Verbal Doodles

Name Game

2011-06-13T18:39:00.001-07:00

What's in a name? Surprisingly, rather a lot. To me there is anyway. I've finally gone and decided, after many years of deliberation, to change my surname from 'Sheasby' to 'Zaple'. I'm currently in the process of doing it all by the books, despite taking a while to do completely it will eventually become passport official. How these people who get married willy-nilly and and change their surname more than they change their socks I shall never know. I guess they must love filling in forms and creating new signatures. Although that said, the making a new signature bit was secretly quite fun.

It's been kind of liberating changing my name. The weirdest thing is that it feels as though there has been a weight removed from my shoulders.... one which I didn't know I had before.

But like I said to someone the other day, I'm still the same Dave. Just now I'm Dave Zaple.

For Bator or For Yurts

2011-04-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

So this is the bit where I should write about how I'm such a rubbish blogger for not writing in such a long time. How this time last year I was on Cat Ba Island in Halong Bay, Vietnam. How much has changed since then. How I'm on a massively steep learning curve in the back ambulances around Reading and perhaps even how I delivered a baby last weekend.

However...

this is my blog and my rules and today we're looking to the future. Not in a Mystic Meg kind of way (what ever happened to her?!) more of a Marty McFly kind of way.

What the future holds I really have no idea as the DeLorean is currently VOR.

Well, I have only a slight inkling as to what could be in store.

It would be nice (and downright scary) to think that this time next year, I will have applied for a job as a paramedic and be nearing the end of my course.... woa.

My main man Alex and I discovered an adventurous couple that we though could use a little bit of our help...

'For Bator or For Yurts' (www.forbatororforyurts.com) consists of Merryl and Philip who are planning on driving an Ambulance all the way to Mongolia for their honeymoon! They aim to purchase and drive an Ambulance from the UK to Ulan Bator, Mongolia, reaching their destination with the vehicle in such a condition that they can donate it to a Mongolian hospital where it will provide invaluable support to the local community. All monies raised will go towards purchasing a front-line Ambulance for this trip.

We figured a bunch of paramedic students with a little bit of spare time could lend a hand in raising some money for a good cause, so that's exactly what we're doing.

The first part of us helping out we are sacrificing blood, sweat and probably tears by getting our legs waxed. Please, please, please donate as much as you can to make our pain worthwhile! We'll be badgering everyone we know to donate a little for the cause.

Join the facebook group and follow them on twitter to find out what's coming up and how we're getting on.

one/one/oneone

2011-01-04T10:52:00.000-08:00

Ok so it's actually four/one/oneone but I thought about writing this on the first.... it's the thought that counts though right?

Happy New Year

New year.

Same Dave.

New challenges.

Game On

Reflection.

2010-12-10T03:11:00.000-08:00

So it turns out I never did get round to finishing the travel blog in it's entirety. Nevermind. I'm happy in the knowledge that I had a fantastic time in New Zealand and I have too many photos to prove it. One day I may even get round to putting the best ones onto Flickr.

It's been a whirlwind 4 months since getting back to the UK - who am I kidding?! It's been a whirlwind year. This time last year I was working in ETS selling TV's and other such electricals to the people of Plymouth for Christmas. This time next week I'll be doing exactly the same thing....! I have truly gone full circle.

Right now I'm lying in bed. In Oxford. Contemplating getting out to make some breakfast.

I'm at university! Training to become a Paramedic. I've just passed the most important exams of my life so far and as of January, I will be out and about on the ambulances around Reading.

I've been to my first festival: Ivylive, in sunny Devon. It has got me hooked as a festival goer and increased my love for live music, exponentially.

I made a long overdue visit to the city of Manchester to spend some quality time with some dear friends. I saw Muse whilst I was there too.

I had a car breakdown on me for the first time. Hopefully the last?

For Movember I attempted to grow facial hair for the first time. It turns out I'm perpetually juvenile when it comes to that not shaving lark.

I've joined some pretty wizard clubs and societies and this University place. I mountaineer, climb and cake.

I moved away from home. I've not given myself food poisoning or turned any white shirts pink. So far so good? I've even put a deposit on a house for next year with 5 other moderately cool people.

I make time for ketchups with the people who make me, me. Hell, I've even met some super cool people who continue to make me, me.

They say you make some of your best friends at university. I agree to a certain extent... however I think you meet your best friends all the time - they normally share your interests, have similar ambitions and are generally like minded. You find yourself in that situation surrounded by those types of people at university... but I'm guessing as life goes on and you once again find yourself surrounded by people who think, act, say and do similar things that you do... you'll have made even more best friends then.

Cereal time :)

Honey, I'm home!

2010-08-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

I have been away 4 days shy of 6 months. In which I've taken 12 flights, tried 9 different languages, visitied 14 airports in 6.5 countries. It only counts as a whole one if you stay overnight.

I've used more modes of transport than you can shake a passport at: motorbike, kayak, ferry, taxi, rubber ring, camel, jeep, bus, quadbike, surfboard, abseil, car, zorb, airplane, bicycle, luge, ambulance, train, river sledge, skis, RIB, parachute, raft, tuk tuk, racing yacht, rickshaw, boat, police car, zip line, electric buggy...then I've even done some under my own steam by walking, running, swimming and climbing.

It may have been called a world tour or a round the world trip. God forbid, some cheeky folk may have even said that I've been on holiday. I like to think of my last 6 months as a journey. A journey into the unknown. A journey of discovery. Yes, i know you can pretty much find what your likely to see, smell, taste, hear and touch by spending five minutes on Google. But the unknown part is how you're going to feel. Ok so google may be able to predict your emotions in certain situations. Imagine being stuck in the middle of Rajasthan, India, as it's getting dark, cold and to be honest - a little bit spooky. Your belongings are all in the broken down car with your not so helpful driver who pops back every 2 hours to say "car not ready"... no one can predict how you're really going to react and what thoughts and feelings that it will invoke in you.

After returning from China in 2008 I knew that I had changed. It was a once in a lifetime, life changing and other cliché type of experience. Change was inevitable. I knew I'd have an amazing time traveling the world, see some amazing things but I didn't think I would change. I was wrong. It has changed me. Confidence, insert cliché here, open mindedness, cliché, understanding....yawn - I'll let you guys figure it out for yourselves.

I became Marty McFly for a short amount of time and travelled back in time to LA. My flight left Auckland on 4th August at around 1pm. I landed safely in LA after a 12 hour flight, 6 hours mooching around the disgusting American Airlines domestic terminal and it was time to board my flight to San Fransisco...at 12pm still on 4th August. I'll let you do the maths on that one.

All in all, door to door, it took 48hours to get back to Plymouth. In which time I did a bit of thinking. Now I believe I'm ready for all of your repetitive questions. If you insist on asking me the pointless question of “How was you trip?” I'm likely to reply with some nonchalant answer along the lines of: “pretty good, not too bad, awesome, incredible, yeah good, amazing...etc”. If and when you see me try and come up with something a bit more original, be creative. If that's too hard for you and you go for “what was your favourite country?” I'll tell you now - I don't have a favourite country as they have all been so, so very different. Instead I'll probably go onto tell you some little story of a moment that sticks in my mind about one of them in particular.

Forgive me if I come across a little fed up in coming days and weeks. There is a medical condition called reverse culture shock which I may be suffering from. The best way of describing the post travelling blues is using an analogy that a wonderful Dutch girl called Paula said to me: When you leave your home and get on that plane, it's as though you hit a big button marked 'pause'. You go away travelling, see amazing things, meet incredible people, experience so much... but when that plane lands again back home, you step off and hit the button for 'play'. Nothing changes. People still moan. Still complain about the cost of the bus fare going up. It even still drizzles all day in the hight of summer (providing your in Plymouth).

I think the trick to it could be to keep reminding yourself of the amazing time you've had. The things you've seen and the places you visited might not even be changing that much either...

I'll soon polish off the rest of the bloggings but I just had to get all that off my chest. Now, with a little luck I might not end up answering as many of those repetitive questions, getting irritated and changing the conversation to how dreadful this summer weather is or how the bus fare has increased.

Aotearoa

2010-08-06T00:22:00.000-07:00

More from the land of the long white cloud...

Two people I used to work with at ETS had both been to NZ, both had done the KiwiExperience bus, both raved about this place:

Otherwise known as the Poo Pub.

Before stopping at the pub the bus calls into what must be the most profitable charity shop in NZ. The kiwibus calls there almost everyday. A bus load of backpackers then pile in a purchase a whole random bunch of items for their themed evening at the pub. Our theme was WTF. If you don't know what this is an acronym for then I'm not going to tell you. The idea of the theme is you have to make other people in the bar respond to your outfit with WTF.

Legend: Les

Les who is approximately 85 years of age runs the 'Hotel' and cooks the steak for the meal. $10 gets you most the amazing home cooked meal. It's pretty much all you can eat too...as there's so much grub even I struggled to finish my plate. It's safe to say that my appetite is fully up and running after it's dip in Asia. Folling the food it's a quick change and off to the bar for a drink...or 2.

WTF indeed...

