Jen and Col's Excellent Adventure

Hope Theres No Spiders - The Interview

2006-11-23T03:07:00.000+07:00

Life just won't be the same without regular updates from Jen and Col. In this exclusive interview, they tell us what its like to travel the world and write the most popular blog this side of an egg sandwich.

Jen and Col, since writing the Hopetheresnospiders blog you've become legends in your own lunch time. What have you to say to all the fans you're abandoning now you're back in Blighty?
Col: Obviously we're sorry to be back. We'd rather continue our globe-trotting adventures and continue providing both witty and insightful comments to our legions of fans. Unfortunately this isn't to be, so people will just have to find other ways to waste time at work without our help.
Jen: The support our fans have shown during the past 12 months has been outstanding, we couldn't have done it without them. Perhaps if they all clubbed together... we'd be more than happy to go off again?

Have you learnt anything during the last year?
Jen: Oh yes we’ve learnt lots haven’t we Col.
Col: We certainly have Jen.
Jen: During a particularly desperate moment I learnt that I can hang my entire body weight off two fingers. Useful if you suddenly find yourself precariously balanced in an underground cave.

Col: Well I'm currently perfecting a new method of solving my Rubix cube, and yes, I can play When I'm Cleaning Windows on the Uke (Jen has to do the singing). If you're looking for anything deeper than that you're probably going to be disappointed. Although, I can count to ten in Thai and Japanese. Possibly in Mandarin too - at least I'll be able to by the time this interview goes out...

Q Many people go travelling in order to find themselves. Did you find yourself?
Col: I wasn't aware I'd ever lost myself. Jen does go missing occasionally, but she's very small and can easily fall down the side of things. I did find a few things - like the Chinese, I found them intensely annoying when they wouldn't stop staring...
Jen: I wasn’t actually looking for myself. I’d never been to any of these places before so I’d have been confused to find I was already there.

Q Of all the many places you have visited, which Country did you like the best?
Col: That's a very good question; one I have been asked before, and expect to be asked many, many, more times. I think I'll go with Thailand, or maybe Japan. Malaysia was very nice too. And Australia. I did enjoy our time there...
Jen: You're right, blimey, there are so many good memories. Canada was beautiful for sure and it would be a great place to live. But I'd have to agree with Col and plump for Thailand.
Col: Who wouldn't love a Country that thinks you're a whore?
Jen: Would you like a slap?
Jen: What Col meant to say was the combination of great scenery, tasty food, smiley people, good weather and laid back ambience all come together to make Thailand worth returning to. Which we did.
Col: Oh yes, that’s exactly what I meant to say!

Q You were travelling backpack style. What was the best thing that you took with you?
Col: Well a backpack was obviously quite useful. Clothes, we considered those essential. And a credit card; couldn't have left home without that. Other than those I guess a good sense of adventure and a poor sense of smell were invaluable.
Jen: Unfortunately we’re not all blessed with a poor sense of smell. Two months in a camper van with Col's feet?

Jen: The best thing I took was a travel clothes line, one of those bungee cord things. I loved it and used it most days.

Q Was there anything you took with you but didn't use?
Col: Ball of string. Who'd've thought.

Jen: I forgot we even had that.

Q You must have come into contact with lots of new cultures. Did you meet any interesting people?
Col: Interesting?? Well there was the guy in Lake Louise who swore to himself in his sleep. That was...interesting.
Jen: Oh yes, and there was that feller in Tokyo who shouted out ‘Polystyrene’ in his sleep.
Col: That’s right. We met lots of people, both travellers and locals. Some of them are probably reading this so I won't go into favourites here (except Dave and Claire in Calgary, we might be needing to use your spare room again soon - Hi Dave! Hi Claire!).

Q Any challenging moments?
Jen: I think I’ve already mentioned the Feet and Campervan combo…
Col: ...
Jen: It was quite a challenge to last 12 months with only a pair of trainers, walking boots and some flip flops in the footwear department. But luckily I managed to purchase myself some of those sexy walking sandals in New Zealand. They are a crime against fashion but it took my grand total footwear option to four! (… but then I had to ditch the trainers due to xs weight in the backpack area…)
Col: Challenging...well, I somehow managed to wear the same trainers for 6 months and didn't need a new outfit every week. I got by.

Q And Highlights?
Jen: No, it's bleaching from the sun.
Col: And I've had mine cut a number of times. You might have noticed it's got a bit shorter.

Q Ahem, yes, your hair is a popular topic on the discussion boards. However what I meant was what ‘were the highlights from the trip'?
Col: Oh right. Machu Picchu, Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, Great Wall of China. Yeah, there have been a few. Wendy's is a favourite now too.
Jen: Plus elephant riding in Thailand, the Terracotta Army, penguin spotting at dusk, sleeping in swagbags under the stars in Oz… the whole year was a highlight.
Jen: Is Wendy’s rated higher than Starbucks? Remember the free wireless internet.
Col: Good point… add Starbucks to that list will you?
Jen: It’s a bit sad to put two franchise chains on the list though
Col: Good point… remove Wendy’s
Jen: Although Wendy’s do a nice jacket potato
Col: Good point… burn the list

Q Would you do it again?
Jen: In a heartbeat. But next time I would build-in quick trips home every 6 months. It’s a long time to go without mushy peas.
Col: If I did it again I'd make sure I was richer so I could eat better, sleep better and buy more stuff!

Q Is there any aspect you would NOT do again?
Col: Let Jen trap my hand in a car door.
Jen: I said I was sorry. I am still very sorry.

Col: Actually, you're usually busy laughing hysterically every time you remember it.

Jen: It's a nervous reaction. Besides you hurt the other hand yourself falling down the stairs.

Col: And I was sober on both occasions. This finger is still not right.

Jen: Anyway, I wouldn’t get my hair cut in Shanghai. It’s hard to relax while people are trying to rip you off.

Col: that too.

Q What was your favourite meal?
Col: Hmmm. We did have some very nice food. Things that spring to mind are the first Masamman Curry I had in Thailand, the Green Curry on Ko Pha Ngan, Peking Duck in Beijing, Sushi breakfast in Tokyo. Unfortunately, the one that stands out most was the buffet at Le Meridien Angkor - mainly due to the 3 courses of pudding I had. And this was closely followed by the buffet at the Hong Kong Hyatt that Natasha treated us to - again, lots of pudding, just not quite as much chocolate related fare as the Angkor.
Jen: One of the best things about travelling was trying out new foods. The Steam boat in Malaysia and the Hot pot dinner on a stick thing in Chengdu were both very interesting; particularly when that fish head rose up out of the pot and surprised us. And the group house dinners in Canada were lots of fun.
Col: By the way, when is a chicken not a chicken...

Q How did you manage to fit all your clothes into one bag?
Jen: Folding helped. And putting some things in plastic bags, Hardly taking anything with us also had a lot to do with it.
Col: I found that wearing the same clothes every day reduced space nicely.
Jen: Did you know, it’s possible to exist for a year with only 5 pairs of pants (that’s knickers not trousers for you American types). And if you wash your undies out every day you get to use the washing line too which is always nice.
Col: Did you also know it's possible to wear the same pair of pants for 5 days, thus avoiding the need to do much washing at all :-)
Jen: words fail me…

Q What did you miss most from home?
Jen: Friends and family, our cats, mushy peas, decent cheese, my shoes, my clothes, my garden.
Col: Cricket, Golf, my Playstation2/iPod/Computer/Sky/Car. And decent salad cream, English sausages, 555 take away. Oh yeah, and friends and family.

Q What would you say to anyone contemplating a RTW trip, what advice can you share with our Readers?
Jen: You need a Visa to get into India, it might be worth organising it before you get to the airport.
Col: Careful with the ice-cubes. They do funny things to your bottom.

Q Wise words, what else has a year of backpacking taught you?
Col: To not go backpacking for a year! Or if you do, be sure to schedule regular visits to beaches to recharge batteries.
Jen: Aye, there does come a stage when you simply can’t be Buddha-d anymore. Try to limit yourselves to fewer than 5 historic sights in any one minute.

Q Jen you seem a little obsessed with toilets, what was all that about?
Jen: Here’s an interesting fact. The National Phobics Society estimates that at least four million Britons are affected by toilet phobias. Four million! The Society has even launched a self-help book and DVD. Can you imagine what’s on that DVD?
Col: Bottoms; a popular topic of conversation amongst travellers.
Jen: And I reckon that the best way to tell if a place is any good is to look at their toilets. That works for everything from café’s to countries. I was giving up a three toilet house to go and shower in flip flops. Once you’ve got over the sights and the weather – what everyone wants to know is “but what are the toilets like”.
Col: But you are a little obsessed Jen. I think it’s a family thing. We once went on holiday with Jen's sister who brought a small bottle of bleach with her.
Jen: What’s wrong with that, it was handy for the bathroom.
Col: See what I mean?

Q Col, the ukulele hasn’t appeared in any of the more recent Blogs. Has it made it home safely?
Col: Indeed it has. Lack of pictures has been an oversight on my part, sorry about that. It’s now a well travelled uke and sporting a sticker from every place we visited. And here it is…

Q Can you share with our readers some observations on the backpacking lifestyle?
Jen: Backpacking as a lifestyle is both sociable and transient
Col: There are two methods to backpacking - 1) religiously sticking to a budget or 2) enjoying your time away. Number 2 every time.
Jen: Yes there are 2 styles to backpacking – 1) dirty scummy hippy traveller type or 2) clean. I’d recommend the second option ;-)

Q Talking of which. You’ve been back in the ‘real world’ for a couple of weeks now, do you still smell?
Col: Yes, a little. I'm still living out of my backpack so I don't have much choice.
Jen: It’s odd being back home. For starters I’m not at home I’m mostly at my mums house, secondly I’m still living out of a bag and thirdly my cats are doing their level best to pretend I’m still not there.

Q Are you looking forward to being back and rejoining the rat race?
Col: Ah yes, about that...
Jen: We’re putting off that inevitability by opting to be ski bunnies for another season. After Christmas we’re flying out to Canada. Another three months on the slopes and to hell with getting a real job. Marvellous plan don’t you think?

Q Sounds like you’ve still got the travel bug. After spending so long with each other it’s amazing you’re still talking!
Col: Ah yes, about that too...
Jen: For 2007 we thought we’d have a go at getting hitched.
Col: To each other.
Jen: Col proposed while we were in Thailand and I’m now sporting a fantastic rock on my finger. It’s so sparkly!
Col: We just need to work out a ‘where’ and a ‘when’ but I’m sure that a party will be involved...
Jen: …and a frock and pretty shoes…
Col: …and cake…
Jen: So all in all the adventures just keep coming!
Col: and you never know, we might find another cause for blogging one day. You have been warned.

….Run end credits….

Big in Japan

2006-10-30T20:23:00.000+07:00

And on to Japan. We arrived at Tokyo airport to face a new language, a new subway system to negotiate and getting used to not being the star attraction anymore. None of this matters, because the Japanese are just so nice and helpful. We headed off to our hostel (K's House, near Kuramae station, if you're in the area, stay here) which was probably the best we'd seen on our travels, and got acquainted with the sights waiting for us in Tokyo.

Luckily for us, Tokyo is surprisingly quiet on the temple front, and the best one around was a short walk away. Bargain, gave us something to do in the rain - seems there were a couple of tropical storms in the area and the weather was a touch damp and a little on the windy side...

There you go, Sensi-Jo temple. It's either Buddhist or Shinto, and probably quite old.
Thats unlike you Col - so vague on details... do I detect a wee touch of the blase? Maybe I'd better take over for a while.

Where are we, ah yes the typhoon has passed by now, so lets busy ourselves with some non-temple thing such as watching barely dressed people lunge at each other. Its an amateur Sumo match and while some of the competitors obviously take their hobby very seriously and have been scoffing down the pies, others are tiny creatures that I fear will become pancaked during the afternoon.

Now for a quick browse round town. With its electronic and high-tech super stores, posh malls and neon pouring out of every spare pore; Tokyo is a veritable whirlwind. You can catch glimpses of elegant ladies wearing kimono side by side with the latest fashions (it appears that shorts worn with knee high socks and high heels are IN right now).And if this isn't enough the local teenagers dress up at weekends to add that extra touch of surrealism - was that Little Bo Peep I just saw queing up for a Wendy's burger?

Anyway, no time to chat got to get an early night, we're up at 5 tomorrow to go to the famous fish market.

Beep Beep Beep. Wakey wakey rise and shine. Woah don't the subways look empty at this time of day, and the streets are really deserted. And the fish market, it looks like a ghost town. Hold on a sec, shouldn't this place be buzzing with activity? Why is there no-one in the auction room? Something smells very fishy about all this. What's that you say - today is a National holiday and everything is shut?
Right.
Right.

Kababashi road, Steaming bowls of Ramen, the moon festival, tea ceremony in the park, it all passes by in a blur... the bright lights of Shinjuku seem just a bit too sparkly and come 1am I'm ready for bed.

Beep Beep Beep. Wakey wakey rise and shine. Woah don't the subways look busy for this time of day, and the streets are really happening. And the fish market, it's buzzing with activity! Plus something smells very fishy - and thats all the fish :-)

The gentle murmur of mens voices at the giant tuna auction sounds almost like monks chanting. But the peace is lost as soon as you step into the market place, people are setting out their stalls and you have to watch you backs because of the motorised carts rushing about delivering newly purchased fishies. Now normally the last thing you want to do at 6 in the morning is eat raw fish, which is why it came as a surprise to find that we were having a most enjoyable breakfast at the nearby sushi bar. It was actually delicious. Anyway, I'd love to tell you what happens next but i must must have a nap...

...zzzz...

Off to Kyoto on the Shinkansen (that's the 'bullet train') for a few days of temples, temples and more temples. When we left the subway somewhere in Kyoto and asked the guy behind the ticket counter where so and so street was, they had three people looking through maps and one on the phone to the hostel trying to get us directions. They even apologised that they'd taken so long (about 5 minutes), as they handed us precise instructions to get to our hostel. Very helpful those Japanese, it's such a huge change from China.

At the hostel we met up with Paul and Linda, who we'd met in Yangshuo (China), and wandered the city at a leisurely pace. Geisha hunting in Gion was fun if unproductive (back of one head in a taxi and a brief glimpse of one scurrying into a tea house were our only reward) looks like they're all hiding out in a nearby town called Nara...

Geisha and deer seem to be the speciality in Nara. The deer are friendly enough until you feed them. I was trying to go for the Ace Ventura look, which worked for the first 10 seconds. To be honest I think I just got unlucky, it had a weird look in it's eye from the start - I'll have to show the Benny Hill style video when I get back, at least it amused everybody watching.

They look harmless, just keep those biscuits well hidden.

There's temples in Nara too, it's actually why most people make a visit...

Biggest wooden building in the world right there, goes by the name of Todai-Ji. Inside it is an enormous Buddha and some scary looking wooden statues.

Before we go any further allow me to explain, we're not going round Japan looking at temples willy nilly. Oh no. Taking into account 2 things: 1 - there are a lot of temples about and 2 - we have already seen a lot of temples; we started enforcing a few criteria before it got plain silly. In order to get onto the shortlist a sight must meet at least one of the following criteria:
i) be the biggest, tallest, somethingest of its kind
ii) offer a previously unseen feature
iii) be very very cheap and easily reached

Ok. That said, we can offer to you...

A Zen Garden. Minimalist heaven, we haven't had one of those before!

Nijo Castle. It was only round the corner, and we'd walked past it plenty of times before we popped in. Nice too, it's got a 'Nightingale Floor'. It's a medieval burglar alarm - the floor squeaks when you walk on it. It's not just shoddy workmanship, it's a 'feature'. And finally...

The Golden Pavillion. It's a pavillion, and it's made of gold! Tick, and tick! OK, it's not actually made of solid gold, that would be silly (it's gold leaf at best), but it looks pretty good.

Finally, we had a day trip to Himeji. According to the guide book, if you only ever see one Japanese castle, make sure it's Himeji. Now despite the fact we'd already seen our fair share of castles...well OK, we'd seen one castle...we thought it worth a visit. It was only 2 hours on the train and what else were we going to do...

Look at that! Not bad at all. Worth another look we reckon...

So a day in Himeji looking at the castle and the gardens. We even tried to see a museum, but what would you know, it was closed for renovation. At least we tried :-) Back in Kyoto we spent the night in a Manga Cafe - it's what the trendy kids do, beats those Capsule Hotels hands down. You get your own booth with a padded floor, TV, DVD, Playstation, Internet, blankets, cushions and all the comics, magazines and films you want. And the drinks are free! You can have a nap (Jen) or play all night long (Me!).

Back in Tokyo we had another look round and generally wasted time until our flight to Hong Kong. We never did get to see Mt. Fuji, a rare sight it would seem, and we certainly got nowhere near climbing it. Having read the account of Paul and Linda I can't see we're too sorry to have missed out, we've had our fair share of mountain climbing.

So that was our quick tour of Japan. Two weeks, two cities and about two grand later (in Jen's words, watching our budget disappear faster than a biscuit in hot tea...) we're back on the road.

Almost forgot, we had to try the Sushi Train...

You've got to be quick. That trains almost as fast as the Shinkansen.

Thanks Col. I'm awake now. Where are we? Ah yes, cheaper climes, next stop - India.

Time to action Plan A: move on to Delhi asap.
The usually quick call to the airline turns into a 2 1/2 hour phone/fax marathon as I discover all my reservations have mysteriously been cancelled plus the flights to Delhi are fully booked. But we're seasoned travellers now so no worries. Effortlessly move to plan B: Fly to Hong Kong, change planes and fly to Bangkok (stay on the plane) and then on to Bombay.

At the check in desk in Hong Kong we're politely asked where our Visa for India is. A good question. with a not so good answer of 'uh-oh'. It's a Saturday so the Indian Consulate is closed until Monday. quickly make plan C: stay in Hong Kong for a couple of nights then fly to Bombay. That doesn't sound too bad.

However, the airline wants to charge through the nose to fly to Bombay, but Delhi on Monday evening is free! Airlines are a law unto themselves. Plan D: Delhi it is then, with brief stay in HK.

6 hours later we discovered all the Hostels and all the Hotels are full. Even the ridiculously expensive ones. We've tried telephoning, using the internet, reservations desk at the airport, and finally going door to door. A guy we met in a lift suggested we go to Mong Kok where you can rent hotel rooms by the hour.... Hmmmn. Surely we were not that desperate? It's getting dark...

... Plan E. Do you remember a few blogs back I met a whole load of new family? Cousin Natasha was pretty suprised to hear we were back in the country but rose to the occasion brilliantly. Sigh of relief. A couple of days in Hong Kong, free accommodation, and a fantastic (expensive) lunch courtesy of Natasha.

Monday morning, Indian Consulate. Visas are tricky things apparently and it will take a week to get one, plus a national holiday on wednesday so maybe even longer. By the time we get to India it'll be time to go home again. We're on the last leg of our RTW ticket and our last flight home is 6th November.

Time to formulate Plan F: f*&% it

So that my friends is why we're currently at Le Meridien Beach and Spa resort, Khao lak, Thailand. Twelve nights of luxury free courtesy of my hotel points, 3 pools, a private beach and endless sunshine... Come on now, we needed a Holiday :-)

Please excuse me... it's time for my Windsurfing lesson...

Crouching jen hidden toilet roll - China

2006-10-20T19:11:00.000+07:00

Our trip into China began with a 24 hour train journey. If I'd had enough imagination I would have realised long before I needed the loo that squat toilets and moving trains don't combine well. Luckily we managed to take a picture of the facilities fairly early on in the day - so you can see for yourselves. Please excuse the blur, its hard to keep the camera still when the carriage is wobbling.

At that moment in time its all clean but basic. And basically difficult to use. Its a shame that you can't go for 24 hours without.

