Happy New Year from Oz

Well doesn't it seem strange to be seeing in the New Year in blazing sunshine.... I WOULDN'T KNOW GIVEN IT'S BLOODY FREEZING HERE AND THE RAIN MEANS OUR PARTY HAS BEEN MOVED TO A CRAPPY CLUB IN BONDI JUNCTION. Apart from that we have a new camper with a message on the back which is so bad I'm not even going to put it here, suffice to say we have seen parents rushing their kids away from the van before they ask what it means, and money is going very quickly here compared to India. However it is ridiculously beautiful in all directions and we are loving cooking our meals outdoors with the rainforest/beaches/harbour/lake as a view. We have been wine tasting which was great except we kept having to pretend we were winelovers looking to buy rather than the pitifully obvious freeloaders we actually were. We have also invested in a body board and now we totally fit in with all the other body-boarders at the beach - well except for two things 1)our board was quite cheap and has 'THIS IS A FLOTATION TOY ONLY AND SHOULD ONLY BE USED UNDER COMPETENT SUPERVISION' in big letters on it and 2) we are so bad at body boarding onlookers may suspect we need competent supervision.
Really this is just a quick seasons greetings to you all - hope you are having a wicked time and wish we could be there with you (with a magic plane to transport us back to Oz immediatly after)
Love you all and if you haven't been in touch for a while let us know how you are.
Love Sophie xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We're going into space...first stop Uranus!

We initially thought our campervan was quite cool with some nice alien pictures and star wars robots but then we saw the back which has the catchy slogan above on it which may have been why we were pulled over by the police within two hours of picking it up (it was just a random breath test cos it's Christmas but we still shat ourselves). Now we're in the mountains where it's chilly and raining and not what you'd expect from an Australian summer.
Now on to more important matters such as our burgeoning film career, or more accurately Pauls. While Sophie was too big for any of the balldresses the rest of the white extras were wearing and ended up in a fifties schoolteacher dress and wedge sandals which gave her the stylish look of a Hassidic Jew, Paul was given the role of chief journalist. This entailed a heavy antique film camera which was such a prized prop that it had its' own minder who stalked Paul around the set giving constant instructions on how to hold it. His outfit was pinstripe trousers with braces, a shirt, Buddy Holly style glasses and greased combover hair. He was on camera for pretty much the whole ten hour all night shoot (about 10 minutes of actual film) and was given a lot of personal attention by the director. After two shots, he just wanted to go and hide but bravely stuck it out for the rest of the shoot while Sophie went slowly insane getting up from a cinema seat and sitting down again in unison with the other extras (in what cinema does everyone sit down together, incidentally?) all of whom were COMPLETE FREAKS. From the ginger albino Indian flirt who Sophie initially thought was Russian to the very angry American reject who wasn't allowed on screen due to his non-fifties hair, from the woman with delusions of grandeur who kept pushing Paul off screen to the cockmunch referred to earlier who pretty much defies description, they were all the sort of people who'd expect to have nothing to do all night than work on a low budget film. He claimed to have been in 3 Bollywood films and obsessively showed anyone who was passing the billboard for the one he was in (we later found out he just did some dubbing for a security guard), thought all the Indian girls were chatting him up when they were really taking the piss, kept referring to a mythical Turkish girlfriend and his many travelling exploits in a loud voice even when NO-ONE was listening, the list goes on.......
The whole shoot was demented chaos and no-one knew what they were doing. Highlights included the director trying to beat up the security guard and a futile attempt to stop Mumbai rush hour traffic in a 200m radius when the filming overran. By this time it was 7am and Sophie was going psychotic, Paul was so wired he had no idea what time it was and a confrontation nearly ensued when we demanded our money and refused to do 'one more shot, one more shot'.
It was a pretty cool end to our Indian trip, even though by the time we reached the airport we were so tired we were hallucinating. Sydney came as much more of a shock than we thought it would and we really miss India. Here are our highlights; walking across Delhi at rush hour, gazing at mountains in Spiti Valley, watching the Tibetan performance in Dharamsala, talking to all the visitors in the Golden Temple, visiting a yogi and watching the puja ceremonies in Varanasi, cycling through the villages around Konark, climbing the pilgrimage trail in Tirupati, standing on a rooftop in Tiruvannamalai, gardening in Auroville, visiting the temples in Thanjavur and Madurai, seeing the elephants in Periyar, the whole of Sophie's birthday, taking a bus ride through the tea plantations and chilling out on the beaches in Costa Malabari, Gokarna and Agonda. Anyway that list is probably more interesting for us than for you but India is great and you should all go there.

