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Hello - Yes we are still alive!
For our avid readers we apologise for the lack of blog entries over the last couple of months, time flies when you're having fun! We have quite a lot of ground to cover so we thought we would tell you about our key highlights ...
We did a three day tour of Uluru (Ayers Rock) which was great. We slept in swags (basically an outdoors sleeping bag) under the stars and we saw Uluru at sunrise and sunset which was pretty spectacular. It's hard to describe just how big it is when most of the surrounding area's dead flat!
Darwin (Lichfield & Kakadu National Parks) - we decided to DIY as guided tours were ridiculously expensive. Therefore as it was the wettest "wet season" in 50 years, our 2 wheel drive Hyundai Getz (think modern-day Nova in terms of size) was never going to be up to the task!! Therefore we didn't get to see much of Kakadu although we did see jumping crocodiles (ask us when we get back - the pictures say it all!!). We did camp for 2 nights in Lichfield though which was great, although very humid at night. Some of the park wasn't open for swimming in waterfalls etc though as due to the flooding they couldn't guarantee the water was crododile free!
West Coast Australia - we picked up another campervan in Perth and headed north towards Exmouth. The west coast is vast and we did a lot of driving to get from one place to another. The beaches were stunning, expecally Monkey Mia where we saw dolphins in knee deep water and Coral Bay with it's turquoise water.
In Exmouth we swam with whale sharks, well one whake shark which was 5 meters long. Apparently this was a small one, as they can grow to up to 18 meteres in length - still felt pretty big to us to have a 5 metre shark swim towards you! It was an incredible experience. After that we headed back down south and visited the Margaret River Region known for it's wineries - Alex was in her element! The South West coast is beautiful, it reminded us of home only with kanagroos in the fields instead of sheep.
Having recharged are batteries in Perth we head to Singapore for a few days before moving on to a Malaysian Island called Tioman. We visited Katie (Alex's friend) who runs a dive school over there. It is a stunning island and we were able to go snorkelling, diving and have a night on Katies Dad's yacht! We had a great time.
We stopped in KL for a couple of days and then caught a flight to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. We couldn't get over how cheap everything was compared to Australia so we lived like Kings for a few days. From here we did a two day trek out into the mountains which was hard work but the scenery made up for it. The trek also included bamboo rafting and an elephant ride so we had a great couple of days. We also did a thai cooking course which was brilliant although we were so full by the end of the day.
We decided it was probably time to move on so made our way to Laos. The boarder crossing was an interesting experience, very different from passport control in the UK. We then spent two days on a slow boat down to Luang Prabang. We loved Luang Prabang with it's laid back atmosphere and french colonial buildings.
Next we went to Vang Vieng which is famous for Tubing which basically involves floating down a river in an inner tube whilst stopping off at the numerous bars along the way. Needless to say we had fun.
Having stopped in the Vientiane (the Capital) we got a night bus (with beds) down to Paske and then caught a little boat over to the 4000 Islands in Southern Laos. These are a number of sand islands in the Mekong river near the border with Cambodia. We chilled out there for a few days before corssing the border into Cambodia!
Siem Reap was our first stop and once we had recovered from a 15 hour bus journey we hired a tuk tuk for a day and visisted the Temples of Angkor Wat. We got there at 5am in time to watch sunrise however it was too cloudy to see it! It was pretty impressive however after 6 hours of walking round temples we had enough! We then spent a couple of days walking the street markets and sampling the Cambodian food.
Another bus took us to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. We spent a day visiting the killing fields and the S21 prison learning about the Khmer Rouge. It was a really interesting day, although very sobering especially when you consider that it all happened so recently.
The following day we took yet another minibus to the Vietnamese border, as we'd sorted Vietnamese visas in London, we expected to pay fewer "processing fees" (bribes) to the border officials, but they still managed to get a couple of dollars out of us for a health certificate - a new one on us but there's no real option other than to pay it if you want to get in!!
We then headed to a place called Phu Quoc, the largest Vietnamese Island. This was intended as a bit of R&R (you'll understand that all this travelling's very stressful!) as Phu Quoc is billed as an undeveloped version of Phuket in Thailand. Although not quite as idyllic as we'd expected we still had a really relaxing 4 days, which also included hiring a scooter for a day. This was the first time either of us had ridden one so it was a good thing the Island's relatively quiet - less things to crash into! Although Paul did try his best when taking a wrong turn through the day market in the island's largest town.
A short flight to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) led us to our first scam of the Vietnamese trip (border officials aside) where a rather rapid taxi meter meant we ended up paying double the going rate from the airport to our hotel - good job everything's so cheap here! We visited the Vietnam war museum, took a day trip to the Mekong Delta and enjoyed some Bia Hoi (apparently the cheapest beer in the world at 15pence a glass - hangover wasn't the best the next day though)!
Anyway we're now making our way up the Vietnamese Coast and have about 2 weeks til we're home - we can't believe it's gone so quickly!
Hope all's well at home with everybody and looking forward to catching up with everyone when we're back.
Alex & Paul
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