The last great adventure… (Choquequirau & Machu Picchu)

www.daveswatson.com

My great world trip is sadly drawing to an end, and barring any major mishaps I plan to be eating my Christmas turkey in Warwickshire this year. However I do have one last blog entry to write - this is a mammoth one and for that I apologise. If you do wish to continue, I suggest you first put the kettle on.

Actually this is not so much a blog entry, but extracts from a diary I have been keeping for the past 10 days. The last 10 days coinciding with very probably the most silly thing I have done since leaving the UK. Even more silly than planting trees in Oz, canyoning with dangerous snakes in the Indian jungle, heading for the South Asian seas with South African pirates, or even running away from angry bulls in Spain! What we decided to do was hike by ourselves (just Andy and I) through rural mountainous Peru, in some stupid effort to visit the mystical ‘lost’ Inca cities of Choquequirau and Machu Picchu unguided. You can do similar tours with local guides, mules to carry your gear and cooks to make your dinner, but it will cost you at least $500. We completed this mammoth hike for a fraction of that cost; but it did mean climbing a total of over 6000m (20,000ft) with all our gear on our backs. As I say stupid! Anyhow enough blabber; click here to read our story.

The last great adventure

Daves xxx

Bolivia

Where can I start? 100% the poorest country in South America. 100% the highest country in the southern hemisphere. 100% landlocked. 100% the only country where coca is grown legally (much to the annoyance of the now departed American DEA). 100% awesomely stunning scenery. 96% alcohol for 15p. One of the most remote and rugged countries in the western hemisphere.100% Crazy!!!

I last wrote from Sucre where I had spent a week studying a little Spanish. Rock on… what a city! But there was sooo much more of Bolivia to see, and so we were eventually forced to vamos and head elsewhere. Now unfortunately I don’t have time for my usual full report and stories (I’ll explain why in a sec…), but safe to say Bolivia has been my favorite traveling experience since India – and possibly the top country on my whole trip?!?!

Anyhow rather than describe what was so great, just check out the newly added photos (here and on facebook). Simply stunning!

Now this brings me to why I appear to be skipping homework: I am now in Cusco (Peru), and came here with the intention of visiting Machu Picchu and various other Inca heritage sites like any good diligent tourist. However, we have decided to do it with a difference! The tour companies have all been ditched, topological (big word for me) maps have been purchased, a tent hired, food supplies acquired, and tomorrow we do like the Incas and head for the hills. Basically we have a rough plan to hike to Choquequirau and then to Machu Picchu, and so expect to be away to the real world for a fair bit...

I guess a much smellier Dave will let you know more next time. Until I return; Addios! x

Tumbleweeds, dust, and a surprisingly large number of Germans (AKA Paraguay)

Leaving behind Argentina and Iguazu falls (an uber cool spectacular waterfall system), we stumbled rather more blindly than usual into or next country; Paraguay. More blindly than usual, due to the lack of info available. Internet, guidebooks, and fellow travelers were a wonderful void of advice on what to do in Paraguay. Nevertheless we optimistically packed our bags and begun the long journey through Paraguay to Bolivia!

The fist notion that fun and games would begin was the actual crossing into Paraguay from Argentina. We turned up bright and early at the port (or shack at the side of a river) where we had been assured a ferry would happily meet us and take us across. However the ferry was parked in the middle of the river and el captain was very much on land. In very broken Spanish and lots of made up sign language we determined that there was probably no boat today, possibly one tomorrow and certainly one sometime towards the end of the week. Great! A trek back to town and bus via Brazil it would be.

Said bus actually turned out to be a cheap and simple solution. In fact it took us all the way through Brazil, and to the main bus station in Ciudad del Este (Paraguay’s border city). Awesome stuff, except that it had driven straight through border immigration without stopping. Again; great! So another bus trip; back to the border, more broken Spanish, lots of asking if we were Americans (who have to pay crazy amounts of cash to enter), and hey presto we were officially in Paraguay. We thus celebrated by jumping on yet another bus, this time to the capital Asuncion, cracking open a new country beer and admiring what looked suspiciously like bullet holes in our room.

