New Zealand - south island

So eight countries down, three more to go, and next up is New Zealand. We had a pretty painless flight from Sydney into Christchurch - and managed to get into town and checked in to the hostel without any of the drama we had in Melbourne. So we definitely got off on the right foot in New Zealand, and so far its just getting better and better. Most of the gripes we had in Oz are much less prevalent in NZ, and the scenery is simply world class.

Our plan was to follow in several of our friend's footsteps and rent a campervan; however after a bit of research into costs and a chat with the reception staff in our hostel we were persuaded to rent a car instead. It turns out you have to pay to stay in campsites anyway as its illegal to 'freedom camp' so if you're happy to be a bit less hardcore and like your home comforts such as a full length bed, your best option is probably a car and sleeping in a hostel.

After a couple of days in Christchurch milling around and enjoying our last bit of time in a city for a while, we took off in the budget mobile (a snazzy '98 Nissan Pulsar automatic) to Oamaru, the next town of interest down the south coast. We were put onto a scenic route by the chap who rented us our car and we were soon driving through the most stunning landscapes we'd seen on the trip so far - needless to say what should have been a short drive ended up taking a fair while longer with all the picture stops:



We'd decided to be a bit cocky and leave booking our accommodation until we arrived like the good old days in Asia, however this quickly backfired as it turned out Oamaru's only annual event was occuring that weekend - some big Victorian fete, typical! After a bit of searching we luckily managed to find a lovely little hostel a little way out of town but right by the coast and with a really homley feel with a proper fire place and everything.

After settling in, our first mission was to go a see the penguins that inhabit the coast surrounding the town. Our guidebook gave us the info to buy tickets to watch them from a grand stand set up near the town, but the owner of our hostel put us onto a free viewing point a little further out in the sticks. Naturally, being stingy backpackers we took his advice and set off for the free spot, glad we'd managed to save a few bucks. We made the journey about 15 minutes further up the coast to a lighthouse where a penguin fanatic couple had set up a viewing platform and a penguin hospital. Straight away we saw seals and sealions bathing in the sun and it was pretty amazing to see all these creatures in their natural habitat completely unaware of our presence a few hundred meters away. As we were there for the penguins we decided to test our patience waiting for them to arrive...a good hour or so later one lone yellow eyed penguin decided to waddle to shore.



It wasn't exactly the hordes we'd been told to expect but hey, at least one had shown up so we could justify heading back for some dinner and a beer!

The next day we thought we may as well go and see the event happening in town, as it seemed to be a pretty big deal with all the accomadation in town completely booked. Turns out the Kiwis get really into it with locals and tourists alike in crazy Victorian fancy dress strolling around watching events like penny farthing racing etc in the historic section of the town, it was all a bit surreal:



After a stroll around and a cake and tea at one of the 'Victorian' tea shops we set off to our next destination - the Moeraki boulders, a natural phenomenon of rows of spherical rocks that had mysteriously appeared on the sand.



Although quite strange, the boulders didnt provide much entertainment so we were soon back on our roadtrip heading further south to Dunedin.

After another three hour drive through the blissful NZ countryside we arrived in the second biggest town in the South Island, Dunedin. It turned out that they had a Cadbury chocolate factory in town, so naturally this was the first thing we signed up for that afternoon. NZ is the first country we've come to that has proper chocolate, ie not fake Cadburys that they have in Australia with so many chemicals to stop it melting in the heat that it no longer tastes like chocolate, so we took full advantage and gorged ourselves silly on all the free samples :)

After that, we felt we ought to do something a little more cultural so we went and had a look at some of the old buildings like the train station thats supposed to be the second most photographed thing in the Southern Hemisphere (or so we were told at Cadbury world but we've never seen it before....who cares they were giving us chocolate.) It did seem like a bit of a bold claim though - a train station second only to the Sydney opera house.

By this point we were beginning to realise that most places in NZ are quite small and you really dont need longer than one or two days to see all the attractions, it really is all about the scenery so once again we headed off, this time west to Queenstown.

Yet again, the drive didnt dissapoint and before we knew it we were in Queenstown - NZ is definitely the first place where we've complained that the journeys have been too short! After checking into our hostel we headed straight for the cable car to get a good view of this amazing town:



We couldn't resist a go on the luge they had to take you part way down the mountain which was good fun. Not quite as good as the one we went on at the Great Wall as you still had to walk 99% of the way back down (a track that turned out to be a right old leg killer) but a start at least.



There were so many adventurous activities organised around Queenstown - its famous for its bungee jumps (its where they "invented" it), but you can pretty much do anything crazy there. The budget wasn't quite ready for us to go mad, so we sorted through everything and decided that jetboating would be the trip of choice. We headed off the next day, choosing a tour that took us along their famous Skipper Canyon - a really crazy dirt track used in the gold rush that is so risky to drive the rental companies wont insure the tourists to drive it =) On the way they stopped off for some more magnificent view points :



The tour we signed up for took us out to the Skipper's Canyon section of the Shotover river. We didn't really know what to expect from the boats, but it didn't take much hanging around on the river bank before we got a taste of what we'd let ourselves in for :



The jet boats were amazing fun - they work a bit like jetskis by sucking up water underneath the boat then shooting it out of the back, making them crazy fast and really manoeuvrable. Their trademark trick is a 360 degree Hamilton spin (named after the first jet boat, nothing to do with Grand Prix), something the driver pulled out quite a few times to give us a bit of a soaking and a good laugh.



