girl's big trip

A Very Big Trip in a Very Special Bus - Afterword

2007-11-23T20:03:00.000Z

TCHAU/CIAO/CHOW

Basically this is when we sent them packing in various states of disarray from the night before, with nothing for comfort apart from Brazilian radio (that´s right, Johnboy also didn´t bring his I-Pod charger!)

Goodbye, goodbye...tchau tchau chicos, it has been amazing and we already can´t wait to see you again. More thank you´s than you can ever imagine! xxxx

Day 21 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-23T19:51:00.000Z

DAY OF THE DEAD

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Number of home-made Caipirinhas: too many!

Number of surprise birthdays: 1

Number of shops open in which to buy said surprise birthday things: 0

Today is a kindof bank holiday, Remembrance Day at home, Day of the Dead here! And it was in fact pretty dead around town. All the shops were shut in the AM which foiled mine and Vikki´s plan to buy things for Lisa´s early birthday party which we planned to hold that evening. Also meant all we couldn´t get all the souvenirs we were hoping to get.

Instead we headed to Ipanema Beach to get sunburnt, swim, drink beer, buy overly expensive ice creams, sarongs, corn on the cob, lot´s o´water please and some tasteless prawn cracker-y-esque tasteless things. When we were all sufficiently pink enough we headed back to see if the shops had open. Fortunately some had so it was full steam ahead to try and lose Lisa (in the nicest possible way) and buy stuff.

In our quitet time wisdom John decided that we should definitely try and make our own Caipirinhas. One can of pure Caipirinha alcohol (Cachaca run) was about 50p...we got about eight. It was definitely enough to send us over the edge before we evn left the hostel to go out that evening! Our first attempt looked a lot like pond water, which we drank in true pikey fashion! Enter Angela with the magic fingers (and the correct sugar) who shows us how it is done. Then we had Lisa´s surprise birthday, with singing and guitars and cake. And then to the streets of Lapa and maybe some Samba!

We lost Kit not long after this, it´s just like being at uni again! He went home or something :)

Day 20 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-23T19:35:00.000Z

THE COW PARADE

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 0!!!

Number of kms cycled: 7.5

Number of times Amy kissed Christ: 1

Today we ended up `spending some time apart´, its all for the good of the relationship in the long run kids! Amy, me, Lisa and John went to the lake, Vikki went on a woodland walk and Kit went bodyboarding in Sao Paulo or somewhere equally as far away.

In 38 degrees of heat we show up in Ipanema, hire a few bikes and WALK to the lake...still not convinced about the traffic in Rio. Every corner we turned there was some helpful guide to point us in the right direction, we must have been looking a little lost/a little out of place. We eventually got the lake after standing for what felt like 7 years at the traffic lights, suncreamed us up, and got on our bikes. We cycled, drank not enough water, put on not enough sun cream, found some more cows, found some potentially dead tramps...all in all it was much fun.

Back to Botafogo for some much needed showers and resting before heading up the Christ. We waited at the wrong bus stop for a long time but eventually made it there just in time to see Vikki leaving! The sun was almost setting which was lovely and meant we had to get the last train back down the mount...we ended up in a carriage with a school trip and the kids thought it was funny to take photos of us "without us knowing", Lisa foiled their plan and then they thought it was funny to take photos of us "with us knowing"!

I had a headache and went to bed...maybe one of the others can fill you in on the details of their evening out...the air con is working now by the way so maybe we will actually get some sleep as opposed to just sweating away our body weight.

Day 19 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-23T19:10:00.000Z

HER NAME WAS LOLA

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 0!!!!!!

Number of Itinerary items successfully completed: 4

Our first stop on the Grand Rio Tour was St Theresa and the unmissable little train journey. We navigated the very jolty metro and squeezed onto the tram. We think if you hung off the side you got to ride for free but what with all the sheer drops and crazy Brazialian bus drivers we weren´t feeling too confident.

We strolled and took in the view and had a beverage at Mike´s Hauss and then decided to head back down the mountain when we reached the edge of the favella. Then to the shopping centre so Amy and I could start our Grand Tour of the Food Court and then we headed to the Sugarloaf. It´s a good job we ordered a large cloud positioned right on top of the mount because that is what we got. The views, when the clouds parted for seconds at a time, were tremendous....our Look Before You Click philosophy had to be set aside for the sake of Flickr!

It was all very eerie which fitted in nicely with it being halloween.

That night we headed off to the Macarena (Maracena) stadium, the largest in the world don´t you know and watched our home team (The Flamengos/O Meu Mengos) vs the Sao Paulo Corinthians . The traffic was intense, sit down, stand up, the atmosphere was incredible, sit down, stand up, and despite the supporters throwing bottles at each other´s heads for seemingly no good reason, sit down, stand up, it was all very well spirited. Sit Down. Stand Up. We also were lucky enough to be sitting behind a man with the hairiest back you have ever seen. Our guide came to collect us a couple of minutes before the end of the match which we were all very surprised about until the stampede of 100,000 came pounding past us. It was drive-by jump in the van and away we went.

Since we are obviously still made of money we walked past all the plastic-pre-school-tabled-bars on the street and headed for the one with valet parking! You get a ticket, the waiter marks on it what you have, you get your drink, you give the waiter your ticket, you give the waiter some money, he decides whether or not you deserve change and how much, he gives you back the ticket, you give the ticket to the door-person to get out. A bit of a roundabout way of serving people to say the least with the added bonus of (men) being groped by transvestites when you go to the bathroom.

Day 18 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-23T18:39:00.000Z

"HOW HARD CAN IT BE??"

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 6

Number of MacD´s: one each please (they don´t do breakfast you know!)

Kit´s dreams finally came true and MacDs was on the menu for breakfast and off we set for Rio...for the first time ever it was almost a race (amongst us girls) to get in the sixth `nomination´ seat which is small and spaceless and luggage falls on you continuously...but in this case (as we head into Rio...city driving...no road signs...a really vague map...) it is the seat furthest away from the Navigators seat! Johnboy stepped up to the task full of optimism...we all keep quiet! Until Westlife came on of course and then we `serenaded´! Although the "one skip a day" rule went out the window at that point...we think Kit and John may have been having some issues that not even Mandy could help with.

After driving in the wrong direction down a one-way street we found the hostel and what we thought was a friendly gentleman´s garage to leave the special bus in. We were slightly alarmed by the 10´ bunk beds with three beds but soon got over that when we realised none of us would have to scale the heights of the room to go to bed at night. There was another reason none of us were particularly keen to sleep on the very top bunk and that was because of the attractive pair of gold undies we found up there....s´niice!

We ate sandwiches for dinner and realised maybe our portuguese skills hadn´t come as far as we´d hoped when we nearly ended up with four beers instead of the cheque!

Day 17 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-21T19:37:00.001Z

BANHEIROS BANHEIROS BANHEIROS

Number of funny bathroom stories: 1

Number of times we missed the clocks changing: 1

Number of hours in the car: 9

In the absence of a boat trip which as far as we could tell was the only reason to visit the town in the first place, we hounded Pablo at the tourist information for most of the morning and checked out the one archealogicalarchitectural wonder of Caravan that was the pink church.

We formed a new plan, let's get out of this town and head to Rio. We managed to get to Campos and ended up staying in what could have been a drive-in sex motel. Luckily MacD's was shut so we ended up eating at Mama Zaps (Crepe heaven), mmm, I'll have two please! Sometimes having a maths degree isn't overly useful, like when I counted the money we owed and then the waiter chased us down the street because it was in fact the wrong amount!

I think this was the day we finally got a clue about the petrol station toilet system where you go and collect a key for the door and take it back when you are done...instead of finding the door locked so you test the male toilets and when they appear to be open, creep in, in the hope of going to the bathroom undetected but then realising there is indeed a man in there and run screaming from the toilet!!

Day 16 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-21T19:29:00.001Z

BANCO DO BRAZIL ANYONE?!

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 8

Number of cockroaches killed: 1

Caravan here we come! We take the morning off to shop, sleep in, board and swim and eventually set off at 12 o clock. The route was pretty straight forward aside from the drive through Itabuna with once again a distinct lack of road signs. We ended up asking in a petrol station which proved a little more complicated than we would have hoped and they organised for a man on a motorbike to escort us out of the city to the road we were looking for! Genius.

Anyone up for a game of Troixieme Faixa?? How about a made-up letter game or a made-up word game?

We got to Caravan (Caravellas) and checked in to the 'best' hostel there was...with dirty sheets and cockroaches and six new complaining or screaming guests!

Day 15 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-21T19:20:00.000Z

SIX PEOPLE, NINE BEDS

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 0!!

The lack of sleep did not however deter us from getting up at 9am and heading to the beach where I spent most of the day hibernating from the sun. The beach was beautiful and we met a couple of Itacarian kids, Lucas and Gabriel who were very entertaining until they asked for some dinheiro for their time. We would have tested out the waterproofness of John's camera had he not left the charger behind (in the UK behind)!!

We went out for some more pizza in the evening and the waitress kept trying to set Kit on fire! He had a burning lychee with his cocktail but it never quite made it to the table in tact which the waitress thought was hilarious. Turns out the lychee was actually cotton wool and slightly less edible than we first thought.

Despite the abundance of beds, Amy and Vikki managed to get locked out of the hostel and since scaling the wall was out of the question they had to book into another hostel for the night...d'oh.

Day 14 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-20T21:41:00.001Z

VIKKI - FOCUS ON THE HEADREST!

Number of pot holes: a brazilian trillion

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 8

We took the morning off from the Special Bus since we only planned to do a few hours in the afternoon. We all went to the beach and although we went to different beaches, just call us Sunburn R´Us...Weatherman John didn´t even see the need to take his suncream to the beach that day even though the forecast was 30 degrees + :)

Lei and I managed to pur-chase lunch for six people for $R9.

First part of the journey is once again ok and we are happily lulled into a false sens of security. Just about then we hit the 50km long dirt track with pot holes in every which way of every different shape size depth...it was getting dark, there was long grass on either side of the road...I was expectiong men donned with loin cloths to jump out and attack us with spears, Lisa saw a lion (cow) and Amy was mistaking wooden poles for African Voodoo statues!

I am not sure how we went the right way since there were many forks in the road and very few (i.e. none) road signs, even the games weren't helping us this night. We came across a broken down bus...an omen you might think?! Then we got a puncture. Luckily, Lei-the-car-mechanics-for-girls-queen was there to rescue us, although I am not sure she would have been so forthcoming with the aid has the stray dog actually carried out it's threat and peed on the flat tyre we were attempting to change! Imagine, only 6km to go till we get to tarmac! Some ramdom man appeared as if from nowhere to offer his help which we skeptically declined, and the AA van equivalent was totally confused by us when they drove by obviously in search of the coach that had called them..."I thought they said it was a bus"! Fortunately you can't outfox the fox and we were back on the road in no time at all.

Next obstacle...can you guess what it is yet?? That's right we are now on the verge of running out of petrol! This really wouldn't be the place to do it either. We made it to the tarmac and think we have just enough petrol to get us to the town, whether or not that means the petrol station in the town we have no idea! Now is not the time to be wasting petrol, so what do we do? Drive the wrong way down a dead end roadwork site! D'oh.

In the name of saving petrol kit and John get out and go and check if there is anyway through to the town...this could have been directed by Wes Craven himself...it's about 11pm, dark and just as Kit and John disappear over the hill to the left hand side of the bus a strangely out of place figure appears on the horizon to the right of the bus. With four girls left in the car to deal, there is obvious dismay/concern/sheer panic! And this would be the point in the movie when the girl veers off the main well-lit road and into a dark dead end alley...Amy leans into the front to switch the ignition on to close the window and lock the door...at this point we have opted for shutting ourselves in the car and hoping for the best...she gets the window shut and accidentally puts the hazard lights on...HELLO STRANGE MAN, WE ARE OVER HERE!! Just as we compose ourselves and the man is about 50m from the bus, Kit and John start heading back towards the car, they can't see the man, the man can't see them and we are in panic mode once again. They meet in the middle and difuse the situation - turns out he is the roadwork sight night porter and informed us we had indeed gone the wrong way and the town is 9km away.

WILL THE GROUP MAKE THE 9KM TO THE TOWN? WILL THEY RUN OUT OF PETROL BEFORE THEN AND BE STRANDED? WOULD THE CHEAP VODKA BE A GOOD SUBSTITUTE FOR PETROL? TUNE IN NEXT WEEK TO FIND OUT....

(Next week) Heaven sent another angel and we made it to the town, to the petrol station which was looking suspiciously shut until a man appeared from a parked car and gave us some petrol...it was a little expnsive though so we didn;t get very much ;) It is now midnight and we still have nowhere to stay and haven't eaten for another 8 hours. We found a hostel and totally confused the man who was working,musical rooms ensued and we went from having two room swith five beds to three rooms with seven beds and the man was wandering between us looking for 'the one who spoke portuguese', that would be none of us dude! Anyway, since I think he was only expecting 5 of us we got it for $R100, our best price yet!

We went out to find some food (not holding out too much hope), Amy nearly fell down a man hole and a man who was innocently walking along hissed at a cat to scare it and ended up making all of us jump as well! Itacare turned out to be fairly closed but we did manage to find a pizza place which was willing to serve us despite our weary/stinky appearance! We eventually got to bed at 4am...what a day!

Day 13 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-20T21:27:00.000Z

LISA MAKES A JOKE

Number of ice creams: 5

Since we a living in the land before clocks we all managed to get up and ready for 7am without realising! Today´s plan is to visit Salvador although Kit went decided to abstain from the procedings and go body boarding...what? You have had enough of us already, I find that hard to believe :) So let´s say PraÇa De Se at 1700 hours?!

We navigated the public buses and luckily with our quick-slimming-14-stone-in-a-day diet we had no problem fitting through the turnstiles made for those token anorexic big bums that the Brazilian ladies have.

We discovered the city on foot, thankful to not be in the bus for a day. Cobbled streets, beautiful churches, the old city (where the cemetary was), Jorge the military policeman who regaled us with his heartwarming stories of how he hates Americans, once we had regaled him with our stories of not being American of course!

Despite rising fears we did manage to meet Kit at the arranged spot almost at the arranged time which gave us plenty of opportunity to scope out the weirdos in the bus station...it´s the same wherever you go! Oh, and we found the best ever ice cream shop in the world ever with the best ever banana ice cream ever (...one for the books there Madtin!) Once the gang were reunited we headed to Sao Francisco church, which was stunning aside from the angel statues with bulbous heads and deformed faces. It took 27 years to complete all the gold guilding.

We went to a bar then to a restaurant where Johnboy got a portuguese pronunciation lesson from the waiters...it must have been that french in a day tape you listened to before you came to the portuguese speaking country of Brazil that confused them Mr :)

On the way home we spent a significant amount of time bartering with the taxi driver over $R2 and ended up giving it to him in tip for his boy racer impression when he blared Sting´s I´ll Be Missing You (portuguese style) whilst driving us home.

Day 12 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-20T20:53:00.000Z

FIRST RULE OF THE SPECIAL BUS; DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE SPECIAL BUS

Number of hours in the Special Bus: I didn't realise this wasn't a driving day

Number of hours of sunshine left by the time we got to the beach: 1/2

Number of times almost ran out of petrol: 1

Number of funny bathroom stories: 1

Despite the smell in the room we did get fried eggs for breakfast and with John in our midst it is definitely a new day! First things first we need to move to a more suitable hostel in a more suitable area. This didn't take all that long and John eventually got over the trauma of being shot at (or the car backfiring, depending on where you were sitting). We decided to avoid the City Centre again and opted for a place by the beach.

Once we had driven all the way back towards town, we then drove all the way back out to where we had come from to go to a beach near there. In true Special Bus Style we drove past every potential food joint till we were in the back of beyond where there was very few places to get food or petrol...that's right folks, we almost ran out of petrol...AGAIN! Add a wander to the lighthouse to the equation and we arrived at the beach (our only ain for the day) at about 5pm.

Juan Chico the space saving genius brought with him three flannels instead of one towel...thank goodness he did though, it was enough of a squeeze without a sixth full-sized towel thrown in the mix.

It has been 12 days and I think we have finally mastered the art of ordering three meals and sharing them between the lot of us (as opposed to ordering six meals and wondering why everyone looks at us a little strangely and why we end up with enough food to feed an small third world country!) John has also managed to figure out where the men's bathroom is :) To be fair the sign was a bit vague! Speaking of the toilets, they barely allow enough room to swing an ant let alone sit comfortably on the toilet without your knees scrubbing the back of the door!

After a few much needed Caipirinhas, we are ready for our much overdue wandering the streets of a city we don't know looking for somewhere to go, lo and behold there isn't anywhere suitable and we end up going back to the hostel for some cheap cheap vodka and a little Brady-Bunch-esque sing-a-long!

Day 11 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-18T20:44:00.000Z

D-DAY IV - WHAT A DAY!

Number of hours in the Special Bus: Once again a lot more than we had envisaged

Mosquito bite status: Lisa has been bitten on the eye

Weight-loss: 14 stone, IN A DAY!

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 14

Hopes are high as we set off to Salvador and I may even use the word excited. 650km left on ONE relatively straight road with few pot-holes. Today´s Special Bus time is spent making The `The´ List of bands. We ran out of money pretty early on in the day which made buying the essentials - lunch and petrol pretty difficult.

Fortunately, the moment when we ran out of petrol was exactly the moment we pulled into a petrol forecourt (only a little pushing was required).

Unfortunately, `Do you take Visa?´, `No´, `Parlez-vous français?´, `No´. The kindly gentleman said he would take our U$S for some petrol, although in hindsight I think this was maybe preferable to having five foreigners and their Special Bus camped out at his petrol station for the rest of the day! Let´s just hope we don´t have to bribe any policemen in the hour...optimism is once again rising.

TASK 1: FIND A HOSTEL AND SOME MONEY AND MACD´S

Falsely hopefully we enter the mindboggling one way system that is Salvador city centre. Another clock change means that we have 3.5 hours to complete our task and get to the airport to collect Johnboy, no worried maate.

3 hours later we have no hostel, no money and no Macd´s...to clarify, that is no food since 7am and it is now 9pm. We abandon task 1 and head to the airport to collect John. We all hate Salvador.

Task 2: FIND JUAN CHICO

Another hour of sitting in Arrivals, with no sign of a flight from Amsterdam on the agenda we start to wonder if we have in fact got the right day/time/airport/city...by today´s standards anything is possible.

In truth John arrived on an internal flight from Sao Paulo airport and was in the domestic arrivals as opposed to the international arrivals where we were. After 18 months, 28 days and 9.5 hours we are reunited!

Task 3: GET SIX PEOPLE, SIX PIECES OF LUGGAGE, ONE BODYBOARD AND ONE GUITAR IN A SPECIAL BUS

We were hoping to not have to tackle this task until we left Salvador but since the last few hours hadn´t really gone to plan it wasn´t much of a surprise that we were here. Instead after 14 hours in the bus, no food and nowhere to go we managed to squeeze everyone in, just!

Task 4: TO MACD´S

It´s shut.

Task 5: FIND THE POUSADA

Another supposed easy task, especially with maps and directions BUT NO! We end up driving round the suburb confused by the directions and the map. We seem to have landed in the red light district/Habib's fan base area and only managed to find the place thanks to some kindly Habib-er. Then we arrive to find that our room stinks of pee...nice!

Task 6: GET SOME MUCH NEEDED FOOD

The next hour doesn't really bare mentioning, all you need to know is that we went to bed hungry!

Day 10 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-18T20:32:00.000Z

D-DAY III - TROUBLE OVER BILL´S MOTHERS

Mosquito bite status: high although we are not sure what changed!

Actual Mosquito bites: quite a few, Vikki has her first bite of the holiday - welcome to the club!

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 13

Number of hours Kit drove: probably 12.5

I think we gave the hostel hostess the wrong impression yesterday with our late rising since today we plan to leave as early as possible and thus have to do so without breakfast, we drove past the lady with our breakfast on the way out of town!

Mission to get as close to Salvador as possible. With only one minor detour down a `scenic´ road (dirt track through a wood) and one major hailstorm when I thought the windscreen may actually break we managed find a Pousada (of the Parrot kind) on the main road. And have actually made a significant dent in the kilometres! I think our/Vikki´s negotiation skills improve after a frustratingly long time in the car and she managed to bargain the man down to $R125 for a room for five!

We ate some more pizza (this time of the microwaveable kind) and drank some more cerveja and were about ready for bed...we know how to live the high life!

Day 9 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-16T23:17:00.000Z

PLEASE SIR, CAN I HAVE SOME MORE?

Number of hours in the car: More than we had hoped

Mosquito bite status: low

We have our first real lay-in of the holiday and still manage to get breakfast...although our lovely hostess didn´t have any other guests to cater for so I guess there wasn`t much else to do with the food.

We visited the Secret Garden expecting a woodland walk and found a jungle-style obstacle course from the Krypton Factor and totally not suitable for our flip-flopped feet. We lost Kit and Vikki to that well-known artist Oscar who had no faith in our abilities to get to Salvador in two days! In the afternoon we decided to go to the much talked about (by guide books) and much advertised (by leaflets) Agua Santos. Surprisingly this attraction was not signposted AT ALL and we had to stop and ask many-a-random for directions (because we love to be reminded how much of the language we cannot speak!), we arrived just in time to catch Mr Incredible, Miss Sunburn Brazil 2007, some well-practiced strutting by some (what we can only imagine are) regulars and Juan, Amy´s new man :) Basically it was a swimming pool.

Unfortunately Tiradentes closes up on a Sunday night so we were stuck with fast food of sorts but in the next level price bracket...for what I can only assume was the plate and cutlery hire. They love their cheese, especially of the plastic kind and Vikki ended up with a feast of plastic cheese omlette with a lettuce leaf and not one but two slices of tomato...mmmm!

Day 8 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-16T23:09:00.000Z

NOT MEANT TO BE A D-DAY II.I - FOR EVERYTHING ELSE THERE´S YELLOW PAGES!

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 5

Number of times we lost the car key: 1

The instuctions failed in the first two minutes, over to the Yellow Pages Maps which get us to what seems like the one and only sign for the 65 in the whole of the town.

Five hours later we arrive in Tiradentes and the 1900´s which cobbled streets, horse and carts, cows randomly strolling down the road, ATM´s that don´t accept anyone´s card apart from Amy´s, steam trains and secret gardens. We find our hostel which requires either the tourist information or a neighbour to telephone to, to get their attention...knocking on the door the old fashioned way does not do the trick. We check in and have fast forwarded to the 70´s with green and pink tiled walls, a bright red fridge, a bright yellow freezer, lights that get brighter when you switch the shower on...retro huh!

For dinner we try and find the Italian restaurant, Vik is in charge of the map so put your walking shoes on folks ;) turns out to be a little too expensive for our tastes and we head back to the main square. We end up in a bar...in THE bar and get kicked out at some unreasonably early hour because they want to close...! Duschbags!

Day 7 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-16T23:00:00.000Z

D-DAY II - WHO IS ROGER BANNISTER?

Number of hours in the car: 12

Number of hours lost: 7

Number of funny toilet stories: 1

Another debate I am not allowed to mention is the `Shall we bypass Sao Paulo completely on our drive today?`...moving on (but definitely coming back to it later) we made really good time in the morning and had a comedy moment when Lei got stuck in a public Brazilian toilet! We are talking comedy sketch moment when the handle comes away in one hand and you hear the other half fall to the ground...luckily us girls always go to the bathroom together and did so for the rest of the trip after this incident, so we were all able to come to the rescue and take photos and laugh! It was looking like our options were to pull Lei over the wall or leave her there until Vikki the Door Fixing Genius had a go.

It was funny but not funny enough to get us through the next seven hours of driving around 1/8 of a page of the map looking for route 65. We hate Route 65. We ended up in Campinas (not even close to where we wanted to be), in an expensive hotel with some people patient enough to try and give us directions and with yellow pages - out of which we stole the local maps FOR THE GOOD OF OUR SANITY! Everyday´s a school day and we find out that although roads are marked as numbers on the maps, they usually are signposted as names - we have in fact been looking for the Dom Pedro Road this whole time and just not knowing it - probably drove past it a fair few times too :( In the words of Pink, Who Knew?

Day 6 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-16T22:50:00.000Z

DRIVING DAY I - EVERY POTHOLE HAS A DIFFERENT STORY

Number of hours in car: 11

Number of potholes driven over: thousands

Number of arguments over animal, mineral, vegetable: at least one per game

Today is the shortest distance we have to cover - 650km, we are heading to Morettes. The game of the day is Animal, Mineral, Vegetable AKA Janet Jackson/Harold Bishop, Bridges, Maracuja. Is a bridge a building? Is a bridge a structure? Is a building different to a structure?

We think we are driving over the worst roads EVER...(see Days 7-21) and it takes us 11 hours, d`oh. Have we bitten off more than we can chew? i find it hard to believe when we are five poeple who have been limited to a diet of cheesey and salty snacks for the last five days!

We spy the road to Morettes which is signposted very vaguely and only once - it takes us down and around a mountain on cobbles for about 20km - Amy feels sick, even the scenery cannot help. What does help is our 5* dinner with Mr Chipolopodous at his lovely restaurant and the oh-so kind people at the hostel we are staying in. Vikki gets her own specially made fish dish for one...well, this might be the last time she gets to eat you know! :)

Day 5 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-16T22:40:00.000Z

DUSCHCO DUSCHBAG

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 0

Number of arguments over the Janet Jackson/Harold Bishop game: 1

Number of countries visited: 2

We are off to Argentina to check out the other side of the Falls. We are on a tour and all cram into the minibus with the overly pervy bus driver who seems quite keen to leave all the chicos behind. Luckily Kitty morphs quite well into a squirly after the last four days!

We left Brazil and entered Argentina - yay a whole country away from the Special Bus! Santana became a topic of heated debate along the way although I am pretty sure I am not supposed to bring it up again?! Apologies :) We had a truck ride and a boat ride and hopes were high that we were going to see some Toucans. Sadly no, but the boat ride made up for it somewhat when it took us through the falls, under the falls, round the falls, over the falls and we ended up absolutely drenched...thank goodness for the sunshine that day! Even though it was like being sprayed with a hosepipe and I feel I had my eyes shut for most of the time...it was still amazing!

The rest of the day we walked and the sights just kept getting better and better! Although, my boots are clearly NOT made for walking...since they broke. It was a tiring day so we ended it with dinner and some sort of impromptu planning session on how to get to Salvador...in four days, surely not?!?

Day 4 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-16T22:29:00.000Z

¨KIT I AM LUCKY IF I EVEN HIT THE BALL LET`S NOT GET INTO THE RULES¨ Vikki Re: A table tennis match

Number of hours in the car: 1 more than we hoped

Number of ice creams: 1

Contents: Five people, 4.5 bags, one body board and one guitar

Today we are visiting the Iguaçu Falls on the Brazilian side. The day starts out raining but our tight schedule does not allow us the luxury of waiting around for good weather, we are especially looking forward to the open top bus ride!

So after the naked conga in the shower we head out to the Special Bus and down to the park. The unprepared of the group pur-chase their moomin style, very fetching rainmacks and we get the bus (thankfully closed top) up to the Falls - an awe-inspiring sight to say the least. The sun managed to show it´s face, as did Burt Raccoon and all the weird insects of Brazil. We got stuck with fast food for lunch since we were unwilling to spend $R30 on salad!

The late afternoon we spent trying to sightsee and went looking for the lake and the Dam. The Dam was shut and apparently would have cost us money had it been open?! and the road signs to the lake mysteriously disappeared somewhere on route - this is the new code for we got lost! Kit had time to p-p-p-pick up a guitar on the way back to the hostel (yay!) and we went for a dip in the pool, played some table tennis, ate more food and drank more Caipirinhas.

Day 3 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-16T22:17:00.000Z

PARKING TICKET ME UP PLEASE

Number of parking tickets: 1

Number of times we failed to realise the clocks had changed: 1

Number of hours in the car: Too many

The change of the clock completely bypassed us which meant we did not get an early start, we did not check out on time and we got a parking ticket - luckily it was only for $R8 which is the equivalent of 2 British Pounds. In the midst of all the excitement we almost lost Vikkis´s head in a car window accident.

We are heading to Foz Do Iguaçu which is in completely the opposite direction to where we want to be going but apparently well worth it...we arrive in the dark, we arrive in the rain and get stalked by a man on a motorbike who Lisa and I are convinced is a policeman ready to throw us in jail for not having much of a suntan, get your bribe money out kids! Turns out he is just a man trying to get tourists to go to his hotel! After two near misses we get to the hostel just in time for the all you can eat buffet and some much recommended Caipirinhas...Vikki assures us they are made from Rum made from sugarcane but we are not convinced is not alcool which has been sifoned from the Special Bus.

Day 2 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-14T22:24:00.000Z

BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH JOHNNY WILKINSON

Number of hours in the car: Again, unrecorded so couldn´t have been too painful!

Number of times lost the car key: 1

Number of times nearly ran out of petrol: 1

The plan: Curitiba - the well-planned city

Some sterling reversing from Kit the Cat Man and we are back on the road. Next game please...´Songs with the word Rain in the title´, that´s right it is raining as we head to Curitiba, the well-planned city which turns out isn´t so well-planned afterall in light of everytime you want to go left, you cannot go left and instead have to turn right and head away from the very spot you are trying to get to.

Lucky my Dad taught me to pay attention when I was in the car because we somehow I managed to get us to this fancy looking hotel - this is the one yeah? this is the one in the budget section of our book yeah? Vikki the Negotiator worked her magic and landed us an entire suite with a shower as big as the entire bathroom we had in Santos, corridors, a bedroom AND reception rooms for almost half the price we paid in Santos! Santos Schmantos.

Rumour has it we get some sort of free coffee and snack at 6pm so off we trot...only to discover ´a snack´ is actually code for an all you can eat buffet of soup, bread, snadwiches, cake, fruit (I guess the All You Can Eat part depends on your conscience which I think I left mine in a free food basket in a hostel in Australia so...) At this point we start to contemplate if we are really getting such a good deal and is the price per person as opposed to per room??!! Hmmm! We discard these thoughts until later and go for a wander in the rain in search of some beer and wine. The lure of our luxury pad is too much so we get the drinks to takeaway in spite of the humour it caused all the staff and clientele at the cafe!

Kit teaches us a game called Scum, which to be honest still needs some clarification of the rules - but we did have fun ranking the five of us as King, Queen, Neutral, Scum and Kaiser Cheif Scum that night and for the rest of the holiday! Oh, and does anyone know Shakespeare´s surname?

Day 1 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

2007-11-14T21:53:00.001Z

A JOURNEY OF SEVEN THOUSAND KILOMETRES BEGINS WITHOUT MUCH OF A CLUE

Contents: Five people, four and a half bags and one bodyboard
Number of times the car key has been lost: 1
Hours in the car: Obviously not a particularly shocking amount since I have no record of it
The plan: There isn`t one

The story begins in Sao Paulo airport where five friends reunite (Amy cries) and are introduced to the most special of special buses (Amy cries ;) which by all accounts runs on alcool (alcohol) and Kit has already scarred by driving into a curb - what they have curbs in Brazil?

Let the games begin - first up is the Janet Jackson/Harold Bishop game...a few rounds in and Kit throws us all off with his description of some half cat/half man character/from a tv show/and a book/there are four members of the gang/he has a feline name/it is from the 90s/he is not main character/actor was in a film after the tv show/BBC2/9pm...basically you cannot believe how long it took us to figure out that Kit was Cat from Red Dwarf! Let´s move onto game number two shall we? Interpretting Portuguese road signs - oh yep, that one definitely means they are strengthening the bridge. Luckily we arrived at Sao Vicente not long after this point and the game came to an end - the one thing the book did say was DO NOT STOP AT SAO VICENTE...I am pretty sure someone piped up at this point and said ¨Shall we stop?¨, a precursor to the rest of our trip if you like - ending up in situations that we have specifically been told not to do, but did we learn...Nao!

