TomSam

We arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand after a short 3 hour flights and the 5am start around 3pm to pick up our campervan/home for the next 3 weeks. With baited breath we were shown our graffitted people carrier - thankfully it wasn't as bad as we were expecting considering we went for the cheapest thing around! After stopping off at Westfield for a snack and pillows etc we set our sights on Queenstown, only the underestimate the size of New Zealand and at 10pm, starving and after being up for 18 hours we were still looking for a place to stay for the night around a third of the way to Queenstown. This was proving very hard and after an hour of searching in the pitch black, deserted roads with no phone signal we came across ... read more

Apologies for the recent silence... So...after we finished our time on The Whitsunday's we got the coach overnight for 12 hours down to Hervey Bay, ready for our trip out to Fraser Island, and checked into probably our nicest hostel there. However, the joy of the nice hostel was short lived as Sam after a morning of complaining and trying to milk whatever sympathy she could - not getting much in return from me - decided to show everyone what she had eaten in the past 24 hours and continued being sick for the rest of the day! After a while we decided the best thing was to find a doctor to see what was wrong...i asked the hostel owner, Bill, and as it was a saturday afternoon all the doctors were closed so he turned ... read more

After spending a few days chilling out and relaxing on Coogee Beach, waiting for the Geordie Boys to arrive, we decided to get off our back sides and research about the places we were going to be staying over the christmas period. Checking on trip advisor we were thrilled to see that the hostel we were booked into the next day, had been described as "falling down" and "infested with bed bugs and cockroaches". On this advice, we decided to start looking elsewhere...with only a couple of days until christmas (one of Sydney's busiest times) - we knew we were pushing our luck. Another problem was that Naz and Ric were blissfully unaware as they were flying from Singapore, heading straight for that hostel when they arrived! The only way of stopping them going straight to ... read more

After spending 2 days sunworshipping...well me sitting in the shade giving my designer patch work sunburns time to heal we decided to go out exploring...and for this we hired ourself a wee scooter, for the costly price of 3 pound a day! I would tell you were we went however I really do not know. We literally got on the scooter, turned right out of our resort and drove...would tell you how fast we went but the speedo wasn't working either so I might be getting a speeding ticket coming my way! We stumbled across a lovely little beach somewhere and me being me, again declared I was hungry so we embraced the thai culture and went to our second irish bar of the trip for bangers and mash! With light fading and the petrol running ... read more

Hi all, well...after being stuck on the runway at Heathrow for an extra hour and a half and circling over Bangkok for an extra 20 minutes we finally arrived in Bangkok. (I prepared myself for what lay ahead by watching the Hangover 2 on the plane) After walking for what seemed like miles...with Sam moaning her back was hurting from her bag - this was still in the airport...we got a taxi to the centre of Bangkok - white knuckle ride to put it mildly. The hostel was a pleasant surprise...lovely and clean but that is probably partly due to the fact you have to leave your shoes outside...which is more than you can say for the rest of Bangkok - open sewers, dirty/smelly river etc. We've been here for a day and a half and ... read more