It was really nice to see them both and we had a really pleasant evening catching up over a bbq in the yard of their lovely flat (the rain had stopped by this time). The next day we got up quite promptly and after a nice breakfast we headed into town to visit the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, both of which we really enjoyed. After a great lunch Edd (our personal chauffeur for the weekend!) drove us to the top of a lookout point in the city, which was really nice. Canberra is a bit of an odd place – despite being the capital of such a big country it is quite small, with a population similar to that of York or Leeds in the UK, much smaller than cities such as Sydney or Melbourne – and it is exceptionally green and quiet, with no highrise buildings. Indeed, from the lookout point it was quite hard to see exactly where the city, which is also known as the ‘bush capital’, was! Of course this has the benefit of giving the city a very pleasant, clean and relaxed feel, and we certainly enjoyed our day sightseeing. Later on in the afternoon we visited the impressive and moving war memorial museum, before drinking some wine by the lake then going out for excellent Chinese food followed by a comedy show (which was Hazel and Edd’s treat – thanks guys!). It was ages since we had had a ‘night out’ involving going to a proper venue such as a comedy club and we really enjoyed it. Somewhat to our surprise we saw adverts at the comedy club for a number of other comedians that we are familiar with from the Edinburgh festival, such as Jason Byrne, Danny Bhoy and Jimeoin. They were all due to be playing Canberra in coming weeks, presumably as part of the run-up to the Adelaide festival, which is apparently quite similar to the Edinburgh festival.

We were quite tired from a busy day of sightseeing so collapsed gratefully into bed on the Saturday night, only to have to get up horribly early on the Sunday morning to get the 7.30am bus back to Bateman’s bay (there is only one bus a day in each direction so we had no choice). Poor Hazel and Edd had to get up too as they drove us to the bus station – no fun on a Sunday morning. We were able to snooze all the way back down the road but were rather disappointed when we arrived to find that the weather by the coast was dismal – 17c and rainy. What a contrast to the previous week of 40c! It was only 10am and we had planned to pick up our bikes and cycle on, but after two hours sat in coffee shops the weather clearly wasn’t brightening, indeed if anything the rain was getting heavier, so we took the decision to find the cheapest motel we could in town, and spend the day relaxing in the hope that the weather would be better the next day (which it was forecast to be). Fortunately for the sake of our wallet we found a reasonably priced room above a pub where we holed up for the rest of the day. We were a bit more tired from all the cycling and from a busy weekend in Canberra than we had realised, and so really it was a good thing we ended up having to stay still for a day as we certainly appreciated the rest.

In the evening we went out for a dinner of fish and chips. Bateman’s Bay definitely seems to be more of a weekend place and was absolutely dead on a Sunday evening – we were lucky to find somewhere open for dinner! When we returned we had a big shock when we got to the corridor of our hotel and switched on the light – the occupant of the room next door was lying face down, half-naked and pretty much unconscious on the corridor floor, surrounded by vomit. We ran to get help from the hotel staff, who provided first aid and called an ambulance. It seemed to be nothing worse than a serious case of too much to drink, but we were a little shocked when the ambulance men recognised the woman – who was staying at the hotel alone – from earlier in the week, when she had been picked up for a similar reason. She had a serious black eye and other bruises, which she claimed were from falling off a bike, but the hotel staff and paramedics thought it far more likely that she had been badly beaten up – presumably by her partner – the week before and had come to a cheap hotel in Bateman’s Bay to hide out and drown her sorrows for a few days. A very, very sad case.

The hotel staff were very good about the whole situation, being very kind to the woman in question (including agreeing to look after her dog that she was devoted to and had brought with her despite it not being allowed in the hotel, while she was in hospital), quickly cleaning up the mess, and giving us a new room away from the vomit on the floor outside our previous hotel room. We felt pretty sorry for the poor bar girl that had been working alone in the bar downstairs (it was dead quiet as it was a Sunday evening) and had had to deal with the whole situation largely by herself, including cleaning up the mess and sorting out the dog – beyond the call of duty in our view! We offered to help but she wouldn’t let us, so in the end we left her to it and retired to bed. The next morning the owner of the hotel insisted on giving us our money back, saying ‘you shouldn’t have to put up with that sort of thing’. Totally unnecessary as it clearly wasn’t the hotel’s fault, and in our view they had done everything possible to minimise the impact on us. But they wouldn’t take no for an answer so we ended up accepting the money back. Really very kind of them.

After that little dramatic and sobering episode we cycled on towards the town of Nowra, 120km away. It was cloudy and quite cool but with no rain, so that was perfect. Now that we were getting close to Sydney we found ourselves getting more and more beeps and friendly waves on the road (courtesy of our cycling tops that say ‘London to Sydney by bike’ on them) and lots of people coming up and chatting to us when we stopped. This friendly attitude – which we have experienced frequently in Australia – is really nice and has certainly enhanced our overall experience of this country. The going was, as ever, really quite hilly but with fresh legs it wasn’t too bad, and we reached Nowra by mid-afternoon. The town itself is quite large and commercial, in stark contrast to the small and beautiful beachside resorts we were able to stay at further down the coast. However the campsite we stayed at was nicely located by the river, and was full of brightly coloured parrots which were nice to look at and listen to – the only downside being that their squawking woke us up horribly early the next morning!

The next day was our last full day of cycling, before the final hop into the city of Sydney itself. It still didn’t feel quite real that the trip was so nearly over. This was especially true as we had been warned by people as far back as Melbourne that the area around Wollongong – the last big town before Sydney and our destination for the night – was extremely hilly., and so we didn’t want to take the attitude of ‘we’re nearly there’ until we had got that bit over with! Our route for the day took us along the so-called ‘Grand Pacific Drive’, which sticks firmly to the coast and is very scenic. The first 20km or so were almost flat which was nice for a change! That all changed when we reached the stunning seaside town of Gerroa – the section between Gerroa and Kiama was full of hills that were just stupidly long and steep! We diverted into Kiama to see the blow-hole that the town is famous for, but were disappointed as it wasn’t very windy and the tide was somewhat out so there wasn’t really anything to look at. Still, it was a nice spot for lunch before continuing on towards Wollongong. At this point we decided to rejoin the main highway, as gradients on major roads tend to be much gentler than on minor roads. Despite being a dual carriageway, the main road had a dedicated bike lane and was fine to cycle on, at least as far as Unandarra where we had to leave the main road as bikes were not allowed on the section into Wollongong. This wasn’t a problem as there was a parallel road that we could take that was nice and quiet. Once we got to Wollongong we decided to rejoin the Grand Pacific Drive and continue as far as the town of Bulli, which according to our map contained the last campsite before getting into Sydney itself. This proved to be a great spot, right on a fabulous beach. The afternoon was quite hot so even though we didn’t arrive until 4pm it was definitely warm enough for a quick dip in the crystal-clear surf before having a dinner of barbecued steak and red wine – steak and wine are about the only two things that are cheaper in Australia than the UK so we feel like we should make the most of it! All in all a great end to our last full day of cycling.

We set off early the next morning as we knew we had some more big hills ahead of us, and wanted to be in in plenty of time to meet Dave (Pete’s brother) and his partner Mark at 2pm on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, as we had arranged. The first 20km were very nice but very steep as the road wound along the beautiful coastline through several rather nice and posh-looking Wollongong suburbs. Once we got to the town of Stanwell Park the road started to go upwards towards the top of the escarpment that separates that strip of coast from inland. Unfortunately it was super steep – at least 15% we reckon – so we had to walk up at least half of it as our legs just weren’t up to the challenge! A bit of a shame to have to walk on our last day but there you go. Still it didn’t take too long and once we got to the top we were rewarded with great views along the bay. The top of the hill is a popular spot for paragliders to take off so we spent some time watching them prepare their stuff before taking off and swooping down to the beach below.

At this point the road split, with one way going to Sydney along the freeway, and the other following a longer route to Sydney through the Royal National Park. We weren’t sure if we could cycle on the freeway, and besides we figured that even if we could it wouldn’t be much fun, so opted for the national park route. This was a great way to go, as there were virtually no cars on the road, which ran through a scenic forest, despite being only 50km or so from Sydney. This road only got us to within 20km of the city though, after which we were forced to join the freeway for the last bit. This proved to be fine though, as again there was a dedicated bike lane, and we were soon crossing Botany Bay, within sight of the CBD. As the traffic got busier and slower on this last section we had quite a few people beeping their horns and waving, or shouting things like ‘good on you’ and ‘almost there’ out their car windows, courtesy of our customised cycling tops. We still couldn’t quite believe it ourselves that we were almost there but it was really nice having that sort of support on the last bit. We didn’t actually have a detailed map of Sydney but figured it would be easy enough to find the Opera House. Rather amusingly this wasn’t quite the case, largely due to Christine’s erroneous opinion that it was in Darling Harbour, leading us to follow signs for there, when in fact it is located next to Circular Quay and the Harbour Bridge. After getting a bit lost in Sydney’s CBD around Darling Harbour we asked a few times and eventually found our way to the right area. It was quite something swooping down the hill towards the Opera House!

We got there to find that Dave and Mark had thoughtfully set up a ‘finishing line’ ribbon for us to  cycle through, much to the amusement of the multitude of tourists around. Unfortunately the security guards didn’t take so kindly to it and came running when they saw the ribbon and banner appear – they probably thought it was some sort of protest or something. However we clocked what was happening and pedalled quickly through the ribbon before the security guards could stop us! Christine was first through the ribbon but Pete would like to point out that this was only because he slowed down to let her catch up, only to have her whizz past. Well`, as they say, if you snooze you lose!

So, that was the end of our mammoth cycling trip. We dismounted, and after the obligatory photo session we headed to the botanical gardens with Dave and Mark, to celebrate with the champagne they had kindly provided for the occasion. We then walked back with them to their nearby flat, put the bikes on their roof terrace, and, well that was that. Quite a strange feeling knowing that the bikes are now going to be packed up to be transported home, and quite possibly left packed up for a while after our return!

Following our arrival into Sydney on the 9th of February, we are currently enjoying a couple of weeks ‘holiday’ before we fly home. So far we have rented a car for a really enjoyable three day road trip up the coast of New South Wales (amazing to be able to cover 100km in just an hour or so (not so many speed cameras round here!), and to be able to fly up hills with no effort whatsoever!!), and are currently spending a few relaxing days at O’Reilly’s, a lovely rainforest retreat, a wonderful post-trip treat courtesy of Christine’s parents. From here we fly back to Sydney where we have a few days before heading home to the joys of winter, not to mention the fun of finding not only jobs but somewhere to live – it is going to be an interesting and busy time for us! We are however really looking forward to seeing our friends and family again – it has been a long time.

In conclusion, it really has been an amazing year. It is almost scary to think how quickly a year can go by in our ‘ordinary’ lives, with so little of note happening. As it is we will never forget the last eleven months and all the extraordinary experiences we have had. Even now we can’t quite believe we cycled some 16,500 km through some fairly extreme terrain and hugely diverse cultures in 24 countries, some of which we would never have even contemplated visiting prior to the trip. Now seems a good opportunity to thank everybody that has helped or supported us along the way. Support has come in the form of friends and family who have supported us either by email and in some cases coming and visiting us en route, which was hugely welcome and appreciated. It has also come from the huge number of complete strangers that have been so kind to us along the way, offering us everything from countless cups of tea to a roof over our heads, to lifts when we broke down, and just about anything else they thought we might need, even if they clearly needed it more than us. To all of you, a hearty tessekur ederim/merci/spasiba/rachmat/xie xie/kupchai lai-lai/khawn-un-kah/terim kasih – in other words, THANK YOU! Your generosity and kind-heartedness really made the trip for us.

We would also like to thank all those that sponsored our efforts, and helped us raise almost 2000 pounds so far for our chosen charities, Mary’s Meals and Medecins Sans Frontieres. If you haven’t donated yet, it’s not too late, see the links on the right hand side of our website.

So, I guess all that remains to say is ‘That’s all folks’. We sincerely hope that you have enjoyed reading our blog, and we hope that we may have inspired at least some of you to get out there and have an adventure or two. You won’t regret it for a second, we promise.

THE END

The next morning we set off in the direction of the town of Orbost, around 100km away. We weren’t loving cycling on the Princes’ Highway, so when we saw a turning off to a so-called ‘rail trail’ that also led to Orbost, we decided to take it. These rail-trails exist where old disused railway tracks have been removed, leaving just the path the rail ran along behind. The path is now maintained as a cycling and hiking route, providing a flat and traffic-free path across the countryside. Definitely much nicer than cycling on the road. The only downside is that the surface is unsealed, which slowed our progress a bit, but that was fine as the sealed road was probably no faster as it was quite hilly. The path was very quiet, which enabled us to see quite a bit of wildlife, including several echidnas (like porcupines) and lots of parrots. One aspect of the wildlife that we didn’t enjoy though was the numerous spider webs stretched across the path in the more remote sections that nobody else had been down recently. Getting a facefull of spiderweb when cycling at speed is not enjoyable at all and very nearly resulted in both of us falling off our bikes as we frantically clawed at our faces worried that we might have a big nasty spider on us along with the web. Yuck!

Another issue slowing our progress was that Christine kept getting punctures on her rear wheel. We had recently replaced the tyre on that wheel as the previous one was wearing thin, but the only spare we were carrying at the time was one of the Schwalbe Supremes that I have complained about in previous blogs. It didn’t help that the spare inner tubes we now have have all been patched quite a few times and so are reaching the end of their lifespan – really we should have bought more but we didn’t appreciate how bad the problem would be and so hadn’t bothered when we were in Melbourne. Now that we were in the back end of nowhere with no bike shop for hundreds of kilometres we regretted that oversight, as the combination of the extremely puncture prone Schwalbe Supremes (never ever buy this tyre!!) and the old inner tubes resulted in about 8 punctures over two days – extremely frustrating. Eventually we swapped the tyre and inner tube from Christine’s rear wheel with those from Pete’s front wheel, as the front wheel is much less likely to puncture than the rear. Despite the fact that the tyre now on Christine’s rear wheel (a Schwalbe Marathon Plus) has travelled over 12,000km or so, it has not punctured once since, which shows just how good it is compared to the Supreme tyre.

Anyway we reached the small town of Orbost in the late afternoon and spent a pleasant night in the campsite there. The campsite owner, who was very friendly and chatty, warned us that the next day was due to be extremely hot – 40c – and suggested we do things the ‘Aussie way’, which is to set off really early in the morning (rather than the lazy ‘European’ way which involves getting up late). As we had not found the heat a problem so far – it had got to almost 40c on our way into Orbost, but the fresh breeze and frequent shade made it feel quite bearable – we chuckled to ourselves a bit and thought ‘well, we are European, and we are not going to get out of bed at 5am unless we really feel we have to!’ So the next day we got up at our normal time and set off at around 9am. What a mistake that was – when will we learn not to ignore local advice?! The road was quite unshaded, there was no breeze, it was very very hilly, and overall we got extremely hot – we were certainly soon wishing we had set off at daybreak after all. It didn’t help that there were virtually no facilities between Orbost and our destination, Cann River, only one hotel about halfway where we were able to stop and buy a cold drink. The hotel owners were a tad unfriendly and unhelpful, looking rather askance at us when we only ordered a drink (we had sandwiches in our bag for later on in the afternoon), and not seeming too enthusiastic to let us fill our water bottles up with tap water. A bit rubbish considering how hot it was and the fact that they were the only source of drinking water for us all day (in fact any water – filtering river water isn’t even an option round here as all the rivers dry up in summer) – something they would have been very aware of.

