Whitsundays is a collection of islands of Airlie Beach. They have been classed as a ‘National Heritage Site’ which means that no building can be built on them, and the waters are policed heavily. The islands are surrounded by the Great Barrier Reef which only adds to the beauty of this place.

From Airlie Beach, visitors jump on any number of boats for a variety of days and head over to the islands to take in the scenery. We ended up on The Hammer.

Luckily the weather was holding out (which we were told was not the case for the past couple of weeks) and we got clear blue skies the whole way round.

Our first stop was Whitehaven Beach. Which looks as if it has been brought in from a movie set. It does not look as though it should be real, but when you feel the sand under your feet (which is the softest sand I have even stood on) all you can do is look around and laugh. How the hell did I end up here??

It was on this day, that back at home, all my friends in the drama department at Exeter were donning their gowns and mortar boards for graduation. I had a very different picture, using my cowboy hat from Kroombit as my mortar board and an Australian towel as my gown with the traditional blue screen background being replaced by a view over the Whitsundays islands. Perfect.

Right now, we are out of the jelly fish season, so there is no serious danger, but the crew on the boats are still obligated to giving you stinger suits to wear before you go in the water. Standing on the most perfect beach in the world, looking at the clearest water in the world, with not a cloud in the sky, there is NO WAY that was going to be putting on what can only be described as a thin wet suit to go swimming. Besides, the crew weren’t even doing it either. Which is how I got my first ever jelly fish sting. Don’t jump ahead though, it felt as if someone had starched me pretty hard, and the sting that comes with it wouldn’t go away. James, one of the crew members, said that we would know if it was serious in 20 minutes was I might start feeling funny, I hope he was joking.

Like with Fraser Island, there is no light pollution around these islands. In fact it is even less so. Again, we were very lucky. There was not a cloud in the sky, which meant that for the first time in my life I got to see the edge of the Milky Way. Awesome stuff!

Whitsundays is one of the places that I wish I didn’t have to leave. I could sit on Whitehaven beach for my entire life and never get tired of the view both during the day and at night. But of course, we have to move on.

It’s getting even hotter now, and the scenery is getting more and more beautiful. 2 more days of Oz fun times ahead!

Matt M

STA UK WTI 2010

All of the people on the bus are like minded travellers, and the drivers try and make this as enjoyable as they can. Included in the price of the bus ticket (which varies depending on the kind of package that you buy) are several activities you can do as you go like surfing, lawn bowels (!) and the Kroombit Cattle Station.

If anyone has watched any kind of cowboy film, then you will know what I am talking about. Kroombit is in the middle of nowhere (so remote in fact that in 1995 they found a downed WW2 plane that had been ‘missing’ since 1946 - it was apparently not in any way hidden, it was just that no one walked past it in almost 50 years) and the people who work on this farm (made up of both locals and backpackers working for accommodation… as a cowboy!) spend their days moving goats around the enormous expanse of land they own and cracking whips.

When you come here, you get to share in that experience. I can now say that I can ride a horse!

There are so many different things you can do at this place. Quad biking, Horse riding, Goat Mustering, Shooting and there is something called a goat rodeo, that everyone gets involved in at the end of the day, which constitutes of dragging a goat out of its pen, lifting and turning it over and simulating the branding on their arses (of course we were only using a rod painted red at the end). It’s a lot of fun!

Then the winners of the goat rodeo (depending on the time it took you to brand your goat) choose either ‘the circle of love’ or ‘the ring of fire’. For us it was ‘the ring of fire’, which turned out to be all twenty of us standing in a circle holding hands while our guide stuck a cattle prod into someone on the other side of the circle, sending 11,000 volts (apparently) through us all. I find myself wanting to know what ‘the circle of love’ may have included. He then asked for volunteers to have the rod put directly on them. Being who I am, I stepped up and he promptly stuck the rod on my bare stomach. Poor cows.

In the evening, there’s a buffet dinner (there’s a lot of these up the East Coast), whip cracking lessons and a Bucking Bronco. It’s hard to believe that just over a week ago I was in the concrete jungle of Sydney.

It’s starting to get hotter as well, and yet this is still winter over here. I can’t imagine what summer is like.

