Singapore sling

The 6 hour bus ride from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore turned out to be more like 8 but at least we got there. After a bit of faffing through customs we were dropped off at an innocuous looking building with shops and a taxi rank. For a huge 4 pounds 50 I think I'll let the lateness slide. Taxi it is then. Luckily the taxi drivers here all speak 3 languages and English is one of them, due to the old British rule days.
The streets are clean and the place seems very orderly. We'd heard about the amount of rules abound here and the massive fines in place if you break them. It didn't feel like a place living under a regime though. Our hostel was on a really flash housing estate above a 24 hour food court. What a total dive. The owner had clearly been using the grotty room himself for having showers and the such. Lovely sweaty humidity. We were shown around the 'facilities', an odd zombie-like Australian on a PC on a box turned his head but ignore our greetings. Okay. So what if there's ant crawling the walls, we'll make good of it. We headed straight out.
Luckily good food was just around the corner and we eventually settled in for the night. Next day was the only full day we had here and there's a fair bit to see.
First stop was the financial/city district, very flash it looked too. Lots of old colonial style buildings mixed in with sheer glass skyscrapers with immensely clean lines. We walked around the harbour and watched a boat race in the sunshine. This place is humid all year round, all day long. It's still a clean and friendly place to be despite the heat.
The British reign in Singapore sorted a lot of the infrastructure out, a good transport system, orderly road network and drinking tap water along with sewerage that actually works. Finally we're back to flushing toilet paper! Oh the joy of the little things.
Another by product of the British rule was the influx of British and Indian convicts. They were taxed to build some of the roads and the impressive bridges around the city. Good work boys!
The harbour is an impressive sight. The Music, theatre and arts venue being the best. A kind of double hedgehog shape that was 20 years in the making. A nice looking place from the inside. It seems Singapore's prominent ship trading position and the British rule really made this place what it is. We had to check out Raffles hotel while we were here. It's basically an old hotel used by the British to lord it over the locals. No it's mostly shops, cafes and boutiques but it's still partly a hotel. We originally got the place mixed up with a much grander building. The Park Hotel. This building looks like something from Batman or Ghostbusters. It stands out because it's built in the middle of a flat grassed public park and has a kind of evil look about it. Very flash inside but not for the likes of us paupers.
Once we saw Raffles after that we weren't impressed but it did kind of grow on us. This is where the cocktail the Singapore Sling was conceived. The famous Long Bar is in the middle courtyard surrounded by palm trees and accompanied by a smooth jazz backdrop. Money stopped me buying a Singapore Sling, and the fact that I looked like a tramp(I was now onto the 4th day with the same clothes in humid weather). There was a class and style about the place that I liked and the Indian staff still remain, dressed in full regalia. It felt like we'd been transported back in time when the wedding party attended, apart from the Subaru Impreza wedding car!
That evening we walked along the beach, as advised by a local bookshop owner, and watched a group of wake boarders(like water skiing but with a single board rather than two) zoom round the man made lake on a kind of pulley system. Pretty innovative. A stroll back along the posh avenue to the grot-hole where we were staying ended our Asia experience. All eyes were now fully turned to Australia. Singapore itself is worth a stop over of a couple of days but no more. I'd visit again on the way to somewhere else for sure.

