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Lots of snowy days around the 10th December meant more pistes started to open up, and the lessons started in earnest. Luckily, most of the first few days’ lessons were just half days, which was a good way to break in the legs (and brain 🧠  tbh).  Pete lucked out Read more…

We started our visa process in June this year so thought we’d get our visa much earlier – wrong!  It was all very last minute and we basically made it to the Embassy with 30 minutes to spare to pick up our passports and visas before flying out early the Read more…

True to the forecast, there had been heavy rain overnight and the blue skies were no more.  We drove away from Theth with heavy hearts – although Pete was quite excited to have no slow drivers in front of him, just an empty twisty road of fun.  Our usual 3.5 Read more…

Rather rudely it decided to rain in Albania,  did it not know we were here on holiday trying to fit all the sights in? 😉 This is when its good to have fluid travel  plans aka no real plans. So we started planning to try and have the forecasted wet Read more…

Albania?  Why Albania? Is it safe there? What is there to see there?  These were the questions we were asked when we announced our holiday plans. In fairness, we didn’t know what there was to see apart from coastline like Croatia and lots and lots of mountains.  We had bought Read more…

Sorry Pete here, so expect more pics than actual words/descriptions in this post………. Janet’s obviously been busy, so the posts have slipped 🙄  sea kayaking, her travel agency is getting more and more bookings ( you could say its starting to takeoff 🫢 ), had a holiday to Cyprus to see Read more…

Tokyo was a cool 13 degrees and we had to get out jeans, jumpers and even rain coats the first evening we arrived. We loved the familiar feel, the clean and plentiful toilets and convenience stores and the politeness. It was nice to be back! We travelled about 1.5 hours Read more…

Having enjoyed the sea breeze, and the cooler morning air, we were in no rush to leave our homestay on Tanjung Simpang Menhayau Beach. We spent our last morning on our gorgeous shaded balcony, listening to the sea lapping against the sand, and then headed South towards Kota Kinabalu (otherwise Read more…

So it was back along our favourite road 🙄👀🤦🏻‍♂️once again,  just for good measure we stopped at the ATM, once bitten twice shy…….   topped up with fuel we arrived back at Sepilok mid afternoon and booked onto the night walk at the rainforest experience nearby. Chilled by the pool with Read more…

We drove another 30 mins East to Kinabangtan River for some wildlife river trips. Being spanners 🤦🏻‍♂️🙈  we didn’t have enough  cash with us for the trips….   Borneo takes cards nearly everywhere  (whereas cards were hardly ever accepted in the Philippines ) so we’d got complacent….   We had a nap then Read more…

So we left Sepilok and headed for the port of Sandakan, getting there around 4pm the roads were carnage, with lots of one ways and drivers obviously keen to get to where they were going for their end of Ramadan feed !!! After a few attempts, we found the hotel Read more…

Sepilok has become famous for its orangutan sanctuary which opened in the 1960s.  They take orangutans in who have had their future threatened through loss of habitat or orphans who had been kept as pets.  The sanctuary have a nursery area where new comers are encouraged to develop their skills Read more…

We knew our time in Sabah would be during Ramadan but not sure how much that would affect us.  Our first evening we landed at Kota Kinabalu airport and collected our hire car.  Back to driving on the left and upon our first fuelling stop discovered how cheap petrol is Read more…

Having received an email to inform us that our ferry to Manila would leave 6 hours late but still take the 18 hours, we knew we had to make a plan B to still get our flight to Kota Kinabalu at 16.15 the next day.  We sat in a little Read more…

Pete survived the 4.5-hour crossing to get here and we decided to book a hotel near the port, not in the main hassle and bustle.  It was lovely walking past the tricycle terminal refusing the set and inflated fare to town as we could see our hotel as we docked.  Read more…

We took probably the most scenic flight ever from Bohol to El Nido with Air Swift.  We flew over tropical islands galore with beautiful white sand beaches and coral reaching into the glistening aqua seas.   Air Swift own the airport at El Nido and all the surrounding estate, including Lio Read more…

At Momo Beach, we were unloaded from the ferry and asked to line up our hand luggage and then main luggage for the police to pass over their sniffer dog. He seemed much more interested in his ball but did eventually take a good sniff and then we were then allowed Read more…

To acclimatise we decided to spend a couple of days fairly close to the airport on Mactan Cebu Island, in a place known for independent travellers, called Maribago.  It was a busy place with locals mixed in with Fillipino tourists, many Koreans and an odd European.  We stayed a hotel Read more…

Just a quick update  !! The last post might have sounded a bit down on the Philippines???  Tired, heat shock etc. We’ve now got back into a more “Asia” backpacker mindset but, honestly, there hasn’t been much need to, people wise. Traffic wise definitely need to be in Asia mode 🙈🙈🙈 Read more…

Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone We hadn’t even left Japan and we were starting to lament about how lovely the Japanese people were. This was prompted from a 2 hour wait in a bag drop queue for a flight to Manila surrounded by Filipinos. Unlike Read more…

And as the kids say these days “and just like that”, or “how did that happen?” the instructing season was over for us both 😭 The last couple of weeks seemed to be on fast forward ! Maybe it was because in early February there had been 2 sets of Read more…

Last week, we had two consecutive days off, which coincided with the Snow Festival at Asahikawa (the nearest city to us only 1 hour 15 mins away by train).  We planned to head off in the morning, but fresh snowfall the night before led us to change our plan and Read more…

So in the small world that is ski instructing, 2 Japanese colleagues from last season at Club Med are in furano teaching for a different ski school !! We bumped into them on our 2nd day ! Not knowing they were in Furano…. Anyway, we’ve been threatening to meet up Read more…