Anne and John were extremely hospitable and staying with them in Auckland was a really lovely experience.....one year into our travelling experience, just the touch of home that we needed to reinvigorate us to continue! Anne cooked up some fantastic dinners..... perfect home cooking after spicy vegetarian India. We spent about a week in Auckland getting over our jetlag, eating rather well, running round getting a load of medical tests done on Bryn for his green card and also enjoying local delicacies such as fish'n'chips in swish Parnell.

We were also priviliged to get a space on one of John's legendary Auckland tours, getting a feel for the city off the Link bus route and seeing many locations linking in with family stories. The tour culminated in the high court where Fi got to experience her first (and hopefully only) trip to the dock.

On reccommendation, we headed off to Tiritiri Matangi island in the waters next to Auckland. Native bird species tend to struggle on the mainland due to exotic pest species introduced when the Europeans arrived. They've actually eradicated all these pests from Tiritiri and spent much time introducing native bush back to the island.

When we arrived we were assigned a volunteer guide, Anna, who took us on a 2 hour walk - showing us many species on the way.....Tui, Quail, Stiches and Saddlebacks. The highlight though was the little blue penguin and penguin chicklet which we found hiding underneath the walkway.

We also headed over to Waiheke Island, just an hour's boatride from Auckland downtown. The island is known for it's hippy, artistic, green community and it's fun having a potter round.

It's also got a large selection of boutique wineries....and we eagerly set off on a tasting circuit. Favourites included Jurassic Ridge where we had quite an indepth chat and a vine tour from the (English!) owner.

We also went to trendy Mudbrick where we got to enjoy a wedding present.....wine tasting complete with cheese platter on the terrace looking out across the vines down to the sea. Stupendous! Thank you very much Jessica!

Back in Auckland we headed off to the US embassy for a nail-biting 3 hour wait for our green card interview. It didn't help matters as we saw other people get turned away after failing to even get a tourist visa. However, our turn finally came round and we seemed to pass the suspicious repetitive questioning.

With Bryn's green card in the bag we were able to head off on our NZ road trip, we were very fortunate to be able to borrrow Anne and John's car and we excitedly set off for the Coromandel peninsula, mountainous and green, with beautiful yellow sand beaches, and with an extremely wiggly road hugging the coast all the way round. It really felt off the beaten track, and so close to Auckland!

We visited Hot Water beach where if you arrive at the right tide time you can dig yourself a hot water pool in the sands above the hot springs underneath. We arrived at the right time, along with most of Auckland, so we had to content ourselves with dipping our toes in other people's pools! We visited Cathedral Cove, with it's rock formations, and were the first to spot a school of leaping dolphins out in the deep water.

We headed through the Bay of Plenty and on to the East Cape, with more spectacular coastal scenery. We spent our wedding anniversary kayaking in the beautiful serene and green waters and building up the courage for a quick dip in the extraordinarily cold waters.

The most easterly lighthouse in the world...

We also visited Gisbourne eager to taste the aromatic white wines for which the area is famous...but we were stymied as everything was shut so we had to content ourselves with a tasting in town. We also visited the Eastwoodhill Arboretum - a nice walk, and great if you're into trees. We did manage to find some amazing wine tasting platters in town which went down nicely one afternoon in the sunshine...

Further down the coast, we enjoyed wandering around Napier and the art deco buildings. The whole town had been flattened by an earthquake in 1930 and as a result the rebuilding was designed to boost morale using the latest building fashions.

The area around Napier, Hawkes Bay, is one of the largest wine regions in New Zealand and we eagerly set about visiting the wineries. We also headed over to Craggy Range where Anne and John had got us a fantastic wedding present....a three course gourmet lunch complete with reccomended wines. Pate, terrine and Pinot Noir to start followed by the roast pork platter accompanied by Viognier....yum yum.

We also set about walking to the largest gannet colony in the world....8 km along the beach - only accessible at low tide. You can get really close to the colony, perched on a grassy plateau overlooking cliffs and we had a lot of fun photographing the gannets as they swooped low over our heads into their nests.

We couldn't come to NZ of course without doing a good old Kiwi Tramp and all the wine and food was taking it's toll. We fancied the Tongariro Crossing as it's billed as one of the top 10 one day walks in the world. We arrived into the little village of National Park, which actually seems to exist more for the winter ski season than summer walkers, and it was pretty quiet....and we weren't able to do the walk the following day due to the weather.

When we were finally able to get out and do the walk though we weren't disappointed. The weather was clear and the sun was beating down as we set off, across some lava flows and up a steep 500m climb up to the South crater, with fantastic views to Mt Taranaki in the distance. Another steep 300m ascent up to the red crater. Feeling pretty good we set off on a side trip up the Mt Tongariro summit, sliding across snowfields on the way. Back on the main trail as we came up to the rim of the red crater we were treated to some pretty spectacular views....down into the red crater, and over to the absolutely stunningly beautiful emerald lakes and then over to the blue lake. A really great one day walk!

Back in Auckland we bid our farewells to the Priestleys - thanks again Anne and John for everything After 3 fantastic weeks in NZ, we headed to the airport for the usual check-in debacle. This time, not only did it take us the usual extra hour than everyone else to get through check in, the Air NZ staff had got so flustered over our ticket that they forgot to tag our bags! Of course, we only realised this as we stood sadly awaiting our bags at the other end! However, luckily Bryn had found us a fantastic beach-side bungalow and as there didn't seem anyone else around on our patch of sand we swam happily for a couple of days in our undies whilst we awaited our luggage!

When our backpacks finally arrived we were able to really get into the swing of things....sipping the fruits of our Hawkes Bay wine trip on our deck watching the sun go down, spending hours out on the reef searching for fishies and long walks on the endless white sands that seem to completely surround our bit of the island.

We proudly dragged ourselves away from the beach to attend our local Sunday church service where despite tourists making up about half the numbers we were treated to some superb singing.

Feeling like all we did was sit round eating and drinking (which pretty much was the reality) we worked up the energy for the cross island trek.....right through the uninhabited mountainous jungle centre. The views across to both sides of the island were spectacular.

Feeling virtuous after our walk and having worked up an appetite we headed to one of the legendary Island Nights - an all you can eat buffet stacked full of local delights....ika mata (raw tuna fish with coconut cream and lime), taro and octopus. We were then treated to a local dance troupe who entertained us with fire dances, coconut husking and an awful lot of hip shaking! A great evening - and another wedding present - many thanks to Helen and Manu!

10 days on Rarotonga has absolutely raced by, it's felt like a holiday within a holiday, but it's time to move on again...this time to LA for our rendez-vous with our parents, Fi's first thanksgiving and Bryn's proud entry into the USA with his new green card!!

24 - Southern Sojourn remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Getting off the plane in Amritsar, India felt like coming home...after 2 months in Central Asia it was a relief and fun to be able to talk to everyone in english! We headed off to the Pakistan border for the afternoon closing ceremony. It was a little bizarre, tensions really are quite high between these two countries and yet they manage to co-ordinate this spectacular display of machismo, arrogance and bravado every day for the assembled crowds on both sides of the border. There were literally thousands of people on both sides watching the display from grandstands. Each side tries to outdo the other and goosestep, shout or march that little bit higher, louder or faster. There were MCs on both sides....ours whipping up the crowd with frenzied cries of 'Hindustan, Hindustan, Hindustan!'. Most of the hour long ceremony consisted of guards goosestepping quickly to and from the border culminating in the flags being slowly lowered....signifying that the border was closed for the day and that for us the show was over.

The next day was the Golden Temple - home to the Sikh religion. It was a great experience and brought to life the Sikh values of equality and inclusiveness. We had to cover our heads, a friendly Sikh chap at the entrance sorted Bryn out a bright orange pirate look. The golden temple (750kg of gold) is set in the middle of a giant square pond...which devotees walk around, swim in and also scarily drink as it's considered holy. There was a communal kitchen, a feature of all Sikh temples, staffed by volunteers serving up dhal and chappattis to all comers for any donations anyone wanted to give. Inside the golden temple are four priests who keep up a chant from the Sikh holy book which is broadcast around the whole temple complex on loudspeakers. It was fun chilling out around the pond and people watching.

We headed down to Delhi for a few days before catching the train to Jaipur in Rajasthan. We'd decided to do Rajasthan in style as we had so many wedding presents here and it seemed a shame to have to return to our backpacking ways in between our presents.....any excuse for us to upgrade!!

Jaipur

Jaipur - is the pink city. We had thought that this would mean that everything would be a nice delicate pink sandstone, but it wasn't to be. Instead all the buildings are actually painted pink....nice from a distance but up close everything just looked a little dirty. We visited the Observatory which dates back to 1728 and has the largest timepiece on earth....a giant sun dial which can tell the time to the nearest minute - see the shadow in the bottom right of the photo indicating it's about half one.

We also visited the City Palace and the Palace of Winds - enjoying the pretty buildings and a new style of architecture for us.

We went off to the Amber Fort, a massive structure 10km outside Jaipur, which we had fun exploring. There's always loads of Indian tourists at the sights - but sometimes we wondered whether they had actually come to see the sight or to take pictures of foreigners. Everyone wanted their photo taken with us!

We also climbed up to see the Tiger Fort overlooking Jaipur and had a great time walking round the ramparts as the sun started to dip.

Bikaner

Another overnight sleeper train and we arrived in Bikaner....a swirling dusty city set in the desert. Fi got particularly excited at seeing camel carts delivering their loads in downtown Bikaner!

We were staying in Bhairon Villas a heritage hotel, once home to Bikaner's Prime Minister - this was another wedding present, this time courtesy of Nicola and Kieron - thankyou! Our room had real character and really seemed like some sort of Scottish game lodge complete with stags heads on the walls.

We set off early one morning for the Karni Mata Temple which is 30km south of Bikaner, to foreigners it is known as the Rat Temple and the main reason people visit Bikaner. The people here believe that they will be reincarnated as kabas - a holy rat. The holy rodents receive first class treatment at this temple....large saucers of creamy milk left out for them, food in abundance and the temple has also been modified to provide them with plenty of holes to scuttle through the walls. It's considered particularly auspicious for you if one of the little flea-ridden bundles scurries over your feet. Yes, being a Hindu temple....you're barefoot, doing your best to avoid the rat poop. We were a little disappointed at the quality of the rats considering the treatment they receive - we had thought they might be a little more cute and furry. Instead they were mangy, dirty things...and we were both glad to get out of there.

We also visited the National Camel Research Centre...where we learnt about the different breeds of local camels...you need to select different ones for speed, endurance, strength etc They had a great little cafe serving up camel products....we weren't totally convinced about our camel ice creams!

Jaisalmer

We arrived into Jaisalmer at dawn, glad to get off our train as there wasn't an air-con option and we spent most the night coughing as clouds of desert billowed through our carriage. We were grateful for our pick-up which whizzed us across town and straight into our beds at Hotel Fifu. We were staying outside the fort walls....it's essentially the world's largest sandcastle and the extra demands that tourists are placing on the water infrastructure are causing the castle to fall down.

We'd organised a 3 day camel trek into the desert here - a wedding present from Lisa, Nat and Mel. Thanks girls we really had a lot of fun! It was incredible seeing how people survive here in this parched environment. It was tough seeing the fields which were literally dust.....this the second year that that monsoon rains had failed. Most the camels that we saw had actually lost their humps as they'd had to use their fat reserves due to the lack of food.

We spent our days riding for a few hours and then stopping up under a nice shady tree for a 3 hour siesta to escape the worst of the heat. We were well fed with fresh chappattis and veg curry every meal

Each night the camel men would let their camels wander looking for food, as camel food is scarce during the drought, for a few hours and then head out to find them before they themselves went to sleep. They spent 2 hours looking for their camels the first night! Sleeping was a magical experience...no tents, just a roll mat on the sand dunes under the stars. Our guide Mr Khan really looked after us, waking us up each morning with a cup of chai. We honestly didn't lift a finger for 3 days.

Our guide's devotion to our two camels....Mr Lalloo and Julian was quite astounding....whilst other guides spent their money on themselves (cigarettes/alcohol), he would buy his camels sugarcane and oil. We'd never seen anyone smile so much when we told him that we thought his camels were the best kept! He was an interesting chap, world's apart from our lives but with a very kind heart, who'd got married at the age of 12 and fully expected his children to be married off at that age as well...the dowry system is still in force in Rajasthan and he grimaced as he told us that his first three children were all daughters!

Back in Jaisalmer we enjoyed wandering round the fort at dusk - lots of little lanes and great views out across Jaisalmer. Jaisalmer is famous for it's rich merchants houses with their fabulous intricate sandstone carvings. We also bought some really stunning patchwork bedspreads made out of 60 year old Brahmin dresses.

Jodhpur

We caught a dusty train over to Jodhpur where it was yet another wedding present....this time in the form of a luxury hotel stay from Paul and Millie - thankyou! Our train actually arrived in two hours late...and it was a lovely start to our stay when the hotel apologised that we were late!...bearing in mind that it was us that were late....and told us a tray of sandwiches was in our room....which had been upgraded to the suite! Kharni Bhawan is a 1940s red sandstone villa and was once home to Rajasthan royalty. We spent a fabulous day relaxing by the pool and pretending we were on some posh holiday. We splashed out one night and decided to sample a bottle of sparkling Indian wine....Sula Brut....surprisingly OK we thought considering the climate. The food was fabulous and had won awards in Europe...the chicken tikka was the best we'd ever had!

We visited Jodhpur Fort, where by this time in the trip, the sheer volume of forts was starting to take it's toll

Nice view out across the Blue City

Udaipur

It was time to move on and unfortunately there weren't train tracks where we wanted to go....so we had to settle for a non AC bus...with some wierd double sleeping compartments where we were actually pretty comfortable for the 8 hour trip to Udaipur. We'd found a nice hotel on the lake in Udaipur...we had a lovely view from our balcony over the lake.

Udaipur is a city set on the edge of an artificial lake....there's a pretty famous hotel in the middle where we had been supposed to go across for the lunch buffet for one of our wedding presents....but unfortunately they'd put a stop to day trippers such as ourselves since the Mumbai attacks....same hotel chain as the one that had been attacked. However, we contented ourselves with a really fabulous dinner on the lake shore looking over to the Lake Palace and also a afternoon tea at another posh hotel on the lake shore. The afternoon tea spreads were really stupendous! Thanks Claire and Matt - a couple of really nice experiences!

