Round the World

Hello everyone!

Ten days or so on, 2000 miles later were a little bit nearer to our final destination in Oz-Cairns. We've had great fun, the three of us (Me Tan and Charlie) and apart from a few leaks and some funny noises (all coming from Tan I may add) we're getting on brilliantly.

From our last entry in the blue mountains, which incidentally seems like years ago we've visited quite a few different places, some great some not so. Our first stop was Stockton near Newcastle, i've never been to Stockton in the U.K but i'd imagine it has about the same amount of charm and character as Stockton-Aus..... none! we made a quick move from there north, heading towards Byron Bay the hippy resort down under. We made a few other pit stops on the way but nowhere either of us can remember so I wont waste typing time on them.

Byron Bay was great, we finally hit our first patch of good weather (sunny and about 21c) the town reminded us of an upmarket Goa minus the rubbish and with a little bit more class, kind of hippies who werent really hippies they were loaded (lots of nice cars) but just dressed scruffily, not neccassarily a bad thing but just what we picked up on. The beach at Byron was stunning, apparantly 17kms of unbroken white sands altough not having walked the length I cannot confirm or deny that fact. We spent a couple of days there relaxing, we also managed to spot Dolphins at sunset and Whales at sunrise which we were chuffed about, it saved us a packet on paying for a whale watching trip thats for sure.

We headed to the Gold coast from Byron, about 4 hours drive. The Gold coasts a kind of upmarket Costa, spending too much time there is just a bad idea, everything there costs lots. We just had the one day there, after winning a bet a few weeks back Tan had decided to give a rollercoaster a go, which is something i've never been able to convince her to try. We paid a visit to Movieworld, a kind of Warner brothers Disneyworld. True to her word we went on a double looping corkscrewing 150foot terror ride and to my total suprise she loved it, and after we went back to the van and she changed her undies I couldnt get her off the rides for the rest of the day.

Us and Wayne Rooney on a day off from the world cup.

Brisbane was next, we were just an hour too late to catch a footy (Ozzie rules) game at the Gabba which was (Quote-Tan)"dissapointing" so we had to make do with a look around the stadium and a visit to the club shop. We only spent a few hours in Brisbane as the nearest we could camp was about 10kms out, we did meet up with a couple of people we went treking with in Thailand which was great as they are doing the opposite journey to us we compared notes went bowling and had a few stubbies.

Tropical rainforst in Gladstone.

Turtle power!

From there we went to Rainbow beach, the jump off point to Fraser island, the largest sand island in the world. Although it rained like we've never seen before for 4 hours straight during the morning it didnt take anything away, the place was amazing, we went on a 4X4 bus day trip, visited Shipwrecks, lakes, Lagoons, desert, swamps, rainforest and the famous 65mile beach all of this on an island which is just 15kms wide at its widest point, mindblowing!. We didnt know what to expect but we were blown away with how much life there was and with the amount of different enviroments that were packed into such a small area. A great day out and we'd love to come back again and camp here for a little longer, if thats ever possible.

Shipwreck on Fraser island.

Lake Mckenzie.

We're now about 800 miles North at Airlee beach, part of the Whitsundays. Wednesday we take a day trip out to a few of the islands to see what all the fuss is about a bit of snorkelling too, We end up on Whitehaven beach which apparantly has the whitest sand in the world, we'll let you know.

Bye bye for now, Ant and Tan xx xx

We're going to turn over a new leaf and update the blog quicker than it takes to complete a menstral cycle, we'll see how it go's.

Well a new country, a new language (sort of) and definately a new climate, crikey! I think the cerimonial 'shrimp throwing on the barbie' will have to wait, its brass monkeys out here. You'd think coming from Wales we'd be hardened and used to cold weather, but it seems not. Arriving at Sydney airport 6am in flip-flops (sorry thongs, using the local talk) a t-shirt and shorts probably wasn't the wisest decsision but it was a bit of a shock to the system and we're slowly but surely acclimatising.

We spent out first 3 days in Sydney, it felt like a cleaner, friendlier and generally nicer Britain (maybe the weather helped us reach that comparison?!) we had a great few days, did the usual sight-seeing bit, Opera house, Harbour bridge, Bondi etc... but as with lots of capital cities it was pretty expensive, not quite as pricey as home but having got used to staying at hotels for 3/4quid a night and both eating and drinking for a fiver it was back to the 'real world'.

