After a 2.20am flight from New Delhi, 8 hours in the air (with 5 hours sleep) and a pickup at Heathrow by Dave’s mother we eventually made it back to Dave’s family home. We unpacked our bags, lunched on some homemade soup and took some much needed rest.

On Saturday 21st April we drove north to see Helen’s brother, Emily, Sukie and spend the weekend at Helen’s family home. It was lovely to see everyone again and have we all enjoyed catching up and the delights of home cooking.

Now to find some work, earn some money and evolve notworkrelated. Stay tuned.

Helen & Dave x

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0, 18mm f4, 90mm Tele-Elmarit f2.8 processed in Lightroom 3)

We wont be on here for a little while as we’re off exploring parts of the Everest Region. We start our trek in Jiri and will be making our way to Gokyo Lakes and Gokyo Ri. We hope you don’t miss us too much!

Thanks for following, and we’ll be updating when we’re back and resting from our epic hike!

Helen and Dave x

The MacBook has been working over-time recently, working on some fairly hefty image resolutions and demanding spot removal editing techniques (must remember to always clean the lens!). The 2TB hard drives are filling up fast and our online gallery is slowly increasing in size as we work hard editin’ the night away! (Helen does indeed have a good assortment of slacks!)

Here’s a man in evenin’ clothes,
how he got here, i don’t know, but
man, you oughta see him go,
editin’ the night away-ay,
he’s dancin’ with the chick in slacks,
she’s a-movin’ up and back,
oh man, there ain’t nothin’ like,
editin’ the night away

they’re! editin’, editin’, everybody’s feelin’ great
they’re editin’, editin’, they’re editin’ the night away

Anyway enough larking around… Since we got back we have spent some dedicated time and effort to work up some China images. Workflow amends… Levels. Colour correction (using a gradient map or colour balance). Contrast. Spot removals. Save TIFF. Engarge to desired size. A touch of unsharp mask if it’s required. Save JPG.

Here are a few to pay homage to Sam Cooke, twisting the night away and hopefully some inspiration for you guys to get out there and do something notworkrelated. Enjoy!

Travel Insurance

We have found a few little gems recently whilst sorting out last minute bits for our trip. After the nightmare we’ve experienced with STA Travel and their very unwillingness to help us with our insurance claim we decided to go a little more budget on the travel insurance side of things. This time round we have a joint policy that we can amend and update as we travel. There are small administration fees for these changes but Backpacker Travel Insuarance offer a comprehensive cover within their Premier Cover policy, and we have paid over 50% less than what we did with STA and bumped up our Sports grade to level 2 within this price. Okay so nothing has gone wrong so far, but after our previous experience we asked ourselves a series of questions ensuring we knew what we wanted from our travel insurance. So far Backpackers is ticking all our boxes!

We figured most people in China must climb the cliff!

Airbnb!

Something else that has got us a little excited is the wonder of Airbnb! We have booked through Airbnb for our travels in LA and Seattle meaning we have been able to source so far 3 different types of accommodation for our stay in the USA. This was pretty important for Venice Beach as Helen’s yoga course is daily and we didn’t want to be faced with big travel times and steep accommodation costs (a dorm room is cheaper but we’re in the area for 11 days so we don’t want to be sharing ourselves that much!!). We’re staying very close to the beach and even have our own bathroom as well as a host who is a superfoods expert!

Airbnb means we can stay with the locals, in a local area and avoid the high costs even hostels have in these busy places. We also want to live like a local does! It’s a little like couch-surfing but you pay to stay in someone’s spare room. Payment is through Airbnb and the person whose room we could be renting wont get paid until we check in. We’re looking forward to this alternative experience and for finding out about things going on away from the tourist trap. We think we’ll book through when accommodation is pricey in the western countries and we fancy a nosy at someone’s home! ha ha!

How many people take photographs either back at home or whilst on a round the world travel adventure? And how many actually get them printed rather than leaving them on a hard drive or photo sharing websites? For us; physical prints are a big part of what we love and we want to share our travels and photography with as many people as possible.

