Looks like a woman - but with the strength of TWO men???

There I was just walking down the street minding my own business in the resort town of Kuta. Granted it was three in the morning. Granted I had just finished some ridiculous looking fishbowl thing full of some foul liquor. And granted the walls did seem a little wonky and I had to use both hands in order to hold them up in places (to ensure that they didnt fall down).

When out of the blue came a speeding scooter (in that it was going over 10 mph which is pretty fast for Bali) carrying a ladyboy with suspicious intent. The vehicles occupant jumped off the scooter and ran towards me. Now I'm an open minded guy and if given the chance would have politely declined the young ladyboy's advances.

However the person in question proceeded to perform a pretty challenging manouvre which involved simultanmeously trying to grab me where it hurts whilst attempting to remove my wallet from my pocket. Luckily I have seen the same attempt on my friend Paul in Prague and was wise to this game. With some difficulty I managed to prise them (these guys are strong!) off and quicken my step down the street. Unfortunately said person decided to jump back on the scooter and chase me down.

Now this leaves a guy in a pretty serious dilemma. All of my insticts are telling me not to hurt the lady (drilled into me through years of believing it is wrong to be violent towards women). The other side of me is thinking "I'm not a small guy, but the dude in this lady has a blooming vice like grip!"

Only one thing for it. I ran as fast as my little wobbly legs could carry me back to the hostel.

According to the guy who works in reception, the number of huffing and puffing guys who run in in the middle of the night is quite high. And they think it is HILLARIOUS!

Inb the Gillis near Lombok at the moment after a horrendous 12 hour journey. The internet seems a little quicker now so I may be able to post some photos up.

Hotel Jam-Jaman

This means literally pay by the hour hotel, which we found out to our horror during our stay in Semarang!

Desparately trying to get to Borneo, we decided to take a 5 hour bus trip to the north coast to try to either get a flight or a ferry. The bus was an interesting experience, every second stop or so, a "musician" jumps on board and starts playing an awful tune on some form of primitive banjo. Then the hat goes round and you are expected to give payment "from the heart" according to our indonesian friend that we made on the journey. Obviously being western it was percieved that our hearts should be slightly larger than anyone elses. Which was fine except we had no change!

It turns out that Indonseians find it hilarious when a westerner says to them "I have no money". I think we should possibly avoid the use of the phrase in the future.

On arrival in Semarang (late at night) we walked the streets lookin for somewhere to stay, unfortunately all the places recommended by the lonely planet were "full" or else unwilling to accept us. We kept getting directed to this decent enough looking hotel accross the way, so eventually we gave up and decided to go there. The receptionist asked if we wanted "Indonesian Woman" which we thought was a little strange and we politely declined.

This is where we made our first mistake - we neglected to check the room before accepting it! Handing our money over, only when we got into the room did we think something suspicious was going on. Only then did we realise we were in Hotel Jam-Jaman.

This was the biggest hole I have ever been in. The sheets were brown and crusty, the whole place stank and the toilet didnt work. Luckily I had a sleeping bag liner and was able to hide within this, unfortunately Pete had no such luck and had to snuggle up into his delightful bedding!

Following our Semarang ordeal we went to the travel agent and promptly discovered that we couldnt get any flights or boats from here to Borneo either. Deciding to alter our oplans we thought it best to go to Denpasar (Bali) and head oward from there. This of course (by the rules of sods law) meant that we had to get a 5 hour bus back to the city that we had just come from. Altogether not such a good experience!

Still trying to upload photos, I think I managed to upload four in an hour yesterday - loads more to come...

Borobudur

Borobudur is the worlds largest Buddhist stupa built in 775AD. Rediscovered in 1815 (from underneath a covering of volcanic ash) restoration works began in 1907 and it was reconstructed block by block in the 70's to combat the subsidence in the structure.

Anyway, enough of the history lecture, Borobodur is absolutely spectacular, and my highlight of the trip so far.

We have also hit our first stumbling block in that we are desperately trying to get to Borneo, and failing miserably (and its looking like we may have to give up in the end). All the flights entail either changing 17 times or spending 3 days on a boat.

Im finding it extremely frustrating that I cant download any of my pictures due to the slow internet connections (after being sat here for an hour), so pictures may have to wait until Denpasar.