So, how about China proper? Well the Hostels are great and cater for us foreigners just fine. Sometimes squats, sometimes western toilets, sometimes even toilet roll - although that is a rarity and people do a roaring trade selling small packets of tissues. Facilites are nearly always clean, although they have yet to create drains that cope with toilet paper. Which reminds me - I recently got an email from a fellow traveller, Matt, on this subject. Poo is always a popular topic of conversation amongst travellers. This is what he had to say:
'As an Englishmen I live in daily hope that I am able to coincide my
'timings' with the occasional cleaning and emptying of crap bags, that in
theory takes place. Some hotels empty their bins during your visit- there is
nothing like visiting a water closet with such an overflowing bin.

Science has proved beyond doubt that a buttered piece of toast will always
fall butter side down. Unfortunately this particular law of physics does not
apply in the South American bathroom. Due to the inherent aerodynamic
properties impressed upon a piece of toilet tissue during its cycle of
existence, it will inevitably fall 'face' up.

Thanks for that Matt, and I'm glad you allowed me to share that particular observation with the Crouching Jen readers. The same physics hold true in the Far East by the way. I just wish that they'd discovered bins with LIDS.

But No. Its gets worse.

There are not enough words in the English language to sufficiently describe the horrors of chinese public conveniences. They take the word 'public' to new levels.

Imagine you're a disabled English traveller in Xi'an. You follow the signs to the disabled facilities - into the ladies toilets - and see the toilet before you in all its glory. Before you, and everyone else in the queue that is. With a row of sinks to the right and a row of too small for you to use cubicles to the left - the disabled squat sits with its handrails (or more accurately it squats) unfair and square at the end of the room, devoid of any screening. Horrified you look around. Hopefully you try to fit into a cubicle. Helplessly you realise its the only option. Thats when you catch the eye of the only other foreigner in the room.

We exchanged only a short glance but she positively SCREAMED 'help'. I tried to nod and smile encouragingly and pointedly looked to the side to give the illusion of privacy. Unfortunately the Chinese are known for their capacity to stare, especially at foreigners.

Anyway. Just when I was getting the hang of squat toilets and beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about - I visit China and discover where the modern squat originated from. Gone are the handy hoses with useful spray attachments. Squats come in a variety of types. Each of them with their own unique and disgusting selling points (DSP).

DSP #1: Low walls

Everyone is familiar with the concept of cubicles. They allow a bit of privacy right? Unless of course there's no door on the cubicle. And the walls of the cubicle are only hip height. And the chinese version of queing means that you stand right in in front of the cubicle you want to use, sighing and staring at the person currently using it. Talk about stage fright.

Here is nice clean example of DSP #1 taken at a Monastery we stayed in over-night. Luckily the ladies was empty at the time of this particular visit.

Note the foggy appearance. That'll be the fog coming through the glassless windows.

DSP #2: Communal drain

For this one you do at least have a proper cubicle with doors and walls. In the cubicle is a bin and running along the floor is what appears to be a stainless steel channel. The idea is that you straddle the channel. Do what you came to do. And leave.

Doesn't sound too disgusting yet, but I can see that you're already thinking one step ahead of me. Did I mention that the channel runs the full length of the room and doesn't contain any water?

Now theres a number of scenario's that can happen here. i] you can do your business then wonder how the hell you dispose of the evidence, or ii] You can be mid way through your performance when suddenly a 'river' appears beneath you complete with a strangers turd.

Either way is far from ideal. The single 'flush' button is handily placed, unlabelled, at the far end of the room by the exit door right next to the light switch. Which allows the added adventure of doing it in the dark.

DSP #3: Hole in the ground

This one is similar to DSP#1 without the added benefit of a porcelain footplate, flush or modern drainage. In fact it is a hole straight into the ground from which things are meant to 'seep' away, and you can smell them from about 50 metres. Enough said.

This is an example of DSP#3 taken on Mount Emei.

The Lonely Planet recommends that you practice holding your breath for extended periods of time or take up smoking. Preferably a really strong brand of cigarette that produces a nice personal fog.

On that note I'll leave you. All of you lucky buddhas within reach of a lovely clean, fragrant, private and fully flushing convenience, count your blessings.

I've been crouching Jen and you've been disgusted. Thanks for dropping by.

Jen
xx

The main attraction, in the red corner - China

2006-10-19T21:30:00.000+07:00

So we caught the train from Hong Kong to Beijing and spent 24 hours as the local tourist attractions. They're not a subtle people, the Chinese, they just stare. The other thing you notice pretty quickly, and which explains a particular sign we saw in a restaurant in Malaysia, is the spitting. It's relentless. And it's not just the men - you'll hear somebody hacking up the biggest mouthful of phlegm you could ever imagine, and when you turn round, expecting to see somebody choking to death, there'll be a little old lady depositing half a lungful of mucus on the pavement. It's something you just don't get used to.

And so to Beijing. Soon to be famous for hosting the 2008 Olympics, the government is doing it's best to make sure everything looks just right. Unfortunately for us that means a lot of restoration work at the major tourist attractions, but don't despair, there were plenty of sights available to photograph for your viewing pleasure.

Let's start with Tian'anmen Square...

Ooops, sorry, that'll be a tour group. Get used to them, they're everywhere, sometimes with matching hats, always with a flag. We are SO glad we didn't take a tour. Let's try again, Tian'anmen Square...

Hmmm, big open space. In fact the biggest public square in the world with the National Museum on the left, Mao's Mausoleum on the right (slap bang in the middle of the square, somebody's ego needed one last massage) and the Monument to the People's Heroes between the two. The Great Hall of the People is just behind us, facing the museum, and out of shot on our left is Tian'anmen...

...the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tian = Heaven, An = Peace and Men = Gate). Oh look, a picture of Mao. Heading through Tian'anmen takes us to the Forbidden City which was off limits to the public for 500-odd years...

That's the Meridian Gate and in front are the five bridges spanning the Golden River. But we can't hang around here all day, we've got lots to see.

The other big sight, in a direct line south of the Forbidden City, is the Temple of Heaven, where the emperors went to pray for good harvests (amongst other things). In fact, here's the Hall Of Prayer For Good Harvests - we've gone a little arty here, but as I had to wait for a whole load of tour groups to disperse before getting a clear(ish) view, it's going in...

They also had some unusual pavillions. Good for lazing around in - it was a very hot day...

Come on, follow the guy with the flag, we're off to the Summer Palace next.

North-west of Beijing (incidently that's Bei = North and Jing = Capital, as opposed to Nanjing which used to be the capital, Nan = South. See, it all makes sense.). The Summer Palace was where the Emperor went in the summer to escape the heat of Beijing - we spent an afternoon wandering around and barely saw half of it. Beats a caravan at Skegness...

And the canal runs all the way from the city, so he didn't even have to catch the bus.

This next picture goes in because we had to pay an extra 10 yuan EACH to go up (that's about 60p!). This is the expensive view from just inside the gate...

And lovely it is too, thanks Col. Is it time to go to the Great Wall yet?? I've been dying to see this since I was little (You're still little) Actually I think you'll find I'm averagely tall here in China (Whatever...short arse)

OK, since you're here now. Tell me Jen, just how big is the wall??...

(Sigh) If you're going to be silly about it I'll have to tell everybody myself. The Great Wall of China, or Wan Li Chang Cheng, is approximately Wan Li long. That's 10,000 Li to you and me, or about 3000 miles. The bit we saw at Mutianyu was about 2 1/4 kilometres long - it was plenty to walk along as once again it was roasting...

Standing on the ramparts you can almost imagine a tired invading army, having struggled for days over the forested mountains and valleys, finally reaching the summit of the final ridge only to find that some joker's built a bleeding wall there. D'oh.

One more picture, just to keep Jen happy...

And that's the wall. It's grrrreat.

We left Beijing on the train, heading for Xi'an (pronounced She-an). Xi'an is known as the home of the Terracotta Warriors. Discovered in the early seventies, they were built around 2000 years ago by the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty. He was the first emperor to reign over a united China. Of course he didn't actually build them himself. That would have taken forever. Let's have a look...

Look at all of those. They're life size and apparently they all have different faces!! Who'd have thought. Also, there are still remains of the original paint when they're first dug up, but this soon degrades with exposure to the atmosphere and they look as you'd expect. Let's see one close up...

I'll let Jen tell you more about these later. We didn't see much else while in Xi'an, not that much can compare with the warriors, but we did go to the Big Goose Pagoda (I have no idea why they call it that), all seven-storeys...

and there are a couple of very impressive towers in the middle of town. The picture below shows the nice view, using some handily placed grass, and also the reality of the huge roundabout they've built around the Bell Tower...

Here's an interesting point that I forgot to mention earlier. If you look at the roof you can see a line of little figures (they're actually animals) that, as well as helping to keep the tiles in place, denote the importance of the building. The Bell Tower is an eight-er, which is pretty good going, I think the maximum is eleven which is how many the Hall of Supreme Harmony has (it's in the Forbidden City). I'd show you a picture, but it was being restored, and the picture hanging from the scaffolding really didn't do it justice.

After a few days in Xi'an we flew down to Chengdu to see pandas and potentially climb a mountain.

We stayed at Sim's Cosy Guesthouse which, true to it's name, was most cosy. Something else that was Cosy, was Cosy the pig...

She's a bit of a star, and unfortunately Jen now wants a pig. Can you house train pigs?? Anyway, while in Chengdu we went to the Panda Breeding and Research Centre. If you go early in the morning you get to see them having breakfast. If you go at any other time you get to see them sleeping. Decisions decisions. Just for you we put in a special effort...

Ain't they cute. With their big teeth and claws.

Chengdu is also the birthplace of Ma Po Tofu, which is apparently a famous spicy Tofu dish. The original restaurant, ran by Ma Po herself, is just round the corner from the hostel. A good excuse for a nice feed. And on the way there is the Wen Shu Temple - three storey, buddhist, too big to fit in the photo, enjoy...

About 130km from Chengdu is Emei Shan, one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains in China. Most of the Chinese tourists take the bus up to the cable car and then the cable car to the top. Most stupid foreigners try to walk it. We stayed the night at Baoguo before heading off for a day of walking. Baoguo Temple (Declare Nation Temple) is a good place to take a photo of the mountain - good job there was a sign there to tell me so...

It was kinda like climbing stairs FOR SEVEN HOURS. At first it was enjoyable - the scenery, the temples, the lack of tour groups. After two mostly enjoyable hours, some cheeky monkey tried to steal Jen's walking stick!!!

After four hours we were dearly hoping the estimate of six to eight hours was a gross exaggeration. After six hours we were beaten, dragging ourselves up step after god-forsaken step, dreaming of selling the house and buying a bungalow, wondering why we didn't listen to a whole nation of 1.3 billion people and take the damn bus. The monastery we stayed in was basic - well it was basically a building site. It didn't matter, they fed us and we slept, knowing there was still two more hours walking in the morning. The big thing about a trip to Emei Shan is seeing the sunrise from the top. It's a nice idea, most people miss it due to the huge traffic jams of buses all trying to get to the top at the same time. That and the almost permanent cloud cover. Rather than take the risk of being disappointed, we decided not to get up at 3am. When we eventually made it to the top at about 1.00pm (the queue of an hour at the cable car would have been annoying if we'd been trying to see the sunrise) there was plenty of lovely cloud to justify our laziness. There's an enormous statue at the top, along with various shops and restaurants, and of course temples...well worth 9 hours of hell...

We took the bus down.

From Chengdu we flew to Guilin, and from Guilin we headed straight down to Yangshuo where we stayed in the Yangshuo culture house. It was really a homestay, rather than a hostel, and Wei and family made everybody very welcome. There were lessons available in calligraphy, painting, language and various other chinese pursuits for those who wanted, but the highlight of every day was the huge evening meal they provided. The stuffed peppers were the best. We tried some calligraphy and painted some bamboo, here's Jen's effort...

Not bad. We can flog that down the local market to some other dumb tourists. Yangshuo is mainly known for it's scenery - lots of limestone stacks, the area round Guilin is the inspiration for the old chinese landscape paintings featuring steep mountains and cliffs (I can't guarantee this information, I'm just trying to justify going there). Have a look for yourself...

That's from the top of Moon Hill, I'll save the photo of Moon Hill itself for the upcoming slideshow (which, incidently, is currently numbering somewhere over 5000 photos. Be afriad, be very afraid!). From ground level it's looks more like this...

We had a pleasant day cycling around the countryside along the river and past paddy fields. And we had an interesting day in the Water Caves, one of the local big tourist attractions, which we visited with people we met at Wei's place. We were escorted around the underground tunnels by a guide who pointed out various rock formations and informed us that they looked like the tibetan plateau or a dog or buddha - he couldn't understand why we weren't taking it entirely seriously. It was most bizarre. The saving graces were the mud pool and the water pool. We spent half an hour diving into the water pool, and in the mud pool we just got dirty...

(Left to Right: Marie, James, Me, Jen, Pete, Linda and Paul)

Almost finished now. Finally from Yangshuo we headed to Shanghai, 29 hours on the train from Guilin. We'd learnt after our 24 hours of hard-seats from Beijing to Xi'an that a sleeper was definitely worth the extra yuan. And at 20-odd quid a throw it was a bargain.

And at Shanghai everything ground to a halt as we hit our travelling wall. We had plans to take day trips to a couple of places, but instead we just lounged around the hostel and took a couple of trips into Shanghai's main shopping district. Motivation had deserted us. As the saying now goes - we couldn't be buddha'd. And with that, this blog will also grind to a halt. I'll let Jen fill in all the fine detail I've missed out. Thanks for getting this far (sorry Sam, I tried to keep it short, but big country equals big blog, nothing I can do).

Thanks Col, but I think you've pretty much covered everything. I was going to add a bit about the bizarre bagged fruits we saw in Xi'an. I think they were pomegranites. Each fruit had its own clear plastic bag around it, hold on a sec did I take a photo? ah yes I did, it was taken from a moving bus so its not exactly in focus but I think you can just make out the fruit...

...are still on the trees. Odd. Very odd.

Other noteworthy points include the 2 dogs which sit outside every doorway. We realised that one always has a ball to play with while the other is stood on a puppy. Actually they're supposed to be lions and with a bit of reasearch we discovered that the ball signifies male playfulness while the cub signifies a lioness and maternal instinct. Here's one proud mommy in the forbidden city...

Doesn't she look motherly. Perhaps not. Ok, here's a pic thats sure to elicit some broody coo's and sighs...

How sweet is that. He's ony a few weeks old :-)
(Can you house train Pandas?)

And so on that note we'll round up the China edition of the blog. If you've ever fancied being in close proximity to fabulous sights and 1.3 billion people who think you're the main attraction - then China is THE place for you.

Thanks for reading the whole gubbins. Now please, seeing as you've got this far, you might as well leave a comment to prove it. You know we'll love you for it.

xxx

Crouching Jen Hidden Toilet Roll - Top Ten Thai Toilet Tips

2006-10-02T23:38:00.000+07:00

For everyday mentions of pee (phi) and poo (phu) you just can't beat Thailand. It crops up in words and place names all the time; it's pee pee this and poo poo that. A toilet writers dream. You can learn a lot from observing the bathroom habits of a country (Eh? Like, what six months in the Bangkok Hilton feels like if you get caught observing? - Ed). So for the benefit of you lovely readers I've compiled a few observations. Welcome to The Thai Toilet Tips - Top Ten. Cue music...

Scraping in at 10: It must be a sign
Imagine. You've just arrived at Humpalong Railway Station, Bangkok, and you're unsure what to do. Never fear, help is at hand. All you have to do is follow the signs...

... feel better now?

A non-mover at 9: Pond life
Tiles are in and shower curtains are out and as for shower cubicles - they're so last month dahhling. All you need is a shower head fixed to the wall above an ordinary toilet and BINGO - instant shower room.

As long as the floor has a drain hole, you can put a shower head pretty much anywhere. The average drainage rate for the hole should be one cup of water per 15 minutes, so it's advisable to have wall tiles at least one foot high to hold the ensuing pond. Even better if you can slope the floor and place the drain hole at the raised end of the room.

A plastic bag is a must for keeping clothing and towel dry during the shower and may I suggest knee high fishermans waders as a useful addition - allowing you to use the bathroom during the 3 hours following a shower without getting wet!

Up five places to 8: Practice makes perfect
I once knew a woman who claimed to be able to have a shower during a commercial break and not miss a second of her programme. A talent I can only now fully appreciate.

All the cheapy accommodation has cold water - only. After careful consideration of the options I can now suggest the following guidelines for taking a cold shower:

>do not let the water run. Sometimes the water in the pipe has been warmed by the sun allowing approximately 25 seconds of valuable luke warm water at the start of the shower
>keep the water off your face. Did you know that the body has an automatic reaction to detecting cold water on the face - and that's to stop the heart. I first discovered this fact when doing my biochemistry degree and re-learnt it in Thailand. God knows what useful purpose it serves but it's useful to know when avoiding a heart attack in the shower
> be quick

New entry at 7: They might be giants
Thailand is a land of correctly sized people, somewhere hovering around the five foot tall mark. So I fit in perfectly. If it wasn't for the fact that I keep being mistaken for Thai, and given dirty looks because of the tall white feller with me (must get t-shirt with "I'm English, I am NOT a dirty whore" printed on it), I'd feel right at home. But I digress.

The owners of Great Bay Resort in Ko Pha Ngan are keen to keep the tourists happy and so have installed 'The tallest sink in the world' in order to cater for foreigners...

It's not often I get stand on tippy toes in order to clean my teeth.

Climbing to number 6: Feeling Freshy
It's hot. It's humid. And unless you live in a swimming pool - it's sweaty. So how come the locals look cool calm and collected while us foreigners look pink and uncomfortable. What's the big secret to keeping 'freshy' (as one local put it)?

Well apart from the obvious - shower 2, 3 or 4 times a day like the thai people do - the secret is to use talcum powder. Apparently its a big hit in thailand. I'd suggest johnsons baby powder for the comforting clean smell (You can get this in Boots the chemist of which there are branches all over) and using the word freshy as often as possible :-)

In at number 5: Bucket love
I've come to realise that the bucket is a much under-used and under-valued item in the Western world. In Thailand it has many uses and is usually the size of a beer barrel.

From the Malaysian edition of Crouching Jen you'll recall that the official purpose of the bucket is two-fold; you scoop up water from it using the shallow bowl in order to 'wipe', then you take several more scoops of water to flush.

I've also found it's invaluable for doing the washing. Clothes that is. If you're too cheap to pay for the laundry. Which we often are.

A former number one, now at 4: Feel the force
I think I mentioned the hose in the Singapore and Malaysian editions. It's still there, with dinky gardening-style shower head 'gun' and jolly useful for making everything within hosing distance nice and clean. I'm getting the hang of hoses now - for personal freshy, not just for rinsing the entire cubicle before you begin. And If you think about it - its really a much more hygenic option to wash when compared to having a waste basket full of used tissues in the room. The only thing I didn't manange to find out is whether Thai people carry towels with them. Judging by the number of flannels for sale I'd say they do....

But a word of warning; not all hoses are born equal. It's wise to test the strength of the water by aiming the gun at a non body part FIRST. Believe me.

Highest climber this week at 3: The great out-doors
It's good to take an open mind with you when travelling. Wide open. Sometimes the facilities are not quite the same as you'd get at home. For instance the shower in the jungle north of Chaing Mai was definitely lacking in the non slip rubber mat...

and there were no rubber ducks in the bathing facilities either....

Number 2: A wee story
Picture this: Long-boat trip around Ko Phi Phi, July, Monsoon season.

The sun is beating down and you're enjoying a little meander. Without warning the heavens open, the seas get choppy, and some israeli girl is indulging in a fish feeding frenzy over the side of the boat. The weather steps it up a notch. The little boat's heaving from side to side, you feel like extras in a film - the one where you're in a little boat in a storm and someone keeps throwing a bucket of water over you to demonstrate waves.

Luckily through the thunder and lightning you see you're just about close enough to Bamboo Island to be able to land. There you huddle round an impromtu camp fire which a local guy will promptly use to bbq squids. The clouds hang dark and low and the wind's having a whale of a time whipping up the sea. Eyes screwed up against the wind and rain you hear the fish feeding girl cry: "want to go phi phi, want to go phi phi, take me to phi phi" she wails dementedly. Captain smiles slowly and looks into the mist... "no see phi phi - no go phi phi".

