Bangkok, Phi Phi, Bangkok......home remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Not satisfied that there were enough people on the bus having filled all the seats, a stack of of tiny plastic stools was produced, and lined down the aisle. So, once there were approximately a million people on the bus, and no oxygen left we got going, an hour and a half after we were supposed to. As usual, this was a false start, as we drove round the town to a petrol station for them to fill up the bus.....with the engine running, which I always find a bit concerning. Then for the next 12 hours, through the night, we had to listen to blaring loud Lao music. I felt a bit sorry for the people in the cheap seats in the aisle, as the road was really bumpy and windy, so most of them stood and clung to the ceiling hand rails, as opposed to sliding about on their stools. The bus arrived at our destination, Huay Xai, at 5.30am. Two and a half hours early! Due to the blind conering at 100 miles an hour the whole way there. So we were dumped at the bus station, in the dark, freezing cold. We took a songtheaw - (literally translated as "two rows") which is a van with 2 benches along the sides in the back - to the immigration office. It was closed and didn't open until 8, so we had to sit around in the freezing cold for another 2 hours, which was fun.

We did eventually get across the Mekong river, that acts as the border, and caught a bus on the other side to Chiang Rai. We were both shattered for the next couple of days.

We didn't get off to a very good start in Chiang Rai, as there didn't seem to be much to do, although there is a market it's mostly residential. When we were wandering about we saw little wooden signs directing to "Chiang Rai Beach", which we thought was odd, as Northern Thailand is landlocked. There is a river though, so we decided to play it by ear and go on a little adventure to find it just by following the signs. There were quite a few signs, then they disappeared. We walked about 2 miles in the blistering heat to the outskirts of town where we found a massive motorway style sign to the beach. By that stage we'd had enough, and decided that it didn't in fact exist and the signs were just there to take the piss out of tourists, so we walked the 2 miles back into town. The main feature of Chiang Rai was the night market. The main square has tables in the middle and is lined round the outside by food hawkers. This was great. Really cheap, good, spicy food for next to nothing, and free entertainment on the stage. There were also quite a few child beggars.

There were lots of locals selling souvenirs, and a woman doing tarot readings. We passed by her and she was very interested in Jenny. She said she had a "very lucky chin". I just about wet myself, and have been slagging her ever since.

From Chiang Rai we took a bus 4 hours West to Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai's got alot more to it than Chiang Rai. It's th 2nd biggest city in Thailand. It's pretty touristy, but there's loads to do and see. Lots and lots of temples. Think we've seen enough temples to last a lifetime. They have some extra gold ones in Northern Thailand.

We did go and see a variation on the theme on the outskirts of Chiang Mai, at Wat u mong. This is in the forest and quite overgrown. It also had a series of tunnels to wander through, and a lake with giant catfish and turtels to feed, which was a bit different.

We did a Thai cooking class on our second day. This was excellent. It was just us and an Australian guy. We started off by agreeing what we were going to cook then took a trip to the local market, where we were told all about the various typical Thai ingredients. We also bought the ingredients for our dishes. We then got into the cooking itself.

It was good fun, really simple, and the end product was almost retaurant standard, even if I do say so myself. We cooked 5 dishes and they were all great. By the end we were all stuffed.

Really worthwhile, definitely going to try and recreate them back home.

Yesterday we splashed out and went to the Elephant Nature Park about an hour North of Chiang Mai. This was pretty amazing too. There are various companies that offer elephant related activites, trekking, riding, mahout courses etc. but the elephant nature park is dedicated to saving asian elephants from the illegal logging industry, and from Burma. They have a lot of elephants that have been injured or abused over the years. The emphasis of the park is to allow elephants to roam free and socialise as they would in the wild, or as near to it as possible. With as little human interaction as possible.

It's an incredible place. Being able to get so close to them, and watch them roaming about in their little groups was really impressive. Whilst many of them have lots of problems, they all looked really happy and enjoying what they were doing. All of the mahouts - elephant drivers - have been retrained so they don't use the metal hooks that other operations use to control the animals. They use voice commands and positive reinforcement. None of the elephants are made to carry tourists, as most of the other outfits do. Apparently elephants backs are not designed to bare much weight, and so to ride them is not good for them.

We got to feed the elephants watermelon. The elephants would line up and stick their trunks out and we would place the fruit in their trunk. We fed the old granny one, 75 with only one tooth.

Accordingly, she had had her watermelons specially peeled. We then got to go and follow the elephants to the river and help wash them, with buckets and scrubbing brushes. This was really incredible too. We were basically allowed to wander amongst the elephants freely and touch them.

Quite frightening at times, as they are such enormous, strong animals, and they just wandered where they wanted too. Of course once they had all been cleaned, they got straight out and sprayed dust all over themselves.

The younger ones all headed straight for a muddy pool and were pushing each other in and sliding about in the mud, having a great time.

It was so great to watch, and we were literally 10 yards away. We then got shown a pretty distressing movie about traditional methods of training, where they break tohe spirit of the elephants and poke them with sharpened sticks. Not very pleasant to watch. We also got to meet the founder of the sanctuary, a little Thai woman called lek. She answered everyones questions, and gave loads of background about the place. It was really interesting. We then got another opportunity to wash the elephants before we returned to Chiang Mai. All in all a really great experience that I'd recommend to anyone.

I think Jenny might want to return to live there. You can volunteer and it's a shame that we didn't have a bit longer, as that would have been fun.

Today is another boring day of hanging about for a night bus back to Bangkok, where we are catching a plane to Krabi tomorrow morning. Last real bit of travelling, as we've only got a short time left, we're going to be taking a bus, plane and boat in the next 24 hours, and with any lucky be back on Ko Phi Phi by tomorrow afternoon. I'm sure Jenny's chin will see us through.....

Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The place that we were staying was great. A bit out of town, and right on the Nam Song river.

So for the first couple of days we spent most of our time loungeing about, dipping in the river to cool off, and watching sunsets over the spectacular scenery surrounding the area. Jenny made a couple of little flea bitten friends whilst we were there, and made them a little house, and bought them a tin of tuna every night. The highlight of Vang Vieng was the tubing. It was such good fun. We got driven by tuk tuk about 5 km upstream from Vang Vieng and dropped at the rivers edge with our inflated tractor inner tube.

Then we spent the rest of the day slowly floating down the river. It turned out to be a bit of a boozefest, as there were lots of bars dotted along the banks, with little kids with sticks trying to lure you in.

We got lured into quite a few on our way down the river. Most of the bars had rickety homemade wooden towers jutting out over the river with rope swings or zip lines to slide down, so the entertainment was watching drunken idiots jumping off them and bellyflopping into the river. By the thrid bar we had both plucked up enough dutch courage, aided by the free flowing beerlao, to have a go.

Was great fun, although the next day we both had pretty sore necks from awkward landings. I also have a weeping sore on my foot which I can't account for. It was so much fun though, and we met loads of randoms along the way. Was pretty cold by the end of it, as the sun had set behind the hills. The scenery on the way down the river was incredible aswell, although not particularly peaceful given the frequent shouts and screams of people jumping in. We went out that night and ended up in a bar chatting with one of the guys we met doing the tubing, and a Lao who owned the bar. He was really interesting, but very pissed. He kept filling up a bucket with Lao whisky in front of us and encouraging us to get stuck in. He said he was fond of Western women but was dismayed by why so many were like 'water buffalo'.

From Vang Vieng we took a bus ride 6 hours North along a really windy road through the hills to Luang Prabang, where we are just now. The countryside in Laos is absolutely stunning. The journey through the hills was so spectacular. The mountains jut up thousands of feet vertically and it's all so green. Luang Prabang is a really cute little town at with the Mekong river on one side, and the Nam Khan on the other, on a peninsula.

It has a little hill in the middle with a temple perched on top. In fact there are I think 30-odd temples in the surrounding areas. It seems like threr's one round every corner.

They're all dripping in gold leaf, and shiny things, which appeals to my taste. Think I'd quite like to live in one. Hiking up the hill to the temple Jenny was doing quite a bit of moaning about how she hated days like this but she was happy to get the opportunity to free some caged birds at the top - supposedly to bring good fortune.

I was persuaded to have a go aswell, and felt like we'd done something good, although Jenny I think wanted to buy all of the cages and set all of them free as she didn't have many left. Unfortunately we found four other women selling lots of them at the bottom of the hill too. The view from the top was pretty incredible. Along with all the temples there are the accompanying monks adorned in traditional orange robes.

Traditionally most Lao men at some point in their lives become a monk. There are lots and lots of them wandering about Luang Prabang, which is quite an unusual sight. Unfortunately they have a habbit of getting up really early in the morning to go and accept alms from the locals. The unfortunate thing for us being that we're staying right behind of the temples, and have been woken by the eerie, slow rhythmic banging at 4 am of the massive drum that they have.

As if that wasn't enough there's a demented rooster that cries every couple of hours throughout the day and night, irrelevant of whether the sun is up or down. The food in Laos has been pretty good, very similar to Thai, we went for something different last night, in the shape of a Korean BBQ, which was really good. It's a do-it-yourself job with a BBQ in the middle, over a pot of coals, sloping down to the sides which holds a soup round the rim, like an upturned saucer. Was really tasty.

Today we are making the long trip to the Thai border on an overnight bus, which we're both dreading, and hopefully going to end up in Chang Rai by tomorrow at some point. We'll both be pretty sad to leave Laos, as the country is so beautiful and the people are so friendly. Almost without fail everyone that you pass says Sabai dee - "hello". We're both looking forward to getting some Thai food when we get back over the border though.

Vang Vieng, Luang Prabang remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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.......turned out to be very much alive and squirming about.

One big piggy going to market remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Was great to be in a smaller town, without the motorbikes. We stayed in an overpriced place on the outskirts of town with a pool, that was useless as it never got above 15 degrees the whole time we were there. There was also a man who liked banging a hammer from 7 am onward, living right next to the hotel. One of the main draws to Hoi An are all the tailors. There are about a million of them. I decided to get a shirt made, and ended up getting 2. You could easily become addicted to getting clothes custom made. Especially at the prices they were charging. Jenny got a couple of pairs of trousers made. One pair that are 'fishermans' trousers, or 'hippy clown's' trousers as I would describe them. When Jenny was describing what she wanted the woman in the shop started dancing about, laughing and singing 'Ali Baba, Ali Baba' over again. I think that says it all. But she likes them, so fair play.

The other main tourist draw in Hoi An is the Japanese covered bridge, which is quite unusual, but essentially just a bridge with a roof.

There are also several pagodas at every turn which we went to.

From Hoi An we got another 'sleeper' bus the 17 hours to Hanoi. This was a bit of a sleepless nightmare. The 'beds' on this bus were even smaller than the last one, and I had to wedge my feet into a kind of tin box at the bottom. Was so cramped it felt like being in a coffin. To make matters worse, as we were driving along, one of the windows shattered. Presumably because somebody chucked a rock at it, because whatever the missile was hit the very top window right in front of me. Almost wet myself. We continued a very cold and windy hour or so before pulling over to fix it. This of course took forvever as a crowd gathered to hum and haw and shout instructions at each other. So they sellotaped a massive bit of card on and off we went. Miraculously it stayed in place all the way to Hanoi.

We both really liked Hanoi. It similar to Saigon in that it's so busy and there is so much going on around you, but it's prettier, with a few lakes dotted around, and a lot more trees.

It's also got remnants of the French era, and it's a maze of narrow streets. On our first day we just wandered around looking at stuff. We went to a little pagoda on an island on the lake which was pretty. The highlight was a stuffed turtle/tortoise thing in a glass case.

It's the strangest looking creature ever. Think it might have been a botched job on the taxidermists part, as it's so fat and it's bogeyed and got a weird twisted smile on its face. We were staying in the old Quarter of the town, right in the thick of the action which was good. We were also right round the corner from a little street bar that sold bia hoi, the local brew, for 9p a half pint which was extremely good.

On our second day we took a trip to Halong Bay, about 4 hours south of Hanoi. We went for a 2 day overnight cruise, which turned out to be really amazing.

The boat was a fair size and the cabins were simple, but pretty luxurious by our standards, especially the bathroom. Amazingly they managed to provide a hot, powerful shower, and toilet that didn't block every time you used it - something that many of the places on dry land throughout Asia, seem incapable of.

Unfortunately the toilet did have a tendancey to burp a lot, producing a revolting smell which was the one downer. The only other complaint was about the weather, which was shit.

The sun was out for the first hour or so aboard, so me and Jenny ran and stripped off and lay on the top deck, whilst everyone else sat about in their jumpers and trousers looking at us like we were mental. We cruised out of the bay and around the amazing karst limestone mini islands that dot the bay.

Really really spectacular. We visited two caves on our way. The first one was the magic cave, although I' not exactly why it's called that. It was quite small but we clambered through it and out the other side, scrambling up the mountain a bit.

The view was pretty incredible. We then went to see the suprising cave. Surprising because it's absolutley massive.

We walked about 500m into the massive gaping hole in the side of the cliff. There were loads of stalagmites/tites and weird formations that resembled various things. The best one was at the mouth of the cave. It looks like a guy's legs hanging over the edge.

