More tea vicar?

Click here for photos

After a brief stop in Kandy we were collected by our tour guide, Kamal. We had been planning on doing the whole trip by ourselves, but when we saw how long it would take to get around by public transport we decided to sign up with a guide. We wouldn't usually trust people who reckoned they could show you the country on a shoe-string but he had an honest face and turned out to be a real find! First stop on the road was the Pinnawalla Elephant Sanctuary. Elephants still live wild in Sri Lanka and sometimes fall foul of humans. Any orphans or sick adults found by the rangers are brought here where they have all the leaves they can eat and a twice daily romp in the river. Some even had their own personal butlers to scrub behind the ears!

After a packed day of elephants, spices and white water rafting we eventually arrived at the village of Hatton - the start of the pilgrimage to Adam's Peak (or Sri Pada if you are Buddhist or Shiva padam if you are Hindu. Who says religions can't share?!). It rises 2243 metres above sea level and can be climbed by 5200 steps. The slightly foolish (i.e. us!) can rise at 2.30am to climb to the top and wait for sunrise. We actually arrived an hour before the sun was due to come up and huddled for a while in a small room crammed full of guides making hot, sweet tea and other intrepid trekkers that had mis-calculated how long it would take them to the top. The sun finally rose and although there was a lot of cloud, the view was breathtaking.

Back down for breakfast and a drive through the tea plantations that made Sri Lanka famous - to the point where exported tea is still known as 'Ceylon tea' even though the country has not been known by this name since 1972. We visited a tea factory and saw more tea plants than you could shake a stick at. By 9.30 we had been up for 19 hours and Ju could barely keep a civil tongue in her head! Boy did we sleep well that night...!

Sri Lanka - Negombo to Kandy.

Click here for photos of Negombo to Kandy

Well, our Sri Lankan adventure has come to an end and what great fun it was! After a total of 12 hours waiting around in airports (don't talk to ME about navel gazing!) Juliette and I finally met up and were swept off to our digs in Negombo. After a few days of chilling on the beach, we took the train inland to the town of Kandy. There were 2 classes on the train; second and third and the difference between the two is the presence of seats in one and the need to hang off the side of the carriage in the other! We got chatting to a guy called Kamal who we eventually spent the rest of the week with as our driver. He first demonstrated his usefulness by helping us to get seats on the train. The technique involves choosing the correct position on the platform, not actually letting the train stop before you leap on board and then physically shoving people out of the way. It's a good job we met him as we shy, retiring English folk aren't used to behaviour like that! The train journey was fantastic. After leaving the suburbs of Colombo we travelled through green, lush countryside. The train track climbed higher and higher until we were looking down into jungle-filled valleys and up to amazing rock formations. We sat next to a mother and her 2 daughters who cheerfully shared their food, as we did ours. A lovely introduction to the friendly locals!

Ju and Rosa on the road again

The holidays are coming thick and fast and I'm off to Sri Lanka to meet me old pal Juliette for a week. We decided that we should try and meet somewhere that was geographically in the middle between the UK and Singapore. After some inspection of the atlas, it turns out that that's Afghanistan. Not fancying anywhere on the axis of evil at this time of year, we've plumped for Sri Lanka instead!

I am currently mid-way through my journey on a 6 hour stop-over in Kuala Lumpur airport, Malaysia. I feel that immigration standards are slipping as there was not even a small pretence at getting anyone to fill in a card on arrival! I am currently sitting in something called the Plaza Premium lounge, where for a small fee you can put your luggage where someone won't run off with it, use the internet and eat as much over-cooked rice as you can manage. All in a room the size of a broom cupboard! We are promised a much bigger area once we have gone through immigration and can even enviously watch people through the window moving around in their large space not knowing what to do with themselves in all their acres. It's a heady thought and one that's going to keep me going through the night...

Were we always this unfit?

