How many pairs of shoes can be lost, stolen or ruined on one trip? I will let you know what the final count is when I stop traveling, but at the moment I am down to my last pair. Who steals shoes? I mean honestly, especially my shoes, which were more kind of honorific footwear then functional accessories.

In recent times; I have been working on my tan, losing shoes and enhancing my ability to lie still for long streches of time. Claire and I went out to an island and spent the night there, much fun was had by all. The island is billed as a place to chill out and get away from it all, I am sure it was exactly that before we arrived and made it all loud. I have done lots of peering at the fishies on coral reefs and avoiding the sea urchins of doom. Apart from that not really done much at all; Sihanoukville has been lovely.

Me and the wagon have had a disagreement about directions and it seems I have now been forcibly ejected back into the gutter. I remember now why free shots and buckets of gin and tonic are a sure fire way to do some silly dancing, lose pool competitions and wake up seedy. I have not laughed as much as I did last night for a very long time, feels good. India was practically booze free, so Cambodia has been a re-education for me and the art of drinking. Some nice moments, having a drunken conversation in an Irish accent with a Canadian, much to the amusement of the 2 English representatives, sing alongs on the beach (mainly the theme song to Round the Twist), arguing with taxi drivers who try and rip you off because you are drunk and eating tofu burgers every second meal.

Off to Penom Phen tomorrow then onto Siam Reap shortly after. I ma really excited about Laos as everyone I meet who has been there raves about it.

Last night was the Vietnamese New Years and despite our best intentions Claire and I managed to stumble home rather late and a little intoxicated. It was an interesting night, the firework display was watched by millions of people in their scooters who attended quietly. Exactly 15 minutes after the explosions ceased, the crowd drove off again. It was the quietest, most subdued and orderly New Years crowd I have ever seen, nothing like Australian excess.

So in true Aussie style, we met some other tourist revellers and drank blue cocktails. I proceeded to have an arguement with an extremely unpleasant man from Machester and then storm off to bed very late. I have not met so many Sydney siders in one place since I was in Amsterdam.

So this morning my alarm failed in some sepctacular way that meant we woke up 4 minutes before our bus was supposed to depart. Somehow we got up, put on clothes, paid our bill and shambled to the bus stop discussing our options. To our absolute amazement we discovered that the bus was still there despite us being 15 minutes late. The bus then stopped three times so we could find an ATM and get cash out to pay for our visas into Cambodia, earning us the title of ATM Girls. I am sure we probably smelled like a brewery, but noone was rude enough to comment on it.

The 6 hour bus trip was delightful, the hangover not so much, but the comfortable seats, air conditioning and overall luxuriousness of the bus blew my India scarred mind. The Cambodian roads were not the best, but getting air out of your seat on these buses, did not inspire a heart wrenching moment of sheer terror.

So far loving Cambodia, it is much more chilled then Ho Chi Minh and seems really clean. I will probably love it even more when I have had some sleep and a chance to have a look around more.

I am in Vietnam, despite all odds. It involved  arriving at the airport drunk and surly, vowing to never fly Thai Air again (evil bastards) but here I am. Off to Cambodia in 2 days on a bus, florid and graphic comparisons to Indian buses coming soon.

I said goodbye to Jason this morning and met Claire a couple of hours later. I have now seen more friends today then I have for a very long time, yay. Can't wait to see the rest of ya, unfortunately the setting may not be quite as exotic and for some of you nom-residents of the Emerald City, it maybe a little bit further in the future then I can predict accurately.

Oh and apparently you don't have to worry about mosquitos in cities in Indochina as the water is too polluted for them to breed. Phew.

All is well. Lots of reading snorkelling, smoking of spliffs, lying in hammocks and dancing has been acheived, excellent. I love it here, it is relly awesome.

I am not sure how many of you have noticed the Google ads that appear down the side of my posts, but they are probably why this free blog exists and sometimes they are hilarious. In order to fuck with the system and for pure scientific purposes I am going to post a list of keywords and see what ads get linked. I am very curius especially since I noticed an ad for a Jehovahs Witness holiday beside one of my posts.

Here goes; valium, religion, sex, barbie, activism, sex, Australian politics, sex, dolphins, campervans, resorts, hotel, sex, dinner, golf, sex, freedom, kites, camels, elephants, sex, beach, testosterone,  organic, vitamins, sepulchre, sex, rainwater tank,  doom, sleeplessness, Cliff Richards, cats, sex, flying pigs, sirens, loopholes, excel spreadsheets, toilet breaks, caravan, sex, emu, ambassador, Mercedes, sex, fridge, helicopter, Tarzan, lycra, aquarobics, beer, brast enlargement, Franciscan, power tools, values, Pi, sex, babies, agraphobia, gaol break, Paris Hilton topless, quicksand, Isaac Newtown, communism, custard, proliferation, frenzied, punching bags, gorillas, snooker, Ronald Reagan.

Te he, lets see what the results of that are!!

Ok, so the first time I got sick was because I had a magic mushroom shake... It seems that only under these circumstances do I remember why the second to last time I had mushrooms (8 years ago) I vowed to never touch them again. Lets see if I can recall this, if, in 8 years I am tempted to do it again.

