New Zealand

The final stage of our journey before settling to work for a year in Australia. New Zealand was immediatally a country of epic scenary, friendly locals and a lot of sheep.
Christchurch was closed down to tourists so we got out of there and drove all the way to mount cook stopping at beautiful lake tekapo on route.  At the foot of NZ's tallest peak we camped out for the night in our little campervan 'charlie'.
Next stop was Queenstown the adventure capital. We didnt have a lot of money for adventure activities but  still loved it here and took full advantage of the beautiful weather and surroundings. A travellers right of passage here is Fergburger, (the best burgers in the world).
From Queenstown we took the milford track to do a short cruise on the amazing milford sound (actually a fiord). The drive through Fiordland national park was probably the most scenic part of new zealand that we were able to see, it was simply stunning.
After Fiordland we made our way past lake wanaka and up the west coast of the south island.
The west coast highlights had to be the rugged and wind swept coast line and pancake rocks at punakaikai. The sandflies were not so fun, those things are vicious and sometimes we couldnt leave the van for long without getting covered in bites.
Last stop on the south island was Nelson and the Abel Tasman national park. We had a stroke of luck and managed to get a days tramping (trekking) in at Abel tasman before the rain started. The next few days were spent catching up with our good friend danny we met in china. This was a relief as we realised we hadnt actually had a real conversation with anyone but each other for nearly two weeks. Theres only so much gin drinking and card games you can take before going a bit crazy.

The south island was over and we made our way across to wellington on the ferry.
Windy Welly is a nice city with a reputation for bad weather, the museum here (te papa) was amazing.
The final week of NZ was a literal wash out. We travelled from wellington to lake taupo managing to get  a morning of nice (ish) weather to see what all the fuss is about. Unfortunately we didnt manage to fit in a skydive due to all the rain, and oh how it came down.
Our next stop Rotorua rained solidly for two days but we did manage to go to a geothermal wonderland (not as good as it sounds) and see a Maori cultural performance (very cheesy but fun).
Soo with dampened spirits and dampened belongings we arrived in Auckland, a nicer city than we were told it was. We spent a few days catching up with friends and exploring here before our return to Sydney with a nearly empty bank account but glad of the times we had exploring beautiful new zealand.

New Zealand Photos

Java, Nusa Lembongan (and a bit more Bali...)

 Mount Bromo

Our last two weeks in Asia and Alice's mum came out to meet us. We picked Tina up from the airport after hours of driving around, Lost. For Tina's first meal we ate Balinese duck at a local warung (small restaurant). Our first few days were spent by the pool, drinking rice wine and playing dominos with hotel staff (meh mehmehmeh). We left Ubud and headed for Java our first stop being Mount Bromo, a semi-active volcano flanked by two other volcanoes in a luneresque landscape. We woke at 3.30am for sunrise at the summit, which was beautiful.
Next stop in java was yogyakarta, the cultural capital. Here we stayed in a Losmen (cheap hotel) down a series of warren like alley ways, this added to the charm but made it hard to find. Our first day we visited borobudur, said to be the worlds biggest buddhist monument and had a lot of school kids take our pictures. The rest of yogya was spent wondering the market and sampling the many delicious street foods on offer.
A twenty hour bus and a boat later and we were in Nusa Lembongan a tropical island off the coast of Bali. With nothing to do but lye on the beach and explore, we did just that. Alice even rode her own scooter for a day.
Our joint 24th birthday was spent here also. This started out really well with a nice meal  and a few drinks courtesy of tina.. however it all went a bit wrong at the end of the day. Turns out something was very wrong with the tuna we ate, first we had itchy mouths and later i was covered in a red rash. NOT FUN.
Soo last stop in Asia was Sanur where we spent our time lazing on the beach and eating the last delicious asian food we could manage to get down us...After a teary goodbye between Alice and Tina we were done and off to Australia..

 A Few Photos

Lombok to Flores; and everything inbetween

So its been a pretty crazy couple of weeks. The photos are just a taster of what its been like.
We started in Senggigi Lombok, a dramatic coast line of black and white sand beaches and cliffs rising out of the sea. On a scooter we roamed the coast jumping from beach to beach. I managed to drive in to a swarm of bees and got stung a few times.

In Senggigi we decided to book a four day / three night boat trip from Lombok to the island of Flores, visiting komodo national park on the way to see some giant deadly lizards. These trips are notorious for being dangerous as the seas are pretty hard to navigate around these islands, so naturally we were a bit apprehensive.

The trip started with a very rocky sea crossing to the islands of Moyo and Setonda, here we showered in fresh water waterfalls and saw a nice salt lake.  The people on our trip were all really nice and we immediately formed a good group. There were only seven of us which meant a lot of room on the boat.

Our next day involved being woken up at 5 am and told to jump in and swim to the beach. We were on Gili Laba and climbed a hill for amazing views of the crystal waters and a dry landscape. Next we went to Pantai merah (red beach) for some amazing snorkelling. The pink sand here made the beach beautiful. Finally we were off to Rinca one of komodo national parks island. We did a two hour trek and saw quite a few of the beasts along the way. We did some more snorkelling and lying on the beach for the last day and finally arrived in Lubuanbajo Flores.

