Home and Away

We landed in Australia at 4am on 6th September. Our first impressions on landing don't go very far beyond being mildly excited at how clean and orderly Darwin airport was compared to Bali. Karl was particularly impressed with the cleanliness of the loos. Reception at our hostel was closed due to the early hour, so we made ourselves comfortable on the sunloungers by the pool, pulled our backpacks up close, and went to sleep. The following morning was blue skied and warm. We were welcomed by one lovely member of staff while another prepared the daily free breakfast. After some tea, a few helpings of toast and a square crumpet (!) we decided we liked Australia. This impression remained for the next five weeks. It's an awesome place. And, for once, I don't use the term 'awesome' lightly.

However, by this point, we had neither the patience nor the budget to be tourists in Australia. There are many words that spring to mind when you think of Australia – beaches, diving, surfing, kangaroos, Aborigines, bush walking etc etc. But one of the words we weren't expecting to use was 'expensive'. Compared to what we were spending in Asia, Australia was a massive shock. We went from paying 10pounds a night between us, to paying over 40pounds. Our average weekly spend more than doubled, and it left practically no money to do anything fun – diving and visiting the national parks was out of the question. If we carried on like this, we were set to run out of money within a couple of months, without actually having done very much.

Luckily, my lovely friend Nina recommended a work exchange website. The idea is that you can search for a nice family to stay with for a few weeks, getting free bed and board in exchange for a few hours of work each day. The work depends on the type of property – it could be picking fruit and looking after trees on an orchard, cooking and general housework in the city or gardening and looking after animals on a farm.

We found Rick & Annie, and their brilliant organic hobby farm near Grafton, a nice little town about halfway down the east coast. A hobby farm is essentially a small farm. Small by Australian standards, that is – Rick & Annie's place is about 100 acres. They live there with two of Annie's kids, Briony and Brennan, and a wonderful assortment of animals (more on them later).

The farm

Halfway round the globe and missing home, for the next two and a half weeks they allowed us to make their home our home. It was nice to be in a family environment again, and it didn't take long for us to settle in. Sofas, home cooked meals, kids running around, playing football in the garden, falling asleep while watching Midsomer Murders on a Sunday...it was perfect.

Me, Karl, Annie and Rick enjoy pie and ginger beer for lunch one afternoon.

The photo was taken by Annie's lovely friend Lynney

They're actually in the process of building a new home on the property. It's the sort of thing you'd expect to see on Grand Designs, and you can just tell that it's going to be absolutely stunning:

Under construction, but still beautiful

We stayed in our own cosy caravan, at the top of a hill, about a 5 minute walk from the main house.

Cosy caravan

It was a nice stroll on a sunny morning, through the paddocks, past the horses and cows. But you wouldn't want to do it during the cold and dark nights. So, Annie offered to teach Karl how to drive her car. Karl tried to act all casual and answered with a nonchalant “Oh yeah, that'd be cool”, although his eyes practically popped out of his head and he had a pretty huge grin on his face. From that evening onwards he took great pleasure in driving us both to and from the house in Annie's car.

Not to be left out, I learnt to drive a tractor. It's easier to drive than a car (so I'm told), and waaaaay more fun. Plus, it's the first time I've ever driven anything, apart from Karl up the wall. To earn this special privilege, though, I had to help Annie fill up eight huge bags with cow and horse manure. Plastic gloves, no shovels. It wasn't too bad, to be honest – I've seen and smelt far worse things since beginning this trip. Besides, afterwards I got to spend a while driving the tractor around the paddock, practicing changing gears and trying not to run over Ellie the dog, before we loaded the poo bags in the bucket at the front and I transported them up the hill.

If you have a tractor that needs driving, I'm your gal

Apparently it was only fair for Karl to have a go to, so Annie taught him as well later on that week.

Karl was ok at tractor driving

This time, we were gathering hay from a paddock across the road. Raking it up, pitchforking it into the trailer behind the tractor, and then jumping on it to push it all down.

The hay is used for mulching, which we did on other days in the vegetable garden. Mulching is where you put a thick blanket of hay around plants to maintain the temperature of the soil and prevent weeds from growing up.