The afternoon was really hard work – we felt like we were in a furnace. To make things worse, this section of the Princes’ Highway is particularly busy with trucks in the afternoon. Considering that the road is a narrow, windy, hilly single-lane carriageway, we just couldn’t believe the speed at which everyone drives on it, particularly the truck drivers – definitely well over 100 km/hour. On several occasions we were literally forced off the road when a truck behind us could not overtake as something was coming the other way, and absolutely could not stop in time because of the speed it was going at. What also surprised us is that there were no speed cameras in evidence – in fact we have not seen one in over 700km of riding on the Prince’s highway, despite the fact that just about every vehicle is breaking the speed limit (85 km/h, less on bends and hills) most of the time. We heard later on that when the police carry out (infrequent) mobile speed checks in the area, it is normal for lorries to be found to be doing 130 km/h. We find it incredibly disappointing that this situation is allowed to continue as it is so dangerous. All it takes is for a fast-moving lorry to round a bend into a slower-moving vehicle (including cyclists!) for carnage to ensue. All in all we consider the narrower sections of the Princes Highway in the afternoons (we think the trucks mostly set off from Melbourne in the mornings) to be one of the most dangerous roads we have cycled on in the world – we don’t recommend it. Unfortunately there is no alternative – there are very few roads in the area, and none others that run along the coast.

All in all we were very happy to reach the campsite at the small settlement of Cann River. After prolonged cold showers and lots of drinking of cold water to rehydrate, we set up camp, had dinner, then investigated the local pub to watch the final of the Australian Open on TV. Andy Murray was in it, so Pete wore his Scotland shirt, much to the amusement of the few other patrons of the bar. Unfortunately being such a quiet place, the bar shut at 8.30pm so we did not get to watch the end of the match! The next morning, having learned our lesson the day before, we set off nice and early, despite the fact that we had only a very short distance to do (50km) to our destination, the small town of Genoa. We would have liked to go further but after Genoa there was almost 70km of hilly road with absolutely no facilities, which would have made the day unbearably long overall. We got into the tiny village of Genoa – population around 100 – by 10.30am and found the campsite, which we were pleased to find was free. What we weren’t pleased to find was that the shop we had expected to be there had closed a while ago, so we had no food for lunch or dinner. We had carried enough food for dinner at Cann River, as we knew the shops would be shut when we got there (as it was a Sunday evening) but had counted on being able to stock up again in Genoa. There was, thankfully a hotel/motel with a bar that said it served meals, and a small cafe. We tried the bar for lunch, but the rather haughty proprietress told us they only served food in the evening. We asked where we could get a meal from and she told us we would have to go to Mallacoota, a town 25km away in the wrong direction. When we pointed out we were on bicycles and so couldn’t do that she just shrugged and went back to chatting to the local customers. Now if we ran a bar in the middle of nowhere and two hungry cyclists came in looking for food, even if we didn’t have the kitchen open or whatever, we would offer to rustle up a sandwich or something. Not hard, is it? But clearly this was a local bar for local people and we just weren’t welcome.

Disaster (or just a long hungry afternoon) was averted when two other customers in the bar, who had stopped for a break on their drive back to Melbourne, took pity on us and gave us some food they had left over – just some fruit but certainly very welcome. We also realised shortly afterwards that the cafe across the way was open and serving sandwiches. Why the owner of the bar hadn’t pointed us there to start with mystified us but the reason became clear when we got chatting to the much friendlier, if slightly scary, owner of the cafe. She is from Germany originally and took over the cafe in Genoa some ten years ago.It seems that she and the woman that runs the pub have never exactly seen eye-to-eye and indeed were at that time involved in a protracted legal wrangle over what seemed to us a rather trivial matter. The cafe owner told us that the owner of the bar was a bit of a redneck harridan who dislikes people who aren’t from the area, and particularly those from other countries or those who look a bit different (dread locks, tattoos etc) – apparently in the past there have been numerous occasions where she has refused to serve or offer accommodation to people she does not like the look of, despite being the only food/accommodation for some distance around. Another tactic is to insist that people she doesn’t approve of have to pay double to sit inside the pub rather than outside. You just can’t make people like that up! Clearly we had passed muster when we went in looking for lunch, but only just – when we went back for dinner we were repeatedly asked if we wouldn’t like to sit outside and when we said no as it was hot (and they had air-con inside), our food was served in a different room away from the other, local patrons (all two of them), who were allowed to eat in the bar. We are amazed that places such as that can survive, when they appear to do their best to put off their customers. All we can say is shame on you, owner of the Genoa pub and hotel/motel – we only hope that one day you find yourself the recipient of such hospitality (unlikely as she was the sort of person never to leave the area).

Back at the campsite things were a little more cheery as we bumped into three other cycle tourists who were travelling in the opposite direction to us. It was good to be able to exchange tips on the road ahead. We got up early the next day, prepared for a bit of a slog to the town of Eden on the coast. We were a little concerned about our lack of supplies – other than the snacks donated to us the day before, we had little in the way of sustenance to keep us going over the 70km ahead. To counter this we had a big breakfast of the food we had on us – baked beans and pasta, which thankfully saw us through to Eden without a problem. The ride was uneventful, but very hilly and quite dull, so we were quite glad when we reached the coast and the town. We found a great campsite right by a fantastic beach, and spent a happy afternoon lazing on the beach and splashing in the crystal clear surf. That evening the wind picked up significantly, so much so that people round about us started frantically tightening the guy lines on their tents etc. Our tent is designed to be very stable in windy conditions, and we had fortuitously pitched it in exactly the right direction relative to the wind, so we had no problems. The temperature of the wind was incredible though, so hot it was like a hairdryer on full power – not very nice at all. The poor couple next to us were clearly not used to camping and had not put up their tent very securely – soon they were panicking and even though Pete offered to help they decided just to collapse the tent in the hope the wind would die down. Unfortunately it didn’t and they spent the night sleeping in a collapsed tent – they didn’t look very impressed and we wonder if they will camp again in the future!

The strong wind was very noisy and as a consequence we slept badly, and were not happy when the alarm went off at 5.30am the next morning. We knew we had a long couple of days ahead of us if we were to get to the town of Bateman’s Bay by Thursday, in time to get the bus for a side-trip to Canberra to see Hazel, an old uni friend of Christine’s, for the weekend. Thankfully the strong wind had brought a change in the weather and it was somewhat cloudy and much cooler, so we made good progress over the many hills as far as the town of Tathra, where we stopped for lunch on the beautiful beach. From there it was only 40km to Bermagui, where we planned to stop for the night, so we set off at a relaxed pace after lunch. This was a bit of a mistake as we had underestimated both the hills, their steepness, and how tired we were after four days of hot, hilly cycling. It seemed to take forever to get to Bermagui, but we were rewarded when we did by beautiful, empty beaches – it amazes us that such nice beaches are so commonplace in Australia, and that most of them seem to be very quiet most of the time. We set up camp just in time for the clouds that had gathered to burst – not good but not the end of the world as there was a nice covered bbq area near our tent where we could sit out the rain. It stopped for a while and we thought that was that, but then a huge thunderstorm started and the rain became torrential. Now our tent is waterproof, but any tent in those conditions is likely to let in at least some water, and we were not looking forward to a potentially soggy night. To mitigate this we moved our tent into the bbq area – there was thankfully plenty of floor space to allow us to do this, to keep out the rain, although this mean sleeping on concrete – not ideal. However, it turned out we didn’t have to sleep there after all – as \we were just getting ready for bed, a very kind old man staying in a permanent cabin opposite offered us his campervan – which he was not using – to sleep in for the night. We very gladly accepted and had an absolutely blissful, dry night’s sleep – wonderful!

The next morning it was still drizzling but we decided to get on with it and set off quite promptly. As it happened the day brightened somewhat and we didn’t get rained on at all, much to our relief. We knew about Cyclone Yasi hitting Queensland the night before, so felt very grateful to have got off lightly with the weather system that had come across eastern Australia. Once again the road was horribly hilly and we felt ourselves really struggling in the afternoon as the sun came out properly and it got really quite hot again. Our progress over the hills – many of which were so steep we had to walk up them – was at times painfully slow and it took us until 5pm to reach Bateman’s Bay. This town is really quite touristy and in our view not that nice, and the campsites more expensive than elsewhere, but as we were getting the bus to Canberra from here the next afternoon it didn’t make sense to move on. The campsite we found was very quiet – we were the only guests – but the owners were friendly and the quietness allowed us to have a really good night’s sleep, which we really needed after six long days on the bikes.

Our bus wasn’t until 3pm the next day so we had a very lazy breakfast of eggs and bacon cooked on the barbecue followed by some time packing up our bikes – we had arranged with the campsite that we would leave them there until our return on Sunday. As we knew we had to buy our bus tickets in advance – you can’t buy them on the bus – we then wandered to the tourist office to get them. There they told us that to book through the tourist office incurs a booking fee of $5, which we could avoid if we called the bus company and paid using our credit card instead. Fine, we said, pulling out the Aussie mobile that Pete’s brother Dave has very kindly lent us for our time down under. The woman then pointed out that it would be very expensive calling from a mobile, but very cheap from a landline. At this point we are sure that if we were in any of the other countries we have visited on our journey, the tourist office would have happily let us use their phone – even if we paid them for it. But that wasn’t happening, instead they they suggested we find a pay phone, but couldn’t tell us where the nearest one was – as the assistant tittered, she couldn’t remember the last time she had had to use a landline. So we spent 20 minutes walking around until we found one. All in all it was a complete waste of time going to Tourist Information, they weren’t exactly helpful! Anyway it was fine once we found a payphone and called, and the bus turned up nice and promptly to take us to Canberra to visit Hazel and her boyfriend Edd who are working out here at the moment.

After changing planes in Kuala Lumpur, we arrived into Melbourne the following morning. Quite a culture shock! Gone is the politeness and gentleness seen so often in Asia, replaced with the brusqueness and coldness so common in the west. This was immediately evidenced by the behaviour of the woman controlling the (ridiculously long) queue for immigration, who did nothing but shout at everybody in the queue as if she were herding cattle. Woe betide any poor person who did not understand her shouted commands and did the wrong thing – she even sent people back to the end of the queue if they had not filled in their arrival cards properly, and threatened to call the police in when a poor old man chose to put his bag on the floor while waiting rather than carry it. A bit later on in the baggage hall a Chinese lady was on her mobile by the exit, which attracted the attention of the security guard who yelled at her repeatedly in the face to turn the phone off – the woman didn’t understand and kept trying to gesture that she was waiting for her friend who was still collecting luggage. The security guard was threatening to arrest her and all sorts by the time she finally got the message and turned the phone off. We’re pretty sure the whole thing could have been avoided if the security guard had just asked her politely rather than yelling at her. What a welcome to Australia!

The second thing to shock us was how expensive everything is here – and we don’t just mean compared to the cheapness of things in Asia – because of the exchange rate, we are not exaggerating when we say that almost everything is more expensive, sometimes literally twice or three times the price, than in the UK. For example in a very average bar in Melbourne half a pint of shandy will set you back 3 quid – ouch! We expected Australia to be as expensive as the UK, but not more so. Needless to say we were very happy to have our tent back so we could camp as much as possible to keep costs down. At least Australia has the weather for camping, as well as campsites all over the place.

We had booked a hostel in St Kilda, a beach suburb in Melbourne. Because the Australian Open was on at the same time as we were there most places we had tried to book had been full, hence us ending up at the distinctly unappealing Home Travellers Motel – just the place to stay if you want to do nothing but drink all day and party noisily all night, and don’t care about anything being clean and/or tidy. Not the place to stay if you want to spent a quiet weekend catching up with your brother/brother-in-law (Pete’s brother Dave, who lives in Sydney at present, had come down to see us in Melbourne for the weekend), and getting a reasonable amount of sleep. It is times like this that we look at each other and think ‘when did we get so old?’, but there we go, that sort of place isn’t our favourite type of scene anymore. Nonetheless we had a really nice weekend seeing Dave and adjusting to life in Australia. One of the things that excited us the most on our first day was going into a proper supermarket – the first time in ages! Makes you realise how lucky we are at home. No more schlepping round six different unfamiliar shops just to get stuff for dinner – instead all of our favourite things under one air-conditioned roof!

Our hostel was near the beach, and the weather was great – 30c and sunny, so we had fun chilling out on the beach as well as seeing some of Melbourne’s sights, etc. On the Saturday evening we bought fish and chips and a bottle of Oyster Bay for dinner, and ate and drank on the beach as the sun went down – really nice. But of course it was soon time to move on, and get back on the bikes. On the Sunday afternoon Dave flew back to Sydney, while we took the train west to the town of Warrnambool, at the western end of the Great Ocean Road. We were pleasantly surprised to find that not only are trains cheap in Victoria, they are very bike friendly – plenty of space to put them on, no need for a reservation and no additional fees. Because it was late when we arrived into Warrnambool we elected to stay in the backpackers rather than try to put up our tent in the dark. Besides, in this area all of the campsites are well-equipped caravan parks, with facilities such as pools etc – aimed more at families than the budget traveller. It is actually a similar price to get two dorm bed as it is to get a piece of grass to pitch your tent on! Unfortunately wild camping in this region is very clearly illegal and frowned upon – there are signs everywhere saying ‘no camping, penalties apply’. We guess that as this area is very popular with surfers they would have a problem if they did allow it, but it is a shame as we do like wild camping. On the plus side Australia is full of campsites, most of them much cheaper than those on the Great Ocean Road, which invariably offer good clean facilities, including a camp kitchen with a barbecue for guests to use. So we are happy enough to stay in campsites.

Setting off from Warrnambool the next morning we were surprised to find how cold it was – the sun had been replaced by clouds and there was a cool breeze blowing, necessitating us to dig out our fleeces to cycle in for the first time in ages. The first 50km of cycling was pleasant but not particularly special, as it passed mainly through farmland as the road wound its way towards the sea. Unfortunately we had a strong headwind the whole way, which made it quite hard work despite us having fresh legs after a week off the bikes. But by the time we reached the coast the sun had come out and the wind dropped, allowing us a very pleasant afternoon cycling along the dramatic coastline in the sunshine. We stopped at most of the viewpoints, including the famous 12 Apostles (actually there are now only 7 Apostles as 5 have crumbled into the sea over the years!), meaning we made fairly slow progress to our destination for the night, a campsite in the small village of Princetown. This was a great little campsite, very rural and relatively basic, but cheap and with a nice relaxed feel to it. Much to our delight as we were setting up our tent we realised there was a family of kangaroos in the field right next to us! They were quite interested in us (or more likely, our dinner) so we were glad for the fence separating us, as the largest one was bigger than Pete and could no doubt have squashed our tent if it wanted to! This campsite also allowed us to have an open fire, which was really nice to sit around as the evening was again quite cold.

