The first few months in Australia...

Thought it was probably about time I wrote a new blog again, it's been about 4 months since the last one and I guess no one's checking for updates anymore! Colm and I arrived here on the 2nd March at about midday. We thought we might have a hard time getting through the notoriously strict Australian border security but we breezed through and got a bus into Melbourne. We headed to St Kilda, a Melbourne suburb on the seafront. We only stayed one night at the first hostel we found, it wasn't a great place and they only had space for us for the one night. The next day we moved hostels, seemed like a nicer place on the face of it, the rooms were bigger, the kitchen seemed clean enough, foxtel and decent showers. We met up with a few of Colm's mates over the next few days who'd been in Australia for a while. We spent a few days applying for all sorts of jobs but not really getting any worthwhile replies. We finally rang the harvest line number and they put us in touch with a campsite who got us a grape picking job so we thought we'd give it a whirl. Got the train up to Swan Hill for $30 and had to wait around for 4 days because it was raining. When we did finally go picking we were on a shocking wage, worked out at about $4.50 an hour which is about 3 quid, slightly below minimum wage we thought so we only stayed for a couple of days. While we were up there Colm rang another Colm he knew and got us a job in Melbourne with him so we hot footed it back on the train to the bright lights of Melbourne and started work the next monday. The night before we started work Simon turned up at the hostel, a day earlier than we were expecting him, bit of a miscommunication somewhere, still not sure how it happened. Colm and I started work the next day at Entertainment Publications sending books conhtaining money off vouchers out to all the kids in Melbourne schools and if they didn't want them they sent them back. It was easy work and fairly good money for what we were actually doing. Simon tried looking for jobs over the next few weeks but didn't really get anywhere, in the end we managed to get him some work with us when it was busier for a few weeks. We managed to do a few things whilst we were in Melbourne, we went to the Australian Grand Prix in Alfred Park which was pretty cool, and we caught the end of the Melbourne comedy festival for Simon's birthday. I flew up to Brisbane for a weekend to see Ian which was a bit wierd but we had a great time. After that I carried on working at Entertainment and Simon and Colm went up the QLD/NSW border to work on a farm for 6 weeks seeding wheat and Chick Peas. By the time they got back to Melbourne I'd been there for nearly 4 months and since the boys had the car for getting to the farm we decided it was time to leave and see a bit of the country. So we packed up everything and off we went west towards Adelaide, Perth and Simon's unsuspecting relatives.

The Asia leg ends....