Udaipur and Mount Abu aren't connected by train so we ended up sharing a taxi for the day with two French people and stopping off at a few sights on the way. First up was Kumbalgargh Fort, which is the second biggest in Rajastahn, it was a really imposing sight up at 1100m. We had fun exploring and loved the breezy views at the top.

Next stop was Ranakpur where we visited a beautiful Jain temple - Jainism is one the oldest world religions, founded in the 6th century BC as a reaction against the Hindu caste system. The temple was made from beautiful milk white marble and despite having been built almost 600 years ago looked brand new. Jains take very seriously that they mustn't harm any living being and as a result many wear scarves over their mouths to prevent breathing an insect in. They also really don't want one scrap of flesh on display in their temples so Bryn donned a pair of baby blue janitor trousers and Fi got to wear a baby pink granny outfit. Everyone seemed to find us very amusing.

Mount Abu

We arrived into Mount Abu late and had trouble finding a decent hotel due to Diwali, the largest Hindu festival of the year, when Gujaratis flood to Mount Abu for the holiday season. There's not a lot to do in Mount Abu, it's just a nice place, set in the mountains and at 1219m was a welcome break from the dusty desert plains of Rajastahn. We had a lovely dinner at the Jaipur Palace with a terrace looking out across the town and enjoyed the Diwali fireworks going off all over the city.

We also took a guided walk in the hills in the National Park and were lucky to spot our first bear of the trip. People are attacked all the time and we'd been given big sticks to fend off an attack, unfortunately our bear was a long way away. We also got to see some pretty lazy crocs sunning themselves.

Then we were off on our last Indian train journey We'd been really lucky to secure the last two tickets out of Mount Abu over the holiday period - and we'd had to upgrade to second class! A couple of nights in Delhi before heading off for our flight to Singapore and then onto Auckland. It's hard to believe that we've been in Asia for 10 months and we're definitely sad to be leaving but looking forward to seeing some family and different bits of the world!

23 - Living it up in Rajasthan remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Almaty is definitely the most European place that we'd been all trip and we felt quite at home walking along the wide tree-lined streets. It's a pretty affluent place...so it was a surprise for Fi one day to be walking along, without her bodyguard Bryn, and have some little Kazakh chap make a pickpocketing attempt on her rucksac. Not too sure who was then most surprised by the reflex reaction right hook that landed on the left side of his face. He didn't get anything But it was a reminder to us to start using those money belts again!....particularly as Fi had just withdrawn $1000 from the cashpoint!

There's not really loads of key sights in Almaty but having been in 40 degree Delhi for 6 weeks it was a bit of a novelty for us being able to walk around without triggering undue perspiration. It was wierd for Fi, after 2 months in India being starred at for exposing any flesh, now being starred at for quite the opposite reasons. It's definitely not wrong in Kazakhstan to wear 6 inch sparkly heels for a stroll in the park.

We went up the cable car one day for a pretty hazy view over Almaty and were amused to find the Beatles at the top with all the Kazakhs queueing for photos.

We got tickets to the circus one afternoon, and despite out initial horror at realising that we were the only adults in attendence who didn't have children with us, actually had a great time watching all the performers. We then headed out for a slap up central Asian feast...mouth watering lamb shashlik...yum. This, and the circus, was all courtesy of another wedding present - thanks to Great Aunt Tillie for all of that!

Dog school was actually pretty funny

And as for the giant orange skipping fluffball...

We headed out to the Charyn Canyon for a day trip on a bus full of Kazakh/Russian tourists. Charyn Canyon is definitely not the Grand Canyon but we had fun wandering through all the sandstone formations.

We also headed out into the mountains just 10km from Almaty to stretch our legs. We headed to Medeu where they are currently refurbing a massive ice rink in preparation for the Asian Winter Games. We set off on our Lonely Planet walk and were disappointed for it to finish 10 minutes later as we'd actually only walked along a BMX track.
Undeterred we set off up a small path leading straight up a steep hill. We quickly gained height heading up through the trees and stubbornly kept going as the path got narrower and narrower. We did wonder whether we actually were on some sort of animal track as the vegetation closed in further around us......careful what you wish for.....round the next corner there was a massive hole leading into the earth......a bear's lair!!! We beat a hasty retreat.....we didn't feel quite so confident without our jungle guide. We headed further up the hill into a lovely Alpine type clearing full of flowers and aromatic herbs...however, by now there really wasn't a path and our mountain was getting steeper and steeper.

We realised we had to head back down and as the heavens started to rumble we realised it was the right one. We felt quite elated to be back down at the road as the rain was really starting to come down, so we found somewhere to shelter with a load of Kazakhs. These were Kazakhs on holiday and despite their lack of English and our lack of Russian - they wanted to be friends. We all posed for photos and then the vodka bottle came out and before we knew it there we were, in the middle of the afternoon, doing shots of vodka with the locals in the middle of the beautiful mountain scenery.

Ok, off to Stan number 2.....

19 - Here a Stan, there a Stan, everwhere a Stan Stan! remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Moving round the lake we arrived in Karakol - the trekking capital of central Asia. We stayed in a lovely homestay courtesy of Babushka Fatima. Her daughter-in-law spoke good English which was a real help and made asking questions about Kyrgyzstan and the USSR much less painful. It was interesting to hear how the people really struggled to cope without socialism for many years as they had never had to think about their careers or generating money. They were suffering an almost institutionalised mindset that was difficult to break free from. Only now are they starting to get used to trade and entrepreneurialism and starting to see the benefits.

Kyrgyzstan is full of two types of vehicles - Ladas and German-manufactured cars from the 1980s. I did not know it was possible for these cars to still be on the road, I thought they went to a little car heaven in the sky when we got rid. Now I know different. Most of the cars we went in had 500,000 miles on the clock BEFORE the mileometer stopped working! I wonder why we cannot be more sustainable in the UK and repair and reuse like here? Although, to be fair, I am, not sure that even 5% would pass a UK MOT.

We were lucky to be in Karakol on a Sunday to see the second largest animal market in central Asia....where we arrived bright and early at 6am! Lots of horses, sheep and cows.....and men in felt hats whom Bryn had a particular penchant for photographing with his long lens....

Not quite the same as in the UK...no pens for the animals so you had to watch out for the bucking horses and we did see a few sheep being stuffed in the boot of a Lada for the journey to their new home!

We had resolved that for our trek into the hills we didn't want another 18 year old 'guide' accompanying us so we set off round town in search of some camping equipment to rent, which is surprisingly difficult as most the operations who have equipment only rent it out as long as you hire a guide/porter/cook from them. However, after a couple of days we had sorted our gear and got in our bright blue Lada taxi (Bryn very excitedly hand picked this) which whizzed us up to Jeti-Orguz the start of our trek, undaunted by our 18kg packs.

The first day was pretty easy ambling up the beautiful valley in the baking sunshine. After a couple of hours walking we spied a yurt that agreed to bring us some chai.....what we didn't bargain on was that in Kyrgzstan, tea is never just tea....you simply must eat as well. So there we were....with a beautiful view down the grassy valley....tucking into a cream tea that would have gone for good money in central London....the homemade blackcurrant jam was the best we'd ever had! Grudgingly, we set off in search of our campsite for the night.

Day 2 was actually an easy day but for some reason we made rather slow going. We were walking up narrow alpine valleys full of grass, streams with big tall green conifers everywhere....all very Soviet. However, it was very pleasant walking mainly....apart from fording a couple of glacial streams where we needed to take our boots off. We'd done this a lot in Borneo but hadn't quite realised quite how cold the glacial meltwaters would be - people must have heard our swearing 20km away!

It started to rain just as we reached our campsite....we got our tent up pretty quickly and spent the rest of the afternoon cowering from the rain. Just before bedtime an inquisitive and insistent cow herd decided that they wanted to become friends and several times we had to shoo away a snuffling snout that was trying to get into our tent!! After living in fear of the cow shadows outside the tent all night , we generated the courage for a stern face to face dawn showdown....

We also spotted some interesting looking orange scurrying fluffy things that later turned out to be marmots.

Day 3 we got up a little late due to more rain and set off for the first high altitude pass of the trek.....this was where it turned out that the maps we had weren't exactly Ordance Survey quality. We missed the path and ended up doing most of the 1000m ascent up the river course....at one point going up some pretty steep sections as we got pelted by hailstones. This wasn't exactly the summer walk we'd planned.

Luckily, the weather got better as we approached the 3800m pass and there were some pretty stunning views as we trekked across the barren plateau.

Going down from the pass was a lot of fun as we got to ski down about 400m.....ok no poles or actual skis....but we made it down in record time and thankfully no broken bones in this remote place!!

At this point, we thought we'd done the hard work....but oh no....our crappy maps made it a tough afternoon for us. First we trekked one km too far down one side of the valley before realising that there was no way through due to some nasty looking morraine piles....so we had to head back up to where we could actually cross the river.....then we headed too far down the other side of the valley...and ended up having to descend about 400m down an extremely steep track through pine forest.

We had another equally tough day to follow - made even harder by the fact that our legs were wooden from the previous day - pretty difficult to motivate sufficiently to wriggle out of our sleeping bags! After a lot of slow trudging and a picturesque stop for tea at 3,000m....

....we were finally at Ala-Kol Lake (3500m) for a late lunch just as the hail starting to pelt down again! It was really quite scary walking round the lake as the heavens ominously rumbled. There were hardly any trekkers, no where to pitch a tent and we were dressed in summer gear as slowly everything started to turn white!

We made it to the pass at 5pm, definitely not on schedule.

Our jubilation at having finally made it up quickly evaporated as it was snowing heavily (covering tracks) and starting to get dark. Unfortunately, because of this, we could not locate the path down from the pass. We searched for around one hour, including one near fatal descent investigation! At 6pm we really thought we would be those silly trekkers who disappear after going off on their own into the wilderness - it was too late to go back to the last place a tent could go, too cold and exposed to stay on the pass and no route down! Finally we see something resembling a slighter gradient and decide to go for it - after sliding down on our bums for 30 mins we were down and thankfully still in one piece. Shortly after it started to thunder and hail so we erected our tent in record time and as we looked out later we were surrounded by a foot of snow! We decided we needed to celebrate our survival through a tough day - what better way than a fine chilled vodka and caviar supper. Perfect.

An easy half day walk followed to our end point, Altan Arashyn, where we were able to go in a butch lady's shed for a hot spring bath - perfect recovery. The mutton knuckle soup wasnt anything to write home about though! Only one vehicle was due to make it's way back into Karakol that day so we waited around until the departure time of 6pm. 3 hours later we were still waiting as the driver had decided that fermented mares milk in the hills was a much more appealing propsect. Our spirits started to slump as we realised that we weren't going to be having our celebratory beer and shashlick feast that evening Then we saw a jeep revving its engines and hollared the locals in our best russian to give us a lift. After a bit of negotiating we were on our way. This was the roughest track we had ever been on - it took over 2 hours to go 20km - at one point we all had to get in the total darkness and walk down while the jeep skidded down the worst bits! A flat tyre didn't help matters....but at least our head torches came in useful as they tried to change the tyre by mobile phone light! We were very happy to arrive back late, and safely, in our nice homestay where they invited us to join them for a supper - bread, jam and tea.

After a day of laundry and recovery (i.e. more shaslyk and beer!) we headed off around the lake to Kochkor, the land of rolling green pastures, in contrast to the more rocky snow-capped mountain scenery at Karakol. This was where we did our 'Life of a Shepherd' horse trek wedding present, courtesy of the Centric boys, Chris, Sean, Andrew and Pete. Thanks lads. This was great fun. With no riding experience we were a little nervous, but then, as we mounted our steads, we realised these were friendly chaps. We were quickly learning the Kyrgyz horse language e.g. "Tcho" and a kick to the gut to go faster. But there were no real worries as our mounts were certainly no sprinters! Bryn, in fact, had a particularly flatulant mount and was regularly scorned as he moved upwind of the group. It was a great experience staying in the traditional yurts. They are so warm, and the families make you feel so comfortable and serve endless food - "more cream tea anyone?" Another girl, Nona (American), came along with us and she proved to be quite a mean card player!

There was a cute little puppy at one of the yurts who'd had his ears and tail cut off! It turns out that they do this all across central Asia so that the dog has less problems when it gets older and starts fighting!

At the end of day two, our horses were starting to turn asthmatic and sweat heavily so they were glad that we dismounted for the final time. Our guide departed back to the yurt from the previous night where he had been exchanging glances with a sweet sixteen, and we relaxed by the glacial lake at 3500m. A really good trip.

We just spent two nights in the capital, Bishkek, as no real sights and no cheap hotels. We did appreciate our bathtub and separate living room in our $40 hotel for a treat though! We wandered the leafy streets and had a final meal out with Nona, before beginning our 2 day overland journey back through Kazakhstan to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan. It was disappointing that as we got off a matrushka in Kazakhstan that Bryn was surrounded by a group of jostling men, one of whom kept making repeated attempts at his pocket.....for his 'wallet' which thankfully was just a wodge of toilet paper. A difficult situation as they were all in on the scam and we were trying to get our bags off the bus at the same time before it drove off....

2 days, 3 countries, 1 randomly shut border crossing for foreigners only due to a power cut!, 2 borders successfully crossed. Uzbekistan here we come!

20 - Camping, Caviar and Cream Tea remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We didn't do a whole lot in Tashkent.....it's a Soviet city complete with wide roads, lots of nice shady trees and plenty of cafes serving us tasty shashlick and beers. We visited the national history museum and went off to the massive main market where all manner of fresh and dry produce is for sale. The guidebook had told us of whole rooms full of flour etc which we hadn't really believed until we found the onion warehouse!

One night we came across the Gasthaus, hidden behind the train station, which was really quite bizarre. As the night went on we got quite confused where we were.....were we really in Uzbekistan?? The waiters and waitresses were in typical Bavarian costume, we were eating fantastic german sausages and drinking great cloudy microbrewery beer. Had we been transported to Bavaria for the night?

Being at the train station, we of course had to depart by train and we had a very pleasant 4 hour ride to Samarkand, the first of our silk road cities. The sights here really knocked our socks off.....the Registan, the centre of Timur's 14th century capital, was absolutely magnificent.....it's a massive square surrounded on three sides by medrassas (Islamic religious schools), all decorated with stunning turquoise mosaic tiles.

90% of the sights in Uzbekistan are massively restored....and although there were some dodgy Soviet restoration attempts, on the whole the result is impressive. Walking round the Registan in the evening was quite spellbinding....