En route to Franz Josef we stopped at little place called the Bushman Center. These guys used to sell Possum Pies. Legally they can no longer sell them – but you are able to make a 'donation' of $4 in exchange for a pie which contains possum meat. Unfortunately they didn't have any whilst we were there. They show you a most interesting little doco (downunder slang for documentary) on how the clever Kiwi's of years gone by started the deer farming industry. How do you catch a live deer that's legging it across the side of a mountain. Naturally Kiwi's being Kiwi's would jump out of a helicopter and tackle the beast to a ground. Tie it to the undercarriage of the chopper and hoist it back to the farm. Easy. This was all part of a big drive to restore New Zealand's native plant life as it was being destroyed by such pests as deer and possums.

Bushmans Centre Weather Forecast

Possums, introduced by their neighbours in Australia, are a huge problem in New Zealand. 3M high fences that go another 1.5m underground have been installed around many different parks nationwide just to keep out unwanted pests and allow the native plant life to restore.

Anyhoo...Franz Josef. Sleepy little town which is entirely reliant upon New Zealand's number one industry – Tourism! With a little help from the Franz Josef Glacier Guides (Chris John and Ben Mitchell – this would be a pretty wicked company for you guys to work for) I went Ice Climbing for the day! Massively different from normal rock climbing but heaps of fun. We were climbing on the Franz Josef Glacier in what is best described as a drainage hole. The interesting thing about the glacier is as it's constantly moving, melting and freezing - the walking and climbing routes are constantly changing. Guides go out everyday to re-carve the steps and work out how safe all the routes are. Scaling a wall of ice wearing crampons, waterproof gear and a pair of ice axes is fantastic fun. Climbing up a waterfall was a bit nippy though. To round of the day we all visited the hot pools. Pretty self explanatory – three different pools 35°C, 38°C and 40°C for chilling out and chatting after a hard day on the ice.

Ice Ice Baby

Lake Matheson is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. The pictures never do it justice. The surface of the lake is a mirror. In some of the photos, because the reflection is so good you can't tell which way is up. Amazing!

Lake Matheson

Wanaka was our next stop – pretty cool place to stop for access to the ski fields. This means the local supermarket was rammed with people sporting baggy jackets and sallopettes . Only an night spent in Wanaka before hitting up Queenstown.

What. A. Place. We arrived for the last two days of WinterFest which meant the place was buzzing. An electric atmosphere all round the town. There are many many bars to cope with the hoards of people looking for an apres ski session. The end of winterfest was followed by the start of New Zealand and Australian school holidays. Basically the place got even busier!

Milford sound is campaigning to be voted as the 8th wonder of the world. Amazing as it is, it was kind of overshadowed by Halong Bay in Vietnam. For me Halong is much more deserving of the title!

~~Plymouth~~ Milford Sound

Queenstown is known as the adventure capital of the world. Adrenaline fueled activities galour! Happy days. I did 3 different bungy jumps, a canyon swing and went skiing for the day. Bungy jumping is safer than crossing the road. Everyone who has the opportunity to do a bungy jump should take it! It's all about what's in your head, having the bottle to throw yourself off some kind of structure with some elastic tied around your ankles. Completely different to sky diving in that you have to throw yourself off...there's no one strapped to your back. Both get the adrenaline pumping but with bungy jumping you experience ground rush.

Kawarau Bridge, 43m - World's First Commercial Bungy

The Ledge, 47m

Nevis Highwire, 134m - NZ's Highest Bungy Jump

After reading AJ Hackett's autobiography I was definitely going to bungy jump. All the staff at AJ Hackett are all extremely professional and very supportive when you're trying to phsyc yourself up to send yourself plummeting towards the ground. The chaps at Canyon Swing are however much more fun. They will pretty much try to scare you as much as possible.

Carter, Darke & Sheasby

Skiing in New Zealand was wicked good fun. Ollie Darke and I took the micheal out of Ben who was snowboarding for the first time ever, no lessons, no insurance... just a whole lotta bottle. LAD. He therefor attended D&D's School of Snowsports. Me and Darkey would pelt him with snow every time he fell over, therefore encouraging him not to fall over. Our method had a varying degree of success. I've been spoilt by skiing in Europe as the skiing are itself consisted of around 4 lifts. Meaning in 1.5hours you'd completed all the possible runs. In the Alps, for instance, you can ski all day and not do the same run twice.

Queentown is also home to a frisbee golf course. Played just as it sounds. That's how cool Queenie is.

Queenstown went by in a flash and I was soon on a bus back to Christchurch. What was possibly the shortest flight I've ever taken found me in Wellington to begin my adventure of the North Island.

That's almost it for this mammoth blog except to tell you about the global phenomenon that is Fergburger in Queenstown. I can't believe I almost left it out of the blog. It's one of the best burgers you will ever eat. The biggest of the Fergburgers is roughly the size of a bowling ball and pretty much the same weight. Tastes amazing. Fergburger is open for around 20hours per day in which you'll never find it empty. There is almost always a Que. This place does no advertising whatsoever. It's all word of mouth. Whether you're yapping to someone in a bar, having a yarn to a randomer on a chairlift or just talking about Queenstown you will almost certainly converse about Fergburger. It goes hand in hand with other usual traveller questions like 'Where are you from? Where have you been? How long are you travelling for? Have you had a fergburger yet? Etc'.

Dave, Stef and Ollie pre Ferg

Mmmmmmmmmmm Fergburger.

Bookworm

2010-07-15T01:41:00.000-07:00

I just thought I'd give you a bit of an idea of what I get up to when I've got a bit of down time. When I'm not chatting to people, drinking, plugged into my iPod, on the internet or watching tv I can, believe it or not, be found with my head in a book. I'm now part way through book number 12. I have never been a big reader so to get through two a month is pretty good for me! I've tried wherever possible to read 'famous books'. That way I can pretend to have a bit of knowledge when people more intelligent than me are talking about books. Most hostels have a shelf marked book exchange where you can swap the book you've read for one you haven't. Failing that if you ask around you can normally get hold of a fresh read.

Downunder - Bill Bryson
China Road - Rob Gifford
Angels & Demons - Dan Brown
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea - Robert Holden
Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
Tenth Man Down - Chris Ryan
The Way of the Peaceful Warrior - Dan Millman
A Splendid Thousand Suns - Khaled Hosseini
The Girl in the Picture - Denise Chong
Jump Start - AJ Hackett

I won't bore you anymore with lengthening this mundane blog except to say all those books above are pretty good reads. Some more so than others. Shantaram is one of the best books I have ever read. I recommend you keep your eyes pealed for a copy in your local charity shop and read it too.

"Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind." JR Lowell
I found on the outside of Victoria University, Wellington and really liked it.
It even inspired me to write a blog.

Kia Ora

2010-07-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

"Welcome to Christchurch where the local time is 12:20pm with an outside temperature of 4°C"

Four degrees!? That's a whole 26°C colder than I was getting used to in Cairns. Moist from the driving drizzle and flapping around in my backpack for the hat, gloves and buff. Fortunately for me Christchurch has a wicked surplus store where English folk that are used to the heat of Asia and Australia can purchase ex army antarctic thermals. Sweet as! (Very common kiwi phrase) Randomly they also had Royal Mail body warmers in there too. I was tempted. There's a lovely little museum in Christchurch and a really cool art gallery - parents please take note. Apart from that not a whole lot to do. So as you do...I went and bought a pair of Goretex approach shoes and binned my loyal dunlops. The Dunlops were once relegated to river footwear but were brought back from the garage and resurected as traveling trainers. Ahhh the memories.

The Weather Forecast...brrrr

So back to the travels... I swiftly hopped on what is known as the Kiwi Experience Bus. It's big, green and filled with backpackers. Heading north we stopped for a night Kaikoura... it was still raining! But I did spend my first lump of cash on going whale watching! It was definitely worth it. Out upon a speedy whale watching boat we were on the look out for forty tonne sperm whales. Sounds pretty easy but the ocean is pretty big. The top notch crew found us a few - even in the fog and the rain. These beasts come up to the surface for around 8mins after diving deep for around an hour.

dive dive dive

Onwards to Picton. The ferry port access to the North Island - I however was staying south. A driver swap and a whole bunch of folk from the north island boarded my bus and we headed to Nelson. In Nelson you can find the geographical centre of New Zealand. We all trekked up the hill just in time to catch the sunset and pose for photies at the centre of New Zealand. Narrowly dodging the rain we rushed back to the bar for free beer tasting. That's right. FREE BEER. The following day we went to a vineyard for wine, liquor, olive oil, sauce, and fudge tasting.

The Geographical Centre of New Zealand

Westport. There's not a lot going on here - some wild stories of people being shot in some of the dodgy bars in the area, people joyriding in the early hours of the evening and suchlike. The only reason we stopped there (with the exception of a $9.50 roast - first in about 5 months!)was to visit Buller Adventure Tours. Where I went Jet Boating and Quad Biking much cheaper than you can do it for in Queenstown.

The Team Pumped for Jet Boating

Jet Boating basically involves a high powered boat that is able to reach very high speed in very shallow water. Throw in a few high speed spins and splashes and hey presto - Jet Boating. Quad biking is pretty self explanatory... 250cc Suzuki, 4 wheels, lots of mud, bumps, hills and speed. The next day my legs were hurting from 90minutes of ragging it through trees and mud!

Vroooom

England got booted out the world cup by Germany of all people. The less said about that the better - it was definitely not worth getting up at 2am to watch.