We headed south from Koh Phi Phi in Thailand, down to Penang in Northern Malaysia. It was a spot that both Colm and I knew very little about so we were sort of following Kris at this point. My first impression of Malaysia was that it seemed very prosperous and developed. Travelling around parts of Penang I think you could be forgiven for thinking you were in a city somewhere on the Mediterranean. There were two main things we wanted to do whilst we were in Penang, there was an 800m high hill to climb that offered brilliant views over the city, especially in the evening, however the first item to cross off the list was the snake temple. It’s more of a museum really although there is a small temple at the back of the complex. These days there are hundreds of snakes that are given full roam of the temple, you can wander about with pit vipers just sitting in trees at eye level with no sort of barrier at all. We also watched a snake attempting to eat a mouse although the two actually never met whilst we were watching. I did stroke a golden python from head to tail, which is apparently good luck according to the sign. We got back from the snake temple and found out that the funicular railway that climbed the hill was shut. We decided that it wasn’t worth sticking around just to climb the hill. The next port of call was Tamal Nagara, Malaysia’s rainforest national park. We had a mad dash to the ferry to get from Panang to the mainland and then a run to get to the station before the last train to Kuala Lumpur left. We made it just in time and sat in seats overnight to KL. The next morning we got a bus and then a boat to the national park. We decided not to do an organised trek in the jungle but just do our own thing, we were going to do a canopy walk and a trek to a hide, we’d then stay in the hide overnight, looking for animals while we were there and then do some more trekking the next day. We took Colm’s main bag with us full of sleeping bags and food and water but we still ended up having to get some more food and water on the beginning of the second day, this meant we could leave the big bag behind for the second day which was nice. We saw quite a few different animals in the end, a Monitor Lizard, giant millipede, wild boar, praying mantis, giant squirrel, a deer (from the hide overnight) and Kris saw a snake, plus numerous spiders, bugs and butterflies the size of your hand. Had a really good time out there although it was extremely hot and sweaty! The next day we got a local bus back down to KL again at 1/3 of the price it cost us to get up. KL is a nice city, although there isn’t much to do in the way of sightseeing. We got up at 6am one morning and went to the Petronas towers to get a ticket to go on the sky bridge. It was free but they only give out 1600 a day so we had to queue up for an hour to get the tickets. Our time slot wasn’t until 2pm so we went and got some breakfast and then went to a bowling alley for a few games. It was good fun and something we hadn’t done since we left. We got onto the sky bridge after watching a promotional video telling us how brilliant the Petronas company was. It was a good view from the skybridge (45 floors up) but for the amount of time we were up there it was a good thing we hadn’t paid anything. I got a rush of blood to the head that afternoon and ended up buying a laptop which I’m writing this blog on now. It was our last night with Kris as well so we had a somewhat pricey night out. Colm and I were going to get up the next morning and go to Singapore for the night but unfortunately we didn’t get up anywhere near early enough so we saw Kris off and then did very little for the next 24 hours until our flight to Australia. We did experience some torrential rain though that came through the roof of the hostel, Colm was rudely awoken when a stream of water started pouring onto him whilst he was in bed. That’s basically the end of the Asian leg of the trip, it’s been just over 5 months for me and I’ve had a superb time, now it’s time to top up the coffers in Australia. Will be meeting up with Ian while I’m there and we’ll also be welcoming Simon back soon enough.

Bangkok and the Islands

We spent a very hot few days in a stuffy but cheap room in Bangkok. We spent a day looking around the city and the royal palace. We had to pay for trousers to wear though as shorts weren't acceptable, they didn't make for a particularly good look but we certainly weren't the only ones wearing them! We spent a couple of hours walking around the different temples and then went to little India to have lunch. That night we went to watch Mai Thai boxing, ended up paying about £35 to sit ringside. We had a really good evening and it was worth paying the extra to see all the action up close, although it is a brutal sport. We met an american girl there and the 4 of us went out on Kho San Road that night. Took us a while to get going the next day after our night out so we didn't get a huge amount done. We did take a boat ride around in the evening though to see the city at night. We paid about £20 on it between us and none of us were too impressed with it, but it was quite relaxing for an hour. From Bangkok we got a bus to Katchanaburi which is where the bridge over the river Kwai is. We only spent a fwe hours in the town but it was a very imformative time. The Japanese forced thousands of prisoners of war and immigrant labourers to build a railway from Burma down to Singapore. 16'000 prisoners of war died building the railway along with 100'000 labourers. We had a walk across the bridge and back which was a little odd in itself, walking along a railway line that still has trains using it! We also went to the cemetry for the POW's that died building the railway, they were buried in the jungle but the bodies were moved and identified after the war. From there we got an overnight train down to Surat Thani to get a boat over to Koh Samui. We only spent the one night on Koh Samui, none of us were too impressed with it though so we got the boat across to Koh Phangan. This is the Island where they have the full moon parties on the beach but unfortunately we weren't there at full moon. Its a really nice island though, with a very nice beach. We stayed for 2 days. All these Islands were on the Eastern side of thailand, it took us a full day to travel from Koh Phangan to Koh Phi Phi on the Western side. We didn't stay too long on Phi Phi because we were all running low on cash and didn't really want to go to the cash machine and incur the charges just for a small amount. We had a cheap night out because people were handing out flyers for free drinks in the evening. The next day we hiked up to the view point to look back down on the beaches. The viewpoint wasn't very high but it was a very hot and sweaty climb to get there, definately worth it though, we had spectacular views. The morning after that we got a boat back to the mainland and then a minibus to Panang on the West coast of Malaysia, breezed through the border with no problems and got a 90 day stamp for free, although were only there for about 10 days!

