My Travels

Church photos

2010-06-25T05:18:00.000-07:00

E16 CANNING TOWN

St Fidelis Friary Killip Close - mc

St Margarets Chapel Bethell Avenue -mc

Anchor House 81 Barking Road - MC

St.Matthias Kimberley Road - MC

Canning Town Evangelical Church Cliff Walk - MC

Keir Hardie Methodist Fife Road - mc

Old British Flag pub, now Black Church Victoria Dock Road/Bridgeland Road? - mc

E16 CUSTOM HOUSE

Custom House Baptist Church Prince Regents Lane - mc

Varley Christian Centre Varley Road - mc

St Annes RC Church Berwick Road - mc

Lighthouse Christian Fellowship Lawson Close -mc

E13 PLAISTOW

Rowntree Clifford Close - mc

Forrest House

Society of St Francis 42 Balaam Street

Harold Road Centre Harold Road - mc

St Martins Boundary Road - mc

Word of God 738 Barking Road - mc

Newham Hospital Quiet Room

East London Buddhist Cultural Centre 33 Maybury Road - mc

Sikh Centre 2a Lucas Avenue - mc

Upton Cross Centre Claud Road

E6 EAST HAM

Hartley Centre Barking RoaD - mc

St Albans Wakefield Street [west end]

Latimer Hall Cleves Road

Jehovahs Witnesses 65 Napier Road
[take pic of Flanders Field Pavilion and Playing Fields run by Bonny Down Baptists] - mc

Jehovahs Witnesses 183 Green Street - mc

St Edwards Primary RC School Green Street-by WHFC - mc

Islamic Centre 72 Selwyn Road

Al-Hira Centre 241 Plashet Road

Islamic Centre 98 Plashet Road

Vishura Hindu 446 Green Street - mc --- turns out this is a hairdressers...

Islamic Centre 175-179 Plashet Grove

Madina Masjid 225 High Street - mc

Masjid E-Taupid? 248a High Street - mc

E12 MANOR PARK

Froud Centre Romford Road Toronto Avenue - mc

Little Ilford Baptist Church Sheringham Avenue

Gainsborough Christian Fellowship 77 Gainsborough Avenue

Manor Park Methodist Romford Rd/Herbert Road - mc

Bible Bookshop 744 Romford Road - mc --- now closed

St Nicholas RC Gladding Road

St Barnabas Browning Road - mc

Sri Muragan Temple 78 Church Road

Mahdekesh Temple 272 High Street North - mc

Anjuman Masjid 266-268 High Street North - mc

Islamic Centre 398 High Street North - mc

Mosque 724 Romford Road - mc

Gurdwara 97a Rosebery Avenue - mc

E7 FOREST GATE

Durning Hall Earlham Grove - mc

Christian Care [now a Community- Woodbridge?] 34 Norwich Road - just a house

St James Church St James Road - mc

Hope Baptist Church 5-7 Stafford Road

Church/Community Centre 66 Sebert Road

St Edmunds 464 Katherine Road - mc

Grangewood Independent School [Christian School] Chester Road

St Marks Lorne Road

St Lazarus & St Andrews [Greek Orthodox] 4 Rutland Road - mc

Shree Kutsch Temple 22-24 Shaftesbury Road

Anjuman Roza Mustapha 198 Shrewsbury Road

Azhar Academy 235 Romford Road - mc

Forest Gate Mosque 449-451 Romford Road - mc

Ida Minhaj Community Centre 292-296 Romford Road - mc

Imamia Mosque 328 Romford Road - mc

Sub Rung Islamic Centre 113 Green Street - mc

Mosque and Community Centre 88 Green Street - mc

St Angelas RC School and Convent Grosvenor Road

St Anthonys 56 St Anthonys Road

Upton Mosque 62-66 Upton Lane

Namdari Gurdwara 96 Upton Lane

St Bonaventure School Boleyn Road

Sikh Gurwara 10-14 Neville Road

E15 STRATFORD

Martyrs Memorial- west of St Johns

West Ham C of E Primary School Portway

Grace Baptist Church Gurney Road - mc

Christ Disciples Faith Ministries 6-7 Park Lane

Stratford Methodist Bryant Stret

Tom Allen Centre Grove Crescent Road

Trinity Chapel/Redeemed Church of God 1 Warton Road

Stratford Seventh Day Adventists 58 Janson Road

Brickfields Welfare Road

Hindu Centre 5-7 Cedars Road

Abbey Gardens,Bakers Row
> Mini-garden opened up on former site of monks gargen of 12thC Stratford Langrthorne Abbey.

I'm sure some people are still following this...

2009-08-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

I'm in Kenya now, livin' it large with an unruly bunch of kids from east London. Well, sort of anyway... painting slum schools and cleaning up the shit from the streets of Nairobi. Ain't we nice?

If you want to follow our progress, as depicted by the aforementioned group of illiterate retards (myself and one or two others excluded), go to http://theswiftinkenya.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

I'll post a few highlights up here once I'm home.

Photos!

2009-07-21T16:34:00.000-07:00

There are loads to catch up on and still a few hundred to upload, but I now have a decent amount on my flickr page and they've all been nicely arranged into sets according to where they were taken. http://www.flickr.com/photos/37333113@N03/

Here's some tasters:

Surin:

Hanoi:

Sapa:

Lao Cai = very nice beer :)

I'm home

2009-07-14T08:06:00.001-07:00

There's still more blog to come and more photos to show, but I thought I'd let you all know that against my own better judgement, I have returned to London. So for now at least, farewell southeast Asia. *sad face*

Surin

2009-07-05T20:11:00.000-07:00

We were based in a pre-existing 'study-centre' in the Surin Elephant Village, which includes ivory stalls, a circus and elephant rides... hardly the best education you can get. There were 8 volunteers and we were the first ever to go there. We paid 6 mahouts 500B each a day (about 4 or 5 times what they normally earn) to unchain their elephants, put their hooks away and have their elephants follow us around while we went off and planted fields of grass, trees etc... Then each afternoon, we'd head off to the local river or mud bath and bathe the elephants with the mahouts. Basically we were trying to show them that they can make a lot of money without having the elephants work and without them putting in any effort whatsoever. All the mahouts co-operated completely and apparently were surprised at how well things turned out... some promising to continue the routine of a daily bath; something that doesn't happen at the moment. Whether or not they will, I don't know. he morning we left, we saw one of our elephants back in chains, mahout on its neck, hook in hand, so it might take a while to educate them completely.

The place itself is stunning. Completely flat, rice paddies everywhere and thanks to deforestation, not many trees in sight... we're hoping to change that. They currently have 65 elephants at the centre (we saw about 20 in total... it's possible the rest are on Bangkok streets. We thought it best not to ask that sort of question just yet), most involved in the circus. We're hoping that their mahouts will see the money we've spent on our six and be more willing to co-operate with us in future.

Eventually, it'll just be a vast area of land for up to 300 elephants to roam free in, with volunteers and visitors working with small family groups, while the rest are free to roam, undisturbed, and we'll cycle families. As it stands though, the land itself just isn't ready for that number of elephants, so we need to plant loads and loads of grass, trees and fruits for the elephants to eat.

The local river is awesome. It's so much wider and less currenty than the ENP river, and bathing elephants without throngs of day visitors is so much better. We even got in little fishing boats for one of the afternoons, which was insanely good fun! You also get to get an awful lot closer to the elephants themselves here than you do in Chiang Mai. There's a lot less security stuff like barriers for feeding and it makes a big difference... I felt like I really got to know the six elephants we were with.

The volunteer group were, if it's possible, even more awesome than our group was at ENP! We all got on, were all hard workers and everything went excellently. Couldn't have asked for a better week (could have asked for a longer one though) - it was hard to leave.

There are lots and lots of photos to come. Hope you've got unlimited internet, John!

I'm back in Bangkok :(

2009-07-05T05:02:00.000-07:00

... and i'm still alive. Surin was, by a long way, the best week of my travels to date. Lots of stories to tell.

Right now, I'm off to find some street begging elephants with fellow volunteer Rachel, which should be an experience, if nothing else.

Tomorrow's my last full day in Asia and I'm off on a shopping spree. If anyone wants to get any dirt cheap CDs or DVDs, tell me now. I can absolutely guarantee that they'll be 100% genuine - possibly even working - copies in authentic paper cases. No piracy here!

Short update

2009-06-28T03:02:00.001-07:00

I'm sure I will find time to write about Sapa and Hanoi in a bit more detail than this at some point, but blog writing is boring and I really can't be asked right now. I've got a few more hours to enjoy Bangkok and then it's off to Surin tomorrow morning to play with some more elephants for yet another week. God, time's gone quickly!

After that's done, it's back here for the Sunday night and the following Monday, then I catch a plane to The Big Apple on Tuesday. 23 hours in planes and airports... looking forward to it!

Sapa was superb. Really good people doing it, beautiful place, interesting night spent with a hill tribe family, got an indecent amount of excersize (those hills are steep!), learnt quite a lot of new card games and generally just had a good three days there.

The last night in Hanoi was great... got drunk for about a quid and caught my plane with a killer hangover. My malaria tablets don't help much with this, I've found. I get a hangover after two drinks!

For the rest of today, I'm gonna catch a skytrain (like the DLR, but good) north and find somewhere out of the way to have dinner. Maybe a local market... I've already spotted some interesting looking (and smelling) local delicasies. Let's see just how strong my stomach is, eh?

Once again I'm gonna give you all a break from my blog. I'll be back in Bangkok next Sunday night, so expect something soon after then. And mum, that doesn't mean that if there isn't anything written with an hour of my return, you have to send a text to both of my phone numbers and worry Jerry with an email asking if I'm okay. I'll be fine... it's only Thailand after all, what's the worst that can happen?

So once more, bring on the elephants!

Next few days should be fun...

2009-06-22T00:31:00.001-07:00

For those who I haven't told yet, I arrived in Hanoi yesterday evening, planning to spend a few days here with Jerry (my mate's dad) before heading out to Halong Bay, where I'd maybe do a tour of the islands, sleep on a boat and come back to Hanoi before (probably) flying to Bangkok on Sunday.

Well that's all changed... Jerry recommended the Kangaroo Cafe as a good place to book tours, and having looked online, it seems he was right. So I got the local bus to the town centre (only 3000d and quite an experience!), headed there for lunch and had nasi goreng, which I hadn't been able to find since Indonesia (off to a good start already). I asked about their tours and a girl produced a huge folder, which thudded down on the counter and invited me to sit and read it for a while. It took half an hour, and that was only the Halong tours! I asked about availability for their 3 day, 2 night option and was told that not only was this was a bad time of year to do Halong - Vietamese summer holiday... thousands of tourists flock there - but the next tour to leave was on Sunday morning. She recommended a place called Sapa to me instead. Now I'd already heard of this place through other travellers and Jerry had mentioned it yesterday and it sounds really nice, but the tour info had photos of it and holy crap, the place is stunning! So I'm going there instead. Tonight, in fact. There are tours leaving every night, but if I'd gone on the Tuesday as planned, it would have been just me; all by myself with noone but the tour guide to talk to. Whereas if it were possible for me to leave tonight, there'd be two others there with me. "Same same, but more fun!" she told me.

Now this means I have to leave in a few hours, which means sacrificing the luxury of clean clothes for the duration of the tour (who'll know, eh?) leaving Jerry to his own devices until Friday morning, when I get back. I'm sure he won't mind.

The tour will go something like this:

Leave tonight on an overnight sleeper train to Lao Cai. Leave from Lao Cai to Sapa early the next morning. Check in at the rather nice looking hotel in Sapa, then go for a walk with the guide to some local waterfalls for a few hours. Then a free evening in Sapa.
Next morning we drive to Giang Ta Chai and hike a further 6-8 hours to the small hill tribe village of Ban Ho, where we'll stay the night with a local family in a home-stay.
The following morning, it's a short trek to the nearest road, where we'll be picked up by a mini-bus and taken back to Sapa. That evening, we get taken to Lao Cai again, where we'll catch the return overnight train to Hanoi, arriving on Friday morning.

From there, I'll spend Friday and Saturday night in Hanoi, exploring what looks to be a pretty cool city and, so I've been told, going to a piano shop to give Jerry some advice on pianos. Definitely looking forward to that!

So until Friday I shall bid you all farewell.

Another day of Bike Europe

2009-06-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

Apologies in advance here... the s and y keys don't work very well here, so don't mind the weird spelling.

Today's brought the cyclist back out of me.

After lunch I rented a mountain bike with the idea of exploring the town a little bit easier, but I ended up doing 60km to the local waterfalls and back. Possibly the bet thing I've done while I've been out... perfect (if lightly hot) weather, really nice roads, no traffic whatoever and generall just good fun! Everything from the smell of the sun cream before hand, to the roads on the journey, to the feeling of freedom it gave, to the aches and pains and even the arbitrary croissant I had afterwards, reminded me of Bike Europe.

Racing Tuk Tuks and motorbikes, high-fiving local kids by the ide of the road and getting pointed at for riding no-handed (once by a pick-up full of orange-robed monks), I thoroughly enjoyed myelf. The 32km to the waterfall took jut under 2 hours, with a head wind and an average uphill gradient and the way back took 1h20. Pretty proud of the effort it took, but I'm not as fit as I was and I had to reort to the granny ring at one point!

