Well everyone, I hope all's well with you, thank you for visiting my website, if you visited this entry bfore you may have witnssed some rather interesting pictures of me impersonating a drunken idiot, I've deleted the embarrasing ones of me and cruely left the embarrasing ones of the others! Ha ha!

I'm going to try to cover Oz up to now then I'll post some pics of Malaysia, not in order but still lovely!

We flew into Cairns from Singapore some time ago (the 11th of July rings a bell) at 0430, it was VERY cold and I immdiately had to try and dig out some warmer clothes. Zipping on my trousers while Steve trid to call hostels we realised that we wre going to have to wait a while until we would get a response despite the advertised 24 hour pick up. We stood shuffling in the cold for a couple of hours, periodically calling hostels until one eventually picked up at around 0600, we receivd directions to get the bus and she would be opening up a 0700. We did as instructed and eventually got in, unfortunately we had to wait for some others to check out so we watched bad Australian TV, half asleep, until 1000 when we eventually got into a room.

At the hostel we managed to fall in with a German girl called Eva who had met some locals, from her on in we had a very different experience of Cairns than the standard wet T-shirt comps, pub wide drinking games and days of lying by the lagoon like sausages on the barbie! We happened to be there during a local arts week and entered a voyage of exploration into Cairns' offering of modern dance and theatre. It was good, at times a bit weird but intriguing and a very memorable time. Some pics will follow but at the moment I can't re-size them. Sorry.

In Cairns we arrangd our wheels, a nice big Ford Falcon (like a Cortina), a bit on the large size (4L engine) but we've been sleeping the odd night and it's great for cruising the open roads. We then headed up North to Cape Tribulation, it was pretty cool and we did a crocodile tour, managed to see a cassawary (big bird that disembowels, a bit like a feathery Jurrasic Park veloceraptor) which are really rare. We slept a night in the car and one in a campsite. When we were just in the car we stayed by the beach and managed to fit Eva in the back of the car as well, a bit of a squeeze (but no funny businss!) and I kept waking up hugging her feet! The sunrise was amazing and so worth the cramped night, the sea was cold but refrshing and set me up for the day.

Back to Cairns now, the place we bought our car from fixed our rear (electric) window and we started South for Mission Beach, heading towards the inevitable winter in the far South. I'm sure you remembr Megan and Rachel from Thailand, they're in Oz as well and we arrangd to meet them at Mission Beach with a view to sky diving togther. Unfortunatly the weather was bad for all 4 days we spent there and we just drank (sorry Steve (his best Cassawary inpersonation!)) and sat around apart from a couple of drives to look for Cassawarys and see what was about, it was raining though which quickly sapped our enthusiasm for walking in flip flops. We did manage a day without rain though and found expression in natural forms, ish.

After another farewell we continued on down to Townsville, it seemed quite quiet but we were headed to Magntic island so it made no difference, however Magnetic island was even quieter because they'd just had a full moon party. By day however the island was really nice, we did a nice circular hike but didn't see any Koalas which are supposed to be plentiful on that particular route. Apparently they were hiding!

From Townsville we headed down again to Arlie Beach and booked on a boat to see the Whitsunday islands, White Haven is the most incredible beach I have ever even heard of, it is what God meant when he thought of the beach and I would very much like to spend a very long time playing in the powdry white sand and swimming in the clearest water I have ever seen. Unfortunatly I only had 2 hours. It was great though. We also got on a boat that took us out to the Great Barrier Reef and we had a free dive, great visability, not many fish but you could hear whales singing and we saw 2 reef sharks, about 4ft long, which was nice. Aftr the dive I had lunch and went to sleep, real clever, I didn't wake up until dinner time and managed to miss 4 whale sightings and Steve saw another shark and a turtle while snorkling.

After the Whitsundays we went out with some of the people that were on the boat, some of them got a bit messy and one got slapped because his friend got a bit too forward with a girl. An interesting night.

From Arlie we headed to Makay to see Tracey (Kiwi who lives in Oz, met her in Thailand). Makay seems quite nice, we managed to find a bar that had live music on a Sunday night and hung out with her friends from work. Thanks for having us Tracey.

From Tracey we went down to Rainbow Beach to prepare for our trip to Fraser Island, Rainbow beach was nice, we had a lesson on how to fall off a surfboard! Fraser was incredible, we did a self drive tour, 10 of us in a 4x4 including Claire and Vicky, two girls who first encountered us the night I was acting like a loon at Mission Beach. It's the worlds largest sand island and is very sandy, we had 3 days and camped, all equipment provided. It was a lot of fun and the pictures are incredible, nothing compared to seeing it but incredible.

We went back to Rainbow Beach for a night then drove to Noosa with Vicky, Claire and a girl called Laura who was on our Fraser Island Trip and also needed a lift. We stayed at a really cool hostel and cooked a roast dinner for all of us (Laura's friend Hattie (also on Fraser trip) had a pre-paid bus so met us there). I made them watch Men of Honour which isn't as good as I remember and we watchwe Dodge ball which is always good for a laugh!