It was another place with a Lord of the Rings claim to fame (we were beginning to spot a pattern emerging...) - the chap claimed they filmed the section where Arwen raises the river to block the dark riders there, and then proceeded to blast around there at high speed a couple of times. It could well have been the place, it looked similar to the picture, but to be honest most of the turns in the river looked the same so who knows!

That was it for our whistle stop trip to Queenstown, we loved it and its definitely somewhere we'd like to go back to with a bit more cash in the pockets. Because of the way the roads were laid out in the south, it turned out we'd need to come back through Queenstown on the way north, so we'd see the place again in a couple of days time anyway. Next stop was the Fiordland national park, which is the largest in the country.

We thought the scenary on the way up to Queenstown was amazing, but the trip to Milford Sound blew everything else away... it is by far the most dramatic drive either of us have ever done.



So many amazing photos to choose from, it was a small wonder we stayed on the road there was so much to look at.



It was quite a long drive all the way from Queenstown, and Milford Sound is a tiny little place at the end of the park, so we booked a little cabin (/shed) at a campsite in Te Anau so we didn't have to drive all the way back to QT that day. After dropping off our stuff there we headed into the park and hit a few easy trails recommended in the guide book. Now I'm not really much of a walker - definitely not compared to Alex "If theres a mountain here I'm gonna climb it" Bentley - but the views from these tracks were so beautiful it was definitely worth it... see I'm actually happy after going on a walk!



The view just around the corner from there was a contender for best picture of the trip so far :



And that was just some lake we stopped at on the way to the main event. After another hours worth of driving we made it to the end of the road at Milford Sound. The guide book had prepared us for the slight disappointment of there not really being anything there - the journey was more amazing than the destination, but yet again the scenery was well worth the effort.



Even though we'd been driving all day, we still had lovely sunshine the whole way back to Te Anau as it doesn't get dark until around 9pm here - its just perfect when the sun is out!



Thats about enough of the pictures of the scenery for a moment, because when we arrived back in Queenstown the rains came down and it wasn't quite so pretty. We consoled ourselves with an amazing gourmet pizza in one of the restaurants in town (probably better than Fire and Stone is was that tasty.)



The next day we were due to head north up to glacier land so had an early night in preparation for a 7 hour mission of a drive.

Its been at least one paragraph without a picture of a view, so not to worry here is another one. The sun was out for the drive and the great views were back.



You could stop every 5 minutes pretty much, and just pull over and take in the views if you wanted. It would take you a flipping long time to get anywhere though, so we had to get our heads down and stop taking photos for the rest of the journey...

The driving was starting to get a little much as we hit the winding roads up towards the Fox glacier. This was the first stop for a walk before heading onwards into Franz Joseph where we were staying that night. There was a bigger glacier in Franz Joseph so we wont post any of Fox; it was very cloudy so both glaciers look pretty much the same. There wasn't much to do in the town of Franz Joseph, but the hostel pointed us towards a nighttime walk where we could go glow-worm spotting. Any excuse to get the head torch out I reckon is worth it, so off we went into the darkness.



It was a bit of a let down to be honest, we saw quite a few glowing specks but you'd be hard pressed to call them worms. The walk in the dark was fun, we kept bumping into other people walking down the track in total darkness.

The next day we headed out to the main attraction of the town, the glacier. In hindsight we should have paid the big bucks to go on the guided tour, as they only let the pro guides take you onto the glacier itself. We opted for the zero cost walking around option, but we got pretty close to the front of the ice flow :



They have very scary signs telling you not to walk up and touch it, so thats about as close as we dared to go! When we are millionaires this is another place to come back to - they fancy trips involve flying on a helicopter, landing on the glacier and climbing into the ice caves... sounds amazing!

Thats about if for this update - its been a few days in the making and by now we've made it to Wellington on the north island. We've got another 10 days of adventures here, before he head of to the USA, so fingers crossed we'll have some blogging time later this week. Bye for now...

Cairns to Sydney, the end of Oz

So we reached the end of our canned updates last time around - in case it wasn't obvious from the random cuts, we wrote the last 4 blogs in one big sitting and posted them in little chunks. The hope was that it would buy us enough time to get back on the blogging horse and start doing weekly updates again... but no luck, we've fallen behind again =)

We are now about 9 days into the New Zealand part of our trip, so we need to catch up on Cairns and Sydney first.

Cairns turned out to be a bit of a weird one - our hostel was like a haven of tranquillity compared to the rest of the town. There were tons of bars in town centre, and this seemed to create a slightly booze fuelled atmosphere about the place (apparently the Ozzies mostly make the trip up there for 'Hen and Bucks' parties.) But we weren't really there for the night-life (thankfully!) so quickly signed up for a day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef.

We'd been warned to expect a great conveyor belt of ships delivering people out to the reef, and in this respect we weren't disappointed. There were a huge range of ships to choose from, but thankfully the very helpful chap at the hostel reception put us onto a bargain where we would get our first dive free, and then have the option for an extra 2 dives at a pretty good rate. This seemed ideal, so we signed up the next day.

As it takes a good hour or so to get out to the reef, the trip started pretty early so we found ourselves filling out the usual "if you die, its not our fault, and its definitely not PADI's fault" forms around breakfast time. The boat we were on was huge, about as big as the car ferries we'd been on in Thailand, and it was totally packed out with newbie divers going out for the first time to do Discover Scuba Diving trips. We started the day stuck with the riff-raff until we realised we'd been booked in as beginners too, so after a brief panic we found ourselves in the lounge for qualified divers.

