HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I feel the absence of new posts on this blog speak for themselves. The saddness and overhwleming glee of returning home climaxed in a series of events that were truly undescribable, followed then by MASSIVE depression that all of this, everything i have been writing about for the last few months is over, and now remains firmly in my memories and on this blog. I hope to continue it, and finish it soon. But in the mean time, have yourselves a very Merry Halloween.

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We apologise for this interruption to our scheduled programming...

Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. Yep, im pretty sorry. As it can be easily seen, the blog has somewhat been erratic in its new and wonderful delivery of delicious travel related stories. As noted, tragedy, illness and mostly, (a lame excuse i know) the fact that New Zealand had LITTLE internet action have really impeded the growth of this delicious little blog. I would love to carry on writing about it ya know? I may be a month and half behind, stranded in the literary limbo that is the story of our trip to Frasier Island, but if anyone is still reading, i would certainly like to tell you about it. And New Zealand. But not Fiji. Nope. Fiji was HELLISH.

Anyway, instead of the continuous writing of these apologies, maybe i should just get my fingers tapping away at the proper stuff. The stuff this blog is made of. SO, if you still want to stick around and find out whats been going on, i'll get to it now.

Stay tuned, our regular programming will resume shortly. Promise.

Supergran

On the 4th of July, at 2am, i was standing at a bar trying to decide whether i could afford another drink or to get a pie instead. On the other side of the planet, at 3pm, my Nan left. she finally said goodbye at 96 years old, and im so sad i wasnt there.

Nan was so amazing at being a grandmother, it's very difficult to put into words what made her so special to me.

i'm remembering you standing at your bedroom window Nan. im in my car, and i start to drive away, and i turn back and you are smiling and waving, and we blow each other kisses. i will miss you very much. Goodbye nan.

Elizabeth Cragg - 1st Sep, 1912 - 4th July 2009.

BOOK LIST! Part 2

Part Two. I love a part two. I bet you have been waiting for it as well haven’t you? Have you been waking in the night, a cold sweat on your forehead, as you wonder 'what has Chris been reading whilst he is away? I simply must know!' WELL, wipe your beady brows my friends as here are some more of the delights that my eyes have been feasting on during my trip around planet Earth.

In The Night Country by Stuart O’Nan

Bit of a depressing one this one. But still, brilliantly written. It’s a ghost story about three friends, who die one Halloween night in a terrible car accident. Set one year on, the two survivors from the crash are still trying to deal with what happened to them. One is still mourning; the other is badly brain-damaged from the accident. The three dead friends come back to haunt the people they blame, and help their friends left behind. Like I said, well written, with an awesome ending, but MYGOD depressing.

The Taking by Dean Koontz

After some pretty heavy going books, I needed something a bit more popcorn, a bit more blockbuster. Steven King and Michael Crichton were obvious choices, but Dean Koontz is pretty good at the blockbuster book too. Easy reading, extreme stories and some freaky bits along the way. Taking is about a woman who wakes up in the night next to her husband to an unusually heavy rain fall. When she goes outside, animals are running wild, terrified from something gigantic flying above the clouds, and when she smells the rain, it smells of SEMEN. Yup. Pretty weird. Really good end of the world story though, totally my kind of book. Part religious, part sci-fi, it’s a survival story about how two people survive the end of the world when aliens attempt to terraform the planet. It’s got a surprise ending too!

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

An awesome and devastating book about friendship and growing up in Afghanistan. It’s a story about two boys, Amir, the son of a rich Kabul merchant, and his servant and friend, Hassan, a Hazara boy. The horrible prejudices explored in this story and the awesome writing made this one of my faves from the trip so far.

Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima

When I was in Singapore, there was so many Chinese and Japanese influences around, I kept finding good comic shops, so what better place to read some Japanese Manga!

Twilight by Stephanie Myer

Oh god. From what I have seen in all the hostels and dorms I have shared over the entire trip. It seems that amongst backpackers, this is the popular book of choice. And what a load of crud. For one thing, it’s FRICKING HUGE. You need like a spare backpack JUST for the book. And this is only the first, there’s three more and they get progressively larger as you get through them. Plus its like 400 pages long and 350 pages of it are just full of the main character banging on about how much she loves her wimpy fangy boyfriend. The last 50 pages have some bitey, vampire action which is pretty cool. But that is all. I am NOT a fan.

So, thats the end of part two. ENTHRALLIN HUH!? I bet you opened this post and utter dissapointment flooded your veins yes? maybe becuase i havnt posted anything for some time yes? Well, all i can say...poopies. Big fat poopies to you. Becuase, i am currently in the land of Middle Earth, and internet connection is even rarer than it was in the Land of OZ. BT Broadband would do WELL in Mordor. The net is cheaper yes, but rarer, certainly. HOWEVER, another post is in the works so you shouldnt have to wait too long, PLUS, there are lots of photo's and Vids still going out so keep your piggy little peepers on those guys.

Right, well i better go, just realised i have locked myself and my friends out of our home, a campervan, and its like minus 480 degrees outside so i think they may already be dead whilst im sitting in here in the warm. Ahh. Warm ignorance.

We Were Over the Rainbow...

My time in OZ has finally come to an end. Yes, i know i havn't finished telling you all about these adventures i have had over the rainbow, but now, i must take my memories and head into another strange land. A land of dwarfs and hobbits and volcanoes and snow. No, i am not going up the Faraway Tree, i'm actually off to a...New Zealand! Or as i shall now call it, the land of Moria! Where we shall be on our guard. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world don't you know...

Sunset City

IMG_8567, originally uploaded by blibblobblib.

Out of all the sunsets we have witnessed, this one, On Phi Phi was the best. We watched for three hours, drinking cocktails and eating dinner, as a lightening storm and a sunset vied for our attention. It was incredible.

AMISTAD

IMG_8520, originally uploaded by blibblobblib.

The night ferry of DOOM. See that laughter? Thats HYSTERICAL laughter. You know like when a person has been driven mad through fear, and there are no more tears left to cry? This is what happens. Notice the numbers above the beds. Notice the space between the numbers. Not a lot huh? See those people in the background reading? They're not reading. They're DEAD.

SWEATY BETTY

IMG_8454, originally uploaded by blibblobblib.

Ah Angkor Wat. More like Angkor DRIP. That water around my chest has not been added. This is no illusion. This is me literally sweating to death.

Sailing the Whore!

Check this out, CHECK THIS OUT. No blogs for a couple of weeks due to HORRIFIC internet action over here in Oz, and now, there’s two at once. And no they are not like buses. Well, hopefully I shall be writing even more than this, and I still have another week in this GLORIOUS house to blurt out more rubbish about what we have been up to whilst away. But for now, enjoy the tale of our Whitsunday experience…

Our next stop after Magnetic Island was the one that we had been longing for. It was a trip to paradise, a trip to the Australia you hear about and see on postcards. To the Whitsundays. ON a PIRATE SHIP. Oh yeah. Our port of entry to the Whitsundays is an amazing little town called Airlie Beach. Right on the ocean, Airlie is basically one long strip which runs parallel to the coast packed with great shops, good, cheap food, bars and amazing beaches and a fantastic esplanade and man-made lagoon IDEAL for soaking up the sun and ogling the beautiful people. I of course, hid in the shadows, strips of sunlight shimmering over my pale figure and beady eyes. But I did swim a lot, which was fun. Apart from one time when I was happily splashing around like a deflated lilo when suddenly a MILLION screaming Australian children had surrounded me. I was in the kiddie’s pool, and it was their swimming trip. I made a swift, silent escape, submerging under the water like a retreating hippo and climbed out before I was accused of some crime to humanity.