After spending a few days relaxing and basking in the 43 degree heat of Asuncion we continued north and one step closer to Bolivia. Now the north of Paraguay is actually an almost uninhabited savannah about the size of Spain. It’s known as the Chaco – or land of cactuses, pumas and not much else. We decided (rather stupidly as it would turn out) to break up our journey and stop for a night in Filadelfia, a strangely American sounding place half way to the border. I’m still not quite sure what anyone actually does in Filadelfia, and we did devote a fair amount of people watching time in an effort to find out. In fact the locals were doing pretty much exactly the same as us; sitting outside a shop, sipping something cold, playing chess, wiping dust out of their eyes, and generally just trying not to melt. The highlight of the day was most defiantly watching the odd tumbleweed roll past. And so here we waited… for a whole 24hours and the next bus the hell outa there!

So I guess this brings me to Filadelfia´s slightly bizarre German influence. We couldn’t help but notice that most streets had somewhat German sounding names (i.e. Hindenberg street), and there was also a very out of place efficiently run supermarket with lots of German signage. However the real confirmation came when we visited the towns’ bank; everyone looked a little like, and spoke much more than a little like what I deemed to be German. Even with our somewhat limited powers of deduction we were able to deduce that this town was full of Germans... Now I could be barking up the wrong tree here; but didn’t some friends of a ´tash proud Austrian come to hide in South America around the mid 1940´s?

…

As it turned out, getting ourselves stamped out of Paraguay was likely to be as tricky as getting stamped in. Mariscal Estigarribia is the place to do the stamping, but that is still hours from the Bolivian border. To achieve a successful evacuation of Paraguay we had to get the 8pm bus to the stamping shack (“shack” being very very generous), and wait outside until 4am when the border bus passed by. At least we had plenty of mosquitos for company, and even the odd motorbike every few hours.

But 4am did eventually come, and it meant success and a change of fortunes… 7hrs and many more cactuses later, a bunch of jolly Bolivians welcomed us into their country! We took our chances and jumped off the bus at the pretty but remote oil town of Camiri, hoping to find something or someone heading in the direction of our intended target; Sucre. Sure enough a bus left the next day! So after a much needed pit stop of sleep/food and beer, another dirt (but mountainous road), and yet another night on a bus we eventually reached Sucre from where I write this.

In an unplanned change we have been studying Spanish here for the last week, meaning we can now have broken conversations with the locals. Still a fair bit of sign language is involved but we are getting there! I think Andy has learnt more in a week than 5 years studying back at school. Next we head to the highest city in the world, Potosi, before exploring the highly rated salt desert of Salar de Uyuni.

Hasta Luego Mi Amigos,
Daves xx

Steak and Wine - Argentina

¡Hola!

I write to you from the land of the world best steaks (and bloody good wine too); Argentina. This is 100% great/amazing/exceedingly delightful news, because it equates to me finally leaving Australia and travelling once more! In fact I have been on the move for the last few weeks, visiting a bit more of Australia, Fiji, a brief night in New Zealand, and Chile.

My first travelling escapade after escaping from Australia was the sunny paradise of Fiji. Call it a holiday within a big holiday, I once again joined forces with Andy who had been in Fiji for a week or so, scouting the Islands. So after spending the first night at Fiji´s major football tournament in Nadi, we planned to board a boat to the Yasawah islands to the north-west. Sadly as fate would have it, it was raining the next day. The following day too. Oh and the next just for luck… In fact it rained for 3days straight, confining us to the dining room (the only dry place) when we did eventually arrive on our first island. Not to be deterred from having a good time, the staff demonstrated plenty of dancing – Fiji style - and unfortunately got us involved too. But on the fourth day the sun eventually, and with some embarrassment, decided to show itself. Normal Fiji style swimming, sunbathing and beach volleyball service was resumed. The holiday begun!

Moving on from our mini holiday we briefly stopped in New Zealand and caught a new time travel device with wings to Chile (our fist stop in South America) ...I say time travel primarily because we climbed aboard this so called ´plane´ friday evening, spent almost 12 bored hours watching films, and somehow arrived 3hrs before we left on Friday afternoon! Rather odd sorts of planes they use these days.

Due to a series of unfortunate events (actually not involving us being stupid for once), we unsuccessfully tried to watch a game of South American ´futbol´ in Santiago Chile. I say unsuccessful because the game wasn’t being played in the stadium in which we had been assured it was. We kinda guessed something was odd being the only people at the stadium 30 minutes before kick off. But no worries… as luck would have it the biggest game in domestic South American futbol was on the following weekend in Argie-bargie land. River Plate were hosting their local rivals Boca Juniors in Buenos Aries. And as any self respecting football fan would, we promptly acquired tickets and raced across the width of South America to watch the game!

