So glad to be out of Bangkok, I disliked it more each day I was there bar the 1st day!! We had a 12 hour overnight bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Our seats reclined quite far and we were given blankets, it was quite nice. There was also a film on, clearly a pirate copy it wasb in English with English subtitles, and my favourite 'translation' was "open up your ass" for open your ears.. Already love it here the streets are so quite off the main road and there isn'...

We have arrived in Thailand!! Very exciting, though sad to have left NZ because I absolutely loved it!We arrived midnight last night and took a taxi through the torrential rain to our hotel, and went straight to bed!Today we've been a bit 'Buddhad' out! But had a good day none the least!We had a pretty early start but it was ok, there were 2 other girls on our tour called Kim and Lucy. We started out by getting a longboat onto the river Chao Phraya, it was quite ...

Last day in NZ! :( We arrived into Auckland yesterday afternoon, and wondered around Victoria Park Markets to look for souvenirs, we were catching the bus to arrive in St. Helier's at 3 to meet Dad's friend Maurice, who was kindly letting us stay for 2 nights! We arrived there and Maurice took us back to their house, and we had a lovely cooked dinner of lamb and veggies! We then watched the Royal wedding as they had it recorded and Arthur and I hadn't seen it yet...

We are now in the Bay of Islands, after a very long bus journey yesterday. We were picked up from our hostel and had a stop off in Matamata, aka Hobbiton! We weren't able to go to the set adn see 'the shire' but we did take our photo with the sign like keen tourists! We had an hour to kill in Auckland before our bus, and didn't do much really! We cooked dinner when we arrived here and then went to bed as early start today (as usual). Unfortunately the weather was...

Ah another amazing day! Started off the day with a hot mud bath and spa! We got picked up from our hostel and taken to Hell's Gate, the natural geysers and hot springs. There are a lot of them in Rotorua, as there is a lot of geothermal activity there. We were the only people on that first bus, so were the only people for our first hour or so at the hot pools! We started off by walking around all the pools and geysers. All of them had different names and were use...