Ben

Screw Lemonade.

Many times on this trip when trying to make decisions we went back to what the motive of the whole undertaking was. Was it to cycle A to B? Was it an unbroken line? Was it to see cool stuff? Was it a holiday? In reality it was never any

Christmas in New Zealand!!!

We've had a very action-packed week! First there was Emma's extended family Christmas and then... 0:00 /0:22 1× 0:00 /0:31 1×

Day 98 - We made it 🎉🎉🎉

We landed on time which was nice and got through immigration very easily - ePassport gates kind of easily in fact (which was more of a surprise for me than Emma of course). The real trouble of this border was always going to be the New Zealand biosecurity and their

Day 97 - Flying

With the taxi pre-booked and the hotel kind enough to let us raid what was already ready from the buffet 2 hours early today should have been a simple and relaxed flight, but at check in just about everything that could have gone wrong went wrong! The real adrenaline shot

Day 95 & 96 - Bangkok

Bangkok is a modern, bustling and expensive (European prices before the cost of living crisis) city. We found it very friendly, very well organised and peaceful despite the bustle, if a little lacking in character. Sit back and relax while I tell the tale... Day 95 Our bodies pinged awake

Day 94 - The Final Leg

While the hotel didn't provide full breakfast, there was toast and hot water in a very pretty restaurant area, which when combined with our own tea, eggs and oh-so-good pineapple made for a decent breakfast! We had more of a tailwind than expected this morning so made good

Day 93 - Wholesome Tourism

It was a rather short and disturbed night, but luckily we were just awake enough to enjoy the Phimai historical site - a mini version of Angkor Wat. It's particularly pleasing as although we missed out on the famous capital of the Khmer empire thanks to recent border

Day 92 - Towns beginning with "P"

We "Grabbed" our breakfast this morning and ate at the same nice table downstairs in the hotel which we'd had dinner at. It was more of the baguette sandwiches, one for the morning and two for the road...and they were really good! We set off

Day 91 - It's Hot!

The aim today, after another short night's sleep, was to not to fall into our usual pattern where we do a big day, then are tired an unfocused the next and so end up losing the gain by doing a short day the next. That being said we

Day 89 - Time to Spare

I didn't like my 6am alarm, but I didn't hate it either. Having the bike all ready the day before, I just had to make and consume my oats and pot of tea and I could be off. We had separate plans today - I was

Day 88 - A whole new biome!

We were rolling early today up to the caves, planning to have breakfast there. On arrival we were greeted by a jobsworth parking attendant who first instructed us exactly where to put the bikes in a massive empty moped parking; "forward, forward" and then tried to charge us

Day 87 - Playing Catch Up

We had to actually find breakfast this morning in the hotel complex of restaurant, bar, cafe and pho bar, but when we did it was a nice, if not filling, pho (Vietnamese ramen). We'd woken up to all-night rain and black clouds, but by the time we were

Day 86 - The Unexpected Four Hour Lunch Stop

I was almost too sleepy this morning to enjoy the impressive buffet for breakfast, and the lack of black tea wasn't helping! Paying the interest on all of those short nights. It was a smoggy, overcast and oppressive day, which definitely didn't help with the tiredness,

Day 85 - The Most Efficient Yet?

We were moving at just gone 8 this morning after comfy sleep and breakfast (although no buffet this morning sadly). That's despite snoozing the alarm for a precious extra 20 mins sleep! The main focus of the day was to see the sea (a new one to us)

Day 84 - It's Flat Again

We ended up having a lovely evening drinking craft beer with Rob (who we met yesterday in the bike shop) covering topics from dating to concentration camps to professional networking! A lovely evening that got us to bed once again very late (especially after I'd treated myself to

Day 81, 82 & 83 - Hanoi!

Seeing as we stayed in one place for an unprecedented amount of time on this trip (and it was glorious) I'm combining three days into one! In short: Hanoi is awesome! We're back in a land of food that isn't entirely oily or spicey,

Day 80 - When India says, "Hold my Lassi"

The hotel had no breakfast included and that suited us just fine as we were keen to catch up on sleep, and anyway, 30mins after waking up, coffee and sandwiches (spicy, of course) rocked up, along with another cake 😏. Eventually, just before the checkout at 12 we set out to

Day 79 - Tea Factories!

We enjoyed breakfast in the sun in a beautiful spot overlooking the tea gardens. Meanwhile our host was arranging for us to visit a nearby tea factory and leant us the hose to wash our bikes ahead of packing them. We'd never have found this factory without the

Day 78 - Nepalese Tea Land!

For the record I independently thought of this title but Emma pipped me to the post with yesterday's blog! I saw the sunrise from the comfort of the toilet seat this morning as the sun had the good grace to come up perfectly aligned with the bathroom window,

Day 76 - We can't be on it everyday

It was perhaps a sign of things to come when our planned relatively early start included us sitting in the sun at 8:40am. We often complain that breakfast slows us down in the morning, and it does, but this morning breakfast had long finished and we still hadn'

Day 75 - Four Thousand Metres

Big day planned, moderately efficient morning to start it off - helped to have found some oats the night before so we weren't at the mercy of the very slow kitchen! It was a bit of fairly smoggy flat and then our first hill. Boy was it hot

Day 74 - It's Bumpy!

We had a hyper efficient morning and left our very rugged but authentic guest house after a decent breakfast of omelettes and chapatis. It's good having our sleeping bag liners to sleep in for places like this, although the cold water and lack of sink is still curious

Day 72 - Yep, the hills are still there

Our plan from yesterday requires a lot of miles every day from now until Christmas, so it was the first of many early starts, especially as we knew we still had to actually plan and book things before we could leave. The hotel (a third of the price of the

Day 71 - Actually doing the admin

After another AWESOME breakfast we realised that we'd done all of the chilling yesterday, but none of the planning, so we decided on an (as yet unheard of on this tour) third night in the same place! We perhaps weren't as efficient as we could have

Day 70 - Ahhhhhh

[Strava not found!] We woke up late. We had an AMAzing buffet breakfast. We did a little bit of admin. We wandered out no further than 200m from our hotel for a bit of souvenir shopping. We had a gym session. We had a sauna and spa. We chatted in