Just a taster as Mik definately needs to be the one to write about his whale sharks and amazing diving, but in the meantime....
After a long, but unexciting 20 hour bus journey from Cape Town, we arrived in the Namibian capital of Windhoek. In the late 19th century Namibia was colonised by ze Germans, and despite gaining independence almost half a century ago, there is still a heavy German influence. It was, however, controlled by South Africa until 1990 and subsequently English has become the official language. Most white Namibians speak either German or Afrikaans as their first language, while the African population speak their own tribal language as a first language. One of which is Damara with it's clicks and whistles, making it very difficult to learn. For us anyway!
k of plastic material hung around a small stand. Attached to the wash bowl was a bottle of liquid soap and a towel, so we could all wash our hands before eating. Simple things, simple minds.....
rhino looked a fair size initially, but next to these elephants he was tiny by comparison. Eventually the elephants stood their ground and the rhino disappeared. Wow. By this time it was getting on for midnight so we headed back to our tents for a delicious 5 hours sleep.
be scanning the roadside/horizon for wildlife. We had one of those cool trucks with the big pop up roofs so we'd stand on the seats and snap away without having to open a window. Not something you necessarily want to do when there are lions nearby! It was invariably Joel who spotted all the good stuff. I guess that was his job after all. When I had been on safari before I hadn't managed to see a lion so that was my main hope, aside from lots of giraffes obviously. Joel found us many lions. Big ones, cubs, two lazing close to the road and a few hiding from the sun under trees. God only knows how he saw them as most of the time the rest of us spotted the backside of a springbok (deer like animal found in their thousands in Etosha) or worse still, just a bush. We would swear that the shadow made by that tree over there was a rhino and that the bare branches of trees were in fact giraffe heads. Another animal which is very common in the park is the zebra. They are just little painted horses but not just black and white as you would expect. Many a time we confused them for something else as they can actually have brown stripes mixed in too. We saw hundreds of them and soon became blasé and barely even slowed down for them.
One minute the bull was alone, the next there were seventeen elephants drinking from the pond. They ran in like they hadn't had a drink for days (which we later found out was probably the case as they sometimes drink enough to last them three days - that would explain the bull's thirst) It was an incredible sight and I couldn't stop whispering 'oh wow' over and over again. The elephants all lined up, always protecting the babies on their inside. When they moved toward the old bull and tried to drink the fresher water with him they were shooed away. One elephant then wee'd at the waters edge close to the bulls coveted pipe in protest!
s of game spotting and as far as I recall the last animal we saw was a giraffe - highly fitting. We stopped for lunch on the roadside, visited a market where we were unfortunately pestered so much we left rather quickly, and finally reached the comfort of our hostel in the capital. We'd been given a fantastic room but I have to say I would have swapped it for my tent in an instant if I could have stayed in Etosha. It was one of the most amazing experiences ever and I loved every minute of it. Safari is a truly magical experience - when you get as lucky as we did. Thanks Chameleon and thanks to the guys on our tour. And of course a big thanks to the giraffes.
Cara insists that Cape Town is her favourite city in the world. Personally, I find this very difficult to believe as she has visited Leyland on several occasions and had more than sufficient opportunity to change her mind. This was my second visit to the city and, whilst I do like Cape Town, I haven't formed the kind of attachment to it that Cara evidently has. By the way, Cape Town is so called because it is a large town situated on the Cape of Good Hope. Very imaginative.
through the usual tourist itinerary. We visited the waterfront and took the cable car to the top of Table Mountain (possibly so named because it is a mountain that has a flat top, like a table. Spot a pattern?). We even spotted a meditating monk atop a rocky outcrop. I'm not sure if he was there to attain enlightenment or to offer us a good photo opportunity, but he added a dash of colour to the proceedings and for that we are grateful. The weather was fantastic, hot and sunny without being oppressive, and we enjoyed walking the streets of the city. The food in Cape Town is great too, although you have to remember that I consider the chip to be the ultimate achievement of humanity, so always take my advice with a pinch of salt (and a splash of vinegar).
umping into water you know to contain large numbers of the world's biggest, marine predator. Surely this can be considered the stupidest activity on earth? After blowing up your own head, obviously. These huge fish have been protected in the waters around South Africa since 1991 and the growing population of this migratory hunter regularly hunt the seal colonies around Dyer Island. The best time to sea them, unfortunately, is in the winter, when food resources are low and they can be easily attracted to the boat. During the summer months, specifically now, the sharks show a sneering disdain for all things boat-like and seldom stick around for long. Despite the poor odds, both Cara and I wanted to give it a try and see what would happen. The last time I was hear, a large, intimidating shark tried to stick his snout into the cage a matter of inches from my head and a second shark managed to tear the cage door from its hinges while two young men cowered inside it. I had my fingers crossed for a repeat performance. I don't think Cara was feeling the same way.