As we ticked off some of the smaller sights in Samarkand we realised that after 10 months of travelling....we were the subjects of yet another scam! Arriving at a very minor sight, and hearing the quite high entrance price we walked off....and were surprised to hear the lady calling after us "Student discount? Only 2000 then? 1500?" From this point on, we wised up and played hard-ball with the smiling middle aged ladies writing any price they fancied on the tickets.

We moved onto Bukhara which was a nice change to Samarkand. Although, Bukhara is a typical tourist town it at least has some sense of 'ye olde worlde' to it. In between the sights in Samarkand are immaculate squares, manicured gardens and gleaming shops.....in Bukhara you get more of a feeling that camel caravans really did come through here once upon a time....

We went to the Ark - which was a fortress occupied right from the 5th century until the Soviets invaded in 1920. We visited the prison where, in the 1840's, two British envoys, Stoddart and Conolly, were kept for 3 years in the 'bug pit' before they were marched to their deaths....all because Queen Victoria hadn't personally replied to a letter from the Emir.

We cheated death on the Soviet era fairground wheel....which seemed to sway alarmingly in the breeze....

And of course more mosques, minarets and medrassas! We had fun going in a medrassa that was actually closed to the public as it hadn't been restored yet. We paid for our 'tickets' to some local pensioner who keenly showed us round and yabbered away in Russian to us We had fun scrambling up the stairs into crumbling rooms, taking care to avoid the sheer drop offs and up onto the roof.

By this stage in our central Asian experience we were having food issues..... Bryn was laid up in bed and Fi was sent out to find acceptable food items. For 4 weeks now, we'd pretty much survived on a diet of salty shashlyck, bread, and tomato salads. They really don't seem to eat much else in restaurants despite having the finest array of fruits and vegetables that we'd seen on our trip so far!

Soon we were in Khiva, another silk road city, which is a pretty compact version of Bukhara. Literally every building, is a medrassa, a mosque or a minaret. Bryn being laid up in bed again, Fi went up the ancient minaret solo, dodging teenage Uzbeks making out in the narrow, dark, winding staircase! The view was pretty good though...

As the sun went down it was pretty special as the tour parties cleared out and the sunset cast everything in a soft orange glow. Sadly Fi had to enjoy the romantic vistas on her own!

We moved on from Khiva up to Nukus, right next to the Turkmenistan border. The main reason for visiting Nukus is to visit the art gallery which contains a massive collection of artwork, banned in the Soviet period. We had a great time wandering round and it made a nice change to silk road sights. They had a great shop with artwork for sale and soon we were off to the market to change our dollars and count our giant wodge of notes to procure a couple of nice pieces.

21 - Mosques, Minarets & Madrassas remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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It was amusing to watch the Turkmen women undergoing an ancient fertility ritual that involved donning a thick coat and rolling down a hill! It looked quite painful so Fi chickened out!

We set off through the Karakum desert to the Darvaza gas craters....these are the results of Soviet gas exploration in the 1950s. There are three of them....one filled with bubbling water, another with bubbling mud and the last which was to be our campsite for the night is alight.

It was quite a sight when we arrived in the middle of the afternoon....40m in diameter and depth....and flames everywhere! It was quite hot to stand next to....and we made sure not to stray too close to the edge! As the sun went down....it started to glow....it really was an amazing sight....and we had to agree with our guidebook which describes it as the gates to hell. It really was quite quite an astounding sight....and we were able to see the glow all night through our tent!

The next day was a long desert drive south to Ashgabat, the capital. We had loads of fun spotting the camels at the side of the road......Timur had said a few times that they were really dangerous for drivers as despite it being a straight desert road....the small dips and hills means that sometimes people don't see them in time. It turns out that people let their camels roam free in the desert for up to 4 months before they head after them, on motorbike, asking at local villages when their camels were last seen!

Sure enough though, we sadly came across an accident that had probably happened 20 minutes previous. It was shocking to see the driver of the car hadn't made it.....not likely with 300kg of camel crashing into his windscreen.

We arrived into Ashgabat and got settled into our Soviet era hotel, complete with moody babushka on each floor. Definitely one of our more downmarket establishments...complete with scampering mice that died each night in our bathroom! Ashgabat was the jewel in the crown of Dictator Niyazov's regime...and something his successor is keen to build on. It really is quite something.....gold self-obsessed statues interspersed freely in between the gleaming white marble buildings - everything in the centre of town has to use Italian marble. They were very proud of having the biggest flagpole in the world....well done them!

There were public parks everywhere but no one seemed to use them!

Everyone drives everywhere as gas is so cheap but like the parks there were far too many roads for the number of people using them....

It quickly became a little freaky and seemed like some sort of cross between 1984 and the Stepford Wives. It seemed a little odd that the only people on the streets were ourselves, the army of streetcleaners and the military policemen stationed on each streetcorner. Not many photos because the police won't allow it! People seemed to act a little like zombies, their laughter and chatter kept behind closed doors. To be honest the whole place seemed to lack any real soul - the central pedestrian areas of European cities and the hustle and bustle of Asian cities were non-existant. The powerful nanny state actually made China seem pretty soft. On the other hand, it is similar to China in that the people are not used to anything else so what they don't know won't hurt them? The free gas, free electric and practically free petrol keep people pretty happy.

Our feelings of unsettledness deepened as we were randomly refused entry to a couple of markets by plain clothed policemen....only to enter moments later unhassled by another entrance! Enough was enough for Fi though, as we set off one night to find a reccomended Chinese restaurant and after 30 minutes walk a plain clothed cop tried to usher us off the road! Fi, worrying that she was about to be kept from her Chinese feast, demanded to know what was going on from this rather ambivalent/unfriendly cop....thankfully, someone came to our aid and said we only had to get off the main road for 10 minutes while the President's calvalcade came whizzing by....before we could proceed to our Chinese restaurant! Dumplings....Mmmm.

We whizzed round the main sights in Ashgabat....going up the arch of neutrality, complete with a gold statue of their man Niyazov - which spins round every day to ensure he's looking directly towards the sun.

Bryn then enjoyed the rest of the time in Ashgabat viewing every Turkmen carpet in the city and conducting a thorough price/quality comparison.

Enough was enough though of toy town Ashgabat and we were thankful to hit the desert road. Our first stop was the ancient site of Gonur where the current excavations have been dated back to a staggering 3000 BC!! Despite having had our reservations at looking at a pile of sandy mounds in the middle of the desert we really were gobsmacked at what we saw. There were pottery shards everywhere and the foundations were in pretty good nick. We saw ceramics kilns, shashlick ovens, water purification works, the royal palace and even a drainage system! They are still uncovering stuff and we were able to go and have a look at what they were currently working on....no need to cordon off the area etc....we were able to get right in and see what they were up to! We saw the burial tombs where the royalty were buried alongside their horses.

The most staggering thing we saw though was a human skeleton complete with a bronze bracelet and ring still in situ!

Back at the entrance we got chatting with one of the local archaeologists who'd worked there for the last 20 years.....it was amazing watching him undertake what must be the world's most complicated jigsaw puzzle as he restored an ossuary. I don't think they get too many visitors....before we knew it we were being ushered over to meet Viktor Sarianidi...the 79 year old Russian/Greek lead archaeologist. He'd discovered the site 50 years ago and had led the excavations twice a year since then....considering the heat, dust and bumpy journey over the dunes to get there we thought this pretty good going. He thought that this year would be his last though. We got to ask him loads of questions and uncovered that funding was a big issue for them....it turned out that he'd sold his Moscow flat to pay for the excavations.

We also visited Merv....which only dates back to 600 BC, and with many of the remains being dated much later - it's actually a succession of cities spread over about 1000 years. Over the years they'd played host to many of the world's major religions Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. They've only excavated about 10% - so we needed a better imagination than in Gonur, and often what they had excavated had been fairly comprehensively restored which somewhat destroyed the magic of the place.

We then drove 700km through the desert to the SE corner of the country, right next to Afghanistan. We visited the dinosaur plateau in search of the footsteps of Turkmenosaurus Rex who came this way 155 million years ago. The dinosaurs had left loads of footprints on the bed of a muddy lake....which had then dried rock hard in the sun, there was then a volcanic eruption which covered the lakebed in lava sealing the footprints for us to view all these years later. We'd been quite sceptical about this...until we saw it.....it's not just one footprint....we were able to track where the dinosaurs had been heading all over the rock face!

We also visited the Kyrk Gyz cave where we were welcomed by the local mullah who kindly said some prayers for us.

We were then given a bit of cloth each and we had to throw it, and make it stick to the roof of the cave....achieving this would grant us a wish.

They weren't specific about whether we'd still get our wish if we weren't successful on the first attempt....

All that was left to do in Turkmenistan was another long desert drive to catch our $21 flight all the way across the country back to Ashgabat. And then onwards back to India

22 - Stepford Wives go Soviet remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Crossing the border into India was definitely one of the more relaxed border crossings that we'd done so far. Due to the large numbers of people crossing every day they seem to have given up on examining passports etc and instead if you want a stamp you need to go and ask for one.

We caught a bus no problem to Gorakhpur where we had booked tickets on a sleeper train to Varanasi. Getting off the bus in Gorakhpur at midnight was a real eyeopener. The scores of people who simply lie down on the pavement for their night's sleep, the children to whom the island in the middle of a roundabout is home and the figures lurking in the shadows preparing their evening fix. In the station it really wasn't clear who was waiting for trains and who was living on the platforms. Despite having reserved sleepers, we were keen to stretch out on them, having heard nightmare stories about people wanting to 'share' your seats etc in India. It all turned out OK in the end and we actually had a great night's sleep in our non AC, second class coach.....arriving in Varanasi 8 hours later...all for the price of a UK beer.

Arriving into Varanasi was like stepping into a tandoori oven. By the time we had found somewhere to stay we'd drunk 4 litres of water and by the end of the day.....another 6 bottles had followed. Trying to economise, thanks to our Temple Tiger splurge, we'd opted for a fan only room. This just wasn't sensible in the 40 degree heat......our only escape from the heat were our hourly showers, no need to towel dry, just go and stand in front of the fan for 2 minutes. Our days were spent getting up early...around 6am and going to see the Ganges, taking a boat ride before retreating into our hot box for the next 10 hours until we could venture out again for our evening stroll along the Ganges. Despite the touts etc, Varanasi did have a pretty special atmosphere. The bodies draped in bright orange fabrics, with long processions of family following on, winding their way through the narrow lanes down to the Ganges; the burning ghats visible from afar in the evenings; the smell of incense in the air from the evening ceremonies; the old men, followers of Shiva sat passing the time with their painted faces and long hair. It still gave us a bit of a fright though to see a body floating down the Ganges one morning.....it turns out that there are a few circumstances whereby you don't get burnt and instead you are set into the Ganges, supposedly weighted down but obviously not in this case! Leaving aside the pollution in the Ganges, it's wierd to see everyone bathing happily despite what might float by...

Fi declined the opportunity to practice with the Ganges Swimming Club....

We caught another sleeper train onward to Agra. This one was AC.....and seemed like luxury to us. Bryn was impressed that his evening meal order was taken at one station and delivered an hour later to his bunk at the next station....all for 40p. Sadly we had to get off at Agra though and negotiate our way through the tout throng to the sea of rickshaw drivers. We were impressed to find a bargain place to stay with a view of the Taj!

We went off to Agra Fort and were immediately introduced to Indian tourists.....who want their photos taken by us...on our camera for some bizarre reason

We were outside the Taj for 6am along with a long line of other tourists. Stepping round the corner to see it for the first time was quite spell binding. It really is a very impressive and beautiful building. Actually being there, seeing the green lawns, fountains and pools was certainly better than seeing pictures etc. We spent quite some time posing for photos!

Our evening trip onto the other side of the river to see sunset wasn't quite as successful as Bryn forgot his camera battery and then it turned out that there wasn't even a colourful sunset that day!

We'd been thinking for some time that a rest from travelling would probably be good.....and we'd decided that Delhi would probably be the place to do it as we'd have easy access to plenty of amenities. We needed to engage our brains on something other than bus timetables and managing our budget.

However, with 6 weeks in Delhi now complete and about 12 embassy visits under our belts it's time to push on for our seven week tour of the Stans....Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan!

18 - Indian interlude remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We did arrive in Nepal though after a lovely mountain flight from Lhasa, getting a great view of Everest.

It’s not quite the same though as staring up from base camp

After a bit of research in the LP we checked into a nice hotel in Kathmandu to ‘celebrate’ Bryn’s 30th birthday, and treated him to a slap-up Italian meal with a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse – god we miss wine – after a walk around Durbar Square.

After a couple of days in Kathmandu, catching up on some western food....including the biggest steaks in the world....

....and getting some shopping done we had to get out. It really is hectic, dirty, and in the tourist area, quite a sleazy city. The hash boys and tiger balm salesman whispering in your ear every five minutes does wear you down quite quickly. Although it is sad to see kids rummaging through the piles of litter left on the street for collection each evening, before the dogs come and take anything remaining that is even slightly edible.

Now it was time to move on to the main event – the 2 week Annapurna circuit trek. We had been preparing for months, three summits, carrying full packs, humid and cold conditions….we were ready. We decided against porters and guides as we had never felt in better shape. We packed the slabs of Dairy Milk and headed off. Testing out our new fake Arcteryx waterproofs right from the start which didn't turn out to be that waterproof

We met a nice pair of French guys, Christian and Ben, and a pair of Canadians (not Americans Bryn), Chris and Sheryl on the bus to the start point. From this point on these would be our hiking buddies.

The trek didn’t start off well for Bryn as he had the squips and was sick at the side of the trail twice on day one. But in the blistering lowland heat we pushed on. It was cool being able to get cups of tea at the teahouses every hour - unique.

These little places all had strangely similar, yet varied menus – be careful when ordering western food though as a ‘Lasagne’ failed to contain pasta and none of the ingredients were cooked. They also often contained sweet little playful children….

We started to find our rhythm after a tough first couple of days, and with the aid of cooler climate each day of ascending we were walking at a good pace and had already gained a day on the book’s walking itinerary after 4 days.

Passing by the local weed plantations.....

At the village of Upper Pisang we got our first really good view of the snow-capped Annapurna peaks – time for photos at our well positioned lodge for the night.

The sun was really hot in the day so, as Bryn forgot his hat, he had to improvise the headgear!

