End of the west coast

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Darwin wondering how to sum up the last three weeks. I'm finding it hard, so perhaps I'll just make some observations.

1. Jules and I seem to be capable of losing anything - so far the list includes sunglasses, mask and snorkel sets, a hat and a memory card reader
2. The west coast is a huge, empty place. Its great in terms of wildlife and landscape, but hardly anyone lives in a area that's bigger than Germany, Japan and the UK combined. There's some serious scary people here too
3. To all the fans of the tash, I'm afraid its gone, but a photo has been taken for posterity. I'm sure a new version will turn up in a couple of weeks anyway
4. I'm missing proper beer, Aussie stuff is terrible

Wetsuit superheros

We are damn sexy people I can tell you.

Exmouth was another great place - snorkelling with sharks, turtles and rays was certainly an experience, off the ningaloo reef at a set of islands an hour from the coast - all good.

We also rented scooters, rented a wreck (this car was so old the doors didn't close, it needed a new roof and the mileage clock no longer worked - oh and it was cheaper to rent out than a scooter). It got us to Yardie Creek though - water, sorry, what are you doing here.

Now in Broome. Its bloody hot, bloody humid and I intend to have a beer pretty soon.

Next stop Kununurra and the bungle bungles

Give me fish

Monkey Mia is great - I'm not normally one to get well happy about things, but feeding wild dolphins was rather marvellous. Jules even got to do it twice. The whole Shark Bay area is windy, full of sharks, but a great place to come to for a couple of days. highly recommended. We have now moved on to Exmouth to see Nigaloo reef, but as we've been awake for about 24 hours I can't think of too much else interesting to say at the moment.

Oh, there won't be any photos for a bit, we've had a bit of a technical problem with the equipment, involving a Jules and the Indian Ocean.

Where the hell?

Geraldton. Imagine an English seaside resort without the kitsch, arcades, in fact without anything. Oh apart from the biggest lobster factory in Western Australia. Where are we?

Tomorrow we leave, thank goodness for that. Another journey on the greyhound bus to Monkey Mia, which hopefully will be cool.

Callie - the prawn cracker was from a stall in Chinatown, you and Paul need to explore more :)

Perth

Perth, Australia - its transport system is nowhere near as efficient as Singapore, nothing is as cheap and it seems to be full of student types from all over the world - but I love it. After the sterile controlled Singapore this relaxed city is great. We arrived late afternoon yesterday and had our first full day today. We spent a lot of the time wandering around swearing about how useless greyhound buses are (well how bad their info is, the buses themselves are meant to be great, but where do they go from, what's the timetable, hello anyone there??? etc).

After finally sorting the bus we then had a good day - the pic above is from King's Park - brilliant views of the city, great place really. Bit of food and a couple of beers later and I'm writing this.

Just one more day left here then we move on to Geraldton - a beach resort town, time for a bit of relaxing after all this charging round. Hope you are all well.

Prawn crackers Singapore style

Did I mention they do things big here?

And the weather, think we have seen more rain today than in the previous year.

Final day in Singapore was spent basically at the zoo and night safari - which is basically a zoo in the dark. While this may seem like a stupid idea - as in you can't see the animals and they can eat you, it actually works really well and you see loads of animals being active that normally just hide from you.

Tomorrow Australia

Singapore - mad mad mad

As mad as cheese some would say. Its day two here and already we've been to some nicely touristy places (raffles hotel) had a genuine singapore eating experience (crazy, you sit down and then get attacked by people from 10 different eating stalls all trying to get you to buy food from them) and had a drink at Singapores only micro-brewery. The czech stlye pilsner wasn't bad.

But, this place is totally crazy, everything is huge and new. They are a tiny country relatively speaking and that seems to make them feel they have to build everything huge. The buildings, the roads, the fountains....they have the world's largest fountain (though it wasn't working) and they are always trying to get new records - the world's largest line dance anyone?