Gidday,

Ok, it's been a while, but Deirdre & I have been busy globe trotting since the last update.  You have to understand that we're very busy with lots of important things to do.  There is just so little time.   You wouldn't believe how fast this year has gone for us.

Anyway, we're still alive.  We can now use the phrase..... "when we were in 'nam"!  Yep, we're in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as it now known.   I'm pretty pumped.  We spent this morning up at the Cu Chi tunnels which the Viet Cong built and used in the Vietnam war, or the American war, as it is known here.  We've been crawling through the tunnels, and I had a go with a shot gun, AK47 and M16 all with live bullets.  Just call me Kerno the sharp shooter - I was the only one to hit the bulls eye - twice!  Not bad for a blind man!

Our last update was from Darwin in the Northern Teritory, which seems like such a long time ago now.  From Darwin we spent about a week getting down to Katherine via the Litchfield and Kakadu National Parks.  There were many 4wd tracks, which were a breeze in our Britz Land Cruiser bush camper.  The hardest place to get to, and probably most beautiful, was Twin Falls.  It was about 2 hours of 4WD to get there, and then you had to swim about 500m upstream to the falls.

We saw a fair few crocs during the week, most of them were Salties (they're the larger, more aggressive variety!).  I managed to squeeze in a bit of fishing and caught a few Barramundi, although all were too small and had to be thrown back.  There's a good rule of thumb up there in NT - where there's Barra there's usually crocs.  It's a good rule.  When I was fishing at the East Alligator River a 5 metre croc came out of the water only 20 feet down the bank!  That was the end of that day's fishing.

From Katherine, we headed west towards the Kimberley via the Bungle Bungles, a mere 600km detour. The Gibb River Road takes you through the heart of The Kimberley, and is about 650km long.  It's really 650km of corrugated red dust interspersed with a few river crossings and boggy patches.  In the wet season (November through April) it's impassible.  I'm pretty sure there wasn't one part of the Landie that wasn't loose by the time we finished driving it.   We saw loads of awesome waterfalls and gorges, interspersed with lots of red craggy rock.  Broome was supposed to be the civilisation at the end of the dust. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

From Broome south to Perth we passed large stretches of nothing.   The highlight was Coral Bay near Exmouth.  Karajini National Park was up there on the list, although we were only there for 30 mins before we had to evacuate because of a bush fire.   Kalbarri National Park was also nice, although by this stage we were finding it hard to get excited over yet another gorge.  The lowlight has to be the three days we spent in Carnarvon whilst the Landie was being fixed due to a collapsed wheel bearing.

We caught up with Desi Drew whilst in Perth.  Desi managed to score us an afternoon's sailing on the Swan river - thirsty work!  It was our duty to ensure that Desi didn't go home sober.

Thailand was the next stop - we flew in to Bangkok where we spent about a week organising our visas for Vietnam, checking out the Buddhas, having races in the Tuk Tuks, and sampling a few of the local brews. Whilst in Bangkok we did a day trip to visit a floating market.   Anne (Deirdre's friend from Ireland) joined us after a couple of days on the start of her round the world trip, which gave us a welcome relief from the lack of goss & scandal we've been having.  The traffic in Bangkok is unbelievable, although at least there are some rules of the road, which is more than I can say for Saigon.

From Bangkok we went to Chiang Mai, where we joined a trekking tour into the jungle for three days near the Burmese border.  During that time we visited a couple of hill tribes, went elephant riding, bamboo rafting, and perfected the art of smacking mossies.  All that exersise had us pretty hungry, so we did a one day cooking course in Chiang Mai.  We learnt loads about Thai cooking, and also just how many chillies it takes to blow your head off.

Phuket was the next stop, which was a dump, so we set off for Krabi and the beach.  Three days of relaxing and living in a beach hut didn't really prepare us for the 11 hour journey to Kho Samui, where we enjoyed three days of rain.  We could have done without the 24 hour journey to Kanchanaburi, but it was nice there, even if it rained a lot.  The Bridge over the River Kwai festival was on whilst we were there, so there was huge market (lots of weird food!) followed by a light and sound show on the river.

After getting completely covered in dust and bat droppings from a cave exploration at a Wat (temple) near Kanchanaburi, we headed for Bangkok and our flight to Saigon, Vietnam.  From our perspective in the back from the taxi to our hotel, driving in Saigon looked like a complete nightmare, so after an evening acclimatising to the local brews, Deirdre & I hired a scooter for the day to get amongst the mayhem.   When we returned, Anne was still trying to cross the same piece of road that we had left her at hours before!

From Saigon we joined a 2 day tour of the Mekong Delta, which has to be one of the highlights of our trip so far.  It was on this trip that I tried the local delicacies of frog and snake (I'll never look at Kermit the same way again), but the real highlight was the canoe tour of the swamp lands where the Viet Cong put up a fierce resistance to the US during the war.

After returning to Saigon, we've booked ourselves on a bus to head up the coast towards Hanoi, stopping at Phan Thiet, Nha Trang, Hoian and Hue on the way. Travelling around Nam by bus isn't reputed to be the most fun you've ever had.....

Cheers,

Rik & Deirdre

PS: Ok, we've made it to Nha Trang.  It's still raining.  In fact, it seems like it's been raining since we met up with Anne, so Deirdre & I are currently formulating a plan to dispose of her!  On the way here, we stopped in Phan Thiet where Lance (a friend of ours) was born.  It's quite a mad place, although not as busy as Saigon.  We were the only European looking people around, which drew a fair amount of curiosity, culminating in Anne having her breasts molested at the local market by a 70 year old woman.  We stayed about 10km out of town by the beach, where we watched the sand soak up the rain for three days.   Apart from the rain, it was paradise.

PPS: We have loads of fantastic photos, but unfortunately the laptop screen has caught malaria, so we'll update the web site when we reach London.  At present, we'll hit the smog about 6am on the 21st December (this year!).