So it was 11 months to the day that this all came to an end. 11 months between my arrival in Bangkok, til my departure from JFK in New York. Around the world in 335 days. I saw a lot.

My last stop along the way was in New York City. I flew from Vancouver via Toronto to NYC and made it just in time to join my sister Margot, au pairing north of the city, for New Years celebrations. What a blast! Margot organised to go to Bryant Park Grill - a popular night spot a few blocks from Times Square, where the crowds were fewer and the drinks prepaid, and we had a blast of a new years party. It was still a bit jam-packed, but I guess what can you expect from NYC on New Years. As the ball dropped in Times Square clouds of confetti came floating down to earth. The wind brought bellowing plumes of the stuff down onto the nightclub's glass roof. It was great partying with my sister, who I hadn't seen in over a year, since Christmas last year, back in South Africa.

Before I left NYC the two of us managed to see quite a bit of the city together - Brooklyn Bridge, down-town Manhattan - including ground zero, Wall Street, uptown-Manhattan and all its skyscrapers. Its a phenominal city - just huge and so busy. A bit too busy for my liking, but still a fascinating place. I think it was perhaps the time of year that I was there - there were just huge crowds of people everywhere - the year-end sales may have dragged the masses from their living rooms.

In many ways I wasn't all that excited about New York. I couldn't figure out why that was. Every country I had been to previously, had filled me with energy and an ambition to read as much about the place before I got there, but here I was in NYC and I just wasn't all that excited. Was it the cold? Don't think so - Canada and New Zealand were colder. The masses of crowds? I'd been in some busy places already - like the tourist crowds in Thailand, the train systems of Singapore, or the Christmas crowds of Oxford Circus in London. So what was it? I was boarding the plane at JFK, departing for London, and it was now pretty clear: I had been away long enough. I had seen enough. I had met enough people. Made enough friends. Re-packed my bag enough times. I wanted to go back to familiarity. To my old friends. Any random job. I wanted routine. And most of all - my own bedroom!!

So here I am in London now and its time to get real and find a job! Wish me luck!

I'll produce a final blognote on the stats of my trip sometime soon and I think that'll probably be it. Hope you enjoyed it

Totsiens!

Its all over now remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Portland and Seattle
I left San Francisco, headed up the north California coast and arrived in Oregon. Portland is another great north west city. Its small in comparison to San Francisco or Seattle, but its got a great restaurant scene and a lively micro-brewery industry. I hired a bicycle for a day and went over the multiple bridges that cross the Columbia River from where the city draws its name, and on day 3 there - hired a brand-new Toyota RAV4 and charged down the Columbia River gorge to see the numerous waterfalls and Mount Hood, which was mostly snowed out anyway.

After spending a few days in Portland, I went on through to Seattle - going by Amtrak's scenic Coast Starlight option, and then staying for a couple of nights at the city’s famous backpacker lodge, the Green Tortoise, which is also situated only a short walk from the home of coffee franchises – Starbucks – its first branch, at Pike market. There are now about 12,000 franchises internationally. I also went to the Needle, built for the World Fair back in 19-something, and the amazing EMP (Experience Music Project) museum dedicated to the rock scene in Seattle (it's incredible how many stars the city has produced – Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Presidents of the USA, Foo Fighters) and did some high rise viewing from the Columbia Centre. Other than that, I found Seattle quite boring - perhaps it was the cold that prevented me from seeing too much (even the needle was covered in cloud half the time I was there) - I did spend a lot of time in coffee shops getting away from a freezing sea breeze. Next time, I'll visit in summer.

Vancouver

My uncle David met me at the train station, once I'd crossed the border and faced some rough questions at Canada's border immigration office. I hadn’t seen him for nearly three years since our last meeting in Cape Town in early 2006. Little did I know that David and Heidi had plans in store for me - shoveling snow in their driveway. Shortly after arriving, there I was, shovel in hand, skin frozen to the metal handle, back virtually breaking, sweating away in sub-zero temperatures - clearing snow off the ground and salting the driveway. I had to work for my meals...
Well, not quite. But I did get to shovel snow when bad weather came in, which was great because it meant that the ski-hills would most likely be getting a good dumping of snow. Plus, the whole snow-thing was quite a treat. In South Africa, snow is pretty rare, and a good dump is considered to be any snow, even a few centimeters. So watching the snow fall was something I found myself doing quite a bit of. Amazingly, there were still a few crazies around wearing t-shirts outside, when the temperature read as -4c. What would they wear if they were in the Caribbean?

Vancouver is an amazing city - its built along miles of inlets and bays, and is surrounded by pine and maple forests, and stunning mountain backdrops. Its a gorgeous city and although its meant to be stunning in the summer, I'm glad I went in winter, especially with all the snowfall. David took me on a number of walks and it was great seeing the natural forest splendor of the area. Trekking in snow was also something of a novelty. Its just incredible how much people have to adapt in those cold conditions - whether its the tyre treads of your car, installing a heating room for wet jackets, waterproof boots for a quick stroll outside, the brief hours of daylight, gloves in case you touch a metal surface - there are so many considerations and changes that come about with the winter season in Canada. And this wasn't even the east coast, where its far colder.

So I got to see my cousins Chris and Sarah - it had been a long time since our last meeting. I got to meet Lisa's husband Ken (cousin in law??) as well. So all-in-all, it was pretty good getting some well-earned catch-up time in. The highlight of the trip was heading to Kelowna, the family destination for Christmas. That place is cold! On Boxing day the cousins and co headed up early to the nearby resort of Silver Star, where after pulling some sic snowboarding moves (for me, thats turning left and right consecutively, without falling over) we would get onto the ski-lift and head back up the huge slope. On the way up, the temperature dropped to -22c.... It was COLD! No amount of gloves and scarves can prevent you from freezing! In the evenings, Chris and I would warm up in the hot-tub. After enough dares, I'd head out to the snow, jump in it, and get back in the tub. Its pretty weird having icicles grow on your head while the rest of you is relaxed in hot water. The occasional beer or bottle of wine helped matters.
Ken's folks organised a hockey game for us in Kelowna - the local team - the Kelowna Rockets were playing against some rival team. Ken bought me a puk-head. I got to wear this at the game, until people starting complaining that I was blocking the view. Anyway, I'll add it to my party-dress wardrobe, right between my Nepali Hindu holyman gear, and the Balinese fisherman suit.

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My cousins - Sarah, Lisa, Ken, and Chris and Aunt Heidi (above).

It was great staying with family again - I've luckily had the opportunity a few times during the trip. David and Heidi made things very easy. But after 10 months on the road, it really makes a difference.

Just by the way - HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Shoveling snow in Vancouver remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Los Angeles:

Above: Hollywood Boulevard, Darth Vader about to end Tigger's happy existence, Venice Beach basketball, David 'Mitch' Buchanan, Manhattan Beach volleyball, LA Kings v Washington Capitals, Keith and I, Walt disney concert Hall.

Roadtrip:

Above: Joshua Tree National Park, the Grand canyon, Bryce Canyon, Smokey the Bear, The Mirage casino, paris??, Keith and his car, Keith's folks in Vegas and dog Baxter in front.

San Francisco

Above: Sather Tower at Berkeley campus, Uni of california; berkeley Bears playing at home; cheerleaders; SF skyline; Alcatraz; Golden Gate Bridge - the most amazing bridge I've ever seen.

Shlugger visits America remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Unknown to most tourists, Hollywood is spectacularly dodgy. Its full of creeps. Still confused with the city layout after being in LA for 8 days, I decided I'd buy an illustrated map of the city. A couple of crazies glared at me as I crossed the street on the way to the gimmicky little map shop. One even tried to shoulder - charge me, but he seemed to change his mind when he was a foot away from me and stopped right in front of me. I kept walking down Hollywood Boulevard. I picked up the map and walked over to the cashier to pay. At that moment, another crazy ran passed the shop screaming and flinging his arms above his head. He had a long beard and old clothes on. The cashier says "He's high on crack. They all high on crack. Do you know what crack is?" I was still focusing on the crazy but when I looked at him and his raised eyebrows, it seemed he was trying to lull me into some sort of drug deal. I mumbled something about having to go, and took the map. I also witnessed some oscar worthy performances from some bird and her pimp (I think) and some guy trying to get a free drink at McDonalds which led to the outlet closing down for the next 10 minutes as the cops where called and the drinks machines put on hold.
There are definitely more crazies in America than anywhere else. Apparently there is a story about bums and beggars being dropped off in LA by other city metropoles in California and Arizona. There definitely seemed to be a lot of bums around.

Los Angeles: "The Angels"

LA is a mega-city. It is absolutely huge. There are a vast amount of freeways throughout the city, and cars everywhere. Its extremely cosmopolitan, and suprisingly, given the political climate with Iran, there is a large Iranian presence in the city too. Even more of a suprise, is that large parts of Beverley Hills are dominated by the Iranian community. The city, and all of southern California as well as Arizona, is supported by the Colorado River. It never rains in LA, perhaps only a dozen days a year. As a result, I was wearing shorts everyday, despite it being near the height of winter. Perfect weather.

My old pal Keith Davis met me at the airport. Its been 9 years since we last saw each other when I was back in first year at varsity in Grahamstown. Keith had been on exchange for a semester and we've kept up ever since. There was a lot of catching up to be done. Keith's a great host - he took me to so many of the famous places in LA - Venice Beach (bumped into a drugged-out hippie party on the beach, and saw all the famous basketball courts where street teams compete aggresively for the courts), Santa Monica Boulevard (street musicians as well as the famous pier), Mulholland Drive (where James Dean crashed his bike), Manhattan Beach, Bel Air (unbelievable mansions), Beverley Hills and the San Fernando valley (full of all the famous studio houses). When Keith was working I cruised about the Hollywood area, and wandered up to the Hollyood Hills, or the various boulevards - Sunset Blvd especially. There is a lot to see in the city - its truely massive. The day I went up to the Hollywood Hills I found the view even smoggier than expected - the fires at Yorba Linda (outlying district) were creating such a haze that I couldn't see downtown LA. The entire valley was grey and the next day ash was falling over Hollywood. Being in LA was a surreal experience - especially for someone from outside the US - all the names, places, buildings - are familiar - I've seen them in so many movies and shows that it feels like I've been there already. I kept saying "This is just like the movies!" and then Keith would mock me. Keith was always pointing out something from some movie.

Dr Phil, my hero

I did a day trip to Universal Studios, but found it less than impressive, its one of those places where you need to be with mates, or perhaps just 15 years younger I also went to Paramount Studios for a studio tour - that was great. Unfortunately we had to witness Dr Phil rounding off one of his shows with his legion of bored housewife fans. This was excruciatingly painful to say the least. Dr Phil was walking along this fan-filled aisle up to his studio stairs and his legion were just cheering and cheering. There were guys hanging just out of sight from the camera's who were revving up the crowd every 30 seconds or so. Dr Phil looked in our direction, aknowledged us, and then made some corny, lame-ass joke to his die-hard legion, who erupted into hysterics (some of the fans almost did some Beatles-mania faint maneauvres). Yuuurghh. Anyway, the rest of the tour was great. We saw a few famous people on set, between takes (well I didn't recognise them, but apparently they're big news).

Living the dream: Roadtrip into the American South West

Keith got a week off from work over the Thanksgiving break, and we headed out west from LA, with the intention of hitting some of the the national parks in California, Arizona, and Utah, with a final fling in Las Vegas, where his folks live. We hit Joshua Tree National Park just outside of LA. This was a symbolic moment for me as I've been a big U2 fan for years, thanks to old school mates. Like hardened U2 fans, we played their greatest album - The Joshua Tree - at full volume. Fortunately there weren't any tourists about. After about half an hour we came across our first Joshua Tree. It looked like a big cactus... We took some pics and moved on! The build up was better than the real thing!

Our first night was in Phoenix, a massive, sprawling city - seemingly endless, and with random suburbs spreading for many miles beyond the downtown area. Its fascinating to see - the city is quite literally built in the desert. Another example of the the wonders of the Colorado River and the Hoover dam. I couldn't help but wonder how this city would deal with a massive petrol price hike - its so spread out that building any public transport system would cost a vast fortune. I reckon a massive price hike would cripple the city, and LA, for that matter.
Its so spread out that we struggled to find a hotel. When we finally did, we found ourselves in Tempe, considered completely seperate from Phoenix city. We dropped off our stuff and headed into the Tempe area of Phoenix, which is the home of Arizona University students. No problem! We ended up in Hooters, which was quiet anyway.
Phoenix is a little strange in my opinion - its so spread out that I think it loses a lot of character.