The Big Green Bus

Sunshine Stalker

2010-07-01T00:51:00.000-07:00

Townsville was my next stop courtesy of the Premier Motor Service. It seemed like a nice enough place for the time I was there but there not a terrible amount of stuff to do! I booked a diving trip to what is supposed to be one of the worlds best shipwrecks, the SS Yongala. Booked for Monday I had another four nights to kill so headed across the water to Magnetic Island. Maggie is a beautiful volcanic island surround by protected reef zones and only 8km from the mainland. Similar to Thailand's Koh Panyang, Maggie is also well known for it's full moon parties. Unfortunately I wasn't there for a full moon party but had a good time all the same! About 2minutes walk from the hostel was a popular spot for feeding rock Wallabies. These relations of the kangaroo will just appear out of everywhere and if you're patient enough you can even have them eating out the palm of your hand.

Me amongst the rock wallabies

I was on Maggie for the start of the 2010 football world cup and the first England game. Thankfully I chose not to get out of bed at 4:30am because England were, as usual, crap. Myself and to amigos - Marc and Ali, joined forces with Dave and Kitty for a 20km jaunt along one side of the island in search of a good, legal, fishing spot. We found the supposed spot cast out the lines and caught nothing. We conceded defeat and ended up scoffing a discounted cake that Kitty had bought at the supermarket earlier. On our way back to civilisation we were asked by an elder gentleman: "Do you like birds?" - Naturally we all said yes and headed down a little track to a patch of land that he owned. His name's Ron and he sails over from the mainland every weekend in his little red catamaran. So we sat and chatted to him and awaited the arrival of his feathered friends. Lorakeets and cockatoos soon flocked down, almost within touching distance. Pretty surreal moment courtesy of Ron.

Ron the bird man and his birds

I had a brief appointment in Mission Beach to attend. The small matter of leaping from a plane at 14,000feet strapped to a mad Aussie guy called Mike. Wow. That's the 2nd time I've skydived and it doesn't get boring - a bit more relaxing if anything. Next time however I'll be jumping without an instructor....

Gotta love free tees :)

Cairns. What a place. Not a lot to do. You can't swim in the sea because of the Crocs. The Lagoon is shut for renovations, so you can't swim there either! They do however have a wealth of bars filled with backpackers, special offers and all that jazz. Fortunately Cairns was also packed with a whole heap of people I'd met traveling up the East Coast - whom many of which I shared a beer or two with. Cairns City Council were also running free fitness and exercise classes for anyone who wanted them. Naturally taking the family motto of "If it's free, it's for me" I took part in a few. Beach volleyball lessons made my forearms ache but it was very fun. Bootcamp was a whole different kettle of fish. Almost a dare between myself and Marc from London whilst moderately inebriated...we rocked up in shorts and tee's after three hours sleep to be bullied by a woman from Queensland. Pushed to the limit doesn't even come close. Following a beasting we decided to buy all the ingredients for a fry up from heaven. We were the envy of the hostel kitchen with an incredible full english. Wow.

Another early morning flight. Catching up on sleep in the air found me back in slightly chillier Sydney. Back to the Zaple's family abode. A kind of surprise, early 21st birthday present found me the proud owner of a ticket to see England play the Wallabies at the ANZ Stadium. Uncle Andy supporting the team in green and gold was bitterly disappointed at being beaten by the mighty England Rugby Team. England 21 - Australia 20.

National Anthem Line Up

It was then a speedy little train ride for a few nights at Leah's city apartment in central Sydney. I used to work with Leah at ETS and we got on pretty well. 6 months later I find myself crashing at her apartment in Sydney. Crazy! Or at least I thought it was until I was sat sharing a pizza in a bar in Sydney with one of my close mates from school James Moreby. He's only doing a little bit of work for an engineering firm in Sydney in his summer break from uni. Now that was pretty surreal.

Morbster and Me!

My remaining time in Sydney consisted of taking full advantage of Leah's laptop and free internet uploading photos and writing blogs. I wondered around the city trying to come to terms with the mad two months I'd had since I was last meandering down Pitt Street.

Next stop New Zealand.

East Coasting Australia

2010-06-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

Back to Byron for a farewell day out with my fellow WWOOFers before meeting back up with Lindsey and heading for Surfers Paradise. People change, grow apart. This is what happened to Lindsey and I. We both decided to go our separate ways and travel independently. We're both happy and that's really all that matters. The shuttle bus driver summed up Surfers Paradise the best: "It's a lot like Magaluf but without the bad bits." ~~Brilliant.~~

I stayed there for one night and caught the next bus out. I did meet some cool people and even a fellow Janner. Skyscrapers beside the beach and despite the name there was a distinct lack of surf.

Paradise?

Beautiful, Lovely, Wonderful... Brisbane!

I love Brisbane. It's a real city, gets busy at rush hour, and there isn't a tour agency on every corner trying to flog things to backpackers. I got there and immediately went climbing with Rhi. An outdoor wall that's floodlit so you could even go climbing at midnight if you wanted to. That and the place is fantastic means I could really see myself living there. Parents may be pleased to know that I did a walking tour of the city and voluntarily went to the museum. There I discovered that they know produce a wetsuit for Muslim women, bet you'd never really thought of that conundrum before?! So aside from doing tourist and cultural things I also got horrendously drunk, dressed up as a woman, $2 steaks... For my Mother's sake I'll leave it there.

Enough said...

Crikey Mate!- That's right I joined the hoards of people who flock to Australia Zoo every year to pay homage to Steve Irwin's brainchild and love for all things animal. If you'd not heard that Steve is sadly no longer with us and went to Australia Zoo I'm confident you'd think he's very much alive. He lives on in the fantastic work they do there.

This photo is rated LB for Little Beauty

Next stop a lovely little place called Noosa. I'm told it's even nicer when you're not in a torrential downpour. A bit of rain never stops me. I walked around the headland spotted a few soggy looking Koalas and endured gale force winds around the headland. I booked a self drive tour of Fraser Island and a 14,000ft skydive then headed to Hervey Bay. There's a whole lot of nothing in Hervey Bay with the exception of easy access to Fraser.

3 groups in 3 Toyota Land Cruisers set off with a set of instructions to the largest sand island in the world for 3 days and two nights. The trucks were packed full of alcohol, food, tents, cooking equipment and backpackers. Following the ferry ride everything was 4WD. Single lane sand tracks that weave their way through trees, over roots and eventually onto 120km of beach. One word:

WOW

Cruising along the beach watching the waves break is incredibly surreal. Longing for a dip in the ocean is all you can do. that is unless you've got a thing for shark attacks and jellyfish stings! The island has the worlds cleanest fresh water lakes. So clean you can swim along drinking the water if you really wanted to. I was fortunate enough to have a really cool bunch of people around me which meant the good time were simply unavoidable. A German guy called Stefan had become my unofficial stalker as I kept bumping into him everywhere...low and behold he was in my 4WD too. We made a deal with the girls that we'd sort all the tents if they sorted the food. It was a good deal - sat with a beer in front of the tents watching the girls cook. We did help them eat it though.

The Land Cruiser

Airlie Beach - party central and gateway to the Whitsunday Islands. Through a contact of Darren I was soon aboard a racing boat called Silent Night. 2days and 2nights of fun. Some really good sailing, good food, and even better company made for an awesome trip. Whitehaven Beach is stunning. It was where they filmed the part of Pirates of the Caribbean where he's in Davy Jones' Locker. White sand, blue sky - need I say more? The Deckhand on the boat, Anna, kept putting wild ideas in my head about what I could do within my future career. Ski patrol, expedition medic, join a boat going round the world as a medic... so many possibilities.

This world really is my oyster.

Deep in The Channon

2010-06-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

Another little trip on board the Happy Coach but this time got off at a place called The Channon. Myself and 3 lovely ladies from Hull were about to begin WWOOFing. If you don't know what that means look it up on google.

Dropped off at the village pub we waited for Darren to arrive. He's the father of the family whose house we were to help to build. He arrived in a Toyota Hilux (pick-up truck, the indestructible ones off of Top Gear) also known as the Zebra due to the paint job. When a guy with dredlocks rocks up in one of these you know you're in for an intersting time!

The Zebra

We were introduced to the rest of the gang. Darren and his wife, Polly have 3 children - Makunda aged 9, Tashi aged 5 and Inara who's 18months old. They open up there home and invite WWOOFers into their family to help them with projects they have on the go. Myself and the 3 from Hull: Vicky, Lizzie and Sarajayne joined 3 others - Andy from Manchester, Michel from Holland and Jean-Baptiste from France. The lads took up home in the Special Bus and the girls were housed in the camping trailer. The bus was formally home to the family whilst they built their first part of the house.

Home - the special bus

So the deal was we worked in return for a roof over our heads and regular feed. All the food was organic and where possible home grown. This meant the food was incredible. A no drugs or alcohol policy on the farm led to a welcome detox from Byron Bay and the rest of the East Coast!

The work mainly consisted of rendering. The house made of straw was naturally rendered with mix of soil, sand, horse poo and straw. This basically translates as we spent the majority of our time elbow deep in shit. Our day would start somewhere around 7:30am when we were woken by a singing bowl, a small child, chickens or a combination of the three. Meditation and yoga beside the pool followed by a mountain of cereal is without a doubt the best way to start the day.

Poolside for sunrise meditation and yoga

Once in our work clothes and the music was on the rendering commenced. Chatting and listening to music whilst working was the usual drill. Doused in an abundance of jokes about how 'shit' the work was and it was just 'same shit, different day'. In the evenings after we had consumed the majority of the hot water from the solar tanks we'd sit down as one big family and eat together.

