is that you sydney?

HI
Once again we have done too much to write about succinctly since my last post so i apologise in advance for more rushed waffle if that is indeed what comes out of my fingers now...
Had much fun driving around the snowy mountains and going on charilifts, which I might have mentiooned last time. We have enjoyed the English place names. This one was quite funny. This one will only mean something to certain members of my family. On the subject of dodgy names, check out this cheese.
Our next stop on the way to sydney was out-of-the-way Bateman's bay (where we made kebabs and used our first coin-operated barbecue) and the surrounding beaches; the most exciting of which was pebbly beach, where we were inundated by kangaroos trying to eat our crisps and steal Zoe's phone. It was really cool, you could touch them and everything. I took the opportunity to cuddle one, although in the tussle for the crisps one stood on Zoe's foot and drew blood. We are telling people she has been mauled by a wild kangaroo.
After that it was quite a dull 4 day's drive to sydney, arriving in which was VERY exciting. This far into the trip my hair was beginning to malfunction so I bought some scissors from a service station and cut it all off over the bin in a backpackers hostel. How times have changed. After that we spent the evening checking out the obvious sights, (Obvious sight 2), climbing the tower (here's sydney by night and here is a picture of luna park) and getting ready for Australia day. I'm not sure how we have fluked being in the right place for all these major events (thailand at new year, melbourne for the open, sydney for australia day) but despite the acomodation issues, it's been amazing. For thos of you that aren't australian, or happen to work with any, australia day is a day when millions of australians get pissed, watch bands, (That was Dan Sultan, we liked him. He is indiginous) and watch fireworks (My fireworks photos are shit but you know what fireworks look like). We were both a bit freaked out by the large amounts of giant bats in Sydney. They also had a big car rally which is why there's millions of car photos on flickr - I'm not sure what I thought I was doing there.
Later that evening I took this photo of the Opera house which I am pleased with.
The rest of our time in Sydney has been an opportunity to catch up with those of you who have emigrated, ALL of whom have sickeningly jealous-makingly great lives. Dufty took me in her jeep to a cool bay where you can go swimming and look at the skyline. Yesterday we met up with Christiane who's living in a huge old beach house (with the world's biggest bathroom) on a hill in Coogee with a view of the sea. (grrr). From her house it's a really nice walk to bondi past a few beaches where we went snorkelling. I should say thanks to the very helpful Mark for finding me a giant blue grouper (? spelling) and taking Zoe her glasses. And in Bondi we had an ice cream then bumped into suzy and Luke. So here we all are post-beach and pre-drinks.
So Sydney life is very agreeable and civilised. We have been at the beach again today. My favourite thing is the swimming pools that fill up with sea water when the tide comes in. I think I am going to live here for ever. Or I would were it not for the fact that we are going to Uluru tomorrow. Yes folks in a moment of madness we are going off-itinerary and visiting The Rock at a mere cost of *cough* million pounds. Apparently it's, erm, quite hot at this time of year so the next blog post might be written by a charred corpse... (At least the cemetary here is a beautiful place to hang out. Ooh - Lee - we even saw your tomb.)
So that's all for now, I am, for once, fully up to date. I am now going for a shower followed by a bowl of pasta by the beach. As always, missing you all xxx

[PS. This last photo is for people who worked at BBC broadcast. We saw some australian dead-ringer lookalikes for Paul Marsh and Andrew Davies in a bar. I took this surreptitious photo. W.E.I.R.D]

The Perfect Blend

Hello there,


I'm writing this from a ski lodge in the Snowy Mountains. It's very relaxing here, but freezing, but I'll get on to that. I hope you are all well. Thanks for all your emails and stuff, it's good to know life goes on, although Danny, sorry to hear about the Pitbull attack.


