DANGER DOWN UNDER
Australia is the land of plenty. However, for Helen and I, it seems to be the land of plenty of stupid accidents!!!

To date; I have nearly drowned, been stalked, been bitten by a dog and only yesterday somersaulted over the handlebars of my bike. Helen careered around a roundabout and managed to just stop short of dying in a horrific car accident and nearly got hit by a high speeding train in said car. In fact, only yesterday Helen nearly died of sunstroke. She was expecting some sympathy only to find out Lib had outdone her by coming home battered, bleeding and bruised with a sprained ankle.

Helen's also been involved in plenty of drunken fighting and had some dramatic bruising to show for it... She had a comedy karate-bruise that lasted for two weeks!

The most frightening and dramatic of the Darwin experiences, had to be the near drowning......

The day all started pleasantly enough, with Helen, Billy, Clint, Matty and I going out for a jolly good swim in the local death pool (or creek as the Aussies call it). I was swimming happily, when all of a sudden, I swam a bit too close to a waterfall. Before I knew it, I was being sucked down into the water.... It was all very peaceful and I thought that maybe this was it!

But it was not to be!

Billy, who had been standing at the top of the waterfall, dramatically down it on his buttocks. He leapt fearlessly into the raging white water which was roaring and splurging with venom. He fought with the strength of a hundred men (and 10 hamsters - one with a cold) to battle the ferocity of the force of nature, to pull his beloved one out of danger. He romanced the damsel with the words "get out", as he pushed her away from the swirling pool of doom.. He then pulled her towards safety, protectively putting his strong, manly arms around her. Unfortunately, Lib's death wish was stronger than his will, as she repeatedly kept swimming back into danger....

Blimey, it was all a bit stressful....

Although it was kind of fun, so here's a re-enactment of the event:

Billy looked:

And saw the frightened Lib









Saved her and was very smug:










In fact, you can just see the edge of the waterfall behind young Matty here....

(Unfortunately we didn't get any actual photos of it because my camera had run out of batteries and I couldn't convince Lib to go back and do it again so we could have some quality snaps. Damn!)

It's a surprise we didn't get bitten by this beast actually. You can't see just how large this is because we didn't fancy getting that close, but it was as large as two hand spans! (Of a giant!!) (Not that we ever exaggerate)(but it was very big) (very, very, very, very, etc .....)

Spreading The Squid

Since coming away we have been introducing everyone to the face of the squid and now all of Australia is partaking in this crazy craze! Some people were rather creative and invented their own versions of the squid, as you can see:

The Incredibly Drunk Squid The Psychadelic, Spot-the-squidder squid


href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2384/2792/1600/Matt%20squid.jpg">

The Side-Hide Squid

The Scary-Bearded Squid

The Yogic Squid

And here we are trying to teach the art of the squid. You would think it would be easy, but as you can see, some people are just very slow learners......

Well, after doing lots of drinking and very little sleeping, we decided to go and meet some crazy plants and animals in the rainforest! By the way, it did actually rain a lot and everyone felt that they had to make the obligitory jokes about raining in a rainforest (ha ha).

Despite this, the trip was amazing. Helen and I had had approx. 2 hours sleep the night before and it made the already strange land even more surreal.....

We started off by stumbling, bleary eyed into the coach. The tour guide, Billy, called us "the Beaver sisters", presumably not because we look like each other, but because of the comedy surname! When he did get around to finding out our first names, he insisted on shouting "MUM!" at Helen several times, because apparently she shares the same name as his mother...... Anyway, he was great and very, very funny.

We trekked through the rainforest and saw many interesting and dangerous foliages. In a comedy way, our tour guide, whilst imposing upon us the dangers of the dangerous foliage, proceeded to be attacked by the most dangerous of said dangerous, spikey foliages and was extremely calm about the whole incident. Even though his arm expanded to the size of a small wallaby. Apparently, the pain and rash can take up to two years to finally disappear...... Bloody Aussies!

Later, not to be outdone, Lib became trapped in a tree:



But seemed quite happy about the whole thing. If it weren't for her intense phobia of being left behind by buses, then she'd probably still be there. (Trapped in trees, trapped in trees....)








Other sights we saw were, shrooms



n crazy frogs:


huge waterfalls (just like the timotei one):


and tree lizards:

Singapore - Part Two

So, after many marriages and a few shenanigans, we decided to become far more civilised and went to Raffles Hotel for a spot of Champers! What ho!



Found the bar shut, so went hunting for tigers!!

Lib looked

And found!

(that you could see her pants through her skirt!! Hahahahaha!!!)


Then we went to the art museum, which was cool. We were cultured and chatted about, erm, pictures and politics.

And then we smoked Sheesha!!

So, all in all, a fantastic time!!

Singapore!!!

Well, we are writing this weeks after we left Singapore, because we have only just recovered from Singapore! Two weeks of sleep (which we desperately needed) and we now feel much better!

We arrived, on a plane, and found a hostel run by a lovely man called Khalil! We got our room, or several people's rooms (as there were 8 beds!) and slept. Then we woke up, and went on an epic trek to find the 'rock pub'. After wandering for ages and being directed into various carp parks, we finally found it - even though it wasn't a rock pub any more. Luckily however, it was ladies night, and although they didn't spot that me and Lib weren't ladies - they gave us free booze anyway! We then continued to drain the bar dry and met lots of fantastic people!

