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As Matt and I bordered the 6.00am flight to Zhongdian, we weren’t entirely convinced of where we were going. Even on the plane listening to the pilots announcement we couldn’t make out where we were going. Feeling a little ill from waking up so early and nervous about where the plane was going to land, we watched as huge mountains penetrated the clouds. The flight attendent handed out herbal tablets, from what the packaging told us to prevent altitude sickness and the packaging advised warm clothing and sunscreen for high altitudes. Unfortunately Matt and I had rationalised our two packs, leaving one in Kumning with all of our warm clothes. When we arrived at the rural airport of Shangri-La we figured we must be near ‘the land of the snow’ or the Tibetian Plateu. Infact the GPS (thanks David) showed us that we were 3283m above sea level and Matt was feeling a little dizzy. We watched as the other passangers (all Chinese) ran for a winter coat stand and bought up big. Matt in his t-shirt and shorts wondered if it may be a wise investment.

We arrived at the Tibetian Cafe at 8.30am, we were asked if we “check-out” the girl looked confused when I said no we “check-in”. We were lucky enough to get a room at 9am and sleep off our fatigue. On investigation we were in Zhongdian the last stop before Tibet. We spent the day walking around the old town (getting sun burnt) and staring at the locals (in their traditional gear) as they stared back at us :) We worked out the bus system and got up to an old Tibetian monastery, that felt a little like the lost city tucked away in the hills. Though those monks have learnt about about capitalism, 30 yuan entry fee (AU$5). It was beautiful! Mainly looking at the huge hills around us. And against all early expectations, I got sunburnt that day.

As we were only able to secure one nights accommodation, we boarded an 8.30am bus to Lijuang (making our way south again). It took 5 hours to make to 160km trip across the mountains. And as always there were a few moments that made our hair stand on end. The trip was one of the most beautiful that I have ever done, through Tibetian rural towns, along the Yanzi river as it decends from the hills and twisting our way through enourmous mountain passes! But we were exhausted when we finally got to our destination, and not for the first time this trip, we did wonder where the hell we were, as our bus pulled in, we heard an announcement for a bus leaving for Lijuang, “isn’t that where we’ve come too?”. We found some other foriegners and confirmed that we were infact in Lijuang. We found a taxi (after passing the touts trying to sell us their services) and he took us around the corner and said he didn’t know where the nominated hotel from the Lonely Planet was. After signing that he could ring the hotel for directions, we went for another 10minute journey (which I think was just a big block) to pull up at another hotel and he told us to wait. We realised that the hotel was in a part of town that was restricted to traffic so the concierge from the hotel met us with a trolley. We were exhausted and thinking this hotel better be okay because we have expended so much effort trying to find it. We treated ourselves to the suite (two TVs), ate quickly and slept fo the next 5 hours.

That evening we went and explored the old town, to find that it must be China’s number one tourist destination (for the Chinese). With flag waving tourist guides everywhere. That evening we went to a moving performance of the Naxi Orchestra, not really our style of music, but so moving knowing the history of this country and the fact that the conductor had spent 21years in jail during the cultural revolution, due to his Western Sympathies (for playing Schubert). 50% of the orchestra was over 80years old, having hid their instruments during the cultural revolution, the other half of the orchestra were our age, it seems that traditional music here has missed an entire generation.

This country is one of contradictions, a communist country that does not allow freedom of religion yet photos of the Dali Lama were everywhere in the Tibetan Monastry we visited, a country that is closed and censors the press yet 80% of the audiance at the orchestras performance were Chinese, coming to see the conductor as they had heard of his story throught magazines and TV (about his time in prison from 28years old to 48years old).

Last night we also saw some Chinese night life, which seems really fun. Groups of people chanting songs at each other across the river and lots of dancing (to new and old music). We hope to get into it a little more tonight as it is apparently the biggest festival in the Lijuang calender.

After two days of relaxing in Chang Mai, we have caught a plane to Kumning China. What a culture shock it has been! Arriving via plan we saw some of the country side, which was all divided into lots, with blocks of high rise building right next to them. At that stage it dawned on Matt and I that this was going to be quite different to anything that we have experience before.

Customs was efficent, thought the health questionairre a little personal, “Have you experienced any symptoms of HIV? or pyschosis?”. A the airport we discoverd that there was no currancy exchange or ATM which we were banking on, as we were unable to buy Chinese Yuan in Thailand. This left us in a bit of an awkward postition, with 30+ taxi drivers trying to secure our business, rain+++ and no money (only USD). We finally negotiated (with no English) a trip in a private vehicle to a hotel of our choice for USD4. We got caught in peak hour traffic, in what we were expecting to be a country town (3 million people), whe

The alarm was set for 5.45am yesterday for our 7am check in at Haui Xai airport. When we arrived we realised that we were the only westerners on this flight and that it was quite a peculiar air port. It is an old American Air Force base, so it is painted a grey colour and is the only building in Laos that we have noticed to have guttering. Atop of a hill, with a beautiful tropical mountain range surrounding it, our jumb/tuk-tuk struggled with us and our two packs (both expander packed by now). The terminal consisted a bench to check in at, with a sign stating the bags needed to be x-rayed (though the x-ray machine was no were to be found), a wooden table with a women collecting “air-port tax”, all 50cents worth (no wonder this airport is a shambles) and a small office (looked like an interrogation room) with the police in it, completing “passport control”. We checked in and as our bags were weighed on the old style slide scales, saw other passangers filing past with their tropical plant and live stock “hand luggage”.

The food facilities consisted of a grass hut 10 metres from the terminal building, where the locals were hitting the Laos home made whisky early. So as the hours passed and our 8.25am plane had not arrived at the airfield, the locals got even drunker. At 10.30am an offical made an announcement (in person) in Lao, it was roughly translated to us that the plane would be there at 12noon. This brought us relief as we had a nice hotel booked and paid for in Vientiane which we thought that we wouldn’t see and connecting flights to Kumning tomorrow at 5am. So we sat and ate noodle soup with the locals, and consumed the last bottle of drinking water that the store had, when the offical came out to the grass hut and the locals exploded in laughter (4 hours of drinking whisky by now), a tuk-tuk driver keen to secure our business translated the message for us, the plane had been can celled for today and would run tomorrow. ANOTHER DAY IN HAUI XAI!!!!

Matt went to the terminal building to retrieve our baggage as I made a quick phone call to Laos airlines, we needed a refund on our tickets!! We were going to miss the plane to Kumning and the next one isn’t scheduled until Saturday from Vientiane and as much as we love Laos, our visas would not extend that far and we wanted some new scenery. Matt and I made the quickest decision of our trip….we were going to Thailand!

I finally got across the information to the women on the ticketing line that we needed a refund for our tickets, she was quite obliging and said this was fine and we could collect the money when we returned to Vientiane, it took a little longer for me to explain to her that we were not returning to Vientiane. Again Laos hospitality coming through, she provided me the local Laos Airlines office details and said that we could obtain a refund via them.

Meanwhile, Matt had been doing some explaining to the baggage handling people, he was able to retrieve our bags after he convinced them that we were not returning for the flight tomorrow and was also able to obtain the original voucher that had been removed from our ticket so we could obtain a refund. He had also found the man that we had to talk to about getting our refund!

So the cheepest tuk-tuk ride our entire time in Laos, along with 5 other locals and their luggage, took us to the Laos Airlines Hauy Xai office . After another 60 minutes of waiting and listening to phone call in Lao to all sorts of offical people, the man behind the desk announced that he had organised our refund and we had to make our way to the bank. At the bank he gave us crisp new USD and we felt grateful that the system had work. we quickly changed our kip to baht and the Laos airline official dropped us at the immigration office.

It was here that Matt made his first “land” border crossing, which involve climbing into thin speed boats and being taken across the Mekong. It was raining and the banks were muddy and we were filthy by the end of it, but we were in Thailand and it felt like we were moving again. As the they are famous for a Thai tuk-tuk had sorted us out within 10 minutes, we were at the bus station and on a bus to Chang Rai. In Chang Rai we had our first meal for the day at 4.30pm as we waited for our 6.30pm bus to Chang Mai.

Sorry about the slack blogging of late, Matt and I have just been on holidays :)

At the moment we are sitting in a hot internet cafe, talking to our parents on skype (isn’t the internet great) and listening to live Laos music at an open air college graduation ceremony. At the moment we are in Luang Prabang in the North of Laos in the mountains. It is very beautiful here, hence touristy. It is were the Mekong meets the Nam Khan river. So much to say, mix of local politics and the way of life here…but not sure that I wanna be sitting on the internet for hours typing it all out or that you will want to read all of our rants and take on the local situation. In brief the Chinese seems to have their eyes on Laos for Hydro electricity schemes and there is also pressure to start mining exploration here…the promise of big $$$ seems to be more aluring than the small amount of money they can make from keeping the environment beautiful with ecotourism and local industry that relies strongly on the environment.

So more about us, we have turned a little soft. We are staying in a beautiful hotel with air conditioning and hot water on the river front. Tomorrow we board a 5 star boat and travel along the Mekong river towards the Thai border to a place called Huay Xai which is a two day slow boat trip away. So we off set our guilt by visiting and supporting some local NGOs by buying local produce, yes we have had to expand our packs, and maybe have to buy a second bag :) We visited an NGO yesterday called Big Brother Mouse, that produces fun books in Lao to encourage children to enjoy reading. We have also bought up big in local textiles and visited the Laos versions of Friends which is a restaraunt that trains street kids in hospitality skills.

Any how we will bore you with more stories and photos in the coming weeks. Off to see the beautiful sunset.

Lucky the Lao people are pretty trustworthy as they could do a real number on us with the number of currencies they use here and the mental arithmatic that you have to do to work out which is the best deal. We did get quoted over USD2000 for a belt yesterday, I think that girl got her currencies mixed up or thought that we were really gullible.

So we’ve been to the Paris end of Vientiane (as Matt described yesterday), today we headed to the more typical southeast asian site of the Pha That Luang. Matt and I were not really expecting much, and did the obligitary visit as it is the number one tourist site. But it actually was something quite impressive and has been restored to what I imagine was its former glory. There are still works going on around the place, but is a national monument that the Lao people should be proud of. This is were I was gonna put a photo of a link to the impressive spire and surrounding temples until Matt can upload the photos, but he tells me this is illegal…this is what I will be telling him next season of 24 he downloads!

We went to a local place for dinner last night, thought that we would give the locals something to laugh at. No menu in english, infact no menu and only one man with a few english words to work with. I even left the guide book at home! So with our three Lao words (Hello/Goodbye, Thankyou and Delicous) and this mans five English words (no Menu, noodle salad, Beerlao [which I think is technically a Lao word]), we got a delicous you guessed it noodle salad with Beerlao (actually Pepsi) all for 12000kip, I know they really took us for a ride. That is USD1.20 for both of us.

Anyhow, better run and have some more fun.