Being stuck at the top of the boat didn't do much for Alex's sea sickness - it was a really nasty journey in the end as people were throwing up all around us. And it was a total scramble to get all the gear on, with the guides really hurrying everyone along despite their sickness. This kind of set the tone for the dive to be honest, it all felt a bit rushed. The guy massively overweighted us (really annoying having done all that bouyancy stuff in the advanced course) and wouldn't really listen when I said I didn't want that much - the production line approach meant everyone had to do what they were told pretty much. The dive itself was ok - nowhere near as pretty as our previous destinations and a bit annoying as the masks were a bit rubbish and we both spent half our time mask clearing. But we were both glad that we have now seen the Great Barrier Reef - but we did feel a little for the beginners, they were being marched into the water in groups, swimming around with linked arms and generally causing a menace to us swimming underneath them =) Not a great intro to scuba compared to other destinations in the world thats for sure.

After that we politely declined the additional dives, and hit the snorkelling for free instead.



By far the highlight of the day was getting to swim with a giant maori wrasse that lived at the second dive site. This was a massive really inquisitive fish that usually visits the snorkellers and divers each day, and fortunately he appeared half way through our snorkel. Now being cash-strapped travellers we couldn't afford to rent/buy the underwater cameras, so I've had to pinch a pick from the internet again :p



(We can't work out if thats a chap or a lady, but either way its not one of us with a crazy new hair cut!)

The fish was really fun to dive down to, as the people on the boat had explained that if you rub its nose it gets a bit of a head rush and lols around happily in the water. So we couldn't help but swim down and give it a good old rub, hours of fun =)

That was about it for Cairns, we chilled out for the remaining time (we went to see The Time Traveller's Wife and got ourselves into a right miserable state for a night! Loved it though, did reasonable justice to the book) and before we knew it it was time to jump back on the plane to Sydney.

The flight was a really strange experience after spending so long on the greyhound, it seemed quite bizarre to be back in the place we'd left all those long journeys ago. We'd booked into a well rated hostel (The Jolly Swagman) in the Kings Cross area of Sydney. For those that don't know, "The Cross" is Sydney's red light district, so we were a little apprehensive... but the hostel web site reviews were all really good so we thought it couldn't be that bad! It turned out to be a good choice - no worse than staying in Leicester Square or Soho in London), and after a good nights sleep we hit the tourist trail hard.



We ended up walking for miles, as Sydney is an amazing city to wander around. Its small enough that you can check out most of the sights in a day. Our route took us down the hill from Kings Cross to the Botanical Gardens, around Farm Cove to the back of the Opera House. The photo above is the view of the harbour bridge from the Opera House... and from there we went up through the Rocks to the bridge to get the reverse picture of the Opera House from the bridge...



It was quite the knackering day out, I think we walked for about 5 hours before collapsing in the park. The route back to Kings Cross became really familiar - its pretty much up hill all the way after going downhill out of the city. But it did mean we got to pass Sydney's luxury car area every day, and couldn't resist...



One of the things we'd been looking forwards to the most was seeing some of our friends who live in Sydney. The company we both worked for in London has had an office in Sydney for years, so there have been quite a lot of people making the hop to the other office for a bit. So we found ourselves hitting the ferry over to Manly on Saturday night to meet up with Shelley, one of Alex's friends from CMC, and her boyfriend Jimmy. Now it had been a while since our last 'proper' trip out with someone we knew (in Thailand with Bekka) so we had a really brilliant night out swapping stories and enjoying a really really tasty pizza. A few fancy bars later and sadly it was time to get the ferry back to the city after a really great night out.



The next day we were a little worse for wear (me especially, as per usual) so opted for a relaxing day out at the beach. Little did we know that Bondi Beach is probably not the best place to go for a quiet relax at this time of year...



Talk about manic! We wandered around the town for a bit, but it was too crazy for us in our fragile state so after Alex had her fix of the Sunday market we headed back into the town to try and find something quieter!

The next day we'd lined up another night out with a still current CMC-er (dying breed that they are!) and top footballer, Paul Brown. We arranged to meet in uber touristy Darling Harbour which gave us a chance to check out Sydney's Aquarium.



It was pretty good all in all, it definitely got better at the end with the massive tanks with sharks and all sorts swimming around. I think we have become zoo/aviary/aquarium snobs by now, each different exhibit gets compared to the sum of the amazing places we'd seen so far in the trip. The bar has to be pretty high to impress these days :p

We had another great night out with Paul, he lived pretty locally and took us to a gem of a sushi place were we ate at least a couple of the fish we'd seen earlier in the day, mmmmm tasty =)



Our last day in Sydney was pretty relaxed (not too much of a hangover thankfully, we definitely felt bad for Paul who was in work the next morning nice and early!) We had a lovely picnic in the park before heading back into town to complete our hatrick of meetups with another of Alex's ex-CMC buddies Phil who has only recently made the hop over to Sydney. We went out for drinks in 'the rocks' another of the fairly touristy parts but with some pretty nice chilled out bars.

And that was that for Australia. Definitely an action packed month, sadly marred with lots of organisational blunders and an epic budget fail. But despite this, we had a great time there and look forwards to coming back in the future - just with a bit more cash in our pockets =)

That'll do for now, next stop - New Zealand...

Oz part 3

So where are we up to? Today is a bus day, travelling north from Byron Bay to Hervey Bay, with a quick stop off in Brisbane to get lunch and change buses. Oh and to try and redo all our remaining flights over the phone with British Airways in order to save our ticket from being totally cancelled...