Firstly, Bird

We met her before we even got there by accidentily making her choke on her dinner by questioning her in the dark, in a surprising manner, about where the rock pub was. She was very lovely about the whole thing and turned out to be a crazy, fun, chick. She's grape!

Then we met Adi! And he's an absolute star, and we love him!

(And Lib married him - a bit!)

He was entirely responsible for our absolute drunkardness which ensued, and resulted in my getting married when on a trip to the toilet. To this man here :

I also then married Bird, and Adi became my boyfriend. Within our 4 day stay, I became quite infamous. ??!!!

We then had the 'Honeymoon' in a fantastic club called mos (Ministry Of Sound) where we got in for free (again, they didn't spot we weren't ladies! Ha hahaha) and we all had a jolly good night! What!

Bitten On The Bum In Bangkok!

As well as wandering round the busy markets and risking our life in our hands amongst the traffic, we also went on a tranquil trip down the river. We passed ramshackle houses on the river banks and were waved at by happy, smiling people. They say that Thailand is the "country of smiles" and it's true.....

Unfortunately, the peace was interrupted when whilst basking in the sunshine, I felt a scratching sensation on my leg. Upon looking down, I saw a millipede, but not an ordinary, jolly decent British sized one; it was at least 30cm long and a fat bugger at that! When it saw me, it seemed to raise its head and then sink its jaws into my bum! I was so surprised by this event, that I leapt in the air, did a true girly scream and threw myself at Helen, nearly knocking her into the water (Helen can't swim properly, so she wasn't impressed!)

When everything had calmed down, we hopped off the boat at a snake crocodile farm. It cost us 100 Baht to get in, so I opened my bag to get my purse. I soon became puzzled, as I couldn't find it..... Suddenly, the man who had taken us on the trip appeared, "What you looking for?" He asked. When I told him, he calmly replied, "Oh, it's in the river." We can only presume that in the panic that ensued following the buttock millipede biting moments, the purse, along with nealy Helen, and also (we later realized) Lib's sunglasses, were thrown, probably quite dramatically, into the water. Oops.

So, now we have no money!

(But we have really!)

Then, I (Helen) held a snake, which was really quite heavy ...

And following that, I confused ... and then got attacked by, a monkey ..... (again!)

And then we quickly went to a temple, and Lib had her photo taken infront of it in a comedy way.

Bangkok! Day One - The Crazy Fun Begins!

Bangkokis a crazy, crazy place. We stayed in Khoa Sarn Road for the first night, but got annoyed by the pretentious backpacking types, so we moved upmarket (daaaahling) to Chinatown and shared a room with a huge bug. Turns out that bug was quite friendly and persistent, even though we kept trying to chuck him out! All he wanted was a place to stay, just like us.

First day we got horribly lost, as the map did not seem to mirror the actual streets of Bankok. The guidebook said that to get lost was one of the things to do in Chinatown, so it had to be done, and we did it well!

We tuk (ha ha) our life in our hands by getting tuk tuks (3 wheeled death machines) to places when our feet hurt so much, we couldn't walk anymore. Sometimes, we got taxis, purely to cross the road! The traffic was so crazy..... and there don't appear to be any rules other than "Run!! Run for your life!!"

Having crossed the road, we were then able to visit places like temples ..... Which was brilliant! we had some good chats with Buddha and saw some beautiful places.

As you can see, contary to popular belief, we ARE still alive and Helen is still stealing hats!

We have had a few near misses with death, as last night, Helen had a playfight and was very nearly concussed, by wanging her head on a metal bar! One hour and two tea towels full of ice later, it was fine.......

We have been having lots of fun and lots of strange experiences. We're in Cairns at the moment and it's great, but it isn't! The problem is, all the aussies seem to contradict themselves..... For example, we ask for directions and the answer is, "It's that way, but it's the other way. Stay on this floor and go down the escalators, then turn right"(as indicating left). It's all very confusing, but I'm sure it will all be fine (but it won't!) ...... We were very excited when we first arrived, as you can see.....


(There should be a video here of Lib leaping around in the airport from excitement, but there isn't!)(There's a guy sitting behind us who came over and joined in the Crazy Cairns dance!)(Which you'd be able to see, but you can't ...!)

Instead - here sums up how we felt when we had finally arrived ...The photo's here but it's not! It's actually at the top of the page!?!

The guy you can see in the background had to come over after the video was taken and join in the Cairns dance!! We're staying in a backpacker's hostel in the centre of town at the moment and we've met some cool people, including the obligatory "crazy israeli" and the "mummy and daddy are paying for this trip" type. Well, that's about all the news for now. When our money has been transferred to our Australian bank accounts, we can start spending it on cool things like rainforest tours and scuba diving. You see, we have money, but we haven't.........

Our Travels - Day One!

THE MOMENT OF REALISATION DAWNS...............

This was the moment when we both looked out of the window in the airport and went, "Aaargh! What on earth are we doing? HA HA HA!" Having navigated our way through the airport and being very proud of our selves, we had to sit for AGES and ponder our decision.......