The description of the following day’s route in our ‘Cycling Australia’ guidebook sounded pretty nasty – a ‘relentless, wicked, blinding uphill slog’ – great fun! But when we looked at the elevation profiles we were amused to see that in total the hill in question was only 450m high – absolutely nothing compared to what we had done previously on this trip. We set off, smirking slightly as we anticipated flying over the hill with no problems. Oh dear, when will we learn?! It seems that a couple of months cycling in largely flat SE Asia resulted in us forgetting how hard it can be slogging up a hill, particularly when the roads are steep (as they are here). Not only that, the road went up and down a lot before finally climbing up to the top, so in fact our total ascent was much more than 450m. By the time we got to the village of Lavers Hill at the top we were very ready for a lunch of healthy Australian fare – chip butties! The afternoon wasn’t much better – more hills, combined with a strong headwind and cold, persistent rain. Not quite the spinning-along-easily-in- the-sunshine that we imagined cycling in Australia would be like! By the time we got to the pretty little town of Apollo Bay we were quite cold and wet, so we decided to treat ourselves to a night in the very nice Surfside hostel (actually only slightly more expensive than the campsite anyway), which was right across from a beautiful surf beach. The hostel was quite old-fashioned but very homely and relaxed, with friendly helpful management. It turns out this part of the world quite often gets quite cold and wet so the beds were fitted with electric blankets and there were baths as well as showers in the bathrooms – heaven! After a hot bath and a couple of cups of hot chocolate we felt very much restored and spent a nice evening having a big dinner and chatting to other people in the hostel, before heading to bed early for a well-deserved good night’s sleep.

We were relieved the next morning to see that the rain had stopped – there is nothing worse than setting off to cycle in the rain – and in fact soon after we started cycling the clouds cleared and we had a day of wonderful sunshine. It was January 26 – Australia Day – so there were lots of people out enjoying the beaches in the nice weather. The cycling was much easier going, quite undulating but nothing too bad, and with lots of beautiful beaches to admire. At Kennett river we stopped to see the koalas that live in the eucaplytus trees in the area – very cute! We had lunch by the beach in the pretty seaside town of Lorne, which was heaving with holiday makers, many of them having barbecues on the beach. Seeing as everything was so expensive round here – the Great Ocean Road was particularly bad as it is both a bit remote and very touristy – we opted for simple chip butties for lunch. Pete went off to buy the chips, and quite amusingly came back with enough chips to feed a whole family – it seems that a large portion over here is indeed a truly large portion – seriously, it weighed at least a kilo! No wonder they have a problem with obesity in this country, with portion sizes like that. Even with our big appetites we only managed to eat about a quarter of the chips!

The afternoon found us cycling through ‘Surf Coast Shire’ – past some of the best surfing beaches in Australia (apparently), including the famous Bells Beach (where the movie Point Break was filmed). Quite hot and hilly but really nice. By the time we reached the end of the Great Ocean Road, near Torquay, we were quite tired and definitely ready to stop for a cold beer and a barbie. Unfortunately this is prime holiday territory, as it is close to Melbourne, and the first campsite we stopped at wanted AU$60 (about 40 quid) for a pitch! We weren’t impressed with that and cycled on to the small village of Jan Juc where we found a campsite for $40 – still expensive but clearly we weren’t going to do much better than that so there we go. As we were checking in a family overheard us discussing our trip and approached us to ask about it. They – Jeremy, Tamara, daughter Alexandra and boyfriend Alex – were very friendly and were sufficiently interested in our trip that they invited us to join them for dinner – steak sandwiches, yum yum! It was really nice to have some genuine Aussie hospitality, particularly as it was Australia Day, and we spent a very pleasant evening in their company. If you are reading this, thank you!

Our plan for the following day was to cycle as far as the town of Geelong, and from there to take the train into Melbourne; we were aware that Geelong-Melbourne would not be a nice ride (busy and not scenic), and we also wanted the afternoon to do things such as laundry, finalising our tax returns etc. We were able to get the last two beds in the Green Backpackers hostel in central Melbourne, which turned out well as it was heaps better than the Home Travellers Motel – clean, tidy, secure and with loads decent communal space. One of the best things was that it offered free wi-fi. This is a real bonus in Australia, where internet is surprisingly hard to find, and often hugely expensive; outside of major urban centres such as Melbourne, you can expect to pay at least $1 for 10 minutes (the most expensive we have seen was $5 – 3 quid – for 15 mins), and usually the connection is irritatingly slow. So we spent much of the afternoon doing things online that needed to be done, including our tax returns which we finally got sent off.

Despite a poor night’s sleep and the jetlag both Sarah and Becky managed to drag themselves up the next morning at a reasonable hour, and after a leisurely breakfast we headed off to see KL’s main cultural sight, the Masjid Jamek, the most important mosque in Malaysia. We took headscarves etc so we would be able to enter the mosque, but in fact we needn’t have bothered as they provide wonderful wizard-like gowns and scarves for visitors to wear while looking around. We looked quite ridiculous! The mosque was nice but not that exciting, and certainly not as impressive as many of the mosques we have seen on our trip so far, and so we did not spend long there before moving on to look at the colonial area. This is located around what used to be a cricket ground, and is complete with mock-Tudor buildings etc, constructed during Malaysia’s colonisation by Britain. An interesting reminder of the past but all rather out of place these days.

Next on our agenda were the lake gardens, a large park containing, among other things, a large walk-in aviary, a butterfly garden and an orchid garden. We had heard that the Hornbill restaurant by the aviary was good, so we headed there for lunch and indeed we were very impressed. The restaurant has a balcony overlooking the aviary, so while you are eating you can observe lots of impressive birds flying around and indeed sometimes coming and sitting on the balcony rail hoping for some of your lunch! Although lunch was more expensive than we would usually go for, the food was great and it was a really enjoyable experience. We also felt that there was no need to pay the high entrance fee to visit the aviary afterwards, as we had seen most of the birds in it. Definitely recommended! We then spent some time wandering around the orchid garden and the butterfly garden, before deciding that the big black clouds building ominously above us were a warning that we should take shelter back at the hotel for a couple of hours. For dinner we headed to Little India, figuring this would be a good place to eat; in fact we were quite wrong on that front. After an hour wandering around looking for a restaurant and instead only finding sari shops we eventually found a rather basic place by the market. Not quite what we were looking for as it was more Malay than Indian food but it was cheap and tasty so we weren’t complaining. After dinner we once again headed to Chinatown for beer and prawn crackers before collapsing tired into bed (sightseeing is surprisingly hard work, particularly when hot!)

The next day Becky went off to try and buy some new glasses, while Sarah and Christine went for a refreshing swim at the local outdoor pool and Pete did some shopping. We met up in the afternoon to go for a Chinese massage – very welcome therapy for our tired muscles. In the evening we headed up to the KL skytower, which is the highest building in KL and offers great views. Unfortunately it was a little hazy so we couldn’t see too far beyond the city limits. After that we headed off for dinner – having got a definite recommendation for a good Indian restaurant this time – and had a bit of a blow-out meal (i.e., we ordered just about everything on the menu!) in honour of Pete’s birthday, which was the next day.

Sarah and Becky were due to fly up to Krabi early in the afternoon the following day to continue their holiday in Thailand, so we said goodbye to them late in the morning when they headed off to the airport. It had been really nice to catch up with them so we were quite sad to say goodbye. We consoled ourselves by heading to Sunway lagoon, a huge water/theme park complex on the outskirts of KL – a birthday treat for Pete. We had a fun few hours whizzing down various flumes before changing and heading to the theme park for some rollercoaster action – great fun! As it was a Wednesday the complex was quite quiet which was great as it meant the queues were nice and short. It was interesting to note the wide variety of dress worn by women in the water park – everything from skimpy bikinis to full-on ‘burkinis’ (head to toe coverage). Aware of the appropriateness of dressing modestly in a country like Malaysia, Christine had planned to wear her sarong over her bikini for the day, but the rules at the entrance said loose clothing could not be worn. So the sarong went in the locker, only for us to find that most people were ignoring this rule and wearing something over their swimsuits, leaving Christine feeling a little silly. Still it wasn’t a problem as she definitely wasn’t the only one making this slight cultural faux-pas, and nobody seemed to mind.

After a really fun day we took the bus back to KL and packed up in preparation for the ride down to Singapore, for which we had allowed five days. We headed off fairly late with a vague plan of riding as far as Port Dickson. Sarah had kindly brought our tent back out for us so we were now able to stop and camp in the countryside if we wanted, although the frequent heavy downpours in this part of the world meant we were not keen to do that. The ride out of KL was rather too exciting for our liking, as it involved motorways – literally the only type of road available to get out the city. Bikes are allowed on them – indeed at times there is a bike lane to one side – but it is no fun at all negotiating the slip roads! We were quite relieved to be able to exit the motorway onto another road after 30km or so. The road was a little hilly – hard work in that level of humidity – and we were quite tired by the time we reached the seaside resort of Port Dickson. We had heard that the town itself was not that great, but that there were lots of resort-type places strung out along the coast south of the town. In particular we had heard of one resort that had a campground, offering us the opportunity to use the resort facilities cheaply. We arrived at the resort – the Casa Rachado – in the late afternoon, just as the heavens were about to open. Based on this, and the fact that rooms were inexpensive as it was midweek, we opted for a room rather than camping. Quite amusingly we were pretty much the only people staying in the resort so had the great pool and decent beach to ourselves, not to mention the full attention of the staff in the reasonably priced restaurant for dinner. All in all we decided it was quite nice there and so stayed on the next day, as we had time in our schedule to do that. We managed to fill an entire day doing not much at all other than lying by the pool, eating lunch, and admiring the late-afternoon thunderstorm when it came.

Our plan for the next day was to head for the historic town of Melaca, which we thought was around 80km away, but in fact we were able to take a shortcut that reduced the distance to 60km, so we were in before lunchtime. After lunch and a brief whizz round the colourful Chinatown on our bikes we decided to move on to the city of Muar, around 40km further south, to avoid too long a ride the next day. Muar was pleasant enough but uninteresting, and we were happy to spend the evening watching National Geographic which we had on the TV. The next day would be our last in Malaysia, and we hoped to get as close to the border with Singapore as possible, to give us an easy day into Singapore. However our plans were thwarted by a headwind which dogged us for most of the day, and by the time we had cycled 110km to the town of Simpang Renggim (about 70km from the border) we called it a day. This proved to be a wise move as about half an hour after we checked into the hotel the heavens opened and it rained harder than we had seen it rain in a long time. Despite the presence of numerous storm drains on the roads the road quickly flooded and we entertained ourselves looking out our hotel window at the cars almost aquaplaning down the high street. Clearly the drivers here are used to these conditions as they all did an impressive job of maintaining control! Nevertheless we would definitely not have felt safe or happy being on the road in those conditions.

We were due to meet Christine’s friend Graham – who currently lives in Singapore with his wife Charlie, and with who we stayed in Singapore – at 2pm the next day just past the Singapore border, so to give us plenty of time to get there we got up earlier than normal – so early that unfortunately it was still pitch-black outside! It was just getting light by the time we set off at 7.30am and we had a nice quiet ride into Johor Bahru, the border town. On the way we were lucky enough to see lots of monkeys and parrots along the side of the road. After a quick lunch break we headed across the bridge that links Malaysia with the island of Singapore, and through immigration. We had been warned that this might be a protracted and difficult affair – people travelling by bus have to get off the bus and walk, with all of their luggage, up and over the separate pedestrian bridge – hard work with heavy bags as it is quite a long walk. We, however, just joined the motorbike lane and were able to whizz straight though without even getting off our bikes – they have special booths set up to process two-wheeled vehicles – very fast and civilised. This meant we were 45 minutes early to meet Graham, giving us enough time to change some money and grab a couple of banana smoothies. Graham arrived on his rather swanky new racing bike – a very nice bike indeed. He had planned a route involving mostly minor roads through the countryside (of which there is a surprising amount in Singapore) back to his and his wife Charlie’s flat. To our slight embarrassment we found it difficult to keep up with Graham, but then he wasn’t carrying any bags and our bikes are starting to look and feel a bit worn-out now. That’s our excuse anyway!

We were distinctly hot and sweaty from the ride so it was really nice to arrive at Gray and Charlie’s lovely flat, which has a great view and is in a block that has its own very nice swimming pool – great! Once we had refreshed ourselves it was really nice to spend some time catching up with Gray and Charlie, who we hadn’t seen for a while as they have been living and working in Singapore for three years now. That evening, which was a Saturday, they had organised a barbecue at their flat, and had 16 or so friends around. It was really nice and very interesting to meet all their friends and hear about their lives living as ex-pats somewhere like Singapore. Plus the food was great – although we had had access to western food such as KFC or McDonalds for a few weeks now, this was the first time in ages we had the sort of food we would eat back at home – Christine was particularly excited by the mozzarella, which we hadn’t eaten in many months!

The next day we had a lazy morning – we both had tax returns to do, which can thankfully be done online, but which take a good amount of time to make sure you do properly. We got going on those while Gray and Charlie ran some errands, then in the afternoon we went out first for a lunch of paratha and dosai – Singaporean specialities that are delicious – before heading to the botanic gardens for the afternoon. The botanic gardens were really nice, particularly the orchid garden, and were a great place to people-watch – very few people in Singapore have their own garden (most live in flats) so the public parks and gardens are heavily used. Gray and Charlie pointed out the large numbers of Filipino maids out for a stroll – Sunday is typically their one day off in the week. Apparently many of the better-off Singaporeans employ live-in housemaids – who typically come from the Phillipines – indeed most flats are built with an extra tiny living space for just this purpose.

The following day was a Monday so Gray and Charlie headed off to their respective jobs (oh the joy of Monday mornings – not something we are looking forward to returning to!) while we spent the morning doing some more work on our tax returns and enjoying the swimming pool, before heading into the city centre after lunch. We headed first to the Chinatown area, which was nice and busy but a touch cheesy, before wandering down to Boat Quay and across to the colonial area. We ummed and ahhed over whether to have a stupidly expensive Singapore Sling in Raffles hotel – it is kind of the thing to do in Singapore, but is extortionate (around 14 pounds), but then a downpour started and we thought ‘sod it, we’ve earnt it!’ so we enjoyed a cocktail while waiting for the rain to stop. While we were there we got chatting to a nice couple who run a B&B in Milton Keynes, and who were out visiting their daughter who lives out here. They were rather impressed by our trip – so much so that when we first told them the man looked rather astounded and asked ‘does the British press know?!’ We were sorry to have to inform him that well, we did contact the Brisith press but other than our local newspaper they weren’t in general very interested!

After our Singapore Slings we had some time to kill before meeting Gray and Charlie in Little India later on, so we had a drink on Boat Quay, a popular spot for ex-pat city-types to hang out after work. While we were there we witnessed a rather dramatic rescue of two poor window cleaners who had been cleaning the windows of a skyscraper when a sudden gust of wind blew their cage around the corner of the building, where it snagged. It was too firmly stuck to be winched back up to the top, so the fire brigade were called so the window cleaners could be hoisted out the cage and through a window into the building. They were a good 20 storeys up and a good crowd had gathered below to watch events unfold. We saw the first guy successfully rescued, but the second one seemed to be suffering somewhat from vertigo and didn’t want to step out of the cage – can’t blame him really! By the time we had to leave he was still being encouraged to step out by the fireman, but according to the next day’s papers he was eventually successfully rescued. A good bit of drama for us though!