We'd come up with a set of dates, and hoped they could get the specific flights sorted out for us over the phone. It had all been such a mad panic both of us were stressed out and worried everything was about to go hugely pear shaped.

We made it to Brisbane on time and found an internet place to skype call to BA. After explaining that I was phoning back to check on the results of the mysterious manual process, the chap proceeds to apologise profusely that its all sorted out but they wont be able to offer a refund.

I sat there dumbstruck for a second or so... assuming that he didn't understand what was going on. After double and triple confirming everything, it appeared that the re-routing fee had mysteriously vanished, our tickets wouldn't be cancelled and we didn't need to go through all the remaining flights and change anything. Result!

It was a good thing we didn't have to go through anything else as we barely made it back to the station before the bus left. Neither of us could really believe it had all worked out so well at the last minute... (To be honest we should really call BA again at some point just to double check, but neither of us want to risk breaking the illusion that its all sorted out ha!)

So somehow that massive black cloud was lifted, giving us much more time to re-plan the end of the trip based on the new budget. The rest of the journey flew by, and we arrived in Hervey Bay and were picked up by our hostel (called "The Friendly Hostel", not sure what to make of it but it was well rated on hostel bookers!) Sure enough the people that run the hostel were very friendly indeed and we settled in for the night. We were due to leave for Fraser Island in the morning, and they let us leave all our bags and stuff in the room - without making us pay extra or anything! Its a miracle, full marks to the Friendly Hostel. Suddenly everything seemed like it was back on track and we could start really enjoying ourselves again.

Fraser Island is a bit of an odd one - its a massive long island off the east coast, but the trick is its made entirely from sand. The trees and bushes have grown on a thin layer of soil, and they lock the sand down so it doesn't blow away. It all makes for some amazing terrain and a really bumpy journey around as there are no real roads.



Because of this we booked a guided 4 wheel drive bus tour over the island with one nights accommodation. There was a choice to do a self-drive tour, but after some stories we'd heard from other travellers on the Ocean Road tour we'd decided against it - and it turns out that was a brilliant choice.

The ferry ride over from Hervey Bay took a while, I think we'd become too used to the speed boats they used in Malaysia. When we arrived we were met by our intrepid bus driver/tour guide - Dave. (He looked the spitting image of the CTU boss in 24 that dies of radiation poisoning, and sounded a lot like Adrian from CMC. The combination confused me for a long time.) Our bus was a fearsome piece of work too - everything on the island has to be full on 4x4 to make it through the soft sand. We set off up the road and it was bumpy going from the get go - and within minutes the bus had to stop because a self-drive rental jeep was stuck in the sand. This set the standard for the rest of the two days - Dave explained that as they hadn't had any rain for the last three weeks the sand had got so dry even the locals were having a hard time getting around without getting bogged in sand. For the tourists with no 4x4 or sand driving experience this meant they got bogged, then didn't know what to do so then got themselves totally and utterly stuck.

Dave was pretty helpful to these poor souls, giving them a crash course in driving on the island ("Low gear, high power - drive it like you stole it. har har har." Yes, he did laugh like a pirate) but we'd heard stories about the other drivers giving the tourists a right earful and telling them to get off the island! Charming... but we were on the bus so had nothing to worry about...and we weren't at all smug.

Dave was quite happy to keep us occupied during the forty minute drive to the first stop, and it become very clear he was of the no-nonsense school of Aussie humour. His anecdotes would have offended most of the annoyingly politically correct types you get back home, but to be honest you couldn't fault him as his heart seemed to be in the right place (despite his views on killer dingos and religion.) He was one those people that seem to know a lot about just about everything, so some of his stories were fascinating, some were hilarious and some were blatantly made up, but it kept everyone entertained for the entire two day trip.

The first stop was the first of several freshwater lakes, and we took a stroll around the edge of it. The scenery is amazing, with trees just sprouting up from sand:



The walk out from the lake took us through the rain forest, which was really thick in places, with little creeks running through it. (Some aspect of the metals in the sand reacting with the dead tree bits has caused hardened deposits to form, according to Dave, which keeps the water from sinking in to the sand.) This was a really nice walk, with great walkways build over the creek to prevent damage to the fragile natural balance.



The next stop was a much bigger freshwater lake that we could swim in. This is a real treat in Oz, because you can't really swim in the sea because of the risk of jellyfish and sharks. So this was great, we both dived into the crystal clear water and had a great time. Alex had been practicing her croc impression since the Singapore zoo:



We headed back to the main resort complex to check into the hostel they have built a little bit away from the nice hotel section - they definitely make sure the unwashed backpacking types are kept away from the conventional holiday makers. The accommodation was pretty basic, we shared with another couple who didn't talk much English so we didn't get to know them much. The evenings food was provided down at the Dingo Bar, which we thought was going to be rubbish but turned out to be great - decent buffet (mmm chicken wings) and a bar. We got talking to a couple of English girls we'd be chatting to during the day, and ended up sharing stories over beers and cocktails until late (well, late-ish, we had another 7am start!)

The second day was quite different from the first, as the bus headed straight out onto the east facing beach. Through some trick of the wind this beach runs the entire length of the island, and is wet enough throughout the day that the bus can drive flat out down the beach. Its so flat that they have a small plane that takes off and lands alongside the buses, as they tear up and down at 60 mph.

The first stop was a lovely fresh water stream that we walked down to the sea. It was high tide at the time so the fight between the sea and the river had built high sand banks on each side.



The second stop was a wreck that washed up and is steadily falling to pieces, it felt like we should have been diving to see it - it looks strange as it had washed so far up the beach, but I guess that the sand must have built up around it since it ran aground year ago.



