18th July 2009 First up in Hanoi was a visit to the House of Literature, the oldest university in Vietnam. Before entering Alex, in his wisdom decided to barter for a bottle of water outside the grounds. Thinking he was in for a good deal, confusion over the many naughts on their currency meant that we nearly paid 500,000 dong (about 16 pounds) instead of 5000 dong. Lesson learnt, don't barter for water on the streets of Vietnam, its cheaper in the shops! The grounds were particularly beautiful, with a series of courtyards, that led to a temple. The university was [View Full Entry]

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14th July 2009 After a long day traveling yesterday we felt we deserved another lie-in. Finally emerging from our slumber we headed to the Presidential Palace. This was "liberated" during the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the North Vietnamese government kept it the way it was on that day. We both though that for a presidential palace it was a little understated, maybe a symptom of 1970s interior design. As we left we were greeted by our first experience of Monsoon rains as we made our way to the War Remnants museum. The museum displayed disturbing photographs of the atrocities [View Full Entry]

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12th July 2009 With only one day to explore Singapore we headed to the harbour where we saw the famous symbol of the country, the Merlion. After walking around the centre of Singapore for a while we headed to Little India to check out a couple of Hindu temples. The one we saw was very colourful, with statues of the gods lining the outside of the temple. We headed to a nearby park for a sit down and we were treated to a chinese dragon display by a troupe of kids. We then headed to the night market for our first [View Full Entry]

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8th July 2009 After spending the day waiting at the airport, watching Micheal Jackson's Funeral, we finally flew to Brisbane. After dropping off our bags at the hostel we went for a well deserved drink in the centre of Brisbane. 9th July 2009 The morning began with a short walk to a different hostel. After doing the mundane task of laundry, we then headed into the centre of Brisbane to complete some more mundane tasks. After we were all done we headed for a walk along the riverside. This was very nice and Brisbane looked like a particularly nice city at [View Full Entry]

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3rd July 2009 Airlie Beach is known as the gateway to The Whitsundays and as such there isn't very much to do there and there is barely even a beach. Never the less as always we found a way to fill our day by walking around the coast on the bicentennial walkway. This was a very nice walk around the bay through parks and great views of the coastline. Conveniently it also took us to the local large supermarket to buy our dinner and some beers for the evening. 4th July 2009 One of the other perks of Airlie Beach is [View Full Entry]

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30th June 2009 After the shortest stay in a hostel of the trip so far (7 hours) we were off bright and early to the airport for our flight to Townsville. Straight after landing in Townsville we caught a bus to the ferry terminal and made our way to Magnetic Island. After the long but smooth journey (some old guy offered us a lift to our hostel on Magnetic Island) we arrived at X-base backpackers. This was a hostel we swore we'd never stay in as it is a chain of hostels renowned for partying 18 year olds but we got [View Full Entry]

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11th June 2009 After finally arriving in Melbourne and a good nights sleep, we set out to explore Melbourne in just two days. First up we went to get a birdseye view of the city on top of the Rialto Towers. Just like Auckland we took lots of photos of the cityscape and Alex got excited as he got a glimpse of the Albert Park F1 race track. It was then on to Melbourne Gaol, the infamous site of the hanging of Ned Kelly. We managed to spend a good 3 hours morbidly reading the accounts of terrible crimes, mistaken executions [View Full Entry]

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13th - 19th June 2009 After 3 and a bit months of traveling we were treated like a King and Queen for the week that we stayed at Katrina and Roy's. We always had full bellies and probably a bit too much beer. We had lots of fun playing with the boys and catching up with Katrina and Roy. It was good to see some of Australia without looking at it through a lens and we can thoroughly recommend Ned Kelly pies to all. This was such a great break from traveling and we are both very grateful to Roy and [View Full Entry]

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19th June 2009 We arrived late into Sydney, settled into our hostel and, after some food, headed to bed. 20th June 2009 Despite having spent most of yesterday traveling we decided to head to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains (2 hours by train from Sydney). The reason for this was that the lonely planet had informed us that there was a Winter Solistice Festival, which we had arrived just in time for. We wondered around in the misty rain watching local school children and various other groups performing before the climax of a fireworks show. It was interesting to mix with [View Full Entry]

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25th June 2009 After we had finally manged to get up and have some breakfast, we decided to head to Nelson Bay. Before we made it to the bus stop we couldn't resist petting the baby kangaroo rescued by the lodge. We waited a very long time for the bus to arrive, so when we finally made it to Nelson Bay we had limited time before it got dark. We wondered around and manged to take a wrong turn or two, ending up at a dead end in the national park. To salvage what was becoming a wasted day, we spent [View Full Entry]

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