Let's go to San Francisco!

As I am writing this, we are sat in Jon and Ellen's apartment overlooking the Bay and Alcatraz. If you stand on the balcony and look to the left, you can see the 'crookedest street', which goes up one of the many hills on Lombard. San Francisco and California has been really great.

We were a little excited as we landed at LAX, because we were certain we'd see loads of famous people instantly. Turns out most people in LA are pretty normal!! Once we'd got over our disappointment, we picked up our upgraded hire car and went cruising around LA. After getting a bit lost and confusing the left and right lanes a little, we finally managed to get to Hollywood. We drove down Santa Monica, Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards and past Rodeo Drive (very exciting). We even managed to see the walk of fame and the Hollywood sign.

We headed up to Santa Barbara that evening and watched the sun go down while eating clam chowder in a bread bowl. Tasty. We were pretty tired after the flight, so made sure we got an early night before our long drive up to San Francisco. We decided to take the scenic route up the coast, the Big Sur.

We'd been looking forward to getting to San Francisco, not only because we've been staying with Jon and Ellen, friends from Hoddesdon who moved here a year ago, but also because Kate's Mum and Dad (Chris and Jean) were in town on holiday. We had a great few days sightseeing with them around the city - and some great evenings out too! The best was probably cocktails at 'Top of the Mark', a fancy hotel bar with panoramic views of the city.

Kate and Jean's favourite were the sealions on Fisherman's Wharf (we went to see them three times). Chris and I were much more impressed by the Golden Gate Bridge which was just as cool as I'd hoped. Ellen provided us with some excellent itineraries for a tour of the city and helped us use every type of city transport - cable cars, street cars and a few buses with insane/entertaining drivers.

Alcatraz was pretty interesting to visit, with a cracking audio tour (we really are geeky tourists). Although bumping into the Beckhams was the highlight... don't think they fully appreciated the prison - they weren't using the audio tour.

Last weekend we went up to the Russian River for a day's kayaking. It was all downstream, but there were a few tricky rapids - Jon and I were much better than Kate and Ellen... although it was also us who ached the most for the next two days! Kate claims it's better technique... we say she didn't work hard enough. We relaxed a little the next day, with a tour of the coast which included visiting a winery for champagne tasting.

If that wasn't enough, we've just got back from a couple of days in Yosemite National Park. It's an amazing place with spectacular scenery. The local bears have been known to rip doors off tourists cars while looking for food, so to visit the park you have to sign a declaration that you are "Bear Aware"! We were, but didn't see any. More appropriate would have been "Squirrel Aware" - the pesky blighters team up to steal your pickernick basket. We took a day hike up the valley to a couple of stunning waterfalls and, as usual, took far too many photos!

Yesterday was dedicated to shopping, and spending the last of our budget on shoes and clothes - no, not presents. Ellen cooked us a great Mexican meal last night, and Jon introduced us to Guitar Hero on the Wii... we rock!

San Francisco has been great. It's the first place we've been where we feel we could live (don't worry mum!) - however, that may be down to Jon and Ellen making us feel so comfortable!

It's been a great finale to our vacation(!) - just time for one more trip to the sealions before our flight this afternoon. Quite looking forward to coming home... the weather better be good.

Cook Islands Time

The Cook Islands were great! Pretty much what you'd expect a South Pacific island paradise to be like, only a bit wetter and windier.


We arrived in Rarotonga airport, and were greeted by a guy playing a ukulele. Everyone staying in the fancy resorts were given a flower ei (necklace) - we didn't, but got some cheap rum in the duty free shop instead. The first guesthouse we stayed in was completely empty except for us, and was a little run down. The family who owned it was very friendly: invited us to church and to join them for Sunday dinner. We declined, as we'd only just arrived and were shattered, but they left us some food in the fridge.

We moved on to another guesthouse after a couple of days, which was great. Much busier - although we did have to share our rum! Our first week in Rarotonga was pretty dull and rainy, but we managed to do loads of snorkeling, which was great. We saw trigger fish, butterfly fish, puffer fish and big blue star fish. We managed to get to an Island Night too, where there was drum music and ladies wearing grass skirts and coconuts and wiggling their hips! Most importantly I spent a good few hours reading on a hammock.

We hired a kayak for a day, figured that since the lagoon was so sheltered from the waves it'd be easy... well, it was easy one way - but the current was so strong coming back that we couldn't move forward! The water was only knee deep, so had to get out and drag the kayak (with Kate in it) back to calmer water. Oh, and we got stuck in the middle of a sailing race too... oops!

After a week in there, we took a flight to Aitutaki (another island within the Cooks). Aitutaki is really beautiful and is surrounded by a huge lagoon dotted with tiny uninhabited islands. We managed to get a beachfront bungalow here, which had stunning views of the lagoon. It was so stunning that we barely left the beach and balcony and chilled out for most of the week eating coconuts and paw paws.

I did a couple of cool dives and saw some huge white tipped reef sharks and a massive moray eel. I didn't see any turtles though, but we did spot them on a lagoon cruise that took us to some amazing sand banks in the lagoon.

We'd planned to do the cross island walk when we got back to Rarotonga before flying to LA, but the hammock was much more inviting than a 4 hour hike. Then it was back to the airport, to see the guy playing the ukulele while we waited for our flight to LA.

