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what the heck is this blog about?

This blog is for me to share with you all about the exciting adventures I am having while spending all my money on travel. When not sleeping in train stations and lugging a pack around you'll find me wishing I was, in the garden city of Christchurch, New Zealand. I'm an 20-something, wishing-I-still-was-one student, worth around 100 camels according to that guy in Morocco. Lucky enough to have already been on lots of global adventures but still looking for more countries to go to with unpronounceable names. On the right you can see my progress around the world. Blogs posts are grouped in countries and in different trips. The first block is from my 2006/2007 RTW trip, below that is my 2008 'overland trip', then lay travels since then. There is also links to all my photos, video's and trip expenses. Have a look around and please leave me a comment if you like what you read! *update* I am now living in London with a job that I love and taking a break from the travelling life, one day I will return but till then...

Floating bars and beach parties in Nha Trang

January 28th, 2007

I have taken a lot of overnight buses on this trip, all of them pretty bad but this was up there. The bus was packed and the seats more designed for tiny Asians on a 3 hour trip rather than us lanky westerners on a 12 hour one. Combined with dodgy air con which meant I froze the whole night while Tash and Jeff were dying of the heat, and seats that didn’t recline…..so arrived to our beach paradise very tired and to see the grey skies and rain with the rising sun. But at least it didn’t make us feel bad about practically sleeping all day and watching our cable TV. We’ve been quite lucky with room in Vietnam all having hot water and TV for pretty cheap. So we watched a lot of trash but it was all good on a grey rainy day. Jeff and I went for a short walk for over priced ice cream and to check out the beach, which would be fantastic if it wasn’t so wet. Very different feel from our beach in Cambodia, no shared bungalows on the beach and campfires, this place was all developed with concrete hotels and shops. We did manage to leave our hotel room and get some food and buy ourselves some super cool Vietnamese rice paper hats. I love it how people here wear these hats all the time, its actually not just a stupid tourist thing, and they carry things on the balancing baskets over their shoulder, its great! So looking hot we had a few photos on the beach which turned out to be the only time we wore our hats, they’re not practical for traveling.
Back for an early night as we were all pretty exhausted still from the night before and we had signed up for a boat trip the next as day in hope that the weather would turn out.
The boat trips are the main tourist thing in Nha Trang, the original trips closed down because of the ‘party favours’ that were handed out, but there are now plenty of less illegal trips, all advertising themselves with floating bars, free alcohol and fun part times. Hmmm…could be horribly cheesy…..the boats all playing “let’s get the party started” when we got to the pier only added to our fears. But we decided to go with it and take the piss a bit. There were heaps of boats at the pier all offering essentially the same thing, when we were all on board we headed (slowly) across to the islands on our old wooden split level boats to the sounds of ‘hip, cool backpacker type music’ (Hotel California and Bob Marley)
“Are you guys ready to paaaaarrrrrty???”

oh dear…..we thought

“yyyeaaaahhhhh!!!’ we answered

“after lunch will be happy our where you have freeeeeeee wine and fruit!!!! Don’t be lazy or we will throw you over board!!!”

Turned it to be a pretty fun day, and for $6 with a massive seafood lunch, heaps of fruit and indeed free wine (more like vinegar) it was a great deal. We were even lucky enough to get sun for most of the day.
We stopped at a few different spots where we jumped off the boat for swimming and snorkeling and then we all grabbed our floating rings and hung out in the sea on a floating bar. The best part was the live band! The seats in the bottom folded into a table for lunch and they busted out drums, guitars and a guy in a coconut bikini with Marackers, we even got a song sheet with lyrics to an awesome song they had written about our fun boat trip. Then they got us all dancing on the table, it was hilarious, you really could only laugh as we got down with the coconut breasted man and the insane Japanese guys.
We were luckily to have really cool people on the trip which made it really fun. Our last stop was to an aqurium which was a bit bizarre then headed back to port where it seems most of the other boats had been drinking far too much as all the Australians were falling over themselves to find their right boat.
So great day for $6 and it got us in the partｙ mood so we headed out to check out the bars that all seem to offer free drinks. We ended up at the sailing club, the hippest place around. We ended up out until 3am dancing like idiots, so much so that a guy asked us if we were on ecstasy and had any he could buy.

