Wellington, New Zealand

Another lovely journey on the intercity through the Tongariro national park and its highly active volcano. As usual the drivers are super-informative and friendly. We stop at a curious farm cafe for a coffee and savoury scone. Out back there's some ducks, chickens, sheeps and some fluffy Llama type animals. In Wellington i'm dropped off at the main bus terminal then take a windy walk through town to the enormous YHA - this place has six floors!

Let it be known from the start that I love this place. This city was designed for people. Everything connects together perfectly. You can amble about along the whole waterfront, taking in bars, businesses, the museum, planks to jump into the crystal blue harbour from, sailing clubs, rowing clubs, helicopter taxi's - the list is endless. Businessmen on skateboards, joggers and cyclists happily share the board walk. There's no sense of one-up-man-ship here - no feeling of 'my house is bigger than your house' or 'my boat is faster than your boat' - everybody just seems happy to be there, and why wouldn't they?

20 minutes on the bus and you're on a remote beach at Island bay. From here are walking/cycling tracks around the point to red rocks and a seal colony - but it was off-season, and there was only one seal. Back in the city you can get up Mount Victoria in 45 minutes with an amazing 360 of the whole area. Down a track and some steep roads brings you back to sea level, and a beach fronted by some beautiful houses. This is where I shall live, if I ever come into some money - everything is so expensive. beer I ever drunk, at $11 (£5.50) for a pint - eek

My usually great YHA experience was tainted by two young German guys in the dorm - and they were without doubt the two most annoying bastards I've ever had the misfortune to share with. I got back the room at lunchtime to collect something and they were asleep, the room was pitch dark and stuffy with the windows closed. I grabbed my stuff and headed back out. Getting back to the room about 5pm they'd just got out of bed, I said hi but got no response. The window was still closed and the curtains drawn - I opened them, to looks of disgust. There were many power sockets in the room in use, charging their phones, laptops and mp3 players. I asked to use the one next to my bed and received a "no". I pointed at a spare one next to their bunk and said use that one. They couldn't as there was no signal there, and the phone was downloading. I bluntly said that I'm going to use this socket, just for 20 minutes, and unplugged the phone. Then they were obviously imitating my frustration in German. As they'd been sleeping all day they were full of beans - they didn't go out and talked and talked and talked - several times I told them to be quiet. At 2am they woke me up leaving the room and I though AHHH great, now I can get sleep, as I need to get the ferry at 7am next morning. They came back half an hour later with a McDonalds, eating it in the room and talking talking talking! I couldn't beleive it. I didn't say anything, I took some deep breaths to relax and put thoughts of killing them both out of my head and tried to get some sleep. What can you do? Some people really are arseholes.  

Ha Long bay, Vietnam

The bus pulls up outside the May de Ville hostel in Hanoi. On the side of the bus it boldly says "HA LONG PARTY CRUISE. No fun no pay". What have I got myself into? I've never been into forced group partying. I've never been on an 18-30. I've never really been on a lads holiday! I skulk low in my seat so all these strangers I'll never ever see again can't see me.

Don't make me do this... please!

A three hour bus journey east from Hanoi (via some compulsory gift shop stops) brings you to Ha Long bay, featuring the famous limestone islands forming this stunning part of the coastline. On arrival we ask some tired looking depart-ees how good the trip was to very positive replies but more importantly our stomachs learn that we shall be eating as soon as we get on the boat. woo-hoo!

PARTY PARTY PARTY

Our party guide is called Lucky, and he likes to party. The boat is called HaLong party and it also likes to party with its large karaoke machine and flashing disco floor. The staff love to party and wether we like it or not, we're going to party! By this point. We sit down to a delicious lunch of everyhing you could imagine and get to know our new party friends. Two of these are young English lads, who'd partied a little too hard last night and were in a hair-of-the-dog scenario. Also there were three Canadian guys, six Argentinian girls, an English girl and a French couple; I think that's everyone. After lunch we're shown to our cabins to unpack and unwind. We somehow had a free upgrade to a nice spacious top deck cabin with a bally window!

Room 2 - with a fantastic view

Before dinner we jump on a small boat to visit the .... caves. The ... cave system... etc... The ammount of boats here is ridiculous. Literally squeezing into the dock we file off the boat and join one billion other people on a conveyor belt through the beautiful caves, then out the other side and back to the small boat. On the way back we notice some latecomers on the deck: three more Canadians. This puts the Canadians joint first with Argentina, followed by the English then the French. On further thought I seem to remember one of the Argentinian girls was was actually Spanish, so the Canadians win. I should research these kind of facts before writing maybe.

cave, cheesy lighting and hoards of people

Back on the party boat it ups anchor and we chug off. Everyone potters about for an hour until we reach the next destination: a small island with a beach, and a steep path to the summit. The view from the summit reveals seemingly infinite islands fading into the distance, and also infinite boats anchored everywhere. The weather is incredibly non-descript: grey skies and no wind or rain. It remains like this for our time there. Back down the hill to the beach and some people chilled, some played football and the Argentinian girls stripped to tiny bikini's and splashed about in the shallows... erm, yes. Also on the beach they were apparently filming the latest episode of Vietnam's most famous soap opera.