4.5 months and finally we've been robbed!

It nowhere near as dramatic as it might seem though, there was no desperate struggle in a dodgy Bangkok backstreet or anything like that, Colm and I just got a little careless on the bus! But I'll tell the story in order. We got the boat across the Mekong to Thailand, my first border crossing by boat, it only took a few minutes and it was all done. Free Thai visa for 15 days aswell which was nice. From the border we took a minibus to Chiang Mai in the north of thailand. We got to Chiang Mai and decided to have a nice productive few days. The evening we arrived we got dinner and then went to a travel agents and booked two things, we decided on a days cooking course which was something I'd been wanting to do since I left home and for one reason or another we just never got round to it. For the second day we booked a trek to see a waterfall which also involved elephant riding and also a ride on a bamboo raft. We also went to see some minority villages but we've done this quite a few times in different places so that wasn't too exciting. Anyway, first day first, we set off to do our cooking course, none of us really knew what to expect from it really. It cost us about 15 pounds and was well worth the money. The first thing they did was get us to choose the 5 things that we wanted to cook and then they took us to the market to buy the ingredients for the dishes. The 3 of us were with a small group of people on an intrepid tour of thailand for 2 weeks. I chose to cook chicken and cashew nuts, Chiang Mai noodles with red curry paste, mango sticky rice and a coconut curry. We spent all day cooking the different things, and obviously once you've cooked it you've got to eat it aswell, we were all stuffed by the end of the day. The following day was an early start and we all pretty much went back to sleep in the bus that took us to the trek. The first thing on the itinery was the elephant trekking. We were on them for about an hour and I don't think I'd have wanted to be on for much longer than that, it was quite uncomfortable but really cool at the same time. They weren't as big as I expected them to be but Asian elephants are supposed to be quite a bit smaller than their African cousins. Colm was put on quite a cheeky little elephant, ended up spraying people on the backs of other elephants when we got to the water. After the elpehants the bus took us to a minority village where they tried and failed to sell us their handicrafts. Then from there it was the trek itself, 40mins later and we were at our destination. wasn't the hardest trek we've ever done. We messed about in the waterfall we'd reached though, no rope swings this time, it was quite shallow which meant it had some power behind it and it became a bit of a challenge for us to get to the fall. After this we were taken for lunch and then it was onto the bamboo rafting. We half jokingly told our guide that we wanted to do the rafting on our own without the guide to steer the boat and we were somewhat suprised when we got to the river and they sent the 3 of us off with a pole on our own. It was fairly easy on the slow parts of the river, you use the pole to punt along and also to push the front from side to side, the back just sort of follws the front. The rapids we went down however were a little trickier, some of them were easy enough but both Kris and I managed to bounce off a rock or 2 a few times! We got to the end of the river and that was our day done, we were dropped off back at Chiang Mai, we had a bus booked to get to Bangkok and we were being picked up by the taxi 15 minutes after we were dropped off by our trek bus so we made use of the first McDonalds we'd seen since China and ran back to the guesthouse. The taxi turned up just as we finished eating. We got to the bus and were pleasantly suprised, had plent of leg room, comfortable chairs and blankets provided, couple of films were played aswell rather then the usual karaoke rubbish. We got to Bangkok at 6am and went to sleep for a few hours. When we woke up Colm realised that he had $50 missing from his bag, I checked mine and I was down $65. The only place we can think of it going missing was when we were on the bus and the bags were down in the luggage hold. The way the money was hidden in our bags suggests that someone was sat down there going through all the bags on the off chance. We probably weren't the only people who had a problem and it has taught us a bit of a lesson and nothing important was taken so its not all so bad. Will talk about Bangkok and the Bridge over the river Kwai in the next blog!

Talk to you all soon

Paul, Colm and Kris

Laos...