Wise words to live by in any circumstance.

And still at number 1: If in doubt - hit it
It's no secret that spiders are not my thing. Especially huge spiders. Unfortunately Huge spiders ARE Thailands thing, and one the size of Colins hand (and he has big hands) was hugging a large detergent bottle in the bathroom of our little beach bungalow.

Luckily I spotted him before i began showering and quickly repaired to the outside of the bungalow from where I could direct proceedings:

"kill it"
"what now, did you see a little spider"
"kill it"
"I can't see it"
"kill it"
"F*** me!!!!!!!!!!!"
"oh you can see it now can you?"

There followed a few moments while Col got the camera then located the broom and began sweeping the spider in a obviously non threatening manner. Col would sweep, the spider would run out of one ventilation hole in the wall and back in through another. Col would sweep, the spider would run out of one ventilation hole in the wall and back in through another. Col would sweep...

"For godsakes stop brushing it it's not a bloody dog"
"I'm trying to, It's too fast"

Luckily my animated dancing from the lawn had attracted the attention of a number of laughing locals and passing man wearing a sheet wrapped nappy style and carrying a machette.

I did my spider impression.
Nappy man did a non-biting impression
I did the impression of being a very very big thing
Nappy man did a non-biting impression
I did my hysterical impression
Nappy man strode in and chopped the spider into pieces with a machette.
Col swept up the legs with the broom.

Time for a little demonstration of precarious balancing:

(Oy, are you trying to make me look stupid?...I see...Fair enough, carry on then. - Ed)

So there you go. That's Thailand for you. Full of surprises and toilets and smiles and men with machettes.

That's all folks, I've been Crouching Jen and you've been a terrific audience. 'Til next time, you stay classy THE WORLD!

xxx

Hong Kong - We got an upgrade!!

2006-10-02T23:07:00.000+07:00

Cathay Pacific is now officially my favourite airline. They upgraded us to business class - it was my first time. The welcome champagne was a nice touch, as was the (very small) table cloth, and I especially liked the way they remembered everyone's name. I always knew food on planes didn't HAVE to taste as bad as it usually does. Just a shame the flight from Bangkok was less than three hours - I'm considering investing in a suit for future flights, I'm sure the extra booze available would justify the price...

Anyway, we're in Hong Kong! And who'd've guessed, it's baking hot!

Arrived late at night and just had time to wander the streets near our hostel. We seem to be in the middle of shopping heaven - clothes, shoes, phones, phones, more phones. I want gadgets, but I can't find anything that I just can't live without. Jen's got her eye on a tiny little laptop...we'll see.

We went down to the harbour and took the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island. It used to be the only way across to the island, but now they've got three tunnels as well. But it's still the cheapest - one thing we're learning on our travels is what crap value public transport is back home. The ferry costs about 12p.

Then we took the funicular (extortionate, well over a pound) up to Victoria Peak. You can see it in the previous picture - middle background, the big lumpy bit with the little pointy things on top.

Sorry about the glare, we'd escaped into Starbuck's air-con, which happened to have a great view all across the harbour. The book advised to stay until night for the best views, so we settled in...

Worth the wait. Here's one more from a different angle...

So what else did we do? Well, we wandered round the markets and as ever soon discovered that they repeat every 5 to 6 stalls or so. There must be agreements that the silk scarf ladies won't set up directly next to each other, and the watch people must have at least 3 stalls between each other, and god forbid if there are 2 fake handbag stalls within shouting distance. That obviously didn't stop us investing in all manner of useless tat, it's gonna be christmas soon after we get back, and some of you may be finding said useless tat in your stockings (especially if you don't start leaving comments - Michelle, Dave, Annie, etc. you know who you are!!)

This brings us to the highlight of our stay in Hong Kong - meeting Jen's extended family. Give us a wave...

Left to Right (I'd better get this right, here goes): Cousin Barry, with daughter Natalie and his wife Margaret, Auntie Anne, Cousin Malcolm (our host for the evening, thanks for the food) and daughter Hilary, Niece Natasha and us two.

Hilary and Natalie No.2 (friend of Hilary, taking the photo, and therefore not in the photo, obviously) came to meet us and took us off to a rather nice private club in Kowloon Tong to meet the family, and Jen's cousin Malcolm treated us to a rather civilised feed - not something we've been to used to over the last few months (thanks again, the sweet and sour was especially good I thought). Afterwards two of Jen's Nieces - Hilary and Natasha, plus Natalie (friend, not niece) took us over to Hong Kong Island for drinks and more food - if any of you find yourself in the Hollywood Road area look for Chocolux. It's down an alley and serves lots of chocolate based drinks and chocolate truffles and stuff. It's really quite good.

I think I'd better let Jen add some bits here - don't want to get in the way of family...

...and they kept us out till 3 in the morning finding more places to eat. Like a pub crawl but with a lot more munching. Smashing stuff. Despite the hour the cafe's are packed full of people ordering all sorts. It's a gastronomes paradise. I just wish I had a bigger appetite - I really didn't do it justice.

Families are family no matter how recently they've just been introduced so it wasn't long before we were discussing the relative merits of toilets in the west versus alarming ones in china they'd seen on recent visits. That, plus horror stories of travellers being kidnapped or conned, left us feeling well prepared for the next leg of the journey. (well prepared to give it a miss!)

But for now we are in Hong Kong - clean and organised with lots of transport - bus, tram, tube, ferry... so we wandered around trying it all out and using our new octopus travel card, which you can also use to pay for things in some shops too. Here's a quick look at a tram... which nows I come to look at it seems empty - It's all lies - the one we were on while I was taking this pic was packed solid.

She's right. The whole picture is in fact a lie. For a start you can see road and pavement, rather than cars and people, which is a rarity. The whole place is heaving - especially up around our hostel, which we were reliably informed is actually a bit of a dodgy area - there are signs advertising discount rates if you book your room for the whole night. At least they offer the rooms for two hours rather than just one. That would be a bit cheap.

By now we were starting to suffer from Temple Withdrawal Syndrome. So we took a quick dose of the Temple of the 10,000 Buddhas and started to feel a whole lot better. Just a short train ride and we were standing at the bottom of a whole load of steps leading up to what promised to be buddha heaven - or buddha nirvana I guess it would be. Anyway, there were allegedly a whole load of buddhas awaiting at the top. Just four hundred steps to go. Four hundred hot, sweaty steps. The things we have to go through to get these pictures (and not a commment to show for it blah blah blah...) At least we had company on the way up...

Not bad, that's a fair few buddhas for starters. And not just buddhas. Oh no, not here. They've also got.....a big blue dog!!!!!!

And more buddhas of course. Now, while they clearly have a whole load of buddhas here, in fact somewhere over 12,000 (most of them a lot smaller than the ones we've seen so far) they do appear to have been struggling a bit for ideas - all the big buddhas being different from each other. So, while there are plenty of perfectly acceptable variations on young and old buddhas, the pictures below show there are also some pretty lame excuses for buddhas...

(Click and it will grow)

Left to right we have: 1) For comparison, a nice old buddha 2)Rock Star Buddha? 3) Going for a paddle Buddha? 4) Getting desperate now - Really long arm Buddha! I mean. Really. And if that wasn't bad enough we have 5) Comedy fake poo Buddha (look at his hand). I rest my case.

Almost forgot - they had a decent pagoda too....

All in all, despite the heat and the steps, we were glad to have made the effort to come and see the place. The buddhas were impressive and occassionally amusing. You could say it was the big blue...

Which brings us nicely onto another addition of Kiddies Corner.

Silly names galore in Hong Kong. It really is too easy.

Jen insisted I took this picture, but I don't understand why...

Mong Kok was just the MTR station round the corner. Nothing funny there.

A couple of places not to shop. Don't buy your watches here...

And definitely don't get your clothes here.......

Enough of this childish drivel. I'll let Jen add some of her own.

How exactly am I supposed to follow that?

Well we followed it with another dose of family. We met up with Aunty Anne and Hilary for a bite to eat, then with Aunty Anne's guidance we tried out a shopping mall, stopped for ice cream, visited cousin Malcolms offices, went to the museum, stopped for a cuppa, tried out another shopping mall... and then just as we looked set to try a bit more shopping Aunty Ann (who is in her eighties after all) had to cry off because we'd walked the knees off her. We out shopped a shopper. Incredible.

Anyways, we can't hang around Hong Kong shopping forever can we? It's high time we checked out those horror stories for ourselves. Let's board the train to Beijing. We've splashed out on 'hard sleepers' (40 quid each) which means theres 6 bunks to a room and no door. I'm pretty adept at climbing up to the third tier bunk as it happens, maybe I was a monkey in a former life.

Settle in for a nice lie down, for say, 24 hours? And I do mean lie down, the bunks are not quite big enough to actually sit up in. I hope you've brought a good book, there's very little by way of entertainment on trains - the chinese of course don't need books, they've got you to stare at. You're the star act. See you in China!

Thailand - the land of smiles, and Cambodia - they know what's wat!

2006-08-29T21:25:00.000+07:00

Well we could hardly spend all of our time lazing on Malaysian beaches. Not when Thailand has plenty of its own to offer.

We flew into Phuket. Lets get the childish giggles out of the way now - it's pronounced Poo-get not fu-kit. The h shows, pay attention now this is interesting, the h shows that the p is aspirated, i.e. you breath out while saying the poo (no laughing I said!). If the h was after a vowel it would mean it was a long vowel, not a short one. It's because Thai has it's own script consisting of some 44 consonants and about 30 vowels which has to be transcribed into the standard 26 letter roman alphabet. OK, lesson over, lets hit the beach.

We had a quick look round Phuket and just as quickly left for Ko Phi Phi...

(Quick lesson in Thai part 2 - Ao (pronounced Ow) means Bay, Ko means Island and Hat means Beach. OK?)

Unfortunately, it is pronounced Pee Pee, so laugh away if you feel the need. That's Ao Loh Dalum, across the island from Ao Ton Sai which is the main shopping/eating area. The island was devastated by the 2004 Tsunami but they've done a good job getting things up and running again. The island with accommodation is Ko Phi Phi Don (big Pee Pee), but the most famous area is on Ko Phi Phi Leh (little Pee Pee)...

That's Maya Bay, the beach they used in the film The Beach. It's almost completely enclosed by the limestone cliffs. We took one of the long-tail taxi boats for a tour of the islands - unfortunately they don't call this the monsoon season for nothing and things got a little hairy in the torrential rain and heavy seas later on in the day. It was still warm despite the rain, so when we stopped at an island everyone sat in the warm clear sea while we were fed freshly sliced pineapple by our guide.

We spent about a week enjoying the mostly sunny weather, mainly by the pool of a far more upmarket complex than our own. There were lots of fire shows and even a cabaret with genuine Thai lady-boys. Amusing and disturbing all at once.

After Ko Phi Phi we headed for the beaches around Krabi. Hat Rai Leh is especially well known for it's limestone karst cliffs. We took a taxi boat from Ao Nang, where we were staying, to Hat Rai Leh - very nice, but a little busy. We followed a couple on the taxi boat and ended up at Hat Phra Nang...

That'll ding dang do for us!!

Everyone we'd met up to this point was planning to go to the full moon party on Ko Pha-Ngan on the 9th. Rude not to I guess.

A bus and a ferry and a taxi boat later we found ourselves here...

For some of the time anyway. Jen found some time to join the meditation and yoga classes overlooking the bay, and the rest of the time was spent just over there...

on Hat Thian, just a 100 baht (1.50 english) boat ride from Hat Rin, where the big party is held.

You can actually walk between the two beaches to save the price of a boat ride, which we tried with the guys we arrived with (Chris and Martin who we first met on our boat tour round Ko Phi Phi and again on Hat Rin looking for a taxi boat, and Andy who had met the other two on the ferry over). The walk was an hour and a half through the forest covered hills and it nearly killed us. OK, a bit of an exaggeration, it nearly killed Jen - no seriously, she decided to have a hypo halfway across. Still, 100 baht is 100 baht.

As for the full moon party - the bars turn the music up load and people dance on the beach until the sun comes up. They also sell "buckets". For the dangerously cheap price of 180 baht (about 2.70) you get a half bottle of local whisky, a can of coke and a can of red bull in a small plastic bucket. Even I had a little dance after one of those.

So anyway, after 6 days on Ko Pha-Ngan we were starting to feel a little guilty and thought we'd better go and see some temples and stuff. Bangkok seemed like a good idea.

And it was (thanks Col, I'll take over for a while). The Queen was having a Birthday when we arrived, and what with it being the Kings 60th year on the throne - the whole country is Royal mad - no more so than in the Capital City of Bangkok. Pretty much everyone is wearing bright yellow shirts, there is classical thai dancing in the night markets and fireworks to celebrate. All good stuff. Bangkok was brimming with activity.

We shopped till we dropped in the frenzy they call Chatuchak weekend market (absolutely enormous, and 38 degrees in the shade). And then we took in some culture...

That's Wat Phra Kaew. It's wonderful, and practically the most shiny place in the world. And right next to it is the Grand Palace ...

Which is just as OTT, but with more topiary. You've got to admire that kind of extensive glitz, it takes some guts to put that many mini mirrors on to one wall.

Time now for a flurry of buddhas. Wat Traimit boasted the biggest golden buddha. Here he is, all 5 1/2 tonnes of him...

This buddha had been recently discovered to be made entirely of gold, having been encased in concrete for years posing as an ordinary stone buddha to escape the unwanted attention of invaders. Which is a nice surprise don't you think?

And Wat Pho claims Thailand's largest reclining Buddha...

He really was magnificently large. His toes were bigger than my head.

Now there were a lot more buddhas and shiny things but I reckon the 2 pictures are enough. Besides, Wat Pho is also famous for inventing Thai massage. It'd be rude not to try it. So we had a go. It was singularly the most painful thing I've experienced in a long while - I think the woman left her thumb in my shoulder, I can still feel it.

Anyway, now for a quick note about local transport. Do as the locals and try crowding onto the express ferry bus to get down the river. We were packed on like sardines and all the farangs (foreign giants like Col) stood out like sore thumbs because the ceilings were so low - anyone who wasn't normal height like me had to crouch - which was particularly funny. Also worth noting was the 2 foot of respectful space surrounding the saffron clad monks clinging to the back rail. Despite the swarm of people, they managed to maintain their dignity and orangeness.

Then theres the equally crowded local bus. The conductors are really friendly and helpfully tell you where to get off - but you've got to be quick - they don't always stop the bus entirely and jumping on or off a moving vehicle while wearing a heavy back pack is an acquired skill.

Alternatively you can try catching one of the many Tuk Tuks that buzz about the city. Not as crowded because there's just you and the driver. They resemble a cross between a motorbike and bumper car, and it's the closest thing to an extreme sport!

Anyway. It's time to leave Thailand for a while and pop over to Cambodia. I hear they've got a lot of Wats.

(Musical chairs again, Jen's had enough)

Indeed, and after reading all about the infamous Bangkok to Siem Reap bus scam we went straight to the nearest Travel Agent and booked ourselves a couple of tickets - 300 baht (that's 4 1/2 quid) to get to Cambodia, surely too good to be true!!

Too good indeed, after 4 hours on a decent air-con bus we got to the border and payed nicely over the odds for our visas - only a 20 baht fee my arse, we knew full well they were charging us 400 baht extra. After another 4 1/2 hours we eventually get on the bus at the Cambodian side, knowing there was a 6 hour bus ride awaiting on the worst road imaginable before we got to Siem Reap - 150+km of heavily pot-holed dirt track (apparently an airline is giving backhanders to make sure the road doesn't get improved). We'd cracked by this stage, and along with another from our bus hired a taxi - 7.50 each - and did the trip in a little over 3 hours. After ten minutes in the taxi we passed the bus load of tourists that had left about an hour before us. Their bus had broken down :-) It wasn't the only broken down bus we passed either, and given the unbelievable downpour that accompanied us for the final hour of what has to be the most unforgettable taxi ride I've ever had, we were increasingly happy with our decision to abandon our fellow travellers.

So, 3 days in Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. No point roughing it, how about Le Meridien Angkor? Thanks to Jen's stash of hotel reward points we got three nights of luxury absolutely free. A welcome drink would be splendid thanks, just to give you time to arrange the fresh fruit and nibbles in the room. And an upgrade? OK, if you insist. Nice pool complex too, the waterfalls were especially easy on the eye.

Let's have a picture. How about Angkor Wat...

The single biggest religious building in the world!! It's huge! The whole complex is surrounded by a massive moat. If you climb up to those three pointy bits, the view looks something like this...

The whole place is in various stages of ruin, restoration and repair. There's far too much to tell you about here, but don't worry, the slideshow will be coming to a living room near you soon!

Now the thing I didn't realise is that Angkor Wat is just one of many temples in what was once the ancient city of Angkor.

The rest are spread around the area, up to 30 odd kilometres from the central city of Angkor Thom. That means that you can't easily just wander about the place on foot - what you need is a friendly Tuk-Tuk driver who will drive you about and wait for you while you do your thing, all for about 6 quid a day. So we spent 2 very sweaty days wandering around the various temples and terraces - we even had a guide, a local police officer, clearly not overly stressed with work, give us the ins and outs of the hindu carvings on one of the more intricate little wats. Two days was enough though, after a while one wat starts looking kinda like the rest, and they surely do have a whole load of wats here. We spent the third day by the pool.

Here's a couple more pictures of some wats before we get back to Thailand. Some of the temples have been left partially overgrown and you get a real Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider feeling. One of the best is Ta Prohm...

The only really annoying thing in Cambodia was the kids selling stuff around the temples. If you made the mistake of speaking to one, a whole army would decend on you demanding you buy their scarf, water, hat, book, postcards...

A typical conversation:

Kid: "Meester, you buy my book?"

Me: "No thanks"

Kid: "OK, you buy my book now?"

Me: "Thanks but I don't need one"

Kid: "OK. You buy my book now?"

Me: "No really, I've got that one"

Kid: "You buy another one from me?"

Me: "No, really, I don't need a book"

Kid: "OK...(pause) you buy my book now"

Me: "Really, no, I don't want another book"

Kid: "OK. You buy my book now?"

Kid 2: "Meester, you buy my postcard?

Me: "Thanks, but no, no book and no postcard"

Kid: "You buy my book now?"

Kid 2: "You want postcard from me?"

Enter kids 3 to 15: "You buy *insert tat* from me?"

Exit me, running...

Let's hop on a plane back to Thailand eh - can't quite face another nightmare bus journey just yet. From Bangkok we headed up to Chiang Mai, the big city in the northwest, and signed up for 3 days of jungle trekking with promises of elephant rides, hill-tribes and bamboo rafting with no other tourists around.

And that's exactly what we got. Firstly, we went for a ride an elephants...

They were even bigger than Jen!!!!!

We met some local hill-tribes. Jen had a go at bashing some rice - I would've help but it's womens work, and we don't want to offend them now do we...

We wandered through the jungle, abley guided by the cheeky Chai...

and spent the nights in some cosy bamboo huts. This is our happy gang, freshly washed after a swim in the river...

Left to right: Megan, Alex, Jen, Sophie, Tasha, Roz and Me - not sure where Chai got to, but we suspected the home grown tobacco cigars the locals were smoking had a little something extra in them. Opium is rather popular in these parts.

The last day was bamboo rafting time. The rapids weren't TOO big, but then the rafts weren't quite as sturdy as we were expecting. This is our raft...

Taken during the 5 minutes it was floating above the surface of the water :-). We had the raft without Chai, which meant we stayed mainly dry and nobody got pushed in...unlike the other raft. I almost forgot, the second night trekking was Sophie's 21st birthday, which led to a round of the "cooking pot" game. Kinda like Spot Harry with hand signs and a face full of soot.

The real festivities had to wait for the night we got back to Chiang Mai where we all got to see the effect of multiple buckets on Sophie and Alex. All very amusing - Sophie has an unfortunate habit of trying to stand on tables and chairs when drunk, not the cleverest thing when she could barely stand on her own feet!