After a long sleep-in we dragged ourselves out of bed and headed down to the airport where we were avoiding the 60 hour bus ride and flying to the capital Hanoi. Unfortunate that we don’t have enough time to check out the coast as it looks amazing but theres always next time, so it was a quick flight up to the cold north.

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January 21st, 2007

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Back in ‘Nam’

January 21st, 2007

Only 3 weeks until home time! Can’t believe the year is almost finished, but not quite yet still more countries to visit, things to see and lots more to buy. And Vietnam is a good place to go shopping! We arrived in Ho Chi Min, formally known as Saigon, in the evening and tried about 10 places before we found a room, a expensive room but with hot water. Ho Chi Min is a big busy city, lots to do and see, most of which we didn’t do. Had a full day in the city where we quickly learned the Vietnam road rules. Basically motorbikes never stop so you just walk out and they avoid you. Sounds simple right? But when faced with hundreds of motorbikes speeding past you and having to just step out in from of them, well its no so fun. Its really best to close your eyes and walk, really it’s the best way because if you stop then they’ll hit you! But we have survived thus far.
Crazy cheap food which off sets our expensive (OK well $5 each) hotel room, cheap markets where we went through all of our money within about 10 minutes and tailors for cheap, cheap dresses. So me and Tash both had a dress made. Also great fruit shakes and iced coffees for about 30 cents, Vietnam is good times!
Our last day in the south we headed on a full day tour out to the Cao Dai temple and the famous Cu Chi tunnels.
An interesting day, always fun times on group tours. We loaded into a bus with stickers to identify us, a long drive out to the weirdest temple for the weirdest religion of all time.Cao Dai is a weird religion, started in 1924 and is a mix of Catholisom, Buddahism, and Taoism. The worship Buddah, Jesus, Confusious and….Jules Verne, the French Novelist.

The Temple is a mix of a French Cathedral a Chinese pagoda and some sort of Vegas casino. colourful, psychedelic and just weird. The holy eye (left eye always) is everywhere, grape vines, and just other strange things decorate the outside. All the worshipers are dressed in long white white robes with the ‘higher’ people are either in Red for Catholic, Yellow for Buddahist or blue for Toaism. When it was time to go for the service we all filled in, different sides for men and women. The whole thing had turned into a bit of a tourist attraction so there was heaps of tourists gawking at the whole strange thing. We all went inside up to the balcony where the interior was even stranger than the exterior. Tinfoil stars were all over the roof and the pillars had giant snakes all over them. The service involved all the people standing in lines kneeling to bizarre music. The whole thing was just a bit surreal.

So after our religious education we were back on the bus, quick stop off for average over priced lunch, then on to the tunnels. They were built for the people of the Cu Chi area to hide from the Americans and to fight them. Its kind of the ‘thing to do’ in Vietnam. Started off with an introduction video, can’t imagine it going down with Americans in the audience.

