My travels

New Zealand!!

nic_jones_ — Mon, 3 May 2010 15:39:00 GMT

So I'm currently in New Zealand and have been here for about a week and a half in the South island where it is cold and wet but incredibly beautiful.

We are on the kiwi experience here which means you jump on a bus with the same people for days on end and get dropped off in random places and sent for walks (basically like a school trip!). So far we've visited the famous glaciers in franz josef and done a glacier walk which was brilliant fun - walking on the ice is a very weird feeling! We're currently in queenstown - the capital of all extreme sports and I have just done the world's biggest swing which is a 70M freefall drop then the cord drags you out and you swing across the canyon -- it was amazing!

We've also done a day trip to Milford Sounds to visit the famous fiords which may be classed as one of the 8th natural wonders of the world next year so as you can imagine it was an awesome sight -- we also got dolphins swimming next to our boat for a bit aswell!

Soon we'll be heading for the north island and taupo where i will be doing a bungee and skydive - eeeeeekkk

Australia

nic_jones_ — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:33:00 GMT

So i realize i haven't wrote anything for ages and i have a lot to catch up on but going to try and quickly write about Australia.

Me and Debs hired out a campervan from wiked -which had a rather funky paint job- for the first 2 weeks of our trip to drive from Cairns to Brisbane in - funny since i haven't drove since i passed my test 3 years ago!

We first headed north of Cairns to Cape tribulation to see the amazing rain forest up there - on the way we saw the most amazing things - Baron Gorge which on the photos is the brown mucky colored waterfall, and we pulled into a place called mossman gorge and spotted a wild crocodile! All the while it rained which was a bit rubbish but it is still absolutely boiling up there!

After this we headed back down towards cairns along a different route stopping at the most amazing waterfalls and driving through national park on top of national park which was amazing. It really is beautiful up there!

We arrived into oz just after the cyclone had hit and basically destroyed the Whitsundays islands but we still got to do a trip out there on the nicest sail boat - the islands had some of the most amazing beaches i have ever seen but the debris left behind from the cyclone was everywhere which is such a shame. All the while we got to go on a sail boat for 2 days and learn a bit of sailing which was fun!

Oz has the famous Steve Irwin Australia zoo which we went to of course - they have a kangaroo pen as such which you can go into and strong the kangaroos! Also we found out that the number of koalas left in Queensland is the amount that got run over last year so it's not looking great for koalas!! They still do their famous crocodile show there which is awesome!

After this we did a few more sights of oz stopping along at beaches and pretty national parks then onto Brisbane, from there we did our fraiser island trip -- you basically get given a 4x4 car for 3 days and drive around the island which is full of amazing lakes and views then camp out at night (keeping a close eye out for dingos which are everywhere!). This was one of my favorite parts of Australia - it was brilliant, camping on the beach with lots of other people, spending the day in lakes that you could drink the water from and seeing amazing sand dunes everywhere -- incredible.

From here we went to Newcastle to meet up with a couple of girls we met in Vietnam - the girls live on the lake there so we got to go out on their boat and do a bit of knee boarding off the back which was awesome!

I have a cousin who lives in Gunnedah which is a bit inland from Newcastle so I went to visit her for a couple of days which was incredible - i saw so many kangaroos in the wild and even spotted a koala in a tree! Her and her husband run a farm so i even got a fun ride in a tractor while there! It was nice to get away from the East coast for a bit and see inland Oz which really is different!

Sydney was my final stop and i was on my own for a while which actually turned out to be great fun. I did a bit of standard sight seeing (even spotted the RBS building overlooking the botanical gardens!), and met a lot of great people. I really loved Sydney and is definitely somewhere i will return to!

That's about it for Australia -- loved the whole country even though is was ridiculously expensive (more so than England!) but happy to currently be in New Zealand and ready for exciting adventures here!

Photos: Travelling

nic_jones_ — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:02:00 GMT

Photos: travelling photos

nic_jones_ — Thu, 4 Mar 2010 18:49:00 GMT

Vietnam

nic_jones_ — Sun, 7 Feb 2010 21:37:00 GMT

We have been traveling through Vietnam from the South now for about 10 days. The border crossing into Vietnam went much smoother than we were expecting!

