Australia day, Birthday, and back to Asia!

Hey guys.


I feel like it has been a long time since I last wrote my blog! In fact it has been just over a month, but a lot has changed in my life since then...

My current life...

For a start I have left Australia for good! I can't say that I feel too sad about this. It is a great country, and I met many awesome people there, but two years is a long time, and I feel like I got my moneys worth out of Oz...

The last few weeks in Oz were mostly spent trying to find a few days of work to supplement my meagre resources. I'm not sure if I mentioned before, but the plan upon leaving Australia was to go to South America, see the carnival in Brazil, and to generally tear it up around South America for half a year or so...

Unfortunately this wasn't to be. Mother Nature, along with some girl called La Niña, scuppered my plans by blasting Australia with record amounts of rainfall! You may have heard about this on the news... Happily I wasn't caught up in the epicenter of the floods in Queensland; but we saw enough rain down south, at just the wrong time, to make the cherry season, normally very lucrative, into a washout...

This, combined with various expenses incurred in the course of the year, meant that my funds couldn't stretch to getting to South America. A one way ticket to Argentina from Australia seems to cost from $1800 upwards!

Anyway... back to the story... I eventually found a weeks work thinning pears near Shepperton. This was pretty good work, and I managed to add some much needed cash to my reserves. After this I made my way down to Melbourne to meet my sister and her boyfriend, and sell them my van. This worked out nicely a few ways. For me it meant that I didn't have to run around in the week before leaving Oz trying to sell my van. For them it had a similar advantage, as well as avoiding having to pay for a safety certificate... We found out that it is quite difficult to haggle with family members though!

I left Australia on Australia day... Which I thought was particularly fitting... During the day my sister arranged for us to go to the Australia day races... which were very nice, even though the races were called off due to kangaroos on the course! Very Australian!



From Melbourne I flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia... I had been here before, but i was staying with a friend that time, so I didn't feel like I saw the city from a travellers point of view... The return wasn't disappointing! I stayed in a hostel near chinatown. The food was excellent everywhere i went, every meal was completely different, and I never felt the need to "cheat" and have western food. A particular favourite of mine was the roti, curry and sweet tea combination that was the normal breakfast for the Indian locals.

I also celebrated my birthday in Kuala Lumpur. Needless to say I got very drunk. Had an awesome time, in part thanks to Murry winning the semi finals of the Oz Open, and in part to two Norwegians called Kristin singing me a Norwegian birthday song!

Two Norwegians called Kristin...

Since then I have moved north into Thailand. I spent a few days in Bangkok, where I caught up with various people and enjoyed getting back into Thai food again! Thai food is great! Chinese New Year also fell on my visit to Bangkok, so I made my way to Chinatown to check out the festivities that were happening there...

Now I am on Koh Pangnan. An island paradise most famous for its full moon parties... I'm not really in a partying mood... so I am here when there isn't a full moon, and at the opposite side of the island to the party beach. It is very, very chilled out here. I almost like it as much as Koh Tao...

And that is it for now... In another months time I will be thinking about my return home, so the next blog will reflect that a little... be sure to check in for that one...

The road to glory... 2010

The title is of course a reference to the world cup. Some of you will be avid supporters of your teams, some of you couldn't care less... I fall somewhere between these two extremes...

Don't get me wrong, I'm an England fan first and foremost (well, that and a Leeds fan!). If the national team does well, I'm in a good mood. If they perform badly (Algeria anyone?!?) then I am flung into a tiny little pit of despair... So on the whole I'm glad that England have gotten through to the knock-out stages of the tournament, if slightly fearful of the upcoming opposition...

Back to my story though... My last blog left off in Koh Tao. Which was just as I remembered it... a tropical paradise... I saw a bit more of it this time, chartering a boat to take us round the island to some of the more remote beaches and snorkelling sites...

Myself, Namrin and Allan all had a great time there. Even after Allans adventure of having his wallet stolen and then the next day managing to drop his phone underneath the floorboards of a beach-side restaurant!

All good things must come to an end however, so eventually we had to leave Koh Tao and make our way back to Bangkok.

Bangkok is big! And smelly! Well, parts of it are. We spent a day there checking out the temples and palaces had some excellent meals, and then before we knew it Allan had to head home! We slightly nervously put him into a cab heading for the airport and hoped like hell that he would be able to make it back home all by himself!

I was only in Bangkok for a couple of days after this. We did a bit more sight-seeing, went to visit Namrins second home town of Ratchaburi and saw a bat cave there. We ate some more excellent meals with some of my friends from Bangkok. We even found time to fit in a bit of salsa! Then suddenly it was my turn to head back to Australia!

I won't go into it, but the goodbye was long and teary... On the plus side we got to travel to the airport for free on the test run of the new airport connection train!

Back in Australia I stopped for one day in Sydney, and then started heading north... I was heading towards Bowen, via the Blue Mountains national park when I realised that I was passing very close to a small town called Gayndah.

Gayndah is little town in the middle of Queensland, remarkable mostly for the citrus fruit that they produce there. It is also the little town where myself and Nam had our first picking job last year when we were just starting our travels...

I figured that I may as well pop in and see what was happening there, and within a day I had a job to start tomorrow!

So that is where you find me now! I missed the first England game against the USA because I was on the road, but once I got to Gayndah I haven't missed any of their games (though it seems that the England players missed one!).

Gayndah is mostly full of French people, Germans and Koreans (apart from the ozzies of course). The French are of course the but of many jokes right now regarding their team... We go up against the Germans next, which should be interesting. I have a place to watch it arranged and a German to watch it with. If we loose I may have to have a one man riot! We English have a reputation to protect you know!

Or I might just go to bed....