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Hello all and welcome to our LAST update of our blog site
Sorry for the delay in updating this but as you can imagine we’ve had rather a hectic month or so since the last time we wrote on here. We’ve got loads to tell you about so this threatens to be a long blog but we’ll keep it as short as we can....!
We managed to pack in loads of stuff into our last few weeks of Oz. This included a super 14’s rugby game (as if we didn’t watch enough rugby in NZ). A trip to Ramsey street, a tour around Ayres rock and some surfing lessons in Byron Bay.
After we finished our jobs in Brisbane it was time to head out on our OZ mini trip. We were heading to Melbourne and then to the ‘red centre’ to see Ayres Rock.
The first thing we did in Melbourne was to take a tour around the MGC (Melbourne Cricket Ground). It holds 100,000 people so it isn’t small! We both really enjoyed it to be fair. The highlight for me being when we were going through a big traditional bar call the ‘long room’ which held some amazing cricket memorabilia from the games legends and Jules disappeared from sight. A few second later she came back having scoped out the bar prices looking impressed and she said ‘hey....drinks are pretty cheap in ‘ere!!!!!’
Our next day in Melbourne was really great. We went on a Neighbours tour and saw the Lassiters Set and Ramsey Street! We also met Jenae Timmons from the show. Sadly, we both had a fantastic time and got some great pics. Unsurprisingly the tour was full of Brits!
That evening we took in a theatre show called Wicked which was something to do with the incredible hulks sister or something like that!!!!! That was ‘wicked’ and rounded off a good day. That night we caught up with a friend of mine, Josh, who was over in Melbourne so it was nice to see a face from home again. This was after we met another Uni friend, Maddox, who is studying in Brisbane! (Small world and all that....!)
Both of us really liked Melbourne. It has an older feel about it all and is described as ‘European’ because of all the coffee shops etc...
We both became a pair of wussies when it came to the weather however and felt freezing when the temperature was at 18, so as you can imagine that the cold is going right through the pair of us at the moment. Jules however did find this a good excuse to buy a new cardigan!!!!
We then headed to the outback to see Ayres Rock. We stopped over in a town called Alice Springs which is slap bang in the middle of Australia. It was 40oc when we were there! It is the biggest town nearest to Ayres Rock and is some five hours drive away from it.
Our day tour to Ayres Rock was wonderful. We’d both bought ourselves a fly net and you’ll see from the photos we won’t win any style points but after getting a taste of all the flies when we we’re walking about Alice Springs, how you looked was at the bottom of the list!
The drive to Ayres Rock was cool as we got to see the landscape change along the way and then it because red and vast. You would not want to break down out there as there isn’t much shade around.
We stopped regularly along the way for toilet and ciggy breaks but I spent most of the time waiting on the coach because of the flies. Jules started calling me ‘Victor’. After Victor Meldrew as I was moaning pretty well. Despite the moaning we loved the day, only the flies got right up my nose! Literally!!!!!
Being around Ayres Rock was fantastic and the photos you’ll see of it don’t do it justice. We got right up close to the base to touch it etc and it’s much more contoured than you would imagine.
After seeing the rock, that made our wonders of the world count rise to 3 after we had seen Niagara Falls, The Grand Canyon and now Ayres Rock. Not bad going!
Soon we were back in Brisbane tying up loose ends with the estate agents, which by the way, are just as useless down under as they are in the UK.
Our time in Australia was ending faster than we would have liked but we had time to go Byron Bay with Burgers and Katherine to have one last session with them and also to have surfing lessons. We both really enjoyed them and it was, for me, one of the best things I did on our trip. You’re motivation does dwindle a little after three hours solid though. You often hear surfers talking about ‘hanging 10’. After they watched us they would say ‘hanging 3 ½ !!!!’ It was great fun though and helped top off our Oz experience.
Sadly it was then time for us to say goodbye to burgers and Katherine. They’re were both instrumental in making our time in Australia as good as it was and we have a great deal to thank them for. We’ll miss both them and Brisbane for sure. Burgers.....we’ll get the pack of P P P P P P Penguins out to you as soon as we can afford them as a thank you!!!
We braved an 18 hour coach journey overnight to Sydney and then left Australia then next day with heavy hearts. We absolutely loved it....
Our next stop was Singapore and the flight there was great as we got to go on the new A380 which is one of those double decked planes. We both said that we wished the flight was longer! It was more like a hotel than a plane!!!!
