My Tedious Blog

Emails That Don't Work With Images Disabled

2011-08-03T15:06:00.005Z

I receive rather a lot of marketing emails these days. Much of it comes from companies with whom I have had some dealings in the past and who have therefore put me on their mailing list. While not exactly spam, it generally isn't particularly interesting to me either. The senders obviously put a lot of work into making their emails look good, by which I mean that they eschew textual content in favour of a large and presumably beautiful image in the centre of the email. This would be great, were it not for the fact Gmail sensibly doesn't display images by default and I have no inclination to turn them on. Most marketing email looks like this to me (with apologies to the company that send this particular email):

That email went straight into my spam folder, which I felt bad about because they were probably a reputable company but not sufficiently obviously so to trust the unsubscribe link. It probably didn't make any difference but it's definitely something to bear in mind when sending marketing emails.

Testing 123

2011-05-09T18:48:00.001Z

I wonder if my phone will successfully post to Blogger.

Mount Taranaki

2011-03-25T06:26:00.003Z

Way back in December, we visited Mount Taranaki, a dormant volcano in New Zealand's North Island; although it hasn't had a major eruption since 1655, it is apparently due to errupt any time now. As we approached it, we could start to see its shape forming menacingly in the distance.

When we finally it, we were rather disappointed for a number of reasons. Firstly, we had been expecting some kind of hellish volcanic landscape. What we got was a perfectly normal, grassy (albeit volcano-shaped) hill. Secondly, we couldn't actually get all that close without spending all day hiking. Thirdly, we could only see a fraction of it, the top part being hidden by the cloud:

Hannah found a big Maori totem pole. I can't remember what the correct name for one of these is.

Instead of hiking up the mountain, we decided to visit the supposedly very impressive Dawson Falls instead. On the way, we encountered what claimed to be the world's oldest continuously operating hydro-electric power station.

We followed the stream down on the way to the falls:

The falls were quite impressive and there was the opportunity to get pretty close to them.

According to some Maori legend or other, a Maori warrior was being chased by a band of other Maori warriors and managed to evade his pursuers by hiding behind the waterfall until they had gone past. I can't really see that working but never mind.

Geothermal Power!

2011-03-20T11:51:00.004Z

While travelling between Taupo and Rotorua, we passed a geothermal power plant. Naturally, I did my best to get a picture of this, which didn't do justice to its awesomeness:

Motueka

2011-03-20T11:31:00.003Z

We spent Christmas in Motueka, just outside Abel Tasman National Park. Alas, we don't have pictures of either the park or our amazing Christmas dinner of beef olives and mashed potato. Still, we do have a few pictures of the beautiful scenery nearby.

This is a view from the lookout point to the north of the town, looking back towards Motueka. Beyond the town can be seen the Tasman Bay and, beyond that, lies the very pleasant city of Nelson.

The rocks near the lookout point were very interesting. From what we read, it sounds like the rocks were shaped by rainwater that sank through the soil, becoming acidic on the way, before partially dissolving the rocks and making them look like miniature versions of some of the hills that we saw in New Zealand.

Waitomo

2011-03-20T11:25:00.003Z

On the way from Taranaki to Taupo, we stopped for a couple of days to visit the Waitomo caves, a system of caves notable for the glow worms that live within. We went round on a guided tour, finishing with a boat ride through a pitch black flooded passageway. Here is a picture of the opening from which we finally emerged:

We went for a wander around some of the surrounding countryside. Very weird it was, too:

Waikite

2011-03-20T06:58:00.005Z

On the way from Taupo to Rotorua, we stopped at the excellent Waikite Vallley Thermal Pools. These are some thermal pools fed by a boiling spring. The pools were great fun (and free to anyone camping at the adjoining campsite):

The spring itself was amazing, with boiling water gushing out of the ground. It was hard to get a good picture of the spring due to all the steam.

As the stream flows down the valley, minerals can be seen that have been deposited as the water, still close to boiing point, evaporates:

The vegetation around the stream looked rather unusual.

We were told that some of the ferns in the area are only found here and in the Amazon Rainforest.

The folks who operate the spa were in the rather unusual situation of having to find a way to cool the water down to a bearable temperature. They did so using this contraption:

Some of the water then flows into the spa pools, still steaming:

Waikite was a great place to stay. We tried to stay another night but, annoyingly, the xampsite was fully booked.

Cape Reinga

2011-03-19T18:11:00.005Z

Towards the end of our trip to New Zealand, we visited Cape Reinga, the John O'Groats of New Zealand:

Being a much-visited place, it has an obligatory signpost:

In common with John O'Groats, it isn't the most northly point in New Zealand; that point lies a few miles to the east:

This is the place where the Pacific meets the Tasman Sea. We were told that the waves from those two bodies of water sometimes crash together violently. Alas, it was pretty calm when we visited:

This being (nearly) the very north of New Zealand, the local flora was starting to look very tropical. The contrast between the vegetation here and that in the south was striking.

One particular piece of vegetation was, we learned, sacred to the local Maori population:

One of the nearby islands was, apparently, a haven for indigenous wildlife:

The view from our campsite wasn't bad either:

Alas, we couldn't spend much time in this area and headed back to Auckland quickly, to get ready for our flight to Singapore.

Puhi Puhi Scenic Reserve

2011-03-19T17:58:00.003Z

Way back in December, we spent a night at Puhi Puhi Scenic Reserve DOC campsite near Kaikoura. The campsite itself was unremarkable and rather busy, now that the school holidays have started. The surrounding area was, as usual, rather picturesque. We were near the Hapuku river, which runs through a gorge with steep rocky sides.

The river's tributary, the Clinton River, also seemed to be housed in similar gorges which were beautiful and also annoying since they made the river itself frustratingly innaccessible.

The rocks lining the gorge were interesting. Notice how the strata are almost vertical, indicative of some "geological stuff" having happened at some point:

As we drove away, we noticed some other interesting rocks which Hannah was kind enough to park next to so I could take a picture.

When we reached Kaikoura, our plans were yet again cussed by the weather; strong winds made sailing conditions treacherous and all whale watching trips were cancelled. With just a few days to go before Christmas, we headed off to the Marlborough Sounds instead.

Botanic Gardens, Singapore

2011-03-17T16:11:00.005Z

While in Singapore a few months ago, we visited the Botanic Gardens. Here are some pictures, which I am currently too lazy to write about:

Hello Hong Kong

2011-03-10T16:26:00.002Z

We have now arrived in Hong Kong and settled into our tiny hotel room in Tsim Shar Tsui, in the southernmost tip of the Kowloon Peninsula. After all the touts in Thailand, we thought that we had seen it all. Nope. Stepping off the bus at the wonderful Chung King Mansion, we were set upon by an army of touts demanding to take us to their preferred accommodation. We managed to fend most of them off, apart from a burly Nigerian guy who came up with us on the lift to our hostel's reception and proceeded to show us our hostelbookers booking confirmation and check us into the hostel. By that, I mean that once we had checked in, he led us down a maze of corridors and down five flights of stairs until we were completely lost. We are now in a completely differently named hostel in the same building and are hoping that we haven't just been massively scammed.

Kowloon is crazy too. Before we came here, we looked up the surrounding area on Wikipedia and were told that it was the most densely populated place on planet Earth. We can now believe that. Every building round here seems to be a skyscraper. Tomorrow, we must go out and have a look around Hong Kong. I hope that we are able to make sense of it all.

Lolcats of Thailand

2011-03-09T16:44:00.002Z

We are now back on a ferry to Phuket from Ko Phi Phi Don and it is time to reflect on the wide variety of cats that we have met in Thailand.

On our first morning on Phi Phi, we went out for breakfast and met these two feline dudes:

This cat was seen prowling half way up the unreasonably steep path to the lookout point:

This cat (which is actually the same as one of the previous cats, if you look closely), found it all very amusing.

Of course, we mustn't forget the lolcats that we met in Singapore.

Toodle pip!

Ko Phi Phi

2011-02-25T16:59:00.006Z

On Monday, we caught a ferry from Phuket to Ko Phi Phi Don, the largest of the Phi Phi islands. The guidebook describes Phi Phi as being more expensive than anywhere else in Thailand (and it was; we payed nearly £30 per night to stay here, massively more than anywhere else in Thailand) but cheaper than any other similarly beautiful island in the world.

The first sights of Phi Phi Don as the boat approached were indeed beautiful:

As we got a little closer, it was possible to appreciate the sheer limestone cliffs. I don't know if it's possible to see in this photo but the sea had been eating away at the lowest few metres of cliff, while rainwater attacking them from above had left stalagtates dangling down towards the sea.

After checking into our guesthouse, we went out for lunch at a restaurant by the beach. The beach was superb, by the way:

The afternoon was spent catching up on sleep, before heading out for dinner. We were disappointed by the sign that greeted us when we arrived at the restaurant:

I think that they meant to say "no food or drink not bought on these premises" or something similar. Those crazy Thai restauranteurs!

Hannah wasn't very well that evening so I went out on my own to explore. The beach had turned into party central:

Impressed, I returned to the guesthouse and persuaded Hannah that it would be more fun sitting on beach than lying in bed. We sat on mats on the beach, watching people twirling burning batons around and sipping the juice from a fresh coconut:

I was a little worried about mosquitos but my fears were calmed by the numerous paraphin fires built on top of cones of sand; I assumed that the mozzies wouldn't much like the smoke from those:

Not so, of course: I received a huge number of mozzie bites all over my feet, causing me much distress for the next few days.

The next morning, I left Hannah and climbed up the nearby hill to the lookout point. On the way up, I passed numerous signs like this one:

The signs were presumably installed following the boxing day tsunami in 2004, which utterly flattened the part of the island where we were staying and killed numerous people.

On the way up a sequence of steps on an unnecessarily steep path, I looked back and got a strange sense of deja-vu. Eventually, I realised that I had seen this view before, in some grainy amateur video footage of the island being innundated by the tsunami six years ago. Somewhere down there is the guesthouse where we stayed. A lot of people lost their lives when that thin strip of land was assaulted by water from both sides simultaneously.

When I reached the first lookout point (it turns out that there are several), I came face to face with some kind of bird of prey:

It turns out that the guy who lives there feeds it fish every day, which is one way to make sure it keeps coming back.

Finally, tired and drenched in sweat, I reached the highest of the lookout points, from which views of the island were beautiful:

Also visible in the distance was Phi Phi Lei, one of the smaller islands and the setting for the film The Beach. If you look carefully, you can see that Phi Phi Lei looks like Homer Simpson lying on his back.

Mmmmm... Donuts...

Phuket Town

2011-02-19T16:51:00.002Z

On Tuesday, we left Bangkok on a flight for Singapore, leaving Thailand a few days before the expiry of our 30 day visas. We had been thinking about flying home from Singapore but decided instead to come back to Thailand to visit the south of the county. Sadly, hotels in Singapore are expensive and we couldn't justify paying for accomodation for the night so we spent a largly sleepless night in the airport. Luckily, a few cafes stayed open all night so we were able to get something to eat and drink.

One cafe sold "chocolate mouse" which we initially assumed was a spelling error. I stand corrected:

Finally, morning arrived and we got on a plane to Phuket.

First impressions of Phuket: it's insanely hot here. Hotter than Singapore, perhaps, which surprised us. It's also, unsurprisingly, even more touristy than everywhere else we've been in Thailand. When we arrived at Phuket airport, we were set upon by an army of touts who were keen to charge us far too much money for a minibus to our guesthouse or a boat trip to Ko Phi Phi. We eventually found the taxi rank and caught a taxi for far less money than the touts were going to charge us.

We're staying in Phuket Town, quite a distance from the beaches and consequently a lot cheaper than places near a beach. We haven't made it to the beach at all yet, mainly because we have spent our first two nights here at a nearby bar, being plied with free drinks by the owner and a whole load of cool British and American ex-pats, and have consequently spent our first two full days nursing hangovers.

Here is a picture of us with the Turkish guy who owns the bar:

A mention must be made of the hilarious Plup Fiction picture which adorns one of the walls of the bar. Well, it made me chuckle anyway:

In the next few days, we plan to catch a boat to Ko Phi Phi, supposedly the most beautiful of Thailand's islands. We'll stay there for as long as we can afford, which probably won't be long since Phi Phi is meant to be the most expensive place in Thailand to stay.

Banglamphu

2011-02-14T10:59:00.002Z

We are back in Bangkok and, once again, are staying in Banglamphu, a stone's throw from the (in)famous Khao San Road. The guidebook describes this area as a "backpackers' ghetto", which is a pretty apt description. Farangs like ourselves outnumber the locals and the streets are lined with stalls catering to the likes of us.

This time, we decided not to book any accomodation in advance and just turned up, doing a tour of guesthouses until we found a room. We eventually managed to find a double room with a private bathroom for 350 baht (just over £7), which didn't seem to bad, despite the dirty concrete floor, lack of light and the smell of cooking coming from the kitchen directly beneath. Things took a turn for the worse during the night, however, when Hannah woke me up and complained that she was being bitten by bed bugs. We left the light on for the rest of the night to scare away any bugs and promptly checked out the next morning. We're now paying a king's ransom (£17 per night) for a much nicer room down the street.

Walking down the street round here is rather a draining experience, with tuk-tuk drivers and tailors touting for business. Unfortunately for them, the guidebooks are pretty clear, advising travellers that both are either a rip-off or a scam. We still managed to fall for a scam, though. When we first arrived in Bangkok, when the first few locals noticed that we were clearly new in town and approached us, we asked where the tourist information office was. Little did we know but the tourist information office was mere feet away at that point. We were instead led in completely the opposite direction by a friendly chap who dropped us off at a travel agent who promptly offered to plan our entire time in Thailand in axchange for £800. Thankfully, we didn't go with that offer.

At night, this area becomes even more manic, with a million backpackers coming out to play.

A million biting insects also come out to play and we have learned that insect repellant is essential, even in the centre of Bangkok.

Today is, of course, Valentine's Day. We're off out for a swanky and expensive meal. We're off to a pizza restaurant round the corner where a pizza will cost all of 300 Baht. That's £6 per pizza. Good job Valentine's Day only happens once a year.

Man's Inhumanity To Man

2011-02-10T08:51:00.003Z

We have just returned from the rather appropriately titled Death Railway Museum in Kanchanaburi, a museum dedicated to the history of the Thailand-Burma railway.

