Category: Travel
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Final Round Up – Get the tissues out
Unless John suddenly comes up with something inspirational this will be the last post for this blog. It feels really strange just writing that. The end of an era. Time has gone fast and yet slow at the same time since we arrived back. So much has been going on! It’s been lovely to catch…
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Wells, orphans and mosquitos
Last Saturday we arrived back from our final bush trip at Ebakika where we dug a well, built a latrine for a school, built a tree nursery and did a talk at a couple of local schools about cleaning your teeth as well as handing out toothbrushes. This was the toughest trip of the three…
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A very brief post…
The only internet cafe in town is down at the moment (and has been for the last 2 weeks apparently…) so I’m using an azafady office coputer so will have to be very brief as time is very limited. We arrived back from Sainte Luce yesterday where we successfully completed the house for the maternity…
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About to go back in the bush, minus a phone
Yes guys i’m afraid our Madagascar mobile phone has been stolen so nobody can call us for the time being. John still has his British phone for texts but we’re not sure how he’s going to keep it charged as our only charger was also taken. Ah well, these things happen, we’ll see if we…
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Back from the bush
Right, expect a brief and badly typed email with lots of typos and uncorrected spelling errors. Blame the french keyboard and wobbly monitor screen. Madagascar is going well for the both of us and the group is now gelling well and we’ve just come back from our first trip to the bush just up the…
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Quick post from Madagascar
Salama! Going to keep this brief as dont have much time and this french keyboard makes it infuriatingly slow to type! We arrived last Thursday and are currently having lots of orientation lessons about the work of azafady and have spent two afternoons carry sods of earth to and fro. We have a Madagascqr mobile…
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Madagascar and fundraising bits and bobs
Quick post just to let you know about a few bits and bobs prior to us jetting off for Madagascar. We don’t think we’ll be able to remain in as good contact while we’re there as we’ll be spending a large part of our time out in the bush and the internet is pretty rubbish…
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From coast to coast
I’ll start this post by mentioning a little from our time in Mozambique a little under a month ago, if I can remember back that far that is. Well, here goes… Our main reason for going to Tofo beach was so that I could get a bit of diving in as this is one of…
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Thank You Again!
This is just a quickie to say thank you so much to all of you who have donated so far and especially the people who have kindly helped us to raise money. So far our joint efforts have raised an incredible 1484 pounds. With the Jiv donation that makes it 2484 so we’re not far…
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Poor Old Mozambique
Hello All, We’re back in Maputo now and to the best Internet cafe we’ve found in Africa so far. This post is full of raw emotion as well as stuff that John and I have spent a lot of time philosophising about. Before I published it I considered toning it down and then changed my…
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Horny animals with big teeth
Ey up all! It’s been a few weeks since Viv’s last post and about time for another update from the road… We didn’t do an awful lot in Durban, just chilled out and spent a bit of time on the internet, got a visa for Mozambique, got lost on a bus and ate a curry…
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Floods and roaches
It sounds like something biblical doesn’t it? We’ll it’s not all that bad, quite entertaining when you look back! A lot has happened since we left gorgeous Cape Town. Our first stop on our way up the coast was Nature’s valley. It absolutely poured it down and we spent most of our time cowering under…
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Cape Town
Apologies all for the length of time it has taken us to get round to writing a post, we’ve just been in a lot of places where the internet is either non-existant or prohibitevely expensive, couple that with needing to prioritise sorting out fundraising for our voluntary work (still time to donate!) has resulted in…
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Chilling complete, back to the travelling
And we’re really looking forward to getting on with it again, we fly to Cape Town tomorrow to explore the southern reaches of Africa. We are both very excited indeed and it’s thanks to a couple of weeks chilling with Rightee that the travel magic’s back! Under our collective, Mary style, name of VAJ (Viv,…
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Your help needed! – John and Viv’s charity fundraising challenge.
In October we will be going to Madagascar for 10 weeks of voluntary work out in the jungle. During this time we will be living in a tent and will pretty much eat nothing but beans and rice (mmm, lovely beans and rice!). We also need to learn French, and fast, as that’s the only…
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Chilling in Chiang Mai
What have we been up to in the last couple of weeks? Erm, not a lot to be honest. After over 7 months of fairly fast-paced travelling we decided that we were long overdue a bit of a break to slow things down a bit. The three days of travelling to get to Chiang Mai…
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Thank you!!!
