My top 10 travel highlights of 2014

Since leaving the UK in November 2013, Luke and I have had so many adventures and seen more amazing places than I can often remember. The year of 2014 has seen me travel further than I've ever been before and tick off so many things on the ever-expanding bucket list.

Here are some of the best places we've been to during this wonderful year:

1. NYE in Kerala.

From seeing in the new year at a club in Varkala to bobbing along the backwaters, this amazing region of south-west India provided the perfect place to start the year.

2. The paradise of Palolem.

Moments of our India trip were trying (to say the least!) but thankfully we were able to re-group and relax at the totally chilled Palolem beach. Kayaking with dolphins, drinking red wine and eating Marmite were some of the highlights. Oh, and those spectacular sunsets.

3. Oh, Sri Lanka, how I love thee!

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to explain how good it felt to be in Sri Lanka after ten weeks of Indian craziness. It was clean, the people were friendly and we ate our weight in their speciality of 'five veg curries and rice'. Yum!

4. A magical wedding on Railay Beach, Thailand.
What can I say? A beautiful couple (Katie and Grant) got married surrounded by all of their amazing family and friends, in a setting so stunning it didn't look real. It still makes me smile every time I think about it. What a day!

5. Learning to scuba dive in Koh Tao, Thailand.

After fulfilling a joint ambition to become certified divers, Luke and I loved it so much we did our advanced certificate. It was a week full of conquering fears, post-dive beers and so many laughs!

6. Getting arty in George Town, Malaysia.

Of everywhere we've been in the past year, George Town definitely gets the most cool points. We were completely bowled over by the amount of culture crammed into this little town on the island of Penang.

 

 7. The idyllic Perhentian Islands, Malaysia.

The palm tree fringed beaches, amazing sealife, $2 curries and seriously chilled vibe, definitely made Pulau Cecil in the Perhentian Islands the the most relaxing destination of 2014.

8. Getting acquainted with the Australian wildlife.

One of the best things about making myself an honorary Aussie has got to be getting up close with animals I'd only ever seen on television. Kangaroos, koalas, possums and wild parakeets, 2014 has seen us meet them all.

9. Learning to surf in Mollymook.

Although my skills need honing, thanks to my time in the quaint town of Mollymook on the NSW coast, I can now stand and even slightly turn while riding the waves. Surfing is seriously good fun but seriously hard work.

 

10. Becoming a Sydneysider.

Even the most enthusiastic of traveller needs somewhere to settle own and call home. Why not make it Sydney, arguably the best city in the world? (Just don't say that to a Melbournite.) From seeing the cool surfers on Bondi beach to taking a ferry past the iconic Opera House, so far it's been everything I dreamed of and more.

Happy New Year everyone - who knows what incredible travel moments 2015 will bring!

WWOOFing in the beautiful Barossa

After an epic five months travelling across India and SE Asia, Luke and I arrived to our new lives in Sydney and fell in love with the city almost instantly.

Within a few weeks we'd rented a room in Maroubra and found work - Luke at the iconic Hurricane’s on Bondi Beach and me as a freelance writer at a weekly real-life magazine. Even though it was winter, we still spent time on the beach and managed to do a couple of surf lessons. After three months it felt like home.

And then came the bad news.

Because we’re in Australia on a subclass 417 visa (better known as a working holiday visa), we only had a year in Oz. However, the visa can be extended to two years if you’re willing to do 88 days rural work. We always knew it would be a possibility that we’d have to do rural work, but we thought we had at least until January 2015 to decide. That is until we realised that, as Luke turns 31 in December, we had to get the work completed and signed off before he became officially too old to apply.

So there it was, within two weeks we’d left our jobs, packed up our things are were on a plane to start our next adventure - as pruners in the Barossa wine region in South Australia.

Because many immigrants decide to do rural work in Oz, it’s very hard to find paid jobs, so we had to opt for WWOOFing (willing workers on organic farms) which means you work between four to six hours a day, five days a week and in return you get a bed and board. This goes against everything I believe in - I think you should get cold hard cash in return for work - but needing our visa signed off ASAP, we were left with little choice. You could say I was more of an unwilling worker on organic farm, or UWWOOFer.