Our first stop in Vietnam was Saigon (Ho Chi Min City) but due to costs and wanting a beach we moved quickly on to the quiet "honeymoon resort" of Mui Ne. It has 13km of beautiful sandy white beaches and nice big fancy hotels. We were obviously a few stops down the road in the guest house part!

2 Days later we set off for the busier resort of Nha Trang -- backpackers paradise -- full of guest houses bars and cheap places to eat. We spent 4 days beaching and going out (cocktail buckets for a pound - you can't go wrong). Also there are islands about 5 miles out to sea - one of which (VinPearl) has an amusement and water park on, which was slightly random. We went late one afternoon and found a completley empty water park, an imported sandy waveless beach and a few random rides - all in all quite a fun day!

After 4 fun days in Nha Trang we headed even further north on a sleeper bus (a bus with very uncomfy short beds which you get stuck on for about 14 hours at a time) up to Hoi An. This was a very sweet place, it seemed still very old with a dock that was lined with unusual quirky old houses. We arrived at 5:30am in the morning so got to see the sun rising and all the commuters coming across the river on packed flat boats holding on to their motorcycles - a very bizare sight to say the least. Also Hoi An is famous for it's streets of tailors so I couldn't leave the place without getting a tailor made suit. It's amazing the service you receive there, a 3 piece suit made in 12 hours and readjusted to fit perfectly in the 3 hours after.

After 2 short days we left Hoi An and headed on to Hue hoping to discover BachMa national park - apparantly the place has it's own weather system of sort but it was closed so instead we moved on up quickly to hanoi which is where I'm writing from right now.

Hanoi -- i don't want to comment on just yet as we've had a very bad first day so will update soon!

Cambodia

nic_jones_ — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:05:00 GMT

We have spent the previous 5 days travelling through cambodia visiting siem reap (home of the ankor temples -- the 8th wonder of the world) and Phnomm penh the capital.

After a long 10 hours on a bus to get from Bangkok to Siem Reap we found a nice little hostel to stay in and got ourselves settled. The next morning at 4am we headed to the temples to watch the sunrise (apparantly what a lot of people do as it was heaving!). I can't even explain how it feels when the temples suddenly start to appear and they are the most amazing sights you've ever seen. There are 3 main temples -- one was the set of tomb raider -- and we visited them all. Words just can't put into perspective what these temples are like and photos just don't do it justice.

After this we headed on another long bus journey to Phnomm Penh where we visited the killing fields and geneside museem. Obviously a very insightful day into the country and people of Cambodia and the pain they have so recently been through. We also visited a Russian market -- it's about 33 degrees outside and in the market it's probably about 38 - it was so disgustingly hot and we only bought a couple of travelling bracelets!!

After all our worries about visiting cambodia I have to say that it's a beautiful country and I'm so glad we came here - the people are so friendly and welcoming and the scenery here is just amazing.

Next stop Vietnam...

Bangkok

nic_jones_ — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:44:00 GMT

It's weird to think that I have only been away from home for 5 days because i already feel so settled (and have already used most of the clothes in my bag!)

Currently I'm in Cambodia but the previous 4 days we spent on the one and only KhaoSan Road in Bangkok. Known for it's bars, market stalls and general mayhem feel, we found ourselves constantly drinking beer under the murky sky (probably an effect of the fuel emmisions from the crazy driving that occurs there). For the first night we opted for a luxery 9 pound a night room - needless to say we moved quickly to an optimum 5 pound one after - even though the 9 pound place had a pool (which we accidently got kicked out of in the early hours of the morning on our first day...)

We spent a day visiting the royal mile (temples) close to khao san road (after nearly falling for a scam by a tuktuk driver) and got a few nice sights including some at the golden mount -- i'll add pictures -- but still it wasn't quite what we wanted to see so we were ready to leave yesterday in the early hours of the morning, for the long bus journey to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

All in all my opinion of Bangkok is it is a quick stop off point for travellers and no more - but I'm definitley looking forward to the next part of the trip and sorry family I'm not feeling homesick yet at all!