Kyle & Jade's Travels 2005/6

Wholly crap.....

2006-08-04T11:16:00.000+01:00

.....what have I let myself in for. Why the hell didn't I do this while I was still travelling??? It's now been about a month since the last update and I can't remember for the life of me what we did! Ummmm....

This may take a while!

I'll just summarise as this makes my life easier, and we are home already so seen most of you guys anyway.

Well... looks like we were heading to Nha Trang which was a very cool beach town. We met a bunch of cool guys here (EJ, Sannie, Vance, Lu, Al, Maurice etc etc) and pretty much just chilled with them. We did an island tour where we had a crazed Vietnamese guy who was hooked on karaoke, so we all had to sing and dance around this boat for hours. Huge buffet lunch etc etc - see photos.
Chilled on beach, ate, drunk, slept. Great place though.

Next was Hoi An which was a 12 hour bus journey away and was not a pleasant trip. We got stuck at the back over the engine compartment which was bloody hot, and the a/c didnt really work.
Hoi An however, was an amazing little town set alongside the river. Loads of cool restaurants, very cheap amazing hotels and the best place in the world to get tailor made clothes!
Jade and I both had a lot of stuff made, including a pimping pin stripe suit for me! :o)
We were staying in a hotel that would easily have cost 150 quid a night in the UK and we were paying around 9 quid between us!
Highly recommend going here for anyone who wants absolutley anything tailor made to very high standard!
Also met up with a few guys we met in Nha Trang here too.

Hue was next, and this place was crap to say the least. Absolutely nothing to do, so we booked the first bus straight back out. That's about it for here!

We then had our final bus journey of the entire trip! We had a 14 hour drive to Hanoi which was pretty comfortable and I managed to sleep most of the way.
Hanoi is one HECTIC place! Even more so than London I reckon. Absolutley loved it there though. We met up with EJ and Sannie here and ended all going on a 3 day, 2 night boat trip around Ha Long bay which was awesome.
Basically huge limestone cliffs jutting out of the water, great kayaking, lots of swimming and generally a cool trip.

From here we had to do the most backwards thing ever and fly from Hanoi to Singapore to get to Hong Kong. They are only a few hundred miles apart but Singapore airlines don't fly direct??? Crazy!
Anyway, flight was fine, although a little weird being on a plane after doing ALL our journeys on a bus.

Hong Kong is AMAZING! It's right up there at the top of the list of our most favourite places, just pipped by NZ. I could literally move over to HK to live. It really is such a cool place - probably more so as it was the most civilized place we'd been to in months.
The place is spotless, everything works, everything is on time and there is a shed load of stuff to do!
We were thankfully staying in this really plush 4* hotel that I had booked as an early birthday present for Jade, and we even got a free upgrade! :o)
We did soooo much in the 4 days we were there, including hooking up with Jonni from the B'ham ghettos! ;o)

A brief list of what we did, then you can compare to the photos.
Hong Kong Island and all the crazy building, the peak tram for the most amazing view of the HK skyline, especially at night, Causeway Bay for shopping, Nathan Road (where we were staying) for shopping, avenue of stars (although they were all chinese - but there was a very cool statue of Bruce Lee), basically lots of shopping centres, Kowloon park, ladies market, mens market, sports market, goldfish market, bird market, flower market, La Kwon Fai for a few beverages, Soho for food, the mid level esculators (basically esculators that take you from one district to another for lazy people), Victoria harbour for the skyline view across to HK Island etc etc.... the list goes.

To sum it up we had an amazing time and would love to go back!

So...this is the end of our trip and we are now home in England! :o( It's not great to be back, but guess the whole thing had to end at some point!
Back to the grind of daily life, job hunting, flat hunting and English weather - although that is going crazy at the moment - hottest summer in god knows how many years.

Well for all of you that we met while we were away, it was great to meet you guys and hopefully we'll see you all soon when you make your way over to England. For those of you who have been reading this from England, I hope that I haven't waffled too much - I know I get carried away, and if we haven't seen you already - we'll see you very soon!

Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

Angkor What?

2006-06-25T11:13:00.000+01:00

Well Cambodia has now been and gone and we are well into our Vietnam leg. We're currently heading up the Ho Chi Minh Trail and have done, Saigon, Mui Ne and Da Lat (where we are now), and off to Nha Trang tomorrow.

Cambodia definitely had it's good bits and bad bits! The bus ride from the Thai/Cam border to Siem Reap is possibly the most uncomfortable ride ever! We were crammed into a mini bus for the 6 hour dirt road ride. I got lumbered with a broken chair and we were attacked by grasshoppers flying into the minibus from outside. One managed to fly right at me from outside and clock me one right in the eyeball! So I sucessfully smeared him on the van floor with my flip flop - there's one that will be hopping no longer! :o)
Jade and 2 blokes in the back were having a fit as one was hopping around all over them and they couldnt see it because it was dark - I found it pretty hilarious!

We visited the Angkor temples in Siem Reap on the first day, putting in a solid 8 hours, followed by the notorious "killing fields" which was really sad. I don't know if any of you know about this, but basically Cambodia was under rule by the Pol Pot as recently as 30 years ago and all citizens were made to work the rice fields. People who were too intelligent or were lazy were basically killed, and this wiped out somewhere in the region of half the population. This museum coupled with the one in Phnom Penh is a tribute to the killing and they have a monument that contains 5000 skulls which were uncovered in the fields. Not a nice thing to see, but it really makes you realise how terrible some people have had it, and so recently too.

Anyway, the temples were amazing, and if any of you have seen the first Tomb Raider film, this is where they filmed a lot of it. It's really hard to explain what it was like (just think Tomb Raider come Indiana Jones!), but hopefully the photos will help with that when I get around to uploading them. We went to Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and a few others that I can't remember what they were called. We hired a tuk tuk driver who carted us around all day and pretty much for the whole time that we were in Siem Reap - he was like our personal chauffeur! :o)
We also met up with Tommy, Renee and Jan (from the Laos boat) here which made Siem Reap more fun. Our nights were filled with beers, good food, cards and football! What more could you ask for!?!

Next stop was Phnom Penh which was a nice enough city, but more of the same. Cambodia is full of people begging and latching on to tourists which is soooooo annoying! Fair enough there are some that genuinely can't work or whatever, but 99% just walk around and hold there hands out to you to give them money because you are white! Really started to p*ss us off in Cambodia. It wasn't like Laos where they are just as poor, but no one begs. People actually try to make the best of a bad situation and make things to sell etc, but the Cambodians just like to get something for nothing! Oh yeah - would you believe a lady on the street actually tried to sell her baby for $20!!!
We didn't really to do much here as we just wanted to get to Vietnam, so we just visited the Russian market where there is amazingly cheap knock off CD's and DVD's and I nearly came away with the Simpsons series 1-16 boxset for 30 quid. The will power was strong that day, so managed not to buy it, but they had sooo many to choose from. Lost series 2 was as fiver - sooo tempted!
Oh yeah, and because I didn't buy the Simpsons boxset the women in the stall started yelling "You are bad man" over and over, even after we had left her stall and were walking away! Oh the guilt - not!
We also went to Tuol Sleng (S21) which was a former prison for the people arrested during the Pol Pot regime. The prison was left exactly as it was when it was shut down with blood on the walls, all the rooms still with the beds that people were tortured on, all the cells etc. Again very disturbing. Apparantly 14000 people were killed here by the Pol Pot soldiers.

I had a rather annoying incident at our hostel, where the guy that did our laundry managed to dye 2 of my white tops a nice shade of patchy dark pink and then proceeded to blame us for it! One had to go in the bin and one I had to re-wash myself about 4 times to get the dye out. So my rucksack is now one top lighter! :o)

Enough of Cambodia, we are now in Vietnam and loving it! The place is really cool, but very hectic. When we were in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) there are 4 million mopeds and crossing the street is a literal nightmare! You basically just have to walk out slowly and they drive round you - scary the first few times but you just have to get used to it.
We did a Mekong Delta trip in HCM which was cool and got to go to a coconut candy mill, went on a row boat through coconut orchards, saw some vietnamese traditional singing etc. All in all a good day. We also went to the Cu Chi tunnels which are the tunnels that the Vietcong used in the war with America. Got to crawl through some very small tunnels and then I got to shoot and AK47!!! How cool is that!?!
We went to the War Remnants musuem too which showed all the atrocities that occurred during the war with America including all the deformities caused by the notorious Agent Orange. They even had 2 foetuses in jars showing just how bad the birth deformities were - really gruesome!

Next port of call was Mui Ne which is a really nice beach front town with loads of cool places to eat, drink and chill. This is a famous place for windsurfing competitions. We hired a moped here to check out the sites (sdand dunes, canyons) and basically just relaxed for a couple of days. We then got the bus to Da Lat, where we are now, which is 1500m above sea level and very cold - actually wearing trousers and jumpers! It's like being back in England, and it's raining! I suppose it'll be good to help ease us back into to it before we get home. Pretty cool place, but the rain is stopping us seeing it, so hopefully it'll stop soon.