Matt M

It will cost you AU$50 to stay here, but that includes a buffet style dinner, buffet style breakfast, your four hour surf lesson the next day, and an incredible lunch after you get back to the camp (which is optional and if you do not want to have it you can knock AU$5 off the price of the stay, but believe me, you will WANT to have this lunch!).

The night before you get your lesson, after dinner, there’s a chance for you to get to know your fellow surfers and your instructors over a camp fire, a guitar, and a box of goon. Cue some slightly inebriated camp fire sing alongs. I love my job.

The next morning it’s straight out onto the water. And I am proud to say that I got standing on my first try. It then took me a further 45 minutes to do it again. Beginners luck indeed. Once you have the hang of it though, it gets addictive, and I can see why these guys do it for a living. I can also see why they are so fit, after four hours of this I was exhausted and all my muscles were aching. The most exercise I’ve done in a long while.

Nearer the end of the lesson, myself and Charlie, a guy I met on the bus, were getting up the board most of the times we caught a wave. And as they started to call everyone back into the beach, we went out to catch our last couple of bigger waves.

On the penultimate surf, we both started paddling under a wave about 2 metres high (this might be inaccurate, but to me, this wave was 2 metres high) and after a bit of a wobble both got up and standing. Realising how close we were standing to each other, we high-fived, and promptly fell off. How many times can you say you have done that?

Again, I love my job.

Matt M

On my return, in the height of their winter, I was in for a nice surprise. We pulled into the Woodduck Inn, a hostel just off Kings Cross, and headed up to their top deck which over looks the observation tower and Hyde Park. And there was not a cloud in the sky. Not only that, I was stripping off the four layers I had donned in preparation for the cold. The fist guy we met was actually sitting in the sun in shorts and not much else “catching a tan”… in the middle of winter… go figure.

The Woodduck is a fantastic place. The people working there were brilliant, and it was also full of backpackers working for accommodation, some of whom had been there for a good long while (it seems that the inspiration to actually find a job is quite hard when you are living in this place for free and are surrounded by people wanting to have a good time) so we already had a head start in finding the best places to go.

There are obviously the standard things that one goes to see when in Sydney; the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the Botanical Gardens (pronounced Booww-taaaanicaal by the Welsh Paul who had been working in the Woodduck for just a week but had settled in straight away) and The Rocks (it has to be said that The Rocks is an entire area of shops, houses and bars, all with a very rustic feel, and all very cosy. There is a pub crawl that you can do which takes you to all the bars in the area, and will take about three days, but it is a little more pricey here that other places you might go. Here, is more of a place to go and get some food. And what food it is!), but for the more backpacker cheep deals, we found The Gaff.

It’s a small bar/restaurant/club/general place all backpackers go after a bag of ‘goon’, and some of the deals you can find in here are amazing. It’s no Ivy, and certainly isn’t Fabric (a restaurant and club in London respectively for those who have no idea what I’m referring to) but the food that comes out is some of the best that I have had on this trip. The Woodduck has a long-standing relationship with them (as with the sister hostel, Boomerang) which means that you get even more money off with them than usual. I had an incredible steak and a drink for AU$6, and on nights out, the amount of free drinks vouchers that fly around is brilliant!

If you find yourself in Sydney for a few days, and are looking for a good night on the town, there is something called the Oz Party Bus, and is exactly what it sounds like. The guys who own the company bought an old bus and gutted it, filling it with speakers and disco lights. They pick you up from certain points around the town and then take you to five bars and clubs around Sydney (ending in The Gaff) and it can get pretty hectic. If you think about what it is like on the underground in rush hour when a train comes to an abrupt stop, add 3 bars with a free drink at each and dancing people. You get the idea.

It is in Sydney that you can get the chance to go and see the Blue Mountains, given their name because from a distance they look ever so slightly blue thanks to the millions of Eucalyptus trees growing on them. Now while these mountains are fairly spectacular, and the ‘Three Sisters’ formation is pretty nice, I have to say that it is not the most amazing thing I have seen on the trip so far. The tour itself was perfectly nice, but if you have been all over Australia before this, then you might not be so blown away by these mountains. By all means, go and see them if you want to, but don’t expect anything really special.

Heading up the East Coast now… all the way to Cairns in 13 days… wish us luck!!

