Colombo to Chennai We started our trip to Chennai in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The city bus was a full 2 hours from downtown Colombo, and dropped us 1km from the airport, so after running with our luggage at 9:00pm to a Tuk Tuk who went painfully slow down the dark road to the airport, we finally checked in and got on the plane by 10:00pm. The flight didn't land in Chennai until around midnight. We had a sense of where we wanted to go, but nothing concrete. We figured we'd go somewhere downtown, central, so we could see the sights, etc. Trung has a couple of hotel names ready to give the cabbie. Chennai At the Chennai airport there are several prepaid cabbie companies offering rides for about 400 rupees to go somewhere downtown. The alternative ... read more

Pollonoruwa After our great excursion to Sigiria and two nights at the middle-of-knowhere grasslands guesthouse, our driver outlined the last two days of our trip. First, we would be travelling to Pollonoruwa, an ancient capital city about 50km from our hotel. We would see the ruins and stuppas built hundreds of years ago before heading across the country (150km) to Anuradhapura, another ancient capital city, to check into our next hotel. After saying goodbye to our hosts in the savanna and our car bouncing along the dirt track back to the highway, we were on our way. Its a relatively new, smooth stretch of highway after that, with picturesque straightaways crowned by large trees along the way. The driver knows some back routes to Pollonnaruwa. At one point we're on a rough, one-lane dirt track moving ... read more

The Flights Our flight from Australia to Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to Sri Lanka was a really long journey. We slept at the airport in Singapore (a nice lady told us where we could find a quiet, out-of-the-way area to set up camp. I felt like a refugee, camping on the floor with about 50 others overnight! I had a good sleep though, she was right, there was nobody around other then our fellow campers! In KL we had an afternoon and evening to wait, so we got a hotel room to sleep. Our flight was at 5am, but we ended up sleeping until 7am, instead of waking up at 3 to go to the airport. Well. That was nice. I guess that's what happens when you try to travel for 48 hours non-stop. Neither Trung ... read more

After having blasted our way south from Brisbane to Sydney in two days, we finally entered the northern suburbs of Sydney in the mid-afternoon of the 2nd day. Now, for some reason Australia is like Canada. The main highways in the country extend THROUGH neighbourhoods, freeways become two lane roads with traffic lights and the traffic goes from free-flowing, four lane highways to jammed pretty quickly. We entered Sydney with the gears grinding, the engine feeling like it was overheating and with Andy at wit's end. There's an electronic tolling system in Sydney, operated by different companies, and with different methods for tolling. Our aim was for the Sydney harbour bridge, to cross into the central business district and then head East to Bondi Beach, as I had read somewhere that parking in that area was ... read more

Australia Part 1: A Camperman Campervan to Remember Our flight from Denpessar, Bali was fairly uneventful, flying through the night to Melbourne, Australia. Jetstar did their best to keep everyone comfortable through the night, and the flight was kind of a sleep/unconsious/fitful waking type deal. We left Bali at 11pm and arrived in Melbourne at 7am. Once at the airport, we decided to pick up some coffees and wait around until about 9:00am. The campervan office didn't open until 9:30am, and it's just down the street from the airport, so we had about an hour to wait. Once we've ordered our $4, tiny coffees (our first Australian price shock... coffee was free at our last hotel, where we spent $7.50/night including breakfast!!) we moved towards the exit doors. It was kind of a grey day outside ... read more