G'Day Mate!

Gday Mate!  "Look at me... Look at me", Neighbours (everybody needs good Neighbours).....Throw another shrimp on barbie ya flaming galah.... Well, if you havent already guessed by my awful, steroetypical, introduction then we have landed in Australia!


Perth, Western Australia to be precise.




This moment had been a long time coming and in a way it felt like a bit coming home, as we were back to western civilisation! Yippee! We were getting desperate for some normality; flat, job, our own bed and being able to cook for ourselves.  It was funny that such small, simple pleasures were a very exciting prospect after 12 months in Asia.

One of the first things that hit us was just how expensive things are back in the Western world and in particular, Perth.  We nearly had a heart attack buying a bottle of water from the Perth airport.  We left the airport and made our way to the Comfort Inn (Perth City) as we had booked ourselves in for a couple of nights to recover from jetlag and to find our feet again.

We had been very lucky and managed to secure a houseshare before we had even arrived Australia, by the ever faithful Gumtree.  Both us, and our prospective housemate, and taken a huge leap of faith and agreed to share before we had met, exchanged money or even viewed the property. Naturally we were thinking this could go extremely well or be the worse mistake ever.  I (Sarah) decided to send across some information over to our new housemate, Lija, to show her that we werent a pair of nutters (although after living with us for a few months she may disagree)!

We slept of the jetlag and then it was time to go and see our property in Bronte Street, East Perth, we were slightly nervous, what if we hated it???  Although all of our worry was misplaced as it was lovely.  We met up with our new housemate Lija, 28 who then she showed us our quarters.  We had our own entrance, bedroom, bathroom and courtyard and we could come and go freely, the transport systems were close by and it was going to be so easy getting around on the free CAT transport system. It had a park at the end of the road and the WACA is five minutes away.  Perfect.

We knew that we needed to start work straightaway and Andrew had managed to secure a job before we arrived, so it was just moi to find one.  I had forwarded my CV before arriving in Perth to the Western Australia Health Department, so within the week I had found a job.  It was back to the world of Healthcare procurement and Andrew was going back to EF teaching schools.  It was like we had never left home :-)

This is me with Lija, our housemate

This is Wellington Square which is at the bottom of Bronte Street

 
One thing that we didnt realise before we moved in was that Lija had a dog, Wookie.  As most of you now know from this blog, I (Sarah) am allergic to fur and was a bit embarassed to break this to our new landlord.  So after a few days of avoiding Wookie, Andrew kindly advisied Lija of why I was so distant.  Luckily Lija put me in touch with a Naturopath and have since been cured of my allergy, I hope it still works by the time I get home to see Burton.

Here is a picture of Wookie, he is adorable!

Andrew with Tony, our Swan Valley Tour Guide

August and September were quite important months for me and Andrew, as it was time to celebrate our 30th birthdays.

Andrew being Andrew said he didnt want to do anything major for his birthday, so we just decided to be tourists for the weekend and started familarising ourselves with the city and  then went out for a meal.  He did his best impression stating that he didnt want me to get him anything (read that as 'please spoilt me rotten') so I pretended that I wouldnt bother and that we didnt have much money anyway (everything was going on the credit cards at this point) and then secretly got him a load of presents so he was a happy boy!  (at least girls are honest when they want something).

Me and Andrew at the start of our wine tour, this is on the boat cruising up the Swan Valley

I, on the other hand, wanted the full monty and so I had arranged for us to go on a gourmet wine tour of the Swan Valley.  This basically meant spending the day drinking/wine tasting and sampling cheese! What more could you want?

Andrew enjoying our lovely lunch

Me and Andrew at Lancaster, our favourite winery of the day

We sampled 16 different types of wine and port at this winery!  In total I think we tried over 70 wines and god knows how much cheese.  It was the stop off in the chocolate factory when I said enough was enough, Andrew managed to squeeze in a ice cream (god knows how) - we will do this again though as we had such a good laugh

This is me in Fremantle on my birthday weekend.

The lovely Fremantle (Freo) markets

Andrew down by the river in East Perth, this is one of our favourite hangouts.