The museum rather effectively told the story of the construction of the railway at the cost of the lives of tens thousands of forced labourers, many of them allied POWs.

Visiting the museum was a humbling experience, in a "there but for the grace of God" sort of a way. We also visited the cemetery next door:

6,318 of those who died were British and many of their graves could be found in the cemetary. One thing that I didn't realise was that most of the labourers who were forced to work on the railway weren't alllied POWs but were Malay and Burmese. Of the 180,000 Asian labourers who worked on the railway, 90,000 died, which rather puts things into perspective. They don't even get an immactulately kept cemetary; most of the dead were never even identified.

Kanchanaburi doesn't feel like party central any more.

The Bridge Over the River Kwai

2011-02-10T03:39:00.002Z

I haven't blogged in a while, during which time we have visited Sukhothai (the ancient Thai capital) and Ayuttaya (which was Thai capital until it was sacked by the Burmese 200 years ago). I'll try to post some pictures at some point.

We have now arrived in Kanchanaburi, home of the infamous Bridge Over The River Kwai. I had been expecting this place to be a stark symbol of man's inhumanity to man but, so far, a more apt description seems to be "party central". We are staying in a floating bungalow on the river and were kept awake last night by party boats going up and down the river, blasting out terrible music and even more terrible karaoke singing. We are staying on a street that is incredibly touristy and rather reminiscent of Bangkok's Khao San Road, being lined with bars and restaurants.

Today, we are going to visit the Burma Railway museum before walking across the bridge, which I'm rather apprehensive about.

Moradok Thai Guesthouse in Auytthaya

2011-02-06T06:30:00.000Z

On Sunday, we took a train from Bangkok to Ayutthaya. Oour hosts very kindly picked us up from the station and drove us to our accommodation for the next few days, Moradok Thai Guesthouse.

This turned out to be by far the most wonderful place that we stayed in Thailand so far and I can't speak highly enough of the awesome hospitality shown to us by our hosts. That evening, they laid on a barbecue for us (which they wouldn't accept any money towards). The barbecue was great, too, and the format was very new to me. I didn't know that you could barbecue soup.

We hung out with the other guests, getting very drunk on Chiang Beer and making friends with lots of awesome people, before our hosts took us out to a bar down the road where we watched a very good local band.

The next day was pretty much a write off due to a massive hangover so we postponed looking at the sights and gladly extended our stay by another night.

The day after, we finally headed into the city to look at the ruins. Ayutthaya had been the capital of Siam until, a little over 200 years ago, it was sacked by an invading Burmese army. It was after this that Bangkok was founded but, until that point, Ayutthaya had been the Thai capital and one of the world's largest and most magnificent cities. Keen to explore the ruins, we hired bikes from our hosts and headed off.

First stop was Wat Mahathat, the ruin of a massive temple.

As we explored the temple, we came found numerous headless Buddha images. We presume that Burmese soldiers hacked the heads off the statues when they destroyed the city. Here is an example:

I wonder where the head went... ah, here it is:

While exploring the ruins of this temple and others, we took many pictures of the ruins. Here are a few more:

While biking around the town, I realised that the bike I'd been given was fairly rubbish. We passed some people who had a much better mode of transport:

We enjoyed our time in Ayhutthaya greatly. The city and the ruins were pretty cool but the best thing was the guesthouse at which we stayed. Our hosts were the most friendly and awesome that we have stayed with anywhere in Thailand (or, to be honest, anywhere, period). They took great care of their guests as well. When one of our guests developed an eye infection and needed to go to hospital, one of our hosts gave him a lift there and stayed with him all day to make sure he was ok. Stuff like that really makes a difference.

The atmosphere of the place, created by our hosts, was great, too, and we made some great friends during our stay. Overall, top marks. If you ever go to Thailand, take a trip to Ayutthaya and stay at Moradok Thai Guesthouse.

Muay Thai Fun

2011-02-01T03:35:00.003Z

Last night, we finally caved in to the pressure of relentless advertising and went to see a Muay Thai boxing match. I was a little apprehensive when a little research revealed that this match was put on entirely for backpackers (and it was; the majority of faces in the audience looked pretty Caucasian to me). We paid our 400 Baht entrance fee (a whole £8 each - and that's for the cheap seats) and waited for the show to begin.

The flyer had promised eight genuine Muay Thai fights, including the main fight where a Spanish guy named Jorge would be pitted against a Thai fighter. My prediction was that Jorge wouldn't stand a chance and would be pummelled by the Thai guy . More on that later.

The first thing that startled me was that we were watching fights spanning all the age groups. The first fight was in the youngest age group, featuring a couple of nine year old kids.

Don't be fooled by the picture; the kid in the red corner made mincemeat of the kid in the blue corner, who threw in the towel in the third round.

As the fights continued, we moved through the age groups, the fighters becoming stronger and more skillful and the blows becoming more and more vicious. The third fight ended with a knockout blow in the third round, which was rather shocking to see. Luckily, the defeated fighter regained consciousness and was lead out of the ring to a round of applause.

Before the main fight, we were treated to possibly the most entertaining spectacle of the evening: blind boxing. This involved putting four blindfolded boxers into the ring, and watching them flail around, trying to find each other. Any time a boxer made contact with another, they would unleash a flurry of blows. Often, this would involve punching another boxer in the back, which seemed a bit mean. Occasionally, a boxer would make contact with the referee instead, knocking him to the ground. The ref didn't much like this sort of thing and would respond with his feet (on which he had shoes), kicking the offending boxer to the ground, to a cheer from the audience.

Finally, it was time to see the plucky Spaniard, Jorge, take on Thailand's finest. As the fighters stepped into the ring, I couldn't see that Jorge stood a chance against Thailand's finest. After all, Spain doesn't have the same reputation for producing awesome kickboxers that Thailand has. The fight was soon underway, to cries of "viva España" from the numerous Spanish backpackers in the crowd.

The fight seemed fairly even for a very short while, both boxers trading blows and grappling with oneanother. Then, something happened that I didn't expect at all. As the fighters grappled, Jorge put his opponent on the floor. Then he did it again, before landing a series of increasingly brutal blows:

The fight ended shortly into the second Jorge putting his opponent on the canvas one too many times and the Thai guy failing to get up again. I was a little disappointed, to be honest, having hoped to see the full five rounds. Jorge departed, having confirmed the honour of his nation, and we headed for home. Despite the short duration of the main fight, we left satisfied, having discovered that Muay Thai is an awesome sport to watch. Even if this fight was purely for the benefit of us Faranags. Apparently, the Thais go to a different Muay Thai stadium across town.

More Chiang Mai Fun

2011-01-31T08:23:00.002Z

It's now Monday and we have had lots more fun in Chaing Mai. On Saturday, we got the bus to the top of Doi Suthep, the mountain overlooking the city, in order to visit the temple at the top. Getting the bus was a tricky proposition and it took us a while to find the "bus stop". Once on board the truck that was to take us to the top, we realised that we'd have to wait until the driver had filled his vehicle with passengers. After an hour or so, a group of four novice monks joined us for the journey.

The temple was very beautiful and I will try to post some pictures at some point.

On the way out of the temple, we were collared by a lady selling "tapestries", which were rather nice. We ended up being ripped off massively, paying 800 Baht (the equivalent of £16) for a couple of pictures. The worst part came when other vendors of similar pictures noticed that we had just paid over the odds for these pictures and wouldn't leave us alone. Through this process, we discovered that the correct price was 100 Baht, a quarter the price that we had paid. When one lady pursued us into our bus and begged us to buy a picture from her for 100 Baht, we tried to explain we would have loved to have done so but that she was five minutes too late. Eventually, she left, uttering what we were pretty sure were swear words.

On Sunday, we visited the Sunday market in Chiang Mai's main street. This was an excellent opportunity to practise our bartering skills (which are still not that great) and also to sample some excellent Thai food. This we did with relish. My favourite was a kind of sausage-dumpling; a long tube made of rice flour with pork inside. While eating dinner, we were cornered by a guy offering foot massages, who seemed perfectly happy for me to eat my dinner while being massaged.

Today, I had my first proper Thai massage. This was a painful and yet strangely satisfying experience. A bloke spent half and hour massaging my back so hard that it was excruciatingly painful at times. After that, he spent the next half hour twisting my arms, legs and fingers into slightly unnatural positions, standing on me and periodically hitting my muscles. I wouldn't describe it as having been an enjoyable experience at the time but afterwards I was rather chilled out, albeit sore and bruised. Hannah went for the slightly less intense foot massage.

We're now in a cafe, having a quick drink and looking forward to tonight's entertainment: a Muay Thai boxing match. Wish us luck!

Week in Chiang Mai

2011-01-28T07:41:00.002Z

We arrived in Chiang Mai on a plane from Bangkok on Saturday evening and checked into what was meant to be interim accomodation in SK House, a guesthouse at the north-eastern corner of the old town. Hannah was feeling extremely ill when we arrived so we took it easy for the first few days until she felt a bit better.

On Tuesday, we went on a one-day Thai cooking course, where we learned to cook such delights as tom ka gai (chicken soup with coconut milk - awesome) and green curry (also awesome). I was very pleased with how this went; we each managed to cook five dishes over the course of the day, all of which tasted reasonably authentic and most of which tasted good. I'm going to attempt to cook some Thai dishes when we return to the UK, although I can't see it going as well without constant supervision from an expert teacher.

On Wednesday, we explored the city a little more, visiting Wat Phra Sing, one of the larger temples in Chiang Mai. Thailand's Theravada religion is everywhere, especially in Chiang Mai, where every street seems to have multiple beautiful temples on it and where monks can be seen on the streets in their distinctive orange robes. We witnessed the monks in Wat Phra Singh drawing beautiful works of art, with reference to the artwork on the walls of one of the temple buildings. I'm hoping to visit another temple on Saturday for "Monk Chat" to ask the monks about their religion.

That evening, alas, I came down with a rather bad case of traveller's diarrhoea. This rather cussed our plans for Thursday and Friday. Luckily, I seem to be getting over it now so we hope to take a bus to the top of Doi Suthep tomorrow. This is a large hill overlooking the city, with a famous temple at the top.

I'll try to post some photos at some point. Until then, adios.

Sickness in Bangkok

2011-01-20T11:15:00.004Z

Well, that didn't take long. 24 hours after arriving in Bangkok and I'm being sick. I don't know whether to blame the awesome chicken and coconut soup that I had for dinner or the surprisingly strong Thai beer that I washed it down with. As a result of the above, we haven't managed to do much today. Tomorrow, we hope to figure out Bangkok's public transportation system well enough to get across town to satisfy our dual objectives of meeting Katrina and buying train tickets to Chiang Mai. For now, we are enjoying another warm evening sipping Coke Zero and, in my case, enjoying a lovely red curry.

Arriving in Bangkok

2011-01-19T04:28:00.001Z

We have now arrived in Bangkok after a month of not blogging much. I have a tonne of blog posts in draft which will probably get published at some point.

We caught a Tiger Airways flight from Singapore to Bangkok yesterday, which was an interesting experience. A large group from China found themselves separated from each other. Those members of the group further back in the queue attempted to join their friends by pushing ahead of other passengers in the queue, causing angry exchanges with both the other passengers and checkin staff. Matters were eventually resolved when the checkin staff threatened to either close the checkin desk or call the cops. After that, the flight was pretty uneventful.

Arriving at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport, we made it through immigration after a wait of an hour or two and got in a taxi. Unfortunately, the taxi driver spoke as little English as we spoke Thai but, after a phone call to the hotel, he figured out where we were going and we set off at breakneck pace down the motorway. It was at this point thatwe realised that the taxi driver was a bit of a maniac, swerving between lanes or straddling two, depending on what he felt would be quickest. We made it to our hotel in Banglamphu in one piece and paid our fare, rounded up to the nearest hundred baht, in crisp 100 baht notes. Before I could consult my phrasebook for the Thai for "keep the change, mate", the taxi driver had already sped off. What a mindreader!

New Zealand to Singapore

2011-01-14T12:04:00.002Z

My previous experience of air travel had been that one went through security before getting on a plane. This seemed a very sensible measure, given the need to ensure the safety of the aircraft. This trip has introduced me to the thrills of going through security after getting off a plane. On the way from London to Melbourne, our plane refuelled in Hong Kong. All the passengers were therefore herded off the plane, through security (who confiscated any dangerous items such as the bottles of water that had just been taken off the plane) and then back onto it.

The same thing happened during our trip from Auckland to Singapore, via Melbourne. Disembarking from the first plane, our trip to the transfer lounge had an element of farce about it. The captain led the passengers down a featureless corridor with a locked door at the end. Hannah likened it to the depiction of pergatory in an episode of South Park. After the captain had an argument with security over the intercom, we were finally allowed through the door, all so that we could go through security before being allowed into the transit area. I was left feeling slightly miffed by this experience because they confiscated my bottle of water.

The transit area at Melbourne Airport doesn't come close to the awesomeness of Singapore Airport's transfer lounge. Nice though it was to be "back" in Melbourne, we couldn't wait to get going again, on the way to Singapore. Luckily, our plane soon arrived:

We boarded the plane, sans water bottle, and were soon underway, heading for Singapore.

Auckland Part 2

2011-01-11T06:58:00.002Z

On Tuesday, we woke up early and left our very last campsite. The rental company were expecting their Spaceship van back later that day so we sped south, arriving our hostel, The Oaklands Lodge in the Mount Eden district of Auckland, arriving just after 2pm. The reception turned out to be closed so we were unable to check in. Reluctantly, we left the non-valuable parts of our luggage in the hallway and made our last journey in our Spaceship, handing it back in plenty of time and returning to the hostel to check in.

We returned to the hostel and immediately discovered that Hannah's phone had gone missing. A quick call to the phone revealed that it had just been found under the driver's seat in our van, necessitating a trip back to the depot the next day. We combined this with a spot of sightseeing. Auckland is a nice city and, despite being much smaller (and having much worse public transport) than the likes of Sydney and Melbourne, is rather large compared to anywhere else in New Zealand.

