I have now vacated AUSTRALIA!

Well well well... I am now in Bangkok, a long way from where I was last time you all heard from me! The last 2 weeks in Australia have probably been some of the best I've had whilst being over there!

So, I last left you when we were about to visit Magnetic Island. We spent 3 days on the island and basically chilled out a lot. It wasn't the greatest place we've visited and didn't really have anything special but we met some fun people staying in our hostel dorm room and had a really good time there! We did manage to squeeze in some snorkelling but it wasn't too great, a bit dark and sandy but overall, well worth a visit! From there, we continued North to Cairns stopping at the famous Mission Beach which by the way was absolutely gorgeous! I actually felt like I'd arrived in Hawaii or the Caribbean somewhere, we spent the afternoon there fishing and sunbathing but I would have quite happily stayed longer if we weren't on a strict time schedule!

Cairns is a beautiful city and the base for the Great Barrier Reef. We met up with some friends up there and had a crazy night out at Rhino Bar resulting in me having the longest lasting headache from Saturday morning until Sunday night, I guess the night out we had was worth the pain! Hmmm? Cairns doesn't have an accessible beach so it has an amazing artificial lagoon which is so nice to lounge around in and by, it's the biggest pool I've ever seen!

So... did I mention that I dived the Great Barrier Reef??? That's definately up there on the list of things to do before you die and now it's ticked off for me! We went on a day trip and because me and James are qualified as advanced divers (I mean on paper!) we got to dive without a guide which was really cool. We did 2 dives in the inner reef and saw lots of really brightly coloured coral and some funky fish. I have to admit, we didn't see anything amazing and it wasn't as good as diving in the Red Sea in Egypt but definately worth the money. I'd like to dive the area again and explore the outer reefs which aren't as damaged.

So anyway, after Cairns we drove down to our final adventure in Australia which was a 3 day sailing trip in the Whitsunday Islands. This was an absolute blast!

We were on a boat with about 35 people, all backpackers and about our age and had a crew that kept everyone laughing. We basically sailed to South Molle Island which was our home for 2 nights and then explored the other islands and sea in the day. Everyone was so friendly and we all had so much fun building human pyramids on the beach and boats from sand! Whitehaven beach was the main place to visit and it is a stunning white beach which stretches for 9km with the clearest torquoise water. After the sailing trip we all had a beach BBQ and then some of us went out in Airlie Beach which is where we were all staying and got rather drunk on goon (the classy and cheap 'wine' you get in a bag over here)! Overall, the Whitsundays was definately the best way to finish our trip in Australia!

So now we're in Bangkok. We had a long trip to get here - 2700kms of driving from Cairns to Sydney which we did over 3 days and then our 9 hour flight which wasn't too bad. I watched 3 films in a row, a record for me I reckon! We've only been here a day, we arrived in the middle of the night. James' sister arrives this evening which I'm really looking forward to so all in all, its going to be a good month here in Thailand. Today has been a 'get your bearings' day and 'walk around in a daze' day due to lack of sleep so I will keep you all posted about our plans when we actually make some!

So for now, ciao!