Well December has been a great month thus far mainly because we can now confirm that when we arrive back we will be Uncle Muppet & Auntie Muppet to my brother and my sister in laws 1st baby (hence the picture of me in the t-shirt he bought me for travelling and this being the only time I'll show it in public) we're absolutely buzzin, chuffed to bits bro...although you'll always be the uglier true muppet!!

The start of December brought about the Christmas lights turn on in Brisbane before heading back to Coolangatta where we last visited with my dad. Walshy had been badgering that she wanted to pick the accommodation for the 3 nights as I'd took it upon myself to never let her book accom again after her last attempt. You see the last time she tried was when I was at my weakest point in bed in Vietnam with dengue fever. Our next stop was Bangkok just for 1 night but 'I wasn't to worry as she would take care of everything', she said. What could possibly go wrong!...........30 minutes after booking and falling asleep she had turned the light back on to say 'gizzy, I did book the right date didn't I?', 'I've no idea Stace, you booked it', came my groggy response. When her next words were 'aahhh sh*t', I knew something was amiss, 'I wasn't meant to book for 14th November was I?'.......No Stace......We'll be in Australia!!!'

Anyhow for Coolangatta, I'd wanted to book where my dad had stayed but seeing as though he'd mentioned he'd seen some sort of big bug (cheers pops), Stacey was having none of it, she'd picked a lodge in a tourist park. After getting our keys to the room, sorry jail cell, with 2 single beds and a nest of ants, she had to agree that it was better that I did the accommodation booking!!

To her benefit the room did at least have a small tv meaning an alarm clock was set for 3am to watch the World Cup draw. With me getting closer and closer to the edge of my bed (still with my jumper on in the freezing room as the only way to keep the ants at bay was to leave the air con on at below baltic), I waited eagerly to see who we would be grouped with. After pessimism had well and truly set in as I'd only heard that our 1st game would be played in the Amazonian rainforest of Manaus, my dreams were shattered, there's no way England will get through that group or that we will get to go to games in the north of Brazil...don't get me wrong I love new experiences but getting dengue fever was rainforest enough for me! I went back to sleep pretty peed off.

The next morning we were heading out to Surfers Paradise (Gold Coast) where we'd booked for 2 weeks and it got off to the best start imaginable. After checking the trusty bbc football website I was to learn that England would play the last 2 group games in São Paulo and Belo Horizonte...cue massive optimism and jumping round the room as both are easily reachable from Rio...'thought you said we won't get through the group stage' Stace said...'don't be daft, we'll batter them all' came my joyous and over patriotic response!

So Surfers is where we are...the place is basically a mixture of what Blackpool wishes it could be and a Benidorm on steroids. It brings with it sun, sea, sand, surfin, sex and strip clubs! After we had seen off the Aussies of the Munro's in a mini golf competition (Stacey really is a dab hand with a putter - and by the way bring your next challenge on Munro's...just don't mention the ashes), anyhow where was I, oh yeah, we would have our 2nd serious argument of the travels!!! The first lasted a couple of hours, but this 1 was different...we agreed to spend the day apart!! I did what any man would do and went shopping for approximately 5 minutes before succumbing to a beer. As for Stacey, well she said she didn't get up to much......but after we had walked past a Chippendale club the night before, I'm not totally convinced, must have been a coincidence eh!! Anyhow, we both agreed we were bored after a couple of hours really but that it could be good to have some more 'Chippendale time' as I'm calling it in the future. After all we don't want to kill each other before the wedding....surely that comes after it!

The Gold Coast is also the theme park capital of Oz and thus far we have hit Seaworld (where Stace fell in love with dolphins...and seals....and the polar bear cub....and unusually mantra rays!!) as well as wet n wild (where I got to see Jay n Simon filming a scene from The Inbetweeners, as they are filming the 2nd movie in Oz - watch out for a good looking, bronzed up, muscular physique walk past - I'm the slightly overweight silver fox just behind him!) and just today Movieworld (where I was proud of Walshy as she went on the super fast and scary Superman ride 3 times - I believe I've got Gemma Markey to thank for getting her on rides at The Pleasure Beach).

Inbetween all this we've carried on hitting the unbelievably impressive beaches but with our theme park tickets allowing us unlimited entry for all next week also, I doubt it'll be long before we're reunited with the dolphins!!!