So. You are looking for a place to go to for a holiday. Can't afford/don't want a flash resort and don't really feel like the activity of cruise. Looking more for something relaxed - lazy even - with everything provided? Need some beautiful surroundings, friendly people, lovely tucker? Well then, I am writing this post sitting on a houseboat on the Kerala backwaters. We have a storm coming in and this has backed off the heat of the day.. Lights are coming on along the banks of the waters. We can still just hear the singing from a Sunday evening church [View Full Entry]

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The traffic authorities in India use a variety of techniques to try to keep some level of control of the roads. One of the most common is the use of what Australians call speed humps. Here in India they get called a variety of things, often depending on whether the driver has spotted them early enough to slow down. They are often not what might be called 'normal' speed humps'. They can be quite large. Indeed, if you hit them at anything over walking speed they could tear the bottom out of the car. These somethimes vicious speed humps can come [View Full Entry]

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You hear a lot of stories about India. Confronting, incredible, tough, traffic worse than anything else in Asia. We don't really know yet whether these things will be borne out by experience. But let me tell you how it has gone so far. We arrived from Singapore at 11.30 pm on a Tiger flight. We were met by Anantha, Raghu, Dash and Shankar, loaded into our vehicle and delivered with efficiency down a wide and pretty empty highway into Bangalore. T and T were delivered to house of Illi and Vijaya. She is the sister of Ramakrishna who is the person [View Full Entry]

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We are now in India, and there is a lot to be reported on that, but, just to tidy things up we need to make mention of Melaka. Unfortunately we were only able to spend a few nights in Melaka in the southern part of Malaysia but it was not a time that we want to risk letting be swallowed by the Indian experience - which is promising to be spectacular. The original, original plan had us spending some time in Melaka staying in apartment of a friend from Darwin. This plan had to be changed and, now that we have [View Full Entry]

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We are in KL as a sort of interregnum between Vietnam and India. There were a few objectives to be achieved with a visit here. First, we need to try to pick up an Iranian visa. We were also keen to have a few days to sit down without moving too much so that we can get our breath a little. Most importantly, we had to be here to meet up with our first lot of fellow travellers. Travelling is normally a satisfying and exciting activity but, we all know that there is the other side of the equation. In a [View Full Entry]

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Surprisingly for us, a few people we have met along the way in Vietnam have told us that this will be their last trip - one said that it was his first and he wouldn't be back, and he was a resident of Thailand. Others are more experienced travellers in the country. They cite various reasons for their decisions including a general 'I am over SE Asia with its heat, humidity and constant hassling of tourists'. Inevitably, I guess, some don't like the food and others can't get used to the differences from whatever their particular culture may be. There aren't [View Full Entry]

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One of the purposes for us in writing this blog is to make sure we don't forget the little things, the special things that tend to slip away in the mass of material that floats by while we are travelling in a new country. We haven't been in a position to post for the last 10 days and already some of the details may be fading. A function of age perhaps but also, possibly, just a function of how much we are seeing and enjoying. Having been in the country for 3 weeks now we are probably becoming qualified to comment [View Full Entry]

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Sleeper buses, Tet and clothes shopping. An irresistible mix Some will know that we trained for the use of public transport. After many years in the NT where public transport was not a serious option for getting around we, or more precisely I, had developed a bit of a dislike for the option. Training on the Brisbane system wasn't bad but it didn't do much to assist in coming to grips with the roads in Vietnam and definitely not with the sleeper buses. The road down to the coast from DaLat wasn't bad, as roads go. It was rough, a bit [View Full Entry]

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Even though we have been travelling for over 4 months now that we are out of Australia wiith no specific intention of return for a couple of years it feels like we are officially and formally on our way. We have planned for a long time to start out with a month or so in Vietnam. The country is one of the last in SE Asia that we have missed out on to date and we have been keen to get here, provided we could fit it in. We have a visa for a month so will be out again before [View Full Entry]

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The Final Run - in NZ The little Hippie Camper has gone home and so have we - more or less and for a while. When we handed the camper back to the Apollo people we found out why we have seen so few other similar vehicles on the road around the country. There are just 5 in the entire Apollo fleet in NZ. The Hippie is their eco-friendly camper, Apollo’s contribution to Global Warming you might say. So, even without knowing it we have been being planet friendly for the last 31 days. Just imagine what we might have done [View Full Entry]

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