Holiday Fever

Most people seem to get holiday fever when the sun starts to come out but with me it’s just the opposite. Ever since I booked the holiday to Goa on Wednesday I have had holiday fever and I can’t stop thinking about them, looking for them, downloading APP’s for them, which is my current favourite pastime, even dreaming about them. It might also be because the weather has definitely turned and my shorts have already been packed by Claire who also has holiday fever; I think she was packing the rucksacks while I was on the phone arranging the holiday. It’s getting so cold that I have just bought a new pair of tracksuit bottoms in favour of my normal house shorts. I have even taken to leaving several sheets of toilet paper hanging over the radiator in preparation for my next visit which isn’t very long with my new cocktail of drugs and Claire’s weight loss tea. Even when the Sunday papers arrive, the first one that I look for is the Travel supplement. I can’t get over how cheap some of the flights are, especially for long haul. We had a magazine arrive through the post called “Footprints” sent to us from Travel Mood who arranged our Australian and world tour. Incidentally, Derek who we are currently buying a house from has just booked his world tour including New Zealand, Australia Hong Kong and Fiji has used them on my recommendation and he was very impressed by them as they are so helpful and also very cheap. Anyway the magazine also includes a £100 voucher for the next time we book a holiday through them. I was reading through it and they had a special feature on Malaysia which has really got me going. I hadn’t realised that Borneo, Penang and Singapore were all part of it; well I guess that Singapore isn’t technically but its there abouts. When we toured Thailand we went quite a long way down towards the Malaysian border but we have never been there. There are some lovely islands all along both of the Thai coasts so I suspect they will continue into Malaysia. This contract didn’t finish a moment too soon.

I have been to Singapore for 24 hours but never got out of the airport so it wasn’t my favourite holiday memory, rather the journey from hell. I set off to stay with my good friend Steve who was working in Korea for a week and arrived at Heathrow airport at 5am on Friday morning. I didn’t arrive at my destination in Soul with Steve until Sunday afternoon and had neither washed or slept or barely eaten. I never received any compensation for this nightmare journey but did manage to get upgraded into first class on the way home. I visited every terminal at Heathrow, Singapore and Korea several times and even visited the swimming pool at Singapore airport on the roof; trouble was it was around midnight so I didn’t see the sun but it didn’t stop me feeling the heat that it had left from its previous appearance. Anyway, Jimmy has been to Singapore several times and he really likes it so it’s definitely on my bucket list. As is Borneo which is the last place on Earth that Orangeman’s can be found in the wild. I would love to have a trek through the jungle there. Anyway I found some return flights to Kuala Lumpur for around £350 and considering it’s not far from the other side of the world I find that very cheap. Also Jim’s youngest son Tom is living and working there at the moment with his girlfriend so I guess that he would help getting us going. He would probably also know cheap and good restaurants to try out. In fact he sent us some CAD software over from there for which he wouldn’t let us pay so we still owe him for that.

What I thought was that if we just booked return flight with around 6 weeks in between that might leave enough time to explore the whole area including some of the islands and Borneo. Looking on my new google APP Bali doesn’t look very far from Borneo either and we loved it there. But I remember from our last trip there some Australians said that Bali was only around 2.5 hours flight from Perth and we haven’t visited Western Australia at all. However, I think I am getting a little ambitious for a 5 or 6 week trip, better to leave those for another time and concentrate on doing a smaller area better. When is the best time to go? Well I was looking at one of my Malaysia APP’s and they have a monsoon that lasts up until February so we don’t want to go there when that’s on but its better for us to go during our winter so as to muss the worst of the weather. I’m not sure if the monsoon finishes at the beginning or the end of February but February is probably our best time to go anyway. We have booked one of Claire’s holidays that she won in January to Tenerife, it’s only for a week but it does seem to be getting in the way of more serious holidays. With us going to Goa for 3 weeks in about 3 weeks we wont be back until early December and then its my Mum’s 80th Birthday and my Dad’s 85th both in December, then Christmas and New Year and then this silly free holiday before I can even start looking for another contract. So I’m already half way through January anyway, so why not wait until the weather starts to improve. We want to be around for the second or third week in March as the new apartment that we are buying becomes vacant when Derek’s current Tenants will be leaving and we want to do our usual renovation makeover before we re-let it again anyway. It’s an ideal apartment for old people as it’s on the ground floor and very close to shops a pub and Central MK. We were thinking of putting one of those showers for old people in rather than a bath which allows you to have a sit down whilst getting clean; I might even try that myself first. Anyway we were thinking that my Mum and Dad might like to live there as they are both really struggling with the stairs at their home; or even my Auntie Daphne who is still recovering from her fall and broken leg whilst we were in Australia. It has the added advantage that we also own the only other attached apartment on the 2 floors above so we could live there so as to be available to help them and shop for them but still giving them their independence. We are also in the process of trying to buy the land between the properties and the pub car park from the Council which could give more space for parking or gardens at the very least.

I have been keeping my eye on the Goa holiday that we booked and although we saved nearly £200 between us by waiting they are down even further now by another £40 each but for the week after we have booked to go so we would have missed my Mum’s birthday anyway. It surprises me that they are getting cheaper and we are getting closer to Christmas; usually the closer towards Christmas the higher the price. And of course the hotels charge around 3 times their normal rate over the actual Christmas period as well.

Anyway it seems to me that we may be able to shoehorn another holiday in before all this starts and if we go to Malaysia we wouldn’t take our computer with us, we would buy one there as they are cheaper than here; we could also load it with lots of cheap software and then use that for our blogging and Claire would get a new one in the bargain as hers has almost stopped. Here I go again, I’m almost trying to talk myself into it by suggesting that we would actually be saving money by going on holiday; what do you think Claire?

They have built some more concrete cows and placed them near the old Oak tree in the city centre. The new part of the city centre was actually built around this tree because they were not allowed to chop it down. It must have cost a fortune to design and build around it in the first place and then even more to rescue the tree when it started to die almost immediately afterwards. Here is one of Claire near it when we visited the Apple store to take the docking station back because it didn’t work. Apparently, most of the hardware for the iphone still isn’t compatible with the iphone 4. I also include a couple of Georgina in the style of a pencil drawing when she last drove to Melton to visit her Grandparents. Another of one of our many walks by the canal, usually to see a film now that Claire has her free pass and I have my new student card. There is a nice one of Harriet after she got changed into her new clothes that she bought in preparation of her London trip. Fourteen girls got together and ordered a limousine to London and back so they could all get pissed and have a night around town. She didn’t get back until 6.15 am on Sunday morning but seemed to have a great time. The last one is of Claire and Harriet; not sure if Harriet has grown or Claire has shrunk and goodness knows what we were watching on the tv.