Around the world in 367 days

Sorry for the interval - Alexander is now back in the building!!

So what have we been up to:

Malaysia - after a week in Cameron Highlands we headed down to Kuala Lumpur. It had been a while since we had been in a big city so it made a nice change. It's a pretty clean city but still has an authentic China Town and Little India. Accommodation prices had been creeping up as we've been heading South and hit new heights of a staggering $20 dollars in the capital! We stayed in China Town and luckily food stayed pretty cheap - $4 buying us a great claypot of Chinese goodness. Our next port of call was the Dutch / British / Portuguese trading town of Melaka. It was pretty sweet and we stayed in a lovely little guesthouse but the mosquitoes were a nightmare. Then...

Singapore - the accommodation started to get really stung as we headed a little further South but again, it's a great little city. The only bad bit being the 'super cheap' electronics etc turned out to be not so cheap. As it happens Malaysia would have been a better shopping choice. The city itself is super clean. We had ended up in Singapore two weeks early as we had to abandon plans to go to Borneo and the Perhentians for various reasons - least of all being the fact that we were in Malaysia and Singapore for their extended monsoon season. Hard to believe that former British colonies are more than capable of coping with torrential downfalls whilst in GREAT Britain a few spots brings everything shuddering to a halt. With time on our hands we adjusted our itinerary and headed down to...

Melbourne, Australia - we just spent a week here but really liked the place. The pace of life feels really nice. The weather seemed a little temperamental - 31 degrees one day, 15 the next - but most people are walking around with smiles on their faces. There is a great cafe culture there and a ton of parks and coastline to explore. We also took in our first game of Aussie Rules football. I used to play for the Wandsworth Demons so I should have caught the Melbourne game, but they had the audacity to schedule their game for the afternoon we flew out of town - the cheek! So instead we aimed our allegiances at St Kilda, the Saints, and in a pulsating game saw the Saints run out winners against Sydney in a high scoring match 51-49! It was our first game so it seemed pulsating and high scoring - the papers confirmed it was neither, being dire and low scoring - oh well, as novices we were suitably entertained. We only had 5 days there but got to quite a few of the key places before heading to...

New Zealand - we stayed with our new friends Jes, Louise, Joe and Millie in a great house overlooking the ocean and the regions most recent addition - the 600 year old Raggitymofo volcano. The city itself is a little quiet but there are some lovely suburbs plus a choice of almost 50 volcanoes to scurry up. We picked Rangitoto and had a great day. After a couple of days hospitality (it was great to live in a proper home with lovely people for a few days!!) we headed up into Northlands. Last time we were here we spent most of our time in the South Island and during our brief stop in the North Island declared the South the easy winner on the aesthetic stakes. We are happy to be proven wrong. Both Islands offer unique and contrasting environments - both equally stunning and both have really captured our hearts. The scenery in both is just stunning is isn't helping with my OCD with my new camera. Even being a mere hour and a half from Auckland we were able to find entirely deserted beaches that we just had to share with a few cormorants - till I chased them off!! So now we find ourselves up in the Bay of Islands in the North Island, encountering more stunning scenery, but also experiencing the changing seasons as summer stutters to a halt. We are spending a few more days here and then in Coromandel before heading over to Chile - leaving in the evening of April 4th and landing in the morning of, April 4th - neat trick!!!

Photos will shortly be available in the galleries - go on check now!!

Posted by Alexander at 07:53 | Permalink | Comments

This is the greatest and best blog post in the world......... Tribute!

A long time ago, I was hitchhiking down a long and lonesome road. All of a sudden there shined a shiny demon, taking the form of Jack Black, in the middle of the road. And he said, "Write me the best blog post in the world, or I'll eat your soul". With Tenacious D'light I said, "Okay".

And I wrote the first thing that came into my head. Just so happened to be, the best blog post in the world, it was the best blog post in the world!!

Reading my posts it's easy to see r and s are followed by 'tu' and b and c are followed by 'de', it was destiny. Once every hundred-thousand years or so, when the sun doth shine and the moon doth glow... and the ink doth flow...

Needless to say, Jack was stunned. Whip-crack went his whippy tail, and Jack was done. He asked me, "Be you an angel?". And I said, "Nay, I am but a man - blog on!!!!!"

This is not the greatest blog post in the world, no, this is just a tribute. I couldn't remember the greatest blog post in the world, no, no, this is a tribute.

And the peculiar thing is this my readers; the blog post I wrote on that fateful night didn't actually read anything like this post!

This is just a tribute! You've got to believe me. I wish you could have been there.

(PS - if you have no clue what I'm going on about don't worry. I tend to prattle on - if you just ignore me, in all likelihood I'll just stop or go away!!)

Posted by Alexander at 12:00 | Permalink | Comments

In case you've been wondering what I've been up to over the last few weeks here it is...

After completing the dive course in Koh Tao we spent another week just chilling out on the island. It's a great little island with good beaches and snorkeling, nice restaurants and great walks across the island. We spent some time hanging out with some new friends in Raema, Laura and Ben and Kiri and Kit - and toasted in the New Chinese Year in style with some great fish at a restaurant on the beach and sending off some Thai lanterns. A beer or two was also involved... .

After Koh Tao we headed to Koh Phangan, home to the infamous Full Moon parties that we were more than happy to miss!! I preferred Koh Tao hands down - it's still nice but can feel a little remote at times and the quality of the beaches we found didn't seem to compare. Each to their own though, many people we have bumped into prefer Phangan to Tao. I did a dive on Sail Rock, one of the premier dive spots in the Gulf of Thailand, but managed to catch it on a bad day - the 'viz', as we divers like to call it ;-), was not good!!! Apparently there was a whale shark there but he might have been two meters away and I wouldn't have had a clue!!

Almost beached out we headed inland to Khao Sok - it's a pretty nice national park in Southern Thailand but the treks you can do yourself are pretty limited. The day trip we made to the lake though more than made up for it as it's a stunning man made lake with awesome limestone cliffs and over 100 islands.

To fully beach ourselves out we headed to Krabi - there's no beach there itself but it's a short trip over to Koh Phi Phi if you want to hang out with a horde of speedo wearing sun seekers. Not really our scene, it's a beautiful island but the day trip was enough. We also did some kayaking around Krabi which was really good and I headed out into the Andaman sea for a couple more dives. A lot more success this time, the variety of fish is incredible - I saw more than 20 new species (I am a new diver) on each dive including 5 different types of Morray Eel on one dive alone!! I will definitely be heading back to the Andaman coast one day for some more underwater adventures!!

To our surprise we only realised with a few days to go that our Thai visas were coming to an end - where does the time go??? So now we find ourselves in Malaysia. We spent a couple of nights in Penang, which is nice enough, staying in the red light district. Boy means Joy in this part of the world where they prefer their prostitutes with a moustache - no tash no cash!!

As I write we are now in Cameron Highlands. It might as well be England - the remnants of the Great British Empire remain with red phone boxes, post boxes and tea and scones!! It even seems the levels of service I grew accustomed to in London have made it across the miles!! There are some great treks to do here and as long as you manage to time it to miss the britishesque weather they are great fun!!

So that's what we've been up to - in the next day or two we will head down to Kuala Lumpur, then further into Southern peninsular Malaysia, possibly a short stint in Sumatra in Indonesia before we arrive in Singapore to end the South East Asian flavours of our round the world trip. Four months down and still loving it!!

Posted by Alexander at 10:28 | Permalink | Comments