After lunch we climbed up onto the top of a headland which overhangs nicely so that you can see the sea life wandering by. With the sun above you, the white sands and you looking vertically downwards you can see pretty much everything swimming by. We managed to spot a sting ray, three sharks and a turtle. Sadly the pictures dont really do it justice, as they are just shadows under the water, so all we have is the view from the edge...



That was it for the sightseeing, and Dave headed back to the ferry port for a goodbye to the people we'd met on the tour.



We headed back to the Friendly Hostel again for another night, before hitting the Greyhound the next day for our biggest mission yet - a 17 hour epic overnighter to Townsville - to get the ferry to our next destination, Magnetic Island. After our previous rants about overnight travel we were suitably worried about loosing vital days due to sleep deprivation, but we were reasonably confident we'd get two seats each on the coach so we could sleep reasonably. Our luck was in, and the coach was pretty empty when it picked us up. We played doggo (this might be a Shaw family expression, meaning "to lie down and pretend to sleep") sprawled across two seats each time the coach stopped to pick people up, so by 10pm we had ourselves two seats each and managed a pretty good sleep.

We arrived in Townsville at lunchtime and arrived in Magnetic Island shortly after - the weather had turned nasty and the ferry crossing was a stomach churning 20 minutes. Another fairly packed out local bus took us across the island to Bungalow Bay - which turned out to be a hostel rather than an actual bay. The chap that had arranged the trip for us swore blind we'd have the option of upgrading to a private room when we arrived, but the place was jam packed and we ended up in an 8 bed dorm. This was a bit of a disaster as we'd got a bit fed up with dorms and were really looking forwards to spending a couple of nights with some peace and quite and personal space. They were a strange bunch, all brits - a slightly older very quiet couple, a strange softly spoken scouser, two typical backpacker girls and a strange chap who only seemed to come into the room to have a shower in the mornings. We had vague chats with them but didn't really hit it off, so we spent most of our time doing our own thing.

We decided to explore the island by bike, its so small it looked like you could get most of the way round in a couple of hours so we set off on our mission. We hadn't quite taken into account the huge hills though which turned our little bike ride into a bit of a tour de france. Inevitably we soon decided to cut it short and have a picnic by the next bay we came too. This was our first bit of exercise in a while before this so were pretty tired that evening and decided to treat ourselves to fish and chips on the beach before settling in with a jug of beer we got free at our hostel (they know how to snare in the backpackers.)



We have to mention the crazy wildlife we came across whilst staying in Bungalow Bay - each day we'd have a close encounter with a different kind of creature. Whilst eating dinner one night we watched a lazy fight between a small stork shaped bird and a possum, and the next night a Kookaburra perched right by where we were sitting. Every evening hundreds of large bats would swoop between the trees. But the most colourful encounter was with these parrots, which had flocked in for a feed at the campsite.



We said our goodbyes and headed back to the mainland the next day, for the final stage of the epic bus route - Townsville to Cairns. This looked like a walk in the park, only 6 hours, and it flew by. As we've spent so long on the bus in Oz, we thought we'd capture some of its Greyhound glory:



Only a few days left in Oz now which we'll be spending in Carins for the Great Barrier Reef, but more on that another time, hopefully one day we'll be up to date again!

Oz part 2

After our epic two days of bus travel, we staggered off the bus in Byron Bay at 7pm on Saturday 31st, Halloween night... and also a long weekend in Oz because of the Melbourne Cup. This was bad news for us - all of the hostels were full, and the streets were full of drunken/crazy revellers. We managed to get the last two beds in a four person dorm in the biggest and potentially most expensive hostel in the town - Nomads. Beggars couldn't be choosers, but it hurt to be paying 80 oz dollars a night (46 quid each) for dorm accommodation that would have cost 4 quid a night in other parts of the world. Not a great start after our spending spree in Melbourne... and our first exposure to dorm living. After the exhausting journey and stress about budgets, it was feeling like a lot of hard work. We agreed to have a big planning session the following morning so we could try and get things back on course.

This was our first experience of dorm living and - based on the unholy menagerie we'd seen outside - were a little apprehensive about who/what we'd be sharing with. Thankfully our only room mate turned out to be a really lovely Australia girl called Erin (there was another girl there on the first night, but she seemed even more unhappy to be in a dorm and stormed out tearfully the following morning. Hope it wasn't my snoring :/) It was definitely a relief for us both to be sharing with someone nice, phew!

The next day was spent online doing the budget and scheming... but not before we took a walk along the beach to check out the surfing action.



We'd not planned anything for New Zealand and the US, and we were starting to realise we'd need to work it all out to see if we had enough cash to last us. The budget spreadsheet quickly spiralled out to epic proportions and it turned out we were well over a grand over budget already. Even if we trimmed out everything like drinking and eating out (this is supposed to be a holiday! :p) we'd still never make it. It was becoming clear we'd need to shorten the trip or we'd be running out of cash a month too soon.

So I phoned the airlines to check that we can change our flight dates - this being on the key things you get on your around the world ticket. And also as we'd travelled under our own steam between Melbourne and Sydney, we thought it would be polite to let them know we wouldn't be making it. But shockingly the lady at Quantas tells me that this will incur the dreaded "re-routing fee". (This is some bureaucratic nonsense that means we have to pay 300 US dollars for them to re-issue the ticket... which I'm sure in this day and age requires them to click a couple of mouse buttons!)

