Australia is enormous.  Not just big. But off the scale huge. I’ve always thought that it’s quite a long way to Nanna’s house in North Wales from our house near Portsmouth on the south coast of England.  But Australians would consider driving that distance to get to the shops. We’d landed on the biggest, Read More

A Smug Monday post by Sam (aged 11) and Evan (aged 9) After a long sweaty slog through the stinky streets of Sandakan, in Malaysian Borneo, we arrived at the offices of Crystal Quest, the only (legal) way to Turtle Island. Once there, we took an hour long bumpy and calm boat ride with Alex, Read More

‘The bloody mothers’ visit didn’t get off to a great start, as flight delays seemed to be conspiring against them making their connection in Heathrow and Songkran forced a rapid and pricy change in Bangkok hotels whilst they were flying somewhere over Eastern Europe. But with nearly a century and a half’s worth of, Read More

A Smug Monday post by Evan (aged 9) We woke up to a wonderful sunny day, then scrambled into our clothes and joined four other people on a songtaew (red pickup truck taxi) for a lovely day of snorkelling. When we arrived at the pier, we stopped and had to waddle, because of the, Read More

I woke up this morning, and realised that I was eleven!  Once I got everybody up, it turned out that my mum and dad had got me a card, and Evan had drawn me a picture. At seven o’clock a mini-van pulled up outside and we all piled in to head to Cham Island,, Read More

  When I walked down stairs this morning and found the McAndersons eating breakfast it took me a couple of seconds to remember that they had arrived in Vietnam yesterday. But soon we were chatting away merrily and once brekky was finished we hopped on a bus to Halong Bay playing Top Trumps, Fish, Read More

Before we go any further, I have to say that I haven’t found travelling in Sri Lanka to be the most rewarding experience of the trip. I’ve found it lacking in culture, history and identity, and the food is generally rubbish. I think that the whole country is overly expensive, and that it has all, Read More

After a thirty-seven hour train journey from Agra, which included two nights and one full day in an Indian 3AC sleeper carriage, I was expecting to be quite relieved to see the sea. The journey had been so much better than I had feared. Indian trains have changed a lot since we last travelled, Read More