Obviously a very very old video that hasn’t been updated to a more PC version.
Cue peaceful village scenes “The happy Cu Chi people lived in harmony until the evil Malicious Americans destroyed their way of life. The people nowhere near Washington, yet the devil worshiping Americans murdered the innocent people” and so on and so on. Showing pictures of hero’s awarded for how many Americans they killed. Hilarious. Well we thought so, not sure the other people actually got how incredibly blatant it was. So after the movie we went through the forest dotted with holes from B-52 bombs, traps set for the ‘evil Americans’. I don’t know what sort of people think up these sort of traps. Holes that you step in with massive spikes in them and other awful maiming type things. Clearly some of the people on the tour were a wee bit more into war than we were. One guy ( A NZder actually) was decked out with gloves, a head torch and cargo pants. He was jumping down all the tunnels and rolling around in the dirt, climbing over the old tanks taking photos. No surprise we lost him at the shooting range were you could pay a few bucks and fire off a few rounds of a machine gun. The actual tunnels are this massive network all over the area that the soldiers lived in for months on end, the ones we climbed through were 3 times larger than usual, only 50 meters long and had lights through them. Its hard to believe that people could actually get through tunnels smaller than we were in, we came out dirty and sweaty and pretty over it after 10 minutes. SO don’t think I would have been too good in war time. So back to the city and straight away jumped on an overnight bus up the coast to a beach town called Nha Trang for some more sun.

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Beach Fun

January 21st, 2007

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Sihanoukville is Cambodia’s Cote d’azure. It is however, yet to be overrun with mini dogs and women in white linen. It’s not quite yet a beach resort which is a good thing after the commercial beaches of Thailand and it was nice to be somewhere before it has been ‘discovered’ too much. I think in a few years it will be much busier, but as for now it’s a cool chilled out place with accommodation that is a cheap as chips in big shared rooms with mattresses on the floor. We stayed at a great place right on the beach called Chiva’s shack, everything is all very relaxed and the staff (when they can be bothered) or the many beach sellers can get you whatever you need, from happy pizzas to massages to fruit to bizarre hair removal methods.
Weather was beautiful and stayed for 3 nights hanging at the beach in the day and eating fresh seafood at beach front restaurants in the evening. Big comfy chairs are all over the beach and it’s a great way to spend a day sitting around with people bringing everything to you. Tash got a few beauty treatments done, including leg hairs being ripped out by cotton. In the evening people would light fires and there was lots of fire sticks to watch
One of days was somewhat wasted in the ‘great visa chase’. Always a fun time with visas, the Vietnam one being even more fun as we had to get before entering the country. This involved trekking around the hot dusty town trying to find the embassy. Finally finding it the guard at the door quickly locked the gate and told us to go away. A bit confused we eventually spotted the opening time sign, the guard not being too helpful by actually telling us the embassy was closed for lunch. Of course we had arrived at the beginning of a 2 hour lunch break. So hung out drinking lukewarm water until 2. The oh-so-helpful guard gave us another angry look when we asked if we could go in now that it was 2, he pointed to his watch. 1.58pm.
We did end up getting the visas, once we were actually inside it was surprisingly easy. So we were all set for our next country. We left the beach early in the morning on our incredibly professional (hilariously so) bus across the border. Baggage receipts and bus hostesses as well as snacks and strange information about the areas we were driving through over a dodgy PA system. We changed buses in Phnom Phen and had some food at a funky café before our next bus where they played strange video clips of western songs redone by Cambodians with Christmas themes, what does the Venga Boys have to do woth Jingle Bells?
The bus organsied our passports on the border which while helpful ment a long wait but hey, since when are border crossings outside of Europe straightfoward?
So we were into Vietnam, home of funny hats, pho noodles and of course the war
photos from Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia are here:

Phillippines Thailand Cambodia

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Depressive and uplifting tourism

January 16th, 2007

For those who don’t know Cambodia has one of the most horrific pasts. During the 1970’s a group called the Khmer Rouge overthrew the government and had some brilliant idea to abolish the currency and hospitals, plant land mines everywhere, kill all the smart people and move everyone to the country to be farmers. Brilliant. So in a nut shell they screwed there own country over and killed and tortured around a million people, with people still dying today from the thousands of landmines still around. Pretty much making Cambodia one of the poorest countries around. And this was only 30 years ago so there a more than usual amount of people missing limbs around. So the main tourist attractions here are the mass graves of the killing fields and the torture prison called S-21. What a depressing day, but good to learn a bit more about the country’s history. The guest house we are at shows the movie “the killing fields’ so was good to be able to see that as well. In fact the guest house not only offers movies, food, games, bus services and all the usual tourist stuff, its also seems Cambodia offers more drugs than Amsterdam, so along with pizza and milkshakes you can also get the ‘happy option’ which wasn’t really making all the other people that happy, mostly meant everyone watched movies all day. But anyway for Phonom Phen offered a bit more.
As well as the killing related attractions we also had an amazing (and expensive) dinner at a restaurant run by an NGO with incredible food, Jeff even brought their cookbook so hit him up about cooking you dinner sometime.

