I left gorgeous, cultured, chilled out Louang Prabang 3 days ago, and after a 6 hour (suprisingly painless) bus journey through some awesome scenary arrived in a town called Viang Vieng. This place is described in the guides as a backpackers hangout, and it makes a stop-off point between Louang Prabang and Laos's capital Vientiane. We are going to be here for another two nights as its got some good climbing (I managed to bag another 6b - woohoo!), but thats not what attracts the hordes of backpackers out here. What attracts them, is a massive number of bars where people can get absolutely wasted every night on various substances, and then sit around doing absolutely nothing all day, until they go out and do it all over again. The only thing that seems to break ... read more

The End of Relaxation After a couple of weeks of lying on the beach Chris and I decided it was time to do some 'proper' travelling again, and headed up to Chiang Mai in the North of Thailand. The town itself is really nice and very very chilled out. No-one hassles you for anything, yet there are quite a few tourists about and a lot of tourist activities to do. We ended up staying here for 6 nights from the 7th until the 13th January. While we were there we spent a day seeing some of the local temples, did a one day thai cooking course and spent an awesome three days of sport climbing at some cliffs about 45 minutes drive from the town itself. Climbing - shown how it should be done We spent ... read more

After Sumatra (I've added photos to my previous entry) we flew to Bali which is another of the Indonesian islands. It was amazing how different this place was compared to Sumatra - loads of tourists and every local you meet tries to sell you something - transport, t-shirts, bracelets, hats, fruit, drinks, mats to lie on the beach, blow-pipes, bow and arrows etc etc. So, as you walk along in Kuta you get shouted at from everyone you meet to buy something. Also, the prices for everything was much higher here than in Sumatra (don't get me wrong its still dirt cheap) but the standard of living seems a bit higher as well which is cool. Anyway, we stayed in Kuta for a couple of days which although it has nice beaches and really good surfing ... read more

I went to Canada on 2nd September for a couple of weeks, meeting up with Ryan to do some climbing/drinking/sight-seeing etc etc. I was also over there to see if Vancouver could be a future place to hang my hat... Anyway, there's lots of climbing talk in this entry, so sorry if you don't quite get it, but I know what I'm talking about, so thats all that matters! I've written below what we got up to most days, but thought I'd give a mention now to Big D's in Squamish - absolutely great breakfasts from massive fry-ups to massive fruit bowls to granola and special porridge - me and Ryan stopped eating lunch as we knew we'd get enough here to do us until dinner everyday - and for those who know us, you'll know ... read more