We've been so chilled, we're getting behind in our blogs. We're in San Francisco now, having a great time sightseeing, shopping, eating and celebrity spotting... more on that later!

Geology in the North Island

After Fox Glacier, we had a couple of days steady drive to Picton for the ferry crossing to the North Island. Stopped off in a few places along the way including Pancake Rocks (rocks that look like pancakes) and a seal colony. We expected to see 3 seals at most, but there were over 100 and even some pups playing with each other on the rocks!

We didn't hang about in Wellington, looked nice, but you had to pay to park, so we went straight north towards Tongariro National Park. We were hoping to do a day trek across the volcanoes - including Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings! Unfortunately the weather wasn't great on the peaks - snowy, cloudy and cold, so we couldn't go. Instead we went on a couple of really nice shorter walks in the volcanic valleys, around lava flows and rock falls. Speaking of falls... I did, and ripped my trousers - dangerous things these volcanoes.

I'm slowly turning Kate into a bit of a geologist, and after glaciers and volcanoes we moved onto the geothermal areas of Taupo and Rotorua. These places are weird! You see steam coming out of the ground all over the place and pools of bubbling mud! Our campsite in Rotorua was geothermally heated and had a hot spa and steam oven. We tried cooking our mussels in the steam oven, but it took too long, so had to do them on the hob! (a kilo of huge green mussels -for a quid!). Wasn't all geeky though - we spent a day racing luges down the hill and terrifying ourselves on the Sky Swing (bungee swing on a hill over Rotorua)! We even saw some Kiwi birds in the wildlife park. (oh - Kiwi fruit, 20p a kilo - who knew they came from New Zealand?)

Our last couple of days in the van were spent cruising around the Coromandel Peninsula. Wonderful coastline with big green hills and windy roads. We visited Hot Water Beach and tried to dig our own hot pool - didn't quite work, as we missed the tide... but if you buried your feet in the sand under the water, you could feel the hot spring water! Pretty cool!

We were both a bit sad to return the campervan, we had a great time and is strange to have had the same accommodation for so long! Auckland has been cool - we've seen more volcanoes and climbed the biggest. Also saw a Maori Cultural Show at the museum, where they did the Haka. Another box ticked for NZ.

We're off to the Cook Islands this afternoon, and we'll arrive yesterday... this dateline thing is very confusing.

Kiwi Campervanning

I thought I had better write this blog to prove to John that I am, in fact, still alive and well! That is despite all the crazy things Paul has been getting me into in New Zealand.

New Zealand is really beautiful, but also really cold! It's Autumn here and all the trees are golden and red, which is nice. It's pretty chilly in our camper van, though. We have a little electric heater, two quilts and a box of beer to keep us warm, though. It's really nice having the freedom to go where we want when we want. It's also great not to be in dorms for a while, too. Not so nice when I'm desperate for the toilet at 4am, though!

We started off in Christchurch, which is very pretty annd reminded us a lot of home - little old churches, cathedrals and Olde Worlde trams. From there we headed to Lake Tekapo, where you could see millions of stars at night. We even saw a shooting star! The views over the lake of the mountains were also stunning, and also very sheep filled!

Next stop was Oamaru, because I really wanted to see penguins. We saw Yellow-eyed and Small Blue penguins coming in from the sea to roost. Penguins have such big pink feet! They are very cute and really noisy! We saw a really lazy fur seal, too, who pretty much flopped on the beach and waited for the tide to come get him. Must have been a male - couldn't be bothered to walk to the sea!

Queenstown was good fun. We watched bungee jumpers, which was more than close enough for me. Paul said he would have done it if it wasn't so expensive!! We really wanted to go canyoning or white water rafting, but it's not the right season for them, so we ended up going river surfing! This involves riding through white water rapids on a body board! It seemed like a great idea until we got up that morning and it was freezing! We had ridiculously thick wetsuits, though, so stayed pretty warm although the water was 9 degrees. It was great fun, although neither of us can really say we surfed! It was more like clinging on and hoping for the best! As part of the package, we were taken to a hot pool place after, which was much more luxurious and meant we could both feel our toes again by the time we got back to the van!

After Queenstown we went to Wanaka and did a beautiful walk up a big hill/small mountain (?), which had great views of Lake Wanaka and more snow capped mountains. I don't think I could ever get tired of views like that, which is good, because they are everywhere we go!

The best bit so far was yesterday when we went for a day's guided walk on the Fox Glacier (of the mint fame!). We had to wear crampons, which was great, because it meant I had no chance of falling over! The glacier was stunning, with ice caves, tunnels and crevasses. It was like nothing I have ever seen before. It was like another world. I was really sad to leave. We rounded off the day by going to see some glow worms in the local woods, which was also magical (if a bit dark and scary!)

We have a few more days in the south before heading to the North Island. We're really looking forward to the volcanoes!

Sharks and Surfers in Sydney

Much less smelly now! Found our way to a much nicer hostel and spent two nights as the only people in a six bed dorm. Our company for the other night was a crazy, drunk american girl and her unfortunate friends - she decided she was leaving at 2am, which kept us amused in our bunk beds!

