AniaDazz

Day 106 - 113 Swan Valley So today we were leaving Asia heading for Aussie, one of our final stops before NZ. We took one of these cheap Air Asia flights from KL - Perth and decided to fork out an extra £5 each and we got ourselves upgraded to seats with decent legroom (exit seats) and this is WELL worth the extra cash!!!! The flight itself was surprisingly good and comfortable for the 7 hour haul. Arrived in Perth (no time difference to KL) about 2pm and after the lengthy exit procedure where all our stuff got checked and double-checked by customs we were in Aus and picked up by our friends which were fantastic. (Thanks guys!!!) For the next week we stayed in the Swan Valley taking in some of the sights around Perth. ... read more

Day 98 to the Perinthians Got a taxi first thing and managed to share with 2 other girls so was handy, the taxi took us to the Jetty which was at Kuala Besut about an hour away. On arrival here we transferred to a Jet boat and were warned about our back and if we had eaten recently :) Lovely, anyway no need to worry as the seas were very calm and we were there in about 20 minutes. We decided on the smaller island Kecil as it predominately has more budget and available accommodation than it's bigger and more resort style brother Beasar Island. Besar was originally what we wanted but just could not find any decent place to stay so settled with Kecil which also has a younger crowd (so I have heard?). Problem ... read more

Southern Thailand for the next little while :) We planned on a month.. So after another sleepless night on a night train we were closing in on Surrthani which is the main junction for entry into the South of Thailand for the islands. What we found with the train is they do not actually switch the lights off at night, strange and the the train carriages are locked so you can not basically get anywhere except the loo! Perhaps for security but it meant anyone sleeping on the top bunk probably got very little sleep as the light would be beating down on them. Not great! Anyway we arrived around 7am and our plan all along had been to ignore all the thai agencys that would badger us into taking one of their best price bus/boat ... read more

Day 68 - to HK Right, after a week of amazing sights, running around, heat and great food it was finally time to leave Beijing. We really loved it here and definitely one of our favourite spots so far. Never did try the fried Scorpion, Grasshoppers or any of the other delicacies, probably a good thing in hindsight! Today we had a 24hr train which would cover some 2000 Kms to Hong Kong, unfortunately there was no time to visit other sites in China. We would have loved to go to Xian to see the Terracotta warriors but after looking at the route we would have to take decided against it, Shanghai was another option but we dismissed this with the Expo that was on everything was pricey. We had to check in some 90 minutes ... read more

Day 60 to Beijing Awoke early for our last transiberian train. The train we were taking was number 4 which is a favourite used by foreigners and was slightly better quality than we had been used to. We again were sharing with Russian's, could not believe it the whole trip since St Petersburg we had shared with Russians so again there was not much chit chat. Train left at 07:15 and we should arrive in Beijing at 14:00 the following day. Our journey passed through the Gobi Desert, this was for several hours of the day, just a huge expanse of sand and little else. We finally arrived at the Mongolia / Chinese border at around 19:00. The Mongolian's were pretty swift with their border/custom procedures, basically you surrendered your passport for around 30 minutes and ... read more