the skipper considered a good spot, we moored up and a crew member chummed the water with some fish heads and arse-cheeks to attract in the sharks. We didn't have long to wait for a very big fish to arrive. It kindly cruised alongside the boat, just to give us a good sense of scale, and I remembered Roy Scheider's immortal words from the first Jaws film, "We're gonna need a bigger boat!". The first fee-paying sharkbait donned their wetsuits and flopped into the now flimsy-looking cage. The skipper tried his best to draw the big female toward the boat, but the shark was not really interested and just stuck around to see if one of us was foolish enough to fall into the water. We weren't and it eventually lost interest and left. Thus began the pattern of the day. The folks in the tin can soon became tired and cold and clambered out for a cup of tea and a biscuit (Oh, I can feel the tension building!). It was our turn.
definitely left the building and nobody else had yet taken to the stage. I knew that I could keep going on sheer enthusiasm alone. In fact, they would probably have to drag me out of the water by the earlobes when it was time to leave, or maybe just leave me behind. Cara was fairing pretty well, too. Apart from the loud chattering of teeth and wide-eyed, what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-in-a-cage-waiting-for-great-white-sharks-to-open-it-like-a-tin-of-sardines expression she was wearing, obviously. We made ourselves comfortable and settled in for the duration.-722408.jpg)
bit like Cara with a credit card and a shoe catalogue. It glided impressively in front of us and toward the bait line. Within just a few seconds it was gone, returned once more to the murky deep. We bobbed back to the surface and sucked in the air hungrily, even though we had only been underwater for about four seconds (I need more exercise!). I checked the camera to see what shots we had taken, but found only some photos showing a blank green space and a technically adept video of Cara's left armpit. Not technically what I was hoping for, adept or otherwise.
One benefit of staying on the busy Long Street was that our hostel was immediately above an Irish pub. Drinking ice cold draught Guinness for less than thrumfty pennies a pint ensured that we rarely strayed far away in the evenings. We even dined there on a few occasions. The food was mediocre at best, but after dropping in for a few pints 'on the way past', we lacked the compunction to keep moving and planted ourselves in a corner table for the duration of the evening. On the Sunday evening, a live jazz band was playing. Although the music was a bit 'zibbedy dooh wah, bazabaddy bow wow bink' for my liking, we still had a great night and the atmosphere was excellent. There are few post-pub experiences more pleasurable than standing up on wobbly legs after too many beers and realising that you only have to walk four yards home."Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer"
- Mark Twain
Our ferry from the mainland dropped us at Air Batang (ABC) beach just as the sun was setting. At least, I assume the sun was setting. The sky was a roiling mass of murderous black cloud, and the sun was relegated to a dull smear on the distant horizon. We shouldered our bags and set off along the narrow strip of concrete to the northern end of the beach. We were looking for ABC Chalets, which had been recommended by friends and occupied our favourite end of the price bracket. After what felt like three hours trudge through unforgiving jungle (but was actually just eight minutes stroll along a pleasant path. We really need to lose some cargo from these backpacks!) we found the place. The owner offered us the choice of a lovely, spacious, air-conditioned bungalow with sea views for 150 ringit, or a bamboo shoe-box with termites and a dubious odour for just 35. For once, I'm proud to say we took the cheap option, and booked ourselves into Casa Del Shithole for the next two weeks. It wasn't so bad. The plumbing worked, although the toilet cistern needed to be filled by hand(!), and the well constructed walls kept out everything bigger than a goat. Home, sweet home. A place like this would fly off the market in some parts of Burnley.
We dined that night in the attached restaurant, which had been cleverly constructed to 
resemble a large, drab, lump of concrete. We made our choice from the wide selection of fried rice, fried noodles or mashed potato with fried egg, then sat back to let the cool inshore breeze blow away our cares and usher us once more back into island life. The food was unremarkable to the degree that I can't remember if I had fried noodles or the mashed potato with fried egg, but they made every effort to take your mind off what you were eating by showing live Premiership football. Cara was in seventh heaven.