Where to start with Sydney? It's a great city! We started off in Darling Harbour at the Aquarium - really cool, with underwater paths through the seals and sharks, and a huge coral reef. Even saw a platypus - I didn't think they were real! The harbour itself was really nice, with cool bars and restaurant. Too expensive for us though, so we headed back to the hostel bar for happy hour.

We spent the next day taking photos of the Opera House! Took far too many, but you can't help yourself. We got great views of both the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge from the Botanical Gardens, home to hundreds of fruit bats and almost as many joggers (running up and down stairs over and over again... crazy!). Had a look inside the foyer and, just for a laugh, asked how much tickets were to the evening's ballet. We were lucky on two counts: we could afford a ticket and there was no dress code! It was my first (Kate's second) ballet, and we both really enjoyed it. It wasn't a traditional show, but a tribute to the guy who choreographed West Side Story. Interesting and funny - really great.

On our last day in Australia we walked from Coogee to Bondi Beach, the cliffs and bays along the coastline were beautiful. Bondi was oddly familiar, felt very much like a British seaside town - except for the weather, although it wasn't that warm - the surfers were all in wetsuits. We sunbathed a bit, and Kate had a bit of a paddle in the Pacific (that's paddle, not piddle - I hope!).

We arrived in New Zealand yesterday, and are staying in Christchurch on the South Island. It's already very different to Australia: autumn here is cold, and the leaves are falling. The red and gold trees look really pretty. It's even more like being at home here - cathedrals, oak trees and mallards. We're picking up the campervan in the morning, and then we hit the road! Woo hoo!

Western Australia

We've just spent a week in Western Australia, which has been very different to all our time in Asia. It came as a bit of a shock! Especially as we spent most of it with Kate's family, who looked after us amazingly well, even feeding us oysters and champagne - we're not used to such luxury!

The morning after we arrived we were taken out waterskiing. Kate was great at it and managed to stand up for ages, but I didn't. Think it's harder when you're tall... I did much better at the doughnuts and only fell off once. Kate didn't fall off at all - of course.

After a couple of days exploring Perth with Kate's Uncle Ian, we hired a car and headed south to Margaret River, the big wine growing area. We went on a great 'Bushtucker' wine tour, which involved Kate getting a little tipsy and me eating a wichity grub (delicious - tastes like peanut butter, looked horrible). While down in the south west, we also went to a beautiful cave and to the forests of giant karri and tingle trees. There was a really cool, but very wobbly, tree top walk. Next stop was Albany and the incredible coastline with natural blowholes and bridges.

We did well spotting Australian wildlife: kangaroos, emus, possums, kookaburras, and we cheated a little by seeing koalas, wombats and dingos at Cahuna Wildlife Park back in Perth. The place was a little run down, but the kangaroos and wallabys were very tame, so you could hand feed them which was fun.

While in Perth, we also managed to get to Scarborough and Cottesloe beaches to watch the surfers and eat fish and chips (different over here, they use snapper - yum!).

Our last couple of days in the west were spent on Rottnest Island. It's a beautiful place, with great beaches and bays. The weather was wonderful so were able to snorkel. It was a bit chilly, but there were loads of fish. While I was scuba diving, Kate saw a dolphin - I'm not jealous though, the underwater caverns were cool! Loads more wildlife here too: ospreys, oystercatchers, snakes, lizards, quokkas (they're not rats, they're not kangaroos!) and a huge sting ray.

We were really sad to leave Ian and Jenny yesterday as we had such a great time with them. Was even worse when we arrived at our accomodation in Sydney at midnight last night. We've already checked out, and are off to find somewhere a little less smelly!

Beijing and the Great Wall

After Xian, we visited Pingyao, an ancient walled city. I spent most of our time there in bed with a cold, but Kate told me it was pretty nice - lots of old buildings. Not too much to do there though, so we quickly moved onto Datong. Not the most charming of cities, but just out of town there are some caves with Buddhist carvings. They were incredible, thousands of buddhas all over the walls - did wonders for our giant stone buddha count!

Beijing has been cool, once it stopped raining. We tried not to get beaten by the weather, but lost after getting drenched at a market, and came back to the hostel and watched DVDs for the day. We treated ourselves that evening with a Peking Duck feast. Delicious, one of the best meals we're had in Asia, but ate far too much!

We've done lots of touristy stuff: the Forbidden City, Tiannamen Square (although we didn't see Mao), but the highlight was the Olympic Stadium. We could only see it from across a busy road, but it was very cool. To console ourselves for not being able to see the games, we've bought loads of Olympic souvenirs instead. The mascots are great!

Speaking of great... The Great Wall of China really was great. We were on a trip organised by our hostel to the 'Secret Wall' - a stretch of unrestored wall which no other tour groups go to. It was spectacular with incredible views, there really was no one else there! It was very windy on top of the wall, and with some sections being really ruined it was a bit scary at times. Lots of fun though.

We're off to the airport shortly for our flight to Perth. Our four months in Asia has gone really quickly, but it's been amazing. Will miss the chopsticks and the cheap beer, but not the squat toilets!

Giant Pandas, Giant Buddas and Giant Terracotta Warriors

Pandas are cute. Kind of stupid, but very cute. We visited a Panda breeding centre just out of Chengdu - Kate was very excited. So was I, they were great. As far as we can tell, pandas are perfectly evolved for sleeping and eating. Everything else (reproduction, walking) seems to be a bit trickier. They're not really helping themselves survive!

