Well we made it from Bangkok to Cambodia, flight was uneventful (and given the fact that Qantas have had a couple of plane problems - bangkok airways seems pretty ok with their Airbus 320 - they even fed us on our flight from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh which was only 30 minutes long - hows that for efficiency). We flew into Siem Reap - the only thing there is the Temples of Angkor - but what a thing to see. We had organised a tuc tuc to collect us from our hotel at 5am to bring us to the Temples [View Full Entry]

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A little bit late, but wanted to upload the video clip.... We had always intended using Bangkok as a bit of a gateway into SE Asia - it has a good airport, loads of flight connections and reasonably priced airfares, decent hotels to recharge in and to plan the next steps, loads of western stores and brands if you need to get anything, decent medical centers if necessary, and all the embassies you need for visas. Well that is exactly what we did - had to spend a couple of days here to get a visa for Vietnam but could also [View Full Entry]

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I know it has been a while but we have an excuse - really... We are currently n bangkok having finished our time in china and as we did not want to run into issues with the Chinese government thus we refrained from posting until we left!. So here it is - our Chinese adventure. We ended up flying from Ulan Bator to Beijing as the Chinese govt would not sell us the overland train tickets to come in over the land border. Border controls and visas controls having become much stricter as a consequence of the trouble in Tibet [View Full Entry]

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See the olympic pandas - Jonathan and I went to the Zoo in Beijing and we saw the Pandas at - get this - the Olympic Panda house, they also had an Asian games Panda house. They were absolutely gorgeous but Jonathan said I could only have one if t fit in my hand luggage - meanie. [View Full Entry]

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A few pictures from Beijing that I'm late posting - partly because I couldn't put some of them up while in China. e.g. while on a mobile call with my sister, I heard the click of another handset being lifted on the line... [View Full Entry]

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Having arrived back from our stay in the Ger in Mongolia a few nights ago, we will update our pictures - by popular request. Note that I have updated the pictures in some of the previous entries too, so you might want to look at them too. Actually we are in China now but just trying to catch up - if I missed your call last night while we were watching a Legend of Kungfu, please send me a text. The trip out to the countryside was just 300kms but it took 7 hours as the road is not yet completed. [View Full Entry]

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Sorry about the abrupt ending to the previous entry - we had to publish quickly as our time was up in the internet cafe and we had to go and get our train to Mongolia (which is where we currently are). So we have now completed the Russian part of the trip and whilst it was interesting and exciting, for me the big part of the trip was coming here to Mongolia particularily as our arrival coincided with the Naaman festival - Jonathan had planned it that way. But our entry into Mongolia was an event in itself. We arrived at [View Full Entry]

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Since we were last in contact we have had a very eventful few days - prior to leaving moscow we were lucky enough to get to go to the circus (or half of the circus as we had to rush off midway to catch the train) - apart from cirque de soleil - not sure if that classes as a circus - it has been a really long time since i have been at the circus and the circus in moscow was absolutely amazing - my personal favourite was was the poodles who acted like they were on speed! They were [View Full Entry]

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After our few days in St. Petersburg we took the overnight train to Moscow. The Russians made it very dramatic by broadcasting old marching music over the loud speakers as the train pulled in to the platform. I felt like I was part of one of those old black and white movies where people run along the platform chasing a loved one as the train chugs out of the station. The music lasted about 10 minutes and then continued for the whole train journey (thankfully we discovered the volume control in the carriage). It was a pretty comfortable cabin for 4 [View Full Entry]

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So we have made it to st Petersburg, although the bus trip was an experience and a half with spending about an hour and a half lining up at passport control for the Russian border, but after a few shaky moments we got through. We crossed the border at about 4.30 in the morning and our first glimpse of Russia was this forested area with mist rising from it in the partial light - it looked like ice all around you. At present there is no proper darkness in st Petersburg - only the twilight part of the day when you [View Full Entry]

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