Another reason for being in the capital was to visit a group called Young Life, chrstian youth workers that do similar stuff to us back home so we had lunch with a few of them, visited a school and went to a youth group night.
We had also organised to visit mine and Jeff’s sponsered kids, from World Vision which is an aid organisation that me and Jeff work for back home. For those of you who know world vision, know that your money is being well spent and they are doing amazing stuff. So we sent the day hanging out with world vision outside of the city seeing what they do and a few projects. Meeting our kids was really cool and also a bit awkward as langage barriers are always a problem. But the girl I sponser is lovely, really quite and shy but cool and was great to meet her and her dad. So all of you go sponser a child now! www.worldvision.com, its al over the world and I can tell you first hand that they are not stealing your money.

So that was the end of our good-deeds then it was off to the coast for some sun.

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Angkor What?

January 10th, 2007

One night in Bangkok was spent at the malls and markets thinking about what we would buy when we were back (if we had any money left). Then it was off to Cambodia on a long day of buses, border controls and expensive taxis because there was no more buses. Visa was no problems to get, just a long line and a request for an extra ‘fee’. Bit of a difference in Cambodia as the road from the main entry point and the biggest tourist attraction was not paved so it was a long bumpy ride into Siam Riep, arriving late in the evening.

Bright and early the next morning we tuk-tuked out to Angkor Wat, Cambodias big draw card. Which explains the incredibly expensive entrance fee’s. A lot of super old temples, all very impressive and very massive. Spent the entire day checking out all the different ones, set in a massive area with forests, food stalls, beggars and shops. You can get passes that last up to a week but 1 day was enough as amazing as, they are as Asians say ‘same same, but different’.
Main one Angkor Wat is huge with death defying stair ways leading up big alters. Another couple were used in the movie tomb raider and my favourite was one set back in the forest with massive tree roots snaking around the sides of pillars and down the walls. We had hired a tuk-tuk for the day as walking the whole way around in the heat would have been no fun, lastly we headed up a hill to one last temple to watch the sunset which unfortunately didn’t make it through the clouds. So tired, dirty and dusty and with camera memories full we headed back into town to shower and get some food. Siam Riep is full of funky bars and restaurants and we had some great food at ‘the dead fish’ then headed down the aptly named ‘bar street’ for a few drinks then back home.
One more day before leaving and started nice and early at 5am with a wedding happening literally on the other side of the very thin wall from us. The whole room vibrating from the bus as dodgy speakers blared out voices and strange music for about 5 hours. Great way start to the day. Headed to a cute little café called the butterfly house for breakfast, which is in a garden with hundreds of butterflies floating around you. Off to the markets to get a few clothes as mine are all falling apart, and lunch on the street. So day pretty lazy day, did have nice dinner on a rooftop restaurant for our last night. Working out that we are spending way too much money as things work out to be more expensive than you think, so finances are looking a bit dire but not too much longer to go!
Early next morning we got on a bus to Phnom Pen, the capital of Cambodia. Cheap bus ride, longer than expected but nothing too bad, at least the road was paved! So rocked into the capital about 1.