Our boat we were booked on for the Whitsundays was called New Horizon, a pirate ship with a masthead that was carved into the shape of a beautiful woman...with her tits out. This lovely feature of the boat helped it earn its name among the other competing boats as...The Whore. But I can honestly say, riding the Whore was a wonderful experience. (Sorry) We set sail from the harbour and spent our first afternoon cruising out to the islands. The boat, at first glance seemed TINY. It was one of the cheaper options amongst the trips you can buy at any travel agency, so we were worried they would have scrimped on any goodness that is dished out by the other trips available. One boat, for example, has a HOT TUB on deck. Sounds pretty fricking awesome right? WRONG. Our pals went on it and apparently the hot tub was so full of sex wee and other feculent objects, the thought of going into this fermenting soup was horrifying. So maybe, we did just fine with our Whore. On our boat we had three members of the crew to look after us. A nice chaps as captain, a large, loud Northern woman with a big nose, and a small young Ozzy fellow. All were very lovely, although by the end of the trip I could have happily fed large nosed, northern woman to the sharks. As for the other passengers, there were 32 of us over all. There were Mexicans, Germans, Swedes, Dutch, Danish, French, Canadians and Brits. The only Brits however, were myself and Jo, and two others. One was called James. The other was called Scary Lonely Woman. James was 19, and it showed. James pretty much encapsulates most of the British people we have met so far travelling down the coast in Oz. James was in OZ for two reasons only. Sex and drink. Now these are some pretty good reasons to visit another wonderful country, but it kind of narrows your experiences after a while if this is your main drive. This seemed to be the main topic of conversation with James. Apart from when James was drunk. When James was drunk he was looking for sex. And when you are on the boat in the middle of the ocean, it narrows down your targets of copulation dramatically. That is, unless, you have a Scary Lonely Woman on board, and as James's luck would have it, we did. James was also ginger. Very ginger. When we first stepped on board and were getting to know each other, Jo pointed out to me how ginger James was. I noticed Jo staring at James with her hand over her mouth as though she were repressing the urge to vomit. A common look when any eye falls upon a Ginger (I kid I kid!), I asked Jo if she was all right, and she said 'No. No I’m not all right. See that Ginger guy? I can see his ginger pubes and their making me fucking sick' I turned and looked in James direction, sure enough he was standing their with his top off, letting everyone see his gelatinous form, and his shorts were waaaaay too low. 'This guy' I said, 'is a horror'. Sadly, my prediction wasn’t wrong. After spending our first night, moored by Hook Island, out came the Goon. Ahhh Goon. I shall miss it when I leave this fare land. Goon is the drink for backpackers and the homeless. Its basically cheap wine in a bag. And when the bag is depleted of cheap vinegary wine, it can be blown up and used as a pillow. Very clever ay? So, as we all sat around drinking, getting to know each other and enjoying the fact we could see hundreds of large fish swimming around our little boat, James was hitting the goon hard. By 9 he was already feeding the fish - puking off the side of the boat. We were all pretty merry by this point but it was certainly not a party night, just a chilled merry night. James didn’t like this. He wanted everyone to DANCE. There was no music playing, but this didn’t matter to James. He ran around the boat, trying to instil drinking games in everyone (like the douche bags at Mission Beach), and attempting to kiss every female on the boat without success. That was until he came to Scary Lonely Woman. Scary Lonely Woman, or SLW as we shall call her, was 38 years old and from Norwich. She had followed her Canadian friend away on the trip. However, to look upon SLW, you would not have thought them friends. Her quiet Canadian friend would sit happily, chatting politely to other guests, then normally head to bed at a reasonable hour. SLW however would sit beside her, mouth turned down like she was about to burst into tears and sadness in her small, tired eyes that could not be measured. She would sit in silence, never speaking to her friend, and glug back glass after glass of goon with such ferociousness it looked like she was dying of thirst. This is all we saw of her the first night. That was until we ventured outside to look at the stars. The deck was quiet and empty with most people asleep downstairs, but then, undulating in the darkness were two figures. James, and Scary Lonely Woman. It was like watching a Dementor removing the soul from a child. The wind grew cold, and the stars went out, and two of us were left on the deck with terror in our eyes, amidst the presence of pure WRONGNESS occuring before us. Before we could see anymore, Jo and myself rushed below deck and jumped into our beds, shuddering. We had seen things no man should ever see. By smashing my head repeatedly against the hull of the ship I finally managed to pass out into a dreamless sleep. The next day we awoke trying to forget about the nightmare we had been living before we slept, and we came up onto the deck ready for a day of paradise. James was already on deck. Actually, he had been on deck all night. Asleep with an inflated goon bag as a pillow.

We set sail for Whitehaven Bay. Whitehaven beach is the image of paradise. You know those pictures of generic beautiful beaches that they plaster all over travel agencies to make you feel bad when you are in grotty England? Chances are, they are taken on Whitehaven Bay. An unspoilt, uninhabited group of islands, with crystal white sand, and sky-blue water. We headed over to the bay, climbed off the Whore and headed through the jungle to get to the mythic Whitehaven Beach. After a slightly sweaty, hungover trek through the bush, the tree's ahead begun to part, and there, emerging from between the leaves, we glimpsed blinding white sand. Our feet sank into white dust, and we were there, the beach was before us. It honestly is the picture of Paradise, check out myself and Jo's photos on FB and Flickr, it is AWESOME. The sand on Whitehaven Beach is really quite special. With a composition of 98% Silica, it's the stuff they make computer chips out of. The sand on Whitehaven has only ever been mined once, and that was to make the shiny lens of the Hubble Space Telescope. Sciencey goodness ay? When you take your first steps onto Whitehaven beach, you can tell there is something a bit special about the sand, because it squeaks when you walk. It sounds like you're walking on polystyrene. Very weird sensation. Once we had gotten over the paralysing beauty of the beach, we all decided to explore the shiny, clear waters of Whitehaven. You see, this is where the price you pay for paradise, becomes overwhelmingly clear. The waters around Whitehaven are INFESTED with jellyfish and gigantic, monstrous Sting Rays. So once we were in the water, all smiles of wonder had disappeared, and instead we all looked like a bunch of badly, sighted, old people shuffling through the waters staring at our feet with looks of terror on our faces. You see, poor Ozzy Hero Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray. He was basically pissing the thing off, so it stung him big. One big way to piss off a stingray is to stamp on it. So shuffling was necessary as these big guys have a snooze under the sand. So there we were, all cautiously walking in a line, shuffling our feet amidst the odd girly squeal from one person or another. Then all of a sudden, we hear the scream...'SHARK! OHMYGOD SHARK!!!' We all look up, the blood draining from our scorched faces, and staring at the horizon, a whole new level of fear enters our hearts. Then, we see them. A pod of dolphins leaping out of the sparkly water just in front of us. Amazing. These guys were having a great time. Instantly, all fear and apprehension was gone and the whole group took off, splashing and running through the waters, stamping their little hearts off to get to these dolphins, but alas, they were having too much fun for us. After a while, I got a bit bored of all the shuffling that had resumed, so I went off on my own swim through the waters. After encountering several jellyfish that looked like nothing more than a Tesco’s bag floating in the water I stopped in my tracks and took in the view. This place was pure beauty. Incredible. As I was happily absorbing as much of this place as my eyes could allow, I looked at my feet, and there, poking out the sand was a long black stick. I give it a little inspectory (word?) nudge, and weirdly, the stick begins to quiver. Then it moves backwards, and upwards out of the white sand. Then, the stick is no longer a stick, and the stick is a tail, connected to the biggest, largest, grumpiest Sting Ray I have EVER seen. In a cloud of sand around my waist this guy rises upwards, like a gigantic, black cloud underwater. Before I actually lost control of bowels, luckily the big guy huffed at me then zipped off in an opposite direction. Paradise was a wonderful thing, but I was ready to enjoy it from the beach. On my way back to shore, just to make it clear this paradise belonged to someone else, I encountered two more bigger and angrier Sting Rays. I got the message.

Back on the boat that night, it was time to party. After getting over the semi-formal night before which mainly consisted of polite introductions and the normal 'Where you been? Where you going? Yeah wasn’t it great' kind of chat (Oh and some horrific copulation), everyone was fully up for a party. And we did. It was wonderful. Dancing beneath the stars, our boat was rocking. I should really mention the stars. Out in the middle of the ocean, under the unharmed, toxic-free air of the sky above the Great Barrier Reef, there is as much to look at above your head as there is beneath the waters. It is incredible. Inverted astronomical formations swing above you, and in between every single star is four more, and in between them, 20 more and so on and so on. After your eyes adjust to the glittering, you feel as though you are looking through a tunnel lined with fairylights. And swinging round, over our heads and zooming off into the horizon you can see quite clearly, the Milky Way. NO, not a giant chocolate bar launched into the air but our galaxy. Well a side, view of it anyway, and the concentrated number of suns and planets and moons that lay inside it. With the party on the boat, and the party above us, it was an awesome night.