(Although the match fizzed out into a 1-1 draw the crowed lived up to their reputation; especially the crazy Boca fans! I shall put a video from inside the stadium on Facebook when I can)

On the way to Buenos Aries we did make a quick pit-stop in Mendoza, the capital of Argentinean steak and wine. Pit-stop is a bit of a wee lie as we ended up staying a few days, rented bikes and went on a very successful tour of the local wineries. Safe to say I don´t completely remember the events of that day, particularly the afternoon and evening, but I do remember being woken up rafting over rapids and splashed by very icy water the next morning. All in the name of travelling!

Anyhoo I´ll leave you here until next time. We are currently on the Brazil/Paraguay/Argentina border checking out a giant waterfall before leaving for Paraguay in a few days. Guess I shall probably get the chance to write again from Bolivia or Peru. Take care and ciao ciao for now.

Daves x

Working Class Hero

Ha! Well so much for door-to-door salesmen. Conor and I lasted a grand total of 2 hours before admitting to ourselves that it sucked big time… and lasting the 2 hours was chore enough. I guess I’m just not made to be a Jehovah’s Witness; at least not in this life.

So that posed the grand problem of what to do next in order to bread-up the table (and to make it to South America, of course). For the first step we left the city and headed back to backpacker bread and butter… farmwork - and specifically for us, pineapples...

Now have you ever wondered how pineapples grow? I must, for one, confess that I have really never cared enough to donate brain cells to the matter. But if you had pushed me I would have suggested that they grow on trees a bit like coconuts do – Wrong! It would seem one of the more delicious of fruits grow on a bed of razor sharp knife-leaves spouting out of the ground. To pick; simply stumble through the leaves picking up pineapples and throwing ‘em onto a conveyor belt which is dangled in front of you by a tractor (the driver of which has somehow bribed his way to the bestest job), all whilst loosing limb by limb to the knife-leaves. On the plus side I did generally seem to get some good basket ball practice as I had to throw further and further, whilst losing my personal race with the tractor. But I did actually last more than 2 hours this time: 2 days in fact! Improvement I hear you cry.

As it happens I didn’t actually throw in the towel on this particular pineapple throwing extravaganza (and would have been happy to continue), but I was randomly offered a better opportunity – Guaranteed 4 months work making cardboard boxes of all things. So here I am living in Caboolture, a place my boss and landlady like to keep reminding me is a ‘socially deprived’ suburb of Brisbane. However my housemates rock, and keeping with the Australian theme I am living with another Korean, Tawanise and 3 Japanese people... all awesome. And we are close enough to Brisbane, the Sunshine and the Gold coast to escape and provide sanity at weekends.

So with travelling now very much on hold again (this time at least until October), this will be my last update for a while. I’m sure we can enjoy these times of spiderweb fellowship next time I hit the road. For now I’ll be getting on with practicing my Spanish.

Adiós Amigos! xxx

Saving the world…

I did, at the beginning, believe that my work was helping to save the world – that’s what tree hugging/planting is about, right!?! Well – wrong! As it would turn out, planting trees actually causes more damage to the environment (thanks to fertiliser, weedkiller, etc.) than, well, not planting trees. However you can probably thank me for being able to wipe your rear ends with something other than your hand. Donations to my travelling fund please...

As you can see, I have finally gotten round to writing this new blog entry -and am doing so from the laid back city of Brisbane. I write today as an ex-tree planter; the end to my employment involving Wallabies, birthdays and a mutiny... but more on that inna bit.

I did eventually leave sleepy Ingham about a month ago; after two months in the middle of nowhere. In this time Conor had also joined the tree planting game in an attempt to acquire much needed funds. Unfortunately ‘Red’ our fun Korean boss left the company (along with most of the Koreans) when we left Ingham. Whilst poor Evan, another Korean, had to fly home with a hole in his lung – turns out from working too hard! I spent a very interesting day in hospital with him, trying to play at being translator even though I only know a few words of Korean – unfortunately none of them being ‘hole’ or ‘lung’.

