Now that we are so far from home it can cost a little bit to call us. But if you have Skype installed on your computer or iPhone , you can call us for free!

On the side of our blog is our Skype status (like below). If we are online, call us!

Edit: Our username is “chambills”

Well we have arrived! Greeted with sunshine and a balmy 4 degrees London so far has been fantastic.

Things I Like So Far

This list is full of surprises for instance; the weather. It’s great, sunny, cold and crisp like the snow towns at home.

Opening a bank account. Due to the credit crunch they basically have people attacking you and dragging you in. I literally didn’t have enough Id on me and the guy fudged his way through to sign me up! (Unfortunately my credit check failed due to the people previously living at my address, it’s being cleared up at the moment)

The city looks and feels old and metropolitan, the public transport so far as been seamless and efficient (thanks in part to our oyster cards)

I haven’t come across any dislikes so far… so loving it.

We leave for the airport in 1 hour! This marks the official end of our extended honeymoon. As the little map below shows we have been to a mere 9% of the worlds countries, and it still took a year! So much more to do. We had an amazing time; I was going to give out awards for things like “Best Animal Experience” but time doesn’t currently permit it. Thanks to everyone to hosted us and hung out with us over the year. The entire set of albums are over at Picassa. 

The map won’t load in WordPress, so click here to see where we have been.

See you in London.

We went to Lembeh Strait to see crazy critters and seem them we did, above and below the water. The rubbish in the strait was even more than I had expected which detracted from the experience. The creatures were really interesting, however we only saw 3 frog fish which was a big disappointment (We did get to see the hairy frog fish above). The cuttlefish here were amazing, I could watch them change colour all day.

The accommodation was average at Two Fish and not good value for money. Kahlia loved the diving, whereas I quickly got bored with poor visibility and repetitive animals. Again one to see if your in the area.

We have arrived back in Sydney for Christmas, Brent & Bex’s wedding and to pack from the UK. The honeymoon is almost over.

We decided to end our trip with some diving in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. We had previously heard people raving about the diving in the area. So we decided to check it out.

We stayed at Lorenso’s Guesthouse, which is very basic and you have to love eating fish. The beach is an interesting tunnel of sand walled by forest on one side and a mangrove forest on the other. There is good snorkelling straight in front of the property.

We dove with Two Fish, one of the cheaper operators on the island. They were fine (the whole area is over-priced IMHO) and the diving was lovely. Beautiful walls (ala Sipidan) and reef, however being so close to Manado the trash in the water was off-putting. My general opinion is it’s great diving if your in the area, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to visit.

Off to Lembeh Strait for some muck diving.

Our Vietnam photos are up (the few we took). We are off to North Sulawesi, Indonesia for some diving before we head home and call it a year!

After we farewelled Niki & Shawn in Bangkok we headed back to Phuket so we could sail to Malaysia and earn our Competent Crew Certificate. We sailed with Langkawi Sailing School on their 44ft Ketch ‘Kay Sira’. We did 203 nautical miles over 6 days from Phuket to Langkawi. We had a good time, although tiring, it wasn’t the easy going leisure boating I was used too.

We are now officially Competent Crew!

After the jungle we all headed to Phi Phi Island of the Andaman Coast of Thailand. Not much has changed since we were last there, although the food has gotten infinitely better! We spent our time enjoying the pool and beach and eating thai food again!

When we arrived it was the start of a prohibition period in respect of the anniversary of the death of an important royal family member. So no bars were opened till the last night, which happened to be Kahlia’s birthday. So everyone was out in force on that special night of the year.

The title is because our pool “bar” had a big sign saying “We have drinks here”… they didn’t…. but we did. It turns out some bottle shops were more interested in business than the law.

The lack of photos is because we brought along a professional photographer, Nikki, and didn’t bother taking our own.

Kahlia’s two  brothers, Amber, Nathan, Shawn & Nikki came with us up to Sepilok to see the orangutans and then onto the Kinabatangan river to do some jungle trekking and river cruising.

We stayed overnight at the Jungle Resort at Sepilok (which was fine) and spent the day looking at the orangutans. Not much has changed since our first visit in 2004. We did however lose our Steripen When I went back to look around the reserve was closed, so I jumped the fence. After the hordes of people had gone, a lone juvenile orangutan was roving the boardwalks looking for new toys left behind. It was amazing to encounter up close. It came running up to me and outstretched it’s hand! I wasn’t sure if it was introducing itself or asking for something. Every time I turned my back it would edge closer, I would turn around and it would stand there pretending it was doing anything. It was very cool and a little scary.

After Sepilok we all headed to the Kinabatangan River to stay at the Bilit Lodge. On the river cruises we got to see, what has now become the usual suspects for us, proboscious monkeys, all the macaques and hornbills. This time we got to see numerous crocodiles and Borneo’s Langurs which are a little different from India’s.