http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/leeandamy/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from leeandamy en-us Sat, 02 Jan 2010 04:17:00 +0000 Sat, 02 Jan 2010 04:17:00 +0000 Day eight started with another early morning so that we could get around King's Canyon before the sun became too intense. Ian had warned us that the beginning of the route was up a very steet 300m incline called heart attack hill that would take us to the top of the canyon wall and from where we could walk around the rim. When we arrived at the bottom the air already stiflingly hot we saw why we http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Northern-Territory/King-s-Canyon/blog-462180.html Sleeping in swags in the bright red soft dust at the Yulara campsite was definitely our most comfortable night so it seemed cruel that it was also our earliest morning. At 4am we woke up and blearily threw some clothes on rolled up our swags and climbed into the bruck for the drive to the viewing platform between Uluru and Kata Tjuta. We arrived as the sky was starting to get light and grabbed a http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Northern-Territory/blog-458737.html On day six we were up early as we had another day with lots of kilometres to cover. The morning was spent dozing in the bruck stopping occasionally to refuel and stretch our legs before we stopped at a service station for some lunch. There was a nice patch of grass under some trees for us to sit while we munched away on our sandwiches. The service station was also home to a variety of bush animal http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Northern-Territory/Uluru/blog-458731.html Due to the fact that we had fallen a little behind schedule our fifth day on tour was a day to make up lost ground. Most of the morning was spend on the road catching up on some sleep while the bruck ate up the kilometres. We made a couple of quick stops to refuel and stretch our legs one of which was at the small town of Marla the official end of the Oodnadatta track where we then joined the S http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/South-Australia/Marla/blog-458718.html In the morning we cooked some breakfast on the fire before packing up camp and finding our way back to the Oodnadatta track. We headed north for a while until we got to a very scenic lookout point over the main section of the lake. There were also some information boards that explained why the lake forms and that it is part of the Great Artesian Basin that covers quarter of Australia making it th http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/South-Australia/Coober-Pedy/blog-458705.html Waking up somewhere as beautiful as Parachilna Gorge is never a hardship. The morning had a chill so we huddled around the fire toasting bread and heating water for coffee on the fire before rolling up our swags and packing up camp. Before we left we decided we should have a quick bushwalk around the area because even Ian had never been there before. One thing I that love about the Heading Bush co http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/South-Australia/Marree/blog-458691.html After a surprisingly sound night's sleep in our swags we woke up to the early morning sun around 6.30am. It sounds strange but waking up to the sunrise feels very natural and peaceful much less abrasive than an alarm clock in a darkened room. Maybe I'll be sleeping with the curtains open when we get homeFor breakfast we started the fire up again and toasted some bread while a kettle warmed in th http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/South-Australia/Wilpena/blog-458667.html When we had first arrived in Australia and went to the Work and Travel Company who set us up with jobs bank accounts and other useful stuff they also had a guest in from the outback travel company Heading Bush a proper country Aussie called Jim. We had already decided that we wanted to get into the outback but when we saw the slide show and heard Jim talking about the tour we were instantly sold http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/South-Australia/blog-458658.html The Indian Pacific pulled into Adelaide around 3pm and we were due to leave on our tour around Kangaroo Island the following day so after a quick look around town taking in some of the sights mostly churches and statues we got an early night.We were picked up horribly early in a minivan by our guide Kate and drove south to Middleton Beach on the mainland for a surf lesson. Rather foolishly we h http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/South-Australia/Kangaroo-Island/blog-458492.html We're back on the roadAfter checking out of the Sydney Central YHA on the 18th November we went to Central Station having remembered quite how much our bags weighed on the short walk there and found the platform for the Indian Pacific train. It's name comes from the fact that it runs between the Indian and Pacific oceans on its twice weekly 4352 kilometres trip between Sydney and Perth via a http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/New-South-Wales/Broken-Hill/blog-454983.html That's it we've left Sydney Well not quite. But nearly. We have quit our jobs after three months of hard toil left our tiny little apartment and packed our bags for the outback beaches spiders and snakes big rocks fine sand and general awesomeness of Australia outside of Sydney. But we only got as far as the YHA hostel next to Central Station. Rats.Last Friday both Amy and I left our jobs http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/New-South-Wales/Sydney/blog-453810.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/New-South-Wales/Hunter-Valley/blog-444806.html 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 w http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/New-South-Wales/Sydney/Manly/blog-437213.html 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 tukmoto 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 ha http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/New-South-Wales/Sydney/blog-436075.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Vietnam/Red-River-Delta/Hanoi/blog-430943.html 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 someth http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Vietnam/South-Central-Coast/Hoi-An/blog-427758.html While in Saigon we bought tickets for the opentour 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Vietnam/South-Central-Coast/Nha-Trang/blog-426416.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Vietnam/Southeast/Ho-Chi-Minh-City/blog-424615.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Vietnam/Red-River-Delta/Hanoi/blog-423760.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Vietnam/Red-River-Delta/Halong-Bay/blog-421742.html