Along on the honeymoon

The post wedding week started with a bit of stress as Ronan's other brother and his wife were due to leave for England but were being royally foiled by the ash cloud, they headed back to Melbourne anyway hoping it would all sort it self out (hmmm....).

Bless Jarlath and Pip, they sacrificed going on their honeymoon for a week to spend it in the mountains with us. They even invited us all around the day after their wedding for a bbq at their amazing honeymoon pad, the romance was quickly destroyed by a session of balcony cricket that I am amazed didn't end in a broken window.

We left the newlyweds for a little peace next day to get our first taste of the mountains the next day with a trip up the seemingly endless windy road to mount buffalo. it was a little 8k walk but it seemed pretty long to me at the time, I was gonna have to seriously step up my game for NZ! Still get got some fab views and watched the sunset from the wonderfully named 'horn' and encountered wallabies and owls on the way back down the dusky mountain.

We had some fantastic evenings at the homestead, it was a proper outback affair with a huuuge porch and one of those bbq that can cook food for about 20 people at one, at it did do that a number of times, I consumed by bodyweight in sausages I think! We also sampled a lot of the great local wines as well.

It was Jarlath's birthday that week and his celebration of choice, a walk in the mountains and staying the night in an unheated back-country hut. The Leydens are weird but who am I to argue so we set off for apparently one of the best walks in Victoria and it certainly didn't disappoint. 

The weather was seriously moody with deep dark cloud hanging over the hills but it really only served to enhance the drama of the landscape, all the hills were covered with plants that had been burnt in forest fires. We made it up the peak we were aiming for though we couldn't see a thing at the top due the cloud and the clouds finally broke on our way back down to soak us just in time to get to the hut, luckily this did mean that we saw the most perfect sunset.

So started an interesting evening. We thought we would have the hut to ourselves but arrived to find a slightly drunken and rambling man called Howard in a boiler suit from the 70s, he was seriously old skool hiker who used firelighters to heat his food and seemed pretty pleased to have found a captive audience to talk at. At the time he got seriously on my nerves but looking back he was pretty amusing, he repeated everything he told us at least three times in slightly different ways and seemed to believe he know all there is to know about the mountains carefully ignoring the fact that Jarlath also knew everything he was telling us. We escaped to our sleeping bags at about 9pm.......

The week seemed to fly by and on a seriously rainy Saturday we headed back to Melbourne to head our separate ways.

Oz: Pip and Jarlath's wedding day

Big day in the mountains

So the English invasion decamps to a lovely farmstead in the 'alpine' region of Victoria.

No Mnt Blanc in this version but it was still pretty stunning and we arrived to fabulous weather predicted for the wedding weekend (seriously luckily considering it pissed it down on the one before and the one after).

The day before the wedding it was all systems go with everyone assigned jobs to help get everything ready, we all ended up at the reception venue putting the covers on the chairs, I was chief bow tier and the place looked pretty damn good by the time we finished if I do say so myself!

Wedding morning came and the boys were off early to set up the ceremony venue, apparently Jarlath has to be persuaded to get into his suit about a hour before the wedding as he was busy setting up the speakers and doing handstands on the lawn.

Meanwhile I had been assigned the task of bus conductor on one of the minibuses hired to take guests to the ceremony and reception. A task I managed to fail in when we left Pip's cousin and family behind and the ceremony was delayed for their arrival. In my defence we waited 15 minutes for them and tried all their phones to no avail, apparently they even saw the bus from their room....

It was an absolutely stunning day and everyone looked fantastic hanging out, they were come cute , having taken the 20s theme seriously, there were some fabulous flappers and very dapper hats on the men. The bride and groom certainly disappoint either, Pip's dress was perfect and Jarlath wore a great sharp little suit with a hat with a gun on the side, maybe a little risqué for his wedding day!

The ceremony was a short ans sweet, personal affair with the bride and groom standing on the vine covered veranda of this fabulous house they had hired with us all stood on the lawn watching. As soon as the vows were finished we were popping the champagne corks and got gently sloshed in the sun as the photos were done.

Once the champagne was finished it was time to head to the reception which was being held a stag farm, though it wasn't just deer hanging out, there were emu, ostriches and goats galore as well, something to amuse as as we ate our canapés. I did have a close encounter with one of the deer who I think may have been trying to mount me, I mean I know it was a great dress but really!