Had a relatively straight forward run up to the 4000 islands from the Laos/Cambodia border. We stayed on an island called Don Det in the middle of the Mekong river, spent about 10 mins in a boat threading our way through other, smaller islands and got off on the beach at Don Det. Its a pretty small island, about 1.5x0.5km and all the accommodation was in bungalows. We found one with 3 single beds in it for 75'000kip, which is about $9. We had all sorts of grand plans of renting kayaks and renting bikes but unfortunately Rob was right, the island is just too good a place for relaxing and doing very little so thats pretty much what we did, we met a couple called Rich and Sue from Crawley and we ended up spending most of our 4 evenings with them. We finally dragged ourselves away from all the relaxation and booked a boat and then a bus up to a place Champasak about 3 hours North, in the end we kind of wished we hadn't. We got up early, got the boat back to the mainland and then got in the 'VIP bus', basically an oversized tuk tuk with bench seats and about 15 people in it. It wasn't to bad, we got there, or so we thought, we asked at someone and it turned out we were about 12km from Champasak. The plan was to go to Champasak and see a temple and then get the night bus to Vientienne. We flagged down an articulated lorry carrying wood and he said he take us as far as the river. I sat in the cab while Colm and Kris had to stand behind the cab, don't think they minded though! We got to the Mekong, again..., paid to get across to Champasak and then walked 2km toward town in sweltering heat, after the 2km we decided to stop at a guest house and have a drink. We left our bags with them and walked the rest of the way into town to go to an cash machine, we were all running low on money, but the cash machine was closed for some reason! By now we were all pretty fed up and then we were told that the busses to Vientienne only left from Pakse, so we decided to cut our losses and got a tuk tuk the rest of the way to Pakse, got there by about 4pm and by 8pm we were on the night bus to Vientienne. Found ourselves a room with 3 beds in for $18, more than we wanted to pay but it did have a TV which meant we could watch the final of the Melbourne Open. The next day we did a walking tour that was in the lonely planet, it was supposed to take 4-6 hours, we managed it in 1, dont think our hearts were in it really. The following day we got the local bus for 4 hours up to Vang Vieng. We spent 3 nights there before we managed to get it together and go up the river for a spot of tubing. Had a really good time and drank far to much as you can probably see from the pictures. We all ended up with a few cuts and bruises from the river and I needed a new pair of flip flops when I ended up with 2 right feet ones at the end of the night (think that pair number 5 now). After that we spent 6 hours on the bus going from Vang Vieng up to Luang Prabang. When we got there we realised we were only going to be in the country for a few more days so we had to start rationing ourselves so that we wouldn't have to go to the cash machine again and its not a partiuarly cheap place to stay. We managed it though, went to visit a waterfall which was really cool, they have loads of asiatic bears that they've rescued from poachers who keep them for they're bile which is used in Chinese traditional medicine, they seemed really well looked after. The water fall was really nice, I haven't ever seen water that was that colour before, we spent an hour or so walking around it and climbing to the top and then after that we went for a swim, the water was freezing! It was good though, did the rope swing and jumped off the waterfall. If you left your feet in the water there were little fish that come and nibble at them, that was quite a wierd sensation. The day after the waterfall we had a day walking around Luang Prabang (see the buddha for each day pictures) and that evening it was a seater bus over night to the Laos Thailand border.

About to leave Laos, time to write about Cambodia!