That's as far as it goes. Off to Nha Trang tomorrow.

Hope everyone is well - that is if anyone actually still reads this anymore! :o)

Take care
K&J
xxx

PS It's stopped raining - woo!
PPS 22 days left..... :o(

Bad BeerLao!

2006-06-16T07:27:00.000+01:00

Well guys, we've travelled far and wide since the last update with many a long journey!

After Bangkok we got the bus to Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) for a couple of days where we did a hilltribe trek, an elephant ride through the jungle and bamboo rafting. All were really good and the photos have been updated to show what we did.

It was pretty cool to get out in the jungle visiting hilltribes after spending so long lazing on the beach. We went to two tribes at seperate locations each having their own special trades.
After this we went for the elephant trek in the jungle which was great fun - and also a first for both of us. We had "the Daddy" of the pack who insisted on trying to climb up really steep hills to munch on the bamboo! Naughty Dumbo! It got a bit hairy when our guide decided to jump off our elephant leaving us to fend for ourselves!!!
We then went bamboo rafting down a river which we have no idea what it was called, but was an experience to remember! We thought it was going to be relaxing but ended up going through some rapids and getting drenched, as well as seeing quite a few people fall off the raft into the rocks! :o)
Jade also had a little visitor on the raft when we went through some bushes. We all know how Jade is petrified of bugs, well a big spider jumped off the bush onto her back then crawled into her hair! She nearly capsized the raft screaming and jumping around trying to get me to get it off! Girls eh!!! She sure does attract them!

We then booked ourselves transport into Laos to Luang Phabang, which took 3 days - the longest journey ever, but turned out to be good fun because of the people we met.
We had 1 day travelling in a minibus to the border, followed by a 2 day, 1 night trip down the Mekong River on a longboat.
We stopped off in a small town in the middle of nowhere, where we still managed to catch the opening games for the world cup! :o) They don't have electricity at night there but, a guy put on a generator just for us!
The two day journey was really good fun and we saw some amazing scenery. It also helped that two of our boat gang had guitars to help pass the time!

We finally arrived at Luang Phabang and rewarded ourselves with beer, shooters and the England game! We drank a considerable amount of BeerLao which leaves you with the worst hangover!!! Didn't stop us drinking it every night though!
We spent a fair amount of time chilling here (as the place was really cool) after the long journey but still managed to catch a few of the sights too. We went to Khong Si waterfall (which was amazing) where our Tuk Tuk broke down and filled with smoke, climbed up Sacred Hill for a panoramic view, shopped at the night market, walked around the penninsula etc etc...

The whole gang from the boat stuck together and we all travelled to Vang Vieng by bus.
There wasn't much to this town and Jade saw even less as she was ill here and spent the day in bed. I however, went tubing down the Nong Xai river with Tommy, Renee, Chris and Mike. The river is lined with bars and loads of bamboo structures to throw yourself off after having a few BeerLao's. Very cool and very relaxing and Jade was very jealous she missed it!
As this was pretty much the only thing to do here, we decided to move on to Vientiane. Instead of taking the incredibly uncomfortable and boring bus, we decided to kayak our way there down the Nam Lik river. This was sooo much better than the bus and we wish we could travel between more places like that instead.
We stopped off for a BBQ after negotiating some rapids, where only Mike fell in, followed by some cliff jumping (check out the photos).
On the whole it was a great day until we had to get a tuk tuk for the last part of the journey, where they crammed 18 people into this pick up truck plus all their luggage - and if you know how much just Jade and I bought travelling then you'll know just how crammed that would be!!! Tuk Tuk's don't seem to be loving us all that much lately as this one nearly conked out too. The driver then foolishly decided to take off the radiator cap with a very hot engine and also while the engine was still running, which resulted in the cap shattering and covering Mike with boiling hot water!

Vientiane was pretty drab compared to the rest of Laos and we were expecting more from the capital. We only stuck around here for 2 days as there really was nothing to do! The group finally split up here after hanging around wathcing the world cup and playing cards. We all headed in our seperate directions, although have planned to meet up with a few of them in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Which brings us back to Bangkok after another 11 hour bus journey! We are just stopping over night here before yet another 11 hour bus journey to Cambodia tomorrow morning! Oh the joys!

Hope all is well with everyone.

Speak soon - only 5 weeks until we are home! :o(
K&J
xxx

Anyone for Ping Pong?!?

2006-06-05T06:25:00.000+01:00

We've now done all the islands (Samui, Phan Ngan and Tao) on the Gulf coast of Thailand which were amazing. They all had their good bits and would highly recommend them to anyone who's heading out this way.
We spent about 6 days on Samui staying at Chaweng Beach. We lived it up a bit here compared to the rest of Asia and treated ourselves quite a lot. We had a really nice room with a/c that had a daily cleaner (which is almost unheard of in most accomodation over here), en-suite bathroom, and situated in a really nice resort. We bought quite a lot of stuff too, but wont bore you with the details!

We mostly just relaxed in Samui, hitting the beach when the weather was good enough. We had a fair amount of overcast and rainy weather while we were here, so just had to sit it out in bars watching movies!

After Samui we caught the ferry to Ko Phan Ngan, which is the island famous for its full moon parties. There wasn't one on when we were there, which I reckon is a good thing judging from the pill popping ravers that were dotted about there anyway! Losers!
The beach here was a lot nicer than the one at Samui but the place on the whole was quite a lot smaller. We travelled around a bit here in the Songthaews to see a bit more of the island, but generally just lazed around on the beach again! :o) We even had a bit of a car chase as well, as some guy hit the side of the van we were in while we were driving, then our driver chased him! Bit scary as the roads are appalling! Another funny thing about it was the guy that hit the van looked like Claude the Scuba instructor from Along Came Polly (Ben Stiller/Jennifer Aniston film). We saw him get away, and then saw him walking down our road about 10 mins later, so he obviously ditched the moped and went to hide. Anyway we left the next day for Koh Tao and who should turn up when we got there - Claude - and guess what, he was a scuba instructor! Guess you really had to be there, but it was very funny!

There was also another funny incident here, which was more funny for Jade than me, which involved a pizza, a lizard and 2 poo's! We were watching a film and I was eating a pizza when I caught something out the corner of my eye and I felt a wet sensation on my leg. I looked at my food and saw something really smooth and brown on the top, which I assumed was a mushroom (No I didn't eat it before you start thinking that!), but was still puzzled about the small wet patch on my leg! I started poking around at the "mushroom" as it looked very suspicious and after closer inspection, and checking the ceiling, we realised that this pretty big lizard had just left me a present on my pizza and weed on my leg! So that was the end of the pizza. The fun didn't stop there though, as after I'd given up on the pizza and just carried on watching the film, another present was kindly given to me in the form of a splat just next to my plate on the table and another wee on my leg! Jade was finding all this very amusing, so I cut my losses and moved seats! Don't I just have all the luck! :o(

Next stop was Koh Tao which is the island more known for its Scuba Diving. I was planning on doing the advanced open water certificate here but money and time was running a little short so just opted for some fun dives. The diving here was pretty good, but it still doesn't live up to Raro standards! I definitely think we were too spoilt going there first!
Other than the diving, we just lazed.......yeah you get the idea!

We then had an 11 hour trip to Bangkok where we are now. The place isn't nearly as bad as everyone was making it out to be. Yeah some areas are a bit annoying offering you ping pong (if you don't know, you don't want to know!) shows, live sex shows, sex movies, and all this was being offered to me while Jade was with me. Although this only happened in one part of Bangkok where we went to a night market at Pat Pong. Other than that, it's a lot cleaner than we expected and were told to expect, and it's not nearly as hectic as Kuala Lumpur.
We are staying on the road just behind Koh San Road which is pretty famous if any of you have heard of it.
Everything is dirt cheap here too and we wished we'd waited to buy some of the stuff we had already bought - oh well!

We've been to the Grand Palace which is amazing, Wat Po which is the reclining Bhudda (45m long), which is also pretty amazing, we saw some other big landmark just across the river from there too, but can't remember what it is called. We've been to Chatachak market which has over 8000 stalls and was a bloody nightmare to try and find anything or even how to get out of the damn thing, Pat Pong market, MBK center (I had to use some serious will power here as the 4th floor is dedicated to gadgets!!!), the whole Siam area, Koa San Road area and loads more. It really is a shoppers heaven here - maybe even more so than Singapore!

We're now just waiting until 6pm for our 11 hour/700km bus journey to Chiang Mai that cost 2.80 pounds, so thought we may as well update the blog!

Not much else to report. Hope everyone is well, and we'll see most of you soon! Only 7 weeks left! :o(

Take care
K&J
xxx

PS I must be browner than I thought I was as I've had 3 or 4 people ask me if I'm Israeli! :o(

Hello massaaaaaage.....