Yet you know it's a good day when just at the crest of the biggest, most painful hill, the wind picks up from behind, your ipod flicks over to Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World and you begin a nice fast, long descent. And yes, I was riding with my ipod in... I know it's dangerous, but I was wearing a helmet, so it all cancels out in the end.

That' all I wanted to report... today has been a day of miles and smiles for me :)

The Elephant Nature Park

2009-06-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

First off, I'd like to say a massive thank-you to Jo for the recommendation. It has been a better week than I could ever possibly have imagined! If it weren't fully booked for this week, I'd still be there!

The Elephant Nature Park is a vast sanctuary for abused, domesticated elephants. It's a place where elephants who have spent their lives performing in circuses, begging for their owners on city streets, pulling logs out of jungles or just giving tourists rides on their backs can live without abuse, can get proper medical care and aren't chained around the clock. As a volunteer, it's your job to keep the park going; making sure the elephants get their food, fixing what needs fixing, planting what needs planting and mostly just shoveling shit, sand and soil. Groups of people come for day trips to help feed and bathe the elephants and then watch a documentary about what some elephants go through at the hands of their human owners. I have this on DVD and you'll all be watching it once I'm home. It's not pleasant.

There were 4 girls who had all been there the previous week and were staying for two weeks in total and there were 7 of us newbies staying for one week. There was also a family of four joining us for the first three days.

Day one was spent getting to know each other and doing the tourist 'day-trip' routine of feeding elephants, bathing elephants and watching horrible documentaries. Our group were a varied bunch of people. Included were a horse farmer from Australia (Peter, who I've been traveling with for the last week), a married couple from Australia, a mental health worker from Australia (can you see a pattern here?), an ice cream factory worker from Australia, a family from Tasmania and half a dozen students and ex-students from Australia, England and the US. Our volunteer coordinator was a self-styled Thai Brad Pitt (his real name was not the easiest word to pronounce, so everyone does actually call him Brad). Or Hugh Jackman, for the Aussies. We all got on like a house on fire and I certainly had a thoroughly enjoyable week with the group.

I was practically adopted by the Tasmanian family, so for the first three days I had a new mum, dad and two sisters. I was quite sad to see them go, but within hours of them leaving I had a waterfall to jump off and that well and that truly took my mind off things. Take a look for yourself:

Other activities of note included a trek up to the Elephant Haven; an area of forest about three or four miles up in the hills from the park, where the elephants are allowed to roam free overnight, unchained and without the continual watchful eye of their mahout. We stayed in a surprisingly well built bamboo and timber structure with no electricity, running water, flushing toilets or even internet. Despite this, we shared the most amazing meal I've ever eaten. It was seriously good. There were six of us volunteers who'd made the trek to the Haven and four were vegetarians, so me and Eric (one half of the married couple) had quite a feast of red meat curry and chicken drumsticks, while the rest shared the vegetarian options, which were also apparently really good. I honestly don't know how they managed it in such conditions, but Pom and the mahouts really know how to put a meal together!

We had five elephants with us at the haven and we'd made the journey up with three of them - Hope, Mae Perm and Jokia. Hope is a youngster at 9 years old and is fast becoming a moody teenager, so he's usually kept away from the rest of the group in case he tries anything too ambitious with any of the female elephants. Jokia is a bit of a special case. She's completely blind having lost both eyes to her previous owner when she refused to work after the death of her baby. Watching a blind elephant climb a mountain is something I don't think I'll forget in a hurry - at no point did she put a foot wrong, even in parts that were steep enough to make me struggle! Mae Perm acts as Jokia's eyes and you can hear the two communicating while they walk, Mae Perm in front, Jokia behind.

A few points during the evening, you'd hear an elephant call in the distance and Pom's ears would prick up and she'd know exactly which elephant it was and what the call was for. At one point, the mahouts had to go out into the forest with their torches to reunited Jokia and Mae Perm, who had become separated.

Back at the park, some other activities included paying the local school a visit, where we attempted to teach the kids some English, while they, rather more successfully, attempted to stop us from teaching them English. In the end, I relented with my group of kids and they took me outside and taught me a local Thai sport - basically football tennis (for those unfamiliar, it's like volleyball, but with your feet) - and I proved a lot better at this that than I had at teaching English.

Not only does the park play host to 33 elephants, but there are also 47 dogs and about a dozen cats. And the one thing that I'll miss more than an other from the park is being in the company of so many dogs. Everywhere you turn, there's a dog wanting some attention or two rival packs of dogs at each other's throats. Okay, that bit wasn't quite so much fun, but a week of being around that many dogs has made me really, really want one. I'm sure the cats won't wind, mum...

To finish the week on a high, we spent a few hours with Mae Boon's (I think) six week old baby Fai Mai. In the presence of Lek, who started the whole Elephant Nature Park going, who's presence has a visibly calming effect on all the elephants and who just happens to be a pro photographer, we could safely play with this 300lb bundle of fun. Unknown to me, the act of getting on the floor, below the eyeline of a baby elephant is paramount to saying 'come here and climb on my head' and so there I was, trying to get a photo from a decent angle, a good half a grand's worth of camera in my hand, and Fai Mai, spotting a new play thing, trots over and does indeed climb on my head, face and anything else she can find. She also tried to eat my hair, get a piggy-back from me, steal my camera and generally pummel me into submission. It was great fun, I managed to save my camera (though I don't think my T shirt will ever be quite the same) and I got some good shots to boot. Since then, I've been given two CDs full of the photos Lek was taking and some are spectacular. Trust me to pick a computer with no CD drive and dodgy USB ports... the photos will have to wait.

As a last goodbye to everyone, we all went out for one big meal and drink. At least those of us who enjoy such things did. The Reggae Bar was the venue and, with some quite good music to accompany them, most of our group were on the dance floor pretty quick. I did my best to resist, but they got me up there eventually. I blame the beer.

The last two days in Chiang Mai were spend with Peter and Poonam (she works for HSBC in Birmingham, of all places) in a hotel well above my means, eating at some really nice restaurants and spending far too much money. Bloody good few days though!

Me and Pete happened to be heading in the same direction, so we figured it best to stay together until Luang Prabang, where we'd finally split and head our own separate ways. It took two bus rides to get to Chiang Khong on the Thai-Lao border, the first of which was air-conditioned and comfortable and the second of which was cooled only by the open doors and windows, noisy, full of locals, cheap and much, much more enjoyable than the first. The views out the windows grew increasingly spectacular as we neared the Mekong river, we stopped at a street stall selling nothing but mushrooms and we had the whole back row to ourselves. I later found out that the back row of buses is usually reserved solely for monks, but we didn't know that at the time and nobody seemed to mind, so I'm sure it was fine.

In Chiang Khong, we stayed in a guesthouse, whose name I can neither remember nor pronounce... it began with a B, I think. There was loads of info around the place about Laos Visa regulations, info on the slow boat and speedboats and loads of maps of Laos and surrounding areas. It was surprising that we were the only people staying there that night. Well, apart from one American guy, but he'd been there for 15 months and pretty much worked there. We had a lot of useful conversations with him and the owner, who were both very knowledgeable about Laos and helped Pete sort out an itinerary of sorts for his next two weeks traveling; he's heading back up to the Chiang Mai ENP the same week I go down to Surin.

The slow boat down the river was not quite what I had in mind. I though that it'd maybe hold a dozen people and would go at about walking pace and be nice and comfortable, but in fact, it had well over 50 people on board, most of whom were of the scummy, drunken English/Aussie variety, hard wooden benches with legroom that even Ryanair would be embarrassed about and it went pretty quick, weaving between rocky outcrops in the river. Oh and when it rained, the rain covers didn't work too well and when it rains in this part of the world, it really rains! Nonetheless, we survived the first leg of the journey and arrived in Pak Beng, half way to Luang Prabang on time(!) and found a decent guesthouse to stay the night.

Day two was much more sedate and enjoyable. After only about half an hour, we pulled up beside another boat and were given the option to jump ship and split the passenger load between the two boats. Pete went on the other boat and I stayed put... a bit of a race, if you will. So with more legroom and less noise, I quite enjoyed the last days boat ride. There were a group of girls sitting behind me (from Loughton and Woodford, would you believe?) and one had spotted my camera and we got talking about photography type stuff. Now somehow... don't ask me how... she'd managed to format her memory card, wiping nearly 8GB of photos from her camera and was understandably quite distressed about it. So I spent a while explaining how to get them back again.

After a while the boat pulled up in LP and I met up with Pete to find a new guesthouse. Walking around Luang Prabang is much like walking around a small french village, complete with markets, bakeries and dead rats in the gutter. It really is a charming little place and I'd love to spend more than my three days here.

...

Sorry, but I'm really bored now and this wooden chair is hurting my arse... I'll be back with more stories (and hopefully photos) soon...

An edit for photos:

Lek herself:

Pom:

Brad Pitt:

Poo and Pete:

Recognise?

Lisa (Eric's wife):

Alison:

Pete:

Poo and Mo:

Literally hundreds of new photos can now be found on my flickr account

Lek took the two with me and Fai Mai, I took the rest...

Quick Update

2009-06-16T02:57:00.000-07:00

Just so nobody wonders why I'm inactive for a day or two... Tomorrow morning I'm catching the slow boat from Huay Xia to Luang Prabang. Assuming Lao customs and immigration all goes to plan, I'll be on the boat tomorrow at about 11am, stopping overnight in a little village about half way down the river, then arriving in Luang Prabang the following afternoon.

I'm staying in Chiang Khong, on the Thai side of the border for tonight and it's a nice enough town... not masses to see or do though. I'm with Pete from the ENP until Luang, which means that accommodation is now half price and I have someone to chat to on the two day boat.

I'll probably write the ENP blog once I'm in Luang Prabang... it'll be a good'un!

So until LP, goodbye!

I'm back!

2009-06-14T23:18:00.000-07:00

Right, you've had your break and I'm back with a keyboard at my fingers... can't say I've missed it much.

Volunteering at the Elephant Nature Park was by far the best thing I've done while I've been away. I shall go into my usual level of detail at some point, but not now. Things to do today. One thing being to sign up for my next volunteering stint with elephants... there's a brand new park being set up in Surin (south east Thailand), by the same people and it's right at the beginning of it's existence. So it'll be homestay accommodation, basic food and an awful lot of hard work. Buildings need building, trees need planting, acres of grass needs planting for the elephants to graze on and so far, a grand total of 5 people, myself included, have signed up to do it. It starts on the 29th and finishes on the 5th in Bangkok - perfect my flight outta here on the 7th.

http://www.elephantnaturefoundation.org/go/Surin

I also need to find the bus stop for the bus to Chiang Kong, which I'll be catching at about 6am tomorrow. There's a possibility of heading out there with fellow volunteer Peter, which would be ideal... it's always nice to have someone to talk to.

Lots and lots and lots of photos, videos and stories will be coming this way soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

It's raining again...

2009-06-07T01:12:00.000-07:00

...So I've jumped inside so keep from getting too clean. Can't be having that now.

Just checked the 7-day forecast for north Thailand and 'scattered to widespread thunderstorms with isolated heavy rain for most of the week' was the result. Great!

Chiang Mai

2009-06-06T23:03:00.000-07:00

The train pulled in more than five hours late and it was raining far more heavily than should be allowed, but I still love Chiang Mai! I've only been here about two hours and everything is nice and calm, the monsoon's finished and the sun is out, I've got a frankly amazing room at the Blue House for a more than reasonable price, it's not too hot here, I've been in a tuk tuk, I had a very decent night's sleep on the way over in a more comfortable bed that I'd have ever imagined could exist on a train and I'm off to see some elephants tomorrow. All told, I'm pretty happy.

If I don't get online again before tomorrow morning, this will no doubt be the last you hear of me before next Monday, when I get back from the Elephant Nature Park. So you get a week off, you lucky people!

My Thai sim card is being funny about sending things internationally at the moment, so you'll just have to assume that I'm still alive until my next blog post, mum. I'm sure you can manage.

Much love,
Matthew

I'm in Thailand!

2009-06-06T02:40:00.000-07:00

Yep, the land of smiles. I landed in Bangkok about an hour late, which I'm not complaining about... one hour less to fill before my train leaves. I'm in an internet cafe opposite Huamphalong (I think) Station and have an hour and 15 minutes til I leave. I've got a 2nd class upper berth (it's actually a bed this time, I checked) complete with air-con. Whether or not the air-con will work, I have no clue, but here's hoping.

The plane journeys didn't go too badly, minus the hour delay in KL and my stomach feeling a bit iffy. That problem still remains, but since I'm on an upper berth, I can fart the night away unnoticed and I'm sure I'll be fine by tomorrow.

First impressions of Thailand are good. Everyone (so far without exception) has been extremely friendly and willing to help and no one has asked me for money or tried to rip me off. Or if they have, they were bloody good because I didn't realise. The taxi driver from the airport even gave a free lesson in speaking Thai! And speaking of which, since I'm a man, if I'm asking for something in a polite manner of even just saying hello, I have to finish the sentance with the word 'krap'. Now I know it's very immature and all, but I'm finding it hard to keep a straight face in these situations. You try it next time you're ordering food. 'Stir fry noodles please... Krap!' It's not easy!