Matt M

It was 1pm and we were on our second flight of the day. As we approached our final descent into Melbourne flight attendant cheerily announced that it was a freezing 9 degrees outside. It was the middle of the day and an ungodly 9 degrees! Matt and I starred at each other in shock. We’d just come from a frazzling, flip flop wearing, sun cream lathering, sweaty 49 degrees in Hong Kong, and now we’d arrived to this. Now, I’m no medical expert but I was almost positive that a sudden drop in temperature like that could be fatal. Well, I say sudden; it had been 14 hours since we’d last experienced that kind of temperature but had since then been cocooned in a 20 something degree recycled aeroplane air and blankets. This was going to be a pretty nasty shock. As soon as we collected our bags then, we rushed immediately to the airport toilets to change… into literally EVERYTHING that we had. I was now wearing pretty much ALL my clothes, and I still felt a chill.

It must be stressed, therefore, that when travelling from Northern-Southern hemisphere from our summer, to their winter that two drastically different wardrobes are required. In Vietnam we had moaned ceaselessly about the unrelenting heat and humidity and how much we longed to go to somewhere cooler, and now, barely five minutes after accomplishing such an ambition, we were already regretting it! ‘Where’s that genie… bring him back! I’ve changed my mind!’…

Melbourne, it has to be said, did not strike me as Australian. In fact, I had considerable trouble remembering where I was for the first few days. To me, it seemed more like America or Canada than Oz. At least the Oz I had had in mind. The streets were arranged in blocks and lined with trees, the yellow taxis were reminiscent of the NY style cabs, there were wide expanses of parkland and super tall buildings everywhere and the whole place had a kind of Manhattan in a movie set kind of feel. As we walked the streets it looked like autumn but felt, thanks to a particularly nippy wind, like winter.

Aside from the cold, however, I was loving being in Oz; loving being in an english speaking environment again. Whilst miscommunication in other languages can be entertaining, and learning a new language rewarding it is always nice to able to converse with utter ease in your own language, and to understand and be understood be everyone.

After a few days spent video editing, chatting with locals and banishing our jet lag, we wandered out onto the streets to get a feel for the place. To me, Melbourne seemed like the kind of place where you didn’t need to actually do much to have a good time. Or maybe I should rephrase that. You didn’t need to SPEND much.

We first hopped on the free tram service which forms a handy frame around the centre of the city and hopped off wherever took our fancy. Our first stop was to sample the delights of Victoria Market – a market that’s been around since 1878. (Market open every day apart from Mondays and Wednesdays) It was here you could peruse through aisles and aisles of the most bizarre and interesting arranged stuff. Amongst the delights the market had to offer were the following gems: gigantic furry caterpillars, the kind normally seen in IKEA-esque places, Oz inspired beer coolers,didgeridoos, crocodile Dundee style hats (as modelled in one of the pics!), magnetic wine racks, socks with Che Guevara on them and some truly hideous jumpers. Nothing in the end took our fancy (although I was quite tempted by the novelty of having a South American revolutionary on my socks!) so we moved on to kick leaves in the park and make our way to the Melbourne Museum, which was showing an exhibition of artefacts found from the wreck of the Titanic. The exhibition wasn’t free but the museum itself was for those with valid student cards. (Remember to bring them though. No amount of persuasion works!)

After that we wandered through colourfully graffitied streets to get to Brunswick Street, where we’d be told by the lovely people at STA Australia, was the place to go. At first it didn’t start out as the world’s most promising street but further up it turned into an ecliptic mix of funky boutiques, trendy cafes and bars, vintage shops and restaurants selling international cuisine. Melbourne has the highest Greek population outside Greece and Cyprus so it was unsurprising to find so many Greek style places, what was more startling, however, was the number of Vietnamese restaurants. Here we were having left the country barely a week ago and having travelled thousands of miles away and we were met with dozens of places selling Vietnamese food. We’d been recommended Brunswick Street, especially for a place called Bimbos- a place famous for its AU$4 pizzas. Look out for the giant baby we’d been told. As in turned out, the baby wasn’t as gigantic or as prominent as had been made out. Still, inside the place looked good, and the pizzas we even better.

After hopping back on the tram, we checked out Federation Square – the place to be to watch the world cup apparently. There wasn’t a match on when we went, and as such the place failed to impress, although I can imagine that were we there for a game, it would be pretty awesome.