The Barossa is about an hour’s drive from Adelaide and is one of the most prestigious wine regions in Australia. It’s a beautiful area of rolling hills, seemingly endless fields of vines and wild kangaroos. It’s home to well-known wineries such at Penfolds and Jacob’s Creek and also many boutique operations that produce bottles of wine costing thousands of dollars. I thought if we were going to have to do this damn rural work then we might as well do it somewhere pretty…with lots of wine!

The beautiful Barossa region in South Australia.

We scored work via Gumtree at a small farm of 27 acres owned by a farmer and his young family.  On arrival, I was shocked to find that our new house and workmate, Ed, was actually from the Lincolnshire village of Scopwick - just a few miles up the road from where Luke and I grew up. The world really is a small place. The three of us would be sharing a small one-bedroom cottage across the way from the farmhouse. As Ed was on his own, he slept in the living room but had to come through our bedroom to get the bathroom. In return we had to walk through his sleeping area to get to the kitchen. It was a cosy setup for us Yellowbellies.

Our job was to prune the vines ready for the summer so they could bear fruit. This involved hours and hours of snipping with secateurs along rows of hundreds of vines. I found the pruning really monotonous, it reminded me of a summer I spent working in a carrot factory when I was 16. However, it was made a bit more bearable by the amazing views we had across the Barossa. If I ever felt depressed (which was quite often), I would take a look around and appreciate my surroundings.

Luke pruning the vines.

Not a bad view out of the "office" window.

When we’d finished pruning, we did some odd jobs around the farm which meant we got to drive the Mule, which was fun. I also did some planting of young vines while poor Luke spent hours and hours strimming (hilariously called ‘whipper-snipping’ by the Aussies).

Luke in the Mule.

Me planting some young vines. Tough work in the heat of the day.

One thing that made the boring, unpaid days bearable was the animals. Our host family had a friendly Ridgeback called Jake who used to trot out to the fields with us every morning and loved a good scratch. One day we met a bearded dragon who was perched on the vine looking for some heat and we enjoyed feeding the chickens and collecting their eggs. We also found several venomous spiders in and around the cottage which was less comforting.

Jake and Luke on a very cold morning in the Barossa.

Spot the dragon.

On our days off we made the most of being in the Barossa and went wine tasting. Most wineries offer tastings for free or a small fee of $5. You basically work through a list of around ten to twelve wines and have a few sips of each. The sommeliers will tell you about each wine and, if you like it, you can buy a bottle or two - although we never felt obliged to buy. It’s a really fun way to learn a bit more about how wine’s made - and get a bit tipsy!

Ed and Luke sampling the goods at Penfolds.

We also enjoyed a hike or two at nearby Kaiser Stuhl National Park and came across these guys…

Kangaroo with a Joey in her pouch.

This one was a big chappy.

I will never bore of seeing kangaroos hopping about in the wild!

It wasn’t all kittens and roses though. Having always lived in a city, I found it hard to live rurally and got incredibly bored. We didn’t have a TV or the internet, so would spend our evenings watching box sets on the laptop and managed to get through all of Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. It was winter so it still cold and dark at night and we didn’t have heating, so we’d put several layers on and just lay in bed trying not to freeze. Some nights I'd be in bed by 7pm!

I also found it difficult that we weren’t being paid. To me, hard work deserves money, but instead we were living in a cold cottage, eating nice but essentially cheap meals and using up our hard-earned savings on petrol and other essentials, while working for someone else - for free! The problem is, rural areas of Australia are used to having immigrants who have no choice but to work for free or cheap, I think they take it for granted. 

