A Cruise Down the Yangtze River

A short video I took during my 3-day cruise down the Yangtze River in 2013. This video was taken during a day-trip out to see the 'little three gorges'. 

Traditional Drummers in China

Here is a video I recently uploaded to YouTube, showing a small clip from a wonderful drum performance I saw at the Drum tower in Xi'an in 2013. These performances are made several times daily for tourists and are included in the price of the entry ticket to the tower. It was a wonderful performance, very impressive indeed. The clip below captures quite well the skill of the performance.

The Bund Sightseeing Tour

The Bund Sightseeing tour in Shanghai, also known as the Psychedelic Tunnel, is definitely one of the stranger attractions I visited in China. From the Pudong to the Bund, this tunnel will provide you with probably the weirdest 5 minutes in Shanghai (although there's no guarantee you won't find something weirder out there!).

It's a little over priced, frankly, at 50 yuan per person (about £5), and I definitely wouldn't bother with the return journey! Considering the ferry across the Huangpu river costs about 20p per trip and includes beautiful views of the water front on both sides (assuming you can see past the pollution), the Psychedelic Tunnel is definitely something you only need to do once. It's worth it though, if it's on your way.

The Bund Sightseeing experience (which doesn't actually involve seeing any sites, of course) also includes some other, potentially weirder, exhibits, including a 'Freaks' exhibit. They were quite expensive though and I opted not to visit.

I'd love to hear from anybody who has braved the even quirkier exhibits on offer here (post a comment if that's you!)

Beijing Street Market

My first experience of Chinese street food - edible insects on sale in a market in Beijing

And here's how I got on giving some of the wigglier food a try:

You can read about my trip to Beijing here.

The Big Finish

And it's over. Finally time to come home. Today I will fly back up to Tokyo, and tomorrow I continue on to London. I am scheduled to arrive home around 3pm (GMT) tomorrow.

New Zealand Loop

In New Zealand I am taking a hop-on, hop-off bus around the North and South Islands, I'm not sure of my exact schedule during this period, that's sort of the point! So, this is a map of the rough route I will be taking over the next month.

Flight to Auckland

Today I fly to New Zealand to begin the final leg of my adventure.

Flights, Farewells and New Frontiers

Today I say goodbye to my travel companions and return to solo travel for the remainder of my trip. This evening I fly to Melbourne, arriving early (7am) tomorrow morning.

Komodo Loop

Over the next 6 days, Terri and I will follow a loop around the Indonesian islands of Flores, Rinca and Komodo.

Flight to Bali

Today we head south and into Indonesia, for a few days relaxing in Bali.

Northern Borneo

For the next 10 days or so I'll be travelling around Northern Borneo. In Kota Kinabalu I'll meet up with my friends Lynne and Terri, and from there we will explore Kinabalu National Park, climb Mt Kinabalu (hopefully!) and visit Sepilok and Turtle Island, finally returning to Kota Kinabalu.

Flight to Miri

Southern Borneo

For the next 5 days I'll be travelling around the southern part of Malaysian Borneo, from Kuching to Sibu.

Borneo Bound

Finally I embark on probably the most anticipated part of my trip - Borneo! I'll be flying today from Bangkok to Kuching, via Kuala Lumpur. I am due to arrive in Kuching around 2pm (local time).

Down to Bangkok

Flight to Chiang Mai

Phnom Penh: Riots, Sickness and Genocide

We took the day bus up from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh and arrived around midday, Sam was feeling very ill at this point but we still needed to find our accommodation and check in before he could rest. We managed to get a tuk tuk to take us from the bus stop to the hostel we'd booked, although it was quite a way out of town and took ages to find. We'd had a hard time finding a suitable place when we were booking, and the map and road names were totally confusing - many of the roads are numbered rather than named but for some reason do not seem to be numbered chronologically with respect to geography. Arriving at the hostel, finally, we checked in and I put Sam to bed.

Sihanoukville: A Little Piece of Paradise

The journey to Sihanoukville (Cambodia) from Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) was one of the longest days of travelling of my entire trip to Asia. It began at 8am when my travel companion Sam and I were met at our hostel by a Vietnamese man who led us to our bus. It turned out to be about a 10 minute walk from the hostel, which we weren't expecting. At 8am, with heavy bags and not enough sleep, this was not particularly welcome. We got to the bus and hung around for a while as luggage was piled onto the bus, and tickets were handed out. It was at this point that it became apparent that some people on the bus had got a ticket all the way to Sihanoukville, whereas we were scheduled to get off in Phnom Penh and make our own way onto another bus. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

The bus took a couple of hours to get to the border, where we had to get out of the bus, unload our bags and carry them through border control to leave Vietnam, followed by immigration and visa check for Cambodia. The bus driver sorted most of this out for us and it was easy, although rather boring. I braved the toilets on the Cambodian side, and wished I hadn't. Eventually, we got back on the bus and drove for only about another half an hour before stopping at a run-down cafe for lunch. I didn't fancy anything on offer so I bought a can of coke and some crisps for later. Back on the bus, we proceeded to Phnom Penh, where we arrived about 3pm. Here, many of the passengers were taken to their next bus, continuing on to Sihanoukville on the coast. We found a timetable on display and worked out that there was a bus in 20 minutes. So I left Sam to wait for our bags to be unloaded from the bus and went to queue for tickets. The queue took forever, people kept pushing in and chatting to the lady behind the screen for ages. Eventually I got to the front of the queue and she told me that the bus, which was now leaving in just 5 minutes, was full. Thankfully, she sold me a ticket for the next bus after that, but we'd have to wait till 5pm for it. I agreed, paid and found Sam and our bags again. We decided we should try and get some food and stock up on a few essentials, so we hauled our bags across the busy road to a small supermarket and then across to a fairly unpleasant-looking restaurant, the only thing we could see nearby, and ate some questionable noodles. In all fairness, they didn't make us sick, so I'll consider that a win. We killed a couple of hours and got back on the bus for the final time.

Ho Chi Minh City: But my friends call me Saigon

Nothing could prepare me for the pain of waking myself up at 3am on a Vietnamese sleeper train, scrabbling around in the dark for my belonging and clambering off the train into a dark Ho Chi Minh station. Worse still, we arrived early, so it was an anxious rush to get everything together before getting off the train. Bleery-eyed and confused we piled into taxis to the hotel that my tour had booked. We arrived to find the rooms were not ready yet. Sam and I had a back-up plan, though. We'd booked a hostel. So we got a taxi over to the hostel (which was in the backpacker part of town), only to find the place closed and shuttered up. We'd told them we'd be arriving around this time. Desperately we banged on the metal shutter. We waited. Thankfully, a sleepy-looking receptionist appeared and let us in. Our room wouldn't be ready until 10am, though, so we could have a different room until then. Fine. We got into our small room, with a broken air conditioning unit and partially functional bathroom door, and immediately fell asleep.

Later that day we dragged ourselves out of bed and down to a restaurant just down the street where we refueled on a delicious full English breakfast. Then we headed out on our first mission - trying to track down a post office to send some of our (now overflowing) collection of souvenirs home. We got directions to the central post office from our hostel and decided we could walk there from the hostel, which, as it turns out, we could quite easily. It took a bit of finding, though. First we wandered into the center of town and passed a shockingly western complement of highstreet stores. Following the map we found ourselves on a quieter road just a block or two away from the busy highstreet, and eventually located a rather unassuming building which we determined must the be post office. It was the weekend though, and the post office was most definitely closed.

Sleeper to Ho Chi Minh

Another night, another sleeper train. Of to my final destination in Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City