Needless to say I argued quite irately that a cancellation is clearly not a route change, we were still going exactly the same way around the world, and they'd be able to sell those seats to someone else and get paid again for them (we don't get refunds as we don't pay for the individual tickets.) But she was having none of this, and then dropped the bombshell that if we didn't a) complete the re-routing, or b) get all the way back to Melbourne at get on the flight, the rest of our tickets would be automatically cancelled. Leaving us stranded in Australia. Arrrrg!

We hadn't even thought to check this, if it wasn't for the budget rethink we'd never had called the airline and never found out about it until we tried to get our flight to New Zealand. Close call.

Anyway we had two days to complete the re-route, and come up with the new dates for the flights. This was hard enough to come up with back in London with the travel agent in front of us, let alone in the middle of Australia on the floor of a dorm with flakey wifi. We didn't want to waste the entire day, so we headed out to relax on the beach for the afternoon whilst we both contemplated what we thought we should do for the rest of the trip. The beach is really amazing, it goes on for miles and the scenery was just what we needed to relax a bit.



That night we went out to a bar on the beach and had some drinks with Erin, which was a great help to forget about the planning stress! The next day Alex went out to look around the market, which had loads of hippy clothes, cheap books and food - a lot like the stalls at a music festival back home. Byron Bay tries to cultivate that hippy, alternative therapy, artsy feeling but at the same time has given in to money a long time ago - we splashed out on breakfast to cheer ourselves up, and ended up spending a tenner on a fry up and 6 pounds on muesli with yoghurt! This was the last straw, from this point on it was supermarket food cooked in the hostel kitchens.

I was determined that we sort out every thing we could in advance, so we went on a mad frenzy of bookings. We sorted out an over night trip to Fraser Island, and a two night stop at Magnetic Island to complete our set of destinations up the east coast. Next came the bus connections for the remaining three journeys, followed by hostels at each destination... finally the plan was starting to come together, but bloody hell was it hard work. And we hadn't even sorted out the reroute, as the lady we spoke to at British Airways said they needed 24 hours to "complete a manual calculation in their back-office" in order to work out the exact charges... it was starting to get silly at this point. Manual calculation?!

It was our last night in Byron, and Erin had suggested we have a barbie in the courtyard of the hostel. I might have been moaning about how expensive it was for a dorm room, but the place was definitely well equipped. We hit the supermarket (bizarrely the local is a branch of Woolworths, who seem to be fairing a lot better than their counterpart back home) and came out with a bargain basement feast of burgers and sausages. We headed back an I did the honours on the gas BBQ:



This was my first effort on a gas barbie, and it wasn't quite the same as a proper charcoal job, but it was a great way to spend our last night and was a bargain to boot, happy days.



The following morning we were back on the dreaded Greyhound at the crack of dawn - heading north to Hervey Bay, and from there to our two day trip around Fraser Island... somehow having to find some time along the way to call British Airways and sort out the re-route, before the deadline the following morning.

Did we make it? Will we be stuck in Australia indefinitely (hardly the worst result in the world :p)? Sadly we've run out of internet time right now so we'll have to tell the rest of the tale next time...

Oz part 1

Following on from leaving Singapore we boarded our overnight plane to Melbourne hoping for a good few hours kip on the 7 hour flight. The gods of air travel were not smiling on us however, and the resulting seven hour flight was sleepless for both of us. We got some ok movies in though, but the screaming babies at the back of the plane managed to keep us awake despite the ear plugs. We were starting to realise we were in a bit of state, as we wondered off the plane into Melbourne airport the time zone shift had propelled us into the morning - our bodies were saying 3am, but the clock was saying 6am. We sleep-walked through the airport and into a taxi, and made it too the hostel we'd booked only to be told by the really grumpy receptionist guy that the room wouldn't be ready until 2pm. Arggggggg. We were used to the hostels making a bit of an effort to find a spare room, or get the cleaning gang in early, but this guy wasn't budging, and was being really rude with it too. Welcome to Australia...

The guy begrudging let us store our bags, so we set off to discover Melbourne at 6am, after being awake for approaching 20 hours. It turns out Melbourne is freezing cold at this time of year, so our thin shirts and shorts didn't really stand up against the 9 degree chill. We ducked in to the only place that was open at 6am on a Sunday morning and got some fried foodstuffs for breakfast from Hungry Jacks (is this the Oz version of Burger King?)

After barely making it back to the hostel alive, Mr Cheery let us in to get changed and told us we could sit in the hostel lounge upstairs. We took this as a great opportunity to get some sleep, but within about 30 minutes another overly officious chap came in and turned on the lights and told us he could let us sleep there, only sit. We were quickly realising the Oz wasn't going to be quite as chilled out as we'd become accustomed too.

Having been turfed out of the lounge, we headed back out to kill some more time. Fortunately Melbourne is a lovely place to stroll around, especially on a sunny crisp morning (now we had our warmest clothes on - hoodies/fleeces, jeans and trainers, heaven!) We found a lovely row of street cafes and had some breakfast, possibly the best fry up in the world so far. We then took a stroll down the river and watched the crazy Australian's rowing, running, cycling and their way through early Sunday morning. We were shocked to see so many people out and about - I swear most people in London would still be nursing a hangover at that kind of time on a Sunday...not that I'd know :)

So we were up to 10am by this point, 24 hours on our feet and feeling pretty spectacularly tired. I'd done some pretty hairy all nighters at work in the past, but they didn't really prepare me for this kind of tiredness. It got to the point where we decided to go and pay to watch a film in the cinema just so we could sleep for a couple of hours... the only thing on was "An Education" - we were hoping for something a bit lighter to sleep through, but it turned out to be a pretty watchable film and neither of us managed to get any sleep. But it killed another couple of hours and by 1pm we wobbled back to the hostel to see if they'd managed to clean up the room yet. Kicking out time in Oz hostels is 10am, so you'd think they might be able to prioritise cleaning a room in the 4 hours they have between 10 and 2pm... but no. They made us wait until five past two before they finally let us into our room. We were a bit annoyed to find out our twin/double room was actually a bunk bed, but to be honest who cares when you've been awake for 27 hours and travelled thousands of miles.