We rose late and cruised north to the Grand Canyon, passing a few small towns along the way. Keith stopped at a typical Diner and there was some great people watching in order. It was like another world. Guys were even arriving in hunting gear with rifles strapped to the backs of their "buggies." Later, we stopped off at some old Native American cliff dwellings and at Sunset Crater national park. Both were absolutely gorgeous. Sunset Crater is a large dried out lava field - a total moonscape. Arriving late at night at the Grand Canyon, we almost hit an elk caught in our spotlights. Keith freaked out. (Maybe it was all the long hours on the open, desert roads) Still, it was pretty funny. I was also freaking out, but mostly because Keith was making me listen to Annie Lennox. Roadtrips are one thing, but inviting Annie Lennox to the party is something else altogether. He's a borderline Annie fan, which is shameful. Day 3 and we did a small trail into the Canyon. Its unbelievably huge. You start to feel that you are looking at a painting, because it just doesn't feel real. Its that big. There are some great walks and viewpoints along the ridge and we cruised along the edge stopping every now and then to get some pics. The sunset was great - the canyon went bright red and I got some great pics.

Utah: Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks

Another day, another state. Utah was next, and the deserts kept rolling in. We crossed the north-eastern point of the Grand Canyon, and went over the Colorado River, which was stunning with its bright green waters. Keith and I even met a Navajo woman later, on the rim of the Canyon. She was pretty engaging and told us lots about the culture and the squaw dances they still do every year. We managed to reach Bryce Canyon as the sun was setting, which was fortunate because the next morning it began to snow. We managed to walk a trail down into the canyon and get out as the weather turned icily cold and the snow started to come down quite hard. Bryce is spectaclar. It is a small canyon with bright red rocky pinnacles surrounding its rim. It has a planet Mars feel to it. The viewpoints, once again, were great.

Zion is spectacular, but in a different way. The highlight of the park is a cliff viewpoint that looks out over enormous domed mountains. There is a stream and valley below the viewpoint, and the entire place just makes you feel so insignificant. Its one of the most amazing viewpoints I've been too. I think that says a lot taking into account this year of travel so far. I could have sat there all day staring at the domed mountains ahead of the viewpoint.

Viva Las Vegas!

Vegas is unreal. As you can imagine, its all the glitz and glamour of the casinos world, along with as much sleaze and as many slimeballs as you could possible have in one place. The city has plenty of character! I think half of Mexico is there too. Keith gave me a few tours of the city and its famous casino's, but the highlight for me was spending my first thanksgiving in America, with his family. It was great doing the whole turkey thing, and staying in the comforts of your own bedroom, if only for while! Hostels get to you eventually! Keith's brother and sister-in-law came through from New York and it was great meeting them too.

So I'm in Portland, Oregan now. I've just been in San Francisco for three days, and they were epic. The city is definitely a place I could live, if the oportunity ever presented itself. Golden Gate was magnificent. I've only been in Portland for a few hours and it looks nice too. Its meant to be the micro-brewery capital of the US, so I'll have to conduct some firm investigations into this statement.

Til next time, ciao.

Roadtrip through deserts in the South West remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Sunsets and Parties in the Mamanuca's

The chief at Bounty Island. When he isn't singing he's teaching you how to open coconuts, clean turtles(?!), cook taro, etc.

Thats Castaway Island on the right. This is the view from Mana Island, my favourite - what a place, what a crowd.

View of the pier from Mana Island.

Drinking games, and the English are unstoppable.

Contemplation as the games get underway... what DID they put in my cup?

Don and Fred - local legends. Fred can make you believe anything.

After 2 weeks marooned on a little island I turned around and saw another island. Freedom!

The Journey to Taveuni

Yes, that is a loader that fell over during the voyage. All the trucks couldn't get out, except by squeezing through on the far left, which meant putting a few dings in the trucks. It took them three hours to sort this out. The MV Sophie.. never again.

The gents - pictures can't describe the horror I felt when I walked in here. And shock. And horror. Then the army of cockroaches arrived in our cabin.

Bus trips are always entertaining and the kids often take great interest in you.

Taveuni: Beauty above and below the sea

Taveuni is full of dense greenery, and deep blue seas filled with coral reefs.

Vuna Lagoon, always beautiful.

Jerry has a phobia for buses and little kids. This did not bode well for our trip.

The fireflies are just massive in Fiji. Wait til you see the bats.

Buzzy, a pro golfer in hiding, putting for glory, with Bruce our Instructor watching. M'Ok.

Jerry was always having a bit of "Jerry-time," as he called it. He'd go for little wanders down the beach and skip stones on the water and things like that.

Tracker is the puppy at Vuna Lagoon that has in excess of 1000 fleas. So we called him Fleabag.

Vanua Levu and Dolphin Bay

I spent 16 nights camped 10 meters from these waters. Paradise.

Out on the boat.

Studies were made difficulty thanks to the attentions of Carrycat, one of nine cats at Dolphin Bay.

A local Scottish-Fijian Tribesman with his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle partner on Halloween.

Rose - abusing animals again. She was always throwing them off tables or something. The ginger cat is foxy and is the greatest cat in the world.

The Levena Coastal Walk. The entire coastline is covered in coral reef. If you walk out to them and peer over the edge, it drops off into big coral walls. There must be so much life down there cos there is very little fishing in the area.

Tovoro Falls, Taveuni. This is where one of the famous scenes from Return to the Blue Lagoon was filmed. I kept waiting for a naked Milla Jovovich to arrive but she never did.

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Island - hopping and kava -drinking in paradise

A mate of mine in London recommended that as soon as you get to Fiji you should book a trip out to the Yasawa's and Mamanuca's island groups. Ferries go every day, dropping people off at their preferred island and then they hop on again for a few more days at another island.
So I took the Yasawa's Flyer ferry, getting off at the second stop - Bounty Island. Its quiet and chilled there, and the chief (I think) greets you wearing a floral shirt and a guitar in hand as you jump onto the beach from the transfer boat. I spent loads of time reading, and doing very little other than kayak and snorkel. One night, the chief decided it was time for some kava. Kava is the drink of the south Pacific, its available on most island groups from the Solomon's to Tonga. Its ground up from roots and mixed with water inside a large kava bowl, and looks and tastes like very dirty dishwater! The correct way to drink it is to clap your hands before receiving the kava cup, to thank your host after downing it ("Vinaka!"), and to clap three times afterwards again - to show appreciation. It has a fierce reputation. Although, in Fiji, it is a mild drink. It does not contain alcohol, but instead is a form of hallucinogenic. Although I had quite a few cups on several occasions, I never really felt much of an effect. What you DO feel is a dullness of your senses and a dead mouth and tongue - sort of like the feeling you may get after you've been to the dentist and had a local anesthetic injection somewhere in your mouth. Its not like beer, but it does leave you very relaxed and not too keen to do anything really. Perfect!

Two days of relaxation and I headed to Beachcomber Island, the so-called 'party island.' What you can do here is tan, tan some more, tan again, and then party from happy hour each night. Standard routine. It simply amazed me how much time some of the girls spent in the sun - perhaps 6 hours, through midday, and often until the sun goes down. There were a lot of pink people there. The sun in Fiji is as fierce as I've ever experienced.
Since I don't tan very well, I started reading again during the day (shady spots only), and hit the bar in the evening. I walked around the island in five minutes - its tiny. There is only one dorm, and it takes 130 people, boys on one side, girls on the other. If you had cash to spare, you could stay in a bure, complete with hammocks and a patio looking onto your own little section of the beach. I splashed out and went jet-skiing, since I hadn't done it before. Over-rated, I reckon. I got chatting to the manager of the island, Vince - a local Fijian of British descent, and it was fascinating hearing his stories of the filming of the Tom Hanks' film Castaway. He recommended the island that they ultimately filmed on, met Steven Spielberg during filming, and even baby-sat Tom's kids.
After blowing the budget on over-priced beers for 2 days, I decided it was time to head to Mana Island - which I had heard so much about from my Irish mate Gary in New Zealand.

Mana is the perfect destination for "chillaxing", one of the Irish girls, Siobhan (pro. Chevon) told me. I stayed at Mana Lagoon Backpackers, and what a classic backpacker place. The crowd was awesome, the food filling, the drinks cold, the beach straight out of a postcard, and the hill views at sunset - unbeatable. On one of the days, a big crowd of us - from Maryland, Holland, UK, Ireland, Sweden, France, Germany and all sorts of other places - headed up and witnessed the most amazing sunset. It was a champagne moment - but where do you get champagne in a place like this?! The sun set not far away from the cliffs of Hanks' movie, and it was a perfect setting. (In the movie they make out as though there are no islands in view of castaway island, but there are in fact half a dozen all around it).

The MV Sophie, aka Noah's Arc

After lazing about about for days, and literally missing the boat a couple of times (its that chilled out) I decided it was time to focus on diving. So I headed back to Nadi, amidst sad farewells and many facebook promises, and booked a trip on the MV Sophie from the capital Suva to Savusavu, on the other big island, Vanua Levu. Little did I know that the trip would be classified as my worst after 8 months of travel. Luckily, I shared a cabin with Brits Holly and Rachel. We took first class - basically you get a cabin. Anything less, and its the big seated area with screaming kids, indoor picnics, and snoring old men everywhere. We got into our cabin, and there were cockroaches crawling out of the beds. We moved cabins. Still cockroaches in the beds. We then saw that there were rust holes linking all the cabins, and that one way or another we would have a couple of friendly little cockroaches sleeping with us tonight. Then we departed, and the boat started to roll about in the rough seas. A few people spewed on the deck outside the cabins. I needed the toilet later, and came across the most decrepit, unhealthy, uncared for, men's bathroom I have ever seen. The toilets seats could not even open because the doors blocked them (difficult to explain). Sleep was difficult - all the lolling about gave Rachel and Holly sleepless nights.

In the morning I bade them farewell - I would continue with the ferry to Taveuni, and the Brits got off at Savusavu. Little did I know that downstairs in the cargo hold, there was a problem. The construction loader had fallen off its transport truck and was preventing all the other trucks from getting off. They literally had to squeeze through a small gap to get out, creating nice little dents on each truck.
I asked one of the cargo guys: "How long til we go?"
"One hour perhaps," came the reply.

One hour later and no progress. I picked up my bag, bade the MV Sophie a tearful goodbye, and headed into town. I met the Brits again, and 2 hours later during breakfast, the MV Sophie departed. Incredible ship that.
While in Savusavu we headed out to the town of Lembasa, home of Lonely Planet's highly-rated Monolithic Gods site. After a 3 hour bus journey (average of 10km/h) we got to the site. I must admit, its times like these you want to wring Lonely Planet's neck. Why on earth has this place received so much coverage in their guide book???!! It was quite literally a long rock sticking out of the ground, and a few other rocks showing evidence of ancient cannibalism, and what must have been a stone village once, but resembled someone's nicely laid out rock garden. Pathetic. Anyway, the villagers were friendly enough. We then had a 3 hour bus journey to look forward to again...
After a couple of days I headed over to Taveuni, where my dive courses began.

I'll try update with some pics soon - don't hold your breathe though, this internet cafe can't even load up facebook.

Mamanuca's in Fiji remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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My visit started in Auckland. I was pretty suprised at the size of the city - its much smaller than I expected. In fact, that pretty much sums up NZ - large parts of the country almost feel deserted - there is often not a soul around, especially in the south island. Auckland's Sky Tower is impressive - the views of the Auckland area are something else. The city centre is pretty small - I saw most of it in under an hour. My backpacker's room was eventually ok; I decided to move to my own room after coming across two fly-infested dorms (some funky, ripe old food in some bags I think). I met up with old East London mate Brendon Sparg on the waterfront for some drinks. It was great catching up, and Brendon introduced me to a few great Kiwi brews.

Without going into detailed daily accounts, I'll give you some of my highlights from the last three weeks in New Zealand:

Rotorua and the Maori cultural show:
So a bus picks you up for a cultural show, and before you know it, some massive Maori guys are just about decapitating our selected 'chief' and sticking their tongues out at us, doing the whole eyeball thing, and generally making every tourist squirm, as we are challenged to enter their 'village.' Then you go into the village, have a fat chat with these guys who have just threatened us with our lives, and eat 'hangi' - a kind of stew cooked under the ground with hot rocks/coal. A good experience, but unavoidably touristy.
Rotorua is also something of a hot spring capital, with various areas throughout the town closed off to public access because of boiling mud and geysers. There was a field of geysers just outside our YHA backpackers. As it turned out, the YHA is run by the grumpiest staff in New Zealand, and upon enquiring as to why the bar and restaurant closed at 7pm ("If there's no one in the bar, we close!"), they directed Irishman Gary and myself to another eatery. We didn't know as we set out in the dark, but the owner had directed us straight through the geyser field. We barely escaped with our lives. She probably sends all complainants there. That's were all the missing backpackers in New Zealand can be found, I reckon...

