As we approached the last 60 kilometres into Noosa the scenery became more interesting - with green rolling hills reminiscent of Devon, albeit with different vegetation. When planning our trip, we looked forward to the Greyhound bus ride down the east coast, and looking at the map you would think that you would get to see a lot of the coast. Wrong! for most of our trip from Cairns there were not many towns, it was mainly endless sugar cane plantations followed by miles of savannah, with the odd kangaroo to break the monotony. The Greyhound buses services was great with many bus drivers advising the location of the individual hostels. Noosa is a lovely town and you can tell there is a good standard of living here, some of the waterfront properties go for 4000000 ... read more

Qantas did themselves proud, I’d never had a fried egg on an in-flight meal before but there in front of us was a proper egg, bacon, and sautéed potatoes breakfast (shame about the side of spinach but Alison liked it). Our main reason for coming to Cairns, it is one of the main stopping off points to visit the Great Barrier reef, that’s stretches for 1300 miles off the coast of Australia. Prior to our visit to the reef we thought we would visit the Queensland rainforest, that predates the Amazon one by 50 millions years. We took a ride on the very scenic but touristy Kuranda railway, that winds its way into the mountains, passing stunning views and waterfalls eventually reaching Kuranda. Originally a mining town the railway was built in 1891 to support the ... read more

A simple Air Asia 1 hour flight brought us to Singapore, not as exciting as the train maybe but a whole lot quicker. I’d like to have told you we then booked into the Marina Bay Hotel. Kim has been desperate for a swim at the incredibly high infinity pool atop this crazy hotel, spurred on by some Germans we met, he’d been watching the room prices avidly, but at over £300 per night (plus 17% tax) I had to comment that it was a very pricey swim, and voted against. However, the Marina Bay Hotel dominates the skyline here, and haunted Kim because you could even see it from our room at our very functional YMCA (please no singing) hostel! Just to torture him further we took a trip up into The Marina Bay, not ... read more

DI-SAS-TER….. the Lonely Planet Guide for south east Asia was left on the bus, Alison is bereft, it was like having her right arm cut off. After our train travels with cockroaches we were a bit apprehensive about the next, an overnight trip from Bangkok to Surat Thani, then meeting a bus to take us to Khoa Lak, a resort north of Phuket. The train although not new, was clean enough and shortly after leaving the station, the immaculately uniformed carriage attendant (starched creases and all) came through the carriage, assembled and made the beds, and attached the privacy curtains. It was a pretty cosy and we had a good sleep passing through the Thai country side. We had bought a joint train/bus ticket and was told the bus would meet us at the station for ... read more

On our original plan we weren’t sure whether we would go to Chang Mai. The easy route would be to go to Bangkok and either fly or train. It was due north and we needed to head south towards Singapore. Two things forced our hand one was if we flew into Thailand we got a 30 days’ visa as opposed to a 15 days one, the other was that Alison wanted to see some elephants. There wasn’t a direct flight so we took two Air Asia flights, the first a short hop to Bangkok then an hour north to Chang Mai. This city is known for three things temples, elephants and cuisine. We were going to experience all three during the next 3 days. On coming out of the airport the first thing we noticed was ... read more