Trace: After a thrilling motorbike ride through the Central Highlands, Nicki, Mat and I were all ready to relax and enjoy some good local food (and local beer) in the relative tourist mecca of Hoi An. Hoi An is 'Nam HQ for tailors and shoe stores, all 200+ stores in this small town advertise that they can make any item of clothing (or footwear) from a picture, from fabric of any colour, in any size, wool, silk, leather all no problem ... overnight. I got a suit jacket, pants, a shirt and a skirt all for $65US. Bargain at twice the [View Full Entry]

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Mat: A pancake-and-plastic-jug-of-whiskey Christmas was had in Cambodia, and now we headed to Saigon, Vietnam, for New Years. Unfortunately Nicki and I had a fluey thing we affectionately called "The Nana". At about 3pm every day we - well, me in particular - had to retire to our rooms for a little lie down as the world all seemed a bit difficult and tiring. If you did not respect Nana she would bite, causing you to become very fragile emotionally and physically, maybe causing you to kick out a small puppy or even have a little cry. I didn't like Nana, [View Full Entry]

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Mat - Lazy blog and photos: We headed to Sihanoukville on the south coast of Cambodia for Christmas. Ended up spending six days or so there. Its hard to relax on the mainland beach because of the persistant kids selling stuff you don't want and lots of beggars, but we headed to Bamboo Island off the coast which was bliss after a couple of days on the mainland. The comments on the photos should fill you in more. If the videos don't work they will if you head to: http://www.fliqz.com/FliqzWebPublic/Dynamic/proxy.aspx?PID=1723&from=perma :) Trace: After Nicki and I arrived in Ph [View Full Entry]

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Mat: Trace is writing a bit of a blog on our time in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, so I will leave her to it and just post this quick blog on my day visiting the abandoned French Hill Station at Bokor. Seeing as I could hire a 250cc Honda Baja for 8USD I did so and headed out for a days ride by myself. The hill station is about 1000m high nestled on the plateu of a small mountain. The area is now a Cambodian national park, which I wouldn't have thought would have counted for much, but the rangers seem to be [View Full Entry]

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Mat: After Mt Kinabalu Trace and I had 7 days before we had to fly out to Bangkok to meet up with Nicki. So we decided to book a flight back to KK from the Mulu National Park in Sarawak, and head there overland via Brunei and Miri (in Sarawak). After catching the ferry from KK and a bus, we spent a night and the next morning in the capital city of Brunei. We then shared a private car to Miri with a very friendly Malay woman from KL who was visiting her baker boyfriend in Bandar. Once in Miri we [View Full Entry]

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After a few days spent hanging out in Bangkok with Nicki (and without my husband) shopping, getting facials, massages etc etc we decided we had better get a little intrepid and head on to see the sights in Cambodia. After a mildly confrontational Thai/Cambodia border crossing involving some corrupt border police trying to score an extra few US$ we headed on as part of the infamous Siam Reap bus scam, which took us on a 6hr journey down a horrendous road (which legend has it, is sponsored by an airline to stay that way indefinitely). We ended up being dumped at [View Full Entry]

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Trace: While Mat was busy getting the blood drained out of him by jungle leaches, I decided to instead head on a shorter trip (3 day tramp) in Mulu National Park to see the limestone pinnacles, massive caves, and 3 million bats! I ended up joining a guided trek with several other NZérs. Luckily for me, they were super friendly and one of them had a digital camera (Tim has kindly emailed me his shots!), as Mat had our camera with him for his trip to Bario. The limestone caves at Mulu are magnificent, one has the largest cave entrance in [View Full Entry]

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Mat: Mount Kinabalu is Sabah's biggest draw card. Its tall, its climbable, there are fantastic views, lots of people give it a crack. We did. Standing at 4095m it is a good head taller than Mt Cook in NZ (3764m). Being in the tropics however means that any punter with an urge to walk straight up and straight down in two days can have a go. I don't really know what proportion of people actually get to the top, but someone mentioned it was only 50/50. You have to hire a guide in case it turns nasty, but compared with something [View Full Entry]

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Trace: After our time at Uncle Tan's we travelled south to the coastal town of Semporna, then over to Mabul Island where we stayed at "Uncle Chang's" diving lodge in the middle of a fishing village for four nights. We used this as a base to do some diving at Sipadan, an island famous for it's fantastic diving. I had the best six dives of my life here, Mat and I dived with huge turtles (about 1.5m in shell length), sharks (leopard and white tipped reef sharks), loads of coral and squillions of fish including bump-head parrot fish, unicorn fish etc [View Full Entry]

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Mat: After two amazing weeks we finally have time for some communication (we are in Kuta Kinabalu again). Luckily enough we have not had much time to spend in internet cafes, and in fact have been away from any computers for most of the time. This is the first of three blogs to explain what we have been up to in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo: 1) The Kinabatangan river, 2) Diving around the world famous Sipadan Island, and 3) Climbing the 4095m Mount Kinabalu (I am happy to be sitting in front of a computer because my legs are cripped after 2 [View Full Entry]

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