The Magic Bus:
The Magic Bus (www.magicbus.co.nz) is full of characters. The most interesting are the bus drivers, mostly because they are partly crazy. Since they are tour guides, they fill us in with interesting facts, such as the story of the possums: apparently there are either 19 million, 25 million, or 80 million possums in New Zealand, they are destroying the forests and they came from Australia. I didn't know this. Other fascinating facts are that you cannot sue in New Zealand, a Japanese guy once fell into 200 degree boiling mud and died, NZ is the most dangerous country in the world, and other facts. Sarcasm aside, the bus guides are pretty good blokes and apart from the occasional questionable fact, give you some pretty interesting stories about New Zealand, which keeps the trip pretty well entertained. They also stop off at great lookouts for photo opportunities, which lets you see so many great spots as you journey through the countryside. There are interesting passengers on the bus - I've met loads of Irish, English and Australian travellers.

Tramping in New Zealand
NZ is great for terkking, or tramping, as they say here. So far I have done walks through Tongariro National Park (Mordor from Lord of the Rings), Abel Tasman National Park and a little trip out to the Franz Josef glacier. All have been spectacularly beautiful. I've also done a bit of cycling - hiring bikes at Rotorua to see the Blue and Green lakes just outside the town. Like I said, and as you can see, NZ is spectacularly beautful.
Summitting Mt Ngauruhoe (Tongariro Crossing) felt like quite an achievement, but unfortunately the weather had closed in for most of the day, and the spectacular views that it is famous for were completely blocked by mist and sleet, which was worsened by the bitter, cold wind. It was still pretty cool seeing the area where the Mordor scenes were filmed though.

Wine tour and rugby in Napier:
I visited my mates from Nepal, Jason and Philippa Readpath, in Napier. What a great town. Pip took me on a cycling wine tour (hmm....poor combination?) on her day off. We mountain-biked through farm backroads and ended up on a Pacific beach. It was pretty weird seeing an old concrete World War 2 bunker on a quiet, desolate beach near Napier - built for the expected Japanese invasion back in 1942. You kind of forget just how far-reaching the 'world wars' were sometimes.
Pips and I then headed off to the vineyards, where we sampled some great white wines, and added knowledgable comments such as 'clearly an autumn harvest,' and 'yes, 2004 - a great year' to taster conversations. The Mission is a great little winery.
On the way home, Jason called to announce that a rugby match would be on later that night. Hometeam Hawke's Bay v Taranaki, the big, superior rivals!! And, big suprise... the hometeam won! It was a great game, and the local provincial rugby scene reminded me a lot of the domestic rugby atmosphere back home in South Africa.
Overall, I really liked Napier - its a great town.

Windy Wellington
I met up with my old Wimbledon housemate Gen Talbot in Wellington, and she took me all over the place - Wellington, although often cold and chilly, seems to have quite a trendy arts scene. Its headed up by the most amazing museam - Te Papa. Personally, I think its far better than any museum I've seen in London. I was really impressed. The city is spread out and runs along a large bay. Fortunately, the weather cleared and we managed to walk up to a great viewpoint on my last day in Eastbourne, Wellington to get some photos of the bay.

Snowboarding in Queenstown
Wow wow wow!! Well, what can I say - snowboarding is just awesome. I love the sport, and may well be addicted now. If you've done it before, you'll know how cool it is. I went to the Remarkables Ski Resort for two days. Queenstown is also unbelievably beautiful - the views from the hillside down to the town, and up to all the surrounding mountains are really incredible. I stayed at another YHA, along with the Irish and Aussie crowd from the Magic Bus. I'm kind of glad to be leaving tomorrow - this town sure can break the bank!

Til next time when I'm in Fiji, adios!

The land of the Long White Cloud remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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My 5 week tour began in Sydney. I stayed with my uncle Jim - hadn't seen him in 11 years, and it was great catching up after so long. It was great hearing all his London and Sydney stories. I also appreciated having my own bedroom for a change, which, after months away from normalcy, means a lot to a backpacker!
Like all good Sydney tourists I headed straight to that little opera house and the Sydney Harbour bridge. Fortunately, the trip to Jim's place meant that I would have to pass right by both of these incredible structures everyday while in Sydney. For me, the bridge is more spectacular. Its truely magnificent. It's also called the Iron Lung, as it kept so many people employed during the depression of the 1930's.



Uncle Jim - Freshwater, Sydney

Sydney has a peculiar mix between sprawling, busy city and quiet suburbia. Its a nice city.

Roadtrip up the NSW coast and Brisbane

I decided the best way to see Australia was to hire a car and head west of Sydney via the Blue Mountains and then north to my mate Craig Rheeder in Brisbane, Queensland. The trip took 8 days. What a great way to see New South Wales.
On the way to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, I passed the Sydney Olympic Park. Its incredible. I'd hate to know how much nations spend on hosting this event. Basically, the equivalent of a medium-sized town is built to cater for it. The number of stadiums, grounds, stands, etc is ridiculous - they spread out for miles. Of course, there's plenty of extra's like big parks, fountains, a variety of sporting monuments, and all that, that must have been built to conform to the whole Olympic 'spirit' the IOC demands. It is beautiful though, and its still used today, as there were a number of conferences and sports events being held when I went there.

Sydney Olympic Park

Katoomba is a great little town - the famous Three Sisters are there, and a number of beautiful ridges that have spectacular viewpoints and drop-offs into a large gorge below. It was even colder here than in Sydney. In fact, I think I wore boardshorts only once or twice in my five weeks in Australia - total opposite of what you would expect from Australia. I headed north with Camilla (my Camry Altise - got a free upgrade from the little Yaris I was meant to get... ). Along the way, there were plenty of great viewpoints and I kept stopping to take pics. The Australian bush is really beautiful. I stayed at YHA's (youth hostels) the whole way up, spending only a night at Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, and Byron Bay. they were all pretty similar I thought, and a little boring actually. Byron Bay has a good party scene, but for a change I didn't get involved. My favourite spot was the Hunter's Valley YHA - the hostel organised a full day wine tour of the local wineries, and of course, I thought this needed investigation. The wineries had no problem plying the group with their wines, and I responded by getting a few bottles for later on the roadtrip. Some great red's I must say! There was also a micro-brewery next door, which was investigated as well, and received a fine quality check on all of its lovely brews.


Camilla - my Camry Altise

Koala at a sanctuary in Port Macquarie

Byron Bay lookout

I headed into Brisbane and my old pal Craig picked me up in town. Criag and I have been mates since we were 3 or something, having met via our folks when they joined the King William's Town Round Table organisation back in the early eighties. It was awesome catching up, and I spent the days exploring the city and the nights heading out for drinks or dinner with Craig and his mates. Its another cool city, the south bank area was my favourite. The city sits on a river and well-developed and its easy to get around. I'd say that Brisbane was my favourite city in Oz, although I can't comment on Melbourne and Adelaide. Craig and housemate Lawson took me to Nussa Heads on the Saturday that I was there - which is basically a hangout for retired billionaire's. I saw a real live Wallaby there (most are roadkill I think). We also saw a naked guy taking a little stroll down the beach, which was disturbing.

Lawson, Craig and I at Nussaheads

Prosepine and Richmond

I've been really keen to see my aunt, uncle and cousins in Prosepine, Queensland since I left for my travels back in February. I caught a flight from Brisbane and my aunt Joy and uncle David met me at the airport. Joy is my dad's sister. It was awesome staying with the family. It was like being home away from home - no noisy backpacker going through multiple plastic packets in his bag at 5am, no security lockers and no rusty doublebunk beds. My cousins Pam, Linda and Myles all came in from various parts of Queensland to see me over the course of my stay. I hadn't seen the girls for years so it was great catching up. The family is traditonally into cattle farming, but got into cane farming a few years back. I asked David why he went into something so different... "Another drought would have killed me!" he said. I thought he was exaggerating until Joy and David took me to their cattle ranch 500 km inland.... proper outback territory. Without a doubt, you have to be pretty tough to succeed out there. The land is flat, hard grassland, that stretches for miles and miles. The cattle are supported by boredrains - the boreholes having been drilled more than 300m into the earth to reach water levels. The water comes out hot and runs for miles down the boredrains to various yellow pastures. There are no other sources of water for most of the year and there are few trees to stand under to get under some shade. A short stint in the sun left me sunburnt, and it is the height of winter there right now! Farms are many kilometers apart - a visit for tea, or preferably a cold beer, takes about 15-20 minutes to your nearest neighbour! It's tough out there!

Cane flowers.

The wattle tree - this is why Aussies wear green and yellow national sports gear.

Iron man.

Joy and David - on the way to Richmond.

A highway 'train' - note the three trailers.

A black-headed-python on Gracedale.

The old sheep sheering shed.

David shoeing a racehorse for his dad Bob on the way to Richmond.

Kronosaurus tooth inspection. Richmond has the best kronosaurus fossil in the world. (That's a big sea monster from long, long ago, for those who are wondering.)

A Kookaburra - this is the funniest bird you'll ever hear. Its ridiculous.

Myles laying out some "pots" in the Whitsundays islands. Mud crabs are absolutely massive crabs - loads of good meat!

Me on the famous Whitehaven beach. The smile soon changed to sheer horror though, as the wind had picked up heavily, and our voyage back to the mainland sufferred a few minor setbacks. I realised this when David mentioned it was perhaps time to put our lifejackets on halfway through the straight and at the bottom of a giant swell...

David and son.

Motor-cross at Prosepine.

Mud crab. These things are seriously nasty crabs. They could easily chop off a finger or two. Not this one though, it ended up in the hot pot mmmm

Inside a cane harvester. Everyone should have one of these bad-boys - they are awesome!

Yes, thats me in a small plane. Yes, those are harness straps over my shoulders. Yes, that is a man with a parachute attached to his back. Yes, I'm attached to him. No, I actually did jump. Yes, I was scared.

The chicken of death

Me and the cuzzies. We tricked Pam into rapping. Myles and I are her pimps.

The Townsville Amateurs

David's dad, Bob, got us some tickets to the Townsville Amateurs. What a cool event!! There was actually a horse called Slugger there, so I placed a bet on it. It came last, or second last, I couldn't tell. Damn thing.

Bob, Myles and I - dressed to the 9's.

Linda at the races, dressed to the 9's as well.

Myles pointing the way from Castle hill viewpoint in Townsville.

Back in Sydney, I had some time to see old friends and Jim once more before heading out to New Zealand for the next leg of the world tour. I managed to stay with my old primary school mate Ryan and his wife Kilmeny and once again do some big catch-ups. Life passes by so fast sometimes...
Ryan tried to tuck me in for bed the one night I was there, so I thought I should leave pronto as things were getting dodgy... Kilmeny - watch that husband of yours.

I managed to see another Dutch traveller from the Philippines - this time Astrid, who I met in dodgy Manila. She's in Sydney working in dentistry.

Then, last but not least, I saw Jim one last time before flying out. I hate goodbyes.

Australia has been great. It is an amazing country, and I can see why people want to live there - it has a lot going for it. Perhaps one day I'll return for a look-see...

But now, New Zealand, and this place is crazy!! What a fun place to travel to. Sabs Birch - sorry for the 6 week delay in getting this blog note out, I'll get the next one out much sooner than that!!!

See ya later, mate!
Sweet as...

Australia remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Kota Kinabalu is a pretty nice little city. I stayed at North Borneo Cabins - a classic backpackers lodge. I met Brits Tom, Natalie and Becs - and we hit the local bar Hunters for some well-earned Carlsberg Towers on a couple of nights. Our pool playing skills declined as the nights grew longer.

