JEZ
Just what an absolutely amazing whopper of a fantastic horse riding day. Up just after 5am, thats how exciting it was for us yesterday! The sun had barely thrown a shadow, dew was soaking everything and it was freezing cold, but we barely noticed any of it as wolfed down our breakfast, necked a coffee and saddled up.

Again again...

Scenery from way beyond picture postcard land. Well into the places dreams get made of we'd ridden by this time. Sweeping mountains, the sky overhead a perfect saphire blue with a full compliment of fluffy white clouds. No fear of rain today. We followed the river in this magnificent valley for two hours, taking time to stop at a local ger for a quick tse (even I'm getting used to it!) and on again.

Local felt maker

The freshest air on earth, open steppe, forests and sky. At some point, for some reason we all simultaneously decided to help a local farmer herd his yaks to further pastures. Seriously proper cowboy stuff, everyone was galloping round the herd shouting and whoopin "oochoo" to make them run. It was utterly exilarating.

We're pretty good on our horses now Amanda and I, Fanny's decided to be lazy and we were all frequently stopping so that Fred could catch up. Once we were in sight of the camp waterfall though there was no stopping us. Yelling for the joy of it we even outpaced the guide as we ran hell for leather. Some locals stopped us to say hello and we talked out of politeness but couldn't wait to be off again. At top speed we raced into camp, welcomed by the surprised faces of Bayara and Suvdaa, and dismounted for the last time... Until Amanda insisted we do it all again that is (once Fred had arrived) so we could video our triumphant entrance.

Jez and his new best mate, the horse not the Yak

AMANDA
But what he's not telling you is that he christened his horse Jez Junior... yes a little worring.

JEZ
Last night we milked YAKS. Amanda persuaded the nice lady we are staying with that it would be a good idea... It kinda was.

Milking my first yak.

Its verrry cold outside but the sunshine is already strong at 6.50am. We have dived straight into Suvdaas mum's house (ger) in a small town and Amanda can recharge the camera battery. Suuvdaas Mum makes the most amazing butter I have ever tasted-its like clotted cream but made from yak cream! I enthused about it so much she has out it in a jar for me to take away.

Our guide's family

We stopped to refill the vans water at a cool (freezing) spring. It feeds the town and they are all gathered with pots and pans on little trolleys. I froze my feet off paddling then put my head under....Oh My God.

The roads in Mongolia are utter hell by the way. Incredibly bumpy and made by the passing of other cars. There seems to be a pioneer attitude to trail blazing out here where each successive driver tries to forge their own unique path across the steppe. The result is a complex web of dirt trails cutting through the valleys and hills, all leading in a supposedly different direction, finding the right one amongst this illogical tangle is impossible. You have to ask a friendly local herder which way to the next landmark and hope for the best.

Oh dear!

Amanda is not well at all. She has stomach troubles and she feels a bit sick. This is a looong driving day to the Great White Lake so thats even worse. Suvdaa's mum has given her a concoction of fat extracted from a sheeps tail and she is rubbing it on her belly. It doesnt seem to be helping.

Good gracious a road!

We stopped in a wide green valley, more like Narnia or Middle Earth than this planet, for a picnic. Fred and Fanny are convinced that this was the place they were poisoned by 'off' meat in the sarnies. (Amanda is a veggie but was ill before we ate anyway) They assure me I am not ill because I have an iron stomach from years of eating bacteria on a stick from dodgy street vendors. Fred has been sick and Fanny followed closely behind. Our arrival at White Lake is not quite what anyone expected!

It is utterly beautiful by the way, but that goes for just about everywhere here not near the drop toilets.

The novelty of bumping about like magic beans in a box as we go from A to B is starting to wear a bit thin. At least we are doing tomorrow on horse back.

AMANDA
Yesterday was horrid, awful, disasterous. If the day before hadn't ended so well I surely may have been forgiven for willing this road trip to end. Hours and hours on dirt tracks bumping and skidding, dodging yaks and horses and goat and sheep. There was even a camal amongst them all. Suvdaa gave me some mixtue of lambs tail to rub in to my tummy but later wouldnt stop in the town for a 'toilet' stop. She claimed 'toilets' are everywhere "the countryside can be used as a toilet". I know there was loos in that village, drop style ones with walls, you cant have a group of people living in one place and everyone just 'go' where they like. Eventually we managed to persuade her to stop in a ger camp to use their facilities. Personaly I think it was the homemade yaks butter at Suvdaas Mums. We made a stop there on the way today and we were welcomed with the traditonal salty tea, fermented mares milk and hard as nails cheese. Jez ate all he could possibly get of the butter. He wasnt ill but everyone else was?

Great White Lake

Just as I was beginning to think our french travelling companions were quite rude by refusing to exchange their space on the back seat so I could put my head on Jez's knee and feel a little less like killing myself Fanny told me fred was ill. Sure enough they both threw up their undigested meat from lunch time. Not a great day. I just hope we are getting it all over with at the begining.

