vegan.in.brighton

I've written a couple of posts about eating vegan in Melbourne, check them out here and here, but what should you be doing in-between meals? There are a whole bunch of great non-food related things to do in and around Australia's second city and here are a few of my favourites.

• Go on the Official Neighbours Tour

You might not really be from the UK if you've never seen an episode of Neighbours. Many hours of my childhood, teenage years, and early twenties were spent watching the goings on at Lassiter's and Harold's, and for a while I seriously wanted Susan Kennedy to be my mum. With this deep love for the show a Neighbours tour was a must!

Unsurprisingly all but one person who'd been dragged along by a friend was British and everyone was enthusiastic about the tour. You get to visit Ramsay Street and check out the studio lot where a bunch of the other location sets are which was so fun. Many photos were taken! Our guide was both knowledgeable and hilarious and we learnt a whole lot of stuff about how the show is filmed including how they always make it look sunny in Erinsborough when the reality of Melbourne is a little different.

• Take a Walking Tour with I'm Free Walking Tours

I love taking walking tours when I visit new cities, they're are usually led by interesting local people who know the city's history and who have great tips about where to eat, what to see, and where to hang out. We were lucky with the weather and our two hour tour with I'm Free was a blast. As well as checking out some cool historical sites the tour also takes in street art and parks and it even included a little stop in the middle for a bathroom break and some snacks. The spot that this tour stops at has a branch of epic Aussie doughnut spot Doughnut Time which made the whole thing even more awesome in my eyes. Good job Melbourne!

• A Tour of The Steve Irwin

Our paths finally crossed with the Sea Shepherd ship the Steve Irwin during our time in Melbourne and Nick and I headed to Williamstown to take a tour of the ship with Lex one of SS's amazing crew members. It was really cool to get to see where some of Sea Shepherd's most dedicated activists are living and working and holy wow was it hot in the kitchen! I'm not sure that I could handle working on board especially as I get very sea sick but they just so happened to be having a bake sale for the World Wide Vegan Bake Sale on the day we swung by (okay so that was not a coincidence!) so we were able to support SS and eat some delicious treats - I think I'll have to stick to that kind of activism as far as saving the oceans is concerned.

If like me you can't step on board and head out to save the planet yourself there are still things you can do (aside from buying cakes!) to help ocean wildlife whilst keeping your feet firmly on dry land. One easy step is to take a long hard look at your plastic consumption. As a traveller I find this very difficult - there are times where you will need to drink water from plastic bottles - but you can take tote bags to the store and learn how to say no to a plastic bag, refuse straws, ask for a drink in a real mug rather than a paper cup with a plastic lid at Starbucks, and try to buy your fruit and veg from local markets rather than in plastic packaging from corner stores. When I'm home I'll definitely be taking a look at where else I can cut back. You don't need to give up all plastic to be making a difference, just take some small steps and remember that every little helps. If you'd like to visit the Steve Irwin to learn more about ocean conservation you can take a free tour on Sunday's between 11 and 4.

• Grab drinks and check out the view at Naked for Satan

Okay so this one kinda involves food but it's more than that! Naked for Satan is a bar specialising in vodka and pintxos. It's located on Brunswick street in Fitzroy and aside from the fact that they serve great drinks, including interesting non alcoholic options, and tasty nibbles you can also take your drink up in the lift to Naked in the Sky to check out the gorgeous wrap around views of the city. I'd recommend heading there around sunset on a weekday if you're hoping for a more chilled vibe.

• Visit the Phillip Island Penguins

The day out that Nick and I were probably the most excited about was visiting Phillip Island to see the little penguins emerging from the water. We took a guided ranger tour which meant that we were in a small group of just 10 people and we were able to view the penguins from a secluded beach away from the larger groups of tourists near the visitor centre. We sat on the sand as the sun set and soon saw penguins emerging from the water. Our knowledgeable guide was able to fill us in on their movements before we spotted them thanks to our handy earpieces so we were always looking at the right spot. There are no penguin pic's because they don't come out until after dusk and flash photography would damage their eyes and confuse them. We watched the penguins through a night vision eyepiece which made me feel like I was in some kinda spy movie! Sadly the other attractions on Phillip Island are not so animal friendly, there are some dubious photo op's to be had with koalas, horse riding experiences, and farm tours all of which we avoided. A visit to see the penguins here is definitely a bit of a splurge budget wise but we thought it was more than worth it.

• Head out to Edgar's Mission

Edgar's Mission is Australia's largest farm sanctuary and it's located approximately an hours drive north of Melbourne. Sadly Nick and I haven't had the chance to visit yet (it's not accessible by public transport) but hopefully we'll be back in that neck of the woods with a vehicle in the not too distant future. You can take a free tour on weekends and on occasional weekdays, just check out the availability calendar and book your place.

It was my 34th birthday last week and my first ever birthday in the Southern Hemisphere. I was working on my actual birthday but as I'm always up for having a birthday week I started celebrating early by planning an epic day out with Susan from Kittens Gone Lentil. Me and Nick started the day at Petrie station and travelled into Brisbane to meet Susan near her place. We even got to pop to her house to meet Dim Sim, her gorgeous black cat who I've known online for many years!

We had our sights set on eating copious amounts of dim sum / yum cha so we drove south to Gold Coast to eat at Easy House, somewhere I'd been reading about and dreaming of eating at for a while. Easy House certainly didn't disappoint, the food was freaking amazing and I've eaten dim sum in both NYC and Hong Kong so you can trust me. You can order from the menu but the lovely people working there also bring around trays of dim sum so that you can choose what you want to eat that way. So fun! As someone who is often paralysed with menu indecision this was great news. We started with some deep fried taro dumplings and some delicious bbq filled flaky pastry crescents that I do not remember the name of. They were basically the best thing ever though so if you make it to Easy House order them.

Next up we grabbed an order of turnip cakes which are another of my favourite ever foods. These were a freaking delight and I would have grabbed a second plate if there weren't so many other tempting things on the menu.

All three of us love steamed dumplings so we went big when that tray came around. We grabbed the coriander dumplings, the pea shoot dumplings, and the faux chicken dumplings. The coriander dumplings were my fave' but I think that Nick and Susan preferred the pea shoot dumplings.

Lastly, despite feeling a little full, we couldn't resist some sesame prawn rolls. In the background you can see our almost final order of pork bao (my fave'), bean curd rolls, and an aubergine dish that I forget the name of.

We got more than one round of pork bao because we're geniuses and the only thing that I didn't love was the fried aubergine dish. I'm a little particular when it comes to aubergine based things and this was a miss for me despite it being one of Susan's favourite dishes.

After lunch Susan took us to the beach because despite having been in Queensland for two months we'd still never seen a beach here. Ridiculous! I went for a run around on the sand, dipped my toes in the water, and marvelled at the fact that this was just a regular neighbourhood beach and not even a famous beach! Seriously Australia? You're ridiculous!

When I got back from running around on the sand like a fool there was a soft fluffy kitty just waiting for me to pet her! Could this day get any better?!

The answer is yes because our next stop was Flour of Life bakery in Helensvale just north of Gold Coast. No birthday day out would be complete without desserts and Nick and I ordered so many baked goods (we were buying treats for the other volunteers too) that we had to let a bunch of people go first because we were taking so long!

These are just our goodies. I started with the Neenish Tart (top) because I can't resist a pink baked treat and it was super tasty but so freaking sugary that I could only eat half. This worked out well later when I had a second sugar craving and it was right there waiting for me! Nick got an apple pie and a chocolate fudge slice and I got a Lamington because they're the best. I felt a little jealous of Nick's apple pie when I was taking this photo so I ran in and ended up grabbing an apple and rhubarb crumble tart as well - I'm pretty sure the person working thought I had a serious sugar problem! Maybe I do? Who can say!

We can only get to one very overpriced supermarket from the sanctuary we're volunteering at in Dayboro so we also included visits to a Supa IGA and an IGA with a huge range of Asian products in the day's itinerary. Luckily Susan loves food shopping as much as I do so she thought that this was a fun idea rather than torture! We picked up delicious teas, vegan cheeses, vegetable dumplings, turnip cakes, scallion pancakes, tofu, veggies, Loving Earth chocolate, and a huge tub of hummus for $6.99. It was a very successful shopping trip!

On my actual birthday I was lucky enough to spend the day working with Nick surrounded by super cute animals which was a-ok with me. One of the volunteers who just left us (so sad!) sent me a fun birthday package with hats, balloons, a birthday badge, glitter jelly, and fun tea based things which was so nice and it meant that I spent the day doing my job wearing a party hat! I'm pretty sure that the animals liked it!

Susan also got me a fun gift which included this Lenny & Larry birthday cake cookie and my very favourite Food Empowerment certified Seed & Bean Sicilian hazelnut chocolate. I've wanted to try this cookie for so long and it certainly didn't disappoint.

There were even two actual birthday cakes. Nick baked me a lime drizzle cake and the other volunteers made me a chocolate coconut cake! They were both super tasty and everyone enjoyed eating them for the next couple of days.

So far I'd say that 34 is looking pretty great. I even saw wallabies and a possum on the big day! I have just under a week left at the sanctuary and once I leave here I'll be spending a couple of days in Brisbane where I intend to focus on delicious food (Doughnuts! Pizza! Juices!), a pampering session at a nice hotel (after all of this mud I cannot wait to have an actual bath!), and matcha lattes which is probably going to make for a fantastic few days. After Brisbane Nick & I are planning to get back into #vanlife mode to drive a camper van up the coast towards Cairns. We're planning on checking out the beaches on the Sunshine Coast, snorkelling at the Great Barrier Reef, and exploring cute towns like Noosa. I'm super excited for more adventures and I can't wait to share them with you. I have a couple more China posts to share first as well as my final Melbourne eats post but then hopefully I'll be back on track for some real time blogging assuming that Australian campsite wifi is up to the challenge!

I was about a quarter of the way through Peter Hessler's excellent book River Town when I decided that I needed to see the Yangtze River for myself. It took me about eight years to make it happen but during our travels in China Nick and I finally made it. We decided to book a three night cruise with Victoria Cruises because it seemed like the best way to see not only the Three Gorges but to really get a feel for the river. We arrived in Chongqing by sleeper train from Xi'an at around 5am and immediately made our way across the city by bus from the train station to the port. The cruise was scheduled to start boarding at 5pm so we left our luggage at the port so that we could explore the humid bustling port side city in comfort. Finding the left luggage office was a total mission filled with people insisting that they were in fact the official left luggage spot for the cruise (yeah, no.) and many detours around the construction happening literally everywhere. After about an hour of wandering in circles we found it and were more than happy to leave our bags with two official looking ladies and a cat.

After 11 years of vegan travel I've learnt not to trust people 100% when they say that providing vegan food will be no problem so our plan for the day was to eat, explore, and then find and purchase snacks for the journey. I always pack snacks for flights, day trips, and tours but I was especially focussed on my snack game this time. When the place you're going is a floating hotel with no access to shops you need to be extra prepared.

We ate lunch at a vegetarian restaurant on the top floor of a mall thanks to Happy Cow, it was nothing to write home about but it was the one of very few options and the only one that was easy to get to so it was totally fine. There was a huge language barrier and no interest in seeing my allergy cards but we ended up with vegetables, rice, and tofu which is really all I need to be happy. Thankfully our snack buying plan was a total success because Chongqing has a massive Walmart! Walmart is a place that would usually be on my boycott list but there were no other options in the city and just look at the bean products aisle. Imagine if Western supermarkets had a bean products aisle. Now not everything here is just made of beans, a surprising amount of fish makes its way into these bean products but thankfully our Hong King sim card from China Mobile meant that we could use Google Translate which is a total lifesaver in these situations.

We came away with a huge bag of snacks to take on our cruise including breakfast staples like Frosties (which are still vegan in Asia - no vitamin D3!) and bananas as well as Lay's crisps and a whole lotta bean curd products.

One flavour of Lay's that I'd never seen before and will hopefully never eat again is Lime! Now I thought that these sounded like a good idea like how lime in beer is delicious but nope, these were terrible! I'd still recommend that you try them because the faces you will pull whilst eating them will amuse everyone around you but I will warn you that they are sugary and they taste like those lemon cream biscuits. I ate this bag in three sittings which just goes to prove that they were the worst!

The bean curd snacks were all great though which just proves that you can't go wrong with tofu. My very favourites were these little five spice tofu bites that I struggled not to inhale in one sitting. I was glad that I had the foresight to grab more than one!

These chewy soy bean snacks were great too and they come individually wrapped which makes them perfect for taking on day trips / keeping in your handbag.

These were Nick's favourite, they were a little saucy, soft, chewy and also individually wrapped making them another great on the go option.

Lastly we grabbed a couple of packs of these simple tofu strips which again were five spice flavoured. Most of these had a spicy and super spicy counterparts which I obviously avoided.

These were probably my least favourite but they were still pretty good and our whole bag of snacks totalled around £10 which is a ridiculous bargain. We also grabbed two 5L bottles of water because we suspected that bottled water would be expensive on board - correct! After spending the day wandering around the city marvelling at just how freaking enormous and busy Chinese cities are we headed back to the port for our 5pm boarding time. After a lot more walking around trying to find the right pier we ended up waiting around for ages. I don't think that the boat even arrived until 6pm. We met a woman on the dock who'd been told to arrive at 4pm. I'm not sure whether the cruise was doing that annoying thing that I can be guilty of where they assumed everyone would be late and told them a time way before they really needed to be there but as someone who is always on time it was definitely a little bit of an annoying start.

It was all okay once we'd boarded though as the ship was ridiculously nice and the views back towards the city were fantastic.

One reason that we chose the Victoria Jenna over the other boats we could have taken was because all of the rooms have balconies. Call me paranoid but boats sink and I like to know that I have a bit of a chance of escaping! It was also made in 2009 which made it a safer bet than a lot of the other boats sailing the river. Escape route aside the room itself was way nicer than I thought it would be and we were glad that we didn't drop any cash on a room upgrade. After a few nights of trains and hostels I was pretty excited to get to spend a few days in a floating hotel!

