Day 222 (02.11.07) We had borrowed some bikes from our hostel today to explore Bunbury (and possibly a bit further afield). After stocking up on breakfast and packing some food for lunch we went to our first stop of the day - the Dolphin Discovery Centre. Bunbury is a lovely little town which (like most towns in OZ) sits on the coast with amazing sweeping beach views wherever you look, however this is not the main reason for a visit here. The bay which joins Bunbury to the Indian Ocean (Koombana Bay) is home to up to 200 bottlenose dolphins and [View Full Entry]

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Day 221 (01.11.07) We were up early and on the bus to Rockingham a little further down the coast from Freo. The coast of WA where we currently are is rich in it's wildlife and today we were hoping to see some penguins on the aptly named Penguin Island. We'd found so far on our trip that, if an island/place was named after an animal e.g camel beach, shark bay, barracuda point etc., then you'd never actually see the named animal at that place. Today we were to be proved wrong! We'd done some research and sightseeing trips seemed fairly pricey [View Full Entry]

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Day 219 (30.10.07) We got up early and collected up all of our camping gear for our short trip to Rottnest Island, a few km off the coast of Fremantle. Luckily we were able to leave our big packs at the hostel and got to the docks in time to catch the 9.30 ferry. Half an hour later we had arrived at Rottnest Island and were glad to have some warmer weather. It had been sunny but chilly for the last few days but the chill had definitely dropped today. We weren't able to check in for a couple of hours [View Full Entry]

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Day 217 (28.10.07) After our eventful night we gave up on the idea of sleep for a bit and went to get some breakfast after which we decided to try and get an hour or so of shut eye before heading to Fremantle our next port of call. Here we would meet up with Ozzie from the Gibbon Experience, back home to earn some money for his next adventure. Thankfully we were able to get a little kip but unfortunately we overslept and were late in arriving to meet up with Ozzie. However it turned out that he'd done the same [View Full Entry]

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Day 216 (27.10.07) To start the day we went into the city to do part of the walking tour in our book around the sights of Perth. The start of this took us to the Art gallery of Western Australia, near the train station. Neither of us are what you would consider true art buffs however there was a really interesting section on aboriginal art (one painting in particular that we took time to sit down and make up a convoluted story and meaning behind - nice!) After this we went through art depicting Western Australia from the British colonial era [View Full Entry]

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Day 215 (26.10.07) Today was our last in Asia and having spent 7 months (to the day) there we were leaving this region with a lot of sadness and a bit of trepidation as to how we would like going back to easy travelling and a country where not only everyone speaks English (albeit with a funny accent) but everything is written in English as well. We have always felt that arriving in Australia would be the next chapter of our trip and it certainly felt like the end of part one as we prepared to leave. Packed up and out [View Full Entry]

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Day 213 (24.10.07) Today we were leaving behind the rigours of staying in a hostel and were going for a slice of the good life. We were off to Raffles Hotel for the night! This was a wedding/xmas present to us from Mark's parents - a massive thank you goes to you both - we had an incredible time. We spent the morning wandering around the Chinatown area of Singapore, interested to see many of the bits and bobs that we saw on stalls in China all that time ago. We had a lovely wander around this colourful section of the [View Full Entry]

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Day 211 (22.10.07) We had to rely on our natural alarm clocks to get us up as we had lost our alarm clock over the previous day. Luckily enough we woke early enough to have packed, showered and had breakfast before 8:30 am when we were to leave for the airport (leaving plenty of time for our still aching legs to tackle the stairs down to street level!). After a bit of a palaver getting a bus, where everyone we asked seemed to point us in a different direction, we managed to get one to the terminal, checked our bags in [View Full Entry]

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Day 207 (18.10.07) (2 pages of pics on this one - make sure you see them all!) We spent the morning catching up on some stuff using the cheap internet in Ranau and then managed to flag a coach down from the main road to take us to the entrance to the Kinabalu National Park which would be the starting point for our mountain climb. Mount Kinabalu, at 4095m, is regarded as the 'highest mountain in SE Asia' although it is actually the third highest mountain with others topping it in Indonesia. Every year Mount Kinabalu hosts a climbathon where incredibly [View Full Entry]

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Day 210 (21.10.07) After a great night's sleep, we all woke pretty early to find that to our huge disapointment England had lost the rugby, oh and that every move we made was extremely painful! After our big climb the aches had truly arrived and any walking hurt - stairs were agony! After packing, we joined Anna and Kathryn for some breakfast at the cafe before catching a minibus back to Ranau where we were going to use the internet and catch the bus back to Kota Kinabalu. There are a lot of other things to do at Poring including the [View Full Entry]

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