Kerrin & Lesley's RTW

After coming down the Gold Coast and doing some of the theme parks  when I was here before, it seemed rude not to check some of them out while we were passing. The first of them was Warner Brothers movieworld where all of the rides and shows are to do with Looney Tunes or one of their films. It was a really good day out with some pretty big roller coasters and rides and got to meet scobby doo and the gang and a couple of other characters.

The next day we headed to Seaworld which had brillinat dolphin, sealion and waterski shows and loads of marine animal enclosures, with Lesley getting pretty attached to the dolphins and us ending up with millions of photos of them, really cute though, there was a couple of rides there too to check out.

the last of the theme parks was suppoed to be Wet & Wild a big waterpark, which was pretty good, but it was bloody freezin' , yes freezin in the Australian summer and the queues were pretty huge so it kinda spoiled it but still good. We had hope to go to Byron bay for a few days, but there were was not a single bed in the whole town available, appartently everyone wanted to be there for christmas so we had another few days in Surfer's Paradise.

With one of our spare day we headed to Dream World, full of rides, with the Big 6.

The Giant Drop a 120m high vertical drop, then there was the tower of terror a roller coaster that shot you out horizontally like the Rita ride at Alton Towers which then shot you 3/4 of the way up the Giant Drop tower, there were 2 pretty good roller coasters in the big 6, the other 2 were The Claw, a giant swing that swung you pretty high and upside down a bit and The Wipeout which spun you round and round like, felt like being in a washing machine.  There was a really good tiger enclosure where they had a few adults and some cubs out playing, so cute! they had a show as well showing them doing some stuff they do in the wild like climbing trees, jumping and fight stances. We even got to stroke a tiger cub, wel chuffed. We got a deal at the end of the day to come back for a second day for $10, so it filled our remaining day too. That night we had our 16 and a half our overnight bus journey to Sydney to look forward to,  :-(

We got really excited about heading to Brisbane, with Lesley getting to meet my furthest away relatives my cousins in Brisbane. We started off the week doing some of the touristy stuff in the city centre checking out the fake beach at South Bank (really nice), Queensland museum and a couple of other places just enjoying the city. A few days in we headed out to Mike & Wendy's (my aunt & uncle) for a BBQ, was so good seeing everyone my three cousins Andrew, Megan and Jaime & their partners, Mike and Wendy & Max and Roslin (Wendy's sister and her husband) who we stayed with for a bit during my last family trip to Oz.

We soon after headed out to stay with Megan and Ben at their place and had a brilliant time either being at theirs or up at Mike and Wendy's for BBQ's, at Andrew's 26th birthday party, round at a friend of their's party or down at Max & Roslins. We had a ball the whole week with a good few hangovers thrown in for good measure. Thanks guys for having us, was great to see you all, hopefully wont be so long til the next time.

God it was good gettin to Australia and back to normal food again, that beans or baked tattie with beans never tasted so good! Started off up north in Cairns which we soon found out was a ghost town and much smaler than we thought so only lasted a day there, down in its nice waterfront.

Next stop was Townsville, really nice wee place with a really nice beach front, nice swimming pool, stinger free bits etc. We checked out Reef HQ, a reef in captivity, with sharks and tropical fish it was just like being diving again really cool.We had hoped to do some diving in the Great Barrier Reef but it was way too dear.

20mins over the water was Magnetic Island, really small island with loads of nice little bays. WE did a few nature walks and seen Koalas in the wild on one of them, we got VERY excited!!! Better was to come though as we came across some wild rock Wallabies on our walk home and sat feeding them corn from our hands for about an hour, so cute and even more excitement!!!! We seen a couple of possums that night back at the hostel, so  we did pretty well for australian animals that day. Oh yeah and the cool little Rainbow Lorikeets you get to feed in the zoo are everywhere here. The island was pretty much dead apart from "schoolies", all the kids just finihsed school coming for an underage drinking week, god we felt old.

Back on the mainland we headed to Airlie beach where we went crusing round the Whitsunday islands, had a couple of snorkelling sessions over the reef then headed up to a lookout point for amazing views ofver Whitehaven beach. On the beach itself, it had pure white sand, suppoedly the purest in the world 99.8% silica, felt amazing underfoot, crystal clear water, amazing! We headed of to do a bit of stinray spotting and came across a few pretty big gold ones. Airlie itself wasnt up to much, but was good for a few days chilling out.

