So this is our final update, with our return flight getting us into Heathrow on 24 January.Since the lovely and relaxing Railey Beach, we've spent 4 days on a fairly large yacht relentlessly SCUBA diving around the Similan Islands.The diving was comparable to Fiji, i.e. excellent, with wonderfully clear, warm water and a diverse selection of fish, crustaceans, seahorses and, my absolute favourite, octopuses.It wasn't always brilliant, of course, and one of our Fr...

Hi friends! How is everyone back home? I hope all is well. After a luxurious stay in the fabulously clean and civilised Singapore, we catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to see more of South East Asia. We have experienced a whole range of cultures over the past 5 and a half months and our latest, Malaysia, turned out to be a curious enigma to me. We only saw a few places, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Langkawi, perhaps an inadequate range of places to develo...

We've spent the last week in (very welcome!) stress-free and fun environments, visiting good friends for Christmas in Hong Kong, then hopping across to Singapore for a complete spoiling on my 30th birthday!Of course, this has made the transition to Malaysia somewhat of a shock, but Em will pick up on that in her next update. We flew into HK early afternoon on Christmas day and, thanks to the excellent transport infrastructure (including blissfully cheap taxis!...

Hi friends! Thanks for your comments on Chris' last blog and our Japan photos! My Mum's hit the nail on the head with her comment - 'every new country is a new experience.' That's totally true! Japan is the 7th country of our travels so far, and I think the people here are my favourite. I am in awe of them and their gentle kindness, respect and politeness. I suppose I should have had some indication from my Japanese phrase book, which has 8 various ways to sa...

We're now halfway through our Japan adventure and it's proving to be a wonderfully different country, jam-packed with beautiful, historical buildings, stunning gardens and landscapes, lovely, earnest, humble people and incredibly well thought out and punctual transport infrastructure.It's not as different as my preconceptions, which involved black being white and people watching TV via implants whilst levitating their way across the city, but there is a clear con...