Hello!

We are in Bali! Yesterday we left from Singapore and said an emaotional goodbye to all the fantastic people we met on the tour. The last stretch of the tour ( Bankok to Singapore) included many a late night,sleeping on the bus's and buckets of cocktails.... Their was 8 of us on this tour that were all 18 and we instantly bonded- we are meeting up with two of the girls, Alice and Amy, in Perth next week and we are all getting together in Brisbane on the 20th Feb. It feels weird to be away from everyone, our hotel last night was a real s***-hole so i've been on a bit of a downer. We are in Kuta at the moment and tomorrow we will travel to Pedang bai and then over to lombok, which is another Indonesian island that is apparently less tourist-y. The weather is absolutely boiling, and the hotel last night only had a crappy fan. I don't think ive updated since Hoi-an so I'll give a quick over-view of the best places weve been to....

Whale Island.

We were all so looking forward to Whale Island as it seemed that it would be an idillic little island. It was exactly this, but it rained! We tried to make the most of it, iinsisted on lying on the beach in the clouds and drizzle! We stayed in beach bungalos that were really cool. Lauren and I shared ours with Mari and Lisa. We will be going to stay with them next week in Perth. The big drama of Whale Island was this....I was layed on my bed, happily dozing when i heard a scraping...it was pretty weird and know-one believed me but it kept happening and then i felt something prodding me in the head....this just happened to be about a 30cm lizard that decided to climb into my sheets!!!!We spent about half an hour and a lot of screaming to finally get this lizard into a bin....very eventful! The following day Darren and I went Windsurfing which was pretty difficult as they only had phat sails that were wayyyyyy to heavy for me, i ached so much the day after. We were all a bit gutted about the weather, and the fact we left on new years eve to go and catch an overnight train to Saigon!

Saigon

We arrived at 5am new years day. Our cabin on the train was designated as the party carriage, but seeing as it was about the size of our downstairs loo, not much partying could actually go on! We stayed up till midnight and did the conga all the way down the train, to the annoyance of most of the other passengers haha.

Saigon as a city was pretty cool. It had more of an atmosphere than Hanoi, you could tell their were a lot more westerners about. In Saigon we visited the war museum that had lots of photos of the 'American war' (as they call it) really shocking stuff... The city was our first taste of being back in civilisation, we visited a shopping mall and it was weird to see all the crowds of shoppes, kinda scary! A group of us went to see the new James Bond movie, the Vietnamese really did have a strange sense of humour, they laughed at the weirdest parts! The second night we were here was the ned of the 1st tour, so we said our goodbyes by going out to 'apocalyse now' a typical vietnamese nightclub where id's say everyone woman apart from us were prostitutes, and every western man apart form us were looking to pick one of them up, ewwwwwww.

CAMBODIA.

Phnom Penh

The journey from Vietnam to Cambodia went quicker than i thought, we had a wicked game of eye spy(pah!) where i got slated for calling hooped earings 'hoops'.....you losers. Cambodian lanscape was a dramatic chande to Vietnamese. Things looked a lot lusher. We arrived at our hotel and then went to a chinese restaurant for lunch. Darren and I thought we would share some chilli beef, expecting it to be like home....but it was so spicey it gave me the shakes. Never again!!!! In Phnom Peenh we visited the Genocide museum and Killing fields. These were both very emotional places. The genocide museum was a former highschool where people would be taken and tortured and then taked to the killing fields. Barbed wire was everywhere and there thousands of photos of every person that was sent to the fields. The killing fields were surreal. As you wondered around you could see bones coming up from the ground and bits of rags of peoples clothes. It was probably the most difficult day we had. On a brighter note, we stopped off at an amazing market called 'the russian market' where all gap, h+m and abercrombie clothes are sold really cheaply as they are made in Cambodia...i was in my element! $1 for a gap t-shirt, woo hoo!!!

Siem Reap

Siem Reap was light relief after Phnom Penh. The town was fairly small, and had some great restaurants and Bars. One road, called bar street, was where it all happened. We had a good couple of night out here with the younger people of the grouip that joined us in Saigon. We are hoping to meet up with Yvette in Sydney(where she lives), and she may come to Fiji with us! We got up at 5am one morning to go and see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. This was amazing. Angkor Wat is where the Tomb Raider film was filmed, where all the huge rooted trees grow out of the old, falling down temples. The sun rose at about 6am, and we had prime position sat by the lake. Also whilst in Siem Reap we visited the landmine museum that was set up by a guy that used to work for the Khmer Rouge when we was little planting landmines. He now dedicates his life to getting rid of these mines with a small group of people, and donations form people that visit the museum.

THAILAND

Bankok.

We left Siem Reap at 5am by pick-up truck. We piled all our backpacks in the back of the truck and attempted to get comfy for the 5 hour journey we had ahead of us. Every bump we went over sent us flying, but it was a pretty funny trip. At one point Jon looked down at the floor and then back up again and was covered in roange dust, he looked like a right ginga!!That kept me ammused for the rest of the trip. We crossed the Thai border really smoothly and got tuk-tuks to the bus station, from which we had another 4 hour bus ride to Bangkok! So much travelling!!! The bus was pretty cushty though, and we have now mastered the art of falling asleep as soon as you get on the bus and waking up when we get to our destination....this means more energy to go out partying!!!!!

We met our new tour group here in Bangkok woho happened to be mostly our age.So good!The first night we went out together we went to a 'Ping-pong' show, thinking it would be funny but it was just dirty!Proper full on porn on stage, so we quickly left, es pecially when they started asking for more money....

Khao San road was brilliant, we were warned not to go their by our guide because of the recent bombings but we couldnt go to Bangkok and not Khao San road! The shopping there in the daytime was pro and then at night the bars were fab. Along the street they set up cocktail bars with loud blairing music so you can get really cheap drinks. Here in Bangkok i turned into a proper backpacker and got my nose pierced and 2 dreadlocks, haha. I don't look like a hippy though....

Bridge over the river Kwai

Cant remember the ctual name of this place, but it was a pretty dull day! Visited the bridge, that had been reconstructed as the real one had fallen down...got boats over to a floating restaurant for lunch which was nice and then went to some dull museums that the youngen's opted out of and went to have a nap in the cemetry! We were attracted to the cemetry as it had sprinklers going so we thought we might be able to have a cool down, haha. I think by this time we were just all wanting to get to Krabi, to deck out on the beach and chill...

xxx