In less than two weeks we are leaving the UK for part two of our travels, we are having a leaving party (BBQ, music and a few drinks) to send us on our way in style. Several friends and relatives are having birthdays soon, which gives us a great reason to print some digital negatives and make something tangible whilst adding a little bit of creativity to it all. We hope they like them… If you would like your very own print please see here…

Recently on Twitter we were asked if we had taken part in the “My 7 Links” feature from Tripbase. A week or so later we appeared in Wired2theworlds post and they nominated us to do exactly the same. So we both sat down together and decided what previous posts fitted the following criteria…

Your most beautiful post…

The post that sprung straight to our minds was our Koh Kong Island tour in Cambodia.

We loved everything about this part of our travels through Cambodia…Bartering with Mr T to arrange our own personal tour with two other travellers Carl and Ali, we arranged a tour that doesn’t usually happen over 2 days. We had two devoted locals one acted as our tour guide, the other as the boat driver. We visited the most desolate, untouched beaches either of us have ever experienced and swam in crystal clear blue water. We had every beach completely to ourselves and ate amazing fresh seafood, barbecued and prepared by our two trusty Cambodian friends. To top this off we stayed at a very local floating fishing village, played with the children, visited their school, played pool with the locals and eventually stayed in one of their family homes. This was a truely authentic Cambodian home-stay experience, far far away from any tourists.

The second part of the blog post for Koh Kong is featured here, just in case you didn’t see enough beauty in the first one!

Your most popular post…

We were pretty happy to discover that our most popular post (according to Google Analytics) was from our Yuanyang Rice Terraces visit in Yunnan Province, China. The bus journey from Kunming was as ever a little scary in parts and often delayed along the narrow mountain roads, and when we arrived in Yuanyang there were no views, only fog! This is very normal for this part of the world though, often the valleys are deep-set in very thick fog, but when the fog lifts the rice terraces reflect all the light around in their pools of water stretching out for miles. This is a breathtaking part of the world, with a very strong traditional and cultural heritage stemming from ancient hill tribe minorities. It is one of the highlighted things to do in China so perhaps this explains why it has been our most popular blog post. Sunny’s Guesthouse is also recommended in the Lonely Planet so this may have helped!

Your most controversial post…

We haven’t really gone into too much controversy whilst travelling through Asia, there are many areas we could have touched on with regard to Communist run governments but we weren’t there to be political journalists! However whilst we were in Vietnam staying in Mui Ne on the coast we did experience first-hand a little bit of uneasy Police action. Two policemen decided to stop us not long after we had set off on a hired motorbike for the day. Their reason being that we didn’t have a Vietnamese drivers license! To cut a long story short, TET was one week away and we were told after our shared $50 dollar fine with the bike owner that this sort of thing does happen quite frequently around the National Holidays as the Police are in effect collecting their beer money in the form of fines!! Thanks for that one! This story features in the second part of the post.

Your most helpful post…

We’ve written a few tips and tricks posts, reviews and recipes from our cooking course experiences and even offered the chance for one lucky follower to win a print from our travels! But the most helpful post would be our Top 5 tours in Asia. We’ve gone into who we booked it with and why, the costs, what we thought was good, bad and so on. We didn’t always choose the obvious tour with the obvious tour operator so we were really happy with the tours we chose and wanted to share this with the rest of the travelling community.

A post whose success surprised you…

Not an obvious choice when it comes to written content and the response we received, but the post focusing around our stay in Luang Prabang, Laos has proven to be very successful. This is down to the imagery that we shot whilst we were staying there. We ended up staying longer in this quaint World Heritage town, and shot some really atmospheric photography centred around colour, texture and mood along with some great documentary work of locals and tourists in and around the place. We’ve also had one image accepted for an International Award and our first print sale came from some imagery contained within this blog post.

A post you feel didn’t get the attention it deserved…

We were blown away by how magical a place The Summer Palace really is. We loved our imagery from our day here, very atmospheric with layers of mist encompassing ornate hand carved palaces, bridges and pagodas. Very easy to get to if you take the metro there which means it only costs 20p each way!! The site is huge, and we could have easily spent 2 days if not longer to capture the sheer essence of the Summer Palace site. Most people visiting Beijing will focus on the Great Wall, Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City but we think The Summer Palace should be way up there on that list!!

The post that you are most proud of…

Perhaps an obvious choice but we are truly proud of our very first post from Japan! This shows us setting off from the UK and records our first day as we arrived in Tokyo. We were both jaded from jetlag and the Leica was still an exciting new tool for us to photograph with. On the Tokyo metro we snapped away discretely at our fellow passengers, managed to go the wrong way, and had our first taste of authentic Japanese noodles! It was all so new and exciting back then and we were on a high with street photography, getting the first travel blog-post out and starting our journey.