We did have a great welcome to Great White Lake though, more so because they gave us our own gers for the night. YEAH.

It was amazing to see Claire and Neil for such a long time... four weeks in all. We actually managed to co-ordinate our travels to spend some of the best times together. Thailand was really all about sun, sea, sand and as usual the toxic vodka. We spent time on our favourite of favourites, Bottle Beach on Phangan and had amazing cliff view cabins in Haad Rin. (Obviously they had the aircon deluxe version as "long term holiday makers"... 6 months on I ask you!) We did some great snorkeling in Koh Tao and lounged about on the beach, or next doors pool whenever we felt the need.

Whenever Neil can be bothered, or drag himself away from the Orang Utans in Borneo for long enough to write all about our adventures you'll be able to hear what we all got up to. In the meantime we were desperate to share some of the best times we had together, in Cambodia again with the kids...

Yesterday started fabulously well with a quick stop at a local parade. We seemed to be doing very well with these indeed, being in the right place at the right time. It was a Hindu ceremony, very colourful and a taster of things to come in India.

We thought begining our day strolling about the market might set us up with some similar local flavour. How wrong we were. From the outset we were mobbed by beggars and kids after pens and sweets (we had given away our stash of 50 pens between us and much to Amanda's dissapointment we don't give sweets away to children) and people selling local sun-block fruit and veg, laquerwork, wood carvings, longyi's, deep fried stuff and all manner of other such whatnot. Annette ran straight into the throng and under the cover of the stalls hoping for a reprieve, she was quickly followed by four or five people who begged her for a sale for at least half an hour without pause. her longy was very nice though! Amanda and I too retreated into the shady aroma-filled cool of the market, but again this just served to whip the locals into a frenzy. we really were there out of season and it showed. Jostling each other in their mob to get your attention, Amanda freaked a little in the midst of all this madness, we were all in a bit of a state actually and I had to appear out of nowhere (bearing a bouquet of flowers) like a knight in armour to fight off the great weight of need the local sellers were putting on her shoulders. After a few punches and pushes and nasty moments thrown in by the crowd they eventually came over when we were pulling away (relieved looks of shock on our faces) and apologised for being so hard-core. They knew it was a bit over the top especailly considering nearly every one of them got a sale/ donation. They even gave her Amanda a little present, though we were unsure whether this was just another sales tack. We pulled out with desperate arms still poking through every windowas they continued to push their wares at us, grasping for that unlikely last minute sale. It was a shock for us as we had not experienced such desperation in this country yet, nor in any except Africa. Now it was obvious that the need of many people is great but like most other things apart from big smiles and some of the loveliest people we have come across on our travels, a lot is hidden under the surface in this country.

After fourty five minutes of driving through a landscape that took us right back to outback Oz we stopped again. This time wary of our reception we gingerly went into a palm sugar workshop to see how it was done. The people out here are very, very poor, but a world away from those we'd left behind at the market. They didn't try to sell anything, just showed us how they climb the palm trees to slit open the fruit stems and catch the sticky sap, which they then boiled for hours (I had a stir) till it was a thick paste. After it had cooled the would roll it into balls which can be eaten, crushed or just dropped into your coffee for a nice sweet nutty taste.

The family there were all amazingly lovely as they showed us their lives, which turned out to be very simple and very basic. They cut down some palm leaves and weaved a collection of birds, whistles and flowers. From deper into the palm plantation came half a dozen kids, much worse off than this family and wearing only filthy shorts or pants, they stood a safe distance away and started at the strange foreigners. Amanda went straight over and started to ease their fears. She ended up giving away all of our change, managed to miraculously pull out some toys meant for the cambodian children and bought most of what the family had to sell (palm rum, wine, sugar) before we moved on. Claire and Neil were in for a treat in 3 weeks. Lovely toxic booze.

Mount Popa is right at the edge of the Bagan Plain, the hard-lava centre of a long eroded volcano topped by a golden pagoda. Its is a bit of a challenge to climb without shoes, especially considering the hundreds of vicious monkeys that live around the stairs. They are fed by the less intelligent tourists and leave little messages everywhere for the rest. Getting up and down without hookworm infections or being attacked by hungry apes is also quite challenge. The steps to the top are lined with locals selling beads, and a new fake, volcanic rocks and petrified stone picked up by their industrious children. Acting like pious pilgrims we bought a few beads and dutifully ignored the monkey poo as we ascended. The view from the top was very nice, and we had a chat with a few monks but weren't immesurably impressed. I could tell Amanda preferred the company of the palm sugar family. We drove home for a kip and spent our last utterly breathtaking Bagan sunset back with the pagoda family and their sand paintings.