I don’t think we were taken advantage of (our host family were really nice people, although there wasn’t as much free wine as you’d imagine!) but I heard some horror stories from other WWOOFers and workers in the Barossa who’d been taken in by scams, leaving them hundreds of dollars out of pocket. Common scams include farms offering $23 per bucket of oranges they pick, but the problem is that it takes about four hours to fill a bucket! Local hostels also get involved and charge people extortionate rates to stay there, saying they'll find people work, but then not giving them consistent hours. Stories like this made me think we were probably better off WWOOFing.

Overall I didn’t love our work in the Barossa, but it's undeniably beautiful which helped you get through the long and boring days. After five weeks we'd done all of the pruning and odd jobs around the small farm, so our hosts asked us to move on and we were happy to try somewhere new.

So we packed our bags (yet again) and headed to Kangaroo Island to see what it could offer a pair of poor British UWWOOFers...

Camping along The Great Ocean Road with Elvis - for free!

Driving The Great Ocean Road is on many a bucket list and not long after arriving in Oz, we just knew we had to do it.

But, after not working for five months, we also knew we needed to do it on the cheap.

When we found ourselves needing to get from Adelaide to Sydney to find work, we decided that, instead of flying, we'd drive the 1,760 kilometres, taking in the famous road on the way.

To save money, we registered with  www.transfercar.com.au which advertises camper vans that need relocating. It means you get a van for free - all you need to do in pay for petrol and relocate it from one city to another. Adelaide's a good place to get a relocation van as it's the end of the road for many travellers who drive The Great Ocean Road (GOR).

Our journey began when we picked up our 1998 Mitsubishi Star named Elvis. It was a bit stinky but overall in good nick. It had two seats in the front, a little kitchenette in the back and a mattress in-between. It was very cosy (read small) but would do the trick.

Elvis, our 1998 Mitsubishi Star.

The kitchen...

..me demonstrating how you can be in bed and have breakfast at the same time.

Luke modelling the kitchen stove and equipment.

We were given a five-day time limit by Elvis' owners, Awesome Campers, to take the van back to Sydney. With 20 hours of driving it was going to be pretty tight.

For anyone interested in taking the same trip, our five-day itinerary from Adelaide to Sydney looked a little something like this:

Day 1 - Adelaide to Portland, 548km, 7 hours
Day 2 - Portland to Princetown, 181km, 2 hours 30 mins
Day 3 - Princetown to Torquay, 162km, 2 hours 30 mins
Day 4 - Torquay to Jugiong, 621km, 7 hours
Day 5 - Jugiong to Sydney, 332km, 3.5 hours

The first day involved an epic seven-hour drive from Adelaide to Portland which was a boring journey with long straight roads and little to see. But we did have a nice pit stop at the beautiful Blue Lake at Mount Gambier before bedding down in Portland.

The Blue Lake at Mount Gambier.

Up early on the second day, we were ready to start the exciting part of the trip. After a quick drive from our campsite we reached Port Fairy which is a beautiful little town with a port (hence the name) and a really lovely stretch of beach which was deserted the day we went.

Luke in pretty Port Fairy.

Me walking along Port Fairy beach.

Like many small Aussie towns, there isn't much to do in Port Fairy but we enjoyed a walk along the beach and went into the small town for a cup of tea. Overall it was very quaint and a really lovely start to our second day.

Our serenity was disturbed, however, when we realised Luke had left the van lights on and the battery had gone flat. The local mechanic was just not interested in helping us, but luckily we found a very nice British ex-pat from Wigan who gave us a jump start. Bloody nice people those Brits!

Next we took a lunch break at Tower Hill Reserve which turned out to offer great views. We took a steep 30-minute climb up Peak Climb and were rewarded with amazing an 360-degree across farmland and the sea. Driving out we also had the hilarity of bumping into a wild emu. These funny native Aussie creatures really do look like something from prehistoric times.

Pretty view at the top of Peak Climb at Tower  Hill Reserve.

A wild emu trots on by Elvis.

Next up was the iconic imagery from the GOR - the rock stacks.

Pulling up to the Bay of Islands I didn't really know what to expect but was astounded by the beauty of the dramatic coast line. This stretch of sea is well known for it's ferociousness (many ships have fallen victim to these shores) and the stormy skies of autumnal late April.

