Brisbane, Part 1

We left Melbourne on a plane and flew to Brisbane, only a 2 hour flight, where we were greeted by Brett and Kerrie. They took us back to their gaff and we were made very welcome indeed. They live in the suburbs just outside the city, a nice house with a big garden, they have a dog too, an Australian Cattle dog called Tora, she's only 2 and she's a cutie!

Spent the first few days not doing much at all. Brett and Kerrie were at work during the week and so we mostly just dossed about (we're good at that) Although one day we did cycle into the city very early one morning with Brett and had a good old look around before cycling back with him after work, that was a lot of excercise for us in one day! We also went to a comedy night at a local bar which was pretty good, 9 comedians all for free, admittedly about half needn't have bothered but a lot of them were really funny!

First impressions of Brisbane are good. It's a nice city with plenty going on, and it's pretty, with a river and botanical gardens. We'll be spending a few weeks here so we'll get to know it pretty well. Brett and Kerrie have got all sorts of things planned for us so no doubt they'll take us to all the best spots and we won't have to consult the Lonely Planet.

So, first thing they had planned was their joint hen / stag weekend. This was on a houseboat at Stratbroke Island (about an hours drive from thier gaff). There were 11 of us staying on the boat plus 2 others joined us who had thier own little boat. Was a really fun weekend, was mainly drinking and eating. Jeez did we eat, we had cooked brekky, pre-lunch, lunch, pre-dinner and dinner!! An awful lot of food was consumed, mainly BBQ'd too, think we were all a bit sick of sausages by the end of it!! A good weekend was had by all, there were many other activities besides the eating and drinking. Yabbiing (??) was one of them. Collecting Yabbi's to use for fishing. Fishing, in which Paul caught a pointy nosed shark (or whatever it was called!), playing cards, and board games and general silliness, Rich normally being in the centre of said silliness!!

So, that was our first week in Brisbane, watch this space for the next installment!

Revised Itinerary...

Well, we're 7 months into our trip and so far it has all been fantastic, we've seen and done some great things. One thing we've learned however is that we don't have enough time realisticly to see all the countries we originally had planned to see. As we spent longer in Fiji and New Zealand we're running a bit behind schedule and would eventually mean we'd end up with about 3 weeks in China. Now China is a big country and we just couldn't do it justice in 3 weeks so we've decided to scrap China. We've also decided to scrap Japan as it's very expensive and as we're scrapping China we will realisticly have to scrap that too......hopefully we'll be able to see them on another trip. So, our journey now ends in Hong Kong. We have also decided not to go to Indonesia too as lots of dodgy things have been happening there recently and we can live without that, it also means we get to spend longer in Thailand where everything is cheap as chips.....looking forward to that!

So, there are our reasons for changing things. Our new plan is as follows:

Weds 21 Jun Fly from Sydney to Singapore
Sat 24 Jun 17 day tour from Singapore to Bangkok (Thailand)
Mon 10 Jul Arrive in Bangkok and meet up with Chris and Katie for a couple of weeks :-)
Fri 11 Aug 7 day tour from Bangkok through Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)
Sat 19 Aug 14 day tour through Vietnam to Hanoi
Sat 2 Sep Fly from Hanoi (Vietnam) to Hong Kong
Tues 12 Sep Fly from Hong Kong to Heathrow (London!!)
Weds 13 Sep Sleep
Thurs 14 Sep More sleep!
Fri 15 Sep Start with the UK tour, visiting Newbury, Thatcham, Nottingham
and Somerset!
Sun 1 Oct Find somewhere to live.........

All the dates up until the 12th Sep are rigid, we have to stick to them as the tours we have are booked and paid for and the dates have already been changed once, we can't change them again. So another couple of months in Oz, still a lot more here for us to see here, then we're off to pastures new :-)

And back to Melbourne

After Coober Pedy we made our way back to Melbourne. We stopped at a place called Mildura on the way for a few days where we had a little winery tour / steamboat ride which was nice! That was about all we did there, the rest of the time was spent sorting our stuff out and, updating the blog and doing our washing, pretty dull stuff really.

We arrived in Melbourne and checked into our hostel. Now, I'd booked this place last time we were here to make sure we got a double room over the GP weekend, but when we arrived they had us in a twin room and there was nothing they could do cos they were full due to the GP! They were very unhelpful and didn't seem to care even though it was their mistake. So, we decided to stay for one night and then see if we could find somewhere else (which was gonna be difficult given that it's GP weekend and we'd be paying top dollar if we found anywhere!) But we did manage to find somewhere, the place we stayed in last time, Nomads which is a nice place, but we did have to pay top dollar, but anyway room sorted all that was left to do was sell the car! There was a girl interested in buying it who the guy at the Autobarn put us onto and she happened to be staying at the same hostel, but in the end she didn't and I spent the evening before we were due to sell it back to the autobarn trying to sell it to everyone in the hostel, but to no avail! Hey ho, we sold it back to the autobarn place and now we are back to carrying our stuff around and yet again we've accumulated a lot!

We were in Melbourne for just over a week and we pretty much spent that week drinking! The hostel we'd been staying at really is party tastic, people are on it everynight and there's always something or other going on, plus you get free evening meals which are served in the bar so it's really difficult not to spend the evening drinking. We had a couple of nights in nightclubs too, there are plenty of places that do cheap / free drinks for backpackers, it's dangerous!! We also saw the Grand Prix too, really enjoyed that. We went for all 4 days and it was the first time I'd been to one and I really enjoyed it, was an exciting race!

Now, we're actually still in Melbourne but we're flying out to Brisbane this evening to go see Rich's friends, Brett and Kerrie. They're getting married in a couple of weeks so it's going to be a pretty exciting time with them what with Stag / Hen weekends, the wedding and we're even going on the first part of their honeymoon with them to fraser island!