Ciarán & Elaine's Travelog

Malaysia

2007-07-30T06:24:00.000-07:00

Leaving Phi Phi we had decided to go to the Cameron Highlands in the centre of Malaysia for a few days before flying out of Kuala Lumpur on Monday. What we thought would be a nice scenic journey (1 ferry ride & 1 coach ride) turned into the journey from hell!!

Our friends Hol & Bex had been to the Cameron Highlands a couple of months ago and raved about it so with only 1 week in Malaysia it seemed like a great spot. Unfortunately our journey didn't go quite to plan.

Instead of 1 ferry and 1 coach trip we ended up getting a ferry then two minibus's, then crossing the border to Malaysia, then another minibus then a coach which dropped us at the bus station in Kuala Lumpur at 2am. Too late to get a hotel and a 7 hour wait for our next coach to the Cameron Highlands..... A not-so-fun night sitting in a dirty city bus station surrounded by lots of weird/criminal looking folk followed by 4 hours on another coach eventually found us at the Cameron Highlands - 35 hours after we left Phi Phi and thoroughly exhausted. Our usual attitude of 'what an adventure' didn't quite work this time as the rain was pelting down in the highlands.

The reason for going there was to hike for a couple of days but with the rain so bad the tracks were all waterlogged so there was no hiking for us and after a cold, wet evening we decided to head back to KL the next day. We booked a bus for lunchtime which should have seen us reach Kuala Lumpur at 5pm. We got a learner driver who insisted on never going over 50 kmph and we were further delayed when a tyre blew out. We eventually arrived in KL at 9 o'clock, again in the lashings of rain. Unfortunately the taxis wouldn't take us to our hotel as they said the traffic was too bad! So we had to walk 3km's in the rain with our backpacks on.

Not such a good start to Malayisa!

To be fair, Kuala Lumpur is a great city. It's full of tall buildings and the biggest shopping centres we've ever seen. We stayed for 5 nights right in the centre of the shopping/entertainment area and spent an absoloute fortune in the shopping centres, but we thought 'what are the last few days of a trip for if not to blow the budget!'

We did a few of the touristy things, like going to the famous Petronas Towers, the KL Tower and going to the markets in Chinatown and Little India, but nearly everything in this city seems to revolve around shopping centres - the biggest one we were in had 14 floors - paradise for Elaine although I don't know if we'll fit everything into our backpacks!

Malaysia is quite interesting with a big ethnic mix here. The population is a mixture of Chinese, Indian, ethnic Malay and Middle Eastern. It's a Muslim country and its evidence is everywhere. Nearly every woman we see in KL is either wearing a habib or a head scarf and guys take out their prayer mats and face mecca at the drop of a hat. It's amazing to see such a different culture but it's so easy not to even see the women when they're wearing the full on black outfit. Elaine calls them ninja's cause one minute there's nobody in front of you and next you see this black ninja moving toward you! It's really like they're invisible especially when they wear glasses. Honestly I don't know how it works but they've caused us to jump out of our skin a few times now!

Malaysia is probably our least favourite country in S.E. Asia, the people here don't seem to be as happy as any of the other countries, although there were major celebrations last night when Iraq won the Asian cup. Then again at this stage we're really just looking forward to getting home and seeing our families and friends - its been so long, but just a few days to go now!

Paradise on Phi Phi

2007-07-23T20:49:00.000-07:00

The second we stepped off the ferry at Phi Phi we loved it. Wandering to our hotel through the windy streets we immediately noticed that there was no traffic at all. Everywhere we've been in Asia has been teeming with mopeds but here on this little island they don't have any motorised vehicles and it was such a change not to have to constantly duck out of the path of a crazy driver. Apart from the 'island' feel the sun is shining and it's hot hot hot here!!!

Phi Phi is famous for two things; the movie 'The Beach' and the Tsunami. Two tragedies. There is evidence of the tsunami everywhere on the island. Apart from the evacuation route signs, the memorial garden which is so sad and the photo's in bars and restaurants of the massive cleanup operation afterwards there is so much rebuilding going on. Everywhere you go you can see construction sites.

One of the days we took a walk up to the viewpoint and were chatting to a Thai guy up there who had photo's of the island from the viewpoint before the tsunami and again just after. The difference in the landscape was unreal. It's so sad to think of what happened.

Aside from the tsunami Phi Phi is amazing. It's tiny and two of the beaches split the island into one of the most picturesque places we've been. Couple that with great food, great weather and great nightlife and you've got a little piece of paradise.

We met up with Marc & Megan again and bumped into some other people that we've met while travelling through SE Asia. It seems like everyone's on their way home now and determined to make the most of the last few weeks. We intended spending three days on Phi Phi but ended up staying for ten.

One of the real highlights was a trip to the beach from the movie 'The Beach'. We took the sunset boat trip, stopping along the way to kayak to Monkey Bay to see the long tailed monkeys, followed by snorkelling and more kayaking in the lagoon before reaching the 'tunnel' to the beach. Like in the movie, it's not the most accessible place. We had to swim from our boat and clambour over rocks (there were ropes to hold onto) before making it through the tunnel. It was worth the effort. The Beach is stunning, definitely one of the nicest we've ever been to. It began to rain lightly as we reached the water but swimming in the warm sea with the rain coming down seemed to make it even more beautiful.

Phi Phi has been a real highlight of Thailand. Eating at Papaya restaurant, which has the best Thai food and friendliest staff, free drinks in Tiger Bar and watching the fireshows on the beach at night. Topped with blue skies, hot sun and swimming in crystal clear water - it's been a perfect end to Thailand.

Koh Tao

2007-07-12T00:22:00.000-07:00

Leaving Bangkok we took the overnight bus to Chumporn then the ferry to Koh Tao which is on the east coast of Thailand. We'd decided on the east coast because we were told that it was dry season here and monsoon on the west. Unfortunately the weather wasn't what we'd hoped for. Although it was quite hot the sky was often grey and we were getting at least one torrential downpour a day, which always managed to catch us out. Saying that though, we stayed for 5 days and had a fantastic time.

We found a nice guesthouse on Sairee Beach and met up with Marc & Megan the Canadians that we'd first met on the way to Laos. We also bumped into Sorcha - one of the girls from Sydney and a group of English lads that were good craic.

Most of the bars and restaurants are lined along the beach and at night time the tide comes right up to the edge of the restaurants and they have to move all the seating for the bars back . For such a small island there was great nightlife with Ciaran heading off one night with two thai girls from the bar to a Pirate Party. I found him at 5am outside our room stuffing pringles into his mouth with a pirate patch over one eye. Next day I was happy to be the one with no hangover!

During the days we just wandered around the island checking out other beaches and the small town. Marc & Megan had left for Koh Phi Phi on the west coast and mailed us to say the weather there was better so after 5 days we packed our bags and headed back to the ferry.

Back to Bangkok....

2007-07-07T04:44:00.000-07:00

So we've spent the last few days back in Bangkok and can't believe how different it seems this time round! When we first got here in May we thought it was chaotic and the people were all trying to scam us, this time around and perhaps because we've had 7 weeks in Asia it seems to be the height of civilisation. We love it here and would easily stay for weeks. The shopping centres are amazing and we spent a day at the cinema - something we haven't been able to do since we left Australia.

Naturally, there's been some big nights out - you can't come to Bangkok and not go a little bit crazy and we've met lots of really fun people but now it's time to leave. We're about to jump on the bus to Ko Tao for a little bit of island hopping..... ah, white sandy beach, a hammock and a cocktail - I can't wait!!!

Sapa - day 2

2007-07-03T03:53:00.000-07:00

Our second day in Sapa saw us heading off on a 3 hour walk to the villages of Lao Chai and Ta Van.

While we were waiting at the hotel for Mu we got chatting to lots of the local kids who work in the town selling silver and little bracelets. They were so curious about the colour of my hair with one of them actually asking 'what happened to it', they all wanted to touch it and just like in Hoi An, rub my freckles! When Mu arrived a couple of the kids from the Black H'mong tribe decided that they would take the day off and come for the walk with us instead (I think they just wanted to keep an eye on my hair) so off we trooped in the direction of Lao Chai.

It was quite a drizzly day but the cooler weather certainly made the walk more enjoyable. The scenery today was even more beautiful than yesterday and we were lucky enough to see lots of people working in the rice fields, men ploughing with water buffalo's and other young guys bringing wood from the forests. We even saw a couple of young boys catching frogs from a small waterfall. They're quite a popular dinner choice in Sapa, and we reckon the frog may have known what was coming next as it dangled from the piece of string.

Mu pointed out the more interesting flowers and shrubs that are used in traditional medicine. She also showed us the Love Poison plant, eating only one leaf from it can kill you, in fact, her sisters ex-boyfriend ate the plant and died after they were refused permission to marry!

Without a doubt though, the best part of the day was getting to know our new little friends; Na, La, Chun and Lane. They were such gorgeous kids and although they have to work long hours in Sapa they are so happy and free spirited. They're aged between 5 and 8 (Chun is older) and they all speak H'mong, Vietnamese, English and a little bit of French even though they only go to school for 2 hours a day.

The track to the village was quite rugged, often crossing small rivers or walking over slippery ledges but the kids were so agile running ahead but then coming back to tell us 'slippy, careful careful' and taking us by the hand. Then they'd go racing off into the bushes again and come back with different berries for us to taste. They all loved the berry that turns your tongue blue, particularly 5 year old La who must've eaten hundreds of them, by the afternoon half her face was blue! They made us all crowns and wings to wear from ferns (although I'm not sure what Ciaran thought of his wings.....) and spent plenty of time squabbling over whose turn it was to hold my hand.

Not all the girls from the tribes are lucky though, Mu told us quite a frightening fact about being so close to the border with China. For the past number of years there's been a growing number of kidnappings of the girls from the tribes. Aged about 15 to 20, they're taken over the border to China and sold as wives because of the shortage of women in China, one of her friends was kidnapped last year but the family knew somebody in the government and they managed to get her back. They take the girls from the tribes because they usually only speak the tribal language, that way there's no chance they can ask for help.....

All in all though we thought Sapa and the tribal villages were amazing, particularly getting to know the kids. It was the best part of our trip to Vietnam but also one of the highlights from our entire travels. We can't wait to go back someday and seeing as it is so close to the Chinese border maybe we can plan on taking a trip in that direction too!!!

Sapa - day 1

2007-07-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

4 hours after getting off the boat from Halong we boarded the overnight train to Sapa, an area in the North West which is renowned for being one of the most beautiful places in Vietnam. Sapa is a small town in the middle of some of the highest mountains in the country and is surrounded by small villages of minority tribes. It was our last place to visit in Vietnam and we weren't disappointed.

We arrived at the station at 6am and immediately noticed how much cooler it was up here - at least 10° less than Hanoi - such a relief! As we drove higher into the mountains from the train station our breath was taken away by the stunning scenery, thousands of terraced rice paddies being overshadowed by towering mountains and deep valleys. It reminded us so much of the Sacred Valley in Peru, just much greener.

After checking into our hotel we met our guide for the next two days, a young 19 year old girl called Mu who is from the Black H'mong Tribe. Mu has never been to school but is so intelligent and articulate, speaking 3 languages but only recently learning how to read and write. Between the two days of the tour she gave us a little insight into what it's like to be from a minority tribe. She doesn't consider herself Vietnamese but H'Mong and has never danced or been to a bar because if anyone else from her tribe saw her she'd get a bad name. She's got great ambition though and is determined to open up her own tour company within the next couple of years.

We set off for Cat Cat village where the people mainly wear traditional tribal clothes which has been woven from hemp and dyed from indigo leaves. Each family has a couple of rice terraces for themselves which they use for food but they grow cardamon to earn money, although it takes 6 years for each crop to mature they can get up to US$6 per kilo which is a huge amount of money here. It's a hard life but everyone had a smile and a wave and were very welcoming. The children were having a great time running around like little ragamuffins.

They live a very basic life, how we'd imagine Ireland 150 - 200 years ago, no electricity with everyone living in an old wooden house consisting of just one room as kitchen, bedrooms and living area. The typical family home will house not only the mother, father and children but also the married children and their children, sometimes up to 15 people in a tiny little place. Most people are married by 16 (usually arranged and always to someone in their tribe) and by 20 have a couple of their own kids. The women usually work in Sapa, selling woven goods and silver to the tourists while the men work in the forests and rice fields.

It was a great experience to visit some H'mong people in their home and to see how such a simple life can still be so happy. Further down through Cat Cat we reached a lovely waterfall where we had a break before jumping on the back of motorbikes to race up the hill before the rain came.

In the afternoon the rain poured down but as we only had two days in Sapa we decided that we should fit in as much as possible. We donned the most hideous poncho's (although I like to think I looked better in mine than Ciaran.....) and headed up Ham Rong mountain which is another big tourist attraction because of the views of Fan Si Pan the tallest mountain in Vietnam and also to see the town through the clouds. It was worth getting wet, we had a lovely afternoon wandering around but were glad when we got back to the hotel and dried off.

Halong Bay

2007-06-29T19:12:00.000-07:00

From Hanoi we booked a trip to Halong Bay which is about a 3 hour drive away and again is a Unesco World Heritage Area. The bay has over 1000 karst peaks which makes it so spectacular and unusual. We've wanted to go to Halong for quite a while so decided on a 2 day boat trip.

The boat we were on was really nice and compared to the boat we were on for the Whitsundays in Australia it was practically luxurious! There was a great group of people on board and we sailed around the bay stopping to visit huge caves which were stunning.

We also had an opportunity to go kayaking around some of the karst peaks and through the floating villages. It's amazing to see entire communities of people living on floating houses. They even have a floating school and they set up shops in rowing boats and row around the place selling their goods.

The sea in the area was just beautiful for swimming in at the end of the hot day, I was jumping off the roof of the boat into the water as the sun set - fantastic!

Hanoi, Vietnam

2007-06-28T20:13:00.000-07:00

After 18 hours on the bus we reached the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi. The city is chaotic, just like Ho Chi Minh but has a lovely old quarter which we stayed in. There's a really nice atmosphere here and everyone is full of smiles and so friendly, even when they're trying to scam us - it's been pretty much like that through all of Vietnam. Also, just like the rest of Vietnam so far it's roasting hot and unbelievably humid.

The old quarter is right beside a big lake and most of the streets are dedicated to one purpose. There's shoe street which only sells shoes, bag street for bags etc, it's quite odd to walk down a street which only offers one product but I suppose it makes shopping a little easier. One thing we saw which we'll never be buying and quite frankly would give me nightmares was roast dog..... Lined up along the side of the street you could see whole dogs, skinned and roasted on big skewers...... Agghhhh!!!!

We didn't have much time in Hanoi, but based ourselves here while we visited Halong Bay and Sapa. Everyone we met assured us that if we didn't have much time in Hanoi, the one thing we couldn't miss out on was the Water Puppet Show at the Water Theatre. After seeing the show I'm not quite sure I'd agree with that!

Water Puppets are one of the traditional entertainments of the Vietnamese people and the show basically involves a small orchestra playing instruments that we've never seen or heard of before, a couple of 'singers' who sound more like tortured cats, and some water puppets. The puppets are the freakiest looking things ever and are controlled in such a way that they appear to dance out of the water.... I'm sure it's very interesting, if you're interested in that kind of thing!! And have no doubt that the puppeteers have a difficult job hiding under the water while they make their puppets dance but I think it was just a bit of culture overload for us!

After the show it was straight to the pub for a glass of much needed Hanoi Beer and to watch the people go by - much more interesting to us than water dancing puppets!

Hoi An, Vietnam

2007-06-26T22:34:00.001-07:00

Twelve hours and one overnight bus later we arrived in Hoi An town. We were pretty tired from not getting too much sleep on the bus journey so we just checked straight in to the hotel that the Canadians had recommended to us - Thanh Xuan (Long Life Hotel). It was great to get into such a nice hotel. It had a swimming pool, nice garden and breakfast and internet access was included. We had a lovely room with big bathroom, minibar, cable TV, aircon and a view out over the hotel garden and surrounding countryside and and the bed had small flower petals sprinkled all over it - now thats what I expect for EUR13 per night!!

After a couple hours sleep, we headed out to do the thing that most tourists go to Hoi An for - get some clothes tailor made! Everything we own is out of shape and practically falling apart at the seams so it's definitely time for something new! We went to a tailors just around the corner from our hotel and were immediately surrounded by several women sizing us up and pointing out different style and materials to us. After much mayhem and discussion we made our decisions but no matter how many items we chose they kept on saying 'buy two, buy 3, buy 5'!!

I had originally just wanted to get 1 or 2 shirts made but I somehow managed to leave the tailors with 4 shirts, 2 trousers and a thick winter jacket measured up for me! All for the princely sum of EUR100 - guess I'm a sucker for a bargain...

There is a lot to do around Hoi An including day trips to the Mai Ly massacre site, trips to My Son (an Angkor Wat style ruin) but we loved the town itself so much that we stayed there every day except for one day to go to the beach.

The beach is about 5km outside the town and we rented bikes and cycled out there for an afternoon. It's by far the nicest beach we've been to in Vietnam with golden sand, clear water and no pollution at all. The weren't that many tourists at the beach and the number of street/beach sellers nearly outnumbered them. They were all selling mangos, pineapples, drinks and nuts.

Vietnamese people (in fact nearly everyone we've met in S.E. Asia) are constantly trying to cover up from the sun as they regard whiter skin far more beautiful than darker, tanned skin. The steet sellers on the beach were no exception. Even though the temperature was well above 30°C all of them were wearing at least 3 long sleeve tops, long trousers, thick gloves, conical hats and bandanas or surgical masks on their faces. We don't know how they don't melt in the heat but they're all fascinated with Elaine's skin, teling her 'me no lucky, you so lucky, white, white ....you want pineapple, mango, banana? Me no lucky today....'. Quite funny for me considering Elaine thinks she has a tan.

We bought a pineapple from one named 'Lulu Number One' for about 15,000 dong (about 75 cents) and literally 3 minutes later she charged the people sitting next to us 30,000 dong, telling us to be quiet as she took the money and did a legger! Its a different price for everyone over here!

Hoi An itself is a Unesco World Heritage site and really is a beautiful old town with pagodas side by side with old french colonial shuttered buildings. The tiny winding cobbled streets were filled with art galleries, restaurants, colourful lantern shops and literally hundreds of tailors - practically every 2nd shop is a tailor! We spent hours wandering along the streets, looking at the food markets and fish markets at the riverside and just generally soaking up the atmosphere of the town.

On the river we saw several families of boat people. These people don't own any land or house and actually live in these tiny little boats with woven bamboo roofs. They just live off what they can get from the water and even cook in their narrow little homes. We saw them bailing water out from the bottom of the boat - a daily chore for them, just like sweeping the floor for other people!

