After a comfortable albeit sleepless overnight bus ride from Sydney, I arrived in Melbourne at around 8 in the morning on Tuesday. I came here with 3 French-speaking girls - Kathleen and Claudia from Quebec (spelling?) and Amelie from Paris. Althought they all speak perfectly good English, they spent most of the time talking in colloquial French which was a little hard for me to understand, but I do feel I have learnt a few things from them. Admittedly, it was mo...

This is my last day in Sydney as I'm leaving for Melbourne tonight by bus. Since being here I've met so many great people, mainly at the Jolly Swagman backpackers' hostel. When I first arrived I felt really lonely but all that has fortunately changed. I've been hanging out with French, Germans, Swedes, Swiss, Canadians, Americans, Aussies...oh yeah, and 1 or 2 English too. If I had to choose my favourites, it would have to be my 3 German 'si...

So, now I'm in Sydney!My first few days here weren't great as I'd not slept in 2 nights and had a rather nasty case of the squits. After one night of staying in a ropey hostel which looked out on to a very noisy Kings Cross, I decided to find somewhere a bit quieter. The place I'm in now is very clean and basic but suits me fine as I can cook my own food. Yep, it's time to start saving pennies - SE Asia was sooo cheap in comparison to here.Aft...

This is going to be my last journal entry before leaving South East Asia. I've had such a great time here and feel a little sad that I have to move on.During my last few days here, I squeezed in a short visit to Laos. After one night in the remarkably quiet capital 'Vientiane', I met up with my Aussie friends Mike and Sally, as well as a Canadian guy called Dave, who looks remarkably like Chris Martin out of Coldplay. We caught a 'VIP' bus to ...

I came to Cambodia for 3 reasons. To see its temples, learn some history and try and give something back in return. Whilst the temples of Angkor were amazing, I also felt it necessary to learn of this country's more immediate past. Until today, I was embarrassingly unaware of what happened here during the mid 1970s under the reign of Polpot's Khmer Rouge regime. Sure, I did some reading up over the last few weeks, but none of that was quite enough to...