The Long Way Home

01/02/11

I quite enjoyed Macau and found it a good fun place. With thanks to Hollywood we all kind of assume that Las Vegas is the world leader for gambling revenue, but the truth is Macau absolutely towers over Vegas in terms of gambling income! It does, however, significantly lack the razz-matazz of Vegas’s legendary scene and there is little in the way of doubt towards Vegas’s eclat. I suppose Macau still has a lesson or two to be learned from them. You can go there on a family holiday and be entertained and looked after fabulously well, whilst in Macau, the only thing for the kids to do is watch hopelessly as daddy plays boom or bust and places the whole of the would be college fund on black. Good luck with that by the way. I wouldn’t mind seeing the free drinks for gamblers policy creeping in sooner rather than later though! That was sadly missed by me as I placed down an insignificant last few Macanese Patacas and HK $’s for good measure. Me being a usually redatt person (I don’t think I’ve ever used that word before now), this was slightly atypical behaviour, but when in Rome you know?

It is a city definitely worth exploring in a day though with all the UNESCO listed buildings and squares. Of course you can find superb Chinese cuisine here, with the province’s own spin on dishes which adds interest. I’d definitely recommend a visit and wander into the hotels, just for the gimmick if nothing else. The Venetian over the water in Taipa is paving the way for the new Cotai strip which will be similar to that of Vegas, and man that will be a sight in a few years time! My fav though was certainly the very British Grand Emperor Casino containing pictures of Her Maj and the monarchy complete with the fake Irish Guard at the entrance, donning the familiar bear skin hats. They were English too! It made me chuckle anyway.

So back to Hong Kong and British Airways bound for Manchester, I sneaked in one final trip to the Avenue of Stars in time to stalk some American cheerleaders due to perform in a few days as part of the lunar new year celebrations, and took a final glance at the nightly Festival of Lights. Later I went out shopping for some speakers for my netbook, but came back with a darn sight more than that! For some reason I bought a new camera, probably thinking in advance given my track record (I've gone through eight cameras in two years, breaking them in various unfortunate circumstances), but this one is 'the dog's', and an external hard drive, which I do not need! I already a 500MB one which pretty much contains my life story, why the hell do I need a TB one? Just because it's a bit cheaper than in the UK - ridiculous frivality on my part again. Luckily the shop had sold out of iPhone 4's and no new stock is due until after the holidays and I'm back on UK turf. This was almost as bad as the time when I bought a didgeridoo just for a four day road trip before posting it home at an expense of £90, and now it sits as little more than a forgotten decoration, hidden behind my wardrobe! Anyway, it has been a good trip, and there’s plenty more in the pipeline for this year and the following one's thankfully. There’s not much time for boredom in my life, so I’ll go home and quickly recover before gearing up for the likes of Belgium, Spain, and Romania trips before seeing where the travels take me next later in the year.

Well that is all for now, but let it be said that oh my god how I’ve missed Cadbury’s chocolate and Yorkshire Tea, so I’ll make for damn sure to nip into Tesco asap! Yes I still have that crazy sweet tooth with the moorishly addictive personality for a handicap. A lot of people still find this very funny, the b****rds with the greatest of schadenfreude qualities, namely Gibbo etc, but a lot of new friends from travels have laughed at my expense when cake and other sweets have appeared!

I’ll see you tomorrow Manchester – have the kettle on please.

It Draws To A Close

24/01/11

So after a strange flight to Darwin involving a little more hang time in the air than expected (we had to wait for a cyclone to pass over Darwin!), I made it onto the connecting flight and into Singapore as scheduled. I don’t want to blog too much about my boring SG stuff as it was just much the same as previous visits i.e. sit down in the same (cool) hostel and email work and agents back and forth, but at least I had a chance to get quite a bit sorted out before going home. I’m now faced with a manic few days on return. I fly into Manchester, land and get through customs, do a few visits to potential houses I’ll live in, catch a train to Nottingham, allow 1 day for jet lag, pack the car up and return to Manchester. Pretty shitty eh?! I supposed deserved after blogging so many good times whilst others work away and pass time by thinking “What a b*&%£$d!” Well, it’ll be home-time soon enough and you can al tell me to F-right off in person then.

As for SG – well, it’s my ….. sixth visit I think; maybe seventh. I really should know my way around by now, so confidently, but foolishly I did not take a map! I got a little confused and a little bit lost, so Najiah came to meet me for lunch at a venue of my choice rather than one we’d penciled in. My phone playing up didn’t help the cause and I was almost an hour late. It was brilliant to catch up though and it must be pffft what the best part of a year now since I’d seen her, but we made plans to catch up later in the evening with my other friends in Singapore, now including my German friend, Andre, who I’ve seen in 8 countries and counting, Sarj, Mark, Shylla, and Abu, all of whom I’ve travelled and met up with heaps over the last two years. What a great time. Food a beer provided the needs for conversation, and it was much the same for the second night.

I once again got slightly confused and turned up late to meet Sarj for lunch, but in no way was I late for the evening! Wednesday night is key in Singapore as it is the only time you can drink in the bars for cheap! $20 entry into Insomnia for two hours of free-flow gave me enough time to get standardly/Britishly drunk! We had a great time, but I felt a touch concerned for Sarj who I’ve never seen so drunk hahaha – well, knowing her, no doubt she’d pull a sicky anyway.