And now for another issue I'm keenly debating with myself and I think I'll need your assistance with. To shave or not to shave? I've got a bit (and only a bit) of a ginger beard going on right now and even though it looks stupid and isn't very comfortable, I kinda like it. So what to do? Shave and only have half my face smothered in hair, or keep it and keep the balance up. I'm gonna let you decide on this one. Cast your votes now!

Boring day, today.

2009-06-05T01:55:00.000-07:00

I've spent most of today getting sorted for Thailand tomorrow. Getting clothes washed, changing my Malaysian Ringget for Thai Baht and researching all sorts of stuff about the next month in mainland south east Asia. And from this research, I've come to the worrying conclusion that I may not have enough time to do everything I'd planned. With only three weeks left after the elephant thing, I still have Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and southern Thailand to compete with. I seriously doubt I'll get all that done, so I'll have to make some priorities.

Initial, very flexible and highly-susceptible-to-change plans are as follows:

After washing elephants for a week, I'll hang around in Chiang Mai for two days or so - no doubt I'll be in desperate need of a shower and somewhere to get my clothes washed - and then I'll be off to the border town of Chiang Khong (no idea as yet how I'll be getting there), where I'll cross the border into Laos and into the town of Huay Xai. From there, it's a slow boat down the Mekong River (looking forward to that) to Luang Prabang, which takes two days with one overnight stop, apparently. Luang Prabang sounds nice, so I'll be there for a day or two, before flying (yes I know... but you try finding a route into Vietnam from there that takes less than a day!) to Hanoi. In Hanoi I'll find Jerry's place and (if he'll let me) use that as a base for exploring northern Vietnam and in particular Ha Long Bay, where that favourite Top Gear episode of mine finished.

That, so far, is the extent to which I've thought this through and that will allow me maybe a week and a half, if that, to get back to Bangkok for my flight to New York. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze Angkor Wat (Cambodia) into that time, but I'm not counting on it. All I know for sure, is that one day, I'll be back here with a fair bit more time on my hands, because rushing like this is far too stressful and expensive for my liking.

I fly to Bangkok tomorrow morning, via Kuala Lumpur. Penang -> KL at 8am local time, and then a few hours later (can't remember the exact time) KL to Bangkok, arriving at 13.35 Thai time. If I get the train I'm hoping to get, I'll leave Bangkok at 6pm and arrive in Chiang Mai soon before 8am the next morning. Elephant volunteering starts at 8am the following day. Should be a good week :)

I realise that most of what I've said (place names in particular) will mean absolutely nothing to most of you, but it was useful for me to get that written down and so at the expense of your time, I now have a much better idea of what's going to be happening to me for the next few weeks. Thanks very much!

Cameron Highlands and Georgetown, Penang

2009-06-04T06:06:00.000-07:00

I'll be brief on the highlands. They're a fairly small mountain range half way up peninsular Malaysia and they have a climate similar to England in spring, only they have it pretty much all year round. The climate isn't the only parallel to the UK either. Much of Cameron seems to think that it'd quite like to be England and the locals have an appetite for English tea with scones and jam, a penchant for all things rural Britain - think cottages and bungalows with rose gardens - and an absolute fascination with anyone English who happens to wander through. It's all a bit surreal, but it was nice to have a proper cuppa again, even if it wasn't quite up to PG Tips' standard. The scones were hot too, I'm sure that's not right. The Chinese tourists lap it all up though, and they come in their thousands.

I stayed in Brinchang, the less popular of the two Highland towns and as it transpires, by far the more expensive of the two. So much for me trying for once to deviate from where the Lonely Planet tells me to go! Still, I found a cheap(ish) tour of the local area, including the local tea plantations (if you ever see 'BOH' tea, this is where it comes from) which was not only visually stunning (see the photos), but pretty interesting too.

From there, I got an air-conditioned 'VIP' coach to Penang, where I'd be staying in the capital, Georgetown for 3 nights. The coach trip was really very comfortable and easily made up for the 7am start. There were two other British couples on board and though we didn't speak much on the journey (mostly due to my being fast asleep), we stuck together at the other end, and for good reason too. You see, we'd all been expecting to arrive in Georgetown, as advertised, but when we shooed off the bus, we were in a remote bus stops in, as far as we could see, the middle of nowhere. We managed to shirk off the taxi touts and found the stop outside for the local bus. Turns out we had been dropped in Relau, in the south of the island. After two busses had gone past, one came in and the lady on board told us that 'yes, bus go Georgetown, yes.' So we hopped on, paid our RM1.50 and it only took us 45 minutes to get to the central bus station in Georgetown. Just a shame that the backpacker district is about half an hour's walk from the centre. Unperturbed, we headed forth and found some locals to ask for directions, one of whom produced a map and showed us exactly where to go, what roads to take and how long it would be til we got there. Thanks to him, we only got lost about three times, rather than the usual dozen. The lonely planet map didn't help, having mislabeled one of the guesthouses and caused us to look (for quite an embarrassingly long time) for a back street that didn't even exist. Still we found our bearings eventually and one couple headed off in search of some friends with whom they'd be staying, the other couple went to somewhere I couldn't afford (although their place had air-con rooms, which in this heat and humidity is well worth forking out for) and I found New Banana. Smitten with the name, I booked the cheapest room they had and while it's a small and quite stuffy affair, it's clean and quiet. I've since discovered that I'm sharing the room with two baby geckos, the smallest of which is less than an inch long, and according to old Mr Gede in Bali, they're a sign of protection and they keep the mosquitoes away.

That night I headed to Little India to quell my craving for a good curry. And boy did I find one (okay, two)! In a fairly large, very loud and very popular restaurant, I sat down, was thoroughly misunderstood by the waiter, inadvertently ordered two main meals and came, I'm quite proud to say, within two or three mouthfuls of polishing them both off. I could barely stand afterwards, but the pull (push?) of my bowels was enough to get me back to Banana. Once thoroughly relieved, I spent the rest of the evening in the rather nice bar downstairs reading my new book (a Tom Clancey one) in the company of a tiger beer.

Today. Today has been erm... interesting, to say the least. As promised I found somewhere that didn't seem to mind renting me a motorbike for the day (Banana refused on account of me never having ridden before... the other place didn't even ask. I gave them the money, they gave me the keys). Now I'd always been of the opinion that if girls can do it and if Indonesian children as young as about 5 can do it, it can't be that hard to ride one, right? Erm... I was very slightly wrong. Thankfully the guy who lent me the bike turned a blind eye as I lurched away from the parking spot, narrowly avoiding the hurtling traffic and kangarooed my way down the road. In my defence, it's a manual with no clutch and until you've got the knack, gear changes are extremely violent and both 1st gear and the brakes are incredibly sensitive! I gained control enough to pull into a little side road and spent a good ten minutes just riding up and down this one empty road, getting a feel for it. To get back to the hostel though, thanks to a phenomenally complicated one way system, I had to make quite a big loop, involving some rather large roads. So I just gritted my teeth and went for it. Scary though it certainly was, I made my way back in one piece and went and collapsed on my bed, never wanting to set foot in that sort of traffic again! It's just plain dangerous!

But I'd paid good money (okay, 4 quid) for that bike and I'd be damned if I wasn't at least gonna use up some of their petrol before giving it back. I psyched myself up for a proper ride, which I'd been planning to do all along and thought I'd go to the next town along the coast, hoping that it'd be less crowded there and the roads between the two would be nice and empty. Not a chance! At no point did it get any less built-up, any less crowded or indeed any different from the centre of Georgetown and it was only at the point that I'd gone much further than planned (without realising... every single road is identical to every other road in this place!) that I stopped, tried to work out where I was, worked out that I had left the map completely and panicked. In the distance I could see a tower that I recognised as being in the middle of Georgetown and I decided I'd head towards that. But even here, the one way systems were a nightmare, pushing me further and further away and every time I could see where I wanted to go, I wasn't allowed down that particular turning or I was forced by other cars round a bend I didn't want to take (lane discipline doesn't really exist in south east Asia). So in the end I resorted, and being a man this was difficult, to asking someone for directions. A local shopkeeper told me (wrongly) where I was on the map and where to go, so ignoring him, I headed again towards the familiar building and this time found a road name that I recognised. Shot down that road and, just to be sure, stopped again and asked another local where I was. This one didn't lie and confirmed where I was on the map and even told me the best way to get round the one way system in chinatown to get back to Banana. And thankfully his advice was sound and I arrived back, shaken and vowing never ever to do that again, collapsed on my bed decided that I'd go and hand the motorbike back that evening. No way will I be exploring the whole island like that. I'll stick to public transport. Motorbikes can be saved til I get home... don't get me wrong, I still want one! It was great fun for those rare moments where there was little traffic and it didn't take long to get the hang of the controls.

The bike safely back with its rightful owner, I went back to Little India for dinner. And usually I wouldn't go to the same place twice, but those curries yesterday were pretty special, so I found the same restaurant again and this time didn't order two mains.

Two girls were sitting at the table next to me and invited me over (I guess I looked lonely). So I sat with them and it turns out they're from America, but have been living in Sumatra, Indonesia for the last year. Another German guy joined us and it turned out to be a nice sociable dinner, which was more than I'd had planned. Unfortunately they didn't hang around afterwards, so me and the German guy quickly paid and parted company.

From there, it was back to here where I started this blog about an hour ago. I'm gonna go to bed soon; it's been a long day! No plans as yet for tomorrow. I'll see where the day takes me.

I shall leave you with photos from the Cameron Highlands, my lovely left foot and the Petronus Towers in KL. With the exception on those two towers, the less said about KL the better!

No doubt this is only gonna get worse...

Just a short one this time.

2009-06-03T02:18:00.000-07:00

I'm now in Georgetown, Penang and was expecting some Jakarta-esque shit'ole full of traffic and rude people, but I've been pleasantly surprised. It's not hugely busy (okay it is quite busy, but not horribly so), everyone speaks English, which is more than can be said of the rest of Malaysia, the food has so far been pretty good and I'm staying at the New Banana, which is not only quite nice, but very friendly and filled with travelers like me. It's by far the best named place I've stayed in too! It is worth mentioning though, that there's a weird (presumably) drunk guy in a head-dress dancing to Shine On You Crazy Diamonds by Pink Floyd about 2 or 3 meters away from me. At least has has good taste in music...

New Banana also rent 100cc motorbikes for RM20 a day and I've met two people already who have explored the island by bike and they say it's by far the best way to do it. I've been reading up on how to ride one and it seems pretty straightforward. I don't need a IDP here either, so I won't be coming home in handcuffs for riding without a license.

I spend 3 nights here before flying out and heading to Chiang Mai ready for Monday. I'm really quite excited about the elephant thing!

I might do my usual mega-blog for the last few days, but my headache from the last one lingers on. I might do a short summary tonight. First off, I need to go and get myself a new book - the fifth one I will have read! - before the shops shut, and I might wander down to the seafront this evening to see if it looks any good by night.

So goodbye for now,
Matthew

Slightly more solid plans

2009-06-02T02:19:00.000-07:00

First, the good news that I've been accepted onto the elephant volunteering course. It starts on Monday 8th at 8am in Chiang Mai (northern Thainland) and I'm currently only half way up Malaysia, in the Cameron Highlands.

Next stop is Georgetown in Penang for two days (3 nights) and since time is somewhat limited I'm going to have to fly to Bangkok, rather than get the train as originally planned, which would have meant two sleepers and arriving in Chiang Mai only hours before starting the elephant thing. This way I get a (hopefully) comfortable night in a sleeper train and a night in Chiang Mai. I still don't feel good about flying so much though, it feels like I'm cheating.

The thai train website doesn't like me and won't let me book the Bangkok-Chiang Mai ticket online, so I'll have to risk getting it at the station. Apparently this is usually fine, but it's the school holidays here at the moment and this might be a problem.

So far Malaysia seems alright. Prices have increased a fair bit from Indonesia, people speak less English and where I was staying in KL was a bit of a dive, but the rest of the city was amazing. The Cameron Highlands are pretty stunning too, but a bit on the pricey side and rammed full of Chinese tourists.

I really can't be asked to finish the last blog. The last night in Indo involved me, Nolke and Bob going out to the night market for dinner, eating some extremely strange food (some of which came back to haunt me... I can now say with confidence that Dyoralite works pretty well) and me having what can only be described as a condom full of green soy milk explode all over me. I also bought a cool lighter with a green flame which, within hours of buying it, stopped working. It only cost me about a quid, so it ain't too bad... I think it might even be fixable.

I'm gonna try this train website again and then go and get some dinner. There's a big night food market 10 mins walk from here, so I'm going to try some local delicacies.

Until Penang,
Matthew

Bromo & Yogyakarta

2009-05-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

Happily I've now recovered from the ordeal of 36 hours of straight traveling. The train from Jakarta was by no means luxurious. I was expecting a bed and got a reclining chair and a free smelly blanket. I was expecting the 'free meal' to be both free and edible and was disappointed on both fronts. I was expecting to maybe get some sleep, but the screaming toddler behind me had other ideas. And lastly, I was expecting to arrive at the time the train was timetabled to arrive, whereby I'd have an hour to catch next train to Probolinggo, but no, a full two and a half hours after we should have been in Surubaya, we finally pulled into the station. So I went to the ticket office to find out when the next train to Probo was and when the man (who didn't speak a word of English) explained with a calendar rather than a timetable, I decided to find myself a nice strong coffee and some biscuits. Biscuits always help.

