Australia and beyond!

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Dear Friends, Family and Fellow travellers…

Hey, it’s Anna here - hope you are all doing great. For those of you in the UK, I hope that Autumn is treating you well - with crisp mornings, games of conkers, the wind whistling through the trees and all things lovely that I can remember from the annual ‘Autumn’ poems that I wrote in Primary School. Perhaps not? If recent weather patterns are anything to go by, you’re probably enjoying the wild heat of an Indian summer. If so, too bad. You don’t have air con. We do.

So, at the last time of writing we’d just left New Zealand. We’re now in Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur to be exact! It’s been a little over 3 months since we kissed our mothers goodbye so I’m sure you’ve all forgotten about us by now. Just incase you haven’t - here’s a QUICK update on what we’ve been up to…

After New Zealand we flew to Cairns and spent a good 7 weeks making our way down the beaten track of east coast AUSTRALIA - finishing up in Sydney. Lots of fun and the true Aussie experience complete with dingoes, koalas, crocs, sharks, surfing, sunbathing, scuba diving, sailing the Whitsunday Islands (superb!) and Roxy bikinis! Been There Done That? Well I bet you didn’t meet 16 members of Charlie’s extended family. From wonderfully eccentric Great Aunty Gwyn in Townsville to newly-weds Elisha and B.J. who run a hotel out in the STICKS near Canberra, this was a great way to see the real Australia - and now I get ALL the jokes in ‘Kath and Kim’.

Next stop SINGAPORE. Ok so it’s a city but this is one city that everyone should see (especially all you history geeks who studied European Cities with me in the 3rd year). So clean! So efficient! So scary!- you can’t buy chewing gum and littering is punishable by a ‘corrective work order’. We were lucky enough to stay with Charlie’s mate Trinia, who showed us all the local hot spots and introduced us to Asian dessert (interesting…)

And now MALAYSIA. Being the ignorant type, I’m not sure I could even spell Malaysia before I got here. But Charlie and I are now connoisseurs! Kuala Lumpur is like a mad, massive metropolis but without your standard drains, hygiene, law-abiding traffic (everyone drives on red, like its no big deal), rubbish bins or readily available Diet Coke (argh!) On the upside (!) the English Premier League is like a second religion in Malaysia, which means football is on the TV in every bar - this keeps Charlie happy and the locals are obsessed with asking him questions (like which team to bet on!) We’re also turning into China Town addicts - particularly the rough and ready ‘Hawker’ food courts where you can get anything from curry fish head to sweet and sour. And it’s cheap as chips!

I’d better go now since it’s getting late and Charlie is half asleep next to me. In a couple of weeks we’ll be meeting up with his big brother Stuart in Thailand, which should be interesting for me. I hope we make it out of Bangkok…

Take care of yourselves and please play sensibly with the conkers.

lots of love

Anna and Charlie x x x x x

P.S. Sorry about the lack of photos (i.e. the interesting bit!) not enough time to get it sorted 😞

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