Blogging Pubbitch

A year and a day ago Holly and I left the comfort of our lives in Britain to travel and see the world. In some ways, it doesn't seem as if any time has passed since we were sitting in the back of a taxi, speeding towards the airport and rummaging through the various bags we had with us in a bid to find my sun glasses (hint: never put dark glasses in a black case in a black bag when there's not much light about) I vividly remember the strange mixture of elation and trepidation as we waited for the flight, and the soft sense of sadness for leaving people and places that I loved behind.

When you scare a snail it retreats into its shell for a time before slowly and tentatively poking itself back out into the world. It's been a bit like that to go travelling. For a time we were moving so fast that we only had fleeting contact with anyone other than ourselves. Now that we've stopped in Sydney we're slowly sending feelers out, exploring our surroundings and making new friends. It's great, but hard work, and it would have been harder still were it not for Aussie friends from home, especially the Rev (and the other Holly!).

Rather than sitting here trying to think of all the highlights (and lowlights) of our travelling, I'm going to reminisce by linking to some of the older entries when there was a little more time for blogging. Fundamentally, I'm still a lazy soul.

• Cow toe nail soup was the most outrageous thing that I managed to eat on our travels. Somehow, I couldn't manage the spiders in Cambodia
• Holly and I loved Laos. If you have a chance, go. If you don't, then try and make it to the Perhentian Islands, still my favourite place to relax in the world.
• The Cambodian shared taxi still leaves me puzzled, though I think that I'd rather take that than a disco bus.
• And of course, you can't forget about the people. I don't know why I didn't blog about Vanessa (who travelled around the south west of Oz with us, and who we met again and again in Sydney), Sam, Penny and Jessica (who very kindly put us up in KL, and managed to get the most amazing noises out of Holly with the promise of cheese), Bodil (who last we heard was heading off to chat with the BBC in the UK. Good luck to her) or SyXPAC (fellow geeks and thoroughly nice people to a man). I must have been stupid.
• Diving. Nuff said