[sic] Guys – I’ll be blogging all this fully, as per usual, when I get home, so keep an eye out in a week or two.

27/01/11

Slightly dazed I flew off from my penultimate destination the next day to Hong Kong. It was here my jaw dropped! The place had an uncanny resemblance to New York for me. Huge building squashed together on separate islands. It’s seemingly impossibly given the landscape and geography of the area, but somehow they’ve managed it, and managed it very well!

I’ve squashed in so much with my time here, but in general it’s all been the common touristy stuff. I’ve seen the Avenue of Stars and Symphony of Lights; I’ve gone up the funicular Peak Tram and been treated to the exceptional view of the city from Victoria Peak; I’ve explored Kowloon, Tsim Sha Tsui, and Central inside out; I’ve even been to Stanley Market and the southern beaches! I’ve been all over Lantau Island and knackered myself out climbing the incredibly masochistic peak before shying away from doing the rest of the Lantau Trail (I caught the Ngong Ping 360 to get up there and did the Po Lin and Tian Tan Buddha statue thing), but I have managed to avoid the likes of Disneyland and Ocean Park, but thankfully I still have a healthy four digits in the spending account, so I’m off to Macau to gamble, gamble, gamble! Viva Las Vegas for my last blow out!

I only have a couple more days to go now, so maybe I’ll squeeze in one more blog before I leave. I will put up some accompanying photos as well as the East Coast ones asap (this time out of pier pressure – Sarj bit me and Naj threatened me!).

Oh – I must say it really good to see Notts County take the game to Man City the other night. I thought they were a little bit unlucky to come away with a reply, but good to see Nottingham teams giving City a hard time still despite the gap. I guess the state of the pitch might have had a fair factor in the proceedings, so maybe the rugby team should get a shift on with their proposed move, though I quite like knowing Jacko is playing in a decent venue. I really should go watch him more, but rugby can never be a football substitute; the world agrees.

A Sinking Ship And A Sad Goodbye

So where did I finish off last time? Ah yeah, I was falling to a gruesome death from 14,000 ft. but miraculously survived right? It’s true, I had a great time at Mission Beach, and my second day/night there seemed to give it a bit more of an edge; I finally met some people who were going up to Cairns! It had seemed up until then everyone was going down from Cairns as they could now get through the floods, and those who leapt over the sodden ground were few and far between; not now though. Dervla, an Irish lass I’d met in Brisbane was there and needed a gentle nudge into doing a skydive, and Rosie, a really nice, bubbly English chick from just outside of London, kept me company alongside a couple of Dutch guys and a few from Sweden. No danger of a lack of company this time. I sat next to Rosie on the bus up to Cairns and she was making me laugh quite a lot.

Once in Cairns I went out for a couple of drinks in Gilligan’s, but didn’t last too long. With a 5:45am pickup time for the liveaboard and diving, sleep was a huge priority! I didn’t get anywhere enough of that though, and so quite surly, I got taken to the dive centre and geared up. I was pretty antisocial at this point given the truthful fact that I am just not a morning person at all or a punctual person for that matter!

A bumpy ride later and after a few introductions we were at the outer reef. I buddied up with Jan, a German guy who would later divorce me for his girlfriend (after she qualified from the Open Water Course) and down we went. Over the course of 3 dives I had seen plenty of fish, but had a bit of disappointing comparison to the Yongala wreck dive; the reef was good without being great. Maybe they should rename it to “The Good Barrier Reef” or “The Big And Decent Barrier Reef” instead of misleadingly using the word “Great”. That said, I did see a lot of sharks, turtles, nemo’s and other anemone fish (one had been blinged up with a massive speed stripe down his back. I think he was the bully), but I do prefer Asia and Ningaloo reefs for vibrancy, life, variation, and colour.

The night dive provided a new experience, and by this stage I was on course to becoming an Advanced Diver.

The next day gave me a deep dive and a couple of other tests, and my qualification was complete. I was now free to explore the reef in different environments. I was been played with like a pass the parcel game with dive buddies (I seemed to be only temporarily wanted, much like the kid who gets picked last for the footy side) and went through a disappointing four different buddies in three days. The best one was possibly Chevie though. She was content to follow my lead and have me point out and find the fish which was cool. Pleasingly I did not disappoint and found a massive Nepoleon Wrasse sleeping in a cave during out night dive. We also got circle by heaps of sharks before coming back onboard ridiculously over-excited.

Day three was the last dives and I got bullied by a turtle for a little while barging me out of his space; ran away from a trigger fish, keen not to repeat the Gili Island’s episode with Naj about a year ago; and teased a nemo or two for good measure. It was all good fun, but watching the boat fall to bits as we travelled back through a cyclone wasn’t as great. The ceiling fell down and cracked the skulls of the three body buildings onboard which made me cruelly laugh. Beef Beef Beef – serves them right for only talking about diet, protein, and gymnasiums. They have well and truly killed any Arnie jokes for me as well, but apart from that they were really nice guys (I’m being serious for once).

