The Smiles

G'day ye lil ripper....we finally left Aussie and have arrived in our first port of call in Asia - Singapore! The flight over was an interesting one in which we spent most of our time being insulted by a drunken Irish hooligan from Belfast! - as per usual, showing the country up! After insulting people at the front of the plane, he was unfortunately sent down to us at the back of the plane. The cabin crew hoped he pipe down with less people to insult at the back of the plane...however it got worse, long story cut short we moved jst to get away from him and 4 hours later touching down in Singapore the local police boarded the plane and escorted the nice young gentleman off the plane to no doubt spend 10 years ... read more

We drove to Airlie beach and thought we make use of our voucher that we won at the neighbours night in Melbourne and book ourselves on a three day, two night cruise! It was class...we both had an amazing time! Such a good time in fact that we have booked ourselves on another one...only this time, we'll be doing 11 dives on the Great Barrier reef including two night dives so I can't wait! Lets just hope the weather holds out! Been a bit blustery lately in Cairns. All the people on the boat were really cool...we fell in with two Irish girls and a couple from Leeds. We set off on our sailing boat called Broomstick! It was built in South Africa to win the Cape Town to Rio Yacht Race. From there the boat ... read more

We flew from Queenstown in New Zealand to Sydney...a good three hour flight and booked ourselves into the Railway Yha and slept in an old train carriage which was interesting! It was comfortable though and didn't look like a train in the inside at all. We spent the first night having a walk around the centre and we saw people from all walks of life except from Australia! We couldn't believe it! There wasn't an Aussie in sight! They must be all in London and Dublin....I think it must have been about a week before we actually met some Australians! David couldn't believe it...it was definitely not what I imagined for Sydney! And where are all the Aussie bars?? Every bar you pass is called Paddy O'Flannigans or Shenannigans or Molly Malones! I think if we ... read more

First of all, apologies for the lack of blogs lately.....blame it on new zealand, there's just too much to do there!! We have just been having the best time and with email being pretty expensive, the blogs have definitely taken a back seat in things! Well, we left South America, gladly, although we had a class time there, the spanish really was a strain and we were ready for a modern country with toilet roll flushing toilets, English speaking people, tourist information and the main thing was a car.....let's say a big goodbye to the 20 hour buses for a while! The flight wasn't too bad, slept most of it...pretty used to long journeys by now and have mastered the skill of being comfortable with long, boring sessions of sitting about with nothing to do, whilst ... read more

We took a flight from Buenos Aires to Rio Gallegos and there was definitely a drop in the temperature! On came the coats, hats, scraves and gloves, hoods up! We stayed one night in Rio Gallegos and thank goodness it was only the one night because there is nothing to do there. Got a twelve hour bus the next day, off four times for passport control, exiting Argentina, entering chile, exiting Chile, entering Argentina! Arrived that evening in Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world, 800 miles from Antarctica and the air had turned icy cold! We only get daylight from 10 in the morning to about 5 at night. All around us are snow capped mountains, forests, lakes and the town is a delightful town full of lots of little wooden lodges as ... read more