A day in Kuala Lumpur

The only thing I knew about Kuala Lumpur is that it used to have the tallest buildings in the world. That has been beaten by the building in Tapei, so now they say that the Pertonas towers are the tallest twin towers in the world. They are tall there's no denying it. I just didn't know what to expect from the place as a whole. As it turns out it's a mixed culture country with the majority of the population being Muslim. Plenty of Indians here, there's a Little India part of town which had plenty of curry houses. First impressions were good. We arrived at our hostel, via another skytrain monorail thingy, and the place seemed to have a good relaxed vibe. Things are getting progressively more expensive the further south was are heading but it's still cheap living.
I never expected it to be soo big and have soo many flash buildings. Everything is fairly modern looking but there are many different styles of building here. It was fairly late when we arrived so we shot straight out for food and I made a rash decision to eat at some dodgy looking curry sort of place. After all we'd done to avoid bad food in Thailand I immediately turn to this dire excuse of an eatery. The food came and it was pure abysmal, it was a traditional beef curry thing but I'm sure it's not supposed to have this much hair in it!....or be totally cold! I sent it back but it was no better, I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth for quite while. From this moment on it was higher class places. So what if it cost 1 pound for 2 meals and 2 drinks. I think I'll pay a massive(!) 3 times that and get some quality. Luckily the next day we did and it was fab and we avoided getting seriously ill too, bonus!
Next day was our only full day and we took a dash tour round the city. Whilst eating food at a class place near the city centre we witnessed a crazed white guy argue with a taxi driver at full pelt in the street which resulted in arrest and a rubber necking moped rider to crash into the back of a stopped car. By the time dessert came we'd also seen a girl fall straight on her behind, all just across the road from us. The thing is while all this was going on people just kept smiling. The place has that kind of aura about it. Or maybe I was still on a high from Thailand. But it seemed a good place to be. The cityscape itself is pretty good looking. We went up the communications tower to get 360 views of the city and they were pretty amazing. The whole city is surrounded by lush mountains and has a small-ish jungle in it. The Petronas towers really look the part too and the whole place seems to have benefited from having this massive petrol company, Petronas, right in the city.
Passes to get up the Petronas towers are free but you have to turn up at 8am to get them. NO chance! We went anyway and looked around the building museum they had inside. Whilst we were wondering around thinking maybe we shouldn't be here a woman approached us asking if we had tickets to go up to the observation deck. We said no and thought we may get ejected for nosing round the building. Instead she came back with two passes for us and off we went. First you have to sit through a 3-D advert/movie for Petronas oil company and then you go up a high speed lift to the 41st floor. It's less than half way up but still pretty decent a height. One tower was built by the Japanese, the other by Koreans. Not sure why but there you go. The views were good and the general friendliness of the place made it all the better. When the building is lit up at night it looks even more impressive and a huge display of progress for Malaysia as a whole. This is no tin-pot nation.
Back near the huge street where we stopped was a large free music concert going on, mainly Indian stuff and sounded pretty damn good, apart from the dodgy singing!
There's plenty of money in Kuala Lumpur and it shows. Bars and restaurants everywhere, a lot with a jungle shack type of theme, and the almost compulsory lady-boy type bars for the more discerning traveller.
Our brief stop was over soo soon. It was time to get tickets for the bus to Singapore. A chaotic bus station with bartering style ticket buying was just down the road. We weren't relishing the 6 hour bus ride to Singapore but we had to get on as were were flying to Perth in 2 days.
I'd stop off in Kuala Lumpur for a few days but wouldn't make it a holiday destination. I liked the place and it had a friendly laid back atmosphere but apart from the towers there wasn't oodles to see. I just wish travellers would stop calling it KL.


The Petronas towers at night, huge! And below, the skyline looking from the Communications tower onto the Pertronas towers.

Phuket...the return

Phuket is much busier than I remembered. I'm sure it's the same but after Phi Phi island this place seems rammed.
At least the beach is still relatively quiet, at 3 kilometres long I'm not surprised. The sand is a soft flour-like consistency and with the intense heat the water is soo soothing. But don't forget, as we kept being told when we booked the trip, that this is rainy season. So what? It's hardly rained all through Asia. Here it rains once a day, at about 8 o'clock, for about half an hour, and it feels great. If this is low season then I think I'm coming back at this time!
At night we ate like kings on our freshly picked out steamed sea bass and pondered the amazing differences of Thailand. Then realised we were half pissed due to Chang beer being 6.4% here! Blimey! The Thai people really know how to do things!
It was time to move on yet again, this time to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. But looking back at Thailand is great. The place we researched the least but surprised the most. The one-side dishonesty to the other-side total truth. Bangkok is the sex industry capital of the world and Phuket also has enough to keep any sad old man happy. You can also watch a bit of Thai boxing, they promote fights by driving round in a truck fighting the day before!
Bangkok had great buildings but a grotty underbelly and not a great deal to recommend. Phuket is a good location to visit the islands off the east coast of which Phi Phi really was amazing. Would I go back? To Bangkok? No. Phuket? Sort of. Phi Phi Island? Tomorrow in a shot!

As a side note, it turns out that not so long ago the same airline we took to Phuket, One-2-Go, crashed there. Quite why there is a huge sponsorship deal running with Manchester United I don't know, the stewardesses even wore Man U caps! It was a low budget airline but didn't seem too bad but you never know. Whilst in Bangkok we also saw one of the biggest plane crashes in Brazilian history on the news......from the same airport we fly out from in November.