The next day our bus broke down. Not quite as dramatic a story, it was just a city bus, and another one pulled up a few minutes later, but it had us worried for a moment! We were on our way to Leshan, home to the world's biggest buddha. It's pretty big - 71 metres high. There were huge crowds of Chinese tourists, all armed with cameras and elbows... not all bad mind you, one guy gave us pea flavoured lollys. (That's a lolly that tastes of peas.) We got round the corner and quickly threw them away!

Our last day in Chengdu was wet, and we got drenched while walking the streets looking for an art gallery. We didn't find it, and just went back to the hostel and browsed the internet, while waiting for our train to Xian.

Which is where we are now! We saw the Terracotta Army yesterday - it's cool. Definitely one of the best things we've seen in China, although I think we both expected a bit more. It's all a bit dated now - the 360 degree cinema would have been more impressive when it was new, 15 years ago, and the buildings are all plain grey concrete. However, when you see the army itself, you forget it all! They stand in a 200m long hanger, and are incredibly detailed. Again, there were loads of tourists and Kate's enjoying the pushing and shoving a little too much!

Xian itself is a nice city. Lots of shopping and bargaining to be done, and we've found some great street food including fried pancakes, lamb kebabs and duck sandwiches. In fact, I think it's lunchtime!

63 hours on a bus

We made it to Chengdu... 63 hours after we started. It should have taken about 24 hours, but turned into a bit of a nightmare.

Our first sleeper bus was ok, even managed to sleep a bit and we arrived in the town where we had to change buses at about 5 am (12 hours). As we were packing up, someone grabbed Kate's iPod out of her open bag - just turned away for a second. We needed to report it to the police for our insurance, so headed to town and got ripped off in a taxi (charged double). We had a couple of hours to wait for the police station to open, so figured we'd get some breakfast. We went to a local cafe, where the owner spoke no English but kept bringing us different food to try. Really nice - and cost less than a pound! Finally met a police guy who spoke pretty good English, but it took ages to file the report. We were left in the Police Chief's office, and amused ourselves playing I-Spy and Charades. The worst of it was that we were kept waiting for over an hour while the rubber stamping machine was being repaired... couldn't they stamp it by hand?!

Got back to the bus station at about 12 to find that the next bus (which we thought were hourly) didn't leave till 3pm. A filthy little bus which made ominous noises and moved frustratingly slowly. I think we only covered about 200km in the first 4 or 5 hours.

At about 3 or 4am, we stopped. The driver came and had a sleep in the seat behind us. We figured he'd been driving a long time and needed a rest. A couple of hours later (daylight), we started reversing! We reversed a few km back to a town with a garage. Everyone had to get off the bus and help to push it into the garage... (I think it was stuck in gear or forward was broken?). The mechanic was pretty quick in removing the gearbox... people didn't seem very happy. But with us not speaking Chinese, it was very difficult to work out the problem. Using the Lonely Planet language pages we realised we'd be here a while, but other people were waiting too... so we thought - Ok.

It was about 8am now. We waited around this garage... dusty, oily (our clothes were filthy by the end)... people were very friendly and bought us snacks, even paying for us when we tried to buy our own. We were still waiting at 6pm when people started going for food. They insisted we went with them, and wouldn't let us pay. We all went to a local restaurant, passengers and the bus staff, and had a great meal... loads of food. Lots of photos being taken, high spirits, and we felt sure that the bus would be ready when we got back. Not quite...

We hadn't noticed that when we'd pushed the bus, we'd left it very neatly parked. Turned out that another bus would be arriving for us at 2am. So back on the bus for a sleep.

Unloaded our bags at 1am, and waited, not overly confident that anything would arrive... but it did, and it was full. I managed to get a seat at the back (with guys sleeping on my shoulder), but Kate had to stand for 3 hours before a seat came free - being careful not to stand on a box of kittens! Kate says "chivalry is dead in China" - we couldn't swap places as it was so tightly packed. (That's my excuse) We even had the broken gearbox on the bus!

We finally arrived in town at around 7am. Everyone was very nice, helped withour bags and waved us off... they'd been really friendly, even when we were getting stressed. We were sad to say goodbye. Got a couple of guy's phone numbers - not sure how the conversation will work?!

Took a taxi to the hostel, and ran to the shower... we were both so dirty and sweaty after spending a day on the roadside! Have now had a sleep, done our washing, had a meal and feel much better. Think we'll watch a film this evening and have the beer that we've been promising ourselves for the last 30 hours.

I think we'll take the train from now on.

One Week in Yunnan

It's cold! We're in Shangri La, in the mountains on the edge of Tibet - the town's at around 3200m. Pretty quiet, not many tourists... can't think why? Everyone we've spoken to has said it's quite safe for tourists here, apart from the cold.

We've been in China for about 7 days now, and really love it. We left Vietnam via a town called Sapa, also in the mountains. Wasn't quite as cold, but very misty, so we didn't quite get the epic views we hoped for. Nice though, and met lots of people from the local villages.

