OUCH!

11.30pm Thu 20 Mar: It's almost midnight in Hamilton, NZ, and here's a stop-gap blog until I have time to write a proper blog in a few days' time.
I'm afraid to say I've abandoned my love of writing in favour of stackloads of sensational gallavanting around Queensland, Australia (very wet but fun nonetheless) and New Zealand (simply stunning and amazing hospitality with Nati's aunts and uncles in Hamilton, home of the recent England cricket catastrophe).
Check back in a few days for a proper blog...until then, some of you will be pleased to see I finally met my match when I came cropper with a croc.
We're now heading to the most remote places either of us have ever visited - Tahiti and a scattering of other stunning coral islands in French Polynesia, and then Easter Island, which really is the ends of the earth.
Until then...thanks for the emails and muchas saludos to all
Ali & Nati

ALI AND NATI STRIKE GOLD!

8pm Thu 7 Feb: Having just returned from two days swinging a metal detector and pick through the bush near Bendigo, Australia, I am proud to open this long-overdue blog with a bombshell journalism headline: ALI AND NATI STRIKE GOLD!
It's true...the novice mining duo (pictured above; Max, I doff my cap to you for stealing your photo idea) have hit it rich, striking something missed by hundreds of thousands of miners during the 1850s goldrush.
But...and why is there always a 'but'?....we're not retiring yet, and plans to purchase that small Caribbean island are still on hold.
Why?
Well, we DID find gold, but it was 100 specks (value $2), phenomenally-patiently panned from a creek by Nati at superb recreated goldrush town Sovereign Hill (www.sovereignhill.com.au) in Ballarat.
We did trawl the bush, following up a 'red-hot' prospecting tip (maybe of the wild goose variety), but, after two days attempting to decipher unintelligible screeching noises from our hoover-esque kit, digging numerous large holes and earning a handful of blisters...the highlights of our haul were: a bullet, nails and a whole lotta rusty metal.
So...here we are in Sydney, staying not in the Ritz penthouse but a down-to-earth Coogee hostel, but still a damn sight better than the monstrous Favela Backpackers from Melbourne last weekend.
Before that hovel, stayed in a joint familiar to a couple of poss blog readers - 'Mad' Max Feltham and Adam 'Turkish Delight' Chakmak - the establishment being Coffee Palace in Melbourne's yuppie-backpacker-hippie-rollerblader-beach-clubbing-prostitute mish-mash St Kilda.
St K is a crazy place.
Take the time I was making a vitally-important phone call and a tramp, having shuffled into smelling distance, lost control of his trousers and they dropped, like a flag shooting down a flagpole, to his ankles, revealing all.
Or, still on the trousers theme actually, as I left St K's version of Clapham funky house Mecca Inigo the other Sunday night, a guy on the tram stripped to his Y-fronts, delivering a quite brilliant impromptu rap about...trams.
Despite the strangeness, I love Melbourne and gotta say it or Sydney are deffo my fave cities in el mundo. Any opinions?
Super-cool Coogee is my new No 1 Sydney suburb - and Melb is awesome - whether jogging round Albert Park (Aussie GP there March 16); rollerblading down Port Phillip promenade (just the one head-over-heelsers...so that's why they give you elbow pads); dipping in the 2006 Commonwealth Games pool (I now call Nati 'Nemo'); shopping on Chapel St, in Fitzroy and the CBD (ok, Nati forced me to write that bit); or, this being Melbourne, gatecrashing a couple of world-beating clubbing events.
No 1: Sat daytime fluro rave to hard dance (for the uneducated/ignorant, read: harder than really hard house - this is fast…you should have seen my dance moves!).