And that is pretty much that. Jen's spent the last three days at a Thai cooking school, learning how to make me lovely curries, while I've been lazing around and learning all about China for the next leg of our adventure. We fly to Hong Kong on Wednesday and then on to China proper when our visas are sorted.

(You'd better add a bit more Jen, I seem to have skipped through that last bit)

Ok, I'll add a bit more, if you insist. It's been an amazing few weeks. For starters I got to sit on an elephants trunk - not something that happens to me every day...

We've crossed rivers while balanced on precariously placed bamboo poles, explored bat (and snake) filled caves, hiked past paddy fields, been bitten by leeches, and eaten with chopsticks that had moments earlier been a bamboo plant growing happily in the jungle. I also got to see lots of unusual mushrooms (come on, its been a few blogs since I mentioned them):

These are straw mushrooms for sale at the local market. We got a few and with the expert guidance of Perm my cooking teacher - I made a lovely spicy coconut soup, stuffed myself silly for three days and created intricate decorations from all sorts of ingredients. Here's one I made earlier:

So that brings us to the end of our travels through South East Asia and I must say it's been fantastic. If you can look past the cries of "You want Tuk Tuk?" "same same but different" "lovely jubbly" and "Massaaaaaaa" (would you like a massage) you will see a land filled with warm and smiley people, beautiful sights and delicious food. Join us again soon to hear of our adventures in the far east.

lovin' it

Jen and Col

Crouching Jen Hidden Toilet Roll - The Tissues and Issues Issue

2006-08-25T12:55:00.000+07:00

Malaysia. Malaysia. Malaysia. Where on earth are all your tissues? I've looked far and wide and can honestly say I'm perplexed about the whole thing. Of course this being a bathroom report we're thinking toilet tissues, but its not just that. There aren't any in the restaurants or cafes either. No serviettes snuggling cutlery, no dispensers on tables. It's plain odd.

Naturally the reason I've been noticing the lack of serviettes is precisely because there are no tissues in the bathrooms. Although there is usually a bin to place them in after use. Col has a theory that they don't give you any serviettes in case you do use them as toilet paper. Which may well be true. Although that IS a little paranoid don't you think. I tried asking a waiter for tissues once. He looked suspiciously at the spill on the table and was very reluctant to dip into his hidden stash to release a single inadequate sheet. Perhaps its an expense thing?

Well guys, I've had my first (of many) real cold shower. The water was not luke warm, it was cold. Actually cold. Actually lovely and cold. It helps if you're really hot before you shower. Like getting into a swimming pool on a hot summers day - the cooling waters take on a soothing property. Although it must be remembered that I am British. Have you ever stopped to watch different nationalities at the beach, its quite interesting. I know that most Brits abroad are a pasty white or lobster red colour - but its also easy to spot one merely by watching them go for a dip in the sea. Aussies tend to rush at the sea eager to catch a wave, French and Italians splash about having a lot of fun and everyone else seems to glide into the water swallowed head first without a ripple. Brits on the other hand mostly edge in one cm at a time, tentatively tiptoeing with each oncoming wave, and generally trying not to actually get wet. Thats the way I approach cold showers.

And now for a quick pic... taken at the Kancil guest house in Melacca...

Anyway, back to more practical matters. What to expect? Well first of all expect a hose. I think I mentioned the hose in the Singapore edition. It's still there, with dinky shower head attachment and jolly useful for making everything nice and clean - floor, walls, toilet - anything within hosing distance I'd venture. The floors all have drain holes in them so its also rather useful for cooling tired feet should you happen to want to do that too.

Also expect to see a large bucket filled with water and a handled bowl, a la...

What you can't see in this picture is a cistern for flushing, and thats because there isn't one. The purpose of the bucket is two-fold; If there is no hose then you 'should' scoop some water from the shallow bowl to 'wipe', then you take several more scoops of water to flush. Ingenious.

You know what? The curious thing is that I've quickly gotten used to this new way of life. It's nice to find a bathroom where the mirror is at my face level and the sink at just the right height. Ok, sometimes the whole room needs to be sprayed down with bleach, but it's been a few weeks now so my pockets are packed with handy andies and I've (almost) stopped noticing grout.

So come on Asia, bring it on, bring it on!

Just nipping through Malaysia

2006-08-15T21:55:00.000+07:00

Another sweltering day, another country, and if you've just spotted a big Tesco sign then you've arrived in Melaka (also known as Malacca), our first port of call in Malaysia. [Note to Ric - were you responsible for that??].

Obviously the heat is not going to let up so let's have a quick wander around the town anyway. Careful now, there's no pavement, the traffic is 'enthusiastic' and those large uncovered drains look pretty deep.

So what can we see? A beat up old Church, a big red Church, guys on flowery bike taxis, a chinatown, a modern air con mall, portuguese towers, old chinese temples,

and massive fruits hanging in the garden.

They're Jackfruit apparently. We thought for a little while they may be the famous Durians, but they didn't smell so bad and were about the size of a guys head. Obviously a guy with a very very big head. Like on It's A Knock-Out.

Anyway, what is there not to see? I'll tell you what... the little buggers that bit me on the first morning - 29 times on my left calf and 19 on my right. Naturally I'm very tasty. And naturally I have a massive allergic reaction, itch like the billy-oh, and grow red welts thereby looking like a leper and putting paid to any skirt wearing for the next few days. I do have a photo of this taken 3 or 4 days after - but I'll spare you because I'm sure you want to eat sometime today.

Anyway, it's just a quick stop in Melaka. Time to get on a bus to Kuala Lumpur, the capital, where the traffic and people lurch at you from all directions and of course, it's sweltering.

Getting around Kuala Lumpur proves to be dead easy, the sky train and LRT trains are well labelled and have a/c which means its tempting to just stay on them all day. If you want to alternate between grotty alleys with cheap tat, and Designer Labels in posh Malls then KL is the city for you. It's got them both, and not much in the in-between price range. It's fascinating and shiny and bewildering and every now and again there's a foul smell which is either drains or durians. Or both.

The most shiny, most pointy and most tall of all places was the unmissable Petronas Towers with the glass walkway. Which we missed, by visiting them on a Monday, the only day of the week they don't do tours. Still they look good with the blazing sun behind them...

Right, next, hop on overnight bus to Kuala Besut (pronounced bee-soo) sort of top right of the country. It's a nice big comfy bus, not too many of the little cockroachy things (which love buses), free blankets and a/c. I manage to snatch a few hours sleep and mostly dream I'm hurtling along on a bus about to crash. Hmmn. Hop off in the early hours. Hang about a bit then hop on a small and BOUNCY boat (a leetle overcrowded perhaps, 24 people, 16 lifejackets, thanks for counting them Col) to the Perhentian Island of Kecil. There's nothing like a good bounce in the morning to wake you up I say! It's just getting light, and our private little bay of D'Lagoon looks gorgeous, and we are the only ones to get off there, so that's nice.

And it IS nice. So nice in fact that we decide to stay for a few days to laze about; snorkelling, swimming, sunbathing and living in a tiny 'bungalow' on stilts. The sea is shallow and full of coral and the water is so warm, its like swimming in a big bath. A big bath full of neon coloured tropical fish mind you. I FOUND nemo! And here's Col finding a leetle shark....

pic 05 - Just a sec Jen. Don't mind me, I'll just be censoring this piccy. How about one of a big red church instead. Much more suitable for family viewing than me in my swim shorts...

OK, carry on.

So, lying in the hammock, tummy full of fresh coconut, hearing the waves lapping 25 foot away, I wonder... Does life get any better than this?

Yes it does.

There's a 'nest' of Green Turtle eggs right next to me, and they have just started hatching. I'm currently a mother of 5 :-)

Cute is an understatement. They didn't know how to use their flippers yet. The D'Lagoon owner will look after them for a few weeks until their shells harden and they have a better chance of survival. There's a lotta predators out there. A lotta predators. And here's one lot of predator....

That's Eddie (the Monitor) Lizard. He's 6 foot, his hobbies are swimming, early morning walks on the beach and fresh water puddles.

Now. It has been brought to my attention that we're having far too good a time and look incredibly happy in all the photo's. Fair enough, you have a point Helen. So just for you I'm trying out a new look. It's called my 'Oh god not another coconut' look. Not as famous as the 'Blue Steel' look of Zoolander, but here goes....

hmmmmn. I think it needs some work.

Anyway, try as I might to be not too incredibly happy, it's just not meant to be. We're woken up the next morning with a knock on the door and cries of 'Turtle on the beach, turtle on the beach!'. Yes another mommy turtle had come to lay eggs. Right there in front of us. It was like living in a wildlife documentary. I thought I might faint with delight.

Gorgeous isn't she? She took hours to dig her hole, lay 100 ping pong balls and then fill the hole up again. It's a shame it was such an effort for her. Plus the guy took all the eggs before she covered them - he's going to dig a safer hole further up the beach cos the silly thing chose a spot which will be under water come the monsoon in a couple of weeks.

ooohhhh. Just realised I am in a public place waving my arms back and forth imitating a giant turtle digging in sand. I think I'd better hand over to Col for a little while. Whaddya say Col?

Hello. Sorry, but I've been watching the footie. That's football, the magnificent game, for all you foreign types. And Liverpool won, so that was nice. Not sure if that's why Jen's waving her arms about or not. Maybe it's another mozzie attack...

OK, so we went to Malaysia. Oooh the hardship (right Tom, nudge nudge). Getting woken up at seven in the morning - Seven! Can you believe it. Just to watch a turtle laying eggs. Like I've never seen a nature documetary before. And the service at the restaurant was terrible, it sometimes took minutes for those fresh fruit shakes to arrive. We only stayed a week.

Despite the fact we'd pretty much reached Thailand at this stage, we decided to head back south to the Cameron Highlands, which is the major tea growing area. Not surprisingly, the land is quite high here - indeed, up to 6666 feet at Punkat Brinchang, the highest accessable road in the country, or so our guide said - which means less heat, which means less sweaty and more freshy. Or so the theory goes.

It looks like this....

And it was roasting. Not the tea, silly, the weather. But the guides still insisted on taking us on a tour of the plantation, explaining to us all about how the tea leaves go from being on the bushes, to sitting forgotten at the back of your kitchen cupboard, because let's be honest, everyone prefers coffee, but you have to have a pack of emergency teabags at home in case your mum visits. Except my mum drinks coffee as well. But Jen's mum drinks tea - come on, she's a northerner - and Jen seems to like the stuff too. But she probably just drinks it to be different or northern or something. (You should have a cup of tea and a lie down Col)

Then they made us go for a walk in the forest (seriously Tom, they MADE us, no arguments, and this was no walk in the park, it was like a walk in the...errmmm...forest...). It was a mossy forest I believe. Which meant we were actually walking on a thick layer of moss rather than on the ground. It was all explained to us at the time - five types of forest (or was it seven?), three of them in the highlands area, lots of long names, sorry I can't do better than that but we'd hit information overload by this point - as were various ways of doing away with unwanted acquaintances using just the local plant-life. That seemed to get everyone's attention back.

How about another pitcher...

Did you notice the little pun there. Well that's as good as it's going to get...hmmm, I guess you've realised that after 9 months of this rubbish. A picture of a poised pitcher plant (five times now, quickly) ready for it's next feed. There were thousands of them. That was one of the better ones.

So, promised tales of hardship and woe. I'm afraid I'm struggling a bit here. There was the golf I suppose - lovely course, but the play was shocking. And high tea afterwards at the hotel over the road would have been a little more relaxing if the king (?) hadn't decided to turn up in his helicopter and land it in the middle of the back nine. Awfully distracting. We'd been wondering why the police had been hanging about outside the clubhouse as we waited in vain for a taxi. And then there was the Steam Boat - the local dish, you cook your own food at the table in a large heated soup bowl. What do we think of that Jen?...

Yeah, don't know about you, but I generally go out to eat because I can't actually be bothered to cook myself. It was a classy joint though, there was a No Spitting sign on the wall.

(I'm floundering here Jen, take over again)

Again an example of my 'Not another coconut' look. I can't take my eyes off the 'No Spitting sign'. I mean. It's in English. Are the British THAT badly behaved abroad?

So, a quick paragraph about traffic. The rules of the road are a little different. In England they drive on the left. In France they drive on the right. In Malaysia they drive in the middle. Humpback bridge, bend in the road, brow of a hill - are all good spots to overtake. Larger vehicles have right of way over smaller vehicles. And if the police set up a road block and want to raise money - they will keep you on the side of the road until they can think of something to fine you for (in our case it was having 3 people sat in the 3 front seats of the minibus, all wearing seatbelts. obviously). I must say however, Malaysian road crossing signs are fantastic. The little green man is actually an ANIMATED green man - running. He's brilliant. (check - yes, i'm doing an impression of the running man - must stop). Also, theres a countdown timer above the traffic lights so you can tell how long you've got before the lights change. Genius.

So that brings us to the end of our jaunt through Malaysia. It was supposed to be a few days but it turned into a fortnight. Lovely country, could have stayed longer, but onwards and upwards as they say. Need to hop on a plane to Thailand now, see you there.

xxx

Crouching Jen Hidden Hidden Toilet Roll - Singapore

2006-08-04T10:05:00.000+07:00

Mention the far east and sooner or later you're bound to start thinking about squat toilets. You've heard tell of their existence and quite frankly they're all a bit foreign. Well for anyone that wants to come to South East Asia, but is a little bit concerned about the lack of Western conveniences - I'd say go to Singapore. Its like Asia for beginners.

With Singapore all the best bits of Asia are condensed onto one small island, theres fantastic food to be had, shopping galore, practically all the signs are dual language (so its easy to find the toilets) - its a real combination of East meets West. And that's not confined to the public places either - its extended to the most private of places too. The option of either western style seat OR eastern squat style toilets can be found in most outlets. And clean, clean, clean. Which is, I can assure you, a lovely thing in a toilet.

And If you don't believe me heres a quick photo....

Nice and shiny clean wasn't it? That was taken at the Night Safari which is a Zoo that you visit at night when the animals are awake, and a 'must see' if you ever happen to be in the area. Oh, were you expecting a picture of a squat toilet? Well I wouldn't want to disappoint anyone would I?

Now the more observant of you will notice that the East West approach doesn't stop there. In either style cubicle you can often find a tap for personal washing AND toilet paper - so you could pick and choose your method. I can't comment on the tap option right now as I'm much more familiar with toilet paper. The only problem is the enduring humidity in Singapore. With such high levels of humidity it is inevitable that any tissue paper will shrivel to a limp pathetic existence. If you've never thought about slightly damp toilet paper then you won't be aware that it tears easily and likes to cling to itself.You can only imagine the fun involved in getting more than one segment off the roll.

Now, for the female readers amongst us, can we all agree that visiting the ladies loos will inevitably find you joining a queue? No change here. However in Singapore I found there were often two queues in the ladies - one for each style of convenience, and generally speaking both of equal length as women went with what they were familiar with. I saw a young woman inadvertantly join the seat style queue and when it was her turn she backed out of the cubicle as fast as she went in, wrinkled her nose up, and joined the squat queue. So it works both ways.

Talking of two options brings me to the unexpected SINGLE option when it comes to water, in particular, showers. Folks, theres only one option for water temperature, and thats luke warm. I suppose technically speaking its cold water but with the high ambient temperature it actually comes out more tepid than you were expecting. Which is actually quite nice. A tepid shower was a rather nice compromise. Although seeing as for most of the time I was outrageously HOT, a nice cold shower was a pretty inviting thought . Besides all this, the refreshing feeling you get after showering is unfortunately not possible. The humidity levels are such that IMMEDIATELY (and by that I mean within a nanosecond) of switching the water off - your body heats up and the humidity ensures that you remain damp for the rest of the day no matter how much towelling you try to employ. The only way round it is to live in air-conditioned sanity or stay in the shower forever.

And that, my friends, is the low down on Singapore. I hoped you enjoyed it and will be reassured that your personal reporter is doing well, if a little damply, in South East Asia.

Singapore - it's small, but then it's very far away...

2006-07-16T19:51:00.000+07:00

Just popping in for a look round on our way to Thailand.

I'll let Jen demonstrate a few things we've been up to. First there was the fresh coconuts...

then the fresh Tiger Beer (it's brewed here, so this is like culture, I think)... [yes Col, LIKE culture, but not ACTUALLY it]

There was eating with our fingers...

[Naturally i am eating so fast that the picture is a little blurry - Jen] and after all that there was time for a Singapore Sling. At the Raffles Hotel of course darling...

All sorts of people have turned up here over the years so there's a healthy mix of just about everything. They've got Hindu temples like the Sri Mariamman...

Chinese temples like the Yueh Hai Ching...

And due to a strong colonial influence there's slightly more important temples like this...

the Singapore Cricket Club. There are lots of skyscrapers towering over the older shops and cafes. Kind of like a reverse architectural mullet - business at the back, party at the front...

We took a cruise on the Singapore River ...

and saw the sights, including the Merlion...

Dreamed up in the '60s as an official mascot for the island it's been spitting on the tourists ever since. Did I mention we tried the local fast food? Much as the McSpicy sounded tempting, we went for the hawker stalls in Chinatown instead...

And that's that. We only stayed for 3 days and now we're in Kuala Lumpur. But that's a different blog.

Before I go, this week Kiddies Korner brings you - Kickapoo, the original Joy Juice!

Joy Juice!? What the hell is that? It just sounds wrong. And if you're feeling peckish then don't go here...

So close! My one regret in Singapore is not getting a photo of the Talk Cock Sing Song bar. Sorry children, I'll try harder next time.

Any words Jen?

I think that just about covers it Col although you seem to have missed out the fact that its sweltering here and humid too (that's true Jen, I've been sweating like a pig since we left Oz). So I think that its pretty impressive we managed to see anything considering my new best friend is air conditioning. Even at night it's like a steam bath. Talking of night times, we went to the night safari which is basically going to the zoo at night when the animals are more active. Due to it being dark, and not wanting to startle the leopards, there are no photos of this but we did hear the lions having a good old growl.

Thats all from Singapore, catch ya later.

Crouching Jen hidden toilet roll, the dunny edition

2006-07-16T19:46:00.000+07:00

Long before I set my dainty size three and a half's in the land down under, I was more than aware of its spider problem. Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head. Whatever the size I happen to know for a fact that they are NOT more frightened of me than I of them. Anyway, what hadn't occured to me was how that would affect the toilet situation, down under, as it were. Luckily travellers are great ones for sharing tips. Which is how I came to spending my last two months in Australia gingerly lifting the toilet seat in search of red backs and other eight legged nasties. My chosen method of seat lifting was wad of toilet paper, although others I believe utilise a flip flop (thong in Aussie slang) which is then in prime position should swatting be required. Fortunately the only unnecessary spider I came across was in a jam jar on a trampoline, but thats another story.

For your benefit I tried out facilities in a variety of different settings to get a good feel for the place. Not a great deal to report. All bathroom facilities were thankfully free of wild life and contained the expected number of porcelain goods and industrial sized loo roll holders that refuse to dispense tissue without a fight. I did hear one interesting snippet of gossip about the toilets in the Crown Casino Melbourne - apparently they are a popular spot for suicides and they have a special back door so that bodies can be removed discretely. Which is thoughtful. They also don't have hooks on the back of the toilet doors to disuade people from hanging off them. I didn't witness any bodies in person but I can testify to the pleasantly scented soap.

Aussies are known for their forthright manner and direct approach. So it was fitting that it was in Australia that I came across the most unsubtly decorated toilet of the trip so far. It was at crocodile Harry's in Coober Pedy, middle of the outback and famous for Opal nuts and underground houses. Harry doesn't do subtle, and he also happens to have a sizeable collection of ladies underwear, mostly stapled to the ceiling.

Did I happen to mention that it was winter time in Oz right now? Well contrary to popular belief its not sweltering here all the time. It really isn't. In fact Melbourne in July is a bit like Reading in December. Down right chilly. Which is why I found it very odd that several of the Hostels have open plan facilities. In particular showers. Now I don't mean open plan as in showering in public, its more the fact that showers open straight to the outside world. I'm all for outdoor living and believe the concept of the 'outdoor room' in gardening terms is inspired, but we all know that shower cubicle doors don't actually enclose the area; there are massive gaps above and sometimes below. In Winter that means massive gaps to enable cold draughts to blow about your wet personage. Hello. Do they WANT backpackers to be smelly?