We left Siem Reap to head for Kratie to find Rob and some dolphins, we were successful on both fronts! We expected the bus to Kratie to be nice and straight forward and to start with it was, got on your average Cambodian coach, nothing special but nothing out of the ordinary. Spent 6 hours on it going to Kom Pong Cham, when we got there they told us we had to get off the nice big bus and get into a Toyota Camry (The Cambodians favourite car, they all have them). Again we thought this wasn't really a problem until they told us how many people were going to be in this saloon car. They put 8 of us in it, 4 in the back, 2 on the passenger chair and 2 on the drivers chair. It was an interesting 3 hours but as everyone keeps saying, its all about the journey and we survived the journey so it wasn't to bad. Got to Kratie in the afternoon and thought rather than just sit around we'd get on and go and see the dolphins the same day. Got a tuk tuk for 30mins out to the place on the Mekong river with the dolphins. Luckily we went past Rob and Mao on their motorbike on the way so they followed us, we had a quick reunion and then Colm, Kris and I went out onto river to spot the illusive dolphins. They're not so illusive, we saw loads of them, and they breathe out when they get to the surface so their even telling you where they are, even so, as you'll see from the pictures, they are extremely difficult to get a decent picture of. But we did get to see them so it was mission accomplished. That night was our last night with Rob, we all had a romantic candlelit dinner because the whole town was out of power. The next morning we all met up for breakfast again and then Rob and Mao left South for Kom Pong Cham again and we headed North East to Bang Lung. The journey up to Bang Lung was another bone rattling one in a minibus but as we went on a few people got out and we ended up with a reasonable amount of space. Bang Lung (in Ratanakiri province) seemed to have very little going for it when we first got there, our bags were absolutely caked in dust from the road when we got there. The following day we got on a push bike each and cycled out to what we thought was a volcanic crater lake but some people have told us it was a meteor crater lake, we're still not sure which it was but we had a great time there, it was a pretty much a perfect circle of really nice water. People have built platforms around the lake aswell, we managed to find one of these to ourselves and proceeded to spend a good few hours swimming about, jumping in off the platforms (hopefully the video's worked the other day) and chatting on the deck. That afternoon we cycled the other way back through town and went to a couple of waterfalls. They were both pretty nice and again we pretty much had them to ourselves but we did all sort of wish we'd spent the whole day at the crater lake.The next day was another bumpy ride in a minivan to Stung Treng and then from there another minivan up to the Cambodia/Laos border. Got across with no drama's and from there it was off to Don Det in the 4000 Islands (South Laos).

Sorry its late, again...

We're no longer in Cambodia but I'll try to finish off the blogs from then! In the last entry we were beginning our temple marathon. We left Kom Pong Thom to head for Siem Reap, got there early afternoon and I wasn't feeling too clever so it ended up being quite a lazy day, we did however organise ourselves to go to Koh Ker the following morning. It was 120km to get there in a 4x4 and it was only the 3 of us going. The main temple there was really impressive, a 40m high pyramid in the middle of the jungle, unfortunately we weren't allowed to climb it but just seeing it was pretty cool, and because it was so far away there was nearly no one there. They only finished clearing the Khmer Rouge mines around the Koh Ker temple complex quite recently, they were still getting rid of some of them in 2007. We spent about 3 hours around the Koh Ker area looking at all the other temples (camera ran out of battery so not many pictures). Got back to Siem Reap that evening and decided we'd be healthy for a few days and use bikes to get around the Angkor temples. We bought a 3 day pass to the Angkor temples when we got up early the next morning to go and watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat, unfortunately it was drizzling the whole time we were there and there was no sign of the sun at all, it just slowly got lighter. Got a tuk tuk back to Siem Reap for some breakfast and to pick the bikes up, unfortunately we had a bit of a lie down and it ended up being about 11am before we got back out on the bikes. We decided that seeing as Angkor Wat is supposed to be the main event as it were, we would look at all the other temples around Angkor (There are a lot) and then finish up with Angkor Wat as the grand finale. The first main one we went to was Bayon in Angkor Thom. This is quite a big building and its covered with the faces of the king who ordered it to be built. Apparently all of the temples were deconstructed and the stones were laid out in the forest, its only recently that they have reconstructed them, some of them are still in the process of being reconstructed. There are a lot of different temples in Angkor Thom (a walled region) so for day 1 we stayed around there and tried to see all the temples that it had to offer us. Cycled about 20km and after our early sunrise start we were pretty tired by the end of the day. Got soaking wet on the road back into Siem Reap but it did cool us down if nothing else.
Day 2 started with much better weather, although we couldn't be bothered getting up for sunrise again. Hopped back on the bikes again and did some temples that were a little further afield. This included the temple that the tomb raider film was filmed at, and for myself and Colm that was our favourite one, it was much less polished than the other temples we had seen and generally seemed to have more charachter than the other ones that we saw. We finished the day at Angkor Wat for sunset and realised that it wasn't really the best place to watch the sunset (couple of unseccesful days as far as the sun was concerned). Angkor Wat was impressive, it is definately the best preserved of the temples and its massive (Biggest religous building in the world I was told), but as I said before, it wasn't our favourite, just didn't quite have the charachter that some of the others did. We managed another 30km on day 2 and decided that we were pretty much templed out and didn't see the need to stay for the last day of our 3 day pass so we headed to Kratie to see Irawaddy dolphins (fresh water) and to meet up with Rob!