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Gay cabarets and more parties

January 6th, 2007

I spent a day on a trip out to the Marine park that was near by and which is the location of ‘the Beach’. Unfortunately no Leonardo DiCaprio and they didn’t actually film the movie here but still beautiful and a fun day. Loaded on to a speedboat with Australians in bikinis and a whole lot of Russians in….nothing, well almost nothing. Surely for a day kayaking, snorkeling and sightseeing you should at least wear pants. But anyway we headed out for about an hour to a whole lot of limestone islands and spent a bit of time snorkeling then kayaked out to a deserted little white sand beach. Perfect weather, clear blue water and lunch on another deserted island, great day. Back on the main land I headed over the other side to meet Vaneet who turned out to be living in luxury in a beach front bungalow in this super flash resort. The bungalow was massive with air-con, a huge bathroom with a bath, and cable TV. Was great to be able to crash on her couch as I would never be able to afford something like that. Much different feel on this side of the island, very developed and the beach was packed with topless sunbathers and the water full of jet skies. Not the casual, relaxed place where we were before but good for a change and that night headed out to meet a couple of Vaneet’s friends. Darren and Brian are a really cool gay couple who are traveling, went out for dinner first then off to gay clubs! Very interesting night! First place we went was to a gay cabaret with Thai lady-boys dancing with feathers and Tina Turner in a sparkly green dress. It was really fun and the girls, or guys, were so lovely and all came down to say thank-you after. So after that finished it was off to the opening of a new gay club ‘Male Box’, swish new place full of beautiful young thai boys, older western men, lady-boys and everything in between, well apart from real girls I think me and Vaneet were the only ones. They had some competition which involved boys in not many clothes dancing around poles with cowboy hats, plus performances from Cher and Tina Turner again. Basically a surreal and hilarious night.

Last day there was another full moon party and spent the day lying on the beach getting very sun burnt. Ended up booking a flight back up to Bangkok for the next day rather than catching a bus at 6am for 12 hours. So meet up with Darren and Brian for dinner then headed over to anther crazy full moon party and again didn’t get back until 8.30am. Not as many people as New years but still pretty massive, brought drinks in buckets. You just chose a few ingredients, red bull, vodka, juice and they chuck it all in a little bucket for you. Also people were letting off these big paper lanterns that floated up in the sky, was an amazing sight with all these lanterns floating away. We brought one and spent a bit of time trying to light it and get it up, eventually it floated away and we watched it until the little speck of light disappeared. Other than more dancing until the last ferry was about to leave. Back for a quick nap then headed to the airport to meet up with Tash and Jeff in Bangkok airport. The airport in Ko Samui is really cute, a whole lot of little thatched building with no walls and wooded signs. So much better than the bus, only an hour and half and touched down in Bangkok to see Tash and Jeff waiting for me. I was exhausted and losing my voice, but really good to see them again.

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Into the New Year, 2007 already!

January 6th, 2007

Landed at the flash new Bangkok airport around 2am after a 2 hour flight. Took awhile to trek through the place to get out but eventually found immigration and waited and waited…A group of 8 Kazakstanis pushed in front of me talking too loud and being generally annoying, I mean who is actually from that country? I thought about asking them about Borat but wasn’t sure it would be a good idea. After finally making it through, extreamly exhausted I settled down on hard plastic chairs for a 3 hour nap. So not the best sleep but needed to wait until a decent time to get going. So around 6am I caught a taxi into the bus station and jumped on a 10 hour bus heading down south where I could get over to the islands I would spend the next week on. Big comfy and air con bus meant I slept most of the way down bar the few hours where they blasted out some Thai movie. The plan was to get a ferry over that evening but arrived a bit too late so headed to a nondescript hotel in a nondescript town for the night. Managed to order food that spicy beyond belief and asleep early from pretty crazy last 24 hours.
Early next morning I was packed off on a bus with loads of other backpackers to the pier where there were even more backpackers, arriving by the bus load. Literally hundreds of us all hanging around with packs over chairs, in the mud, all pushing forward trying to get on a boat. It was all very crazy, never seen so many tourists together! After an hour or so of trying to organize who was going where we made it on to a ferry overflowing with packs and bodies for a 2 hour journey across to Ko Samui. Pretty much these islands are one of the biggest tourist destinations and New Years is the height of the high season so there were people every where and accommodation was booked out weeks in advance.
Being the organized person I am I’d booked into a nice place for the first 3 nights in a relaxed sounding beach. Shambala was run by an English couple and really really cool. Had a cute bungalow right on the beach, amazing food and lots of chill out areas with cushions. White sand and coconut palms 5 meters away topped it off. So spent that afternoon and the next day lying Around in the sun, swimming, eating….tough.