So on that ranting note I'll leave you. Actually I really didn't mean to rant. Despite being called dunnies I was quite pleased with the facilities all told. Perhaps I should add in something about the camping facilities on Fraser Island ( basically smelly but relatively clean), the fact that the ladies is often labelled 'Shielas' but the gents rarely 'Bruce', and there was also copious amounts of hot water to be had at both Mark and Trishy's house and Tyson and Jennas.

That brings us to the end of this country report. Thanks for reading another edition of Crouching Jen Hidden Toilet Roll from your host, Jen, lifting the lid on toilets world-wide.

Aussie Aussie Aussie Out Out Out

2006-07-11T09:56:00.000+07:00

Hello again. Sorry for the delay in updating the site. We've been a little busy - there's been lots of footie to watch (a subject we'll come back to), friends to visit and places to see.

A quick refresher shows me we last spoke while in Maroochydore after a visit to Australia Zoo. Well from there we headed up north to Rainbow Beach and booked a 4WD tour to Fraser Island. After a quick talk about the dangers of driving on sand and how to stay "dingo safe" we were thrown together with seven others and left to fend for ourselves for the next three days with only alcohol, a bodyboard and a copious supply of red meat to keep us alive [and halloumi for those who don't do meat]. So we swam in some surprisingly cold lakes, cleaned our teeth with sand, ate crisp sarnies, played in the staining mud, sang round camp fires and surfed the dunes, all while failing to spot a single dingo but making sure we had more fun than the other two groups that left the hostel with us. A final mad dash for the last ferry home by a certain crazy dutchman ended a memorable trip in style - you'd better meet the gang...

Left to right: Katryn, Katja (kneeling), Vicky, Adam, Jen (kneeling), Dave, Rich, Geert, Col.

After all that excitement it was time to relax a little, and that meant a comfy bed and home cooked food. Time to visit Tyson and Jenna (fron Fernie, check back if you've forgtten). The little darlings drove up to get us at Maroochydore, despite a pair of well earned hangovers, and we spent the next week in the comfort of suburban Brisbane. Just in case you have forgotten, this is Tyson doing a grand job on the barbie...

and Jenna being arty...

We spent the next week in style thanks to the loan of a car and a decent DVD selection. Tyson's dad was thoughtful enough to show us the local wildlife (my words, definitely not Jen's)...

We played touch footie in the park, watched the State of Origin match 2 with most of Tyson's family (Queensland destroyed NSW - go the Maroons) and took a trip down to Surfer's Paradise with Jenna while Tyson had to work.(NB for Calgary Dave - they live in the granny flat attached to Tyson's parents house and both work in the family business, which makes taking a sicky slightly trickier. Not that you'd do something like that of course.) And with a trip into the city to see a live footie game (Brisbane Broncos v. St. George Dragons) a good aussie time was had by all.

Cue today's rant, feel free to ignore the next paragraph, you won't be missing anything constructive...

Now about all this footie. As an englishman, footie is footie. That is to say football. But to a Queenslander, for some unknown reason, footie is actually rugby league, and to a Victorian, footie is aussie rules football. I have no idea what it means to anybody from Sydney, but what footie certainly doesn't mean is anything to do with "soccer". Now, seeing as Australia managed to qualify for the World Cup it was initially quite nice to be able to see plenty of games on the telly and go out and watch them at night on the big screens (they weren't so happy when Brasil beat them, a spectacle I got to watch in Federation Square - Melbourne, and it certainly wasn't as close as they'd like to think it was). However, it did mean that I had to put up with the aussie pundits telling me how everything the Socceroos did was historic - the historic first goal, the historic first win (it was only Japan! They're crap!) - and everything England did was disappointing. I don't need to go half way round the world to listen to the media complain about an english football team. And if one more stupid aussie screamed for a penalty when somebody was tackled in the centre circle or talked about how many goals each team had "kicked" I was going to scream. Thankfully, due to a last sixteen game with Italy and a classic last second dubious penalty all I could do was laugh. And laugh and laugh and then laugh some more. Right until we lost on penalties. Again. Oh well, I'll be cheering for Italy in the final. OK, rant over.

After sponging off Tyson and Jenna for a week, we decided to head for Melbourne to sponge off Mark and Trish (they were in Fernie as well). We all stayed at Mark's place and the first thing we did was visit the Good Food And Wine Show and sampled far too much of the local tipple. This is the four of us at the Crown Casino, the only casino in Melbourne. None of us are quite sure what we were doing here - we should probably have sampled a bit more of the local food...

While Trish worked during the week Mark chauffered us around the city to see the sights. So we looked around Melbourne - it's a big city like many others but there are some nice parks, there are some great coffee shops selling fantastic cakes in St. Kilda and Lygon Street especially, and the sun decided to put in an appearance while we strolled along St. Kilda beach which briefly made us forget how damn cold it was. They're having 30+ degrees in Germany and Melbourne is struggling for double figures. Here's a deceptive picture of the botanic gardens (sunny - yes, hot - you wish)...

We spent almost two weeks in Melbourne, including 3 days when we nipped out, hired a car and drove along the Great Ocean Road. While getting blown about by the wind and getting soaked by the rain we managed to see some lovely scenery like Apollo Bay (with rainbow)...

and some equally impressive rock formations like the Twelve Apostles (no you can't see all twelve)...

and we even saw a whale at Warrnambool.

Anyway, back in Melbourne we managed to track down Anton who has moved over here from the UK with girlfriend Lou to do a postdoc at the university. We spent a day at the Victoria Market and an evening annoying their neighbours while we continually proved our inability to master the didgeridoo. Despite the fact that Anton had skipped the country without organising an AGM for the Chemistry Cricket Team of which he was captain, and thus deny me the batting trophy that I'd blocked long and hard for all season, I still let him beat me at pool (in my defence, there was a mad bloke waiting to play the winner). I'll add a picture of Lou if they send me one - the one I have isn't too flattering, and I'll save you all from the video of the didgeridoo session...

It was time to move on. We took the bus to Adelaide and then took the next bus out again and headed to Coober Pedy to see the opal mines. Coober Pedy looks something like this. Most houses have an underground living area that everyone retreats to in the summer when the temperatures hit 40+ degrees for a month or two...

It was a lot warmer than Melbourne and Adelaide, despite the cloud, and underground living was hardly necessary. Still, when in Rome....

Radeka's hostel had dorm rooms underground and a TV for watching penalty defeats :-) and :-(

Took a tour to see the sights - the underground church, the underground potteries, lots of mine shafts, the Breakaways (more rocks, it's not all flat) and a really long fence...

That'll be the dog fence. Not to be confused with the rabbit fence in Western Australia, this one keeps the dogs (dingoes) out of the sheep stations on this side of the fence and runs for about 5300 km from Surfer's Paradise to somewhere down on the south coast. As educational as ever. And the real reason I wanted to come to Coober Pedy (because I'm not obsessed by opals like Jen is) was to play golf. I'd read about their course with no grass and wasn't to be disappointed...

You have to take your own piece of artificial turf with you (just visible below the sign) which you're allowed to use on the "fairways" but not in the "rough" - i.e. inside or outside the roughly scratched markings. And it's always a good idea to rake the greens before putting. I imagine Burghfield looks much the same after all the sun you've been having over there in blighty.

Our adventures down under are almost at an end, it was time to catch the bus up to Alice Springs to have a look at Ayer's Rock.

We met Gem and Ali during a stop for breakfast and eventually worked out that we'd previously met on the bus from Dougies to Cairns a month or so earlier. As we were all staying in the same hostel, and all agreed that the prices for tours were extortionate, we decided to hire a car between the four of us and headed off for an overnight trip...

Armed, as ever, with plenty of meat for the barbie and a box of goon (and vegetables for Jen) we set off early for the 450 km drive to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park (or Ayer's Rock and The Olgas in old money). First stop was The Olgas, which despite being generally ignored due to the hype that surrounds Ayer's Rock, are just as impressive - a collection of 30+ huge rocks surrounded by a whole load of nothing. From a distance they look like this...

and from closer they look like this...

Unfortunately, they're always going to be playing second fiddle to the one rock everybody has come to see. That is the world's second largest monolith (it's not even the biggest!), and sure enough with sunset approaching the viewing area filled with other like minded tourists all waiting for this....

To do that....

You can tell when you've seen everything there is to see because of the mass exodus of tour buses. We headed off for Yulanda (that's Ayer's Rock Resort to us tourists) and our genuine outback experience - sleeping under the stars in Swagbags. For some reason the other three weren't quite as excited by the idea as I was, possibly due to the promise of overnight temperatures barely above freezing. Luckily a full hostel meant I wouldn't be sleeping outside alone, and as it turned out they were remarkably warm and comfortable...

Another early morning to see this...

become that...

and time for the climb up, all except for Ali who was suffering with a bad ankle, before heading back to Alice (The Olgas picture above was taken from the top of Ayer's Rock). On the way home we got to see our one and only wild dingo, and in Alice we got to watch the deciding State of Origin game which ended in a late win for Queensland - I imagine there were a few hangovers the next day in Brisbane.

And that's pretty much that. We took The Ghan...

back to Adelaide where I'm currently writing this update. We fly to Sydney tomorrow morning and then on to Singapore tomorrow afternoon. Time to practice the little Malay and Thai we learnt from a lovely girl called Ling Sea in Maroochydore.

So thats all folks, I think Col has just about covered our Ozzie adventures despite his penchant for including sporting references every now and then. It should all get a bit more adventurous from now on as we stumble over the language barrier and enter south east asia.

See you in Singapore
xx

Travelling In A Fried Out Combi...

2006-06-06T10:09:00.000+07:00

...Or not. After all the driving in New Zealand we'll be flying anywhere that's more than 10 minutes walk away. Or at least taking the bus.

So we're in Oz, and have been for the last three weeks. Arrived in Sydney to some unexpectedly cool and cloudy weather - having wanted to come to Australia for years this was not what I'd been hoping for. We had a little look around anyway. They've got a bridge...

And a theatre thing...

That was a bit unexpected, looks different on the telly. They let you climb the bridge - one of the "must do" attractions they say. THEY also charge you $165 dollars for the privilege....or, you can pay $8 to go up one of the big concrete pylons, see a museum of how it was built, and get a similar view. $165 or $8?? Here's a view from the top of the bridge, see if you can guess the price...

That's better, more like what we were expecting. But look at that grey sky! Not good, time to go somewhere hotter. We went to Cairns.

Arrived in Carins at 10pm. It was warm - a good sign. Then it rained, and while it was nice and warm during the day, and extremely hot when the cloud cleared, there was altogether too much rain happening. Still, it was nice to be able to stay somewhere for more than a day at a time, so we did. Cairns is a quiet little town, with it's souvenir shops and bars you could be anywhere - except all the souvenir shops sell boomerangs and didgeridoos, and most of the other shops sell opals.

After a few days lazing around Cairns we headed up to Port Douglas and spent a week at Dougies. Dougies is a hostel/campground with a pool, big screen TV (where I saw Australia beat Greece at "soccer" - Greece being so bad they made the Aussies look good, when actually, they're a bit crap) and, more importantly, hammocks. With the weather improving all the time and some serious tanning to be done, this was my view for most of the week...

We took a cycle ride up to the Wildlife Sanctuary one morning for "Breakfast with the Birds"....

That's a Pied Heron trying to 'alf inch my bacon. A well aimed fork ensured he didn't try again. We ended up spending most of the day looking round - they had a huge wetlands enclosure with all sorts of water birds and parrots, a rainforest enclosure with even more parrots (including lorikeets, cockatoos and whatever) and too many other birds to mention, and finally a grasslands section with crocodiles and kangaroos. We spent most of our time feeding the wallabies and kangaroos. I'll let Jen demonstrate...

I haven't showed you the local beach yet, Four Mile Beach it's called...

Pretty good. And notice the blue sky. If you're gonna have hosepipe bans, you wouldn't mind so much if you had a little of that.

We also took a trip up to Cape Tribulation and the Daintree River. Cape Trib is where the rainforest meets the sea. Lots of mangrove trees and golden sandy beaches, and, while the Daintree River looks very inviting, you do have to watch out for these little fellas...

Christ on a bike it's a bloody crocodile!! Just a little female apparently, only about 3 metres long so that's OK, and as everybody keeps saying, it's the ones you can't see that are the most dangerous. Yeah right, and I suppose she's more scared of us than we are of her. Thankfully they'd recently killed a cow so everyone was feeling nice and relaxed - everyone except the cow anyway, which was slowly rotting on a nearby sand bank. Sometimes a poor sense of smell is a blessing.

And just before we head back to Cairns, here's a Kookaburra. He was having a little snack just above my hammock as I slowly toasted...

Actually, before we leave I wanted to show you a picture of Snapper Island which is up near the Daintree. Is it just me, or would Hippo Island be a more appropriate name...

Anyway, back in Cairns we did a little more sitting in the sun and then took a trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. The reef looks something like this from above...

It's a slightly better view from below the water, although you'll have to use your imagination (or your browser - you're at work remember, and you're clearly not very busy) in this case to fully appreciate the diversity of marine life that inhabit on the reef. Two somewhat graceless creatures that briefly called the reef home can be seen below...

And before we fly down to Brisbane I'd just like to introduce you to our latest celebrity friend. OK, so she's no Dave Gorman, but say hello to Karen. At the time the picture was taken, Karen was the latest evictee from the Aussie Big Brother house. I know, you deserve better...

So down to Brisbane we went (Tyson and Jenna - if you're reading this, we will be back. I'm still counting on those surf lessons and Jen is in bad need of a fully stocked kitchen and some cats to cuddle. If you don't have cats of your own, is there any chance you can borrow some from friends or relatives??). Brisbane was chillier than expected. Lovely and hot in the sun, but not permanent shorts and t-shirt weather like Cairns. It was Jen's birthday while we were in Brisbane so we treated ourselves to a nice big fry-up for breakfast and a trip to a local theatre in the evening (not as dull as I'd expected - anything with knob AND fart jokes can't be all bad). During the day we had us a little culture and followed a walking tour round the city. So here's a picture of a church taken from the City Hall bell tower....

and a walkway on the South Bank...

Having been spoilt by the Cairns sun we decided to head north again, although only as far as Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast, which is a short drive from Australia Zoo. We could hardly visit Oz without seeing if Steve Irwin was home. Unfortunatley we were out of luck, he was out on one of the other properties, but having spent a day there we feel like he's a personal friend. His picture is everywhere and on everything. It's a great zoo, everybody is very cheerful and enthusiastic, and the animals are treated more like pets. Jen got to stroke a koala...

and feed an elephant, and we went to the Crocoseum (there's crocs and you'll see 'um) to see the shows - snakes, birds, tigers and of course crocs...

And that pretty much brings you all up to date.

So what did I miss Jen????

I think that about covers it. Did we mention the ferry trip to a place called Manly, where Col got a 'manly haircut'? or the huge amount of fun you can have looking for beer tokens in a massive arena of foam - i've never BEEN so clean! Anyway, let's just take another look at that last picture, in the foreground is what looks like a massive scratching post. Thats because it IS a massive scratching post.

(If I'm allowed to pet koalas, elephants, a wombat, kangaroos and even a black headed python - surely I should be allowed a quick cuddle from a very big cat. The keeper guy got one. Not fair)

Thats all for now folks, we're off to Fraser Island tomorrow. Paradise apparently. See you there.

Before we leave...

2006-05-29T16:00:00.000+07:00

Just to finish off the New Zealand leg of the trip, which we actually finished a little over two weeks ago now...

We headed up to see Mt. Taranaki on the west coast and for once got lucky with the weather. The local saying is 'If you can see the mountain it's going to rain and if you can't see the mountain it's already raining'. So we were quite happy with a couple of sunny days and had a quick fix of culture with a look around the restored pinoeer village...

Mt. Taranaki, which is also known as Mt. Egmont, is a dormant (I think) volcano which is most impressive because there are no other mountains around, just one big one all by itself.

We then drove over to Tongariro with the hope of doing the famed Tongariro Crossing - one of the better one day walks available in New Zealand. However, for a second time we weren't so lucky with the weather here. We were told that they were expecting five days varying between snow, storms, freezing temperatures and a mix of all three. Good for the upcoming ski season we were informed, but less than ideal for walking. So instead we took a drive up to the ski slopes in the hope of actually seeing the elusive mountains which had been covered in cloud on our visit. They were covered in cloud. At least we get to lower the tone briefly with this picture...

You see, the thing with New Zealand is that a lot of the town names are Maori words. Wh is pronounced F,so Wha would be closer to Fu (Mark T - not sure why I thought of you while taking this picture, must have been the Bromwell High influence).

Anyhow, our last stop in New Zealand was the famous Waitomo glow worm caves...

We took the gentle walk and boat ride option (rather than the other more hectic wetter options). The picture above shows the sticky threads that the glow worms hang down to catch their food. These are no relation to the european glow worms, they're the larva stage of some gnat or other (Arachnothingy Luminosa perhaps? - look, it was three weeks ago, I can't be expected to remember everything) - you can just make out a few of them in the picture, they look like long thin shadows. The caves were very dark with lots of glowing glow worms, but you'll have to use your imagination here because we weren't allowed to take pictures.

So that was New Zealand. All 9250 km in 60 days. A brief summary - it's like a cross between Cornwall and Wales, only more impressive and without the Welsh.

And how can you spot a Kiwi (not the bird or the fruit)? The easiest way to tell the difference between an Aussie and a Kiwi - your Kiwi tends to pronounce the letter e as an i, and the letter i as a u. This was confirmed for me by an email sent to me by Mark T (an Aussie) concerning a Kiwi and a Gorilla. I'll save you from the joke, but we found it quite funny how Kiwis say iggs instead of eggs and dicks instead of decks (although not when listening to announcements on the ferry about the children's play area on deck 2), and the classic is fish and chips, pronounced fush and chups.

Enough of this, it's about time I wrote about our adventures in Oz...

Crouching Jen Hidden Toilet Roll - New Zealand

2006-05-25T14:48:00.000+07:00

I bet you're all dying to hear the toilet report from New Zealand. No? Well I don't blame you, it's a fully flushing civilised country with few ablutional drawbacks. Although I must say, camp site facilities have certainly come a long way from when I was a kid. Gone are the breeze block sheds filled with daddylonglegs, and in their place you can experience home from home comforts, luxury even. Ok there are still the odd breeze blocks to be found, but add a splash of pink paint, fresh flowers, cloths to wipe down the basin, a radio playing, they're almost quite pleasant.

On my travels, staying in a different camp site nearly every night for 8 weeks, you get to sample pretty much everything the country has to offer. So in my considered opinion I have awarded the Bronze prize to a little independent camp site in Marahau on the outskirts of Abel Tasman National Park. A bit of a wild card but hear me out - while the facilites are pretty basic they do have the biggest and best designed shower. Some places think that it's ok to put a shower in a normal toilet-sized cubicle. Think about it, imagine you're there, how much room is there in your average cubicle? Not much. Now add water, coming at you from high up on the wall, a shower head that cannot be redirected in any way, perhaps water that is a bit blinkin hot because you only managed to turn one tap on before it hit you in the face... Now work out where your clean dry clothes and towel are supposed to go. Quite. Lesson number one: always take a large plastic bag with you. Marahau had a dressing area with a bench, dry floor and many hooks and adjoining shower room with an angle poise fully directional massive shower head dispensing a veritable waterfall. Now thats much more like it.

The Silver medal may have to be shared between two camps. On the one hand the private spa bathroom of Okahune was pretty special, but you did have to pay 5 dollars (about 1.85) for the use of, whereas the spa jacuzzi in a room off the ladies loos in Wanaka was free and bubbly but I did have to share with a couple of others. Oooh decisions decisions.

Anyway, Gold has to go to Christchurch Top Ten Holiday Camp. All I can say is they must be rolling in it, I mean, just look at the sinks...

Their piece-de-resistance are actual bathrooms that look like normal bathrooms you might find in a home; toilet, sink and shower in one actual room (not cubicle), central heating, wall tiles and bathmats... Bliss.