The tour took us past Shibaozhai, through the Three Gorges, and lastly to the Three Gorges Dam. The price included two shore excursions both of which we took; the first took us to the wooden pagoda at Shibaozhai and for the second we sailed down the Goddess Stream, a tributary of the main river, on a small boat. The pagoda at Shibaozhai was interesting but I was mostly into checking out the little town we walked past to get there, there seemed to be a real sense of community with groups of older people hanging out dancing and playing games.

The boat trip down the Goddess Stream was my favourite of the two excursions we took, partly because it was beautiful but mainly because the guide was hilarious. She was a young woman from a village way up in the mountains who'd taught herself English by watching Desperate Housewives. Her family were originally from lower down in the valley but they had to move during the relocations for the dam project - it was interesting to get to talk to someone from there about how people felt about relocating. To get to work she walks two hours each way down and then back up the mountain which seems pretty extreme to me but that's just life there. There were a couple of other excursions that cost extra that we skipped, getting to see Qutang Gorge, Wu Gorge, and Xiling Gorge and to get a feel of the river were our main reasons for taking the cruise and the other two shore excursions were already bonuses. The weather was misty and a little rainy for most of our journey but honestly that's exactly what I was expecting, it made the journey very atmospheric and I think it gave us more of a true sense of the place. I mainly spent time sitting on our balcony looking out at views like this and just marvelling at the scale of everything.

One place everyone on the boat was excited about seeing was the exact gorge portrayed on the 10 yuan note, we went through it in a serious rainstorm so I didn't get my decent camera out - my iPhone picture will have to do! By the end of the storm it was just me and two dudes I hadn't met before left on deck, we were sharing one umbrella and trying to hide behind some deck chairs but eventually even we had to call it!

Food wise Victoria Cruises nailed it for almost every single meal. We spoke with the cruise director when we arrived and once we'd explained our dietary requirements he assigned us a member of the dining room team who would greet us when we arrived for every meal and take us on a tour of the vegan options. He also explained that they never use meat stocks in the soups and that they label the vegetarian options. This only went wrong once when a member of staff kept pointing out things that were clearly covered in mayonnaise but we were able to reiterate our dietary requirements to her and after a consultation with the chef things went smoothly from there.

Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day, I always wake up starving and I always want to eat a decent and preferably carb heavy meal. Toast was off the menu because almost all sliced bread in Asia contains milk, egg, and sometimes even honey but thankfully they had some fantastic steamed Chinese bread that was totally vegan. We were served tea at the table and there was a fruit station where you could make your own fruit salad.

Breakfasts were similar each day with some variation of steamed buns, some stir fried vegetables, potatoes which sometimes contained chilli, fruit, and cereals. By day two they were bringing us hot soya milk which Nick used for cereal.

Lunch and dinner were also served buffet style and there were always plenty of delicious options to choose from. My favourites were the minestrone soup, garlicky green beans, steamed buns, and fried noodles. There was always steamed white rice available as well as a salad bar and the type of buns changed almost every day - the pumpkin ones were particularly good.

The only time I was unimpressed with the food was on our last night, the meal was served family style at the tables and we'd been assigned a table with us (two vegans), a vegetarian, and two meat eaters. We were the smallest table in the dining room but we were served the same amount of meat as the other tables! They literally brought over a whole dead duck, platters heaped with ribs, whole fish and more. The two meat eaters were barely able to make a dent and the vegan options were definitely lacking. I understand that the kitchen probably had a lot going on that night cooking up a huge and elaborate meal but the amount of food waste our table produced was pretty gross and given that the two meat eating guests preferred vegetable dishes it wasn't a great meal for anyone. Overall Victoria Cruises provided good vegan food but I would have liked them to take our table into consideration a little more when planning the final dinner.

Our last excursion took us to the Three Gorges Dam site which was pretty epic - at first it was very hard to see as there was a lot of fog (enough to stop us being able to travel through the locks or in the ship lift which was a bit of a shame) but as we were getting ready to leave the mist cleared and we were able to get more a sense of the sheer size of this project. Photos don't do it justice, this thing is humungous.

Once we were done with the final cruise activities we ended up in Yichang early in the morning and spent the day dozing at a hostel, cooking, drinking bubble teas, and exploring a mall before catching a super late night train to Zhangjiajie to continue our adventures. More of that next time - Yangshuo was one of my favourite spots in China so keep your eyes peeled, it's gonna be a good 'un. Overall I'd say that I enjoyed this new way of travel way more than I expected - as a little break from self guided travel cruising was pretty damned relaxing and I would definitely consider another cruise especially if I was contemplating heading somewhere that you really can't see any other way. How about you? Have you ever taken a cruise? If you have what were the vegan options like? If not would you consider it or would it just not be your travel style?

This is the fourth and final part of my Vegan in Melbourne series. Check out parts one, two, and three by clicking the links and for more more tips on travelling, volunteering, and road tripping in Australia visit my dedicated Australia page here.

I followed the lead up to Red Sparrow Pizza's opening on Instagram and I was delighted to get to visit twice whilst I was in Melbourne. It's no secret that I'm a huge pizza fan (the fact that I don't have a pizza tattoo yet is ridiculous. Get it together Jojo!) and this place looked more than a little promising. Proper Italian style bases and multiple vegan cheese options along with a killer specials menu, what more could you want right? Well this place exceeded my expectations, the pizzas were seriously the best I've ever eaten - they had that combo of the perfect thin crust with plentiful tomato sauce and super fun toppings. We ordered from the specials board and I chose a pear and walnut pizza with aubergines and a balsamic glaze while Nick went for the Halal Snack Pack pizza.

For those of you who aren't Australian you may have never heard of a Halal Snack Pack (or HSP), I certainly hadn't. It's basically kebab style meat on chips with barbecue, chilli, and garlic sauces to top it all off. I'd have had to mess with it too much to make it a-ok for my allergies so I didn't try it but Nick gave it two thumbs up. I mean it's a pizza topped with chips, thinly sliced seitan, and a whole bunch of delicious sauces so of course he did!

My pizza was perfection, thinly sliced crunchy pears are one of my favourite pizza toppings and I love rocket on a pizza but what really made this was the amount of cheese! So good! When we visited the second time (because how could you eat pizza that good once and never go back?) I tried the Hawaiian minus the boozy glaze because I'm boring like that and Nick ordered a classic, the Pepperoni. These were both excellent and we both agreed that we'd order them again. The toppings were evenly spread out, there was plentiful tomato sauce, and the cheese was just right.

Just when I thought that Red Sparrow couldn't get any better Shelley told us that she'd saved us a slice of her Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Pie. Whaaaat? Too much! I was pretty excited about this, I mean peanut butter and chocolate? Yes please! Despite my excitement and high hopes this slice of pie still wowed me.

It was creamy and delicious and although I don't usually love whipped toppings it was seriously excellent and reminded me of the rad whip that Isa Chandra Moskowitz uses at Modern Love - high praise indeed! Red Sparrow is a must-visit for sure so make sure to fit it into your Melbourne plans.

Mister Nice Guy's is another spot that exceeded my high expectations, I started following them on Instagram years ago and had marvelled at their delicious looking creations for a long time. Thankfully Mister Nice Guys is a place where everything tastes as good as it looks and hot damn does everything look amazing.

We didn't have a lot of time which was a shame as I could have whiled away a few hours there eating, reading, and trying some of the drinks on the menu but alas we only had a short time so we had to eat and run. After spending far to long gazing at the options I chose the Popcorn Mudslide Cupcake and the Chocolate Babka for me and Nick to share.

These were both off the charts ridiculous! I'm a very fussy cupcake eater and often find them too dry, too stuck to the wrapper, too bland, etc, etc, but this one? This one was freaking spectacular. It was flavourful and gooey and the popcorn topping was so fun and so tasty. I didn't think that it could get better than this but then I tried the babka and almost died of deliciousness. Is that a thing that can happen?! This is an off the charts delicious pastry that's light on the cinnamon and heavy on the chocolate. It's better than Smith & Deli's croissants, better than the matcha babka I ate at By Chloe in NYC, better than basically anything I've ever made and without wanting to brag I'm an excellent baker. I hope that I get to eat this again but just in case I don't make it back there and you do please go there eat one and send me a picture so that I can live vicariously through you!

Because Nick was extra hungry he also grabbed a Pretzel Dog which looked amazing but definitely had some chilli going on so I didn't get to try a bite. He claimed that it was excellent though and after that amazing cupcake and perfect babka I'm inclined to believe him.

Mister Nice Guys is located a little further North West than anywhere else we'd planned to visit so we headed here before visiting the Phillip Island penguins when we had a car. I'd say that it's definitely worth the trip on public transport if you have the time and your best bet would be to go from the centre of the city rather than from the Fitzroy / Collingwood area because you'll have to change trams there anyway.

Lastly my other fave' Melbourne spot is Dangerzone Tattoo where the gorgeous and talented Shell Valentine works. I doodled this tattoo idea in a notebook years ago and wrote Shell's name next to it knowing that nobody else would do it justice and I'm so glad that I waited for our paths to cross.

Shell specialises in cute, colourful, fun, tattoos and I have so much love for her kawaii foods, kitsch designs, and feminist body art. She's also the nicest person, I had so much fun hanging out with her chatting about vegan eats, travel, and tattoos. My ice cream is totally healed now and it doesn't need a single touch up, it's super bright, and I just adore everything about it. I'm already scheming ways to get back to Melbourne before we leave the Southern Hemisphere so that I can get a little something else to add to my collection.

I found myself repeatedly putting off writing this post, the final post about my travels around China, and it's taken me a while to work out why. Despite it being one of the more challenging countries I've travelled in (Why are your national parks full of concrete?! Why is Mandarin so hard to learn?!) I did enjoy it, especially this part of the trip. The time I spent travelling around Guangxi province was probably the highlight of my time in China but I'm not sure if I'll ever end up back there again which makes writing about it a little more bittersweet. Guangxi is so different to the China I think most people imagine when they think of the bustling built up country with a population of over 1.37 billion, maybe this post will open your eyes to a different side of China or even inspire you to add another stop or two on to the classic trip to Beijing and Shanghai.

To get to Guilin, the first town on our mini tour of Guangxi, Nick and I took a sleeper train from Zhangjiajie to Liujiang arriving at 5am, we shared a compartment with a Canadian couple and the next morning we all took a walk to a bus stop and caught a local bus across town to a different train station, Liuzhou, to catch our trains to Guilin. The last train only took an hour which was nice after such long travels. We could have made our lives easier and grabbed a taxi from one station to the other but this worked out cheaper and it was more fun, I love watching cities wake up. It would have gone without a hitch if the roads around Liuzhou station weren't totally closed to traffic because of roadworks meaning that our bus took an unexpected detour. Apple Maps had a hard time finding us a route around them but thanks to some friendly locals we all made it there with over an hour to spare. Upon arrival in Guilin we hot footed it across town to Tian Fu Lou, a buffet style veg place that we spotted on Happy Cow, before my hanger kicked in.

This place is a bit of a wander from the centre of town but it's well worth it. After spending two days somewhere that we didn't love eating just steamed rice, fried greens, and Pringles for every meal we were beyond excited at the sight of the buffet and ecstatic when we were told that everything was vegan. We went around a few times trying new things as we went, I was most excited for the noodle soup bar and made myself something delicious after watching how it was done.

In the evening we found more delicious street potatoes, just like the kind we ate and loved in Xi'an, an excellent chain of bubble tea shops, a branch of F M Wheat with what we thought were vegan bread rolls (sometimes language barriers are hard and you become a little suspicious of things afterwards!), as well as a branch of MiniSo which is up there with Daiso and Paperchase as one of my favourite ever stores - it sells super cute things and I would have bought a whole bunch of stuff if I wasn't currently choosing to live out of a 40 litre backpack.

One interesting thing to be aware of in China is that there are a lot of fake versions of things and bubble tea stores are no exception. After drinking a perfect bubble tea at this Gong Cha location we ventured into another somewhere in Yangshuo only to realise upon tasting our drinks that they were nowhere near as good - the flavours were off, the bubbles had the wrong texture, and upon closer inspection the little tea logo was a teeny tiny bit different! We spotted a few more fake Gong Cha's on our travels and got pretty excited when we'd find a real one and could indulge in our bubble tea love... I say our, Nick just gets the tea. No bubbles. So weird!

The next morning we were up bright and early to catch a bus to the Longsheng, or Dragon's Backbone, rice terraces. We decided that the Dazhai spot was where we wanted to be and we chose to walk from the bus stop up to our guest house. It took about an hour and it was all uphill but it was totally okay because the temperatures were pretty cool, we only have small backpacks, and we're moderately fit from all of the walking we do. There are also plenty of places to stop, sit, and look at the views!

Checking into our guest house was a bit of a disaster, we'd chosen a little spot run by a couple, one of whom we read speaks good English, and their cute dog. We'd also read in reviews that they were able to make people food in their little dining area. Unfortunately when we arrived nobody was there, after a while an older man appeared, and after a lot of gesticulating (we don't speak Mandarin and he didn't speak any English) we managed to convey that we were here to stay the night and he put us on the phone to his son, one of the owners. It transpired that the owners had decided to take a holiday and wouldn't be there meaning that nobody could cook us anything or help us find vegan food! Also, there would be no dog. So sad! Thankfully after years of travel me and Nick are pretty good at rolling with things and well, with this view nothing else matters, not even a bathroom made almost entirely out of corrugated plastic.

I kind of loved everything about Longsheng Dazhai, from the atmospheric mist that hung over the valley to the remote feel of the place. We managed to find some vegan eats at the YHA hostel just around the corner from the guesthouse and whilst this wasn't the most amazing meal ever it kind of felt like it after all of the walking we'd done up, down, up, and around, the terraces that day.

