So travelling is meant to be a time when you rough it, well the Stones and me have suffered, I can assure you. We got a sense of comfort however from the moment that we entered the sleepy East coast town of Sanur. The lonely planet had described it as ‘Snoozy Sanur’ but as it was our gateway to a tropical island it would be home for a couple of nights. We arrived mid afternoon and as per usual headed for the beach to check out the sand, it is our habit to get to the beach ASAP so that we [View Full Entry]

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After a 1-2 hour drive we arrived unscathed in Ubud. We passed through the capital Denpasar and quickly moved on, it’s not a pretty place. Ubud, however, is a very pretty place. It sits in the hills among stretches of paddy fields. It is cooler than the coast and has a very upmarket vibe. This is reflected in the cafes and hotels. We stopped on the main street which is called Monkey Forest Road, by virtue of the fact it has a forest with lots of monkeys in it at the end of the road. We had a coffee in a [View Full Entry]

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So with the worst map in the world and our £4 a day rental jeep we made it to Perernan Beach just outside of Canggu, another surfing hotspot. The L.P had mentioned a lovely little homestay called Pondok Wisata Nyoman, right on the beach with just 4 rooms. We actually managed to find it, more by luck than judgement I think. It was at the end of a long road through the paddy fields dotted with houses of typical beautiful Balinese design. As it was firmly off the tourist trail it was frequented with a lot of local surfers, and on [View Full Entry]

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“Hello, is anybody out there? It feels awful lonely without contact from your mates.” My first line out of my new book, what do you think? I can already hear the abuse coming my way, love it, give it your best shot. So onwards and skywards, we have moved again and now the forwarding address is tropical paradise island, surf street and surf road. The green, clean walls were calling. We were transported to Bali on a Qantas flight and to Emma’s delight they served the red wine early on and she finished her claret amnesty with a rosé cheeks and [View Full Entry]

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We had an uneventful Air Asia flight to KL. It was good to be back. It’s one of my favourite Asian cities. Our flight arrived at midday and we were due to catch the overnight sleeper train to Singapore at around 8pm. So we had a few hours to kill. We collected our train tickets from the train station and put our luggage into storage. All done very efficiently, not what we were used to at all. We had a firm plan. Borneo’s food choices were not great, and we were hungry. We had been in Borneo for nearly 3 weeks [View Full Entry]

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Ok, so we wanted to book our flights out of Sandakan for the following Friday, which happened to be Good Friday. After everything we had been through we were ready to leave. The tour agents in Sandakan were generally unhelpful, one could only offer us flights at around 700-800MYR per person (6.4 = £1) for the flight to KL, while the other said that there were no flights. We needed to get to Singapore ultimately, and the only way to fly directly there was to head back to KK - not an option that we wanted. It seemed again that Borneo [View Full Entry]

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So there we were, stood outside what had been our humble abode for the past seven days excluding the time spent on the mountain, The wonderful “Rose Cabin”, a mixture of “Faulty Towers” meets “Acorn Antiques” but with a Malaysian twist. We had been informed in extreme broken English / International sign language that we could get a bus from outside the hotel and towards Sandakan. We estimated that this would take us about five hours; well the calculation was done on the Bornean method of travel which has to take on board the age of the transport, the amount [View Full Entry]

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I have been elected to write the story of when we climbed the mountain. It was bloody hard, but we did it! It was every bit as amazing as we hoped it would be. After the fiasco that was trying to organise our own independent trip up Mount Kinabalu we decided to just head to the Park HQ which is at 1700m and try and organise it there. The Lonely Planet had filled us with hope that we could just rock up, chose a guide, buy a permit and off we go. It certainly wasn’t that easy but we managed it. [View Full Entry]

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In case you hadn’t already figured, we have not sent the same blog twice; instead we have edited it with the full story and some photos. We know some of you find this blogging business a tad confusing, but really it is quite simple as long as you read the dates and location header, it follows chronologically. We thought we would write a quick blog just to let you know what we got up to on the 6th March, Stuey’s 30th. It didn’t start in the best way possible due to the lingering stomach bug issue. He really wasn’t a happy [View Full Entry]

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Right then cowboys and cowgirls it has been a long time since we last spoke. How are you’ all doing? Well, considering that we have not kept you in touch with our travel progress I must first apologise. “Sorry.” Secondly I will inform you of the reason why - we have been rushed off our feet recently, meetings (Getting to know all about the wonderful animals out there in this world), deadlines (Catching international flights from tropical destination to beach paradise) and of course presentations for the boss (Well we can’t divulge that information - top secret). [View Full Entry]

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