Traveling from Dubai to Australia, touching on some of the most beautiful, untouched lands that were never known to man as well as cities sprawling and falling over themselves.

Dubai; a city of expanding wealth, my first stop and an easy start to the many cultural explosions that the next 10 months was to bring.

Paradise in the Maldives, sand dunes and cities just surfaced from the sea. Beach parties and turning 25.

The crazy streets of Thailand, loud, raucous , tourists and touts, sleepless nights and lost shoes.

Luxury’s in Singapore, a city so organised it runs in perfect synchronization like a finely tuned waltz. Sky scrapers and hotels, clubs and late night  mc’donalds.

Mantra Rays in Borneo; gliding like giants of the ocean, inquisitive and powerful yet as graceful as ballerina never wasting a movement.

Ostentatious officials in Vietnam, scooters and horns, bumps and bruises, awesome street food and hidden temples – a crazy world governed by no one and everyone.

Out of this world experiences in Bali, laughing till your sides hurt and friendships made to last a life time.

Civilisation in Perth, speaking to taxi drivers and ordering food in comfort. Strippers, laughter and tears. The realisation the world can turn on its head at the most unexpected times.

Crocodile Dundee in Darwin, the lonely one street town.

Secrets like the lost islands in Papua New Guinea, mountains of lush green , tropical forests scattered with hidden communities of indigenous families like something from a folklore story.

Wild animals and foreign marine life in Indonesia that have never seen man let alone the sails (or the anchor) of a 300ft yacht.

Finally to Cairns my last stop after 10 months. Cheesecake breaks and sweltering heat. Sad farewells and misgiven gifts.

Today 23rd Feb. 21:16. I’ve been away from the boat since 22nd december, just now starting to look for a new adventure.  I’m hoping to have a busy summer in the Mediterranean, working, cooking, cleaning, serving, organising, laughing and making new friends.

To those left behind and to those yet to meet, to my friends at home and my friends faraway

xxx

Its the best place i’ve been so far, not that i’ve been anywherre or done anything except work but what ive seen is just so incredible and brings tears to your eyes.

When we first arrived here we did go ashore to a place called Sarong, Myself, Jane, Donna, Rebecca and Shelia. It was such a wierd day, we arrived on the shore to a little village that looked desolated, dusty and dirty except for a few grubby looking locals and its so fucking hot and humid that it felt like our skin was melting.

We obviously stick out like sore thumbs, all in our nice clothes all brandishing cameras, we walk past a little fish drying set up where a lady is drying hundreds of little anchovy looking fish in the sun – she just smiles akwardly as the others talk photos wewalk on anyway t the main road with everyone starly at us, we find a funny taxi thing which we get into with these other two women who are already int there, we try to tell the driver we want to go to the main town but can’t really get this point across but he drives anyway and then stops a very short while later and tells the other ladies to get out – this we establish later because we dont understand – we also get out tp get cash and water while the taxi guy waits for us.

When we get back in he turns his music up so loud it feels like our hearts will explode. so anyway we try to tll him we want to go somewhere for food and we end up at this market where it promptly hammers down with rain, everyone is crowded around uslike we’re freaks and donna and Jane buy some locally crafted knives which is an episode in itself but anyway we decide not to wait for the rain to stop and head back to out taxi man who we have established will be staying wth us for the day, we try to get him to take us somewhere for a beer and we stop at this little place where jane gets out and managest o meet this man who speaks english and who decides will come with us and translate what we want to the driver, so there we all are in this taxi and we get taken to this restuarant place which is inside but over looking the sea and all the shit and rubbish that has washed up on the shore, we order some food and beer and it turns out that this english speaking man is a teacher who wants us to go to his school to talk to his students.

We all think this is a great idea, so off we toddle in our taxi to his school. We get there and it hits us that we don’t have the foggiest idea what to do now we’re there and all these kids are string at us, there wasn’t many of them maybe 10 or 12 all around 11 – 12 years old, some of them speak quite good english already but for the most part no one has any idea what is going on so we’re like ok, and the teacher guy is like just talk to them so Donna takes the bull by the horns and starts to tell them about what we are doing here and about the boat and what not, she draws pictures on the whiteboard – then we’re like ok, what next – so we count to 10 – then the teacher says why don’t you sing them a song…..and the ony thing we can come up with is The Wheels on the bus!! we’re all standing singing the this stupid song to a load of kids who are like what the fuck, it was sooo embarresing!!