Click here for photos of Rinjani

One of the main reasons that we took our holidays in Indonesia was to get the chance to climb the volcano on the island of Lombok: Rinjani. This is the second highest volcano in Indonesia and is apparently of a similar height to Mount Fuji. It's still active and was throwing rocks around as lately as May 2010. However, the crater now sports its own lake from which another miniature volcano peak is rising - it's this that is the active part. We took a 3 day and 2 night tour which started in the town of Sembalung on the East of the mountain. This area is very fertile and there is everything growing from coffee beans to strawberry plants in the tropical sun! The first few hours was relatively easy as it was through savannah, but then the real slog started. We ascended around 1200m to the rim of the crater to be met by our ever-smiling porters who carried all food and camping equipment in bamboo baskets strung on a pole over their shoulders. To make us feel even more unfit, they race up and down the mountain in flip flops and only seem to stop for cigarette breaks! The view into the crater was breath-taking and worth the blisters. The other 2 members of our group (2 French brothers; Emmanuelle and Aureliene - great fun!) elected to get up at 2.30am and make the final ~1000m ascent to the summit proper, but we were more sensible and stayed in bed and got up at a more leisurely time of 6.30am to watch the sun rise - very romantic. When our 2 travelling companions had returned to the rim, we then set off on the next 5 hours of our walk (can you see why we didn't go to the top?!). Down in to the crater itself and then a visit to the hot springs that flowed out of it helped to ease aching muscles...and also made some improvements on the smell we were starting to generate. I thought that the hike up the other side of the crater to the opposite rim was going to defeat me, but the sheer determination to not be one of the hikers who cries at some point in the trip spurred me on! Again the view of the sunset setting over a landscape in which you are the highest point was breath-taking. That evening we sat around the fire with our guide and porters and chatted and laughed - even though we didn't share that much language in common. We even tried the local Indonesian chili sauce (sambal) that the porters gulped down in huge quantities, although it caused Emmanuelle to cough so violently that he managed to get a grain of rice wedged in his nose!! The next day was all down hill, which was possibly worse than the up, but it did allow us to look rather smugly on the people who were only just starting off on the long slog up. We were dropped back at our hotel in Sengiggi where we lay around the pool for a couple of days - mostly because our legs wouldn't let us get up or walk sensibly!

A hair raising boat ride back to Bali (I was seriously considering stuffing my passport in my underwear so they could identify my body although Matt was taking a slightly more optimistic approach and rubbing sun cream in so that we wouldn't burn whilst waiting to be rescued!) allowed us to finish our holiday in the resort of Sanur.

A lovely 2 weeks away and my walking is almost back to normal...

Gili Trawangen

 It's such a good name that I can't resist having it as the title! After Bali we took a boat over to the 3 islands collectively known as 'the Gilis' off the NW coast of Lombok. The boat from Bali to Lombok and the Gilis takes around 2 hours but the boat was seaworthy and even had life rafts - an improvement on the boat we had on the return journey, but I'm getting ahead of myself... With nothing to do but lie on the fine, white sand and splash in the turquoise sea that is mostly what we did! We did walk around the largest of the 3 - Gili Trawangen - which took about 2 hours. If you walked reeeeeally slowly. We also went snorkelling and even saw turtles, but they're hard to photograph without getting your camera wet!

Bali Hai

 

Click here for photos of Bali 

It's school holidays again, which means it's time for the Fradleys to vacate the country. For our 2 week holiday we decided to visit the islands of Bali and Lombok in Indonesia. We started in Bali on a laid back part of the South coast called Petitenget. A short distance along the coast is the resort of Kuta, which is where you hang out if you're young, drunk and Australian. A bit like an Antipodean Benidorm. So we didn't go there. We did visit the island temple of Tanah Lot and honed our skills in not buying many identical souvenirs - well we were in Indonesia!!

After the coast we headed inland to the town of Ubud. Ubud itself is mostly tourists and locals trying to make a living with the entertaining call of, "Taxi sir? No? Well how about tomorrow?" However, not much effort leads you out into paddy fields and we spent a lovely evening watching the sun go down over lush, green fields of rice with a large glass of Bintang beer in front of us. It also made the walk back into town in the dark more interesting! A highlight of inland Bali was a cycle tour of 25km - all downhill! It starts up near the slopes of one of the Balinese volcanoes - Mount Batur. It is still sporadically active and the sharp line delineating the burnt ground from the untouched ground from the last eruption is startlingly clear. On our journey we passed through small villages in which the children would run out to High Five us as we cycled along. We got to visit the compound of a Balinese family (temple in the NE corner, pig in a sty, Iron Maiden poster on one of the houses!), help to plant rice in a paddy field (presumably any self-respecting farmer would dig it all up and start again after we'd gone?), watch coffee being roasted and the highlight of the tour - a cremation party who were on the way to dig up someone who'd been dead for 5 years so that they could then burn them! Some people get no rest...

Run fat girl, Run!

Never agree to things during a drink-all-the-champagne-you-can Sunday brunch...it will only end in tears! On this particular occasion, it resulted in signing up for a 5km run. It was for a good cause, but it was also at 8.30am on a Sunday in a country with an average humidity of 75%! It went a lot better than expected and I even found myself enjoying the experience, although perhaps next time I'll attempt it without the hangover.

It seems I've now agreed to do a 10km...will I never learn?

Raindrops keep falling...

Well, as the weather in the UK picks up we seem to be plunged into another monsoon season! Apparently, this season is called the 'little wet', although how you tell them apart is anyone's guess. Following the worldwide trend of weather pattern disruption, the rain has been a little heavy here recently...to say the least! Umbrellas have no effect and the best thing to be wearing is probably a swim suit. In fact, even the amazing Singaporean infrastructure couldn't cope with the last few downpours resulting in several flash floods and road closures. Even the famous Orchard Road ended up underwater with cars floating down it!

