Here in Sydney, what happened? Well, Karl - a bit of a ditherer - dithered in the direction of Malaysia/Singapore and I got word that Bob and his fishpot were not leaving for quite a while so I thought bugger this for a game of soldiers and took a flight to Darwin. Good job really. One day in Darwin and I came down with some mysterious tropical fever thing I musta got in Timor. The doc wasn't the most tactful bloke in the world and I spent the next day scared half shitless that I had malaria and was going to die in a less than graceful style. 2 days later, 6 vials of blood and $250 lighter, I found out I wasn't going to die. A week later and feeling better after the worst illness ... read more

Do a Google search on 'Flores' and you will see that this far out Indonesian island gained worldwide attention last year as the place where they found a little 'hobbit' person's remains. Only about 12000 years old, it is supposedly a previously unknown human relative. Ardent evolutionists and creationists have been jumping up and down in their armchairs about it ever since. The scenery in Flores is utterly brilliant. It is up there with Laos. Maybe it is better - it would be a great place to explore by motorbike for a couple of weeks. The other surprising thing is that the people are mostly catholic. Tin shack churches replace the more familiar mosques of other parts of Indonesia. Seems like the Portuguese missionaries did a proper job when they were here. Everyone is called Bernard, ... read more

After blowing my budget to pieces in Thailand with the dive trip, I decided to hot - foot it through Malaysia (thought it was a bit crap last time and couldn't be arsed to give it a second go) and make my way to Jakarta in record time. It was a fairly pain-free journey to the port of Melaka, Malaysia - if you consider 36 hours on a sleeper train and 3 buses pain-free (does this make me a 'guru-traveller'? I hope not - I haven't been to India and I don't have those stupid huge hole things in my ears yet). I stayed the night in Melaka. I told the guesthouse owner that I was getting the next ferry to Dumai, Indonesia the next morning. I was filled with stories of travellers being poisoned in ... read more

In Luang Prabang they had started up a cookery course so I put my name down to learn how to cook some stuff that tastes eerily similar to Thai food. The restaurant owner ran the course and was very enthusiastic, always prefering the sound of his own jaw flapping to silence. So as well as making chilli-bark beef hotpot (don't ask), I can now write his resume from memory and tell you which famous chefs have patronised his gaff (including that mockney tosser, Jamie Oliver). In addition, he also lectured us on five centuries of Lao history, explaining why the food and language was similar. The grub was brilliant and did you know that most Thai restaurants in the west are actually owned by Lao people? Since my previous visit to Laos, I had romanticized the ... read more

For the first time since my Middle -Eastern adventures, I felt the heat of the sun. It is as if I have tunnelled through a block of snow thousands of miles thick and am on the other side. The scarf, gloves and thermals are in the bin, the parka is in the post (along with a helluva lot of sooper cheap dvds of questionable authenticity). Heat. Mmmm. So there was a plan to go back north to some great stuff near the border with Tibet - I even extended my visa for that reason. But sod that. Laos bound. I am now in the "deep" south, spent 2 days cycling along the Mekong River (the Chinese call it Lancang Jiang, but what's in a name?). It is warm and subtropical and I'm Lovin' it. Kunming was ... read more