So Singapore and K.L were the last places I talked about. But already even though it’s only been 3weeks since I last posted a blog and already I feel like a I could write for hours about what I’ve done. Travel blogs I now realise take a lot of time and effort, Which is now why I’m wondering how much longer I will keep this up for. But I will try.
So I’m sat on our tour bus in the middle of the outback heading from Karinjini National Park to Port Headland and then onto 80mile beach which will be our home for the night. But maybe I should backtrack a little.
From K.L we headed to the Perhentian Islands, we needed to get to the port of Kuala Besut, which was about a 9hour overnight bus journey away. We bought our ticket from inside the bus station, but something wasn’t right. But we accepted the fact they said we were going to get to where we wanted. We ended up in a town over 2 hours down the coast called Kuala Terangannu (Sp). Luckily we got talking to 4 guys from Palestine and Saudi Arabia and we managed to get some random guy to give us a lift, for a few pounds. After nearly killing us we got there and then onto the Islands. The boat took us to Kecil the smaller and cheaper of the two islands, but no less beautiful. From about 100m out you could see the seabed. The water was crystal clear and the beach golden. Due to not being able to book accommodation prior to arrival, it was a bit of a dash to the few chalet receptions to see what was free, which wasn’t much. But we found somewhere, Panorama Chalets. The room was one of the better rooms but still basic, a shower, toilet a sink and two single beds. But it did have a pretty nice verandah. The Beach we stayed on, Long Beach was beautiful. The pier at the end had great views of the whole beach and the ‘Jungle’ behind. The beach had a few bars and restaurants on which me and Dan ended up spending most of our time in. There wasn’t masses to do there, apart from dying in the heat, swimming or getting drunk. We didn’t end up going snorkelling just because we never got up in time. The weirdest thing was the water was really warm, you always want the sea to be slightly warmer. But we just wanted to cool off, but you couldn’t except for our cold showers. Ironic. The island did have some cool nature though, just from our verandah we could see massive spiders the size of my hand, less exciting but fun to watch Squirrels and monitor lizards. The monitor lizards were the most exciting, some were over 6ft long, they were huge. We’ld be sat on the verandah and you’d hear rustling under the chalet and look over and out would come these massive lizards only about a metre away. We thought we came away to relax, but when we got the chance we just wanted to be doing something, seeing lots of new things, but it was amazing for the few days that we had. We decided to head back to K.L, we had only been away for a week and had dome so much. Again getting back to K.L wasn’t pre-planned, we got the boat back to K.B and asked about for where to get the bus from. A guy rang someone and said there’s no buses from K.B (Kuala Besut) today. But there was a bus going from a town nearby. He offered us a lift, so we ran to his car, which was more like a metal box on wheels. It was old and tiny, but we didn’t complain, only laughed. Again this guy nearly killed us, must be a Malaysian thing. He overtook someone on a junction who was going the same way as us. Then went to overtake a lorry when another lorry was coming. He was nearly round the lorry, but clearly wasn’t going to make it so pulled back and laughed “not going to make that.” But he got us there, We arrived in Jerteh and got our tickets, but we had to wait for 5hours for the bus. Jerteh didn’t have much going for it, we wondered around with a Swiss guy we met, ended up eating what we think is tripe, disgusting stuff. The bus journey is probably the worst journey I will hopefully ever do. The bus looked ok, but we got caught in a storm driving through the jungle, but the bus driver was still overtaking. The air conditioning never got turned off so me and Dan in our shorts and t-shirts literally froze. Then we got stuck for an hour behind a crash, eventually I got much jumper out but realised my bag was wet. Turned out our bags were soaking, everything was wet all the way through. Must have been the A.C or the rain getting in. We managed to get to sleep, but were woken by the driver shouting “Kuala Lumpur” we looked out the window and when the lightning struck you could still see we were in the Forest, we got off with our bags into the rain. To find out there were no more seats so now soaking wet ourselves we had to get back onto this horrible bus. Luckily the next amount of time went quickly even though cold and wet we slept most of the way. We got to the outskirts of K.L but we were still on the highway. He pulled over on the highway and shouted K.L again so we got off expecting another bus, but no. he dropped us on the side of a busy highway and drove off. Another girl got dropped off too, but me and Dan had no idea where we were. We climbed the bank and walked until we found a taxi, well the girl showed us. Lucky she was there really.