We find our chosen hostel in Santos which turns out to be very expensive for what we get...five beds in a small room with a tiny bathroom containing shower (electrics on display), toilet and sink with no divide so that one shower in it is a fight to not get soaked whenever you enter the room...a particular problem for us squirlies who had to squat over the toilet whilst hoiking the trouser legs up and pulling the trousers down and holding the toilet paper under the arm - I thought this was supposed to be a holiday!!

When we were all ready to move out we head to the streets of Santos and almost immediately get run over on the bike track running along the beach...oops! The first cafe we come to caters for groups of four people only (i.e. the tables), no vegetarian option and when you ask for water you either get a bottle that has been previously opened or fizzy when you wanted still - Parlez-vous francais? This may have been the moment it dawned on Vikki that she may actually be living of cheese Doritos for the next three weeks! We ended up in a typical Brazilian style restaurant where you pay by the kilo...this turned out to be one of our favourite lunchtime jaunts aside from the lack of tables for more than four people!

By this time it was quite late on but we managed to spend some time sat on the beach while Kit went boarding, then back to the squat for a planning session of sorts and oh, it must be time to eat again by now surely...Lei - did you leave any room for anything else¿? We wandered to the `Old City` named so because of the presence of a cemetary and we had some pizza at a particularly unfriendly restaurant who would not understand "pizza com atum"...with hand actions/pointing/phrase books and all?? I´ll just have the pizza with heaps of cheese then please, times five! We wouldnt have known if there was any tuna/other toppings on the pizzas even if we had been successful.

A Very Big Trip in a Very Special Bus - Foreword

2007-11-04T16:26:00.000Z

First let me introduce the band - we have Kit on lead guitar and lead vocals (basically the charge of the group), Gem on practicing guitar and can therefore only participate in the one song, Lisa, Vikki and Amy on vocals (when Amy is asleep the others take over, when Lisa is peeing the others take over and when Vikki is flapping the others take over) and John on the triangle.

Just before we begin I would like to extend some advice for those thinking of visiting Brazíl; learn portuguese, do not bring more than four friends since their seating plans rarely cater for more than four seats round a table and prepare your stomach for an inundation of cheese!

¨When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable¨ Clifton Fadiman

It is not likely that the next lot of messages will embellish this quote but hindsight is a beautiful thing!

Empujar Por Las Escaledas

2007-10-12T17:06:00.000+01:00

Getting into town...be prepared for traffic like Vietnam, sitting on a train track with a train heading towards you and somehow not managing to hit anything...this kindof driving skill cannot be taught.

Moving on, we are now in Buenos Aires and it is raining and we have actually spent long enough in an internet cafe on a computer that actually works to get around to sending some emails which are long overdue. We arrived here and made it to the posh part of town and saw Evitas grave (oh, please let me have my photo next to that...in fact let me frame it and put it on a wall!) and since then it has rained but we figure we will be back here at some point so the lack of sightseeing has not been too disturbing. We have a friend of a friend here who has been very kind, i say he has been very kind...he did con us into eating cow's intestines the other night. I think i preferred the chickens feet in china. We did go for amazing ice cream afterwards though which did kindof make up for it.

Have been trying to recall my spanish from school but without too much success. In my attempt to order pizza the other day i ended up with chicken pastries. d'oh. Then there are the mosquitos who have taken a liking to Amy and me...and especially my face. In our confusion we couldn´t quite work out which currency they were working in Pesos or Dollars (although looking back now it is pretty obvious U$S15 for some laundry...naaa!) so we went to a restaurant thinking it was in dollars...ordered really stingily, paid for it on credit card because we thought we didn´t have enough money then left what we thought was a 10% tip but was in fact 25%! The waiter must have thought we were loopy :)

On the plus side we are back to paying a pittance for everything, including mosquito repellant, chicken pastries which you didnt really want to begin with, overly large tips, internet to pass some time when it is raining, cows intestines which you didnt really want to begin with...

We leave tomorrow at 7am...we dont have a bed for tonight and are going to use Pablo´s house as luggage storage while we go and experience Buenos Aires nightlife, enter Pablo (another one). His parents have been all too kind and say their house is our house...hopefully that means we can one day adopt their dog Flappy. Chip chop...must be off now.

If at first you don't succeed then skydiving isn't for you

2007-10-12T17:05:00.000+01:00

We left Nicky, our jobs, our apartment and headed to Christchurch - we had no desire to stay long there so we picked up our Jucy Rental car the next day and bid our farewells...Lake Tekapo here we come. It was not long down the road that the scenery happily morphed into mountains and lush green landscapes...the New Zealand we were hoping to see. And it only got better...we booked into a wooden lodge-style hostel in front of Lake Tekapo and at the base of a mountain. The mountain was Mount John and we managed to climb it in 30 minutes, when it actually suggested 90 minutes, what can I say apart from Professional Mountaineerers! Even the near-on vertical section at the top was no trouble for our burning lungs.

Clint, a friend from Brisbane who was also in Lake Tekapo was jumping on our Road Trip Band Wagon for the few days so we sat around waiting for him to tell us something useful, like when he could leave and where he lived...since we had very little signal on the mobile phones this meant we had to go wandering up the road and round the phone box hoping for a bar of signal or two in the freezing cold. We visited Mount Cook the next day which we would highly recommend if anyone is heading that way.

We picked Cliff, I mean Clint up the next day and headed to the South Coast Road and the promise of some more extraordinary sights...in truth we saw the Moeraki Boulders (seems that the Kiwis have taken after the Aussies in this respect and are calling rocks on beaches tourist attractions!), the steepest street in the world in Dunedin, millions of sheep, some sealions (after some several hours of searching), Milford Sound and the happening place (if you are 15) of Te Anau. Turns out we have managed to arrive in the South Island in low season (which is only a small window of opportunity between winter and summer...I don`t know how we do it). Queenstown was particularly quiet which equated to us wandering the streets a lot looking for a party that wasn´t really happening. We did find the casino and I did make some significant profits on the 5c machines without really knowing what I was doing. We went luging and ate Fergburgers and Clint finally bought a camera after what felt like months of deliberation! We found a mountain to drive up (not convinced it is in the rental car contract to do so!) only to get to the top and not be able to see through the clouds. The surprising thing being that people were still managing to ski!

To bungee or not to bungee that is the questions...No is the answer, it just takes a few hours and one detour to figure that out...by which time I am ready to push Clint off the bridge without a rope and for free :) Next stop was Wanaka and Puzzling World which was very interesting but made us feel a little sick and that evening we cooked up a storm with some Lamb`s neck curry! Not the easiest thing to do - Ayms you are culinary genius. Clint broke his new camera...noone knows how?! We dropped Clint off in FrANZ jOSEF for his next job and me and Amy walked over the glacier/iceberg while he gave himself five minutes to decide if this was the town for him...turns out it wasn´t and he is now in Auckland. Anyway, back to the iceberg...we walked half way round before we ran into a guide who told us we had our spikes done up wrongly! Tip: if you do ever do it, do the full day tour, it is not as strenuous and you do not need to be as fit as they say you do. Our evenings were spent beating Clint at pool and watching the Magic Bus folk get it on the local club.

Amy and I continued on to, yep some more rocks...this time in the shape of pancakes and then Hanmer Springs for a soak in some eggy-smelling water! We saw the seals at Kaikoura before heading to Picton to get the ferry back to the North Island.

We were reunited with Nicky in Wellington (the land of Miss Dibby) and to celebrate both we did karaoke, not once, not twice but three times and I am pretty sure there would have been more had the DJ been more sympathetic to our ´Bad Singers Trying to Sing´ campaign! We saw the Crater´s of the Moon, Lake Taupo, Thermal Wonderland, the natural phenomenon of the Geyser which they add soap to to make explode and Rotorua - extreme sports, check. We launched ourselves into a giant inflatable ball with some water and rolled down a hill...Amy and Nicky also swooped. We would have gone to Hobbiton but the tour was a little expensive so we followed (private-eye style) the bus instead until it (sadly) turned down a private road, we definitely made it to the Shire though.

Back in Auckland there was one final Sunday Session in Danny´s...thank you to all involved and thank you Nicky for having us to stay...and thank you Diego for all your advice on Buenos Aires!

An Ode to Nicky Jones

2007-09-29T10:29:00.000+01:00

English, Irish, Scottish, Wellish
Man, three day hangovers are hellish
That's what you get after a ten week binge
Oh, and a stalker with a (conveniently rhyming) surname like Singh

It all started in a place called ARTA
Where thert motto goes 'drink now, corro after'
Its common knowledge you work better under the influence
So a quick nap at your desk shouldn't really affect your conscience

It really all started with one glass of wine
Some bubbles then a vodka diet coke and squeeze of lime
That was the night Chief One Bottle was born
Err, I think that Carni over there has got the horn

Staying upright isn't so easy we found
Mud or tiles - we somehow manage to lay down on the proper cold ground
Now your stealing lines from that song by Damien Rice
Ahoy hoy, go stick your head in a bucket of eggy ice

Do you like Piha Coladas and Tuesday group?
Or getting caught in the rain and gloworm poop?
Let's not talk about the Auckland weather
But feel free to stand under my umbrella ella ella (sweet as bro eh eh eh)

It's so cold in the Globe it's so cold it's so cold
I need some warmth, anyone seen that nineteen year old?
Failing that we'll go to the bar of D
Do you know there's an icebox where my heart used to be?

Twenty-nine drinks and a Subway later
I'll inhale some nuggets as well thanks waiter
"Here's fifty cents for the extra sauce Miss Jones"
"You don't get things for free round here you know"

Everyone in - spirit fingers, hairy legs and Michael Jackson's nose
Taxi! Please drive us round in circo's to get us to the casino
Ding ding, bring it on black twenty eight
"Seriously - you're not allowed to take photos in here mate"

"I'm talking with the man in the mirror" "Who?"
You're actually talking to the lady in the coat of blue
"I'm asking him to change his ways" "What?"
We are intoxicated by the door "Get out you lot"

We've had the time of our lives and that's all there is to tell
Nicky - please enjoy your blockbuster one night rental
Make sure you tell him that Justice is com-ing
And we will continue this rhyme at our next gather-ing :)

Working nine to five

2007-07-16T00:42:00.000+01:00

And then to getting a job...yip, it's that time again in our travels when money is running low and the NEED (not the motivation) to get a job is high.

Unfortunately our first destination Christchurch had very little to offer on the job front or the nice weather front so Auckland here we come! Not before we managed half a walking tour of the city, a catch up with Clint the pasta eating machine and a share in 3l of wine. NB. must remember that boxed wine in NZ is not like boxed wine in Australia, i.e. it is made with normal wine-like ingredients instead of fish and eggs, it is high in alcohol and actually tastes nice - a lethal combination and we had the hangovers to prove it.

HOSTELS IN NZ: The first hostel we found had a brilliant energy saving system where they had their heaters on a timer for an hour at a time - in the middle of winter?! This meant you had to get up from whatever you were doing every hour on the hour if you had any hope of keeping the lounge/kitchen/bedroom remotely warm, Amy and I went for the lazy option and just had two duvets instead. The walls may as well have not been there for all the good it did. We moved out.

In the first hostel in Auckland I managed to get the top bunk above a particularly rotund man who snored and shook the bed every time he breathed out - it was like sleeping on jelly. This hostel also advertised its presence of windows which we found particularly laughable until...

The second hostel was called the Fat Camel and didn't specify it's abundance of windows so when we got lumbered in a box room for four people we started to catch on...it wouldn't have been soo bad had a big, smelly man not moved in and made the room stink. This chap was also in training for the Snoring World Cup and I have concluded that bunk beds in NZ are some of the most unstable since whenever this guy moved I felt a bit seasick. Even the free evening meal and our new found friend Yoshi were not enough to keep us here. We moved out.

And now we are the proud owners of our very own dinky apartment in the City. Dinky being the operative word! It is on the 11th floor (almost the penthouse!), we have excellent views over the City, our own rooms for the first time in 18 months, the smallest dishwasher you have ever seen, a lounge come kitchen come diner, a general lack of working lightbulbs, touch lamps (a very exciting find) and le piece de la resistance - electric blankets!

Amy is working for the Government Department of Travel and I am working at Telecom - nout to interesting by all accounts but I did manage to get me a job in the busiest bar in town just to challenge my ability to survive on a lot less hours sleep! It's mostly been fun so far though, contending with drunk people who think they know better than you, who also think its a good idea to get it on in the disabled bathroom?! Or against the bar?! Or in the confessional booth with only a very small curtain for protection...

I think the blog for the next eight weeks is going to become one big thank you letter to the wonderful Emily and Paul - part of the Campbell Soup Clan don't ya know :) We have only been here for a few weeks and they have already offered us a haven from the world of backpacking, homecooked food, a Marian Keyes library service, our very own private tour guide, a lesson or two in the All Blacks and tried and tested, guaranteed good restaurants to go to. It has been superb and it only gets better with the promise of weekends away, parties and I even heard the word mansion mentioned at one point!! THANK YOU!

Leaving on a jet plane....AGAIN!

2007-06-16T12:25:00.000+01:00

And then to Kiwi Land...well not quite - there was a brief interval in between arriving in Darwin and departing Christchurch. This part of my life is called trying to squeeze the thus far untravelled three quarters of Australia into just under four weeks...mission impossible?!

Two cheap flights and a day long trip on one of the most famous train journeys in the world (although don't expect any Australian to have heard about it) - The Ghan and we have come full circle and arrived back in Melbourne. A few points to be made on the in-between moment...

We paid a painful amount of money to do a one day tour to Kakadu in the Northern Territory which turned out to be an OAP spectacular...I am all for air conditioned buses and walking at a snail's pace so that everyone can keep up but not when it means we have to scrimp and save on the amount that you see...so in the end we didn't see all that much of the park, the river and some aboriginal rock art , we had to hang out with the sandal and sock wearing crew and the day was topped off with wine and cheese...brilliant I thought - I'll get my moneys worth here OR I'll eat so much cheese that I end up being sick...niice! It didn't even compare to the previous day when we paid a fraction of the cost to drive through all the same countryside to go and see the Jumping Crocs and also managed to see Sea Eagles (almost seagulls if you say it but defintely not quite as exciting), Kites, baby crocs AND the added bonus of holding Medusa the Python (the prospect of dying at the hands of the crocs was enough for Ayms without throwing the Python into the mix as well :)

Our three day outback tour to Uluru managed to begin on my birthday, pleasingly at 6am! Not the best time to encounter our fellow traveller Ian who talked a lot and loudly and disturbed the already difficult task of tryingt to sleep on a mini bus. The rest of the 21 people consisted of Amy's neighbour who was ALWAYS the last one to get on the bus due to some fabulous photo opportunity that no-one else had spotted, Frenchie - hilarious and did all the walks with her handbag in tow!! the little blonde German dude, the tall blonde German dude, the German dude with bad hair...you get the idea! We became professional stirrers, ate camel bolognaise, slept out under the stars in the freezing cold, climbed and walked over every rock formation we could find, watched the sun set and rise from every possible angle and of course there was the obligatory goon. All of this ended in another drunken night out back in Alice Springs and therefore another hungover flight the following morning to Perth.

To the person or persons who suggested that when you pack your backpack you seperate everything with plastic bags....you deserve to be shot or worse, you deserve to have to spend a night in a dorm with these people who took your advice whole-heartedly. Because in the same breathe these are the people that always feel the need to get up at 6:30am.....AHHHHHHH!

Imagine the most annoying fly in the world...then imagine this fly went and got himself a training camp for all the other flies in the world and they all graduated as equally as annoying flies...then imagine these flies congregated in West Australia.

From Perth we hired a car which I did under the pretence of being 24 - apparently the birthday bypassed me so much I haven't even acknowledged the turning of 25?! Aye well, luckily the guy in the shop spotted the error and discounted the relevant amount of money off the bill - a good job really since we chipped the windscreen (not my fault) and had to pay for the damage. We were planning to go a little way North then a little way South but in the end decided to follow the sunshine and went all the way to Monkey Mia via Kalbarri, Pinnacles, River Hutt Province, York and Freemantle. A lot of boring straight roads and not a lot to keep us entertained in between places apart from our brand new purchase of a Flirty Dancing CD - played to death by the end of the trip. We had one hairy moment when we almost ran out of petrol on a stretch of road with no service station for 110km, luckily brainbox and brainboxer had the initiative to drive at a snails pace in order to convserve petrol - this didn't stop the mild rush of panic though when the red warning light came on and we still had 30km to go...AHHH! Luckily we rolled into the services and carried on our merry way now free from the fear we may have to hitch a ride with some unshaven-ute-driving-outback-loving-aussie!

The final days were spent in the company of the one and only Miss DIbby - exciting news people she is due to be moving to the UK so you will all have the pleasure of meeting our new-found friend :) We ate Grill'd burgers, listened to Paul play guitar, went out in St Kilda - just like the old days and a good reminder of all the good stuff we are once again leaving behind.

But who in these circumstances could not at least be touched from time to time by the ridiculous joy of existing?

2007-05-30T10:25:00.000+01:00

I would really like to put the last few months of Brisbane into some sort of blog but I fear it is going to descend into comments like 'Don't be shy, show us your pie', ginger nips, the fork shortage, the naked carwash, Jesus...in Dirty Dancing?! and 'Who the *&!@ is Dennis?', oh, and I would have to tell you about the dude who ate a packet of noodles and SIXTEEN fish fingers for his dinner one night!!!! and there would news about some of the worst television we have ever seen including 'Who wants to be a Superhero?' (after watching that show, not me) and a race against forty midgets and elephant to see who could pull and airplane a certain distance the quickest?! (The elephant won by the way) and after all that no-one would want to read this blog again...so to save you from the boredom and us from all the explanation I shall move on quickly...

So Miss Nicole was the first to leave, to soften the blow Em and Saul moved back into the hostel and a couple more months past and James left and the next day it was our turn! Our last night 'party' consisted of Amy going to work, and me dressing up like a pink flamingo to go and see...that's right...P!nk! Thumbs up to all involved, Vicky for forgetting her I.D, Em and Vic for the ridiculous outifts, Vic for getting caught with her glo in the dark bangles and having them confiscated and Em for smuggling hers in...arriving back at the hostel we found all the guys completely drunk, what followed was a world cup pool tournament, goon shots, many-an-important conversation, P!nk reenactments...and finally the decision to go to bed! For some reason I decided to set the alarm for 9:56am when checkout was at 10am! Surely, four minutes is plenty of time to get up, pack everything we own and get out of the room, no Ayms? Turns out Saul knocked on the door at 9:54am and that was plenty of time...sleeping in the clothes from the night before really helped speed things up :)

So more sad g'byes in Brisbane...like leaving home once again, it never gets any easier but mine and Amy's large amount of luggage caused much amusement and saved us all the tears :) I have to say Amy even closing her bag was against all laws of nature let alone shutting it and managing to attach the little rucksack on the front as well. Luckily Saul and Trev were there to chauffeur the bags to the bus so it wasn't really until we got to the airport that the "oh no, are they going to be over the limit? are they going to charge us a million dollars because of it?"

This experience was topped off when I bent down to get something out of my hand luggage (also overweight I'd say), lost the balance with the rucksack still on my back and fell over...d'oh! Between tears, Amy managed to get a picture :) The final weigh-in turned out ok - we are now up to 20.6kg (compared to 18kg in Asia!) It's all necessary stuff we swear...need it all for New Zealand :) We make it to our gate and luckily get distracted from our sadsack states by this kid who enjoyed commentating on the world around him..."plane"..."plane"..."plane"..."plane", the funny bit was when the trucks went past..."truck"..."truck"..."truck"..."truck", unfortunately he hadn't quite gotten a handle on the TR part of the word and it came out a little differently if you get what I mean - I think his Dad was pleased when the planes went by again!

With our money-saving heads on we thought that since we were arriving at the airport at 1am then we would sleep there the night and go to the hostel in the morning - the actual sleeping part wasn't all that bad...like a bizarre movie when you open your eyes every hour or so and the scene has completely changed from the last time; men in suits, men snoring, families bedding down for the night...now here's where the plan failed, the shuttle bus only shows up when the big flights come in which would have meant staying at the airport for another four hours...no thanks! So we ended up spending the money we would have saved on the accomodation on a taxi - brilliant!

Finally we make it Darwin City and our beds :) Then Amy gets ill...Gem turns into a big ball of sweat and it's like we never left Asia! We have already been to the Deckchair cinema (it does what it says on the tin!) and got eaten by mossies (doesn't say that on the tin!) and we managed to get there early enough to sit through the Top End Tourism Committee meeting...seriously if this is an accurate insight into the folk of Darwin then it's a good job we are only staying for five days...the most interesting guy was the man who is involved with a film to do with Darwin and Nicole Kidman...but then again he had no personality so I'm not sure anyone was actually listening to his drone.

We found the 'place to be' on our first night - called The Vic and ended up taking part in the quiz. There was just the two of us on our team (FC Hammer)...we wont count the guy standing at the bar behind us who gave us all the answers :) Unfortunately it was one of those quizzes that involved participation and at one point or another me and Amy both ended up on the stage "playing games"...not really our style but the dancing afterwards was much fun until they played the birdie song..................then we had to leave!

News Just in...Siamese Twins Seperated for a Two Week Trial

2007-04-29T06:22:00.000+01:00

Soup,

In your absence the skies of Brisbane turned grey and the rains came down - much to the delight of the Dambusters I am sure! Fortunately though we are now back to sunshine :)

Yesterday on the way to work I had to stand at the traffic lights for a full three minutes waiting for the green man even though there was no cars on the road (apart from one lone police car also waiting at the lights)...I feared if I used my initiative and crossed without the aid of the green light the police dude my jump out of his car and scream something like "freeze! this is the jay-walking investigation unit and you are under arrest for not spending half your life waiting at traffic lights when there is clearly no need"...love Brisbane!

Oh, and the saga of the annoying roomies continues...after my joyous 12 hour shift yesterday I got home to my (just realised how dodgy that may look to the folk at home - oops!) bed and just as I am about to drop off the girl above me's phone goes off...it was like some vibrating Dad's Army theme tune and I was totally confused by it all...THEN...she answered the phone!?!!?!?!?!? What a loser...I was shocked and appalled...so then she hung up and I settled in again to be awoken two seconds later since it appears she was just calling the person back...HELLO! It was at this point when she decided she should probably take her and her telephone coversation outside of the room...

Oh my goodness! Right, miss you heaps and just had the most manic day at work EVER - service nil, cheerfulness of staff double nil, efficiency of service off the scale (at the wrong end!!) I got ferrero rocher though for my artistic chalk board writing talents...woudl say I'd save you one but two weeks is a long way away ;)

Catch ya later Belle...hello to the Robster xx

PS. There is now an egg timer in the shower - I think it is four minutes long - I failed miserably this morning at keeping within the time limits btu this afternoon's shower was much more successful ;)

What do you do when there is a rat in your kitchen?

2007-04-23T23:33:00.001+01:00

Our next instalment of “I’M VERY EXCITED” was our trip to Moreton Island with the gang from the hostel – Amy “oooo-ooooh, eeeeee-ooooh”, Nicole “I just farted”, Gemma “I’m going to marry this box of goon”, Em “I’m not a !@#$ing donkey”, Jonny the idiot, Saul “I hate having my picture taken”, “Deadly” James and moi. It was an early start and we were all gathered at 7am – a little too loud and hyper for the early hour and (I assume) all the other hostel guests. When our pickup was 30 seconds late we started panicking…

Side Story…
Saul and Jamie work at the hostel and have been playing Handy Andy for the last week or so – painting etc. They took the initiative one day to remove the skanky old cabinet in the men’s bathroom and put it in the skip. Christine – the owner thought this was hilarious…since the cabinet was actually an antique (in a men’s bathroom?!) - A ‘Shabby Chic’ don’t you know! They managed to save the cabinet from the skip and returned it to its home. Then James decided to paint the antique since it was looking a bit worn (as antiques are supposed to, no?!) So we were planning to do a runner for the day before Christine got the chance to berate Jamie for un-antiquing her antique! Luckily, she thinks everything Saul and Jamie do is priceless so she didn’t say anything (maybe she realised that after years in a men’s bathroom no doubt being ‘sprinkled’ on and half a day in a skip really wasn’t the best care package for a Shabby Chic so at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter if the bottom half is sanded blue and the top half is Dulux bright white glossy acrylic)

Day packs and goon in hand the only thing that was missing was our trusty Ghetto Blaster. Eventually the 4x4 showed up with our chauffeur for the day, Justin, for the purposes of this exercise we will call him Hungover Justin! I’m not sure who was more pleased we were all on this trip together – us, the overly excitable A Team, or Justin who had to do very little schmoozing/commentary/tour guide like activities all day since we pretty much entertained ourselves…although I am guessing our incessant noise, laughing and occasional screaming wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by a sore head! The ride to the ferry (said in a bizarre pikey Leicester accent) was not as smooth as we would have liked and Em had trouble staying upright for this part of the journey – it didn’t bode well for the day-trip-to-the-world’s-second-largest-sand-island-including-a-lot-of-bumpy-driving part of the day. Not to worry Amy’s general upper body area was on hand for Em to steady herself with every time we went over a hump and much to everyone’s surprise it was in fact Saul that almost lost his head through the roof when we was doing an energetic impression of Em bouncing around the car and we hit a bump! Free drinks and biscuits on the trip over really perked us up (some more) and after Nicole’s 2.5 sugars kicked in she joined Em’s “talk as loudly as you can” campaign! And her own “let’s shake people who aren’t being as loud/excited as me!” campaign.

Our first activity was Sand Tobogganing. The idea of which sounded very appealing when you are looking at photos of people elegantly sliding down sand dunes with an awesome view to take in on the way…in reality you walk to the top of a sand dune – no mean feat with a piece of ply wood (or part of a wardrobe) under your arm, then stand contemplating all the things that could go wrong and wonder how anyone in the photos ever made it look that easy. Maybe it was just that none of us were particularly good at it, but no-one got to the bottom of the hill and stood up jumping for joy and ran to the top of the dune to rush down one more time – in fact one by one we subjected ourselves to a face full of sand with comedy results (my only regret is that we were all too considerate of each others pain at this point to take any photos :) Dare devil Nicole went first and survived mostly unscathed. Then Jonny, then somehow I got roped into going – I never knew your eyes could fill with anything other than tears…somehow I managed to fit a desert of sand in there as well…

You can’t do anything once you get to the bottom - you can’t get up because you can’t see to go anywhere, you can’t open your eyes for fear the avalanche of sand sat on your eyebrows will come cascading down into them, you can’t wipe the sand away because your hands and clothes are also covered in sand and since sand tobogganing with a rucksack full of useful goodies (like water, towel, insurance certificate, goggles, cotton buds, ear plugs…) to help you out you are stuck improvising with the small square of material on your person that maybe didn’t get hit with sand and hope that the sand monster which has escaped from inside you will miraculously disappear. We were a right mess - mascara down our faces (AMY YOU’VE GOT SOME MAKEUP UNDER YOUR EYES!), cuts and scrapes, sore eyes, spitting sand…it is safe to say we all looked like Jiggin’ Schnitzels and we all could have been used as human sandpaper (maybe to help sort out the Shabby Chic cabinet were it required!)

The other unfortunate thing that happened at this point was that Jonny lost his wallet and his phone, which had been safely (?) tucked away in his pocket whilst he was ripping up the sand. The wallet was recovered however the phone has been lain to rest in the cemetery of sand, never to be seen again.

Another bumpy ride later and we made it to the Fountain of Youth (according to our tour guide) – a cove on the Island with a wall of rock acting as a barricade against the huge breaking waves. Good job it was there since the wash from the waves had enough force enough to push you around the rock pool and your bikini bottoms round your ankles J Either way we were all incredibly grateful to be able to wash some of the sand and sweat and blood off from the mornings tobogganing.

Then what we had all been waiting for – lunch! The first time all morning we shut up for longer than a minute.

After soaking up some more of the fountain of youth (mostly in the form of sand collecting in our pants) we headed off to the North Headland and a stroll around the lighthouse. We saw some turtles…from a distant…well, from the top of the cliff…not even the cameras maximum zoom could pick those babies up very well J

Next we headed to the Blue Lagoon and another much needed soak – the lake here is full of tea tree and is supposedly very good for your skin, so we frolicked around in it for a while…playing a rather violent game of Piggy in the Middle with a Frisbee (and very extensive rule book!) in which Emma actually hit Amy in the face and made her bleed whilst trying to drown her so as to regain possession. Oh, and Saul got another wack to the head too! We are expecting to blossom into glowing specimens of our former selves in the next few days with all the youthfulness and tea tree…we’ll let you know.

And that was us – the ferry ride home seemed to take forever and we were fading fast it has to be said…even the free afternoon tea couldn’t liven us up at this point. Shame since the plan for the evening wasn’t to go back to the hostel and go to bed but to head out to wish Nicole a proper farewell with some drunken memories attached! Needless to say out came the goon and we were soon all back on it and being utterly ridiculous…Bye Nicole – you are an absolute darling and thank you for making Brisbane sooo much fun J We’ll catch you in your Wolverhampton village sometime soon chicken – enjoy the party xx

To the left to the left, everything you own in a box to the left

2007-03-21T07:53:00.001Z

It’s been another little while but finally we have something to say! We have officially survived one year away travelling round the world and are now on the home straight…six months to go people and the FC Hammerettes will be back touring in your town J

The next landmark event worth mentioning (in amongst all this working we are so eagerly doing!) was Easter weekend which saw the Looky Ladies reunited in Melbourne for 60 hours of unadulterated fun! That’s Miss Dibby for anyone who needs a reminder…the third Trevor’s angel – she is once, twice, three times a lady!

After a particularly late night on Thursday for both Amy and I at separate ends of Brisbane town we started the long weekend off by waking up at 9:50am and having to be packed and moved out by 10am…even our permanent residency at the hostel couldn’t sway a couple more sneaky hours in bed from the man in charge - James L So we set up camp in the downstairs T.V. room and didn’t move for the rest of the day – since we had all of our stuff with us to be put into storage it was a good eye-opener as to how much we have collected over the last few months and how it is all never going to fit back into the rucksack! Parents – prepare for some post!

We eventually made it to Melbourne, to Spencer Street, to Prahran, to Chapel Street and to Dibby J Since all three of us had started the weekend a little too early – we decided to skip the planned booze cruise and had a pyjama party instead – lots to catch up on and all that good stuff! In fact it was a relatively un-drunken weekend all round and surprisingly most relaxing. We played lawn bowls AKA sat in the park, ate good food and went for afternoon drinks in the sunshine. Aside from apparently being invisible to every other pedestrian in Melbourne who you had to practically be standing on top of before they moved out the way (and not even then sometimes) and it was every taxi driver’s first day on the job - it was ace - eh! Amy and I went to see John Mayer on Saturday night who was brilliant as ever – no sign of Miss Simpson in the crowd but Amy did spy Dean from Australian Pop Idol on her way to the bar – very exciting (for us!) :-/

It was a relatively un-drunken weekend until about Sunday night the evening began with the sunset over St Kilda beach, a civilised dinner party with chilli from a can (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it) and high quality goon and it ended in a trolley and a taxi ride home at 4:45am. What time do we have to leave to go to the airport again Ayms? Oh, that’s right – 6am – genius. An hour later and I had to practically beat Amy to get her off the couch which she and Dibby had collapsed on after giving up on trying to play the 80’s dancing video at 5am. Somehow we managed to get packed and into a taxi on time and my ever-lasting image of Miss Dibs will be her standing on the pavement half asleep, half drunk, wrapped in a blanket and singing J That day, amongst the more appropriate items of clothing and bedding she put her remote control through the washing machine - eh!

We got on the Skybus and it was at this point that I decided to check the flight information?! Just to add to the day’s fun, turns out our flight is scheduled a whole 25minutes earlier than what I thought it was…panic stations everyone! Another story to add to the ever-growing list of ‘running through the airport’ anecdotes we seem to becoming the lead roles in. We did manage to find some time to spend a ridiculous amount of dollars on a 2 hour old egg and bacon muffin and a stale croissant! Where’s MacD’s when you need it huh?! Not in Melbourne airport for future reference.

When we arrived back at the hostel we found out we had been put in a dorm with some smelly boys and quickly set to work revising that decision…we were fortunate enough to get back into OUR room the next night and have settled right back in since J We spent the rest of the day recuperating in the T.V. lounge, like we had never been away.