Finally leaving Ingham we spent over 12 hours crammed into the back of our truck driving south to the coastal town of Yeppoon. Due to perfect planning we arrived slap bang in the middle of the night, during the local running of the cows festival. What this meant was that there was ‘no room in the inn’ so to speak, and we actually ended up camping in the forest 40km from the nearest settlement with no car (Our new boss, not as nice as Red, always took a few days badgering before letting us borrow the ‘troopy’ and drive to a shop). Living in the middle of nowhere was actually a great way to save money, and experience even rural-er Australia. I even got to feed very tame Wallabies (smaller Kangaroo type creatures) from my hand, around the bonfire.

Initially told that new workers were en-route, we were looking forward to meeting and working with new people. However half had actually quit on their first day, before us ‘old timers’ had even stated. The rest followed suit and quit the next day, leaving us with just two new workers from a possible dozen or so... such is the nature of the tree planting ‘profession’. To be honest I wasn’t surprised; the ground was like concrete and planting generally involved wedging a tree between a couple of rocks. Soil, what soil!? Their departure meant that we had to work without a day off to get the job done on time, but did result in more money for our good selves!

This then brings me to the Mutiny via the birthdays... following Yeppoon our next job was to be on Bribie Island just north or Brisbane. Myself and Conor had actually decided to take a few weeks off, but wanted to take advantage of the free ride further south first. It was also 3 of our crew’s birthdays (Aussie Darren, Scot Danny, and the final remaining Korean ‘Ray’) all on the same day, and we wanted to stay and celebrate with them. Once again great planning meant we arrived in our new destination (which turned out was not near an Island; but instead a motorway) at 10pm, well after all campsites had closed, and just a few hours before 3 birthdays commenced. Our boss then thought it appropriate to leave us in a roadside rest area for the night and drive off with the car. Obviously we were less than thrilled with that plan, but after intense negotiations did persuade him to take us to a pub for a drink first. So there we were having a drink in the pub knowing that we would be sleeping by the roadside inna few minutes (what a fun life), when our boss came back in and well... to cut to the chase this 20year old redneck was soon standing in the middle of the pub shouting “I am the boss”; a comical sight to behold, believe me. In his crazy tantrum he sacked Errol, a 50-something year old planter – at which point we all staged a mutiny, quit, grabbed our bags from the truck, and promptly ordered another round of drinks!

Possibly the most interesting thing to every happen in the pub, the staffed loved it! They set about finding us somewhere to stay for the night, and it’s safe to say we had a great birthday celebration the next day in said pub...

And that brings me to Brisbane, where I have spent the last couple of days training to be a door-to-door salesman. Basically the idea is just to tell porkies the whole time. So if you see me walk up to your door trying to sell electricity - I’d advise that you pretend no one is home. I’ll let you know how it goes, and how flat my face has become in the next episode.

Ciao for now. x

Thailand to the Underworld (aka Oz)

So Australia - the unknown land of the south, the land down under, the world's smallest continent, a nation of prisoners...Well against the ever increasing odds I actually made it here!

So to continue from where I left you; I am now the owner of a brand spanking new British passport. However, the best thing was the wait. It meant that I got to stay in Thailand for several extra weeks. In that time Thailand rose from a good country to an amazing nation in the strange world that is my brain. That is to say I say another side of this fine country, and began to experience a little more of the local culture.

As so often happens when travelling, you meet new friend in strange circumstances. I met Gary and Jo in the wake of a massive explosion that had filled the sky of Bangkok with thick black smoke. We were waiting for a train at a tiny café in the suburbs of Bangkok, as an impromptu valentines day parade marched by. There were strange dancers, dragons, and even beer trucks handing out glasses of beer. I’m still not quite sure what all this has to do with valentines day, but who am I to question??!

Well we did eventually jump on a train, which took the route of the old death railway to Kanchanaburi, where we met Gabi (an Aussie from Brissy) and Jane (one of the local bar owners). Kanchanaburi is very different to the islands of southern Thailand; but I can’t recommend it highly enough. We visited the humbling ‘Hellfire pass' where a huge number of POW’s died during WWII, walked over and kayaked under the infamous‘Bridge over the River Kwai', visited the crystal clear Erawan waterfalls, and I even rode through the River Kwai on an elephants head. But best of all we hired motorbikes and Jane showed us around - allowing us to explore numerous caves and temples, often only visited by the locals. Safe to say I am a well practiced beginner Buddhist now!

