Mark and Verlie

So it’s my turn to write the blog for our next section of our adventure Cambodia. This isn’t going to be the happiest blog you’ve ever read, Cambodia has had its challenges and we wanted to experience as much of it as we could. It does get happier though peeps so grab a cup of tea. We booked onto a coach from Vietnam to drive down to Phnom Penh. It was clear that the storage lockers under the coach were full so the back seats were now filling up with backpacks and cases. Taking our seats we prepared for the drive down, the coach was quite comfy and as always it gave me the perfect people watching opportunity. When we arrived at the border we handed our passports and cash to the coordinator on the coach ... read more

Hello again! Mark here. Ok where were we? Bangkok. I was so flipping excited about the overnight train! I'd booked a "first class" sleeper compartment, which was a private 2 berth cabin. I was under no illusions, I knew that first class meant, the best of the three classes available, as opposed to actual Orient Express first class. Verlie had been sceptical about the train ride, but I'd persuaded her it would be awesome. We found our platform and carriage very easily (Verlie loved my Prince-Air Guitar joke "Purple Train, Purple Train!!" As we had arrived half an hour before take off, I had a chance to grab a few beers on the platform at normal price, before I started to get fleeced by the on-board services. There was no restaurant car, so we'd decided to ... read more

So since mark last blogged what’s been going on?? The Ozi Inn has been running at full capacity so as usual Mark has been exhausted most days. The one thing for us to look forward to being our Asian Adventure meant that we had a lot to do even before we packed. As Mark had handed in his notice to Sunny, who was not angry but a little upset by Marks departure a replacement had to be found. After some consideration and deliberating Sunny asked a 31 year old Italian guy who had been at the hostel for some months if he would like the job. Mark and I wondered if this was such a great idea considering that Gianluca’s English was a little on the poor side but it’s Sunnys’ business so we let him ... read more

I’ve had a few false starts in the old battle to get out of dreary England, in 1993 aged 21, I was on a one year working visa in New Zealand, and about to apply for PR when I decided overnight that the time wasn’t right, and I flew home to my Mummy a few days later. In 2004 I had lunch in California with some blokes who worked at my mate Spencer’s Oil refinery, who pretty much offered me a job there and then, had they been more up with US immigration, and been a bit more willing to go the extra mile, that’s probably where I’d be now. In 2005, I had a reconnaissance trip to Canada, in advance of applying for a Permanent Residency Visa. None of these panned out, and I know ... read more

Hello everyone, Happy New Year (when's the cut off for saying that, at what point does it go from being ok to say it, to a bit weird?) Sorry, as always it's seems to have been a while. Mark here, (in case you hadn't already spotted my witty prose) I hope Santa (or Satan, depending on your point of view, ever notice how close those two words are.....and he dresses in red....hmmmmmmm) brought you everything you wanted for Xmas, and that you all drank and ate too much. I'm trying to cast my mind back to when I wrote the last blog, must've been the Bali Blog.....that was October....blimey. So Verlie's been on her jetsetting travels, visiting friends and family in England, Florida and LA, stopping over in Melbourne before finally getting home almost a month ... read more

Right so we’ve had lengthy discussions about how this blog is going to be written, as you may or may not have noticed, we take turns blogging, and this time it’s my turn. However, it’s a big one, (fans of short and to the point blogs, may want to break this up into chapters, over the course of a few days) a lot happened and Verlie has lots to say, so how we are going to do it is like this: I’m going to write the blog, and Verlie is going to add paragraphs and sentences in italics ok got that? Right then…………. We booked our week long break what seemed like months and months ago, in fact it was only in August, but it was the longest 10 weeks of our lives. We’d both been ... read more