While exploring the city, we were rather pleasantly surprised to find the presumed inspiration for New Zealand's most successful soap opera:

One of the main attractions in Auckland is the Sky Tower, the southern hemisphere's tallest building. We considered paying a fortune to go up to the top but decided against it because we were staying right next to Mount Eden, a volcanic cone of similar height from which views of the city can be seen. On Wednesday evening, I left Hannah in the hostel and climbed to the top. It quickly became apparent that this is indeed a volcanic cone, as I found the crater:

I would have loved to have explored the crater but the sign persuaded me not to:

From the top, there were views of the other volcanic domes that are scattered around the city:

The harbour bridge could be seen in the distance:

...as could the tall buildings of the CBD:

Our time in Auckland came to an end rather too quickly. We donated what was left of our food to the free food shelf in the hostel and headed to the airport to catch a plane to Melbourne, the first leg of our journey to Singapore and then Thailand.

Dolphins in the Bay Of Islands

2011-01-09T11:16:00.002Z

On Saturday, we visited the lovely seaside town of Paihia. Here, we booked a dolphin-watching trip in the bay.

Early on Sunday morning, we joined our hosts on the wharf and set off in a big catermaran, searching for dolphins. After a few false alarms, dolphins were finally sighted. I did my best to take pictures:

As if that ace picture wasn't enough, here is another one:

Here is a picture of a dolphin being much more friendly with another boat than with ours.

As it turned out, those were the last pictures that I took with my camera before it broke; every picture I take now comes out overexposed and rubbish.

I had been hoping for the opportunity to jump into the water and snorkel with the dolphins. As usual, New Zealand's changeable weather cussed these plans; the sea was far too choppy and we were forced to watch from on-board the boat.

The Bay of Islands was nice but we were running out of time and had to leave. We jumped in the van and headed north on what was left of State Highway 1, aiming to reach Cape Reinga by the end of the day.

Auckland Part 1

2011-01-07T06:54:00.001Z

On Thursday, after leaving Hot Water Beach, we headed for Auckland. We had a shopping list of things to buy for our trip to Thailand. We camped for the night in a place called Manukau near the airport, an experience which was unremarkable except for two things.

Firstly, the campsite placed us in a site next to the recycle bins which seemed to already be occupied by a seemingly abandoned van.

Secondly, when I went to take a shower, I noticed that the shower cubicles had no privacy, being next to open (and uncloseable) windows. At least I was able to keep an eye on the van while taking a shower.

On Friday, we popped into Auckland and visited a few outdoors-ey shops, stocking up on mosquito coils and the like. Then, we returned to the van, payed a small fortune in parking fees and headed north on the motorway, aiming to reach The Bay Of Islands that evening.

Taupo

2011-01-01T15:05:00.002Z

On Friday, we arrived in Taupo and checked into out luxurious and spacious cabin, ready to celebrate the arrival of 2011 in style. We were certainly glad to be out of our increasingly claustrophic van.

We had been planning to go into town, where we were told we would find a free concert. Rather annoyingly, we never made it; falling asleep for a short kip, we were awoken a few hours later by the New Year fireworks. Annoyed at having been woken from my slumber, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

On New Year's day, we decided that we had better make the most of Taupo so we drove to Hot Water Beach, an area of the lakefront where geothermal springs belch out hot water into the lake. I went for a quick swim and discovered a number of things.

Firstly, the lake is actually pretty cold. There were a few patches where the lake bed was slightly warm and one rather hot stream flowing into the lake a little further down which had already been monopolised by a group of kids. Other than that, it was a struggle to stay warm.

Secondly, we were sharing the lake with the local ducks and swans. I found feeding the ducks to be a lot more fun than swimming with them:

The swans round here were black and looked rather fearsome:

Here is a picture of a family of ducks that like to say quack:

After we'd had our fill of lake+ducks fun, we headed into the town for lunch. It was nice enough, in a "heavily touristed" way. We discovered one shop which, I'm pretty certain, was being slightly economical with the truth:

Now, I don't know about you, but I take "World Champtions" to be predicated on winning the world cup, which the All Blacks haven't done for, ooh, 23 years. Surely they meant to say "All Blacks: Champions Of The World (1987)".

Pelorous Bridge

2010-12-22T11:20:00.003Z

On Wednesday night, we camped at the DOC campsite at Pelorous Bridge in the mountains between Picton and Nelson. This was a "serviced" campsite and, as such, had the greatest range of facilities of any of the DOC campsites we had stayed at so far. Warm showers? Gas hob for cooking? We were impressed.

It also had great views of the river which was still swollen after the recent rain. Here is the view from our van:

We arrived early enough to go out and explore the area a bit too. We were advised to check out the swing bridge over the nearby river Rai:

I was able to tempt Hannah to cross this bridge, from which can be seen the confluence of the Rai and the Pelorous in the distance:

We also climbed on the rocks by the Pelorous River. As you can see, these rocks are particularly geological:

Our hosts at the campsite also recommended walking to a nearby waterfall where glow worms can be found. We duly did this and found our path blocked by a stream gushing with the water of the recent rains. Hannah was unable to cross but I made it to the other side and found where I thought the glow worms ought to be. I'm not sure if the worms were actually glowing at the time, mind, since the sun had yet to go down completely.

The waterfall itself was pretty beautiful:

DOC campsites never cease to amaze me. The are the cheapest campsites available and are also almost always sited in the most wonderful locations.

Fox Glacier

2010-12-17T11:27:00.004Z

We spent Friday night in a campsite near Haast, the rain hammering down on our puny little campervan from dusk til dawn. I was woken by Hannah's distressed cries; she had just discovered that her trousers had fallen out of the van when she went to the toilet during the night and were now lying in a muddy puddle.

We sheltered from the rain in the kitchen, finding time to chat to a Kiwi couple who, it turned out, had worked at the same place as Hannah in Lymington during the 90s. Finally, we plucked up the courage to high tail it out of there. We headed for the most southerly part of the west coast that can be reached by road (apart from Milford Sound): Jackson Bay.

Unfortunately, Jackson Bay was a bit rubbish in the rain and we only spent a few minutes there before the sandflies chased us back to the van. It's a shame that the weather was so terrible because I bet that there would have been some lovely views of the mountains on a sunny day.

Next, we headed up the coast to the Fox Glacier which might or might not have been named after a brand of sweets. We decided to visit the glacier ourselves, rather than paying a fortune to take part in a guided tour. The torrential rain again cussed our plans:

Still, we could see some of the glacier beyond the safety barriers and it was an awesome sight.

The cliffs at the side of the valley were impressive too. Notice how the strata in the rock are nearly vertical, which is indicative of some kind of geological process having folded the rock.

One result of the recent rainfall was that, downstream from the glacier, the Fox River was a raging torrent of water and ice:

On our way back down the valley, we sighted a "historic bridge". This was built many years ago and was used by visitors to access the glacier back when the glacier extended a little further down the valley.

Hannah didn't fancy crossing the bridge for some reason so I crossed it alone. It was actually pretty scary with the river below in full flow:

Sadly, we didn't have time to stick around any longer and we headed off to the DOC campsite where Hannah attempted to dry her trousers out on our Bear Grylls style washing line. It was a shame to have to leave so soon. I would have loved to get a closer look at the Fox Glacier or its slightly more famous neighbour the Franz Joseph Glacier.

Mount Cook

2010-12-16T11:44:00.005Z

On Thursday, we made a quick dash up from Wanaka to visit Mount Cook, New Zealand's tallest mountain. Eventually arriving at Mount Cook Village, we were as close to the mountain as we could get by car. Mount Cook could be seen in the far distance.

A glacier (I forget which one) was easily visible above where we stopped.

We decided to pop in to the Edmund Hillary Centre, dedicated to the legendary Sir Edmund, a local Kiwi hero who led the first expedition to conquer Everest.

Interesting though the Everest stuff was, I was intrigued to learn that Hillary had also been a legendary explorer of the Antarctic. In 1958 he led the first team to reach the South Pole since Scott in 1912. It was on the snowfields around Mount Cook that the team did much of the training for their expedition.

The centre had some tractors that saw use in the Antarctic.

Upon seeing them, I remembered my dad's Antarctic stories and wondered what would happen if one of them fell down a crevasse...

As evening was drawing in, we made camp in the nearby DOC campsite, resolving to make the walk up the Hooker Valley to the end of the Hooker Glacier the next morning. The sunset was beautiful and that ought to have been an omen of good weather to come in the morning.

Of course not. During the night, the heavens opened; it turned out that this was the end of a long drought and that the rains were welcomed by the area's farmers. It was still raining heavily in the morning, cussing our plans of making the walk up the Hooker Valley. We made plans instead to head straight to the Fox Glacier, which also originates from Mount Cook and heads west, down the other side of the mountains from where we were. Despite its proximity, we had a day's drive ahead of us to get there since there was no direct route across the enormous mountains of the Southern Alps. Our route therefore took us, back to Wanaka and across the Haast Pass. This we did in a hurry as the rain beat down.

We camped at a campsite near Haast that evening, hoping that the weather would clear up by morning.

The Road To Wanaka

2010-12-15T12:14:00.000Z

On Wednesday, it was finally time to leave the Queenstown area. After spending a few hours running round town in a vain attempt at finding my lost phone, we hit the road. We decided to take the cross country route out of town, beginning with the bridge over the Shotover River.

Our route crossed the Crown Range. As we climbed the zig zag into the mountains, we could see views back in the direction of Queenstown which was by now hidden behind an inconveniently placed mountain.

The Remarkables range of mountains could also be seen behind us.

We didn't realise it at the time but we were heading into one of New Zealand's driest areas. It didn't take long for the hillsides to lose their green shade.

The views along the road were both beautiful and strikingly different to what we had seen so far.

I can only assume that the geological makeup was just as different from that we were leaving behind. I don't know what sort of rocks made up this terrain but I saw, at various times, what looked like limestone, sandstone, chalk and, finally, slate:

As we crossed the watershed and began descending towards Wanaka, the transformation in the landscape was nearly complete:

Here is a picture of Hannah showing her appreciation for all my geological musings:

When we arrived in Wanaka, the guy at the campsite complained about Wanaka's lack of rainfall and, after showing us to the best site in the place, put the sprinklers onto his parched yellow grass. Little did he know that, a couple of days later, the months long drought would come to an abrupt end.

Shotover Swing

2010-12-14T12:36:00.000Z

We spent a little under a week in the Queenstown area. We had previously been advised by pretty much every Kiwi that we met that Queenstown is "too commercial" and has been "ruined" by the "tourists". Being tourists ourselves, we couldn't help but feel slightly guilty as we pulled into town. People were half right, too. Queenstown is very touristy and rather commercial. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that it wasn't rubbish, however.

Our campsite was the slightly oddly named QBox site. Despite the odd name, it was actually rather awesome and I feel obliged to plug it to the max on this blog. It was owned by a couple who had recently bought the land and used old shipping containers to build the buildings that housed amenities such as toilets, laundry and kitchen.

What about the town itself? Everything that we had read about Queenstown had billed the attractions as being exciting and adrenaline fuelled. Having already sampled the rather tame excitement of kayaking on Lake Wakatipu, we had to push the envelope a little. I decided that it would be a good idea to go on the Shotover Swing. This is billed as "The World's Highest Cliff Jump" and involves jumping off a cliff, freefalling for 60m and swinging across the bottom of Shotover Canyon.

Our host, Nick, picked us up from the office in Queenstown and whisked us up to the canyon in his 4WD minibus. The drive itself became pretty scary towards the end but we made it in one piece.

Before heading down to the jump, I decided to use the only urinals on site. Here is the one that I used.

On the way down, a sign pointed out the distances to all of the places that we might never see again in the event of a horrible bungee accident. I was particularly impressed to see Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobollantisiliogogogoch on the sign, although I'm not sure if the direction is 100% accurate.

We then headed down to the jump platform, which was at least as scary as it looks here. Lord of the Rings fans might recognise the canyon below; the Ford of Bruinen is set a few km further up the canyon (that's the scene where Liv Tyler is carrying Frodo on her horse and summons up the river waters to drown the persuing Ring Wraiths).

Nick cruelly decided that I was to be the first to jump so I was quickly harnessed up and standing on the jump platform before I knew it. This was intensely frightening and I wouldn't go anywhere near the edge in case they pushed me off it. After taunting me for my lack of jumping off, the jump master eventually agreed/ that my jump would be a cutaway. I was attached to another wire and hauled a few metres off the platform and suspended above the canyon. I was then invited to pull a wire above my head in order to be released. This I did and...

...

To be honest, I'm not really sure what happened next. I have a vague memory of a rush of sheer terror and I remember swearing uncontrollably. The next thing I knew, I was swinging around the bottom of the canyon, completely disoriented, with pins and needles in my arms. After a few seconds, I was winched back to the top and the ordeal was over.

Unless I wanted another go, of course. Which I did. I had to wait for everyone else to have a go (sadly not including Hannah, who had decided not to participate) before heading back to the platform for my second go. This didn't go as smoothly as the first one; the jump master told me that I wasn't allowed another cutaway and this time would have to jump off. This sent me back into panic mode and I spent the next 15 minutes being berrated and insulted for my refusal to go anywhere near the edge. I tried to explain that I have a slight fear of hights and, besides, it's rather unnatural to hurl yourself from the top of a cliff but to no avail.

Nick eventually came up with a compromise: He would hold onto the rope attached to my harness as I leaned from the edge of the platform. Then, when I was ready, he'd release me. Naturally, him being a totally swine and all, he dropped me as soon as I started to lean off the platform, leaving me swearing profusely and uncontrollably again on my way down. Again, I don't really have much of a memory of the actual drop, just a feeling of sort of "coming to my senses" afterwards, noticing that I was swinging around the bottom of the canyon, wondering what was going on. And that was that. I didn't fancy doing it again so I paid an extra $70 for a DVD of my (first) jump and we headed home. I swear I must have been in shock because the rest of the day was a bit of a blur. And I lost my phone.

Was it worth it? I don't know. I certainly wouldn't describe the experience as being enjoyable. Clearly I am not enough of an adrenaline junkie for this sort of thing because there was a little too much adrenaline. I would put it into the category of "things you do because you don't want to see yourself as the person who chickened out of doing that thing". At least I was successful in that. Sort of.

