Rich And Kaz Do The World

Blowing the cobwebs off!

2006-11-27T11:57:00.000Z

Hey All,

This is just a short entry as a way of apology. Sorry we haven't been very communicative as of late, we've been back in sunny England now for about 12 weeks and as you could imagine we've been trying to re-establish ourselves with jobs and a home and the like. We've managed that now and once BT have pulled their collective heads out of their huge butt then we can reply to you all.
In the mean time here's a picture of my Uncle David, he loves a good party!

My lordy lord

2006-09-05T15:50:00.000Z

Having seen the latest photo's of Richard I have only just stopped the tears rolling down my face, my god man what is going on with that hair ?? Seriously it's worse than that mullet you used to sport all those years ago !!! The woman in the photo looks actually upset by it all !!

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b168/Chardly/Vietnam/100_5761.jpg

In all seriousness, will be good to see ya mate, enjoy the rest of it, see ya soon :-)

Hoi An to Hue to Hanoi.....

2006-09-04T15:33:00.000Z

We arrived at Hoi An early in the morning and had 2 full days there. Hoi An is famous for it's tailors and they are everywhere, you can get anything made really cheaply. I had myself 2 dresses, some trousers and a pair of shoes made and Rich had 2 pairs of shoes and a hat made. He had to have a hat made as he couldn't find one big enough to go over his crazy hair! Our shoes were a little disappointing as the quality was not as good as those on display. Rich was pleased with his hat (even though he looks like a tit in it, tee hee!) and was pleased with my clothes, until Rich pointed out that my beige shirt dress with orange stitching makes me look like I work in Sainsburys!!! And he was right, bugger! Maybe it's a sign!!

We spent a lot of time just wandering around the city, we visited a few museums and some ruins! It's a really quaint little place, with narrow streets and not much traffic. It was so hot and humid though, probably the most humid it's been so far, it was such an effort just to walk around! There's a big market, loads of tailors and lots of nice restaurants and at one of these restuarants we had ourselves a little cooking course. We learnt how to make various spring rolls (Vietnamese spring rolls are soo good), green papaya salad and and a fish dish, and then we ate it....yummy!

A 3 hour bus ride and we were in Hue. We had a day and a half here and in that time we had a tour around the citadel in the city which was very impressive and a boat trip to visit a pagoda and the kings tomb, which was also pretty impressive. Our guide was really good and we learnt a lot about the places we visited, it was also nice to be out on a boat getting a breeze as it was very hot n' shitty again.

And after Hue, we took another overnight train to Hanoi, our last stop in Vietnam. We had about 5 days there before our flight to Hong Kong on the 2nd September. Our first day was spent wandering around the city, it's just as hectic as Saigon in the motorbike front. While we've become used to crossing the road in a suicidal manner, I'll be glad when we don't have to, it's just so stressful! That evening we visited water puppet show, which was interesting! At dinner that night Rich didn't eat anything and we went home early as he was feeling ill, Bob and Angie hadn't gone out to dinner as Angie had been sick earlier...irk! Rich was feeling bad all night and was sick every couple of hours throughout the night. Not good.

The following day we were supposed to be going on a day trip to Halong Bay but Rich was still feeling ill and so didn't go. I stayed behind with him too just in case he needed any sort of medical attention. We pretty much didnt' do anything all day, apart from watch a couple of films on TV, It was raining really hard all day so I didn't bother going out! Halang Bay was really nice by all accounts, Angie went but was sick while she was there!

The day after we were due to go to Coc Phuong National Park. Rich was still feeling bad so didn't go, he was feeling a bit better and was managing to eat and so I did go. It was a really nice day, even though it took 3 hours to get there! We visited a rescue centre for endangered primates, a prehistoric cave and then spent a few hours trekking through the jungle, which was hard work in the heat, but really nice to be away from the city into the peace of the jungle!

Rich was feeling much better by the evening and so we went out for our farewell dinner with the gang. The tour through Vietnam was really good and we enjoyed the group of people we were with and had a lot of fun with them, it was pretty hectic but we crammed a lot in and saw as much as we could. I like Vietnam a lot and would definitely go back there, the people are friendly and the food is good, the weather is hot n' shitty but you get used to it, just like you get used to crossing the road and being hassled to buy stuff every 5 minutes!!

We did a bit of shopping with everyone the following day and had lunch before saying farewell :-( to Bob and Angie, and Ben and Jane as they were flying home.

We spent our last night with Jady and met up with Jean also, we sat drinking local beer at 2000 dong (about 5p) a glass on a street corner, great stuff, can't believe our guide didn't tell us about this! Forget to tell you about the currenty, the Vietnamese Dong, there are 15,800 VND to the US$, brilliant, we were millionnaires!! After the outdoor bar we went to a club and had a boogie and got ourselves a motorbike taxie home, luckily at 2 am there's barely any traffic about!!

So Vietnam all over with, we said au revoir to Jady who had a few more days there and left for the airport, with a bit of a curly head!!

The fun of floating bars at Nha Trang

2006-09-04T14:28:00.000Z

Our overnight train from Saigon was pretty good, better than the ones in Thailand as you get 4 bed cabins and so a bit of privacy.

We had a couple of days in Nha Trang which is on the coast, it has very british feel to it though, at first glance it could have been any british seaside!

We spent our first day relaxing on the beach on our nice sun loungers, I say relaxing, we only managed to relax for about 3 minutes at a time as we were constantly pestered by people selling us everything from massages to seafood, it was really annoying, and they were so persistant. Rich and I ended up having massages and pedicures just so everyone else would leave us alone for a bit!!!! Apart from that though it was a lovely beach, the sun was shining and the sea was warm. Despite being under an umbrella all day and wearing factor 60, Rich and I still got sunburnt....it is bloody hot in Vietnam.....hot n'shitty!

On our second day Rich and I had booked to go on an island tour, it was only $6. The bus picked us up and took us to the boat and it was absolutely heaving, loads of people on the tour, we were a bit disappointed at this, but the guides told us what the itenery for the day was and he seemed like he wanted to make it fun. The first stop was to snorkel, there were about 3 other tour boats there plus a dive boat and so that meant there were about 100 snorkelers and a hand full of divers all in the same area, not good, we had a little snorkel but gave up as there were too many people and the coral was shit too. So, so far we weren't particularly happy. Back on the boat and we moved to a different spot and had some lunch up on the top deck of the boat. Lunch was really good, we were impressed with that, we got chatting to some Aussies, a canadian girl and an english fella and they became our 'gang' for the rest of the day! After lunch our guide told us it was happy hour at the floating bar but we couldn't go in the water until our food had gone down and so he and the crew set about entertaining us with their 'band'. And entertaining it was, they were very funny and got everyone us dancing on the tables, Cheesy stuff but it put us all in a good mood. And then the floating bar opened. We all jumped in the water and were given rubber rings and made our way to the bar where we were given a plastic cup of mulberry wine. Now, when he said happy hour, he meant an hour, the mulberry wine just kept on coming for an hour, and it was free so everyone had plenty. The barman was even pouring it straight into peoples mouths, especially the aussies, they got very pissed!! We did take plenty of pictures but on our waterproof camera and we've not had chance to put them onto a disc to upload to here, so you'll have to check them out in a couple of weeks (maybe!)

When we all wobbled back to the boat pretty much everyone was steaming. We stopped a bit later on at an island resort and we spent our time sat with the aussies drinking beer, it was much fun.

That evening we got on another overnight train to Hoi An, Rich and I met up with the rest of the group in a very wobbly state which they found very amusing!

Mekong Delta

2006-09-04T14:24:00.000Z

We left Saigon and travelled by bus for a few hours to the Mekong Delta. We met up with our guide, Fu and got on a boat. Fu was a great guide, very funny and always chuckling at something! We were taken on a little tour of the Mekong Delta area which is where the Mekong River meets the sea and there are little islands dotted about and everyone travels by boat and everything is transported by boat. It's a really lovely place. The people are very self sufficient and there are no restaurants or hotels or anything like that, just people living their lives and making a living the best way they can. Of course they get tourists like us, but we didn't see any others and that just made it nicer. We visited all manner of 'workshops' and 'factories', things being made in a simple / traditional way, bricks, roofs, rice paper, coconut toffee, tools, it was all very interesting to see. We stopped for lunch at the home of Mr Baa, who gave us all some rice ouzo (very strong stuff) and fed us a fantastic meal of fish, spring rolls, rice, noodles, and other tasty stuff.

We went to this one bonsai farm (like japanese bonsai except the trees are much bigger) and they had a python there, I had a go at holding him, he was very heavy and strong but i liked him! We were also treated (I say treated, it didn't feel like a treat!!) to some snake wine. The foulest tasting stuff on earth. It is what it says it is, wine made out of snakes.......yuk. Apparantly it's really good for you. They can keep it, that's what I say!

We arrived at our guest house for the night. A local family's home. They had made an upstairs room into a big dorm and we all slept in there, was like being on a school trip!!

That evening we took a walk along the river before dinner which was so nice. It was like being back in Fiji, not a tourist in sight, no souvenir shops just people doing there thing and all saying hello to us, many of them stopping Rich to touch his hair and then giggle!!

Dinner was pretty much the same as lunch but we didn't care because it was equally as delicious. We spent the night all playing cards and drinking beer.

On the way back to Saigon the following day we passed through the floating market where the locals come to buy and sell their wares, mainly foodstuffs. The boats stick a sample of their products to the top of a bamboo pole so that everyone can see from a distance what they are selling! It was all very hectic there and we didn't stop to shop as no-one wanted to buy pineapple or sweet potato!

So back to Saigon where we hung around for a few hours before getting an overnight train to Nha Trang.

Saigon

2006-09-04T14:09:00.000Z

We had about a 6 hour bus journey out of Phnom Penh, accross the border and into Saigon. We got off the bus and were greeted by pure hecticness!! There are motorbikes everywhere, not many cars, lots of cyclos (big cycles with seats on the front for passengers) and cycles and a few buses. Jeez, thought Bangkok was bad, then Phnom Penh but this just tops it, and then some!! And the noise!!! All over SE Asia, vehicles beep to say 'here I am, please don't crash into me' Here, they are still used for the same thing but every vehicle is doing it constantly, if baffles me how anyone works out what horn belongs to what bike ???

The tour officially ends here and Rich and I had booked into a different hotel for a few days while the rest are all in the same hotel as most are leaving the following day. Exceptions are Bob and Angie who are on the same tour up through Vietnam and Jean who is doing the same tour but with a different company, and Graahame and Lorinda are having a couple of weeks travelling on their own through Vietnam. So no doubt we'll see them and Jean along the way. We also found out that Sophie would be our tour guide.....oh joy!

We found our hotel and had a bit of a kip before meeting everyone else for a farewell dinner. We walked to the restaurant as it wasn't far but that was a scary walk. As I'd said, the traffic is hectic there shuold be order to it, there just isn't. The way to drive is pretty much I'll go where I like, you go around me. And that's how you have to cross the road , it's really not a pleasant experience but if you don't then you'll never get across the road. So basically you just have to step out and walk slowly but purposefully in a straight line across and everything will move around you. It's easier if you just look straight ahead and not at the million motorbikes heading your way, but it's hard to do that!

We went to a local restaurant that had some 'interesting' things on the menu. Good old favourites like, goats breast, beef penis, rat and some other crazy stuff that I can't remember (check out the menu!). Bob, who will eat anything and want's to try everything went for the beef penis. Rich and I tried a bit and it was quite nice, fortunately it did come in slices so you'd never know what it was. They didn't serve dog in here gladly but it is something the Vietnamese eat a lot of, in fact I learned later on that dogs are bred especially for it like cows :-( But they do also keep dogs as pets, the intelligent ones, it's the stupid ones that get eaten......Ruth, never take Alfie to Veitnam!!!

We had a couple of days before the tour started and so Rich and I spent our time, emailing people and sitting at a bar watching Saigon, it's a very interesting city and just watching the traffic is fascinating! We did also meet up with Jean an took a cyclo tour around the city, visiting some temples and stopping at chinatown another market!
The cyclo tour was quite hairy, they're not very fast and as you're sittng at the front you feel very vulnerable! The cyclo would turn a corner into a million oncoming bikes and somehow manage to slip into a space and round the next corner, there were many near misses along the journey but I didn't see so much as a raised eyebrow. Fascinating!! My driver was called Mr Kim and he was very funny. He Spoke some english and as we were going through chinatown kept hitting me on the shoulder and saying 'chinatown, many chinese people live here' He must've done it about 10 times! He used to be a policeman before the vietnam war but now he's an illegal citizen in Saigon and as such cannot own a property or business and as such can never marry. it's quite sad but most of the cyclo drivers are like that, eeking out a living giving cyclo rides, they have no homes either, they just sleep in their cyclos. I don't really understand the Vietnam war and why these previously respectable people have no place in Saigon anymore. (Note from Rich: I know why, during the war all intellectuals and people in high ranking jobs tended to sympathies with the Americans, so after the war these people were rounded up and sent to re-education centres then after their re-education they were dropped back into society as 'non-people' with no rights what so ever. Sad, but true!) And they are the lucky ones, a lot of people don't even have a cyclo to earn money to eat. We were talking to a fella about our age and he had nothing, he tries to make money by taking newly arrived backpackers to hotels in order to get comission from the hotel for finding them custom. He doesn't earn very much so he doesn't eat very much, and as he has no cyclo he has nowhere to sleep, he's constantly moved on by the police if he sleeps in the streets and so doesn't always get much sleep. Makes you realise just how lucky we are.

When the tour started, we met our new group for Vietnam, which was Rich and I, Bob and Angie, a couple (who we later discovered were only friends!) Ben and Jane and a girl on her own, Jady.....and that was it. A small group and we knew half of them already!!

The first day of the tour was to the Chu Chi tunnels. These are tunnels that the Vietnamese lived in during the war to hide from the Americans, and there was a whole 'city' down there with a huge network of tunnels and rooms at different depths. Now, I can't tell you much more because our guide was shocking. He started off by shouting at us the whole of the way there saying that tourists come to vietnam without knowing anything about the war or having incorrect knowledge (ie Americas version) and we are ignorant. Tis true, but a lot of us hope to learn something while we're there. He called us all fat assed westerners countless times and pretty much made us all feel like naughty school children. He was very anti-american (even though he fought for america and has and american girlfriend and lived there for ages ?????) and in your face with his opinions. Nobody liked him. When we arrived we were shown a film about the Vietnamese war. Now, he complained of our incorrect knowledge but I'm not sure the film gave us the correct knowledge as it started out by showing Chu Chi village, a quaint, peaceful little village full of nice people and then said that all of a sudden the Americans decided to Bomb this quaint little village and kill all it's nice people. Now, I don't know much about war, politics or history but I'm pretty sure that's not what did or would have happened! There was so much propaganda it was unreal, and like Angkor Wat it was teeming with people. Blimey, I'm winging again!

The actual tunnels were cool. A section of them (about 90metres) are used to demonstrate to tourists, and had been widened to allow for our fat western asses. But even so, it was still a small space to be crawling through with no light and all manner of insects and rats and the like eeeek (there werent' insects and rats when we were there......I don't think!)

So, that was Saigon!

(Ask Alan what sort of tank it is I don't have a clue!)

Holiday in Cambodia

2006-09-03T08:44:00.000Z

After that late night with Chris and Kate we managed to meet our group at 6am to begin our tour through Cambodia. But first we had to get to Cambodia, our guide Sophie had warned us that it'd be 'a bit of a mission' (one of many phrases she constantly used!) She wasn't kidding. First we got a bus to the bus station, where we were told we'd be getting the 7am bus, but Sophie couldn't get tickets until the 8.30 am bus as it was a public holiday that day and the place was rammed! So we waited about and eventually got the bus. This took about 4 hours to get to the border, traffic coming out of Bangkok was a nightmare. Took a while to actually get through the border but once through we were on the back on a couple of trucks which would take us all the way to Siem Reap. There were 15 of us in total, split (with all our luggage) between 2 pickup trucks, where we sat cramped in with all our luggage!!! It was a hairy ride along a very dusty very very bumpy road. It was fun and we got to know the people on our truck but by the time we arrived in Siem Reap, 6 hours (yes, that's 6 hours!!) later we were battered and bruised and covered in orange dust and tired and hungry but relieved to finally be there. So quick shower and we got into tuk tuks to take us to a restuarant for dinner.

The people on our tour were.....Jean (Canada) Bob and Angie, Sarah, Helen, Caroline and Susie, Milly and Becky, David and Linda, Grahame and Lorinda, me and Rich and Sophie (all English!)

The next morning we all got up at stupid o'clock again and took a short bus journey to Angkor Wat to watch the sunrise, which was a little disappointing as it was a cloudy day! After breakfast a bus and local guide came to take us on a tour of Angkor Wat (yay, more temples!!) We visited 3 temples (ruins you understand) in the morning, one of them, had trees growing on top of them, made famous by Tomb Raider. It was quite interesting, more so because we had a guide to tell us various stories about history of them. It was very bloody busy though, didn't expect that many tourists, was a bit of a theme park! In the car parks there were always little market stalls selling water, postcards, hats, food and the like and there were always kids (offspring of market stall owners) crowding round the bus trying to get you to buy everything and anything. They are very persistant and well practised at sad faces and it was hard work saying no, but even harder if you actually want something!! I wanted some water a girl offered me water, I said I would like some and the minute I said that, there were about 10 kids all trying to drag me to their stall. That was all a bit too much, I could see a stall right in front of me and so I headed for it, bought some water and carried on. I was then chased by the girl who offered me water first and the conversation went like this:

Girl (with sad look on her face) - You hurt me, you didn't buy my water, you said you'd buy my water
Me (feeling very bad) - I'm sorry
Girl (even sadder look) - I don't want your sorry.....you buy a hat !!!!!!!!!!

I guess you had to be there but it was very funny, and I didn't buy a hat but when we returned to the bus later I did try and avoid her as I didn't want another guilt trip!!

After the temples it was time for lunch which was all very nice and in the afternoon we visited the landmine museum, which was very sad but quite uplifting too. It's run by a man who was forced to be a child soldier during the Khmer Rouge period and during that time he laid many land mines. Now he dedicates his life to clearing them and to taking care of some of the victims. He has adopted many young boys who've had arms and legs blown off due to these land mines and helps them to get education, medical care and food. He also raises awareness about the cause and clears the landmines himself without the aid of machinery. He's quite a guy, it's not a government funded museum, it's funded by him and donations plus profits from the gift shop there. We were shown a video of the young boys who live there and despite their missing limbs, they mess about and play football and stuff and just get on with it, it's good to see.

Our first day in Cambodia was a very full and hectic one and at last was a free day to do whatever we fancied. Rich and I and a couple of the others decided to give blood at the local childrens hospital as they have a big shortage of it. They were very grateful for our donation and gave us a goodie bag with a t-shrit, a weeks worth of iron tablets and vitamins, stickers and biscuits....brilliant. Of course we were all rewarded by the knowledge that we might help to save a childs life. We had a look around the market, and then sat at a bar in town watching the world go by and drinking a beer or 2! Before we knew it though it was time to meet everyone for dinner. We had a very nice meal and some went home after that while the rest of us went to a bar for a few more beers......and then it got a bit messy! Rich was playing pool with some of the others and we got chatting to other people in the bar (mostly tourists), most others had gone home and it was just me Rich and Bob. When the bar shut Bob was nowhere to be seen, so we just hoped he'd left earlier and got home OK. It was about 4am when we returned to the hotel, we were leaving at 5.30 for Phnom Penh and we still had to pack so we decided not to go to bed as we'd never get up again. We started packing in our wobbly tired state and Rich went out onto the balcony for a fag....and then fell asleep! So I finished the packing with half an hour to spare and had a little lie down, and then the cockrells started, and I lay there, and then Rich started along with the cockrells......yes, in his drunken / sleepy state he was cock a doodle dooing with the cockrells, very loudly, it was sooooooo funny!!! I just lay there laughing at him, I thought about getting the camera and recording him but I was too tired to try and dig it out, but I wish I had though!! Rich had no memory of it!!!