A phone call did eventually interrupt my fun informing me that my passport was ready. Just in time for me to get to Singapore for my early March flight to Oz. So I speed through Southern Thailand and Malaysia by a combination of bus, tuk-tuk and train. However, I did have time for a quick stop on the Island of Koh Samui to say hi to a mummified monk, oh and Kylie and Jim who were holidaying in Thailand :-)

So Australia... to my surprise I actually made it here, and began by spending 10 days in Cairns a rocking chilled town in north Queensland. Along with most of the town’s population, I spent my days chilling at the lagoon, before having a BBQ and heading the bar for the night. Meeting a great bunch of British lands and Swedish girls we decided that some diving at the Great Barrier Reef was in order. Now as many of you will be aware I have a particular aversion to waterproof killing machines, and well, fish in general. Hence myself and the sea are usually kept well apart. Diving and snorkelling changed all that, especially when swimming with ‘Willie’ a strange fish close to half my size. I’m not quite comfortable with sea creatures yet, but I'm actually willing to give it another go. On this occasion I did get away without any sharky encounters, but choose a few small jellyfish/sea-lice stings in preference to the fetching bright sting suit.

Gutted to say goodbye to Cairns and good friends, I really needed to get working and earning some cash. In light of Australia’s crazy current unemployment rate, and in light of the vast quantities of beer I consumed in Asia... I chose the hardworking option of tree planting in pretty much nowhere. So here I am in Ingham with a bunch of Korean travellers. We have a ‘troopy’ tuck that breaks down hourly (especially when driving through roads that are now rivers), and several other trucks that feel like they have jelly suspension (when I drive them at least). I am sleeping on a kitchen floor, and every so often a farmer drops pesticide on us from his plane. But it is awesome fun!!! I’ll probably stay here till the work runs out in a few months and maybe even save up for a share of my own truck, so what was once the Euro road trip can continue down under :-D

Ciao for now. Daves xxx

A snake, a jar, and a lost passport - Laos

Happy days; I’m stuck in Paradise :-) As fate (or luck) would have it, I lost my passport in a country without a British Embassy … Laos. On the bad side it would appear that I am going to miss my flight to Oz; but never mind – I get to chill here longer!

‘Here’ is Vang Vieng; a small town on the Nam Xong River in Northern Laos. I am actually writing this entry whilst sitting in a hammock by the river, overlooked by stunning mountainous scenery, sipping the local beverage (recommended by the Laos tourist board as the safest bottled stuff to drink, mmm) – BeerLao, and watching people float past on tyres.

My adventure into the (sadly ex) Land of a Million Elephants began on the 28th January. After escaping King Kong and moving south, we took a train from Bangkok to Nong Khai – a small town in Northern Thailand, from which we were able to buy a visa and cross ‘Friendship Bridge’ into Laos herself (one of the few land border crossings in the world where cars actually have to switch driving sides of the road). In a single trip we took an overnight train, tuk tuk, bus, pick-up and coach; mowing straight through the capital ‘Vientiane’ and on to our destination; ‘Vang Vieng’.

After settling in; myself and Conor armed ourselves with mountain bikes and spent a few days exploring the impressive neighbourhood. The town itself is just like any town; it is the river and scenery around is which is soo stunning! It was great fun checking out the many caves, awesome river views, an underwater lagoon, and we even got to play linesman at a local football match. However the best fun was had just following the river, crossing rickety wood bridges, finding isolated bars (a man and a bucket of BeerLao), and just chilling!!!

Not to get totally sucked into a life of laziness (and I’m convinced that this is one of the best place in the world to be lazy), I decided a day of floating / swimming / jumping / diving / zip-lining and sliding was in order. So I did what most people do; hired an inner tyre and went ‘tubing’ down the Nam Xong. You basically get given a ‘tube’, are driven upstream and left to float the few k/m back to town. However, the key is that the river is lined with bars, and even better - barmen who literally throw you a lifeline and drag you to shore. And here begins the story of my lost passport…

This particular lost passport story begins with a snake and a jar… On being pulled into one standard beer serving bar, with a bunch of Aussie’s (who else!?!), I was offered a choice of free shot – Whisky, Vodka or some local stuff in a jar with a snake! Taking full advantage of ‘free stuff’, and to extract some revenge on the animal kingdom, I naturally chose the snake. This was probably not in my top 10 good ideas of all time, and would soon lead to a lot more zip-lining into the river, another beer or two, and ending with me chasing my tube down the river. Anyhow, at some point my dry bag became a wet bag and my passport and wallet thought it clever to sneak off, leaving my phone to commit suicide in the resulting puddle...doh.

