Happy New Year from Borneo!

Happy New Year everyone. Hope you all had a great festive holiday.

We had a very lazy couple of weeks in Jomtien, Thailand. My parents rented us a really lovely little apartment in the same complex as them. We had a huge swimming pool right outside the door and the beach was a 2 minute walk away.....bliss!

We managed a day of diving while we were there but the visibility wasn't too good. It was still great to get back in the water and it was a nice easy couple of dives to get started with.

We had a really lovely Christmas day in Pattaya with Lobster and Sea Bass sitting next to the sea. It was our first taste of Lobster and it was cooked to perfection :)

Sadly I was a bit under the weather on New Years Eve so we ended up staying in. Luckily Mum and Dad's apartment has an amazing view (see sunset photo below) and we were able to see all of the fireworks from there. We have video footage of it but for some reason the blog doesn't seem to want to upload it :(

We are now in Kota Kinabalu in Borneo and it's very humid indeed. We are heading to climb Mt Kinabalu tomorrow so we'll let you know how that goes in a few days!

Bzzzz

Brian Blessed!













Biker / Neo-Nazi.











Shaved off. Time to start all over again.

Cambodia Part 2

Hello!

Since we spoke to you last we have waved goodbye to Cambodia and hello to Jomtien in Thailand (near Pattaya). Let me fill you in on the last half of our Cambodia trip.
We spent a few days in the capital Phnom Pehn taking in the sights. One day we visited the Killing Fields and S21, both vile examples of the Kymer Rouge's cruelty. The killing fields is a site where the Kymer Rouge killed 17,000 people and buried them in mass graves. S21 is a school converted into a prison where people wear held and tortured before being sent to the killing fields. Quite a depressing day out that one.

We spent the rest of time visiting the palace (the first picture - which includes a miniture model of Ankor Wot in the foreground) and wandering around the city.

Next we headed south to Kampot which is a lovely sleepy place beside a river (second picture). We used Kampot as a base for visiting a few nearby sighths. The third picture is of the Bokor Hotel in the Bokor hill station, a creepy abandoned town on top of a hill. We visited a cave which we were guided through by five chatty kids, and Kep, a small pretty seaside town where we ate crabs and paddled.

Our last stop in Cambodia was Sihanoukville, the major beach destination of Cambodia. The original plan was to spend a good few days there and do some diving but the accomidation was overpriced and we were informed by several sources that the diving was crap. We spent a day by the beach before making the 14 hour bus journey here.

We are staying in a fantastic apartment in the same complex as Sueann's mum and dad. We are planning to go for a dive then eat some lobster on Christmas day and until then we are chilling out and planning the Malaysian leg of the trip.

If we don't do another entry for a while then Merry Christmas :)

Hi from a very sunny Cambodia!

Hello all,

We have been in Cambodia for a week now so we thought we'd better give you a little update.

We had a very interesting trip overland from Bangkok. We heard loads of horror stories about 'Scam Buses' taking tourists across the border and dumping them at random hotels in the middle of the night so we decided to take the local transport. Despite having to get up at a ridiculous time in the morning and being a little conned by the immigration guards at the border (all too common) we made it to Siem Reap in record timing.

Sadly the border crossing at Poi Pet doesn't give a great first impression, but thankfully that doesn't last long. The people are really lovely here and there is loads of great stuff to see.

We started our stay in Siem Reap by visiting the temples of Angkor. Wow there are a lot of temples. We spent 2 full days traveling between as many as we could fit in. They are pretty amazing. We really loved Angkor Thom. The trees are growing through the temple and it makes quite a spectacular sight.

Once we got slightly templed out we made our way to the stilted village of Kompong Phhluck. It's set next to a huge lake and spends most of the year under water. The houses are all raised up on 7m high stilts. It's just the start of the dry season now so a tiny bit of land was showing.
We spent the day there and had a fantastic lunch in one of the houses.

We also went on a little dug-out boat through the flooded mangrove forest. It was so peaceful and really really beautiful.
This photo doesn't quite do it justice.

After Siem Reap we headed on a boat down the river to Battambang. The boat trip was one of those '3-8 hour journeys' and of course it took 8 hours. There were are lot of bad rumors about the boats breaking down but it is meant to be one of hte most scenic boat trips in the country. You pass floating villages, wet lands and not to mention really narrow waterways where you get battered by all of the trees on the way past!!