We had a really fun evening, very informal with lots of booze flowing, the speeches we great and Ronan and his brother did a great job of letting all the aussies know what Jarlath was like as a small boy (very similar to be honest). They had a chosen a really cool wedding band, some classic ska and I did quite a lot of pogoing. It all gets a bit hazy form there on in, Ronan reliably tells me I was pretty drunk and some rather unflattering late evening photos attest to this, the hangover wasn't too bad though and a big breakfast sorted me right out to begin our week long jaunt in the mountains.

Oz: Melbourne & yarra valley & great ocean road

Hot skinny on the side

So we arrive in Australia, where the temperature is 15degree lower (a welcome relief) and we don't need to haggle for everything, though Ronan did try a few times and got very strange looks from the Auzzies.

A lovely welcome at the airport with Ronan's brother Jarlath waiting to pick us up and whisk us to a comfy bed as we had not slept at all on the way over, I did a marathon 5 films on my personal entertainment system and was feeling a little jaded...

Jartlath had already planned to whisk his little bro off the next day to do some knarly mountain biking so I was kindly invited to go for a girly bunch with Pip and some of her lovely lady friends. This brunch was my initiation into Melburnians and their coffee. We had been told that the coffee was really good here and taken prety seriously but I was still a bit bemused when the orders from the other three ladies at the table were 'short black with some hot skinny on the side', 'skinny flat white', 'soy latte'.I wasn't really sure what half of that was so I sheepishly ordered an expresso, though I have developed quite a liking for the flat white since then.

We spent the next few days enjoying catching up with Jarlath and Pip who were great hosts showing us round Melbourne and hanging out with us as luckily we had arrived on easter weekend. Over the next few days 'the english invasion' as Pip called it began with Ronan's brother and his wife, his parents and three of Jarlath's friends all arriving from England.

We decided to give the almost weds a bit of wedding prep peace and headed off to the great ocean road for a few days, a fabulous rugged coastline full of amazing beaches and the famous 12 apostles, though apparently there are only 7 of them, I think the Oz tourist board should be done under the trading standards act. I did manage the spent the equivalent of £10 to see a lighthouse as well which was possibly the most underwhelming tourist experience of the trip so far.

Speaking of money of my god we were shocked by that when we arrived. Both Ronan and I have been to Oz before and remembered the srong pound meaning we could live pretty well down under, this is no more with the exchnage rate have dropped from about 2.5 to 1.5 and now Melbourne is more expensive than London. we had to become the stingy ones in the corner ordering the cheapest stuff on the menu and rifling through the reduced to clear section at the supermarket!

While in Melbourne I also managed to catch up with a few people. The lovely Laura Kerr, a very good friend from my days as a geeky teenager. Listening to her is brilliant with the accent veering between classic Leicester and proper auzzie.

Also great to see the fabulous Dave Carswell again (someone I met on my last travels) who acted as our guide to all things cool in Melbourne and taught us that every bar worth going to is down the end of an alley, off another alley which is full of wheelie bins.

In our two weeks or so there we really grew to love Melbourne; sometimes a bit grimy, always uber cool and very much a city that needs to be slowly discovered and doesn't put it all out there.

All too suddenly it was time to head off to the hills for the big Leyden wedding!

Temples and shit

Still doing very badly at catching up with my blogging but I will endeavor.....

So time to leave Thailand for the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, we booked ourselves what we though was a nice easy all the way through bus and were up bright and early for our 7am pick up.... 1 and a half hours later we were still waiting, what they call 'thai time' over here.

Our border crossing was a relatively distressing experience where, despite about 3 years backpacking between us we managed to fall for the classic exchange rate con on the border, I knew that guy was talking crap but somehow let myself get carried along by it,, too old to backpack clearly. Anyway we lost the equivalent of about 4 pints in London so not life threatening and arrived in Siem Reap as hardened hagglers and bull shit detectors.

We'd picked up a random dutch guy and a the most mature and interesting 18 year old brit backpacker on the way and proceeded to drag them around town to find hostels that didn't exist. Anyway we soon found somewhere not in 'the bible' aka lonely planet but good enough and headed out to revisit a town I had had an amazing time in lat time I was there. Suffice to say the Angkor What? bar seemed a lot louder than last time I was there.. ah well as I said too old to backpack really. Should probably change the name of this blog to that....

Next day we decided to be intrepid and visit the famous temples by bike, a lovely idea and great exercise but managed to give the poor Irish boy heatstroke which took him out for about 24 hours bless him.

