We have now officially started our travels down the east coast! First bus journey out of the way and first stop on the road south - Magnetic Island! We'd heard a few people talking about it being a good place to see koalas in the wild, and also that it was good for walking and lovely beaches, so we decided to give it a go. Turns out our hostel has a wildlife sanctuary in the grounds which is pretty good, lots of random things like crocs, koalas and snakes separated from the main hostel grounds by flimsy looking fences.... We stayed [View Full Entry]

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After a long overnight journey via Darwin we arrived in Cairns! The owners of the hostel we had booked into came and collected us from the airport and took us into Cairns. On the journey she explained how it was nearing the end of the rainy season and that they'd had record rainfall a few week earlier...over a metre of rain in 2 weeks We arrived at the hostel and after been shown to our room / prison cell we set off to the esplanade to do some sun bathing....except it started raining! And no body had forwarned us that the [View Full Entry]

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After a fantastic 5 hour bus ride from Kuala Lumpur during which we got to see some amazing jungle scenery we arrived in Singapore! We were staying in a hostel in Mt Emily, just on the edge of Little India. We decided to go to Singapore zoo on the next morning, the zoo was fantastic, set in a rain forest with winding paths and board walks through the trees. There was some brilliant animals to see, including white tigers, elephants, lions, zebras, polar bears, orangutangs and sals favourite..........the sloth Seeing the polar bears feeding time was exciting! Also the Orangutans were [View Full Entry]

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We landed in Kuala Lumpur late on Friday afternoon and headed straight for the nearest McDonalds. It's been over 5 weeks since our last BigMac...far too long... needless to say the BigMac was well worth the wait! KL was very busy as it happened to be the weekend in which the Malaysian Formual 1 Grand Prix took place! Neither Sal or I had ever been to a Grand Prix before so we thought we'd take the opportunity to check one out. We managed to get a couple of tickets for the covered hillside from the station when we arrived. We then [View Full Entry]

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After 2 taxis, 3 buses, 1 plane and a ferry we arrived at Ko Phangan, an Island on the south east coast of Thailand. We had decided to stay in haad yao after some people we met recommended it. When we arrived it was night and we were starving! so we dumped our bags in our wooden hut and headed to the beach to check it out. it all looked amazing, all along the beach were little restaurants and bars all lit up with fires and fairy lights, just what i was wanting! the next day we set off to find [View Full Entry]

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After 10 days in Chiang Mai including a day in the local hospital with sal on an antibiotic drip we were back to full strength and ready to move on. As it seems we were destined not to make it to Laos and Vietnam, we decided to head for Kanchanaburi, 2 hours west of Bangkok, to see the bridge over the river Kwai and visit the famous tiger temple! The place had been highly recommended by a couple we were friends with in Chiang Mai so though we'd check it out. After a swift 1 hour flight and 2 hours on [View Full Entry]

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Chiang Mai is brilliant! We arrived after 15 hours on the train, which is nothing compared to the China distances, had barely sat down and we were there! Managed to find ourselves a little red truck to take us to our guesthouse, feeling very proud of ourselves for avoiding all the touts who descend on the trian when you arrive to try to take you to their guesthouses. The feeling was short lived though when the driver kindly dropped us off on the opposite side of the city to where we were supposed to go. He obviously just couldn't be bothered [View Full Entry]

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After a 2 hour plane journey we arrived in Bangkok, Thailand. After a 2 hour taxi journey we finally arrived at our hostel (only a 10 mile trip) never again will i complain about traffic at home! Our hostel was located in the Sukhumvit, the business district apparently. It was a lovely 32 degrees when we arrived and finally i could dig out my flip flops from the bottom of the rucksack. We dropped our bags in our room and headed out to check out the local bars. It soon became apparent that we had found ourselves not only in the [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday, after our final chinese sleeper train. Pleasant suprise when we arrived at lunch time, after we had all convinced ourselves it was going to be another delayed journey. We headed off to our hotel, by far the swishest on the trip so far! Sadly only there for one night though.... It was our last night of the china group trip, hard to believe that the three weeks has gone already. Went so fast but that's because we were having such an amazing time. For our last night we all headed off to Victoria Peak [View Full Entry]

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Weeeelllll our train left Shanghai station a mere 10 minutes late! We were not expecting that! However a couple of hours into the journey the train stopped. And stayed there for very long time! An update from the helpful guard on the train was that there were some 300 other trains on the same stretch of track, the backlog from the storms, that they were trying to clear. From then on we only seemed to move a few hundred metres at a time before stopping again. After 25 hours on the train, just when we were beginning to giv eup hope, [View Full Entry]

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