Arrived in Melbourne after 36 hours of travelling (via Bangkok, Penang and Singapore). Journey delayed further by a vehicle crashing into aeroplane's engine 20 minutes before take-off! Had to switch planes which was fun...nobody moaned, as you can imagine! Melbourne was a scorching 34 when we arrived. Checked into nice hotel, Kingsgate on Kings Street. Explored river walks, city, Botanical Gardens (stunning), Aquarium, Observation Deck, Queen Victoria Markets...

So, here we are back in Bangkok. It was sad to leave our paradise Island yesterday....we were treated like royalty to say the least! We finished our diving which was great, although the visibility wasn't brilliant. We saw a shark and barracuda on our last dive. The island was pretty quiet mostly, as there were only a handful of guests staying, but each day hoards of visitors would come over by boat to stay for a few hours, snorkelling and sun bathing mostly. ...

After a short stop in Singapore, we arrived in Bangkok, drinking Singapore Slings on the way over! Our limo (!) took us to the Amari Boulevard Hotel, in the Sukhumvit are of Bangkok. Despite being a very well developed area, with smarter hotels and amenities, it is without doubt the seediest area in Bangkok! Scenes, similar to that of Ting-Tong and Mr Dudley from Little Britain are commonplace here... However, the food is cheap, wholesome and delicious. Our favou...

20 November - Jen's birthday! We left our Keralan cooking course early in the morning for our backwaters cruise. The boat was full of other non-Indian tourists which was quite a novelty for us, but it soon wore off. It was amazing seeing the backwater life, the villagers working away. We saw some rope being made from twisting coconut shell twine. We stopped on one of the 'islands' where our guide promptly disappeared up a tree and started throwin...

The trip back to Delhi was fine. We found our way by taxi to the YWCA Internation Guest House on Parliament Road. It was a fantastic place with friendly staff and clean rooms. Typical, because we only have about 7 hours before we have to get up to goto the airport and fly to Cochin. Well we've had 6 days in beautiful Kerala, it is amazing here, so lush and green, and the people are friendly with big smiles. We are eating and cooking s...