Kakadu to Litchfield National Park

07/02/13 to 10/02/13 – We left Darwin behind in the rear-view mirror and not far along the Stuart Highway we saw a sign that read ‘Alice Springs 1646’, which made us gulp.  We took a left turn onto the Arnhem Highway, which leads all the way to Kakadu National Park and then on to Arnhem (Aboriginal land).  We’d made it a hundred kilometres when we stopped at Foggs Dam.  Everybody had said what a bumper year for crocs it was, and how we were bound to see some.  We weren’t completely sure if we wanted to see any or not, but if we did, we wanted it to be at a safe distance.  We drove a few miles down the gravel track, avoiding several wallabies hopping across our path, but no crocs in sight.  Back to the highway where we camped just opposite a birdwatching site, called Window on the Wetlands.  We’d found that meat was actually quite good value in Oz, and so we had our first proper steak since leaving home, prepared on our tiny gas stove.  It was excellent, but the mosquitoes loved it as much as us, and came and surrounded us in our camper van.

We woke early as every morning (around 6am) when the temperature was “only” between 28 and 33 degrees.  We continued along the highway before stopping for brunch (again, on the gas stove).  We met a french bloke, Julien, who worked for Yamaha and as a perk was given a bike to test for free.  He’d chosen to ride this around the world, and had ridden in Asia and Africa already (where he’d ridden in 57C heat), and was now doing Darwin to Adelaide, before going onto South America.  We wondered how we would cope down in the Outback with temperatures near 50C (especially after struggling to sleep at 33ish the previous night).  We hit the road again and after stopping a couple more times with vain attempts to spot some crocs, we ended up in the small uranium mining town of Jabiru, where there wasn’t much, but there was a supermarket with lovely cool air con.  There was also a swimming pool, but this was closed until the following day for refurbishment.  Instead we went to the lake for a barbeque dinner on the free gas barbeques in the park, before sleeping again under a magnificent starry sky.













The next morning we went to Ubirr (pronounced ‘ooh beer’, although ironically you can’t buy a beer for miles around as its prohibited on aboriginal land).  Here there was a nice walk with a great view from the lookout across the floodplain.  There were also lots of aboriginal rock paintings to see.  We learnt about some of the main aboriginal characters from the time of creation or the ‘dreamtime’ as they call it.   It was really hot walking around the rocks and through the dry grass and we were relieved to be back at Jabiru to have a dip in the pool (which was thankfully open this time).  Again we made us of the free gas barbeque in the park and our attention turned to the sky and the lightning from a thunderstorm in the distance.   After paying attention to the rock art earlier in the day, we knew this to be the work of Namarrgon the Lightning man.  The rain finally came and cooled down the air.

We wanted to visit more places in Kakadu, but many were closed due to roads being flooded.  Many of the swimming spots and waterholes were also closed due to the risk of ‘Salties’ (saltwater crocodiles) lurking beneath.  We stopped once more at Nourlangie Rock to see some more aboriginal rock art before hitting the Kakadu highway west and then back up to Litchfield National Park. We stopped for the night in a campsite next to a racecourse at Batchelor along the way and the only neighbours we had were wallabies.
The first stop at Litchfield was to see some Magnetic and Cathedral Termite mounds.  These were as big as 5 metres high, and are the largest non-human structures on earth.  If you were a tiny termite looking up at these it would be like us looking up at the tallest buildings in the world (proportionately).

We continued through the park, but were again unable to swim at Wangi Falls, again due to crocs.  We began a walk to the top of the falls to see the sunset.  As we walked we heard a noise in the bushes.  We looked at each other and thought Crocodile!  Our hearts were beating quickly as we felt quite vulnerable on the narrow path surrounded by thick bush and we could hear more growling sounds and something moving in the bushes, but we couldn’t see it. We  knelt to grab the biggest rock we could find around us as a potential weapon… then, finally we saw two huge boar standing there… and felt a bit silly to have been so scared but had a good laugh after all.  We continued the walk (with a quicker pace than before, hearts still beating) to see a nice sunset at the top of the waterfall.  We returned to the base and camped the night there before finally making our way south down the Stuart Highway towards Alice.