#carbs #beige

After leaving the rice terraces the next morning (that downhill walk was a whole lot easier!) we travelled to Yangshuo by bus. We decided to splurge a little and stay at the Li River Resort, a boutique hotel a little way out of the centre of town. After our basic room at the terraces, nights spent on trains, and at hostels this place was ridiculously nice. They even had a pool which we weren't expecting and our view out across the river to the limestone karst beyond was amazing.

The best thing about the hotel was how easy it was for them to understand and cater to our dietary requirements. We had a lot of exploring planned so being able to fuel up with a decent breakfast was important. Baked beans on Alf's homemade bread, enormous hash browns, fried noodles, dumplings - there seemed to be no end to the vegan breakfast options!

The dumplings were a little much for me at breakfast, steamed I can do but fried is a step to far for me before lunch, but the noodles were perfect fuel and the Heinz baked beans were a fun taste of home although sadly I could only have a little nibble of Nick's as beans are something I struggle to digest because of my colitis. We took a long walk along the river on our first day and on our second we hired bikes to explore a different section of the river. The hike was pretty epic, 12 or 13 km along the Li River zigzagging across using the little ferries and, at one stage, a motorised raft organised by a very persistent man on a motorcycle.

We visited the spot pictured on the 20 yuan note which I was pretty stoked about as we saw the place pictured on the 10 yuan note during our Yangtze River cruise and I was building up something of a collection. Sadly I didn't have a 100 yuan note when I visited the Great Hall of the People in Beijing so I didn't manage to get a photo of me with that note and it's real life landmark.

Our walk took us away from the river at points, past gorgeous karst scenery and through fields that I'm not 100% sure we were meant to be traversing - we stayed on marked paths of course but sometimes we were pretty unsure of the route. We only got lost once. There are no proper maps of this walk you're just kind of looking for landmarks along the way and trying to keep on the correct side of the river until you reach an obvious crossing. As well as the man on the motorbike who followed us for a long time we were also chased for over a mile by an elderly lady trying to sell us berries. We were running low on water at this point and couldn't waste any washing berries nor did we think they'd survive in our bag so we just politely said no and continued on our way. This didn't seem to be good enough for her though and at times she was actively chasing us, we had to break into a jog once when we were out of sight around a corner to get her to finally give up on her quest!

It was such a beautiful and memorable day. I love adventures like this where you're getting some exercise, breathing in fresh air, and exploring somewhere new. It's also very rare to be alone in China but this was the one place where we didn't see people for huge sections of the journey and when we did they were often local people just going about their days rather than tourists. The next day we did some more restful exploring and took a bike ride along the Yulong River. As soon as we arrived at the scenic area it was stunning and it just got more beautiful as we got closer to the river.

As any westerner who's travelled in China will know getting stopped for photos is the norm - I probably got stopped for pictures 20 - 30 times that day as it's quite a popular spot for domestic travellers.

Nick bought me a gorgeous fresh flower crown when I was in the bathroom, I came out to find him wearing it and he was getting some strange looks. I thought that he should keep it on but he insisted that it was for me. I felt like a snapchat filter!

This route along the river is much busier than the walking route we went on the previous day but it was well worth it for the stunning views down the river. We wanted to continue a little further but were stopped by police and turned back around. I have no idea why! After exploring we cycled back into Yangshuo to go to our new favourite local spot, Mango, to grab a cool drink before dinner. Their name is pretty self explanatory - they just make a whole host of delicious blended mango drinks.

Our fave' was just straight up fruity, delicious, refreshing blended mango with chunks of perfectly ripe mango on top. They have other drinks with more ice or with coconut cream but this was our go-to. We'd already eaten at the only vegetarian place in the centre of town and found it to be pretty uninspiring so we went across town to Mood Food Energy Cafe for dinner. They had both dogs and nooch, two of my favourite things, so obviously I loved it. The dogs were rescues and I hadn't seen nooch since leaving the UK so I was pretty excited. I was more than happy to eat a big delicious bowl of noochy pasta but I took a hard pass on the essential oil water. I was actually pretty impressed with the availability and amount of vegan options in such a small town, I'm sure we would have been able to find even more if we'd had a little more time or weren't staying somewhere that was making us such delicious food.

If you want to read more about my adventures in China I have posts about travelling around Beijing here, here, and here, one about the amazing food in Xi'an here and you'll find my post about taking a cruise down the Yangtze River here.

Brisbane has been on my radar for a while thanks to fellow MoFo participant and general all round wonderful human Susan and her blog Kittens Gone Lentil. I was lucky enough to get to spend a few days there before heading to Dayboro to volunteer at Farm Animal Rescue and then a few more nights there afterwards.

Brisbane doesn't have the same completely ridiculous vegan food scene as Melbourne but there are a lot of decent options and overall I really enjoyed the vibe of Brisbane. The area just south of the river has a super cool man made beach as well as a swimming pool that's free to use. They even have free wifi! The area around it is often used for markets, pop ups, and celebrations and on our first evening in the city they were holding a Buddah's Birthday festival which was 100% vegetarian and awash with vegan eats.

We met up with Susan and ate our way around the area stopping for BBQ buns, shu mai, mock duck with rice, savoury pies, Turkish flatbreads topped with vegan cheese and a whole heap of garlic, as well as desserts like tiramisu, chocolate pudding, and fruit crumbles. We did a lot of sharing which is my favourite way to eat especially when I'm with people who could take or leave spicy foods.

Restaurant wise my favourites were VegeRama, Vegeme, and Tea Master but I also enjoyed some of the menu at MisoHapi and the hot dog I tried at 5 Dogs was decent. VegeRama have a few locations dotted around the city but the location in West End is more of a sit down affair with a full menu including pizzas and specials. The other locations are in mall food courts and have slightly more limited options (especially if you're allergic to chilli!) featuring Indian dishes, salads, and desserts. At the West End location both Nick and I got a little fixated on their pizzas. I went for the vegan version of the pear and rocket pizza whilst Nick stuck with the classic margherita, veganised of course. The pizzas were a little bit heavy on the Daiya for me to love them but they were good and hit the spot when I was craving gooey cheesy deliciousness.

I only ate at their location inside the Myer Centre once but it was enjoyable. I had an excellent salad with rocket, figs, roasted veggies and seeds, and a slice of mocha cake whilst Nick enjoyed a samosa with tamarind sauce and a Thai green curry pie. He loved them both but would highly recommend the pie to anyone who likes spicy food.

Vegeme was one place that I wished I'd had the time to return to one more time, it has an excellent menu but we were told that the small dishes were the way to go. We nibbled on cracked black pepper edamame, soy nuggets, and corn croquettes as well as radish cakes that I was too excited about to photograph.

I'd say that Vegeme is a must visit especially as you can have a full meal or just a few little snacks as part of a vegan eating tour of the West End. MisoHapi is another West End location and it's worth a visit but I did find their food a little hit and miss. The aubergine dengaku and the soy nuggets were both excellent but I felt pretty meh about their inari tofu and the donburi was a little bland. The avocado maki and the tofu nigiri were both decent but I've had better elsewhere.

Their vegan labelling is excellent though and again, like Vegeme, you can pop in and try a few things rather than committing to a whole meal. The West End of Brisbane is pretty crammed full of vegan options, as well as the places I've already mentioned there's The Cruelty Free Shop which sells everything you'd expect from a vegan store plus vegan baked goods like laminations and meringues. Gelato Messina whist not a 100% vegan spot is located on Melbourne Street and there's a Doughnut Time located a little wander away down Grey Street. We did stocked up on black salt, cheese, and chocolate at The Cruelty Free shop and swung by Gelato Messina with Susan for one final ice cream before we had to leave the city.

Doughnut Time have locations in Melbourne, Sydney, and Gold Coast as well as Brisbane and whilst they aren't 100% vegan they do always have vegan options. The vegan mainstays are the sprinkle covered Fairy Godmother and the red velvet Liam Helmsworthy (both pictured below) but rotating vegan options include things like their matcha glazed and cream filled Matcha Matcha Man (OMG) and the jam filled Berry Seinfeld.

My final favourite Brisbane eatery is Tea Master which Nick and I only ended up visiting on our last day, if we'd eaten there sooner we'd have definitely tried to fit in a second (or third!) meal there. We ordered food to share and chose the red pork dish and the duck noodles. The red pork was a little dry compared to the versions of it I've tried in the past but the duck noodles were off the charts delicious.

With fresh noodles, succulent gluten, and loads of bok choy, it was the perfect plate of food. We also ordered bubble teas, I'd been avoiding ordering them from the usual take out spots because I'm trying to cut back on my plastic consumption (more on that in another post soon) and on the menu they were pictured in a glass so I got excited, ordered one, and then felt a little irritated / guilty when they arrived in the usual plastic cup with a cellophane lid and a thick plastic straw. Fail. They were delicious though; mango bubble tea with pearls and coconut jelly is up there with my favourite ever drinks (thanks Taiwan!) so it isn't something I'll be giving up totally anytime soon.

If you're looking for things to do in-between meals then Brisbane is a great city to explore on foot, you can walk almost everywhere especially if you're staying in the CBD and there are loads of cool places to pop into and explore. Aside from the super cool city beach my favourite spot was GOMA - the modern art gallery which was packed full of thought provoking exhibits and work by young local artists.

If you've followed my blog for a while you'll know that I love a road trip, from spending a week driving from NYC to Chicago, to taking an epic journey around Europe for a whole summer, any time spent on the road is good with me. When I was researching how to travel around Australia, the answer to how to get around was obvious: ROAD TRIIIIP! Australia is freaking massive and wildly expensive so we haven't been able to road trip the whole country but Nick and I were able to take a road trip from Brisbane to Cairns in a rented camper van. We covered 2600 km's so I'm going to split this epic journey into two parts.

We chose Hippie Camper as our rental place as they had small vans, great rates, and their location made picking up the van in Brisbane pretty easy.

Our van's name was Lily which cutely was also the name of one of the sheep we were caring for at Farm Animal Rescue! Rather than heading north towards Cairns straight away we decided to head south for two reasons, firstly I'm a ridiculous person and hadn't stopped thinking about the dim sum at Easy House since I visited for my birthday, and secondly we both thought that never seeing Byron Bay seemed a little silly as it's a popular destination and we didn't know when we'd be back in this corner of the globe.

Sunshine Coast beach - they're all this nice!

We drove straight down to Byron Bay that first afternoon and explored the town in the evening before spending our first night in the van. So often a new van takes a little getting used to but this style was perfect for us. The kitchen area was outside so you just opened up the back door of the van and everything you needed was right there, a little fridge, work surface, and sink, as well as drawers and cupboards containing your gas stove, plates, mugs, and cutlery. This style of van probably wouldn't be so great for camping in the UK given that every time I camp at home it pours and you just have to hide inside but it was perfect for the Aussie weather.

We woke up bright and early the next morning in time for another beach breakfast before heading North to Easy House in Gold Coast for lunch. You can see more photos of Easy House's delicious dim sum in my birthday post but here are two of my favourite dishes, turnip cakes and BBQ buns, coincidentally they were the very first things they brought over when we sat down. This place is so rad!

After lunch we drove North and serendipitously a traffic diversion took us right through Brisbane and almost right past The Green Edge Brisbane's biggest and best vegan store. Obviously we had to take a mini detour! The Green Edge is also a cafe but sadly we were too full of dim sum to try anything. We did grab some of the Linda McCartney burgers that I'd been craving as well as my favourite Alter Eco chocolate, another round of the amazing smoked sesame cheese we'd tried in Brisbane before our time volunteering at Farm Animal Rescue, and some Green Vie smoked gouda that wasn't my favourite as it was a little bland but it melted decently into pasta.

That night we made it as far as Miami where we found a campsite with spaces easily. We had a chilled evening and took a walk along the seafront before heading back to our pitch to cook up the Linda McCartney burgers, eat dinner, and get an early night.

We were up bright and early again to eat breakfast and drink mugs of green tea on the beach behind the site which set a precedent for the rest of the journey. A combination of getting up early to care for the animals in Dayboro (either 5:15am or 5:45am) combined with the fact that camper vans start to heat up as soon as the sun has risen, has turned Nick and I into morning people. It makes sense really, we're not all about the night life at all, if a great band are playing I'll go to a gig for sure, but neither of us are into pubs or clubs and so often in small cities or towns there is little else to do after dinner.

Mooloolaba was our next stop and it turned out to be one of our favourite stops of the whole journey. We went for a long walk along the seafront in the evening and found a bustling community with people of all ages walking dogs, exercising, and just hanging out in the small towns public spaces. It seemed like a really chilled place. We got up early for breakfast again but this time we headed across town to the Ocean Shepherd espresso bar. I discovered them whilst browsing the awesome vegetarian dining and shopping guide Happy Cow and it seemed like a cool place to support. They've been set up to support Sea Shepherd and they sell their merchandise, as well as coffees, teas, and cakes. Australians are big on Sea Shepherd, in the UK if you see someone rocking SS merch there's a very high chance that they're vegan. In Australia it's all over the place and I would be amazed if there were that many vegans everywhere. One day! Ocean Shepherd's muffins and things aren't vegan yet which I was a little sad about but they said that they're working on it so that's promising. I was able to get a vegan hot chocolate in my snazzy new silicone mug which was a birthday gift from my Farm Animal Rescue volunteer buddy Georgina. It was a pretty ideal breakfast especially when paired with the peanut butter sandwiches I made in the van that morning.

This was such a beautiful, peaceful, way to start the day. We watched people surfing and going for their morning swims and whilst Mooloolaba is a small town and clearly a touristy spot we loved how many locals were out and about making the most of the morning, chatting to friends, exercising, and drinking their coffees by the beach. The other bonus of getting up early is that you can get on the road early and either beat the crowds to wherever you're heading or get a lot of the driving out of the way whilst it's still cool enough not to need to blast the air-con just to survive. Our destination that morning was Noosa Heads where there are walking trails at Noosa National Park. We arrived around 8:45 but the car park was already jammed full of cars and vans belonging to early morning runners, walkers, and surfers and we had to drive around a bit to find a spot. We'd planned on doing a long hike but there was a 2 hour parking limit all around the area so we picked one of the shorter hikes to fit within that time frame and set off at 9am. We were glad we ended up doing a shorter hike for two reasons, one it was really freaking hot and I actually don't think I could've walked for more than two hours, and two, we saw a freaking koala doing this route! A KOALA Y'ALL!

