Peas in a POD...

So there we were, lying on our beds staring at the stars and suddenly I though...Where the hell is the ceiling? Ok, so it wasn't that bad in our KL hostel but it was close enough. The rooms or pods we were staying in were actually all just sectioned off areas on one floor. I realise this creates images of the open plan offices you find in New York or have seen in movies...now add bright green to this image and BAM...you've got it! Now, we got to share this wonderful experience with someone who has tourettes, add an 11pm lights out rule to this and just imagine how well we slept with constant vulgarities being shouted in our direction.

Our first experience of this was rather alarming as we had no idea of our 'pod mates' problem and so just before the lights went our we received a mouth full of vulgar words just in time for the lights to go off and everything to go dark. Now, being the calm level headed saffas we are we climbed into our beds slowly pulled the blankets over our heads and in sheer states of panic ran through all the news headlines: BACKPACKER MASACRE or BACKPACKERS FOUND IN OWN BAGS! Once we all calmed down, a bit with no sign of some creepy person peering over our pod wall, the girls took some rescue pills and off to sleep we went like peas in a pod...literally!

We saw our time in KL to be more of a stopover before the big Europe adventure so we decided to get in a little shopping, a lot of laundry and some good food.

Finally ready to get our ever growing Saffa asses to Scotland we got our bus to KL airport and seeing as we had been cutting it close on time with everything we had done we decided to get there early....either that or we were just ready to get out of our somewhat scary pod situation. After check-in we made use of our favourite Saffa instinct....find a coffee shop with free internet.

After a long flight and a one night stop over in Stansted we finally found ourselves in Scotland. Feeling like social misfits being back in the western world with large, loud and fast moving inhabitants was an experience in itself and we were very relieved to find Chris (The husband of our friend Candace with whom we were staying with) waiting for us.

Our time in Scotland seemed to pass us by in a blur of medieval castles, bagpipes and great home cooked meals (Thanks Candace!!). We had a great time seeing all that Edinburgh has to offer, catching up with good friends and dare I say....more shopping!

After Scotland we had a crazy weekend in London with my good mate JP. It was spent cramming in some sights, braaing, drinks at a local Aussie watering hole and some splendid match making by yours truly. Good times were had all round and before we knew it we were dragging our backpacks through the streets of London in search of our coach to Paris.

This was finally it....all the planning, all the money spending and the excitement hitting it's boiling point as we started the greatest adventure of our lives....