It's been a fun 9 months but it's time to go. We've sold Max, we've spent our kids inheritance on flights to get home and we're off to Singapore on Thursday. We'll travel on land from there through Malaysia to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and probably Laos. Then back to Thailand for our flight on January 24th to Hong Kong. We'll be in Hong Kong for the first 2 days of the Chinese New Years - this should be quite the sight, then on to Tokyo on January 27th for about 3 weeks with our final leg getting us back to your loving arms on February 20th.

For both of us, the resounding highlight of Australia has been the fantastic wildlife. We had no idea we would see so many different animals, and certainly not in such abundance (that goes double for the 11 snakes that we came across in our travels). For 2 inlanders, being this close to such beautiful coastline for such an extended period has been phenomenal. As an added bonus, we managed to meet up with 2 Swiss friends and 1 friend from Calgary here in Sydney and we had a great time chatting and sharing stories with them. It really made us miss being around all of our friends as we had forgotten what fun sitting around a dinner table with a glass of wine and some good laughs can be.

We're a little citied out which doesn't bode all that well considering we're about to head toward one of the most congested parts of the world with small cities easily being a couple million people, but we hope to offset that as well with some quiet time at beaches and perhaps even a little meditation class. We did, however, make the utmost of our weeks long Sydney Transit pass and spent the better part of today cruising up and down the inlet checking out how the rich and...well, rich live on the waterfront. Captain Cook was a cracker for finding this inlet. I don't think I've ever been to a city with such a huge but sheltered harbour.

Hopefully by the time I get home I've stopped, annoyingly, talking like an Aussie, but I fear the alternative might be some horrible Asian Pidgen English which I'm sure you'll all appreciate. Barbara and I are going to try and stop calling each other mate all the time too, but I must say, she's a hell of a mate and we continue to have fun.

Watch out for presale tickets or our Diggeri-Doo concert in the Saddledome in the spring of 09 - it's gonna be AWESOME!

We also need to thank our one and only sponsor: Air New Zealand generously and unknowingly gave us 2 wine glasses in which we enjoyed countless bottles of wine. You know, it's just not the same sipping wine from a plastic cup or a coffee mug so we sincerely thank them for their support.

Final scoreboard status for the English speaking leg:
Yatzee: Barbara 80, Jason 56 (I dare say I was gaining fast and that the scores don't truly reflect how "on the ropes" Barbara was)

Punchbuggies: Barbara 23, Jason 40 1/4 (To my amazement, Barbara has also learnt the sound of the little bugs motor and was beating me black and blue here in Sydney - I think the quarter point may be the deciding factor)

PS: We will try and keep our travel plans updated - check them out by clicking on the map in the bottom right on the home page.