Anyway, after the tennis we went to watch a country band at a bar called Manchester Lane, which was a smoky Jazz club.without the smoke. The day after we mooched around and met Zoe's lovely friend Kirsten for lunch by the river who we drilled (is that the right word?) for information about Australia and drew up plans. After that we went to the queen victoria market and bought some posh food which was a bit embarrassing to cook in the hostel surrounded by 18 year olds eating pot noodles. We spent the evening in St Kilda which has the world's oldest roller coaster but we didn't find it. We did, however, find a massive grand old hotel called the Esplanade which had been turned into a band venue called the Espy. We loved the Espy. Here's the bar, here's the staircase. And we saw an electro band who were two teenagers jumping up and down pressing buttons, and they are going to be big but we can't remember their name. (Lucy, take note, Australians love electro, I think you could easily this market.)




I am of course building up to the proudest moment of my life. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is me on RAMSAY STREET. This is Paul's house, this is the robinsons, this is the ramsays, and this one used to be Des & Daphne's, (and then the Willises and then the Kennedys). The one of Mrs Mangels was deleted because I was puling a funny face.


Adriana has correctly spotted that it was raining. The weather in Melbourne went a bit downhill after this point.


And our last activity in Melbourne was to investigate Fitzroy, the cool bit, and its cafes, bars, shops, graffitti, odd vehicles, and nice old buildings.





So now we're en route to Sydney!


The journey was pretty special. After a few *ahem* wrong turns we managed to find our way onto the scary mountain path to Kosciusko; none other than Australia's highest point, kids. It was very beautiful but did unfortunately take 8 hours and most of it was on gravel. And it was raining. Thanks to a bag of sweets and some careful navigating from Zoe we got there safely and enjoyed some amazing views of the Snowy river on the way. We even saw our first kangaroos but our wildlife photography skills are a bit poor especially while driving. There is one photo though, see if you can spot it on the snowy mountinas pictures. I will be awarding a prize.

So now we're here, staying in a little ski resort called Thredbo. It is not actually Snowy here because it's summer, but the ski lift operates all year round and we have been up it twice already. We have had to embrace our outdoorsy selves as there is nothing else to do, so we walked toward the top of mount koszszsko (I'm sorry I can't say it or spell it) but didn't quite make it to the peak because the weather went barmy. Here I am gazing upon austraila's highest Mountain.


Today we've been on a walk through an amazing burnt down eucalyptus forest (also on a mountain) which was spooky because it was full of menacing ravens waiting to pick our carcasses clean when we ran out of bananas and starved. There were lots of flowers everywhere and it was like somewhere a unicorn might live. Or Heidi. The computer I'm on has just gone up the spout so I can't put anyt more picture links unfortunately so I will stop waffling on get back to you when we're in Sydney. (Tim, Maggi andZoe I have a picture I took specially for you I'll have to post it next time)
/adios

dry as a dead dingo's donger

Hello. I finally managed to find a civilised place and I've uploaded all the photos to date, which is very exciting because my camera is on its last legs and I was worried I would lose them all.
So first of all I need to show you some pictures from the rest of Malaysia and Singapore.
Here's Zoe and a twin tower (the other one's behind it) and here they are by day. And here's the moment I turned into my bird form, during a trip to Kuala lumpur aviary.
Now, the pictures of the Malaysian space institute/museum thing are truly spectacular. It's an informative and educational building in KL. No expense was spared on building the place.
This is me in the zero gravity simulation. I forget the exact wording but the next exhibit was described (approximately) thus. "Black holes are just a theory. Nobody has ever experienced one, but this simulation is the nearest any human being is likely to get."
This is the simulation they were talking about. Note how in that picture Zoe is very tall. At the other end of the room she is very short. We're not sure how this compression of matter occurred but it was very clever. Without wishing to dwell too much on the space museum, I have to show you this vision of the future. If you look closely there is a plastic burger in it which lights up when you press the button. I took this photo especially for Alison, and Star Trek fans all over the world.
And for sleaze fans, here is a squaddie admiring a malaysian girl dancing on a table, and this is the malay rock band we saw in Kuala Lumpur. You may not be able to pick it out from this photo but despite all being men, the drummer looked like Alison from Big Brother, the guitarist looked like Joan Armatrading, and the singer was Tanita tikaram.