We’re off to Melbourne Airport for our 14 hour flight to Vientiane, via Bangkok. I am glad to be writing this entry because I have had many conversations over the preceding weeks about how to pronounce Laos… a friend who has it on good authority from a guy that is from there believes that it is said “Layos”. These and many other mysteries should be solved over the coming weeks. I think that the Yanzi is off the itinerary which is sad, as it was the one big thing that I wanted to see, but it is sadder for the 100,000 people that have been displaced due to the spring floods. It is more like a humanitarian disaster than a tourist destination at the moment. We’ll get to see the scummy end of the Yanzi in Shanghai.

So travel with us as we blog our way around Laos (Layos) and Southern China.

How can you describe our 10 days in Sweden? We basically ate and ate and drank and played 500 and ate some more. Good times really. Our friends Pete and Kate kindly hosted us over Christmas and we had a wonderful cultural experience. Matt almost swears he can speak Swedish now, he actually is pretty good and understands about 70percent of what is going on. We arrived pretty exhausted after packing up the house and due to the long dark evenings we managed to fit in about 12hours sleep a night, bit like going into hybernation.

On Christmas evening the snow flakes came down and we enjoyed about 70cm of snow. It really brighted up the place and created a lot more fun and games (Matt invented a new game which involves throwing a snow ball at Pete and almost breaking his leg). Evertime we got into the car we had to scrape and brush it down, we had to shovel the snow, sweep it, brush it off our feet…really high maintenance living really. But still wonderful…Christmas is really designed for winter…well our traditions are at least.

We bought some small fire works and with the rest of Ljungby contibuted to the 360degree firework display that brought us into the 2006 (no fire restrictions to worry about). The local counsel has the right idea just legalise fireworks then you don’t have to pay for a public display. And the Ljungby locals spent alot of money on fireworks between them.

After 10 days of relaxing and some post-Christmas-sale shopping we packed our bags and waved Pete, Kate and Olivia off as we were wisked away on the 5.36am Swedish trains. Swedish trains are great!

The day was long, Lgungby to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Stansted (London), Stansted to Heathrow, 9 hours waiting for check in to open and trying to reclaim some tax,…duty free shopping at Heathrow (our credit card didn’t see that coming and my long time dream to own a Swatch watch was fullfiled), then Heathrow to Bangkok….where it is hight time that Matt does some blogging.

Matt’s impression of the deep fried Mars bar was that it wasn’t worth waiting 10 years for…but maybe we just went to the wrong shop. Our whirlwind visit of Edinburgh was enough to make us feel as though we would like to go back there on day, but not enough time to check out all the trourist must see places. Matt, the star he is booked a hotel 5 minutes walk from the train station, so on Thursday we packed our gear…trying to protect all the grog and pressies that we brought for our friends in Sweden… and jumped on the 10am train to New Castle.

From New Castle we jumped on a DFDS boat to Gothenburg, via Kristiansand (Norway). Matt and I almost killed ourselves carting all the alcohol that Pete and Kate asked for, the taxes in Sweden almost work as well as prohibition…we felt like we were smuggling grog in across the sea border. The “cruise” was great fun…we dined in a swish restraunt…where we couldn’t understand anything on the menu although it was written in English, we saw dancing girls (and a boy), listened to the easy listening, underinspired rock group and did the whole titanic thing (Matt: “I am king of the world”). It was a beautiful experience sailing into Gothenburg, which is a much bigger city than I expected, with big bridges and a built up shoreline on both sides of the river. It was a bit unnerving that it was pitch black at 3.30pm when we arrived…and frezing cold. Not really sure how much daylight to expect…we are travelling south now, so hopefully there will be some improvement.

Tomorrow we start the Christmas celebrations, Swedish style. May everyone have a wonderful Christmas and take joy in the fact that “Man shall live forever more, because of Christmas day”. God Bless you all. Matt: “Bah Humbug”!

Hi, this is a real quick one because I am racing the clock at the internet cafe.

We left Bedford last night…very sad saying good bye to good friends! after racing down to the charity shop with our towels and bedding we raced to get a train that missed the airport station that we had to get off at. We jumped on another train and finally got to Luton airport, where we landed 8 months ago. still not British we chose the worst check in line, taking over an hour to check in. The flight was short and sweet and Edinburgh is beautiful. they currently have a winter wonderland theme park set up at the base of the cliff with the castle. It has an ice skating rink and a German market and a Ferris Wheel…which we will check out tonihgt. Today has manly been retail therapy, recovering from a hectic week of packing up and shopping for christmas pressies. We discovered that the scotts cannot cook any better than the English at lunch time, tonight we are going out in search of a deep fried mars bar…to celebrate matt’s 27th birthday.

love you all and hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas….

Thank you for everyone’s feedback, to be honest I think that the promise of retrospective blogs was an empty one until we received so many comments and emails and realised embarrassingly that people still check the site regularly. So not to disappoint, here are some yarns and tall stories about Liz and my trip to Germany. Thank you to Liz who let me cut and past some of her group email to help prompt my memory.

After we left the boys in Frankfurt Liz and I started on our adventure. Liz describes our first stop Heidelberg where;
“we had a few money problems and put together a bit of busking act. Phil recited Man from Snowy River while I sang Waltzing Matilda in the background while jumping around like a kangaroo. Luckily the banks came through and we never had to put it into action, but there were a few tense moments as we tried to conserve the last few cents we had”.
The money problems we experienced, I later discovered were a product of me entering my PIN number incorrectly and not being able to access any funds for the entire time I was in Germany. Thank God for gracious friends – who don’t mind paying for your holidays.

Our camping ground in Heidelberg was picturesquely positioned along side the river with large trees behind, unfortunately they were not enough to mask the sound of the traffic from the major arterial directly behind the campground. Our first lesson for a camping road trip holiday – choose our camping grounds more carefully so that we can get more sleep and be a little less grumpy. I was also a little grump because I was missing Matt.

Then onto the Romantic Road through Bavaria from Wurzburg to Fussen. We have decided there is more romance in the thought of the drive than the drive itself. But there were some gorgeous German towns along the way. We recommend that no couple attempt this route because it is poorly sign posted and often leads in disagreements, especially when the driver travels 2 or 3 km to find a location to turns around after missed turn offs.

Fussen the end of the Romantic Strasse is magnificent. Set amongst the mountains with lovely lakes and 2 very famous castles, built by a very eccentric man. I was so taken by him that I bought his biography, wishful thinking that I would read it. I have a long plane trip to Oz. Heading out of Fussen we hit a bad rainstorm – and had flash back of the pictures of flooding that had been on the news weeks before. Liz and I made the quickest decision we made for our entire trip – we were heading for the city and a B&B, we weren’t gonna camp that night.

In Munich we discovered another much loved German pass time – nudity. Liz and my love for nature drew us to the magnificent parks in Munich. Unfortunately other German’s were using the autumn sun to get an all over tan. Have they not heard of the new sun smart ways? So traumatised by this open nudity and unable to take in the natural beauty of the parks, Liz and I headed to the beer halls to get sloshed. One night Liz describes “Had the best night at the touristy beer hall, the Hoffbrahaus. We sat with these old German guys with the lederhosen on. After getting through as much beer as we could (a very good 500ml) we noticed their photos on the wall. These guys were the locals. Some conversation in our very bad phrase book German discovered they had been going there every Friday night for years. They were very sweet.”

We then headed for the hill, and how magnificent they were. Berchesgaden, a little alpine village right near the Austrian border. We hiked lots, cheated a little by catching the cable car up the mountain. But boy my knees hurt after 5 hours of down hill walking. We met some very tame cows and took lots of photos. It was stunning. One day we walked right to Austria, quite bizarre. It even had a customs house there, but now there is just a teahouse and a bus service that leaves at regular times. They may have big mountains in Germany, but they are not as hard-core as us Aussies or maybe they just have it right. After four hours of walking to a “remote place” you come across a pub in the hills that sells sausages and sauerkraut. We visited a local schnitzel bar, which reportedly had 20+ types of schnitzel. They where all pork, with variations of toppings. Some local lads recommended a dish and we spent the night talking with an old timer (even though he didn’t speak English), who took everything out of his wallet to show us. We also went rowing on a lovely glacial lake and laughed like school girls when we passed some naked rowers. Boy could they row, disappointingly I couldn’t keep up with them.

Our final German stop was Rhinefalls. Hmm, actually we discovered it was in Switzerland and very confusedly asked the young girl at the tourist office how we got to Switzerland. I was extra annoyed because I had made a big fuss about boarder crossings and how I wanted to avoid them, just in case they caused us delay and we didn’t even notice that we crossed one. So we hurriedly tried to find a cash machine to get some Swiss francs, the euro makes it all so easy that you forget how it must have been 10-15years ago travelling though Europe. Apparently Reinfall is the biggest (?widest or longest) waterfall in Europe. Really it isn’t that fantastic. But the Rein river itself is great fun and river life is really alive, with people floating down it all day and night. Somehow Liz convinced me to canoe 40km down the river. I was a bit dubious, it sounded like too much hard work for a holiday. I was happy to do the 20km trip for the same price, but Liz is an accountant and value for money is important for her, so we set out on the 40km trip. When we were on the train travelling down the river, it began to sink in the task that we had set ourselves. When we set out it dawned on us that the trip started on the lake and there was no current to help us along, the task therefore because 10 times harder. The current kicked in about halfway along, I kept Liz going with Saltie songs and choruses. The nudist beaches and a man offering us sex, gave us motivation to row a little harder too. Poor Liz was suffering the next day…and she tried very hard to bend my “no massage” policy.

Next stop was Stuttgart where I left Liz at a bus stop, this stop was literally a formality and we didn’t expect to find much there. But as it happened we arrived in the middle of a wine festival…every major city in Germany we visited seemed to be having one festival or another. The next day I drove 800km and paid 50euro in tolls, across France and England (without my trustee navigator – never again will Liz be able to pretend that she cannot read maps), with a ferry crossing in the middle. Amazingly I just happened to be on the same Ferry as my in-laws the Piening’s and we all jumped in the little Rover (with a lot of luggage) and headed back to Bedford and my beautiful husband.

This is where you have to imagine “The Final Count Down” rock ballad in the back ground and a Flash animation with the world spinning and a plane taking off from London Heathrow airport, into the atmosphere, back down to earth for a quick stop over in Bangkok and pulling up at the final destination Melbourne, Australia. That’s how I pitched it to Mattie anyway…as it has taken us this long to write a blog…I don’t think fancy animations are going to be part of our site any time soon.

So finally we have broken the silence…

England seems to be exploding with colour from dusk until about midnight for the last week. I have never seen anything like it and Matt rightly asked why would a country celebrate the failed plot to blow up parliament?? The thick cloud at night reflects the fireworks in the distance and it seriously could be mistaken as a war zone at times! It really is ever so fun and Matt and I enjoyed our first Saturday night out together walking the streets, drinking beer and watching the fireworks. Part of the evening was soaking in the atmosphere, but the other part was celebrating our decision to come home and booking our tickets to arrive home in mid-January. So needless to say the night started in the Aussie pub drinking VB and Boags, and watching Australia take on the French in rugby (league or union it is hard to say…).

Our plans are to leave Bedford on the 21st of December travel north to New Castle then catch the boat to Gothenburg in Sweden. Catch the train down to Pete and Kate’s house and spend Christmas and New Year with them. On the 3rd of January we will catch a plane from Heathrow to Bangkok for some R&R, acclimatisation and to readjust our body clocks…then we will head home on the 12th of Jan, in time to enjoy some of the summer.

