Wow, can you believe it, after 4 and half months in South East Asia, we've made it to Australia!!

And I haven't blogged since we were in Vietnam at the end of August, so I have some catching up to do...

We had a 20 hour overnight bus journey from Hanoi in Vietnam to Vientiane in Laos. As I mentioned in my previous blog we were fully prepared for this one, and as it turns out it was one of our better experiences on a sleeper bus. Once we got over the border and into Laos we were greeted with the most beautiful countryside - lush green mountains and rivers, with villages dotted along the mountain roads.

We arrived in Vientiane where we stayed for a couple of nights, but it was nothing special, so we hopped on the bus up to Vang Vieng. We met a couple of lovely crazy kiwi ladies on the bus - Vicky and Christine. After a boozy night on buckets we decided we would get up and go tubing the next day. So hangovers and all off we headed in the tuk tuk that dropped you off at the 1st riverside bar and the begining of tubing. What a great time we had! Tubing was sooo much fun - crazy, but brilliant! We were swinging from the high swings, tubing down the river and getting pulled into the bars - Linds nearly drowned trying to get in at one bar and lost her tube! But she survived to tell the tale! And we got our T-Shirts!

From there we went up to Luang Prabang, which is a beautiful and serene town on the Mekong River. We had a lovely time there swimming in waterfalls, learning to ride and train elephants (we are now fully fledged Mahouts!) and we managed to get up on our last day to watch the Monks collecting Alms.

After that we had a mind-numbingly boring 2 day slow boat trip to the Thailand border. Oh my buddah it was a long two days!! The beautiful scenery soon became very same same (and NOT different). We had a stop over in the tiniest riverside town ever - they've only just got electricity 24hours a day and they don't have any ATM's!! And we had no money!!! After a small panic (that was me panicking!) Lindsey found some Thai Baht that we were able to exchange in the hotel, so we weren't stranded in this tiny town - phew!!

Back in Thailand and we headed for Chiang Rai to see what the trekking trips were like there. It was all a bit too quiet so we decided to move on to Chiang Mai and trek there instead. We had a full on 5 days of activities in Chiang Mai - Thai Cooking Class (me), Thai Massaaaaaage class (Linds), 3 days trekking, Jungle ziplining, and then straight onto the overnight train to Bangkok - what a busy fews days!!

The trekking was an experience, and at times we wondered how it could be that we were paying good money to walk in the rain and mud and then sleep in ant infested beds - but looking back it was a great experience that we'll probably never do again - LOL. Our guide was from the Karon Tribe and we walked up into the hills and stayed in the Karon Village on the 1st night. Unfortunately we didn't have a very good night, and poor Linds got eaten alive by ants! The 2nd day we set off again walking through the mountains and along rivers and our 2nd night was much better - helped by drinking our way to oblivion before we crashed out on slightly cleaner mattresses on the floor of a slightly cleaner hut! The 3rd day was more walking, finished off by bamboo river rafting where we nearly lost 2 people as we got stuck in the rocks & rapids.

On our last day in Chang Mai we had a great morning zip-lining through the trees in harnesses - just like monkeys!

With a fleeting stop-over in Bangkok we re-visited Khao San Road for some last minute t-shirt shopping. Oh the smell of Khao San Road, brought back some unsavoury memories of eating bugs after a few too many Changs!

Then we were really living the highlife... we flew to Singapore and had a lovely long weekend with Lindsey's friend Hilary. We were lapping up the luxury of staying in a lovely appartment with a huge swimming pool. We did what everyone does in Singapore - eating & shopping!! We had a Singapore Sling in Raffles (just the one!) which I was very excited about.

So after a lovely few days in sunny Singapore we arrived for a week in Bali... Bali, bloody Bali!! We didn't love Bali... it rained for starters, the hotels weren't great (well not the ones we could afford), and it was stinky and very dirty - especially after the cleanliness of Singapore! And don't mention the Rats!!! Our last couple of days in Bali were better as the weather improved and we finally managed to get some time on the beach... where we soaked up the sunshine and got very excited about our imminent arrival to Perth and our families!

And here we are! Loving being with family and living in lovely houses, doing washing and cooking and being able to make a cup of tea when we want!! Ahh the simple things!! So I'm staying with my cousin Jodi and Mick and the adorable Annabelle, while Linds is staying with her sister and family - it will be hard to drag ourselves away, but we know we have to make a plan to go and see the rest of Aus and NZ... it's gonna be tough!!

The weather here is hotting up (although it can be a bit chilly when the wind blows!), so we've been to the beach a few times. Yesterday we took the kids to the aquarium (and me and Linds were just as excited as the kids! I couldn't drag Lindsey away from the touch pool!). Tomorrow we're off to see some wild-life (in the form of Kangaroos etc... the girly night out is next week when we hope to see a different kind of wild-life
!)

So that's me all up to date... it was a bit of an abbreviated version, but you get the gist!

Bye for now... there's a beach awaiting :-)

xxx