Our friends Sandar, Terence and Ohnmar, invited us to the Songkran Asian New Year and Water festival at the Wat Pa Buddharangsee Buddhist Temple at Leumeah. One of the highlights being delicious asian food from Australia, Burma, Cambodia, Lao, Malaysia, Sri-Lanka and Thailand. Ohnmar, Sandar and their mother were working on the Burmese food stall, raising funds for the new temple that the Burmese community have recently purchased at Smithfield. Lots of interesting cuisine was on offer, including deep fried quail, melon and Sri-Lankan love cake. Most of the children and many of the adults got into the swing of the Water festival using buckets, tubs, and water pistols to drench anybody who was not on the ball. I got a tub of ice water down my back as did Lorenza, but the person who wet ... read more

Saturday was the inaugural meeting for over 30's Couch Surfing members. Lyn, who is a CS Ambassador for Sydney organised the meeting and it was attended by more than 20 CS members, prospective members and travel lovers. It was a fun afternoon talking travel and meeting some new people, including ... Robert who had just returned from an epic motorcycle trip through Nepal and Bhutan on a 350cc Royal Enfield. Nina who has been traveling in Australia for almost 12 months and is soon to return to Canada, Emmanuelle a French teacher who was recently teaching in Syria and now based for 2 years in Sydney. Bev who is now retired and set her heart on a new life of travel who came by train from Newcastle (about a 2.5 hour trip) to meet up with ... read more

This Saturday was the opening of the Sydney Festival and all the events were free. Lorenza and I checked the program a few weeks ago and decided to book a hotel and make the trip to Sydney and enjoy the fun. On the program were 3 weddings in Macquarie Street, dance parties in Martin Place, Angel Place, Hyde Park and a concert in the Domain featuring Paul Kelly and Brian Wilson. The one and a half hour train ride to Sydney is a bit of a bore, but I could not be bothered driving and then searching for parking. The weather was not looking all that brilliant when we left home and the forecast in Sydney was for showers. The temperature was still expected to be about 28 or 30 degrees so a little rain would ... read more

Arrived at about 9am and a bit dazed and confused. Trying to locate a shuttle bus to our hotel got us even more confused, but we eventually made it to Hong Kong at about 11am, once booked into our room we discovered the hotel was undergoing a serious make over and there was not much chance of catching a nap with the jack hammers pounding away. Instead we freshened up and decided to go in search of something to eat. There were a few restaurants close to the hotel but they looked very sterile. We noticed a market that had lots of fresh produce and a sign "cooked food upstairs" so we went to take a look. The second floor was crowded with local people eating various types of noodles with chicken, pork, etc. The place ... read more

Château de Versailles If you are in Paris make sure you make the effort to get to Versailles - the former home of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. This is our second visit and we still have not managed to take it all in. Al and Melissa had to get back to Gare du Nord for their train to London so we did not get to explore as much as we may have liked, but that just leaves us more to look at next visit. 22nd October 2007 - Giuseppe Arcimboldo Together with Jean and Beatrice, we went to an exhibition at the Musée de Luxembourg. The exhibition of paintings by a 16th century Italian artist - Giuseppe Arcimboldo. His work was amazing, his portraits use vegetables and plants painted in such a way as to ... read more