There is an invasion of Sydney every year during March. Tens of thousands of people make their way to the city of villages, booking out all the hotels, packing out the pubs and generally making the place look………fabulous daaaaahling !! Yep, that’s right folks, it’s Mardi Gras. Sydney becomes the home of one of the worlds largest Gay and Lesbian festivals for a weekend, the whole place is encouraged to embrace the rainbow as it’s flag and get in touch with the gay side of their self because, you know, we all are really, we just don’t know it yet !! [View Full Entry]

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Finding somewhere to stay shouldn’t be this hard. Sydney is huge and wherever you turn in the city there are adverts plastered all over the lampposts, on hostel notice boards and in internet shops all over the city. We’d been looking for somewhere near where Rosie and Phil were staying as they were going to be staying almost as long as us and it would be good to be nearby. Problem was that nearby is pretty much King’s Cross. Where do you start with describing “The Cross” ?? If you walked along King’s Cross during the day, you would probably not [View Full Entry]

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The other big event to happen in January is Australia Day. Every 26th Jan, the country has a day off and celebrates being Australian. There’s no St. Bruce’s Day or anything like that, just a plain old holiday so that everyone can have a drink and be glad that they are in Australia, it’s quite a cool concept and one that should be adopted back home to be honest. Last year’s celebrations were going to be hard to top and Lee and I were expecting a fairly quiet day and in all honesty were not really looking forward to it. The [View Full Entry]

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So that was the year that was. Our first full year in Australia had passed and to be honest, it had completely flown by. When we left Scotland back in 2006 it seemed like we would be away for eternity but it doesn’t seem like we have been away for long at all. Phone calls to our parents also confirmed that they too had felt that the time had passed quickly since we had left. Going by the old saying that time flies when you’re having fun, I don’t know if we should be glad or offended by this !! It [View Full Entry]

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After the excitement and liver-pounding mayhem of Christmas and New Year, the plan was to rest and recuperate and start the saving. As New Years resolutions go, it wasn't the most un-achievable of personal goals, but here's the thing, you can't put the kidneys in dry dock and put all the spare cash away in the bank when you have a little sister arriving from Scotland during the festive period. That's right folks, it's that bi-annual event when NSW police cancel all leave and blow the overtime budget, Scruffy Murphy's orders a double cider delivery and all hospitals stock up on [View Full Entry]

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We had invited the guys round for Christmas Eve at our lovely flat, complete with pool, jacuzzi, 2 tennis courts, golf practice nets, putting green and barbecue area, and we were having a great time. By this time Angel had come down from Darwin with Charlotte, and Craig, Fran, Liam and Jim were all there and we had told the guys that everyone was coming round. No probs we thought. When the guys arrived, Rosie and Phil came along as well and we hadn't been expecting them so there were a few extras and we had a great time. It gets [View Full Entry]

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Sydney is about the same size as Melbourne. Roughly the same population, and roughly the same passion for sport. As soona s you get into Sydney though, you definitely know you are in somewhere different. There's a different atmosphere to the place. Melbourne is all gridlines and blocks, it looks and feels like a planned city. Sydney feels like a city that has just gotten bigger by itself without really knowing where it was going. It's called the city of villages and that's eaxactly what it feels like, loads of little areas that have been joined up to make one big [View Full Entry]

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And so it was we returned to Australia, our minds and bodies refreshed and thankful to be off that plane. It's weird to think but we kind of felt like we were returning home though, we've gotten so used to being in Australia now that it doesn't have the same sense of "wonder what's going to happen now" that you get from flying into a new country. It's like coming home from holiday and landing in Glasgow when you live in Edinburgh. We'll never get used to the heat though, it was about half six in the morning when we arrived [View Full Entry]

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Ao Nang was more like it !! I think this is what we'd imagined that Krabi was going to be like when we arrived there. It's more lively, not so dull and boring and the weather was nicer also. Ao Nang was where we had arranged to catch up with Claire and Emma, two out of three of the maddest girls we've ever met. Sinead, Claire's cousin had headed back home to Britain a few days earlier so it was just the two of them left. Our trip from Ko Lanta back to krabi was a typically Thai affair which as [View Full Entry]

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Part of the fun of travelling is getting to and from your destination. Thailand is a mad place to travel around. Everything is pretty much organised chaos. There are no proper travel agencies or anything like that, all the trips and bus/boat services seem like theiy are run by evryone else's brother in law or cousin but you always seem to end up where you wanted to go. We had booked our ticket to Ko Lanta through one of the travel outlets in Had Rin and our journey was to take about 8 or 9 hours. This is of course 8 [View Full Entry]

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