A lot of the work we did on the farm didn't feel so much like work as just pottering about happily in the garden on sunny mornings. The sort of work we did included:

Creating sawdust paths between the rows of plants in the vegetable garden

The veg garden

Planting marigolds in between vegetables and herbs to keep away pests

Sowing seeds for next season's crop – peppers, melons, tomatoes, aubergines etc

Putting up fence and netting around the strawberry patch to keep out wallabies (little kangaroos)

Planting new things (fenugreek, irises) in the herb garden

Extensive herb garden

Preparing an adjoining paddock for planting by fertilising the soil, sowing seeds (corn, soybean, melon), planting (potatoes, ginger, tumeric), mulching and spreading over manure and stinky seaweed fertiliser. Took a good scrubbing to get the smell off our hands...

All in a day's work...

Cracking corn using a traditional, old-fashioned corn-cracking contraption. The cracked corn is used for animal feed.

On some mornings we helped to feed the cows, horses and chooks (chickens, ducks and other such birds)

Letting the chooks in and out of their pen, and collecting eggs

One morning we found this little gem of an egg:

Teeny tiny

We also had a go at milking Prize, the Jersey cow, a couple of times. Although this was usually done at 5:30am and we couldn't quite bring ourselves to get up that early most mornings.

Prize & Daisy

Weeding! We spent two mornings in one of the horses paddocks pulling out fireweed, which is poisonous to horses and cows. The bags we were filling up had previously been used to store horse feed, so the two horses in the paddock (Duke and Queenie) got all excited and decided to have a nose around, picking up the bags and chucking them around, making a bit of a mess. When Duke realised it was just full of fireweed, he snatched the straw hat off my head, deciding that it would probably make a better snack. After a bit of a munch he changed his mind and spat it on the floor (it was a bit crumpled and soggy, but otherwise fine). Then he had a bit of sulk and started kicking his feeding trough. Drama queen.

The dreaded fireweed

Duke & Queenie finally go back to munching on grass instead of my hat

We also helped Annie to set up her own website. She's a reflexologist (I got a fantastic foot massage one evening), and has come up with her own theory of Padaveda (“knowledge of the feet”) which combines reflexology principles with Ayurvedic teachings. Karl did the techy side of the website, while I worked on the text, and we combined our limited Photoshop knowledge to create a banner. You can see it here: www.padaveda.com

One weekend, Rick and Annie were going away to a conference on soil management and very kindly gave us the option of spending a weekend on the beach in their camper van. So on a Friday afternoon they dropped us and the van off at a campsite in a little town called Woolgoolga, and Karl and I had our first ever camping trip together. As with most camping trips, it had it's fair share of mishaps. We decided that we wanted to turn the van around so that the doors opened out to a nice grassy patch, but Karl hadn't driven a manual before. There was some difficulty using the clutch and a lot of stalling, and after bumping into a picnic table and backing into some tree branches, we gave up for fear of drawing too much attention to ourselves when we didn't possess a driver's licence. We tried again the next day, after I'd explained to Karl how the clutch in the tractor worked, and had some more success. Also, we hadn't thought to test the camping stove before leaving the house and were slightly dismayed to find that it wasn't working – that was our well-planned menu out the window. In the end, we had to cook all our meals (including boiling water for tea) on the communal BBQ grill, which drew some strange looks, as well as some kindly concern, from fellow campers. We'd also forgotten to bring any bowls or mugs.

Once we'd gotten over all this, it turned out to be a brilliant weekend, even though it rained all day on the Sunday. Our camper van was small but incredibly cosy:

And we had some great dinners, including grilled lamb chops, and Aussie style burgers complete with pineapple rings (don't knock it...).

We didn't quite make it fully into the sea, due to the freezing water and enormous waves, but we had a little paddle and some nice strolls down the beach. Oh and some amazing fish and chips – almost as good as back home.

Food on the farm was always brilliant, because most of the vegetables and herbs come straight from the garden. And it turned out that Annie loves Indian food, so we did a little knowledge exchange where she taught me how to make my own paneer, yoghurt and ghee, and I showed her how to make chapattis and a couple of curries. Another evening, Annie invited over her friend Lynney and we had a bash at making homemade masala dosas, which were an enormous success:

During our second week they organised a campfire dinner. It was quite a cool setup with huge, heavy cast iron pots over the fire, filled with Annie's bean stew, Rick's lamb stew, and fresh corn on the cob. Lynney had made a delicious spinach and cheese pie, her daughter Lily whipped up a carrot cake, and somehow Karl managed to charm Annie into making him a cheesecake!

