Taipei day 1

I arrived last night. It's the first time I've been back to this part of Asia since I left Japan almost 3 years ago. I was immediately struck by how similar everything is to Okinawa here - MOS burger! Family mart! I suppose just reading the kanji again too - although it's Chinese here, Japanese language has many Chinese characters, so even though I can't speak Chinese, I can tell the meaning of some things, which is nice.
I found my hostel fine, right next to Taipei's main station. Everyone always forgets to mention that Taipei's main station is humongous. It literally takes 30 minutes to find your way out of the correct exit. It's a new hostel, complete with 'mini single rooms'. I have one, it's tiny, but it has nice details...a lamp, pretty cherry blossom painting on the wall, air-con...and remarkably NINE power sockets!!

This morning I woke up and researched Taipei a bit online then decided to head out to the south, Taipei Zoo. Apparently the largest zoo in Asia, it cost me less than £2 to get in! I saw the pandas (sleeping) and the penguins (in their freezy enclosures) and the giraffes, zebras. I was most impressed with the hippos. One hippo managed to get his jaw stuck between some railings...not a good idea! I have photos.

After trekking to the far end of the zoo I decided to jump on the shuttle train up to the MaoKong Gondola. It's a pretty extensive gondola system, going up and down and over a few different hills, terminating on a tea mountain, which conveniently overlooks the whole of Taipei. There are loads of tea 'plantations' here, and lots of tea houses, and a 'how tea is made' factory thing.

After walking around all day I decided it was time to get back on the gondola, back on the metro and get some food before going up Taipei 101 for dusk. I was in the queue to get up to the observation deck for what seemed like forever. Plenty of time to people watch. I gave my place in the queue up 4 times because the people behind me were so argy bargy! Beautiful view from the top, you get a free audio guide woohoo. It is an amazing building. Then I came home, and I'm wrecked!!

Painting took 3 months to arrive from Nicaragua

1 month in Australia

Well, I've been here for a month now. The first 2 weeks were busy with sister Eilidh and niece Kyla. Lots of family time. The three of us visited more relatives in Sydney for a long weekend. Since Eilidh left I've been on more of a mission. I've been trying to kick start all areas of my life, one part at a time. I've been playing the harp quite a bit. It's amazing how much my fingers can remember! I've made a basic website to try and improve my chances of getting hired for weddings and functions on the gold coast. All the other harpists have one, so, I feel like I'm ready now, if I need to become a harpist overnight!!
I've been searching for jobs in the sports industry - a huge vague umbrella covering all sorts of roles. But I did find a job on the Sunshine Coast - 2 hours north of Brisbane - the job is Regional Coordinator, Active After-School communities. This involves working with primary schools and hooking them up with the local community sports providers to try and encourage inactive children into sports after school. Sounds like a perfect job for me...but if I don't get it, it's not the end of the world - at least it's forced me to crack on and get my CV in order and the letter writing process under way. The next letter will be easier! The search continues!
Sports! Sports have been keeping me going through this strange time. I've been swimming most days, there's a pool in the garden, and a 50 metre outdoor pool 5 minutes away, so that's brilliant. I've been cycling 2 different routes - the first is a 40km valley road - out and back. The 2nd route is a 70km loop, going up into the mountains - a beautiful ride, but massive elevation, hills galore. It's currently taking me 3 hours...hoping to gradually speed this up. It's a tough tough ride at the moment. Need to find a cycle group. I saw a group of girls this morning on the valley route, but I was going the other way. I'm thinking of turning around next time, joining their pack and find out what the deal is!!
Running. I've been running along the beach - with no shoes...it's been good for my running I think. Then I found the bike shop in Coolangatta - they are about to set up a whole new triathlon training scheme. The first run was that very same night, so I managed to get a group run in - the hills were harsh though! Training buddies! There were only 3 guys, 2 of which used to be on the pro olympic triathlon series, now overweight and trying to get fit again! The third guy does sub-10 hour ironman distances, so pretty quick. Really fun to find a good bike shop anyway. At the moment, they only have super fast bike ride groups...a little out of my league at the moment, but hopefully I'll get fitter and faster!!

So, I have just over 2 weeks until I head to Canada, my friend Hannah from my Japan years is getting married! Hooray! So, the McRazy travels continue!!

