My big OE

16 April - Leaving Auckland, NZ to travel for a month, to finish in Aberdeen, Scotland.

26 April - After staying in Kuala Lumpar for a couple of days we bused up the coast to Penang. We stayed next to the beach at a guest house, for 3 days. It was here we found a couple of large shopping malls that had shops selling pirated music and computer software CDroms for $nz 2.50. We then left Penang and went over the Thailand border, we stayed in Ao Nang for 10 days , which is just out on the coast from Krabi (pronounced Gra-bee) , it is between Trang and Phuket.

We have had nightly lightning displays in this province, but never any rain. It's always between 28 (night) and 35-38 degrees sunny, with only 5-10 kts of wind (lucky I'm not kiting) and the water is so warm you never get cold. We have finally found paradise here! We are staying here for the rest of the days till 1st May, it is very cheap, we have a nice hotel room with aircon and sea view for 500B a night,approx $NZ 20.80 a night(still expensive accomodation by Thailand standards, and the thai food is amazing, and so cheap, we have drinks dinner and dessert for both of us for under 250B! ($NZ 10) We have been snorkelling on the reefs and took a Thai cooking class yesterday,cooked 6 different thai dishes, and are going elephant treking tomorrow!!

Plenty to do here, we might try some novice rock climbing here too, Krabi is apparently a world class rock climbing location. We will be visiting a few of the island in the next few days too, including the famous location where the James bond film goldeneye was filmed (I think the secret baddie lair!!) Still lots of cheap music CDs around, most work out around $5 nz. We are here till the 1st of May, then back to KL, then on to South Africa... 3rd May - We are in SA now, arrived yesterday, at 9.15am, we are staying near the city centre, 2km to the centre. 6km to the V&A waterfront plaza shops. The place we are staying at, the Oak Lodge is having another party tonight, they had one last night and the night before, it went off, African drum and bass rocks! ;-)!! :-) Big night.. slept till 12am (we had been travelling from thailand to SA, no sleep for 35 hours!! We almost missed our plane out due to a mixup with the flight, and instead of travelling by bus to K.L which is 12 hours travel, we ended up using the only transport available, and chartered a taxi ( a white 1970's Mercedes Benz!) to take us to K.L, which only took 7 hours, going fast, no stops! blew our budget for Asia!).

Caught the flight to SA, arriving at 9am in the morning, and explored a bit of Capetown then had dinner then partyed till early hours of the morning, at Oak lodge, SA!
Rained here today, so we didn't get up to the top of table mountain, maybe on Monday..

4 May - Walked, or rather climbed up table mountain, from Oak lodge, to Tafelberg road and up the Plattekip Gorge track, up to Macleans beacon, to a height of 1085m, in about 4 hours. Very tiring! The mist at the top cleared for half an hour giving us great views out to Camps bay and Sea point. We had lunch up there, then caught the cable car back down.

5 May - We visited a Township near Hout bay, to see how the other half lives, townships are clusters of tin shacks, little villages, occupied by black south Africans, who are jobless. SA has 65% unemployed, hence the huge crime problem in Capetown and Johannesberg

6th May - Did a Stellenbosch and Paarl Winetour today, in a mini bus, visited Villiara, Simonsig, Laborie, and Seidelberg for winetastings. The last vineyard had a amzing view across the Winelands all the way to Table mountain, far off in the distance.

7th May - Hired a car ( for a measly $35 per day) and drove out along the bays, lunch in Simonstown, a nice seaside village with a naval base!, then on to Cape Point. Saw lots of good surfing spots along the way. We drove back over te hills and went past West Lake, saw a couple of guys flying kites on the southerly wind. looked like a good spot. Took the motorway all the way back (120km/h speed limit!) and had dinner at the Oak lodge. African stew with salad.

8th-10th May - Drove out from the west Cape to Mossel bay, a 400km trip heading east from Capetown to stay a couple of days. The first night we stayed in the Santos Express backpackers, which was a old train, on the railway line about 20m from the beach. Had dinner at the restaurant, joined to the train. Had a bottle of wine we bought in Stellenbosch. Next day we went out to the Botlierskop game reserve, it was raining and quite cold, but we saw plenty of wildlife, 3 hour 4wd drive, then we went back to the lodge and had a very very nice buffet 4 course dinner, and tried some game meat, kudu, and impala. Got offered some almost free accomodation for the night, in Mossel bay, lucky as we hadn't organised anything!

11 May - back in Capetown today, leaving for Amsterdam today, had pizza for dinner last night. There is a delivery service that picks up takeaways from any takeaway shop and brings it to you, so you don't have to go out after dark in the dangerous streets of Capetown. We got to the airport on time and flew out to Amsterdam, a long and cramped flight with KLM, Malaysia Airlines was 1st class compared to this! Bad food too.

12 May - Arrived in Amsterdam at 8am, decided to catch a train out fromt the airport to the Centraal station, then catch a tram out from there to our hotel. Of course we still have our heavy packs on, and I'm carrying my kiteboard through the streets of Amsterdam, and trying to find our hotel, which was in the Museumplein area. Very tired, slept for a hour, then went for a walk, quite cold, 14 degrees. We found the Van Gough Museum, very worthwhile visit. In the afternoon, after we had lunch at a little pub, we visited Anne Frainks Huis. Had dinner at an Italian restaurant.

13 May - Had a big sleep in, then hired some push bikes ( Everyone in Amsterdam rides push bikes!) . We biked around the centre of town, Ali got a flat tire, so we found a outlet of the hire place in another part of town, and got it fixed. We booked a twilight cruise around the waterways of Amsterdam. We biked around for a while, got some icecreams and relaxed. In the evening we went on the cruise, all wine and snacks supplied, (bottle of wine each! ) and after that we took a wander through the streets to find the redlight district. We found a quite a few "coffee shops" selling hash cakes, cookies, and plenty of weed, and we did try some! They offer you a menu of the available types of cannibis and a description of the type of high they give you!!

14 May - Flew out from Amsterdam to Scotland! Short 2 hour flight, on a small plane. Same air temp as in Amsterdam. Grant was there to meet us, and took us back to his flat. Went for a quick walk over to the library. There is a free internet service at the library! Grant picked up Davinia and then picked us up from the library. We stopped at Safeway (a supermarket) for stuff for dinner.

15 May - Started looking for jobs, and try to familarise ourselves with how to get around.