Thanks to all our hosts

 

Australia

Heather for letting us stay in her beautiful apartment in Cannonvale and to Sheena as well for entertaining us with the wallies.

Paul and Lynn for hosting us in Maleny Montville with some excellent cooking and a great trip around the area.

NZ

Dee and Hannah for looking after us so well (and their cats for entertaining us) in Napier. I’ve become addicted to the ginger nut biscuits Dee introduced us  to. Not sure they’ve done much good for our teeth as they are considerably harder than the English ones.

Mark and Christina for opening their house to us in Bendigo.  It was great to do shorter trips and come back and have a bed! And the drill/screwdriver came in handy for fixing the van. Not forgetting Dexter and Archie and their antics. I’ve also developed a liking for ginger beer! Luckily it is available in the UK.

And Christina for the night time tour of Auckland with all the spectacular boats.

Rachele for some excellent home cooking (especially the roast dinners!). Adam and Finn for taking us up the Port Hills in Lyttelton and nearly killing the pair of us.  Liam and Finn for washing the van for us.

USA

We also wanted to say thanks to Chris’s brother Zac and family for putting us up in California.

Rick Decker in Hawaii was very helpful with photography and diving tips. We much appreciated their home grown eggs. Gigi the cat was good (if noisy) company there.

Hong Kong and home

A whirlwind tour of Hong Kong.

I've been several times before as my brother lived out there for years but Chris hasn't.

The airport express train into central HK is a great introduction to the city. It's clean, fast, shows you where you are on the journey and delivers you into the centre of Hong Kong island itself. It puts London to shame.

They are lot less concerned about people taking photographs here than in the UK. We went into the HSBC bank building and asked a security guard if we could take photos and he said yes to the atrium and no to the banking hall which is reasonable. We also went up the Bank of China tower to the 43rd floor where there is a special viewing area which has a panoramic outlook over the harbour. Again no problems with photos here.

A wander through the conservatory and the aviary in Hong Kong park and then on the Peak Tram. This is incredibly steep and you are pushed back into the seat at several points on the short journey. Again a fantastic view from the Peak Tower (about 5 storeys above where the Peak Tram arrives). Very busy up here as it is a popular tourist spot.

The MTR (the equivalent of our tube) is also very good. The carriages are much wider and taller and cleaner. There are fewer seats but that doesn't seem to matter. The Octopus payments system is better than Oyster as you don't need to take it out of your pocket or bag to pay as it can read from a distance. Makes it much faster getting through the gates.

We ventured to Mongkok to look at electronics stuff. The prices don't seem that much different to the UK. Bought a new strap and battery for my camera. A very busy place and you can't walk down the pavement in a straight line as there are people coming at you from all directions. This is more like the 'real' HK. Scruffy buildings and people selling things on the street. Shopping is a major pastime here.

Another trip on the airport express and dinner in the airport.
Up early the next day to get our plane back to London.

The plane was completely full (still trying to sort out people after the problems from the Icelandic volcano) but I had a friendly kiwi woman next to me and we didn't feel too cramped. I definitely prefer day time flights as I find it very difficult to sleep on planes.  The Air NZ entertainment system and a couple of books and the 13.5 hours seemed to fly by (not quite but they definitely made it go more quickly)

Heathrow Terminal One is a very bad introduction back to London. It's small and cramped and feels dirty in comparison with the lovely airport in HK. At least our bags turned up relatively quickly. It's always an anxious moment waiting by the baggage carousel. We were lucky and didn't have any problems at all whilst we were travelling.

My parents collected us and drove us home. A bit of unpacking and an early night as still on HK time (+8 hours).

Our 96 day trip is over. We left in the cold, in the middle of winter, and arrived back in late spring. The garden is full of flowers and scents. No frogspawn in the pond as I think it was too cold for the frogs. Lots of birds singing now and bluebells coming out.

It's good to be home for the moment. Not sure what is happening with the political situation as we arrived home just before the election and now we have a hung parliament. Don't know what this will mean economically.

We need to seriously consider where we want to live over the next few years. New Zealand is an attractive option as there doesn't seem to be a recession there. Australia has too many creepy crawlies for me and I'm not sure we fit the entry criteria.

It's been a fantastic journey and opened our eyes to lots of possibilities. It was also great to catch up with old friends and to make some new ones. We are likely to have visitors later this year from both NZ and Oz.

I'll put up a summary of our favourite places later on.

Queensland and on

An easy flight from Proserpine to Brisbane and Paul collected us from the airport.

He lives about an hour and a half outside Brisbane in what is known as the hinterland. We passed the Glasshouse Mountains which are apparently plugs of rocks left from old volcanoes and were named by Captain Cook when he saw them from his ship.

Brisbane was pretty warm but it is much cooler where they live as they are up on a mountain and actually on the side of a cliff with fabulous views across to the coast. It seems more European here - there are green fields and cows. It's a popular tourist area and the local town of Montville seems to only have tourist shops. It's very pretty with lots of attractive buildings. 

We met Paul's wife Lynn and their two children Oliver and Alexandra. We even had the fire on that evening as it gets quite damp up there. Lovely home cooked food - Lynn is an excellent cook.

You have to be aware of the wildlife around here. They get big (and I do mean big) huntsman spiders which live in the post box outside or crawl into vehicles if you leave doors open. Paul had to find and then dispose of one which got into their car. At one point he was kneeling down looking for it and it was looking right back at him from the rear seat. A bit too close for comfort. Luckily this was before we arrived and we didn't see any whilst we were there. They also have mouse eating ones.    Lynn said she had seen one of these. The Australia Zoo (owned originally by Steve Irwin) is nearby and they have loads of birds and animals including crocodiles.

Paul took us on a tour of the sunshine coast - lovely sandy beaches and pretty towns. People lead a good life here. We were looking over the beach at Coolum and loads of teenage schoolkids went past us with a teacher and had their PE class swimming in the ocean. Much better than the local swimming pool in the UK!

There's a sand recycling project on the beach at Noosa Heads. It provides around 30,000 cubic metres of sand a year and this stops the beach disappearing. It's a lovely beach with a river running through it to the ocean.

Next day we were off again back to Brisbane airport down to Sydney and then onto our final stop in Hong Kong. I got scanned for explosives again at Brisbane (I must look very suspicious!)

We upgraded our seats on the Virgin flight to Hong Kong to premium economy. This mean we had more leg room, foot rests and more food and drink than we could consume. They even brought round bars of chocolate. Funnily enough the seats are no wider as they are all fixed and the armrests do not move. I believe this is still the same in the business/first class areas as well. So if you are wide bottomed people you are probably better off with sharing three seats in economy between two as long as the armrests go back properly.

Found our hotel in HK - it is attached to the airport terminal via a walkway. It was around midnight by the time we got to bed. A long day starting in one continent and ending in another.