13 days until we leave...

Sorry to do the big countdown, but I'm excited!

Sold the couches last night - weight off my mind, now cars...

I have also changed our flights so that we don't have to spend a previously unplanned night in Kuala Lumpur. For some reason I had booked flights that left a full day after I thought they did! However, have sorted that out.

Looks like we're probably going to have to take malaria pills while we're in malaysia as we're in quite a bad area for drug resistant Plasmodium falciparum (not a good thing to catch). We've been prescribed Malarone (atovaquone/proguanil). So I'm hoping they won't be too bad in terms of side effects - I really don't want to have to dive with neuropsychiatric side effects! According to my sources, adverse events associated with the drug in clinical trials were dizziness, nausea, headache, abdominal pain, asthenia and pruritis. Fun times!

2 weeks exactly...

There is now only two more weeks to go before we leave. It still doesn't seem quite real. You can tell that by the fact that the garage is still littered with drawers full of our clothes and nothing is in any semblance of order in terms of what is coming in our suitcases, what is being airfreighted, and what is going into storage. Really should be getting on to that! :S

I am excited about getting on a plane in two weeks though!

Our computer brokeded last night. I don't know what's wrong with it, every time I try and log in it just logs me straight out again! annoying! All I wanted to do was update my nanonano, I've got lots of cool music and I can't listen to any of it! grr.

Going away party is this Sunday. Having it at Shanghai Lil, so looking forward to that! :D

More Sepilok photos

AND...

Super duper welcome to Baby Squeak. Made his entrance into the world, and what a head of hair!

24 days until we leave

Counting the days left actually gave me butterflies.

Last night I finished booking all of the internal flights around malaysia. So far the itinerary looks like this:

12 June - fly Auckland to Bangkok - arriving at 1am! not sure what we're going to do then, probably should book a hotel or something for the night and then go from there...
13 June - Muck around in Bangkok then take the night train to Chiang Mai
We're going to do the elephant thing and some rafting and stuff in Chiang Mai, then at some stage head back down to Bangkok via this cool national park where there are tigers. Unfortunately no ligers. Then do the beaches and stuff, no real plans, but want to spend some time maybe on Koh Samui or something, and go to Krabi. Of course we'll be seeing my friend that lives in Thailand, perhaps in Bangkok when we come back from Chiang Mai, then she can show us all the cool places to go and shop and stuff...

then, the next firm plans are:

2 July - fly Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur on Air Asia and then Kuala Lumpur to Tawau in Sabah, we're spending a night in a hotel up there

3 July - we're picked up by the Pulau Sipadan resort people and head to Kapalai
Sipadan-Kapalai Dive Resort

3 - 9 July we're spending there, and will be doing 3 dives or more every day going out to Sipadan island for two of the dives and diving around the resort for the others... There are so many amazing things to see, I am super excited. There are turties!!! I can't wait to see turties...

9 July - fly Tawau to Sandakan and get picked up by the next resorty thing
Sepilok Nature Resort

9 - 12 July we're spending there and doing various jungle trek thingees and seeing Orangutans (as a bit of trivia, in indonesian, and probably malaysian as they're similar, orang means person and utan means forest - cute) and other cool things. (dream holiday anyone?!)

12 July - fly Sandakan to Kuala Lumpur and then at one am the next morning leave KL en route to London.

Booking flights from places that I don't know where they are, to others that I didn't even know existed on airlines that hopefully aren't dodgy, but will probably have tiny planes, was somewhat of a mildly odd experience. The resort recommended flight numbers and stuff, and I was thinking to myself that it would be funny (in many many years) if they were just fucking with us and none of these places existed, or they were running some racket and were going to use us as mules or something and we'd end up in a malaysian prison and be hung. Ok, so far fetched I know, but these things run through your mind when you have no idea what you're doing!


Anyways, still some planning for Thailand to go. Hoping to spend my birthday in Pattaya or nearby so I can see my friend on my birthday and have dinner or something with her and boyo. Then I won't feel quite so lonely and cut off from my friends and family.

still with the butterflies!

7 more days of work...

not that I'm counting.

The beginning of the end

We moved house on the weekend. It was horrible. I think I have decided to become a hermit in the mountains somewhere to escape ever having to move the pile of shit we seem to have accumulated. so. much. shit. I was too slack to sell all the furniture we won't be taking to the UK before we moved so it's now in storage and I'll have to sell it and then get it out of storage (not going to be easy) when I manage to find someone silly enough to pay me money for it. The mother-in-law's garage looks like a bomb went off in there, only the bomb happened to go off when someone else had moved all their stuff in for some reason, so it's not even like it's her stuff strewn around the place! bummer.

Sam and Frodo are liking the stairs. and the carpet. they don't like the new shower arrangement. Frodo nearly had a heart attack when he realised that that shit was WATER splashing on me. how was I going to get out ALIVE?! 'somebody help her, she's getting wet!' yowl. MROWl. SCRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH. They could hear it upstairs! boy has a set of lungs on him, let me tell you!

Anyway, they're inside at the moment, there is some mild paranoia floating around that they're going to destroy everything. can't imagine why that might be! ;)

The moving bit was hugely traumatic, the weather was stunning on Friday and on Sunday, but of course on Saturday morning when we were moving all our furniture etc it pissed down. we're talking torrential downpour originally, but it calmed down to a drizzle by the end of it. I am never ever going to move my own shit ever again. I'm sure it will be worth whatever it would cost to have someone pack it and move it. Although I wonder if you can get them to unpack again at the other end?!

I am covered in scratches and bruises, I got about 3 hours sleep on Saturday night, thanks to the getting the house clean thing and then the cats waking me up to tell me that some bastard had taken their house away and left this crazy shit in its place. Then we had to go back to the old place and take yet more stuff to the Women's centre (now I know why they say not to leave stuff on evenings and weekends - all the boy's shoes that we had left there had been stolen already. good luck to them if they fit a size US14 they can probably keep them!) and get the other car started so we could get it out of their driveway. we're going to have trouble giving it away!

SO this week is going to be filled with the fun of sorting out the crap in the garage, cleaning up after the cats. making sure they don't scratch the furniture and get turned into cushion covers as a result.

Only two more weeks of work...