My lovely colleagues from Cirencester College bought me a treatment at a spa in Melbourne as one of my leaving gifts. I managed to get mum booked in for the same treatment and off we went for some pampering while Dad was plane spotting. It started with a steam, followed by a foot bath and scrub then an entire body brush and massage. I can honestly say it was the best massage I’ve ever had and I didn’t want it to end. After it was over we lay on beds listening to chill-out music and drinking chamomile tea.
The navy top I am sporting was another gift from the team; and I have carried their photos emblazoned across my bosoms throughout Asia. Despite the 40+ degrees heat I thought I should bring them along on this particular day to be part of the pampering.
Thanks again guys it was fantastic and although it sounds very dodgy to admit, I did think of you all whilst I was being scrubbed and pummelled!
The peace and quiet was broken on 20th Jan when the olds arrived from cold England via Singapore. It was really great to see them after 5 months and I had planned a week of activities to keep them busy and out of mischief. I allowed them the first day off to recover but then we hit the ground running. We started the week with a free walking tour of the city with a local volunteer, followed by a free bus tour…well they are pensioners after all. We had to balance the interests out so one day Dad got to go to an Australian airbase to see his beloved planes and the following day Mum treated us all to an evening at the Australian Open Tennis. It was really great and we got to see, in person Nadal continually pulling at his wedgies; most entertaining. Our local outdoor pool was another great place to while away a few hours and Mum and Dad made a trip up to The Edge; a scary glass bottomed viewing platform in Melbourne’s highest building. On Sunday we took them on a surprise trip to Philip Island to see the world’s smallest penguins coming into nest from the sea. They were very relieved as they suspected we might be putting them into an old folks home! We visited a Koala sanctuary, great beaches and dad’s third aviation museum of the week. Their final day with us in Melbourne was Australia day, a public holiday so we meandered through the parks looking at vintage cars and a flypast of 3 M18 planes. We had the last supper at their hotel, full of very fit looking tennis players and then returned to the city for the fireworks display.
It has been a brilliant week and we have loved having them here. We have 2 weeks to recover now before we see them again in Sydney. They called this morning to say they had boarded their cruise ship, heading for New Zeland and an upgraded cabin had gone down well with a view of the Sydney Opera house! Pleased to know my inheritance is being put to a good cause 
The Great Ocean Road is the stretch of highway to the west of Melbourne, in the direction of Adelaide that hugs the coastline and has some spectacular scenery. We took ourselves off in our little Toyota Corolla hire car and had a very leisurely drive along all the tourist hot spots. We passed many beautiful and deserted beaches, cute seaside villages and magnificent cliff top views. We even saw our first wild Koala sleeping lazily in a tree and the lighthouse where ‘Round The Twist‘ was filmed!
We stayed overnight in the Paradise B&B and it really lived up to it’s name. The self-contained cottage was perched over a idyllic duck pond in beautiful grounds in the Otway Ranges. It was surrounded by hills and trees full of singing kookaburras by day and glow worms at night which made it look like fairy lights had been draped everywhere. We found it very hard to drag ourselves away from the view, jacuzzi hot-tub, sumptuous bed and home cooked bread for breakfast.
The remaining part of the drive took us to the 12 apostles, and London Bridge, all eroded coastline formations that stood majestically amongst the crashing surf. It was a fantastic weekend away and another of my trip highlights!
We’ve really settled into life in Melbourne and had lots of fun with new and old friends. Kez, a fellow backpacker who we met in Laos kindly invited us along to her News Year’s day outing to the country horse racing. She had a large group of friends who were all lovely and made us feel really welcome. It was a great experience with beers being consumed pretty much non-stop. We even won $90 in our syndicate betting which meant we were able to enjoy more booze when back in the city. The hangovers we experienced here are even worse than back home as in addition to all the booze consumption you have to factor in a mild degree of sun stroke too – not pleasant, but still it was all worth it and a really fun day.
We’ve also got to spend lots of time with my uni flat mate Tan, Ben and their 15 month old daughter Lillianna. We had a great New Year’s eve meal with them before going to town for the fireworks display which was very impressive. We’ve also had snags on the barbie with them and yesterday they drove us out to a fab beach for some games of beach cricket and body boarding in the sea.
Our friends from home Craig (David) and Kay also came out for a week in Melbs. We mooched around the city and also had a day on St. Kilda beach before the brave couple came around to our flat to experience our cooking.