Revisiting the temples was just as stunning as the last time I was here, the intricate stone carvings everywhere you turn, giant alien trees slowly trying to take them back by growing giants roots through them and just the sheer scale of these ancient Khmer kings to show how good they were. I read an awful lot of descriptions of the wheres and why fores which I have immediately forgotten except the fact that all their names ended in varman, still for me its not really about the facts but just soaking up the atmosphere of the place.

Best experience of the two days we spent in the complex was sneaking back into the main Angkor Wat temple after it closed and watching dusk set in with absolutely no one else around, not a common experience in the major attraction of Cambodia which is usually full of Japanese and american coach tours. It was pretty special.

Our whistle stop visit was over too quick, having learned our lesson we did the trip back without an all through bus, a much more peaceful trip. So back to Bangkok with us and one final night before heading off to Australia and to be honest we were quite relieved at the prospect of not having to worry about being ripped off all the time of sweat buckets before even finishing breakfast. It was lovely and totally weird to bump into Liz on a soi off the Khao San road, who I had met in Morocco about 1year and a half before. The world is too small sometimes.

Australian adventures with the extended Leyden family to come soon, also will upload an album full of photos of Cambodia to flikr for you to look at if you fancy, I know it looks like a lot of old rock but it reall was very impressive in person.

Worst blogger ever

O.K so its official, I am the worst blogger ever, I want to write amusing anecdotes and be the quintessential witty blogger that I keep putting off actually doing it!

Well as of today its 'carpe diem' or just write anything basically...

So we left off last on Koh Chang in our basic little ratan hut in bailan bay. We were lucky... ish to stumble on the only cool little bar in our 'for those not wanting to be kept up all night by techno' resort run by two very friendly germans who will keep you drinking alcoholic fruit shakes and talking about what to do on the island for literally hours. They persuaded us to take a snorkelling trip where they drop you off at one of the other islands in the region for a couple of days as well.

We had a couple of days to kill until the trip as apparently the boat was currently being fixed (why is there always a catch once you decide to do something...?) so we visited some of the other beaches on the island, even walking the to one of them much to the amusement of all the thais and farang shooting past us on litle motorbikes as we sweated it up and down hills. We had decided not to get our own one as neither of us had ever riden a bike and we heard many stories about farang careering off the steep windy roads when there brakes failed or one to many whiskies dampened their reactions. Apparently someone died on the road while we were there so I was very glad to have taken the sweaty but safe option.

Anyway so the morning of the trip arrives and we get on a little pickup taxi with a few other young and friendly looking types. The guy running the tour casually says 'so you are coming back from koh mak on friday then...' at least two days after we planned to head back. Apparently the boat was still being fixed and even though they had a boat today they couldn't possibly use it again until friday, hmm a bit of a spanner in the works since this would squeeze our time in cambodia considerably. Luckily a travel savvy dutch girl managed to negotiate on behalf of the 6 of us effected and get the tour guy to pay for a night of accommodation for us on the island since we were staying longer than we wanted, best bartering i've seen by far.

So off we headed to Koh Mak and despite it being a smaller island actually found some cool people to hang out with instead of the virtually deserted beaches of Koh Chang. We had 3 fun nights hanging out at 'monkey island' a cute little place run by a bunch of thai rastas who played live reggae music every night, cheesy but fun, especially the song dedicated to that thai delicacy 'pad thai'. Other highlights of our time on koh mak
1) hiring bikes and cycling the whole island in a day (it was tiny) it about killed me though in the 40degree heat!
2) a very brightly coloured snake appearing in our little hut sending Ronan running for google to check out poisonous snakes in Thailand (apparently it probably wasn't).
3) eating fabulous fish bbq on the beach surrounded by twinkling lights
4) finding a little pier to watch the sunset from.

So it wasn't too bad staying longer than planned in the end and the snorkelling trip on the way back was well worth it, with hundreds of fish swimming around us, we did have to share our boat with a hilarious group of Russians who shared a bottle of whisky before breakfast and then looked miserable as hell all day and barely got in the water. We even managed to wheedle some free beer out of them for our terrible inconvenience which we triumphantly drank on our way back to Bailan Bay.

So now it was time to get moving and do some proper travelling...Cambodia. We booked ourselves onto a 7am bus and had a final night drinking alcoholic fruit shakes.


Ronan getting to know the pooches at our friendly german's bar


The boat to Koh Mak


Out on our bike ride around the island


Hanging out on our little pier


Guillem jumping for joy off the back of the unattended yacht him and ronan cheekily boarded


A great spot to watch the sunset from


Dusk at the pier