2006-05-20T12:06:00.000+01:00

We've been in Thailand now for a couple of weeks and absolutely love it. It's got such a nice atmosphere and more laid back than Malaysia. Also the perv situation seems to have disappeared which is good!

I'll continue from where we left off. Penang Hill was pretty cool, except it rained and we got wet! :o( The bhudda was pretty impressive as were the statues surrounding it. The temple (South East Asia's largest apparantly) was cool too. We had to trek (yes trek) up this huge hill to get there, but it was worth it in the end. By the time we actually took the cable car up Penang Hill the weather got worse and the clouds were getting lower. At the top, we just managed to get a few snaps before visibility was reduced to about 5m, which isn't great when you have gone somewhere for the spectacular views! Typical Kyle and Jade luck!

We also checked out Batu Ferringhi beach resort which was skanky to say the least and not a reason I would go back to Penang for! Lots of dead fish on the beach and scum in the water! There were kids swimming in it, which didn't seem like the healthiest thing to do!

We caught a minibus to Krabi (10 hours) from Penang crossing into Thailand. We had the most uncomfortable minibus with the most annoying driver who refused to turn up the aircon even though it was nearly 100 degrees inside (I kid you not!). I was ready to spark the guy out by the time we reached Krabi!
Krabi was pretty nice, and we saw our first Boots (the chemist) since leaving England 8 months ago! It was such a novelty and we spent lots of money in there! :o)
We did a a tour of James Bond island by long boat, also going to a floating village called Gypsy village, as well seeing Monkey temple. Long day but worth it. Although my camera ran out of batteries before getting to the main part of James Bond island, so we have no photos of anything which was pretty annoying!

We got the ferry over to Ko Phi Phi island and had our first experience of being ripped off by touts! We were sold a ferry ticket to Phuket for 450baht which we were told would cost 500 on the island, but which turned out to cost 250 on the island! We wont be fooled like that again. We now assume that everyone that talks to us is a liar! :o)

Ko Phi Phi was really nice and we stayed in a room that was the best one of our entire trip, but still cost less than 7.50 a night between us! It also had sky tv with a channel that played continuous films 24 hours a day. As soon as the credits of one film finished the next film started! So we didn't get much sleep! All the films were pretty new too!
We did a tour of the 2 Phi Phi islands, Don and Leh and went to the actual beach from the film 'The Beach'. It was pretty good, but there was clever camera trickery in the film! The scenery around Phi Phi was amazing and the water was gorgeous. We did loads of snorkelling (which still doesn't beat Raro) and swam to a tiny secluded island. Jade also tried to feed the fish with watermelon, and got bit. You could actually see the teeth marks! What is it with Jade and getting bitten!?! :o)

We had 4 nights on Phi Phi before getting the boat across to Phuket. We stayed just along from the main resort at a place called Kata. It was really nice, although for some reason everything there was Danish. Never found out why either??? So if anyone knows, email us!
The weather wasn't that great while we were there as it is now heading into Monsoon season. We had to take our waterproof jackets around with us as it would just suddenly starting p*ssing it down.

We went to Phuket town, Ao Patong (the roudy resort) and Ao Karon. All ok, but not somewhere we'd go back for a holiday. No where near as nice as other parts of Thailand.

We then took a minibus from Phuket (west coast) to Surat Thani (east coast) where we caught a ferry to Ko Samui where we are now. It's really nice here and we have already bought quite a few bargains using our haggling skills. Weather still isnt that great here either, and is supposed to pick up from Sunday onwards, so we'll be hitting the beach then.

By the way, the title for this post is because in Thailand every corner you turn you are offered a massage. Well actually it's not a massage, it's a massaaaaaaaage! They either don't know how to say the word properly or they just like singing it to us! It's so funny.

Hope you are all well.

Take care
K&J
xxx

Sunshine's Calling...

2006-05-05T14:24:00.000+01:00

Well well well, we've had a rather pleasant last couple of weeks skipping from island to island. I know, I know, it's a chore but somebody has to do it!
Right here goes....While in KL we did the usual sights of the twin towers, sky tower, markets, golden triangle, attempted to see some temples but failing miserably, saw some he/she's, got harassed (but's just the norm now being a westerner/white person in Asia), sweated a lot, bought some fake stuff, and I think that's about it. We skipped around KL on the monorail and tube, and had some quite funny experiences. We went to this market in Chow Kit, which was recommended by our 'Rough Guide' book as a good market and nice place to eat. Well, when we got there it all started off fine until we hit the centre of this market which turned out to be harder to get out of than the Labyrinth! To top things off, this was also the 'wet' section of the market, meaning the fish, meat, poultry etc, which is all well and good, until you saw it. The place was horrific, how anybody who buys anything from there doesn't die from food poisoning or something far worse is beyond me. As far as I was concerned it was pretty disgusting, but Jade was finding it quite a bit worse. The guys were sweeping fish water into the walkways (which were about 2 foot wide), as well as chicken off cuts etc, and the smell was awful. Jade started to feel a bit sick at this point so we decided to head out of the market to get her some fresh air, and this is where it all started going wrong. We couldn't find our way out and were going deeper and deeper into the fish guts and chicken heads section. Jade was fighting back the urges to chuck right there, so I had to push our way through the stalls to where I could see sunlight (it was all undercover). We managed to get to sunlight only to find that we'd hit the back street behind the market where the bins were. The smell was twice as bad here, with squashed whole chicken heads on the floor, old fish remains and basically any old bit of fish, meat etc that hadn't been sold, or that was so gone off that they couldn't sell it. Combine that with 30+ degrees and you get the picture. We practically ran out this ally before Jade added to the smells. We got her some water and she started to feel better. We had actually headed there for lunch, but decided to give it a miss after that! I still find it funny, but Jade doesn't see the funny side! :o)

Oh as a side note, another thing that we have found in Malaysia is that the whole country is full of perverts! There is rarely a guy that walks past Jade without staring or beeping his horn. You'd think they'd never seen a white girl before. The worst thing about it is that they are so obvious about it. I'm not sure the word subtle exists out here. If they are travelling from behind us, they actually slow down enough that they can turn there heads to see what she looks like. We were speaking with some other couples out here that have had the same thing. Dirty old b**tards!

Anyway, back to KL. We went to this one cool market (Petaling) where they sell all this knock off gear and I got a billabong bag for 2 or 3 pounds as well as a Tag watch that is literally a complete replica of the real one. Can't wear it in the water, but never mind eh! :o) Some of the watches there are amazing, they do all the kinetic ones, with sapphire glass, water resistant etc etc. They go for around 20 quid but it's still a bargain when they look exactly like the real ones. They have all the catalogues there to compare them to. I was well impressed. If I hadn't just bought a new watch in Oz, I'd have had myself a couple of the good ones!

Think that'll do for KL now. Next we caught the bus to a place called Cherating on the east coast which we were told was amazing. Ghost town springs to mind. The first few hours we were there we didn't see a single person! Beach was OK, place was clean enough but the hut we were staying in had so many holes in it that it felt like we were sleeping outside! We stayed in that one for a night then changed to a much nicer one. The place didn't get any better so we skipped town and headed for Marang where we caught a ferry to the Kapas Islands. This place was amazing. It was tiny, but it was so clean, and really was like a mini paradise island. There wasn't much there, so excellent for relaxing, which we really needed to do after the hectic life style that we are leading! ;o)
We stayed in a hut that was actually on the beach, so we didn't have far to walk in the morning! We only stayed here for one night as our excellent planning skills got us over there the day before bank holiday and everything was fully booked. This gave a good excuse to head straight to the Perhentian Islands, so weren't too fussed. However, this damn bank holiday nearly caught us short again when we got there. We got the speed boat over to Perhentian Kecil after being told that no one books accommodation on the island and people just turn up. Well we just turned up and the place was heaving. We went to stay at Long Beach and got dropped off by the water taxi at the far end. We tried to get a room at the first place that was fully booked, so we dumped our bags and I headed down the beach checking the resorts to see if anywhere had a room. 30 mins and 5 places later, still no room, every one was fully booked. It was sooo hot and I was sweating buckets, so I headed back to the bags to get Jade to check the rest. She worked her way down the other half of the beach and every single place was fully booked. We were starting to panic then as we'd just got the last boat over to the island and there weren't any boats back until the next day. Jade got to the last resort and they had just had a cancellation and had 1 room available. So she took it without even looking at it (luckily it wasn't a sh*t hole). Straight after that 2 more sets of people turned up looking for rooms and we'd just gotten the last hut on the island! That was such a relief. It was very nearly a bad start to the one place we were looking forward to going to the most in Malaysia! With all that sorted we started to relax, and started off with some grub and beer!