As we were crossing a bridge to look at some of these people an old lady came up to Elaine and grabbed her arm, examining it intently, looking at her freckles and turning it over to see how white it was on the underside. After that she just let her arm go and walked off without saying a word looking suspiciously back at her! We've gotten used to people staring at us like we're a freak show all throughout S.E. Asia but that was quite a strange experience...

After several trips back to the tailors for fittings and alterations we picked up our clothes and it was hugs and kisses all round from the girls there - such nice people and a great bargain too!

Next stop - Hanoi but only after a long bus journey - 18 hours in all. When we were leaving the hotel it was hugs and kisses all round from the reception staff there too and they gave us both presents of wooden bracelets and stood at the door, waving us off as the bus left. It's been by far the nicest place we've stayed in Vietnam and the people working there are unbelievably nice and helpful, so hopefully we'll get back there someday...

Nha Trang, Vietnam

2007-06-23T20:24:00.000-07:00

Further north we reached the beachside town of Nha Trang which is billed as Vietnams Beach Capital. Well, we didn't think it deserved much of a title at all really. It was a busy small town with a beach but nothing more exciting than that. Perhaps if it hadn't rained every day we might've been more excited to be there!

To be fair though, it was surrounded by lots of little islands with some great beach bars and lovely restaurants. The grey sky was a bit off putting though so after a couple of days it was back on the bus and North again to Hoi An.

Mui Ne, Vietnam

2007-06-20T21:06:00.000-07:00

We left Ho Chi Minh and headed to the tiny beach of Mui Ne. The drama of getting to Mui Ne far outweighed the excitement of the town itself.

Mui Ne is a gorgeous little fishing village consisting of just one street with lots of guesthouses, and a beach, needless to say we had a very relaxing few days here. Swimming in the sea and eating dinner at the beachside restaurants.

Unfortunately the coach trip from Ho Chi Minh wasn't as relaxing. As a 4 hour journey turned into 7 hours at breakneck speed, swerving in and out of lanes beeping the horn every two seconds and slamming on the brakes. The cherry on the cake; driving up the top of a hill on the wrong side of the road to be greeted at the cusp by two huge trucks, one overtaking the other..... don't know how we survived that...... But hey, we did, and Mui Ne was great!

Cu Chi Tunnels, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

2007-06-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

The next day we headed 60km out of town to the Cu Chi tunnels that were a Viet Cong stronghold.

On the way we stopped at Handicapped Handicrafts! Strange name but all the goods there were handmade by people that had been affected by Agent Orange. The stuff was absolutely gorgeous so we picked up a really nice duck eggshell picture - we get something nice to keep
and they get some money towards their cause.

When we first got to the Cu Chi tunnels we were shown this propaganda video that constantly referred to the Americans as 'the enemies' and how the Vietnamese were only poor ordinary farmers. Maybe it's true, I think I've been brainwashed! In all the scenes that showed the Vietnamese people helping the Viet Cong, they all had these strange smiles on their faces and the background music was something out of Bonanza - very weird!

The Viet Cong were quite ingenious with their tunnels. All the entrances were completely hidden and they had underwater escape routes into the Saigon river. There were 16,000 people living in these tunnels and they had sleeping areas, dining areas and the kitchens had smoke vents that dispersed the smoke from a cooking fire far away from the entrances. During the height of the war there was a network of 250km of underground tunnels in this Cu Chi area. They were spread over 3 levels ranging from 3 metres deep up to 10 metres deep. Bombs from the B52 bombers were the only ones that could destroy the lowest tunnels. Only 8000 people survived the war in the tunnels.

The tunnels were tiny, only 80cm wide by 120cm tall - and those were the newer, 'bigger' ones! We crawled and hunkered our way along a 90 metre stretch, but by the time I got to 30 metres I had to get out, it was just so small and my legs were so tired from having to walk at that angle - I suppose there's not a lot of 6 foot Vietnamese men!

Our guide Kon was a translator against the French and then the Americans during the war and spoke with this weird Vietnamese/American accent told us that the Viet Cong would be able to travel up to 10km in these tunnels in 1 day. I don't know how they managed it, apart from being cramped it's pitch black down there and they just had kerosene lamps to light their way.

They showed us some of the traps that the Viet Cong used on the Americans - they were so vicious it would send shivers up your spine to see them. There were sharpened bamboo poles sticking straight up from a covered hole in the ground to two rollers with huge nails sticking out so that when a person fell in the hole their body fell through the rollers and was pierced all over. As Kon told us - you don't need a medic after that trap. Many other traps though were designed to maim and not kill though so the Viet Cong could take them as POW's and interrogate them, then trade them for their own soldiers back.

While we were there I couldn't resist the opportunity of going to the shooting range and I had a few minutes with an AK-47. The main thing I would say about this is that it is sooo bloody loud. Even with ear protection I still thought my eardrums were going to burst. The
recoil from it wasn't too string but the bullets fly out of it so fast. 1 second on the trigger and about 5 rounds have gone off - with me completely missing the target of course!

Goooood Morning Vietnaaaaam!

2007-06-16T20:30:00.000-07:00

We left Phnom Penh and got the bus to Saigon, Vietnam. First impressions? This place is mental. We thought we'd seen a lot of bad and crazy driving already in S.E. Asia, but nothing compares to the sight of about 20,000 mopeds and motorbikes speeding through the city, ignoring all road markings and speed limits. Traffic lanes? Who needs them. Brakes? They're for losers.
Thats how life is over here. A kind of disorganised chaos that just somehow manages to work. The rainy season also appears to be starting in earnest these days with huge downpours happening almost every day like clockwork at 1pm and 8pm, kind of weird that you can set your watch by the rain. Just before the downpour the humidity gets unbearable and the wind really picks up so that we're nearly glad to see the rain lashing down.

Although the place is a bit crazy it was still really nice getting back to a more developed city with lots of cafes, bars and other signs of modern life after being in Phnom Penh. By no means is Vietnam the richest country around but it's a world apart from Cambodia.

We stayed in the Pham Ngu Lao area which is the main backpacker strip and quite a cool place with tonnes going on day and night. We were talking to a local guy in a bar and asked him whether we should call the place Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City as everyone we've met seems to call it something different. He told us that it used to be called Saigon and then was renamed Ho Chi Minh city (in honour of General Ho) after they beat the enemies in the 'American War'! He's very proud of their victory - don't know what the yanks would make of that!

We went to the War Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. It had photos from the 1950's to the 1970's showing the lead up to and during the "American" War. It was quite shocking to see so many photo's depicting horrendous scenes or tortures and the bodies of not only soldiers but the women and children that had been killed by US troops. It was fairly gruesome.....

Beside those were photos of people that were affected by Agent Orange and the disabilities that it has caused in subsequent generations. And beside those were a lot of propaganda posters designed to show how the "whole world" sided with Vietnam over the war. We overheard an American guy talking while we were there, telling his friend about the first time he shot someone in the head in the war. Pretty distasteful considering where we were.

Phnom Penh and the Killing Fields

2007-06-13T08:26:00.000-07:00

Leaving Siem Reap we noticed immediately outside the main tourist areas how bad the roads were – covered in huge potholes and often just a dirt road. The 6 hour drive to Phnom Penh was broken by a lunchstop at a roadside ‘café’ where the menu was a choice of either fried noodles or fried rice (I’m going to turn into a grain of rice soon). We were happy enough with the rice considering what the locals were eating – fried cockroaches, grasshoppers and now, one we hadn’t seen before – deep fried giant black spiders. Disgusting!

We paid $10 for our air conditioned spacious coach for the 6 hour trip. We thought it was good value but when we saw how the majority of Cambodians were travelling I think we would’ve been happy to pay $100. The Cambodian people were all wedged into tiny 12 seater minibuses; each one must’ve carried at least 30 people with a minimum of two people to every seat and at least 5 on each roof along with mopeds and whatever produce they were transporting. It was crazy to see these minibuses racing along the road overtaking each other as the mopeds and people on the roof swayed precariously from side to side.

We arrived in Phnom Penh to be greeted by utter mayhem outside our bus as all the tuk tuk drivers fought to get close to the door to get our fare. Battling to get out the door, with our backpacks whilst being grabbed at by about 30 pairs of hands we raced across the road and hid behind a big sign while we got our bearings. Considering the bus had just stopped at a random street, not a station and we couldn’t find a sign with the street name this wasn’t to easy so in the end we had to go back to the tuk tuk drivers and negotiate a fare to get us to the area where all the guest houses are. Our drivers name was Setho and as he drove us around in circles to all the hotels he’d get commission from he convinced us that we should allow him to take us on a tour of the area the next day.

So the next morning we set off with Setho, first to the Vietnam embassy to apply for our visas, then we headed 18km’s out of the city to The Killing Fields. As we approached the fields Setho told us that his father had been one of Pol Pots victims and had been massacred at the Fields. We don’t know a huge amount about Pol Pots regime, or the genocide that happened in Cambodia in the 1970’s which killed over 1 million people, but we could still feel the unbelievable sadness of this field where thousands of men, women and children were slaughtered. As we stood looking at the Stupa which houses more than 8,000 skulls of the victims (on many of which we could see bludgeon marks or bullet holes) and thought of how they died after the most terrible tortures it was nearly impossible not to cry.

Looking at the ‘Beating Tree’ which they beat babies against to kill them before tossing them into one of the mass graves was just devastating. Another tree was also named. The ‘magic tree’ used to blare out music at deafening volumes so that people working in the vicinity wouldn’t hear people moaning, crying and screaming for their life.

After the Fields the gloom continued as Setho drove us to S-21 the Genocide Museum also know as Tuol Sleng. Before Pol Pot & the Khmer Rouge Tuol Sleng used to be a school but during the genocide electrified barbed wire was put around the gates and over 14,000 people were brought here blindfolded and tortured for months on end….. Every victim was photographed when they arrived at S-21. The photos of terrified mothers holding their little babies and pictures of little children and old men were all so desperately heart wrenching….

Each of the victims of S-21’s details were recorded in case they might escape, which wasn’t very likely considering they were shackled to the floor and kept in the most horrible conditions imaginable. They were tortured in terrible ways for their ‘crimes’ which could range from being an educated person to somebody who wears glasses….. We walked around S-21, looking at the photos of hundreds of those victims and couldn’t even begin to fathom what kind of monster would do something like this.

Of the 14,000 people that were sent to S-21, only 7 came out alive.

Thoroughly depressed we left S-21 and Setho offered to take us to an orphanage. We declined the offer, as we’d had all the misery we could handle for one day and instead went to the Royal Palace which was very grand but we really weren’t in the mood to sightsee at that point so headed back to our hotel.

Phnom Penh is a city of about 1 million people of which an estimated 10,000 children are homeless. It’s a thoroughly depressing city and without a shadow of doubt the most impoverished place we’ve been to. Unlike other places where the poverty is really bad, for instance in Bolivia, in Phnom Penh there is a palpable air of desperation.

Even 30 years after the defeat of the Khmer Rouge you can feel it’s a city that’s not yet back on its feet. We saw no old people at all and when we asked about this we were told it’s because Pol Pot killed them all….. With no educated people or older generation the city has obviously been struggling for a long time.

We’ve never experienced anything like the amount of begging in PP. The average wage here is $1 per day but we’ve been told that a lot of families survive on less than half of that.
Obvious land mine victims are everywhere with their hand out which is so sad but worst of all are the children.... Little kids as young as 1 and 2 years old are wandering around the streets by themselves, tugging at our legs with their hands out, the saddest eyes in the world and distended bellies…. A little 5 year old girl called Norlina who only looked 3 nearly broke our hearts as she played at the side of the busy road, we were all set to run to the adoption agency with her and bring her home. We had dinner at Friends restaurant which is a training school for former homeless children run by an organisation called streetfriends.org. They provide training and support to thousands of homeless children in PP and all profits from the restaurant go towards funding more programs.

On the street a lot of the children carry heavy baskets full of books to sell to tourists. At first we said no to all of them but eventually Ciaran decided to buy a book and called one of the little boys over. Once the other children saw this they all swarmed around, with one little boy in particular very upset that Ciaran had earlier said no to his books. He told Ciaran that he hoped his heart was breaking for what he'd done to him and by the look on Ciaran's face I'd say it was.

Later we sat along the main street having a drink and chatting to a girl who worked in the bar. Her name is Alech and she ran away to Phnom Penh when she was 14 after her father died and with no money the family had to live in the neighbours shed. Her first job in PP paid $12 per month and then she got her lucky break working for a hotel for $40 per month, they told her that if she didn’t learn to speak English within a month she'd lose her job, so she learnt English and now earns $60 per month. Luckily for her an English couple met her a couple of years ago and after getting to know her offered to sponsor her studies so she now goes to the best University in PP and hopes eventually to be a tour guide. It was so refreshing to see some hope in somebody..... Strangely enough she told us that her 4 best friends all married foreign tourists and are now living all over the world, one of them is actually living in Naas and is seemingly not very happy with the Irish weather!!!

We took a motorbike taxi home even though we were less than a 5 minute walk to our hotel but we would've had to walk through the old market which is seemingly where all the local gangs hang out at night and Alech reckoned our chances of making it home without being mugged were fairly slim.....

Visiting Phnom Penh was definitely an experience that we won’t forget in a hurry.....

Angkor Wat?

2007-06-10T00:44:00.000-07:00

We left Luang Prabang and flew Lao Airlines to Siem Reap. Elaine really hadn’t been looking forward to the flight as Lao Airlines don’t have a good reputation and a lot of Western countries recommend that their citizens don’t fly with them! Elaine’s not the best flier in the first place but a trip to the local pharmacy in Luang Prabang and some over the counter valium soon sorted her out - she nearly flew there on her own! To be fair to Lao Airlines, apart from the terrible food that you get on every flight there wasn’t even a bit of turbulence. Once we landed in Siem Reap, we quickly found a taxi and made our way to a nice hotel, organizing a tuk tuk & driver through our taxi driver for the next day.

The reason we’re in Siem Reap is to visit the famous Angkor Wat temples which are situated only a few miles from SR. We bought a 3 day pass as that was what everyone we’d met had recommended but we thought it would be a bit of overkill. Who’d want to spend 3 days wandering around temples? But we had completely underestimated the size and scale of these ancient monuments. It’s more than just 1 temple but a series of temples and cities and in the 12th century it was the capital of Cambodia, housing over 1 million people.

On our first day, as we were driving along a big river on the way to the temples we asked our tuk tuk driver if we were near and he started pointing just up ahead. It turns out this ‘big river’ was in fact the moat around Angkor Wat. The moat is 200 metres wide and certainly puts the one around Drimnagh Castle to shame! When we got to the carpark and got out of the tuk tuk we got our first glimpse of the famous image of Angkor with the 3 spires rising into the sky. It’s hard to believe that it’s approaching 1,000 years old!

The next thing that struck us was the detail. Every last square inch of the stone walls and pillars was decorated with ornate carvings. We had always assumed that Angkor Wat was a Buddhist temple but in the past in Cambodia, successive kings switched religions between Buddhist and Hindu (this switching eventually led to the demise of the Khmer Empire) and so nearly all of the carvings depicted Hindu stories, lore and symbolism.

Our guide proceeded to relate the story on the walls to us. It ranged from flying monks to 3 headed elephants, giant turtles to monkey warriors (led, of course, by their monkey general!) There were stories of a 7 headed serpents – some story I tell ya! I don’t know where these guys get the imagination from but they certainly worked hard to carve it into those walls! The carvings went the whole way around the outside of the temple and by the end our heads were swimming with too many facts.

The next level of the temple at one point housed over 1,000 statues and images of Buddha. The King that built Angkor Wat was a Buddhist and so filled it with Buddha statues, but his grandson who succeeded him was Hindu and destroyed all the statues of Buddha. In fact this crazy grandson had even gone to the bother of defacing anything that even slightly resembled Buddha but of course leaving anything Hindu and the Apsara celestial dancers untouched.

We then went up to the next level via a set of extremely steep stairs. They apparently made the steps so steep so that people couldn’t ascend upright, but rather, had to scramble upwards so that they would enter the temple with their head bowed. A way of making sure they showed enough respect. The final level is the one with the spires at the top (5 spires but only 3 are visible from the front) and the view out over the temple and moat was amazing. The whole place was completed by the monkey that was wandering around on the top level - happy as you like!! On the way down those steps I was clinging on to the handrail so hard - steep as it looked from the bottom, it was nothing compared to how steep it looked from the top! I can’t believe they don’t have accidents there all the time!

Angkor Wat itself took only 30 years to build which is an amazing feat, considering the ornate detail on every surface. They did use 54,000 people though, so that may have something to do with that fact…

After we went back to our tuk tuk we were immediately surrounded by loads of kids trying to sell bracelets, postcards and books. They were all so persistent saying that they would wait for us outside the café and that we would buy from them afterwards. Elaine was dubbed Lady No Name by one little girl after she wouldn’t tell her name and anytime we saw that girl later during the day she would run over to us saying ‘Lady No Name, lady No Name, you want this bracelet?’. We eventually gave in and bought something from them – just to get them to leave us alone if nothing else! That didn't stop the kids from the other sites though trying their luck though...

After Angkor Wat, we went just down the road to Angkor Thom, which used to be the ancient capital, and within its walls were a host of other temples. On the way there we passed by a wooded area and saw loads of monkeys on the ground, running across the road and eating used coconuts - our tuk tuk driver seemed to be amazed to hear that we don't have monkeys in Ireland!

The first temple in Angkor Thom we went to was called Bayon. This one wasn’t as well preserved as Angkor Wat but we thought it was almost more impressive with every pillar having 4 faces pointing in different directions. The walls here were all carved too, but these ones were depicted daily life at the time as the king wanted to show future generations how they lived. There were scenes of hunting, fishing, traditional boxing (which look suspiciously similar to Thai Boxing), wartime with the generals riding atop elephants. They even depicted the different races that lived in the area with a lot of Chinese with different facial features - it gave a good feel for what the society was like there.

After that it was down the road to Ta Prohm. Now this really is like something out of a film. Tombraider in fact. Some of the scenes from the first film were shot at this temple and it’s easy to see why they chose this location. This temple mightn’t have been as atmospheric as the others but it really did look so cool! There were huge trees growing in the temple and sprouting out of everywhere – on top of buildings, through buildings, through walls with roots tangling amongst the stones. I don’t know how the whole place hasn’t just collapsed under the sheer weight of these trees.

After our couple of days at Angkor, we had one day at Siem Reap but we basically spent the day running from one cafe to the next trying to find shade and the elusive air conditioning. It was so hot and humid that day that any other sights at Siem Reap got overlooked! We did make it into one of the markets though and it was quite strange to see a lot of the vendors turning on the lights as we approached their stall and turning them off as we left - anything to save a bit of money as they all seem so poor.