We found out the next day that Bob had tried to get back to the hotel, wandered around the dark streets and into the jungle, but managed to find his way out and get a lift home......Phewy he was lucky as there are still plenty of landmines out there even that close to the city.

Needless to say when we met with the group in the morning we were feeling a little, how can I put it.....pissed ??? yes, we were still very drunk as we'd only stopped drinking about 2 hours previously and Rich and I were giggling like kids for the first half hour of the bus journey and then we were asleep! The bus took us to the lake where we had a 6 hour boat journey accross to Phnom Penh, I managed to sleep through nearly all of it, which was nice. Rich had some sleep, and had spent a few hours on the top of the boat and so got sunburnt, along with everyone else!!

When we arrived, we had a little look around the markets and the shopping mall. The traffic here is even more scary than Bangkok, there are motorbikes everywhere, and tuk tuks, there's some order to it I'm sure but crossing the road can take ages!!

The following day we had a hectic schedule of seeing all the sights as after that we'd be travelling to Saigon. We were up early and a bus came to pick us up with a very nice local guide. First stop was the royal palace and the silver pagoda (it's not made of silver but the floor tiles inside are). The palace was very ornate and there wasn't a huge crowd of tourists but there were plenty of kids selling stuff, and a fair few beggars, some with missing limbs, very sad to see. After that we visited the Russian market which was huge but was just another market, starting to get a bit marketed out now too!!! We had lunch at a nice restaurant which was a bit pricey (for Cambodia) but it supports local children and victims of landmines. After lunch was the sad part of the day. First we visited Tuol Sleng (S-21) museum, this was a prison where people were held, tortored and executed during the Khmer Rouge period. It was all very chilling to see. Our guide told us a lot about it, and did so with dignity even though he was a child then and knew most of his family had been sent there (and therefore were executed). He taught us a lot about that period, and Rich and I have been reading a lot about it too and it is really shocking. It was only 30 years ago so, it's so amazing to see how the people have just got on with their lives, despite all the trauma they all suffered, they're not bitter, they're very happy people and are not ashamed to talk about their experiences. It's a country that's quickly getting back on it's feet and the people are proud and willing to do their bit. Next we visited the killing fields of Cheung Ek, where people were executed en-masse and just buried where they fell. Many mass graves were discovered here and as you walk around there are bones and bits of clothing and things are still emerging all the time. It was quite disturbing and very sad. As I said our guide was very good and to lighten the sombre mood on the bus on the way home, he sang us a couple of songs Karaoke style (asian people loove karaoke!!), which was very entertaining and he seemed right chuffed with himself too!!

Our week in Cambodia was very hectic and sad but very enjoyable and over too soon. Next we were on a bus bound for Saigon

Back to Bangkok

2006-09-03T08:14:00.001Z

Another little plane ride and we were back in Bangkok. We got a taxi to our hotel which was different from the first. The Grand Hyatt. And boy was it grand. It was in the nicer part of Bangkok, near Siam Square and it was the swishest hotel any of us had ever stayed in. Rich and I did feel a bit odd checkng in with our smelly backbacks, but the staff didn't bat an eyelid and the porter took our stuff to our rooms. The minibar was extremely expensive though so we didn't touch that!! We were so tired that when we arrived we just crashed for a few hours. Then we got a taxi to Khoasan road as Chris and Rich were due a fitting at the tailors. After having some food we were all pretty beat so we got some provisions and got a tuk tuk back to the hotel, that was a scary journey with all 4 of us squashed in but it was great pulling up outside the Grand Hyatt in a little scabby tuk tuk!!!

We had access to films on the TV so the 4 of us piled onto the bed and settled down to watch Jarhead, but about 30mins in it got all messed up and the staff couldnt' do anything about it.....boooo! I know it's sad that we were all in Bangkok but chose to stay in and watch a film, but when you're in a swish hotel like that, you don't really want to leave it!!

The next couple of days were taken up with suit fittings and shopping, mainly window shopping in the siam square area and lunches and beer. When you're wandering around Khoasan road you're constantly offered tuk tuks and taxis and stuff. But when the tuk tuk drivers offer a tuk tuk, they also offer ping pong too. Now, Bangkok is famous for it's 'ping pong' shows and so we couldn't not go and see one, so when a tuk tuk driver said, "tuk tuk?, ping pong?", we said yes!! I won't go into detail about it but needless to say it was a very 'entertaining' night. It was really expensive to get in and to buy beers and it was quite embarrasing to be there as we were sat right next to the stage but it was fun. No cameras were allowed but Chris was 'given' a nice little souvenir to remind him of it (tee hee!!!)

And all too soon it was our last night. Rich and Chris picked up their suits which they were very happy with and we had a very nice evening of dinner and drinks until we were kicked out of the bar (they were having some sort of private evening as the thai people weren't kicked out, just us wesnteners!). Rich and I were staying at a different hotel on the last night as we were starting a tour through Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) the following day. So we said goodbye to Chris and Kate (sniff) as they got into their taxi, and Rich and I eventually got to bed around 3am!!

We had a really great 10 days with Chris and Kate and it was sooo good to see them. Made us realise how much we really were missing home. Probably a good thing as when the day comes that we do have to go home we'll be ready and excited about it and won't be sad about the end of our trip!

Elephants, buckets, mopeds and nommies on Ko Chang

2006-09-03T07:27:00.000Z

When we (well Rich) was planning Chris and Kates visit, chris had insisted he wanted nice hotels, no cheapies so Rich got us bungalows on the best resort on the island, which was a bit pricey for Thai standards but in pounds, was still bloody cheap. After our flight and a minibus and a ferry and another minibus we arrived at our resort. And it was very nice. Our bungalows were beautiful with little patio areas, right by the resorts private beach. We had great views, the pool was lovely, and the minibar was well stocked and reasonably priced....brill!!! The downside to all this niceness and luxury though was that the resort was a little secluded. But we'll be able to get tuk tuks or taxi's we thought so we could get around.

We settled into our little bungalows and had spot of lunch at the resort and then decided to go for a bit of an explore, so off we went with our resort umberellas (it was raining!) and had a look at the beach then we ventured up the big steep hill to the main road and turned right. We walked and walked along the windy and hilly road for ages looking for signs of life, it was starting to get dark, and we were all a bit knackered, and vowed to get a taxi home! We finally arrived at a place called Lonely Beach and found a nice looking chilled bar and had ourselves a bucket or 2 and played some cards, then more buckets and cards and a couple of rounds of toasties and more buckets, we got a little pissed! There was a scary moment when a couple of the big stray dogs (there are loads of them in Thailand) had a fight right where we were sitting on the floor, it was all big teeth and drooling, biting and scratching and rolling around, Kate and I were forced into a corner trying to get out of their way as we didn't want to get caught up in it as we nearly did! It was quite scary and nobody could do anything as they were really big dogs, but eventually they fled and we could relax, they'd knocked everyting everywhere but luckily our bucket was still intact!! It got to around midnight and everywhere around us seemed to be shut so we figured we'd better get ourselves a taxi home. Unfortunately for us though, there was no-one about. The girl running the bar said if we started walking along the main road we should be able to flag down a passing truck (the way it's done round here), so we did, but we didn't see any vehicles apart from the odd moped, great, so we had a long and hard walk home, but it was very enjoyable!!

The following day, after a very late start we turned left and got to another little 'town' a lot quicker than Lonely beach and had a look around there. After a bit of discussion we decided to hire a couple of mopeds for a few days so we could get around the island. It only cost 1000 baht (about 15 quid) for 2 bikes for 4 days. So we spent the next 4 days razzing round the island, we pretty much went all the way arond it finding nice little places to eat and shop and takes picutres and the like. We got helmets with our mopeds and were about the only people wearing them as the locals don't and most tourists don't, and we got laughed at a lot, especially Rich as, what with his crazy hair do, he couldn't really fit a helmet on, it just sat on his hair!!! Most evenings we were back at the resort by 9ish with a stash of Samsong and coke and snacks and we made our own 'buckets', then empited the minibars and played cards / monopoly on the patio until the small hours. It was much fun!

We had ourselves an afternoon of elephant trekking while there which was really good. We rode on these elephants through the jungle and to a waterfall where we had a nice swim and the elephants had a drink. They are awesome animals, never been that close before. Chris and Rich both got to sit on the elephants head (rather than on a seat on the back), I reckon Chris really enjoyed that part as he had a silly little grin on his face the whole time! Afterwards we got to feed the elephants which was cool, and we all purchased the photo they took of us early in the ride, although chris and katie didn't realise they were having their picture taken and both looked bored / bewildered, tis a very funny photo!!

Unfortunatly the weather wasn't the best, it was cloudy for the first part of the week so we didn't really spend much time on our private beach. But the sun did put his hat on towards the end, and boy was it hot then, we did have a couple of sunsets on the beach and a little swim in the sea, we couldn't do any kayaking though as it was too choppy, which was disappointing.

It was also Rich's birthday while we were in Ko Chang, but it has to be said he did have a bit of a quiet birthday. We'd had a pretty late night the previous night and so didn't get up till really late. Chris had bought a load of cards with him from everyone and Rich was right proper chuffed with that. He didn't really get any pressies though apart from sweets and silly toys, a bit difficult when you're travelling to get pressies for each other! I did manage to get him a birthday cake, well, several small cakes with some candles!!!

Rich and Chris had to take the bikes back by 2pm, we'd still not had any breakfast so Kate and I lazed by the pool while they sorted the bikes out and organised a lift to the airport for the following day. That seemed to take ages and eventually they returned and we went for our first (and only) meal of the day at the resort about 4pm!! The rest of the day / night was spent in the usual manner of beers, buckets and cards with a reasonably early night as we had another early flight the next day!

The arrival of Chris and Kate :-)

2006-09-03T07:11:00.000Z

Wa-hay, Chris and Kate were coming!! Rich and I got a taxi to the airport to meet them, that took ages and when we got there we discovered that their plane had landed much earlier, so we werent' sure wheather they'd come through the arrival gates already. I stayed put by the gates and Rich had a wander around just in case they'd already been through. We waited for ages but eventually I saw Chrissies little smiley face looking around for us, so I made a dash for him and gave them both a big hug, was sooo good to see them! Rich came back from his search and it was smiles and hugs all round!!! We got a taxi to our hotel and Chris and Kate had a bit of a freshen up......then we went out!! We had a bit of a wander around the only part of Bangkok Rich and I were familiar with, namely Khoasan Road and surrounding area, we had a wander round then popped into a bar for a drink or 2. Chris got very drunk very quickly and it was funny!! We didn't realise quite how strong Chang beer is until Chris was drunk on 2 bottles and we checked.....quite strong then!!! After a bit of dinner (and chris took 3 layers off his mouth as he poured a whole dish of chillies onto his meal!!!) we went to a tailors shop that Rich and I had checked out previously for the boys to get themselves measured for suits. You can get pretty much anything made here for next to nothing. After much umming and ahhing over fabrics and styles Chris ordered a suit with 2 pairs of trousers and 3 shirts, and Rich got 2 suits with 4 pairs of trousers and 6 shirts and a winter coat plus a couple of silk ties thrown in for the princely sum of 25,000 baht for the lot (about 350 quid) Bargain. We had a couple of buckets at a bar after that and then headed home in the early hours to pack ready for our early flight the next morning. I said I'd take full responsibility for getting us all up........so at about 5 am, Chris knocked on our door and woke us up.......thank god Katie packed an alarm clock, and we headed to the airport for our flight to Ko Chang. The plane was a little propeller plane and I have to say I was a little scared, but it was only a short flight and we were soon there!

Gotta love the beach life!!

2006-09-03T06:25:00.000Z

We took a local flight from Chaing Mai to Phucket (changing at Bangkok), then a bus to a guest house in Phucket the night (as we arrived quite late). Next day we walked to the bus station and got a 3 hour bus to Krabi, once there we got a sawangethaw ((can't remember how you spell it) which does a sort of bus route, only it's not a bus it's a truck thing with seats in the back!! ) to Ao Nang and then a long boat to take us to the peninsula of Railay as it's not accessible by road. Phewey, going from a to b is not always straight forward or direct!! As it was off season we managed to get a really nice bungalow for half of it's normal price. We checked in for 5 nights!

Railay is a really beautiful place, nice beaches with a stunning backdrop of limestone cliffs. It's rock climbers heaven and in fact is famous in climbing circles and people come from all over to climb here. There are many climbing routes all over the place and you can sit on pretty much any beach and see people of all levels and ages climbing, it's pretty awesome to watch.

So, our first 5 days were spent lazing around on the beach, there were quite a few beaches just a short walk or if the tide was in a longboat ride away, or playing cards in bars with the various friends that we made there. Mostly with Mike from Canada, he loved a bit of Nommies!! We spent almost every night (and breakfast) at the same bar, it was not far from our bungalow and was such a chilled place and the guy that ran it, B, was cool, he'd always chat to us about various things and we could get dinner from any local restaurant and eat it there....sweet!! Plus as it was low season a lot of places weren't open and so lots of people spent the evenings at B's and there was always a good crowd in, playing cards or connect 4 (the thais love connect 4) and just relaxing.

This relaxing lark was hard work though, after about 4 days of it we decided we'll spend the rest of our time there until we had to go to Bangkok to meet Chris and Kate as it was just so nice!

Seeing as we were in climbers heaven we decided to have a go at it and booked ourselves on a half day climbing course. This involved a bit of training in tying knots and the safety aspect of it and how to hold the climber and the like, then 2 different climbs on the 'training' routes. These were called training routes but they were a bit hard core to us!! Even to get started on the first one was a challenge in itself requiring the strength and flexibility of a gymnast and nerves of steel!! On the first route Rich twisted his back and pulled some muscles and couldn't continue. I pressed on as best I could though and managed to complete the first one. The second one I got almost to the top buy all my muscles had turned to jelly and the last hold was just to awkward for me to get too, hey ho. I had a good go at it and have much admiration for the pro's. They make it look so easy. For the next 3 days my muscles were hurting so much, some I didn't know I had and some I didn't realise how much I used, my brushing teeth and wipng bum muscles were in a lot of trouble!!!! I was also covered in bruises and scratches, jeez, people do this for fun!!!!

Apart from lazing around playing games and stuff and our bit of climbing the only other thing we did there was on our last day we went on a day trip to 'James Bond Island'. We'd had brilliant weather all week apart from the occaisional morning shower and so as we made our way to the meeting point at around 6am, and it was drizzly, we didn't really pay too much attention to it. We had some breakfast and then our long boat arrived. By the time we'd waded through the sea to get to the boat the rain was thick and horizontal and we were soaked! As we climbed in, Rich suggested not bothering, he wasn't feeling too good and the rain was a bit of a pain, but I said it'd pass and soon it'd be fine....oh how I wishI'd listened to Rich!!! It turned out to be the worse day of our year and Rich and I were wishing it would just end!! It wasn't so much the rain that was the problem (although we did spend the day soaking wet and each time we were in the bus the air con was on and so we were also freezing!) but the fact that it was a shit day trip. We didnt' learn a thing, the guide didn't tell us anything, not even here name. We took a boat, then a bus then another boat to this island. The guide said, this is James Bond Island, you've got half an hour. The island itself was the biggest tourist trap I've ever seen. The man with the golden gun was filmed here (hence James Bond Island) and I was expecting a beautiful beach where we could sit (despite the rain) and just enjoy it's peace and tranquility. No, what it was was a bit market. Everyone was herded to the only accessible part of the island where loads of market stalls were set up on the beautiful beach selling tourist tat at stupid prizes. You couldn't sit on the beach or enjoy any peace and tranquility at all and there were about 20 boat loads of people.

So that pretty much ruined it for us and we were miserable and pissed off all day. We visited a 'floating village' where we had a very crap lunch, a temple, a cave and the usaul day trip stuff adn we hated it all, we were so glad when the day was over. So if anyone is ever in that part of the world and is tempted by the James Bond Island tour, don't do it!!! Right, winging over!!! We spent our last night drinking buckets of Samsong, coke and red bull at B's and sharing poo stories with 2 dutch couples we met there, it was very funny!!! As a departing gift B let us have one of his buckets as a souvenir which was nice :-)

departed Railay the following day and got a boat, a minibus then an overnight coach to Bangkok, where I had something drastic done to my hair (was bored with it!!) and we prepared ourselves for Chris and Kates arrival. I have to say that Rich and I were incredibly excited about this and were like 2 kids on Christmas eve!!

Chaing Mai

2006-09-03T05:57:00.000Z

We had about 3 days in Chaing Mai and we spent our time getting pampered and shopping pretty much. It's so cheap in Chaing Mai, much cheaper than anywhere else we've been. We had ourselves a Thai massage, 45 mins worth for 200 bht each (about 2 pound 50!) That was so nice, they bend you into all sorts of funny postions and poke and prod at you, all a bit wierd and quite painful at thimes but felt so good afterwards! We also had a full on 4 hour pampering another day with steam bath, foot massage, body scrub and oil massage, it's the sort of thing you want to do at home but can't cos it's so expensive, so we made the most of it here!!! Our evenings were spent walking up and down the night bazaar, getting hassled to buy stuff here and there and haggling for our wares. Rich is getting really good at it now, I'm still rubbish. We spent a lot of time in the antique shops too, Rich is becoming a bit obsessed with them, I find looking at dusty opium pipes and budda's with no head a bit dull, but hey, he's happy!!

We also went on a little day trip into the hills to 'gawp' at hilltribe people, there are many tribes in the hills, not Thai, alot of them originate in Myanmar and are a bit nomadic and ended up on Thai soil. The king has been working hard to get them out of growing opium (traditionally their main crop) and into growing rice and weaving silk and making stuff for us tourists, and they seem to be happy with that. When us tourists come to visit we visit their market stalls not their homes so we didn't feel so much like intruders and they all seemed pleased for us to be there as we bought their tourist tat!! The tribes funnily enough are called 'Karen', there are long neck Karen, big ear Karen and many other amusing ones!! We visited the long neck karens. The ladies wear these big having bronze rings around their necks, not to extend their necks (as they don't, they push the shoulders down). This tradition only started about a hundred years ago and this is what we were told the reasons were:

1 - People were being attacked by tigers about 100 years ago and they thought they'd done something to upset the 'spirits' and were being punished by these tiger attacks and so they wear the bronze rings by way of apology to the spirits.

2 - Only the ladies wear the rings as protection from Tiger attacks, the men don't need to as they can run from the tigers faster than the ladies!!

So there you go!

It hooned it down for a lot of our time there and had to take shelter under the roof of the market stalls, and so were pestered into buying stuff. Hey ho, they were very friendly types!!

We also visited a butterfly farm, a temple, a cave and had a boat trip, these seem like standard fare for any daytrip in SE Asia!!!

On one night in Chaing Mai we were having a couple of quiet beers in this bar and this very brash texan bloke kept buying us drinks, I think it was just cos we were western and he was rich and wanted everyone (especially the thai girls draped over him) to know how rich and generous he was! We got chatting to him (as you do) and the thai girls and he was a knobhead, but we took his free drinks and laughed at his jokes all the same! It was really interesting talking to the thai girls though, they all seemed to have quite sad stories and were telling me why they look drape themselves over knobheads like this as they want someone to take care of them, for many reasons....to provide homes for their children who aren't allowed to live with them, to pay for a sick relatives medical bills, and many other things. There is much poverty in Thailand and it's pretty sad to hear these girls stories. Some do find rich thai men or even nice western men, but easier to find are the rich knobheads like this one. Poor girls.

After Chaing Mai, we'd decided to go to a little peninsula south of Phucket called Railay, Kit had said it's a really nice beachy type place and we booked ourselves a flight there as it was fairly cheap and better than 2 days of trains!