Crossing the Chinese border was fun - we were asked to show the offical all of the books in our bags. If we hadn't have disguised our Lonely Planet with the the cover from an Indian guidebook, it would have been confiscated, and we'd have been lost and hungry - especially since our next challenge was ordering a meal in a local restaurant! It was pretty disorienting to start with, but once we realised we could buy food and a bus ticket, we felt much more confident.

Our first city was Kunming - it's a pretty small city, by Chinese standards. Pretty big by ours. We stayed in a great guesthouse, called The Hump, where we met loads of cool people. Had a great night out in a nearby bar (which sold cans of Boddingtons), then went onto a club with an English guy and his Chinese girlfriend. Great fun - you order beer by the dozen!

We overslept. Woke up the next day at 12 - the same time we should have been checking out. So it seemed sensible to have a lazy day around the hostel before catching our overnight bus.

Lijiang is one of the prettiest towns we've been too, lots of traditional Chinese (Naxi) buildings, canals with fish, and lots of Chinese tourists. Spent a couple of days wandering round the streets taking far too many photographs, as usual. Just outside the town is a beautiful park around a lake formed by a natural spring. The water was perfectly clear and you could see hundreds of Koi carps. The lake was surrounded by some wonderful pagodas, and was really quiet, mainly due to the extortionate ticket prices.

Next stop was Tiger Leaping Gorge for a bit more trekking. It's a great place, with incredible scenery from the snow capped mountains, to the rapids rushing through the 20m wide - 4000m deep gorge. We trekked for 2 days with some really nice English guys we met in Lijiang. Hard work, but great fun, and Kate only freaked out once - after climbing a vertical ladder up the gorge!

China's been really great so far, and we've another 3 weeks to go. Not looking forward to the 25 hour bus journey to Chengdu though, I'm sure there'll be a lot to write about after that!

Halong Bay and Hanoi

We had another long overnight bus trip to Hanoi from Hue. It was quite an exciting one, though, as the bus' rear window shattered at about 1am and covered Paul in glass! I think it must have been a very big stone that did it. The bus guy tried to solve the problem by drawing the curtains and our journey was accompanied by the tinkle of falling glass until they stopped an hour later and covered the hole with tarpaulin!

We like Hanoi. It is big and bustling and there is lots of bia hoi. We've also seen some beautiful pagodas and Ho Chi Minh's mausaleum (didn't go in though!). I think Paul and Ben got a bit sick of pagodas, but cheered themselves up with some KFC!

We did a 3 day, 2 night trip to Halong Bay. It was really beautiful and really peaceful sailing around the islands and rocks in our junk. We visited a huge, beautiful cave and Cat Ba island National Park, where we saw tiny frogs! My favourite thing was kayaking in the rain. We kayaked to a really beautiful lagoon and managed not to capsize, either. Karaoke seems to be a pretty big thing here still and Paul and Ben did a couple of beautiful duets in the evening!

We're back in Hanoi now and are getting an overnight train to Sapa, in the mountains, in a couple of hours. We've spent the day buying toiletries and supplies for China. Ben's headed off to Laos, so its just the two of us again - I'm sure it'll be fine!

Made to Measure

We've had a great week - diving and shopping!

We went to Nha Trang, on the beach, and Ben perusaded us to go on a diving trip. Kate went snorkelling, and I did an 'introduction to scuba diving' - which meant that another guy pushed me around underwater, all I had to do was breathe! Really enjoyed it, so decided to do the four day PADI diving course: 2 days in the classroom and pool, and 2 days diving. First day in Nha Trang and the rest further up the coast in Hoi An.

A long overnight bus journey to get there, but we had a bed-bus so managed to get a bit of sleep. Arrived at 8am, the next day of my course started at 10. The diving wasn't quite as good in Hoi An, colder and less fish, but I'm now a certified scuba diver! Looking forward to Australia and the Cook Islands... if I wasn't already.

The main attraction of Hoi An, however, is shopping... so we shopped! The town is full of tailor shops, and having clothes made to measure is very addictive. We've bought some great suits, coats and dresses, just better not put any weight on before we get home.

In Hue now, off to see some tunnels from the Vietnam War tomorrow, before getting another bed-bus to Hanoi and Halong Bay. Hopefully we'll get a lie in at some point - it's another 6am start tomorrow.

Good Morning Vietnam

Sorry... I couldn't resist the title. It was too cheesy not to. We've been in Vietnam for 5 days now and are still travelling with Ben, which is great. We seem to be watching lots of football, now, though....

We started off in Ho Chi Minh City (most people seem to still call it Saigon!). It is a really big bustling city and we got a hotel room with actual hot water and air conditioning - It was wonderful! We had heard that there was a really great waterpark there, so on our first day decided to head there after a cultural morning seeing some pagodas. The pagodas were very beautiful, with lots of dragons and incence. Unfortunately, the water park didn't exist. Even worse, the taxi driver didn't realise this until we got to the site where it was (before it was demolished!) and charged us for driving us there and back! That evening, we managed to cheer ourselves up with our discovery of bia hoi. It is a locally brewed beer and costs 4,500 dong per litre - about 15p!! It also actually tastes really nice!

We headed out for some serious sightseeing on our second day. We saw the cities major sights, including the Re-Unification Palace and the War Remnants museum. The Re-Unification Palace is the one that the Northern Vietnam communists smashed down the gates of with a tank at the end of the war. The museum was really interesting, but sad and awful too. It didn't really cast the US army as particularly good or decent.