In the end, I went for a full Indonesian breakfast in a tiny little warung round the back of the station and while I was eating I was approached by a middle aged local guy saying 'where you from? where you from?'. Turns out he just wanted to practice his English rather than sell me some lude, tacky souvenirs, like I thought he would. He was actually a really nice guy, with surprisingly good English and he was more than willing to help out with my transport troubles. He recommended using a public bus from the bus terminal about 20 mins south of the centre, where they do a hourly service to Probo, which takes 2 hours and costs less than half what the train would have cost me. He even offered to drop me there (for a fee of course).

The bus trip was quite an experience. I was the only white person on board and there was a steady stream of buskers and beggers (some disturbingly young), getting on, singing hideously out of tune, spotting the white person sitting sheepishly in the corner, heading down the bus to then sing really loudly into my face, proffering plastic cups under my nose, asking for money, singing even louder when I said no, finally receiving a few coins and jumping off the moving bus, only to be followed by another busker, this time with an out of tune ukulele and an even worse voice. This cycle continued for the whole two hour journey and by the end, I was in a less than pleasant mood.

The bus came to Probo and the bus driver got off and helped me out of the bus and ushered me into a 'tourist information' place. I'm familiar with these from around Bali and they don't provide information, they provide overpriced tickets for tours and they're pretty difficult to leave once you're inside. Until your wallet opens, that is. Sleep deprivation and a foul headache meant that I was probably an easy target for them and indeed I agreed to use them to get up to Cemero Lawang, where Mt Bromo is and I bought a land rover tour from them, which I'd intended to do in Cemero anyway. So having paid an extortionate amount of money for all this, a minibus pulled up outside and I got in, while the driver tied my bag to the roof.

There was an American couple, Michael and Lily, on the bus already, so at least I wasn't the only idiot to get conned into this trip and I'd have some people to talk to on the way up. I got in at about 2pm and it turns out they'd been sitting in the bus since 11am. The driver said he was waiting for the bus to fill up before he left. Oh great, I'd be sitting in a hot, stuffy minibus that was filling up at a rate of one person an hour. Thankfully it only took about half an hour before a large group of Indonesian tourists got on and I thought we'd be able to leave. But the definition of a full bus here is quite different to that at home. It took another two hours (yes, two hours!) before the bus was sufficiently rammed with people, sitting on the floor, hanging off the ladder at the back, on each others laps and hanging out the side door. I'd managed to get a front seat with two chain smokers, but I was still better off than those in the back.

Slowly but surely the bus emptied out as people got off along the road and towards the end it was quite comfortable. We arrived in Cemero in the dark and in the rain and checked out the two cheapest places to stay, which were both pretty expensive and both fairly hideous. We went for the least cell-like rooms, chucked our stuff down and went to check out the restaurant, which, though similarly expensive, was actually very nice and apparently had good views over the volcano during the day. I ate with Michael and Lily and when they went to bed, I was joined by a dutch guy called Nolke, who was in the room opposite me and we had a beer together. He'd done the jeep tour I would be doing the following morning and he told me that the view point was covered by a big cloud when he was there, so they couldn't see a thing. Didn't sound too good, so I didn't get my hopes up. Like me, Nolke was going to Yogyakarta the next day and we decided to make the journey together.

3.30am there was a knock on my door and a voice saying 'Jeep... 15 minute,' so I hauled myself out of bed, chucked on as many layers of clothes as I could find (it was bloody freezing!) and headed out to the front. My jeep was a nice burnt orange Toyota Land Cruiser and the driver was semi-suicidal, with taste for speed. Needless to say, the journey to the view point was great fun! Woke me up more than any amount of caffeine could. The sunrise itself was distinctly disappointing though. Just dark and cloudy and the view from the view point wasn't that great. Plus it was difficult to get to the front to get and pictures due to the throngs of people lining the railing.

The jeep ride down from the viewpoint to the crater itself was, again, great fun. We'd been tailing an identical Land Cruiser down the mountain and once the land flattened out onto a plain of volcanic sand and ash, it was an all out race to the crater! The jeep ride alone was well worth the money I spent on it and more than made up for the crap sunrise.

The crater lip was spectacular. The sun was up by now and it was a clear morning (apart from the smoke billowing from the bottom of the crater), so there were some impressive views to be had.

The jeep took us back to the prison - I mean err, guest house... sorry - and I walked down the road to a tiny little warung with Nolke for a breakfast of Nasi Goreng (fried rice with a fried egg on top) before getting back in the minibus (this time with the same number of people as there were seats!). The journey to Yogyakarta went much smoother that I'd thought it would. We got off the minibus in Probolinggo and there was our next (aircon!) minibus waiting, ready to take us the 8 hours to Yogya. Okay, so the aircon didn't really work and yet again, the driver was a maniac, but we got there in one piece and more than that, we'd made a new friend :) Bob, from Ireland, was the only other English speaker on board and the three of us, on arriving in Yogya, went in search of some budget beds together.

Having been ushered round the little alleyways by a local, eager for us to use his travel agency, we found Nuri Losmen, a small and very cheap affair, with sparse rooms and no hot water, but surprisingly comfortable beds and unlimited free tea. They had only a single and a twin left, so Bob took the single and myself and Nolke shared to twin. Okay, so you do lose a little privacy, but it meant we only paid half each and the result was 3 nights of decent accommodation for the grand total of about five pounds fifty. Not too shabby.

All of us were absolutely shattered, having had rubbish nights sleep in the cell-like mountain rooms (see picture below), so we decided to find somewhere for a quick dinner, maybe a beer and then bed. But only bed for a few hours because the Man U - Barca final was on at 2am and none of us would be missing that! We ended up having dinner at about half 9 in the 'Bintang Cafe', listening to a really quite good live instrumental band (think early Pink Floyd music coupled with late-60's hair and fashion... actually no. Imagine Jimmy Hendrix but Indonesian, right handed, not quite as good [though still pretty decent] and with less fire and there you have the lead guitarist of this band. If only I'd had my camera with me...), but we had to pull ourselves away after a few songs, because we desperately needed some sleep before the game. Thankfully Nolke seems to be a light sleeper because he actually heard his alarm, got up and (with difficulty) woke both me and Bob up.

The game itself was an odd one for me. I fully intended to watch as a neutral, but was swayed in part by patriotism but mostly by the fact that 90% of people watching (including one very annoying, vocal and downright ignorant American sitting next to me) were supporting Barca. So for the first time I can remember, I actually wanted Man U to win a game. Of course, I was only to be disappointed and had I watched as a neutral I would probably have quite enjoyed the result.

Next morning was supposed to be a well deserved lay-in, but I was awake and beyond sleep by about 8.30 in the morning, as was Nolke. So we went to a little cafe down the road to have breakfast and then to a little travel agency to book a tour to see the vast Buddhist Temple of Borobodur at sunset. The tour left at 2pm and we hopped onto a little minubus and set off for the temple. Bob was going to explore Yogya, so we left him in bed.

Borobodur was bloody huge! Like really properly big. But the most amazing thing wasn't the sheer size of it. It wasn't even the mind-bogglingly intricate detail on every inch of it's surface. It was the evidence of what I can only presume to be the most backwards education system on the planet. Local students roved by the dozen all over the temple, having been sent here not on a history trip or even one for RE, but an English trip. Their English homework involves going to tourist hotspots, armed with cameras, pens and pieces of paper, in search of Westerners, whom they have to interview, get a signature from and be in a photo with. So me and Nolke spent most of our time there looking for deserted corners and didn't dare venture towards the top where the majority of them were prowling. Needless to say we couldn't stay inconspicuous for long and once one group has got hold of you, they all follow and block off any means of escape. In the end we glanced up at each other and both decided now was the best time to leave. So shoulders down, we pushed our way out of the crowd (they were mostly young kids... no match for a good shoulder barge or well placed elbow), jumped down the stairs and headed for the empty grounds around the temple.

The way out towards the car park was just as treacherous. Now just because their education techniques are questionable, doesn't mean that Indonesian people aren't clever. The way in to the temple had been a clear walk down a nice tree lined path, but on the way out we found this way blocked. As were all other the routes except for just one. And that route was a maze of market stalls, beggars and touts all eager to get your money and not in the least shy about asking for it. This time, chin up, pretend you can't see anything but what's directly ahead of you and walk fast! That way you only get the most determined sellers pushing garish souvenirs into your face. There was one man who deserves particular credit for his efforts though. He followed us right to our minibus, trying to sell what looked to us like pieces of wood that a child had drawn on, had to be forcibly moved just so we could shut the door and then stood, face gaunt, about an inch from the window, pointing to these bits of wood while everyone on board tried to keep a straight face and pretend he didn't exist. He stood there for a full 5 minutes until the last two people arrived at the bus and we could finally leave.

That evening, Bob was nowhere to be found, so me and Nolke went into Yogya to explore the night stalls buy presents for people at home. Don't get your hopes up, he was the one buying presents, not me. Yogyakarta (pron: Jogjakarta), is a very arty and cultural place and full of batik artwork (more on that tomorrow), leatherwork and amazing food, but mostly full of tourists. Not that it was that bad though; probably my favourite place in Indonesia and certainly the most relaxed and laid back place that I've been to. Nolke bought a load of t-shirts for his nephews and some new headphones for his ipod while I gawked at the rock bottom camera prices and vowed one day to come back to this place with nothing but an empty suitcase and a large baggage allowance on the return flight. We ate dinner in a tiny little place well away from the markets and all the tourists and were pleasantly surprised by the 'Bakso' we'd ordered. This place served only meal - a really nice beef and noodle soup - for 5000Rp or in British terms, 30p, and one drink - a lemony, sweet tea - for 1500Rp... 10p!

Right, now for Friday. Bob had turned up again and he and Nolke were going to head off to some other nearby temples, while I stayed in Yogya to by Sarah's birthday present, post that and some other stuff home and then go and explore a batik art gallery. In the post office, I was asked by a worker there if I wanted a hand. Evidently I looked as lost and confused as I felt. So I showed him what I had to post and told him where it was going to and he took me round the back to the packaging department where I watched as some other workers packed it up very neatly. So if it arrives broken Sarah, it's not my fault. While this was happening I got talking to the first guy about where I'm from, what I'm doing here etc and when I told him I was going to a batik gallery later, he told me not to trust anyone round the touristy spots as it's all fake and massively overpriced and recommended a small place about a kilometer east of town that I should visit. Once the package was done and they saw the look of horror on my face at the price to post it via airmail, the same man said I should go to a different post office to get it send by boat, which would take up to 2 months, but would cost about 10% of the airmail price. It just so happened that he had to go to this post office himself to pick up a delivery of paper and he offered me a free ride on the back of his motorbike. Not one to sniff at anything free, I gratefully accepted. Once there, he helped me fill out all the forms, explained to the lady behind the counter what needed to happen and once everything was done, he told me that the good batik gallery was only two blocks from here and that he'd happily drop me there. Score! If only everyone were this friendly...

The batik gallery was fascinating. Batik is a process where you apply a pattern to fabric with molten wax, dye the fabric and the waxed parts stay white. Then you chuck the whole thing into boiling water and the wax comes off. With multiple dyings and waxing, some truly stunning effects and images are possible. I walked through to the back and two women and one man were working on new pieces, sitting on the floor, waxing bits of fabric. The man got up, introduced himself (in perfect English) and offered me a free tour of the gallery and an explanation of the process. Having done a fair bit of batik stuff for work at Brampton, I was fairly familiar with the process and able to truly appreciate just how bloody amazing some of these pieces of art were. Now no offense to the students at Brampton Manor, but the stuff in this gallery makes the batik work hanging around T6 look like something a blind child with no arms has done.

All the exhibits are either hanging on the walls or piled against each other along the edges of the room and there's so much in this little place that it'd take at least a day to look at it all; they have stuff from hundreds of artists across the globe. Now my room at home is decidedly bare and could do with some art to liven it up, so I figured I'd see if anything took my fancy. Looking round, I made a shortlist of about 30 pieces and the guy who'd given me the tour came over and remarked that I had very good taste. There were about 6 of his own in my little collection. I asked if I could see any more of his work and if he had any particular favourites. When asked this question, he pointed to a piece that had escaped me until now. Hanging opposite the main desk was an absolute masterpiece. A mountain landscape at least two and a half meters across and one and a half deep, so intricately detailed and perfectly made that I was almost speechless. It had taken him 17 weeks to complete and was the only piece he'd been working on at the time. Now most of the ones I'd picked out already were in the 150,000Rp - 300,000Rp range (about 10-20 quid) and all now seemed slightly poor in comparison. 1.75 Million Ruppiah this was valued at and me, never willing to spend any money on anything, was sorely tempted. So some hard bargaining followed and I got him down to 1.1m (about 67GBP), which seemed pretty good to me, so I bought it. It's now nice and safe at the bottom of my bag, waiting for me to get home and build a stretcher frame for it. If you're reading this Tom, I'll be paying the tech department a visit once I'm home, looking for some assistance.

