What did we do on Christmas day I hear you ask? Well we went over to an area of Sydney called Manly and went for a swim in the sea of course! And naturally we had a BBQ back at our hostel with Lobster, prawns, various meats and champagne! Well it was christmas day! No BBQ on the beach unfortunately as there was a total fire ban and being in a new country and not knowing the laws we didn't want to get arrested on christmas day! To get to Manly we had to take a ferry across the beautiful sydney [View Full Entry]

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No, never fear i have not gotten married in scotland -i'm talking about the highlands of Viti Levu - the largest island in Fiji. We had decided we wanted to go and stay in a village in the highlands and opted for a homestay e.g. staying with a family in the village, hoping to see a bit more of the traditional fijian way of life. Amazingly enough we arrived on the day of a wedding ceremony! No this was not a faux wedding put on for tourists like the one in Tunisia which was a mock berber style wedding in which [View Full Entry]

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"Like it? You'll love it!" is actually the advertising slogan for Fiji Gold the local beer but it has become the slogan for our time in Fiji because we love it! Have attached a couple of photo's from our last night in Auckland because part of it was spent at the minus 5 bar - a bar made entirely of ice! For the last 7 days we have been relaxing on Waya Sewa island (also nicknamed Waya Lai Lai) at the Waya Lai Lai eco haven resort - sounds incredibly posh I know -we stayed here for approximately 20 pounds a [View Full Entry]

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From Franz Joseph we headed onto Nelson and stayed at the paradiso backpackers - an unusual but fun hostel with good facilities and unusual in that the tv lounge and internet facilities are up ladders through holes in the ceiling. Whilst staying there I had the opportunity to catch up with my friend Paula who used to work in Enfield and try some of the local wines. It was really good fun to catch up with Paula - she and her sister kindly showed us some of the delights of Nelson and I was able to sample some of the delightful [View Full Entry]

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Well its a long entry - partially because last time i'd put so much in and couldn't be bothered to keep going and also because I've done a lot of stuff in the last week! This i'm afraid means lots of photo's especially as I am having a bit of a love affair with the beautiful new zealand scenery! DUNEDIN: Well as with all good stories i shall start at the beginning! We travelled down from kiakoura to Dunedin which is a city where the scottish settlers landed and apparently its name is celtic for Edinburgh. It was from here that [View Full Entry]

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Hello all, I realize it has been a while since my last blog - we are all safe and well and enjoying our time in new zealand! We are now 13 hours ahead which makes phoning home quite interesting! When I last wrote to you Clara and I had gone to Cha-am, a beach town with mostly thai visitors in Thailand. It was a little like an english beach town in that there were lots of shops lining the sea front with buckets, spades, clothes etc. However there was an amazing array of street seafood to be had - one morning [View Full Entry]

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We took a bus from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia which took about 8 hours including the longest border crossing I've ever had - it was about an hour to get our passports stamped and checked several times - we started whistling the great escape theme having "escaped from ' nam" and reaching cambodian soil! the ticket we had booked took us straight to the king guesthouse which was a bit out of the way from the city centre but they were well organised and with a bit of bartering we got a good price [View Full Entry]

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Hello from vietnam! have been here 14 days now and unfortunately have no more days left! Vietnam is an incredibly large country and I wish I had more time to explore it so i think I will have to come back one day! We arrived into Hanoi which is an incredibly large city and the first thing you notice after this is the traffic - one feature of vietnam is that the traffic is crazy! To cross the roads you just have to walk slowly and sedately out into the traffic as you seldom find a gap in the traffic or [View Full Entry]

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And that statement is true, we have been very active since we've been here and had lots of new experiences. We started our journey by crossing the border at the Chiang Kong / Huay Xai border crossing which involved crossing the border on a small long boat taxi. Once we had our passports stamped, we changed some money which made us feel like we had robbed a bank - remember the Lira in pre euro Italy and you can imagine what the money's like in Laos- its all in thousands! I've never felt so rich! In the end we opted to [View Full Entry]

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Well this is our last night in Chiang Mai, we spent the day engaged in various activities including thai boxing, a thai cooking course, visiting the local markets and visiting a famous temple on one of the mountains surrounding Chiang mai! This is actually a description of the various activities we each engaged in rather than what we all engaged in -Tom went thai boxing, Ele and I went on a thai cooking course and Clara visited the local temple. It does show you the diverse activities available to visitors to Chiang Mai and that has barely scratched the surface - [View Full Entry]

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