Flying in to Phnom Phen we realised that during the monsoon season Cambodia resembles a giant puddle. The land is flat and the rain leaves so much of it flooded. The upside is an abundance of rice and freshwater fish, two of the very few reasons the people here have to be contented. Cambodia is a country with a bleak history of conflict, chaos and extreme cruelty to the ordinary peasants most notably at the hands of the despicable nerk Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. Corruption and political unrest remain common place. So many victims of landmines, some missing limbs [View Full Entry]

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Three days in Singapore left us feeling fairly underwhelmed. Although a clean place, for us it lacked any real character, the only highlight being a trip to the night safari which was pretty good. The low point was being stuck in a hostel with the contestants of the Singapore version of Pop Idol. We made our escape by train, a pleasant seven hour trip to Kuala Lumpur a city with a little bit more personality than the place we had just left. KL is a little bit rough around the edges but is nowhere near as serious as Singapore. We spent [View Full Entry]

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by caroline. Salam, After arriving late into Bali we hit the sack ready to find our bearings tomorrow. The next few days we spend sorting our trip to Flores, making sure we draw enough cash as ATM's are few and far between over there. We're hoping to have some chill out time on the beach, unfortunately the beaches are pretty poor but we did find a great bar called Paradise. After talking to Peter we decide to take an over land trip for four days. Our driver is Robert he reminds me of Eddie Murphy when he smiles. The trip involves [View Full Entry]

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22nd April 2006. Today is our 11th anniversary. We arrived at Perth around lunchtime and were met by my cousin Spencer and his daughter Izzy. We had discovered at the airport in Christchurch that we didn't have visa's for Australia. We were'nt sure why but ten minutes on the internet and 40 aussie dollars later the problem was solved. We spent eight days at Spenny and Gails house, a little house on the prairie affair, weatherboard clad with a full frontal verandah set in five acres of countryside but still only thirty minutes south of Perth. Izzy had been kind enough [View Full Entry]

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Kia ora Since leaving home in november I had managed to lose 7kgs in weight, I'd had my hair cropped, I had started to wear bracelets and had developed a habit of calling everyone dude. I was, I decided, a true nomad. Caroline however, apart from losing some weight had'nt become as shallow as me and remained the same as ever. 6th March 2006 We arrived in Auckland at lunchtime. Donna and Vance, are friends from our South American travels were there to meet us. They drove us to Taupo where we spent three days with them staying at Donna's folks [View Full Entry]

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by caroline DAY 97 Our flight today is 12.10pm, back to Carcacas yet again. The worst thing is saying goodbye and that empty feeling you get. We arrived in Caracas at 6.30pm, at the Catimar hotel we head to the bar for supper, we ordered 2 beers and got 2 strawberry milkshakes good to see our spainish has improved. Day 98 Flight to Dallas is 10.24am, on arriving in Dallas we have to make our way to security where for some reason my camara sets off an explosive alarm, just my luck. Tim's looking a bit panick stricken, anyway no worries [View Full Entry]

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by tim After six and a half weeks we finally arrived in Rio. Nine Dragoman/Encounter trucks carrying 120 people had descended from all over South America on the Hotel Paysandu. Our first night there was the Red and Black ball. This we had been pre-warned was an event which saw several thousand people dressed in Red and Black converge on a nightclub called the Scala club. The point of it was fairly obscure apart from the fact that the woman generally got mauled by the local bloke's. I was'nt really looking forward to it but it was just one of those [View Full Entry]

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by tim The decision made, Brasil here we come. We said our farewells to Scotty, Ross, Yvette, Paul and Claire. Caroline cried which had become fairly normal, but so did Scotty which was quite funny considering she was fairly adamant she wouldn't. On the upside we welcomed some new guy's into the fold. Anna and Magnus from Iceland, Clive and Jane, Wayne and Sarah, Dwight and Harriet, Chrissy, Liz, Lucy and Natasha ( Precious), plus a new co-driver Zoe from Portsmouth which meant, we assumed that AJ must have been demoted to Trolly Dolly. First stop was Ciudad Bolivar, the main [View Full Entry]

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by tim We arrived back in Caracas to join our Dragoman group on the 18th Dec. Dragoman is the tour company and they specialise in overland trips all over the world. They supply us as a group a purpose built truck which is kitted out with everything we need to be self sufficient, a tour leader ( Svava ) and a co-driver ( AJ ). Svava and AJ's job is to get us from A to B, sort out campsite/ hostel accommodation, keep the truck maintained and generally oversea the day to day running of the trip. Everything else is [View Full Entry]

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by tim Buenos dias, como ustedes, Thats about the extent of our spanish which we´d discover was going to be a bit of a problem here. Isla Margharita is an island in the Caribbean sea off the coast of Venezuela. We had decided to come here to take it easy after what we knew would be a fairly hectic couple of weeks previously. We had booked a hostel (hotel Casa Maria) about a year in advance and was met at the airport by Romolo the guy who owned the hostel with his mum Maria. The hostel is situated in a town [View Full Entry]

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