Busaba Eathai

So after a random trip to Bicester Village I discovered the wonderful world of Busaba Eathai, a restaurant that, to quote the menu 'combines Eat and Thai...'. A yummy Thai restaurant (I've Thai Green Curry cravings all day since) from the makers of Wagamama's, although I'll put it out there as being better than Wagamama if possible.

So this also gave me my first opportunity to sample to local Thai brew, Singha.

Nice light beer that goes now a storm with a good curry... now I'm just going to see if my taste buds can handle the real McCoy in a couple of months, I think that more than one beer may be needed to get me through it.

Write a Postcard

I've been reading the Lonely Planet's '10 Best Things to do in 2011' amongst the many other list of different things that they have to do on their site.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/asia/travel-tips-and-articles/76334

I particularly liked number 10...

10. Write a postcard

E-books, mobile phone apps, augmented reality – we live and travel in a world of instant information and sore thumbs. This year is a good time to pause and revisit that ol’ travel chestnut: the postcard. What started a century ago as a craze of keepsakes (recipients cherished them as much as travellers sending them cherished their actual experiences) has lost out to wi-fi , text messaging and Flickr images. A shame. Sending a postcard leads to all sorts of local life commonly missed – stationery shops, post offices, funny stamps – as well as the art of actually writing with a pen.

So I will endeavour to do this for as many people that want them... message me addresses please x

Father Christmas: The Travel Guru

So I can now say I am ready to go. Father Christmas has excelled himself and I received a nice bag of treats yesterday fully equipping me for my trip...

He's covered everything from my much anticipated camera to the vitals (Imodium and re-hydration sachets obviously!)

There are lots of handy hints in there too; like taking a universal plug as hostels often don't have them which makes a quick body wash/clothes washing a little bit tricky; a key ring that has the measurement of salt and sugar that you need to dilute in water to play the same function as re-hydration sachets if we can't find any and obviously as any D of E keeno will know, duct tape, the answer to every problem.

A Taste From Brazil

This week I attended my first 'Zumbathon' having been to quite a few Zuba classes in recent weeks. Zumba is a new style of Brazilian themed fitness class that seems to be sweeping the nation at the moment. It crosses aerobics with salsa and Latin to produce a sweat filled and highly amusing evening.

The classes usually last for an hour every week, and are hard work enough! The Zumbathon, as the name suggests, was a three hour challenge of endurance. Testing co-ordination, stamina and our taste buds as the evening was finished with my first taster of the traditional Brazilian cocktail, the Caipirinha.

The Caipirinha is just a simple mix of rum, lime and sugar, probably most easily likened to a mojito (without the mint!) that definitely packs a punch.

Latin beats, bongos and a Caipirinha is what the carnival is all about and the Zumbathon went to great lengths to encapsulate a little snippet of Rio, bring on the real thing!

Gap Yah

All about the 'banter'...






I've been meaning to pop this little gem up here for ages, and after a lovely but sad time saying goodbye to people in London this weekend I thought I should share some of the content of the weekend (you can imagine the impressions over Nando's as Sarah and I attempted to describe these hillar video's to Soph!)

There are a few things I will be sad to miss

So with only a month to go I am getting ridiculously excited and I'm also starting to realise that there are quite a few events that I will be missing next year (worth it of course!).

Most devastatingly I'm going to have to miss my favourite mans first tour in May :(



and obviously the royal wedding, which will be a shame especially with the lovely long weekend you lot will all get. I think that we should be in Aus for this anyway so I'm hoping we will be able to find a bevvy and an English crowd to get all patriotic with.

My sister has come to the conclusion that as I am missing every single person in my families birthday that I should be leaving secretly planned gifts with various members of the family to make sure that they still get their presents on the right day. As much as this is a nice idea (kind of) she seems to have forgotten that its also Christmas in 25 days and I struggle enough to think of one present each for this crowd let alone 2 so she may be a little disappointed!

The Travel Doctor, My Best Friend

Found another good website that might be good to check out...

http://www.traveldoctor.co.uk/

It has information on everything... every jab, illnesses malaria etc. There is advice for everything.

Hannah and I are currently trying to work out which malaria tablets that we should be taking as the resistance to chloroquine is aparently on the rise in some areas of South America. According to this site thats still the best drug to be taking for Mexico and Guatemala but any thoughts would be appreciated....

We know we definitely need to be on Doxycycline in south east asia though!

Does this always happen?

Mummy Crouch has promised a performance to beat this upon my return.

Fact of the Day

Drinking gin prevents malaria.

If Father Christmas is feeling generous.

After 3 years of uni, i think I have managed to get through easily that many cameras, if not more, after many snap happy, drunken nights out ending in the solemn disappointment of an empty, cameraless bag the morning after.

So having managed to break a couple and lose a couple, the time has come for another new camera. But this time I don't want a cheap fix, safe in the knowledge that it will be lost or broken soon anyway. I want something that will be able to handle my trip and document everything that we see.

I have been introduced to the Olypus Tough range, a seemingly indestructible range of cameras that have it covered.... waterproof, freezeproof, shockproof, Lauraproof.

http://shop.olympus.co.uk/e_commerce/digital-cameras/olympus/tough-3000-p-603-c-90.htm

I have been given a few recommendations for this one, but would be great to know what people think?

I think it will be finding its way onto my Christmas list before long.