Darwin

06/02/13 to 07/02/13 – We landed in Darwin around midnight and got a shuttle to the centre of town (officially it’s a city, but it makes Ely or Charroux look big).  We stayed in a backbacker’s dorm for our first night, before we hired a camper van the following morning.  We’d pre-booked the van from Singapore, and were promised air-con.  We realised after driving the van for 15 mins that the air-con wasn’t working.  We returned to the rental company and the man told us that he couldn’t guarantee that it would work.  He said that the girl on the phone shouldn’t have promised it and started to go on about how the poor ‘Sheila’ kept messing things up.  He didn’t seem to have much sympathy and after we whinged a bit, he told us that he didn’t have any other vans, and he gave us a couple of extra gas bottles, which unfortunately weren’t going to keep us cool in our van.  Even though after few kilometres of driving it we knew that the van was a “piece of cheese” for several reasons, the only upside was that we did have one awesome paint job on it, so although we would be sweaty, we would at least look pretty cool on the roads… if only there were other cars on the roads to actually see us.

It was the wet season (still the tropical monsoon climate up here) and although there hadn’t been much rain so far, there were few tourists about.  The locals generally seemed pretty friendly and helpful, except for one surly policeman who, when we him asked how long we could park on the street, responded with “Do I look like a blaaady paaarking attendant?”  Luckily the man in the Tourist Information office was much more friendly and helpful, with a wealth of tips and advice on where to go, where to camp (safely and for free without being woken up by the rangers and getting fined) and where to swim (not in the sea because of box jellyfish at this time of year and not in certain lakes or billabongs where crocodiles are sometimes found to lurk, apparently its a bumper year for crocs).  I can hear and see him talking about the jellyfish now, saying, ”If you think you know what pain is, you don’t”.  He also told us that we had to make sure we had at least 15 litres of water in our car, as it would be difficult to find some drinkable water in some areas (a few days later we had easily drunk up to 5 litres each per day – while usually I struggle to drink more than a litre per day).

We spent the rest of the day in Darwin.  First we looked around the museum (partly to avoid the heat as it was now back up to 33C).  We saw ‘Sweetheart’, a stuffed 5 metre long saltwater crocodile, an exhibition on the 1975 cyclone that flattened the town and learnt about all the nasties living in the Northern Territory, including venomous snakes, spiders, ants, fish and even frogs. We left the museum fearing all the animals we could find in Australia.  We also saw some aboriginal paintings as well as tools to either hunt or use for certain celebrations.  Then it was onto East Point where we saw a cracking sunset, with some interesting cloud formations.

Our camping ground for the night was Darwin Harbour, where we woke to an amazing sunrise and we looked down at the water to see hundreds of huge jellyfish dotted about in the water.  There was no way we were going to have a dip after seeing them, so we drove a short way to Lake Alexander to cool off and make use of the outdoor showers there.  On our way out of Darwin we stopped off at Charles Darwin National Park, which had some short walking trails and several old ammunition bunkers from World War II.  Flora’s ‘thongs’ (flip-flops) broke (her forth pair in 4 months), so we had to cut the walk short and head back to the van.  We left Darwin behind in the rear-view mirror and hit the Stuart Highway heading for the Kakadu National Park.

Sydney

05/02/13 – We landed at Sydney Kingsford Smith the next morning and we quickly realised we had left Asia as we were charged 15 aussie dollars each to leave our bags at the airport for just 8 hours.  We’d have spent about the same in a whole day in Laos, Cambodia or Thailand and now even a bag of crisps was costing about 5 aussie dollars.  To our amazement for a city of Sydney’s standing, there was no direct bus to the city centre from the airport, so we’d either have to take a cab or pay 32 aussie dollars for a return by train.  We asked around a bit, and the minibus mafia were telling us they were the cheapest and only way into the city.  Then we saw a bus pull up and we asked the driver if we could take a bus.  He told us to get on and we could change to another bus near some shops (where we could also grab an almost affordable breakfast, yes Asia really has recalibrated what we perceive as value for money).

