An Aussie Christmas

Merry  Christmas All & A Happy New Year.  It is very odd being away for Christmas, doesn’t really feel like Christmas despite our tiny Xmas Tree, tinsel and the Michael Bubble Christmas album...its hot, sunny and we’re on a beach in a campervan!  It’s not quite right, but we’ve had a great couple of days that feel special – if not Christmasy!

So the van has now made it another 1000km to Denham near Monkey Mia!  Our first stop from our last posting was Exmouth, a seaside town with free roaming Emus, reduced ice coffee and with easy access to the beautiful coastal National Park, Cape Range.  The Cape is my favourite National Park to date.  The gorges were really impressive as usual, but with the added beauty of them meeting the turquoise ocean.  The beaches are white sand and beautiful with the bonus of great snorkelling just off shore – the Aussie fish seem much bigger than their Asian cousins, Parrotfish, Angelfish and the Wrasse are massive!  And the animal encounters have been plentiful from watching kangaroos on the campsite, the pelicans overhead and the turtles bobbing about in the shallows – just amazing.

Heading South we stopped at Coral Bay for more snorkelling.  Lots of Stingrays here, a Sea-snake, a Catfish and all the usual reef fishes.  It was chilly in them waters though, our morning snorkel being rather brisk to keep us warm!  Next destination was the blowholes, this is on the coast at the cliffs.  The waves hit the rocks and then a jet of water is forced from a hole in the rock, shooting high up into the sky, it is naturally occurring phenomenon and is pretty impressive to watch.

We then headed to Carnarvon, the plan being to get some work fruit picking here.  But after a drive around the deserted plantations, we found that there are no jobs to be had – some fields full of ripe tomatoes, melons and the dreaded mangos, just looked deserted, clearly nobody likes to work here nearby to Christmas.  We thought we might have struck lucky with some chilli picking, but nothing came of it so after a quick sight see of the Giant Banana and 1mile jetty we headed down the coast again towards Shark Bay.

We have taken our time going up the Shark Bay coast as we wanted to spend Christmas Day on this peninsula.  We began at the stromatolites, the single celled organism that are thought to have been a source of the Earth’s oxygen allowing Man to evolve.  They look like rocks but you can see their air bubbles which show you that they are actually alive!  The next day we stopped at Shell Beach (lots of tiny shells) and then we free camped at Eagles Bluff.  From the cliffs you could see Sharks and Stingrays passing by, but it was really, really windy, it shook the van for most the night!

Then on Christmas Eve we arrived to our campsite in Denham and travelled to Monkey Mia.  Monkey Mia does daily feedings for the wild dolphins living in the bay, they only feed them a very small portion of fish so that they continue to be wild and hunt for themselves.  We were lucky to see Nicky the dolphin and Chris even fed her a fish!  Nicky brought her friend Bliss with her who had a 3 week old calf splashing next to her, it was lovely to see.  We also saw a turtle bobbing about in the bay, a shovelhead Stingray in the shallows, lots of crabs and some pelicans.

Our Christmas Day started with a trip to Monkey Mia in the morning to watch the dolphins but sadly a low tide meant that they didn’t visit today, so we just enjoyed the beach instead.  Then we headed back to Denham to cook our Christmas lunch, Chicken breasts, pigs in blankets, smash, butternut, cauliflower, carrots and gravy – not bad for a camping Christmas.  And now its wifi time to try and catch up with family!  We will be heading South on Boxing Day towards Kalbarri National Park.

Enjoy the Christmas break!

Love Kat & Chris xxxxxxxx

A Real Aussie Experience - Breakdown in the Outback!

So Lola our lovely little van broke down at a free camping site just off a main road on our way to Karijini National Park which just so happened to be 200km from civilisation in either direction north or south. We parked for the night after a hot day driving and switched off the engine. The van shook for a few seconds then boiling hot water came gushing out of our radiator onto the ground. We went to bed for the night hoping it’d be alright in the morning. It was not alright. Luckily we have Australian breakdown cover, however where we were there was no phone signal to get a tow truck to come and pick us up. I (Chris) got a lift to the nearest roadhouse (a big petrol station with shop and cafe) with a very friendly German couple and organised from a payphone a tilt truck to hoist Lola and give her a lift 200km’s to Tom Price. Never has she gone so fast on these Australian roads – we even over took things!

Once in Tom Price the highest town in Western Australia, a small friendly mining hub with a Coles supermarket, a petrol station and not much else we organised our free accommodation we’re entitled to with our breakdown cover whilst the van was in the garage. The caravan park 3km’s out of town is where we’ve been staying and it’s a lovely place - red breasted parrots and cockatoos rule the sky during the day and when it’s dark you can see the stars really clearly giving us a great view of the full lunar eclipse that occurred on the 11th.

Interestingly the garage’s workers are all flown in from South Australia lured by a wage 4x what they could earn in any big city because of Tom Price’s isolation and need for mechanics due to all the mining vehicles in the area. Tom Price’s isolation also means any spare parts need to get flown in which can get very expensive - but it is quick!