Phi Phi Paradise?

To get to Phi Phi Island from Phuket we got a on a tour boat. This was a hassle free tour boat though that involved us lazing around eating free sticky bread rolls and drinking soft drinks. The boat had this really cool commentary from a Thai guy who must have learnt English from an American. As it was a large boat his voice was broadcast to all floors via the tannoy and it was pretty entertaining in itself. The laid back nature of the islanders really showed through. These guys have no worries, you wouldn't have thought that only 3 years ago a tsunami ravaged the majority of the islands destroying plenty of lives in it's wake.
More astonishing island scenery abound all backed up with friendly Thai commentary. It was turning into a good little cruise. Then the boat stopped for snorkeling. I'd never been snorkeling for real before, mainly because of my lack of interest in wildlife, but it was pretty amazing stuff. Teams of multi coloured fish swam around us in the bath-warm water of the ocean. I really can't believe we're backpacking sometimes because I'm sure people pay loads of money for trips like this! The clear water was just mind blowing meaning you were able to see loads of stuff just from beneath the surface. I wasn't to happy about swimming into a flat fish but it's all par for the course out here!
We were then taken ashore, by speed boat of course, to an all you can eat buffet restaurant on the beach. Frickin brilliant. Covered food, with the addition of candles that put off the flies, that was just excellent. Our table was right on the quiet beach under palm trees on the tropical island. It doesn't get much better.
Turns out it does.
Back on the boat to be dropped off at our destination and next two nights stay, Phi Phi island. This place is small but fairly busy, but in an extremely laid back kind of way. No motorised vehicles exist here, other than 2 motorcycles we saw and even those could've been the same bike! This island has one hotel the is about 5 storeys high and everything else is no bigger than 2, but mainly everywhere is on the level. The people living here are almost horizontally laid back and the whole island has a family-type atmosphere and is really friendly. We're a long way from Bangkok! No dishonesty here, it's all straight down the line, which we found out immediately when a local showed us to our hotel. Hotel is probably the wrong word though. These are separate air conditioned cabins on stilts in a lagoon all within a tropical setting, with the mandatory gorgeous pool and free excellent breakfasts via the boardwalk to the restaurant. "What?! It's a 30 second walk to the pristine beach?! Damn this backpacker lifestyle!!" Needless to say the beach was truly beautiful. Moored up fishing boats and the double spoon shaped island meant mountain on either side while you swam in the glass-like warm water. You couldn't see a bad view no matter where you looked. I loved this place.
Considering we were just going to pass through Thailand I'm soo glad we went to Phi Phi as the whole perception of the place got turned right on it's head.

That night a huge thunderstorm struck the island. Massive lightening bolts and cracks from directly above, all watched from the comfort of our room - there were 2 cameras rigged up on the island running direct to the hotel's TV channels and we saw the whole show!
The next day we stuffed our faces on gorgeous food and relaxed in the water to then go out and stuff our faces again on amazing food. We got talking to a Welsh couple who were staying on a nearby island, which you had to get a water taxi to. We ended up going for cocktails on the beach with them whilst watching a Thai guy do some amazing fire-poi to the banging music. It was all uber cool and soo far from where we've been it's untrue. We could've have stayed weeks here just doing nothing. I've never seen scenery like it or stayed in a place like it.
But like all good things, the next day we were off again back to Phuket for a couple more nights.

Fishing boats at Phi Phi. The first photo higher up this post is our cabin on the island, cracking.

Above, the hectic streets of Phi Phi island.

Phuket Paradise?