Because i’ve previously written about K.L and Singapore, I’m going to skip it, not much happened. We had a wicked time, I got tattooed in each places. But we definatley enjoyed ourselves more the second time.
We flew out of Singapore early on Tuesday 30th June arriving in Perth, WA later the same day. When we got there we changed into trousers and put on jumpers, it was pretty cold and raining. We got a shuttle bus to our hostel, which had people in, the previous hostels were quiet or just had business men in them. This one actually had backpackers in. But it was nice and everyone there was nice and helpful. We went to see what Perth was like, for a massive city we expected a lot, but it was just a couple of streets where the centre was, very much like Worcester, England. But it had a few cool parks and little areas to sit out chill out. It also had a few cool suburbs where there was just as much to do in. We got on really well with everyone in the hostel and ended up staying up late and getting drunk every night, we had a few cool nights out too. But Perth didn’t have much to offer. A few groups were moving upto Broome which is up the west coast, they were buying camper vans and driving up. Everything they said sounded amazing, but there were downsides, like if you breakdown it would cost more to get it towed and repaired than the cost of the vehicle, so you could lose everything. So after a few days discussion me and Dan decided to go on a Western Xposure 10day tour up the coast. Which has been awesome, we’ve had a good laugh and some of the things Western Australia has to offer is unbelievable, from amazing gorges to beautiful beaches. So glad we have done this trip, but today is our last full day. Perth took a bit of time getting used to, but we started enjoying it towards the end. Our trip left the Monday after we arrived in Perth, it takes us 4,200km up the coast with over 40hours of driving.
It’s now the 4th August, I haven’t had chance to upload this blog onto the internet yet, but hopefully fingers crossed by tonight I will. So I have again moved on from Broome where we spent about a week to Darwin. Glancing over what I wrote over 2weeks ago, I still haven’t written about what happened on the tour. Well where do I start, the itinerary of the tour was pretty vast and my memory not so. I remember everything we did, but the order we did it in and the names of places fail me. Well we departed Perth on a rainy Monday morning, we arrived at our first destination: the Pinnacles to more rain. They are rock formations that rise from the ground to about 3m tall, the origins of them is still a bit unclear. There are a few explanations, one of the explanations is that it was old tree stumps from thousands of years ago that got covered and fossilised. Then with erosion they’ve re-appeared. Obviously this isn’t 100% true, but it’s something along those lines. This is where we saw out first wild kangaroos. Lunch on the first day was also interesting, we sheltered under a hole-ridden canvas in the rain making sandwiches Not knowing people made it more interesting, but a good talking point. Stopping on route to Sand board on the dunes, which was a lot of fun, but tiring to get back to the top. I even did something stupid and stood up on the board, which was f****** scary, due to having no control over the board, but it was good fun. I did crash near the bottom, but noone else was stupid enough to follow my lead. We carried up the coast to a view point, where we luckily saw migrating hump-back whales jump out of the water. The evening was spent in a house, where we all pitched in with the cooking. But the thing that got everyone talking was alcohol. Once everyone had had a beer we all got to know each other. This is where my memory gets blurry, not sure if it’s to do with the amount of alcohol we drank or just that we did so much that it’s hard to keep track of everything. I prefer to think it was the latter. We did many awesome things, from standing with the water at our toes at sunrise and wild dolphins swimming only a metre in front of us at Monkey Mia. To swimming with turtles and rays in the ningaloo reef. We also had the chance to hold a Joey, a baby kangaroo. Just so the family doesn’t get confused. We did many amazing things on the tour, but the major part and most amazing was the 3days we spent camping in the Karinjini National Park. We climbed through the most amazing gorges, with breathtaking scenery and camped under the stars. I’ve never seen so many stars in the sky and have definitely never seen the edge of the galaxy. We had kangaroos hopping round our camp-site and the occasional growl or bark from the dingoes The gorges had a rating of 1-6, 1 being easy and 6 being a route that you needed abseiling gear on. We got upto level 5, which unfortunately not all the group could do due to ability. Some of the level 5 routes we’re scary, if you slipped you could have seriously hurt yourself. We shuffled along vertical cliff edges with tiny grips and spider walked down stretches of the gorge. But all was worth it when you got to the pool at the end, which was always freezing due to it hardly ever seeing the sun. I believe Patrick has put a few pictures up of it on facebook. Karinjini is something that cannot be described by someone who’s not a talented writer or photographed by a professional. I’ve tried my best, and I will put pictures up on it. But maybe search it on Google, I’m sure they’ll be better pictures and descriptions there. So that was a rough guideline to what happened on the tour. If you search for westernxposure online, you may find the full details of what we did and see how much i’ve missed. But we started that tour 4weeks ago yesterday so forgive me for the vagueness.