Up early enough for our last morning in Bagan Amanda and I decided to make the most of it and, even before breakfast were being chaufeured around in a horse and cart for one final romantic look. Our driver took us to a fantastic local wooden manastery, the 'Temple of Ananda' and around his home village, which we thought was a great idea. We ended up right back at the sunset pagoda once more, this time to give Cherry, one of the family who looks after the place, Amanda's hairbands (she'd shown an interest in it before). They repayed us by showing us a reclining Buddha in a long room that most people seem to pass by. It was great. The little daughter never once gave up trying to sell me a collection of postcards. Before we left Bagan for good I eventually gave in and bought them, much to my own surprise. It turned out Annette had just been there too to buy yet another sand painting, we'd missed her by two minutes.

Bagan Bagan Bagan. Definately on my wonders of the world lsit and even if we had onlt seen this in Burma it all would have been worth it.

The Sultan of Brunei is no longer the richest man in the world, but he is still the only one that can say he owns the country he lives in so hey, what does he care? In order to get from Sabah to Sarawak we had to pass through his little stretch of oil rich land, something most travellers do as quickly as possible because it is so much more expensive than Malaysia. Throwing caution to the wind Amanda and I spent a whole two nights there before heading back to the comfort of cheap hostels and bad restaurants. Maybe we'd be able to meet the man himself, borrow a fiver perhaps... who knew what could happen?

Not opulent at all

First of all, Brunei's capital Bandar Seri Begawan (called BSB by everyone including the Mayor for obvious reasons) is really small. There doesn't seem to be anyone living there and its roads only sport about half a dozen cars, which incidentally stop dead at prayer time and clog up what little traffic there is. After viewing the local 'hostel' with its cell like seperate sex dorms we picked the same hotel everyone seems to stay at, the strangely named 'KH Soon' with its insane security arrangements (a massive locked steel gate halfway up the stairs in a city with almost no crime at all) and slightly unhinged staff. Taking in the city took barely two hours, from the big mosque to the river on the other side of town is a slow 20 minute walk passing everything else of interest (a nice river bridge and a pizza hut). They actually let us into the mosque for the 5 minutes left before afternoon prayer time, insisting we didn't step off the red carpet laid like a tourist corridoor along the floor and that we wear long flowing black robes that covered us to our toes. I think maybe they could feel the half muslim vibes we'd picked up in the middle east, the guys who turned up to have a look just behind us were turned away with a 'Muslim's Only' sign thrust in front of them... We were smug indeed, perhaps it was my blossoming goatee?

If Christopher Wren had had a bigger budget

On a high from this religious brotherhood we used our new found mojo to arrange a boat driver to take us around the cities stilt water villages later on in the afternoon (he just appeared at his house window and asked if we might need a boat). First priority however was the Brunei museum which housed a wing devoted entirely to Brunei's oil industry. I was dumbfounded to read how proud they were to have allowed all their other industries to collapse in favour of the black stuff. I was also dissapointed that the 'natural history' section of the museum was temporarily closed. I do so enjoy wandering through corridors of glass cages containing the forna of an island, killed, stuffed and posed in unrealistic dioramas. The temporary display was interesting (really, no sarcasm here), a chinese wreck from 500 years ago had been found and all the cargo salvaged for the museum. There was also a great collection of islamic art that took us right back to Syria, especially the decorative wooden boot with the mother of pearl inlaid compass on the toe. Just what every Saracen General needs for Hari Raya!

We didn't need to get the bus back to town, a 60 year old woman saw us from her car and took pity on us. Apparantly she is always picking people up from that spot and taking them home. I was begining to like Brunei.

Boat ride bartering in Kampung Ayer

Our tour around the river started well, we agreed a price and timescale and shot off towards the Sultans Palace. It turned familiarly ugly however when Chad, our moneygrabbing driver tried to stop and renegotiate the price seconds after losing sight of the docks. Maybe we've both spent too long in Egypt, he was no match for the might of our combined arguments. He tried to gain the upper hand by dropping us off 20 minutes walk away from the palace (forcing our trip over the agreed time due to the ensuing stroll) but this was transparant beginners stuff to us, we got straight back on the boat and took photo's from the river. Next he tried to charge a 'monkey levy' for taking us an extra 300 metres to see a colony of proboscus monkeys frolicking, but again he was fighting a losing battle. The 'rising price of petrol' excuse doesn't work in a country that charges less than 20p a litre. Finally (you've got to give the guy credit for trying) on the way back he tried to drive past our jetty and beyond, possibly 'by accident' into the stilt village that lines BSB's rivers. He was hoping we wouldnt notice, overshoot our time and therefore owe him an undiscussed extra charge. Whilst the water village views were a great thing to see (they have stilt schools, stilt shops, stilt mosques and everything), we had walked through them earlier in the day, my eyes were on the clock and he didn't get away with it.

Hopping off the boat I payed the guy, recieving some seriously bad vibes in return. I enjoyed the ride but it was a pain having to think all the time about what his next ploy would be to scam some more money out of us. It might not have mattered in Malaysia, a ringit goes a long way, but Brunei is really expensive. We knew not to be fooled by the delapadated appearance of those stilt houses, the shiny expensive cars outside give away their owners wealth. We left him grumbling to himself in the dying light and went to pack, maybe it was time to leave.