This post is now failing to save as a draft, so I'll have to post it up. I'm off to get dinner somewhere in Kuala Lumpur's chinatown, where I'm staying at the moment. I will be back to add more to it!

Photos...

Bromo:

Pathetic sunrise

Borobodur:

Just a quick update on my plans for the next few weeks. I'm heading to the Camron Highlands tomorrow, and then to Penang. From there I'll have to move bloody quickly to Chiang Mai in north Thailand, because I've applied for a week long volunteering thing with a load of elephants on Jo's advice. If i'm successful, that starts on Monday morning. From there, Laos, Hanoi, Vietnam coast to Ho Chi Minh, Cambodia, Siem reap and the temples there, Bangkok, New York, HOME!!!

Byesy bye.

I've got some catching up to do.

2009-05-25T02:39:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in a stuffy internet cafe in Jakarta right now, wondering how I'm going to spend the next 6 hours before my train leaves Gambir station at 2130. There is the glimmer of hope that it's a 'luxury' train, so I have something to look forward to at least. For now though, I'll try my best to remember the last few days and recount them for your reading pleasure.

The last night in Lovina was spent entirely in and around the homestay. I went to sit on the beach for a bit and found Georgio (the guy from Hounslow or wherever it was) there already. I'd bought my Lonely Planet for some light reading and he went through all sorts of places with me, telling me the best way to get from place to place, what to do about visas, where to avoid, where I shouldn't miss and all sorts of very useful stuff like that. At sunset I went to get my camera and it turns out he's into photography too, but he'd decided against bringing his stuff, so that fueled the conversation for a while. That was when I got the chicken shot in the previous post.

Eventually the conversation turned to cycling, which we're both fans of, even if he is a bit on the slow side. He wanted some help adjusting the indexing on his rear derailleur and showed him how to and even drew some diagrams. So it turns out I am useful for some things, even if rivetting blog posts about cameras and bikes isn't one of them.

As a reward he invited me to try some of the Durian he'd bought earlier. It's the most expensive fruit you can buy and, defying all logic, it's by far the most disgusting. First off it smells absolutely foul - gut wrenchingly so, if you take a deep breath of it. It's prickly enough to be painful to pick up, it's very slimy sticky and it's renound for giving people hallucinations and weird dreams if you eat enough of it. It doesn't taste quite as bad as it smells, but that's not to say it's by any means pleasant. I had a few tentative mouthfuls and had to resort to spitting the rest away and washing my mouth out. It took a good 2 days for the smell to completely leave my fingers (yes, I do wash my hands, thankyouverymuch), but I can at least say I've tried a Durian, which is something not many people can do. Although similarly, I can also say I've drawn a diagram of the indexing of a rear derailleur, so perhaps it's not such a good thing.

Dinner that night was tuna steak, caught fresh by Mr Gede's son, cooked in a very nice Balinese onioney sauce, which I enjoyed in the company of Mr Gede himself. He'd been playing the Gamelan that afternoon and I was asking about it, so he offered to teach me some traditional Balinese tunes. It's harder than it looks, but I picked it up quite quick. For those interested, it uses a pentatonic scale (the black notes of a piano), where no two notes will sound wrong together, so you can happily sit there with no musical prowess whatsever and make something resembling actual music! I might have to get me one of these!

Later that night I sat on the beach trying to get some more star trail photos, but got so harrassed by local touts trying to sell me stuff, I decided to leave it after one shot. Then for an early night, followed by an equally early morning, ready for my bus back to Kuta.

I went to Kuta much moer mentally prepared this time, and it paid dividends. I quite liked it there this time. You can have fun messing around with the touts, the food's cheaper than anywhere else and I was staying somewhere with a really nice pool. So two days were spent browsing (but not buying) in the local markets and relaxing in the hotel grounds, preparing for two days of continuous relentless travel (from which this blog is being made).

From Kuta, I flew to Jakarta and from here, I'll get the overnight train to Surubaya ni the east of Java and from there, it's a taxi to another station within Surubaya, then another train to Probolinggo, then a bus to Cemoro Lawang, where I'll finally be able to book a bed for the night. Cemoro Lawang is right on the lip of the crater of Gunung Bromo and I'll be up at 4am to trek to the summit for sunrise. Expect some good photos :)

In case you hadn't guessed, I'm writing as a means of time wasting while I wait for my train (5 hours to go now!), so apologies if I'm babbling. Well apologies if I'm babbling more than usual, anyway...

Now to try and put into words the vast monstrosity that is Jakarta. This is how Lonely Planet put it - 'America can keep its big apple; Indonesia's capital was never going to be an easy fruit to swallow. Dubbed the 'Big Durian', Jakarta is a chaotic landscape of freeways, skyscrapers, slums and traffic jams'. And I completely agree. It is, to not put too fine a point on it, fucking horrible here. You can actually see the pollution here! The air is hazy and if you look up, even when there's a rare cloudless moment, the sky is mottled and brown rather than blue. Flying in, you could see a quite spectacular change in atmosphere below the cloudline, where it went from clear and clean, to being abruptly dirty and smoggy, with maybe no more than half a kilometer's visabilty. It smells about as bad as it looks too.

I've found my way to the backpacker district, had lunch in a really quite nice and friendly café and am now in an internet café a few hundred yards down the road. The internet and computers are slow, the keyboard is sticky, but there's a fan pointed right at my face, so I'm happy to stay here. It's dirt cheap too... about 20p an hour!

I'm coming to the unavoidable conclusion that the best way to while away the hours might be to find another friendly little café somewhere and get started on the Bintang - a very nice Indonesian beer. Maybe there will actually be some other backpackers to talk to. We can only hope.

I think I've exhausted all my stores of inane nonsense, so I'll leave it here for now. Next time I write, I'll be either at Bromo, or in Yogyakarta - the former may not have internet access, I'm not sure.

Wish me luck.

Just photos this time

2009-05-23T06:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've been able to upload anything, so here's the backlog. I'll do my best to get them in chronological order.

Temple in Ubud where I saw the Legong dances:

Rice Paddies in the hills north of Ubud:

Helpful notice on the cottage door in Ubud:

Not sure if you can read it due to the compression, so here's what it says:
Attention to guest

We would be preciated to you if you do go to bed to sleep close the door from inside.

Sincerly your
Sama Cottage Owner

Not entirely sure what they meant by that...

Sunset Temple (Tanah Lot) and you can see where it gets its name from...

The temple is the big silhouette on the left. It's inside the rock.

My army of admirers (there were more off shot too!):

Lovina Chicken!

And the shot it was interrupting:

Gede's Homestay at night:

Told you I like stars. Expect plenty of these to come. The sky is soo nice here at night! No light pollution whatsoever.

Sorry about all the compression - it's the only way to get shots up in time over here. There's more on my flickr if you're interested.

My plans for the next few days

2009-05-23T03:19:00.000-07:00

So I'm back in Kuta now, having taken the direct shuttle bus here from Lovina.

I have a flight on Monday morning to Jakarta, which sounds like a boring place, so I'm gonna try and head out of there the day I arrive and go to Yogyakarta, which doesn't sound like a boring place. It's got a cool name at least. I'll spend a night or two there, then head to either Surubaya or Probollingo, where I'll make my way to Gunung Bromo. I'll spend a few nights there before heading, finally, into Malaysia, probably from Surubaya's airport, but maybe by taking a ferry from somewhere. I'll decide nearer the time. For those who want to know what Gunung Bromo is, Google Images is your friend (until I get there and take some better pictures!).

In Malaysia (Mum, you'd best not read this paragraph), I can legally rent a motorbike and since that's a fun thing to do, I shall endeavor to do just that. If you did read that Mum, don't worry, I'll use a helmet and only go fast when the police aren't looking.

The last of my adventures in Lovina will come in the next blog, whenever that might happen. Probably later tonight because I'll only end up at the hotel reading my book otherwise. On which note - Dad, you'll be happy to know that your Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is now on sale in a little second-hand bookshop in Kuta for 70,000Rp and got me a pretty good deal on a nice thick Dean Koontz novel. Ta!

The last of Ubud and the first of Lovina

2009-05-21T02:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's evening at the sunset temple was much better than I'd been expecting. Possibly even worth the hour's very slow journey on the back of Akak's motorbike!

Now personally I'm not a huge fan of temples and the like and I'd been expecting something similar to those earlier in the day. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that this one was basically just a very nice stretch of black beach with various templey-like buildings 20 or so meters out to sea (you could swim there, but I didn't fancy it myself) and some more on rocky outcrops that you could walk up to. 'DO NOT ENTRY' was the sign at most of the buildings and I happily complied.

The beach itself was heaving with people and there something extremely unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome, happened. I'm kneeling down with my camera trying to get a photo as I so often do and someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn around and there's a group of about a dozen local teenage girls all staring at me and giggling. 'Foto foto' was all the girl said to me, so I presumed they wanted a group photo against the sunset and they want me to take it for them. A group photo was what they wanted, but apparently I was to be included. So I had to stand and pose amid a rather large pack of girls (yes girls, you come in packs) while half a dozen cameras were produced and handed to another bemused Westener, so they could have their photo taken with me. Now let's face it, you can't blame them... you'd be hard pushed to resist a photo with me, but this was slightly over the top, I'm sure you'll agree. Despite their pleas and possibly against my own better judgement, I managed to escape, but from then on the rest of the evening seemed a slightly more pleasant affair than it otherwise might have. It's always nice to be appreciated.

The journey home was much faster and more pleasant and it being night time, the roads were less crowded and the air significantly cooler. Plus the stars were out in force and if you hadn't gathered by now, I quite like a starry sky, so I quite enjoyed the journey back to Ubud.

That night I ate in Warung Kaca, which was a very cheap place I found in a tiny little back street about a kilometer from the town centre. It was fairly empty bar a small Indonesian family and some half a dozen cats and some very friendly dogs, but the food was, as it usually is here, excellent.

The journey to Lovina the following day took about 3 hours and would take us through some stunning landscapes of mountain bordered lakes, and smoke and cloud tipped volcanoes. At one point we drove through a thick cloud for a good 3 or 4 kms. The bus itself was pretty empty with only myself, a Japanese couple who didn't speak any English and a Swedish couple called Daniel and Lydia, who spoke perfect English. So I spent the journey talking to them about the sort of things backpackers talk about. I.e. backpacking. They're heading out to Thailand and Cambodia after Bali.

Once in Lovina, we split up since they were staying with some friends, who came to collect them from the bus stop and I would be staying at Gede's Homestay, right on the beach, about 2kms East of Kalibukbuk - the centre of Lovina.

This is by far the cheapest place I've stayed and for once I thought I'd go for the cheapest option available, just to see what it's like being a proper backpacker. So no air-con, no hot water and not even any toilet paper. Just a bed, a ceiling fan and a toilet/shower room complete with it's own population of mosquitoes. Still, it's only costing me about 4GBP a night. Having spent one night there though, I think it might be worth the extra 2 quid for an air-con room in future. I had about 3, maybe 4 hours sleep in total last night.

I'd only been there for 20 mins or so and was sitting at the table outside my little bungalow when Mr Gede, the owner, came and introduced himself to me and sat down to have a little chat. He's an old man (probably 70 or so) and very friendly and open, with lots of good advice about the area and which activities to do and what touts to avoid. His family runs the homestay, with nieces, nephews, grandsons and granddaughters milling around the restaurant, cleaning rooms and fixing broken motorbikes. He asked how I found out about his place and I told him I'd found it in the Lonely Planet guide, which seemed to surprise him - I thought the majority of his custom would come from people like me, sticking religiously to everything their guidebook says, but apparently not. So I showed him the page in the book and he read it with interest, occasionally asking for definitions of some of the longer words and at the end his face lit up as he saw a mention of himself and the free rides on his motorbike that he gives his guests.

Also staying here are two dutch couples, who are very friendly and chatty, a middle aged guy from Hounslow, who's cycling the circumference of the island (about 300-400 miles and he's taking two months to do it, so I didn't like to mention Bike Europe) and is very knowledgeable about the whole of southeast Asia and an American girl who's quite good looking, but so far seems very quiet and unwilling to join in conversations, unfortunately.

As for Lovina, it's not very big, but it seems a very nice place and isn't as touristy as I'd expected it to be. There's still lots of touts around though, offering dolphin watching trips and cock fights. My ability to say no to things is fast improving and I can even speak some very basic Bahasa Indonesia now, and they bother you less when you put the effort in to say no in their own language. It usually evokes a smile and lots of 'well done, well done!!'s.

This morning, on a recommendation from Mr Gede, I went snorkling and it was absolutely breathtaking! It's something I've never done before, but it's surprisingly easy to pick up and the coral reef to the northwest of Lovina is spectacular. Perfectly clear waters, thousands of psychedelically coloured fish and weird looking coral thingies sticking up from the seabed, at times only a foot or two from my face. For about 6 quid for half an hour in the water, I was pretty chuffed with my morning, even if I didn't get to see a giant turtle, which supposedly are quite common here. The only downside being my now slightly rosy coloured shoulders, but it was well worth a bit of sunburn.