Stardom beckons!

We are in the middle of filming a Bollywood film - we will be starring as 'random white people in the background', a great part I'm sure you'll agree. I've just sneaked off to do some internet stuff. It's all good fun except one of our fellow background artists or extras as they are sometimes known is the BIGGEST COCKMUNCH I HAVE EVER ENCOUNTERED. Will I last 8 hours without murder occurring. Find out next time.....

Disaster Strikes!!!!!!

Just as we were patting ourselves on the backs for not losing anything important and not missing any trains or buses we woke up yesterday morning at 7, our train was at 9.50 and we decided to stay roughly an hour away from the train station especially not to miss it. Anyway as we were getting ready Sophie asked in passing if I had my passport just out of our constant paranoia, and then we remembered we hadn't got it back last time we changed money. So we ran out the hotel hailed down a taxi and explained we had to go back to our last resort 40km away,(in India 40km can take hours if there are very slow trucks and cows in the way) At this point we knew all the trains are booked out for weeks from Goa to Mumbai and we probably have to get about 10 local buses maybe having to stand crushed into someones armpit for hours.
The taxi drivers soothing Muzack of various eighties hits added to the atmosphere as we flew through the roads, and eventually we got the passport and made the train with ten minutes to spare,
Its remarkable this has only happened once so far but I'm very happy it worked out ok as we are having fun exploring Mumbai, its far from the hell hole made out by people and they even have Christmas trees to make us feel at home.
Now we are now just killing time before we go on an opentop bus tour.
Lots of Love Paulie xxxxxxxxx

Strange Goan's on

Hello everyone, christmas is nearly upon us and its weird to say the least, we've spent the last few days relaxing on the beach in a place called Agonda in Goa, it was nice and quiet(we are turning into geriatrics) and we had a hut on the beach facing the sea, the weather here is perfect no clouds and cool breezes so not too hot.
Anyway now I've made you jealous I will tell you the bad news that we've realised we will probably be spending Christmas day in a 'wicked' camper miles away from civilisation eating christmas dinner in an aussie pub (if they do that?).
Our last week has been fairly busy despite trying to stay in one place for more than two days we have been to about five places in the last ten days, starting in Madikeri which was a dump surrounded by beautiful countryside, we had a nice walk to a waterfall, posed for the Indian tourist paparazzi then walked past the drunks lying outside the Arrack shop(Indian rice alcohol made with ethanol that makes you go blind an can kill you).
We then went to jog falls India's highest waterfall which is probably India's biggest tourist failure after they built a dam nearby and its little more than a trickle, the local shop owners (still mourning the loss of then enormous olympic sized swimmimg pool with three diving boards which is now a dump(litterally))were very keen to have us though and shouted WHAT DO YOU WANT!' at us every opportunity and then 'WHY NOT?' when we refused to buy eveything on there stool.
Next stop Gokarna which was beautiful and we met some interesting characters there was Taff a very hard looking man from Sheffield with no hair and neck tatoo's who turned out to be very sweet and his best quote was, 'some people take India far too seriously' which we agreed with, then there was John a born traveller who had been around the globe for the past couple of years who informed us of handy tips like were your likely to be stripped and searched inside and out on south american borders and which country's the police will steal your camera.
We also met Thomas a Czech guy who walked around in his pale blue Y-fronts and pale podgy body and said he was quitting DHL and telling them to send his things express delivery so he could live in Bangalore to become a computer engineer, this he found so funny he laughed for ten minutes although I think that was because he was very stoned.
We left to Vagator in Goa in search of trance parties, and went to a few but one finished a 10pm after starting at 7pm and the other was on a very small dance floor constructed out of wood over a pit which was a bit dodgy and the music was rubbish.We did have the pleasure of meeting Tristan a lad from Devon who strangely used to drink in the same pub as sophie when she was sixteen in Cornwall and also lived in Roman Way in Bushhillpark 2 minutes from my house, quite spooky, he was a Goa resident most winters and tried to find us a better party but failed, however we did get to hear about his Tarot reading business and his philosphies about England being a magical land of fairys, pixies, witches and wizards, he then claimed he saw a fairy in the bar at which point I found it hard to believe anything he then said(only after that point obviously).
We then went to Arambol which was good but we wanted more seclusion(old people remember!) and Agonda was the perfect place.
We are going to Bombay tommorow which should be fun then in five days saying goodbye to India and hello Australia which we are both excited about.
Anyway hope your all having fun buying useless crap, its one thing I will not miss!!
Love you all Paulie xxxxxxxx