I know Australian people who've never seen a koala in the wild (if at all) so this is a Big Deal. I'm vegan for animal rights reasons and I've boycotted zoos and aquariums since just before committing to going vegetarian. This means that my chances of seeing animals like koalas are slimmer than for some travellers but I would rather see a wild koala than support a prison for animals. So often zoos are disguised as conservation centres but anywhere where you can hold a wild animal like a koala is probably not doing great things for the animals in their care. When I first visited The Monkey Sanctuary in Looe Bay in Cornwall they talked to us about not even making eye contact with the monkeys because although they can't be released into the wild due to their upbringings in circuses or animal labs they don't want them to get close to people as it will affect the way that they interact with the other monkeys in their groups and they will become too bonded with humans which is unnatural.

Can you see her?

The koala we spotted was quite high up but we were still so excited. She was just chilling, nibbling on leaves, and occasionally moving about a little. So amazing. Koalas aside Noosa itself is a cute little beach town and we spent a little time chilling on the sand before deciding that we'd better get ourselves out of the sun. We walked back to the campsite through the centre of town stopping to treat ourselves to a coconut soft serve from Coconut Head on Hastings St.

We topped our coco whip with some raw brownies and shaved coconut and it was a pretty great treat on a warm day. Apparently everything at Coconut Head is vegan aside from the kombucha which contains honey but be aware that it is a little pricy even by Aussie standards. We spotted a few cafes and restaurants advertising vegan food, from fancy looking sit down places with vegan pizzas on the menu to hole in the wall style burrito spots, but Australia is an expensive place to travel and to make it work we needed to eat most of our meals in the van. Luckily Australia's supermarkets have great vegan selections and we were always able to find great fresh produce, tofu, and cheap bread.

Road trips aren't complete without snacks and we found some new and fun options including these chicken flavour Vege Chips which I picked up as a joke but which turned out to be vegan, and these apple, cashew, and coconut bliss balls which Nick and I both loved and were gutted to never see again.

The Vege Chips are made from Cassava and they reminded me of Skips texturally. This flavour wasn't my fave' but we bought the natural and salt & vinegar flavours later on in the trip and enjoyed them more. I'm crossing my fingers that we can find the bliss balls again when we get back to Australia!

That was just part one of the road trip and I hope that you enjoyed reading about it. Tune in next time for part two where we eat vegan in The Whitsundays, The Great Barrier Reef, and maybe, just maybe, see another koala!!!

This is part two of my Brisbane to Cairns vegan road trip series, we already picked up our Hippie camper, visited Noosa, ate a whole bunch of delicious vegan food, and spotted a koala in the wild so if you haven't read that post already you can catch up right here.

The Whitsunday's were somewhere that both Nick and I had crossed off of our list of places we'd be visiting on this trip because they aren't exactly a budget friendly place to get to and we just didn't think that we could afford it. The closer we got though the more we realised that we were both thinking that we wanted to go but thought that the other wanted to stick to the original plan. A frantic afternoon of planning and organising ensued and the next day we were off in a boat heading to the Whitsunday Islands with Whitsunday Bullet one of the more budget friendly options whose day trip included visiting a snorkelling site (great practice for me before our planned trip to the Great Barrier Reef) as well as a lookout point and the famous beach itself.

The peep's from Whitsunday Bullet even pick you up at your hotel / hostel / campsite and take you to the port so you don't have to do any pre planning you can just book and go.

The boat itself is brand new, launched in January 2017, and it seats 42 passengers which is a really nice size for a tour group as it means that you don't spend too much time getting onto and off of the boat when it's time for snorkelling or excursions and you also get enough individual attention from the crew.

Now I am always deeply suspicious when anyone says that they can cater for vegans; from outright lies (no this Yorkshire pudding that is exactly the same as the ones everyone else is eating isn't vegan so stop telling me it is), to sad salads, vegan catering isn't always amazing but it was on this day. I tore into the lunch bag before we even got to our first stop because I was so excited / anxious but Whitsunday Bullet nailed it. Rather than getting their usual caterer to whip up some kind of disappointing salad sandwich with a dubious smear of buttery spread they outsourced our meals to a vegan friendly cafe located near to their jetty on Airlie Beach pier. Our meals were different which was great as we have different preferences and could swap juices and things and the only thing that was un-swapable was the salad because Nick's was a Mexican bean salad with obvious chilli and mine was a pepper free falafel salad with quinoa and hummus.

The lunches also included raw balls, one PB and one cookie dough, which we loved, as well as a bar each, a Chia Pod, a juice, and a bottle of water. The juices were from concentrate and made by Coca Cola so I'd never buy them but they tasted good and provided us with some necessary pre-snorkelling sugar. The bars were awesome, one was a cocoa paleo bar that I would never have picked up in a shop (paleo is stupid!) but that was actually really good, and a raw Astral Crunch chocolate bar by The Chocolate Yogi who are on the approved list with the Food Empowerment Project. We both freaking loved that one. I won't go into my thoughts on Chia Pods because to me they aren't food but a slimy abomination. Almost every other vegan I know loves them though so I'm clearly an outlier and I appreciated the thought!

See? Catering for vegans isn't so hard! You just need to actually think about the fact that we need calories and protein (especially for a whole day of activities!) and fun treats just like everyone else.

Whether you hit the beach first or snorkel first depends on the tides and on our trip we went snorkelling first. This was a little unexpected as I hasn't realised that we might snorkel before lunch but it actually worked out well as I didn't have time to get anxious about getting into the water. One moment we were squeezing into our wetsuits and the next I was in the water gripping onto a noodle and learning how to swim with flippers on. From where I was a few years ago when I had to have therapy / swimming lessons to help me get over my fear of water (I couldn't even wash my face with water!) to being here actually snorkelling in the ocean was kind of a huge deal! We saw some amazing fish including a huge (and I mean huge) maori wrasse as well as fusiliers and, my favourite, colourful parrot fish. GoPro haven't gifted me an underwater camera yet so you'll have to do a quick Google search or use your imagination to see the fish!

Next on the itinerary was a birds eye view of Whitehaven Beach, the Whitsunday's most famous landmark. The boat dropped us off in a little cove and there was a little uphill walk to get to the lookout point but nothing too strenuous, I did it in flip flops which was totally fine. The view was honestly breathtaking. Everyone kinda fell silent when they reached the top, I could hardly believe how beautiful it was.

I'm not sure that these images need a lot of words to accompany them but I swear they haven't been retouched or anything. The sand really is this white and the sea really is that blue. Next we got back onto the boat and headed to the beach itself. It's a really long beach and our boat stopped at the far end. We only had about an hour and a half on the beach and because it was so hot we decided to just find a patch of sand, chill, and eat lunch rather than running all over the place frantically trying to snap the perfect photo. It was such a great place to sit, chat, and watch the world go by.

Finally we headed back to the boat ready to set sail for Airlie beach and the comforts of our camper van. I wouldn't say that I am a boat lover by any stretch but this style of boat really didn't get thrown around a lot and I think we lucked out with a very calm day.

I can't fault Whitsunday Bullet at all, they were beyond helpful when we were snorkelling; staying in the water on surfboards to help weaker swimmers, checking that everyone understood the equipment, and trying to point out sea turtles (I was always too slow to spot the elusive creatures). They took photos of us at the lookout point too and they seemed genuinely into their jobs. I'd definitely recommend this excursion as a great way to see The Whitsundays especially if you're a vegan traveller because they have that whole lunch thing nailed.

The morning after our epic excursion we drove north powered by the residual happy feelings from our amazing day out. We got pretty excited about roadside attractions like this huge mango and couldn't wait to get to the location of our next adventure.

Magnetic Island wasn't on my radar at all before we arrived in Australia but Nick did some research and learnt that it would be a good place to spot a koala. I was so in and that was before he told me what kind of car he'd rented for the day. It was basically a Barbie jeep and I can't resist something pink and ridiculous. I loved it! I've never been in a open topped car before and it was so fun.

After picking up the car we went for a hike following The Forts Trail which was much more challenging than I thought it would be! It was super hot and like a fool I'd dressed for the beach in a bikini and a black dress. It was still amazing though and we made it the whole way round. At least I was smart enough to throw on my trainers and some shorts to prevent thigh rub! There were a couple of highlights including this lookout point and finding another koala.

The forts lookout point, Magnetic Island

I say finding but it turns out that in Australia people are super rad and they make an arrow out of sticks pointing towards trees where they've seen koalas. How friendly is that? We never would've spotted this little cutie otherwise and I think that it's our best koala sighting yet. She was pretty low down in the tree compared to the last koala and you could properly make out her ears, nose, and paws. She didn't move around a whole lot but she did eat a few leaves whilst we stood quietly watching her being careful not to freak her out.

Sleepy Koala

Just when you thought that this post couldn't get any cuter Magnetic Island is also home to a large colony of rock wallabies. I'd seen wallabies in the wild during my time volunteering at Farm Animal Rescue but none this close up and rock wallabies are different to regular wallabies.

Aren't they just the cutest animals? The belly floof on the one in the first picture kills me. There are signs and adverts suggesting that you can feed the rock wallabies as well as an approved list of foods but a lot of the people living there would prefer that you let them forage for their own food and I'd agree. Humans should not be feeding wild animals. If you're in the area Magnetic Island is definitely worth the day trip. It's just a short ferry ride from Townsville and you can get around by bus, bicycle, or car. Vegan eats are not prevalent but we weren't looking very hard because I made us an epic packed lunch, we did stumble upon some excellent vegan chocolate sorbet by the gorgeous beach at Horseshoe Bay though.

We set off from Townsville early the next morning and about an hour into the journey we came upon this, another huge mango. I was so excited! This spot is called The Frosty Mango and they do indeed sell frosty mango. They had a whole case of amazing sounding fruity sorbets which were all labelled dairy free and I grabbed a scoop of the sugar free mango. I mean how could I choose anything else?

This was pure blended frosty mango and it was unbelievably delicious. I scoffed it so fast and if it hadn't basically been breakfast time I'd have grabbed another scoop immediately. If you're driving up the Bruce Highway you have to stop here. Roadside mango joints aside we were eating pretty well elsewhere; these cocoa lamington bars made by Naturally Nood reminded me of a Nakd bar crossed with my favourite Aussie treat and I was pretty into them.

Annoyingly I spaced out about checking the Food Empowerment Project's app when I was picking these off of the shelf so I need to check in with them before buying them again as I'm trying my hardest to avoid any cocoa that could have originated from slave labour.

Our only major miss of the whole trip was this purchase, Oliana Foods Feta, which was unbelievably awful. You can't just take a block of rubbery vegan cheese, make it extra salty, package it in water and sell it as feta! There was no crumbly texture and both the mouthfeel and taste were all wrong. We tried a little bit each but ended up putting the rest on the free shelf at our hostel in Cairns.

These Field Roast sausages on the other hand were super delicious, they were a bit of a splurge as imported foods are even more expensive in Australia than they are in the UK but after a long morning of driving we pulled into a rest stop, fired up our camp stove, laughed at the serving size, and proceeded to eat half of the packet each on some soft white bread rolls. Such a perfect meal.

Sadly that was also one of our last roadside meals. Our road trip was finally over and it was time to go back to living and cooking indoors again. Lily, our lovely Hippie Camper, looked after us well and whilst sections of the journey involved long days of driving, Australia is so huge, we would definitely consider taking another Aussie road trip.

Did this post make you want to visit Australia? Are you into road trips? Have you ever seen any unusual and hard to find animals in the wild? Let me know in the comments! Next time I'll be blogging about vegan eats in Cairns and our snorkelling trip to the Great Barrier Reef so stay tuned.

This post was sponsored in part by Whitsunday Bullet. As always all views and opinions are my own.

After spending two weeks road tripping north up the Bruce Highway from Brisbane Nick and I arrived in Cairns and camped there, at the Cairns Coconut site, for two nights. We had a trip booked out to The Great Barrier Reef for the day after we arrived in town and the tour company we booked with were picking us up at 6:20am. Sadly unlike our amazing experience with Whitsunday Bullet the vegan options on Reef Experience were terrible. We started badly at breakfast time with a spinach, carrot, and cucumber roll with some balsamic drizzle (what the what?!) whilst everyone else ate bacon and egg rolls. Lunch was just more salad with some roasted pumpkin in place of all of the meaty things everyone else was eating. I was getting pretty irritated by this point especially as the woman in charge kept calling us her "little vegans" which felt super patronising. Ugh!

There were also snacks for after snorkelling, cheese and crackers I think, and they didn't even try to find us a vegan option for that. It was definitely one of the worst vegan catering experiences I've had in recent memory and I was pretty annoyed that they'd told me that they can cater for vegan guests. I brought emergency snacks with me, ate all of them, and was still starving when we got off of the boat at the end of the day. When you have hours of physical activity ahead of you you can't just eat salad! It's ridiculous that in 2017, in a country with plentiful vegan options, people still think vegans basically just eat vegetables.

Getting to see The Great Barrier Reef was cool though and I was glad that we went, I'd just pick a different tour company next time. Even getting into the water wasn't great as we had to ask for lens cleaner for our masks and the woman helping people into the water was eye rolling at the people in front of us behind their backs because they were taking a while to get in. The sea was pretty choppy (you need to take anti sickness medication on these journeys, at one point about 12 people were throwing up at one time) and I was feeling pretty rushed. I even forgot to get a pool noodle and had to go back for one. As soon as we were out there snorkelling everything was great. We saw a reef shark almost immediately which was terrifying - they have no interest in humans but still, it is a shark! It was so cool. We also saw maori wrasse, fusiliers, cute butterfly fish, shoals of damselfish, and my very fave' parrotfish. The coral situation was really sad though. It's basically dead and from the research I've been doing since visiting I'm not sure that tour groups are helping the reef. Economically I think that it would ruin Cairns if the trips out there were to cease but I think that the reef needs it. I'm not an expert but as soon as I get back to a country where Netflix works I'm excited to check out the documentary Chasing Coral. It's made by the same team of people who made Chasing Ice which is one of the best environmental documentaries I've ever seen.

