Merry Christmas Everybody

So, the last you heard from us Simon had been diving out of an aeroplane whilst I was partaking in the perilous and life endangering activity known as reading on the beach. Well you may be pleased to hear things have got a bit more exciting for me without risking life and limb. Firstly by us acquiring the truck!

Truck, trucky, she, the van is a 1992 Nissan Patrol who is looking a little rough around the edges but has a stonking great engine and is ready willing and able (with a bit of tlc from us) to take us on our trip around Australia. If anyone’s missed the latest plan at all we will be doing the city corporate thing until the end of February before we set off on a four month road trip to see Australia. Route tbc but will some how encompass, north, south, middle, east and west – some off road tracks, a bit of diving, surfing, crocodile avoidance, drinking fosters in the outback, camping in the desert and possibly going slightly doolally from only having each other to talk to for days on end.













Here are some pictures of our recent camping trip to Jervis Bay. Very pleasant.

We then decided to try out the Sydney clubbing scene – bit of a disappointment compared to out usual outings at home or we might just be getting old…


















Simon then had his work Christmas party on about the 1st December, Christmas as a whole is pretty low key here compared to home and to be honest it is a bit weird seeing the trees and santas around where they are up. My party is this week – also going to be a pretty low key event I think (did I mention I’m working in IT J).

Back to the truck (which needs a better name – any suggestions welcome). Went to the Mt Yengo National Park last weekend and discovered that we lose all mobile reception about 2 hours out of Sydney. Still, that didn’t stop us heading up some pretty cool tracks in the park and finding the most awesome lookout over Mt Yengo (apparently the Mountain is a very sacred place for the Aborigine indidgenous population). However being on the highest point around and suddenly having fork lightening flash down a little way off perhaps wasn’t one of the safest things we’ve done so we made a hasty retreat back down the track.





Now it’s Christmas we’re heading up the coast with Simon’s parents for a proper beach holiday and I’m looking forward to some good bbqs and some sunny weather (unlike the rain we’ve had in Sydney the last month – it’s not all great down here!).










Merry Christmas everybody, anyone who’s had new year with us in the past – make sure you have it for us this year... More in 2008!

Jumping out of planes and stuff

Hi all,




Hope all has been well with everyone back home. We've had a busy few weeks here, having been looking forward to spending the summer in the pad in queenscliff we were pretty disappointed to find out landlady, out of the blue ,gave us our months notice as she wanted to move back in for the summer ! How dare she!


You had to feel sorry for our friends Steve and Alex as one day they found out their tennants in England had stopped paying rent and the next day we were all being kicked out of theirs.!So into the dogfight that is the Sydney rental market we went. I'll resist the temptation to launch into a bitter diatribe about looking for rental properties in Sydney but in summary it sucks - it's far too buoyant, leading landlords to take no care with their properties as they know some Brazilian backpacker'll rent it off them, 80's style avocado kitchens and all.


Anyway we eventually sorted a new pad in Harbord just north of Manly. Sweet flat about 3 minutes walk from the beach. In between though we took the opportunity to house sit for one of Charlotte's workmates in an area called Glebe for a couple of weeks. Glebe is totally different to everything we've experienced about Sydney so far, the houses are victorian-esque rather than angular, glass walled types, there's more organic food shops than surfwear stores and more people in Led Zepplin t-shirts than suits - you get the picture. To be honest it made a pleasant change for a couple of weeks. We enjoyed being able to walk to work and have an extra twenty minutes in bed each morning.











The anzac bridge on the way to glebe -harbour bridge & the city in the background













(Charl's birthday night on 26th october)
























view from our new balcony - harbord village









October & November have been a funny time weather wise - we've seen 10 degree temperature changes within the course of two hours and a bizarre two-week long infestation of moths in the city. It was really quite freaky walking out to a client meeting through a cloud of moths.











the moths - like some sort of horror movie!



















Next in early November came a moment of madness when I paid for the privilidge of jumping out a plane at 14'000 feet. I won't go on about it as the pictures say it all really. Long wait whilst trying to exude confidence and relaxation in order to cover your growing apprehension, one group of very nervous people squeezed into the smallest plane i've ever been in then one hell of a rush once you're out the plane and you realise there's nothing you can do about it. As soon as I work out how to do it i'll get the DVD posted on youtube or something and post the link here.





















The dude with dreads is my tandem instructor aptly named "douggs" and is some sort of local basejumping champion. We jumped over a city called wollongong right by some beautiful beaches (photo's above) with an outfit called skydive the beach -highly recommend this as a sydney based skydive.