On from Federation Square we took the tram, past a sculpture of a cow in a tree, to Melbourne Jail – the place where the notorious criminal Ned Kelly finally met his maker. It was closing as we arrived, so we didn’t unfortunately get the chance to go in, but the ghost tour looked interesting and the whole place serves as a good reminder of the country’s unorthodox beginnings.

In the evening we headed up, courtesy of STA Australia, (normal student price AU$18) to the top of the Eureka tower to see some amazing views of the city. All in all, a good day, and a relatively cheap one.

In my opinion, Melbourne gets the thumbs up. Visit it if you can, just remember to bring lots of layers!

The island is considered so out-of-the-way, that you can only get there via an internal flight from somewhere in Australia, which are quite thin on the ground anyway. This is what constitutes the tiny domestic airport you enter after getting off the plane. The distance between the plane and the car waiting for you outside (be it taxi, bus or otherwise) is about 50 metres, and there is only one tiny baggage reclaim belt, which gives you an idea as to how small and ‘out-of-the-way’ this place is.

Hobart, the capital sits in the shadow of Mount Wellington. A mountain that on most days you can jump on a tour called ‘All downhill from here’ which will drive you up to the top the mountain with bikes on the back, so that once at the top you can bike it all the way down. If you get the chance, do it. While at the top of the mountain, at this time of year, you will find icicles on your nose and you hands may go numb, it is still an incredible view from the top, looking North, East, South and West all over Tasmania. I can imagine that in the summer this tour is even better (especially as it started getting dark as we got to the bottom, which is where you go off road. Adventure tour indeed).

On Saturdays, by the marina, there is a massive market that is set up from 4:30 in the morning and carries on until 6:00 in the afternoon, all with the backdrop of Mt. Wellington. All the way along the street there are restaurants and cafes, one of which is Retro, a great place to go and chill for breakfast, watching the bustle of the market only get more intense.

Here in Hobart we met up with the STA US interns, Casey and Natalie, and have spent the past few days travelling Tasmania with them both and our tour guide, Greg, who is doing for the Tasmanian Tiger what Steve Irwin did for ‘crocs’.

Greg’s middle name is apparently ‘Adventure’. At any opportunity he will convince anyone that the road less taken is the right one to take, that it would be an ‘Adventure’ and just a bit of fun. More often than not, it is the road less taken for a reason. Yesterday we ended up in the middle of nowhere having to dig the bus out of a mixture of manure and mud. What an adventure.

Along the East Coast, there is small town called Bicheno. Now when I say ‘small town’, what I really mean is a couple of houses, a pub and a supermarket. The entire time we were there I think I saw 3 locals, but even they were some of the nicest people I have ever met (something that HAS to be said about Tasmania is that everyone here is amazingly friendly. all they want to do is make sure that everyone around them is happy and in tern, ooze happiness themselves. It makes the entire island and big bundle of happy helpful people. If you ever get lost, get lost in Tasmania!).In the morning, at some point during you stay, set your alarm a little (or a lot depending on who you are) earlier and head down the the beach to watch the sunrise. Tasmania is one of the ‘Greenest’ places in one of the ‘Greenest’ countries on the Earth, which means that there is no pollution in the air, making the sunrises spectacular, rivalling those on the beaches of Tulum in Mexico. At this time of year though, it is around -2ºC at the time of the sunrise, and make sure you get the right time (not an hour earlier like I thought. It is not fun the wait around in the freezing cold for the sun to finally come up), but it’s worth it at any time of year.

Off up another mountain today, this place is full of them.

Matt M

STA UK WTI 2010

1) Despite everything your body is telling you this IS going to be fun
2) It’s safe, I promise
3) Make as much noise as you can, all the way down, it will help, and
4) the moment you finish, you WILL be wanting to do it again.

I did my first bungee jump in a water park in Venice. I had always wanted to do it, and when the opportunity came along for a pretty low price I was all over it. At the time I was in a pretty dark place, and the moment I was taken off the rope all my problems seemed to have been blasted away by the amount of adrenaline pumping through my body. I was hooked.

For my following birthday, my sister got me a bungee jump voucher for anywhere in the UK. I spent no time waiting around, and booked into the earliest slot I could. I spent the next weeks shaking with excitement and once again threw myself off the platform and screamed all the way down. Knowing what to expect, I was so much more ready for what was to follow, and I was officially addicted to adrenaline.