Feeding time

After the dishes were done I was normally given the task of sorting out a fire. Around the fire we'd play music, sing, get bullied by the boys, be enthralled by some of Andy's fascinating magic tricks, watch the stars, try and learn the didgeridoo and inevitably fall asleep there. Wake up cold and retire back to the bus. Sundays were a day of rest where we were free to do as we pleased or join the family in whatever they were up to.

First coat of render on the outside completed

The house itself sits in 66acres of land which is owned by a community of Darren and 3 other friends and their families. They arrived and made their dreams reality. Nothing is set in stone. If something doesn't quite look or feel right it can be changed. For example there's an angel on the outside of the building which required bigger boobs. So we sorted that too. Putting in windows as you go along thinking on your feet and following your heart is a good lesson for anyone. A quote from a propaganda poster I bought in Vietnam reads:

Nothing is more important than Independence and freedom.

Darren and his wonderful family have all of that with topped up with unimaginable amounts of love. Wowzers.

All in all, my time at the Channon was one of those moments in life where I've noticeably seen a change in my life. I've continued to meditate and I always keep an eye out for free yoga classes. It's opened my mind to a way of life that I've never seen before, a more spiritual side of the western world that, before now I would have brushed off as 'hippy nonsense'. It's really difficult to portray how incredible my time at the Channon was but to say that I've developed some kind of inner peace...

...crazy what 10 days spreading shit on walls can do for you eh?!

Sunset over part of the 66 acres.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie

2010-06-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

The wonderful world of home cooked has never seemed so far away... The week or so in Sydney was fabulous. Home comforts of hot running water, amazing food, being with a family - and most importantly Weetabix and milk! Wow! I missed morning cereals. We popped into the city for a few days, saw the sexy sights of Sydney. We also visited Palm Beach where they film Home and Away.

View from the lighthouse at Palm Beach

With our hop on-hop off bus tickets we joined the thousands of other young British, German, Irish, Dutch...(you get the idea) travellers on the East Coast of Australia. 1st stop Coff's Harbour. I'm not going to lie - compared to the rest of the East Coast there's a whole lot of not a lot to see there. One hostel, Aussitel, made our stay there pretty damn awesome. Special thanks goes to Martyn and Christina (from Devon! - we even had a friend in common on Facebook!) Ceri and Brendan, Dan and all those others who I am unable to name! Aussitel was really only special due to all those people there! They introduced us to the world of Goon.

Cask Wine - Backpacker's Essential

Goon is commonly known as wine that comes in a box. Goon is apparently the aboriginal word for pillow, for which the empty silver bag is a worthy substitute. Either way this stuff costs around $10 for 4litres and is moderately lethal. It soon becomes a travellers best friend as beer is very pricey in comparison. Many a night was sat round tables munching on BBQ'd Kangaroo steak, socialising and consuming unhealthy amounts of Goon. Swimming, canoeing, snorkeling, watching movies and jumping off the jetty it was time for me to head on up to Byron Bay. As things between Lindsey and I hadn't been the same we decided to spend a few weeks apart, she stayed in Aussitel becoming the cleaner in exchange for accommodation.

I absolutely loved Byron Bay. Stayed at a few different places there but had such a good time. Something about the place just sucks you in and makes you never want to leave. Many a good night out in a place known as Cheeky Monkeys.

A number of strange coincidences occurred here in Byron Bay. I met a guy who will be starting the Paramedic Emergency Care course at Oxford Brookes September 2010. Same as me! There's only about 60 people that are on the course. Earlier that morning I had to double-take a girl who I'm sure I'd met in India - sure enough it was her and her friends, making themselves breakfast at the same time as me, in the same hostel. Crazy times.

Future Brookes Students

From Byron Bay you can climb aboard the Happy Coach to a tiny town known as Nimbin. There was recently a festival there known as Mardi Grass. Such events as joint rolling competitions could be found there amongst the petition sheets for the legalisation of cannabis in Australia. This town is full of dealers trying to sell you 'special cookies' and other sorts of substances.

Nimbin

Every sunday somewhere not too far from Nimbin there's a market. At these markets you can by all sort of local stuff like food, clothing, etc. I saw a painted sign that was looking for WWOOFers in a place called The Channon. A break from the backpacker scene, no drink, no drugs just lots of fun - or words to that effect was what the sign read. I took down the number and this was without a doubt the best move I've made in a long long time.

To be continued...

Naaaaam

2010-05-01T23:53:00.000-07:00

Blogging has been slightly delayed for a number of reasons -

Frequent, prolonged power cuts
Lack of time
Lack of motivation
and I've simply been far too busy having way too much fun!

Since your last update I'm now a fully fledged Advanced Open Water Diver, completed travelling the length of the Vietnam and seen two of the most beautiful places in Vietnam :)

Not too shabby eh?!

NB: Linds has once again beaten me to blogging (no surprise there then) - so I'll highlight the important bits, then, if you haven't already done so, you can go and read hers. www.lindseybirtles.wordpress.com

The diving course went really very well. No ear problems and plenty of fish. Even did some underwater photography! Photos to follow yet again!

Onto Hoi An - not a typo of Hanoi but an actual place. It's where you can get pretty much anything you like tailor-made. Bikini's, shoes, suits, sleeping bag liners....the list is endless. It's and old market town and soon became one of my favourite places in the whole of Vietnam. A really chilled out atmosphere and we had a pretty good evening out.

A bus ride the next morning wasn't the best thing in the world but the overly average burger and chips in Hue was well overdue by the time we got there. Hue didn't appeal to us in the slightest. Probably due to the rain and cold but we did the DMZ tour and headed off to Hanoi as soon as possible. DMZ stands for De-Militarised Zone which encompassed part of both the North and South territory and the area of nomansland in between. It was pretty interesting but it did mean spending the majority of the day on a bus...followed by an overnight bus to Hanoi.

In Hanoi we met up with our special friends that we met in the desert of Rajasthan - Sally and Sian. After waking them up we had an action packed day of museums, monuments and other similar tourist attractions of Vietnam's Capital. We saw the body of Ho Chi Minh in his very own mausoleum. This man is known as Uncle Ho by Vietnam and is famous for bringing successful communism to Vietnam. An extremely biased museum on a prison that was built by the French to house Vietnamese prisoners - then during the war it was the "comfortable and enjoyable" home of downed American pilots. We travelled to all these places courtesy of 2 motorcycle taxis. 3 people on each bike. On the last journey from the Museum of Ethnology it became evident that our drivers had sunk a few cheeky bevvies whilst we were becoming culturally enriched. It made for a pretty exciting last ride anyway.

We often frequented to one of two places in Hanoi for eating and killing time. One was called the Kangaroo Cafe. This was an Aussie owned restaurant which had real milk and Weet-Bix (very similar to Weetabix - my staple diet at home!) and possibly Vietnam's best burgers! The second place was a very European looking ice cream parlour called Fanny. The jokes we had. It still hasn't got old!

Sixty US Dollars got us a fantastic tour of a part of northern Vietnam called Sapa. An overnight train, and an overloaded minibus ride later found us in Sapa City centre with our group of ten people ready to head off for two days trekking. The trekking was moderate to almost difficult - which was brilliant. The views were utterly spectacular. I'm pretty sure that my camera did not do it the justice it deserved though. The mountains were shaped by the rice paddies that covered them. We had a tour guide and about 8 women from a village in the mountains somewhere. These women would walk from their village early in the morning to Sapa market to buy things to sell to tourists. They then walk back with a group of tourists until they force a sale of cloth, bracelets, bags, cushoin covers, wall hangings and grandmothers upon you. They were all really nice people and naturally we bought some naff stuff from them to help them along. Following lunch we had a lighter afternoon of trekking before we got to our home for the evening. It was sold as a "homestay" but it's not what immediately comes to mind. It's a home that has a larger room attached full of comfy(ish) double beds with mozzie nets on. For each person the family has to stay at their home they receive 80,000dong - about $4 of the $60 we pay. Crazy. Nevertheless we had fantastic home cooked food and a very social evening chatting with our fellow trekkers.

Another train back to Hanoi, repack our stuff and we were off again on a speeding minibus to Halong City. This place is not worth visiting unless you have no other option as we did with our little run in with the "Vietnamese Mafia" (See Lindsey's blog for the full run down)

So anyway....we eventually got on a ferry boat - saw some really beautiful caves and sailed on through Halong Bay to Cat Ba Island. I'm guessing you've now got visions of Halong Bay and it's glorious blue waters and blue sky.....it was raining. Drizzling in fact. I was even wearing my waterproof jacket. But nevertheless it was breathtaking.

The four of us had lots of fun in and around Cat Ba - motorcycling round the island, climbing, Kayaking, Drinking, eating, celebrating Lindsey's birthday, fishing, drinking, snacking, UNO playing and laughing a lot.

Back to Hanoi one last munch in Fanny and Kangaroo Cafe. We parted from our Special Desert Friends - Sally and Sian and met some new ones too. S&S you were certainly missed though. A few more nights ensued of dining with different people and then we met back up with our two favourite Danish girls Malou and Louise. We did a bit of good old fashioned sightseeing with them and of course introduced them to Kangaroo Cafe and told them about all the fun we had frolicking in Fanny and suchlike.