Kinloch

2010-12-11T03:01:00.000Z

On Friday, we found ourselves in the Queenstown region. Having been told by a few people that Queenstown is overly commercial, touristy and a bit rubbish, we decided to head for the tiny hamlet of Kinloch, at the "kin" of "loch" Lake Wakatipu. Almost as soon as we arrived at the Kinloch DOC campsite and paid our fees, the heavens opened. We spent most of the afternoon sheltering from the rai in the cafe at Kinloch Lodge drinking coffee and trying to work out what we were going to do. We went for a quick drive around the area but didn't dare go out for long in the pouring rain.

After rehydrating a freeze dried meal for dinner and fighting a losing battle trying to keep our side awning upright, we retired to bed. The next morning was much better. The rain had stopped and we were finally able to see what a beautiful spot we had camped in:

A guy from Kinloch lodge took us out kayaking on the lake for an hour which was great fun, albeit a bit tiring/scary when the wind really picked up on the way back.

We left Kinloch and headed towards Queenstown, passing some beautiful scenery on the way:

When we reached Queenstown, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that, while it was commercial and touristy, it wasn't completely rubbish.

Lake Gunn

2010-12-10T02:45:00.000Z

Last night, we camped at the DOC campsite by Lake Gunn. This is the view that greeted us in the morning:

To think, we only started staying at DOC campsites because they are cheap (or free in the case of the "basic" DOC campsites). There are about 10 DOC such campsites between Milford Sound and Te Anau and we camped at the first DOC campsite that we came to. This one just happened to be set in the loveliest location imaginable. We were lucky to get a space, too; in the few hours after we set up camp, a steady stream of campervans arrived, looking for a place to camp. The last few left, disappointed, and presumably ended up at the much less picturesque campsites further down the road.

Aside from a hoard of fellow campers, we also shared the campsite with more ferocious sandflies. And a family of ducks.

Quack quack!

Mirror Lakes

2010-12-09T14:59:00.000Z

On Thursday morning, we set off from Lake Gunn, our eventual destination being the Queenstown area. As the crow flies, this wasn't very far but, alas, a mountain range stood in our way and no one had been kind enough to build a road for us to drive across it. Therefore, we went the long way, via Te Anau.

On the way, we reached Mirror Lakes. These lakes were apparently famous for their still water, creating a clear reflection of the mountains behind. The mountains were certainly impressive too, reminding me of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California (I heard an American chap saying the same thing so it must have been true).

The lake itself was indeed pretty calm and reflective. I'm not sure it was impressive enough to justify the enormous hoards of tourists swarming around it. Tourists, eh?

Milford Road

2010-12-08T03:00:00.000Z

On our way back from our visit to Milford Sound, we had a little more time so we stopped frequently and took a lot of pictures.

Our first stop allowed us to snap the mightly Cleddau River, named after the Cleddau rivers that feed Milford Haven in South Wales.

A little further up the Cleddau valley, we came upon "The Chasm", a little waterfall where the Cleddau River plunges down a drop of a few metres and which was considered important enough for someone to build a boardwalk to get there. We felt a little disappointed by it but I think that there is often a lot more water flowing.

When we reached the head of the valley, we really knew it; the valley ended rather abruptly.

This must have been a formidable barrier to early explorers. Luckily, someone had built The Homer Tunnel between the head of the Cleddau Valley and the head of the valleys of the Eglington and Hollyford rivers.

On the other end of the Homer Tunnel, we found a big load of ice that still hadn't melted. I was hoping that we'd found a real live glacier but I don't think it was flowing anywhere.

The ice was melting rapidly and the water was flowing underneath the ice:

I noticed that Hannah was standing on the ice immediately above this icy cave and, remembering Dad's stories of cravasses in the Antarctic, I quickly called her off the ice. It was rather worrying to watch a steady procession of people climbing up onto the ice but hey, I thought: If it was that dangerous then someone would have put up a warning sign. Oh, wait, what's this tiny sign?

On the way back, we saw some mountains in the distance.

Finally, we made our way to Lake Gunn DOC Campsite and made camp for the night. All in all, a fun day.

Milford Discovery Centre

2010-12-08T02:00:00.000Z

As part of our trip to Milford Sound, we were talked into paying an extra chunk of cash to visit Milford Discovery Centre. This is a floating platform in the water which extends 10m below the surface of the sea with a viewing platform on the lowest level. Tourists like us can thus get to see the local aquatic sealife up close.

The most impressive of this was, apparently, the black coral:

Our guide was quick to explain why it is called black coral despite its white appearance: it apparently only appears black when dead. This must have been an embarassment to the guy who first studied a dead piece of coral and then named the stuff.

Here is a fish enjoying the black coral almost as much as us:

After heading back to the surface, the boat came to pick us up and take us back to the vistor center at the head of the fjord.

Milford Sound

2010-12-08T01:00:00.004Z

On Wednesday, we drove along the beautiful Milford Road from Te Anau to Milford Sound. We had risen pretty early in the morning, hoping to beat the tour buses to the sound. We were mostly successful, although one tour bus rudely overtook us when we had the temerity to drive at only the speed limit along a straight stretch of road.

After applying liberal amounts of insect repellent and dodging the sandflies on the way to the visitor centre, we were soon on a boat trip out into the sound. Our captain gave an informative commentary along the way.

One of the first thing that we learned was that Milford Sound isn't actually a sound at all but is, in fact, a fjord. Fjords are valleys carved out by galciers and subsequently flooded by rising sea levels whereas sounds are carved out by rivers. In fact, all of the sounds of Fiordland are fjords, a fact that we learned repeatedly. We also learned that Fiordland National Park was so named in an attempt to correct the error and to include the word "fjord" in the title but that they mucked that up too and mis-spelled it as Fiord-land.

We also learned that the first European to discover Milford Sound was welshman John Grono, who was caught in a storm while sailing past the coast. Grono, afraid that his ship was about to be driven onto the rocks, was astonished when Milford Sound opened up in front of him. Thankful for having discovered this haven for his ship, he named it Milford Haven, after the waterway and town of the same name in his native Pembrokeshire. The name was subsequently changed to Milford Sound in order to match the other sounds of Fiordland, which we were then reminded are not actually sounds.

The first major sight of our voyage was Mitre Peak, so named due to its resembling a bishop's mitre.

We passed by several impresive waterfalls. Here are the first that we passed:

The slopes either side of the water were incredibly steep and rocky but still had trees clinging to them. Our captain explained that the position of the trees is incredibly precarious; the trees cling to oneanother and, if one should fall, it takes its neighbours with it in a "tree avalanche". We saw evidence of the aftermath of one of these at close range:

The debris of the fallen trees were clearly visible at the bottom:

We passed a rock with a colony of seals sunning themselves on it. Arp arp arp!

Hannah was clearly enjoying herself almost as much as the seals:

On the way back, we passed another waterfall:

We packed into the front section of the ship as the captain drove the boat into the falls:

Here's a gratuitous Lord Of The Rings reference: a photo of the falls at close range looks like the Ring Wraiths. Just a little. Frodo, don't wear the ring!

Once back on dry land, we high-tailed it out of there, determined to appreciate some of the scenery on the Milford Road that we sped past on our way out; that will be the subject of my next post.

Lake Monowai

2010-12-05T00:47:00.002Z

On Sunday night, we couldn't decide where to stay on our way from Invercargill to Te Anau. We eventually headed for a DOC (Department Of Conservation) campsite next to Lake Monowai in Fiordland. Our decision was sweetened somewhat by the fact that we weren't going to have to pay for the campsite; it was listed asa "Basic" campsite with few facitilities and, thus, was free. The list of facilities was indeed short, featuring long drop toilets and an invitation to take water from the lake. We drove down several kilometres of unsealed road to get there and, once we did, we were set upon by ferocious sandflies.

After applying liberal amounts of insect repellant, we emerged from our van. The area was beautiful and not even the fading light and an infestation of annoying insects could spoil it.

In the morning, it was raining heavily so we had a long lie in until it stopped. We then went for a walk up to a lookout point further up the lake:

Sadly, we didn't fancy staying much longer, what with not enjoying being lunch for sandflies. Hopefully we will get to grips with using insect repellent as our trip goes on.

Bluff

2010-12-05T00:00:00.000Z

Today, we visited Bluff. Bluff is like the Land's End of New Zealand. It's like Land's End in a number of ways.

Firstly, it's not actually the most southerly point of the mainland; that honour falls to Slope Heap, a place that we couldn't even be bothered to visit because we had heard it is rubbish.

Secondly, it has a big sign with pointers to various places that you might prefer to be than cold, windswept Bluff. Luckily, it is unlike Land's End in that there isn't a guy trying to get you to pay to have your picture taken next to the sign. Behold:

Notice that the pointer to London appears to be pointing to the north, which I don't think is the shortest route. Surely the shortest route to London would take you to the south. Cuss.

We didn't stay long enough to sample Bluff Oysters, which apparently are the world's best.

Curio Bay

2010-12-02T02:21:00.000Z

On Thursday, we drove from Invercargill to Curio Bay a short distance to the east along the south coast. The main attraction here is a petrified forest: a forest that was fossilised long ago as a result of a volcanic erruption that buried the trees with volcanic mud. It was quite amazing to see some of the fossils:

We discovered that the beach was also inhabited by rare yellow eyed penguins. There were signs on the way down to the beach telling us not to get too close to the penguins or they might flee back into the sea and neglect their young. Here is a picture of some idiot tourists ignoring those instructions and crowding round a penguin:

Here is a (zoomed in) picture of one of the little penguin dudes:

Invercargill

2010-12-02T01:33:00.000Z

We arrived in Invercargill on Tuesday evening, with two tasks to perform while we were in town. Firstly, we had tickets to see Rhys Darby (Murray from Flight Of The Conchords) perform stand up on Friday evening. Before that, though, we had an appointment at the Doctor's to get some injections to complete the courses of vaccinations that we'd need in order to be able to visit South East Asia in the new year.

Our accomodation for five nights was to be the Lorneville Holiday Park. When we arrived, we were met by the sound of a few incredibly noisy lambs bleating in the adjoining field. Our host Gary extended a freindly Kiwi welcome to us and asked if we'd like to help feed the lambs. This we did and great fun it was too.

We also fed one of the older sheep, a recently shorn ewe who looked very un-sheep-like what with not having much wool.

The next day, we headed into town for our injections. After a little confusion and after filling in a whole load of forms for about the third time, we were duly injected and vaccinated. As usual, this ended with me lying on the bed with the nurse worried that I was about to pass out. I tried explaining that I was well used to passing out and knew how to deal with it, after a growth spurt in my teenage years which gave me plent of experience of what a low bloody supply to the head feel like but she wasn't convinced. We waited around for twenty minutes, long enough to be sure that we weren't allergic to what we'd been given, before an uncooperative EFTPOS machine necessitated us handing over all (all!) of our New Zealand cash and then went on our way, to sample what Invercargill had to offer.

Invercargill is a strange place. It was founded by Scottish settlers and is awash with Presbyterian churches. It's windswept. There seems to be a shortage of people between the ages of 20 and 40 and the locals will tell you as much. It isn't really on the tourist trail. Still, it's a pleasant enough place with some lovely scenery nearby and friendly locals.

The only reason that we were staying in Invercargill at all was because we had tickets to see Rhys Darby's standup show. He was excellent, by the way. The start of his show consisted of poking fun at the town: "Where have you been, Rhys?" "I've been trying to do everything there is to do in Invercargill... Trying to fit it all in... You'd need a week!"

We weren't allowed to record Rhys's show, as apparently this would have been "copyright infringement" or something like that. Here is a sneaky picture of Rhys's logo (or log-oh, as the Kiwis appear to pronounce it):

Invercargill: it's actually alright.

Christchurch

2010-11-27T00:11:00.000Z

We set off for from Melbourne on our way to Christchurch on Friday evening. Our plane was delayed by three hours due to thunderstorms around Melbourne. We eventually arrived in Christchurch in the early hours of Saturday morning and didn't get to the hotel until 3am. This didn't help us to get over our mini-jetlag, New Zealand being two hours ahead of Melbourne.

Also not helpful was the complete lack of windows in our tiny day-glo hotel room, despite the space age alarm clock and mood lighting.

Compared to Australia, Christchurch looked surprisingly familiar to us Poms, with familiar British things such as...

... Christchurch Cathedral:

...the tiny river Avon meandering its way through the city, complete with a family of ducks:

...the most awesome ever fountains:

We only stayed in Christchurch for a short time before picking up our Spaceship campervan and heading south at a rate of knots.

Profiling My Slow Django Templates

2010-11-23T08:30:00.004Z

This is another techie post. If you have no interest in Django or Python then you may not be interested in this post either :-)

A Django app that I'm working on was running ridiculously slow. A quick Google search helped me to learn the basics of the Python profiler.

Add the following in order to profile my_function()

cProfile.runctx("my_function()", globals(), locals(), filename="profile.txt")

Run the code in question and then run the following in the Python interpreter in order to analyse the results:


import pstats
p = pstats.Stats("profile.txt")
p.sort_stats("cumulative").print_stats()

This will output results similar to the following, sorted in order of cumulative execution time:


Wed Nov 10 07:39:39 2010    profile.txt

     11405 function calls (11319 primitive calls) in 0.459 CPU seconds

Ordered by: cumulative time

ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
    1    0.000    0.000    0.458    0.458 /home/chris/MyProject/thingie.py:60(my_function)
    1    0.001    0.001    0.458    0.458 /home/chris/MyProject/wizzle.py:32(thing_function)
    1    0.000    0.000    0.358    0.358 /home/chris/MyProject/hoss.py:2(hussss)

In my case, I needed to see the call graph. The following draw a pretty .png picture of the call graph

gprof2dot -f pstats profile.txt | dot -Tpng -o out2.png

Armed with a visualisation of all this data, it became apparent that Django's template system was taking up most of the time. I had a line in a template, deep within a doubly nested for-loop that looked like this:

onclick="leftClick( {{cell.x}}, {{cell.y}} )"

Django was rendering this very slowly indeed. I ended up removing the for loop from the template and generating the html directly from within python code. This wasn't pretty but sped things up by nearly an order of magnitude.

I wonder if there is a more satisfactory solution to this problem, other than dumping Django templates altogether.

Back in Melbourne

2010-11-23T05:33:00.003Z

I have a few Blog posts in draft which I'll post soon. In the meantime, check it out: we're in Melbourne.