We headed up to Dalat yesterday. It is really high in the hills and is much cooler than it is in Saigon. Both Paul and I are currently wearing trousers and long sleeve tops. The French colonnials really liked it up here, because it reminded them of the Alps and you can really see why! There are big lakes and pine forests and many of the buildings look like ski chalets. We thought we were in Europe until we ordered white coffees and they came ridiculously strong and with condensed milk (we had added more sugar before we realised, too - yuk!).

We met up with a Swiss girl called Nora and have spent most of our time here so far with her and Ben. Ben supports Middlesborough, so we managed to find a bar with the 'Borough - Cardiff game last night... We tried to cheer him up this morning by climbing a mountiain. Not sure how effective it was, but the views were great. Not so peaceful, though as there were a big group of Vietnamese Christians chanting at the top! Tomorrow we're off to find a waterfall with a mini-rollercoaster and a cable car. Then it's back to the beach...

Battambang, Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville

Once we had got over the bus and van journey, we had a great time in Battambang. We did a Cambodian cooking course, which involved us going to the market to buy the food and then cooking it. The market was really interesting. The fish were live and bashed over the head in front of you and I saw a woman selling live, but skinned frogs!! There were also selections of honey roasted insects!! Luckily for us, our cooking course stuck to chicken, beef and fish. It was great fun, although Paul nearly chopped his finger off!!

That afternoon, we went for a bit of a tour of the surrounding countryside, which was so beautiful. Cambodia is really flat and the countryside goes on for miles. We stopped to visit a temple and some caves where the Khmer Rouge killed local people during the massacres here. The temple was beautiful and serence, but the caves felt so awful and sad. On the way back, we rode on the bamaboo train - it's basically a bamboo platform, powered by a motorbike engine on some very rickety train tracks - great fun.

After Battambang, we went to Phnom Penh. Here, we met up with Paul's friend Ben and some Canadian girls he knows. It was really nice to spend time with other people! We spent a day learning about the Khmer Rouge and the genocide they carried out in the 1970s. We went to a memorial in some of the killing fields and then to Tuol Sleng, which was a prison where people were tortured before being sent to the the killing fields. We learnt a lot about the brutal ways in which people were killed. It was really hard to get your head around why and how something like that could happen. It is really wierd to think that everyone here over the age of 30 lived through it. Our driver told us that he does not know any family that did not lose people to the Khmer Rouge. What is amazing is that the Cambodian people we have met have seemed so friendly and welcoming and lovely. Cambodia seems to have already come an awfully long way in a very short time and people have got on with their lives. It seems incredible that people can go on after something so terrible.

After Phnom Penh, we went to Sihanoukville, met up with BEn, again, and spent a couple of days on the beach, which was really nice. Happy Hour beers were 25p, so we had a really good time. No more blue cocktails for me, though! Right now, we are back in Phnom Penh and will be heading to Vietnam tomorrow. We have really loved Cambodia. We spent 3 great days at Angkor and have loved the countryside, the beaches and the people. Time for Vietman, though!

Best day so far...

Tottenham won the cup!

Cup final day, and my first excuse to wear my new Spurs shirt. The time difference made it a late 10pm kick off, but we headed into Siem Reap to find a bar who would let us watch the match. They weren't too happy that it ran into extra time, neither were we, we had to get up at 5am.

Early morning start for our boat trip to Battambang. Boat was maybe a little small for the 40 people travelling with us, so Kate and I headed for the roof to sit with the luggage. The boat was slightly top heavy and so a little unstable, but was reasonably comfortable. It was very scenic with lots of wildlife and floating villages, but the travel company had a little suprise for us: we'd be finishing the journey by road. Since it's the dry season, the river was too low for the boat. That would have been ok, if they had more than two pickup trucks.

We had 20 people in each pickup - myself and two others had to sit on the roof of the cab. Again, would have been fine, if there was a proper road!

We really love Cambodia though - the people here are very friendly and Angkor was incredible. We've just spent an hour editing our photos, we took far too many, but of course, they still don't do it justice!

Life's a Beach

Cheesy title. Kate's choice. We've been in Thailand for the last week. A few days in Bangkok, followed by a bit longer on a beach on Ko Chang.

Bangkok wasn't quite what I expected. Actually I can't justify that, as I don't really know what I expected - but I think I liked it!? Having spent the last 2 weeks in Nepal, the big city came as a bit of a suprise, as did the heat and humidity. Hotel was around the main backpacker area, but comfortably far enough away from the infamous Khao San Road. I think I expected to see everything you hear about Bangkok to be on one street. Lots of bright lights, clubs, markets, food (oh, I'll have to mention food!) - good fun! Had a couple of beers there, but didn't hang around too long.

Yes, food! Loads and loads of street sellers, and unlike in India, it seemed (reasonably) safe to try them. How can you resist a 50p plate of fried noodles! Well, I couldn't resist, many times. Saw one person selling deep fried insects, although I think her real profit was in the charging for photos.

What else, temples, palaces, boats on the river... Very nice, but we needed a holiday (from our holiday), so off to the beach.