After flying north from KL to Bangkok we caught a much cheaper flight back down across KL to Melbourne. Thanks to on-demand movies the 10 hours went quite quickly and we arrived to a warm climate but much less oppressive that the Asian heat. Our flat is fantastic and it feels like home already, especially since we added some Christmas decorations and stocked the fridge full of good food and booze. While all the locals feasted on seafood and BBQs they thought us nuts for roasting a bird and having all the traditional English trimmings. It was delicious though and a real taste of home. The TV is rubbish here in comparison to the UK but we got to watch the queen’s speech and National Lampoons so with the AC cranked up to cold it felt very familiar.
A Melbourne tradition is to go to the Boxing Day test at the MCG (cricket for those of you like us who didn’t know what that meant). We got tickets mainly to turn Jacq and dad a shade of green and went along although we knew non of the rules, deciding we’d just cheer and boo in line with the locals. It was actually a really great day with superb atmosphere and the highest beer glass towers we’ve ever seen, until the police came and confiscated them (boo!)
We’re really enjoying having the bags unpacked for a while and recharging our batteries for the next leg of our trip, planned for March.
We wish you all a Happy New Year and thanks for all the comments during our trip, please keep them coming.
After telling Helen throughout the trip that driving on Asian roads doesn’t look that tough, I finally got to put my money where my mouth was with a trip up to Taman Negara. After a short hop from Langkawi back to Kuala Lumpur and with a questionable degree of planning, we sat in McDonalds at the airport and took photos of Google Map’s calculated route on the laptop screen for later reference. Once we were handed the keys to our shiny 4×4 and received some proper directions we felt a bit more confident that we’d make it out of the city and 200 miles onto Malaysia’s largest national park.
Driving in Malaysia is quite simple for Brits since the road rules are pretty much the same, that is apart from the swarms of insane motorcyclists. With little regard for anything on the road, least their own lives, they dart between the lanes of traffic, often magically appearing in the space you need to move into. But as the saying goes, in S.E. Asia ‘might has right’, so forcing our way across 5 lanes of stationary traffic in our 4×4 was probably a bit easier than it could have been. With KL behind us the traffic thinned out and the roads swept through rolling hills lined with palm oil plantations until this gave out to the beginnings of jungle.
At 130 million years old and untouched by Ice Ages and natural disasters the jungle here is amongst the oldest primary rain forests in the world. We arrived at the start of the wet season and were expecting the place to be infested with leeches and pouring with rain. We were really lucky with the weather and the sun shone for our entire trip but the leeches did introduce themselves by trying to burrow their way into our feet through our socks. We thought the attractive look of tucking our trousers into our socks would solve this problem but they’re persistent little buggers.
The suspended walkways were the highlight at 50 meters above ground level it was an exhilarating experience being up in the jungle canopy. We trudged up another mountain with breathtaking views and spotted a bloody big wild-boar, frogs, spiders and monkeys.
We stayed in the Traveller’s Home a unique half-board hotel with chalet’s in the garden and a communal house where we relaxed in an Ikea clad interior and enjoyed their slightly ropey DVD collection and free range over the fridge.
After more exercise in 7 days than we’d experienced in the preceding 3 months it was time for a well deserved rest on the Malayasian island of Langkawi. To save a bit of cash and to try and reduce the massive number of flights we’ve been booking we opted to take the boat across from Georgetown. With the nightmare of the Koh Tao crossing still fresh in our minds we dosed ourselves up with travel sickness pills and reluctantly boarded. To our delight the sea was like a mill pond and the crossing was super chilled with only blue skys and sunshine on the horizon.
Being a tax free island it’s a popular spot for Malaysians to visit and stock up on dirt cheap booze and fags. Not wanting to be left out we filled up our room’s fridge and spent the next three days drinking and relaxing on the deserted beach. When we’d sobered up sufficiently we hired a motorbike for a quick tour of the island but soon realised there was more fun to be had back on our balcony working our way through the liqour mountain.
Georgetown, on the Malaysian island of Penang, was an old Straits settlement and so is crammed full of British colonial style buildings and character. Chilling out here was meant to be a welcome relief from our recent outdoor pursuits. Our flight was delayed so when we arrived on a Saturday night during the school holidays the town looked like Ibiza, packed with young holidaymakers out drinking booze sold at London prices. Consequently we struggled to find any decent accommodation and what we did settle for would have been great had it not been for the adjacent nightclub.
