RichandRach

Raratonga To conclude of our round the world trip, we decide to treat ourselves to some relaxation before returning to the world trip. The Cook Islands are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean are a long long way from the UK, so we are unlikely to visit them again so took nine days to experience the Islander’s lifestyle in full. We arrived at Raratonga airport to find an old guy in a Hawaiian shirt (well I guess it’s and Islander thing) playing a guitar and singing tropical, Polynesian songs to us as we queued for customs and to collect our bags. I had already found and booked a well recommended guesthouse on Trip Advisor called Aremango, all the reviews had raved about it and it was only thirty quid a night for a kingsize room ... read more

WELCOME TO NEW ZEALAND! We had a great flight with Singapore Airlines, and although we only got a couple of hours sleep, the outstanding entertainment system (and the free Singapore Slings) meant we had a very enjoyable night flight. We tried not to notice the git who had an entire aisle to himself and was sleeping horizontal, away with the fairies. The cabbie who took us into Auckland town gave us a mini-itinerary whilst excitedly telling us about all the different varieties of crops that many kiwis were harvesting this autumn. We picked up our campervan, which was beautifully custom painted in flowers (much to Rachel's delight!), and headed straight out of the city and hit the New Zealand countryside. Driving on no sleep was fairly easy in our relaxed auto-transmission camper, and we made it ... read more

Singapore!   We left Japan ready to embrace warmer climates - we’d both had colds since being in Japan and although Singapore was renowned for rain, we didn’t care - it was 30° and we were armed with waterproofs and umbrellas.  The torrential rain that greeted us at the airport was a bit of a shock, but Singapore is designed for rain and we made it to our backpacker hostel pretty dry thanks to all the underpasses and shopping malls on route.  We were staying in Little India, which was brilliant because it was just like being in India (ie all the awesome range of food), but it was clean!  And slightly surreal with all the different cultures (Chinese, India, Malay & Westerners) blended together, seeing a Chinese old man tucking into malasa dosai, and South ... read more

After the seclusion of bottle beach in Koh Pha Ngan we decided to stay somewhere a bit more mainstream in Koh Tao. We'd been recommended a dive school by some random Irish guys that we met in a songthaew so we thought we'd follow their advice and ended up at Sairee Hut Dive School. Through our 5 nights on Tao we changed rooms three times but we stuck with the dive school. They seemed to know what they were doing but were really chilled out and relaxed at the same time. And strangely enough one of the main dive instructors, Neil, is from Harefield (the village my mum grew up in) and his Dad used to work for my Grandad! Small world hey! We started our diving almost immediately with a 7.30 start the following morning. ... read more

Koh Samui! We woke up (again) at the ridiculous hour of 4.30am from our guesthouse in Kuala Lumpa and brewed a cuppa to get the brain functioning enough to pack and get into the taxi... which at 4.55 we discover hadn't actually been booked! Somewhere along the line, the asking of "can you arrange a taxi" and the answer of "ok pickup is at 5am", the happy-go-lucky receptionist negated to actually call the cabbie! Fortunately, their driver was awake and in the area, so after 10 minutes of pacing around, he wizzed up to the hostel, threw our bags in, and drove at breakneck speed across KL weaving and undertaking cars, trucks, motorcycles and even an ambulance! Needless to say, we arrived in time to check in and go grab a much needed Mcdonalds breakfast! A ... read more