Well, you might have noticed, we're a bit behind again. I'm not going to go through the excuses, suffice to say that it's hard to have adventures and write about them at the same time...... so we're going to give yall a sneak peak at where we've been, in the hope that you don't all lose interest and stop checking in on us. Sorry bout the delay, we're working on it.

We started our Nile Cruise looking for beer but unfortunately Ramadan - the Muslim Holy month - had begun that day. During Ramadan a good Muslim will let nothing but air pass his or her lips during the day (no food, water or even cigarette smoke). They are also expected to abstain from alcohol completely and from sexual relations with everyone/thing except their first wife (sorry boys, no camel, donkey or monkey spanking for a month). Not only does this make it nigh on impossible to get booze, it also makes everyone pretty grumpy, especially just before breakfast (around 5ish in the afternoon). They are also not supposed to sell alcohol either, but when there's a bill there's a way and it was just a case of talking to the right Mohammed and paying a bit more than usual. It's official, I'm a bad Muslim, but hey the squeaky Infidel gets the beer....

The night train was not fun, this is probably as good a time as any to de-glamourise travelling a bit. It's not all beer and hammocks, a lot of our time is spent stuck in the travel grind, crammed like cattle on buses and trains, missing nights of sleep, or waiting at bus/train/plane depots. In 6 months or so we've probably had about 3 weeks of real holiday (i.e lazing about). A true adventure means you take the good (deserted, perfect beaches) with the bad (trying to sleep on the floor of a noisy moving train with one arm around your valuables). The pain and discomfort is transitory (just try to remember it while it's happening) and makes the destination all the more worthwhile (so I'm told). The die-hard traveller wears his (or her) painful train/bus/plane rides like a badge of honour, scoffing at the lesser mortals who haven't spent 12 hours with their knees around their ears busting for a pee.

Salaam Salaam, I don't know why you say Salaam I say Salaam.
How different the musical world would have been if the Beatles spoke Arabic.

After a couple of nights on couches, catching up with friends, we made a move into the world of the tourist. We booked our first ever tour over the internet, an 11 day adventure up and down the Nile. This was a bold step, organised tours are, almost the complete opposite of what independent travelling is about. Shuffled about in air-conditioned buses, taxied to and from pre-booked hotels and lazing about on catered cruises........... hang on, that doesn't sound half bad does it?

We headed for Snowdonia, partly because we had heard it was beautiful, but mostly because of the name. Now I know every name for every place, person, animal and abstract theological concept had to be made up by a human at some point, but of all the places we had visited Snowdonia alone sounded like it had been dreamed up by Walt Disney during a severe episode of writers block. Snowdonia ....... what sort of name is that?

We land in Belfast at 7 in the morning. There's a feeling of tiredness creeping into the group, maybe it's just the 4:30 am start but more likely it's the unrelenting pace, driving us 2000 miles in just over a week in a crazy push too see it all and get our money's worth out of the car. Somethings gotta give and I hope it's not our sense of humour.

We were walking around the park when the Mushrooms kicked in. Flashing lights filled the sky, dancing around each other, moving in formations. "Can you see them too?", I asked Ed my imaginary friend, He could.

U.F.O's or Shared Hallucinations? Whatever.... it was weird.

This is our last foray back into the past. I'm going to miss the power to play with time, to drag you from past to future and back again like some bad b-grade movie, but I am glad to finally catch up.

After 3 weeks of hard Spankin' we catch a train to Derby to hire a car with my cuz Cita, to do a quick tour of the U.K, not realising that we hard barely enough money to drive the thing, let alone eat and sleep as well (reality bites). Despite the fact that we were broke we managed to see heaps and have a lot of laughs (most of them cheap).