Jenny got her wildlife fix in the cave in the shape of a penguin shaped bin. Not sure if it is indigenous or migratory?

The food was great throughout the trip. We spent all of our meals sharing with a couple of Spanish girls, who were pretty good value, although one of them was quite a big girl and certainly made sure she got her full helping, leaving us to fight for what was left, and the other didn't speak much English and was pretty mute. The guide was really informative and made quite a big effort which always helps as well.

On our second morning we got up at 7am to go kayaking. The Spanish girls weren't up for this particularly. I think the bigger girl would rather have extended breakfast into a brunch, but credit to her she did reluctantly go. It was really hard work,as we had to paddle over quite strong currents before getting to a couple of low caves that we could paddle under. The scenery was really spectacular, and it was really peaceful as well. By the time we were told to head back we were all pretty tired. Jenny and I got a bit competitive with the others and decided that we had to beat them back to the boat, (a la the amazing race) which we of course did, although the next couple of days we paid for it, walking about like penguins with our arms glued to our sides because of the stiffness. All in all the trip was really worth it, and Halong bay has to be up there with the most naturally beautiful places in the world, befitting it's nomination to be one of the 7 natural wonders.

When we returned to Hanoi we had another day sightseeing in the capital. We went to do the history bit, which Jenny was delighted about. We went to see Uncle Ho - Ho Chi Minh - in his mausoleum in the North of the city. This was quite a creepy experience.

His body is seeled in a glass case in a really dark room, like Lenin in Russia. He's very well preserved, and looks like he died just yesterday, or he's asleep. I kept thinking that his eyes were going to open. We had to go and see him twice it turned out, as we duffed up the conveyor belt queueing system that is opertated by the army there. They're so fickle about where you can and cannot walk. You have to walk on the pavement and along white lines, and if they catch you straying they point and shout at you. We got pointed at and shouted at quite a bit. I wanted to run all over the grass by the end of it. We then went to the Ho Chi Minh museum, or I went. Jenny sat and clapped a few flea bitten kittens outside while I went round the museam, which was probably for the best as it turned out to be just a series of photos of uncle ho meeting various dignitaries and a bizarre art exhibit. Was interesting though to learn about the man who effectively masterminded the defence of the nation against the most sophisticated army in the world, and went on to unify Vietnam. Pretty amazing character, and so the Vietnamese are rightly proud of him. There were as many Vietnamese as tourists going to view him which tells a story.

On our last day we did something that Jenny wanted to do, and took a trip to Jill Robinson's Moon Bear Sanctuary, a couple of hours North of the city. She is in the process of building the centre which will house rescued Moon bears. To be honest I wasn't looking forward to this, and had spent the preceeding days teasing Jenny that I'd ask Jill whether she was intending on releasing the bears back on the moon etc. It turned out to be quite interesting, and a lot better than Hanoi zoo, which was pretty grim.

Jill was real friendly and told us all about the project. The best part was the bears themselves. She's got 6 at the moment, and anopther 80 coming soon. They're really funny animals, especially the cubs. We sat and watched them watching us with they're beady little eyes, and showing off, and running at each other standing on two legs with their front paws in the air like little hairy men. Turned out to be a worthwhile visit that we both enjoyed.

From Hanoi we cheated a little and caught a flight to Laos. This was a necessity, given the bus option was allegedly going to take 24 hours, and has a very bad press suggesting that that can often stretch to 36 hours. So we opted for the 50 minute flight to Vientiane. We by-passed Vietiane, as it didn't seem to have a lot, if anything, to offer. So we caught a 4 hour bus North to Vang Vieng where we are now. I'm a lot happier, as it has been beautiful blue sky and glorious sunshine since we arrived. Also Beer Lao, the national tipple is going down a treat. We intend to stay here a few days relaxing in the sun (hopefuly). We're going to go tubing down the Nam Sang river tomorrow - which involves floating down the river on a tractor tyre inner tube stopping intermitently at the bars that litter the banks. Sounds great.

Hoi An, Hanoi, Laos remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Ponytail remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Unfortunately they had been built to accommodate Vietnamese as opposed to westerners. Very uncomfortable. Not a lot of sleeping going on.

Mui Ne was a pretty palm lined bay, although there wasn’t much of a beach to speak of.

We didn’t care though, as we’d booked a fancyish hotel to stay at, with a pool. Was really good to be able to just relax by the pool for a couple of days. Part of the the deal with staying at the hotel was that we had to attend the compulsory Christmas Eve BBQ, bumping up the price a good bit. Was actually quite entertaining, and the food was pretty good too. The entertainment was quite strange. First they had a guy dressed up as santa come and dish out sweeties. He was a lot skinnier and shorter than I remember him and he had a very big pointy moustache.

He also ran between the tables with his hands aloft, kind of squealing, like he’d just scored a goal, which was quite unusual. It was all good fun. The best bit was the prize draw, where the host drew room numbers, got the winners up on stage, and forced them to sing Christmas carols, that the band didn’t know the tune to, and that the winners only knew the first line of. Then in an effort to save the day the host burst into a rendition of “We wish you a merry Christmas”. But once again the band played a version I’d never heard before, and the host only knew the ‘we wish you a merry xmas and a happy new year’ bit which he sang very loudly and proudly at the chorus, and mumbled very quietly over and over again fitting it to the verses. We were in hysterics.

Christmas day was spent lounging around the pool in the 30 degree heat which was excellent. Then we watched the fisherman out at sea, in their ridiculously dangerous little baskets, floating by at sunset.

We skipped the turkey and had a traditional Vietnamese hotpot that night which was very good.

After a few days in Mui Ne we headed further North to Nha Trang, another beach resort. Unfortunately the weather turned a bit crap since we got here and so I’ve spent most of our time here moaning and checking the internet for weather updates. Nha Trang’s quite a big city right on the beach. The town itself is pretty naff, with lots of tourist traps round every corner. The beach is massive, and looks pretty good. However, we’ve only been down there once, to look. It’s been grey and cold, and even rained a couple of times which has not been good. We did however venture out on a fishing trip which was fun. It was ridiculously cheap.

We chartered our own boat all day, with guide, crew of two, fishing equipment, and lunch, all for around $50.

We weren’t very successful on the fishing front. Jenny caught one fish that was about the size of a 50p. I was almost resigned to returning having caught nothing. Was so frustrated to the extent that I was considering throwing the rod in, as Jenny kept getting nibbles and was doing a bit of gloating, and I hadn’t had anything all day. Luckily, she wanted another 5 minutes before heading back, which was enough time for me to catch a less than impressive, but considerably bigger fish than her….. which I rubbed in for the rest of the day.

We spent New Year's eve in a cheesy bar that handed out stupid hats for everyone to wear. Was a good laugh though, and we met up with a couple of Scots, which meant that the drinking got suitably out of control.

The DJ got an earful from all of us for preferring Abba's Happy New Year after the bells, as opposed to Auld Lang Syne. We ended up at a party on the beach and feeling pretty unwell all the next day. Was good fun though.

Last night we ate off the street. It was basically a little family with big pots of fresh seafood set up on the pavement, with only the main road separating them from the sea where the fish had been caught. Can't get much fresher than that. We were seated on little childrens plastic chairs at a tiny table, having picked a selection of shellfish - 2 lobster, about 10 scallops, and a couple of snail-like things.

The snails turned out to be the best. It tasted amazing and was all cooked in front of us on a BBQ, and we got it all for under a tenner, which is incredible value.

Today we're killing time before catching another weird sleeper bus North to Hoi An. Hopefully by the time we get to Hanoi the sun will be behaving itself, or I'm going to start getting very upset......

Mui Ne, Christmas, Nha Trang, New Year remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Saigon is a bit mental. Really bustling big city. There are so many motorbikes here. Crossing the road is an absolute joke. There are few traffic lights, and even where there are ones, none of the bikes take any notice.

They clearly are taking notice of what's going on around though, and so it is possible to cross with caution going very slowly and letting them weave behind and in front of you. Very dangerous though. There are apparently 8 million people and 3 million motorbikes in the city. They're just everywhere, and the rules of the
road don't seem to apply. They drive the wrong way down main streets and even drive about the pavements which means really there is no escape. They passed a law, only 5 days ago, meaning that they all must wear helmets. So they're all wearing really new shiny colourful helmets which is quite funny.

We've done quite a bit of wandering round the city. It's a really busy place, and tere are lots of tourists. There seem to be predominantly US tourists which I suppose makes sense. The area of the city that we're staying in is a bit of a mecca for tourists, and consequently it's a bit crap, but the centre is quite nice, and the shopping is pretty good. Not that I'm particularly interested in that. We spent most of our first few days just trying to get across the roads. The food here has been really good.

They do a soup called Pho Bo, that is a clear broth with noodles, beef, beansprouts, chili, aniseedy leaves which seems to be the staple for the locals. It's magic. Been getting a bit sick of it recently though because we've eaten so much of it.

They also have the cheapest draft beer in the world here. We sat at a little street bar that was full of both tourists and locals all tucking into the stuf. IT came in a plastic jug, about a litre big, and cost 20p, which is pretty good. Supposedly it gets cheaper further north, so very much looking forward to that.

We went on a tour of the famous Viet Cong tunnels at CuChi the other day. The site is about 1 hour drive out of the city, to the North West. We booked up with one of the many tour agencies, and went on one of the 30 or so bus loads of people that go there every day. Apparently they get 1000 visitors a day, which is pretty crazy. Our tour guide was pretty crazy as well. He (allegedly) was part of the US lead South Vietnamese army that fought the Viet Cong around Cu Chi. He gave an amazingly detailed account of the history of the war, and indeed the preceeding wars that Vietnam have been involved in. He was a fountain of knowledge. Not only that he was a veteran of the American War who had fought for the US collecting injured soldiers and returning them to the base. At the end of the war, even though he had lived in New York for a time prior to the war, and was invited by his comrades to return, decided to stay in his homeland. He was captured by the Northern Communist forces and spent 4 years after the war in a reeducation camp. So he said anyway. Even if it wasn't true it was a really good story. He certainly knew his stuff.

I was a bit sceptical about the tour, but the fact that the tour guide was so good made it so much more interesting. The Viet Cong were clearly extremely ingenious and skilled in the art of war, which makes sense as they had spent the 20 years prior to the American invasion fighting off the French on their own soil. They accepted that they didn't have the immense fire power of either the French or the US, but used their knowledge of the countryside to defeat both. The Cu Chi tunnels are an intricate system of tiny tunnels - 1.3m high and 60cm wide - built on three levels, 3m, 6m and 8-10m, running for over 250km along the cu chi river and into the jungle. They had been building them for the 20 years preceeding the US occupation. In fact the US built a base right on top of the network. So at night the Viet cong would emerge and steal weapons, etc anything they could get their hands on. Even when the US eventually discovered the tunnels, they tried everything from Napalm, Tear gas, Grenades, Smoke Bombs, even sending men called 'tunnel rats' or sniffer dogs down into the tunnels. Despite the masive casualties they remained in the tunnels until the US withdrawal.

They had boobytraps all over the shop, and were clever enough to smoke american brand cigarettes and use US soap to confuse the dogs that were used to try and trace them. All amazing stuff. I was hanging on every word the guy was telling us. It was great. Even Jenny was pretty interested in the stuff we were shown. Not so much the hour lecture on the bus. She slept and listened to her ipod instead.

We were taken round various bunkers, and shown an abandonned m41 tank. The highlight of the tour was the tunnels themselves. We were able to crawl through 100m of the tunnels. There were escape routes every 30m which you could get out of if you were so inclined. Many were. It was absolutley stifling, and really really cramped. Quite difficult to move.

It was also pitch black at some points and we decended twice, to 8 or so metres. Was very claustrophobic. We both made it to the end with another few, dripping with sweat. Quite a lot of people bailed out early. It just reaffirmed how incredible the Viet Cong were, as I think the tunnel we crawled along had been heightened to allow us to get through, and it was absolutley tiny, even for Jenny who's a midget. Was a really great experience.

The next place of interest that we went to was the War remnants Museum. This is dedicated to the American war. I thought it was really interesting. Jenny didn't.

They had various tanks, and other equipment that the US abandonned when they withdrew from Vietnam. One of the bombs was ridiculously big, about 3 times the size of me. It was used to wipe out areas 100m in diametre. Absoultely ridiculous. The main body of the musem is a gallery of photography of various aspects of the war. Some really amazing pictures. There was a lot of emphasis on the terrible after effects of the chemical weapons used by the US - agent orange and napalm. There were a lot of gory pictures of children born with deformities as a result of the effects of these, and terrible skin burns suffered by those who were subjected to napalm. There were a few really horrendous shots of American GI's involved in the Mai Lai massacre, where the US 'search and destroyed' a village, executing 504 civilians in the process, many of them women, children and elderly. The place is a really good exhibition of all that was wrong with the Vietnam/American war, and war in general.

After exhausting all of Jenny's patience with musems and war, we booked ourselves onto a 2 day tour of the Mekong Delta. Probably the less said about this the better. It was absolutely crap. Both Jenny and I were as bored as each other with this. The Mekong River and the floating market thereon were quite interesting. Unfortunately we only spent about 2 hours doing this. The rest of the time was spent on the boiling hot bus, or on boats. Not boats on the Mekong, but ones ferrying us to crappy factories making crap - coconut candy factory, rice factory, fruit orchard, rice krispie factory!?! It wasn't their fault obviously, but it wan't really what we'd gone to see.