Never forget where you've come here from, Never pretend that its all real, Someday soon this will be someone elses dream

2007-03-21T07:52:00.000Z

I'm sure the next question on your lips is aside from all the working - how exactly are Gem and Amy having fun without spending any money...we play cards - mostly Cheat which I'm not so good at but Amy is worse, something about a huge grin on her face when she lays the cards down! Sh1thead (no Gravesend School for Boys rules here I'm afraid Kit!), watching gheckos stalk insects, sweating stemming from the walk to work (with the aim of saving more money), laughing at Irish guys and English girl, drunk on goon having discussions on religion and history of own countries, watching Irish guys fight outside hostel (not as interesting as it sounds), betting on which Irish guy will be kicked out the next morning for being rowdy, betting on the time Clint and Will actually made it work at the weekends.

Brisbane is in a drought and is apparently destined to run out of water in two weeks according to our hostel (reality is 18 months) so you are only allowed two minute showers, to compensate for the lack of time allowed in shower people take several a day! We joined a library with a messed up "locating book" system (trying to recall lessons in library terminology but cannot) where you inevitably find the book you are looking for, not on the shelf in alphabetical order but on the 'recently returned section' AKA 'these are the books that folk have dropped off and we cannot be bothered to put them away so you should spend your afternoon looking through this pile on the off chance that the book you are looking for has just been returned', must mention that this section of library takes up most of library!

We are now the pikeys that raid the free food basket everyday in the hope of winnning lottery and finding bag of pasta or spaghetti! Woohoo, a saving of 85cents :) We played Ludo one night as well which was grand although took forever, anyone remember is it one dice or two you are supposed to play with? We go to bed most nights about 9:30-10pm and still wake up tired?! And the reason (without knowing it) that we came to Brisbane - so that Amy's dreams from 14 years ago could come true - when she met Take That in the Queens Street Mall! I've never seen anyone so excited about anything as she comes strolling down the road brandishing a signed CD for the bargain price of $6!

...Life would lose it's thrill...

2007-03-21T07:50:00.000Z

Amy and I have lain to rest the magic skateboards for a while and have substituted them with work - that's right we are back to cultivating the bags under the eyes and trying to work as much as possible so we can earn as much as possible so we can save as much as possible and travel as much as possible!!

We have settled into Brisbane, Brissie, Bris-Bane, Bris Vegas fairly well - the question on most people's lips is why? Well here, they have jobs and many other people like us, who also have no money to have a life and have to resort to the goon for a good time (Defn:- GOON; Cheap wine bought by the 4litre box, tastes rank until about the 6th glass by which time all your taste buds have recoiled into submission, also made from fish and eggs or fish eggs, but is incredibly cheap if not mentioned that before - 5 British pounds for four litres). In theory there will be less temptation here to go out and spend the much needed bucks?! We'll keep you posted.

Week one - Amy, reception extraordinaire found a job in the agency she signed up with and Hays is now much better for it, the non-existent room-booking system has been whipped into shape (as have all the staff who use it!) and basically they all love her and think she is brilliant - as do we all. I started my "career" off in Brisbane as a Data Entry Slave - job to last anywhere between two weeks and three months, since data entry is my forteit I managed to finish the assignment in a week which didn't work out quite so well for me because then I was unemployed.

Week 2, Amy settles further into her job and I embrace unemployment and contemplate how long it will take before the desperation is enough to put Macd's on the list of potential employers?! Besides working, we are back to fulfilling our Recommended Daily Allowances of films/Will & Grace/SOuthpark/Family Guy/Whose Line is it Anyway? And we are very active members of the NO NOODLES CAMPAIGN!

I finally got a job in the offices of Roche Mining...am project assistant or office mathematician as am fast becoming known - something to with a maths degree?! I'm not sure where they got that from! T'is always good to see that from office to office wherever you are in the world the bitching and moaning is always a constant comfort! I am ashamed to admit there is a Scottish guy here who in the beginning I could not understand - I soon came to realise that it was less of the accent, more of the sense of humour I was having trouble picking up on, seriously, it is sometimes a good thing that people laugh at their own jokes so you know when you should be laughing along with them - ha ha ha! And just like buses - as soon as you've got one another one shows up, turns out though it is just about possible to take both buses in the same week and still survive the journey! So I now work as a waitress (in a cocktail bar...not really!) in a restaurant called the jazzy cat cafe and Amy managed to get a job in an Irish bar just in time for Paddy's Day, she worked 12 hours with half an hour break and came home with no feet...Amy Campbell Soup - I don't think I can do the horrors you endured justice myself so if you would like to explain to our fans back home nows the time.... :) (Amy says ?!&*!!?%@!?) ....This prompted me to go shopping and I managed to buy a woolly hat(?!) even though a) I have no budget for woolly hats and b) it's around 30 degrees here everyday. BUT it will come in handy when we get to New Zealand - managed to find some cheap flights at the end of June - "we're doin' it Harry, we're really doin' it!"

Everyone meet everyone...Being in one spot for three months definitely has an upside - that we meet some more quirky people! There is/was Clint and Will - Car washers for Europcar, always late for work, comedians, potential married couple and have now left to pursure other car washing ventures in Cairns. Gemma AKA Arietty from the Borrowers (TV Programme, not film), her man Johnny and they both work in the Irish Bar around the corner from the hostel (very useful). The Fabulous Nicole(...papa?) She is not french but from Birmingham, had an accident with some hair bleach and a bag full of clothes once, works as night manager/irish mob controller at the hostel, given up anything sweet for lent and is pretending to be on a fresh food diet recommended by Irish Jamie. Irish Jamie, our first roommate and a joy to be around, I can even understand him! A labourer by day and night manager of the hostel by night. Kate, daytime manager of hostel has since moved on to Noosa to avoid evil stepmother/owner of the hostel.

Then there is the day to day unexpected entertainment provided by new people in our room...The Air-Con Wars - how long into the night will it be before someone switches the air-con off and how long into the night before someone switches the fan off, then exactly how similar to a sauna will our room be like in the morning. We had two Canadian girls stay - they were excellent, Adam and Eve - chat-a-lots and hung pair of pants on a hanger for all to see?! German guy who fell off top bunk the first night! Most of the above also had trouble figuring out how to open the door to our room, which admittedly has two handles but still isnt that complicated to figure out - still, it has caused me and Amy much amusement.

Since you've been gone...

2007-03-16T08:15:00.000Z

The Australian Government, Canberra has issued this statement:

We would like to send our utmost appreciation to a gentleman called Adam Barton, before his visit to our country - Australia and especially Queensland was in a drought for coming up seven years. Scientists believe the water would have run out in a couple of weeks (others believe this is just a scare tactic on posters in hostels to discourage backpackers from taking showers longer than two minutes) if something was not done. Then as fate would have it, Mr Barton graced us with his presence and sure enough the rains came with him.

Weathermen around the world have been baffled by this - whether it was stowed in his rucksack, brought on by the rain dancing or from one of those many 'out of body' experiences he seemed to have twice daily (some people believe these "naps" were in fact visits to the rain Gods) either way we thank you from the bottom of our hearts, the water supplies have been replenished and we now have enough water to get by another seven years.

See ya later aligator

2007-03-16T08:11:00.002Z

TO Byron Bay and sure enough some sunshine. Adam, pro-body-boarder whipped out some moves in the sea - it is the quickest we have seen Adam move since he got here, the prospect of sun, sea, sand, no rain, surf...the excitement lasted all of 24 hours by which time boredom of the beach, boarding, sunbaking had set in - who said girls were difficult to please?

That evening we took a romantic stroll along the beach, well more like to the beach where it was dark and windy so we opted for more food and drink (sounds like we should be about the size of a house now right?) and then Cheeky Monkeys. And guess what night it is...!? Coyote Ugly night! I don't think it was a bad thing that by the itme we got there we had missed all the girls cos Adam didn't have too much space left for extra photos after the last incident with girls dancing on the bar! Hopefully those 300 that you took the first time will be enough to keep you going Adamski! I crashed out at about 2am and so am not too sure how the others got on but CCTV footage places them on the steps outside the bathroom nearer 3 or 4am scoffing cold pizza and warm beer...happy days :)

We managed to get ourselves another room next to the reception and all the noise! But it was the overly conscientious cleaner that finally got us out of our beds the next day. Adam went to hire a bike - well he told the guy he wanted a bike then went to the bank to get the deposit...by the time he got back the guy had given the bike away to someone else, charming! Body boarding it is then! By the time me and Amy got to the beach and the allocated meeting point, Adam was nowhere to be seen. We scoured the beach for a blue towel and pair of trainers, then we scoured the beach for a pasty white slim fella but found neither. Eventually we gave up and started sunbathing, he emerged from nowhere with a bike helmet in tow. He looked a little tired at that point but that was nothing compared to when he got back to the hostel covered in oil and dirt - good bike ride to the lighthouse dude?

Back to Brisbane and a much better hostel (well, a room really far away from reception, and air-con) which is now mine and Amy's home. We spent the day doing chores, presents, photos then took a boat trip through the city. We were pretty tired from the hectic schedule of eating/sleeping/eating etc so nap #406 of the hols and we finally made it out in the evening for the last supper (before the noodle diet starts again) and a (not-so) classy backpackers bar where we danced stupidly, sang badly, drank too much, Adam took some photos, the bouncer didn't appreciate Adam's photography skills and we left shortly after that, noone is sure whether that decision was forced or not! Hmmm!

And that's it...l'histoire d'Adam...he left Oz with a very heavy bag (we hope you all appreciated the effort that went into buying and getting all that wine home!?) and once again me and Ayms were alone :(

Just like I predicted...

2007-03-16T08:11:00.001Z

We ran into (it was planned) Amy's Aunt Linda and Uncle Alec in Cairns much to our delight...and the delight of our stomachs. We went for some civilised food and drinks and it was a most pleasant evening - to Alec and Linda, thank you thank you thank you :) After that, Adam was ready to be horizontal again so off to bed we go.

The next day - we still had high hopes that the rain would die down, the floods would disappear, the roads would open and we would still manage to get a bus to Airlie Beach for our Whitsundays Trip...so Adam booked a flight from Airlie to Brisbane so he would make his flight home in time. "A little hasty" you may be thinking - well that indeed was the case, it's only money right?! We spent the afternoon swimming in the lagoonand went for an 'as much as you can pile onto a small plate' asian buffet. In the evening we headed to P.J. O'Briens for a couple, they had a live band and for Adam...ladies dancing on the bar! He got a little snap happy but unfortunately missed the moment in the competition (for non-professional dancers, i.e. drunk girls from the crowd) when a girl just fell off the bar! One second she was there, the next she was gone. It was a good night although we all managed to leave the bar alone with no bearings whatsoever. I was the first to get back to the hostel and usefully sent Amy a minute by minute text update of Adam's whereabouts...Adam is not here, Adam is not here, Adam is still not here, Adam is here and taking photos of my bum!?

Another rainy day and Macd's was the only thing going to get us through the morning, in fact food was the only thing going to get us through the day...we tried to upload some of Adam's 10million megapixel photos but managed to do about 6 in an hour - so back to the hostel and back to napping/wacthing tele/eating pizza, mmm! In the absence of any sun on Monday (the last day we could travel to Airlie Beach) Plan B went out the window as did Adam's pre-booked flight. Plan C - back to the Bellview Motel reception desk and the lovely Betty and Evan. I'm sure Evan was incredibly pleased after all our to-ing and fro-ing to hear the words cancel cancel cancel! Our only saving grace in the midst of it all was the the lady who took our booking for the Whitsundays didn't take our Credit Card details otherwise we would have been out of pocket by $700! Instead we used the money to leave Cairns and head back to Brisbane - a wise decision we thought. Plan Z to drive to Byron Bay where the sunshine is almost guaranteed :) The long awaited departure flight was all good, Adam 'the charmer' Barton decided he deserved the window seat on the return flight since on the way out he had shut the visor and gone to sleep.

In Brisbane we settled into a hostel for the night, got a room right next to reception (which opened at 7am) with thin walls, no air-con but instead a fan which moved slower than Adam on a slow day. So we left and headed out for some - you guessed it, food. Brisbane is another Australian city which has fallen prey to the myth that people don't need to eat after 8pm unless it's in a really expensive restaurant or in Macd's. We eventually found a random Asian/Burger place willing to serve us and Adam even got a side of pickled salty cabbage, mmm s'nice! We stopped for a couple of drinks on the way back in the hope of knocking ourselves out so as not to be disturbed by the reception opening but alas it was not meant to be, 7am and the phone starts ringing and ringing and ringing, the hostel isn't really that big yet the reception guy manages to be on the other side of the world everytime it rings and takes an age to get to it - WE HAVE OUR OWN ALARM CLOCK THANKS VERY MUCH NOW SHUT UP AND _____ ___!

Plan A

2007-03-16T07:25:00.000Z

One evening we went to a backpacker feeding farm for some cheap food and this evening's entertainment will be GOldfish racing...or Goldfish torture as we would like to call it. The idea goes...the crowd bids for a fish (i.e. George W. Fish - most hated fish in the world, Lord Windsor - inbred fish from England, Paddy the drunk, Silver Fin from New Zealand, Sushi from Japan, Dirty Sanchez the most disgusting fish etc. etc.) The drunkards of the bar pay anything between $20 and $40 for a fish, then the tournament begins! The skill (yes, apparently there is some) is to blow bubbles about 6" behind the tail of the fish and it will swim away from you...the reality is the only girl in the competition won because she is the only one who had any concept of how far away 6" was, the guys on the other hand - whether it be from lack of co-ordination from the alcohol, the inability to do two things at once or the inability to do anything but suck when a a straw and some liquid are handed to you...the really weren't getting it. If the fish went in the wrong direction, how does that saying go?? Braun before brains - I know if I blow really hard I'll probably just be able to blow the fish to the end of the track!? The poor fish...!

An early rise for our Cape Tribulation tour...first stop giving away some more money - this time to Santa!? It's a good job Santa's job doesn't involve charging for his presents because the combination of credit card technology and fat man with a white beard didn't go down to well. Jeremy/Fred/Hippy version of Steve Irwin/our tour guide started our day off with a "get to know each other session" - what's your favourite tale from Australia...Adam happily told his I shared some chips with a drunk Aborigini story! The tour continued with many a long and informative 'swear on my life' diatrap about his time in the rainforest, yes? especially at 2am, yes? 3am, yes? and a particularly indepth science behind the roofing system of the rainforest, miracle fruits, a detailed timeline of how the road was built (finshed in 1994 - this will be a part of your pop quiz later on in the week) which somehow turned into how the worlds mountain ranges were formed. Bet I stopped listening before you did :) Now don't get me wrong, in the midst of all going off on tangents there was some very interesting facts, like if you incubate a crocodile egg a degree higher than normal you will get a lady crocodile - preferable for zoos and such like because the ladies fight less!

We stopped at a wildlife park and saw cassowary birds and crocs in a billabong which launched out of the water when the guy threw stones at them. I think I would be fairly annoyed if I was trying to avoid the rain and someone kept throwing stones at me. Oh yeah, it was raining again by this point! We also saw the tiniest frogs in the world ever about the size of a fingernail (a small fingernail) - sadly whilst oohing and ahhing over these creatures a girl came along and stepped on one! :(

We continued to drive through the Rainforest and saw some wild Cassowaries. We wandered through the mangrove swamps...maybe I should say on a boardwalk - we were inches away from danger at every turn. Jeremy/Fred ate an ant?!?! Which apparently tasted of lemon and lime...well if we are going to play 'I'm a Celebrity' dude feel free to bring out Ant and Dec anytime you like :) In the afternoon we were dropped off at PK's - our home for the night, Adam napped and Amy and I went to the pool (and he wonders why he doesn't have a suntan!)

To while away the next morning before our trip back to Cairns we went for a walk along the beach...where danger lurks around every corner - which isn't far wrong to be honest - at high tide when the sea meets the creek the crocs come right along to the shoreline, this was exactly the time we managed to arrive at the beach! Luckily Adam Dundee was there to protect us so when the 6m long croc appeared out of nowhere and started chasing us down the beach we were barely scared at all...Adam bravely diverted the croc into the trees confusing it by running in zig zags. As the crocodile was just about to grab Adam's leg he used his suntan lotion as a weapon of massive power and the crocodile started choking. Adam Dundee finally wrestled it to the ground but was standing in quicksand! By the time the croc had drowned in the sand Adam was already in it up to his waist and was only able to pull himself free with the strength of a bear - being such a hero he had also managed to karate chop with crocs tail off with his arm and is now planning to make some crocodile boots as a momento of his trip! Back in the safety of the pool we relaxed for a while with some swimming and su dokus.

Jeremy/Fred finally picked us up and we headed to the ice cream factory - a typical sight of the Australian rainforest. Along with this and the breif stop to check out the white tailed kingfisher we had to navigate the potholes and dips in the road with less caution than before and the trip was fairly bumpy to the crocdile cruise. Next stop - the crocodile cruise! We were told to be careful walking down the path to the boat...why? Should we be looking out for crocodiles?! Have they been spotted on this bank before?...no, be careful carrying your hot drinks down the path, we don't want anyone to burn themselves! We saw a tree frog, lots of interesting vegetation and birds nests, a croc sunbathing and we saw some rain! Luckily the rain held off long enough for us to walk through Mossman Gorge and just as we got back to the bus it rained again and didn't stop for another four days! Upon our arrival back at the hotel we had some good and bad news waiting for us...the good news is that we have been upgraded to a better room because all the dorms have gone...the bad news is that there will potentially be a cyclone in the next few days the roads to AIrlie Beach are flooded! Excellent!

Our day to the Great Barrier Reef turned out to be a success - there was good weather and good reef! In fact the sunshine was out in force that day (mostly because of the lack of ozone layer in that part of the world) and so was the suntan lotion, if anyone was watching from the outside it would have looked like we were playing pass the parcel with it and when the music stops you are the lucky person that gets to use it! Adam managed to burn the backs of his hands - a small price to pay for the realisation of a dream to go on a catamaran, no? We did some snorkelling, had a giggle over the wetsuits (Adam was in charge of helping/groping Amy into hers ;) Someone in our snorkelling group spotted a turtle, so off 20 of us trot - stalking this poor turtle! Adam and Amy were playing a fun game of how deep can you dive...I on the other hand had a lot of difficulty staying face down in the water let alone going any deeper than that! We had lunch and then more of the same, snorkelling, taking silly photos, getting cramp, missing the "GET BACK TO THE BOAT" signal. Back at the hostel we found out the Bruce Hwy was under 8m of water and the forecast - rain, rain and more rain.

The Legend that is Benny Oakley

2007-03-16T07:23:00.000Z

Another nap later and we headed down to the bar to redeem our backpacker bargain special - pork chops and chips for $7! We unretired Adam from the game of darts – then Amy beat him so he quickly retired again! He made his come back on the pool table until James – random buyer of drinks/pool club promoter took over and wiped the floor with him. Adam was on the verge of retiring from pool as well but was too polite to say no to the guy when he asked for another game.

The next randoms to invade our personal space was Little Miss ‘Oi Oi Oi’ herself, Brooke - when we finally caught on that she was trying to get our attention we went over and sat with her, her brother, Claire, the legendary Benny Oakley and too many others to realistically remember all their names. The pitchers of beer and the sav blank was flowing and all was going well until the leader of the ‘stupid boys we need large rocks thrown at us’ club reared his drunken head and started causing a scene…we left shortly after that!

Tuesday morning arrived along with more mosquito bite, the beginnings of a hangover, the joys of packing, trying to get to the airport on time (we were up against the clock, a particularly nonchalant mini-bus driver who took forever to round everyone up, forever to get into the bus and then had to drive to the harbour to drop the boat/passengers off before we even set off for the airport), screaming children, the rest of a hangover, turbulence and finally we arrived in Cairns.

To make up for our bad taxi driver experience in Sydney, karma did its job and we managed to discover the friendliest taxi driver/tour guide in all of Australia. Then we met Betty and Evan who became our new best friends and didn’t turn us away even though their motel didn’t really cater for mixed groups…thanks guys! Task #1…to plan the next ten days of our trip - what an ordeal. It was tough enough organising the three of us, our wants and needs without Evan's 'helpful' contribution of only giving us the expensive Whitsundays trip leaflets..."Oh, I'm sorry dude, do my worn down flip flops and holey skirt scream out to you that I have money to spare?!"

We put together something resembling a plan - 2 days Cape Tribulation, 1 day reef, overnight bus to Airlie beach, 3 days Whitsundays then back to Brisbane. Four days later our plan looked a lot more like...2 days Cape Tribulation, 1 day reef, 3 days in Cairns waiting for the rain to stop, 1 day Brisbane, 2 days Byron Bay. Despite all the setbacks we managed to have a good time.

AAAAH CHOOO!

2007-02-27T05:10:00.000Z

On Saturday we were totally up for a beach day...your mission if you choose to accept it Adam Barton is to change colour - the only thing holding us back was indeed the weather, surprise surprise! We ignored the clouds for as long as we possibly could...got ready, went for some burgerlicious burgers, walked to beach, laid down towels, Adam even took his shirt off for a minute...then the wind/sandstorm/empty beach managed to eventually deter us and our beach day turned into a cafe afternoon. Then of course we had to go home so Adam could sleep off all the exercise and sunshine!

Since it didn't feel like we were really leaving Sydney, it took all our efforts to start packing and even more effort to get Adam back out of bed an hour later to go and watch the sunset over the City. Once again the clouds really weren't on our side but we did get a couple of dramatic cloud/sun/city shots before the sun disappeared completely (not below the horizon, behind a large band of grey cloud!)

Sunday started promisingly with us all up and out of bed early...washed, dressed, packed and ready to go - now it's Betty's turn to throw a tantrum, she obviously thought it would be funny to permanently lock the boot...ha ha ha. Our patience (well mine was) running thin and our option became; cram all the stuff in the back of the car and hope the unfortunate person in there with it didn't suffocate, try and find a garage open on a sunday?!, or Adams really useful suggestion of buying some flights and leaving the car where it was to be picked up who knows when?! Then Amy Campbell Soup stepped up the to ring and busted the lock open...we were in! To prevent any further dramas when we needed to get the stuff out we concocted a concealed string opening device - who needs keys huh!?

So thus begins the long journey to Brisbane - 1000km with four MacD's stops planned! We managed to make two and weren't tempted by a third...lightweights, we know! Adam went speeding past a police car in an attempt to NOT attract attention to us and I managed to book us into a hostel which seemed closer to Cairns than it did to Brisbane. We were staying in a harbourside town called Manlywith one pub, one hostel and a whole heap of jellyfish. The bar shut a little too early for our liking so we went in search of some more entertainment but the town was unanimous on the decision - you must go back to your hostel and go to bed.

I turned into Mosquito food during the night - looking on the brightside at least I managed to save Amy and Adam from getting any, right?!?

Day 2 in Manly and we have definitely been here too long already :) We got up too late to make it to any of the islands, which we figured out is the mian attraction of Manly, so instead we went to the beach. The beach in Manly resembles a swimming pool a lot more than an actual beach and that is because the sea around Manly is FULL of jellyfish. The pool was good though, it had a flume, a shaded area, lots of hard ground to lay on and plenty of screaming kids.

Adam changed colour either side of his watch strap and on the side of his neck - he has now taken over Amy's crown of comedy tan lines since she has discovered this new glue/paint/sunscreen invention that really works!

Ever-decreasing circles

2007-01-27T10:34:00.000Z

Let's get down to it...spending some money and eatin' - lots o'chips please!

To officially celebrate Adam's arrival, Gem's final day at work and the start of two weeks of non-stop eating (after evening #1 Adam's chip portion count is already at 2) we headed out to Coogee on Thursday evening to consume some beverages. With the competition rife to take more photos than kitsbigtrip and dumbanddumbersbigtrip combined and the discovery of a great new camera mode (illustration) the camera was out in force alongside many bottles of wine! There was some dancing...there was Luis (Brazil)...there was a nice gentleman who was eager to know if I was alright? To which I obviously replied yessss very enthusiastically only to be told by Amy that he was actually asking if he looked like a poof?! Oops - lines of communication are down...repeat down!

Since it had been all of four hours since we last ate we headed to the pizza shop and managed to scrape enough cents together to upgrade to a medium sized pizza, a good enough size for three not particularly hungry people we thought...then Amy rocks up with her first portion of chips of the day and the plan goes out the window! We had to store two slices of pizza in the fridge for a later drunken date...

We have been lucky enough to receive a television of late...just in time for our departure from the mad house! So in the quiet (Adam-napping) times we can be entertained by great programs such as Shopping For Love and the tennis!

26th January - every Australian's favourite day when they are out in force ranting about how Grrreeeeeeat Frosties, oops I mean Australia is. It was a little too much for us whingeing pommes!! We managed about two hours without food and then had to partake in some pie and chips action which they tried to charge us $104 for?!?!...thank the Lord for the maths degree :) So Darling Harbour is where it is at on this Great Day - the foutains are full of soggy children trying to get innocent passers-by wet, the pavements are full of wet innocent passers-by wanting to drown all the soggy children. TO THE PARK - where the children haven't yet managed to invade in full force - after Adam has had his required 20 minutes in the shade to "adjust" to this unexpected heat mind you. You see, so far Adam's holiday has consisted of nearly being mugged in Melbourne, sharing a bag of chips with a drunk Aborigini in Melbourne, rain in Melbourne, rain in Sydney...so the sun was a bit of a surprise to be honest.

Alison joined us and the music and munching began in vain - a guy from a band who were famous once and a DJ on at 7 in the evening playing to a subdued family crowd in broad daylight when I imagine he is used to playing to packed, pill-popping venues in the early hours of the morning?! The four of us, that's right, just the four of us went to a bar and luckily the fashion police on the door deigned us acceptable to enter after much scrutinising. Once inside you realsied their presence was none much needed since it appeared they had already invited in every waif and stray wandering by.

Once we tired of the ''Australia is Great" promotion by the DJ (and who can argue with him with such hits as Tie Me Kangaroo Down?!) we started the usual wandering round the City part of the evenign looking for an open, welcoming bar...This part of my life is called wandering....in the absence of any of the above we went to a German bar which was housing our incredibly drunk, incredibly short housemate Dario G and the world's most depressed looking hen night. We went to another bar on the Harbour then found a exceptionally rude taxi driver to take us to the Shelbourne. He almost kicked us out of the taxi for not knowing exactly what street we wanted to be on - another example of how Australia is Great!

We headed home after a bit of a boogie only to discover that one of our pikey housemates had eaten our leftover pizza...losers!

Bad Boi Bad Boi...

2007-01-25T02:54:00.000Z

Watcha gonna do?
Watcha gonna do when he comes for you?

A to the Dam has arrived and once again it takes less than a few hours for us all to realise that actually nothing has changed and have we really been apart for 10 months?!

Unfortunately Gemizzle had to frequent her place of work a little to regularly in the first few days of Bad Boi's stay but I am pleased to announce that tour guide/nasty girl Amyizzle stepped up and showed Bad Boi the sights and sounds of the city - in between his six and a half hourly naps of course :) As far as I am aware...and they have the photos to prove it - they managed to sightsee despite the overcastness and rain.

Having had withdrawal symptoms from the bitterly cold and windy British winter (Dads and men alike - we hope all your fences are still standing!) we visited the bar made of ice in Sydney called Minus 5...you spend 30 minutes exploring this bar made completely of ice...even the glasses you drink from are!! On the other hand you may spend the entire 30 minutes watching your pager and hoping it is going to off sooner rather than later indicating you may leave the room - what can I say, sometimes Bad Boi's are a little sensitive to the cold I guess :) Where's your hat again Adam!?

We ate some pizza, Gemizzle had a Marco Polo, Amyizzle had a Papa Grande and Bad Boi had a Aloe Haa (an Aloha in non-bad boi speak). As ever the Australian folk never fail to amuse with what seemed like a massage class going on in the middle of the bar and the the waitress actually believing we had ordered a fourth pizza. This was in fact for Alison who was at the time on her way from the SLip Inn to the SHip Inn to meet us - a little bit of confusion in the midst of all the chaos.

Oh, by the way City Road folk - Adam has some interesting photos from Bangkok...the slideshow this time around will be a fun one :)

10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1....Happy New Year

2007-01-17T11:07:00.000Z

As of tomorrow Bad Boi is officially on Australian turf and mine and Amy's lives will once again be complete...as only a Bad Boi can :)

For New Year we had Alison's sister Jenny visiting from London and Jamie and his cousin visiting from Melbourne...we headed down to Sydney Harbour to check out the much talked about fireworks - they cut off pedestrian access to the Harbour at about 6pm so you are forced to get down there six hours early to ponder life. They have fireworks for the families at 9pm which breaks the monotany of sitting on a concrete floor a little bit (obviously some people were organised and brought picnic food, seats, cushions, games etc etc. we on the other hand brought doritos and dip). And what we thought was a good position - between the Botanic Gardens and the shops lining the harbour, turned out to be not so good since the 9pm fireworks went off the other side of the Botanic gardens and the other side of the Harbour as opposed to on the bridge and the Opera House which we could see!

Attempt number two - and since all the families left and we managed to score a place in the Opera House forecourt which was ace and we were on the steps to the Opera House when they went off - brilliant! The usual anti-climax was blown out the water by the $14m they set off in smoke!

You were not supposed to take any glass or alcohol into the enclosure with you but us being A PROFESSIONAL STEALTH INVESTIGATION UNIT - we managed to sneak in a bottle of sprite (vodka) mixed by moi and I don't think anyone will be giving me that task again! How old are we again?! Security was on the lapse side! A good night was had by all and in the end it as fairly civilised since the night before we stayed out till 5am in King's Cross dancing and eating Macd's....who at 5am only had big macs and quaterpounders with cheese left, what happened to all the McChicken McNuggets huh?!...Mark, Jamie's cousin managed to stay even later than us and arrived at Macd's in time for the breakfast shift! Then he got a taxi to Botany Road (we live on Botany Street!!) and ended up on the other side of the city!! Genius :)

Since new year we have visited the moonlight theatre to see Clerks II, the Rand(y)wick Ritz to see The Pursuit of Happyness and The Holiday (all thoroughly recommended) and are now spoilt for choice of activities since the Sydney Festival has begun - we went to a Brazilian Jazz concert in the park and managed to pick up some tickets to go to the Sydney Opera House to see a show called Kiss of Life by a British guy called Chris Goode...also very good :) We will be frequenting the free outdoor cinema at the Olympic Park and some firework display which you are reccommended not to go to if you have difficulty breathing, we will let you know about that one!

Oh, and did we tell you, our lounge now has two armchairs and the most recent addition...three televisions - WOOHOO! Ooops - what I meant to say was three broken televisions :) A big thank you shout out to the City Road boys who when we left gave us some money for each of the countries we were visiting, anywho we remembered this the other day and pretty much ran to the supermarket to buy alcohol....JUST KIDDING!!....we bought lots of yummy food :)

And as for emplyment - I now work on the corporate reception or Client and Dining Services (as they like to call it) for JP Morgan with a lady called Jennie who is pretty entertaining. My day consists of confirming meetings, meeting and greeting people, speaking to the waiters, playing solitaire and freecell, taking people to meeting rooms, when Jennie goes to lunch I play internet jigsaws (www.jigzone.com if there's any other puzzle geeks out there) then Jennie comes back and I go to lunch, in the afternoon Jennie goes home and I play games for another hour and a half - throw the newspapers out, turn the lights off and leave! Saving the world one jigsaw at a time :) Did you hear on the news about the guy called Rex who has just climbed the seven highest mountains in the world and he is only 23? Well, he was in our office the other day and the Attorney General came in for a meeting and I spoke to Shayne Warnes manager on the phone....!

Amy on the other hand now works for a stockbrokers and from what I can gather shouts at the six people who work there...watches music videos...wanders the streets of Sydney for however long she can get away with each day...and writes visual basic code (and she calls me a geek!!)

Have yourself a Merry little Christmas...