Life with mum and dad is pretty chilled and relaxed. The kookaburras are on the balcony from about 6 am until 8 am and again from 5 pm...funny things. We're having BBQs almost every night! The house is amazing, the view of the ocean is stunning. Sunrise from my bed isn't too bad either.

I have been missing my friends and Andrew a LOT. Having no routine and no job...it's a weird thing - but everything will come together eventually. I have the luxury of hanging on until the RIGHT job comes along. It's all very exciting.

Seeing 2 of my best Japan friends next week. Dona lives an hour north of here on the Gold Coast. Jaimee lives further north but is back in Brisbane for Easter holidays. Great to have such good friends so relatively close!

Time to put the BBQ on :)
Happy Easter everyone!

Diving in Borneo, Sipidan and surrounding Islands

This is wayyyyy overdue - about 2 weeks ago now!

I was met at Tawau airport by Scuba Junkies staff, hooray (always nice to see your name on a piece of paper at the airport), and driven to Semporna - the base hub for diving the islands. It takes an hour from Tawau airport to Semporna, driving mile after mile through palm oil plantations. I arrived late morning and booked in all my diving, one day at Sibuan, 2 days at Sipidan, then a 4 day rescue diver course.
Scuba Junkies have a backpacker hostel, super cheap with an amazing breakfast. They also have a resort on the island of Mabul, it's more expensive, but it's absolutely gorgeous. The town of Semporna is pretty scuzzy, stinky and dirty - only really explored once, and that was enough. People come here to dive, and that's it! There is a pretty cool fish market, pretty stinky too!
The boats all leave at 8am. 3 dives and lunch, returning at around 5pm. It's a long fun day. The sun is really strong, and divers don't usually have much time to build up their tans...they all come back with RED faces!
The first day was pretty standard diving, at Sibuan Island. I'd seen most of the sea life before, and with a sandy bottom, there wasn't a vast reef. Still a great day diving though.
The 2nd and 3rd days I was diving at Sipidan...the golden egg of these islands. Sipidan is a protected nature reserve and has a permit system, I think about 150 permits per day, somewhere in that region anyway. There are no resorts on the island, only a military base. Until 2005 there were a number of resorts, and no limit to the dives. People do think that the reef has recovered significantly as a result of this heightened protection, so that's great.
The minute we jumped into the water, we knew this was going to be a spectacular day of diving.
Reef sharks, and turtles, too many to count! 2 really nice wall dives in the morning. Our 3rd dive was at 'Barracuda Point'. The minute we jumped in the water we were surrounded by a tornado of big eye trevally, or 'jack fish'. Very cool. Then a few minutes later, a huge huge huge school of chevron barracuda came by. Again, sharks and turtles galore...insane.
The rescue diver course was fantastic - really important. Our teacher and the dive master who was helping us were hilarious - on our practical dive, they literally had every problem you could think of. I'd look around, one of them would have lost their mask...or a fin...or they'd be floating upwards, or sunk on the bottom, or their BCD would be floating behind them, or they had spat out their regulator, or they'd be having a panic attack...endless problems!! These dives were really exciting!! Challenging too!
Best diving I've ever done. I will definitely be going back there to do more fun diving.
I almost left without my passport, which could have been exciting...but all worked out in the end. Off to Singapore!

London

Kirsty and I were pretty excited about returning to London for many reasons; the quirky people, familiarity, tea, biscuits, access to a kitchen, mosquito-free atmosphere, friends. Within 3 hours, all these yearnings were satisfied and we were back to normality.

Our flight back was a total nightmare. We arrived at Miami and soon found out first leg to Detroit was severely delayed. If we took the delayed flight we would have missed our London connection. Instead they re-routed us through Atlanta. This left us with about 11 hours to play in Miami airport. We bought some trash celebrity gossip magazines and hit the bar; a fantastic way to kill 11 hours by the way!

Our flight to Atlanta was running late too, and as soon as we arrived we found ourselves sprinting through the airport to reach our London bound flight gate – when we got there everyone was already on the plane. If we were sprinting, there was no way that our bags would have made the connection, so it was no surprise when they didn't show up in London. It made the journey home much easier though, as we strolled from Paddington Station back to Baker street on a freeeeeeezing afternoon!