Yes, I am officially reet old now! Reet reet old! My birthday was absolutely amazing and that’s a big thank you to loads of people for making it that way! The day was great, I wasn’t born until seven twenty in the evening and as we’re 6 hours ahead here I could have a great…
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Laos – Straight to the roundup
Sorry guys, I did half write a post a couple of weeks ago but then managed to get a mystery illness and didn’t quite finish it. In truth the pair of us have had sensitive stomachs for our entire time in Laos. We put it down to the heavy handed use of spices. There’s nothing…
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Vietnam Round up
No prizes for guessing that we really enjoyed it! We spent almost a month there and will be back like a shot if the opportunity presents itself in the future. The usual roundup’s been harder to write this time as there were so many good things it’s been difficult to group them. GOOD Hanoi and…
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Guns and goats
Since Viv last wrote we’ve left Vietnam and now find ourselves in a the laid-back capital of Asia, Laos. We should fit right in! And so to bring you up to date on our antics since Viv last wrote…. We left Saigon and headed back to the centre of Vietnam on a loooong sleeper train.…
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Ho Chi Minh City (or is it Saigon?)
It’s supposed to be HCMC but none of the locals actually use it and prefer Saigon. Ho Chi Minh was a hero of North Vietnam and it wouldn’t surprise me if the persistent use of the name ‘Saigon’ is part of the North-South divide that still clearly exists in Vietnam. Our guide from Cat Tien…
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Some videos
I’ve taken a few videos at points over our travels. They now have a home on the web so I will share them with you. Click on the video name to view each video. In chronological order: Gannets flying – I know you all didn’t get enough of the gannets with the crazy number of…
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Hanoi rocks
It’s been ages since I last posted on the blog, hopefully this one won’t be too mammoth… You’ll all be pleased to here that the blog is back up and functioning properly again after last week’s sojourn caused by the crap website hosting company suspending our account due to too much traffic and asking $75…
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China round up
Well we’ve certainly had some extreme views about this place. Here are our well considered notes after we got over the initial shock. GOOD Yes we have quite a few things. It’s bloody Cheap yay for that. Beer and food were unbelievably cheap. Full pints were 16p from a shop as were those gorgeous roasted…
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The runs caught up with us
It was bound to happen sooner or later. It’s just a shame it chose the day we had a 9 hour land crossing from China to Vietnam. Maybe we said too many nice things about Chinese food and some balance needed to be restored. The cheap noodle soup we ate at lunch time sat awkwardly…
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Time out
Greetings from Yangshou! We are just at the end of a relaxing few days in Yangshou where we have had a home-stay with a Chinese family who have made us feel very welcome. We’ve even learnt a bit more Chinese and helped out cooking our evening meal which was a very amusing experience with much…
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Down South
Hello from South China! We’ve seen a good improvement in our experience of China since the last post. I’m sure you’ll all be glad to hear that and as Kat points out, at least we’re not at work. Fair enough. We had a delivery of 11th hour train tickets on Wednesday and so boarded our…
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Yum and Yuk
Yum The food in China is divine. It always made me ill in Britain so I never touched it. Here it’s incredible and also extremely cheap. The good thing about that is you’re free to try things without worrying about wasting your money. Only once have I not liked something we’ve tried. We thought we…
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Final thoughts on Japan
In short we were a little dissapointed with Japan. I’m sure it was once a beautiful country but it is now scarred by unsympathetic and relentless urbanisation that makes green spaces are rare commodity. In the big cities there is rarely interesting modern architecture to draw the eye and give the place a bit of…
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Abandon Ship!
‘The Captain has instructed that we must abandon ship’. Not really what you want to hear on any ferry. We were passed our life jackets and lead to the life boats. Both John and I were surprisingly calm. I was worried about us being split up, worried about a capsized ferry being on BBC news…
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Kyoto and beyond
Greetings all, it’s been a little while since our last post so I thought I’d do a quick update on what we’ve been up to. We’ve spent most of our time in Kyoto. Like most cities in Japan it is nothing much to look at save for the odd temple or shrine cropping up here…
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Hiroshima
Hope all is well with all you folks back home. I’m enjoying Japan. I love cute things and Japan is cute world magnified. You should see me in those toy shops, some serious regression going on. John got rather excited about all the different lego available, you can even play with it in store. Mega!…
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Hello from Japan!
For those that can’t read kanji that says ‘Hello from Japan!’, at least that’s what google translate tells me. We arrived on Sunday and currently taking it easy staying at Keith’s in Tokyo, finding our feet in what is a radically different place to Australia (unsurprisingly!). The journey here was pretty smooth and featured our…
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Australia round up
I know you’re all wondering what we’re up to in Japan but we have a few loose ends to fix up for Australia first. Here goes then: GOOD THINGS Wildlife. It was worth going to Australia to experience the wildlife, even if we did have to endure some other things we didn’t like. Here’s a…
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Japan here we come!
