Episode 34: Langebaan/Cape Town/Johannesburg, South Africa
Skin colour (both): Blue
Location: Alsager/Preston
Date: 23rd December 2010.
11 months, 4 continents and 17 countries later, our trip has ended. We are shivering in our respective parents’ houses and the clear skies and hot sunshine of Cape Town seem a world away.
Since my last update, we’ve braved the wild seas of the Western Cape, a cable car with a revolving floor and BA’s airline food. Read the whole post…..
Posted in Travel | Tags: cape town, career break, gap year, johannesburg, Langebaan, robben island, round the world, rtw, sailing, south africa, table mountain, Travel
Episode 33: Drakensburg/Queenstown/Hogsback/Addo/Plettenburg Bay/George/Oudtshoorn/Hermanus/Langebaan, South Africa
Skin colour (Tom): Rio Ferdinand
Skin colour (Jane): Ferdinand de Lesseps
Location: Langebaan, South Africa
Date: 09 December 2010.
Of the many, many countries we have visited during our trip, South Africa wins the prize for worst radio hands-down. Not only are most of the presenters unintelligible, incoherent and inane (most can barely string a sentence together), but the choice of music comes mainly from terrible films of the 1980s.
If you’re lucky, you’ll get some South African drum ‘n’ bass, which is like listening to drum ‘n’ bass produced by me. You may also have your spirits raised momentarily by what sounds like a decent track from recent(ish) memory, only to have them dashed by the heavy house track which has been laid over the top, making it sound like you’re listening to two bad songs at once.
Commendable, but not helpful, is the way the presenters switch (usually mid-sentence, always during some interesting news article or the single Ashes update of the day) between English and Afrikaans. It’s enough to make you turn it off and listen to the purr/screech/wail of your Chevrolet Spark’s engine noise instead. Read the whole post…..
Posted in Travel | Tags: Addo, career break, Drakensburg, gap year, George, Hermanus, Hogsback, Langebaan, Oudtshoorn, Plettenburg Bay, Queenstown, round the world, rtw, south africa, Travel
Episode 32: Sanur/Jakarta/Hong Kong/Johannesburg/Nelspruit/Kruger National Park/Graskop/Drakensburg Mountains, Indonesia/Hong Kong/South Africa
Skin colour (Tom): Will Smith
Skin colour (Jane): Will Self
Location: Drakensburg Mountains, South Africa
Date: 29th November 2010.
Joining an ever-growing list of average/inadequate vehicles we’ve used on our travels, we picked up our car for 27 days in South Africa on arrival at Johannesburg airport last week.
It’s a Chevrolet Spark, it’s the cheapest vehicle that money can hire, and it has a mighty 1.3 litre engine and about 1.3 horsepower. Don’t send in name suggestions – it’s called Sparky (by Jane) and Stally (by me).
In all my years of driving (including learning to drive), I haven’t stalled as many times in total as I’ve stalled this tiny metal box-on-wheels in the first few days behind the wheel. Read the whole post…..
Posted in Travel
Episode 31: Nusa Lembongan/Ubud/Lovina/Sanur, Indonesia
Skin colour (Tom): Pamela Anderson
Skin colour (Jane): Jimmy Anderson
Location: Sanur, Bali (Indonesia)
Date: 11th November 2010.
I won’t dwell on the last post on this blog, as we certainly haven’t dwelt on the problems of Probolinggo. Instead, we’ve had a fantastic ten days or so in Bali.
Since my last correspondence we’ve seen a manta ray up close and personal, spent four hours looking for a hotel in the most touristy place in Bali (and finding none), and spent an evening (sober, would you believe?) at a Balinese dance show. The worrying thing is that I actually really enjoyed it! The dance show that is, not the fruitless searching for hotels. Read the whole post…..
Posted in Travel | Tags: asia, bali, career break, gap year, indonesia, kuta, lovina, nusa lembongan, round the world, rtw, sanur, Travel, ubud
Episode 30: Solo/Surabaya/Probolinggo/Sanur/Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia
Skin colour (Tom): Des O’Connor
Skin colour (Jane): Tom O’Connor
Location: Nusa Lembongan, off Bali (Indonesia)
Date: 31st October 2010.
You know how in my last post I was singing the praises of the Indonesian people in a somewhat uncharacteristic display of nicety? I’m excepting natives of Probolinggo, as they’re all arses.