Temples and ruins and wats and trains

2006-09-03T05:27:00.000Z

We left Bangkok and got a train about an hour and a half North to Ayuthaya, a former capital. Ayuthaya is famous for its ruins of temples (wats). We had a couple of days there, took a boat trip around the place looking at temples, did a walking tour around the place looking at other temples and had dinner that had great views of some temples lit up at nighttime. We pretty much saw every temple in the city, Rich loved it, I got a bit bored.

Next stop was a couple more hours north to a place called Lopburi, another former capital, also famous for it's temples, famous too for it's monkey problem! Certain parts of the city are overrun with monkeys, they live around one of the bigger ruins there and wreak havoc with the locals, stealing food from markets, outdoor eateries and the likes, pooing on car windscreens, fighting, and generally being a nuiscance. But being a buddhist nation, they won't cull the monkeys, they just put up with them as best they can......yay.....Monkeys!!

I don't think Lopburi get many tourists as I've never been looked at so much anywhere, it was a bit wierd! Our hotel was outside of town and was too expensive to eat there so on our first night we decided to walk into town for food. However, we didn't realise quite how far it was, plus it was getting late. When we'd been walking for over an hour we were only halfway and there were no tuktuks here and no cyclos would be this far out. Luckily though a motorbike pulled up and offered his 'taxi' service into town. Now, if at home, we'd never ever do this, but it's the way it's done round here plus we didn't want to walk anymore, so Rich and I jumped (yes both of us!) on the back and got a bit of a scary lift into town. Bikes are everywhere here and people just ride on them, no helmets, leathers, as many people as they can fit on and away they go!! It was fun despite being scared!!

We only had one full day in Lopburi but guess what we did? Yay, we looked at temples, not all of them though, there were too many, but all the main ones. These were slightly more interesting as there were monkeys about (yay, monkeys). We saw plenty of ruins, Rich loved it, I got a bit bored.

Next stop was Sukhothai, another former capital, can you guess what it's famous for??? Yay, ruins!! In fact, this place has an immense collection all in one area in the old town. We got a 5 hour train from Lopburi, then a short bus ride, then a 2 hour bus ride then a 30 minute tuk tuk ride to the old town, phew that was a journey and a half! Found ourselves a nice little guesthouse to stay in and settled in. Spent the evening chatting to an english guy, a french girl and the owner of the guesthouse who bought out a bottle of whisky for us all to drink, nice, although Rich and I didn't partake as we're having a couple of weeks off the beer! The owner of the guesthouse was really nice and told us he'd love to go to europe but thinks if he went in the winter he would die. We all laughed at this but he was deadly serious and so we all felt bad! He thinks he would die because of the cold. Thai people aren't used to cold. I think he must think that we live 'outside' like they do. We did explain that in winter, we don't go out much, we wrap in lots of clothes when we do, have central heating and double glazing etc. But I still don't think he got it, I think he imagined the same sort of lifestyle as thailand but in the snow!!!

So anyway, we had a full day to explore the ruins and decided to do it on a pushbike as the ruins are all enclosed in a heritage park so there's no traffic to contend with, other than other cyclists! We rented a couple of bog standard bikes for 20 baht each for the day (about 30p!!) and away we went. We looked at as many ruins as we could get to and did a fair bit of cycling too which was fun, but hard work in the heat and humidity. There were many ruins to see and Rich loved it, I got a bit bored (I'd like to point out that that is an understatement, I was bored after the first half dozen in Ayuthaya, by this point I was almost insane!!)

Happily, that was the last of our ruin trail (and even Rich admitted he was a bit ruined out!) and the next stop was Chaing Mai, right up North, we got ourselves on another overnight train to get there.

Bangkok (still)

2006-09-03T05:09:00.000Z

Sorry it's been so long people, but it's been a bit hectic in SE asia, so, got a couple of hours to spare so I'll try and bring you all up to date.

Where were we? Ah, still in Bangkok. The tour had ended and Rich and I were on our own. From what we've seen so far Thailand is a pretty easy place to get about, so we weren't too worried. We had about 3 weeks to explore Thailand before Chris and Kate arrive on 2nd August, we already had a plan of where to go with them. We consulted our Thai guide Kit who pointed out some of the best bits of Thailand and decided he knows best and to go and visit some. We had a few more days in Bangkok to send some stuff home, do a bit of shopping and the like before we got on a train up North.

Now, the sending of stuff home and shopping was not as successful as we'd hoped. Remember that painting of Kates that we promised we'd send to her? Well, we turned up at the post office with the painting all wrapped in brown paper but they wouldn't accept it, unless it was in a tube. Did they sell tubes?? Did they buggery! We wandered around bangkok for a few hours in search of a tube but to no avail, so we resigned ourselves to carrying it around with us until we did find a tube. As for the shopping, I needed some pants as I'd lost a couple of pairs along the way. You'd think this was an easy task, but it wasn't, you see Thai ladies are very tiny, they have little bottoms, I am a fat assed westerner.....I looked in numerous shops, market stalls but nothing, their XL was equivalent to a size 10! Lots of shop assistants tried to convince me that these XL would stretch to fit me but I knew differently, so I had to give up and resort to wearing my pants for 3 days at a time!!!

Also in Bangkok Rich decided he'd had enough of his hair sticking to his face in the humidity (he tied it back but the front still wouldnt' stay in a ponytail) and so did something about it......something pretty drastic......check out the photos (you'll have check out the photos on a different post though as Rich didn't put any on here!!)!!

We didn't do much touristy stuff in Bangkok, mostly just wandered around. It's as hectic as I imagined it would be and things really are cheap. Crossing the road in Bangkok is always a joy and the tuk tuk rides are scary, but it's all part of the fun.

2006-08-01T09:45:00.000Z

Now then Chard you listen here and listen good. Chrissy and Katie should be very nearly on their way by now. I suggest you get a couple of bottles of 'Magners' on ice for their arrival and make sure you don't influence either of them into cultivating unruly hair or beards during their stay!
HOOF!

Bangkok part 1

2006-07-11T10:27:00.000Z

We left Kho Pha Ngan and boarded an over night train bound for Bangkok, as over night trains go this one was pretty good. Our seats turned into a bed and there was a pull down top bunk, so we did sleep, which was good as the following day was hectic. We arrived in Bangkok early morning and went for breakfast. Then we were taken to a floating market, the only one left in Thailand apparantly. That was fun, there was bit of a boat ride to get there and local people were selling their wares from long boats....mainly farm produce. There was also a market on the land next to the canal so we had a good look round there. Kit told us that all the prices were more inflated here and you have to haggle (you have to do that everywhere but here you have to do it more), we tried our best, but I reckon we still got ripped off. It feels wrong to be arguing with poor people over 20p though! Rich bought the nastiest bit of tat we've seen since the Steve Irwin and family plate, a wavy cat. We've seen them everywhere, gawdy gold plastic cats with a wavy arm :-/ ....he loves it. After the floating market we drove over to the bridge over the river kwai, had a walk on the bridge and a look round the museums, then visited a cemetary where hundreds of japanese POW who died during the building of the Burma railway are buried. Rich's grandad was a POW and worked on the Burma Railway, it was really sad to see the cemetary and all the names of the people who died, nearly all of them under 25.

This was the last day of our tour although it does include a night at a hotel in Bangkok....the girls however had to fly home that night. They were desperate to shop on Khosan Road (famous for shopping in Bangkok and VVVVV cheap) before they went. W arrived back in Bangkok around 7pm, by the time they'd showered and got themselves ready for leaving it was about 7.30....then they went on a shopping frenzy! We all chilled out and had dinner, they met us an hour or so later loaded with bags and wolfed down some food, then Bronagh went for round 2.....she didn't come back till almost 11, poor Kate was getting stressed as their flight was just after midnight...it was funny...We bade them farewell and then about half an hour later Kit got a phonecall from a tearful Kate saying she'd left her painting behind!!! Oh how we laughed....sorry Kate, but we did. She'd been carrying this enormous rolled up canvas with her since Bali (before she joined this tour) and it was slowly getting battered...and then she goes and leaves it behind...tee heee ;-) We'll send it home to you Kate....promise!

So, girls gone :-( tour over :-( we're on our own....

Woo-hoo.....Thailand....beaches, buckets and (sun)burn!!

2006-07-11T10:02:00.000Z

As you can probably tell from the title, I'm quite excited about Thailand!! Been looking forward to coming here for ages and I've not been disappointed, it really is bloody cheap!

The first thing we did when we arrived was go have lunch at a restaurant. It was a fairly nice place and we spent about 1 pound 50 between us on lunch and a drink....great stuff!!

Our first stop was Surat Thani which was just an over night stopover on our way to Kho Pha Ngan, an island popular with us tourists!

It was a ferry ride and then a jungle truck to get to our beach resort and we were greeted with flower garlands and fresh coconuts to drink.....hello Thailand!!! OUr accommodation was little huts, right by the beach for 4 nights!! Bliss

We had a most excellent 4 nights there. Bronagh and Kate were so excited to get to the beach and to Thailand as they'd heard about 'buckets' and couldn't wait to have them! Buckets are basically cocktials in a bucket, like a kids bucket and spade type bucket. Generally they're half a bottle of Thai whisky, a can of coke and a can of Red Bull and cost around 200 bht (about 2 pounds 50) and you only need one to get hammered, although you can pay more and get a variation.

Our days were spent lazing around on the beach, eating, snorkelling, shopping, eating, swimming, eating, playing cards and shopping....it was tough.

Our evenings were spent watching Thai boxing, eating, drinking buckets, shopping, getting piercings (I got my tragus pierced), drinking buckets on the beach, watching football and playing cards....it was tough.

I have to say that most of the eating was done by Kit and Shannon who eat loads. Kit has about 10 meals a day while Shannon sticks to 3 mostly but will have about 5 dishes where the rest of us have one or two!! It's just not fair either cos there's not an ounce of fat on either of them...they do excercise a lot though, and meditate. I wonder if that's where we're going wrong....perhaps we should start meditating ??

On our last night we all got very drunk on buckets (except Shannon who doesnt' drink) and had a fun night of drinking and dancing and the like.Bronagh got extremely drunk and was in a bit of a state, I've been 19 and in that state though so I looked after her!!

All too soon it was time to leave our island life and head for the bright lights of Bangkok....booo. We had a great time on Kho Pha Ngan....it was quite developed and touristy but it had it's quiet spots too. It was cheap, the food was great, the buckets, er...full, the group we were with were fun....need I say more ???

A week in Malaysia....

2006-07-11T09:14:00.000Z

So, we join our group and travel from Singapore to Malaysia, first stop Malaka. This was a nice little city with plenty of charm and character. Rich and I were right impressed with our hotel, yes that's hotel, we're in the land of the cheap now so no more smeggy hostels. We had nice hotel with TV, Fridge, air con, en-suite, was luxury!! Spent 2 nights in Malaka, generally walking around the city, taking in the sites, chinatown, little India and the many temples. We all got chatting to this man selling little paintings by a church, he was very funny and ended up giving us all one of his pictures for free....cheers Francis!! Malaysia is much cheaper than Singapore so going out for dinner was great, although as I'm a funny f@@ker when it comes to anything with a face I'm not going to be eating meat and there is a lack of veggie food, but I'm getting by, Rich'll eat anything, and has been! One of the irish girls on our tour, Bronagh is a funny f@@ker like me, but with everything not just meat so I don't feel so bad about it! Rich and I had the best meal from a little hawker stall in Malaka, it was a plate of noodles (mine with no meat) and they were the best noodles ever, and they cost 6 ringit for 2 (1 pound) Brilliant!!

After Malaka we took a bus To Kuala Lumpur and had a couple of nights there. I have to say I wasn't very impressed. It was a big city and it was dirty and smelly and didn't have half the charm of Malaka. We had a good look around there too. We visited a place called Batu Caves which was really interesting, the caves are world famous for hosting hindu festivals and there are shrines all over the place and an enormous statue. There are 272 steps to climb up to get to the caves and there are little macque monkeys all over the place.....we like monkeys :-)

Our guide Kit was constantly getting us all to try local food and the like and we all did most of the time. One night he took us into chinatown and to a little tea place where we had jelly tea, with honey, was very odd...but nice.

Rich and I wanted to have dinner at the revolving restaurant at the top of KL tower, but when we got there it was fully booked....bugger should've phoned ahead. So instead we went of for dinner in a nice part of town. After we'd been in the restuarant (which was also a bar) a while though, Rich noticed that it was full of prostitutes!! Nice!. We had a look at the petronas towers but didn't bother going up as we'd been up KL tower and already had a good luck at KL from above.

So, KL.....tick, next stop was the Cameron Highlands. We arrived there early evening and the first thing we noticed was that it wasn't hot....hooray!! As we were up in the mountains it was significantly cooler which was a welcome relief.

Had 2 nights here as well, again, in a hotel. We went on a full day tour of the area which consisted of a bit of a jungle trek, a visit to a tea plantation and sampling of said tea which was very nice, a butterfly farm (which pleased Kate as she'd been going on about butterfly farms since Malaka!!), a buddhist temple, a swim in a waterfall and a visit to a village of indiginous malaysians.......Now, it was a great day up until this point. The indiginous people had been living in the jungle in a traditional way up until 10 years ago when the government turfed them out and gave them a village on the edge of the jungle, all well and good you may think but seemed a little wrong to us. Well, what was more wrong was that the local people did 'tours' to these villages, they handed us sweets to give to the children when we arrived and when we got out of the bus we were swarmed by kids all with their hands out for sweets, it was like being in the zoo and was just so wrong. It would appear that the local tour guides have agreements with the village people so they can bring tourists in but, we felt like we'd invaded their home just to gawp at them like animals, rather than being invited in to see how they live. Sorry, a bit of a rant there, I'll stop waffling now!

After the fresh air and peacefulness of the cameron highlands it was back to hectic cities, Penang to be exact....So, a bus, a ferry and a taxi ride we finally arrive in Penang and have lunch at a 'british' pub....oh how Bronagh was happy when she saw the menu!! Normally everytime she looked at a menu she had a look of horror!! After that Rich and I went with Kit on a cable car ride up Penang hill. That was nice although it took bloody ages!! Rich was in a bit of a panic as the England game was starting at 11pm and we didn't get back to our hotel till 10 pm!!!

We watched the England game and Rich was not happy, I think that was a bit of an understatement....he was almost suicidal....I tried to reassure him and tell him it was just a game and it was the taking part that counted but that didn't seem to help.....although beer did!

We had a walk round the botanical gardens and saw more monkey....yay, we like monkeys :-) We also learnt a new word....doowar...not sure if it's chinese or malaysian but it means raise your arms and lower them again!!! So everytime someone said it we all did it.....you had to be there really !

On our last night in Malaysia we made the most of it....by going to the cinema! We saw Superman returns and what a great film it was. Cinema Malaysian style was odd though....people were constantly talking, phones ringing, phone conversations being had, burping loudly and all manner of noises, you just wouldn't get that at Warner cinemas

So that was our week in Malaysia. We did really enjoy it and wish we'd had more time, and seen some beaches and the like, but hey-ho we only had 8 or 9 days, and we did get a feel for the place.

Hello Singapore

2006-07-02T04:14:00.000Z

After a 7 hour flight from chilly Sydney we arrived in hot hot heat and humidity in Singapore. We were only there for 3 nights before we met up with our tour group to take us through Malaysia and into Bangkok so we wanted to make the most of our time.

So during our time we had a good look around the city, walking around the colonial district and riding on the MRT (like the tube). We went on a bumboat ride down the river and learnt all about the different areas of the city. A walk around the botanical gardens (in the rain) and the orchid gardens. We had some great local food in the many restaurants and bars. On one afternoon we got all dressed up (well, put on our cleanest smartest clothes!) and went to Raffles and drank Singapore Slings! That was cool. Raffles is an absolutely Beautiful hotel and even us humble backpackers got 5 star treatment while enjoying our cocktails!

We had a bit of a ride around the city on a trishaw, a little cart with a bike on the side. Poor guy must've been knackered, he was only a little old man and he had to cart our fat asses all over the place....we gave him a tip though as he looked ready to kark it by the end!!!

So, a whistle stop tour of Singapore and we really liked it. It's true that it is really clean, there are hefty fines for littering, spitting and the like and they are enforced. The people are friendly, the streets are clean, the food is good, it's not that cheap, but cheaper than Oz and it's just a really interesting city with all it's different areas, great nightlife and to top it off, the sun always shines!!

After all that hecticness we met up with our tour group who would be our 'family' for the next 16 nights. Our guide is a guy from Thailand called Kit. There are only 3 others on the tour so it's nice and intimate! Shannon, a guy from San Francisco, and a couple of young girls from Northern Ireland, Kate and Bronagh. So we had a bit of a chat with them all and were given a bit of a briefing about the itinerary and stuff. Next stop Malyasia!

Last stop - Sydney

2006-07-02T03:46:00.000Z

Well, the first thing we noticed when we arrived in Sydney was the cold, people had told us it'd be cold, but we thought they meant like, Australia cold...but no....England cold!! We went and checked into our hostel which was a bit of a dive it has to be said, and our room was really cold and damp, but it was cheap and we got extra discount, so we made it our home for the week!

Now, the world cup had just started and all the bars were showing it, which is all well and good, the bad thing was that coverage started at 11pm, so watching football all night meant sleeping all day, and that's what we did on quite a few nights. I didn't watch the football, Rich did, but I couldn't get any sleep without him as our room was so cold, so we did have a few wasted days due to the footie!

That said though, we did have a bloody good look around Sydney, we did a lot of walking around different parts of the city and there are many different parts. If you didn't have much money in Sydney, I reckon you could still have regular nights out, there are so many bars offering cheap drinks and meals, free poker, free pool competitions, and Karaoke all with beer tokens for prizes! We made the most of all these things of course! Rich won $30 of beer tokens when he came second in the poker, a crate of beer when he came second in the pool comp and he even won a free drink on the karaoke!! Yes, I did say Karaoke! Most of you will probably know that Rich doesn't do Karaoke, for one, he can't sing and 2 he thinks it's cheesy and chavvy and not for him.....however, when we were out with our new friend Mark, who loves it, he took us to a karaoke bar and put Rich's name down, and fair play to him, he got up and did quite well, and then he got up again, by this point there was only me Rich and Mark in the bar and we couldn't get Rich off the stage, he loved it!!! Unfortunately I had no camera that night so no photo's, sorry.

One thing I've always wanted to do is climb Sydney Harbour Bridge, it's an impressive looking bridge and looked like it'd be hard work....so off we went to the bridge climb place and paid our $240 for a sunset climb. Took about an hour to get us kitted up and have all the safety talks and the likes and eventually we set out to do it. I expected it to be tough, I expected to be knackered and I have to say I was disappointed, maybe it was because we stopped every 5 minutes because we'd caught up with the group in front, but it didn't feel like a challenge at all! When we reached the top there were excellent views all across the city and of course, the Opera House. You couldn't take any thing up there with you so we had to buy the photo's that they took, that's why there's only one here. It was disappointing but I'm glad I did it and did really enjoy it. It was great seeing the opera house from that vantage point as it is a really impressive building.

The other trip we did there was to the Blue Mountains (so called as all the oil from the eucalyptus trees gives off a blue haze). But not like a busload of people going to the same tourist spots, we went with an aboriginal guide who took us on a walkabout. We followed the same track that the indiginous people used, when the boys had to go walkabout as part of their initiation into manhood. We were told all sorts of stories along the way as the boys would have been as well as him teaching us about all the flora and fauna in that area. We stopped at various caves and meeting points and camp sites and told various stories about these points and what would happen there. There were carvings and rock paintings in some of the caves and meeting points and we were told the stories that they represented. It was really really interesting as well as a good walk and we didn't see anybody else all day.

So that was pretty much it for Sydney, we had a good look round, did some shopping, some eating and drinking and watching footie and a couple of tours. We sorted out our visa for vietnam and organised a load of crazy currency for the next couple of months.