Thanks to wired2theworld for the nomination, we both hope you enjoyed our 7 links. Here are our five nominations…

• Totaltravelbug.com

• Worldtravelguide.net

• blog.networkosaka.com

• Good.Is

• weblogtheworld.com

Well it’s been just over four months since we returned home from Koh Phangan Island in Thailand due to unexpected circumstances and during this time we have had the chance to rest a little from the stresses of travelling, reminisce about all the great times in Asia and work on our photographs. The plan for having our photos on stock libraries is proving particularity difficult for many reasons, however selling prints of our work is now a possibility if anyone so desires a print for their wall.

We have also been lucky enough to get some paid work since returning home which is all going in the money pot for part two (continuation) of our adventures. We wanted to aim for a year travelling, so notworkrelated part two will hopefully last between 7 and 9 months. You can read an itinerary in our about section with an abridged version here…

What we know so far… London to LA flight. Two weeks in Venice Beach area. Fly to Seattle. Canadian Rockies camping tour for 15 days. Hire a vehicle in Seattle and head to the Olympic peninsula. Zig zag down the west coast dipping into oceans and hiking in national parks for 28 days or so. Meet some friends flying into San Francisco. Road-trip with them to Vegas, Grand Canyon Etc. Phoenix to see Helen’s relative. Back to LA for flight to New Zealand. Phew and that’s 2-3 months done!

We both hope you can follow our travels (which resume 3 weeks today) and enjoy them with us. The Leica and Olympus will most definitely be put through their paces once again! We will update you again soon with our now much more relaxed packing of rucksacks and pre-trip preparation.

Best regards. David and Helen xx

Hello and welcome…

This is part three of our top tips for travelling which we learnt whilst on our first five months away in Asia. Not long now until we head off to Los Angeles USA for some yoga teaching training workshops and exploration of Venice Beach. New travelling posts will start appearing in August. Here’s part 3 of 3! We hope you find something useful…

Whilst on our travels we heard tales of survival and health remedies from lots of fellow comrades and we wanted to share the hints, tips and advice that we now take for granted. Part 3 of 3!

Bus Journeys!
Throughout your travels you will travel overland using buses, as these are a great way to see the country and also save some pennies as they are normally cheaper than trains and definitely planes! Vietnam has a good value ticket that allows you to travel the whole length of this surprisingly long country. This open ticket allows you to choose from a selection of places along the way you might want to stop at and then jump back on and head to the next destination.

We went from north to south (Hanoi, (Hue – a few hours stop over waiting for the next bus), Hoi An, Nha Trang, Mui Ne, Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City) for $49 USD. You give them 24 hours notice and if the bus isn’t full then you can normally get a seat for the following day! The ticket is valid for three months.

From our experience in many places in South East Asia buy the cheapest ticket that you find. There may be two options for a slightly better “VIP”/”King of Buses” bus, but at most times you will buy a ticket and no matter the price from various sales offices you will be on the same bus as everyone else! Bus journeys that advertise breakfast included – Avoid!! Also your ticket does not guarantee you a seat, sometimes when the bus is oversold or they ram the bus with locals, you may end up sitting in the aisle on a plastic stool or your backpack!

Security!
We did not have any issues whilst travelling through Japan, China, Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos. Common sense will get you through most situations without too much fuss. Thailand, relatively well off in financial terms compared to some of the other countries, was the only place we had a problem. At Surat Thani, where you get a short bus journey to the port to access Koh Pha-Ngan, Ko Samui and To Tao islands, the bus drives suspiciously slowly and when we got to the port we realised that our backpacks in the underneath luggage hold had been tampered with.

Confrontation of the bus driver, assistant (thief) and port staff just made them all do a vanishing act and loose all memory of the English language. On the boat across to the islands we learnt of other peoples fate, £200 missing and a gold ring missing! Luckily our bags had padlocks and any valuables were in smaller backpacks which we kept with us at all times. A document wallet which goes around your waist keeps passports and money safe.

Exactly the same happened on the way back after we had visited the islands, same bus driver and two assistants this time. Be careful and don’t leave anything expensive in your main backpacks when they are separated from you.

Hiring a scooter.
Make sure that your insurance covers you for the power of the scooter as it can be less than 125cc only etc. Also make sure that you wear a helmet and follow all the rules of the road and local laws. Scooters are a great way to travel around the local area, although we did see lots of people in bandages and hobbling around so be careful.