The dramatic cliffs at Bay of Islands.

Our second stop was London Bridge. Which, when you see it, the reason for its name becomes obvious. As well as being impressive to look at, I also loved the story about how it became a single arch bridge. London Bridge used to join the mainland until one day in January 1990, the bridge collapsed leaving two unsuspecting tourists stuck on the world's newest island. After a few hours they were eventually rescued by helicopter!

Me at London Bridge.

By this time it was getting late in the day so we raced along the winding roads to get to the main event: The 12 Apostles. This is probably the most iconic stretch of the GOR and when you spy these almighty formations it's easy to see why. Having been created by retreating headland, these rocky stacks stand proudly out of sea. Apparently there may never have been 12 stacks, but today there are even less then before - maybe seven - they're still impressive though.

We arrived at sunset which was a bit of a fluke on our part but I would highly recommend seeing this sight as the sun goes down. It's really very magical and Luke managed to snap some lovely photos.

The 12 Apostles at sunset. Hashtag: no filter.

Selfie at The 12 Apostles.

After sunset we spent a night at the fab and cheap Princetown Recreation Reserve ($15 a night) where we camped next to a field of kangaroos who we saw have a bit of a boxing match. The more time I spend in Oz, the more I love kangaroos!

It was an early start the next day to take a walk down Gibson's Steps. These were hacked by hand into the cliff in the 19th century and lead down to Gibson Beach. It was a gusty cold morning and certainly woke us up after a stuffy night in the camper van.

A morning stroll in Gibson's Beach will wake you up.

Then it was back on the road through the Otway National Park which is a rugged and green rainforesty area - very different to the crisp coastline we'd previously driven along.

Back on the sea road, we stopped for lunch at Apollo Bay, a lovely stretch of beach surrounded by rolling hills. It was a bit too cold to take a dip (Australia was unseasonably cold for April) so we took a walk along the sand and observed the very naughty seagulls stealing food from people and harassing each other. They are the same the world over.

Apollo Bay reminded me a bit of beaches in Lincolnshire at it had small sand dunes covered in shrubbery which led down to the beach. Although the water was a lovely blue rather than the poo brown of Skegness!

Seagulls attacking each other at Apollo Bay.

Day 3 (going from The 12 Apostles to Torquay) proved to have the most dramatic views from the camper van. The winding roads veer dangerously close to the sea. Elvis proved to be a bit clunky but in an open-top car I can imagine it would be a lot of fun. I only wish it had been a bit hotter so we could have made the most of the amazing beaches and had a swim.

Our last stop along the GOR was Bell's Beach which is where many huge surfing competitions, including Rip Curl Pro, are held. Surfing folklore also says it's where Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayzee had their final showdown in the 1991 film Point Break.

We arrived at around 5pm and it was very amusing to see lots of men screech up in their station wagons, pull their surf boards off the top, squeeze on their wet suits and sprint down the steps to the waves below. After-work surfing - the Aussies really do live the life!

Surfers wait like seals at Bell's Beach.

After watching the surfers until sundown, that was it, The Great Ocean Road was complete - but we were still 966km from Sydney. So we hunkered down at a campsite in nearby Torquay in anticipation for an epic couple of days of driving.

I won't go into heaps of detail about our drive from Torquay to Sydney - it was long, boring and just one straight road. We did it over two days so we stopped off in the small town of Jugiong for a night. We'd read there was free camping and the pub served pizza - and were sold!

Arriving in Jugiong we saw the field of free camping was overrun by horses and after speaking to the locals discovered there was a horse show on that weekend. This meant we shared the field with many horses who 'neighed' their way through the night and left a fragrant smell in the area. We did find pizza in the village pub, the old Sir George, and spent the evening talking to the friendly locals which was fab. I would highly recommend a stop off in Jugiong - it felt like a proper small Aussie town.

The next day it was just a few hours' drive to our new home of Sydney.