There is so much to catch up on that I have decided to write a retrospective series that will cover Liz and my trip to Germany, and the parents’ visits, it should appear over the next few weeks or so. If there is anyone who is still checking this site thanks for still loving us.

I think that we have lost the routine of blogging…so a bit of a catch up is in order….

Please excuse any typos, I am currently doing battle with a German keyboard.

A quick recap of the last month…there was a fantastic weekend (4 days) in Sweden with our friends Pete, Kate and Olivia. We shopped in Malmo, went to a Swedish surprise party and visited an Alk park. Enjoyed a BBQ and learnt a new board game…it was a fantastic relaxing time and great to be hanging out with old friends.

We have also had some visiters staying with us in Bedford which has also broken up the manotonoy of life a bit. Matt´s brother Simon stayed with us for a week, we managed to cram a road trip into that also – to South Hampton (the Launching place of the Titanic), visiting Oxford briefly to have dinner at the Eagle and Child (Tolkien and CS Lewis´ old watering hole), saw an Abby and a couple of castles and visited Stone Henge all in one weekend!

We then had some other visitors from Oz, Richard Carron (Tommy´s little brother) and his friend Julie. They made good use of the Thames Link and travelled to London everyday to take in the sites. Which reminds us we should venture to London some day :)

Last weekend Matt and I packed the car and made our way down to dover to catch the Ferry to France. We travelled for about 11 hours reaching Antwerp and our beautiful four star hotel. My husband is such a bargin shopper! It took us a while to wind our way to the “tourist” sites in Antwerp but when we got there we were glad we stayed the distance…it is a pretty little city. We then headed off to Eindhoven, where we caught up with the Piening clan and spent a few day visiting the sites of significance to the Piening family. Phillips pretty much own that town. It was hard to find a building without Phillips written on it. We also crammed a road trip to Western Belgium into to our four days. Belgium waffles are great!!!

As we set off again our car was a little fuller, with Liz and Simon crammed in the back with all our gear – Metro Rover what a car. The German auto barns are fast and furious. We had a brief stop in Colone – visiting the Dom (and walking the 500 steps to the spire), and Liz initiated me into the H&M stores.

Our next stop Frankfurt swept us off our feet as we landed there in the middle of a huge festival. All the museums were discounted for the festival and the river bank was a sea of people, market stalls, live music, out door bars and plenty of German food (which is apparently more than sausages). The boys caught a plane the next day to London and Liz and I continue on with our German roadtrip.

That is a whirlwind catch-up and here is my obligatory promise to update the site more often…which I actually think might happen as I am back on the road again. Send Matty emails because he is probably lonley home alone…hey why not even give him a call!

Still playing catch up…

My uni friend Ali and I planned a trip to Brighton that is directly south from London on the coast. Initially we decided to catch the Thames Link train from Bedford that travels directly to Brighton without transfers (through London). We decided however that it would be cheaper to drive in our little rover. When we hit the M25 (London’s outer ring road) we began to think differently. We travelled one exit in 25 minutes and decided we would be best to get off the motorways and travel on the back roads or the A roads. Ali skilfully navigated until we hit an eight-way intersection that made us panic, we ended up heading to Windsor (the opposite direction to which we hoped to travel). We went on a nice sight seeing trip of Surrey (one off England’s posher shires) and eventually pulling over for a picnic next to a local air field…ah the serenity. We arrived in the vicinity of Brighton 6 hours later (when the train would have taken 3 and a half. Our camp ground was actually in a small town east of Brighton called Seaford, we camped right on the beach – if it could be called that, with a pebble coast line and no surf to speak of. After pitching the tent we headed to the toilet block to freshen up for our big night in Brighton.

We caught the surf express that travelled along the coastline affording us great views. As we approached Brighton my preconceptions of this coastal town were blown out of the water – it was a huge sprawling city. We spent an hour or so walking the coastline taking the glitz and glamour and tackiness. It appeared to be a big destination for buck’s parties and hen’s nights which kept us entertained. We ate at a local pub, drinking a bottle of Australian wine and catching up on the details of Ali’s recent trip to Turkey, Croatia and Greece. We then walked over to Brighton’s famous pier that embodies British seaside tackiness, with roller coaster, merry go rounds and stands testing you skills with the odds hopelessly stacked against you. We enjoyed some Belgium waffles and then walked backed to the train station for a good nights sleep.

The next day we packed up and jumped on the seaside express. We spent some time walking though the boutique shops and trash and treasure shop. Brighton has great shopping and bargain hunting, as it has a diverse community (all sorts of “alternate” lifestyles) there are a good variety of shops.

We dragged ourselves away from the shops to do some sight seeing. We visited the Royal Pavilion, which looks like it should be in India next to the Taj Mahal. This palace of similar vintage as Chateau de Versali, an era of decadence for royalty, was built by King Richard IV the son of “mad” King Richard III. The facility was built primarily to have huge parties in. King Richard IV isn’t remembered as a great king and the palace fits in with the Brighton tackiness as the Asian architecture and interior design was reproduced by those who had never been to Asia so is a mishmash of the east meeting the west.

Ali and I headed back to the car via the shops not looking forward to the potentially long trip home. The traffic was fantastic and I arrived home to my husband by dinner time. After being together every day for six months it was nice to have a period of missing each other (even though it was only one night), as they say, absence makes the heart grow stronger.

Sorry about the delay… I need to get into the mood for bloggging again, and now have a little bit of inspiration after our recent trip to Sweden. I have to start two weeks ago though… where Matt left off in Bordeaux.

Bordeaux was a beautiful little country town in Southern France. After arriving by train, we booked a budget hotel for the night – and when I say budget, I mean it… I guess in hindsight the room wasn’t too bad, it was clean and there where only a couple of cigarette burn marks in the bedding. Bordeaux is apparently one of the major wine producing regions of France, with hundreds of wineries dotting the surrounding countryside. As Bordeaux is also a university town, the main street is youthful – with all the usual French designer label stores on every corner. I couldn’t help window shopping, and had to be brought down to earth when Matt said we couldn’t afford the €600.00 Louie Vuitton hand bag.

Later in the afternoon, we met up with some friends from Australia – Ang and Warwick; they are driving around France, Spain and Portugal for three months, camping wherever they end up at night. After walking around town with Ang and Warwick, we decided on a yummy Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. After dinner and a quick chat, we parted ways – Ang and Warwick to go find a camp ground, and us to our 1 star hotel. Early the next morning, we caught a tram and a bus to the edge of town where we again met up with Ang and Warwick. They entertained us with stories of Gypsies, obnoxious Americans and other camp site companions they had met as we journeyed to the sea-side resort of Biarritz.

We finally found some beaches that rival those of home in Biarritz. It is a very posh, touristy area – where the surf beaches really are surf beaches. We spent the afternoon in the sun, watching the tourists more than the view. Matt ventured off to find some baguettes to make lunch and took and hour an a half to locate four croissants – the poor bugger, he did get to see most of the town though. After lunch and a bit of shopping, we again bid farewell to Ang and Warwick as it was time to find a place to rest our heads, we settled on a hotel with a “sea view room”,… three blocks from the beach and Ang and Warwick went off to find another campsite. It was a cute little hotel and like our hotel in Paris – it felt very homely. Later, Matt and I ventured out for dinner, and I experienced my first Spanish Paella (Biarritz is very close to the Spanish border). Matt watched on as I devoured prawns, shrimp, muscles and chicken pieces all served on a massive plate – I was very disappointed when I couldn’t finish it all, but the waitress told me that I had finished more than most men – so I still had my dignity.

We all met the following morning for coffee and decided that we would just have a lazy day on the beach and in the shops. I visited the Long Champ shop and restrained myself from buying anymore hand bags (although it should be mentioned that Matt has purchased more man-bags on this trip than I own handbags). In the evening we visited Ang and Warwick’s 5 star campsite for afternoon tea of French pastries and other yummy treats. The campsite was nothing short of amazing, with it’s own private beach and pool. Pretty flash! We made plans for the following day to visit Pamplona in Spain, with the hope of witnessing the first day of the famous Running of the Bulls Festival.

As planned we met our friends at 5am at the beach car park, and than drove the 20KM or so to the Spanish border, which we didn’t even realise we had crossed until the signs had changed from French into what we guessed was Spanish. We arrived in Pamplona to a sea of red and white people, and somehow happened to land a car park only a block from the main stadium where the bull run finishes. We found our way to the stadium by saying “Toro” to all the Spanish people walking (stumbling) past. Queuing for the tickets, we ran into some Aussies that had made their way over from London on a package tour. From their account, the opening party the night before had been pretty wild with much drinking, singing, drinking, mob rowdiness and drinking – tourists where already in hospital, before the bulls had even been released. Waiting to purchase entrance tickets, the Spanish locals showed us a new way of queuing – basically a free-for-all shove and hope that you get to the ticket window. We were able to get our tickets to the morning running, but the afternoon bull fight had already been sold out, which wasn’t a bad thing in retrospect.

The stadium atmosphere was awesome, the photos put across some of the atmosphere if you want to check them out. We joined in on a “Spanish Wave”, that rivaled the MCG’s and hummed along to the Spanish songs. These Spaniards sure know how to have a party. The brass band left the arena and then the “runners” started to arrive in the stadium… starting slowly with a few joggers and gradually speeding up to a sprint as the runners closer to the bulls tried to avoid their fierce horns. The arena quickly filled with thousands of runners, funnily enough – I think that I could pick a jersey from just about every AFL team. An ex-pat who had lived in Pamplona told us that an Australian or an American dies every year running with the bulls. I wasn’t surprised to hear this because there sure seemed to be a lot of dumb Aussies running with the bulls.

The crowed oooooed and ahhhhed as the bulls finally stampeded past…which was all lots of fun and every now and then a poor sucker (probably and Aussie) got picked up by the horns or trampled under foot of the bull,… the crowed seemed to really like that. The matadors did their best to heard the bulls into the gates on the other side of the arena, it was interesting watching how these professionals worked. Then the not so fun part began, a single bull was let into the arena for the thousands of runners to taunt,… watching exhausted animals being beaten, poked, kicked, slapped and tormented by thousands of half drunk barbarians wasn’t really our cup of tea – so we took a “stage right” and exited the stadium and left these animals to their sport of tormenting animals… I’m sure it is already under scrutiny, but surely the EU Animal Rights department should ban it! I won’t go on about it, we kind of knew what we where getting ourselves into – but being there, and seeing the cruelty to these animals really made us sick. On our way back to Biarritz, we stopped off for a coffee in the Spanish mountains, all a little emotional and mostly with our minds made up that this wasn’t a sport that we enjoyed.

A road trip to Barcelona was planned for the following day, through the very picturesque Pyrenees mountains. Matt probably said it best when he said, jaw a gasp “we don’t have those in Australia!”. We stopped for lunch in a gorgeous little town and enjoyed some more baguettes,… in a parking lot :) We skimmed past Andorra and then hit some very impressive tunnels to finally reach Barcelona.

