Feb 8
An Update from Oz
Time for a quick update from Australia.
We arrived into Melbourne on the 21st of December just in time to spend an excellent Aussie Christmas with Denise, Simon and Daniel.
After chilling for a few weeks in Melbourne we hired a campervan and set off along the Great Ocean Road and then onto Adelaide. We managed to take in all the major tourist sights and also tick off sightings of all the famous Aussie animals in the wild.
We spent a few days in Adelaide before we set off on a 6 day tour to Alice Springs. We stopped off at some really cool places along the way including of course that big chunk of rock - Uluru. We did some really challenging hikes including an 8km hike up Dutchman’s Stern in the afternoon heat of 40 degrees so managed to finish up in Alice Springs a few pounds lighter!
We spent 2 nights in Alice Springs trying to cope with the soaring Northern Territory’s heat and then caught a flight over to Cairns to land in… rain!! We felt just a little bit at home but the warm temperatures soon got rid of those thoughts!
On the 30th of January it was time for another campervan hire, this time to make the journey down the East Coast to Sydney. Our first day was a bit of a disaster as we only managed to get 200kms down the road before being stuck for 2 nights in Cardwell due to flood waters blocking the road.
“Stuck in this tiny place in the rain for my birthday”, I thought. Thankfully the police woke us at 1am on the 1st and sent us on our way. We managed to get further down the road but to our dismay we were greeted with only more rain!
After a few days we finally managed to get away from the rain and we are now enjoying the “Sunshine State”. Our first major stop was Bundaberg where we visited the famous rum distillery and sampled a few drinks - before lunch was probably a bad idea so I had to get my stomach filled up with a delicious lunch in town. That evening we went to Mon Repos Conservation Park, a short 12km from Bundy to watch from nesting and hatching sea turtles. We were lucky enough to watch the rangers process a Loggerhead turtle nest that had hatched a few nights earlier where they found three baby turtles that hadn’t been strong enough to make it to the top, we sent them on their way to the sea to hopefully make it to adulthood and then we watched a group of Green Turtles make the race to the sea from the beach.
We visited Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo yesterday and watched an excellent animal show in the Crocoseum and we are now enjoying a lazy Sunday on the Southbank in Brisbane - similar in ways to London’s southbank with the exception of the beach!
Tomorrow we are heading for the Gold coast to some theme parks and some more sun!!!
I will upload photos as soon as I can…
No commentsDec 19
Cambodia
Whilst we were in Siem Reap we visited the famous Angkor Wat temples. We took a tuk-tuk trip from our hostel which took us around for 1 day visiting the “small tour” route. The temples were really impressive and it’s amazing to think that they were built so long ago.
My personal favourite of the temples that we visited was Ta Phrom where nature has taken over and through the whole temple there are roots and trees growing everywhere.
We were pretty tired out from all our temple-hopping and climbing the steep temple steps that the next day we checked ourselves into the Golden Banana boutique hotel for a few days of luxury. We treated ourselves to an hour long traditional Khmer massage that sorted out all those aches and pains and chilling by the pool in the hotel. It was nice to treat ourselves to a few days luxury after a month of hard travelling!
From Siem Reap we took a bus down to Cambodia’s capital where we spent a few days visiting the Royal Palace (not really worth the visit in my opinion) and the S21 Toul Sleng museum and the killing fields just out of the city. The museum is an old school that was turned into an interrogation centre and prison during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, from which prisoners were taken to the killing fields to be slaughtered. It was really quite chilling to imagine what had gone on in these places and for it to be so recent as only 30 or so years ago.
No commentsDec 8
Battambang, Cambodia
We crossed the border from Thailand into Cambodia at Poipet and instead of taking the usual tourist route to Siam Reap we decided to visit Battambang. It was about a 2 hour journey from the border which we travelled by taxi, our first introduction to how the use the car horn in south-east asian countries - basically it is used to tell other road users that you are coming through and they better get out of the way quick!