The day after our reef trip and just before returning the van we drove into the centre of Cairns to check into the Cairns Central YHA hostel as we thought that it made a whole lot of sense to do it that way round rather than lugging our backpacks back across town from the van hire place to the hostel on the bus. This turned out to be a smart plan and we even had time for a little cupcake stop at Cakes Annie Time.

Before I travel anywhere I check for options on Happy Cow but I also scope out local hashtags like #cairnsvegan and #vegancairns to see what's new and then hopefully I can discover somewhere to add to Happy Cow. Like this place! Hopefully more vegan travellers will find it now that it's on there because this place is a gem. It's not all vegan but it has a good range of options for both drinks and cupcakes. I chose a lamington cupcake whilst Nick went with cookies and cream.These were a delight and I wished that I'd had the chance to go back for more. Another great Instagram find was Waffle on Cairns a popular brunch spot that has both sweet and savoury vegan waffles on the menu. The savoury waffles weren't really an option for me as I'd have had to make a bunch of substitutions to keep my stomach happy so I went with sweet which wasn't exactly a hardship.

These coconut based waffles came with fruit, syrup, and coconut whipped cream and I was very impressed with the fruit selection. It included so many of my favourites; strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, as well as banana which is a must for waffles in my opinion. The coconut cream could have been a little better as it was a quite thick and heavy, I would have preferred something a little lighter like Isa's rad whip. This was a solid brunch option though and I would definitely recommend it. I love that more and more non vegan places are adding vegan options to their menus. The more options there are the easier it'll be for people to go vegan and then more 100% vegan places will appear because of demand. Bring on all of the food!

Cairns isn't a big city and I don't think that you'd need to spend more than a day exploring, we were only there for one full day and we fitted in everything we wanted to do. We found a great shop for souvenirs and things just down the street from Waffle on Cairns called Makin' Whoopee. This little gift shop is cooperatively run by three friends who put on art pop ups and sell the work of over 40 local artists as well as some from further afield. I got a cute postcard and a vinyl sticker for my suitcase for when we are eventually reunited one day!

The lagoon on Cairns esplanade is a fun place to while away a few hours. There's plenty of shade and the pool is huge, free, and has great facilities including showers and a changing area. We also stumbled upon a brilliant tree full of flying foxes which isn't technically a tourist attraction but I was pretty mesmerised by it! I've never seen so many bats and I love that they've declared the trees a conservation area to make sure that nothing happens to their homes.

Lastly I loved the Cairns Art Gallery. It was another free attraction and I thought that it was the perfect size for an afternoon wander. All of the exhibits were fascinating; ranging from a photography exhibit chronicling Australia's frontier wars, to the examination of narratives of the Pacific Islands as paradise and the life of islanders in relation to slavery and the sugar cane industry. I didn't take any pictures of those exhibits but I snapped some shots of the gorgeous textile pieces in the Lei It On show which focussed on the contemporary lei and body art of the Torres Strait Islanders.

They're so beautiful. Each piece was collaboratively made and had so many different meanings and memories sewn into it. The whole museum was fascinating. I love it when I can learn something from art, those are the pieces that tend to stick with me rather than the exhibits that were only aesthetically pleasing. Nick and I chatted about art (and bats!) over matcha lattes and tasty raw desserts at Pineapple Cafe before heading back to the hostel to grab our backpacks and catch our flight to Bali.

We've been having an amazing time exploring Bali, Lombok, and the Gili Islands so stay tuned for more travel fun coming your way on Friday. Have you had any disappointing vegan catering experiences recently? Commiserate with me in the comments!

After volunteering at the farm animal rescue for two months followed by a fun filled and action packed road trip up the Australian coast from Brisbane to Cairns Nick and I decided that Ubud in Bali would be our next stop. We chose Ubud because it has a reputation for being a laid back kind of place with plentiful vegan options and it's not too far from Australia. It sounded like a great place to rest and recharge our batteries and I'd say that it exceeded our expectations quickly becoming one of our favourite places in the world.

We chose to stay in Penestenan at an amazing Air BnB located a little way into the rice terraces. We were about a 40 minute walk from Earth Cafe in the centre of Ubud but if that's not your vibe taxis were around 70,000 and we took them once or twice. The area is beyond gorgeous and I think that we'd have had a very different experience if we'd chosen to stay in the bustling, traffic filled, touristy centre of Ubud.

Here I could wake up early and sit and listen to the world waking up whilst drinking tea, head out for an early morning run around the quiet lanes and surrounding streets, or pop around the corner for a restorative yoga class followed by breakfast at Alchemy Cafe.

We were welcomed with a fresh coconut and I immediately got into my bikini and into the pool. I love having private outdoor space when I travel. It doesn't happen often but when it does it's blissful. I can't think of a nicer place to relax than this.

I really can't recommend the area or the Airbnb more highly. If you're heading to Ubud and want to stay at Oming's place you can find it here and if you've never used Airbnb you can book through my link in the sidebar and get a discount. I'll earn some Airbnb bucks too which can help me travel for longer!

One thing I've always struggled with whilst travelling in Asia is dressing appropriately and being comfortable. My usual style isn't really appropriate for a lot of the muslim areas I've been too and whilst I can cover up my top half with a looser t-shirt, scarf, or plaid shirt my struggle with covering my legs is real. I hate trousers. Like I seriously hate them. I've never found a pair of trousers that fit me and are comfortable enough to sit down and eat in, and the ubiquitous one size fits all elephant trousers do not fit me at all.

Everything changed when I found these high waisted leaf print trousers made of a super thin material at a store in Ubud. I love them. They're high waisted enough that there's enough stretch for my hips and they're wide enough that my thighs do actually fit in them. They even have a pocket! They're a little tight around the middle for me to eat a huge amount of food whilst wearing them but they are high enough that they eliminate the need for chub rub shorts. I love my chub rub shorts but having to wear them and my black harem pants (that totally double up as my pyjama bottoms) when it's 30 plus degrees is seriously the worst. Because doing a little shopping and supporting local people trying to make a living is fun I also bought a couple of cute bracelets.

When you're only travelling with hand luggage every single purchase needs to be carefully thought out because there just isn't any room for new things. The addition of one too many t-shirts or even a chunky fridge magnet could push my backpack to breaking point so bracelets are the perfect souvenir. I'm going to post about all of the excellent food in Ubud next time but I wanted to share that I finally got into coffee! I dabbled in coffee a while back but it never agreed with me, I'd get hyper for 5 minutes and then need a nap after one latte. Don't even get me started on espresso. Disaster! Apparently cold brew with cashew milk was the answer all along. It's actually decent and not overhyped hipster nonsense. This was news to me but I should've known that I'd love it as other apparent hipster things like artisan bread and avocado toast are right up my street.

It seems that cold brew just has less caffeine than regular coffee which is a win in my books. As you can see I fell head over heels in love with Ubud, I just felt so comfortable there. Does it look like somewhere you'd enjoy? I can't wait to show you all of the delicious food next time. See you soon!

If you read my last blog post you're probably already dreaming of a trip to Ubud and this post might just push you over the edge. The food in Ubud is excellent and even I managed to find enough to eat - no mean feat in a country where everyone loves chilli. One of the spots that Nick and I ended up visiting the most was Alchemy. It was located around 10 minutes from our gorgeous Penestenan Airbnb (seriously if you haven't already check out my previous post!) and we headed there for breakfast most days. They have a smoothie bowl bar which I was deeply suspicious of because I don't even enjoy smoothies let alone pretending that they're a meal. It turns out that smoothie bowls are actually amazing though! Who knew?!

The options were different every single day and you could mix and match your smoothie, fruit, and topping options to mix things up and keep breakfast exciting. My favourite days were the ones when they had strawberries in the fruit section and blueberry or turmeric whipped coconut cream in the topping area. I always went for chocolate granola because it's the best and I was wild about the bright purple dragonfruit soursop smoothie.

These gorgeous bowls were the perfect start to the day especially when they were paired with a glass of cashew milk cold brew. I'll be honest though, I wouldn't eat here for any other meal. Their menu after breakfast is 100% raw / salad bar based and that's basically my very least favourite way to eat. Raw foods don't jive well with my stomach! Alchemy Cafe also have a honey problem. They insist that their food is 100% vegan but when asked they also say that they use honey. Thankfully they can tell you which dishes and items have it but it's definitely annoying. Words have meanings and calling something vegan when it isn't just confuses things for real vegans who are out there trying to avoid all animal products. If you can't quit honey just use another word like beegan or almost vegan or even plain old dairy and egg free vegetarian.

Somewhere that did recently drop honey from their menu entirely is Earth Cafe. They're now vegan and their huge menu was full of things that I wanted to eat no matter my mood; from seitan steak and chips to brown rice maki filled with veggies and tempeh, they have something for everyone.

Nick ordered the spaghetti and meatballs one day and got this huge plate of pasta whilst I chose to dine on the tofu omelette. This was probably the only dish I was a little disappointed by. I enjoyed it, it was a delicious and simple plate of food, but an omelette this was not!

The service at Earth Cafe was great, they were so amazing with my allergies and a surprising amount of the menu was actually chilli, bell pepper, and paprika free which is not something that often happened in Bali. In fact on one memorable evening we tried to eat at one of the cheaper local vegan warungs and after trying to explain and eventually showing the owner my little homemade allergy card she just looked horrified and told me to try Alchemy instead! I totally understand, small restaurants in Indonesia often cook one meal a day and everyone gets the same thing, but I was definitely bummed to miss out on this side of the local dining scene. Nasi goring was something that I was excited to try in Indonesia and this chilli free version from Earth Cafe was a delight.

Brown rice, tempeh, edamame, and pickles with a dressing of sesame oil, tamari, and ginger made this an unusual and healthy version of the dish but it was just right. The other cool thing about Earth Cafe is that you can order take out over the phone or via WhatsApp. Nothing we ordered arrived at our Penestenan Airbnb in a particularly photogenic state but it was all delicious and getting to spend the whole day chilling by our private pool whilst someone brought food to us was a real treat. I also ate a lot of their power balls which were filled with crispy rice and dried fruits and covered in chocolate. They only cost 19000 / £1 / $1.40 which is a bargain for these perfect bites which made a great pre-yoga or post run snack.

Sage is my final recommendation and it's somewhere that you need to put on your must-eat list if you're heading to Ubud. It's a little out of the way, south of the Monkey forest and definitely a cab ride from Penestenan unless you're feeling very energetic. The menu leans heavily towards Mexican food so there were limited choices for me but I ate the best tempeh sandwich of my life there.

The bread was so amazing and there was so much tempeh on there. They even realised partway through putting my plate together that the side salad contained capsicum so they quickly whipped up a different salad for me. I'm always so appreciative when people notice the little things, since being diagnosed with allergies I've had to get used to not being able to eat the dip that comes with my summer rolls or having to skip my sides because nobody thought to check them. Nick went wild with the small plates and ordered a whole bunch of seriously gorgeous looking dishes.

I couldn't try any of this but doesn't it all look amazing? The tempeh wings especially looked fantastic, as did the corn cakes and Nick said that he loved the empanada type things. I'd heard really great things about Sage's coconut cake so we couldn't skip dessert even though we were already verging on too full.

I thought that the coconut cake was very good and I would definitely have ordered it again if I'd had the chance. I preferred it to Nick's chocolate cake but he definitely disagrees! Ubud has a couple of other vegan dessert spots, Kokolato is a 100% vegan and raw ice cream spot that makes an decent coconut coffee sorbet and Tukies is a coconut focussed spot on the main drag which makes an uh-mazing mango coconut ice cream float with the creamiest homemade coconut ice cream.

Did reading this make you want to book a flight to Bali? Have you been to Ubud already? What were your favourite vegan eateries?

I've been into the whole reduce, reuse, recycle thing for as long as I can remember. I'm always the person encouraging everyone to bring their own plates and cutlery to the vegan potluck and removing your juice bottle from my kitchen bin as soon as you turn away. Yep. That's me! When I lived in Brighton I supplemented our kerbside recycling with monthly trips to recycling points dotted around town to recycle things like tetra paks of soy milk (did you know that you need to remove the plastic spout and lid before recycling these?) and textiles. I also paid a little bit of cash each month to Magpie Recycling Co-op's opt in scheme so that I could recycle things like yoghurt pots and tofu tubs. So I was kind of a champion recycler and I always washed out my zip seal bags so that I could reuse them until they fell apart, but the whole reduce thing? Not so great!

Since taking a tour of the Sea Shepherd ship the Bob Barker in Melbourne and reading a few articles and blog posts about the impact of plastics on our oceans I've been trying to do more. By putting more of a focus on reducing my plastic consumption I feel like I'm stepping up my game! It definitely isn't an easy thing to do when you're travelling; you can't buy in bulk, often have to avoid drinking the tap water, and are given plastic bags and straws all the time but here are the steps that I've taken so far.

• Refuse plastic carrier bags
One of the few things that I can say confidently in Japanese is fukuro wa kekkou desu which roughly translates to I don't need a bag. It's a very helpful thing to know how to say if you don't want to be given a carrier bag for the smallest of purchases. I'm working on the same for chopsticks, straws etc for when I return to Japan this winter. I travel with a fabric tote bag and a larger fabric shopping bag for those times when I'm in one place for long enough to do a proper food shop.

• Buy some metal straws
I've wanted to get glass straws for ages but they aren't practical when you're backpacking. I was pretty excited when I saw bamboo straws being used all over the place in Bali and when I spotted these stainless steel straws at Atman Cafe in Ubud I knew that I had to grab a set, they're the perfect solution!

