Blessings and Borders I sat quietly in the dark on the kerb opposite our guesthouse. I could see the first hints of dawn in the sky, it wouldn’t be long before the monks were walking silently towards me. Everything was familiar, the same women were there setting up for the morning, laying out carpets and […]
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Back to the Garden – Theo’s blog Arriving in the village of Batu Katak to begin our “jungle trek” in the rainforest of Sumatra was like arriving to stay with a celebrity I’d been a fan of since childhood. I was full of anticipation for exotic sights and sounds, and dreaming of magical wildlife encounters,
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Love the Jungle, hate the Leeches Turns out I really hate leeches. I managed to avoid them in Australia, but that clearly wasn’t going to be possible when trekking through Sumatran rainforest. It’s not like the leeches in the jungle were big or even dangerous, but GOD they’re so disgusting. I first got one when
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Back to Chiang Mai Travelling to Thailand looked pretty straight forward. Get a GRAB to our minibus, at the relatively civilised hour of 7.00 a.m., then an eight hour journey to Bangkok. Either a taxi, tuk-tuk or underground trip to Krung Thep Aphiwat station and then a 12 hour overnight sleeper to Chiang Mai. We
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Angkor Wat Siem Reap was not like anywhere we’d been before. Angkor Wat is an international tourist destination attracting two million visitors each year and the city of Siem Reap has absorbed a wide variety of cultural influences as a result. The incredible food options, the style and price of accommodation, the transport choices around
Batu Katak We spent a long time on the deck of the KM Kelmud, making the most of the calmest seas we had experienced. I got up early each morning to watch the sunrise. Standing in the near darkness out on deck watching the slow, softly changing colours being reflected in the silky smooth seas.
Dili to Medan In one of our (many) family meetings in the last few days before we left Ellie’s we had tried to do some broad brush stroke planning of the journey home. Was it possible to shave a month off the time it took us to get here, without the journey killing us…? After
550 million years, and counting…. Theo’s blog On a drive through Gosford, New South Wales, towards the end of our stay, I noticed I was no longer noticing Australia. I’d gotten used to the utes and double-trailered trucks driving at sober speeds past bungalows and verandahs and retail parks where well-fed sunscreened people in shorts
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Where have all the parrots gone? The next door neighbours pig is squealing, the five o’clock call to prayer has woken up everyone in down town Dili, including our host Tracey, the British Honorary Consul, and her menagerie of cats who think it’s definitely time to be fed…but there are no parrots, not a single
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Uluru My last eight hours on a bus in Australia – I have both a fondness and a mild dread of Greyhound buses now. They are hard on my back and each one has been a seriously loo-oong journey. That said, apart from one slightly suicidal driver on the journey from Melbourne to Sydney back