Leaving Sydney Getting to the airport The first part of my journey was to get to the airport. As I live in Western Sydney, and the trip to the airport can take at least an hour (depending on the time of day), and the fact that I had a super early flight, I decided to get to the airport the afternoon before I was due to fly out, and stay at a hotel at the airport. I'm glad I did, as the trains weren't running in the Blue Mountains, and there were buses replacing trains to Blacktown. Luckily I had a friend drop me off at Penrith Station, where I hoped to catch an express bus to the city, however, it wasn't running, so I just waited with the others that were stuck like me trying ... read more

I have a friend who lives on the Mid North Coast of NSW near Forster, and she invited me to stay over the weekend and go to a concert in Forster on Sunday night. I drove up on Thursday and back home again on the following Monday. When I arrived, we headed to Tuncurry beach with her kids and dog. They had lots of fun jumping in and out of the waves! On Friday (after the kids got on the school bus) we headed up to Harrington for lunch over the water and then did a road trip back to her house via Taree, Wingham and Krambach. We went out for dinner on Friday night to an Asian Infusion restaurant and had sashimi for entree and a thai curry for mains. Great view! On Saturday we ... read more

My friend Sue contacted me a couple of days ago saying she was heading into Sydney for the afternoon / evening to check out the Chinese New Year (CNY) festivities, and wondered if I wanted to join her. I took up that offer! We met each other on the platform of our local station and caught the train to Town Hall station. We made a slight detour to a camera shop so I could buy a new camera strap, and then we headed to Darling Harbour. We crossed Pyrmont Bridge and had lunch in the food court. It was so hot! I had noodles and an ice cream. Yum. We then headed towards Haymarket and came across the CNY festivities. It was still daylight so we got to see the paper lanterns in daylight. We decided ... read more

I left Vietnam and headed to Kuala Lumpur. I got the train from the airport to KL Sentral then the metro to my hotel. By the time I got to the hotel, all I wanted to do was have something to eat and sleep. The next three days were spent wandering around KL, dodging the rain downpours and relaxing in my hotel. By this stage I was completely exhausted (I had worked 4 weeks straight and then done 10 days around Vietnam), and I’m really not one for shopping so I didn’t really like KL. I left KL and headed back to Australia. As it was the time of the Ebola outbreak, I had to fill in a health declaration when I arrived back in Oz.... read more

We left Hanoi in the morning and took a mini-bus to Ha Long (Descending Dragon) Bay. Again there were many interesting sights to see along the way. Once we got to the bay, we were taken by a punt-type boat to our overnight accommodation boat. I was staying on the V-Spirit Classic, which was the ‘basic’ option for my tour. It wasn’t really all that basic, and I was quite happy with my room, which included an ensuite with shower! We headed off into the bay (along with MANY other boats) to see the limestone islands. People came by in their little boats trying to sell us wares. I just smiled and waved at them, as I didn’t want to buy anything. Our first ‘tour’ was to some limestone caves. Having been to Janolan ... read more