Elizabeth's Big Adventure!

Keep your feet warm this winter, or for brilliant Christmas present ideas,
click here to discover the warmest, cosiest most original slippers you'll find!:

All profits go to Azafady. Fantastic presents for a fantastic cause.

]This website gives people a voice, definitely a postive thing. Have a read and get an insight into the difficulties of local people's lives in the Anosy region of Madagascar. We visited Sainte Luce on our trip to South Madagascar earlier this year, it is a stunning area but terribly poor...

http://www.panos.org.uk/pushedtotheedge

If you would like to help support the people of this area, check out http://www.azafady.org the fantastic NGO that I volunteered with in this area. They really are making such a positive difference to people's lives. You can also see my previous blogs when I was there to get an idea about the kind of work we did.

Click here to watch the video

I travelled through this area and saw men, women and children collecting dirty, brown water from puddles on the road. These dirty puddles are their only source of water. Due to climate change the people in the South of Madagascar can no longer rely on 2 rainfalls a year, this means they can no longer have two harvests. Which means the people are not only desperately short of clean drinking water but also food. Malnutrition is an incredibly serious problem here, especially in children under the age of 5. UNICEF and Azafady are working to reduce the impacts of climate change by providing those in need with emergency food and training on nutritional health and nutritional practices.

I saw men digging wells about 20 metres deep, the area is so dry they have to dig extremely deep to find water. The walls of these wells regularly collapse on the men and they are never seen again.

Children begged at the windows of our car to give them empty water bottles so that they could contain water from a ditch or puddle.

Please help Azafady and UNICEF carry on their crucial work by donating.

Click here to donate to Azafady
Click here to donate to support UNICEF in this area

So, Ruth and I left on another boat to get back to the mainland and then travelled down through Thailand to the Malaysian border by bus. Other than numerous checks by the police (there has been some trouble in that area recently) the journey was smooth and we ended up at the border that night. We found a cheap hotel and then got up really early the next day. When we arrived in Malaysia, we realised it was Ramadam...so we were eating very dubious snacks in a bag all day because that was the only thing we could get our hands on! After having lengthy chats with our taxi driver, the station master and any other man who happened to be around, we got on the Jungle line train to Danang. Beautiful trip through the Malaysian jungle and we arrived in Danang feeling very hot and sweaty because we were having to keep our shoulders and knees covered!

Here we bumped into the only other westerners around and we decided to change our plans and go with them to the Cameron Highlands. A couple of taxis later, we arrived in the mountain town filled with strawberries and tea...definitely reminiscent of English colony days! We spent a day trekking through the jungle and visiting ' The Big Red Strawberry Farm'! and eating strawberry sundae, strawberry waffle, strawberry shake and strawberry juice. It was incredible!

From the Cameron Highlands we then got a bus to Kuala Lumpur and found an amazing guest house with free internet and breakfast! We spent a day exploring China town and the Petronas twin towers. Last night I got an overnight bus to Singapore, which is where I am now. Ruth is now flying to Siem Reap, Cambodia. I'm meeting Poppy here and flying home tonight and Laura is flying home from Bangkok. Can't believe that 2 months has gone so fast, but we've definitely seen a lot

We spent 5 days on Ko Tao which was the longest Poppy and I had stayed anywhere for 2 months so was very nice not having to unpack and pack all the time. Days were spent chilling out on the beach, eating good food and generally lazing around! We experienced a 'Blue Moon' party, which was the closest we got to a Full Moon party. Up in the mountains with lots of UV lighting and some tunes, it was a very fun night. Other highlight of our time there was a boat trip round the island. This involved stopping at each of the bays and snorkeling....the best bit was definitely the Black Tip Sharks we saw that swum around underneath us. We saw loads of other beautiful fish and coral...not sure of all the names, but they looked very cool!

After Ko Tao, our next stop was Ko Phi Phi. Possibly the roughest boat ride I've ever been on to get back from Ko Tao to the mainland. The only reason we didn't all slide from one side of the boat to another was because we were wedged in like sardines together on our 'beds'! Anyway, after a boat, then a bus, then another boat we arrived in Ko Phi Phi (on the west side of Thailand) This island was beautiful, it has become a mecca for tourists after it was rebuilt after being severely hit by the tsunami. Ruth and I only had 2 days here because we decided to travel down through Malaysia to get to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Poppy and Laura had flights booked from Phuket so they got a few extra days on the beach.