So, whizzing through Singapore we have Martinis in the Fullerton, Singapore Slings in Raffles, another drink somewhere flash, a statue of Boy George, a monkey that looks like Alison's cat, some hindi things, a nice tiger, some temple or something, and a merlion.

So now we're in Australia. We started off in Adelaide which to be honest was a bit dull although we had a comedy incident involving a pedalo and a huge fountain which resulted in this lovely rainbow. Just outside adelaide was mount lofty, Steph we took this photo for you. And a volcano with a big blue crater.
So we hired a car and basically spent a week drivling from Adelaide to Melbourne, through some absolute nowheresvilles, lobster ports and the like, from Southern Australia to Victoria, then along the great ocean road and Victoria's surf coast.

The Great ocean road was beautiful. I'll let you browse the photos by yourselves, if you can be bothered, but here is one of the twelve apostles, (which are rocks). We stayed in a couple of gorgeous beach/fishing towns which apparently all the rich and famous live in, a bit like Saint tropez. Here is an example of the houses. This dilapidated old one was for sale. Most triumphantly, I learnt to SURF in a place called, bizarrely, Torquay. Contrary to the usual male rules, the better you are, the smaller your surfboard, hence this baby. Here I am happily surfing along and about to kill some kids. And thanks to Zoe's mastery of the telephoto lens, here I am drowning. I came away from the day surfing grazed and bruised but very happy and we celebrated with a bottle of wine.

The day after that we drove up to and finally arrived in Melbourne which we LOVE and it's where we are now. Thanks to a tremendous fluke the Australian Open is on, (this is a picture of it that I took from the top of the rialto tower) and it's 10 mins walk from our hostel. This is not where the fluke ends - we went yesterday on a cheapo ground pass and Amer Delic was playing first thing on an outside court and we watched him for four hours in an amazing 5 set marathon* complete with rowdy bosnian supporters who were shouting "I'm blind, I'm deaf, I wanna be a ref" at the umpire for most of the match. For those of you who remember this episode, Amer Delic is the guy I got a bit obsessed with at Wimbledon this year (due to some spectacular tantrums) and subsequently became friends with on facebook. Here he is taking his top off. (Look how close we were sat!!)
Oh and we saw some women playing doubles as well, apparently these two are famous sisters...
Everyone is obsessed with the tennis obviously, you can even watch it in the town square, which also has some cool modern buildings.
Got lots more to do in Melbourne but just in case you're not bored of tennis pictures yet, here is me, here is Zoe, this is the Margaret Court Arena (because it couldn't be called the Margaret Court Court, which I find hilarious).
And here is someone playing tennis. ahem.