2007-01-17T10:30:00.000Z

So we continued with the doing nothing for several weeks in order to put some money aside...our favourite activity being watching the roof leak when it rained...luckily there was plenty of rain to keep us entertained! We also, in order to make our room a little more homely we replaced the 1000watt lightbulb they placed in our room making me and Amy look like blotchy ghosts - we downgraded to a 60watt in the hope of looking more attractive! We had momentary escapes like when Mac and Cheese (Sam) came to Sydney for a few days from Melbourne and we met up with them and went to Manly beach for the day...and the few occasions when being in the house is just too much so going out for some beverages is the only option...I think between me, Amy and Alison we have managed to terrorise at least half the population of the Coogee Bay Hotel...sorry folks :) I have also become a puzzle geek - or maybe the puzzle geek in me has finally been let loose (Crazy for you :)

Rand(y)wick is the sort of town you imagine that nothing happens in...but rumour has it that someone got shot in the butt-ock (Forest Gump stylee) a few months ago and we saw a car on fire and we were victims of a drive by water pistol incident as well one night.

Aside from the feeling a little low on Christmas day in the absence of family and friends and pots and pans, it all turned out ok :) And after all is said and done Christmas fades pretty quickly once it's over and the prospect of new year in Sydney was a little bit exciting to say the least. Anyways, it was great to speak to everyone we managed to talk to :) And once again apologies to Johnboy for NOT phoning you - we are officially useless and will remain so until we redeem ourselves further!

So after our very successful fry-up and present opening session (Amy and I spent $10 AKA 4 pounds on each other in the tat shop before Christmas so we would have some stuff to open, the highlights being the bunny outfit, tyre launchers and the funnel kit! - none of which paled in comparison to Alisons gifts - the girl with the five pairs of earrings! :) we headed to Coogee beach for a sunbathing session - this was a bit hit and miss since we (and all the weather folk out there) had been expecting rain on Christmas day - luckily for us because plan B had yet to be formulated. we made it to the beach along with hundreds of other backpackers of all shapes and sizes in all states of dress up and dress down! One group even brought a Christmas tree with them.

In the evening we were lucky enough to be invited round Alison's friend Chris's for a proper turkey dinner, we donned our Sunday best jeans and away we went to Manly. We watched the sunset over the City and had an absolute feast! Having thoroughly tested the noodle diet for the previous couple of weeks...I had two platefuls, Amy had one and a half then I ate her leftover half! So much for having shrunk the stomach :) Obviously in not-so-well-known company who are not aware of our current noodle-loving situation I just looked like a bit of a pig!! Which translated into me getting the largest portion of dessert...this is the point when my plan backfired because the dessert consisted of plum pudding, cream and mango.

Enter fussy Gem!

In theory I can manage the mango without too much effort...and if I eat around all the raisins in the cake then maybe I can hide the leftover raisins under the cream...it's quite plausible/inoffensive to not like cream right?! The first problem I discovered was that the cake although on appearance looked not very raisin-y was in fact full of them! The second problem I encountered was that not only did it look like I had mutilated the cake but it was never all going to fit underneath the spoonful of cream...D'oh! The dude caught on to my plight and I thought honesty is definitely the best policy (especially after a couple of glasses of wine!).

Having spent the night in Manly we were in prime position to watch the Boxing day Sydney to Hobart Boat Race leave from Sydney Harbour the next morning. And that was our Christmas :)

Hope you all had a good one people...! Take care....Amyizzle and Gemizzle in da hoouse

The depression...

2007-01-17T09:40:00.000Z

Welcome to the low point of the year...having arrived back in Sydney where the skies are never blue and it rains an awful lot for the season of spring (that's right folks summer doesn't officially start till 21st December...if you don't believe me look it up on the BBC!)...Amy and I descended into a sorry state of affairs, with in effect no money (None is an exaggeration to make the story more poignant) no home and no jobs.

The hunt for either didnt start off too well so we got progressively more disheartened as the week went on. We managed to meet the most anally retentive man in the world when we went to view the rooms in his house, he pulled out a five page rule book we would have had to of abided by...

1) put newspaper on the floor if you fry anything
2) clean the kitchen/toilet/bathroom after you use it
3) wear the allocated flip flops into the bathroom whenever you use it
4) no shoes in the house
5) no noise after 9pm
6) no drunkeness

Number 7) was probably do not leave the sponge in the sink after washing up and number 8) I think was do not click the battery cover on the remote control open and closed incessantly!

The list went on and on and we sat there trying not to laugh like school children. Oh, and if you were caught breaking any of the rules you had to put $5 in a pot which then went to a house dinner and movie night at the end of the month?! After a quick huddle we decided that we would probably be better off just paying for the entire flat to go out at the end of each month rather than partaking in the fine system, which at the end of the day would defeat the object of trying to save money!

Anyway things started looking up, we found a house that Amy, Alison and I could all live together in. It is in Rand(y)wick between the beach and the city, it houses 10 people legally and as many stowaways as you like. In truth they are still renovating it around our ears but...it has a roof (slightly leaky), one armchair (for the 10 of us), one grill and two hobs (again for 10 people), one small saucepan - half a handle, one small saucepan - no handle, one GIANT saucepan - two handles, two frying pans, one kettle (broken then fixed), one toaster, four forks, 300 knives...it has been likened to the mental ward of a hospital by the folks that have had the pleasure of visiting us there! We have a bed to sleep on which is the main thing and we are all together which helps keep us sane in the madhouse.

If you ever want to know what it might be like to live in the Big Brother house then try living at 1 Botany Street, Rand(y)wick. You move in with a bunch of randoms, you have little money so going out isn't an option (because that inevitably ends in money expenditure), you have no tele to distract you from the boredom and you are rationing your food in an attempt to save money...and the food that you do have, the other housemates lay claim to when you are not looking. For instance, Amy bought some milk one evening, got up the next day and went to work and came home - looking forward to a nice cup o' tea and guess what...3/4 of her milk had just vanished?!

The Housemates - firstly there are the kind of housemates that never really make too much of an impression, like Martin and Erika (these are the sorts of folk who just hide out in their rooms and never interact with people no matter how much you try), then there are the kind that keep themselves to themselves but you definitely notice they are there...like the two slovakian boys who take pleasure in wandering around in small tight pants or towels, we like to think of ourselves as the control of the experiment - the norm (but I'm sure so does everyone else), then there is Tom who is plain and simply a lovely guy but then there's those characters that like to make themselves known in every possible way, Laura and Chantelle and the Italian pervert for instance. Then you have to take into account Marian and the Fruitarian, our in-house DIY/Landlord/Handymen/mechanic/procrastinator extraordinaires traipsing through every day and night.

Chantelle is housemate number 11, thrown in at the last minute to do nothing but stir up trouble...so the dynamics of the house go something like this: you have the Italian pervert offering to get in the shower with every/any girl that is in it, the normal crowd will be sat around the dining room table under the calming and flattering effects of the strip lights, trying not to let the repetitive radio playlist drive us insane, deciding that it is better that everyone gets a chair as opposed to all bar one having to sit on the floor of the lounge, then Martin or Erika (Amy says "who's Erika?") may appear for a two second insightful conversation while he/she makes a sandwich, the Slovakian guys seem to take their fifth shower of the evening and once again strut through the dining room in full view of everyone, Marian will manage to turn the oh-so-normal (enjoyable) day-to-day conversation into a psychological debate and fruitarian man will probably scoff a large pizza or ten sausage sandwiches whilst sitting in his pants then he will attempt some DIY that you can bet your life savings will have fallen off/broken within 24 hours...then just about the time that everyone has trotted off to bed and is on the verge of falling asleep, Chantelle and Laura arrive home trolleyed being as loud as you like, slamming doors and trying to steal people's chocolate ice cream.

Our kitchen is like the Bermuda Triangle...EVERYTIME someone goes into it you inevitably hear them say "where have all the .... gone?" - plates, forks, bowls...my favourite story being one particular sunny Christmas morning when Amy, Alison, Alison's sister Jenny and myself woke up looking forward to our cooked brunch only to go into the kitchen and exclaim "where have all the pots, pans, plates, forks, baking trays gone?", turns out our number one (for eviction only) lodger had "borrowed" all of our utensils to go to someone else's house to cook Christmas dinner for some other people...thanks for that - Merry Christmas to you too! Luckiy there was one saucepan left and we had plans to eat dinner elsewhere otherwise we may have been a little stuck! The tale doesn't end there either because we had to spend another two days after Christmas before said pots and pans and forks were returned!

Can you guess who was the first to be evicted/leave from the asylum....that's right - the Italian pervert followed by Laura and Chantelle (which unfortunately meant the unfortunately soon departure of Tom also)...we can't really say anything though because me and Ayms are next on the list!

Work was scarce for the month of December, mostly because the world and his wife decided to arrive in Sydney a lot earlier than we did and take all the jobs and good flats! T'is our own fault really but like the wise old Miss Amyizzle says...it's all good life experience!

What's the difference between the good times and the boogie?

2006-12-23T08:15:00.000Z

2500km down...Saturday night party night back in Sydney turned out to be a bit of a non-starter it being the 19th night in a row and all! On Sunday we visited Palm Beach the home of Home and Away. We ate chish and fips and wandered around. It was a bit grey and cloudy so it didn't look all that brilliant although considering how disappoited Martin was we figured he must have been expecting the entire cast of Home and Away from ten years ago (when he used to watch it) to be there to meet and greet him!

In the evening we went for some DAMN good pizza...and Stu informed us that human beings spend on average two whole weeks of their life kissing - we didn't think this sounded like too much until we worked out that we would have to kiss someone for two minutes every day for the rest of our lives and live till we were 100! Martin dragged us back to O'Malleys that evening which was DAMN busy so we squeezed ourselves into the corner and proceeded to get drunk! To be honest we were slightly too drunk and it was slightly too late by the time we got home considering we had to be at the bus pick up point at 7:40am for our wine tasting tour to the Hunter Valley. At 7am we were all a bit worse for wear and Madtin was distraught that he couldn't find his water bottle..."Where's my water bottle? I've lost my water bottle" (repeat 50 times) It's a miracle we made it on time!

After we picked everyone up our guide Steve-o talked for what felt like a million years while we were all quite eager to sleep. When he stopped at the servo and the golden arches shined down on us - you should have seen Amy run! Only one thing on her mind...sausage and egg mcmuffins :) At 11am we arrived at our first winery - excellent, 7/8 tastings, some shortbread and chocolate cake later it is debateable whether we feel more or less sick than at 7am!

Winery #2 - 6/7 more tastings (it's a weekday so they are far more generous with the number of tastings they give you), Schnoo has already bought two bottles and then Madtin buys us one for our lunch!! It was another best ever on the lunch front - we had panish bread sandwiches (which in some french/english language almost translates as breadish bread!) which in another language means focaccia! Some cheese, some more wine and more purchases later and we are on our way back to Sydney! Sleeping all the way :)

Alison returned back to the brood from New Zealand so we went out for dinner to catch up. We found a place that sold cheap sangria and realised once we'd ordered it that it was soo cheap because the jugs were the size of sparrows!

We almost slept in too late to go to the Blue Mountains the next day but decided to go anyway...going via the best ever sandwich shop on the way to calm Martin's cravings/moanings. We visited Katoomba and the three sisters, walked down a giant staircase, trekked through the woods and came back up on the steepest railway in the world ever! Then when we got to the top we realised we were miles away from the car and had to get a cable car...it was ace, the floor was all frosted over and then halfway across is all vanished so you could see through it!

We went for our final best ever $10 steaks that evening and then headed to the Empire for some dancing and general fun...at one stage Stu and I were trying to do the splits?!?! It was a fab last night!

And that's all folks...we took Madtin and Schnoo to the airport the next morning and said some more teary g'byes :( We miss you guys already...come back, come back!

I don't feel like dancing

2006-12-23T08:01:00.000Z

Our next stop was Coff's Harbour and the joyous Hoey Moey's (hotel motel?). A room to ourselves which thus far didn't resemble a sauna...yesss! It just had about ten light switches and only the one light?! Since Madtin ordered a sandwich at lunchtime that he didn't even like (the worst sandwich in the world ever) we were first in line at the restaurant and in plenty of time for the evenings entertainment - karaoke! Natalie Imbruglia was first up which pleased Martin no end since we got to renew his everlasting connection with her. Julie is also worth a mention - she was bouncing around to everybody elses songs and trying to whip the crowd into a frenzy with her own! We decided we could entertain ourselves better by playing pool in the other room.
No-one was really paying attention to the score until Martin suggested that whoever won the next game was the overall winner - no surprise that me and Amy won! Then Stu was named player of the match for his attempts at continuing to play pool even when the ball fell of the table and went under the games machine.

Time to mention the saga of Martin's flybite...it may not sound too serious people but from the amount of moaning that came along with it you'd have thought he'd been bitten by a crocodile - it was agony (honestly!) he was even having trouble standing at one point?! - those of us that know Martin might think that this was the alcohol affecting his ability to stand up - as it usually does, but you must believe us when we tell you it was definitely the flybite causing him problems!

The next morning we were rudely awaken firstly by the cleaning lady screaming "Are you checking out today?" to what could have been the entire town as opposed to just one room, and then secondly by Madtin's electric razor which I can only assume he thought we wouldn't hear since our room was so large?! It was like trying to sleep on a lawn that was being mowed! Even with the early wake up we still didn't make it to the pet porpoise pool in time to kiss any dolphins so instead we ate! Then spent the afternoon discovering the Royal Botanic Gardens.

In the evening we played canasta, unfortunately I got to be on Martin's team...it was not a pretty sight! There is no I in 'Martin's team'...oh, hang on a minute, yes there is! :)

Good skills!

2006-12-23T07:40:00.000Z

On our way to Surfer's Paradise we visited Australia Zoo - nothing much to report from here apart from the amazingly slow shuttle service that runs between the different animal enclosures...it is actually quicker to walk to your destination backwards.

When we got to Surfers beer and food was the order of the day - we headed to the main street, ate, drank, listened to live music and watched the schoolies go by.

Schoolies by definition are all the young bunnies who have just or are about to graduate high school. They migrate to Surfers, fake i.d's in hand and try to get into any bar or club that will have them! For everyone else it means there is the potential to be i.d'd if you even think about alcohol no matter how old you look (unless you look at old as Madtin!) - we all contemplated shaving in some temporary bald spatches to see if that helped any! Since some of the schoolies can't get into any bars, they get drunk in their apartments and take to the streets being loud and screaming at each other.

The band we saw was most amusing - almost like they had picked the first four people in the job centre queue and plonked them into a band, including a drummer with an annoying incessant out of time cymbal beat going on. And the guitarist was Napoleon Dynamite with slightly less hair and some skills thankfully, he was hilarious. Amy was the beer mat flipping/catching champion of the world ever. On one side of us we had all the old cronies in the bar getting drunk and trying to dance and on the other side were all the schoolies screaming for no apparent reason - very surreal. We saw Amy's 21st birthday in that night - Happy Birthday Belle.

We spent the day on the beach doing Su Doku challenges - now renamed Schnoo Doku since we realised Schnoo was the Schnoo Doku King...whoever came 2nd (Madtin), 3rd and 4th really isn't that relevant...! Surprisingly there isn't too many surfers in Surfers Paradise, in fact I think we saw none! We exchanged the windy beach for the hostel pool in the afternoon and the jacuzzi, it also had a sauna in the shape of our room! Luckily it was all you can eat pizza night :) After stuffing our pieholes we hung out with the Swedish contingent, learning tricks, and singing Happy Birthday to Amy in swedish which Madtin somehow managed to join in with?!

We went back to the old mans pub in the evening (because it was preferable to hanging out with the 16-18 year olds). We played some games and listened to the band until everything got a bit blurry then headed to the club called Bedroom and danced the night away- this is Madtin's dream club since it had beds all around the edge of the room :)

The next day we headed to the beach again because secretly we love been wind beaten by all the sand! It was a very chilled out last evening at an Irish bar (that's the only kind of bar there is in Australia)

Eggcellent

2006-12-22T11:07:00.000Z

Now back to the schedule...the tide comes in in three hours, we need to be off the beach by then. Indian Head is about 1hr and 20mins drive away and there is a couple of things to see on the way - Challenge Anneka here we come (obviously adhering to the speed limit at all times huh maggot!?) And we made it, bypassing Eli Creek but stopping briefly at the shipwreck on the beach we got to Indian Head. Babs had fulfilled her walking quota for 2006 and 2007 by that time so she didn't climb it with the rest of us. Alex however took it one step futher and climbed out onto the rock face. This was our first hint that he was a little bit weird.

We made it back with minutes to spare with only two hairy moments when we hit some soft sand at speed and getting bogged trying to get off the beach onto our campsite - we were home and dry (minus the small wave that caught us!)

It was a fairly civilised start to the evening with food and chat and then Alex came out of his shell and decided he wanted to throw some eggs!?!?!?!? It was like some whirlwind of inspiration flew through the camp and suddenly Martin transformed into Bruce Forsyth and was playing Higher or Lower with a twist. Add two jokers to the pack and whoever gets the joker has an egg thrown at them by the person sitting before them. Obviously said person has a chance to get away from the egg-thrower but in a comedy manner; run for 5 seconds, hopping, kangaroo style, on all fours, in a duel, victim has a spade...I don't think the entire thing would hae been quite so funny had Arianne not received 80% of all the eggs (considering she had them many thrown at her she was surprisingly unscathed).

The finale was two teams taking each other on in an egg and spoon race - the losers then have the remaining eggs thrown at them, we were on the verge of losing until Alex ran straight past the marker where he had to turn around...a bit stupid after having just watched the other three members of his team run around it.

On Sunday we packed up the camp and headed back to Lake Mckenzie where we ate some more sausages and bacon and did some more bathing. Our last mission was to get back to the barge on time which we managed....us being the bright sparks that we are decided we would stroll along the beach to the barge and let Martin drive it on, thus lowering the risk of getting bogged and we dont have to experience the big bump back onto the barge...the driver of the barge was having other ideas though and when he started screaming over the tanoy "STAY WITH THE TRUCK" our stroll turned into a sprint...Babs was not happy :( We think Martin caught the brunt of his wrath since we were all too tired to move by the time we got to it!

We arrived back at the hostek, unpacked, had our final check up with Yo Merv and finally...STOP....SHOWER TIME!

Lot's o' steak and chips please!!

Momentum is your friend

2006-12-22T10:19:00.000Z

Fraser Island continued...we made it to the barge with a big jolt and some directions and we were on our way, 5 minutes later we were on the Island...let the games begin! Immediately we got bogged in the sand - reverse reverse, forward, reverse reverse, forward, "everybody out, everybody push". This ended up being our first of many experiences of standing in the hot dirty sand pushing the 4x4 out of a hole - that's it, no going back now we all look like sand monster (hot dirty ones ;) Fortunately we didn't look too stupid because another truck got bogged a lot worse that us!!

"Momentum is definitely your friend" until you have to sit in a queue for the high tide track. Another car up ahead had gotten stuck, an older couple who clearly hadn't had the "don't keep trying to drive out of it if you get bogged" speech because sure enough the dude continued to plough himself into the sand and cover his wife in sand in the process...well if she will be silly enough to stand right behind the front tyre?! She got a few facefuls of the hot dirty sand and Madtin thought this was the funniest thing ever :) Since all the other trucks had driven past us when we were bogged and jeered at us we didn't feel too guilty about sitting back and watchig the spectacle from afar! Fortunately for that couples health and safety the car in front of us was feeling a little more saintly and got out and helped them push!

From the bumpy high tide track we hit the bumpy beach and Ariane took over the driving. It wasn't long before we needed a pee stop (pee status about a 8/10) since Alex, Jim and Mark had started drinking about three hours previous! We discovered many things on our trip - Arianne liked to soar towards washouts with no sign of stopping and Martin did the same with potholes!

Our first stop was Lake McKenzie - up the most awful track you've ever seen...we all know they are 4x4's, I am not sure the theory needs to be tested that badly!? All thoughts of this being a relaxing weekend go straight out the window! Somehow Arianne had managed to sneak a bag of condiments onto the roof-rack, things like; jam, peanut butter, salt, cinnamon (all the necessities!), unfortunately the bag split and before we even realised I think we left a trail of bread crumbs/condiments all the way to the lake! It was totally worth it though - Lake Mckenzie may possibly be one of the most perfect places we have seen on our entire trip so far, words and photos will never do it justice.

We bathed and ate and sat and bathed - we left that beach all clean and shiny which lasted all of 5 seconds once we got back to the truck. We picked a prime spot to set up camp (prime:- defn.; a spot that doesn't smell too much like pee) - four tents , two eskys (one for food, one for drink), two crates of pots and pans (wine tastes so good from a metal cup!), a lot of spare alcohol and a lot of spare food and we settled in for the evening - what no-one was expecting was how tired we would be and when we all started thinking it was midnight when it was actually 9pm - we realised there wasn't much hope for the evening!

Early the next morning we were forced out of our tents which had miraculously transformed into saunas...another feast of bacon, sausages, eggs and beans and we had a plan!! The Plan: to walk to Lake Wabby for the morning. Fortunately Arianne had seen a sign which said Lake Wabby this way -----> off we trot and about 45 minutes later we reach the end of this pretty tough driving track up the side of a mountain/large hill. Turns out we had walked to a lookout - since Lake Wabby is supposed to be a short distance from the camping area across a relatively easy walking track we figured we had walked in the wrong direction! We felt like we'd come too far to turn back and that the other track from the lookout would definitely lead to the lake....luckily Madtin was being ever-encouraging with his "we are doomed" and "either way you look at it we're screwed" comments! Another hour or so later and we gathered once again to discuss our plight. Is it best to continue up this really steep hill or head to the campsite that we saw a sign for five minutes ago which is only another 2.5kms through the woods. It was a unanimous decision to head for the woods. We contemplated the For Your Safety sign before heading into the woods...and realised we were breaking about 7/10 of the recommendations...no thongs, tell someone where you are going, bring plenty of water, not in the midday sun (the list went on).

Eventually we met another track going to Lake Wabby and after crossing the burning sand dunes we all crashed into the water. Another spectacular sight - this greenishly clear lake surrounded by forests and sand dunes - we even spotted an eagle or two! We stayed long enough to recover our breath and some senses - there was no hope for our feet by this point, another 1.8km back to the beach (the right way!) and up to the campsite - we think we walked over 10kms that morning.

George? Michael? Tim? Tom? Nick? Matt? Charles?

2006-12-18T05:03:00.000Z

The next morning Schnoo was sacked from any further dispensing liquid duties after he marinaded Betty in oil! We headed to Rainbow Beach in preparation for our Fraser Island tour, before our group meeting in the afternoon we visited the Sandblow - which turned out to be a runway made of sand for the hangliders. Some excellent views of the beach although we still couldn't figure out why it was called Rainbow Beach?!

A small amount of time for a table tennis tournament, which Martin lost since his ball spent most of the time on the ground or outside! Then we headed off to meet the gang...Babara - Babs the german legend who thought everything was funny, hated walking, hated hills and loved Harry Potter (Amy got a full rendition of the story on one of our long walks up a hill!), Arianne - another german who spoke amazing english bt maybe couldn't read/interpret it all that well - she is also the beetroot lover and silent Haika - her travelling partner although you would never know since they barely spoke to each other, and the competitive three - Alex, Jim and Mark from Newcastle. We had two safety videos to watch, which usefully informed us that if we were to be attacked by dingos you have to put your hands across your chest and back away slowly...looking forward to this already! Then we had to brainstorm a shopping list for the next three days, luckily everyone was of the same opinion that they didn't want to go hungry so we ended up spending $220 for the 10 of us for seven meals!

If you cross Big Brother with Supermarket Sweep - that's pretty much what our shopping trip looked like! We survived unscathed apart from a few unecessary provisions which we had to buy to keep everyone happy, namely sweetcorn, peas and beetroot...for sandwiches don't you know! It seemed we did better than another group who were also in the supermarket with a fairly empty trolley and were already arguing as to whether butter or mayonnaise was the way forward!? Oh, and don't forget biscuits for the biscuit king!! Back at the hostel we are told to store everything in the fridge to keep it all together...chilled toilet rolls, excellent :)

That evening we sat around for the last supper, played some pool and drank proper pints for the first time in ages...not sure how well that went down the next morning when we had to get up to meet everyone at 7:30am! We packed up the van and went for our checkup at Yo Merv's garage - we figured his routine is very well rehearsed by this point in time with his 'covering your nipples ain't gonna scare no dingo away' joke being one of his favourites...his useful advice was to hit it with a spade! Also his 'Momentum is your friend' advice turned out to be really useful along the way especially when we were taking the mick out of Yo Merv. Oh, then there was his horsefly dance which was our first warning about the inch long disgusting flies that hound you as soon as you get on the island.

With everyone and everything on board we headed down to the barge and and the beach and the 4x4 experience! As soon as we hit the sand we started bouncing around all over the place and that didn't really stop for the next three days!!

Currently listening to:- Ghetto Gospel, Elton John ft. Twin Pac

2006-12-18T04:29:00.000Z

Next stop on dumb and dumber's big trip is Byron Bay. With Amy navigating and Martin driving it was a bit of a disaster to be honest...everytime Amy said LEFT, Martin ignored her, every time she said RIGHT, he ignored her again...there was a lot of turning round and doubling back on ourselves before we managed to arrive safe and sound! Upon arrival we booked ourselves onto a sunrise tour which unfortunately ruled out any activity apart from sleeping for that evening. We did manage to catch Australian Idol though, which by the way if you haven't heard was won by an Irish guy?!?!

We did indeed make it up in time to watch the sunrise and then went straight back to bed afterwards for another much needed six hours sleep, zzz zzz zzz. As much as we like to give off the air that we are footloose and fancy free and just drift from place to place with no real idea of where we are actually going it doesn't really work so well when you have to be back in Sydney to catch a flight on a certain day at a certain time...I held a planning session - I was the only one that showed up ;) Well whatever trevor!

Has anyone ever heard Martin sneeze?? He sounds a bit like a child making gun noises! We made up this great game where Amy, Schnoo and I had to "shoot" Madtin whenever he sneezed and the winner (whoever shot him first) got a point! Points didn't mean prizes though unfortunately...Amy was on about 100 points by the time we left (she was on the ball a lot more than the rest of us it would seem) We would encourage everyone to take part in this game if you are hanging out with Martin since it seemed to bring him so much joy! Oh, how I have missed the constant..."Gemma Layton!!" (even when it isn't my fault!).

We visited our favourite Thai restaurant and ate far too much then headed to the pub for the 10th night in a row! We had another night out in the infamous Cheeky Monkeys which was jam-packed with School kids who didn't leave us a whole lot of room to dance on the tables. We met a "cracker" of a guy called Michael - "G'day, I'm from Bedford". We eventually got onto the topic of sports and he eagerly threw in the question "Who do you think is going to win the cricket??", well maate, in all honesty we aren't going to take any gip from someone who thinks Manchester Utd is the best football team in England and that David Beckham is their best player.

WELCOME TO QUEENSLAND! We stopped in the Glasshouse Mountains for a night and spent the afternoon learning how to play town/crown green bowls...maybe not huh Madtin!? Turns out this town is home to the Beegees...Barry Gibb, Gibb Gibb and Dead Gibb. We checked into Steve Irwin's brother's hotel and ended up with a whole wooden hut to ourselves! Nice one!

It took us all day to realise that something wasn't quite right in this new found state. First of all the lady at the bowls club told us we shouldn't really be going outside between 12 and 2pm, even though it was 3pm, then the lady at the bar of the bowls club wouldn't serve us even though she said she opened at 3pm and it was now 4pm, the cafe was supposed to shut at 5pm but was still open at 5:30, the 5 o'clock news was on at 6pm?! And the Simpson's and Neighbours didn't start at their usual times....after all this had happened, it was only because there was a small mention on the news about Queensland Don't Do Daylight Savings that we realised we had been an hour ahead of ourselves all day....you big eejits!

The story of the Glasshouse Mountains in brief goes a bit like this...Adam you'll like this one; a family (represented by the mountains) were running away and the Daddy said to his eldest son to help his mother, the eldest son decides that his mother is too fat to be saved so runs off on his own. Then the Dad throws something heavy at the boy and breaks his neck (he is the mountain with the crooked top) and the family disown him for the rest of his life. Turns out the mother wasn't fat...she was actually pregnant (she is the pregnant looking mountain) the other 15 mountains represented the rest of their children but weren't really anything to do with the story! Instead of climbing up any of the mountains we decided we would drive to the scenic lookout instead, this was more difficult than expected when Madtin drove past the sign saying Lookout - arguing he didn't think that was the turning to the Lookout because it didn't have 'Scenic' before it!?

Kiss the Camel

2006-12-01T07:10:00.000Z

Friday morning and our big east coast adventure begins. First of all we hit Port Maquarie or
Port Maguire as Madtin 'dont let me forget to put suntan lotion on my bald spatch' Gravy like to call it. We stopped off in Newcastle for lunch (Dave (Dave who?...Dave Jay) why-eye man) where Amy spat on schnoo, madtins kit kat fed the 5000 and where the art of kite flying has not yet been realised. Thankfully since we have left Sydney Martin has given up his "fun" game of pelting me with his dirty socks...nice. There is now a new game though... the random sign reading game ...... "Aqua Diving Centre"!

In Port Maguire we BBQ'd and drank and played some canasta...Madtin (bad_loser@hotmail.com) lost three games and won only one...Martins version of these events (Dave (Dave who?...Dave Jay) can verify this) goes something along the lines of "Me and Amy won Canasta"! His run of bad luck/lack of skills may have had something to do with his concentration being elsewhere that evening - like more on his biscuits. At hostel closing time we went back to our little hut and Madtin got 'tired' as soon as he saw his bed! So we stole his pillow and duvet and when this didnt work we had to hide his matress to stop the inevitable! Does any one want a biscuit?

We found a whale watching tour that was still running, should have guessed it may not have been the most successful trip in the world considering the other three tour operators had shut down saying it was "Out of Season"! But as an added bonus we got a free river cruise and saw some posh Dawson's Creek style houses which we now plan to retire in. We went to a fish farm and fed the fish then the organisers fed us...tea and cake which Martin spat back out right at the point we had asked a stranger to take a photo of us all. Martin took an award winning photo of a seaplane and then declared himself a Loser. Unfortunately it was McHappy day so we sampled some Big Macs in order to 'help the children', we played some more cards, had another BBQ, some more goon and then took a jaunt to the local irish bar (no wonder an irish guy won the australian pop idol competition!) Schnoo made a new maate, chris who liked foodie (rugby) and thought Martin was called Martian - "Wow that's a strange name, haven't heard that one before"...serves you right for slurring your words I guess Madtin :) We found a breathaliser machine which confirmed our suspisions that Madtin was the most drunk out of all of us. Despite this, a more drunk local asked us for a lift down the road, presumably because we had the ability to blow into the straw so couldn't have been that drunk!

The next morning we got up early to pack and whale watch. It was a lot of fun to begin with...all of us brimming with hope and the possibility we may actually see a whale. (First time i've ever been on a boat and been handed a life jacket and been told to put it on straight away - how to install confidence in your customers!) The boat ride was a little bumpy then we all move up the front of the boat and start getting a little wet, then start getting a little seasick. Stu took the brunt of it although I wasnt too far behind him :( My saving grace was the dolphins that arrived to play alongside the boat! It was amazing. There was a sighting of a whale but it definitely was the one that got away beacuse we didnt see it again. Aye well, better luck next time i guess.

Would you rather?

2006-12-01T06:02:00.000Z

Day two of the big trip was beach day which was conveneient since Wednesday turned out to be gale force winds day, we went to Bondi Beach which is stunning although maybe a little smaller than everyone expected (you can always find something wrong with these world famous landmarks!) We sat on the beach and watched the world go by, which turned out to be quite amusing at times ;)

Top tip #1 for anyone who is planning to visit Bondi Beach - do not wait at the last bus stop in the town and do not assume the queue system works...it does not. We waited for ages and watched five buses go by before we managed to get on one and it was still amazingly crowded. In such a crowded situation you might normally avoid talking about the forty people sitting within earshot of you - to disguise this Martin used a cryptic code which I guess you could say you would have to be finely tuned to crack..."the person not on my right" (NB: I feel it worth noting at this point that the "woman" not on my right to which Madtin refers so subtley, actually turns out to be a man!). We were also treated to a rendition of Hitler's one arm band walking through the park though!