We arrived in Broome, to 30degree heat, broome didn’t have much to offer. We spent our time at Cable beach, which was a gorgeous beach to chill out at. Broome however does have the oldest cinema garden in the world, where we watched Transformers 2, in deck chairs under the stars. Which was an awesome experience. Many of the people we met on the tour were slowly moving on, me and Dan decided we needed to find a job or moving on again. Which is sort of annoying me that we’re not really giving anywhere a chance. But if we’re not totally enjoying somewhere then what is the point of being there. Again pretty soon into our stay in Broome we booked flights upto Darwin, where we were told there were jobs. We needed to stop chilling out and start working, because otherwise we would never start working. We had a good week in Broome mainly drinking and sleeping on the beach. But it was cool. Before we booked the flights we looked into going on relocation to Darwin, which is where they give you a car and some cash for petrol and get you to drive it to where they want. It works out well, but you’re limited for time. Claudio an Italian guy we were meant to go with who we met on the tour, had to change the plans a bit. He needed to be in Darwin in about 2days from Broome. Which in a van is doable but meant it would be very long days driving, so me and Dan opted out. The last night in Broome, me, Dan, Pat and Clare cooked. Me and Dan had Kangaroo steak, which was awesome, cheap, good for you and good for the environment. Well it’s better for the environment than cows. It was a nice way to end the time with them. But they were headed up to Darwin at a later date, so we thought we might see them again.
Our flight to Darwin was about an hour and a half. We arrived into Darwin in the afternoon and checked into our hostel. We just wandered round the first day and went for food with a guy in our room in the evening at the Vic, which sold meals for $3.50 what a bargain. They had a quiz on after, which thanks to one of Tim’s friends we won. We won a $75 bar tab, me and Dan had already had a couple of jugs of beer each. So it turned out to be an awesome and very cheap night. On Wednesday we handed out cv’s into a seafood restaurant. I got the job the next day, so by Thursday I had a job but Dan was still looking. He did after a few days make a good effort handing out CV’s, but by the next week I had managed to get him a job at the restaurant, but by Friday morning the morning of his shift he had changed his mind. He had spoken to his friend who lives in Melbourne and had decided to go to see him. We were both finding Darwin pretty boring and Dan wanted to be in a bigger city and he was told his friend could get him a job. So Dan flew to Melbourne on Monday 3rd August at about 2am. So we’ve decided to go our separate ways, was a bit sooner than I thought, but I couldn’t go yet because I have a job which is money. But also I’m leaving Darwin soon. I fly to Singapore on the 16th and the then to Thailand on the 19th to see Han. I return to Oz on the 30th September, so me and Han are going to travel Asia together. Me and Dan plan to meet again on the East coast and travel that part when I get back, so that’ll be cool. Works not going so badly, they’re is some cool staff. I’ve spent a lot of time with a few. Me, Iseult, Leila, J.P and Guilluem end up having a few drinks after work. We’ve had a really good time together and I may even meet the girls on the East coast but not really sure what the guys are upto after. We went to go and watch Iseults cousin playing GAA (Gaelic Football) at a bar last night, which was cool.
Before Dan and Pat left,well I forgot to mention they got the same flight to M’bourne. We went to a Crocodile park, where we had a baby saltwater croc and I fed a 4.5m Saltwater croc which was an experience.
So for now I think you’re upto date. A lots changed in the last few days. Been thinking of joining Leila on a ski season in N.Z when I’m done in Australia. But think Dan wants to do a ski season in Canada. It’s amazing all the options you realise you have. Well money depending.
Seen as I don’t write on this that ofterI guess i’ll be in Asia next time, sure Han will make me write something whilst I’m there. Can’t want to see her and Asia.
P.S since i’ve been away i’ve realise how much hastle uploading photos is. So you’ll have to wait
