‘Everywhere I went the world was on my side’

Hi my little mince pies, 

Today’s going to be a bit of a random blog/update. I’m pretty chuffed to be honest because I realised I’ve inadvertently been updating this blog every 7 days exactly. I’m usually terrible at stuff like this. 

So if you have read my previous posts you’ll know that I’ve booked all my flights and paid for my tours in Malaysia and New Zealand (goodbye £3,200!) which is awesome and now I don’t have to stress about either of those parts of the trip. However, the main part of my trip will be Australia a) because its where I want to visit the most and b) because its where I’ll spending the longest. Now Australia is a huuuge place and I’m planning on seeing about half of it which is a massive area. I’ll have about 6/7 weeks in Oz in April next year. Obviously I can’t hire a car as I don’t drive so my massimo conundrum is … WHAT DO I DO IN AUSTRALIA?! 

Basically the options I’m looking at at the moment are either to buy the Greyhound KM pass which allows you to buy a certain amount of km and travel around by coach – if you have any km left at the end you can trade them in for tours, accommodations etc. But this option means it will probably be harder to meet people. The second option is to do 2 tours – the Oz Experience East Coast cruiser tour and a tour through the outback – but these are pretty expensive and you only get some accommodation and no meals included. However, obviously it is really easy to meet people this way as you’re all on a tour bus together.

The tricky thing is that I land in Sydney on April 3rd which is the day before my birthday. When I booked my Malaysia tour I was still with my (now Ex) boyfriend so the plan was to meet him in Sydney on April 3rd then obviously I’d be with him for my birthday and the next 2 months. So now I’m left feeling a little bit worried that I’m going to be sat in some internet cafe, cupcake and pathetic lonely candle in one hand, on Skype to my mum bawling my eyes out because I’m alone on the other side of the world on my birthday.  

So I’m a bit stuck because on the one hand, if I got the Greyhound pass and did Oz myself I’d no doubt meet people in hostels along the way and It’d be a lot cheaper/I’d have more freedom to do what I wanted and on the other hand, if I did the tours I’d have a ready made plan, it’d be easy to make friends and I wouldn’t be alone on my birthday.The other issues with the tours is that I want to have a week in Sydney first anyway to see the city so I’d actually probably still risk being alone on my day of birth (birthday is just starting to sound weird). AHH what to do?! 

The great thing is that I’ve been checking out websites that help you to find travel buddies. Its so easy, all you do is type in where you’re going and when and then other ‘solo’ travellers can contact you and be like ‘hey I’m going there then too, lets hang out’! So I’ve actually been talking to a few people that I could potentially meet up with in Australia. However their plans don’t exactly match mine and, as with everything that you have to spend months planning, we aren’t all at the same stage with our planning. One girl hasn’t even decided for definite where she’s going yet and the guy I’ve been talking to is leaving in less than a month – so its all a bit of a mess at the moment! But I’m sure I won’t be alone at least 🙂 Everyone keeps reassuring me that its so easy to meet people out there and I know it will be but people who know me know that I worry and nothing anyone can say will stop me from worrying until I go out there and realise it for myself! 

So, meine Freunde, as you can probably tell – I’m in a bit of a stuck in the mud situation with my travelling plans at the moment. But its Christmas so all stressing can wait until January 1st! And THEN i’ll start pulling my hair out. 😀

Have a beautiful Christmas you guys and a VERY happy new year! 

Catch you on the flipside 🙂 

x

‘Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life’ – Michael Palin 

‘Even the smallest person can change the course of the future’

If you didn’t recognise the quote in the title then get off my blog 😉 Only joking, you can stay if you’ve at least WATCHED Lord of the Rings. 

So if you still haven’t guessed today’s blog post is going to be about the beauuutiful country of New Zealand – home of LOTR – because I just booked my trip there today! 

As I’ve already mentioned, New Zealand will be the last leg of my journey and from there I will be flying home (sob) in mid June. I plan on spending about a month here and will be travelling around both North and South Islands. 

Originally I was going to go with a company called Stray and do the ‘Short Moe’ tour because a) its cheap b) you get to visit both islands and c) its a smaller tour group. When I saw this tour I think it was around £400 but today when I looked it had gone up a fair bit in price and I had just had an email from STA about an offer they were doing on a tour with Kiwi Experience called the ‘Sheepdog’ tour which was verrrry similar and is half price (£309) until midnight tonight. SO I booked the sheepdog tour instead! 