We got bored with Australia and booked some tickets to go and see Keith early. We’re off on Saturday! John’s researched the best airport sleeping spots in Hong Kong so we might look vaugely human by the time we arrive there on Sunday. (Mums: Keith will be in charge of us for the duration of…
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Caption competition – We have a winner
Congratulations to you all for your great entries. It’s been a lot of fun reading them! Here goes: In 3rd place with the startling starwars related sizzler: “He says his name’s Yoda and ‘Broken down my car is…’ †It’s Dr Skiz Congratulations – you win, a birthday card – It’s in the post! In…
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Sailing the Whitsundays
We have just got back from a pleasant couple of days sailing the Whitsunday Islands aboard the ‘Ron of Argyll’. Unfortunately the weather was not with us and we ended up with 3 overcast days which meant that snorkelling could either not be attempted or was not the best. However we did have one excellent…
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CAPTION COMPETITION
A mystery prize is available for the most inventive and amusing caption for a currently untitiled photograph on my flickr site. The photo shows John making a phonecall under the supervision of an amphibious friend. What shall I call it? Get those imaginations to work! See you all after our boat trip! Viv xxx (No…
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When it rains, it pours
As Viv said in the last post the caving was really great, felt proper adventurous and jeez those holes were tight! I’m just glad that I had lost a bit of weight since leaving the UK else I’m not sure I could have got through, fortunately we didn’t attempt the hole named ‘rebirth’ – those…
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Things have got a little better
I was amused to read John’s last post. He so rarely gets frustrated, it’s usually me jumping up and down with steam coming out of my ears. I feel a little better now. Yesterday was indeed very frustrating but today has been great. We managed to go out caving. There was only us two and…
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Tours, tours and more bloody tours
Since leaving Rainbow beach we had a longer than expected stay at Maryborough, a picturesque city/town littered with beautiful colonial buildings and blessed with the friendliest people we have met in Australia. We stayed at a great little campsite and spent a bit of time getting to know a few Aussies staying there and generally…
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Australia’s a funny place
I’ve been here almost two weeks and I still can’t decide whether I like it or not. There’s amazing and unique wildlife but the people here are simply not our kind of folk. Don’t get me wrong, on an individual basis we’ve met some really great people. We went out drinking with a really cool…
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Made it to Aussie!
Easy Folks! We have made it to Australia where we have now been for almost a week. We have spent a few days in Brisbane finding our feet and looking on aghast at the food prices and in reaction to that trying to live off budget cheese sandwiches and budget beans on budget toast for…
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The last word on New Zealand
Here are our observations: Good Birdlife Although there are many introduced British birds such as sparrows, blackbirds and finches; the birds in NZ are very different. They are extremenly tame. Sparrows were everywhere and wouldn’t think twice about flying into a building and seeing what’s in the Kitchen. The Gannets we saw were adorable. They…
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The silver bullet is sold!
Well hello again and a special hello to Random Stranger! This is Viv again and not John i’m afraid. I’ve got a little less to do on the internet. As you can see from above we’ve sold the silver bullet. It is not a very good time of year to sell so we’ve been extremely…
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They appear on the north island again!
Hello to everyone! We’ve been up to all sorts since the last post so i’ll try to only include the details you may be interested in reading about. Hmm We’re back in Taupo now and will spend the night with Ros and Tony again. It’s a really nice unexpected visit. We’re also meeting John’s cousin…
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Sky diving!
Just been sky diving – WOW!! What an awesome experience! 🙂 It was absolutely fantastic, I was pretty nervous on the 25 minute flight up to 9000ft but surprisingly chilled out when my legs were dangling over the side of the plane getting ready to plummet towards the Earth. It was an amazing rush during…
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Now for the other bits
Ay up! Got a bit of time to kill before I go white water rafting so thought I’d add to John’s post. He’s gone off to do a sky dive. He’s using his leaving money from Ufi to do it, so thanks guys! What a nutter though, I’m really nervous for him. Can’t wait until…
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Back in Sheffield!
Been a while since our last post so we’ve a fair bit to update you all on, I think we were heading to Akaroa on the Banks Penninsula when I last posted… well the drive was spectacular, Akaroa quaint but limited in attractions and the rest of penninsula that we saw beautiful if a little…
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The untitled post
Easy everyone, hope you are all well after the Christmas break with renewed enthusiasm for work! Thought I’d give you all a quick update on what we’ve been up to recently, which isn’t an awful lot, but here goes: We passed through Kaikoura and saw lots of seals which was pretty exciting – they were…
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Enough free wine I tell you. Enough!!