My second night there was new years eve, and the reason I was down here was to head over to the famous Full Moon Party on the island close to us. I meet a really cool Canadian chick and we headed over on a speed boat later that evening to join around 60,000 others to see in the new year. Definitely one if the craziest parties I’ve ever been to, the whole place was packed with people and we joined in the flow down to the beach where bars lined the seafront blasting out every type of music you could want. We brought a few glow in the dark items to be cool off the hundreds of people selling everything on the beach. I’m guessing that they make a fair bit of cash out of these parties. There were fireworks, fire sticks and poi so got a chance to have a play with some ones I brought in India. Danced the night away until the last ferry at 7am. So many cool people, all really friendly and lots going on. No countdown to New Years was a bit of a shame as didn’t really realized it was 2007 until about 2am. But all good! Colapsed into bed and slept the whole day only getting up for a swim and a bit more lying around.

I had an amazing dinner sitting by the beach with Vaneet (the Canadian). Prawn curry inside a coconut, yum! Thailand is definitely winning the best food award, especially this place I stayed at. So nice to be able to sit by the beach and eat in the warm weather. So my last night in Shambala ended well as I moving in with Vaneet for my last 2 nights on the main beach Chawang.

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just to let you know

January 1st, 2007

Just checked the news and there was bombings in Bangkok last night! Anyway I’m not in Bangkok at the moment, im down south, just in case anyone was wondering….am going there in thursday though, hopefully no more trouble! Happy New years!

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Christmas time

January 1st, 2007

Christmas eve, Jeff was flying in from Thailand to meet us in the evening and we were going over to the village to play Santa and give out the presents. First a ridiculously extravagant breakfast at a French crepe restaurant. Peaches, whipped cream, ice cream and liquors…but hey its Christmas time!

To get to the village we had to put a big ladder over the wall and climb down it, in true Philippine style poverty and wealth are meters apart separated by a big wall and guards with guns, was cool passing all the presents down then getting down there. Took about an hour to read through all the names and take a photo of each family. They also got new hoops and basketballs for the central area so Andy and all the others stayed for a while to play a bit of basketball with them. I think its so cool that they can actually do stuff like that and make a bit of a difference and actually see it, not like at home sending money off to some country you’ve never even heard of. So great feel-good stuff. Jeff was arriving in the evening so Andy dropped me, tash and Jess off at yet another mall to by a few last minute things while he went out to the airport. After finally deciding on some presents we went back around to buy them all and discovered everything was closing! So unfortunately missed out on a few things and Jeff ended up with a terrible present! But did manage to get to the supermarket and buy some things for Christmas day. Great to see Jeff who had been leading a mission’s trip in Thailand, now our little travel team for the next 6 weeks was together. So Christmas eve, no midnight service instead Jess made huge batches of brownies and a big pot of coffee and we drove around Brentville handing them out to all the guards (which is a lot) around the school and houses. Jess and Andy get on really well with all the guards and staff around, probably more than most as they actually talk to them and make a bit of an effort to learn the language, so it was really cool to help them out and do this with them.
Christmas day came and like anywhere we stuffed ourselves the whole day, first with a pancake breakfast and then a big combined street BBQ later in the day. Spent a bit of time at the pool doing ‘photo shoots’, snacked away on chocolate from NZ and opened up presents. Finished the evening off with a movie, and rolled into bed swearing I would never eat that much again (yeah right…).
Only a few days left before we went our separate ways for new years, spent boxing day in another gated community, but much bigger and much flasher, the place to live if your wealthy and in Manila is Alabang. Headed down to a field to play some touch with a whole group of expats. Well Jess, Andy and Jeff played while me and Tash sat around and ate ice creams, just like we would do at home. Another big lunch then headed to a kiwi family’s house for a swim. Jess and Andy teach the kids, about 5 in total I think. Moved over a few years ago for the dads work and living in a huge house with bedrooms the size of most people’s living room and kitchens combined. Really cool family so was nice to chill out there for a while before we said goodbye and headed 42 stories up to what must be Manila’s highest restaurant. With amazing views of the city, we had seafood entrÈe’s and drinks, really flash and funky place, but probably not a good idea if you’re scared of heights. On route back home we stopped to buy some VCD’s to watch, amazing than you can go into a department store and by VCD’s completely legally for $2.

