Tioman islands Once we had left Singapore we headed by bus to the fishing village of Mersing, a non descript town with only one purpose for us and that was to catch a boat from there to the islands about 2 hoursaway. We spent a couple of days in Mersing catching up on e-mails and getting little bits and piecesbefore heading to the islands. The morning of the boat ride the weather was great and the sea was like a mill pond making the whole trip very quick and ea...

Unatawuna and Galle Tim and I had been really looking forward to coming to Sri Lanka. We had been led to believe it was a more relaxed, lush version of India, with its own unique attractions too. Just before we left India, we were fairly mortified to read the government website, listing all the bombs that have occurred in Sri Lanka in the last few weeks, with the number of fatalities. All the bombs have been on public buses and a couple on trains, in the Kandy a...

Singapore 14/06/2008 Singapore is now the best city I have ever been to in my life and this was only after two days for being there, in my view it is the cleanest city I have ever seen and boasts a great transport system and it also feels very safe to walk around as a traveller, our whole experience was great fun and we both enjoyed it allot. We hoped off our flight from Sri Lanka to Singapore feeling relaxed and refreshed because Singapore airlines are so good...

The house boat After a few hours heading south by train we got to Aleppey which is the main town linked to the back waters and where you can hire houses boats from for any given time you want.We managed to find a good government hostel and stayed there for a night before getting on the boat that we had book, this was also a government tourist boat and for the three of us it was not a bad price for what you get. The hostel was a listed building and had a nice gar...

Cochin We got the overnight bus to Mangalore from Goa and then the train from Mangalore to Cochin, which seemed like a great idea at the time but turned out not. The only train tickets that were left were for standard carriage, the tickets cost about 70p for 12 hours and you could not get any more people in the train if you tried, it was rammed and have to admit I felt a little unsafe. So after 5 hours we got off at a town and booked a night bus from Kannur, t...