For dinner that night we went to the famous Apollo restaurant for excellent curry served on banana leaves (with cutlery thankfully). According to a big sign in the restaurant they recently won an award for serving the biggest fish head curry (a local delicacy) – it had over 1000 fish heads in it! Not to our taste but each to their own. The next day we decided to check out Singapore zoo, which is famous for being an ‘open concept’ zoo, which means that fences and railings are kept to an absolute minimum, with natural features such as water and rocks separating the animals from the people and each other. This concept really worked for us – we thought it was the best zoo either of us has ever been to. It even has free-ranging monkeys, birds and monitor lizards, which definitely adds to the feeling of being in the wild rather than a zoo. We were also able to see a number of animals being fed, including the very rare white tigers, which was quite something to see. All in all a thoroughly enjoyable day out that was topped off by a visit to one of Singapore’s latest additions to its skyline, the remarkable Marina bay hotel and casino. This consists of 3 skyscrapers side by side, connected at the top by, believe it or not, a structure resembling a ship. At almost 60 storeys high the view from the viewing platform and bar up there is pretty stunning. There is also an infinity pool which looked rather impressive, but that was reserved for hotel use. We poked our heads into the casino for long enough for Pete to lose a whole dollar or two on a slot machine, before heading over to the Arab quarter for dinner. We opted to go Turkish, which we really enjoyed as we both really like Turkish food. After dinner we went to a shisha cafe and shared a water pipe over some apple tea – very pleasant and civilized!

The next day was our final one in Singapore, and indeed in Asia. Quite something as we had been on the Asian continent since we crossed the Bosphorus in Istanbul over six months earlier. The experiences we had in Asia – from the hospitality in countries such as Iran, to the hardships and adventures of Central Asia, the uniqueness of China, and the fun and laidbackness of SE Asia – have really been the defining moments of the trip and will always stay with us. So although we were excited to be getting to Australia, we were certainly sad to leave Asia.

Our flight wasn’t until the evening so we had a leisurely morning packing up, before cycling to a nearby bike shop to get our bikes boxed up for the flight, then taking a taxi to the airport. Changi airport is an exceptionally civilized and well-run airport, so we had quite a pleasant wait for our flight. Unfortunately we had not thought to pack our swimming gear in our hand baggage, or we would have checked out the pool there. We definitely plan to do that in the few hours we have between planes on the way back from Australia though!

Again he seemed so certain we went with his advice, heading up to the boat lagoon marina, only to find that it was a private marina full of yachts! The only way to leave from there on a boat was to hire a yacht – not quite what we had in mind price-wise. We were, naturally, quite annoyed by this stage. After all boat is a very popular way to get to and from Phuket so why does no-one on the island seem to know where the flipping pier is?!! It seems they are just not used to independent travellers in this part of the world; most people take a transfer to the pier from their hotel, which may help to explain the confusion. Anyway back to Phuket town we went, this time we eventually found a sign to the pier we were looking for and hey presto we found it ourselves. Quite a big place with lots of boats and lots of passengers! Having bought our tickets for the following morning, we returned to Phuket town to get a hotel – all in all we had cycled some 70km, to travel just 20km. It had to happen at some stage on the trip we guess!

After a pleasant enough but uninspiring night in Phuket town, we headed to the ferry port nice and early for the boat to Ao Nang beach on the mainland. We contemplated getting the boat further south to Koh Lanta and cycling from there, but that would have involved changing boats and would have felt like cheating a bit too much. In hindsight perhaps we should have done that as we ended up being a bit pushed for time, particularly as the boat took somewhat longer than scheduled. It was a pleasant trip though, certainly a nice way to travel. From Ao Nang we cycled to Krabi, where we had a quick lunch, beforecontinuing south. Our original plan had been to get to Krabi the afternoon before, then to spend the next day cycling as far as Trang, 130km away. Because of the delay with the ferry, we weren’t able to start cycling until 1pm, so there was no chance we were getting all the way to Trang. Instead we made it to a small town around 60km south of Krabi. There was only one small guesthouse in town, and it was quite basic, but it was cheap so that was fine by us. A big thunderstorm started shortly after we arrived, good timing once again!

After an early night we headed off south, deciding to bypass Trang in favour of sticking to quiet roads near the coast. Unfortunately this area does not appear to be very well mapped and it was quite a bit further than our map suggested, so it took longer than anticipated, and we only made it as far as the small town of Yan Ta Kao. Again there was only one hotel in town, again basic but clean and cheap. The twist on this that we subsequently realized is that the hotel appears to double as a brothel – there were lots of skimpily clad ladies hanging around, and each motel style room had a parking spot in front of it with a curtain that could be pulled across to conceal the car behind it. New Year’s in a Thai brothel, memorable for all the wrong reasons! Figuring there wouldn’t be much happening (the Thai new year, in April, is a much bigger celebration), and tired from our cycling, we had a game of scrabble, evicted two enormous cochroaches that invaded the room, then went to bed – very rock and roll! We were wrong about not much happening in town, in fact we might as well have stayed up and joined in as we certainly didn’t get much sleep – fireworks and loud music all over town lasted until the wee hours.

The town certainly looked quite sleepy when we got up earlythe next morning. Our plan was to get as close to the Malaysian border as possible, and after 120km of hot, hilly and headwindy cycling we called it a day in a small town about 20km shy of the border. Southern Thailand is heavily Muslim, which is great as far as we are concerned as Muslims are always really hospitable. Indeed that morning we were called over by the traffic police, only to be offered a cup of coffee and some biscuits! And whenever we were looking for a hotel, rather than just vaguely pointing in the right direction, the person we had asked would almost always get on their moped or bike and show us. Very kind and most appreciated.

The next morning was a Sunday and when we reached the relatively remote border at around 10am we were surprised to find it heaving with activity – it turns out there is a cross-border market on Sundays, which is popular both with tourists and locals. To be honest it didn’t look very inspiring to us – a bit like a car boot sale – so after getting the requisite stamp in our passports we moved quickly on. A big steep hill on just the other side of the border provided a bit of a shock to the system, but we were pleasantly surprised that we seemed to make much lighter work of it than a group of local cyclists – complete with fancy bikes, lots of lycra and no bags – all the cycling over the last year is definitely paying off! We were quite hungry but had no Malaysian currency, and had to cycle 40km to the town of Kangar before we got to an ATM. Because we were so hungry, and we had a bit of a tailwind for the first time since leaving Phuket, we made short work of the ride. After several days in real backwaters in southern Thailand we were delighted to find a KFC, complete with air-conditioning, hooray! After two combo meals each we felt a little more human and carried on with gusto to our destination for the night, the pleasant town of Alor Setar. Again we appreciated the benefits of a more developed country as we were able to find a hotel that was cheap but nonetheless offered air-con and hot water – we hadn’t had a hot shower since Phuket so this was certainly welcome!

We were also pleased to find that English is very widely spoken in Malaysia, making asking directions etc a lot easier. Plus the roads are in good condition and well signposted, so we had no problems the next day covering the 100km to Butterworth, the jumping off point for Georgetown on Pulau Penang. While we would have liked to visit Georgetown, we really didn’t have time (we only had another 4 days to get to KL to meet Pete’s sister Sarah and her friend Becky), so we spent the night on the mainland. Butterworth is a very uninspiring place, your typical seedy port town, with a bit of a nasty undertone. To us it was telling that this is not a Muslim town, which generally feel friendlier and safer to travellers, but a predominantly Chinese one. Malaysia has a fascinating mix of cultures – due to the British (who colonised Malaysia until 1957) encouraging mass immigration of Chinese and Indians into Malaysia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, indigenous Malays only make up around 55% of the total population – quite remarkable when you think about it, especially when you consider how culturally diverse the three (Malay, Chinese and Indian) populations are. Malaysia has had its fair share of ethnic tensions in the past, but currently it seems that people here live at ease with each other. What is noticeable though is that they don’t appear to mix that much, to the extent that some towns are clearly Malay, others Chinese etc, and in towns that are more mixed you can easily tell when you are in the Malay versus the Indian section etc.

Anyway, back to Butterworth. We felt sufficiently uneasy in this clearly slightly dodgy town that we decided that Pete would go and get a take-away KFC to eat in our hotel room, so we didn’t have to go out. This was actually fine as we had National Geographic on the TV so were very happy to have a TV dinner! The next day we kept on Highway 1 -  which was getting busier and busier as we headed south, until the town of Taiping, where we decided to branch off onto Highway 5 through what looked like a quieter, more rural area. Indeed for the next couple of days we saw far more wildlife (in particular monkeys, birds and malaysian ‘dragons’) than humans as we passed through either rainforest jungle or palm oil plantations, which cover huge areas of land in Malaysia. The only downside to this was it was hard to find places to stay, as it was quite remote – on the first night we even had to double back 5km to stay in a fishing ‘resort’ in the village of Treng as there was nowhere else. It was fairly basic but comfortable enough, and it was really nice sitting on the jetty watching the wildlife in the adjacent river as we ate dinner and breakfast. A particular highlight was when a family of otters suddenly appeared and swam in circles around the bay chasing a shoal of flying fish – a quite spectacular accompaniment to breakfast.

The next day was quite long, largely due to some poor directions from a local that we asked that resulted in us doing two sides of a triangle unnecessarily to reach the town of Teluk Intan. As we had already cycled for 8 consecutive days (normally we would only cycle for 5 days or so at a time at the most) we were pretty tired, and were happy to find a decent hotel just as a huge thunderstorm was getting going. A nice thing that happened here was that as we were parking up in front of the hotel, a guy driving by stopped and asked if we would like to stay at his house. Unfortunately we were exhausted, hot, sweaty and starving, and as churlish as it sounds all we wanted was a shower, comfortable bed and big dinner – rather than trying to navigate to someone’s house to be sociable for the evening. So we politely declined and plumped for the hotel instead. We certainly appreciated the offer though, very kind.

From Teluk Intan we charged down Highway 5, reaching Kuala Selangor (about 60km from KL) by 4pm. As Sarah wasn’t due to arrive until 3pm or so the following day, we could have (and perhaps should have）stayed in one of the several hotels there, but we decided to keep going in the hope that we would find a hotel in one of the satellite towns closer  to KL. This was a mistake, as we ended up doing another 40km, the last 10km of which were horribly busy, before finding a cheap but nasty hotel on the outskirts of KL. Still, the more we did then meant the less we had to do the next day, so although we were exhausted and starving after 150km of cycling that day, it wasn’t a disaster. The suburb we ended up in was Indian, which was absolutely fine by us as it meant we could have a great curry feast for dinner, just what we needed. Incidentally we were expecting Malaysia to be significantly more expensive than other SE Asian countries, due to its greater level of development and westernisation, but we haven’t really found this to be the case. Cheap accommodation is harder to find – but not impossible – but the food is cheaper even than in Thailand. Typically, for a big plate of rice with curried vegetables, along with two or three iced drinks (such as ice lemon juice, or ice coffee), we have been paying around 1 pound each, sometimes even less – bargain!

After a long sleep (we overslept the alarm by 2.5 hours! Not a problem though as we had such a short ride to do) we headed off around 10.30am, and had no problem navigating to our hotel (the wonders of our Garmin sat nav!), arriving before midday, leaving us a few hours to sort out our things, catch up on some errands etc before Sarah and Becky arrived. It was a long ride to get here – almost 1000km in 9.5 consecutive days – so we are definitely ready for a rest!

On arrival into Poipet, the Cambodian-Thai border town, we were greeted with absolute chaos and people surrounding us trying to sell us things, get us to change money etc etc. Plus the whole area was very busy and absolutely stank of rotten fish (we couldn’t work out why as the sea is a long way away!) So it wasn’t much fun reassembling our bikes and bags before finding our way to the border post. Thankfully it didn’t take long to get stamped out of Cambodia, but from there it was not at all obvious where the Thai border post was. By the time we worked out where to go a bus load of tourists drew up and beat us to the queue, so it took us almost 40 minutes to get stamped into Thailand, which was kind of annoying as we wanted to get to Bangkok before dark.

Anyway, formalities over, we cycled on to the nearby town of Aranya Prathet, from where buses leave for Bangkok. We were somewhat surprised to suddenly notice that most people were driving on the left side of the road rather than the right – we weren’t aware that the Thais drive on the left and there weren’t any signs warning us. Quite confusing as we have been riding on the right continuously since leaving the UK – there was at least one occasion in our first few days in Thailand where we went the wrong way round a roundabout! However, people drive so crazily over here that nobody even batted an eyelid when we did that. We got to Aranya Prathet just in time for a bus to Bangkok, so we jumped on – no problems this time for our bikes to ride in the luggage compartment beneath the bus. Although it was only 250km to Bangkok, the bus was quite slow, and as we got to the outskirts of the city the traffic practically ground to a halt. By the time we reached the Northern bus terminal it was 6.30pm and almost dark. Unfortunately this bus terminal is very out of town, and we had to cycle for more than 10km on dark, busy roads to get to the centre. Unlike many other Asian cities, the majority of traffic in Bangkok is cars rather than mopeds, and so for the first time in a long time we felt rather vulnerable and nervous on the roads. Eventually however we reached the centre, and after a brief McDonald’s stop (we had missed lunch so were starving) we braved the hordes of people on Khao San Road to find our way to the Rambuttri village Inn, which we had reserved in advance.

We were so used to people being very kind and generous to us that the cold, unfriendly service that we sometimes experienced in Bangkok came as a bit of a surprise. In particular the hotel receptionist was exceptionally rude when we were checking in. Despite us having used a credit card to secure our reservation on the internet, when we asked if we could pay the balance with the card the receptionist barked at us ‘no, you go ATM’, and wouldn’t talk to us again until we came back with the money! Not a very warm welcome. To be fair, it can’t be much fun working in an environment like that and I doubt they get a great deal of courtesy from their customers. The hotel was unatmospheric to say the least, but our room was nice enough and the rooftop pool was a definite bonus. After the relative remoteness of Laos and Cambodia, Khao San Road was certainly a shock to the system, however much we were expecting it. Crowds of tourists, endless busy, noisy, neon-lit bars and restaurants, and a plethora of street sellers combined to make it a rather overwhelming experience after a long day travelling. Still we managed to have a walk around and to find some beer that was not too outrageously priced, so that was good.

Our intention was to only spend one day in Bangkok, so we could get back on our bikes as quickly as possible. There were a few things we wanted to get done, such as fixing Pete’s glasses, replacing his front wheel (which had a big dent in the rim after he hit a rock on a road in Cambodia), and doing some Christmas gift shopping. Plus we hoped to have time to swing by Wat Pho and Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok’s big tourist attractions. To this end, we got up early, and managed to get Pete’s glasses fixed nice and quickly. For his bike, we had the details of a shop (called ThaiCannonAsia) that apparently specialised in Cannondale bikes and stocked Mavic A319 (reinforced) rims – perfect, we thought. However, after spending 3 hot and sweaty hours riding to where the shop was meant to be located (Soi 3, Th Sukhumvit), asking around, checking every little side street etc, we concluded that the shop had either closed or moved. Very frustrating. We ended up returning to where we were staying and going to a much smaller shop that was nearby (Soi 2, Samsen Road). Although the shop was small and specialised in mountain bikes, they were able to provide a suitable new wheel as well as a service, for a decent price (they did a very good job with his bike so we would definitely recommend them. Only 5 mins by bike from Khao San Road so very convenient if you are staying there). However, it was going to take 24 hours to do this, so we ended up staying in Bangkok another day. Not a disaster though as this gave us time to do a bit of sightseeing and shopping. We have to admit that we didn’t particularly love Bangkok – we found it very busy and polluted, with little charm and relatively few sights to see. Plus in the tourist areas everything is way overpriced compared to other areas of Thailand. So we were defintely happy to move on.

