One, two, three...back in the room

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It was a quick hop, skip and jump for us down to Singapore to catch our flight to Sydney in mid
Feb. The month in Myanmar meant our plans to travel through in north Thailand and Laos again before heading down the peninsular to explore the Thai islands and Malaysia had to be shelved - for next time! We'd even left it too late to get a train ticket so we booked a flight to Phuket for the next day and used that as a jumping off point for a chilled week in Ko Phi Phi, then flying onto Singapore. Before we knew it we were knocking on the door of a very nice hotel apartment in the Sydney to be greeted by Mum, Dad, Sam and lots of bubbly wine. Hurrah! They had all had an amazing few weeks in Tazmania with Esther, Simon, his family - also meeting with family there.
Our location right by Darling Harbour was absolutely perfect and we spent a great week in Sydney- heading out to Bondi, Manly and Cronulla. We had some lovely meals -Zoe and Sam decided martinis were very nice and Eric decided that oysters not very nice (he spat it back out into the shell - classy).
And then the time came to pick up our campervan and hit the road. Unfortunately this turned into a bit of a farce - we'd arranged to have one standard van for a few days to explore and then swop it into a deluxe version which we'd keep for the remainder of our time on Oz. Camperman had managed to supremely bugger this up and emailed us about it about two hours after we were due to pick up the van. By which time we were at the depot trying to sort out the crap. We ended up taking the standard for the whole six weeks but all the problems at the depot meant we didn't really pay a lot of attention to the van other than to record that the awning was broken and parts of the van were hanging off.
By the time we reached a campground just south of Sydney we'd established we had hired a turkey. It was as stable as a drunk elephant on a skateboard, as noisy as a tractor , riding in the back was horrible and there was no way you could fit three people in the front - no matter what Camperman said... not even with Eric 'mousebum' Jong trying to fit in. Oh and it had an ant infestation, broken saucepans, a broken door, and was pretty dirty. Overcoming these obstacles with Zen like calm.....(in the end Zoe and Eric headed back into Sydney and hired an extra car) we continued onto beautiful Bulli where we continuously mispronounced the name (Bully) camped on the beach and had some lovely barbecues. And after a spirited debate (ho ho) we set off cross country on the Hume highway, the fastest route to Melbourne. We checked out a few places on the way but pretty much pushed on, stopping overnight at Wodonga. And the next morning arrived in north Melbourne, catching Est and Si just as they were trying to make their escape from the campground. Out came the sparkling wine and we headed on into Melbourne for a great night out. And all we can say is it is totally sick to be with the fam again. It's total bullshit. (This is Australian for 'it's very good to be with the family again').

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