We slept for a good few (beautiful) hours - ironically making ourselves completely jetlagged despite only making a timezone shift of three hours. So for the record - overnight travelling is a spectacularly bad false economy: first of all you have a half wasted day because you can't do much carrying bags on the day you leave. Then you may or may not get a jot of sleep on the bus/train/plane. Then when you arrive in the morning you are more than likely going to have to wait for check in at your next hotel. By the time you make it to bed, you are so knackered you write off the rest of that day. When you wake up at 6pm you've got no idea what time it is or even what country you are in, wander around like a zombie then go back to bed. It then takes another twenty hour hours to get your head out of zombie mode. So by all accounts you've wasted half of the first day, the whole of the second day, and pretty much all of the 3rd day... just to save one nights accommodation costs. Bonkers. So if you are like us and really need your sleep, make damned sure you are going to be able to get some sleep on the transport, or our advice is forget about the overnight trips, it doesn't save you anything.

Ok rant number two is officially over. Back to Melbourne.

After a couple of days we started to feel human again and started to really enjoy Melbourne. Its a great little city, its small enough that you can get around most places in the central area on foot, and there are trams and buses to get further afield. We soon realised our diets were taking a bit of a dive, as instead of the cheapest food being the healthy stuff (rice or noodle dishes in Asia), the junk food was now by far the cheapest thing on offer. We had so many Subway rolls for lunch that Alex has all the choices memorised, ready to go at a moments notice. Dinner was at Hungry Jack's again, but we were still feeling a bit sorry for ourselves so didn't care!



The next day we hit one of the skyscrapers in the Central Business District for the viewing platform which was great. The weather was picking up nicely and the view was amazing.



We'd done most of the sights in the city, so we signed up for one of the more popular day trips - a days sightseeing up the Great Ocean Road. This is a long strip of coastal road running west along the coast, with a load of sights to see on the way. The price of the day trips was a real eye-opener for us - at this point we'd kind of been on auto-pilot, spending whatever we needed. But at 92 oz dollars a pop each - 53 quid with the lousy pound/strong oz dollar - we were spending more than our entire days budget just on the tour. Add on the accommodation and food and we were starting to realise we were spending money like there was no tomorrow. We decided to think about the budget another day and hit the tour - it was a nasty early 7am start, and we hadn't woken up before noon for two days running thanks to our jet lag/laziness.

The tour was amazing - or more specifically the scenery was amazing. The tour was just driving us down the coast and back, with really rubbish rolls for lunch (gah 106 quid!) The highlight was the national park containing the Nine Apostles, which apparently are Australia's second most iconic image after the Sydney Opera House (what about Ayers Rock/Uluru we thought, but apparently not. We kind of felt bad for never hearing about them before - bah.) Enough waffling, here are the pics :



The whole place was amazing, but this is probably the pick of the scenery photos:



The final stop was a place called London Bridge, that turned out to be a Durdle Door-esque rock which used to be two arches next to each other. The bigger of the two arches famously collapsed, trapping two tourists on the end of the rock. Their rescue was televised across Australia, but it turned out they were having an affair and had lied to their respective partners about where they were going that day. Or so the story goes...



It makes for nice photos no matter what they tell you =)

The next day we had a planning summit; we hadn't really figured out at all what we were going to do in Oz. Our first plan was to meet Alex's friend Hayley in Melbourne, but as (bad) luck would have it she was back in England when we arrived. The only other plan was to meet up with some of our other friends in Sydney, but we had this pencilled in for the end of the month as we fly out from Sydney to New Zealand.

So we hit the guide books and came up with a list of places we like to go. Our best guide book was a sheet of A4 that Bekka had scribbled down for us in Thailand. She'd gone through all the best backpackers things to do and to be honest was ten times better than the rough guide in figuring out what to do. The bad news for us was that our useless travel agent at Trailfinders (he of the overnight-travel-is-good fame) had led us into booking a flight into Melbourne, and then another flight to Sydney, and then our flight out of Oz from Sydney. This meant we'd have to stay around Melbourne for a fortnight, then spend a week travelling out of Sydney and back. (For our geographically impared readers, Melbourne and Sydney are pretty close to each other in the south east of Australia, whereas most of the places we had on our list were on the east coast.)

It quickly became apparent that we'd need to change our plans to get up the east coast, and looked into flying from Melbourne to Cairns (in the north east) and then travelling back down the east coast to Syndey (in hindsight this is what the Trailfinders chap should have told us, but I guess we were lazy and should have planned it more ourselves.) The flights were silly money though - because we needed them short notice I guess - so that was ruled out. Then we turned to trains, which were crazy money too, leaving buses as our last hope. Unsurprisingly these were crazily expensive too, but not quite as bad as the other two.

A trip to a travel agents later and we were the proud owners of two east coast coach tickets that would take us all the way from Melbourne to Cairns, with as many stop as we wanted - all for the bargain price of 550 quid. (2797 km and about 35 hours driving time.)

