Sorry there has been a bit of a gap between the last blog and this one…we have been too busy lying and basking on a paradise tropical beach and booking flights to our next paradise tropical beach - jealous? Anyhoo, instead of getting up at the crack of dawn and getting a Rapid Penang bus to the bus station and then onto a big bus we decided getting up at the crack of dawn and being picked up from our guesthouse with a smaller minibus was the better option for the (supposed) 4 hours journey to the Cameron Highlands. Of course our 7:30am pick-up was late and we were the last ones on the bus…we swear with this minibus journey we really had to bite our tongues with our fellow travellers. They were so damn rude! ... read more

Giggling away to ourselves in Hong Kong airport’s departure lounge because the Air Asia staff were insisting to Neil (at 9pm) that our 9:05pm flight was on time and the plane hadn’t even arrived yet…well this is Asia! We weren’t too bothered because we had decided to sleep overnight in KL’s Cheap Charlie terminal until the first connecting flight to Penang, even though the last time we did this we vowed never, ever again - but the prospect of saving a night’s accommodation was too tempting, so all common sense (and memories of the eye dropping tiredness) went out the window! The wait wasn’t actually too bad as we had dosed ourselves on the refillable McDonalds coffee at 5am and our flight to Penang was only a quarter full (how do they make money on these ... read more

A side note for those wondering about the blog title...as Sandakan is where we flew into, we just couldn’t resist a reference to the Clint Eastwood films from the ‘80’s featuring Clyde the Orang-utan...and yes it does show our age! So we were up and at ‘em at 5am so we could get another extortionate taxi to Kota Kinabalu airport...we decided on the 45 minute flight versus the 6 hour bus journey as it ended up being the same price. Well that and because we had heard the road was very winding so with Donna’s tendency to get travel sick we really didn’t particularly fancy that journey! On the approach to Sandakan we saw why the bus would be a bad idea - it was mostly mountains, although it seemed to us that a lot of ... read more

Our day started off well in Cebu city with our Maccie D’s breakfast and hot chocolate - we have thoroughly learnt our lesson about drinking coffee on travel days - it makes us need the toilet constantly!! It then turned a little bit hectic as we scrambled to find a taxi to take us to the airport who would actually turn on the metre and then when we were at the airport none of the cash machines were working for us to get a bit of ‘safety money’ out! After a mad dash and looking hot, bothered and slightly sweaty we managed to check in for our flight and had the undignified honour of being weighed along with our hand luggage so they could put the right amount of fuel on the propeller plane! Our destination ... read more

Our flights to the UK had been booked since November 2008, for our very brief visit to the UK to attend Neil’s big brother’s wedding (congratulations Darren and Vicki!). As we hadn’t been back to our home country for 2 years and 7 months we would undoubtedly find it a very interesting and possibly strange experience - so the next couple of blogs are about our experiences in the UK. Before heading to the UK we decided on some beach time in Malaysia and spent a fantastic 5 days lazing before our long flight back to the UK, the longest we had done in quite some time. The budget terminal - LCCT - or as we like to call it Cheap Charlie Terminal is impressive; we were last there in January 2008 and the changes are ... read more