I guess the moral of the story is that snakes are bad, even when in jars. Oh and that loosing your passport can hinder the whole travelling thing. Still I am now the proud owner of an Australian emergency travel document, which will let me get to Bangkok. Even better it allows me to stay here in paradise a little longer whilst the Thai’s take a nice bank holiday weekends rest. I spent my extra time thus far exploring a massive underwater river by tube, and Kayaking through this never-failing-to-impress scenery. Seriously come to Laos – it rocks!

Before I go, I’ll leave you with some good advice - learn some local words when visiting a new country or you may end up looking like a bit of a plonker. On arriving back in the capital (to ‘fix’ my passport problem) we planned to stay in ‘Sabadee Guest House’. Getting out of our long-distance pickup, we were more than a little surprised to find a load of tuk tuk drivers running up to us shouting ‘Sabadee, Sabadee’!!! Not to be deterred we jumped in the first tuk tuk and confirmed ‘Sabadee Guest House’ as our destination… It was only a few hours later when thumbing through a guide to Laos I determined that ‘Sabadee’ is the actually the local word for… yep you guessed it … ‘hello’ :-)

China

After spending a fair amount of time being very British and moaning about the weather to anyone who would listen in Korea, we were looking forward to visting warmer climates again. As you can imagine, we were unbelievably thrilled to find snow on the ground when we arrived in the Chinese port town of Tianjin! Needless to say we didn't hang around too long, and took what is currently the worlds fastest commuter train outa there, and to Beijing (which actually turned out to be further north - missing the whole planning aspect yet again me thinks!).

I remember previously mentioning that India was "big", and it is very big indeed. However, we were soon to discover that China is India and a lot more. I am led to believe that Mahoooosive is the technical term. We soon realised that we would never get to see much in the little time we had - especially as train tickets are like gold dust over the lunar new year. A word of warning to anyone planning to visit China; avoid travelling over the new year! Competing with literally billings of people for train tickets (there is only one government run train company - surprise) is a mission of the highest order. Travel agents have no chance to help as tickets go on sale exactly 5 days in advance of the journey, and often run out in hours. Visiting the train station was like visiting a camp site as loads of people decided to await ticket sales time. We enjoyed a fair bit of luck, and a lot of eye-spy, acquiring our ticket from Beijing to Shanghai. But hey at least we joined in the with locals!

England has a few things in common with China asides for the weather. The biggest (apart from the Olympics) is that we both built big walls to keep out the riff-raff from up north :-) Both were eventual failures, but the Chinese version is certainly a more impressive exhibit that your average garden wall - some might even call it Great! We decided to explore said wall by hiking 10km of its length, and we did so with just two other Brit's a German and a local guide (don't put it past us to get lost following a single wall, hence the guide) . So much for the term "The Great Wall of Tourists"; for most of the journey we were the only people in sight! That is apart from the odd sentry or local selling your postcards or beer; the latter which we appreciated more. 10km is not really that far, but once you factor in the insane amount of stairs... therefore the beer :-D) To see why the wall was so effective in deterring attacks, I have uploaded some photographs ->

You should also find some photo's of the Forbidden city, and Tiananmen square where a man once famously stood in front of a tank (which was attacking those who stood up against the communist regime). Interestingly we discovered that the tank division in question then set up defensive positions in the city, worried that other divisions of the Chinese army might seek revenge for the massacre.

Utilising our well earned train tickets we next visited Shanghai - the most hi-tech city I have ever seen. It would not be too extreme to suggest that this may be the worlds number 1 economic hub in our lifetime. The plans for the city are rather ambitious, but the worlds biggest air and sea ports are already in their 2nd phase of construction. Asides from the obvious question 'where is all the money coming from?', I see nothing to stop Shanghai reaching its goal. Best of all for us - it's still cheap at the moment; 50p for a very large bottle of local German created beer, making this one of the best party cities around.