One person who was having a particularly good night was young James. Over-emotional with the thought of all these people finally getting involved in his favourite past time, James went for it. Did it matter that the girls on the boat found him repulsive? No, he just grabbed their heads and kissed their faces. At one point over the night, he grabbed a bag of goon and shouted, to no-one in particular (as he was actually standing on his own at the bow of the ship) "SLAPTHEFUCKINGGOOOOOOON" where he latched onto the tap of the goon bag like it was some over-swollen teat, and he began to suck at the sour wine inside, whilst spinning in a circle. Everyone stopped dancing, everyone stopped talking, and we stood in silence, together, staring at this young man frantically spinning on the spot, goon trickling from his puckered mouth and a madness in his red eyes. After a minute or so, his mouth let go of the bag, and as it fell to the ground he angrily slapped it with a girly swipe and staggered backwards, belching. As we stared wondering what would occur next, he lurched over the side of the boat and evacuated the contents of his stomach for the fish again. The music and partying resumed instantly. Two other passengers on the boat were two crazy French guys; I call them that because I can no longer remember their names. But they were crazy. And French. Through most of the night they offered excellent entertainment, making everyone laugh with their jokes and general foreign enthusiasm that makes people smile. James did not like this. He was Mr Party Animal. It was HIS job to entertain everyone with drinking lots and vomiting and kissing. Whilst watching the two French guys dance around on deck impressing everyone, I turned to look at James. With his red eyes locked don the French guys, he stood swaying on the spot, fist clenched round a plastic cup of good. Suddenly his eyes darted to the girls sitting at his feet laughing at these guys in front of them. Panic came over his face, and then the calm confidence as his plan formed. As I watched James, he dropped his cup on the floor, and slumped to the decking, eyes closing as he descended. Once on the floor he begun to undulate and wobble as though he were having a seizure, his gelatinous body shuddering and pencil rolling into the girls sitting near him. They stopped laughing, turned to look, shrugged and carried on laughing at the French guys. James stopped his over-enthusiastic seizure after a couple of minutes, and lay quietly still for a moment, then opened one eye and pencil rolled away to the bow of the ship. Little did he know I thoroughly enjoyed his performance way more than the French guys, so his mission wasn’t a total fail. As the night went on, James's many failed attempts for attention got less exciting the more drunk he got and before the night was even half way, he was asleep on a cooler box. But by this point, another favourite character had arisen her head. Scary Lonely Woman was back. Spending most of the day in hiding, SLW sloped around the boat with her head hanging low, large sunglasses over her puffy eyes and her mouth turned down in that perpetual grimace. Shame was on her face for the actions of the night before, and it was assumed that tonight, after the horrendous amounts of alcohol she had consumed the previous evening and her well-documented actions with the boy, this night would be a low-key one for SLW. We were wrong. Over the course of the evening, we would spot her in the corners, in the shadows, furiously drinking back glass after glass of goon, her eyes fixed, and determined on the party in front of her, as though the elixir in her hands was powering her. After she had filled up on what must have been nearly two boxes, she tottered over. This is where the 'Scary' part of her name comes in. Over the course of the trip, there were many smokers and social smokers on the boat. Jo and myself fell into these categories and we had run out of ciggies by our first night on the Whore, as had many others. Scary Lonely Woman was aware of this, and had a plan to redeem herself. She began to drift slowly round the boat, in and out of people partying, not saying a word. And then she would stop in front of one of us, swaying on the spot, eyes blinking out of sync and she would slurring utter in a posh, squeaky, British accent "I'm sssorry, but, did hyou assk me for a sssiggarette?" And when one of us would gratefully say no, but how we would love one, she would smile, eyes closed, reach into her large bosoms and pull two out. This went on for the whole night, with SLW moving from person to person, and producing booby-insulated ciggies. She came round to us and performed the exact same ritual three times over the night. It was very sweet of her, but also a bit sad. I wanted to wrap her in a blanket, put her in the little dinghy and push her out in the dark waters. In the early hours of the morning, the goon ran out. It was a sad time. But then, out of the darkness we heard a voice. "Did you guyssss want sssome drinks?" and there, shuffling from the gloom was SLW, with two boxes of goon under her arms. Bless her. So at this point, she had plied us with ciggies and wine all night, I wanted to know more about SLW. After chatting to her for five minutes, that dementor magic begun to happen again and as she spoke, the stars flickered and dimmed and my soul begun to cry. I got as far as her being an accountant and how she hated her job and how many cats she had, and then my ears closed up as my brain tried to protect itself from self-destruct. Then suddenly she began to talk about her polite Canadian friend. As I looked at her face, that sullen, mopey mouth, turned into a snarl, a grimace, and with her eyes pointed at the floor, wide with fury she said, "You know, I come on THIS holiday for fun, and SHE just talks about how much she missed her husband. WE don’t all have husbandssss you know, and THATSSSS all she wantss to talk about. Well, if sssshe thinks thatsss what I want, ssshes wrong and BORING SHESSS SO BORING AND...SHEESS AND OLD IWANTFRIENDS." As she ranted the stars went out completely and we all backed away slowly, nodding and simultaneously eyeing our glasses of goon and sniffing at it for any trace of sedatives. The party quickly dispersed after the rant, and SLW was left on the deck. With her head lowered, we left her staring at the glass of goon in her hands. Or at the unconscious James lying at her feet. Thankfully, we will never know which it was.

The next day our Whitsundays trip came to an end. At the crack of dawn we embarked on a VERY hung over, but wonderful snorkelling session off of one of the islands. A million fish were swimming around our hung over bodies, and I cant say whether it was the refreshing water, or the drunken goon still in my system, but whatever it was, it was a magical experience. That was, until I looked up, and was face to face with the biggest, meatiest, angriest looking jellyfish in the world. This thing was solid. Not ethereal like the other jellyfish we had encountered. This guy, was the fricking mothership. About the size of an exercise ball, he bobbed towards me, his large bowl head poking out of the water. After nearly inhaling my snorkel and mask through terror, I quickly made a swift exit and got back on the boat. My snorkelling was finished with for now. Getting back on the boat, I discovered James had also encountered the jellyfish. Unlike me, he had shoved his hand into the angry looking mass because he thought 'it looked like it would feel nice.' Silly James. Also back on the boat was SLW, but she retreated back into herself and sat in the corner, hiding behind large glasses and a big towel. Once everyone was back on board, we sailed back to Airlie and said our farewells, agreeing, but not quite promising, to stay in touch and see each other down the coast. SLW was never seen again. And neither was James.

Over the course of this post I realise I have made several disparaging remarks about some of the people, I have come across, but you see, there are some human beings who cross your path, who are so mental, and unknowingly horrendous in a wonderful way that they stick in your mind for ever and ever. Also, before I get any angry comments, there is NOTHING wrong with a lady seeking a toy-boy for some sexy time, but when you are in a beautiful place where beauty is the main attraction, an event such as the one we witnessed is an assault to the senses. Its like discovering a skid-mark on a nice clean flannel just as you are about to wash your face with it. Ahem.

Anyway, more soon!x

HALLO POSSUMS!

Bit of a rare start to a post today. I write to you today...with happiness in my heart. Not the smelly, tired happiness that I have had over my time away, (because I truly have been happy most of the time) But, no, this happiness is CLEAN happiness. My eyes are bright with life, and my skin has the non-sweaty smoothness of someone who showers regularly. That’s right. I am in a house. I am living a static existence once more - no illness, no ailments, no terror, no fumblings in the dark and no sweating. Just peace. OK so yes I still look like Bryan Blessed after a night sleeping rough but LIFE has returned to me. I feel it my veins as I awake. I see it in my eyes when I look in the mirror. For no longer am I on the road. I am living in Sydney, for 2 weeks and am at utter peace. A wonderful, beautiful friend has put Jo and myself up for the entire time we are in this wonderful city, and it’s very, very awesome. True, I still have to wear the clothes of a holocaust survivor, (I kid, I kid, my clothes are MUCH worse) have hair like Willy Wonka but it's OK. Who cares? I have a couch, and films, and a bed and INTERNET. Oh yeah. Oh yeah oh yeah ohyeah. So, as I sit here with a cuppa and some biccies for dunking, I write...

ONWARDS with our Australian adventure! There's lots of wonderful tales to come. There really is. After our time in the just bloody lovely city (is it a city? I don’t think so. I'm going to call it a TOWN), the wonderful town of Cairns, we begun our journey southbound along the coast. At first, the idea of travelling by coach for the foreseeable future was not an appealing one. During our time in Asia we experienced many varieties of coach/bus related transport. Some were good, with nice drivers, lots of room and lots of air con. Others were bad. Rusty shit boxes driving way too close the edge, with drivers who seem to not understand the fundamental requirements of driving, and passengers of the non-human variety. (Dogs really do get car sick, FANCY THAT!) Many a time I sat on a 6-hour journey with some strangers stinking backpack pressed against my FACE. Also, one journey that I seem to have blocked from my memory occurred entirely with NO AIR CON. Oh god. The horror. Thank god for Diazepam. BUT, when we first boarded our Premier coach service, (Might I add, the cheapest of ALL the budget coach tours down the coast) we squealed like children with pig flu when we saw it. It was LOVELY. Always half empty, so we could stretch out on our long journeys, and with convenient flat screen tellies placed along the aisle, we even managed to catch some cracking films on our journeys down the coast. (Back to the Future and E.T! GREAT SCOTT!)Pretty soon after our first journey from Cairns, I actually found myself looking FORWARD to these trips. These were times when I could blatantly ignore every other person, watch the passing scenery in silence, and read my book or watch a film. I was a 100% anti-social passenger. And I fricking LOVED it.