They were affordable and they can travel with us in our backpacks without getting damaged. They're a good reminder to ask for drinks without straws but we aren't having 100% success with that yet. We recently stayed at a resort on Lombok and we asked for our drinks without straws every single time and every single time they still came with a straw. It was incredibly frustrating! By this point you know the straw is going into the bin whether you use it or not so there's little point saying anything but damn, is it that ridiculous a request? Our new straws haven't solved the bubble tea dilemma yet either as it requires a much thicker straw and always comes in a plastic cup with a cellophane lid. I'm definitely ordering less bubble tea but I don't think that I can quit it completely.

• Travel with a water bottle
This is easy and fantastic if you're travelling in places where you can drink the tap water. My only issue is that I'm on my third water bottle in two and a half years as I'm prone to leaving stuff in the seat pockets on busses and trains. I like to think that some other traveller has picked them up!

• Don't use travel size toiletries
This is a tough one especially if, like me, you're only travelling with hand luggage. It's definitely tempting to use the cute little toiletries provided by hotels but just think of all of that plastic going into the ocean and you'll quickly go off them. I travel with as many solid products as possible including LUSH's Godiva shampoo bar and their Jungle solid conditioner as well as a solid bar of soap for my body and another for my face.

I'm just trying to be more mindful of my choices at this stage. When I eventually stop travelling I'd like to look at my cooking routine with a more critical eye and try my hand at making my own margarine, bread, and tofu but until that point I'm just trying my best. Is reducing your plastic consumption something that you're thinking about doing? Are you already on a similar journey or are you already the queen of zero waste? I'd love to hear what you're doing to help save the planet!

When Nick and I were planning our trip to Bali I knew that we had to visit the Gili Islands. These tiny islands seemed like the most amazing place to live out our dessert island fantasies so we blocked out ten days and got researching. We decided that Gili Trawangan wasn't for us, it's too loud and too much of a party hotspot and it definitely doesn't have the chilled out vibe we were looking for. We decided to split our time between Gili Air and Gili Meno spending a few nights on mellow backpacker hotspot Gili Air and then the majority of our time on the even smaller and quieter Gili Meno.

Our trip to the Gili Islands didn't start wonderfully as I started to feel unwell on our last morning at the resort we were staying at on Lombok. I wasn't sure if it was food poisoning, a stomach bug, or a colitis flare up at this point but it wasn't great. We managed to get to our Airbnb on Gili Air without too many dramas but because I wasn't feeling good we took a speedboat which cost far more than we were hoping to spend on the journey. It got us from A to B as quickly as possible though which was all I cared about.

I was feeling light headed and Nick was super hungry so we walked to the nearest vegan friendly spot on the island, Good Earth Cafe, and I ordered the only chilli / paprika / capsicum free thing on the whole menu whilst Nick ate a delicious looking vegetable curry.

My bruschetta was fine but it came on wholewheat bread which is basically my nemesis. I love it but my body struggles to digest wholewheat so my heart aways sinks a little when the only thing I can make OK for my allergies is going to mess with my colitis. After this I basically spent two whole days running between bed and the bathroom and sleeping a lot. I still don't know 100% what was wrong but Nick got a little unwell after I did so I suspect that it was a bug that then caused my colitis to flare up creating what can only be described as a total shitshow.

On our last night on Gili Air I managed to venture out with Nick to Classico Italiano the place he'd been eating at at least once a day whilst I was unwell. They have a vegan pizza on the menu, The Vegana, which I was more than happy to try.

This thing was huge but with a super thin crust. It had the perfect amount of toppings, a delicious base, and perfectly seasoned tomato sauce. I couldn't have been happier (well, no, I'd have been happier if I was feeling well enough to eat all of it!) and of course this spot is run by super friendly Italians. I love that you can find good vegan pizza somewhere as remote as the Gili Islands. Before dinner we managed to catch one of Gili Air's famous sunsets, it really was beautiful. We wandered a little way along the east side of the island to find the perfect spot at a quieter bar and watched the sunset whilst sipping on a fresh mango juice.

Our next stop was Gili Meno and despite the previous evening's burst of energy I still wasn't feeling great so again we dropped some cash for a speedboat. The cost of this one was totally ridiculous but I was feeling super weak and could barely walk to the beach with my backpack let alone to the port where we would have had to wait in the sun and then squeeze onto a boat with a bunch of other people. I was kind of cursing my body by this stage, it's ability to ignore our travel budget is highly annoying!

Our Airbnb on Gili Meno was the perfect next stop. It was located in the village only a five minute walk from the beach we were dropped off on and I couldn't wait to get there. It certainly didn't disappoint - there were even cats waiting to greet us alongside owners Claudia and Made. This place is described on Airbnb as a back to nature experience but it was just like most of the places Nick and I stayed on the islands in Thailand just with far less bugs and air con.

We woke up most days with the call to prayer and then dozed until it was a reasonable breakfast time. We'd read all about Made's famous pancakes in the Airbnb reviews but we didn't know whether it would be possible to make them vegan. We needn't have worried though, Made and Ketut were more than happy to whip up vegan pancakes each morning with rice flour, coconut milk, and bananas

You just need to ignore the honey that comes to the table with them and this plus the delicious fruit plate makes for an excellent start to the day. It wasn't quite enough food for us so we'd either eat one of the bars we packed (the PB stuffed Clif bars are my jam), or just get lunch early.

If you haven't used Air B&B before you can sign up using this link. You'll get £30 off of your first booking and I'll earn travel credit that will help me to keep travelling for longer.

Most of our days started here navigating the dusty streets of the island's centre whilst we decided which way to go.

All roads lead to the beach but they're all different. The best swimming beach is in the south east of the island but the more isolated northern beaches are fantastic for snorkelling.

The beaches on Gili Meno are truly breathtaking. If you have the energy and can handle the heat I would highly recommend taking a walk around the whole island, it takes around an hour and a half with some stops to cool off in the water and to grab a snack. Nick loved it so much that he did it twice.

I adored the Gili Islands, if I could only choose one I'd pick Gili Meno time and time again but if you have time you should visit both islands. Gili Meno has the benefit of being remote enough and quiet enough that it doesn't attract a party crowd, there are plenty of cheap accommodation options (I don't think that you can beat Claudia and Made's Airbnb though!), and whilst eating vegan isn't easy everywhere on the island it's totally possible and there are some great spots listed on Happy Cow. My favourite was Ryan's Cafe which is run by a local dude and makes some great simple but flavourful tempeh dishes as well as fruit plates and simple western fare like French fries. Between Gili Meno and Ubud I've found some new favourite places and I hope that I can get back to Indonesia someday.

My travel itinerary has been jam packed and almost totally wifi free for the last week or so so I'm just posting a short(ish) but pic heavy post today. When Nick and I were looking into flights from Bali to Australia we realised that we would be able to fly into Perth and then from Perth to Melbourne for far less than it would have cost to fly straight to Melbourne. It made sense to have a little Western Australia adventure! We stayed in Fremantle and the way that our cheap flights worked out meant that we were there during the week, unfortunately all of the vegan spots there are closed during the week! If you want a foodie adventure then try to visit from Friday to Monday when most of the cafes and the markets are open. We went into Perth to visit museums (I loved the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts), drink bubble tea, explore the Asian food stores, eat at Lord of the Fries, and to watch The Big Sick at the cinema on Cheap Tuesday. Have you seen The Big Sick yet? I loved it! I'm a huge rom com fan but as a feminist they definitely push my rage buttons. I don't think there were any moments that made me angry in The Big Sick though! There was even a decent joke about mansplaining and the whole movie was laugh out loud funny as well as cute.

Another of my very favourite thing about the Perth / Fremantle area was 100% vegan gelato spot Gelato 101.

This epic ice cream spot is located in Cottesloe which is right between Fremantle and Perth on the main train line and we were blown away by their ice creams.

They were so creamy and there were some interesting flavours to choose from. It was smaller than Veganista in Vienna but the quality was just as good. I rate that place super highly so this is definitely a solid compliment. On our first visit I had a cone with scoops of Chestnut and Chocolate Hazelnut and they were both so good that I had to get them the next day when we squeezed in another visit. Pistachio is my favourite ice cream flavour of all time but I think that chestnut is now a close second, the nutty creaminess is just so damn good. On our second visit I tried them with the waffles which I enjoyed but I think that I prefer my ice cream straight up in a cone or cup when it's this good. I don't need any distractions y'know!

Gelato 101 is right by the station so it's well worth the trip even in the pouring rain. The weather was pretty terrible the whole time we were in Perth and Fremantle (hence managing to justify a cinema trip!) so we put off our Rottnest Island day trip until the very last day - there was no way that I was getting on a boat when there were 6 metre swells. Hell no! The 2 metre swells on the day we went were quite enough, we took anti sickness meds which stopped us throwing up everywhere but they had a terrible side effect. They made us so sleepy! I'm very susceptible to drowsiness, I can't even take most non drowsy allergy medications because they just make me fall asleep but Nick's normally okay. Not this time though! We'd been walking for about an hour when we both started to feel really, really tired. Our limbs felt heavy and we had to keep stopping, it was so weird. At first I was like "Oh no, are we getting horribly sick" but then I remembered the tablets! In the end we stopped on a picnic bench for a nap (Yes. Really.) and we totally dozed for a full hour! It was ridiculous. So many people must have walked past us and wondered what on earth we were doing sleeping on a bench before lunch. When we woke up there was a quokka under the table which was incredibly surreal but oh so cute. Look at her!!! TOO MUCH!

Rottnest island is a great spot for a day trip, there are plenty of great walks to do and there really are quokkas everywhere but there is some truly terrible colonialist history hiding behind the cute furry animals that draw people to the island. Rottnest was a prison for aboriginal people. I'm no history expert so I won't try to explain what went down there save to say that it was awful. Check out this link to learn more whether you're considering visiting or not.

I'm going to leave you with these little cuties and I'll be back soon with a review of a great vegan friendly resort in Lombok and more of my Australia travels. I've been working with YHA Australia so I'm excited to bring you some hostel reviews and tips along with some more awesome vegan food finds.

After exploring Perth and Fremantle Nick and I flew east to Adelaide. It's a smaller and less touristy city than Melbourne, Sydney, or Brisbane and I really enjoyed it. On our first night there we went for a walk and saw protesters showing the earthlings experience, drank bubble teas, and went to Zen House for vegan yum cha. It was the perfect first glimpse into the city and we were excited to return. We stayed at the Adelaide Central YHA hostel which worked out great for us, it really is very central which is a theme with YHA hostels, when they say they're central they really are. It's within an easy walking distance of vegan eats, there was good wifi which is a must as a travel blogger, a huge lounge area, a book swap (so great!), and a decent sized kitchen which was always very clean. It was the perfect jumping off point for a trip into the outback as they even have a car park out back where we were able to park our rental car whilst we loaded it up with food, water, and our backpacks.

Our road trip was taking us six hours north of Adelaide to Broken Hill where we planned to stay in a cabin for a couple of nights.

Nick and I love to take road trips and this one was extra fun because we'd never seen scenery like this before. We love to snack on the road rather than stopping to make a meal especially when we have six hours of driving to do in one day and my favourite way to get my protein in Australia is this Japanese marinated tofu by Soyco. You can find it in most decent sized Cole's stores and if you can handle the spice there are Malaysian and Thai versions. Just watch out for the Chinese one because it contains honey.

We arrived in Broken Hill in time for sunset but there isn't really anything to do in town after dark aside from bars or restaurants and we were staying somewhere with a kitchen so after sunset we just cooked dinner at the cabin, played cards, and got an early night. The next morning I opened up the Happy Cow app on my phone to see whether there was anything decent nearby and was surprised to see a cafe called The Silly Goat which looked like it had vegan food as well as plant milks for drinks! So cool. We hopped out of bed and headed straight there.

We ordered slices of chocolate banana bread as well as drinks and my matcha latte was actually the best I've ever has outside of a Starbucks. I know that sounds ridiculous but Starbucks make an annoyingly good matcha latte. This one had the right amount of foam and creaminess and there was none of the bitter taste or grittiness that cafes often seem to have going on. I also tried the cold brew which was huge. I grabbed some macadamia nut milk as that's how I enjoy cold brew but it was still far too much caffeine for me; after breakfast we headed to the Flying Doctors museum and I had to sit outside for a bit because I felt super weird. I was having heart palpitations and I felt anxious and shakey. I've been laying off of the coffee since that experience! After the museum we drove to Silverton because Nick had read that it's an old silver mining town and he wanted to check it out. As soon as we arrived we saw donkeys roaming around. We heard that they moved into the town one day and just hang out there now, they were very cute and friendly.

I enjoyed checking out the former mining town, I had a XXXX at a local pub and we wandered about a bit. It's definitely a very touristy spot but 89 people do actually live there. One thing that wasn't on our list before travelling to Broken Hill was a trip out to the Broken Hill Sculpture Park which we heard from a local was an amazing place to see sunset. We decided to head up towards the sculptures on foot via the 900m walking trail from the picnic & BBQ area car park and we were so glad that we did. About 1/3 of the way up the path we spotted this kangaroo with a joey in her pouch. She was just chilling out and eating and she didn't seem at all bothered by our presence.

We ended up just standing on the path watching her snacking for about 20 minutes. We almost missed sunset because we were so mesmerised. Kangaroos are so beautiful and to get this kind of one on one time to just stand quietly and watch what they're up to in the wild is incredible.

Nobody else came past us on the path and there were no other cars in the car park when we left or when we got back which means that everyone just drives up for sunset. This seems like a mistake to me, a walk is always nice but getting to see this gorgeous marsupial doing her thing was really the icing on top of the cake. Sunset was beautiful albeit quite busy but I've never seen one quite like it, the sky is just so vast that it's a bit like a 360 degree sunset and the colours were amazing.

If we'd had more time we definitely would have gone on the Cultural Walk Trail and the Flora Trail at the living desert but we had to get back to the city. We were headed back to Adelaide for a few days of chilling before picking up a relocation and driving the great ocean road towards Melbourne. We stayed at the Adelaide Central YHA hostel again which worked out great for us, they have a cool deal where you can pre purchase ePacks to get discounted dorm room accommodation. If you're travelling as a couple or with a group of friends you just need to leave a note in the booking or drop them an email to make sure that they book you into the same room.