We spent ages at each of these extremely uninteresting places where they tried to sell us the stuff they were making before getting back on the bus/boat for another 2/3 hours. Complete waste of time and money. What made matters worse was that we had to get up at 6.30am both mornings to go see these places. So we were both really tired and crabbit. The Mekong itself was pretty cool though, having slagged off the rest of it. We took a boat that weaved in and out of the women all selling their goods to other passing vessels.

It was massive. We also went to see another market where they were selling snakes and other interesting animals.

The Vietnamese seem to eat anything. We've seen snake on the menu already, and snake wine so hopefully will get to try that at some point. Then as we get further North supposedly dog may start appearing on the menu. Think Jenny may draw the line with that, I'm not decided yet........

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The buses deserve a quick mention. The drivers are literally constantly on the horn. Every person they pass is given several loud blasts of the horn. In between the horn you have to suffer the blaring Khmer Karaoke that emits from the TVs, that most of the tone deaf locals enjoy droning along to. If it's not the music then they have weird pantomimes playing on the TV where they all the characters have Hitler moustaches. All very bizarre, but seem to be hilarious to the locals who piss themselves laughing every couple of minutes.

Sihanoukville itself is a bit of a dump, however a short moto ride away is Serendipity beach which was where we were headed. We hadn't used any motos up til this point, but we couldn't see any tuk tuks so just had to go for it. Motos are just guys on motorbikes whose bikes you jump on the back of to get lifted around he place. Not particularly exciting, although pretty dangerous considering we had our massive rucksacks with us. We took one each and they balanced the bags on their fronts and we hopped on the back with our daysacks. Was a bit concerned that we weren't offered helmets, but they were wearing them. Especially as hardly any of the moto drivers wear helmets. We made it to our destination unscathed though, so it was all good.

Serendipity beach wasn't much to look at as beaches go. Very dirty both on the beach and in the water. Was pretty cool at night though, as all the restaurants that the beach backs onto put big comfy wicker seats an low tables on the sand right in front of the sea, and at night you couldn't really make out the plastic bags and chip boxes floating on the surface of the sea.

It was a pretty lively place, which might have had something to do with the fact that the cheapest beer in Cambodia can be found here, as it is brewed in Sihanoukville. 50 cents a glass of draught, which was well received.

There were quite a number of children patroling the beach at night selling various things, and lots of people missing arms and legs crawling along the sand begging for money. There was more begging here than we've experienced anywhere we've been in South East Asia. Literally every couple of minutes from the moment you sit down. Quite difficult to deal with. Lots of the children had sticks that were filled with fireworks that they set off every night on the beach. This was a bit disconcerting given children that could barely walk semed to be allowed to have them. There were also a few twats firing them at each other and waving them about right next to where we were eating that wasn't funny.

We managed to find a better beach without as much litter and free from rivers of vile smelling rivers connecting the restaurants to the sea. It was much quieter. We spent a few days chilling there, before taking a boat to Bamboo Island an hour off the coast.

This was much more secluded, and we stayed the night in a very basic A-frame bungalow right on the beach. Was really tranquil, and there were cows and chickens roaming about the place and on the beach. There was one big bull that clearly wasn't to be messed with. We watched as a little 5 year old local got a bit too close and was met with a full butt to the face. Apparently it had split his nose open, and there was a bit of comotion as the locals all gathered round to see if he was ok. We were a bit further away, and it was quite funny from our vantage point, because the bull just stood staring at them as if asking 'does anyone else want a go?' It was punished by having a rock thrown at it. Think the boy was ok. Didn't get much sleep on the island as there was no fan in our room. Aboslutely baking hot. I got up in the middle of the night for a pee in the sea, and was greeted by loads of tiny twinkling white lights flashing in the water. They were amazing. Like little underwater fireflies. Thought I'd maybe overdosed a little too much on the cheap beer and was seeing things but Jenny said they were some kind of shrimp. They were pretty cool though.

We returned to the mainland and spent another couple of days dossing about before returning to Phnom Penh for a night, rising the next day to catch a bus to Saigon. We took a trip to the central market on our free afternoon in the Cambodian capital. It had all the usual stuff, and some very unusual stuff. There were women sitting selling all sorts of insects to eat. Big insects.....and spiders.

Tarantulas are a delicacy in Cambodia. I took a few pictures of them, and was asked for a dollar, so I told her just to give me one. She gave us one and a big cricket for good measure. We took them back to the hotel to try. We each ate a leg of the tarantula.

It was pretty manky. It had quite a lot of hair on it. Having been the big man and bought the thing at the market, I wasn't quite so brave about it when it was out of the bag. It was a bit big for my liking even dead. We both ate quite a bit of the cricket, but it wasn't great either. Thy both just tasty really salty, crunchy and a bit like they'd been kicked about the floor a bit. Try everything once though.

The next day we got up and headed for the bus station an travelled the 6 hours over the border to Saigon - officially called Ho Chi Minh although nobody here actually calls it that. The border crossing between Cambodia was remarkably smoothe as it was all taken out of our hands by the posh bus company that we went with. It was also quicker as we had already purchased our Visa in Cambodia which is a requirement of entry to Vietnam.

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But once again she bottled out by developing a mystery stomach ache at the crucial moment. When we arrived in Phnom Penh there were about a million tuk tuk drivers ready to pounce as soon as we got off the bus, in fact one drove along side the bus before it had even stopped and Jenny agreed through sign language to go with him. We ended up with him as our tour guide for the various sights of interest around the city the next day. We met up with him the next morning and were taken about half an hour out of town to the shooting range. This was an extremely bizarre experience. We drove down a little track off the main road and turned into a completely unmarked drive where a gate was opened and shut very quickly behind us. We were ushered to a table in what was a bit like a little cafe. We were gawking at all the various guns adorning the far wall when the guy who seemed to run the place brought us over a menu each with lists of various prices for various different weapons that we could have a go at. He recommended the AK-47 Kalashnikov for me with 25 bullet magazine, and for Jenny an M16 semi automatic with 15 bullet magazine. There were various other weapons from handguns to tommy guns you could choose from. You could also shoot a bazuka at the mountain, or throw a hand grenade into a duck pond. These were all a bit out of our price range however. So we went with our hosts recommendations and donned camouflage jackets then were taken into a long darkened room with a seat at one end and a target about 50 yards away at the other end. Jenny was sat in the seat first, the guy loaded it up, then the gun was put in front of her, and off she went.

Same drill for both of us. He let us have a few goes on semi-automatic, then flicked a switch to automatic for the second half. Was pretty exhilerating, especially as mine jammed twice, which was a bit disconcerting. When he flicked it to automatic it was really kicking back into the shoulder. It was also mental how many bullets came out and how fast they did with one squeeze of the trigger.

All good fun. Expensive fun though, $30 each for the 5 minutes that we spent there.

After the shooting range we went to see the killing fields at Choeung Ek, on the outskirts of the city.

This place was really depressing. The area was used to execute and dispose of Cambodians in mass graves during the Khmer Rouge's regime from 1975-79. Very very sobering. Felt very guilty about firing the weapon just before going there. There's not a lot to see, however the history of the place and the huge gaping holes in the ground where mass graves have been disinterred, make it a pretty thought provoking site. At the peak of the Khmer Rouge's ethnic cleansing process, they were executing 100 people a day at the site. One of the graves had 450 bodies found in it.

There is a stupa - memorial - to those who died which is a tower that contains some of their clothes and several hundred skulls. I think all in all 14,000 bodies were discovered at the site, many of them women and children. All very chilling.

It only got more horrifying when we went to visit the prison at Tuol Seng in the centre of the city. This place is probably the creepyiest place I've ever been.

It's an old school that was transformed into a prison where thousands of Cambodians were brought to be interrogated and tortured by the Khmer Rouge, before eventually being driven to the killing fields to be executed.

The classrooms had all been transformed into various types of prison cell and they have room after room of black and white photos of those who ended up in the prison.

The sheer number is astonishing. There were also many women with very young children in some of the photos. They have also preserved some of the torture devices including amongst other things a box that housed various scorpions, venemous spiders and centipedes that was put on the victims'heads. There are also various extremely disturbing photos of people who have been tortured to death thrown in for good measure. Whilst the list of Pol Pot's security regulations are a window into how paranoid and ridiculous the Khmer Rouge was.

The place is just sickening. But it is a testament to one of the most barbarous genocides in recent history, so I don't suppose that's very surprising. We both left feeling pretty shellshocked by what we'd seen.

We spent a couple of days recovering and dossing about Phnom Penh. It's not a very nice city so far as places to see, however there is so much going on, that it was great to just sit and watch locals going through their everyday lives, markets etc.

The number of children begging and selling books is a bit depressing, and you can't go 5 minutes sitting in a restaurant without being mobbed by them. We got chatting to one of the booksellers who had amazingly good English. He looked about 12 but said he was 16. He told us that he sold the books to pay for school, and that he got to keep any money that he made from it. He said that it cost $7 a month to go to school. So we bought a couple of books off him. Unfortunately he borrowed a book off one of his less friendly colleagues who found this out and came and pestered us to buy his books, which ended in him threatening to kill me......which was nice. Turns out the books are pretty crap. I've got half way through my one only to find that there are about 25 pages missing. Bit annoying.

The food in Cambodia has been pretty good. Quite like Thai, but the curries are thicker. All good. We went to a weird little restaurant where their speciality is a soup that you make yourself called chnnang dei. They're supposed to bring the raw ingredients over and a big clay pot is put on a stove and you just mix it all in however you like. We obviously looked like a couple of clowns that that was going to be beyond, so all the staff came and watched as one of the girls made it for us while we sat and watched. They were all pissing themselves. Was quite funny.

From Phnom Penh we travelled to the south coast of Cambodia and Sihanoukville, where we've been relaxing by the sea on the beach for the past week. Don't have time to update about that but will in due course. We are heading back to Phnom Penh tomorrow for a night before venturing over the border to Vietnam.....

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From there we took a tuk tuk to the border, and had to stop the driver taking us to a travel agent instead of the border. In fact he didn't take us right to the border. He dropped us short of it at a group of touts who offered to do our Visa's for us, and told us that we wouldn't be able to get a Cambodian Visa at the border. Bollocks. We managed to avoid them and headed to the border control. Departing Thailand was all very straightforward. We then walked across nomans land - which is a case of dodging all of the begging children before going to the Cambodian Visa office. I lost the rag a bit here.

We filled out our applications and took them to the counter - above which there is a large sign requesting $20 for a tourist visa. We were served by a very officious looking character in a military uniform. I had calculated $20 as being about 800 baht each so passed this over to him with the applications. He flatly refused the 1600 baht, saying that it would be 2000 baht. I in turn refused and told him that it was 1600 baht. He sat down and read his paper and ignored me, which got me a bit angry. He kept saying it was 1000 baht. I kept telling him he was a liar and that I knew it was only 800. After a bit of more of that, I then went into my rucksack and produced $20 each for the visa. His response to this was that it was $25 each, despite the clear sign above his head stating $20. I did a bit of pointing at the sign and shouting at him, but he wouldn't budge. Then he shouted at me that it was only $20 if you prearranged the Visa in Bangkok, and if I wanted to do that then it would take 24hours! I was apoplectic by this stage and pulled out my mobile and shouted at him that I was going to phone my embassy, the British embassy, to find out what they had to say about that.......and he accepted the 800 baht each and gave us the Visas. Absolute joker. But I won. Just before I get criticised for being tight (as the difference between 1600 and 2000 baht is about 6 quid) it's the principal that really annoys me, that some fat twat who sits drinking coffee, reading the paper and smoking fags in his uniform can demand extra money (and get it most of the time), just because he's wearing a uniform, is just wrong. Especially when there are children begging in the streets outside his office. So corrupt it made me want to strangle the guy. Anyway, we then went to the next office to get a stamp and we were in Cambodia. No sooner had we stepped into the country than we were escorted to a free bus to the "bus station''. Turned out the ''bus station'' was 100 yards up the road and was a travel agent. We agreed with another couple who we met on the bus to share a taxi to Siem Reap. We went into the ''bus station'' and there was a guy with a piece of paper with various pricings for buses and taxis to Siem Reap. At the top of the paper, which was clearly something he had typed up himself was "Ministery of Transportation of Cambodia''. The prices were ridiculously overinflated and so we went outide into the street and got a guy off the street to drive us there for half the price.

The difference between Cambodia and Thailand is immediate. The tarmac road stops at the Thai side, and continues as a very dusty, pot-holed, dirt track all the way 160km to Siem Reap. The journey took us around 3.5 hours. The countryside is so beautiful though.