As we approached our first stop along the coast in the early hours of the morning, I wriggled and jiggled in my seat with glee. What wonders would we find at Mission Beach? What glorious sights would we see? As it turns out, NOTHING. We saw nothing. Talk about boring. I actually can’t even call this place a town. It was a hostel. And a beach. Mission beach funnily enough. And lots and lots of fields of dead grass. Sure the weather was hot and there was a swimming pool, but other than that, Mission Beach was dullsville. Plus, I had a cold. This might have added to the suckiness I felt. One wonderful thing did come out of this place though. During our travels, as is inevitable, you meet people. Some are lovely, some are not, some are weird and some are hot (Wow I sound like Dr Seuss). Two lovely people we met in Malaysia, Lottie and Nick were in Australia the same time we were, but up until this point, we had not bumped into each other. Also, during our time on the Great Barrier Reef, we met a lovely chap named Charlie. What a nice guy we both said aloud after meeting him. The wonderful thing happened just after we arrived at our hostel, Scotties Backpackers at Mission Beach. Charlie was eating his breakfast, and looked up at us two coming through the door. 'Oh look, Chris and jo!' he exclaimed with glee in his bright little eyes. 'Hey, we know Chris and jo too!' exclaimed Nick and Lottie sitting opposite him. And voila, we had a group of friends at last. No longer would jo and myself have to pretend to talk to each other as though we have anything interesting to say anymore. We were pretty close to resorting to grunts and gurns for communicating with each other, (I kid, we got on fabulously) But after spending three weeks with just the both of us for company, it was lovely to once again have some other faces to talk with and plan the rest of our journey down the coast with. And even more wonderfully, the three Irish gals turned up later in the day too, pushing our friendship group to 'Posse' levels. We were now a posse. OH YEAH. Later that night, we all ventured out to the local bar. I say local, it’s about a 30-minute drive away. And I say Bar, I actually mean a room with some beers in. but it was not for the drink that we went there, oh no, it was for the free curry WITH a beer. Without wanting to turn this offer down, we went along with the rest of the hostel so we could stuff our faces and all catch up over a pint. Annoyingly, most of the other people in the hostel went along as it was a 'Bad Taste Party' and planned on getting utterly smashed whilst wearing some dead peoples clothes. Me with my sniffles, I wasn’t really in the mood, and we all decided we would rather just sit and have a laugh sharing our stories from over the last couple of weeks. This did not go down well with the other partygoers. Frequently throughout the night, douche bag after douche bag would come up to our table, and interrupt our laughing by screaming in our faces 'LIMBO CONTEST INSIDE FUCKERS, WHATS WRONG WITH YOU ALL? EH? WHATS WRONG? COME ON! GET UPANDFUCKINGDAAAAAAANCE' to which we all looked at him with blank eyes and carried on with our conversations. I know I might sound like a boring moron, but you know what its like, you haven’t seen some friends for a long time, you are really in the mood for pub like entertainment - sitting around, catching up, getting drunk and having a laugh. These people that we had followed out could not understand this concept. When we would try to explain this to them after the fourth attempt to get us to enter a wet t-shirt competition with a bucket of piss-ridden rain water, their faces would stop smiling after our fourth word, and begin to morph into a look of utter confusion and disgust. 'You mean...you don't want to enter the dance off because you're all, like, chatting and shit?' yes we would tell them. Yes, that’s right. We are not really in the right frame of mind to have a dance off to 'I Saw The Sign' by Ace of Base, amidst a bunch of imbeciles dressed like blind clowns and throttaging with each other whilst standing in a puddle of spit. Maybe another night, we would say. By the end of the night, when we had exhausted our chat and beer funds, we overheard the collective douche bags cunningly coming up with ways to get us on the dance floor. One plan, we overheard during their ridiculous shouty whispers, was to pour a bucket of water over our heads. Little did they know this would have had the opposite effect of what they desired. No we wouldn’t all get up and start dancing, covered in water, we would have gotten up and smashed chairs over their sweaty faces. So shortly after this discovery, we made a swift effort. Sadly though, this experience wasn’t the last. If we EVER considered spending a night NOT drinking in a public place down the east coast, most other backpackers and their staff would look at us as though we had small pox. 'What’s wrong with them?' we would hear them utter. So unless we were out drinking, we were made to feel as though we had brain damage. Luckily for us though, we were a POSSE, so we didn’t care! YEAH! (I promise that’s the last time I’ll use the word posse)

Next on our trip was a strange and wonderful island. As we boarded the ferry at a town called Townsville (Clever huh?), we sailed over foamy, blue waters towards a green, mountainous island. For a moment I stood in silence with the salt air rushing at my face and I begun to long for my favourite island. That’s right, the island from LOST. GOD I MISS THAT SHOW. Anyway, Magnetic Island was the name of our destination, still spookily LOST like with this idea of it exuding impressive magnetic fields, but our Lonely planet guide quickly dashed these wild fantasies of mine. Magnetic Island is so called as when Mr Captain Cooke discovered the place, he found it made his compass act strangely. Which it doesn’t (I tried mine, thanks Karen ^_^) Silly Captain Cooke. Regardless of the spooky name, Magnetic Island was very cool. Again, not a great lot to do, but this place was really nice. Really cute. Tall, green mountains surrounded little pockets of shops and restaurants, whilst long shiny beaches extended along the coast. Plus it was HOT. I found myself SWEATING. I was not PLEASED. However, the place and the people were so just damn cute, it made the place wonderful. Our hostel though, not so much. Staying at Arcadia Hotel, the rooms smelt of hot Stilton and the swimming pool was a cemetary for bugs, but we were there with our pals, so it wasn’t too bad, plus this hostel had an extra feature that only occurred at night. POSSUMS. Have you ever seen a possum? I always imagined them to be something like a hedgehog with no spikes that defecated over everything it touched, as they are a common pest in OZ. However, a possum is nothing of the sort. If they are a common pest, they can pester me anytime. OH YEAH. About the size of a cat, with short, shnuggly grey fur, long nose pink snouts, big whiskers and little human like hands (Admittedly slightly spooky), they are just so fricking cute. And sitting outside at night on Magnetic Island, you suddenly realised you were in POSSUM VILLE. These guys were EVERYWHERE. The sun would begin to set, the sky would turn orange, and then slowly, with a quiet snuffling, they would appear. Climbing down from tree's, poking their little faces round corners, and climbing out of bins. Yes, its true that when they mate they sound like babies getting murdered and they also snort like pigs, but come on...WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE?



One particular night, we decided to try our luck with an evening out drinking, true it was only possible by visiting another hostel where the Irish Gals were staying, but we went none the less. Upon our return at 2 in the morning (After waiting, might I add for an 2 HOURS for a taxi as the response we received upon calling for one was that they 'Had to get the driver out of bed') we came back to discover that in the dead of night, POSSUMS RULE. These guys were everywhere. I half expected to look over at the swimming pool and see them jumping off the board or swimming with a Daiquiri in their little hands. Due to drunken, over affection, I actually found myself sitting down and chatting with two in particular and feeding them pieces of my peanut butter and jam on toast, They loved me. I named them Edna and Harold. Magnetic Island was a revelation for me in that it was the first time since being in OZ, other than the wonders of the Barrier Reef and the giant killer turkeys and spiders of Cape Trib, that I noticed that living anywhere in OZ, you were susceptible to the incredible wildlife this country has. Other than possums we were surrounded by weird, long legged, fat squawky birds, incredible flocks of multi coloured parrots, squawking, screeching cockatoo's and the odd giant cockroach and killer crocodile. But one of the best animal displays I encountered during my stay on Magnetic Island was KANE TOAD RACING. Oh yeah. Kane toads are some big fat frogs that Ozzies introduced to get rid of rabbits. But that was a big boo boo, as now these fat suckers are everywhere. They look more or less like a normal toad, but a bit grumpier. We discovered on our second night at our hostel, that they were having a Kane Toad Race. Could be fun we thought. When we turned up, I actually think the ENTIRE POPULATION of Magnetic Island had come to watch this strange old sweaty man race, Kane toads. Strange sweaty old man went by the unfortunate name of Crazy Bob and his cooky Kane Toads. Standing in the car park of our hostel surrounded by a huge crowd, Crazy Bob, sweating, spitting and jabbering like a man with rabies, he would place five toads, each with a lovely little ribbon round their bellies, into a compartmentalised container. After taking bets from the heckling locals, he would collect the money, then with a feverish excitement and quite often, a strange little jig, he would lift the container then scream like a man possessed at the motionless green blobs on the floor directing them to leave the chalk circle in which they had been placed. The first time we witnessed this ritual; we all turned and stared open mouthed at each other. Here we were, surrounded by more or less the entire population of the island we were staying on, all screaming, screaming and pointing, at five toads sitting cross-eyed and motionless in a car park. If toads have brains, they were either frozen with terror to the spot, or gloating at the only moment in their lives for which people actually cared for their outcome. I felt sorry for the little blighters, I really did. I never thought I would ever see such a fuss over a frog. However, by the fourth round I found myself screaming and shouting with the rest of them, and at one point, at the height of my passion, I had the sudden urge to run out, pushing through the crowd, into the circle and stamp each toad into oblivion. Mob mentality is not good for my feeble mind. At the moment this raging thought crossed my mind, I decided to retire to my chair, and talk with some far nicer creatures - with my possums.

Next stop is our Whitsundays Trip, but i have now progressed from Tea to Red Wine and the keys on this wonderful computer are becoming blurred so i shall depart, and return, oh so soon with more tales. I'm gonna go lay on a couch. Yep, all to myself. OHYEAH.

YOU SWINE!

Just thought i should post a little explanation about the lack of Photo's and videos and such lately. I thought i already did this in my previous post, but looking back i can't seem to find it. Could be something to do with the way im feeling right now. You see, in OZ, it is a criminal offence to use a USB to upload photo's, however, i am retreating to a sanctuary in Sydney in about 2 weeks time, where a beautiful girl, with long, fiery locks shall welcome us into her lap of luxury where hopefully, i shall be ready to uplaod photo's again. However, a warning. You see, this whole Swine Flu business that's going about, the strain over her ein OZ has reacted badly with some people, myself and Jo included. So, when you see the photo's, just, you know, pity us, but do so quietly. We are learning to deal with our ailments. All the best, and speak soon. I have attached some recent snapshots of us both below, to ease you into our new look. Stay safe, take ya Beechums.x

Chris and Jo.xx

BOOK LIST Part One

“The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

You know who said that? The greatest philosopher all time thats who. Yep, Dr Seuss. Ya know what he got his PHD in? LIFE. OK, yes, he also said "My alphabet starts with this letter called yuzz. It's the letter I use to spell yuzz-a-ma-tuzz."but thats beside the point. What i'm trying to say here, is that during my travels, READING has become the BESTEST thing in the universe. Long gone are my wonderful evenings sitting alone in my room, scratching my crotch whilst engrossed in a movie and eating Nutella straight from the jar with a pencil. Those moments of happiness have been taken away from me by the life i now lead. So, to fill this abyss of escapism, i have taken up reading with ravenous delight. Wanna know what ive read so far? No? WELL GUTTED COZ IM GONNA TELL YOU NOW. But don't worry, it will be in parts so you don't end up hating me even more than you already do.

