Time for another blog seeing as we're now in a new continent - our last blog was from Swakopmund, Namibia so we'll pick it up from there - bear with us if it gets long!

After seeing some huge dunes along the Skeleton Coast in Namibia, we entered our last country on our overland trip - South Africa. We did an awesome wine tour in Stellenbosh, sampling wine and cheese in the sunshine - our kind of day. Into Cape Town for our last night with everyone on our overland truck, The whole trip through Africa was brilliant and we had a great bunch of people to experience it with. Now off the truck we had to start organising things ourselves! Silky and Ben met us in Cape Town fro their 2 week holiday, we did Table Mountain, Robben Island and the Cape of Good Hope amongst other things. Unfortunately the one thing we were all looking forward to the most - cage diving with great white sharks - was cancelled as the weather was too rough out in the ocean. Tried several time, closest we got was half way to the place on the minibus before the driver got a call cancelling it. I blame Silky, she did sit on her bed before we left chanting 'cancel, cancel, cancel' - she must have been scared. We left Cape Town for our epic drive to Durban but had 9 days to this. We stopped at Hermanas, Mossel Bay, Buffalo Bay, Storms River, Jeffrey's Bay, Addo, Chintsa, Coffee Bay and Durban. A mention must go to Gilmore - the little Citi Golf we hired for the drive, even though he got 2 speeding tickets (Joel & Ben!). Also travelling in tandem with us most the way was Happy - being driven by Luke and Amelia (people we met on the truck). The Bay's we stopped in were brilliant - Buffalo Bay prob a fav and also enjoyed big nights at Storms River and Chintsa (didn't we Silks?!). We did some whale watching, canoeing, body boarding, saw the penguins, went to Addo Elephant National Park in Happy and Gilmore, who look very small next to the hugh elephants. Some of us did the Bloukrans Bridge Bungy, which can I mention is the highest in the world? 216 metres....! After urrmming and ahhing for an hour Luke, Ben, Silky and Clare decided to take the plunge and it was awesome! Overall a brilliant time here, we did 2508 km's from Cape Town to Durban (well, Joel and Ben did while Clare & Silks chatted in the back the most of the way). Silks and Ben flew home back to work and Clare & Joel boarded a plane for Bangkok.

Bangkok is one busy city! We spent 4 days there - saw some temples, watched some kick boxing, had cocktails on Khao San Road, did some shopping and just relaxed a bit after 2 hectic weeks in South Africa. 4 days were enough of Bangkok, time to see the rest of Thailand. Our 1st stop was Kanchanaburi, home of the River Kwai Bridge, War Cemetery and museums on the history, which was good to learn about. Also went to the Tiger Temple, which we were dissapointed about - probaly been too spoilt in Africa! Next we headed to Pak Chong and we to Khai Yai National Park - it was brillaint trekking through the jungle and also lucky enough to come across a herd of wild elephants. Climbed a tree for a better view and Clare stayed there as most the group got within 5 metres of them! Went to a local Thai Festival that night which topped off a brilliant day. After a mammouth trip (train full, wrong bus etc) we finally got to Ayutthaya - stayed there a day and saw the city on bikes. We got our first sleeper train from here to Chiang Mai, a 12 hour journey but overnight so not too bad, was even able to sleep ok despite the bumpy and rocky track. We spent 3 days in Chiang Mai, a really nice city and the highlight was doing a Thai cooking course forn the day - we made 7 Thai dishes and got to eat them all - we were stuffed afterwards! From here we continued North to Chiany Rai, which was our last stop in Thailand for now. We got through the border crossing into Laos with no probs, we went through on a Sat which means overtime for them (!) so we had to pay an additional charge! Stayed in Huay Xai for the night as had to wait for the 2 day long boat yo Luang Prabang. 1st day wasn't so bad (6 hours) with an overnight stop in Pak Bebeng, but the 2nd day (8 hours) went on forever as both of us had finshed our books and we broke down about 10 times! Anyway, we're here finally, just been chilling out, had a Laos massage today which was awesome. We leave here and head South tomorrow morning, before heading into Vietnam next week where we'll spend Crimbo with Joel's family and then New Year prob in Saigon.

Hope you've enjoyed reading about our lastest adventures! Sorry about the lack of photos on here, we put them on facebook which is much quicker to do - so everyone get themselves on facebook.com and request to be our friend and you cann see all the photos!!

Love Clare & Joel xxx