Hervey Bay was our next stop down the coast for the world famous Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island. It was massive (125 km long) with only deep sand tracks to get about, so we got about in a big 4WD bus/ truck thing, seen loads of people stuck so was glad we werent driving ourselves. The tour itself was brilliant, the first day we had a wander round a pretty wee lake, a couple of walks throgh the rainforest and down by a creek then up to the spectactular, yes it was that good, Lake Mackenzie. It was amazing with the same sand as Whitehaven beach, crystal clear water fresh water you could drink and was warm, just like swimming in the bath, so good!!  We met loads of nice folks on the tour and got good mates with Trish and Evelyn, a pair of irish sisters who we are hope fully gonna meet up with in Sydney and Jason and Lauren, a Canadian couple.

The second day we saw a sand blow, where the sand had completely covered a big section of the rainforest and smothered it, went swimmingin Champagne pools, wee rock pools that looked like champers, seen inside an old shipwreck, seen wild dingoes and went swimming in a creek. We went down to see the sunset then for a good few drinks at night. Day three was walking through the desert for what felt like ages then got an amazing wee lake Lake Wabbyand had it all to ourselves. there were some steep dunes up the sides of it so we got a body board out and boarded down them, great fun. Then spent the afternoon by Lake Birrabean, a bit like Mackenzie but better and chilled all afternoon, with nobody else there, amazing.

After out trip we headed down to Brisbane via Maryborough, the birthplace of the woman that wrote Mary Poppins so we couldnt resist stopping off to have our photo taken with the Mary statue and having a wee nosy about town, before heading down to Brisbane. 

 

Back to Bali for a wee bit before we headed on to Oz. We had enjoyed the waterpark so much the first time we headed back again, still as good. We both took a surf lesson and have been doing a fair bit of surfing since, great fun but pretty knackering with all that paddling. I have been out most days and have learnd about gettin up speed and hitting the bigger waves.

At the time Les on the other hand, it seemed to be her turn for a bit of food poisoning, up all night and feelin terrible for a few days, a day or so of chilling by our nice pool seemed to do the trick.

We met up again with Sophie and Saskia for a couple of Arak (local rice wine) cocktails again on their last night in Kuta before they had to head back to Belgium.

The rest of the time we just beached and chilled at the pool.  While we were there the Indonesian Rupiah nosedived so all the stuff in the Quiksilver and Billabong shops got a lot cheaper so we had a nice big shopping spree before we headed to the airport.

We also heard there was a big earthquake in Sulawesi (not to far from Bali) but we never heard/felt a thing strangely enough, didnt know anythin about it til dad told me and no there was no bomb threats etc the media was blowing it all out of proportion, but it did help with making things a good bit cheaper and quieter.

Headin to Oz tonight canna wait!!!

From Bali we had heard about these amazing wee islands, the Gili Islands off Lombok (The island next to Bali). Explaning how remote and small they are is pretty hard. Lombok is a wee bit smaller than Bali, pretty tiny itself, these islands are tiny in relation to Lombok, on the biggest of the three it took us just over an hour and a half to walk right round it on one of the days!  There isn't even any motorised transport - which was very nice after Kuta!  They just use horse and carts of bicycles to get around!!


Really nice wee desert island for some relaxation, most days were just chilling at the beach or in some of the wee beach huts at our place. One of the days we had a snorkelling trip round the three islands, seen heaps of stuff - most of the normal shallow reef fish from diving, loads of cool coral and a sea snake, was quite excited about coming face to face with it! They can only bite the soft bits between your fingers or your earlobes so we kept them covered and escaped.


The island had a "cinema", a pub with projector so you got to watch new pirate films, good quality if you bought something.  On the second time we went i got a chicken burger, eating it in the dark it seemed ok, not the greatest burger but ok. We get home..... oh no!!! Seriously ill all night, dont need to give you the details, but it wasnt pretty. Food poisoning, in the middle of nowhere,oh no! By tea time the next day i finally managed to eat something, felt weak and crap all day but was starting to feel a bit better once i found out united had beat aberdeen 2-1 and stopped spewing!


On the snorkelling trip we met some really nice belgian girls Sophie and Saskia, a spanish guy and some dutch people and all headed to the party at one of the dive centres, 80's themed and loads of Arak flowing( local rice wine) so a good time had by all. We ended up meeting up with the girls a few times for drinks and sunsets and met the spanish guy on the ferry home to Bali and he's now living close to us in Kuta, sorry still dont know his name!


