PeteSarah

We've had this article cued for a long time now - Might as well give it light of day! We stayed on Koh Tau for about 4 nights and went there in order to do a bit of diving. From what I remember this was a bit of a let-down, and far far less professional than diving in Cairns or NZ - quite a bit cheaper as well, but it did show. Anyway I'll stop the negativity but just warn people that if you're going to go diving on Koh Tau you shouldn't expect too much, and from what we saw I wouldn't really recommend it as a place to learn, but it would be a good place to put a few entries in the log-books without having to shell out too much. The island itself ... read more

Singapore eh? Well we didn't do too much slinking but I was curious about Singapore's history and reputation as "the place they don't sell chewing gum". One of the things that has struck me time and time again whilst travelling has been the incredible impact of the British on the modern world. Australia and New Zealand don't bear explaining, but the impact of the British in Asia (in particular) and South America has been very notable. I will not forget the random breaking-down of our bus in northern Peru, and my chat with that chap about the English railway (always with the railways) and the English fort (those too). The explanation given to us in the Edo-Tokyo museum about the modernisation of Japan was fascinating, and the impact of the British in Japan is not to ... read more

Feeling a little inspired here in Singapore, I will attempt to write some more about Tokyo and post the best of some of the millions of photos we took whilst there. We decided to go all out "Japanese Tourist" and try and beat them at their own game. No, not Sumo; We decided to take millions of pictures of all the quintessentially Japanese, funny, different and quirky things we encountered in our short time there. I'll describe each picture using the captions, so for now I'll take you through the place in my own way - off the top of my head (with just a little help from my notebook). The first things that catch my eye in my little book are "Sars mask" and "lots Japanese". The second one seems pretty obvious and I'm not ... read more

It is a bit hotter up here in Cairns, hopefully a taste of things to come in Thailand. We booked on to a dive with Tusa on the reef and headed out on Wednesday. We did our dives on Saxon's Reef, our first on a site called Twin Peaks and our second on Reef Magic. Our first dive was with a guide, Willy, and we saw some sea cucumbers, lionfish, reef sharks and some coral, of course. There were signs of damage from the cyclone that went through there in 1998, a lot of the coral is just growing back. Pete and I did our second dive alone. It was a good experience for us and we saw lots and lots of really nicely coloured fish and some nice coral like staghorn, bubble and mushroom leather. ... read more

Well, we're getting closer to being an actual real-time travelblog for the first time in a couple of months! Our trip to Melbourne was always going to be primarily to visit family, so we weren't expecting to see too much of the surrounding area - and after 6 months of seeing all kinds of wonderful things I wanted to dedicate time to family. Roy and Carol very kindly picked us up from the airport - they waited an hour extra for us due to Qantas's incompetence. We stayed most of the time at Roy and Carol's but also stayed for a few days with Sammy and Dean and their two girls Stephie and Christie. It was really fantastic to catch up with the family again 12 years after the first visit. We worked out that it ... read more