After hiking through the amazing rice terraces of Banaue and Batad for a couple of days we jumped on a van heading into the mountains towards the small tranquil town of Sagada. A quick change into a jeepney and some very windy and steep roads later, we arrived and immediately loved the place. Equivalent to Pai in Thailand it is the ‘backpacker’ town of the Philippines, although we didn’t see too many other Westerners here. It had a very chilled out vibe to it and the surrounding mountainous scenery was really picturesque. We soon found a room and headed out for lunch at the renowned Yoghurt House, which we had heard so much about. This place is amazing! It served a mix of delicious home-made local and western food as well as fresh yoghurt, and for ... read more

Borneo, to most people, conjurs up images of lush rainforests, exotic creatures, rare animals and tales of jungle treks. Well, this is exactly what we encountered whilst in the region of Sarawak, the largest state on the Eastern side of Borneo-Malaysia. We chose the city of Kuching to base ourselves in for our stay here as it was both convenient and easy to get to most places that we wanted to see. Originally when we had planned the Borneo part of this trip, we had intended to travel across to the Sabah area and take in Kota Kinabalu for it's famous mountain trekking, Sepilok for nature and wildlife and Sipadan for diving, but due to serious political problems and reports of violence and terroism there we just didn't feel 100% sure about going so decided to ... read more

Before starting this blog, we would just like to give a quick thanks to everyone who nominated and voted us into the Travelblog Hall of Fame. Something which started out over 3 years ago as a means to updating our friends and family back home and has grown into a recording of our personal adventures around the World is something we will look back on in years to come with the greatest memories. Even looking back at some of our older blogs today, we cringe when we think about the very first time we entered Thailand from Australia and thought paying 250Bht for a curry was great value - I am glad we can now pass on some of our favourite places to eat and info on local food, transport and accomodation . . . Anyway, ... read more

After a good start to Malaysia, we left bustling Georgetown for the calmness of the Cameron Highlands, around 5 hours away inland. When we got to the bus station at 7am we were pleased to see Thea and Jeremi (the Canadian brother & sister) there, who we had dinner with the night before, and it turned out we would all be on the same bus – this is how we gained travel buddies (and friends) for the next few weeks! The first bus was nice and comfortable, but after a stop in Ipoh about 3 hours in, we had to change to a small mini-van which wasn’t so great; it was another couple of hours until we were dropped in the town of Tanah Rata, the gateway to the trails through the Cameron Highlands, passing some ... read more

After the madness of Phi Phi we needed to relax, unwind and get away from the party scene, as well as restore our faith in the country and its people, so arrived on Koh Lanta hoping to have a nice last few days. Thankfully, it provided just what we needed and having had no real expectations before we got there, it also surprised us in a good way. Getting off the boat at the pier there were a lot of taxi drivers and hotel touts vying for our business, and one guy seemed pretty genuine when he told us he had room at his resort on Khong Klong beach which he would take us to for free and it sounded nice so we went with him. We usually avoid touts like the plague but this guy ... read more