No 2, without a doubt one of my top three clubbing nights EVER, was a hard trance (read: devastating hands-in-the-air trance-hard house) blitz served up by no-nonsense German duo The Hitmen. My brain must have produced record quantities of endomorphins in three hours of absolute euphoria.
Oz is awesome and the combo of upbeat people & fun-lovin', sporty lifestyle has got me thinking of living and working here again one day.
A few stories...people reckoned we had Buckley's chance - but we hitched back O'Bourke - Hicksville, actually - one arvo in some cobbers' utes.
Saw a load of roos and koalas but no salties (thankfully), cooled down in a billabong; drank a few slabs of tinnies - no goon though; wore thongs; met a few flamin' galahs; and Nati cracked the sh*ts when I called her a Sheila. Fair dinkum!...
And if you can translate any of that nonsense, you're a true Aussie.
Met some bonzer locals when hitching Sydney to Melbourne and around...like dyed-in-the-wool trucker Wes, whose broken air con in 41C heat led to a throat-numbing three-hour shouting conversation...during which we stunned him by revealing England has a winter when it's summer Down Under - and that Norway is amazingly even colder and actually quite close to the North Pole.
Then there was Steve, the drunk cricket club groundsman, who became the (uninvited but entertaining nevertheless) third party in Nati and my supposedly-romantic, veranda cheese-and-wine evening.
On a more genteel note, had a lovely time with Rosa, a fun Melbourne lady we met on the Nile three months ago - staying at her great hol home, sipping whisky, being whisked around the sights and having a vast amount of food forced on us. Thanks, Rosa!
Quick bang-bang of some other ace Oz moments: free Plump DJs rave in Sydney's equivalent of Trafalgar Square; NYE Harbour Bridge fireworks and Hed Kandi clubbing; Yarrawonga's spooky, colossal dammed lake with tens of thousands of dead, grey gum trees poking out; gorgeous yellow grass & green gum trees in the Victorian bush - especially cycling/wobbling sampling Rutherglen wineries' fortified reds and ports; Williamstown (port of the boats variety), beautiful tall ships and some right salty old sea dogs on Australia Day; Bollywood dancing with 2,000 people in Melbourne; the viewtastic Great Ocean Road (despite main 12th Apostle collapsing since my prev visit), and; unintentionally having a beer in the hotel where bushranger Ned Kelly was locked up after his armour-plated police shoot-out.
Before Oz, had fun Xmas in Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand, in cabin on beach. Xmas Eve Full Moon Party was great but what a mess everyone else seemed to be in!
Good and bad news since my last FMP in 2004. My fave funky house club had become a tacky impersonation Seven Eleven convenience store, but revamped Paradise Bungalows rocked with psy-trance...and found another top f house club, wicked if you stood in front of the two non-broken speakers.
Singapore inbetween Xmas and NY also v cool – unbelievable veggie and beef curries in Little India, before Qantas flight to Oz during which Nati broke world record for number of in-flight movies watched in a single flight.
Fly to Cairns tomorrow for three weeks camper-vaning to Brisbane, seeing Ed Randell from uni and family friends en route.
Thanks again from Nati and I for all the emails - great to hear news from home - and congrats to the people who deserve them...I'd better not reveal your big secrets here!
You can comment on this blog if you wish by hitting the ‘COMMENTS’ tab below.
All the best from both of us, hope you're well and look forward to hearing from you soon and seeing you back in the UK in the summer.
Now its time for a Tooheys!
Ali & Nati