But, all too soon it was time to leave Oz :-( We've really enjoyed it here and will definately come back. But on to new adventures, different cultures and probably some crazy food....next stop Singapore!

Ayr

2006-06-18T06:23:00.000Z

Was great to see Brett and Kerrie again, they had a great honeymoon and returned with good news. We spent the weekend at Raline and Brians place. They have a beatiful house, it's really big and on loads of land, a very quiet and peaceful spot. They were great hosts and Brian took us out fishing on the creek, he'd already put some crab pots out and caught quite a few! Brian told us he'd seen a 9 foot croc out there a few days before, so it was a bit scary as we were only in a little tinny! When Rich Brett and Brian went out on the creek the following day, Brett was standing in the water by the jetty holding the boat, when a lady nearby told him that the croc was seen on the jetty earlier! They all came back with 4 limbs though so they didn't have any close encounters! Brian also drove us around and told us all about the cane farm. Unfortunately though there was to be no cane burning that weekend, something to do with farming politics. He drove us to the beach and then drove along the beach with us all stood in the back of his Ute, that was fun. Brett took us round the cane fields on a quad bike and we were followed by the craziest dog ever, he was running around in circles in front of the bike and barking at the front wheels, he'd already been run over by it once, but he carried on playing 'chicken' with us!!

On our last night there, some of Raline and Brians friends came over for a BBQ which was nice, was sad that it was our last night in Queensland as it's been our favourite state. But, new adventures await us.

So, we said goodbye to our friends, and promised to return, which we definately will, and boarded our flight to Sydney....

....so peeps, all up to date as Sydney is where we is at! Don't know when the next update will be as we're leaving in a couple of days for Asia and that's going to be hectic, so have patience my friends.....

Are tiger sharks really that hard?

2006-06-18T06:10:00.000Z

After all the fun of the rainforest, we got an early bus back to Townsville where we'd got a 3 night diving trip booked for the outer part of the Great Barrier Reef.

We had an afternoon in Townsville shopping (I had to buy a new hoodie as I'd lost my pink one somewhere :-( ) and going to the cinema.

The next day I went on a refresher course just to practice my diving skills before we set out on the boat, that all went well and I was feeling pretty confident. We boarded the boat about 8pm but it didn't set off till about 11, by this time everyone was in bed, but nobody slept!!! It was very windy and choppy and the boat ride was awful. It took 8 hours to get to our first dive spot and it was a long 8 hours, we were being chucked all over the place, and if that wasn't bad enough our room was right under the engine and so it was really noisy! Quite a few people were sick too so it wasn't a pleasant night!!

When we arrived at our dive site, everyone was very bleary eyed and not very enthusiastic, but we all went and dived anyway, it was still pretty choppy and cold out there, but the water was nice and warm. I only did 1 dive that day, I tried to do 2 but on the second dive I couldn't equalize so I gave up for the day! Rich did 3 dives I think. It was all very pretty down there.

Day 2 was at a different spot but the skipper didn't drive through the night this time, he just left really early! Rich did 3 dives including a night dive which he really enjoyed. I was still having loads of trouble with my ears and it was starting to get really stressful and I wasn't enjoying it. So I gave up!! I was enjoying being on the boat and it was a good group of people on there.

Day 3 was supposed to be diving at a wreck called the Yongala but it was too rough for the boat to get to, Rich was disappointed but it couldn't be helped. He did a reef dive in the morning. Then there was an 8 hour journey back to Townsville, which was really rough still, but nobody was sick this time and we weren't trying to sleep so it was OK. Had a few beers back in Townsville with fellow divers, then we made our way to the airport to meet up with Brett and Kerrie and go to Ayr and stay with Raline and Brian.

The Daintree / Cape Tribulation

2006-06-18T05:59:00.000Z

We had a 2 day tour booked from Cairns up through the Daintree rainforest up to Cape Tribulation and were picked up early doors. First stop was a zoo type place which was all very nice but we'd seen it all before! After that we had lunch on the beach then headed to Mosman Gorge for a walk through the rainforest and a swim in a very cold river...brrrr!! There was a boat trip along a croc infested river, where we saw lots of saltwater crocs (the big ones!!) in the wild, which was cool albeit a bit scary! Unfortunately our camera battery died at this point and so we didn't manage to get any pics of the rest of our tour :-( We also saw a lot of snakes along the river bed and a teeny tiny baby croc!

We were dropped at our hostel in the rainforest for the evening, we had a look at the beach which was very nice and spent our evening playing scrabble!

The second day we went for a nice walk through the rainforest and in the afternoon we went 'jungle surfing', this was great fun, flying fox type things in the rainforest. There were about 5 slides in all and the last one was done upside down, was pretty neat, Rich thought it was tame, but he would! I thought it was great!! Again though, no pics, sorry! Later on we had a 3 hour journey back to Cairns, back to hostel for one night. Didn't get to see Cairns which is a shame as it looked like a good place with lots to see and do. Nevermind, can't see it all!!

Chard gets a haircut.....

2006-06-18T05:50:00.000Z

.....only joking! It's Magnetic Island really, but I bet you all looked at this one first!

As we'd missed the 6.20am bus we had to get a later one and after a short ferry ride from Townsville we finally arrived on Magnetic Island about 6pm. Didn't do much that evening as we were feeling a little curly.

The next day though we hired a little open top jeep thingy and went and picked up Claire and had a little drive round the Island. It was only a little island so it didn't take long. We spent the day lazing on the beach, walking and hooning around in our jeep! We did a walk up to the highest point on the island and were rewarded with fantastic views as well as seeing a couple of Koalas in the wild :-) and a snake, but I don't know what sort.

That was pretty much it as we only had 2 nights there, we left early the next day for our bus to Cairns which took up the best part of the day. When we arrived in Cairns we said bye to Claire and arranged to meet up with here again in Sydney, then found ourselves a bed for the night.

Airlie Beach / Whitsunday Islands

2006-06-18T05:23:00.001Z

We arrived in Airlie beach all nice and refreshed after a good nights sleep on the bus.........NOT! We didn't get any sleep and were feeling as rough as....we couldn't check into our room at hostel till 10 am either so had to hang about for a few hours. We went into town and booked ourselves a 2 day sailing trip around the whitsundays for the following day.

Later that day, a guy called Hud (who we'd met in Torquay, a couple of months ago) arrived at he hostel, we had arranged to meet him there for a night out in Airlie Beach. Rich went out early doors but I had to have some sleep. We had a few beers in the hostel and got talking to 3 girls from Sunderland who were a scream! Did the quiz with them and won a bottle of fizzy goon, then ventured out, met up with Claire and some of the others too. It wasn't the wild night we were expecting but it was a great night!

Needless to say the next day we were feeling a bit secondhand, but we said adios to Hud and boarded our boat......which was a racing yacht and had won numerous races. There were 21 people on board and 4 crew and it was pretty cramped.

Rich and I didn't really want a party boat, but we got one! There were some lads from Croyden who were on a mission to drink as much as possible and be as loud and silly as they could! Hey-ho, we joined in with a bit of drinking but not the drinking games, we wanted to enjoy the sailing!! The sailing part was really good fun, very scary at first as when it sails in a decent wind the boat is right up on its side and if feels like the boat is going to keel over, but when I realised it was supposed to be at that angle and the crew knew what they were doing, I relaxed and enjoyed it!!! The weather was pretty crappy over our couple of days but we still had a good time, we visited whitsunday island which was beautiful and we did some snorkelling at a couple of places.

After a pleasant sail back to Airlie Beach we went back to the hostel, we spent the evening in the hostel bar with the 3 sunderland girls, we did the quiz and won fizzy goon, then another quiz, and more fizzy goon, and the quizzes and goon kept coming! Had a great night but didn't end up going to bed till 2.30am, our bus was at 6.20am........we missed it!!!

Note: 'Goon' an aussie word for cheap wine that usually comes in a box. A derivative of the aboriginal pronunciation of the word flagon, flagoon, and the aussies shortened that to goon. Goon, our new favourite word!

Rockhampton / Great Kepple Island

2006-06-18T04:51:00.000Z

After a gruelling 12 hour bus journey we arrived in Rocky and settled into our hostel. We were only there for a couple of nights, which was good as there's not much going on in Rocky, we visited the art gallery and that was pretty much all there was to do!!

Then along came Capricorn Dave, we met up with him at the hostel bar the night before our tour (sorry adventure, he doesn't do tours, he does adventures!!!) with him and had a few beers. Next day he picked us up along with a few others and set off into the bush! We had a hectic day which involved dancing barefoot on ants nests (not pleasant as they are viscious!!), going head to head with big bulls, searching for spiders and snakes found some golden orb weaver spiders, which I braved myself to hold and a massive Huntsman, which nobody but Dave wanted to hold!! and we also came accross a Taipan snake which is Australias most deadly, didn't manage to get a picture though as he scarpered! We licked ant's bottoms, yes I did say we licked ant's bottoms, it's a bizarre thing, but you get an extreme hit of citrus, sort of limey and they're full of vitamin C (there is a photo of Rich doing this but you can't see the ant!!). We covered our selves in lemon tea tree mud and had a swim in a billabong. In the evening we made a big fire and camped out under the stars, no tents, just matresses around the fire and sleeping bags, that was the best bit!

On the second day it was just me and Rich with Dave, we went to an area of wetlands to see what wildlife we could spot, we found some Brogers (big birds) and a little tree snake, I was brave enough to hold that, don't have a problem with snakes, and it was really cute. Dave kept trying to get it to go into his mouth (he's not right in the head!) but I don't think it liked his fag breath!! We had lunch at a little restaurant in the rainforest then went canoeing down the river through the rainforest, which was really nice, even though it was raining and none of the wildlife came out to play! That eveing we couldn't sleep under the stars :-( as the rain had soaked the matresses and firewood, so we had to go to a campground and sleep in a tent :-(

Next day we took a bus and a ferry to Great Kepple Island, it was still raining and so we spent the afternoon just chilling out, we met a girl on the bus called Claire, from York, and spent our afternoon with her and a few others, we were all pretty much going in the same direction over the next couple of weeks so guessed we might keep bumping into them!

The next couple of days there we had great weather, and spent our time walking to various beaches (some great beaches you can have all to yourself!) and snorkelling. On one walk we walked over to the other side of the island, to the lighthouse with our snorkelling gear as we were told there's great snorkelling to be had, Yuko (a japanese girl) came with us too. It took about 2 1/2 hours to get there and was pretty tough going in parts, but when we got there, we could see the reef all around and it looked great but it was low tide and there was nowhere for us to get in without cutting ourselves to shreds on coral! Bugger, it was a really hot day and it was a gruelling walk back, felt really sorry for Yuko as she really wanted to snorkell and she wasn't much of a walker!

On our last day we went out on a motorised canoe, which had outriggers that you could hold onto and snorkell as the canoe motored on, that was cool and we saw an enormous turtle! After that it was a ferry back to Rockhampton where we were booked onto the overnight bus to Airlie Beach, the bus was leaving at 11.50pm so had to hang around in Rocky till then. We went to the hostel where we'd stayed previously and they were happy for us to hang about there. Claire was with us too as she was getting the same bus. Rocky was good for one thing, steak! We had a great steak at the hostel and Rich won a bottle of Bundaberg Rum so we had a pretty good evening waiting for the bus!

Er.....Brisbane part c - the laziness!

2006-06-18T04:31:00.003Z

Hallo avrybody peeps!

Right then I've put aside the afternoon for blogging updates, and then I saw how far behind I was so might not get it all done, but I'll give it a good go.

Just so you all know though, we're currently in Sydney where it is bloody cold, no, really bloody cold! We're leaving on Wednesday though :-( be sad to leave Oz cos we've really enjoyed it here. But we'll be moving onto the next leg of our adventure.....South East Asia, starting in Singapore....

But anyway, back to Brisbane part c.......in our last 2 weeks in Brisbane we did a lot of loafing around watching DVD's! Sad I know but that's what we did! We had a lot of BBQ's too, mainly with Brad and Lisa (friends of Brett and Kerries) and we went out with them a couple of nights and got quite drunk and on one of these occaisions Rich nearly bought a house for a million dollars (and for some reason thought he could afford it)!!

We spent a lot of time planning our trip through asia too as we haven't really got much time in each country so want to make sure we make the most of it so that's gonna be a really hectic couple of months.

And we made a couple of journeys down to the gold coast to go and play at the theme parks. We went to Movieworld, which was OK, very tacky and only had one decent ride (the superman which goes from 0-100km in 2 seconds!). The other was Dreamworld which was better, had more good rides and wasn't so cheesy. The best bit though was that at both places there were barely any people there so we didn't have to queue for any rides......we liked that :-)

And then all of a sudden it was time to leave :-( we had a bus to catch at 7.30 am to Rockhampton.......

Just a quickie

2006-06-06T02:10:00.000Z

Dear Telly et al,

Sorry there has been no updates recently but we've been flat out cruising up the Queensland coast for the last few weeks and have been no stop (I know, I know, it's a hard life). But rest assured, we'll be in Sydney in a weeks time and the updates will come thick and fast, expect such treats as:

Chard gets a hair cut
A night off the booze
Who keeps stealing my pants
Is that a pillow up your top or are you just a big fat lazy git?
and
Are Tiger Sharks really that hard?

Love to all,

Rich and Kaz

Where are you?

2006-06-05T11:06:00.000Z

Hey Chardington (and Kaz of course) what's going on? No updates for ages! Are you caught up in red tape trying to get retrospective planning permission from the Australian authorites for your hair by any chance?

x

Fraser Island

2006-05-11T10:01:00.000Z

We'd hired a 4 wheel drive truck for Fraser Island, and were going camping for 5 nights. The truck was an 11 seater, and we filled it to the brim with our stuff, needed a lot of stuff for the 6 of us for 5 nights as there are a limited number of shops on Fraser and those there are very expensive, so we had to take 6 days worth of food and beer, as well as tents and fishing rods and cooking equipment etc etc. We were pretty cramped in the back with all the stuff, but it was fun!!

We drove up north and took a short ferry ride over to Fraser Island which is the largest sand island in the world, and found a suitable spot to set up our camp. As the Italian boys had not been camping before Brett had tried to make it as comfortable as possible by bringing a camping shower and a camping toilet!!! He did a great job of making ours an en-suite site, we had the shower hanging from a tree in a quiet spot with a lamp and some tarpaulin for privacy, and for the bathroom he'd dug a big hole and placed over it a camping seat with a hole in it, also with a bit of tarp for privacy, Brilliant!!!!

We had a brilliant time there, days were spent fishing, driving along in the sand dunes (a very hairy and bumpy ride!!) swimming in beautiful lakes, floating along Ely creek, checking out the interesting sites such as the red canyon and the mohino wreck. We walked in the bush and chilled out on the beach and also did some 'sand dune surfing' which resulted in one or two sand related injuries as well as us flying down sand dunes on a bit of plywood straight into the lake, great fun!!! We had great food (plenty of fish thanks to Rich and Michelle) Brett made sure our days were full and made us get up early every day to make the most of our time, he's a real slave driver!! But without all his planning and energy we wouldn't have done half as much, we had such a great time there. The boys seemed to really enjoy their first camping experience, Michelle loved the fishing and as they were only in Oz for a couple of weeks were desperate to go home with a tan, Michelle took every opportunity to strip to his little shorts, so in nearly every picture of him he is half naked!!! They cooked us a yummy pasta dish and got involved with everything, and they learnt more English and we leart some italian, and we all managed to communicate with signs and facial expressions and the like, it was fun!!!

After Fraser Island we visited Australia Zoo, home of Steve Irwin! That was OK as far as zoos go. The boys headed off to Noosa for a few days of partying on thier own and we went back to sunny Brisbane as Brett and Kerrie were going to New Zealand for their honeymoon!

So, we returned home and 2 days later we were saying TTFN to Brett and Kerrie at the airport, to finally get some rest and relaxation on their honeymoon.

Now, Brett and Kerrie are away for 4 weeks and we are house sitting for 2 of those weeks. Then our plan is to make our way up north and meet up with Brett and Kerrie again in Townsville on the weekend of 12 June, where we'll go over to Bretts sisters (Rayline, husband Brian and baby daughter Phoebe) for the weekend. Rayline and Brian live on a farm and that weekend they'll be burning the sugar canes, which apparantly is a great thing to witness, so that's what we'll be doing!

So, after all the early mornings and hecticness of the past few weeks, Rich and I lazed about for a couple of days and planned out our next few weeks
.

Brisbane, Part deux - the Wedding!

2006-05-11T09:32:00.000Z

The next couple of weeks in Brisbane flew by what with Brett and Kerries wedding coming up and all the last minute preparations they were doing. Brett's brother Ross was building a shelter for the outdoor BBQ area and so Rich and Brett spent a few days here and there helping with that, Kerrie and I painted it and so we did our bit! Whilst Brett and Kerrie were out at work we did a lot of dossing about (getting really good at that!). I did a bit of wedding outfit shopping and we had a very nice evening at the drive in movies, liked that a lot!!

Brett broke up from work at Easter (about a week before the wedding) and he pretty much spent that week entertaining us! He took us to a place called Canungra where we camped and saw some of the local sites, a tree top walk and a place called Natural Arch, where we went for a swim in a very cold little river, brrrr!! He also took us out sailing on his little boat. We sailed out to South Stradbroke Island and camped in a nice little beachy part, and did some more sailing out and about there, all very pleasant until Brett made the mistake of leaving us in charge! We'd both had a go at the sailing bit under his supervision and all was well, until he went for a lie down, when, 3 seconds later, while Rich was doing something to one of the sails, I got totally confused with which way to steer and which way the wind was blowing and it all went wrong!! The boom bar swung round, narrowly missing Rich who just happened to duck in time, but got caught by the ropes, these flung him to the side and he was halfway overboard kissing the water, the boat was almost over as all the weight was on one side!!! Man it was hairy and I thought we were going over, but Brett managed to jump in and save the day in the nick of time, well done Brett!!!!

We both had nice new shiny haircuts ready for the wedding and I treated myself (and my very battered feet) to a pedicure. A couple of days before the wedding Kerries cousin Rachael arrived from Melbourne, she was also staying at Brett and Kerries, so we had a couple of days getting to know her, which was much fun!!

And so the big day arrived for Brett and Kerrie and all appeared to go without a hitch, Rich looked very smart in his suit and nicely straightened ponytail (although when his hair was down and straight he looked like Jennifer Anniston with a beard, very funny, although he didn't think so!!) The wedding venue was a vineyard up in the hills about an hours drive from the city. It was a beautiful spot. When Kerrie arrived she looked stunning and the service they had was really nice. As is usual at these things there were many speeches, Bretts dad's being very amusing! We had a lot of fun at the wedding with my special glasses, we took them to make Brett and Kerrie smile for photos after they'd had enough of smiling, cos one look at Rich with them on never fails to make people chuckle!!! We ended up getting pictures of a lot of guests (and a waitress!) wearing them! So, a great day and night was had. Brett and Kerrie left early and by the time we left we had a call from Ross (Bretts brother) seeing if we fancied a pint in town with the newlyweds, which of course we did! So there were Brett and Kerrie, freshly married, Kerrie in here wedding make up and hair, wearing jeans and drinking a pint in an Irish Bar......nice....reminded me of Angie!! They were staying at the Hilton, but got supper at McDonalds!! Go figure!

The next couple of days were spent having BBQ's and social gatherings at Bretts, and then Kerries parents, never been kissed by so many strangers!!!! Brett and Kerrie had anouther couple of international guests at the wedding. Gaetano and Michelle, from Sicily. They met them in Sicily and have been friends ever since. They were staying at Kerries parents (Kerries dad is Scicilian) Gaetano speaks fairly broken english and Michelle doesn't speak any, so was a bit strained the first time we met, but we managed to get by, with a couple of phrase books and an english / italian dictionary and Kerries family to interpret!!

