jamesandheather

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

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

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

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 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