Alas, it was our time to begin our journey out of Asia heading for Australia! After a 4am wake up we were at Hanoi Airport for 5am. Our flight took off at 7am and landed in Saigon at about 9:30am. We then had the best part of 6hours to kill in Saigon airport. We finally came to land in Singapore where we got another stamp in our passports dated 22nd April. We met up with Callum off of Newcastle/PMGF/NUS for a special birthday meal beside the river. We bought breakfast at Bread Talk and headed back to the airport to finally be able to go through 'early check-in' at 00:30. Another immigration passport stamp dated 23rd April meant we could finally find somewhere to sleep. I curled up behind some chairs and had a pretty good kip considering. At 09:30am we took off bound for Sydney Australia. Landing at 19:15 Sydney time our monster journey was almost over. We had our hiking boots cleaned in quarantine met my Uncle Andrew who drove us back to his home where we would live for the next week.

That's enough for one blog as I'm sure you'll agree. Aussie fun times are next on the blogging agenda.

"Jenny, they sending me to Vietnam - It's this whole other country"

2010-04-02T02:55:00.000-07:00

Those of you who know what movie that's from: Well Done!

For those of you who don't: You obviously haven't seen Forest Gump enough times!

We flew into Ho Chi Minh City courtesy of Air Asia. As we were leaving the plane we asked the girls sat opposite if they wanted to share a cab to the 'backpacker region' of the city. They agreed, we got overcharged, but still ended up in the right place! The Danish girls (Louise and Malou had a room booked already, a bit out of our price range we found a place round the corner for $12. Still a little bit pricey for us but it was a lovely little slice of luxury. Having only been open for 2months it was very clean, had AC, bathroom, AC, flushing toilet, hot shower and even Air Conditioning!! AC! Alas we only stayed there one night and upped sticks to a cheaper dirtier place, with a fan. It did have a balcony though!

That evening I fell in love with Vietnam - not only is my digestion system finally back to full working order - You can get a beer for under 18p. Otherwise known as 5000 Vietnamese Dong! Oh and the food was really good too. It started off with sharing a cab and has now turned into an almost nightly dinner date with Malou and Louise (M&L). We visited the Cu Chi tunnels with them too.

The tunnels were used by the Viet Cong during the war. Most are not much bigger than a doormat - with hidden entrances, traps and probable unexploded devices still around we stuck to the paths and followed our guide. They have even made 100m, of around 200km of tunnels, bigger - just for us chubby tourists. If you've got the nerve and the stamina in your quadriceps to negotiate the full 100m, you can emerge hot, sweaty and muddy at the other end. It was pretty fun! Having learnt a bit about the war and seeing the fascinating Cu Chi Tunnels we thought it best to purchase some 'Old Propaganda Posters' from the aptly named Old Propaganda Poster Store.

Along with M&L we booked on an open bus tour up to Hanoi. This set us back a whopping $35 each for a hop-on hop-off bus ticket. We hopped on the sleeper bus to Mue Ne. For a pleasant $6 per night we stayed at the Mellow Guesthouse. Excited to get some sun, sea and sand we dumped our stuff and trotted across the street, through the palm trees to the beach.
We lasted there about 6minutes. Not due to the heat but the ferocious wind! This is supposedly the windiest place in Vietnam and hence also the windsurfing/kitesurfing capital. Having been suitably pebble-dashed, 3 of us headed back to the shelter of the street to explore. As in lots of SE Asia there's travel agents everywhere offering different things. We decided to enquire about the Jeep Safari to the Sand Dunes. Managed to negotiate a sunrise tour for $6 each. Getting up at 4:30AM and paying $6 was definitely worth it. We were picked up on time from Mellow Guesthouse in a American Jeep, it even had the stars and strips sticker on the dashboard. We watched a beautiful sunrise from the white dunes then headed to the fairy stream and rounded the tour off with the red dunes. The fairy stream was incredible. So peaceful and an incredible mix of colours made for some awesome photies. Bearing in mind it was still before 8am - there were hundreds of people on the red dunes. Eating, drinking and sliding down the dunes on sheets of plastic that you can hire.

We are now in Nha Trang, further north on the coast of Vietnam. Still with M&L. Our relationship with them has even gone as far as t share a bath or 2 with them...
...at a spa. The Thap Ba Bath Mud Spa was very good. 100,000d got us the complete muddy package. It starts with a mineral water shower, 15mins in the mud bath (supposedly does wonders for your skin), sun bath to allow the mud to dry, then shower it all off. Down some steps to the hot bath type thing for about 20mins then we had unlimited time usage of the waterfall and 2 swimming pools. Oh and the jacuzzi. One of said swimming pools is kept at a toastie 38°C. Another 120,000d got us a full body massage for 45mins followed by 15mins in a steam room. I could only hack around 2mins in the steam as it was excruciatingly hot. All in all, my day at the spa with three beautiful girls in bikinis was horrendous... :p

Both Linds and I are now developing our Scuba skills. Lindsey's doing her Open Water and I'm doing the advanced one here in Nha Trang where some of the best diving in Vietnam can be found. We thought it best to go with what is supposedly the best dive company too - Rainbow Divers. They were the first PADI people in Vietnam and pioneered the diving here. Les Dennis even took his Open Water course with them! What a claim to fame!

Finally, today (02.04.2010) is Independence Day in Vietnam. It's 35 years since the Vietnam war. There's been a few road closures and a large procession of military peoples and civilian folk with floats and everything. They were on there way to the main street on mass this morning at around 5:30am walking past my hotel. Rather noisily. I have a feeling there's more things going on tonight so I'm off for a wander. Taraa.

Whistlestop Malaysia

2010-04-01T04:04:00.000-07:00

After about 10days in Singapore we caught a bus into Malaysia. It proved to be an 'on and off' kind of journey across the boarder. This was mainly due to immigration checks and more passport stamps! Yay! We'd booked ourselves on our first Air Asia flight to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This meant we had around 8days to kill in Malaysia. This is easy. We spent a few days in Melaka doing touristy cultural things and then booked ourselves an overnight bus to Kuala Perlis. This is the mainland side where you hop on a ferry to a beautiful island called Langkawi. The overnight bus cost around $55 each. Considering we travelled virtually the length of the country and the bus was another nights accommodation - it's pretty cheap.

A few nights in a hut about 100m from the beach made us feel much more 'traveller-like' and got the tan a few shades darker. Once the pink/redness had settled anyway. We also hired a moped and ventured up a cable-car to the Langkawi Skybridge. It won the award for best footbridge in the world of 2005, apparently. We then scooted our way to a waterfall...it had a distinct lack of water falling though. However there was another part to the attraction known as "Seven Wells". This is essentially a series of rock pools at the top of the waterfall. Pretty awesome to soak in after climbing 500+ stairs to get there! In the dying hours of our motorbike rental we zipped to the most beautiful beach on the island. This is an understatement. It was amazing (photo's to follow on flickr and facbook when i get Internet faster than a paraplegic gecko). White sand, picture perfect turquoise sea, in an enclosed bay of amazing islands and cliffs. A snorkeling trip topped off our little stay on Langkawi because I saw a barracuda (as did our new, newly-wed friends - Anna and Ant) and Lindsey didn't. I did get bitten by a Damsel Fish though.

Another Ferry, another overnight bus found us in Kuala Lumpur. We stayed in a cheap and cheerful guest house and saw some moderately tall buildings! Two of which are owned by the Malaysian fuel giants Petronas. The Petronas Towers were once the highest in the world until Taipei 101 was constructed. If you get up very early and que with the other tourists for a few hours, you can get free tickets (our favourite kind of tickets) to go up to the bridge which connects the 2 towers. It was very good, but I was glad I didn't have to pay! Opposite the towers is the Traders Hotel (where our newly-wed friends stayed). They had tipped us off about the bar (and pool) on the 33rd floor which looks directly across at the Towers. We headed up there and watched an electric storm, the fork lightening was incredible. We contemplated purchasing a sprite or two, but we were not repaired to pay 8 GBP for the privilege!

Low Crime doesn't mean No Crime!

2010-03-16T05:53:00.000-07:00

We decided to shorten our time in Mumbai a bit so we could have some extra time in SE Asia and it was getting rather pricey and we'd seen all we'd wanted to see. Personally I was glad to be away from it because of the whole stomach rollercoaster. One very special moment to note was the boat ride back from Elephanta Island - off the coast of Mumbai - The sun was setting over the high rise buildings and it was truly amazing. ***

The title of this post is a little slice of an ad that can be found on the side of a Singapore Taxi. Singapore, in case you didn't know has an incredibly low crime rate!
Fresh from the sights, sounds and unforgettable smells of India we touched down to a mild 32 degrees centigrade evening in Singapore. We were warmly welcomed by two of the most hospitable Global Fellows in Singapore, Dan and Callum! They're out here studying at the National University of Singapore otherwise known as NUS. If you ever get a chance to study there...do it. It's incredible.

Here are a few little facts about my current location: The population of Singapore is 36% made up of foreigners and the lowest ever recorded temperature was 16 degrees Celsius. Though normally it's double that and often about 100% humidity. Nice eh?

Even in the heat Singapore is best described as a very 'pretty city'. Everything is clean. You get fined for littering (I'll come onto fines shortly...). If there were prizes for the most aesthetically pleasing country, Singapore would have a darn good shot at 1st prize...in terms of its built up environment anyway. Head to a coastal part and it's likely that you'll be able to just make out the horizon beyond the vast amounts of container ships. As an island with no industry it takes great pride in it's people. The industry of talent if you like.