Eventually, we made it into the city centre, where we were shivering a little bit as the temperature was a fair bit cooler (24 degrees) than we’d grown accustomed to.  We took a stroll around Sydney, which was weird as everybody was speaking English (well, sort of) and lots of streets and places had familiar names but in different areas.  So our day might sound pretty much the same as if we were describing a typical day in London: “We took the bus, passed Waterloo, stopped near Hyde Park and walked down Liverpool Street and browsed around some shops on Oxford Street”… at the end of the day, we could have gone back to Neptune street but we went to the airport instead to catch our flight.

We also wandered past a statue of Queen Vic and into the Queen Victoria Building which was originally and now is again a shopping centre.  Inside we admired the interior and waited until 11am to see the Royal Clock (in the shape of a castle) strike the hour, with its fanfare sounding and trumpeters appearing from the turrets at the corners.  On the side there were sculptures of English historical scenes rotating every few seconds.

Then we walked down to the harbour past the Museum of Contemporary Arts (with a big concave mirror sitting on the lawn outside) and took in the vista of the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and a huge cruise ship that was docked in Circular Quay.  We took a picnic from a supermarket and lunched on the lawns in the botanical gardens, accompanied by some colourful birds who were after our crumbs.  We were after a bookshop for an Australian guide book.  A new one would set you back a cool 50 aussie dollars, so we opted for a second hand one at a tepid 7 dollars, a saving that went some way to recouping the money we’d spent on our luggage.




This was only a quick one day stop in Sydney, as we were taking a flight to Darwin that evening.  It may seem silly to go from Bail (which is just a few hundred km from Darwin) to Sydney and then back to Darwin, but this was driven partly by economics and partly due to us not having a detailed itinerary when we booked our RTW tickets).  So, it was back on our bus combination back to the airport, and the International terminal to pick up our bags.  Our flight to Darwin was leaving from the Domestic terminal.  Again, no public bus between terminals, just a private company doing shuttle buses for 7 dollars for a 5 minute journey (previously 7 dollars would have taken us the length of Laos)… would we ever be able to adapt back to life in the western world?  Luckily we wouldn’t have to just yet.  First we were off to the Northern Territory, where things were just about as remote, wild and smalltown as you can get…

Summary of Indonesia

REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA

Distance traveled: 2,108 km

Snakes encountered: 2 (very tasty)

Turtles encountered: 1

Noisy Geckos encountered: 1

Modes of transport: bus, train, taxi, minibus, bemo, becak, security truck, car, ferry, fast boat (or ‘pass boat’), glass-bottomed boat.

Favourite places: Yogyakarta, Borobudur, Mt Bromo, Ijen Crater, Ubud, Gili Islands.

Jobs we don’t ever want:

1. Minibus driver (‘1 hours sleep, 6 hours driving’)

2. Sulphur miner inside an active volcano breathing toxic gas carrying 80kg up steep hills between 2am and 10am

3. Acting the part of a Sanghyang dancer, having to put out coconut shells on fire with our bare feet.

Our Route:

Bali and the Gili Islands

29/01/13 to 04/02/13 - We took the ferry to Bali and landed in Gilimanuk. Once again we changed our clock an hour forward.

We were quite surprised that there weren’t a lot of cabs or buses making the connection between Gilimanuk (the ferry port) and Denpasar (the capital). Actually, there was one local bus, very cheap but very long (five hours to do the 125 km to Denpasar.)

We decided to share a taxi with a Canadian couple for 500,000 Rupiah. The taxi driver wasn’t an official one but he was the only person willing to do the job. The idea was to drop the Canadian couple off on the south west coast and for us to keep going to Denpasar to rent a cheap car for a few days.

