http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Helen-and-Dave/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Helen and Dave en-us Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:11:46 +0000 Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:11:46 +0000 It's currently October the 28th and it was almost a year ago that we began our round the world trip. More importantly it's about 3 months since we arrived in Boston. 3 Months I hear you cry Surely you should have written this blog ages ago. You'd be right however one the blog writers has been putting off doing this for so long now that I've given up and decided to do it myself. Not wanti http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/New-York/New-York/blog-422837.html So here we are. It's 9.30pm in New York City and we're less than 12 hours away from getting on a flight back to London after nearly 9 months away. This blog is a breakdown of our experience along with a few of our favourite photos and we hope you enjoy reading it. We'll do one more entry on what we got up to in Boston and NYC after we've gotten around to writing it but this is a little somethin http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/blog-422839.html There are two types of people in the US wersquoll call them type A and type B with roughly 50 of each. Type A are the most friendly helpful people in the world. If they see you in the street looking confused at a map theyrsquoll offer to help if yoursquove got bags with you theyrsquoll ask if you want a lift to your destination see later and theyrsquoll always be smiling and stri http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/District-of-Columbia/blog-422836.html ... As they went under a tunnel the American was smacked in the face. The ugly woman thought to herself 'That American must have touched that beautiful woman and she smacked him...' The beautiful woman thought to herself 'Obviously the American touched the ugly woman thinking it was me and she hit him...' The Canadian thought 'I can't wait to go through another tunnel so I can smack this st http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Canada/Ontario/Toronto/blog-420839.html Leaving San Francisco we took a 2 hour flight North to Portland Oregon. While Portland still had a large number of homeless people it had a much nicer lsquofeelrsquo. Gone were the people swearing at lamp posts and areas in which you wouldnrsquot want to ever be replaced by a smaller cleaner and much friendlier city.Portland doesnrsquot have a great deal of tourist attractions so we spe http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Washington/Seattle/blog-419291.html Arriving in San Fransisco we went to the luggage claim area to get our bags. When we spotted Helenrsquos on the carousel it didnrsquot look much like when wersquod left it. The lock had been ripped off the top exposing lots of sharp bits of metal. Inside the case was a note left by US customs saying that they had checked the bag.Now I can understand that sometimes customs have to get into http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/California/San-Francisco/blog-419260.html The day we left Australia to fly to Hawairsquoi was without question the longest day of my life. No Dave wasnrsquot being especially annoying during these past 8 months Irsquove learnt to combat this little trait of his with a technique I like to call lsquonot really listening most of the timersquo. Neither was the alarm set particularly early or the flight massively delayed. Neverthe http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Hawaii/blog-416065.html Having left the Blue Mountains which judging by her last blog Helen was very pleased to do we started the trip down south towards the state of Victoria. First though we had a quick stop in Canberra the capital of Australia. Oh wait Before I tell you about Canberra I havenrsquot updated you on my lsquolist of animals I want to see before I leave Australiarsquo have I Sorry about th http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Victoria/Melbourne/blog-412105.html Driving in Australia is a doddle. But thatrsquos not to say we werenrsquot a little vexed to learn that because of the darn rain and closure of a part of the highway we needed to drive 800kms to get to a town only 50kms away. We reached the road closure blockade at around 3pm at just the same time the television crews were arriving to report it having closed turned around and arrived back http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/New-South-Wales/Sydney/blog-408095.html Itrsquos a bit of a pain Helen finished the last blog on Fraser island. We did very little in the next place we went to Noosa one of the big surfing towns along the sunshine coast and therefore it makes for a rather boring start to the blog. In an attempt to make it seem slightly more interesting I may have embellished the following facts but I can assure you that almost everything here http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Queensland/Brisbane/blog-404910.html It wasnrsquot a large rat it was a bandicoot. If you donrsquot know what Irsquom talking about then you obviously havenrsquot read the last blog. Shame on you I like to think of our blog entries as individual episodes part of a larger series. A bit like Neighbours only without the poor acting and Karl Kennedy and sadly with the dubious script writing. Those that tune in regularly ar http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Queensland/Fraser-Island/blog-401096.html Something must be done our blogs from Asia were getting in excess of 200 views some even getting more than 350 but since leaving Asia people seem must have lost interest. These days wersquore lucky if a blog gets more than 70 people looking at it. Therefore in an attempt to try and spark some excitement in our travels again this blog includes a couple of pictures of me wearing nothing but H http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Queensland/Cairns/blog-398306.html Prior to booking a 15000 ft jump out of a plane the closest I had got to thrill seeking during my 24 years was sliding down the staircase at home in a cardboard box aged 10. So naturally skydiving seemed the next sensible step.In order for one to plummet towards the ground before a parachute is finally hopefully unleashed the weather conditions need to be pretty spot on. There must be lit http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/New-Zealand/North-Island/Bay-of-Islands/blog-396896.html So off we hopped onto another flight. For all those of you who now have an image of us bouncing like frogs past the check in staff let me clarify. We didnrsquot literally hop we actually just walked. I just thought lsquooff we walkedrsquo didnrsquot sound very good. See the effort and thought that goes into these blogs Anyway it was I think our 11th flight wersquod taken so far. I http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/New-Zealand/South-Island/Queenstown/blog-393921.html As my Dad mentioned in the last blog we went to Kaikoura in the hope of having a lsquowhale of a timersquo you can never use that pun too many times can you but unfortunately were disappointed on two counts. First Kaikoura is a bit grim. Nicer in the sunshine perhaps but not on days like when we were there days of high winds and rain. Which brings me onto problem number two the whalew http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/New-Zealand/North-Island/Auckland/blog-390849.html After leaving the opulent surroundings of Changi Airport in Singapore understandably regarded by many as one of the best in the world we landed some 10 overnight hours later at Christchurch Airport in New Zealandrsquos South Island. After Changi the kindest thing we can say is that it is not the best in the world. It was not helped by fussy immigration staff anxious to establish if I had http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/New-Zealand/South-Island/Christchurch/blog-388961.html I decided to view our visit to Australia as a test what would British people be like if they actually had decent weather On the basis of Darwin theyrsquod be friendlier more relaxed and drunk. Though thinking about it now maybe the first two points are a result of the latterhellipSo this is going to be another long blog. Sorry but we were in Darwin for almost 2 weeks and most blogs are http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Northern-Territory/Darwin/blog-385065.html So our time in Singapore didnrsquot start all that well. The journey there was pretty good armed with a couple of bags of Malaysiarsquos answer to Haribo the time flew by. And customs was seamless which was a bonus given we had a few DVDs in our rucksacks that may or may not have been 100 legitimate Singapore is a little ldquostickyrdquo on such matters. We even had an Australian ki http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Singapore/Bugis-Village/blog-384236.html The bus pulled in and the driver told us this was our destination. I could see a sign for the lsquorose cabinrsquo our hostel of choice and so we jumped off. The bus slowly chugged round the corner and I looked at the sign again lsquoRose Cabin 2 kilometresrsquo. Damn. The bus had dropped us off at the Mount Kinabalu national park rather than the hostel wersquod asked the driver to http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Malaysia/Sabah/Sandakan/blog-380413.html The alarm sounded at 4.45am. This is very early for us unemployed. Nevertheless Borneo wasnrsquot going to come to us so off we went and a taxi ride bus journey and plane trip later arrived in the town of Bintulu. Advice for anyone going to Borneo donrsquot go to Bintulu. The majority of people do not need this pointer arriving at such a conclusion of their own accord. I know this because http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Malaysia/Sarawak/Gunung-Mulu-National-Park/blog-376855.html