Back in Cairns I partied for a couple of nights with the other divers and crew and bumped into the various people from Mission Beach every now and again. It wpould have been nice to have spent more time there and see everyone a bit more, but as with all travels, you simply run out of time. I hope to keep in touch, and I’m sure I will with a lot of the people I met over my final week in Australia. Hey, I’ve even tried convincing some of them to join me in South America later in the year, but of course, all are very welcome.

Now I’m in Singapore and have only a short amount of time left, so it’s a bit of catching up with friends I’ve known for a while, and no doubt a heavy amount of drinking. I’ll blog this chapter later, but let it be known I was very sad to leave Australia, but I’m sure I’ll be back one day on my never ending travels.

The Different Sorts of Diving

So after flying out from Brisbane and over the flooded zones, I arrived on the cloudless and hot Hamilton Island (in the Whit Sundays). I caught a ferry from there to Airlie Beach and could only think about the cyclone that had hit last year. After seeing the edge of flooded area from the air, I was a bit pensive about the disasters that seem to constantly hit the region. That said, however, Airlie Beach was now as vibrant and open as ever, and it was like visiting a totally new place. I did think a bit about all the brilliant people who I’d net along the way just a year ago, and remember the fun I’d had from here on upwards with the various groups. Thankfully I’m still in touch with many of them, and hopefully will continue to be so for a very long time to come. As for this visit, it was more of a convenient stop to get back on course with the Greyhounds and continue on up the east coast away from the harm and devastation of the floods. I partied the night away and ended up stopping out far later than planned.

With just a few hours sleep to my credit, and a roaring headache, I got onboard the bus and went up to Ayr to dive the S.S.Yongala, one of the top ten wreck dives in the world. It’s a deep dive in small places as the wreck sits about 20km off shore, and is at a depth of 30m at its deepest. Here I had the best dives I have ever done! Even on descent I saw cod fish as big as my leg and reef sharks in abundance. A huge school of giant barracuda swam past, all hanging around for a good nosey at us, and all that was before I’d made it to the graveyard of the wreckage! I have never seen so many fish in such a small space, but most were huge! The seventh most poisonous snake in the world is a familiar underwater denizen there, and giant Queensland groupers bigger than me are very common. I was lucky enough to see all the above, but most impressively was a giant turtle who seemed not to take an interest in divers approaching him/her to a touching distance. The turtle was about two thirds my height in length and was incredibly social; in actual fact most of the marine life are more intrigued by the divers than scared by them. It certainly is one to be seen to be believed. The features of the ship are still clearly distinguishable, and we found intact lanterns, toilets, and a bathtub. It kind of brings it home that no survivors from the 122 passengers and crew onboard at the time the cyclone brought it to an abrupt end almost 100 years ago, and most of the human remains are still actually in there somewhere! It’s a fascinating dive and the first one ever that I will make sure to do again someday. With dive master training available to me for just lending a hand with upkeep of the ship and house, maybe I’ve found a future travel option – especially as no working visa will actually be required to do it! Hmmm Manchester first I think then take it from there.

Onto Mission Beach to finally tick another one of the growing bucket list and complete the skydive the weather prevented me from doing last year (this time I wouldn’t be the picker on Blind Date and so paying the full price).

Oh My God! Chucking myself out of a plane at 14,000ft, defenseless to the gravitation acceleration has to be up there with the best things I’ve ever done in my life! With sixty seconds of free fall, followed by a much gentler, parachute aided descent gave me the adrenaline rush that everyone who opts to do such a thing craves, and time to take in the vast and exquisite views of the entire area, from the beach lined coast right over to the rugged, lesser noted mountainous inland of Queensland. The whole experience was just incredible, and I loved it! I was actually the first out of the plane, but that way I had to show the confidence and guts for the others to follow. I quickly realised what a good actor I actually am, as I appear to be quite unmoved by the heights, and have a huge smile and excitement blazed across my air-strained face; if truth be told though, I was shitting a brick! Dangling over the edge and looking down without seeing anyone falling was a seriously nerving experience. With little choice otherwise though, Andy (my tandem instructor) flung us out and Earth-bound. It’s a first, and possible a last time I will ever gratefully and acceptingly have a man to be so intimately tightly bound to me! I would recommend it to anyone, hey, even a 101 year old man did it last year! I have 70 years to go until I can have any chance of leveling that record; here’s to hoping.

As the trip now approaches the end stage *big sigh (crowd encouragement and participation “Awww”* I have a liveaboard and 11 dives to do on the GBR (2 at night), and then a few days to party it up a bit before I fly to Singapore to re-meet some of my very best travelling friends, who are now considered some of my very best friends in life – hell how many countries is it now for me, Andre, Naj, Sarj, and Abu?? Loads I believe, spread over 3 continents as well! Awesome, long my it continue *uh hum, South America remember guys ;-) * It then approaches home time for me via Hong Kong and Macau (where another adrenaline-fueled effort is scheduled, the World’s Biggest Bungy no less! I’m nuts! Mum and Dad, you probably shouldn’t have read this on this occasion – soz.