I've put up some new pics on older blogs below if you fancy a look.

A hammock, Ko Phi Phi, kayaking, 'White Christmas' and the awesome...the fabulous...the one and only...FULL MOON PARTY!

3pm Thu 20 Dec: My hammock, slung from a lolloping branch above the sand, is swaying gently as I admire giant limestone cliffs planted opposite a sheet of light green and turquoise water.
This spot is familiar to two potential blog readers - Andy Worden and Graham Caygill - as we're outside the thatched Mao Prao cabins on the famously-beautiful Ko Phi Phi Don island, off west Thailand. Andy, Cago and I stayed here three years ago.
Nati is sprawled on a sarong in the shade of another branch, and, if there was ever a spot to take time out and write a blog wishing everyone a truly Merry Christmas, a fun New Year and a sensational 2008...this is that it. We both wish you a really great one!
I'm feeling festive after a kayak shop played 'White Christmas' last night as I jogged down an almost-white sand beach under a 3/4-full white moon. Thought that was quite cool - and decent blog material - so maybe shouldn't mention Cliff Richard's abomination 'Mistletoe and Wine' followed to turn cool into cheese.
For the big day, we're heading to Koh Pha Ngan (Xmas Eve Full Moon Party...is that great timing, or is that great timing?) and a cabin plonked ON the beach - then Sydney for New Year fireworks and, after midnight, a massive, classy Hed Kandi house night.
Back to the hammock...I'm fantistically happy to be here in Phi Phi; but also very sad, as what touched me most about the 2004 Tsunami was the terrible loss of life on the island I had visited three months earlier.
700 people died on Phi Phi that Boxing Day morning.
At Mao Prao, I recognise a Thai man from our previous visit. He tells me his friend was killed when the restaurant was destroyed.
The main town suffered far more damage, as waves swept over the 100m-wide sand spit (backed by beaches on both sides) on which the town is built. Photos, screen-grabs and videos at http://www.issuespotter.com/
Most of the town has been rebuilt but the scars are still there. There are still piles of twisted wood, barren land between battered palm trees, and people sleeping in rough wooden shacks which double as daytime fruit stalls.
Despite the reminders, and the daily invasion of 6ft red lobsters from package-holiday-and-sleaze hot-spot Phuket, Phi Phi is still unquestionably beautiful.
This patch of Thailand is famous for sea-kayaking, and Nati and I have had some super paddles: around Phi Phi Leh of 'The Beach' movie fame; into the shallow, pale blue, cliff-wrapped lagoon of Hong Island near Krabi (absolutely awesome for 'helloooooo' echoes!), and; up against the strange finger (or a ruder protrusion) shapes of sculpted limestone at Railay.
Nati, with her cute doggy swimming style and fear of deep water, has been surprsingly calm and hardly screamed at all.
We're two weeks into our Thai journey, which started on the southern island of Ko Lipe. We were fortunate to have a cabin above a breathtaking hook-shaped swoop of white sand; to tuck into a record-size coconut ('procured', not purchased) large enough to excite the late Norris McWhirter; swing on dangling vines from rocks onto a beach, and; relax on a picture-perfect wooden swing with a classic beach-palm tree-sea-sky view.
You may know Nati and I are crazy about food, so we've loved trying every different cuisine possible in the three months of our trip. Thai curries are just incredible...I can (and do) eat them every night. And Nati still starts salivating if I mention a sizzling seafood platter she had a fortnight ago.
We arrived in Thailand after a couple of weeks in Singapore and Malaysia, both home to the best hawker/street food I've ever tasted. Aside from skyscrapers and colonial buildings, Singers also has: quayside aerobics featuring free Yakult...ok, the temptation was too great; a superb zoo with performing elephants, polar bears and orangutans (see pic above); and a tremendous overhead thunderstorm with gunshot bangs echoing off tower blocks.
Delved into history in Malysia - Nati wasn't TOO bored - tracking Portuguese, Dutch and British colonisation in museum-mad Melaka (only place I've ever heard a flower-filled tourist tricycle play AC/DC...Nati was more impressed with Nando's) and colonial architecture-filled Georgetown.
And...had an awesome time at our pal Adam Cooper's fantastic 21st-floor pad in downtown Kuala Lumpur. The gym and pool were great - but the Petronas Towers (of 'Entrapment' film fame) and views of them over a SkyBar cocktail and on a Petronas park jog were something else. Ad somehow managed a quick 5ks the day after finishing in the top 150 of the Singapore Half-Marathon. Congrats and thanks again! Also great to meet the very fun, food-and-party-mad Julian & Honey (http://juliansi.blogspot.com/).
That's it...festive saludos to everyone again from Nati and I...going to Koh Pha Ngan and Sydney now so chat in 2008!
If you'd like to comment on this blog, click on the 'COMMENTS' tab below.
All the best
Ali & Nati

Pics link

9pm Mon Nov 26: Hi...if you didn't get this pics link on email, you can see some pics up to Japan a few weeks ago here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/agrantabroad/PublicFirstTravelling
And remember you can comment on this blog if you wanna, click on'COMMENTS' tab below.

Hobbits, Indonesia's Machu Picchu, communication blackout, a fruit frenzy...and the Cornflake Game strikes again!

