On the road – Part 2

A large part of our trip has been spent driving, as that was the main point. Though we changed the original plan from driving from London to Singapore to driving around Europe, it has still been quite an adventure.

The first thing about driving is that someone needs to drive while someone else needs to navigate, and on this front we have our roles clearly demarcated. Obviously CS drives while I navigate, haha… Actually the GPS device navigates, I just tell him the instructions in advance cos sometimes it’s just too late. In all honesty, if we do not have the GPS and had to rely on maps, the trip would probably have ended within a month since we would have argued endlessly as I am not the best person with maps. Even with the GPS, it still took us a while to get used to the instructions, things like ‘bear left’ for example sometimes really means turn left, whereas at other times it just means bear left so you can imagine the amount of grief we had in the first month. So far, the GPS has been fairly reliable other than the one time it led us down a forest road, we actually drove on for quite a bit into the trees until we decided it wasn’t making any sense. It did break down one day (the day our hotel decided to close for the day and leave us totally stranded), but otherwise it’s worked fine *fingers crossed*

We did take a while to get used to driving on the ‘wrong side’ though those Europeans probably say that we drive on the wrong side when they come to Singapore. We have also made some turns into the wrong lane though thank god there has been no major accident *fingers crossed*. We do have 2 more days before we return the car so I'm trying not to jinx anything.

Friends ask if I get sick of living out of a suitcase but in actual fact, we have been living out of our car and not our suitcase. Having the car has allowed us little luxuries, such as

1. Having things such as an extremely large stash of snacks from different countries (Haribo sweets from Germany, beer from Belgium, biscuits from France etc), extended change of clothes, shoes, hiking gear, toiletries, ample winter wear, thermal and boiler pot, cooking stuff (rice, soya sauce, oyster sauce, instant noodles), etc. All these things have made a world of a difference to our trip, whatever we want it is there, it really doesn’t feel that I’m away from home as much when I have everything I need.
2. Making detours on a whim just cos we felt like it (e.g. Mount Vesuvius, Whisky distilleries, cheese factory) or visiting places that are just a little bit more difficult to visit if we don’t have the car (e.g. L’occitane factory, Herge Museum, Cinque Terre, Isle of Skye, Museum of Witchcraft)
3. And most importantly, not having to lug our luggage from airport/ train/ bus station to our hotel!!! You wake up at whatever time you like and set off when you feel like it (more or less, subject to the other hotel's reception hours).

However it has also came with issues like

1. Finding accommodation with parking which can sometimes really be a pain. You would think most hotels in Europe would come with free or at least paid parking but that’s not always the case, and sometimes when it does come with parking, the fees are just way too expensive.
2. Navigating the streets, even with a GPS, can be an issue, and some roads (e.g. Italy) can be ridiculously narrow and difficult to drive in
3. Getting our car broken into (!!!), long story which happened in London.

As mentioned, we are returning the car soon (in 2 days!), and as CS puts it, it will be the ‘end of an era’, so here is our top five list regarding driving

1. If you have money to burn – France and Italy. They have the most tolls out of any other country so you can spend your money paying tolls as you drive. Spain earns a mention here as we had to pay a crazy amount just driving in and out of Barcelona, otherwise within Spain itself, the tolls are negligible.
2. If you have the need to take a break often – Italy. They have the most rest stops along the highway and the rest stops are the best amongst all the countries. They are often equipped with petrol stations (obviously), restaurants, convenience stores and toilets. The toilets are usually clean and free!
3. If you want to like an F1 driver – Monaco obviously. I think the F1 drivers really can go crazy driving there, and the scenery is great though the country is ridiculously small and roads ever-winding.
4. If you want to take your car to the maximum – Germany. Contrary to popular belief, there are speed limits on certain sections of the autobahn, however unless it’s stated, you can drive as fast as you like. I got freaked out when CS drove at 185km/h so he didn’t drive any faster than that.
5. If you have lots of time to spare – Poland. It took us forever to get anywhere, as there are no proper expressways, the so called highways have traffic lights. We got so bored, I ended up watching ‘The Blind Side’ while CS drove. Diesel prices were the cheapest there though so that did make up for it a bit.