Lynney with her fab pie (left), and Annie's scrummy cheesecake (right)

The list of fun things we did during those two weeks is almost endless. But here is some of it anyway:

• Visiting the waterfalls nearby. Once again, it was one of the best we've been to, even though the water was freezing. Karl did his usual array of jumps and flips. I divided my time between swimming about a bit and sitting on a rock, chattering my teeth.

• The next day we took a stroll down to a little swimming hole on their property. I didn't go in this time, but I'm told the water was even colder than the day before.
• We spent a couple of afternoons in the nearby town of Grafton, where there's a bakery that does the best apple turnovers.
• Annie arranged for her neighbour to take us to another nearby town, Coffs Harbour, where we had a nice picnic and a stroll, and found a cheesecake shop.

We bought half a cheesecake. To share with the rest of the family, of course...

• We helped to clean windows and ceiling's at Annie's old house in a small town called Tucabia. We went round to a neighbour's garden with Bree and Brennan to eat mulberries, pecans and macademias from her trees (with her permission, of course).
• Bree taught us how to tightrope walk. Or she tried to, at least. We were rubbish.
• Karl played a lot of football with Brennan
• Bree helped me find some four leaf clovers in the back garden
• We had a few pub dinners. The barramundi and chips at the local pub was very good
• Learning how to make ricotta and cream cheese
• Played with Ellie the dog. Me and her became good friends until she tried to get over-affectionate with my leg. I didn't realise girl dogs did this. Anyway, then I backed off a little bit.

Ellie has a snooze

• Star gazing. I've never seen a sky as full of stars as when we were on the farm. Stunning.
• We saw a snake! We were in the house and it slithered past the window, then darted away when it saw we'd noticed it. When we described it to Rick later, he said it sounded like a poisonous one. For once, I don't think he was just teasing.

Thinking about it, I can't believe we packed so much into such a short space of time. We're really grateful to Annie, Rick, Bree and Brennan, for going to such lengths to make sure we were always comfortable and having a good time.

Working on the farm for a fortnight meant that we didn't have enough time to do some of the things we'd planned in Australia, like diving the Great Barrier Reef or visiting the Whitsunday Islands. But I found that I didn't actually care, because I doubt any of it would have provided as brilliant an experience as the farm did. We did an unbelievable amount while we were there – things we wouldn't have been able to do if we'd been travelling around as regular tourists - and we loved every minute of it. I'll catch the coral next time round.

Happy Shiny People

Note: For anyone who isn't aware, to view photos in more detail, just click on them to enlarge!

This situation is getting a little out of hand. We're nearing the end of our Australia visit, over six months into our trip, and I'm still blogging about things we did a couple of months ago!

I very badly need to get this blog up to speed so I'm going to fast forward through a bunch of stuff. Basically, after Laos we returned to Thailand and spent a week on one of the islands learning to scuba dive. It's probably one of the most amazing things I've ever done, but I'll tell you about it another time – if not on the blog, defo in person.

After getting our scuba diving licence, we hot-tailed it to Malaysia, where we were due to catch a flight to Indonesia to meet up with Nina and Julia, two lovely friends that I've known since sixth form.

On 7th August, at around midday, the four of us sat in the cafe at the front of our hostel feeling amazed and excited that we were all there together on the other side of the world. Once we'd gotten over this and spent a good few hours catching up on each other's trips (they were nearing the end of a two-month trip to Indonesia), we started to discuss our forthcoming adventure together. You see, we'd signed ourselves up for a three-day jungle trek.

None of us had done any trekking before. In fact, aside from Karl and his kickboxing, none of us had done any real exercise in about six months. Nevertheless, the following day we made our way to Bukit Lawang, a little town on the edge of the jungle. We met our guide, Thomas, who assured us that he had secured us some 'bloody swanky rooms' at a local guesthouse for the night. The rooms were pretty nice, and we made the most of our last shower and comfortable bed for three days. The following morning, we put on our oldest clothes, laced up our walking shoes, packed our rucksacks and headed into the wilderness.

