monkeycopilot

What do you know, I’m more than a little behind with my blogging, too much lazing around and enjoying myself to start typing that’s what… loads of photos to sort through, beaches to bathe on, DVD’s to digest, games to play, oh and of course places to see… so what’s new eh? Well, the next leg of our trip turned out to be one of the more memorable journeys to date, Siem Reap to Battambang via boat across the great ‘Tonle Sap’ proved to be an uncomfor-gettable eye opener. Tonle Sap literally translates into ‘Large Fresh Water River’ and is home to innumerable, transient floating homes, floating schools, floating shops, whole floating communities that fish this most abundant expanse of water. Seasonal monsoon rainfall swells this relatively small one metre deep body of water into a ... read more

Fully relaxed and ready to go we bode farewell to Koh Chang and caught the return bus back to Bangkok, the complete journey (both ways), including the ferry rides cost us the grand total of around $16 USD or £8, man you gotta love this country. On returning to Bangkok we decided not to stay around the Kao San Road circus this time, opting instead for the much more sedate and civilised Rambuttri Road, which is just a stones throw away from the infamous street and nestled up against a lovely old temple (Wat) - infinitely more relaxing. Claire was going to be heading off to a Buddhist retreat for a week leaving me to have a nose around Bangkok’s surrounding area, but before she went off we took a joint excursion up to the fallen ... read more

The day, the big day, the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning was finally upon us and we were picked up bright and early from our hotel in Cuzco. The weeks seemed to have flown by since the 1st October when we had first entered Peru and booked the Machu Picchu expedition from our helpful travel guide Alberto. Being told then that we would have to wait over a month to get onto the official trek seemed like an eternity, so during the weeks that followed we put our pedals to the metal and took in the best of what Peru had to offer. This South American country has everything you could wish for from oxygen lacking, lung crushing mountain highs, to arid, sweltering desert sandboarding lows with nearly every other type of ... read more

Next on our grand tour of Peru was Huacachina, an idyllic little oasis ‘town’ nestled amongst gigantic sand dunes in Peru’s western desert area and only a short taxi drive from the recently earthquake hit town of Ica. On driving through Ica from the bus station to Huacachina, the earthquakes destructive forces were evident everywhere from the rubble piles and corrugated sheet boarding up municipal buildings to the shop fronts showing stress cracks with missing facades in the town square. We also saw numerous temporary, makeshift homes scattered along the roadside that the locals had been forced into following the annihilation of their property. This kind of seismic action, although brutal and deadly to the locals is an unfortunate part of life in this part of the world and from my inexperienced eye it certainly looked ... read more

Due to our close proximity to Bolivia we decided to make a dash for the Uyuni Salt Flats, this is something that Claire had been mad on doing since seeing all the amazing perspective photos on other peoples blogs, and something I wasn't really that bothered about to be honest. After eventually giving into the my ladies persuasive arguments we jumped on a luxury tourist bus and made our way around the shores of the majestic Lake Titicaca. Three or four hours out of Puno we arrived at the first destination - Copacobana "Her name was Lola.... She was a show girl" no, no, no - different place, Barry Manilow would never have coined a song after this one horse town. We disembarked the bus, got our papers signed off by the officials, walked over the ... read more