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!