We've hired a camper van to travel up to Cairns in, its a bit of a shed and covered in some very distastefull graffiti but its got (almost) everything we need, bed, table, cooler, sink, oven etc... no toilet or shower though, we're hoping that our Glastonbury experiences can see us through the hardest of times in 'Charlie' we've not travelled far from Sydney as yet, just a couple of hours West to the Blue Mountains, its a beatiful area there are a few national parks here, caves, lakes and (youve guessed it Mountains, although we've yet to see a Blue one yet!) we spent our first couple of days here camping (in our van) in one of the national parks. Within 20 minutes of geting into the park we realised we didnt have any drinking water then proceeded to get our van stuck in the mud, CLASSIC! we had to get help via some Indian tourists who passed on our S.O.S call to the Rangers who turned up an hour later and rescued our "sorry Pomme arses" (they didnt say that, but they didnt need to). We also thought we'd make use of the skills we had picked up from the Ray Mears 'bushcraft' show and collect and boil our own drinking water from a local source, great idea but it tasted like vomit and our tum's seemed to almost instantly repel it, ah well we did try.

The park was great, we were the only campers there, not unsuprising as the night temprature hovered around freezing! but we had Kangaroos nearby as well as dozens of different brirds including some lovley white parotts who let us hand feed them.

We're now in Katoomba going to spend the night here before making our way back to the coast up toward Newcastle and hopefully to sunnier climbs!

Take care all, Anthony and Tania xx

Hi all, sorry its been so long but we seemed to have entered some sort of time warp where one day we're arriving at Denpasar international airport and the next we're back in Singapore waiting for a connection to Sydney. Thankfully we managed to do a fair bit during that 'day' so the blog will be longer than just one paragraph.

Bali was great, brilliant weather, good food, beatiful scenery but like everywhere we've visited so far it had god awful local wine, we have so far resisted the temptation of splashing out on ridicuously priced imported wines and have had to make do with lager and weird sounding highly flammable regional spirits, poor us eh?! So for one reason we're looking forward to getting to Sydney and sampling some of the best Australia has to offer but for so many other reasons we'll be sorry to leave Bali, and Asia as a whole. We've both enjoyed Asia more than we had expected, and could have easily spent our 6 and a half months here but the tickets are booked and no doubt we'll continue to have a great time in Oz and afterwards.

Anyway back to Bali, we only managed to see about a third of the country partly as we got stuck in Kuta (think any one of several hundered resorts around the Med) for almost 2 weeks (long and very boring story....much like the blogs then eh? in fact dont answer that) from there we travelled north to Ubud which is the area that lots of manufacturors (sp?!) artists, writers, desingers (and us) stay. It also had a monkey forest nearby where the monkeys had some some traits as some of the kids from Bonymaen, small, very cheeky, they both tend to have whispy hair around the face and slightly long dirty fingernails (not wanting to stereotype of course, I mean some of the monkeys were positively large) We also hired a car which was terrible, we spent 4 hours the first day avoiding scooters with whole families on, carts filled with fighting cocks (i'll leave you draw your own conclusion) and just continually going around in circles. That was even before we left our hostel! to cut a long story short driving in Bali isn't for us. Once our pride had been bashed and pride alone (more luck than judgement) we gave up and hired a car with a driver, only slightly more expensive but a damn sight less stressfull. He took us to visted a series of beatiful temples and Gunang Batur (Bali's second larget volcano) which was stunning, we've got some great pics and we're hoping to get some on here from Oz.

From Ubud we came south again to Sanur, we only stayed for a couple of nights but managed to see everything worth seeing (we think) we got up the second morning at 5:15am to watch the sunset thinking it would be very romantic to watch the sun come over the horizon sat together on a deserted beach, think again. There must have been at least 300 kids there, apparantely on summer holidays from Java and although they kind of spoilt the romance it just wouldnt be Asia without a few hundered locals at close proximotory, we spent most of the rest of the day playing the biggest game of crazy golf i've seen in my life, 18 punishing holes which incidentally for the record books I (Ant) won, sorry Tan.

Following Sanur we caught a shuttle bus to Dreamland (Erics old stomping ground) we met up with Indra who ran the place where Eric stayed and made camp in his old tree house. It's a fantastic place, the houses are built in a large field which is on top of a cliff overlooking 2 beaches, everyone we met (including Erics cronnies Arya and ChiMien) were so helpfull and friendly we both felt right at home, they even had 3 dogs to amuse us. We had only planned to stay a night or 2 there before heading off to see more of Bali but we didnt leave until we had to come to the airport a week later, again got some photo's to put on here. I think we've said this about each place we've been, but we mean it! that we'd love to come back to Bali again in the future, theres lots we just didnt get to see and do, and lots we'd like to see and do again, Tremacassy Bali!

For some people at home they will be glad that we're leaving an area of moving tectonic plates, civil unrest and bird flu but we'll be a little sad although we do have six weeks in Australia to soften the blow, Ozzy ozzy ozzy!! oh yes and the world cup, i've got to stop Tania continually counting down, 6 days 5 hours 26 minutes, 25 minutes, all in good time Tan.

Seeya this 'arvo, bring your 'ute, fair'd inkum mates.

Ant and Tan xx

Sunrise at Angkor Wat.