After that they sing us a song while we sit in their chairs, the song they sing is so sweet and nice it was incredible!
anyway i ended giving my facebook to one of the girls and she emailed me the other day to say thankyou, it was so cute.

After this we go back to the market where we find the fish market, i’m wandering around on my own and am just walking out of the putrid, stinking hell hole when i hear this grunting behind me, theres this weird arse fucking old man staring at me and getting closer and closer and at first I’m like ok, well what do you want…but then he starts looking aggressive and he has these horrible wild eyes and this skanky red gunk in his mouth covering his rotten teeth and all over chin, theres so much of it its actually formed little horns on the side of his mouth then he lifts this damn pole that he’s holding like he’s going to strike me and i’m like fuck man what the hell did i do to you!!  Jane is next to me at this point pushing me away and i hear Rebecca calling come this way..but me and jane have backed up in the other direction by which time of course everyone in the market is looking at us even more and someone has ushered this horrid man away and appologise pointng to there head saying he’s mad i suppose, so i’m like thank fuck!! and carry on walking towards rebecca – and then she says Chrst he’s got a gun!! the next thing i know he’s ahead of us again with a sawn off bloody shot gun! So jane pushes me out of the way and we’re all like Jesus! but everyone else in the market is laughing…and its like what the hell….so anyway we walk past him, other people are saying its ok but he’s following us with this gun but starts pointing at our camers and it turns out that he wants a photo taken but i get out of there sharp and the others humor him a little whle trying not to get too close, but poor jane by this time hes getting all touchy feeling and holding her hand and she really doesn’t want to touch him…but anyway it was horrible!! but also quite funny once it was over!!

so that was our first day off and now its pooring with rain

The last couple of days have been entertaining and hectic; i’ve been threatened with a metal pole and a shotgun (by the same wild, manic, crazed indigenous Papua New Guinea man) and hoovered many a floor (which isn’t quite so interesting but a very necessary part of my day) and i say necessary in the loosest of terms.

We’re expecting the big man to arrive tomorrow for my very last charter; i have handed my notice in on the good ship and am due to leave on around and about the 20^th December ; very mixed feelings about leaving because I’m definitely not leaving because I’m over it and hate it here I just know that enough is enough and that I should  move on hopefully to bigger and better things. I want to learn something new (and earn some more money) (ready for my new house that i’m going to buy so that I can exhibit my new knives above my mantle piece)

Only the male crickets chirp.

 They have a large vein running along the bottom of each wing. The vein has “teeth,” much like a comb does. The chirping sound is created by running the top of one wing along the teeth at the bottom of the other wing. As he does this, the cricket also holds the wings up and open, so that the wing membranes can act as acoustical sails.

It is a popular myth that the cricket chirps by rubbing its legs together.

There are four types of cricket song: The calling song attracts females and repels other males, and is fairly loud. The courting song is used when a female cricket is near, and is a very quiet song. An aggressive song is triggered by chemoreceptors on the antennae that detect the near presence of another male cricket and a copulatory song is produced for a brief period after successful deposition of sperm on the female’s eggs Crickets are popular pets and are considered good luck in some countries; in China, crickets are sometimes kept in cages (Carrera 1991).

It is also common to have them as caged pets in some European countries, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula. Cricket fighting as a gambling or sports betting pastime also occurs, particularly in Southeast Asia

And sometimes on sailing yachts they can make great companions

Something else I done today was sit on the bus with my new gold and black dress on and my big arse head phones, wasnt even embarrassed about the headphones even though my sister said I looked like a geek.