By the way, as a dedicated hour-long bather, I didn't think I'd take to showering in flip flops as much as i have done. And while I would still love to sink into hot bubbles, candlelight and a good book, I have come to appreciate a damn good shower when I see one. Showers vary quite a lot, I didn't realise this before. As a person of minimum reach I can only assume that the placement of shower heads is often left to very tall people - when combined with low water pressure it's like being dripped on from a great height. It's not great. Neither was the limescaled sprinkler which barely emitted a fine light spray. That reminded me of a comedy sketch by Peter Kay, you remember the one - Dinner ladies shouting "it's spitting, it's spitting" while rushing the kids back indoors cos as we all know 'that fine rain soaks you right through'. Only it doesn't.

So. There's nothing quite like the feeling of masses of water gushing at you all warm and lovely. Rinsing away all the cares of the world. Incidentally also theres nothing like the feeling of stepping out of the shower to find you didn't bring a towel. Lesson number two. The hard way.

Jen
xx

New Zealand again, this time it's the bottom bit

2006-05-06T18:27:00.000+07:00

Morning all.

Right, where were we? Northland blah blah blah, smelly middle bit yadda yadda yadda, took a ferry and we're here in the South Island.

We landed at Picton and promptly left. Heading west to the National Parks we found ourselves in Blenheim, which is south, and considered the possibility of investing in a compass. In the absence of a compass we decided to follow the road signs and wouldn't you know it, a couple of days later we were paddling around the Abel Tasman National Park.

We had a guide for the first day, then a day on our own, and finally a day tramping up to our pick up point (Marahau to Anchorage to Onetahuti to Totaranui for those that have been). Now with all those days we're gonna need some nights to fill the gaps, which luckily or unluckily, depending on your personal comfort requirements, means a spot of camping. Our first night was spent here...

That's Anchorage. Blue skies, calm seas. Nice. We don't like to talk about the second night - let's just say it rained, hard, and puddles should be OUTSIDE the tent.

So anyway, we paddled about, saw some seals...

met lots of hungry sandflies and had a great time. Even so, it was great to come home to Vinnie (remember, he's our van) and a nice cuppa with Tim Tams.

Now, in case your wondering, Tim Tams are kinda like the Penguins we get in England, only according to most Aussies we met in Fernie it's possible to use them like a straw and suck up your drink through the soft bit in the middle. This, I discovered over a packet of minty ones, and believe me I researched this thoroughly, is utter rubbish. What actually happens is they melt into a chocolately biscuit goo, which generally ends up in the cup, and while this is in no means a bad thing, I still feel cheated.

Right, sorry, kinda got distracted there for a minute. Time to head for the West Coast.

Set sail for Westport via the Buller Gorge, and then up to Karamea which is pretty much the end of the road. It rained again. This became something of a feature of the South Island, and not just on the west coast as they'd have you believe - the Southern Alps are supposed to shield the east from the worst of the weather. Lies I tell you; We had the most impressive two days of rain in Dunedin which caused huge amounts of flooding and general chaos. Getting ahead of myself a bit, let's have a look at what's to see around the Karamea area. Well there's walks like this (Oparara Arch)...

To places like this (Moria Gate)...

Time to head for the Glaciers now. Drove down the west coast past Punakaikai, which is known for it's Pancake Rocks. Lots of Shags in New Zealand, these are Spotted Shags (without their breeding plummage - post-shag Shags I suppose you could say)...

Clearly Kiwis like their pancakes in the American style. I was expecting more of the rolled English style with lemon and sugar which would have been far more impressive. OK, time for the glaciers. Firstly the Franz Josef....

and then the Fox...

First impressions were how dirty they are, not like the sparkly white ones we see while skiing, but as this is the only place in the world where glaciers reach down to the rain forest then I guess we should cut them a little slack. As you get closer to the bottom of them, although still a surprising distance away, there are various fences telling you not to go any closer due to "extreme dangers". Seems that the dangers increase if your credit card isn't shown at the guides hut on the way in, so we ducked under a couple to get a better look...

A couple of facts about about the glaciers: Firstly, they're remarkably spritely and travel three times as fast as those in Europe (which would explain my blurry photos) due to the huge amounts of moisture blown in from the Tasman Sea, and secondly, they've been advancing for the past 20 years....not sure how that fits in with the whole global warming theory, but if somebody wants to explain feel free.

OK, enough with the glaciers. Can't afford to hang around there's lots more to see. Another picture...

Right. Looks like Jen's been adding pictures. It's a walk to somewhere - probably a waterfall, they usually are. Let's just admire the view. And while we're taking a little rest, how about a sunset, they do right good ones here...

That's over Lake Wanaka. We turned up on Easter weekend just in time to see the Warbirds Over Wanaka airshow. Lots of old and new planes flying around. You're supposed to pay lots of money to stand in a field and watch them - we're too tight for that so we paid nothing and parked in the field next door. And of course Easter means...

BEER!!!!!!!! Well no, but we were passing and it would've been rude not to have popped in. The picture doesn't actually do justice to the true size of the samples on offer. Those are three of the TINIEST beer glasses you will ever see. But as I was driving I didn't complain too loudly. Anyway, the true meaning of Easter...

CHOCOLATE!!!!!!!! LOOK AT THE SIZE OF IT!!!! One kilo of chocolate, and as it was hanging around a rather warm van for a couple of days before being eaten, we had to use spoons :-)

Between Wanaka and Queenstown is Arrowtown which we were told (I think by Sam) had a nice golf course. It had been a while since we played so we gave it a go...

Nice views and a good climb up to the elevated 9th tee. We'll not mention the scores, unfortunately with our lack of talent it's very much the taking part and not the winning. Next stop was Queenstown, which I'm sure some of you know is the extreme sports capital of New Zealand, if not the world. This basically means that you can spend lots and lots of money doing all sorts of daft stuff. At various times of the year they have heli-skiing, heli-biking, jet-boating, bungy jumping, bungy swinging, heli-bungy (I think. If not, why not), jet-swinging (I might be making these up but I don't think so), canyoning, white water rafting and all sorts of other stuff mainly involving big rubber bands, helicopters and jets. Unfortunately nobody could offer heli-jet-bungy-biking so we saved our money and bought cut-price easter eggs instead. We did walk up to the top of the gondola...

for the view of Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu, and then walk down again. Got to justify those easter eggs somehow.

Hi, sorry, got to interrupt you there Col. It seems you were about to move on without so much as a mention of any mushrooms whatsoever. Thank God I'm here. It's been a great month for mushrooms. In particular the hike up to the Gondola was fantastic - imagine walking through Willy Wonkas candy land - now replace the candy with mushrooms... you still with me? great isn't it. mushrooms of all shapes and sizes absolutely littered about all over the place. And as a special treat I have collated a few of my favourite 'shroom pics

The more observant of you will notice that one pic was taken at the golf course. While I'm here I might as well continue....

Moving on from Queenstown we followed one of those Brown signs to the Cliffden limestone Caves, expecting a jolly jaunt with a few well placed stalactites. We hadn't really anticipated a sign next to a hole in the ground, but seeing as a couple of wee children had just completed it alive we got our torches out and crawled in. Now we're not daft, we've been proper caving before, and Col might have mentioned it rains a bit in the South Island; So i don't know why half an hour into the crawling and squeezing I'm surprised to see our way blocked by caves filled with water. It's at this point we recall something else about the kids - they were wet. Anyway, it turns out that I really can reach that extra foot hold and put all my body weight onto just a couple of fingers...

Thanks Jen. Now where were we. Well let's just go to the south coast. It's windy down there. How windy you ask? Well, this was a calm day...

Nuff said. We stayed around Invercargill for a couple of days - it was, as promised, again by Sam, a bit of a dump. But the Bluff Oyster Festival was on so we went along. Lots of Oyster related activity - oyster opening competitions (technically called "shucking"), oyster eating competitions (technically called "gross"), various foods involving oysters. Not being particular fans of oysters we went for the deep fried versions, basically to hide the fact that they were indeed oysters. Not sure who's idea it was to go really....still, it passed the time. We considered going over to Stewart Island, but as we'd have to leave Vinnie somewhere, and the ferry was quite expensive for a day trip, we just took a photo instead and went to the museum.

The main reason to go to the museum was to see Tuatara. They're related to dinosaurs apparently. Meet Henry, according to the blurb he's probably the oldest, biggest and meanest of them all - 100 odd years old, a foot and a half long and very very mean.

However, they don't do much. Imagine that the picture above is a real time video. If you want, imagine it's a time lapse video of a year in the life of a damn Tuatara. Either way, they're pretty damn lazy. Time to leave Invercargill I think. As we'd been to the top of the North Island, it only seemed right to go to the bottom of the South Island. Not much there, just a sign. And wind of course...

They call this area The Catlins - lots of waterfalls and walks and unpaved roads and stuff. Like this waterfall at Purakaunui...

What they also had was penguins. Yellow-eyed penguins in fact which are quite rare, but after sitting in a hide for a bit they eventually came waddling up the beach to nest in the bushes just below us. No doubt Jen will add something more when she reads this, but for now I'll just leave you with the photo. You'll have to excuse the quality - the camera hasn't got much of a zoom so I had to use the binoculars as well....

From this point on it rained. Then it rained some more. And then it rained again. It was quite impressive just how much rain there was and it meant we spent a lot of time sitting around reading (in Dunedin that is, it's just round the corner from the south coast). Except for when we went to the albatross centre and I spent far too long standing in torrential rain trying to spot the damn things. If we weren't so tight we would have paid for the guided tour of the colony, but where's the fun in that.

After two days the rain stopped and we headed back over to Milford Sound - we'd almost gone after leaving Queenstown, but having aborted the drive cos we were likely to run out of diesel and then found out the Underwater Observatory was closed due to too much freshwater (I'll explain in a bit) we'd decided to leave it for a few days. Let's just look at a few piccies...

Pretty good. It's what you'd call a fiord, being a glacier carved valley that's flooded with water. Those steep sided walls are similar below the water. So it's deep but surprisingly calm because of the narrow entrance. As for the observatory, I'll try to explain. It seems that due to the very heavy rainfall in the region and the narrow and shallow entrance to the sound, there is a permanent layer of freshwater on top of the sea water; And because of all the surrounding vegetation there is a very high tannin concentration in the freshwater, which means it's dark in colour. The dark freshwater filters out UV light so that a deep sea environment is duplicated at surprisingly shallow depths - due mainly to the lack of algae I think. Anyway, they've built this underwater observatory - as Jen puts it, it's like a big goldfish bowl with people in it (they've got a website, have a look for yourself)...

Just a couple more photos...

That one was Mitre Peak. Almost forgot the Keas - they are mountain parrots and hang around a car park on the way to the Milford Sound. Playful and inquisitive apparently, which means they'll peck your toes and pull bits off your car...

It's Jen again now... Luckily the Keas left Vinnie alone. He's been through it a bit lately, we've driven him on the beach, and for about 8000km so far, thats a long way by anyone's standards. We almost drove him up the steepest hill in the world, but chickened out after watching a car completely fail to get more than half way and have to back down again, head hung in shame. We did make him drive towards the tallest mountain in New Zealand - Mount Cook - here it is

And then he took us to what seemed like the worlds smallest cutest church - the Church of the Good Shephard.

Are you all getting a bit sick of listening to what a great time we're having; how we spent thursday afternoon lounging in the natural hot spring in Hamner...while you were, what were you doing again? :-) OK OK, enough for now.

We're going to leave the South Island now and pop back on the InterIsland Ferry to the North Island again. Got a few glow worms to visit in Waitomo and do some tramping along rather pretty moutains then it's time to leave. Roll end credits....

Don't know where we're going, have no way of knowing
Driving on the road to nowhere
Shirking for a living, meeting men and women
Riding on the road to nowhere
And we don't take shit from anyone
the only thing we're gonna do is have some fun
We're Jen and Colin
(Colin and Jen)
And we like to have a cuppa now and then.

p.s. that will mean a whole lot more to those who recognise the theme tune to british sit com max n paddy
p.p.s. See you in Australia.

The land of kiwis, kiwis and kiwis!!

2006-04-26T07:01:00.000+07:00

So we've finally made it to New Zealand, arriving in Auckland a day and a half after leaving Hawaii, due to the whole dateline malarky.

The first thing we did was hire ourselves a little campervan. Everybody meet Vinnie (as in Vincent Van Go!!)...

We have two stoves, a microwave, running water, a fridge, heated towel rail, dvd/tv, toaster, cuddly toy...

After looking round Auckland for a day (it's a city) we decided to head north to the imaginatively named "Northland". Worked our way up the east coast. Stopped at Waiwera Thermal Resort (hot pools, naturally) and Goat Island Marine Reserve (snorkelling, big fish, much colder than Hawaii). Took a walk to the Whangarei Falls (5 mins)...

and back (about 1 1/2 hours...took a wrong turn somewhere) and ended up, via some lovely sunny beaches, at the Bay of Islands. We hired some kayaks and did a bit of paddling around Paihia, stopping off at our own private beach...

before taking a proper tour on the Mack Attack...

which was somewhat faster than our efforts on the kayaks.

(Jen's go now) You can't really tell from the picture above but apparently this big rock is not actually part of any landmass. It was thrown into the sea by a volcano and is now resting on the sand. And it makes a nice tunnel.

There is so much to do here that our first couple of weeks were spent in a frenzy of doing doing doing; we hardly knew which way to turn next...

[Cape Reinga - the very northern-most point of New Zealand]

And at times it seemed like an uphill struggle...

[Te Paki - Giant Sand Dunes]

But we soon fell into a routine of trundling along the well marked coastal road of the North Island, lunch by a beach, see this do that, and settle down in vinnie wherever we happen to be for the night. Sights along the way included some massive Kaori trees, far too big to hug, and actually too big to take a photo of an entire one - so heres the lower middle bit of the biggest one of all

[Tane Mahuta]

Here's a little bay we stopped at to have lunch, pretty typical; blue skies, sea-shells on the shore line, gentle lapping waves, and usually pretty much to ourselves...

Somewhere around the Coromandel we found the Driving Creek Railway - a narrow gauge mini railway that some guy built himself to bring clay from up the hill down to his pottery. He extended it and opened it to the public when he realised too many people were stopping by out of curiosity. As well as to clay pits it now goes to a lookout tower from which you can get a magnificent view of the rolling countryside. The carriages were really cute and the pottery is still in full swing. Now let's see some of the rolling countryside.

All these hills and no snow... no snow? thats no reason not to hire sledges anyway!

Sledging down sand dunes is one helluvalot HOTTER than the snowy version. We were quite glad of the nearby sea to cool our bright red burning feet at the end :-)

After a week or two of this we went inland to Rotorua which smelled strongly of rotten eggs. The whole town did. In fact I think the whole surrounding region did. This had the odd effect of making Col want to eat egg sarnies for lunch, which just goes to show how his sense of smell is quite unique.

The sulphurous eggy aroma is due to the thermal volcanic activity of the region. Hot springs and mud pools everywhere, clouds of steam rising from holes in the ground, alongside roads, in fields, pretty much anywhere it felt like escaping. All pretty impressive. We tried to get a picture of a mud pool farting for you to share ...

As we were leaving Rotorua we struck lucky and found Kerosene Creek. A gorgeous place - you have to visit if you ever come to New Zealand. It's a very pretty stream running through woodland and is the temperature of bathwater. A small waterfall flows into a natural stone pool and its literally just like taking a huge outdoor bath with the waterfall acting as giant mixer taps. Picture sunlight filtering through trees, sound of running water, and NO SMELL. Perfect. This is me testing the water....

After all that lounging about it was time for a bit of History. We went to Napier. Napier is on the East Coast and was pretty much destroyed by an earthquake in 1931 at 10.47am (can't remember the date, but the time for some reason stuck in my mind). They had to rebuild a whole town at once. Think back to the 30's, what was big then? Yep thats right, its now a whole town made entirely of Art Deco buildings. Sunbursts, ziggarats, speed lines, chevrons, pastel colours the lot. It's like stepping into a giant museum, only with modern intrusions.

We took the guided walking tour, it was excellent and we got a cuppa tea at the end too, which is always nice.

Napier is in a region called Hawkes Bay which is known for its produce and wine. The weather was a touch rainy so we thought we'd skip the self cycle wine tour and do the Foodie tour instead. Following the leaflet we stopped at all the local producers and ate or drank our way round the region. YUM. And get this, there was a Mushroom Farm on the list! Oh my cup overflowed with joy, especially when the manager agreed to give us a tour behind scenes even though it wasn't really allowed. We even got a mushroom each to keep as a souvenir.

I was that excited I could have burst.I'm sure the manager thought I was off my trolley.

After that things got a little Crazy...

...Well it was Cols Birthday after all, I had to let him win...

Somewhere along the way we also fit in a trip to an aquarium, a glass floored tower (Dave and Claire - yes i did the usual show of being not very brave), plenty of walks through forests, waterfalls, a bit of twitching, a model Maori village where we saw traditional dancing and flax weaving and massive war canoes, and places with names we couldn't pronounce...

All in all, this traveling has made me a pretty mean map reader. Just think, a year ago I didn't even know places like Whatuwhiwhi and Fernie existed, let along be able to place them on a map. Erm, hold on a second...Who moved Fernie to America while I wasn't looking???

[map of the world found in a Holiday park kitchen, note the dashed line marking the border between Canada and the USA]

All in all the North Island proved to be a winner. So we left it and took a ferry to the South Island to see how that fared, but that's another blog. See you all in the South Island soon.

Ski Movie!!!

2006-04-13T08:17:00.000+07:00

We've had a few quiet evenings and sort of made a short movie from our Fernie photos and videos. You'll find it here...

http://mediamax.streamload.com/JenColVideo/Hosted/Fernie%20Movie.wmv

It's about 12 megs and you'll need sound to appreciate the full effect of our artistic talents.

Enjoy!!!!

Jen and Col.

(And leave comments)

Hawaii - Aloha Ukulele Heaven

2006-03-30T12:40:00.000+07:00

We were a bit nervous about going to Hawaii. Reports on the TV in Vegas had shown heavy rain and flooding, but nothing was mentioned at the airport, and it was too late to change plans anyway. So after a stop-over in L.A. (disappointing not to see the Hollywood sign) we landed in Honolulu on March 7th to blue skies and temperatures in the mid 20s.

Picked a hostel that sounded good - the Beachside Hostel - and soon found ourselves living a nice short walk from here...

that'll be Waikiki Beach, as modelled by Jen (remember that blue sky, you won't be seeing much more of it). And we sat around a bit to watch the sun go down...

what's known as a "Romantic Moment" apparently. What would I know.

We mentioned the flooding and whatever to a guy in the hostel, who was quite surprised to hear about it, and it was decided that the North Shore must be responsible. It seems that areas of the island have very different weather, despite the small size of the place.

Hung around Waikiki for a couple of days - saw some Hula dancing at the recreation ground and wandered round the shops - then decided to hire a car and see the rest of the island. We ended up with a little Suzuki jeep who's picture doesn't deserve to grace the same blog as our lovely Mustang from Vegas. It was barely functional, there was no back to the soft-top so we had to padlock our backpacks to the door frames every time we left it. And, of course, it started to rain. And the further north we went, the more it rained, and the more leaks we discovered. Still, it was OUR barely functional leaking pile of rust.

OK, so we did a little sight-seeing. Went to Hanauma Bay, which has very good snorkelling, although we didn't find out (yet) because it was a little windy and a little cold and had started to rain a bit. Saw a blow hole - big seas + small hole = spouty water - and lots of nice beaches which would have been that little bit more appealing if it wasn't for the rain. And by the time we got up to the north shore it was varying between heavy wind, and heavy wind with heavy rain...

Stayed at the Plantation Village Backpackers in Waimea - nice little cabin with three small dorm rooms. By now the rain was quite impressive and we spent the evening sat around talking with the other people there. Next morning, surprise surprise, it was still raining. Most people in the cabin seemed to be leaving today and the sensible thing appeared to be to head south where there might be less rain, so that's what we did, and after trying a few different places to stay we ended up back at the Beachfront Hostel in a much drier Waikiki. And the first person we met in our new room was Kris (from Austria), who we'd just said goodbye to at the Plantation Village.

