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 to the track leading to Kbal Spean. I made a particular mental note of the Lonely Planet's warning of sticking to well trodden paths during our trek as there are known to be land mines ... read more

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 stamped & passed down a line of at least six Government officials. Five minutes later we're officially "in" and travelling light with only carry-on luggage meant we were out in the tropical balmy air only ... read more

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, at a "Sea" World), then the girls want to go on some rides. Head over to the Atlantis ride only to discover it doesn't open unitl 11am. OK, we'll go in the opposite direction to ... read more

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 hairy butts, so this was a real bonus. These guys are very very cute, but they were not our favourites. This for me, the best were the Gorillas. The San Diego Zoo has a fairly ... read more

Did some Tiki touring around the countryside of Sedona this morning before hitching up with our pre-booked Pink Jeep Tour - an off road 4X4 trip on the Broken Arrow Trail into the heart of the red rocks. Apparently this is the "must do" activity in Sedona. We had a really exhilarating, bumpy ride up and down some pretty steep bits of rock and dirt roads for about two hours, which was really, really cool fun. The kids got to sit right at the back of our chauffer driven Pink Jeep, so they got the best rollercoaster ride of all. Our driver, Bob was a wealth of knowledge and full of facts when it came to the local geography, flora, fauna and geology and we all learnt a lot about the formation of rocks and canyons. ... read more