beach charged three or four times what you would pay for the same bottle on the mainland. Nothing too surprising there, as a captive audience of western tourists can work miracles on your gross margin. But inexplicably, items such as cigarettes and beer (hmmm, tasty beer) were much cheaper than on the mainland. I offer no explanation, just a heartfelt thank you to the people of Tioman for their lifestyle enhancing approach to free market economics. The situation was made all the more confusing when we spotted a large sign by the jetty informing us that any Muslim caught buying, selling or consuming alcohol would be shot, or sent to prison, or shot and then sent to prison, or worse. I still remember the difficulties I experienced acquiring a hangover in the Perhentian Islands last year, so I was more than pleasantly surprised to see every establishment on the beach happily selling beer, wine and bathtub gin at, for Malaysia, bargain prices.
for. The only down side was the food. 
frightened away by the loud "Fucking Philippines!" that could regularly be heard above the sound of the jungle. This also seemed to work effectively on the mosquitoes, as Kori and Chad were bitten far less frequently than us. Any budding inventor should note that all you would need to construct an effective new repellent device is a sound recorder, a small speaker and a disenchanted Texan. 
an interesting piece of coral was surrounded by three other people, and when she looked up was all alone. Wondering what the hell was going on, she spent a minute or so searching around to find out where we could all have disappeared to, before she wisely surfaced to try and find us. At almost the same time, I surfaced thirty metres away and Chad, who had caught up with Kori and decided she would live to dive another day, surfaced on the other side of Cara. Under the current UK obscenity laws, I am not permitted to print the words uttered to me by Cara when she saw me on the surface. We soon regrouped and continued the dive, where we eventually found a turtle who didn't mind us watching him eat for fifteen minutes.
Once again, I feel the need to apologize to our three readers for our rather slipshod approach to maintaining this website and keeping you up to date on where we are in the world. Since the last entry from Sipadan, we have been jungle trekking in deepest Borneo, spent a week in Kota Kinabalu, flown to Bangkok, where we stayed for 10 days(!), travelled to Koh Phangan (again) for over a week, and now we are on Penang on the west coast of peninsula Malaysia.
On the bright side, we are now waiting for Cara's blog from the jungle trek, and for once it is not me that is holding things up. Makes a pleasant change, eh?
If anybody is becoming frustrated at our lack of updates, I suggest you get a hobby. Let's face it, you never read any information of the least interest on this website anyway, so why trouble yourself over it? Maybe this would be a good time to take up stamp collecting, or maybe you could learn Mandarin?
Mik
p.s. As the only reason I'm writing this is because I'm sat in an internet cafe, bored out of my mind, waiting for Cara, I decided to read through my last entry on this site. And don't I sound like a pompous prick? Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill. This is what happens when you try to write your diary at 4am, sitting in a hammock, after one too many bottles of the local firewater. We went to Semporna, we dived at Sipadan, we had a camera stolen. I could have left it at that, really.
p.p.s. To spite me and wipe the smug grin off my gace, Cara has now published her jungle blog below, thus putting the responsibility back onto me to update this nonsense. Don't hold your breath.
As a concession, I agreed to stay on a different part of the island than we had previously, and after a wet and windy drive in the back of a rickety old songtheeuw and a very bumpy ride sitting in the back of a pickup truck we found ourselves at Haad Khom Bungalows, a few miles outside Chaloklum*. Haad Khom is a beautiful little stretch of beach on the northern tip of the island, and notoriously difficult to get to, hence the rickety ride in the pickup.
Okay, she might have bailed out soon into the third match, but it still counts as progress. Cara even managed to continue her uncanny wildlife spotting skills by finding a large, green snake next to her foot on her first try of the hammock. I spend my life looking for these things and she just stumbles across them every other day. I am obviously going about it all wrong.
with our bouncy old moped. We approached the hill that led out of the bay, and I throttled up to carry us up the steep incline. As soon as we hit the concrete rampat the bottom of the hill, I knew we didn't have enough revs to make it up the hill. The bike began to groan under the strain, so I released the throttle and dropped it into first gear. Not a good idea. When the clutch released, the bike lurched forward and the front wheel began to lift off the ground. The front end reared up on the steep incline and tipped us both off the back of the bike. By this point we were only travelling at a few miles an hour, so we both easily managed to plant our feet on the ground and let the bike ride out from under us. Unfortunately, I had kept a tight grip on the handlebars to try and keep hold of the bike. The front end reared up higher and twisted the throttle in my hand. The engine whined like a swarm of angry bees and channelled the extra power to the back wheel. Desperately, and with hindsight extremely stupidly, I hung onto the throttle in a vain hope of controlling the little mechanical shit. As the bike started to bounce about the concrete on its back wheel, it twisted the throttle further still and tried to carry me off into the bushes. For a few moments we danced around together in a big circle, before I completely lost control and me, my mechanical shit, and the angry bees flew headfirst into the nearby shrubbery.