The only issue that we had was during TET, Lunar New Year in Vietnam, when we got pulled over by the police. No speeding, helmets on heads and driving safely we proceeded to stop when instructed to. The bike was impounded with the reason that the UK licence was not appropriate and we should have a Vietnamese licence (all excuses under the sun come out)! We had to walk back to the hostel luckily only about 3km.

We soon learnt that three weeks before TET and two weeks afterwards the police stop lots of people and impound bikes to basically get beer money. Lots of people were driving around, we were just one of the unlucky ones. Frustrating at a $50 USD fine which we split $25 each with the owner of the bike!

Mosquito Net.
A simple one this but take your own net that can stretch over a double bed, lots of provided nets have holes and tears in which most mosquitoes will find!

Re-hydration… (Tip from Corinne Walker)
It is possible to make your own rehydration solution. Put four teaspoons of sugar and one teaspoon of salt in one litre of water. It is very easy to do and the ingredients are easily accessible from almost any guesthouse. (Good for a hangover cure too!)

Part 1 is here! Part 2 is here! Do you have any top tips? Comment below or drop us an email and we can add your suggestions to this post.

Whilst travelling many months throughout Asia we have accumulated lots of photographs with our lovely Leica and Olympus cameras. After cutting our trip short due to unforeseen circumstances we have had the chance to work through literally thousands of photos and we would like to offer our followers a little piece of our adventure.

In celebration of our first guest post going live, our online shop launching and part two of notworkrelated starting in August; we wanted to run a little contest…

We are giving away a 24″ x 20″ (61cm x 51.5cm) photo-quality print from our notworkrelated round the world travels. This prize is a print from our first country visited – Japan!

Here are the details – Please read this carefully!

How to enter: (Contest Ended!)

- Follow notworkrelated on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/notworkrelated_)

(If you are already following or like us then there is no need to unfollow and refollow – doing so repeatedly will get you blocked and banned from the contest.)

- Tweet the message on Twitter you see below just ONE TIME! (There is no advantage to tweeting more than once. There is also no penalty for tweeting more than once but you won’t have any better chance of winning and you may anger your own Twitter followers if you decide to tweet more than once)

Win a 20″x24″ print from our #rtw #travel adventures in Asia. #nwrjuly2011 Please RT. Info at: http://bit.ly/n9XfXp

Total value for all prizes = approximately £50.00. The prize winner will be selected by random after the closing date at noon on July 16, 2011.

The Prize:

Grand Prize (1 winner):
- A photographic print on Fuji Crystal Archive paper with a semi-matt finish. Here is the print that you can win…

The prize: A print taken in Japan on the Leica! (Printed area is 21.5"x14.5" on paper that is 24"x20")

Upclose and personal. Detail shot of the print that you can win!

No purchase necessary to enter or win.

1. You must be 18 years or older to enter
2. You must be following Notworkrelated on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/notworkrelated_)
3. You must send out the above tweet EXACTLY as it appears. A failure to do so will disqualify you. Do NOT put @ sign in front of notworkrelated_ anywhere in the Tweet. This is by design, we do not want our twitter stream filled with entries!
4. Entry to the contest will close on Saturday July 16, 2011, 2011 at noon GMT. Any tweets will not be included in the random draw to decide a winner after this deadline.
5. The prize winner will be selected on July 16, 2011. We will congratulate you on twitter and also contact you via a private message on Twitter to inform you further and find out a delivery address etc.
6. If you live outside the UK you are responsible for any taxes, custom duties and shipping in the event you win. We will only ship the prize to a UK, USA or European address via Royal Mail Internatonal Signed For / Recorded delivery.
7. Depending on where you want your prize delived it may take up to 28 days to arrive, but we will post it ASAP. Proof of shipment to the winner’s address shall end any obligation to deliver any prize under these rules.
8. The prize will be rolled and sent in a tube to the winners address. The prize does not include any mounts, frames or hanging materials – Print only.

For the full Terms and Conditions please see here…

Notworkrelated will keep a record of each tweet in a database and then a random number generator picks the winner. We will attempt to answer questions but we both have busy vocations and are planning the next trip so we cannot guaretee we will be able to respond! Good Luck!