Because of the delay with Pete’s bike, and because we were still a little concerned about Pete’s back (it had been quite sore on the journey from Siem Reap to Bangkok), we decided to take the train part of the way south to Phuket (where we were due to be meeting Christine’s parents for Christmas). We knew the train went early in the morning so we set off early to get there in plenty of time. Despite this though, we were disappointed to find out that there were no tickets left by the time we got to the station. The next train was not until 1.30pm so we had a few hours to kill. We decided to make the most of it, and after leaving our bikes and bags at left luggage we took the metro to Chatuchak market, a huge market on the edge of Bangkok, that is supposed to be good fun to walk around and a good place to pick up souvenirs. The market was great, better than we expected. It wasn’t too busy, there was a huge range of goods, and prices were reasonable. Plus there were lots of little coffee stands where we could revive ourselves with an iced coffee when it all got a bit much. We spent about four hours there and managed to complete our Christmas shopping, so all in all it was a good thing we ended up with a delay on the train.

Thai trains have three classes, and the only tickets left were for second class. This was actually quite good, as the chairs were pretty comfortable and spacious, and reclined a long way. There was no air-conditioning, but instead there were big, open, wide windows from which to admire the view. The journey was slow – 8 hours to cover less than 500km down to Chumphon – but it was pleasant watching the world roll by. By the time we arrived into Chumphon it was dark, but it was easy enough to find a hotel, grab something to eat and crash out for the night. The hotel we found was cheap (about 3 quid a night) but certainly on the basic side – there wasn’t even a bed, just a mattress on the floor! Still it was clean, as was the shared bathroom, and very spacious, so that was fine by us.

We had hoped to rise early the next morning to give us plenty of time to cover the 120km to Ranong, but the previous day’s early start, combined with the long train journey, meant that despite an early warning alarm call (i.e., the call to prayer) from the local mosque we didn’t drag ourselves out of bed until 7.30 or so (quite a lie-in compared to what we had been doing recently). Still, we got going quickly enough, and the road proved to be quite fast – good quality tarmac, no wind and only small hills. We were amused to note that Tesco have made it to Thailand (there was one in Chumphon) – we would have got lunch from there, but it was Sunday morning so it was closed until later on in the day.

A couple of incidents kept us amused on the ride. Firstly, as we had stopped to chat to a couple of other cycle tourists coming the other way, a lorry went by with an elephant on the back – we all did a double-take! Then later on in the day a pick-up passed with the back absolutely full of coconuts. Hanging off the back of the pick-up, in the same way that binmen hang on to the back of rubbish trucks, were two large and menacing looking monkeys! We honestly think they were ‘employed’ by the coconut-pickers, either to pick coconuts or to guard them. It would certainly take a brave soul to face down the monkeys to steal a coconut from that truck.

Although it wasn’t too sunny on the ride, it was really humid, which when combined with some hills to climb, resulted in us feeling very hot and sweaty – not very nice. So we were delighted when later on in the afternoon we passed a waterfall right by the side of the road, with a big natural pool at the bottom of it, in which people were swimming (mostly fully clothed). We couldn’t miss an opportunity like that so we stopped, removed our shoes, and took it in turns to join in the fun. Unfortunately when it was Pete’s turn he got rather carried away and swam right underneath the cascading water, while forgetting he was wearing his rather expensive photochromic Rayban glasses. Predictably they were washed off, never to be seen again in the torrent of water. Thankfully he was carrying a spare pair, so all was not lost, but his old pair are not photochromic which is a pain in sunny weather.

We got into Ranong around 4pm, and after spending a bit of time locating the town centre (this is often surprisingly difficult in this part of the world. They never think to put a sign saying ‘town centre this way’, and when asking it can be quite difficult to explain what you mean using sign language) we found a suitably cheap hotel. It turned out we were lucky to arrive on a Sunday, as on Sunday evenings the main street is closed off and becomes a bustling night market, complete with live music and lots of atmosphere. Unfortunately we missed much of it as we had a giant faff after we tried to take money out and discovered our bank cards weren’t working – odd as they had worked in Bangkok. After a big trek round town we found the only place with Skype, and managed to call our bank (Santander) to find out what was going on. They said a block had been placed on our cards, but they would remove it straight away. Relieved, we went and had dinner before going to try to take money out again (at this stage we had a total of around 80 pounds on us, not a lot), only to find the cards still not working. After another 20 minute phone call the hopeless security team eventually managed to remove the block – they never explained why our first phone call had not done the trick – but this time it worked and we had access to cash again – phew! Although overall we have had few problems with our cards while away, this episode was highly irritating and quite stressful. Thank you, Santander, for making our lives difficult and refusing even to refund us the significant cost of calling you several times.

Ranong is just a couple of miles across an estuary from the town of Kawthuong in Myanmar, and as such is a jumping-off point for people wishing to extend their time in Thailand. Under the current system, most nationalities do not need a visa for Thailand, but those entering via a land border are only allowed to stay in the country for 15 days at a time. If you want to stay longer, as we did, you either have to get a visa in advance (we didn’t really have the time), pay for an extension of 7 days (very expensive and a pain to organise), or hop across one of Thailand’s numerous borders – you can come back straight away, giving you another 15 days for free. Of course getting a visa for Myanmar is a bureaucratic hassle, but for just $10 the Myanmar authorities let people cross the border to Kawthuong without a visa, as long as you return straight away to Thailand. This of course has the benefit of being able to say you have been to Myanmar, and seeing as we were passing through Ranong anyway, we decided to take this option.

So the next morning we hopped on a sangthaew down to the port, which was all hustle and bustle and very smelly – lovely. Our Lonely Planet said you had to pay up to 300 baht (about 7 pounds) each for a return boat trip to Kawthuong, but this seemed rather expensive to us, and seeing as the LP is hardly an authoritative source of information these days, we decided to try negotiating with the numerous boat owners who assailed us the minute we approached the dock. Indeed it was worth doing this, as with minimal effort we got down to 100 baht each – the same as what the locals pay, it turns out. Other tourists on the boat had agreed to pay 300 baht each, and we were asked by the boat owner to keep quiet about how much we were paying, which we were happy to do.

The boat that took us across was just a small longtail boat, and, as the water was quite choppy, we soon understood why the boat owner had offered us all umbrellas when we got on the boat – we had assumed it was to keep the sun off, and had so declined as we were wearing hats – but in fact it was to keep water splashes off. In fact at times the crossing felt a little hairy, and we couldn’t help but think that it would be no fun, not to mention potentially hazardous, in poor weather. It is telling that before getting on such a boat, the locals put their hands in their pocket to make an offering to some sort of shrine by the dock – on the return journey we seriously considered doing the same!

When we got to Myanmar the formalities were very straight forward, and then the boat owner said we had half an hour to shop before the boat would return to Thailand. Apparently many things, in particular alcohol and cigarettes, are cheaper here than in Thailand, so locals come across to stock up. Lots of people offered to sell us whisky etc, but we weren’t tempted – not only did we not want to carry it, we were aware that we wouldn’t have much recourse if it turned out to be paint stripper when we opened it when we got back (containers of alcohol have to be kept sealed until you cross the border). So after a wander round the market we headed back to our boat and back to Thailand. We couldn’t help but think what it must be like for the locals living here, being in such close proximity to a country that is so much freer and more developed. Although it is clearly easy for Thais to pop across to Myanmar to do some shopping, it didn’t seem to be the case that people from Myanmar could easily pop across to Thailand – no doubt the authorities are aware that there would be significant temptations for them not to return.

Having being granted another 15 days in Thailand – all that we would need – we returned to the hotel to pick up our bikes and continue on our way. Considering it was 2pm by this time, we only managed 50km, to the small town of Kapoe. The next day we got as far as Takua Pa, where we stopped as it was clear a thunderstorm was getting very close – indeed we timed it perfectly, as we got as far as our hotel room door before the heavens opened and it absolutely chucked it down. On our way to Takua Pa we visited a museum about the 2004 boxing day tsunami. This whole area was absolutely devastated by the tsunami, with whole villages wiped out. The museum provided lots of information about what caused the tsunami, the impact on the area, and what has been done to prevent such a disaster from happening again. It was chilling watching some of the footage available of when the wave struck, particularly as of course we were going to spending boxing day 2010 on Phuket, which was similarly devastated – it certainly made you think. It was particularly poignant learning that when the waters receded prior to the main wave hitting, many locals, not understanding what was happening, ran out to catch crabs that were left exposed. Of course they didn’t stand a chance when the wave came in.

The next day the weather was back to normal – hot and sunny – and so we found the time to stop at a lovely beach north of Khao Lak (another area devastated by the tsunami; literally every building here is new as nothing was left standing), where we had a leisurely lunch, a swim and a snooze on the sand before continuing down to the town of Thai Muang. When we arrived into this town we were absolutely starving, and stopped to wolf down rice and fried eggs at a small restaurant on the main street. As we were doing this we were approached by another foreigner, who tapped Pete on the back and asked if we were really cycling from London to Sydney (our cycling tops say London to Sydney by Bike on them). He turned out to be an expat who had married a local woman, and settled down in the area, teaching English at the local school. After a brief chat he volunteered to show us the way to a cheap hotel (great, as we would never have found it by ourselves) which was right by the beach – lovely. He and his wife seemed quite interested in our trip so we asked if they would like to meet up for a beer later on, which they were happy to do.

After settling into our hotel, we just had time to grab a beer with which to watch the sunset on the beach. Thai Muang, despite having a great beach and being only 50km or so from Phuket, is completely untouristy – we saw only 3 hotels, all of them small, and saw hardly any other tourists. Just the sort of place we like. Being the only people on the beach certainly made the fabulous sunset seem all the more special. After sunset we went to the beachside restaurant where we had agreed to meet Anders and Nat (apologies if we have got the spelling totally wrong there!), the couple from earlier. Over a tasty pizza we had a good chat both about our trip, and what it was like for an expat living in Thailand. We were also able to ask lots of questions about life in Thailand in general, such as how good the healthcare and education systems are, what are the main problems facing people in their daily lives, etc. It is rare to have an opportunity to ask such questions, and so we really enjoyed our evening. We were very touched when the couple insisted on paying for our dinner, despite the fact that we had only just met. Definitely the sort of act of kindness that leaves us with a very positive impression of a place.

The next day – the 23rd of December – we cycled the remaining 70km to Phuket. En route we picked up a small Christmas tree, to go with the tinsel we had put on our bikes – very festive! We had arranged to meet Dean in Patong, on the west side of the island, for pre-Christmas drinks, before meeting our parents at the beach resort on the 24th. We thought it would be nice to get some snacks and drinks for Christmas from the large Tesco’s we passed en route, as we knew everything would be very expensive in the resort, and we figured it would be nice to be able to enjoy a gin and tonic on our hotel room balcony. Unfortunately we went a little overboard and ended up with very heavily laden bikes for the last few kilometres into Patong – and of course it was just our luck that there was a massive steep hill to get over first! We were definitely hot and sweaty by the time we had navigated our way into Patong and around the bizarre one-way system to the hostel we were staying at. Much to our disappointment we found out when we got there that as Dean’s friends (who were meant to be coming out to spend Christmas with him) hadn’t made it out to Thailand because of the snow back home, he had decided to head home early. As he was flying from KL his only chance of getting home in time for Christmas involved him leaving Phuket before we got there, so we pretty much just missed each other. A shame as we were looking forward to seeing him, but we will have plenty of time to catch up when we are back instead.

The timing was also unfortunate as if we had known earlier, we would have not chosen to go to Patong, which is not only a diversion over a huge hill, but is a right dive of a place. The beach is nice but you can hardly see the sand for all the hundreds of deckchairs squeezed onto it (which cost more to rent for a day than we are used to spending on a hotel room!), and the town is loud, brash and seedy. Everywhere you look there are adverts for ‘willy massages’, ‘ping-pong’ shows, tattoo parlours etc. And virtually all the bars are full of young and pretty Thai ‘escorts’, keeping the male tourists company. Everything is super expensive, and nothing is nice. What is worse is that hordes of tourists seem to actually enjoy this type of thing. We were amazed to see families, including young children, out for a stroll in what is blatantly a red-light district. We certainly could not wait to get out of there. Unsurprisingly the restaurant where we had dinner tried to rip us off – the old trick of upping the price on the bill compared to the price on the menu, followed by not enough change. Why do these ‘mistakes’ never happen in our favour?!

After an early night we were very happy to get back on our bikes for the final 20km over to Rawai beach, where our resort was located. Unfortunately we did not quite appreciate what was in store for us – the hills on the west side of the island are truly immensely steep. In places we really struggled to even push our bikes. It was really hot and sunny, and everyone else was whizzing past on mopeds, making it feel even tougher. By the time we had struggled up the hills, stopping frequently to ‘admire the view’, and had a spot of lunch, it was almost 2pm by the time we got to the resort, the Evason Phuket. To our dismay, after lugging bottles of gin and tonic, not to mention two pineapples and some other stuff all the way from Phuket town via Patong, there was a Tesco’s just up the road from the resort! The resort was at the top of a small hill, so by the time we pulled up we were hot, sweaty and out of breath – not the sort of arrival that most guests at a resort like that would make! The staff took it in their stride though, providing us with cool flannels and a cold drink, and getting us checked in very quickly.

We were certainly happy to get into our room to relax, and what a room to relax in. We are both pretty sure we have lived in flats that were smaller. Definitely a step up from our usual standard of accommodation! We quickly washed and unpacked, used the bath to do some laundry (what a luxury, a bath in which to wash our clothes – oh how our living standards have dropped during the trip!), before retiring to the reception area to wait for Christine’s parents to arrive from the airport. That they were coming at all was remarkable – they were booked to come out on the 20th of December, just a day or two after the snow chaos started in the UK, closing many airports including Heathrow. Their carrier – EVA – only has one flight a day to Bangkok, and that flight had been cancelled on both of the previous two days, along with the vast majority of other flights leaving from Heathrow to Bangkok. So we knew that if their flight was cancelled, their was no way that they would get seats on another flight, as there were huge numbers of people wanting to do the same. We kept a close eye on the internet around the time they were due to take off, and were absolutely gutted when on the 20th the EVA website announced that that flight had been cancelled. Facing up to the grim reality of Christmas by ourselves on Phuket, with no hotel reservation and no-one to celebrate with, we were feeling pretty down. But much to our delight we found out a few hours later that in fact the flight had taken off, albeit after a 16 hour delay, and so my parents were among the lucky ones whose Christmas plans were not destroyed. Phew!

