Street art, coffee and a cousin in Melbourne.......

After our five day blitz of the west coast over in Perth with Bill it was time to hop on yet another budget flight to check out the sites, bites and smells of Melbourne, we could not wait.

The flight, yet again, was a smooth one. It took us three and a half hours to get from Perth to Melbourne, about the time it would take to get from London to Moscow, but we'd only traversed two thirds of the country. I couldn't look out the window but from what shell was saying it was just an ocean of orange. A dry, semi-featureless land so huge it almost made your head hurt trying to grasp it's sheer size. After a few hours we landed in Melbourne, an instantly appealing city, and made our way to glenhuntly, a short distance into the suburbs, to meet our couchsurfing host Greg. After staying at bills it would be hard to live up to our time in Perth but Greg was a good man, very softly spoken due to his job as a psychiatrist but with almost limitless energy. This guy literally never stops. He seems to be in a comfortable position but if he's not skydiving one weekend then he's on a speedboat the next, all the while hosting appreciative couchsurfers like shell and I.

Anyway, the next day feeling rejuvenated and refreshed we hopped on the metro and travelled the short distance into the city. Of all the cities we have visited over the years, including my previous visit to Sydney, this is the one that looks most like home. Although over the years huge skyscrapers have been added it still looks as much like London as you could probably get. Even some of the cities most famous streets and landmarks bear the same names, Southbank (which serves the same purpose), Liverpool street, oxford street and Croydon, no signs of any riots here though. In fact the only thing you can see anyone rioting about around here is if they started serving instant nescafe in any of the thousand coffee shops. And here's the thing, Melbourne seems to be top of the list for three things, it's edgy arts and music scene, it's food and it's coffee, why weren't we born here!!!

We simply had an amazing day. I know this is just the centre and you know little or nothing about the rest of the city but what a city this is. Apparently you could dine out at a different restaurant or cafe every night for ten years and still have a few spare. We spent the day taking in a couple of the walking tours which took us around some amazing street art which Melbourne is famous for and drinking a tonne of coffee. We've got these explorations down to a tea, literally, or maybe a coffee. We walk, talk, smile and pop in out of streets and lanes that look interesting. We take breathers in bookshops and try to talk to anyone who looks approachable, even the disgustingly annoying charity workers, who unsurprisingly were British trying to pay for they're trip around this most expensive of countries.

Earlier that morning Greg had left us some money to buy picnic items so that when he returned from work he could drive us down to Brighton beach. This beach, although not the best we had seen on our trip, again reminded us so much of home it was unreal. It's most famous attraction was around thirty beachhuts, all decked out in various colours, passed down from generation to generation. Much like the premium huts in the UK, these small boxes, according to Greg, went for at least 100,000 dollars each, making them by some large margin, the most expensive real estate in Australia, if not the world. Anyway, we went for a swim, the sea was warm but the wind not so but Greg was in there crashing about like a 16 year old while these two weaklings stood shivering, dreaming of eating sandwiches in the warmth...

From there Greg took us to a beautiful lookout of the city, a place where runners past and sports of all kind were being played in the early evening warmth, leading you to believe that everyone in this city plays at least three sports on a regular basis.

After briefly returning to gregs for about an hour, Greg had us again up and about to go and check out another of Melbourne's must sees, the little penguins. These furry little creatures were, up until quite recently, called fairy penguins but melbourne's numerous gay community apparently kicked up a bit of a fuss so had to be scaled back to something slightly less offensive - little penguins! Typical. Anyway, 1200 hundred of these cute little things swim in every night to nestle up in the cracks in the rocks and to pose in front of the waiting tourists. They were awesome.

The next day we started relatively early and headed towards at St Kilda, melbournes trendiest district. This place apparently has, besides melbournes busiest beach, the highest concentration of coffee and cake shops anywhere in the world. Shell was in cake heaven! It was a cool place but way too expensive but a good place to hang around in for the morning. In the afternoon we decided to check out some more of Melbourne's street art and take in melbournes impressive waterfront where its uncanny resemblance to London became even more apparent. We decided to do another one of the walking tours which took us past some fantastic looking buildings but then decided, and we really don't know why, to miss out the last third and take a shortcut across a small bridge to take us over the river and in the opposite direction. It was here, amazingly, that we bumped into Lee, shells cousin, who had been in Melbourne for a few weeks but whom we had struggled to get in touch with. What an absolute insane coincidence!!

The next day, with the promise of scorching temperatures and wall to wall sunshine we headed down to the beach. We stayed there for as long as we could handle before scurrying off, hot bothered and sunburnt to find ice cream and solace from the sun, it was officially 100 degrees, the hottest day we have had yet on our trip.