Tomorrow I head back to Kuta for a few more days and I have a flight to catch on Monday into Jakarta. I'm now more prepared for the mayhem that is Kuta and I'm going to try and make more of my time there than I did before.

That's all for now. Photos will probably have to wait until Jakarta, where they (hopefully) have broadband.

So until next time, selamat tinggal and selamat malam!

Screw what I said before...

2009-05-19T22:02:00.000-07:00

Bali is a friggin' paradise!

I'm out of Kuta now, thank God! I'm up in the rural area of Ubud, staying at Sama's Cottages as recommended by Lonely Planet. I have my own en suite cottage and there's a really nice pool surrounded by palm trees. I'm only here for two nights though; I'm heading up to Lovina next, where there's an interesting sounding black sand beach.

Yesterday was spent on the rickety little bus from Kuta here, which took about an hour and a half, then spent exploring Ubud itself. Yesterday evening I went to one of the ceremonial dance performances in the central temple, which was pretty amazing, if a bit odd. Incredible musicianship though and plenty of nice complex polyrhythms and odd time-signatures to keep me entertained.

Ubud is like the religious centre of Bali, and there's a temple on pretty much every corner and if you travel out a few kms from the centre, there are some spectacular temples set into the hills. I've spent this morning travelling round some of those on the back of a motorbike ridden by a local named Akak (I think). 100,000Rp (~6 quid) for a day's riding doesn't seem too bad to me. He's taking me to the Sunset Temple later, which is apparently spectacular. Apparently I'm the best Westerner he's had on the back of the bike - most people make it hard to ride, but apparently I don't.

There's an awful lot of French people here and I've spoken to a few of them as best I can, but it'd still be nice to have some English speaking company. Maybe Lovina or Yogyakarta will be better for that.

I would upload photos, but the internet here still seems to be made of bits of string and cardboard and is distinctly pedestrian. I don't think this computer can handle pictures either.

It's mid afternoon here, and I'm off for a late lunch of spit-roast suckling pig. That is if I can find the place that does it - it wouldn't be the first time that the Lonely Planet guide has been wrong.

Not sure when I'll be back. Probably soon. Until then, Selamat Tinggal.

Finally got to Bali

2009-05-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

I have indeed arrived and it's frigging boiling here!

I'm in Kuta, which is the hotspot for western tourists, but it still feels extremely foreign. Tiny little alleyways with scooters weaving their way around you, Balinese people constantly (and I mean literally every 10-15 seconds) asking if I want a taxi somewhere, some cheap sunglasses, my hair dreadlocked, my back massaged, a bike to rent, a surf board to hire, some lessons in surfing, a tailor made suit... I could go on, but I'm sure you've got the idea by now. It is completely incessant and quite annoying, so going to leave Kuta tomorrow and head north to Ubud, which sounds a bit nicer.

It's not all bad here though. The food and drink is phenomenally cheap - I paid about two pounds for a quite large (and very spicy) meal and a beer - and once they realise they might actually make a sale out of you, the people are very nice, friendly and helpful. It's nice being a millionaire too :) it's about 15,000Rp to the pound at the moment and I haven't seen much being sold for more than 50,000Rp

I gotta be off now though
Bye

...

Back again :)

Been here for a day and a half now and the culture shock has hit me pretty hard. I'm occasionally feeling at a bit of a loss in this new place with far too many sights and sounds to take in and being an obvious foreigner I'm a particular target for all the thousands of street-side vendors. So I've been feeling a weird rollercoaster of optimism and excitement to bouts of hopelessness and overwealmedness (there must be a word for that...).

Things are looking up though and I now have a plan!

But I'll have to tell you the plan later because my internet is running out... their idea of 30 minutes seems pretty dubious to me! It's a good plan though, you'll like it.

So here's what happened:

2009-05-15T21:58:00.000-07:00

I arrived for my flight at about half past eight, only half an hour later than planned, and joined the back of the rather large check-in queue. It took 45 minutes to get to the front, but I got there with about 15 minutes before bording and everything went smoothly. I got my boarding pass and my bag went through fine, so I headed towards the nearest travelex to get some Indonesian Rupiah. I figured it best to do this while I was still in an English speaking country where I knew my bank cards would work. Only they didn't. I've got two debit cards and a credit card with me and all three failed to get me anywhere. So I went and tried the cards in the nearest ATM, but no luck. My transaction was temporarily unavailable, apparently.

Now I know that logically speaking, it's unlikely that all three cards would happen to get cancelled on exactly the same day, when they've been working fine for the last month, but I had 5 minutes left to get through security and get to my gate and locic was the last thing my mind was capable of. As if to prove this, the first thing I did was to phone home for advice, waking my parents up at half past midnight (on my mum's birthday of all days), and genuinely thinking they might actually be able to help me. In the end I went over to Garuda Airways helpdesk and asked them what to do. It seemed I had the option of either running through security (not literally of course, that'd look suspiscious), catching my flight and ringing various banks once I was at the other side in the hope that I could sort it out there or getting my bag pulled from the flight and getting a transfer to the next flight to Indonesia, on Sunday. I chose the second option, decided to get down to the HSBC in Sydney and find out what the hell had happened.

Having calmed down slightly while waiting for my bag to arrive in the baggage handling place, I thought I'd try a different ATM and see if I could do anything at all with my cards. Low and behold, each and every one of them allowed me to get $20 out, check my balance or even top up my phone if I so wished.

It's now the next day, I've been to the HSBC and a different travelex and everything has been explained. First off, travelexes in Australia don't take UK cards of any description. Why the girl in tn the Airport travelex didn't know this, I don't know, but if she had, I'd currenly be on a beach in Bali. And it would seem that the ATM that didn't like me in the airport was just out of service.

So out of all this, I still have three working cards, two extra days in Sydney, my foreign money before I get to the airport, an earlier shuttle booked for tomorrow morning and I'm even gonna book my first night's accomodation in Bali before I get there. So I suppose it's all for the best in the long term. Plus I got some cool photos last night to make up for not taking my camera the first time.

Today has been spent in and around Paddy's Markets and Darling Harbour. Hardly anything to write home about, although inspired by my own blog post earlier, I bought the biggest apple I could find felt satified that I might manage my 5-a-week this week.

I'm gonna phone ahead and practice my Balinese with this accomodation booking. Hopefully my Lonely Planet guide is accurate.

I'll leave you with my photos from last night. It turns out you can do star trails in a city too. :) I didn't think that'd work.

Bye for now and hopefully my next blog post will actually be from Bali!

Update

2009-05-15T19:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, so there were some mishaps with bank cards and currency exchanges at the airport and I've been transfered to Sunday's flight to Indonesia. Bit of a shame, but hey, two extra days in Sydney - could be worse...

I'll go into it all in plenty of detail later, don't worry.

In other news, I've developed a spectacularly snotty cold, partly due to staying up (with my camera this time) in the freezing cold at Maquaries Point and partly due, I think, to eating about as much fruit here in a month as I would in a day at home.

Happy (slightly belated, if my maths is correct, which it usually isn't) birthday Mum!

Byesy bye.

Back in Sydney for the last time

2009-05-14T04:26:00.001-07:00

I'm writing this on the eve of my flight to Indonesia having spent the last two days in Sydney again.

Firstly, some good news being that my phone has revived itself, with only a little help from a two metre fall from my bunk. Should you feel the need to call me, I will actually be able to hear you. Okay, maybe good news isn't the best phrase... And secondly, my ipod dock broke. I had the idea of making a new one myself by connecting a usb plug (which I happen to have) with a 3.5mm jack (which I happen to have), because, as far as I could tell, that's all the original dock was. I asked the guys in the big Apple store in Sydney of this would work and got some strange looks, followed by an offer to buy a new one for $48. No thank you. Anyway, long story short, it doesn't work, so I was faced with the choice of no music for the next two months, which I'm sure you'll agree is totally unthinkable, an overpriced dock, which once again, I wouldn't sink to, or for an extra $15 a whole new ipod shuffle, which would include the dock and a handy extra pair of headphones. So I'm going to be looking for buyers of a two month old, slightly worn blue 1gb ipod shuffle when I get back home. Any takers? I'll throw in whatever random Thai music I happen to pick up in internet cafés free of charge.

I honestly never thought I'd write a whole paragraph about an mp3 player, but there we go. I'm sure you all enjoyed hearing about it.

Last night, a girl called Debs came round flaunting (don't worry, it's not that bad...) pieces of paper entitling the holder to a meal for $6 and pints for $3 at Madame Debiers. Sounded good and about twenty odd people were going from our hostel alone, so I figured why not, and tagged along. There was an open mic later that night which two people from our hostel would be performing in and they were actually pretty decent. Anyway, a good night was had and a pretty horrible morning followed.

I dragged myself up anyway, because I had planned to go to Bondi beach, since it was my last day in the country and therefore my last chance to go there. It takes about 45 minutes from the city and really isn't worth the effort. It's just a beach. Quite a nice one, but still just a beach. Maybe it's better in summer. Nonetheless, I spent a good hour or so, lying in the sand, reading the Lonely Planet guide to SE Asia, scared myself shitless about various diseases I'm going to catch and figured I'd be best off going to have lunch somewhere to take my mind off it all.

If there was one redeeming factor to Bondi, it was the fish and chips. Almost as good as those back in east London.

Anyways, I left at about 3 o clock to head into the city to buy the aforementioned ipod and on my way home decided it'd be nice to watch the sunset again from Mrs Macquaries Point. And if only I'd taken my camera... it was spectacular! Better by miles than last time I was there. Ah well... I'm sure there'll be plenty in Asia for me to get.

Since then, I've been sorting clothes out, charging things and generally making myself ready to fly out of Australia tomorrow. So this will be the last blog I make from anywhere vaguely western, but if Lonely Planet is right, they've got computers and things in Thailand now, so I should manage to keep you all informed of my antics and their whereabouts.

So goodbye for now and hopefully hello to some swealtering heat and sandy white beaches for me :)

Hope you're all nice and jealous.
Lots of love
Matt
xxx

Once again, no photos to show, but all my Blue Mountains ones are now up if you take a peek at my flickr

One more before I head back to Sydney.

2009-05-12T04:11:00.000-07:00

I'm still in Katoomba and it's bloody freezing here! I've had to buy some shoes for God sake!

Having woken up late and just got to the kitchen in time to make some breakfast before they shut it down for cleaning, I figured it was about time I stopped being a lazy bastard actually went and made the most of my time here. So I walked down the road to the Explorer Bus place and tried to see what I could do for the day. The Explorer buses are two ex-service London routemasters that run an hour long circluar route round all the main sites in the mountains. One ticket means you can jump on and off as and when you like, all day, but it costs $34! I'm still not entirely sure how I managed it, but I got one for $13 and a half price voucher to go on the skywalk, scenic trainline and cable car. Plus I now had a plan for the day, which is always nice.

I got on the bus to the skywalk and arrived just as it was pulling up and boarding. It like a cable car but erm... well it is a cable car, they've just called it the Skywalk to make it sound better. It takes you right out over a gorge-thingy and you get some pretty spectacular views, obstructed only by posing chinese tourists. Once you arrive, you have the choice of either the world's steepest railway or the (actual) cable car ride down to the bottom. Naturally I chose the railway and like they said it would be, it was pretty damn steep! 52 degrees at its steepest point. I was lightly disappointed that it was all done by winches and counterweights though - I was hoping for an old steam train that would struggle to stop in time at the bottom ala Polar Express (how gay am I???).

At the bottom there was an elevated walk throught the rainforest with boring signposts stuck to trees and weirdly, lots of carpeted sections. Ever a cleaner, I couldn't help but wonder if they ever got hoovered and if so, how...

This circluar route took half an hour or so and I headed back up the mountainside in the cable car for lunch in the café.

Next on my list of things to do today were the Leura Cascades and they were only twenty minutes away on the next explorer bus. It was a popular stop and the whole bus emptied out. I ended up walking with an old couple from Geelong (on the south coast... I went there with the Oz tour) and a Chinese guy who seemed permenantly lost.

Will finish this later.

...

It's now later - two days later - and I can't be asked. It wasn't that exciting, don't worry.

Finally got to do it!

2009-05-11T05:46:00.000-07:00

Ever since coming to Australia I've been waiting for a cloudless night in a place with no street lights and finally it happened!

And here's why...

All my other photos are uploading as I type, but I just checked the upload speed here and I'm getting 0.07mb/s. So they probably won't all be done before my time runs out.

They are actually pretty damn blue!

2009-05-11T01:12:00.000-07:00

The mountains that is. I've been in the Blue Mountains for a few hours now and they are breathtaking! I'm staying in one of the top YHAs in the country in Katoomba and it's like a hotel! About $30 (15 quid) a night too... not bad! Their claim of 'fast internet' is somewhat dubious though - 30 pictures to upload and it's taken 15 minutes to do 3%... this might turn out to be an expensive internet session.