In the evening we discovered the best steak in the world ever (see later blog) and it only cost $10!! This was also the beginning of the 'Public Displays of Affection Campaign' going on in Sydney...unfortunately we have been privey to a bit too much "action" for any of our likings recently - "GET A ROOM PEOPLE"! The evening ended in O'Malleys drinking jugs of beer for $8 (= 3 pounds) and singing along with the karaoke king who seems to perform there every night of the week. Then Madtin got "tired", luckily Amy's shoulder was in slouching distance!

Australia is a multi-cultural society steeped in ancestary... particularly of our aboriginal friends who live amongst the hustle and bustle of the busy Sydney streets. It would almost be forgiveable to walk past them each day without noticing they even exist... almost like they blend into the background.... so much so that when they are pointed out to you, you might say "why does everyone keep pointing out tramps to me??" Madtin would like me to admit that this was my dappy moment of the holiday...hello, my name is Gemma and I am sometimes a stupid as a pencil :)

On Wednesday we visited the Royal Botanic Gardens of Sydney in search of colourful birds and fruit bats. We did see some cockatoos but this wasn't good enough for Madtin, the fruit bats though are UUUUGLY! It was another day for a 'Best Ever in the World Ever' - this time for sandwiches (again see later blog). We went over to Coogee in the evening to drop some stuff off at Matt's house (otherwise we would have had to of dragged Martins stuff behind the car by a piece of string)...thanks Matt! It was all going smoothly until I made us all get off the bus at the wrong stop and then had to charm the next bus driver to let us back on the bus to enable us to reach our expected destination... by basically admitting to him and the entire bus that I had been a bit of a numpty and got off at the wrong stop!!

Scnitzel Schnoo and Madtin Ah! Bisto Gravy, The Adventures of

2006-11-21T06:17:00.000Z

Another early jaunt to the airport, another emotional hello after another hours wait...it could be worse though, we could have been the limo driver stood in Arrivals waiting for Mr A. Pickup - no joke, we were eager to go back to the airport in the afternoon to see if he was still waiting :) A Bart Simpson classic if ever I heard one.

We 'settled' into the hostel but since we were swapping rooms the settling meant packing up and leaving all of our belongings in the car until further notice! So even if Madtin and Stu had wanted to go to bed...they couldn't. So off out we went, in search of some fun and games...blue skies, good company - all is looking good! We stopped for breakfast and watched the clouds roll in, it did in fact start to rain while we were sat outside and the day didn't improve much weatherwise but on we trotted...to the Opera House, to the Bridge (a magnificent bridge specimen if ever I saw one), to the Pylon lookout (16 people died building the bridge), to Darling Harbour and finally back to the hostel for some curry and beer. Two down and the boys were ready for sleeps, so we returned to our luxury style room with plenty of floor space and air-con and that was that - first day in Sydney over!

Just for reference, in case people were wondering (because Madtin was) they do have schools here, they do have crisps here and the Harbour Bridge DOESN'T spin round! They also sell beer...so we brought as much as we could carry! Madtin informed us at this point that he had already fulfilled his beer and walking quota for the entire holiday - make of that what you will people ;)

Just a quick thank you for all the gifts sent over from the NU folk, we are now proud members of the toyvoyagers.com club - everyone meet Fraser, Fraser meet everyone (all will be explained at some point). And an extra special thank you to Ma and Pa Layton for the camera!

In between dreams

2006-11-19T08:19:00.000Z

Our week in between Kit departing and Martin and Stu arriving (they have arrived by the way - for all of those concerned family members they have yet to notify!)...

So Kit left and to stop Amy and I moping for too long Alison moved into our room in the hostel. It didn't take too long for the room to look like a chinese laundry...or just a room with three girls living in it!

I spent the week working for an Irish company doing "reception" which looked a lot like data entry from where I was sitting!! Amy and Alison spent the week searching for work and eating Chinese soup from what I can gather :) Tuesday was Melbourne Cup day - ladies who aren't going to the races or even to Melbourne dress up to the nines and head down to the pub, so on my second day of working I ended up sipping champagne and watching horse racing in an Irish bar...and being paid for it! Can't be bad huh?

Friday night me and Ayms headed over to Bondi to say our final fare-thee-wells to Steve and Mark who we met in Melbourne and have sadly now moved on from Australia. Our new favourite mode of transport is the bus and we managed to navigate our way to Bondi Beach only to discover that we were meant to be in Bondi Junction (a few stops previous - oops, there we go getting lost AGAIN!)

So we found a bar had a drink, then got back on the bus to return to Bondi Junction...got to the pub too late to be let in and had to find another bar that would take us, (un)luckily we found the Tea Garden Bar which contained it's fair share of drunkards who didn't seem to mind all the broken glass on the floor! Thankfully Steve and Mark joined us just in time for me and Ayms to get tired and want to go home :) Not before a quick screaming rendition of Meatloaf - I would do anything for you though! Hope you had a safe trip guys and enjoy the next leg of the journey :)

Saturday we managed to drag ourselves away from the city and headed to Bondi again to check out the Sculptures by the Sea exhibition. It was one of the hottest days yet and me and Ayms forgot our suntan lotion (sorry Mums!) we did try and cower in the shade for the most part of it though and I even creatively used the exhibition brochure as a cool hat to cover me. The exhibition runs along the sea front from Bondi to Tamaramarama with 100 sculptures, it was pretty amazing all in all. We then headed to Coogee to catch up with Matt and his not-so-sane housemates. Sunday involved some sleep, some food and preparing for the incoming madness that is Madtin and Stu...

For reference I know how to spell Martin (and Marvin for that matter) but in one of the rare not-so-sensible comments from our beloved Martian he became and has remained ever since Madtin Gravy. I don't expect that anyone other than myself, Ayms, Stu and Madtin will understand the blogs for the next few weeks but stick with us please :)

She's a pie eater...

2006-11-09T07:27:00.000Z

We stayed in the Holiday/Village/World (some combination of the three) in Byron Bay - which was nice, we had our own room to make a mess in and by the end of the week we had our own sandy beach effect going on. Unfortunately they made us check our culinary skills in when we first arrived...we managed to concoct meals such as hard jacket potatoes with frozen prawns, uncooked vegetables and overcooked curry. Damn the microwave and the one speed hobs!

This is definitely where it is at though...Cheeky Monkey's, the party bar and restaurant is right across the road from our hostel. The only place to dance is on the tables and beware of the odd evacuation because of bomb threats! Not to worry though, the Bomb Squad surveyed the area and proclaimed it a bomb free area!...off we went dancing again! Me and Amy also met a guy from the SPECIAL INESTIGATION UNIT of the airforce and since we have been taking the mickey out of this phrase for the last two months, unfortunately we laughed in the man's face...apologies to you .... Bob?!

Turns out the 'party' hostels on the east coast are a bit of a myth since once again this hostel shut its communal areas down at 10:30pm...drinking, playing guitar and well, making any sort of noise has to become and underground affair.

Kit boogie boarded his way through the first couple of days and I even joined him on one occasion for about an hour, until the flippers and cramp became a bit much and laying in the sun seemed a less painful option...don't worry though Kit, I haven't given up completely just yet :) While Kit was out riding the waves me and Amy strolled/hiked our way to the most easterly point of Australia! It was a pretty windy/unsheltered affair so we didn't stay too long.

We also learnt a new drinking game with too many rules for any normal (let alone drunk) person to remember. It was however the cause of Kit hugging every guy round the table at the hostel...not to worry though, the lads in Byron Bay were well up for it and one even came back for seconds. Oh, we also had the pleasure of eating in a restaurant where the waitress thought 10% of $30 was $20....genius. I had to pull out the maths skills out of the bag for that one.

Kit also managed a changing rooms style makeover while he was in Byron, he now sports boardies and thongs and neither of them are blue...imagine :) looking good mr Kit! He took up surfing for the next couple of days to complete the surfer bum lifestyle! Amy and I missed the entertainment on both days apart from the last 10 seconds of Kit getting out of the sea at the end of the lesson. By all accounts and the photographs though, he did a grand job!

We spent one whole afternoon searching for halloween costumes for the Halloween party at the hostel...we ended up going as Ghostbusters on holiday (our own normal clothes, a rucksack attached to a water gun by some hosepipe tubing!) We looked ace and even had a green balloon as Slimer until he burst for no particular reason...bustin' makes me feel good! We were the cause of a couple of mini water fights, one of which ended in me being pushed into the boys showers, oops! And Kit took part in a comedy drinking game which involved downing a mug of goon...nice! Him and his two lovely lady friends were just beaten to the post by toilet paper man and bill and ben the flowerpot men. To be fair the night started a little bit too early and although we made it to Cheeky Monkeys we didn't stay all that long and ended up at the 24 hour bakery eating pies at 1:30am!

We once again discovered the world is not that large-a-place when we ran into Shane and Brian in Byron Bay (those are the irish guys from Sydney) We arranged to meet them for a quiet drink after our 'farewell to Byron Bay' meal at an amazing Thai restaurant, mmmmm! It was a fairly tame evening since we still had to pack and prepare for the mammoth drive the next day...although at one point we were drinking cocktails out of jam jars, and they were free! The perks of being a traveller :)

Turns out Byron Bay to Sydney in one day is possible although the chances are you may go a little bit insane, I ended up dreaming about talking ducks that evening...and Kit - what was your weird dream about?! We managed to find a half decent curry house in Crows Nest which was our reward for having driven that far in one day! And we tried to drive over the Harbour Bridge but ended up taking the tunnel instead - rubbish signs again! Oh, and we stopped by Palm Beach on our way through (via a massive detour) thats the home of Home and Away by the way but we will have to head back there in the daylight to really appreciate it.

We managed to hook ourselves up with a pretty nice room in the hostel when we finally arrived in Sydney, although the luxury-ness only lasted for one night before we were moved into a small oven for the rest of our stay! Kit's last but one day in the wonderful world of Oz and I HAD to go to work for an afternoon, Amy HAD to look for work for the afternoon and Kit HAD to buy a body board!! In the evening we did our usual walk for miles and miles before finding somewhere to eat or drink, it was worth it though since we found a particuarly nice restaurant and visited the three monkeys pub recommended by our very own weathermanjohn (thanks!)

Saturday looked a lot like us getting up, packing, going to Macd's and taking Kit to the airport for another emotional g'bye...it was definitely worse the second time around :(

We miss you Kit...come back! xx

I am so over lookouts

2006-11-09T07:23:00.000Z

Monday morning arrives all too soon and our first challenge is to fit all our luggage into the car...a bit of a space saving exercise and we finally fit everything and everyone into the car! Kit and Betty got on so well that Kit started to splash out on the 'quality' unleaded petrol (Gem means 'Premium' ;-) KC) to feed her - once again the budget has gone out of the window! :)

After filling the car with petrol we found a McDonalds from which we purchased some quality junk food (just going through my reciepts, here!) On the bill we appear to have a Quarterpounder with cheese meal, 6 chicken nuggets meal, two cheeseburgers, some BBQ sauce and a pot of sweet chilli sauce. What would you do without me filling you in on the finer details?! I'm offerering a prize of a deluxe weekend break in Norwich, complete with sofa and sleeping bag accomodation to anyone who match up all 6 items to the correct traveller! Answers in the comments section, please. KC

Our first day we spent driving through the very green Blue Mountains...we are so over lookouts right about now! Another one of Kit's hunches meant we took more than four hours to go what we thought would take two hours and we finally arrive in Newcastle...check the map and we have gone all of 5mm! It wasn't all bad though - we got to do some star-gazing along the way! (Yeah, it was amazing - totally different stars to the ones we see back home and not a cloud in the sky! KC) By the time we had arrived and settled into the hostel is was about 9pm - perfect time to get some dinner before going to sleep...wrong again people, restaurants here shut at about 6pm and you are left with takeaway pizza or bed on an empty stomach - you gotta do what you gotta do :)

We left Amy in bed the next day in an attempt to recover some energy, she is currently on about 50 paracetemol and 27 hours of sleep a day ;) Kit and I headed out to discover the sights and sounds of Newcastle, we visited the beach which was the equivalent of an intense all over exfoliating session - the wind/sand combination got too much after a while not to mention the toxic looking blue jellyfish that line the beach and make swimming in the sea completely impossible unless you want to spend the next part of the day bathing in vinegar, which some people apparently did?! We headed back into the town for some lunch, a haircut, we tried to find the fort and instead discovered some pac man grafitti which was far more interesting anyway! We visited a very helpful chemist who diagnosed Amy with a middle ear infection and gave her a food ice pack!!

We dined out in a posh-ish restaurant that evening where Kit felt the need to throw his credit card away - who needs money huh! Luckily we were all such good hide and seek candidates when we were younger that we didn't have any trouble tracking it down!!

The party on the road continued the next day...we headed to Port Macquarie via Nelson's Bay which held the promise of dolphins, but no :( Instead we ate...Kit had pancakes, Amy had scrambled eggs and I had scrambled eggs and sausages minus the sausages. We drove a fairly long distance out of the way to visit Seal Rocks which neither had any seals on it nor looked like a seal - however Kit seemed to enjoy risking death by clambering all over the rocks so all was not lost! Mum, I swear it's all lies! KC

We arrived in Port Macquarie and settled into our next home...cooked up a storm on the BBQ in the rain and headed out to the trivia night at Down Under in the town. We actually won something!! - $10 to spend on drinks in the bar which was enough to buy a round of JD, Vodka and Scotch - prices to rival Vietnam here! Although considering how drunk we WEREN'T after 7 or 8 rounds i.e. we weren't raring to get up and join the Karaoke clan, we are not convinced the alcohol content was that great. The locals however were all over it and loving it...we on the other hand were loving the 'Wayne and Waynetta do singing' as our free entertainment for the night.

We lost Kit to the sea the next day along with his boogie board (body board!) while me and Amy tried to make whatever we were doing not look like shopping :) We popped into the Koala hospital and kidded ourselves that we might actually wash Betty Boo but opted for videos and beer instead! Kit made us watch Sliding Doors, he claims it's like his favourite film ever ;) We also watched 'The Castle', which I would recommend to anyone who's into an underdog story or two. KC

One more day on the road and this time we had the immense pleasure of seeing the Big Banana, Australia's oldest fruit-like attraction at forty years old...DO NOT GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO SEE THIS "ATTRACTION", it's pants. We also by-passed (I think Gem means passed-by, but I'm just getting picky now! KC) the Big Prawn and my favourite of all of them the Ayers Rock replica come petrol station come hotel! (I got told off for calling it Ayer's Rock when I got back, I wonder if the politically correct internet police will be after us?! KC) The lonely planet advised leaving all cynicism at the door which Kit and Amy bought suitcases of and they couldn't quite shake the feeling they were in some sort of mad twilight zone, aye well :)

We made it to Byron Bay and then refused to go any further! And who would want to? Ahhh... could there be a better surf / party / sunburn spot in the world? If so, I've yet to find it! KC

Smooth as a gravy sandwich

2006-11-03T14:54:00.000Z

Kit 'I only go to the gym so I can eat more' Cecconi joined the terrible two in Sydney three weeks ago as most of you know, 24 hours on a flight, a teary hello at the airport, a very successful introduction to Betty Boo and four breakfasts later it's like we have never been apart! - but in Australia instead. So, it should be a lot sunnier than home and beach activities should be on the top of our list things to do...wrong! The clouds have rolled in over Sydney since we arrived and we have planted ourselves in the middle of the city - a fair distance away from any sort of beach front unless you want to swim in Darling Harbour?! Which, incidently, is totally illegal - how not fun is that?! KC

STOP...Hammertime...

We stayed at the Billabong Gardens, a particularly nice hostel with a pool (unheated, exhilarating fun! KC), a cheap home for Betty, free internet, large tele room, good kitchen and outdoor chilling out areas...these would be incredibly useful if they didn't shut at 10:30pm and you were banished to either the pub or your room?! I don't think we knew how good we had it in Melbourne until all the hostels since then seem to close their common areas at nightime...I guess it's an attempt to keep the place quiet for all those people trying to sleep, in reality it means people rock up at 1, 2, 3am a little inebriated and totally inconsiderate of all those that went to bed hours ago! We shared a room with Shane and Brian/Bream from Ireland and an Aussie guy called Michael who seemed to be a permanent resident of the hostel.

We visited Australia's number 1 attraction - not Steve Irwin's zoo...not the Whitsundays...
not Fraser Island...not Uluru, but the Sydney Aqaurium! We saw such sights as a platypus
(singular because I cannot figure out the plural...numbers girl me!), a dead looking crocodile, some weird looking sea cucumbers and we found Nemo! It was thoroughly enjoyable as aquariums go and since we were trying to avoid the bridge and the opera house until the blue skies had returned it fitted in well.

Having not found a dance mat in all of Australia or Asia for the last seven months (excuses, excuses), Kit found one on his first day here (he used the force to find the flashing neon lights of the arcade)...the competition resumed and by jove ol' chap...Kit is a human dance machine!! Me and Ayms definitely need to practice some :)

Kit, the superstar that he is managed to bring a few vital items with him...some Minstrels
(mmmmmmm, thank you!!!), some giant buttons, some alcohol, a 12 year old lonely planet
(which prompted the debate 'is it or is it not more useful than mine and Amy's non-existent lonely planet?') with some pressed flowers in it - "Are you carrying any illegal substances into the country today Mr Cecconi?", "No", "Did you pack your bags yourself Mr Cecconi?", "Yes"...hmmmm! And let's not forget the all important guitar along with an eighties music book! Happy days as a wiseman once said :) ...The alcohol lasted an evening, I think Amy ate all her buttons, the Minstrels are still going strong (melted and reformed a few times over but still!), the lonely planet was banished to a dark corner as soon as possible along with the pressed flowers and the guitar has made many an appearance now all over the east coast of Australia - this is the lyrical genius of Kit and Gem thus far...

We've got a car,
And a guitar,
And some sandwiches,
They have potato salad in them (it's all true!)
STOP...Hammertime...

The rest of our time in Sydney was spent visiting the Chinese Garden, dressing up and taking silly photos, wandering around the Royal Botanic Gardens, visiting Mrs Macquarie's chair, the Opera House and the tower with views all over Sydney...that was a fun day when we went in the tower it was blue skies and sunshine, by the time we got to the top of the tower it was more like grey views all over a grey Sydney with plenty of clouds in sight! Oh and to top off the experience, our little camera broke as well...probably from overuse?! :( That was the day that Kit killed a fly, we think it was just karma that these things went wrong! (Let's not forget the two cockroaches that I also put to death, with the heel of my shoe! KC) Oh, we also got served by David Starsky at the Opera House bar and Amy saw a famous person but still hasn't figured out who she is!

It is definitely the time to be seeing old friends, since Mel and Graham (from Norwich ) arrived in Sydney at the same time as Kit, We visited Manly altogether, got attacked by flies...the story goes, Kit has been having some directional hunches since he arrived here and we are not sure if it's because the sun is in the wrong place or if it's the water going down the plughole the other way (Johnboy maybe you can shed some light?!) but we have learnt to generally do the opposite of these hunches. We were a bit naive in the early stages of the holiday so Kit led the way at Manly and we went round the houses (and the flies) in order to get to the main beach which turned out to be pretty much opposite the ferry terminal! D'oh! OK, let's get one thing straight... Whilst my 'hunches' on which direction to travel in may have been erroneous, I would like to point out that the poor standard of Australian maps and signs was not at all helpful in this regard. Mel should recieve full credit for later deciphering the map's code and leading us, eventually, to Manly beach. And a jolly good beach it was too. KC

We also managed a night out on the town with Mel and Graham...a struggle at first since we couldn't find anywhere to go (this is Sydney right?) but after walking a million kms we stumbled across some bargainous $10 steaks and an irish bar which kept us going into the early hours!

We also took the ferry to Watson's Bay to taste the delights of the famed Doyle's fish and
chips...a bargain at $32 each! Surprisingly it was a fairly cheap day for everyone bar Kit's mum...since she sent Kit away with a few extra bucks so we could go for some nice food...thank you thank you thank you!! All in all we spent $173 on fish and chips....who knew it was possible?! Mmmm... Jumbo prawns with beer batter, stuffed with spinach and pine nuts... Mmmm... to die for! KC

STOP...Hammertime...

Another Friday, another night out on the town...this time with Brian, Shane and Caroline - it was another evening of wandering the city looking for somewhere remotely inviting (i.e. not a strip bar) so we ended up in a bar full of middle-aged people dancing to a middle-aged band, once we decided this wasn't for us we hit the streets again and headed for O'Malleys where the middle-aged contingent was definitely present but not in such great numbers. In our confused (drunken) state we tried to squeeze five people in a four seater taxi without the taxi driver noticing?!?! Unsurprisingly we didn't succeed :) On the comedy side of things we had lost Brian at this point, turns out he had gone to wait for the train to get home, fell asleep on it and ended up riding from one end of the line to the other until about 10:30am!!!

Saturday night fight night came and went and was pretty uneventful aside from our little jaunt to Coogee (the place doesn't even exist in Kit's lonely planet book!). We waited for a bus for about forty minutes then realised Kit's bus timetable reading skills were about as off as his map reading skills (sacked once again mr Kit)....so then we tried the train, another twenty minutes and one finally arrives to get us into town at which point the idea of trying to find another bus stop drives us to catch a cab...another half an hour and we finally make it to Coogee.

We went to a bar which you could easily mistake for a bookeepers/shopping mall/family pub....there we met up with Hazel (Happy Birthday), Matt and a few others. Once we had exhausted all the fun to be had in that place we headed out to find a house party we had been invited to...another trek in the rain and wrong direction (Just to clarify - this was not one of my directional hunches, I had been sacked as navigator days beforehand! KC) and we finally got there to be greeted by Steve (Scottish guy from Melbourne) and all his uni buddies. The place was over-run with Scots, flaming Barcardi, drunken darts and a broken guitar, which Kit kindly gave a lesson on to a drunken girl even though it only had four strings and she'd had enough alcohol to wash away all sense of rhythm!

STOP...hammertime! Then Amy got sick :(

On Sunday we had the pleasure of meeting Amy's friend from school, Alison...she arrived back in Sydney at the weekend and we went to meet her for dinner and some drinks over in Manly.This was a good pre-evening activity for three people about to start the road trip of a lifetime :)

OK, blog competition time again... Is there anyone out there who can name the James Taylor song that contains the lyrics in the title of this blog? Kudos is the prize up for grabs here, in bucketloads! KC...POINTS DO NOT MEAN PRIZES BY THE WAY!

THE KIT HAS LANDED

2006-10-15T07:22:00.000+01:00

This morning we got up at 6am for a labour of love - picking up an-awake-for-36-hours-now Kit from the airport!! The excitement was rife...when we first arrived - an hour later with the parking meter ticking Kit comes through arrivals and it's only just possible to hold back the tears (NOT because of the cost of the parking ticket ;)

Welcome to Australia Kit, we are glad you came :)

Melbourne to Sydney via Melbourne!

2006-10-14T14:44:00.000+01:00

Since leaving home I think leaving Melbourne maybe one of the most difficult things we have had to do - in part beacuse we managed to make ourselves a home there but also because we have collected so much stuff that even buying a car with plenty of boot space hasnt solved the 'how to transport it all' problem. At this moment, I should probably point out that Amy thinks it is mostly me that has bought too much stuff (Amy just likes to think she can still fit all of her things in one bag by pretending to have finished packing when it is full regardless of all the other bits and pieces she still has to put somewhere ;) I on the other hand went for a more organised approach with and now have an underwear bag, a 'stuff' bag, a storage bag?! Look out Madtin, we might actually be dragging you behind the car by a piece of string!!

So the big news...we bought a car - did you work that out already? It is a baby blue Toyota Corolla circa 1984 with a built in oil leak and furry front seat. She has been christened Betty Boo (just doin the do) with the help of Miss Dibby and is now the proud owner of some furry die (thank you looky lady!)!! We took her for a test drive on the weekend to Queenscliff and took the ferry over to Sorrento in the hope of seeing some dolphins, but we didn't :( At this time we became aware of a small oil leak somewhere within the car. "Joe...?" (thats the man that sold us the car), back to the garage and she goes in for a little check up and everything is deemed ok.

Our last few days in Melbourne were spent working with a small amount of socialising to wish our new friends farewell (for now!) The most memorable night being Paul's 'pimpin' BBQ where we all went insane. Enough said :)

We finally left on Wednesday - jam packed car and and extra passenger for the first leg of the trip. Amy, Jamie and I visited the Australian Garden in Cranbourne which was a little out of the way but our last must-see attraction in Melbourne (even though it isn't due to be completed until 2010!) Next stop the train station to send Jamie back home and it's time for us to hit the road Jack, and never come back till-la-ter-on-this-aft-er-noon! Turns out the nout-to-worry-about oil leak was actually something to worry about, "Joe...?". After a quick check-up at a garage in Moe the diagnosis is not so good - the rear main seal has gone and unfortunately the only way to get to it is to rip Betty's insides out and go in through the gearbox. Options are...go back to Melbourne and have the car fixed for free or go back to Melbourne and have the car fixed for free. So we go back to Melbourne and have the car fixed for free!

Thursday afternoon we try again...and this time - SUCCESS! ...WINNERS! We made it all the way to Bairnsdale where the streets are lined with bugs and there is no hostel-style accomodation to keep budgeteers happy. To make up for the five star accomodation we had just paid out for we lived off ham sandwiches that evening...mmmm! We managed to spot a bush fire, some big lizards, kangaroos on a golf course and dead kangaroos in the road (we didn't kill it!!)

Friday morning (oil check, water check) we are up and away again via the Canoe Tree which is a tree that the aboriginals used to make things like...errr...canoes! Past a few lookouts and through a town called Eden which held the promise of some whale watching but just like the dolphins, they remained hidden :( After Eden we drove through Merimbula and decided to carry on to Bega where there was a cheap hostel and a cheese factory. We visited the cheese factory in the morning, maybe not the best time to be tasting cheese but still (and Mum - there wasn't any wine to go with it unfortunately!)

The next part of the journey was straight up the coast and into the jaws of Sydney. Driving round the city wasn't so much of an issue - the gridlocked traffic and 37 degrees of heat were though! We eventually arrive at the hostel only to discover that the 'Car parking available' meant 'you can have a car park for $15 A NIGHT, if you want to spend all of your money on parking your car three miles away from the hostel!?'...no thanks sparky. So we went to another hostel which we had heard of and lo and behold their parking is only $5 a night, much more reasonable in the eyes of the backpacker!

Australians Like Wood

2006-09-10T13:21:00.000+01:00

After a few weeks of not doing anything productive with our weekends we are back on track after last weekend and our road trip to the Great Ocean Road!!

SPECIAL CAR HIRE UNIT
Special Detective Layton takes to the streets of Melbourne on foot in order to get to the car hire place - she thinks leaving work an hour before the deadline will be plenty of time to pick up the car - wrong again Ethel...it's all about the bad directions this weekend and these directions were particularly bad. Special Detective Layton ends up at 449 Inkerman Street and needs to be at 87 Inkerman Street....28 minutes to go, CAN SHE MAKE IT?? Just!

The car is a white, three door Hyundai beauty with the indicator on the WRONG side of the car...hence the new way to indicate going round corners is by the speed of the windscreen wipers. Special Detective Layton heads to the hostel in search of some parking. Luckily the signs are not easy to interpret at all beacuse that's a quality all road signs should have. Fortunately there is a driving expert waiting in the wings in the form of Matt who comes up trumps with plenty of useful advice about where to park, how fast to go, what to do with the trams and even offers us his parking space for the evening. Sold.

Obviously that evening, Special Detective Laytong and Captain Campbell stayed in, had dinner and an early night in order to prepare for the exciting events of the weekend....(see Club Retro reference in last blog)

LEAVING MELBOURNE INVESTIGATION UNIT
Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell finally get away from the flat at about 11am and pick up the car, here's where the trouble begins. Knowing how bad the directions were to get to the car hire place - goodness knows why they thought the ladies directions on how to get to the Great Ocean Road (from now on it is to be known as THE GOR) would be any better - maybe it's because they looked so simple!? Basically it takes them an hour (that's right AN HOUR) to get out of the city...or to try and get onto the freeway (which by the way isn't actually free because they fine you if you haven't paid to be on it?!) Well, this is what happens when you have amy reading a map, gem driving and specific instructions from the car hire lady yet you are ignoring all this and trying to take a photo on timer before the lights change and this then means you don't see the ridiculously small sign for your freeway and you now need to find the next exit. A million illegal manouevers later, 3 times past our front door, once past my work, a scary encounter when we thought we were heading on to the 6 lane freeway in the wrong direction and taking the wrong exit at the very last roundabout out of the city and we were on our way to Geeeeeeeelong.

HAVE YOU EVER INVESTIGATION UNIT
Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell's first stop is the Split Point Lighthouse, this is the very lighthouse from Round the Twist! Have you ever...ever felt like this? Have strange things happened are you going round the twist?

APOLLO APOSTLE INVESTIGATION UNIT
Now hands up who'd have thought if there was a place named APOLLO Bay that the Twelve APOSTLES may be somewhere nearby? Special Detective Layton's hand is definitely up right now...unfortunately the slight mix up with the A-words meant that the plan to get up early and watch the sun rise over the Apostles was foiled since they were another hour and a half's drive away! Aye well, Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell found a magic place to stay in Apollo Bay called...'The Apollo Bay Backpackers', like it just stepped out of storybook. The mish-mash of furniture, cosy kitchen, dinky lounge and random decor made this place pretty special - upon entering Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell found a note saying make yourselves at home, be back soon...genius! And it soon became home for the evening.

We went out for some food and the waitress kindly told us that she doesn't see many people eat THAT much food :)

SERIOUS FLIGHT UNIT
Day two of the serious crime intent crash unit investigation and Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell are back on the road - via a rainforest walk and Cape Otway lighthouse (look out for the cows) they eventually arrive at the Twelve Apostles, rock formations in the sea which are slowly being eroded away - definitley would have looked stunning at sun rise! Still they did the best they could with the available light and its true what they say - it's difficult to take a bad picture of the twleve apostles.

In order to get the best possible view of the Apostles (in the absence of the sun rise!) Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell decided to pay over the odds for a ten minute helicopter ride...turns out it was worth every cent!

Port Campbell was the next stop - well you can't not have a Campbell next to a Campbell sign can you! Other than the sign it wasn't overly exciting.

RETURN HOME INVESTIGATION UNIT
The return journey was pretty uneventful apart from the one designated stop at the Treetop Walk through the Rainforest...a little Ant-and-Dec-I'm-a-Celebrity-Get-Me-Out-of-Here-esque with walkways through the trees and tall lookout points to climb, spray that again please!?! Detective Layton and Captain Campbell experience such sights as THE BIG TREE and THE OLD TREE STUMP! Genius huh!

Australian radio is a little repetitive to say the least and Unfaithful by Rhianna soon became the GOR Trip theme tune. Not particularly appropriate to anything but you can't fight fate! Oh and if anyone is wondering why this blog sounds like (in mine and Amy's head) a television voice over introducing a (not-so) quality police drama - that's because we have adopted these comedy accents to make the quiet times in life a little bit more exciting :)

(you'll have to imagine the voices) "AMY WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE FOR DINNER?" "I DONT KNOW GEM, WHAT DO WE HAVE IN THE FREEZER" "USING MY SPECIAL INVESTIGATION POWERS" (checking the freezer....) "NOTHING!"

CLUB SANDWICHES NOT SEALS

2006-09-01T09:06:00.000+01:00

More recently we have been to the Picasso exhibition, maybe you have seen our photos? We found an excellent arts and crafts market and some highly weird street performers, one of whom thought it would be funny whilst he was tied up in chains on the floor clutching his crotch to tell a young girl she was his father!?!?!?!?!? HMMM!