(these little white dot's are us in freefall - freefall lasted about 45 seconds, believe me it seems like a long time when you're up there)









Coming in for a smooth landing

I only found out at bottom our guy was having some trouble getting our parachute to untwist - good job i didn't see this when Ii was up there

Wollongong beach

On the ground, relieved





Anyway since the dive we haven't been up to anything more extreme then a trip out to palm beach (aka summerbay of home & away). I've also been growing a big fat Merv Hughes style moustache for a charity event called Mo-vember and still trying to stand up on my surfboard







(charl outside what avid home & away fans will recognise as the summer bay surf life saving club)


















(palm beach left - pittwater bay on the right)











Stay tuned next time for pictures of moustaches, a link to me Skydive vid & our new 4x4 beast !!

Cheers
Si & Charl

Settling in Down Under

G'day All.

It's been a while since we've posted anything as we've just been settling into life in Syndey.

We're currently staying with our mates Steve & Alex in a two bedroom flat in Queenscliff, which is just north of Manly beach, Syndey. Arriving in the Sydney winter was a bit of a shock after 7 months in Asia. Although tempertures of 16 degrees are quite mellow by UK standards we'd long ago lost our native english resistance to that sort of temperature & the occasional biting wind. Anyway month down the line and happy to report winter seems to be fading rapidly with some days making it up to the 28 degree mark recently.

The Flats

Manly

Sunset from our balcony

Our plan for Sydney was simple. Week 1 - chill out, sort out banks, tax codes etc... Week 2 interview for jobs and Week 3 start work and settle down to life down under. Amazingly it worked out pretty much exactly as planned. Charl put out the feelers out to some old contacts from centrica and is now doing IT conract type stuff for a small sowftware firm producing some some of programme to do with derivitaves trading for utility companies ? (fresher - think you'd probably be the only one who'd be able to understand it.) As for myself i'm back with my old company BBT in their Sydney office.

Feshwater beach

Me & Steve on our way to the office!

my commute

One week into work and we ventured out for the weekend to do something poeple obviously often associate with Australia trips - snowboarding. A five hour drives gets you to the Snowy Mountains and the mountain town of Jindabyne. We only really manged a day and a half but it was great to get back on the snow anyway. The resorts aren't quite up to Alpine standards but they're not bad and fine for weekends (they do however seem to have an incomprehensible liking of T-bars as a way of getting up them mountains, a method of transport pretty damn uncomfortable for anyone on a snowboard and should in my opinion be fully outlawed)

Me

possibly the bluest photo we've ever taken

Soo other than that it's life as normal for now - with just a few subtle differences. My commute to the city is via the Manly ferry - every morning I get beautiful views of the oprea house,bridge etc... and the other day we had dolphins playing in the bowwaves, you don't get that on the M3!

We're trying to get into the whole Sydney fit and active lifestyle. I'm currently falling off my surfboard a lot and charl has signd up to every yoga class she can find. Plans include diving (which we can do off the loacl beach), running(to and from the ferryport), signing up to crew some of the local racing yachts and skydiving (possibly - Myself and charl are currently in negotiations over this one).

a quiet after work drink

middle harbour wiht the city just visible in the background

We're going to stick around for six months or so and see what happens -we'll stick some photo's up whenever we do anything interesting.

Take it easy

Si & Charl

Bangkok to the Perhentians and eventually Down Under!

Hello all,

Hanoi had been a great experience but we were looking forward to going back to the familiarity of Bangkok and also this time not to the backpacking haven of Koh San Road but actually into the centre of Bangkok and Siam Square – home to all the major shopping malls.

This was to be a bit of downfall in terms of sticking to our budget but great that we avoided being accosted at every possible moment by tuk-tuk drivers and other sales type who just want to make a quick buck off the dreadlocked 18 year olds.

To summarise the 4 days we had there we basically shopped – for warm clothes for Australia - saw Transformers and Harry Potter at the cinema – brilliant – and I got ill with some stomach bug – not so brilliant. Staying out of the backpacking area of Bangkok really gave us a much better feel for the city and we thoroughly enjoyed the time we had.

