Siem Reap, Cambodia

There are 15 of us in total, on the group tour, including a couple of Germans, Scandinavians, some Brits and a whole lot of Canadians!

Our tour leader is a lady from Thailand called Fon. Fon, is her nickname. Apparently everyone in Thailand has a nickname and its much easier to say that, than her real name!
 

We spent last night with our group going over our trip. Fon gave us some really useful advice about money and security, but probably the handiest was a tip to avoid mozzie bites...apparently, the best defence is to eat spicey food (it doesn’t have to be too spicey, just as long as it has a bit of chilli in it). Fon also advised that the areas we’d be visiting would carry no risk of malaria, so there was no real need for the malaria tablets, but as we'd started taking ours we thought we’d continue on until the end of the course.
 

We set off for the Thailand border, from our hotel in Bangkok, in two small mini buses.
Getting out of Thailand (through immigration) was so simple. We stopped off at a gas station on the way out of town and sat at few picnic benches to fill out our departure cards and Cambodian visa forms. Then all we needed to do was hand our passports and money to the bus driver and he checked us all out of Thailand, by nipping into the consulate. It was so quick and easy.

When we reached the border, we stopped for some lunch in a small restaurant and had some delicious fried duck with rice and a beer for the equivalent of £1.20 (the choice was only duck or chicken with rice or noodles, but still it was a total bargain!)

Our bags were taken over the border by a hired hand, which we were all really thankful of, given the distance and the baking heat!  

As we walked over the Cambodian border, we were surprised to the find the area saturated with large casinos and bars. It was like a mini Vegas! It's apparently so people from Thailand can visit and gamble without going through the process of applying for a visa, as it’s not technically in Cambodia.

Once over the border, it was a two hour bus journey to Siem Reap. We had our own private coach, which was pretty comfy. All was going well until we pulled into a small village about an hour in and the driver popped the lid to the bus and announced that the bus had broken down.

Nevermind though, 20 minutes later, we were up and running again. Fon mentioned that most bus drivers are also semi trained mechanics too. They have to be apparently, as most of the buses they drive are pretty old – apparently the buses in Cambodia are old buses from Korea.

Our hotel was lovely and the staff served some very much needed cold drinks and cold towels upon our arrival. The one quirk about our hotel was that they turn the electricity connection off, when the bedrooms are empty, so you had to remember to ask at reception for your electricity to be turned back on, when you came in at the end of the day.

We spent our first night in Siem Reap at a charity called New Hope. A charity set up by a local Khmer and an Australian to provide free education for children in the slums area of Siem Reap, as well as a free hospital. The tour provider we are using for this trip, G Adventures, is a major sponsor of this charity, mainly paying for a training restaurant to be set up next to the school to train students interested in hospitality work.

New Hope was a really amazing and inspiring place. We arrived just before 5pm (by Tuk Tuk from our hotel) so were allowed to sit in on one of the English classes. The children were lovely and so friendly. Each class was based on skill level, rather than age, so the classes really varied in age from 7 years old to 22 years old. 

 

We then headed over to the training restaurant for a a delicious Cambodian dinner of spring rolls, mango salad, vegetable curry and duck...oh, and we had crickets with dry roasted nuts as nibbles! Fon mentioned the night before that meat is really expensive for locals in the poorer areas, so to get protein people usually go to nearby fields and catch crickets and snakes. Thankfully, the snake wasn't biting that day, so we only had the crickets.

The next day we got up at 5am, and headed over, with the rest of the group to watch the sun rise over Angkor Watt temple. Fon suggested it was the best time to go, as it was fairly quiet and it was a good way to get some pictures of the temple before the Chinese tourists roll up with their tripods!. It was a pretty amazing sight, such a beautiful place.
 

We spent the rest of the afternoon, exploring Angkor Watt, the Ta Prohm, (the temple used in the Tomb Raider movies) and the jungle temple.
 

Just before sun down we took a boat trip around the floating village - a village of houses and boats, built on top of bamboo sticks. The bamboo helps the houses to rise in the floodwaters during the raining season. The village even had a floating restaurant, school and basketball court!
 

In the evening, we went out with the rest of the group and to a local Cambodian restaurant for some yummy Cambodian curry and traditional Cambodian dancing.

After dinner, we headed along to the night market for a bit of shopping (we successfully haggled after picking up some handy tips from Fon) before heading out for a quick drink on Pub Street.

Next stop – Phnom Penh, this time on a local bus...only a six hour journey though!

Phuket

Phuket has to be our favourite spot in Thailand so far. We loved everything about it – the hotel, the beaches and the people. We stayed on the island for two days and had an absolute blast.