The Book Thief by Makus Zusak

Awesome, amazing, heartbreaking book. This was the first book i read whilst travelling and it was SO FRICKING GOOD. Narrated by death, it tells the story of a little orphan girl called Liesel growing up in Nazi Germany. Amazingly written and so sad you will weep forever. Read it. Its very important that you do.

The Catcher In The Rye by J.D Salinger

Before i came away i made myself a promise i would read more classic novels. So far im still wandering around with about four classics in my backpack. However, after finishing my first book i moved straight onto this and loved it. Just the funnest book i have read in ages. Really funny, sweet and strange, if you havnt read it (which i hadnt) it follows a kid called Holden Caulfield over 3 days after he quits school and hangs out in New York trying to guide his life in some way that will make him happy. Brilliant stuff.

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carol

Another classic i picked up. Its funny, most of the books you end up buying in Asia are just large, photocopied versions of the original books. Sometimes the pages are stapled in upside down, and they cost you almost double what they would cost you at home, but i still loved reading this. Its just the most strangest, original, crazy story for kids. Alice east ALOT of food in this. I think Mr Carol was eating ALOT of mushrooms whilst writing it. but whatever creative techniques he used they worked perfectly. Just the best fun.

The Beach by Alex Garland

Yes thats right, i am indeed a walking cliche. But you know what? I DONT CARE. It was bloody brilliant reading this laying on the beaches that Garland writes about. Looking around at the local Thai's with their 'smiles like sharks'. Really made me think about the idea of Paradise and what it meant. The Lonely Planet described Phi Phi as 'paradise so beautiful it would make you cry'. Instead i found endless tour shops crowding the streets so you couldnt even see the sky and drunken British morons throwing up outisde the countless pancake stalls. I found it eventually, but it took a while.

Awesome stuff so far hmm? HMMMM? OK, this is actually all a rouse. You see, i would normally be posting photo's and other exciting little tidbits from the journey so far, but you see, AUSTRALIA IS A HUGE RIP OFF. It's actually proving more difficult to upload photo's and video's here than it was in Asia. They CHARGE you to use the USB ports! i mean, why not just suck all the atmosphere out of the internet cafe's then charge people to use oxygen tanks as they check facebook in a cold, lifeless vacuum? Bah. I'm off. Be back soon!

CRRRRRIKEY!

Before i say my normal bla bla's about how i havnt posted for so much time etc etc, i must firstly point something out. I need to apologise for the grammar on this particular post. You see, i have acquired a disability. I arose this morning after returning from a lovely sailing trip round the Whitsundays (Oh yes, there shall be more on this later) and discovered that i seemed to be unable to open my left eye. My hands rose to my face, groans coming from my mouth and as i rushed to the mirror, i screamed. I currently look like Matthew Broderick in Election. If you have any idea what im talking about, you will know my horror. If not, basically my left eye looks like a mouldy fig. This poses many problems. Not only for my normally impeccable grammar on this blog (HA!) but also for my self esteem. you see, in the land of OZ, many things are different from that crazy world of Asia. In many Asian countries, people wouldnt bat an eyelid (oh how i miss my eye-lid) at what you look like, or what you are wearing. Even if you pulled your pants down mid-stride and evacuated your bowels oustide the local McDonalds, they would still step over you and continue on their journey to purchase a McThai. But in OZ, things are sadly very different. Gorgeous, impossibly brown western people are everywhere. And the majority of them are pretty much constantly looking for sexual intercourse with/without copious amounts of alchohol involved. Therefor, it is ALWAYS in your best interest to look incredibly fabulous at all times. For a 26 year old man, with a little belly and an alergic reaction similar to a vampire when he steps in sunlight, this image of fabulosity is hard to obtain. Therefor, when i embarked on my glorious trip around the Whitsundays, sailing on a beautiful white pirate ship whilst surrounded by many brown Scandanavian beauties sunbathing againt the passing paradise, sadly i shall be remembered as "that pale british guy who hid in the shadows with the gammy eye". self-confidence, and grammatical correctness has therefor taken a nose dive. SO, with impaired vision, and a truly new, low of self esteem, i write to you.

"I AM NOT AN ANIMAL...Slurrrrrrp....I AM A HUMAN BEING!"

SINAGAPORE. What a funny city. In many ways, it incapsulates the more Westernised, affluent image of Asia. I imagined it to be as similar to Tokyo, Japan as a city could get. High rise buildings rise out of the flat landscape with thousands of blinking coloured lights, crazy looking shops and eateries scream with neone lights on every corner, and literally, EVERY OTHER BUILDING is a shopping mall. Its absoloute madness. Singaporians (Is that even right?!) must be either incredibly bored, or incredibly materialistic, for all they can do in their spare time is SHOP. The main shopping road, Orchard Road, is over a mile long, and you will find over 30 malls along it. Each mall holds on average about 250 shops. Thats like 7500 shops. On one road. ARE THERE EVEN THAT MANY SHOPS ON THE PLANET? Obviously there are, theyre all in Singapore. Anyway, so Singapore, its pretty damn good for shopping. However, arriving in this city-sized mall is not so enjoyable for a budegting traveller. Therefor myself and Jo walked around the entire city with faces like a slapped arse. Gurning with jealousy at every shopper walking past us. That was until we found the true reason i love Asia. COMICS. Books shops are great in Singapore. Obviously influenced by Japanese and Chinese culture (The majority of Singaporians are Chinese), Japanese Manga can be found in many shops. And it was cheap! So finally, i could shop! Without going too crazy, i bought a big enough selection to ease my raging desire to shop without raping my wallet. Later in the day, we ventured to a nearby shopping centre, and i squeeled with delight as i saw a sign saying VIRTUAL WORLD ARCADE! I grabbed Jo by the hair, and yanked her down an escalator where we stumbled upon the biggest arcade i had ever seen. People everywhere, of all ages where shaking, pushing, stamping and jumping on these big flashy arcade machines that i had never seen before. It was fascinating. It was like the scene from Lost In Translation where lovely Miss Johannsen walks into that peculiar arcade. I loved it. We quickly got some tokens, and then spent the following four hours running around like kids trying to figure out how the hell you play the games. It was brilliant. My favourite one was a giant plastic cube, with little screens for buttons. When the screens lit up in time with the strange Chinese song playing, you had to hit them. The rythem alone makes you do a little dance when you are playing. It was awesome fun. After a heavy day of wandering the city, we ventured onto the subway. The Singapore MRT is massively impressive compared to the London underground. Its all shiny and new and very frequent. Hwever, they did have one feature that fear may not go down so well in London. Small TV screens line the platform walls and the trains themselves. Most Singaporians didnt pay these screens any attention, as i guess they had seen them many times before. however, myself and Jo could not stop staring at them with looks of utter horror on our faces. These screens basically showed you the consequences and aftermath of the various ways of dying through a terrorist attack on the MRT. Visions of the trains pulling into the stations then exploding in great fireballs of hot death flashed across our bulding eyes. Passengers running screaming through the tunnels then emerging into the daylight and vomiting black poison from a chemical bomb flickered over the screens. yet no one paid any attention to these shows. It was just me and Jo, staring in disbelief. Another funny thing about the MRT, is that they have signs everywhere saying NO DURIANS. Do you know what a Durian is? Or more importantly, do you know what a Durian smells like? If the answer is no, then you are LUCKY. Durian is a spikey fruit that can be found on most street stalls or being eaten with raging hunger, zombie style, by wrinkly Asian people sitting on the road. It is the SMELLIEST fruit in the world. Imagine a smell of intense rotten eggs, sulphur and hot garbage juice mixed together. IT IS THE SMELL OF DEATH. We discovered this wonderful smelling fruit as we ventured through Malaysia. Walking past a fruit stall, marvelling at all the colours and smells, we spotted the Durian. Picking it up we remarked at its wonderful colour and spikeyness. Suddenly, the seller came rushing over, grabbed it from our hands with a big smile on his face then sliced it in half. Time seemed to stop at that moment. All surrounding birds and animals fell silent and our eyes began to stream. Standing in such close proximity to this HELL FRUIT was not a good idea. I very nearly explosively vomitted into the shop keepers smiling eyes. And that is why when we looked at those NO DURIAN signs on the Singapore MRT, our noses smiled.

We said farewell to Singapore on the 4th of April, and made our way to the airport. The act of travelling has almost become a comfort to me. Its a long period of time, where you dont have to move, dont have to look good, dont have to talk, and you can just sit and sleep or read whilst being taken to the next new and strange place. The idea of sitting on a plane for 8 hours as we flew to Cairns, Australia appealed to me immensly. I fidgeted with exitement as i contemplated what games and films we could watch on our little TVs in the seat in front. I wobbled at the thought of scoffing my mid flight food whilst staring out the window at the stars. This, would explain the look of PURE digust on my face when i got on our plan and noticed there were no TVs in the back fo the seats. I whispered frantically in Jo's ear as if i were commenting on some horrendous social faux pa that had occurred - "Jo...JO...where the hell are the TVs?...JO....Where are the TVs? I dont understand WHERE ARE THEY?" Once i controlled my disgust, we were seated by some lovely Australian ladies (Our first Ozzy encounter) who said we could RENT a TV for $10. Succumbign to our budget, we declined with grumpy no thank-you's and settled in for our flight. 8 hours, i woke with raisin-eye's and peeped through the window at Cairns as it came into view. I felt like i was flying to Jurassic Park. Green, jungle filled mountains and crystal blue water glimmered beneath us. I was excited.