And I've just remembered about the Ukuleles. They're everywhere. I'd forgotten when I bought mine that Hawaii was the place for Ukuleles and it certainly was. Every souvenir shop sells them, even cheaper ones than mine, but there were also some specialist shops where you can spend over $1500 on particularly good models. I even saw an electric uke with no headstock (kinda like a Steinberg guitar) and a body like a travel guitar. As it happened, I bought a solid case and a sticker and left it at that. Oh, and a book to learn some hawaiian tunes, and spent the early mornings sat on the balcony merrily strumming away.

We'd decided not to visit another island, mainly due to cost and also because I'd been assured there'd be other chances to see volcanoes, so we spent the rest of our time staying at the hostel in Waikiki. We drove up to Hanauma Bay again when the weather was better and snorkelled in the reef there. It's a nature reserve and the reef, which acts as a barrier to provide calm water, is teeming with fish. They also limit the number of people allowed in so it never gets too crowded...

And that was about it. We did some more lazing about on the beach and playing in the sea...

Rachel (Cornwall), Me, Ken (Cornwall), Jen, Huan (San Francisco), Morgan (Vancouver)

and managed to burn a little despite the cloud.

And a quick educational note: It's called Hawai'i to the locals. The ' is an okina, which is a gutteral stop (like the middle of "uh-oh", go on, try it) and like the 13th letter of their alphabet. For those interested the other 12 letters are a, e, i, o, u, h, k, l, m, n, p and w. The smallest alphabet in the world! See, you're learning while you're skiving.

Anything to add Jen???

Always! You miss out loads of stuff. We didn't see Magnum PI but we did pass his house and we actually saw a sea turtle in Hanauma bay. That was exciting. Plus we managed to get a bus that took us on a magical mystery tour instead of the supermarket (remember seattle anyone?) but we did get lei'd, so thats a bonus.

We watched a street parade with lots of hula dancing and people from Japan, a dragon, more hula dancing, variations of the stick dance and enough hula dancing to shake a stick at, literally - we got really flat bottoms because every group stopped and showed you their act, which was kind, but it lasted over 4 1/2 hours!

The cocktails are rather nice but waikiki is very very touristy and every third store is an ABC shop (a franchised tat shop - all with the same products but different prices which is odd). The fire engines in Hawaii are yellow. If you wear a flower above the right ear it means you are available.

Ok i think thats enough of the minutae of our lives.
Time to move on. See you all in New Zealand. For now, Aloha.

Viva Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley

2006-03-26T12:27:00.000+07:00

Welcome to the opportunity to gamble as soon as you step off the plane. We must have arrived in Las Vegas!

It's everything cheeesy you ever hoped for and just as you'd imagine. The bling is everywhere and at all times of the day or night; flashing lights, blip ding whooooh of gaming machines, colourful shiny surfaces, the ka-ching! noise of computer simulated jackpot wins, the shuffle of cards, the roar of the crowd and of course outrageously large Americans. We got a bargain priced luxury hotel room right in the centre of the Strip and soon got into the swing of things... Here's me enjoying a few goes at the penny slots accompanied by our new favourite thing - Complimentary drinks :-)

But its not all drinking and gambling. There's tonnes of stuff to see and free shows too. We saw a Volcano erupt, an impressive water fountain display to music, and a full on pirate ship battle with singing and swash buckling. All in one evening. Not bad eh? You can see the pirate's sword moving in this pic, that was just before all the guys stripped to the waist and dived into the water. Nice. I suppose that was to balance out the fact that all the lady pirates seemed to be dressed in their underwear...

During the day we walked for miles because each casino is massive. MASSIVE. Past the statue of Liberty, a disneyesque castle, the bridge of sighs and the Eiffel Tower and Arc du Triumphe (which gave me a bit of a shock - it was almost like walking to the office!).

Now did you notice the blue sky in that pic? It was lovely and warm in Vegas. I barely needed a cardi. In fact it was a good 50 degrees warmer than it had been only 2 weeks ago (of course we were in Fernie then) which has got to be a shock to anyones system. Not to worry, I soon discovered a number of mushrooms, which made me feel quite at home.

So after a few days of wandering about drinking free booze and seeing who could get the biggest win from a dollar, we decided to hit the road. Being cooped up in a small town for three months had taken its toll. So, we decided to drive nearly 1000 miles through the desert, to see Monument Valley. In a Mustang. With the top down.

There's Col. Doesn't he look grand.
A real road trip. Motel Rooms, singing Hotel California at the top of my lungs. ahh. Now the thing about deserts is that they are fairly empty. Which means no real need to put any curves in the roads. for miles. And miles. Just straight, empty road, and the occasional passing car. And the side effect of driving for miles and miles down an empty road with the top down, is nice big hair...Here's Cols hair in action before it hit the big time...

So Monument Valley. It's all it's cracked up to be. The stacks are too big to comprehend and we took a good many photo's. Here's the edited highlights.

and of course 'The Mittens', which look like giant mittens, as demonstrated by our model.

So What next? Well on our way to Monument Valley (which is 2 states away from las Vegas) we dropped in on the Grand Canyon and watched the sunset over it, as you do, and rather lovely that was too. But not content with the view from the top we decided to go one better and catch the view over the Canyon. So we nipped back to Vegas and caught a Helicopter ride.

Over Las Vegas and all its shiny things, over the Hoover Dam...

That white strip by the shore line is caused by the water level dropping due to outrageous water requirements in the ever growing Las Vegas. Apparently.
And over the Grand Canyon. Wheeeeeeee. Swooop. Imagine the theme tune to 'Apocalypse Now' playing (In fact we didn't have to imagine it. It was playing over those rather tasteful headphones we were wearing). And then into the Grand Canyon, Where we landed and had a champagne lunch. Yes i know we're bumming it round the world but a girl has to have standards sometimes.

So. That brings us to the close of this little adventure. Another 2 stickers to add to the Uke and then it's off to the South Pacific to Hawaii.
'til then, !kerching!

Farewell Canada ('til next time)

2006-03-25T07:55:00.000+07:00

Enough with the skiing already!!!

Time to quit while we're ahead, or rather still in one piece. Well two pieces I suppose, one each. Anyhow, enough, places to be and things to see.

We spent the final month in Fernie living with Jim and Liza and little Remi (all pictured below), also Assaf and Tara. Larry turned up for the last week or so and should be currently enjoying our old room. And a merry time was had, what with group dinners and new people to ski with.

Final tallies were....

75 days for Col, and about 10 less for Jen

Injuries included....

Jen's weird finger thing - it kinda pops out when she's asleep.

Jen's knees - they need to spend some time on a beach. This is part of the reason for Jen's absences from the slopes, that and her inherent laziness (her words, not mine).

Col's thumb - to match the one I hurt last year, I skied into a tree. I now know what it feels like to be female - I have no grip strength and am unable to open jars.

Col's middle finger, left hand - Jen shut it in a car door. She laughed when she did it and she laughed as I wrote this.

Col's middle finger again - fell down stairs (while sober) and bent the top back. It hurt. A lot.

Anyway, been there, done that. Time to head for Calgary and adventures new - minus all our skiing gear mind, need an excuse to come back next year. Somebody chalk it up in the LPT diary. So, we got a lift with Mark, and Sam came too. Went to the Olympic Centre with Mark to watch him do his bobsled run and met up there with Dave (check back to the Inca Trail if you don't remember Dave) one of our hosts for the next couple of days.

Spent the evening with Dave, Claire (our other host, Inca Trail again) and Sam at the Calgary Tower trying to persuade Jen to stand on the glass floor, and then at Montana's where I had the "All You Can Eat" Ribs - or "You Can All Eat" Ribs as it turned out, except for Jen of course who had side orders.

The next day Dave chauffered Jen, Sam and me around the wondrous sites of Calgary. It felt just like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, one adventure after another, there was the Post Office (?), the mall, the indoor driving range (piccy below), Canadian Tire (you can buy guns!!!), the Ship and Anchor (where Claire joined the fun) , and finally canadian five-pin bowling - did the Brits beat the locals? I think they did.

So thanks to Dave and Claire for putting us up for a couple of nights, and for getting us to the airport on time. Here's a picture of Claire looking a lot cleaner than in Peru - everybody say hello (and if somebody wants to remind us of the cat's name that would be great).

Cheers Dave - say hello to Auby the giant cat (it's pronounced Obi).

So that was Canada. It's all good.

Crouching Jen, Hidden Toilet Roll - North America

2006-03-01T00:26:00.000+07:00

What a joy it has been to visit the toilets of North America. The white porcelain, the abundance of soft toilet paper and the choise of two flush options have all combined to make it a pleasant experience. Some have even featured gimmicks to make the visit more hygenic, I've frequently seen aniseptic dispensers so that you can wipe down the seat for that just cleaned feel, or disposable paper seat covers so that you never need come into contact with anything; both options making the term 'it's much less bovver with a hover' totally redundant.

But as we all know, not all Loo's are born equal. Theres always going to be a winner and in this case the prize goes to the laidies loo at 'The edge of the world' board shop and internet cafe in Fernie B.C. This particular delight features bubble wrapped walls, feathers and fairy lights and all sorts of fancy decoration. You might have to turn your head to the left to see the picture properly.

Here, every available surface has been utilised to its full and frantic potential. Honestly you could spend a good half an hour in there trying to work out if that is the arm of a tiny tears doll glued to the wall above the tissue dispenser...

Other good features in ski resorts include a nice big basket to put yout helmet, gloves etc in. Handy. Plus plently of paper tissues for the blowing nose routine which follows coming in somewhere warm after the well below freezing temperatures outside.

In order to provide a balanced account i do have to point out some of the not so great features too. Namely the stalls. What is it with America and the click together stall design? Ordinarily selecting a stall and closing the door ensures you are safely enclosed in a small room on your own to get on with things with privacy. But not here, the door and walls are connected using bulky spaced out hinges which ensure that there is a big gap. sometimes a very big gap. On one occasion in Seattle I was curious to see just how big the gap was and discovered i could fit a paper back book through it - plus my hand. And in the New york HI hostel the gaps on the shower cubicles are big enough for one girl to pass the shampoo bottle to the girl in the next stall, and for me to be able to witness this exchange from 3 stalls down. Hmmmn.

Aaaanyway, the prize for most curiously placed toilet roll dispenser goes without a doubt to the ladies loo in a pub (the Ship and Anchor) in Calgary.

And now a quick note about the bathrooms in private residences we have encountered. 802a 6th Avenue Fernie boasts lashings of hot water and an extremely clean bathroom at all times of the day, thanks to Shirley who cleans as good as my mum, and thats saying something. 1102 5th Avenue Fernie boasts a bathroom big enough to fit my entire house in it. And Honorable Mention goes to Claire and David McClean in Calgary, for the fluffiest thickest softest towels and of course the Aveda shampoo, thanks for the use of!

So that brings this report to a close, i'll sum up with a phrase often heard in Canada " It's all good".

Quick note for the boys - the Royal in Fernie has head rests in the urinals. Be sure to try them if you're in town, just don't fall asleep.

Fernie - 62 and counting

2006-02-13T03:26:00.000+07:00

Right, time to finish our tour of the mountain.

Just a couple of things to mention first. Monday was Waitangi Day, so we let the Kiwis win a game of cricket against an "Aussie" side with some Brits and Canucks making up the numbers. Cricket and beer was enjoyed by all, with a kicker providing a sideshow of skiing and snowboarding tricks of varying degrees of success.

The Prize

The Action

and The Entertainment

The other big news is that we've now had 4 blue sky days in a row. No new snow for a week isn't a problem when the base is over 3 metres and everything is now open - including hiking up to the head wall and up Polar Peak - but we'd quite like something softer to ski on now thanks.

I noticed from the last entry that the pictures were a bit small. You should be able to click on them and see bigger versions now. OK, lets get back to that hill.

We'd just seen the traverse under the Knot Chutes which can take you into the Currie Bowl, but you can just drop back into the Timber Bowl and get back to the White Pass Chair for another circuit. That means more lovely trees down Surprize, this is looking back at the top of the Timber Chair...

Here's a picture of the top of the Currie Bowl that Jen took. You can traverse along the ridge and either drop down into Currie on runs like Tom's Run or Barracuda, or go down the Saddles to the Lizard Bowl. You can also get to the three runs that look straight down at the base - Stag Leap, Sky Dive and Decline. Check those trail maps if you're getting lost.

Currie Bowl - drop over ridge for Lizard Bowl, traverse right for Sky Dive.

Sky Dive in the middle, taken from the base.

This is what the weather is usually like. A typical view near the top of the White Pass Chair would be...

Over in the Lizard Bowl there are some nice groomed pistes for those that like that kind of thing. Here's the Bear which unsurprisingly starts from the top of the Great Bear Chair...

Viewers, especially skiers amongst you, will notice the line of boarders sat RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAMN PISTE!!! (Shakes head in a resigned manner). Which brings me to a little aside.

We've been contemplating the collective noun for boarders. Suggestions have been:

An annoyance of snowboarders

An inconvenience of snowboarders

An inconsideration of snowboarders (my personal favourite)

Feel free to add suggestions. Just remember (especially any snowboarders that may have slipped through security) who controls the editing rights around here.

OK, how about a view of the Lizard Bowl from town since it's sunny. This is the classic postcard view...

Here's a closer view of the Lizard Bowl taken from the Bear Chair - the groomed run below the little sunny peak is proably Cascade...

Almost done now I think. Perhaps a quick look at the Cedar Bowl - the chair at the top right is the Great Bear, this is taken from the far side, somewhere on the Snake Ridge...

One more of Currie Bowl in the sun - this is from the traverse, somewhere near the Corner Pocket, looking back towards the Timber Bowl. The Knot Chutes are on the other side of the ridge...

And here's a silly one of Jen as she's not here to stop me putting it on...

And finally some trees with snow on them...

So that's what we've been skiing all this time. There's great tree skiing, big ol' powder fields, steep, deep, whatever you want. When it gets busy you sometimes have to queue at the lifts for a couple of minutes and if it snows too much they close Currie and bits of Cedar and Lizard - and it's always good to watch the carnage when Currie Bowl first opens after a big dump of snow.

Thanks for reading, remember to leave comments, and hello to everyone at Hichrom - Gosia said they've been printing off a copy of each update, so I'll try to keep things clean...ish.

Later.

Fernie - 50 not out

2006-02-09T10:58:00.000+07:00

To celebrate 50 days of skiing at Fernie (last Saturday) I thought I'd show you all what a great mountain there is here.

(Any LPTers out there can probably imagine the victory dance I'm about to perform and the smug grin I'll be wearing while doing it - gently though, it was ANOTHER long day at the hill.)

Lets start with the official trail map courtesy of skifernie.com - you may want to have a look here http://www.skifernie.com/themountain/trails.asp for a snazzy interactive version.

If I'm not mistaken that's five bowls of fun - Siberia, Timber, Currie, Lizard and Cedar. And if you want to go out of bounds there's also Fish Bowl on the far side of Cedar.

The day usually starts with a walk down to the hitching spot, on the highway just over the bridge. There's a good view of the hill from there - at least when there isn't any cloud, which is pretty rare in these parts. We've had one perfectly clear day since we arrived in early december, and maybe 4 days that could be described as sunny. And the reason people hitch to the hill is because there's no free shuttle and it's too far to walk.

Right to left - Fish, Cedar, Lizard and you can just see a bit of Currie Bowl.

So, the daily grind begins...

From the base you've got two main options - up the Timber Express and onto the White Pass Chair to access the Siberia, Timber and Currie bowls, or up the Elk Chair heading for the Boomerang or Great Bear Chairs and into the Lizard or Cedar bowls.

That's the Timber Chair in the top right. Looks like this was taken from the White Pass Chair around the bottom of Quite Right. The trees on the other side of Timber Chair are Big Bang and the Mitchy Chutes and the busy (by Fernie standards) trail is 100% taking everybody down to White Pass.

If we spin around in the chair we get a good view of the Knot Chutes - there's a traverse running through the middle of them that ranges from easy to embarassing depending on snow conditions. The embarassing part is due to everybody on the lift getting a perfect view when things go wrong.

There's also a lower traverse below the chutes and both of them give an alternative way into the Currie bowl. Either down here, which might be Gotta Go but I'm not too sure...

or down the Anaconda Glades which almost always have great snow and are as steep as you'll ever want in places. There's also a good view of town from the top...

Anyway, out of time for now, I'll have to finish this tomorrow (and Bromwell High is on).

Fernie - A quaint little drinking town with a ski problem

2006-01-19T09:49:00.000+07:00

OK, time to get this story up to date. We've been in Fernie for a month and a bit now - a total of 35 days on the hill (32 for Her Laziness) and another 6 each in Lake Louise means that we've skied six or seven holidays worth already. But lets recap on the events since we left Lake Louise.

We arrived via Banff in the early hours of December 9th (the Greyhound again) and headed straight to the Raging Elk Hostel for some much needed sleep. The hostel, run by Joe and Sadie, has much to recommend it, not least the pool table, free pancake breakfast and huge TV. The ski season didn't start until the 10th so we spent the day looking round the town and doing some shopping. Not knowing anything about Fernie before we arrived, we were pleasently surprised to see that it in no way resembled Lake Louise - they've got supermarkets, pubs, a cinema and ski shops galore here.

Time for a picture - here's a view of the ski hill from the hostel. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much sun here so this is about as good a view as you get from town.

Opening day was all a bit hectic. First lift was at 9.00 and we were in the queue when the resort opened for the season. Things did calm down after the initial rush however - and we soon got used to big open empty pistes - the next picture was a typical piste... Jen suggests we should all "look at the lovely corduroy"( a reference to the groomed piste below. That's certainly not why I invested in fat skis. Don't worry though, I soon got her into the steeper and deeper stuff - she foolishly follows where I go, and I don't always tell her where that's going to be :-)

So the skiing is good and the company is good (mostly boarders and not skiers, but still nice people). It's easy to meet people because the town is pretty small, in fact it's hard to walk the 4 blocks to the supermarket without bumping into someone you know . Lets see some of the people we've met...

Back Row: Claire (Sydney, she's a Snowboarder For Christ), Me, Jenna and Tyson (Brisbane) Front Row: Matt and Hugh (Toronto), Kurt (Calgary) and Steve (somewhere in Oz, he hurt his back but is back boarding again).

Life in Fernie is party party party. It's just one excuse to celebrate after another. The first big official occassion was the Mogul Smoker - December 17th. Traditionally skis are sacrificed to the snow gods on a bonfire, now it's just an excuse to have a big party with a big bonfire. And a big party it was - they bused over 500 happy revellers in and bused us back home again. With 14 kegs, various DJs and bands, 3 fire pits and the famous Mogul Smoker cocktail (don't remember exactly what was in it but it involved hot chocolate and rum, yum) - it was probably the coolest party we'd all been too (another reference to the temp rather than the local death metal band). It was about the coldest night ever, somewhere around -30 C, plus it was the first time we'd experienced self cooling beer, the top froze over if you didn't drink it quickly enough...

And here we are... your hosts with Tyson, Jenna and a welcome big fire. (Probably about 50 C colder than the Aussies are used to at this time of year.)

It being the done thing to share houses round here, we found a room in a house, and moved out of the Hostel a couple of days after the Mogul Smoker (we could have moved in before but it took a day to recover from the excesses of the night, plus it seemed like a good idea if we kept our embarassments confined to the hostel...)

Home Sweet Home

That's our window, top right, 802A 8th Street and 6th Avenue, you can see the hostel in the background on the left. We share the place with Shirley (Canadian, she looks after the place), Sam (from near Manchester - supports Everton which makes me smile), Mark and Trish (Melbourne) and Barb (local, runs a massage and general pampering business at the hill), plus Mickey the dog and the two cats, Goolie and Jack. Trish left this morning for home via Vancouver and Sydney, and we all miss her.

Here's Col with Sam ( left) and Mark (right).