Our first impression of Barcelona was a very hot and dusty traffic jam, driving around for what seemed like hours, we eventually found our way into the town, located parking and got to our pre-booked youth hostel. Negotiating with the youth hostel reception was a bit of a nightmare, it appeared that more than we realised was “lost in translation” – the man serving us appeared to speak fairly fluent English, however he didn’t quite understand us (as we where changing our original booking). Throughout the argument, Ali – who had just flown in, joined us and got caught up in the discussion. We finally got our rooms and Matt and I ended up sharing a room with a really nice Australian guy called Shane, who had only bought a one way ticket and was hoping to get some work on boats off the coast of Spain or France. He was a bit of a free spirit, who only traveled with a guitar and a surf board. He was enjoying the Barcelona night life, getting up at midnight and returning at about 5am.

We went out for dinner, and after my previous promising experience of Paella, I decided to try it again. Matt ordered a pizza, beer and a coke; I ended up with the biggest beer that we had ever seen as Matt could barely drink the head. They had seen us coming however, charging us €6.00 for the coke and €9.00 for the beer. Needless to say I was pretty annoyed at the bill, but I was more annoyed when I spent the whole night throwing up the Paella in the youth hostel bathroom. BAD PAELLA! After a night in the youth hostel, with drunks coming in and out of our room (one even decided that our bin was the toilet) – we where reminded why we don’t like youth hostels!

The next day, a little groggy – we took in more sites of Barcelona. Starting with a local market to get a bit more of a feel for the place – the colours and smells have a certain vibe and we enjoyed watching the interactions between locals and shop keepers. We followed this up with a visit to the Picasso museum, which was a lot of fun and had a good collection of his early work – and his not so great ceramics (probably worth millions all the same). We enjoyed the buskers in the street on unusual instruments, and witnessed an interaction where a half naked man forced a busker out of the street because, he was trying to sleep. The museum was followed up with a nice lunch in a cafe (nice change from baguettes!) and then we spent the afternoon at the Sagrada Família. Gaude is credited with most of this bizarrely designed cathedrals architecture – it is hugely symbolic and meant to be an offering to atone for Barcelona’s sins. We where happy to hear that it is being funded purely by private donors and that the Vatican purse is not contributing a dime. We forwent the walk up the stairs into the towers as the queue was pretty long.

We rushed back to the hostel and snuck back in to get our luggage, to avoid having to pay the storage fee. We negotiated the public transport system and found our way to the airport. Going through security we experienced more Spanish queuing, then at Luton London airport I enjoyed the one hour, almost stationary non-EU queue, while Matt strolled through the EU queue. We finally arrived home at 2AM to find that our landlord had been over to make some repairs and on his exit had deadlocked the door,… that we did not have a key to. We tried the local hotel, but all the hotels in the county were booked out due to their proximity to the English Grande Prix. So we spent the evening sleeping in our car not getting much sleep as it isn’t too comfy and was parked between three pubs. Needless to say we slept all of Sunday away.

Life has settled back into a routine which makes it a bit difficult to find exciting material to keep our loyal readers entertained…(well that’s you mum and I talk to you twice a week anyway). The weeks are flying past, over the last three weeks we have treated ourselves to the theatre, going to see Miss Saigon, which was fantastic and making me believe that we are going to be visiting the West End of London a few times before we leave.

Last weekend we packed the car with our new tent and lilo and headed up to Sherwood forest to see what this Robin Hood legend was all about. Needless to say my childhood fantasies of Kevin Costner leading his merry men were quite removed from the reality. I have since discovered that the majority of that film was shot in Ireland. We visited the old oak the place that Robin Hood and his men legendarily met and the church where Robin and Marian got hitched. Across from the church we found a great cafe and an English man that can really make coffee (he had spent 3 years living in Madrid and 5 in Africa) we had a great chat with him and he excited our dreams of future travel. Strangely he had been a middle level manager in an ISP and decided he was sick of playing with the numbers on excel spread sheets. The next day we visited Nottingham with our camping compatriots (Ang and Warrwick). Nottingham was a really nice medium sized city with a really young feel. It has a bit of a rough reputation but we were given no reason to feel unsafe. We visited the man made underground caves and learnt the process of early day tanning leather. We then visited the local gaol and had a tour much like that of the old Melbourne gaol. It brought us a bit closer to home as the last exhibit was about transportation to the colonies. The back ground music was the early colonial music that I remember Grandad Harvey used to listen to.

I still am working at the same post – which has provided me some security as a locum. The team I am working with is currently 4 people down and with holidays and sick days there have been days when I am the only person in the department. So needless to say that work is hectic and the days pass quickly. Getting a glimpse at the NHS (National Health Service) has made me realise that Kennet was a pussycat compared to Thatcher and that investment in public infrastructure is so important. The building in which I am working is literally falling down around us. When we were interviewing job applicants on Friday a small drip from the ceiling began to hit the applicants shoulder, a few minutes later eventuating in the ceiling collapsing. Apparently it is a pretty regular occurrence, raw sewerage flooded the department last Christmas. So as the Psych department await a new building the NHS is paying hundreds of thousands of pound patching up the pipe system which is reportedly beyond repair. We have a man employed to run each tap in the building for 5 minutes each two times a week. The absurdities make my mind boggle and make me wonder if I am that far from Asia.

Last night we a had a staff function, Christmas in June, which was novel for most as it was “so hot” (21 degrees). It was great getting to know all my work colleagues a little better, I am really happy to have landed with a great bunch of people (and yes I have to say that because they’ll probably read this).

We have a few thing coming up to be excited about, we are flying to Paris to catch up with Liz and then travelling down to Barcelona with Ang and Warrwick. We have planned another trip in July to fly over to Sweden and catch up with Pete and Kate. And of course Pauline and Henry (Matt’s parents) are arriving in Birmingham on the 31st of July!

As always thank you all for the news from home, it always bring a smile to our face and reminds us about why home is the best place in the world. The Aussies cricket team are touring here and are copping bad press for their poor performances. Don’t think that we will get to Lords (as the tickets are pretty sewn up), but we might catch them somewhere on their tour.

We bit the bullet this weekend and decided it was time to get ourselves a car. Partially because we are off to Manchester next weekend to visit one off my uni mates and watch some live music (Chemical brothers and Missy Higgins). I don’t think that you miss your father’s so much as when you are looking for a car and trying to work out whether it is worth our hard earned £250.

We looked at a few private sale cars, but weren’t really impressed. There is an amazing amount of rust in the cars here, I think it is because of the salt they put on the roads during winter to break up the ice. So you guessed it, we returned to our trusty aucton house two doors down and bidded on a little Rover Metro 111…which we hoped would go :) When cars are sold at aucton here they are generally sold with MOT (road worthy) and Tax (rego), so we kinda felt a bit confident about its condition. We got to start it and look over it before the aucton, and there didn’t appear to be any unusual noises. After sales tax and credit card premium (how odd buying a car on credit card) I think we were out of pocket £274. Our insurace cost more than the car!

It was great getting behing the wheel after 4 months. Our first destination was Tesco a huge supermarket where we purchased a few bits and pieces to fit out the car. A place looks a lot different when you are driving around, one way streets are suddenly significant and you are trying to find speed limit signs.

We collapsed after a long day of talking with insurance companies, organising parking permits and negotiating English roads. At least they drive on the same side of the road as us. We sat in front of the televion eating leftovers and Matt’s home made pancakes and watching Eurovision. I never thought it but the experience is definately hightened being in a country were we can vote. How does Israel get grouped in with Europe?? Anyhow I took my right to vote very seriously and judged all the performances on originality and entertainment value. Denmark got my vote – the guy had an amazing resemblance to Crown Prince Fredrik and I thought that he is almost an Aussie, so I kept the voting in the family like the rest of Europe does.

Anyhow…I think that it is road trip time…don’t forget to give us a buzz on our new number. Will upload some pictures of the car soon.

Our last day we spent with Pete and Kate we did the all important visit to Ikea – yep it is pretty much the same as at home, but a lot more of the products make sense in the Swedish environment – especially the meat balls that they sell in the cafeteria. We caught the speed train the Ryan Air airport about 100km from Stockholm (and didn’t get a chance to see Stockholm this time, we’ll just have to go back to visit it). Ryan air is about as budget as you can get – the chairs are primarily made from hard plastic! We arrived in Luton (near London) exhausted and made it to our guesthouse, what an adventure that turned out to be!

The guesthouse owner had overbooked the accommodation, so he offered us his room, which we took – as my recruitment agency had prepaid for three nights and it seemed like a waste of money paying to go elsewhere. We were directed out to the back bungalow, which was a real bachelor pad. This bachelor however had a thing for purchasing clothes, and, other than the bed, you could not see any of the furniture as it was all covered in clothes. We found about 1 meter square to put all our bags, we were almost too scared that our belongings would merge into the chaos that surrounded them. To top off the clutter situation, there was about an inch of dust over everything. After viewing the bathroom, we decided that we were in England now and we only needed to bathe once a week! The owner was such a top bloke though, we felt as though we couldn’t really complain.

We spent the next few days visiting medical centres (trying to get Matt seen as he had a really bad ear ache), checking out the real estate and hassling my job agency. We finally made it to London on the Friday and did the monopoly board tour, while trying to open a bank account. So we have had our highs and lows this week. It looks like I have a job, which is great – cannot believe how easy it is, and we were homeless for a little while and shelling out the dollars (which don’t convert to pounds to well) waiting for temporary accommodation to be sorted out. I also caught up with the uni crew that are over here – there are about eight of my peers here, we had a baby shower for Kerri (for those that know her).

Looks like our home is going to be Bedford for a while. And tomorrow we are going to move into our new place, which is fully furnished, with a big screen TV (I think that was the selling point for Mat).

We have uploaded heaps of photos from Hong Kong and Europe for those that are interested in using the internet inappropriately at work.

Love yall and looking forward to your correspondence. And yes… I’m soon going to get tuff on you guys who have promised e-mails and haven’t delivered yet!

We flew into Copenhagen feeling a little groggy after our 6am start (which was necessary because we couldn’t be bothered packing the night before). We didn’t pass through any customs, I am still feeling a little confused about how all this EU stuff works – who’s in it and who isn’t, who uses the euros and who doesn’t?

We walked straight to the train ticket booth (how great are these airports that have train systems that connect to the airport), and abruptly asked the ticket man the details of our journey – turns out they are a bit more helpful in Denmark. Felling a little bad after this interaction I adjusted my interpersonal style to match this new environment. We caught a train that crossed directly to Sweden and travelled north to a town called Alvesta where Pete (Matt’s school mate) and Olivia (his 2 year old daughter) picked us up. How great was it to see them (and then Kate – Pete’s wife, later), it was one of those weird feelings knowing that a lot has changed over the three years since we have seen them, but so much was still the same.