In all honesty, Australia so far has been lovely, butquite uneventful, hence the lack of posts. Its pretty much - Beach, Lagoon, Drink, Beach, Lagoon, Drink, POSSUM, drink. Anyway, i shall divulge the details, as a blog written in that style would be gigantically boring for all involved. SO, Cairns turned out to be a lovely place. We stuck around for a week, slowly settling into our new western environment. Part of us missed the friendliness and anonymity that came with being a Western in Asia, but we slowly succumbed to being back in a world full of Baskin and Robbins and steak specials. After spending a couple of days sunbathing around the man-made lagoon in town, we took our trip to the local travel agents and booked all our excusrions. It is these excursions that put the Ahhhh in Australiahhhh. We booked a trip to Cape Tribulation, an area north of Cairns that is home to the worlds oldest rain forrest, and HUGE FRICKING SPIDERS. We hopped on our bus, which would take us on a little tour till we arrived at our place for the night, a hostel in the rainforrest. Our driver, lets call her Amanda as i cant remember her real name, was perhaps my favourite Australian stranger. This woman, LOVED her country, and LOVED telling people about it. She was bloody great. As we sleepily made our way to Cape Trib, she informed us all about the local area, the local Abroiginal tribe and most entertaingly, the many, varied ways thet you can be killed by many Australian animals. It was literally a case of "If the Dingo's don't git ya, then the bats will git ya. And if the bats don't git ya, then the sharks will git ya, and if the sharks dont git ya, then the crocs will git ya." She was great. We found out many wonderful things from her. A Box Jelly fish can kill you in 15 minutes. Crocodiles live on most of the beaches along the East coast and they eat people frequently. An Iriganji is a small jelly fish the size of your finger nail. If you are stung, you will spend the next 6 hours in intense pain with feelings of intense anxiety and death pulsing through you. You will also hallucinate. There are no remedies. there is a small snail called the Cone Shell. It has a beautiful shell. It can be found in the sea along the East Coast. A woman snorkling last year found one, picked it up and put it in her bathing suit. She was dead half an hour later, as the cone shell snail fires a small harpoon which injects you with quite alot of poison. All of these creatures, and many many more can be found all the way along the East coast. And swimming in the sea, is almost never reccommended. Luckily, when we arrived in the rainforrest for our night amongst the wild, only two of these creatures were present. Crocodiles. And a large blue bird, that had the ability to disembowel you, Velociraptor style, with one swift kick of its clawed foot. Luckily, we saw neither. However, we DID see the Golden Orb Spider. A huge, harmless spider that is horrifyingly the size of a grown mans head. With a web the size of a fricking bed sheet. These guys were EVERYWHERE to our horror. With every step came the squeel of terror as we would frequently walk into these guys. I half expected to walk around a corner and find several small childen entombed in their webs. Sadly, this never happened. However, we made some friends with 3 lovely Irish girls, and i quickly realised these spiders could offer quite alot more entertainment than they first suggested. Sarah, Caroline and Fiona are three gorgeous and UNBELIEVABLY Irish girls from a placed called Cork in Southern Ireland. In their own words, they are a great crack. They are SO VERY IRISH. Its wonderful. They even text in Irish speak "Ok den, will be wit you shortly!" Sarah happens to be utterly, entirely and intensly terrified by anything that is not human. At the sight of these spiders, her blue eyes would enlarge, her mouth would hang open, and she would start stepping backwards, shaking and uttering in a raspy, breathy voice her vocalised terror "Oh.....uh...Bjeesus....oh..god..i....bejeesus...what the....fuck....holyshitbejeesusfuck..." Great fun to watch. So with our new friends, we spent the night in the rainforrest, surrounded by giant spiders and unknown animals squaking in the night. It was our first truly Ozzy experience and it turned out to be great fun, and we made three new awesome friends on the way.

Our next Ozzy experience was even better. The Great Barrier Reef. Did you know that the reef can be visited more or less all the way down the East Coast of Australia? Its HUGE. The only natural structure that can be seen from space. And my GOD is it beautiful. We headed out for a day trip around the outer reef near Cairns. Cairns is a good spot to visit the reef as its very close to the outer parts, where all the colourful goodness lies, and more importantly, its CHEAP. Our boat was called PASSION FOR PARADISE. Cheese city. But it was great fun. We ventured out to a small quay, a little sand island smack bang in the middle of the crystal blue waters where rare birds liked to nest and after donning our stinger suits, (spandex body suits that make you look like you're one of the Fantastic Four but also keep spooky jelly fish fron stinging you) we jumped in with our flippers and began to explore. It was as incredible as you can imagine. I always thought the colours and shapes depicted in magazines and even in Finding Nemo were exaggerated, but thats not true. Every colour you could imagine lay under that clear water. Purple and green clams opened and closed with the currents. Bright orange clown fish hid in the throngs of bustling, pink anenome's, staring at you as you swam by. Branches of electric blue coral pointed towards the surface with huge multicoloured parrot fish nibbling at their twigs. And Sea Turtles, elegant sea turtles swam along like Dude from Nemo. I don't mind saying this, but i actually felt like Arial under the sea with her fishy friends. It was incredible. Sebastian was right - Nothing is better, down where it's wetter, under the sea. That trip will forever be one of the main highlights of OZ, and im really glad it happened. Before that, and Cape Trib, when we were laying by the lagoon, looking around at the McDonalds and scorched, red tourists eating up the sun, we could easily have been in Malorca or Tennerife. Asia was a place where no matter where you looked, everything was strange. Strange, but REAL. And after our first week in OZ, we were worried we would miss that feeling. However, after our trip to the reef and Cape trib, these little excursions, that take you out, into the crazy natural world of Australia, it's these amazing experiences that sets this country apart. And i have lots more to see, many more excursions to talk about and have, and that fills me with many bubbles of wonder.

I was just thinking about our first night in Singapore. We stumbled into a shopping area called Bugis Square. Starbucks, Abercrombie's and Gaps surrounded us everywhere, amidst a selection of tasty and expensive eateries you only find in shopping malls. And suddenly we realised we were really saying goodbye to Asia, and hello again to the Western World. It was a sad moment. Not one cry of "YOU WANT BUY MISTA? CHEAP CHEAP BUY NAAANAY!!" could be heard. Not one whiff of street juice was in the air. And as far as i could see, not a moped in sight. Instead we were surrounded by the shops and usual sights of our lives in England. And with this new environment, came a feeling of real comfort. Sadly though, this only added to our melancholly. Why should we feel more comfortable surrounded by logo's of uber corperations and fake palm tree's rising out of sculptured concrete? Wouldnt it be more fitting to feel at ease amidst the reality of the smelly, bustle and dust clouds of Hanoi? Or walking the night markets fo Changmai looking for something edible to eat that doesnt come in a pre-sealed vaccum? It was a strange feeling - coming from this crazy new world we had been living in for the last two months, this Western world is such a HUGE contrast to the crazy reality of Asia. but what to do? Shall i burn all my western money and grow a huge beard then live in a cave, eating bat droppings and Phad Thai? No, i embrace the things im used to - the fake, expensive, impersonal Western world ive missed so much. Yes i guess that makes me a bit of an hypocrit or ignoramus, but i can now appreciate it all a bit more, and have a better perspective of my silly little life...ANYWAY, after all that cliche claptrap, i'm off for a Grande, skinny, double espresso, vanilla latte. Cheerio.

TURNOFFTHELIGHTSHUTTHEDOOR!!

I could apologise for the lack of posts of late again, but it seems i do that EVERY SINGLE TIME i write a post, so this time, i'm going to say GUTTED, big fat GUT ROTS that i havnt posted anything for a while. Right, now thats out the way, my excuse for not posting anything for a while is simple. it costs FIFTY MILLION BUCKS to go online in OZ. So, i guess the one good thing to come out of this, is much shorter posts from myself. Anyway, from all the people i have been speaking to, i think we only have three people reading this blog anymore (Thanks Karen, Hannah and Emma, you guys just really rock. You really do.) Anyway, beacuase time is short and money is sparse, this is going to be more of a roundup.

So, we were last at Krabi after the DEATH ferri yes? Well, due to this horrific event, we spent three days in Krabi doing NOTHING. Plus there were so many fat, boiled, red Brits everywhere, it didnt really feel like a special tropical paradise anyway so we were pretty happy sleeping all day in our room. After Krabi, we made our way to the wonderful tropical paradise of Ko Phi Phi. Lonely Planet described it as "So beautiful, it will make you cry." we it did make us cry but i cant say that was because of the beauty. Sadly, like most of the tropical wonders of Phi Phi, the place had succumbed to the TOURIST. As soon as we arrived, the white, snowy beaches were covered again in fat europeans, lolloping around, and roaring like Elephant Seals battling over their spot on the sand. The water was also so hot i actually think i began to boil whilst6 sitting in it. however, saying this, we did find paradise just off shore when we went sailing in a long boat for the day. We snorkled just off of the beach where that film, The Beach was filmed, and saw many tropical wonders. We also sailed home under a purple sunset which was pretty eye bulgingly beautiful. However, my highlight of Phi Phi was chilling out in a place called the Sunflower Bar, where we sat stuffing our face with Phad Thai, and watching the Sun Set and a Thunder Storm, battle for our attention in the great big sky over the endless ocean in front of us. Wonderful stuff.