As part of the breakdown cover we were also entitled to free car hire for 5 days but unfortunately the only cars available for hire are in the next town which is over 80km’s away and they had no cars as they’d all been hired out to the miners. Being 3km’s out of town it has been awkward to walk in the heat to get food from the supermarket without a car but so far we’ve had lots of people very kindly take pity on us and give us a lift either there or back again so it’s been no problem. A French couple even gave us a free bag of carrots!

We’ve spent most of our days at the caravan park enjoying air conditioning in our free cabin and day time Aussie TV which has a crazy amount of adverts and the most popular news story we’ve been hearing about is the ‘silver fox’ George Clooney visiting Sydney.

Luckily just before our free accommodation expires we’ve now got Lola back and she’s all fixed! We’ve certainly missed her and tomorrow we finally plan to visit the National park we were on our way to until the van broke down then it’ll be onwards to Exmouth where we’ll probably next have the internet and post this.

Love Chris & Kat xxx

The Hippy Life Through the Kimberly

Would we do mango picking again...no!  A week of severe mango rash, a trip to A&E and a course of steroids have definitely put an end to our mango career; we shall look for less dangerous fruit in the future!

We eventually left Katherine and headed West along the Victoria Highway.  I am pleased to report that the van is running well and we’re averaging about 300km a day.  The roads are pretty much straight and long, with not much traffic (about a car every half hour).   It is the start of the rainy season in the north, so it has been really hot, approaching 40degrees some days.  We’ve seen lots of lightening in the distance, the electrical storms are impressive, although it was slightly unnerving when we were caught in one! 

To save the pennies we’re doing quite a lot of free camping rather than staying on sites.  It has been a great experience and has felt like we’re truly living the hippy life in our retro van, cooking on the gas stove, showering with a hose, Chris playing his guitar and us experiencing the awful compost, fly ridden toilets!  The locations of the free campsites have been awesome; some days we’ll be in a National Park watching all the parrots & Birds of Prey then other days we’ll be in a rest spot on the highway overlooking a gorge and the bright stars, nothing around us for 100s of kilometres in any direction.  It is vast!

This part of our trip is mostly about the scenery and National Parks.  We began with the green Gregory National Park, then to the small Keep River National Park.  Once over the border to Western Australia we saw the beautiful Lake Argyle and the red rocked Mirima National Park which is a mini Bungle Bungle Range.  We’ve also stopped in Halls Creek to visit to China Wall, a natural occurring Limestone wall that runs for over 100km and then onto Geikie Gorge National Park for another scenic walk, this time to admire the limestone rock formations.  It is all so beautiful and what you imagine ‘the real Australia’ to be all about, especially the red rock.  We’re enjoying the wildlife too, seeing lots of wallabies, hundreds of birds, 2 dingoes and a variety of lizards (the frilled neck variety being our favourites).

Having the freedom of the van is amazing and it is making this part of the trip feel very special.  We are destined to get to Broome soon, very excited to see the white sands of Cable Beach and the camels!

Lots of love, miss you all!

Kat & Chris xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mango Lovers United

Fresh from completing 53 hours of Mango picking with sore hands, scabbing legs, rashes and the inability to use our thumbs without pain we’re enjoying a day off! Mango picking isn’t difficult it’s just mind numbingly boring as it is repetitive work over 10 hour days. You pick the round, plump looking mangos that aren’t yet ripe from the trees and throw them into a huge, noisy mango washing machine that is driven alongside you whilst you pick. Each time you pick a mango, you break the stem and an acid sprays out which burns skin and can turn your skin a reddish brown colour as we have both found out!

Some facts for you:

·         Each 400g bin filled with Mangos is worth $4000 to the farmers

·         Generally there are four picking teams that collect over 100 bins a day

·         Mango picking can cause trench foot

·         Every harvest the company makes around 4 million Australian Dollars from the Mangos

·         Kat and Chris had to throw away 4 pairs of socks due to a smell that just wouldn’t leave

·         All the Mangos are just for the Australian market

·         There is a high turnover of staff

·         You can buy one of our handpicked mangos from the supermarket for $1.75 (just over £1!)

We met some great people whilst picking and Kat even got to use her medical skills to assist with an industrial accident where a picker got run over by one of the mango washing machines which got as far as his chest before reversing off – amazingly he was fine, just very bruised!

Would we do it again? Yes, but only once we’ve recovered from these past six days! The next fruit we might try our hands at once we’ve driven the West Coast are strawberries or cherries.

C & K xxx

The One When They Buy ‘Lola’ and Hit the Road!

So we had a very busy and fairly stressful week in Darwin organising bank accounts, Aussie phone, tax file numbers, replacing the camera I lost, trying to fix the laptop cable and of course campervan hunting!  In-between the organising frenzy we did a little bit of sightseeing in Darwin, the highlight being our walk to East Point and Fannie Bay – we saw a crocodile on the beach!  It was only a baby one, so we were more concerned about where its Mum might be hiding!  No swimming allowed because it’s box jellyfish season, but after seeing the Croc I’m not sure you’d get me in there anyway!

