Singapore - it's small, but then it's very far away...

Just popping in for a look round on our way to Thailand.

I'll let Jen demonstrate a few things we've been up to. First there was the fresh coconuts...



then the fresh Tiger Beer (it's brewed here, so this is like culture, I think)... [yes Col, LIKE culture, but not ACTUALLY it]



There was eating with our fingers...



[Naturally i am eating so fast that the picture is a little blurry - Jen] and after all that there was time for a Singapore Sling. At the Raffles Hotel of course darling...



All sorts of people have turned up here over the years so there's a healthy mix of just about everything. They've got Hindu temples like the Sri Mariamman...



Chinese temples like the Yueh Hai Ching...



And due to a strong colonial influence there's slightly more important temples like this...



the Singapore Cricket Club. There are lots of skyscrapers towering over the older shops and cafes. Kind of like a reverse architectural mullet - business at the back, party at the front...



We took a cruise on the Singapore River ...



and saw the sights, including the Merlion...



Dreamed up in the '60s as an official mascot for the island it's been spitting on the tourists ever since. Did I mention we tried the local fast food? Much as the McSpicy sounded tempting, we went for the hawker stalls in Chinatown instead...



And that's that. We only stayed for 3 days and now we're in Kuala Lumpur. But that's a different blog.

Before I go, this week Kiddies Korner brings you - Kickapoo, the original Joy Juice!



Joy Juice!? What the hell is that? It just sounds wrong. And if you're feeling peckish then don't go here...



So close! My one regret in Singapore is not getting a photo of the Talk Cock Sing Song bar. Sorry children, I'll try harder next time.

Any words Jen?

I think that just about covers it Col although you seem to have missed out the fact that its sweltering here and humid too (that's true Jen, I've been sweating like a pig since we left Oz). So I think that its pretty impressive we managed to see anything considering my new best friend is air conditioning. Even at night it's like a steam bath. Talking of night times, we went to the night safari which is basically going to the zoo at night when the animals are more active. Due to it being dark, and not wanting to startle the leopards, there are no photos of this but we did hear the lions having a good old growl.

Thats all from Singapore, catch ya later.

Crouching Jen hidden toilet roll, the dunny edition

Long before I set my dainty size three and a half's in the land down under, I was more than aware of its spider problem. Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head. Whatever the size I happen to know for a fact that they are NOT more frightened of me than I of them. Anyway, what hadn't occured to me was how that would affect the toilet situation, down under, as it were. Luckily travellers are great ones for sharing tips. Which is how I came to spending my last two months in Australia gingerly lifting the toilet seat in search of red backs and other eight legged nasties. My chosen method of seat lifting was wad of toilet paper, although others I believe utilise a flip flop (thong in Aussie slang) which is then in prime position should swatting be required. Fortunately the only unnecessary spider I came across was in a jam jar on a trampoline, but thats another story.

For your benefit I tried out facilities in a variety of different settings to get a good feel for the place. Not a great deal to report. All bathroom facilities were thankfully free of wild life and contained the expected number of porcelain goods and industrial sized loo roll holders that refuse to dispense tissue without a fight. I did hear one interesting snippet of gossip about the toilets in the Crown Casino Melbourne - apparently they are a popular spot for suicides and they have a special back door so that bodies can be removed discretely. Which is thoughtful. They also don't have hooks on the back of the toilet doors to disuade people from hanging off them. I didn't witness any bodies in person but I can testify to the pleasantly scented soap.

Aussies are known for their forthright manner and direct approach. So it was fitting that it was in Australia that I came across the most unsubtly decorated toilet of the trip so far. It was at crocodile Harry's in Coober Pedy, middle of the outback and famous for Opal nuts and underground houses. Harry doesn't do subtle, and he also happens to have a sizeable collection of ladies underwear, mostly stapled to the ceiling.


Did I happen to mention that it was winter time in Oz right now? Well contrary to popular belief its not sweltering here all the time. It really isn't. In fact Melbourne in July is a bit like Reading in December. Down right chilly. Which is why I found it very odd that several of the Hostels have open plan facilities. In particular showers. Now I don't mean open plan as in showering in public, its more the fact that showers open straight to the outside world. I'm all for outdoor living and believe the concept of the 'outdoor room' in gardening terms is inspired, but we all know that shower cubicle doors don't actually enclose the area; there are massive gaps above and sometimes below. In Winter that means massive gaps to enable cold draughts to blow about your wet personage. Hello. Do they WANT backpackers to be smelly?

So on that ranting note I'll leave you. Actually I really didn't mean to rant. Despite being called dunnies I was quite pleased with the facilities all told. Perhaps I should add in something about the camping facilities on Fraser Island ( basically smelly but relatively clean), the fact that the ladies is often labelled 'Shielas' but the gents rarely 'Bruce', and there was also copious amounts of hot water to be had at both Mark and Trishy's house and Tyson and Jennas.