Luang Prabang

2007-06-06T03:18:00.000-07:00

As soon as we reached Luang Prabang we fell in love with the place. Laos was a French colony in the past and it was evident as soon as we got off the boat and started strolling around town. Most of the buildings may be slightly crumbly and there is a definite lack of money around the place (Luang Prabang got it's first and only ATM last year) but you can see the French influence everywhere; from the shutters on the windows to the baguettes at the street market to the local tuk tuk drivers playing Boules while waiting for a fare. It really is a case of East meets West here and the people are unbelievably laid back. It makes the pace of life in Kerry seem like New York!

We've spent such a relaxing few days here, wandering around the streets, eating real "Western" food - such a treat! We hired bikes and cycled around the area which seems to be the way most people get around here. We saw whole families going past on bikes and mopeds! Watching all the locals standing in the river fishing with their nets we can really feel the pace of life going so slowly, and we thought Thailand was relaxed! Here we're actually able to walk the length of a street without being approached by 50 people trying to sell us anything they can.

We took a trip up Phou Si which is a hill in the centre of town with a temple on top and the view from up there was lovely; we were able to see the Mekong river stretch and wind its way into the distance on one side and the Nam Khong snaking its way along on the other.

We've also had a few nice meals out and drinks with the Canadians that we met on the boat, but the nights have ended quite early as everything apart from the bowling alley closes at 11pm!

One of the days we all took a tuk tuk up to Kuang Si waterfall. There was a black bear sanctuary at the start with quite a few bears that had been orphaned by poachers and there was also a tiger (they were kept apart which is probably for the best!). We had a really nice afternoon swimming at all the waterfalls and pools and cooling down from the humidity.

Apart from that its just been a case of relaxing and soaking up the nice atmosphere. Tomorrow morning, we're leaving Laos and flying to Siem Reap in Cambodia going to check out the Tomb Raider place, if I'm really lucky Angelina will be back there visiting.....

Slow boat to Laos

2007-06-03T03:01:00.000-07:00

Laos is not the most developed country in the world, so much so that it doesn't even have roads to a lot of areas which is why we ended up on a two day slow boat....

We left Chiang Khong and took a 'ferry' across the river to the Laos side where we got our visas. We were then shepherded around the town, stopping in the most random places where we had to show the most random people our passports. It was all just a big ploy to get us into these people's shops, I mean, why on earth must we get out of our tuk tuk to show the newsagent our passport?!! Still, it was an interesting experience and it just made us laugh.

We boarded our boat along with about 200 other people for the two day trip to Luang Prabang in Laos. The boat was so crowded and uncomfortable with most people sitting on the floor, we managed to get a space on a wooden bench but when we were told that the first day on the boat would take 9 hours to get to the town of Pakbeng we were a little worried. We had purchased a package deal from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang and hadn't really asked any questions so we felt a bit like what it must feel like to be a refugee as we crammed onto this uncomfortable boat, unsure of where we were going, with nobody to ask and being unable to speak the language.....

It turned out to be a really good day though, we got chatting to lots of people all round us. With everyone literally 'in the same boat' we were all happy to have any kind of distraction possible. The scenery along the Mekong river into Laos was beautiful. And as we passed little settlements we could see the men out in their boats fishing with huge nets, wearing those pointy hats. The women sitting along the banks washing clothes in the river.

Our boat was a fairly rickety old thing and when we reached Pakbeng, where we would stay the night we all had to stand on the left hand side of the boat as it was tipping so much into the water on the right. It took nearly an hour for everyone to get off because it all had to happen so slowly.

Pakbeng is a really poor little village where the electricity is switched off at 11 o'clock each night. We met 2 Canadian couples on the boat; Mark & Megan and Matt & Erin who we got on really well with so we all went for dinner. Dinner was cooked by a girl who couldn't have been any older than 11! It's like a different world over here. We had our first sample of Beer Lao and Lao Lao (Lao whisky) neither of which were very nice although Ciaran seemed happy enough with them.

The next day we boarded a different boat to take us the rest of the way to Luang Prabang. Amazingly enough, this boat was even smaller and more uncomfortable than the last one! I ended up sleeping for a while on a black plastic bag underneath our bench, anything just to pass an hour or two as we were told that today's boat journey would take 11 hours....

The time on the boat passed a lot quicker than we expected, some of the scenery we passed was spectacular; tiny bamboo villages dotted along the waters edge, huge limestone escarpments. The boat even stopped so that the 'captain' could buy some fish from a fisherman on the river. It was a definite 'experience' but we were delighted when we arrived in Luang Prabang 3 hours ahead of schedule. We checked into a really nice guesthouse and went out for a delicious Italian (such a nice change from rice & noodles) dinner with the Canadians.

Chiang Khong

2007-06-01T02:48:00.000-07:00

We left Chiang Mai to begin our three day journey to Laos. A few hours in a minibus where our driver stopped off so we could check out a cashew nut farm (how random!) and we eventually arrived in Chiang Khong which is on the Thai side of the Mekong River. Across the water we could see Huay Xai, Laos - our next destination. Chiang Khong is not the most exciting place we've ever been, basically just one street with tonnes of guesthouses and cheap restaurants. We still managed to get completely lost though. Then it was an early night to prepare for a long day on the slow boat to Laos.

Trekking in Chiang Mai

2007-05-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

We booked a three day trek from Chiang Mai into the surrounding hills. Leaving Chiang Mai we were first brought to see the 'Long Neck' and 'Big Ear' (!) tribes who have fled to Thailand from Burma. As the name suggests they've got long necks and big ears.

The girls begin wearing rings on their neck when they're 5 years old and until they're 25 a new ring is added each year until eventually their neck is freakishly long. They say that it doesn't hurt at all but we can't imagine how that's possible considering the weight of the brass rings. They're taken off once or twice a year to be cleaned but apart from that they're worn 24 hours a day. The reason they say they wear the rings is to protect them from tigers!, so that they look more like they're tribal symbol the dragon and to make them look ugly so that the men from the other tribes don't take them!

After that it was on to the elephant camp where we had lunch and then a ride on an elephant which was just brilliant. The elephants were massive and we were in a little seat strapped to its back at first. He lumbered up through the mud along the side of the mountain with quite a steep drop off, it was quite scary when he lurched from side to side.

We had an elephant keeper sitting on his head/neck who steered him with different commands and his feet - he'd rub the back of his right ear to make him go left and vice versa. When we got down from the side of the hill the keeper got off and Ciaran rode on his neck. He says that he could feel all the huge muscles in his head, shoulders and neck and felt like he was going to fall off at any minute. We couldn't get over how hairy his head was (the elephant, not Ciaran!). I stayed safely tucked up in the little seat and we wandered down into the river where he started sucking up the water in his trunk and spraying it all over us. Considering he'd been spraying snot at us for the past half hour this was quite enjoyable!

As we rode back to the elephant camp he stopped for ages to eat lychees from the tree and then lumbered back up the hill. Back at the camp we fed him a bunch of bananas, it was great when he took them with his trunk from our hands and then tossed them into his mouth. Such a fantastic experience.

We met up with the rest of the group who were doing the trek; Scarlet, Haylie, Luke, James, Kelly and Jeremy and along with our guide, Chin, we jumped into the back of a truck and were driven to the beginning of the trek.

The beginning of the trek was really steep with about 1 1/2 hours of climbing uphill, crossing streams on some of the best Thai engineered bamboo bridges (they were terrible, I don't know how we didn't fall in!) and scrambling up muddy banks. After about half an hour one of the girls decided it was too steep for her and gave up and turned back. We spent about 3 or 4 hours walking through the Thai jungle it was really beautiful but so humid and hot we were all completely drenched in sweat.

We reached our village for the first night which was with the Meo tribe who were refugees from Burma. This meant that although many of them were born in Thailand they could never be issued with Thai passports, just an ID card stating that they were part of a hill tribe if they were lucky enough to be born in a hospital. If they were born in the village they couldn't receive the ID card and so therefor could never go further south than Chiang Mai. Makes us realise how lucky we are.

The village was made up of little bamboo huts on the side of a hill in a valley with a big waterfall at one end. After a hard afternoons hiking it was so refreshing to jump into the waterfall to cool down. Our sleeping area was a long bamboo hut with mats on the floor and mozzie nets, definitely not 5 star tonight!

After a great dinner cooked by the guides and some of the people from the village we all sat around having a few drinks and chatting to any of the locals that could speak any English. Then it was off to bed for a fairly sleepless night with 8 people tossing and turning in one little room....

Day 2 of the trek

Waking up to the sound of all the jungle was really amazing. Unfortunately we'd both been eaten alive by mosquitoes during the night with Ciarans legs taking a particularly bad biting.
After breakfast we set off again up the mountains through bamboo jungle. We walked for another 4 hours, stopping to explore some bat caves and then for another swim at a different waterfall where we saw a small stripy watersnake battling against the current. Some of the guys were jumping from the cliff 20 ft down into the plunge pool below - quite cool looking!

Eventually we reached the village of the Lahu tribe where we would be staying for the night. We were supposed to spend another 3 hours hiking up to another waterfall but the rainy season has come 1 month early and the sky was black so it seemed like a better idea to just hang around the village instead of risking getting caught in the rain.

We spent an hour or two wandering around the village which consists of about 10 bamboo huts to house the 60 people who lived there (including the ladyboy shopkeeper). There were chickens, pigs, dogs roaming everywhere and we spent a while playing with the kids who are absolutely wild. Then the rain started pouring down it was really torrential, I've never seen anything like it. We sat inside our hut which was our bedroom, living room and kitchen all in one and watched the rain outside until eventually we could barely see outside the door it was falling so heavily.

That evening pretty much all the men from the village came to our hut and sat around playing the guitar and singing Thai songs (every now and then a bit of Bob Marley would slip through....). With Chin, our guide, cooking dinner on an open fire in the middle of the hut it was definitely an unusual evening but really great fun with plenty of chang beer floating around although I didn't fancy any it was good to laugh at everyone else getting a bit too merry.

Day 3 of the trek

After a surprisingly good sleep I woke up and waited for all the others to surface. Chin, our guide, who's a really funny, good hearted guy eventually woke up at about 11am absolutely dying from the excess of the night before. He really was in a bad way and tried to convince us to take a short cut, an easy 40 minute route downhill instead of 2 1/2 hours uphill but we decided that we were here to trek in the jungle so thats what we should do and headed off up the mountain.

The start of the trek was particularly steep and for about half an hour we were regretting not taking the downhill option but eventually the track levelled off a bit and we were up in the jungle again. Poor Chin was completely wrecked though, he looked like he was going to collapse at any minute, stopping with his head against the tree muttering 'why oh why', not the most inspirational leader but it made us laugh!

Eventually we reached a little house in the middle of nowhere, we had some lunch and then jumped on the back of a sangthaew and were driven to the river where we jumped into a raft and went lubber lafting (white water rafting) for an hour or so. It was good fun particularly because the water level in the river was low and the raft kept getting stuck on the rocks.

After the white water rafting we went bamboo rafting. We'd never heard of this before but it was a lovely way to end the 3 days. The raft was basically some bamboo poles tied together and we just sat on them while a guy 'punted' us down a really calm stretch of the river.

That night, after a much needed shower, we went to the Riverside bar and restaurant and had a
great evening listening to Thai bands singing western songs with their Thai accents, we never realised a Killers song could sound so funny!

Chilling in Chiang Mai

2007-05-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

We left Bangkok and got the overnight train to Chiang Mai. With quite a bit of difficulty the seats on the train changed into bunk beds and we cosied up with our curtains drawn and watched a movie on my ipod - thank God for luxuries! We tried to sleep as best we could but with the constant stops, the movement of the train and the lights being left on all night we didn't get too much sleep and got into Chiang Mai train station at 10am the next morning pretty tired only to be set upon by hordes of taxi and tuk tuk drivers all hanging out of us, trying to get our business for the short ride into town.

We eventually went with the least intrusive taxi driver (the taxi's in Chiang Mai are called sangthaews and are basically red pickup trucks with 2 rows of side-facing seats, a roof and an open back) and went into town. We found a guest house called SK House on Moonmuang Soi 9 that has a nice pool - something really nice to have in the hot afternoons.

The reason we left Bangkok when we did was for the Champions League final between Liverpool and AC Milan and we hooked up with a few other Irish lads in the guest house and headed out that night after a few warm up beers. The pub we had been told to go to was closed and I was starting to think I wouldn't see the game at all but 7 of us piled into 1 tuk tuk and we raced around the streets of Chiang Mai looking for an open bar that was showing the match. We eventually found one just before kickoff. The less said about the game after that the better I suppose. Good performance, bad result will suffice. After that we headed out to a few nightclubs on Loi Kroh Road - all of which seemed to be full of Thai girls who were interested in more than a bit of dancing.

We decided that we couldn't come to Thailand without learning how to cook some of that tasty Thai food we'd become fond of in Australia so we went on a 1 day Thai cookery course with "The Best Thai Cookery Course" company! Its run by a cool, funny guy called Permpoon (his brother is a TV chef over here) and we spent the day cooking in his outdoor kitchen at his house outside Chiang Mai.

We started the day going shopping for all our fresh herbs, spices and other ingredients at the local market - we never knew choosing an egg was such a complicated task! When we saw a woman gutting frogs (with a basin of live ones in a net beside her) and some fried chicken heads, we decided to give that stall a miss! Yeuch! We spent the rest of the day cooking (I learned to cook 'adventure style'!!) and eating all our gorgeous food - 8 dishes in all. We both had to be rolled out of the place by the end!

The next night we went to see some Muay Thai (Thai Boxing) in Kawila stadium. We got a tuk tuk to a ramshackle shed which passed as the stadium and saw guys weighing 8 stone beat the living hell out of each other. 8 stone they may be, but weaklings they are not. They start training at 7 years old and their first exercise is kicking banana plants to toughen up their legs and shins - pretty rough. We saw guys getting knees to the face, kicks to the head, being thrown to the ground and an Aussie guy beat a Thai guy by TKO by smashing him so hard in the nuts! Every guy in the stadium winced at that part...

We went out and were planning on getting a Sangthaew home, but it turns out the people we ended up sharing the taxi with were more Irish people staying at our guest house. So we needed no further excuse to go for a drink and went out for the rest of the night, ending up in some Thai hiphop night club where all the peeps thought they were fiddy cent with their caps on at odd angles. We ended the night eating pork noodle soup at the side of the road at 5 am - I can't believe we haven't gotten food poisoning yet!

Apart from that we've been spending time reading, checking out the temples in town and one day we took a sangthaew up to Doi Suthep which is this really amazing temple on top of a mountain. We ended up going up on the day of Budda's enlightenment (Visthaew Bucha or something)and the place was packed with people offering gifts and lighting incense. Even the monsoonal downpour that started while we were up there didn't stop them. There was something quite nice and peaceful sitting there while the rain pelted down and the thunder clapped.

Bedlam in Bangkok!

2007-05-21T04:32:00.000-07:00

After 9 brilliant months in Australia it was time to move on to somewhere new. So after a flight to Singapore and a 6 hour wait in Singapore airport we eventually arrived in Bangkok.

Immediately we were blown away by the bedlam and noise on the streets outside the airport, they drive like complete lunatics over here but it's kind of exciting, feels great to be somewhere 'foreign' again! We headed straight to the backpacker mecca 'Khao San road' where the fashion seems to be fisherman pants and sunburn with the obligatory Chang beer in hand.

We spent about a week exploring Bangkok, it's a fantastic city with so much to see but even just wandering up and down the streets and laneways (Soi) is an experience in itself. With food stalls every few steps, the smell of pad thai, spices and curries pervades the air and in the evening drink stands set up in every available piece of street. It's been great fun trying out all the different food from the stands. Sitting down on an upturned crate to enjoy a delicious stir fry and a beer which cost a grand total of about 50 baht which is only EUR1 for both food and drink!!

Soi Rambuttri is one of our favourite little laneways with so much happening, a constant chatter in the air and the rattle of the tuk-tuks racing down the laneway, jumping out of the way before they run us down becomes more difficult after a few Changs.... one of the drink stands on Soi Rambuttri is a converted old VW van with the roof taken off and the side windows removed to serve drink through - very funky. We watched the FA Cup final in a Shell petrol station which becomes a bar in the evening. They just put a few seats and tables in amongst the petrol pumps, set up a big tv screen and hey presto you've got a bar!

Khao San road and the surrounding soi's are swamped with market stalls selling pretty much everything you'd ever need to buy and lots more including a giant cigarette lighter about the size of my head, it's hilarious, who on earth would ever want to buy something like that?! And the 'Frog ladies' who walk along the street rattling sticks over wooden frogs are brilliant, always trying to catch your eye and entice you into buying anything they can sell.

The Thai people are just lovely, really gentle people, always smiling and friendly. Although they're always trying to sell something too so maybe that's why they're so friendly..... They're pretty much all devout Buddhists and are full of respect for their religion and their king with even the taxi's decorated with symbols of buddhism and one day a week they all wear yellow t-shirts in honour of the king.

As a city of nearly 10 million people it's got the pollution to match with the air so bad it's completely normal to see people going about their business with smog masks on. The heat doesn't feel too much after the last few weeks in Australia but the humidity is quite stifling.

Nobody walks anywhere, it's taxi's and tuk tuks all the way which might explain why the air is so polluted and the traffic so crazy. The tuk tuks are great fun to get around town in. They literally zoom in and out of traffic and pay no heed to lanes, indicators, traffic lights and without a doubt never ever stop for people crossing the road. You take your life in your hands as you make a mad dash across the roads. Everyone drives like there's no tomorrow with one particular taxi driver reaching 120km on a completely congested stretch of road, he just kept moving in and out of lanes, speeding up and slamming on the brakes. We couldn't believe how fast he was going. By the time we were getting out we were both feeling as sick as anything and Ciaran looked like a ghost but the driver turned around laughing saying 'Schumacher Schumacher!', he thought it was hilarious! When we eventually arrived at Soi Cowboy our guts were turned even more to see the locals eating fried cockroaches and giant beetles at the side of the road. We did discover that night though that the ping pongs have been replaced by darts which held a particular fascination for Ciaran...

But Bangkok has more to offer than just mayhem and madness. Mixed in amongst all this are some beautiful Buddhist temples and and palaces to rival anything we've seen anywhere else.

We hired a Tuk Tuk driver for a day to bring us around to some of the temples and tourist sites and we were amazed at how many ornately decorated places there are. We went to a temple with an image of Buddha outside that stood about 20 metres tall and after that it was on to the Golden Mount where we climbed up to see the giant golden chedi with views over the city. After that it was off to the Marble Temple where a lot of monks live. There were monks everywhere and we waited outside the temple admiring the oriental style roofs and many Buddha-lined courtyards while they chanted and prayed inside.

