Hiya there - hope you're all doing ok - I guess it's the big build up to Christmas now, not much sign of it here!

We left Thailand on 30 November and crossed over the border into Malaysia. Our final conclusion is that Thailand was a brilliant place for families - dead cheap but extremely cheerful! We travelled from North to South by various forms of local transport (no Oriental express for us) ...local bus (interesting when there's a basket of live crabs crawling around), train, tuk-tuk, the back of pick-up trucks, elephant, longtail boat, bamboo raft and sky train.

If you're considering Thailand the positives are: seriously cheap accommodation and food (mind you price is no indication of quality 10 pounds can get you a private brick built chalet with bathroom, balcony, hot water, clean sheets or a hideous dingy room with no window and very suspect bedding!) food of every variety on every street corner - heaven! (Jill) children can ride motorbikes at 12 (Leala thinks it would be great to adopt the same rule in Britain) amazing scenery - beaches, rainforest, mountains very friendly and helpful people

Mind you - it's not all been perfect...you have to be prepared to put up with a bit of hassle. If you go out without children, you're just another faceless westerner waiting to be exploited, but with the children you take on the status of filmstars. Lots and lots of stray dogs and cats; very large flying insects and mossie bites; no boring rules and regulations (you have to be prepared for things not to happen on time or as you imagined).

Malaysia seems to have passed by very quickly. After all the activity and budgeting in Thailand, I said to Paul that we'd got to "up" our accommodation standard, so we've done some 4 star hotels. As a result of having such luxuries (hot water, TV, pool, gym) we've spent a lot of time sitting by the pool and chilling out to garbage TV. Paul's not a happy camper - he needs more excitement in life (like grotty hotel rooms which encourage you to go out more!), so it looks like our next destination (Bali) will also involve a trip to Java (is it safe??) and Lombok and not as so much beach dwelling as I'd hoped for.

As for the Channel 4 malarky...we've been filmed doing various things over the past 6 weeks. The crew flew home yesterday, so we can now argue in peace! The issue of being filmed hasn't really bothered us at all, but I am bound to die of embarrasment when it finally gets shown.

We're in Singapore at the moment, I am in a very noisy club at the bottom of our hotel which was the easiest place to find access to the internet, but the music is deafening. I apologise for these hideous "one for all" emails, but the internet connection is often very slow, so it takes an age to check/send emails!

Anyway - have a good christmas!

Lots of love Jill, Paul, Leala and Benxxx