We arrived back in Melbourne yesterday after a tortuous 9 hour journey by coach, train and rail-replacement-bus-service from Canberra. Melbourne is a lot hotter than it was when we were last here (a month ago) and that, combined with a hotel room next to a noisy main road and the insect bites that I sustained while in Canberra, made it very difficult to sleep last night. Consequently, I am feeling very sorry for myself. We're off to New Zealand on Friday and have plenty to do in order to get ready so this week we'll be getting ready, Melbourne-style.

Tidbinbilla

2010-11-21T23:59:00.003Z

On Sunday, after visiting the Deep Space Center, we visited the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. This is located in an area that was devastated by a bush fire in 2003. Thankfully, it seems to have recovered over the past seven years.

The first sign that the local wildlife had recovered came shortly after we entered the reserve. We had been pretty frustrated up until this point to have only seen one solitary kangeroo in our whole time in Australia. Imagine our delight, therefore, at meeting a whole herd of them:

Later on, we were even more excited to see a rare duck billed platypus. Normally, these creatures are pretty shy. This little guy, however, was bit of a show off and kept coming up for air near us every few minutes, allowing us to take photos.

Next up, we went looking for koalas in the eucalyptus forest. Sadly, we weren't able to find any wild koalas but we did see this little guy who was being prepared for release into the wild:

Deep Space!

2010-11-21T23:00:00.000Z

On Sunday, we visited the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. This is the one of NASA's ground stations for communicating with spacecraft and is particularly important since it is the only one in the southern hemisphere. The dishes here differ from the dish at Parkes in that they are specifically designed for this purpose and they are capable of transmitting messages to spacecraft as well as receiving them.

There was a very interesting visitor centre with lots of details on the workings of zero gravity toilets. Here are some pictures of enormous dishes:

To be fair, these dishes were actually a bit wimpy and small when compared to the one at Parkes, since they are only designed to receive signals from mere millions of miles away. As opposed to millions of lightyears.

Canberra Botanic Gardens

2010-11-20T23:43:00.000Z

After climbing visiting the Black Mountain Tower, we paid a brief visit to the Botanic Gardens. There were plenty of botanical plants on display:

The most exciting thing, though, was meeting a real live wild kangeroo. As far as wild beasts go, it was actually pretty tame and wasn't bothered much by our presence, preferring to continue its meal of grass. Question: do kangeroos have to chew the cud? I wonder...

Finally, we paid a brief visit to the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, down near Parliament. Here, we ran across a wedding which we did our best not to disturb as we went past. We discovered some aboriginal artwork which I feel duty bound to post here, despite the fact that aboriginal art is rubbish:

See: aboriginal art isn't very good.

Black Mountain Tower

2010-11-20T12:00:00.000Z

The next day, we went to the top of the Black Mountain and climbed (actually went up the lift in) the tower at the top of the mountain:

From the viewing platform, parliament was visible in the distance:

As was the CBD:

We had been advised by a few people not to bother visiting Canberra. That's pretty unfair. It may not be as massive and as exciting as Sydney or Melbourne but it is a beautiful place, set in a stunning location. One thing that we noticed is that public transport is not nearly as good as in Melbourne or Sydney and a car would have been very useful. As it was, we relied on lifts :-)

Parliament

2010-11-19T23:24:00.000Z

Last weekend, we stayed with Gill in Canberra. On Friday, Gill gave us a lift into the city on the way to her work. We headed for parliament, specifically the old Aussie parliament which is now a museum of Australian democracy and has been since the new parliament was built in 1988.

Here is a picture of Hannah in the cabinet room, pretending to be the Aussie Prime Minister:

Sadly, she wasn't permitted to pose in the Prime Minister's office:

...but she was permitted to pose on (a replica of) the speaker's chair. The Aussie speaker's chair is a replica of the original speaker's chair from the Westminster parliament in London. When this original chair was destroyed during World War 2, the British parliament made a replica of the Aussie speaker's chair. Thus, the current chair in the UK parliament is a copy of a copy of the original one. Which, in turn, was probably a copy of the one that was destroyed by fire in the 1830s. Which is nice.

We took a look into the chamber of the House of Representatives (roughly equivalent to the UK House of Commons)...

...and, after escaping from an overly enthusiastic volunteer guide, we found the Senate (an elected assembly which seems roughly equivalent to the UK House of Lords) chamber:

On the way from the old parliament building to the new one, we discovered some interesting geological rocks, as this sign shows:

Here is the old parliament building, with the interesting rocks in the foreground:

When we finally reached the new parliament building, we didn't have enough time to go in. Hannah was nevertheless very excited to be there:

Everton

2010-11-17T23:00:00.000Z

They are clearly massive Everton fans in Sydney, as evidenced by this picture of the Everton Cafe taken from a train passing through Strathfield station. You might like to click on the photo to see a higher-res version and then zoom in a little.

The Dish

2010-11-17T06:40:00.003Z

On Tuesday, we visited the Parkes radio telescope. This was made famous by the film The Dish. Here is a picture of the telescope not doing much:

Unfortunately, the telescope was undergoing maintenance when we visited. I'm sure it wouldn't have looked much different if it was actually doing something, mind. The telescope is in use most of the time (when it is not being maintained) so the general public can't get any closer than the visitor's center. From there, we looked at lots of exhibits and fun activities which almost managed to make Hannah become enthusiastic about science.

Very interesting were the "whispering dishes" outside the visitor center. These were a pair of parabolic dishes 20 metres or so apart, positioned such that someone whispering at the focal point of one of the dishes could be heard clearly at the focal point of the other dish. This was naturally very exciting. Here is a picture of Hannah bigging up one of the dishes:

I was so excited by this that I attempted to reproduce the mathematical proof that a parabolic dish will focus parallel light (or sound or radio waves or whatever) to a focal point. Unfortunately, I failed, due to having forgotten pretty much all the maths that I learned in school.

Newtown Festival

2010-11-14T23:51:00.003Z

On Sunday, we met up with Lindsay and Lisette at the Newtown Festival. This is a festival in aid of a community centre in the Newtown area of Sydney, Newtown being a favourite of hippies and new age types, as far as we could tell. The festival was free, which was nice. We managed to check out a few bands. Here is Hannah enjoying one of them:

The best band of the festival wasn't actually playing at the festival at all but were playing from the garden of a house adjoining the festival site. Here is a picture of them rocking out, taken from a distance.

Just out of shot are a few very nervous looking cops. Presumably they think a riot is about to start. Or... worse!

Movember

2010-11-10T07:06:00.002Z

To celebrate Movember, I will be spending the whole month of November growing a moustache, in aid of The Prostate Cancer Charity. Please visit my fundraising page here and sponsor me; it will go towards a very good cause

Here is a picture of what I look like so far:

Sersiously, please donate. Prostate cancer is rubbish.

Building the Django docs

2010-11-08T23:12:00.002Z

Having limited access to t'internet at the moment, I decided to try to get an offline copy of the Django documentation. It turned out not to be as easy as I had thought but I managed to find out how to do it. Here's what I did:

Install Python's easy_install by running:

yum install python-setuptools

Use easy_install to download Sphinx:

easy_install Sphinx

After downloading the Django source and untaring it, cd to the docs directory and run the following:

make html

Wait for an age while it builds the html docs from source!

This page in the Django docs was quite helpful:

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/internals/documentation/

Cleveland and Birkdale

2010-11-07T03:39:00.006Z

Today, we visited Cleveland Point. Here are some pictures:

Point Cleveland Ligthouse:

Mangroves by the waterside:

Some highly geological stones on the beach:

Sophie and Hannah enjoying ice creams (actually gelato and sorbet) next to a big tree:

A heavily moustacheoed (please sponsor me here) Chris enjoying his very first gelato:

Afterwards, we visited a British import store where Hannah bought some out of date Robinsons fruit squash and then had British-style fish and chips. It seems that the area of Birkdale is a bit of a ghetto, being chock full of immigrant poms, explaining the presence of the above British establishments, as wells as a genuinely British balti house.

Beachy

2010-11-07T00:31:00.001Z

While we were staying with Sophie and Dan, we visited the beach a fair few times. Brisbane actually doesn't really have nice beaches itself but is located between the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast, both of which have great beaches.

My favourite beaches were on the Gold Coast, where the waves were big and pretty powerful. A mere picture doesn't do justice to them:

As I remarked on my previous visit to the Gold Coast, the area has been massively built up. We visited the northern end, on The Spit, lured mainly by the free parking. In the near distance, we could see Surfers Paradise:

We also found time to visit Mooloolaba and Noosa on the Sunshine Coast. These places were slightly more relaxed (and apparently posh) affairs with gentler seas and fewer skyscrapers.

Mount Coot-tha

2010-11-06T07:38:00.002Z

On Friday, we drove to the top of Mount Coot-tha, a hill near Brisbane with great views of the city. From the lookout point, we could see the whole city beneath us:

As well as sampling the views, we stopped for lunch at the cafe at the top of the hill. Alas, the meal proved to be absolutely horrible. Hannah's shepherd's pie was barely edible. My Thai curry was a little better but wasn't worth the $15 that we paid for it. Avoid the cafe at the top of Mount Coo-tha!

Our Lonely Planet guidebook told us to check out some of the waterfalls in the area. We drove to near Simpsons Falls but didn't bother to visit the falls when we realised how little water was coming down the stream:

Luckily, there were some highly geological rocks in the area:

We headed to the nearby JC Slaughter Falls in search of actual flowing water. Alas, there wasn't much there either (and the path to the bottom of the falls was closed!).

Nevermind. We had the most awesome Chinese/Vietnamese takeaway at Dan's sister's house that evening. Mmmmm....

Brisbane

2010-11-01T09:06:00.004Z

We are staying with Spohie and Dan in Brisbane right now. I will write about lots of the fun things that we have done but, for now, here is a picture of the city.

Byron Bay

2010-10-25T03:49:00.006Z

We started our journey to Byron by catching a train at Sydney Central Station at 4:12pm on Friday. We were expecting to be on this train for a little under twelve hours before changing trains at Casino for the bus to Byron Bay. It turned out that the journey would take a little longer than that after a lightning strike left us stranded in a siding in Sydney's northern suberbs for an hour and a half. To be honest, we were rather glad of any delay to our eventual arrival, since the bus was due to deposit us in Byron at around 6am, several hours before the reception opened in our hostel.

After a long night of not much sleep and a short coach ride to Byron Bay, we wearily trudged the last mile or so to the hostel, arriving completely knackered just before 7am. We fell asleep on a bench outside and woke up when our host, Ellie, opened up the reception a few hours later.

After eating breakfast, checking into our room and having a kip, we ventured into town to explore. On our previous trip, we avoided spending much time in Byron, having been advised that a previously idillic haven for hippies and new age types had been over-developed and turned into an expensive tourist trap. This was confirmed as we walked down a main street of bars, restaurants and overpriced clothes shops. That said, Byron is an awesome place to come on holiday, especially if you like surfing.

After finding the cheapest lunch that we could (ten dollar burger and chips), we hit the beach, which was lovely, even if the sea was rather cold.

After dipping our toes briefly in the bitterly cold Pacific, we retreated to the grassy bank next to the beach. This was lovely, until a really scary spider crawled onto my shorts. I was asleep at the time and freaked out when Hannah woke me up. Luckily, I managed to get rid of Mr Spider and calmed down again.

After that, we retreated back to the hostel and, knackered, went to be sans dinner.

On Saturday, we visited Tallow Beach, the other side of Cape Byron from Byron Bay. We had been advised that it would be dangerous to go in the sea and, as we approached the beach, a sign reiterated this advice:

>

The beach was lovely, if a little deserted compared to the main beach at Byron Bay. In the distance, you can see Lennox Head, which we visited last year:

There was a great view of Cape Byron Lighthouse in the distance, not that you can really tell from this picture:

On Monday, we checked out of the hostel, did a spot of shopping in town and prepared to board the coach to Brisbane.

Leaving Sydney

2010-10-22T06:34:00.000Z

On Friday, our brief visit to Sydney was already almost over. We checked out of our hostel and then spent a few more hours exploring the city. We got the free tourist bus up to The Rocks, the oldest part of Sydney and the part with the most historic buildings. Historic, in this case, meaning 200 or so years old.

We checked out the exciting underside of the Harbour Bridge:

We wondered what would happen if someone needed the toilet while waiting around under the bridge. Luckily, Sydney has this covered, with toilets for gents and ladies:

We got a great view of the bridge from near the Sydney Observatory:

We walked down a quaint, picturesque old fashioned looking street:

After that it was back to the hostel for lunch, before racing to the station to catch our overnight train to Byron Bay.

Modern Art

2010-10-22T01:50:00.000Z

Inspired by our visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, I thought I could do this "modern art" thing myself, especially after Claire bigged up my artwork and told me that I could make millions. At the gallery, I noticed that some of the paintings from the sixties were pretty simple. The artist had just drawn a simple geometric shape on a canvas. When viewing said paintings, one presumably infers meaning in some way or other. This was presumably followed by much self congratulation on the behalf of the artist. Check out this piece by yours truly:

See how the bleak simplicity reflects the artist's soul and desire to express himself. That not enough? Hmmmm.

I noticed that some of the more recent modern art features words or slogans painted onto the canvas. Presumably the artist put down words that evoked feelings or ideas that he was trying to get across or maybe it was just a stream of consciousness. Check out this piece of art that I whipped up myself in that style:

The bleakness of the painting represents the soul crushing loneliness of modern life.

Cynics may point out that poking fun at modern art, especially when you don't understand it, is actually pretty cliched. True. However, by deliberately engaging in such a cliched activity, this blog post becomes truly post-modern, thus transcending any traditional form of criticism.

Finally, here is a picture of the Sydney CBD, drawn entirely from memory by an autistic savant with a photographic memory:

A Day In Sydney

2010-10-21T13:00:00.000Z

We arrived in Sydney in the early hours of Thursday morning, utterly deprived of sleep after a night on the train. After checking into the YHA, we noticed that we could see another YHA out of the window. Sure enough, there are two YHA hostels next to Sydney Central station. Getting between them isn't too tricky, as Google Maps demonstrates:

Despite having been to Sydney several times previously, we decided to go sightseeing. This time, we headed for the Royal Botanic Gardens. On the way, we found some great views of the city, which Hannah is keen to show off here:

On the way, we headed to Wolloomaloo in seach of a coffee to wake us up. This being New South Wales, it is only fitting that the first person we met should be from South Wales, specifically a guy from Neath who had spotted my Wales shirt. He pointed us in the direction of coffee and also advised us to stay away from scary back streets in King's Cross.