We've seen so many monks wandering around the place. They stand out from the crowd in their bright orange garbs and the ones we've seen vary in age from 10 years old to about 80! There is something odd about seeing them on their mobile phones though - the picture doesn't quite fit!

We'd been warned about being 'scammed' in Thailand but naturally we don't listen to warnings, so when our driver decided to bring us on a detour on the way back, stopping off at several tailors and jewelery stores to try and earn some commission, we just sat there and laughed. He looked a bit disappointed dropping us off at our guest house, though he should've known that us stingy backpackers are never going to buy a diamond ring on a whim.

Another way of getting around the city is on the river ferries along Chao Praya and the next day we took a ferry and visited The Grand Palace, which is the kings old residence. This place blew us away, with all the little altars of worship decorated so colourfully and huge demon warrior statues at the gates protecting the way.

Beside The Grand Palace are Wat Phra Kaew and Wat Pho. Wat Phra Kaew is the temple of the emerald buddha which is one of the main tourist attractions in Thailand and completely mobbed with people. The decorations are so detailed and ornate you can understand why. Wat Pho houses the biggest reclining Buddha in Thailand and we've been told that it shows Buddha as he is achieving enlightenment and entering Nirvana, he certainly looks fairly happy! It is absolutely massive - 15 metres tall and 47 metres long - they take their images of the Buddha very seriously over here!

So all in all we've loved Bangkok, I didn't really expect to but we'll be travelling through here again in about a month and we're already looking forward to a pad thai and chang beer on soi Rambuttri....

Destination Darwin....

2007-05-14T22:37:00.000-07:00

Well it's our last day in the van and after 4 weeks and just shy of 8000 km's we have eventually made it from Perth to Darwin.

We've got a few days now in Darwin to get organised i.e. do our blog! throw out all our horrible old clothes etc before flying to Thailand on Wednesday night.

We don't intend doing much in Darwin although last night we went to the Mindill beach markets which was brilliant. Lots of people sitting around waiting on the sunset (I think we must've seen about 1 million sunsets by now but were still not bored!), having a drink or some food from the Roadkill cafe in the markets (Ciaran had emu, crocodile and buffalo for dinner!) and just enjoying the bands that are playing and the atmosphere of the night markets.

3 days left in Australia - Oh My God!

Litchfield National Park

2007-05-12T22:01:00.000-07:00

We didn't think anything would top the crocodile cruise of that morning but on the way to Litchfield we stopped at The Didgeridoo Hut to check out some of the didgs and artwork and on our way out we saw a baby kangaroo and possum that had been orphaned and were being cared for by the owners.

The possum was cute and everything but it was the little roo that got all the attention as he jumped around on unsteady legs and tried to hop into Elaines "pouch" whenever she crouched down. I think Elaine would have taken him home there and then! He was so gorgeous and soft and we want one as a pet now! There was a Flaming Galah (Alf Stewart would be proud) that took quite a shine to Dads camera too and kept trying to eat his lens cap!

We eventually dragged ourselves away from the little roo and headed on down the road to Litchfield NP where we had a relaxing afternoon and just spent the rest of the day reading and swimming in the pool (and killing all the bloody bugs in the evening).

Next day we went to Wangi Fall which is one of the highlights of the park however the swimming hole was closed because of crocodiles in the water and the walking track was closed because of bushfires but just to see the falls was still fantastic one big and one smaller waterfall in a lush green grotto gushing into the plunge pool.

We headed on to Tolmer falls where we had a chance to take a short walk and view this waterfall. It's completely different from Wangi, with the water flowing under a limestone arch and then over a 30metre drop.

The third and final waterfall of the day was Florence Fall. We took the 5km walk from Buley Rockhole which is a really gorgeous river with lots of people swimming in all the little cascades. The sun was absoloutely baking us by the time we got to the falls so we dived straight in. God the water was so cold! After messing about for a half hour or so and making sure we were cooled down enough we headed back to the van and the campsite for our last day on the road. Tomorrow we head to Darwin, our final destination in Australia.

Crikey, jumping Crocs!

2007-05-11T21:37:00.000-07:00

We left the Coroboree Roadhouse the next morning which incidentally has its very own saltwater croc in a cage beside the front gate (only in Australia!), and headed about 50 km up the road to the Adelaide River where we took a crocodile cruise.

The "cruise" entailed basically going down the river about 2 km and dangling hunks of meats off the side of the boat on wooden sticks to see how many crocs we could attract. And attract the crocs we did. Within a few minutes of setting off we could see them coming towards our boat. We saw about 8 in total - mainly smaller females about 3 metres long but also the dominant male of the area - Bogart. He's about 5.5 metres long, ferocious looking and battle scarred with only 1 full leg left, the other 3 have been bitten off in fights with other males over the years! Another dominant male from the next section of the river came into Bogart's area while we were on the boat and in true Aussie style the captain of the boat tried to instigate a fight by forcing them further together, but in the end there was no fight. A bit disappointing for us though!

The highlight of the cruise really was the feeding though because, with the meat in the water still attached to the stick, when the crocs went for it they raised it out of the water and those hungry crocs just jumped straight up out of the water to snatch it off the end of the pole. They came so far out (most of their body length) and we all got a great look at how big they are. We did this several times with different crocs and not one of them failed to disappoint, hurling themselves out of the water to get at the food.

Food was also left dangling for some birds of prey to get and we were lucky enough to see a white bellied sea eagle swoop down and pluck it off the end of the pole - they move so fast and are so accurate. Then on the way back, smaller bits of meat were flung into the water and about 15 hawks flying around came down and tucked in, grabbing it from the waters surface.

It was such a brilliant cruise and something I don't think we'll ever forget.

After that it was on to Litchfield NP...

Kakadu

2007-05-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Kakadu in the evening and we went to watch another beautiful sunset at Yellow Waters. A local there warned us not to sit on the jetty with our legs dangling as there are 5 metre saltwater crocodiles in the area and our legs would just be a little snack to them!

We had planned on doing a walk all around Yellow Waters as the place is supposed to be teeming with birds and other wildlife, but because its so soon after the rainy season, the boardwalk is still under 3 metres of water - guess that rules the walk out so... They had a late wet season this year in the Northern Territory with the rains only stopping about 4 weeks ago so quite a lot of the place is still recovering from the floods. They've also started the bush burn off so we're constantly driving past bush fires. Some of them are only tiny patches of land, maybe 3m x 3m but other fires are really quite huge and the smoke and heat as you drive by is tremendous. It's really cool to see though!

After a lazy morning we headed on to Nourlangie Rock where we saw some great examples of well preserved Aboriginal Rock Art. The art was a lot more interesting that we thought it would be and the view from the lookout on the escarpment over the floodplains was fantastic.

After a stop off at Annbangbang Billabong we drove on to Coroboree, stopping for a while when we saw some joeys playing on the grass outside a roadhouse.

We stayed in a roadhouse campsite that night which we later renamed the valley of the damned because the bugs, mozzies and other assorted beasties were just totally out of control there (from the recent floods apparently). Practically every surface in the van was covered with some weird crawley and there were beetles that were (no exaggeration) the size of the palm of your hand and about an inch high - needless to say Elaine was freaking out and to be fair I wasn't too happy myself. There was nothing else for it, we abandoned ship and headed to the roadhouse bar (trying not to stand on all the cane toads along the way) and that was an experience in itself.

The bar was Hicksville, Tenessee and the mullet was the 'doo' du jour. It was the locals pool night so all the local weirdos were out, complete with ticks, twitches, ripped clothes and cowboy hats. We were the only people there wearing shoes which was particularly disturbing especially when one of the local women stood on one of the giant scorpion beetles - I thought Elaine was going to have a heart attack! Despite first impressions, the people were great craic, really friendly salt of the earth type people and we ended up staggering back to our tent at 1am, not in any state to be worrying about giant bugs...

Next up - jumping crocodiles!

Kununurra to Katherine & Edith

2007-05-08T20:22:00.000-07:00

We left Kununurra and drove our last kilometres through The Kimberley. The Kimberley has been a real highlight of the West Coast with its red escarpments, beautiful National Parks and giant Boab trees - its realy been gorgeous.

We leave W.A. and cross the border into the N.T., stopping for a picnic breakfast beside Cockatoo Lagoon in the Keep River National Park, then it's back on the road for a long drive to Katherine.

Another early start saw us out at Katherine Gorge in Nitmiluk National Park. After a brisk walk up the escarpment to the lookout over the first gorge we boarded our boat for our 2 hour cultural cruise through the gorge. The sheer limestone walls of the gorge were stunning and it's easy to see why this is a special place for the Aboriginal people. Our guide on the cruise was aboriginal and he told us stories of how they hunt and kill in that region which was really intereting and also how they celebrate with special ceremonies. The Katherine river zigzags its way through a series of 13 gorges in this section of the river and although the guide warns us that we're surrounded by crocodiles, all we managed to see were some old croc trails and a snake.

Leaving Katherine we drove on to Leilyn/Edith Falls campground where we had a lovely cool dip in the plunge pool at sunset.

Early the next morning we set out on a 12 km hike through the bush to Sweetwater Pool and then on to Edith Falls. It was a great hike, passing by rivers and little cascades although sometimes walking through hip high grass in a country full of killer snakes and spiders could get a bit much and we'd break into a jog! We were walking through the scorching midday heat by the time we reached Edith Falls, so the cool water was a welcome relief.

The falls themselves were beautiful - water gushing down in a sand coloured alcove and we whiled away an hour there swimming against the current and diving beneath the falls. We could've stayed there all day just messing about in the water. Another couple of kms saw us fairly tired and back at the carpark for the drive to Kakadu.

Wyndham & Kununurra

2007-05-07T20:04:00.000-07:00

Leaving Turkey Creek roadhouse we headed north towards Wyndham. Just outside Wyndham we stopped at The Grotto which is a natural watering hole and was perfect for a cooling mid morning swim. The Grotto is the type of place that Bounty Ads are made of - wow!

Wyndham wasn't a very exciting place so after a quick stop there we headed back to the highway and on to Kununurra which is pretty much the last town in The Kimberley.

We stayed at the Ivanhoe campsite in Kununurra which was brilliant, mainly because of it's shady swimming pool! We had a gorgeous meal out in the local pub (each steak was big enough to feed 5 people!) and had a couple of days visiting great little places in the local area.

We went up to Ivanhoe Crossing where you have to watch your step or you'll likely stand on a crocodile - although that still didn't stop the locals standing in the middle of the river fishing. On one side it's safe but the otherside is full of crocs.

We went to Hidden Valley (Miriana NP) and spent a couple of hours walking and exploring there. It's really beautiful, lush green and with lots of 'mini bungle bungles'. After that we went to The Zebra Rock Gallery and spent lots of time relaxing in the gardens there and feeding the fish and turtles in the river at the bottom of the garden. The rock that they mine at Zebra Rock is brown and cream and stripy like a zebra, it was very tempting to buy some of their carvings but I don't really fancy the idea of lugging a piece of rock around Asia for the next 10 weeks. While we were there we spotted loads of little puppies that were just hiding in the bush outside the workshop - they were so cute and we played with them for a while but eventually we had to drag Elaine away - she would have spent all day there with them!

We also saw the floodgates of the Diversion Dam on the Ord River being opened. The dam holds 9 times the amount of water that's in Sydney Harbour so it was a fairly powerful sight to see all that water gushing through. We finished off the afternoon with a trip to the Hoochery rum distillery (very tasty!) and then up to Kelley's Knob to watch the sunset over Kunnunura.

Purnululu &The Bungle Bungle

2007-05-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

Turkey Creek is just a little roadhouse with a caravan park out the back but it's also located quite close to Purnululu National Park which is home to The Bungle Bungle. The Bungle Bungle are orange and black beehive shaped stripy domes made of limestone and they're one of the main sights to see in The Kimberley.

We took a scenic flight from Turkey Creek (a Cessna 210 for Rob, Bob & Peter). We were in the air for about an hour while the pilot gave us a guided tour over Picanniny Gorge, the Bungle Massif, the Bungle Bungle and the other main sights in the national park. It was fantastic to see if from the air but we were glad to get off the plane because it was so bumpy we were all nearly getting sick (especially Elaine with her head practically in the sick bag!).

Down on the ground we met up with our tour guide who drove us in a 4wd through the Bungles and over to Cathedral Gorge. It was about 2km walk into Cathedral Gorge through the Bungles and some really beautiful scenery. The Gorge itself is huge and at the end you reach a massive dome (the cathedral part) with a pool for swimming.

After Cathedral Gorge it was time to start making our way out of the National Park. It took us nearly 2 hours to cover 53km's across rough ground in the 4wd, crossing a couple of very wet fords along the way and of course we stopped to watch the sunset which was a lovely end to the day.

Back to Turkey Creek and we were all in great form after such a brilliant day.

Fitzroy Crossing & Geikie Gorge

2007-05-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

We left Broome and had a relatively short drive to Fitzroy Crossing (450kms). Fitzroy is a tiny town in the middle of the Kimberley and it wouldn't have been a stop off point apart from the fact that it's home to Geikie Gorge which we've been told is beautiful.

We stayed in Fitzroy that night and got up at sunrise to take a walk through the Geikie NP and a boat trip up the gorge. It was lovely to drive into the park just after sunrise and see all the wallabies running through the bush, although we had a couple of near misses in the van as they bounded across the road in front of us!

The gorge itself is a beautiful place that used to be a reef in the inland sea milliions of years ago. We saw our first crocodiles of the West Coast too - a fresh water one that was basking on the bank as we cruised by. The place was amazing but by 11am it was far too hot so we headed back to the van and the drive to Turkey Creek.

Broome

2007-04-30T19:54:00.000-07:00

Broome is mainly famous for the spectacular sunsets at Cable Beach and now we can understand why. We spent 5 days in Broome staying at the Palm Grove Holiday Resort just a few minutes walk from the beach. The campsite is gorgeous with a really good swimming pool to jump into whenever the 38° heat got too much for us. It's so hot here, only cooling down to the mid 20's during the night and we're getting up so early everyday because the tent and the van are just too hot to sleep in, it's like trying to sleep in a sauna.

We spent a couple of nice days at the beach running into the warm water to try to cool off a little. Most of the evenings we've spent sitting on the beach or at Guantheaume Point watching the changing colours at sunset and we've had a couple of really nice meals out. On our last night in Broome we all took a camel ride over the dunes and down the beach. It was great fun. We never realised how big and smelly they are and the camel behind our one was completely nuts! Constantly trying to wander off into the bushes and eating everything in sight - I don't think the Japanese men on his back were too impressed with Elaine tempting it into the bushes at every possible opportunity, it gave us a good laugh though!

The long drive....

2007-04-26T00:43:00.000-07:00

The west coast is huge! I don't think we really realised how big it was until we started driving.

We've driven more than 3000 km's since we left Perth. All of the towns are tiny, they wouldn't even rate as villages in Ireland! We've had emu's running out in the road in front of us and we must've had about 1000 bugs splattered on our windscreen!

From Coral Bay we drove into Exmouth and then on to Cape Range National Park. Cape Range NP was a bit of a washout as the rain there was torrential, but that didn't stop us having fun. We put on our swimmers and ran down to the beach and swam over the Ningaloo Reef in the rain. It was brilliant with turtles swimming by us and a big ray just floated past too. Then it was off for an early start as we headed north. Destination Broome which took us 2 full days of driving to get from Exmouth to Broome. On Thursday we drove over 1000km's!

Coral Bay

2007-04-23T00:06:00.000-07:00

We have found Paradise... 700kms north of Monkey Mia is the tiny little town of Coral Bay (population 120, think Summer Bay)

It's the cutest town set right on the most beautiful beaches where you can walk out into the warm turquoise water to the coral of Ningaloo Reef, this has to be one of Australia's best kept secrets.
Ningaloo Reef is one of the biggest unspoilt reefs in the world. We've been in it, on it and over it and it is beautiful.

We've had a few perfectly lazy days in Coral Bay which have included a trip on a glass bottomed boat out over the reef where we snorkeled amongst hundreds of brightly coloured fish and huge snapper.

The coral here doesn't seem to be as brightly coloured as the Great Barrier Reef (what we've seen of it anyway) but the fish are far more brazen; swimming right up to us and brushing past. At one point I was surrounded by about 40 or 50 large snapper. It felt like they were eying me up for dinner instead of the other way round! It was brilliant diving down in amongst the coral and giant clams. The water was so warm I didn't want to get back on the boat!

We also took a scenic flight over the reef. Unfortunately the weather wasn't so great that day but the views were still spectacular. The 3 of us and a pilot crammed into a tiny Cessna 179 (I'm sure you'll be familiar with that one Peter, Bob & Rob!!) and headed south over the reef.
The views were breathtaking, you'll see what we mean by the photo's.

We love Coral Bay!

Monkey Mia

2007-04-20T00:17:00.000-07:00

After a longish drive (about 500km's) we arrived at Monkey Mia which is a little resort just outside the gorgeous town of Denham on the Peron peninsula. The Monkey Mia resort is fab, beautiful beach with a nice cafe, restaurant and bar.

We're in Monkey Mia to see the dolphins which come into the beach each morning and are hand fed some fish.
We stayed here for 2 nights getting up at 7 each morning to see the dolphins swimming into the beach. We were lucky enough to see a little baby dolphin - it was the cutest thing ever!

The rest of the days were spent chilling out, reading, playing guitar and walking on the beach. On Friday night we sat out at the beach, under the stars watching a great band playing at the bar, such a lovely night.

Kalbarri

2007-04-19T00:12:00.000-07:00

We left The Pinnacles and headed back to the highway. To give you an idea of the huge distances we're driving; it took us nearly 2 hours to reach the highway!

Next stop Kalbarri National Park. However our van had other ideas and broke down just outside Northhampton. We were so lucky we were near a town and not in the middle of the outback as there's no mobile signal anywhere except big towns. We called roadside assistance and they came and fixed us that evening.

One night and one power steering belt later we were driving again and got to Kalbarri National Park early that day.

The road into Kalbarri NP is an unsealed dirt track and it took about 1 hour to cover 25km and it was so bumpy the van sounded none too healthy and the end either.

We went to see Natures Window, The Loop and The Z Bend which were nice but not spectacular as the Murchison River was mostly dried out. We would love to be here in The Wet to see the river in the gorges in full flow.

Kalbarri town is a stereotypical Aussie seaside town where the kids go surfing and the men go fishing but the bay itself is really picturesque and we could easily stay here for a week just chilling

Namburg National Park & The Pinnacles

2007-04-18T00:02:00.000-07:00

Dad and I went to pick up the van which turned out to be slightly more traumatic that I first imagined. Whilst doing the basic hire car checks for scratches, bumps, lights etc. I turned the key in the ignition. Unfortunately, even though I checked the gear stick, the van lurched forward and began rolling down the hill. Luckily I managed to stop it just before hitting another car. Unluckily for me and Dad it had rolled over both our feet first - yeouch!

