We’ll be gone till September, gone till September

ok we admit it we have been staying in brighton eating fish and chips hears
the proof we never left england
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we have now been in living and working Echuca for 4 weeks, or should that read; get up go to work get back grab tea bed, get up go to work grab tea bed, get up …… We work long hours to earn money to buy stuff, 10 or 12 hours a day in a tomatoe shed 8 days a week, sorting and packing tommies. No travel no new interesting or wired destinations for
these travellers Echuca pride of the Murry is home.

Curentley working in a tomatoe shed. Amanda has been there three weeks sorting millions of tommies in all shapes and sizes, Miller has been there a little over a week puting the lids on the boxes A’ has sorted or some other general warehouse duty usually involing a pallet truck. Working at the same place has given Miller a new ligt into A’s job, it Really is a shit as she described. Before this Miller has worked in Echuca, picking tommis, laboring at a building site, worked at a vineyar,a landfill site, and took down marques after a party.  No great jobs but i’ve had a bit more variation than amanda, now its just tommies.
Something to look forward to is that we have brought tickets to the athletics final of the commenwealth games on march 20th, starting to make plans on getting outta here, need to see more of Oz than the inside of a Shed. Its a big shed but Oz is a bit bigger.

Not much to report other than work, most exciting thing that happened this week was that Miller threw a saucepan at Amanda Smacking her right on her toes. Didn’t mean to throw the saucepan, and it was a big saucepan, the rim side finding its way to Amanda’s foot. Freak accident and by the way Amanda hopped around i knew it hurt, kind of thing only Miller can pull off.

domestic violence its a quiet town, and a slow news week.

http://blogs.bootsnall.com/Andy_g_Miller/wp-login.php

Having seen the sights of Sydney and tiring of city life,we headed north into the Blue Mountains. Katoomba was our base as we took in the sights of some beutiful senerary, the blue Mountains are called the Blue mountains due to the Blue haze, mist, that rolls in through the valley thanks to the eucalyptus trees, giving of some sort of radiation of something. There are some natural rock formations to see, and many walks to go on aound the national park,including many flights of stairs (don’t get amanda started on stairs!!)

Or Leeches A managed to get a leech bite on one of our walks Oh the BLOOD!!!!! Oh the she didn’t feel the bite only noticed because her white sock was RED when she took off her boots, we found 5 leeches that night running around our room must have come of the bottom off our boots. Was a nice natural park with many walks

Went back to Sydney to watch Madam Buterfly at Opera house Very Cool, a strange design of a building the sails make up difenert buildings its not one building but a couple joined together. totaly confussing when seeing it up close and walking aroundin it. Great views of the harbour from there. We have walked across Sydney harbour bridge unfortunatley we can’t afford the 100 quid plus it cost to climb over the bridge, but walked across the road way, just like the one in the toon just as bloodly windy too.

Travelled down to Melbourne for a change and to look for work, hopefully being in Victoria would help the cause more farms around there. stayed in a converted Nunnery for the first few nights very cool, now its a hostle with a starnge feel to it, close to god! Well the tacky Jesus wall clocks are cose to god the guest are happy to drink cheap wine and play shit head.

Whie in melbourne we went to the openning day of the Australian open, watched Venus Williams crash out in th first round as well as our very own no hoper Tim the pussy cat henman crash out to some russian bloke. in fairness to Tim the crowd were a bit pissed and an ironic pissed ausie kept shouting TIMMY as in South Park, along with some wierd comments about liking tim’s hair cut…. i thought some of the stuff shouted from terraces was strange. Victoria Market in Melbourne is well worth a visit, the night market on Tuesdays sells any kind of food you could think of. Unfortunatley we had already eaten but the Kangaroo, and croc burgers looked nice.

Curentley a few hours north of Melbourne in Echuca. WHERE I hear you Ask?? Echuca a little town of 10,717 people (so it says on the sign edge of town), curnetely in a hostel that helps you find fruit picking work. Done a day picking Tomatoes and we hated it, pay was SOOOOOOOOOOOO shit, and it was 53 c!!!! Illegal to work at those temp but hay the turk farmer didn’t care, and they want us to go back tomorrow!!! I / we think Know this is the low point of the trip, just need some good work to start so we can earn the cash to start travelling again, need to save some majour cash. Season is late at the minute so we are 2 weeks behind in finding a job than we hoped.

never mind still in Oz and its sunny 🙂

Happy New Year.

So what did you do for the New Year, any thing exciting, where did you spend it? ………. What did we do? Well Sydney Harbor had a few fireworks, Mrs Macquarie’s Chair is a look out point which is popular with a few locals and tourists a like. We had front row seats (well standing room only) and a great view of the fireworks, watching the Harbor bridge explode was quite a sight. The fire works are like nothing we have ever seen, not quite like watchin’, your dad light a fire fireworks and sparklers in the backyard.