SO, after Phi Phi, it was time to say fairwell to Thailand, and HIYA Malaysia! We jumped in a minibus at Krabi, and made our way over the boarder to the wonderful island of Langkawi. Weirdly, in the bus on the way there, out of the four Brits on board, two were from Essex. One went to my school and happened to know everyone i did who was a year younger than me, and the other is best friends with my cousin Toria, AND the sister of one of my old friends! MADNESS. JUST MADNESS. So talking about how weird it was that we knew eachother and how many other people we were connected to took up most of the days journey (perhaps not the pleasure of the other passengers who did infact try to suffoctae themselves with their own fists throught the journey) adn we finally arrievd in Langkawi. Langkawi offered beaches, great pizza, MASSIVE insects and jungles. One night whilst i was enjoying a rather excellent Satay Pizza (Chicken satay, on a pizza, there is NOTHING better i assure you.) two giant flying cockraoches, about the size of a mobile phone each, flew over to the lampost next to our table. Instantly, all girls in the surrounding vicinity opened their mouths and eyes and begun to emit deep, gurgling squeels of horror. It was quite amazing. As they stared, open mouthed at these flying monsters, i began to calm them. "Guys, seriously, whats wrong with you? look, theyre not gonna fly into us, theyre more interested in that light, besides theAAAAARGOHMYGOD" i flew off my chair, jumping about becuase one of these beetles of doom had decided to fly straight into my face. It actually felt like someone had thrown a crunchy stone right at my cheek. Those bugs hit HARD when they smash into stuff. So for the rest of the night all of my manly assurances were disregarded due to my girlish screams during my bug attack. On our last day in Langkawi, and with the essex girls, we all rented a car together and drove off into the jungle. We got two cars. one good one. And one bad one. Guess which one i was in? You know, i have never seen smoke coming out of the air conditioning before. Nor have i ever seen the steering wheel come off mid turn either. But it was good fun none the less.

After we said our goodbyes in Langkawi, we headed to Penang. Not much to report here apart from the fact we went the cinema and it was AMAZING. 1.50 per film. I was in HEAVEN. Life surged back into my eyes as i sat in those air conditioned rooms, wobbling in the darkness with my eyes and mouth devouring the popcorn and sights in front of me in equal measure. Oh we also stuffed our faces in Penang as well. Lots of curries. Ever heard of Butter Chicken curry? I havnt, but its bloody lovely. After Penang it was to Kuala Lumpur, one of those funny sounding places you never actually realises exists until you see it on a map or go there. kind of like Timbuktoo ya know? Well KL (as the locals call it, oh yeah, im down the kids) was pretty dull. Lots of shops, including a TOPMAN (DANGER DANGER) were present, but apart from the giant glittering Patronas towers that we couldnt even go up, not alot here. Shame we stayed 4 nights to be honest. KL was also the location for my first dorm experience. An experience i wasnt really looking forward to. Sleeping in a confined, hot, room with a bunch of burping, farting, rude foreign strangers who care about nothing but their own goodness? No thanks. But iw as assured by jo and Jo that this was the not the case and most Dorm experiences were good fun. My first one WASNT. As we entered our 8 bed dorm at 11 at night (on a saturday might i add), we found the lights off, air con and entire guests of1 asleep, or trying to apparently. As we turned on the lighths, this disgusting hair beast, a girl with the same complexion and greasy locks as the girl from The Ring emerged from her bed, seeming to grow up out of the mattress. As we attempted to enter the room, which was the size of my parents bathroom, her eyes bulged and she screamed "TURNTHELIGHTOFFCLOSETHEDOORPLEASEBEQUIETTURNTHELIGHTOFF" and fell back under her covers. It was like witnessing an attack from the Canvey Island Banshee. Her thick essex accent constantly mumbled and swore until we had climbed into our beds, still holding our bags and still in our clothes. At one point, after i exited the room to brush my teeth, as i quietly opened the door ajar and stuck my hand into my bed to get the key, she arose again, stared through the gap ala THE GRUDGE, eyes buging beneathe my arm and begun to close the door upon it. If i didnt remove it as quicly as i did i would have lost it. Anyway, i decided that after spending the night trying to sleep above this hairy harpee and her UNBELIEVABLE snoring, i opted out and got my own room for the next three nights. I was in bliss. I had my own room. PEACE. It was wonderful.

So, all thats left of our Asian Experience is our time in Singapore, and our first week in the Wonderful World of Australia. I'll update on this in the next post. Saw my first Abbo today. I actually said "Oh look, there;s an Abbo" totally ignorant to the fact that apprently 'Abbo' is a derogatory term. I discovered this when the man glared at me through his thick brow and started follwoing us. I shant make the mistake again.

Photos will be uploaded soon as well, as soon as it doesnt bankrupt me to get online.

Until then, cheerio!

OH, and this post is dedicated to
HANNAH AND RICH!
HAPPY WEDDING DAY WONDER!
MWAH xxxxxxxxxxxx

Fairwell my dark skinned friend, my sweet and sour companion...

IMG_8181, originally uploaded by blibblobblib.

Today we leave Asia, Chapter One of our adventure is over, and its with sadness and relief that we fly to the Land of OZ! OZMAR! Will it be everything that Asia wasnt? To be honest, Asia was everything i had never expected, so this could be confusing. But one thing is for suire, i will be missing the Sweet and Sour, coz theyre the time i wont forget.

Kup Ji!

Booze, Bugs and Bastards! Oh my!

Apologies for the delay since my last post - when you are travelling, it is natural for the unexpected and unfortunate to occur in equal amounts, and over the last two weeks, there has been plenty of both indeed. The unfortunate has mostly involved my SWEAT. You know, i actually never knew your forearms could sweat. My KNEES are even sweating. I would be quite amazed and interested by this phenomenon if it didnt horrify me and the many others so much. ANYWAY, you've heard enough about sweat i should imagine, as have the poor people im travelling with, so lets get to it.