Our bus journey to Phuket was great. It was meant to take around 7 – 8 hours, but in the end we arrived in Phuket a couple of hours early (a bonus from booking on the VIP bus). Again the bus tickets were an absolute bargain at around £8 each.
When we arrived in the centre of town, at the station, we decided to take a taxi to our hotel as it was about 16 km away and we didn’t really want to get on another bus. As soon as the bus pulled up to the station, the taxi touts began to circle! Somehow, we’ve developed a knack for selecting the nice, genuine taxi drivers, which comes in handy! In the end, there was no haggling involved as the station had a board displaying the prices for each of the main areas on the island, which is great for tourists. In the end it only cost us £10 to our hotel.
 

Our hotel was based in the Karon beach area of the island. We read up on the different areas beforehand and Karon was meant to be a quieter, less manic part of town (especially in comparison to Patong, the party beach).
We stayed in the Bamboo House Hotel and it really lived up to its name (there was bamboo everywhere, even the furniture was made out of bamboo, it was very funky). It was a fantastic hotel. Not only were we greeted with complimentary drinks on arrival, we also had an Apple Mac in our room and fantastic views on the city. The hotel also provided a beach bag with beach towels, each day. It was fantastic.

We dined each night in the hotel restaurant as it served great food (the restaurant had lots of bamboo everywhere too and coconut lampshades). It was the most varied menu we’d seen so far, of Thai and Western food. We made full use of our time here and sampled lots of the fresh seafood and traditional Thai stir fries. The food was really great value for money – you could have beautifully cooked lobster for £8.

We spent our first day in Phuket lazing on Karon beach - a beautiful, long beach, lined with deck chairs, parasols and a few beach hut bars. We paid £4 to hire a couple of deckchairs for the day and had a really lovely chap bringing us bottles of beer every now again. It was great.

It was so warm on the beach, we were thankful for the shade from the parsole. It was so hot in fact, that even the small sparrow like birds were walking around with their beaks open!
In the afternoon we hired a jet ski and had a fun filled half hour bombing around on the water. 

Phuket is a big island with around five? different beaches and resorts, so to see if properly, we decided to hire a scooter for the day. Again it was dirt cheap to do so. It was only £4 to hire a scooter for the day. The lady was very lovely and friendly but you had to ask to get a helmet (most locals don’t wear them, despite it being the law). They didn’t have a great selection of helmets, so the lady actually leant Arran her helmet to wear as the others were a bit worn out!

We had such an amazing day whizzing around the island. It’s amazing how much you can pack in when you’re on a scooter. We went to a couple of great vista points for amazing views of the island; fed a couple of elephants, visited Kata Beach and Patong.
After handing the scooter back, we ended the day on the beach with a couple beers, watching the sun set – bliss!
 

Our highlights from Phuket

•    The beautiful beaches
•    The amazing seafood
•    The people – everyone is so friendly and helpful.
•    Stopping at small shacks at the side of the road to fill up the scooter – the gasoline was decanted into olive oil bottles for hand pouring into the engine (it was about 50p to fill up the tank, which can last up to a week!)

 

•    The cocktails – Phuket Paradise drank quite nicely!
•    Feeding the lovely elephants

 

•    Having to proof read suggested text for a barmaid’s new tattoo – on our last night we went to a really lively local pub and the barmaid mentioned she was getting a quote in English tattooed on her back. She asked us to check the grammar and spelling!
•    And a couple of primary school pupils asking Emily if they could take her photo – Not many people have seen blonde hair over here!

We are now in Bangkok (we decided to take a cheapish flight, as opposed to the 10 hour bus journey). We are currently witnessing the most dramatic thunder and lightning storm from the safety of our hotel room!
We will be in Bangkok for the next two nights before we depart on the last leg of our adventure - an organised group tour of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and finally Laos.

Hat Yai

On the ferry back from Penang we bumped into a backpacker we had met previously in KL, called Neil. It was great to have a conversation with a native English speaker and to exchange travel stories and tips. Neil was a really interesting guy. He was on a career break too and had actually been travelling for the past two years. He was a hardier traveller than us though, as he had a biked all the way from England. He had to leave his bike in Singapore as the trains didn’t allow him to take it any further. So he left with a friend and is planning on picking it up on the way back, before biking home; pretty incredible! We got some good tips from Neil on places we were about to visit and also things to look out for when hiring things like scooters and mopeds in Asia.

We caught a train from Butterworth to Hat Yai. It was a sleeper train as its ultimate destination was Bangkok (a 20 hour train journey from Butterworth) luckily it was only five hours to Hat Yai. We were surprised to find the train was really comfy. We had two sleeping berths (just like bunk beds), which folded back into seats. We didn’t bother assembling the bunks for our short trip.

The train journey was pretty good, apart from some stops on the line. The train was rather rickety however, and was pumping out some thick black smoke at some points! Another interesting quirk about the train was the toilet...Arran told me it was actually just a whole in the ground. I thankfully didn’t need to check this!

We left Malaysia and crossed over into Thailand about an hour before our stop. At the border crossing all the locals disembarked the train straightaway. It looked just like another train station, so it took us and some other backpackers a couple of seconds to figure out what was going on! (They don’t tend to announce stops on the train over here). It was funny to see a woman selling a small selection of duty free, just a short distance from the immigration checks desk!