The strangest thing that you will experience is the moment before you jump, as you step to the edge of the platform and look out into nothing. Everything in your head is telling you that this is wrong, that this should not be happening, and that this is NOT a good idea. Even that feeling makes me smile now.

Both of these jumps were at a mere 70 metres. Macau Sky Tower is the biggest bungee in the world, the main platform standing at an amazing 235 metres above the ground. As if I was not going to do this.

I do have to admit, that for the first time, I felt pretty ill on the way up to the top, which you take via a lift that accents at 6 metres per second. Mostly I was scared that I was going to bring the massive buffet I had just gorged on back up on the way back down. after standing at the top for a long while however, that feeling I am so used to washed over me like a blanket, and all I could do was smile.

There is no way that I can describe hurtling towards the ground held only by an elastic rope. That, you will have to experience for yourself, but suffice it to say, that that feeling and the incredible amount of adrenaline I got from it sent me through the next 24 hours. If there is anything I would tell you do in Macau, it would be the Sky Tower. If anything, for the views you get of the entire city as you fall to the floor.

Matt M

STA UK WTI 2010

Quickly we had to come back to reality and leave the luxury of Hong Kong for Oz. We gave a fond farewell to our new friends (who offered to put us up for a few weeks next year for the ‘Sevens Tournaments’ which are apparently the best thing since sliced bread, and after experiencing the Hong Kong nightlife, I will be booking my flights back very soon), and set off for Melbourne. Stepping off the plane was a bracing experience. The last time I landed here, I was leaving winter and arriving in summer. Now, I was leaving 42ºC and landing in 9. I should not have been wearing shorts.

I will never under appreciate the joys of living in an English-speaking country again. The fact that we were able to go into a corner shop and ask for what we wanted without being confronted with a blank, dazed expression was heavenly.

It was all about catching up on lost time over the following days. We were back in hostels, back in dorms, and back to the real travelling life, and so there were no luxuries to distract from the job at hand. After hours of editing and uploading, we hit the streets of Melbourne, calling into STA Australia, who handed us free tickets to the 280 metre Eureka tower. Although higher, it was nothing compared to the thrill of the Macau Sky Tower!

If you ever find yourself in Melbourne, I urge you to go to Shanghai Dumplings, located on Tattersalls Lane, just off the main road. I was handed 15 dumplings of fried pork for a mere AU$5.60 (about £3.50), and they were fantastic, but beware that these will come out hotter than the sun. I am still recovering.

Off to Tasmania now, were I’m told it’s even colder than here…. god help me.

Matt M

We were seated at a table, map out, considering our next move when a voice called out from behind a newspaper. The voice, as it turned out belonged to a smartly dressed English businessman sitting at the next table along. ‘Do you need some help?” he asked. And that was it. From there the conversation went on. As it happened, this guy was the former president of the Hong Kong ex-pats hiking society, and as such knew all the best routes to take and where to find the most stunning views of the city. We’d done Victoria Peak, we’d been to Stanley, we’d taken the ferry across to the other side. Now we were looking for something different. Something that would fulfil our innate desire to explore and to experience a real adventure. Also, hiking sounded fun. As soon as he told us about the walk to a place called Ng Tung Chai, which passed through ’some of the best waterfalls’ he had ‘ever seen’ we were hooked. He then mapped out a detailed route of where to go and how to get to the starting point via bus and MTR metro system. Included in his precise description of our intended trail was the following gem of advice. ‘Take the path marked NOT VIA WATERFALL, and unless it’s been raining, ignore the warning signs. They’re only there to stop you from getting close up’. What? But we want to go to the waterfall I thought. How odd! He assured us that he had taken the very same route a few weeks back with his 9 year old son, and that anybody who was reasonably fit could manage it. Delighted with our newly acquired knowledge and the promise of a real adventure we headed back to the hotel, happy to have found such a helpful and informative friend.

The next day we were meant to be on a tour of the Northern territories, but a mix up with the hotel pick up times meant that fate struck once again. Having missed that tour we now had time to head off in search of these great waterfalls in Ng Tung Chai. The first part went well. We metroed it to the supposed bus stop for the number 51 K bus- the bus which would take us to the Visitor Centre and the start of our hike. We searched everywhere but could we find this damn bus stop? Short answer: no. Long answer: (exasperated) noooooooooo.