So this week we have been up to a lot of catching up, relaxing, eating, walking through the woods, fishing in the lakes, visiting bakeries and tea houses, golfing, watching Hong Kong movies, meeting Kate’s family, playing cards (yep Pete’s influence), dancing to the wiggles and walking Poppis (the dog). Matt and I think that they put something in the water over here, because Poppis seems to be the most gifted amazing little dog that we have ever met. He understands only Swedish (which makes it a bit difficult for us to interact with him), but when told he does just about everything – he can discern between his different finger puppy toys (duck, bear, lion, froggy etc). Matt has been trying to communicate with Poppis by talking like the Swedish chef from the Muppets.

Oliver, Pete and Kate’s two and a half year old daughter speaks both English and Swedish (this kid is smarter than us and she is 2 and a half). She is such a little cutie, but she suddenly hit the terrible twos while we were there ☺ But she is still sooooo cute!

Pete, Kate and Olivia say “Hej-Hej” (G’day).

Sweden is exactly what you expect, the air is clean, everything is designed smartly (triple glazed windows on houses), they actually eat meat balls, they’re all blond and giant (well not the recent immigrants), dairy seems to be a staple over here – milk with everything, everyone bludges off social security and there is an Ikea on just about every corner. Disappointingly we haven’t seen any mousses (elks) yet, but we have seen lots of cute road signs with schematic diagrams warning of their proximity.

There were some crazy storms here in Smalland in January where five years of logging produce was destroyed in one day. Even now some houses haven’t had power restored. Trees are down everywhere and it is only now that the major clean up is commencing (after the snow has melted). There are high piles of logs beside the road every 100m. Entire forests have been flattened and some minor roads are still yet to be cleared. Peoples retirement plans are in chaos as they were relying on harvesting the wood slowly to give them a steady income.

We’re off to England in a couple of days – time to face the real world again ☺ Thanks for all the emails and sorry that these blogs have been so long coming.

We left you on the bustling streets of Hanoi. We we’re able to cram all our stuff into the four bags that we are now travelling with. The alarm went off at 6am and we lingered out of bed and ended up rushing to get our taxi who was waiting for us outside. We arrived at the airport and checked in to Southern China air (the most budget airline that we could find – as this flight was not in our original itinerary). We high fived (well metaphorically) when our bags weighed in at 18.5kg and at 22.6kg…it was our hand luggage that ended up being an issue. Matt and I consciensciously asked the lady if our hand luggage was okay, unfortunately it weighed in about 8kg over (both bags combined), the remedy was we were sent to the bag stall to purchase another bag which had to be checked along with our big bags. So yes dear friends Matt and I stooped to new lows and purchased a “candy bag” – like middle aged ladies on a crazed shopping tour! Dad we revoke any slide remarks that we have made about all of you luggage :) The lady very nicely checked our 8kg excess bagage for no cost. Nothing runs smoothly in Vietnam so after a gate change and about 30 minutes after our scheduled departure time we boarded the plane.

We had a 6 hour stop over in the middle of China that we had to pass through imigration for, we could have gone out and explored the city – but instead Matt and I decided to spend the time exploring the terminal (which is the biggest and most modern airport that we had both ever seen)! The information lady laughed at us when we asked where the McDonalds was (Matt was keen to get back into it after spending a month in countries that hadn’t quite reached that stage in development). Instead we spent $37 on a very average lunch – we spent some time trying to work out the exchange rate and got caught out! The part of china that we saw was very expensive, Au$5 for a coke!

We arrived in Hong Kong and cruised through imigration to baggage collection where the very polite customer service officer informed us that our baggage was probably not going to arrive that evening! I was so impressed with the customer service that I wasn’t too put out that our bags hadn’t arrived. And of course there was McDonalds. We jumped in a taxi…and as we watched the meter tick over on the highway to our hotel, we got a very serious reality check about the cost of living in Hong Kong. Our Au$60 cab fair reminded us of the real cost of living in the Western world.

We checked into our lovely hotel (which Matt’s mum spoiled us with) and got a good night sleep, after checking out all the cable TV chanels. HONKERS – what a big bustling city it is! You can spend a lot of money very quickly in this place, but you can also get some great bargins. We are loving the food here – hmmmm…BBQ pork! We spent the first few days crusing up and down Hong Kong island on the double decker trams and checking out all the big (generally expensive) shopping spots. Mattie purchased some Hong Kong cinema (which we are very excited about watching when we pick up his lap top and we’ll prolly bore Pete and Kate with) and we have been comparing price on iPods and having the “Do we really need this” conversations. We caught up with a girl that we met in Hanoi who lives in Hong Kong. She sings at a hotel here, so we went and saw her perform (eating out Au$20 hamburgers and drinking our Au$7 coffees). Natalie is a Melbourne girl who is pursuing her music career in Hong Kong. We invited ourselves to her church the next day and got to hang out with a heap of expats, which was loads of fun, we did really normal things like go to McDonalds for ice cream and then hang out playing sherades at the harbour. Matt and I almost felt as though we could stop here for a while. I met another OT…dunno what is happening to the world!

Tonight we went up to the peake of the island on a cable car (actually that is where I am sitting at the moment enjoying free internet access. The reason you are hearing from me again (and not Matt) is that he is a little under the weather – he is hoping that it is not SARS.

Tomorrow we jump on a jetplane and head off to Amsterdam. If you have been wondering why you haven’t got a post card lately it is because I haven’t posted any since Cambodia. So chances are you will receive one from Vietnam with a Netherlands postmark on it…sorry just having too much fun at the moment :)

The holiday is almost over and the reality of upcoming work is beginning to set in! What a great time we have had though and what wonderful people we have met along the way! Thanks for all the new from home…hopefully Matt is all better for the next post!

Hoi An is another gorgeous little Vietnamese town that felt like it had more tourists than locals at times…for this reason, along with the architecture, a lot of the time we felt as though we were in Europe. We planned to stay for three nights but stayed for four for reasons outlines below!

My birthday had left me cashed up – thanks to some generous family members – which was perfect timing to be visiting a town of tailors and cobblers! It was exhausting walking the streets full of shop fronts wanting your business. Visitors appear to come to Hoi An and leave with an extra suitcase or two. Along side the tailor shops the bag shop owners seem to be doing a decent trade. We had come with a rough idea of what we wanted to purchase (as we knew that we needed some clothes for work and colder climates), but really it was a bit overwhelming…the process involved sitting down and looking at pattern books, then choosing the material that it should be made out of, then haggling over price, then returning the next day to be “fitted”, and then returning later to pick up the finished garment. I didn’t want to ‘put all my eggs in one basket’ or the manufacturing of my clothes in the hands of one tailor – so I ended up dealing with three tailors, two cobblers and a leather worker. Our four days were jam packed with walking from tailor to cobbler to the ATM – as the maximum withdrawal amount was 2,000,000VND(dong) (AU$160) and our clothes/shoes came to a bit more than that (our haggling skills are not that great) and trying to fit some time in to eat at the great restaurants that Hoi An had to offer. I have to put a big rap in for the Mango Room – which impressed us no end, the meals all come at once and in order of the courses, along with the fact that the food was tantalising. Adding mango to anything can only really improve the dish :)

To appreciate how exhausted we ended up, can only be illustrated by the amount that we purchased –
Philippa
1. shirts (6)
2. suit – with a skirt
3. duffel coat
4. work slacks (2)
5. leather jacket
6. knee high boots (2)
7. sandals/high heals (3)
8. skirt

Matthew
1. suits (2) – both with additional slacks
2. shirts (6)
3. shoes (3)
4. over coat

Robert
….lost count

We also managed to fit in a half day trip to My Son and to Marble Mountain. My Son is where the centre of the Cham Kingdom was about 1500 years ago. Unfortunately there is not much left to see after the US bombed the place senseless. There are a few remaining temples, but unfortunately – they really did not compare to the Angkor temples in Cambodia. The jungle surrounding the temples was dense and we saw a number of colourful butterflies which kept us entertained…and the ride down to the temples in an old army jeep with 9 tourists hanging out the side kept us on our toes.

Marble mountain on the other hand was well worth the trip – there are actually 4 mountains which look like blemishes on anotherwise smooth terrain. Scurrying around the caves looking for the hidden temples made me feel like a kid again! Surrounding the mountain there is a booming industry in making marble artifacts (all the marble is now imported from China, as the government worked out pretty quickly that they would have no mountain if they continued to remove marble). You can purchase a life size sculpted tiger and have it shipped to the US for US$1500…Matt wants to get a couple for our place in Caroline Springs. Around the corner was China beach which was the R&R place for the US soldiers during the war (and is the setting for the TV series of the same name).

We sadly said goodbye to Hoi An as our time was quickly running out in Viet Nam and we still had half the country to cover. We caught the bus to Hue (the old capital during the Nguyen dynasty) stayed for 4 hours then caught the night bus to Hanoi.

Hanoi…another big city, but with somewhat more charm than Ho Chi Minh city. Motor bikes continually zoom up and down the narrow streets, and women walk around with heavy baskets selling there wares. There are many shop fronts that open out onto the street and the city is doted with lakes, that people fish in and meet around in the evening. As we stumbled off the bus at 7am, after a night of broken sleep a man grabbed us to “show us his hotel”. We had little energy to resist, so before we knew it we had agreed to the US$10 a night room, probably being ripped off :P We ventured into a local cafe trying to find some breakfast, like most local cafes the food preparation seemed to be outsourced to a number of local traders, no sooner had we ordered our meal than a little boy and a teenage girl headed off in different directions with bowls in hand. Dad’s soup arrived from one direction and a loaf of bread from another…this cafe even had more varieties of tea than lipton (which seems to hold the majority of the market here). We spent the day visiting tourist agents looking for the best deal in tours to Harlong Bay and to Sapa (in the North West mountains). We walked through the different streets which are named after the main trade that occurs in the street such as “Tin Smith Street” and “Spice Trading Street”, interestingly there is a counterfeit street, where counterfeit money is sold for burning in the ceremonies dedicated to the ancestors. You can purchase a US$5000 bill.

We found a middle range tour that we booked to Harlong Bay and dad also organised a trek to Sapa that Matt and I miss out on as we have run out of time – Matt was sorely disappointed! We found a place that makes a decent Aussie burger and we had an early night catching up on sleep.

The next day we decided to go and see Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh) at the mausoleum, but unfortunately he has the day off. We instead spent our time organising tickets to see the Water Puppet Theatre. While queueing to get our tickets we witnessed a very uncomfortable seen were a military officer was trying to detain a pick pocket until the police arrived. The poor kid was on his knees crying to be let go, and in the end the officer (who I think was in as equally difficult position) did let him go, as the seen became a little too public for his liking I think. We really enjoyed the water puppet theatre, complete with fire crackers and traditional music. The show was in Vietnamese, but it was fairly self explanatory and full a cute little jokes. We planned to go out singing at a Karaoke bar later that night – however after repacking (and purchasing another suitcase), we instead had another early night.

The next day we headed off on our tour to Harlong Bay. The weather looked shocking…misty rain. We stopped at the usual tourist stops, with over priced souvenirs…however this was the most overpriced so far. Matt was looking at a necklace for me that he thought was 245,000VND ($20), but it was in fact US$245…I don’t think we have seen anything that expensive the entire time that we have been here.