Flores is an incredible mix of mountainous landscapes, insanely friendly people and natural splendour. The bus rides were far from comfortable (one minibus we counted 33 people) and the roads are shocking. First we visited a town called Moni were we went to see the incredible multi-coloured crater lakes of Kelimutu. Trekking down from here to swim in waterfalls. We went on to a town called Ende and then to Bajawa to see traditional villages renowned for sacrifices  and soak ourselves in the natural hot springs. Flores has a real rural charm to it,, there are macadamia trees everywhere making the forests shine silver and the people are genuinely happy to see you. We were sad to leave.
Back in Lombok we spent a few days relaxing on desserted beaches in Kuta. Paradise.

Photos

Bali and the Gili's

Rice fields in Bali; September 2011

Our first day in Bali was pretty disorientating, Kuta the main tourist town is like Magaluf for Australians. The traffic is incredibly hectic and the music is loud. This was a bit worrying at first but as soon as we ventured away from Kuta we were relieved to see that Bali is all its cracked up to be. After an hour or so of riding around on a scooter we managed to find Kerry and James, some friends from home at there place in Sanur (it took 15 minutes to get back).

With Kerry and James we went to the port town of Padangbai were we organised a car rental for the next week. This trip let us see the REAL Bali. We started in padangbai and went to the blue lagoon, a nice little beach and then on to candidassa for lunch and a haircut (by some nutter). On the drive to Amed the views over rice fields and mountains were breathtaking.
We spent two days at a really nice place on a black sand beach in Amed, we went out with some local guys who tried to teach us some bahasa indonesian. 'Appakabar' (how are you) sounds like something out of harry potter.
Next up was Lovina, were we went to see dolphins in there hundreds, this was incredible. On route we stopped at a balinese hindu temple, the guy showing us round was VERY friendly. From Lovina we looped round through the mountains and past some huge lakes along some questionable roads and finally arrived in Ubud. Ubud is the cultural capital of Bali, and well known (trust me they dont let you forget) for being the setting of "Eat, pray, love". James got his duck he was looking for, so he was happy.
After six days we arrived back in Padangbai to get the boat to the Gili islands. On Gili Trawangan we spent our time lying on the beach, relaxing by kerry and james pool and eating very delicious satay chicken. We chartered a glass bottom boat for a snorkelling trip of the islands, this was possibly better than the snorkelling on the Perhentians, so yeh AMAZING.
After an incredible two weeks we said goodbye to kerry and James and headed for Lombok.....

Photos

Singapore

 Singapore (zoo)

Singapore is a modern, clean and very safe feeling city. It is the kind of city either of us could live in (i could live at the airport). The food is great and people are really friendly. All this does come at a cost though, we were paying twenty dollars each to be in a 10 bed dorm with the worst snorers on the planet.
During our stay we visited the (amazing) zoo, continued eating a lot and had singapore slings by the river. As is our habit in cities we did way too much walking around, but this was probably a good idea as we will be spending the next few months lying on the beach....

Singapore photos

Malaysia; Truly Asia

Malaysia is immediately a very different country to those we have previously visited. The multicultural society here is very obvious with malay, chinese and indian people rubbing shoulders at every corner. This mixture of cultures and how well it works is refreshing. Food is the one thing that stands out in malaysia, with a huge mix of smells and tastes on every street there is no chance of ever going hungry here. Although ironically it has been Ramadhan while we were here so a lot of stuff is closed during the day and of course people are very hungry..
The country itself is also extremely diverse. While here we have been to Penang (a food paradise). Then the perhentian island (literally paradise) where we went snorkelling and saw sharks, rays and giant turtles. From here we went through a very islamic town Kota Bharu and took the jungle train to Taman Negara, one of the worlds oldest rain forests. We did our own tailor made (easy) jungle trek and did the canopy walk. The Malaysia tourism board posters that are everywhere inspired us to do this.
We needed a city fix after getting covered in mud and sweating more than is believable, so headed to Kuala Lumpur (KL). There is a rollercoaster in one of the many shopping centres here. Ofcourse we had to visit the petronas towers as well.
Next up was the Cameron highlands, a very green and VERY cold area of tea plantations and strawberry farms. A long days walking came with the rewards of "tea Tarik " and strawberry cheesecake. Delicious.
So there was just one place left to go before returning to KL for malaysian independence day, this was Melaka. Both of us really enjoyed it here. The mixture of colonial architecture and old chinese houses was really charming. The busy night market was great too with drunk chinese dance groups spilling out on to the street at random intervals. By now we felt like we had seen everything Malaysia had to offer so decided to head back to KL for our last few days before heading in to Singapore.
photos of Malaysia

Southern Thailand

Thailand; Koh Phi Phi

Arriving back in Bangkok was surprisingly comforting. Knowing a place even a little bit makes it feel a bit more homely. Alice's friend Emily was in town so we met up to go to the weekend market. Chatuchak  market is huge, supposedly asias biggest (ofcourse alice needed new clothes).. Before heading to the beaches we decided to go see Harry potter at the cinema. Standing for the national anthem at the beginning was quite strange.
Next stop koh Tao, where less than an hour in being on the island we bumped in to Hannah someone we knew from home. We actually did very little in koh Tao, merely moving between the bungalow, beach and bar. Our holiday from our holiday.
With Emily and Hannah we headed to Koh Phi phi for more drinking,  eating and sleeping. We watched Emily do the fire show every night and Alice even had a go ( although she was a bit scared).
Malaysia here we come.

Thailand Photos