While we were there we found out about the Bali bombers from 2002 gettin executed and that Kuta was now a very dangerous place, lovely since we were about to head back there, aarrgghh !

Our stay in Kuta on Bali didn't get off to the best of starts.  On our first morning when we left our hotel I was crossing the road and got knocked down by a scooter that I didn't see coming.  Nose was pouring with blood but luckily wasn't broken just a bit sore and bruised!  Then within a couple of days Kerrin had his bank card stolen.  Other than that we are having a great time!!

The place we are staying is awsome - room service breakfast and a big pool so we've been spending plenty time chilling around the pool!  Kuta beach is really nice and very busy with surfers (something we've still got to try out) and the sunset over the water is really nice!  Kuta itself is so busy with cars and motor bikes everywhere and so many people trying to sell you things!

We spent a day at Waterbom, the water park and had a great time (with plenty screams) on all of the flumes.  One was called Boomerang - it started like a normal flume but then shot you up vertically so you thought that you might go over the edge and then you came hurtling down again backwards! VERY scary!

Another day was spent doing a tour of Bali.  We saw a Barong and Kris Cultural dance; rice fields; a monkey forest where there were monkies EVERYWHERE including jumping onto people they thought had food; visited a stone carving village; and had an amazing view of Lake and Mount Batur - an active volcano.  The last stop was at a spice plantation which at first seemed a bit boring but we got to see them making coffee and got a taste.  Kerrin couldn't resist trying the most expensive coffee in the world made by feeding coffee beans to civets and waiting for them to come out the other end which makes the coffee a lot smoother!  Apparently Peter Jones sells it in London for 50pound a cup!!

You might have noticed we were getting a bit hooked on scuba diving so another day was spent doing some dives at the ship wreck of the US Cargo ship, Liberty which the Japenese sunk during WW2.  We could see for over 25m and was really cool to see some of th structure of the ship and swim amongst it and we saw plenty of big fish we hadn't seen before.

Sorry people, we have been getting lazy with these updates and partly due to being on tiny wee islands that you would be amazed if you got an internet connection on.

Anyway, we were in Singapore not so long ago staying with Lesley's uncle Colin in his swanky new apartment, we got there after a brush with customs due to me not realising you get hammered with tax for any alcohol in Singapore so the guy tried to charge me 30 quid for a tenner bottle of vodka, but we escaped by playing it stupid!

We had some amazing meals in singapore which we werent allowed to pay for (thank you very much Colin and Andrea). We checked out Raffles and chucked peanut shells on the floor, as you are supposed to.  Went on the Singapore Flyer (like London Eye) and got a cracking view of the city and overlooking the F1 track. We had a walk along it and the pit lane, really cool seeing it, they were still dismantling stuff from the race they had when we were in KL. Had a day at Sentosa island and beach off singapore which is full of touristy rides and a pretty nice beach, pity it was full of indian sleazy men, since it was a public holiday, nice to see though (the beach, not the men). And needless to say with singapore we did even more shopping, got some more clothes in some of their 470 shopping mals they have, even Les was knackered from shopping!

Great to see Colin and Andrea again, thanks for having us. Popping in for another wee visit for the day after Bali before we head off to Oz.

We were pleased the day that we left mingin' Sandakan and headed up to Kota kinabalu, the capital of Sabah and back into civilization again. I had been training to climb Mt Kinabalu (biggest mountain in SE Asia) before we came and was intent on doing it. When we had been diving we heard from some guys that had done it, that you needed gloves, a hat and a good coat. Where the hell are we gonna get them in Borneo when its 30 degrees most days?? But we got them and the next day i set off @6:30 and started climbing about 10. There were 2 german guys we had been diving with, i met at the bottom Harry and milo and ended up climbing a good bit up and to the overnight resthouse with Milo. It was a good 6.7 km hike up to the resthouse at (11,000 ft) 3226m. 

Got a good scran that night and met up with Ben & Joey a really sound aussie couple and a french couple, played some cards and had a good haver with them before trying to get an early night for the 2:30 am start the next day!! Finally got sleeping at 11:30 so at 2:30am I wasnt for gettin up, but the mountain air and freezin cold soon woke me up!!

We had a 2.7km hike/ climb  most of it with guide ropes in the dark , just your headtorch and the moonlight to guide you to the summit, awesome fun.  Ended up climbing way too fast and got to the summit an hour before sunrise so as pretty chilly even with my 5 layers and hat and gloves on. Well worth it for the amazing sunrise and finally seeing all the different peaks and the whole area in daylight from 4095.2m up!!.