It seems that this time, I have food poisoning. Thats right I ma in tropical paradise in a hut on a private beach and I have been ill, very ill. Boo. Thankfully Jason arrived in time to take care of me as I lay around being ill.

Jason wants everyone to know he is alive and well, and desires no contact with the outside world.

It really is paradise here, there are definitely very few places more beautiful that I have seen. Now that I am geting better I can appreciate the coral reef and amazing food and lying around a lot more.

This place is way over priced... I am in shock after India, and wondering how to salvage my budget.

Also after traveling in the filthiest country I have ever been to, India, without the slighest hint of a stomach problem, I have gotten ill in Thailand. Go figure. There are other factors to explain why I got ill, but they can wait for a face to face explanation.

It is beautiful here, but very touristy and full of people who are far too young to be out without a grown up, oh wait that is just me being old. There are far too many of the beautiful people here. I freaked out in a supermarket yesterday, could not handle it, too much for my poor brain.

Full Moon party tonight and I am thinking about staying in and reading my book. What the hell has happened to me?

So with a big middle finger held firmly aloft we left Mussoorie. We got so sick of being ripped off and stared at we decided to come back to Rishikesh. Just thought you would like to know, Mussoorie is nothing but a tourist town and being there in the 10 month off-season is a bad idea. So we took our tourist dollars back to Rishikesh and were greeted with hugs at our accommodation, contented sigh.

I am bummed to miss the Big Day Out, for the first time since 1995 (gosh that makes me feel old). I think maybe this trip is more then compensation though. So to all who are there right now, enjoy, I know I would be.... TOOL.

Interesting trivia; today is also India day, so I get to see how it compares to Australia Day. Actually I do not know what Australia Day is like, as, for the last 12 years I have spent it at the BDO, so I guess I just get to see it with no comparisons to be made.

Observation; traveling in India is like being trappd in an epsiode of Fawlty Towers that takes place on a Mardi Gras float.

That is all from me until Thailand.

I am at altitude for the first time in my life. I am staying in a town called Mussorie 2270m up a mountain in the Himalayas. Yesterday I climbed to the highest point in the town 2500m, mind blowing, so beautiful. I am literally above the clouds. The sunsets are astonishing, the stars are so clear. It is all awe-inspiring.

The bad news is that I cannot trek to the start of the Ganges as, at this time of year it is cut off by 3 feet of ice and is closed. However, I can see the glacier form my hotel window so I am happy. It would have been amazing to make it there, but my general fitness would need to be a lot better (altitude 7000m) and it would need to be a month that is not the second coldest in this part of the world. But I have seen it through a telescope and every day from my bed, close enough for me, what is 60kms when your are flying 35 000 miles anyway?

Speaking of cold, oh dear, I am so happy I have my sleeping bag and lots of clothes, our hotel room is 6 degrees over night, it is so cold up here. I love it, it is amazing, the air is so dry, the wind is so cold I am sure it is about to snow (despite the lack of clouds).

Strange things I did not expect to find two and a half kilometres up a mountain in India; Dominoes Pizza, the first cup of espresso coffee I have had in India (I gave up drinking coffee when I got hewre so after that I was bouncing off the walls, great fun!) and a roller skating rink. We tried to go roller skating yesterday, but the rink is only open during the tourist season. Tourist season here runs from May to June..... Our room is 2300 rupees in peak season, we are paying 300 rupees, very strange, very specific season, the whole town is focused on 2 months of the year, weird place.

This afternoon I am planning to walk around the town and stand around slack jawed staring at the clouds below me and experimenting with getting drunk at altitude, I will let you know how all this goes.

So here I stay until I begin my insane odessey to get to Ko Samui / Ko Pha Nagn in Thailand. It will take 3 days, 1 jeep, 1 train, 3 planes and a 4 hour boat trip to get there, but it should be amazing. thank God I have been in training for insane missions.

My poor body, by the time I get to Thailand I will have dragged it from humid beaches to desert to mountains to tropical jungle in less then 4 weeks. Good thing I plan on spending 2 weeks lying around not doing much in Thailand before heading to Vietnam.

So I have now ben to the Taj Mahal. It is amazingly beautiful and I believe, compulsory if you are traveling in India. It took another insane cross country bus trip to get there (no I obviously do not learn very quickly). This time it really was cross country, we spent virtually the entire time on dirt roads, not a sealed surface in sight. This time we had learnt not to go to go sleeper, and our pain level was suitably reduced.

The Taj Mahal is astonishing, the inlays are heart wrenchingly stunning and the acousitcs in the main building (the big white one you always see) are awesome, I would love to hear singing there it would be so cool. There is a whole cluster of buildings aside from the big white one, there are red mosques and gardens. It is beautiful, jury is still out on whether it is worth another ride in and Indian bus....

