Dec 1 2017

Phantom Post: Fixed in the next release…..

Have the 2slowspeeds lost the plot? Has Anne gone ‘Bush’ while in Alice Springs, has Anthony too much time on his hands? This morning’s unexpected post, unexpected to us as well, as a ‘Phantom Post’ magically appeared making no sense at all. I could not log in at first, then Anne contacted WordPress and found they had just done an upgrade of, you guessed it, the Post Editor. Wonder what the culprit could be?

So that’s the answer folks, a WordPress software upgrade somehow created a spurious blog entry so you can all relax, well, until the next upgrade anyway. I am glad I got out of IT back in 1997 when it was a simpler world and I still believe that Oracle Version 6.0.36 was the best RDBMS ever. Maybe I have lost it after all.

– Anthony

Nov 12 2017

Wheels down

We are back, wheels down, in Brisbane and home after seven months. Weeks have passed since our last blog entry, which was one of the hardest I have had to write. There has not been much enthusiasm to write since our return as we wrestle with trying to make sense of being back home – interesting times…

Let’s step back a few weeks, from Sri Lanka: we flew to Singapore where our friends Michael and Alicia and their two sons, our godsons, now live. Sadly Michael was away on business but Alicia was a wonderful host and we really enjoyed catching up with her and our godsons.

Making Alicia’s famous dumplings


Onwards on the last leg to Brisbane and while our flight arrived at 1:00 am we zipped through Customs courtesy of the express passes from Emirates due to my lifetime Gold status on Qantas. Worth all those hours flying over the years accruing frequent flyer points and status. We arrive home and straight to sleep. The next morning we are up and about without jet-lag, our slow gradual return with three stops has allowed us to adjust our body clocks in a much more user friendly manner. Great to do if you have the time, but impractical for most working people.

Everything is both familiar and new, I have always wondered how our eyes and memory work together, when we were travelling, everything was new, probably making my 20th century brain work in overdrive, now we are back we are overlaying the memory with the current image. Enough science.

The day of our return is Halloween night and Manly, where we live, hosts the biggest Halloween party in Brisbane, culminating in fireworks just outside our windows – just for us of course!!

Welcome home, aka Halloween night, fireworks in Manly


We adapt so quickly: within a few days we are in a ‘home’ routine again, albeit still feeling a little strange. We catch up with many friends which is wonderful and helps ground us. Our life has been moving most days for seven months, to stay put for a period of time is disconcerting, well, for the first week anyway. The exciting stuff, like dentist visits, crashed hard drives and weed filled flowerbeds have been the focus of our efforts.

Welcome home flowers from a dear friend


Enjoying the new local coffee shop with real French croissants!


We are still surprised at how much stuff we have after the simplicity of a single top-box bag, the decluttering process will continue, of that we are certain, however it will have to wait until December as we have a couple of short trips coming up. I know, back a couple of weeks and we will be off again. So much for staying put.

The first trip is motorcycle related. In 2013 just before we left for Europe to spend time with family, we attended a Horizons Unlimited (HU) http://www.horizonsunlimited.com event. That was probably the genesis of our RTW adventures although we did not realise it at the time. We have always wanted to give something back by presenting aspects of our experiences at the HU event but in the last four years we have always been away when the Queensland HU event was on. This year, the HU Snowy event for Sydney and Melbourne riders was scheduled for mid November. We offered to make presentations on ‘Starting a trip on the other side of the world’ and ‘Iran and the Stans’. We knew that it was late, but the Snowy HU organisers said Yes! Anne worked magnificently for a week to prepare two Powerpoint presentations while yours truly took his afternoon naps. Then we are off to the Snowy mountains.