Once we got to the village of Manang at 3,500m we stopped for a day to acclimatize, as Bryn had been altitude sick in Tibet at Everest and we didn’t want any repeat.

Some local apple crumble helped make us feel comfortable It was starting to get pretty darn cold in the evenings though and this would be our last shower for 4 days!

The days started to get very easy for hiking now as we were limited by the amount of altitude we could sensibly cover in a day – trying to keep it less than 500m per day. We were now leaving at 9am and finishing at 2pm even with lunch and tea breaks.

The lodges were now putting charcoal burners under the tables which was a godsend as it was starting to get damn cold!

Finally, the time had come for the most challenging day of the trek, climbing from 4,500m to 5,500m over the Thorong La pass and then back down to 3,800m to Muktinath. You have to get over before the strong winds come in, so given the ascent coupled with the inability to walk to the loo without losing breath at this altitude we headed off at 6.15am after a bowl of apple porridge and pot of mint tea.

The walk was incredible – we were walking on our own up a mountain with practically zero visibility and snow everywhere – a real sense of mystique and adventure.

By 10am we had reached the pass and felt a real sense of achievement and a little relief that after thinking about the trek for 6 months we had completed it.

Our weary lungs and legs were pleased it would be downhill from hereon in and we vowed to relax and focus on enjoying the villages were walking through and the people we would meet.

Fi's new temple buddies from Muktinath...

Highlights included Kagbeni, a little traditional village, set in the middle of the rainshadow desert....appearing like an oasis to us....

We stayed in a little place run by three Nuns, complete with private chapel and a monk chanting outside our room. The village felt like a medieval film, with its ramshackle stone housing, narrow lanes and free-roaming livestock…

Passed up a visit to the well known ‘YakDonalds’..

We also really liked Marpha – the home of the Nepalese apple – an experiment founded by the King after a visit to France – the apple juice is amazing – quite a few litres consumed!

The further we descended the more rain we were walking in with no decent waterproofs. The clouds were now covering all the mountain peak vistas by about 7am each day. Also, unfortunately for tourists, a jeep track has now been established for virtually the entire route once over the pass, which for us took away the magic of walking in the Annapurnas.

We therefore decided to stop at Tukuche and head back to Jomsom and fly to Pokhara and use the the remaining three days better elsewhere. The Annapurna Circuit completed for us in 11 days.

On the bus back from Pokhara to Kathmandu we caught up in one of the seemingly regular Nepalese strikes. We don’t quite understand what these are about, but they do cause gridlock. We joined a queue of traffic 40km outside of Kathmandu that was not allowed to enter the city for a further 5 hours. So we all sat in midday heat, packed on buses with no aircon and no water. Ambulances could not get through the traffic to help people. People were taking refuge wherever they could find shade…. It was chaos.

Back in Kathmandu we headed off for another one of our Wedding presents – a Meditation and Yoga retreat courtesy of Mike and Alex. We had three days in a lovely secluded retreat learning how to try and achieve balance between our mind, body and soul. We got quite into it…..ohm, ohm, ohm, ohm, ohm! Even Bryn managed to keep the sarcastic comments at a minimum. We also enjoyed treatments as part of the package - Ayervedic massage, oil dripping on the head thing, and steam bath….!

Fully mentally and physically reinvigorated we now caught a bus to Royal Chitwan National Park – where Bryn had struck a great off-season deal on a luxury lodge in the park, Temple Tiger, as few visitors go when it is so hot and wet – didn’t deter us though!

It is amazing to be able to go from the Himalayas to a lowland jungle in less than a day’s driving – Nepal is a lot more geographically diverse than we had imagined. We had an amazing time, a real highlight of our trip. We went on 5 elephant safaris, jungle walks and a boat trip in only 4 days. We saw loads of Rhinos up close and personal, four types of deer, a monitor lizard, 18ft Python, wild pigs, a flying squirrel, jackals and Langur and Rhesus Monkeys.

It really must be one of the best places outside of Africa for remote and natural wildlife. For most of the time we were the only guests and so received totally personal service – a real treat after backpacking for so long. It was great to be able to sit back and relax in the evening on the viewing deck and watch the Rhinos wallowing in the mud with a drink in hand – paradise. We got lucky with the weather in that it was baking hot but bone dry.

In addition, we were able to include another wedding present – from Katie – where we spent an afternoon with all the elephants, learned about them, got to play with them, and most importantly, helped to wash them!

After a great month in Nepal, we are now ready (?) to step over the border into blistering summer heat of northern India. Let the fun continue!

17 - Peaks, Protests, Presents and Parks remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We checked into a brilliant hostel which used to be a printing factory back in the 1970s so we were straight down to the bar to use the free wifi and drink beer for 25p. The main reason people visit Chengdu is to visit the Giant Panda Sanctuary on the outskirts of town. It really was quite fantastic and we hadn't realised that there would be so many pandas and that we would get so close. The young ones were really very cute and seemed quite playful.

Of course, being in Sichuan we had to try the famous Sichuan Hotpot.

We'd had one of these when we were in China before...a bubbling pot of chilli where you cook your stuff much like a fondue. This time though we decided to step things up a notch and add some duck's tongues into the mix.....probably not something we need to do again......

And then it was on another plane and onwards to Lhasa! It had been quite a challenge getting all the paperwork and the tour organised for Tibet as the restrictions change all the time. At present the Chinese government has decided that all Western tourists must pay for a guide and a car each day. So it was a nice luxury for us to be met at the airport by our guide Nawam and transported straight to our hotel in central Lhasa. We met Sharon and Steven there who are both from Malaysia and were the other two members of our group. We all went out for lunch and immediately realised we were at 3600m as we almost passed out trying to bound up the 2 floors to the restaurant. Fi got stuck into some yak dumplings....the first of our many yak products. Yak lasagne, yak cheesecake, yak butter tea, yak cheese, yak steaks, yak yoghurt. We also walked the first of our many Koras...or pilgrim walks....around the Jokhang Temple seeing the sights and smells of Lhasa. It's imperative that you walk clockwise...the only people who don't do this are the patrols of Chinese soldiers.

Yak Butter...

Bryn getting stuck into the local home brewed barley beer

Prayer Wheels a plenty whichever way you look

We spent a couple of days with our guide doing the main sights of Lhasa. The summer palace of the Dalai Lamas, from where the 14th made his escape to India back in 1959.

And the first of many monasteries...the Sera monastery where we were treated to the monks 'debating' in the open air courtyard. They get quite impassioned by it....

We visited the Jokhang Temple early in the day,past the pilgrims doing their protestations out front....

And then on with the rest of the pilgrims and followed the trail through the numerous chapels all lit by yak candles. We played spot the Buddha with our guide........trying to guess the difference between the Past Buddha, Present Buddha, Future Buddha, Medicine Buddhas, Protectors, Disciples, Tara, Kings etc etc We weren't very good at it.....Buddhism is pretty complicated.

But we did have some fun on the roof looking out across Barkor Square and all the pilgrims doing their koras and protestations.

The Potala Palace is definitely the star attraction in Lhasa. It was a beautiful day for it as we puffed our way up the steps

No photos allowed inside as usual.....but we were blown away by it. The gold coffins of the Dalai Lamas were particularly impressive. It was sad to see the living quarters of the 14th Dalai Lama who is in exile in India. But all in all a very impressive building.

We were glad to get out of Lhasa and to see the Tibet landscape. We did a very long day trip to Namtso Lake...one of 3 holy lakes in Tibet. Namtso Lake is at 4700m and the highest salt lake in the world. Many barren landscapes on the journey there with a few yaks in....

The lake was really pretty....frozen round the edges, prayer flags fluttering everywhere.

We puffed slowly up a small hill at the side of the lake for a better view. It's very wierd getting so out of breath doing so little!

And then we off on our Everest Trip with a scattering of more monasteries on the way. We caused chaos with our Chinese guide who was quite unused to tourists wanting to walk anywhere! We did persuade him to let us walk the kora around the monastery at Shigatse early one morning. More prayer wheels, pilgrims and reincarnation merit for all Buddhists out there.

Lots more driving and we found ourselves in Shergar at 4300m a cold, windy place. Nothing to do there apart from huddle in bed!

And then up early for our final assault on Everest. Our first views from a distance!

And then after a very bumpy road for 4 hours we were off...walking the 4km from the tourist camp to the proper mountaineer base camp! Lots of stops for photos as we puffed our way up to 5200m!

But then we were there! A really great moment

And also a photo of our new travelling buddy who actually stowed away in our luggage - unknown to us!

And then a quick march back to the van trying to escape the impending storm...

Then it was a long long journey back to Lhasa (too much for some)....

....where we said goodbye to Steven and Sharon. We spent a quiet few days...feeling guiltly that we'd paid money for a guide and car and all we wanted to do was chill out. We did however go on a great walk in the hills around Lhasa where we saw the skyburial sites. Tibet isn't blessed with either soil for burial or trees to provide fuel for burning so they rely on vultures to dispose of their loved ones. We felt quite queasy as our guide explained how the bodies were pounded up. We walked to our first nunnery - where we were welcomed with open arms and spent half an hour chatting with one of the head nuns - with the aid of our interpreter/guide.

We try to maintain open minds in all countries that we visit. Things are always more complicated than they seem. And we tried our best to find out as much as we could on the politics, economics, culture etc of Tibet from our 3 guides. Having Tibetan and Chinese guides did give us a more balanced view on things. Whilst many businesses were run by Han Chinese...there were options to patronise Tibetan businesses which was great. It was interesting understanding the Chinese viewpoint.......and whilst there are definitely pros and cons of Tibet being part of China, it was quite sad some of the things we found out. It's sad that they aren't allowed photos of the 14th Dalai Lama as he is their religious leader. It's wierd that the 11th Panchen Lama is stationed in Beijing and not in Shigatse where all Panchen's before him have stayed......leaving aside whatever happened to the little boy who was installed as the 11th Panchen Lama before him. It's sad that some Tibetans are seemingly not allowed to get passports. There's definitely a very visible Chinese military presence in Lhasa. Definitely no photos allowed of them!....we did see them run after tourists who tried to take photos! But just a reminder that Big Brother is always watching you in Tibet....

16 - Monks, yaks and pilgrims remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Where we had our sights set on their most challenging trek that they offered to help prepare for our Nepal trip - 'only for the super fit'...and us it would seem! Mulu is set in the middle of the dense Borneo jungle and it was great to see that not all of Borneo is palm plantations

Gunung Mulu NP is really well organised and they offered a whole series of trips ranging from canopy walks......

To Clearwater Cave, the largest cave system in the world....

However, before we knew it we were off on our 4 day trek up to the Summit at about 2500m - a 48 km round trip.

It was quite a pricey trip and we'd been lucky to meet up with Linus from Sweden to share the costs. Linus turned out to be an ardent Middlesborough supporter and he and Bryn were able to talk football for four days solid. We had a great guide, Henry, who was really keen on doing the trip. It turns out that only 10 groups do the summit trip every year despite the large numbers of visitors who go to the park so the guides don't often get to do the trip. We'd already been prepped that day 1 was going to be tough....and it was! 6km on the flat, dodging the mud swamps and crossing a couple of big rivers, and then 6km straight uphill to 1500m. It was really tough carrying all our gear and food for 4 days! However, we were truly impressed when we arrived at Camp 3. It had a kitchen, toilets and a great sleeping area to hang our luxury mosquito net!

Bryn and Linus cooked up a storm in the kitchen and did their best with the tins we'd been able to buy in Mulu.....cockle curry being one of their delights.

Day 2 was up and down....passing pitcher plants - carniverous plants which trap insects in their pitcher shapes which are filled with water. Thankfully day 2 was a lot easier than the previous day and we were able to take time to admire the views....

And arrive in enough time for a game of 500 on the helipad at Camp 4.

And assessing the summit....

Before getting up pretty early for our summit ascent.

Thankfully we were able to leave our packs behind in camp 4....because before we knew it we were hauling ourselves up ladders, hanging onto ropes next to sheer drops and generally scrabbling up the mountain anyway we could.

Getting to the top was a great moment

Just a pity that Fi couldn't see the view from the viewing pole....

After half an hour wait at the top the clouds finally parted as we had to start our descent! Note the pitcher plant on the side

Going down Tracker Fi spotted a tiny bright green frog on the trail.....which Bryn promptly picked up.......and then threw away quickly as Fi screamed it could be poisonous. Henry had only been telling us the day before that frogs can be much more deadly than snakes!! Turns out that this one wasn't poisonous and that actually it was quite rare. People have gone up the mountain for weeks just to see the frog and failed!!

Going downhill was pretty tough going and it took us all day to get back to camp 3 - where Bryn uncovered a near deadly leech attack.....

We'd actually been really lucky with leeches as it hadn't rained once on our trip - which was unbelievable luck as that would have made things even tougher!!

The next day, despite having trailed the lads all trip, the talk of post trip beers powered Fi down the mountain in record time...arriving at Camp 1 for a long river swim before the boys even turned up! Everyone was impressed to see us back in time for lunch. We were quite the celebrities down at HQ as all the staff seemed to know about our trip! Unfortunately Linus had to go catch a plane so we headed off on our own to Royal Mulu...the posh hotel in the area for our post trip beers.

The next day was a few more caves....Deer Cave, the largest open passage in the world....

With it's spitting image profile of which US president??

And Lang's Cave with it's impressive stalagtites and mites...

And then the bat exodus at 5:30pm. This was a really amazing sight.....as 2-3 million bats exit the cave for their nightly supper. They tend to leave the cave and swirl round until they have sufficient numbers to head off in curling ribbons made up of thousands of bats.....trying to stay as part of the group to avoid the bat hawks which in turn are after their supper. These ribbons went on for about an hour and we watched completely mesmorised by this display....we're told it is on Planet Earth for those with the DVD.

And then it was off to Singapore and a manic 48 hours there. We were staying in Chinatown which is a great place to stay and although we arrived at midnight we checked in and were straight out and enjoying our beloved dumplings...yumyum The next day we headed over to Raffles for our Singapore Slings, courtesy of a wedding present from Tom - thanks! We had fun eating the monkey nuts and chucking them everywhere.

Reeling slightly from the effects of a mid afternoon cocktail we headed over to Harbourfront where we were reunited with our winter clothes which friends of Katie's had been looking after for us - thankyou Nicci and Neill! We had dinner in Little India and the next day headed to Changi Airport which is definitely worth the hype. We were just upset that we hadn't arrived earlier in order to make use of all the facilities!! However, Bryn got himself in prime position for the Premiership roundup....

