Dear All, Happy New Year. Currently in Sydney recovering from the festivities. Since we wrote last, much has happened. From Malaysia we went to Singapore, only for 3 days as it is the traditional stop before Austraila, But it was nice and we did quite a bit. We took an evening out away from the hum drum of cheap travelling existence to have a drink with the nuveau riche at Raffles, it was much more 'me' than the seedy hostel we were staying in in Little India. But we did have to go there at Happy hour. Ate loads of free monkey nuts and drunk the beer, v.posh. From there we flew to Australia and stayed for a week at Manly Beach, as the weather was so crap in Thailand this was our beach chill-out holiday. Met up with some friends from china, and spent a few days being looked after by Paul and Marianne, soon to be proper aussies. We were taken to Summer Bay (aka Palm Beach - where they film Home and Away) we saw no starlets there but a nice beach and a picnic. For Christmas we had to do the BBQ thing and queued for a space before cooking our chunks of steak, no shrimps today. After another body boarding sesion we went back to Paul and Mariannes for a proper Christmas Dinner - Roast Chicken and all the trimmings. We moved into Sydney proper on the 28th to join a hostel filled with 500 young'uns, all drinking, frolicking and generally bringing down the tone of the neighbourhood. As is right, we went to Bondi beach, i did some surfing (in the loosest sense of the word) while Rachel sunned herself. Surprisingly, I was not as good as i remember from my days last year in Cornwall, but have since been consoled that its a tricky beach for a beginner so will try again in a few days time somewhere else. Last night was the 'big one' and we assembled with some friends and a couple of thousand strangers on Cremorne Point to watch the NYE fireworks and see the pretty boats in the harbour. The pyrotechnics were pretty good and we were able to find a good spot to drink our beer and chill out till midnight. Hope you all have a good new year, Andy and Rachel