Bye Bye Asia, We Will Miss You!

So now were sat in a bar in Singapore, waiting to get our night flight to Brisbane Australia!
We've had 3 days in Singapore which we've surprisingly really enjoyed although this has always only been a stop gap.

After the rest of south east asia, Singapore is so much cleaner and wealthier. The high rise buildings and shopping centres are absolutely out of this world! We've been to the zoo which is undoubtably the best zoo I've ever been too and we've taken full advantage of the no tax and cheaper electronics here by getting ourselves some little presents in the form of a MacBook Air and a Sony Tablet!

Although were very excited about Australia there is no doubting that we will miss South East Asia, we have had the time of our lives here and met so many amazing people from all over the world.

So our favourite place so far I here you ask? Well thats impossible to say, every place has its own favourites:

Cambodia definatly has to be Angkor Wat... every temple since has just faded in our memory compared to that, also the wonderfully friendly and courageous people!

Vietnam has to be the food and the beautiful scenery of Halong Bay.

For Laos its simply the pure laid-back-ness of the people and the way of life there.

Thailand has to be the scenery in the north and the beautiful beaches of the south.

Bali and Lombok must be the food (I ate Mie Goreng almost every day!) and the lush greenery of the wet season that reminded us a lot of England!

So what will we miss the most about SE Asia... chop Sticks, cheap everything, the culture and history, spring rolls, beautiful scenery, fried chicken, smiling faces!

And what will we not miss about SE Asia... squat toilets and being hassled for a tuk-tuk/taxi/sarong/sunglasses and anything else they can possibly sell to you!

South East Asia... You have been awesome!

Come Rain or Shine

So after we unwillingly prised ourselves away from Uluwatu, we made it up to Ubud which is like something you'd find in 'Eat, Pray, Love' with lots of people trying to 'find themselves' walking around in hippy clothes and doing lots of yoga! We saw some traditional Balinese dancing which is a bit freaky, they dance with their eyes and everyone wears a lot of make up, including the men! We also went on a bike ride where we got to learn a lot about the Balinese culture and saw a traditional kitchen which made you not want to eat the food for a while! Before the bike ride we got to have breakfast overlooking the volcano which was a beautiful view!

After this we moved onto Padangbai which is the port town to get over to Lombok and the Gili's. Unfortunately the weather changed and it would rain almost solidly for the next 6 days! In between bursts of torrential rain we make our way over to Kuta Lombok and took some nice coastal walks but we'd always end up drenched from the very unpredictable down pours. (We saw some pour lady looking very happy in her pristine white wedding dress heading over the the coast for her wedding day pictures and the sun was beaming down only for the heaven to open not 3 minutes later, I dread to think what she looked like as I had not one single dry spot on me 2 mins later and there was definitely no shelter where she was headed!) During the downpours we played A LOT of cards, read A LOT of books and on one occasion drank A LOT of beers with some fellow English travellers trying to ignore how much the rain reminded us of England!

Next it was off to Gili Trawangen where we stopped and chilled for a wonderful 11 days which we really needed after not stopping for 3 months! The weather cleared up with only the odd shower and we had a lot of beach and sea time. We did some very good snorkelling and Mike saw a little family of squids(I not sure if that is the plural but it sounds good!)

Next was Kuta Bali again which was much quieter and better the next time round, we even enjoyed a little of the night life thanks you £1 double vodka red bulls!

Bali - New Years Eve!

Hello all,

The trip has seemed to have slowed down slightly, which has been brilliant.

We left Samui to make our way to Phuket for our flight to Bali for New Years Eve. We stopped over at Phi Phi on the way, what an incredible Island although it's incredibly touristy. It was great to see the Island especially after the 2004 boxing day Tsunami. You wouldn't know anything had happened to be honest, it seems the Island is back to normal buzzing with tourists and locals. We started our relaxation period here, chilling out on Long Beach for three days.

After the chilling we set out for Phuket for our flight, we had an early flight so instead of booking a room for the night we thought the airport benches will do! We had a few hours sleep but that was about it! Cheap accommodation though :)


Well hello Bali, Indonesia!
Our aim was to get to Bali for New Years eve which we managed but what we didn't expect was Kuta! We'd heard it was a party town, perfect! How wrong could we have been... we arrived to Malia for 18-30 Australians! A heaving party of the country and not what we were expecting at all. We were too late to organise anything else so we settled with staying there to try and make the best of it, until the next morning!

By complete fluke I got up to go and get our clean laundry and bumped into Kristin who we'd met a few times along the way, it turns Kristin and Sab had both also arrived the night before and felt the as we did and we're leaving in 30 mins to another part of Bali, I completely invited my self and Steph onto their trip which they both were chuffed with - cut to me running up the stairs to get Steph out of bed and packed - 'Let's get the flip out of here!'

We jumped into the taxi not knowing where we were going but hey, why not? We ended up going to Uluwatu where two friends the girls had met were staying, Dave and Rob.

Uluwatu is a really cool surf town and the thing we were looking for. New years eve was great spent dancing, and on the strike of midnight we jumped into the resort pool in our underwear as fire works were set off!

We stuck around Uluwatu for a few days and then decided to head off to Ubud.

Christmas on the Samui!

As Christmas was nearing we wanted to meet up with some friends who were on Koh Samui, a quick boat trip away - so we said a farewell to Koh Tao.

Koh Samui is a very different place to what we were used to, an extremely built up tourist destination filled with resorts, bars and clubs. To be honest it hasn't been our favorite place but Christmas was great fun as we met up with Helen and Elaine.

We spent the next six days chilling out and hearing about their adventure, they've both been volunteer teachers in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We also did a secret santa with 6 quid to spend on each other, which was great as there are so many stalls and markets around you could pick up a load of goodies for that.

We spent a day at Ang Thong National Marine Park, which was absolutely beautiful. We Kayaked around the main Island and then took a hike up to the top of the mountain which brings you out to view this amazing lagoon, apparently this was Mr Alex Garland's inspiration to write 'The Beach' - don't ya know!

The afternoon was then spent hiking up to a cave, well when I say hike I mean climb - it got pretty extreme at times but was well worth it.

Christmas Eve was as traditional as we could make it, although we spent the afternoon in spa having body scrubs, massages and facials! In the evening we went up to Helen and Elaine's guesthouse with some booze, wearing our Christmas hats! Drinking games a go go and then we were off out to find the most Christmassy vibe we could which was actually quite a challenge. In England you spend all your time moaning about Christmas songs and we couldn't find any! All in all it was a great night out helped by meeting up with some Liverpool lads who were up for some Christmas cheer!

Christmas Day was a very different one, we had a nice lie-in before we went to meet up with the girls on the beach. The weather wasn't perfect but having a Christmas drink and opening presents on the beach was great, made very special by the sand man we had all made. We also managed to find a Pub which sold a Christmas dinner with all the trimings playing Christmas music in the background, perfect!

All in all it was a great way to spend Christmas although we did miss everyone back at home, especially knowing that you were all probably sat around the box watching a Christmas film filling ya faces with as much chocolate as possible!

As the beach wasn't the perfect one we hoped for we decided to make our to Phi Phi on boxing day!

Merry Christmas Everyone, we hope you had the perfect day!

Mike and Steph

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