We were anxious to get through the queue quickly as we are now constantly a little nervous about public transport leaving without all the passengers. In fact, we think the train did leave a couple of people behind who nipped upstairs to buy food!

As time rolled on we started to look out for our stop (you can’t really tell which stop is yours by the time, as the trains never arrive on time so you really have to look out for your stop an hour before it’s due and an hour or so later!). It wasn’t until we approached a stop that looked like it was in quite a sizeable city that we started to look for clues. I decided to find the conductor and check where we were. His English wasn’t too great, but I think he tried to say it wasn’t a main stop, but when I asked how long it would be to Hat Yai he said quite quickly “this is Hat Yai!” We grabbed our bags and jumped of the train just as it was pulling away!

Our hotel was fantastic. It was a beautiful, old fashioned four star hotel right in the heart of the CBD, with lots of shops and restaurants nearby. It wasn’t until we arrived at the reception desk that we realised English would be a bit of a problem in Hat Yai (if the front of house staff couldn’t speak English we thought we’d have no hope out and about in the city!) Still, we managed to check in and order some lovely room service for dinner.

 

All the channels were in Thai, apart from one movie channel which had English subtitles. So we spent the night watching a badly dubbed Thai version of Footloose! (At least the song at the end was in English, that’s all that matters really).

The next morning, we remembered that Neil had said that the clocks were around 3 hours forward in Thailand (compared to Malaysia). As we didn’t have a clock in our room (and we hadn’t invested in WIFI access at this point) we had to take him Neil his word. We woke up quite late and figured out it must have been around 10am. We jumped up and headed down for breakfast hoping it was still open.

It wasn’t until we were downstairs, yawning, with bed hair while sipping coffee, that we spotted a clock. There is in fact only an hour’s difference between Malaysia and Thailand and Thailand is an hour behind, so it was only 7am! (No wonder we felt so tired)

After breaky, we headed across the road to McDonalds to make use of the free WIFI (all the McDonalds around the globe so far have had free WIFI, it’s been really handy). It was here that we discovered there’s quite a strong security presence in the centre of town. This is due to a bombing a couple of years earlier and apparently stop searches are still pretty common.

 

From what we could find out, there are no direct trains to Phuket (our next destination) so we decided to get a bus. A lot of forums and blogs advised going directly to the bus station counter staff to purchase the tickets and warned against using pushy ticket touts. They also advised travelling in a “VIP” class of bus to ensure a clean, air conditioned and shorter journey (the better buses take fewer ‘rest stops’).

Picking up our tickets was a bit of an ordeal. Mostly because in the first instance we went to the wrong bus station (it was a bit out of town and was more like a van terminal) but also the English barrier made things a bit tricky. We made sure to write down our destination and preferences, to make things a bit easier. After successfully purchasing our tickets and making sure we were actually booked on a VIP bus (we opted for business class, as this is apparently above first class over here), we jumped on a tuk tuk back to the hotel.

 

Hat Yai is a lovely city, but it’s predominantly visited by Malaysians and Singaporeans, which is why English is not a necessity. In fact, we really surprised to find the best English speaker was working in KFC, when we went in for a quick drink and to get directions to the bus station.

Overall, we had a great stopover in Hat Yai and enjoyed some the best food and drink of our journey so far!

Some funny things and highlights from Hat Yai...

• The hotel breakfast – such an amazing selection of Western and Thai food. The oriental breakfast was a great start to the day – sautéed vegetables, noodles and rice. 
• English speakers are few and far between – anytime we tried to ask the hotel staff a question, they instantly thought we were trying to check out! 
• The Bell Boy could speak the best English in the hotel and knew enough to give us some tips on Phuket (and to tell us his friend lives in Edinburgh). 
• Pictures on Arran’s Ipod came in very handy. We used a picture of the bus station and a taxi to book a taxi from the hotel! 
• Drinking a pina colada from a pineapple while listening to the house band 
• Our first ride in Tuk Tuk 
• Living like kings and paying only £180 in total for accommodation, food and cocktails!

Penang

We were really thankful to be in Penang, mostly because we’d be in one place for more than one night, but also, it was nice to be out of the huge metropolis for a bit, with just small, village like streets to walk round.

Now we’ve left the big places like, Singapore and KL, we’ve found the prices have dropped dramatically; most notably hotel room prices. So much so, that from now on we can afford to stay in hotels for the rest of our trip, which is a lovely luxury to have! We booked a decent three star hotel in Penang before we arrived. It worked out at around £20 per night for two people. The hotel was a little basic, but it was really central and served a lovely breakfast in the morning on the very sunny, rooftop garden. It was based right in the middle of George Town (on Argyll Street funnily enough!). 

 

Penang is considered a main tourist destination in South East Asia, due to its architecture and beach resorts, but we felt two nights and one day was enough time on the island. The old fashioned streets, houses and shops are pretty spectacular, but as we were based right in the main hubbub it was a little manic. There were no real pavements around our area, due to the streets being lined with parked scooters and street vendors, so walking around the main area was a little tricky in the traffic – those scooters just never look like they’re going to stop! 

