Mark1981
Mark Lone Joined: April 21st 2009
Logged in: September 28th 2011
Logged in: September 28th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
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One slight oversight I made when planning my around the world trip all those months ago was spending some time in Darwin during their wet season. It wasn’t a huge error, but due to it being wet season some areas of Kakadu National Park would be closed due to flooding. This was one of the main reasons why I came to Darwin, but alias I was still able to see jumping crocs. I was due to meet a uni friend, Helen in Darwin. She has planned to come out to Oz to work for a year, and wanted to do some travelling beforehand. She was due to meet me in Darwin and then we would fly together to Cairns and work our way down the east coast. I arrived mid afternoon in Darwin from Perth and ... read more
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Armed with my new weapon against the world, my friend Helen who is from Wales, but sounds like a scouser, we flew from a very wet and humid Darwin to a very hot Cairns. This was to be the starting point of my east coast trip. I guessed that everyone who does the east coast would be about 10 years younger than me, but on the flipside that meant all the girls would be 18/19, so with every silver cloud... right.. Helen is only a year younger than me too so I wasn’t going to be the oldest by much. Our hostel in Cairns offered us a free airport pickup service. A nice shiny BMW X5 greeted Helen and myself at Cairn domestic terminal, which was a good way to start our trip. The transportation could ... read more
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Another day, another early morning ferry and another moment when I regret opting for the early option after only being in bed for a couple of hours. After 9 months of travelling, you would have thought I had learnt that early morning starts are a bad idea when you are getting in the same time the sun is rising. Will and I had hired some mopeds whilst in Koh Samui and we needed to return these back to the hotel reception. The previous night I had asked the guy in the bike shop next door to the hotel that we were checking out early morning and if he could put my passport behind reception. When it came to handing the keys back to reception my passport wasn’t there. Just as we were checking out, the woman ... read more
Visit to the Tiger Temple
The flight from HK to Bangkok was going to take about 2 hours 40 minutes, which compared to some of the flights I have taken seemed very short. The flight was full, and the queue at the boarding gate was long so I took a walk around duty free for a few minutes to let the queue reduce and the boarded the plane. I had been issued a window seat, 54A and I had planned to do nothing but sleep on this flight to Bangkok. The seats were set out in a 3-4-3 formation, and two women were already sat in the B and C seats next to me. ‘Excuse me, do you mind if I squeeze past please’ I say to the mother and daughter in the B and C seats. They looked at me ... read more
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Well, it was time for me to leave Australia and move onto the next country on my agenda, Hong Kong. Last Century it was under British rule, but now back in control of the Chinese, I planned to spend 4 days in Hong Kong staying with a friend of mine, Pete, who I used to work with in back in London. The queue for check in at Sydney International seemed like a long wait and after my overnight bus journey from Byron Bay the night before, I just wanted some form of luxury. I was tempted to ask how much an upgrade from Sydney to Hong King would cost, but I didn’t bother in the end, but I was given an emergency exit seat by the woman who checked me in, so I was content with ... read more
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Life doesn’t get much better than this. FACT. I am sat by the window of my friend, Jasons place in Phillip Island. The Ocean is 5 metres away if that. Coupled with 35 degree heat, and the tide is just going out in time for some beach cricket and, last but not least the fridge is full of beer. It is NYE at the moment, and nearly 2pm in the afternoon. I have spent just over 2 weeks in Australia so far and the time has just flown by. I flew into Sydney from Christchurch on 16th December and spent 10 days with an old friend I used to go to school with. Five years ago he took the plunge and decided to move out to Australia to work, and in that time I have only ... read more
Leaving Melbourne at 6am, to get a flight at 7am is cutting it fine, but I was confident in Jason’s driving to get me there in time. The good thing about arriving close to the time of the gate shutting it that you can get pushed to the front of the queue, much to the dismay of all the other people who have managed to get there on time and have waited patiently. I need to fly back to Sydney to catch a connecting flight to Perth which would be the next place for me to visit in Australia. ‘Would you be able to put a fragile tag on my rucksack please’ I asked the woman behind the check in counter. ‘What do you have in there that is fragile’ she replied. ‘Just aftershave’ I answered. ... read more
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If you mention, Queenstown to anyone, they will immediately tell you that it is the drinking / adventure sport capital of New Zealand. If you want to jump off a bridge with a piece of string attached to your legs, or drink teapot cocktails then this is the place you need to be. I planned to spend a week here as I was going to do the Nevis Bungee, and also get some partying out of my system. The four guys from Abel Tasman (Sam, Olly, Rob and Tom), two guys from our bus (Tom and Luke) and I all shared a dorm, room 308. It was the start of a great week together.ome great relationships were built in that week. The only let down with Queenstown is that it is very similiar every night. Same ... read more
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Festive greetings to all. I know I am a little late, but better late than never. I hope everyone enjoyed the festive period, as cold as it was back in the UK. It must have been nice in a way to have a white Christmas and equally as nice not to have an X-factor number one at Christmas. It definitely felt strange spending Christmas on the other side of the world on the beach. Before I start the next blog, can I apologise for being very slack with the updates. It has been a while since I updated the blogs, hopefully with the next few blogs that I publish over the next few days I should catch up. I will start with Wellington and work my way down to Christchurch. From Christchurch I flew to Sydney ... read more
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Where is the most expensive place in the world? One would hazard a guess, Tokyo, London, Dubai, maybe Moscow? I have a contender for most expensive place in the world, Santiago Airport. I thought I would arrive early to the airport to at least try and see if I could use my charm to get an upgrade from economy. My attempt failed, so I was stuck in ‘Duty Free’ for ages. After I have parted with nearly £5 for some chewing gum, a packet of mints and a soft drink I thought that I might have to resort to busking outside gate 16 to raise some extra funds for my three hour wait until my flight left. Luckily enough for me, and I guess the rest of the people in the airport I didn’t have to ... read more
