Elephant extravaganza in Botswana

A short drive and an efficient border crossing (apart from the seemingly pointless foot and mouth check where we dipped our shoes into some muddy water) and we were in Botswana, a country the size of France, but with a population of just 2.2m. The nation is known as one of the higher end safari destinations:…

Waterfalls to hippos: our first four days in Africa

Africa. It’s the only major continent we both haven’t really visited before (discounting Egypt and Morocco) and knew the least about. We always had it on the itinerary but at some points we wondered if we’d actually make it here, but after just a few days, it is already one of the highlights of the trip….

Doing Dubai like a local

We knew we’d be likely to pass through the Middle East travelling from Asia to Africa so made plans to meet up with our good friend Paul, who lives in Saudi Arabia, in Dubai. As luck would have it, his sister lives there too so we had a local to show us around. We upped…

Asia summary

Three amazing months in Asia flew by as we visited (and ate our way through) Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Hong Kong, Myanmar and the Maldives. Asia has always been our favourite continent and this trip reaffirmed it’s position at the top of the tree. Destination highlights Driving around the beautiful lush green hilly scenery in Northern…

The Maldives for £38 (yes, seriously)

A sub-£40 flight from Kuala Lumpur, coupled with the fact that we had read a few blogs which said you could now visit the Maldives on a budget, meant that adding this gorgeous tropical paradise to our itinerary at the last minute, was a no brainer. Further research revealed that since 2009 Maldivians have been allowed to…

The ghosts of yesteryear in Yangon

Yangon (formerly Rangoon under the British) was the capital of Myanmar until 2005 when, Than Shwe, the leader of the former military regime constructed a brand new capital at Naypyidaw, seemingly as a vanity project. It apparently has 20-lane motorways with few vehicles and not many inhabitants, apart from government employees. However Yangon is the country’s…