Things still to achieve

post sophies package

sort out credit card

sort out driving license

A life

Things achieved

Camping

Visa card

boozing

complications

sleeepp

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 One of the highlights of the last few months, i’ll even go so far as to say …for me a real achievement …I don’t want to say it in fear of being corny…but in my life;  was definitely swimming  with manta rays in Komodo, Indonesia. My fear of the sea was overridden as I slipped off the side of the tender with my snorkelling gear on. Straight into a very strong current that carried us to where the rays were , we just had to float with the current, let it take us where it wished . 

The rays were everywhere, gliding, majestic and absolutely amazing, huge bloody things.  Swimming towards you with their huge gaping mouths scooping in the plankton and swerving away from you at the last possible moment their wings brushing past your shoulder; it was truly a great moment.

A great moment for today was being surrounded by whales today, it was sooo cool. We’re a few hours away from Perth and throughout the day we had random calls from deck for sightings of whales and dolphins; such a great thing to see. Shame it was so bloody cold.

8 hours to clean one bathroom

I wonder what else I could do

umm

I clearly don’t have very much to say either all this cleaning is numbing my mind

blarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Thats what I wonder everytime I have to clean a bathroom on charter….among other things that don’t even bare writing about. On the floor on the mirror, on the taps, on the telephone and soo much water! its drives me mad. The rich obviously arn’t always brought up with much class sometimes I want to puke at the things I see.

5 days to go on charter and although its pure cleaning hell time fly’s like we were having an absolute ball; those 15hours that we worked yesterday barely register and as i said before, you just keep on dancing.

We had a much anticipated day off before charter where once again we stayed in hotel and where once again it was barely worth paying out the money for because we barely slept, but the following day made it worth while for the use of the pool which we made full use of. Luckily I again sidestepped my hangover, partly due to the hair of the dog but mostly due to my unshakable constitution, we  kept up the spirits throughtout the day with a vodka fuelled boat trip around the isands of Halong.

As always with days off, they’re not long enough and the day came to an end all too quickly.

Now i’m sitting in the crew mess, with 1 and half hours off work and time ticking by too fast again. Off to read a few pages and mayeb have a snooze.

Maybe I just thought of it as a reminder that things can’t always pass with blissful serenity. My naive happiness does sometimes crack, but thank god right now its all intact so this whole lot of blathering is basically a waste of energy except that it gave me a chance to share my new epitaph..(Not that I’m dead i just can’t think of the right word) ‘You just have to keep on dancing’ I read it in the last book i was reading and thought it was a nice way to live life. No matter what life throws at you, you just have to keep on dancing, find your pace and go with it.

So there we are, my weird words of wisdom; even if you didn’t want to hear it.

I spent my days off sprawled by the pool or at the local shopping centre! I didn’t do anything more cultural than eat Sushi, which obviously has no relation to Malaysia anyway!!

I’ m actually sitting watching Jurissic Park 3 at the moment while on Friday night watch; the troops have all left for a night on the town so its very peacful at the moment which is a time to savour.

Its now Sunday 21st June, Father’s day I believe (Happy father’s day dad – sorry I didn’t actually say it to you)

I’ve just finished my evening aft deck work out…..it’s actually my first evening aft deck out; me and Rebecca worked on our guns while the sun was setting in the distance and the wind was blowing through our hair, appartently a very Calafornian style work out. Now after devouring a roast dinner we’re watching Toy Story while I fight my CRAVINGS for chocolate and biscuits – which i’m going to be fighting for 2 weeks! BECAUSE WE’RE HAVING A STUPID 2 WEEK CHALLENGE and I know i don’t have to do it but hell if they can so can I.

We have been in and left Nha Trang and are now on our way to Hanoi. We had a super day off while we were Nha Trang, we visited temples, markets and rice fields all on scooters, navigating the crazy roads of Vietnam putting our lives on the line. I was on the back of Vic’s scooter, Sam, Jane and Lee all had their own. Sophie having her own bike the day before had some fun that put me off doing the same…umm

We had a great day watching the things people were transporting by bike, things like pigs, fridges, ducks, doors; there were women breast feeding children on the backs of scooters and family’s of 4 all on one. Madness is all you can say.

I’m now thinking of crashing  although its only 8.45pm, got to get that beauty sleep.  Toy Story is over and the herds have left the room, what crazy kids we are.

Goodnight