The flight from Kuching to Jakarta was one of the worst flights we have taken. We were flying at night and we both had an ominous feeling from the start. It was a bit stormy and the flight was bumpy but its when it starts to feel as though its falling from the sky that we started sweating and holding hands and the whole plane went silent. Its kind of annoying when the hostesses are laughing and joking like this is nothing, or its just good training (or drugs) to try and keep things calm. Anyway, we arrived safely and were [View Full Entry]

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Hey!, just in case you cant see the images clearly, if you click on the photos you will get a bigger image if you want. We entered our next leg of Borneo in the city of Miri, Sarawak. Miri is an oil town in North East Sarawak and from here we visited the caves of Mulu national park, which are only reached by aeroplane so we were met at the little airport in Mulu by "Mr Think" who drove us to our little resort that we would stay at and appeared to be the only guests. We took a walk [View Full Entry]

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Next stop in Malaysia was Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, a destiantion which we had visited in 2006 and had enjoyed whilst we climbed Mount Kinabalu and dived at Sipadan. A few things had changed round the area we stayed last time and it was a lot posher and updated. First day was off to an island for the beach and luckily (as became apparant later) the weather was very good and we all got a bit of sun, specially mum who was burnt to a crisp. On a short walk through the small peice of forest on this island, mum and vik [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Langkawi on the 18th December like drowned rats after our ride in the speed boat from Thailand, god only knows what the man from immigration thought of us. Langkawi was another class of island and you could see immediately that it had money. Many posh sailing boats, very good roads and smart resorts. It was proving difficult to find accomodation so we had to accept our first time in a mixed dorm room but this turned out to be ok except for Vik on the first night who had the fartiest and most fidgety guy in the bed [View Full Entry]

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First stop back in the land of smiles was Bangkok. The unrest at the airport had only just finished but it seemed to be business as usual in the Khao san road area. A couple of days chilling and not a lot else. We took a 12 hour sleeping bus journey down the south and were sorely dissapointed when we thought we had arrived but actually had another 4 hours to go to our destination in Krabi and then another half hour after that - it was pretty hard going. Ao Nang was the first port of call - a nice [View Full Entry]

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Once we got in to Cambodia we decided to once again get of the main tourist trail and head to the wild North East to the province of Ratanikiri. We arrived in the provincial capital of Ban Lung. This place was a bit intimidating at first due to the large ditches at the sides of the "roads?", there were fires in the streets from people burning their rubbish and orange mud caked over everything. When we got off the bus we were set upon by a few guys desperate to get us to stay in their hotel. Neil forgot that we [View Full Entry]

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The bus journey from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng is the most beautiful one we have ever taken, although the bus was VIP and had a toilet this meant the whole bus stank of wee made worse by the fact that a Laotian women sat in front of Vik was vomiting into a plastic bag all the way! There was a lot of lucious green forest carpeting deep valleys where sharp limestone mountains rose out of in strange shapes. We arrived in Vang Vieng and began the usual searching for a room for a cheap price and came across one with [View Full Entry]

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We last left the blog in Chaing Rai in Northern Thailand. We have since travelled through Northern Laos and are currently in Southern Laos. There has been so much to see that we thought we should split Loas in to 2 blogs. Our bus to the border was not so good, either the suspension had been stolen or had been ommited in the design stage. After clearing immigration and officially leaving Thailand, instead of getting on the boat and crossing the river to Laos, Vik had a change of heart and tried to re-enter Thailand. We did however leave and after [View Full Entry]

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Hello from the North of Thailand! True to form, too many beers on the first night! Vik ended up having a broccoli pizza, very thai! Visited the grand palace, checked out the emeral (jade) buddha (small) then walked to wat pho to see the reclining buddha (huge). Also managed to get face and neck burnt without even seeing the sun! After a night of tropic thunder the third day started early and wet. Bus trip to cemetary where the POW's are buried that built the death railway. On to Kanchanaburi and visited the JEATH war museum which if I had to [View Full Entry]

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Off to the dales to attempt the 3 peaks. Traditionally the 3 peaks are tackled in one day within 12 hours and in fact there is also a yearly race where some athletic dudes cover this 26 mile route over hills/cross country in about 4 hours. We decided to do it in two days, take it easy and enjoy the scenery. Camped at the starting point and as we would not complete the whole route in one day, we pre-positioned cars at the half way point to take us back to the camp site. The first hill, Pen-y-ghent - actually welsh, [View Full Entry]

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