So with the sheepdog tour you can hop on and off whenever/wherever you like and you can use the pass for up to 12 months (obviously I won’t need to do this but its a big bonus if you’re staying for longer). It starts off in Auckland on the north Island and ends in Christchurch on the south island. 

The first main stop is Hot Water Beach – which is rated one of the top ten beaches in the world by Lonely Planet – where you can go surfing etc. Then we travel on to Waitomo where you can visit the limestone caves to see glow-worms and other crazy shizz. From there its on to Rotorua – the Maori culture capital of NZ – where you can go luging or zorbing and then in the evening experience a traditional Maori feast and watch the traditional Maori song and dance. Next its on to the adventure capital of the north island – Taupo! Here you can go bungee jumping, skydiving, jet boating etc and you can also visit the geothermal reserve of Te Puia (with NZ’s largest geyser) and see a real live Kiwi bird. A chance to visit Huka Falls and cross the Tongariro Crossing is also on the cards! After a few days in Taupo we will be moving on to River Valley to visit the Tongariro National Park and to spend the afternoon white water rafting or horse riding. From here its on to Wellington – the capital of culture – and then on to the south island! 

The first stop on the south island will be kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park and from there its on to the Highway 6 to Lake Mahinapua for an evening of partyyying in the ‘Poo Pub’ (yes its actually called that)! Providing you’re not too hungover and don’t need to spend an extra day in bed the next stop will be the Franz Josef Glacier Village where its recommended to spend at least 2 days. Here you can hike on the Franz Josef Glacier or, if you’re a bit of a wuss, you can take a helicopter up and do the ‘heli-hike’. The next morning is an early start to visit Lake Matheson before heading into Mount Aspiring National Park and arriving at the beautiful Wanaka.

From Wanaka its the final part of the journey which means travelling down to Queenstown (adventure capital!) where you can jump from the world’s first commercial bungy site – the Kawarau Bridge. Then its another night of partying and a day trip to NZ’s most beautiful spot – Milford Sound. Then its through LOTR territory (be prepared for lots of photos) – The Lindis Pass – and on to Christchurch where the tour ends. 

Of course as I said, you can hop off anywhere you like and stay for extra nights or you can skip the ‘extra days’ they suggest and catch an earlier coach – its all up to you! 🙂 I will most definitely be stopping off for a bit longer in Rotorua to go visit the famous Shire ! Other than this bit I’ll most likely stick to the tour seeing as they seem to take us pretty much everywhere. 

I have to say, before booking this tour NZ was the part of my trip I was least looking forward to but now I’m crazy excited … its such a beautiful country with beautiful traditions … I’m really looking forward to experiencing it all! And of course I can’t resist a bungy jump or 4 😉 (my mum will cry if she reads this because she thinks that If I do a bungy jump my retinas will detach and I’ll go blind – sorry for putting this in here mother but its too funny not to) 😀

If you’re still here and haven’t died from boredom/exhaustion yet then pat yourself on the back. 

Now go watch Lord of the Rings! 😉

x

‘Not all those who wander are lost’ – JRR Tolkein (I may have already used this quote I don’t know but its too appropriate not to be used again)

    
   

 

 

 

‘Go for it now. The future is promised to no one’

SO my little chipolata sausages … this is a bit of a random blog post today! But basically I need to have a bit of a rant because I’m starting to feel the need to violently shake people. And I’m pretty sure If I started doing that I’d have no friends left and that would be sad. 

So this morning I was getting ready for work – dancing around my room and singing along to Roar by Katy Perry – as you do (I know you all do it – don’t deny it) and I was listening to the lyrics and realized DAMN these are some pretty awesome lyrics. (There are people reading this who’ll probably want to slap me right now but hey – its a great song okay!) Anyway, as many of you know I’ve had a PRETTY stressful year to say the least – finals, a big health scare within a week of my finals, graduating and a break up! Not a great year but you know what people … tough poop! Life throws a HELL of a lot of crap at you sometimes and you’ve gotta power through it and come out the other side and show the world what you’re made of! 

You’re probably wondering why on earth I’m mentioning all this stuff on my travelling blog? Well since I started mentioning my travelling plans to people I’ve had SO many people say to me ‘oh my god you’re so brave going travelling alone, I could never do that’ and you know what … its actually bugging me quite a lot! I mean don’t get me wrong, If people want to pay me compliments then that’s fine by me haha but it bugs me because its a load of codswallop. 

