We started our Christmas adventure with a very early start to drive to the airport, before arriving in cairns around 9am, meaning we had a couple of hours to explore before picking up our Jucy campervan. We explored a Market on the esplanade and a couple of tourist information centres before grabbing breakfast and heading to collect the van. The first thing we did after collecting the van was to head to a shopping centre north of town for food and alcohol supplies. Unfortunately tiredness induced delirium had set in by this point, and we didn't end up planning the meal shopping very well, ending up with a random food selection and not many possible meals! We decided to head to a beach not far away to relax and try to catch up on sleep, to ... read more

As it was a long weekend I wanted to go somewhere further than usual, to make the most of the extra day free. This is how I came up with the blue mountains. I've been before on a day trip but Alex had never been so we found a list of all the walks available and on Saturday decided on a 3 hour nature circuit at Wentworth falls. At the beginning of the walk the sound of cicadas was deafening. I'd never seen a cicada before, but I've seen plenty now! There were thousands of empty cicada shells covering numerous trees too, which was quite cool to see. About an hour into the walk we stopped for a picnic lunch at a lookout, giving us great views over a valley. After lunch we continued our walk ... read more

Arriving on Gili Air my main priority was to find a diving company, and book a dive for the morning. After visiting a few different dive shops I finally settled with the first, and arranged a dive for 8am. Turning up in the morning I discovered I was the only customer on the 8:30 dive, so it was to be just me and my instructor. The dive was at shark point, and despite there being no guarantee of seeing any sharks, my instructor soon found me a white tipped reef shark around 1m long hidden in some rocks. It was amazing to see my first shark, just a shame it didn't come for a swim so I could get a better view! After leaving the shark I also saw thousands of fish in their schools, and ... read more

I wasn't planning to visit Sepilok as I would have another opportunity to visit Orangutans outside Kuching, and I wanted to do a river cruise. Luckily a couple of girls I met in the hostel were going to Sepilok and they tempted me to join them. I'm extremely glad they did! We started the day by cramming passengers into the car - just a slight squeeze - then headed off off the 45 minute trip to Sepilok. Once we got there we had to put all of our stuff except cameras in a locker so the Orangutans wouldn't steal it inside the centre. After a short walk, along which we spotted the trees shaking with small monkeys jumping around, we got to the viewing area by the Orangutan feeding station. It was already very busy, despite ... read more

My first activity upon arrival in Borneo was to complete an Open water PADI course with Scuba Junkie. This started at 8:30 the day after I arrived, so there has not been much time to look around Kota Kinabalu and see what it has to offer. Day 1 was a day of theory - 5 videos, 5 knowledge reviews, 5 tests and a whole book full of information to try and retain. There were 4 of us in the group, so it's a nice small class, and everyone's really friendly which is a great bonus if we have to spend 3 days together! We all passed the theory easily, ready to start getting in the water on Monday. Day 2 - Slightly nervous about everything today, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - it is ... read more