Driving The Great Ocean Road on the cheap certainly wasn't easy. It's a tourist trap designed to make you part with your cash but getting Elvis for free made it much easier.

I'm so pleased we decided to drive from Adelaide to Sydney instead of fly. It felt like one last travelling 'hurrah' before we settled down. Back in the real world.

USEFUL INFORMATION ABOUT TRAVELLING THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD:

Accommodation/camp sites: We had hoped to free camp along The Great Ocean Road but this proved to be more difficult than we first thought. There were signs in every car park and large areas of land to say if you were caught camping there you'd be fined $250, so we wimped out and paid for camping, apart from in Jugiong. Here's where we stayed and what we thought:

Portland - Henty Bay Beach Front Park, $25 a night, Tel. 0355233716, info@hentybay.com.au - lovely location on the beach with generous unpaired and powered pitches. Would recommend.

Princetown - Princetown Recreation Reserve, $15 a night, Princetown Recreation Reserve, 99 Old Coach Road, Tel. 0429985176, princetownrecreationreserve@gmaiprincetownl.com - really good value and super close to The 12 Apostles. Would highly recommend.

Torquay - Jan Juc Cravan Park, $30 a night, Tel. 0352612932, info@janjucpark.com.au - this was probably the worst value. The pitches were really far from the toilets and it was in a strange location.

Jugiong - Just head to the Sir George pub and the free camp site is just up the road. There are toilets but no showers. But for free it's the best value we got all week!

Eating and drinking: To save money we mainly cooked using the camping stove, apart from the lovely pizza at the Old Sir George in Jugiong www.sirgeorge.com.au, Tel. 0269454207

Petrol costs: In total from Adelaide to Sydney, going via The Great Ocean Road, we spent $305 in fuel. This is only marginally more than two one-way flights with excess luggage (which we had) so it's a super-cheap way of travelling if you can get the camper van for free.

The Perhentian Islands: Paradise on earth? Quite possibly...

Me and Luke. We've officially turned into fish.

If reading this blog sometimes feels like I'm on a quest to find the most beautiful place on earth, then call off the search: I've found it.

When we arrived on the island of Pulau Kecil after a stomach-churning boat trip from the Malaysian mainland, we were greeted by the palm tree-fringed Coral Bay surrounded by turquoise water.

Beautiful Coral Bay at Pulau Kecil, Perhentian Islands, Malaysia.

There are no cars on Kecil, so we trudged with our backpacks to the other side of the island to Long Beach, a vast stretch of white sand with a slightly wilder feel to it. The beautiful beaches are littered with pieces of snow white coral that have (hopefully, naturally) broken away from the surrounding coral reefs.

Long Beach at Pulau Kecil, Perhentian Islands.

Pulau Kecil is one of five islands that make up the Perhentian Islands which lie 10 miles away from the Malaysian mainland. All of the coral-fringed islands belong to a marine park and Pulau Besar and Pulua Kecil are the only ones that are inhabited - Besar is the more expensive option while Kecil is the choice of backpackers.

Being budget travellers, we booked ourselves on to a ridiculously cheap boat tour of the islands with low expectations. For 35 RM (so, £6.50) we thought it would be a pile 'em up high kind of day, when in fact there were just ten of us on a very powerful speed boat which saw us nipping around the sights of the marine park - including Shark Bay, Millions of Fish, Turtle Bay and The Lighthouse.

Bezzing around the Perhentians on a speedboat.

Turtle Bay, as it says on the tin, is where turtles go to hang out because they like the algae that grows on the sea floor at that particular spot. As soon as we got there, the driver started shouting for us to get into the water QUICK as there was a turtle next to the boat. An actual real-life turtle metres away from us - imagine. So we threw our snorkels on, jumped into the water and had the amazing experience that is swimming with a turtle.

A photo of the actual turtle we swam with - what a guy.

Turtles are magnificent creatures that very gently glide through the water, bobbing up ever so often for breath. It was breathtaking to see one swimming wild and it's something I'll remember forever.