This year, for me, has been absolutely pants and I could’ve easily let it ruin my plans … also I don’t have the power of eternal youth, I don’t get any financial help and I don’t have the good fortune to never have to work in my life … but I’m still going travelling because you know what? I’m 22 … I’ve worked my bum off for the past 17 years in education … and because why the hell not?! Yes sometimes life is crap and we all like to have a good moan, yes we can come out of uni/college and go straight into work and work until we’re 75 because we need to buy houses and cars and pay bills and pay for kids etc and yes sometimes things just seem too scary/hard …but surely its worse to end up regretting what you didn’t do in later life because you were a bit scared or life was a bit pants at times or you were just waiting until you had the time/money but it just never happened? I know so many of my parents’ friends/family who say ‘Oh I wish I’d done _____ when I was young’ and I just think its such a shame. 

Nowadays we have so many opportunities open to us and my aim is to live my life making the most of those. I can honestly say that so far in my life I don’t have any regrets … everything I’ve said i’ll do I have done and they’ve all been amazing experiences. Yeah some things are scary as hell to imagine … I don’t particularly want to travel alone and the thought of living in Germany for a year terrified me before I went (ask my friends – I cried on like every night out haha) and throwing yourself out of a plane isn’t exactly a calming thought … but unless you get out there and try things how are you ever going to experience life. 

Life is what you make it – don’t sit and wait for opportunities to come to you. 

Rant over! Until next time 😉 

Briony xoxo

‘Life is what you make it’ – Mother of Briony. 

‘A goal without a plan is just a wish…’

Hi friendlings!

So I have some awesome news – I can finally go ahead and start booking flights, tours etc! 

I don’t know if I explained in my other post about my plans for Malaysia (I don’t think I did) but basically the grand plan is to fly from London to Malaysia to work with Orang-utans for a month and then after that I’d do Australia & NZ. A while ago I found this trip called the ‘Orang-utan Experience’ with a company called RealGap. You pay roughly £1,500 (this covers accommodation, food etc – not flights) and you spend one month in Malaysia doing all sorts (I’ll put some info below!) and travelling around. Anyway so I booked the trip a little while back but it turns out there weren’t enough people going on the trip and I was getting all stressed out and I won’t bore you with the details BUT on Friday they finally confirmed that my trip is going ahead – yay! So i’ll share the juicy details with you now that its all sorted and I won’t look like a complete loser after having written a blog post about it and then having to turn around and say I’m not going! 😉 

SO on day 1 I fly into Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, where I will stay overnight just to meet people etc. On day 2 we are taken to Zoo Negara where we will be staying until day 16 of the trip. On the weekdays I will be working in the zoo mostly with the Apes (weekends are free time to travel/explore/stuff your face with food) helping to feed the animals, cleaning (aka poo shovelling) and helping out with general maintenance. The zoo houses over 5,000 animals including camels, sun bears, pythons, tigers and other glorious creatures so hopefully I’ll get to work with a lot of them too.

Then on day 17 we fly from Kuala Lumpur to Sandakan which is in Sabah, Borneo. From days 18 to 26 we will be living in a wildlife sanctuary with the local tribe – the ‘Orang Sungai’ – and of course the Orang-utans!  We will be working to help preserve the rain forest for the Orang-utans and should also be teaching local school children about the importance of maintaining their natural habitat.

On day 27 we will be visiting the Sepilok Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre and then we will be travelling to Sandakan where we will have some free time to travel to Kota Kinabalu or the Turtle Islands if we wish to. Then we fly back to Kuala Lumpur and I will be making my way on to Australia!

Whilst in Malaysia I will mostly only have access to basic facilities – which means cold water showers! For the 2 weeks I spend in the rain forest with the tribe I won’t have any access to a phone or the internet.

The food situation will be interesting, to say the least! Most of you will know that I am a Vegetarian. This is what RealGap have said about the food: ‘Food will be fresh jungle vegetables, and other local delicacies. Food will contain chilli, fresh jungle produce and will be rice-based. There are no alternatives, no restaurants out in the jungle – volunteers must eat what they are given.’ They also warned that most Veggies just end up eating meat by the end of the trip! So for all of you (and there are plenty) who’ve tried to trick me into eating meat again – sorry but its still not gonna happen 😉 Ha.

So there’s a little insight into the beginning of my trip! 🙂 I’ve included the link to this RealGap experience below if any of you are interested in it. Be prepared – I will be uploading hundreds of photos of my hairy ginger family members! 😉 

http://www.realgap.co.uk/malaysia-orang-utan-experience

Ciao for now. 

‘Every man dies.  Not every man really lives.’  – Braveheart