Our good friend Kerrie was there waiting for us at the exit as arranged - lucky considering we were 20 minutes early, had no luggage to collect, flew through immigration and past the temperature monitors without stopping. We hadn't seen Kerrie since they moved from the Mount to Bangkok almost a year ago. It was so great seeing her after all these months - we just clicked back to where we had left off. Before long her driver had the car brought round (oh how posh~) and we were heading off to their lovely apartment near Lumphini Park in the middle [View Full Entry]

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Our last morning and we were up early and enjoying a delicious breakfast outside under the umbrella in the balmy heat beside the pool - does it get any better than this? In my opinion - no way! We quickly packed our bags (which didn't take long given that we didn't have much to pack), and met up with Suwan again who was prearranged to take us out to the Floating Village on Lake Tonle Sap. We sat back in the tuk tuk and took in all the sights and scenes that we passed on the way out to the lake. [View Full Entry]

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This morning, after enjoying a really delicious breakfast at the hotel, we were met by Suwan who had organised to have the use of his uncles taxi (a nice Toyota Camry) to take us 50km out of Siem Reap to Kbal Spean - "The River of a Thousand Lingas", Banteay Srei, the Landmine museum and another temple, the name of which escapes me at present. We left Siem Reap at 8.00am and after a fascinating journey through the Cambodian countryside on a surprisingly excellent road (apparently it was sealed by the Thai Govt only last year) we arrived at the entry [View Full Entry]

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The alarm beeped at 5:30 this morning to enable us to get to see the sun rise over Angkor Wat. The hotel had kindly packed us a breakfast box and Suwan was waiting reliably for us at the entrance in his tuk-tuk. I think he looked a little more jaded than us at this ungoldly hour as we were still on NZ time (5 hrs ahead). The streets of Siem Reap were very quiet and rather peaceful at this time of day. The only other movement coming from fellow travellers making their way out to the temples. Quick stop at the [View Full Entry]

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Thanks to an exceptionally cheap airfare & a good friend now living in Thailand, we're off on holiday again only this time without kids and traveling the long way via Christchurch & Sydney to Siem Reap, Cambodia and Bangkok, Thailand. Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples have always been on our "Bucket List" and now seems as good a time as any to take the opportunity to see them... 27 hours after leaving home we finally touch down at the beautiful Siem Reap airport. We needed to get Cambodian Tourist Visa's which involved handing over $20 each and having the passports [View Full Entry]

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Our last day - boo hoo! The kids are ready for home and seeing their friends, but Steve and I would like another couple of years before we have to go back to the drudgery of work. Even a few more days to wind down would be nice - I should have booked a couple of days at the beach on the way home!!! Next time... So we pack up the suitcases, squeezing everything we could in every little space, but darn it we still have a plastic bag full of shoes and stuff to put somewhere. Too bad that we've [View Full Entry]

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San Diego SeaWorld - our final theme park. Today's weather is in complete contrast to what we thought San Diego weather would be like - it's overcast, quite chilly and feels like it's about to rain - here we are thinking that it is always brilliantly sunny here... Anyway, we get to SeaWorld just before opening at 10am and are greeted at the entrance gates by very grumpy, unfriendly staff who roughly search our bags & snatch our tickets without the usual friendly smile (they need to go to Disneyland for some retraining me thinks!) First stop the Clydesdale Horses (yep, [View Full Entry]

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Today we're off to visit the biggest museum we've ever seen - the Aircraft Carrier, USS Midway. As recommended we parked the car for free at the Old Town and took the San Diego Trolley (a train) into the city centre. Had a quick look around the Seaport Village area before walking along the waterfront boulevard to the Midway ship which is permanently moored in the harbour. OMG! It's massive!!! Great value for money at only $34 for us all to enter including both self guided audio tours and small group tours of "island" (the bit including the bridge) area of [View Full Entry]

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Enjoyed a yummy cooked breakfast courtesy of Homewood Suites this morning before heading out for our day at the famous San Diego Zoo located in Balboa Park. Decided to take the narrated double-decked tram tour of the zoo first to get an idea of what's what which was very informative and probably saved our feet from a few miles of walking. First stop after that was the Panda's - and for the first time ever we got to see them awake and active. Every other time we have been to a zoo with Pandas all we got to see was their [View Full Entry]

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Packed up the car again, grabbed a quick breakfast, gassed up and began the longest drive of our holiday - 750km to San Diego. Tomtom had the time estimated as 7 hrs 50 min - ewwwww! Kids were primed with Nintendo, laptop, books and ipods to help pass the time. We had soon left the beautiful red rocks and were back on the 4 lane highways passing thru the dry, desolate desert country which domitates the Nevada and Arizona countryside we have seen so far. Every now and then we would come across irrigated pastures where they were growing vast paddocks [View Full Entry]

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