We hobbled in, picked up Elaine & our bags and left Perth for Cervantes - the first of many long drives on the West Coast.

The drive was pretty uneventful - a lot of scrub land, bush and red earth. Driving here is weird. Some of the roads are so straight you can see 8km straight in front of you.

We got up the next morning to go to The Pinnacles Desert in Namburg National Park. The Pinnacles look really cool - they're ancient limestone fossils and it looks you're on the moon. Some of them stand up to 5m tall! It's brilliant being out in such a desert environment. On the drive out we saw a family of 4 emu's just wandering across the road, completely ignoring the van. Amazing to see such huge birds just wandering around the place

Perth

2007-04-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Perth on Saturday morning and spent the day wandering around the city window shopping and getting supplies for the next 4 weeks travelling up the west coast.

Our friends Holland and Bex were in Perth this weekend too so we had a couple of brilliant nights out with them, particularly Sunday night when Elaine turned into the dancing queen of the the nightclub!

Not being very organised we hadn't actually booked our campervan and when we started making calls on Sunday we discovered that there were none available for a week. Stress! After about 2 hours on the phone we found a company who had one left so we snapped it up. Can't wait to get on the road.

The Red Centre

2007-04-14T20:40:00.000-07:00

Our tour guide for our 4 day Ayers Rock (Uluru) name is Sauce and he's a long haired biker, funny guy. He picked us up at 11am and we were delighted to see Mike & Nicole were on the same tour as us. We headed off into the outback but after a couple of hours driving the bus started filling with steam. The radiator cap had blown off and we were broken down in the outback. It could've been a bad situation but luckily for us we happened to be right beside the only roadhouse for 300kms and even luckier, it had a bar and a pool so while we waited a few hours for a new cap to arrive we had a few drinks and enjoyed the cool water of the pool - a nice start to our tour.
By the time we arrived at our Kings Canyon camp it was dark so we rustled up some dinner and sat around the campfire with the other tour groups playing games.

It was an early start on day 2. We were up at 6am to do the rim walk of Kings Canyon. Starting off with a hike up the aptly named Heart attack Hill we spent the next 4 hours exploring the canyon, seeing areas like Colliers lookout, the Garden of Eden (thanks to the woman playing the panpipes!!) and even where they filmed Priscella Queen of the Desert!
Kings Canyon is stunning.

Back in the tourbus we headed towards Uluru but stopped off near Mt Connor and the salt lakes for dad to take a scenic helicopter flight over the area.

We arrived at Uluru just before sunset. From the viewing platform we could also see the sun going down at Kata Tjuta (The Olgas). It was really beautiful.

Another early start for day 3. We got up in time to drive to Kata Tjuta to watch the sun rise, it was definitely worth the effort with the sun coming up behind Uluru and the colours changing by the second. After the sunrise we did the 8km Valley of the Winds walk at Kata Tjuta. It was a really good walk with our guide stopping to show us various plants that aboriginals use for food and medicine. We were glad we started so early too because by the time we got back to our camp at 10.30 it was already 30°c. We jumped straight into the swimming pool to cool off then after lunch we went to the Uluru cultural centre then we did the Mala walk at Uluru which is a short cultural walk where you can learn about the aboriginal uses and customs of Ayers Rock.

The girls from Elaine's job in Sydney bought her a Harley Sunset Tour of Ayers Rock when she was leaving. I couldn't let her have all that fun by herself so we went too. The biker guys picked us up on their Harleys about half an hour before sunset and took us on a ride around the rock before stopping for sunset and champagne. It was a spectacular sunset with the intense colours of the rock changing by the second. It felt like the rock was alive - really magic. The ride back to the camp at twilight was so much fun too!

Our 4th morning and yet another sunrise! This time at Uluru followed by the 9km base walk - it's a bloody big rock! Then it was back to camp to pack up for the drive back to Alice Springs and some dinner out with the group in Bojangles. A great end to a great tour.

Adelaide, Coober Pedy and Alice Springs

2007-04-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

We got to Adelaide in time to surprise dad at the airport (he didn't expect us to arrive in Adelaide for 2 more days). It was really great to see him after nearly 2 years there was a lot to catch up on. Just aswell really considering how boring Adelaide is!

The next day we took a drive out to the Barossa Valley and went to a few vineyards to taste lots of wine. Jacobs Creek was really good and Bethany. Elaine was driving so we made sure we bought plenty to drink that night.

We had an early start for our tour to Alice Springs. We went with Groovy Grape Tours and have 1800kms to cover in 2 days - that's a LOT of time sitting on a bus staring out into barren desert! Our guide Tasha was really good though and tried to make it as interesting as possible. We had lots of stops during the day at salt lakes, Mt. Augusta etc. and on the first night we stayed in Cooper Pedy which is a small little Opal mining town. Because it's in the middle of the desert it gets up to 55°c during the summer so the town is literally built under the ground - our hostel for the night was in a cave!

Before we left the next morning we went on a mine tour and a tour around somebody's house (all underground) it's really amazing to see people living so happily like this! Time to get back on the bus though and another day full of driving - we even passed by this secret American military base in Pine Valley outside Alice Springs. There's a huge amount of security there and nobody in the area knows what they do but there's 3000 Americans living in Alice Springs and whenever asked what they do for a living they ALL say that they're gardeners - some pretty weird stuff going on in there I'd say!

The Great Ocean Road

2007-04-05T00:51:00.000-07:00

After a big weekend in Melbourne it was time to move on so we hired a car to drive the Great Ocean Road between Melbourne and Adelaide. We eventually navigated our way out of Melbourne with their weird right-turn rules and got on the road.

We first stopped at the famous surfing beach Bells Beach outside Torquay. The Rip Curl Pro surfing competition is starting on Tuesday 3rd April, so the sea was packed with surfers practicing for the big competition. Some of them were amazing - really made us wish that we could do it!

We stayed overnight in Apollo Bay and went for a run. The views there and the surf were great. Apollo Bay is a quiet enough place so we had an early night and got up the next day and went to Mariners Lookout above the town for some nice views out over the whole Bay. The weather was pretty overcast but we've got our fingers crossed that it will get better when we get to the Twelve Apostles part of the road.

After we came down from the lookout we drove on again. Out luck was in and the weather was improving all the time. We spent the entire day stopping and getting out of the car every 5km or so and there were so many "wow" moments. The stretch of road between Apollo Bay and Portland is nothing short of spectacular.

The whole area is rugged sandstone with sheer cliffs dropping hundreds of feet into the huge surf below. The 12 Apostles (there's actually only 8) were stunning. A definite highlight of the Great Ocean Road. Then we saw the Arch and "London Bridge" - again these were absolutely beautiful.

We stayed the night in a dodgy 'hotel' in a dodgy 'town' called Portland aka Hicksville so next day we were up early to drive on to Adelaide. For some reason we thought it was only 200km but after a quick visit to the information centre we discovered it was nearly 600km, a long day in the car lay ahead of us!

This area of South Australia has been in drought for eight years so for hundreds of miles all we could see was barren flat dusty land, however from time to we were lucky enough to see more interesting things including wild emu's running along the side of the road. On one stretch of road we felt like we were driving through kangaroo death valley, literally every five metres there was a dead kangaroo, we must've passed at least 100 dead roo's! Things started to get a bit nicer when we reached Coorong National Park, not that it was a particularly beautiful place but after 400kms of barren land we really appreciated some trees!

Next stop is Adelaide where we meet up with my Dad who's joining us for our west coast trip. It'll be great to see him after so long away from home...

Melbourne

2007-03-30T00:02:00.000-07:00

Well, it's time to leave Sydney, so with heavy but really excited hearts we flew to Melbourne early on Friday morning.

We got into our hostel (Flinders Station), dumped our bags and started wandering around the city. The first thing we noticed was how cold it was compared to Sydney! I can't remember the last time the temperature went below 20°!

Melbourne is a great city. Over 3 million people but it seems a lot smaller than Sydney and it's so much more laid back. Nobody was rushing around and everyone seemed really friendly. There's a tram system in the city and its cool to see the trams trundling along the middle of the roads, although you're literally taking your life into your hands crossing the road - we didn't know which way we should be looking. To often we found ourselves standing in the middle of the road only to look down and see we're in a tram track!

There are coffee shops everywhere which suits us down to the ground as we've become slightly addicted since leaving home. So after some great coffees in beautiful cafes in winding little alleyways, we headed back to the hostel to get ready for a night out. Friday night we went to see an AFL (Aussie Rules) game. Melbourne V St. Kilda in theMCG. It was a cracking match - really like Gaelic but faster paced. St. Kilda won 93 - 62. The MCG is a brilliant stadium and we had great seats - just behind the goal line where most of the action took place.

We were supposed to be meeting Nic (who we know from Sydney) before the match but it was her first time driving in Melbourne and she got slightly delayed by about 2 hours or so trying to find parking! Beer was the first thing on her mind when she eventually did get in to the MCG!

After the match we jumped on a tram to the Corner House to meet Kate and some of her friends. Kate is from Melbourne and we met her in Ilha Grande in Brazil. It was great to see Kate again and it felt like we'd only seen her last week! The bar was great with live music, but so different from most places we went out in Sydney (we couldn't get over how different the cities are!). We eventually stumbled home late...

Saturday 31st - Today we got the free City Circle tram all around the city and got off in the docklands for a wander around and to grab a nice coffee. There's so much weird architecture in Melbourne - lots of buildings built at strange angles with odd paint jobs etc.

That night, we met Kate and her friend at Riverlands bar at the side of the river Yarra. It's a great bar and sitting outside under the patio heaters we could see ourselves staying there all night. But Kate had different plans. She decided to show us the places in the city that tourists wouldn't find.

First, she brought us to a restaurant called The Waiters Club. We went down a laneway, through an unmarked door and up these rickety stairs. When we walked in we thought the place looked like a bit of a dive, but the atmosphere there was great and the food was just gorgeous. Kate then took us to a series of bars and clubs that you would just never find on your own in the city. The last club we were in we had to walk up a rubbish strewn alley past loads of graffiti and dumpsters and at the end there was a doorway in and then a really nice bar/club on the inside. It ended up taking Nic over 2 hours to find her way back to the hostel even though we were only 15 minutes walk away. That could have been something to do with the cocktails as well as the series of winding alleys we had to walk though!

On Sunday we had a lazy brunch and coffee with Nic in a great cafe (did I mention that Melbourne has great cafe's?!). We then had a look around the huge Queen Victoria Markets, said a last goodbye to Nic and the caught a tram out to St. Kilda for a walk along the beach and the pier as the sun was setting. We also saw some guys doing capoeira beside Luna Park there - very reminiscent of Brazil!

We've decided - we love, love, love Melbourne!

March In Sydney

2007-03-05T23:31:00.000-08:00

March in Sydney got off to a great start with the Mardi Gras. A huge parade of glitz, glamour and lip gloss - and thats just the men!

We saw some sights we could have done without seeing - middle aged men wearing chaps and not much else is not something you want to see, or something you can forget too fast either!

The atmosphere in Hyde Park was electric. The place was packed - a much bigger celebration than we'd seen for Australia Day. There were 6'5" drag queens everywhere who were more than willing to pose for photos, a big Kylie Minogue float and bizarrely a police band going by on a float playing Aretha Franklins R.E.S.P.E.C.T.! Maybe they should be known as the boys in pink instead of the boys in blue!

After that came St. Patrick's Day. The parade was on the weekend before (there were 75th birthday celebrations for the Harbour Bridge on the weekend of the 17th) but we didn't quite manage to get into town to see it. It was a scorcher of a day and Bondi Beach was calling us so we skipped the parade but made up for it on the day itself. We went to the Cock n Bull at about 11am and had a huge breakfast washed down by a pint of black slop in a plastic glass they were trying to pass off as Guinness - ah well you can't have it all. We stayed in the Cock n Bull most of the day. There were great trad bands on all day and by mid afternoon there was many a sloppy person.

We went into town later on to try and get into PJ O'Briens but the queue was around the corner, so back to the Cock n Bull it was. We watched a hard fought win against the Italians in the 6 Nations and we went home thinking Ireland had won! We were pretty disappointed the next day to find out the French had spoiled the party.

After the excess of Paddy's Day we decided it was time to be a bit more sophisticated. We went to see Macbeth in the Opera House. We got dressed up, had a pre-show drink in the Opera Bar and went in. It was my first time seeing Macbeth and I loved it - the performance was brilliant.
Afterwards we went to the Shangri La Hotel. They have a bar on the 40thfloor and the nighttime views of the city form up there were amazing.

Apart from that we've been loving "The Spot" in Randwick to take in a film in a nice old cinema followed by by dinner in one of the many great restaurants there, the whole area has a great atmosphere.

For one of our last evenings in Sydney we decided to have a nice night out in Icebergs at Bondi Beach (really really posh bar sitting right on the water) followed by a walk on the beach. Clear skies, crashing waves, soft sand - a perfect night. We're really, really going to miss Bondi so much....

February in Sydney

2007-02-28T16:41:00.000-08:00

I always love February because it's such a short month, and before you know it it's March and St Patricks day, and sure after that it's nearly summer! This February has been no exception, the time is flying by. I'm working 3 days a week and that's really making the weeks quicker too.... At times the weather in February hasn't been the great with some people saying that it's some of the worst weather they've had in 10 years (something to do with El Nino), but even so there were weeks of unadulterated sunshine! Anyway, no matter what the Ozzies say we're still finding it hot enough, especially when we hear reports of snow at home!!

The main event in February was a weekend trip to the Hunter Valley. The Hunter Valley is a wine producing region about 3 hours north of Sydney. We rented a big holiday home out in the middle of the countryside and 14 of us headed up there on Friday evening for what proved to be a fun filled weekend!

The fun and games began as we tried to drive out of the city, it's a bloody big city but we didn't even make it out of Bondi without taking a wrong turn! Not to worry, once we were on the road, we put the greatest hits of the 80's on, opened a beer (not the driver naturally!) and sang our way to the Hunter. Who knew Spandau Ballet were so cool!!!

We were in two people carrier cars and when we arrived at the house the others were already there. As it was out in the middle of the countryside we thought it would be funny to creep up and scare them so we parked the car down the road and started creeping towards the house. We might've frightened them except for Ciaran falling over a fence half way up the driveway, alerting them and giving us laugh too.

Later that night we held a mini Olympics (where Ciaran managed to fall again in the middle of a crucial relay race!) followed by a yummy bbq.

After not a lot of sleep it was time to head off on our tour of the Hunter Valley vineyards. The tour bus brought us to about 5 different vineyards, a chocolate shop and a cheese shop. It was a roasting hot day and everyone was in great form.

When we got back to the house there was a big huntsman spider and a big goanna sitting on our patio waiting for us - yuck! We cooked up a big huge bbq which felt more like a banquet with the amount of food we had!

Later on we were all sitting out on the patio. Paul lit a fire (there was firewood and a firepit) and we were having great craic when the local fire chief pulled up in his car to order us to put out the fire. Woops, apparently there's a severe fire warning at the moment, Australia's in drought and anyone caught lighting a fire can be hit with a $10,000 fine or time in prison.... Sure we didn't know!!

Well of course we offered the chief a drink to say sorry for the trouble. Turns out the fire chief is a funny old guy who didn't want to go home and spent the rest of the night sitting with us, laughing and singing and telling stories. With a bit of prompting he did his party piece for us - chugging down two bottles of beer at the same time followed by a whiskey chaser (with all of us cheering 'Frank the Tank, Frank the Tank' ala Old School in the background!!!). By the end of the night Frank the Tank was also being called Chief Wigum and said about a hundred times that 'this is the best party I've ever been to'.

Eventually he went home, although we're fairly sure he shouldn't have been driving..... While he was being distracted by the array of girls around him and his van (he felt like a lucky guy!) we managed to tie a load of beer cans on strings to the back of his car. By the sound of it he at least made it to the top of the street!! We all headed in doors and cranked up the music, dancing on the tables and had a bit of a party.

Sunday, was a much quieter day with hangovers all round. We went looking for snakes but didn't find any and everyone else went horseriding then it was into the cars and back to Bondi....

January in Sydney

2007-01-31T16:20:00.000-08:00

January over here is completely different to January at home thanks to the great weather. Everybody's in a good mood, with the long evenings and beautiful days... So naturally enough we spent plenty of time outdoors enjoying it all, at the beach and the parks and checking out different parts of the city. We also celebrated both our birthdays - yahoo!

For my birthday we had a picnic in the Botanic Gardens, sitting by the water in front of the Opera House watching the sunset with a nice bottle of wine.... fantastic!

Since we arrived in Australia Ciaran's been dying to see a Cassowary. This is a native bird, the size of an ostrich but with a tendency to rip your heart out of your chest if you ever cross him.... I think it must be a man thing to be interested in them! One way or the other we haven't managed to see one so far. With this in mind I surprise him with a trip to the zoo for his birthday, we're going in search of the elusive cassowary.... Murphy's Law, they don't have any at the zoo either..... Not to worry though, it's a beautiful day and we have a great time wandering around in the sunshine, looking at all the animals with great views out over Sydney Harbour.
The search for the cassowary continues....

That night we went into Home which is one of the biggest nightclubs in Sydney (we went there for my birthday too). We had such a great night, sore heads the next day though....

New Years Eve

2007-01-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

How exciting to be in Sydney for New Years Eve!

The day started early enough as we wanted to make sure we had a good vantage point for the fireworks. After a big brekkie in Cosmo cafe we headed out to Mort Bay Park in Balmain which was a fantastic spot, right beside the harbour with perfect views of the Harbour Bridge and the city skyline.

The weather was good and it was great fun to spend the day in the park playing games and chatting. Even the police were having a great time, joining in the festivities and spending most of the afternoon playing cricket!
There was about 50 of us altogether, nearly everybody either Irish or British and they estimate about 3000 altogether in the park.

The first set of fireworks went off at 9 o'clock, just after it got dark. They were absolutely amazing so we we're fairly excited to see the main event. With three hours to kill until midnight everybody upped the party mood and drank far too much goon, particularly Mary (who's now known as Wino Mary!) and the sing songs began. Needless to say, fifty Irish & British (and Dutch, Tinus) backpackers can get fairly loud! I'll never be able to listen to 'It's My Life' without thinking of NYE again thanks to Wino Mary repeating the same line about 100 times!!

As midnight got closer the atmosphere was electric, everyone crowded together as the first of the fireworks went off. WOW! They really know how to put on a show over here. It was just amazing, with fireworks exploding for miles and miles in the sky all over the city. In front of us, above us, behind us! The atmosphere was unbelievable and unforgettable....