Sydneyis a nice city, we have booked tickets to watch Madam Butterfly at the Opera house on the 10th, have walked over harbor bridge, as windy as the one in Newcastle UK. Visited some other of the sites, drinking the local red wine, generally having a good time currentley looking for a JOB!!!!

ok so it is 04:29 in the AM here in Sydney.
We watched the harbor fire works at harbor bridge and sydney harbor from
Miss Macreals or something like that chair. Got a great view front row
stands was there all day got perfect veiw, 2 fire work desplays aty 9pm and
midnight equalled 40 mins entertainment and 11 hours waiting time, my feet
hurt. what hurt more was that we at 23 needed id to buy booze so we went
2005 T total, 2006 was fixed as we wenrt to a bar started chattin to a nice
Ozy who brought a few rounds, and left the bar we entered at 2am at 4am. One
bar wouldn’t let us in as flip flops are not a good footwear. miller went
out in his hicking boots as open toe shoes my sandels are a no no around
here. I miss SE Asia wear what ever you want get a beer soooooooo laid back
too much like england here, shoes please i’m backpacking.
Anyway have done the big 10 9 8 7 6 thing saw the be4st fireworks desplay
we’ve ever seen, and finally started on the white wine, ale, and largar
respectavley. so at 11 am when we may get out of bed and those of u in the
UK start counting down the numbers we may ring and wish a haapy new year in
person. for those in SE Asia who have doen the count down happy 2006, for
those waiting longer than UK we will be eatting our evening meal about the
time you start the count down.

where ever you are happy new year.
Miller i should go to bed or get more beer……

MERRY CHRISTAMS

Christams in 28c heat, walking the streets in a t-shirt and shorts, not quite like home. We arrived in singapore on Xmas eve and took a walk around the streets to find 100s of 1000s of people out and about, many spraying silly string a fake snow everywhere. It seeems that a favourate past time for 1000s a younger people is to run around srapying each other with fake snow from a can, we guess it is because it doesn’t snow here. Anyway as yopu walk down roads you often get caught up in the action and wew were covered in foam on a number of occations. To get out of the “snow” and to dry off a little we popped into a bar at 00:30 xmas morning, ordering one PINT (never get pints in Asia) and Amanda’s first glass of Red since HK. The drinks went down very well and we started xmas day the right way.

Christamas day was spent in the company of two very nice Americans Bo and Amber, who we met back in Laos. We went for Christams lunch at a nice hostel resturant on Orcard road the main shopping street in Singapore and where we had been “snowed” the night before. Lunch was a buffet and I had one main course of peppered beef with all the trimmings, includig rice and a popadom. Then on to roughly 3 or 4 desert courses, including xmas cake, icecream, bread pudding, some stuff I’m not sure what it is called but tasted nice. Needless to say we all ate very well and no more food was consumed until lunch on boxing day.

Probabily the best part of our KL experiance after the back to back films in the fridge. Cold air con in Malaysian cinemas.

Was the friends we made, ok so they turnned us to drink but we can forgive them for that. We had yet to drink alchol in Malaysia due in part to the point we don’t need booze to have a good time, and part to the point that it ia damn expensive. Among the nights out was a famous sitting on the step experiance. We started in the Regga bar in China town, nice and cheap for a ladies night, the three girls who where with us; Amanda, Wendy and Becky were the only girls in the bar and they drank on the cheap. While travor twisted my arm and I moved from sprite (costing more than the girls alcohl drinks) to sharing a jug of beer. It was expensive to say the least to drink in that bar so we (me and trevor) headed back to the hostel to the roof top bar a cheaper alturnative. Unfortunatley at 01:30 in the morning it was closed, drastic messures were needed and not for the first time in KL we found ourselves buying beer from the 24 hour 7/11. Being that beer is expensive we resorted to Skol, we worlds 3rd largest selling beer. We did look for white lightening, red stripe, even cheap red wine, but couldn’t find anything more brown back and road side tramish. We did end up sitting on the stairs in the hostel drinking the beer, until the girls returned and we went outside and sat on a step in the street oposite the hostel. This was at 02:oo and we must have looked like a complete picture to the few chinese still around eating at the hawker stalls.

still a great evening back on the beer.

Kuala Lumpur turned out to be a refreshng change of pace for us weary travellers. After 10 days of treking around the Cameron Highlands and Taman Negara, and the pace at which we had travelled over the past few months and we were tired. Tired of sight seeing, changing hostels, serching for good accomodation, getting on and of buses and trains, were we templed, museum(ed) and now jungelled out.

