Sydney Australia

My first impression of Australia was from the air, our flight was 8 hours long and after 4 hours we were flying over Australia, its big!  On the ground was pretty much nothing other than sand coloured mountains, and small mountains more like hills!
Approaching Sydney our captain advised us of high winds and duly our plane was pushed from side to side  and tossed around, soon enough we landed safely.  One thing to be said about the 8 hours on the plane, remember to take money or pre pay for the meal with AirAsia as they do not accept cards for food purchases, perfume yes, food no!  We arrived a little hungry.
We had two reunions at the airport, one was Prunelle after 5 months travelling by herself, the two sisters ran together and slid on their knees towards each other to embrace, very sweet! The second was our friend Amy whom we had met in Turkey at Bodrum EcoFarm some 11 months previous, she hailed from Sydney and had agreed to let us stay with her and her parents whilst we found a van to buy to start our Ozzie road trip. (Thanks Amy, Neil, Lorraine and Matt.)

CBD from the ferry

Family selfie

Sydney is a beautiful city, abet cold in the winter, and rather expensive. We caught a ferry down the river which would take us into Darling Harbour and then under the Sydney Harbour Bridge and dock next to the Opera House.  Blue skies the views were superb and the hype of the opera house was realised.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

City by night

Giant Chess in the park

Anzac bridge traffic

Sunset on the ferry

What struck us about Sydney was how clean it was, how unpolluted, maybe the benchmark had been left low after 10 months in India and Asia but all the same, a pretty good job.
We took the time to visit the iconic Bondi beach, which in my head was a massive stretch of sand that went on for miles and miles, it does not! Quite a small beach in fact, with cliffs on one side that give you great views.

Bondi Beach

Graffiti on Bondi beach

The world cup foot ball was in full swing, but with matches starting at 2 am you did feel you were the other side of the world from everything else, needless to say I did have a few late nights.
Our search for a van was a little frustrating with very few vehicles available in our price range, but we were starting to get the hang of what was out there and what it cost, in the end we settled for an older ford van, did a little renovation to the existing conversion and were ready to cruise.
Sandrine had an old friend living on Manley beach where we spent a couple of nights camping in the van and seeing people and sites during the day.
Sadly we had to say goodbye to our new friends and to Prunelle whom is staying with a lovely family close to Bondi and working as an au-pair.

Hasta Pronto Sydney!

Kebun Kaki Bukit, Kuala Selangor, Malaysia

Arafats farm, Kebun Kaki Bukit, part two.

You can follow the farm on their FB page, and contact them if you wish to volunteer.
Face Book Link


For the first time in our trip we returned to a place, why? Firstly it was about air planes our next stop was going to be Australia and we found an amazing deal with Air Asia to fly from KL to Sydney.  So we decided to go back and see our friend Arafat and the farm that he is building..

When we originally arrived in February he had been there just one month and everyone was living in shipping containers and cooking on the industrial part of the property, there were no growing beds and no water irrigation systems, when we had left we had moved to the new accommodation moved the kitchen to a new place and cleaned up the area and started digging fields for crops.

We arrived for our second stay in the evening and immediately felt at home reuniting with a good friend and some other great volunteers who would also quickly become friends.  One thing that shocked me was the presence of new buildings, a kitchen, a place to eat protected from sun and rain, the main house had walls!! Wow it was great to see how much can change in just a three month period with a little effort and help from willing hands!

The next morning I woke up and had a look around some of the land and was happy to see that there were crops growing in the soil!  Not everywhere but a good area,  Okra, Spinach and Corn were planted and ready for harvest... and of course weeds!! A new water irrigation system had been built with sprinklers to help the plants in the dry season.

The first morning we started weeding, which is back breaking monotonous work or great meditation depending on you! We had a great team of volunteers which made the time at the farm the more enjoyable and we hope to stay in contact with all and see you all again.

On one of the night on the first week we had an incredible storm, the rain and lightning were intense and we had thoughts of Noah and his ark...!  After many hours of torrential rain it finally stopped, the sun came up and we got up to see what the effect was of that much rain in such a short period... the moats were full, but holding.  This time round the Malaysian wet season had forgiven us it did not rain again so the waters dissipated after a few days and returned to hot and dry conditions.

Arafat also organised that we volunteer at the KL zoo with some kids, we went along and helped were we could that the kids had a good day out at the zoo, Lili was sick that day, so we put her in a wheel chair to push her around the zoo, she fitted in well.

Sandrine has started making jewellery and hopes that she can make a business from her talents, so far every item has been a real work of art, although very time consuming, but well loved by all.

We also returned to the waterfall where we had previously lost our camera, this time it was a necklace and Arafat told us that previously one volunteer had fallen and broken her leg!!  The place is obviously cursed.. stop going there Arafat!

Kuala Selangor is the local town and it has a market where Arafat started taking his produce to sell, we also visited the local nature park where you can see lots of crabs and mud skippers, and crazy aggressive monkeys who will steel your food.

At the end of our stay we spent two days in KL and stayed with Arafat's friends in there art cafe Findars, which is a very cool place, art gallery and music jam seasons plus a place to chill have a coffee etc.  Lili was allowed a free reign of the drums and the stage and loved it!!  The room that we stayed in was like a small oven but I kept reminding myself that our next stop was Sydney and it would be winter!! OMG