I've just realised I've written and waffled quite a lot so I'll try to keep it short.
Perhentian Islands are amazing and I highly recommend to anyone to go there. We did a 5 hour snorkelling trip and saw giant turtles, squillions of fish and went to place called shark point where they always see sharks, but guess what, today there weren't any there! We swam round 3 times and didn't see a single one! I really really want to see a shark now. I was pretty much dead against it at the beginning, but we have both now warmed to the idea!
Anyway, we sunbathed a fair bit, chilled out, ate a lot etc. Had a cool time.

Our next port of call was/is Penang where we are now. We've been here a day but not really done much so will write about this later. We had the worst bus journey to get here though. First we had to get a taxi for an hour to the bus station (a fiver :o) ) then wait 4 hours in the bus station for the bus before the 7 hour journey. We caught the bus at 10pm, so had a night journey which should've been fine, except the guy in charge of the aircon must've been wearing thermal undies as it was set to full for the whole journey. It was soooo cold. We had to put socks on, have our beach towels wrapped around our legs, Jade had her jumper on with another towel over the top of that, then we had a towel over our heads! I've never been so cold on a bus before. It made it so uncomfortable, and to top it off, my seat was broken, so everytime we went over a bump (which is a lot over here) my seat jumped from reclining to upright and back to reclining again, which pretty much stopped me sleeping the whole time! I know what you're thinking, yes reclining seats on a bus is pretty good, and it usually is, but this one felt like we were sitting on an iceberg when the titanic hit it!

I'll stop moaning now, it's nice and hot here (very humid) so we'll try to see some sights tomorrow. Off to see Malaysia's largest Bhudda and a trip up Penang Hill on the cable car.

Hope you guys are all well, and feel free to email us whenever you want.

Take Care
K&J
xxx

The journey continues...

2006-04-23T13:00:00.000+01:00

** Jade keeps telling me off because I have forgotten to mention that on our last night in Sydney, Kerry took her to see James Blunt in concert as an early birthday present! She says it was amazing and they were standing a couple of rows from the front so were in the centre of the action! **

Since our last update we have travelled pretty far and are now in Kuala Lumpur.
On our last couple of days in Singapore we went over to a small island called Sentosa for our 4 year anniversary and stayed in a really nice hotel (a huuuge difference from the likes of the Hawaii hostel we've been in). The whole place is like a theme park type island with loads of different activities and sights to see. We spent the day fitting in as much as we could, which included another Luge (tobogan/go-kart cross breed) taking our tally to 3 now, as well as the aquarium where we got to touch sharks/stingrays/puffa fish etc. We also went to a fullsize simulator type ride in a cinema where everyone sits in seperate boothes that move around to match up with the movie, and then to see a pink dolphin lagoon show! We didn't even know that pink dolphins existed - next they'll be showing us those flying pigs!
Our last day in Singapore was a bit of a naughty day for me, as we headed to the main shopping district, which also happens to have a huge selection of electronics shops. It wasn't as if we had even been looking around for ages and I got dragged into a sale, it was in our first shop! We spent well over an hour in there, and I ended up coming out with a digital video camera with built in 6 megapixel digital camera (that fits in the palm of your hand!), a 2Gb memory card, spare battery and tripod! Oops! Those damn tax free savings! Oh well, hopefully I've gotten it out of my system now (yeah right!!! I nearly walked out with a Canon 350D too!). I worked out it was over 150 quid cheaper than the UK price, so I definitely got a good deal.
I was all spent out after that, so we just did some window shopping before heading back over to Chinatown for Jade to get her hair "rebonded" which is some fancy Japanese process that chemically straightens your hair so that hair straighteners are obsolete! It took 4.5 hours and cost a small fortune, but Jade seems to think it was worth it, so it's all good! Plus it is a damn sight cheaper than my electronics addiction.

The next morning we caught a bus to Mersing in Malaysia (4 hour trip and cost 4 pounds!) and got straight on the speed boat over to Pulau Tioman, which is a tiny island where they filmed South Pacific! I had one small complication on the bus journey there when we had to change buses, and that was me getting stuck in the door with my rucksack on and two holdals of hand luggage. I think the bus driver must've thought I wasn't getting off quick enough as he just shut the door on me. I was literally stuck in the door and two guys had to shout for the driver as he had walked off the bus and on his way to the cafe! Jade was completely oblivious to the fact that I was still trapped in the door as she had half walked into the station herself! But when she finally saw, she decided to laugh instead of helping me get out! Typical women!

The island itself was amazing and the huts we were staying in were less than 10 quid a night which isn't half bad! The whole resort of Salang was no more than 300m in length and ran parallel to the beach. All the restaurants/bars were on the beach and our meals were costing less than a quid each! Can't complain at that.
We have finally started to top up our tans again as we were slowly heading back into pastyness. Jade decided to take it one step too far though and now looks like she is wearing a red body suit with white pants!
We did a 4 hour snorkelling trip around Coral Island and a couple of bays which was amazing and unlike our Barrier Reef snorkelling trip, 99% of this one was actually spent in the water rather than the boat! We swam with turtles (again) as well as thousands of different tropical fish, and Jade even saw a stingray too.
We also had another small blunder on Jades part while we were there as she locked our key in our chalet and the guy had to hammer the lock off as he couldn't find the spare key. He decided to ignore my advice of unscrewing 4 screws (it wasn't the most secure place) to get in, in favour of hammering it and breaking the door in the process! Each to their own I guess!

We stayed on the island for 3 nights before catching the ferry back to the mainland this morning and getting a coach (6 hours - less than 4 quid!) to Kuala Lumpur. On the ferry ride, our boat managed to get stuck in the sand as it went through water that was too shallow, so we all had to climb onto another boat to get back to shore. This one then proceeded to get stuck also, so we had to climb onto a 3rd boat to finally get back to shore! Don't we just get all the luck!

Anyway, we are now in KL and going in search of food. Will update again soon with more tales from our adventures.

Hope you are all well.
Take care
K&J
xxx

Singapore baby....

2006-04-16T13:59:00.000+01:00

Well we have finally left the comfort of Kerry's flat in Sydney and made it over to Asia! It's quite a shock losing all the creature comforts, but it's about time we did some proper backpacking! :o)

Everything seems to work perfectly over here so far. We got off the plane, had our luggage and were through customs in about 10 mins! Then got straight on the MRT (about 50p) for our 20 minute journey to our hotel. If only Heathrow and the tube worked as well in England!

It's not all good though as it's 30 degrees (which isn't the bad bit) but it seems like there is about 99% humidity all the time! You get out of the shower sweating! Yes I know, nice thought for all of you! Lugging around a 20kg rucksack with another 5kg's for hand luggage = very sweaty Kyle & Jade!

Anyway, enough of that. We've been very busy since we got here, and seen loads of stuff already. We didn't get in until about 7pm yesterday, so didn't have too much time to sight see, so we just checked out the shopping malls and food court on Bugis Street before crashing out at the hotel. Today however, we've more than made up for our lack of exercise in Sydney by walking what feels like from one side of Singapre to the other! We moved hotel this morning which was a mission in itself, then headed to Suntec City (more shopping) which has the world largest water fountain. After all that excitement we needed to relax, so went to Raffles for a Singapore Sling (it had to be done!), then checked out Raffles City, followed by a huge food complex called Chijmes. I then got turned away from the New Asia Bar on the 72nd floor of the Swissotel building for wearing a vest! Cheeky b**tards, how the hell do they expect you to wear anything more in that heat!!!! :o) (I was wearing shorts too in case you were wondering.It wasn't just a vest!) ;o)

Anyway, headed to the Esplanade, Merlion Park, Boat Quay and Clark Quay which were all pretty cool in their own way. It was at Clark Quay we encountered our first monsoon! You'll see from the photos that there is a pretty big storm brewing in the background! The heavens opened and it poured down for about an hour, so poor us had to sit in a bar and drink beer until it passed! We were really bummed about that! ;o)

We also checked out the Bugis street markets among many others which had some quality knock off gear dead cheap, but with Thailand looming it's just not the time to start buying that yet. The stuff was much better quality than I expected though, and 3 quid for a quiksilver t-shirt can't be bad! They do get a tad confused with their copies though as one stall had blokes t-shirts with the roxy girls logo splashed all over the front!
They had some top quality knock off watches too like the fake Dolce & Gabana (D&G) with D&F written on them - couldn't help but laugh. The TAG ones were funny too, called TAF. Guess they just picked the closest letter in the alphabet!

We're both knackered after all that walking and beer drinking so gonna head back to our new hotel, which is a dive but half the price of the first one! Loads more planned for the next few days, so will update again soon!

Hope you are all well. Drop us a mail if you're bored.

By the way, Jade and I are now on our old English mobile numbers, so don't use the Australian ones any more.