For our last week of relaxation prior to getting to Oz we decided to go to the Perhentian Islands partly because we could do our advanced diving course there quite cheaply and partly because some guys from Raleigh had highly recommended a visit. Unfortunately our trip there wasn’t the best. We’d booked to fly from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur and then arrive in time to catch the night train to the north eastern coast of the Malaysian Peninsula where the following morning we’d arrive and get the boat to Perhentian Kecil (Small Perhentian). For the first time our Air Asia flight was mightily delayed so we arrived too late to catch the train although there was a flight from the airport 45 mimutes after we arrived, to the town we needed to get to. So – throwing out the window our environmental conscience through tiredness and no desire from either of us to spend the night in KL we took the flight and got ourselves to Kota Bharu for about 10.30 pm. In time to find the dingiest hostel in town with a dodgy bathroom, no covers on the bed but a very helpful and friendly owner. He got us organised with transport the next morning to the harbour and we went out and had some fried rice for dinner.

The boat involved some general miscommunication with us being told to wait for one boat then being told we couldn’t take that boat and generally getting Simon into a rather irate mood before we even got there. I hate to say it's typical but we have come expect it and beng in Australia has in that respect been a lovely change. Eventually though we arrived on Long Beach – party central of the Perhentian Islands. The beach is as you might expect long and made up of beautiful white sand dotted with restaurants, huts and diving schools. We stayed at the cheap end of the island and by all accounts were lucky to get ourselves a hut. Later the same day and for days afterwards we’d see girls sat on piles of luggage on the beach obviously waiting for their blokes to find somewhere for them to stay.

The first place we looked at was the worst place I’d seen for the whole of our trip and that’s saying something, the second was a little better but joined to the next door hut with only a partition wall with a whole at the top – not ideal, the third though was just right – Lemon Grass Chalets. Hut was small but with a nice balcony, shared open air bathroom and a nice view from the café. This was the cheap seat end of the beach.

So we spent the week chilling on the beach and topping up our tans, doing our advanced diving course – which wasn’t so chilled- drinking, eating and sleeping. We also met Matt and Carol who were our breath of fresh air in travellers. Si and Matt shared a few Steve Irwin moments including drunken crab chasing and innocent gecko catching. We’ll be a planning a stonking night out in Sydney for when they arrive in the autumn.

The advanced diving course was great (after I got over my initial freak our over leaking diving masks). Probably the best dive I’ve done was at Sugar Wreck an old container ship carrying sugar where we swam into the hold, saw some great fish – lion fish, scorpion fish, sharks, barracuda, a puffed up pufferfish – like the scene in Finding Nemo, other really big puffers, and the usual array of wrasse, parrotfish, sweetlips. Very enjoyable. Our instructor did appear to be signing "do you want to go through this doorway into a vertical black hole where we can't see where we're going and a sea monster might live"… but then didn’t take us. Apprently a more senior female diver had swum past and he thought better of it. Shame.

(Apparently Michael Schummacher was in this boat behind me in the picture...)

After a great week in the sun we took an overnight train to KL (not a great night’s sleep) and then flew to KK.

A trip back to where the whole adventure started to see Yo and get ourselves a bit closer to Brunei where our flight to Sydney was going from.

On Sunday morning we took the most ridiculously shaped boat to Brunei and spent the afternoon lying in the airport awaiting our overnight flight to Sydney. It was a long and tiring trip particularly as we'd enjoyed a few beers over the first night of the Premiership football which we managed to catch in a pub in KK.

So, we’re pleased to say we are now safely in Sydney staying with Steve and Alex – who we can’t thank enough for their kind hospitality and nice flat. It’s bloody freezing after 6 months in Asia but we’re still enjoying the novelty of cups of tea in bed and getting to wear our beanies when we go out.

We’ll let you know how we go over the next month or so – we need to earn some cash soon.

Hoping everyone is well, with love Charlotte and Si x

Mission to Vietnam

Hi all, (tbcompleted)

The good news is we got to Vietnam allright - although it did end up being a bit of a mission.

First stop out from Luang Prabang was Nong Khiaw, about 4 hours away by pickup. Nong Khiaw is a small town set in spectacular surroundings on the river. Most people use it as a transport hub to move onto lesser well travelled parts of North Laos. We managed to check oursleves into some terrible guesthouse which also seemed to serve as a dorm for a load of the local workers and the last foreigner to sign in the guestbook was over a month beforehand.

We wanted however only to stay there for the night, intending to catch a morning pickup to the next town and then hopefully change to get another pickup to the border town of Xam Neu. It was here we got a real introduction to how the Lao bus sytem works out in the sticks. The pickup was supposed to leave at 1030 but by 1200 the driver had decided that Charl & I, along with one other irish girl and one old local guy weren't enough custom to motivate him to take his truck out into the poring rain so decided he'd cancel. Luckily enough though another bus came past about another hour later going in the right direction so we jumped on that. The pickup's seem to be privately owned and run on a "if we can be bothered" basis.