The one good thing about the stress of thinking Christmas would be cancelled was that it certainly made us appreciate our good fortune. Christine’s parents arrived safely in Phuket (after a few days in Bangkok), and it was really great to see them after being away for so long. We spent an idyllic four days relaxing either by the fabulous infinity pool, or on the beach on the private island that is a short boat ride from the resort. For us the breakfasts were a particular highlight as they were buffet style, with just about everything imaginable available – after months of ad-hoc and often rather random breakfasts, this was great and we certainly made the most of it. In the evenings we left the resort to walk down to the village of Rawai that was nearby, where we found a very nice, relaxed restaurant with excellent food – we liked it sufficiently that we went back every night! Christmas day at the resort was quite good fun – great buffet breakfast followed by a trip to the beach for the day, where Santa even made an appearance – admittedly looking a little hot and sweaty! An amusing highlight was when we were returning from the beach to the resort, via the longtail boat provided by the resort. About halfway the propellor unexpectedly broke leaving us stranded, a little unnerving as a huge fishing boat was headed our way (it missed us, but only just!) and it was quite wavy. We got a tow from the other resort boat which, much to our amusement, contained Santa. So Santa really saved Christmas day for us!

Anyway，we soon found a good guesthouse – the Prohm Roth guesthouse， just east of Pub St。 It was really nice，with clean，well-appointed rooms，air-con，cable TV, hot shower，excellent wi-fi，and excellent location, all for 13 dollars a night. The staff were also really friendly and helpful。 Seeing as we ended up staying there for almost a week， we were really glad of all this！ After a nap we went out for a late lunch on Pub St – a street full of nice restaurants and bars. High competition keeps prices low and standards high, so it is a good place to eat. We certainly enjoyed the cheeseburger and chips that we each had, along with the fish and chips (with proper tartare sauce!）that we shared。While we were eating we were approached by a number of disabled people – all of whom had lost limbs due to landmines – selling things such as books，CDs or paintings. At first our attitude was to do what most people do and look the other way，but quite soon we decided that we wanted to be different and to help these people. It’s not like they were begging – in fact，despite all the desperate need in Cambodia, we saw very few beggars，rather lots of people trying to make a living by selling things. And considering that we were just about to run out of books, it made sense to buy a book from one of these poor guys. It’s no secret that there is no state support for people with disabilities; unless you have a family to support you, you have to find work somehow. So we see nothing wrong with them trying to sell things to us, even if it does make us feel a little uncomfortable at first. A few dollars is nothing to us, but a lot to them.

We were still thinking along the same lines when that evening we were handed a leaflet from a local orphanage, inviting us to either attend one of the regular dance nights put on by the kids in the orphanage, or to spend some time visiting during the day .We decided to do the latter – we thought this would be more rewarding, and besides it didn’t seem quite right to go and watch the kids dancing to solicit donations – we understand why they have to do that, but it’s sad that they have to ‘earn their keep’, so to speak, doing these performances. There are quite a few orphanages in Siem Reap – it makes sense to have them here as they rely largely on donations from tourists such as ourselves; they get no state funding, and few in Cambodia have enough money to be able to donate to the many worthy causes here. All the orphanages hold these dance nights and encourage visits, but in the time we had available we decided to focus on one. It occurred to us that if the children at the orphanage did not have bicycles, then it would be really nice for us to make a donation of some bicycles – children on bicycles are a common sight in Cambodia, and so having a bike is a great way for orphans to feel a bit more like other children.

We emailed the orphanage that night and arranged to visit not the next day but the day after, as our plan was to spend the next day visiting Angkor wat. One of the seven man-made wonders of the world, Angkor wat is a large complex of spectacular temples built hundreds of years ago. Time, nature and the Khmer Rouge during their time in power have conspired to cause a lot of damage to many of the temples, which only started to be seriously restored in recent years. However, this adds a certain charm to the place, particularly at temples such as Preah Khan and Ta Prohm where giant tree roots encapsulate some of the buildings. The whole effect is very Tomb Raider like – indeed Ta Prohm is where much of the Tomb Raider movie was filmed. It is usually recommended to spend at least two days exploring the Angkor wat site, but we only really had one day if we wanted to visit the orphanage too. So, wanting to make the most of it we dragged ourselves out of bed early, so we were cycling to the complex (7km from Siem Reap) as the sun came up. It was certainly worth coming early, as the main sight, Angkor wat itself, was very quiet, and of course it was still relatively cool which made walking around more comfortable.

After Angkor wat – and an expensive but very good cappuccino – we cycled onto Angkor Thom, and in particular the spectacular Bayon, a temple consisting largely of huge stone faces that watch over you slightly spookily as you approach and look around. After this we stopped for an early lunch/late breakfast, which was nicely negotiated by Pete – there are loads of restaurants in the Angkor wat complex, they all have menus with hideously expensive prices on them but what a lot of people don’t seem to realise is that these prices are always very negotiatable.

After this we cycled slightly off of the main path to some minor temples off to one side, where we were amused to see some men fishing in the adjacent small lake. It just seems funny to see people doing this sort of thing in the middle of such a big tourist sight. Later on we also saw people tending rice paddies! We then moved onto Preah Khan, and the temples along the northern side of the ‘loop’. This loop is 40km long, but is only the ‘short’ loop; there is also a 70km one that takes in some more distant temples. We decided that the 40km was enough for us in one day. In the middle of the afternoon we stopped again as we both fancied a cold drink and a pineapple pancake. There were several restaurants where we stopped, differentiated only by number – they all serve the same food at the same price. The women running restaurants number 5 and number 8 ran out to try to persuade us to go to their restaurant rather than any other, but how do you decide between two identical restaurants? In the end we had the idea of each buying our food at different restaurants, on the condition that we could sit together in one of the restaurants. This solution certainly seemed to please the restauranteurs, who gave us some fruit for free as a ‘thank-you’ for being considerate and spreading our money around. All in all good fun and definitely a recommended tactic.

Preah Khan was impressive, as were all the temples we saw that afternoon. We particularly liked one on the eastern edge where we were able to climb up one of the towers, which gave us a great view of the surroundings. It was great being able to use our bikes to cycle around – not only saving us money (most people hire a tuk-tuk with a driver for the day) but giving us complete freedom to set our own schedule. Definitely the way to do it. We noticed electric bikes for hire and were surprised not to see more people doing that, as it is the perfect compromise for those who don’t want to cycle all that way. We finished the day back at Angkor wat for sunset. There is a hill nearby that you can climb to get a nice view of the sunset over the forest, so we duly joined the throng climbing it. Rather amusingly, the sign at the bottom of the hill showed two routes up the hill – the ‘safety’ route or the ‘danger’ route. There didn’t actually seem to be anything stopping you doing the danger route but we thought we should be sensible and take the longer safety route! We subsequently jumped back on our bikes to race back to town before the sun had set and it got dark.

We had arranged to be at the orphanage for 10.30 the next morning, so we were able to have a bit of a lie-in. On the way we stopped at the market to buy some supplies for them – although we were tentatively planning a substantial donation, we didn’t want to turn up empty handed in the meantime. They said on their website that they always need basic stuff such as toothpaste and soap, so we got a big box of that. They were obviously short as soon after we arrived the kids all went off voluntarily to have a wash and to clean their teeth! We spent a couple of hours getting to know the kids, and the helpers that were there, who all (apart from the cook, who earns a measly $50 a month) work entirely for free. The orphanage was set up by a lady called Meas Pov, who was an orphan herself. Now they have 30 kids living in pretty basic premises – they all sleep in one hut, 3 to a bed, and have just one toilet between all of them. As they rely totally on donations, sometimes the money runs short and they have to do without. In the past they have had to resort to foraging for food in the nearby countryside when there was no money for food. They seemed to be short of just about everything, from soap to school uniforms. What was noticeable was a complete lack of play equipment; not high on the list of priorities we guess. However, one thing they did have was a load of bicycles. We were almost disappointed to see this as we quite liked the idea of buying bikes for them. We decided instead to make a donation of more general stuff, so we explained to the staff how much we had to spend, and that we would like their guidance on how to spend it. They took us to a stationary store where we loaded up on school exercise books, pens, textbooks etc. We also insisted on buying some play equipment, including footballs, plastic tennis rackets, shuttlecocks, hula hoops etc. One other thing that had struck us was the lack of christmas decorations, despite the fact that they do celebrate christmas here; in fact the kids were in the process of practising carols when we first arrived! So we also got them a christmas tree and a load of decorations. Finally we had found out that none of the kids had school bags so we went and bought nice smart school bags for them all. When we got back the first thing that was done was to put up the christmas tree and decorations, then the various gifts were distributed and we had a bit of a party, playing games with the new toys etc. What was remarkable was how well behaved the children were – there was no pushing to get to the presents first, and they were all very happy to share with each other. It does seem like a big extended family, indeed they all share the same surname (the same as Meas Pov’s), and they certainly look out for each other, which was really nice to see. The staff were all touchingly grateful – it seems like relatively big donations like ours are fairly infrequent, which is sad.

Up on the wall there was a list of the children living in the orphanage, with basic details such as their age and where they came from. It is heartbreaking read, because they are all classified as ‘parents dead’, or ‘abandoned’ or ‘family too poor’ etc. One tiny boy proudly told us that he had been found abandoned in a rubbish bin. How sad. Meeting them for the day it is easy to feel like the kids are just in school for the day, and will return to their families at night. You have to pinch yourself to remind yourself that they aren’t going anywhere, that this is their home and this is their family. Truly a touching experience. We were shocked to discover that the orphanage is potentially facing disaster next year, as the lease on their property runs out in June, and as yet they don’t have anywhere to go. It is untenable to think of them being turfed out on the street, which would be the inevitable conclusion if they could not raise enough money. So hopefully we will be able to do some fundraising when we get home to help them out of this situation. If any of you reading this want to find out more, or want to find out about donating please see their website at http://www.orphanagecofco.com.

To say thankyou for our donations, the kids donned their dancing costumes and showed off some of their traditional dances for us. As we said, we would rather they didn’t have to do this to get donations, but to be fair the kids do seem to enjoy getting dressed up and it is nice to see them working together. By the time they had finished it was almost 6pm and definitely time for us to leave – we felt physically, mentally and emotionally drained. We returned to our hotel in silence, digesting all that we had seen.

But that wasn’t the end of excitement for the day – in fact it was only just beginning! A couple of hours later Pete suddenly felt rather ill while we had gone out for a drink – so much so that he abandoned Christine in order to run down the street in the direction of our hotel – unfortunately he didn’t make it and was sick in the street which was rather embarrassing – we were on Pub St so everybody probably assumed he was drunk! Poor Pete spent the night either on or beside the toilet suffering some sort of food poisoning. It was odd as all we had eaten all day, aside from breakfast, were some banana chips at the orphanage. But we remembered being told that 3 children from the orphanage had just been at the hospital suffering from food poisoning, indeed one of them was still there, so we think that somehow, perhaps via the banana chips, the infection was passed on.

He was still ill the next day, but things got worse mid-morning when he made a dash for the toilet to be sick, only to get his legs tangled in a blanket and wrench his back while he tried to stabilise himself. You couldn’t make it up could you! His back was really very sore, so he returned to bed, being sick in a bucket as he could no longer get to the toilet – a sorry sight indeed! Christine went out for ibuprofen, antibiotics, and a cold compress, all of which helped temporarily, but the pain kept returning, particularly when he tried to move. By late afternoon we were quite worried as the pain was no better and he literally couldn’t sit up let alone stand. We investigated getting a doctor to come to the hotel, but the state hospital doesn’t provide such a service, and so the only option was the Royal Angkor International Hospital, which is described as being of ‘international standard’, which was quite reassuring. They suggested sending an ambulance to get him to hospital where more tests etc could be run, so we did that. Pete’s immobility meant he had to be stretchered out of the hotel, which caused a few wide eyes from passers-by. We were soon enough at the hospital which was very quiet, meaning he had the undivided attention of the staff which was nice. They quickly gave him pain relief and did an X-ray to rule out spinal damage. They were quite concerned about the level of vomiting he had been experiencing so they also did blood tests and attached him to an IV saline drip.  Although the pain relief helped he was still in too much pain to be able to get out of bed, so they decided to admit him. Cue a call to our insurance provider to get the wheels in motion, as we knew the bill was going to be big – hospitals like this don’t come cheap.

Pete’s room at the hospital was really rather nice – think 5 star with a hospital bed! So he was quite happy to spend the night there. Incredibly, for a hospital that is quite big, there were only 3 patients there in total – apparently the day before they had none! It is kind of disgusting in a way that such high quality facilities are available, but not for Cambodians – only expats or tourists with travel insurance can afford to use it. In contrast the local hospital does not even have an ambulance, and no doubt lacks many other basic facilities. It is sickeningly unfair. Anyway good for us that we fall into the category of those able to use such facilities, Pete was certainly well looked after. Christine in the meantime returned to the hotel to email various family members about what was going on, before returning to the hospital the next morning. By then Pete was feeling much better – the acute pain had abated and he was much more mobile, plus the food poisoning had largely cleared up. So he was discharged with plenty of drugs and instructions to rest for a few days.

During the next couple of days Pete rested, while Christine discovered a lovely swimming pool (at a restaurant called Kanell, about 400m from the river along 7 Makara St). It is free to use the pool if you eat at the restaurant so she enjoyed having a leisurely lunch or two by the pool. Nobody else seems to have discovered this place so she generally had it to herself – nice. On the third day Pete was well enough to join her, and we decided he was well enough to endure a bus journey to Bangkok, where the plan is to rest for another couple of days before getting back on the bikes to get down to Phuket for Christmas. All in all it wasn’t the disaster we initially feared it to be.

The main irritation while waiting for Pete to get better has been the requirement for us to chase the insurance company to pay our hospital bill – as he was admitted as an inpatient, our policy says the bill will be paid directly, rather than us paying it and claiming the money back. For some reason the insurance company dragged their feet – first because it was at the weekend (although that is no excuse as it is meant to be a 24 hr service) then when we next spoke to them they started muttering about having to get the underwriters’ permission as we had gone to a private hospital and our insurance says private treatment will only be covered if no ‘adequate’ state facilities are available. Quite vague that! Anyway, given that the local hospital didn’t even have an ambulance to send, and Pete was in no position to be getting in a tuk-tuk to get there, the insurance company didn’t have a leg to stand on saying that the state facilities were adequate. Not only that, but we had called them before he was admitted and told them what hospital he was in, and there was no comment then about him being in the ‘wrong’ hospital. They obviously realized this and by Tuesday had sent through a payment guarantee. Definitely a relief to have it sorted but no thanks to ‘Medical Assist’ for their less than reassuring guidance on the phone.

After an early night we headed down to the town pier to get a boat across the Mekong (to Thalabaravit) so we could start our journey west towards Siem Reap. Before we left the hotel we spotted a load of dirt bikes parked in the yard, and got talking to the trip organizer. The company is called Global Enduro and they run advanced dirt bike trips all over the world, including Cambodia. There were about 10 people on the trip, and almost as many support crew who travel either by bike or in one of the two Land Cruisers. The support crew includes two medics and two engineers so they are pretty well set-up in case of accidents (which apparently are quite frequent, given the tricky off-road riding they do). We subsequently looked on the website and discovered it costs almost 3,500 quid per person (including flights, accomodation and food) for a two week trip in Cambodia, so all that support clearly comes at a cost. Not for us but no doubt great if that is your thing and you can afford it! Anyway it turned out we would be following the same route that day, although we were setting off earlier, so we said we would see them on the road later.