Anyway, back to the van.  The van hunt was not as easy as we’d hoped.  There weren’t a lot of campers around in Darwin as it is approaching the wet season (we have heard some amazing thunder whilst we were there but not much rain....yet!)  so people aren’t really travelling up this way.  We had 3 failed attempts at buying, one sold before we saw it, one owner just messed us about so much we gave up and another van badly failed its service.  The 4^th beauty was a 1979 Toyota Hiace. 

We like to call her Lola.  You may call her old, we like to refer to her as ‘vintage’.  She belonged to an old couple for most of her life and then a Kiwi mechanic took her on before us.  She has only done 142,000KM and has classic features such as the yellow mustard classic Toyota coloured exterior, the delightful orange and brown pinstriped seating, the pop top with carpeted ceiling, the original user manual and service guide, and a spirit level on the steering wheel so that you know when you’re parked on a hill.  New additions to her spec. include a tele, a microwave, a fan and a new sound system up front!  She drives well, slow and steady – no power steering nor ABS breaking and the gears are on the steering column so it takes some getting used to!  She gets lots of attention, lots of comments from people (mostly compliments!)2 people have tried to buy her from us already and waves from passing vehicles.  It’s pretty cool that Chris’ first car is a ’79 Hiace that we live in, in Australia!!

Our first night in the van we got given a flyer to a local rodeo with the promise of free camping – so we decided it’d be rude not to!  The rodeo was fantastic, bull riding, horse riding, motocross tricks, fireworks and a live band.  The bull riding was brilliant, the guys that do it must be mad – some of the falls were awful but when a cowboy gets it right it looks amazing!  Our favourite bull was Saltrock, nobody has ever ridden him for the full 8seconds, there is a huge cash prize if anybody ever manages it – sure enough 1 buck and rear and the cowboy was off – 2 seconds flat...but then Saltrock, enjoying the limelight wouldn’t leave the ring after about 30mins of coaxing they gave up and built him a different pen to stay in!

Our first morning in our campervan did not go as smoothly as planned...we had managed to drain both our batteries by leaving the fridge on instead of switching it to gas...yes we are stupid.  But lucky for us some of the hungover/still drinking Aussies from the rodeo had jump leads and after taking the piss considerably, they helped us out and we were on the road again...feeling a little sheepish!

We headed to the Territory Wildlife Park.  This is kind of a zoo but only with native creatures from Australia and mostly things that you can find in the Top End.  We started the day feeding the Archer fish – you hold out a maggot as if you were a tree and they spit on your hand to release the maggot – very clever!  I then helped feed the Whiprays (a type of stingray).  Then we went to the Birds of Prey presentation which was just brilliant, we saw Buzzards, Kites, Owls, Parrots, Eagle and Storks.  We went on a walk to the Billabong and saw some Pelicans and turtles and then went to the Aquarium to see the Barramundi and the prehistoric looking Sawfish.  After this we entered Lichfield National Park and I organised and set up the van to our liking whilst Chris battled with hundreds of bugs whilst he tried to cook tea – note to ourselves, do not cook outside after dark with a lamp...!



And the next day...our van woes were not over – another none starter!  Confused as we had used a trickle charger over night and upset as we were stuck on site!  A bearded fellow called Ken came to our rescue!  His car wasn’t able to jump us, so he towed us until she started and we headed to a mechanic...long drawn out story, but basically the 2^nd battery had no water in it and wouldn’t hold a charge (who knew it needed water!) and was therefore flattening the 1^st.  So all sorted out, we headed back into the National Park and successfully started Lola the next morning.

Lichfield NP is much more green than we expected, lots of trees and grass, it’s not the rocky, barren Australia that we expected.  We’ve seen termite mounds that are about 15ft. High, beautiful waterfalls and lovely refreshing plunge pools to bathe in.  Also at both our camp sites we’ve watched wallabies and kangaroos!  It’s really quiet around the parks and you feel like you’re seeing an undiscovered secret.  For the friendly people, awesome wildlife and beautiful waterfalls I would definitely recommend Australia’s Top End.

We are now staying in a camp site that also seems to be a bar, golf course, rodeo stadium or horse track depending what day it is!  We’re heading towards Katherine tomorrow, hoping to pick up a bit of Mango picking to help pay for our van insurance and its registration.  From there we head over to The Kimberly and to Western Australia.

Lots of love,   Kat & Chris xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

What We Did Until Australia

We’ve now landed in Australia, Darwin to be precise! We really enjoyed our time in Asia but we’re glad for a change and are looking forward to getting our own little van to tour the country in.

