We've made it! 6-1-2008

Yup we're here at last, somewhat mentally battered but here nonetheless! The airports are the dodgy parts, otherwise fine.

Adelaide Airport: Dylan gets sent back out to check in his tripod because it's some kind of lethal weapon. I lose my boarding pass, have a hissy fit. We are the last to be on the plane (that we saw, family's might disagree!).

Melbourne Airport: Good old Jetstar has booked us onto a Qantas flight that doesn't exist, moved us to another one in the afternoon (no email mind you) which happens to depart to Sydney AFTER our flight from Sydney to KL. Lucky for us we had a very helpful girl at Qantas check in who moved us to an earlier flight and thereby saved the day.

Sydney Airport: Eat terrible chicken. Get snapped at by security over the 'too big' mossie repellant I'd handed over as per regulations... it wasn't too big and I got a brief apology. Have loads of time to get to gate and wait, bum our way along to hear over the loudspeakers about 10m before we get to the gate that the flight has been moved to another gate and is boarding, right now...we have a good 10 minutes panicked walk over to the other side of the airport and join the queue. The queue goes absolutly nowhere and after a while we sit down again to wait. By the time we get on the plane (about half an hour late so far) and sit down we wait again as someone is 'removed' (no I don't know why, but the nosy parker in me would love to!), they can't find this person's bags and I fall asleep and end up missing the safety demonstration (but then if we crashed I can't imagine I'd really be in a position to actually need my life jacket or know how to use it). We leave about an hour and a half late. Oh well, we finally got underway. The movie was StarStruck and I wouldn't recommend it.

Kuala Lumpur: I like more every time we pop in. I love the ease of the train system, I love love love the dirt cheap curry shops on every corner and the lemon drinks,the lights everywhere and the tropical downpours heralded by the air growing so heavy it's like syrup. I would have liked to stay a few more days but we have that at the end of our trip so that's ok. I'd insisted on booking a hotel with a pool (a real novelty for this pair of backpackers!) and so we even got to go for a swim while a little man went around dusting and polishing the leaves of the pot plants (I guess being a pool attendant gets a little dull).

KL airport: Totally our own fault by not paying attention, but we went to the wrong terminal. Whoops. Thankfully were very early because the correct terminal was a good 15 minutes away but the limo driver (yes, we had to take a limo!) whipped us away at 130km an hour and so we were well on time. LCCT (cheapo terminal) is basically a big shed with inadequate airconditioning and macdonalds which we regretfully ate for breakfast (only on holidays would I eat that).

Anyway, moving on! We arrived in Angeles yesterday and stayed overnight in Tack-O-Rama hotel (Actually La Casa). I'm not sure if it was the plastic flowers, the shell chandeliers, the plastic tomato salt and pepper shakers or the life size wooden cowboy out the front but somehow we felt compelled to move on quickly. Angeles was one of the towns swamped by ash when Mt Pinatubo erupted and even now there is ashy sand everywhere and a general pall of misery and dust over the place (when a man invited us into the Nasty Duck Bar; quack quack, I didn't know if I should laugh or cry. You could buy a drink for less than a dollar here, or a woman for $2.50). We had thought to go up to Mt Pinatubo but opted to head straight for Manila instead, maybe on the way back as we do have to pass through again.

Manila is extremely run down, lots and lots of rubble,mess, and cobwebs of wires hanging everywhere. Every corner seems to have a Macdonalds, KFC, Chow King or JolliBee's. A taxi driver tried to rip us off almost immediately but we are well versed in this and removed ourselves from the cab and flagged down another one (driver one wanted 600 pesos to take us here, driver 2 put the meter on and it cost us 75 pesos, we're not that green any more!). We're staying in an ok hostel, it has quite a nice communal area and a kitchen but our actual room is just an expensive bed and a window which looks out onto another wall. It's a reasonably quiet area though and not as desperate looking as some of the places we drove through on the way here.

We are flying to Puerto Princessa tomorrow (on Palawan) where we hope to find somwhere about a 1000 times more chilled out than this.

Anyway, that's all for now! This sounds more gloomy than it really is, I think we've just seen all the ikky bits of the country first but best to get them out of the way I think!

Love to all,

Katie (and Dylan)

xx

Hooray, it's hot.

Woo, it's 40c outside. Tomorrow afternoon is SIL's wedding and it's predicted to be 41c. Erg. Still, we won't be outdoors for long, then to the reception which will be delicious and cool(er).
Tonight is my last shift at work for over a month, it's a strange feeling, I would have liked to hang around for a few drinks with everyone afterwards but instead I'll be leaving early: A 9am hair appointment (got to be girly tomorrow) and a long, hot day ahead means no farewell drinks for me! it's a little weird realising that almost my entire social life is conducted with my work mates but that's hospitality for you
My bag is only half packed, I haven't yet been to the pharmacy or the bank, the house is a shambles and I'm not sure when I will be cleaning it up. I suppose I could be doing it now but it's too hot and it takes all the fun out of that last minute panic!
I'd like a cold drink but there's nothing in the fridge but milk as we haven't been shopping in ages (don't want an excess of food while we're not here).
Meh.

Home and Away. 24-12-2007

Has it really been more than a year since I last posted? Dylan says 'well that's cause we've been home' but we haven't! I guess our becoming annual SEA-trip earlier this year was such a non-event for us that it didn't warrent posting about? No, it wasn't a non-event, it's just that when you revisit places sometimes some of the charm and wonder is lost from them The long and the short of it is, for this upcoming trip we've chosen to go somewhere we haven't been before: The Philippines.