We also sorted out the flight from Cairns to Sydney, which set us back 330 quid. So in the blink of an eye we'd spent the best part of a grand sorting our the mess we'd got ourselves into. Not a great start, but having come all this way we figured we'd not forgive ourselves if we didn't at least see some of the country. We were in a bit of a daze after all this (I'm not sure we spent 900 in total in the whole of India, let alone on a single day) but went back to the hostel to pack for the bus trip to Sydney the next day.

In order to cram everything in we decided to only stop over night in Sydney and head up the coast straight away the next day. This meant a 13 hour bus ride from Melbourne to Sydney, followed by a 14 hour journey from Sydney to Byron Bay the following day. Mission. In hindsight I think we tried to cram too much in to too shorter time, but we were keen to see as much of the country as possible despite the crazy coach times. To be continued...

Singapore

So we've just finished up in Tioman, and its time to leave the island paradise and head to our next big city, Singapore. For once our route planning paid off, and the journey from Mersing to Singapore was a pretty short one. The main hassle was negotiating the border control; they've build a huge series of buildings on each side of the causeway that links Singapore island to the Malaysian mainland. I think we had to change buses 6 times before we finally arrived in down town Singapore. The Rough Guide pointed us to a road near the centre with a lot of hostels on it, but sadly we soon found out the government had closed most of them down. Only one was left, and were sitting pretty on their monopoly, charging big bucks for really rubbish rooms. We were too tired to get a bus to another part of town, and as we only had a couple of nights there it couldn't be that bad.

The room was still a stinking pit of despair when we woke up, and sure enough we had little bites on our arms and legs where we'd been visited in the night. Oh the joys of backpacking! We cheered ourselves up with a trip to the Singapore Zoo, which was absolutely world class - probably the best zoo either of us have even been to. Their main attraction are the cage-less enclosures, with the creatures separated from the public using moats or at the worse perspex dividers. They also did some really good shows, like this one showing off how elephants worked in lumber camps before machinery took over.



The zoo was positioned on a peninsular, so the animals didn't have anywhere to escape if they managed to get free, which meant the whole thing was really scenic and really well designed. Each different area was lavished with details, and we couldn't help take a load of silly pictures with everything we could find around the enclosures.



(Fortunately the real monsters were behind 6 inches of croc-proof glass.)

So full marks to the zoo, definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far. That night we hit the other side of Singapore - the shopping. In a fight between Singapore and Malaysia to see who could build the fanciest shopping centres, we think the Singaporeans would just about edge it, as their version of Oxford Street is quite something.



I'm not quite sure why any city needs 18 branches of Louis Vuitton on one road, but the shopping-crazy people of Singapore seem to think this is a vital necessity. It was all a bit rich for us, but it was great to walk through some of the buildings, the designs are amazing even if you do feel a bit overwhelmed by the consumerism of it all.

After all that excitement the next day we chilled out and went to the cinema and lounged around the shops. That night we hit the ultimate Singapore tourist trap - drinking a Singapore Sling at the place were they were invented.



The Raffles Hotel was suitably grand, but their bar was basically a 15 quid-a-go cocktail producing conveyor belt. Inventing a cocktail has given them a license to print money (the cocktails weren't even mixed in front of you!) but it was quite good fun as so many people were there doing exactly the same thing.

The Raffles Hotel was suitably grand, but their bar was basically a 15 quid-a-go cocktail producing conveyor belt, but it had to be done!

From there we went on a stroll around the city's waterfront, which is definitely up there with Hong Kong in terms of amazing night time strolls.



We tried to get another drink around the harbour, but couldn't find anywhere that would sell us a bottle of beer for less than 8 quid! (You can get the same beer for 50p back in Malaysia.) Not wanting to completely destroy our budget we resolved to save drinking for Australia. This was the first time we'd had to pay more than a pound for a drink so it was quite an unwelcome shock to find ourselves somewhere more expensive than London.

Another unique part of Singapore is their "inventive" laws, you can get fined for just about anything so we spent the first few days trying to avoid any of the following offences:

• Failing to flush a public toilet


• Consuming chewing gum


• Crossing the road within 50 metres of a crossing

There are probably even wackier ones we didn't come across, but the road crossing one was a right pain because sometimes the traffic lights would take a good 5 minutes to change. Having honed our traffic dodging skills on wild roads of Vietnam, it felt quite ridiculous to wait 5 minutes for a green man on empty roads.

Singapore was only a flying visit so we didn't really get to see all that it had to offer, but to be honest it wasn't very well set up for backpacking with the lack of budget hotels and expensive drinks, attractions etc so we were both in good spirits when the taxi turned up to take us to the airport. We'd taken the "go overnight, it'll save you a nights accommodation costs" advice again for the flight, but we were beginning to smell a rat on this strategy already. The hostels all kick you out at 10am or noon at best, so you end up not doing all that much because you are stuck with your daypacks loaded for a flight (with the main backpacks sitting in the hostel, praying not to be interfered with.)

Having seen the wondrous shopping centres of central Singapore, we were ready for their airport to be a shrine to commercialism the likes of which we'd never seen before. Somewhat unbelievably the airport was a real let down - I'm not sure if we were at a bad terminal or something - the best we could muster was a 7 Eleven (to be honest this is by far our favourite shop in Asia) and we struggled to find somewhere to sit, so in the end we had to wait it out just outside the boarding gate. We boarded around 8pm, and by this point we'd been faffing around for twelve hours and were pretty tired, so we were looking forwards to watching some movies and getting some shut eye.

The rest of the story will have to wait for our next post, next stop, Australia...