Another day travelling followed the chaos of the day before. These travelling days are pretty much nothing days. You get up, get a taxi,tuk tuk, bus then train, plane then bus, train and taxi at the other end so it's all you do just to get somewhere. The Bangkok visit was brief but hectic but we were definitely ready to get out of the city, mainly because all we've mostly been to are cities so it feel good to get away. Bangkok's no bad place though. There's still loads we could've seen but I doubt I'll go back in the next 30 years!
Our next destination was the island of Phuket and for a few days we were living it up. We escaped out of the shoestring backpacker budget to stay in a decent hotel and go on yet another tour. Phuket itself is very touristy but mainly a gorgeous island with long beaches. Well it was where we were staying, Patong beach. The only problem is that with the tourism comes the constant hassle of vendors trying to sell you suits, fake surfing clothes, jet ski hire and tuk-tuk rides. It does get annoying, especially the tuk-tuks as they just drive up and down the same two streets beeping their horns at every single tourist to see if they need a ride.
Our hotel was round the corner from the beach and was fair flash, for us on this trip anyway. It had a pool and breakfast included aswell as cable tv in the room! Oh the luxury.
We headed out into the main bar and club streets at night to see what went on here. Mainly prostitution and lady-boy action along with fat old drunk blokes trying to see what they could get. The women are very persistent, Laura left my side for about 10 seconds and straight off you could see the Thai women begin to gather. Frightening.
As we were living it up here we decided we didn't want to risk the food at the dodgy looking street restaurants and headed into a flash place with gorgeous food and a cool band playing classic 70's rock tunes.....with a Thai accent. Great stuff.
The next day we were really not looking forward to, another tour. I just wanted to get it over with but from the off this tour was much better. It was touted as the 'James Bond Island' tour. Of which I still don't know the real island's name. But it's the island featured in 'The man with the golden gun', I think, Scaramander's lair. Either way it looked stunning. We took a brief stop on the way to a cave temple which looked pretty cool, loads of monkeys climbing around all over the place and a giant reclining Buddha inside. Stalagmites and stalactite's aplenty and I let a couple of young Thai boys lead me into a dark cave, sounds like fun I hear you say, but it turned out a neat little walk around and in between ancient rock. Of course a tip was required, I should've known.
Then it was onto a long-tail boat for a ride to the island. This was unbelievable. I mean really. The landscape of this country is truly spectacular and quite hard to describe. Lots of lush green islands make up the backdrop between tropical waterways were crocodiles and fisherman inhabit. Huge rock formations and narrow cave passages dotted along the route with beauty in every direction. For some reason I just didn't think we'd be seeing anything like this on the trip but here we are. Tremendous. James Bond Island itself was stunning also. In the bay is a narrow, but tall, rock which has worn away near the bottom but acquired greenery up to the top. Totally tropical. I did recognise it from the film but only vaguely. We had half an hour to wander around the island, it was tiny but full of interesting views from caves and the jetty round the other side next to a narrow beach. Crystal blue water, gorgeous green islands, no clouds in the smooth blue sky. Amazing. All this for hardly any money too!
Back on the long-tail boat we were taken for lunch on a floating boat island. Hmmm this sounds familiar. But as it turns out this fishing village on stilts was superb. Out in the ocean in the middle of no-where this village community survived off fishing and the tour groups that stopped by for food and the crappy tat they sold. The food though. Oh the food. Was soo good. You couldn't get fresher fish than this and it was cooked to perfection. I was I could gorge on that again right now rather than the crap we've been eating in Australia!
And in true from on the way back at the end of the day we had to face a couple of 'education and shopping' excursions. This meant a visit to a cashew nut shop and another jewellery shop/factory - apparently the biggest in the world, just like the biggest jewellery factory in the world in northern Chang Mai, so we were told. Odd. The first, a cashew nut shop, was actually fair interesting. There was a worker in there going through the process of getting the cashew. No wonder they're soo bloody expensive! They have to be picked from a tree attached to a large fruit, which I think they made the god awful cashew nut drink from! Then they have to crack the large shell with a giant nutcracker, you have to do it by hand because of the odd shape of the shell, then they have to prize the nut out and clean it off, throw it on a pile so it can be roasted for 3 hours. What a palava. I bought two packs of nuts in sympathy, and because I love em' too!
The jewellery factory was a chore, an absolute comedy video had to be sat through before entering the shop with our helpful store assistant. No matter how much we told this woman we had no money she would not leave us alone. We made a sharp dash for the bar for a couple of cheap as chips beers. Not bad I thought. More excellent food at night and we were off again the next day for true paradise, 2 days on Phi Phi island (pronounced 'pee-pee' but sounds much worse than it really was).
Below, James Bond Island and the famous rock.
Above, the view just next to our dinner table on one of the many gorgeous islands.