Harlong Bay as all the post card show is amazing – the lime stone islands, I think there are 1900 in total are spectacular, and the weather cleared up for the afternoon, for us to cruise the bay. Our poor guide (who was a previously a journalist and is a trained computer programmer) had nothing go right for him. As we settled down in a quite part of the bay to spend the evening, he received a phone call that another four guests were arriving via water taxi. The problem was there where not enough beds to accommodate all of these people. So dad got turfed out to the staff quarters (as he had a double bed to himself). The Vietnamese culture seems to have no concept of compensation – so the fact that dad had paid for a private room with an ensuite bathroom didn’t seem to phase the guy. After some negotiation, dad did receive a complimentary beer. We spent the evening playing a Swedish/Danish version of a card game called “asshole”, which seems really similar to a game that I used to play at youth group. It was great fun and almost everyone on the boat got into the game.

The next day we woke up to no water in our bathroom, a man came and fiddled around for a while and I did get a warm shower in the end. Showering become redundant after heading off on our bushwalk through the jungle and up a very muddy hill. Information communication is also not a strong point on Vietnamese tours, even with English speaking guides. Luckily I did not arrive in my tan shorts and thongs as some other people had. My white shoes however were soon mud red. The walk was actually very enjoyable and the view spectacular. In the afternoon we had an opportunity to see Harlong Bay up close as we canoed around it. We canoed into caves that opened up into little land lock lakes. It was great fun, however, I think that an hour was long enough for me…I have no upper body strength at all. Dad went to spend the second night on the boat and Matt and I spent the evening at a Hotel on Cat Ba island, with the rest of our tour group.

That evening we visited the local disco…the had the music cranked really loud and the two times that we walked in a local guy was singing out some Karaoke song that I could not recognise, though the music sounded familiar. We tried to stay twice, but the environment was unbearably uncomfortable. Instead we opted for a second dinner with our new friend Rikard. We ended up at a pizza place that also served porcupine and turtle. Rickard ended up with a pizza that had more cheeses than it did crust and Matt with a burger that was white at times. The town was decked out in lights and a new water, sound and light show was being trialled, for the upcoming visit of someone important. I think it was something to do with the 30 year celebrations of reunification???

Again another early night…the next morning we discovered the party was in room 405…the German guys room. Later we met up with dad on the boat and he had also had a big night…with some Germans he had met on the boat. The only thing that I can deduce is that Germans really know how to party! The cruise back to the harbour was slow, and the mist had set into the harbour again, most people slept on the boat on the way back. We had a lovely French family on the tour who had a five year old son who looked like a miniture Harry Potter – he was the smartest kid I have ever seen and he did not cry once on the trip. Matt was feeling a little clucky (maybe I was too) :)
The mother of little Harry Potter I discovered was also an OT…which was very odd, considering I usually have to spend half an hour explaining my profession because nobody has ever heard off it. Sadly she betrayed the profession and went back 8 years afterwards and trained as a physiotherapist :P

We arrived back in Hanoi and spent our time trying to organise freight home for some of dads belongings. We turned our nose up at the US$240 quote that we received from TNT and instead sent it home via sea at the post office. We met up with some of our tour group mates for dinner, before the majority of them caught the 10pm train to Sapa (along with dad). Rikard again got the raw end of the deal with his “tuna salad” arriving…actually it was more like not arriving. In the end it was rushed goodbyes and exchanged email addresses. Dad got all his gear together and jumped on the back of a motorbike to the train station which I can only imagine was for an early night after his previous one.

Today we did get to visit Uncle Ho. We lined up and went through three security checks, got man handled by the guards and had our cameras removed. Gee he is looking good for a guy that died over 30 years again. I have been reading a bit of his work and he sounds like a pretty decent guy, his wishes was to be cremated and not to have a big fuss made of him…the party didn’t really respect that though.

So here Matt and I are, almost one chapter of our adventure is over, we are jumping on a plane to Hong Kong tomorrow and still we are not in debt. I think that Europe is going to be a shock to our budget. We are really looking forward to catching up with Pete and Kate in Sweden, and with my uni friends in England. Sorry about the long blog…Matt and I have resolved that we have to blog more often! We are feeling a little further away from home now that dad has left and there is about to be greater disparity in time zones – but looking forward to Hong Kong!

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh city pretty tired from our three day trip through the Mekong-Delta (which dad has filled you in on) – and were happy to indulge ourselves in the three star comfort that Matt had organised. By far the nicest hotel that we have stayed in to date (however the price tag also reflected that).

Ho Chi Minh was an interesting city – they have a saying throughout Asia “Same, Same – But Different”, usually people who are trying to sell you something will use it to get a better price (it is cotton not silk, same same but different). But it could also be used to describe most of the big cities that we have visited. When you have worked out some basics like how to bargin and to watch where you are walking when going down the street you can survive in any Asian city, however there are always little customary things that you stumble upon, only through embarrassing yourself or others. So Ho Chi Minh – same, same – but different. One thing that really stands out in a city of similar size to Bangkok is the lack of development, much fewer shopping centres, high rises and general sight seeing attractions.

After meeting up with Matt he took us to the best budget restaurant in town, that he specifically sussed out for our arrival. It was very nice – on Matt’s recommendation I had an Aussie burger for dinner. We visited the Reunification Palace the next day and got our dose of propaganda – which I suppose just balances out the propaganda that we are indoctrinated with through other sources. The Vietnamese propaganda is just so blatant – and it leaves me feeling sad, because it appears to leave room for only one way of interpreting history. This has developed what appears to be a very patriotic nation – but some of the distorted facts that it (“The Peoples Party”) comes out with are almost laughable when you take into consideration other nations perspective…come to think of it there are a number of nations that you could charge with the same crime :) This is a very strange, complex community – in some ways as Matt has commented we feel very at home here, but in other ways we are really struggling to understand it. You only hear quietly from some people about the hard years – no museum we have visited or famous war site have spoken of the the severe rations on the people which lead to starvation or the “re-education” camps.

The next day Dad and I spent a half day cruising around on the back of motor bikes seeing the sites (while Matt was having his turn of fighting off the food poisoning) – the highlights included some Chinese pagodas, visiting some shops that sold Chinese medicine (I bought Matt a small vile of wine with a cobra in it – medicine), a floating market on the blackest river I have ever seen (pretty much an open sewer), a visit to the Chinatown (every country has one) and a stroll along the river front. It was really good to get out of District One (tourist central) and get a look at how people live in Ho Chi Minh. Dad and I hit the central market that afternoon, I think that dad is now at the stage were he requires a candy bag to get all his wares home! I never realised how much of a shopper he is – and he wouldn’t buy anything for more than half of the original price! The shop keepers often look impressed at his bargaining skills. By the time we got back from shopping Matt was was begging to go to KFC – it was good that he had his appetite back!

The next day we visited Chu Chi tunnels – an area 60km from Ho Chi Minh city were the Viet Com built complex tunnel systems to live and fight from. These systems had everything from a hospital, an ammunition manufacturing factory, kitchen and sleeping areas. It was very eye opening, even frightening to see the way that these people lived. One thing that the Vietnamese people do very well is get across the horror of war! Our guide was an ex-south Vietnamese soldier (another contradiction that it is hard for us to get our head around), who appeared almost pro-vietcom. He was an old guy that would go off on tangents and then come out with really inappropriate jokes and you would wonder if he was joking. He loved the microphone and spent the 90 minutes bus trip telling us stories of the war. Next to the Chu Chi tunnels was a rifle range – so as we were walking through the forest and looking at the tunnels, you could hear the constant sound of gun shots…. A little too realistic for my liking. But never the less Matt was able to satisfy one of his goals for this trip – he shot off 20 rounds on an AK47, at the cost of US$1 a bullet. You can’t be too trigger happy! This was all a bit surreal.

That afternoon it was Matt and my turn to go shopping and we headed down to central market to make some purchases. Afterwards we decided to catch a Cyclo back to our hotel – we were quoted 15,000VND for both of us, which is a bit expensive (about US$1). But we were tired and wanted a lift back to the hotel about 800 meters away, so we agreed to the price. When we arrived around the corner from the hotel we were told that the drivers were not allowed to cycle down the main street at that time of day (about 200 meters left to our hotel) – which was all good, then Matt went to pay them – when he handed over 15,000 they complained that they had asked for 50,000 (just under US$4) for their 4 minutes of work. Matt had been ripped off by a cyclo driver two days prior, so we were very careful to be clear on the price before we took this trip and we felt as though these men were playing us (wanting 50,000 – for a trip that we had received for 5,000 a number of times prior). Feeling disappointed – because we hate the feeling of being ripped off, we explained that we felt that this was a bit a rich. When they dug in and said that they would starve if we did not pay them – a card regularly played with tourists, we also dug in and I said that if they wouldn’t take the 15,000 we would not pay them at all. They threatened to call the police at which I said I would be happy for this to happen as it was clear that we were the ones being ripped off (how self righteous was I). At that they played a different tact and asked for 15,000 each, to which I stated no – then they said 10,000 each and Matt being the wise man he is paid up (as by this time nearly the entire street was involved) to dissolve the situation. Sitting in the hotel room, I felt crap – quivalling over such a small amount of money! How far do you push principles? They were ripping us off – it is so hard to swallow your pride and just pay up! It takes away from the joy of travelling and it leaves you feeling cynical about the general population.

On Monday we jumped on a bus and travelled north to Da Lat – in the high country. Da Lat is much cooler than Saigon and I felt cold for the first time in a while on our first night here. We are staying in a lovely little guest house for US$7 a night. Soon as we jumped off the bus we were recruited for a “cooking class”, which turned out to be five tourists crammed into a one room “house”, watching the “chef” and his 5 assistants help prepare a meal on the floor. The learning side of the evening was pretty light, but the hospitality and the humour of the people made the evening one that we wont forget! The food was also fantastic. Today we took a tour (with the chef of last evening now turned tour guide) around the hills on the back of three motor bikes. It was great fun! I can see why people like riding – you feel a lot closer to it all. Da Lat is a funny mixture of the natural and the really tacky. With theme park like attractions set in the hills amongst a thriving farming community. Tomorrow we head to Nha Trang on the coast.

So if you have gotten this far I have to commend you for getting through my late night babble – we are off to pack our packs and tomorrow is an entirely new adventure :)

Matt and I have tried to keep the blogging pretty balanced – taking turns to give our perspective about the places that we visit and the things that we have experienced. Matt has begun this blog three times and has been unable to finish it because in his words “they were too negative”.

Cambodia!

I think that so many myths precede visiting here that it is hard to come with an open mind. Pictures of Khmer Rouge, the killing fields, mugging on the street, sex tourism and land mine victims. But a lot has changed in Cambodia over the last five years and there is definitely hope here. That is not to say that you do not see land mine victims begging in the street every day and hear terrible stories of corruption that make your blood boil.