Carrying on from where Kat left off we spent another day in Amed enjoying the snorkelling, visiting the viewpoint and Kat’s mum even had a massage! After Amed we travelled to Ubud – the cultural centre of Bali and took in a fire dance show which featured music created with hundreds of voices, fabulous costumes, actors with bulging eyes, a monkey army and a man in a ‘trance’ who kicks and walks over burning hot coconut coals! All very entertaining!

The next day we visited the monkey forest where the mischievous monkeys roam free amidst temple complexes set in a forest. Not only were these picturesque surroundings but monkeys are always good fun to watch. Some people were a bit too wary though as we saw a German man carrying a stout stick and one woman kick a monkey into a river! The poor thing! For the rest of the time in Ubud we wandered the streets browsing its many stores and took a walk to see the rice and wheat fields stretching into the horizon – they look more impressive than this sounds!

For Rhona’s final day we travelled back to Kuta, did some more shopping, Kat and her mum did the tickly fish spa, walked along the beach, had a ice cream, watched the sun set with a beer and then took Kat’s mum to the airport to say goodbye.

The next day we planned to leave Kuta as quickly as possible as it’s a bit of a dive. The destination we picked was the Gilli Island’s just off of Lombok as everybody has always told us how good it is. Unfortunately my watch’s alarm had other ideas as we never heard it and managed to miss our mini-bus to Lombok waking up 20 minutes too late!!! Luckily the company we were using said we could use our ticket the next day for no extra charge which was great news but we did have to spend another night in Kuta L

The next morning with three alarms set we made it on time to get our transfer and caught the ferry over to Lombok where we eventually got to Gilli Trawangan the next day after spending the night in Sengigi - a beach town on Lombok with the most annoying touts and thousands of them!

We spent a nice relaxing five nights on Gilli Trawangan. Most days just consisting of walking around the small island, dipping into the sea, reading, eating good food and buying fresh mangos from the same lady each day. We did a great snorkelling day trip around the 3 islands where the highlight was seeing about 5 - 6 turtles swimming about or resting on the ocean floor. The island itself wasn’t an amazing place as it feels slightly too developed so you just feel like you’re on the mainland – it even has an Aldi supermarket! That’s not to say we didn’t enjoy it because we did but it’s a long way from the tropical paradise you might imagine.

After all that relaxing we had a bit of a horrible day travelling back to Bali. The ferry took the usual four hours to travel between Lombok and Kuta but then didn’t dock in Bali for five more hours due to construction work. We left Gilli Trawangan at 8:00am and arrived to Kuta in Bali at 12:00am. A very long day!

Love Chris & Kat xxx

More Dives, Surfing and Mummy has Landed!

And enjoy island life we did, due to a religious day where the Balinese honour the spirits of the water by not going in and on the water we were stranded!  No boats, no diving, no swimming!  So we had a day of walking around the island, visiting the mangroves and up to the cliffs to watch the crashing waves. 

The next day, with all water gods happy, we were back in the water for our next 2 dives.  We were told that ‘it’s like being in an aquarium’ and that description did not disappoint at all!  So many fish, you could feel quite dizzy trying to take it all in!  The water was much warmer too, a delightful 27degrees and we even saw a turtle (much to my excitement!)  And this was our first go at drift diving, we got in and let the current take us along the reef – which seemed to go on for miles, then the boat just picked us up when we popped up an hour later!  Our second dive began brilliantly, we went down and instantly found a 2m tall Mola Mola staring at us!  They are really ugly but cute kind of fish, rather rare and almost never seen at the spot we were diving – so lucky!  The rest of the dive again was like being put in a tropical aquarium, we saw huge schools of BIG trevley and tuna.  We thought a huge boat went over, there was a huge vibration that was so loud we all had to cover our ears – when we got out we were told it was a 6.8 earthquake!  Luckily no Tsunami waves followed, although there was a tremor later when we headed back to land.

After our dives and a little short on cash (no ATMs on the island) we headed to Bali and Kuta.  Kuta, well is the Ausie Benidorm we soon got used to seeing stag dos having Bintangs for breakfast!  The plus side to Kuta was the cheap, good food that we found at ‘Gongs’ and the surf!  We signed up to a surf school and with our 2 metre longboards we headed out to catch them waves!  Chris really picked it up quickly and was paddling himself out and catching (or not!) the waves.  He stood up really quickly too and makes it look fairly cool in the photos!  I was a slower bloomer, the guys would help take me out, they’d push me into a wave and shout “stand up” and watch as I fell down!  I did get it a few times though, my first stand was magnificent and I sailed all the way to the beach...where I promptly face planted into the sand!  But when you get it, it feels good and we’d have loved another go, but the swell got a bit wild for us beginners so maybe next time we’re in Kuta we’ll try again if its calmer!