There is currently a government initiative to harvest more of Singapore's ever growing talent pool. There are encouraging postgraduates to 'get together' - more and more sex shops are springing up around the city. The theory is that if clever people 'get together' - the ultimate result will be cleverer babies. The really interesting part for me will be the fantastic cultural background from which these babies will spring from.

I mentioned earlier 36% of the population are not from Singapore. The majority of Public information signs on transport in particularly are in four languages. Four! English (Singapore's official language), Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. Despite this I frequently encounter people speaking Hindi and in the same train carriage there's probably some European folk chatting in German or French too. So eventually there will be children with fascinating family trees.
Singapore is a fine city. Literally. It is possible to get fined for lots of things. Littering being the least of your worries. Thirsty on the train? No eating or drinking - £500 fine. Stand back from the yellow line on the platform otherwise crossing it could see you £250 out of pocket. Carrying flammable liquid gases could cost you £2500. So make sure you're well behaved.
So to conclude...Singapore is culturally rich, a stickler for the rules, clean and essentially very western. In fact I'd probably even say they do "western" better than the west.

That brings me to the end of my very sporadic and random blog.

***This is closely linked to a video which another Global Fellow (Adam Tyndall) posted on my Facebook wall:

Delhi Belly

2010-03-04T23:34:00.000-08:00

The inevitable has happened to my soft western stomach. I have got the world renowned "Delhi Belly". The title is most misleading as I am now in Mumbai and still suffering. The nickname given to me by our 'Special Desert Polystyrene Pedalo Friends' - Sally and Sian - of dysentery Dave is becoming less and less amusing.

So despite our driver (and stomach) troubles which can be read about in Lindsey's blog we have had a pretty damn good tour of Rajasthan (only slightly smaller than Germany....and not the UK as mentioned in Birtles' blog :p)

Whilst in the town of Pushkar we celebrated the festival of Colour known as Holi. Pushka is famous for it's holy lake which was created by Lord Brahma, one of the Hindu gods. It is also where you can find the only temple in the world dedicated to Lord Brahma. We had been forewarned about the low level of the lake by Sally and Sian but expected slightly more water than there actually was. There's been no rain there for about 3years so the 'Famous Lake' is now more of a mud flat with a puddle at one end. But as you read this there is a pipeline being constructed to collect water from the surrounding mountains which should feed the lake and fill it again.

Holi is basically a time for a large water and paint fight. Our guide turned friend Jeet owns a Hotel in Pushkar, so we played Holi there with his friends and some of the other guests. The pool was the lovely clear colour you would expect from a swimming pool before Holi, but the paint started to flow and it soon changed into a dirty green, then claret red by early evening. We chatted, drank rum and beer (slightly illegal in Pushkar) and generally had a good time. People were thrown in the pool countless numbers of times too. We played, what can best be described as a more formal version of tag. The name escapes me but it was very good fun and I turned out to be quite good at it. The game followed the basic rule of if you get caught you have to throw yourself in the pool. Good times.

Whilst it's fresh in my mind I shall tell you about our little train ride from Agra (where you can find the Taj Mahal) to Mumbai, otherwise known as Bombay.
We're booked into the 3 A/C class one above sleeper where it turns into a bit of a melee for seating etc. As it turns out the 3 means 3 tier beds and the A/C bit obviously stood for Air Conditioning. The middle bed can be lowered to form the backrest of a seat upon the lowest bed. I was lucky enough to have the top bunk. This was where I spent the majority of the next 23 hours to Mumbai. The compartment of the carriage we were in was shared with 6 others. Some of which snore very loudly and talk loudly on their mobiles. During all of this there is a constant stream of staff selling water, coke, biriyani, samosa, magazines, crisps and biscuits. Despite all this i managed to get a good amount of sleep. Alas I didn't see any of the preconceived images of people sitting atop the carriages or hanging out of windows (seen lots of cases of this with busses and jeeps though). But there are lots of people who seem to roam the tracks, picking up litter or just generally running for their train which is pulling off from an opposing platform both with varying degrees of success.

Fasten your helmet tight, keep your head intact.

2010-02-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

This is another quirky little sign that can be found attached to traffic lights all over the place.

The other afternoon we had a lovely little tour of of some of the tourist sights in Delhi. The Red Fort named for it's construction from red sandstone, was the first stop. Humayans Tomb and Ghandi's cremation site. Photo's to follow.

I'm going to try and explain what Delhi is like. This is no mean feat as whatever I write everyone will paint a different picture in their heads. Similarly, everyone who visits India will respond with mixed emotions too. It's much like Marmite in two ways...You'll either love it or you'll hate it, as well as it being smelly and let's face it, marmite looks disgusting. Despite the smells, masses, upon masses, upon masses of people, and ever constant noise of engines and honking horns - there is also a strange kind of inner peace to the place.
Everything is colourful! It's fantastic. Trucks painted with many different words, colours and symbols, sari's of the most beautiful designs. The truly intriguing part is the people. Some are respectively wealthy, yet some have next to nothing. Living under blue tarpaulin and corrugated asbestos. In a space no bigger than a standard bathroom you're likely to find a family of six or seven people. To western eyes this poverty is atrocious. However the people are seemingly happy and content with their lives. It really makes you think of how people can whinge and moan about the weather, or the cost of stamps increasing when there are people which remain relatively happy and still wear a smile in the slums.

Chaos!

2010-02-13T08:30:00.000-08:00

So here we are. New Delhi. India.

I'll skim over the boring stuff like the flight being delayed, having curry on the plane, the small irritating children sat behind me, and too many films to let you know a bit of interesting things we've been up to. That and I don't really want to just copy Linds' blog - despite the fact she seems to be hogging the blogging limelight.

We are staying at a place called the 'Smyle Inn' - very quaint with lots of similar gappies to chat to.

We are on day two and it already feels like it's week two! A nice chap named Ojas who I have been emailing from the UK is the PR person for Boy Scouts Delhi and he's been fantastic. He came to meet us last night and took us on a tour of Delhi in his car. We then went back to his 'family home'. This takes a much more literal meaning as his entire family live there. Ojas is 45, the youngest of 3 brothers. He lives on the top floor with his wife and two children, the middle brother lives on the second floor with his family, the eldest lives with is family on the first floor and their parents live on the ground floor. His mother is 76, knits, cooks and cleans. His father is 82 still rides on two wheels despite being a freedom fighter serving under Ghandi.

Around 36 hours with no sleep Lindsey and I were understandably fading. A well earned kip and we were up and ready for Ojas to pick us up at 8am. We went to the Lt. Col. Maher Little Angels School - a private school named after the headmistress' late husband who was in the army. She was a very down to earth woman who had a lot of interesting views. Over 50% of the lessons are taught in English. She disagrees with this a bit as the kids would learn more if lessons were taught in the mother tongue. Yet the opportunities which being able to speak English brings are vast. But she posed the question why is it that lessons in English schools are not half taught in Hindi? Why is the English Channel called "The English Channel" and not the "English and French Channel"?

At the Little Angels school we attended a disaster management lesson in which Ojas teaches some basic first aid and ways to improvise things like slings and stretchers in emergency situations. Very interesting stuff. Later in the day we also visited another school - a government primary school and a very successful one at that. upon leaving this school a small child who had kissed the feet of the people around and then me was turned by the Principal to shake my hand. I later found out it is an Indian custom to kiss the feet of your elders.

Traffic noise is incredible - engines and horns are a constant reminder that cars, mopeds, cows, motorcycles, rickshaws, dogs, trucks, bikes and people are everywhere. The best method I've found to combat all these is to relax and go with the flow by copying whatever everyone else is doing. I have taken a few videos of the traffic and hope to get them up onto YouTube at some point just so you get an idea of the chaos that is Delhi's traffic system!

Too much to write about and not enough time to write it!

so watch this space for more and check out Lindsey's blog on black bogies.

We fly tomorrow!

2010-02-08T02:14:00.000-08:00

"We fly tomorrow!" - best said in a corny American accent on some huge box office smash movie trailer. Ok so I have only just woken up and that's the first thing that popped into my head when I thought....I know I'll write my last UK blog.

Here we are in moderately overcast Yate, on the outskirts of Bristol. The weatherman has said that temperatures are set to plummet again and he's forecast more snow. As long as the powers that be at Heathrow allow flight BA257 to take off, I'll be happy. The rucksack is packed and yes Mum - we've shared our stuff out between the two bags in case one goes missing. Today we start our 3 month course of Antimalarial tablets. These, for those of you that are familiar with such medicine cause you to become hyper photosensitive . This translates basically into you'll get an amazing tan so wear lots of suncream. With a few other minor side affects like liver failure also possible.

A goodbye buffet tea hosted by the Birtles' went swimmingly. There was a food available from every country we're going to! Very yummy indeed.

My parents made the trek from Plymouth to come and visit for the last supper. then spent the following day at Cribbs Causeway after Mother's farewell where she tried her hardest not to cry...and failing.

Finally the most important news is that I have been offered a place to study Paramedic Emergency Care at Oxford Brookes! Finding this out before I go is a massive relief. As the other two Uni's I had interviews for are likely to take months to respond!

That's it really... 15:15 tomorrow we'll be setting off to Delhi. Henceforth this ought to be the last of the boring blogs with much more exciting adventures to follow.

Christmas and New Year

2010-02-01T03:38:00.000-08:00

It's February. This is an mad attempt to catch up on missed bloggings and be completely up-to-date before we fly out a week tomorrow.

