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!