As we walked back through town after the fireworks the city was jumping. People everywhere, with a big parade going down George Street, with drummers leading the way and everybody dancing. Then it was down to Bondi Beach to wait for the first sunrise of 2007....

St Stephens Day

2006-12-26T20:35:00.000-08:00

On St Stephens Day Ciaran & I headed into the Botanic Gardens for a walk & a picnic.
It was such a beautiful day and we really wanted to see the classic view of the Opera House & Harbour Bridge which you get from the botanic.
The botanic isn't like the one in Dublin and we haven't suddenly developed a love of botany it's really just a park where people come to sunbathe on a hot day when they don't fancy getting covered in sand at the beach. There's millions of huge fruit bats hanging from the trees which Ciaran was fascinated with, I was more interested in staying in the shade because I felt like I was going to melt!

We walked through the botanic to Mrs Macquaries Chair which is the area where you get the classic harbour views, then had a picnic from the Christmas day leftovers - it was a gorgeous afternoon.

The girls had a slightly different day at the races in Randwick which resulted in Kelley dressing up like a Christmas tree and dancing around the street outside the apartment - hilarious!

Christmas Day

2006-12-25T20:33:00.000-08:00

I was so excited on Christmas day that when I woke up at 5.30am I just couldn't get back to sleep. I found myself in the kitchen at 6am baking soda bread(!) with Christmas songs playing on my ipod. Managed to finally get Ciaran and the girls up at about 8 o'clock which meant we could open our pressies - at last! The girls hadn't got home till about 5am so they weren't too impressed with being woken up but they soon got into the swing of things when they remembered there were presents to be opened! The 5 of us in the house got each other a small pressie which meant that there was loads of unwrapping to do - hurrah!

Myself and Ciaran then headed into Hyde Park Barracks for the Christmas mass which was shown live on RTE. There were thousands of Irish backpackers there trying to squeeze in. The church had asked everyone to wear their GAA county jersey so it looked really cool. Everyone was trying to get their face on TV for the folks back home. I think we were spotted once or twice but with me being surrounded by 6 ft men it was a bit difficult. The helpful text from my mam telling me 'I can only see the top of your head, get up on Ciarans shoulders' made sure I was aware of my vertical challenge.... Everyone was waving like lunatics trying to get on the camera and at one point there was even a mexican wave going round although I'm fairly sure they didn't show that on TV!

After mass we took a walk through Hyde Park with Garry & Clare then it was time to head back to get ready for the beach. Bondi beach was absoloutely mobbed. There was a great atmosphere with everyone wearing their santa hats and red bikinis (not the boys!), even the lifeguards were looking a little bit festive. The weather was beautiful and the waves were great so we spent a good few hours down there in and out of the sea.

That evening we had Garry, Clare, Nicola & Lawrence over for a bbq. We made way too much food but it's not Christmas if you don't stuff yourself! We even had a go at throwing a shrimp on the barbie. Then it was back into the apartment for Christmas night drinks and a marathon game of poker.

Christmas Eve

2006-12-24T20:34:00.000-08:00

On Christmas Eve we went out on a Sydney harbour cruise a.k.a booze cruise...

There was about 10 of us in our gang and probably another couple of hundred on our boat with 5 more boats packed full of backpackers.
It was really great craic on board and a brilliant way to spend Christmas Eve with loads of people dressed up in Santa suits and Christmas hats.
After the boat docked we headed down to the local pub which was crammed full of people singing all the old Christmas songs, then it was off home to wait for Santa!

December in Sydney

2006-12-23T19:37:00.000-08:00

December in Sydney was a good month despite the sometimes miserable weather. Ok, not miserable compared to home but miserable compared to our expectations of December weather in Oz!

Just like last year it's been hard to get into the Christmas spirit here in the sunshine. The shops aren't decorated and there's no Christmas jingles being played - it's the opposite to home! But our apartment is decorated like santa's grotto with a fantastic real Christmas tree and tonnes of fairy lights.

We spent a few Saturday's exploring different parts of the city; Glebe, Newtown, Watsons Bay & out to Manly to meet some friends from the coast which was really great and of course there's been plenty of nights out...

There's some great markets in Glebe and Newtown is a really funky little area with cool cafe's. I love getting the ferry to Watsons Bay, passing by multi million dollar mansions that have places to moor their yachts right outside their door... Manly is a bustling little village with a really good beach, we had a lovely lunch there with Holland & Bex.

Sydney, the first of many...

2006-11-19T19:49:00.000-08:00

So we've been settling into life in Sydney, getting used to being in a city again and enjoying the fact that we're not living out of a backpack....

The apartment's great, feels like home already and it's so great to have a wardrobe and mirrors! and our own bathroom! We're really loving it.

The nightlife in Sydney is brilliant with somewhere different to go every night if we fancy it.

We went to see Pearl Jam two weeks ago. The gig was amazing, it was so fantastic to actually see them play live after listening to their music for years & years... It was so good that we decided to go again this Saturday. So on Saturday afternoon we headed out to the Olympic Park where they were playing. We sat in the sun, had a lovely picnic then headed into the gig. Second time round was even better than the first while they played an entirely different set list we got to hear all the old classics and more from the new album - woohoo!

Apart from nights out in Kingscross, Coogee & town we've been exploring the rest of the city. We've done the Coogee to Bondi walk which was really good. At the moment they've got a 'Sculptures by the Sea' exhibition with sculptures lining the track all along the cliff tops. We've also taken the ferry out to Watson's Bay and taken a hundred photo's of the Opera House & Harbour Bridge! We've been to the Kirribilli, the Rocks & Paddy's markets - trying not to spend all of our savings though!

Sarah & Owen were in Sydney last week (their last week in Oz), it was great to see them and a great excuse to go out to Darling Harbour and meet up in Chinatown for dinner with all the gang. Darling Harbour is lovely, it really reminds us of the Viaduct where we were living in Auckland. Yesterday we spent the afternoon at the harbour just watching the boats coming and going, very chilled....

Bondi Brats!

2006-11-01T19:33:00.000-08:00

We're not really sure how we were this lucky but we managed to find the most fantastic place to live. It's a 3 bed apartment with a huge living area and views of the harbour bridge & opera house. It's also got 2 swimming pools, gyms, jacuzzi's sauna's & tennis courts, a bbq area, snooker room & racquet ball court (I'm not even sure what racquet ball is, but we've got a court to play on if we ever figure it out!). Needless to say we love it!

We've moved in with 3 girls that we met in the hostel. Two sisters, Kelley & Susan from Castleknock and their friend Sam from Cork. They're gas craic, always up for a laugh. They've already named us the Bondi Brats (they wanted to call us the bondi babes first, but Ciaran put his foot down at that one) so we're doing our best to live up to the title, kicking off with a hallowe'en party which involved myself and Sam dressing up as mummy's (the old dead mummy's, not the 'yummy mummy' variety!). Well when I say 'dressing up' I mean wrapping ourselves in toilet paper... anyway, it's definitely one of those 'you had to be there' moments but we all had a great laugh...
Fingers crossed Ciaran can cope with living with 4 women!

Back to the real world...

2006-10-22T00:36:00.000-07:00

So we've arrived in Sydney which marks the end to the latest bout of travelling. After 5 months living out of a backpack we're both fairly happy to get here.

Ciaran started work on Thursday, which was a bit of a struggle for him to switch the brain back on after months where the only decision to be made was which beach to go to! The first couple of days have gone well though, he reckons the work will be tough enough but the people are nice & not too nerdy so that's the main thing!

I've spent the past week househunting which is a serious business in Sydney at this time of the year as everyone else we meet is househunting too so competition for a decent place is fierce!
We've found somewhere we love & have put a deposit down so fingers crossed our application will be approved, in which case we'll be moving in on Thursday.

Apart from that we've met tonnes of people already and had a few really great nights out so it looks like it's going to be a fun summer!

Blue Mountains

2006-10-13T22:11:00.000-07:00

The Blue Mountains were our final stop before Sydney. They're only about an hours drive from the centre of the city but felt like a million miles when you're surrounded by the sound of cockatoos, lizards, all the other creatures and miles and miles of trees and bush...

The first night we stayed at Katoomba and took a walk down to Katoomba falls and the Three Sisters (3 rocks) then spent a lovely evening at the campsite with Ciaran playing guitar while I read. The next day we visited Echo Point, with it's stunning views over the mountains, Evans lookout, Govets leap & Bridal falls. Everything we saw was really beautiful and the weather was amazing. The last place we stopped at we could see kangaroo's munching on grass, very cute!

The Blue Mountains themselves were fantastic. They're not as big as anything we saw in New Zealand but once you drive up them and get to the lookouts, there are these huge drops that look like the Grand Canyon. Such a beautiful place. I think we'll definitely be coming up here for weekends while we're living in Sydney.

The weather while we were there and especially on our last day was just unbelievable. The day we were driving back to Sydney was 38 degrees and the and the air-conditioning in the van stopped working, we were melting by the time we got to the hostel.

Coffs, Port Macquarie & Toronto

2006-10-11T22:04:00.000-07:00

We spent the next few days travelling south (this country is Huge!), stopping at Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie & Newcastle. The towns were cute little sea-side places but not very exciting for us so we weren't really interested in staying long at them.

We did manage to get completely lost, in the dark and ended up in a random town called Toronto. It was quite exciting to drive around in the pitch black hoping that a kangaroo didn't jump in front of the van! although all Ciaran was concerned about was how hungry he was!

Ciaran starts work on the 19th October so we better get our skates on...

Byron Bay & Nimbin

2006-10-08T21:47:00.000-07:00

Byron Bay was our next stop. It's a really cool little town, the complete opposite to Surfers Paradise. It's beside a great beach and there's lots of people there, it's full of hippy types and alternative shops.

We stayed here for 4 nights because it was so relaxing. Met lots of fun people including a group of crazy Aussie guys who we're staying at our campsite and ended up at a bonfire on the beach with them and a heap of other people we'd never seen before. Also met up with the Martina, Mariella & a few others from the Whitsundays.

We went to the lighthouse to watch the sunset but we're too late & it was nearly dark by the time we got there but still really nice! We also spent some time at Watego's surf beach which was so much fun on our body boards.

We spent a day at Nimbin which is a crazy little town a couple of hours away from Byron. Very 'alternative'! Loads of people there still think it's the 70's!, very funny to see the way they dressed with old men still sporting dreadlocks and flares... here's a photo from inside Nimbin Museum might give you an idea of what the town was like if this is there museum!

Didn't want to leave Byron but time is ticking on & we need to get to Sydney...

Surfers Paradise

2006-10-04T21:28:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Surfers around mid-day and we're shocked to see how commercial it was. Full of high-rise buildings, neon lights and so crowded! The beach was beautiful though and the surf huge but it was a really windy day so we decided not to go for a dip.

Spent the afternoon exploring the town (shops, shops & more shops!) then drove onto the town of Coolangatta for the night 'cause there was nowhere to stay in Surfers. Driving past a beach on the way to Coolangatta we spotted about 4 whales swimming south. We jumped out of the van and ran over to the edge of the water to watch them go by. This was so great that we decided we'd like to do a proper 'whale watching' trip. It's whale migration season at the moment and we've seen tonnes of whales breaching and tail slapping at loads of different points along the coast so it will be great to see them up close.

The next morning we headed back to Surfers and booked a tour with Whales in Paradise. We spotted about 12 whales in total which was really brilliant. Unfortunately they didn't come very close to the boat though but it was still fantastic to see them. They we're absoloutely huge, the guide told us that they normally grow up to about 17 metres - wouldn't fancy falling overboard when they're swimming by!

Brisbane

2006-10-02T20:44:00.000-07:00

It was time to leave Noosa and we were all lucky enough to escape hangovers so we piled the dutchies into the van and hit the road.

Our first stop for the day was Coolum Beach. We headed straight to the sea with our boogie boards again and all had some fun. It was the dutchies first time on them so it was funny for us to watch them falling off!

We then drove on a little more and had a picnic lunch in Maroochydore beside a river with pelicans swimming by. Its crazy how accustomed we have gotten to all these birds and animals we would never see at home. Seeing lorikeets, cockatoos, parrots, fruitbats and dolphins is almost becoming a daily occurrance!

After lunch we headed on to another surf beach at Mooloolaba for the rest of the afternoon. We got to Brisbane just as the sun was setting , dropped the dutchies off at their hostel and headed to our campsite - where we bumped into Chris & Karen, Sarah & Owen and Ellen & Graeme again! We just had an early night then because tomorrow there's the Rugby League Grand Final and that could be another big day!

Spent the next day sight seeing around Brisbane. It's a really nice city with a relaxed atmosphere, lots of cafe's etc. Then it was off to meet up with the gang to watch the NRL final, Brisbane Bronco's v Melbourne in Tin Billy's. Turned into a great night with major hangovers the next day! Had a lazy day and then went for a fab Mexican meal with Graham & Ellen.

Noosa National Park

2006-09-29T20:31:00.000-07:00

We decided to go for a nice walk today in the Noosa National Park, so we left our campsite and headed back into Noosa where we picked up the dutchies (Martina & Mariella) and went straight to the park.

We had a nice easy walk along the coastal track and then went to Alexandria Bay where we had a yummy picnic and a swim in the sea - the surf beaches over here are so good! We got a little bit more than we bargained for at some stages as this beach is an unofficial nudist beach and we were treated to the sight of naked old pot-bellied men strolling along. We all had to do our best to keep our lunches down after that!

On the way back we saw some dolphins in the sea and we were also lucky enough to spot a Koala in the tree near our van! They're so sleepy and cute!

That night was the Germans (Ina & Kevin) last night in Oz, so we had a bit of a party with them and the dutchies. After some dinner in the bar it was back to their dorm for a few drinks before we went out. A few drinks turned into a full on party and we ended up throwing clothes and pillows at the fan! Still not sure why...

It was a brilliant night and we were sad to see the Germans leaving, but they left a lovely note for all of us and hopefully we'll keep in touch.

Noosa

2006-09-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

We left Hervey Bay in the morning and then drove to Noosa which is quite an exclusive sort of place. Everyone's walking around in their designer gear and looking ever so posh - a complete contrast to us! Noosa is a really beautiful town with a river that meanders through it. All the houses along the river are huge and have their own jetties into the river and of course they all have their own boats & yachts too. Apparently lots of Aussie celebrities have holiday homes here.

The beach at Noosa is just great and packed with loads of people as its the school holidays at the moment. Its a real surf beach and we were straight in it with our boogie boards once we saw it. The surf was much better here than in Agnes Waters & 1770 and we spent the afternoon in the sea.

We bumped into Sarah & Owen and Ina & Kevin in the middle of town too. Its a small world!
That night we camped at Lake Carooiabah about 30 km from Noosa.

Fraser Island - day 3

2006-09-27T19:56:00.000-07:00

We had to be up at 6am on the final day in order to be off the beach before the tide came in. It was good to make an early start as we still had a lot to see. We took the Southern Scenic Lake track which was a very bumpy track and saw lake Birrabeen, Benaroon and Boomajin.

We had intended to go to Lake Wabby for a few hours but lake Boomajin was so beautiful we just stayed there. Spent a couple of hours playing frisbee & football then had another picnic.

Everybody really enjoyed it although So Jin (the Korean girl) found the sun too hot and spent most of her time under a tree. She's really lovely and is in Australia to learn English. She's only been speaking English for 2 weeks but it was worth making the effort to simplify sentences and speak slowly as she's so nice and just giggles all the time. She even tried to teach me some Korean which went in one ear and out the other! Still it was really interesting to find out some things about Korea and Seoul and how she lives over there.

After lake Boomajin we had to go get the ferry back to Hervey Bay. Myself and Ellen were lucky enough to see two really big turtles in the sea on the way back.

You'd have thought we'd seen enough of each other & sand but that evening we all met up (and the dutch girls too) for Pizza, drinking games and a trip to the beach! Couldn't face another bbq!

Fraser Island - day 2

2006-09-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

It was great to wake up on the beach and to hear the sound of the sea first thing in the morning. We could only drive on the beach at certain times because of the tides so the next morning got off to a slow start which was probably just as well for those with hangovers!

Myself and Ciarán took a walk up to the Dundaburra campsite which is about 2km's away. As backpackers we're not allowed to stay in the official campsites because they think we'll be too noisey - maybe they're right. We had a lovely walk along the beach and a chat to the ranger at the campsite who gave us a few ideas on what to do today and where to camp tonight.

We set off at about 12 o'clock and headed north to Indian Heads. Indian Heads is a rock formation and one of the only places on the island that isn't made of sand! The sea surrounding Fraser Islands is a breeding ground for tiger sharks (swimming is strictly banned) and we were delighted to see lots of sharks, turtles, whales, dolphins and even a manta ray from the top of Indian Heads. The views back down the coast line were really beautiful too.

After a picnic lunch on Indian Heads we all walked up to the Champagne Pools. It was only about a 40 minute walk but we were so hot by the time we got there I ran straight into the water. The Champagne Pools are formed by a volcanic rock barrier which shields the beach from the sea. As the waves from the sea come in they poor down over the rock pools and fizz like champagne - really cool and the only chance to swim in seawater without been eaten by a shark!!

That night we camped at Cornwells beach (more bbq) and even had a visit from a dingo. We didn't actually see him (some of the others did) but as we were trying to get to sleep we could hear him sniffing round our tent and we even saw some of his tracks right beside us the next morning!

Fraser Island - Day 1

2006-09-25T18:53:00.000-07:00

We all met at 5.45am (so early!) and had to spend the next few hours at another briefing (more info on what not to do in the 4 wheel drive), getting instruction on how to drive the van and finally packing up all our tents, equipment, food, drink and belongings for the next three days. By the time all 11 of us were in the van it was fairly crowded.

I was the first to drive and was glad I'd had the experience of driving our own van for the past 4 weeks 'cause this was another beast to drive! We got to the ferry on time and once we reversed off on the other side we put the van into 4wd and headed to Lake McKenzie.

It was so much fun to drive on the inland tracks although we had to go so slow because some of the pot holes in the sand could only be described as craters. At one point, just before we reached Lake McKenzie I went over a crest and the van was at such a bad angle I couldn't even see the ground in front of me - great craic! Not so much fun for those sitting at the very back of the van. Every time we went over a big bump (every 2 minutes) things were falling from the overhead storage on top of them and they were being bumped right off their seats.

Lake McKenzie was really really stunning. Soft, white sandy beach and crystal clear warm water. I think everyone was blown away by how beautiful it was it looked like a beach from a desert island. We spent a few hours there, enjoying the sunshine and swimming in the lake.

From Lake McKenzie, Ina drove us to the beach and we headed north to Eli Creek & the Maheno ship wreck. At Eli Creek it was back into the water to walk up the creek and then float back down on the current - very cool. The Maheno shipwreck was also very cool, it was washed up onto the beach in 1935. We spent some time here exploring the wreck then headed off to find somewhere to camp for the night.