The Scrapbook is finally born

So after a lot of talking, I've finally started making the scrapbook I'm taking with us of all our useful bits of info. So I'm sat here with a beer in one hand and pritt stick in the other. What better way to spend an evening after work...

So I introduce you to my home-made, Blue Peter style travelling bible....

I particularly liked the garish pink and white pokadot cover, I'll definitely not have any worries about losing this beast.

So anyway, I'm using this to keep track of everything that we're booking and to start recording all the amazing places to go and see that I'm reading about. I thought as we are going to SO many places it will be impossible to carry a trusty Lonely Planet for everywhere, and I'm not sure I trust myself with my BB in all these places so I'm thinking the Lonely Planet app may also have to be ditched in favor of good old pen and paper for a change.

From Visa forms to hostel bookings to safety tips to interesting article... you name it its going in.

I ended up spending several hours (when I should have been sleeping ready for another boring day of phone calls at work) ripping up my favourite copy of Lonely Planet just to populate my new book.

LOVE THIS... it basically tells me that we're going to all the best places. Just look at the front cover... snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, celebrate the carnival in Rio and cast away on a Thai island. I reckon covering 50% of the cover features in our trip isn't bad going!

I'm also going to be adding a few great articles that Hannah's sent me that may be worth a look at....

The Iguassu Falls

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/southamerica/brazil/7325718/Iguassu-falls-A-natural-wonder-of-spray-and-thunder.html

Because it appears that the Iguassu Falls are bigger and better than Niagra and Victoria, stretching longer than Niagra and being taller than Victoria.

Buenos Aires

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/southamerica/argentina/739026/Buenos-Aires-travel-guide.html

Which looks set to be one sexy city... we even get free tango lessons at our hostel!

Things are starting to get exciting now as all the boring hostel booking and visa researching is done and its just time to have a look at all the amazing things we will be getting up to!

This time in two months we'll hopefully be staring at an amazing Mayan temple or learning to scuba dive on the reef off the coast of Cancun.

The Human Pin Cushion.

So since the last installment Hannah and I have become human pin cushions since being informed that we need WAY more jabs than we were originally informed! (Hannah has very bravely taken on 3 jabs in 1 day today, I'm definitely very impressed, I wussed out and complained of feeling sick after just one last week!)

So now we have to have a grand total of... wait for it... 8 JABS before Christmas which means becoming bezzies with the nurse as we're in their every week, and parting with the best part of £250 which I for one had definitely not factored into the budgetting! But anyway, better to be safe than worrying!

So to add to the previous list is Hep B (x3) and Rabies (x3) which nicely bump up the cost and the pain ratio of these lovely little sessions.

Luckily we've managed to get LOTS of malaria tablets for free so thankfully we're covered for all of South East Asia which will save us lots of pennies, we just have to go on one beginning with c while we're in Mexico and thats our lot.

Phew my bodies going to be a machine once its pumped full of all this disease! YUM.

Get jabbed up.

The bible to getting jabbed up....


http://www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk/home.aspx

According to my nursey friend this website tells all that we need to know.

I had my first jab on monday and now I have a lovely circle plaster (my favourite kind) so I can take on pretty much anything (except Malaria and Yellow fever but that will come in time).

BRING IT ON GERMS

TOP TIP OF THE DAY

Malarome gives you WEIRD dreams that should not be spoken of, doxycyline probably does too, but at least their cheap dreams and you can get them in country when you run out. I think I might go for this one. 

Carnival Time, check.

The first accomodation booking was completed today! Which means that we will officially be hitting Rios famous carnival!

Seeing as Hannah and I are both a little bit dancing obsessed I CANNOT wait to get involved!! I read somewhere that the costumes are something like £500 a go, truely spectacular.

So we're off to spend a week at one hostel and then a couple of days at the next, should be an interesting experience, any hosteling tips would be well received... we're both complete novices at the moment.

Everyday I get told something new i HAVE to do in each country, so todays tip for the day is...

Eat a steak in Brazil.

To make up for the last blog, before I had decided to do a tip for the day...

Eat a guinea pig in Peru.

(I think I can see a theme developing here... Hannah may be a little left out as shes veggie... does Quorn guinea pig exist?)

xxx

It Begins.

So seeing as its now official and me and han are off round the world together for 6 months, I thought the time has come for me to start THE BLOG.

After a ridiculously stressful/exciting 2 hours spent in STA we parted with the cash and have booked the trip we've been going on and on and on and on and on about since a little chat on a turkish beach that turned into a big plan to take on a grand tour, tackling an amazing 4 continents!

sooo... here is somewhere where you guys can see our plans during the build up and then follow us around the world! I'll try and post as much as poss!!!

A little coffee at our fave coffee shop on Tottenham Court Road...

Latte with caramel shot for Laura
Latte with butterscotch shot for Hannah
and big decisions for both + a MASSIVE list of questions to ask our experts.

4 hours later and we finally have an itinary

Coffee definitely was not gonna cut it for celebratory drinks so we hit the hard stuff... 1 isnt too early right?

So anyway... we have finally got our schedule sorted and this is how it goes....

Mexico 5th - 25th Jan

Peru 25th Jan - 10th Feb

Brazil 10th Feb - 14th March

Auz 14th March - 11th April

Singapore 11th April....

Thailand  

Laos

Vietnam

Cambodia ... 7th June

Dehli 7th - 21st June

The trip of a life time.... sooooo cant wait!!!