Our Australian Adventure Begins

Our journey over to Australia was just a tad stressful with our first flight back to Singapore being delayed and leaving us with about half an hour to go through immigration and baggage claim and get back through departures! Fortunately our second flight was also delayed which gave us time to relax in the free massage chairs in Singapore airport.

Finally after 82 days of traveling, 32 hours of flights, 43 hours of train journeys, 8 hours on boats and 78 hours of bus journeys, we landed in Australia!

Our first stop was Perth where we spent our first day walking round the city, visiting the mint, the WA museum, the bell tower and kings park. Perth was not really what we were expecting and is a very small 'city' that can easily be walked around in about 5 minutes, so the following day we took a train down to Fremantle. Here we took a tour of Fremantle prison which was very interesting and definitely worth it. This prison was built by British convicts who were then persuaded to stay in Australia once they had served their sentence. Lashings and hangings took place here and the prison only closed down in 1991 when it still did not have proper toilets installed. We also discovered that multiple Todds, Corbetts and Andrews had been residents there!!

After the prison we took a look round the market, the shipwreck galleries, harbour and the round house. Fremantle is a really nice, sedate and cultural place to visit. On our way back to Perth we even saw some dolphins near the harbour!

Our second stop in Australia was Alice Springs. We spent one night here before getting up at 5am the following morning to head out on a tour to Ayers Rock and the outback. This was truly AMAZING!! The weather was a good 35oC+ for the three days and our tour guide was a quarter aboriginal so told us information and stories that not many others would know. Our first stop was at Kings Canyon where we did a 4 hour walk up to the top and around the edge of the canyon. The views were really good and at one point we all lay down an tuck our heads over the edge of the cliff to get a good view.

  That evening was spent 'camping' in the outback. All 21 of us sat around a camp fire eating kangaroo meat chilli and then sleeping in 'swags'. A swag is basically a large sleeping bag with a thin foam mattress in it that does up over your head. It was so hot though that everyone just slept on top of them hoping not to get attacked by snakes or any other animals (no one did) although some ended up with lots of ants for company. Unfortunately our journey to our 'campsite' involved a road kill.....Kangaroos sit on the side of the road and get blinded by the headlights so when the vehicle is about 5 metres in front of said kangaroo, it decides to run across the road in front of the car. There is nothing the driver can do at this stage so we ended up hitting one with a large bang! The next day was our Uluru (Ayers Rock) day! We started at the aboriginal cultural centre before embarking on a 10km, 2 hour walk round the base of Uluru. After lunch we did a couple of short walks with our tour guide, Micah, who told us lots of interesting stories along the way. The evening was spent watching the sunset at Uluru before spending another night on our swags, but at least we had toilets and showed at this campsite!!

 

  Our final morning was a very early one, getting up at 4 to head to Kata Tjuta to watch the sunrise by Uluru followed by 2 and a half hour walk through the Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuta.

 
From here we headed back to Alice Springs playing various amusing games along the way including everyone doing karaoke, the weet-bix game and a quiz. Overall the three days were truly incredible, even though they were also very sweaty!! All three sites were amazing but different at the same time. We also saw lots of wild Kangaroos, Camels, Lizards, Thorny Devil Dragon Lizard, Eagles, Rabbits, Cows and Horses. In total we walked about 20km and drove 1428km! We definitely recommend finding the time to visit Uluru if you ever come to Australia!

Back in Alice Springs we had a rather expensive evening of dinner and drinks with our fellow Trekkers. Needless to say the next day was a very lazy one having had only 5 hours of sleep for the last 2 nights. So we headed into town and up Anzac hill for a view of Alice Springs before spending the afternoon by the pool and having a BBQ with friends we'd met on the tour.

After Alice, our next destination was Darwin. Arriving in Darwin was like stepping into a sauna - extremely hot and sticky! Our first day was spent exploring the local sights - the smith street mall, the Chinese temple, the waterfront, Biccentinial Park and we even spent a few hours cooling down at the Wave Lagoon.

The following day we decided to venture further afield and hopped on a bus to the Parap markets, from here we headed to the Darwin Museum which was pretty interesting, especially the gallery about Sweetheart the crocodile and cyclone Tracy. Again we had a lazy afternoon but this time over by Lake Alexander. Our final day in Darwin was spent on a crocodile jumping tour. This was awesome! We took a boat down the Adelaide River which has 2,500 crocodiles in it! In total we saw about 10 crocodiles in our hour trip, with a number of them jumping to grab boys of chicken within less than a metre of our boat!

From here we visited some termite mounds and cathedrals before going for a swim in Wangi Falls.

 

In the afternoon we visited Florence Falls and then our tour guide took 5 of us 'youngsters' on a swim through the jungle at Burley Rock pools which was really cool and peaceful!

Our day finished with champagne and prawns watching the sunset over Fannie Bay.

 By the time we left Darwin we had successfully set up our lives in Australia - we have bank accounts and debit cards, phones, tax files numbers and have registered with Medicare! You'd be surprised at just how easy it is - no long phone calls to customer services, only one form of ID, and you don't even need a permanent address!!