Pulau Sipidan:
The city (KK) is centrally located for plenty of adventure stuff: rafting, climbing, jungle trekking, etc. I used it as my base for a few days and after doing the rafting I headed to the world-famous island of Pulau Sipidan/Sipadan for some ridiculous diving. My accommodation: an oil rig...! I dived with SeaVentures, an operation based off the beautiful Mabul Island. To cut the diving talk short, I can honestly say that Pulau Sipidan is the most amazing underwater experience a person can get, either through scuba or simply snorkeling. To give an example - I was taking a break on the island after my first morning dive and decided to go snorkel for a few minutes. I entered the water and within 60 seconds an enormous turtle had swum passed me, a reef shark cruised beneath me and a giant barracuda was just chilling in the current a few meters from me. I stuck with the turtle for a while and we cruised along the reef for about five minutes, only a meter apart. It didn't mind at all.
I ended up doing 13 dives on Sipidan and Mabul. I was blessed with massive amounts of sealife on every dive, Sipidan in particular because it is an island that literally rises straight from the depths of the ocean. On one side of the island the water drops to a 900m basin, while on the othe side it drops to 2km's. You literally do wall diving where you stare into the inky blue beneath you, knowing that the deeper you go, the bigger the fish get! I stayed pretty shallow...
On the way back from one of the dives, we came across some whales. The skipper lined up the boat so that the whales came right passed us. They were perhaps 8 meters away when the the last whale decided to dive deeper. It was incredible watching it spurt water right in front of us, and then lift it's tail into the air as it dropped down to deeper water.

On the last dive, I saw perhaps forty turtles. It was crushing leaving the island, but there was more in store for me at Gunung Mulu National Park...

Gunung Mulu National Park:
Gunung Mulu National Park is famous for a number of things: The Pinnacles (weird limestone formations on top of a mountain), immense rainforest, massive flora and fauna diversity, and the world's biggest caves. I took a little MASWings twin-propellor plane to Miri (re-named 'Miri Resort City' with lots of cheasy adverts at the airport), and then flew in to Mulu airport, which is more of an airfield. Its brilliant actually: to ensure good conservation, the park managers decided years ago, that to prevent the chopping down of the rainforest, they would make the park accessable only by air, or boat. No roads lead into the park.

[As a sidenote, flying from Kota Kinabalu to Miri allows you to see the infinite wealth of the small nation of Brunei.

It only takes 10 minutes to fly past the country, but if you look north out to sea, you'll notice dozens and dozens of massive oil rigs just a couple km's from the coastline. The Sultan is clearly still making a killing - apparently he owns 3000 cars or so.]

The park has plenty to offer in terms of adventure. First on the list were the famous Deer and Lang's caves. Wow. I tried to take some pictures to illustrate the sheer immensity of the Deer Cave cavern, but sometimes pictures just can't match actually being there. Visitors walk through the rainforest along a wooden boardwalk starting from the main camp, and after 3km's of dense, wet forest, you face some large limestone cliffs. The one cliff face has an enormous cave entrance and once you get into it, you find yourself inside the world's largest cave cavern.
My first thought was that it resembled the inside of a hollow mountain. Its that big. The park states that you could fit 5 St. Paul's Cathedrals into the cavern alone, and 40-odd Boeing 747's into the entire cave. It is enormous!! There are numerous waterfalls INSIDE the cave, falling from the ceiling, 120-160m above you, as well as a river that flows right through the cave system. One of the fascinations of the cave are the 3 million bats residing inside (you're never sure if its water dripping onto your head or guano!) Most afternoons, the bats depart from the cave in huge groups to feed on the insects of the rainforest. However, viewing this amazing event takes some luck, as it rains a lot in Gunung Mulu, especially in the afternoon. And when it rains in Mulu, it rains hard!
After three 6km round trips to the caves, and being drenched on the way back every time (raincoats are useless in such downpours), the bats finally decided to make a trip out of the cave for some food on my third lucky viewing. The bats exit in small groups at first, becoming progressively larger as the evening light fades. They fly in formation, resembling a giant snake, swirling about and moving as one. Thousands of little bats make up each group, and you can hear them, chattering away as they fly over the rainforest canopy. Bat hawks watch from the cliffs and dive into the groups, hoping to make a kill. I didn't see any successes during my viewing. Before I knew it, the open skies had closed in, and the rain came down, and thus ended the spectacular viewing. I trudged back elated!

The Pinnacles:
The 3-day Pinnacles trek is recognised as a pretty tough trek by Sarawak standards. I met up with two Belgians, Martin and Heleen, and we organised for a guide at the office. We joined another group made up of Danes and Englishman Andrew. We stocked up on supplies at the reception (2 minute noodles mostly) and set off the next day, taking a longboat upriver to the trek starting point, which is literally in the middle of the rainforest. We trekked 8 km's to Camp 5 and upon arrival were confidently told by our guide that the next day would be a killer! Great...! He also promptly told us that although the trek would take us 4 hours ascending and five to descend, he had once done the whole thing in 3 1/2 hours. Show off. Nothing like a good confidence boost before doing the trek.
We set out early the next morning. The trek is actually only 4.8km there and back, which made it seem impossible that we'd be trekking all day.... that is, until you see the path. Its pretty much a 45 degree climb. Every 100m feels like an achievement...! We got to the top of the mountain after 3 gruelling hours, and what a view:

After an hour soaking up the view, we headed down - we didn't want to get caught in the afternoon rain in such terrain. I can confidently say this was the toughest 2.4km walk/trek/hell-march I have ever done! Every foothold was slippery, I wiped out a good few times, and every one of us really had to watch how we descended. Many of the sections had ropes and ladders to help you down. The tropical heat was thankfully beaten back by the rainforest canopy.

Camp 5 Power plant..!

The next night, back at camp headquarters, Martin, Heleen and I gorged on hamburgers at the restaurant... we'd earned it!!!

Belgian trek team-mates Martin and Heleen - in happier times... ie. pre-Pinnacles trek!

I have previously found Malaysia to be a little boring compared to some of the other countries I've visited to date, but I must say Malaysian Borneo is just fantastic. If you are even mildly interested in outdoor activites, this place is for you. Its also been great to be in such an organised country. The National Park was just brilliantly run. Compared to the Philippines - dealing with administration here is just a pleasure! My only worry in Borneo is the tiny amount of national parks, in both Malaysia and Indonesia. Any national park map of the giant Bornean landmass shows hardly any areas have been reserved for conservation. This is really worrying, and is confused further by the varying levels of conservation. Ie. In Malaysia you get Nature Reserves, Protected Parks, and Totally Protected Parks... what is the difference, actually? For someone who loves nature, I found the vast landscape of converted rainforest/palm oil plantations around 'Miri Resort City' to be a little sickening. From the air you can see just how much land has been converted to palm oil plantations. It turned my stomach a little. I'd hate to see what remains of the Indonesian side of the rainforest.

K'CHING!!!
And finally, now I'm in Kuching, capital of Sarawak.. and land of the White Rajah's! I won't bore with that piece of history. Google it, if you're interested. Awesome little city, there are lots of nice, old, colonial buildings and a great waterfront with loads of people selling lots of Milo shakes. Don't ask me why thats so popular here...

Yesterday, I went to a local Orangutan sanctuary. Those are some darn funny monkeys I must say. Unfortunately, they didn't do much other than eat coconuts and bananas at the touristy feeding platform.
The hyper-aggressive, foul, territorial, "7 times your strength" dominant male didn't appear either. However, I was well-warned by the ranger that getting within five meters of this fiercesome jungle-beast would probably result in my 'instant' death. I think some of the kids were on the verge of tears after the speech. Personally, I think its a mythical creature, as no-one else at the backpackers has seen it either.

This month's ratings:

Worst Backpackers in the world:
Dieng's in Gunung Mulu National Park.

Biggest Culture Shock Moment:
Opening up a Malaysian Time mag, and seeing an article and pictures of Marijuana covered by govt stickers, going on about unauthorised public viewing or something.

I have one more day here and then I'm off to Sydney to see my Uncle Jim! 11 years is a long time...

Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie!
Oi Oi Oi!!

Adventures in Sabah and Sarawak remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Malapascua took a big hit from the typhoon. I later heard that it was in fact a super-typhoon, which only occurs roughly every twenty years or so.

Cock-fighting: its not for the faint-hearted, or vegetarians I would think...

The dive crew had its fair share of characters, with The Captain at the helm, so to speak. These are his home made fins! He says they work better... but who am I to question that!?! Also occasionally on board was Tilly the Hound of Malapascua. Besides biting all visible toes she enjoys boatrides and terrorising children...

Alona Beach - centre of the Panglao resort and diving scene. I hate to say I went to a "resort" place, but it was cheap for the off-season, and cheap is a backpackers middle name. Plus it was really nice.

There is no shortage of Spanish history on Bohol island. I think it was the first area of the Philippines for them to colonise. In fact, most of these churches are from the early 1500's. The Philippines now seems to show far less Spanish history and more interest in American culture - such as basketball. Every little village has a few courts.

Clinton and I made a stop at a roadside cafe at one of the small villages along our 2-day roadtrip. Lunch cost us less than a couple of dollars.

The Chocolate Hills are beautiful. They're not the biggest or most impressive of landscapes, but its a great day out. Hiring bikes was the perfect way to get there.

Note the caption above the windscreen. Once again - I prove here that all bus drivers in the Philippines and most of Asia for that matter, believe themselves to be invincible!

Tarsiers - I think the producers of Star Wars, Gremlins, and Critters all got their inspiration from this little furball. Smallest primate in the world apparently, and very shy.

Travel in the Philippines takes much patience...

Cebu and Bohol - Philippines remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Of course, I hadn't travelled all this way just for a bar: the diving in Malapascua is famous for its thresher shark and manta ray sightings. Signs had been good on the way to the island as I crossed the channel from Cebu - the boatman had pointed to something in the distance and said that a Manta had just leapt out of the water. Of course, I missed it. Perhaps he was just talking rubbish, because when I got off the boat, he took me straight to a dive shop (probably gets commission for dropping me off there if I sign up with them).

Anyway, ol' Frank had clearly had an impact on the island and the beaches were covered in coconuts, massive palm leaves, sometimes whole palm trees, and in general there was a lot of cleaning up being done by the various restaurants and bungalows on the beach. There couldn't have been more than a dozen foreigners on the island, and I had clearly missed the "Malapascua Closed" sign! But with such losses, come some great advantages too. Every place on the island was offering accommodation at a third of the price and dive shops were keen for business too. I signed up with Malapascua Beach Divers, and booked a dive for the next day - at Monad Shoal - famous for Manta Ray sightings in the afternoon.

Manta Rays:
I've really tried to avoiding making this blog a sort of "Diver's Chronicles," but sometimes these things need to be explained! A manta ray is not a little fish. An adult has a wingspan of about 6 meters, and the largest recorded was almost 8 meters wide. They don't look like sting rays, and I don't think they even have stings in their tails. They are famous for their massive wings - they resemble giant birds underwater, you could say. They are not shy with divers - they often come very close to someone underwater. Its a member of the shark family, although large shark species hunt them, and its not uncommon to see one with a piece missing, apparently.
These were the sorts of things running through my head, as the banka made its way to the dive site. I descended with my instructor Emma, and a fellow backpacker, Canadian Nathan, and I was full of nerves. We descended to the sand at about 24 meters, and had swum for perhaps a few minutes when a MASSIVE shape passed by in front of us, perhaps 10 meters away. It was about 5 meters in width and yes, it was a Manta! Visibility was a little poor, but it cruised passed again, getting cleaned by all the fish coming off the reef. Then it was gone - into the blue.
We headed off to the next so-called cleaning station. We chilled for a while, all lying on the ground waiting for something to happen. Nothing was happening, the minutes were ticking by, and soon I were checking my gauges to see how much air I had left. As I was starting to think that our dive was pretty much over, a manta off to the right begins to materialise from the blue. It was also quite large, perhaps 3.5 meters in width or bigger. And it was coming straight at us! Its mouth was open, and it was taking in plankton; it hardly moved; it just glided right towards us; and kind of steered its way right OVER us. It wasn't intimidated by us or the bubbles in any way! In fact, it was totally checking us out - its big eye on us the entire time as it glided past us! If I stretched my arm out, I could have touched it! It was incredible!!!
What a magnificent creature.

Thresher sharks:
The next day I went to the same site - Monad Shoal - at 05h30!! Early rise, but apparently that's when the Thresher Sharks arrive at the site. I wonder what else they get there?! We dived down, and once again, at about 24 meters down, we saw thresher sharks. Its also an incredible creature - its famous for having a tail the length of its body. We saw two on the dive, and one must have been 4.5 - 5 meters long (including tail). Its an amazing animal - its long tail curving behind its body, and cruising past us to see who these funny visitors were on its reef. It was quite inquisitive, which I was fine with - I wanted to get a close up, and we got just that.