Rhona & Kat at Git-Git Waterfalls

Mum arrived and we met her after jogging to the airport – we had planned to walk to save on taxi money, but a road was closed and it added 2km to our journey, worrying we’d be late we jogged the rest of the way to greet mum with a sweaty hug!  We stayed in Kuta for the night then whisked mum off to Lovina to a beautiful hotel with a pool (ahhh a pool!)  We had a great day visiting GitGit waterfalls, a Buddhist Temple and Banjar Hot Springs which left us all feeling thoroughly relaxed.   The next morning we woke for sunrise and got on our tiny boat to see the Bottlenose Dolphins.  There were hundreds, swimming all around the boat it was amazing to see them all.  Today we have moved onto Amed and we have all been snorkelling off the beach, the reef is only 10metres out and it has an array of tropical fish and coral to see, really good fun!

So Many Dolphins!

Lots of love Kat & Chris xxxx

Climbing Volcanoes & Diving with the Ray’s

We booked a two day trip to visit Mt Bromo and the Ijen crater (sulphur mine) from Yogyakarta. This trip included all transport along the very potholed ‘roads’, lovely expensive hotels (but they are in the middle of nowhere) and two breakfasts consisting of bread, jam and a tiny inch long banana and the next day a boiled egg and a chocolate sprinkles sandwich – just what you want when you’re about to visit a sulphur mine!

Mt Bromo was amazing, we had a jeep transport us just before sunrise to a viewpoint high up in the nearby mountains where we saw all three volcanoes in the area surrounded in low lying mist slowly being lit up as the sun turned the sky pink to clear bright blue. After an hour and a half and the sun firmly in the sky the jeep took us down to the base of Mt Bromo so that we could climb to the top (there are sand covered steps) and peer into the smoking crater. We liken the landscape to how you would imagine Mars or the Moon to look just desolate desert stretching for miles in every direction.

The following morning we visited Mt Ijen where there is an active sulphur mine. Upon arrival we climbed up an exhausting 3km track along with some of the very friendly miners some of whom were on their third trip to reach the crater and then we descended to the bottom of Ijen’s interior to admire the turquoise sulphur lake and all the hard work transpiring at the mine. We found the trip hard work but the miners do it all whilst carrying up to 100kg (H&S Regulations?!) of sulphur freshly chiselled from the bowels of Ijen and they earn about $13 (US Dollars) a day for their efforts, yet still they have the cheer to say “hello” whenever you pass them!!! Kat and I both think that the miners keep a tally of nationalities somewhere as every one of them asks you “Where are you from?” and then nods sagely at your response. It was a fantastic trip and testament to the human spirit that the miners can wake up each morning and do 3 or 4 more trips. As with all of Java the scenery was amazing.

We caught the ferry over to Bali later that day and made our way to Sanur which is described in our collection of used pages from 2005’s Lonely Planet as ‘Kuta with a Cardigan’ – what a lovely description! Kuta is a bit of a rough and ready beach resort for heavy drinkers looking for sun, sea and surf. Sanur has all this but with a bit more class and naturally, higher price tags L First impressions of Bali are that it’s a lot more built up than Java (besides Jakarta) and traffic seems congested in the main cities but there is still beautiful coastlines, coconut trees and rice paddies to brighten up the views.

The main reason we stopped in Sanur besides a day off from travelling every day and early sunrise starts was to get the slow boat over to Nusa Lembongan to do some more dives. Little did we know when we booked the ticket and got told to turn up at 7:30am the next day that we were still running on Java time which is an hour behind Bali – we did think the sun went down early! So we missed the first slow boat but luckily transferred to the 10:30 boat with no issues except for the locals laughing at us.

Nusa Lembongan is a small island with a penchant for seaweed cultivating / harvesting to be exported and then used in cosmetics, shampoos etc. I think we were expecting another Perhentian Islands (where we dived in Malaysia) experience with nearly deserted beaches and a handful of guesthouses and cafes so were initially disappointed with the small boats everywhere, coral strewn beaches and rectangular patches of seaweed filled sea (like a farm’s fields) and the island seemed pretty built up and busy. Then we realised how great it is to sit back and watch the local seaweed fishermen go about collecting, drying, packing and replanting their seaweed in the crystal clear waters and the tourism hasn’t affected this one little bit.

This morning we did 2 freezing cold dives (18 degrees at one point!) with the main aim of seeing Manta Rays and what a sight they were as they gracefully swooped over our heads! The biggest was about 2.5 – 3 meters long and there were about 5 or 6 rays in the area we dived which is a cleaning station for the Rays. The next dive had a visibility of 25 meters and the coral and fishes we saw were so vibrant because of the clear water. We had some fairly strong currents and it was distractingly cold but it was another great dive.

We’re now weighing up whether to do some more dives in the area before we head back to Bali and meet Kat’s mum on the 16th. In the meantime I think we’ll enjoy island life some more.