I arrived soon after lunchtime today, having taken the two hour train from Sydney and went straight to a little café for some lunch. And what a place to start here... really nice food for pretty cheap and the place was deserted so they let me play the piano in the corner afterwards. It needed tuning and felt a bit horrible to play, but they were still impressed :) Apparently it hasn't been touched in months. Nothing compared to the $270,000 Bechstein I played in Sydney (don't think I mentioned it before, but I stumbled upon a hidden little piano shop in Sydney with that piano in the window. The owner let me play one of the uprights in the back, heard me playing Fantasie Impromptu and offered me a 'real piano' to play. My god that was nice! But anyway, I'm a) just showing off now, and b) getting quite distracted and deviating massively off topic).

So yeah, the Blue Mountains... After lunch I decided to dump my stuff in the hostel and go off and do the touristy walk past the Three Sisters in time to catch the fast approaching sunset. Amazingly, I managed to time it perfectly, despite the walk being at least twice as far as I'd thought it would be. The mountains are stunning. Normally I'd let you look at the photos, but they're still only 12% done and I've got 20 minutes of internet left. I think they might have to wait til next time...

I've just got back from Echo Point and I'm sitting in the hostel, waiting for dinner time, when I'll have to decide between going to the supermarket and cooking for myself or eating out. I'll probably end up eating out because it seems pretty cheap round here and I can't cook.

The hostel's pretty empty (only two people in my six share dorm), so I dunno what's gonna be happening tonight. Hopefully it won't be too boring.

Once again, I'm running out of things to talk about so I'll leave you with the few photos that have uploaded.

I'm back in Sydney...

2009-05-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

... and it's raining again.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to catch the train into the Blue Mountains and spend a night or two out there. 'Mostly sunny' is the forecast, so hopefully it won't be too bad.

Apologies again to those at home... it turns out my maths isn't as good as it should be and it was actually half six in the morning when they got three international calls with nobody on the other end. Oops!

Not too much to report for now. The greyhound bus over here was extremely uncomfortable, but I managed to get a few hours sleep. I now have an hour and a half to waste before I can check into the hostel, so I've booked into an internet café to upload the last of the photos from Byron. Nothing special though, so you'll have to look at my flickr to see them.

I really can't think of anything interesting to write, so I'll be off now.

Until next time...
:)

Quick and slightly irrelevant update

2009-05-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

I rather stupidly took my phone into the sea with me yesterday and now the speaker doesn't work. I can still send and receive texts, but don't try and call me, because I won't be able to hear you.

For those at home, if you got a strange phone call at about half 9 this morning, that was me testing it.

And for those who don't know it, my number while I'm in Australia is +61(0)431591746

Byron Bay, but in a bit more detail...

2009-05-08T18:25:00.000-07:00

I'l start at the beginning, in Sydney. My last morning there was spent checking out of the hostel and heading to a post office to get a load of stuff posted home. I had a rather nice breakfast from a market stall in Kings Cross and while I was there, I got a text from Anna with instructions on how to get to their campsite. So off onto the underground I went. They were three trains away in North Sydney in a little suburb called North Ryde. They picked me up from the station in their little 'Camperman Australia' camper van. They had a load of shopping to do before we could head off so we went to the local shopping centre, which was HUGE. Having got lost numerous times in numerous department stores, we eventually found the things they were looking for.

So on with the journey it was. The girls had spoken to a park ranger earlier who had given them a load of maps and recommended a few campsites up the coast. The original plan was to go to a coastal campsite in a national park and hopefully get there before dark, so we could set up, get a meal ready and just relax for the weekend. Needless to say, we miscalculated hideously and it was dark by half 5, it was raining, the camper van's wipers seemed only to add more water to the windscreen, articulated lorries flew past in the opposite direction only inches from the van, the entire road network was filled with road works and we were lost. It got to the point where we just said we'd go to the next campsite we saw and stay there for the night.

So along came the town of Kempsey and with it a roadside caravan park. We drove in, rang the bell and the owner came out and limped up the road towards us in her dressing gown. It really wasn't that bad though, she was very friendly and helpful, told us we could park up anywhere, use the electricity and the communal kitchen. The campsite itself was, as Maya so deftly put it, 'very trailer trash'. And it was indeed. Just a few plots down from us were some redneck Aussie hick, bogan type people, staying in their lovely looking caravan, complete with a little place for their pets and car wreck for the kids to play in.

Our own camper was not exactly luxurious though. There were two lower beds and one upper one, where I'd be sleeping for the night. I had about 2 foot of clearance from the roof and my own two feet had to hang in mid-air because clearly the average Australian camper is only 5 feet tall.

Our dinner was made on the little gas burning stove in the van and we had spaghetti bolognaise with ingredients bought in the shopping centre earlier that day. Only it got to the point where we couldn't be asked to cook the meat and decided instead that a veggie meal wouldn't be too bad. So we had Spaghetti with tomato, mushroom and onion sauce. And very nice it was too. I actually like mushrooms now as well!

That night was comfortable, if a bit of a pa'lava to organise - my bed was neither easy to set up nor get into, but once I was there, I had a pretty decent night's sleep. I was woken up in the morning by Anna, who had spotted a flock (herd?, pack?) of kangaroos a few metres from the van. And in part of an ongoing venture, they were all named Bert. Alf the quakka came first, Bert the kangaroos second, Carlos the ugly bird thing third, and Dennis and Earl are yet to be found... you get the idea.

Anyway, breakfast was jam and marmalade and similar such things on bread and was followed by showers in the surprisingly clean toilet block. We managed to leave soon after 9 and were optimistic that we'd be at Byron Bay by mid afternoon. We drove through a lot of wilderness, and countless little towns that all felt very deep-south American - wooden bungalows interspersed rather too frequently with churches bearing questionable promises of 'healing' and 'enlightenment'. We drove on regardless and soon saw signs for Ballina and Byron Bay. We stopped for lunch in a little town just south of Ballina and from there it was only an hour or so to Byron.

Byron itself is a very small beach town and is something of a Mecca for those with dreadlocks and guitars. It's a very very friendly place, packed full of little privately owned shops and not a big name store in sight. This time of year, it's a bit on the quiet side, but to be honest, it's all the better for it. There are patches of completely deserted beach and others that are still packed every day. There's a cool little lighthouse just down the coast, which I walked down to at quarter to six yesterday morning to catch the sunrise.

The last few days have been spent lazing around on the beach and wandering the town. I've met a few cool people in my youth hostel and we went out to 'Cheeky Monkey's' nightclub, which was such an awful place it was almost good. Certainly a good laugh anyway.

Yesterday I was wandering along the beach and spotted two familiar figures in the distance. Anna and Maya were sitting on the beach and were about to head out and do some kite surfing (it's what they're here for) and invited me along. So I hopped back into the camper van and we drove to Lennox Head beach. It took ages to get the kite ready and sort out the bits of string, but they did manage to get it up in the end, although apparently it wasn't windy enough to do any proper stuff. In the end we gave up and decided to go swimming in the massive waves. We went out for about 20 minutes, swallowed about a gallon of salty water each, decided that the rip currents were getting a bit strong and headed back to the beach, just as the sun was setting and it was getting cold. Having dried off and packed the kite up, we headed back to the camper van and they were kind enough to drop me back in Byron before heading off to their campsite.

Running out of time once again, but here are some photos:

Particularly proud of this one :) Well worth the 'ole click!

Byron Bay

2009-05-06T22:11:00.001-07:00

Not a huge amount of time to do this, but time enough to let you know that I'm in Byron Bay (cool little place about 2 hours south of Brisbane) and I'm here til Saturday evening.

Drove up in a little camper van with Anna and Maya, two dutch sisters, and two of the nicest people I've ever met. They're here on a kite-surfing holiday finishing in Cairns. Awesome journey, which I'll write more about later when I have time.

Byron Bay is a small seaside town, which in summer is rammed full of dread-locked hippies, but at the moment is a bit empty. There's still a lot of hippies though.

I stayed up til about 1am taking photos on a completely deserted beach last night, then got up at 5.30, jogged down to the lighthouse to get some pictures of the sunrise over the sea - something I've been meaning to do since day 1 in Sydney.

And here are the results:

This first one was taken at night. Seriously!

Still in Sydney

2009-05-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

Yep I'm still here, but I should be moving on tomorrow. Went to a free concert/festival type thing yesterday in Darling Harbour, which was pretty cool. They had a massive event to celebrate a Harbour's 21st birthday - just goes to show what sort of a country this is, I guess.

Spent most of the day wandering round with Lou (from the Oz Experience tour), eating ice cream, buying sunglasses and sitting akwardly in a manicure place while she had her scummy feet tended to. And despite both her efforts and the frankly insulting remarks from the Thai pedicure lady regarding the state of my feet, I managed to avoid getting my toenails painted pink.

Since we had about 2 hours before anything remotely decent was going to be on stage, we walked down to the observatory park to catch the last of the sunset (shut up Daniel!). Having done that, it was back to the main stage to see the last few acts perform. First up was an aboriginal digeridoo/dance group, who were just plain odd, but they were only a warmup act for the big name of the night. Wes Carr, Australian Idol winner!! So we were expecting some cheesy westlife covers and maybe a disney song or two, but it turns out, really quite paradoxically, that the winner of Australian Idol actually has some talent! Okay, not masses, but he was pretty good at guitar and he looked like Jesus, so that was enough to win me over.

Once he'd filled his half hour slot in 15 minutes, we were subjected to some of the worst ad libbing I've ever heard from the two comperes for the evening. They had 15 minutes to fill and actually resorted to talking about the weather. Shocking!

Next up were a group of Japanese drummers, who were awe inspiring! Really, really properly good! And their finale was accompanied by fireworks better than any London New Year. And this was all for a harbour's birthday!

After the fireworks, we met up with Emily and Kirstine for dinner in a quite expensive, but very nice Italian restaurant about 5 minutes walk down the waterside. Well worth the expense though, it was nice to finally be in some fluent English speaking company.

We all went our separate ways after the meal and as I was coming back into my hostel, a group of about a dozen people, some of whom I'd been chatting to the night before (we all watched the Man U match in the hostel TV room last night) were heading over the road to the 'Soho' bar for a few drinks. So I joined them and met two Dutch sisters who are renting a camper van and heading north up the coast. They've agreed to take me as far as either Byron Bay or Brisbane. So the next few days should be pretty good fun.

From there I'll probably Greyhound it back to Sydney and spend some more time here. I still haven't done the Blue Mountains or the zoo, both of which are apparently unmissable.

Sydney is flippin' cool! I wouldn't mind living here.

Anyways, I best be off.
Not sure when the next blog'll be, but I'm sure it'll be a good'un!

Byesy bye

Sydney, Day 2

2009-05-01T01:28:00.000-07:00

Spent the majority of today exploring Sydney on foot. Walked all round the bays around the harbour bridge and oprah house, explored the city a bit, then went back to Mrs Macquiries Point for sunset, to get some shots overlooking the Oprah house and the bridge. Nearly fell into the water at one point, but I got the shot I wanted, so it was worth it. Didn't have my tripod with me though, so they're a teeny bit blurry - 2 minutes is a long time to keep the camera still!

Back at an internet cafe near the hostel now. Apparently there's gonna be a BBQ there tonight, so if that's true, I'll certainly be going to that.

Maybe going to the beach tomorrow. Dunno yet.

Photos!

This is the one that nearly killed me:

Sydney

2009-04-30T05:08:00.000-07:00

Had a lay in this morning before taking the 12.30 Greyhound bus from Canberra to Sydney. Arrived in Sydney and spent about an hour looking for my hostel. Turns out I had to get a train to it - it's halfway between the city and Bondi beach in the 'Backpacker' region, so there's loads of cheap bars, clubs and accomodation here.

I ate out at a fairly posh restaurant (by myself :( ) and had rump steak and mash for $10! I thought Sydney would be the most expensive place yet, but apparently not.

Anyways, this evening has so far been spent talking to various people in the hostel courtyard. Met two european guys and a Japanese girl, who are all working here. They all just went to bed and the whole place is clearing up, so I took the chance to get onto one of the few computers here.

I haven't really seen anything in Sydney yet, so tomorrow will be spent wandering around, taking in the sights. Might head down to Bondi or Manly beach on Saturday if it's warm enough (not making that mistake again!) and then there's a free concert all day Sunday by the harbour. I'm probably gonna go to that with one or two of the girls from the Oz tour last week; apparently they're arranging something.

I'm here at least a week earlier than originally planned, so I'm gonna get as far north as I can, see the blue mountains and just see what else I can generally fill my time with while I'm still in Oz. Might even make it as far as Cairns and back, but we shall see.

I'm gonna go and grab some more food now.

Speak soon,
Matt

The last week or so.

2009-04-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

True to my word, this won't be long.

Melbourne was wet and cold, but still probably my favourite of the big cities I've been to so far. I did literally next to nothing on the Saturday - completely missed all the Anzac day stuff, went and explored a bit in its aftermath, had a few coffees in local cafes, but just generally spent the day in the hostel either asleep or reading or writing the massive blog post below this one.

The day after was my last day there, so I was determined to make something of it. What better than a trip to the beach? Well erm... possibly not taking a trip to the beach. I'll let myself explain:

Anyway, I spent two hours (like I say, I was determined) at the beach, didn't get any sun whatsoever, caught the 20 minute tram back and went and dried off in the hostel.