Within 15 minutes, we were a little out of breath and already starting to sweat. Secretly, I was already hoping that Thomas would pause more frequently to explain something about the surrounding wildlife so that I could put on my best 'interested' face while my nostrils did overtime trying to get a bit more oxygen into my lungs. I'm not sure Thomas was wholly convinced by this act.

An hour later we were properly in the jungle. It's essentially a sauna with trees, and for the next three days we spent most of our time looking like this. Happy, shiny people.

Probably the sweatiest I've ever been in my entire life

As if the heat wasn't bad enough, the trekking itself wasn't exactly an easy stroll in the park. The paths we followed generally went either very steeply uphill, or very steeply downhill. Uphill paths were like climbing a couple of hundred massive steps, often pulling ourselves upwards with the help of the vines and tree roots growing across the slope. It was murder on the legs and left us gasping for breath.


Surprisingly, downhill was not easier at all. The paths were steep and often very muddy, so each footstep down was a potential skid so we had to use vines and roots to steady ourselves as we cautiously made our way. With my usual grace and elegance, I found myself sliding down on my arse more than once. By the time we got to the bottom, my legs were weak and wobbly and my bum was covered in mud.

Yet, even though we (the girls) spent a lot of time grumbling about how only absolute mentals could possibly want a hobby such as climbing or hiking, it was loads of fun (in fact, less than a week later we were discussing walking holidays). It was exhausting, but at the end of each day it was also extremely satisfying to look back and think about how far we'd walked, while we wolfed down tea and biscuits like there was no tomorrow. Between the four of us, we polished off four rather big packets of biscuits in three days. We were almost as proud of this as we were of our trekking.

Teatime!

Speaking of biscuits, the food on the trek was incredible. We'd been convinced that we'd be eating the plainest of meals, but for three days Thomas and his three trusty helpers cooked up the best food we had in our entire time in Indonesia. Every meal was outstanding. This is what we ate over the course of our trek:

DAY ONE:

We'd eaten breakfast at our hotel that morning.

Lunch: Nasi Goreng (fried rice with vegetables), with a perfectly fried egg on top, prawn crackers and chilli sauce. All beautifully wrapped up in banana leaf packages.

Trying to disguise a gob full of food with a dashing smile. Is it working?

Snacks: Passion fruit, oranges, bananas, rambutan and pineapple.

Dinner: Chicken curry, vegetable curry, tofu and soy bean in chilli sauce, rice.

DAY TWO:

Breakfast: Toast with tomato and scrambled eggs that had been cooked with onions and chillies.

Lunch: Noodle soup. This was cooked on the spot while we sat by a beautiful little stream.

Snacks: Same fruit as yesterday, with watermelon instead of pineapple.

Dinner: Sardines in a tomato & chilli sauce, vegetable curry, tofu and soybean in chilli sauce, BBQ fish, rice.

Feast. Easily the best food we had in Indonesia.

DAY THREE:

Breakfast: Pancakes (cooked in a wok!), with condensed milk.

By lunchtime we were back at our guesthouse.

After dinner, Thomas would tell us funny stories about the jungle and his own life. He's an awesome guy with a great sense of humour, and he looked after us really well. He and his helpers entertained us in the evenings by teaching us card games and a selection of weird but fun games, including “Lah-dee-dah”, Peanut Marriages and 'This is a cup. A What? A Cup!” Don't ask yet, just remind us to teach you them when we get home. As well as preparing great meals and keeping us entertained, they trekked alongside us each day. Except they were each carrying huge bags weighing about 20k, containing food, cooking utensils, sleeping mats and everything else needed for our trek. And as we puffed and panted, grumbled and fell, they managed to never look tired or complain.

Our guides were hauling these around the jungle
while we struggled just to carry ourselves!

Chillies being ground and fish being BBQ'd for our dinner

The two nights that we were in the jungle, we camped in the most beautiful spots. On the first night, our camp was set up by a little stream with a beautiful waterfall just a few minutes away. I know we've gone on about waterfalls a bit in South East Asia, and you'd think we'd had enough. But this was definitely the best we'd been in so far. After the day trekking, a bit of a splash about in the cool water was just what we needed. Plus Thomas had brought some soap, so we had a good wash too!