Love Chris & Kat xxx

End of Malaysia, A Memorable Entrance to Singapore & Java First Thoughts

So our return to Kuala Lumpur was soured by us both picking up the flu!  We stayed a couple of days to organise a few things (like our Indonesia visa and picking up the fixed Sony Camera) but then once both us could survive without being next to a toilet we headed to Melaka!  Melaka was where we chose to recuperate and as we were both still a little ill, we decided to spend almost a week there – almost unheard of for us to stay somewhere so long!  It’s a nice little town, full of history of English, Portuguese and Dutch invasions, full of culture having a China town and a Little India and it had nice cafes, a big shopping mall and home comforts such as Pizza Hut for when we started to eat again!  We didn’t do a lot but the week went quickly and soon we were feeling well enough to move on again.

Our next destination was Singapore.  We had been very lucky and met a lovely English couple (hello Alice & Con) when we were in the Perhentian Islands and they very kindly offered us their spare room in Singapore!  This was great news as Singapore is expensive.  As any good house guest we brought a bottle of wine with us as thanks; not realising that you are not allowed to bring anything over from Malaysia to Singapore!  So we got stopped at the border, Chris got taken into a room and after some form filling the great ‘fine city’ issued him with a $8 bill and we were on our way...or so we thought!  The bus had only gone and left us there!  And we had only 1ringgit and 1Singapore Dollar (courtesy of Canadian Kyle) and not an ATM in sight.  After a minor panic, lots of pacing up and down and worried looks, a coach driver took pity on us and let us on his bus for the measly 70p we owned!  Sadly his bus went in the opposite direction to where we wanted to be – but we made it into Singapore and to Alice & Con, only a mere 2hours later than planned – they appreciated the wine too.

Pulau Ubin

We had a great few days in Singapore.  We enjoyed a walk, hawker food, beers and some drunken tree climbing on our first night at the East Coast Park.  On the 2^nd day Alice & Con took us to the beautiful Pulau Ubin.  We went over on a bumboat from the mainland and then hired bicycles to explore the island.  We admired the scenery, from turquoise lakes to the mangroves and we saw plenty of wildlife; hornbills (!) monkeys, lizards, fiddler crabs with their one huge pincer and lung fish - it was great.  The 3^rd day we explored the marina area to see the skyscrapers, shopping malls, theatres and huge casino that has 3 hotel blocks with a huge boat lying on the top of them on the 57^th floor – it was very Vegas!  Our last day we decided to go to the zoo as so many people have told us how good it is and it didn’t disappoint.  The enclosures are all quite big (the Orang-utans are free roaming) and the animals seem well stimulated.  We spent the whole day there, mostly entertained by the various monkeys, gibbons & apes!  We also saw Komodo Dragon being fed, Giant tortoises, White Tigers and Pygmy Hippos to name but a few! For our last evening we were spoilt by Alice & Con and we got taken to an Ex-pat place that did amazing egg, chips & beans and had a big cider collection!  We enjoyed a Westons Cider & a Hobgoblin – oh how we’ve missed them!

Over to Java and back to haggling Asia!  We had almost forgotten what it was like after being spoilt in Malaysia!  Everyone has been very friendly so far, although they normally want to sell you something!  We have done a lot of travelling so far, as we didn’t want to spend much time in Jakarta.  The trains have been really nice as we’ve plumped for slightly more expensive business class (less chickens & goats!), the journeys scenic – paddy fields, hills, volcanoes and coconut trees and the temperature has been surprisingly pleasant, not nearly as sweaty as we expected!  We are now in Yogyakarta which has a nice backpack feel to it.  We went to Borobudur today, a cool Buddhist Temple which has dozens of latticed stupas (look like bells) which each contain a Buddha.  The scenery was amazing with volcanoes in the distance and the early morning light (we were there at 6am!) made it look all the more impressive.

Next we head to Mount Bromo (a volcano) and another early morning wake up; as every tourist knows – you need that sunrise picture for your collection!

Lots of Love K&C xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Kuching = Cat

Our week in Borneo has come to an end but what a brilliant week it’s been! We’ve been staying in Kuching which means ‘Cat’ so whenever we see one we’ve enjoyed pointing and yelling ‘Kuching!’ at it. Kuching is the capital of Sarawak and a great hub for travelling to the nearby National Parks and wildlife centres. Whilst we’ve been staying here the Regatta festival which involves long rowing boats racing each other and the World Wakeboarding Championship have been taking place on the waterfront making for some great viewing when we’ve had the time!

Whenever anyone hears the name Borneo they think of orang-utans and we travelled to see these marvellous ginger apes for their breakfast hour at the Semenggoh Rehabilitation Centre. They slowly swung their way over to the feeding platform for fruit, rocking thin trees or branches back and forth until they could gracefully get to the next tree. It was really amazing to see the orang-utans so naturally using all four limbs going hand over foot spinning like a Catherine wheel to get down ropes and when they walked on two legs they looked so very human. An hour soon passed by and as the fruit ran out the seven orang-utans that had come to see us slowly climbed and swung their way back into the jungle where they emerged from.

Shortly Before I Dragged Kat in to the Waterfall!