We drove past loads of little rural towns, with children playing in the paddies at the side of the road, animals roaming about the place, people living in little thatched houses on stilts, people fishing in the ponds beside the road. Very reminiscent of Central America. Unfortunately Siem Reap is a bit different. It's a bit of a sprawling mess of Massive Super Hotels for the wealthy. We got dropped on the outskirts of town and picked up by a tuk tuk. Turned out the reason for this is that they want to secure a fare for the day after to the Temples at Angkor, which are just outside the town. We went with our guy and arranged for him to collect us at 9 am the next morning. He dropped us at our hotel and we checked in. Crashing back to reality after our time in Bangkok. Nobody greeting us with jasmine garnets, no lifts for anyone to be waiting to press the button. Our room was sparse to say the least, and the warning on the back of the door was a bit of a shock.

Cambodia is clearly very poor. Everywhere we've been there are very young children begging, or selling books or trinkets. It's all a bit sad. There are also a lot of people begging missing limbs, presumably as a result of coming into contact with one of the hundreds of landmines that are still present in the countryside. We succumbed to one little boy, who couldn't have been older than about 8, who asked where we were from? We replied ''Scotland'' to which he immediately reeled off "Scotland. Capital Edinburgh. Population 5 million people. Minus two. You know why? Because you 2 are here''.

On our first night we went out for an amazing meal at a crazy little restaurant in town called the Dead Fish Tower. Not the most appealing name, but it is so unique. It is laid out on various different levels and has a really cool atmosphere. Coolest of all though is the pond and the crocodile pit that they have right down at the bottom. The food was really tasty and the beer really cheap (Cambodia is so cheap mug of draught beer for 40p). After our meal we ventured downstairs to see the crocodiles. First we stopped off at the pond.

There was a huge fish about a couple of feet long lurking about in there. I decided it would be funny to try and tease it by hanging my finger over the water above its face.

It looked like it was recoiling away, but it turned out to be readying itself to attack, as a second after this photo was taken it lunged right out of the water at me. I was just quick enough to get away, but screamed like a little girl, much to the amusement of all the staff who had gathered to watch. Jenny just about wet herself. After I'd calmed down we went to have a look at the crocodiles.

Turned out you could feed them dead fish which was good fun. Jenny enjoyed this a lot. There were loads of them all living under the floorboards. They all looked in pretty good nick as well.

The next morning we were rudely awoken at 7.30 by drilling and banging right outside our room, so we upped and left to go to a better place. We then hooked up with our driver - riding a motor bike pulling a carriage that we sat in. We negotiated $12 for the day and set off to Angkor. Angkor is a massive site of temples built during the Khmer empire that controlled Cambodia. The Khmers built a vast array of temples to worship their Gods and bury their kings. They were clearly an amazing bunch given how intricate the temples are.

The first temple we came to was Angkor Wat. This place is sijmply incredible. As far as temples go this one is mindblowing. The sheer scale of it is as impressive as the ornateness of its design. It was built in the 12th century which makes it even more special.

I'm not really that fussed by temples but this place is just magnificent. It has a moat all the way round it and ponds with pink and white lotus flowers floating on them. It's just an awesome sight. Jenny's perhaps not quite as enthusiastic as I am about it she said ''if it had been built by a monkey then I'd be impressed''. I think she was quite impressed though, and there were some monkeys stealing stuff from tourists, and some elephants roaming about the roads to keep her baredom levels down.

The next temple that we visited, Bayon, was really impressive too.

It has lots of faces carved into the rocks towering up the sides and the centre of the inner temple. Jenny was a bit more enthusiastic about this one, however that was tempered a bit by the fact that she had her bottom pinched by a Japanese tourist (of which there must have been several million in the entire complex). We went to see another couple of temples, one which you could climb right up to the very top of, on very narrow, shaky stairs.

There is another temple that has been made famous by the film Tomb Raider that was filmed there, and a final one where they have made no effort to protect the structure from nature, resulting in huge octopus-like tree roots strangling and warping the stone walls.

Both of these were pretty amazing also, however we ran out of camera battery unfortunately. We were supposed to hang around for a couple of hours longer to watch the sunset, but it was clouding over, and both of us were shattered, wo we gave that a miss and got our delighted driver to take us back.

We've just been taking it easy for today and are probably going to venture south to Phnom Phen.......

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We also treated ourselves to a massage on the beach whilst we were staying here. This started off well, but it all got a bit violent and sore for me, especially on the legs. Left feeling a bit sore and with a slight limp. Not sure I'll be rushing to have another one anytime soon. When we left to get the bus to Bangkok, we got a lift up to the main road from our Dutch host who told us a bit about the Tsunami which raized his, and all of the other properties around his, to the ground. He said that he and his family had to clamber onto the roof of their place to survive, and that half of his residents didn't survive. His car had been washed 3 km inland, along with a police boat, which he pointed out, standing in a bit of waste land 3km inland at the mainroad. All very sobering.

We endured a 12 hour bus North to Bangkok, arriving there at 4.30am. We sat about for a few hours before heading to the Oriental hotel where we would be living it up for the next week, with the folks. The Oriental is mental. Fanciest hotel either of us have ever stayed at. We were greeted with somebody helping us with our bags and handing us a garnet of jasmine.

For the whole week we were treated like royalty. Was amazing. They have something ridiculous like 2 staff member for every guest, so everything is taken care of for you, almost as far as wiping your arse after using the toilet. They even had a guy whose sole job was to press the button to call the lift. Very oppulent. The rooms were unbelievable as well. Just having a room with running hot water and pillows that weren't made of wood was a bonus for us, but they provide you with fresh fruit every day, little posh snacks at night, and everytime you leave the room they sneak in and fold your clothes and tidy everything up. Superb. I ordered room service for the first time ever, turkey sandwich, which was brought in on a trolley and seved on a silver salver which was pretty cool.

Was good to meet up with the parents as well, and not to have to stress about anything for a whole week. We did quite a lot of different activities whilst we were in Bangkok.

Our first outing - me, mum and dad - wasn't quite as successful as it could have been. We attempted to go and see the grand palace, which is a series of temples and the previous royal residence, in the centre of Bangkok. We had been warned about people telling us that the place was closed, and not to listen to them. Unfortunately we couldn't find the entrance to the palace and wandered round the outside of it for a while eventually having to ask a few people where the entrance was. We were told 3 times that it was closed by different people. The last of whom was at what looked like an entrance, and was wearing what looked like a uniform. We were told it was closed til 1pm and gave us a map with a couple of other tourist attractions marked on it. Then from nowhere a tuk tuk driver appeared and told us he would take us around the sites for 30 baht (50p). This seemed to good to be true and was. Although he did take uas to the places that we wanted to go to, he also took us to a gem shop and a suit shop. After these two excursons we got fed up, and so did he, so he took us to some crappy temple that was like a building site and dumped us. We did eventually get to the grand palace after a lesson learned. The temples at the palace were pretty amazing. Really ornate and dripping in shiny things and gold. Unfortunately the Jade buddah - the most sacred Buddah in Thailand - was involved in a ceremony when we got there so we didn't get to see it.

I managed to get the three of us booted out of a taxi on our way back to the oriental from our meal on the second night. Taxi driver didn't put on his meter and I pointed this out and told him to put it on. He threw a figure at me, and I again ordered him to put the meter on. He pulled over and told us to get out. All a bit embarrassing, but we got a free fare near enough as the taxi that we flagged down literally took us round the corner and we were at the hotel.

All six of us went to the bridge on the Kwai, which was quite interesting, although we were only allowed 5 minutes there, due to tight time restrictions. Was quite impressive despite what I'd been lead to believe about it. It's not massive but it's some structure to have been built given the circumstances.

We took a walk across it which was pretty hairy, given that it's only really wide enough for single file and we met plenty of people coming the other way. There are several large gaps to the side of the railway that had to be carefully negotiated to let anyone past. There was a bit of a panic when we were heading back across when a train appeared, but it stopped to pickup tourists before getting onto the bridge so we survived.

Next stop on this combo tour was a trip to the tiger temple. This is a tiger sanctuary run by monks. Was pretty amazing to be able to interact with the tigers in the way that we did.

We all got a shot of touching their backs whilst they wnadered down to the canyon where there were more photo opportunities. Jenny got well involved (obviously) going for the head shot and pulling their tails etc.

It became apparent pretty early on that the tigers had been given some sort of sedative to calm them down enought to have sweaty tourists poke and prod them, as the first big one to appear was zigzagging its way down to the canyon as if it had had one too many. It was all good though, and at the same time amazing to be able to get so close to them. There was one very annoying greasy twat who wouldn't listen to any of the warnings that were being issued by the guide (eg keep away from the tiger's mouth) and kept straying off towards the tigers trying to get the perfect shot. I think I can speak for everyone else in that we all would have clubbed together to made a hefty donation to the monks if they'd fed him to the tigers. He was so annoying.

We went and had a scope about chinatown on another day which was interesting. Lots of weird things being sold on the streets. Lots of gold shops to catch my eye. These pailed into insignificance when we (eventually) got to the Golden Buddah which is a 13 foot high solid gold buddah.

Very shiny and impressive. We almost didn't make it to this site, as again we were helpfully told that it was closed that day by a taxi driver who was more interested in taking us on a canal tour. After the grand palace experience we'd wised up to this line though and did eventually find it.

We ended up on a canal tour a couple of days later which was interesting. Not least for the fact that the smaller tributary canals seemed to be teaming with massive water dragons. Wouldn't have wanted to have fallen in. We cruised along lookingat all the ramshackle houses built right over the edge of the Chao Phraya, the river running through Bangkok. We stopped briefly to feed the fish which was good fun.

The fish were massive (presumably the reason there were dnosaur sized water lizards in there too) and we were encouraged to throw whole rolls in for them which they gobbled up no problem. We stopped off at a "snake farm'' next. This turned out to be a very run down and pretty depressing zoo.

The star attractions were the snakes which took part in a show hosted by a creepy guy on a microphone, and involved various snakes being tormented for 10-15 minutes, culminating in them milking one of them. All quite entertaining, but not very educational or fair on the snakes it seemed. The other animals were all pretty unhappy looking in their tiny cages. Jenny and Wendy were particularly taken by a cute baby gibbon that was out and about. Just a shame that it'll ended up in one of the tiny cages that the others were kept in.

Whilst we were staying in Bangkok we went to some very smart restaurants. For Roddy's birthday we went to the Banyan Tree, which is a restaurant on the 61st floor of a skyscraper on the top and open to the elements. Was an amazing view and food.

Was pretty windy though. After that and as a treat for him we went to Patpong - the red light district. We had a couple of drinks in a dodgy little bar and spotted ladyboys going past and watched all the seedy old men with their thai prizes. Was interesting. Not quite as in-your-face as I'd thought it might be, although Roddy was given an impromptu, unwanted neck massage whilst he was in the toilet which is pretty in-your-face I suppose. We didn't go to see a ''ping-pong show" which all the bars were advertising as I don't think either me or Jenny could cope with the embarrassment of seeing something like that with mother/father respectively in tow.

We also ventured across the Chao Phraya on one of the complimentary Oriental boats to have a traditional Thai meal sitting on the floor at lowered tables. They put on some traditional Thai entertainment whilst we ate. They had traditional dance which was interesting.

Especially the girls' fingers which were all hyper extended which looked pretty uncomfortable. That was followed by quite an odd mini-play with people wearing masks, and then a mock fight.

We took a trip to the famous chatuchak market. The biggest market in the world. It was massive. Sold nearly everything you could imagine. We spent a good half day wandering about here looking at all the weird and wonderful things on sale. We probably spent half of that time in the pet section as Wnedy and Jenny got all doey eyed about the puppies on sale there. The market wasn't quite what I was expecting, and I was a little disappointed that it wasn't a bit more in your face, ramshackle. In actual fact it was very civilised, neat and clean! It was interesting all the same though.

In between all of our sightseeing we all did a bit of relaxing by the pool, and eating and drinking well. Was a really amazing setting with the hotel right on the edge of the Chao Phraya so you could watch the cargo boats and tourist boats chugging up and down all day. All in all we had a great time relaxing for the week. Was good to re-charge the batteries, fatten up on good food, before heading off to Cambodia. We were very grateful to our parents for putting us up in a hotel round the corner from the Oriental the night that they left, to ease us back into traveller mode. We said goodbye to them on Sunday night and got up early on Monday morning to catcha bus to Cambodia........

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Was a bit choppy and rainy so we got soaked both on the boat and attempting to get our rucksacks into the thing in the first place. The sun did finally decide to start playing along just as we scrambled off the longtail onto the beach at Railay.

Railay puts Ao Nang to shame. Such a beautiful beach and no tacky little shops. It has the sheer limestone cliffs rising out of the sea at each end of the beach which was pretty cool. There were quite a few plush resorts that the beach backed onto, but pretty well hidden in the undergrowth. Unfortunately for us we had to trudge past the resorts, wishing we could afford to stay there, right through the undergrowth into the forest to find the cheap places. We ended up getting our own little wooden, thatched, bunglaow/forest hut effort with veranda and cushions to lie and relax on which turned out to be really nice. We'd gone to see another place that was a lot simpler and cheaper further into the bushes but I spotted a spider in a tree that was the size of my hand, so we decided against staying there.