This was followed by a 13 hour train trip to get 460 kilometes, which is absolutely absurd, we could have gotten to Rishikesh faster on virtually any other form of transport, including Butch the Angry Camel. But we are here in RIshikesh in the foothills of the Himalayas and it is stunning, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

From here we are going to trek to the glacier that feeds the Ganges and 2 other sacred rivers in India. We leave from a town that is at 2000 metres elevation, I cannot wait. It is one of the things I wanted to do in India, make it to the start of the Ganges. It does mean that once again I need to travel across half of India, to get my flight to Thailand. If anyone wants to check out just how mad this trip has been, have a look at  map of India, then check out how far it is from the southern most tip (varkala) to Pushkar (I did it one go on a train) then to Rishikesh which is right up in the north. In 12 days I have been from Varkala to Rishikesh, some 3000 kilometres of travel, on buses and trains, no wonder I have slept 9 hour a night for the last week...

Here in Rishikesh the Ganges is breathtaking, it is clean and blue and stunning, quite a contrast to the pollution further south. In fact the Ganges is so filthy that for this years Kubla Mela (massive religious ceremony involving 7 million people taking a sin cleansing dip in the sacred Ganges) they have had to add fresh water to dilute the pollution which is so horrendous it will even kill Indians, and trust me they can survive phenomenonal levels of filth. 1 in 10 people in the world rely on the Ganges for survival, scary stuff.

I am so pleased I am seeing fresh pristine India, with such a heart breakingly beautiful river, and gorgeous hills I understand why it is a sacred town. We are here in the complete off season, so we have or hotel to ourselves and the restaurants offer things like cheese sandwhiches becasue no one else is crazy enought to come here at this time of the year, so everyone is comeletely unprepared for us. It is nice to escape the hordes and hang out here, and I am inlove with my sleeping bag. I am finally pleased I lugged the stupid thing all the way around the world, it has saved me from freezing my balls off for the last 2 weeks, and I love it so very much.

Bliss and I went on an overnight camel safari into the Rajastani desert, well it was supposed to be into the desert, but really we just went out of the town to the desert and then back towards town again. It was, however most definitely overnight and most definitely on a camel. It was also terrifying and amazing.

My camel (real name Gopal, I re-named him Butch the angry camel) did not like other camels, or people, or doing what it was told, or keeping up with the other camels. I did not mind the slow pace as I was scared witless and quite happy to move at snails pace. I did mind when the camel tried to bite other camels and when going down hills (an exercise that means you need to pretty much lie down in order to avoid sliding off the camel) Butch would attempt to run, causing me to gasp in fear, which in turn caused our guides to nearly wet themselves laughing at me. Bliss's camel was a racing camel, thank god I did not get the racing camel, those things can really move.

I don't kow how many of you have gotten up close and personal with a camel, but they are weird looking things and they are tall.... While sitting on one, going past traffic, I could not help but notice that I was the same height as the passing buses, I could have climbed on the roof of the coach from my camel. They are also smarter then I gave them credit for. When we stopped for the evening the guides secured the camels by tying a rock to their reins and burying the rock. Bliss's camel Gloria, promptly pulled the rock out by pulling on her reins with her teeth and dropping the rock with a thud. Thankfully Butch did not quite have Gloria's brains, or speed and he had a much bigger rock.

The guides spent a lot of time very amused by us crazy white girls, then spent the night entertaining each other... But not before making us some amazing food and putting us to bed, at 7:00pm. We are assuming it was so they could get some alone time, in their beds half a metre away from us. The two miniature men rode the camels with us, which caused more merriment for the onlookers (everything you do in India attracts a crowd, when you are tall, blonde and white, and usually they laugh at you) I can only imagine how we must of looked, tiny Indian man behind enormous white girl on tall, long-lashed, bad tempered, farting camel.

The desert was freezing by night and the sounds of dog fights were a little scary, and the fact that our angry camels were metres away from where we slept was also not so comfortable, but we had our sleeping bags and the big heavy blankets supplied by the tiny little, laughing, loving Indian men and the stars, which were mind blowing. Sleeping under the stars in the desert was spectacular, so weird not having the stars in the right place, but absolutely beautiful skies. We saw a shooting star ( after waiting expectantly for some time) and spent a lot of time gazing up at the constellations.

The next day we returned to town, moving slowly through the town centre, I was less terrified by this time, but still dreading the prospect of getting back off the camel. Mount and dismount from a camel is complicated and for me, terrifying. the way a camel stands is to first raise it rear legs, leaving you pretty much standing up in the reins, with nothing to hold onto and panic surging through your veins, followed by another heart stopping lurch into a full stand. I was left dry mouthed and shaking after the first time. It did get easier, but not that much.

Camels aside Pushkar is amazing, the Bangh lassi flows freely, instead of booze (illegal here, but still we are offered it at twice it's normal price by our hotel proprietor who shall remain anonymous) and it is cheap, crazy and most definitely India.

There was a kite festival yesterday which was magical. We returned from our camel safari early in the morning and spent pretty much the rest of the day on our hotel rooftop, looking across the whole of Pushkar and it's sacred lake watching kites soar. We flew many kites poorly, and had kite fights with our neighbours, I believe we lost all bar one. Kites would plummet out of the sky and replace our losses regularly, making the collection of nationalities inability to fly kites no barrier. All of this in a valley in a desert surrounded by hills and temples with a sacred lake at its heart, amazing.