*He lost

Rain and plains

Well, I wrote that last post at about 2 in the morning somewhere in Singapore, so I'm surprised to see it is relatively coherent. We are now in Oz, in a sleepy crayfishing port about half way between Adelaide and Melbourne called *ahem* Port Fairy. The journey here was a long and knackering one!.....
So we finished up in thailand and got on a southbound bus through Malaysia. It took us as far as butterworth where we had to get on a ferry in the middle of the night bound for penang. Here is a highly professional shot of the skyline from the ferry. We stayed in a right dodgy little hostel but luckily found a wonderful curry for us dinner which cost about 10p, or something. The next day we headed up to the Cameron Highlands (as Zoe pointed out - how scottish does that sound.)
The Cameron Highlands are the home of Malaysia's TEA plantations. That's right, TEA. It was a pilgrimage as you can imagine. Here is a picture of some TEA. Some highlights of the tea region were 1) finding out what tea looks like in real life. 2) Having scones 3) bumping into the PG tips lady.
We also did some pottering around the jungle . I wore a cagoul and zoe was in her glastonbury poncho. One thing I should mention about Malaysia is that it rains ALL the time. This is OK, but we fear our tans have been washed away.
Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to upload any pictures after this point thanks to the Australian internet, so I will have to just use old-fashioned words, and put the photos up later.
So, we got a minibus thing to Kuala Lumpur which we loved. It was raining most of the time but we like big tall buildings so we spent some time walking around the towers, and eating underneath them. We also visited the Malaysian national space museum/planetarium thing which was hilarious, funnier than the mappin museum (as was, I understand they've done it up recently). It was basically a load of exhibits made of eggboxes and sticky back plastic. I wish I could show you the pictures of the black hole simulation, and the zero gravity room. You are going to love them.
Actually we fitted quite a lot into KL I have just remembered we also went to a bird park and saw peacocks. Then we spent the evening in a bar full of American GIs and local women of dubious profession. It was very enjoyable though, there was a Malasian band on playing things like Smoke on the water and Mustang Sally.
And then (you can see why we're knackered) we got an overnight bus to Singapore where we stayed in colonial luxury with Jeanine's Anthony for a couple of days. There are some good photos of this too, mainly of martinis and singapore slings etc.
So where are we now I hear you cry. Well we flew to Adelaide, hired a car and have been on the road ever since. We're aiming to get to Melbourne at some point in the next couple of days where we're seeing some friends of Zoe's and I plan to visit Ramsey street.
We have seen several dead kangaroos so far but no real ones, driven hundreds of miles, stayed in some very quiet coastal backwaters (can you have a coastal backwater?), and listened to a lot of dire radio. It's fun being in the middle of nowhere though. Tonight we've ended up in a sort of posh tourist town where families come to surf during the summer holidays - ie now - so it's a bit busy and we had trouble getting a room. Today we saw a blue volcano but more on that when I get the pictures sorted.
Hope you're all having fun in the freezing cold, ho ho.
Lots of love,
Zoe and Rick.

what i railey railey want

Dear everyone,
Apologies for the lack of posting recently. We have been on the move pretty much all the time since my last entry and internet access has been scarce, or slow, so I have a bit too much to catch up on. We have made it it out of Thailand, through malaysia, and into singapore. So here's the end of thailand story....
As predicted, new years eve was really funny. We thought we'd be the only people in Krabi town but it turned out a few people had got stuck there due to accomodation demands on the beaches, so we ended up having a great time, despite intentions of an early night. Krabi is famous for, as well as being the aforementioned transport hub, having some great traffic lights in the shape of ape men. It also had some fantastic dodgy little bars, one of which we settled in for the evening, and met lots of transients including the lovely saskia and ronny, some very funny nice scottish people called elaine and kirsty, someone called heather who had the same hair as heather jones at mtv, and even gandalf. In the bar they had no music as such, but played DVDs of Live 8 which we played along to onthe various musical instruments lying around. And we sang along, here I am joining in with Marti Pellow. And here we all are at midnight. Transport hubs rule
Despite staying up til 4 we decided to head for Railey beach at 9 in the morning on new years day, which turned out to be a mistake because the boat broke down and the driver spent half an hour fixing it with an axe. There are no pictures of this beacause Zoe was trying not to be sick and I was on the phone to Stu who was still up on NYE despite the 7 hour time difference.
We got to Railey eventually which was very beautiful but a pricey tourist trap. It was fab though, there were lots of climbers there due to the large amount of mountains, and we went sea kayaking in some deserted lagoons which you have to canoe throug tunnels to get to. Here is Zoe advertising a canoe in the style of The Price is Right. While kayaking we saw a ghost pirate ship. you can see it on this picture. This is the island we kayaked round. I would like to say I took that photo from a helicopter but I actually just took a photo of the brochure. The island we kayaked to had the whitest sand we have ever seen. Here is my photo evidence. Zoe discovered that in a life jacket, and with her hair pretending to be a brace, she looks like ugly betty. Railey also has some brilliant caves.
Our favourite thing about Railey was the comedy enormous towels we got given. Here is mine. Here is Zoe's.
Then Jeanine and Kate and Joy turned up which was much fun. Spot the person who's been sunbathing for a month. We only saw them for one night but clearly we made the most of it. We miss them.
One night, while getting ready, Zoe noticed that when I've washed my hair I look like exonerated murderer Ron Williamson in the photo from his biography we've both just read. Zoe however can do a better facial impression.
And that's it really. We got a bus to Malaysia after that, but I'll fill you in on that story when I have a bit of time.
Just to finish off, here is Zoe eating some corn on Railey beach, here is me demonstrating the beach is as white as my t shirt, and here we are being affectionate.
Til next time x