We stumbled upon the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This turned out to be full of art of various kinds, most of which sadly appeared to be Aboriginal art (on which I am not keen) and modern art (on which I am even less keen). We weren't permitted to take pictures of the artwork, alas, but here is my attempt at copying one of the more "clever" pieces of modern art:

My two faviourite pieces of art turned out to be by local schoolchildren, which probably says something about my level of art-appreciation.

After exiting the gallery, we finally made it to the Royal Botanic Gardens. These clever signs let us know that we had arrived:

There were many awesome plants in evidence, such as this one:

I'm not sure exactly what this one was but it was a bit like Mum's Flaming Red Hot Poker plant, only larger:

There were many eucalyptus trees such as this one, which didn't seem to have much bark on it. Presumably that's normal.

We then headed for Mrs Macquarie's Point, a peninsular from which excellent views of the harbour bridge and the opera house can be found. We discovered Mrs Macquarie's Chair, a seat which was hand carved out of some highly geological rocks by convicts in 1810 so that the governor's wife had somewhere to sit and watch ships sail into the harbour:

Upon reaching the head of Mrs Macquaries's Point, we enjoyed impressive views:

On the way back, we got some great views of the city, too:

That was enough for one morning. We headed back to the hostel for lunch and a kip.

Tomorrow, we'll be heading to Byron Bay, on our way up to Brisbane.

Melbourne

2010-10-20T10:05:00.000Z

During our stay in Melbourne, we stayed with Ross and Sally, who Hannah had already met in Melbourne before I arrived and who had agreed to put first Hannah and then me up in their house. Ross and Sally took great care of us, for which we are hugely grateful. I spent most of the time slowly getting over my jetlag. We did once venture into central Melbourne. Here's a picture of Hannah giving the place some serious repect:

On Wednesday, we said goodbye to Ross and Sally and went to Southern Cross Station to catch the overnight train to Sydney. We had initially planned to take as many overnight trains as possible, using our Country Link Backtracker Pass ^tm, through which we have unlimited use of various trains and buses between Melbourne and Brisbane for the duration of our stay. At $300 for three months, this pass seemed to be awesome value.

Awesome value or not, it did involve us committing to spend the night on a train between Melbourne and Sydney. On the positive side, we did save ourselves the cost of a night's accomodation. On the negative side, we didn't sleep much. The seats in a railway carriage turn out to be even less comfortable than those in an airliner. Still, we arrived in one piece and made plans to explore Sydney for a day before heading north towards Brisbane.

Bon Voyage

2010-10-16T09:44:00.000Z

I departed from Blighty on Friday, Kieran very kindly giving me a lift to the airport. The flight was largely uneventful, despite a few slight tribulations en route. The first was an overweight neighbour on the plane who spoke no English and who kept invading my space (and that of her neighbour on the other side). The second was a drunk Englishman who dropped his rubbish all over the aisle and rocked about so violently that the guy in the seat behind asked if he could move seats to get away from him. The third was a confusing experience in the transit lounge at Hong Kong airport. This involved us getting off the plane, in order for it to be refuelled and cleaned, and then being set loose in the airport without specific instructions on what to do next. It eventually transpired that we had to go through security (twice) and then re-board the plane. I'm sure that the contents of my bag enjoyed being taken off the plane, x-rayed repeatedly and then taken back on to the plane.

The flight over with, I arrived in Melbourne to meet Hannah who had made a "Chris" sign for me, in case I wasn't sure who I was meeting. For me, the Australian part of our travels was about to begin.

Travelling - Part Deux

2010-09-06T20:24:00.004Z

We're going travelling again soon. Hannah and I are going to pack up our lives (which will be stored in Mum's basement for six months) and head back to Australia, with the aim that we will travel to more places this time. Other than Australia, we will also visit Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and New Zealand. I'll be blogging about our exploits as we go.

Snow

2010-01-10T16:02:00.006Z

It's still very snowy in Southampton, which is unusual for this part of the world. I took Spike for a long walk on the common. He enjoyed himself and seemed to take great pleasure in running off into the bushes with his ball and then emerging a few moments later without it.

I still can't get over how much snow there is. I have lived in Southampton for years and the most snow I have seen before this was last year, when there was snow on the ground for approximately one day. By contrast, this snow has been here since Tuesday evening and is only just starting to melt now.

There were countless snowmen on the common. One of them seemed bigger than the rest, even from a very long way away.

Getting close, it became apparent that this was a seriously big snowman. So big that even Spike was almost impressed.

The lake was still frozen over too. I thought that this was very dangerous but it turned out that there was barely any water beneath the ice.

I can't decide if I want it to remain this snowy. On the plus side, snow is awesome and this is the first time in eight years that we've had much of it. On the negative side, after a week of working from home, it might be nice to actually be able to get to work.

Back in Blighty

2010-01-08T17:43:00.004Z

As you may well be aware, I am now back in the UK, just in time for the country's coldest weather for the past century or so. I still have quite a few blog posts from Australia in draft, so I will attempt to publish those, now that I have access to t'internet again.

The UK is not so bad. OK, so we might not have hot sunny beaches but we do have this:

Instead of lush tropical rainforests, we have this:

I still wouldn't mind going back to Australia, though.

The Voyage Home

2010-01-02T09:27:00.003Z

My journey home from Sydney back to the freezing cold UK was very eventful. After checking out of the relative luxury of the Menzies Hotel, we checked Hannah in to the oddly titled Y Hotel (or Sydney YWCA, as it turned out to be). We then got on a train and headed to the airport.

After killing time waiting for check in for my flight to open, we finally made it to the checkin desk, to discover that the flight was overbooked and the airline were looking for volunteers to move to the next flight. I was more than happy to volunteer, given that I had been trying for the past week to get onto the next day's flight in order to spend an extra day in Sydney with Hannah. Even better, the airline put us up in a nice hotel, gave me S$500 in compensation (that's 500 Singapore dollars) and also gave me a US$200 (that's 200 US dollars) voucher for the inflight duty free shop. It's very nice to be given compensation in order to accept something that you've been asking for all week.

While we waited to find out if I would definitely be getting the next day's flight, we went for dinner at the airport's Wagama restaurant. This proved to be a bizarre experience, as we managed to witness a fight break out between one of the chefs and one of the waiters. This ended when the waiter stormed off, leaving the only other waiter to try to clear up all of the mess. The end of our meal was even more surreal as five or six coppers descended on the place, trying to find out what had happened.

After we finished our meal, we went back to the Singapore Airlines desk and were told that I would indeed be on the next day's flight. Result. The airline put us up in the Mercure hotel near the airport. Sadly, it wasn't nearly as posh as the Menzies but it was a bit nicer than the YWCA. The airline paid for our dinner, too, which was very nice.

The next day, I said goodbye to Hannah and got on the plane. The journey home wasn't particularly exciting, involving lots of trying to sleep in the plane, waiting around for hours in Singapore airport and then finally arriving in Heathrow in the early hours of Sunday morning, jetlagged and very cold.

So is it nice to be home? Well, it's quite good and all but I miss Hannah. And my feet nearly froze off walking home from the National Express coach station.

New Year

2009-12-31T23:59:00.008Z

We spent New Year in Sydney. When booking our accommodation, we were somewhat annoyed that most hotels and hostels had jacked their prices up incredibly. We eventually found somewhere called The Menzies Hotel and booked that, since it seemed cheaper than most places.

When we arrived at The Menzies, we were rather pleasantly surprised to find that it is a 4 star hotel. It seems that The Menzies was one of the few places that hadn't jacked its prices up and we were getting our money's worth for the £200 per night that we were spending. There were all kinds of wonderful things in the hotel that we didn't make the most of such as several bars, several restaurants, a gym and a swimming pool. Of course, we didn't have time for that sort of thing; we had a city to explore.

Although we visited Manly earlier on our travels, I hadn't really been to the city until now. Sydney is an awesome city. It's completely different to Melbourne; it feels like London or New York.

We met up with Lindsay and Lisette again for New Year's Eve. We went to party at some the flat of some their friends Brett and Michelle. It turns out that their flat has some awesome views of the city; we could see all of the skyscrapers of the Central Business District, nestling within which was our hotel (somewhere):

The Harbour Bridge could be seen in the distance:

When the fireworks started, we had a great view of them. In fact, there were so many fireworks that smoke obscured most of the views that we previously had. Nevertheless, the spectacle was awesome.

All in all, we had a wonderful time and were very grateful for the awesome hospitality of our hosts.

Jenolan Caves

2009-12-31T13:00:00.012Z

In the middle of our day trip to the Blue Mountains, we visited the Jenolan Caves. I couldn't help comparing them to the awesome Dan yr Ogof cave in South Wales. the Jenolan Caves are the oldest known caves in the world, having been formed about a gazillion years ago.

Even the entrance to the cave looked impressive.

A short way in, we entered the "cathedral," which was a larger cavern It seems like every system of caves worth its salt has to have a cathedral but, in this case, the name was fitting because it used to be used as a place of worship.

Throughout the cave, there were beautiful rock formations.

A short distance after the cathedral, we came upon a sharp descent. When the cave was first discovered, it was necessary to climb down the nearly vertical drop using a rope. Thankfully, some steps have now been built to bypass it.

A little later on, we passed a deep chasm with water at the bottom. This, it was explained to us, is the river that slowly dug out the caves over the years. It has been named the River Styx, after the river between Earth and the underworld in Greek mythology. We were warned not to drop anything in the river, as it was far too cold to go in and get anything out. By "far too cold," our guide meant about 6 degrees or so. This didn't seem very cold to us but we still didn't drop anything in.

Later, we passed some animal bones. I'm not sure if these particular bones were deliberately placed where we found them but we were told that the original explorers of the caves found the remains of dead animals as they explored.

We also saw some older animal remains. This next picture does not show a fossil but, rather, the calcified remains of an animal. I'm not sure quite how this differs from a fossil but there you go.

Our tour of Lucas Cave was over all too quickly but we couldn't stay as we had to get back to Sydney in a hurry; it was nearly time to celebrate New Year's Eve.

Blue Mountains

2009-12-31T09:27:00.009Z

On New Year's Eve, we decided to go on a guided tour of the Blue Mountains and the Jenolan caves. I'll write about the caves in a different post.

We were picked up from our hotel by our tour guide John, who turned out to be from Devon. He drove us to the dodgily-titled Scenic World park for a fairly whistle-stop tour. This park is built around the site of an old mine, the entrance to which could still be seen.

As soon as we arrived, we bought tickets for the funicular railway which would take us down the hill and into the park. This turned out to be highly scary, as the train made a rapid and almost vertical descent while the Indiana Jones theme tune blared out on speakers.

We were promised that the Three Sisters would be visible when we reached the bottom. Sadly, this was not to be the case due to the thick fog and low cloud that day:

Having failed to see much of a view, we contented ourselves with a quick walk round the temperate rainforest in the park, reading the informative and educational plaques that told us about various examples of plant life and relics of mining activity that we passed.

One such plaque pointed out a dead tree that had been hit by lightning and which only continued to stand upright because it rested on another tree.

There were plenty of highly interesting geological rocks:

We took the cable car back up the mountain. This was significantly less scary than the train but the views were sadly no better.

We were slightly disappointed that the view of the Three Sisters had been obscured. Luckily, our tour went past them again later in the afternoon, on the way back from the caves, and the fog had cleared.

Hooray!

Kuranda

2009-12-27T09:27:00.007Z

The day after boxing day, we visited the town of Kuranda, in the mountainous rainforest near Cairns.

Our journey to Kuranda was via the Kuranda Scenic Railway. We were told that the railway was originally built in response to a gold rush in the area. Nowadays, its primary purpose seems to be to ferry tourists to Kuranda and it's easy to see why, given the great views that we saw on the way up.

Half way up, we stopped at a station where we got some great views of the Barron Falls.

The construction of the railway line took a massive amount of time and effort. Massive amounts of rock had to be removed from the mountainside. In this picture, you can see some of the solid rock from the mountainside that was left behind as a monument. The side of the mountain is actually to the left of the train in the picture; the monolith that you see is all that remains after a cutting for the railway line was cut from the rock.

The town itself wasn't much, really. There were a ridiculous number of shops selling souvenirs and quite a few cafes and restaurants. We ended up eating in a great place called German Tucker, where we dined on German sausages, saurkraut and German beer. The sausages and beer were great, although the saurkraut wasn't to my liking. While there, we noticed that most of the other customers were Japanese. I guess Japanese people really like German food. A few days later, we went to a Japanese restaurant in Sydney and there was a German guy there so I guess the love is mutual.

We went down the mountain on the Skyrail cable car. This was, in many ways, even more spectacular than the train. From the cable car, we could see the valley that our train had climbed up earlier in the day.

We stopped in a few places on the way down. From our first stop, we were able to view the Barron Falls from the other side.

We went for a quick walk in the rainforest.

On the final part of the descent, we could see the city of Cairns in the distance:

Unfortunately, the rapid descent played havoc with my ear (the other one!), leaving me in a lot of pain and forcing us to cancel the snorkelling trip to the Great Barrier Reef the next day. Still, Kuranda was lots of fun and the views that we saw were truly great.

Christmas in Port Douglas

2009-12-25T09:26:00.006Z

Merry (belated) Christmas, everyone! We spent Christmas in Port Douglas, in the luxurious surroundings of the local YHA. The drive up the coast from Cairns was pretty spectacular; there were far better views than the Great Ocean Road.

We visited the beach on the way up but were dissuaded from going near the water by the dangerous local wildlife.

When we got to Port Douglas, we were pleased to find the local stinger net, which keeps the jellyfish out and within which it's safe to swim.

While visiting the beach, we did meet some of the local wildlife. Sadly, it turned out to be dead; some kind of ray had been washed up on the beach.

Christmas day was great fun. Hannah and I used our complementary Singapore Airlines socks as makeshift Christmas stockings. My stocking contained a banana, a bottle of Aussie beer and some chocolates. Only a satsuma could have made it better but, sadly, they don't seem to have satsumas in Australia right now.