The next stop was a small town called Vieng Kam. By the time we got there it was too late to get any transport to the next village so we had to find a place to stay and wait for the overnight bus - something we had being trying to avoid to start with. Our guesthouse duly assured us we could get some kip and they'd wake us up when the bus came past at around 0100 so with that sorted we went off for a stroll through the village. With us being the only three foreign people in the village we got the celebritary treatment good and proper. I do love some of the moments travelling provides you with sometimes, the little boy in his bright orange monks robes who got on the pickup grinning widely at us before proclaiming "I am monk" (I had to bite back the typical english response of "no sh*t sherlock") or the two little kids in the village who came running up to us and proceeded to shake our hands for about fifteen minutes (bit of a novelty for them - they do the buddha bow thing as a greeting here).

Anyway the reason for us not wanting to ctahc the night bus is we knew it would be cramped, crowded, long & possibly more dangerous as well as the fact we would miss all the scenery. Suffice to say it lived up to all our expectations. It was apparent from the minute we got on sleep simply wasn't an option. In additition to the fact I think the bus was designed specifically with the discomfort of your average 6 foot westerner in mind there was also the absolutely awful Laos ballods we were subjected to at regular intervals. Played at max volume I can only assume the purpose was to keep the driver awake as it's hard to imagine anyone taking any actual pleasure from listening to it.

We arrived in Xam Neu tired and aching. A quant little border town with the most obvious communist feel to it we had come across so far. Other than trying to guess what were the wriggling things wrapped up in banana leaves that the locals were devouring with such pleasure there wasn't a lot else to do here. The next day we pressed onto the Vietnamese border.

Incredibly the border crossing went relatively smoothly and required only pennies in the way of bribes. The hassle started a bit on the other side. There is a bus direct form Xam Neu to Hanoi, this we found out runs direct but once a week, inevitably though it went the day before we got there. There is also apparantly another direct bus that runs from the border town. Na Meo to Hanoi every two or three days depending on when the driver feels like it. Again we had just missed it. This left us with the choice between a bus train combo journey getting to Hanoi around 0100 am or a private hire MPV which would get us there by nightfall. By this time we'd hooked up with a group of about eight including, Dutch, German and French..... after a lengthly and multi lingual negotiation a group of us decided to splash the big bucks to get a nice comfy MPV straight to Hanoi.

If anyone who reads this is doing this journey this is our advice. We took four days to get from Luang Prabang to Hanoi but take at least a week. Take local pickups from Luang Prabang to Nong Khiaw, then to Vieng Kam, then Vieng Tong, then Xam Neu. Cross the border and hire a MPV to Mai Chau, then take public transport to Hoa Binh then Hanoi. If you had the time to spend a night in each place it'd be an amazing trip through some little travelled parts.

If arriving in bangkok from the UK is like a cultural slap to the face arriving in Hannoi is like being mugged. It is an incredibly louds and hectic place. The streets in the old quarter are quite narrow. The pavements are taken up by all the stalls and people generally using the streets as their lounges, this means you have to walk in the roads which have a continual stream of horn beeping mopeds going past in either direction. They use their horns all the time, seemingly to indicate "I'm coming past you no sudden movements please" but also to indicate everything from 'hello' to 'I fancy you, wanna come for dinner?'. We loved the city though

We took a 3 day trip out to Halong Bay which is a world heritage site and is naturally beautiful with towering lime stone karsts jutting out of the sea - much like the scenary in Northern Laos but in the water. However being in a tour group for the 3 days - the only real way to get out there - was a bit much to swallow. "Go left, go right, eat now, swim now, no jumping off the boat at midnight" (Simon broke this rule decisively and earned us some stern looks in the morning). We stayed for one night on this big wooden junk and then the 2nd night on Cat Ba Island - Torquay of SEAsia, and that's probably unkind towards Torquay.



Upon getting back to Hanoi rather than going back to guesthouse which was owned by the brother of the mother of the cousin of the dog of the sister-in-law's uncle of the person who drove us to hanoi, and at 9pm we didn't really argue, we treated ourselves to a hotel (something we'd promised ourselves since May - Viet Anh Hotel $25, great breakfast buffet, gorgeous room) where Si watched plenty of football.

We had another couple of days and headed to see where the embassy where Charlotte's Mum worked would have been and enjoyed the cheap Beer Hoi on the street stalls (2,000 dong per beer - 32,000 dong to the pound).

All in all well worth the trip over to Hanoi and we're now looking forward to a week on the beach in the Perhentian islands before we fly down to Sydney on the 12th.