A day of mourning for Pards

Despite our huge upset at the sacking of our second favourite manager in football (and one we were actually slightly obsessed with) we have managed to find the strength to prise ourselves away from the bottle and come and upload some pictures. We would like to say, however, how outraged we are with the chairman of West Ham and his poor decision making ability. Football has lost a legend. God bless you Alan and may you return soon, hopefully as manager of England? We are opening our blog for messages of support which we will then send together to Alan to help him through this difficult time - come on guys, he deserves it.
Anyway the photos are of a temple elephant in Madurai, the banyan, the chubster and the giant gold golfball in Auroville and the Sun Temple in Konark.

Travelling's fun, honest

As I was lying in bed a couple of nights ago laughing at the fact that while I was under a blanket and a sheet wearing pyjamas, a t-shirt, Paul's big fluffy jumper, a long skirt over my pyjamas and bedsocks and sturggling to get to sleep cos i was too cold, Paul was snoring away, wearing boxers and covered by a thin blanket (I think there may be something wrong with me), I thought that we should check Paul's bank account to make sure the hostel in Sydney had taken the money out for our booking. Well Paul did check and the hostel told him that they couldn't honour our booking cos they would have to ask other people to leave and 'that wouldn't be fair at Christmas, mate', conveniently overlooking the fact that we would be homeless at Xmas and we had booked and paid a deposit in May... I checked some other hostels which were all full and then spoke to a dithering woman at Visit Sydney who said 'Well we might be able to find something....but it won't be in Sydney city......and it will be over $140pn' (we were meant to be paying $40). So I phoned the hostel again primarily to shout at them but after a few seconds of hearing his smug 'don't know what you're getting upset about' nasal voice I hung up and decided there might be a small problem when we get to Australia - I find Australians REALLY REALLY ANNOYING. Anyway we've found one just about reasonable room for the first night and then we will be spending Christmas in a campervan which actually could be quite cool as we figure we can just drive out to a beach and enjoy the view and then we will head down to Melbourne. However, even campervans are in short supply and nowhere had one. Nowhere except 'wickedcampers.com', which in some misguided attempt to be young and funky have painted their entire fleet in zany 'wickedcamper' designs. Check out their website if you want to see the type of monstrosity we will be driving around in and disowning if anyone thinks it is ours. (More worryingly, when we booked ours they offered us wickedcamper t-shirts - who buys clothes that advertise campervan rentals? who?) Anyway sorting this out was a stressful 24 hours, not helped by the fact that the town we were in was full of arseholes and that I have developed a hideous itchy rash all over my body which makes people move away from me when they notice it.
Enough moaning - we actually had an amazing few days before that taking a beautiful boat ride through the narrow backwaters in a canoe, staying in a lovely old house in Kochi and then splashing out (again!) on a guesthouse on a beautiful deserted beach. It really wasn't that expensive and it included all meals which were amazing Keralan food. We also were sent to see a temple ritual called theyyam by the guesthouse owner. This involves a local man being painted in all different colours and putting on a huge costume and headdress and dancing to frenetic drumming and music until he becomes possessed by Shiva and can offer advice to the people who have come to the ritual, often by predicting the future. It was a quite an intense atmosphere, despite the fact that the temple had a corrugated roof and was next to a bus stop (which in a weird way made it more real) and was definitely one of the most unusual and interesting experiences we've had here. Anyway i'm not going to do a Paul and now claim I'm a shaman or something - instead I'm going to go and watch Arsenal v Spurs which I'm sure will be just as fascinating.
Sophie xxx
ps yes paul did make us check into a hotel with a tv for the match. so it better be a good one!