Hi there everyone getting ready for my trip next month and want to know if you are all still getting my blogg. let me know if you get it love lee [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hi there everyone getting ready for my trip next month and want to know if you are all still getting my blogg. let me know if you get it love lee [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hi folks just checking my blog is up and running and how does this damn thing work????? well Toni and I are off to London and Dubln which is very exciting and hopefully to bring back GOLD as well as attending the Hostelworld conference. We will be going from great sunny hot cape town weather to 0 degrees or close. I am sure its going to take our breath away. WE are so looking forward to catching up with our friends in London. So folks watch this space!!! [View Full Entry]

---

---

On Saturday we went to Koh Phi Phi on the big fast mother of a speed boat with 3 engines and comfortably sat 30 pax. We dont usually like doing the tourist thing but you got to jump off the boat now and again at some very lovely spots and have a snorkel. Obviously some places are better than others due to visibility and what there is to see but for a novice like me its all great as there are loads of fish, the corals were bright and the sea far too warm really. For those of you who have [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well we have spent a few days here and time just flies in Paradise. We took a boat trip for the day to 4 Islands. We were extemely lucky with the weather as it was really calm and at each spot you can have snorkel. On Poda Island, our first stop as soon as I put the snorkel on and my head under the water I could see we were surrounded by colourful tiger fish. They are so exquisite and inquisitive they come up and look at you and may even nibble you a little. Then it was off to the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hi there everyone from Paradise. Sorry to tell you all this but it is a bit of Paradise here even though there are many reminders that things can go wrong in Paradise. We are at a hotel on the beach front in this James Bond setting - its close to the place where Dr No was filmed and the mountain cliffs go straight out of the water with jungles clinging to them. Wildlife abounds in the forms of cicadas who screach so loudly when the night approaches its deafening, lizards, ants of all shapes and sizes, butterflies and wasps and lots [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well we made it to Beijing and time has flown by. The train was good and the hostel is well located near Tianamen Square. The first day we orientated ourselves and went for a walk around the square. Its really huge everything is miles long and you cant just cross the streets to get there. You have to use underground walkways where the wind can really howl through and it did. Then if you cross the street you must use the designated areas where the traffic nazis patrol the streets with wistles and such like. The square is covered in surveillance [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well we survived the hard sleeper from Xián to Pingyao and met some lovely people in our compartment. They were all locals of course but the guy gave us little packet of the food that Pingyao is known for and it turned out to be corned beef so i was really surprised and tasted just like the way my mum makes it!!! the compartments in the hard sleeper are stacked 3 up on each side and i was lucky to have the bottom one and terry got the middle one. they do not have any doors and the passageway is open. [View Full Entry]

---

---

Although this is about Xi'an I just wanted to add that in Shanghai we went to the main Buddhist Temple which was crowed with tourists and was a complete goldmine for the Buddhists which I had not imagined to be so money concious. Besides having to pay an entrance fee you also had to pay extra to see the one jade buddah (which i did do and it was extremely lovely but no pictures of that are allowed) which was brought there from Myanmar. All the souvenires on display were horrendously overpriced which i felt was a real rip off and [View Full Entry]

---

---

did i tell you about the toilets??? i think this might be a shitty story for some but for others well its just how it is. there are a few basic varieties here - the one type is the one we are all familiar with with. There are a few of those about usually in our hostel and at some majorly western places. the next type is the starting block variety which is fine and they have been very clean and usually you get your own cubicle but the last sort is the open drain variety and i kid you not. [View Full Entry]

---

---