  

Each year the city of Perth holds a festival called Parklife and this year it was to be held at Wellington Square, which just happened to be at the bottom of our street (see picture above).  Due to our savvy housemate Lija we were able to get free tickets because we live so close and the noise etc.  The festival featured Missy Eillot, 2manyDJ's and Groove Armada amongst others.

All I can say is that it was quite a crazy little festival and I can officially say Perth festival goers are mental (literally!).  We have both been to many festivals but this was a definete eye opener!  It was bloody expensive too - me and Andrew decided to drink 2 litres of wine before we got in to try and save some dosh as it was 8 quid for a small can of beer or even more for wine. Failed to find some Jaiger (which in hindsight was a good thing given previous events.

FACTOID - Perth is the most expensive city in Australia (mainly due to mining boom in recent years).

 This is Lija with her boyfriend, Badi.

Andrew with Lija and Badi's housemate Andrew

Drunk with Lija and Badi..

Hiding in the middle of the Parklife crowds for a very cheesy camera shot

My old hairdresser, June, who had cut my hair since I was a wee child had moved out to Perth a few years ago and so we made contact with her and her partner Mark so we could see some friendly faces.  June and Mark live out of the city down in Currambine, so I arranged to meet June for a catch up in the manner of "ladies that lunch" and of course to sample some vino!  All I can say is that after 4 bottles the day is a bit of a blur.  It was lovely to catch up and we have had since had many outings with them both; they have looked after us super, smashing, great.  Thanks June and Mark :-)

We visited the local Aquarium with June, here are some of the pictures:

Amazing Coral

Andrew and June stroking the stingrays

Shark - hope we dont see one of these when we go snorkelling

A lovely HUGE turtle!

One of the things that I really wanted to do was go on a tour to see the Humpback Whales as I love fishies so much.

We got the train down to Freo and picked up the boat which took us down to the Humpback Highway.  We had a brillant day and we saw about 10 whales in total, they are amazing creatures.

This is a mother and her calf swimming up to the boat.

Thats about it now, as you can see we have got off to a cracking start to our Australian adventures and hopefully you have enjoyed reading what we have been up too since Asia (as it has been a while, getting a bit slack on keeping the blog up to date).  Unfortunetly now comes the hard part (and the boring bit)- saving.  So not sure when the next entry will be bloggers as I am sure that you dont want to read about what we get up to at work, it would pretty much read as work, eat, sleep. The sound of a working tourist visa sounds fun, its just a shame about the work bit!  But of course we really do need to save and keep our heads down (read this as not having much fun, other than drinking wine from a cask) in order to continue to live our dream and get some dollar together for the next part of the trip, otherwise we will be leaving on a jet plane!  Although we have bought ourselves a car so we will be buzzing round in that, especially as the weather is heating up here in Perth (not meaning to rub it in, as I think that it is getting pretty damn cold at home). Ciao for now people.

Anyway thats about it - see you soon folks! Sarah & Andrew xxx

p.s. Andrew will be writing the next blog!

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The End of Asia

Hello again! Yet again it is me, Sarah, who will update you on the last of our adventures as Andrew claims he does enough work at school; but don’t worry I will get him writing again soon. We are nearing the end of our Asian adventures, so this will be our last entry for Asia…. Boo :-(

As normal we decided to change our plans around at the last minute as we had had enough of Thailand and thought that it would be fun to meet up with our friend from Manchester in Singapore. So we said a drunken Thai goodbye and headed back to Singapore for a few days. This was about our 6^th visit in as many months and I had definitely started to warm to the place, maybe it was familiarity and the pure ease in which you can travel round this city.  It had become like our Asian home from home after 12 months on the road. We also decided to head back to Malaysia - we were gutted that we had missed out Penang on our initial trip due to the lovely lazy days in Langkawi so we decided this would be where finished our trip before heading to Australia, quite apt really as Malaysia was the starting point of our SE Asian adventure. 