And then at 2am in the morning we were off on our flight back to China!!

15 - Cooking up a Cockle Curry remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Flew into the capital, Kota Kinabalu, and Bryn struggled on and off the full public bus into town at every stop with our full rucksacks in order to make room for people....not good in the searing humidity! Got our first taste of Malaysian food since a trip to Penang 6 years ago - as good as we remembered. We loved the Philippines, but the food really is poor (thank you America!)

We had a lovely trip to see the fireflies and Proboscis monkeys on a jungle river just outside KK, courtesy of Pip and Colin's wedding present - thank you! It was great to see the trees lit up like christmas, which considering it was lashing with rain was quite impressive, even if we were cowering under our lifejackets. Photos impossible though

On to Sepilok for the Orangutans at the rehab centre, which we thought was really good (others thought a little to captive). They really are all characters! They all live alone though which is wierd - what do they do each day?

Also came face to face with a roaming green viper!

Again - the heavy rain was a little frustrating but you just have to go with it.

On to our Jungle Lodge in Kinabatangan - The Last Frontier - which Bryn had booked up in advance....a bit of a treat really....a couple of slightly more luxurious days than many backpackers have in the jungle! French cuisine, ensuite bathroom, air con private 4wd transfer, private wildlife spotting boat cruises. Its a tough flashpacking life!

We got a better look at the human-like proboscis monkeys; plus got to see hornbills and eagles. The long lens came in handy....finally worth lugging it round for 5 months!

We went on a short jungle walk tracking animals and were upset to see palm plantations as far as the eye could see instead of pristine jungle

The pre-dawn boat cruise was all a bit much for some........

Our final destination in Sabah, Semporna, aimed to further capitalise on Bryn's newly acquired scuba skills and Fi's newly acquired dive buddy. We did three days diving at various islands, based from our resort on a wooden platform in the ocean - Singamata. Our resosrt had it's own aquarium which we could snorkel in....it had some really giant fish which was great fun.

Off on our dive trip, our boat actually got lost in the middle of the ocean on the first day as the rains came in and we weren't able to see more than a few hundred metres. We were literally going round in circles in the mist for an hour!

It was hilarious to see the fishermen fishing in their pants as it rained - although the dancing guy complete with Peter Stringfellow g-string and posing pouch was a little too much!

And although we're not complaining It was so cold from the constant rain that between dives we had to sit in the water to keep warm!

The coral wasn't as good as in the Philippines but we got to see massive turtles from a couple of inches away! Also saw schools of Jackfish, Devil Scorpionfish, an Octopus etc etc (god we are turning into dive bores! Bryn and Fi felt pretty good now buddying up together with perfect buoyancy.....a lot better than poor old Marco, the nice Italian in the group, who refused to let go of his inflator and shot up and down clattering coral left right and centre! Big let down was that we were unable to get permits for Sipadan, which is the premier dive spot (only a limited number of divers are allowed per day), but together with Mount Kinabalu, which we were also unable to get permits for, they will make for a great future 2-3 week holiday.

After a 10 hour night bus, and 7 hour boat trip we were now in Brunei, oil country! Picked up some duty free wine on the way and nearly got into problems at customs for not declaring it in a Dry State ..ooops.

This Sultan is seriously wealthy. Checked into the only cheap hotel in the country - the youth hostel....separate dorm rooms for Bryn and Fi. The capital BSB is immaculately designed and cared for, with immaculte roads, flower border, gleaming mosques and no crime issues. The problem is, it is a bit boring after a couple of days - even the locals say so! Dry state and everything closes at 6pm, even the buses stop running. However, the salaries are good and as the Sultan provides free education and healthcare, cheap efficient public transport and subsidised pilgrimages to Mecca(!) people seem to stay. Virtually all the museums and sights are free which is nice, as tourism revenue is small fry next to oil money. Don't know what will happen when the oil runs out in 10 years if predictions are correct?!?!

The beautiful main mosque..........

Over half of the capital's population live on the river villages - a complex network of stilt houses, so we thought we would hire a boat and get a better look........

Not quite a Barratt new build development, but similar.....

The villages are all fully self sufficient, complete with their own....

satellite tv, parking spots

schools

gas stations (possible the most scenic in the world!)

rubbish collection

exposed electrical switchgear!

Also good to watch all the locals having some banter down at the market....

Our main reason for staying so long in Brunei was actually to get our Chinese visa for Tibet. We'd been warned not to tell the embassy that we were planning on going to Tibet.....but the problem was they asked for our flight details out of China so we had to fess up. We had a tense half hour as the head honcho explained that we were supposed to have a pre-visa authorisation from officials in China. After some whining and glum faces, they eventually agreed to process our visas without this form...phew!

Off now to see the largest cave in the world and hike to 2500m at Mulu National Park in Sarawak - will keep you posted!

14 - Certainly not a Bore-neo! remains copyright of the author bcoles, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The sand really was beautifully soft and white and the waters were perfectly clear. All 4km of White Beach are covered end to end in bars / restaurants / shops....so we took it for what it was and spent a relaxing couple of days lounging round pretending we were on a package holiday....sipping cocktails at sunset and scoffing down all you can eat seafood buffets.

We then travelled down to Guimares (via a stop in IloIlo) a small island in between Panay and Negros. We ended up at the Valle Verde Mountain Resort in the middle of the island which is set in a lush jungle valley complete with it's own spring fed swimming pool. There's only 5 huts there so it was very peaceful and we got plently of reading and DVD watching done. It was a lovely family run business and their home cooking went down a treat.

We did set out on a walk into the jungle one morning before breakfast which didn't bode well for future walks!! Within 15 minutes we were covered in sweat, had lost the trail and our heads were spinning.

After Guimares we got the boat over to the large island of Negros where we planned to climb Mt Kanalaon which is in the top 6 active volcanoes in the Philippines. We visited the Department of Environment Office in Bacolod where we were able to get a permit to climb it. They only allow one group per day so we felt lucky to get our permit. We spent a busy day in Bacolod buying provisions for the trip and equipment. We needed our own tent so Bargain Bryn picked us one up for $12. For some reason we were in charge of providing food for our guide so we picked up a load of tins and hoped we'd be able to whip something up with them. We stayed the night before at a thermal hot springs resort on the slopes of the volcano.

The alarm clock buzzed into life at 5am and to be honest shouldering our full 75 litre packs (we hadn't opted for a porter) at that time in the morning seemed very hard work. We were puffed and sweating by the time we'd crossed the resort for our rendez-vous with our guide! The first couple of hours were extremely tough going....quite steep uphill and with the biggest packs we'd ever walked with in our lives. When we'd booked the trip they hadn't been too keen to let us walk this route due to the thermal power company activity in the national park. Unsurprisingly they have a few issues with green activists upsetting the ongoing activity. However, we passed by the works unscathed and the security guards even smiled at us. A definite blot on the landscape however as we could hear the hum of the thermal plant most of the day. As we ascended though it did gradually get cooler.....and after a long old day walking we finally hit an old crater at the top....1800m higher than we'd started that morning. Our campsite was inside this old crater which is now full of swamp. We explored the swamp swinging through the trees between the dry spots...

We got an early night as it was so cold - and got into our sleeping bags to scoff oreos and try out our new headtorches

The next day was less uphill but provided more jungle challenges for us. But it did give us our first view.....

We spent the whole day ducking, weaving and climbing over things.

At some stages we even had to conduct vertical ascents with our packs on!!

We passed by many pretty lagoons.....

Before we came upon our target.....Mount Kanalaon

We had to camp in the trees near the crater so that they would provide shelter from any ash that was erupted during the night. We tried not to think how our $12 tent would hold up in those circumstances. By this stage the guy ropes were all frayed and the poles were splitting! Goodness knows how Fi managed to fit in there too......!

However, after setting up camp, we made our final ascent up to the crater's edge. It really was a breathtaking moment looking over that crater rim for the first time.

Over the edge it dropped vertically off....straight down a few hundred metres to a pile of ash....and then a large tunnel ominously heading off into the bowels of the earth. We stood staring down at this for quite some time.....it was truly awesome.

Successful team on the top of Negros Island.....

Heading down to our camp for dinner there was a truly spectacular sunset over the crater.....even Bryn was impressed

The next day heading downhill our thoughts had turned to getting to the beach as quickly as possible. Tracker Fi spotted our first wild snake (which Bryn has since identified as a deadly Black Mamba) slithering across our path before settling behind a foothold. We scuttled quickly by! We were back in Bacolod for lunch where we amazed the McDonalds employees with our burger eating capacities before heading to Dunkin Donut for desert. We have built up quite a penchant for donuts - Dunkin Donuts, Mister Donut, Krispy Kreme Donut etc etc!

We then had to spend a whole day on a bus before we arrived at Sipalay where Sugar Beach is billed as Boracay without the crowds. Bryn quite rightly pointed out that it was more like demerara sugar but either way it was pretty nice.

We were staying at Takatuka Lodge which is run by a couple of Swiss guys with an eclectic sense of interior design. We were in the Superstar Suite.....complete with a pink cadillac bed with working headlights

And a movietime balcony

Yes, the light is a video camera and the light switch was a camera!

However, keen to do some diving we soon headed on...spending a night in Dumaguete complete with it's floral wastewater treatment works in the centre of town. Definitely puts Thames Water to shame.

We got the ferry over to Bohol Island where we had a short tuk-tuk transfer over to Panglao Island and the diving. We found the cheapest dive operator in town and headed off in a boat the next day to Balicasag Island where we did two amazing dives spotting the black coral which is a local speciality and also 2 turtles which was an amazing moment The next day saw a spectacular wall dive, us swimming through a coral arch and also our first drift dives where Bryn enjoyed sitting in his Buddha position, not moving a muscle, showing excellent buoyancy control and watching the coral pass by.

We transfered back to Bohol Island and hired two motorbikes the next day and set out on a day trip to see the local sights. It's great that everyone speaks English but a few road signs wouldn't go amiss. Within 10 minutes we were lost and were directed to our destination via some pretty small pot-holed roads. Bryn had to regularly stop for 15 mins or so to wait for 'Hells Angel' Fifi to come roaring round the bends....putt putt putt putt! The child riding the BMX was even suprised to be overtaking her down a hill!

Note the unplanned matching biker outfits........

We made it to the Tarsier Centre mid morning and had a personal tour around the Tarsier enclosure. Tarsier's are one of the world's smallest primates and can fit in the palm of a human hand....their heads can turn almost 360 degrees and their eyes are 125 times bigger in relation to their head size than a humans. All in all pretty cute.

We stopped at the Butterfly Farm for a quick tour. Didnt realise you could touch moths' wings - but we touched this one's............

Before heading to the Chocolate Hills which are a spectacular formation of coral deposits which have eroded into perfect little chocolate drops - during the dry season the vegetation roasts to a chocolate brown colour. Having spent some time negotiating some pretty tough roads we were glad to find a nice flat straight road with perfect tarmac.....but unfortunately the heavens opened and we were completely soaked by the time we arrived at the viewing area! Luckily though we were pretty impressed by the views

Then it was time to leave the Philippines where we'd felt pretty at home for the last month. We hopped on a ferry to Cebu - admiring the wonderful nautical scenery?......

Played a couple of games of bowling and had our first starbucks for nearly 6 months - caramel machiatos all round!

And jumped on our plane to Borneo!

13 - Volcanos, snakes and turtles in the Philippines remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Arriving in Manila, we took a taxi to Malate – a relatively salubrious part of town where we hoped we could get a cheap room. No such luck…we viewed some of the smallest coffins of the trip before finding a relatively OK one above Starbucks. It was just a pity that it was Saturday night and and at times it actually felt like some carnival was processing through our room.

However, the next day we were still up bright and early for our city tour.

We walked to Intramuros, the Spanish walled town, and had a potter round a few churches and the cathedral which had been rebuilt about five times due to earthquakes.

Then we went over to Fort Santiago which the Spanish had originally built but had been occupied by the US, the Japanese and even the British for a short period.

The Filipinos don't believe in wasting a good castle moat...and have turned it into a golf course....

Then in classic Bryn and Fi style we decided to walk to China town ignoring the numerous taxis and jeepneys that were beeping us for a lift as we proceeded over a huge multi-lane bridge which clearly wasn’t used to seeing many pedestrians. We then found ourselves in the middle of a slum next to the port. However, people were very friendly and Bryn had an offer to play basketball.
We were very excited to catch a jeepney later in the day. Jeepney's are modified US Army jeeps - but now the jeepney drivers try to outdo each other competing for the gaudiest decorations...

We then spent the rest of the day camped out in Burger King which offered free wifi and tried to decide which way to go from Manila. Eventually after an awful lot of trauma we got a flight booked to the Calamian Islands off the coast of Palawan so that Bryn could do his PADI course. But not before a day spent chilling out and watching more movies inc popcorn…..note the rather unusual lights in our room!

The next day we boarded our tiny plane for the 40 minute hop over to Busuanga Island.

We met up with Gerd from Rocksteady Diving who had agreed to take Bryn on. It’s a new dive operation so we were the only customers of the day and had a great time on the boat on the way to the dive site. We were really lucky to not be just one of the crowd with the other ‘fastfood dive operations’ on the island. After a few basics it was time to put the kit on! Bryn seemed to have a lot of fun doing this....the regulator providing particular entertainment...

Then the wetsuit...

Fins...

And mask...

Before preparing to jump...

And then jumping!!

We both had a fantastic 4 days. Fi joined in on day 1 as she was having her refresher course. Gerd couldn’t believe that she actually hadn’t dived in the sea before having only done 10 dives in England’s dark and cold reservoirs and quarries. Bryn got his Open Water PADI qualification on day 4 - he did very well, although our instructor did admit to us that he didn't think Bryn would make it after the first day. Unfortunately Bryn's biggest problem on day 1 had been the fins - he'd been given the biggest clown feet fins you've ever seen and as he’d never snorkeled before his pin legs struggled somewhat with them!

Fi also got in on the action for a few of the dives once Bryn had qualified and we loved Barracuda Lake...which is a really special dive. First of all, you have to do a 25m ascent in full scuba gear over big jagged boulders to get from the sea to the lake.