The bags finally showed up the following day, much to my relief – I had already sent all my belongings to Australia and was left with a jumper and a pair of jeans, and no shoes!

 

I had 6 days to reunited with as many people as possible, and actually managed to cram in quite a lot. Jetlag was on my side…sleep in while people were at work, then party into the wee hours. I went to Andrew's comcomedy.com live night on the Wednesday. Thursday I visited my old colleagues at the bank then out for drinks with Mike and Roger – it was great to see them, and a funny feeling being back in that office, it felt very very small after being outside for the last 3 months! Friday night was a Uni girly night in Windsor. Saturday I made it to the huge Triathlon Expo at Esher where I met up with Japan Ironman friends and met Chrissie Wellington again (my hero – 3 time world champion). The rest of the time I spent with boyfriend Andrew (another tragic love story…ripped apart by my silly international lifestyle. L)

I really wanted to go to the British Museum before I left – they have sooooo much stuff in there. So many times on my travels they have little signs saying – the original is located in The British Museum.

Departure day, Monday 15^th, came around extremely quickly. My flight was at 11:05pm so I had the day to pack and watch more Olympic craziness during the day, hanging out with Kirsty and Andrew. Lisa popped by on her way home from work, just while I was dyeing Kirsty's hair! Then it was time to go. Andrew was going to come with me to the airport for a final farewell. All was going to plan, we jumped on the bus to Paddington Station – where the Heathrow trains leave from. We bought tickets and went over to look at the flight departure screens. Hmmmmm that's weird, I couldn't see my flight on the board…then it hit me, like an elephant falling on my head from a 100 storey building. My flight didn't leave from Heathrow at all…it left from Stansted!!!!! Oh NOOOOOO. It's only the FURTHEST airport from London. I have never ever felt such a feeling of dread in my entire life. I've never missed a flight in my life, and I wasn't planning on missing this one either. I think I burst into tears, it had been a very emotional few days! Action plan – taxi to Liverpool street station then Stansted Express. I left Andrew at the ticket barrier as I boarded the train – not exactly the goodbye that I had planned. I had worked out by this point that I was going to make the flight and was pretty sure I wouldn't be back in London that night. So, Airasia flight to Kuala Lumpar. £150, not bad. I had the screaming baby infront of me and a strange passenger next to me, but as an overnight flight, the 12 hours seemed to fly by. It did feel very strange arriving at night – quickest day ever.

I flew into KL (LCCT), which is the airasia hub, about 15 minutes shuttle bus from the main KL airport. I wasn't aware of the two terminals and I'd booked the airport hotel that turned out to be super close to the other terminal. I found two other British girls who were in the same situation and we shuttled around and found our bed for the night.

I had to be back at KL (LCCT) for a 7:20 am flight the following morning, so was able to pack in about 5 hours sleep. I proceeded to have several nightmares about missing my flight, and awoke 3 times within the 5 hours to check the time. I had a wake-up call from the front desk, then when I was inconveniently in the shower, a follow-up wake-up call. How annoying! I suppose some people go back to sleep!

Now I find myself up in the air again, bound for Tawau on the Island of Borneo. I have 3 seats to myself, just had my pre-booked meal (which I didn't really need) and am hoping to be met by the 'Dive Junkies' shuttle.

 

Miami - Super Bowl Weekend!

