Java Our tour of Indonesia began with an 8 hour train ride to Yogyakarta – central Java's main hub. Whilst Jakarta is the archipelago's financial and political center, Yogyakarta is often seen as the cultural capital. Waiting on the platform … Continue reading
Singapore From Tioman Island, we ferried back to the mainland and eventually boarded a delayed bus to the Malaysia-Singapore border town of Johor Bahru. The border crossing into Singapore was possibly the most efficient and easiest of our trip so … Continue reading
PenangNorthwest Malaysia Our first stop in Malaysia was the northwestern island of Penang, where our plane from Laos landed amidst a spectacular lightening storm just before midnight. Upon arrival, we were soon whisked away by taxi to the island’s capital, Georgetown. … Continue reading
Flying out of Myanmar (since it's virtually impossible to cross into Thailand overland due to ongoing civil war in the Burmese border regions), we landed in Chiang Mai where we intended on spending a week relaxing and visiting Eric's aunt … Continue reading
A one hour flight took us from Bangkok to Yangon, the capital of Myanmar. We arrived at the small international airport and entered into a terminal building still being built – literally a four storey grey concrete shell. We then … Continue reading
We spent the first couple of days in Kathmandu recovering from our trip to the Annapurna region and getting re-acquainted with the much-noisier and polluted streets of the city. Our next goal was to arrange a river rafting trip to … Continue reading
The Tibetan Plateau is shown below; our route to Nepal would take us from Lhasa, through Gyantse, Shigaste, Everest Base Camp and down through the border to Kathmandu. Day 1: Lhasa to Gyantse At 8:42 am, we departed Lhasa in … Continue reading
Our alarms rudely awakened us at 4:00 am, giving us just enough time to finish our packing, check out of our guesthouse and board the shuttle bus to the airport. A trip to Tibet requires purchasing an expensive permit in … Continue reading
A 17-hour sleeper train journey brought us to the city of Xian. XianLocation: Capital of the Shaanxi province; central China.Famous for: Terracotta Warriors. Our primary reason for stopping in Xian was to see the world famous Terracotta Warriors, while the … Continue reading
Day 50 in Russia!!! We spent the last couple of weeks in the Lake Baikal region, basing ourselves in Irkutsk and venturing out to villages around the lake. IrkutskPopulation: 591,000Distance from Moscow: 5,185kmFamous for: Founded by a Cossack garrison; for a … Continue reading