Down Under

It's time for an update now:) We spent 3 weeks in Australia and are now in Wellington, New Zealand where Selma studies( Jorgens sister, check her blog if you havent already its awesome ).

Our first days down under, we spent in Sydney, doing tourist kind of things like the Wild life park, Darling Harbour, The Rocks and so on. The days we spent here were a little amputated because of my (Hildes) ear infection and dentist visiting. Sydney is a big city, with more people than in the whole of Norway combined. The first day we ended up in Chinatown, and that made us wonder if we were back in Asia again. When we were searching for accommodation the first day we fond a lot of hotels. Only the hotels in Australia are not a place you sleep and eat breakfast, it's pubs-restaurants-gambling spots. So that made it a little hard to find accommodation before we realized the difference.

After Sydney we took the train to Brisbane, and from there we rented a car to drive up along the north coast of Australia.

About 4 hours north of Brisbane we took a boat to Frazer Island. This Island is famous for its unique sand vegetation. It is the largest sand island in the world. And despite of being a sand island it has lots if vegetation, freshwater lakes and many different kinds of wild life. All kinds of trees and plants grew extremely well in this environment. We went on a trip around the island. First we went swimming in this freshwater lake.

Lake McKenzie, a freshwater lake on Frazer Island

We were told to watch our bags carefully because of the dingos in the area. They were known for running off with peoples bags.

Afterwards we took a walk in an old rain forest. It was incredibly beautiful to walk by this little river.

Rain forest walk

Looking for snakes and other creatures

Driving at the beach, no roads needed

After Frazer island we drove up the coast stopping by many towns and small places. Driving on the Australian roads we saw many snakes, wallabys, kangaroos, toads and rabbits. Unfortunately most of them were dead, lying in the road.

When we had been driving a few more days we went on another boat trip to an island called South Molle island. Here we stayed at a resort (the only one on the island). This resort had sort of a trial project going on. They called themselves Koala Adventure island, and didn't allow anyone under the age of 18 to enter the resort. The resort itself was quite nice with a big swimming pool, nice rooms (at least after we got an upgrade because there were so few people there), tennis courts, a golf court and much more. The downside was that none of the two restaurants were open (again because of the few people on the the resort), so the only place we could get something to eat on the whole island was in the resort cafe. There the food was really really bad. The selection consisted of hold-it like food called sousagerolls, gourmet pie (small pie with black goo oozing out of it) and mini pizza (wet, uncooked, tini tiny) mmmmmmmm.....

Yellow and black- striped spider right outside out hotel room door

View from hotel veranda

No doubt which country we're in

Really big things are obviously a big hit in Australia

Road trip stop

Looking for a bathroom at the old railway station

Ok, there will come some more about Austalia hopefully, but no more imagination at the time being.

So catch you later, we are off to meet Selma.

Don't worry mom, she looks really healthy and seem to have heaps of fun, her blog doesnt seem fake :P And she aint even freezing although she is wearing less clothes then we are, thats kinda strange isnt it?

One day in Kula Lumpur, Island of Gods and Gilli Air

When buying plane tickets to go to Bali, we had to stop somewhere along the way because there where no direct flights to Bali from Siem Reap. That's the main reason we stopped by Malaysia for a day. But then we received an e-mail from Air Asia saying our plane was delayed half a day, so we had a little extra time in Kuala Lumpur. Our hotel there was quite nice, with a view of the petronas towers.

Petrona towers Kuala Lumpur

When we again got back to the airport is was raining heavy outside. None of the monitors showed the flight we were supposed to be on. So after a while we got a but worried. Pacing back and forth trying to find someone to ask questions, but there were no information desk or airport employees anywhere. After a while we heard some Norwegian girls talking behind us. They were supposed to be on the same flight, but hadn't got any information either and were starting to get really annoyed. After some more waiting we asked a lady in an other gate about the screens and flights. She said they were all delayed because of the rain, and than sometimes the flights didn't show on the screens.

In the end the plane actually took of, and 3 hours later we arrived Bali, the island of gods. Since the flight had been delayed we ended up arriving in Bali late at night. And of course we hadn't booked a place to stay. Hilde was exited to be back in Bali and kept looking around for places to recognize. But she really didn't see anything familliar. Kuta was really loud with disco music and we saw (again) drunk Swedish 20-year olds wherever we turned.

The memory monument of the 2002 Bali Bombs in Kuta

The next day we decided to find a new place to stay a little out of the main party zone. We went to stay at Bali Ayu. The same hotel wich Hilde lived for 3 months in 2001. When we got there the receptionist asked: Have you been here before? I don't know if they actually remembered me (Hilde), but they made a huge fuss about it and thought it was very funny. A couple of the employees had been there since 2001 and I think I remember some of the faces. But anyways the room we ended up in was the same I'd stayed in 8 years ago (I didn't even ask for it).

Hotelbar at Bali Ayu

The next day er went to Jimbaran. A fishing village with a beautiful long beach. They were only serving fresh fish there, so there wasn't really a choice of what to eat that day.

A few days later we took a speedboat to the Gilli Islands right outside of Lombok. We stayed on the smallest of the tree islands: Gilli Air. This is a little piradiselike place with white coral sand all the way around the island, coconut groves, and happy, nice people around. Only about 700 people lives on the island. When we stayed at Gilli Air we did three dives. One of them was a deep dive. That is part of the advanced diving course and means that we can now dive down to 30 metres depths. The dives on Gilli were amazing. We saw some really big fish and sea turtles. And at one point there were actually a real shark swimming right towards us, turning away only 5 metres before it reaced us.

We stayed on Gilli Air for 9 days before we went back to Bali. Then Hilde had a pretty bad earinfection and had to see a doctor.

And after all of this we've just arrived Sydney, Australia. Hope you're all well back home :)

I really wanted to post more pictures, but the computer doesn't seem to cooperate...

Pictures of Nah Trang, Nui Ne (Vietnam) and Angkor Wat (Cambodia)

Sunrise over Angkor Wat


Tree covering the enerance. You've might seen this in the movie "Tomb Raider"

One of the older temples in Angkor wat

Jorgen at the white dunes in Mui Ne. Getting ready to throw himself from the top of the sand dunes :) Great fun

The sunset over the Red dunes also in Mui Ne

Hilde in the auarium in Nah trang. Looing at a lot og different kind of fish and fosiles