Everyone was impressed that Fi managed it as normally the boatmen carry the gear for the women - but we explained that 17kg of scuba gear is nothing compared to our rucksacs! Once we made it over to the lake we descended down into brackish water and at about 10m we hit a layer of hot seawater....about the temperature of bathwater. Just as we were about to overheat we found a layer of much cooler water. It was so wierd swimming through all the different layers...at times we couldn't see due to the heat haze. It was really quite amazing.

The main reason divers come to Coron is to do wreck diving - and after a day of rest we were off to dive two of them. The wrecks are mainly the Japanese fleet which was seeking shelter in WWII when the US bombed and sunk most of them. Unfortunately the warships are all mainly at a depth of 30m+ so being novices we decided to give them a miss. The 2 ships we got to dive were auxillary ships mainly carrying cargo. Despite being stripped by salvage teams there was still plenty to look at on them. It really was spine tingling seeing them looming up for the first time. Visibility wasn't great but it kind of added to the eeriness of the situation. They were both covered in coral with lots of bright fishes eyeing us up as we explored. We were able to penetrate the second wreck and were amazed to swim along corridors and into the engine room. We felt quite James Bond, brandishing our torches, as other dive groups would suddenly loom out of the gloom. With both dives reaching a bottom point of 25m it was an impressive set of dives for Bryn’s sixth and seventh dives of his career.

One evening we visited the local hot springs where Bryn was befriended by the local youths who wanted him to sing love ballads with them. Filippinos love to sing and in Coron Town there is a constant background noise of karaoke bars and they think nothing of striking up in public…..

We were sad to leave Coron as we’d grown quite at home there after a week but we were also glad to board our first Philippines ferry which seemed to exist just to ferry backpackers to El Nido. We were glad to get off the Jessabel after 8 hours on board and arrive at the picture postcard town of El Nido which is the gateway town to the Bacuit Archepelego - a series of jagged limestone karst islands just off the coast interspersed with beautiful beaches.

We had two days of activities lined up courtesy of Gem and Phil’s wedding present. Day 1 was spent on a small boat touring the local sights such as lagoons, beaches and snorkel spots…..the seascape really is stunning……

Promising to keep the Secret Lagoon secret…..

On Day 2 we had our own two person kayak and set off on our own into the open sea.

We headed over to a tiny island with a beach and had thought we had it to ourselves before a boat of Filippinos turned up to cook their lunch! We pushed on and found a picture postcard beach for our lunch complete with coconut trees and hoardes of scuttling crabs. It really was a treat to kayak along the island coast and to spot an enticing beach and to paddle over and pull up! Only a handful of people live on the island so it really was our own piece of paradise for the day! Sea kayaking is particularly tough against the waves and by the afternoon we were knackered!! But we needed to push on as otherwise they’d send out the rescue boat. Fi was glad to not be left behind as usual and will lobby for a two person kayak in future. We did make it back to El Nido and quickly turned around to head out for a slap up meal, including a bottle of wine, to celebrate a fantastic two days – thanks Gem and Phil!!

We got the bus down Palawan to Puerto Princesa in a rush to find the Immigration Office so that we could extend our visas. After 7 hours on our bus there we realised it was a Saturday....doh!

So we went off on a day trip to the Sabang caves....the longest caves in the world which we were able to take a boat trip in them for 2km. They were pretty amazing....and home to lots of bats. It was slightly disconcerting to feel drops of water or bat poo land on us throughout the trip.

When we came out of the caves we were amazed to find monitor lizards roaming the picnic area and gangs of ninja monkeys making raids on people's lunches....

Surprisingly we’ve almost stayed three weeks in the Philippines and it’s totally whizzed by. We really are enjoying the country and its people. It’s a strange mix of contrasts….some of the nicest people we’ve met on our trip so far but also a country with a security guard stationed outside each and every shop in the cities. We're starting to get used to the politeness - everywhere we go we are greeted by Ma'am and Sir which makes a change from the snotty nosed teenagers in the UK. Christianity is big here and instead of commercial billboards lining the road on the way to Puerto Princesa it was nice to see the Lord’s Prayer spelt out….phrase by phrase over a kilometre. The American influence is strong and the malls in the cities are full of American fast food chains. It’s also really nice being able to chat with people, something we were really starting to miss on mainland SE Asia….as everyone speaks great English (not just people working in tourism).

But anyways.....off to catch our flight to Boracay.....one of the top 10 beaches in the world. Backpacking is a tough life

12 - Kayaking to paradise in the Philippines remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Arriving into Phnom Penh we were really quite excited to be in a new country and we had high hopes for not just being seen as walking $'s. Phnom Penh is actually quite a nice city on the river and we spent a few days doing the local sights - albeit mostly related to the Pol Pot genocide years. We were also dead excited at getting our first tuk-tuk of the journey...

We visited Security Prison 21 which used to be a secondary school before the Khmer Rouge came to town. It was really spine chilling....a totally normal school turned into the largest centre of detention and torture in the country. The exhibitions were hugely informative and gave us a start at understanding these years......such as trying to understand why on earth the UN let the Khmer Rouge genocide perpetrators keep their seat on the UN general assembly until a staggering 1991.

The Khmer Rouge like the Nazis kept detailled records of their victims and it was sad to see the faces and their expressions of the S21 detainees staring out at us....some of sheer horror, saddness, resignation and defiance....

We also visited the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek - the extermination camp where the detainees from S21 were transported. Sobering stuff.

And of course we had a drink in the Foreign Correspondent's Club where the journalists hung out back in the 70's and now tourists pay lots of money for smoothies

Sihanoukville - Beach Time

We were then delighted to head off to Sihanoukville where the beach was beckoning us. We stayed in a lovely stilt bungalow looking down on Otres Beach (away from the oykes in the seedy main town). The water was blue, clear and calm, with the temperature of bath water and we loved swimming and sipping fruit shakes It was sad to see the darker side of tourism in SE Asia of the Gary Glitter variety and we picked our bars carefully after day 1.

Bokor Hill Station

We travelled down the coast to the peaceful river town of Kampot where we found the Sisters cafe run by an inspiring lady who was sold by her family as a child, lost a leg and now also runs an orphanage. The cafe provides jobs for the orphans when they grow up. We were able to help fund her good works by eating large portions of her lemon meringue pie and apple pie with ice cream (taught by the US NGO that rescued her - trust me a real treat in Cambodia! Yum-yum

However, we were glad of having eaten so much pie as we set off on our 2 day hike to the Bokor Hill Station in the National Park. Bokor is at approx 1000m and was where the French colonials holidayed to escape from the heat. It's now a ghost town as it got caught in the battle between the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese. This was our first group walk and not wishing to let the side down we duely turned up in full hiking gear and our matching Deuter rucksacs. At the other end of the scale were a couple of girls in summer dresses, flip flops and handbags.

However, setting off it became clear that we'd dressed appropriately as we staggered up through the jungle in the stifling humid heat.

At the top we were treated to the run down buildings such as the king's old palace...

The catholic church

We loved exploring the old casino and hotel...

And sunset

Before settling into our basic accomodation for the night. There was uproar in the group the following day when it became apparent that the guides hadn't brought enough food for breakfast let alone lunch! We'd of course brought loads of snacks and goodies with us....but they didn't stretch too far in our group of 12.

Back in Kampot we met up with the group at an expat bar called the Rusty Keyhole (run by a mancunian bricklayer who serves the best sticky ribs and mash in SE Asia - a whole piglet's back apparently) and played cards late into the night - too late! Fi and Max gave Bryn and Ryhs a tough time...

And of course there was the post-game analysis

But Bryn was happy when he realised that despite losing he could still keep drinking beer....

Temple Time

Then we were off to Sian Reap and our 3 day temple tour. Bryn could scarely believe that we had to pay $40 each for our 3 day passes but amazingly we both totally enjoyed the entire 3 days worth of temples (well Fi a little more than Bryn)! We hired a tuk-tuk to take us round each day as the baking heat wasn't conducive to our bicycle touring ideas.

Our first stop was Banteay Srei where the tourist hoarded worried us somewhat...

But thankfully after a Red Bull to keep Bryn going we were able to view most the other temples without the tourist circus

We visited the Tombraider temple where the jungle has encroached somewhat....

And we saved the spectacular Angkor Wat for day 2.....we really were impressed at the sheer scale of it. Fi went for the burka look to ensure she kept cool!

Our tuk tuk driver working hard for his tip.....!

And we had to love the huge faces staring down at us from everywhere at The Bayon

Kompong Cham

We arrived at the sleepy Mekong town of Kompong Cham to try and get a better insight into rural Cambodian life.....but not before a nice bit of refreshment,......

We organised a homestay with Don (a 65 yr old American guy), his Cambodian wife Kyeung and their son and daughter Na and Ra. Their dog Mreck, had just had a puppy and therefore saw Bryn as a threat (?) and decided to savagely bark at every move I made - I am sure they can just sense our fear and play on it! We even saw our first wild snake which slithered in one morning whilst we were eating breakfast - apparantly it was not one of the cobras and just eats frogs!

Despite the basic accomodation, we experienced amazing home cooking for a couple of days - all rural delicacies and were treated very well.......although Fi wasnt convinced about the field snails for a light snack.....

We went on bike rides....

Mind the cows!

And walks to speak with locals working the rice paddies....

Go on, have a go Fi.........!

Pathetic! This lad was much better!

And extracting palm sap to then turn into palm sugar...

We even had a guest speaker each night (well family actually) who we could ask about anything including the Pol Pot era. During those years despite her mother's protestations Kyeung had 'volunteered' for school and had instead been sent to the children's work camp to build a dam. We learnt a lot from them all about Cambodia today and it helped us understand why it's only now that the first trial of the Khmer Rouge is starting in Phnom Penh.

Kyeung also runs an English school and one afternoon we were able to join in and be their guest speakers for the lesson. It was funny though how their simplest of questions could launch us into the longest of explanations...I'm still not sure that they really understood what I was going on about when I explained the concept of eBay to them.

Life in rural Cambodia is often a life without electricity. To keep anything cool the entire country depends on icemaking centres and then the big ice blocks are distributed on the back of motorcycles to everyone's cool boxes. Bryn caused chaos one morning when he didn't see the candle in the bathroom and put his synthetic top down on it causing it to melt somewhat....

Kratie - dolphins

We stopped at another Mekong Riverside town to see the legendary freshwater irrawaddy dolphins! There are now only 100 or so left after little conservation. It was a baking hot day so we rented a moto and headed off to the river. We quickly saw the dolphins coming up for air - but they disappeared so quickly again it was a case of watch and enjoy or try and take impossible photos (Bryn did the latter!)

Banlung - into the jungle!!

After some internet research, Banlung seemed ideal for our first lengthy jungle trek - an organised government trekking facility in the National Park and not ridiculously priced. We felt pretty hardy after outperforming many of the others at Bokor, so signed up for the longest trek (8 days) deep into the jungle and to the wilderness grasslands of Virachey National Park.

But before our trek we had a day on a moto round the local sites such as crater lake where we had had great fun swimming and jumping in

And numerous waterfalls

On the way back into town Bryn had to take evasive action on the bike from a mini tornado that was gathering steam ahead of us on the road!! No, unfortunately there wasn't time to take a picture

And after a last Western meal involving a huge pizza we were off into the jungle! It was just the two of us and a Ranger, assistant ranger and local minority guide and despite carrying all our own stuff, the other people had to take the food and had double our loads! We really felt like Bruce Parry on our way to the village on our tiny little boat heading along the river....

We spent the first night in a minority village where we were definitely the local attraction for the night. But we did get to try some rice wine...

Unfortunately our guides didn't decide to translate for us so we were left with most the village watching our every move. They were fascinated by our card games

Ducking and diving in the jungle was tough work with a big pack - Bryn managed to saturate his top with sweat after 3 minutes and was wet through from then on!

Did some great river swimming and slept in hammocks out in the open at a different camp each night.

Food was suprisingly good considering - there was always enough which is our key criteria - although the tinned pilchard and rice 4 day home streach did start to grate! For water we drank boiled river water - don't know how we didnt get sick as some of the streams were more muddy stagnant pools! The water also tasted of bbq pork from the saucepan and had sediment floaters - oh well, when you are thirsty, you are thirsty!

We reached the grassland on day 3 after having insisted on walking a double day as we'd been surprised at reaching our camp on day 2 after only 4 hours walking. The grasslands are Cambodia's own mini African savannah. As it was the dry season there weren't any animals at the watering hole sadly. But we did have a great couple of days wandering around the top spotting a selection of poos....leopard, wildcat, deer etc

We also went to a bat cave where Bryn bravely wriggled in to take some fantastic photos...emerging covered and stiking of bat poo later....

We had to chuckle one day when we pitched camp and then went off for a swim in the river only to find that the river was dry....so everything got packed up again and off we went to find a camp near some water!

After the grasslands we started to look forward to getting back to Banlung....the way down was easy until we reached the river where we spent half a day slithering and sliding along. There wasn't a set route and we would be on land forging a way through the jungle with a machete and the next second wading through water up to our waists. The key thing in our minds was to not fall over and ruin our cameras and also our beloved goose down sleeping bags!

We reached another minority village on day 7 and found out that we, or rather the rangers, weren't welcome there. Some men from the village had been caught illegally hunting by the park rangers a few days previously. No one would sell us any food!! So it was an easy decision to endure the crampt 2 hour boat ride back to town for a celebratory beer!!

Woohoo - 7 days survived in the jungle!! But slightly concerned that we've spent yet another month in a country when Bryn's planning spreadsheet had only allocated 12 days....but anyways Laos here we come!!!

10 - Cambodia remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Arrived at our first beach for three years!!!! Another classic Lonely Planet 'unknown sleepy gem' that everyone therefore now goes to and hotels are up everywhere! We splashed out and stayed at a place with a swimming pool and spent a few days having some much needed R&R time, swimming and reading (yes Bryn was reading books - novels as well!)

The beach was ok, but the hotels have been built too close to the sea and the beach disappears at midday - a bit of a let down. Bryn did nearly caused an international incident as his milky white body was revealed for the first time and started to divert the planes overhead!

Also had an afternoon trip to see the local sights...

The Fairy Stream which you walk along barefoot to see sand formations....

Had to share with the local cow herd...

Off to the local fishing harbour

Then the Red Canyon

And the White Sand Dunes....

And the Red Sand Dunes....

Also enjoyed loads of fresh squid, fish and prawns each day in true roughing it, backpacker lifestyle!

Saigon

We went to Saigon briefly in the end after realising it would be too difficult to bypass (we were getting a bit sick of doing city stuff and wanted some trekking). Got one of our worst, but cheapest rooms to date and explored for a day and a half.....