After the islands we travelled back to Bangkok on another wonderful Boat/Bus combo, another 12 hour fun filled trip on public transport only made bearable by our consumption of half a litre on SamSon(very cheap Local Thai whiskey, very very cheap-like 1 quid 50 for a litre)coke and red bull during another marathon journey. We spent a couple of nights on Th Koah Sarn before booking a trip into Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat.

We needed to leave and re-enter Thailand as our visa was just about out. The trip was three days, day one-travel there, day two-see the temples, day three-travel back. Sounded fine no problems (we thought) We started our journey from Bangkok at about 8am on Sunday, got to the border 4 hours later and proceeded through passport control (another 2/3 hours) when we got to the end we were informed by a seriously moody female police officer that our visa was 2 days out of date! we we're sure this was't the case and tried to argue our point, that was untill she pointed at the visa stamp which read expired 28th April! Ooops, so we paid our fines (1000 Bhat) and went through the border to our 4th country of our trip. As we walked through the border we saw 4 or 5 huge very swish looking casinos, apparantly their illeagal in Thailand and the Thai men come across the border to gamble in their spare time. Once we passed those our impressions we're very simular to those when we firt got to India, "SHIT a bombs gone off!" it was very dirty, there were lots of beggars and pretty much pverty was the order of the day. We were then hussled into a very rickity old minibus, which appeared to have gunshot holes in the windscreen, we found that very reassuring. We headed toward Siem Reap (the town where Angkor Wat is found) the road there can only be described as the worst fooking road in the world, potholes the size of small children dusty as hell with gravel and chippings everywhere. The suspension on the bus didnt really help either it was awfull, to put it in perspective the driver (drive I think his name was) was ragging the bus for all it was worth the whole way and we took 6 hours to get 150kms! we did have a few stops on the way and met some really great people, it still amazes us that the happiest people we seem to meet are the ones with nothing!

Another impressive temple.

We arrived battered and bruised at the hotel around 9pm and arranged to visit Angkor Wat the following day at sunrise, we thought that we may had well do it properly! Angkor Wat and the other 5/6 temples in the grounds were simply breathtaking, neither of us have seen anything remotely like it before and to be honest we probably never will again......unless we go back of course! Its just mindblowing how much detail was on every pillar and post, and the scale of everything was simply immense, its hard to describe it, but it's the kind of place that gets the hairs on the back of your neck stand up (and the ones on Tan's palms we're doing likewise as I remember.......sorry Tan) (hes joking!)(no i'm not)( shut up!)(o.k hairy).....

We spent most of Monday there and travelled back Monday on the same god awfull route, we're now in Bangkok again but just for one more day before we fly to Bali tommorrow morning. We really dont want to leave Thailand, but we must move on. Next stop Bali!

Speak to you all soon, Ant and Tan xx

Us by a tree in the tomb raider temple!

Our waterproof camera's now coming into it's own, thanks Jane and Martin for that, the pictures which will hopefully be on the blog (by blind luck if nothing else) are really clear, we've got over 1500 pictures so far, so all of you lucky people schedule a week or so off so we can bore you ridged with them, and with our stories of the seven sea's (well 4 oceans, 3 sea's and a few rivers).

We've spent the last 3 weeks being extremley lazy, we can now understand why so many travellers spend so long in Thailand, you take things slowly but time seems to speed up!? After the full moon we spent a week recovering (with a bit more partying mixed in) on Ko Phangan, the island was great, we met a lot of really cool people to but the beach for a few days after the party was a bit messy, they do a lot more than the Indians about rubbish (to be fair thats not hard)but with that many people dropping litter its inevitable that things will be a little dirty straight after, it's amazing that the water has stayed so clear, although maybe that wont always be the case.

We then went to Ko Samui, a larger more deleveloped island with its own airport. It was nice as we had a room with satalite t.v (we watched the F.A cup semi's, only because Tan kept on and on about them) ate a few burger kings, shopped at tesco's so it was kind of like being at home which isn't really what we're after although after roughing it for the most part so far it was nice to have some home comforts. There were also lots of old fat white men with their newly found Ting-tong (Thai bride) which was pretty horrible. We did take out a scooter to see the island and i'm pleased to report my driving has improved since I last owned a chicken-chaser no bumps or crashes, not even that many near-misses, although we're not going to tempt fate, we'll keep the scooter riding to a bare minimum.

From Samui we went to the smallest island we've visited so far, Koh Tao. It was beatifull, unspoilt, quiet beaches, great beach bars and huts to stay in and the clearest water either of us have seen so far, its where the pic above was taken. We wished we had longer there but our visa's we're about to run out so we had to head back to Bangkok then onto Cambodia (Angkor Wat) to get a renewal. More updates then. We'll leave another pic at the bottom of a sunset on the last night on Koh Toa, its me (Ant) on the rock.