The Hunter Valley is famous as one of Australia's finest wine producing regions so on the Bank Holiday weekend we decided to head up with with Andy, Kayte and Charlie to sample some of the delicious wines on offer. We both booked the Friday off work and met up with Andy near the harbour in Sydney before catching a ferry over to Manly, sinking a quick beer (the delicious James Squire Amber Ale that I have become quickly addicted to - who says all Aussie beers are rubbish??) and playing some pool while we waited to be picked up by Kayte. [View Full Entry]

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Well, its been a while since I last wrote a blog but we've been rather busy! On the Monday of our second week in Sydney I went to work in a warehouse, lifting, sorting and unpacking boxes of clothes for an Australian mail order company while Amy sorted out various potential waitressing jobs for her and some clothes for said waitressing. For the first few hours I really liked the warehouse job. It was nice to have something physical to do after years of getting fat at a desk but towards the end of the day I was utterly exhausted and [View Full Entry]

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Having spend six months in SE Asia we had prepared ourselves for reverse culture shock when landing in Australia but although it was weird to arrive and not find ourselves surrounded by clamouring touts and tuk tuk/moto drivers, or be the only white faces in a crowd at the airport it wasn't the culture shock that stunned us most, it was the weather. Only a few hours before, in Hanoi airport, we had stood dripping with sweat and barely able to draw breath in the oppressive humidity and I had said that I couldn't actually conceive of weather cold enough to [View Full Entry]

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We arrived back in Hanoi on the 7th August after a relatively uneventful final journey on the sleeper bus and checked back into Classic 1 Hotel. That day was spent catching up on some sleep and just chilling out in the hotel before we headed out in the evening for a few beers. Via the wonders of facebook we had found out that one of our friends from home was going to be in Hanoi that night. We met Emma a few years ago at the Download heavy metal festival and had met up at the event every year since then [View Full Entry]

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After our comfortable and uneventful journey from Saigon to Nha Trang on the open tour sleeper bus we thought that all future journeys on it would be that pleasant. We were wrong. First off we didn't manage to get the long beds at the back so were cramped onto the beds in the middle that were only about 4ft long. Amy's was slightly better because it was a window bed which meant that she had something to lean on to stop her falling out (we were on the top level) but I had the middle bunk which meant I had nothing [View Full Entry]

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While in Saigon we bought tickets for the open-tour bus that runs almost the whole length of the country from Saigon to Hanoi for just 39 US dollars. Once you have bought your ticket you can jump on and off at any of the various destinations for and simply get on another bus a few days later to the next stop, all you have to do is confirm your place on the bus 24 hours ahead. Once we'd decided that we really had to leave Saigon before we stayed forever we booked ourselves a seat on the next open tour bus [View Full Entry]

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Saigon was one of the places we had heard most about from other people before we got there. We had been told that it was manic, modern, wonderful, awful, fun, noisy, smelly and dozens of other adjectives by other travellers we had met along our travels and were excited to find out for ourselves which ones we agreed with. It was also one of the most historically interesting cities on our route with its importance in The American War, as the locals call it. We were also unsure about what to call the city when we got there. It was originally [View Full Entry]

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After four weeks on the RealGap Experience Vietnam program we headed back to Hanoi with the group for our last day together. Accomodation was our own responsibility again so everybody checked into different hotels according to their budgets and agreed to meet up for some food and drinks at a cafe we'd been to before, later that afternoon. We had some excellent pizzas and fruit shakes before saying goodbye to Emma, Emma and Doug who had to catch an afternoon flight and then headed back to our respective hotels. That evening we met up with everybody that was left in Vietnam [View Full Entry]

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On Monday we got a minibus to Halong City on the north east coast of Vietnam where we would spend a night before heading out to Cat Ba Island, through Halong Bay. Halong City itself is not a particularly nice city and merely serves as a stop off point and base camp for any day tours through the bay and the various islands in it. We arrived in Halong City at around midday and had a very nice simple Vietnamese lunch before catching a few hours sleep in the room. In the evening various groups split up and me, Amy, Arelene, [View Full Entry]

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On the morning of Saturday 11th July we arrived back in Hanoi via the sleeper train and checked into the Youth Hotel to get an extra couple of hours sleep after an uncomfortable night on the train bunk beds. The rest of the day me and Amy spent just lazing about and eating some good food before we met up with the group for a few beers that evening. First of all we went to Minh's Jazz Club and saw some excellent jazz but left after about an hour because the drinks were fairly expensive and we were all trying to [View Full Entry]

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