As we had been living it up in high rise appartment blocks and hostel double rooms, we thought it was time to get back to nature and local communities.So we took a flight to Ayers Rock airport and joined a 3 day Adventure Tours outback tour. It was hot, in fact very hot, averaging 40C in the daytime and 22C at night, but with little shade and a sandy surface that reflected the raging sun ray back at you. Unpleasant. The first afternoon saw a 45 minute walk throug...

After accidentally blagging $2 discount on the airport shuttle bus (we just told the driver we were told it was $10 not $12 and he went "ok"), we arrived at Base Backpackers in Sydney. The most noticeable thing in Sydney was that with Christmas 1 week away, there was virtually no Xmas atmosphere, no Xmas music in shops or on the radio and few decorations - the complete opposite to any British city. Many shops in Sydney close for 2-4 weeks over the perio...

We flew from Singapore into Kota Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo, before an onward flight to Sandakan airport. We checked into our dorm room in the exotically titled Sepilok Jungle Resort. Looked great in pictures, but less so in real life - a tad dated and lacking in life. However, it's only a 5 minute walk to the Urang-utan centre. That afternoon we went to see the Urang-utan feeding session. They put bananas and sugar cane onto a platform twice a day and the ura...

We arrived at our hotel in Singapore to find they had no record of our booking. The helpful staff did little to assist and we had to spend money getting the internet booking print out as evidence. No apology and they woudn't refund the internet costs! We got out of the hotel as soon as we could and headed for Raffles. After touring Raffles shopping City complex (just one of about 50 shopping malls in tower blocks) we headed to the Raffles hotel where we had the c...

We took a 1 and a half hour boat ride on some pretty choppy seas - not very pleasant; in fact those passengers on deck got sent down below as it got worse. We only stayed one night on Phi Phi island as we had already spent a lot of time in neighbouring Ko Lanta, accommodation prices at Phi Phi are quite high, and more importantly we had a plane to catch a few days later. It's a beautiful island, quite small, and there are no cars or trucks etc. The only motoris...