We got into Carnarvon and immediately liked it for its ease and simplicity. When traveling, there is something to be said for compact, convenient towns. In one short drive through, you can figure out where the best place to park in the shade is, where the information center is, where the best internet is, and where there are public toilets and supermarkets. With this out of the way in a few minutes, you can then proceed to doing what you need to, and still be out of town in a few hours. In the world of traveling, as far as we are concerned, small towns are king. We stopped for lunch at the bay, and went online for a while to keep in touch with the goings on of the real world back home, and decided ... read more

We continued north along the coast, and saw there was a place on the map where camping was permitted for free which seemed to be right on the beach. We had to check it out. 9 times out of 10 it will just be a little pocket next to the road, where everyone can see everything, which, when there is no toilet, does make for complicated situations. We drove down a dirt road and it ended, well, in a pocket next to a dumpster, where there was a caravan parked and we could see straight into the nice older couple having dinner. Embarrassed, we thought if we just drove onto a patch of sand, we could at least have our backs to them. Well, that quickly turned into us getting stuck, or “bogged”, as one says ... read more

We got into Perth after traveling overnight from Cebu to Kuala Lumpur, which meant that by the time we got to our hostel, we hadn't slept for over 30 hours. We were already in shock at the fact that the bus ride from the airport had cost us 35 dollars (each!), and our arrival at our hostel did nothing to lighten the mood. Having been without internet for a few weeks, and not knowing we were arriving in the middle of Perth's high season (in late February? who knew?) we had ended up having to book a room at Aberdeen Lodge, which was the only thing available within Perth town that was under 80 dollars a night and only described by 50% of its previous users as a fleabag flophouse (the rest were so described by ... read more

Getting to Negros from Bantayan is for the well-travelled. People gather at the ferry station in Bantayan town (where there are, so to speak, no tourists), and depending on the day, the ferry may go to one of two ports on Negros. This means you may or may not have to take an 8-hour bus to Bacolod instead of a 4-hour one. Also everyone gets there early, adding to the excitement, even though the boat has no chance of leaving before the tide is high enough (about 2-3 hours into the wait). All of this is not as arbitrary as it sounds, but while in the planning stages it seemed apparent that getting from Bantayan all the way to Sipalay in one day was out of the question. And we were indeed glad we hadn't tried. ... read more

Singapore had been loads of fun but as any city of its size and modernity (not that there are THAT many) it had also proven rather frenetic, and we were excited at the prospects of the next stage in our travels: two weeks in the Philippines, where we had allowed ourselves to only choose two major destinations without any flying in between, and where the only major thing on our schedule was not having anything on our schedule. These, of course, were hard rules to abide by when each island seemed, upon closer inspection, to provide its own brand of endless activities, be it snorkeling, mountain climbing, driving around, or even sorcery. But we had decided this would be our «vacation» before heading to Australia (and completely changing our way of travelling), as well as of ... read more