Take care
K&J
xxx

Bye Bye Ernie..... :o(

2006-03-31T02:51:00.000+01:00

Well that sad day is finally upon us and we just waved goodbye to Ernie! Jade got very emotional but managed to hold back the tears. It was really weird seeing someone else getting in to our home and driving off. We had him for 3 short months and he served us really well for over 11,000km's! Hopefully he's gone to a good home. A guy from Manchester and girl from Finland bought him, and will be living in him for the next 12 months!
Oh well enough of that.

After we left Melbourne we headed for Lakes Entrance which was a nice little town just above yet another beach named 90 mile beach. Didn't do much here as we just stayed a night before heading up the coast to Merimbula for our last ever stay in Ernie. We had our last photos with him and I gave him another coat of polish to attract some new owners.
Our last drive was quite a long one but on the way a guy phoned up to view the van and that was even before we were back in Sydney. Luckily he lived just outside the city so called in to show him Ernie on the way through. They were really interested in the van but got pipped to the post by the other guys who came up with the moolah first! We even made a profit on the van by selling him for more than we paid! :o)

Anyway, we're back in Sydney now and staying with Kerry again (lucky her)! Not much else to report so I'll keep this post short.

We've just had to pay out over $600 for our visas for Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, so our pockets are feeling a little empty. Now researching our way out of Singapore as we cant be issued a visa unless we have a ticket booked out of the country - how annoying.

Oh well, hope all is good with everyone.

Take care
K&J
xxx

Jeez...it's been a long while!

2006-03-21T13:10:00.000Z

Well guys, we're gonna have to keep this fairly compact as we've been majorly slacking on the blogger front. We're almost back to Sydney now, so as you can imagine we've travelled a fair distance from Hervey Bay.

After Fraser Island we stopped at a few small places as overnight stops on our way to Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands. We did a 3 day 2 night sailing trip on a Maxi Racing yacht called "The Card" and had a fantastic time. We met some really cool people (you know who you are) that we have managed to meet up with a few more times in Oz and hopefully again when we get back to England. If you have checked the photos then you will already have seen the photos from the Whitsunday’s so I won’t bother going into too much detail. We did a lot of sailing, snorkelling, eating and drinking - see photos. The snorkelling was fantastic around the Whitsunday Islands as it’s so close to The Great Barrier Reef. We saw the most enormous fish that we’ve ever seen in our lives!! His name was Elvis and he was a 1.5m long Maori Wrasse. It gave us a bit of a shock at first, you don’t expect to see a fish nearly the same size as you swimming straight for you!!

Next stop was Mission Beach which was a very small town right on the beach, lovely place but tiny. Then off to Townsville for a night as a stopover on the way to Cairns. Nice town, nice beach, nuff said.

Cairns was next and we stayed here for just under a week in a 5* campsite with loads of cool stuff. Australia’s largest jumping pillow for one, mini golf, outdoor cinema, free pancake breakfasts, free aqua aerobics (which was the 1st bit of exercise we’ve done in about 2 months!!) and loads more. Great place. Cairns was a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be and also a lot quieter. We took a couple of days out in the middle of the week to drive up to Cape Tribulation via Port Douglas to do a snorkelling trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. We made the effort to do the trip from there because the coral is really grey and sun bleached in Cairns, and a lot is dead from the thousands of people that snorkel there every week. Where we did it from there are only 2 boats that go with a max of about 60 between the two, so loads less crowded and the coral was brilliant colours and the fish were amazing.
We were actually quite lucky with the time that we got to Cairns as a few days after we were there a cyclone hit. It rained alot anyway as its pretty high up in the tropics, but it absolutely bucketed down just after we left.
I've got a fact for you guys, Cape Tribulation is the only place in the world where two World Heritage sites meet. The Rainforest and The Great Barrier Reef. That’s just a little trivia that might come in handy one drunken night down the pub! :o)

We really didn’t want to leave Cairns, and not because it was an amazing place, but because we knew we had a 5000km drive to do through the outback and Ernie doesn’t have aircon!

Our first trip was to Charter Towers which one guy from the outback referred to as the "Big Smoke" which has a population of 150,000 so you can imagine just how much hustle and bustle this place had. It’s the second largest city in Queensland and has the population that equals Ipswich!!! Not exactly what we’d call the big smoke!
We basically just stayed one night in each place on the way through outback as we wanted to get through as quickly as possible.
Our next stop was Richmond which had the worst flies in the history of the world. We had to sit in our van in 40 degree heat as the flies were just so overwhelming and annoying. It also didn't help that we drove through a plague of grasshoppers on the way and had (literally) 1000 dead grasshoppers plastered ALL over the van! Next stop was Mount Isa which is actually a fairly large and commercialised place (it had a McD's!) considering its over 1000km's into the outback. The first thing we did here was to get a McFlurry! :o) True Brits!!

We were supposed to drive to Barkly Homestead Roadhouse after Mt Isa as it was just over 500km away, but as we got there we were totally overrun with Abo's and insects. The place was pretty scary as there were Abo's sitting around everywhere under trees getting p*ssed. To top things off, as I walked across a piece of grass about 3 square meters, about 500 grasshoppers decided to jump out of the grass and started flying around me. This pushed Jade over the edge as she was already petrified of all the insects there, so we had to get back in the van and drive another 230km's (taking the total to around 700km's that day) to drive to the next place which was Tennant Creek. This place wasn't any better on the Abo front but there was actually a nice (ish) campsite with a lot less bugs!
By Tennant Creek we were about 2000km's into our 5000km drive with Alice Springs as the next stop. Ernie's friend Clive became infested with ants in Tennant so we stayed 2 nights in Alice Springs so they could empty the van and kill the little blighters!
Alice wasn't a bad place but I certainly wouldn't go back. Actually that applies to pretty much the whole outback!

We drove to Kings Canyon next and spent a night here before attempting the sunrise 7.2km walk through the canyon. For those of you who haven’t heard of this place (and we hadn’t until about 2 days before got there) it’s a mini Grand Canyon. We all nearly died from exhaustion walking up the first part, which felt like a vertical cliff face! We had to do lots of rock climbing to get to the summit where we could lie down looking over the edge. We then walked through the Garden of Eden to a natural swimming hole in the canyon before hiking the last few km’s back to the car, for the drive to Uluru. We visited Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) in the afternoon which is a rock that used to be like Ayres rock but has been split into 36 huge bright red rocks and is much more impressive than Ayres. We didn’t do the walk here as it was 40 degrees and too damn hot for an 8km uphill hike, so we took some photos and headed back to Ayres rock for the sunset photos.
We then had another early morning the next day for the sunrise pictures at Ayres followed by the 10km walk around the base. Really good walk but got bored about half way around as it’s all the same! Ayres Rock is totally amazing when you 1st see it, it’s just unbelievable that this giant red rock is just in the middle of desert! But, I think we actually preferred King Canyon over all 3 sites, it was the most spectacular to see up close and walk around and definitely the most interesting.

We then headed out of Uluru on our way out of the outback, stopping at Marla, Coober Pedy, Cadney and finally Port Augusta. Coober Pedy was the only place of any interest as they filmed Mad Max and Pitch Black here and the most of the town is underground as it can reach 50 degrees regularly in the summer. The place was actually a dive but the underground stuff gave it a bit of novelty. We also got a bit harassed by the Abo’s here as well which was a little bit scary!

After Port Augusta we finally came back to reality when we reached Adelaide which is a really nice city. It’s really laid back, clean and generally a nice place. We could’ve easily stayed longer but had quite a few people to see in Melbourne so soldiered on to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road. Saw lots of cool things along here, like the 12 Apostles (there are only 8 left) etc and spent the night in Mount Gambier and then Apollo Bay. Both nice places and worth a visit. We had a bit of a nightmare on the drive through the Great Ocean Road because Kyle locked the car keys inside Ernie!! We were just going to check out the view so didn’t take any money/mobiles when we got out the van! So we both started trying to break in with the only tools we had-my hairclip and Kyle’s sunnies!! I don’t actually know how he managed to do it, but Kyle hooked the wire from his sunglasses through my door and pulled up the lock to open the door!!! Nice to know that Ernie is so secure! Kyle was very chuffed with himself after for “jimmying” his 1st car!!

