This time it's the difference between the world of backpackers' hostels and the world of the luxury hotel, where your room is cleaned three times a day, fresh sheets are put onto your bed daily and clean towels are offered about three times a day: the cruising classes must be a mucky lot. It transpired that our sleeper train left from Giza not Cairo itself, which meant another hair-raising taxi trip. After being security searched, we hung around on the platform waiting for sleeper train number 82, which duly arrived. It consisted entirely of sleeper cars and was British Rail style circa 1965 - a little compartment for the two of us, with a wash basin and two bunks. Dinner was awful - come back British Rail, all is forgiven. As it was after nightfall when ... read more

Farewell to wet and windy Perth. Our last couple of days has seen a dramatic shift in the weather - frequent heavyish showers with intermittent hot, sunny spells - a pain in the but when selecting what to wear. We spent the last morning in Perth killing time - we had planned to take a walk through their botanic gardens and adjacent parks (overlooking the estuary) but given the unpredicability of the weather decided against it. Our flight was extremely comfortable or as comfortable as being cooked up in a tin can flying through the air can be. Singapore Airlines lived up to expectations, flight staff were friendly, helpful and as pretty as their adverts suggest. Not only that the flight landed some 30 mins early! We had intended to take the shuttle bus or MRT ... read more

We didn't mean to go to Nannup: we were actually heading for Margaret River, but realised that we weren't going to have enough petrol to make it, so we turned right instead of left after Donnelly River and went to Nannup. Nannup had two petrol stations, which was sheer luxury as we hadn't seen one in about 80 miles. In Nannup we stayed at the Black Cockatoo Hostel, a lovely hostel, with individual rooms/huts/caravans/camping set in a lush garden, well provided with comfortable seats and with piles of interesting magazines, (things like the Guardian Weekly, New International, Rolling Stone and my favourite Earth Garden Australia, which was full of articles aboiut green energy, straw bale building and growing vegetables organically). We had a very pleasant evening, sitting around drinking wine and chatting to other residents. The ... read more

Another longish flight then shuttle bus into town arriving a bit tired and worn out. Booked into hostel - nice room then went for wander round town. First impression - we were glad we're only here for a couple of nights (sorry Perth). Place was certainly a bit of a come down from Melbourne (which we both liked) but tomorrow is another day. Friday woke up to overcast sky and when I went out for my first cigarette of the day it was actually cold - almost pleasantly so. Found a decent internet cafe the connection speed in the hostel was abbyssmal (10 mins to get into e-mails then 5 mins to actually open them!). Booked ourselves a hire car then went to tourist office to get some better idea of where we might be going ... read more

First a postscript to our Great Ocean Road Odyssey - on our last day in Lorne we drove some 25k back along the GOR to a small township Kennet River which claimed to have a koala walk and as neither Wendy nor I had seen koalas in the wild it seemed a good idea, especially as the weather still refused to be beach type (windy and low 20s with lots of clouds and intermittent sunshine, in fact pretty much what it has been all week). I didn't have particularly high hopes as koalas tend to hang around in the trees sleeping and as such aren't particularly easy to spot. However before we even got out the car Cara spotted a koala, fast asleep in a gum tree on the edge of the village, then another in ... read more