This is our first ever time "blogging" so hope it goes well and doesn't bore anybody. The best thing about this blog is if you subscribe the website emails you when we've updated it so you don't need to keep checking.
For those who don't know (surely there isn't a living soul who doesn't know???) the aim of our trip is to get to Australia without getting on a plane, after extensive research we reckon this probably isn't going to happen once we get to Indonesia, but we will try our hardest to achieve this goal and will definately go the furthest we can go by train/boat/bus/bike/tuk tuk.
We're off on the 1st June 2009, first stop France....our rough route is Europe/Russia/Mongolia/China/Nepal/South East Asia/Oz.
We hope you enjoy following our travels as much as we will be enjoying ourselves not working and generally bumming about :-).
Love G & T
February 3rd 2010
After miss judging how long it would take for us to get to the airport we ended up having to race though to get to our gate, where we proceeded to sit and wait for over an hour, typically our first flight of our trip was an hour late leaving. We couldn’t quite believe the size of the plane that was going to take us to Australia, it was tiny but as a consolation it was brand new and Jet Star have excelled themselves with their seat…all leather!!!! We flew for 4 and a half hours before landing in Darwin, we had a connecting flight to Sydney about 3 hours after landing, luckily we didn’t have to hang around because it took so long to get through customs, we thought it wise to tick pretty ... read more
February 1st 2010
After a great few days in KL we boarded our sleeper train, in fact our last train of the trip to Singapore, we arrived at 8:30am and headed straight to Little India to where we had decided to stay, typically for our last night of our trip we hadn’t booked anywhere so we ended up staying in a dorm, luckily the hostel where we wanted but in a dorm all the same. Our home for the night was The Price of Wales Backpacker Hostel, for a whopping S$18 each. To be fair the dorm was really nice and the whole hostel was very clean and at night very quiet. It even had a nice bar downstairs with wine, yes WINE at a reasonable S$8 a glass!!!! We couldn’t check in right away so we hung around ... read more
January 30th 2010
After an overpriced (the man in the Travel Post Shop in Cherating added a massive 12RM each onto our bus tickets) and a 5 and a half hour bus journey from Cherating back to KL, we headed back to the Original Backpackers Hostel in Chinatown and dumped our bags before heading out for some much needed food, G naturally went back to the Monkee Inn and had her much awaited pizza while Tony sipped on an ice cold one waiting for his chicken and rice. A few more beers later we were back in our rather hot cell for an early night. The next day and our second time in the city was full of novelty things, firstly we had roti for breakfast, something we have been enjoying all the way through Malaysia, still shocked how ... read more
January 28th 2010
After a rather quiet time in Kuala Terengganu we headed a few hours further south along the beautiful coastal road, which has been stunning all the way from Kuala Besut with its gorgeous blue sea running to the left of us. Our next stop was Cherating, a small village by the sea with a beach. Our guide book described it as an outstanding little “travellers” community where the locals have moved out and travellers moved in, it is an oldish village of ramshackled tinned roofed wooden houses and once you get used to it quite cute really. The draw here is the surf and pretty much every local chap surfs. We wondered around for an hour in the baking heat and finally finding a gaff for the night for a whopping 40RM, with no sea view. ... read more
January 27th 2010
We had to pull ourselves away from the Perhentian Islands so we could continue down the East Coast, so after breakfast we set off with Mee and his boat for the 21km trip across the South China Sea to Kuala Besut. Firstly, Mee’s boat was a single engine 12-18ft boat, onboard was Mee, a local chap, G and I (T)but unlike our two local travelling buddies we had no idea what we had let ourselves in for! After a precarious boarding at the unsightly pier, we set off at high speed, all is good, the sea appeared flat and calm. Ten minutes later and the sea swells are present, I (T) have never felt more like a floating bottle in my life, when our small boat descended down a swell, you couldn’t see the land in ... read more
January 23rd 2010
It was a very early start for us, we firstly had to get a bus to Kuala Besut which is a small fishing village and the gateway to the Perhentian Islands. We got up at an ungodly hour of 6:15 and headed over in the dark to the bus station in time for the 6:45 bus (bus number 639) to Kuala Besut. Upon arrival at the bus station we were annoyingly followed by a taxi driver who kept saying “bus left at 6:15”, to our annoyance the ticket office confirmed this with the taxi driver going “see I told you”, that wasn’t the point we didn’t have 50RM to give him to drive us there so we ignored him and went back to our hostel and went back to bed for the 9:30 bus. Now the ... read more
January 21st 2010
Upon arrival in Kota Bharu we found a great place to stay called KB Backpackers Lodge which was in our Rough Guide. To be fair the Rough Guide has only let us down once since using the Malaysian Guide for accommodation, that being the previous night in Gua Musang, anyway our gaff was yet another cell with shared facilities but the owner was really helpful. Our main reason for coming to Kota Bharu apart from it being a jumping off point from the Jungle Train was to see if the legendary Perhentian lslands were open yet, being the time of year that it is (January) it is very near the end of the North-Eastern Monsoon, over the monsoon season, between late October to Mid February the islands close as it is pretty hard to get there ... read more
January 20th 2010
We climbed aboard the 10am local bus from Kuala Tahan back to Jerantut, and headed directly towards the train station, we were unsure of our destination, as we couldn’t decide whether to stop off at Kuala Lipis or Gua Mustang, we would leave that up-to fate, or realistically the Malaysian rail service. The train stopped at both stations, after conducting some preliminary research - I.e. consulted our Rough Guide, we decided on Gua Mustang, primarily because of the early morning local train that departs from here, this is the ‘proper’ jungle train which takes 6 hours and stops everywhere! Whilst waiting for a train, we enjoyed a stunning curry each with rice for next to nothing, the bill come to RM 12 (about 2 pounds 30 pence) in total for a chicken and a beef curry ... read more
January 18th 2010
After we arrived at Kuala Lumpur central train station we boarded a packed monorail to Titiwangsa station were the Pekeliling bus station is based, we then boarded a rather plush coach - typical of Malaysia, to Jerantut for RM 19 each. Jerantut used to be a bustling gateway town, a transit between the east and west coast but it has since fell in insignificance due to the creation of the east coast highway which travels a little further south. Jerantut is a small little place which has a bus and train station, a central market and the usual amenities of a small little town including a KFC, but more importantly for us it was the gateway to Kuala Tahan and Taman Negara National Park. We had an hours wait for the local bus which run us ... read more
January 17th 2010
Today was the day we were going to complete our overland journey from London to Singapore, considering no one has been lucky enough to win the lottery and help fund our trip to go any further, Singapore is the furthest we will be able to go. We got up early but had to hang around for AGES waiting for someone to turn up to we could give our key back and get our key deposit back, we could have left it but at 10RM that was half a bus journey to Singapore. We caught the local bus to the bus station then got another bus for 20RM each to take us all the way to Singapore. It took much longer than we were lead to believe in fact it took double the amount of time, completely ... read more