Fancy a Haircut?

1 Adult Please

Travelling alone can be pretty empowering. You can go where you want when you want and spend as much time as you like. You also get to meet some pretty interesting people (see picture of drunken Irishman with Indian dancer).

Today I went to the Changi Chapel and Museum on the site of Changi Prison (with a German Guy amnd a Finnish Girl. Its a pretty moving exhibition dedicated to the memory of the Englishmen, Australians and New Zealanders who were imprisoned there during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. Very bizarre to see the letters and memories left their by former POWs and POW relatives who have been back to the site. The majority of the letters seemed to come from the small Yorkshire town of Barnsley.

However, I am looking forward to Pete arriving this afternoon as the city of Jakarta (my next destination) can be a little dodgy and apparently you cant move for people trying to rip you off, so safety in numbers is what I say...

Singapore Photos

www.flickr.com

A Tale of Three Cities

Singapore is a pretty cool place. Hedged with skyscrapers and enormous glass buildings,

Singapore is certainly the place if you like to shop!

Which I dont unfortunately.

However, there are other sides to Singapore, and if you get away from the main riverside area a few tube stops away is a place called Little India (where the majority of the island's 20% Indian population live). Its an amazingly colourful part of the town, and I elected to stay here for the whole of my Singapore stay. There are small curry houses on every street corner and you can eat here for 4 singapore dollars which is little over a pound (struggling here with a lack of pound signs!)

Another side to Singapore is slightly less glamorous. Singapore is the second largest sea-port in the world (after Rotterdam), and there are cranes abosultely everywhere (it never said in the guide book that it hadnt been finished yet)! Sentosa island is located just off the south coast and pretty much an island of manufactured, man-made beaches designed to be an expensive resort town. And the view is pretty strange to me. Just row upon row of cargo ships and oil tankers (see photo)!

I went to a shopping centre last night with an Egyptian guy that I met this week as he was looking for a Mac - and electronics really are dirt cheap. The one we went to had 6 floors of electronics stores each with around 20 shops (so probably well over 100). I plan to severly annoy my Ipod obsessed brother by buying a 160GB Ipod for 70% of the price he paid for his 30GB one (I dont really want an Ipod, I just think it would be funny).

The whole trip is only tainted by two things: my bank decided to cancel my card as they thought someone may have obtained the detailes fraudulently over the net, and also I cant make outgoing calls on my mobile = lots of stress...

RCWR Goes Global

Wow, looks like I never got to spend those three days on blogger, nor any time over the weekend either (much of the weekend was spent doing long hard goodbyes)!

Anyway, I am in Singapore now (having just got to my hostel), and by my reckoning I havent really slept for almost 24 hours now and I'm pretty knackered! First impressions of Singapore:

• Boy do thse guys really love their PSPs (they're everywhere!)
• Tubes with air con (and hardly any passengers) - Nice!
• I sweat a lot

As you may have guessed, my first impressions are quite heavily influenced by the fact I have only seen the tube as of yet.

Over then next few days I hope to be able to post up some pictures and some more interesting stuff (when I have seen it). Also in the next week or so, there is going to be a new blogger on this site, in the form of my mate Pete.

As a side note, it would have been useful to know that chewing gum is illegal in Singapore BEFORE I walked through the airport with a mouthful of Wrigleys best.

*&%$@

My work have blocked facebook. This angers me greatly.

This angers me not because I really want to look at facebook. It is the principle that makes my blood boil!

For those who dont know me, I work long hours. Long hours with long commutes added on the end. I earn directly over £80k for the company, of which I estimate that a good £45k must be pure profit.

The IT department trust me to work extremely long hours with no overtime. They trust me to earn the money which keeps them in a job (as non fee earners). I am trusted to sell work all over the world to clients in large blue chip companies. They dont trust me to use Facebook sensibly! What the &%*$£)"*!!!!! Its like being treated like a child!

Oooh, if I wasnt three days from leaving (I would probably have a good moan).

Anyway. In protest, I am going to spend as much of the next three days (apart from tomorrow) on Blogger.

10 Faces of Sam

I would never call myself the kind of guy who likes to relinquish control - of anything. At least not too much of it anyway.