Realising that we were running out of time we hailed a taxi and showed the driver the address of our intended destination. He nodded and we got in. Barely 5 metres down the road he begins to consult a map. ‘Umm… do you get the slight impression that this guy might not exactly know where he’s going?’ I asked Matt. He smiled in agreement. Two minutes later our suspicions were confirmed when the driver started to call a friend. The friend seems equally stumped. Great! So now we’re just kinda cruising around in a taxi stocking up a hefty cab fare and getting nowhere, I thought. Just then fate struck for the third time. We saw the bus! We saw the same bloomin’ number 51 bus we’d been searching in vain for at the bus terminal. ‘Follow that bus’ I shouted momentarily forgetting he understood no english. ‘Umm.. busi, follow busi..busi good!’ I attempted in the manner of the world’s worst charade. Miraculously, however he seemed to understand and we followed the bus until we saw a sign for the Tai Mo Shan Visitors centre. Huzzah, we had made it, but by now it was 4pm. After a quick chat with the guys at the centre, we bought a Country side series map- essential if you want to try one of these hikes and make it back alive- and headed out at a brisk pace. Brisk, because they’d told us it would take around 5 hours. Barely 500 metres up the road the stunning views began. We’d climbed pretty quickly and already we could look down on the sprawling business heartland of HK and marvel at the sublime juxtaposition of countryside jungle on one side and urban jungle on the other.

From there on upwards the views just got more and more spectacular and although at one point we were shrouded momentarily in thick fog for around 15 minutes, we were fortunate with the weather. It was not stiflingly hot and humid, but was instead sunny and bright for the most part, which meant we had some absolutely stunning views.

With note pad in hand we followed the clear instructions that Paul, the man from the sandwich shop, had written down for us and took the turn marked ‘not via waterfall’ down a dirt track into dense jungle. The path was often rocky and sometimes a little difficult to scramble up and down but nothing that the average person couldn’t handle. Both Matt and I buzzed with a sense of real adventure. Everything was so green and lush and fresh. It was just like you imagine Harrison Ford or Angelina Jolie doing in Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider. There was also a certain buzz from ignoring the danger signs and rebelling a little. Clearly, it must be stated that we kept our common sense and would have turned back if at any point it got too dangerous. It also should be said that we only did this on the advice of an experienced hiker. And it was advice well worth taking. The waterfalls when we reached them were just stunning and the whole day was such a great adventure. We swam for a little in the pool of the biggest fall and took some amazing photos (which should be up on flickr soon!) before realising it was getting dark and we still had a fair bit to go. So we pushed on eventually reaching the small, sleepy, town of Ng Tung Chai just as the sun was setting. From there we hopped on the bus and metro back to our hotel, thoroughly knackered but completely satisfied with a day well spent. If you’re in the area and you have a spare day I thoroughly suggest trying a hike. Just remember to bring a map, enough water and plenty of repellant for those peskie mossies. Try it though, and you will be rewarded with some jaw-droppingly beautiful scenary.

Route: Take the MTR metro to TSUEN WAN- the end of the red line. Then take either the 55 or 51K bus, or taxi (around 35,000 HK Dollars) to the Tai Mo Shan Visitor Centre. Buy a countryside series map- you’ll need it. Follow the path up and where it splits into two, take the road marked ‘Not via waterfall’. Dodge past danger signs and go round others warning of landslides only if the weather is good and it doesn’t look like raining. Our route took us 5 hours and it was dark when we finished so it’s a good idea to start earlier than we did. Say around 12 or 1 and you should be fine. Good luck, and let us know if you do it. We’d love to see your photos too!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The last few days in Vietnam were fantastic. Hanoi was much faster than any other town we have been to, but there was ten times the amount of scooters on the roads, making crossing them an adrenaline sport. Every street looks very much the same, which meant that when we got lost, it took a long time to make our way back to home. But along the way we found a local market, one that not many westerners seemed to have found as we were the only ones in sight. After a little battering (3 DVDs and the complete 24 box-set for around £12) we did make it home.

Over the two days that we were there we managed to get to the War Museum, where I found out that the country has been ripped apart more times than thought, what with the French sticking there head in there as well at some point over the past 100 years. Some of the jeeps and planes that were left over were fairly haunting, some of them having plaques drilled into them expelling how many people were killed with them. Chilling stuff.