In the morning I woke to the realisation that something was not quite right with my face when I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognise the person staring back at me. A trip to the doctor and £50 later I was told I had some sort of allergy and was given injections, creams and pills to be getting on with. I spent the rest of the day exploring behind my sunnies and thankfully it had cleared a lot by the time we took high-tea at the Eastern & Oriental hotel; an English tradition that we feel must be reintroduced into normal life. Seeing all the Christmas decorations there got us really excited about the forthcoming festivities so we listened to carols in our new and greatly improved hotel room at a grand old Chinese mansion. In the evening Mark re-lived a much missed treat from our last trip with a shave from a barber in Little India.
After leaving the jungle we had a mammoth day of bus journeys until we reached Berastagi in the Karo highlands whose cool air was a light relief from the sweltering jungle. Known for its two nearby active volcanoes, the following day we attempted the smallest one, Gunung Sibayak (2450m). With legs not fully recovered from the jungle trek we ambled our way up the fairly safe and dry path to the volcano summit. For the majority of the climb it felt like any other mountain but suddenly when nearing the top, the fresh air became sulphurous and all you could taste was eggs. It was just as you’d hope a volcano would look, steaming, ferocious and something not quite of this planet. We sat down wind of the eggyness and tried to enjoy our packed lunch unable to fully appreciate the amazing views as the clouds refused to clear.
The climb down was much more luscious with thick jungle undergrowth that often masked the ramshackle steps we were attempting to following. The three hour descent was really spectacular and we were highly rewarded at the bottom with a session in the hot spring baths. Naturally heated water from the volcano was pumped into several pools at varying degrees of temperature. I’m afraid bathing in this eggy warm water was so relaxing we forgot to take any photos. The minerals clearly had some kind of impact as they turned our wedding rings blue and despite being laundered twice our bathers still smell eggy.
Heading off to Indonesia was Mark’s idea and something I was a little concerned about. Sumatra has had numerous natural disasters of late and with our track record it didn’t seem like the best place to visit. I couldn’t have been more wrong however and for me this has been the absolute highlight of the trip so far. Landing in Medan we saw a country that was far more similar to India than any other on this trip, making us feel right at home. The general standard of living was nowhere near as high as in Malaysia and the costs of food, transport and accommodation reflected this. We boarded a cramped minibus to Bukit Lawang, a town on the edge of the jungle that was devastated in 2003 by flooding. The area is famous for jungle treks and one of the few places on earth to see wild Orangutans. We were soon accosted on route by ‘Jungle Man’ Thomas who became our local guide and insisted Mark ride the remaining journey up on the roof of our bus like a real local.
Our two day, overnight in the jungle experience began early the next morning and after an hour we were all about ready to collapse and die. We’d not expected the terrain to be so hilly, nor such a lack of trails. It felt like a true Tarzan experience though, swinging on the vines clambering through the densest jungle imaginable.
During a brief rest stop we munched on some local fruit and saw our first Orangutan ‘Sandra’ with her 6 month old baby. They were so beautiful and we felt really honoured to be experiencing this in such an intimate way; just us and our two guides. They gracefully swayed through the canopy towards us and accepted the bananas we placed in the trees for them. I had a massive lump in my throat and was so pleased we’d been able to live out Pauline’s ‘Judith Charmers’ experience on her behalf.
The jungle was abundant with wildlife; snakes, spiders, bees, gibbons and macaques. Thomas described much about the flora and fauna to us. Every time he stopped to explain somthing we had a chance to catch our breathe before heading off again. After lunch we were visited by ‘April’ our second Orangutan and she allowed us to get much closer. At times she ate fruit from us that we held between our teeth - though she may have just wanted a cheeky monkey kiss. Once all the fruit was gone she also ate my left over rice directly from the Banana leaf I held out for her. This made all of the hideous physical activity to get here worthwhile.
Our camp was described as a tent but a plastic roof would have been more accurate. Nevertheless we kept dry when it rained and were fed and watered until ready to explode. By 7pm it was pitch black outside and we whiled away the hours playing silly games. We all slept fairly lightly, trying to not imagine what may be crawling across us in the night.
Tying several tractor inner tubes together our guides constructed an inflatable raft. We all climbed on-board and floated back down the river to our hotel through raging rapids. It was a bit like a water ride at Alton Towers and definitely much easier than the getting there. Back on shore we were filthy, smelt disgusting and totally exhausted but felt it was one of the best experiences of our trip so far.
