Our was very cheeky and demanded bananas before he would continue. However, tossing bananas ahead encouraged a good speed!
Hello all!!
This one is coming from the campervan as we travel from Mackay to Rockhampton. We’ve been in the chubby (the campervan) for five days now steadily making our way south along highway one from Cairns. The first two days was spent cruising round the Tablelands to the west of Cairns. This national park was really with some magnificant waterfalls and views as we meandered up and down the hills. We camped at Granite Gorge, a small creek inhabited by hundreds of small rock wallabies and small turtles.
By the second day we were heading southwards towards mission beach, which is currently occupied by deadly jellyfish. The next day we proceeded southwards again to Townsville where we visited the Museum of Tropical Queensland. Here Rob fired a cannnon, Elee was clamped in leg irons and we learnt about the shipwreck of HMS Pandora.
On Friday we drove out to Airlie Beach and had some fish and chips before sunbathing on the man made lagoon. Yesterday was an early drive down to Mackay where we stayed on the beach and spent the day planning the rest of the trip and enjoying a BBQ on the beach!
The front of our van is incredibly geeked out. We have an inverter attached to the cigarette lighter which provides a proper australian power socket. We’ve then got a spiltter in that to give us two sockets before having two converters to British plugs! Out of that comes A laptop charger with external 3G modem, and an iPod charger for the ipod/iphone. All in all it just about fits in the glove compartment!
We’ve also listened through the first 2.5 books of Harry Potter on our travels, determined to finish the series before we arrive in Melbourne in 20 days time!
See you all later!
Rob and Elee
Sorry about the late update! Us geeks havent had as much internet access as we thought we would have!!
So update: Chiang Mai was awesome! The trekking was really good fun and we met some really great people. Shout out to Theresa, Rob, Paul, Thomas and Stefanie! We started the first day around the pool at our hotel (BMP - very good!), then went into the city in the evening to have a look around the night market, picking up two t-shirts for 2GBP each.
Early start the next day to begin the trek, and we went straight to the elephant sanctuary where we got to ride on an elephant with the rest of our group! Our was very cheeky and demanded bananas before he would continue. However, tossing bananas ahead encouraged a good speed!
Then we had a 3 hour walk through Thailand’s hilly “jungle” (more like dried scrub land!) where we taught the practical uses of Bamboo (Catapult, food, walking sticks and a bong!). Then we camped at a small village which was memorable to say the least, including a shower in the stream and saw the night out with a campfire. Next day the hardcore trekkers (two nighters) continued. A 45 minute trek and we had lunch for almost 2 hours followed by an hours trek through rice plantations down to the first waterfall. An hour at the waterfall, before a 45 minute walk to the second where we camped for the night. Note to all : it’s freezing to shower in a waterfall even if the temperature is 30 degrees :D
That night Jan (our guide) cooked up pumpkin mash which was the best meal we had in Thailand (Pumpkin, soy, rice and all things nice)! The following day was a small walk followed by Bamboo rafting which was mucho funo and probably the highlight of the trip, though Elee was bullied by Rob, Paul, the rafter, the locals and the other tourists! (Although Rob fell in :P)
Once back in the hotel the origional team (minus Stefanie and Thomas) met up for beverages where Chang Beer really DID kick Rob’s ass.
[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”500” caption=”About 80p a Pint!”]
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Next morning after a restless night for Rob, we checked out, lounged about the pool and almost missed the train back!
One day in Bangkok, and one day in transit later and we arrived at Gilligan’s in Cairns Australia - party capital of the East Coast. Our first day was spent lounging about the pool (again!) and exploring a bit of the town. We also decided against studying for the four day PADI course, and as such are leaving town a little early in our chubby (campervan)! Last night (our first night) we were woken up firstly by a room mate being sick, then by Rob being shouted at by an angry Frenchman and being made to swap beds, and lastly by some excessive snoring. We endured.
Today was spent job doing, booking Scuba, Green Island, changing travel plans, ringing home, buying internet time, blogging, buying food, postcards and other odds and ends! We also spent some of the day lounging (!) around a swimming pool/fake beach on the promenade. Very nice indeed!
We’re going to round off the essay there, so thanks for enduring, and hopefully we’ll be updating you again once we have the chubby.
Rob
NB - This post is now a week old - photos of the trek are up but I’ve not written it all up yet! Coming soon!!
Hello everyone!!
Blog post number two comes from the train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. We’ve slept the night on board and are now sat on my bed admiring the sceneary as we climb northwards into the jungley area of the northern city.
Our trip to the beach 2 days ago went very well, with a 2 hour car trip to Pattay and then a 40min boat trip out to “Coral Island” (aptly, if commercially, named). The beach was gorgeous (see attached pics) but despite 5 applications of factor 25 suncream and staying out of the sun between 1 and 3, my face still managed to get a little burned (missing my Aunty’s Pizz Bun sunblock stick!)! Elee’s back was a little burned too, but she already has really prominant tan lines!
Yesterday we whacked on the factor 50 and headed out to the Grand Palace which was truly spectacular. Shorts and open shoulders wern’t allowed so I had to wear some rather fetching borrowed pants, but it was certainly worth it. Check out the pictures we’ve put up! Im hoping to get some videos up shortly, but forgot to install the software to convert it for YouTube. Downer was it being the hottest day yet (I’d guess early-mid 30s) and Elee getting -more- burnt.
Today we get off the sleeper train at 10:30AM and check into our (relatively posh) hotel (With pool!). We’re planning on a day in the shade next to the pool, then a visit to the night market tonight for some shopping (I have my heart set on a bandana!).
