Suck in the gut

So, we're in Indepdence Square, KL being all touristy when I spied three idian fellas walking around together, taking photos of the sights as well. Nothing odd there. That was until one of them, stood in front of a momument to have his photo taken and took of his shirt. He stucked in he's gut as much as he could, put he's hands on he's hips in a iron man kind of pose and smiled. Photo got taken, back on went the shirt and off they all walked - Random.

Lumper Lumper, stick it up your jumper

Kuala Lumpur is an interesting place.

Great arcitecture, stunning shopping centres. A real technilogical masterpiece. Yet, it does smell like a dirty toilet, and at times it's really overwhelming. It's a very bizzare contrast, yet there is something a little bizarre about KL - Period.

We went to the Petronas Towers, it was the biggest in the world, until some bloke in Tiepei came along and made a bigger one - Cheeky git.

The tour of the towers is free, which is really rare for......well, anything. But it does come at a non-finacial cost. You have to sit down to the all singing, all dancing, ain't petrol great, Petronas corporate video.....in 3D!!!! Who decided that 3D would make this any more interesting or convincing obviously had more money than sense, but it did mean Clare and I could wear 3D specks, which was actually more entertainment than the video itsself. We also had to go through several security scanners, which in this day and age is understanderble, that was until they confiscated our umbrella. Not the weapon of mass destruction I was expecting.

Food glorious food.

The food in Asia is ACE!

There's so much to choose from and it's so cheap!

In many places there are areas called Hawker Markets, which are market stalls for food. Now this is my kind of shopping!!!!! You can all kinds of varieties from all regions of Asia. Wash it down with a can of cheap beer and you're laughing!

The one thing alot of the food does seem to have in common is spice. Now, I can been a bit of a fairy when it comes to spicy food, but Clare's a real conisseur. When I'm crying a turning purple, Clare will quite happily inform me that the taste of ginger really compliments the meal.

"I'll have to take you're word on that darling. At the moment I'm struggling to stop my head from exploding"

Even here though, Clare's finding one or two of the meals a little on the hot side. I don't know what she thought of them 'cause I was running to dunk my head in a bucket of water.

Up above the streets and houses, Youngs are flying high.

Once again the Youngs have blasted across the skies in a metal tube to their next destination. Saying goodbye to Oz for good this time, we we're off to Asia.

First stop - Singapore.

I don't get Singapore. Is it a city, is it a country? It's so small on every map we have, that it's covered by a small dot. Anyway, one thing I do know......it's damn humid - Cue sweat.

Your blog's not a good as it use to be.

Ain't that the truth.

Apologies for not updating the blog much over the last couple of months and when I have it's not been that funny or interesting. For some reason I really just can't get into it. We've got six weeks left when we'll be going around Asia, and I'll try really hard to finish it with a flourish!

Mmmmmmmmmm my precious

New Zealand is amazing. End of story!

When watching Lord of the Rings, Clare and I both thought bits of the scenery must have been enhanced or pieced together from different locations but it's not, it's all here and it blows you away.

Such an amazing contrast from what we had scene in Australia, we had 10 days to look around as much of the South Island as possible. In the next new van, we were off like a rocket. Now, New Zealand is no where near as big as Australia but the winding roads mean that you are driving for just as long. We got to Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook on day one and carried on from there. We got to Milford Sound, Fox Glacier, Franz Joseph, Queenstown and Clare also managed to go hang gliding.

Working 9-5......yeah, chance would be a fine thing.

As well as accommodation being in short supply in Sydney work was even shorter. After looking for a couple of days a coming up with nothing, speaking to several other travellers things started getting desperate. We had planned on three months of work to get money together for our trip to New Zealand and Asia. Now I setting the scene here to help justify our eventual place of work. We got a call from an agency that there was a job available for Clare and I, it wasn't ideal, but it was work. It was working in a call center, which I was fine with, Clare's done it before and I've known plenty of people who have done it. It was more what we were doing whilst we were there. We were working in outbound telesales......selling American Express credit cards. Noooooooooooo. I was about to become everything I hated. I think it's great if people can avoid using credit cards and I'm rubbish at sales. This ain't gonna be pretty.

It's raining men.

Sydney and Christmas spells one thing - Backpackers!

As we got closer to arriving in Sydney it became apparent that even in mid November that we weren't the only ones looking for somewhere to stay for a couple of months. Accommodation was in short supply but we managed to get a nice little room, 20 mins walk away from the city. Nice. Now, between our room and the city is Oxford street. Neither Clare or I were really aware of Oxford street and its' reputation before we arrived. It did become very clear, very quickly however. Lots of men walking very little dogs was the first clue, bars looking out onto the street that had just blokes looking out and then, possibly the biggest giveaway, rainbow flags all the way down the high street. It really is an eye opener!

And they're off.

Once the trip from Alice Springs to Adelaide finished we made our way to Melbourne. Time for another Wicked Van, which was fine, until it started raining and we found out the hard way the their appeared to be a hole in our roof. After some very dodgy and temporary repair work by yours truly we were off. Now Melbourne can be considered Australia's second city behind Sydney, but don't say that out loud. Melbourne likes to consider itself as the intellectual, artisan capital of Oz. There's plenty of cafes and culture, but our main focus was on one thing. The Melbourne Cup. One of the biggest horse races in the world, the Melbourne Cup is made up of four days of racing with hundreds of thousands of people attending spending their hard earned cash. We weren't in Melbourne for the main event, but got tickets for the Saturday event The Emirates Stakes Day, other wise known as the Family Day. This sounded great until we arrived. You have never seen so many kids dressed up like they were auditioning for boys bands in all your life. It was unreal and there was an unhealthy amount of strutting. I even had to wear a wrist band to show that I was over 18 so that I could get a beer.