In the evenings it was all about the celebration. We found a bar on top of a block of flats, cleverly named ‘Top Pub’ which turned out to be a little dodgy, as when police came round, the music was turned off and we were told to keep our voices down and to pretend that we were infect friends with the bar man who had just come over for a casual drink. The bar man had a LOT of friends. Once they left the music instantly started again when I am fairly certain they were still in earshot. After far too many cocktails (which you got for free if you stood on one leg for 4 minutes, which gets harder after your 5th) we all stumbled into a taxi that drove around a few times before going to the hotel, watch out for this, it happens a lot, especially to drunk tourists!

The were some swift goodbyes in the morning, with the rest of the group heading into Lous and us jumping on our plane to Hong Kong, it was amazing to go up Vietnam with them all, and was a shame that we had to say goodbye so soon as they all rumbled off to the party capital of South-East Asia.

Hong Kong is a city full of rich businessmen and high rise 5* hotels. It’s no more expensive than it is back in the UK, but after going through a country that asked you for no more that 70p for a beer in the nations capital, it was a bit of a shock when the bill for our first meal come through. It would have been alright though if the food and service had been anything like what I had experienced in Vietnam, but alas it was not. On a recommendation from a guide book, we went to a restaurant in the City Hall. The place must have been a school hall at some point in its life, which had been closed down and then filled with tables, chairs and chandeliers. Avoid it if you can!

Here, they have something that works very similarly to the Oyster card back at home. Although here it’s imaginatively called the Octopus card. The public transport system is pretty sound all the time, and not only does the Octopus card work for all modes of transport, you can also use it in the 7-Elevens all aver town (like co-op, only smaller and there’s one every other shop). Even though this is great, you can’t eat food on the trains, at all. Annoying when my stomach was crying out for some food and I’m sitting there holding a bad full of biscuits, bread and cream cheese (the ONLY cheese you can actually buy out here).

The night life here is fantastic, and not as expensive as you think it might be after spending a day watching the back account suffer. I have a friend out here who moved out with her parents a few years ago, and she is well versed in the night time scene. Katie took me to a bar, ‘Carnegies’ in the centre on town. Here, the booze is stacked on the shelves behind the bar like a library and the way the bar staff get them down is using a ladder very much like the ones you would see in a library to slide back and fourth and drop them down to the colleague waiting at the bottom. You dance on the bar all night, and on wednesdays and thursdays it’s ‘ladies night’ so all girls drink free. Have a female friend with you helps and most of the time there are so many people there and you are ordering through someones legs so the bar staff have no idea that every girl is taking two drinks and handing one straight over to a male friend behind them. Twas a cheep night for all!!

The Hong Kong island is only one part of the entire city, and to be honest not the most exciting one. Whilst it has all the bars and night life, as far as things to do during the day it falls a little short. there is a place called the peeks, where you can get a tram up to the highest point on the island for another amazing view of the different environments in the city, but thats about it. There is also the ‘Big Buddah’ that you can find on the next island, the same island with Disneyland Hong Kong and the airport on it (diverse I know), which is definitely worth the very long cable car ride to it, but pray for good weather. being so high up in the mountains the whole place is prone to disappearing into the clouds.

If you ever do manage to make it Hong Kong, something that is a must is truly experiencing the sudden change between built up city to dense jungle. Right now, I just got back from an epic 4 hour trek up a (almost) mountain, where on one side of me there was a concrete jungle and on the other an actual jungle. We dropped down the other side and started hunting around for something special. We found it. Three hidden waterfalls are cut off by signs saying that there have been landslides and it’s too difficult to get there, saying that we have to turn back now for our own safety. But after bumping into an expat in a sandwich shop who turned out to be an experienced hiker, we were told to go for it, to climb around the sign, and climb down the old land slide (it had been a few years ago, and as long as it hadn’t been raining was still [relatively] safe). We did, and thank god we did. We fell upon one of the most beautiful water falls I have ever seen. If you are anywhere near here at any point, even if you are only there for a few days, get your trainers on (flip flops are a no go!!) and get out there, it’s well worth it, and the best hang over cure in the world!

Tomorrow, through various contacts made over the various nights out and friends of friends, I will be getting on a yacht, heading over to an exclusive yacht club, and dinning with the other half. Its a tough life!

Till then

Matt M