Mark and Suz

Hello for the final time!! After a fantastic Thailand hurrah in Phuket we headed to the bus terminal to catch a lift to the airport. Naturally as were told the bus left at half past the hour and arrived with seven minutes to spare, we found that it actually left at twenty past. This was typically frustrating, as it left us stranded with only a more expensive taxi as a means of transport. We arrived at the airport after the luxurious ride with plenty of time to spare after passing our prospective bus shortly after leaving the town. We were a little concerned as we were flying with Air Asia, renowned for its nonchalant baggage handlers. However we arrived into Singapore with no problems. The airport is slightly out of town but is connected to the ... read more

Hello again. After a slightly delayed southern Vietnam blog our hotel in Siem Reap has fast and free internet so we have been getting things together bit by bit. We arrived into Cambodia and Phnom Penh on our bus from Ho Chi Minh. We handed in our passports and $20 for the border crossing. The journey took about 6 hours and the border was more efficient than we thought. We had to get out of the coach and take our bags through a x ray machine before getting passports checked, it was quite surreal. After getting back on the bus we drove past a strip of casinos that stood in the middle of nowhere which was also odd. Cambodia is similar in its scenary to Laos but on a slightly more even plane. We arrived into ... read more

Good morning from Vietnam! We arrived into Hanoi after our flight from Vientiane. The journey was fine and we were even given a meal despite the flight only lasting 2 hours. When we arrived into Hanoi we had a rough idea where we would be staying and where we could get the shuttle from. However when we arrived we found we had just missed a shuttle and therefore accepted a lift in a mini van for the same price. Unfortunately this is where th9ings became a little bit tricky; our driver stopped at one point and told us we would need to pay more to continue to our hostel. We refused and played the waiting game. Eventually he continued and we arrived at a completely different hostel, but with the staff and driver tell us that ... read more

We arrived into Thailand after a mammoth bit of travelling. Our flight from Cairns to sydney was fine and gave us great views of the harbour at sunset. We had a very quick turnaround, with literally 15 minutes to spare before our flight to Bangkok. This was very long, bt had good service with Qantas and a fine erray of entertainment on offer to keep us occupied. We arrived into Bangkok at around 1am local time and had a 6 hour wait before our flight to Chiang Mai. All though the troubles seemed to be over we still thought it better to avoid the area, changing our entire Asia travel route, looping Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia in a clockwise direction than our planned anti clockwise method. Our flight to Chiang Mai was fine, but the stay ... read more

After a really enjoyable spell in Byron Bay we were hoping for a repeat of happy times in Surfers Paradise which we had heard good things about. However, after arriving and walking along the main strip of town we decided that Surfer's was probably not for us. The street was littered with sky-scrapers each vying for their own perfect view of the beach. The population consisted of pretty much all tourists, attracted like moths to the bright lights. The second morning we got to really explore and whilst there was plenty to offer in terms of shopping, bars and colourful happenings it didn't have any sort of culture to back it up. The beach was enormous and at intervals the lifesavers were situated ready to rescue stranded tourists from the severe currents. It wasn't really surfing ... read more