Our next stop after Darwin was Canberra, via a short overnight stop in Sydney. Canberra is a bit of a strange capital city - it's tiny, very quiet and has a limited number of attractions! The first day we decided to rent bicycles and cycle around Canberra. We visited the new Parliament House and old Parliament House where we managed to get on free tours.

From here we cycled through reconciliation place to Lake Burley Griffin where the Captain Cook water jet memorial is. Next up was the National Gallery....as neither of us are that into art, it did not take us very long to go round!! But any artists out there would be sure to love it - it has a large government budget so gets some good exhibitions in. We got to see Waterlillies by Monet!! Finally we cycled back across the lake an along the waters edge, past the carillon, back to our hostel.

The following day we hopped on a bus to the National Museum and then in the afternoon took a tour of the Australian Institute of Sport which was pretty interesting, although our tour guise definitely needed to learn how to smile!! Our final day in Canberra was spent looking round the National Film and Sound Archive, National Capital Exhibition and Australian War Memorial. All of these were very interesting but we are definitely museumed out!

 From Canberra we headed back to Sydney where we will be spending Christmas! Our coach journey to and from Sydney was pretty good - we didn't get stuck on any traffic jams in either direction....luxury!

It's quite good being able to cook our own meals finally (and no rice that's for sure!!!) Although we are basically living off Kangaroo - it's both the cheapest and healthiest meat here. And woo we can finally have fresh milk and cereal - it's the small things!

The feature for this blog, and maybe a few others, will be 'words used by Aussies' (or words that have different meanings over here!). The majority of them you can work out what they mean but some are a little trickier so you may have to ask us if your struggling. We suggest you learn what these all mean as we will no doubt have picked them up and be using them when we return to the UK!!

- Mall
- Pants
- Gum boots
- Weet-bix
- Esky
- Thongs
- Piker
- Pash
- Chips
- Yous all
- G'day
- Pushie
- CBD
- City (irrespective of settlement size)
- Intersection
- Freeway
- Capsicum


And one last piece of advise when you come to Australia....beware of Drop Bears and Hoop Snakes!

We hope you all enjoy the Christmas festivities! Our next blog post will be our Christmas/New Year edition so stay tuned!

One final thought for you all: how much does Ayers Rock weigh? Comment your answer on the blog and the correct answer wins a plush toy Koala. Just make sure you really think about it - it's not as simple as you may think!

Lots of hugs to you all freezing back home!

X x x

Sexual Assault by an Orang Utan among other things from Borneo, KL, Singapore and Bali

Following our 10 days of relaxation we boarded the plane to Kuala Lumpur. Upon arrival here we were met by one of Ems work friends, Kogi who kindly took care of our large bags whilst we went off to Borneo for 3 days. It was great to see Kogi and catch up having not seen her for over a year! A couple of hours later we took a flight to Sandakan where our tour would begin the next morning.

Early in the morning we were picked up and delighted to find that we were the only two people on our tour!! We took a boat trip to one of the three islands within the Turtle Islands Park.

The day was spent relaxing and exploring the island, with all the fun to come in the evening. Before dinner we took a look at the exhibition centre and watched a DVD which helped us to understand the programme better. After dinner we all had to wait outside until the first mother turtle came ashore to lay her eggs. Hearing the words 'Turtle Time' everyone rushed to where the ranger was on the beach. We were first to the scene as the Saga tour hobbled along behind, many aided by walking sticks! When we arrived the mother turtle had already dug her body pit and hole for the eggs an begun laying her eggs. It was very interesting to watch and she laid 71 eggs in total before resting for a few hours. We then watched the ranger transplant the eggs into the hatchery before releasing some hatchlings into the sea. This was an incredible sight as the newly born baby turtles ran helplessly to the sea by instinct.

The following morning we took a boat back to mainland and headed to Sepilok Orang-utan rehabilitation centre. Here we watched another video about the programme there before heading to the viewing platform which overlooked the feeding platform.

To begin with there were about 4 smaller orang-utans happily eating away. Then the big dominant male with large cheek flaps appeared. Apparently he is a rare sight and our tour guide had only seen him twice in four years. His arrival to the feeding platform quickly resulted in the other orang-utans leaving. We were luckily enough to get up pretty close to some of them as they walked along the edges of the board walk. Unfortunately though some people did not listen to the warnings and one man got a little too close. This resulted in the orang-utan enveloping him and trying to obtain some sexual gratification (by shoving his genitalia in the mans face). This was all amusing until the orang-utan refused to let go of the man and started becoming aggressive. Everyone was quickly ushered behind the gate however ourselves and a few others did not quite make it in time and ended up trapped at a dead end for a rather scary 5 minutes as the ranger tried to get him to go away. All in all it was an interesting experience!! From here we headed up to Bilit Rainforest Lodge, where we would be spending the night, and went on an evening river cruise. Whilst on this we saw maccaque monkeys (with the long tails), proscerus monkeys (with the long noses), orang-utans (a rare sight!), monitor lizard, viper, king fishers, hawk bills and white herons.

