So there I was at Noah's Backpackers in Bondi Beach, looking forward to a week of the beach and job hunting. After a knackering first day I had an alcohol free evening and even an early night! The next day the sun was out and I hit the beach and waited for Svenja, who came to join me. As the weather was so gorgeous for the first few days, job hunting proved to be difficult as the beach was just too tempting. We sweated out way along the 5km walk from Bondi to Co...

G'day From Down Under! (Yeah I can't think of anything more original...) To do list for Sydney: See a kangeroo (x); eat a kangeroo (x); see a koala (x); see the Sydney Opera House (x); meet an attractive life guard; ask an Australian to 'put another shrimp on the barbie'; wind up an Australian by going on about how your tan gives you a healthy glow (x); moan that the weather is too cold (x); freak out about cockroaches/ spiders/ creepy crawlies of gigantic prop...

The Islands of Hedonism and a Lesson in Avoiding the British! So I spent a very surreal Christmas in Koh Samui. In the absence of Christmas Eve in the 8 Bells with half of Dover, myself, Rachael and Hamish (both NZers) headed into Lamai town, where we sunk the typical island bucket of alcohol containing Red Bull, Coke and the Thai Whiskey Sangsom. We purchased ourselves a Christmas hat and absorbed the Thai Christmas atmosphere. Despite obviously not celebrating...

A Lesson in Loneliness So there I was in Thailand, alone and slightly terrified. My preoccupation with the train journey turned out to be completely unfounded as the trains were about a hundred times better than in India and I actually got a decent night's sleep. It took just over 20 hours to get to Bangkok and I travelled by taxi, train, bus, ferry and giant tuktuk (which act kinda like buses here) before I finally reached by hostel. I was thoroughly disappoint...

And so the last week passed by with normalities such as an elephant visiting the slum and Julie giving me a backy to the local beach to save me 300 rupees (the bruises lasted for days!). Suddenly it was the last day of volunteering, in which Vicky and I caused chaos by taking many photos of the children, making paper hats and giving them balloons to play with, thoroughly annoying the teacher! I was annoyed at myself for feeling pleased that it was over, for feeli...