Adelaide 20th-23rd February 2006 Arrive in Adelaide mid-afternoon after another easy flight across the country (much better than the rickety buses in SE Asia!). Decide to have a wander around the town and see what's what, including a walk around the lovely botanical gardens. We conclude that Adelaide has more of small town feel even though it is actually a city. It seems to have a great variety of restaurants and bars which suits us just fine. We decide ...

Sydney, 16th February - 20th February 2006 Unbelievably it started to rain as we arrived in Sydney. We hadn't seen rain in ages and had to touch it just to see how it felt and to remind ourselves. Thankfully this stopped pretty soon after and we got a taxi to our hostel (great taxi drivers in Sydney by the way, really chirpy and good humoured). We had a twin room which we quickly converted into a double (Carole Smilie eat your heart out) and went...

Ayers Rock 14th Feb - 16th Feb 2006 We first saw Ayers Rock from the plane as we arrived into the purpose built airport, as you can imagine a rock that sticks out so obviously on the landscape was pretty impressive at first sight. We couldn't believe the heat when we arrived (despite knowing that it was a desert, we're not that stupid). As we stepped out of the airport the heat was like someone hitting you in the face with a spade. Today it's a mild ...

Monday 6th February Up early again for the journey to KL. The bus leaves at 0830 am and we arrive at 1400hrs. It's one of those buses which have had the 4th set of seats removed giving a ridiculous amount of luxury. One can't help thinking that it would have been better served servicing the Hanoi to Vientiene route. Nevermind. The journey travels along a proper highway and everything and we can't help but be struck by the differences between Malaysia an...

Friday 3rd February 2006 Another long journey ahead of us. We get up early ready to leave at 7.00am - we are due to arrive in Penang at about 5.30pm and we will be getting three different "air-conditioned" minibuses on our journey. The first minibus takes us from Koh Lanta to Trang, next is from Trang to Hat Yai (near the Malaysian border) and finally from Hat Yai to Penang. It doesn't begin well when our first minibus is late in arriving. Amy begins...