Also, as we were in the main part of town, which was a bit more residential, we did get a lot of looks. Despite it being a tourist destination, we didn’t really come across many Europeans, so we became a bit of an attraction ourselves! I think it would have been a slower, more relaxing place towards the other side of the island, where the lovely resorts and beaches are!

During our day in Penang we managed to fit in a little bit of shopping in the Queensbay Mall (one of Asia’s largest shopping mall, it had eight floors, it must take ages to get around all the shops!), visited the Khoo Kongsi (a clan temple) and took in the historic streets and architecture on the oldest street in George Town.

The Clan House was a main highlight for us. It was such an ornate building and pretty spectacular to see up close. 

The heat in Penang was scorching (it was about 38 degrees), so we found we could only walk for a little bit before stopping for ice cream or a couple of beers (it’s a hard life!). We found one or two great local pubs. 

Penang is known for its culinary delights and apparently the best food is served by the street vendors...but as the majority of these vendors are based next to semi open drains, we didn’t feel confident enough, at this early stage in our Asia trip, to experiment! So instead, we went to a small friendly restaurant for dinner and had some lovely local food. 

If we had one more day in Penang we would have liked to have taken the train up to Penang Hill for the amazing city views and perhaps, fitted in a visit to the snake temple. The temple is built in memory of a monk, who, as legend has it, had healing powers and gave shelter to snakes from the jungle. Apparently when the temple was built, the snakes moved in permanently! Evidently they burn a lot incense outside the temple and inside to entrance the snakes (as the majority are meant to be rather poisonous). I was secretly relieved we ran out of time for this attraction; I wasn’t sure that visiting some uncaged snakes was the best way to confront my snake phobia!

Some quirks we noticed during our time in Penang...

• The restaurant we dined in had a page dedicated to Western food – you could order a huge macaroni pie to feed 10 people... but you needed to order this a day in advance. 
• In small restaurants they don’t serve starters before mains, in fact they tend to just bring the food out, whichever course it is, when it’s ready! 
• They have Marmite, Makro and Tescos over here!
• A large Carlsberg, instead of being a pint, is a massive bottle of Carlsberg served like wine!

Next stop Hat Yai.

Stopover in Kuala Lumpur

I’m not sure we actually got to see Kuala Lumpur at its best. We only had a night’s stopover in the city and the following day was consumed with picking up tickets and making accommodation arrangements. But I think it is safe to say, in this instance, that our journey into Kuala Lumpur (and getting around the city itself) was almost as long and arduous as our journey out of KL!

• Our journey from Singapore

We booked our train tickets from Singapore to KL, online by email. We were really impressed with the speed at which our booking was processed so I think this lured us into a false sense of security about the ease of everything else. We had to pick our tickets up the day before we were due to depart. So, on our second day in Singapore we headed over to the train station. Unfortunately, when we arrived we were told there had been a derailment a few days before and all trains had been cancelled. So we were told to call up the following day to check if our train was running and then, if it was, to pick our tickets just before the departure time. So we did and thankfully, it was.

 
We arrived to a bit of mayhem in the station, it was really busy. The first obstacle was picking up our tickets. We had to explain a few times (to a couple of different people) that we had reservations, we just needed our tickets. It finally transpired that if you don’t pick up your tickets the day before, your reservations are released (even though this wasn’t possible!).

 
 After showing our frustration and a bit of back and forth, the ticket officer managed to “pull some strings” and get us a seat on the “fully booked train”, which now involved switching between two trains and a bus, an after affect of the derailment. 

 
Not to worry though. The first train journey was pretty smooth, as was the connecting bus transfer to Kluang. 

Our main problem was actually self-inflicted – because we had to get up early to call about the train and factor in some time for waiting in the ticket collection cue, we ran out of time to buy any breakfast or snacks for the six hour train journey! We also only had Singapore Dollars on us, so even when the train stopped sporadically, for lengthy periods of time, we couldn’t get off to buy anything (we crossed over the Malaysia border about 10 minutes into our train journey). 

On arriving at Kluang, we were told our train was on the opposite platform. We made our way over to the pedestrian bridge to cross over, but instantly noticed that the locals just jumped over the train tracks to get to the other side (young and old alike, they were fearless!). We stuck to the bridge.
Once on the train we were moved three or four times by the train conductor (it was also at this point that we noticed an abundance of free seats on the train; no sign of it being “fully booked”). To be fair, he was trying to do us a favour, as he was keen to have us sit in an air conditioned seat, however, we soon realised that we were mostly warm and overheated from all the moving and lugging our bags around!
We did, however, get moved to first class, which appeared to be exactly the same as second class, only the seats were red and they were playing a muted version of Harry Potter on a small screen. 