Ko Chang is an island just off the south east coast of Thailand. We've spent four days being very lazy. If we weren't on the beach, we were in a hammock, and if not there... then riding an elephant.

Our 13 year old (former working) elephant was called An-na, and she took us for a trek up a mountain and along a river. The clear high point, and possibly of the trip so far, was swimming with the elephant. Great fun and I think, I hope, An-na enjoyed it too. Did you know that elephant poo floats...?

Off to Cambodia tomorrow morning. It's a 12 hour bus journey, so had to buy some more books. Looking forward to a decent night's sleep (our beach cabin is very noisy at high tide, at 4am) and a hot shower (pouring buckets of cold water over your head isn't fun).

Shouldn't complain though - life's a beach!

Adventure!!

It's been a really busy week!! Last Sunday, Paul decided to throw himself off a cliff. Luckily he did it while attached to a parachute and an experienced paraglider. He says it was really good, but he felt a bit sick when they guy made him do acrobatics. I stood on the hill, like a wimp, and took lots of pictures!! Kind of wished I'd done it too, now, but we had a row on the lake in the afternoon - much more my style and pace!

Then... on Monday, we set off on our 4 day trek into the Himalayans. We had an amazing, but very tiring time. On our first day we walked for 5 hours to a village called Tikedhungga (I think?). We followed a river up a valley, walking through pretty villages and stopping to look at pretty waterfalls.

The next morning we had to walk up 3,300 steps to a village called Ulleri, where we collapsed for a while, before continuing uphill to Gorhepani. We started in warm sunshine, but while we walked up through the forest, we started to see snow and ice. Gorhepani was freezing and snowy. Our water and Paul's deodorant froze in our room overnight and we slept under 6 blankets!! The views of the mountains were amazing, though.

We started day three at 5.15am, by walking up Poon Hill to watch the sun come up over the mountains. I thought I was going to die, but the view was stunning at the top. I have never been so high up and am proud to say I wasn't at all scared. I slipped and fell on my backside on the way down though! After a hearty breakfast, we began our descent to Tatopani. The valley we walked down was the most beautiful place I have ever been - we nearly stayed there an extra night!! There were high mountains and hills, terraced paddy and mustard fields, farms and pretty villages. We were regularly overtaken by herds of pack horses and wandering cows.

We stopped for lunch at a lodge where they dug up the veg fresh for our dinner. The family just got on with their jobs around us - grandad mainly shooing chickens off his veg patch! We started our walk at freezing temperatures, but by the time we got down into the valley, it was lovely and warm and there were orange trees growing! They were the sweetest oranges I've ever tasted. We finally got to Tatopani after about 7 hours and collapsed into the hot springs there - our muscles were very relieved for it!

On our last day, we only had to walk a few hours to get a jeep, then a taxi back to Pokhara. It was lucky we hadn't gone further, because we could barely walk at this point! The valley we walked down was much more severe than the last - the hills towered above us. They are building a road up there, so it was really dusty, which was a shame, but you can't stop progress!

We got to Pokhara last night and treated ourselves to a huge dinner and a few beers. Today, we've just been hobbling slowly around like a pair of O.A.P.s. The trek was brilliant, though and we both want to come back and do a longer one - more slowly and with more preparation, though!

Back to the Future

In Nepal, it's the year 2065 - but no hover boards or flying cars. They just use a different calendar, which is almost as odd as their 5 hour 45 minute time zone

Our bike ride was predictably unsucessful. We found the monkey temple... big stupa and lots of monkeys. But after that we struggled to find everything else we were looking for. I blame the map, Kate blames the navigator.

We took a walk to see the world's biggest stupa (a Buddhist monument) - it was big. Then from there we went to a site of Hindu temples alongside the holy river in Kathmandu. There were several funeral pyres burning on the river banks, which was a very sad, but interesting experience.


We left Kathmandu a couple of days ago, and stopped halfway to Pokhara in a tiny village called Bandipur. The village sits on the top of a hill, and gives great views over the valley below. It's a bit off the tourist trail (but still in the Lonely Planet!), so was really quiet. Lots more walking. plus a bit of caving in the biggest cave in Nepal - it was big. Feeling really relaxed from a lazy couple of days there, and ready for our trek!

Nepal Rocks

Delhi turned out to be pretty cool, once we'd changed rooms to get away from the resident mice. Old Delhi was very similar to the rest of India, but New Delhi was suprisingly different. Wide roads, new builings, clean and quiet - may have had something to do with preparations for Republic Day. Big military parades, air force fly-bys... all being held on the day we left.

But it didn't matter, because Nepal rocks! Kathmandu is a very laid back city, even in the main touristy area. We're warmer too, having bought replica North Face jackets, and woolly hats and gloves. (Photos of Kate to follow). The temples here are amazing and there are bars with beer and live bands playing rock covers - and you know how we like rock cover bands!

Had a wander round the city, saw Durbar Square and the many temples along the way (including a shrine to the god of toothaches), and also the Nepali Living Goddess.

Hiring bikes tomorrow and heading for the Monkey Temple (lots of monkeys, apparently), then moving onto Pokhara for a bit of trekking in the mountains... maybe.

India's not supposed to be cold!

