Week 64 - Kuala Lumpur, Adelaide (Malaysia, Australia)

Our flight to Melbourne didn’t leave Kuala Lumpur until lunchtime so we weren’t in a rush to get to the airport. We ended up jumping in a cab for ease since the buses only run every half an hour and managed to find the looniest cab driver in the whole of KL. He started off nice and chatty, offering us fruit to try and asking about our travels, then he started getting out the bible and making me read from it and showing us news articles about him, saying he’s a miracle man and showing us how he ‘wins’ the lottery! It was a very long hour and a quarter drive. 

The flight to Melbourne was 7:30 hours and we landed at midnight. We flew Air Aisa and we know it’s a cheap airline but we didn’t expect to have to pay for everything, including water. We then had a 5 hour stay at Melbourne airport before we could check in for our 7am flight to Adelaide. We grabbed a MacDonalds for dinner and found a quiet corner to try and get a couple of hours kip. We failed miserably and ended up sitting up playing cards and drinking some of our duty free. Finally we could check in for our flight and head into the departure lounge. The flight to Adelaide was only an hour and we were met by our mate Slater who had been working nights and waited up to collect us. Slater took us straight back to his house and settled us into the living room on the sofa bed. We were out before our heads hit the pillow and slept until gone 3pm. 

That night we met Alan (Rhys’s cousin and Slater’s housemate) in a bar on Jetty Road, the main street in Glenelg, a trendy beach suburb of Adelaide where they live. It was great to see them both (we saw Alan last at our wedding reception in Wales and Slater, just over 4 years ago in Brisbane). We drank a lot of cider, were shocked at the extortionate prices of drinks in bars (£8 a pint of Bulmers anyone?!) and headed back to the house to finish the night with a couple of bottles of red wine. 

We’ve been in Adelaide at Slater and Alan’s house ever since. The house is perfect, huge rooms that stay cool despite the 38 degree heat, a fence that circles the garden for privacy and loads of fruit trees heavy with fruit (the orange and lemon trees are our particular favourite and have provided litres and litres of fresh juice).

Orange tree in the garden of Slater and Alans house, Adelaide.

Lorikeet eating all the crab apples in the garden, Adelaide.

Alan’s mum and her husband Chris were in town to visit Al for 3 nights and we met up with them each day for a couple of drinks at various bars along Jetty Road, the beach front and the Marina (all within 10 minutes walk of the house). One day Alan took us all in to town to the Central Market on the tram (family outing!), a great little place with all kinds of gourmet ingredients (think Borough Market in London) and to China Town for a cheap food court lunch. 

Me, Rhys and Alan with Alan's mum Jan, Jetty Road, Adelaide.

We’ve filled the rest of our days buying and putting up Christmas decorations, sorting out odds and ends for Christmas dinner and preparing anything we could in advance, cleaning everything in our backpacks, drinking goon (the cheapest wine you could ever dream of and the only thing we can afford to drink here), visiting Coles and Woolworths and their equivalent of the £ store to stock up the cupboards in preparation for Christmas and just generally enjoying being in the garden and sitting on couches in front of the TV. We ventured out on the bus to Bunnings, a DIY shop to pick up a cheap BBQ and managed to get on the wrong bus home which resulted in Rhys being given a lot of stick about the Ashes and a 95 year old man saving us and pointing us in the right direction to get a bus home. We’re just enjoying living a semi-normal life, we’ve unpacked our bags and slept in the same bed now for 6 nights running, a real treat.