Happy Australia Day!!

My first working week has been a four day week thanks to Australia day! After a couple of hours down at Manly beach we headed over to Sydney Harbour to join in the celebrations. We found a great spot overlooking the Opera House and the harbour bridge and tucked into a picnic with some friends and Alex's mate Laura from Bournemouth.

The rest of the weekend has been spent down the beach trying to surf on the board our landlady left in the garage for us (I had my first lesson this morning), bbq'ing, and having fun!!

Back to work tomorrow but bring on next weekend!!

We have arrived!!

We arrived in Sydney last Tuesday, found a flat on Wednesday and moved in on Monday. Since then we have been rushing around like mad people sorting out all those exciting things you need to sort out when you set up a home! But we love the flat and it has a spare room so everyone is welcome! It is 3 minutes walk from Manly beach with sunset views of Manly lagoon (see photo). The flat is furnished with everything (dishwasher, plasma tv and dvd player!!) but our boxes of stuff that we are having shipped over do not arrive until March so it doesn't really feel like home yet!

We have only made it to the beach once and within 2 minutes of going in the life guards were calling everyone out! Fortunately it was a rip and not a shark but we were out of the water in seconds!

Our mates Hazel and Kev have been entertaining us and already we have had a 1st beach barbie and clifftop picnic. Steve starts work on Monday so we are enjoying our last few days of no work!

Kanchanaburi

We hired a car and drove up to Kanchanaburi, it was great to be in the luxury of our own car after so many bus journeys over the past few weeks. Unfortunately we followed the Lonely Planet's instructions to our Hotel which sent us over the wrong bridge and it took us almost an hour of driving up and down the road looking for it before we realised this and got on the right road!! The hotel was lovely and worth the drive though.
The town had a tragic role in WW11 as a Japanese run POW camp where many British soldiers died. We went to Death Railway Bridge made famous from the film The Bridge over the River Kwai. We also visited a War museum and an Allied War Cemetery that was immaculately kept.

To get us back in the holiday spirit we went to a beautiful National Park the following day and trekked up a Waterfall.
The journey back was fine apart from my navigating skills into Bangkok!

Tomorrow we are off to Sydney where the hard work will begin again.

Happy New Year!

Well the three of us were sitting in my Dad's living room having a pre meal drink...we were half way through the 2nd bottle of bubbly when Dad got a phone call advising that some bombs had just gone off in the centre of Bangkok and all the large new year celebrations had been cancelled. Fortunately we had not booked to go to one of these parties so rather reluctantly I was persuaded that everything would be fine and we should still go into the centre to the restaurant we had booked. The meal was delicious and after another bottle of wine we decided to brave it further and go to an outdoor bar on the 52nd floor of a hotel next door. It was certainly worth it as the views were amazing over Bangkok but I did jump abit when the fireworks and Chinese fire crackers went off! On the taxi ride home we drove past a road with police cars and ambulances, we found out later that another bomb had gone off there.

The 2007 Happy New Year Hotel Hop
Abit bleary eyed, we went and had brunch at The Shangri-La (I won the competition to get the most of the eat as much as you like buffet eating 4 main courses and 5 puddings!!) This was followed by a trip to the other side of the river for tea at The Peninsula and then cocktails at The Oriental. It was nice to see how the other half live!!!

We are hiring a car and heading out of the city tomorrow for a couple of nights to explore some more of Thailand.