War Remnants Museum.....even worse propaganda than before - although all the agent orange deformity photos were gut-wrenching. They also love the photos of woman and children capturing american GIs. The ''tiger cages'' (cells) where the French used to keep their prisoners through to the 50s were pretty appalling.

Walking tour of the city taking in some of the most impressive buildings and parks.

Mekong Delta

As our 30 day visa was running out (we were well behind on Bryn's itinerary spreadsheet) we bit the bullet and did the Mekong Delta region on a 3 day tour which would take us into Cambodia. The Mekong is the most fertile area of the country , they get 3 rice harvests annually - and so most people want to live there. This means pretty packed floating markets - with everyone trading their crops by boat. Lots of genuine smiley kids all saying 'hello'' with big teethy grins.

Was good fun seeing the locals making the local foods - although it was a bit touristy (but a day off from thinking isn't always a bad thing).

Rice papermaking....

Rice candy making....

Coconut candy making...

Local spirits (snake and scorpions included!) were also being made - go on, down in one Fi!......

Stayed overnight on the boat one night in a room with 12 others - a bit like school camp - luckily no heavy snorers! Another day stayed in a floating hotel which was really pretty for sunset. Went on lots of different size boats.....

Did some biking...

Relaxing....

And visited a local child sweatshop aka Silk Factory - where actually the kids seemed to be having a right laugh - albeit they probably should have been reading books or learning a language or something. Bryn went down a treat with the girls, as he had learned some basic Vietnamese phrases by now - heard the giggling fits down the street!

All that was left was a nice meal with a drunk frenchman......

All ready now to take the boat over the border into Cambodia. Cant wait for something a bit more off the beaten track......fingers crossed! tbc......

9 - Beaches, dunes and delta remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Kon Tum is supposedly the friendliest town in Vietnam - think probably because it is not famous for anything else! However, we immediately noticed the lack of people selling to us and the amount of kids shouting ''hello, hello, hello' with big smiles was drastically on the increase. We checked into the nice Family Hotel, with a balcony room overlooking the garden - perfect place for getting our smalls dry! We started to feel the baking heat of SE Asia for the first time and a planned hike became more of a gentle meander as our bodies waned. Walked through one of the traditional villages with a communal Rong House where all the villagers meet up. Good bit of banter with the bakery boys as they realised they were pretty short next to Bryn....and Fi! Discovered excellent egg, dried fish and salad baguettes at roadside stalls for only 15p - nice!

Buon Ma Thout
Headed on to the home of rubber plantations in Vietnam and also the coffee capital ...Buon Ma Thout. Tried to organise a national park trek in town through an agent but were being quoted $100 a day without transport and sleeping in a tent - they had gotta be having a laugh! Headed to the village of Ban Don ourselves, where the national park HQ is base to try and cut out the middle men (Bryn likes lean supply chains!). Got a 'local' bus, which was hilariously packed, and we kept knocking people out with our big rucsacks. However, the locals found us very amusing and were very friendly - albeit with limited comms. Stayed in a basic stilt hut which was fun - although not the most comfortable environment for washing and relieving! Lots of dogs with scars and a monkey in a small cage Headed off the next morning to play negotiating hardball with the park ranger. He was not budging on price even though when he tried to break it down at our request it made no sense. We later found out that the government runs all tourism in the province and so it is basically take it or leave it - which is why they never get any damn tourists! (I would love to see their business plan!). The only other tourists we met also walked away based on the ridiculouus prices levied - oh well, still nice to have some adventure again for the first time since China. Did manage to have our frst ever elephant ride (see piccy below!) - Fi got rather excited.

[b]Dalat[/b]

Arriving into Dalat we commenced our biggest accomodation search trek to date. We were convinced that there must be some lovely place to stay in this colonial French hillside town. Sadly we couldn't find it! Heading out that night Fi was amazed to run into an eBay colleague from Richmond who we had dinner with and shared flashpacking stories.

Dalat is the home to vietnamese wine, because of its elevated cool climate so it was perfect for apair of wine bores from the UK! We splashed out on the top wine made in partenrship with a french cooperative - if that is the best they make they should stick to the rice spirits! Bit of subtelty with the oak would have been nice - felt like we were licking the barrell!

Dalat was perfect for doing our own thing and we immediately hired a tandem bicycle and set off round the lake. An interesting experience...particularly the hills.

Visited the local flower garden...

Loved Emperor Bao Dai's art deco palace....

The cable car ride.....

The reservoir....

And some waterfalls....

Bravely hired a motorbike and set off to climb a mountain - and were glad to suffer just a flat tyre on the way there. Couldn't believe our luck when we discovered this next to garage....which only charged us 40p for the fix! We loved a day walking up Lang Bian through the jungle up into the clouds.....

And then we were on the bus....quickly descending down out of the hills down to the beach

8 - Into the Central Highlands remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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New Year was pretty low key and we scuttled back to our hotel as soon as the new year started as we needed to be up at 6am for our Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) tour. We'd splashed out and hired our very own South Vietnam army veteran for the day to show us round the locations. The DMZ was the area between North and South Vietnam and
many of the key battles in the American War were fought here.

Stopping at a catholic church riddled with holes on the way to the zone it was sad when he broke down in tears, as he lost a lot of good friends during the American War.

He had lots of good stories such as at Khe Sanh Combat Base - otherwise known as Hell to the US GIs. It sounded absolutely horrendous...with the Viet Cong regularly sending in missiles. Our guide really brought it to life for us with his tales....drug taking was a regular occurence here with many perishing because they didn't react to the air raid sirens. The GIs had only 2 minutes a week to speak to their families in the US and he told us that often they never actually managed to get any words across to their families as they couldn't stop the sobs....

Also went to the Vinh Moc tunnels....these tunnels weren't fighting tunnels like the Cui Chi tunnels in the South.....these were built next to the China sea and was the main inward location for the VC arms from Russia.

From here the arms would be transported down the Ho Chi Minh trail to the south. We had a fabulous time scurrying through the tunnels appreciating being on a private tour and ignoring the signs saying 'No Entry' and heading off down unlit tunnels with only our torches! Despite the massive bomb craters we saw, from the extensive US bombing campaigns, the US never managed to penetrate these tunnels. Amazing ingenuity.

Because he fought with the US, our guide has been treated harshly by the government/police, monitored ever since leaving a 'reconditioning unit' following the war. Getting work was very difficult. He has written 15 letters to the US to try and get recompense or move across, but apparently they had all been ignored. In fact, our tour was conducted under a shroud of secrecy as officially he was just our non English speaking driver.

Also went off to the Royal Tombs of the Nguyen emporers and the infamous Thien Mu Pagoda....

Hoi An
Hoi-An was a bit of a tourist circus - just a town of silk shops (check out the exact replica of Fi's Ted Baker dress below!), tailors and cafes and restaurants - not much for us hardy backpackers.

Nonetheless a pretty riverside town full of canals and flooding roads....

Nearby are the mystical ruins of My Son which we were lucky enough to arrive at for sunrise thereby beating the tour buses. Sadly the site did suffer in the war, and the area is still mined.

Everything in Vietnam is separated into 'Tourist'' and 'Non-tourist' - public transport, hotels, restaurants, prices, areas of town etc etc. This is good in that everything is very easy for the tourist and you dont have to think much. However, it was starting to irritate the hell out of us, as we were not speaking with any locals unless they wanted to sell us something, were subjected to attempted overcharging a lot, were not seeing the real Vietnam and generally our minds were getting stale and bored with the ease of each day. I know this sounds odd - but when you backpack the day-to-day logistics and banter with the locals is great fun! Decided to take action and rerouted away from the tourist run along the coast and headed into the Central Highlands instead. The bus ride to Kon Tum was fabulous...in with the locals and the scenery was stunning. We were actually following the Ho Chi Minh trail up, climbing up through winding valleys and through small villages. The foliage was lush, green and dense and we did wonder how the US GIs must have felt heading off on their patrols in terrain such as this.

7 - Tourist, tourists everywhere! remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Then it was a frenzied day of culture! First stop was Uncle Ho...who's corpse was illuminated by a strange orange light but all in all...suprisingly small Communist leader. Then on to the Army Museum to pose with the military hardware outside. We both really enjoyed the main exhibition though which helped us understand recent Vietnamese history but also left us wanting to understand a slightly more balanced picture - ie without the vietnamese propaganda.

Upset with the hotel as they tried to kick us out that night so they could accept a booking from a large group. We stood our ground but were too scared to go out for long for dinner and ended up pacsafing our luggage to the room in the event that they tried to get rid of us whilst we were gone! Ended up watching a Vietnam - Singapore football match (ASEAN Cup semi-final for those interested) which the Vietnamese won - party time in the streets!

And then we were off on our Christmas holiday trip to Cat Ba Island and on to the Ocean Beach resort on it's own private island. Cat Ba Island is in the spectacular, if a little misty, Halong Bay....

However, arriving onto Cat Ba Island we made a major mistake and didn't get the shuttle bus to Cat Ba town as we thought we were in the right place for our pick up to the island. Spent an age trying to negotiate a decent moto rate to the other side of the island from the greedy locals who seem to love seeing a foreinger in a pickle. Bryn insisted we stand our ground and start to walk the 40 km in midday sun to the correct collection point. Eventually after we'd walked about 5km through the middle of nowhere with our full packs we stopped in a restaurant and, the angels must have been looking down on us, as we ran into a tour guide from Ocean Tours who'd been asked to look out for 2 lost Westerners on the island.

We finally arrived at Ocean Beach and were met with welcome drinks and escorted to our beach bungalow - woohooo! The holiday had finally begun!! The slight disappointment was that it wasn't sunny and despite meticulous planning on Bryn's spreadsheet we'd failed to spot that North Vietnam would be experiencing their rainy season whilst we were there!

Christmas Eve was spent taking a quick dip in the sea and heading off round our island on kayaks. Due to low tide, we weren't able to make it directly round our island and ended up going round quite a few islands and navigating through a narrow channel of churning water!

In the evening we headed to the restaurant and joined the BBQ party set up on the beach. When we headed up after dinner to the bar we were amazed to discover the staff had transformed the bar and were all ready for a big party!

The fact that we were celebrating on the wrong day didn't perturb us overly. And despite us having eaten our fill at the BBQ we managed to find room for all the goodies they'd laid out for us all. Steered clear of the karaoke after our experiences in China and made sure we made use of the free beer keg they'd laid on.

Unsurprisingly Christmas Day was a very quiet affair for us and we settled for a fresh seafood spread for lunch

Begrudglingly we had to abandon Ocean Beach... and headed over to Cat Ba Island for our trip to the National Park. We hired two motorbikes and after Fi's initial kangaroo bucks we were off across the island! First stop was Hospital Cave, which was an impressive feat of wartime engineering - it was built so that it was safe from the US bombs. Not quite certain about all the rooms....there seemed to be more swimming pools, cinemas, games rooms than places for sick people.

Second stop was the national park where we had a very quick 8km march to reach Frog Pond through Jurassic Park terrain. A shallow stagnant pond home to many mosquitoes and not many frogs as far as we could see.

We beat a hasty retreat through the jungle underneath the ever darkening canopy in an effort to get back before dark.

Ten minutes in and Fi was distraught to turn a corner and find that Bryn had skidded his bike and was examining both himself and the bike for injuries at the side of the road. It would appear that Bryn had found the only bit of gravel, on a road, on a corner on Cat Ba Island. Bryn suffered a bruised hip, grazed elbow and knee, sore ribs and a yanked thumb. The bike suffered extensive scratching, cracked body work and a bent gear lever. It was the gear lever that was to cause us most grief on the way back to town....eventually the bike got stuck in 1st gear which is not the ideal one to be in at all. We stopped and scratched our heads...no traffic passed....and then a friendly farmer appeared on the horizon and managed to bend the gear lever, enough for the bike to function, with his massive machete. It was a very slow 20km back into town particularly as we lost the daylight and had to go even slower so as to not compound the situation. Back in town we psyched ourselves up to take the bikes back to their owner wondering what our strategy was in a situation where we didn't have a signed rental agreement. It turns out that he really didn't expect anything...he realised he had no right to demand anything so Bryn agreed to pay $30 which the chap seemed relatively happy with. Fi procured a big block of ice from the hotel to treat Bryn's injuries and we went out for some Western comfort food and an early night.

Back in Hanoi we had a few days waiting round to get our passports back from the Cambodian embassy and we perhaps fell off the backpacker boat a little and for some reason ended up treating ourselves to an all you can eat buffet in a French colonial house . BBQ'd prawns, seafood, steak etc

Street party time again as VietNam beat Thailand in the final of ASEAN cup, in Hanoi - tickets for the game were 200 quid on the black market - which is a lot for these folks. Street food and street party commenced......all through the night.

Monday involved finding a clinic to see Bryn's thumb which had swelled up somewhat, was clicking and didn't seem to want to move that much. Big palava trying to contact our insurance company who seemed to think they required a police report of the incident for us to be covered, despite that fact that Bryn was the only person involved! A big learning for us though on insurance companies. However, in the event the clinic forgot to charge for the X-rays which thankfully came back with no breaks. Phew!

Decided to take the relaxing sleeper train 12 hours south to Hue. Arrived in enough time to be first into our cabin and find good spots for our giant bags and continued our strategy of taking the top two bunks in a cabin of 6 so that Fi didn't have strange men looking at her in her sleep. Train left and we all settled down to sleep.

6 - Good Morning Vietnam & Halong Hazards remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Trekked over to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier where it's traditional for an unknown reason to us for newly weds to be photographed. We instead got lured into McDonalds. Made it over to see the goosestepping guards changing over.

Visited the Kremlin and luckily bought tickets for the Armoury as well. Not a whole lot to see in the Kremlin actually - but the Armoury did have lots of bling.

Wandered over to the Gum Arcade which is a posh old shopping arcade just off Red Square full of Western brands. Security guards eyed us warily in our hiking gear.

Popped into St Basil's which is a rather different 'church' as it's actually a collection of about 10 chapels all in the one building.

Then we were off to the Sanduny baths for our traditional Russian bathing experience - birch branches in super hot sauna. Bryn sat and read his book quietly and did 3 sauna followed by cold plunge pool routines - avoiding the shady characters sat round drinking beer in the nud. Fi got harassed by the women to put a towel on her head whilst the old Russian ladies stoked up the sauna which resulted in everyone having to squat (naked) on the floor. Certainly an experience to remember!

