The Blog Posts I Didn’t Write in 2014
Ah, 2014! A corker of a year. We’ve settled down in Bali, got ourselves more or less sorted out, done lots of interesting travel, entertained guests, made friends and – OMFG – I hit 40.
And, for a range of reasons, mainly time/money/internet-related, I’ve written close to fuckall about events to date. So, to enable me to catch up and start 2015 in the present(ish) tense, here’s a selection of the blog posts I meant to write this year, and didn’t:
19 Reasons to Visit Malacca
Home Sweet Home? Take 3
A Bewildering Encounter with a Notary
Back to Square One
Settling into School
Home Sweet Home? Take 4
In Which We Experiment with Country Living
The Most Hopeless Puppy Ever
Tumpak Landep and Other Ceremonies
Holy Cow! I’m 40
Cebu After the Typhoon
Thresher Sharks – Fuck Yeah!
A Dwarf Bar in Manila
Travel Just Ain’t the Same When You’re on a Schedule
Rabies?! Surely Not?
Aaarrrgggh! Rabies!!!!
Alas, Poor Winnie…
A Cringe-worthy Visit to the Neighbours
Everything You Ever Needed to Know About Rabies in Bali
A Few Ways In Which the Balinese Say No
How World School Translates into Real School
Gosh, This Bali Lark Is Surprisingly Expensive
We Find a House!
Home Sweet Home, Take 5 – This Time It’s for Two Years
The A-Z of House-Hunting in Bali
But What Religion Shall We Have the Exorcism In?
On Making Friends
Paragliding – Wooooo!
Sundry Scenes of Bad Behaviour in Bars
Because Everybody Gets Lost in Bali, All the Time
How Not to Organise the School Holidays
Diving Kuta, Lombok
Pemuteran: Officially a Long Way for a Weekend
Climbing Mount Batur
Some Thoughts on Travel, Indonesian Style
A Few Weird Things About International Schools
My Spawn WILL Get the Bits of Paper
A Kalimantan River Trip
Return to Derawan!
Why Diving the Derawan Archipelago Rocks
OMFG I Turned Into an Expat
Some Small Pleasures of Being Settled
Praying for Rain
Happy Birthday, Zac!
In Which My Ma and I Play Fashion Designer for the Day
Why Does Everything Break all the Time?
How to Spend 48 Hours in Ubud
Discovering the Secret Gilis
Fawlty Towers, Lombok
Shopping for a Funeral
A few changes up ahead. I’m going to start the tale of the new, non-nomadic us at Christmas and New Year. I intend to pick up my Friday Photo post as a chance to write about cool places I’ve been to but not mentioned; I’m aiming to do one helpful travel piece a month on spots I know well; I want to rant about things more; and – tell me! – what do you think about the idea of some book reviews?
In 2015, we’re looking at visiting (so far) London, Berlin, Paris, Viennes, Barcelona, Bruges, Amsterdam, Poland and Singapore, not to mention Java, Sulawesi and various random English countryside places, and, of course, exploring more of Bali and Lombok. Zac, in addition, will be off to Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and most likely Sydney: I’ll try and persuade him to write about one or more of these on his blog.
If you’d really, really like to read any of the posts above – or if there’s anything you’d really, really like to know in general – drop me a comment and I’ll see what I can do.
And, finally, a big shout-out to Gabbie Gavanaghan and Bekand Bean, both of whom spotted the best-camouflaged pygmy seahorse EVAH on my Facebook page.
Happy 2015!
Depends. Are these reviews for GOOD books? :-p (And I may steal your idea here considering the withering on the vine my own blog is undergoing lately.)
You should clearly come to Amsterdam btw- free boat ride, and I may still be single but the Lego collection has expanded! 😉
Hahahahaha! We’re actually flying into Amsterdam so were planning on hitting you up – Zac will be super-chuffed with the lego. Completely forgot you had a boat….
Sweet! Just let me know when you’re planning to be around here so I don’t find myself off somewhere else then! 😉
yes please i’d like to read the home sweet home series!!
and if you could resume diary-like blog that would be brilliant, i love your tone and your pics. even if it’s not nomadic anymore it’s a nice change of scene to read it from the uk!
happy new year
Happy New Year to you too, Helene. I will go back to the diary format – I just needed to get shot of 10 months of backlog, because otherwise I’d forget everything I’d done and it would just be flat…
This is such a great way to get a whole load of posts done! But it’s super frustrating too as I want to know more!! I think you should add Nice (and surrounds) to your European tour!
Oh blimey – France isn’t really a focus for us on this trip, and thanks to the curse of school holidays we do have limited time. But tell me about Nice. We’re very much about the cities for this trip (one of the things about living in Bali is one does miss cities from time to time)….
honestly just your blog titles sound so intriguing 🙂 do drop a note when you do pop by Singapore if you wanna hang out with a fellow travel blogger who can bring you around for some good food!
Thank you! We may be going to Singapore en masse — but I’ll keep you posted….
Bali is my favourite place for about 5 years now. I am concerned about the growing safety alerts though. Where is your fave place in Bali? Mine is Ubud but haven’t been to the islands yet and hear they are cool.
I have lots of favourite places on Bali – Amed, Pemuteran, Bedugul, Batu Bolong, and I’m fond of Ubud to visit, although I couldn’t bear to live there…. Still discovering lots more places, though – I haven’t yet been to Sidemen, Bingin, Belangan, or dived Padangbai…
Would love to hear about the encounter with the Notary. We are Indo bound in mid Feb so am sure that post would be full of handy info. Have just found your blog and love it – its awesome to read about the non tourist places. Thanks!
Ooh, that’s a long story. I’m pumping all my old Bali stories into a Bali Stories section, so I’ll try and get to that one at some point over the year…. Are you going to be living here? If not, you don’t need to worry about notaries. If you are, you do…
Yes, we land Feb 16th – we will have a month wandering around Lombok and Sumbawa, then plan to settle in Bali for a few months whilst we firm up the next phase of our life. I have read most of your other Bali and Indo post – they are brilliant. Thanks I will keep reading!
hands down, the exorcism!
I’ll be on that right once I’m done with the rabies x
I want more on the rabies and the thresher sharks! Maybe you could do a post with 10 of these and just a paragraph or 2 about each??
Thresher sharks are easy – I can probably cover that off next Friday! Rabies is a saga, but I’ve just started it: http://www.escapeartistes.com/2015/01/08/bali-stories-winnie-part-1/ Happy New Year!
Well, I’d like to read any of the school posts. That would really be an unusual angle that I’ve never seen covered. And of course, I’d love to hear about Derawan again. SO JEALOUS! We went there before any of us took up scuba diving so only did snorkeling. Even so, the jellyfish and the turtles were one of the highlights of our year….
I’ll get to Derawan in due course – that’s an easy enough one to offload into a Friday photo post or everything you need to know about story. It’s changed a lot – but we did get out to more of the islands than we did before. I’ll also do a post about school, because I think that’s useful for people planning something similar – and not many people cover how it actually works.