I write this from the Hong Kong hussel and bussel, where the Chinese New Year has just been welcomed in. Realising time is not on our side, we have booked an Air Asia (Asian equivalent of Easyjet) flight to Bangkok tomorrow. We will then travel to the forgotten land of Laos, where I have been well informed that jumping in a tyre tube and floating down a rivers is the best way to get around. Sounds great to me...! So I'll be leaving you for now; till the next time xx

(p.s. don't forget to check the latest photo's).

… Continued as promised! - South Korea

The reason for our visit to Seoul (a place not usually visited on a tour of south-east Asia; mainly because of its north-eastern location), was that our good friend Nora and her family were celebrating New Years in this the “second largest urban agglomeration on the planet” (or in my words; huge city!). In order to be sure of making it there on time, we booked a flight from Vietnam on Boxing Day - but thanks to our previous extended boating adventure in Malaysia/Thailand, we still needed to boogie and get a shuffle on!

So we briefly visited Bangkok; where we accidentally walked into a political rally some sort, drove a golf buggy with some shopping centre staff to a red carpet event, and took a long walk through the slums (we weren’t lost – honest), before jumping on a train to the border with Cambodia. I’m going to fast forward the story here to save you wasting your whole lives reading, but suffice to say we had a long but fun trip through Cambodia to Saigon, Vietnam. Cambodia was I suppose similar to India, except that they drove on the wrong site of the road. Anyhow, against all odds we did make it to Saigon for Christmas, even with a slight visa related delay which briefly left us stuck in Phnom Penh - Cambodia’s capital.

Saigon was a crazy place to spend Christmas. You can keep yourself entertained for hours on end just by tying to cross the road. Top Gear recently described the roads here as “unorganised chaos”, and they are spot on. There is never a gap in the traffic, and so the only option is just to walk out into the flow. Once you get the hang of dogging in between bikes/cars/busses it’s not so bad really – but going back to waiting for the little green man seems alien elsewhere. I plan to return to North Vietnam in a few weeks, and you never know someone might sell me a bike (...some top gear copycatting on the cards maybe!?!) :-)

Flying into South Korea we made another slight error, in that we forgot to check the weather – arriving in t-shirt and shorts (Conor in Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops), we were shocked to find out it was -6 outside... once again oops! Arming myself with a strange piece of attire called a ‘scarf’ we spent a chilli New Year in Seoul. It was great to catch up with Nora and her family, and the street party as we welcomed in the New Year was not half bad; awesome in fact!

We then spent an extra week than intended in Seoul as we waited for China to accept that we are not American spies. So we moved into Bong Hostel – perhaps one of the best party hostels in the world. Bong (the owner) took everyone for Korean BBQ and beers most nights, as well as taking us to lots of special pre-opening nights in his soon-to-be-open new bar. The hostel was full of travellers, students and teachers, mainly from Australia, Canada, Finland, oh and Korea. Best of all, hanging around Seoul gave us the opportunity to explore some other places close by...
On one such trip we visited the demilitarised zone; the no-man’s-land between North (so ronery) and South Korea. A strange place to witness, it was particularly interesting to walk though some of the many ‘infiltration’ tunnels built by North Korea in preparation to send troops southwards. I also finally got to see a Tiger! Okay, it was in Korea’s biggest theme park, not quite the wild... but I did also get to see a monkey ride a pig and a sea lion play basket ball. Oh and travel on a rollercoaster that puts England’s attempts to shame.

Anyhow the Chinese have now accepted that we are not spies and so we jumped on a bumpy ferry and began the exploration of a new land. Beijing and the Great Wall here we come.... xxx

Quick update from Seoul, South Korea

I hope you all had a very Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year! :- I am sorry it’s been a while since I last confirmed that I still exist – but well I have been having fun, and being lazy. I last updated you from Thailand, and we have since had flying visits to Cambodia and Vietnam (with a view to return to both shortly), as well as an extended adventure in Seoul which is where I write this now!

Our recent travels have utilised most types of transport imaginable; from boat, bus, tuk-tuk, taxi, tube, monorail, train, plane, scooter, and even a golf buggy in the middle of Bangkok. Best of all we have reunited with old friends, and met many new fascinating people.

I had this great plan to write a full update, but unfortunately will miss my boat to China if I do. Therefore I will have to love you and leave you for now, but will write again soon. Take care and enjoy the New Year all. x