Battambang is the second largest city in Cambodia but it didn’t feel any bigger to us than a small UK town. The city spreads out from the Central Market where most of the action is. We stayed in the Royal hotel which was right beside the market and were able to watch all of the action and the motorbikes whizzing every which way from the rooftop bar.
We took a recommendation from the Lonely Planet and went for dinner in the Smokin’ Pot restaurant to sample some local Cambodian food. It was so delicious!! I had a vegetable amok which is a coconut milk based red curry with lots of local vegetables and Iain tried the Lok Lak which is Beef with a peppery oyster sauce. The restaurant advertised cooking classes so spurred on by the delicious meal we had just had we signed up for the following day.
No commentsDec 8
Bangkok
We ended up spending 9 days in Bangkok waiting for our Vietnam visas to come through (it’s the only visa that you have to make sure that you have in advance of arriving at the border) so managed to see a lot of the city.
We visited some of the many temples that there are in Bangkok to see the many different positions Buddha is cast in: sitting, standing, reclining, emerald (although we couldn’t take any photos of the emerald Buddha).
We also took a day trip to the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market which involved getting up around 5am to be there to get the most of the action. It is a market on one of the canals about 2 hours from Bangkok and one of the only floating markets still running. It was a bit touristy and most of the goods were tourist souveneirs and fruit but was good fun. We took a bus from Bangkok and then changed to a long tail boat when we got close to the market before swapping for a paddle boat to go through the market.
There were so many shopping opportunities in Bangkok with night markets, day markets and the amazing Chattachak Weekend Market which has over 15000 stalls! It was really difficult to resist the temptation to spend, spend, spend but fortunately the size and space in our backpacks has helped to curb the temptation!
While in Bangkok we stayed in the Hostelling International Hostel HI-Sukhumvit on Sukhumvit Soi 38 which was really good. It was really clean with friendly staff, a rooftop with cushions to laze about on and even free breakfast thrown in every morning.
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I have to say that Bangkok certainly hasn’t been my favourite city so far. You get hassled quite a lot by people expecting you to buy something from them so I was quite glad to be moving on to Cambodia once we had successfully got our Vietnam Visas in our passports!
No commentsNov 9
Tsukiji Fish Market & Tokyo Disneyland in One Day!
Thinking that we had 2 days left to fit in everything we wanted to do in Tokyo, one day at Disneyland and a visit to the fish market followed by an early night in preparation for our early flight on Wednesday, we noticed that the fish market was closed on the Monday so headed off to Disneyland instead - only to get to the gates and realise that it was sold out due to a National Holiday - Doh!
As we couldn’t get back into the magical kingdom we headed back into central Tokyo and wandered around Akihabara - Electric Town. It was sensory overload with shop after shop of electrical goods blaring out catchy tunes and tempting us to spend our remaining yens - unfortunately there was no room in the backpacks!
So on Tuesday morning we got up super early and went of to the largest fish market in the world. There should be a warning sign for sleepy-heads here - there were a few near misses with the carts that speed around the market delivering fresh fish from stall to stall. It was so interesting to see where all of that fish in Japan actually comes from! We were surrounded by so many different types of fish but especially eye-catching were the enormous frozen tunas - they were as big as me!
I felt a bit queasy to say the least after walking through a market of fish for about 45 minutes I didn’t think I was going to manage to eat any sushi but after a few walks around the block we stopped into a sushi place where I had the most amazing sushi ever! It was great to know that this was as fresh as it could ever get - I think that our breakfast could have been auctioned off only an hour or so earlier!
After washing down my sushi with some green tea we headed off on the tokyo metro to Disneyland! I was pretty excited after the disappointment of not being able to get in the day before.
We managed to get on most rides that we wanted to despite the park being really busy with Japanese people taking an extended holiday. It rained non-stop from around noon but we didn’t let that dampen our spirits and still managed to sing and dance along with the parade which was Halloween themed.
Unfortunately the night parade was cancelled due to all of the rain so it was off home exhausted and sleepy to catch a few hours sleep before our flight to Hong Kong the next day…
No comments