In our madness we decided to take the scenic route to Luang Prabang, Laos, as we had plenty of time and thought it would be nice to see Northern Thailand's countryside. What followed was a 5 day epic journey!! From Chiang Mai we took a public bus to Tha Ton, very close to the Myanmar border. It took about 4 hours winding up and down the mountains, through small villages to reach the 'town'. Really, it is no more than one main road and a river crossing through it...

Our first port of call in Thailand was Chiang Mai, in the north. Surrounded by jungle and mountains, this is the place to come to go trekking into the wilderness and to visit tribal villages. On our first night we had a quick look around the city, before heading off on our 2 day hike. We had opted for the road less travelled, but hadn't realised it was going to be so hard core!! On the morning of the trek, we first visited an elephant camp where we saw some more...

After a few days in wine country, we moved on to a small seaside town called Hermanus. This is where we booked on to our shark cage diving tour! The town is also well known for its whale population, which are clearly visible just off shore. Southern Right whales come to these shores every year to give birth to their young. From the various viewing points, you can see them playing around, splashing their fins and blowing water up! As the weather was poor out at s...

Upon arriving in Stellenbosch, around lunch time, eager to make our way to a winery for the afternoon, we quickly discovered we had actually left our passports back in the safe at the last hostel – 1 hours drive away! So instead of living the life of luxury, sampling various wines, we had to make a mad dash back to collect our passports and back again! Not a great start to our winelands experience!! So unfortunately our wine tasting didn’t start until the ne...

After a fairly wet and miserable start to our few days in Cape Town, we were relieved to see a ray of sunshine on the Friday that meant we could go over to Robben Island. The last 3 days’ trips had been cancelled due to high seas and bad storms, so our tour group was pretty packed with people eager to go and see the island. Unfortunately, at the minute the only way to visit the prison and the island is on one of these guided tours; normally we try to stay fairl...