More walking tours, BBQ's and as previously mentioned we are now professional tennis players!
Oh and we met James and Rachael again!! - it is official they are the nicest people in the world and the most fun to hang out with....thanks for dinner guys (sorry we were late!) keep in touch and we'll see you back home for some more quality time :) Safe trip! We went to their flat for dinner and in the process me and Ayms got more lost than we ever have done before...we were feeling lazy and decided the tram was the best way to go - so off we trot and find a tram that will drop us off on exactly on the road we need to be on. Everything was going to plan until we started paying attention to where we were actually going - and we were pretty sure we were headed in the wrong direction. So we get off and start wandering back up the road, here's where it gets confusing because some bright sparks decided that putting two George streets within a few blocks of each other was a good idea - not going to confuse people at all! We asked a guy in the petrol station who in hindsight needs to go to map-reading school (along with me and the lovely belle) and he sent us back the way we had come..."are you sure?" "yes"

At this point all instinct is telling us to be going in the OTHER direction - but surely the Melburnian knows what he's talking about - right?! Wrong! We get back on the tram and end up at the tram depot at Kew?!?!!? - the kindly tram worker folk advise us that we need to head right back into the city! D'oh. By now we are already over an hour late for dinner and when we did arrive (by taxi in the end) it took another twenty minutes for the motley crew to be reunited since james had gone out looking for us!! One roast dinner and several bottles of wine later me and Amy stumble home - in the right direction this time.

We also went to see an AFL game....Aussie Rules football where they bounce, kick, throw, juggle the ball, have four goal posts and dudes in lab coats who aren't playing but spend a fair amount of time running onto the pitch with refreshments. So it's more like Aussie 'no' Rules football and since the stadium can hold 100,000 people we were quite high up and following the ball was pretty difficult after a couple of beverages. On the way back we had the privelage of frequenting a topless bar with just the one topless barmaid and a lot of old pervy men...they were clearly confused as to why we were there.

We have been to the cinema to see Clerks II - highly recommended (especially if you like donkeys and prefer Star Wars to Lord of the Rings..."there's only one return, okay, and it ain't "of the King," it's "of the Jedi"") And Nico has caused us much entertainment this week with his lack of hearing...

AMY: Ant left the hostel
NICO: What? Ant made pasta for the whole hostel?

Que?!

Ooooh, and to all Club Retro fans of UEA, Norwich...you will be pleased to here there is a Club Retro equivalent all over Australia :) WE BUILT THIS CITY ON ROCK AND ROLL!

Working Girls!

2006-09-01T09:01:00.000+01:00

A quick update on the jobs....

GEM: I have two jobs at present, both of the admin variety. One is at the university and mostly involves serving the students (badly), filing, sticking up posters, making signs, archiving...the usual. I work with Vikki who is a self-titled bitch, Michelle who has the tidiest desk in the world yet she stays behind after work to tidy it!? and Rose who couldn't remember my name for the first week....I think I preferred it that way because now she can remember it she just keeps giving me more and more rubbish jobs. Oh..and then there's Val who was away for the first two weeks but is now back in force...loud voice and all! She's growing on me though :) All in all is pretty good fun and everyone is most friendly.

My other job is at the Royal Botanic Gardens which make up for anything that's wrong with the actual job, like the freezing cold office and my three new friends - the messy filing cabinets! Sometimes it's easier to search the entire network for a PC Duo type program so I don't have to get up and move away from the heater, sometimes I have to stop myself from taking nana naps by going for a walk! And since I met the director of the gardens I have forgotten what he looked like so have to be overly polite to any middle aged men I run into just in case it's him!!

AMY: Ok, my turn. I got myself a job as a receptionist 'Good morning, ERM, Amy speaking' :) I said Amy not emy or emma or debbie or any other name you think i might be called :) thats right the accent causing me a few problems but i'm now trying to help them out and speak
s-l-o-w-l-y!!! Stress free, alright money and time passes pretty quickly answering phones, and looking after the mail and faxes. Thats about all I do, oh yeah and drink tea!! Everybody is lovely and can't be doing so bad was only meant to be there 2 weeks, now there indefinitley. And they invited me to the Fancy Dress Staff Party. Free bar did you say?? And i can bring a friend?? I would love to come. All went well, even though gem did end up wearing one of the office partner's outfit by the end of the night - can't take her anywhere ;)

The week of Productivity

2006-09-01T08:51:00.000+01:00

So after a few weeks of doing nothing we have one week of doing everything, me and Ayms spurred on by our lack of activity so far managed to get ourselves doctors, medicare cards, tax file numbers, bank accounts, phones (which become immediately annoying since agencies keep ringing with jobs for you!), jobs and an apartment!

We descended into normal life at an alarming rate after that but our weekends are spent still trying to see more of Melbourne and put off going back to work for as long as possible...thats right, it only took about three days to get that 'i dont wanna get out of bed' feeling!

The new apartment is a whole new world compared to the hostel - it's ace having our own room again and being able to unpack...on the other hand this does mean that we are less conscious about how much stuff we buy - so good luck with it all fitting back in the rucksacks when we move on! We now stay with Stefan and Charlie who are both very lovely and work all the hours they can as chefs....good you might say, apart from who actually wants to bring their work home with them ;) Another plus is that Nico - who makes the best salad dressing in the world and Dara now live right round the corner, so in the absence of having neighbours that we don't see - they do the job just grand.

We also have free use of the swimming pool and jacuzzi...oh and the gym but we gave up in that idea before we'd even got here. The swimming pool on the other hand is a work in progress....we have made it to the jacuzzi several times....contemplated the pool and the one day we did try and go for a swim, it was shut for refurbishment! Nico and Dara have tennis courts so we have replaced the 'we are going to run the marathan' dream with the 'wimbledon' dream!

Let the sightseeing begin...

2006-09-01T08:35:00.000+01:00

Interesting things we have seen and done in Melbourne!

Federation Square
TV50 Exhibition where you get to watch Scott and Charlene get married over and over again, Sons and Daughters and Round the Twist....Have you ever?
Rialto Tower
Watching England lose
Acland Street
St Kilda tour
Brunswick Street
City Circle tram, this is free and goes round and round in a circle! We only stayed on for 1 lap.
Royal Botanical Gardens
Philip Island - via the vineyard for some wine tasting, the wildlife park where we fed the wallabies, saw black swans and koalas, fed kangaroos...well I had a tug of war with one of them over my bag of food, apparently I wasn't quick enough at getting some for him so he just ripped the bag so it fell all over the floor! Then to the penguin Parade which was more like watching ten penguins walking up a hill.
Looki-here ladies walking tours of Melbourne
Neighbours tour - driving round in the Neighbours van gets you enough attention as it is...but then people realise you have a tele on board and you are watching old school episodes! We visited the school which could have been any school in Australia topped off by the fact that it's a BYO sign deal! Pin Oak Street (Ramsay St) is a lot smaller than you'd imagine and all the streets around it look pretty similar - they picked this particular one because it has a massive car park behind it for all the equipment trucks and buses. They also have a security guard on the street at night time to guard against frisky backpackers who think it's funny to get a bit of action on Harold's lawn!
Immigration Museum
Neighbours night - which is a big cheese-fest centred around a quiz. Unfortunately we were on a table with a pen-hogger type so didn't get much of a look in when tit (think gem means it:)came to the quiz. We met Steph, Boyd and Toadie (is a legend) They played stupid games and cut the quiz short because Dr Karl was so eager to come out and play (with his band!)
In between times we kindof got lost in the world of the sofa and our lives flipped between Family Guy, Simpson's, Futurama, South Park and Whose Line is it Anyway?
We went to the Melbourne Museum to see Helen Daniel's kitchen which we are reliably informed was made out to have burnt down in a fire....no such luck! We have vowed to return on a rainy day to see what else the museum has to offer.
Williamstown - Melbournes original port, we ate some chish and fips and continued the looki ladies pancake tour of Australia.
Plus a few bars....where we are either by far the youngest or oldest people there and one where they have ridiculous coloured lights over the pool table so that me and Ayms think the yellow balls are actually the white ball! Bring it on!

Some people you meet for a reason...others...?!

2006-08-31T11:21:00.000+01:00

Some of the regulars we've met since we've been here (no doubt there names will crop up now and again)........King Dave, whose first impression was to drag us around the hostel when he was slightly inebriated to meet all the residence...then he sat on Amy?! Alistair from Glasgow...from where? Glasgow...where? Glasgow....oh, you said Glasgow!!!!!!!!!!!!! Matt, Matt's Matt, blonde Matt, long-haired Matt, stupid Matt, Jamie 'ginger' Rotten Nuttz, Paul the receptionist or Paul the cleaner depending on the day of the week, Sarah from Canada, Big-eyed Dara, Smelly Jamie, Henry, El who is working for a recruitment company and promises to find everyone a job, Dibs the mother of the hostel and Nico the German chef :)

First Impressions

2006-08-31T11:07:00.000+01:00

First impressions of Melbourne weren't too hot, since we turned up in flip flops at 5am, shattered and freezing - trying to figure out the trains was a bit of a hassle and after shivering on the WRONG platform (thanks to the train information guy) for a fair amount of time, we made it to the right platform just in time to see our train speeding away, another one in half an hours time! Then there was the long walk to the hostel..Back of Chapel with the most comfortable bunk beds ever is to be our new home for the next little while. That day was a bit of a write off as we slept through it all and then watched tele in the evening - a luxury we have been without for the last three months! Luckily everyone thought we had just arrived from the U.K. and that we were sleeping off the jet-lag., not just being lazy!

We shared a room of six and had free range of the kitchen, tv room (with the biggest tele you've ever seen), internet room, bbq area (I'm in the BBQ area!-thats where you'll find gem when she's drunk, obiously??:) and some of the most helpful staff ever. In fact, aside from the unhelpful train information guy, everyone in Melbourne goes out of their way to see if you are ok!

So it's cold and our new found 'student' house has the expected low quality heating system, maybe that's why it was so hard to get out of bed in the mornings! and where it is more convenient to walk to the shop than it is to the fridge. We live just of Chapel Street which is the funkiest place in Melbourne, with bars, cafes, shops right on your doorstep where everyone looks like they just stepped out of a (weird hair) salon or right off the catwalk.

Never thought I'd be so happy to cook for myself....but with heinz beans so readily available!! (the aussies dont understand the beans ON toast thing!?!?!)

Australia is soo laid back but we have discovered that it has to be when the escalators and elevators move as slowly as they do and it takes a minute for automatic doors to sense that someone is standing in front of them! If trains are late, they lead you on to believe it's still arriving at the same time and T.V. advertises now next and later as opposed to telling you what time things are on!

Sing a pore for me

2006-08-31T10:54:00.000+01:00

tigerairways.com if you ever need cheap flights in Asia!

First stop, the shops! We found topshop!! ... and nemo ;) We were quite excited, although the sudden increase in price wasn't so appealing. None-the-less, the streets of Singapore were alive (with the sound of music and performers) so we managed to wile away the day.

In the evening we headed to the night safari, camera in hand and night photography mode switched on...first obstacle was actually getting there which should have been easy since we booked to go on a bus through the hostel, but it wasn't. The Bus was full so we were the lucky four that had to go and grab a taxi...again another easy task? No, we stood for 40 minutes on many different roads trying to flag one down but no-one was having it. One did stop but decided against us when Ayms tried to have a workd? So back to the hostel, defeated and we find out that the bus hadn't turned up yet, some other people had gone off to get a taxi so there was now space for us...a roundabout way of getting there but we did eventually. Then you get to the night safari, all geared up to take some award-winning photos and they tell you you aren't allowed to use the flash...ahhhhh!

We visited Sentosa island where everything is super expensive but where they sell excellent popcorn. We scoped out all the free stuff to do which mostly involved riding the tram. On the one occasion we did decide to walk somewhere, at the point when we were too far from any sort of shelter the heavens opened and we got caught in the biggest downpour I've ever seen - just when you think it's easing, nope, it's just taking a breath so it can pelt raindrops on you even harder.

Drenched and a little cold, we continued to the tour and visited the musical fountain which wasnt being too musical or too fountain like i.e no music and no water?!?! whats that all about?, we found a walking trail to take you to the lost civilisation but we couldnt find it?! It was more like the Gem and Amy get lost walking route!

In the evening we made for the free Singapore Arts Festival and watched some fire shows and weird flourescent uv lights show - seriously - people get paid to do this?

We made it to the obligatory Raffles Hotel but felt to scruffy to go anywhere near the inside and that was our time gone in Singapore...and Asia!

AUSTRALIA HERE WE COME!

Half Professional Divers

2006-08-30T13:01:00.000+01:00

Arrived in Krabi after another painful day of travelling...luckily there was pizza at the end of itwhich half made up for the prison cell we had just paid to stay in. The 'cell' had no air-con, no hot water and it's hard to believe that paint exists in thos town, the would-be-white plastic chairs on our 'veranda' were beyond salvaging (in colour and in chair-safetyness), the beds were designed for five year olds and the tiger/bear/giraffe print sheets and flannelette covers left much luxury to be desires. Oh, and we supposedly had a 'cleaner' who, the longer we stayed gave us increasingly worse towels...they'd start off a dull green colour, then the next day you might get one with a hole in, then the next day some weird stains!? and she also took to hiding Amy's mobile phone under her matress!!

After a long day we collapsed in the why-did-they-even-bother-with-the-matress-it's-so-wooden mattresses!!

The next day we ventured out into the horseshoe shaped town and realise the entire place should have come with a health warning...welcome to Ao-nang, Krabi, AKA a death trap where electrical cables run along the pavement, sometimes a couple of inches off of the ground like they are trying to resemble some sort of trip wire?! they run through puddles, past random craters in the floor which you have no doubt are there for a very good reason, yet you can never figure out what that might be...and what's left of the pavement for you to walk on may as well be made out of ice.

It's our own fault for not picking up the lonely planet for a week but since we knew the only things we needed to do here was meet up with the Irish folk before they moved on - check, meet Kit's cousin - would have done but he upped and left to Koh Tao! and learn to dive - half check!

Our dive instructor was called Marcus, he is from Germany...

DAY 1 Classroom Theory

Since it is raining outside we decided to get this part out of the way - not too strenuous although trying to get your head round air density, water pressure, neutral and positively buoyant, salt water differs from fresh water how? lungs over-expanding, nitrogen narcosis....ahhhh!

DAY 2 In the Pool

The pool stuff was good, it was at first very bizarre to be able to breathe underwater and some of the exercises took a bit of getting used to...luckily Marcus was the patient type...until...the best bit was towards the end of the day when me and Ayms had exhausted ourselves and spent the day breathing in nitrogen, the giggles were bound to arrive at some point! So at the pont when Marcus said we had to take off our BCD's and climb back into them...reminiscent of the time me and Amy tried to jump on lilos and failed miserably, we were already in stiches...the final task of the day was dragging each other the length of the pool in some pretty weird positions, Marcus soon turned into the "we dont want to spend all day doing this, do we?" monster ;)

DAY 3 Out at Sea

Another early morning, we headed out to the boat which was to whisk us away to sea. We stood at the shore comtemplating the rain, the wind, the rough sea, the big waves, low visibility and certain death and decided our first diving experience in the sea shouldnt be one fraught(?) with danger, not a problem, still two full days left to get it done.

So another day to waste in Krabi, where there isn't too much going on in the low season when it's constantly drizzling! Back to the cell it is then!

DAY 4 ...Amy gets a cold...

In case anyone isn't aware...it is a big no-no to dive with a cold. CANCELLED! But this did prompt a bit of an upgrade in the room situation. Me and Amy were aware that one day paying the extra four pounds for some hot water would be very worth it and today was that day! Since wandering around in the rain and showering in a cold shower had probably contributed to Amy not feeling too well we gave in to the budget and in return got some hot water, clean towels, a broken tele and a fridge!

We ran into Gerry from Halong Bay and went out for a drink with him and danced with some ladyboys.."no money, no honey", "never try, never know". All in all this was good preparation for our final exam the next day and me and Amy both passed with flying colours!

Schnitzeleria

2006-08-30T12:29:00.000+01:00

Me and Ayms didn't have too many plans set in stone before we came away, we had certain things that we knew we wanted to do, certain places we knew we wanted to see and certain beach huts that we have dreamed about since we became friends!

I think this may have been the beginning of our extensive travelling plans - one day you might be feeling a little stressed...maybe a little tired, bored at work or maybe just a little sad...and what makes you feel better?! I know what, lets imagine we are in a beach hut in Thailand...laying on the beach, looking out at the open horizon, maybe the sun is setting...there are definitely palm trees...clear blue seas, white sands! And suddenly all is well with the world.

We managed to live the dream and all in all it was pretty wonderful. The beach hut - we booked before we came away, we thought it was a bargain at 90 pounds for the week (normal spending money for a whole week in Thailand, including accomodation!) Aye well! It was beautiful! Comfy bed, gorgeous bathroom, right on the beach overlooking the sea, sunsets just around the corner, great restaurant, and lovely staff and guests!

We ran into a group of Irish folk just after we arrived...Derek, Dave, Iain, Keira, Ste and Owen and bonded over the football! World cup fever and mosquito bites soon took over! I watched the first England match (in between power cuts) in the company of 9 Irish, 1 Scot, 3 Thai and 1 Jack Osbourne wannabe...so obviously everyone was rooting for them to win!

Our resort was based half way between two main towns, this meant that the taxis ran between them constantly - convenient huh, the best of both worlds - quiet and peaceful when you want and crazy party towns just a taxi ride away...well, that would have been ideal had the taxis ever been empty! They rarely left either town unless the back of the taxi was almost full so the chances of being picked up along the way were pretty slim...even slimmer when it was either roasting hot or raining! Then when you did eventually get in the taxi you had to hang on for dear life while the taxi soared over the log-flume style hills.

Our main reason for coming to Koh Phagnan this week was to experience the much talked about Full Moon Party. Some poeple rave about it others tell you not to bother, so the most objective thing to do is to go and partake in a few beverages and see what all the fuss is about - it's a hard life! We went with our new found Irish friends and it is very much like a party on the beach with market-type stalls selling buckets of alcohol and the bars blaring out different kinds of music up and down the beach. Then throw in some kids selling flower necklaces, paint and flashing headbands...(kids that most definitley should be tucked up safely in bed) and there you have it, oh, and the othe few thousand people of various levels of drunkeness.

We purchased some flower necklaces, borrowed somebody else's paint which Amy then managed to wipe on a girls white top as she walked past ;) Some poeple see elephants when they go to the full moon part, we saw 118...and you can only imagine how excited we were to see our long lost triplet! I reckon we may have danced on a table that was too small to be dancing on and then we jumped in a truck and got a lift home...and the night doesn't end there! Amy befriended a little dog on the way home and walked it all the way to our hut!! The main thing is we SURVIVED!!

The rest of the week looked a lot like football, going out, eating (even though tummys and budgets often disagreed) and I think we discovered where the taxi square was on our last but one night, useful :) Then we hop back on the uncomfortable boat - that's right, they still haven't added the sofas and cushions!

To Krabi....

Oh what a thing to do, Cos you were all yellow

2006-08-30T12:18:00.000+01:00

Last visit to Bangkok...finally! Just another stop gap before we head off to Koh Phagnan. It was the King's birthday...and all the Thai people were out in force in their yellow 'we love the King' tee shirts. It was a bizarre sight to see, hundreds of people wandering around in the same yellow tee shirts.

The bus to Koh Phagnan was an all-nighter plus some since the damn thing had a lot of problems going up hills...or small inclines is a better description! Regardless of the engine continually cutting out the diver was very persistent at revving the engine until everyone on it thought it might explode, instead it just cut out again. A quick pitstop at the next garage and away we go again.

We finally make it to the coast and have to wait for our boat to take us to the island. Having not slept too well on the bus me and Ayms definitely had our morning faces on - the ones where we know we are both too tired to make conversation. LUCKILY some lone traveller appeared and was pretty chatty considering it was 6am, she didn't quite get the whole silent vigil thing but soon enough she gave up and went and found some more lively human beings to converse with.

The boat was insanely uncomfortable...we have been talking lately about how much easier travelling must be these days and in fact we are very lucky...but sofas and cushions would have gone down a lot better than the plastic chairs they actually installed on the boat! It was also a lot longer journey than I had anticipated, I imagined it would have been swimmable (i.e. you might be able to see the island from the shore) but no, two hours later and STILL there is no sign of our beautiful beach hut.

Chiang Mai

2006-08-30T12:17:00.000+01:00

Next stop - a cheeky flight to Chiang Mai, in view of our impending week of doing nothing in Koh Phagnan we decided to cram as much as possible into the week leading up to it.

We were only there for two days but that was enough time for me and Amy to become professional Thai style chefs (we got a certificate and everything!)! The day of the cooking course was wonderful…our teacher was called Nokky and she was the biggest, brightest, loudest character you could ever imagine! We learnt to cook spring rolls, Thai green curry, chicken with cashew nuts (which we have since successfully recreated!), noodle soup and the sickliest sweet dessert ever – then we ate it all! Suffice to say by the end of the day we were the size of a tuk tuk :)

Chiang Mai was a lot bigger than we both imagined and thus slightly more expensive (and I mean expensive in Thailand terms) we booked into a (recommended) hotel for ten pounds a night…fifth floor?! Can’t be bad…oh yes it can, when there is no lift to get you to that fifth floor! We lasted one night in this place then decided to hot-foot it to the hostel down the way where we knew Alex (from Halong Bay) was staying. A slight downgrade but there was a pleasingly distinct lack of stairs to climb to get to the room!

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to do a trek while we were there, so in the absence of walking for days on end to meet some tribal folk we visited the tribal museum and looked at the photos instead. We also visited the infamous night market which you are told is huge but don’t quite believe until you see it! We managed to find the massage stall which turned out to be a most amusing experience, between the woman cracking my toes and barely touching Amy's feet to make her jump, the chubby cheek and head massage - we looked like dumb and dumber just having arrived in Aspen! The comedy duo looking their best :)

Chanacanaburi? – The stuff five year olds dreams are made of!

2006-08-28T07:40:00.000+01:00

A birthday spectacular in the town of Kanchanaburi…if I were five years old the zoo would be where it was at…now I’m 24, it’s the tiger temple! We arrived in Kanchanaburi and booked into some high class birthday accommodation at the Jolly Frog – a hammock haven on the River Kwai. Aside from the mix of 70’s style and paint splashed décor in our room, the air-con was a big luxury!
We booked our trip to the tiger temple for that afternoon and off we trot…arrive at some desolate wasteland and head towards the unknown once again. The set up looks something like tigers subtly (about as subtle as I ever am) chained to the ground, serenely strolling round their posts or impassively laying on the floor…it was all very peaceful which begs the question “are they drugged?”. However, had the tigers been supposedly characteristic - aggressive and prowling around, I’m not sure the experience would have been quite so pleasant! With everyone/thing under control and the flimsy piece of string dividing the apprehensive crowd from the tigers we are ready to go. You give your camera to one volunteer, your hand to the other and they take you around to each of the tigers, sit or stand you next to them and take your photo. Easy peasy! One lucky young lady was sat next to a tiger while the guide pulled it around until it’s head was lain on her lap…she looked mildly terrified!
We went for a birthday feast at the Jolly Frog restaurant and decided to splash out (on this special occasion) on a bottle of wine, we are quite prepared to pay up to three, four maybe even five whole pounds for the privilege!!….however, the only one on the menu was rice wine and cost about 85p for the bottle! The most happening place in town was the Country and Western/Britney Spears fan base bar round the corner which aside from the four staff members had just two guests! I got roped into playing pool with some older men (joy!) I think they kept letting me win…Amy took part in the Connect4 tournament to end all tournaments with ‘funny man’ Josh, there was some inspiring armchair dancing and a cowboy hat featured at one point too!...all this while the CD changed every two minutes to suit the clientele that walked through the door….Britney, Thai karaoke love songs, Country, Now That’s What I Call Music past and present. As a birthday treat we got noodles from 7/11 before crawling into bed.
The pre-birthday celebrations (the night before in Bangkok) were pretty non-existent until we were befriended by a group of folk who were out also celebrating a birthday. We bonded over some Oasis singing and they invited us out to a club…hmmm!? So we get in the taxi (where Jason attempted to eat a bug…which he rapidly spat back out and made the rest of us want to gag) and end up at some sort of aeroplane hanger where coincidentally they wouldn’t let you in without your passport – “well, actually that’s safely locked away at the hostel and not in my pocket waiting for some opportune thief to take advantage of me!” still the nice man let us is in and we were confronted with extortionate drinks and music almost as good as hard house karaoke. Finally we left and managed to catch the valet service in full swing outside?! Oh yeah, I remember now, I also left my car back at the hostel too!?
Our second day in Kanchanaburi we did another tour…elephant trekking, bamboo rafting, lunch, waterfall, cave, Death Railway and the Bridge Over the River Kwai…basically a bumpy ride on an elephant with a “guide”, I use the term very loosely since his guiding = picking up stones for most of the time and not paying too much attention to where our elephant was taking us…downstream, bamboo rafts which floated a couple of centimetres BELOW the surface of the river, lunch where the tour guide made everyone sing happy birthday to me and bought me a cake (plate of biscuits with a candle in the middle), waterfalls where me and Ayms (map-readers extraordinaire) got lost!, and the Bridge over the River Kwai, where in true Thai style safety procedures are pretty lapse and you can walk along the railway line regardless of the trains whizzing by!

What would you choose?

2006-06-21T08:33:00.000+01:00

In Luang Prabang, apart from visiting the not-so exceptional, exceptional waterfall (we think we were spoilt in Vietnam) the only thing to do there is to plan your escape....(to Chiang Mai)

a) take the slow boat which takes 2/3 days and involves sitting on wooden benches the whole time
b) take the speed boat which involves sitting crouched in the same position for six hours with a crash helmet on and your bag between your knees - i.e. risking death
c) fly with Laos Airlines - i.e. risking death
d) take the bus for a whole day and night and another day

Since we didn't have too much time available, none of these options were too appealing, so change of plans. We can get the bus to Bangkok in one day and one night, then we can head to Kanchanaburi from there. If time and cheap internet flights allow we can fly to Chiang Mai later.

So once this dilemma was sorted me and Amy were going to climb the big hill in Luang Prabang called Phousy Mountain, really we were - but it started to rain and so instead we found the cinema where you hire your film and room and get a million cushions to lay on and veg out. We watched Walk the Line (Madtin - you might even enjoy that one :) and Jarhead (James Maggot - excellent review from you, just like you said it would be ;)

We visited the night market and purchased some paper lanterns which every traveller needs! Honestly! We met Alex who we first met in Halong Bay, he is from Scotland, so we hung around with him for a while too.

And then here begins the mammoth journey from Luang Prabang - Vientiane and Vientiane to Bangkok. The bus to Vientiane had some colourful characters on it....one guy sat in front of me kept leaning over the sleeping woman next to him to throw up out of the window - eventually she caught on and swapped seats with him. By the end of the journey he was coughing up blood, nice! Me and Ayms were lucky enough to have most of the back seat to ourselves apart from the man carrying the AK47 under his jacket - there for our own protection don't you know, from bandits who attack tourist buses in the mountains. Every now and again people would get on the bus and come and share the back seat with us. At one point a family of four; mother, baby, toddler and child squeezed onto the one and a half seats left (the gun is taking up half a seat), the toddler looked absolutely petrified at the sight of Amy but that didn't stop her from gripping into her arm for the duration of the journey!

Trying to fit the world inside a picture frame...

2006-06-21T07:53:00.000+01:00

There are some places you come across that you know photos will never do justice - but you try anyway! We met some girls in Vientiane who told us about riverside bungalows in Vang Vieng, when we got off the bus the sign said 600m, at this point me and Amy nearly gave up on the idea...we started walking...200m, 100m, 50m, 50m...hello!? What is this...50m to the next sign? or is 50m just a complete lie altogether? Eventually, past the temple, along the dirt track, down a steep slope and a meadow comes into view, then some little white huts, then the mountains, then the river....it's like we just stumbled into paradise (after 600m anyway!)

We checked into the bamboo huts and take in the scene, we cant quite believe the place exists or that we get to stay there! Amy heads off to check out the facilities and I hear some rustling in the hut, luckily its only a really big lizard running across the floor...by the time I call Amy back the lizard has disappeared and she's not quite sure how big a lizard i mean. Off she goes again and lo and behold it comes back again, doing rounds of the room...I'm not quite sure whether paradise is worth it if we have to share our hut with that creature. Amy comes back again and it disappears again! Luckily she catches sight of its head and realises I'm not talking about a ghecko. Thats the last we see of him though, thankfully.

We head out to discover the town, turns out we discovered most of it when we walked to the guesthouse. It has one main street, pretty much a dirt track lined with cafes and restaurants showing Friends on repeat all day, all evening, everyday. Some places break from the norm and show The Simpsons or put films on, but most of them show Friends.

It's Saturday - the bank is closed. We were hoping to go tubing (see later) on the Sunday and be leaving by the Monday, but since we didn't bring enough pennies from Vientiane we either have to survive on $5 for two days, thus having enough money to buy tubing tickets, pay the accomodation and the bus ticket OR spend some of the money we might need and assume we can get money out of the bank on Monday, pay for everything and get on the bus in about an hour, if there is a problem at the bank then we'd have no chance. Since mine and Amy's budget skills consist of - having a certain amount to spend and when we spend more than that we subtract things like accomodation/transport costs of the day from the amount until we are under budget...so we decided to stay an extra day in Vang Vieng and be sure that the bank would give us some money. In the meantime we have accomodation and bus fare to go and spend :)

Tubing and kayaking are about the only things to do in Vang Vieng, unless you are interested in experimenting with magic mushrooms on pizza, in shakes, in sandwiches, in salad....all of the above are readily available on the menus and when I ordered a pizza with no mushrooms the waitress said "no magic mushrooms", "damn straight love - this is my dinner we are talking about!". So we ended up going tubing two days because it is the most fun you can have with a rubber ring and a river. You get your ring and they drop you off at the river and in you get....you float about 50m downstream and you arrive at the first bar...beer and zip lines are the order of the day here. Another 50m and another bar, this time with a rope swing that no-one seems to be able to hold onto, least of all the weedy girls. Belly flops galore! About two hours in and you can still see the starting point in the river! The next bar has food and the biggest rope swing of the lot, we saw some girls basically fall from the platform because they couldn't hold their own weight and winded themselves pretty badly - this quickly deterred us from having a go.

A couple of drinks in and everyone's already planning to be back again tomorrow! The rest of the river was a string of more bars and jumps and then you reach the end of the line. But there isn't really anything to say it's the end of the road - if we weren't following some people who knew where to get off, it could have been a disaster! The only downside is that at the other end you have to walk your ring back to the shop through the middle of town...and since these activities rarely allow for you to bring a change of clothes, it was a bit like one of those nightmares when you are standing in the middle of the street wearing fewer clothes than you'd maybe like?! :)

We also had our final farewell with Jim and Charlie who we first met in Siam Reap, they were heading home in a few days time back to sunny(?) ol' England.

Welcome to Laos

2006-06-21T07:31:00.000+01:00

Rumour has it that the border crossing into Laos is worse than the one into Cambodia...fortunately since me and Ayms needed to start making some time back, we had the perfect excuse to not spend 24 hours on a bus (and the next 24 hours recovering) and we booked some flights. It was bliss, we left Hanoi in the morning and arrived in Vientiane a couple of hours later!

Vientiane is the capital city and is really quite small and peaceful (and you can see the stars!) - you don't realise how noisy Vietnam is until you leave it. We booked into the cheapest place we could find - another box with iron bed frames and matresses made for toddlers and stairs that would require safety harnesses were we anywhere else in the world. We took advantage of our extra day and went wandering around the city. Our map reading skills should be improving but we managed to go the long way round to get to Laos' answer to the Arc de Triomphe, stumbling across the black stupa along the way.

In the afternoon it was too hot to anything so we went in search of the swimming pool. In the evening we hung out by the river and had some good food and drink for another measley sum of money. Day 2 in Vientiane was spent at the Buddha park, which is a field full of concrete statues representing Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam (I think) - including a hell mouth with morbid sculptures of skulls inside and yet another reclining Buddha.