It's pronounced Poo-ket

 Click here for photos of Phuket 

If you're going to live in the tropics, then you really ought to take advantage of the fact that you can escape  to crystal blue seas and white sand beaches at the weekend. Seeing as I owed Matt 2 Christmas presents and a birthday present from 2009 (and this year's not looking too promising either), I booked us a weekend away to the Thai island of Phuket. Seeing as it was a 'treat' weekend we stayed in a swanky resort and enjoyed High Tea on the beach. Are we lucky people? We certainly think so.

All the better to SEE you with.

I recently took the plunge and decided to get laser surgery to correct my eye-sight. It wasn't something I'd ever really considered in the UK, but after several disagreements between my contact lenses and the Singaporean climate, I thought I'd give it a whirl! It wasn't the most pleasant experience in the world but there was no pain involved and the nice doctor even stuck a piece of tape with my name on to my forehead - presumably so that I could be returned to the clinic if I got lost. A mere 24 hours later and my vision was perfect and there were no side effects at all except a bit of dryness in my eyes. After grappling with the sensation that it feels quite unreal to have good eyesight after all these years, I can honestly say it feels amazing to get up in the morning and be able to see!

Glasses? Only if they come with wine in, thanks!

Oh yeah...!

Singapore is such a cosmopolitan place that it's easy to forget that we are living in South East Asia, almost on the Equator. It's sometimes the small things that remind you: like watching a troupe of monkeys use a train bridge to cross the road right outside our front door. Or being unable to get off my bus because the driver missed the stop, didn't then want to get caught stopping in the wrong place and so just carried on oblivious to all the passengers desperately ringing the bell!

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Or Happy New Year! Chinese New Year is bigger than Christmas here. Everywhere is decorated and lit up...like Christmas! But instead of presents, young people receive HongBao (red packets with money inside) from their elders and present them with 2 oranges in return. Doesn't seem like a fair swap to me! This year is the Year of the Tiger, which is the year that I was born in. It's supposed to bode badly when your birth year swings around again and you should wear protective amulets to stop the bad luck. What it actually means is that you must be getting older - perhaps I can find one sponsored by Oil of Olay?

Sisters are doing it for themselves

I recently had the great honour of being asked to be a bridesmaid or 'sister' to one of my friends here in Singapore. Whilst a lot of the wedding ceremony was similar to that in the UK there were a few differences. The Sisters arrive early (7.30am!) at the bride's house ready to put the groom through various trials before he is allowed into the house to collect his prize. This poor lad had to brush his teeth with wasabi toothpaste and have his legs waxed amongst other things! The evening do consisted of a 10 course dinner with the bride and groom changing their outfits 3 times during the night and each time re-entering along a raised catwalk. There were speeches, songs and even a few brave folk performing Bollywood dancing ;) I've never been to the Oscars but I think that now I could guess what it must feel like!

Youch

 Click here for pictures of Thaipusam

The best thing about living in another country is getting to experience customs and traditions you wouldn't usually see. Take the festival of Thaipusam. This is a Hindu festival involving much pain in return for getting a wish granted by the gods. Praying for a new TV? Why not walk a few kms with limes hanging off hooks from your chest. A new car? That'll be a huge needle through the lip. Something bigger? You're looking at a whole world of pain...

You definitely wouldn't see this in Bishops Stortford.

Land of the Long White Cloud

It seems like AGES since we've had  a proper holiday (all those that think that living here is like one big holiday can just pipe down!) and what better place for one than New Zealand? Having booked the flights many weeks ago, the actual departure date seemed to creep up on us, meaning we had to pack in about 2 hours! Good for focusing the mind...bad for trying to remember what you wanted to take. It was just amazing and too much to describe here...it would be a blog in itself!

Rough itinerary:

Christchurch > Mount Cook > Queenstown > Doubtful Sound > Milford Sound > Wanaka > Franz Joseph > Punakaiki > Nelson > Marlborough Sound > Kaikoura > Christchurch

Don't believe everything you read...

The advertising standards in Singapore seem to be slightly more 'relaxed' than I've seen in the UK. See the attached photo - an example of a beer that claims to be a health tonic and more... (if the text is too small, it says that it strengthens the immune system and causes regression and elimination of the AIDS virus)

I like to ride my bicycle...

 Click here for photos of Pulau Ubin

 Mum's back from Australia so to remind her of all the humidity she's been missing we decided to take a trip to the small island of Pulau Ubin off the North East of Singapore. It claims to be how Singapore looked 'back in the day'. It's jungley and pretty humid and you can hire bikes to see mangrove swamps. Cycling speed is set by how fast the mozzies can chase after you and sweating is definitely the order of the day! However, it did enable us to see Fiddler Crabs, mud skippers and even a snake!