Andy's Blog - Gone Further

This used to be a miserable view. The top left of the picture is the MediaCity:UK site which will be home to, among other things, the BBC’s new Salford Quays home next year. Before we went to Tignes this was a horrible looking building site and one of the reasons we got away for so long.

It has snowed all day and now the skies have cleared leaving a wonderful view from our apartment balcony.

We make a return to the Weekly Photo following our recent trip.

The snow has begun to fall in the Alps and we’ve booked our first winter trip of the season returning to Tignes in March.

This photo is of the Aiguille Percée which loosly translates as ‘The Eye of the Needle’. It is a beautiful rock formation caused by wind erosion. The locals believe in ten years it will have completely eroded away.

After a good snowfall there’s a hairy hike up through the Eye that leads to stunning views and a brilliant off-piste run on the other side.

Winter: God’s season.

Show on map

70 Days
2 Continents
7 Countries

26,883 Miles by plane
777 Miles by bus/coach (we avoided overnighters)
693 Miles by train (average 1 cockroach per 48 miles)
183 Miles by car
192 Miles by ferry
100 Miles by sailboat
0.5 Miles by motorbike (before we crashed in Hoi An)
28,828 Miles in total (1.16 times around the world)

19 Airports
9 Airlines
8 Different currencies (US$ widely accepted in Cambodia as well as the Riel)
2 Equatorial crossings
6 World Heritage Sites
Approximately 47 toilets in Hanoi for Pezza

140 Hours traveling (5 days 20 hours)
3 Nights spent on planes
4 Nights on a boat
1 Night on a train
1 Night in Ha Long Bay

48 nights in Asian hostels (average £24.21/night)
10 nights in Aussie hostels (average £45.22/night)
4 Nights in posh hotels (average £250.25/night)

£1,614.18 total spent on hostels (58 nights. Average £27.83/night)
£2,816.18 total spent on all accommodation (62 nights. Average £45.42/night)

2 Items lost (camera and flip flops)
2 Items broken (padlock and laptop power cable)

0.6 Kilograms my luggage gained
3.4 Kilograms I gained (Pezza doesn’t wish to discuss any weight she may have gained/lost)

0 Major arguments
0 Times I was right
100 Times Pezza was right

977 Pictures uploaded to Flickr
23 Blog posts on the road

38 Degrees – highest temperature (MySon ruins, Vietnam)
21 Degrees – lowest temperature (Sydney, Australia)

All the accommodation costs are based on two people sharing a double room. Further details on all our accommodation can be found on the dedicated Southeast Asia Page.

There was one good reason not to go to Sydney, we’ve been twice before in the last three years. Fortunately for us, however, there are many good reasons to keep going back – it’s on a very exclusive list of cities that I would love to move to one day, the only other that [...]

It was a tough call after Airlie Beach, do we rush around and have a few nights exploring Fraser Island or do we go to Byron Bay?  We first visited Byron in November 2007 and vowed to return and with the little time we have here in Australia we thought that a few nights rushing [...]

9 October – 12 October
We checked out of the hostel on day three and made our way to the Able Point Marina where we found our new home for the next three nights, a 30 metre sailing racer called Spank Me.  Most people who come to the Whitsundays take some sort of a trip and [...]

7 October – 9 October
Australia: after two months in Southeast Asia we’re back down under.  It was only a few weeks ago we said to each other we wished we hadn’t booked flights all the way to Australia as we were having too much fun where we were, the smart money was on Bali and [...]

Ko Phangan, 28 September – 6 October.
Getting here was simple enough, just an hour or so on the boat from Ko Tao.  We were genuinely worried about accommodation for the first time since we started the trip – this was the week building up to the Full Moon Party (FMP) and it gets busy here [...]

Phase two of our ten week trip.  We’re now done with the Southeast Asian cities and have covered thousands of miles over the last seven weeks.  ‘Phase Two’ is all about suncream and shorts and what better place than the three islands of Ko Samui, Ko Tao and Ko Phangan in Thailand to do this; [...]

Our last major trip was six weeks long, it seems appropriate to let you know how we’re getting on.

Last time, we attempted to whiz around the world in six weeks. We did this but felt, especially in Thailand, that we missed a trick. So, here we are, six weeks in, and we have [...]