Whilst we were in town we ate at Zenhouse again but this time we discovered a place to get vegan rolled ice cream on the way there. I was so excited! I've been seeing rolled ice cream all over the place and I was beginning to think that I'd never get the chance to try it. Scroll's options include two fruit sorbets which I didn't try because their other option is a coconut based blueberry and lychee ice cream which was just as amazing as it sounds.

It was super creamy and the fruit flavours really popped. I loved it. We also got Baklava from Al Mina Mediterranean Patisserie which is conveniently located on the road out of / into town if you're heading to Broken Hill. I love baklava and finding it without honey is always such a treat.

We also ate at Cherry Darling's Bake House which is a fantastic all vegan bakery located a short tram ride away from the centre of the city. There were a huge range of goodies to choose from including savoury pies, cupcakes, slices, and doughnuts. The pies were particularly delicious and the flavours on offer were so fun, the mac and cheese filled Bromac and the cheeseburger pies sounded great but my allergies foiled my plans to try those and I ended up with an utterly delicious steak, potato and mushroom pie. The doughnuts were some of the best I've ever had, Nick and I shared one that was stuffed full of Oreo's and it was ridiculously good. We also swung by Everything Vegan and tried some wonderful blue cheese made by Studio Voodoo, definitely check that out if you're in the city.

What are your favourite road trip snacks? Have you ever taken an epic road trip? Talk to me in the comments!

This post was sponsored, in part, by YHA Australia. As always all opinions are my own.

The Great Ocean Road has been on my must visit list since I was a teenager so when Nick and I were planning our trip around Australia this was on my must do list. As I may have mentioned upwards of a hundred times we love a road trip but car hire can be pricy so we kept our eyes peeled for relocations. If you haven't heard of a relocation before it's exactly as it sounds, a rental company needs to get a vehicle from one location to another and so they let you hire it for a nominal fee (in our case $5 a day) in return for you moving it for them in a timely manner.

We had three days to get from Adelaide to Melbourne which was just right. If the weather was nicer I guess it would have been fun to have an extra day to fit in some beach time but as you can see from my photos it was rainy and windy for the majority of the trip so the slightly tighter schedule was no problem. On day one we drove, drove, drove (well Nick did!) from Adelaide to Port Fairy, about six hours, so that we could kick off our first proper day on the road with a walk at Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve near Warnambool. We'd read that this was a great place to spot wildlife especially early in the morning and our getting out of bed at dawn was rewarded with some fantastic kangaroo, wallaby, and emu sightings.

Aren't emus just ridiculous? They move in a really bouncy way which is so fun to watch. We also had the pleasure of spotting a koala high up in a tree nibbling on eucalyptus leaves which was pretty cute but not as amazing as the koala sightings later on in this post! There are signs at the park telling you which walks are best for wildlife sighting, flora & fauna sightings etc so you can choose which things you're interested in and get walking.

Our next stop was Warnambool where you can watch whales from the Logan's Beach lookout. Female whales come into this protected and sheltered area to calve and nurse between June and September so you'll see small whales playing as well as larger whales. My camera's zoom wasn't good enough to capture the whales and you'd definitely benefit from some binoculars but we could definitely see them out there which was fantastic.

The Twelve Apostles is definitely the most famous rockscape along the Great Ocean Road but there are many, many others that are both as stunning and far, far less busy. We kind of came at the road backwards as most travellers come from Melbourne towards Adelaide. They often just visit some of the hits as part of a short trip or, if they're on a longer trip they don't make it to these locations until much later in the afternoon. I really enjoyed our way of doing things as we built up to the star attraction and we hardly saw anyone at any of the spots further west.

Bay of Islands was our first stop closely followed by The Grotto. These were two of my favourite spots, Nick suggested skipping the walk down to the grotto itself but I overruled him and insisted and it was well worth the extra walk even in the pouring rain!

London Arch came next and it was actually raining so much that I couldn't get my camera out! You'll just have to trust that it's worth checking out. It's basically a larger version of The Arch (pictured below) but further out to sea. It was getting more and more blustery by this stage but I loved the way the waves looked, the sea was so moody and there was mist on the horizon which made it super atmospheric and cool looking.

The Razorback and Tom and Eva came next and I loved both of these unusual rockscapes, there are some great walks you could do along the cliff face here if it isn't blowing a gale when you visit.

Loch Ard Gorge is where things started to get really busy. We'd barely seen a single other person at any of the preceding lookout points but this car park was jam packed with cars and tour busses and just getting up and down the stairs to the beach was a waiting / shoving game as everyone decided to stop on the stairs to take photos / wait for the rest of their group / generally dither about.

Last but by no means least we arrived at the Twelve Apostles. The visitor area for this place can best be described as a clusterfuck and we were there in off season! We managed to find a spot in the car park without too much trouble but the building itself was clearly built before Australia had an influx of tourists from Korea and China who like to travel in large groups and it isn't handling it well. I could barely get into the building to shelter from the rain let alone contemplate the queue to buy a cup of tea. That said the crowds thinned out towards the viewing points and we were able to see everything and take photos which is all that really matters. Peace is nice but it's not something that I would ever expect at a large tourist attraction.

This was such a stunning way to end our day! So cool right? We were pretty tired after all of our adventuring so we drove on as far as the YHA eco hostel at Apollo Bay where we planned to sleep that night. I loved this hostel so much, the design was amazing and it has the comfiest sofas in front of a log fireplace in the communal lounge. It was recently built with eco credentials in mind so there were loads of cool things going on to save energy and water.

The next morning we backtracked a little as we'd skipped the Cape Otway lighthouse the day before and Nick had read that you can often spot koalas on the road leading to it so we swung by to check that out. The lighthouse was a bust as there was a huge entry fee to even get into the area and look at the lighthouse so we just took a short walk that left from the carpark and went to a lookout where we could catch a glimpse of it from a distance. The trip wasn't wasted though because there were indeed koalas in the trees along the road towards the lighthouse. This was by far the best koala sighting of the whole trip. I zoomed quite a lot to get the first photo but we could still see her clearly (those ears!!) but the koala in the second picture was just really low down in the tree.

Aren't koalas amazing? I can't even handle how cute their ears are. They were both moving around a lot, eating, changing position and climbing up and down. It was lovely to watch. The best thing to do if you want to see koalas on this road is to just drive slowly and look out for groups of people standing around staring into the trees! Sounds ridiculous but that's how we found these little cuties.

Have you ever driven The Great Ocean Road? Would you like to? I think it's up there with one of my favourite travel experiences so I'd definitely recommend it if you're panning a trip down under.

When I was a little kid Tasmania was one of those mysterious far away places that I never imagined that I'd travel to! Hilariously as I grew older I realised that Tasmania is just part of Australia, a cool part but still, somewhere that you could feasibly travel to. When I saw photos of the stunning scenery whilst planning my Australia trip I knew that I had to go asap. Nick and I flew to Hobart from Melbourne, picked up a rental car at the airport, and headed out into the wilderness. Our first night there was challenging, it was 4 degrees outside, the hostel had no heating in the rooms, and the building wasn't well insulated, we were very, very cold. We didn't let that dampen our spirits though and hopped out of bed bright and early the next morning assuming, correctly, that it would actually be warmer outside. Our first destination was Freycinet National Park where we had set our sights on hiking up to the wineglass bay lookout.

This hike was, of course, mostly uphill but it was manageable and we were glad that it was a little chilly in parts. There's usually a slightly longer hike that takes you down to the beach but it was closed for maintenance and we were more than happy with this shorter hike. The bay is gorgeous and the hike was challenging enough to feel like a proper work out. After descending from the lookout we had a look at the park map and headed on to our next location.

The walk down to Sleepy Bay was relatively short and downhill all the way, at the end you reach a very quiet beach studded with rocks and covered in seaweed. Photos can't really do it justice and it was definitely some of the most stunning costal scenery I've ever seen.

We sat on some rocks here for a good long while enjoying the calm and the views. It was a really peaceful spot and the weather was just right for chilling on the rocks.

As well as being awesome for hikes and beautiful views Freycinet National Park is also a great place to spot some Aussie wildlife. There were wallabies everywhere! This one hopped over to me when I was tying my shoelaces next to the car near Friendly Beach. One thing to keep in mind about wallabies and all other wild animals is that however friendly they are you should still never feed or touch them, no matter how soft and cute they look. It's really damaging for them to be fed the wrong kinds of food and feeding them anything creates a human dependent wild animal population which means that they often forget how to forage for food, which often leads to culls which I'm sure is the last thing you want to contribute to.

Whilst we were in the national park we took a short walk on Friendly Beach. The view was beautiful and the sand was such a gorgeous bright white. You can take a short or long hike along the sand which I imagine would be amazing in warm weather as you could stop to take a dip in the ocean whenever you needed to cool off.

I really loved Freycinet and I would strongly suggest that you add it to your Australian itinerary if you love hiking, spotting wildlife, and the outdoors. Our next stop was Latrobe where we stopped to look for platypus. Yes, that was our entire reason for visiting! We stayed in a cabin at the Latrobe Mersey River Caravan Park and spent an hour or so before dusk searching the slow moving water with no luck. Luckily this very large platypus was happy to have her photo taken!

Refreshed after an truly amazing amount of garlic bread and a great night's sleep we got up in the morning determined to spot the elusive and peculiar looking egg laying mammal. After an hour or so we succeeded and saw not one but three platypuses. Two were just swimming along and we only caught a glimpse but the third hopped out of the water close to where we were standing and went about an elaborate cleaning routine on a log where we could see her every move. It was so cute and we were so excited that we were able to spot them in the wild. Did you know that when a drawing of a platypus was first sent to the UK from Australia it was assumed to be a hoax? Nobody believed that this otter / duck creature could possibly be real!

Penguin was our first stop on the northern coast and it really did live up to it's name. Residents have fully embraced the penguin theme, little penguins come out of the water here and onto the beaches to nest between September and March, and there are penguin statues, murals, and ornaments all over the place. Nick and I particularly enjoyed this large penguin and an amazing penguin mural. I also tried my first ever soya flat white at Letterbox Cafe who can also make you a vegan meal upon request and who always have a raw vegan dessert option.

We contemplated not visiting Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair national park. We worried that there would only be super challenging hikes that we wouldn't be able to tackle with the snow still on the ground and that the weather might be too bad to enjoy it but as soon as my friend Shell told me that this was prime wombat spotting country we were there in a flash. We were so glad that we visited, we arrived about an hour before sunset on our first day and just had time to do a short walk along the boardwalk adjacent to the car park before dark. We spotted three or four wombats on this walk and this definitely seems to be the best place to guarantee a wombat sighting. It was also a reasonably clear evening so we were able to catch this great view of Cradle Mountain.

The next morning we arrived bright and early to start the Ronny Creek / Dove Lake Circuit hike. It was drizzling and there was a mist hanging over the mountain so the visibility wasn't great but for me this was a lovely temperature to tackle a challenging hike.

The estimated time for the hike is four hours but we made it in around three including our break for snacks. I imagine that we would have taken longer on a warmer day as the heat would have slowed us down and the lack of mist would have meant that there were more photo taking opportunities. Some areas of the hike had boardwalks, especially towards the beginning, but they soon tapered out and most of the hike was across pebbles and boulders. There was still snow on the ground in a few spots but mostly off of the track. You definitely had to watch your footing though and I was so glad that I was wearing my Vegetarian Shoes Approach Mid hiking boots. I've posted about them a couple of times but not since I wrote about volunteering at Farm Animal Rescue. Since then they've been all over Australia with me and they're still very much in one piece and super comfortable which cannot be said for Nick's hiking boots, the sole has fallen off them twice and he's had to repair them and they've had the exact same wear and tear as mine. He'll definitely be getting a pair of Vegetarian Shoes boots as soon as we get back to the UK.

I loved Tasmania and would go as far as to say that alongside Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park it's one of my favourite parts of Australia. There are so many great opportunities to get outside and enjoy nature and a week was only just long enough to fit everything into our itinerary. If you can spend ten days in Tasmania I'm sure that you wouldn't regret it. Next time I'll be filling you in on vegan eats in Hobart some of which are probably worth the visit all on their own.

After spending a little time in Melbourne after driving the Great Ocean Road Nick and I flew to Hobart to start our Tasmanian adventure. We saw the rest of the state first, check out that post here, before ending in the capital for a city break that involved a little walking, a spot of culture, some grade A eating, and a whole lot of relaxing. Our very first stop was the Salamanca Markets which we'd only heard good things about. Bury Me Standing Bagels was the place we were most stoked about trying, they have great Happy Cow reviews and they sell boiled bagels, otherwise known as proper bagels.

As well as decent bagels that you can buy to go they also sell baked goods like cookie sandwiches and brownies, some of which are gluten free. We opted to get our bagels sliced and filled to eat right away and I went for a potato bagel with a schmear of vegan cream cheese and pickles whilst Nick opted for a plain bagel with Nuttelex (Australia's Vitalite / Earth Balance), sugar, and cinnamon. They also had vegan lemon curd which I was sorely tempted by but a vegan cheese option will sway me every time.

Nick's Nuttelex and cinnamon bagel was like an epic doughnut bagel and I definitely ate more than the one bite I was meant to try! Mine was completely perfect too, it was everything I want in a bagel, a chewy dough and a simple creamy filling. Spot on. I was gutted that we weren't able to get our hands on any more of their bagels or treats before heading to Sydney but maybe one day. That cookie sandwich was one of the best I've ever eaten, it had soft flavourful cookies and the creamy filling wasn't so sweet that it hurt my teeth. I think I'll have to try to recreate them at home one day. As well as their stall at Saturday's Salamanca Market Bury Me Standing also have a hole in the wall spot on Bathurst Street. They just serve hot drinks on a Sunday and they're closed on Mondays but you can get your bagel and dessert fix any other day of the week.