That brings us to the end of this country report. Thanks for reading another edition of Crouching Jen Hidden Toilet Roll from your host, Jen, lifting the lid on toilets world-wide.

Aussie Aussie Aussie Out Out Out

Hello again. Sorry for the delay in updating the site. We've been a little busy - there's been lots of footie to watch (a subject we'll come back to), friends to visit and places to see.

A quick refresher shows me we last spoke while in Maroochydore after a visit to Australia Zoo. Well from there we headed up north to Rainbow Beach and booked a 4WD tour to Fraser Island. After a quick talk about the dangers of driving on sand and how to stay "dingo safe" we were thrown together with seven others and left to fend for ourselves for the next three days with only alcohol, a bodyboard and a copious supply of red meat to keep us alive [and halloumi for those who don't do meat]. So we swam in some surprisingly cold lakes, cleaned our teeth with sand, ate crisp sarnies, played in the staining mud, sang round camp fires and surfed the dunes, all while failing to spot a single dingo but making sure we had more fun than the other two groups that left the hostel with us. A final mad dash for the last ferry home by a certain crazy dutchman ended a memorable trip in style - you'd better meet the gang...

Left to right: Katryn, Katja (kneeling), Vicky, Adam, Jen (kneeling), Dave, Rich, Geert, Col.

After all that excitement it was time to relax a little, and that meant a comfy bed and home cooked food. Time to visit Tyson and Jenna (fron Fernie, check back if you've forgtten). The little darlings drove up to get us at Maroochydore, despite a pair of well earned hangovers, and we spent the next week in the comfort of suburban Brisbane. Just in case you have forgotten, this is Tyson doing a grand job on the barbie...


and Jenna being arty...


We spent the next week in style thanks to the loan of a car and a decent DVD selection. Tyson's dad was thoughtful enough to show us the local wildlife (my words, definitely not Jen's)...


We played touch footie in the park, watched the State of Origin match 2 with most of Tyson's family (Queensland destroyed NSW - go the Maroons) and took a trip down to Surfer's Paradise with Jenna while Tyson had to work.(NB for Calgary Dave - they live in the granny flat attached to Tyson's parents house and both work in the family business, which makes taking a sicky slightly trickier. Not that you'd do something like that of course.) And with a trip into the city to see a live footie game (Brisbane Broncos v. St. George Dragons) a good aussie time was had by all.

Cue today's rant, feel free to ignore the next paragraph, you won't be missing anything constructive...

Now about all this footie. As an englishman, footie is footie. That is to say football. But to a Queenslander, for some unknown reason, footie is actually rugby league, and to a Victorian, footie is aussie rules football. I have no idea what it means to anybody from Sydney, but what footie certainly doesn't mean is anything to do with "soccer". Now, seeing as Australia managed to qualify for the World Cup it was initially quite nice to be able to see plenty of games on the telly and go out and watch them at night on the big screens (they weren't so happy when Brasil beat them, a spectacle I got to watch in Federation Square - Melbourne, and it certainly wasn't as close as they'd like to think it was). However, it did mean that I had to put up with the aussie pundits telling me how everything the Socceroos did was historic - the historic first goal, the historic first win (it was only Japan! They're crap!) - and everything England did was disappointing. I don't need to go half way round the world to listen to the media complain about an english football team. And if one more stupid aussie screamed for a penalty when somebody was tackled in the centre circle or talked about how many goals each team had "kicked" I was going to scream. Thankfully, due to a last sixteen game with Italy and a classic last second dubious penalty all I could do was laugh. And laugh and laugh and then laugh some more. Right until we lost on penalties. Again. Oh well, I'll be cheering for Italy in the final. OK, rant over.

After sponging off Tyson and Jenna for a week, we decided to head for Melbourne to sponge off Mark and Trish (they were in Fernie as well). We all stayed at Mark's place and the first thing we did was visit the Good Food And Wine Show and sampled far too much of the local tipple. This is the four of us at the Crown Casino, the only casino in Melbourne. None of us are quite sure what we were doing here - we should probably have sampled a bit more of the local food...


While Trish worked during the week Mark chauffered us around the city to see the sights. So we looked around Melbourne - it's a big city like many others but there are some nice parks, there are some great coffee shops selling fantastic cakes in St. Kilda and Lygon Street especially, and the sun decided to put in an appearance while we strolled along St. Kilda beach which briefly made us forget how damn cold it was. They're having 30+ degrees in Germany and Melbourne is struggling for double figures. Here's a deceptive picture of the botanic gardens (sunny - yes, hot - you wish)...