We visited Bako National Park by bus then speedboat where we met Kyle, Simon and Michelle from Canada who we did some trekking with that day and have met up with numerous times since. We headed to the waterfall which we didn’t intend to swim in as we’d forgotten to bring our trunks and bikini but as we were dipping our toes in I slipped and dragged Kat with me – fully clothed! After that we figured we might as well enjoy the cool water seeing as we were wet already! We then headed to a private beach where we were the only people for a while and enjoyed some more swimming and watching the crabs scuttling by. Along the way we saw some very ungraceful Proboscis monkeys with their big bellies and long red noses, some bearded Warthogs snuffling around and wild monkeys who attacked me for my bag of rubbish. All in all a great day with a few beers to round it off!

For the rest of our time in Borneo we visited a crocodile farm and saw the crocs jumping high in the air for fish at feeding time. Michelle’s very kind local friend Vincent drove us (all five from the Bako trek) to an Indonesian market where we crossed the border into Indonesia without needing a visa, to the Fairy Cave to explore and we stopped off on the way home at a Chinese food street where he bought us loads of delicious local food as the sun was setting. We visited a Cultural Village to see local tribes traditional houses complete with a dance performance and we also all visited Kubah National Park on our last full day where we trekked to a ten foot high waterfall - with the intention of swimming this time! We had a few more drinks with the guys in the evenings and even tried the local rice wine which tasted a lot like strong cider but you drink it in a shot glass and it is bright green!

We’ll be heading back to the big city of Kuala Lumpur tomorrow with its HUGE shopping malls and interesting Mosques and Chinese temples. We really enjoyed our two days there before Borneo and we’ve got a few more planned when we get back to get our Indonesia visa and do a few day trips out of the city.

Hope everything is okay back home!

Love Chris & Kat xxx

Cream Teas, Turtles & a Rainforest!

Each place that we’ve visited in Malaysia has been very different – Temple hopping to tea plantations and rolling countryside to beautiful clear waters and beaches to vast rainforest – and we’ve loved each part of it. 

The culture is also very diverse in Malaysia and we find ourselves often saying “doesn’t that remind you of China” or “not had Daal like that since Nepal” and perhaps more strangely – “don’t you feel like we’re in Devon!?” – that last one would be directed at the Cameron Highlands.  It is a strange mix, but it seems to work together well.  The Malaysians are really very friendly and all seem pretty laid back.  Everyone speaks good English, which makes travel easy.  The plugs are English sockets!  They drive on the left side of the road.  They enjoy a good brew and they sell Cream Teas!  Diversely, we’ve eaten mainly Indian food here!  There is Chinese influence in all their temples and for the first time in our trip we’ve seen lots of ladies in burkas and Mosques are found all over the place.  So it really is a mix of cultures and landscapes but its proving to be one of the most interesting places we’ve visited.

Us at Robinson Falls

So the day after our last post we had our English Countryside day, we had scones and tea then went for a country walk to visit a couple of waterfalls.  It was lovely and that evening we curled up in our blankets (its a chilly 23 degrees in the Highlands!) and watched a film on the laptop.

Our next destination was the Perhentian Islands, recommended by Greg & Jade for its diving.  So a long bus journey and then a speedboat over and we landed on our little stretch of paradise – Kecil Island.  No roads or cars just the 2 main resorts, Long Beach & Coral Bay which are on either sides of the island, but easy to reach either side by walking the 10min jungle path.  Our main purpose of being here was to do some diving, so we booked on for the next morning.

The whole diving experience was different this time.  The resort was so quiet that we could choose which dive sites we wanted to go to, we could pick the time and we would go out just for one dive rather than the usual daytrip on a boat.   The boat was a small speedboat and instead of having to go to a pier by car to catch said boat, it just pulled up to the beach and you’d carry your gear the short distance from the shop to the boat.  The other BIG difference was that when we arrived to the dive sites – we were the only ones there!  Even though there are loads of different dive companies we never met anyone else which makes it an even nicer experience!

Coral Bay

We did 3 dives in all.  The first and probably our favourite was the pinnacle.  Visibility was good there were schools of fish all around us, we saw lots – particularly liked the stingrays, squid, batfish and ‘tripod’ a sea turtle that only has 3 legs, he was sleeping when we passed him!  Our 2^nd dive was to a shipwreck.  It was quite poor visibility (which meant I missed seeing the bamboo shark sitting under a rock!) but it was  cool to swim over and under the masts and we went into the cargo hold which had an air pocket – so 12metres underwater we had our face out of the water in the air pocket!  The last dive we did was at a site that has a series of rocks underwater, so there you could swim through some rock tunnels which was cool, there were lots of small fish here, nemo clownfish, bannerfish, angelfish, shrimps and these tiny things called nudibranch.  The diving was really good fun and we enjoyed doing an early morning dive then relaxing with our books in the afternoon.