Hopefully all is well at home, sorry if photobuckets annoying anyone, its annoying me, keeps putting the pictures in daft orders and changing it around with me telling it to!

Will try and do the blog for the rest of Cambodia soon!

Its been a while...

Seems like the last blog was from when we were still in Vietnam, I didn't realise it had been such a long time! We got the ferry off Phu Quoc to Ha Tien and got on the back of a moped each to get across the border into Kep on the South Coast of Cambodia. You can immediately see the difference in development between Vietnam and Cambodia, here only the main trunk roads between a few towns are paved, the rest of them are dirt tracks ranging from smooth to near enough inpassable, although the busses still manage to fly along the supposedly inpassable roads. Kep was really quiet, we met up with Kris again there (Spent Christmas and New Year with him) and have since decided to all carry on together as we're all on a similar time scale! From Kep we took a trip out to Rabbit and Snake Islands, we snorkelled around snake Island, not something Colm or I had done before, it was good fun, although I found it a bit disconcerting when it got almost too shallow to swim over the top of the coral, had visions of getting stuck...! From there we went back to Rabbit Island (There only about 15mins off the coast, and about the same apart) and spent the night in 2 little bungalows! It was really nice and personally I preferred it to Phu Quoc. The next day we left Rabbit Island and headed to Kampot, spent the night there and booked ourselves onto a tour to Bokor Hill station. Cost us $22 (Pretty much everything is done in dollars here rather than the local Riel) and they took us to the bottom of the hill, we then trekked up for about 4 hours, getting in a truck at the top to be transported along the top of the hill to the hill station. It was built by the french in the 1920's as a retreat to get away from the heat, it was a very sweaty climb up but it was noticebly cooler at the top. Spent a few hours there and then the truck bought us back to the point it picked us up from and then we trekked back down again, only took about 2.5 hours on the way back down. That evening after the trek we left for Sihanoukville. We spent 2 full days there and had all sorts of grand plans for going to a national park and doing some more trekking, that sort of fell by the wayside in the end though, we ended up spending our 2 days drinking in cocktails in a bar on the beach and going to bed early! Had a good time though, being pestered by people to have bracelets made and buy fruit (we did both in the end). On day 3 we got up at about 6am and got the bus out of town to the capital, Pnomh Penh. Rob met up with Mao when we got there, the Cambodian who took him around last 2 years ago last he was in Cambodia. He took us for a Cambodian barbecue, you basically get the food (Beef and Seafood we had) bought to the table along with the veg and you all cook it together on a gas hotplate in the middle of the table. The picture of Rob and Colm is on the way back to our guest house after the BBQ. The following day we had a trip out to the shooting range where Rob had a pop with a rifle but the rest of us decided it was a bit too expensive. On the way back Rob went to see Mao again and Colm, Kris and I went to the National museum and the Royal palace. There are a lot of Hindu and Buddhist statues in the National Museum that have been removed from temples around the country for safe keeping, (The Khmer Rouge damaged a lot of them during their rule) most of the temples now have replicas in them. The Royal Palace was quite impressive however at this point I wasn't feeling too well, was having stomach cramps and the like so I probably wasn't in quite the right frame of mind to appreciate it fully.