As you can imagine with 11 people in the van, 11 different opinions on where to camp I don't know how Chris (who was driving) didn't freak out with everyone telling him where to go! Eventually we decided on a spot and drove the van up into the dunes. At this stage it was beginning to get dark so we set up the tents as quickly as possible and the guys started cooking (men love to BBQ!). Unfortunately the ranger appeared just as we were getting settled in and told us that we were camping in a no-camping zone and we had to move! Apparantly we were camping in a spot where turtles lay their eggs and we'd possibly driven over hundreds of eggs - woops!

By now it was dark so we took down the tents and started packing everything up. I volunteered to drive the gear (along the soft sand, in the dark - eeek) to the nearest camping area. It was actually great fun as everyone rushed around to get us moved before the tide came in any further.
After a huge bbq dinner (I'm going to turn into a piece of meat we're eating so much of it) the fun started. The Germans showed us a new drinking game called slaps and Chris seemed to lose everytime which gave us all something to laugh at!

Hervey Bay

2006-09-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

We got to Hervey Bay at about lunchtime and spent the day beside the beach. Mariella & Martina (the dutch girls we met on the Whitsundays) came down to the campsite later that evening and we ended up going out with them for the night.

The next day we booked our Fraser Island trip. We're going with some of the gang from the Whitsundays (Chris, Karen, Owen & Sarah) so should be great fun. That afternoon we had our briefing for the trip & met the rest of our group. Another English couple, Ellen & Graham, a german couple, Ina & Kevin and a Korean girl, na So Jin.

Fraser Island is a huge sand island off the coast of Hervey Bay. To get around you need a 4 wheel drive vehicle as all the roads are just soft sand going through forests. You can also drive on the beach in the harder sand but have to be careful not to drive into creeks coming down from the forests to the sea or not to get stuck in the soft sand on the beach while the tide is on the way in!

The briefing covered all the basics of what to do and what not to do then we had to go shopping to buy food for us all for three days and after that we all wanted an early night as we've to be up at 5am tomorrow.

Bundaberg

2006-09-22T18:32:00.000-07:00

From Agnes Waters it was a short drive to Bundaberg which is home to Bundy rum. The town is surrounded by sugar plantations (there's tonnes of them in Nth Queensland) but we reckon these ones are all here to make the rum - that's a lot of rum! There are also thousands of fruit bats around here. They're these huge bats which are everywhere in Queensland but at dusk in Bundaberg we must have seen at least a thousand fly overhead towards the sugar plantations. Very Alfred Hitchcock.... The Bats!

Bundaberg is not the most exciting town in the world but as we just wanted to spend a day chilling out it was perfect for us. After a walk around the town it was back to the van. Ciarán played the guitar while I lazed about in the sun then made a huge BBQ, we were so stuffed!

Agnes Waters & The Town of 1770

2006-09-21T18:18:00.000-07:00

We left Gladstone and headed to Agnes Waters & 1770 (strange name for a town, but 1770 was the year Captain Cook first landed here).

Agnes Waters is the first surf beach on the east coast so as soon as we got there we got the boogie boards out of the van and ran straight into the sea. The waves were fairly small but it was great to be back on the boards again.

That night we just chilled out with a beer and watched the sunset..

Cape Hillsborough National Park

2006-09-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

We all took a walk up Finch Hatton Gorge to the Araluen Falls. Had lunch as the Goanas eyed us up and a Kookaburra swooped down, took Owens lunch out of his hands and then flew off!

We left the guys in Mackay, said goodbye, but hopefully we'll see them again soon. We drove to Cape Hillsborough National Park which is a great spot to see the Kangaroos on the beach at sunrise. Had an early night as we have to get up at 5am!

We got up in time for sunrise the next day and went straight to the beach but couldn't find a kangaroo anywhere. Headed back to the campsite a bit disappointed and there they all were hopping around the campsite! We even got to stroke one which had been hand-reared by someone at the campsite.

Seeing as we were up early we decided to get a good bit of distance covered, and just had a long day driving in the van to
Gladstone.

Eungella National Park

2006-09-18T19:16:00.000-07:00

We went to Eungella National Park today with Chris & Karen and Sarah & Owen from the boat. Eungella is one of the best places to see Platypuses in their natural environment. We waited at the viewing platform and were lucky enough to see one appear after about 30 minutes. They're much smaller than we expected and so cute swimming under the water and then popping up to make sure we were still there.

After that we set up camp, had a gorgeous barbeque and sat around the campfire chatting for the night. Great day.

Airlie Beach

2006-09-17T19:12:00.000-07:00

After coming off the boat trip with no showers for 3 days it was funny to see everyone spruced up for a night out in Airlie.

We stayed an extra night and after a lazy day had a chilled evening at the campervans with Sarah & Owen, Chris & Karen and our favourite dutchies Martina & Mariella. I even got to watch a Liverpool match - the first one in months. Even though the result was bad its all looking good as it seems the Aussies are more into football than the Kiwis!

The Whitsundays

2006-09-16T19:03:00.000-07:00

We've spent the last 3 days on board the pro-maxi sailing yacht The Matador which at nearly 25m is the largest sailing boat in The Whitsundays. There were 28 people and 4 crew on board and everyone got on really well.

The weather on the first couple of days was quite windy and rainy which wasn't ideal for sun bathing but it was ideal for sailing. I've never been on a sailing boat before but it was great fun. Myself and Chris were manning the coffee grinders to control the jib/jive most of the first day. It was hard work but we really felt like we were part of the crew helping to sail the boat - it was great! Everyone else was a bit cold that day, sitting with their legs dangling over the side of the boat in true sailing style with the spray and rain splashing up on them.
The second day the weather took a turn for the worse (which always seems to happen when Elaine gets on a boat!) with severe weather warnings being issued. It made it much more dramatic when we had to change the direction of the boat because when the wind caught the sail from the other side the high side of the boat suddenly became the lowside and we found ourselves clinging on with our fingertips as the water lapped up onto the rails, with our heads far too close for comfort to the water. For anyone that knows anything about sailing (which we don't) apparently this happens all of the time, for us it was terrifying!! Once we changed direction though we really started to pick up some speed and were going 18 knots - our skipper Pete said it was the fastest the boat had gone in 7 years!
Thankfully on the third day the sun came out, the wind died off and everyone was happy.

The snorkelling at The Whitsundays was excellent with loads of coral and multi-coloured fish everywhere. The deckhand Greg, brought us out in a dinghy to feed the fish and we even got to see a Mauri Rasp (called Elvis) which was huge and bright blue with huge bug lips that came out of the water to gobble up the bread. We were glad we were in the boat when we saw it!

On days 2 & 3 we were lucky enough so see humpback whales breaching in front of us. It was amazing to see the mother teaching the calf how to breach and even from a distance the splash from their tails was huge.

On the first night we moored at Whitehaven beach which is reputed to be one of the most beautiful beaches in Australia. It really lived up to its name with the most beautiful powdery white sand and warm waters surrounded by rainforest - it was picture perfect. We even saw a couple fly in by helicopter to say their wedding vows on the beach.

At night the sails were taken down to provide shelter on deck and Club Matador kicked off! Good times were had by all...

Bowling Green National Park

2006-09-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

We spent last night in Townsville but there was nothing happening there so we left early this morning and went to Bowling Green Bay National Park which is en route to Airlie Beach, our next destination. We had brekkie and a walk at the national park and saw soem more wildlife before we headed on to Airlie Beach where we booked a sailing trip on the Whitsundays. The weather has been very winday today, so fingers crossed it will brighten up!

Magnetic Island

2006-09-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

We took the ferry to Magnetic Island today. Its a smallish island about 20 minutes ferry from Townsville. There's loads of wildlife there, we stayed at Bungalow Bay backpackers in Horseshoe Bay. After a swim in the sea we had a tour of the wildlife sanctuary attached to the hostel. We both had the opportunity to hold a baby crocodile, lizards, snakes and best of all to cuddle a Koala! They were so cute and sleepy and I'd love one as a pet! The smell of eucalyptus from them is a bit much though!

The ranger took us on a walk through the rainforest and we saw a Golden Orb spider (quite deadly and can jump up to a metre!) and hundreds of butterflies that stay in there to avoid becoming lunch for the birds! He also pointed out Curlews to us which were so well camouflaged that we wouldn't have spotted them otherwise.

Watched the sunset on the beach at Horshoe Bay and that night I saw my first Possum after searching for them for nearly a year in NZ! There were tons of them at the hostel and they were in and out of the bar area all night and not a bit shy.

Atherton Tablelands

2006-09-10T18:52:00.000-07:00

Today we got off the beaten track a little and travelled all around the Atherton Tableland area. It was quite strange getting there because we spent about 30 mins driving up a mountain and then when we got up there the land completely plateaued off - guess thats why they call it a Tableland.

We took the waterfall circuit and saw some nice waterfalls with strange names like Milla Milla Falls, Zillie Falls (where the Timotei ad was filmed) and Ellinjaa falls. We then stopped in the middle of nowhere at a dairy and had the best scones and coffee ever!

We took a a detour around Mission Beach where we had intended to stay because the beach was really recommended in the Lonely Planet, but we didn't think much of it so we drove on to Ingham.

We spent the night in a campsite in Ingham which unfortunately was located between a traintrack and a highway which made for
a fairly noisy night, but I did get to see Wallabies for the first time; about 30 of them beside the campsite!

1 year away from home!

2006-09-08T17:24:00.000-07:00

We're away from home 1 year today. We can't believe how fast the time has gone but when we look back we've had the most amazing time - the best year of our lives....so far!

We're in Cape Tribulation which is a couple of hours north of Cairns in the middle of a tropical rainforest and beside white sandy beaches.

This morning we took a river cruise on The Daintree going in search of crocodiles. We saw about 8 crocs including the dominant male of the region which is about 5 metres long and also a baby one that would fit in your hand - so cute!

There are Cassowary birds in this region which are about the size of an emu but look more like something out of Jurassic Park with a helmet/horn on their head. They're quite rare and have been known to kill people that have approached them with a claw straight through the heart - not a great way to go! Unfortunately, after looking all day we couldn't find any at all; maybe thats a good thing.
We had a really good night out to celebrate 1 year away with our Israeli neighbours (Dorit & Nimrod!) from the campsite, who we got talking to after Nimrod spotted a Bandicoot beside our van!

Mossman & Wonga

2006-09-07T22:02:00.000-07:00

We stayed the night in a campsite in Port Douglas and got up early the next day and headed straight for 4 mile beach. Once we get over the beastly gears the van actually seems to be working out pretty well with plenty of space for a bed/converted living room and a tiny kitchen area.

4 mile beach is pretty nice but the main thing I can't get over is the temperature of the water! Its like stepping into a warm bath and I just love it!

We left Port Douglas and headed north to Mossman Gorge for a picnic lunch followed by a walk through the rainforest. The heat & humidity in the forest is incredible so we finished off our walk with a dip in rock pools in the gorge - so cooling it was fantastic. We were also lucky enough to see several Ulysees Butterflies which are huge and iridescent blue. I never thought a butterfly could look so pretty.

From Mossman we headed up the road to Pinnacle Village campsite at Wonga beach. Its a really nice campsite with a lovely pool. By the time we arrived there we were so hot again that we just jumped straight in.

We just spent the day today wandering down to the beach, lazing around the pool and sunning ourselves through our 5 layers of factor 30 suncream! 30° again today and we're only 1 week into Spring - what have we got ourselves in for?!

Wicked Beast...

2006-09-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

Today we picked up our Wicked Camper which will be our home for the next six weeks. Well, I suppose you get what you pay for and we paid as little as possible still we're quite impressed with the size of our van (basically a converted hi-ace). The thing drives like a tractor though and the gears are impossible so we've already named it 'The Beast'...
Hopefully The Beast will start behaving itself or else it's going to be a long 6 weeks!

Today's also a bit of a funny day here in Oz. Steve Irwin the crocodile hunter has been killed and the country's in shock. The TV & Newspapers are full of tributes and even though he completely wrecked my head I can't help but feel really sad that he's gone. He was killed by a stingray off the coast of Port Douglas which just happens to be where we're going to today!!

Great Barrier Reef

2006-09-04T21:49:00.000-07:00

Well you can't come to tropical north Queensland and not go to the Great Barrier Reef.

We booked a trip on Ocean Freedom and spent a beautiful day snorkelling over the coral watching hundreds of brightly coloured fish darting everywhere. The coral itself was unbelievably colourful and you could really tell it was alive as it swayed under the water.

The first stop of the day for snorkelling was at Upolo Cay which is a tiny little sand island in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by the turquoise waters of the reef. We even managed to find Nemo in amongst the colourful coral, it was like something out of a movie...
Then there was lunch on the boat while they sailed to another part of the reef where we had another couple of hours to snorkle.

One of the crew brought us on a snorkling tour around different areas which he knew had some really good coral and we were lucky enough to see a turtle swimming by and popping up for air and even spotted some Giant Clams about the size of an armchair.

On the return journey the crew really spoiled us with trays of tropical fruit, cheese & crackers etc - I felt like a rockstar!!
The Great Barrier Reef is just paradise and a magical place and is definitely one of our fave things so far....

We're off to see the wizard....

2006-09-03T21:35:00.000-07:00

After quite a long day travelling from Christchurch (14 hours) we arrived in Cairns (North East, Oz) and were greeted by bright blue skies and scorching hot weather.

We checked into Global Palace hostel which is right in the centre of the town and spent a few days just hanging around Cairns, down by the lagoon which is really great. The weather is about 30°c every day and most days blue skies but it completely lashed one of the days and was fairly overcast another.

Nights kicked off with a free dinner in PJ O'Briens pub which was a great spot to watch the GAA hurling final the other night then on to Gilligans or the Woolshed.

We wanted to buy a van to travel down to Sydney in but there's absoloutely nothing for sale so we've decided to hire a Wicked Camper - cheapest option and they look cool!

Ka Kite New Zealand

2006-08-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

Well the day has finally arrived to leave New Zealand.

Things we've loved about New Zealand - absolutely everything!

Things we think are crazy in New Zealand

People walking barefoot in the middle of winter
People walking barefoot right in the centre of cities!
1 lane bridges, everywhere - I mean seriously, would it cost that much extra to build another lane?!
Girls doing their grocery shopping in their bikini (I personally didn't mind this one too much)
Pacificas wearing t-shirts in a ball on their head topped off with a baseball cap balanced precariously on top (and of course 1 leg of their trousers rolled up to their knee - stylish)!
Signs on the road that point to a 'Historic Place/Bridge/Whatever' - no other details given

We've absolutely loved New Zealand and can hardly believe we're leaving, so to you New Zealand we say 'Ka Kite, Goodnight'

Christchurch & snowboarding

2006-08-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

After Kaikoura it was time to head back to Christchurch to sell the car so that we can go to Australia. We thought it might take us weeks to sell but on the second day we got lucky and a guy put a deposit down. Ciaran headed off to Methven for a few days snowboarding in Mt Hutt and I hung around to finalise the sale i.e. get the money!

With the money in the bank it was time for me to hit the shops - yahoo! and book our flights to Oz - yahoo yahoo!!
So with flights booked for Wednesday morning - flying into Cairns and new summer clothes to wear when I get there I'm now back down in Methven waiting for Ciaran to finish snowboarding. Then tomorrow it's back to Christchurch (gonna treat ourselves to a nice hotel) then up at 4am on Wednesday to catch our flight - can't wait!

Swimming with Dolphins - Kaikoura

2006-08-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

We spent a few days chilling out in Kaikoura. Stayed in a lovely hostel (Dusky) with a swimming pool, sauna, spa pools and even a thai restaurant - that's my kinda hostel! We also met up with Ciaran's friend Dave which was really great but the big highlight of Kaikoura was definitely swimming with about 300 dolphins - wow!

We booked a trip with Dolphin Encounter and set off in the boat in search of dolphins. For some reason (which I can't remember) they normally get huge pods of dolphins in this area. We were on the afternoon trip but that morning they had had a pod of 300 and in summer they often have up to 1000! I couldn't wait to see them!

A spotter plane went ahead to look for them and after about 1 1/2 hours (too long for some people getting sick over the side!) we reached them.

It was the coolest thing ever to see them jumping through the air, doing crazy acrobatics. There were so many of them I didn't know where to look first. The boat stopped in the centre of the pod and it was time for the first group of swimmers (two groups of 13) to go in. We were in the second group so had to wait for them to get out - felt like forever!

When it was our turn we slid off the back of the boat and looked straight down into the water (we had wetsuits and snorkling gear). Under the water there were hundreds of dolphins darting around. The guide told us to make screechy high pitched noises and swim in circles as this makes them curious and want to play. Looking down in the sea and seeing ten dolphins trying to play with you, circling around you was just amazing. Then you look up and all around you they're jumping and diving - WOW! They are the cutest things ever and a major highlight of the trip - wish I could do it everyday! Click here for a tiny video of them... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GYUEG7bXqQ

Nelson

2006-08-18T18:10:00.000-07:00

Before we set off for Nelson we headed to Little Kaiteriteri beach near Motueka. This has to be one of the most beautiful beaches we've seen. It was more like something from Fiji then New Zealand. Then it was back in the car and off to Nelson.

Nelson was quite a bit bigger than we expected to be but really just another town like any other although we did have a great night out!

Abel Tasman National Park

2006-08-16T17:50:00.000-07:00

Leaving Greymouth we headed north to a small town called Motueka. This is the gateway to Abel Tasman National Park. Strangely enough winter didn't seem to have come to Motueka, the weather was fantastic and the hostel had a lovely hot tub in the garden so it was all good!

I've wanted to go to Abel Tasman for years so we were up bright and early next day for a walk through the park although even after 6 hours walking we'd only seen a tiny piece of it. It's huge at over 22,000ha.

The next morning we took a guided sea kayaking trip around the park. It was fantastic. We had 5 hours to kayak from Marahou to Bark Bay taking in some of the most beautiful golden sand beaches and aquamarine lagoons along the way.

We kayaked around Pinnacle island which is home to a seal colony and even saw a little blue penguin swimming in the water in front of us - very cool! The water was crystal clear and the most amazing colour. Apart from our guide (who served up a fab lunch on Te Pukatere beach) we didn't see another person all day - felt like our own little piece of paradise.

That night we sat in the hot-tub, under the stars, drink in hand - life is great!

Greymouth

2006-08-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

Next stop was Greymouth a smallish town on the west coast. Not a lot going on there but a really great hostel (Global Village) and another trip to a brewery!
This time it was Monteiths and the tour was fairly bad but for some reason we got away without paying so didn't feel ripped off like everyone else! After the tour everyone headed to the local for a good night out and an all you can eat sausage sizzle - Ciaran was in heaven!