Hanoi not to be confused with Hoi An

2006-06-21T06:54:00.000+01:00

Hanoi is a lot less built up than Saigon and much less chaotic. Although motorbikes still line the streets wherever you go and crossing the street is still a potential death trap. Since Vietnam is all geared up for backpackers - you get on a bus outside your hostel and it drops you off outside another hostel, so unless you have a strange desire to wander the streets of a new city with a heavy rucksack, it's easy enough to just follow the trail of breadcrumbs that they leave.

The hostel was in the old quarter which is made up of hundreds of streets each selling one or two products. Rumour has it that the streets are or used to be named after whatever product is being sold. Since we can't read vietnamese we cannot confirm or deny these rumours. Can't be too good for business though when you are trying to sell mops and the twenty stores either side of you are also trying to sell mops!?

We spent one day looking around the city - there's the famous lake where the golden tortoise..."Legend said that in the first of 15th century Heaven gave a precious sword to Le Loi who rose against Ming. With the sword he drove Chinese out of Vietnam. After the war he returned the sword to familiar of divine the giant golden tortoise lived in the lake. Since then the lake has had a new name Ho Hoan Kiem (Lake of Restored Sword). " (quote from someone else's blog) We visited this lake which is a lot smaller than you'd imagine it to be and the temple on an island where they supposedly have an embalmed giant tortoise but the signs are a bit vague and just say "it was made...." and it didn't look to real either - not that I know what an embalmed giant tortoise should look like mind.

We visited the cathedral and walked to the Temple of Literature in the rain which wasn't the most enjoyable experience of my life but we did see a fallen down tree on the way back (it just fell down for no reason whatsoever), the firemen were there cutting it up to get it out of the road...not that this stopped the traffic from getting by - they used the pavement instead and had the cheek to look at me and Ayms as if we were stupid for walking on the path?! Hello! So it took us a while to realise that there was actually a motorbike underneath the tree, it's miracle that there wasn't anymore considering how busy it seemed. There was nobody with the bike though, so they must have made it out ok.

The highlight of our stay in Hanoi was meeting up with James and Rachel again - we met them in our first few days in China and have been a few steps behind ever since. They had discovered the cheapest drinking establishment in all of Hanoi which looked a bit like the plastic chairs you get at playgroup on the pavement outside someone's shop/house with a beer barrel and a lady selling glasses of beer for 2000vnd (7p) the bottles of vodka 1 pound and sprite 5000vnd for a bottle. Bargain huh! We sat there till closing just in time for the rains to start again and then we parted ways once again. Since the "pub" didn't have any toilets you were pointed in the direction of the public toilets which were situated down an alleyway not far from the "pub". FInding this alley was an experience in itself, as was peeing in the dark and then having to pay for the privelage!

Our last two days were spent in Halong Bay. The trip could take up to 15-20 people, our boat had five people on it. Me, Amy, Gerry (guitarist in The Belushis, in case they ever get famous), Roland and Kathryn. We spent the first day visiting a cave and the afternoon swimming in the bay and jumping off the boat. There was another boat that also had a small group of people and in the evening we joined up with them and spent the evening not doing karaoke even though there had been promise of it earlier on. So the only reason I mention that is because we met the funniest Italian man ever who resembled the cartoon character from the halifax adverts and made us cry with laughter - and I can't even remember what was so funny anymore :) It rained most of the two days we were on the boat so we never really saw Halong Bay in all its glory but we got eaten by mosquitos instead which was equally as exciting.

Hoi An not to be confused with Hanoi

2006-06-17T11:34:00.000+01:00

Hoi An and Hue were stop breaks so we didn't have to spend 24 hours straight on a bus to Hanoi.

First port of call in Hoi An was to find some food which didn't resemble noodles.....lot's o' chips please :) We were a little tired of thai food by the end of the motorcycle tour. We stuck around for a couple of days and had some clothes made for cheap cheap cheap...these things have to be done!! We went out in the evening and you may not believe this but Amy ran into someone from her home town, Ellon!! She ran off to speak to some really tall guy with a lot of facial hair and I really wondered what was going on for a second - then she introduced me and all became clear. He was called Andy Watt in case anyone's interested :) Then we had to walk home in the rain and try and find our hotel - not an easy task in the dark when we found it the shutters had been pulled down and the gates locked. Apologies to the man we had to wake up to let us in!!

In Hue the first thing we saw was James and Rachel!! They were about to get on the bus headed for Hanoi - "we'll see you there kids"! We ventured to a street cafe and had some weird deep fried noodles - which was about as filling as eating air and about as tasty as dust.

The Motorcycle Diaries

2006-06-06T11:38:00.000+01:00

Five day tour of the Central Highlands in Vietnam, starts in Dalat on Sunday morning at 8am, finishes at 2pm on Thursday in Hoi An - 1000km covered roughly! First task is to strap our bags to the back of the bikes and then work out how we also fit on! It all works out fine...HELMETS ON!...and away we go.

Here's a list of things we did (in an attempt to reduce the size of this blog!)

Crazy House in Dalat; a house created by a politicians daughter (no doubt the only reason it got built in the first placeit's a little wierd with attriubutes like a Kangaroo room with a stuffed kangaroo in it with red eyes...nice to wake up to in the middle of the night! a Giraffe room, one with giant ants...
The tofu making factory AKA a converted back room of a house, tofu is mingin'
Greenhouses where they grow and supply flowers to parts of Vietnam
A house that breeds silkworms
A house that makes the bamboo plates that the silkworms live on
A factory that turns spins the silkworms silk and makes material
The elephant waterfall where we got to stand inside in the spray (amazing!)
A clothes making factory
A minority village where families live in stilt houses (animals live under the house) and kids come sream "hello" "bye-bye" at you excitedly
People separating rice using a machine
One lady separating rice by hand! (Beating it with a stick)
One lady dropping her rice on the road?!?! So the cars and bikes drive over it and separate it for her!
A house in the minority village
Tea plantations
Coffee plantations
Coffee Villas...if people hold a plantation for 15 years under the government then they get a house built for them. So there are many roads lined with wooden shacks interspersed with these huge brick built, colourful, rich-looking houses!
Passionfruits on trees
Avocados on trees
Pineapples (grow on top of the ground)
Cinnamen bush
Deep heat comes from weeds!
Blacksmiths
Resevoirs
Banana plants
A motorbike with a passenger holding a door upright between him and the driver! We are no longer surprised by anything that we see here!
Shrapnel damaged buildings
How to make rice wine
Brickmakers
Granite being split and collected on the roadside
Picture perect rice fields with worker's in Vietnamese hats
Drove through herds of cows and buffalos on their way to the grazing fields
A church ruined in the war
A mushroom farm (with a pet python)
Cement pottery for Bonsai trees
Market
A natural pool which we could swim in
More waterfalls
War memorial
Pick up some petrol...sit and have some tea in the forecourt with the owners...oh and some cigarettes too! Safe as houses!
How noodles are made
Peppercorns being grown, dried and made into pepper
Cashew nut trees
Rubber trees where latex comes from when you strip back the bark
Sea lake in Kontum
Drank sugar juice from sugar canes at the market
Another minority village
An old man playing us some music
The biggest pig ever (alive) wrapped in mesh wiring and sat on the back of a motorbike
Round house where minority people celebrate big events
Wooden Church
Orphanage
Another war memorial
Ho Chih Minh Trail
Tapioca being made
Parts of metal/weapons collected from the countryside to be sold
Monkey bridges- bridges made by the minority people who dont look too skilled at bridge making to be fair...although however unsafe they looked or felt four kids came bounding across the bridge without a care in the world
A truck which had tipped over on it's side when it hit a ditch...it was one of those moments when you round a corner to see an accident and your heart leaps into your throat then you realise that the driver has strung his hammock up on the underside of the lorry between the axels and looks fairly content!
People panning for gold
Cham Tower
Rice paper being made

And that was about it...we arrived in Hoi An! The jungle views were stunning and it was much nicer seeing it from the back of a bike rather than being on a bus and sleeping through it all! And we only found out afterwards that there are some attempted attacks on tourists from people that hide out in the jungle...Titi and Hiep were very Dad-like though so we had nout to worry about.

Mini Paris

2006-06-03T08:38:00.000+01:00

Whilst in Dalat we visited the Valley of Love, which if the founders of Great Yarmouth had been asked to come up with a "Valley of Love" then this tacky-ish attraction is probably what they would have built! Swan boats, horse and carriages covered in pink flowers and ribbons, hand knitted toilet roll covers in the shape of little ladies (?), heart shaped statues, gnomes on mushrooms (?)...couples strolling hand in hand along the lake. It was just beautiful...NOT!

And so it goes, Dalat is a slightly classier version of the Valley of Love, with less plastic statues, still a lake with couples strolling, trees with fairly lights, a telephone tower posing as the Eiffel Tower, flowers everywhere...you get the idea. Quite a bit different from the hectic Saigon but still characteristic of Southeast Asia in that women still walk about in there pyjamas and whole families are still crammed onto one motorbike.

We fortunately ran into Titi and Hiep here...the Easyriders, guys who have been giving tours around Vietnam for the last 13 years and are very eager to take me and Ayms out on one of these tours. We already had the idea that we wanted to do a five day tour so their over-eager sales techniques were lost on us! We managed to organise the tour we wanted to do, asked some questions and got answers to different ones! Job done! We leave the day after tomorrow.

To fill a day we go on a one day tour of the city and surrounding area (including the Valley of Love) the rest of the tour didnt get much better! We went to Lang Biang mountian and got a jeep up to the summit only to be faced with Vietnamese cowBOYS...young boys dressed in cowboy outfits dragging ponies behind them. Next we went to the dragon pagoda...which is possibly even tackier than the Valley of Love. Plastic dragons, cement dragons, gold dragons, yellow and green dragons, huge dragons, small dragons, metal dragons, pictures of dragons, dragons on the roof, dragons on the floor, on the walls, on the steps! Brilliant!

The Lat village was where we met the village chief who played some music for us on a weird flute and a gong and told us about his village, hs family, his house (he talked a lot). Then we shared some potent homebrew with him which then meant we were his cousins! The most normal thing we did that day was visit the Pongour Nam waterfall where you can swim if you are an eager fan of swimming in dirty water...maybe not huh!

On the way home we were supposed to go to the Ostrich farm but weren't allowed in because of the Bird Flu...we weren't sure if they had it or were just being overcautious about getting it so we didn't stick around too long to find out. We took comfort in the fact that the guide didn't seem to bothered about it all!

Then all was left to do was prepare our bums for the next five days of sitting on a bike....good luck with that one :)

Saigon

2006-06-01T14:06:00.000+01:00

Next stop Vietnam, so we need to head on back up to Phnom Penh to catch our bus. Arrive around 6pm and expect to do not much at all as our bus out is at 6am. Check into the guesthouse and half of Sihanouk Ville is there, including Nico and a couple of Irish folk (who ask me if I'm Irish??? :) Llyod and Niamh. Pretty entertaining evening follows as we try to come up with ways to make our millions in the travel industry - as yet we havent come up with anything that would actually work.

Next day the border crossing is fairly uneventful - well, most definitely if you compare it to the first one - until we reach Vietnam. First off, at the border point to get in to Vietnam two men greet you and ask for your passport so they can fill your form in for you. Of course, we could do this ourself but they then wouldnt be able to charge you for this privelege. And maybe you wouldnt mind if they didnt jsut make it up. One of the guys on the bus had the female box on his form ticked??? Try and explain that one if your asked later???

Move on to the line where you are invisible and every other person who isnt a travelling tourist gets rushed through, although this may have had somethign to do with the money sticking out their passports also :) And then to the row of 5 tables and 5 men who all each need to check your passport and of course charge you a small fee for doing so.

We're in, on the next bus and our Vietnam guide dude on the bus wants to sing us a song???? Em, ok!! He starts, finishes and then asks if we would like to hear another one. Hillarious!! Maybe you had to be there but 5 songs later and after we hear a couple in Engish too he tells us we can go to sleep. Oh, thanks very much, very kind of you.

And then the travelling thing in Vietnam just gets easier they drop off at their office and can find you hostels, they pick you from your hostel, organise you day trips etc etc and you can afford to get lazy.

The traffic in Saigon is crazy - if your a pedestrian, the rule is, just to walk slowly and everything will move around you. Under no circustances is there to be any sudden movement.

First night, we go for dinner, as per usual, but this is only worth mentioning this time round cos a cockroach fell on Gem :) She screamed, I didnt know why she was screaming, the owners laughed, we ate quickly and left. We then turn the corner and walk into Jim and Charlie (who we first met in Siem Reap). Would be rude not to go for a drink and so we find some plastic playschool chairs at the side of the road and settle in buying bags of prawn crackers (Gem loves!!) and large poppadums (We all hate!!!) from random food seller people.

Next day we go wandering round Saigon and find the market and go shopping, find some more shops, do some more shopping, visit the cathedral and another random park. Along the way stop off at some cafe and gem goes into buy some fruit - I asked for plums (which we agree are on the left) gem comes back with grapes (that were on the right) ???? :) - and get speaking to some Vietnames people who want us to try Durria fruit. Well ok!! First off you need to put a plastic glove on?? what?? and it absolutely stinks???? It tastes foul but we're told it is very good for you. Of course it is, if it tastes awful but we eat it anyway - dont wanna seem rude.

The following day we're on a day trip to the Mekong Delta. Get to the boat and head off to the fruit market. Loads of oppurtuinty to take photos and then its off to Turtle Island for lunch - all pretty good althogh we are know eating tofu without even realising it. And I learnt that pineapples do not grow on trees!!!

Afternnon is spent on smaller rowing boats and visiting smaller islands, listening to traditional Vietnamese music and drinking tea. Oh, and we also visitied a Coconut Candy workshop in the middle of one of the islands. We werent exactly fans of the candy.

That night go out for some drinks and get talking to the waiter Han. Seems harmless and we cant shut him up. Next day we arrange to meet him so he can show us where the swimming pool is. First pool, closed!!! Second pool, closed!!! Excellent guide he is and this is costing us a fortune in taxi fares. All ends well at the third pool though and afterwards we head on down to the War Museum. Another interesting place to visit although pretty horrific in parts.

That night we head on out again and get talking to a group of Irish folk. Great bunch of people, the vodka and redbulls flow and the next thing you know its 5am - we're meant to be up at 7am for atrip to the Cu Chi tunnels. Lets just say Gem is the only one who made it. I slept through the alarm and Gem's atttempts at waking me. Oops!!!!! Sure I wouldnt have liked it anyway - crawling through small dark tunnels does not sound like fun!!

Gem comes home and we go in search of the water park. En route on the back of motorcycles the thunder and lightning begins. Within seconds out of nowhere the roads are flooded - is crazy but we carry on. Arrive at the waterpark soaked so head on in anyway. Might as well seeing as we're already wet. Find the first slide and through ourselves down it. Bad move!!! This was the Kamikaze ride!!! We will not be going on that again.

Sihanouk Ville

2006-06-01T13:59:00.000+01:00

And let the holiday begin! So after however many weeks on the run me and Ayms decided that maybe we could set up home for a few days and what better place to do it than in a bungalow where they serve Heinz baked beans and the beach is a mere 5 minute walk away!

So we spent a few days (planned) and then a couple more (unplanned) lounging around on the beach (watching the thunderstorms roll in every afternoon to then run and take cover!), laying in hammocks, reading books, eating a lot, playing pool - enter Amy the hustler who can suddenly play like...a really good pool player! (insert your own name pool fans!), swimming in the sea and there may or may not have been a night out or two.

The only problem in Sihanouk Ville is the beggars and the constant hassling - in our first five minutes of reaching the beach there was about 12 children surrounding Amy trying to pull hairs out of her legs with string! Yep that's right...de-hairing, manicures, bracelets, bookmarks, paintings, fruit, you name it, they can do it for you. A lot of pinky promises later, some chasing the kids down the beach trying to retrieve Amy's flip flops and awkward questions later("Where are you from?" "England" "No you're not, you're from your Mum and Dad"..."If I name the capital city of Scotland, you buy from me?" "I know the capital city of Scotland, so no" "what about Madagascar?"..."You buy from me?" "No I don't need one" "You need two?") we manage to get rid of the small people. The beggars are unbelievable, people drag their not so fortunate relatives around with them...when in truth both parties look like they should be taking bedrest.

So we managed to set some roots down for a few days, met some good people (including the prettiest french boy in the world - Nico and his not so welsh, but actually Dutch friend!), ran out of money, visited the bank, discovered Mekong buckets (Mekong whisky, Red Bull, Coke) and there was a little incident with Gem, the dance floor and some falling off of it! Just a couple of scratches though...and it wasn't entirely my fault since the dancefloor consisted of a large table placed on the beach, 3ft away from the main bar...I blame my small legs :) and the red bull "giving me wings"...it didnt! So we danced on the beach, watched the fire dancers, paddled in the Sea and made it home just in time to watch the sun rise. A good night all in all. The next day however was not so good and we didn't surface till late on in the day thus missing our one day tour to the islands, dóh.

The bar staff at Monkey Republic were a comedy act in themselves as well, they played the game of pin the tail on...well, just about any unsuspecting victim available. The idea, Dave and Martin - you will fully aware of the rules, is to peg some string with toilet paper attached, to the back of somebody in the bar and see how long it takes them to notice, which is never very long considering the entire bar ends up staring at one person trying not to laugh too hard!

Phnom Penh

2006-05-25T15:34:00.000+01:00

Amy currently reading: 'The Girl in the Picture' Denise Chong
Gem currently reading: 'The Constant Gardener' John le Carre
Both currently listening to: Amy version (on repeat) of Rob Thomas

The next place we visited was Phnom Penh which had a particularly somber tone to it since we spent our time learning about the atrocities of what happened to the Cambodian people during and after the Civil War. We visited the S-21 prison which was a high school before being turned into a security prison for people supposedly against the regime. These people are the ones that didn't fit the stereotype - people who had lived in urban areas, had an education, wore glasses, followed a different religion...men, women and children.

They were taken to the prison, tortured until they signed their name to a list of crimes and most of them were then executed. The executions took place at the killing fields and the bodies were buried in mass graves. What's now left is a field with big holes where the bodies were found and signs up to explain what was discovered and where, a cabinet full of the skulls and all the clothes they retrieved. There is still a large section of land which potentially has more graves that has not yet been uncovered.

On the more positive side of Phnom Penh, we were picked up from the bus station by a straight faced Sloth lookalike (from the Goonies...Chunk's friend!? anyone a fan? http://ilovetheworld.co.uk/images/goonies.jpg ), we ran into John, Chris, Jim and Charlie who we had met in Siem Reap, went for dinner with them and they were meeting another couple called Anna and AJ, turns out I went on a french work experience with Anna in sixth form! Amy ate sunday roast, we both ate ice cream, we met an excellent Cambodian moto driver who thought everything was hilarious and didn't stop laughing for the whole journey, we discovered hammocks and incense that kills mosquitos so they don't eat you alive in the night. Oh, and we bartered the tuk tuk driver who took us to the killing fields down from $15 to $7...we are getting good at this :)

We have also found out that Amy is a Climacophobic- has fear of stairs, climbing, or of falling downstairs....

See ya!

P.S.

2006-05-25T15:32:00.000+01:00

....I forgot to tell you all that a ghecko fell on Amy's head and it was the funniest thing EVER! :)

Mission Very Possible

2006-05-24T12:46:00.000+01:00

Your mission if you choose to accept it is to find THE TREE and take some most excellent photographs of it...this message will not self destruct in five seconds or indeed any amount of seconds because it is a blog.

Siem Reap is mostly known for Angkor Wat which we spent three days looking around. These are temples which were uncovered by the french after they were left to the mercy of the jungle. According to people who like to talk...the Cambodians knew it was there the whole time but never did anything about it. This is speculation of course.

So the first two days we went by tuk tuk to the temples and on the third day for a change of pace we went on the motorbikes. The tree story - for those of you that I haven't bored with it (sorry Ayms!) is that I found an excellent photo on the internet of a cool looking tree and decided that I needed to take this particular photo for myself. I then explained to Amy that we would need to go in search of this tree when we reached Angkor Wat and we wouldn't stop till we found it. The truth of the matter is that it's a fairly famous tree...apparently I'm not alone in my adoration (for want of a better word, suggestions on a postcard please) and it is the subject of many photos, postcards and drawings all around the country, so it wasn't too hard to find at all. Although there was one hairy moment when we found a similar looking tree and debated it's authenticity as 'THE TREE'. We got the photos and I went home happy that day.

We also visited the butterfly garden in Siem Reap also known as the butterfly cemetary since there are as many dead ones as live ones. Apparently butterflies are quite stupid creatures and think it smart to rest on the path when people are walking on it?!

To the Scottish fans of the website...we met a woman who runs a bar in the town (with very good food) who's brother lives in Hoik (Gem's spelling) AKA Hawick (Amy's CORRECT spelling!) Stories were exchanged, giggles were had, everyone left smiling.

Siem Reap is also the birthplace of Justin Timberlake (JT)...one of the dudes that was working in our hostel who was particularly funny and took somewhat of a liking to our Amybelle :) She didn't really reciprocate his feelings - this could have been because of the long-distance issue or maybe that he was a whole foot shorter ;) Even after a rendition of How Do I Live Without You? Amy couldn't be persuaded. Other characters from the hostel worth mentioning are Superman, this guy was a fan of taking his shirt off and posing for no particular reason, and another dude who talked a lot about his girlfriend from Japan - sounded like a really serious relationship that was about to go wrong since she'd stopped returning his phone calls but in real life she had just been a guest at the hostel for a few weeks?!?

Worst Bus Journey in the World

2006-05-16T15:56:00.000+01:00

Can you imagine the worst bus journey in the world??...........if you can, then you must've crossed the thailand-cambodia border too courtesy of an organised tour bus.

First border crossing for us and we really dont know how these things go, so with visa already prepared we book ourselves on some bus through one of the local travel agencys to take us over to Cambodia.

All starts well, as you're lured into a false sense of security. Luxury double decker bus sees you safely out of Bangkok after about 4 hours, each of us now wearing our obligatory blue sticker. Not so bad and as we already have our visa dont have to worry when we stop at some cafe 4 miles from the border and the nice people there are trying to tell everybody else on the bus they need to buy their visas here and not at the border. Scam?? We dont know and are glad we dont have to find out.

Here's where the fun begins...imagine a mini bus with 11 seats, squeeze 12 people into it then add their 12 rucksacks and hand luggage. Add 30 degrees of heat from the midday sun and air conditioning which doesn't extend beyond the driver's seat. Put that mini bus on a dirt track with pot holes every 30cm, for 7 hours. Sleeping is impossible; the saying now goes, "everything is possible except skiing through revolving doors and sleeping on the bus journey from the Cambodian border into Siem Reap".

Rumour has it that the airlines pay the government not to fix this particular road up so that people still fly into Siem Reap. The scam goes that the bus driver drives as slowly as he can along this road so that you arrive in town too late to leave the hostel they drop you at. This is indeed what happened. The driver didnt get above 20mph and there was people overtaking us (some on foot ;) at every pot hole! This lasted till we reached the proper road with a speed limit of 30mph (6 hours and 50 minutes down the way)...then he drove at 60mph! genius.

The first few hours were ok, watching the suburbs of Cambodia go by. Huts which look like my Dad's allotment shed line the side of the road act as people's place of work, rest and play. Tiny children roam the streets alongside anorexic cows and goats, people sleep in hammocks, kids cycle themselves and siblings on one bike to school and back, trucks with 10/20/30 people crammed in drive by. Then the darkness descends and all that is left to do is answer the question, "if you could throw any one object at the driver right now, what would it be??" Amy - a speed limit signpost, Gem = the minibus.

A man who walks sideways through airport security is always going to Bangkok!!

2006-05-13T14:25:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks after the event perhaps but it is getting more and more difficult to find the time to write the blogs. So much is happening and you want write it all down but we just canny find the time. Here goes though......

We flew from Hong Kong to Bangkok and after no problems got the bus to drop us at the Khao San Road aka backpackers bubblesville. Overwhelming at first - you want tuk tuk?, you want taxi?, you want hostel?, you want hotel?, you want to stay here? you want to see ping pong?? which by now we're use to but is combined with neon lights and millions of others just like us milling around in bars, restaraunts etc and its roasting. the hottest weather we've come across so far somewhere up round the mid 30's. We do one length of the Khao San Road and cant find any of the hostels we're looking for so plan B, find a bar, have a drink, then one of us stay with the bags and the other go find a hostel within a 2mins radius. Easy!!

First night we're in a room with air con think it works out at about a fiver - El Greco the Ghecko has command of the bathroom - we won't go in there if he is but the next day we're thinking we need to save a pound and move into one of the dorms???? ok, its basically a box with 2 fans and 3 mattresses on the floor but it'll do. Is saving us a pound after all?? what are we thinking :)???

Becomes pretty apparant fairly quickly you could quite easily never leave the Khao San Road and be entertained if all your looking for is food, drink and market stalls. Kinda makes you feel like your on holiday.

First day though we go off exploring and head on down to the river and head off on the little ferry boats which link all the different areas of the city. You just hop on and hop off wherever. Which area do we choose to head too - Chinatown of course, its not like we've just been there or anything. The place is heaving but good all the same.

Followed by a night out in the Irish bar. There's a Thai live band on doing covers of everything from Metallica to Bryan Adams. The place is packed and we're making friends with the locals. And think we possibly spend the pound we were saving on the room on vodka. oh well!! what can you do???

Next day - we want to do as little as possible and go looking for Lumphini Park. We reckon this should cost us about 70 baht in a taxi. The first taxi driver we ask wants 450!!!!! Do we look stupid??? (Don't answer that :) but what come on??? Get lost!!! as he trys to barter with us and follows us down the street whilst we get in the next taxi not in the habit of playing the 'lets rip off the stupid tourists' game.

Again another random park in which we find drum kit monuments (if thats even the right word), kids feeding what we think to be fish - turns out to be the biggest , ugliest catfish and turtles, people jogging and doing aerobics in over 30 degrees of heat??? and some sort of school show going on with kids playing musical instruments. oh dear!! again keeps us entertained though and we head off in look of some food and and shopping centres. excellent!!!

And then our plan was to get up early morning, to avoid the heat, and visit the Grand Palace. The early morning bit didnt happen but we're conscious we need to be a bit more covered up -our feet in particular - if we were going to visit as we dont want to offend anyone.

Half way there and we're stopped in the street by some dude telling us we cant visit the Grand Palace in flip flops and that its closed for the morning. What?!?!? He tells us to go off round the other Temples first and head back here in the afternoon. There was a bit more to it than this but in the end we listened to the man - found ourselves a tuk tuk - and for the equivalent of 50p got driven round Bangkok for the morning visiting Sitting Buddhas, Standing Buddhas and Reclining Buddhas????? oh and a random stop at some tailor who wanted to make us some clothes - we made our excuses/pretended we didnt understand :) and left.

Back to the Grand Palace again and dont know what we were worrried about - nobody else seems bothered about offending anyone. Is good to see but we dont stay too long. This place is too damn hot!!!

Only Westlife fans LIVE IN Hong Kong

2006-05-04T10:48:00.000+01:00

Day 1 in Hong Kong...

As much of a shock as it was being dropped off in Beijing and having the world and his wife stare at you quite openly, it was as much of a shock being thrown back into an ordinary western world where you are quite invisible to everyone but the street venders who've picked you out as the type of person who cant live without a gucci handbag or a gold watch.

Breakfast! How much?!! After the initial shock of the sudden price increase we are experiencing, we decide to take a trip to the supermarket and end up with crackers, granola bars and some sort of lemon juice sqaush with added salt?! Good choice Ayms :) Next on the list of things to do is to call Mark, Amy's sister's husband's brother...a tenuous link maybe - but it's good to see a friendly face all the same.

Mark LIVES IN Hong Kong and is studying at the University there. From his oh-so excellent tour guiding skills you may have though he was studying to be a tour guide but no it's more like physics. We arranged to meet him on Hong Kong Island (involves taking a boat to Amy's delight) and have an hour to waste so we go and visit the Avenue of Stars. This would have maybe been more exciting had me and Amy recognised some of the stars aside from Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. We managed to entertain ourselves though by taking some stupid pictures. We met Mark at the boat station and head off into the City for some food which didn't look like bird food (i.e. the crackers) and happily discover the bread hasn't been flavoured with a pound of sugar!

I think Mark soon realised how unbelievably indecisive both me and Amy are...we call it easygoing :) and happily followed him around like sheep for the rest of the day, to Causeway Bay (where the shops are plentiful and oh-so tempting) and Times Square. Then we head back to the University and go on a quick tour of the campus and residencies...the day involved both Amy and me wandering around awed by the size of all the buildings and how much like home it all seemed. We went out for some chinese food and then some drinks on a crazy little street which looked more like it belonged in Spain than Hong Kong.

We arrive back at the hostel to discover we have been moved into the girls dorm and the joy of trying to keep eight girls happy with noise levels/temperature/lights off or on...who ever said girls were difficult huh?!

Day 2...

As soon as we arrive in Hong Kong we leave it to go and visit one of the surrounding islands...Cheung Chan. Mark's friend Kate joins us (we take no responsibility for the decrease in productivity of the students of Hong Kong university over the next few days ;) A trip to the supermarket to stock up on picnic treats and another boat trip and the four of us land on what we expected to be a small, quiet and picturesque little fishing village but are confronted with a Macdonalds as our first sight! Marks 'brilliant' map reading skills are put to the test and we all follow him in blind faith even after Kate's warnings about them being not as 'brilliant' as he makes out...in those moments when we had no idea where we were or where we should go we were just 'taking longer to find the place than normal' in another word - LOST!

We walk around the island, passing a really nice beach (also frequented by sharks according to the sign), many houses, a few too many hills for my liking and then somewhere to eat! Then another route back to the boat passed the dead fish market - which was disgusting. Mark left us to our own devices (=shopping) when we got back beacuse he had some "studying" (=napping) to do and then my wish was granted in the evening and we went for some mexican food...mmmm!

Day 3...

More food organised for today - Dim Sum (I think this was to make up for my lack of trying new things yesterday!) an all you can eat buffet no less...so Mark and Kate ordered just about everything off the menu, including chickens feet, which on first glance look like they could be ok until you pick one up and it really is a whole foot!...a whole chickens foot. Apparently the chinese like chewing in the skin?! Another mystery.

Since Amy loves heights the afternoon was dedicated to going up really tall buildings and the Peak. The building had a museum on the 55th floor but most people just go for the view of the city, a few snaps later and back down we go, bypassing all the interesting monetary facts the museum is there to pass on! We walked around a park, Hong Kong has a distinct lack of grassy areas and walking on the ones it does have is usually forbidden, so is sitting on walls in front of important buildings - you'd have thought we looked untidy or something!

On the way to the Peak, Mark takes us to this dessert restaurant...Amy had some red strawberry goo, Mark had some yellow mango goo and they shared this sesame goo with big lumps in it (it's a good job I'm writing this blog otherwise Amy would have called it Sago and you wouldn't of had a clue what it was, i.e. goo!) The sesame stuff was black like tar and reminded me of sesame seed buns with sausages in them with lots of ketchup cooked by Dad on Sunday mornings - so the experience wasn't all bad ;) At the promise of getting me some real dessert (ice cream) at the peak we move on!

I'd just like to point out that Mark has since told me there is a chocolate buffet restaurant which managed to escape his attention the whole time we were there...cheers dude!

The tram to the Peak was an amusing ride with Mark and me trying to distract Ayms from the height by talking about the highest building we had been in! Brilliant :) The Peak is...as well as a stunning view of the skyline, a shopping centre, a primary school and a home for some people (some rich people). We stayed there to see it in the light and dark and saw the light show - which was good but difficult to know when it had ended. And off back down we go...after the ice cream stop of course!

Our evening unexpectedly turned into a night out when we went to meet Kate and all her friends. One major plus about Hong Kong was ladies night...the ladies drink for free :) Yessss! Not such a happy story for the males of the world, but what can you do eh!? We partake in some frozen margheritas, then some cocktails and then some dancing to an excellent live band :) It's like we never left home. Apart from substitute the live band with Kit and Adam performing Nasty Girl in our living room!

Day 4...