Cock-fighting!
I left Malapascua after six days, highly satisfied with the diving, the beaches, its people, the One Republic and Leona Lewis repeat songs (still very big in Philippines), and the cock-fighting! Malapascuans love betting on cock-fights. Everybody wants to own a rooster and enter it into the next betting day! They're unfortunately rather gory affairs, with plenty of chopped off feathers and cut-up roosters, as the owners attach huge blades to the back of their feet. Its literally a fight to the death. If the rooster is pretty much dead, but not "quite yet," it gets picked up and thrown in front of its opponent to be finished off. There are countless rounds, and during the fights there are chicken pieces being gnawed on by the various spectators. I was told those pieces belonged to the losers!! I betted a few times, and seemed to be pretty good at predicting the outcome, despite my limited knowledge on the "sport". Its simple: you either double your money or lose it all.
Anyway, I'll attach one of the less grisly videos next time, when I can download better at another internet cafe.

Biking roadtrip in Bohol:

I made my way by ferry to Bohol next, and I met a fellow South African in Panglao Island at yes, you guessed it, a dive resort. I won't bore with any of those dive details, other than to say a moral eel nibbled on my finger when I held onto some reef (very bad dive ettiquete) on one dive. I dont know what it was doing, but it was a very funny experience. The diving in general was very good there.

So the two Saffa's, Clinton and Dave, decided a roadtrip was in order. We hired two bikes and headed off into the Bohol hinterland. We had a map from the local tourism centre and thinking this was enough preparation, we headed off. Thirteen loooo-o-o-o-o-oong hours later, we rolled into our scheduled stop-over and collapsed on our beds. The day had been absolutely draining, perhaps even tear-jerkingly frustrating at times!! To start with - Bohol has no road signs. None. The map doesn't differentiate between tarred and dirt roads. Dirt roads in Bohol are not for novice riders like myself! I wiped out on one very muddy descent, head over heels, not knowing that perhaps its better to use the rear brakes! Clinton was a little better prepared than me, since he owns a superbike
Local villagers are also not that clued up on geography! We were frequently informed that a 5km trip was in fact 25km long, or vice versa. Or we discovered that tarred roads (according to the map) were actually old dirt tracks. We found ourselves cruising around bush avenues late at night, and constantly checking with each village that we were on the right track. When we finally got in that night, at least we could tick off the Tarsier reserve. Tarsiers are the smallest primates in the world. They look like a cross between an Ewok and Yoda. Pictures tro come in the next entry - they're pretty funny little things.

The next day, battered and bruised - we headed to the Chocolate Hills and some old Spanish chucrhes. The hills were impressive - its definitely a nice day trip out. Clinton and I stopped at any old church along the way - there were some really nice old buildings, although very delapidated.

And now, I'm back in Manila, ready for my flight to Malaysia. As a Manila taxi driver told me - Las Vegas may be the City of Sin, but Manila is the City of 'tion'....! I asked what he meant? "No, my friend, we are the city of 'tion'. You know, corruption, congestion, pollution, addiction, inflation, no solution, abortion, prostitution, extortion, etc, etc!!!"

And with that, here's me signing out from beautiful Manila!

Bohol: small monkeys, big hills and dodgy bikes remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Manila and the Rice Terraces of Batad and Banaue:

Of course, a lot more has happened in the last few weeks since first arriving in Manila on 31 May.
For starters, Manila is easily the dodgiest city I have ever been in. One of the first things you notice is the level of armed security: a Johannesburg casino would be proud of the security that your average Quick-Mart has here. Security guards are not afraid to wander the streets with shotguns and big automatic rifles. I'm not sure who the culprits are at this stage, as I've been wandering the streets at night, and the only dangers are little kids bumming off pedestrians!

After two days in Manila, I headed north to the World Heritage Site of the rice terraces of Banaue and Batad for two days. I am going to be completely blunt: Banaue is highly unimpressive. Both Nepal and Bali had larger, more beautiful, although not as old, rice terraces. Batad on the other hand, is worth seeing. Its truly picturesque - basic bungalows look down over an amphitheater of terraces that descend into the little village of Batad. There is a magnificent waterfall on the far side of the terraces as well, which just adds to the natural beauty of the valley. To get to Batad, we had to trek a little for a couple of hours before entering the valley, which also contributed to the ruralness of the place. To cap it all, a tropical storm blasted the valley late in the afternoon - I haven't seen a storm like that before, and was pretty glad to have decent shelter for the night.
The transport there and back was once again an issue, with buses difficult to find and stop, especially when traveling in a group of seven. Anyway, got back to Manila amid another tropical downpour. The rainy season has really arrived in the Philippines.

Travels with Battygirl in Palawan:

I met Marianne (Battygirl) - a fellow backpacker - from Holland, in Thailand a few months ago, and upon hearing we were going to be in the Philippines at roughly the same time, decided to stick together for a while. It was awesome having a travel companion for a while. I must admit the road gets pretty lonely sometimes. So we decided to hit Palawan - the large island group to the west of the Philippines. We were raring to go, as Manila is not the greatest place to be stuck (too many lady-boys), and Palawan posters at travel agencies seemed to advertise a tropical paradise in Palawan. We landed in Puerto Princesca, and immediately hired manual/"automatic" bikes for two days. We didn't find any amazing beaches, but we did come across an abandoned hot springs, which resembled more of an Hollywood horror film set. The hot springs still worked so I took a dip. Marianne was being a nerd cos she thought a cloaked stalker was going to come out of the deserted mens toilet with a kitchen knife and chase her We also came across a crocodile farm and did some island hopping.

We were keen to head up to the underground river of Sabang, another world heritage site - the beaches were proving to elusive in Puerto Princesca. The tour was pretty nice, if not short, but I'd say the highlight was the village itself - tiny, remote and beautiful. Electricity only comes on for a few hours each eveing, thanks to a generator behind the bungalows. We chilled out in hammocks for the day and took some ridiculous action poses as the sun settled over the sea which turned out pretty well. This local guy was also chopping down coconuts so he made a coconut drink for me, which I enjoyed in the shade of the hammock, before taking another 30-degree swim. Ah, the rigours of island life...!

We took a boat trip to El Nido, the much-touted northern paradise of Palawan. Once again, we got screwed over by local businessmen. A "5 Hour" boat trip turned into a 10 hour ride. Along the way, we stopped at an awesome little island retreat for an early lunch. It turned out that the retreat was empty of tourists, and the managers there convinced our boat crew to tell us tourists that the boat engine had now failed and we'd have to stay the night! Ah! So that's what all the commotion in the kitchen was about when we ordered our lunch! Battygirl was having none of this, and commanded me to deal with these blatant liars. After a brief "There is nothing wrong with that damned banka and you are going to take us to El Nido right now" conversation, our journey continued, and miraculously the engine managed to work the entire way (luckily a German guy was backing me up with a stern look on his face behind me while I bravely told them off, otherwise they would have laughed at me I think).

El Nido is an average town surrounded by heavenly beauty. The islands are plentiful, the limestone cliffs rival Ko Phi Phi, the coral is great for snorkeling. Its just a great place to spend a few days. My highlight was Taraw cliff - it overlooks the town. I climbed it one morning with the aid of a guide and the views are spectacular. The heat was insane and hordes of mosquito's almost flew us to the top. Luckily, my exploration abilities held fast and I conquered it in an hour.

Coron and the Japanese WWII Wrecks:

The town of Coron is world-renowned in diving circles for having some of the best wreck dives in the world. These are not just wrecks that you float over and point at some old gun lying on the sand and head back up the surface. On every large wreck (ie. supply boats of 120-160m in length) you penetrate the hull and swim right through the passages, cargo holds, impact points from the torpedo strikes, and any other area that allows you to swim through it. IT IS AWESOME AWESOME DIVING!
Marianne had decided to try a Discover Scuba course ("High Five!"), and so on the first day I joined her at the local training reef. What a pro - she handled it well, and continued on with her Open Water course for the next three days. This gave me an excuse to try the wrecks and at the same time do a Nitrox course. Nitrox allows you to get more bottom time because you change the air mix in your tank to a higher Oxygen content.

Wreck diving is an out-of-world experience. For starters its very eerie. The top surfaces of most of the wrecks lie at about 18-25 meters. From here you work your way down the hull and the guide takes you to a small opening in the wreck (say 26-39m). The visibility is not great so it gets a little dark at the sandy bottoms. There were a few occasions when all I could see in front of me was a pair of fins kicking into some dark opening on the wrecks! You flick on your torch/flashlight, and follow in! After a while your eyes start to adjust to the gloom and kicked up silt and you find yourself in a small passage or boiler room, or cargo hold or something to that affect. There is constantly this ghostly and quiet feel to the ship. There is very little fish life inside.
I did 6 wreck dives - all the ships were destroyed on the same day in 1944 by a massive US aircraft - carrier air force. The ships had been hiding in the bay and were spotted by reconnaissance planes who alerted the aircraft carriers to attack. Its pretty weird diving on the ships and seeing where the torpedo's hit.

20 June

So, 20th June was my birthday. Battygirl, myself, Englishman Joel, Finn Okiss, and German Bengf headed to one of Coron's (or maybe the only) nightspots - Hard Rock. We had already warmed up at the Hell Diver bar (named after US WWII plane) and things got pear-shaped fast. Before we knew it, we were drinking 1.1L Red Horse beers (puts many hairs on your chest) and entertaining local lady-boy Ena, who confirmed that yes, she actually isn't yet a full woman, and went into great detail explaining the anatomy and stages of lady-boy development. He/she sat with us all night and there may be some incriminating photographs (Marianne is a budding professional photographer) from some of the members of our group that may be used as blackmail in the future... I'll leave it at that!
I retired to bed from our dive resort balcony when I heard someone getting a wake-up call from reception later that morning.

So now I'm in Cebu. Battygirl has headed to Thailand - more dives on Koh Tau await, and then her international travels end and she'll have to go back to Amsterdam. I still have four months, but I am dreading my turn!
Tomorrow, I'm off to Malapascua Island on northern Cebu - should be awesome I hear.
More updates soon, salamat!

PS. The beard is gone. Has been for three weeks. I hope some of you regret what you've said about my immaculate, and deceased, beard.

Delving inside World War II wrecks remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Workers collecting tea at one of the plantations in the Cameron Highlands.

Dup needs some alone time at a watch tower in the Cameron Highlands as he informs us that his Celebrity Televised Swim Gala with Gold Medalist Michael Phelps has been cancelled. Personally, I think he was lying.

Tea plantation. My favourite pic in Malaysia, I must admit.

Me beneath the Petronas Towers.

Dup, this time in business mode. He comes to this bar to razzle and dazzle the KL elite. There's actually a pool in the bar and this night he refrained from doing a few lengths at midnight.

Bird Park in KL. I swear these birds were trained to kill people! I couldn't shake them off my head! The one on the right attacked me only moments later.

Rickshaws in Malacca. Some of them have booming sound systems, which detracts from the historical significance of the place when it is only inches from your eardrum

Borobudur, an ancient Buddhist temple near Yogyakarta.

Very impressive. The top tier at Borobudur is really amazing - the surrounding views are truely awesome, and the structure itself is just huge.

Its hard to explain how unique my freckled skin is in some of these places. These guys thought I was taking a photo of them, so someone pointed at me and shouted something, and then they all started to pose. So I got them to do the model pose of pointing and looking like Derrick Zollander! The blue guy on the right needs to talk to someone though, he may have a problem...

Me on top of Mount Merapi. Fantastic climb, whjich began at midnight with torches, and had us watch the sun rise over the horizon. Thats sulphuric gas in the background.

The view from the top - this time with a couple of volcanoes in the background for good measure.

Javanese kids challenging me to a duel to the death at the base of Mt. Merapi. I was tired from the walk and in no mood for trouble, so I whipped their asses.

Prambanan - also in the Yogyakarta area. Its hard to believe but this structure has been completely rebuilt following a massive Mt Merapi eruption hundreds of years ago (can't remember date) that covered the whole thing in ash and rock.

Yogyakarta guys playing football outside my B&B. Love this pic.

The plateau from the top of Mount Bromo. What a view - totally surreal being here.

Mount Bromo - the jeeps take you right to the foot of the mountain and off you walk.

Sunrise reveals the Tengger Caldera crater in Eastern Java, with Bromo bullowing out steam constantly.

Great diving here at Menjengan Island off north-western Bali. Great walls and slopes filled with life. This was a little beach we docked at between the dives. Thats Bali in the background.

