Well we're back in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, and we've just finished three days of treking through the Borneo jungle, trying to get fit in time to climb Mt Kinabalo in Sabah (4093m) - we've already been up Mt Taishan in China, but that's a lot smaller (1545m). We didn't see much wildlife in the jungle - we generally had our eyes glued to the floor to stop ourselves from tripping over roots and dead ferns - but we still managed to see some proboscis monkeys (piccie on the left), and macaque monkeys and Bearded pigs came to find us at the park headquaters, hoping to grab some leftover food from the tourists. The longest trek we did was 6 hours, and was pretty hard going in parts - at times you can't see any resemblance of a path anywhere and just have to follow the painted trees to navigate. It's nice to be back at civilisation, but now we've got a taste for the jungle we're thinking of taking it further and travelling upriver to Sibu and Kapit, before looping back and travelling overland into Brunei.

After chatting to a travel agent in Bangkok it became obvious that it would be a LOT more expensive (about twice the price) to fly from Singapore to Australia than from Bangkok, so we decided to book our tickets out to Australia from Thailand. We bought a one-way ticket to Singapore and so now we need to make it back north to Bangkok for the 27th for our flight to Sydney. It feels strange putting a stop to our "overland" adventures, but it was definately the best thing to do in terms of money! We'll probably do a stopover for just a few days in Sydney before heading off to Auckland and looking for work, and somewhere to live.....

We spent 3 days in Singapore, catching up with shopping (I bought an ipod and Helen got some cool new glasses for about 1/3 of what she would have paid in England) and then took another flight into Kuching, in Sarawak, Malaysia. It's a definate change of pace, and of scene from Singapore and Bangkok, and we're looking forward to some serious jungle trecking in Baka National Park tommorow.

After a couple of days in Kampot we 'hired out' the whole of the back seat of a taxi to Sihanookville, which is a tourist-town on the Cambodian coast. The beach was beautiful, but unfortunately it rained almost non-stop after we arrived and we spent far too much time indoors... the nightlife wasn't up to much either, and we split after two nights to take the boat to the Thai border. After getting across into country number 15, we took a van to the nearest sizable town (Trat) without really any idea of where we were heading or where we would stay the night. Eventually we decided to follow the herd and move straight on to Bangkok, so we took a minivan to the capital and arrived in the wee small hours of the morning.

I was in Bangkok only last year, but it's still strange to see the complete constrast between Thailand and the other countries we've been through - Mongolia, Vietnam, Cambodia and even China don't seem as developed as here, and sometimes you have to remind yourself you are in SE Asia and not in a city in Western Europe, or America. Another strange thing is walking down Kau San road and seeing stall after stall selling things that we had spent many hours and huge amounts of effort trying to find in other cities like Phnom Penh and Hanoi - things like speakers for our minidisc players, mosquito repellant (there is a 'Boots' just minutes walk from our guesthouse) and English books.

We're not sure where we are heading next, although we know that time is now the constraining factor - we'd both like to see Malaysia (and I'd like to see Australia) but we'd like to be in New Zealand by the beginning of October at least.

Great to catch up with Darryl Carter last night in Bangkok, an old schoolmate who I haven't seen for nearly 14 years!

I've not updated the site for a week or so, but I'm still getting email so it seems there really is more than my mum checking up on me! Thanks to everyone who's send mail, it's nice to think that so many people are checking the site.

We spent a few days in Siem Riep checking out the temples - Anchor Wat has to be one of the highlights of the trip so far. Took hundreds of piccies which I will hopefully get up to the site sometime soon. After three days traping around all the temples we spent another three days around Siem Riep playing pool and drinking far too much beer with Quincy, a Dutchman who thinks he's from the States who we'd originally met in Ho Chi Minh city, and Mac, an Irishman who ended the first night singing 'Hotel California' on stage at 3am at a 'music restauraunt' with Helen. They've also had the good sense to become customers of Mike's Fantastic Hosting Services, which means that I only need about another 10 customers before I'm making a profit!!!!

We took the fast boat back to Phomn Penh, the first time we have done a u-turn on the trip and it felt a bit funny to be honest. After a couple of days we decided to get down to Kampot, which is a much more relaxed place just off the south coast of Cambodia. The man at our guesthouse recommended getting a taxi there - we could have one seat in the taxi for about 1.5 dollars, but the driver will expect to get *7* passengers in the car! After imagining me sat on some poor Cambodian's lap in the front seat we decided to buy out the whole car.

We arrived in Kampot yesterday, and took a motorbike down to Kep on the coast this morning. It's a bit of a ghost town, as the Khmer Rouge destroyed most of it, and what was left was often sold to the Vietnamese soldiers in exchange for food. It's a bit strange walking around a place that was effectively closed to tourists (because the Khmer Rouge were still active there) until only a few years ago.

When we got to Chau Doc (a nice town on the Vietnamese side of the border) we checked into our guesthouse - a nice place with a sort of water moat in the middle of the bungalows - and asked at reception as to whether our passports had been delivered, as promised. We got nothing but blank looks. Two phone calls later and we still did't know where our passports were. We were told that they would arrive "overnight".... but they don't. So now we are in Vietnam, very close to the border on the last day that we are allowed in the country, but we have no idea where our passports are. Thankfully, the manager of the guesthouse takes on our case and phones the owner of the company who are holding our passports - apparently they are still in Saigon, and we will have to stay in Chau Doc another day while they are taken - finally - to Chau Doc. He also assures us that our visa problem will be ok. We hope he's right - it'll cost us at least a fifty dollar fine for overstaying if he's wrong. Thankfully, it all turned out fine - we got our passports that night, over 48 hours later than we were originally promised, and we crossed the border without a problem. We had a great day in Chau Doc as well, and treated ourselves to a gorgeous Vietnamese meal at a five star hotel just out from the town centre.

We've only been in Cambodia a couple of days, but thankfully we have hit a big city with decent nightlife on the weekend. Last night we found out what Phnom Penh has to offer by way of bars and clubs, and while we weren't exactly spoilt for choice, we still had a great time bounding around the city trying as many bars as we could. We finally called it a night when we ended up at a club called "Manhattan" where a beer would set you back a cool $5 (plus tax plus service charge - an average beer should cost about 1 dollar here)

The current plan is to set off for Ankhor Watt in the next few days, then perhaps come back to Phnom Penh and on to Sinoukville, where we can get a boat into Thailand.

Hurrah! Both the internet connections and the state of the machines are much better here in Cambodia, and I've managed to upload a load of photies. Goodbyes in Manchester, Stockport, London, and a great curry in Brick Lane with MDL People - then our travels in Scotland and The Gambia, followed by some *selected* pictures from Mark's stag do in Brussels. :) There are also pictures from the journey to Moscow, of our four days in Moscow itself, and some pics from on the trans-siberian train from Moscow to Beijing.
Then there are pictures from Irkusk, Ulaan Bator, Beijing, Taishan, Shanghai, and Yangshou If you haven't got anything better to do, check 'em out!