After nine months of travelling the globe, the journey to Probolinggo and our treatment whilst there made us seriously discuss just jacking it in and heading home to Blighty.
Instead, we’ve regrouped and headed for Bali, where the last few days have been almost wholly pleasant. Read the whole post…..
Posted in Travel | Tags: asia, bali, career break, gap year, indonesia, java, nusa lembongan, probolinggo, round the world, rtw, sanur, solo, surabaya, Travel
Episode 29: Ko Samet/Hong Kong/Jakarta/Yogyakarta/Solo, Thailand/Hong Kong/Indonesia
Skin colour (Tom): David Dickinson
Skin colour (Jane): David Jason
Location: Solo, Indonesia (Java)
Date: 21st October 2010.
If your mundane existence has you waking up wondering whether there’s more to life than this, let me assure you, there is.
Travel to Indonesia and you’ll feel like royalty. Maybe minor royalty for some of you, but royalty all the same.
Never have we been so in demand as we have been here: we can’t go anywhere without someone wanting to take our photo (at first we were asking each other whether we had food on our face or something to provoke this interest); we are routinely shouted at in the street, in a nice way – “Hello meesterrrrr”; and we have sights pointed out to us and information foisted upon us. For free. Read the whole post…..
Episode 28: Sihanoukville/Phnom Penh/Siem Reap/Bangkok/Ko Samet, Cambodia/Thailand
Skin colour (Tom): Jimmy Tarbuck
Skin colour (Jane): Jimmy Krankie
Location: Ko Samet, Thailand
Date: 11th October 2010.
This post is book ended by a couple of unpleasant bus journeys, amongst the worst we’ve had. I’ll spare you most of the details and take you on a whistle-stop tour of Cambodia, which is exactly how we did it in the flesh. You may even see more than we did.
We left Ha Tien on the Vietnam-Cambodia border, bound for Sihanoukville, on a bus with a baby who genuinely hated life. I don’t know what he had against it at such an early juncture, but whether playing in the aisle, feeding, sleeping or sitting, the constant noise was a scream. He was like a tiny human representation of Edvard Munch’s famous painting. Read the whole post…..
Posted in Travel | Tags: angkor wat, cambodia, career break, gap year, ko samet, phnom penh, round the world, rtw, siem reap, sihanoukville, THAILAND, Travel
Episode 27: Dalat/Ho Chi Minh City/Can Tho/Ha Tien, Vietnam
Date: 23rd September 2010.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that nothing goes down as badly as a fart in a lift. This is, however, wrong. From personal experience, I can assure you that there are four worse things than the actual fart:
We’ve reached the end of our time in Vietnam and we leave without having asphyxiated anyone. Read the whole post…..
Posted in Travel | Tags: career break, dalat, gap year, hcmc, ho chi minh city, round the world, rtw, saigon, Travel, Vietnam
Episode 26: Hanoi/Ninh Binh/Hue/Hoi An/Nha Trang, Vietnam
Skin colour (Tom): Jodie Marsh
Skin colour (Jane): Rodney Marsh
Location: Nha Trang, Vietnam
Date: 14th September 2010.
If you’re looking for teenage breasts, you’re in the wrong place. The reason I say this is that I have access to all sorts of (highly addictive) stats about my blog, and I’m disappointed to find that the search which most often returns my blog on Google – by some distance – is “teenage breast”.
This, presumably, is a result of my foolishly mentioning them in my blog post about the Banos to Cuenca bus in Ecuador. I suspect that my commenting on it again here will only exacerbate the problem, but if you’re here for that reason, you’re out of luck. We did see a man’s testicles today though, I’m sorry to say. Read the whole post…..
Episode 25: Hanoi/Halong Bay/Sapa, Vietnam
Skin colour (Tom): George Hamilton
Skin colour (Jane): Christine Hamilton
Location: Hanoi, Vietnam
Date: 03rd September 2010.
What has 1376 wheels, all pointing in different directions and moving at different speeds at a single crossroads? That’s right, the traffic in Hanoi. Beep-beep, honk-honk, all aboard the crazy bike.
We thought the traffic was bad elsewhere, but Hanoi is an entirely different animal. As I type this I hear evidence of the two-wheeled disorder and carnage on the street below me – incessant honking of motorcycle horns. Rather like the boy who cried wolf, this means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING because everyone’s doing it all the time. Read the whole post…..
Posted in Travel | Tags: career break, gap year, Halong Bay, Hanoi, Sapa, Travel, Vietnam
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