The other spots we tried at the market were Spiced Lotus where I grabbed a delicious beetroot stuffed spring roll whilst Nick enjoyed a samosa. We also split a bean and vegetable pie from another stall with marked vegan options which we got covered in their homemade chutney. It was delicious but a little hard to eat with the chutney on the top and no cutlery!

Whilst we were in town we stayed at an Ibis Styles hotel using some points that we built up a while back and wanted to use in a country where we couldn't afford to stay somewhere so nice. It was super relaxing and we had a couple of bed picnics, watched movies together, and swam at the pool. I also really enjoyed having my own bathroom after weeks of hostels. The only stressful part was the breakfast buffet as nobody else seemed to understand that putting the meat tongs all over the tots was gross. I mean really? Obviously that's disgusting y'all! We developed a system where we'd wait for the new tots to come out of the kitchen and swoop in with a bowl for scooping, I think that everyone thought that we were a little strange but I'm okay with that. If you'd rather eat your breakfast somewhere vegetarian then Straight Up is a ten minute walk away. I didn't realise before I went that everything they make is gluten free and that they don't have wifi (not ideal when you're meeting someone, have no phone, and no idea when they'll arrive!) but I still enjoyed relaxing with my book and one of their granola muffins.

A lot of places in Hobart are closed of an evening but one night we popped out for a meal at conveyor belt sushi spot Sush Track. It wasn't the best sushi I've ever had by a long shot but it also wasn't the worst. I was pleased that they had a vegan menu available and the iPad ordering system was pretty fun.

One of the main reasons that we decided to visit Hobart was contemporary art gallery MONA and I would suggest that if you're considering that too that you think again. I hate bashing anywhere on the blog because everyone has such differing opinions, especially when it comes to art, and I'm not an expert, just someone who has visited a lot of galleries and has an appreciation of contemporary modern art. For me there was barely anything enjoyable about MONA, the works seemed, for the most part, completely devoid of meaning and it wasn't worth the $100 price tag for the two of us. Not at all. There are much better places to see good art for free in Australia so if I were you I'd skip it and spend the cash on bagels instead. The major plus in favour of MONA is that their cafe has an irritatingly excellent vegan chocolate cake, unfortunately the boat ride over there probably means it isn't worth travelling for but if you have a friend who's going definitely get them to grab you a slice!

Overall I'd say that Hobart is a great place to spend a night or two after road tripping your way around Tasmania, just make sure that you're there on a Saturday so that you can visit the wonderfully vegan friendly Salamanca Markets and don't forget to @ me in your bagel pic's!

Visiting Uluru was an absolute must for me and Nick during our time in Australia but working out how to make it happen took a while. Flights were expensive, we didn't think that we had the necessary skills to drive there, and finding a tour that didn't include eating kangaroo seemed impossible. I also knew that being on a tour with people who planned to climb Uluru against the wishes of the Anangu people would irritate me so much that I probably wouldn't enjoy the trip. In the end we planned our own self guided tour of Ulura-Kata Tjuta National Park and Kings Canyon.

Here's what our five day trip looked like.

Day One

We flew to Alice Springs from Sydney and spent a night at the YHA hostel there. We'd pre-booked a rental car from Central Car Rentals but to save money we weren't picking it up until they opened the next morning. The car rental was expensive but we chose a deal that included everything we'd need for camping which significantly reduced our accommodation costs. Our ride came with swag bags, sleeping bags, a table and chairs, a gas stove and gas bottle, and an Eski (that's a cool box to us Brit's!), as well as crockery and cooking equipment.

As soon as we'd checked into the hostel we walked to the closest Cole's supermarket to buy almost everything we'd need for our time in the outback. There's actually a really well stocked IGA in Yulara (where the campsite is located), just outside Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park, but we didn't know that before we left. I'd still recommend getting most of your food at Cole's in Alice Springs as it's cheaper than at the IGA but you'll be able to stock up on produce and bread and stuff once you're there if you need to.

Day Two

We packed up our bags and walked to Central Car Rentals to pick up our car as soon as they opened. We then drove to Cole's for water and ice for the Eski before swinging by the hostel to grab our bags from the room and our food from the fridge. We loaded up the Eski and then got on the road. It's about a 4 1/2 hour drive from Alice Springs to Uluru and it took us around 5 hours because we stopped to use rest stop bathrooms, take pictures, and eat snacks. Ideally you want to be on the road by 9 - 9:30 so that you'll make it to Uluru in time for some activities before sunset.

As soon as you arrive you'll want to visit the cultural centre before doing anything else. Here you'll learn about Anangu culture and why it isn't okay to climb Uluru. Do not skip the video, I learnt so much about the land treaty of 1985 and the treatment of the Anangu people both before and after the treaty. I'm pretty appalled that the government at the time agreed that they would stop people climbing Uluru whilst talks were happening but rescinded that part of the deal after the treaty was signed as they were worried that it would affect tourism.

After visiting the cultural centre we took the Liru walk and got our first view of Uluru up close. It's so stunning.

Our final stop of the day was watching sunset from the sunset carpark. If you drive towards the end of the parking lot you'll get the best views and it's less busy there. If you take a tour you'll be watching sunset from further away on the dunes above the road next to the tour bus carpark. Getting to see the colours changing as the sun set at Uluru was an amazing experience, don't forget to put your camera down and enjoy the magic!

After sunset we drove back to the campsite at the Yulara resort area, cooked dinner, and then rolled out our swag bags for our first night sleeping under the stars.

Day Three

We woke up at 5:30, shoved our swag bags into the car and drove into the park for sunrise at the Talinguru Nyakunytjaku viewing area. My main advice with this would be to get there way earlier than you think you need to. First light is really early here and whilst we didn't miss the sun rising and illuminating Uluru we were a little disappointed by just how light it already was when we arrived.

As soon as sunset was over we hopped back into our car and headed to the Kuniya car park to do the base walk. The walk is a 10.6 km loop and it seems that most people start this walk from the Mala car park. We decided that we'd rather be on the sunny side earlier in the day before it got too hot rather than later on when the sun was higher and hotter and I definitely think we made the right decision there. Our anti-clockwise walk around Uluru was one of my favourite Aussie experiences. It's such a beautiful place.

We stopped once along the way at the Mala carpark to use the bathroom and to eat some snacks and the walk took us under three hours. I was pretty irritated that there were people climbing Uluru. There are signs everywhere telling people not to climb and explaining why in most languages. I can't understand why people think their personal "need" to climb and conquer is more important than the feelings of the Anangu people.

Our next stop was Kata-Tjuta where we planned to do two walks. The first through the valley of the winds to the Karu Lookout and the second through Walpa Gorge. I'll be honest the Karu Lookout walk wasn't that great, if you have the time and energy to continue to the Karingana Lookout then I'd include it in your itinerary but if you only have time for one walk here Walpa Gorge is where it's at. This gorgeous walk takes around an hour and goes right in-between two of the heads - Kata-Tjuta means many heads in the local language.

After all of our walking we had time to pop back to the campsite for a shower before catching a second sunset at Uluru. We took the opportunity to just chill and watch and not take any photos which was lovely. After sunset we headed back to the campsite for dinner and more stargazing. The moon was really high and full whilst we were there which meant that seeing the stars was difficult but it didn't take away from the experience of sleeping outside under an outback sky.

Day Four

We were up very early on our final day so that we could catch one last sunrise. This time we just drove as far as the bus sunset car park and then walked along the dunes to a quiet spot. Take a torch if you're planning on getting there before first light like we did! It was pretty magical watching Uluru come into view and it was a much quieter and less crowded place to watch the sunrise than Talinguru Nyakunytjaku. That said you don't see the colours changing here so much so I'd only include this spot in your itinerary if you have time for two or more sunrises.

As soon as it was light enough we drove to Kings Canyon. This is an absolute must visit, do not even think about missing this! We'd read about the rim walk and um-ed and ah-ed about whether we should / could do it as it's described as challenging and we knew that we'd be arriving around 11am and hiking through the hottest part of the day. We did do it though and the rim walk is exactly as amazing as everyone says it is. The initial climb is kind of brutal but we made it to the top and once you're up there the landscape flattens out a little.

This really must be one of the most epic landscapes in the world, I feel like this must be what Mars looks like! The circular route is the only one that takes you through rockscapes and through the Garden of Eden which is a gorgeous section full of plants and trees, we even spotted a rock wallaby.

After our Kings Canyon hike we started driving back towards Alice Springs, we planned to drive until around an hour before dusk and then stop at the nearest road house. We made it as far as the Erlunda roadhouse which wasn't ideal as it turned out that they had some kind of dubious kangaroo enclosure there. Unfortunately all of the stops along this road have something to do with animals, whether they're on an emu farm or part of a cattle ranch there's really no way around it, and you can't drive after dark. Despite our annoyance at the animal cruelty it was a lovely evening. We cooked dinner before dark for the first time since leaving Alice Springs and the moon wasn't as bright or high in the sky which meant that we could lay out in our swags looking at the stars before falling asleep.

Day Five

We woke up around sunrise and enjoyed lying in our swags and warming up as the sun rose before packing up our things. Once we were up we had time for a leisurely breakfast before driving to Alice Springs, returning the rental car, and hopping on to a shuttle bus to the airport to catch our flight back to Sydney.

Nick and I took this trip in late winter and I would highly recommend that time of year. It was a little chilly at night but the daytime temperatures were perfect, I couldn't have handled most of the walking we did in hotter temperatures and in summer some of the trails are closed because it's just too hot.

I hope that this post helps you plan your Uluru adventure, don't be scared to go on your own, you get so much more freedom this way and you'll get to spend far more time exploring that you would on most tours.

Sydney based coffee bar / bakery MAKER is one of the coolest vegan businesses in the world and I'm here to tell you why! Firstly, look a this sign. Self love and vegan treats are basically what I'm all about. I visited another popular vegan business in the city and they had a sign letting me know that their products are guilt free. Nope! Not cool. Eating isn't something that we should be made to feel guilty about and businesses buying into damaging rhetoric about guilt free foods and clean eating makes me super angry. Bring on the self love and vegan treats!

Secondly Maker are a social enterprise. Annabelle who makes beautiful bespoke cakes at My Little Panda Kitchen, and Kate of The Vegan Teahouse who specialise in vegan cafe classics, got together to run a 100% vegan commercial kitchen where anyone can join in and make and sell epic baked goods. I mean really?! How perfect are these people? I want to move to Sydney and be a part of this.

Thirdly their baked goodies are uh-mazing which is exactly what you'd expect from baked goods that are made and sold in a supportive environment. When I saw their cabinet full of treats I basically freaked out. How was I meant to choose? I just got everything I could fit into my belly and my bag and then went back for more the next week.

Lemon meringue pie and cherry pie! Which would you choose? I couldn't decide so I just got both.

As you can imagine from a vegan owned and operated community focussed business the people working there were the freaking best. They were so friendly and welcoming and beyond patient with our um-ing and ah-ing as well as with my allergy questions. The first time I went I was with Nick, Amanda from The Bookish Manicurist, and my buddy Josh, and we were there for ages pestering people's dogs, being indecisive, taking photos and shooting video, and popping back in to order more and more food.

As well as sweet treats MAKER offer an amazing range of savouries from sandwiches and breakfast rolls to hangover scrolls. I wasn't hungover but I grabbed one of those beauties as soon as I saw them being delivered!

The scroll was filled with tofu scramble, sausage, vegemite, and cheese and it was off the hook. I think scrolls are my new favourite food group. On our second visit, Nick, Amanda, and I were a little more chilled but we still ate as much as we could reasonably fit in before another day of Sydney based eating adventures. I started with a delicious baked doughnut because baked doughnuts are my fave' (I know. I know.) and I can't resist something pink and covered in sprinkles.

I chased it with a slice of passionfruit meringue pie which wasn't something I'd heard of before but that's not surprising as the northern hemisphere is kind of lacking in the fun fruits department! This slice of pie was exceptional. Somehow it was even better than the lemon meringue pie I tried the previous week which I didn't think was possible at the time. The meringue itself was even more impressively fluffy than before and the passion fruit totally works here. To say that I loved it would be an understatement.

Of course I also had to try one of their cheese toasties especially once I saw that they make them on sourdough bread. This was another thing that MAKER made ridiculously well. It was perfect! I was super tempted to have a second toastie but there was just no more space in my belly.

Last but by no means least MAKER's ethics are spot on, aside from being vegan they're super queer friendly and inclusive. They're vocal about their support for gay marriage. They acknowledge the Gadigal people, the traditional owners of the land, both on their website and on a sign in their window. They also run workshops in conjunction with Sydney Community College to offer affordable cooking classes with local makers. If I lived in the city you can bet I'd be checking out this cake decorating workshop to up my cake sprucing game.

MAKER are located on Paramatta Road which is easy to get to from the centre of the city, just hop on a bus towards Parramatta from stand M at Railway Square and you'll be there in 20 minutes. If you're staying at the YHA Railway Square hostel (which I definitely recommend if you're travelling on a budget) the bus stop is super close.

Which of these treats will you be ordering when you visit MAKER? Do you have a cool business like this near you? Lemme know, I might come visit! Oh and if you'd like to see more food fun from MAKER check out Amanda's video of our eating adventures on You Tube!

Adventures in and around Melbourne

An Aussie Birthday Extravaganza

Cruising from Chongquing to Yichang Vegan Style

Vegan Fave's in Melbourne

Vegan Travels in Guangxi, China

Vegan Eats Brisbane

Vegan Road Trip - Brisbane to Cairns Part I

Vegan Road Tripping - Brisbane to Cairns Part 2

Vegan in Cairns and The Great Barrier Reef

Blissed Out in Bali

Vegan Eats Ubud

Reducing My Plastic Consumption

Vegan in The Gili Islands

Aussie Adventures with Quokkas and Ice Cream

Vegan in Adelaide and Broken Hill

Road Trip! The Great Ocean Road

Vegans Explore Tasmania

Vegan in Hobart

Planning a Self Guided Trip to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park

MAKER Sydney