| DIARY |
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| ...Malaysia I only got one bite, but it was disgusting. They are harmless, but they inject a substance to prevent the blood from clotting, so even when they go off, you still bleed for an hour. The next day we went to the canopy walk, a suspended walkway over the jungle. 500 m long and 5 to 25 meters high. That was a great experience though really scary at times. That day we saw 2 snakes, a tree snake, small and colorful, and a big green snake, who looked like potentially harmful. Soeren was fascinated by them and had always a very good reaction, he stayed very calm even though he wasn't and even went towards them to observe them closely. I am more the kind who beats the running worlds records in such circumstances. Otherwise we saw many monitor lizards, who are actually big animals, monkeys, and many squirrels and geckos.The jungle was really an experience for us. Sometimes, we went deep inside, walking the treks, and getting use to it, as if we were in any forest and all of a sudden we would hear a loud noise of a big animal running fast, and we would freeze, brought back to reality: jesus we are in the jungle!!! Wha...wha...what was it for god's sake? After that we went to Melacca, and tried desesperatly to meet up with Ariadna who happened to be in Malaysia in the same time! Unfortunatly we didn't manage and missed each other for a one day difference... What a pity! So we went down to Singapore where we had only 1 day before flying to Bali. SINGAPORE ? The 01.03.03 Hmm...what can we tell about it ? it's a short story... So we took the bus from Melacca in Malaysia at 8 am and arrived around noon. From there, it took us a while to know where to go and we started walking with the bags through the city towards the hostels area. We visited a couple of crotty and smelly and expensive places until we found a suitable one. Relief! We start to relax, but we think we should give a phonecall to reconfirm the flight. Meanwhile, I heard film developping is cheap here, so I bring one to be processed. 15min later, I come back to the hotel and Soeren is still on the phone with Quantas Airlines : Our flight date has changed, we must be in the airport in 1 hour for check in! I ran back to the photoshop but it was too late, my film was already in the machine. finally they stopped it and only gave me the negatives. I ran back up to the hostel and packed the bag again, we got the money back from the hotel, and left to the skytrain. Everything seemed ok until the sky train stopped, one station before the airport : there was a technical problem. We couldn't believe we were gonna miss our plane! Finally all was fine. The flight was very pleasant, we clinked our wines glasses, and ate nice food. We couldn't believe what had happened that day. In one day we had been in 3 different countries. BALI 01.03.03 / 15.03.03 Bali was beautiful. The culture and arts are very rich. We were unfortunatly a bit fed up with Asia and we didn't have much patience for sellers and tourists traps. But people are easygoing and friendly, and it's definitly a place to go. The first few days we stayed in Kuta beach, and tried bodyboard. We had a lot of fun. We never realised but discovered it was really a lot of fun. And the waves of Bali are wellknown all over the world and people come here only for that. So it was a good place to start. Then we went inside the Island and climbed up a volcano which is still active, and there were differents steam holes, it was fascinating (though a bit scary to see that). But it was an adventure to get there : the local people in the area created an association of the volcano guides and ask an incredible USD 25 to climb for only 2 hours. We didn't want to pay that much so we decided to get up early and go ourselves with another couple. As we were almost at the carpark, 2 balinese guys come up to us and tell us we have taken the wrong path. So we follow them back but as we get back to the main road, we find ourselves in a hijacking by 10 balinese guys who are definetly dertermined to block the passage! It was like a mafia! they were surrounding the car and tried to force us to pay for their services. But we were in our right so we tried to force the passage but one of them jumped in front of the car and got really angry. Finally we went back, there was no point. We then found a path and finally walked up alone to the crater. We stayed in the area a very shot time and went to Ubud, said to be the cultural centre of Bali. Arts are beautiful, especially woodcarvings and stone carvigs (temples). We stayed in a place for maybe 7 euros a night with swimming pool and breakfast included. that was just what we needed after all these bed bugs places. Actually I didn't tell anything about that : somewhere in Malaysia we both got infested by bed bugs, and got around 200 bites each on our body. I had 21 bites only on one ear, can you imagine?!!! horrible. itchy. AUSTRALIA - Brisbane - today 25.03.03 Hey mates, how are you doing ? We are so happy to be in Australia!! We found asia very exhausting altogether and it's really nice to feel "at home" again. We have been here 10 days already, time flies... We stayed a couple of days in Brisbane, the time to phone home and send packages and we started our research for our friend Dean who was our first flatmate in Dublin. Before we left europe we tried to contact him but the telephones numbers he had given to us didn't work anymore, and the email address neither. We had an address on the sunshine coast so 2 days ago we went there, but he has moved out and the neighbours don't have a clue about it. Our last hope is our landlord in Dublin, who might still have his parents address that he wrote on the lease. We haven't reached her yet, but hopefully it will work. Otherwise we are now staying in Maroochydore, a small town on the sunshine coast in a very friendly guest house. We can even use surf boards, bodyboards and kayaks for free. We have met nice people there and might stay there for longer and just do day trips from there. Australia is relatively cheap compare to europe, but for us coming from asia, we are crying everytime we have to exchange travellers cheques. People in Australia are really friendly a bit like in Ireland and we enjoy it a lot. the sun is shining, the people are nice, and ... no worries! See you :-) |