So, after a fairly hectic few days, it was time to go camping on Fraser Island with Brett and Kerrie and Geatano and Michelle........

Hair We Go

2006-04-27T11:03:00.000Z

Rich, just had to write to say how much we're enjoying watching your hair grow. The Grand Prix pics in particular were priceless.

If you need us to send cash for a visit to the barber, just let us know.

Looks like you're both having a blast, keep it up and say hi to Brett if you're still in Brisbane.

Cheers,
Luke, Rocket, Bjorn, Chalfy and Darren (of the Barton variety)

Brisbane, Part 1

2006-04-14T07:05:00.000Z

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...

2006-04-14T06:41:00.000Z

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

2006-04-04T03:00:00.000Z

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!

Alfie's New Threads...only in America!?!

2006-03-31T22:05:00.000Z

St.Paddy's Day, NYC

2006-03-31T13:58:00.000Z

Greetings from NYC

2006-03-31T12:01:00.000Z

r Grand Central Station
Central Park (from top of Rockefeller)
Brooklyn Bridge (from Brooklyn)
Times Square
Ground Zero

Empire State Building

Chrysler Building (from Empire State)

New York from Newark Airport at day & at night!!

Coober Pedy

2006-03-25T03:03:00.000Z

Was a long, dull old drive to Coober Pedy and the desert was getting more and more arid as we drove in. Coober Pedy in one of the hottest places in Oz and is very inhospitable land. It's hot and dry and with very little greenery. People settled here as there are opal fields galore. On the drive in we saw mound after mound of earth dug up for opal mining. We found an underground motel room to stay in run by a greek family. There are many nationalites in this little town as people came from all over the world to mine for opal. The majority of people live in underground dugouts, necessary to escape the heat. 2 weeks before we arrived it had been in the late 40's!! We spent 2 nights here and went on a bus tour of the area. We were told all about the mining and how hit and miss it is, it's created plenty of millionnaires but a lot of people only just manage to scrape a living. We had a go at 'noodling' which is sifting through the earth looking for bits of opal. Only managed to find a few bits of 'potch' (worthless opal) though. We visited this fellas place too. Crocodile Harry is a tourist attraction in himself!! Now 83, he lives in a huge dugout (that he dugout by hand!) which is decorated with all manner of parafanalia, bizarre bits of 'art', photos of his adventures as a young man and the like. He was a bit of a ladies man in his time and there are bits of underwear hanging from the ceiling signed by various visiting ladies, I didn't offer any of mine, I've only got 4 pairs of pants, can't spare any, plus they're all looking a bit raggy now!! Anyway, he's called crocodile harry as he used to hunt crocodiles before he came to Coober Pedy.

Many films have been made in Coober Pedy (Mad Max, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Pitch Black) and there are various set pieces scattered around the town including a crashed spaceship from Pitch Black! It's amazing that people live as it's so baron, but they make every effort to be just like every other town, they just have to do things a bit differently! They have a golf course but there's no grass on it! They had to colour the earth with oil to make the putting 'greens'!

It was an odd place but I liked it and the way people have adapted their lifestyles to suit the harsh conditions.

Alice Springs & Uluru

2006-03-25T02:30:00.000Z

Alice Springs was a much bigger town than I'd expected. We stayed for 3 nights, longer than we'd planned but our first day there was Paddy's day and of course we had to go out for a Guinness or 2! We ended up in this saloon style bar which was really cool, they had an enormous barrel full of monkey nuts and the floor was covered in monkey nut shells, we made the most of the free nuts of course and made a mighty fine pile of shells on the floor!

We did have a good look at Alice, not a bad little town. We visited the Alice Springs desert park where we learned all about the desert and how the aboriginal people survive in the desert and were told some very interesting aboriginal stories about how the land was formed (very different to what the scientists say!), these stories they pass down through generations and between tribes and they are very important. My favourite story was the one about Ayers Rock (Uluru is the Aboriginal name). I might not remember all the details completely but here goes:

The way the land was formed is all about celestial beings. There were 7 sisters (the Pliadies to us) who had 2 sons (can't remember name). Now, these sisters were constantly pursued by a magic man (can't remember his aboriginal name, but he is Orion) who was trying to seduce them. They were forever running away from him. One time when the 7 sisters were resting they sent the 2 boys off to play, and, as boys do, they built mud pies. The 7 sisters then spotted the magic man approaching and fled, taking the boys with them. The boys had made one mud pie (Uluru) but failed to complete the second one (Mount Conner). So there you go, Uluru is the mud pie made by a celestial boy!!

After Alice Springs we set off of Uluru (stopping off en-route to look at some meteorite craters) which is about 500 km away. It was sunday night and we wanted to watch the Grand Prix so decided to get a cabin with a tv instead of camping, even though we knew it would be expensive. When we arrived though I couldn't believe how expensive! There is a complex built especially for visitors to the Uluru national park and if you want to see it at sunrise / sunset then you have to stay over pretty close by. Jees, what a tourist trap. You've no choice really as the nearest 'cheap' roadhouse is around 80 kms away. So anyway, we pulled into the cheapest place there ($150 for a cabin!!!!!) and they were fully booked....bugger, so we went to the next cheapest, Rich was told $149 but when I went to pay, they said $165 so after a bit of discussion they said they'd honour the $149. Result (even though it was stupidly expensive. We've paid between $50 - $70 cabins previously and this didn't even have a bathroom or cooking facilites!!!) When we got to our room, the tv only picked up one channel, not the one we wanted for the GP.....so Rich went and had a chat with them and explained the only reason we got a cabin was so we could watch the GP that night, the manager upgraded us to a $300 ensuite hotel room with no extra charge......Result!!! So, even though we'd spent 3 times as much as we normally would on a cabin it felt like we were getting our money's worth with the very nice plush hotel room we had!

Anyway, we drove to the national park and parked up to watch the sunset over Uluru with a couple of stubbies! Now, I've always wanted to see it but Rich wasn't really that arsed "it's just a big rock in the middle of the desert innit!" But he changed his tune when he saw it. Was amazing, huge and quite awesome. Apparantly only 2/3 of it is underground. We sat and watched for an hour or so and took more pictures than Ruth does on a night out!!!! Was really very pretty but we didn't see much redness. After that we went back to our pad and had a few beers with Graham, an english biker type we met at the sunset viewing. After that we settled in to watch the Grand Prix.

Next day we (well, I, rich stayed up all night!!) got up early to catch Uluru at sunrise. There were thousands of people there (well, seemed like that many!) and again, we watched for an hour or so and took loads more photos. We checked out the cultural centre and were planning to walk around the base (10km) before it got too hot. But as Rich had had no sleep (and was still a bit pissed!) he was in no fit state and had go kip in the car. 3 hours later when he woke up, we did a shorter walk along the base as was too hot to do the whole lot. After that we had a quick look at the Olgas (another rock formation) then left Uluru destination Coober Pedy, stopping for the night at a campsite that was home to 4 billion flies!

Northern Territory

2006-03-17T04:03:00.000Z

After leaving Kununurra, we crossed over the border to the Northern Territory and lost an hour and a half!

We pretty much spent 3 days driving. We stopped at Katherine for the night and Tennant Creek for the night too. It's been a lot of driving (which Rich does, he won't let me as he's a crap passenger and will fall asleep. So while driving I read Magazines out and we do crosswords to keep us both from being bored!) Driving around Oz is an adventure in itself. Not least because of the distances, the (sometimes dull) scenery and the odd little towns, but because the amount and range of wild life. It's unreal!! We've seen the usaul kangaroos (alive and squished) and emu's, but also wild cows, dingoes, Goannas (a type of lizard), wallabys, a huge buffalo of some sort, massive eagles and the best one....a donkey!! All just hanging out on the road or by the side.

Between Tenant Creek and Alice Springs we made a few little stops. One was at 'devils marbles' which is a load of very large round rocks balanced on each other, formed by fast cooling volcanic explosions. Next was a place called Wycliffe Well, which we passed and then had to turn around to go back and look at! It's the alien spotting capital of Australia, they had a big alien theme going on at this roadhouse and inside the walls were covered with all manner of alien sightings and parafanalia, was highly amusing!

Later on as we'd stopped for petrol, we were just pulling out and Rich's window was open a bit. All of a sudden he jumped and leant right away from the window, I looked and there was the biggest spider sat on the edge of the window, half in, half out. Rich pulled over and set about trying to get rid of it. Man it was big. If I'd have been driving I would've jumped into the passenger seat and probably crashed. Maybe it's good that I don't drive! Anyway, I consulted my book of spiders and it was a type of Wolf Spider, can be dangerous if provoked but not deadly! Even so, it gave us both a fright, check out the picture he was enormous!!

So, after all that excitement we arrive at Alice Springs.

The Rest of Western Australia

2006-03-17T03:39:00.001Z

By the time we left Broome it was 10th March. We have to be back in Melbourne for the 29th as we have tickets for the Grand Prix so the next couple of weeks are going to be a bit hectic with a lot of driving! After Broome we stop at Derby for a night in a very seedy motel, next day we check out the large Boab tree there which was once used as a rest place for prisoners en-route to jail, it was indeed a very large tree! Our next destination was Halls Creek where we were hoping to get a tour to see the Wolf Creek Meteorite crater. (Incidentally, Wolf Creek is also the name of a recent Aussie film, apparantly banned in the UK, as it tells the true story of english backpackers who are brutally murdered by some crazed local. We've heard mixed stories, some say he's in jail, some say he's not been caught and is still on the loose, tampering with peoples cars at Fitzroy Crossing and then being on the road to 'help' the unsuspecing travellers when they break down. Now, we haven't seen the film yet as I didn't want to watch it until we'd got past that part of Oz, which we have now so nobody need worry that we'll be murdered!!!).

So, on the way to Halls Creek we stop at Fitzroy Crossing to grab a cheeky half at the oldest pub in the Kimberley Region. However, when we arrive at said pub, there are loads of Native Australians hanging around, all pissed up (it was only about 2pm) . We're used to seeing them in the small towns sat in the parks and under trees, some of them drinking. But here there were about 20 or 30 little groups of them, a bit scary considering we were the only white people there and they were or seemed to be quite drunk and there were a few arguments going off here and there. So, we walk through the groups to get to the pub, when one group call us over, we go over and have a chat and they are very friendly and one guy kept calling Rich 'Retch' as he couldn't say Rich, apparently. We make our excuses and reach the pub only to find it closed! Bugger. Bizarrely, all around the outside of the pub (where the little groups are congregated) are signs saying 'no drinking in this area'. Accross the road is a park with a sign saying 'drinking permitted in this area', but it was empty!

So a few hours of driving later we arrive at Halls Creek and to the visitors centre to see if we can visit the crater anytime soon, but no, it's shut and won't be open for another couple of days! Bugger again. We can't afford the time to hang around in Halls Creek, nor would we want to with potentially a crazed murderer on the loose and the fact that Halls Creek is a teeny tiney little town with nothing to do there. So we ploughed on through to Kununurra and arrived quite late in the evening. Total distance covered today: 930 kms. Pretty Impressive huh?!

We spent 3 nights in Kununurra which was a very nice little town. We took a tour on the lake which was nice and we saw plenty of crocs (Freshwater ones though, they're only small and won't attack you, not unless you did something stupid to annoy them) and loads of colonies of flying foxes, these were cool, all hanging upside down on the trees overhanging the river!! We also visited the national park there to see the 'mini Bungles' (rock formations). We visited a distillery (the only one in WA) called the 'Hoochery' where we tasted some liquers and rums and Rich had a go on their whisky which apparantly was like moonshine!!

After Kununurra we were making a bee-line for Alice Springs, only stopping along to way to sleep, and maybe a few photos here and there

Good to hear from you

2006-03-08T12:57:00.000Z

This is really weird I was just saying to Daz this weekend that I could not find the piece of paper with your e-mail address on, and then opened my e-mail to find you had sent us a mail. Cool!

It is good to hear from you and I have been catching up on your blog, It sounds like you are still having a fantastic time.

It was good to see you in Rotorua, and has been the story that always comes up when talking about our honeymoon. The feast you prepared that night was excellent, and it was really nice to be able to chill out and catch up. I hope that we will be able to arrange to meet up when/if you finally make it back to the UK.

After we left you, we spent the day looking around Rotorua, went across to to Waitomo for the Glow worms and the caves, then spent a day in Auckland (which was the low light of our trip). We finished of our honeymoon with 6 days in the Cook Islands which was a fantastic way to relax and unwind before heading home.

When I am at home I will try and send you the pictures we took of you at the "feast".

Take care for now.

Claire and Daz

Broome

2006-03-06T04:32:00.000Z

After leaving Exmouth we headed North again, destination Broome. On the way though the car started making some funny noises and when Rich tried to reverse, it wouldn't! Bugger, something was not right with the car. We stopped at Karratha to get it checked out and sure enough something was wrong, the gearbox was fooked! We had no reverse and no third gear. The mechanic said to get it fixed he'd have to remove the gearbox and sent it to Perth (as nowhere locally can fix automatic gearboxes!) to be repaired and then sent back and refitted. This would cost aroun $3000 and take over a week!!!! Bollox! He did say however that so long as the car is going forward it'll be fine to continue our journey as the damaged part won't damage anywhere else and if we could live without reverse and a lot of noise when the car tries to get into 3rd gear we should be OK. Well, we couldn't afford the cost or the time to get it repaired so decided to carry on regardless. Fingers crossed it'll all be alright and we'll get back to Melbourne and sell it back to the place we bought it from!! So, on with our journey, we stopped at Port Hedland for the night en-route to Broome and there was a massive lightening storm going off nearby! Lightening storms are also common around these parts as this time of year.

The following day we made our final leg of our trip to Broome, and man what a day that was. It was sooooooo hot. Only about 37 degrees but with 80% humidity it felt like 50 degrees and the air con in our car just couldn't cope. So we spent about 7 hours in the car sweating buckets quite literaly all the way. Wasn't a pleasant journey and to cap it off, Rich got pulled for speeding again! Bastards, those forward facing radars are a nightmare. Granted he was speeding (131 on a 110 road) but Jesus, there was no-one on this road, we saw about 4 other cars all day and it was a big long straight road, but Rich didn't fancy arguing with him about it as he had a gun! So $100 fine, nice.

Finally arrived in Broome around 4 ish and found a place to camp near Cable beach. That evening we went on a sunset camel ride along sunset beach, which was really good and the lady that ran it was very interesting and informative, check out the photo's too, they're great! Next we went to Australias oldest outdoor cinema and saw the Producers, so that was cool too, and then we went back to the beach with a bottle of wine to watch a spectacular lightening storm!

We had to get our car serviced whilst in Broome, and as usual our timing was all wrong. We arrived on a Saturday evening and it was Labour Day weekend which meant no where would be open till the following tuesday so we had to hang around in Broome for a bit longer than we'd thought. Hey-ho, it's a pretty nice place. However, when we did get it serviced we were told the gearbox was on it's way out and could just fook up at anytime. Considering we still had about 7000 km still to do and a lot of that in the outback, we decided we should get it fixed. So, $3000 and 4 days later it's all good. So in all we spent a week in Broome. We did all the touristy stuff we could that was cheap or free! One of those was checking out the dinosaur footprints which you can only see at very low tide, and for once our timing was right and we did get to see them, although it was a bit of a search, but they were pretty cool! We met a british couple (Alan and Elaine) at the campsite and spent an evening with them, drinking wine, chatting then going for a midnight dip in the pool there, nice. There was also an Aussie chap staying there who we chatted to most nights. He was a big lad and he had the tiniest tent, looked like the sort of thing kids have in their gardens! He was a fun bloke though and we had a laugh with him. We visited a crocodile farm too, they had some enormous 5m + salties, they look like dinosaurs and are very scary.

The rest of our time in Broome was pretty much spent just lounging around by the pool, was so hot you needed to be near water to keep going for a dip. We were close to the beach but there were stingers (jellyfish) about at this time of year so didn't really want to risk going for a dip in the sea!

So, car fixed and touristy things done, we leave Broome and head East.

The Ningaloo Reef

2006-03-06T04:21:00.000Z

Again we spent a whole day driving and arrived in Exmouth just before dark. We wanted to camp in the National Park so by the time we arrived there (at Ned's camp!) it was really dark, there were loads of kangaroos on or by the road and had to drive really slowly! The following day we headed into town to book some diving at the navy pier and maybe a snorkel with the whale sharks that visit this area. However, no-one was running diving trips to the navy pier for another 2 weeks and the whale sharks wouldn't be arriving until mid March, bloody typical. We went back to the national park and had a look around. We went snorkelling off a couple of the beaches there which was awesome, one place (turquoise bay) was fantastic, we saw so much and was as good as any reef dive I've done! So we did get to see some sea life there, if not the stuff we went there to see, hey-ho, nevermind. This place was another really beautiful part of Australia with loads to see. At night however, mainly because we were staying in the national park, we were absolutely bombarded with all sorts of insects! There were so many, and lots of them were really interesting and we took plenty of photos. I also found a red back spider in the toilets (a dangerous species!) but when I went back with my camera she was gone (I know it was a she as I bought myself a book on Spiders of Australia and have been studying them, it pays to be informed on these things!!)

The North West

2006-03-06T03:51:00.000Z

We had a long drive up from Albany and drove all the way up through Perth and up to Geraldton. We stopped along the way just to sleep (in the car!). Had a quick look round Geraldton, wasn't really up to much. Weather was starting to get really hot and humid. Next stop was the Hutt River Province Principality, which Tanya had told us about. It's a country in it's own right within Australia. This chap, Prince Leonard Casley was fed up with the governments stance on wheat quotas or something like that in the 70's and found some legal loophole through which he created his own country. He is a bona fide prince and his wife is a princess. The principality is bigger than Monaco and they have their own currency, postal system, army, Passport and various other things, and they don't pay tax. We rolled up there and were greeted by Prince Leonard and he showed us around and told us his story. And I have to say what an amazing man! Not only has he created his own country (a major achievement in itself) but he's an incredibly intelligent bloke. He left school at 14 and trained as an accountant (although he's essentially a farmer) He's done work for NASA (and put them right on some things by all accounts), written papers for the Vatican, has honorary doctorates from numerous universities around the world in physics, maths and other scientific stuff and he's got a recognition of achievement and services rendered which is 3rd only to the Queen and an american president (didn't say which!) He's travelled the world and met (and impressed) many important people. He's still working on stuff now, even though he's 82. Wow, what a guy, we were totally blown away by him. Check out his website at http://www.hutt-river-province.com/ Anyway, we chatted to the Prince for a while and then continued on our journey to the Peron Peninsula.

We arrived in Denham and decided to have ourselves a cabin for a couple of days as it was really cheap! We booked 2 nights in the area which was very beautiful and there was plenty to see there. However, we ended up having to stay an extra night as Cyclone Emma was at Exmouth (our next destination) and was causing numerous floods on the road. We didn't want to head out and then find the roads closed, nor did we want to be battered about by a cyclone! Cyclones are common this time of year here so I guess it won't be the only one we encounter! So, while on the peninsula we got up close to some dolphins at Monkey Mia, where the reserve there feed them in the morning, so that was nice. We also went to an ocean park that was home to various local wildlife, sharks, stonefish, sea snakes, a type of cod, loggerhead turtles. That was all very interesting. We explored the area and looked at the best bits but tried not to be outside for too long, 1) because it was very hot and 2) there were so many fooking flies it was unreal. The minute you go outside there are about 100 on you. You kind of have to just put up with it and you can to a point when they land on your back or arms, but when they're on your face it's horrid, and they seem to make a beeline for your face, I couldn't bear it! Was so glad we had a cabin as our tent would have been full of flies!

Anyhow, once we knew that the cyclone was heading inland (we were driving along the coast) we left that area heading for Exmouth and the Ningaloo Reef.