Balinese troops practising karate. Anti-terrorism is taken VERY seriously in Bali nowadays...

Paddies in Bali - really beautiful.

Kite flying is a great pastime for Indonesian kids. You see kites being flown anytime there is a mild breeze.

Father and son, and musician on my bike trip over the mountains in Bali.

There are little Hindu shrines everywhere in Bali. EVERYWHERE. They bless houses, shops, fields, roads, cars, everything. Perhaps thats why the drivers drive like they're invincible!

Boatmen cleaning their boats before the next tide I think - Bali.

More rice paddies.

On the way to Gili Trawangan, off the large island of Lombok.

Gili Trawangan. Every evening, I'd go to the west side of the island, beer in hand and watch the sun go down. There was quite a crowd of us gathering after a few days there. So so chilled.

The moon sets weren't too bad either...!

Divers horsing around on the way back from a dive. That was my instructor - as you can imagine, dives were good fun!

Hmmm.... my bar - Rudy's. I stayed here, and as it turned out this place had everything to offer, and plenty of big parties.
Awesome bar staff!

The dog and rooster - Bali's monsters. Roosters for waking me up at 4am everynight! and dogs for barking constantly!

The last place I stayed at: Amed in eastern Bali. Famous for the USS Liberty wreck dive - what a fantastic dive.

Cats rule Gili Trawangan and are ready to pounce on any restaurant plate!

OK, thats enough oics for now - more to come in a month or so...
Right now - I'm in Manila, Philippines... its a little dodgy I must say.
Adios.

Pics from Indonesia and Malaysia remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Bali
Once again, my expectations were a little different from what I saw - this time, when I arrived in Bali. The island is massive - over 100km's long, and the surfing that it's famous for can only be found in a few spots, all in the south. I first stayed on the north west coast in the town of Pemuteran, near the diving island of Pulau Menjangan, famous for its wall dives. Little did I know, but its pretty much the most expensive town in Bali, with a few awesome resorts filling its beaches (my dive book fails to mention that the town is also unaffordable to most people on earth). They even MAKE coral there, sticking little thermometers into the water's edge to encourage reef life. I managed to find a cheapish place ($20 a night) after arriving at 9pm on a scooter for 20km's through dense national park forest. The scooter driver wasn't a big fan of using headlights, which was a bit concerning, especially since he didn't understand any English, which made it difficult to get the flashlight signal across to him! Arriving at that time left me with little option but to accept the first place I came across. Ah, long bus journeys in Indonesia, I do love them.
Although it has amazing beaches, Bali also has some massive mountains - remnants of old volcanoes. I took it upon myself to hire a scooter (at excessive Pemuteran prices) and headed into the hills. I covered 200km's of the western tip of the island, and it took all day. The weather changed dramatically as I zipped up the twisting roads, going from a humid 30-odd degrees at the beach to a heavy forest rainfall and having to seek cover for half an hour up in the mountains. Hiring a bike in Bali is dangerous! Not because of other traffic or the animals - the roads are just perfect for rally cars!! You cant help but take the roads at pace, either up or down. It's an awesome day trip, and the locals up there don't regularly see foreigners, or Bule, as we're called, so they wave and greet you, and want to talk at any opportunity. The Balinese are good and easy-going people, they're rarely interested in you just for the money - they enjoying chatting to foreigners. Sometimes though, you get those trying to sell something. In those cases, the conversation is as follows:

Balinese: Salamat Pagi (Hello) / Hello Mister! (if 15 years or younger)
Me: Hi
B: What your name?
M: David (pronounced Daafid) [No Stuart, not Daffyd]
B: Where you from?
M: South Africa.
B: Ohhhh... (Nodding a lot, yet complete confusion).... But you WHITE!
M: Yes I know.
B: Ohhhh......(still the confusion).
Got girlfriend?
M: No
B: Got wife?
M: No
B: How old you?
M: 20- something...
B: Oh. Want girlfriend?
M: No.
B: Want cooldrink? Want bir? What can I do for you?
M: No, nothing. Thanks bud, cheers.

The Balinese also enjoy playing guitar and music all the time. You'll often be at a restaurant and the guy across the road will come out of his shop and start plugging away at some old tunes. Next thing you know, his neighbor is sitting down next to him with a drum and they're playing away. Awesome! They are very musical people.

Gili Trawangan

Lombok is famous for the three Gili islands on the north-west corner. I went there and once again found myself sweating like Dingaan's armpits after 4 midday stick-fights. Luckily the water was a cool 29 degrees and the beers weren't too expensive, so I managed to find some respite from the heat. I hooked up a few dives and saw the best visibility i have ever seen. Perhaps 45-50 meters. It was incredible! Swam with a number of white-tip reef sharks, countless large hawksbill turtles, some huge bumperhead parrotfish, and many other smaller fish. It was great diving. The island has probably changed a bit over the years - I compare it quite a bit to Ko Tau in Thailand, just smaller. So its quite developed now. Most of the younger tourists seem to spend their time either flexing their guns on the main beach or doing some serious bikini tanning. I guess its a good way to take a break for a while, but the place does have a bit of The O.C. feel to it I think. Actually met some awesome Californians/West Coast and German people while there and we had quite a few good nights out.
On the half-hour boat ride back to Lombok, not a word was said amongst the dozen people leaving Trawangan. Everyone was just staring back at the islands getting smaller, wishing they didn't have to go. It is a lovely island, I'll be back for more I'm sure. I'll always remember it for the song "Welcome to my Paradise" - all the bars play it, all the time. Perfect place for it.

Got to the port at Lombok and we were completely surrounded by ferry ticket touts...! Paradise was definitely behind us now! I was left shouting at some tout "I don't trust you! I don't trust you! I wouldn't give you one cent of my money!" The guy was the dodgiest b@stard I have ever come across. In the end though I had to buy as there was no government office around to sell decently-priced tickets. That's traveling - the good unfortunately comes with the bad.
So now I'm back in Bali and going to KL tomorrow to stay with Dr. Dup du Plessis. He isn't coming to Kota Kinabalu anymore, cos he says he has some international charity gala against Michael Phelps or something. Nice story Dup...

Finally, I have decided to introduce my travel tip section with each new entry from now on:

Travel tips for this entry:
Don't ride buses in Indonesia. Walk if you must.
Learn to accept roosters - they will cockodoodaldoo at midnight, or whenever they damn-well please.
Learn to love scruffy, scrawny, mangy Indonesian dogs - they will bark whenever there is a cockodoodaldoo and they don't know what you're shouting at them cos they don't speak English. Accept them.

Final Note: The Beautiful Beard
There have been some unnecessary comments of late about my immaculate and well-groomed beard that I have carefully grown over the last few months. These have not been taken very well. Gowar, Whitfield, Waterman... I have your numbers. In fact, I was considering grooming it, or, dare I say it, taken it all off, because during the last few dives I kept getting water in my mask and couldn't see anything. Hopefully my mask and 'rooibaard' can learn to live with one another.

PICTURES: Will update as soon as I can... sorry, I just cant find internet cafe's that allow me to either downsize the photos or read my portable hard-drive.

The Balinese remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Mount Merapi:
I signed up for a volcano walk....... some would see this as a silly thing to do, as Mount Merapi is one of the world's most active volcano's. Nonetheless, I joined a group to the volcano and off we trudged at 1am to get to the top. Nerves hadn't been made any better by continual commentery in our group along the lines of: "It hasn't blown in nearly two years... what's the worst that could happen?!" Walking in steep furrows and narrow water run-offs made for some adventurous muddy wipe-outs on the way up, but after nearly 4 hours the group arrived at the top of Merapi (2914 meters). Just in time too, my dodgy torch that I rented was busy spluttering to death and it was still pitch black. The smell of sulphur was incredibly strong.
So, what's at the top of a volcano??? I wasn't sure what to expect - a crater lake full of bright red lava perhaps?! No, instead there are lots of rocks, hot steam vents and some icy winds. The effects of previous eruptions was clear - for the top few hundred meters of the mountain there is nothing but lava rocks, and no life whatsoever. I sat on a vent for a while to keep warm - it was seriously chilly and I didnt want to risk the cold, regardless of how comical it may have looked!
The dawn broke and I must say, it nearly brought tears to my eyes. Well not quite, but it was very beautiful. Got lots of pics but will have to display them another time as I can't upload here (too sloooooooooooooooow).

KL and the Legend of Dup du Plessis:
So prior to arriving in Indonesia a few days ago, I spent ten days with Dr Don Juan "Dup" du Plessis, an old mate from school days and East London (South Africa), who has the nasty habit of always bragging about that swimming record he broke when he was 13, back in 1687. After arriving in Kuala Lumpur, we stayed on a mate's 20th floor balcony looking over the KL skyline, sipping ice cold Tiger beers til 5am, getting an hour's sleep and heading off to the Cameron Highlands for some forest exploring. The Cameron Highlands are stunning. The dense forest growth, the size of the trees, the size of the whole forest - its breathtaking. We stayed in a backpackers called Daniel's where the owners have a deep grudge against the Lonely Planet for comments made two years ago about 'Spartan" rooms and some other stuff in their 'On a Shoestring' issue. There's a big blunt sign at the door that between many four lettered words, seems to indicate that LP travel writers are not welcome. After asking about it, and being drawn into a long discussion on why the LP is a crock of bull, I made a mental note not to bring up the topic again. The entertainment and transport for the weekend was provided by Francois and Jana - two ex-pats living in KL, hailing from Cape Town. Ah, good times!

We headed back in Boesman (F&J's old Landcruiser) to KL where I spent the remainder of the week. There's enough to see in the city - the bird park, the Pretonas towers, the KL Tower, the National Museum, but it was great to just chill out in one place for a while, without packing my life into a bag again (backpacking quarter life crisis??!!) I must admit - sometimes you crave malls, big screens and McDonalds burgers. KL is certainly a step ahead of most of south east Asia - it is an advanced and heavily built-up city. I can't compare to Singapore yet, as I've spent no time there so far, but I imagine its the next biggest economy in the region. It has a number of advanced sky/overhead rail systems - it makes getting around the city quite easy. Its also not as massive a city as I thought - 40 minutes by rail to any destination is lengthy. Many people reside in high-rise apartments looking over the city.
I also spent a day in Melaka (ie. Straights of Malacca) - the old trade city of the east. Its immensely historic and well worth a visit. The Portuguese were there in 1511, then the Dutch, the Brits, Japanese - everyone seems to have had a piece of the pie.
Malays love food. There are food markets and stands EVERYWHERE. Food is a major part of the culture. The people are split into three major groups: Malays, Chinese and Indians - its amazing that they get on so well, there aren't many countries in the world with such diversity.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm off to Gunung Bromo and then Bali. Til next time, sampai jumpa...

Pics to come in the next week (i think).

The art of climbing active volcano's remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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So I thought the Nepalese were the friendliest people until I got to Cambodia. It was pretty easy to travel and enjoy Cambodia thanks to the great locals I met. First stop from Bangkok was the host town for the Angor ruins - Siem Reap. I managed to fall into a border crossing scam by buying Cambodian currency at a ridiculous rate. Lost about $50. Last time I try swopping any cash near a border (in my defence, I was scammed by the Thai bus tour guide, as he informed us all that Siem Reap was a wasteland of a town where the ATMS's rarely worked, and then he took us to a local exchange place - probably his uncle behind the counter.... b@stard! All the ATM's worked fine as it turned out!)
First morning at Angkor Wat and I met my scooter driver at 5.30am at my hotel - 20 minutes later and I was standing in front of the most unbelievable architectural wonder and photographing Angkor Wat with the sun rising behind it. "Angkor Wat" is a bit of a misnomer - in fact, Angkor Wat is simply one of many massive ruins in the Angkor area. These ruins take up a huge area - each was built to be a seperate city, each with its own massive moat (some with crocodiles) and a few large walls just for good measure. Since I have always enjoyed architecture and history, I had three awesome field days wandering around, although some could not be more bored by these old ruins, I would imagine. So the ruins were great for me - my favourite temple was Bayan - but the temperature was insane. Having been to a few hot places in Africa in my time, I was blown away by what must have been way more than 40 degree heat. The humidity was just unbearable at midday. I drank about 8-10 litres a day! I was physically exhausted from the heat before midday the entire time I was there. So I guess not the best time to be in Cambodia, but what the hell, its all part of the experience! Air conditioning was my best friend there.