Headed back down to the resthouse for a big breakfast buffet where i met up with the aussies and french guys, then did the whole 6.7km with the aussies, really good fun having a haver with them on the way down. Pretty hard going on the knees, probably after doing to the whole descent and up to the peak in the one day. Finally got the bottom but didnt have time for a proper warm down at the bottom before the bus was about to take off.
So for the past few days I've been walking up and down any steps around town like a pensioner!Legs been burning , but better now.

Gonna meet up with Ben & Joey in Melbourne when we get there on our travels for a beer and hopefully get sorted with a short term job @ Sony ericcson with Ben, fingers crossed. 

Since the climb we have done a few of the cool wee islands off KK, Manukan has amazing beaches so we got some well earned sunning and Sapi today we did a good bit of snorkelling where we seen loads of cool fish just off the beach and i got bitten to bits by a few of them.Had a day at the Water park in the rain, well if your're gonna get wet anyway, tiny wee place but really good fun.

Heading back to Singapore for a few days as of tomorrow then off to Bali and Lombok for 3 weeks, we thought we were in need of a holiday.....he he he. Canna wait.

We started off our two weeks in Borneo by heading to Semporna to do some more scuba diving.  We were staying at a "floating" lodge on Mabul Island which was built up on stilts above the sea.  On the first day we did 3 dives around Mabul Island.  We saw some huge schools of fish and although the coral wasn't as nice or as much of it as there was at Ko Tao we definately saw a lot more fish.  On the final dive of the day we finally saw a turtle sitting on a rock and then swim off.  We'd seen some sting rays before but they were always sleeping under rocks.  This time though the dive master gave it a little prod and it came shooting out under us (got a little fright) and we got a better look at it's blue spots. That night was the last night for one of the diving instructors so back at the lodge there was a bit of a BBQ and party with a band and plenty free beer and rum!  We even went for a late night dip in the sea and met some really nice people.  The next day we were up early again for some more diving.  This time at Sipadan Island which is supposed to be one of the best dive sites in the world.  Straight away it didn't disappoint we saw loads more turtles, plenty of reef sharks, a huge school of hundreds of barracuda and plenty more different types of fish!


After our 2 days of diving we headed up the coast to Sandakan.  The town itself is like one big rubbish pile.  It was horrible walking around, especially at night when there were rats running out of the rubbish and the drains.  While we were there we visited a crocodile farm where we saw, well, plenty of crocodiles.  We then spent a day at the Sepilok Orang Utang Rehibilitaion Centre.  It is a huge are of forrest where the rehibilitate orphaned orang utangs before releasing them back into the wild and twice a day you can view one of the feeding platforms where they feed some of the younger ones.  we saw so many at the feeding times and then while we were walking along before the afternoon feeding one came up really close to where we were on the walkway!  While we were having lunch in the cafe another had come out of the forrest and sneaked past the rangers and climbed onto the cafe roof so it was pretty amusing watching them trying to get it to come back down!  It was amazing to see the Orang Utangs up so close and it was one of the things I'd been looking forward to most.  It was even worth staying in Sandakan for!

We got down to Singapore after a hellish bus journey, the worst ever (a 5 hour journey that took 10, arrggghhh!) and were met off the MRT by Janet (Les's mum), yipeee! She took us up to Andrea's apartment where Les's aunt Sally and uncle Colin were staying too!! Was great to see  them all.  Andrea's apartment is amazing 3 huge pools , jacuzzis, steam rooms, gym! From budget traveller to living like a king and queen.  Andrea thank u very much again for having us!!

After a morning by the pool we took off to the Zoo and Night Safari. The Zoo was brilliant there were almost no cages anywhere just some ditches to stop the tigers etc eating you, it just felt like u were walking thru the rain forest, brilliant then the night safari was similar but with a totally different set of animals but in the dark, yes u could see them!!  It was really cleverly done. The next day we headed down Orchard Road where every shopping centre is jam packed with Prada and Gucci as we found out good for a laugh tho, then headed to China Town, loads of cool old chinese buildings and temples. That night we got taken out for dinner by Sally and Janet for the best steak i have ever had, the thing was a monster in Chijmes restaurant, very posh and amazing.  We then had  a day at the Chani Prison Museum before heading back for a final dip in the pool.  Janet & Sally were heading back home and we were heading back to Johor Bahru in Malaysia to catch our flight to Kota Kinabalu in Borneo.