It's been a very cold week. After leaving Jaipur, we went to Sawai Madhopur, where there is a tiger reserve called Ranthambore National Park. The good news is that we saw a tiger. The bad news was that we were so cold, we couldn't feel our toes! There was a proper frost and Paul had made me unpack my jeans before we set off. He only let me bring 2 jumpers too!

From there, we went to Agra. We went to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise and got there while it was still dark. The Taj was as beautiful as you would imagine, but again, I felt like my toes had fallen off.

We're in Delhi now and it is a bit warmer. However, we fly to Nepal tomorrow and are planning to do some trekking in the Himalayas. Think we're going to have to buy some big coats, socks, jumpers, hats, gloves and scarfs!!

Kite Fighting in Jaipur

After a not very promising start to Jaipur, we've grown to really like it here and have had a great time. It's taken us a long time to get used to the busy-ness of India, but I think we've got it now!! The people here are really friendly and hospitable, whether they are trying to get your money or not. We've found that once the bargaining is over, people are still really lovely and will do their best to help you out if you're stuck.

They have recently had a kite festival in Jaipur, which we missed by 2 days. There are still loads of kites around, though - mainly stuck in trees! We decided to buy one and ended up with 3 for 2 rupees (glass string for 20rs!). Our attempts to fly it were rubbish, but some kids helped us (and laughed at us) and then managed to cut the string of our kite with theirs. Turns out, they don't just fly kites here, but fight with them. After losing two kites in 10 minutes, we skulked off with our last one (to lots of laughter!).

Yesterday, we went to the Amber Fort which was very impressive. We decided to do a 7km trek to another fort. It was obviously hard work and at one point we were chased by a big monkey. It was worth it for the view of the city at sunset, though... and the beer that went with it. Luckily we met a nice Kiwi guy who was able to show us a quicker, monkey free way back down to the city.

We're moving onto Ranthambore Tiger Reserve tomorrow, which will be cool, but we're both unexpectedly sad to be leaving Jaipur.

Kids and Camels (Jodhpur and Jaisalmer)

Our first Indian bus journey took us to Jodhpur, famous for a big fort. We'll remember it most for the children, who bullied us constantly: saying "What's your name?... one penny, one rupee, one school pen?" and slapping us if we wouldn't shake their hands. At one point we had 10 children following us, chanting "Hello!", and pinching our bums!

But the fort in Jodphur was impressive, great views over the annoying children below. Food wasn't so great, and both spent a day inside with dodgy stomachs - at least the kids couldn't find us.

Everything calmed down once we reached Jaisalmer. Small place, much quieter and less hassle. We spent two days on safari on the back of a camel. Fun, for a while, but a once in a lifetime experience... we're never doing it again. We're still aching two days later. Worth it though, great sand dunes, sunsets and food cooked on an open fire, which Kate collected the wood for. We both bought Camel leather bags as souveniers (it's goat leather really).

We're now in Jaipur. Not great to be in a big city again, but we're getting used to it. Off to see more forts tomorrow... but hopefully no more kids or camels.

Udaipur

We are now in Udaipur, which is much nicer than Mumbai in all ways! It's still really busy, but it is much smaller and we've met some really friendly people. The train journey here was ridiculously long and slow (22 hours at a snail pace), but we shared a carriage with a really nice Indian couple who kept giving us food and not taking 'no thank you' for an answer!!

Udaipur is supposed to be the Venice of India. It has around 5 lakes and some amazing palaces (one is on top of a mountain and two in the middle of a lake). The lakes and palaces are beautiful, but the city is still crazy. As well as cars and buses, the traffic also consists of motor rickshaws, bicycles, donkeys, camels and elephants!!! Our first rickshaw experience with our big back packs was pretty hairy!! Not managed to get on an elephant, yet, though.

Most people who have spoken to us have wanted to know our opinion on the cricket outrage and want to make sure we are not Australian!

Last day in Mumbai

Time to move onto our next stop - ready for it too. 20 million people live in Mumbai, and just half a million in Udaipur... hopefully will be a bit quieter!

Saw our first Bollywood movie last night, all 3 hours of it. Great fun though, just about followed the plot. Was sat in the lobby afterwards, and had a conversation with two Indian guys:
Them: Hello
Me: Hi
Them: (laugh)
Me: Are you here to see "Welcome"
Them: Yes
Me: I've just seen it, it's very good!
Them: (more laughs)
Them: Speak Hindi?
Me: Hindi? No
Them: (laughed me out of the cinema)

Treated myself to a haircut today (best 50p I've spent) while Kate read Hello and OK.
Off for a wander before our 20 hour train journey. Woo hoo!

First stop Mumbai

Flight to India was great. We were upgraded to business class (thanks James!) - bed seats, fine wines, champagne, free socks! So we weren't quite ready for the mayhem in Mumbai. A scary taxi ride got us to the hotel - apparently beeping helps squeeze the car through gaps and around pedestrians, goats and cows.
Hotel is ok - basic, noisy, but could be worse.

Fi and Paul are also staying at the hotel (in a nice air conditioned room - dammit), and we've spent a great couple of days exploring, we've seen the cave temples at Elephanta Island, the Prince of Wales museum, and practiced bargaining at markets. Kate's already spending.

We've got a couple more days here, before our long train journey north, but Fi and Paul are leaving today - not sure what we'll do without them!