We spent an awesome couple of weeks road tripping through Europe with our friends Cam and Heidi. We made our way through central and eastern Switzerland, Bavaria, Melk (Austria), Vienna, Prague and wrapped up in Berlin where we met with our Aussie & Brit mates Moo, Nicole and Catriona. Highlights included eating traditional Swiss food such as Raclette and Fondue (and staple sausage eh Cam!), heavy snow falls, hairy mountain passes that snowed over the day after we passed through, a high-tech interactive music museum in Vienna where we got to conduct our own orchestra, Prague Castle with it [View Full Entry]

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The Dalmatian Coast was everything we wanted it to be. We'd been craving the sun and sea since we left Costa Rica and basically just relaxed on the beach for our whole time on the Island of Hvar and in Dubrovnik. There's not a great deal to write about as we spent our days swimming, snorkelling and scooting around the island and the evenings drinking wine and Slivovic (grown and distilled by the couple we stayed with), so we'll let the photos do the talking. Yep, doing it tough... [View Full Entry]

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Many people we met couldn't understand why we'd want to go to Romania at all. We'd heard all the horror stories such as 'gypsy women' throwing their babies at you so that their older children could fleece you as you reach for the flying child. We'd also been warned of all the usual dangers such as pick pocketing and scams and were mentally prepared for a very difficult time. We touched down in Bucharest early on the 16th of September and jostled through the desperate taxi drivers looking for our guesthouse pickup. Our Colo High classmates will understand our fear that [View Full Entry]

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Having spent a few days in Seattle resting our feet and feasting on the local produce we were once again in the air heading to Costa Rica. We were over the moon to see the familiar faces of Rachael and Jeffrey waiting amongst the throngs of taxi drivers at San Jose International and after a night in the capital we were on our way to the Caribbean coast. It was dark by the time we arrived in Cahuita, a laid back Caribbean Rasta town. Thanks to Rachael and Jeff's excellent Spanish skills we soon found a great little room not far [View Full Entry]

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Our time in Seattle was mainly spent sleeping as much as possible to overcome jet lag and eating as much fresh food as we could fit in. One of the greatest things about Seattle is the Pike Place Market and the scores of smaller farmers' markets and strong local food movement. Pike Place Market is chock full of rows and rows of fresh, organic produce direct from the farmers and fishermen in mind boggling quantities. It is the oldest continually operating farmers' market in the world and to top it off we were there on Organic Wednesday! Having lived on Mongolian [View Full Entry]

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Sain bainuu! We're back from the countryside and can happily say the Mongolia we came to see is alive and well outside the city, with nomadic life carrying on much as it has for centuries. We spent a magical 10 days in the Arkhangai Aimag (a central province), participating in a nomad-centered project called Ger to Ger (www.gertoger.org), designed to create alternative income for herder families (affected by recent unusually harsh winters which reduced the national livestock population by a third). The project is supported by various aid organisations and most of the profit goes to the her [View Full Entry]

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We made the day trip out the Terelj National Park (about 2 hours from UB) to do some hiking and check out the rock formations we'd read and heard so much about. The public bus ride from the city was a breeze, a man selling cigarettes by the street even went out of his way to help us find the bus stop, a rareity in Ulaanbaatar, especially when we compare it to Seoul, where people actively went out of their way to help us out and be friendly. After arriving in the town of Terelj we picked a direction and set [View Full Entry]

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Well we made it into Mongolia, even with all the dried food Neen had stockpiled (the customs officials were a lot more interested in checking Mongols returning home than foreigners entering). Our hosts were there to meet us at the airport near midnight on Saturday and after a short drive in the rain in a van with no seatbelts and no headlights either for that matter, we arrived at our guesthouse (if ever you visit Ulaanbaatar, stay at Khongor Guesthouse). Our host Degi more than made up for any character the soviet style building lacks. There are some great restaurants in [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in the evening after a surprisingly comfortable and pleasant 11 hour flight from Sydney. I'm sure we'll feel differently after the next 6 months of flying, but Korean Airlines rock on! Managed to find the bus from Incheon airport to our guesthouse in Myeong-dong in central Seoul pretty easily and after asking for a lot of directions ended up at the Namsan Guesthouse where our hosts had cold Korean beer and snacks waiting for us, champions! We were soon downing shots of Hite beer (yes, beer shots from paper shot glasses... the sentiment seems to be' if it's not [View Full Entry]

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