So life is a whirlwind of skiing, more skiing and visits to the pub - I'll just interrupt myself here to give you the low down on drinking in Fernie. The best places seem to be The Pub, The Central and The Royal. There tends to be a different special night at a different bar most nights i.e. Mondays in the Pub for cheap jugs, Tuesdays are cheap wings in the Pub and Jam night in the Central, etc. The usual is a jug of Kokanee for anything up to $14. Kokanee is a bit special because no matter how much I drink, I don't seem to get a hangover (and trust me, this theory has been thoroughly tested). It sometimes takes a day to sober up mind, but no headaches!

Anyhow, I digress - before we knew it we had another excuse to celebrate. CHRISTMAS!! We were invited to the "pot luck" at the hostel on Christmas Eve. Everybody brings a dish and the hostel provides the turkey. Jen made yorkshire puddings and a bucket load of sprouts while I made a passable version of mum's trifle, three things that are guaranteed to make a special christmas dinner...

A good feed was had by all and we eventually departed for the Central and maybe the Royal - it all gets a bit a hazy, but having consulted the camera I can tell you that we played some pool, drank some tasty Absolute shots (thanks Kris) and finished in the Central. And as this was only Christmas Eve we did it all again at our house the next day...

Christmas dinner at home with Lynn and Kris (Norway and Sweden) and Claire (Sydney, you met her earlier on at the hostel, she's a Snowboarder For Christ's Sake). Mmmmm, sprouts. And although it's a little late (or maybe extremely earlier)...

HAPPY CHRISTMAS !!!!

What did you get for Christmas Jen?

Diamonds are indeed a girl's best friend.

So with Christmas out of the way there was nothing to do but ski and recover in time for New Year. I won't bore you with the details, but there was drinking at the hostel and a house party with a keg disguised as a snow man and I think fireworks were involved. Again, it gets a bit hazy. OK, just one photo...

And that's about all there is to Fernie. It's an old mining town by the way and the local legend involves the Griz, he's responsible for all the snow. It's been successfully snowing for about three weeks now - a little slow to get going, and we had a wet week around christmas, but since then we've had buckets of the stuff. There's a 3 metre base and parts of the hill are closed due to avalanche risk, but all in all it's a great place to ski. Lots of steeps, plenty of deeps and trees galore. I'll finish with some pictures from the hill - then Jen can tell you what's really going on.

Jen on skis!!!

Hmmm, new goggles??

Almost forgot, it was Todd's birthday on 7th January. He cooked us all a huge Mexican meal of Nachos, Salad and the best Enchiladas you could ever want. And Jen made a cake.

Thanks Col.

Now let's see what is there left to tell? We must do a bit more than ski, party and ski... There's lounging about on the sofas trying to get control of the remote for a start... (i found the food network- some things never change no matter what country i'm in!), Monday night there's Yoga, we all go to support 'The GhostRiders' the local Ice Hockey team each week, I joined the library, Tuesdays is cinema night (at 2 quid a ticket it can't be bad), Col's Pool game has improved, we have starring roles in the new Fernie TV commercial (ok maybe not starring but we're in it!) and did we mention how pretty the place is? In fact we like it so much we've decided to stay in Fernie for an extra month!!

So there's plenty of time left to do another update from North America. Watch out for my next installment of 'Crouching Jen Hidden toilet roll' coming to a screen near you soon. In the mean time remember ... we're not here for a long time, we're here for a good time!

Lake Louise, Canada

2006-01-01T06:20:00.000+07:00

Still a bit behind with this little tale of ours, but for our latest installment I'd like to tell you about our time in Lake Louise. Is everybody sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

Let's see now, from Seattle we took the bus to Vancouver in search of skis. We'd managed to convince ourselves that buying new skis was probably the best thing to do in the long run. Or rather, I'd managed to convince Jen that I deserved to buy new skis, and also that snowblades in deep snow weren't a good idea so she needed skis too. And very happy we are with our new purchases (for those that are interested, I've got the K2 Seth Vicious in 169cm and Jen has Rossignol Scratch Pros in 138cm), pictured below on the Paradise Chair at Lake Louise...

So from Vancouver we managed to catch the Greyhound bus the same day we arrived for the 17 hour trip to Lake Louise which left at 12.45 am. Not a trip we were looking forward to, but the train that I'd planned on taking actually went to Jasper rather than Banff and cost over 300 dollars each, so the bus it would have to be.

Thanks Col. So after many uncomfortable hours on the greyhound bus we're dropped off in a small car park and ask directions to Lake Louise village only to discover that we we're already in it; all 4 shops worth. Luckily one of those shops is a ski shop so we get bindings fitted on the lovely new skis and go off to a rather luxury looking hostel. Here's the view of the river by the hostel..

nice innit.

Now the more observant of you might notice the river is frozen. Well it would be, its FREEZING in Lake Louise. In fact its much much less than freezing it's averaging minus 25 and all the hairs in my nostrils were frozen solid which feels pretty wierd. Plus with the wind chill it gets down to minus 40! Take a look at this...

Needless to say I was dressed as a michellin man for most of the time.

So, what did we do in Lake Louise, apart from the actual sliding down mountains? We watched professionals slalom down a pretty steep course at a million miles an hour, we slid down a hill in the dark sat on plastic sledges and blow-up boats (arriving at the bottom like fully grown snowmen), Col won 2 bars of chocolate in the Hostel Pool tournament (i.e. he won the tournament - the old magic is still there), we drank a lot of hot chocolate and tried to defrost every now and again.

But for most of the time I felt like I was on the 'Top of the World, ma, top of the world'...

Anyone recognise that nose?

After a week it was time to move on. We packed up our bags and in the wait for the next greyhound outta town (Greyhounds make a special habit of leaving at ridiculous times) we took a walk to the Lake itself. When I say walk, I of course mean hike. Do you know how difficult it is to walk in snow for hours up hill? After the first ten minutes of oohing and ahhing at how pretty the trees are and how great the sound of snow crunching underfoot is, you begin to wonder if you've accidentally taken the long route to the Lake... which of course we had ;-)

The lake is the white thing in the background with people standing on it.

So that ends our little story about Lake Louise, next stop Fernie. See you there!

Sleepless in Seattle

2005-12-13T00:56:00.000+07:00

Now we reckon the reason why they say 'sleepless in Seattle' is because everyone, and we mean everyone, has a cup of coffee in their hand at all times. Walking down the street, queueing for a bus, shopping, and of course while sitting in a Coffee shop... of which there are numerous. So not to be left out we joined in the crowds and had a lotta coffee, well it'd be rude not to eh? (Careful with the language Jen, we're not in Canada yet eh?)

Despite the fact that everyone is wired on caffeine, everyone is a whole lot friendlier than in New York, the streets are all lit up 'Holiday Style' and look very pretty. But wait, did i say Holiday and not Christmas? Well yes folks, it seems that in an effort not to upset anyone, they have replaced the word Christmas with Holiday. Hmmn, I don't know about you but Holiday Tree conjurs up ideas of a Palm tree gently swaying in a warm summer breeze, not a brightly lit Fir with pressies underneath.

Thanks Jen. Now, first things first. Seattle, home to coffee shops and of course Jimi Hendrix - a quick tribute and a new sticker for the Uke...

Due to free booze and free internet in the executive lounge at JFK we only just made it to Seattle - seems they don't announce flights or let you know they're boarding (that you can hear anyway), but we managed to get another flight out via Dallas and made it to Seattle in the early hours. Not too bad for our first travelling cock-up. Our second wasn't far away as we stepped on the free bus heading a few blocks downtown and got off half an hour later after an unexpected trip down the freeway to who know's where. Still, we got to see a whole lot more of the Seattle area than we'd planned.

At least we didn't take the Monorail...

Eagle-eyed viewers may notice a somewhat wayward door on the other side of the train. Yes, they managed to break the monorail. It seems that if trains try to pass at this spot they can't, and they crash, and there's lots of shouting and panicking and the fire department gets called. Quite fun if you're not involved (don't worry, nobody was hurt, much). So no monorail ride for us.

But who needs the monorail when you've got the underground! No, not that type of underground, the Seattle underground. OK, here's a (very) quick explanation... The city got burnt down in the 1880's (probably) and the store owners wanted to build everything again really quickly, while the town planners wanted to flood the whole area with a nearby hill, thus solving the problems with drainage, but it would take a long time. So they did both. They built the new buildings, then they built walls around all the roads and flooded the roads with a big mudslide so that the roads were up to 30 feet higher than the pavements. Clever. However, climbing ladders to get to street level turned out to be a bit of a problem because people kept falling from the roads and things kept falling from the roads onto people on the pavements. So they built a new sidewalk at road-level and left the old sidewalk underneath - hence the Seattle underground was formed and it looks kinda like this...

There's a few blocks of old unused storefronts and stuff under the current street level - if you shout really loud you can scare the people walking above :-)

As you can see we didn't really get up to much in Seattle, there's a big pointy Space Needle thing that you can see from town and the views are quite nice over Puget Sound. The Chinese food is rather palatable as well, and I'm told, by Jen, that the Chinese Supermarket was particularly fine.

However, we were lucky enough to catch the first night of Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure which was opening just up the street from the hostel (the Green Tortoise, highly recommended with free breakfast, free internet and free meals 3 times a week) - very funny it was too, and we got to meet the great man.

And if you don't believe us, here's the photo...

That's all from the states for now, see you in Canada.

Jen and Col.

New York New York

2005-12-10T07:56:00.000+07:00

So great they named it twice.

Everything in New York runs at double pace and there's no time for niceties, so in true New York Style here's a whistle stop tour of New York. You Ready?

We arrived at night and stayed just off Times Square which was like...(turn monitors to the right, we're using old gear here)

and we had a genuine american McDonald's from the famous 24 hour Times Square restaurant- they taste just the same!!

We did all the usual touristy things. Had a look at Central Park and went up the Empire State Building. We took this...

to see that...

Saw a show on Broadway (actually ON Broadway, not just on Broadway, there is a difference apparently), Fiddler on the Roof with Rosie O'Donnell and some fellow with a funny voice (Harvey Firestein maybe?). We ate in some diners. Rode the subway and didn't get mugged (feels kinda like the Warriors if you've seen the film), and hopped on and off buses like we were locals. Here's a picture of Jen daringly standing next to a bus stop (look carefully, it's like a joke)...

Oh, and we had Manhattans in Manhattan. And we happened to be around for Thanksgiving and saw Macy's parade - lots of big balloons kinda like this... turn your head to the left this time (and we'll try and find somewhere that can handle rotating the photos next time)....

Almost forgot, Col was getting itchy fingers so invested in a lovely little Ukulele which will have a sticker for every place we stay. Here's the first sticker of many...

Closing thoughts on New York? Great city but boy aren't they rude! Nearly every car is a Yellow cab and it looks just like it does on TV, only contrary to 'Sex and the City' the streets are not lined with beautiful people wearing designer clothing - its all tourists huddled in their coats cos its freezing in November.

OK, all done, see you all in Seattle.

Crouching Jen Hidden Toilet Roll - Inca Trail

2005-11-17T06:00:00.000+07:00

Ladies and gentlemen,

Toiletarily speaking the Inca trail is not to be sniffed at. Seriously, if you´re not done within one breath - its tough, you need to leave anyway. Its a shame in these situations that not all of us are blessed with Col´s low sense of smell.

First of all lets count the number of facilities available over the four day hike for the 500 people allowed to do the trail each day..... it´s 5 (Five). Yes thats all folks, one loo more than days.

And its a hike right, in the blazing sunshine, so you´re supposed to drink a lot of water... and let me tell you - squat loo´s aren´t all they´re cracked up to be, especially when a number of trekkers seem to be suffering from the inca two step (if you know what i mean). Plus despite the obvious ´put your feet here ´design, some people still don´t know what to do or which way to face - judging from the poo up walls and on the foot pads themselves.

To spare you the full horror i actually managed to find one that was clean with flushing water.... a rare and welcome sight.

Talking of welcome sights, I have an admission. After refusing to use the loo´s in the camp that morning on the grounds of mental health, on day three i somehow managed to get separated from the group and wound up on a switchback shortcut track towards another camp. Through the trees i spied a miracle.... a small house with an open door and a hallway leading to a clean and fully functioning western style bathroom. it wasn´t exactly breaking and entering...

Anyway. On a scale of one to ten breaths I´m rating the Inca trail a butt clenching 2.

(A bit harsh considering where we were - they could teach the French a thing or two - Ed)

Inca Trail and Machu Picchu

2005-11-17T04:34:00.000+07:00

Hola readers,

Thank god that´s over. Four days of hell, slogging through the cold and arid Andes, no food, no water, no sign of civilisation.

OK, not really, this is trekking the luxury way. First let´s meet the gang.

Left to right, back to front, Earl, Beth, your Hostess and Host, Sian, Laura, Debbie, Bev, Kate, Claire, Dave and kneeling Steve, Tara and Mel.

A happy bunch indeed, despite the 5.30 start for us (earlier for others).

Not really sure what to expect we followed our trusty guides Marcelino and Efrain on an adventure to who know´s where (well, to be honest, we were expecting Machu Picchu). Jen chose the hobo look, being new to trekking she wasn´t exactly sure what to do with her stick...

So, how does this trekking lark work I hear you cry. Well, basically, you pay porters and a cook to wait on you hand and foot while we took care of the terribly difficult job of strolling through the magnificent Andean mountains, looking at the flora and fauna, and generally enjoying life. An example of the local flora is below, something for the ladies (it´s an orchid apparently)...

Anyway, our first nice surprise came at lunch on the first day. As we arrived in camp we were all presented with a glass of juice, somewhere clean to put our packs and soap and water to wash our weary hands (obviously changed after every use (the water, not the hands - jen)). Did I mention that while some of us were carrying all our gear with us, the sensible ones had hired extra porters to do the donkey work and were travelling quite lightly - just the essentials of water and snacks (provided by the company, of course) and maybe a coat in case of rain.

So, surprise number two, a three course lunch, just what you´d expect 3000 metres up a mountain. Avocado salad was followed by mushroom soup and then trout for main course with veg, rice and potatoes. Obviously followed by tea, coffee, coca tea or milo (it´s Australian and it´s lovely, kind of chocolately and malty) as desired. All this was served in our dining tent with table cloths and an every changing cutlery display. Needless to say this was all prepared by the porters who had run ahead and were eagerly waiting for us to eat so they could run on and set up camp for the evening.

After another hour or two walking, which wasn´t entirely easy what with the blazing sunshine and full belly we arrived at our evenings campsite...

Not a bad view for an evenings rest (at Wayllabamba for those familiar with the route). Tea at 5.30 every evening consisted of a selection of hot drinks with popcorn and biscuits. While dinner at 7.00 was the usual three course affair - soup, chicken and a rather lovely hot jelly dessert if memory serves. I probably don´t need to mention that we had nothing to do with the setting up or breaking down of camp. We just sat around getting fat and watching hummingbirds in the trees - although it must be said some of the more energetic amongst us (neither me nor Jen) decided a game of frisbee was in order, something which doesn´t happen too often in these parts, much to the curiosity of the porters.

Right, the point being, to cut a long story (or walk) short, we were treated like kings for the entire trip. If somebody mentioned quietly to somebody else that they could do with a sit down, a porter was already there with a chair. We were woken every day at 5.30 with a cuppa (sounds early but we were generally in bed by 9.00 every evening as the rain quite politely held off until the walking was over and the feeding had begun).

There was, however, one small obstacle that had to be overcome, known as Dead Woman´s Pass. Frankly, the bitch deserved everything she got, which may sound harsh but at 4200 metres and in the blazing sun, harsh is what it was. The picture below should give some idea, we started all the way down there (no, right down there at the bottom) and personally speaking, it almost killed me. If it looks steep, that´s cos it is, very steep, and long, and hot, and not in a good way. Let´s just say we were all glad to see the top.

Of course, all this up had to be followed by a whole load of down - 500 metres of height lost on day three down endless Inca steps, and these fellas had really small feet, unlike my clown feet which spilled over the edge of every step...

Well done for making it this far, here´s a selection of snaps for your viewing pleasure. Firstly, a rare flat piece of "Inca Trail", the sheer drop is to the right.

Arty picture of a ruin anyone?

I believe they call this cloud forest. Hmmm, lovely....

And finally after four days walking we got to Machu Picchu. Slightly disappointed because we awoke on the fourth day to cloud so we didn´t get to see Machu Picchu from Intipunku (that´s the Sun Gate), but the llamas were there to greet us when we finally arrived.

The cloud lifted in an hour or two, and the full glory of Machu Picchu stood before us. And if this next picture doesn´t make it into the Hichrom calendar I´ll want to know why...

Nice. But friends, that´s not where our story ends. See that mountain in the background, yes the horribly steep one, well due to an annoying stubborn streak, and having got this far, I stupidly said that I´d climb up for the view from the otherside (my calves were saying otherwise but nobody was listening), and Dave stupidly agreed to join me. As if four days hiking wasn´t enough. Anyway, having said we´d do it we couldn´t really back out and half an hour of panting and sweating later...

The eagle (actually it´s a baby Caracara) was a bonus, not a bad picture if I say so myself, and just to prove I didn´t just download it off another site...

So there we go, 4 days and 3 nights in the amazingly sunny Andes, the best food we´ve all eaten in a long time and views to die for. Not a bad start to our little adventure. We´ll see you all in New York for the next installment. Bye for now...

Buenos Dias Cuzco

2005-11-09T07:17:00.000+07:00

That´s about the extent of my spanish right there, but as all good Brits abroad know you can always get by with a few hand gestures and lots of shouting.

Arrived in Cuzco, capital of the Incas and home to the newly opened Loki Backpacker´s hostel from where I´m writing this - free internet access and White Stripes in the background, can´t argue with that. I can also upload some photos now, so here goes.

First things first, me with too much hair....

Not sure where all that came from, but here´s the "improvement", we´ll call this work in progress....

That´s all for now. Oh go on then, one more for the childish ones amongst us.

I´ll let you make your own jokes up for this.

Enough, I´ll let Jen get a word in....

....enough of that ´fannying about´ for one day. Cuzco looks like it could wash away in a light shower and hostel smells slightly of manure (which strangely reminds me of the Library in Tilehurst) but we have indeed seen a llama already, 2 in fact - one in the street and another (hope it wasn´t the same one actually) on cols plate at dinner, apparently tastes like a cross between pig and lamb. So things are looking good for the intrepid explorers.

For those of you interested in the fate of my trousers - i didn´t have the heart to throw them away after all. those skinflint backpacker tendencies are kicking in already.

Crouching Jen, Hidden Toilet Roll - Lima

2005-11-08T03:23:00.000+07:00

A section for the ladies and our sensitive bottoms. I´ve always said you can judge a good restaurant by the state of their toilets, well now I´m expanding this theory to whole countries.

The trip started well, from a toilet reporting point of view, since we were seated opposite the loos on the plane. Clean with plenty of paper from start to finish (information or instruction? - ed), and with no turbulence - a dry floor. Bonus! Lima too seems to sport the cleaner loo, but to be frank I can´t be doing with this putting paper in the OPEN TOP bin like it was pot pourri. Surely the whole point of a flushing loo is that you can flush it all away? On a scale of one to ten breaths - I´m rating Lima a pleasant 7.

Lima - The Fun Begins

2005-11-07T22:04:00.000+07:00

Well, we´ve made it to Peru with all our luggage and we haven´t been mugged yet. So that´s not a bad start. All very uneventful so far, Jen´s feeling at home because everybody´s the same height as her and I´ve had a haircut. Obviously the haircut was supposed to happen before we left blighty, but that would have been too easy - I mean, who actually wants your hairdresser to understand what you´re asking for? At least I´m a hit with all the Peruvian ladies. Pictures will be forthcoming when we get somewhere that lets us download them (think mid-eighties Waddle).

Spending the day hanging around the Miraflores area of Lima (posh and safe(ish)) before heading up to Cuzco for a couple of days acclimatisation. Then it´s boots on for the Inca Trail - we´re expecting rain, lots of it.

DD - I´ll let you know about the Coca Tea

Dave - Move that damn canoe