We got the bus directly from Nong Khai to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, as we already had our visas, and the boarder crossing was straight forward. The bus ticket only cost about £1, it cost us more to get a tuk-tuk the other side for the short ride to our hotel! Vientiane is such a laid back place, especially for a capital city, no-one is in any rush and in one restaurant we saw a camp bed set up so the waitress could have a nap when she had nothing to do! We...

We caught the ferry to Phi Phi Island and stayed at the Holiday Inn Resort where we stayed in 2002. The tsunami hit the opposite side of the island so this resort was spared significant damage. The island was as beautiful as we remembered with tall limestone cliffs, beautiful sandy bays and clear turquoise water full of colourful sea life. Some changes have taken place though, some good and some not so good. The Sea Gypsy village just up the beach has now opened ...

We arrived in Bangkok late at night and set off the next morning to meet Jo at the airport. We had some communication difficulties with the taxi driver and he took us to the wrong airport which was 40 minutes away from the airport Jo was arriving at! Luckily we had left in plenty of time and Jo landed a little late, so we probably got there about 5 minutes before she got through from immigration. Jo was feeling a little tired but with limited time in Bangkok we t...

Sydney, New South Wales.There's not really too much tell from this part of the trip. We had more time here than we had originally planned as we had to give up on the idea of going back to Queensland because of another cyclone, so we had some time to start planning and booking things for the next part of the trip in Asia. It worked out quite well really as this will save us lots of time later on. In between booking flights, trips and accommodation we went into Syd...

After 10 minutes in Alice Springs we had seen more Aborigines than we had in the rest of Australia put together. They seem to sit together in groups on the sides of roads and in car parks swigging from cans of beer all day and having loud arguments. These are apparently not representative of Aboriginal communities as those gathered in the cities are usually those who have been extradited from their communities because of things like alcohol abuse. In Alice we sp...