After a while the scenery started to lose its gripping appeal and we just couldn’t wait to arrive in KL. We stopped at so many places en route (for undetermined amounts of time) i’m not sure the stops were really offical, so we didn’t dare get off the train to stretch our legs, just in case. Some, confident locals did though and came back with purchases of fresh fruit and juice bags from little stalls. The fruit juice bags seem to be in sandwich bags with a little straw inside and a handle. I remember Laura and Katie telling us about these when they visited South America. One woman came back on the train with a bag of brown liquid, it really looked like cold gravy and from the look on her face while she was drinking it, I think it probably tasted like it too. 

• Arriving in the city

We finally arrived in KL (eight hours later), thirsty and hungry around 5pm in the evening. We grabbed a quick bite to eat before looking up the route to our hostel. It said it was in easy walking distance of the station, so we planned to head there, dump our stuff and then walk back to the station to book our train ticket for the following day. Unfortunately, an hour later and after two stops for drinks, we were still nowhere near. We quickly found that navigating around KL was very difficult due to the different roads/traffic and lack of crossings. We stopped to try and get a taxi but even the taxi driver said it was too difficult to get to, so wouldn’t take us! After some more walking we finally found a route from the bus station at the bottom of the station. By 7.30pm we were in our hostel crashed out on our bed! 

The hostel itself was fantastic. It was called the POD hostel, so we imagined we’d be sleeping in small sleeping cubicles, but it in fact it was just short for “peas in a pod” and this theme was obvious throughout the building (lots of lovely bright green walls and chairs too).  Like the other rooms, our bedroom consisted of a raised platform on the floor with a mattress on it and no ceiling. It was to encourage a “zen like” feeling throughout the place. I think it just saved electricity really, as they had very little in the way of lights! Still, it was a funky little place with the nicest staff. We spent the evening planning our onward route to Bangkok over a couple of beers. 

• Leaving the city 

The next day we found a Bureau de Change in the train station (we were so pleased to find an official company, after walking past a number of make shift looking money exchange stands in the station). 

 
We needed to stock up on a few different currencies for our onward journey to Bangkok namely US dollars and some Thai Bat. We were a little alarmed to realise that at one point, there was an armed guard with a pump action shot gun standing directly behind us (we weren’t sure if he was there for our protection or the staff! A similar guard stood near train station ATMs).

 
In the end we opted for a bus from KL to Butterworth (our next destination) as the train times were a little awkward. The bus was much cheaper (about £8 each) and was actually quicker than the train in the end (about 4.5 hours). 

 
Booking the ticket and paying for it online was absolutely fine, our next hurdle came when we had to pick it up. 

 
We had to get the subway to the main bus station in the city. We are pretty confident using subways now, having done so with ease in America and Singapore but this subway unstuck us a bit. It seemed just as complicated and confusing as walking around KL so it took us a little longer than expected. This, I think, was due to the fact that competing subway companies don’t allow you to travel on different lines without continually buying different tickets. Anyway, when we got to the bus station, we made our way up to the ticket offices on the fourth floor. 

 
As soon as we entered we were confronted by dozens of ticket touts trying to sell us tickets on their buses, all bidding for our business and as soon as they realised we had tickets already they didn’t want to know. We made our way through and finally found the counter to pick up our ticket. A short while later, after running around to find our platform (we were running really late – despite giving ourselves two hours travel time for a distance of around one mile), we made it on to our bus!

 
The bus was fantastic. It was classed as an “executive” standard, which is what your advised to look out for when you book a bus over here as it means it’s clean and a bit comfier. The seats were massive and reclined right back and the air conditioning was chilling. It was a great journey to Butterworth. 

We did read, before booking our ticket, that buses can leave passengers behind during rest stops and in fact, we did witness this a couple of times during our journey, when we realised there were a lot of jackets and belongings left on the bus. So we decided to play it safe and stay on the bus throughout!

We arrived at the ferry terminal in Butterworth at around 8.30pm and after a little bit of a wait (in a huge pen with about 80 other people) we arrived on the island of Penang. The ferry is amazingly cheap (it works out at around 24p for a return trip) and we had great views of the Butterworth and Penang skylines at night. The only downside is (as with the trains) the ferries don’t seem to run to their set timetables. The Penang ferry is meant to be every 20 minutes, but it was more like every hour and seems to run on a schedule of “we’ll leave when we’re full”. Still, at that price, and with those views, you can’t really complain.

 
When we arrived in Penang, we were a bit wary about getting a taxi to our hotel. We had heard that a lot of haggling was usually required and we were too tired to bother! In addition to this, we only had about 17 Malaysian Ringgit on us (which is about £3). However, while waiting in the taxi cue we met a nice old taxi driver who agreed to take us to our hotel for 15 Ringgit. He was a really friendly chap and really interested to speak to us about Scotland. Apparently we don’t sound anything like Sean Connery though!
We finally reached our hotel at 10pm and crashed out on our bed!

 

Singapore

After a nine hour plane journey (filled with lots of good food, wine and movies) we arrived in Singapore!