If we go to the cinema to watch a film that Lucy wants to see, I will moan incessantly about the poor acting, and the obvious plot (how I knew all along that the Kate Hudson character would get the guy in the end). If we go shopping for clothes for her, I will stand outside the changing rooms and tut (along with all of the other guys) about the indignity of having to stand around in such close proximity to the underwear section.

There have been two occasions in the last two weeks where I have had to relinquish control to Lucy; both of which have made me realise why I love her so much.

Last weekend, I went back up to Leeds for a bit of a night out with some of my buddies up there. Lucy promised to arrange "a surprise" for me and some of my friends during the day. I found this surprisingly difficult. Dress warm she says. "why what are doing? are we going caving? are we going hiking? where are we going? have we left enough time to get there? do you know the way?" was my response.

The day out was excellent, the theme was "laser combat". The best way to describe this is like paintballing, but without the pain and misery (and the cheaters who wipe off the paint and pretend they havent been shot).

The guy who ran the centre told us in no uncertain terms - "its not a good idea to do guys vs girls, as even when you win, you lose". We ignored him. How right he turned out to be.

The first game was capture the flag and was set in the woods. The guys were on the offensive first. We had a quick discussion and decided to take the girls from the side of their camp in a lightning raid, capturing the huts they were occupying one by one before raising each flag in turn. This was a heavily flawed tactic. The girls hid behind their wooden structures (and once they had figured out that shooting the structure caused your laser to rebound and kill yourself), they pinned three of us down (each behind a different tree) almost immediately.

Our fourth squad member "private Steve" was at this point attempting an ambitious three mile outflanking manouvre. We lost one man (technically we lost him 30 times as thats how many lives we had), and out of desparation tried to charge the girls. This failed and we ran out of time.

It was the girls turn to attack. We each took position in the huts and spied the girls though the forest trying to make a head on attack. "they're coming straight down the middle" was the cry. We attempted to gun them down and they took heavy fire. then suddenly two of the girls appeared from our flanks and began a surprise attack. Lucy got round the back and started raising one of the flags "bloody hell they're using tactics" was the shout, "cheating cowbags!". She managed to get the flag up (1 of 4) despite the fact we were riddling her with bullets (not sure this would have been an appropriate tactic in real life). Before we killed every one of her team.

This is where the argument began (and it went on). The girls didnt seem to appreciate that the rasing of one flag did not constitute victory when their entire team was ruthlessly despatched.

There were two more pretty cool games (involving attaching forts and disarming bombs) on the day and fun was had by all. Laser combat did teach me one thing - I'd be bloody rubbish at war. I would probably be dead 65 times over in the space of an afternoon. Better throw out those army application forms then!

The second time I had to relinquish control to Lucy came this weekend when we went down to London for (another) leaving do with all of my friends from back in the Hudd (thats Huddersfield to those not in the know). There were about 20 or so of us playing a little poker and having a few drinks before invading the bars of Clapham. We were just about to head on out when Lucy lands yet another surprise on me!

I was slightly suspicious of the size of the suitcase that Lucy dragged down with her from Manchester as we were only there for one or so days. It turns out that she was harbouring a secret.

The suitcase contained 10 t-shirts. Each one of these t-shirts had a rather embarassing picture of me in some kind of just a little unflattering pose. These ranged from the rather nice one of my head superimposed on a body builder's torso, to a peach of a photo from my childhood falling off the "climbing frame of death". Each of the guys was instructed to don one of the t-shirts (some worn with more pride than others) and we headed on out looking like a rather confused stag do.

It was a brilliant night, and I just wish I could post up some pictures. However I was having camera issues, and as my work has just blocked facebook I cant get access to anyone elses (I have a separate rant to make on that!). So these will follow shortly.

I actually felt a little tinge of regret for moving away on both of these occasions. Particularly when I said goodbye to my partner in crime Rob. I guess its the price to payand it will only get worse.

I've got exactly one week to go before I fly off on my adventure, then I will be away from Lucy for around 8 or 9 weeks (until she flies out for christmas) then again for a few months after that. I just have to say - thanks for making this last couple of weeks so perfect Lucy!

Nidderdale