Tuesday 20th MarchWe drive south to Lake Tekapo, entering Mackenzie country with it's massive flat plains, huge mountains and beautiful lakes. It's quite similar to Scotland, except the mountains are around 3 times the size! The lake is quite spectacular and it's a beautiful day. We've been told that tomorrow won't be a great day so if we want to get some good views of Mount Cook we should drive on to see it today.So we head further down the r...

Saturday 17th March - Happy St Patricks Day!Simon and I are on different flights to Christchurch with his coming in much later on tonight. On my flight I sit next to Alex who is a trainer for an electronics company. Turns out he's also a huge fan of his own country and has loads of pictures he's happy to show me on his laptop. He's also more than willing to rave about all the places I should visit.I get the bus into town and walk past the massive iris...

Thursday 15th MarchSimon and I flew to Sydney yesterday. The hotel is lovely and we have the most amazing view of Darling Harbour. We spend the day wandering around getting to know the place we'll come back and work in. You see we had a big discussion in Singapore about our itinerary and have decided to change things around a little bit, so we'll visit New Zealand now in summer/autumn, rather than in 4 months time in the middle of their winter. So we...

Wednesday 7th MarchIt's taken us 30 hours to get here and it's been a long tiring journey. We avoided being scammed for more money twice: first by the woman in Thailand who tried to convince us to pay her for Malaysian visa's (which are free to the British) and second by the bus driver when we got to Butterworth in Malaysia who also wanted money for customs to get into Singapore where our entry is also free! We did end up having to pay around $5 more ...

Thursday 1st MarchIt takes us 30 hours of non-stop travelling from Siem Reap to reach Ko Phangan. This is my last week with Kate before she heads off to Perth and around Australia. Simon arrives in 12 more days - very exciting.We stay at White Sand at Thong Nai Pan Yai beach on the north east coast of the island. It's beautiful, no hawkers, hardly any tourists, nothing to do but sunbathe and reflect on the last 4 months journey.I also try to forget that we...