11.30am Thu Nov 22: Our Suzuki people carrier (Nati, me, German Lufthansa air stewardesses Anusch and Claudia and Dutch traveller Marieka) is snaking through the twisted, tortuous mountain forest roads of the wild and remote east Indonesia island of Flores, famous for perfect volcanoes, fascinating traditional wooden villages and the 1m-tall, Dean Valler-esque prehistoric hobbit-human, discovered in 2004 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3948165.stm).
This patch of Indonesia is nothing like humid tourist hot-spot Bali: the Aussie hol-and-surf mecca (scene of the tragic 2002 and 2005 bombings); lots of sunshine holiday fun, an air-con hotel we love and tropical scenery; but also overcrowded and with the fat-old-blokes-looking-for-women factor; set to hog the world news from Dec 3 at UN climate change conference (*** now featuring famous ecologist Mandar! ***).
In contrast, lush Flores, visited by just a dribble of travellers, is Bali's anthisesis.
Take Bena, in Flores. We must walk (many Flores roads are stomach-churning but this one was just too bumpy) to the traditional and very poor village of wooden huts, ancestors' graves and buffalo-slaughtering posts in the front yard, boasting a first-view and jaw-dropping perched mountainside location both strangely reminiscent of Machu Picchu.
Arriving in our hotel in Moni (pretty village blessed with towering and enveloping forest-coated mountain valleys; the base for pre-sunrise treks to Kelimutu volcano's coloured lakes), candles illuminate our room. The promised electricity fails to arrive...and the (ice cold) water runs out as I'm coated in soap in the shower. This is a surprisingly-common dilemma in Indonesia.
In a restaurant in Ende, just round the corner from the dramatically-short airstrip we take our lives into our hands by departing from, we order our meal and, a moment later, spy our waiter tugging away on a rope in the kitchen. He is collecting water from a genuine well. You know, the hole in the ground in a medieval castle variety...but this one's in the kitchen floor of our restaurant.
And the buses. Oh, the buses...a constant source of entertainment. People hanging out of the doors, on the roof, on the rear bumper (barging the trussed-up live chickens for space), being tossed in and out of pot-holes...and almost falling off when posing for photos.
As you might imagine, communication here is, erm...challenging. In Labuanbajo, as phone and internet lines had been severed by road-workers, I buy mobile credit for a guy's phone to make an essential call to Qantas. Yeah, you guessed it...the signal was awful and the battery ran out.
So, everything was set up perfectly to wish my sister Susie a happy birthday on the Nov 22. I succeeded in dispatching a text only after tracking down three non-working small-town internet cafes on our rumble through the jungle, and bypassing a mobile phone service black spot.
Indonesians are fantastic people - maybe the friendliest I've ever met, despite many being very poor.
The key thing is people, even from the worst-off areas, seem happy with their lot in life, getting by farming or running a small stall, making enough to provide food for their families. No British-style moaning about not having for the best iPod, complaining about poor salary rises and contributing to the London Underground attitude problem.
Indonesians, especially away from the main tourist areas, almost always wear a big grin. They smile and love the chance to shout "hello, mister" at funny-looking white bloke (Nati doesn't get it, they all think she's Indonesian!). And the kids are amazing, inquisitive and fun.
The country has a lot to offer...and we've seen just a part in three weeks. It's a vast place, the world's fourth biggest country (top three anyone?), peppered by 129 volcanoes - the most of any nation - and blessed with lush forests jam-packed with every fruit you could imagine. One of our hotel gardens had mangoes, bananas, pineapple, papaya, cactus fruit (prickly pear) and tamarind (sour, in long nut-like shell)...and we picked coconut, grenadine and avocado and saw cloves and a spice-rack full of other spices. After all, Indonesia is the famous 'spice islands' that Britain, Portugal and Holland scrapped over a few hundred years ago.
We're a short flight hop from north Australia and half of this country actually has Oceanic rather than Asian foiliage. Our Komodo Dragon-spotting bush walk, on the island of the same name, was more like the outback than the tropics. We took our eyes off the trees when a 2.5m monster lizard chased us down the beach.
Took a three-day boat trip with ultra eco-friendly company Perama to Komodo and Flores, livening up "proceedings" (as a hairy uni friend of some of us would say) by leaping into the sea from the 10-metre mast and staging the most riotous hosting of the (increasingly world-famous) Cornflake Game on deck. The music was pumping, the beer penalties were flowing and Betty, a fantastic, fun Californian lady in her 60s, brought the house down by somehow bending to floor level to of the tune of " USA, USA." Okay, okay, I apologise for footballifying the occasion.
Had a few other great nights out. One on roof terrace of small Kuta (main Bali resort) club - great view and bassy, bouncy, dirty house tunes from unbelievable speakers, while being blasetd by terrific air fans. Heard more great house beneath a sky bulging with stars in the fabulous Gilli Islands, a trio of white-sand jewels packing in turtle-snorkelling, coconut plantations, awesome azure sea and seafood into one splendid package. Half a kilo of king prawns...oh my God.
Back in Bali now, brushing up on world history (thanks to my Lincoln pal Phil's book loan), and going to Singapore tomorrow, then Malaysia and Thai islands for Christmas.
Thanks for the emails and glad this blog seems to be entertaining some of you. Hope you're well wherever you are and drop Nati or I a line to say hi if you fancy it. We always enjoy hearing from family and friends - and remember you can comment on this blog if you would like to...click on 'COMMENTS' tab below.
Ali & Nati