The weather turned from thereon, and we've had glorious sunshine pretty much everyday for the past couple of weeks, which has been great. We spent most of our time just lounging on the beach and swimming in the bath temperature waters which was good. The Thai's know what they're doing when it comes to cocktails, either serving them in hollowed out fruits.....

or in buckets......

or the bars just sell you the ingredients and leave the rest up to you........

all that cost less than 3 quid which was pretty good.

From Railay we caught a ferry South to an Island called Ko Lanta. We caught a longtail boat out of Railay bay then had to transfer from that onto a little ferry out in the sea which was interesting. The ferry was overloaded with people all sitting hanging over the edges which was a bit disconcerting at first, but we just squeezed in and survived the 2 hour trip unharmed. There was the usual chaos that has greets you at every bus station and ferry port over here, with people tugging at you and shouting taxi in your face. We opted for a motorcyle and sidecar to take us to the main beach, which was an experience.

We spent our first night in a fancy beach hut at a resort, right on the beach which we thought was a pretty good deal. We later discovered that there was an open sewar running right under it that carried everyone elses filth past which made a very unpleasant smell. We were provided with an air freshener but it only made the smell even worse.

We left the next day. The beach at this place was pretty good though, and we got our first sunset over the Andaman Sea which was pretty spectacular.

Jenny had spent a good hour and a half constructing a big sand sculpture of a turtle in the sand. She was just finnishing off the head, when a pack of dogs caming running along the beach, made a bee-line for the turtle and jumped all over it destroying it.

Very funny.

We caught another sidecar down to the south of the island the next day, and found a much quiter and cheaper place to stay. We made sure to check for the telltale air spray as soon as we got sown round our hut this time. All clear. We stayed at an amazing quiet little family run private beach resort. Really incredible, and we were paying a third of the price we have been most places. The beach was nice, but a little rocky which made it a bit of an expedition to get into the sea, but other than that we both loved it, and stayed 3 nights. We got into a routine of just relaxing on the beach with our own little thatched shade booth

then gazing out to sea at the psychedellic sunsets and pirate ships going past,

whilst lying at the low tables of the local bar next door, enjoying a Singha or a cocktail, before heading out for something to eat, before returning to the bar to watch the nightly fire show.

Absolutley great. Could have stayed there a lot longer. The only major decision to be made when we were there was whether it was to be green or red curry.

Both brilliant. Jenny got a bit bored of the sun sometimes but there were plenty of crabs for her to torment, and sticks to do it with, all along the beach, so she was happy too.

From Ko Lanta we caught another ferry North to Ko Phi Phi. Ko Phi Phi is a breathtaking place.

It's a series of islands, most of which are massive limestone cliffs jutting out of the sea. The water is absolutley crystal clear and the beaches are white sand. It was quite touristy, but we expected that. And I don't think that can detract from how spectacular the place is.

We ended up staying in a place right at the top of a hill overlooking the whole bay which was really nice. The accommodation was good - big spacious huts on stilts. An American guy in front of us was mumping and moaning about having to pay for one, describing it as 'a bit ghetto'. We thought it was fine, apart from the 10 flights of rickety rusting stairs that we had to climb every day to get up to the top of the hill.

Ko Phi Phi's water is so clear it was unreal, and it has some of the best diving in the world, so we booked up for 2 dives out at the 2 most southerly limestone islands Bidah Nok, and Bidah Nai. We thought it wise to try a bit of snorkelling the day before doing this seeing as we hadn't done any since my little episode with a shark in Panama. You can snorkel right off the beach at Paradise beach where we were, and saw so many fish......and sharks, which was pretty smart. There were lots of Black Tip sharks patrolling about the water, but they were only about 1 - 1 and half metres long, and probably more scared of us than we of them. They were reasonably inquisitive though. But nothing like the monster in Panama so everything was ok. The next day we went diving. This was different class. We did it with a couple who were doing their last day of the open water course, so we could take it quite easy, and it was nice to have less experienced people there seeing as we hadn't dived since March. I can't rant and rave enough about the diving though. It was just immense.

We did it from a longboat which was very very slow in getting us to the islands and back, but very cool all the same. No sooner had we got down than we saw a stingray, then a Leopard shark about 4 foot long chilling out on the bottom. We saw all sorts of amazing fish, nemo, huge shoals of baby barracuda, lion fish......the list goes on. Our guide was good and pointed out all the interesting stuff, and at one point when we werelooking at lion fish under the coral, another 4 foot long lepoard shark came swimming up behind him and glided up the face of the coral. Leopard sharks are docile by the way, otherwise I would have been hyperventilaing and soiling my wetsuit. Really crazy stuff. We were both absolutely flying after it. Learning to dive is a must for everyone we've concluded.

We left Ko Phi Phi this morning on a ferry North to Phuket Island. We are currently in a little beach place called Hat Kata. It's not really very great. Unfortunately it has to compete with all I've just written, which is a hard act to follow, admittedly, but it's REALLY touristy here, and the prices are ridiculous. So don't think we'll spend much time here. Looking into heading North to quieter places before arriving in Bangkok on Sunday to meet the folks.

Thai beaches and Islands remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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This big badboy came through the roof to shelter from the rain. Not sure if the pictures translate very well exactly how big it was. It was VERY big. So big that you can see the pink of it's eyes reflecting the flash. Horrible. Jenny eventually took control of the situation and got rid of it. We were both doing a lot of checking of the bed before getting under the covers last night.

Spiders remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Singapore was alright. It's a pretty amazing mix of Cultures. Little India was interesting because it is Deepavali - Hindu festival of lights - at the moment, so they had all these ridiculously colourful decorations and neon light displays up all over the place.

We didn't spend long in Singapore, only one full day. We didn't see much of it as we spent half the day trying to buy a train ticket to Kuala Lumpur. I'm not sure there's an aweful lot to see in any event. We walked down the main street, Orchard Road, which is basically just one continuous stretch of massive shopping centres. Could have been anywhere. Weird walking down the street in the intense humidity and getting blasted by freezing air conditioning every few steps, from all the shops. I'm still struggling to get used to hot outside, cold inside. One thing that was good about Singapore, and has been so far since being in SE Asia, is the food.

Amazing selection of stuff to eat. On our day in Singapore we ate curry in Little India in the morning, Thai for lunch, then Chinese for dinner. Great stuff. We stayed in a dorm that night, which was a bit like a prison cell, which we had to share with an American Jesus freak and a girl from Leith. Not sure which is worse.

Next day we got up early and caught a train to Kuala Lumpur (KL). I think the line that we were on is part of the Orient Express route.

Certainly there was a sign indicating that was the case. The train took about 7 hours and was absolutely freezing. We went 2nd class, and the carriage was literally like sitting in a fridge. Wasn't very comfortable, and the toilet was a hole in the floor that went straight onto the tracks. Wasn't too bad though.

We arrived in KL mid-afternoon, managed to check-in to a hostel at our first attempt, then went and had a look around the city. Again, there wasn't a lot to see, apart from the Petronas Towers.

Absolutely amazing building, especially when all lit up at night. More massive shopping centres involved here, making up the bases of the two towers. We wandered about here for a while before going to get some food. The food in Malaysia, so far, has been great. You can eat and drink for next to nothing. We both ate and had a drink in KL for under 2 pounds for both of us. Despite the small shard of glass that I found in my Nasi Goreng, that was pretty good value. Nasi Goreng is great - basically spicy chicken fried rice with seafood, or whatever meat they have lying about. Been eating a lot of it, from dodgy little places that we've stopped at along the way. We only spent the one night in KL before moving North and to the West Coast of Malaysia, in search of good weather, and beaches. The weather so far has been disappointing. Been pissing with rain for the majority of our time here so far. I was getting a bit worried that we might have made a mistake in planning the trip the way that we have, and that we were going to be under a monsoon cloud for the whole SE Asia leg. A Malaysian guy that we spoke to allayed those fears by telling us that the weather has just been pretty shocking for this time of year and that it should be good by next week. So should be ok fingers crossed, as I'm planning on getting very very very very brown.

From KL we got a bus to a little place called Lumut where we caught a ferry to an island off the West Coast of Malaysia, called Pulau Pangkor. When we disembarked we caught a weird little pink taxi/minivan to the other side of the island to a little bay called Teluk Nipah.

Was a really pretty little beach town. The beach had rope swings hanging off lots of the trees lining it, which was quite smart.

Unfortunately the weather spoiled any quality time on the beach. It was a torrential downpour for nearly our whole time there. However, we did venture into the sea on our second day there. The sea here is really warm so we spent a good couple of hours mucking about in the waves. Other than wandering about the beach and sitting drinking Tiger beer on our little porch, watching the torrential rain and the weird hornbills flying about, we didn't do a lot.

Jenny is taking great interest in each and every cat that we come across, which makes getting anywhere quite a slow process as they are all over the place here.

I even spotted one down a drain in Singapore. Jenny fed one of the cats in Teluk Nipah a tin of curry tuna, so even the cats like it spicy over here. Was good to relax for a day or so before we hit the road again.

Last couple of days were a bit of a nightmare. Began a marathon two day slog North from the island. First caught a boat back to the mainland. Then caught a 2 hour bus to a town called Ipoh. Ipoh was a bit of a dump, and had proper open sewars running down the sides of the streets, absolutley revolting, the place stank like a toilet. Unfortunately we had to kill a whole day there wandering about in the rain before catching an overnight bus to Hat Yai just over the Thai border. Got absolutely no sleep because the bus was freezing cold. Managed to negotiate the border crossing before catching another 4 hour minivan to Krabi on the West Coast of Thailand. This was a nightmare, not least because we knew it was to be 4 hours, and we spent an hour and a half crawling about the streets looking for people to pick up before leaving. Got no sleep here either because it was so cramped and the driver was driving as fast as he could overtaking on blind corners driving literally inches befhind the vehicle in front at 70mph.

Having survived this we then caught another 1/2 hour taxi to our final destination Ao Nang, where we are just now. Slept well last night after all that carry on. Krabi seemed a bit of a dump as well, although we didn't spend long there and I was having a bit of a strop because of sleep deprivation. Ao Nang has niceish beaches, although the view out to the islands is what it's really all about and the longtail boats scooting about from bay to bay.

Really pretty. There are several reminders of the devastation that was caused by the Tsunami that hit in 2004, in the shape of evacuation signs, and there still appears to be a lot of rebuilding going on around here.

Ao Nang is kind of spoiled by the road that the beach backs onto that is littered with tack shops crawling with tourists. Going to head to better beaches tomorrow probably and try to escape the crowds.

Weather is still pretty crap although it's not raining and the sun is making some effort to come through.

South East Asia remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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A bit like a more glamorous version of Benidorm. The town itself wasn't up to much either. It's clearly trying hard to be like Miami, and their are a lot of numpties wandering about the place thinking they're glamorous. They're not. They're numpties. It was ok, it's just trying to be real glitzy and trendy and fails. Neon signs, Irish bars and run down casinos is basically what it amounts to. We spent a couple of days here before catching another short bus South to Byron Bay.

Byron is cool. It's a total hippie haven, with loads of long haired, heavily beaded, guitar sporting old dudes and women wearing clothes they've made from things they've found kicking about the place. It's just a cool little town though, with a really laidback atmosphere.

The beach is really pretty, with the lighthouse perched on the rocks at the easternmost point of Australia, at one end.

We spent 5 days here. Unfortunately the weather was a bit changeable, but we did spend some quality time in the sun on the beach. We also took a couple of trips up to the lighthouse. On our second visit we were lucky enough to see whales again. They were just off the coast, breaching.

Was really incredible to watch. Difficult to catch on camera so this was the best we could do. There was quite a large group of them, and they seemed to be just larking about jumping about and splashing for shits and giggles illustrating where the phrase having a "whale of a time" comes from.

We also did a bit of surfing whilst we were in Byron. We hired a board between us. Unfortunately we picked a pretty rubbish day to do it as the waves were all over the place, and it was pretty grey.

Was good fun.

Jenny was far more proficient than I was. I never even managed to stand up once. She did a couple of times. The surfing was made all the more exciting by the fact that a woman was attacked bya great white shark in the bay a couple of weeks before we arrived. Jenny was convinced they were waiting for us, and every 30 minutes would point and ask "did you see that?" which was quite alarming just before entering the surf. We both survived however.

The highlight of Byron was doing a skydive. Jenny was too chicken to go up. Did it in the afternoon, and spent most of the morning in the toilet at our hostel. I actually wasn't nearly as nervous as I'd thought I might be. The worst bit was the hanging about in the minibus on the way to the airstrip. We went to a really plush hotel to pick up some delegates from some conference who were doing it too. They were delayed, so we had to hang around about an hour longer than was expected. An hour longer to contemplate death.

When we got to the airstrip I was harnessed up by my instructor, and given 5 minutes instruction on what body shape to adopt. Then off we went. The plane was ridiculously small. There were no seats, and we sat astride each other in two lines facing the back of the plane.