Kangaroos

2006-02-26T17:44:00.000Z

Hi Kaz & Chard
Our local pizza restaurant is called the Kangaroo! Took your Mum there but it was a bit busy that night. It was owned by an Australian years ago but kangaroo remains on the menu and very good it is too!
Nice photos. Looks like you are really having a good experience.
Marguerite

The South West

2006-02-25T05:30:00.000Z

After saying farewell to Tanya we headed south toward Margaret River (another wine region) where we had booked ourselves on a wine tour. We stopped off at Freemantle on the way there. Our wine tour was loads of fun! We visited 4 wineries and had a gourmet lunch at one which included Kangaroo (yummy but seems wrong!) and Witchety Grub paste which was actually quite nice and it was easy to eat as it looked like hummus! We also went to a chocolate factory, a cheese factory and a brewery. Our guide brian was very funny and informative and all in all we had a great day out and met loads of interesting people.

After Margaret River we went to look at a cave, then stopped off at Hamlin Bay where we saw some massive stingrays right on the shore. After that it was Pemberton where we visited some of the national parks, it's all forests with really tall trees. We climbed one of them, the Gloucester tree which is 60m tall, was a bit scary (there were steel pegs inserted into the trunk to make a kind of ladder) but well worth it. We also went on a little tree tops walk in the Valley of the Giants. Next we visited an Alpaca (sort of like a Llama) farm where we saw Koalas, Kangaroos, Emus, a Dingo, a Camel and a South American Bison as well as the usaul farm type animals. That was pretty cool, and I managed to get up close to one of the Koala's and stroke him, he was still half asleep, they sleep for 20 hours a day, that's nearly as much as Rich (tee hee!!) So, been a bit hectic over last few days, good job we had that long rest in Perth!!

Next stop was Albany where we've just been chilling on the beach this morning and that's where we are now. We're heading up North next, to the Ningaloo reef so got quite a lot of driving in front of us before we get there!

Perth

2006-02-25T05:19:00.000Z

So, we arrived in Perth and met up with Tanya who very kindly put us up in her apartment. That was really nice. After living in a tent for the last month it was a real luxury to have an apartment to stay in. It was right by the beach in a place called Scarborough. We stayed in Perth for almost a week and I have to say we did make the most of having an apartment with a DVD player!! We hired all the episodes of Lost that we hadn't seen and spent an awful lot of time in front of the TV....sad I know, but we enjoyed it!! We did do some other stuff in Petrth too, mainly involving food and wine! On one evening we went to an art gallery where Tanya's friends brother was having an exhibition, some pretty cool stuff there but nothing we could afford, and afterwards went out for a meal with Tanya's friends. We spent a bit of time at the beach, had a look around Perth city and went on a wine tour of the swan valley region, which was nice.

We got drunk a lot with Tanya and her friend Phil and had a really good time with them just hanging out and stuff. So, while we didn't actually do much in Perth, we really enjoyed it! Sorry, didn't take many photos!

The Nullabor

2006-02-16T09:13:00.000Z

Next part of our plan was to head to Perth where we were going to meet up with an Aussie called Tanya who we also met in Fiji. However, Perth is a fooking long way (about 3000km) and would mean crossing the Nullabor (means no trees in Latin). So obviously it was gonna be a long drive! The starting point if you like for the Nullabor was a place called Ceduna. It took us about 2 days to get there, through little tiny towns which seemed to have no people! Ceduna wasn't much busier, that was a small place with not much going on. So we camped there and headed for the Nullabor the folllowing day. After a couple of hours of driving we took a detour to a place called Cactus Beach which is a popular surf beach, but only for the hard core though as the surf gets very big and of course there's always the risk of a shark attack. To get there though we had to drive down a dirt track 21km long which was the worst unsealed road we've encountered, it was a right bone shaker and Rich nearly lost it a couple of times! There was a very pretty pink lake there though, although it doesn't look very pink on the photos but trust me, it was VERY pink! Something to do with the micro organisms that live in it! After that we set off for the South Australia / Western Australia border (our target for the day). We stopped off to marvel at the great Australian Bight which is where the sea meets the south coast and there is 2000km of 90m cliffs, no beaches or anything, just sheer drops, looks pretty awesome! We finally arrive at the border after a full days driving down straight flat roads that seem to never end. Contrary to the name though, Nullabor does have trees, if bush like trees, but it is very deserted. Didn't see a single live Kangaroo (they're only really active at dawn and dusk and didn't want to risk driving at those times in case we hit one. Apparently they are really stupid and are attracted by the lights of the vehicles, but will make a right old mess of your car if you hit one!) but loads of dead ones at the sides of the road! We'd driven about 500km that day and decided to treat ourselves to a cabin at the roadhouse at the border instead of putting our tent up!

Next day it was much of the same, driving driving driving on the long straight road. There's a part of it which is the longest peice of straight road in Oz (146km) and you could probably drive it with your hands behind your head, if only the road wasn't so rough and our car didn't pull to the right! Anyway, it was a long old drive with not much to look at, although we did spot a couple of emu's by the side of the road, but couldn't get a picture, Rich chased them into the bush with the camera but they were too quick for him! We did a million crosswords to pass the time, drank 250 litres of water and finally reached the end (Norseman) early evening (we'd gained 2.5 hours as we'd moved into a different time zone!) We'd driven over 800km that day! We were going to spend the night in Norseman but just before the end of the nullabor (about 80km) we saw a place in the bush where we could camp for free. We really (well I did!) wanted to do this as we may have been able to see Kangaroos around then at dusk and dawn and maybe some emus and other interesting wildlife. But no, did we 'eck as like. What we saw was 50000000 mosquitos and flies! I got absolutely bitten to fook! My bum is just a mess of red lumps, there must've been a gang of them in my sleeping bag! So our bush camping experience was a bit of a nightmare in the end. Even more so by the morning when I got dihorrea and had to 'go' in the bush about 7 times before we could even think about leaving! Thinking about it, that was probably when the mozzies got my bum!

When we could leave finally we headed for Perth via Esperance where we chilled out by the beach, did some washing and stuff and gave the car a bit of a rest!

The journey from Esperance to Perth was about 800km...piece of cake now! We drove (I say we, I mean Rich, he did the whole lot, wouldn't let me drive, think this has something to do with the speed!) all day, stopping off at Wave rock (oddly, it's a rock that looks like a wave!) and a dog cemetery! Again, we did crosswords and drank water and finally arrived in Perth around 6pm. Wahey, Perth! It's about 4000km from Melbourne to Perth, a bloody long way, but still only a smidgen of Australia. Driving in a straight line in one direction for 4-5 days really does give you a sense of how bloody big this country is.

Adelaide and around

2006-02-16T08:53:00.000Z

As usual when we're in a city we spent our time shopping, eating out and drinking! Not a bad thing really though, we had a couple of days of this in Adelaide then headed to a seaside town not far called Glenelg. This was a nice little place, they had a museum type place called the Rodney Fox Shark Experience, which, you guessed it was about sharks! Rodney Fox was a guy who was bitten quite badly by a great white in the 70's, he's extremely lucky to have survived it and ever since he has devoted his life to the research and conservation of sharks, was all very interesting. We went and chilled out on the beach after that and had planned to go for a swim but after everthing we'd just seen we were a little too scared as there were great whites in these waters, there'd been 71 fatal shark attacks there in 2005! Scary stuff!

After that we headed north of Adelaide to a wine region called Barossa Valley. It's home to Jacobs Creek and there are around 75 wineries in the region.

We found a nice campsite that did bike hire and set about cycling around a few vineyards. Now, after the first one we were pretty pissed as they had 18 wines to taste, and we went through them all! The next one we only tasted a few and met some nice ladies there who donated their leftover platter to us! By the third one it was all a blur, we met a canadian couple and an american couple and went with them to Chateau Tanunda vineyard to play croquet! Now, croquet always looked like a dull old ladies game, but it really is quite fun! We liked it so much we decided to have another day of tasting and start there first as we didn't have time to taste their wine. Surely enough, next day we set off to the Chateau Tanunda, tasted their wine played croquet....lovely. It all gets a bit messy after that...again, as we went round a few more. At one place they had this delicious chocolate port and the guy there invited us to the quiz at the local pub the following evening....guess we'll have to stay another day then....it's a hard life. Along the way we met a guy called Nikhal who was both and neither American and English....work that one out if you can! He was cool and we had dinner with him that night and arranged to meet him the following day for tasting in a different part of the region.

So, next day we met Nikhal, cycled round a different part which was hard work as it was a scorching day and there was a lot of uphil to be done. But it was all very nice, Nikhal left early to catch his train to Perth and Rich and I carried on and got bladdered! Later that evening we went to the pub for the quiz only to find out we were too late, guess we forgot the details! Nevermind, we chatted with the locals and ended up going back to this guy, Micks house where we listened to his 70's music collection and watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Finally we staggered back about 5am!

So, big thumbs up for Adelaide and the Barossa Valley in particular which is a really pretty region and the wine / food / locals are great!

The Great Ocean Road........

2006-02-03T03:39:00.000Z

Since the first time we tried to drive the Great Ocean Road, Rich drove and I looked out the window, it was only fair that I drove the second time. This was a bit scary for me as it was an automatic and I'd never driven one of those before, but after practising in a car park (as you do!) I found it to be easy peasy! So I drove Rich along the Great Ocean Road, then we stopped for the night in Princeton, not far from the 12 Apostles (big rock stacks in the sea). We'd heard that the best time to see these was sunset and sunrise. We thought sunset would be a bit shit as it'd been a really overcast day and not even seen the sun, but as we sat eating our noodles at the campsite, we could see it was going to be a corker, so we dashed (I was still eating my noodles en-route!) over to the viewing place to get some great sunset piccies. But by the time we found how to get to the veiwing platform it was all too late! Bugger. So we decided to get up really early and catch it as sunrise the next day....

...and we did, believe it or not, we were up at 5 and there waiting before 6am. However, the sunrise was no where near as dramatic as sunset so was a bit of an anti climax. Hey-ho, we were up early though and that was a bonus. We hit the road after breakfast bound for Adelaide (or as close as we could get before getting too tired). We stopped along the way to look at a beach and some more rock stacks and the like, but pretty much just drove.

AT 7.30pm, at least 800km's later we arrived in Adelaide! Rich drove all the way, didn't want me to drive, so he did really well, although as soon as we stopped he realised how knackered he was!! The car did really well too! So, fingers crossed it should be sweet to get us all the way round and back to Melbourne.

So folks, the blog is bang us to date now, as Adelaide is where we are now (Friday 3rd Feb), having arrived last night. We'll try and keep on top of it from now on, promise ;-)

The Car........

2006-02-03T03:12:00.000Z

On Monday (23rd) we went car shopping. We didn't really know whether to rent or buy. We knew we didn't want a van again (got the t-shirt and all that). But we only really wanted to drive the great ocean road to Adelaide then catch trains and buses for the rest of Oz. But checked out a few places and after much discussion and plan changing and idea swapping we decided to buy a car and drive all the way to Perth (about 3000km) and maybe continue up to Darwin and back to Melbourne depending on how we do for time. Travellers Auto Barn do a thing where they sell you a car (at extortionate prices) and guarantee to buy it back from you at a given percentage which depends on how long you've had it. They make sure the car is roadworthy, has good tyres, air-con works, and do all repairs necessary before you take it away. They have various offices around Oz and also provide roadside assistance. As it happened a couple there were just bringing theirs back for the buyback and we decided to have theirs as we'd spoken to them about the car and it'd been good to them but the air-con didn't work. James at the Autobarn said he'd sort out the air-con and anything else that crops up during it's inspection and we could have it by about Friday. Sweet, we thought. Didn't really want to spend that long in Melbourne but happy to hang around and know that we've got a decent vehicle before we start on our mammoth journey!

Seeing as we were going to be hanging around for a few more days we moved hostels as the one we were staying at was a shit hole. We treated ourselves to an en-suite double room in a new hostel on the other side of the city. That was nice to have a bathroom to ourselves, in the same room, no more running to reception in his pants for Rich!

Also as I was going to have to do a lot of driving too, I decided to get myself some new glasses. Fortunatley we came accross an opticians that had a box of $40 frams and they had some shiny new pink ones which I really liked so I did buy them and am very happy to have glasses again :-)

On one of days in Melbourne waiting for our car, we had lunch at a restaurant of Federation Square where they were showing the tennis on the big screen, so we sat there all afternoon watching yet more tennis and drinking wine, and all evening!!! I think somehow we didn't pay for our last 2 bottles, as we had no receipts and no memory of paying!! Tee hee, didn't actually run off without paying as we stayed all night, but we got chatting to some locals and moved tables and it was a busy place, so maybe they just forgot to bring the bill, hey-ho, not complaining!

Friday arrived and we could pick our car up :-) Did a few things in town and went to the autobarn around noon. Car wasn't ready as air-con wasn't a simple job but it would be ready by the end of the day. We hung around waiting, had some lunch and hung around some more, and finally it was ready! Our 1988 Holden Commodore station wagon! We chucked our bags in and off we went, destination: Great Ocean Road! James had told us to stay within 50k of Melbourne and if we have any problems to take it back and he'll get them sorted. We didn't though, first stop was Torquay about 80 km away! This was a little surfy holiday town, popular with locals as much as tourists.

We went to the sports bar as Rich wanted to watch tennis and got chatting to a Melbourne lad (Hud) who Rich seemed to get on with really well. He was telling all sorts of stories about the dangerous wildlife in Australia (and there's lots of it) which was all quite interesting as well as scary! He pointed out some of the best places to see locally, but unfortunatly, we'd forgotten all the details of what where by next day!

In Torquay, we went to a Quicksilver and Roxy sale at the primary school, that was great, loads of clothes going at silly prices!! I got stuck right in and got loads of shorts and tops and stuff for this sunny climate, Rich got a bit bored but still managed to find himself a shirt and trousers :-)

We headed a bit further out next to Apolllo Bay, where, after buying shorts and the like, it decided to lob it down....typical!! The car was leaking water and Rich was quite worried to we decided if it was still looking bad by next day we'd go back to Melbourne and get it sorted.

Rich checked the leak the next day and decided that as much as we don't want to go back to Melbourne we need to get it looked at before we attempt to drive 3000kms! So, off we go back to Melbourne, James tells us to take it straight to the garage which we do. He tells us it's something to do with the heater and he could bypass it and to come back in about 3 hours. So we loitered around and went back 5 hours later, they'd not even started work on it! When they eventually did, they realised it was more than that, that the head was cracked! James rang us and said it'd probably take about 3 days for them to sort that out, and then we'd have to stay close by again to see if everything else is OK. Bugger, we really didn't want to hang around that long. He did however, have a different car that we could have. Slightly more expensive but is already registered in Victoria so would save us loads on the registration (which is a complicated and expensive process). After looking at this other car, checking it out, doing tests, talking and discussing ideas and stuff with James, having Pizza (that James bought), we finally decided to take that instead of waiting round for the other one. We'd have to stay close for a day or so though to see if anything if wrong with it. So at around 9.30 pm, we drive off in a different car and find a campsite just on the outskirts of the city! The second car feels a lot smoother though and felt a lot sturdier. The temperature gauge didn't seem to work though.

So, next day (Tues 31st!) we told James about the temperature gauge and he sent us straight to a garage, they looked at it, tested it and reassured us that it's OK, so with that, we left Melbourne again and headed West, to the Great Ocean Road (again!!)

Phew, after over a week since we first decided to get a car, we were on the road......yay!!!

(This right here above, is my idea of hell on Earth, Rich)

Australia, Melbourne to be precise!

2006-02-03T02:51:00.000Z

Wow, flew into Oz next to a lightenting storm, that was quite cool. Bizzarre that a 3 and half hour flight and we arrive in Australia! We arrived early evening and although it was raining a bit, it was hot. Rang a few hostels from the airport but everywhere seemed to be full (we wanted a double room), but we did manage to find a twin room in a hostel in the centre, cool, so we headed off. We got a free drink at the bar for checking in and it was ladies night there so 'champagne' was $1 a glass (about 50p). Cool, so we dropped our bags off and went straight to the bar. Got our free drinks and I had $1 champagne all night while Rich sampled the cheapest beer! Needless to say we got quite drunk!

I woke up about 3am to find rich desperately trying to prise himself out of the wardrobe! He'd gone to the toilet and forgotten to take the room key, got locked out, knocking on the door didn't wake me up so he had to go down 3 flights of stairs to reception in his pants, half asleep and still drunk to be let in. When he did get in he promptly fell into the wardrobe!! Hello Australia!

Had a look round the city next day (with a slightly curly head) and bought tickets for the Grand Prix at the end of March. Was fooking hot, weather report later said it'd reached 43, blimey, was unusual for Melbourne we're told.

The following day (Sunday) was even hotter, even early in the morning it was unbearable. There'd been loads of bushfires around melbourne (not surprising) and when the wind blew I reckon we were getting the heat from them as the wind was hot! The Australian Open was on so we got ourselves a couple of tickets and headed over there. All outdoor games had been cancelled, we managed to get pretty decent seats in the Vodaphone arena (which was air conditioned, of sorts) and pretty much stayed there all day! Watched a couple of fairly decent matches, then moved outside to watch main games on the outdoor screen (didn't have tickets for the main court), where we drank an awful lot of beer and wine, and finally a cool breeze made it's way in :-) Well, we got quite drunk again and we were the last people to leave, there were no more trams back to the city but there was a maintenance guy in his car on the tram line who drove us back to the city, and didn't seem to mind me and Rich playing with his 'nee nar' flashy light thing!! So, like I said, Hello Australia!

On Monday (23rd) we went car shopping. We didn't really know whether to rent or buy. We knew we didn't want a van again (got the t-shirt and all that). But we only really wanted to drive the great ocean road to Adelaide then catch trains and buses for the rest of Oz. But checked out a few places and after much discussion and plan changing and idea swapping we decided to buy a car and drive all the way to Perth (about 3000km) and maybe continue up to Darwin and back to Melbourne depending on how we do for time. Travellers Auto Barn do a thing where they sell you a car (at extortionate prices) and guarantee to buy it back from you at a given percentage which depends on how long you've had it. They make sure the car is roadworthy, has good tyres, air-con works, and do all repairs necessary before you take it away. They have various offices around Oz and also provide roadside assistance. As it happened a couple there were just bringing theirs back for the buyback and we decided to have theirs as we'd spoken to them about the car and it'd been good to them but the air-con didn't work. James at the Autobarn said he'd sort out the air-con and anything else that crops up during it's inspection and we could have it by about Friday. Sweet, we thought. Didn't really want to spend that long in Melbourne but happy to hang around and know that we've got a decent vehicle before we start on our mammoth journey!

Last stop.....Christchurch!

2006-01-30T03:42:00.000Z

We managed to find a backpackers that had camping at a really cheap rate so that was a bonus. It was Saturday and the earliest we could get our van looked at was Monday. So we spent the weekend cleaning the van and 'decorating' it. All the panels inside were ripped and had ground in dirt and generally made it look like a builders van (which it was in a previous life!) so we bought so very nice leapard print (all we could find!) sticky stuff (like the stuff you get to cover kitchen cupboards) and Rich stuck it to all the panels and the ceiling!! Whilst it was a cheesy print, it worked a treat! We also bought some furry leapard print fabric and I made some covers for the sun visors which were also tatty!! So a few bits and bobs here and there and the van was looking as good as it could! On the Sunday night we met an English couple, Emily and Rob and had many beers and laughs with them and arranged to go out for dinner with them the next night as it was their last night.

We had it repaired on the Monday and all was good, the engine was sweet and would keep on going. The mechanic told us though that it wouldn't get through it's next WOF (warrant of fitness, like an MOT) as the rust on the roof and other places was so bad and it'd cost a lot to repair it. The current WOF was good until April but this did worry us as the mechanic said that if we wanted to sell it we should take whatever is offered. Bugger. Met up with Emily and Rob, and after a few games of pool and some beers at the hostel, we went to a Thai restaurant and had a very nice meal, and a good laugh!