By day, Melbourne was an interesting and captivating place by night it was stunning. We walked all the through city, ducking into the side streets for food then walking down the waterfront to check out a spectacular fire show that apparently happens every night. Essentially four giant pillars spout giant flames fifty feet into the air, three times a night. The most envious thing about our whole time in Melbourne, especially our last night which was a Friday, was our inability to throw off the shackles of budgetary constraints and eat and drink like a local. Something we were itching to do.

They say that Melbourne is one of the most 'liveable' cities in the world and who can blame them, I would.....

Much love Tommo and shell x x x

So Laos then....

Amazingly, after the previous days hellish travel we actually had a great nights keep despite sleeping in a bungalow with a tin roof. We woke up feeling much more refreshed and so after chilling out on the two hammocks on the porch for an hour, we went off in search of the small harbour where a boat would take us back over to the mainland so we could catch a bus up to pakse. On the boat we sat with two lads who we had met in china and along with the two young Canadian girls, formed a good little group for our onwards trip. At the bus station we were once again hoarded into a van which was such a tight squeeze with everyone inside that poor shell had to sit on the wheel arch, I did swap with her after it started to burn her bum though! A few minutes earlier we had paid an extra 20 dollars each for a night bus journey to take us onwards to Vientiane meaning we should have around 6 hours in Pakse before moving on yet again.

After three hours the van pulled into pakse but we felt instantly that things seemed a tad strange. Four guys who were apparently on the night bus too were dropped off first but the driver took us on and dropped us outside a restaurant in the middle of town. Upon arriving, a girl who we think was the contact for the company told us, no jokes here, that our night bus had crashed during the night and that her husband, presumably the driver, had been taken away early in the morning by the police. All of this, after being scammed, conned and laughed at for the past few days nearly pushed us over the edge. The four of us stood there demanding answers from anyone who we could collar before the driver of the minivan made a call and we were picked up to leave for yet another location, this time the bus station. After being led around on amerry old goose chase for two days we were then miraculously presented with two tickets, both with bed numbers, things were looking up just to make things even better, a large green night bus with the letters VIP were inscribed on the side! We felt ecstatic.

Leaving at 8pm the bus was unlike the others we had been on so far in the trip. It only had two rows of beds which were themselves doubles. We settled down, watched a film on the laptop, ate crisps, it was bliss! Thing is though, when it came to sleeping it was impossible. The double shocker of poor Laos roads and a girlfriend who spends the whole night shuffling around meant that as we pulled into Vientiane at 6am, neither of us had had a second of sleep. not a sausage.

As the bus piled onto a giant tuk-tuk we were taken to the centre where half the bus got off and went straight on to vang vieng, a place further north, without actually seeing anything here in Vientiane, the Laos capital.

Whether there was anything to see in Vientiane was a different matter. For us, tiredness had completely overcome us so we sat down, had some breakfast ( unbelievable coffee and croissant's in vientiane, another French gift to the region). I then left shell to go and find is a room and after an hour or so had found us the last room in a cheap hotel. Dumping our bags we went off into the city to explore, noting almost instantly that for a capital city, this place us as mellow as mellow gets...

We saw various ornate monasteries and a replica of the arc d'triomphe that was both impressive and hideous. It is almost an exact replica of the one in Paris but has distinct griminess about it that makes unmistakably Asian. It also has an inscription on the side of it in both Lao and English which read something like, 'this concrete was donated by the Americans to build an airport runway, we decided to build the arc d'triumpth instead. We know it's awful, you know it's awful but let's forget all that and focus on the view from the top'. It's something we are definitely picking up in Laos, just how mellow and self deprecating they can be.

Anyway for the rest of the day we sat around in some of hundreds of coffee shops and ate cake, thinking about how we are going to get to Thailand, our choices are another 24 hour journey by bus and van or an expensive but short 1 hour flight to chiang mai. Decisions decisions,

That night we booked onwards tickets to vang vieng, a 'backpackers' enclave famed for it's 'tubing', riding an inflated tractor inner tube 4 kms down a river lined with a shocking array of bars and dancing youngsters on bamboo dance floors. Although we are keen to check it out I've got to be honest here (even to myself) that this just isn't me. I don't think shells too up for it either. It's supposedly one of those places you will either love or absolutely despise. Vang vieng itself, or at least the surroundings, look beautiful. Which is why we may just book a room away from the carnage and take time to relax after being constantly on the move now for nearly three weeks.

But hey, we haven't been to vang vieng yet so we will make our minds up when we get there, you never know, we could be downing shots on a riverbank with the mushties before you know it!

Much love, Tommo xxxx