The only issue was that we were dropped off at the wrong bus station (well we asked him to drop us there - bloody Lonely Planet got the place wrong). At this point (around 4pm) we were very tired and warm, so we gave up on the idea to rent a car (remember we’d woken up at 1am to go to Ijen). So we paid another 120,000 Rupiah to go to our final destination for the day, Ubud.

Our first choice guesthouse (or ‘homestay’ as the Indonesians call it) was full, so we walked a bit further down the same road and found a similar one. The place had a nice garden and was a traditional Balinese house with a small Hindu temple in the courtyard. We negotiated the last room they had and it was their most expensive one too, as they’d used it for their brochure. We probably looked like zombies smelling of sulphur (or rotten eggs) but luckily they gave us the room for the same price as the cheaper ones. They offered us some tea and “kopi” and we went strait to the shower and then to bed.

During the night we heard a very loud repetitive animal noise. It didn’t last for long but sounded like an alarm o’clock. We didn’t know what it was. Maybe some sort of a bird, but we went back to sleep. The next morning (and the following mornings and each evening), hot tea and coffee were prepared for us and the son (one of the family members who owned the guesthouse) came to have a chat with us (he was supposed to be building a new bungalow opposite ours, but in between the rain showers and chatting to us, we’re not sure he got all that much done). After simulating different sort of animal noises and choosing from one of them, he told us that the noise in the night was a small gecko and we couldn’t believe that such a small thing could make such a noise. He also gave us some good tips for where to go in Ubud and the rest of the Island. He also booked us some tickets for a traditional Kecak fire show in a temple nearby.

We stayed couple of days in Ubud and we really liked it. The houses were very nice and traditional (apparently they belong to the same family of 7 brothers who are of one of the lowest castes. Also 7 out of 10 people living in Bali belong to this caste) and the people were very friendly. 

The Kecak fire show in a temple down the road was a pure delight and very impressive telling the story of a battle from the Ramayana where the monkey-like Vanara helped Prince Rama fight the evil King Ravana. The costumes, makeup, layout, music and venue was excellent. All the music came from about 40 men who were sitting in a circle simulating instruments and chanting and singing. At the end of the story some coconut shells were set on fire on the floor, and one lucky guy had to stamp on them and kick them across the floor to put out the fire and chase away the evil spirits. We felt for the guy as each time he spread the burning embers with his bare feet, and the fire was seeming to dissipate, his fellow cast members would sweep them back up into the centre of the floor for him to repeat the feat. We were left wondering if the same guy did this every week, or if this guy had just lost the game of cards this week. 

The next day we rented a car (a Toyota Jimmy) to explore more of the island by ourselves. We went through Rice fields, Kintamani (and the past the volcano) and came back down via the East coast. We didn’t really have time to stop much as the island was much bigger and it took us much longer to get around than we expected (due to mountains and winding or narrow roads). However, it gave us a good overview of the centre and east coast of Bali. We did manage to stop at a coffee plantation just north of Ubud where we were able to try some Kopi Luwak (or ‘Cat Poo Coffee’ as its otherwise known). We saw the process of how it was made and said hello to the Palm Civets who choose only the best beans.

We then headed off the next morning by ‘Past boat’ to the Gilli Islands, or more specifically, Gilli Trawagan (otherwise known as ‘Gili T’). Here we relaxed and did some snorkelling around Gilli T and the other two Islands (Gili Meno and Gili Air). Gilli T was quite busy on the main street where all the budget hotels were, but we walked around the island and barely saw anybody at all once we were off the main street. 

After spending 4 days on this Idyllic Island, we took the boat back to Bali where our flight to Australia was waiting for us. We took a bit of time to sort out a few things while we had internet and enjoyed the air-con at the airport. When we went through the immigration office, we were asked for a 150,000 Rupiah (that we didn’t have) for airport fees. So we went outside again to withdraw some more cash. We were a bit annoyed by this, but we were ready for our flight to Sydney. Goodbye Asia, we’ve enjoyed our stay and we’ll definitely be back one day. Hello to Rolf Harris.