We are now in Taman Negra – a huge jungle/rainforest National Park.  We arrived yesterday after an epic journey!  The town is a little odd in that it is under major construction and we’re not sure what is open and what is closed.  But we have a bed and we have located cheap riverside restaurants!  Today we ventured into the jungle – totally covered up after hearing leech horror armpit stories from G&J! – and off we went to the canopy walk.  Set 30metres up in the trees is the canopy which allows you to walk above the jungle to view it from above.  The National Park is said to be 130 million years old and it is a vast sea of greenery.  The canopy walk was great and with no signs of the leeches, we headed up to a viewpoint where we found a couple of sleeping bats!

Tomorrow we change from rainforest to city as we head to Kuala Lumpur.  And our flight to Borneo is on the 13^th so there will be many Orang-utan photos to view soon!

Love & Miss you all.  K&C xxx

End of Thailand and Start of Malaysia

A Mini-van – Bus – Ferry – Bus – Pickup Truck – Bus – Mini-van – Ferry – Walking Taxi – Pickup Truck journey later we arrived in Koh Phi Phi! There are no roads on Phi Phi which is lovely as it’s only a small place; basically a sand bar full of pubs, accommodation and shops between the islands iconic Karsts.

Kat at the Viewpoint during a break from the rain!

It rained most of the time we were in Phi Phi but we really enjoyed our time there. We wandered around the shops and restaurants during the day and ventured up to the Viewpoint when there was a break in the rain for a fantastic view. At 10pm each night all the bars along the beach put on a ‘Fire Show’ so we walked the length of the beach enjoying them for free. On our last night we watched a boxing show put on by a bar where Farangs (foreigners) boxed each other to get a free bucket and we also saw two traditional Thai Boxers take to the stage. In comparison to the clumsy attempts of the foreigners the Thai boxers were very slow and methodical probing the other boxer’s defences and when they were sure there was an opening they put huge amounts of power into a punch or a kick sometimes sending the other boxer flying into the air!

Leaving Phi Phi we took a bumpy ferry over to Phuket where we then flew down to Penang in Malaysia. We’d booked into a hostel that had a recording studio as they advertised that you could jam with the owner! We had to take things at quite a relaxed pace in Penang as everywhere was hugely busy because of a national holiday and celebrating the end of Ramadan. The first day we went to the nearby National Park and had a nice walk seeing crabs and monkeys. In the evening I had a jam with Aslan (like the Lion from Narnia) the owner of the hostel and a few of us then helped him prepare a curry for the next day’s festivities although for some reason we only started to make the curry at 10pm. We went to bed just after 12am and it was still being made...

On our second day we had a walk around Georgetown with Tim and Anya from Wales who we met at the hostel. Georgetown is the historic quarter of Penang that is filled with British Colonial Architecture, Mosques, Chinese Temples, Indian Temples and a Fort! We had lunch at Little India (a cluster of Indian shops and restaurants) and enjoyed seeing the Chinese Clan Jetties near the docks that house a lot of Chinese families and even a temple at the end of each Jetty.

Later that night the celebration was in full swing at our hostel and we were given free curry and cakes! Kat and I thought we might watch a movie in the lounge whilst everyone else was drinking and getting ready to go out. I asked Aslan (the hostel owner) if he could show us how to switch on the TV’s 5.1 surround speakers. He said no problem he’d show us after he finished getting ready. Clearly already drunk he came into the lounge a few minutes later and had obviously forgotten what I’d asked him to do as he said to me “you should play the drums” and then we had a 40 minute jam session where he kept forgetting the lyrics to songs until he announced “I need a drink” disappeared and we didn’t really see him again that night!

The next day due to the busy holiday traffic we squeezed onto a very full bus heading towards Georgetown and decided instead of sweating for an hour journey on the bus we'd visit the Floating Mosque just a few kilometres down the road from us. As it was nearby we also visited a Toy Museum which was full of Chinese and Japanese tourists all taking millions of pictures. I got to meet Batman and Leonardo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Kat saw Shrek and Po the Kung Fu Panda.

Kek Lok Si Temple

Our final day in Penang we woke up early and went to the Chinese Kek Lok Si Temple and what an impressive and lovely sight it was! We both thought that the restoration work seemed a lot better than the restored Chinese temples that are actually in China! After seeing the Pagoda and 30.2 metre high Buddha statue we headed back to Georgetown again and shopped around the tallest building in Penang the Kom Tar where everything was really cheap!

Yesterday we caught a mini-van to the Cameron Highlands which is the largest of the Malaysian hill stations. It’s a cooler climate up here and seems completely different to a lot of Asia and more like an Alps resort. Today we did a half day countryside tour to a tea plantation, a rose centre, a bee farm, a butterfly farm and a strawberry farm. The weather was fantastic; sunny but not too hot! We enjoyed a cup of Boh tea, fantastic countryside views, had a shot of honey, I held a scorpion, enjoyed Strawberries with cream and a Strawberry muffin. A great day!

Fields of Tea!

We’ve got one more day in the Cameron Highlands where we’re planning to do a few walks before we move on to the Perhentian Islands to do some dives.

Love C&K xxx