Well....Greymouth....umm....at the mouth of the river Grey.....uuuummm...thats it! No only kidding theres more there but our time in Greymouth was very limited after our Tranzalpine train from Christchurch ran over an hour and a half late. This meant we only spent one evening there rather than an afternoon and an evening. By the way the Tranzalpine train is a really nice scenic train route that goes from Christchurch to Greymouth across the Canterbury pl...

Well here�s the first New Zealand blog. Christchurch, the largest city in the south Island (with 330,000 people) situated on the East coast within the Canterbury plains. It is known as the English City and quite often described as more English than England. That could possibly be true, it�s very quaint, pretty and you can go punting on the River Avon. Well it�s not so much a river but more of a stream but very nice none the less. ...

Sydney is a trendy and very cosmopolitan city and of course has some great features such as the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and Darling Harbour area. However, that was it for us, a nice city. We enjoyed our time there but we probably suffered a reverse culture shock after the energy, buzz and excitement of Asia, especially Vietnam. This definitely gave us a shaded view of the city as we were probably still in 'culture' mode. We would have probably enjoyed it more...

Ho Chi Minh City, SaigonToday we left Danang Airport (an old US base) and flew down to Ho Chi Min City (previously known as Saigon before the North took over the South, reunifying the country and making the whole of Vietnam communist).  HCM city is very busy indeed.  In fact there are 8 million people living there, which is double the total population of New Zealand, 4 million bikes and 10,000 taxis!  We would literally cross the road by all formin...

Hoi AnOn day 30 we left Hue for Hoi An.  On the way we stopped off at China Beach where the US army would regularly take holiday from their war duties.  It was a lovely empty beach with crystal clear warm water.  We wondered at one stage if we were wearing frangipani flowers tucked over our right ear or at the back of hair (a sign to say ‘I am free’ or ‘follow me’),as we were soon harassed by children all trying to sell us a...