We spent part of the day on the beach. This was an almost surreal experience for us northern-hemisphere natives. I realised that I don't think I've ever actually spoken to a stranger on Christmas day before, since Christmas has always been a day for sheltering in the house with the family. Hanging out on a busy beach on Christmas day was completely new to us.

The only downside to the day was the state of the hostel kitchen. We had been planning to cook Christmas dinner for ourselves but the state of the kitchen made us decide otherwise. In all of the other hostels that we had visited, people were pretty good at washing up after themselves and leaving the worksurfaces clean. Alas some of the other guests at this place had left the kitchen in a mess. There were unwashed dishes by the sink and scraps of food on the worksurfaces. Unfortunately, this being the tropics, this attracted thousands of ants. I also noticed a frog on the draining board at one point. We managed to clean up enough to cook lunch (sausage butties!) but didn't fancy cooking our evening meal.

Later that evening, we met Hannah's friend Su and her daughter who, by the most unlikely of coincidences, were also in Port Douglas for Christmas. We dined at the local Chinese restaurant before heading into the centre of Port Douglas for pudding  at a restaurant by the name of Mango Jam. Mango Jam serve the best non-savoury pizzas; banana and mango pizza turned out to be very tasty.

All in all, an excellent Christmas that not even a disgusting kitchen could ruin.

Bugs 3

2009-12-22T00:20:00.001Z

We visited Mission Beach for a night on our way to Port Douglas. On the way to Mission Beach, we passed through the town of Bowen and were surprised to see an enormous mango statue:

When we arrived at our hostel in Mission Beach, we were a bit concerned, given the large number of bugs around the place. In fact, we needn't have worried, because they were mostly either harmless or dead. Check out the colouration on this little bloke that was sitting on the wall in the gents:

Mission Beach seemed to be pretty cool, in a way that could be described by superlatives such as "party central" and suchlike. The hostel was advertising lots of cool activities like sky diving and bungee jumping. I think that it's a shame that we couldn't stay for longer, although I don't think that Hannah does.

Whitsundays

2009-12-21T02:45:00.000Z

So, following our encounter with the hoard of cockroaches in Agnes Water, we set off on our long journey north to the town of Airlie Beach. Our accommodation at Airlie Beach was Bush Village Backpackers, was great. The place was mercifully free of insect infestations. Possibly the coolest thing was the resident parrots:

The lady running the hostel wasn't so keen on the parrots. She told us that her neighbour feeds them at 5am every morning so the squawking starts then and doesn't stop all day.

The main reason for our stay was to visit the nearby Whitsunday islands, so named because they were discovered by Cook on Whitsunday, 1770. We booked a boat trip with the appropriately named Whitehaven Express, a small company who were only too happy to take us round the islands in exchange for a large wodge of cash. Our first stop was Tongue Inlet on Whitsunday island. Making our way onshore, we saw some interesting looking rock formations on the beach.

We then walked up a path through the forest on our way to the lookout point. On our way, we had quite a shock when we met our first Big Scary Spider of the trip:

As you can see, there is also a colourful insect in the picture. At first, we thought that the insect was in trouble, what with spiders having a reputation for eating insects and all. However, it was the insect that got the better of the spider. It grabbed hold of the spider and started dragging it away, off the path and through the forest. I'm sure that we witnessed some vital part of the forest food chain.

We then made our way to the lookout point, which had some spectacular views, one of which we posed in front of.

From this lookout point, we could see Whitehaven beach, which was to be our next destination:

Our guide, Shannon, explained that Whitehaven beach is the second best beach in the whole world, due to the excellent quality of the sand. It appears that there is a fault line between Haslewood Island and Whitsunday Island, where two tectonic plates rub together, emitting very fine and pure silica particles which form the sand on the beach.

After we returned to the boat we donned stinger suits, which we needed in order to safely enter the water at this time of year. Once the boat anchored off Whitehaven Beach, we were able to dive into the water and swim ashore, which was great fun. We spent a few hours on the beach and our guides cooked us lunch on the barbie. While eating lunch, we were joined by some very friendly lizards, which I think are goanas:

The next stop was a coral reef off Hook Island where we donned mask, fins and snorkel and swam over some fabulous coral. I regret not having bought an underwater camera by this point because the views underwater were truly stunning, with coral swaying in the breeze and shoals of brightly coloured fish swimming past.

All in all, this was probably the best day of the whole trip.

Bugs of Agnes Water

2009-12-19T02:41:00.000Z

On Friday, we said goodbye to Sophie and Dan and thanked them for looking after us so well. After cleaning the fruit bat droppings off our car (possibly the most revolting task of the holiday so far), we set off for our interim destination, Agnes Water. This is near the town of Seventeen Seventy, so named because it was the sight of Cook's second landing during his historic voyage in 1770.

The only eventful part of the journey came when the police diverted all of the traffic off the road in order to avoid a car accident. We were sent onto an unsealed road running parallel to the main highway. Naturally, this was very exciting:

We arrived at our hostel in the early evening. After checking in, we headed over to Seventeen Seventy and walked along the harbour.

We ate in a Thai Restaurant called Yok Attack in Agnes Water (possibly my favourite meal of the holiday so far), before returning to the hostel and settling down for the night. We noticed a few insects in the room but thought nothing of it.

I was awoken at 6:45 the next morning by Hannah, who had noticed that the insects we had seen the night before were now crawling all over us. This was rather distressing, to say the least, and we spent the next few minutes freaking out and trying get rid of them. Here is a entomological picture of one of them:

We think that they are baby cockroaches. If anyone knows better than us then please let me know.

Worse was to come; Hannah had left her bag open on the floor and it was also crawling with the little "blighters" so we proceeded to spend an hour or so hunting them down. In the process, we discovered that her bag had several pockets of which we were previously unaware, some of which the insects had already found.

Hannah has also written about bugs of Agnes Water in her blog here.

On the way out of town, we stopped at the supermarket and bought some insect spray. I have a feeling that we will be using it a lot as we head north (as it happens, we didn't end up using the insect spray much; I think that we were just unlucky on that one night).

Morten Island

2009-12-18T02:44:00.001Z

Since I have fallen a bit behind with this blogging lark, Hannah has already beaten me to it and written about our trip to Moreton island. You can read about it here.

On Thursday, we went across the bay on a guided tour around Moreton Island. This didn't get off to a great start when our guide was told the wrong pickup point and we ended up having to walk on to the ferry ourselves; luckily the pickup point wasn't far from the ferry or we would been in trouble. The tour got better from there on in.

Moreton Island is unusual in that the whole island is made of sand, with a thin layer of vegetation on top, holding it together. In fact, it is the third largest sand island in the world, its neighbour Stradbroke Island being the second largest and nearby Fraiser Island being the largest. The island is 95% national park and, given the somewhat shaky foundations upon which it is built, it has to be treated with care. Luckily, this doesn't prevent thousands of backpackers descending on it every year and having an awesome time.

Our tourguide, Grant, turned out to be an excellent 4WD driver. This was a lucky thing. I had been expecting some kind of dock when we reached the island. Nope. The ferry sailed up to the beach and we drove off, onto the beach. We then proceeded to drive along the beach for a few hundred yards. What with it being high tide at the time, this meant that our 4WD minibus was at a frightening angle, with one wheel in the water half the time.

Things didn't get any less scary once we turned onto a sandy track leading into the interior of the island. Grant told us that the tracks were tarmacked during the war, when Moreton Island was an important part of the plans for the defence of Brisbane and was home to thousands of troops. Sadly, the tarmac has now all fallen away. Our seatbelts proved to be essential; we were thrown around violently as the bus careered along the bumpy sand. Luckily, no one was sick and we soon arrived at the location for our first activity: sand boarding.

Sand boarding involves lying on a wooden board, the underside of which is waxed, and careering, head first, down a sand dune. This was our dune:

It was certainly an adrenaline rush, not least because I somehow ended up with the fastest board and, as a result, a ton of sand hitting me in the face on the way down. The board got up to an impressive speed on the way down, with me trying me best to hold on and not lose anything else; I managed to lose my flip flops almost immediately when I set off. Reaching the bottom wasn't fun because the board left the smooth sand of the sand dune and reached the bumpy sand at the bottom.

The worst part came when you got to the bottom and realised that you had to trudge back up the dune:

After a few goes sand boarding, we were covered in sand and had had enough. Luckily, it was time to head back to the beach.

It was at around this point that Sophie reminded me of the time that we went to Guernsey and all ended up with sunburn in comical shapes in all of the places that we forgot to apply sunblock. I think I tempted fate by informing her that it definitely wouldn't happen this time. More on that later.

A little way off the shore were a whole load of wrecked ships. We were somewhat disappointed to learn that these were wrecked intentionally in order to give tourists something to swim out to. They were still pretty cool, though.

Luckily, I had recovered from my ear infection by this point, so I was able to join the snorkeling fun. We each donned mask fins and snorkel and swam out to the wrecks. It was interesting to note that the underwater portion of each was completely covered in barnacles, to the point where the original metal structure of each of the ships was totally hidden. I was very disappointed that we were all given floatation jackets to wear while in the water, making it impossible to swim down and investigate any of the interesting structures and fish beneath the surface. Still, I suppose it is better to be safe than to be sorry. Here is a picture of the snorkeling gear. Very manly, I'm sure you will agree.

After we got in from snorkeling, we had time to do a bit more sunbathing and then we headed back to the ferry and returned to Brisbane. Fortunately, Sophie and Dan stayed awake and were able to direct us home. Slightly less fortunately, Hannah and I both ended up with the comical sunburn. I had completely forgotten to apply sunblock to my upper arms, for example, with the pattern of sunburn showing precisely the bits that I had missed. I guess it's a lesson for next time and Moreton Island was definitely worth it.

Mount Tambourine

2009-12-17T11:33:00.000Z

On Wednesday, Dan and Sophie took us on a trip up Mount Tambourine, a short drive south of Brisbane. Our trip up the mountain took in Queensland's finest producers of booze and cheese.

First stop was the the Tamborine Mountain Distillery. We had a tasting session where we tried sips of various flavoured spirits. Hannah liked the chocolate mint liquer that she ended up buying a bottle.

The next stop we the Witches Falls winery, where we had another tasting session. I had never associated Queensland with wine but some of it was lovely. I tried a lovely Shiraz (or Syrah, as it would apparently be known in France) and bought a bottle.

By this point, I was feeling a little tipsy so I handed the car keys to Hannah for the journey to our next destination: the cheese factory and brewery.

First, we tried a few lovely cheeses and bought a few for our lunch later on. Then, we high tailed it over to the bar where we tried some beers that had been brewed on the premises. They had an impresive range of european style beers, including kölsch, wheat beer and trappist beer.

The brewery looked very impressive:

For some reason, they had a Lotus sports car parked in there:

We had lots of fun sampling the beer

Finally, we made our way to the top of the mountain for lunch.

The views from the top of the mountain were very good:

Sophie and Dan fell asleep on the way home, causing Hannah and me to panic somewhat, since we didn't know the way home. We just about managed to keep going the right way until they woke up again and we managed to make it home without incident.

Crikey: Australia Zoo!

2009-12-16T01:59:00.012Z

I have fallen behind with this blogging business due to a combination of laziness and lack of internet access. I'll carry on writing about stuff that we did last week, starting with Australia Zoo.

After arriving at Sophie and Dan's awesome house in Brisbane, the first thing that we wanted to visit was Australia Zoo, founded by the legend that was Steve Irwin.

Although it is sad that Mr Irwin is no longer around, the zoo is awesome.

We drove from Bisbane to the Zoo, the final part of our journey being down the recently renamed Steve Irwin Way.

Upon entering the zoo, the first animals we saw were rhonoceros iguanas:

To be honest, we found the rhinoceros iguanas a lot less interesting than the lizards that were walking around on the paths through the zoo. We think they might have been eastern water dragons but we're not sure:

There were lots of menacing crocs too. Most of them seem to have been captured by Steve Irwin himself. This one looked like it definitely wanted to eat us:

We stopped off at the cafeteria for lunch. There were wild birds (which we kept seeing throughout southern Queensland and northern New South Wales) trying to eat people's scraps:

While sat in the cafeteria, we were able to observe the action below in the Crocoseum. This involved various animals performing awesome tricks for our entertainment, including snakes, birds and, of course, crocs. The high point should have been the crocs. Check out this scary looking guy:

In fact, the most exciting thing that happened was when one of the bird trainers tried to get a flock of birds to land on the arms of a few of the audience members but the birds just flew away instead, causing much panic and/or mirth.

Parcticularly awesome was getting to meet the kangeroos:

The kangeroos seemed pretty lazy to me. I can definitely relate to that.

We also saw some fairly tame tigers:

We visited the elephants and were able to observe them up close as they had lunch:

Hannah enjoyed meeting the ewoks (koalas):

No visit to an australian zoo would be complete without meeting a whole load of uber-scary snakes. This little guy isn't one of the most deadly but is definitely the most interesting looking:

We had a great time visiting Australia Zoo and I would definitely recommend going, if you have the chance.

Byron Bay, Nimbin and Surfers Paradise

2009-12-16T01:58:00.012Z

Byron

On the way out of Lennox Head, we briefly visited its northly neighbour, Byron Bay. This was as the Lonely Planet guide had described it; more touristy, busier and a bit more tacky.

We visited Cape Byron Lighthouse. This is situated on mainland Australia's most easterly point.

There is also a lovely beach nearby:

They're everywhere... They wanna save the earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad...

After visiting Cape Byron and Byron bay, we still had some time to kill so we headed for the world's 9th best hippy town, Nimbin. Alas, Nimbin appeared full not of hippies but of curious backpackers like ourselves. Things that we noted about the town:

Funny smelling smoke in the air from time to time.
Brightly coloured psychadelic shop fronts.
Some bloke asking us if we wanted any dope as we walked by. What a friendly chap!

We visited the Nimbin Museum, which was quite interesting. There, we learned that "the man" is trying keep us down by banning marijuana and being mean to be people with alternative lifestyles. We also learned that multiple police officers had been sent to Nimbin to try to stop people taking drugs. Clearly, they were doing a bit of a crap job, based on what we observed earlier.

On the way out of Nimbin, we drop past Mt Warning, the summit of which is the first part of mainland Australia to see the sun every morning. Exciting, no?