Gunung Ijen

28/01/13 to 29/01/13 – From Bromo we managed to find a minibus which was going to take a Malaysian couple and a Canadian couple to Bali via the Ijen Crater. We negotiated a bit with the driver and managed to jump in with them (with a nights accommodation included in the price). We spent a sweaty 8 hours on the minibus travelling down the mountain to Probolinggo and then back up the mountain to a homestay at Camitor, where there was a coffee plantation, a waterfall and hot springs… and bedbugs. Before the little critters had gorged themselves, we had a dip in the very hot springs, before chatting to some other people at the homestay who’d seen the crater the previous morning. We were very tired after our early start and long journey and decided against another early start, preferring to delay our trip to the crater until the next day. That night Dave got eaten again (apparently they love the B+ blood group).

We spent the next day catching up on sleep, doing washing and relaxing around the village as we knew we’d need to be up very early the next morning. We’d chosen to leave for the crater at 1am (as opposed to 4am) as the experience was more spectacular in the dark. Our driver took us another hour up the mountain to a couple of huts where we would begin our trek up the volcano. It was a steep uphill climb for about an hour to get to the crater rim. In the moonlight we could see the silhouettes of neighbouring volcanoes against a clear, starry sky. The altitude took our breath away and we struggled to hike it up to the summit at around 2400m. We made it to the rim of the crater where we saw the huge plume of sulphurous smoke billowing out of the crater below. We were not sure if we’d be able to see anything.

As we made our way down, we passed several sulphur miners, who were carrying buckets down into the crater to fill with sulphur rocks. Each miner would then carry up around 80kg back up to the rim and down to the bottom of the volcano. It looked like a horrendous job, as they had to breathe the sulphur fumes and carry a huge weight uphill on their shoulders. Each day they do 2 trips there and back, and earn around £7 or £8 per day. Remarkably they were friendly and seemed in good spirits as they worked, constantly singing and cracking jokes with each other. 

We walked down into the crater for about 20minutes, as far as we could safely go, and we saw an amazing sight. In the darkness appeared several clusters of blue flames (that looked a bit like huge propane flames from the gas cooker). This was the sulphur gas rising up out of the rocks below. Luckily the wind was blowing the smoke away from us for most of the time, but once the wind turned and the foul, incredibly strong eggy smell came straight at us. We turned away and tried to breathe in between the plumes, but we couldn’t help but breathe some of the gas. The wind turned again and we were fine again. The miners were still digging away at the yellow rocks below us, unphased by the smoke. We felt like we were in a scene from Star Trek as the crater itself looked like an alien world in the moonlight.

As the sun rose, we began to see the outline of the acid crater lake. As more and more light poured in from behind the ridge we could see the amazing turquoise blue colour, and the outline of the shore. Then finally we saw the reflection of another volcano in the lake. The picture was complete and we stood in disbelief. We must have taken nearly a thousand pictures as we tried to capture the moment to keep with us.

Eventually we had to come up as the sulphur fumes were getting stronger and the wind turned on us once again. As we climbed we continued to stop to take yet more pictures as we saw burnt out trees, lava rivers and impossibly coloured rocks. We reached the rim and saw an amazing panorama of the valley below, with the sea with Bali in the distance behind yet more volcanoes. We hadn’t planned to come here, we just stumbled across it on our way east through Java, but it was one of the highlights of our trip so far. We descended back down the outside of the volcano and saw some black monkeys on the way. At the bottom our driver was waiting for us and we said thanks to the guides and the miners for such a great experience. Then we made our way to the ferry port at Ketapong to catch a ferry to Bali. It was still only 9am.