Battambang itself is pretty run down and doesn't see much tourism. We did manage to do a cooking course and made 3 delicious courses of Khmer food. (which Matt is looking forward to testing out on some of you soon!)

The photo is our cooking instructor buying fish at the market. All of the fish are alive and they just kill and sell them on the spot. We have many more interesting photos from the market, including a couple that we'll need to keep far away from the the frog crazy Selina.

We arrived in Phnom Penh yesterday so will save that for the next entry. We are heading the the Killing Fields tomorrow so our next entry may not be quite so cheery.

We keep forgetting that it's Christmas soon. Hope you're all getting in to the festive spirit!!
Take care
Us x

Hong Kong Phooey

Hello! Lets start with a picture of Hong Kongs fantastic skyline!

We have just finished a week long stint in Hong Kong which turned out to be a little holiday within a big holiday. When we arrived we were both tired and on the verge of becoming ill, so when we saw how nice our hotel was we decided to take it easy for the week. We slept in quite a lot and managed a few hours of sight seeing a day. The rest of our time was spent lazing, eating and the occasional massage.

Here's another picture of the skyline, this time at night and from Kowloon across the water.

So our sight seeing amounted to wandering inbetween all the sky scrapers and sampling all the many different Asian cuisines Hong Kong has to offer; pig's feet in Chinese wine was interesting. Imagine all the stuff you would spit out and cut off a bit off meat at home and that's what pig's feet is like. Not very tastey but not horrible either.

Here's a more successful lunch of Dim Sum.

My mum requested a picture of me so here I am about to enjoy afternoon tea at the Peninsula Hotel.

I am writing all this from Bangkok while Sueann organises some accomodation in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We bus it across there early tomorrow morning. I'm not sure how often we will have access to a good internet connection so the blog entries may happen a bit further apart than usual. We shall see.

Bye for now.

P.S. Selina - The Harajuku girls are a bunch of girls who turn up at the same bridge (in Harajuku, Tokyo) every Sunday dressed up in crazy fashions. Actually most of them are just goths, but some of them are inspired. They just hang out there and get the photos taken then go home. :)

Random pics from Tokyo

GodzillaaaaaaaaAAAAARGH!!!!!












Park.









A couple of Harajuku girls taking a time out.








Classic coy!












Ninja stealth tactics












Pretty Kimonos












Fish eggs on rice for breakfast. Slurp!








Neon Tokyo!

Tokyo is a little chilly at this time of year.

Hello all,

It`s our last morning in Japan so we thought we'd fill you in on Tokyo before we go.
This place is cool!! It's such a massive city with tons of shops and neon (slightly better neon than Las Vegas).

We stayed in a capsule for a night which was pretty good. We didn't get any photos but they are just how you'd imagine. You crawl in to a white capsule (they are in rows, two high) You get a TV, radio, alarm and it's just the right size for Sueann. Matt on the other hand had to sleep diagonally.... hee hee. The floors were separated in to male and female and we had to meet each other in the lobby. Matt decided not to bother with the male communal bathing. He's not quite ready for that. The ladies didn't have the option. It was showers only for us.
Matt said it was like sleeping in a microwave oven. Bing!

We got up really early from the capsule to go to the Fish Market. It was huge! Fish everywhere. We treated ourselves to some sushi (very odd at 7am) but definitely the best we've had.


Matt and I almost split up after 500 hours of standing in a toy shop trying to decide which transformer to buy. I had to drag him out and say he wasn't getting anything. We got to the end of the street and he finally made the decision. We went back and got Optimus Prime. Definitely the most stressful part of the trip to date :)

We were wandering around taking some last minute photos yesterday when we suddenly noticed a couple of Geisha sneaking around a corner. We followed them for a while (stalkers again) and finally plucked up the guts to ask them for a photo. (Sueann was a little over excited at this point so the photo is slightly blurry).












P.S To Daph - Not a new T-Shirt, bought in Edinburgh. Did buy a new one in Kyoto. It may feature in some up and coming blog entries if you keep your eyes peeled! You should definitely save up for a Japan visit Daph, and save hard, there's lots to spend your cash on.