Once again, Chinatown proved a useful place to fill up. I found a Singaporean (is that the right word?) restaurant tucked away in a back street and it was filled with Singaporeans, which I took as a good sign. Got a very nice (and phenomenally spicy) meal for $10, two free cups of hot brown water and a thoroughly patronising talk from the waitress about how westerners can't handle spicy food. I guess she does have a point though, I was sweating quite a bit.

I spent the evening around the river and federation square, taking in the Melbourne night life with a slightly more sober outlook than I had done previously.

Next morning was an ealy start. My coach left at 8.30 and wouldn't arrive in Canberra until 6 in the evening. So Monday was boring. Nice meal in the evening though, courtesy of Penny. I'm staying with some old family friends while I'm in Canberra, which has proven good for both the budget and the stomach.

The last two days have been spent in Parlaiment House (very big and white-housey), the city centre shopping mall (free coffee courtesy of Ben's friends who work at Gloria's Coffee house), the war memorial (fascinating place and far too big to take in in one day), the national gallery of Australia (like the Tate Modern without the same budget), Tidbinbilla national park (mountainy place just west of Canberra - me and Penny saw two wild Platypusses), some nice restaurant somewhere for Ben's going away meal with his mates, which was cool. Good food too. Oh and the theatre to see Dylan Moran stand-up, which wasn't quite as good as I'd have expected, but still very good.

Anyways, that's all. Not really any photos to show unless you like photos of military aircraft, in which case check my Flickr over the next few days (yes Dad, there was a Lancaster there...)

Ciao for now,
Matt

The Oz Experience

2009-04-24T21:35:00.000-07:00

EDIT: This post is actually finished now. Enjoy.

Right, I've got a lot of catching up to do... get ready for a big one.

Wednesday morning I was up bright and early for my bus. I was on an Oz Experience tour with 15 others (mostly female :D), which would take 3 days to get from Adelaide to Melbourne with an overnight stop in the Grampians and a second near the Twelve Apostles on the Great Ocean Road. The first 4 or so hours of driving were fairly uneventful and consisted of the 16 of us getting to know each other, sleeping, reading, listening to aboriginal music and stopping in tiny little towns to buy food and drink. Eventually the Grampians were in sight and we were warned of some 'light trekking'. Okay, so maybe it wasn't a sheer cliff face, but it certainly wasn't light. Good fun though and definitely worth the effort once we reached the top. We climbed Hollow Mountain and Mt Zero, I think. Amazing views from the top overlooking the plains. We could see areas of controlled burning everywhere in the distance.

From there, we drove up to a place who's name I've completely forgotten, but we got there for sunset and it had some amazing viewing points and big rocks you could climb out onto and hang over 300m drops. We picked up a few more people from another Oz tour and they came with us to the night's accomodation. They'd be travelling with us for the next two days too. One new guy, Tony, sat next to me on the bus and it turns out he's just quit from being a tourist info guy in Sydney. So he's turned out to be a very useful person to know, and I now have a pretty decent idea of what to expect from there, and where the good places to go are :)

The night's accomodation was a series of small house-like buildings in the middle of a forest clearing in the mountains. Dinner was spag bol, and was cooked (extremely thoroughly!) by half of the group. The other half (including me) washed up afterwards. I ended up scrubbing the charred remains at the bottom of the spaghetti saucepan. Thank you very much, Kirstine! The food that survived was very nice though. The rest of the evening was spent talking and generally getting to know each other better.

6am start the next morning in order to catch the sunrise from 'The Pinnacle'. We left at 6.30 and it was an hour and a half trek to the top. And my word, it wasn't half stunning at the top! I'll let the photos do the talking...

After another 45 mins or so coming back down from The Pinnacle, we were to head off towards the coast. It was a few hours to Warrnambool, where we'd join the Great Ocean Road. So naturally, everyone used the time to catch up on some much needed sleep. Reaching Warnambool, the weather was taking a turn for the worse. Not awful by any means, but overcast and gloomy aren't really ideal conditions for seeing one of the most beautiful coastlines on the planet.

Most of the day was spent driving and stopping in little seaside towns for coffee and toilets, until we reached the Twelve Opostles. These are a series of massive limestone sticky-outy things just off the coast and had we had better weather, they'd have looked stunning against the sunset. We didn't even get a hint of a sunset though, unfortunately.

So back to the bus it was, and we had a 10 minute drive down the road to Princetown - our host town for the night. Simply by turning up, we tripled the local population of eleven. Princetown consists of a small hostel (where we stayed), a pub and a shop. That's about it. So no big night out on the town for us... we stayed in had dinner and watched a film instead. The meal was great - sausages, burgers, mash potato and peas. And even better, it was made for us (and therefore not burnt. Well not much anyway...). Dinner was spent learning phrases (please don't ask what they were) in some of the many languages spoken around the table. Somehow the German word Fleischflanzel cropped up and has become a running joke ever since. It means 'burger' apparently. After dinner, we had the daunting task of choosing a film to watch. The hostel has a film rental system with a good 200 or so films to choose from. Though perhaps 'good' isn't the best word for it. Not being a fan of chick-flicks, I could see half a dozen decent titles on the shelf, but amazingly one of these was actually chosen! Gone in 60 seconds. Not bad...

So I spent the night watching a film in a room where girls outnumbered guys about 4 to 1. Not a bad way to spend a night, I'm sure you'll agree. Of the dozen or so that watched the film from the beginning, only 4 remained at the end. Lightweights!

And so all too quickly came our last day together. Most of it would be spent driving the last of the Great Ocean Road and then heading through the evening traffic into Melbourne. There were still some highlights to come though. Early on, we stopped by the road side, walked a little way into the trees by the road and very quickly were met with our first sighting of koalas. I've been told not to call them koala bears, because apparently they're not bears. Anyway, they were basically balls of fluff high up in the trees. We saw 4 or 5 in total and I got a few pictures (you might have to squint to see the koalas though).

Next stop was to see the official starting point of the Great Ocean Road, so we took the obligatory pictures of the archway. And then beyond this was Bells Beach - a surfer's paradise apparently. Not today though, it had just started pissing down with rain as we pulled up in the car park, but we valiantly got out, walked down to the phsycadelically painted toilet block, and walked back up to the van where the girls (Lou especially!) had a not-so-subtle perv over a surfer getting changed by his car.

The rain had cleared by the time we reached Otways rainforest up in the mountains. It has the highest metal walkway in Australia and you do get some pretty good views from it. We were set the challenge of finding as many black snails as possible; they're a native species of Australia, only found in the Otways and they're carnivorous. Emily and Kirstine took the challenge somewhat too seriously, racing down the paths to be the first to spot them. We found about ten in total and the two girls valiantly declared a draw to their game. Anything else would have ended in tears I think. Oh yeah, there were dinosaurs in the rainforest too... probably should have mentioned that.

And once again it was back on the bus for the last time (unless I'm forgetting things, which is extremely likely... I can think of about 3 or 4 places I've missed and I've forgotten where abouts they came in the trip - Included would be some cool waterfalls and a chocolate factory. My memory is still as useless out here as it is at home. Anyway, where was I?). We were about 2 hours from Melbourne and the last of the driving would be on boring highways with lots of traffic. We passed the time with (extremely loud) renditions of all our national anthems, which all the melbournite passers by thoroughly enjoyed. Having exhausted all but Vanessa's energy levels, we agreed to meet up later that night to go out for the night.

So 9 o clock was the agreed meeting time and Flinder Street station was the agreed meeting place. The three of us staying in Nomads (me, Emily and Kirstine) went for dinner at a little outdoor pizza place and ordered far too much Hawaiian pizza. Then onto Flinder Street to see who else would show up. In the end it was only Vanessa, but the others had decent excuses, so we'll let them off.

Anyway, we got very lost in the suburbs, watched a very drunk man dance with the local chav population in a sleazy pub in south Melbourne, got the tram back to where we'd started off and went to a club in federation square. It will suffice to say (because no doubt my parents are reading this very carefully) that we all had a good night and drank very responsibly. Vanessa definitely didn't cause a fight between two guys at the end of the night. Definitely not.

We got back to Nomads at a very respectible hour and went our separate ways. I haven't seen anyone from the Oz tour since, but they're heading in similar directions to me, so I'm sure this won't be the last time.

From now on, my blogs are gonna be shorter than this - not only because it's expensive to be on the internet for this long, but it's bloody boring too!

Time now for the photos though: (CLICK ON THEM!)
Not entirely sure why it cuts my photos in half... Daniel???

Clockwise: Me, Emily, Vanessa, Kirstine

The lovely cramped bus

Those photos are not even close to chronological order, so don't try and work out where/when each place is. I don't even know myself...

Goodbye for now,
Much love,
Matthew

Quick one...

2009-04-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

In Warrnabool now. Look it up on a map. Grampians are cool... photos soon.

Bye

Adelaide

2009-04-21T03:44:00.000-07:00

My flight to Adelaide was the best so far. Actual nice food, nice sunset out the window for the first half hour or so and three whole rows of seats (both sides) to myself, right at the back of the plane.

Adeaide itself is less spacious. I've been here a day now and it feels like I've done everything there is to do already. It's mostly a bit of a run-down and dead town with a few half decent pedestrianised shopping streets and not much besides. I did however, stumble upon a bit of a hidden gem in the city's Central Market and China Town. There's a huge fresh food and merchandise market, where I found a really nice Fill-Up-This-Plate-And-Bowl-With-As-Much-Food-As-You-Possibly-Can-For-Only-$6.80 (less than 4 quid!) Chinese restaurant. I took full advantage of that offer...

After eating, I wandered round the market looking for nothing in particular. Having found exactly that, I decided it was time to head out of the city. Glenelg Beach is 20 mins away on a rather nice air-conditioned tram. While still technically in Adelaide, it's like a completely different town altogether. Really nice sandy beach, loads of coffee shops and restaurants along the shore and a massive road running away from the beach full of surfing shops, clothes shops and bars. Much nicer than Adelaide city centre, by any means.

I stayed for sunset (about 6pm) and finally had a chance to use all the camera stuff I'd taken. So I was happy for the rest of the evening. :)

I'm now sitting back in the YHA Youth Hostel at 8.50, contemplating going to bed. I've gotta be up at half 5 tomorrow, to catch a 6.20 bus to Melbourne. It'll take at least 3 days (depending if I wanna stop off for more than 1 night anywhere) and the first night will be spent in the Grampians. So I'm very much looking forward to that. The second night will be in Warrnambool (I think I spelt that right), on the Great Ocean Drive. Again, I'm pretty excited to see that too. Then onto Melbourne for a few nights and somehow I'll get to Canberra from there.

Anyway, once again, onto the photos. And to those who doubted me, this is why I bought all that stuff for my camera:

Click on them to see the full width.

Prisons & Blues & Roots

2009-04-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

I spent the day before yesterday being a tourist around Perth and Fremantle. Spent the morning walking around Kings Park in Perth, which is like a huge nature reserve to the west of the city. Then I took the river boat down to Fremantle, which took about an hour - I even saw a dolphin! Fremantle is a fairly small nautical town with lots of shops for surfers and loads of little cafés dotted around the place.

I'd been recommended the tour of the old British Convict Prison there, so I went and did that while Adam went and had a coffee nearby because he wasn't feeling too well. The prison was fascinating to see, even if the tour did have a bit too much 'oooh look, this room is haunted' and 'if you come here at night you can hear so-and-so's footsteps in the coridoors'.

Yesterday was pretty special though. Again in Fremantle, me and Adam went to the Blues & Roots festival along with 40,000 others. It was a huge show with 3 stages and a lot of very good music. We met a few of Adam's friends and work collegues and spent the day with them. Highlights for me would include Blue King Brown, LABJACD (Aussie hip-hop), Easy Star All-Stars (by far my favourite of the day), Zappa plays Zappa and The Special Beat. Me and Rus (Adam's mate) got to go backstage with The Special Beat and get a song list signed and have a chat with the band. They're all from in and around London and were just like, well... normal people. We spent most of the time talking about football.

I couldn't really have asked for a better welcome to Australia than that, to be honest.

Today's gonna be a lazy day. Might go for a bike ride once it's cooled down a bit (it's very slightly hotter than the UK here; ~30degC at the moment) and then go to a local sports bar to watch Everton vs Man U.

Hope all's well back home.
Matt

Kings Park:

Fremantle Prison:

Blues & Roots festival:

Days 1 and 2

2009-04-16T04:30:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Perth late last night to find Adam waiting to pick me up. I'm staying with Adam, Sarah and Matilda (2nd cousins/cousins once removed/something like that...) while I'm here, in their rather nice house. I get my own room with my own double bed... I could get used to this!

I've spent today trying to fend off the jet lag in coffee shops around the city centre. Most of the afternoon was spent wandering the city, which is a beautiful place; very clean and friendly with loads of pedestrian only areas and thousands of cycle lanes. There's bikes everywhere! I got a few photos of the skyline and the famous Bell Tower while I was out and they're at the bottom of the page if you wanna see them.

The weather's been in the late 20's all day and it's brilliant! I am by far the most pale person out here though. Hopefully that'll start to change soon.

Anyways, dinner's about to happen here, so I'd best be off. Going to prison tomorrow apparently... :S