We are now in Melbourne and have been here for about a week catching up with various people and being kindly put up for about 5 days by Stu and Josefin in their flat. It’s been really good staying with them and being so close to the city as the closest camp site is 10km outside the city and was costing us 40 bucks a night to sleep in our own van!!!
We’ve seen loads of stuff since being here and even caught some of the Commonwealth Games action. We went to see the boxing which was brilliant, and Leah even saw me on TV in the UK – how strange is that! I must admit I was chasing the camera to get me on, but it worked! :o)
We met up with a couple of our girlfriends from the Whitsunday’s one night and hit the casino together. We didn’t really know what we were doing, but decided to have a go on the pokie machines. Our friends put in 3 bucks and won 380!!! We couldn’t believe their luck, Kyle was telling us all off for screaming and drawing attention to ourselves! Me and Kyle had a go straight after and had convinced ourselves that there was no chance we would win after their luck. We put in 12 bucks and won 350!! It was so funny-what are the chances?!! By this time we had a big crowd around us cheering us on because all of us girls were very over excited by this time! So in about 10 minutes we spent 15 bucks and came out with nearly 800!! I keep wanting to go in again and bet more, but Kyle won’t let me!
We’ve also seen a soap star while we’ve been in Melbourne! I spotted him near to the casino, it was Ned from Neighbours (Stu’s brother btw). The girls were excited by this, but I don’t think Kyle was v.impressed! (Kate and Kerry - you would have appreciated it!). We were also very sad and went on the “Neighbours” tour which was so tacky but loads of fun! We went to Erinsborough High School and Ramsey St and got all the pics of us at all the different houses and holding the Ramsey Street sign!! Kate and Kerry again-you would have LOVED this!! Unfortunately it was a Sunday so there was no filming going on-I had my hopes on seeing Dr Karl and Harold!

We’re heading out of Melbourne tomorrow and will be sad to leave Stu and Josefin, but Ernie is feeling neglected. We’re off to Philip Island to see the Penguins (smallest in the world!) and have one final night out with Laura, Paul and Clive as we will be parting ways after travelling round most of Oz together.

Anyway, I think I have waffled enough for the time being and hopefully you guys get the jist of what we have been up to.

We hope you are all well and that the weather is getting better for you too.

Take care
K&J
xxx

Fraser Island.....

2006-02-10T05:56:00.000Z

Well we got back from Fraser Island a couple of days ago and what an experience it was! Driving the 4x4 over there was brilliant. There wasn't any tarmac roads, literally the whole trip was off road! It takes the best part of an hour to go about 15km though so it's not quick to get around the island. We did just over 300km while we were there but that included about 100km driving up the beach to Indian Heads.

We went to the most amazing lake while we were there called Lake McKenzie which had crystal clear water and brilliant white sandy beaches. It was a freshwater lake as well so no nasty creatures lurking in the depths. We took our snorkels down with us and went swimming with turtles. It was amazing. There were also Dingos walking around and bathing in the lake as well - quite weird just seeing them stroll around. Pictures will follow - I did a few today but it took 2 hours to get about 20 uploaded so we gave up as there are still 81 we need to do, so looking for an internet cafe that is a bit quicker. We are currently in a very small and very stereotypical outback ozzy town, so its not to be expected to have anything faster than standard broadband.

We also went up to a place called Indian Heads which is along 75 mile beach. From here we climbed to the top of this cliff to look out over the sea. We saw at least 15 sharks, 10 sting rays, a giant turtle, a few schools of fish and a few dolphins. We were certainly glad we didnt go fo a quick dip in the sea!

The first night camping was pretty uneventful and everything seemed to go to plan, but the second caused a few more problems starting with Jade getting bitten by a nasty little creature. It turned out it was a bull ant which are nearly an inch long and have huge pincers for killing insects and generally breaking stuff! She leant on it as she was getting out of her chair and it bit her. (They also jump as well!) Her whole hand swelled up and went blotchy, she got shooting pains going down her wrist, she got a big hard lump appear in the middle of her hand and it felt like it was on fire! By this time it was dark, and we didnt see what bit her. Paul and Laura headed off to the ranger station to see if they could help, but they were shut. Jade was in an enormous amount of pain and we had no idea whether the thing that bit her was poisonous or not. I had to go and find some aussies that might know what it was, and luckily there were some staying just across from us at the campsite (when I say campsite, it was just a small clearing in the middle of a forest so lots of creepy crawlies about). Luckily or unluckily for her, the woman was bitten by one the day before and jades symptons all matched what this lady had, so we could narrow it down to the Bull Ant. She gave us some antiseptic cream and ice for her hand which helped a bit, but it didnt start to calm down for over an hour and she still has a bit of the lump left now (3 days later). Thankfully the panic was over, but Jade was still in pain. Then it started absolutley p*ssing it down and guess what - our tents weren't as waterproof as they said they were on the box! Both ours and Paul & Laura's tent started leaking. Most of our stuff including bedding was getting wet but there wasnt really anything we could do, so just had to grin and bare it. All our stuff was soaking wet and covered in mud when we woke up in the morning so had to pack it all away as it was.
As we were driving around the southern lakes we had to clear a few trees that had fallen across the mud/sand roads as we were the first to drive down them that day. It was then that we saw a bloody great big Python laying across the road. After taking a couple of snaps I got a stick to give it a poke - as you do, and it slithered off into the bushes!
So we got to see quite a bit of wildlife while we were there and has also confirmed that we dont want to go camping in those tents again! :o)
We had a good fews hours of cleaning and drying all stuff when we got back which was a pain, but all part of the experience.
Next trip - the Whitsundays. I think we'll sleep on the boat for that one! :o)

Right enough waffling - hope I didnt bore you to death reading that!

Hope you are all well.
K&J
xxx

This week it has mostly been......hot! :o)

2006-02-05T02:08:00.000Z

Well I'm glad to say that the wet weather has well and truly past and it has been scorching since Byron Bay. In fact I think it was Russell Crowe who sang away all the rain as it was sunny from then onwards.
The gig was pretty good in the fact that it was weird to be less than 3m away from a mega movie star and it was a really good atmosphere as it was such a small venue, but his songs were pretty crap. The rest of his band are hilarious, they are such a bunch of gimps! :o)

We've been to the weed capital of the south coast (purely to view I'll add) which was pretty weird. All the shops looked like they had been planted from the 60's and I got offered weed, skunk, ganja, mushies, cookies, grass and every other possible name for weed while we were there. It kind of got a bit annoying as I was offered it at least 12 times in about 10 mins! That was an experience to say the least. We didnt hang around there for too long as it was filled with BO stinking hippies and not really our scene.
While in Byron we also went horse riding along seven mile beach which was brilliant. I'd never done horse riding before, unless you include the pony trek I went on when I was in primary school, and Jade had been bugging me all the way through NZ to do it as well. Anyway we met a couple in Byron that we are now travelling up the Eact Coast with (Paul and Laura) that let it slip that they do horse riding along the beach just down from where we were staying and as soon as she heard that, we were pretty much doing it. I'm really glad we did though as it was such good fun and we had a really sunny clear day for it too. We also did some bare-back riding in the sea which was uncomfortable to say the least - still it's something I'm really glad to have done.

Since Byron we have travelling with Paul and Laura (who have a camper called Clive) and our next port of call was Surfer's Paradise in the Gold Coast. This place was really nice and full of theme parks. We only went to Wet'n'Wild which was an amazing water park. As I like to say and rarely fulfill, I will put photos up soon! ;o)

From there we went to Brisbane which is a place I think I could live. It's a really nice city with a really nice atmosphere. And it's damned hot for most of the year! It has a man made beach just acorss the river which gives a view of the whole city with the safety of there being no sharks! :o)

We took a trip to Australia Zoo when we left Brisbane which is Steve 'Crocodile Hunter' Irwins zoo. Saw some great live shows here and spent quite a while feeding the Kangaroos which Jade has fallen in love with. We managed to take about 100 photos of just feeding the kangas. Made me feel slightly guilty for eating Kangaroo saussies when we first arrived, but oh well!

We spent a night in Coolum on our way to Noosa which was really nice, but just another little surfy town. We are now in Noosa which is lovely. Lots of very rich people around here with houses on the river with massive power boats moored outside! We hired a boat for 3 hours yesterday and had a few tinnies and went fishing - great fun. Jade caught a fish and then freaked out because she then didnt know what to do with it, so I had to de-hook it and throw it back in the water. Paul caught one fish that had swallowed the hook so far that he had to stab it to death - he was going to eat it, but after we weighed up what we had to do to make it eatable, it would've left enough fish for about half a fish finger! :o)

Anyway, we are about to drive Ernie up to Hervey Bay as we have hired a 4x4 for a 3 day trip over to Fraser Island.

Hope that you are all well and I will try to update photos really soon!

Take care
K&J
xxx

This week I have mostly been.......wet!

2006-01-19T06:06:00.000Z

Well, we've done quite a lot since our last update which was god knows when, so thought I'd better get my arse in gear and do another one.
We've been down to Jervis Bay (2.5 hours south of Sydney) for a week which was really nice. We had xmas day down there and Jades aunty cooked us a lovely traditional xmas dinner after a champagne breakfast on the beach! :o) It's a hard life I know!
We then had 2 weeks in Sydney with Jades family and my mum, where we had a lovely house over looking Sydney Harbour (city, bridge and opera house). We had our new years there with the most amazing fireworks. Pictures to follw (yes I know I say that quite a lot!).
We've been up to the Blue Mountains - not that we could seem them as we have such thick fog and also to the Jenolan Caves which was really cool.