Unfortunately our normal hotel in Singapore was booked up, and for the first time ever on our trip, we had to resort to booking a room in a hostel. Arghhh.  I was proud of the fact that I had never had to stay in a hostel throughout our whole trip and it was spoilt in the last week, damn! The thought of sharing a room with other people made me feel physically sick, plus the fact that Andrew snores like a trooper means the other people would not be getting any sleep (ha ha!)  I thought we were lucky though, as we had managed to book our own room in the hostel for the first two nights so it was only on our last night which we had to share (with only another two people so not as bad as it could have been).  I had a vision of being stuck in a room of twenty people all snoring and breaking wind throughout the night so I was feeling positive about the whole thing and felt chuffed that maybe I wasn’t such a snob after all :-)

We arrived at our hostel in Little India and it was looking promising as we checked in, not too bad at all I was thinking, this is going to be fine.  I am going to be fine.  However then we got to our room and there was a double bed (more like 1.5 of bed) with wall surrounding it and a locker for our bags; you couldn’t even swing a mouse in there.  OMG.  The bed was hard, the pillows like rock and a piece of material that was allegedly a cover, but it was more like a brillo pad.  As for the communal showers, don’t even get me started; not sure they had even heard of luke warm water! Plus, you even had to rent out a towel of you needed one… I picked one up from the front desk and it was the filthiest rag you could imagine, yuck! It was a case of shut your eyes and dry. We normally stayed in the Aqueen Hotel on Lavender Street which was only 15quid more and you got your own bathroom, own comfy bed, mini bar, cable TV, own clean towels, hairdryer and toiletries and generally decent conditions and you could get a lush breakfast of Kaya on toast (one our favourite finds on our trip!) 

Anyway, we were due to head to SingFest which was a three day event going on which had a range of stars appearing – there was Pop day, featuring Katy Perry, then Hip Hop day with Kanye West (gutted that I missed him) and then rock day which was headlined by Smashing Pumpkins.  As our friend works for a certain Mr Brown (who was also playing) he kindly sorted us some tickets, so we headed across to the park to watch the bands and meet up with him. 

Well, Singapore is certainly the cleanest place ever to have a festival – even the toilets smelt nice and were cleaned after every person went in them!  It was also the most expensive (although at time of writing I think that Perth now wins the award for most expensive and smallest glass of wine!).  

Me and Andrew were down to the last of our funds    (our credit card was in constant use at this stage) so real cash was a bit tight, we had a couple of wines and beers and then thought the best way forward was to get leathered on Jaigermeister, which we did!  I must say the highlight for me was The Vines, we had not watched them before and for us they were the best of the night.  30 Seconds to Mars were a load of tosh, god knows what Jared Leto is about these days and I am sorry to say that the Smashing Pumpkins were a huge disappointment.  We eventually met up with our friend who furnished us with more alcohol which resulted in us having a huge row about nothing, Andrew lost his brain - which he has a tendency to do when he has Jaiger (this is not me being horrible, he will tell you this himself) and so we disappeared into the night back to our uncomfortable hostel room without saying proper goodbyes (although sure our friend was glad to be rid of 2 drunken fools).

The next day was pretty rough, having a hangover in a hostel is really not fun and one never to be repeated.  I drew the short straw and had to venture out (looking like a tramp I may add) to get our dinner, being in Little India this could only mean one thing… curry!  Eating a curry with no cutlery in a poke hole with little ventilation was not the best idea of our trip and I can safely say it was a lesson learnt.

Anyway, for our last day we headed out to the cinema to watch Inception (never had a film confuse me so much. Andrew loved it, but for me it was the only Leo film that I have not really taken too) and then of course it was back to the hostel to spend the dreaded night in the 4 bed dorm room.  We had a bunk each (god, felt like I was about 10 years old) and as always Andrew takes the top bunk.  I always need to get up in the middle of the night and never fancy clambering down a ladder in the dark, especially for those of my friends who know how clumsy I am but then I think the top bunk could collapse on me so I am not really a bunk bed type of person. 

Our room mates were no where to be seen during the day and we (Andrew) only really met them when they arrived to pick up supplies at midnight (I pretended I was asleep).  They returned to the room at about 4am, waking me up and scaring me that we could be attacked whilst sleeping (I have such an overactive imagination).  Well, needless to say I had a terrible night’s sleep (Andrew slept like a log) and in the early hours of the morning all I could hear was the Norwegian (male) roommates trying to get Andrew’s attention and wake him up to stop him snoring (not a chance).  I just ignored them and prayed that Andrew continued in his full glory, serves them right for waking me up at 4am!