Then another train station kerfuffle - went to the wrong station twice! It's long and complicated but things really are tough when you can't read Russian and your guidebook doesn't have the cyrillac. Only realised with 45 mins to go! Sprint down the subway to the other side of the road - Byns back nearly snapped with the heavy pack! Board the Baikal Express for a 23:25 departure - our cabin had a nautical theme with pictures of Lake Bakial covering the walls; the unfriendly butch samovar lady wouldnt accept our tickets at first as being genuine and took our tickets off us and wouldn't give them back! eventually she allowed us to board - phew! Woohoo! Three days in our little cabin now!

Time on the train passed peacefully playing games and reading in our first class luxury cabin. Got off and bargained with locals at the stops for snacks and goodies. Didn't see any Westerners on our train at all - and little interaction from the miserable Russians.

Pretty excited at my giant Baltika beer!

But it's all too much for Bryn....

The landscape started out with pine trees covered in snow and lots of little wooden houses each with their own vegetable plot next to the tracks.

But by day three the rivers were starting to steam it was so cold outside....

Arrived in Irkutsk around 9am and found our way over to the Baikaler Hostel in town - unsigned to avoid paying tax (hard to find). Freezing cold and snow on the ground - welcome to Siberia! Took a minibus over to Lake Baikal.

Visited the Lake Baikal museum (yellow submarine interactive video dive with the most unenthusiastic russian guide ever).

Tried to find the lookout and failed - found a water tower and an excitable horse.

Then walked over to Listvenyanka. Ate tea including Omul fish from the lake at the bus station cafe. Back to the hostel to chill out.

We didnt realise we had to stamp our trolley-bus ticket and a traffic cop pounced asking for a 2.75gbp fine. Bryn's principles got in the way as usual and we refused to pay, insisting it was a naive tourist mistake. We then legged it at the next stop, darting through side streets and into a cafe where we safely changed into our 'disguise' - waterproof jackets and rucksack raincovers on - no-one would ever see us!

Skulked in the shadows for the remainder of the day before heading to the station and getting our next train to take us to Mongolia!!

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Up promptly for a massive breakfast at the hotel including all manner of delights such as sauerkraut, rice and frankfurters. Walked over to the other side of the river to St Peter & Paul fortress....

Over to Peter's Cabin, and the Aurora....

Enjoyed posing for photos with Lenin and then back on the metro to town.

Headed over to the Hermitage and spent about 4 hours in there wondering at the amazing collection of arts and rooms.

Dinner at a German beer house....

Up early again! And off to the Kunstkammer which contained numerous pickled babies with all sorts of deformities. Peter the Great had a fascination with them and had decreed that all babies born with deformities must be sent to him from all the lands. Lovely stuff for one's honeymoon. Had a laugh at the Russians having their wedding photos taken outside in their horrific dresses....

Then we were off on our guidebook's suggested walk around an island to the north of the city which was supposed to contain verdant parks and many beautiful mansions - where people escape from the city and relax. We enjoyed our walk around the building sites and busy roads, but at least with our Thames Water knowledge we could pass comment on the utility excavations.....

Walked back via St Isaacs and Decembrists Square. Newlywed photo opportunity by the statue in the middle.

Out to see the Church on Spilled Blood - pretty amazing mosaics covering the inside of the church everywhere.

And suddenly our time was up and we had to check out of the hotel!! But one final bit of luxury for us! We were off to the Marinsky Theatre to see the Nutcracker!! The first of our many kind wedding gifts - thanks Deb/Yves/Chris! We had great seats at the side balcony at the front. Bryn even enjoyed it! It really was fabulous and kept us captivated right the way through!

And before we knew it we were out into the cold and off to the station where it all turned a little nightmarish as we were told our tickets had already been picked up!!! A rather stressful 30 minutes with Bryn co-ersing an English speaking Russian to help translate and our tickets were 'reinstated' for a couple of quid. Train to Moscow overnight - the Nickolevsky Express which was an old fashioned style sleeper train. Pretty excited at our first sleeper train! Eventually we did unpick the mystery of our tickets and complained to our travel agent who had picked our tickets up and had them for us in Moscow! - they got confused over our complaint and ended up refunding us the entire ticket price of 200GB...woohooo.....shhhhh!

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Up early the next morning to head off to Teralj Ger Camp which being only 2 hours outside of UB we were worried it wouldn't be wilderness enough for us. We needn't have worried....the five of us were dropped off by the taxi and for the next 24 hours we hardly saw anyone.

Our Yurt...

Went for a walk around the camp and were amazed by the desolation and barren beauty of the landscape.

After lunch we were off on our horse trip! Our horses were more donkey-like and only listened to the guide who would throw branches at them to make them move. Bryn won sprint finish after a few large kicks in the gut, just edging Fi.

Dinner was served at 7pm...sun went down at 5:30pm. Due to the fact that we didn't have any lights we were all asleep by 8pm!

And then we were off on another train to Beijing...our best train yet...ensuite bathroom with a warm shower

3 - Three Days in Mongolia remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Woke up the next morning, feeling a little groggy, but determined to complete our free bike tour of Beijing. Of course, not before the hostel had gone and bought the bikes! And then we were off....weaving through the Beijing traffic. No really, it wasn't that bad - Fi only got stranded in the middle of a massive road just the once. 3 hours of biking and then into the hutong and treated to an endless dumpling lunch - yumyum.

The next day we set off to the Great Wall with a couple of people from the hostel. We were due to walk from Jianaling to Simatai - a tough 10km that would take us at least 5 hours apparently!! We had it sorted in 3 and were quite disappointed to realise that we'd finished as we could have kept going. Fantastic experience - hardly met anyone else walking it! It was great to see the restored and unrestored sections as well. Definitely an experience not to be missed.

Then we needed to see some sights of Beijing!

So we went off to the Forbidden City....

And then a trip to the Summer Palace and a walk around the lake...another fine Lonely Planet mess of course as we spent an age searching for Bus 375 before we need to revive ourselves in McDonalds For lunch we got the wierdest thing - a self heating lunchbox .....

And of course, Bryn couldn't miss the zoo and the chance to see a first Panda.....

Before taking on the hostel at pool....whilst Betty and Bryn were the doubles champions Fi was proud to give Bryn a schooling in the first game of the trip.

And Bryn couldn't resist visiting another sports stadium...great to see them with the lights on as well

And of course we went off for our Chairman Mao viewing - he wasn't in a photographic mood.

Bryn got quite emotional when asked to name two of the younger staff in the hostel team who didn't have English names yet. We chose Jenny and Katie! He'd never seen two such big smiles and had to autograph their english books!

Very sad to leave the Happy Hostel and we hope that the team there make a success of their new hostel! But onwards to Xian!

4 - Happy in the Beijing Happy Hostel remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We quickly notice people stare a lot more here than Beijing - especially at Fifi. Walked/marched around half of the 14km city walls - amazing 18m thick and very high.

Walk through the muslim quarter and a enjoy a big Hans beer in a bar- has 12 beers on the menu but says they have none except Hans! We go for dinner and end up ordering a second main as we are still hungry, and go for the crispy chicken (no chilli as fi feeling dicky). What comes.......deep fried misc meat (prob dog) in the most chillis you have ever seen!

Get the bus to the Terracotta warriors fairly easily - no need to cough up for a tour. Didint realise that the tombs were still largely unexcavated but still an amazing find - definitely the 8th wonder of the world.

Although starting to get hacked off by the walking, shouting, spitting, chain smoking machines flag bearing machines i.e. chinese tour groups....

On the bus on the wayback the bus is hot and Bryn falls asleep and wakes to a guy trying to unzip his pocket and pinch his wallet! Straight stare down and the guy gets off shortly after pretending he was bending down to look at something - reminder that budget travel options do come with more risks and to always be on guard! Wandered out at night and stumble across Tenerife-style Bar St with people trying to persuade us to come in. Bryn mistakenly (!) nearly takes us into a strip joint!

Up at the crack of dawn to head off to Hua Shan - 2200m sacred mountain. Started off and tough going as usual for Fi at the start...

.....but happy when she noticed the km markers and began to notice the KM starting to tick off. Start of the steps was a bit tough but made steady progress until the start of the chains. Very scary series of notches cut into the cliff which you have to haul yourself up with a chain......

Stupid chinese signs as usual....."No Striding Bryn"

Made it up to North Peak for 12:30pm which was the 6km mark - 1600m high...and where most of the chinese get the cable car to begin their walk! Finally shook off the hoardes and enjoyed a slightly more level final walk over to South Peak (2200m). Elation at making it there!!

Chongqing and Three Gorges Yangtze River Cruise

Catch the soft sleeper train (carriage of 4 bunks) and Bryn strikes up a rapport with a furniture salesmen - Bowah.com - very limited conversation, just the usual pretending nods of acknowledgement totally unaware of what is being said, but Bryn spotted an importing business opportunity!

In Chongqing we are amazed at the tall skyscrappers, posh shopping malls full of Armani, Prada etc - can't believe this is double the size of Brum and we haven't even heard of it! Not quite sure about our shower over a squat toilet which comprises our bathroom though Smog everywhere - never seen somewhere so bad.....

3 Gorges Museum - Good insight into the dam and the cultures of the people who lived in the area. Slight overplay I feel by the chinese government saying that the 1.5m people had been dying to be relocated from their homes in order for this proud national project to go ahead!

Push on to the Stillwell museum. Get off at the right stop and spend a while traversing up and down the hill through the hutongs, surprising locals, looking for it. Not many people to ask! Stumble upon it! All set up for tour parties - except that they only get 10,000 visitors a year! It's a museum commerating the work of General Stillwell who led the US effort during WW2 to aid the Chinese resistance to the Japanese.

Get back and decide we are both coming down with colds. Keep our meeting with Nick and Hope for us all to go our for famous 'Chongqing Hot Pot' - mega mega spicy bubbling pot of hot chillis to which you add anything from fish lips to pig brain. Bryn tucks in thinking that the spices will ward off his impending cold. Fi can hardly eat anything not just due to the spices. Go home and Fi vomits. Bryn follows shortly after. Both paralysed in bed for the next two days. When Fi feels better she goes to get a cheeseburger and gets stalked by a inanely smiling Chinese lesbian!

Join our cruise ship at night to see the city lit up.....

Arrive in our cabin to interrupt a portly Chinese man's pot noodle dinner and throwing orange peel over the floor. Pop into the main function room to find wierd karoke dancing going on...and not that many people in there at all.

Early nights sleep with funny cabin occupants. Start having issues with the portly one...who thinks nothing of getting up in the middle of the night and turning the lights on to visit the bathroom. Dislike of the portly one intensifies as he gets up at 6am to get ready for the 7am trip. Slurps down a pot noodle, spends forever in the bathroom...and then bizarrely puts his clothes on top of his thermal pyjamas. Christened 'Pyjama Bottom' from then on.

Very impressive - 3rd largest river in the world, surrounded by high narrow gorges....

Stop for the Ghost City, but its really a crap Disney World sight with no English - cable car was nice though.

Settle into the cruise and crack open a bottle of 'Great Wall Red Wine' - Chinese Cab Sauv - really is not too bad and can't get any other wine anywhere.

Finish the 4 day cruise at the Three Gorges Dam..

Yangshuo

3rd class sleeper to Yangshuo, where we would stay for a week - heading south and getting hotter For 13 GB per night we had a suite with a lovely balcony overlooking the road and Li river, a bath, a massive double bed, a sofa area and best of all our own computer!!!

The karst scenery is amazing here - best we have seen in China. Went out in the evening, however, and amazed by the transformation in the streets. Bars pumping out beating music and touts trying to usher us inside - Magalouf meets China!!

We had a day like a normal short holiday - ice cream , bamboo raft on the Li River and the Impressions of Li light show in the evening. A 70 minute show involving 600 performers which happens on the Li river with rafts, boats, booms etc Quite impressive...loved the silver light outfits that flashed on and off. Afterwards had the local speciality Beer Fish which is carp, chillies, tomatoes, chives, ginger, beer....yum!

Really nice to get on the mountain bikes and get out amongst the karst scenery. Although Fi started to moan about sore back after 15 mins and Bryn thought he would be in for a tough day! To be fair I was a bit John Wayne after the rocky tracks with ropey suspension!

Started biking back along the other side of the river and then we got cocky and decided we wanted to be closer to the river....suddenly the track become a narrow ridge in between the rice paddies! And then, wobble wobble and Fi was off her bike and down into a ditch

Picked up in the evening for our cormorant fishing trip and joined the Chinese tourists on our noisy narrow boat. Met up with our 79 year old fisherman on his motor powered bamboo raft complete with powerful light at the front so that his cormorants could see the fish. Bryn had seen the very same man before on one of Palin's adventures! Motored along with the cormorants diving down for fish....mostly finding fish small enough to get past their cord throat restricters. Every once in a while the fisherman would yank one out by the string on their feet and empty the fish in their throats into his basket. Amazingly clever but reckon that it would take him a while to get any serious volume of fish in!

Went up in a hot air balloon, a wedding gift courtesy of Colin, Cargill and John & Isobel. Amazing, although it was the tiniest of baskets and went up very quick - before we knew it we were up at 500m!

This was followed by boating into 150m tall water caves where we took the obligatory silly westerner mud bath.

Went off on a 2 day trip to the Longshan rice terraces. What a mission trying to figure out the best way to get there. Managed to book ourselves onto a tour group in order to get there and then to come back with another tour the next day. After an early start and 3 hours in our minibus we were all dropped at the corny tourist village where you were supposed to pay 5 GB to see a 'cultural display'. We just wanted to get off on our walk! Had to wait on the tour group but eventually we made it to Ping An...a nice little Chinese village reminiscent of an Austrian ski village.

Shook off the tour group, who were off for their lunch and then a 20 minute trip along the rice terraces and then back on the bus to Yanghshuo! Seemed like a waste of a journey to us! We knew we'd made the right choice to stay and walk when we saw the views...hardly any westerners around and soon we'd left the tourist villages behind and were seeing a bit of real China

Found a tiny to village to spend the night in and were surprised to find a Chinese film crew in our hotel. They didn't seem to mind us wandering round their film set! They were filming the local women doing their dancing...so we had a smug chuckle at everyone else who'd coughed up for their touristic display....we were being treated to the real thing!

Onwards to Vietnam!

5 - Deepest Darkest China remains copyright of the author FiColes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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