I cant think of anymore, so that’s all for now :p

On the road - Part 1

In case you haven't noticed by now, we have a serious, extreme, ridiculous, insert appropriate adjective here, amount of backlog of entries to write, edit photos and upload. Spain was way back in March, and we still haven't finished with the editing of photos. If we were still working and have this amount of backlog, I think we would both have been fired by now. Thank god we're just 2 jobless bums then.

Since some people have asked for new entries, this is part 1 of Being on the Road. And being a true blue Singaporean, of course we have to start with food!!!

First of all, while you may have seen very nice pictures of food in the blog, we do not wine and dine all day. In fact, restaurants in France and Italy have pretty limited opening hours, typically from 12 - 2pm for lunch and then 7 - 11pm for dinner. If you arrive outside of these hours, you either eat a kebap, pizza by the slice or really bad Asian food. Sometimes given those choices we typically end up eating instant noodles instead.

Second, traveling with a cook definitely helps, haha... CS went on a cooking course for 2 months before we went for our trip. Whenever we stay in an apartment, he would typically whip up some dishes. Our roles are, he cooks, I wash, so all in all a pretty good arrangement. Having western food day after day, you crave for a simple clear asian chicken soup now and then. So we tend to cook Chinese/Thai food and you'll be surprised how often we stumble onto an Asian supermarket even if we are not looking for one. The supermarkets are also pretty well-stocked, one of the best ones we found was in Barcelona, we went a bit crazy there and bought quite a bit of stuff. Fried bee hoon, fried rice, rice with stir fried meat and veg are kind of what we cook to eat on the move now, we also cook some pasta dishes on and off, but mostly Asian food.

Third, we do try to go out of our way to find good local food whenever we go, either by researching on Tripadvisor, or from guidebooks or Via Michelin. We did cave in on a few occasions and bought Asian food but so far they all taste bad, so lesson learnt, when in Rome, just eat Rome! So far, 80% of the time, we have pretty good food though we have learnt a few things too

- Do not eat pasta or pizza outside Italy, everyone else overcooks it. We have given up on ordering pasta now. As for pizza, its a bit overpriced outside of Italy, so we don't usually order that too.

- Tripadvisor is a good source of info, but don't rely on it too much, some of the reviews are honestly quite dubious. Lonely Planet is not too bad and Frommers is 80% reliable.

- Go where the locals go! It's common sense but sometimes we forget this. And language is not a barrier, we had a waiter who moo-ed at us once when he was trying to explain what meat it was on the menu. Also, ask your tour guide where to go, our guides have been able to provide pretty decent recommendations so far.

- If you have no idea what it is, don't order it. CS ordered something once and when it came, we realised it was sausage stuffed with liver, intestines, etc. He ate all the side dishes and left the sausage completely untouched.

- Go with the flow. CS saw this billboard with grilled meat along the road while driving in Spain and decided he just had to eat it. Of course I also need to use the toilet so again, another win-win for all. We managed to hunt it down and we had the most delicious grilled ribs ever.

All in, it's been great fun eating around Europe. Now, we just need to figure out what there is to eat in UK since Brit food is supposed to be really bad. I guess we'll just have to survive on fish and chips and curry then :p

Have you packed yet?

Everyone has been asking us this question and well the answer is yes and no. I've started some packing but knowing me, I'll still be packing up to 2 hours before I leave, haha... CS will probably only start a day before? Lolz...

Other than the packing, we have been busy settling banking matters, which also reminds me I still haven't called up some of the banks yet. Other than that, we haven't really been doing much though CS is still staring at the budget! In any case, the only thing we know for sure is that we will be in Europe for 6 months, after that its still a little up in the air. Depending on the situation in Middle East, we may not go there at all. I am very keen to do the trans-siberian railway so that should be firmed though the dates may change. We are also going to collect our passports tomorrow for Israel so that should be fun. Hehe...

The foster sister?

Since the official sponsors aka foster parents have already introduced themselves, and done such a good job at it, we shall not introduce them again. Instead, we will introduce the foster sister that kit cat will be spending time with while we are away exploring the world.