Actually pretty much everything that we saw on our first day in Phnom Phen reinforced our preconceived ideas. Walking off the plane from Bangkok the second billboard that we saw read “Sex with children is illegal – 940 people have been prosecuted and imprisoned – UNICEF”. What is this place that we are visiting?? Matt and I bought a book from a landmine victim entitled “Off the Rails in Phnom Phen – Guns, Girls and Gunja” – a book that details what expat could get away with in Phnom Phen in the 90’s. So at this point we were ready to sit in our hotel room until our Vietnam visas had become valid on the 7th of March. That same day, while we were walking through a market a drunk/mental ill man hastled Matt and dad – they were lucky to get away only with nipple cripples…then later that evening some very interested, sleezy boy tried to pick me up until he realised that my big burly dad was sitting next to me…actually that didn’t really slow him down that much either! Reading the Phnom Phen Post the next day didn’t help either – as they detail all the crime that has occured over the two weeks – like the classified at home. The pages were filled with grenades going off and police men accidently shooting themselves and their friends dead when playing with their guns while drunk.

But our anxiety settled as we talked with expats and local at our hotel (ironically the Hotel California2) and we began to venture a little further out and see another side to Cambodia. We visited the royal palace and the silver pagoda – what a beautiful palace amongst such decay! Later that day at the central market we bargained hard – Matthew was ready to disown dad and I – rightly so, it seems trivial when you are quivalling over one US dollar.

After a few days in Phnom Phen we caught the boat up the river to the major lake in Cambodia (the name of which escapes) – as the tide was low we had to transfer to a local boat and we travelled through a floating town – it had everything from department stores, milkbars and a church! When we arrived at the muddy bank our driver Rou was there to meet us – what a gem he turned out to be! In his semi-proficient english he was able to answer many of our questions. His honesty and frankness was a breath of fresh air. From local politics and customs, to translating Khmer music, to organising our itinerary for the four days of visiting the Angkor temples he was a God send! That day he drove us to our guesthouse situated in Siem Reap while filling us in on the illegal imigration of Vietnamese people into the area and their “electric fishing” methods that were making the locals angry”. Our guest house was very comfortable for a mere US$15 a night, complete with TV and A/C.

Siem Reap is the town closest to the Angkor Temples, at any given time I think that there is almost as many foreigners as locals! Rou took us out to the see the sunset the same evening we arrived – it was the first time we viewed Angkor Wat (the most well know of the temples), it was one of those take your breath away moments. They rank this engineering feet up there with the pyramids and when you read the specs on this building you understand why. The photos cannot really capture the grandness of this building that is over 1000 years old, and once was the “capital of the world”. We walked up a very steep hill, to see a very ordinary sunset, over very amazing buildings. Over the following three days we visited about 15 of the 100 temples – everyone of them was worth visiting. The temples are huge and not close enough to walk between so we had lots of conversations with our driver Rou. How posh does that sound “our driver”, we actually found it a little uncomfortable – but you can get used to anything.

I will not bore you with the details – other than saying WOW and if you come to Cambodia for no other reason, this is a good reason to visit! On the final evening we took Rou out to dinner to say thank you – we asked him where he wanted to go and being the typical obliging Khmer person, he took us to a place that he thought that we would like – it was to the shadow puppet theatre restaurant. We had had plenty of conversations about this on previous days as Rou happened to have travelled to France and Japan to perform in the shadow puppet theatre. Aside from this he also taught the local children in his village English and had a vision of opening a centre for children one day which could teach them about Khmer culture (something that was lucky to survive the Khmer Rouge times). What a top bloke! It was a pretty emotional goodbye – we exchanged contact details and promised to keep in touch.

The plan was to depart from Siem Reap this morning to Phnom Phen, but unfortunately I became unwell yesterday morning and decided to bring up the content of my tummy – for everyone that knows me it will not be a surprise that it was quite a lot. So under orders from Matt and dad I spent the day in bed, which was wise because everytime I got up I felt queasy again. Dad caught the bus as planned this morning (as we had non refundable tickets) and Matt stayed behind to look after me. I feel heaps better, and had to break out of the guest house because staring at the yellow wall was driving me crazy. I have had my first real meal in 48hours this evening and am still feeling fine – fingers crossed. Matt and I decided to treat ourselves to a bit of luxury and have booked a flight to go back to Phnom Phen tomorrow, rather than braving the bus.

So that brings us up to date. Sorry about the big gap between entries. It sometimes takes us a bit of time to process our own experiences. We will be travelling to Vietnam early next week.

Hope all are well!

We finished our stay at Koh Phangan zipping around on a motor bike with our very our cool crash helmets. As we were not allowed to go on dirt roads we spent a lot of time back tracking (as made roads would abruptly finish without warning or notation on the map). Having a motor bike gave us so much freedom and as the roads are fairly quiet on Koh Phangan we felt confident to venture out a bit. And that we did for a steak dinner that Matt claims is the best he has had in months.

On our last morning the concierge of the hotel abruptly burst into our room as we were packing and said that we had to catch a taxi in 10 minutes, (despite being told earlier that we had a midday taxi booked), as we don’t like being rushed when we are packing we declined the offer of the taxi, to which he stated that the midday taxi would be fine, the driver would just have to make two trips.

So there we were all packed and ready to go at midday with our boat and bus transfers. We jumped on the back on the ute and held on tight as the taxi fish tailed its way down dirt roads. We arrived at the ticket counter for the boat and bus and Phil, that’s me who was holding onto the transfers for safe keeping, discovered that the pink bits of paper were no longer in her pocket! After some panicking Matt said calmly, “Phil it only costs $12 each”! After a couple of beers on the boat, I had calmed down – really when someone says 600baht, it just feels like so much more than $24!

The train ride back to Bangkok was without killer bugs – but we did get of the train pretty red eyeds and were snapped up by a crazy tuk-tuk driver in our haze. Matt agreed to pay him 120baht for the trip because the driver called him his friend. This driver I think was trying to break land spead records while dodging traffic on the Bankok highway (while we had our packs on our knees). We arrived at our hotel paled faced…but alive!

Our hotel is amazing – in this short amount of time I will not be able to do it justice – but to get a feel for the place have a look at http://www.theatlantahotel.bizland.com/ . It doesn’t look like it has changed much since the 1950’s!

While in Bangkok we have taken in a couple of movies and visited the Grand Palace – which is the number one tourist attraction in Bangkok and rightly so – it is pretty spectacular. Matt managed to miss the “Jade Buda” which is the most renound Budda in Thailand…but I thought he was pretty cute. Matt spent some time gaining enlightenment under the Banyan tree decending from the one that Budda sat under.

The most exciting news is that my dad joined us yesterday – just in time to be taken to a few local pubs, having a kid make a grab for his watch (luckily it was on securly), go for a tuk-tuk ride and catch the sky train before being whisked away to Cambodia.

As you can probably tell I am punching this blog out at a frantic pace because we have to catch a taxi to the airport in 5 minutes – off to Cambodia.

Hope that my jibberish makes some sense, I will edit this blog when I get a chance. Please pray for a safe transfer to Cambodia!

Matt made me drag out my bikini that he bought me for christmas. It is great after four years of marriage that he still wants to see me in a bikini! Out came the sunscreen and the spatula to apply it thickly over my poor white skin!

The beach was great fun, little fish darting everywhere, it was shallow for about 100m, which created a great playground for kids, even us big kids, and it was soooo warm (I smiled as I thought about running into the freezing water of Wilsons Prom in Spring)! Matt and I decided earlier that playing in swimming pools is just no fun unless you have a game to play or people their to entertain you – but playing down the beach was a entirely different experience! We jumped out of the ocean into the hotel pool and then back to the ocean!

That night I had the beer bottles wrapped in wet towels tending to my sunburn…the sunburn marks suggested that I had been burnt before we went swimming (as they followed my T-shirt line). I had been in the sun for about 10 minutes earlier that day getting lunch…there is not justice for the pale skinned!

I have finished my second book for the holiday – it is great having so much time! Today I spent 30 minutes eating a calipo (the Thai equivalent) – and was remembering as a kid how such basic things once entertained me for the same length of time. I think that Matt and I have entirely wound down and are enjoying the pace of life at the moment!

We hired a motor scooter (120cc) yeasterday, as we are sick of negotiating our fair home late at night which seems to attract about a 500% premium. The cost of the motor scooter was $8 for 24hours – the same fair we paid to a taxi driver three nights ago to get us home at 11:30pm! We filled the tank of our scooter for $1! Matt was a bit white after our first trip, first time that he has taken a passenger and apparently I wriggle around a bit. He is cruising along now though – I feel a bit dorky with my closed toe shoes, jean jacket and helmet compared to others that get around in shorts and thongs! But hey, I’ve got a little more travelling that I want to survive!

Matt and I are being a little bit more adventerous and are trying to eat more local food – the food here is very tastey! We have a few select street vendours that we feel have pretty good hygiene standards and we watch them prepare their food. Don’t think that there is any chance of us loosing weight in Thailand, we have fallen in love with Banana, Coconut and Choclate rotti! We watch as the chef calves up the fresh ingredients, grating the coconut for us to see. Fresh mango juice, pad thai and assorted stir fry curries are all prepared on the street for the customer to see. The fresh seafood in Koh Samui is a real treat, though we are treading carefully (not past the king prawns though).

Few more days here before we head off too Koh Panang on Friday. I have a few post cards to write – to those who haven’t received one yet I am working on it!

The beats of the street bars are floating in as I type this message in sync. We are currently in Liaim – one of the night life centres on Koh Samui. As I look out the window I see a number of open air bars with holiday makers (from families with young children, to middle aged men looking for partners) enjoying local beer and the cool of the evening.

Well Koh Samui is everything that you would hope a holiday resort would be plenty of blond haired, big breasted women with great tans accompanied by their six foot companions who get around in tank tops (if your lucky) and stubbies. Matt seems to have a finally tuned radar for the topless bathers (lucky for him) and his half blind wife has to wait until she trips over them to get a thrill. Unfortunately Matt and I haven’t gotten into the topless bathing scene because our fair skin seems to be repelled by the sun.

Not much to report really…it is exactly as the postcard depict it…coconut trees everywhere silhouetted against the sparkling blue ocean and white sand beaches. The rolling mountains in the center of the island are quite picturesque and the view of the surrounding eighty islands makes you realise why so many people come here for holidays. Prices are a little more expensive, but if you shop around you can still get “Thai prices”. Matt and I are relaxing and trying to recover from our spending spree in Chiang Mai – we loved the markets!

…gee life is tough…

I think that we will wonder out and get a cool beer and some corn off the barbie, followed by banana and chocolate rotti!

Wish you were here…really…but not spending too much energy worrying about it :P

Don’t want to bore you with any more boring details of this place…until next time…

Well it seems that we have a bit of catching up to do!

So Matt and I collapsed on the beds at the hotel when we arrived in Chang Mai, recovering from the hotel California and the sleeper train trip with the horrible, abnoxious, drunk English men!

We didn’t have much time to rest because the next day we jumped on a mini bus and weaved through the streets of Chang Mai picking up guests for our day trip. Our gorgeous (not looking) tour guide was Kon, who was jovial and seemed to know a bit about the places we visited. Our first stop was a hilltribe the Mao people, from Lao I think. It was a forty minute walk up hill. Matt got to the point where he dug in his heals and said “I am not going any further” and we happened to be 10 meters away from the tourist sign welcoming us to the village. From what we could tell, nobody actually lived there it was purely set up for the tourists! So why not 10 meters from the road :) It was an old village that they had preserved, which made us feel a little more comfortable rather than it being a “Human Zoo” experience. We both had turns at shooting a cross bow. Matt shot a bulls eye, through target on the mellon that was hanging.

