Back down at the bottom of Ijen, our next stop was Ubud, in Bali - a journey which seemed endless, particularly after our 2.30am wake up call. After two buses to get to Java's eastern harbour, a ferry to Bali, an extremely hot 5hr bus trip to Denpasar and then a slow, traffic-heavy taxi (fed up with public transport by now) to Ubud, we finally arrived around 7pm, 10hrs after we had started. After a shower and some food it was a quick dash around town on our new...

Our first port of call in Indonesia was Surabaya, in Eastern Java. We headed straight to the bus station, and walking through the bus terminal in Surabaya felt a different world away compared to where we had just come from: immediately far more rustic, but enticing. Indonesia seems to have its own distinct smell (maybe sweat mixed with incense mixed with the smell of a recent tropical downpour) and this is the smell that hit us on our arrival. And we loved the ...

We said goodbye to mainland China and arrived in Hong Kong at the end of June in time for the weekend, ready for some big city fun and catching up with friends we knew living there. After the tranquility and countryside of Yangshuo, arriving in to Hong Kong Central was a bit of a sharp contrast, but we quickly adapted to our new surroundings, very much aided by the upgrade - a suite, no less - which we received on checking in to our hotel (Simon's 'we're on our ...

Our last week on mainland China was spent in the beautiful Guangxi province, in southern China, famous for its striking, karst scenery - which is best explained by our pictures! This was the China we knew of from pictures before arriving - stunning rice terraces with views to match, impressive limestone peaks in lush valleys, rice farmers working away in straw hats, bamboo rafts gliding along shimmering rivers….and all felt another world away from what we had s...

We left Beijing on a Saturday night in style, having had a few G&Ts at a 40th birthday party that we gate crashed with some British Embassy staff that Simon knew from his time in Mumbai, and after meeting the British Ambassador - who we casually talked to for 15 minutes without realising who he was, until we asked what he did at the Embassy. The drinks were the perfect antidote for a good nights sleep on the overnight train from Beijing, to our next destinati...