Our super-cheap day of exploring didn't stop there though. Later it the day (funnily enough at Shark Bay), Luke saw three Blacktip sharks frolicking at the bottom of the ocean . I then jumped into the sea at Millions of Fish and saw the back of a very fat metre-long Blacktip shark and near enough had a heart attack. I don't think anything can quite prepare you for seeing a shark that big in the open sea, but I was assured that they don't bite!

Blacktip shark: "I don't bite, honest."

Me and Luke in the water at Millions of Fish.

Still on the same trip (for just £6.50, remember!) we visited the beautiful Romantic Beach which is, well, very romantic. The sand is the whitest I've seen and feels like icing sugar under your feet. The atmosphere is further romanticised by the fact that people have taken it upon themselves to collect stray coral and attach it to the trees lining the shore. In shallow water and within easy swimming distance from the shore, there are also some pretty reefs with vibrant purple Anemone and pretty Nemo fish.

Pretty coral strung up Romantic Beach.

Nemo fish at Romantic Beach.

Little restaurants and cafes line the shore at both Coral Bay and Long Beach but we think we found the best place to eat - and luckily it was also the cheapest. Ombak Biru is owned by a lovely man called Raza who since 1994 has run his business from his rustic wooden shack. Initially it was just him with his guitar and a cool box full of beers. Since then Pulau Kecil has become much more developed but Raza still has his lovely shack - these days his wife cooks up amazing rotis for 9 RM (£1.70) and his 13-year-old daughter Aisha serves them up with the sweetest smile you'll ever see. Pilau Kecil is definitely on its way to becoming even more developed, but I really hope places like Ombak Biru survive as they make it the paradise it is.

Aisha serving up a roti at Ombak Biru on Long Beach.

Luke at Ombak Biru. Now that's what I call a view.

Pulau Kecil can only be accessed by boat and there aren't any cars on the island which means that it can be very wild and woolly at times. I would say that there are definitely more lizards than people and I'm sure half of them were living in the roof of our beach hut. There was one particularly cheeky one that used to poke his bum out of the roof and poo on the bed! Just wandering down the street you were quite likely to bump into a Monitor Lizard and, at one metre in length, these guys are big.

Monitor Lizard going for a stroll on Pulau Kecil.

Pulau Kecil was our last beach stop on our six-month trip across Asia and I think we saved the best until last. It's the perfect mix of breathtaking scenery, amazing underwater creatures and wonderful wildlife.


USEFUL INFORMATION ABOUT PULAU KECIL, PERHENTIAN ISLANDS:

Accommodation: We stayed at D'Rock on Long Beach which is the cheapest accommodation on Pulau Kecil. We paid 35 RM (£6.50) a night for a hut with shared bathroom. The shower and toilet block was really clean but the room wasn't great. We were there at the end of March/beginning of April and in April the same room went up to 50 RM (£9.30) a night but they let us stay on at the cheap rate. They did have huts with en-suites starting at 80RM (£15) a night. They didn't have wi-fi and the walk up there was quite steep.
Eating & drinking: Apart from amazing rotis at Ombak Biru, we mainly ate at Ewan's, between Coral Bay and Long Beach, which did cheap breakfasts (under 10RM,£2). For dinner we went to Mama's on Coral Bay which did tasty, cheap curries (again, under 10RM, £2) and you could get cold beer from the stall next door. It's particularly beautiful on Coral Bay at sunset.
Snorkelling: We booked it through Amelia Cafe on Coral Bay and paid 35RM (£6.50) each. All of the cafes along here seem to offer the same trip and, as far as I could tell, all took people to the same places.
Getting there and away: The Perhentian Islands are a 45-minute boat ride from the mainland and, as we went slightly out of season (late March), the seas were really choppy and the boat ride quite hairy. But it was all worth it. You get the boat from Kuala Besut for 80RM (£15) return and from Kuala Besut you can get direct buses to Kuala Lumpur - there is also an airport nearby as well. We pre-booked a bus from Kuala Besut to KL while on Pulua Kecil for 60RM (£11).