We got in around 9pm and although the sun had gone down hours before, it was still sweltering. It felt much hotter than Oz. It was the kind of consuming heat you experience when you return to the car after it’s been left out in the sun all afternoon.
We booked a hotel close to the airport for our first night. It was in the bustling Changi Village area. It was a beautiful hotel (we treated ourselves to one night of luxury after our long flight) with an amazing bar and pool.

Koi Pond in the hotel

The following day, we explored Changi Village, taking in the shops and the beach, before getting a taxi over to our hostel for the next two nights.

Our hostel, called WOW, was described as “probably the best hostel in Singapore”...if that was the best, I wouldn’t want to see the worst! Saying that, it wasn't all bad, just a little rough around the edges. It was clean and comfy and our room had air-conditioning, so that’s all we really needed. It was very close to the MRT station, so it meant commuting into the centre of town was really easy.
We really enjoyed our two days in Singapore. It’s such a lovely place, mostly really clean, very friendly and lots of great bars and shops.

I think our best bits would have to include having a Singapore Sling in the famous Raffles Hotel and visiting Sentosa Island.

The complimentary monkey nuts were pretty good too

Sentosa island is primarily a holiday resort, with a theme park inside. It was great fun, riding the chairlifts down to the beach, going up in Tiger Eye to see the amazing city skyline. We also had some drinks in the beach hut style bars (we experienced a brief thunder storm while we were there, but it passed as quickly as it started, so we got another drink in).

We took the opportunity while we were in Singapore to send a lot of things home, to lighten our backpacks. Again, we were amazed by the level of customer service you receive as well as how cheap it was (it was around £12.50 to send a 6kg box home) – a stark contrast to what we experienced in the post office in LA.

We marked the end of our time in Singapore the way we started it – with a couple of Tiger beers. This time in a small bar, just down from our hostel.

 A lovely place, with really friendly people; we would definitely like to come back for a proper holiday.

Our next stop is Kuala Lumpur, where we will be staying for just one night, before continuing on with our journey up to Bangkok.

Cheers mate!

Two months in Oz is nowhere near enough time to really see the place. We felt we made a good start though and were pleased to have seen a bit of Victoria, the East Coast and the Tropical North; but there’s still so much to see in this vast land full of the world’s most dangerous (and some, very weird looking) creatures. So much so infact, that we've already made notes for a future return trip to Oz. We really loved the beaches and activities in the tropics and would definitely love to come back to the Whitsundays and see Magnetic Island in the glorious sunshine (preferably on a scooter or topless buggie). We'd also love to take a trip around the outback in the West, but I think we will wait until we’ve forgotten the itchiness of the mozzie bite!

  

Things we will miss about Oz...

• The glorious sunshine and heat
• The lovely, friendly people – "how’s it going mate?" (around ever corner)
• The fantastic selection of draught beer
• The quirks, that don’t fail to make me smile – many people walk around in the streets and shops in bare feet (come rain or shine!); fresh dog food is kept in the chiller in the supermarket...next to the human food!
• The exotic wildlife and the fact you can happen across something when you least expect it – kangaroos wandering into campsites and frogs in the showers!
• The amazing palm trees, sugar cane and banana tree fields lining the highways – makes those four hour drives, much more interesting.
• The good quality pub grub (they do a mean fish & chips over here)
• And of course, the beautiful beaches

And a few things we won’t miss, so much...

• The expense of day to day essentials...and beer! 
• The mozzies
• The heat and humidity at night (sometimes made for some uncomfortable camping!) 
• The flash floods in the wet season (it was a little bit nerve racking driving at times!)

30 mozzie bites, 24 ice creams and an uncountable number of beers later and we are already looking forward to our return trip...hopefully, in the not so distant future.

We’re spending our last evening in Oz, washing clothes, repacking our backpacks and getting in a good night sleep before our early, long haul flight to our next destination – Singapore!

Aussie Road Trip Part Two – The Tropical North

What a trip. We experienced some really extreme weather – blistering sunshine and warm nights during the first few days, then slowly we encountered rainy days and nights (soggy campsites) and finally torrential rain and gale force winds! That’s what you get when you embark on a northern road trip in Oz in the wet season!

But despite the flood warnings, persistent torrential rain and winds (the rain was due to cyclone Luna, it was reported as 250km winds at some points), our hardy stationwagon made it to our final destination - Cairns, on time.
Despite not having the comfort and luxury of a campervan, the stationwagon did us well (although, we gave up on the tent in the end, as it was a bit too small and Arran’s feet stuck out!) and we were definitely thankful for it on the semi flooded roads, as it proved to be hardier and more resilient than the previous campers.
It feels like we’ve packed in so much on this road trip – we’ve visited more pristine beaches, taken in more local bands (and sampled more local beers!), encountered more of the exotic Aussie wildlife up close, and tried a bit of snorkelling...