Next day we headed off for Nimbin via Brisbane, left Hattie and Laura behind; they had a canoeing trip booked, and swung by Brisbane airport to pick up Claire's special friend before carrying on to Nimbin. Nimbin is a crazy hippy town which I think kind of looks like an old wild west town, but that may be because everyone's dirty! We stayed at an amazing hostel, a little way out from town but wit indredible scenary and great landscaped gardens for just chilling out. There was a TeePee as well but the nights were cold, it being winter and all so we got a dorm room with an stranger and Vicky.

From there we moved to Byron Bay, a surfing town, it's nice there, and the home of the legendary (more like infamous) Cheeky Monkeys bar. A good night to be had by all, and we did, twice, that was enough. Claire and Vicky left us after a night in Byron Bay, Vicky had to get a job and Claire had to get to Fiji. We kind of just hung around and relaxed, winding down (travelling can be tense) before our marathon drive to Sydney.

It took us ten and a half hours to get to Sydney, we did it and then we slept! To make matters worse, it was the best weather we've seen in a while, no clouds, hardly a breeze (the breeze is annoying in winter) and we spent from 0830 to 10.5 hours later either driving or watching the other drive!

Sydney seems ok, trying to sell our car at the moment, we spent the majority of today sitting in a multistorey carpark in a car market praying we wouldn't be stuck there until we fly home! It's pretty depressing, there are loads of poems and writings on teh walls, some people wait 2 weeks or more but after a thorough survey I think the average is around 3 days, maybe 4 and our car is great, it even has cruise control!! Does anyone want a car out there?

Well, that's my blog up to date, I'll be adding pictures as soon as I can find an internet cafe with adaquate resources!

Ladies and gentlemen, this time I have managed to get a PC where I can use my photos so be sure to check the previous entry as well for me!

Well, Malaysia's been a blast so far, we arrived in Kota Bharu from Thailand and followed our Rough Guide's directions to 'the most pleasant place to stay', if this was the most pleasant then I would really hate to see the others. There were a couple of mangey rabbits roaming around the concrete garden and a number of turtles in a variety of containers, all with next to no space to run around! It was a small border town so not a lot happened.

Hello there peeps, I apologise for the lack of pics in this one, I forgot the CD I need, I promise to update it as and when.

After leaving Koh Phangan

So, we got back to Thailand and made our way back to sweet Bangkok. We found out that our old friends from Don Det in Laos were there as well and went out to find them in the streets of the back packers hub. There we spotted Stef and Nathan, sitting, relaxing, almost like being back in Laos!

We met up with them for a couple of nights and did some stuff, probably the most amusing anecdote is the live 'concert' with some reasonable singers and the English Premier League playing ion a massive screen behind the poor performer! We also took our first Bangkok taxi ride, a cheap way to get around. Since I called shot gun you don't have to look at me, at least in this picture. View image

Next we booked a dive course through a travel agent in Bangkok, P.L Travel. Incidentally we saved ourselves around 1400 Baht (around 20 pounds, a lot of money out here) by not doing it independently, a strange phenomenn I'm sure you'll agree!

Ok, since I'm starting this halfway through my trip I'm going to back track a tiny bit over where we were last. We spent just over 3 weeks in Cambodia, a scarred but awesome country.

The route went as follows (if you have a map of Cambodia you can follow the insanity of our route!);
1. Entered at the border with the Southern-most tip of Lao and hot-footed it down to Phnom Penn (capital) for new year.View image

2. Moved further South to the beaches in Sihanoukville. Here, the last of our travelling companions left us and we had to think for ourselves. View image Sandy Steve

3. Following some thought we planned the bits we wanted to see and shot over to Kampot, slightly East of S'ville.

4. Back to Phnom Penn (for a bit of Culture!)
on our way to explore the North East, a further 2 days trip on from PP, on of which was undertaken in a rather hunched position in the back of a ISUZU 4x4 on the worst road in Cambodia for 8 hours from which my neck was aching for 2 days. So we got to Ban Lung, saw some waterfalls
and swam in a volcanic lake
then headed back to PP....

5. In PP again we were on our way to Siem Reap to see the glorious temples of Angkor Wat (I mean that). We sat on a good bus on a good road. Spent 2 days looking at temples, favourites were Bayon
and Ta Prohm
which is reclaimed by nature. We also met up with some lovely American ladies who we had been bumping into for a couple of months, we went to a crazy night club and generally hung out.

6.From Siem Reap we moved to Battambang to see some stuff, it turned out to be a bit of a quiet one but with good ice cream and amazing countryside, also really really big bats!

7.From here we moved towards the border with Thailand and crossed, without incident, to the tourist capital of SE Asia. Alothough a guy did try to charge us 300 Baht (4 pounds) for nothing but we foiled his scam!

That's the summary of our Cambodian adventures, I hope you enjoyed the pics!

Calm St. is an anagram of the first letters of the countries we will be visiting; Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia (yeah, a lot of work went into this one!). It's my first trip and I'm travelling with my friend Steve who I met at Uni from which we both graduated in June 2004.