So having time to spare before we were due in Singapore we made KL our base, for what turned out to be 6 days and the longest we have stayed in one place since we started our trip. We stayed in China town a vibrant collection of hawker stalls, unfortunatally they all sell the same thing. Pirate DVDs, genuine fake Rolex’s, and not so cheap designer copied trainers, with the odd very strange design or colour. Still a good place to stay as the hostel was clean and cheap and there are many chinese resturants open all hours, as well as it being a short walk to all the land marks. By the end of the week we knew KL like the back of our hand, we would have stayed longer we just ran out of things to do.

On our first full day we went to the Petronas Twin Towers, the worlds tallest bulidings. We arrived at the early time of 08:30 to find a queue already doublling back on its self, the towers don’t open untill 09:00. We went up half way to the worlds 2nd highest skybridge on the 41-42 fllors. It links the two towers, unfortunataly yuou can not travel to the top of the towers at the 88th floor. Still for a free view of the city along with the exibition centre it was well worth a visit. The Towers are situated in the KLCC an asortment of shopping malls, cinemas, art gallerys amongest others. We for a nice change (nice change was the buzz word for KL) became mall rats for a day and went around shopping for a few clothes, some how I (Miller) ended up buying some clothes, and Amanda the girl didn’t buy a thing!! Later that day as the sun went down we went up the KL tower, to get a 360 degree veiew of the city at night. As you can only travel half way up the skybridge at the twin towers, you are acctualy higher at the top of the KL tower than you were in the wolrds tallest building. The view from 421 meters high, plus the hill at the bottom that isn’t counted in the hight was excellent.

We also talk a walk around the the Lake gardens and visited the bird park. The park is the largest free-flight avery in the world, (so it says on the sign) with 3,000 birds. I’m unsure if we saw 3,000 birds, many of them are in cages so don’t fly around that much. Still had a good time feeding the ostrages was funny as you hand feed them green leaves, with the emues watching. The emues will take the leaves from you but not eat them, which we found strange the ostriaes love them and reach straight through the cage trying to eat the leaves and your fingers. We also saw a nice show a talent form the parrots as they cycled bycles around and counted up to 10, still higher than some of my mates can count.

In our nice change mood we went to the city ballet, feeling all cultured we popped along and watched an interesting dance routine based on urban living. not a tutu or piroet was in sight but a thoroughly enjoyable experiance was had by all, including becky a friend form the hostel who we roped into joining us.

In the hostel we met some interesting people among them, Wendy and Trevor. Wendy who we have scared off visiting India with are stories for that place, and Trevor the happy snapping brit with his new camera joined us on a visit to the Aquarium. It was an experience and watching a guy in full dive gear and in a santa costume feeding sharks is a sight I will never forget, nor will I forget the size of some of the turtles there just HUGE. Later we went to the IMAX theatre (Asias largest cinema screen) and watched King Kong. A surprise was that myself and Amanda enjoyed the film, we had chosen Narnia over the Gorilla a few days earlier. At Time Square the home of the IMAX is another attraction you don’t see every day an indoor theme park, with a rollercoaster flying around 3 floors of the mall. Needless to say we headed there, jumped on all the rides in quick succession and felt like crap after.

The Oldest Rain Forest in The World also has the Longest Canopy walk in the world.

We took a walk along a dozen rope bridge high up in the tree canopy, unsure of the exact hight lets just say high. great views of the tree tops and the jungle from that hight, see plants and insects that you would not see on the ground. it is also had to swot at the insects when you are holding on to a rope bridge good knows how many feet in the air. We enjoied the treking through the rain forest, boy was it humid.

We took a night walk with a guide, saw so many insects and plants that you would not see during the day or without the aid of a guide. I spotted a brown spider which I was very pleased about, we saw a baby bird spider and an adult one in its hide. The bird spider is the worlds second largest spider an the baby was huge. As we came out of one of the hides after spoting some deer, a giant fruit bat was hangging from a tree branch in front of us about 7 foot in the air. A great sight with its mouth all lite up under our tourch light. Haven’t been that close to a bat until the next day. A night there are glow worms and glowing mushrooms, natuers neon lights can see them only in the dark they are too small to spot in daylight. a real nice walk spotting spiders, crickets, and stick insects along with others.

The next day was spudunking – caving.. Gwano bats droppings covered the cave floor as we ducked and crawelled our way through this dark cave. bats hung from the roof as we walked through an under ground stream and spipped and slided through crevases to reach the end. Much fun was had by all and I didn’t bang my head once, our clothes needed a wash due to the large darkened stains on our backsides as we had slided down one of the cave walls (which was covered in Gwano) to reach the end.

Taman Negara was an enjoyable few days of treking.