Pounding techno, big sandwiches, cycling and yellow spiders

6.30pm Sun Nov 4: I type this having just polished off two mountainous ham, cheese, lettuce and tomato toasted sandwiches, giving me the energy to kickstart my brain after an epic and absolutely thumping night of Tokyo techno ending at 8.30am this morning.
Nati, our Japanese pal Mariko (a girl we met on the train) and I hit Japan's best AND second-best nightclubs in one fantastic night, combining a gorgeous Japanese meal (shoeless, naturally), a stream of beers bizarrely served in mini-glasses, jam-packed Club Air and Club Yellow (both completely hidden in basements; Yellow is so underground it doesn`t even have a sign...and only the club only opens at 5am due to a police-imposed midnight-5am dancing ban due to no licence!), and booming basslines in two phenomenal 360-degree soundsystems from DJs including Detroit techno godfather-figure Derrick May.
As you might gather from the paragraphs above, it went off with spectacular aplomb.
What a way to end two weeks in a country where everything feels familiar due to the comfort and developed-country-ness...but is actually very different. Same same but different, as you would say if you`ve visited Thailand.
Take cycling. In London, you have to be a nutter to pedal into the centre - but EVERYONE In Japan cycles (on granny-style bikes with shopping baskets), bikes get priority on pavements and they`ve even got bike racks outside nightclub. This must give rise to obvious problems, while we also witnessed the amusing but suprisingly-common offence of sending-a-text-while-cycling.
Everyone here is soooooo polite. Ask for directions in London and some chav would probably mug you. Ask for directions in Osaka, as we did, and a guy on his way home from the office spent 40mins helping us find an obscure bus stop. And the lady who ran our Japanese guest house (called mishuku, no beds but sprung tatami mat floor and men`s kimono dressing gowns...sexy) said "you`re welcome" and bowed her head so many times I thought it was gonna fall off.
Taxi drivers? Not some rude cockney bloke with a beer belly and beeping at girls...but an elderly gentleman with suit and flat hat, casually flicking a button to open his back passenger door and beckon you in.
And road/building work. Every Japanese house/pavement/roadworks has a guy with a luminous yellow strap-jacket wafting a red glow stick so long Luke Skywalker could fight Darth Vader with it, all in case someone
might inexplicably not see the enormous double barrier round that work colleague repairing a small paving slab.
Since our last update a fortnight ago, we had three days in a superb hostel near Mount Fuji`s lakes, where we got lucky and saw the snow-capped colossus before a typoon blew in. We were whisked to Kyoto by the shinkansen bullet train (exhillarating 188mph ride; the random factor was the woman next to us singing) and then the day after the typoon I got sunburnt in a heatwave at Kyoto`s very fun wild monkey park.
Chugged round Shikoku`s mountain gorges and Thai-esque surf beaches on trains tinier than the Metheringham to Sleaford school train (that will mean something to some people reading this), passing through even tinier stations. Walked over a vine bridge spanning a river just after dawn and stayed at a surfers` hostel sounding like an extra from The Usual Suspects, the brilliantly-named Minami Kaze.
Endured a night in a bizarre control-freak hostel (somehow Lonely Planet`s top recommendation for Kyoto) with 1,000yen late check-out fines, a kitchen/lounge closed for most of the day and even notes on a tiny sugar pot about not dirtying the spoon with coffee...hello, I left nursery 27 years ago! Upped sticks to the awesome K`s House hostel chain...no notes on the sugar, a beer machine cheaper than the supermarket, free lifestyle/clubbing mags and an International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun (Japan`s biggest English paper) to read listening to funky music in the lounge (yes, I was happy).
Also...realised the government must be oblivious to the mass of tourists here as hardly any signs in English; saw a few geishas; ate various strange combinations of raw egg, chicken cartilage, crazy veg and enough noodles to stretch from London to Tokyo. Tried at least 14 different types of beer (honestly not a bad egg among them...Asahi Extra Dry is my fave), and; Nati almost had a heart attack when she tried on a top with a four-inch yellow spider in it.
That's it, thanks for emails we've received and hope all is well with you. We're going to Bali, Indonesia, tomorrow so will blog about that in a week or two.
All the best
Ali