Our first full day in Singapore most have been close to a Guinness Book of Records shopping record as we were walking around the malls for 10 hours!!!! The shops in Singapore were unbelievable. It is said that the nation’s sport is shopping! You can see why people say that. On one of the street in the centre there must have been 30 huge shopping malls. All about 6-7 stories high. That was a years worth of walking around shops for me in one afternoon!!!!! Needless to say Jules loved it and said it was better than NYC for shops etc...
Singapore is known for its diversity with different religions living amongst one another harmoniously. We can certainly verify that as we saw loads of churches, mosques and temples all in the same area. The different suburbs of the city include china town, little India and Arab Street all of which had different cultures and street markets to enjoy. We walked around them all and had a great time doing so.
We soon had to say goodbye to Singapore and our last bit of 30 degree heat and move on to a cooler Hong Kong. You could say Hong Kong was a bit nippy!!!!!
Again, we really enjoyed this place too and were pleased we planned our trip to stop here on the way back home. We had a great hotel sorted on Kowloon Island which was a great location. It was fun walking up and down the streets seeing all the bright neon signs in the area, not that we had a clue what they were saying!!!!
Hong Kong was really busy and you couldn’t walk ten yards without someone cutting you up and as well as the busy streets there were blokes on every corner trying to sell you cheap suits. Jules actually ended up ‘sshhhing’ one of them like in Austin Powers. Shhhh Shhh Shhh I’ve got a whole bag of SHHHH with your name on it!!!!! It was hilarious and the bloke wasn’t amused one bit!
On one of the days there we took a trip out to Stanley market which was on the far side of Hong Kong Island. If you get there alive (all the busses drive like Lewis Hamilton) you’ll get some seriously good bargains at the market. We got quite a bit. The best bargain being a jumper I got that is £40 in Debenhams.....cost me a quid!!!! The market was on the coast so as well as bargains we got some great views.
That night we checked out the harbour light show which is the world’s biggest light show. The pics on the blog look great but we thought it was pretty disappointing. It looked like some dudes on the tops of the skyscrapers with green laser pens!!!! Still, the pics looks good and it was really foggy so I think that made them look better.
The next day was our last full day travelling and we spent it on the Victoria peak up above the skyscrapers. We caught a tram up there and it was so steep a few people looked pretty scared. I’m sure you would have seen it on travel shows or something as its quite famous. The views on the peak were wonderful and a great day to spend our last day. We were actually quite sombre at the top as we knew the time of ‘living the dream’ was nearly finished. Check out the pics from the peak as they are great and gives you an idea how built up the place is.
All that was left was to have our last ‘few’ beers on foreign soil! We had to make the most of the happy hour as drinking in Asia is SO BLOODY EXPENSIVE. It’s more expensive than having a beer at Chelsea!!! It was £ 7.50 a pint! One round of two drinks was £ 22. Anyways, needless to say we saw our trip out in suitable fashion.
Heading home was a wrenching moment but we were at the airport before we knew it waiting to head to London. We really couldn’t believe how quickly our year had gone. We’d been on 19 flights in our year and not one of them was delayed by a minute but our last flight, incidentally our longest flight of the year, was delayed by four hours!!!! Law of the sod or what?!
As soon as we landed at Heathrow we’d officially completed our round the world trip exactly a year after we started it. We’ve said for the next year we’ll be saying this time last year we did this.....we did that...!
I must admit after being in so many airports it was lovely to have someone waiting for us at the end!!!
What was our favourite place? Our favourite country was NZ as it is just so lovely and the people are the nicest in the world but our most favourite place and time of our trip was Brisbane. We dare anyone to go there and not love it.
Are we pleased to be back? Yes and No. Yes, to see the family and friends we’ve seen so far since being back and then many more we’ll catch up with over the next few weeks (more mates for Jules!!!) and No for the missing of where we’ve been and the weather we’ve been used to but I’m sure we’ll get back into the swing of things soon enough.
Thank you so much to everyone one who made our year away possible and so enjoyable. Thanks to everyone who’s been on here and left us some messages or commented on our pics. It was great to hear from you all and thanks for taking an interest.
Jules and I will be setting ourselves up back in Manchester in the next few weeks and are looking to get back to ‘normal’ as easily as possible so we can start saving for a wedding before Jules changes her mind!!!!!
Thanks again to everyone and, very sadly, for the last time;
Hugs and Manly Handshakes
Alan & Jules
xXx
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