Jiji, aka ms little ginger, came to stay with us for 6 weeks (yes, nothing compared to the 8 months kit cat will spend at her place) while S & HC were enjoying themselves. Actually S was enjoying herself while HC was busy with training. In any case, we gave Jiji her own room, or rather we kicked kit cat out of his room, and gave her the space that all teenagers need. It took us a while to get used to having 2 cats in the house but we got there eventually. Here's hoping that Jiji will not be the evil step-sister and bully poor kit cat and instead take good care of him while we are away.

Do keep a look out for the dear kit cat series that will probably appear on S's blog soon!

The original idea...

I think the whole thing started out with our trip to Turkey where we met this Kiwi who was travelling with his family (sister, nephew, brother-in-law, mum) to Cappadocia and then to Egypt and Jordan (I think). Actually I barely spoke to the guy cos I was sleeping like a pig on the bus but CS spoke to him and he told me that the guy told him he travelled overland from Singapore to London many years ago. He basically flew in from New Zealand to Singapore and then took a combination of buses, trains etc from Singapore to London. At that point in time, there was really not much tourism and he said sometimes he will arrive at some remote village and had to knock on doors and see if people will take him in for the night. I remembered thinking that was really interesting and weird and really quite brave at the end of the day. On top of that, we were both trying to get our motorbike license (which didn't happened in the end, but that's another story for another day) and we were watching the Ewan McGregor show, Long Way Round, which was showing on NatGeo and thought well if he can do it, why can't we? The rest, as they say is just history.

The original plan was to do what the guy did, travel from Singapore to London, but via car instead of by bus/ train as he did. We then did a bit of poking around and realised that actually that was more common than we thought, quite a few people have done similar trips though they were usually ang mos. But then we found the Singaporean couple who did their 2 year trip via motorbike as well as the other Singaporean/ Malaysian couple who drove their Matrix from India to South Africa and it really seemed like a possibility. We then got down to business and well CS was really the one who worked out the budget and forced me to save up for the trip. So after 2 long years or well, actually 1.5 (?) years, we are finally going to do it.

Beyond the money bit, the first thing we had to do was apply for a long term visa for Europe. Being Singaporeans, we are lucky that we can stay in Europe for up to 90 days within a 6 month period, but beyond that, it was a bit of a blur how you can stay beyond that. After checking around and reading through, it seemed like our best bet was to apply for a Schengen visa which would allow us to do that. It then got a little tricky from there cos there is no Schengen embassy you can apply to since it is just a collective agreement between certain European countries to allow ease of travel and on top of that, since we would be moving around and not exactly staying at one fixed place, the application can be made to various countries. In the end we applied for it at the French embassy and I must say the experience was not exactly the most pleasant one. It was rather chaotic at that time cos they had 2 counters for both visa applications and collection of passports, but there wasn't really a system in place. Every visitor pass had a number but when you walk in, it doesn't display which number the counter ladies were serving so you have to peep at other people's passes to figure out who was ahead of you. On top of that, people collecting their passports could basically jump queue and go up to the counter to get their passport even though their numbers may not be up yet. There were also not enough seats so half the room was standing. I must say I thought that it was all quite chaotic. Luckily they have changed their system and now everything is by appointment, so it's much much better. In any case, we had to go in two times before they would take in our application and process it. The experience was quite painful and we had to go down to CID to get a letter from the police to certify that we have no criminal records. That letter took 10 (!) days to process and without the letter, the embassy wouldn't process the application. Luckily, all that is over now and we have our long term visas approved.

But of course, getting this in our passports is not the end of it. When we arrive, we have to fill in some form, send it to the French authorities, and then wait for them to contact us (no one can tell us if it's via phone, email or letter, we're guessing letter) and go for an interview (gasp!) and a medical checkup before we officially get our long term visa (whew.....)

Other than the visas, we have also gotten our international driving license. CS went down to AA to get it done the other day and he took my IC and driving license down as they needed it. And since I was still working that day and had to go to my client's place where I had to change for a visitor pass, I ended up carrying my passport with me to work that day. It felt a little weird carrying my passport and I think the security guard also got a bit of a shock. In any case, we also have our international driving license now.

For some reason, I had thought that it would be like how our driving license and IC are like, but its just a piece of cardboard with our photos in it, which looks rather homemade. Oh well, as long as it gets us by with the authorities.

16 more days to go? I'm still trying to figure out tickerfactory and putting it on the blog. Hmph...