Gunung Bromo

26/01/13 to 27/01/13 – Our train pulled

into the city of Surabaya early in the morning, and we immediately took a taxi and then a bus to Probbolinggo. Here we waited for a minibus to take us up to Gunung Bromo (an active volcano which erupted as recently as 2011). The driver insisted on not leaving until the minibus was full (10 people), so we waited nearly 3 hours as one by one more people turned up. We eventually had 12 people, but the driver was now saying the bus held 15, so he wanted to wait for a few more. This turned out to be a trick to get us to stump up more cash, so we dug our heels in and eventually he took the 12 of us up to the village of Cemoro Lawang where we grabbed a quick look at the Volcano outer cone. We walked across the ‘Sea of Sand’ within it and took in the amazing view. It felt like we had been dropped on the surfaces of Venus, so unearthly was the panorama. We crossed a dried up lava river and picked up some of the lava rocks which had red and purple colouring which shimmered in the light. As it was late afternoon by this point, there were few tourists and we almost had the place to ourselves. It was beginning to get dark, so we decided to save the climb to the crater until the morning.

We took a jeep up to the top of the hill to see the sunrise beside Bromo and another volcano Semeru (very active) behind in the distance. Soon after sunrise the clouds rose up the valley and shrouded Semeru from view and later Bromo too. At this point we took the jeep back down onto the sea of sand where we made our way on foot up to the crater of Bromo itself. We made the climb up before the bulk of the other tourists (it was public holidays in Indonesia so it was pretty busy), which was good as we were able to get a good look around the inside of the crater and see the huge cloud of sulphurous smoke belching from the hole in the middle. All of a sudden the smoke would stop and we had a brief glimpse of the crusty rock inside the shaft before more sulphur rose out again.

We made our way down through many tourists making their way up and were glad we went up when we did. It was another sight to see all the jeeps parked in a line in the middle of the sea of sand. It was still only 8am when we got back to the village and we had a breakfast before moving on again.

Jakarta - Bandung - Yogyakarta

21/01/13 to 25/01/13 – We landed at Jakarta in the early evening and immediately took a bus east. We’d heard about the floods in Jarkata and decided to avoid it completely, although we did get a view of the skyline from the flyover and sampled the heavy congestion as we got stuck in traffic for the best part of two hours. Finally we arrived in Bandung late at night and immediately found a hotel to crash in. Back to life on the road after the luxury of Singapore, as we spent a good five minutes trying to rid our bathroom of a huge cockroach.
Bandung had lots of big colourful statues of superheroes and fantasy characters outside its shops. We don’t know why, but they added some colour to the place. We went to the train station and after a nice lunch in the centre of town, we took a train as most of the sights we wanted to see were in east Java (and trains were limited and journey times were long). We arrived in Yogyakarta (or Yogya as the locals call it) at midnight and checked into a lovely losmen (hotel) with typical Javanese décor and a lovely pool with lizard mosaics on the bottom.

The next day we took it easy and browsed around the city, taking in the old dutch fort, the palace and browsing around the many shops selling traditional Javanese stuff. We also visited an art group were they were producing traditional Bhatik paintings and we saw the technique for making them.

On advice from a nice local man, we went to the area of Kota Baru (meaning ‘new town’) and ate in a restaurant there. It was very cheap, meaning we could try lots of dishes, including chicken and liver sate (or satay), an unusual beef curry and some interesting drinks (a coffee including kidney beans and an non-alcoholic beer made from Jasmine).
The main reason we came to this part of Java was Borobudur, an ancient temple from the 9th century and even today it’s the largest Buddhist temple in the world (so we are told). We were lucky as we timed our visit perfectly to miss the rain, and although the view of the volcanoes in the distance was obscured by cloud, we were still able to climb the temple and appreciate the stone carvings and the surrounding lush green scenery. The temple had been restored following earthquakes and we could appreciate what a big 3D jigsaw puzzle it must have been to put it back together again.