So, we last left off at the Full Moon Bash. What a party. When we arrived in Ko Phangan, we had no idea what to expect. I imagined bristling palm trees surrounded by beach front bars built out of bamboo and rastafarian fellows smoking and handing round coconuts with rum in. This was not the case. It was literally like Bas Vegas (poor, poor mans Las Vegas). With a LOAD of sand. It quickly transpired when we drove past our fourth bar as we drove out of the PORT that Ko Phangan might have once been a beachy paradise, but now, the whole island centres around this monthly event (And even the Half moon party AND no moon party. I think they are going to introduce a Wednesday party soon. and a 'If you are called Dave from Essex ' party too.) So, we jumped in our taxi (Pick up truck, sitting in the back) and it delivered us at ground zero, Haad Rin, the beach of SIN. Concreted roads, packed FULL with bars, shops and more bars is pretty much all you will find there. And strangely enough, one of the most beautiful beaches we stumbled upon this whole trip. Its weird. its like stepping out of the chavviest club you have ever been to, straight into paradise. If it wasnt for the discarded flip flops, empty bottles of sandy Bacardi Breezers and SCORCHED red british people with their fat bits hanging out, you could easily have stepped into a postcard. Similar to Laos (tubing), there was a familiarity here in Haad Rin that i had seen somewhere before. It was in the eyes of the people walking by. It was in the way they walked. It was noticed by the way they hunched over bins vomiting orange fluid. This was a party town, strictly for partying. The dead eyes of the people laying in bars watching endless repeats of Family Guy, Simpsons and Friends was another familar sight. Our resort we were staying in was nice enough though, big swimming pool (full of drunk russians gurning and trying to swim) and it had nice airy rooms with wonderous air con. Some of the other accommodation we saw consisted of a shed...actually that was it. just a shed. Glad we didnt go for those ones. We met up with some of the lovely people from our trip, The Great Danes, and Jess from NYC and Canadian Jo, and after relaxing the night before, we spent the day on the beach surrounded by Brits and Swedes (Did you know, that Swedes have an ALLOWANCE imposed on them by the government for how much Alchohol they can consume in a month? Thats why there are so many over here constantly trollied) then made our way towards the party. Its a great thing to experience actually, maybe becuase it doesnt have the added feeling of DEATH which was ever present whilst tubing in Laos (and no discernable way of losing your nipples either which is a plus for any night out). You quickly get over the drunken horrors and sweary brits stumbling everywhere, and as you get closer to the beach, something magical happens. The lights start to dim, the bars start to glow, you feel the base of the music pumping through your chest and you step onto the white white sand of the beach, shining nearly as brightly as day with the giant full moon over head, and suddenly you realise you are at a festival, on a beach, in Thailand. Its pretty awesome. So we got into it pretty quick, drinking buckets of alchohol and all wearing glow in the dark glasses and body paint. Everyone looked great. Except me. I paid 100 bart to have some of this cool UV neon paint put on me so i glowed and looks funky like everyone else. Sadly, unlike everyone else, im a sweaty pig monster, so after two minutes, a big glowing heart on my chest looked like someone had thrown a slice of pizza at me and the military stripes under my eyes looked like i had applied mascara whilst drunk then cried it down my face. I quickly removed these. From 11pm till 4am we partied hard and ran around like idiots. Playing games of dare, where i kissed a Thai woman who ACTUALLY looked like she thought i was trying to eat her. It was great. but then sadly, it was sober time. Whilst i was off hunting for corn to eat (They sell it on the streets, i wasnt maddeningly searching for a fantastical corn field) Jo was having a boogy in a bar, and her camera was taken from her bag. Pick pockets. Apparently, Fagin loves Haad Rin as much as we did. From that moment, after unsuccessfully trying to locate it (All those photos, gone!) the vale of drunken wonder had lifted, and whilst Jo chatted to the police, suddenly, the Full Moon Party had lost its moonshine. I looked around me, and what was once the greatest beach party ever, now looked like the landings at Dunkirk. Bodies lay writhing on the beach, face down, twitching, some with other people on top of them desperatly trying to copulate through their clothes. One man stood nearby, arms by his side, top off, extremely large belly hanging, head down, wobbling. he wasnt even dancing. he was wobbling, with a strange thrust every now and again. He looked like those people that believe they have demons in them at those weird sermons people go to in the States. Another couple by my side, lay on the beach dry humping. The girl was crying yet she carried on. As i looked up in horror, an old man was standing over the top of them, he must have been in his 50's, and he stood there with a massive erection and a giant camera in his hand snapping away at them. He then quickly glanced up, then scurried along the beach, crab-like, to the next undulating couple. As i turned around, wondering how to escape into drunk ignorance, a group of Thai kids walked past me, all sharing out wallets. They were laughing and looking through the wallets like it was Christmas, taking out ID cards and foreign currancy, looking at it alienly, then throwing it on the beach and pocketing the remaning Thai Bart. Suddenly it became clear. It was like one BIG date rape incident. Everyone was so hammered, so mashed, that they didnt realise what was happening to them. The Thai people that walked among them wearing expressions like grinning sharks, rubbing their hands together at the stupidity of the drunken tourists. Before the end of the night, i spoke to four different people who had all had their stuff stolen. It sucks really, as it was a good night. BY the time Jo got back, she was ready to forget the incident and salvage the rest of the night by downing a big drink then dancing like a maniac to some terrible music with the rest of us, i was in the throws of horror at this time and decided to go on a hunt for some drink that would eliviate my grimmness so i could get back into the swing of things. Upon my unsuccessful return 10 minutes later, i found Jo, who stormed up to me and instantly demanded we leave, we leave right now and go home. She too had become aware of our surroundings and realised the night was at its end, so we stumbled home, stepping over bodies and grabbing a chicken shnitzel for sustenance to help us sleep (You ever had a chicken shnitzel? I hadnt, and they are bloody lovely!) The next morning, we made our way to the beach in a vain attempt to spot a smashed looking camera, poking out of the sand like some forgotten relic. but nope, Fagin had taken it. What we did find though, was a lovely empty beach, but filled with the debris from the night before. It was like a scene from a holocaust movie - i have never seen so many discarded shoes and clothes sprawled across the floor. So, that was our full moon experience. Was it good? Yes, it was fantastic. Would i make the effort to do it again? Probably not. But if i was passing through, i'd certainly give it another bash. Id just leave anything with value at home. The next couple of days we had left in Ko Phangan we spent getting over our hangovers and enjoying some time doing NOTHING. it was nice. Until that is, we decided to rent Mopeds for a day out driving round the island. One thing i havnt mentioned is how you get to Haad Rin where we were staying. You see, Ko Phangan is a suprisingly mountainous island. Mountains that you need to drive over. It was like they literally saw Haad Rin as the party place, then slapped down some concrete over the top of the mountains to get there. This meant, that when you drive up and down these mountains in a taxi, its amazing fun. its literally like you ar eon a log flume. Theres the steep, steady slow climb, then the rushing, stomach altering descent. Doing this in a taxi is great. ON a moped, not so much. We all jumped on one, me driving with Jo on the back and the Danes and Canadian Jo sharing their ones. Sadly, Canadian Jo succumbed to the difficulty of navigating the moped through Haad Rins tiny streets and crashed almost instantly smashing her knee and retiring for a day of recovery. Us idiots though, we gave it a shot. Mopeds, are not the easiest things to drive at first. When you have some speed going, theyre easy, it keeps you balanced, but when you are struggling up a vertical mountain, or zooming a million miles an hour down one, its pretty hard. You know the film the Perfect Storm with George Clooney? When their little boat is struggling over the gigantic wave coming at them, and you are willing and holding on they make it? Thats what the first mountain was like. Holding tight to the handlebars, jo attached to my back like a mollusc, we chanted "please please OH GOD PLEASE" as our bike struggled up the first hill. And amazingly, we made it. And up the next four of them too. It turned out to be an awesome day, touring round the island. (videos on Vimeo very soon!) and we even managed to make it back alive too. The next day, we bid fairwell to the beautiful Danes and made our way to Ko Tao for some well deserved paradise.

And paradise is nearly what we found. We stayed in a teeny beach hut, overlooking the beach. So close you could spit in the sea. It was great. Quiet and peaceful. The only problem was, our beach hut, was a little too basic. It was on stilts, lifted from the beach, but this meant when walking around the room, you could see the earth beneath your feet. And it also meant bugs LOVED us. ON our first night, we wandered along the beach and found the bars i was hoping for in Haad rin. Bamboo huts, with palm leave roofs overlooked the ocean. They played awesome relazing music, and served good drinks and other delicious substances. We spent two nights enjoying these bars and lazing around in our hammocks overlooking a beautiful sky and thunderous clouds. The only problem was, when we navigated our way backl to our beach house each night, the staff neglected to tell us that the SEA would be in our way. So most nights we had to literally swim to our door. Good times. On our last night, Jo and i sat outside in our hammocks, enjoying the night air, when a bat deicded he wanted to feed on the mozzies. The mozzies that happened to be feeding on us. Jo quickly scarpered inside screeching at the first glimps of this flying demon, and left me, outside, in the hammock, disabled, with the light off and the door locked. No matter how much i pleaded, she wouldnt come to my rescue. Becuase unbeknownst to me, Jo could see through the window with her terrified face pressed against the glass, that the bat was literally skimming my hair eating the mozzies. I didnt think bats culd be that scary. i mean theyre like flying fuzzy mice, kind of cute ya know? But no, when they are zooming at your FACE emitting a high pitched death howl, theyre not so cute. After what seemed like an hour, i just gave into my fear, calmly stood up, preying that Sonar is as good as ive read, and made my way to the door. I managed to get inside without being killed, and it actually made pretty awesome viewing watching this little guy zooming around on our porch. The next day, we checked out, then waited to depart for more relaxing wonder. Sadly, Fagin had followed us to Ko tao and Canadian Jo had her iPod nicked. Bastards! So after milling about over that for a while, we decided we should get abck on it with our tour of paradise. However, to get there, we first needed to get through HELL.

On this trip i have been on many forms of transportation. Bikes, mopeds, buses, ferries, vans, trucks, boats, planes, trains, cars, cyclo's and tuk tuks. but i had never been on a night ferry. It sounds fun right? WRONG OH MY GOD SO WRONG YOU HAVE NO IDEA. Think Amistad, writhing, sweaty people, smashed together, churning in discomfort, crying out, whilst on a boat riding the most choppy ocean in the world. In pitch darkness. It was like something from Dante's Divine Comedy, all aboard the hell ship to purgatory! There were beds, when i say beds i mean mattresses. Sticky, brown matresses. And they were about a metre wide. Crammed next to one another. Over every spare inch of the floor. As an added addition, they were also covered in bugs. As i stood staring gobsmasked at everyone shifting uncomfortably in their beds, the man nearest me tried to roll over, only to reveal two dead cockroaches and a couple of flying ants squished underneath him. Our beds, were in the hull, under the floor, with about two feet of head room above them. So at least we couldnt see the bugs. Oh and it was also in roasting heat, as there are no windows in the hull, one of the reasons boast dont sink apparently. I now think, however, i have some idea of what being buried alive is like. During an earthquake. The sea was so choppy, laying down actually allowed you to feel your internal organs moving into your throat as the Hell Boat navigated each huge wave. It was astonishing. I actually didnt realise that human being CHOSE to travel like this in the modern world. Its 2009, i mean it was seriously like we were cattle. We actually discussed the idea that perhaps we had stumbled onto the wrong boat, and were actually being taken away by pirates to Bolivia or somewhere to have our organs haversted. I spent the night next to an unatrually large Spanish girl, whose booty managed to take up most of my metre of floor space. It was squishy, so i didnt mind too much. I couldnt even get to the Vallium. That was in my rucksat buried somewhere under a load of bodies. Amazingly, we survived though. At 5 in the morning, we ran, gasping for air and dripping with sweat and dead bugs into the cool morning air and felt life entering us once more. We were in Krabi, where we spent the next two days recuperating with air con, HBO, movies and pizza. So that was pretty good.

But thats all for now. I really need to make this shorter. Hopefully in Australia that will be the case as i think those guys know how to make computers work. As another note, i feel i have moaned ALOt again this post. Looking back, i sound like an 60 year old, bitter woman talking about 'drunkards' and all that shit. I actually do have fun, honest! But as we all know, its the horror stories that make the most interesting reading right? RIGHT?! Anyway, i'll update again too, the rest of the journey has been suprisingly fun and wonderful, way more boring for you lot, and hopefully, shorter.

Cheerio!
x