It’s a Goa!

Ha ha, perhaps you thought we were back in the UK. No, but we’re back on the net, and back in Western uncivilisation. A couple of paragraphs on what we’ve been up to since our last report back in April…

We headed back up to Malaysia, via the small colonial town of Melaka, which has a big boat and lots of red painted buildings to prove it has ‘heritage’. Besides this, our main motivation for going there was to see the Formula 1 racing exhibition. They’d turned the car park of what is essentially Malaysia’s equivalent to the Birmingham NEC into a racing track and let some F1 cars out there to show off for the crowds, plus a few motorcycle stunt men and local dignitaries. It was a good chance to see real F1 cars and hear just how deafeningly loud the things are! We then caught the bus back up to KL where we did plenty of shopping to update our wardrobes so we wouldn’t look like total scumbags once we arrived in Australia. We stayed in a very nice hostel in KL called Anjung 2 - should you find yourself there, we recommend it (but shop around for deals as there are a few new and nice looking places in the same street).

Before we knew it (actually the wait was excruciating) we found ourselves on a flight to Perth, Australia, home of the omnipresent (in this blog at least) Glen and, once the immigration paperwork got settled, Lou. Said couple met us at the airport and we were taken immediately to a pub called the Lucky Shag (no sniggering at the back, a Shag is a type of water-dwelling bird), before being dropped into the meet-the-family deep end at the birthday party for Glen’s nephew.

Princess Bella, with her parents Sarah and Jez, who we also originally met in Agonda (Perth turned into a bit of a Goa reunion), were also in town and after a week crashing at Glen’s mum’s house (Thanks Rose) we moved into a flash little apartment - with pool and sauna!! - in Hillary’s Harbour with Bella & co.

Despite the fantastic welcome we received (amazingly Glen & Lou even lent us a fab little car called Daisy) We found it hard to deal with the culture shock of arriving in Perth. In fact we found it harder to adjust back to this way of life than we did to the way of life we experienced in Asia. On top of this, the parts of Perth we were exposed to most at the start were the Northern suburbs which look like they were all thrown up last week, just endless, faceless, characterless new-build bungalows and vast retail parks. On top of this, we arrived in Perth feeling pleased with the amount of money we had in the bank. This soon changed as we blew through most of it in very little time as we adjusted to the increased cost of living.

Money quickly running out, we searched for jobs and cheaper accommodation. Tace quickly found work in one of the cafes in the marina by our apartment, but not before some degrading and insulting job searching. I fared a little better but found the process quite demoralising until I, on a complete long shot, secured an interview and one-day trial working in a garage!

Bella & co, eager to explore, moved on to Melbourne and beyond, so we could no longer (just) afford to live in the apartment. Luckily, thanks to the ever-useful gumtree website we found a cheaper place to live; essentially a well-furnished shed in someone’s back garden. We knew our aim was to buy some form of campervan and drive round Australia, so this would break us in gently to a life slightly more exposed to the elements…

So for the next three months we worked very hard and lived in a shed in Perth. Tace eventually and thankfully quit her awful cafe job and got a cushy number as a receptionist. We saved up enough to buy ourselves a campervan and head out on the road… and here I am in Albany, Western Australia updating the blog. Internet over here is surprisingly crappy and slow, plus internet cafes are expensive. Not to mention the 50+ hour weeks we’ve been working so hopefully you can forgive us for not keeping you updated.

Life on the road is great fun, we have a fantastic vehicle and we’ll try our best to keep the blog and our photo gallery up-to-date.