I managed to drag myself from the ruins, and went on to Battambang, via the enormous Tonle Sap lake (largest in Asia). It was pretty cool seeing the river town along the way - at some stages of the boat-trip you can't see the shore at all - and then we proceeded (in terrific, humid, cramped heat again) to Battambang. This town isn't much of a tourist mecca, I must say, but for $9 I got a half-day scooter trip to some pretty remote hilltop temples, travelling along old dusty roads. It also happened to be the April New Year's water festival - locals LOVE giving those stupid foreigners/barang a good ol' mouthful of waterbombs - I got a few in the back from some demonic little kids running unforgivingly after my scooter. Luckily, I was traveling with an Irish dude on another bike, and just pointed at him to distract the kids and so that they could prepare properly for a full volley in his direction. I think he got it way worse. Another interesting chap to meet that day was a young Buddhist monk.... complete with business cards. I still have one, just to prove that I did in fact meet a monk with business cards.
So these temples were even older than the Angkor ruins, but not nearly as impressive. Its here that various locals started walking up to me and taking photos with me and randomly chatting in the local Khmer dialect.... foreigners are not that common, especially 6"4 redheads!

Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, just has to be done. This is where you see the unpleasant side of Cambodia. The city is busy and bustling, but I was more interested in seeing the Killing fields and S21 prison. I can't say I was looking forward to either, but... when in Phnom Penh...
So, obviously, Cambodia is famous for the Khmer Rouge and the resulting killing fields all over Cambodia. In 1975, an army called the Khmer Rouge took over the country after defeating the government army. They immedietely began to convert the entirte country into a communist agrarian society. Therefore, if you had an education or could speak another language, or wore glasses (all indicating that you are educated) - you were in trouble. An estimated 2 million people were killed in the next four or so years, either because they were seen as an educated threat to communism or because they didn't work hard enough in the fields (aptly named the killing fields).
So there are tours now to the Killing Fields outside the city. There are still bones and clothes sticking out of the ground. Everywhere. It is a very humbling experience.
S21 was a prison used by the Khmer Rouge for torture and interrogation and holding onto specific prisoners. It is also a very sombre experience, as only about a dozen of the nearly 20,000 prisoners survived the prison.
In fact, during my short stay in Cambodia, virtually every Cambodian I met had lost someone during the 4 years of the Khmer Rouge. So, that was a pretty melancholic end to Cambodia ;(

'Nam
I crossed Vietnam once again on water, and upon entry (I was the only person on the boat besides the skipper, so I could stretch out nicely) I was greeted by a bunch of smashed boatmen, who handed me my first Saigon beer and started yelling "Bottom's up! Bottom's up!"... what's a man to do? I was damn thirsty after that trip and downed that bad boy in record time (for me that's about a minute!) The Vietnamese guys weren't looking all that impressed but they offered me another. I declined. My first night was Chuc Doc - not much of a tourist mecca either, but it was awesome sitting under a big umbrella in a local town market later that evening, getting out of the rain, and soaking up some local Vietnamese cuisines with another cold Saigon.

Saigon is a terrific city. No one calls it Ho Chi Minh city, unless you're from north Vietnam. I can honestly admit that I would have no problem living there. It's modern, busy, and everyone seems to speak decent English. It's very Western, which is probably a result of all the American and French influence. Wandering around the city centre is a great night out, dropping into good coffee shops along the way, and sampling excellent local foods. The highlight of the night though, was coming to my hotel and finding one of the sports channels playing Super 14 rugby! What a pleasure!! AND it was the Stormers, my favourites! The Incredible Schalk took the team to victory and 3rd on the log! Yes, I have missed the weekend rugby matches...
So Vietam had to be a highlights package tour, due to my poor planning and flight schedule. The Cu Chi tunnels were next on the list. These were the tunnels that the Vietcong built back in the 60's, right outside Saigon, and they are well worth a visit. Russell Fish... thanks for the tip, it was a good day out!


Yes, that is an AK47...! (Cu Chi tunnels still have the sound of gunfire everywhere as this touristy firing range is right next to the main cafe. Leaves a bit of ringing sound in your ears for a while though...)

The highlight for me in Vietnam though, has been hooking up with a bunch of guys called the Easy Riders. These local guys head off into Vietnam's Central Highlands on their motorbikes, and with their excellent English, show you what Vietnam is really all about. I visited minority villages, matriarchal villages (women run the tribe, their husbands sitting quietly and meekly in the background), hill tribe villages, ex-Vietcong villages, rice paddies, coffee plantations, silk factories, incense workshops, wandered along the Ho Chi Minh trail, saw vast bomb craters, old battlefields, houses that decorate their garden gates with giant bombshells, all sorts. Seeing the Ho Chi Minh trail was fascinating. The most alarming thing about the trail is the complete devastation of the land on either side of the trail, perhaps 2 km's wide at some point. This is a result of the South Vietnamese and American air forces trying to destroy the jungle. Initially it began with normal bombs, and then progressed to chemical warfare - Agent Orange and DDT (banned now) were used, amongst other things. The effect is a complete wasteland in some areas of the trail - there is no more jungle or forest... 40 years later.
Everywhere you go, people greet you, and children wave non-stop. Everyone wants to know your name. I felt like a hero! It's totally incorrect to say that there is much animosity in southern Vietnam towards foreigners. It was the best money I've spent in three months of travel. The website for the Easy Riders is: http://dalat-easyrider.com.vn/
Check it out if you are heading to Vietnam. Not cheap at $60 pd, but well worth it, as I have heard from all of the other travellers who have done it.

I have spent the last two days in Hoi An, on the coast in the centre of the country. Its an old town with huge influences from the French, Chinese and Japanese. Not as great as its made out to be I think. The highlight for me here was the Marble Mountains - giant caverns which have been turned into a Buddhist temple.

Major dissapointments:
- missing Laos
- missing the crater lake at Boeng Yeak Laom in Cambodia (but since its mentioned in Lonely Planet, its probably very touristy now anyway)
- not seeing Ha Long Bay, the place I most wanted to see in Vietnam.

Soon I will be off to see Dr Juan "Dup" du Plessis in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for about a week. Dup - please don't go on and on again about your glory days in the U12A rugby team back in 1973, and that time you broke some lame swimming record, and that time you were nominated for Mr Dale 1994 either. See you soon boet!
(Yes, Colm that's "The Hand!!")

Roadtrippin along the Ho Chi Minh trail remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The Annapurna circuit is beautiful beyond comparison. There is a lot to it. Typically the hike takes 16-21 days. I organised a guide in Kathmandu and a day later was taking the bus to Besisahar - the first town on the trail. I know I've have had my fair share of ranting and raving about bus drivers in previous blog entries, but now I think I've seen it all. My guide, Bhuben, organised a trip on a public bus - a seven hour trip from hell! The bus was a classic - straight from the 60's - so you'd think the bus driver would take it easy. But no, this only increases his desire to push the limits. The most useful tool in a Nepali bus driver's arsenal is the horn/hooter. Every horn has an annoying, repetitive tune...! When you arrive at the bus station in Kathmandu you feel as if you're in the middle of a parade band! It is used almost without stopping for the entire journey. There is no need for braking as long as this tool still works. A gap always seems to appear as the vehicle/motorcyclist in front of the bus (usually) pulls over and lets the bus go forth. When the bus enters a mountainous region, you really start to worry. Suddenly you're driving alongside massive cliffs and the bus is showing no signs of slowing down. Overtaking on hairpin corners or blind rises is par for the course. I plugged in my mp3 player, this was just too much for me...
I'll never curse a Sowetan taxi driver again.

So the trek was incredible. To get an idea of the terrain, the Annapurna area has three of the world's ten highest peaks. You are almost always looking at a snowcapped mountain somewhere in the distance, and as you get closer to the pass, you are surrounded by enormous, snowy peaks. For much of the trek you are at what mountaineers call 'high altitude,' meaning you need to let your body adjust to the rate at which ascend. So you take it easier the higher you go.
I generally tried to hike for the morning and a couple of hours after lunch before settling at a guest house for the night, then departing again after breakfast the next morning. My days varied between 11km per day and a maximum of 22.5km. In total the trip is about 205km of hiking.
The teahouses and guesthouses are owned by Nepali's and are rustic, but this all adds to the trekking experience. The villages where you stay are usually in a scenic part of the trek alongside the Marsyagandi or Kali Kandaki rivers, and often include a temple or Tibetan Buddhist monestry. Many of the villages are completely mind-blowing... they resemble medievil towns complete with ancient stone walls and cobblestone streets. The environments change constantly as you scale up to higher and higher altitudes, going from sub-tropical bush, to pine forests, to arid and rocky desert landscapes, and finally to the snowy peaks of the Himalaya's. My backpack initially weighed a ton - so I left some old shirts behind after three days, meaning that by the time I got on the bus 16 days later (no chance to wash clothes before this) my few clothes and I must have smelt like a vast herd of unwashed desert camels.
The pass, Thorung La, was the toughest part. It took a solid 10 hours of heavy trekking to get through the day. The pass is one of the world's highest - 5416 meters - I think that's higher than some continents! I felt the effects of altitude mountain sickness (AMS) through a pretty severe headache, so couldn't hang around the peak for too long, and headed down the other side into the world's deepest valley. The effect in terms of your breathing is unbelievable - sometimes you are gasping for air just from walking a few meters. Hats off to Tenzing and ol' Ed Hillary!! The west side of Annapurna presented some amazing desert scenery, gale force winds, the best hot springs in the world (surely??!), and beautiful viewpoints. What a trek - and there are plenty of other options that I hope to do in Nepal again one day.

Met some classic fellow trekkers on the route as well, by the time I finished the trek, our party had extended to six: Bhuben my local guide, Wolf the German, Ed the Englishman, Kiwi's Jason and Pipp, and me. Good laughs, and what steaks we had upon getting to Pokhara! (16 days of Dal Bhat can kill you! - ie. lots of rice and potatoe). Apple pies, croissants and hot showers were a pleasure on that first day back!

Pokhara is something of an adventure capital, it offers paragliding, kayaking, white water rafting, all that sort of stuff. Its situated on a lake, and its beatiful. I've just completed rafting and paragliding. Awesome fun! See pics below.

The rafting was a bit of a letdown - I had hoped to do some big rapids, but there were only level 2 and 3's. Obviously, the water was freezing but that didn't stop inter-raft water battles. I found myself flung into the river on a few occasions, but got my own back! Was also a great experience camping under the stars on deserted river banks at night.

Nepali's are also amazing people. You can't compliment them enough. They are genuine and kind, and always willing to help a stranger out - no reward is expected. To be honest, it was refreshing meeting Nepali's after dealing with what I call 'The Land of Fake Smiles'... ie. Thailand - I always felt as if someone was trying to rip me off.

Kathmandu was amazing as well. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I loved it. Without going into too much detail, you can see some pics below of the famous sites I got to see. There are incredible places in the city: Boudnanath Stupa and Pashupatinath Temple top the list. Seeing burning funeral pires (with the occasional limb sticking out) on the riverside was a very strange experience indeed.

Anyway, off to the World Peace Pagoda here in Pokhara now... must go.

Trekking through the Himalaya's remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Unfortunately, nothing big appeared other than a large leopard shark. The dive sites have the reputation for large animals such as manta rays, and whale sharks. Not this time to all the divers' disappointment. Got a hell of a fright actually as the dive guide motioned shark underwater (place hand like a fin in front of your face!) and all I initially saw was an ominous large sillouette of a shark above the shipwreck we were diving (adding to the eeriness). Luckily it was just a leopard shark, a very beautiful and peaceful shark.
The night dives were the best for me - its completely surreal entering the water with the boat lights illuminating everything beneath it and then searching the reefs with underwater torches. We surfaced in the middle of a torrential downpore the one night - very cool! There was a really sombre mood as the boat headed back to land, we all had a great time out there.
I also snorkeled with a greenback turtle on the second day - that was amazing. It was completely unfased by being close to people in the water. It even pushed me with one of its fins when it got really close at one point.

So I've seen 7 snakes in the last few weeks, a couple of them very close. The first one was at Ko Pha Ngan - I saw some movement in my bungalow as what appeared to be a lizard shot under my mattress. Nope, not a lizard - it was a little snake!... I called the bungalow owner and he sorted it out (brutally smashed it with a broomstick). Didnt sleep too well for my last few days there!
About a week ago, I was walking at night through the campsite at the remote island of Ko Tarutao when I almost stepped on a long green snake crossing my path. The next day, went to a remote beach on the island and there was a python hanging from a tree on the beach.
Then the last few days - I've been diving off the Similan Islands in the Andaman Sea and saw three sea kraits... one of the world's most deadly animals! Apparently you're fine though - their fangs are too small to puncture a person's skin (urban legend??). Would have been good to know before I saw it...
Then yesterday, another snake sneaked past my feet in Khao Lak.
Anyway, enough of this nancy-boy talk...