I'll try and do another post in the next few days to bring everyone completely up to date with all our temple viewing, etc!

Hopefully talk to you all soon.

Paul, Colm and Rob.

ps. Simon, have you sold that van yet, you've been missing out lad!?!

Mekong and Phu Quoc

Just a quick post, tried to put some pictures on but the virus software on the computer I'm using just quarantined half of my pictures, taken me half an hour to get them back on the memory card, don't fancy trying again really!! We left Saigon for Can Tho spent a very hot 4 hours in a minibus but apart from that it was an uneventful trip. Decided that evening that we should still have enough time to get to the island of Phu Quoc for a few days. The next morning we were all up at 4.45am to go on a tour of the Mekong delta, had a great guide who made the tour for us, he took us up the river to a couple of different floating markets, showed us a noodle factory and then took us for lunch on the way back, I had 'Elephants ear fish'! We left that afternoon for Rach Gia which is the port town that the ferry to Phu Quoc leaves from. Spent the night there and then got the ferry the following morning, they were showing Rambo films on the ferry, something we weren't expecting. We're sharing 2 single beds between the 3 of us on Phu Quoc at the moment so its a bit cosy, the accomodation we've got is only 100m from the beach. The plan for today was to go on a deep sea fishing and snorkelling trip but unfortunately both Colm and I had some sort of bug overnight, both had bad diorrhea and vomiting, we both seem to be pretty much over it now though. Tomorrow we get the ferry off Phu Quoc to Ha Tien on the Vietnam/Cambodia border, then its onto the back of a moped each to get to Kep on the South coast of Cambodia. Hope everyone is coping with the arctic conditions back at home and Simon hopefully your throat is better, hopefully we'll see you back here soonish!

Paul Colm and Rob x

Chuck Mung Nam Moi.... (HAPPY NEW YEAR)

Got to Dalat on boxing day evening and got quite an early night, the Christmas celebrations had taken their toll a bit! Next day we hopped on mopeds again and headed out of Dalat to a waterfall first and then a bit further to another mountain pass, didn't ride the whole of the pass in the end as the roads were a bit dodgy and we were running out of time to get back to Dalat in the daylight. Had a great day though, the following day we decided to do a bit of walking, did a cable car ride down to a lake that the french made when they used to be in Dalat. Was really pretty, had some good food in a little place overlooking the lake. Went to a restaraunt in Dalat thatevening and had Ostritch for the first time, its really nice, well worth a try, will be looking out for more when we get to Oz!

Got up early the next day for the bus from Dalat to Mue Ne which is back on the coast again. Mue Ne was expensive, paid $25 for a room for the 3 of us, although they did have a nice pool which sort of made up for the outlay. Next day we went to see the sand dunes, off on the mopeds, again... The dunes were really good, there were 2 sets, Red Dunes and White dunes, got pestered the whole time by kids trying to get us to slide down the dunes on mats. Got back to Mue Ne that afternoon and we were straight on the bus, weren't too impressed with Mue Ne really although the dunes did make up for it. Got the bus from there to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City now) and arrived at about 10pm, went for a quick bite to eat and a drink and then to bed. New years eve the next day, Colm and I went on a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, which are the tunnels the Viet Cong used when fighting against the Americans. The tunnels here are a lot smaller than the tunnels in the DMZ which were used to hide from the bombs.

Went to a few different bars for our New Years party with Chris and Hannah who we've met in a few different places now. Midnight was spent at a crossroads with loads of other people and lots of foam being sprayed about. Had a really good night. Today is new years day, been a fairly slow day, went to the Rex hotel (where Good Morning Vietnam was recorded apparently) and had a drink. The square where Top Gear started their Vietnam tour is just outside it.

Tomorrow were off to do a bit of sightseeing round Saigon and then it'll be off to the Mekong Delta we think!

Happy New year everyone, its going to be a good one!

Paul, Colm and Rob