There are a couple of things I neglected to mention in yesterday's motorbike blog: * We road 677km in 5 days, 130km on dirt (Patrick now considers himself a dirtbike champion) * Our top speed was 105km, which we only reached on the last day after filling up with Shell fuel * The only time we came close to hitting anything was when a little pig ran out in front of us and only veered at the very last minute We are now in Vientiane after our overnight bus trip. The bus was a sleeper, but because we bought our ticket [View Full Entry]

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After the islands, we decided to hire a motorcyle for the next couple of days (sorry Mum's and Dad's) to go touring round the Bolaven Plateau. Obviously, Patrick was keen, but I was a little unsure, so the decision was made to hire the bike for one day, see how we go, and if I survived and felt safe enough we could look at getting it for longer. Day 1 Pakse-Champasak We headed out of Pakse on our little 100cc to Champasak, about 46km to the south-east. To get there, you need to head to a little town and then jump [View Full Entry]

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We have now been in Laos for nearly 3 weeks already.....wow time flies. The 9th to the 15th was spent on the island of Don Det, which is one of the '4000 Islands'. This was our cheapest accomodation yet, about AUD$1.90 a night for a very basic bungalow overlooking the Mekong. The bungalow had a squat toilet and a big bucket of water, so essentially a bathroom since we could use the big bucket of water for a 'Laos' shower. There was electricity, once it got dark, but the time it went on and off varied according to how much petrol [View Full Entry]

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I've been slack. This blogging is harder than I thought. I will go back and write about our beautiful island Ko Chang, and Bangkok, but I thought I had better update you about our whereabouts. As you can tell by the title, we are now in Laos. We are in South Laos, in Pakse. We crossed the Thailand border yesterday, after catching an overnight train from Ayutthaya to Ubon Ratchatani, and then an International bus which took us across the border at Chong Mek. The train left Ayutthaya at aroiund 8.30pm, and we had booked second-class sleepers, which were comfortable and [View Full Entry]

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We are currently in Ranong, which is on the Andaman coast of Thailand. It's here you can do a 'visa run' over to Myanmar so that you can get an extension of your Thailand visa. When we arrived in Thailand on the 28th June, I used my APEC card and was given 90 days. Patrick doesn't yet have his card, so was only given 30 days, and hence the visa run. You can do visa runs from Phuket, whereby you get a bus at 6am to Ranong, and then go by boat over to Myanmar, get your visa, come back and [View Full Entry]

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Here is a link to some photos that Patrick has loaded onto Facebook...with captions, for those of you who don't have access. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=39954&l=9ad7f&id=680385046 [View Full Entry]

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Thought I would give a quick update of our whereabouts, it's been a while. I think last blog we were leaving Langkawi for Thailand, and that was weeks ago........ We arrived in Thailand at the ferry port of Satun, and ended up travelling to Krabi with another Aussie couple who had been on the same boat. We stayed the night in Krabi whilst they headed directly to Ao Nang.....we've been following them through Thailand, occasionally overlapping in some places. It's led to some big nights, but it's also been nice to have company other than each other. We had a couple [View Full Entry]

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We caught the ferry across from Penang to Langkawi and had the misfortune of sitting right under the air-con vent. Luckily I was prepared and by the end of the trip Patrick and I were both huddled under a fleece blanket and a pashmina. To be honest, Langkawi was not that exciting. We had an air-con hut with a fridge 20m from the water, compared to the Perhentians, the water was murky and not as nice to swim in. On one day, we hired a motorbike and did a tour round the island. Patrick was excited, as our trip took us [View Full Entry]

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Ok, so I want to get Malaysia out of the way, and you are about to be bombarded. My lasting memory of Penang will be how bloody hot it was. hot, hot, hot. We arrived o a bus which we though would take us to the centre of Georgetown. Alas no, it dropped us off at a bus station way way outside of town. We really didn;t have any idea where we were or how to get where we were going. Some helpful locals gave us some bus numbers, but when they turned up they either stopped, or told us they [View Full Entry]

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Hi All, Once all our friends had left it was also time for us to leave the Perhentians. We made the deicision, booked our boat and started packing. Finola cooked us up a farewell dinner of pasta (with real parmesan), and we stayed up with her drinking our last beers and finishing off our Thai Song. The boat back to Kuala Besut left at 8am, so we trudged down the beach, and hopped onto a taxi boat to take us out to our speedboat. We arrived back at the jetty, found our bus and then had about 1/2 hour to kill [View Full Entry]

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