G'day sheilas!

---

We've arrived in Australia! After 2 nights of not very much sleep we arrived at Darwin airport at 4.30 this morning, very tired but glad to be here. We left you in the Cameron Highlands - we did get to a tea plantation in the end and we learnt all about how tea is made from a slightly racist tour guide (I was highly offended - he said that all Europeans like their steak rare, then proceeded to inform us that only Malaysians have their steak well done, he was obviously very much in favour of this and rather turned his nose up at the Europeans, letting us knwo he thought their steak habits rather inferior and slightly disgusting. Can't actually remember how he came to be talking about steak in a tea factory, but as I like my steak medium to well done I was shocked and appalled at his sadly misinformed attitude!)
We had a very expensive cup of tea each overlooking the plantations, then wandered back, passing a tea worker from India who was incredibly in awe of us when we told him we were from the UK. He looked us up and down, dumbstruck by our very presence, and exclaimed, "UK citizens! You are real UK citizens!" Crazy stuff eh?!! Imagine if we had got our passports out! A huge number of people we met in Asia were overcome with jealousy when we told them where we were from, a lot of people do really think the pavements are lined with gold in England. The troubling thing is most of them who come over will end up in badly paid jobs ruled by gangmasters and won't have a taste of what they imagine the country to be like. They also think that allBritish are happy - that's probably cos the only ones they have seen are those who are not in Britain! (Especially when we hear about the fact it hasn't stopped raining and it's the end of July!!)
The owners of the hostel we stayed at in the highlands gave us reiki sessions which was pretty cool - they don't charge as long as we promised to pass the reiki energy onto someone else. Only problem is I'm still not quite sure how to do this!! We were sad to leave our hostel, it was a nice place (complete with 3 week old old kittens and some rather nasty rude boy cats) it really does make a difference to a place to have a good place to stay, especially when it is a small family run place rather than the backpacker farms you can find in cities.

My birthday! We got a bus to Kuala Lumpur (our 4th vist!), and that was how I spent most of my day! We went out for a meal in the evening and it was soooooo nice! We were very uncultural and went to a very posh Italian restaurant - it would have been cheap back home but it was around 50 times more than we would normally spend on a meal!! We also had wine which was really nice, good wine is hard to find in Asia! (We had it in proper big glasses as welll - makes it more fun!) Our food was scrummy and we even shared a pudding, but by this poitn Ben was suffering a bit cos I'd let him finish my pizza. We got talking to the waitress and when she heard it was my birthday, she bought us the nicest chocolate dessert thing that I have ever tasted, complete with candle and 'Happy birthday' written in chocolate sauce and a chorus of happy birthday from 3 of the staff. I should have stood on my chair to finish it off! Unfortunately the chocolate finished me off as well and our walk home was very very difficult!!

Unfortunately our room was hot so I hardly slept that night - so we did very little the next day and waited to catch our train to Singapore in the evening. It was a sleeper train and we were all very crammed in but it was comfortable and we managed to get some sleep. We arrived in Singapore, dumped our bags on a hostel and headed to the zoo - my final birthday treat! We had a good (but exausting day), saw lots of animals, including some orangutans about a metre away from us! It was a pretty good zoo, with some exceptions the animals looked happy and there were a lot of free ranging ones (including the orangutans, they could just swing over your head!) I got some photos Granny! We left the zoo quite late and headed to hget our bags - unfortnately this took longer than expected and we arrived at the airport an hour before our plane was due to take off - and we hadn't had dinner! The woman at the checkin desk had abruptly informed us there was no food on the plane and we were dreading a whole flight with no food (we were already absolutely starving) - so imagine our joy when they bought out free drinks and food!!! They didn't have a vege option (surprise..) but the lady next to us kindly donated her whole family's salads to Ben - great example for the kids there Mum!!!!

So as I said, we were completely exausted when we landed in Darwin, things got worse when we found out that Darwin was full up! Lukily we found a place to stay at 11am (6 hours later) and I had a lovely nap - a bed at last! A day of admin today and probably tomorrow, we have a lot of things to sort out now we are in OZ - so the next time you hear from us we could still be here, or could be somewhere on a farm in the outback! Exciting stuff!!

---

Comments

[Shiv]

Awwww, sounds like you had a lovely birthday and not one you're going to forget in a while! Yes, still rubbish weather here - there's even some floods down our end! xx