Campsite No 1 was at a waterfall

Chilling out at the campsite while dinner is prepared

The next day, camp was set up by a big river. The water was fairly fast flowing, so we just paddled rather than swam. But it was a breathtaking spot, surrounded by dense jungle.

A scenic riverside spot for Campsite No 2

I've got a little carried away and managed to write all this without a single mention of the reason we'd decided on this trek in the first place. Orang-utans. The jungle in Bukit Lawang is one of the only places in the world where you can see them in the wild. The trek was largely about orang-utan spotting. And we saw loads! This fuzzy ginger fellow is one of the first we spotted, and he was more than happy to pose for us before heading off to build a little nest for his afternoon nap:

"Now I'm the King of the Jungle, see, the Jungle VIP..."
Come on, you know the song!

Later we came across Sandra, who had her adorable ball-of-orange-fluff baby clutching onto her. He's only four months old and was getting to grips with climbing:

Sandra and her baby!

We saw a few gibbons and macaques as well, and also a beautiful peacock. And then one of the guides heard a rustling and looked up. “It's Mina!” he shouted “Quickly, go, go, go!” Mina is a butch lady orang-utan who is renowned for attacking guides if they don't give her food. Of the 140 guides that work in the jungle, she's managed to get her hands on at least half of them. We'd read about Mina in our Lonely Planet guide, and we wasted no time in legging it as fast as we could go (not very) while the guides tried to distract her. Her name came up again a few more times on that first day, but beyond a faint ginger blur in the distance, we never managed to get a proper look at her. By the afternoon, we were exhausted from walking and beginning to lag. I wouldn't be surprised if the guides warnings of 'Mina!' were just part of their plan to get us moving along a bit faster...

On the subject of wildlife, we saw some very cool creatures. Look at these guys! I'd like to pretend I wasn't afraid of the green one, but that'd be lying.

On our last day, Thomas could see that our legs were no longer in working condition. Karl could probably have continued trekking quite easily, but us girls were pooped. Thomas took pity on us, gave us the morning off to paddle in the river, laze about in the sun, skim stones and finish the last of the biscuits.

Down by the river

Our trekking included a rafting trip back home. At midday, the youngest helper (who looked about 16) appeared in the distance carrying four huge rubber rings. Amazingly, he'd been walking for an hour and a half, carrying these upstream from the village. Karl had a go at carrying them and almost managed to both fall over and suffocate himself, before managing to stagger into this pose long enough for a photo:

How not to carry a stack of inner tubes

The tubes were roped together to form a raft and all our stuff was secured in waterproof bags (so no photos of the raft, I'm afraid!) and tied on board. We all climbed in and enjoyed a bumpy, splashy journey through the rapids on our way back to the village. It was the perfect end to the trek.

The perfect antidote to all this exercise was a week on Lake Toba.

Knackered from our trek, the next morning we all bundled into a minibus and headed to an island in the middle of a lake in the middle of an extinct volcano. It was beautiful and peaceful and relaxing. We stayed in gorgeous little bungalows, which turned out to be the cheapest and cosiest accommodation we've had to date (1.50!!).

Our cosy bungalow

We spent our days reading, lounging around in cafes or on our porches, and swimming in the lake.

Apparently the lake is over 400m deep! The water is cool and clear, and to Karl's delight there was a diving board at one of the swimming points. What better way to spend an afternoon than repeatedly hurling yourself into a lake?

My rather timid jump off the dive board,
followed by Karl's more adventurous attempt.

As much as we'd intended to have a productive week of exploring the island, the only other thing we did on Lake Toba was sample the local jungle juice. Nina and Julia had befriended a local guy called Eddie whilst out on a cycling trip, and he'd invited us all to his shop to enjoy a jug of this strange booze, which is tapped from palm trees daily. So the next evening, we traipsed off, wearing our waterproofs because of the rain and accompanied by a dog from one of the nearby restaurants. We named him Timmy because it felt a bit like a Famous Five adventure, except with alcohol and no baddies. This fantasy was shattered when Timmy abandoned us after half an hour when he got distracted by a lady dog.

Karl, Nina, Julia and Timmy too!

The jungle juice was pretty weird. It's quite a milky drink, served at room temperature (rooms being warmer in Asia than in the UK), and with a yeasty flavour. It took a while to get the first mug down us, and I felt apprehensive before each mouthful as I hadn't decided whether I like it or not. I guess this probably meant I didn't. Luckily, Eddie told us that the addition of a bit of ice-cold beer made it even better – and it did! It then became a refreshing and tasty beverage. Phew.