Franz Josef Glacier

2006-08-11T22:45:00.000-07:00

Leaving Wanaka we drove through Mt Aspiring National Park and over the Haast Pass. Every single corner we turned we saw something breathtaking. The scenery down here is amazing. It feels like we're just driving through postcards, everywhere is so perfectly beautiful from the ice blue colour of the lakes to the golden trees and snowy peaks and waterfalls everywhere - this place is stunning. We had to stop about a thousand times just to get out and look at places like Thunder Creek Falls & the Blue Lakes.

We arrived into Franz Josef and booked into the YHA which felt more like a hotel than a hostel with a fab en suite room and a complimentary sauna (a lot of the hostels have either spa pools or sauna's here). The next day we drove to Fox Glacier and Lake Matheson which is famous for being the most reflective lake with Mt Tasman & Mt Cook in the background. It was a really lovely walk around the lake even though the ducks did disturb the reflections slightly!

The next day was the main event - a hike up Franz Josef Glacier. This is possibly the best thing we've done or seen since we left home. It was absoloutely amazing to climb up the glacier with our Talonz strapped to our hiking boots (although quite tough too!) and to explore the ice caves, crevases and ice walls with our guide hacking out new ice steps with his pick the whole way. It completely blew us away to see the size of the glacier, the bit that you can see in the photos is only about 5% of it, it stretches back about 11 km's and in places is 1/2km deep. The guide told us that it moves about 5 metres every fortnight and can get up to 140metres of snow on it every year, one day last February it moved 7 metres. It's sitting right on a fault line and they reckon that a quake is long overdue - wouldn't fancy being on it if that happens...

Words or photo's can't describe it, it was an experience of a lifetime.

Wanaka

2006-08-09T22:27:00.000-07:00

The drive from Queenstown was beautiful. We just spent 1 night in Wanaka, the afternoon in Puzzle World and the night in Cinema Paradiso.

Puzzle World is a really cool place with a big outdoor maze and different rooms with optical illusions - great craic.

That night we watched Superman Returns in Cinema Paradiso - the coolest cinema in the world. There were no regular seats, just big sofas, armchairs, lazy boys and even an old car!
I've never been so comfy watching a film! They even had an intermission and we had some home made cookies and delicious ice cream.

The Lake at Wanaka and the surrounding area was really stunning. A really gorgeous little area right on the edge of Mt Aspiring National Park.

Queenstown

2006-08-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

After all the nature and sightseeing in Milford, it was time to head to Queenstown for some fun and nightlife. Anyone thats ever been to NZ knows that Queenstown in party central and it didn't disappoint!

I spent a few days snowboarding in Coronet Peak and at the Remarkables but it was cut a little short when I did a 'face plant' and I'm now nursing some badly bruised ribs! I think I may have over estimated my ability and taken to the jumps a little too soon! Maybe I had got carried away because we'd seen a Rail Jam (people getting TRICKY! on hand rails!) on one of the main streets the night before. Elaine took the easier option and spent a few days shopping, coffee and just chilling out.

We met up with loads of people in our hostel (Southern Laughter) and had loads of great nights out in The World Bar, Winnies, Frasers, Buffalo Bar and Red Rock to name just a few! It was usually topped off with a Fergburger (the nicest burgers in the whole world!) on the way home at about 5am...

We took a trip to Arrowtown which wasn't very exciting unless you're interested in Chinese gold miners (which we're not...).

We also spent a day at Deer Park which was just brilliant. Its basically a wildlife park and we got a bucket full of feed and spent the day with llamas, alpacas, bison, deer, miniature horses, pigs and goats all feeding from our hands. At one stage we practically had to beat a llama out of our car his head was stuck so far in the window! The miniature horses were my favourite - fully grown horses only the size of a big dog - how cool!

The scenery from up there was just amazing with 360° views of Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables (the aptly named mountains). Its no surprise to learn that Deer Park was the location for a lot of the scenes from The Lord Of The Rings. We had a really nice picnic beside a mirror lake reflecting the Remarkables. It was a perfect New Zealand day with bright blue skies and we were surrounded by snow capped mountains...

We took a gondola ride up the mountain in Queenstown and watched the sunset and the lights of the city coming on. While we were up there we tried out the luge, which is basically a tobaggan that goes on concrete down the mountain side a break-neck speed - absolutely brilliant fun!
We just loved Queenstown; it was absolutely amazing. I've got a feeling we'll be back there in a few weeks...

Milford Sound

2006-07-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

We took the remainder of the Southern Scenic highway to Te Anau which is in Fiordland at the South West of the Country. Fiordland is a really amazing area with the majority of it being designated World Heritage Area as is pretty much the whole of the South West of New Zealand. Te Anau is the gateway to Milford Sounds which is said to have the most spectacular scenery in New Zealand.

We took a tour to Milford with Trips n Tramps as we'd met quite a few people with horror stories about crashing on the road from Te Anau to Milford. It's about 140km's long and winds it's way through the Southern Alps passing a lot of avalanche areas so we thought we'd let someone else worry about the driving...

We were really glad to have taken the tour as the guide pointed out all the really stunning things along the way such as the Chasm, Mirror Lakes, Knobs Flat(!), Deer Flat etc. with plenty of opportunity to get out for walks and photographs. We passed the remnants of an avalanche that had occured last week. The road was cleared by now but the snow on either side of the road was 5 metres deep.

When we reached Milford we had a 3 hour boat trip on the Fiordland Navigator out into the sound but by the time we arrived the weather had taken a turn for the worse and it was quite grey and rainy. This just added to the effect though as hundreds of waterfalls began cascading down the mountains. It was really something else to see all these waterfalls because in Milford only 3 waterfalls are permanent and the rest just start flowing when it rains. Unfortunately our 3 hour boat trip had to be cut short when the weather started to get rough as we got closer to the open sea and we had to turn round and go back to port. This didn't really take away from the experience though as Milford was so spectacular that even to have had 2 hours there was amazing. Definitely one of our favourite places so far.

Next stop Antarctica...

2006-07-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

Next stop was Invercargill and Bluff which is the most southerly point in New Zealand.
We'd made it all the way from Cape Reinga in the north to Bluff in the south and really there's not a lot else to say about Bluff - it's cold, grey and kinda boring but still looking out at the sea it's hard to imagine that the next piece of land is Antarctica!

Catlins

2006-07-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

We left Dunedin and took a drive out to the Otago Peninsula which was really beautiful and had it's very own Dublin Bay!

Then it was on further south through the Catlins which is a really beautiful area with lots of forests and waterfalls. The highlight of the Catlins though was the petrified forest at Curio Bay. A petrified forest is a forest which has been fossilised and we could see trees and stumps which were 160million years old! lying in the water at the edge of the sea - very impressive.

We happened to be there around dusk and luckily for us we saw some rare yellow eye penguins coming home to nest for the night - fairly amazing to see them waddling and hopping over the rocks to feed their young.

Dunedin

2006-07-26T21:36:00.000-07:00

We left Oamaru and went further south to Dunedin which is a fairly big city with a lot of Scottish heritage.
The first night we went to the Speights brewery tour. It was a really good laugh and the guy giving the tour was like a Scottish Willy Wonka & very funny - the fact that we were in a brewery may have added to our merriment! Although some of his jokes were particularly funny especially at the expense of the poor Japanese tourists who obviously couldn't understand his accent - he'd say 'don't touch that barrel' and they'd all make a dash for it... when he mentioned not wanting to catch bird flu from them we nearly fell off our bar stools. The tour ended like all good tours should end, with an open bar and us pouring our own beer - we could get to like Dunedin....

Next day we just had a look around the city, there's some really nice buildings but lets face it nothing could top the brewery tour....

Oamaru

2006-07-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

We left Oamarama, driving through Otamatata to Oamaru - seriously, how is anyone ever meant to remember where they're going when everywhere sounds the same!

Anyway, got to Oamaru and found the most gorgeous hostel ever. About 5km's outside the town, in the middle of farmland and looking out at the pacific ocean - not bad. It's called Old Bones, if you're ever in Oamaru you have to stay there and they have the best hostel dogs - Humphrey, a pure bred mastif who's about 4ft tall and Bonnie, a real cute old dog.

We stayed there for 4 nights, the only people in the hostel apart from the manager and it was fantastic to just chill out - we've been so stressed lately - hahaha!

While we were there we went to the penguin colony just outside town. Saw little blue penguins coming home at dusk, they're the cutest thing in the world - when fully grown they're less than the length of a ruler.
A local woman also took us and Sonya the hostel manager and the dogs, out for a drive showing us all the hidden treasures of the area, including elephant rocks where some of The Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe/Narnia was filmed.

It was such a great place I could've stayed there forever!

Aoraki Mount Cook

2006-07-21T21:02:00.000-07:00

We left Tekapo and headed up the road to Mt Cook - the highest mountain in NZ (3500m). The scenery along the way was breathtaking particularly because of the dusting of snow.. The water of Lake Pukaki was the most brilliant blue we've ever seen, offset by the snowy mountains behind it looked amazing.

After a coffee in the Heritage hotel at Mt Cook we went back out into the snow to really take a look - it's a fantastic sight towering into the sky. The Maori's call it cloud piercer - think they could be onto something with that!

One snowball fight later it was back to the car for the drive to Oamarama where we spent the night at Buscot Station, a backpackers on a 900 acre sheep farm. It was so warm and cosy and just lovely to sit in front of the open fire and chat with the owner Tony.

A very Irish conversation...

2006-07-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

There happened to be loads of other Irish in the hostel in Tekapo at the same time as us. Naturally we all sat together, having a chat about this and that. Generally complaining about the food you can't get here in NZ and how kiwi's wouldn't know a decent rasher if it came up and slapped them in the face.
Then the topic of conversation turned to the most serious subject of all - Teabags! Well all Irish abroad would agree that you can't get a decent teabag outside Ireland but the way these guys were debating the merits of Barry's v's Lyons you'd swear it was a matter of life and death. Then of course we got on to the usual 'kiwi's wouldn't know a good teabag if it hit them in the face' which launched us into which was the best kiwi teabag... The best comment of the night had to go to the girl from Dundalk who came out with "these bloody teabags, you have to beat the tea out of them'. Mightn't sound funny to you but after ten months without a cup of Lyons it was nearly enough to reduce us to tears (of laughter!) - doesn't take much to keep us entertained, does it!

Winter Wonderland

2006-07-20T20:52:00.000-07:00

We left Fairlie and headed in the direction of Mt Cook but along the way we ran into a snowstorm and ended up snowed into Tekapo for the night. We were actually quite lucky we didn't have an accident because as we went over Burkes Pass the car in front of us slid off the road down the ditch and into a stream. He actually crashed straight into another car which had just had exactly the same accident and was sitting in the stream waiting to be towed out. By now we were quite nervous as the snow was coming down so heavy but as we were only going 10kmph we made it to Tekapo ok.

There was no way we were going to go on towards Mt Cook and shortly after they closed the roads in and out of the town. We're glad that they did because waking up in Tekapo the next day was amazing with everything covered in a fresh layer of snow. The place looked beautiful and we spent the day messing about in the snow and walking by the lake. Saying that though we wouldn't mind some of the sunshine you's are having at home either!

Hitting the slopes

2006-07-18T20:39:00.000-07:00

We left Akaroa and headed towards Methven where we intended to spend a few days skiing at Mt Hutt. When we got there we didn't like it - no reason why, just didn't like the place so the next morning we headed towards Fairlie to ski at Mt Dobson.

One night at Fairlie holiday park quickly turned to three as it was such a nice place. Mt Dobson ski field was about 30 km's away (about 15 of which were directly up the side of the mountain). It was scary to drive up there the first day (and terrifying to be a passenger!). We had to stop about half way up for Ciaran to put the snow chains on the car (there was no way I was lying down in the mud!) once the chains we're on we really started heading into the ice and with a drop straight down off the side of the cliff I thought we'd never get to the top. I was exhausted and we hadn't even got our ski's on yet!

I spent two days getting skiing lessons and practicing on a slope that was about as steep as the driveway but by the second afternoon I came down the big learners slope which was actually quite steep (I fell about a hundred times on the way down and am covered in bruises) so I felt great. Ciaran had a snowboarding lesson and went straight to the big learner slope (I was so jealous!) still he fell over a million times himself although now he think's he's a pro-boarder - hahaha!

Going to Queenstown in a few weeks so will do it all again there.

Bastille Day in Akaroa

2006-07-14T20:28:00.000-07:00

There's a town about an hours drive from Christchurch called Akaroa which is supposed to be the 'French' town of New Zealand because the French landed here and tried to claim NZ as it's own about 150 years ago but the Brits fought them off. Seeing as it was Bastille day we decided there'd be no better place in NZ to be so we headed there to check out the celebrations.

Unfortunately, the celebrations turned out to be a couple of balloons outside the information centre and the guy in the grocer shop with a beret and some onions hanging around his neck - we're presuming this was for Bastille day or maybe this is how he always dresses...

Akaroa was just a sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere and the weather was fairly bad so we got out of there fairly fast the next day. However there were two gorgeous dogs, Boots & Jessy in our hostel that we got to play with all night.

Christchurch

2006-07-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

Well we've made it down to Christchurch pretty fast to be able to see the World Cup final. We plan on going back up to some of the places we skipped through though at some stage.

Christchurch is the biggest city on the South Island with a population of about 350,000. It was mainly built by British and Irish settlers about 150 years ago and you can really tell because all the place names are Cashel this, Tuam that and Oxford the other. Its a really nice city and some parts of it really remind us of home because of the older architecture and gothic style buildings.

We arrived on Sunday and had an early night because we had a 5 am start for the football! Watched the match in the Holy Grail pub and there was a really good crowd there - full of Italian and French. Later that day we met up with Isabell (a friend from Auckland) and went to the Bog Irish pub. We met up with another Irish guy there, Keith, and we entered a pub quiz. We did pretty well and came 2nd winning a $30 bar tab. But then came the bonus round...it was fastest fingers on the buzzer - the buzzer being Siobhans phone number back in Dublin as only Google could answer these questions! We knew Siobhan wouldn't let us down and with the correct answers we went through to the tie breaker - which we won with a spectacular guess from Elaine! I mean, who would have known that largest number of letters in a dinosaurs name is 23?!! Well we won another $300 bar tab with that one and it may as well have been the lotto with the way we celebrated!!

We had to act fast to spend the tab as Isabell was flying to Australia on Thursday so we arranged to meet up the next evening for a slap up dinner (and 1 or 2 drinks...). Luckily for us it was a trad night in the pub and we had a brilliant night. As you can imagine the next day was a bit of a write off....

South Island at last

2006-07-08T21:46:00.000-07:00

After being on the North Island for the last 8 months we've eventually made it to the South.
Unfortunately the weather was really bad on the ferry crossing so we didn't get to see much of the Marlborough Sounds. After overnighting in Picton we headed straight for Hanmer Springs (we've to try to get to Christchurch in time for the World Cup final). The drive to Hanmer took us down the east coast which was really beautiful and through Kaikoura. Just outside the town of Kaikoura we passed a sign warning us that there might be Seals Crossing! How strange but we stopped the car to have a look and there they were - about 50 seal's lying back enjoying the sunshine.

Then we ran into a little adventure. We hadn't quite judged how much petrol was required to get from Kaikoura to Hanmer. Considering there's less then a million people on the Sth Isl there aren't exactly petrol stations everywhere. Left us in quite a predicament really as Hanmer was on the other side of the Southern Alps to Kaikoura - we ended up driving up hill and then turning off the engine to roll down the other side - had to do this for about 30 km's with the empty light on! We were both having a heart attack as all we saw during that 30 km's was snow and sheep!! Not to worry though, it was our lucky day and we made it to Hanmer. What a gorgeous little town (population 550). Great hostel, great pub, great people and the best hot springs we've been to. Sitting in the outdoor hot spas surrounded by snow capped mountains - heaven!

Windy Welly....again

2006-07-01T21:44:00.000-07:00

Well, we're coming into the our last few days on the North Island. We have slightly rushed down here but the World Cup only comes around every 4 years and I think I'm entitled to see England lose ;-)

Its great to be back in Wellington. We were here over Christmas and the place has lost none of its charm. Its just full of cosy cafes, restaurants and bars that you can easily spend a relaxing few days getting over our adrenalin filled ones!

We stayed up to watch the England match (it didn't finish until 6am here!) and I managed to see all the other quarter finals and apart from that we didn't do all that much here except visit the Te Papa museum again. It had a really good Lord of the Rings exhition on which had so many of the original props, waxwork models, dummies and clay models. The details involved in creating some of these things is unreal and very impressive.

Off to the South Island next and hopefully some snowboarding....can't wait!

Snow!!!

2006-06-29T21:27:00.000-07:00

After staying a couple of nights in a lovely hostel in Waitomo (our hostel had a pet pig and a pet goat!) we headed towards Mt Taranaki to see the snow. It was a beautiful drive to get there but to be honest we could've been driving through Wicklow - it was exactly like home!

Eventually we got to Mt Taranaki and saw the snow - woohoo! Couldn't wait to get up there and jump around in it. It was about two foot deep and freezing!

Then it was a quick overnight in Wanganui before setting off again for Wellington.

Haggas Honking Holes

2006-06-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

Anyone that's been to NZ knows that Waitomo is famous for one thing only - caves full of glow worms. Now, glow worms are cute & all but not really that exciting, so we decided that as we were in New Zealand we should make sure that our caving/glow worm trip involved a bit of adrenallin. With this in mind we booked ourselves onto the Haggas Honking Hole, 1/2 day adventure which includes abseilling, caving and rock climbing.

We were picked up from the office and driven through the countryside to a little farm which is owned by Mrs Haggas. At the farm we were kitted up with wetsuits, safety harness's, helmets and head lamps.

After a bit of time getting to grips with our abseiling gear we headed to the caves.
To get into the cave we had to abseil down 27 metres in the pitch black - really scary considering we'd never abseiled before and we couldn't see where we were going - just had to hope that the harness was on correctly! We had two more abseils to do which were down through waterfalls and finally we were 'dropped' on our harnesses down through a particularly narrow vertical cave - a fantastic experience. Our guide did decide to show off at one stage and ran down a 25 metre drop face first - looked pretty cool! Eventually we were about 80 metres under ground with just our headlamps and our guides to lead the way.

We spent a couple of hours squashing through crevesses and wriggling through caves. Some of the caves had rivers running through them and only enough room to put your face to one side to breathe until you got out the other side (where they took this picture!).

Then it was time to see the glow worms - ooohh! and before we knew it we were on our big climb back to the surface. This was quite an adventure as we tried to get footholds in the cave wall and cling on with our fingertips. The highest wall we had to climb was about 20 metres and I really felt I'd achieved something when I got to the top and saw sunlight again.

It was a brilliant experience - I think I could really get to love abseiling, can't wait to try it again.