The following morning we visited the Kratan, the sultan’s palace, before going to another ancient temple, this time a Hindu one, Prambaman. Again we were lucky with the weather for most of the day, and visitied a couple of smaller nearby temples, before the heavens opened and we had to run for cover. We ran under a shack at the side of the road and a women offered us some lychees to buy. We tried them and they were very nice, so we bought a bunch and munched on them why we waited for the rains to subside. Before they did, some security staff offered us a lift on the back of their truck, which had a roof and kept us dry as they gave us a lift back to the main temple. The rains eased a bit and we were able to walk around the (now very wet) temple. We had to wear hard hats for one of the towers as it was only classed as ‘relatively stable’ after previous earthquakes.

That night we were due to take a train, but we had a few hours to kill in the evening so we decided to go to a restaurant where they served snake as we’d wanted to try it for a long time. We ordered barbequed Python and Cobra. It was actually very nice. Python tasted a bit like eel but with a more rubbery texture (similar to that of squid), and Cobra was a bit fiddly due to the bones, but was more flaky in texture like fish.

Then we watched a reggae band that were very good and seemed to have a decent local following before catching our train.

Summary of Malaysia and Singapore

MALAYSIA and REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE

Distance travelled: 1,812 km

Monitor Lizards encountered: 1

Civets encountered: 1

Tapirs encountered: 1

Modes of transport: train, monorail, skytrain, underground train, ferry, bus, bicycle, canoe, taxi.

Competition prize winners from post "Taman Negara":
Matt and Benjamin, Correct Answer: Tapir

Our Route:

Singapore

12/01/13 to 21/01/13 - Early next morning we arrived at Woodlands station in Singapore, where our immediate goal was to find an ATM (and a coffee) before we hopped on a bus. We made our way to Rob, Jo, Hannah and Matthews’ new pad just off Orchard Road. It was great to see everyone and our thanks go to Matt for lending us his room for the week. Rob and Jo helped us to orientate ourselves and showed us Marina Bay. We took a walk ourselves to the Botanical Gardens (just round the corner) and visited Chinatown (where we could see the preparation for the Chinese year of the snake), Arab Street and Little India.

It was great to eat some home-cooked food for a change, and Jo’s food was great throughout the week. We felt relaxed and made good use of the ping pong table and the pool too. The Trenchers (Jo’s parents) arrived mid-week and we shared the dishwashing duties with them after the washer broke down (we hope it’s fixed now Jo). Brian showed us how to play table tennis by beating us all convincingly.

After spending a couple of days with our heads down inside the National Library, (researching for the remainder of our trip), and checking out the National Museum, we decided to get out and do something physical. We went out to East Coast Park to try our hand at wakeboarding at 'Ski 360'. Here was a system of cables (in place of a speedboat) designed to pull you along as you tried to stay on the board. We did an hour each and knew we would suffer for days with aches from all the crashes. It was good fun though, and excellent practice for kitesurfing. On the way back we were also able to take in the unique view of hundreds of container ships in the bay between us and the horizon.

After another rest day (brought on through stiffness and soreness - it took us a week to recover completely) we had the pleasure of attending a high school musical, with Matt taking the role of Cookie in Return to the Forbidden Planet. We enjoyed the show and even managed to grasp most of the storyline (which we usually struggle with in musicals). Matt’s performance was stellar, and it explained why he kept coming home with silver all over his trousers after his rehearsals.

The weather turned distinctly British (wet) for the final weekend, but we still were able to get out and see the colonial buildings of Emerald Hill and we had free tea and cake at Raffles Hotel. On Saturday night we were treated to classic Singapore Crab with seafood buffet, which was delicious.

We left the kids at home for Sunday night (our least evening in Singapore) and went out with Rob and Jo for a nice dinner, a few drinks and a good old chinwag. Dave stayed up to finally see a full complete Spurs match. Just as well he did as Spurs equalised in the 92nd minute against Man Utd. The next afternoon we said goodbye to the Rickards and the Trenchers and made our way to the airport. Then we left the northern hemisphere and crossed the equator. Put on the Johnny Cash, we're heading into summer and to the Ring of Fire.