We spent almost two weeks in Melbourne, including 3 days when we nipped out, hired a car and drove along the Great Ocean Road. While getting blown about by the wind and getting soaked by the rain we managed to see some lovely scenery like Apollo Bay (with rainbow)...


and some equally impressive rock formations like the Twelve Apostles (no you can't see all twelve)...


and we even saw a whale at Warrnambool.

Anyway, back in Melbourne we managed to track down Anton who has moved over here from the UK with girlfriend Lou to do a postdoc at the university. We spent a day at the Victoria Market and an evening annoying their neighbours while we continually proved our inability to master the didgeridoo. Despite the fact that Anton had skipped the country without organising an AGM for the Chemistry Cricket Team of which he was captain, and thus deny me the batting trophy that I'd blocked long and hard for all season, I still let him beat me at pool (in my defence, there was a mad bloke waiting to play the winner). I'll add a picture of Lou if they send me one - the one I have isn't too flattering, and I'll save you all from the video of the didgeridoo session...


It was time to move on. We took the bus to Adelaide and then took the next bus out again and headed to Coober Pedy to see the opal mines. Coober Pedy looks something like this. Most houses have an underground living area that everyone retreats to in the summer when the temperatures hit 40+ degrees for a month or two...


It was a lot warmer than Melbourne and Adelaide, despite the cloud, and underground living was hardly necessary. Still, when in Rome....


Radeka's hostel had dorm rooms underground and a TV for watching penalty defeats :-) and :-(

Took a tour to see the sights - the underground church, the underground potteries, lots of mine shafts, the Breakaways (more rocks, it's not all flat) and a really long fence...


That'll be the dog fence. Not to be confused with the rabbit fence in Western Australia, this one keeps the dogs (dingoes) out of the sheep stations on this side of the fence and runs for about 5300 km from Surfer's Paradise to somewhere down on the south coast. As educational as ever. And the real reason I wanted to come to Coober Pedy (because I'm not obsessed by opals like Jen is) was to play golf. I'd read about their course with no grass and wasn't to be disappointed...


You have to take your own piece of artificial turf with you (just visible below the sign) which you're allowed to use on the "fairways" but not in the "rough" - i.e. inside or outside the roughly scratched markings. And it's always a good idea to rake the greens before putting. I imagine Burghfield looks much the same after all the sun you've been having over there in blighty.

Our adventures down under are almost at an end, it was time to catch the bus up to Alice Springs to have a look at Ayer's Rock.

We met Gem and Ali during a stop for breakfast and eventually worked out that we'd previously met on the bus from Dougies to Cairns a month or so earlier. As we were all staying in the same hostel, and all agreed that the prices for tours were extortionate, we decided to hire a car between the four of us and headed off for an overnight trip...


Armed, as ever, with plenty of meat for the barbie and a box of goon (and vegetables for Jen) we set off early for the 450 km drive to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park (or Ayer's Rock and The Olgas in old money). First stop was The Olgas, which despite being generally ignored due to the hype that surrounds Ayer's Rock, are just as impressive - a collection of 30+ huge rocks surrounded by a whole load of nothing. From a distance they look like this...


and from closer they look like this...


Unfortunately, they're always going to be playing second fiddle to the one rock everybody has come to see. That is the world's second largest monolith (it's not even the biggest!), and sure enough with sunset approaching the viewing area filled with other like minded tourists all waiting for this....


To do that....


You can tell when you've seen everything there is to see because of the mass exodus of tour buses. We headed off for Yulanda (that's Ayer's Rock Resort to us tourists) and our genuine outback experience - sleeping under the stars in Swagbags. For some reason the other three weren't quite as excited by the idea as I was, possibly due to the promise of overnight temperatures barely above freezing. Luckily a full hostel meant I wouldn't be sleeping outside alone, and as it turned out they were remarkably warm and comfortable...


Another early morning to see this...


become that...


and time for the climb up, all except for Ali who was suffering with a bad ankle, before heading back to Alice (The Olgas picture above was taken from the top of Ayer's Rock). On the way home we got to see our one and only wild dingo, and in Alice we got to watch the deciding State of Origin game which ended in a late win for Queensland - I imagine there were a few hangovers the next day in Brisbane.

And that's pretty much that. We took The Ghan...


back to Adelaide where I'm currently writing this update. We fly to Sydney tomorrow morning and then on to Singapore tomorrow afternoon. Time to practice the little Malay and Thai we learnt from a lovely girl called Ling Sea in Maroochydore.

So thats all folks, I think Col has just about covered our Ozzie adventures despite his penchant for including sporting references every now and then. It should all get a bit more adventurous from now on as we stumble over the language barrier and enter south east asia.

See you in Singapore
xx