There were 4 others doing their first jump with me, and a bunch of idiots doing their own thing. Was pretty nervous when we were climbing up into the sky. We did a cirlce over the lighthouse and beach. Amazing view. We climbed up to 14,000 feet then the plane levelled out, and someone opened the hatch at the side of the plane. Then the group of divers started shouting and screaming and slapping each other on the back. They all climbed out the door and hung onto the outside of the plane before disappearing into oblivion. Very quickly. I started getting a bit panicked at this point. Also the whole plane had lurched to the side as they jumped out. I was first in, last out, so had the opportunity to watch everyone else leave the plane. Didn't inspire confidence. Only at the last minute did my instructor, sitting behind me, clip me onto him and pull the goggles down over my face before shuffling our way to the gaping hole in the side of the plane. With every shuffle you could feel the plane moving with our shifting weight. Then I was dangled over the edge of the plane, hooked my feet under the bottom of the plane had a quick look down, almost had a heart attack, tilted my head back, arched my hips forward as instructed, then we rocked back once before bowling head over heels into the sky. I wasn't quite prepared for the initial feeling of dropping like a stone, losing my stomach, like you would on a rollercoaster, before straightening out and freefalling towards earth. It was absolutely incredible. Never felt anything quite like it. So exhilerating, words can't quite describe what it's like. I was doing a lot of yelling and screaming and laughing. It was so fast and the noise was almost deafening. The speed was the thing that really shocked me, and the fact that you could see the ground coming up so quickly. The view was absolutely unreal as well. I could see the whole of Byron Bay and the lighthouse. There were only a very few clouds. We dropped for 70 seconds. 70 very long seconds. 14,000 feet is the highest height you can jump from in Australia, and 70 seconds, the longest freefall. It was unbelievable. Then my instructor pulled the chord and the parachute billowed open. Needless to say that was quite a big relief. The rush of air stopped and it went silent. I was still screaming like a little girl, much to the amusement of the guy strapped to my back. There was a huge jolt as the parachute opened, and then we were floating. Before I could say anything the instructor said " I'm going to make you a little more comfortable, don't worry this is perfectly normal I'm not doing anything unsafe." and he unclipped something round my undercarriage, and the straps seemed to come a bit loose. I also dropped slightly, probably only an inch or two, however it felt like I was about to fall out of the harness. I just about wet myself. Turned out it was fine, and I was still firmly attached.

The ride down wasn't quite as sereen and floaty as I'd imagined. In fact it was the opposite. The instructor kept yanking the chords attched to the sides of the parachute, sending us into a tight downward spiral. Was really good fun as well though. After 3 minutes of this we came inot land.

I brought my knees up and we landed on our feet. I was on cloud 9. I couldn't stop smiling. It was absolutely different class. Would recommend it to anyone.

I must have shaken the instructors hand about 20 times. Obvioulsy I've bored Jenny to tears since I've done it describing it over and over again and how great it was, and I am for having done it. It was simply unbelievably great fun though, everyone should do it. I would now quite like to be a skydive instructor. Getting out of bed in the morning would be easy if that was what I was doing every day. Amazing.

Other than that we've just been lying on the beach and today travelled back to Sydney. We're staying here for a couple of days before flying out to Singapore on Thursday. Will be sad to leave Oz, as it's been great. Can't wait for South East Asia though......

Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay, back to Sydney remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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They also warn of $3000 fines for encouraging them or feeding them. Jenny was very restrained, despite initially suggesting that we take some dog food over for them. We had a couple of encounters with them whilst we were out there.

They are pretty shifty looking animals. We had one come right up within feet of us. In fact it was circling within feet of her and our bags whilst I was swimming in one of the fresh water lakes. It was scoping out what was worth taking, which gave Jenny a bit of a fright.

They're quite small, and seem pretty solitary. We did however have a pack of them come up to our campsite, but they moved off pretty quickly, only to return and sit directly outside our tent howling at 3.30am, which was annoying. We found them pretty timid though, and if you stood up they normally buggered off. The advice on the signs was to "Defend yourself aggressively" luckily it never got as far as that.

The 4x4 that we hired was the cheapest one available, a Suzuki Jimny, which we named Jimmy.

It was effectively like my micra at home with massive wheels on it. It wasn't long before we realised that nearly everyone else on the island had 4x4's twice the size of our little Jimmy, twice as high off the deck, and with 100 times more power. We came off the ferry and began off down a sand track to the south of the island.

Everything was going ok and we were bumping along quite nicely......until we went over a big jaggy stick that fired up through the base of the car and up through the gear stick narrowly missing my arm on the way. Scary stuff. We slowly began to realise that it was going to be tougher going than we thought as Jimmy was so low to the ground, and there was so much sand piled high in between the tyre tracks we were following that he was dragging his arse along the ground effectively. Despite plenty of encouraging shouts of "Come on Jimmy" from both of us we did end up stuck at one point, and the lack of tuition in driving a Jimmy, or my attention to it, became apparent pretty quickly.

I managed to dig us in twice as deep as we were initially by giving it plenty of wheel spins. So we had to get out in the blazing heat and dig the wheels out. Having dug them out and the undercarriage of the car I again managed to get us bogged down by spinning the wheels faster this time completely grounding the vehicle. To make matters worse (initially) a huge bus load of tourists came up behind us wanting past. We were blocking the road and I had to dig whilst all the tourists got out to have a good look. None of them offering to help. Simply to look.....and take pictures!!!! of me scrabbling about digging the sand out from under the wheels in the 30 degree heat, bright red and sweating. Eventually the driver, who was obviously on a tight schedule, put me out of my misery and encouraged the tourists to help push whilst he took the wheel and drove us back to slightly less soft sand. He clearly had us sized up as a couple of clowns who didn't have a clue and was being a bit arsie, but he did get us to safety so can't complain too much. Certainly was a crash course in how to get unstuck, and we survived the next 2 1/2 days without any other driving difficutlies. You're only allowed on the island with a 4x4, as there are no road. Despite having a kind of hybrid car/4x4 the driving was amazing fun. Hammering about the soft sand tracks in the bush was proper offroad driving, quite hard going and deafening as all the camping gear smashed about in the back. So so so much fun though.

75 mile beach runs right up the eastern edge of the island and is very spectacular, as it is so long, and has the Pacific crashing onto it. It is also amazing in that at low tide is a big wide sand motorway.

Driving up and down this was superb as well. We had to time it for the low tides to use the beach, and cut it quite fine on our second day with the tide fast coming up and running out of beach to drive on we only just made it to a safe spot to stop whilst the tide came up and went away so we could continue. One of the things the hire company hammered into us was NEVER drive in salt water, as that totally destroys all the electrics, so we were very careful about this. There were lots of little freshwater creeks running from the island interior onto the beach and out into the ocean. These were great fun to cross as well.

Eli Creek is the biggest, fastest flowing of these at about a couple of feet deep and about 3 metres wide, and crossing it was quite exciting as they warn that if you get stuck then the vehicle just gets buried which is not good news as a tow costs about a million dollars. We managed to get wee Jimmy across it a couple of times safely. It was quite funny watching the other folk who had the same model - their were a couple which made us feel not quite so stupid - sitting weighing up whether or not it was worth it to attempt certain creeks or deeper sands, then revving it up and hurtling at whatever obstacle was in the way.

The camping went reasonably well, although you forget how uncomfortable lying on the ground all night is. We weren't allowed to use the campsites provided because we're cheapskates but were able to camp anywhere along the beach just behind the dune, which I thought was better, because it meant we could choose anywhere we wanted and get a feeling of being in the wilderness.

Jenny initially liked this idea then spent most of the first night under the stars listening for unusual noises thinking someone was creeping about outside the tent coming to kill us. She was out with the torch a couple of times. We survived. On our second day we travelled right the way 50km up the beach to Indian Heads, the northern most point to which you can take the vehicles. On the way we stopped at the shipwreck of the Maheno, which was a luxury cruise liner, built in Scotland! that washed up on the shore of Fraser Island just before the 1st World war, during a typhoon.

Was pretty cool. We also drove past the Pinnacles which are coloured sand cliffs. When we got to Indian Heads we climbed up the rocks from where you get a good view of the beach and out to the South Pacific. At this time of year Humpback Whales migrate South down the coast to warmer waters with their young, and this viewpoint was supposed to be a spot where you could spy them. We didn't see anything. It started raining and we just got wet, which is unbelievable, as I think they only get about 2 days rain a year there! Typical. We got a mixed bag of weather which was a shame, because when the sun is out the place is incredible. Jenny wasn't terribly impressed with all of this, as we had only seen one scabby dingo that looked a bit mental up til that point and it was quite cold. However she had her close encounter with the dingo later that day, at a freshwater lake we climbed up to and swam in, Lake Wabby.

The sun came out all that afternoon and we did a bit of sunbathing and watching the giant catfish in the lake. Things got even better when I spied some bursts of spray and humps breaching the water just off the coast where we had just decided to camp. So we did get to see humpbacks, literally 500m off the coast. Was really spectacular. Even I was quite engrossed watching them.

We camped for our last night and I got up early the next morning - 4.30am - to try to catch the sunrise.

Unfortunately the sun was hiding behind the clouds, and it was freezing, but still reasonably spectacular. We were pretty sleep deprived the whole time we were on the island, having to get up at 5am to pack up and get moving so that we could use the beach as a road. We were in bed by 8pm each night as well which is not something I've done since I was about 8. On our way back across the island to the ferry we stopped at Mackenzie lake which is the most famous and picturesque of the lakes.

Unfortunatley the weather wasn't great so we lay on the beach freezing and getting sandblasted from the wind for 1/2 an hor before leaving.

All in all, despite the mixed weather, Fraser Island was really beautiful. It's an amazing place given that it is entirely made of sand, and yet you drive a lot of the time through rainforest that has managed to grow in the sand.

It was great to get away from it all as well. Despite their being quite a few others hacking about the place in 4x4's, for a lot of the time because the island is so big, you can be totally alone and be on miles of completely empty beach or seemingly untouched rainforest. All pretty smart. We both really enjoyed it. Back in Hervey Bay taking it easy for a day or so. Had our first showers in three days yesterday which was a godsend. Sand all over the shop. Booked a coach back to Brisvegas tomorrow then heading on to Surfers Paradise for some beach action, surfing and some bloody sun hopefully.

Just a quick aside - Now not only can I wear lots of gold, but drink it as well. Happy days.

Fraser Island remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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On Saturday we went out to celebrate our last night in Sydney before going up the coast. We met up with Russel at the Surry Hills festival, which is basically an excuse to go and drink in one of the parks in Surry Hills.

Was nice weather, so sat about there for a while listening to the live music and drinking warm lager before heading to James' to meet up with him and Sarah for a few drinks at his. He's been trying to start his own aquarium, but hasn't been very successful. He got a quite small tank and put so many fish in it that about half of them jumped out during the night, dying all over his livingroom floor. Not being satisfied with fish, he's now invested in another tank housing two seahorses. So the grand unveiling was on Saturday.

They were pretty impressive, although I'm not convinced he has a clue how to care for them, although I'm happy to proved wrong. We all went out for a Thai meal which was good fun.

My hair is an absolute disgrace at the moment. It's entirely out of control. I've not had it cut since we were in Cusco back at the beginning of May! I got it all shaved off then and have let it grow since then, almost 6 months. It is particularly unusual looking as it is all the same length all over. Without any gel ini it, it looks a bit like an old-fashioned motorbike helmet. Thinking about just letting it grow until we return in February to see just how ridiculous it becomes.

After the meal me Russel and Jenny went down to a pretty scummy Irish pub in the city to watch the highlight of the evening - Scotland thrashing Ukraine in the football. We ended up watching the game in a kind of dingy social club in the bowells of the earth. Sarah and James came down to join up with us and left after about 5 minutes. Not very impressed with the place I don't think. Meanwhile me and Russell had got psyched up for the game and donned the blue and white in support.

Was quite a good atmosphere, probably about 50 or 60 folk in the place. We were making most of the noise after drinking for the entire afternoon in the lead up to the game which kicked off at 12am. Both of us got pretty carried away and did quite a bit of running, screaming and throwing lager about the place in celebration of each of the three goals.

Such a good game. Very proud to be Scottish at the moment. We ended up back at Bondi for about 3.30am needing to be up to take a taxi to the airport at 7am. I was a total wreck. I'm never drinking the night before we have to fly again. Felt like death the whole day. I did however battle on, and we managed to do some sightseeing round Brisbane when we arrived.

Brisbane's ok. It seems a nice enough place but we've been totally spoiled by Sydney. You can't help comparing them, and Brisbane just doesn't cut it. We wandered down through the botanics and along the river Brisbane which was nice, but other than that, and a massive Casino in the centre - which we weren't aloud into because we were wearing flip flops - there didn't seem to be a lot to see. It does seem to be a bit more "Australian" than Sydney, by which I mean Sydney is really cosmopolitan and there are so many tourists and different nationalities, whereas in Brisbane there are a lot less tourists and more Australians, and even some Aborigines.

We used Brisbane as a base for a trip to Australia zoo on our second day. It was about 1 1/2 hours North by train and bus. I thought Jenny might need some reigns put on her she was so excited.

Australia zoo is Steve Irwin's zoo, and to be fair it is probably the best zoo I've ever been to. As you would expect it's really hands-on, and there are loads of shows going on throughout the day. The centrepiece to the zoo is a ridiculous 5,000 seater stadium, like a football ground, called the "crocoseum". They had various birds swooping around the place literally feet above your head as we sat there which was pretty amazing. Then they brought out the crocodile and made it jump out the water and attack from the water for bits of steak.