Ko Tarutao was just the medicine I needed to get away from the resort crowds. Its a beautiful and virtually untouched strip of islands run by the National Marine Parks board. Totally remote - we'll see how long that lasts - one of the islands is already being developed by resorts. Anyway, it was good.

Spending one night in Khao Lak led me to investigate the effects of the Tsunami on the area. Khao Lak was the town that made much of the news from Thailand in December 2004, having suffered more than half the casualties for Thailand. I think about 4,500 people died. There is a significant flatland extending behind the town towards some hills a few kilometers from shore. Evidence of the strength of the tsunami lies in a 25 meter Thai Police cruiser, which lies almost 2 km's inland from the water. It was literally pushed that far by the waves and makes it easy to see how impossible escaping the wave must have been for people staying/wprking close to shore. It was pretty heady stuff. I also went for a walk on the main beach, and came across a completely deserted and destroyed resort. It was also quite heart-breaking walking through the broken bungalows and beach bar, realising that many people never could have escaed in time. It's a huge resort and occupies a large part of prime beach. I didn't hear why it still hasn't been re-developed, most of the other resorts have been rebuilt now.

So... now the real traveling begins. This time tomorrow I'm in Nepal and will be making plans for the Annapurna Circuit in the Himalaya's. Wish me luck, and don't expect news back for at least three weeks - the circuit takes at least 17 days to complete.

Island hopping in the Andaman Sea remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Travelers start to feel sorry for themselves on travel days! I guess the day taught me to just laugh it off and sit back and enjoy the ride! However, it was all worth it. Railay is surrounded by four beaches - three of which are completely stunning. The beaches are all surrounded by massive cliffs and pinnacles. The water must be close to 30 degrees and if you open your eyes underwater it's similar to swimming in a pool, if not clearer. One of the beaches is Phra Nang Cave beach - without a doubt, this is (in my opinion) the most beautiful beach I've ever been to. I rented a kayak today and did some awesome paddling between the various bluffs and cliffs that jut out of the water. On the way back, I cruised past Ton Sai beach, home of the rock climbers. Its big wall climbing there and the view 200 meters up one of these rock faces must be absolutely amazing and terrifying at the same time. One day perhaps (Haig, Waterman, Millar - we'll have to talk...)...

Maya Bay at Ko Phi Phi Ley island is where The Beach was filmed. I did the mandatory speed boat visit of course. It's well worth it - it comes a close second to Pranang Cave (and my hometown favorite of the great Nahoon beach, of course) on my beach ratings. It's full of tourists, but you still marvel at the beauty of the place. Some amazing snorkeling as well, with reefs all over the place and full of life, with schools of little fish often surrounding you. I also registered about 8.2 on the Burner Scale that day. Think I added a few thousand freckles. It's nothing compared to the 9.9 I registered a few years back.

So Ko Pha Ngan is great for hammock swinging. Luckily, my spot was a few km's away from Haad Rin - the island's 'capital' - constantly partying for some shape or colour of moon. Lazy days - I read the first of my el-cheapo re-cycled 'travel guru' classics on a hammock for a few days - Tom Sawyer - going back to basics. When you're not chilling out, you're at Haad Rin or renting a scooter and cruising the island. And on the topic of scooters, Ko Pha Ngan has more than its fare share of Thai tattoos. That's big, bandaged injuries from scooter wipeouts - it seemed half the tourists had them there. Probably a combination of late nights, dodgy roads, suicidal local 4X4 drivers.

The full moon party puts pretty much any party to shame. No new years bash I've been to is like this. Picture a wide beach, with clubs/restaurants each throwing their own party via booming music and fire dancers, and at least 10,000 revelers. It's Khao San Road all over again, and anything goes. They actually hosted the party two days later than initially planned due to elections. Plus, it rained, so no one saw the full moon anyway!

Next - thinking of heading further south to see Ko Turatao National Park - these are almost untouched islands according to some locals I've spoken to. Pictures to come soon... (monthly picture limit still too high)

The not so full moon party and Krabi remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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So the last week was spent in Koh Tau, and what a place. As a Kiwi commented to me last night, while we soaked up the sunset, cold beer in hand - "It's easy to fall in love with the island". It truely is remarkably beautiful. Its not big - perhaps 2 km's from north to south, but houses a lot of people and over 50 dive operations. Dive courses are cheap. So lots of people do introductory courses, where they learn to dive. To get an idea - the place I stayed at is one of the bigger operations and has at any one time, probably 8 groups of open water divers. They have eleven instructors and churn through almost 300 Open Water qualifications each month. My dive school back home does perhaps 12-20 qualifications a month! So it's scuba on steroids here!
So the first few days I dived, and what a pleasure this place is for divers. There are plenty of dive sites all around the island. Unfortunately, the visibility is not that great here - I was expecting at least 15 meters, but on all 6 dives it was below 10 meters I think. Its very comparable to Sodwana Bay, South Africa - in terms of underwater viewing, except with less vis but much warmer waters.

The highlight undoubtledly - was a 5-6 meter whale shark sighting at a dive site called White Rock. A radio call came through to all the boats in the island's area that a whale shark had been spotted there, and so all boats headed to White Rock really fast, in the hope of catching sight of it. We got to the site and there were dozens of anchored big boats already emptied of divers. Thinking it must have been hounded off by now, I went down thinking our chances of seeing it were minimal. I was wrong! 3 minutes in, and a big shape emerges above us, glides slowly over, and not a diver in site. The big guy didnt need to offer twice - so I swam up and joined him, swimming alongside him for a few minutes. He even eyed me out, his big eye swivelling around to look me over, and wonder what this little thing was trying to do next to it and why the hell there so many bubbles coming out of it!! I was absolutely elated! The rest of the divers caught up and I drifted off, its legion of remoras clinging to it, and a dozen divers a few meters behind. Whale sharks are so popular - they have plenty of friends!

Another highlight happened yesterday, and involved sharks of another kind. Believe it or not, Shark Bay has sharks. Little ones though - perhaps just 2 meters...! You snorkel out into the bay, the reef system starts really close to the shore. It gets deeper gradually, and soon you're far out. You're not too sure what to do in case you do see a shark, so the guys with me were sticking really close together! Then you see something - a reflection, and its much bigger than the rest of the fish - black tip reef shark!! Cruising along the reef only six meters away! It was about a meter long - small-ish I think. I saw plenty of others yesterday, and they take no notice of you. In fact, you feel quite safe. What a day!

Other highlights were the visit to the Nang Yuan islands - also stunningly beautiful and seems to come straight from a post card; and hiring a scooter for the day to explore the little island. Discovered some beautiful spots...

I'm in Koh Pha Ngan (pronounced Ko Pan yang by the sounds of things) for the next five days. Full moon party here we come. Adios

Whale shark at White Rock!! remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I only stayed in Bangkok for two days, of which, the second day I spent in Ayuthaya, Thailand`s old capital. This was mostly because of my experiences on the first day thanks to making the error of taking a tuc-tuc to the Grand Palace. Ok, its probably not that bad, but I'm convinced Tsu (I think), my very friendly and approx 15 year old tuc tuc driver, was trying to kill me. Incoming traffic means nothing to this guy, although I'm sure he must 6-foot under by now. A tuc-tuc is a converted motorcycle with a sort of bench and canopy attached to its back. Its quite fun taking side alleys, but then you get into heavy traffic, and this is a tuc-tuc driver's opportunity to impress with his maneuverability, acceleration, and gap-taking skills. Which are all impressive, and timed to the mili-second - I had some large lorries bearing down on me a number of times. The mesh wire tuc-tuc backing appears a little fragile during those hair-raising moments. Its also interesting to note that you will get a great discount to your destination if you let them take you to some shops they recommend along the way. Inevitably, you find yourself at a jewelry or mens suit store, who finance the drivers to drop off tourists at their front doors. I got to see the Wat Phra Keo (huge, ornate temple) and the Grand Palace in Bangkok, which are both immensely impressive. The art works surrounding the interior of the temple are amazing.

Ayuthaya is an ancient collection of Buddhist temples. Its really worth the trip. Unless you've been to Angkor Wat I imagine. I went on a day tour, which unfortunately makes you feel like you're part of a large herd of sheep! The day tours are efficient conveyer belts of tourists, constantly being transported to each venue, with very specific time limits. On the up side, you do get to see all the top spots, which are all impressive.

Next stop was Kanchanaburi, west of Bangkok, for three days. Mixed feelings about this place: Erawan Falls is really beautiful - the water is refreshing and is a weird turqoise colour. It has seven falls in it, and is a great forest hike - it wasnt packed and swimming under some of the falls was a great way to cool off from the rising heat. I also did an elephant ride, which was really cool, and we went off the beaten track into the bush for half an hour.

On the other side of the coin, is a hideous tourist trap called the Tiger Temple. This is an animal rights case waiting to explode (unless that has already happened). Despite discounting it in their lie of a brochure, the tiger temple - without doubt - uses very heavy drugs to keep the tigers drowsy and pretty much asleep for what must be most of their lifespans. I've seen enough wild animals to know that you need a pretty large fence between predators and people. Between the mass of tourists and the dozen tigers there is only a thin rope, which is not to stop tigers, but just to show you were to sit. I had two massive adult tigers not 7 meters away from me, but they were so sleepy they didnt even know I was there. Every time they raise their heads, one of the tenders walks over and thrusts a water bottle at their mouths - the tigers love the flavour and lap up the concuction. Two minutes later, they are asleep and posing nicely for photos, the tenders placing their giant heads into tourist laps. The cubs - in the other den - are guarded by savage western volunteers, who guard their cubs as their own children, claiming that despite the thousand hands that touch them every day, they will remain normal tiger cubs; touch them on the face though, and they're all of a sudden too close to humanity and at the risk of being raised abnormally.
And still the hordes of tourists vans keep coming. Geez, its ridiculous. But I guess if tourists want to pose to with tigers, that's what they'll get, right?

I'm finding it really easy to meet and chat to other travellers - so far met some really ridiculously crazy Dutch chicks (waterfall pic), Canadians, Slovenians, Danes, Brits, Germans, Aussies, and all sorts. I'm seeing quite a few of them in Koh Pha Ngan for the full moon party.

Ko Tau, south east coast - I've just arrived two days ago, and its like a postcard - more to come on this and the dives I've done so far. This morning... scuba dived with a whale shark!! AAAH! And, I got photos. More to come.

Soaking up the Thai's remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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HIGHLIGHTS

- Diving in Sipidan in Borneo, Blue Corner in Fiji, and the Similan Islands in Thailand are probably top of the list.
I’m taking an extra BIG bag for diving – some might say its madness to drag such a large extra burden around for the better part of a year, but if you’ve dived, you’ll know that using familiar equipment can really change the enjoyment and down-time of your dives. So, when Im cursing this extra bag, I’ll hopefully still see it that way!

- Trekking in Nepal is going to be awesome. The mountainous views, the clean air, the Nepalese cultures – its all going to be very different to what I’m used to. I’m doing the Annapurna route – a 3-week mountain trek.

- Cambodia – Boeng Leak Yaom crater lake – came across this while researching my travels and it sounds and looks ridiculously amazing.

- I also think the 2 – day climb on Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia should be pretty awesome.

- Lastly, but it’ll take precedence very often – chilling on a remote beach with a cool beer in hand, hammocks making some guest appearances!

TOP TRAVEL FEARS (the ones I’ve been having feverish nightmares about)

- Cambodian bus drivers
- Malaria again
- unfriendly king cobras
- Running out of air at 32 meters down
- Circus folk
- Polio
- 8-foot Fijians on a boys’ night out.
- Koala's

THE ROUTE:

Thailand
6th Feb – 15 March 2008

Nepal
13 March – 08 April T

Cambodia, Vietnam
09 April – 30 April

Singapore, Bali, Komodo
30 April – 23 May

Philippines and Palau
23 May – 24 June

Borneo (Malaysia only)
24 June – 24 July

Australia
25 July – 22 August

New Zealand
22 August – 13 September

Fiji (& surrounds)
13 September – 29 September

California & NYC
29 September – 11 October 2008

For those of you meeting me here and there along my travels, see you soon.

Until I post a ‘real’ blog… Cheers!

On the road... nearly remains copyright of the author Shlugger, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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