Mmm, milky beer...

As a snack, Eddie lit a BBQ and cooked up some fish that he'd caught from the lake the day before. After a few more drinks, we all headed off to a bar, and the next morning we slept in and were glad that we had no big plans for the day. Life on Toba was pretty good.

A week after we arrived on the island, it was time to leave. We said goodbye to Nina and Julia, and I felt a little sad on the boat journey back to the edge of the volcano. The two weeks we'd spent with them had been absolutely brilliant, and it was so nice to be around good friends again. And it's still a few months more before we'll have that pleasure again.

After Lake Toba, we visited an active volcano in Java, and then spent a couple of weeks on Bali and the Gili Islands before flying onwards to Australia. We'd flown across the equator, marking our first time in the southern hemisphere, where we'll remain until we fly home next year. Halfway through our trip, and halfway across the globe, it felt a bit like a new adventure was beginning.

Our Best Eats - Thailand

Altogether, we were in Thailand for about 6/7 weeks. We left and re-entered the country so many times that I have almost a full page in my passport of just Thailand stamps.

From our first meal, a delicious red curry on the train from the Malaysian border to Bangkok, I just knew that when I got round to writing it, my food post would be like me: bursting at the seams.

Red Curry – we found an amazing place in Bangkok, near Khao San Road (backpacker district) called apple, which served some of the best Thai food we had on the whole trip. Our favourite was the red curry, filled with yummy crunchy vegetables like Thai aubergine, and so spicy that it made my lips numb.


Whiskey shakes – another tasty offering from apple. When I first saw it on the menu, I’ll admit I was dubious. But when the table next to us ordered a pitcher, I quickly changed my mind. It’s basically a fruit shake (fruit blended with ice) and whiskey. The blueberry and lychee flavours were best, and came with juicy little jelly sweets. We couldn’t resist going back for these again on our final visit to Bangkok.

Pad Thai – for anyone who isn’t familiar with this, it’s a popular egg-fried noodle dish with peanutty-tamarind flavours. You can have it with tofu, chicken or prawns, and Bangkok’s swanky mall Siam Paragon does an awesome one.

Market food – Once a week in Chiang Mai, everyone flocks to the Sunday walking market for dinner. There’s a huge variety of food, and our favourites included barbequed Thai sausage, pork kebabs with a garlic, chilli and green-pepper marinade, and steamed pork buns.


Fruit shakes – Couldn’t get enough of these. At the Sunday walking market we found the most mindblowingly good passion fruit shakes. Meanwhile, the little restaurant round the corner from massage school did incredible watermelon shakes. In both cases, the drinks are made simply by blending fruit with ice until it becomes a thick shake. It’s so simple, but the fruit flavours are so intense that every time I took that first sip, I just couldn’t get over how amazing they were. Definitely on my list of things to recreate when I get home! The only downside was the brain freeze from drinking them too fast…


Mango & Sticky Rice – Sounds dull, I know. But the rice is coconut rice, and it’s topped with a slightly sweet coconut sauce, and the mango is fresh and sweet. We learnt how to make it in our cookery course, so I can (hopefully) prove that it’s delicious when I get back!

Everything we made at our Thai cookery class – if we do say so ourselves. No, seriously though, it was really freaking good.


Deep fried pork special homemade – I love this not just for it’s ridiculous name. It’s chunks of pork, deep fried so that they're crispy on the outside but moist and delicious within. It comes with a sort of tangy mayonnaise-like dipping sauce, a spicy chilli sauce, and a selection of crunchy pickled vegetables. Really really good.

Roast chicken sandwiches – not really Thai food, I know. But the roast chicken sarnies I had in Pai following an afternoon at a waterfall are definitely amongst the best meals I had in Thailand.


Homemade Thai food – On our last night in Chiang Mai, Karl’s kickboxing trainer Krupong invited us for dinner at his house. His wife cooked the best meal we had in Thailand. There were plates of beautifully stir-fried vegetables, pork mince flavoured with Thai basil, bowls of Tom Yum soup (spicy and tangy, our two favourite flavours) and so much more.