Was really impressive. The water is clear so you can see it stalk up to the edge then lie perfectly still before striking. All very entertaining.

They also had large areas where kangaroos and wallabies were roaming free and you could go up and feed them, or torment them. I think they are now my favourite animals.

They just lie about on their backs all day, eating and scratching themselves. We saw a couple of children get a bit to close to one of them lying down. The stupid mother was encouraging them to crouch down right beside it and they were getting a bit rough, grabbing at its face. Naturally the kangaroo took offence to this, turned and took a proper swing at the boy, trying to punch him in the face! Funniest thing I've seen in a long while. Luckily he was wearing a cap, so he only took a smack on the peak.

The elephants were a highlight also. One of the keepers was throwing a football at one of them and it was smacking it in the air with it's tail. It enjoyed rolling the ball under its front foot, before popping it like a balloon. The keepers then had the elephants come right up to the barrier so that you could feed them various fruit and veg.

Jenny went mental for this and kept re-queueing up to do it after a go. I think she managed 4 or 5 turns, and was grabbing two bits of fruit on her last few goes......probably meaning that some poor child didn't get a go. But she had a great time. It was pretty amazing, as you got a real sense of how massive an animal they are when their towering over you and sniffing about at you with their trunk. One tiny little boy was clearly terrified and wouldn't let go of the fruit, kept turning away and trying to back away from the elephant, until his Dad grabbed him and thrust him towards it. I've never seen a look of horror nor heard a scream like it. Probably scarred for life.

They also had tiger cubs which were very cute, and we went to watch a tiger show which was pretty spectacular as well. They had them jumping up on the handlers and climbing up posts to get their food. All in all the place was great and we both really enjoyed it.

Jenny had a tanrum when we had to leave and cried all the way home because she didn't want to leave.

Yesterday we left Brisbane on a 5 hour bus North to Hervey bay. The main reason we're here is as a base to get across to Fraser Island. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world. It's supposed to be amazing. It's got spectacular beaches and rainforest to explore. The only way to get about the island is either to go on an organised tour on a coach, or to hire a 4x4. We've decided to splash out a bit and go on a road trip adventure by hiring the 4x4 and camping gear. So we set off tomorrow for a couple of nights in the bush over on the island which should be fun.

Back on the Road remains copyright of the author calumfife, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Unbelievably, considering that the weather had been so so good until this point, when we sat down it started blowing a gale, the temperature dropped right down and it started raining. Despite the awning and mushroom heaters, we got rained on and Jenny had to succumb to looking like an old granny wearing a blanket on her lap and round her shoulders.

To be fair she wasn't the only one that resorted to this, and there were even some guys taking them, big nancies. In spite of the wind and the rain the meal was spectacular. So good. We started by having a couple of cocktails then tried some local fare as entrees, in the shape of Yabbies and Bugs. Yabbies are like big fat bastard prawns with claws. Really really good, if you like that sort of thing. Ever the touch of class I couldn't restrain myself from getting a photo of myself man-handling them, and making them wave at the camera, in spite of the disgusted looks of the snobs at the table beside us.

Bugs are like miniature, really ugly, flat-headed lobster. Again really really tasty. Kind of a cross between lobster and crab. I had tuna and Jenny a seafood Bouillabasse for mains. Both excellent also. All in all, in spite of the weather, the meal was magic. And we had a couple of expensive bottles of wine which was a nice change from the cheap rubbish that we've been drinking since we got here.

In fact it's been very difficult to revert to drinking the plonk, well it was for the first bottle, after one the second always goes down easier, as Jenny proved at the weekend. We went out for a BBQ at russel and nic's friends house. Barbecues at the weekend are kind of a national institution for Aussies. Especially as it was grand final weekend. They go mental for the AFL grand final. You can't escape it. It's almost the only thing on TV for a week prior to the actual game, and on the Saturday the whole of Australia, certainly Sydney, is covered in a layer of sweet smelling meat flavoured smoke.

We walked around for a bit trying to find the BBQ we were supposed to be attending, and literally every 2nd house had a stream of smoke coming from the back garden. Our BBQ was a good laugh, watched Geelong whip Port Adelaide in the Grand final then ate some snags and drank some stubbies, true Aussie style.

Turned out there weren't actually any Aussies at our BBQ, mostly English, so chat centred around the Premiership as opposed to AFL. Was all good though, apart from the fact I managed to carve my toe open on a rusty nail at the party. It happened quite late on, after quite a few bevvies had been consumed, and so I was provided with a make shift bandage which, amazingly, did the job.

Jenny was clearly very thirsty that night, and I basically had to carry her home interspersed with a bit of her rolling about on the ground, which was a bit of a role reversal for us.

She spent most of Sunday crawling about the toilet and rolling about in bed groaning that she was never drinking wine again, lesson learnt.....we'll see.

Yesterday was a public holiday in Sydney, so we both had the day off. The weather has been glorious for the last week or so, and yesterday was really warm, so we decided to take a trip out of Sydney to Palm Beach. Palm beach is about 1 1/2 hours North of Sydney by bus......or 2 1/2 hours if your bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere and you have to wait for the next one, as we did. It was worth it though, as the drive up there is very picturesque, driving up the cliffs looking out over the Tasman Sea. Palm beach is pretty spectacular, with great surf. It was also pretty familiar, as it is probably better known as Summerbay from Home and Away. So we took some photos pretending we were on the show and went to see the Surf club.

Turns out that the surf club in reality is a public toilet block. We could have arranged to go to Palm Beach when they film episodes, as you can find out from the internet when their going to be shooting, but I decided that was too sad much to Jenny's disappointment. We spent a while lounging on the beach before taking the 2 hour bus back down the road. We spent a lot more time on the bus than we did on the beach which was crap, but it was well worth the visit.

We've had a breakthrough with the noise problem in our building, in that all the complaining that we have been doing has resulted in the noisy buggers across the hall being evicted. We came back to find them being told to leave and got a bit of a shunning from them. Brought a smile to my face and serves the tossers right. So since then we've managed to have a good run of proper nights sleep which has been a luxury. No ear plugs. No yelling and screaming. It's been great. Just pray that the landlady doesn't put another bunch of reprobates in the room in their place. Only got 1 1/2 weeks to survive now so it's all good. Anyway don't have work today but better go as Bondi beach is a strict mistress.

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Really plush little bachelor pad complete with harbour views, balcony and barbecue, and sky TV.....and most importantly of all no annoying drum playing neighbours. It was like a wee holiday for us. We were both just glad to get a couple of full nights sleep, and to have the luxury of sleeping without earplugs crammed in our ears, for the first time in weeks. Whilst we were satying there we got a proper view of the fuss that surrounds George W. What a carry on! Anytime he went anywhere in his convoy of 200 vehicles 3 or 4 helicopters would take off in advance to scout about the city, checking the entire CBD was safe. At night it was really creepy because they would hover and cirlce the skyscrapers shining the most powerful light I've ever seen in through the darkened windows, peering in looking for baddies I presume. They did this 3 or 4 times a day for the 4 days that he was in town.

We had to cook all our food on the BBQ because James doesn't have an oven. No bad thing though. Ate a lot of meat whilst we were there. Jenny let the BBQ get a bit out of control at one point and basically set fire to the balcony. I gave her moral support by shouting instructions, waving and sipping wine from the inside, behind the glass. Was great to get away from Bondi for a couple of nights.

We returned to our place to find a surpise in the fidge. A cockroach that had perished on its way to the turkey slice. Absolutley rank! but not as bad as the baby ones that we found scuttling about on the inside of the fridge door a couple of days later. Needless to say the fridge has been thoroughly scrubbed since then. Again I hasten to add that the cockroaches are not living with us because we are being dirty skanks, they are simply everywhere. The pest problem isn't helped by the fact that our neighbours are manky student scum. The communal kitchen is disgusting and smells like a public toilet. Also there is a weird fat dog that waddles about the place. It has free roam of the building and is left chicken carcasses and bones on the carpeted hall by its owner which is nice. It goes without saying, of course, that Jenny has befriended the animal and has invited it into our room for some of the turkey slice on a few occasions. I'm a bit wary of the dog because it's got a bit of a shifty look about it, like it might enjoy biting my hand if I went to clap it. So I've been trying to steer clear of it which was becoming more difficult as it now knows where we live and was beginning to lurk outside our door waiting for a feed. It was however run over by a car this week and has allegedly broken its back so it's been convalescing in its owner's room for the last few days.

Unfortunately, although I now have safe , unhindered passage to the room, the dog is now contributing to the already unbearable noise in the night by whining and howling, which is extremely irritating. I lost the plot last night when the drums started at 12.30 and went and did a bit of shouting and swearing at the guy which seemed to get through to him.

Managed to find Irn Bru in the supermarket which is a godsend of a Sunday morning. That's a good example of just how many Brits and Irish there are over here, that you can get that sort of thing so easily. What hasn't been easy, is watching any football. I spent a good few hours trying to find a pub to watch the France game, without success. There are plenty of 24 hour pubs, just there isn't any interest in "soccerball" over here. They don't care about football at all, which I find very sinister. A famous Aussie footballer John Warren 30 years ago quoted that the Australian attitude to the game was that it was fit only for "wogs, sheilas and poofs" and that attitude doesn't seem to have changed over the years which is a shame.

Other than that we've not been up to much except working. I've got a job at a bank now, which is just as depressing as all the other jobs that I've had. Not long to go though, and we've booked flights up and down the coast in three weeks time, so the beach beckons.

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Taronga zoo sits right on the opposite shore to Sydney, so great views. Yet another zoo though. It's beginning to feel like we're doing a world tour of zoos. We're already planning the next one, Steve Irwin's, in about a months time. Woohoo. Taronga was pretty good as zoos go. There were quite a few impressive exhibits, most notably the biggest crocodile I've ever seen, about 4/5m long. They also had a little section where you could chase wallabies and Kangaroos about and molest them. They didn't seem to care much. They have the same kind of laid back attitude that the people have.

This one was quite happy lying flat on it's back watching tourists go by. Jenny gets scarily excited about being at the zoo, but she was in good company with James as he likes to run about with taking pictures through the glass of everything and anything too. He was even over the safety barrier at the snow leopards cage basically trying to get in with them.

The highlight of the zoo was a talk on spiders where we sat with a bunch of 5 year olds being shown funnel webs and red backs, which are both apparently really common and in every back garden in Sydney....which is nice. The star of the talk was the little boy sitting next to us who when asked "Do you know what the most venomous spider in the world is?", answered "Yes. Spiderman." Good answer.

The Oran-utan was pretty amazing as well. It had climbed right to the top of it's post and was giving disapproving looks at all the tourists. Really weird looking creature. So weird that it kind of looked like it might be a guy in a costume. If it is then that makes my job seem not so bad.

After gawking at the animals for a good couple of hours we went back to James's, via the butcher, for a BBQ. Australians are absolutely mad for BBQ's, indeed so far as food goes over here if it can't be mashed up into sausage or burger form for the grill, then I don't think they consider it edible. There are so many different types of sausage it's unreal. We got a selection of fish snags - shrimp and chilli, swordfish and feta etc. Probably the saltiest things I've ever eaten and wouldn't be rushing to get them again. The meat out here is all really good though, and very cheap. We had Kangaroo the other night which was pretty good - tastes like steak and I'd recommend it if you can see past the fact that you're essentially eating a giant rat.

All last week the weather was really good, and the temperature got up to 27 degrees on a couple of days, so on Sunday we took a trip to Cogee beach, a couple of bays south of Bondi. There was a guy with a message from God flying about above the beach in his little plane.

Cogee basically just a scaled down version of Bondi, but nice. Was so busy. Was sunny but windy so the T-shirt wasn't off for very long. In fact we got sucked into a beer garden not long after arriving. We were pretty warm when we left there though, a few hours later.

This week's been pretty chaotic in Sydney as the George Bush circus rolled into town last night for an APEC summit (which I think is kind of like G8 for Asia Pacific Countries). They're holding the summit in Sydney's CBD, so there's a public holiday on Friday which is a bonus. The whole CBD is being shut down and they've erected a 15 foot fence to keep everyone out, which is causing quite a lot of resentment amongst the locals. They're also closing Bondi beach on the Saturday so that the WAGs can have lunch safely, which is causing some resentment amongst me, because I want to go to the beach at the weekend.

We've both totally fallen in love with Sydney over the 2 months we've been here, and that's saying really something given the circumstances - ie we both have dead-end boring jobs on minimum wage; we're eating almost exclusively own brand supermarket products and reduced-to-clear kangaroo; we're living with cockroaches and selfish, nocturnal, drum and electric guitar playing twats; we're both completely sleep deprived; and up to now we've been wearing clothes and sleeping in a bed that stinks of piss because someone at some point clearly decided that they would use their own urine as a fabric softner in the communal washing machine. We are now handwashing all our clothes. However the point is that in the face of all that we're both having an amazing time and love living here, so it's become a real possibility to come back with a more permanent plan.....maybe. Sydney's got it all, although actually living in Bondi has dispelled the stereotypical image that I had of it before coming here. I envisaged it being a haven for bronzed, good looking surfer chicks and blokes with girly hair wandering about carrying surfboards. The reality is that it is full of pasty, chicken-skinned, Guiness guzzlers. There have to be more Irish folk here than in the whole of Ireland. Bondi is pretty cool though, (the woman at my work said it's "daggie" - but she's a "flaming galla") and although the beach is nothing like I expected it is great for a beach in the city, really clean and the water is crystal clear, unlike other city beaches I've been to.........Joppa.