On the Tuesday we went down to the backpackers car market (same as place in Auckland we bought it from) and paid our $65 for 3 days to sit there and wait for customers! Boring! We had to sit by our van all day, along with a load of other travellers selling cars and vans. Day one but no success, one guy test drove it but was put off by a rattling noise, even though Rich explained what it was. Only a couple of vans were sold that day, at around $2000.

Next day was even slower than the first, hardly anybody coming through, most of them were sellers checking out the competition, or Israelies who seemed to come in when people were desperate and offer silly prices (me thinks they had a bit of a network going on) Day 3 and we were getting desperate! It was Thursday and we were supposed to be flying to Melbourne on the Friday!! Some Israelies test drove it in the morning. Then they came back in the afternoon and offered us $2200 if the mechanical check was good. Which it was. Result!! Not as much as we'd have liked, but hey, it meant we didn't have to change our flight and hang around in Christchurch for another week. At around 4pm we had the cash and were vanless. It was a bit sad as we'd enjoyed our little van, but we were happy to be going to Oz to have another adventure.

We checked into a backpackers and got a double room at this very odd place, but it was cheap and they picked us up so didn't care!

Next day we got our stuff in order and got a lift into town, where we sent some stuff home then got the bus to the airport. So excited to be getting on a plane!!

So, there you have it guys, that was NZ. Sorry it took so long to update the blog, but as you'll have seen, we had to race round the South Island!! We are now currently in OZ. Been here since 20th and I'll endeavour to update the blog in the next few days to get it right up to date. Can't do any more today though as I've been typing for about 3 hours and think I've got RSI!!!

Watch this space for further updates!!

Kaz and Rich

The Fox Glacier

2006-01-30T03:36:00.000Z

After a 400 km drive we arrived in Fox Glacier, camped up had a few beers and some dinner and crashed out. Next day was the half day walk on the glacier that we'd previously booked. We got all wrapped up and they kitted us out with boots, crampons and waterproofs! The walk to the glacier was pretty good, over rocks and stuff. The Glacier walk itself was pretty good too, but man it was cold! OK when walking but the guide (who was a twat) kept stopping to chat to other guides and leaving us standing still (brrr!). So, that was a fun day although thier boots gave me blisters!

Fox Glacier.....tick! Next! The last few days really had been hectic, racing round the south and ticking things and places off!! Next stop Christchurch to get our van fixed (the coughing was still ongoing!) and sold so we could go to Oz. Another 400 km drive took us over Arthur's pass, which was very pretty but very steep, we were in first gear most of the time. We finally arrived in Christchurch about 9 pm and on fumes as all petrol stations along the way were shut!

Queenstown - the home of the Bunjy

2006-01-30T03:06:00.000Z

We arrived in Queenstown and booked Rich on the Bunjy for the following day. They only had 8am left so that'd have to do. Queenstown has a few Bunjy's, it has the first, which is off a bridge and is 43 metres and it is also home to NZ's highest, 134m called the Nevis. Guess which one Rich picked? Yep, the stupid one!! We also booked us both onto this thing called 'flybywire' (a 'plane' suspended in a valley that you fly around ??) for the following afternoon.

So, Rich said he was a bit aprehensive about his bunjy on that morning, I should think so!! He said he'd be OK so long as he wasn't first, it was the first group of the day and he didn't want to be first out of that group. We arrived at the meeting point and he had to be weighed and stuff. I was going along as a spectator. We got on the bus and drove to the site. On the journey we could hear the driver chatting to someone at the front about the order of jumpers, 'heaviest first' the driver said, we looked around, and Rich was definitely the heaviest!!! Then he was nervous as the pressure was on, there couldn't be any dithering at the platform!

We arrived at the site and there were many 'ohmygod''s going around the bus as everyone actually saw what they were jumping off!! It was a little 'pod' suspended between two hills hanging over the valley, the 134 metre valley! There was no messing around, straight into the harnesses and into the cable car to take us to the pod, I went to the pod too to watch and just going over there in the cable car was scary enough!! So, Rich is all harnessed up and ready to go, 3, 2, 1, go........and he's gone!!! I poo'd my pants for him as I could see the aprehension in him but he was laughing through it, and when he jumped it was as if he was a pro, it was impressive!! He was winched back up with a big grin on his face and I stopped shaking!! Watching the other people do it was fun too, especially this chinese girl who kept dithering on the edge but eventually just sort of fell off!!! Because Rich had done that jump he could get another at a big discount so he booked himself onto the Kawara bridge (original bungy site), a mere 43 metres for the next day!

So, after that we had some lunch then went to the meeting point for the flybywire. A short bus journey and we were there. Now this thing looked scary! It was a sort of plane with an engine that you lie down in and it has handlebars at the front. It's suspended in this valley and you get strapped in, winched up the hill backwards, then you let go and are catapulted around the valley, you control your direction and how high and fast you go all depends on how well you control it as it swings back and forth and round and round. Sounds easy!!! I climbed in and was scared when the towed me up the hill, but when I let go it was great fun, it didn't feel like you were attached, just flying this little thing round. I didn't have much control over it and kept going round in circles, which didn't bother me, I still had fun. When my time was up though, the guys sent me out again to do it properly, which I managed on the second time and got some real height and speed out of it!!! Great fun. Rich, did the best out of everyone, he got really high and went the fastest, he loved it!!

So, after all the adrenalin rush, we had a pint in a bar near our site. It was throwing it down again and was quite cold. We got chatting to an Aussie couple who'd been there a few hours. We then planned to take our stuff back to the van then go for a curry, we took our stuff back then went back to the bar for a pint first. Aussie couple, Cliff and Kara were still there, getting roundly drunk, we joined them and played pool and chatted and drank, and drank more and had a laugh, there was a band on too, which we really enjoyed. We stayed till quite late and ended up buying pie and crisps and stuff for tea, as you do!!!! Hey ho, we've heard curry in NZ is crap anyway!!

Fortunately Rich's bunjy wasn't until noon so didn't have to get up so early. Rich was feeling a bit curly though, I wouldn't have done a bunjy with a hangover (I wouldn't do one without either, but that's beside the point!) But he did, and not just a normal one, a 'reverse elevator' where instead of diving off, as is the norm you turn around and do a little jump backwards whilst keeping your eyes on the guy at the top! Man, that boy is crazy!!

Adrenalin activities done, time to head to Fox Glacier for something a bit tamer!

The Catlins and Te Anau

2006-01-30T02:44:00.000Z

Following Randy's route, we set off to Nugget point to see the seals and sea lions. There was a viewing platform there as the seals and sea lions were on the rocks at the bottom of this cliff (for want of a better word) So we had a look from the platform but I couldn't make anything out unless I zoomed right in with the camera and then it was shaky. There seemed to be a track down there, and then we saw this bloke coming back up it. We chatted to him and he said it was easy enough if you take it slow, so we thought we'd take a closer look, this block (Wayne from Yorkshire) came back with us too, to show the way. It was a bit scary going down and I sort of had to do it on my bum, using as many points of contact. When we got nearer though it was all worth it to see them so close. They were qute scary too, especially the sea lions, they actually roar like lions. A couple of the bulls were fighting which was a sight to behold, they are really big and can shift across the rocks! When I turned round to go back and saw what I'd climbed down I was a bit worried, but managed to get back up! It was a bit naughty but well worth it! After that we camped up and chatted with some Germans (one of whom gave me a blanket that he'd nicked from his flight for my birthday!) and some Americans who supplied us all with Southern Comfort and Irish Whiskey as it was a cold night.

The next day hooned it down with rain and was really windy again. We'd planned to go to Porpoise bay where you can swim out from shore and find yourself with Dolphins (Hectre Dolphins only found in NZ), but when we arrived it was far too cold to swim and the sea was far too choppy. As we were on a tight schedule we couldn't hang around for a day or so for the weather to change so we headed straight to Te Anau. That was quite a long drive in the howling wind and rain and we were right pissed off about the weather and missing the Dolphins, until Rich almost crashed along this dirt road, the wind almost got a hold and it took some doing to get the van back under control, I was impressed with his efforts. This near miss cheered us both right up!!

When we reached Te Anau we checked out the diving at Milford sound which we really wanted to do. They were booked up all week. Bugger, we could only stay a couple of days. We looked at kayaking and other things to do on Doubtful sound but it was really expensive. Bugger. We were back to being right pissed off again. So bought a bottle of wine and drank that in the van, then decided to go for a few beers, which cheered us right up and ended up having a very silly night!

Next day was wasted though as I had a very bad hangover and couldn't move! So a day wasted and we decided that it wasn't really possible given our time limits to anything around there and so headed to Queenstown, the home of the bunjy!

The rest of our time with Amanda and Randy

2006-01-30T02:10:00.000Z

New years day was spent mainly sitting around chatting with no hangover (first time ever!), but we decided in the afternoon that we should probably get a move on.

Amanda and Randy were due to leave on the 10th so decided to travel with us for their remaining days and leave us a few days before to hitch back to Christchurch (they'd hitched their way round the south island so far so were old hat at it!)

We decided we wanted to see Mount Cook and so headed in that direction and stopped close by at lake Tekapo to camp. However, the camp site was heaving and was quite expensive even if we could squeeze in, so headed a bit further out to a place called Twizel where we found a campsite that wasn't so expensive. It seems that the Kiwis love to camp over Christmas and New Year!

Next day we woke to ferocious winds, Amanda and Randy had already taken their tent down but we saw a couple that had blown down (hee hee)! After breakfast we set off for Mount Cook, the wind was still howling and rain was coming in horizontally!! A pretty hairy drive for Rich. We had to drive through a flood to get to Mount Cook village and when we spoke to the people there we were told that they were expecting more bad weather and snow below 1000 metres, very unseasonal! They said that if were weren't planning on staying in the village to leave now as the flood would get a lot worse and we'd be stuck. Oh. So we did. With our plans for Mount Cook a bit scuppered we headed for Wanaka. I wanted to go there for my birthday anyway so I could go and see King Kong at the cinema they have there with sofas, waitress service and homemade cakes and the like! So that's where we went, found somewhere to camp and set up for the night.

My birthday! Rich took me out to puzzleworld today which was a crazy place with a fun maze and lots of optical illusions on display and odd rooms and stuff. Next we were supposed to go the groovy cinema but they were all sold out which was a bit disappointing. So, we had a look round the shops and Rich bought me a beanie hat (necessary given the recent weather). Then we went for a cheeky pint, which turned into a couple, then a bottle of wine (we stole the wine glasses!!) and got back to camp a little bit giggly. We'd planned on having fish and chips for tea so when we returned we had that in the camp kitchen. After that was home made apple pie and ice - cream which Amanda and Randy had cooked, then after that was home made carrot cake, complete with 32 candles and party poppers which Amanda and Randy had also cooked. Nice, I was right chuffed!! Of course, some cake ended up in Rich's face (couldn't help it, it had sloppy icing, and I was drunk!!). Can't really remember any more after that! I know I had a good time though and ate a lot of nice things :-)

Next we headed to a place called Omarama and found a really nice backpackers that did camping and was as cheap as chips. It was a great place, out in the sticks, really dark and quiet. Whilst there we took a walk to the clay cliffs we had driven by on the way. We asked the owner how long it'd take to get there and she said about 2 hours. It was all pretty flat and an easy enough walk, only it took us about 4 hours to get there! We had a look at the cliffs which were formed by an earthquake that forced an old river bed up out of the ground to form towering spires. It was all very nice and interesting. On the way back we were a little tired and it was getting late so we hitched! Got a lift from an English guy in a bit campervan who could only take us to the main road as he had no seatbelts. Then a short walk and we hitched again, when a local stopped and took us to town! Nice!

Next day we took a walk up a mountain that was on the land owned by the people who ran the backpackers. That was cool. It was quite a long walk, uphill but not too steep. We had almost reached the top and could see Mount Cook quite clearly in the distance, which was nice, but I had to leave it there as the last bit up was steeper and I'd got an almighty blister on my heel, but Rich, Amanda and Randy went to the top and I waited. They told me the views were awesome but it was bloody cold, 2047 metres according to Randy's Altometer!

After that we went to Omarau, where Randy managed to get us all into a campsite for about $28 (normally about $13 each), he told them that's all we had between us, that boy's got some front, but it works, nice one Randy!!

It was time then for Amanda and Randy to leave us to get back to Chrischurch. We'd also decided that we'd done New Zealand and were ready for somewhere new. The weather had been a lot shit recently and whilst there were still a few more places we wanted to see, we were pretty much done. So, decided to stick with our leaving date of 20th Jan and Randy did us a route round the rest of the South and the places worth seeing and the ones not, so that helped us. We had just under 2 weeks to do the rest plus get back to Christchurch for about the 15th to get our van sorted out and sold.

We dropped Amanda and Randy off at the main road, said our goodbyes and left them hitching with their great bit cardboard thumbs!

New Years Eve

2006-01-30T02:07:00.000Z

New Years Eve. We decided to stay at this place for tonights festivities, as it was free, near the beach, not too far from town and we had room. The downside was that there was a drinking ban on from 7pm on 31st to 7am on the 1st.....exactly the hours in which we were planning to drink! There were fines of $200 per bottle, and we had shite loads of bottles of beer and wine! Hey, ho! We mosied into town to get some food together as we were going to have a curry for tea. We started cooking and drinking (legally) about 5pm. When it came to 7pm, we had to serve our beer in our metal cups and sneakily fill them up, as there were cars patrolling the area. It was a bloody cold night and we were all wrapped up, especially Randy, I think he had on every item of clothing he had! So, much cooking and not much drinking was done. Due to limited and temperamental cooking facilites, we finally sat down to our yummy curry about 10 pm!! Was worth it though. We had wanted to have a fire on the beach but when we wandered down there it didn't seem like a possibility, they were however, setting up for a fireworks display. At midnight, we all sat in our van with the curtains drawn and opened a bottle of fizzy stuff! Then we went out to watch the fireworks which were all pretty impressive. Drinking of the fizzy stuff continued back in the van as did much silliness and laughter. A great night was had by all.

The bit between Christmas and New Year

2006-01-30T01:28:00.000Z

We'd arranged to pickAmanda and Randy up (couple we met in Fiji) on the 30th in a little place called Springfield to spend New Years with them. So we had a look at the seal colony in Kaikora, which was nice although I could only make them out when I zoomed in on the camera! Then we left and headed in the direction of Springfield, stopping at Hamner Springs. Now this was a very touristy place. Full of Kiwi's getting away for the Christmas period. It was quite expensive too so we didn't want to get roped into doing touristy things. Instead we played loads of mini golf, and did a couple of short walks in the Hamner forest, which was nice. One of the walks had a nature trail with various trees and plants along the way which were numbered and had little descriptions next to them. No. 1 was the Larch. Nothing specail about that you may think, there was to Richard, he nearly wet himself laughing when he saw it and then spent the rest of the walk saying "number one, the Larch" and giggling!!! Apparantly it's a monty python gag, but I wasn't familiar. If any of you are please let me know so I know that Rich didn't just have a moment of severe insanity!!

Next stop was a place called Oxford, a very small place. However it did have a massive camp ground just outside which was heaving with locals. I heard one guy in the kitchen bragging that he'd never left Oxford in his life!! This campground was bizzarre, while I understand that some people camp in a luxury fashion, ie they fill their cars up, have a massive tent and have tables and chairs and disposable bbq's and the like. The guys in this place bought everything! We saw full sized bbq's, A big fridge freezer and even a sofa at one place!

Next day we headed to Springfield and picked up Amanda and Randy. Was great to see them both. We didn't really have a plan other than we wanted to be by the beach for New Years Eve and have our own little private party. We loaded them into the van which was a bit of a squeeze but we managed it and headed to a little place called Bonnes bay (I think that's what it was called. Amandas friend who she'd been staying with recommended it as there was camping there) on banks peninsula just outside Akaroa. So off we go, stopping at Akaroa on the way to stock up with beer and snacks and stuff. The drive to get to the bay was a bit of a struggle for the van, it'd been coughing and spluttering a lot lately and what with the huge hills and extra weight, we were all a bit worried, but it got us there, only to find signs all over the place 'no camping'. Bugger. So, we headed to the next bay, that did have campsites but they were all full, bugger! After much discussion we decided that all beaches and bays and stuff were going to be full of people leaving Christchurch for NYE, so we headed furthere south to a place called Timaru which had a 10 day Christmas carnival on. Nice. When we arrived we found the campsite....and not only was there loads of room, it was free....bonus. Was right next to beach and there was a fair going on next door too. Was about 9pm when we arrived so we pretty much camped up, ate noodles and went to bed!

Christmas!

2006-01-30T01:07:00.000Z

Christmas Eve started with a hangover from the previous days wine tour, so was a bit of a slow start. We'd booked a place at a caravan park in Kaikora on the East coast, I'd already checked in advance that they had an oven as we wanted to have Christmas dinner. When we arrived, there were loads of people there and when I checked out the kitchen I discovered there was only one oven. Bugger, I'm going to have to make like a German, get up early and stick a tea towel on it!!

We ventured into town for a Christmas Eve afternoon drink. Now, you wouldn't have known it was Christmas eve here except for the drunk sat at the bar singing Christmas songs!! Town was dead! Where was the last minute pressie shopping and the hoards of people leaving work early and going down the pub??? Not here that's for sure! We had a quiet evening eating cheese and crackers and drinking our expensive wine out of cheap plastic cups!

When we got up on Christmas day, the sun was shining and it was warm (wierd for starters). There were quite a few kids staying at the holiday park but there didn't seem to be any excitement in the air....I had to check my diary to make sure I'd got the date right!! After a hearty breakfast, we prepared the turkey and left him cooking while we went for a cheeky pint. Fortunately, everbody disappeared mid morning and I was the only one needing the oven! Town was even deader than yesterday, no pubs open, a few people milling about eating sarnies and that was about it. We went to the beach for a bit and then went back to our turkey.

So, while turkey was still cooking we opened a bottle of wine and our pressies! I got a bucket and spade, some pyjamas (needed when staying in dorms in hostels!) some nice toiletries, loads of books and the best glasses ever!! They have eyes already in and look really funny kept us laughing for hours! Rich got a few books, some pants and socks (so it still felt like Christmas!) a kite, a guitar and book on how to play it! (He's been going on about learing for ages, I couldn't actually buy him a proper guitar so I bought a childs one, but he loved it nonetheless!) We had dinner and more wine and Christmas pudding and more wine. Then we watched Jurassic park on the kitchen TV and ate chocolates all evening. So, apart from it being just the two of us and having dinner outside, it was a pretty normal Christmas!

On Boxing day we had our Whale watching thing. We took a boat and headed out to sea, didn't have to go out that far as the depth just off shore suddenly plunges from around 50 metres to around 1200 metres! There are only about 6 whales at any one time so you have to be patient and wait as they go down for about 45 mins at a time then come up for air for about 5 mins. We managed to see 3 in all.....although it could've been the same one 3 times, but who cares! It was an awesome sight, especially when they dive back down and they curl over and flip their tails out into the air....cool!

The Blenheim Wine Trail

2006-01-30T00:57:00.000Z

Now, this was fun!! We arrived in Blenheim and straight away booked bike hire for the following day. We also booked a trip whale watching in Kaikora (where we'd decided to spend Christmas) on Boxing day.

So, next day we get our bikes which come complete with little wine bottle sized panniers....we won't be buying much wine though, maybe one or two for Christmas. We embarked on our little ride, which was a bit scary at first as I'd not ridden a bike since I was little, but I soon got the hang of it. We cycled to the vineyard area, it was a nice sunny day and the area was flat so was really nice. We stopped at the first place and tasted about 6 wines, and bought bottle No 1. Next place, same thing tasted about 6 wines but didn't buy any. Then we stopped for lunch, tasted about 5 wines and chose a bottle each to go with lunch (we couldn't agree on one to share!!) We had a nice lunch and left quite giggly. Now, after that it's all a bit of a blur. I know that we went to about 4 or 5 more places to taste and bought loads more. I think we ended up with about 7 bottles!!!! A pretty expensive day but we enjoyed it very much!! As we wobbled back on our bikes I'd become all confident like on my little bike and managed to take a picture of Rich riding in front of my whilst still keeping my bike under control (sort of!)

