After a good bus ride from Siem Reap we were greeted in Phnom Penh by a tuk-tuk driver holding a sign with our names on.. how good is that! No we hadn't found some way to pre order them, he was a brother of one of the guys in the hotel we had just stayed at. The best bit was that he actually asked us how much we wanted to pay and yes we have his number if anyone wants to book him! Our first afternoon and evening in Phnom Penh were spent with 2 friends, Luke & Lil who we'd flown to Rio on the same plane as.. and ended up in the same hostel 9 months ago. Since that time we'd criss crossed the world always keeping in touch with each others adventures and ... read more

We left Langkawi on the organised transport we had booked to take us over the Thai border to Satun the nearest entry point to Thailand for us. While we were in Langkawi we learnt about the new regulations concerning the Thai visa which messed up our plans a little.. because we were doing a land border crossing you can now only get a 15 day visa instead of the previous 30 days. This meant that we would only be able to do a fraction of what we had planned so we set our sights on the Krabi area and decided to spend our 15 days soaking up the sun on the many beaches in this province. The border crossing went fine, the ferry trip there was very painless with The Mummy video to keep us amused ... read more

Off we set at 8am in the morning bound for the alternative destination (to the one we'd hoped for anyway) of the Cameron Highlands. As we said we had planned to go here at some point anyway, it's just we'd planned it for when we returned in a few months so no harm done by doing it now instead. The coach journey was very painless and we arrived in the beautiful Cameron Highlands mid afternoon, instantly grateful of the temperature when we stepped off the bus as it was much cooler than we'd been used to in KL. Another bonus was that the hostel we'd intended in staying at had sent down a minibus to collect any new arrivals so we headed on up the hill to Father's Guest House and checked into one of their ... read more

Sad to have left the luxury of the Lees fabulous house we set off on a 7 hour bus ride to Noosa. The bus ride was actually fine but we were confused that we had driven past Noosa on our way to the Australia Zoo a week before and the total journey had only taken 3 hours so it just goes to show how much longer the bus rides are than a straight run in a car. Noosa is a lovely but a touristy beach resort which is dripping with money. There are fabulous beaches here but by far the most spectacular things are the multi million dollar houses that line the riverbeds along the town. These houses are just jaw dropping and the sort of place we could really see ourselves aiming for if we ... read more

We arrived in Cairns mid evening and were immediately hit by the heat and humidity of the city which was quite welcome after the rain in Alice. We checked into our hostel and set straight off to the city centre to 'enjoy' our first free meal at the Woolshed where where we were to have many more meals during our stay... The Woolshed is a dubious pub/restaurant where many hostels offer either a free meal or an upgrade for a cheap price. If we were 18 years old then this place would probably seem like heaven on earth with wet t-shirt nights, jock nights and other such fun and frovility but, (sadly) we are now 30 and haven't come travelling for all night binge sessions in Australia's answer to Ibiza so we set ourselves into the ... read more

We arrived in Alice Springs and were a bit disappointed that we'd left Sydney in glorious sunshine and arrived in the Red Centre where it was pouring down with rain.. we thought it wasn't supposed to rain in the desert! We had our 3 day Uluru trip booked for the following day so spent the afternoon sheltering from the rain, exploring Alice Springs town centre (not really that much to explore) and preparing ourselves for a very early start of 5am the next day. We got up with no problem the next morning and were very excited to be going to explore the centre of Australia along with the other 22 people in our group and Mark our guide. Off we headed to Kings Canyon, the first stop for our journey into the red desert. On ... read more