•    Noosa
On Anne’s recommendation, we made the seaside town of Noosa our first stop. So glad we did. It was a beautiful little town, with an amazing beach full of surfers training for a big surf competition the following day. Lovely town centre full of funky restaurants and coffee shops and high end clothes shops. Amazing houses along the cliffs near the beach, which must have been worth quite a bit. Would be a great town to live in. We camped for the night in a Sea Scouts campground. It was pretty basic, but cheap and had everything we needed. The campsite was full of frogs, so we had to watch our step on our way back from the pub! It was then that we discovered that the tent was a little small....so much so, that Arran’s feet were hanging out. We decided to make the station wagon our home for the duration our trip!

•    Hervey Bay
This had to be one our favourite stops. Another beautiful seaside town, with lots of surfing and great shops. We found the perfect camp spot for the evening, at a secluded end of the beach. We spent the afternoon browsing round the shops and chilling out on the beach. I think the main beach in Hervey Bay has to be our favourite beach to date. Not only did we pretty much have the entire beach to ourselves (it was a Saturday as well), the water was so shallow, you could walk out for miles and it would still only be up to your knees. We were also paddling on the start of the Great Barrier Reef, so we spotted a few schools of fish. It was great fun. From the beach we could look over to Fraser Island. We ended the day with a couple of schooners at the Beach Hotel. This soon turned into a few more schooners, when an ageing rock band rolled up and started playing a great mix of 80s and 90s rock classics.

•    Gladstone and Rockhampton
After a late-ish start, probably on account of all the beers from the night before, we headed to our next stop – Gladstone. On the way we stopped off in a small quaint village called Gin Gin for fuel and lunch. It is one of the many towns around the North of Oz which has kept its original Aboriginal name. We arrived in Gladstone late afternoon and quickly discovered there wasn’t much too it. It was a funny town, really industrial with the main attraction being the railway station (reminded us of Kansas City!). We drove to the beach front to investigate possible campsites and were a bit disappointed. The beach was a bit dire, really muddy water and a rocky bed (no lovely white sand in sight). We felt really sorry for the people staying in the nearby holiday apartments with a 'beach view'! We decided to continue on to our next stop over – Rockhampton.

When we made it to the Rockies (as it’s known amongst the locals), we quickly discovered wild camping would be tricky (we found most of the touristy / picturesque towns have placed a ban on overnight parking and wild camping) so we checked into a campsite next to the Fitzroy River.

In the morning light we noticed a sign warning campers to beware of the crocodiles which live along the Fitzroy River (just meters from where we were camping – eeek!). Luckily, we had a very peaceful sleep.

We spent the following day exploring the Rockies (it’s based on the tropic of Capricorn, which is why the North of Oz is referred to as the tropics). We spent the day mainly in the botanic gardens, walking around the free zoo (where we met a couple of koalas, an aggressive emu, some more iguanas and a horrible little thing that looked like a cross between a lizard and a snake) and the Japanese Gardens. 

• Mackay

We then set off on our four hour drive to Mackay. It was a really lovely evening, making for a great drive and a beautiful sunset, but it was a big day of driving, so we arrived in Mackay in the dark, around 7pm. We planned to stay at Blacks Beach, but it proved a little tricky navigating in the dark (especially as the GPS insisted on taking us down a couple of dead ends). We finally arrived at the beach, half an hour later.

We woke up really early the next day (around 5.50am) to the sound of some keen joggers. So we decided to get up and check out the beach. Really pleased we did as we saw the most amazing sunrise over the Coral Sea. Blacks Beach is the longest stretch of beach in the region and its lined with 6km of tropical gardens. It was really quiet on the beach at that time in the morning, so ours were amongst the very first foot prints on the sand, which was quite cool. We watched the sunrise and walked the length of the beach, but opted against going in for an early morning swim as we spotted the warning about Box Jellyfish, the night before.

•    Airlie Beach - Whitsundays
We arrived in a very sunny Airlie Beach just after lunch. Again, as it’s in the Whitsundays (a hot tourist destination), there were many signs indicating that wild camping was forbidden. We checked with tourist information and found a really cheap campsite nearby. It was so cheap, we decided to stay in Airlie for three nights.

Unfortunately, after our first night, we didn't see the sun again until the morning we left. But the grey sky and rain didn’t put too much of a damper on things as there was so much to do in the area. We booked on to a package deal which included a day trip to part of the Great Barrier Reef (Hardy Reef) with snorkelling and a trip to Hamilton Island the next day.

•    The Great Barrier Reef
We had such an amazing couple of days in Airlie. Our trip to the reef was great fun. As the weather was a little changeable, we were warned that the water would be a little choppy on the ferry over to the reef platform. So much so, that the crew decided to hand out sea sickness tablets with the complimentary tea and coffee in the morning. It was in fact, the choppiest boat journey we had ever been on (with 2 metre high waves crashing off the sides of the boat). It made the hour boat ride quite entertaining. We were among the small number of passengers who did not use the complimentary sick bags!