So, we find ourselves back in Miami - our last weekend on the road. It also happens to be Super Bowl Weekend...one of the biggest party weekends for the US. We weren't aware of this event at time of booking, but it definitely added a new dimension to the trip.
We caught the Go Shuttle shared taxi from Fort Lauderdale to South Beach, shared with a glamour model and a club DJ from New York. On the way along Washington Ave we saw a club where Snoop Doggy Dog was playing, massive queue outside. Apparently everyone was in town for Super Bowl - Even Brad and Angelina (we just caught up on all the celeb gossip after 3 months of withdrawal from the world). We were dropped at 'Jazz on South Beach' hostel - we'd booked through hostel world, everything was booked up (we couldn't understand why...doh!) Anyway, the hostel was insane, they couldn't put us in the same dorm room, couldn't give us female dorms, couldn't guarantee that tomorrow would be better, 18 year old girls tottering around wearing hot pants and mini-skirts, music blaring...we were SO culture shocked! We couldn't get out of there quick enough! This makes us sound so old and over it!!! Perhaps we are!!!!! We ended up at a hostel called 'Santa Barbara International Fun Hostel!' It turned out to be a better location and much more chilled.
We felt totally knackered that first night, starving hungry, struggled to get a taxi from one hostel to the other, overwhelmed by all the party people and the football fans...slept like a log.
The next day we hit the beach. They had Celebrity Beach Bowl going on, stars from Dexter, Gossip Girl and J-Lo were all playing football on the beach! How exciting!
Then we hit the shops...such great shopping! We have no room for shopping in our packs, but somehow we make it work!
The next day we ran on the beach in the morning, then slept on the beach, then hit the shops again, then watched the super bowl. Everyone seemed to be supporting the New Orleans Saints - the underdogs...everyone running around the town 'Who Dat?' which is their slogan. Crazy crazy. We were offered tickets to go to the game...$900! We watched it in a bar, both teams heavily supported within the bar...insane. It's a miracle the place held together, people running and jumping everywhere!
Finally headed off to the airport, then the chaos ensued. We were meant to be going Miami Detroit London. The Miami Detroit flight was severely delayed, which missed the further connection, so we were pulled off that flight and re-routed through Atlanta. We were then stuck in Miami airport for about 10 hours - shopping and drinking at the bar! Our flight to Atlanta was severely delayed also, and we literally had to sprint to make the London flight - so no big surprises when our luggage doesn't show up in London eh.  :(
We caught the Heathrow Connect back into Central London, headed home to the freezy flat and fired up the heating, the oven, anything that produced heat basically!
It's great to be home (even though none of my belongings are here!!) There's a lot to be said for familiarity after 3 months on the road.
We woke up to SNOW this morning. I leave for Malaysia in 5 days time, my mission is to get my missing bag back!!!!!!!!!

Antigua, Guatemala

We left El Tunco beach in El Salvador on Tuesday. Our hotel, Mopelia,
runs a shuttle service direct to Antigua, pausing at the border for
passport stamping. It was glorious compared to our chicken bus
experiences of late!
Antigua is similar to Granada in Nicaragua - an old brightly coloured
colonial town, now a Unesco World Heritage zone, surrounded by huge
looming volcanoes. The setting is incredible. Antigua runs shuttle
services to anywhere and everywhere. You could definitely fly here and
shuttle back and forth to all the top places in Guatemala without
having to deal with the crazy public transport systems. We shared the
shuttle with two Aussie surfer lads. Staying in a decent little hotel,
complete with resident pushy tour operator - skinny, scarf around his
neck, pops up constantly asking us where we're going...we slammed the
door in his face and still he persists!
Our first trip was to the active volcano in the region, Pacaya.

We left at 2pm on a mini bus and drove about an hour to Pacaya
Volcano, it's about 2800 metres or so. Our tour guide named our group
of 14 people, Toucan. He proceded to blow his whistle and yell
'Toucans' non-stop for the rest of the evening!
We hiked up the dusty volcano path for about an hour and a half,
trailed by horses - the 'natural taxi' for those who struggle with the
climb. As we neared the lava flow field we could hear the volcano
hissing and spurting, just like a steam engine. We were about the
clouds, overlooking 3 other volcanoes as the sun set. As we watched
Pacaya's peak we could see lava spurting out the top. Everyone was
totally mesmerised. We clambered over the old lava flows to a hot spot
where people were roasting marshmallows. In previous years the lava
flows had been very active, coming down the volcano, but the day we
went, the only lava was the stuff spurting out the top. As it got
darker the lava was brighter. We had to head back down in the dark,
mighty bright to the rescue again. Our tour guide had a nightmare
trying to round us all up to return down the volcano, blowing his
whistle non-stop, toucanssssss let's gooooo. He must have this problem
every day! Our path down the volcano was lined with glowing fire flies.
Definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far, cannot wait to
upload photos when I get back to London next week!
Today we chilled out and walked around this beautiful town. We just
sat in a cafe, bagel barn, and watched a really depressing documentary
called 'When the mountains rumble' about the terrible history of the
Guatemalan people and the injustices of civil war :(
Tomorrow we fly to Miami.

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