Koh Lanta

I'm having some creativity issues with the title of my blog posts here, as you can clearly see. Nevermind. I think my brain is a bit dulled by sun and sea.
So, anyway, we waved goodbye to Nick, which was a bit sad - it means me and Zoe are back to everyone assuming we are a couple (and giving Zoe pitying looks of "do you think we should tell her?") but that's fine we are having lots of fun on our honeymoon. We got a boat to
Koh Lanta which isn't as far from Phi Phi as we thought, in fact we can see it from the beach we're staying on, so we have been waving to our friends On TohKoh beach. The new thing about Koh Lanta is that it is the first west facing place we've stayed (you notice these subtle differences when everywhere is basically the same) so we've had some beautiful sunsets. There are also lots of nice beach bars, which, as with all of Thailand, are not shy with the fairy lights. I feel very at home. We've only been here a couple of days but we did manage to bump into my friend Kabir from London who was staying one beach down, indulged in a few pina coladas, and phoned every mutual friend we could think of which was fun. Apart from that it's been more swimming and sunbathing (and sunset watching) and I even managed to go for a run this morning which was the hottest experience of my life. (As in temperature).
Zoe had an unusual coded message on her drinks menu last night.
We have also been experimenting with the fast shutter speed on my wonderful camera. The camera is not, however, very happy in the sandy conditions and I'm worried about her surival odds for Australia.
New Years Eve has proved to be an inconvenient pain in the arse in the middle of our stay here, as hundreds of tourists are arriving by the boatload every second and everwhere is booked up so we are homeless as of tomorrow. We toyed with the idea of sleeping on the beach and then had the brainwave of heading inland, so we will be spending NYE in a grotty hostel (1 pound a night) in a town described by the book as "a transport hub". We have decided this is hilarious and are going to drink whisky with the locals somewhere industrial, maybe by a railway line, and get an early night - the next day we are off to Railay (another beach) to see some friends of mine from MTV (Jeannine and Kate) before setting off for Malayasia. We have decided not to bother with Koh Lipe as it is, after all, just another island, and it's a bit out of the way.
So that's it for now! I've just realised I hadn't posted proper links to all the photos so I have fixed this and the link to the left should show everything up now.
Happy New Year everyone!
x

Picture update...

Hello again! Zoe has written something proper below... so I will keep this short, but I have some pictures to show you. As usual this is just a small selection of the hundreds on the flickr page...
So, just to recap, if Koh Panyang was a hell of debauchery, whisky and tattoos, Koh Phi Phi has been like heaven; white sand, blus skies and turquoise seas. We stayed on a tiny beach where there was just one set of bungalows, and a bar up on the rocks looking out to see. This is where we had Christmas. So here are the photos:

KOH PHANYANG: The boat to KP. Zoe and Judith in a luminous bar. The first of those deadly buckets. The half moon party.

KOH PHI PHI
This is where we stayed. This is the sea. This picture was taken on chrstmas day. How's the weather in England by the way (hehehe). Obviously my camera wouldn't go underwater so you can't see all the little rainbow fishies. I saw a nemo.
This is our beach
This is definitely the funniest picture of the holiday so far
This is the beach where they filmed The Beach
Here's the view from where we eat dinner every night.
This is the sunset from the boat which brings us home from the shops in the afternoon.

This is the full moon rising on christmas eve
Here is my entry into the christmas day sandcastle competition we decided to have
This young lady's was another notable entry.
Here I am being a sea gypsy (avec infamous tattoo)
Obligatory drunk christmas eve photo
And me and zoe in town one afternoon at Ton Sai, Phi Phi. I have now dumped these glasses in favour of some knock off raybans which cost 4 pounds, which I bought with a singha beer t shirt. Yup I am a complete tourist.

(Full sets are here