The second reason was that the day we would probably have left was my birthday. Now I know that at my age l should be starting to ignore birthdays, but that just wouldn't be me now, would it? I didn't want to spend it travelling on to our next destination, so instead we spent the day visiting Wat Pho and the Grand Palace. Both Mik and I had been before, not together, but the buildings were well worth another look. Every wall, floor, ceiling is covered in colourful tiles or painted murals. You've got to admire their patience and dedication. And the huge gold leaf covered reclining buddha in Wat Pho is just stunning.
So having secured a table by the riverside we set about getting our first plate full. There was sushi and fresh king prawns and mussels and salads the like of which I hadn't seen in some time. With a plate full we returned to our seats and got stuck in, just as the first rain drops fell. What a shame. We moved indoors. And resumed our eating. I could list all the things which we ate (Mik has in fact done this!) but besides making for fairly boring reading, it would also be very embarrassing. So suffice to say there was food of all kinds from BBQ lobster tails to massaman curries, to kebabs, and not forgetting the puddings.....! We ate a lot of everything and rolled ourselves home.
One evening we decided to check out a different road than usual for a restaurant. This one was also lined with the ubiquitous 'tat' stalls and I was fully engrossed in checking them out when I heard Mik shout, and I quote "Fuck off!", quite loudly. I wondered what the hell someone was trying to sell him to make him react like that. As I turned round I realised that he was making his way toward a couple with rucksacks on their backs. It took me a second or two to realise that it was the couple we had met very briefly in Argentina earlier in our travels, Ashleigh and Phillip. They had literally just stepped off a bus and were on their way to their hotel. None of us could get over the coincidence and we all stood for a few minutes mouths agape. I mean fair enough if we were following the same route but these guys had been home to the UK for a few months and had then started their travels again, going the opposite way around the world to us. Bangkok is also not a small city, but, it would appear, it is a small world.
So we stayed a few days longer to be able to go out for a few beers with them and catch up on what they had been doing. We took them to our favourite restaurant near the Khao San Road. It was a tourist restaurant but the food was better than most (they did a great BBQ red snapper for just over a quid), it was cheaper than most, and Mik had made a friend with the waiter there, who took great delight in taking the mickey out of him. He also made a mean cocktail.
The agency we had booked it with told us to get to their offices for 5.50am as the bus would leave at 6am. We did this. We waited, no-one came. Eventually I walked up to the boat companies office and asked what was going on. The girl looked at me, said something to her colleague in Thai then turned and said that the bus had gone. I was fuming. I am not a fan of getting up early for no good reason. This was of course compounded by the fact that it's the first time I have ever known a bus in Asia to leave on time. There was nothing we could do we had to wait until the next day. I went to tell Mik and he was then fuming also. The company had offered us a room for free for that night which we took but it didn't really cheer us. We had been in Bangkok long enough and were keen to move on, and besides it meant we would have to get up at 5am again the following morning. Which we did and in case you are interested the bus that morning left 15 minutes late. Right before the tanks started rolling down the streets signaling the start of the coup.
already knackered before we even started the six hour bus journey to KK, and neither of us particularly relished the thought of trawling the streets for a room long into the night. I thanked Chad for taking the time to contact us and for sorting the room. We agreed to meet up with him and his wife, Kori, later that night, although it would take three bars of soap and an industrial sander before I was clean enough to hygienically re-enter society.
hem across the city to eateries that no longer existed, only to slog all the way back to where we had started for our dinner. I'm convinced they thought I was making it up as I went along, and for a few days we didn't see them as Kori "was feeling too unwell". I suspect they were politely putting us off to save shoe leather on more of my wild goose chases.
shopping malls in the hope of finding a new camera, but most days passed without excitement. One morning, we managed to summon the energy to take a speedboat out to a nearby island, where we sat on the white, sandy beach and snorkelled in the clear, turquoise water for a few hours before dashing back to our comfy, air-conditioned hotel room. We had, by this time, found a vacant hotel room with real windows and a hot shower, and for most of our stay we treated it like a little cocoon, seldom leaving it in the hottest part of the tropical afternoon. Our only excitement came on our walk back to town with the Texans after one of our failed restaurant escapades, when I was chased down the street by an overly friendly rat. This gave everybody a laugh, on top of the fact they had already been whooping it up over my complete failure to successfully stamp on the many passing cockroaches.