On to Nelson

2006-01-26T05:55:00.000Z

A short drive from Picton is the city of Nelson which was our next destination, we had all sorts of grand plans for Nelson, some diving (as we'd missed out on diving the wreck of the Mikhail Lermontov
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=bdiiqi45uiia?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Mikhail+Lermontov+%28ship%29&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc02b&linktext=Mikhail%20Lermontov%20(ship) in Picton) at Pupu Springs (supposedly the best underwater visability in the world) http://www.seafriends.org.nz/images/pupu.htm
brewery trips (quite a lot of microbreweries in the area and Mac's one of NZ's best selling beers), horse riding, walking, quad biking, blah, blah, blah.
As it turned out we spent 4 days here and did pretty much none of the above. The brewery trips never had enough people booked on to make the trips worth their while, the diving onlt happened on a Thursday and was NZ$240 each for just a single tank dive (although Rich did speak to a guy at a dive shop who told him that he would hire him all the gear he needed including the tanks and that we could dive it on our own, but given our level of experience we wrote this off as a bad idea!), so that was a no go. The only thing that we did manage to get ourselves booked on to was at trip on Quad bikes around some local mountains just outside Nelson.
So, all in all we didn't end up doing a great deal, we went to a local water tube (we were the eldest on it of course), played some mini-golf (Rich winss, again), did some sleeping in the park like a right couple of old types and read a lot while the weather had it's fun with us.
The quad bikes did make up for it all though, they were really good fun, we had half an hour practising to ride them as they were geared and quite powerful and then about 3 hours riding around the mountains to see a bloody big old tree (4o metres high and 1500 years old, and that's considered small and young for a Maui tree!) and some fantastic views from the mountain tops. The best part of it though (Rich thinks) was that they allowed us a couple of laps on the fun track where Rich got the bike up to 80KPH and went steaming through a very large puddle of sheep crap!
After the biking we headed for Blenhiem and the Malborough wine region to sample their wares:-)

South Island at last

2006-01-26T04:34:00.000Z

We set sail from Wellington on 12th December bound for the South Island, Picton to be exact. It was a pretty sweet crossing and took 3.5 hours, about an hour out from Picton we got or first glimpse of the South Island, mountainous and very pretty was our initial thoughts, little did we know then that we were going to walking up a load of those mountains, that soon bloody well stops them being beautiful, I can tell you that for free!
We spent a day finding our feet and deciding what route to take around the South Island and were to spend Christmas and tried to decide if we should extend our duration in NZ as we had a lot to see in not a lot of time but we thought that we'd leave it at the 20th Jan for now. So, we went down to the local i-Site (Information and Booking Sites to be found in every major town and city in New Zealand) and booked ourselves on to the Queen Charlotte Walk, a 71KM walk over 3 days along a well established path on the Queen Charlotte Sound, Rich's idea and bloody ill conceived it was too, the only saving grace was that we didn't have to take backpacks as they were delivered to each of our destinations by boat.
http://www.picton.co.nz/thetrack/
Walk Day 1: Full of optimism we climbed onto the boat that was to take us to Ship Cove and the start of the track, the little leaflet that we had telling us that it was going to take us 6 hours to walk the 27.5KM initial day being the finally tuned athletes that we are (9 hours for the not quite so finely tuned). At about 20KM into the walk the full stupidity of what we had decided to take on hit Karen's feet and all was not well with the Daly spirits! Rich of course was full of the joys of spring as he had again decided that this would be a really good day to stop smoking (again) and was very encouraging with such comments as 'it's not far now' and 'stop bloody moaning' and 'well, it wasn't my idea was it?' YES IT WAS!
We finally finished the first day taking 6.5 hours which we were quite pleased with, but Karen could no longer walk! We bumped into a couple of Germans Meika and Joachim that had stayed a the same place as us in Picton and had wisely choosen to do the first 27.5KM in 2 days, we spent the evening with them, chatting, laughing and recovering.
Walk Day 2: We had agreed to walk the second day (24KM) with the German couple, so we got up early, dropped our backpacks off and set off, as with the day before the first 1.5 hours was all up hill and we decided to take an extra 30 minutes diversion up to a look out point (stupid) which did have beautiful views and we met an English lad up there called Toby who spent the rest of the day with us. Towards the end of the day (which ended up taking 9.5 hours as there was a lot of dawdling and rest breaks) Kaz had come to grips with her blisters which had seem to become one with her boats but it was Rich's turn to whine like a baby about his knee which had made a very audible popping noise in Fiji while he was proving that he could still get into the lotus position and walk on his knees, he'd obviously done more damage to it than he previously thought as he was in a great deal of pain, but this really did seem to lift Kaz's spirits! The evening was spent drinking with the German couple, Toby and a few others that we had met along the way.
Walk Day 3: The final day just 21KM to walk and it was over. We actually set off quite late as we decided that we should fuel ourselves with a decent breakfast, but once we set off that was it. We decided that there would be no stops longer than a couple of minutes and that we were just going to head for home. We ended up doing it in a little under 5 hours and pretty much overtook nearly everyone that had set off much ealier than us. The last 1KM was the longest Kilometre that we have ever walked and when we finally reached the end of the track we both collapsed but were surprisingly happy, not because we had finished but because we'd actually managed it, we'd bitten off more than we could chew but actually managed it:-) We went to a cafe to wait for our boat lift back to Picton and over the next hour of so everybody that we had met on the track streamed in exhausted but happy.

2006-01-17T08:27:00.000Z

Hi Karen
I see you are having a great time
If you are now going over to Oz if you are still there in March we could meet up.
We will be in Perth from March 11th for about 6 days then going on to Melbourne for about 8 days then onto Sydney for about 8 days if you are there then perhaps we could meet up.
It would be great to see you .
Let us know and we can sort something out.
By the way Happy New Year
Love and best wishes Amanda x x x

Good Luck In Australia!

2006-01-16T00:02:00.000Z

A quick update

2006-01-10T02:38:00.000Z

Hi All,

Just a quick post to let you know what we've been up to and to let you all know that we won't update properly until the 15th(ish) when we arrive in Christchurch and get ready to travel to pastures new (Oz). Also, we'd like to thank you all for your Christmas, New Year and Birthday wishes, you can't understand how important these were to us being away from everybody at a time of year when the main theme is friends and family, so thanks to you all.

We spent Christmas Day in a town called Kiakora which is on the East coast, North of Christchurch for those of you that like to get maps out and check. It was odd, odd, odd, the big shiny thing was in the sky providing very unchristmas like heat, the caravan park we were on suddenly became the most deserted place on the planet, but all the same we cooked our turkey and roastie's and enjoyed it with some nice wine that we had bought from the Marlborough wine region on a little cycle tour.
On boxing day we went out on a boat trip and saw Sperm Whales which was pretty awe inspiring (if not a little expensive) and well worth it.
On the 30th, we picked up Randy and Amanda who we had met in Fiji (and in Thames by accident) and headed for Banks Peninsula (East of Christchurch) to celebrate New Year's Eve. This turned out to be a bit of a no go as everywhere was rammed and we couldn't find anywhere to camp for love or money. So we headed to Timaru (South of Christchurch) and found free camping there next to the beach, ideal except for the fact that it was an alcohol free area, but we didn't let this get in the way of us having fun and seeing in the new year in typical english style.
We spent the next week with Randy and Amanda and dotted ourselves all over the place, camping for free where possible or as cheaply as possible. The highlight was a couple of days in Omarama, we found a backpackers in the middle of nowhere (almost) and spent a couple of days there, hiking, hitch hiking and mountain walking.
We said goodbye to Randy and Amanda in Oamaru which was quite sad as we'd had such a great time with these guys and hopefully we'll see them again in Oz. We headed south oursleves to Nugget Point to see Seals and Sea Lions.
Kaz has just told me that I'm going into too much detail as we will be updating properly in Christchurch, so I'll leave the rest as a surprise!
Until then, be well and happy,

Rich and Kaz

New Year Wishes

2006-01-08T15:01:00.000Z

Wishing you both a Very Happy New Year. Hope you continue to have great travelling fun.
Marguerite

Happy New Year From Nottingham #6

2006-01-04T15:23:00.000Z

Random drunken photo's!!!!

Happy New Year From Nottingham #5

2006-01-04T12:07:00.000Z

Drink 'pretty' people!!?!!

Happy New Year From Nottingham #4

2006-01-04T11:34:00.000Z

12 o'clock!!

Happy New Year From Nottingham #3

2006-01-04T11:17:00.000Z

PS2 Karaoke!!

Happy New Year From Nottingham #2

2006-01-04T10:27:00.000Z

Adele's hat!!?!!

Happy New Year From Nottingham #1

2006-01-04T09:30:00.000Z

Sober 'pretty' people!!?!!

Birthday wishes

2006-01-03T16:10:00.000Z

Wishing you a Very Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Icky Burpy!
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday to you!

Hugs & Kisses

Adele (And Em sends her love too)

xxxxxx

Happy New Year

2006-01-01T13:00:00.000Z

To the Travellers in New Zealand and everyone contributing to this Blogger.

All the best in 2006.

Happy Christmas from Scotland

2005-12-24T10:50:00.000Z

Home sweet home

Well we finally did it!

Sadly, no visit to the Cross Keys for us today.

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas.

The Patterson Clan

Merry Christmas Everyone

2005-12-24T00:50:00.000Z

Last Christmas - you were here with us sharing a good time.
but as you Step into Christmas this year, we hope you'll be sharing
the Mistletoe & Wine in the New Zealand tradition.
We hope you will have Another Rock & Roll Christmas and
Simply have a Wonderful Christmas time.

With Love from Mum, Dad and Matthew
xx

Keep on Blogging in 2006.

Xmas Greetings from Norfolk

2005-12-22T20:52:00.000Z

Have a great xmas and new year. Keep the stories coming we are loving it here. Jane Sam and me are so inspired we are thinking of setting off on our own road trip in the new year. Watch out for the blog 'the Hudsons do Great Yarmouth & Cromer'.

Sending hugs across the miles

Grahame & Jane

Xmas Greetings

2005-12-22T14:41:00.000Z

Wishing you both, wherever you are, a very "merry" xmas & happy new year.
From friends at Allenbuild, Nottingham.

Happy Christmas

2005-12-21T21:17:00.000Z

Hope you both have a wonderful Christmas on the other side of the world. We're off to Newbury tomorrow and will be catching up with everyone on Christmas Eve. Happy New Year and keep up the fasinating stories.

Love Emma, Dean and Max xxx

Christmas Greetings!

2005-12-19T14:31:00.000Z

Wishing you a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS & ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC NEW YEAR!
Stay Safe

Hugs & snogs

Adele
xxxxxx

Wellibob and other places!

2005-12-19T03:41:00.000Z

Next destination was Wellington, the capital, although we took a bit of a detour to see the longest place name in the world (yes, longer than that place in Wales, but easier to pronounce). It's not a village or anything it's just a hill and it's called.... Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatatu
...and it means "the brow of a hill where Tamatea, the man with the big knees who slid, climbed and swallowed mountians, known as 'Land Eater', played his flute to his lover".

Because of this detour we weren't going to arrive in Wellibob till late so we decided to stop over at a place called Greytown, which apparantly has the oldest pub in New Zealand, which of course we had to go to....cos we're like that. It proved to be quite fruitful as there was some scratchcard type promotion on the beer we were drinking (Speight's) and we won not one but two paddling pools!! We gave one away to a local, but now we have a luxury van with pool :-)

Arrived in Wellington the next day and had a nightmare trying to find somewhere to stay so then we couldn't wait to leave! City's aren't cut out for campervans, we had to stay on the outskirts and pay a fortune for the privilidge. We were planning on doing loads of stuff, diving and sightseeing and the like, but it was costing us too much in accommodation costs and parking. So we only stayed for 2 nights. We booked up the ferry to the South Island for Monday 12th (yes I know I'm a lot behind with this but I've got a busy schedule!), exactly 2 months after we arrived in Auckland!

The only thing we did in Wellington was our Christmas shopping! We got a bus into town and started with a pint (as you do) then went our separate ways buying practical, travelworthy and cheap gifts for each other. That was fun seeing as we had no idea what shops we where! But after a few hours of trawling round 2nd hand book shops and the $2 shops we met again at the pub for lunch. Rich had the biggest burger in the world and he couldn't finish it, or move after he'd tried so we went to the pictures. Saw Narnia, which was rubbish the acting was shite and it was all very wishy washy!

Now, Wellington is a bizarre place. It's a lot nicer than Auckland, it has character and style but for a capital city it's dead. We couldn't get over the lack of people! Granted it was a Sunday when we did our Christmas shopping but even so, it was 2 weeks before Christmas in a capital city and there was nobody about....Newbury on a Sunday after Christmas would be busier!!

Wellington done, and indeed the North Island....at last.

Yay a new place.....Napier!

2005-12-19T03:31:00.000Z

It would seem that each time we leave Taupo we have a minor 'setback', last time it was the speeding ticket, and this time, Rich had left the lights on on the van, result.....flat battery, again!! We were saved by a couple of Northern lads that Rich collared to push it though!

Napier is a very pretty city....all Art Deco as there was an earthquake in 1931 and everywhere had to be rebuilt and Art Deco was all the rage then! We stayed there for 3 nights. Rich was in his element as we did an 'Art Deco tour of the city', he turned into a Japanese tourist taking about a million pictures of all the buildings, until the camera battery went flat (hee hee!)

Also in Napier we played crazy golf (which Rich won), visited the New Zealand aquarium and saw various NZ marine life, crocodile, sharks, turtles and things, and spent an afternoon chilling out at a spa, swimming, lounging around in hot tubs and steam rooms and stuff.....oh it's a hard life! Rich also made us walk round the city again taking pictures of the buildings he missed out on the other day!

Taupo....again!

2005-12-19T03:20:00.000Z

After stopping briefly in Auckland we headed back to Taupo. A Canadian couple we met on our 2nd visit to Auckland (Mark and Krista) were in Taupo for a few weeks staying in their friends aunties cottage and invited us to join them, so we did as we also wanted to do the Tongariro crossing which was nearby. We spent a couple of nights at the cottage catching up with Mark and Krista, on one of the evenings we took a short drive to a place where a natural hot stream runs into a river, and we all sat in that for an hour or so. That was so nice, but a bit bizarre cos the stream was really hot and the river really cold and whilst sat in a hot bit there'd be a bubble of really cold water from the river....oddness, but very nice :-)

We left Mark and Krista to stay at a campsite closer to the Tongariro crossing as it was a very early start. When we arrived the weather was pretty shite, but we stayed the night with the intention of doing the walk the next day. Next day came and the weather was even worse, raining like hell and gale force winds on the mountains. So we sat round all day playing cards and stuff with the hope that the weather will clear the following day, but it didn't!! We couldn't hang around for days waiting for a clear day, so we gave up on it!!

We headed back to Taupo and had an evening with Mark and Krista drinking wine and playing a card game called 'arsehole', Lesley had taught us this in Fiji but we didn't play it enough to get to grips with it. We have now though, it's a great game, with a great name!

When are you off to Australia?

2005-12-02T14:21:00.000Z

Cos you might want to consider going to http://www.bigdayout.com/lineup/artists.php if you are in the area. And seeing Cut/Copy.

And The Greenhornes.

And Sleater Kinney.

Though, for goodness sake, avoid The Subways...

Paihai....again

2005-12-01T02:50:00.000Z

So, back to Paihai....not much of a hardship though as it's a really nice place. We ended up staying for 5 nights which gave us plenty of time to catch up with Lesley between her shifts. We did a nice walk to the waterfall there, spent a morning Kayaking (ended up both getting sunburnt faces!!) a night at a nice restaurant and even squeezed in a couple of dives....I'm now upto 10 dives :-)

On our last night we decided to treat ourselves to a bed for the night at the backpackers hostel where Lesley was working, we had a BBQ and a few bottles of wine and it was all good, nice to sleep in a bed again, even if it was a single and Rich was in a different room.

So, Paihai done, Lesley caught up with the plan now is to try and get to the South island as quickly as possible, there are still a couple more things we want to do and places to see in the North. Mainly Napier and Wellington. En route to Napier though we'll be stopping at Taupo (where we did the skydiving) to do a walk that we chickened out of last time as we didn't think we'd be fit enough for!!! While we're there we're hoping to catch up with Mark and Krista who we met on our 2nd visit to Auckland and who are currently in Taupo....so, next stop Taupo, via Auckland though, got a few bits to do there and to see Rob and Judith again.

We've been a bit slack in the old photo taking department mainly because we've not done much, but we'll try and be a bit more snap happy from now on!!

Auckland for the 3rd time!

2005-12-01T02:37:00.000Z

Ah, Auckland again!!! Well, we spent almost 2 weeks back in Auckland and basically did stuff all!!! We crashed at Rob and Judiths which is the worlds tiniest apartment!!! But they let us have their livingroom / kitchen floor to sleep on which was fine with our thermorests and sleeping bags!! It was really good of them to put us up, especially for so long. They were both working a lot so didn't get to see quite as much of them as we'd planned, but we did manage a few nights out and a couple of days!!! One day out was a mammoth all dayer, we started at 8.30 am in a sports bar as Rich wanted to watch a Man Utd game, we had breakfast, lunch and dinner in the same bar and finally left at 10.30pm by which point I was in a mess!!!!

A short ferry journey to a place called Devonport and a 2 volcano walk there and an afternoon spent in Auckland Museum are about the only touristy things we did!! The rest of the time we were either drinking, shopping or going to the cinema. We did enjoy our stay in Auckland, but we perhaps spent a little bit too long there!!

But, while we were there, we heard from another girl we met in Fiji, same place we met Rob and Judith. Lesley had arrived in New Zealand and was working in a hostel up in Paihia (we'd already been there 4 weeks ago!!) But, we wanted to catch up with her too, so after about 10 or 11 days in Auckland we headed back up North to Paihia!!

Just in case anybody is wondering (as we're due to be flying out from Christchurch on 2nd Dec) we have changed our flight to 20th Jan now so will be spending Christmas and New Year here. However, the way we're zigzagging around the place we may have to extend that date again!! We'll just have to jig things around and make up the time elsewhere, no worries!!

Waitomo

2005-12-01T02:26:00.000Z

We spent a few days in Waitomo, which is famous for it's glow worm caves and the only reason we visited! On the way out of Taupo however, Rich was pulled over by the police for speeding!! He was clocked doing 94 in a 70 (that's km's not miles!), I think he may've let Rich off if it wasn't for the fact that he drove past the 70 sign at 94!!! He was lenient though as he only booked Rich for 89 which meant a lesser fine, although it was still $120. Fortunately though, their points system has no effect on ours, otherwise Rich would've been in trouble!!!

So, about the only thing we did in Waitomo was a spot of caving. We went on a black water adventure or something like that!! It involved clambering through caves, over rocks and through tunnels, it was dark (we had lights on hard hats) and at some points we were waist deep in very chilly water (also had wetsuits and wellies!) and others we had to swim or had these black rubber rings to float on!! The caves ceiling was littered with glow worms which looked cool....when the lights were all off it was like looking up at a starry sky, except the little lights were blue!! It was all good fun :-)

While we were in Waitomo, we called Rob and Judith (guys who taught us to dive in Fiji) as they'd mailed and said they were in Auckland and were laying down some roots for a while. Waitomo is not too far from Auckland, and Rob and Judith had said we could crash at their flat for as long as we wanted, so we decided to go back there to catch up with them and spend a few days hanging out with them.....so off we went agian....to Auckland!