Pandan cake – Five minutes down the road from Krupong’s house, our bike ran out of petrol. Karl and Krupong went to buy some more fuel while I watched a terrible Thai soap with his wife and kids (they’re SO cute!). About 15 minutes later they returned with bags of small, light green cakes for dessert. Pandan is a leaf used for flavouring and colouring Thai desserts. The cakes were lovely and soft, and came with a Pandan-flavoured custard too. Plus they’d bought some bags of a hot milky drink – no idea what it was, but it was the perfect pre-bedtime drink.

Wasabi spinach – I had this at Tianzi’s, the macrobiotic restaurant where I went with my massage class on our graduation day. It’s basically spinach cooked with sesame and wasabi. The wasabi was like a punch in the nose, but I absolutely loved it.

Papaya salad – This was one of our favourite Thai dishes before we even left London, but the one we had in Bangkok was mindblowing. It was a dinky restaurant that specialises in this one salad, and it does it really well. Grated green papaya, mixed with green beans and shredded carrot, with a spicy and tangy dressing. Topped with crushed peanuts. This one had salted fish added to it for extra flavour, which was surprisingly good.


Hot herbal drink – Karl discovered this through his kickboxing teacher, who took them to a little stall after their morning running session for a mug of hot herbal drink. We don't actually know what's in it, but it's spicy, and I suspect black pepper is one of the key ingredients. We liked it so much that it became part of our daily routine – we'd ride along for a mug of herbal tea, hop back on the bike to grab some breakfast, and then Karl would drop me off to massage school.


Banana fritters – why don’t we have these at home? I had them on two occasions. We made them in our cookery class, and I also bought a batch for breakfast one morning in Pai. Slices of banana, battered and deep fried, then sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds.

Laos - Part II

Sheena: “Oh my god, you SO have to try tubing in Vang Vieng, it's like, SO much fun”. This is generally the first thing people (mainly gap year students) had to say about Vang Vieng, the third stop on our Laos itinerary. Well, apart from one American guy who declared that he hated the place so much that he left the very next day. Too many drunken Brits, apparently. Nothing we haven't seen before. Vang Vieng is on every backpacker's list for one reason only – tubing. The idea is simple. You hire a great big inner tube, get driven 3km up-river, and float your way back to town via the many bars along the way. It's like the lazy rivers you find at waterparks, except faster, alcohol fuelled and more dangerous.

Karl: When we arrived at the Nam Song river we were greeted by a fast-flowing, mud brown coloured expanse of water, lined with bars.

This was our entry point to the potential death-trap they call 'tubing' and while other dare-devils (who had been through it all the day before and returned because they loved it so much) entered the water, we hesitated, watching to see how it was done. Confident that we'd be safe in our rubber rings, we then splashed in and rode the current towards the first bar, which appeared very quickly thanks to the sheer speed of the river.

Getting off at the first bar proved tricky, as it's almost impossible to steer the tube out of the current, so staff stand at the shore and throw out rubber rings attached to ropes, which are used to haul you in. With so many people attempting to do the same thing at the same time it became quite chaotic. The stop from grabbing the rope is so sudden, and the current so strong that I fell out of my tube. This happens to a lot of tubing newbies at the first bar, but in typical Karl-style, I continued to do so for each bar.

The first bar was heaving with people in various stages of drunkenness and the atmosphere was awesome. Some people were having bizarre things spray-painted onto their bodies, such as “Virgin” and “Paddy is a c***” (poor Paddy). Meanwhile, others were launching themselves from the bar's home-made rope swing (the biggest I've ever seen) into the river while everyone else watched.

Not fancying the look of either in our sober state, we ordered a bucket-sized Mojito (about half a litre) and sat down to watch, with the occasional cheer for an impressive jump or an 'Oooooh' for the painful looking bellyflops. All the while, I couldn't help thinking that perhaps I was getting a bit too old for all this. Of course, it wasn't long before the Mojito started to work its magic and I was dying to hurl myself at great speed into a torrential river.

I quite enjoy throwing myself into water in spectacular ways, but the swing actually frightened the bejeesus out of me and it took the rest of the Mojito before I could pluck up the courage and have another go.