Christmas was a very lovely. Lots of family time was had in between the time at work! All of the presents I recieved were all in some way related to the forthcoming travels, which was great! Saved me plenty of time and hassle buying stuff. Lindsey was back in Bristol with the Birtles' gang for Christmas so we had our usual 'early Christmas' which was awesome as usual.

Linds was back for New Year and overwhelmingly excited about the prospect of spending NYE in a field on the edge of Dartmoor. Especially with the mildly chilly conditions(!). The guestlist included Ben, Emma, Ben, Jane, Me, Lindsey, Chris, Austin, Kate, Joe, Luke and Steve. Lots of warm clothing, a big fire made of pallets, plenty of alcohol and good company kept us all warm on the inside to bring in the new decade. I had borrowed a posh wireless speaker thing that did very well and kept us musically entertained until aroud 23:45 when the battery light began to flash! A mad rush to the generator and we were back on track for Auld Lang Syne and a wonderful display of Bucks Fizz and fireworks!

New Years Eve

Jane (off of Cousin status) has also now embarked on a mini world tour type thing. She's in South Africa doing horse things on some farm safari place. Then she's off toSwitzerland to work in the Girl Guides Chalet. But to celebrate us all heading off in search of adventure we had a wild night out in Plymouth. Good Times.

University Updates: I managed to get three interviews! Yay! Oxford Brookes, Hertfordshire and Swansea. This also meant we had to delay our flights in order to enable me to got to the one at Swansea. For those of you who don't know I'm applying to do Paramedic Science on return from the world tour. We now fly on the 9th. Only a week later than planned - *fingers crossed* it'll get me a place at university and prove to be worth the £400 to change the flights. I've been to the interviews at Herts and Brookes. Both of which seemed to go ok, but of the two I prefer Brookes at the moment.

That's all for now. Dad just came up and said "You all packed?" to which my reply was - "No, I'm wiriting my blog."

"Bugger the blog and get packed, you've gotta get there you know!"

Invisible Children

2010-02-01T02:12:00.000-08:00

Invisible Children.

They are a fantastic charity who are campaigning to make Uganda a better place for Ugandan people. Three young filmmakers from California travelled to Africa in search of an adventure. They witnessed the untold tradegy that Uganda has been facing since 1986. The war between the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan Government. Joseph Kony is the leader of the LRA who are responsible for abducting an estimated 30,000 children and displaced 1.6 million people since its rebellion began 24years ago. The LRA are a rebel army consisting of thouands of children. Child Soldiers.

After reading this please take out 36mins of your day to watch the documentary 'The Rescue' on the Invisible Children Website by clicking here.

35 days unitl we depart...

2009-12-26T14:10:00.000-08:00

...from Plymouth. A blog update is long long overdue. So here's a short sweet update for you.

I've one more injection to go, all gained at cost price. Thank you Sheila and West Hoe Surgery. Australian and Indian visas have all been granted. The list of travel kit required is shortening thanks to Christmas. (Crimbo update to follow)

I still need to get anti-malarials and find an Indian Scout Troop to get in touch with.

This time last year Lindsey and I were in Thailand having spent the day Scuba Diving. Whilst there we met some amazing people one of which emailed me today:

"Hello P'Lindsey and P'Dave
Merry Christmas."

It's amazing how someone so young and so far away can vastly improve another person's day.

Postings to follow include: Christmas, New Year and Invisible Children.

Oh and now there's double trouble: Visit Birtles' Blog by clicking here!

Something in the water?

2009-10-20T01:44:00.000-07:00

Why is it that kids seem to have so much energy?!
What happens to it as you get older? Where does it go??

I'm refreshed, this morning, after a night at Cubs. I can safely say they are all bonkers. Every one of them. Probably down to the fact that they have so much energy! If there's a way of harvesting that energy to make kids slightly less hyperactive, and adults more so - I could make a fortune. I'll put energy harvesting on the back burner for the time being as there is a more pressing matter which needs my full attention. The Trip.

A bit more research here and there has lead us to realise that February 2nd is nearing. Fast. With Christmas not too far away lists are being formulated for relatives to purchase things from to help complete the kit list. Just over a month after Santa pops round Lindsey and I will be off to India. Exciting stuff! My aim is to hopefully get in touch with a Scout Troop in India which we can visit and maybe even create a link with to 3rd Plympton Scouts. In doing so I am also trying to run the International Friendship Award for the entire Scout Group. Updates on this to follow so watch this space.

Plymouth MAD Pre-abseil Photo.

In other news: Dave and Ben successfully completed Plymouth's First Adventure Race!
It's best described as a massive orienteering course on bicycles. It took us all over Plymouth in a 40ish Mile circuit. You collected points on the way by going to given checkpoints and stamping a bit of paper as well as completing activities at the compulsory checkpoints. These included on land rowing, climbing, abseiling, and orienteering. It was a very fun day and made even more rewarding by the free t-shirt and pasty at the end.
Ben and I took part in the Adult Long Course (8hrs) and came 25th out of 42 other teams on that particular route! Special thanks goes to our support team Chris John and Benny Mitch for driving in the warm car in arduous conditions to cheer us on along the way.

The Support Crew.

The end of an era

2009-09-25T02:33:00.000-07:00

My time working at Atkins in Exeter has come to an end. I spent the past 12 months there doing a whole manner of Engineering things, learning lots and meeting lots of wonderful people.
Fortunately for me, I was able to finish work at Atkins on the Friday, then start my new job at ETS on the Monday! Recession?! Pah! ETS in Plymouth is an independent electrical retailer on the top floor of the Drake Circus Shopping Mall. It's about 5miles from home and taking inspiration from my friends in Exeter, I now commute by bicycle! Not only is it cheaper than catching the bus but it's a lot faster!

Drinks promotion is in full swing with the students back in town. My favourite comment of last night was:

"****ing hell?! A Jäger Boy! You're as rare as rocking horse poo."

Speaking of rarities.... Those of you who have read this before may know that I entered a competition to win £100 worth of Blacks vouchers through travmonkey.com. I was the winner!! =] So speacial thanks go to the folks from my favourite website of the moment.

That's about all I can think of for the time being expect to say: Myself and Ben Crispin are doing the Plymouth MAD Adventure Race next weekend! A mix of cycling, running, climbing and god knows what else it will involve...but it ought to prove a bit of a giggle!

Happy Friday!

IF...

2009-09-08T01:37:00.000-07:00

Carlsberg made poems:

If…

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Lightning

2009-08-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

...is the speed in which

- my past year has gone.

- the rate things change.

- Bolt.

I'm sitting here now thinking about where I was this time 12 months ago. China!

Since then I've managed to hold down a full time office job and part time drink promotion role, spend Christmas in Thailand, ride an elephant, scuba dive on boxing day, chat with Danny Cipriani, Margot Wells, Gordon Brown, Ed Balls, Peter Jones, witness Oasis play live at Wembley with Kasabian and the Enemy too, laugh at Russel Howard, see Scouting for Girls and Feeder, visit the World Gig Championship, find new ways of making/saving money, run my first 5km race, be a Smurf at new year, a week skiing in france, been to my first gay bar, discover 5 half siblings, moved in with Lindsey, plan a round the world trip, listen to Desmund Tutu, walk 50km, see Ten Tors from the other side, fly on the London Eye, visit Madame Tussauds, knock on Number 10 Downing Street, learn to love Bristol and start a blog.

Wowzers.

Bragging blog over.

Roll on the next 12 months.

Nonsense Blogging

2009-08-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

I’m going at this old school with a pen and paper. Actualwriting. It’s some mental stimulation from my day at a computer screen. (Yes I then typed it up!)

It’s somewhat wet and windy in Exeter today. I’m sat in the relative shelter of the office building outside in the courtyard area. People are to-ing and fro-ing between the office and the designated smoking zone.

The sticker on this banana skin reads ‘FAVORITA ECUADOR’

How many of the people in these offices actually know where Ecuador is. Chances are quite a few. But there’s got to be people all over the country, and indeed the planet – who know little of the world outside their own.

They go to work. Spend the day in an office. Then go home.

Either their weekends are so filled with excitement that they couldn’t possibly handle anything other then a spreadsheet 5 days a week, or they are actually that mundane twenty-four seven.

The clothes on their backs probably come from all corners of the globe. Take the jacket I’m wearing. It says in the label “MADE IN BANGLADESH”. It was bought in a store in Atlantic City, USA. The banana I’ve just eaten was grown in Ecuador, bought in Bristol, eaten in Exeter. This time next week it could even be on a ship to China being put in landfill there. A week in the life of a banana would be fascinating.

Why do people not travel? Take a different route to the office? Walk down a road they’ve never been down before?

Could it be the vicious curse of no motivation? Resulting in a lack of ambition? Money? Commitments?

Humdrum must have sucked them in and drained their desire for pastures new. Escaping humdrum must be tough as you don’t hear of many people doing it.

I don’t want to have to find out. I’ll visit people there, but I hope to never truly be there.

My lunch break is now over…I best get back to my desk. Ha.

I’m living life on the edge… of humdrum. It’s just a means to an end, honest!

Competition Time!

2009-08-23T10:59:00.001-07:00

I'm all for competitions.

As they say you've got to be in it to win it.

So the story goes like this... I get a bit of time on my lunch breaks at work to peruse the internet. A lot of my attention is taken up by travel websites looking for tips, ideas, answers to my questions and things like that. I stumbled across a website called TravMonkey.com and it's really quite good. It's an online magazine for World Travel . I joined the forum I liked it so much. Articles like "7 Secret ways to save for budget travel" suit me down to the ground and the whole money saving thing is serious hard work.