We had to wait a while for a boat as we had just missed one, and then on the other side we decided to have a quick noodle and ice-coffee break, so by the time we got going it was almost 8am. Still, we were only planning on going 100km or so to Mlu Prey or Chep so we weren’t too worried. The road in that direction is in the process of being turned from a narrow dirt track into a proper road capable of taking 4-wheel vehicles, and was at the stage of being wide and flat but not tarmacced. Unfortunately, for some reason, a whole load of water had been dumped on the first 3km of road just before we got there. The surface was hence like wet clay – ok for motorised vehicles, but we swiftly found our wheels covered in so much mud that the wheels wound not turn and they had to be dragged through the mud – very slow and frustrating. To top it off, when Pete’s wheel first jammed he slipped over and ended up a bit bruised and covered in mud. Not much fun. To our great relief the road soon dried out and we were able to cycle on, although we were frequently covered in great plumes of red dust thrown up by lorries passing us ferrying road materials back and forth. Yuck yuck yuck! All in all we had not covered much ground, and looked a bit of a state, when the dirt bike group caught up with us just before the village of Sam Ang.

Shortly after meeting the dirt bike riders the road forked, with the new road turning sharply north. We had been warned by Gerrard, a French cyclist we had met in Vietnam and Laos, and who had done this route just a week before us, that we should continue straight on, although the road became much narrower. We did just that and soon found ourselves cycling along a lovely path through a forest. Quite amusing that this is marked as ‘highway 214′ on our map but in reality is not wide enough for anything other than mopeds or bikes! Shortly afterwards Pete got a puncture so with a sigh we set about fixing it. Just as we were about to start pumping the tyre back up some locals on mopeds stopped and insisted on pumping the tyre up for us! Just one of many gestures of kindness we were to experience in Cambodia. The road was quite remote, with few habitations along the way, and it was very hot, so we were relieved when we reached the relatively large village of Chep. We stopped at the first small shop we saw, assuming they would have drinks for sale, but in fact they didn’t, but they kindly gave us some cold tea to drink – very refreshing. We stopped a bit further down the road when we saw a stall with a blender and some fruits on it – our guesswork proved correct and we were rewarded with some fantastic, and dead cheap, fruit smoothies. The guy running the stall spoke good English and told us it was only 50km to Tbeng Meanchey, the next big town. Our map made it look more like 70-80km, so we had not planned to go that far. However, it was only 2.30pm, and we knew we would be relying on a homestay in Mlu Prey or Chep as there are no hotels, unlike in Tbeng Meanchey where there are several. Figuring we could quite easily cover 50km before the sun went down at 5.30, we decided to push on to Tbeng Meanchey. The road had widened out and was flat and very fast, despite being unsealed. With just a couple of short breaks for the wonderful ice drinks they serve around here (shaved ice that is made from a block of ice kept in a coolbox, using a colourful ice shaving machine, served with condensed milk and a fruit syup. A bit like icecream but drinkable). This whole area does not have electricity and is quite cut off generally so cold bottled drinks are not generally available. On our way we went over a number of newly constructed bridges that are a big improvement on the bridges we saw earlier in the day, which frequently consisted of some dodgy-looking planks with holes in between. The rivers they covered were just about dry, but it is easy to imagine how difficult it must be to get around in the wet season when the roads are nothing but mud and the rivers are raging torrents. No doubt life will be quite different here when the road is complete and access so much easier.

Dusk was falling as we reached the outskirts of Tbeng Meanchey, where the road suddenly became very bad indeed and we had to take a ferry just to cross a small (20m or so) river. The ferryman must have a rather dull job going back and forth across that all day! It was dark by the time we got into town but it didn’t take us long to locate a cheap guesthouse where we enjoyed a cold shower (normal in these parts where they are too poor even to have solar heaters like in many parts of the world). Cold showers don’t bother Christine when we have been so hot all day – in fact they are quite pleasurable – but Pete really likes a good hot scrub so always complains bitterly when we end up with a cold shower!

We went out for dinner shortly afterwards, and quickly bumped into the Global Enduro group – who were quite surprised to see us, especially as they had only got in an hour or so before we did! Just goes to show that when you want to, and when the roads are bad, bicycle can be a relatively quick way of getting around. For dinner we opted for the safe-but-boring egg fried rice option at a local restaurant. It was a good portion, but we were still hungry, so asked for seconds. The staff were quite bemused by this request, thinking we must just want a second drink or something. Eventually they understood but returned with our second portion in take-away boxes; presumably they thought it was either for someone else, or maybe for lunch the next day – surely we couldn’t eat that much by ourselves in one night?! We were quite happy to take the food away and eat it in our hotel room in front of the TV!

Our plan for the next day was to spend the morning covering the 70km to the temples at Koh Ker, which we intended to visit in the afternoon. We left early as usual but had some problems finding our way out of town. After 30 mins of circles and asking lots of people we eventually found ourselves on the right road. It’s funny, but people there don’t seem to know their surroundings very well – we had to ask again and again how to get to Koh Ker, although it is a main road that goes there. And nobody seemed to know how far it is. It really seems that people don’t travel in this part of the world. Once again we found ourselves on another road that was under construction, with half of it paved but for some mysterious reason covered with obstructions such as branches to stop people travelling on it. So all traffic is relegated to the unsealed half of the road, which is of course too narrow for two-way traffic, meaning that oncoming traffic has to slow down and squeeze past each other. Thankfully the road wasn’t too busy and we were able to make reasonable progress. The road soon improved so it was tarmacced in both directions, so we soon reached the town of Kulen, 40km away. We stopped for our favourite drink of iced coffee before carrying on to Koh Ker. The final 30km felt slow as the road deteriorated again, and there was no breeze so it was very hot and sticky. Still, we were into Koh Ker by 11am. After a cold drink we checked into the guesthouse recommended to us by Gerrard and had a bit of a rest before a nice big lunch – once again we each had two plates of egg-fried rice! We waited until about 3pm, when it was a bit cooler, before going to see the temples. They felt quite remote, and had only a few visitors, so we quite enjoyed cycling around. The health and safety police clearly haven’t been here as there were was masonry everywhere looking like it was about to fall down, not to mention big bits of stone to trip over. A pleasant way to spend a couple of hours though.

The Global Enduro people had also ended up in the same place, although admittedly after a bit of a detour to visit Prasat Preah Vihear, which we hadn’t done, and they kindly invited us over to their guesthouse to have dinner with the group. Unfortunately they were staying out by the temples, about 1km from the village where we were staying. There were no street lights of course, and our bike light really needs some new batteries as it is a bit weak at the moment, so we made somewhat slow progress over in the dark. It was a nice evening though, we certainly enjoyed finding out more about how the company operates and where they go. Most of the people on the trip seemed pretty adventurous and widely-travelled, including one guy that had travelled around the world on a motorbike in just three months (for charity) a few years ago. Interesting people. Making our way back to our guesthouse was even more unnerving than the way there, as it was properly dark and as we walked along we heard dogs howling in every direction – spooky! We were very relieved when just outside of the village a kind local saw us walking, jumped on his moped and drove slowly behind us, lighting our way all the way back! Very kind and most appreciated.

Our destination for the next day was Siem Reap, the home of Angkor Wat, where we planned to spend a couple of days. The distance was almost 130km so as usual we set off as the sun was rising, and made fast progress. We really do love being up at that time of day as the light is lovely, the temperature is pleasant, and it is very interesting to see the world coming to life. The locals obviously think the same way as they get up at this time too. The first 50km or so felt quite remote as there were few villages, but the road was good and as we approached Siem Reap the number of people and habitations rose sharply. Cycling through one village we were pleasantly surprised to notice a smart sign by the side of the road thanking the villagers of Orston, Notts, for their generous donation of a well for the village. Seeing as everybody in Cambodia had been so nice and friendly to us, it was really nice to see some people from our country helping to improve living conditions here. We took a photo of the sign and subsequently emailed it Orston Parish Council, who passed it onto the original fundraiser – a gap-year student, who, together with her mother who had come out to visit her, had, like us, been so touched by the kindness and the gentleness of the people here that they decided to do some fundraising back at home for the area. They managed to raise an impressive 4000 pounds, which paid for 4 new wells and a reservoir, thus dramatically improving the lives of quite a few people in one go. Good work!

Once we passed Boeng Mealea temples (which we didn’t visit as a few people had told us they were too ruined to be of any great interest) everything suddenly became much more touristy, with buses and tuk-tuks ferrying tourists about almost everywhere we looked. Still we enjoyed the last 70km as we passed through some interesting villages and enjoyed yet another nice meal of noodles and ice coffee. One of the good things about Cambodia is that， unlike in Laos or Vietnam， we really did not often feel that we were overcharged， even in the area around Siem Reap which is so full of tourists。 This is despite the fact that the people here are poorer than in Laos or Vietnam， and could really get away with charging more. Taking into account this lack of ‘tourist premium’we overall found Cambodia to be cheaper than Laos， even in the more touristy areas such as the centre of Siem Reap where things are inevitably more expensive than elsewhere.

Despite an early night we were still a bit tired the next morning and didn’t get going nearly as early as we should have done, but fortunately we only had 100km to cover to get us to Viang Kham, from where we had a side-trip planned to the famous 7.5km long Kong-Lor cave. Because we were still on a bit of a tight schedule for getting down to Phuket to meet Christine’s parents for Christmas, and because we had no desire to cycle the same 100km of (hilly) road twice, we chose to do this side-trip by local bus. We took a bus up to the village of Ban Nahin, where we spent the night, and from where we had hoped to hire a moped for the final 50km to the cave and back the next day. However the locals didn’t appear to have cottoned on to the idea of moped rental yet, so the only option was a tuk-tuk, but that was fine by us. It took an hour and a half to reach the cave entrance, where we paid to be boated through the cave on a 3-person longtail boat. The cave was awesome, but rather spooky – as soon as the light recedes from the cave entrance it is pitch black aside from the light from the boat drivers’ torch (which was, fortunately, strong). We were a little annoyed that we had not hired our own torch – they were available, but nobody had suggested to us that it really would be a good idea as it is very dark in there! Instead we just had our bike torch which is too weak to be of much use. This was particularly problematic when we reached a shallow bit of water which required us to get out the boat and walk through knee-deep water flowing fast over rocks, in the pitch black! The boat was surprisingly fast when it got going, and we were very thankful that the driver seemed very experienced, so he knew exactly where all the protruding rocks etc were – it doesn’t bear thinking about what would happen if the small wooden boat were to hit a rock and splinter in the deep, fast water in the dark – that would not be fun! The boat was able to go all the way through the cave and out the other side, before returning the way it had come. All in all a spectacular experience that we highly recommend.

After a quick meal back at Ban Nahin we jumped on the first bus returning to the village at the junction with the main road, where we spent the night. The next few days were fairly uneventful and to be honest a little dull – although Highway 13 allows good fast cycling because it is flat, the scenery is fairly monotonous. From Viang Kham we cycled first to Thakhek, a pleasant riverside town where we spent the night. The next day we took a minor road, rather than Highway 13, which hugged the bank of the Mekong as far as Savannahaket. Despite being a minor road it was paved most of the way, and was much more fun than the highway as it passed through many small villages and was hence much more lively than the main road. After Savannahaket we continued on the same road, however unfortunately the tarmac ended for good and the road surface was very poor, and included sections of deep sand that are a nightmare to cycle through. After a frustratingly slow 50km we were delighted to rejoin the main highway, boring as it was. Because of the slow start, and a strong headwind that was with us for most of the day, we had to cycle almost until it was dark until we found a guesthouse. This was actually a ‘resort’ consisting of a bunch of bungalows just outside of a small village, kind of in the middle of nowhere. It was around 15km short of the big town that we had hoped to reach that night, but we had both had enough and were happy to stop. Much to our surprise we met another couple of cycle tourists there who had done the same as us – decided to stop as it was the first guesthouse they had seen for most of the day. It was nice to have some company for dinner, but we were all whacked so headed for bed nice and early.

The other couple – from Canada – had really been struggling with the heat (they were near the start of their trip so not as acclimatized as us) and the wind, so were up and cycling by 5am, when it is still pitch-black. Quite impressive as we found it hard enough to be in our saddles by 5.45am, when we prefer to set off as it gets light enough to see. We had a fast start as we didn’t have a headwind, and despite two punctures and a short trip back down the road to look for Pete’s wedding ring that had fallen off (sadly we didn’t find it), we covered the 125km to Pakse in time for a late lunch. In Pakse we were delighted to find an Indian restaurant, where we ate both lunch and dinner, as well as a hotel with air-con and cable TV…seeing as Pakse is a pretty sleepy place with not much to see or do, we were happy to have a lazy afternoon. Later on Pete ventured out to buy a new kettle element (ours had broken and we really need to be able to make coffee at that time of the morning!), which he found in the market, along with such other delicacies such as live frogs which were making vain but impressive attempts to escape the bowl they were in.

We knew the next day was going to be long – 155km – so we made a point of getting up very early so we were cycling out of Pakse before it got light. The road was rather undulating for the first 50km, but there was no wind and we were able to go fast, allowing us to cover 100km by 11am – our fastest start to a day on the whole trip. Around the 100km mark we stopped for a snack, and were able to buy some bananas that had been split, skewered on a stick, covered with sugar and toasted – perfect cycling food! The next 55km were somewhat slower as it got a lot hotter, and we had another puncture to deal with. Talking of which, I feel a small rant about Schwalbe tyres coming along. For those of you know who are not knowledgeable about tyres for cycle touring, it is pretty well accepted that the gold standard tyres you want are either the Schwalbe Marathon Plus (for on road riding) or the Marathon XR (for riding on rough roads or off road). Both these tyres have excellent reputations for durability and puncture resistance. Our plan was to rely primarily on the Marathon Plus, as we did not expect to be riding off-road much. However when we went to buy the tyres before we came away, we found out that Schwalbe had just discontinued the Marathon Plus in favour of the Marathon Supreme, a tyre that was touted as offering all the durability and puncture resistance as the Marathon Plus, but with a much lower weight – important when you are carrying 4 spares like we planned. They were super expensive at 50 quid each, but we figured it was worth investing in. We started the trip with the Marathon Pluses on Christine’s bike, and Armadillos on Pete’s bike (as these were the tyres already on the bikes), and carried the Supresmes as spares, swapping the first ones over in Istacnbul. Unfortunately, the Supremes have not lived up to their name. Yes they are light and easy to carry, but they are not very puncture resistant at all – we seem to average a puncture every 150-200km while using them (on tarmacced roads!). We got so fed up with them in Turkey that we replaced them with locally bought tyres (which were much better) and kept just a couple of Supremes as emergency spares. We had to put one of them on Christine’s bike in Pakse because the tyre she was using had split, and hey presto we are back to frequent punctures. We have relegated the Supreme to the front tyre (and even had a puncture on that, the first one of the trip for a front tyre) which is generally much less prone to punctures as it carries much less weight. All in all it seems Schwalbe have shot themselves in the foot – they need to bring back the Marathon Plus ASAP. If they don’t, in future we – and I imagine, other people – will buy tyres from another supplier other than Schwalbe.