Ciao for now!
Rob
Trip blog number one! Today we put the travel in travelling and are about to bust our body clocks as we arrive in Bangkok at 6AM. I’m currently sat at the departures gate in Abu Dhabi. We’re flying with Etihad airways which, so far, has been an absolute pleasure! We had top quality food on the flight just gone, and a selection of about 40 films to watch.
The only downer was Elee beating me at an inflight game of draughts.
Update:
I’m writing this in our hotel in Bangkok! This is the end of the second day and we are really enjoying the city. On the day we landed we managed to get a tour about the city on a Tuk-Tuk and visited a couple of temples. We the found out hotel, had a nap (jet lagged!) and met up with some of our friends over here. Being pretty tired it was really, really nice to have someone show us the basics around the hotel, taking a walk down Khaosan road and enjoying some crazy rice, egg and chicken combo.
Today we moved hotels from a £40 a night to a £10 a night jobbie for two tonight and tomorrow. Bangkok has been an eye opener, but the smog and nagging is already getting on our nerves! Food has been fantastic, really cheap and tasty. We’re on a day trip to Pattay tomorrow and then thursday night we’re taking a sleeper train to Chiang Mai. In Chiang Mai we have a hotel with a pool (bliss!!) and a trek out into the jungle for two nights arranged.
About to head to bed, so ciao for now and we’ll blog again in Chiang Mai!
NB
I’ve also uploaded a batch of photos from the first couple of days. Enjoy!
Wowzerz! Three days until we leave! Elee’s packing her bags now, and we made a little, silly, unprepared or rehearsed video. Enjoy!
Wahooo! First blog post for me!!! We have put some pics up of Rob’s backpack and our little computer we are taking with us, she’s called Eee! No not named after me ;) It’s definitely a girl as it’s cute and small so if Rob ever says otherwise he is wrong. Aaaanyway back to things you may be interested in. So you can see Rob’s backpack which is cool, but not as cool as mine which is a lovely shade of ‘duck-egg blue’!
We will have a picture up soon of mine but Rob’s will have to suffice for the moment! We’re both very excited about setting off next week on Sunday and have just done a practice bag pack!! Relatively successful I must say, but his is the larger of the two, and well, I’m a girl so he will just have to carry some things of mine! So here’s to my first blog, our first bag pack and our first set of pictures!!! Enjoy what’s to come!!!
15 days until we depart and things are looking, well, OK!
We’re insured now (at last!), we’ve got our backpacks, all our medical stuff, vaccinations, hostels booked, flights, tranportation, some trips, monies..wow!
First things learnt is to understand that there’s a significant expense outside of spending money, flights and accommodation. Sun cream is around about £10 a bottle, a mosquito net is £25, your backpacks and boots are at least £50 each, anywhere up to £300. Malaria tablets can run at £3 a pop (for the decent ones), yellow fever is £50 and your insurance can be about £50 a month. For those of us outside London there’s also the train/plane down there (£10-40) and maybe a nights stay (£40 ) if you leave from Heathrow.
None of these is particularly expensive on it’s own but add them together and you can be approaching £500-600 extra cash which all has to be spent before you even leave. We were quite glad to have paid for so much of our trip up front so all these “hidden expenses” haven’t been too troublesome.
Pictures of gear, garb and gadgets coming soon!
Ciao for now,
Rob
Wah-hey!
The site’s hanging together pretty well at this point. Let me give you a tour:
The Trail
Look right. That list of bullet points there is “The Trail”. It shows you exactly what we’ve been up to. It’ll show the images we’ve posted, the tweets we’ve made, the videos we’ve uploaded, the blogs we’ve written and the check-in’s on Bright Kite. It’s powered by the brilliant friendfeed, and lets you quickly see what’s new when you visit.
The Photo Section
Alas, a little bare at the moment, filled with only a few flags and a picture of my Yoshi toy at work. It shows all of the photos we’ve taken on our trip, broken down by location. There’s a nice little javascript plugin called “lightbox” which displays the photo at full resolution in a nice overlay. It’s all powered by Flickr, which will take care of hosting our photos as well as letting us upload with one button from iPhoto (09) on the lappy! No fuss, good results!
The Map!
The map is magic. Super voodoo magic! All of our photos on flickr are GeoTagged - meaning they have a location attached to them (thanks again to iPhoto 09). This map shows you where all of our photos were taken on the planet in a slick interface. Hopefully as we travel you’ll see a line of pin pricks showing a trail of photos, videos and tweets all sat on the exact location they were recorded. Powered by uMapper.
The Blog
You’re already here? Nothing too magical about the blog really, other than it’s powered by wordpress; and is the framework for all the other cool shit (tm) listed above. Being wordpress powered makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside - a good thing, this weather being what it is…
To Come…
Videos - need to figure out the best video site, and how I can tie it into wordpress and the map. Also, an information section with a little bit more about the plan, goals and methods of the site. Lastly, I need to get Elee on here…hmm, perhaps something Disney?
Ciao for now,
Rob
Welcome, and thank you for stopping by. You’ve stumbled upon a website dedicated to tracking and archiving the trip of two backpackers from the UK as they head around the world during 2009. We’re using online technologies and services to record our trip in realtime, posting back comments, photos, videos and blog posts for our families and friends to read. If you’re interested in following us, then subscribe to the RSS feed here. You’ll be alerted when we upload any new content, from tweets to HD video! Thanks again, Rob and Elee