Since then we have bought ourselves a campervan, "Ernie" as he has been named because he's a Nissan Urvan and it rhymes! :o) (Ernie the Urvan - yes I know we are sad!)
It's got a pop top so we can stand up inside without crouching, a fridge, tv, sink, 2 ring stove and grill! You wouldn't think we were poor travellers would you! ;o)

Anyway, we've left Sydney and started our travels up the East Coast. We've currently been on the road for 6 days and covered about 1000km's. We've been to Lake MacQuarie, Newcastle, Port Stevens, Coffs Harbour and arrived today in Byron Bay.

It's been absolutely chucking it down for the last 2 days (just to make you guys feel better) and I've even had to put my rain coat on today!!!
All the places we've been to have been lovely, but Byron is the highlight so far (well it will be when it stops raining!).
The weather has been so random lately, we had the hottest day since 1939 (112 degrees) then patchy rain for the lasty week or so - certainly not what I expected for peak Oz summer!

We're going to see Russell Crowes band on Saturday which should be good - or not! But worth the 10 quid the ticket cost just for the novelty value.

Other than that we've just been up the usual stuff you'd do in Oz.

Will definitely update the photos in the next day or so.

Hope you are all well

K&J
xxx

Kyle's Oz Number

2006-01-06T01:58:00.000Z

Just to let you guys know, I've got a new number to use while I'm in Oz - it's +61415629263. Feel free to give me a call or txt if you want. I will be using my normal mobile number when I leave Oz so don't delete it! :o)

Hope you are all well.
Kyle

Jade's New Number

2005-12-18T01:26:00.000Z

Just to let you know Jade has a new number for Australia. She won't be using her English number while she is here, so make sure you guys write this one down! It's +61 410 988 081. I'll be getting an Aussie sim card once the utterly useless people at O2 bother to cancel my contract, so will post the number up here too!

K&J
xxx

Bye Bye New Zealand.....

2005-12-12T08:13:00.000Z

Well the time is almost upon us when we come to depart New Zealand. We've had a really good time and done loads of cool stuff. The past 7 weeks here have been incredible, and it was the perfect amount of time to see the whole country and do everything that we wanted to.

Anyway, since the last update......
We went to Tongariro national Park and did a 6km trek to Taranaki Falls, past Mordor and Mt Doom. Mt Doom really is a scary looking volcano!
We had really good weather for the walk and it was good to get some exercise as we've been pretty lazy the last few weeks! The waterfall was really nice until a hairy traveller decided to strip off naked and have a bath in it!!! We had to wait for him to finish before we could take anymore photos!!!
After Taupo, we headed North to Rotorua which is stinky to say the least. This is due to large thermal activity they have here which emits sulphur over the whole town. There is a lovely rotten egg smell that sweeps over the town and really clears those sinuses!!! We called into a thermal park just outside Rotorua which had a huge geyser and some other funky weird hot things including a natural fluorescent green lake, bubbling mud pools and steaming sulphur water holes.
We then had rather an adventure packed day here with white water sledging (basically body boarding through the rapids down the Kaituna river), then white water rafting (over the largest commercially rafted waterfall in the world - 7m drop!), then we went zorbing!
The sledging was awesome fun but very hard work, especially when they make you rapid surf which is swimming toward a rapid and heading upstream to surf it! Very tiring on the legs! Jade didnt do the sledging as she heard a horror story from this girl we met who broke her leg doing it and was off her feet for 6 months (wimp!)! We both did the rafting which was on a grade 5 river which is an extreme river - not for the faint hearted! The waterfall was by far the best bit of this with the 7m drop. Me and Jade were put at the front of the raft and so were the first to go under the water on all the rapids and the waterfall. From the photos that we will try and put on soon, you will see that our raft goes completely under the water and surfaces a few meters further down river with all of us hanging on and gasping for breath! It was great fun and would definitely do it again.
Zorbing was next and that was soo much fun! For those of you who dont know, you are put in a huge inflatable ball at the top of the hill and pushed down!!! Ours had water in as well which made it mission impossible to stand up, so we were all over the place. It didn't help that we were on a zigzag course either!!! A definite must do for any of you that get the chance!

After Rotorua we headed to the coast to Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, which is a lovely little town with an amzing beach. The weather wasn't great here so we couldn't take full advantage, but you can take our word for it!
Then off further North to the Coromandel Peninsula, where we stayed in Whitianga. Again lovely place with the most amazing beaches all the way up the coast. We visited "Hot Water" beach where you dig holes in the sand and sit in pools of hot water, then the Hahei beach (which was our favourite), then off the Catherdral Cove.

We then had a 7 hour drive up to the Bay of Islands to Paihia. Another place to be when the sun is shining, which it was for us (temp reached 30 degrees)! Loads of lovely bays and beaches. We took a day trip up to Cape Reinga which is the northern most point of New Zealand and the point where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. It is supposed to be stunning views from here, but when we got there it was that foggy that we couldn't even see one of the oceans, let alone where the two meet! Typical!
We still had a really cool time body boarding down the huge Te Paki sand dunes! Now this was awesome, if not the most knackering thing we have ever done!!! It made us realise just how unfit we were, although each dune was the size of Mount Everest!!! We picked a dune that was about 3 times the size that everyone else was doing and the walk up made us realise why, although the trip down was more than worth it! We were absolutely hurtling down these dunes, nearly landing in the stream at the bottom!
Jade also had a little accident that was most probably the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life! I was soo busy laughing I forgot to take photos of it!!! Jade decided to go down the last little sand dune sitting on her board, but the thing she didn't realise was that all the weight then went to the front digging the nose in and forcing her to face plant BIG STYLE in the dune while still sliding down. Her legs were nearly bent over backwards touching her head as she ate sand all the way down. I literally nearly p*ssed myself laughing! I've got before and after shots for proof, so will put those up when I get a chance!!! Jade is telling me off for writing this, which is making me want to do it even more! :o) You'll all see the photos soon anyway!!
That moment was worth the 6 hour trip there and back alone!

After Paihia, we headed down to Auckland, where we are now, for our final stop before heading out to Sydney on Thursday. Not much to say about Auckland, it's just quite a nice city, with normal city stuff to do. We are off to stay with family for our last two nights here, which will be nice to stay in a house instead of hostels for a change.

Well that's our last post from New Zealand, will update next from sunny Oz when we have a break from throwing shrimps on the barbie! Just to rub it in, it reached 40 degrees there last week! :o)

Speak soon
K&J
xxx

You lucky people....

2005-11-30T06:10:00.000Z

We've finally gotten around to updating the photos again, so get yourselves over to http://photos.yahoo.com/kyle_seager and check them out. We've changed the New Zealand photos into North and South Islands and added to both.

We haven't done that much since the last update, so will give what brief news we have. The swim with dolphins was amazing. There were tonnes of them around us, and some with babies which were tiny. A few were right show off's as well, they were doing double back flips and all sorts right by us.
After Kaikoura, we went up to Nelson which we mostly just lazed around, then over to the Abel Tasman National Park for a days kayak tour around the bays, beaches and lagoons. It was a really good day, and the beaches were gorgeous. We were really close to some huge seals (160lbs I think the guide said they weighed!). We were taken to a deserted beach and our guide rustled us up a really nice lunch on the BBQ. It's the most exercise we have done in ages! :o)

We then caught the ferry up to Wellington (North Island) which really lives up to its name of the windy city! It was freezing! It also rained alot which followed us up the coast to Napier. Lovely place but was very wet when we were there. The photos in the Aquarium were taken in Napier.
We're now in Taupo, which is a Queenstown replica but not quite as nice. Lovely place still, with a cool bungy jump that keeps calling to me, but I'm managing to resist so far. Only 1 more day to stop myself! :o)
The weather is absolutely amazing here, and we reckon today is the hottest day we've had in NZ. Easily 30 degrees which as far as we know is unlike NZ this time of year! I think it's trying to make up for the rain we had over the last few days.
We've been go-karting (about 50kmph's) today which was really cool and been to the craters of the moon, which is a geothermal area and not actually on the moon! :o) It's an area that excretes stream, sulphur and has loads of hot bubbly mud pools.
We also went to the Huka falls and the rapids, which are in the photos.

We're off to Tongariro National Park tomorrow which has 3 volcanoes and is the home of "Mt Doom" and "Mordor" from Lord of the Rings. There are lots of natural thermal pools around that area, so we're gonna take our swimmers for a dip.

Next stop is Rotarua, then the Bay of Plenty (Sorry Moom!).
Will update again soon.

Hope you are all well.
K&J
xxx

New Zealand baby...

2005-11-21T23:59:00.000Z

New Zealand is absolutely amazing (Sorry Louise - I mean it's really awful and ugly!)!
Most, if not all of you will have received our latest emails (sorry for the dissertation I wrote!), so I wont go into too much detail about NZ.