Surfers Paradise

After crossing into Queensland, we headed up the Gold Coast. We had decided not to stay in Surfers Paradise because we had heard it was pretty tacky. Still, we stopped for a few minutes in order to check it out.

First things first: the beach was pretty awesome and totally crowded with holiday makers. There were even a few surfers.

We then headed into town and discovered that the Australians have indeed done to Surfers what the British have done to the Greek islands. It involved a lot of concrete, tacky bars, fast food establishments and alcohol-fueled bad behaviour.

Still, it wasn't all bad. Before leaving town, we dined in style. At McDonalds.

Yamba

2009-12-16T01:57:00.003Z

On our way up north from Bellingen, we stopped for lunch in a lovely town called Yamba. Yamba advertised itself rather well; the sign on the highway read as follows: "Yamba, Australia's number one town!" Apparently, it really was voted the top town by some magazine or other: http://www.australiantraveller.com/component/content/article/362

Anyway, it had quite a nice beach, as this picture shows:

Lennox Head

2009-12-16T01:55:00.008Z

On Friday (by which, I mean Friday 11th December, what with me having fallen behind

with this "blogging" business) , we travelled to the lovely seaside town of Lennox Head. Our decision to stay in Lennox, rather than nearby Byron Bay, was partly driven by the fact that our Lonely Planet guide described Lenox as being less tacky and touristy than Byron. Mostly, it was due to our inability to find vacancies in any of the Byron Bay hostels that we tried.

Our journey from Bellingen was relatively easy by our standards, given that this one "only" took six hours, including time spent having lunch in Yamba (which I "blogged" about "here")

Our arrival was slightly complicated by the fact that I appeared to have caught an ear infection in Manly. This was confirmed when I visited the local doctor's surgery and antibiotic ear drops prescribed. Sadly, I can't get my ear wet for a few days now, which might put a dampener on various water-based fun. Once that small matter had been dealt with, we had a chance to acclimatise to our surroundings. Our accommodation was the local YHA. Very nice it was too. Our double room actually had a fridge in it, which impressed us no end. The hostel itself was a mere stone's throw from the beach. By "stone's throw", I mean "down the street to the end and then across another street and then up a grassy bank" but it was still pretty close. The beach was great too:

We had lots of fun on the Saturday, playing in the sea, me trying to make sure that my ear didn't get wet and Hannah trying to ensure that she didn't get out of her depth.

Here is a picture of me enjoying the sea, confident that nothing bad is going to happen:

...and here is a picture of me, my ear still barely dry:

We also went to Lake Ainsworth, which was a similar "stone's throw" away. This is a lake, separated from the sea by a bar of sand. The waters of the lake are brown with tannin from the surrounding trees which, we were told, is great for the skin. To be honest, though, it was just a bit creepy.

All in all, Lennox Head is a great place to visit with a great beach. Highly recommended.

Bellingen

2009-12-10T23:27:00.006Z

We have now arrived at the small town of Bellingen and checked into the town's YHA.

Bello YHA feels like the first "proper" hostel that we have stayed in; everywhere so far has seemed a bit too posh and slick to be classed as a youth hostel. This place feels like a proper backpacker hostel, from the copious bugs that keep freaking Hannah out (mercifully, all the ones that we have found so far appear to be harmless; no poisonous spiders and snakes have threatened us so far) to the Hindu and Buddhist imagery on the posters around the place and the cool hippy-sounding tunes that our friendly proprietor plays on the stereo.

We also have a lovely view from the veranda where I am writing this:

As if that wasn't enough, the hostel also has a resident cat:

In all, this place gets ten out of ten for awesome cool-ness.

Neighbours Part 2

2009-12-08T06:26:00.008Z

It seems that Monday night did not give Hannah her fill of Neighbours action so we went on the Neighbours Tour (B) on Saturday morning. This was a bus tour taking in the areas where Neighbours is filmed, including Ramsey Street and Global Studios.

We were picked up from our hostel at 8:05am on the dot by our jovial tour guide, Sophie. Sophie is an ex-pat Brit who seemed to enjoy her job ferrying backpackers around the sights of the Melbourne area and who seemed particularly knowledgeable about all matters Neighbours.

Once all the punters had been picked up (and after Hannah had bought Dr Karl's CD, Live At The Elephant), we set off to our first destination: Ramsey Street (real name: Pin Oak Court, Melbourne).

The first thing that struck me is how unlike Ramsey Street it actually looked. While a few of the houses looked familiar, the layout of the street itself looks completely different on television. In real life, it is a cul-de-sac with six houses. On television, they manage to make it look much bigger by never showing much of the road at a time. Another clever trick that Sophie explained to us involves the Neighbours characters never crossing the road (even though it's easy to do in real life, what with a six-house cul-de-sac having little traffic) but, rather, walking all the way round to whatever their destination is, the camera following them the whole time.

After taking multiple cheesy photos, we set off for our next destination, Global Studios. Here, we got to see awesome sets such as:

Lassiters!

Carpenter's Mechanics!

Charlie's!

.

That bus stop that Toadie got handcuffed to on his stag night!

After that, we got back in the minibus and headed back to St Kilda, where we were due to meet a mystery Neighbours cast member. Annoyingly, it turned out to be someone that I had never heard of who hasn't been in the show for several years. Worse, the minibus made Hannah travel sick and the former Neighbours actor had the cheek to suggest that she was worse for wear due to drinking the night before. How very dare she!

Manly Sydney

2009-12-08T06:20:00.010Z

We have now arrived in the Sydney area and checked into the awesomely named Manly Beach House in similarly awesomely named area of Manly, just outside Sydney.

Manly Beach House is run by a jovial chap of Indian origin from Zimbabwe named Dev.

Despite it not actually being on the beach, we enjoyed our stay greatly, not least because the beach was only a few minutes away. It also helped that the beach turned out to be awesome:

Drought

2009-12-08T06:20:00.009Z

Victoria and southern New South Wales appear to be going through a bit of a drought at the moment. Being from the UK, we were used to green grass and rivers that actually flow. There's not much of that at the moment. Here is a pic from our journey between Melbourne and Sydney:

Rivers round here are somewhat pathetic at the moment. We became accustomed to driving across mighty bridges over enormous valleys, only to look down and see not much in the way of water beneath. One assumes that the rivers occasionally swell to mighty torrents but, for now, a river is identified merely by the valley that it occupies and the unusually lush vegetation in the bottom of that valley.

The drought was also evidenced by the frequent posters warning of the danger of bush fires in the area (which was high). Looking at the parched landscape, it was easy to see why this was the case.

One very interesting feature of the landscape in the farmed areas that we passed through was that every little valley had been dammed. While there was no water flowing through when we passed, each dam caused a small pool of water to accumulate, giving the livestock somewhere to get a drink. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to take a picture of any of these pools but it was nice to see the local farmers making the best of the erratic patterns of precipitation. Still, you can't help but get the impression that Australia's lack of reliable rainfall is a real problem, even in the most fertile areas.

Melbourne to Sydney

2009-12-07T11:52:00.005Z

While we were in the Melbourne area, one thing struck me as rather unusual: I didn't see any car number plates from outside Victoria. After we left Melbourne and started driving towards Sydney along the coastal road, it was a very long time until we started seeing New South Wales number plates. I now realise the reason.

If you lived in Sydney and wanted to go to Melbourne, would you drive it? Not likely. It took us two days driving from morning to evening each day to get from Melbourne to Sydney. I imagine that you could just about do it in a day but only if you went flat out, with few breaks. Alternatively, you could fly and be there in a few hours. With the benefit of hindsight, that's what we should have done.

Of course, driving allowed us to see some wonderful scenery:

The trouble is, we didn't have time to stop in many of the wonderful places we went past. In order to properly do justice to the journey, you'd need to spend a lot more time doing it. We didn't have time. We're on a schedule, dammit!

Penguins

2009-12-07T11:47:00.001Z

On Saturday, we drove to Philip Island, a few hours southeast of Melbourne. Philip Island is special in two ways:

Firstly, lots of the towns on the island are named after towns on the Isle of Wight. For example, we stayed in Cowes and the main attraction that we visited was in Ventor.

Main attraction? Oh yes, the second awesome thing on Philip Island is the penguins. Now, I hadn't realised that penguins ventured north of the Antarctic but apparently there are multiple species of penguin to be found throughout the southern hemisphere. The penguins on Philip Island can be seen emerging from the sea every evening at dusk. We sat, along with a massive crowd of people, and watched as the penguins predictably emerged from the sea and waddled up the beach to the sand dunes where they make their nests. We could then observe the penguins up close from the board walk. They seemed completely un-bothered by our presence. We watched a penguin family going about its penguin-ey business. The daddy penguin collected bits of grass to line the nest while the mummy penguin followed the baby penguin around and tried to keep it out of trouble.

Sadly, we weren't allowed to take any pictures of the penguins (apparently, a camera flash can be rather hazardous to their health) so here is a link to some pictures that someone else took:

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/8ed7f/1c8d67/

Chinatown

2009-12-07T11:46:00.012Z

While in Melbourne, we visited Chinatown. This seemed to occupy the entirety of one long and narrow street. As you can see from the picture, it is an exciting place, lined with Chinese restaurants.

We had two meals in Chinatown during our stay. The common factors seemed to be:

Awesome fried dumplings

Portion sizes that were far too large for the two of us. Check out our first meal:

For the second meal, we decided that, if we wanted to stand a chance of finishing the meal, we'd better not order so many dumplings. I ordered something called "fish with chillies" for my main course. This turned out to be a portion large enough for a whole family.

Apparently, not many people order that particular dish. I managed to eat a tiny fraction of it and very tasty it was too but Hannah was unable to help me out and thus I wouldn't recommend ordering it just for yourself.

The Great Ocean Road

2009-12-07T11:42:00.015Z

On Friday, went for a day trip along the Great Ocean Road. This is a road along a stunning stretch of the Victoria coastline southwest of Melbourne:

Before we could tackle this awesome road, we needed a car. Luckily, the friendly people at Hertz were only too happy to charge us an arm and a leg to hire us the vehicle that will carry us around Australia for the next month.

Not too long into our journey, we passed our first awesome landmark: the lighthouse from the series Round The Twist.

Not even the lighthouse could compare with the awesome majesty of our ultimate destination, The Twelve Apostles. Kind of like Durdle Door on steroids:

The way back proved to be a little more challenging than the way there. Firstly, the satnav decided to be a bit "special" and direct us down every tiny suburban street in Geelong, presumably in order to shave fractions of a mile off our journey. This proved to be highly stressful.

Worse, the only pair of shoes that I had brought with me decided to malfunction. Behold:

Luckily, I was able to get some new shoes in Melbourne, with which I will have to make do until I can glue the soles back on to my old broken shoe. Phew!

Brekkie

2009-12-01T20:19:00.007Z

When we went for breakfast yesterday, I was expecting it to be like British or American food: you know, unhealthy, drenched in fat, fried. That sort of thing. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Aussies seem to be seriously into healthy eating. I had avocado and mushroom on toast. It was both good tasting and good for you. Meanwhile, Hannah had beans on toast. I must confess to scoffing, under my breath, at her having gone for a can of Heinz beans on toast. Not so: the beans were actually fresh. Nice.

Later on, we went for coffee. It turns out that Aussies are also great at making coffee. My coffee not only tasted great but was also beautifully presented. It didn't really help us to get over our jetlag, though.

Oh yeah, we also explored Melbourne a bit. Which was nice.

Neighbours

2009-11-30T23:36:00.006Z

Having safely arrived in Melbourne, we did what any self respecting jet-lagged backpackers would do and went to a Neighbours theme night. This involved a pub quiz, meeting some actors from Neighbours. The only one of whom I recognised was Alan Fletcher, who plays Dr Karl Kennedy. Sadly, I didn't get my picture taken with Dr Karl but I did shake his hand. Wowser. Here are pictures of me meeting some of the other Neighbours guys. I'm not quite sure who they are.

This was then followed by the most surreal part of the night, a set from Dr Karl's band Waiting Room. Dr Karl clearly fancies himself as a rockstar, as he was really going for it, playing covers of such classics as I Predict A Riot and Mr Brightside.

The most surprising thing about the whole night was that Dr Karl appears to be a major international sex symbol. Seriously, the ladies loved Dr Karl.

Exotic Singapore...

2009-11-29T14:20:00.002Z

...Airport is where we are now. It's very exciting.

We stepped off the plane and were immediately hit by the oppressive tropical heat and humidity. Luckily we then stepped into the air conditioned airport, where we have been confined for the past seven hours. We have done lots of fun things, such as:

Eating cookies
Sleeping
...?

Here is a picture of us waiting for the plane to Melbourne. Rock n Roll!!!

Other Annoyances

2009-10-22T12:43:00.002Z

Nokia PC suite just updated itself and now it, too, wants to restart my computer. Grrr. I quite literally think that's "rubbish."

More Annoyance of PDFs

2009-10-20T07:45:00.002Z

As if Acrobat Reader's pointless bloatedness wasn't annoying enough, I have just noticed two more annoying things about it:

It now seems to contain some kind of online chat/meeting functionality. I have never felt the need to start an "Acrobat Connect" meeting and I don't think I ever will.
Whenever it updates itself (which feels too often), it makes me reboot my computer. Why on earth would that be necessary?

On the plus side, at least the Acrobat Reader plugin no longer makes my entire browser freeze up while a PDF is loading.

On balance, it would be nice if there was a small and lean piece of software that could view PDFs and not do any of the annoying stuff.

Dear Jeff

2009-09-02T20:22:00.000Z

I'm sorry that there aren't any interesting posts on this blog. Be sure to come back soon, just in case there are any. Just in case.

Animal Noises Made Easy

2009-08-25T09:34:00.003Z

Moo: a cow, a bovine cow
Prrr, a purring feline cat
Twit-twoo, an owl, an owl-esque owl
Squeak, a squeaking rattous rat
Huss, a hussing kiwi snake
Neigh, a neighing equine horse
Oink, an oinking porcine pig
And that brings us back to Moo

Awesome Site: www.hugeurl.com

2009-03-30T08:06:00.002Z

If you're familiar with http://tinyurl.com/ then you are probably wondering how the concept can be improved. Well, it can. Check this out:

http://www.hugeurl.com/

I used it to create this huge link:

http://www.hugeurl.com/?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

Hoo-ray for the internet!