 Next day we headed on a flight to Penang in Malaysia, where we spent 3 nights or so before heading back to Singapore for our final flight (for a while at least) to Australia.  As Penang was our last destination of our Asia trip, we had truly had enough of travelling and so after the rough 3 nights sleep in the hostel, we booked ourselves into a 4* hotel (haha, the joys of flashpacking hey) which had a pool, steam room and sauna and a rather grand entrance with huge crystal chandeliers. We realised just how exhausted we were, so being honest we didn’t really get up to much, so this section will be fairly short.  We had a really lovely Chinese and a Japanese restaurant within the hotel so between this, watching films and swimming in the pool then the days just flew by.  Penang is famous for its street food and so we ventured into our local hawker centre a few times as well.

On our last day, we did arrange for two cycle taxis to give us a tour of Penang via the historic culture trail.  This was a lovely way to spend our last day and we really enjoyed it. We visited the Islam museum, Chinatown, Little India and some very lovely temples, one of which was used for the filming of Anna and The King featuring Jodie Foster (yeah, I ain’t watched that one either) finishing up at a chocolate factory.  

As per the normal requirement of Asian life (from fear of being considerably ripped off – as you now know from the many updates on this blog, having a white face means treble the price normally) we negotiated with the driver the upfront fee (before we even set off on our tour).  Unknown to us they had a little scam going and therefore had decided to double the length of our tour, showed us extra things (without telling us it was extra) in order to charge us double at the end (we wondered why it was going on for so long)?.  So, we had a bit of a “discussion” at the end of our trip, us finally successfully paying our agreed price.  I think that the driver knew he was trying it on so couldn’t really argue otherwise.  We always find it funny how the English improves when in discussion regarding money but the sorry thing for them (which they failed to realise) is that we would have given them extra cash anyway as a tip , but instead they got zilch!

Well, what more can I say, that is the end of our SE Asia tales.  We honestly had the best ever experience and have so many memories that we will treasure forever.  We have some amazing pictures, many of which haven’t even made it to our blog and I am sure that we will look back over them in disbelief over the following years that we actually undertook and completed such a mammoth trip.  We absolutely love Asia, it is so vibrant and different from anywhere else.  It tends to conjure all sorts of emotions; one minute you love and the next you hate and within seconds you like it again!  I personally am very proud that I actually made it to the end of our Asian travels as I know a few people (my little brother being one) thought that I would be back home within a few months.  To be fair, there were occasions when he was right,  I so could have hopped on a plane back home.  Back to a place where our life would be so much simpler but luckily I didn’t; mainly because I had Andrew by my side encouraging me and generally making life easier for me (although harder for him no doubt!).  Actually I wouldn’t change a thing, some of the worst experiences have actually, in hindsight been the best and of course they make for the best stories. 

Coming soon……..Our new adventure being a working tourist in Australia for 12 months!  Oh dear.. we are actually going to have be normal people again and do that dreaded thing that everyone does… W.O.R.K!!! OMG.

Andrew in the lobby of our hotel in Penang

Typical Asian hawker centre, they never look like much but the food is fab

Malaysia's famous dish - fish head curry, this was andrews (the sauce was yummy but I couldnt face trying the fish head, yuck!)  Andrew even eat the eyes!

Andrew outside a temple in Penang where Anna & The King was filmed

Singapore Streets on a Saturday - nightmare!

Us before we headed on our cycle trip

Andrew again at the beautiful temple

Government building in Penang which we cycled past

The local butcher

Andrew with John

Me in Chinatown in Singapore

Our lush Japanese dinner, it was presented beautifully

Looking out onto Penang from our hotel room

At the hawker centre in Penang

A happy hawker

This was one of favs... Rojak... sour mango or fruit covered in sticky tamarind sauce with crushed nuts - sounds gross but its so good.

Andrew getting stuck to some food at the hawker centre in Penang

Me forcing a smile on my bunk on our last night in the hostel!

You rock Asia!






Have a look at our new world food blog website The Food Atlas.com for world food recipes and stories.
Are you interested in food recipes from around the world? Have a look at www.thefoodatlas.com
Computer speed problems? www.systemoptimizer.org