Christmas and New Year in Koh Phangan

We have now decided on a place to stay on Koh Phangan over Christmas and New Year. We have chosen Rin Beach Resort. Rin Beach Resort has over 40 bungalows directly near the Had Rin pier, most with sunset seaviews overlooking Koh Samui and the Southern coastline of Koh Phangan. We are looking forward to the Full Moon Parties over Christmas and New Year. Had Rin has become the global party centre of the world (apparently!), attracting up to 30,000 people to the Full Moon Party on New Year's Eve and 10,000 on an average Full Moon, so it should be fun. We'll be staying on Koh Phangan from 20th December 2008 until 2nd January 2009. After this we plan to head off to Koh Samui, Krabi and Koh Phi Phi. Hopefully some of our friends, Nic, Sarah and Paul, will be able to come out and visit us for New Year.

Macau Accomodation

Well we’ve managed to book up our next bit of accommodation. We’ve plumped for a place called Augusters Lodge Hostel in Macau. It’s taken us a while to find something for the right price as most places seemed to be expensive casino based hotels (which don’t really fit in with our backpacker budget) or places that you rent by the hour (if you know what I mean!!!).

I wasn’t too keen on the hostel idea to start with but Augusters does have private rooms (one of which we have managed to book) and the reviews online look good. We’ll post some feedback after our stay.

Test Post For Using Pictures

I just wanted to post a couple of pictures to see how things work / turn out. This first one was taken at a beach in Hikkaduwa in Sri Lanka (2006).And here's one more of a young monk near at the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia (2005)
And one final one of a tucan at Iguazu Falls in Brazil (2007)

Hong Kong Hotel

We've booked our first bit of accommodation for our travels - we'll be staying in the Harbour View International Hotel on Hong Kong Island. The location of the hotel looks great as it's right in the center of Wan Chai with views across the harbour to Kowloon on the peninsula.

The plan is to spend the first 4 nights in Hong Kong and then catch the boat to Macau. We'll then spend 3 days there before heading West to see the sights of North Vietnam and Southeast Asia

Test Message

This is just a test message to see if I can e-mail updates to the blog from my e-mail account - Let’s see if this works!!!

We're booked

Well we've made the jump and committed to this travelling malarkey. Just got ourselves some one way tickets from Birmingham (UK) to Hong Kong . . . which is probably the furthest point we will go to. We'll be leaving for the far East on 02nd November 2008. Just the next six and a half months of work to get through first!!!