Author Archives: Brandon and Mandy
Malaysia
Our first land border crossing in southeast Asia would happen going from Singapore to Malaysia. The bus pulls up, you get out (don’t forget your passport!) and get in line. What usually happens is the immigration officer looks at your photo, looks at you, looks back at your passport, stamps it, and hands it back to you without saying a word. This would change when we entered England (STAY TUNED!)
The lion fish
The only thing we knew about Singapore before we landed was that it was the most expensive city/state in southeast Asia and that Anthony Bourdain had filmed an episode of no reservations here. We had three days planned before we were going to move on to Malaysia and it turned out to be the perfect amount of time to see the sights and be introduced to the mixed religious community we’d encounter throughout the rest of our time in Asia.
Left turn, Clyde
Going from Brisbane to Bali was a short trip but when we stepped off the plane, like so many other places we’ve traveled to, it was a different world altogether. Bali conjures images of Julia Roberts eating, praying, and loving her way around rice fields and we saw plenty of…well, most of that.
Down Under and Out
I have to start by saying that we did not do Australia correctly. We left our guidebook back home, and we didn’t do a lot of research before we got there. We went back and forth about whether or not to rent a camper van, take busses, drive ourselves in a car, or fly. We thought we would figure it out as we went. It was a strategy that worked for us in Central America (Although the guidebook certainly helped there!). Australia busted our budget and looking back, we wish we would have just flown into Sydney and stayed for a week and then left for Indonesia. We enjoyed our time here, expensive as it was though.
New Zealand – Fin
Three more stops to go in New Zealand and then we fly to Sydney, our favorite city in Australia. One more bus driver change, this time nicknamed Papa G. He’d been driving tour buses for the last 16 years and did one thing I wish the other drivers had done. He stopped the bus frequently to let us take pictures of the beautiful scenery.
Our Elephant Adventure
A little detour from our trip in New Zealand…we’re currently in Thailand and we crossed another thing off of our bucket list…We went to an elephant sanctuary while we were in Chiang Mai and it was amazing! Here’s a video we put together.
New Zealand Part 3
The first two days we had in Queenstown were pretty laid back compared to what we would get ourselves into when we returned later. We spent those two days walking around and getting to know the town and it’s layout and taking the ski lift to the top of the mountain for some amazing views of the city and do a little hiking. We would return to this town wth a vengeance a few days later, but first we had to go see another amazing part of New Zealand: Milford Sound
New Zealand Part 2
We left Blue Duck Station and made our way to the Tongariro National park. The highlight of this park is a 6-8 hour walk through some beautiful countryside of New Zealand. Unfortunately, my ankle was still bothering me from when I hurt it in Nicaragua, so we had to skip it. Mandy also had an unfortunate dental issue that would mean we would have to say goodbye to friends we made on the bus and stay in Wellington for a few days while we got her patched up. It sounds a lot worse than it turned out to be, and we really enjoyed our time off the bus.
New Zealand Part 1
I tried to come up with a tricky, funny title for our first post about this country but New Zealand kept whispering over my shoulder to keep it simple like much of their country, so here we are. Part 1. I have no idea how many parts this will take but welcome to the story of our journey of what we reckon will be the most beautiful country on our journey. Cheers!
Fast Forward
This post is going to be a little bit different. We’re sitting in New Zealand right now and I’m still behind on our Central America adventure and we think people would rather hear about our time here rather than the rest of our time in Central America. So I’m going to hit the highlights of the remainder of our time in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama in one big post so I can move on to New Zealand. If you have any questions about anything I’m about to run through, just leave a comment and we’ll try our best to answer it. (wifi is spotty here in New Zealand)
2crazybackpackers 