For our final day in Borneo we firstly visited the G caves which are where thousands of swiftlets live and build both black and white nests using their saliva and droppings. The white ones are used in the Chinese birds best soup! The caves were interesting but smelt horrifically of guano and were covered in cockroaches....we didn't stay there long! For lunch we headed to the English Tea Rooms perched on the top of a hill overlooking Sandakan city. This is the poshest meal we have had and enjoyed home comforts of fish cakes and chicken, bacon, mash and gravy. As our first English meal in over 2 months, they were heavenly!!

To end our tour we visited the water village, a Chinese Buddhist temple and took a look round the local market.

From Borneo we flew back to Kuala Lumpur where we spent 2 days visiting the local sights. On the first day these included Batu Caves, Merdeka Square, Central Market, National Mosque, National Monument, Islanic Arts Museum, Botanical Gardens, Chinatown and finally the fountain show outside the Patronas towers.

After walking miles the first day, we decided to get the hop-on-hop-off bus round the city the second day. Our first point of call was to see the Patronas Towers in the daylight and wander round the surrounding gardens. From here we headed to the KL Tower which gave us some awesome views of the city from 186m up! This was an I retesting experience as Em doesn't like lifts and James is petrified of heights - a great combination!! But we made it up there and it was definitely worth it! From here we jumped back on the bus to the butterfly park before heading to the station for our overnight train to Singapore.

Our time in Singapore was also limited to 2 days but we managed to squeeze a lot into this time. We started off by heading out to the Bird Park, followed by the botanical gardens and Orchard Road. Orchard Road is the Oxford Street of Singapore and this was our first sighting of true Christmas decorations and we even heard a number of Christmas songs!! Although we still don't feel like its almost Christmas at all. Following a walk down this road we decided to go and splash out on a Singapore Sling from Raffles. This hotel is just awesome as was the cocktail! And throwing peanut shells all over the floor just added to the experience. Our next stop was the Singapore Flyer which provided excellent views over the city and after much persuasion James actually stood up!! From here we headed back through Chinatown night market to our 12 bed dorm.

The following morning we ventured over to Underwater world on Sentosa island. This was good but not quite as good as we were expecting. The island is basically an array of theme parks where one could quite happily spend a few days if you have sufficient funds. Our next stop was Little India which is completely different to the rest of Singapore and smells so good everywhere! Back to Chinatown and we took a look round the Buddha Tooth Relic temple which was very impressive with lots of gold everywhere! That evening we decided to defy our age an visit the night safari. This was awesome and exceeded a expectations - definitely worth it! This ended our time in Singapore on a high before we flew across to Bali the following morning.

On arrival to our hostel we had the pleasant surprise of our 4th free upgrade of the trip from a standard to a deluxe room. However, Bali was not what we were expecting. For the first time all trip we may have chosen the wrong area to stay in. Where we are staying is like the Australian's version of Ibiza and considering the Aussie schools have just broken up the place is crawling with 18 - 21 year old Aussies!! This made James in particular feel quite old!! This area is more suited to surfers and is probably the worst beach we've been to but that's not really saying much as it's still pretty nice. Bali is also the hottest place we have been to so far! We spent out first day lazing on the beach trying to top up our tans. The following day we decided to take a trip to a couple of the temples including Tanah Lot which is on a rock in the middle of the sea, only accessible at low tide. We also visited Gitgit waterfall which was pretty awesome and a Bali coffee production plant.

The following day was our day for diving!! We headed across to Tulamben, where the US Liberty ship was sunk by a Japanese torpedo in the 1940's. This dive site was amazing 0 literally crawling with marine life, from small nemo fish to larger puffer, trigger and snapper fish. After lunch we headed out to the marine wall and coral garden, again which were very impressive although not quite as impressive as the wreck dive. Our final day in Bali was spent lazing on the beach again before our flight via Singapore to Perth!!!!!

We think you have enough facts about Southeast Asia to have both kept you entertained and also prepare you for a trip here if you decide to (which you should)! So the feature of this blog post is ways in which we have turned into 'gap year tragedies' over the last few months:

- Our collection of bracelets is accumulating rapidly!
- We have a large selection of tourist t-shirts.
- James has started wearing wife beaters.
- We have accepted the fact that our feet will never be clean again.
- We have some pretty funky tan lines.
- We have become artists at packing our bags quickly and efficiently, to the point were our walking boots sometimes fit in!!!
- Our bartering skills have improved significantly (with our latest purchase starting at 900,000rp and finishing at 260,000tp)
- We have a large collection of DVDs that we are not sure when we'll be able to watch!
- We love a good fruit shake.
- We care less and less about the places where we eat - cost is more important!
- We can handle spicy food.....ish!
- We are being as cheap as possible to the point where Em cut James' hair.

Next time you hear from us we'll be in Australia and it'll almost be Christmas!!!!

Take care and try to avoid the floods!!

x x x