 

Snorkelling in Hardy Reef was magic. As soon as you jumped off the platform you instantly spot schools of fish swimming along beside you. It was fantastic getting into the deeper parts of the reef and seeing the expanse of corals, the bright colours and clams (we saw a giant clam opening and closing!). Also spotted a huge fish near the bottom of the reef, swimming slowly past. An Australian guy pointed it out to us as a pike. It wasn’t a pike!

In the afternoon we took a semi-submersible boat around the reef for a closer look.

On the journey back to the mainland, there was more sea sickness action to keep the crew busy. Luckily, we managed to keep our sea legs and settled down to watch the in-house showing of finding nemo with a couple of beers (we did have to hold on to our cans pretty tightly though, during the extremely choppy parts of the journey).

•    Hamilton Island
We were a little dismayed to wake up to another morning of dark skies, rain and a soggy campsite, but once we arrived on Hamilton Island we soon perked up. It’s such a great place. It’s mainly a holiday resort, although there are a few houses on the island (there are only 5km of roads around the Island). Most people get around on golf buggies, which add to the holiday feel of the island. We decided against forking out $90 for a buggy and made our way round on foot. We spent our morning at the zoo, where we saw our first full sized crocodile up close (it was apparently a rogue crocodile from the Fitzroy River in Mackay – again we breathed a sigh of relief that we didn’t come across any during our overnight stay at the campsite!), a really chatty cockatoo and some more lovely wallabies and koalas.

And then we spent a very lazy afternoon in the resort pool. It had one of those pool bars, like you see in the movies, so we were hooked for the afternoon. The novelty of swimming over to the bar for drinks never wore off! (Australian money is waterproof,  which was handy).

We spent our last night in Airlie in the local backpackers’ pub, taking in a couple of bands and a few schooners.

•    Townsville
We arrived in a very rainy Townsville around 3pm the following day. The rain was so bad, we decided against attempting to sleep in the car overnight, so we checked into a local B&B. It was a great little B&B, really quaint with lots of vintage pictures and furnishings. The owner, John, was a really smiley, friendly chap (like most of the Aussies we’ve encountered) and didn’t take any money from us until we decided how long we wanted to stay. He knew the weather was bad and that we trying to make it to Cairns, so I think he took pity on us a little!
The rain hadn’t let up in the morning (I think it rained all night), so we decided to stay another night. John seemed happy about this and thought it was a wise decision. He said he’d keep an ear out on the traffic weather/news for us, which was really helpful.
Despite the weather we decided to head out for the day. We had read about Magnetic Island before we arrived and were keen to visit it. We took the ferry over from the mainland and arrived half an hour later. Unfortuantley, Magnetic Island is really not a place you can see on foot. It’s best to see it by car (which you have to hire on the Island, you can't take your car over) or by bus, but the buses were few and far between. We had originally intended to hire bikes, but when we arrived, we realised the company we had intended to hire with, no longer existed and the rain was that heavy anyway, it wouldn’t have been much fun.

Still, we managed to see a bit of the Island by foot. We made it to one of the many bays (there's about seven) called Picnic Bay and decided to stop there for lunch. It was about this time that the torrential rain decided to start up again, so we jumped on a local bus back to towards the ferry. We stopped off at one of the few bars on the Island, Base, which is also a backpackers. It looks like an amazing place to stay. It was right on the beach and all the rooms/dorms were along the beachfront in little beach huts (must be amazing in the dry summer months!).
We decided to stay in Base for the rest of the afternoon, as it was St Patricks Day and the green beer was flowing and the live music was playing all day.
We later read that Magnetic Island is rather unique, as it is first and foremost a protected national park (home to lots of koalas, kangaroo rats and wombats), with only a small number of people actually residing on the Island. This explains why it’s so sparse and difficult to get around on foot.
Still, we had a great time and marked it down as a place to visit in the future...during the dry season!

•    Cairns
John, informed us at breakfast that the road South of Cairns was closed. Luckily he mentioned that the road North was passable with care and said he’d keep a listen out in case he heard anything else before we left. We were a little nervous as we knew we not only had to hand the car back the next day (Monday) we also had an early morning flight departing from Cairns on the Tuesday. John mentioned that last year, during the floods, the rain lasted for two months straight. We started to worry a bit more about our flight and decided to leave quite quickly after breaky.
The drive for the first hour or so was fine. Light rain, but clear roads. After this, we experienced a few rather nerve racking spells of torrential rain which lasted around half an hour each time. After a slow drive and a few stops at roadside cafes (to sit out the rain!), we eventually made it to a rainy Cairns just after lunch.
We checked into our hostel, aptly named Shenannigans, and found that it was actually part of a big Irish Pub. I think it was the first time we’ve ever signed an agreement during check-in stating that we cannot complain about the noise from the pub or receive a refund if we decide to leave because of it. We didn’t mind though, after a nerve racking journey and the fear of not making it to Cairns in time for our flight, we would have slept in a booth in the pub if necessary! And on the brightside, we were given a whole load of bar vouchers to use during our stay!