Back home at Brentville we decided to let off the fireworks we had brought a few days earlier. Andy and Jeff were clearly in ‘boy-heaven’ and had brought fireworks that are illegal in every other country. Already dangerous with very short wicks and way too much gunpowder they sellotaped a whole lot of them together to create this mega fire work, that would either be amazing…or blind and maim us. Much to Tash’s protests we all went down to a not so developed area while the guys fiddled around with it and we watched from the safety of the car. Eventually it was lit, it was short but still very impressive for homemade fireworks and did what it was meant to going up rather than shooting towards the car. Check out the video, which is on an earlier post.

Early the next day we crammed into the car and set of for a night at the beach, 3 hours later we drove along a dirt road with lots of signs for beach resorts. Clearly most of them had seen better days with decrepit signs and potholed roads leading down to who knows what, one place we drove past was called “Aroma Magic Cream” hmmmm…
We ended up at the cheesy looking ‘Blue Coral” which at least looked more like a resort. Clearly not aimed at western tourists at all, our buffet meals over the next 24 hours were meat, meat, more meat, weird looking meant, rice and meat for breakfast, and more meat. Needless to say my inquiry about a vegetarian option got blank stares. However this was real Filipino cuisine so at least we were ‘experiencing the culture’, so the Philippines wins the prize for the worst local food. Thanks goodness for imports. Aside from the food and the chained monkeys in the ‘zoo’ it was a really nice place and we had a bungalow right on the beach. Lay around in the sun, went swimming and walking down the beach, all very nice. After an interesting lunch me Jess, Tash and Jeff went off in search of fresh coconuts, surrounding by coconut tree’s surely this would be easy…but no….after wandering through villages the most we got was a lot of blank looks and to see a pig slaughtered, probably for breakfast the next day.
Watched Bridget Jones on our cable TV then somehow ended up playing Karaoke for far too long, scaring away just about everyone. Filipinos are big on Karaoke and have it pretty much everywhere. Songs are destroyed completely by someone on a synthesizer and put to odd video clips, but they love it and there’s even a TV channel with it on all the time. So after a few terrible songs we played a bit of table tennis and pool then off to bed. Out of there pretty early the next day desperate for some fresh food. Found coconuts on the way home and had an amazing lunch when we got back of fresh prawns, salad, bread and for dessert this amazing traditional coconut pie (well at least they can cook something), thankfully Jess and Andy arn’t too keen on Filipino food and have been cooking us amazing meals the whole time. After packing up all or stuff and our last dinner together we said good-bye to Jess and Andy who we wouldn’t see until next year when they’d next be home. It was such a great week and we were looked after so well, probably saw a different side to the Philippines than most backpackers, would like to come back and see a bit more of the country, but another time. Anyway I was dropped at the airport to catch my plane to Thailand and Tash and Jeff went off to get their overnight bus somewhere up north where they will be having a bit more of a cultural and quieter New Years than me as I head to the ultimate tourist destination for the biggest beach party there is.

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