Big Bangkok (Part 2)

An incredibly mental day followed. We knew very little about the tour we'd booked, just getting out of the city for the day sounded good enough, but what was to follow was totally unexpected.
The day started in the small minibus with a couple of guys from our hostel, Eric the German and Matt the Aussie. Both sound guys. The main part of the trip was to visit the bridge over the river Kwai, as made infamous from the movie in the 70's I think.
First stop was a graveyard of British soldiers and other Commonwealth forces that helped fight in the war and prisoners of war held at the river Kwai. There were loads of graves but the stop off wasn't that interesting, it turns out it was mainly so that the tour guides could sort out the groups of people in different mini-buses depending on what they'd paid for as part of their trip. Confusing? It turned out to be, all day. We were then ushered into a different mini-bus for the 2 and a half our drive to the bridge.
It's not hard to notice in Thailand that they have pictures of the king everywhere, massive shrines in the middle of the motorway and they often wear bright yellow t-shirts with the king's emblem on it. Fair enough I suppose but we did hear of a drunk Swedish bloke getting 10 years in prison for defacing a poster! He got out in far less than that, with a pardon from the king no less, but they still take the king, and their love for him very seriously.
So we arrived at the bridge and to the pathetic attempt of a war museum they'd erected near-by. It was a horrible grotto of a place with toilets straight out of a zombie flick. Not only that some of the displays were atrocious. I noticed a wall of coins and notes, supposedly taken from prisoners of war at the time but there was at least 20 50pence coins from 1980 in there! Shoddy. I read a large notice about the history of the bridge and the hardships the Japanese put the pow's through in building and rebuilding it. It kept being destroyed because it was a valuable supply route for the Japanese war effort. But the torturous conditions the prisoners were under were awful. Right at the very end of this display it actually read and I quote(sort of), 'Although around 300,000 deaths occurred here it was not all for nothing. Because now the bridge is a famous landmark and many tourists come to Thailand to see it and learn about Thailand.' Oh well then. It's all alright because Thailand is now a tourist destination. Mental. There was also a lot of emphasis on the destructive Americans and their bombs, even dropping them on their own prisoners - due to the Japanese sending the pow's out onto the bridge thinking that allied forces wouldn't attack it. Lovely.

The bridge itself was ok but very busy to walk across. Health and safety officers would clearly have a heart attack if they saw the huge gaps people were strolling across though.