Today I was on Travmonkey again and there's a competition to giving away a £100 Blacks voucher. If you'd like to enter too all you have to do is write a blog post about it.

So here's my entry!

Hopefully my blog might even get a mention on TravMonkey.com and I'll feel really special that it's not just my Grandparents that read my blog!

Another week, another free trip to London.

2009-08-11T03:17:00.000-07:00

I am a lucky boy. There’s no doubt about it. But I also believe that you make your own luck. So it’s swings and roundabouts really.

I was down in the depths of Bodmin camping with the Scouts on Saturday and Sunday. This, as always, was brilliant fun. First time camping outside of Devon too, I think. Following 2 grubby days on camp I caught the night train to London….I went for a wonder around Kensington Gardens at 7am, had a spot of breakfast and took some photos.

Not far from the Kensington Palace nest to the lake was a man, dressed completely in black clothes with the exception of his red gloves, doing some kind of martial art. As I got closer he appeared to be homeless and had been sleeping rough. He was wearing red PVC safety gloves and was now balancing on his head with his legs crossed in the air behind him. Whether he liked looking at the swans upside down I have no idea, but he just seemed to vanish. One minute he was there, upside with his plastic bags of things, the next minute he was nowhere to be seen!

I was in London courtesy of winning a competition I entered with Alliance and Leicester. It was a Masterclass with Danny Cipriani.

Anyhow, I met the other ‘Competition winners’ at Waterloo Station and we eventually got on the train to Twickenham. The view of Twickenham from the blacked out windows of the Ford Galaxy was quite impressive. Alas that stadium will have to wait for another day as we turned into The Stoop, home to the Harlequins.

We were met by Danny Cipriani as we entered the function room. He gave a talk about his life so far and his rugby. After some Q&A his agent, a lady called Tara, spoke about herself and how she came to be an agent for famous people. This then got me thinking about looking into a similar kind of work in PR and other people based things.

Those of you who are old enough to be around in 1980 may remember a sprinter called Alan Wells, who won the 100m sprint in the Olympics that year. His wife, who trained him to run fast, is Danny’s fitness/sprint coach. She was next to talk about herself and her life. Then she took us out onto the pitch and taught us how to run fast. By this point Paul Sackey had also turned up to join in the fun.

Margot Wells is not afraid to speak her mind and has an obvious passion for what she does. This combined with her Scottish accent makes her a force to be reckoned with.

The arms are the key, fast arm movements, on your toes, lean forward and head up. That’s all there is to it. That and masses of training. The only rugby player that she hasn’t been able to make vomit during training is Lawrence Dillaglio, apparently he just wanted more. So she left him to it.

We played touch rugby for the remainder of the afternoon in the blistering heat. It was really good fun despite some people’s rugby skills (mine included) being slightly questionable. The red bibs were beaten by one try by the green bibs…at least we came second though, right?!

Showered, changed, got some freebies signed, raced across central London to catch the train home. The following morning I headed back down to Bodmin for another two days at camp! We did backwoods cooking, shooting, shelter building, and sailing in those two days. Hence why I was somewhat saddened when I had to go back to work on Thursday.

However, Friday was bringing with it Fellows from across the land to spend the weekend camping in Devon… that’ll be the next tale to tell!

One more step along the world I go...

2009-07-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

Lindsey and I occasionally spontaneously break out into song. The latest spontaneous sing-a-long was the title of this blog. I said at the time…that’s going to be the title of my next blog…and it is.

There’s big news on planning our RTW trip:

THE FLIGHTS ARE BOOKED AND PAID FOR!

As a result Lindsey and I combined can now muster together about £4.80 to last us until the end of the month.

The actual flights are as follows:-

London to Delhi – 02/02/2010
Mumbai to Singapore – 01/03/2010
// overland to Jakarta
// Jakarta to Borneo
// Borneo to Singapore
Singapore to Sydney - 18/04/2010
Sydney to Christchurch – 18/06/2010
// overland to Auckland
Auckland to Santiago – 02/07/2010
// overland to Arica
//overland to Cusco
// Peru to Brazil
Rio de Janeiro to London – 20/08/2010

For those readers which may struggle a bit with working that out geographically in their head, fear not, I have created a Google map for it below!

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=118187417834212559739.00046da6818ee72337eaa&ll=30.751278,30.234375&spn=165.169768,360&z=1

Not only have we booked the flights we have also created a folder to compile all of our planning stuff inside – a smaller version of which we’ll take with us around the world! This folder even has coloured tabs and plastic wallets.

Back to the reality of hum-drum, working two jobs for the most part is good. Or it will be when both are producing a regular income.

For those of you who don’t know I work for Atkins Global where I do engineering type things not diets as some people think. Job number two is as a drinks promoter. Next time you’re out and about and people in orange Jagermiester uniforms come into the bar/club with flashing lights and giving out freebie look out for me and say hello. Then I’ll try and sell you some after.
Work at Atkins is set to end in September so I am on the serious look out for another job. Having had a couple of possibilities fall through I could with a ray of hope. Should anyone want to employ me full time please drop me an email!

If and when Miss Birtles gets around to starting one of these I'll let her explain about 'the flu' and other such enjoyable tales, but I'll wrap up with this little one.

On Wednesday evening I met Prince Charles.

I was at the British Council's 75th Anniversary Evening Reception with a select few other Fellow's and we all managed to get a handshake a nice little chat with HRH The Prince of Wales. The invitation merely said a VIP would also be there, rumour then spread that it was Royalty...special mention to Dom Kelly who when asked guessed correctly whom the 'VIP' was going to be!

Champagne, Pimms, wine, little finger bites and the cutest little ice creams you have ever seen were all part of the event. All for free which makes it slightly better. Nihal off of Radio 1 was also there. He is a top bloke, and well worth a chat should you ever get the chance to meet him. Congratulations to him on such a Sterling effort that evening considering his wife had just given birth to their second child just two days before!

Oh and The Prince was a lot shorter than I expected him to be.

Thanks to franknoon.com for the wonderful photies too :)

The blog has a theme!

2009-07-06T07:55:00.000-07:00

I must humbly apologise for the sheer abstractness of my initial blogs, I'm frequently thinking of things which will be perfect for these blog type things and then never get round to writing them down. You can now breathe a sigh of relief as I have come up with some kind of theme to write my blog about...

...Lindsey and Dave's round the World tour, 2010.

For those of you who don't know, my wonderful girlfriend, Lindsey and I are currently trying to organise a trip round the world. We've both taken a second gap year to do just that.

The plan goes something like this:

Save as much money as possible until February 2010.
Fly to Rio, Brazil.
Brazil to Peru - to do the Inca trail.
Peru to Chile - to see Michael (Lindsey's old Spanish assistant)
Chile to New Zealand -bungee jump?
NZ to Australia - visit my family and maybe do some work in the outback
Aus to Singapore - to visit our good friends Dan and Callum who'll be studying out there!
Singapore to Borneo - to do a months teaching English in a school.
Borneo to India - for a month before coming back to the UK.

Post RTW Tour we may be going to university, possibly, maybe, perhaps...

As means of financing our trip between us we almost have 5 jobs. We have also completed one successful car boot sale raising approximately £82. Both of us also fill out online surveys as means of making a few pence. A 30min survey could just about pay for a meal for two in Borneo, or perhaps a glass of juice in Australia. All sorts of other means of making money are currently being worked upon in an attempt to save as much as possible.

Lindsey and are also currently saving money by not paying rent at home by house sitting. Not only are we living in the house we also have their pets to look after too. Dexter is a Dalmatian and poppy is a black and white cat. The (who seems to rule this roost) is quite persistent in awakening me from my sleep at about 5:30am just because it appears that the lady of the house needs a feed.
Dexter. Lovely dog, really he is. Just totally bonkers.
Not only does he eat plastic ducks, poo, chicken and mushroom pies he also has rather animated dreams. I imagine he dreams of chasing sheep, birds.... playing snooker like they do in the photograph* and such like. On numerous occasions we have battled for the best part of an hour to retrieve the spotted nightmare from the murky waters of the river Plym. But it's all good fun and makes a change from living with the parents!

So there you have it... The first of many blogs giving you an insight into our little world of planning what ought to be an amazing trip!

*Special thanks to Russel Howard for the joke - and for an extremely entertaining show on Friday!

Numero Uno

2009-06-28T04:03:00.000-07:00

I'll set the scene for you - I'm currently sat on the sofa on this sunday afternoon watching a bit of "Worlds Wildest Police Videos" on ITV 4 - both the dog and cat (Dexter and Poppy) are catching some z's on the other sofa. Lindsey's reading a book we bought at a charity shop yesterday and every now and again peering over my sholder to see what's going in my first blog post.

Turns out, not an awful lot.

Lindsey and I have been house sitting for Kate and Andy for just over a week now and all is well. The animals are still breathing and the house is still standing. Result!

As a result of house sitting we are saving money on rent. Kerrching. Ultimately helping us to save money for our round the world trip =]

My ramblings have led me to come up with an overall theme for this blogging lark... Trip Preparation, Savings, and other random bits that I can think of.

Right. This is now eating into my Sunday and in an effort to do something productive with my day I'm going to leave it there for now.

As they say in Corwall...

...Truro.