Hello and welcome…

This is part two of our top tips for travelling learnt whilst on our first five months away in Asia. Hopefully some of them will also come in use for our next adventure which we have planned for August 2011. More to come on that. So here’s part 2 of 3! Hope you find something useful.

Whilst on our travels we heard tales of survival and health remedies from lots of fellow comrades and we wanted to share the hints, tips and advice that we now take for granted. Part 2 of 3!

Japan Rail sites.
Japan was our first destination back in October 2010. As relative novices to this travelling lark we were thrown into the deep end with a non Latin character country such as Japan. Everyone here is refreshingly friendly and will help you as much as possible. Just a look of mild confusion upon oneself will be enough of an excuse for someone to lend a hand. Two sites that proved really useful for planning the train journeys around Japan are japantravel.co.uk and hyperdia.com.

Japantravel.co.uk has some great information on the Japan Rail Pass, unlimited use on all Japan Rail operated trains, valid for either 7, 14 or 21 days. We had a 14 day pass and travelled from Tokyo to Mount Fuji to Takayama to Kanazawa to Nanao back to Kanazawa to Kyoto to Koyasan to Kyoto to Osaka and finally to Kobe. Even use of the bullet train is permitted! As long as you travel far enough to make it worth while then it’s a great way to see Japan.

Hyperdia.com is a great resource which allows you to plan your journey on the trains around Japan with lots of routes and precise timetables to maximise the Japan Rail pass.

Tokyo subway.
Keeping with the Japanese travel theme there is a golden rule to remember when using the subway in Tokyo. Two companies run the whole network. This can easily cause a problem as we found out the first time we attempted to use it early one morning on our way to the Tsukiji Fish Market.

Tokyo Metro is a privately run section of the subway with 168 stations and 9 lines. TOEI is run by the government and operates 106 stations over four lines. Both are roughly the same price. Just check where you are going and make sure you buy the correct ticket, it is easy, just remember that’s its not all the same network.

The subways are indicated by station name, number and line colour/name. There are English Fare charts near the ticket vending machines. Some lines have adopted female only cars so check when you board to make sure you’re allowed on that cabin. If you traveled further than the ticket you bought allows, pay the extra fare at a fare adjustment machine located near the fare gates. At the exits of the station are really detailed maps that show you which exit you need to continue your journey.

Travellers diarrhoea, rehydration sachets and charcoal tablets.
Travellers diarrhoea is eventually going to happen at some stage on a round the world adventure. We found out that as well as taking a medical bag with the usual essentials (don’t forget an assortment of clean needles from dental to hypodermic etc which you can give to medical staff to use so you know they are safe) you will need plenty of rehydration sachets and possibly constipation and diarrhoea tablets to cover various eventualities. We were informed that pure charcoal tablets can really help when taking anti-diarrhoea tablets. They were quite pricey and huge in size, however they help to kill the bugs that are been held inside your gut due to the firming up medication! Oh and rehydration sachets are amazing at helping to get you through a hangover! (Do check with a pharmacist first…we are not medical experts!!)

Hot water everywhere, noodles, China.
In China and South-East Asia it’s normally not safe to drink the local tap water supply. Remember not to have drinks with ice and also clean your teeth with bottled water. Drinking bottled water may seem expensive, but in China is is relatively cheap to buy and they have plenty of boiling water supplies at most public places, hostels, and even on trains! The locals don’t drink the tap water, they use boiled water for making tea in flasks and for their favourite travel meal, rehydrated noodles which come in a vast array of flavours. They are actually quite nice and much better than the chicken feet they munch on! So get yourself a seal-able thermal flask for hot and clean water along with a box or two of noodles for no fuss, easy snacking.

Sleeping bag liner / pillow case.
A lightweight cotton sleeping bag liner is a must if you can squeeze one into your backpack. It means that any dodgy looking mattresses or blankets can be forgotten about, sleeper buses and trains are much more comfortable as you just don’t know how well they are cleaned, they are easy to wash and quick to dry! A pillow case does the same job, just stuff it with a hoodie etc and you have a makeshift pillow. Also with both of these, they can make great section dividers in your backpack which are easy to grab, e.g. dirty washing can be stored separately from everything else and all washed together / cooler climate clothes can be kept out of the way in the sleeping bag liner so not to get mixed up with everything else.

Part three will be coming soon! Part 1 is here! Do you have any top tips? Comment below or drop us an email and we can add your suggestions to the next post.