Half The World Away

16th April – 7th May 2011 Upon meeting up with Scabs and Woody, it didn’t take long for our first problem to become apparent – each of our backpacks are the size of a small African elephant and the car was made for normal sized luggage!! Nevertheless, after a game of luggage tetris we crammed it all in with no visibility out of the back window. Worryingly, as the trip went on, either the boot got bigger or we lost some stuff on the way as every day the gap of light through the back window got gradually bigger. Our first stop on the trans-American journey was Calico Ghost Town near Barstow in California. This was essentially a mock wild wild west town in the middle of the desert and we were lucky enough to get ... read more

13th – 26th March 2011 After making a mess of the 13th March in New Zealand, the fickle finger of fate pointed us over the International Date Line and gave us another stab at it, hopefully to do a better job this time!! We grasped the opportunity and declined the free alcohol on the flight.... well Ellie did, Steve broke after only an hour and ordered himself a cheeky chardonnay! Luckily it was only a short flight so before we knew it we were being greeted by the heat and a ukulele player at Rarotonga airport. We later found out that this chap was Jake Numanga MBE and he has been there to greet and bid farewell every flight for the past 25 years. We soon found our rental car with their instructions of ‘parked by ... read more

14th February – 28th February 2011 Air New Zealand is the best – let’s make that clear from the start. The in-flight entertainment is unrivalled and the generosity with the wine is faultless. It is actually done electronically, you simply click your order on the screen and within a minute or two it’s there. Steve’s screen started to play up towards the end but we suspect it was disabled by the cabin crew who noticed the stock of Chardonnay dwindling rapidly. The only problem was that the song playing on the entertainment system at the time was caught in a loop and there is only so many times you can listen to Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones before wanting to jump off the wing. Ellie discovered the best soft drink ever – it’s called L&P ... read more

4th October 2010 – 6th January 2011 Hi folks. First things first, a happy belated new year to everyone. It seems like an age ago that we last blogged and Asia is a dim and distant memory. Now we can update you on what has been going on in Australia over the last 3 months. We arrived in Sydney to be greeted at the airport by Ellie’s sister, Bexs who had arrived with Rich from Singapore a few days earlier. We were initially surprised by how chilly it was in the land where the sun always shines, or so we had been led to believe by Neighbours and Home and Away. In reality, Sydney had just had its coldest winter in years and a wet summer was expected after 10 years of drought – great timing! ... read more

18th August - 13th September 2010 Still a bit behind schedule with the blogs, ok maybe very behind unfortunately but here is what we have been up to since Vietnam.... We arrived in Kuala Lumpur mid afternoon and got the shuttle bus to the city as the airport is about 70km away. After trundling through a bustling Chinatown knocking people out with our big bags, finally settled on a hostel we thought we would be comfortable in. Within 30 minutes of settling in, we realised it would be a long night - the absence of a window and dreary grey walls should have been the first clues but went unnoticed at the time of check-in. We made an early start the next day to find a new guest house and truly start our KL adventure. The ... read more