Kim and Seb Trip

Japan is a very good country to visit but painfully expensive.

We started out volunteering on a farm.  It was great.

We got to do mass public exercises on the beach.

And hand out with a load of cool Japanese people.

There’s lots of traditional style culture here.

And we finished by going to Fuji Rock festival, which ROCKED.

We spent a couple of weeks in Xinjiang, far west China. They speak a Turkic language and are Muslim. People don’t have religious freedoms and there is a general but suppressed desire for independence.

So we spent 5 weeks in Beijing.  We thought it was a great city, apart from the pollution…

Spent an interesting 10 days or so in Hong Kong.

We tracked down some strange arty stuff.

We had a great time because we saw Kim’s parents there (they came for a holiday) and also our friend Dean who’s working there for a year.

We spent two weeks in Yangshuo. Lots of beautiful scenery and interesting stuff.

We spent a lot of time at Zhuoyue school where we helped teach some English and got Chinese lessons. We met a lot of really nice people.

Kim also drove a noddy car.

We spent a week in Laos.  Saw some nice religious stuff.

Then we went for a trek through some nice forest for three days.

It was beautiful but the deforestation was shocking.  It was meant to be a trek through a National Protected Area.  In fact the protected area was tiny.  It was full of trees and plants and wildlife (see the background here):

But entire villages had been moved to plantation areas here they could look after rubber plantations which were in huge, logged areas.  Here’s a deserted village:

Here’s the logged areas:

Our guides told us it was all good but we couldn’t help feeling there were some dodgy business practices going down.  The logged area was massive and the protected area was tiny.  In fact, we left Laos on a bus that took 11 hours through similarly logged areas, covered in rubber tree monoculture.

On a lighter note, in Laos we were pleased to find the most thronelike toilet ever:

In Cambodia, all we really did was see Angkor Wat, which was very good.

We went to Thailand via Singpore airport, where we used a free foot massage machine.

In Thailand we stayed with Spock and Guitar.

We managed to avoid doing any sightseeing at all. We went to three different libraries and a pathology museum.

This is the nicest library:

This is a pickled scrotum in the museum:

Stayed in the jungle at “Uncle Tan’s Wildlife Camp”.  Saw animals:

Got wet:

We went to Mabul and Palau Sipadan in Borneo. Mabul was tiny island with 2 luxury resorts, 1 skanky resort, and a large village on stilts inhabited mainly by children.

There was also diving, beaches, alchohol, blah blah