However, the countryside is amazing. Thailand is such a lush place with rolling green bushy hills and the humid climate to go with it. There's no denying its beauty.
As we walked back over the bridge a train began its journey across. A train!? This thing looked like it could barely carry 20 people! Rather them than me. Let's go.
Back in the mini-bus with another set of internationally confused travellers. This tour was run in conjunction with many others and swapping and changing about was clearly the norm. We had no idea where we'd end up next.
Oh good lunch. We heard that everybody gets ill at some point in Thailand. I really didn't fancy that at all so at the fly infested buffet lunch I stuck with rice. The safe mans choice. Besides, luke warm wobbly meat is bad enough without the internal fluids of flies added into the mix.
The 'restaurant' itself was floating, not quite a boat but floating all the same. I'm sure they charge extra for this ramshackle shed on water. The water is pure brown too, but I think that's mud sediment so I'll let them off.
What next? Oh of course, lets get on an elephant and be ridden around at the behest of an 8 year old boy! Still, you just get on with it. Spot on scenery, even if I felt a bit queasy with the lolloping elephant pondering around wondering whether to follow the boys commands or walk towards a yummy looking tree. Often he chose the latter. Uncomfortableness aside and onto our next fun filled adventure. A bamboo raft ride along the river. This turned out to be superb. A real relaxed cruise along a beautiful river on a half submerged bit of wood tie together with elephant eyelashes, probably. It's was excellent just taking in the views and discussing the oddities of travel with a group of Americans by our side. Cracking. And best of all he was the only guy, the raft man that is, who didn't asked for any tip at the end. My type of ride. A highlight of the day, especially when the American next to me fell right through is feeble bamboo seat. Excellent.
All in a days work. What next? Oh tiger temple you say? Hmmm oh good.
We took another minibus to a waterfall which did look pretty stunning but mainly the stop off was to change people into different mini-buses again. After a quick look round we were off to the tiger temple. Now I'm no friend of the animals but I don't like to see cruelty either so I was wondering what to expect.
Upon arrival we were told we would have to pay 300 baht to enter. No way! I refused point blank declaring it was all part of the trip we'd paid for. I had noticed that our tour 'guide' was hanging back slightly to see if any of the tour group would pay. This was because he had the money to pay for everybody in his hand but wanted to see if he could pocket that and let the tourists pay the entrance fee. Once I said I wasn't going in he came forward and said he would pay for us. Dodgy.
We'd heard a few different things about the tiger temple, some good some bad, the main being that it had been featured on cable tv as being amazingly good. We also heard that instead of monks putting the tigers into a calming trance, as was the official line, it was more a case of slip them a few sedatives so the daft tourists can have heir photos taken with them.
I'm not sure either way what was going on but I had my photo taken with a couple of tigers anyway, not that I was too interested as I thought at any moment they could turn on me and bite off my important bits. The park itself was pretty good though, it was like a safari park with loads of animals running wild...right next to you. "Oh is that a wild boar running towards me at 20 miles an hour?" It seems so.
And so the last visit of the day was over and the disorganised chaos of this tour can finally come to an end on the way back to Bangkok. Oh no. We waited around while a tour guide tried to arrange what bus we'd be going in. One of the drivers did not look pleased. I figured this from the pretend Thai-boxing kicks, the moaning voice and the repeated slamming of his fist on his van. Guess which driver was ours? Even so we were on our way and back in the same bus as Eric the German and Matt the Aussie. This time we also had the Americans we'd chatted to for ages and a seemingly insane bloke from Finland. Another Aussie couple joined us at the last minute as they wanted to be dropped off just outside Bangkok. So far soo good. Then the rain started. This was proper rain streaming across the carriageway. Why I chose to sit in the front for this 2 and a half hour journey I don't know. The driver was constantly fidgeting about under his seat whilst answering his mobile. Fine I thought. It's only total monsoon weather. We stopped off at a petrol station for snacks and drinks. And, as it turns out, so the driver could disconnect the accelerator cable from the pedal. This was so he could accelerate using his hand pulling the cable. Hmmm. Then the Aussie couple started getting agitated about whether the driver was dropping them off or not. He refused to say and was clearly agitated himself. His phone never stopped ringing and using the cable with your hand to accelerate clearly was hurting his hand......whilst answering his mobile phone.....and driving in full on rain. This was becoming a nightmare. We stopped again and the Aussie bloke got out to confront the driver. This ended in a load of pushing, shoving and shouting and half punches being thrown. Oh please end this joyous day! But no, we ploughed on. Eventually we got into Bangkok but with still a way to go. The driver pulled over at what looked like his mini-bus depot to see if he could change vans but it was too late at night. The mental Fin, Eric the German, Matt the Aussie and us had had enough. We got out and all crammed into a taxi, four of us in the back. They were cheap anyway and we'd had enough excitement for one day to carry on with the mentalist mini-bus driver. We hit traffic, Bangkok style. Heavy and nothing moves for 10 mins or so. The Fin guy in the front is trying to persuade the taxi driver to take some side roads and swerve in and out of traffic once we get moving. Unfortunately the driver took his advice......only times 10! The guy drove like I've never seen before, except in Hollywood movies, swerving at breakneck speeds in and out of traffic like a total nutter. He floored it and everybody when sheet-white. I felt ill. It was like being stuck in a Playstation game, with 3 other people crammed next to you!
All was fine when we eventually got out at the monorail station, yep Bangkok has a monorail(quite advanced stuff too). Back to the hostel and out for a meal with German Eric and Aussie Matt. A few Chang beers soon calmed us all down but I'll never forget that day. Or the fear!
Blimey, all in a day. I was glad to be getting out of this place the next day for sure!
Paradise here we come, so we've been told.
Below, me and a tiger, niether of us are totally enjoying ourselves!

ok ok

So obviouslyI'm seriously behind on the blog. I still haven't got time right now to up date it properly but should catch up the 2 months I'm behind next week when we give our hired campervan back. Hopefully I'll be on a keyboard that actually works also!
Everything is going extremely well though, except for some emergency dental work but that's all to come soon!
Bit odd that the plane we flew into Phuket on crashed but these things happen. Oddly enough the worst flights we've had have been in Oz!!
The second, and more mental, day in Bangkok will follow in the next few days. Insanity galore!!!