New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia

Ash again, Elliot is lacking the motivation to write at the moment so has left it up to me again!
NEW BLOG! Yeah i know its been a while, but a combination of The Kiwi Experience, natural disasters and laziness has prevented us. I guess its been about a month or so since our last one, so i'm going to struggle to fit everything in here. I'll try my best.

So we flew from LA to Auckland on the 9th of December and stayed there for 4 nights. Spent a day at Mission Bay Beach, walked around Queen street and checked out a crazy open air Christmas concert in Domain Park. Also went to the Auckland Museum which was really interesting, loads of great Mauri stuff. Got on the Kiwi Experience bus the next Monday and had a fantastic couple of weeks. Far too much went on to write here but we went Kayaking, White Water Rafting, saw glow worm caves, jumped in freezing lakes and met some great people. Spent Christmas day with the bus group, which wasn't the same as home but still a good time. We ended our trip in Christchurch a day after a powerful after shock from the September earthquake had pretty much closed the town down. New Zealand overall was awesome, beautiful scenery, great people, and loads to do. So much so that we already want to go back and do more!

After an all too brief visit to NZ we flew to Australia on the 29th of December, just in time for New Year. We spent New Year's Eve down at Sydney Harbour. You have to get down there by midday to get a good spot, so we spent the rest of the day sitting in the sun with a picnic. The fireworks at midnight were very impressive, and all the party ships in the harbour were covered in lights. While we were in Sydney we spent a couple of days on the beach- visited Bondi and Manly, both gorgeous sandy beaches.
After this everything started going a bit downhill. Our hostel was pretty grim, and to make matters worse we were stuck in an over crowded room with some messy and unfriendly room mates. We couldn't get to Byron Bay because everywhere was booked up, so we got on a Greyhound to Surfers Paradise. Where it began to rain, and rain and.....rain!

From Surfers Paradise we headed up to Noosa, and got stuck there for about a week! It just did not stop raining! I'm sure you've all seen on the news about the floods in Queensland. Luckily for us Noosa wasn't too bad, and we managed to change our flights and get out of there pretty quickly! Which was sort of a blessing in disguise as not only were we not having a great time in Oz, we were spending a lot of money doing it! Everything is so expensive over there, from accommodation to food.

We flew to Singapore on the 14th January, where we stayed for 3 nights. Basically the only 2 things to do here were eat and shop. We did a lot of eating. From here we got a train to Kuala Lumpur where we stopped for the night. Much the same as Singapore, but less developed. the following day it was another train journey, this time overnight- and in first class! Elliot was very excited about this and could barely get to sleep!
We arrived in Butterworth the next morning, and got a boat over to Panang. Panang is an old colonial British town. Lots of Victorian architecture, mixed in with Chinese and Indian styles, temples, and mosques. Quite an interesting place to walk around.
We only stayed there for the morning, as we had to get on another train at 2.20pm that afternoon. Another sleeper train to Bangkok, however not first class this time. Elliot was still very excited, and throughout the night would burst out "We're sleeping on a train Ash, how good is this!?" We arrived in Bangkok at about midday and headed straight to our accommodation for a much needed shower after 2 days and nights on a train!
First impressions of Bangkok is that its a very busy city. The roads are a bit mental, loads of mopeds weaving in and out of cars, and the occasional one almost knocking you over on the pavement! We saw one lady driving a moped while holding onto a young baby, her friend on the back...also holding a baby....safe.

So that pretty much brings you all up to speed on what we're doing and where we are! We don't have a plan for what we'll be doing from here, but we'll try and make the blogs more frequent and more interesting!