Our flight into Wellington was fantastic, as we flew in low over the top of the South island and so had a great view of the mountains and islands.We then came over the Cook Straight and saw some dolphins below, then a beach with surfers in the sea, before we hit the very short runway in Wellington. As a capital city, it has a very small and friendly feel to it.We did a home stay here, which has been a great experience, as we have met some great people and got so...

The blog for Sydney is going to be a long one, so I'm going to split it into 3 sections so you can choose the one/s that you want to read!The first section is about arriving in Sydney and the things we noticed coming back into a western country after 5 months of non western countries.The second section is the general blog about Sydney and the third section is my tips for doing Sydney on a budget. Returning to the Western world Our flight from Bangkok to Sydney ...

We flew from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. It was so nice having a 1 hour journey rather than 14 hours on a bus! We booked into an airport hotel with a pool, so we would be ready for our flight to Sydney the next day. So, it is with great sadness that we leave South East Asia, wishing that we could have more time here. We are looking forward to Australia, but our budget is really going to suffer! Although southern Thailand and Laos were expensive at times, it was n...

Our border crossing into Tailand was the most painless yet. We simply went to the office on the riverside in Laos to be stamped out, and for the first time we did not have to pay a fee/tip. We then took a very small, thin boat for about 5 minutes across the Mekong River over to Thailand, where we went to another little office to be stamped into Thailand, which again cost us nothing. We then had a very comfortable 5 hour mini bus ride to Chiang Mai. We decided...

We stayed one night in Huay Xai (seems to be spelt differently in various places!) so we were there ready to start the Gibbon Experience early the next morning.  The town is on the Mekong, and you can see Thailand the other side of the river.  It therefore is mostly a border town, with a few hotels and restaurants, and in recent years has become the starting point for the Gibbon Experience. We had a truck ride for about 80k to take us to the outskirts of the j...