We are both loving it, and have done loads of cool stuff while we've been here. To name a few, we've done Jetboating, Bungee Jumping (me only), a Glacier walk, a skydive over the glacier, boat cruise around the fiord, been in an avalanche (that one wasn't planned!), sky luge (go-karting down big hills), and we're off to swim with Dolphins at 5.30am tomorrow morning! We've got another skydive planned, and I've got another 2 or 3 things I want to jump off before we leave NZ! :o)

The weather here has been pretty good, although not a touch on Fiji or Raro. I did however get burnt yesterday which isn't a good idea in a country with the highest percentage Malenoma (spelling??) cases in the world!

Anyway, not much else to say that hasn't already been said, so will speak to you guys soon.

Laters
K&J
xxx

PS More photo's soon when we reach a town with a decent internet cafe.

Congratulations....

2005-11-21T23:55:00.000Z

....to Leah and Russell who are now engaged. We're all really happy for you two! We'll have to get all the goss soon!

PS I hope you're looking after my car! :o)

About time to.....

2005-10-31T03:40:00.000Z

Well guys, here is the link for you to see some of our photos. We haven't uploaded them all as we didn't want to bore you to death, but if you're interested in seeing a few then go to the website below! :o)

http://photos.yahoo.com/kyle_seager

K&J
xxx

Update No. 2.....

2005-10-30T03:43:00.000Z

Phones are working and have been for the last week, so feel free to text us - although Jade has to pay 50p a text so her replies may be few and far between! ;o)

K&J
xxx

PS Now uploading photos to a DVD so they will be posted up very very soon!!!!

So much to say, so little time....

2005-10-28T01:15:00.000+01:00

Well the internet in Fiji is just about as bad as Raro, so I will try to cram as much info into this post as possible.
Well so much has happened since the last update which was at the beginning of Rarotonga. We are both now fully PADI qualified which was one of the best things that we have both ever done. Jade was a bit worried to start with, but soon overcame her fears and loved every minute of it. It's such a great feeling being 20m under the sea swimming with all the fishes and sea creatures!!! We both can definitely recommend doing it for anyone that hasn't done it before, although I would wait until you are somewhere hot first, as I'm sure the North Sea/Atlantic (depending who's reading this) doesnt have the same appeal!! :o)
We both breezed the exam as well - Jade got 98% and I got 100% (what swots!).

We are both missing Raro as we had it rather cushty while we were there. We were staying with Jades grandad and partner in their house which was great, they lent us their car for the entire 2.5 weeks we were there, and we also got 3 nights accommodation in a very very plush beach front apartment (thanks Betsy!!) that literally opened out onto the beach. I'll put up some pictures soon as we are off to New Zealand in about 45 mins.
We also made some good friends out there who we will hopefuly be meeting up with later on our travels.

Now some home truths about the apparent paradise island of Fiji. Nadi is a BIG no no!!!! If any of you guys happen to be travelling through this neck of the woods, avoid this place like the plague!!! It's a dump! It's like being in downtown Calcutta! The only good thing about our time in Nadi is the accommodation was dead cheap, so we saved quite a bit of cash. We have been paying 3 quid a night staying in the Horizon Beach Resort, which for the money is damn good value, and that even includes a pick up from the airport and breakfast! The place has a nice atmosphere and the people that work here are really friendly and helpful. We've also met some really nice people here too.
The beach at Nadi is a joke - literally. It's dirty, has horrible dark sand and no one goes there unless it is to get p*ssed at night around a bonfire. The sea is the hottest sea I've ever been in though, it was like walking into bath water. Quite strange!!!
The good thing about Nadi though is that it is a great base to get to some of the really good islands. We only managed to get to Robinson Crusoe island while we were here because we didnt plan our time very well (surprise surprise), but am quite happy to be leaving this afternoon.
Robinson Crusoe island was amazing and we had such a good time there. Everyone is really chilled out and the "islanders" are really friendly, helpful and a real good laugh. The island is great for relaxing with it's beach front hammocks, pool and massage beds. There is only one resort on the island so it never gets overcrowded and you get to know everyone really well.
There are loads of free activities to do as well, such as snorkelling trips out to sea, volleyball competitions, fishing trips, island games etc etc. The whole place is just really cool. All meals are included in the price as well, so no cooking is needed! :o)
The showers are really funny as well, you have to use a series of buckets to fill up your shower which is just a bucket on a rope which you hoist up above your head (or not if you are over 5" tall) and then turn the tap on the bottom of the bucket and voila, you have a shower!

The weather has been boiling here and in Raro. Our last day in Raro was 38 degrees and it has easily been that here too, if not higher!

Oh yeah one more thing about Fiji is "Feejee Time" which basically means that there is no schedule for anything. It's a running joke with locals and tourists in the fact that if something is running late, it's running on FeeJee time. They also have 1st last call at the bar, then 2nd last call, 3rd last call and then final last call and final final last call, which is great for getting a few more drinks in before the bar closes! :o) I think that is also FeeJee time!
One funny tradition we have encoutered over here is "Kava Time" which is this ceremony type thing they do where they basically all sit around a big wooden bowl and drink muddy water in empty coconut shells. It's supposed to be some dried root from some plant, but it tastes like dirty water. It numbs your body as you drink it, so the more you drink the more numb you get. It's supposed to relax you. Quite a weird sensation and everybody is Kava mad over here, or Kavaholics as they like to call it. We are now officially Kavaholics! :o)

Anyway, internet is about to run out and we've got a plane to catch to NZ, so we'll say bye for now.
Hope you are all well.

K&J
xxxxxx

Update...

2005-10-16T03:55:00.000+01:00

In case any of you have been texting us and wondering why we haven't been replying, it's because our phones don't work out here. I'm not sure if they will work in Fiji, but they wil defo work in NZ. We have a Raro sim but they don't have international roaming, so can only text and phone with Raro. Oh well........

Kia Orana....

2005-10-08T01:37:00.000+01:00

Well we have now reached Rarotonga and it is amazing! It's like a paradise island - not that any of you really want to read that being stuck in England! :o)
It's a cool 28 degrees at the moment and the sea is lovely and warm. It's nice to be able to go into the water without having your nuts shrink to the size of peas and disappearing inside your body! Now I know you all have a nice image in your heads!

Anyway, things are a tad behind here, they have 1 TV channel, dial up internet which is sooooooo slow after using broadband for the last 4 years, and there is one road (well practically) that travels round the entire island with 1 roundabout and one zebra crossing!! It's pretty damn cool though.
Jade and I now have our own Cook Islands driving licences which means we can drive ANY car and ride motorbikes! They made an error for Jades and added motorbikes to her licence which they shouldnt have as she doesnt have a UK motorbike licence - but heh, it cant be hard on one road! The motorbike test over here lasts about 5 mins and costs in the region of 1.50! I don't think that they have car insurance over here either as no one is bothered about it and once you have your licence you can just drive any car. :o)
Jade's grandad has kindly lent us his car, so we have transport for the whole time we are here, so we are cruising the street (!) of Raro!

Anyway, we have only been here one day, so don't have much to report on as yet - will write again soon.

Laters
K&J
xxx

LA been and gone....

2005-10-05T18:08:00.000+01:00

Well we have been in LA for 5 days now and it is now time to depart. We've done lots of cool things and some very touristy things too! We've done the mandatory Sunset Strip, Santa Monica Boulevard, Melrose Ave, Hollywood Boulevard etc etc and even appeared on a TV show called The Late Late Show! We watched it last night but our 15 minutes of fame lasted about 3 seconds!

We're off to Venice Beach today before we fly to Raratonga tonight! The weather here has been amazing, really sunny and hot everyday! Not to rub it in for you guys back at home! :o)

Anyway, got a bus to catch to muscle beach, speak to you guys soon!

K&J
xxx

PS Mylos, the first episode of series 2 of Lost was amazing! :o) Jealous???

Calling all Skype users...

2005-09-30T23:21:00.000+01:00

Can anybody who has Skype that wants to talk to me or Jade please leave their Skype details in the comments section of this post, or email either me or Jade and I'll add you to my contacts when I get the chance.

Nothing like leaving these things to the last minute! :o)

Panic Time....

2005-09-30T10:32:00.000+01:00

Well it's now the day before we leave and we have finally managed to cram everything into our rucksacks! The room is all packed up and we are now counting down the minutes until we go! This time tomorrow we will be living it up in LA! :o)

I'm guessing by tonight we will both be panicking that we have forgotten to pack something but won't find out until we have left! Oh well, it wouldn't be a proper holiday without forgetting something!

Anyway, lots still to organise. Will post again soon!

K&J
x

The Final Countdown....

2005-09-08T11:23:00.000+01:00

Well the time has nearly come for us to depart around the world! We've just had our final injections and now have to pay a fortune for our anti-malaria tablets! :o(
We'll update this site again once we reach LA (maybe), if not, it will be from Raratonga!
Hope you're all well.
K&J
x