So having seen all the sights worth seeing in Hong Kong (according to the guide of the year) we have to decide do we want to go to Disney Land or to Ocean Park Theme Park with animal attractions. I think this is the only decision Mark left us with for the whole four days and he may have soon regretted it. Finally we decide to go to Ocean Park, cheaper and it has the second longest outdoor escalator in Southeast Asia (Mark is an escalator spotter) The park is excellent fun...and it just so happens this is the hottest day we have experienced on our trip so far, Amy then experiences something a little like heat stroke we think. D'oh. We saw the sealions, the sharks, the dolphins, went on some scary rides and some not so scary ones, rode what should be called the slowest, longest outdoor escalator in Southeast Asia a lot and we visited the Panda park as well. Oh and to keep with the 'let's cure Amy's fear of heights by going on everything that's any sort of distance off the ground' we took the cable car across the park.

Back to Hong Kong and a much needed nap before heading out again for some more free drinks. Being our usual sensible selves though we left around 3am in order to get some sleep to prepare for the flight the next day! We thought we'd be safe going back to the hostel at this time of night since Pervey McPerve would probably be in bed by now (old dude who quite openly looked at porn in the communal internet room at the hostel and looked at the girls in the hostel in a simialr kindof manner...YUK!) turns out we were alone in the hostel apart from the rat which Amy saw run across the kitchen table...I still haven't figured out which was worse, Pervey McPerve or the rat?

Big thanks to Mark for taking us round Hong Kong...it was much appreciated and thanks for putting up with our indecisiveness and my particularly sensitive tastes buds ;) And to everyone else, Mark is neither a Westlife fan nor an escalator spotter (as far as I'm aware, although thinking about it, it's not something people openly admit, is it?)

A new kind of Mansion

2006-05-02T12:23:00.000+01:00

A brief update since we are so far behind and flying through Asian countries like they are bowls of chocolate ice cream (pints of 75 cents beer if you are Amy)...we currently sit in Sihanouk Ville in Cambodia watching the anorexic cows and storm clouds pass by. We have landed here for a few days to escape city life and maybe sit on a beach for a few hours...improve the shade of pale that we already are!

So back to China! The flight was non eventful to say the least and a lot less painful than some of the journeys we had previously taken. At the aiport we found a very helpful information desk that tells us how to get to hong kong island and it all looks pretty simple. The lady even showed us where to wait for the free bus (this is where the cheapness ends in Hong Kong). Outside we find some not so helpful taxi drivers who ply us with scare tactics about how the bus isnt going to show up and how we will miss the last ferry to the island. Luckily there is a kindly Chinese gentleman who tells us to stand fast and not listen to him. In the end the bus was cutting it a bit fine but showed up and off we went to the harbour.

The ferry ride took about an hour and dropped us nowhere near where we thought we were going to be dropped (professional map readers r us)! Useful! Amy felt a little worse for wear on the boat - which was also good since that was going to be our likely form of transport for the next few days!

We arrived at 9pm and grabbed a taxi to go to Kowloon (the cheaper yet not so cheap side of town). And went in search of some hostels...these hostels are situated in what appears to be run down shopping arcades with only one lift serving 16 floors...as you can imagine, me and Ayms were flavour of the moment when we got in the lift with our rucksacks on, leaving only enough room for a small child. The first one we come to..."there's no room at the inn" so off we trot back to the lift. And then to the second place...Chungqing Mansions (imagine a mansion, scrap that and picture a 16 storey pile of bricks with some windows and dodgy characters hanging about outside)..."there's no room at the inn", dóh, it's not looking too good for us and since we suddenly decided to get lapse at booking hostels in advance in the one of the busiest city's in China, it's our own fault!

The guy mentions that he might have some beds in the stable AKA the boys dorm and we jump at the idea...cheapest rooms in Hong Kong, we are expecting to get what we pay for. It turns out to be not so bad, so we take our bags in (wake some people up in the process) and the guy Calvin, promises us the girls dorm will be available tomorrow. Sold! Then a couple in the next room say we can share in their room (they wanted some privacy me thinks but the prospect of paying less money is appealing). We go and pick our bags back up (waking those people up once again!) and settle into our new home.

Is this the way to Hong Kong?

2006-04-28T12:30:00.000+01:00

We arrive in Yichang and it is pretty apparant that this town is not designed for the travelling folk of this world. First stop is some hotel by the train station which we decide will do for one night only. For some sort of scale this is possibly the worst hotel/hostel we've stayed in this far - the only thing going for it is the two beds :) and doesnt look like we're going to have the luxury of attempting to find a western toilet anywhere in this city.

Well, we ain't staying in here all day so we move on out. We need food and the internet. Set off with the rubbish Lonely Planet Guide map and go wandering. We find an internet cafe eventually and dont move. Thanks for all the chats with the folk at the Union - kept us entertained whilst we were uploading the pics on the website.

Oh, that and Gem nearly getting in a fight with the owner of the cafe. Her computer turned itself off, she wasnt happy. This happens though when you've been on the internet for hours and used up all your credit and the nice chinese man just wants some more of your hard earned cash.

8pm and we are hungry. you'd think it would be easy but nope, the restaruants are closing up shop now and Yichang is going to bed??? what?? rubbish!! we do find one though (just before we were about to give up and head to mcd's) and order steak (gem), rice and pork (amy).........this is what arrives, two glasses of cold coffee, two glasses of sherry or something, steak with pasta and fried egg????, a bowl of lettuce covered in sweet and sour sauce and a tray of pork, rice, peppers, cabbage stuff and an assortment of about 4 different sauces. We were confused but oh well. Gem practised her charades again and asked for a menu - she was brought hot water instead :)

That was as exciting as it got today.

Next morning we pack up shop and head for the bus station. Walking down the hill and sure we can here someone shouting our name??? hmmmmm??? turn round and its Matt and Edgar form the hostel in Xi'an. They too have just got off another cruise boat and now going their seperate ways. Edgar like us though is looking to get to Wuhan and we set off together.

All realtively simple and we're on the bus and on our way within 45 mins.

5hours later and Wuhan looks much the same as Yichang - not much for us to do here so we go looking for the train station and some tickets out of here. First off, we set off in the wrong direction (not so much of a problem if your not carrying your life on your back), the taxi wont take us cos they say its not that far, and so a couple of km?? later we arrive.

We would like two overnight tickets to Hong Kong please and Edgar's looking to get to Gulin?? I think. Same story as Xián though - nope sorry, no tickets. not today, or the next day or the next day. what???? have no idea why they dont want to sell us the tickets.

We've spotted a travel agency outside and hope they can help but of course, they dont sell train tickets???? :) bless them though, they try their hardest to be helpful and after letting me use their phone i think they have given us a place we can try and buy tickets from.

This is useless.......go looking for a hotel instead. Advertises outside that they can get you tickets - we ask. nope this isn't possible and to fly will cost us a fortune. We need to rethink and find ourselves an internet cafe. Edgar manages to get himself a bus ticket but not til tomorrow so we all check in.

Next stop internet cafe, again a major task in itself and me and gem are straight on to www.elong.net for cheap flights in China if you ever need one (thanks for the tip Grant and Hazel). 40 pounds to fly to Shenzhen (about an hours outside of Hong Kong) - we'll take two please although not qutie sure how we are going to get the tickets before the morning. Hold on to some small hope they could get delivered to the hotel.

Job done (JD!!:) and again we're hungry - the next task of locating a bank machine takes an hour and so we just walk into the next restaraunt we see. Nobody speaks any english!!!! and the menu has no english either. Out comes the lonely planet guide and we start pointing at random food dishes in the hope they can make it. nope,nope,nope as the waiter shakes his head at everything we point at. he keeps pointing at the stewed eel however and saying he can do that. eh, no thanks!! we get something ordered and possibly the worst food we've had so far. thats it.

Next morning - edgar leaves to catch his bus and i phone some elong number to find out about our tickets. its about 12 and our flight leaves at 4.30. oh yes, its too late to send you your tickets now the nice lady kindly explains to me but we do have an office on the other side of Wuhan on the 47th floor of some world trade building. Excellent!! Taxi!!

Can we find the tower???? nope??? does anyone in Wuhan know where the tower is??? nope??? aaaggggghhhhh!!!! We find it. Floor to the 47th floor and the office is empty - as if elong have moved out and left behind a building site. oh dear!!!!

Back to reception - oh yes, they've moved to the 30 somethingth floor. Oh, of course they have. Back in the lift and oh yeah we find it. Elong lady speaks no english - we communicate by the telephone with one of her colleagues in Beijing who tells us it'll be ok and then she hangs up.

It is getting nearer to 2pm we have no tickets and we can make out that the chinese lady is having an indepth conversation on the phone with someone about her broken desk. Its not even broken!!! What about our tickets lady?? come on!!

Turns out she was waiting for some dude to deliver them - she just couldnt tell us this.

Thanks, gotta go. Taxi to hostel, pick up bags, taxi to airport please. We arrive about 3.45pm. oh my goodness!!! and make it through with 20mins to spare.

Of course though, our flight is delayed :)

Row, row, row your boat........

2006-04-28T11:30:00.000+01:00

Our boat is an OK looking boat...no big white luxury cruise liner but a lot more attractive than some of the tin cans that seem to be sailing people up the river! These boats have four people in a cabin (maybe more) have no hot water and rank showers and they don't give you any food on the boat so you have to bring your own. In contrast mine and Amy's boat has double cabins with teles showing movies all through the day, our own bathroom pod and a buffet meal breakfast lunch and dinner...and all of our excursions are included. This may give off the impression that we are rich kids on tour but in fact this luxury came from the 50p jar...thanks Madtin Gravy...bearer of the 50p jar :) and James Maggot for all his contributions!

So we get on the boat and head to the top deck to watch polluted Chongqing disappear in the distance. We spy three other foreigners and the rest are chinese. We perch on a picnic table and await for our departure...and then the foghorn starts...it's like the chinese roads where the vehicles beep at each other for reasons unbeknownst to the rest of the world except now we are on a boat and they feel the need to make noises at every moving object going past...unfortunately me and Amy have sat right next to it and are now partially deaf :)

Our first port of call is lunch and we meet the, not three but four westerners who are also imprisoned on the boat with us for the next threee days! There is Hazel and Grant (from Scotland) and Heather and Tom (from Kansas State). We are destined to get to know each other a lot better since we will do the tours and eat meals together for the next few days. After lunch Amy and I take advantage of the hot (not sunny) weather and go and sit on deck before our first excursion...we take this to mean that we will be safe getting off the boat in our skirts and flip flops...not so, we get off the boat and it starts to rain, then pour then thunder and lightning...since we are the most unprepared six for this kind of weather we all purchase some very attractive and brightly coloured ponchos from the touts in the streets...these were cheaper than umbrellas (by about 10p) so we opted to, as Grant put it, look like giant condoms walking up the side of the mountain! That's right, todays excursion, in the thunder storm was visiting the Ghost City which was not so conveniently situated up a mountain.

Anyway, of our guide trots, completely unbewildered by the weather and we all follow on. The Ghost City is the place where the chinese believe you go after you die to be judged and either sent to heaven hell or to be reincarnated as an animal or a human, this is a mix between Buddhism and Taoism. We reach the first temple and have to shout "Ha-Hun" at the top of our voices to make our path through the City more easy, second stop the bridges you cross before you reach the Gods to be judged. Couples had to go over in nine steps and single people had to go over it in five steps. Stumbling at this point means you are a bad person and are nervous about meeting the Gods. So off Hazel, Grant, Tom and Heather go. Then it's mine and Amy's turn...the mixture of the rain, cheap flip flops, the lack of partner to hold onto and the unfairly low number of steps means me and Amy slip and slide over the bridge...oops! The idea of the couples going together in nine (lucky number) steps is so that they have luck in finding each other in the next life...although if one of you is a dog and the other is a human, im not sure how the laws work with that one ;)

Next station - Gates of Hell...which you have to step over right leg first and don't touch the wood...simple enough. We walk past the statues of all the wrong-dooers and come to the temple where you get judged. Here you have to balance on one foot on a small pointy stone for three seconds and read the sign on the door...again simple, or would have been had we not chosen the cheap flip flops in the rain scenario! Lastly there is the Homeward looking tower where you get to see your family and home for the last time and the corridor of statues being tortured in various different ways and all thats left to do is get down the mountain in record time to catch the boat thats about to leave!

We make it and are supposed to go straight to the captains welcome dinner but get waylaid by the idea of showering. A good idea since the ponchos weren't made to let your skin breathe too easily, i.e. us = big balls of sweat. We make it to dinner and then head off for some evening entertainment...Chinese folk dancing! Brilliant...and in the interval - musical chairs!! Grant eventually volunteered to get up and take part with three others, the funny thing was the music had lots of rests in it, so every time there was a break in the music, the four people would attempt to sit down and then get right back up again when they realised it wasn't and official 'stop'!

We soon noticed how the Chinese rushed off after the meals and didn't really come out of their rooms unless to eat or go on an excursion, so after the show, we were left alone in the bar feeling guilty about keeping the staff from their beds...and off we trot to get some sleep.

Day 2 on the boat went a lot like breakfast...excursion...lunch...nap...captains farewell dinner...the excusrsion was a trip down the Three Gorges with a mini tour of the Lesser Three Gorges but this bit got cancelled since the rain had caused the Gorge to flood. So we had to entertain ourselves with watching dead dogs float by, trying to spot monkeys on the mountain and being awed by how much of the scenery is going to be destroyed when they finish the Dam Project and flood the river some more...another 40m to go they said and they have already flooded it by 100m. People are being re-homed and cultural landmarks are being lost to the project.

The evenings entertainment was karaoke! A joy to sit through...we would have taken part had the ship not been going through a lock at the same time and standing outside in the cold dark and rain had been more appealing! Another hour of keeping the bar staff up and back to the rooms.

Early start on day 3, breakfast and excursion in quick succession - today we are off to visit the Dam site...the Ugly Dam site it should be called. It was a big concrete block in the middle of the river...from this tour I learnt that they are 2/3 of the way through finishing it and it is supposed to be finished in 200-9, they will have a ship lock and a ship elevator for boats to cross through and that's about it really. The guy who built the Dam got shot because they found cracks in it and he said that it was normal.

Then goodbye to the boat and hello to Yichang and a couple of days of being in limbo!

Breaking News from China...

2006-04-23T16:20:00.000+01:00

SUPERMARKET FIRES CHUBBY CASHIER
A female cashier has been sacked for being too fat at a supermarket in Wenzhou. Teh girl was dismissed after her second day of work because her supervisor thought she was overweight. THe supermarket has agreed to pay the girl for the two days of work.

WHATEVER NEXT? HENS MIGHT FLY
A hen amazed Nanjing residents on Monday by taking flight. THe hen was seen flying between buildings and wires, all dozens of metres above the ground. The hen's owner said she bought it in Anhui days ago and kept it on the balcony of her family's fifth floor apartment until it disappeared. Experts specualte that the hen might have developed the ability to fly because it was raised in the wilderness.

CROOKED HIGHWAY HAS BETTER FENGSHUI
Officials from Shanglin County's communications bureau in the Guangxi Zhunag Autonomous Region have been puzzling over how and why a straight highway built to link the county's Lujing Village to the Mingliang Town-ship has been reconstructed into a crooked one. Local villagers raised a large sum of money to reconstruct the straight highway into a zigzag because they were told last month by a fortune teller that the road was too straight and was affecting the village's fengshui.

LONG_HAIRED STUDENTS TURNED AWAY FROM CLASS
THe local education department in Guangzhou's Baiyan District is investigating complaints from the parents of more than 30 female students who were refused entry to their school on Tuesday because of the length of their hair. The grade 3 students who attend the junior department of the Guangzhou No.115 High School, had to wait outside the school for a whole day because their hair falls below their shoulders.

76-YEAR-OLD SAYS HIS SEX LIFE'S NO GOOD
A court has rejected a 76-year-old's case for divorce in Chongqing Municipality recently. The man wanted to divorce his wife because he was dissatisfied with their sex life. Ma and his wife have been married for 50 years, but he recently decided to file for divorce to seek a better sex life. Ma said he and his wife have not had sex for years. Ma is said to have a girlfriend in her 40's with whom he wants to live. The court rejected Ma's case ruling "Fifty years of marriage prove that the couple have a stable love basis."

Next stop - chongqing

2006-04-22T14:38:00.000+01:00

A four hour bus ride and we arrive in Chongqing. It's pretty grimy and the roads are being dredged up. We hate carrying our rucksacks....maybe we packed too much, maybe it's just too much like exercise but we definitely don't appreciate it and plan to get some wheels for our next trip! We go in search of a hostel - there aren't any in Chongqing, hotels all the way. So we find one across the road and book into a room.

The hotel is quite nice and even boasts a swimming pool...when me and Amy go in search of the pool it looks more like a stagnant pond - all thoughts of swimming are out the window. We have two days to kill here before we get on our cruise and after reading up on Chongqing in the lonely planet, i don't think it's going to be the easiest thing to do. We eat, wander the streets, have our nails done (who wouldn't if it was 1.5 pounds!), look at the river, find the pet cemetary (i mean pet market) to see such sights as a dead rat, cages full of birds, boxes full of puppies, green poodles, pink poodles...we left fairly abruptly!

One thing about this place was the taxi rank, which wouldn't take you anywhere...you had to walk up the road in order to be able to pick up a cab...which defeats the object of a taxi (to take you where you want to go) - if we wanted to walk there we wouldnt have been looking for a taxi to take us in the first place! All that's left to do is wait for AMY to come and pick us (gem and AMY) to take us to the cruise where we will be met by AMY who is the tour guide on the boat!

Ain't no mountain high enough

2006-04-22T14:07:00.000+01:00

So, we could have quite easily decided to do nothing with our last day in Chengdu - well apart from hang out at the hostel - eating, sleeping, reading - which would've been good but instead we decided not to waste?? the day. Depends on which you look at I suppose :)

Of the list of possible adventures to go on we decided to climb a mountain - of course, it makes sense, seeing as me and Gem are professionals at this sort of thing.

We refer to the Bible (I.e the lonely planet book) and yep, Qingsheng mountain is merely 60km away which requires us to navigate our way via three Chinese public buses. easy!!! Never quite sure if you're on the right one you kinda of just go with it. Although we did cheat a little at the second bus station and asked the nicest tourist information lady who was v. helpful.

And then we just get off, we dont know if this is the right stop, the mountain should've been a clue but we just judged it by - em, i think we've been on the bus long enough now!! it works!! 5 min walk up the hill - theres a mountain!! and a zillion chinese tourists.

Pay for our ticket to get in and oh yes the tickets for the cable car to take us to the top - you didnt actually think we were going to climb it did you? :) although its not directly at the bottom.

First off we need to get to a lake first and take a ferry - how many modes of transport??

So, sitting waiting for the ferry, amusing ourselves at the over and under statues, in this peace loving temple covered mountain and what happens, a fight breaks out??? calm down people!! of course we have no idea what the chinese are arguing about but a couple of guys are not happy with their tour guide (maybe it was the hat she made them wear :) but no seriously, all got a bit heated and a little scary to watch. Some poor Westerner dude (the only one on their tour and the only other one in the vicinity) steps in. The very loud screaing continues as our ferry takes off.

Off to fun scenario No.2 - amy on a cable car. I can get a bit funny with heights and 1600m up (thats 4 running tracks to me and you) is not so much fun. Turns out not to be all that bad.

First stop when we reach the top, the vending man selling potatoes on sticks of course :) and then to the Temple. Again it was nice but I'm dissapointed to say looks like every other temple we've seen in China so far - feeling pretty pleased we didnt walk all the way up now.

The view from the top = a breathtaking, showstopping view of grey mist - not one to be missed people :) and a current theme of China unfortunately.

I'm not being entirely fair though it was pretty amazing of what we could see and plenty to keep us occupied as we walked down the mountain - who knew walking down a mountain could hurt your muscles as much as walking up a mountain???

Along the way down you bump into couples of professional Chinese chair carriers (or something like that), who want to carry you down this mountain on a chair, balanced on their shoulders, for a fee of course. Absolutely, no way!!!! but they dont seem to understand this. I know they're only trying to make a living but when some Chinese person takes them up on their offer they just look in pain - much sweating and I cant believe this just won't ruin thier backs before they reach the age of 40.

All that was left to do was find the same 3 buses home again, hmmmmm!!! but works out ok and some Chinese couple on the bus get talking to us. I think they just wanted to test their english but they were v. sweet. Most of the conversation however did revolve around the fact that Chinese vegetables were better :)

Pandas - Gem's version

2006-04-22T13:26:00.000+01:00

So one thing that had to be done in Chengdu was to visit the world famous panda sanctuary, I think avid Blue Peter/Newsround watchers will be aware of the place and it's work. We had to get up early in order to see them doing something/anything and the morning is apparently the best time. So off we trot to the 7 seater minibus (all 8 of us) ... Amy is the last one to get to the bus and is relegated to sitting on the floor. Apparently we are transferring to another minibus in about 10 minutes though so it's all ok.

Turns out that it's just Amy getting on the other minibus though...d'oh. Forced separation does not register in the parents "DONT EVER LEAVE EACH OTHER'S SIDE" speech, but luckily we both survived. We go and see some pandas that are sleeping then some that are eating, then to see some baby ones, not that you could tell from the size of them. We also saw some red pandas which were much more lively. Then they gave us a film documentary on how the breed the pandas, some quite graphic scenes to be honest...not what we were expecting at 11 o clock in the morning, then we had the pleasure of looking at baby pandas and panda organs pickled in jars at the museum!

Just as we were leaving about 400 school kids turned up, no doubt to adhere to the PLEASE REMAIN QUIET signs all around the park :)

We spent the afternoon at the hostel and in the evening we went for some food with the people from the panda trip. We think they were finnish.

Now here's where mine and Amy's story's differ...we went for hot pot food, which is where you have a huge bowl of soup in the middle of the table on a hob and they bring lots of food for you to boil in it and eat. Brilliant idea since all the other food in China is so greasy. It was all going well until one of the guys starts pushing a a fish towards me through the soup making jaws noises...so I said to Amy, "that's a fish right, with fins?" and she said "yes Gemma" (as she does!) and I said, "but it wont have a head right?" and she siad "no"...turns out the fish and its fins are just flavouring the soup, cos everyone loves fish soup don't they! Then another guy dips his chopsticks into the soup to pick out the fish...and it does have a head...it gives a whole new meaning to the Big Dead Fish Restaurant along with the cabbage and the fish insides covering the rest of the food I felt a bit sick. Now I'll admit that I am a little fussy when it comes to food and I would have preferred it if there wasn't a fish floating in my dinner, luckily the guy next to me ate the fish(?) only for the waitress to then bring some more fish heads over and put them in the soup. It hasn't been my favourite meal of the trip so far and has only proven that I am squeamish when it comes to dead fish :)

Karaoke in the Park

2006-04-06T14:23:00.000+01:00

Seriously, what do the chinese people do all day?? it is a mystery to Amy and me and we"ve spent ten days in their company! We arrived in Chengdu today at 5:30 to be once again hounded by people trying to help. Help = ripping us off, he tried to charge 200 yuan for the taxi ride which was supposed to cost 14 yuan! Loser. We declined and got in another taxi.

The Dragon Town Hostel is a very cool building set on a building site...we like to think of it as home! In the dark it looked fairly desolate, in the day people put tables and chairs out on the mud and stones and act as if they are in paradise...again what do they do with their days!

We went exploring for the day and headed to the People's Park. There seems to be a lot going on - people standing around watching other poeple making a lot of noise or dancing. There was several groups crowded around people who were learnign to dance, there was a heap of old men sitting round playing chess-style games, and karaoke if you can believe it - Thursday afternoon and they dont have anything better to do than learn to dance or do karaoke in a park (badly I might add!) It's brilliant. We also found the line dancing crowd again...too much arm movement going on for me and Amy to feel confident enough to join in so we just sat and watched! :)

Next on the list of sights to see in Chengdu is the statue of Mao.....we got a little sidetracked by the shops which is no bad thing since the statue wasn't all that interesting anyway. Yes, the shopping was absolutely necessary and we didn't buy anything that we didn't need!! Oh yeah and the macds was necessary too!! (chinese food makes me ill apparently!)

and thats us up to date again...!!

Happy Birthday Mr So Smaw - have a good one :)

And then the rain came in Xi'an

2006-04-06T13:40:00.000+01:00

And so, much of the same happened the next day in Pingyao - we explore the other half of the ciy, went up walking round the city wall and little and then boarded another overnight train to Xi'an - think it was about 11 hours this time and once again we had opted for the very top bunks - nobody bothers you when your up there and its the cheapest.

We arrive - 6.30am and its raining :( boo!!! luckily, me and gem had decided to treat ourselves in Pingyao and booked what we thought was a nice hotel to stay in. Don't think we fitted in with their image though and the staff couldnt of been anymore unhelpful. We're sent to the back of the hotel, and althougth its nice to have our own hotel room we decide hostels are the way forward. We will be checking out tomorrow.

Not going to worry about it too much for now though and head on out to find the Army of Terracotta Warriors. We know we can get there using the ordinary public bus - much cheaper and quicker than any tour, which we have been told will stop at every jade outlet on the way there and back trying to get you to buy something.

We find the bus, we think??? and yep, arrive about an hour later. Still raining, so everything is still grey and miserable - can make out the outline of mountains in the background so you know its going to be gorgeous in the sunshine - but oh well, wasnt meant to be.

Inside is amazing - not sure our pictures to it justice but we tried :) Is crazy to think that all this was just uncovered by accident!! Spend the next few hours just walking round before heading on back.

Back at the hotel, we are looking for some help to book our next train tickets, find a phone that works and use the internet and no one seems interested. Getting seriously disheartened, we ask if reception can at least write down what we will need to ask at the train station. She does and we head on over - only to be told, no tickets avaiable the next day or the next day and probably no day if we keep on asking - rubbish!! The Chinese man is lying to us!! and we cant argue in Chinese.

Head off in search of a hostel that had been recommended to us and then we find him. Mr Jim Beam!!! seriously, this is the guys name, he runs the hostel we've been looking for and says he can help us. Cautious but grateful, the man (even if he is ridiculously happy all the time) sets out to help us. This guy even gets a mention in the lonely planet!! Imagine a young chinese dude who is about 5ft 3", in a suit a little too big, with glasses, bouncing around trying to help all the guests/sell them everything he can!!

We check in the next day and he has sorted us out with all our tickets!! brilliant!! we're back on track expect we've know got one sick gem. A day of rest is needed and bed for gem (well, eventually after she has followed me round, looking a bit green, for the whole morning:)

I have the joy of now hanging out on my own and looking for some friends - i would like to point out i didnt jsut leave sickface...no she did a grand job of being nurse maid for the day - thanks ayms:).........and did all that i was suppose to do i think.

Feeling a bit better in the eve - gem follows me downstairs - the green-ness has fade. Tis not long before we get chatting to two dudes from Mexico and one from the US - louis, edgar and a peps lookalike. all is good, louis gets his guitar, jim beam gets snap happy with the camera and three other guys from the hostel join the party - tom from birmingham, ryan from the US and mikel from the netherlands.

They announce they're going out dancing and we cant refuse - we wanna go dancing too!!! Head to some club called 1+1 and the conversation at the bar goes something like this;

- can i have a bottle of beer and a bottle of water (for sickface) please!!
- one bottle of beer = 25yuan
- ok, and one bottle of water
- thats 300 yuan!!
- what, for water???
- you want one bottle of wodka??
- no, water.
- wodka!!
- no water. (repeat about 5 times)

the dude calls over his sister to help out.

- i would like one bottle of beer one bottle of water. can you tell him behind the bar please?
- you want one beer and one wodka??
- NO!!! oh my goodnesss!!

much pointing at glasses, bottles later - we are talking the same language and we get the bottle of beer and the bottle of water.

the chinese dude hands me my change and asks - do you speak chinese????? is he having a laugh!!

and so the night continues in some comedy fashion. bottles of spirits are on every tablle and each group out has there own table - all very random, waitresses come round and mix the spirits into some sort of cocktail and we guess they all just pay at the end. we find a table, there is a few chinese rouund it and they dont seem to mind us being there. I dont know how to describe the next couple of hours - very weird!! but all good. mcuh dancing to some sort of house music every so often mixed in with 'eye of the tiger' or a gorillaz tune or some sort of spanish influenced track or a remake of a backstreet boys tune?????

We need to leave tomorrow - its 2am - so taxi home and bed!!! trying not to disturb the old, hairy, chines man who is sharing our room and we believe has everything he owns under his bed!!

Vodka Fizz

2006-04-06T13:14:00.000+01:00

First impressions of Pingyao are a bunch of wannabe helpful chinese folk who leap on us trying to sort us out with taxis, hostels, tours...we already have a hostel so plump for a battery taxi to take us there. They really take some convincing that you actually have somewhere to stay?!

Pingyao is a small walled city, which in the dark, from the back of a bump golf cart contraption doesnt look too inspiring. We check in to a nice hostel, with our own shower/trickle of water (we are going up in the world) and after a quick nap we go exploring. First stop food and ran into the Australian guy, David, who we had been on the wall with. Small world.

Out on the main street there are stalls on either side of the road selling what can only be described as tat - John, you would have been in heaven ;) We wander round half the city in about an hour and realise that we are going to have to purchase one of the tourist tickets to see all the sights and sounds of Pingyao to fill up the rest of the day - we manage to swing student discount (acknowledgments for the dissertation...forgot to thank them for the student discounts!) We decided that once you'd been in one of the temples/famous folks houses/old finance offices you've pretty much seen them all...similar layout just rooms being used for different stuff. What did keep us amused was the chinese-english signs again...check out the photos for the results.

More food - this time we found the best sweet and sour sauce in the world! And a little wine to make things more interesting! In the next room we seemed to be seranaded by a man hitting a wok with a lot of energy - it was quite annoying. Turns out it was actually a band, with instuments, and an audience!

We ended up stopping in another bar on the way back to the hostel, the local! It would have been rude not to pop in for a drink. And guess what - vodka fizz is on the menu! So while Amy spends about 40p on a huge bottle of beer, I spend about 1.80 pounds on the smallest cocktail the world has ever seen - delicious!

We soon attract the attention of the drunk locals - who give us sunflower seeds as some sort of gift - thanks muchly people! We learnt some sort of drinking game with dice - which I found it particularly easy to cheat at since i couldn't understand the dude's rules! and then they had us up dancing, oh dear. I had to dance with some old chinese man who had less rythmn than the man playing the wok earlier on, and Amy got stuck being passed around about 4 different guys and gals. The chinese version (a man singing) holly valance's kiss kiss is on repeat!

We swap email addresses (so that we can show you the no doubt brilliant photos!) and then leave! The next morning I wouldn't say I was hungover but Amy did knock on the shower door in the morning and ask if I was planning on needing my towel?! Hmmm!

I ain't getting on no train!!

2006-04-06T13:02:00.000+01:00

Ok, so when we last left you we were in Beijing and spent the day getting the website up and running........and a grand job we did to we think :) however, this meant we didnt leave ourselves much time to catch our first train out of Beijing to a small city known as Pingyao.

A quick trek to the bank first turned into a mini adventure with us carrying our life on our backs. I broke the cash machine - oops!! and had to have a quick chat with the chinese bank teller - not easy!!

Cash sorted - now all we needed was a taxi!! generally sticking your hand out at any available cab should work anywhere in the world but not so much this time round. we eventually flag one down - its 6.05pm, train leaves at 7pm and yep, we get stuck in a traffic jam!!

Stu - hope you are not laughing at us right now :) apparantly we dont learn from our old mistakes.

Pull up at the one of the biggest train stations I think I've seen and head off looking for the platform. We make it with 15mins to spare. oh yeah!!! we know what we're doing.

Erm, so how should we describe the train??? Another very bizarre experience. we've got two top bunks and there are two bunks below us each. Yep, we're 3 bunks high, its hot, no room to sit up - not much else to do but laugh. oh well, this is going to be home for the next 10 hours - estimated arrival time for Pingyao - 5.30 am - nice!!

I have vowed on the way to the train to pee myself before i set foot in the toilet - thankfully, this has not needed to be tested :)