Back on the party boat again Lucky says we can jump off the boat a few times before we set sail. Of course we head straight for the 10m top-deck and do some group jumps, men flinging themselves off with the girls being a little more cautious. One Argentinian girl took a lot of persuading and hand-holding, but eventually jumped, landing in a seating position. I have a video if this, and will upload when I get a chance. She later had to take pain killers with her wine, and had trouble sitting! Me and one of the gnarly Canadian dudes has a "who's got the biggest penis" battle by prompting each other to dive from the 5m middle balcony. Neither of us had issues with this and we both performed a high eight, though my entry was a little cleaner ;)

How to get a sore arse jumping off a boat (video clip extract)

Up anchor at a grey sunset, a quick snooze, a shower then a delicious dinner. Lucky does his best party speech and we toast with a welcome drink of some very nice Vietnamese red wine. The tables are cleared, the music volume is set to eleven and the flashing dance floor is open, prompting everyone to leave and stand on the open front deck, where we pretty much stayed all night! Apart from people switching their ipods in and out of the stereo (I daren't scare people with my music) and me having a breif tango lesson from one of the Argentinians the dance floor was mostly deserted and the karaoke machine didn't get touched.

Me & Karl the Canadian (note flashing dance floor)

With the boat now anchored again everything is incredibly still, with distant lights from other boats faintly outlining the islands. The water is black, apart from the odd flash of green when disturbed. Phosphorous plankton is possibly one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Pouring water overboard causes the most beautiful bright green ripples. This, coupled with now quite drunk people, prompts a midnight swim by four of us: me, the hurty-bottom girl, another Argentinian girl and the gnarlier Canadian from earler. Jumping into the blackness is odd, the fall always takes longer than you expect. Then suddenly all around you is glowing green. Any arm or leg movement creates phycedelic swirls. I tried to get Talitha to video it but it didn't come out. Our party leader, Lucky, wasn't so party party about this, and wanted us out of the water. In the sober light of day I can understand!

The peace was about to be shattered

Next morning we wakey-wakey with some eggs and bacey then we're seperated. Me and Talitha booked a two night tour while everyone else opted for just one. Saying goodbye to our new party friends we get on a different smaller boat containing a nice French couple. There's a lot of confusion about what's actually happening today, this is because different guides over-explained everything. This sounds odd I know but it leaves me confused to this day. If they'd just said "Ok, today we kayak, then lunch, then pearl farm, then one hour back to the same main party boat to join
a new set of people" this would've been great. I'm not knocking them, I'm just offering a small tip that could save them (and us) a headache!

Kayaking was awesome. I hate using that word but it was! With the two day trip you get deeper into Ha Long and touch onto the ...... national park. Silently gliding into huge limestone caverns and mirror flat lakes is incredible and (apart from the distant monkeys) so serene. There is one big issue though: the water cleanliness. It's pretty much filthy everywhere. Diesel slicks, plastic bottles, full sacks of rubbish floating about. Our guide tells us that it's all from the fishing villages and that the tourist boats account for minimal ammounts. I find this a little hard to beleive until I see a slick of rubbish coming from a floating fishing village later on. Disgusting in places and as this is now a UNESCO ......... world heritage site tighter measures need to be put in place with the tourist boats and better enviromental education for the floating villages. After a nice lunch and a visit to the pearl farm we chugged back to the main boat, catching some Z's on the way.

Pollution

Back at the party boat it's dinner time again. There's a completely new, bright-eyed, set of party people; but these are clearly nothing like last nights rabble. The evening is just a nice dinner occasion featuring a nice Australian couple and their two teenagers, two Indian men (who I spend most of the night chatting with), some very young Swedish girls and an English and Ozzie chap. There is no loud music, no top-deck jumping and definitely no midnight swim as I'm in sleepyland ready for the journey back for part two of Hanoi tomorrow morning.

Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka

VERY quiet here. Pretty much nothing going on apart from the locals and some dogs. Arrived with nothing booked and walked up and down the high street speaking to locals. The room rates here seem to vary wildly. This town has (apparently) one of the top 10 surfing breaks in the world, and regularly holds competitions. The best surf is in May, but some guest houses hold their high prices all season.  Have they never heard of supply and demand?

The high street

I bargained hard and got a 700 rupee room on the beach. I later ask about the tsunami and how it affected him. He tells me that it flattened his house and business and 5m of water gushing over the beach nearly killed his family - they managed to get inland quickly. The tsunami only reached 100m inland. Nothing near the scale of Thailand but equally terrifying. I felt bad about bargaining hard and in the end I paid a little extra.

The beach is wild. You can see the hyped offshore break and there's a few surfers pootling about on it but it was small. I walk miles down the coast accompanied by a pair of rowdy dogs! There's lots of tsunami damage: house foundations, broken trees and even black palm trees, though i'm not sure how they got to be this colour. Found what I thought was a football washed up on the beach, but was a fully inflated puffa fish.

 

In the evening had a real German beer in a Thai bar owned by a real German and his Thai (I can only assume) wife! Delicious. Grabbed some incredibly spicy (and cheap) rice and curry from a local hotel over the road and went back to the room. Not much else to do!

I think my little toe was up against the mosquito net in the night as it got painfully munched.

Next day, had another trust episode with Sri Lankan men while waiting for a bus. I was 99% sure the bus came this way, but got told by tuk-tuk drivers, and locals who had tuk-tuk driver friends, that there was no bus, or the bus wasn't until the evening. I shrugged them off then later a lady hotel owner came over and told me that there IS a bus and it'll be there at 11:30. Sure enough 11:30 came and so did the bus. I'm now only speaking with women!

You can see all of the photo's here