Anyway after fixing yet another puncture – never much fun in the hot sun – we eventually reached the village of Ban Nakasang at around 3pm. From there it was just a short boat ride over to the island of Don Det, one of an archipelago of islands sitting on the Mekong river, known as the ‘four thousand islands’. We plumped to stay near the boat landing on Don Det as it was convenient and we didn’t see much benefit to staying further afield. The accommodation mostly consists of simple bungalows overlooking the river – we opted for Saksoun bungalows, as they had a nice bungalow right on the waterfront available. Pete did some good negotiating and got us a good price (40,000 kip, or about 3.75 pounds) as well as a couple of hammocks to hang up on our balcony – great! We spent the rest of that day, and the next two days, either chilling out on our hammock or pootering around the islands on our bikes. There are no roads on the islands, just dirt tracks, so it is good fun exploring. Over on Don Khon, a neighbouring island, there is a huge waterfall to admire, as well as decent beaches to relax on and dolphins to go and see. What is really nice is that the place is not too touristy – there are still plenty of small villages with no tourist infrastructure at all, so it is easy to feel like you are getting away from the crowds. On the second day we bumped into Frederic and Joelle again, which gave us a nice opportunity to catch up on what we had each been up to. The evenings were generally very quiet – not much in the way of nightlife – but watching the sun set over the Mekong was always a highlight, particularly when sat with a cocktail in in one of the nice ‘sunset’ bars!.

We were tempted to stay another day on Don Det as there was a dragon boat racing festival being held on the day we were leaving, which no doubt would have been fun to go to, but we knew we had to push on to keep to our timetable. So with some reluctance we treated ourselves to one last pineapple pancake before heading back to the mainland and down to the border. Knowing that we would be unlikely to be able to change our kip easily in Cambodia, we visited a couple of shops in Ban Nakasang to use up our remaining kip before heading back to the main road for the final 20km to the border. En route we stopped to admire a waterfall that just situated not far from the road – it is not a high waterfall, but it is very wide and as a consequence is the biggest waterfall (by volume) in SE Asia.

Then it was onto the border where we had to pay the obligatory $1 bribe to a Laos official to leave the country (an ‘overtime’ fee as it was a Sunday. I mean, come on!), and then $3 in bribes to get into Cambodia (incidentally it was absolutely no problem to get a visa on arrival. Cost was $23 each). While it is not much money so it is not worth getting upset about – there is absolutely nothing you can do about it – the principle makes us sick. Both Laos and Cambodia are very poor countries with many people facing real hardship on a daily basis, so to see these officials so blatantly on the take to line their own pockets is disgusting. These borders see a fair few travellers so they must make a whole heap of money doing this job – much more than the average citizen of either country will ever be able to earn. I guess life is just not fair!

Luang Prabang is a great place for monk-watching as there are over 20 wats in the town, which recruit and train monks from all over the country. Unlike monks in Christian societies, the monks in Laos tend not to be monks for all of their lives – instead it is expected that, as part of their education, just about every man will spend at least a few months being a monk when they are young. So there are lots of monks in Laos, most of them young. They are very colouful with their orange robes and it certainly really adds to the atmosphere of a town like Luang Prabang to see them everywhere. It does make us laugh though when you see them reach into their robes to pull out a mobile phone etc – they clearly don’t take the idea of renouncing all worldly goods quite as seriously as you might expect.

We had dinner on the main street running through the old town, which was uber-touristy and contained lots of good restaurants. Our meal was very good but we were surprised when we got the bill to see that it was more than we expected. A quick perusal of the menu revealed some ‘mistakes’ on the bill (i.e., things being priced higher than on the menu). At the time we passed this off as a genuine mistake but we quickly learnt on subsequent occasions that this seems to be a common practice in the more touristy parts of Laos – the prices on the menu are relatively low, but at almost every meal we had in Luang Prabang and Vientiane the bill was higher than it should have been. We quickly learnt to check the bill carefully! Pretty sharp practice if you ask us.

After dinner we treated ourselves to chocolate and banana crepes from a stand on the street, before perusing the night market. This market is one of the biggest souvenir markets in Laos, and is a great place to pick up some nice items to take home. Most of the items are made by women in the hilltop Hmong villages that we had just spent a week or so cycling through, and included many woven materials that we had actually seen being made as we passed through. It was really pleasant spending a couple of hours looking around the market, which is huge, and we came away with a couple of good gifts for people back at home. We also managed to pick up a load of stickers from countries in SE Asia for our bikes, which was great as we hadn’t been able to find stickers to add to the collection for ages before that. We were pretty tired from the day’s early start and relatively long bike ride so we called it a night early on.

The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast overlooking the river before strolling into town and spending a bit of time admiring the well-maintained and beautiful buildings and wats in the centre, before enjoying a very pleasant lunch, also by the river. In the afternoon Christine headed off for a traditional Lao massage – good, but not as vigorous as Chinese massage, which is the best we have found so far for ironing out sore muscles – while Pete had a beer with another long-distance cycle tourist who had cycled from Holland, and who we had got talking to the day before. Over dinner that night we debated whether to spend another day in Luang Prabang, or to move on as per our schedule. We really would have liked to spend another day there – for one thing, there are some great waterfalls nearby that would have made for a very pleasant day-trip – but we were well aware that the countdown to meeting Dean for Christmas (and for meeting Pete’s sister Sarah shortly afterwards) was well and truly on, and we really had to get back on the road. So with a little bit of sadness we decided to leave the next day to push on down the road towards Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

We knew we had some big hills to get over in between Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng, which was 3 days’ ride away, so we set off early and it has to be said somewhat unenthusiastically. As things turned out though, our hasty departure was not really warranted – some way out of Luang Prabang while climbing a big hill, Pete tried to shift down into his lowest rear gear, only to have the chain pop off into the wheel and take out 3 spokes. This happened to Christine near the start of the trip, in Bulgaria, and since then we have been careful to check the limit screws (which should prevent this from happening) regularly. Not regularly enough though, clearly, as one of the screws must have loosened slightly for this to happen. It is a very annoying thing to happen, because the broken spokes are on the cassette side, and we are not carrying a cassette-removal tool with us (incidentally, if we ever do a similar trip in future, such a tool is definitely something we would add to our kit list), so are reliant on a visit to a bike shop. Not a disaster in this part of the world where lots of people ride bikes, many of them with gears and hence a cassette, but it turned out that was not our only problem. Normally we carry spare spokes tucked safely down the back of one of our panniers, but as luck would have it we discovered at this point that they were in one of the panniers that we had sent home from China with our camping gear, doh! So we also needed to get hold of some spokes big enough for a 28″ wheel – a problem when most bikes in Laos have 26″ wheels. Having established that we needed to get to a sizable town to fix the problem, we stuck out our thumbs and as luck would have it the first vehicle was an empty pick-up that stopped and agreed to take us to Phoukoun, a town not far away. It was an interesting ride as the guy first had to visit his home village to pick something up. Our arrival in the village in the back of this man’s truck was certainly an event of some excitement to the villagers!

We were soon off and got to Phoukoun in pretty quick time. Buses use this town as a rest-stop and so there were lots of people around, including lots of tourists who seemed quite amused to see us walking around, broken wheel in hand, looking for the local bike shop. We quickly established that there was no hope of getting the wheel fixed in Phoukoun as it was a smaller town than the map suggested, and so we jumped onto a bus heading to Kasi, another town 50km down the road. We were really gutted to be missing this part of the cycling as the scenery was just spectacular, and it just isn’t the same from a bus window! We had no luck with the bike shop in Kasi either, but we had some fun playing with the local kids while we waited for a lift to Vang Vieng, the next big town. We got a ride in a sangthaew (pick-up converted to take passengers, which acts as a local bus) soon enough, and had a nice but eventful ride for the 50km to Vang Vieng, as dusk was falling. First of all a family got on with a sick child (who proceeded to vomit all over his poor mother). It certainly reinforced to us the poverty of this country – the child probably only had an infection or something, and we gathered that his parents had just taken him to the doctor in Kasi from their village 20km or so away, but it is easy to imagine access to medical care being far harder in the more remote areas of Laos. Shortly after the family got off at their village, we were driving along when there was a dog lying in the middle of the road (pretty common occurrence round here, as dogs are plentiful and the roads are quiet). We think the sangthaew’s horn was not working as the driver did not beep at it, but tried to steer round it instead. Unfortunately the dog panicked and ran right into the sangthaew’s path – even with the driver braking sharply, it was inevitable that the dog was hit, with a rather sickening thud. No doubt it would have been best for the dog if it had been killed outright – doctors are scarce enough round here, never mind vets – as it was it was left squealing in pain in the road. The driver didn’t stop – to be fair there was probably nothing the driver could do for the dog – bu it still felt rather heartless driving off. Not a very pleasant event to witness.

Anyway, we got to Vang Vieng soon enough. Now this is an interesting place, definitely an either love-it or hate-it type of place. When Christine was last here 8 years ago, it was pretty quiet, with people coming to enjoy the activities on offer in the stunning surrounding scenery, such as tubing down the river or exploring the many local caves. Now it has morphed into some sort of mini-Ibiza, with an unappealing main street containing loads of bars with neon signs pumping out loud music and advertising cheap beer and shots, along with restaurants serving everything from pad thai to spaghetti carbonara to – believe it or not, a full Sunday roast (which not surprisingly was expensive and looked a bit rubbish). The town is a favourite with young backpackers who come here to drink lots and get stoned, and otherwise behave as if there were in a Spanish beach resort. On the plus side everything is cheap and there is some nice accommodation, particularly along the river front. After a little bit of investigation we discovered a place called ‘the Cocoon’, a quiet resort consisting of slightly posh bungalows set on a plush lawn by the river, with a nice pool in the middle. It was a little more expensive than the alternatives, but an awful lot nicer (the cheaper bungalows we looked at didn’t even have beds, just grotty mattresses on the floor. We’re not usually fussy but sometimes it really is worth it to pay a little more than rock-bottom). We checked in and had a quick swim before heading out for some food. Again although the main street is unappealing, there are some nice enough restaurants and the one we plumped for served some pretty good food at a good price – can’t complain about that. We met Kevin and Shane, a couple of guys from east of London who were exploring Laos as a holiday, but who had done a fair bit of cycling in their time (including doing the end-to-end twice!) and were quite interested in our trip, so all in all we had a nice evening.

We also established, however, that we couldn’t get Pete’s bike fixed in Vang Vieng – the bike shops were surprisingly basic considering that there are a lot of outfits hiring rental bikes around – but the owners of the bike shops we tried seemed pretty confident we would be able to get it fixed in Vientiane – 150km away – without a problem. So we decided to relax and spend a day enjoying ourselves in Vang Vieng while we were there, before bussing it down to Vientiane. Annoying but not the end of the world as the cycling between Vang Vieng and Vientiane looked set to be quite dull and flat anyway. The next day we had a leisurely breakfast before heading off to hire some tubes and float down the river. Tubing is the thing to do here, and involves getting a tuk-tuk with your tube a few kilometres upstream, then floating downstream. As mentioned above, that is all there used to be to it. How things have changed! The first kilometre of river bank after the tuk-tuk drop-off point is now lined with bars playing loud music and serving cheap cheap drinks as well as ‘happy brownies’. People spend hours lounging around getting drunk and stoned in the sun before tubing back to Vang Vieng. As long as you can suspend disbelief about where you are for a while, it is actually pretty good fun.

Many of the bars also have a variety of rope swings and slides, some of them quite high and fast, that can be used to launch yourself into the river. The downside to all this is that four people have drowned in this year alone – one of them just two weeks before we were there (and it turned out he died after going headfirst down a slide that is now rather grimly called the ‘death slide’ but which is still operating – Christine went down it before finding this out!). Ultimately, combining large quantities of alcohol and dope with high swings and relatively fast-flowing water, in a holiday atmosphere, is never going to be safe. The swings themselves also looked pretty dodgy to us – you have to make sure you let go at the right point or you risk smashing into some rocks, or perhaps onto someone tubing below (this happened on the day we were there). It is also easy to bellyflop and hurt yourself that way – the swings are a couple of storeys high so you have to land right. In fact while we were there, Kevin, one of the guys we had met the night before, went on a swing and landed in the water awkwardly – the result was two cracked ribs and a trapped ulna nerve, i.e., it ruined the rest of his holiday. It could have been worse though. Needless to say we both decided to abstain from the swings and just have a couple of beers before doing the tubing. The tubing wasn’t actually that great, pleasant enough and quite fast in places, but overall we enjoyed it more in Nongkhiaw.

When going out for dinner that night we saw lots of people returning from the tubing, walking through town out of their heads and wearing just their swimwear. Considering a) they are in a country where it is frowned upon for men not to wear a shirt, never mind for women to walk around in their bikinis and b) there are posters up everywhere actually reminding people not to walk around in their swimwear, it is kind of cringeworthy to see this. But at the end of the day you can’t criticise the people behaving in this way without also criticising the locals that run the bars and heavily encourage people to drink lots and take lots of dope. If they don’t like the consequences, it would be easy to stop it, simply by closing some of the bars or imposing a minimum price on alcohol. Something else that we disagreed with is that dope smoking is openly tolerated and encouraged, but that plain-clothes police officers frequently arrest people for doing just this, and then demand a 2 million kip (around 400 pounds) bribe to let you go free. Yes it is very stupid and wrong for tourists to smoke dope in bars when it is illegal, but it is also wrong for the police to use this as a money-making scheme for themselves.

That evening, while out for dinner, we were investigating transport options for getting to Vientiane when we saw a trip advertised where you kayak downriver for half the day in the direction of Vientiane, before being transferred onto a bus for the rest of the trip. This sounded like much more fun than sitting on a bus for five hours, so we inquired, and were pleased to establish that they could transport our bikes the whole way to Vientiane, allowing us to kayak part of the journey – paddling rather than pedalling! We decided to do that and had a very enjoyable day. The only downside was that we had to pass through some grade 2 rapids, which are actually pretty rough, particularly for novices such as most of the group was. Once again it appears to be an example of safety being pushed to one side slightly in favour of getting more people to do the trip – if they said you needed experience to do it, far fewer people would sign up. The guides warned us that people had drowned in these rapids in the past, which didn’t reassure us! Fortunately everybody got through ok, although half the group, including ourselves, capsized in the process. The rest of the day was much more gentle, and we arrived into Vientiane by bus in the early evening.

Somewhat to our surprise we found it difficult to get a room as many places were full – this had been a rare occurrence on our trip so far. Because Pete’s spokes were still broken he couldn’t ride his bike, so our only option was to wheel our bikes around. Thankfully downtown Vientiane is pretty small and it didn’t take too long to find a suitably cheap but grotty room. At dinner that night we were pleased to bump into Frederic and Joelle again, the French-Canadian couple we last saw in Kunming. We had a pleasant meal together catching up on what we had all been up to. We certainly felt quite pleased with ourselves that we had kept up with a couple travelling by bus, even though we had actually covered more ground than them (they didn’t travel to Vietnam like we did).

The next morning Pete headed off to investigate a couple of bike shops we had been told about, leaving Christine to brave the hairdressers (for the first time on this trip – definitely needed a good trim!) before spending the afternoon at the local outdoor pool. The hairdressers was fine as they spoke perfectly good English, and the pool was great, costing just a pittance to enter and being nice and quiet, with plenty of sunloungers round the edge. Definitely a nice place to relax in a hot city. Pete was able to find a shop with the right size spokes, and a cassette removal tool, ok, but the mechanic there claimed he was too busy to do any work before the next morning (in fact he was busy playing solitaire…), meaning Pete had to do the repair job himself. A pain when he hadn’t done it before, but after a hot and sweaty couple of hours he succeeded, which was a relief to us both, and meant we could leave town the next morning for the long charge south to Cambodia.