We're becoming more grown-up backpackers now, no more self-enforced privitations, we've bought super-expensive travel pillows to take away! We also have an exxy head-lamp, a digital SLR each (ahem, yes, insured seperately of course) and multi-vitamins. So grown up are we.

Yes it is the day before christmas, that day of excess, meaning lost in a flurry of spending and eating. I see myself coming full circle with this: From the usual childhood joy at presents and lights and trees; to realising I couldn't be christian and rejecting the idea entirely and then struggling everytime this so-called festive season rolled around (for what was I celebrating, exactly?); to now when I think 'bugger it, just enjoy it anyway'. So we pinched a couple of branches off a radiata pine down by the rail line (and did the environment just a small service by reducing the photosynthetic abilities of just one noxious weed), added lights, red baubles from Target and paper-mache balls from Oxfam and voila! Christmas is in the house, in the corner by the fish tanks, on top of the filing cabinet covered by a shawl from India, next to the Lao woven silk wall hangings, under the temple bells from Thailand and the coloured prayer flags. Hmmm.

So anyway, what's coming up in this life? Well, working Christmas day of course, then off to Mama's for dinner, then madly working, packing and somehow cooking half the food for Dylan's sister's wedding which is on New Year's Eve, celebrating with Dylan's family and friend's all night, expected hangover on New Year's Day then on the 2nd of the new year, off to Melbourne, the first of far too many flights to Angeles, Philippines (alleged home of 10'000 prostitutes, thank you America) for our other life.

'Tis all for now, expect lots of posts about snorkelling to come or Greenie Whining about Coral Bleaching and other assorted environmental destruction ;)

Cheers Big-Ears, and Happy Festive Season for whatever you choose to celebrate :)

Far out! 24-12-2007

Fuck me, what a load of crap! All I wanted to do was write a quick post and I had to create a google account which wouldn't fucking accept my password choice just so I could login! Not Impressed Blogger, really not.
Oh yes, today is a grumpy day.

s'late...bleugh

Yuck, 2 minutes to 1am and I'm still up, awake and tired. I want to go to bed boy! hurry up and get home!

As usual nothing new here, I have no life most of the time. Long long periods of being dull intermittently broken up by exciting overseas holidays. Highlight of the day today was looking at my bank account and discovering that I've been charge $13 in fees this month, leaving me with $3.45. Cheers Local Bank, love your work. Reminder to self: must go back in and show them student card... again.

Still, the world works in mysterious ways. Found printing out notes at uni today to be beneficial for two reasons. 1 being I realised I know nothing and am fast running out of time to learn anything (which is bad), 2 being that the computer wasn't registering me printing out pages so I didn't get charged for any of them (which is good).

What is it about the second semester that leaves me so unmotivated?

Vegettabubble patch however coming along quite well, need to top up with soil and we can plant! Exciting stuff! Or I think so anyway, I realise most people are not of the same mind as me but frankly I no longer give a rat's arse if people think I'm weird. So what? This is bad because...?

Oh and some updates

So what's new in the life of K?

Not a whole lot really.

Uni's back this week, 4 good subjects, one dodgy one, last semester's marks very good (D's were better humph), best I've ever done!

Work's going along swimmingly, am now familiar enough with most people to actually have minor arguments with them , mainly based around the fact that I don't write someone off because they are quiet and I don't believe that being quiet means you have no personality. Why don't people just give others half a chance? Jeez....

Spent 4 days stuffing envelopes for the sales department as we are changing the hotels name shortly, 30 000 names on the database, and no I'm not exagerrating. It took more than 4 days to get them all sent out but I'd had enough by then and bailed out on them (feeling a wee bit guilty over that but seriously, should have been better organised and had more staff!).

Veggie garden area is cleared and ready for us to put the beds in, want to do it soon but D and I work all weekends (collectively) and uni times are inconveniant so we might just have to have half a day there and hope to get it done. Winter's running out!

So warm and Spring-like outside the last few days, been lovely :-)

Over enthusiastic post :-P

YAYAYA for Jetstar and promotional prices :-D D and I managed to land tickets to Phuket last night for less than half of the normal cost, the mind boggles :-o As a uni-friend put it, get in there before they go broke lol! Specials seem to have already sold out by today, managed to get SIL-A (as in Sister In Law A) a ticket too, same day, same plane, almost double the price but still very good so A will be coming along with us! She's been dying to meet Peter the Monkey ever since she saw his gorgeous picture a while back so it's all systems go from here!

Am over the moon excited, told everyone about our fabulous deal, even the girl who develops our photos lol! Trying to convince a pair of married friends to come along with us, I hope they do but at this stage I'm not getting my hopes up. Although Thailand is very cheap it's still a lot of money to come up with with only 5 months notice and they're still recovering from the wedding expenses so we'll wait and see.

Maybe this means I can get that Canon digital SLR I want so badly, hmmm...

To top of the high we're on right now, I won $8 on a scratchie ticket :-P

So yes, come Jan we'll be off to Phuket and not back in Aus until Feb 23, 7 weeks in total woohoo! fun fun fun. No idea what we'll be doing at this stage. We've never been to Phuket cos in my mind it's a sort of tourist hell but should be a good jumping off point to visit some of the more obscure islands around the place.Considering the Surin or Similan Islands near Burma at this stage. We'll actually be playing proper tourist for a while which will be fun. We want to go to Luang Prabang in Laos at some stage so will make that trip either on the way to or from Susan's house.

OMG I'm so excited! In 5 months I'll be eating Tom Kha soup until it comes out my ears :-D