We were soon moving onto bar number two, but only to use the loos, grab a non-alcoholic pineapple shake (an attempt to be sensible and remain sober), and in no time at all we were being yanked into bar number three. The Mojito we ordered here tasted like a bucket of bacardi with a dash of mint, so it took a while to finish. In the meantime, we had a go at mud volley-ball and mud tug-o-war.

After hosing ourselves off and wincing our way through the last of our strong cocktail, it was time to move on. As we floated down-river a huge slide came into view, constructed entirely of concrete and bathroom tiles. Obviously I had to try it out and caught the tow rope, pulling myself in. Sheena somehow managed to miss all attempts at throwing her a line and was quickly floating away so I let go to join her.

Sheena: About 100m on from the Giant Slide bar, I finally managed to paddle my way to the river's edge and pull myself to the bank using some well-placed river plants. I hopped ashore and landed knee-deep in thick mud, then having to wade my way slowly over to Karl with my tube slung over my shoulder. Elegant as ever. We walked back to the bar, ordered some drinks, and sat down once more to

watch people hurl themselves into the river. Up till now, the rope swings and ziplines had looked a little lethal for my liking. The slide, however, definitely looked like something I'd be willing to try.

As I climbed the steps to the top of the slide and stood in the queue, I was feeling pretty brave. By the time I eventually got to the front of the queue, I'd lost some of my resolve. But it was too late to back down now – there was a queue behind me, and Karl was waiting at the bottom, camera in hand. There was a kid in charge of the slide who held out a broomstick to prevent anyone from launching themselves down the slide before his say-so. After he was satisfied that the river was clear of anyone floating by, he chucked a bucket of water down the slide for extra speed and motioned for me to go. I sat, took a deep breath and off I went. My God, it was fast! Before I knew it, I was wooshing off the end and into the river, arse-first, with a tremendous splash. It was amazing!

Just before we left the bar I decided to have another go. This time, the boy was gone and an impatient man was in charge. When it was my go, I sat, took a deep breath. And before I knew it, the bastard had chucked a bucket of water on my head and pushed me down. I raced down the slide, gathering speed, with no time to think about what was happening. I was sitting upright rather than lying back, so as I came off the end of the slide I found myself falling towards the river face-first. Oh shit. I landed with a smack, emerging slightly winded and with a cut lip from where I'd somehow bitten myself. Disaster. After reading about how so many people get seriously injured whilst tubing because they go overboard with the drinking, I'd told myself that I'd be sensible. And now the very guy who was supposed to be in charge of making sure we were sliding safely had ruined my go. What an absolute pillock! There was no time for being angry though, we had to float ourselves back to town by 6pm or face a hefty deduction from our deposit.

Karl: While Sheena queued for the bathroom-inspired slide, I noticed that the pile of remaining tubes was quickly dwindling. Somehow there were more people than tubes, and it turns out many people rock up without one and then move on with someone else's. Quickly grabbing two, I made myself comfortable and waited for Sheena to gracefully take the slide. We had less than 30 minutes to return the tubes or incur a fine so after Sheena smashed into the river with all the elegance of a flightless bird we headed back, with a couple of tubeless and tipsy Canadian girls hanging on to us in an attempt to 'hitchhike' back to town without drowning.

The float back took approximately 45 minutes, and as I struggled to exit the river a small boy appeared offering to carry my tube (to which I agreed), walking only a few paces before demanding payment. I ordered him to carry it up the hill before giving him about 50p (an excellent salary for less than 2 minutes of work), at which point he demanded more! Instead I took back the 50p and made him choose between nothing or the most competitive salary in the industry. He smiled and chose the latter.

Sheena: We were late, of course, and had to pay a fine – it was worth it for the extra half hour of play time. We did have plans to meet up and drink the night away at some of the local bars, but it turns out we're a pair of old fuddy duddies and by 8pm we were absolutely knackered from the all the day's activities. We grabbed dinner at a restaurant showing old episodes of Friends, had one last beer and then stumbled home to bed, dozing off to the sound of thumping music from a bar across the river.

By the way, you may have noticed that all the photos are of Karl. I was definitely there too, I just happen to look completely ridiculous in all the photos taken of me. It didn't help that I'd chosen to wear a pair of Karl's shorts with my bikini, so in most of the photos I look like some kind of short, chunky, gender-confused boy divebombing into a river with an expression of terror on my face. I'm sure you understand.