I have been like the living dead today so i’m suprised John is happy enough to let me loose on the blooog…..ar bugger. Anyway, he’s distracted by amusingly dubious pictures containing the adventures of Speake in Thailand. He he. We are having much fun, we must share: Have a click on this little baby! Anyway,…
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An update on our future travel plans
Easy all, Thought I’d update you all on our future travel plans as we now have a better idea where we’re going to be if any of you would like to come and meet up with us somewhere around the world. Towards the end of this month we will be flying out to Brisbane and…
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Well, New year was certainly ‘eventful’
New years eve wasn’t quite the long-promised blow-out that we had anticipated, not unless you count having an increasingly heated discussion with a racist white supremacist bigot who was also an anglophile. A few of his choice views were that all muslims were fundamentalists, that people with white skin are superior and more prosperous to…
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It’s new years eve
Ay up you lot. Happy new year in advance. We’ve moved on to Napier now. Many thanks to Ros and Tony for looking after us so well. Ros sent us off with some of her wonderful banana and chocolate muffins, happy days! Napier is a cool place, certainly our favourite town in New Zealand so…
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Christmas in the sun
Happy Christmas everyone! We are currently staying at my Aunt Ros and Uncle Tony’s house hear Taupo which is where we spent a slightly odd-feeling Christmas in the sun. Christmas is strange over here, there aren’t the usual triggers that we get at home – decorations everywhere, Christmas shopping, going home to see family and…
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Egg Fart City
Yes it’s me again! John is busy uploading more photos. Plenty more pictures of birds ;). I need a camera cable before I can do any of mine so you will have to continue waiting in suspense. Anyway. Rotorua (city of rotten egg aromas) is our current location. It has sulphur rich thermal vents which…
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My first post for a while…
It’s been a while since I last posted – most of my internet time has been spent sorting other things out so not had a chance to get on here as much as I would have liked. Anyway the last week or so has featured two of the highlights of our trip so far –…
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Up to 18th Dec.
Thanks for all the comments you lot. Looks like we’ll have to turn around and head back up North for more Gannet action! We’ve had a bit of a slower pace of life this last week. This internet connection is certainly slow so there will be no more photos for the time being. You will…
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An update at last
Hello all! Nice to see you all debating amongst yourselves. The Silver bullet has not (yet!) broken down although John has taken to covering the curtains in velcro. At least they close properly now! The downside is that the stuff keeps getting stuck in my hair. We’re currently in Kaitaia and have just spent three…
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We have wheels!
We’ve bought a camper van! It was surprisingly easy and, not wanting to tempt fate, but I reckon we’ve got a good un. It’s a toyota ‘town ace’, is pretty simple with just a mattress in the back, but has a stereo and some very funky skylights too. It has been monikered ‘The Silver Bullet’,…
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We made it to Auckland!
Hello all! We’ve finally left the UK! The 30 hour flight was a bit of a killer, was sure my knees would explode. We did manage to catch the most excellent new Wallace and Gromit movie which I would recommend you all to see. It has some very clever touches and had about half the…
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We’ve gone even further now!
Yes, we’ve made it down to a very snow filled coaley. Feeling very weird that the flight will be on us in no time at all. Clarence the plastic dinosaur( kindly given to me by becky) has braved the interest of two cats so far and almost been eaten by Josh the dog. What an…
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Farewell Sheffield
As Viv has already said we have now left Sheffield. It feels very strange to say that I am no longer a resident of Sheffield after 9 and a hlaf years there, even stranger still that I should find myself in Killamarsh: one of my old haunts and somewhere I thought that I would never…
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We’ve gone now!
Ay up all, The first Leg of our trip is under way! We’ve travelled an entire 10 miles to Killamarsh, escaping the blizards of Sheffield. Tonight we are formally of no fixed abode and we’re staying with the sev parents. It feels rather strange. Our entire lives in two bags. We are still living a…
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Not long to go…
After months of waiting and preparing to go our departure date, 30th November, now seems only just around the corner – in two and half weeks we will be on the plane to New Zealand, the first destination on our world-wide adventure! Viv has already finished her job, moved out of her house, put her…
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Welcome to our blog!
This is the blog site for John & Viv’s round the world trip that we will be starting on 30th November when we board the plane to New Zealand. Our plans as to how long we stay travelling and where we go are fairly loose, we plan to buy single tickets as we go so…