This is a blog for the 4 month trip my girlfriend and I will be taking soon. We leave on the 4th of April and will visit Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Hong Kong
Afternoon all, So, having loved our time in paradise, it was time to leave Fiji and get on the 10 hour flight to Hong Kong. We had decided in New Zealand that it would be nice to end the trip staying at a nice hotel, and having found a great deal on Agoda we booked 3 nights at the newly opened Hotel ICON in Kowloon. We arrived mid afternoon and caught the airport express train which was very modern and very fast. It indicated what was in store for our three night stay in this crowded, exciting city. We got off the train in Kowloon and caught a connection mini bus to the hotel. As soon as we saw the hotel we knew we had chosen well. The reception was lovely and we were taken to ... read more
Hello, It has been a while since I have written so its time to bring this blog up to speed. The remainder of NZ was mainly spent driving back up to Auckland, we stayed in a really nice hostel in Mt Eden (5 mins from Auckland city centre) called Bamber House, very homely! We didnt really like Auckland too much but it was nice to meet up with my uncle who lives out there. The city was pretty nondescript and a little boring really, I also dont think that the rainy cold weather helped its cause that much! So we dropped off our trusty hire care back at the airport (having covered some 3000km's!!) and headed for our next destination, Fiji! We were a little worried as when we boarded the plane there were literally hundreds ... read more
Afternoon, lots has happened so its a bit of a long blog, but worth a read! Our flight to Auckland from Cairns went without hassle, Hevs and I watched "The Town" which was pretty decent. We went to go and get the keys for our hire car from the info center (the hire car's office was shut) and went outside to the car park. When we found the car I was surprised at how nice it was, a Mitsubishi Lancer in good nick, really good considering the price we paid (If you ever need a car rental in NZ check out Ace Car Rentals!). Another interesting point about the car was that it has an automatic gear box, something I haven't used before but it has been quite relaxing not having to change gear over all ... read more
Hey, So we drove north of Airlie beach heading towards Cairns and its surrounding areas and decided to sleep at a rest stop for a free night after about 6 hours of driving. The next day we went to go and check out Mission Beach which turned out to be pretty rubbish... There was lots of damage from the recent cyclone and apart from that only a few cafes and places to stay. We decided to carry on further north pretty sharpish and after a rare Mcdonalds pit-stop we headed inland to the Atherton Tableland which our friends Dave and Sarah had recommended. It was strange because the landscape up there is very different to the rest of Queensland, it felt like being transported back to the Chilterns with lots of rolling hills and green grass ... read more
So its been a while since I last wrote an entry, which means a fair bit to catch up on, dont worry though its been chilled I won't bore you with pages and pages! So we left Surfers Paradise and headed for Brisbane, we checked into a campsite about 25 mins out of the centre and checked out the local coastal town of Manly (our second Manly in Oz). The next day we took the bus to Brisbane, it was bank holiday monday so there wasnt many people about which was nice in a way. We did a walk which was in our guide book which showed us the main sites within a 3 hour walk, the weather was really nice (and has been every day since!) and it was cool to see another major city. ... read more
Mornin' So we have had a pretty busy week! We moved on from Coff's Harbour and made the short trip to the ever popular Byron Bay. We arrived to lovely sunny weather and parked the van to have a look around. Immediately we could see why everyone likes the place so much, Byron is a really nice size with lots of young travellers and lots of shops, cafes and restaurants to cater for travellers needs. Having got some info on campsite options we ended up picking one we stumbled upon called Glen Villa Holiday Village, the site was pretty nice with lots of greenery and free BBQ's. We headed for the internet and a friend from Koh Tao (annie) messaged me to let me know she was in Byron so we met up with her and ... read more
G'day! So we made it safely to Sydney as I mentioned. We had booked the YHA "The Rocks" hostel which is right near the opera house and the harbour bridge. We got into our dorm room and found no one else in so we dumped our bags and went for a look around, the hostel had a cool balcony which looked out over the Harbour with great views of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Having checked out the views we went and got some lunch, the hostel had given us some handy vouchers so we managed to get a steak (my first for 2 months!!) and a beer for $10 each, a pretty good deal! We then headed for George Street (similar to Oxford Street in london) and wandered around for a while before ... read more
Hello again, So we made our way to Phi Phi after a nice chilled out time in Railay, on arrival there was the standard wave of touts that you had to say no to and we were approached by a Dutch lady who owned a local dive shop, I was thinking about doing some more diving so we went inside and she gave us some info on diving in Phi Phi and also gave us a map and some suggestions on where to stay on the island. We wondered off standardly promising that we would return to book some diving....... (which i didnt end up doing, standard) We found what looked like a nice little guesthouse and after checking out a few others decided to stick with the first one, our most expensive accommodation yet (at ... read more
Hello again, So as I mentioned we went out with the diving lot to have drinks and a meal, it was all going swimmingly until the guy with the video turned up..... Granted the video was really good but the guy was asking 50quid a copy and when we told him we couldnt afford it he got very arsey which was a bit annoying considering we never asked to be filmed. We all felt a little annoyed at how the meal had ended so we all standardly decided to get drunk to forget about it. We had a brilliant night which involved most of the group swimming in the sea and me being far too friendly (in a non gay way) to a dutch guy who I had never met. Having had a brilliant time in ... read more
Hello hello, So the last time I wrote (well heather wrote for me due to the ol wrist problemo) we had just arrived in Samui. As i mentioned we stayed in Chaweng in a backpacker type place called "The Wave", the wave was pretty cool with some friendly owners, we were initially in a nice room but it was a little out of our price range so for the second and third nights we switched to a basic room (500thb a night). Chaweng is very developed and westernized, the only locals you see are working in smaller shops, god knows how they afford the rent. We had some ok food but everything nice was pretty pricey so we had to stick to budget joints. One thing that put a big downer on Samui was the amount ... read more