Simon's despatch: The curse of the Gili islands! After a lovely time on Bali we decided to travel to the Gili islands. A group of 3 tiny islands famous as a place to learn to dive, with perfect beaches and, at the turn of the century, only 1 hotel. The idea was for Beth to learn to dive and for me to do a scuba refresher course. The islands sounded so laid back we opted to take the fast boat there for a bit of adrenaline (and a £27 per day budget precluded fly...

Well we made it ok from Australia to Bali. Wow are things different here! Bali is like Lady Gaga - beautiful* and mad. From the word go there have been hundreds of incredibly lovely people trying to sell us things (which is fine actually, they're not nearly as bad as the Egyptians). The architecture is grandiose but elegant and the Balinese Hindu religion has coloured our days ever since the moment we spotted the little tray of flowers, biscuit and a joss stick ...

Ah Cairns! It's not really much to look at and no-one we've met has had any a kind word to say about it, but we've had an absolutely wonderful time here. We spent the first day lazing around near the man-made lagoon reading out SE Asia travel guide and preparing for Indonesia. They need a lagoon here because it's mud flats all the way out to the sea and if you can get there without being swallowed up then you risk being terminally stung by a box jellyfish or me...

Compared to Si's enthusiastic attempts to kill me in Byron Bay, the last few days have been very quiet. First stop after Byron Bay was Brisbane. The highlight here was definitely catching up with old friends again - Ellie (who I've know through Quaker things since I was about six), her top husband Lee (who also loves crisps) and their lovely and incredibly energetic kids Ben (4) and Keira (2). I haven't seen Ellie for about a million years so it was brilliant to...

Simons despatch: Byron Bay 'Chill out under sunny blue skies in Byron bay' the LP promised us. Sounded good so off we toddled from Sydney to Byron on a 12 hour train ride.... to be greeted by rain! Luckily not the British, all day, kind of rain but more the tropical, big cloud with vertical rain for 5 mins then nice for awhile, kind. Byron Bay is a very artistic, musical, hippie, surf centric place and we stayed at the musical epicentre - the Arts Factory. Thi...