full Entry]

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Feb. 19th 2009. I fell asleep feeling a little weird, but woke up at five am with the full-blown Wrath of Shiva. We were supposed to go to Mindoro, but within an hour of being awake, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. Looking back, we’d bought some bottled water from a street vendor. I think he filled it with tap water and glued the seal back on, which is why it was ₱10. At first George was unsympathetic (we really wanted to go to Mindoro) saying things like “Are you sure you’re not just being a girl?” but in a few [View Full Entry]

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February 17th We awoke with a start at 4am, confused and excited. We loaded our daypacks into the van and promptly fell back asleep as Bobby drove through the early morning traffic. Some hours later, when the sun decided to join us, we stopped for some breakfast in a fast food complex in the country. It was a true concrete jungle - as though the wildest forest had gone to bed with an urban planner. We all ate won ton soup and blinked rapidly at each other in the day’s new brilliance. By one o’clock we were climbing the stairs to [View Full Entry]

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February 14th After arriving in Manila, we were quickly and easily met by Lita and Brenda. We met Jojo and his friend, who’s van it was that came to pick us up, and drove out and hit the streets. Both Katherine’s and my eyes were transfixed out of the window. The streets were lined with boutiques, though most were shut at this hour. They sold all kinds of things and the streets were lit in a dusty yellowy-orange shade while we were bumping along sometimes very damaged roads. We hit a motorway and everyone is driving diagonally; I hardly see the [View Full Entry]

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February 14th Okay! Wow! We woke with less than half an hour before check-in closed. It was straight up and off running first to check in and then through security. By the time we had fully woken up, we had taken off. The alarm had gone off but cleverly, I had placed it inside a pocket of my bag. It was quite a long flight before we landed in Brunei. For some reason we thought it would only be a couple of hours or so. Anyway, we landed and realised that we had absolutely ages before our next flight to Manila. [View Full Entry]

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