This is the loveliest city in Asia, I want to put it in my pocket and take it home, along with Wellington! As well as having the best, friendliest, loveliest hostel with delicious icy air conditioning, a blessing in the thirty plus humid heat, it is charming and friendly and seems small, even though its actually bigger than Kota Kinabalu, the biggest city in Sabah. There is a high proportion of Chinese here, so I dined on my first steamed buns and tried all sorts...

My rude arrival in this city started, from sleep coma 0 to 60 in 1.2 seconds at 5am. Thrown out of the bus as the sole departee, my bag dumped somewhere behind me, I was swarmed by a mob of baying taxi drivers I attemped to negotiate while struggling to make my eyes open properly. The sun was just rising as we sped into the city centre, me perched precariously on the back of a moped. Two hours and countless hostels later, I found one with a room. It had been a ve...

Imagine a tiny island, flanked by sandy beaches and clear blue water teeming with fish and coral. Imagine a thatched hut with an outside shower and pet cockroaches scuttling over the walls, with gekkos calling in the background. This paradise, perhaps except sharing my room with certain invertebrates, is where I spent a week of heavenly sun-drenched relaxation. The mewling kittens who lived next door have never been so spoilt as my new Austrian friends and I fed ...

Home of the Monkey Forest, with real live creepy macaques that bear their teeth and steal the clothes off your back, numerous fancy clothes shops and cafes and the hustle bustle of tourists and local alike, Ubud at first glance appears to be a tourist honey pot. And it is. But amid this Bali for the cultured, I had the most profound spiritual, and indeed human, experience. I happened to be there for one of their three major religious festival, and the family owne...

Welcome to the wonderful world of poo, otherwise known as Australia zoo. Here I spent a happy week shoveling excrement from a startling variety of creatures-camels, koalas, kangaroos, a raft of tropical birds, goats, sheep calves. Being slobbered on by a camel, cuddled in a death grip by a very stinky koala and seeing a cheeky kangaroo joey doing freaky alien impressions as he stretched his limbs from inside his mothers pouch to make it contort like a thing posse...