We then set off to go elephant riding. It is hard not to fall in love with the elephants. I was a big skeptic, but when you have two little cubs following beside you and then go walking and playing in the river your heart melts! There is something about the way that there trunks grab the bananas and manovour it into there mouths that gets you!

After our traditional Thai lunch we went bambo rafting, which isn’t quite as exciting as it sounds. Though it seems to take more skill that you would think from observing. Matt ended up in the drink after having a go, it was the rapids that caught him out. We all got wet, which is always fun.

We visited the Karen tribe (one of the versions as you will read later), and purchased some weaving – a piece that took three days to weave. When we paid the lady 140Baht ($5), she looked at us as though we were gullible for paying so much. We did pay alot because at the market the next day we saw similar pieces for 65Baht ($2.20), but as Matt said “I’m not going to pay someone 3 dollars for 3 days work!”.

Somehow I persuaded Matt to walk down to the waterfall that we visited. You couldn’t see the waterfall for all the tourists swimming in the water! I think that Matt was pleased with the view (*Matt elbows Phil*). That night we went out to the night markets – the markets are soooooo much fun here in Chang Mai and had Burger King for dinner – too much culture for one day :P

The next day Matt couldn’t get out of bed for our 7am start to visit the Golden Triangle and more hill tribes. From his lips I could make out “No more walking” in a faint wisper. God love him he was exhausted and the Burger King was playing havock with his tummy – figures. I spent the day on the mini bus, over 7 hours of driving (lucky Matt didn’t come). The golden triangle is nicely set up for tourists, I caught a speed boat over to an enclave in Lao that you do not have to go though imigration in order to go shopping. It was a bit of a joke. The speed boat also took us to see the Paradise Casino set up at the norther tip of Myanmar.

A lot of tourist take this day trip in order to get their passports extended. I met some young Aussies that had run out of money and time, waiting for money to clear from their parents at home.

The rest of the day was filled with visiting hilltribes. We visited another two versions of the Karen tribe, affectionately known as the long necks and the big ears. This felt a bit more like a human zoo, but the village have a cover charge for visitors and plenty of sovineer shops. There where another two tribes living by there side, one which only washed twice a month because they believe that the spirits recognised them by their sent. The hilltribes are all refugees from countries such as Tibet, Myanmar, China and Lao, some have been here for only a couple of years, others have been here for hundreds of years.

Since then….hmmm…we have been relaxing, marketing, enjoying Chang Mai. We love it up here and could easily stay another week however we are catching a train tomorrow and heading south to Koh Samui, two overnight sleepers. Please pray for no drunk English men :P

Thank you for all your emails and comments. I am trying to get through them and answer them individually, because we really appreciate the news from home. It is good to hear that the water catchments are filling up – I just feel sad for all the little kids that have just started back at school. That is enough ranting from me.

Thailand…well the story if I had blogged two days ago would have been very different to the story that I am going to share with you today.

Arriving in Thailand was the biggest culture shock we have faced to date. After being in Singapore for a week and quite comfortable, to arrive in Thailand was a bit of a shock. We walked the streets the first day in absolute shock at how overt the sex tourism industry is over here. The images that we saw on our first day included many older western men with young asian girls in bars, walking down the street, at restraunts; many young girl scantly dressed hanging out in bars, flashing other customers; men on the street flashing cards of children “for sale” to westerner walking by… it was a bit of a shock after being in such conservative Asian countries. After the initial outrage – and Matt wanting to beat up some middle aged western men with young Thai girls – we have realised that it is quite a complex situation.

The next morning we sat in our quaint little back packers “Suk 11″ and spoke with a lady who is doing research into people trafficing. She is actually here to see what NGOs are doing to work on the issue inorder to impliment some interventions in Australia, where apparently we have our own problems! Talking with our friend Wei who has been working in Bangkok for the last twelve months, she said that most of the women that we see as tourists are there (to some degree) of their own volition. It is seen as a big status simble for Thai women to marry western men and the western men generally help the entire families. From what we can gather it is not uncommon for lonely western men to come to Thailand in search of love. Love is a concept for those who can offord it and many of the Thai women see it as their duty to their families to make a good match with a wealthy westerner. So that begs the question who is using who…etc, etc…it is only when you are on holidays that you have time to think about these things.

There is a problem with people trading here, however, apparently they are the “workers” that you generally don’t see on the street. Generally it is the women, girls and boys that “service” the Thai population that are the ones bought from the poor rural families. It makes my blood boil and hence my 10 year plan to change the world is beginning to take shape :) …in Maccas were we took refuge – somewhere familiar and safe.

So that was our first day. Since then we have realised that there is a bit more to Thailand – thank God – because we were wondering what we were going to do for our four weeks that we are here for! Our mate Wei took us out to a restraunt last night called Condoms and Cabbages, which was established to raise awareness of family planning and combat the spred of HIV. It was a very classy restraunt with a bit of a fun twist – the food was fantastic too! It was great to see Wei and she was very generous with her local knowledge, letting us know the amount we should pay for a Tuk Tuk ride and telling us the places to visit around town. She also took us to the largest open air market in the Southern Hemisphere today – it was great! There is a really good range of clothes, homeware…everything, things are cheep and they seemed to be a decent quality. I am beginning to see why people recommend Thailand for good shopping. As Matt and I have been saving so much to go away we are finding it difficult to get back into buying things, especially for ourselves. So in four hours of shopping all we bought was a singlet top for $3 for myself!

This evening we caught a movie…”Meet the Fouckers”…prior to the movie we had to stand for about a minute while a tribute to the king was played prior to the feature. They love the king over here. The really beautiful thing is that the king really seems to love his people as well. He has no problem speaking against the corruption in the government, though I think that he has little real power.

Tonight we were feeling a little home sick so we decided to dine at the Outback Aussie Restraunt. We learnt a bit about what Australian cuisine is :) I think that I will stick with the local tucker from now on.

We are heading to the travel agents tomorrow to make some plans for the next three weeks, I can see beaches and northern hill tribes will probably enter into it.

Thanks for the emails, prayers, SMSs, phone call…we feel very loved…even if we do get a little home sick from time to time. Oh and my registration has come through from the UK!

As the rooster crowed I woke up and re-packed my bag – emptying out the contents to ensure that there was no items that was likely to get me shot or caned in Singapore. We arrived in Singapore, picked up our bags and as I turned to find customs, I was sorely disappointed when I noticed that no one was manning the customs desk and we walked straight through to the airport shuttle bus.

Efficiency is the word for Singapore – especially after being in Indonesia. The queue are orderly, the taxis are metered, there is quality control measures on everything and the buses run every six minutes. The guide book describing the public transport system is literally a novel and has about 10 pages on public transport safety, it is a bit of an ergonomist’s dream city.

Matt hasn’t wiped the smile off his face since we have arrived. He is enjoying looking at all the IT gadgets that we cannot get in Oz, the clean water and of course the variety of fast food outlets.

Today we went to Raffels and enjoyed a Gin Sling in the Long Room Bar and then a buffet afternoon tea in the Tiffin room – which we had to book in advance. Matthew almost keeled over when he saw how I loaded my plate – he knew that I had an appetite when he married me. The food was exquisite! We had a fantastic time catching up with Gail (dad’s partner) and her mother who had a stop over in Singapore on their way home from Europe. It was all a bit posh – the poor people who have to polish all that silver!

We have also finally found a decent internet pipe and hopefully tonight is the night that we will be able to upload some photos.

Unfortunately dad had to delay meeting up with us, so we are catching up with him in Bangkok and he is staying with us through Cambodia and Vietnam. Matt and I are also looking at our own travel plans, we are thinking about extending our stay in Singapore and reducing the time we planned to stay in Malaysia, we are going to try and track down a travel agent tomorrow.

Thanks for all the emails, I am really enjoying getting news from home!

So we have gotten a little streetwiser since our last blog. A little wiser at identifying scams and at engaging in the art of barginning. We hit Kuta art market with a new fury bargining, haggling and walking away with our 2 dollar T-shirts.

We have learnt a new phrase which seems to stop people from hasseling us, not because our Bahasa is great but because they kill themselves laughing – Tidak, Terima Kasih, which literally means “No, thank you”. We seem to be the laughing stock of the market, which we don’t mind, we’d rather be clowns than prey! We were doing so well until we went to post a present home for our nephew and it hit home that we should have bought him something a little smaller (I will not disclose what we bought because it is in the mail), the postage cost four times what the present cost!!! Another lesson learnt, when buying presents to send home keep them small!!

Yesterday we packed our bags and boarded a bus to Lovina (via many craft shops, temples and apparently a volcano which we couldn’t see because it was fogged in). It was a really interesting day learning about the impact the Hinduism has on the Balinese everyday lives, from the way they build their houses to the way they conduct business.

Lovina is a sleepy little town – and apparently we are pretty sleepy too! After getting caught in a tropical down-pour this morning we decided the day was against us and went back to bed for three hours! We have a very fancy garden view room in a very fancy resort for USD$17, because it is the low season at the moment. Our resort is right on the beach, however the beach is a bit off putting because it has black volcanic sand and doesn’t appear as inviting as our Australian beaches. It is beautiful here though, it is much more tropical than the southern part of the island, with surrounding hills, banana trees, coconut trees and rice fields everywhere. Loving it!! The pace is a lot different here than Kuta and Matt and I are soaking it up!

Love you all (sorry if we haven’t replied to your emails, we are having trouble opening g-mail at some of the internet cafes). Will post soon – promise the next one will be from Matt! And photos coming soon also, probably when we hit Singapore in a couple of days with faster internet connections :)

Phew…Kuta…what can we say???

In 48 hours we have been the major prize winner of a hotel giveaway and then had it declined because we are not over 28; we have walked km’s of dusty roads looking for an air conditioned shopping centre; we have paid US$35 for a manicure and peticure for both of us (they saw us coming); and have paid at least double what we should have for all of the souvineers that we have bought – and we’re loving it! Well it took us a little while to recover when we realised how much we had been ripped off by….we just had to get it all into perspective again! We have been offered drugs and sex more times than you can count on all our fingers and toes combined…

Kuta beach isn’t much to write home about, Matt has taken some photos that only Tom would appreciate (artistically speaking of course). The $14 dollar a night hotel is comfortable and the complimentary “American Breakfast” sometimes comes as we ordered it and tastes, um…..um…okay. But we’re having the time of our lives!!!!

Last night we stumbled past Poppies and the name sounded familiar…some famous restraunt…then Matt realised the reason it was so familiar is that we had read about it in the travel warnings before we left home :) seasoned travellers we are, going to all the places that we shouldn’t go. It is very quiet over here at the moment, which makes us a little sad for the Balanese who primarily rely on Tourism for their income. That’s why we don’t mind being ripped off so much.

We’re heading up north in a couple of days to see the country side and the northern, quieter, dutch built resorts…the pictures look amazing!

Love you all and am really enjoying reading your comments.