Wales

As most of you will know by now, we are home. Like a small wrinkly baby.....slightly premature! but with some amazing memories and some tall tales of our 'bogus journey'. Money was the reason for our early homecoming or lack there of, but if we could rewind and start again we'd do it the same, we underestimated the cost of things in Oz and NZ slightly but we dont think getting back a fortnight early is a failure and its been great seeing everyone again. Reality has well and truely set in this week when we started work again, an essential neccessity to fund whatever the future brings, house, babies (not for a while) more travelling....... who knows, not us, but at least we can face it knowing that we've been lucky enough to have the chance to see and experience things most people dont get to do in a lifetime.

Fijian beach.

Anyway Fiji. Short and sweet (enough of the air stewardess on the flight over) especially that now I am bethrothed to Tania!. We only had 3 days there before heading home, we stayed on the main island in a place called Tubakula, a beachfront bungalow which was fully kitted out. The first day was beatiful about 30c glorious sunshine, as you may imagine we spent most of that day on the beach trying to get some sort of colour on us before getting home and being confronted with a nation of halfcasts (possibly not PC?!) after the summer Britains had. Our second day we were awoken at 5:30am buy what we hoped was a local variation on common whistling, unfortunately for us it was no such thing. It turned out to be one of the worst storms either of us had ever seen, just what we didnt want on one of our last few days away but heh, we've had our fair share of good weather (I almost mean that!). The storm pretty much lasted all day so not much to report there, day three we spent lazing about, last minute shopping and killing time before our flight (11:50pm Fiji time 10/08/06 ) the flight into L.A went smoothly, we crossed the 'international date line so actually arrived in L.A at 3:40pm on 10th August which is as close as we've got to time travel yet. Our time in America was short, hectic and annoying, the Yanks (trying my best not to pigeon hole here) we're as expected, fat, loud and irritating, maybe we got a slightly distorted view of the country in our short time there as they were on 'high alert' after the Heathrow shinannigans and we're running around like headless chickens with torrets or maybe there always like that, we'll have to return to find out. We arrived back in London 3 hours late but safely, roughly 6 months after starting our journey. We've come back with some things we didnt have before: brown skin, blonde hair, one engagement ring and an extra 2 stone of combined body mass, but mostly we've come back after having (as hoped) the best six months of our lives. Travelling is the best thing we could have done, we both hope we get chances to do more in the future, got to pay for this one forst though.

Same beach next day.

Us before we leave, Tan looking particularly unpleased.

To conclude we've decided to list some of our favorites and worsts (is that a word??) in a quick questionaire below, adios amigo's!

Favorite country: New Zealand.
Worst country: Singapore.
Favorite city: Tan-Sydney, Ant-Bangkok. (town-Queenstown)
Worst city: Bombay AKA 'Hell on earth'
Best beach: Tan-Whithaven beach Oz, Ant-Paloelem India.
Best excursion: Tan-Jet boat to Whitsundays, Ant-Treking in Chaing Mai Thailand.
Worst excursion: Sentosa island Singapore.
Best activity: Skydive (no competition)
Worst activity: Trampolining (never attempt to do whilst drunk and when its dark).
Best memory: Getting engaged (stopping putting your fingers down your throats you lot!!)
Worst memory: Getting to Bombay seeing the sights near our hotel (took about 15 seconds) and sitting in our room thinking what the bleeding hell are we doing!.

Thank you and good night, Ant and Tan xx xx

In just over 24 hours we'll be landing in Mumbai full of excitement nerves and free airplane booze. From all accounts the first impression is going to be one of sheer horror, can't be any worse than coming face to face with some Mynydd Bach girls in a darkend alley! but we're going in openminded and plan to take things as they come (unless its a lepper asking for a snog!) but only time will tell.

We'll update this blog as soon as we arrive, but thats after we sort out tickets for the England V Mumbai 11 warmup game for the upcoming tests (priorities first)

Speak to you all soon, Anthony and Tania.

The whole process has taken 4 years of thought, 2 years of saving, 6 months of planning and now just 4 weeks of waiting before it's finally here! everythings appears to be in place, jabs-check, passports-check, tickets-check! nerve levels and excitment levels both running at maximum. Just hope I can get at least one decent nights kip in before we set off!

First stop Mumbai! Roll on February 17th, will keep you all posted.

Toodlepip.