We're both a bit fed up with work. It's ok although spiritcrushinly boring. The people I'm working with are real friendly however I've managed to create a potentially embarrasing situation for myself. Despite trying very very very hard to ensure that people are not confused about my name - enunciating it very clearly to everyone that I meet for the first time as if they are elderly and hard of hearing - I have failed spectacularly at work. The woman downstairs calls me Karl and there's another woman in the same room as me who calls me either Kaylum or Cayleb. For some reason I didn't correct either of them on the first occasion they got it wrong, and now 4 weeks on, there's no going back, as to do so would be more embarrassing than "simply" responding to my new various names. So I'm trying to avoid them both and the situation where the one who calls me Karl, calls me that in front of someone who knows me by my given name.....or worse still she calls me Karl in front of the one who calls me Kaylum. Not sure how I would explain myself. Anywho, I'm only there for another week so the odds are in my favour given how long I've kept up the charade so far.

We're currently planning our itinerary for travelling the East Coast of Australia which starts in 6 weeks, and also are planning an excursion to dive with sharks in the interim which should be pretty exciting.....

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When we got to the hospital Jenny was given some pills by a nurse and we sat next to the door and waited and waited and waited. Only when Jenny started shivering and was about to pass out did she get any attention and I'd basically had to grab a doctor as he went passed. Turns out I managed to grab probably the strangest "Doctor" (if that's what he really was) in Australia.....maybe the world. He was from Peru and had some pretty controversial medical opinions which he decided to openly share with us e.g. - "when I'm dealing with HIV/AIDS victims I like to keep the door to the room we are in open so that I'm breathing fresh air and don't catch what they've got!?!" He also said that he was convinced that one of the nurses at the hospital had "healing hands", and she could cure patients just by touching them. He said it was a shame that it was her day off otherwise she would have sorted Jenny out by touching her stomach. He went on to justify this claim by telling us a story of how this woman had sorted out a patient's severely swollen testicle just by touching it?? He didn't inspire a lot of confidence, although he was quite funny....peculiar. We were then abruptly left by him, to think about what he'd told us for the next 2-3 hours before a real doctor came and told Jenny that she had sever period pains, and we were sent home - 6 1/2 hours after arriving.

By the time we got home it was 12pm on Saturday, and we got a couple of hours sleep before heading out to the AFL game that we'd booked tickets to go see that night. Jenny felt a lot better after a lie down and was scooping the wine back by 5pm.

We went to meet James at the Opera bar. This is literally right next to the Opera House. Really spectacular location - even managed yet another sneaky photo of the opera house pretending to take one of Jenny. The bar is probably the most expensive in Australia however, at $7 for the cheapest bottle of beer.

From here we went and hooked up with Niki and Russel before taking the 20 minute train ride out to the Telstra Stadium (where most of the Olympics were held). We arrived at the ground about 5pm, a good 3 hours before kick off. The intention - for the girls certainly - was to don a pink poncho and go stand on the pitch before the game in support of a breast cancer charity. That didn't quite happen. Instead, we all just stood in a car park and ate kebabs and drank a few tinnies. We had however paid double the ticket price, half going to the charity, so we felt we'd done our bit and weren't just being tight and shunning it.

The game was between the Sydney Swans and St Kilda (Melbourne). It was really good. Lot better than I'd expected, and I've decided AFL is far superior to rugby. Far more exciting, fast paced and skilfull. It's obvioulsy nowhere near as good as football, but it's kind of a cross between football and rugby.

I was well impressed. It was helped by the fact it was quite a big game for the Swans, they won, the stadium was amazing - absolutely giant - there were 60,000+ there all wearing colours..........and they sold beer and wine in the ground.

So even though we were all pretty well oiled before the game, there was no escape inside the ground, and we were all well on the way by the time we left. Joining in with the locals behind us shouting at the referees.

Was really good laugh and would definitely go back.

We headed back into town and had a few light refreshments. Niki had to pour Russel into a cab, as all the fun and games pulling faces at the camera had taken its toll on him.

We headed back to James's for a few more and for Jenny to take some interesting pictures of the harbour before we called it a night and Jenny poured me into a taxi where we took some even more interesting photos.




Bit of a mess

Other than that we've had a quite week. I've got a new job that is just as boring as all the others that I've had. Working in a massive private dental centre. The office is in a scyscraper and they have a whole floor with 10 dental chairs on it, if you were scared of the dentist this would be a living nightmare of a place. I'm not doing any dentistry myself just office junior crap. So so boring. Although we do have a radio.........that's tuned into Sydney's top Easy Listening station. Having been there for a week I'd rather they just turned it off, because if I have to listen to "tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree" one more time I'll be forced to take matters into my own hands.

Speaking of music, in the loosest sense of the word, Pop Idol has just started on TV out here. The only reason I mention that is because I worked with a guy doing data entry who a week later appeared on the show and has got down to the last 24 which is quite impressive.

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Still enjoying living there, other than the cockroaches, which are everywhere. Every morning they appear, scuttling about the walls, ceiling and toilet. I'm sure they are crawling about the bed and over our faces in the night, but there's not a lot you can do to stop them. It's not a hygiene issue, rather we are on the outskirst of the city, where things like that live. Trying not to imagine what other things might be eating the cockroaches and lurking in our garden.

Unfotunately the guy in the room next to us has recently invested in a drum kit, which he enjoys practising every night. Last night at 11.30pm. Jenny was not amused. He is absolutley useless, and can only make very basic rhythmic bangs like a small child might manage.

There was a massive boat show the other weekend in Darling Harbour, which Jenny dragged me along to. Don't like boats. Having said that some of the yachts were pretty swanky. You had to take your shoes off before getting on them to snoop around. Some of them were invitation only. Needless to say we weren't invited on any of those ones. Should have gone to a fancy dress shop before going here and bought a Captains outfit. There seemed to be a lot of people who had been and done that. Lots of Captain Birdseye lookalikes strolling about the place. We went to Manly the other day, on the ferry. It's on the North shore, 30 mins across the water from Sydeny. Ferry ride is pretty spectacular as it leaves from Circular quay between the harbour bridge and the opera house, so you get amazing view of both.

We also ventured across to the middle of the Harbour Bridge one night as you get really good photos of the opera house from there. I think I'm becoming a bit obsessed by the opera house. It's very strange, but I feel compelled to take millions of photos of it every time we go past it. Jenny near enough has to wrestle the camera away from me.

Manly is a kind of upmarket version of Bondi beach. Very nice. Lots of very plush appartments and people walking their rat-like dogs with coats along the promenade.

We have tickets to an AFL game on Saturday night, at the Telstra stadium which I think is the Olympic stadium, which should be a laugh. The fans are supposed to be pretty mental, there has just been a strike by the train drivers, who refuse to take one set of fans anywhere because the other week they were caught with molotov cocktails on with them!? They're not the team that we're going to watch though, and it should be a tame affair, as there is a Breast Cancer Awareness gig before the game.

Anyway better go. Seeing as I have a day off I'm going to maybe make a trip to the beach, as it's very nice and warm outside. Roll on Summer, because if this is what winter's like, summer must be amazing.

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The folk at my work are all dead friendly. Also the guy who seems to be running the show is quite funny (peculiar). He's a bit of a David Brent - quite a bit older than everyone else, but acts hip by wearing sunglasses indoors, and a leather jacket and shiny shirts. He also likes to add the word "...meister" to the end of everyone's name. Seems like a nice enough guy though. Even more impressive than finding the job so quickly was that I managed to find a work outfit for less than AUS$100 (40 quid). Shirt, tie, trousers, and shoes. Transpires that I may have to invest in another pair of shoes though. The ones I bought are called "Ned" shoes. Didn't see this printed on the side of the box otherwise I'd have left them well alone. After wearing them only once they have begun to smell like garlic bread. They smell even when I've got them on my feet. It's rank. Not even odour eaters or specifically designed spray seems to help.

We had to wait longer than expected for our little studio appartment to be finished, surprise surprise. But it's all kitted out now and we've both settled in, and are quite enjoying living there. The only issue is the cockroaches. Lots and lots of them scuttling about the place. Think they're attracted to the smell of garlic. Not seen any venomous insects yet which is a bonus, long may that continue. Doing plenty of shaking of clothes and checking of shoes before puting them on.

We went out on a bit of a heavy one at the weekend with James. He knows a guy who is head of promotions for Jagermeister, and we got ourselves VIP passes to a trendy club in Kings Cross. Was really good night although all the drinks were really really expensive, apart from Jagermeister.....which was free. Me and James got a bit over involved in the free shots and the Jagerbombs (a shot of it in a glass of red bull). I also managed to persuade the bar staff to give me full glasses of it, which resulted in Jenny having to help me home. We also had a wee argument in a shop on the way home which ended up with Jenny helping me into a display by shoving me. Ended up destroying it, and on the floor. All good fun, although we can never go back there because the owner didn't find it very funny. Spent the next day crawling about on the floor beside the toilet so lesson learnt, I'm never drinking Jagermeister again.

Anyway, better get back to work. Counting down the days already. Only 10 weeks to endure then back on the road. Roll on October. Not least because the weather is crap here at the moment. Pretty cold, although it is the middle of their winter, so 15 degrees isn't too bad. Supposed to warm up soon. Can't wait to get to the beach.

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We've come crashing back to reality so far as prices are concerned here. The hostels are ridiculously expensive and not even that nice. We are staying in the Kings Cross area of Sydney, which is an interesting mix of backpackers, strippers, hookers, beggars and mental cases. It'll have to do for the next few days though.

For the first few days we were here we did most of the touristy things (well the cheap or free ones anyway). We went to the botanical gardens which were very cool so far as botanical gardens go. Wasn't really interested in the plants, although enjoyed the Queensland Bottle tree.

The highlight of this place is the fruit bats, or flying foxes as they're called here. There were loads of them hanging about in the trees.

They're not the most friendly animals, screaming away at each other and biting their sleeping neighbours for no apparent reason. They're really big though and it was great watching them flying about in the daylight. Needless to say Jenny was running about in the trees, with the camera getting very excited about all of this, had to almost physically drag her away. There were also parrots and cockatoos all over the park as well.

The path through the botanics goes right out to a point that overlooks the Opera house and bridge. Get such a good view from here. The Opera House is pretty spectacular, although looked like it could do with a lick of paint.

It was a bit dirty looking, kind of beige coloured as opposed to white. It's an amazing building though, on the outside. We never went inside because they were going to charge some ridiculous price for that, but you can see bits of the inside. It's a bit dated looking as well, reminded me a bit of the Brunton Hall in Musselburgh (bad memories - a place I had to be dragged to, to do music competitions as a child) all the 1960's style wooden walls.

We also took a trip to the Sydney fish market which was interesting, especially the giant crabs that were the size of my head near enough.

It's a huge market selling all kinds of seafood. You can also try just about anything in the restaurants in the place too. Jenny had baby octopus, although she only liked eating the tentacles.

Luckily there was a few giant pelicans roaming about the car park waiting to be fed the other bits. They were quite funny, literally lurking about outside the market waiting patiently to be fed, and posing with all the tourists sidling nervously up to them for a photo.

Sydney's a really vibrant city that we both really like. And we know a couple of people who stay here already which is helpful. Went out for a few drinks with a guy James we met whilst travelling in Costa Rica, a couple of nights back. He's moving here, and so is Sarah his girlfriend hopefully, for the next wee while. Also Russell who's a pal of mine from Uni days, who helpfully took pitty on us both the other night and shouted us dinner. So, having hummed and hawed about whether we were going to head North to Brisbane to settle for a few months to work, the main draw there being the better weather, we decided to stay here. We're planning to stay here for the next 2-3 months to work which is a pretty depressing thing to have to consider, as I have particularly enjoyed being a waster for the past 6 months or so. Accordingly we've been forced into doing grown up stuff over the past few days looking for a more permanent place to stay here. We have now found somewhere, after going to see quite a few really dodgy places. Jenny's contribution to the flat hunting exercise was on occasion spectacularly poor and as a result I'm seriously considering buying her a hearing aid. One property she arranged for us to see we ended up on a road that sounded 'similar' to the road we were supposed to be viewing a property on, although a 'similar' road is clearly not very useful when it's on the other side of the city from the actual street - and on another occasion we ended up at the correct address but were confronted with 75 buttons on the intercom to choose from, with no idea which one to press and no phone number to contact the owner.

We did however manage to find a place to stay yesterday, although we had to use our imagination a little, as the room hasn't quite been completed yet?! We are assured that it will be finished on Wednesday when we can move in. We hope. It should be really good though, self contained with ensuite and own kitchenette. It's well located in Bondi 10 minutes from the city and the beach which is nice.

Going to start job hunting tomorrow, can't wait.......

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