– Anthony

Oct 23 2017

Sri Lanka 24 hours: tragedy to comedy

A jolt as the train stops suddenly on a steel bridge of uncertain age wakes me from my torpor in this humid weather, the rusty cast iron bridge alongside does not fill me with confidence, or the comments from our fellow passengers about not swimming in the river due to crocodiles. Humm let’s get off the bridge. As the minutes tick by, it becomes apparent that something has happened, what we are not sure, then word filters through the train: someone is dead, an accident, no, sadly suicide, a 23 year old young man just stepped in front of our train. The body collected at the back of the train and we move slowly to the next station a few hundred metres away. Many passengers had headed to the back of the train and one young man had taken photos which he was showing to anyone who interested. Passengers gather on the platform to look, comments such as ‘bad person’ or ‘it’s usually the girls, haha’ are said to us by the man who was sitting behind us, now standing on the platform outside Anne’s open window. Is this a frequent occurrence? I cannot judge how different cultures and religions react to such events as this, perhaps here the Buddhist reincarnation plays a part in the apparent indifference to the tragedy. A whistle, the train schedule is resumed, no police examination, we are off again.

As we pull out of the station, we pass two men carrying a stretcher with the poor man’s body just outside our train window, all the more poignant for Anne, having lost her brother to suicide 18 years ago. This tragedy is yet to touch this young man’s family and friends, his life passed no more than 15 minutes ago. Will they react with as much indifference as those around us? Having stood at Gallipoli and seen thousands of lives ended prematurely and having wondered what each might have achieved in love and life, we are filled with sadness at a loss of life before the fullness of time. I write this couple of paragraphs within half an hour of the suicide as we, on the train, continue on with the normality of our lives…

Our train stopped after fatally striking a 23 year old boy, Sri Lanka

Our title has two elements, the tragedy you have read and our struggle with thoughts and emotions as the train rattled on towards Colombo and the comedy you need to see below:

All this took place in the space of one hour on the same train. Life goes on regardless of our personal circumstances and feelings and sometimes, it’s better from an emotional viewpoint to be swept up and ride the wave of life.

A little difficult to revert to ‘normal’ writing mode, Sri Lanka was the next logical stop on our acclimation return to Brisbane and our 97th country to be visited. With only two full days and a vast and intriguing country in front of us, we needed to be very selective. I wanted to see more than just Colombo but what: rivers, mountains, game parks all interesting but too far away. We chose Galle, about 110 km. / 70 ml. south, a port first used over two Millenia ago exporting cinnamon, visited by the famous Chinese admiral Zheng He, then a fortified city, started by the Portuguese, upgraded by the Dutch and finally occupied by the British as part of the global European empire competition that took place over the world for a number of centuries , a bit like the European Soccer Championships today. Winner takes all.

There is a railway line connecting the two cities which runs along the coast at some points which I understood made for interesting viewing. As we wait for our train at Colombo Fort station, one of Colombo’s two main railway stations the sights are one for UK train buffs, the stations, signage and jobs are a throwback to an era long past, down to the cardboard train tickets, 180 rupees or about £0.90. / US $1.20 for a second class ticket to travel over 110km. 70 ml. Trains are all diesel both DMU and locomotive drawn. The old UK problem of ‘Slam door’ trains has been resolved here, the doors do not close, helps with the ventilation as well. Our Galle bound train pulls in, the locomotive was built in Varanasi by Indian Railways, a place we visited in 2014 on RTW1.
Our engine pulls eight old carriages out of the station in a cloud of unburnt diesel fumes. The rhythmic thump of the engine and the coal like smell has one almost imagining a steam loco up front. All the equipment is aged, some more than others, I suspect that any increased passenger capacity comes due to not retiring older equipment. The track does indeed run by the ocean as we travel southward passing through small towns and villages, houses built close up to the railway tracks. The coal smell is replaced by sea and then drying fish as we progress.

Our train to Galle, Sri Lanka

Spotted on a train in Sri Lanka

Galle Fort turns out to be, yes you guessed it, another UNESCO world heritage site to add to the collection, and it is surrounded by a dutch style walls reminiscent of Cape Town castle, same era of course, buildings have both Dutch and English heritage. While a smorgasbord of sightseeing awaits us, we are looking forward to going home, the journey is over and we want to go home, I fell more like sleeping than exploring, so Anne wanders the walled city. Enjoy the photo collection that Anne has created of our visit.

Playing cricket outside Galle Fort walls


Galle, Sri Lanka

Home in Galle, Sri Lanka

Art deco, Galle


City wall and mosque, Galle, Sri Lanka


Dutch Reformed church, Galle

Fort entrance, Galle


Galle, Sri Lanka

Playing cricket in the Magister Square, Galle

Street sign, Galle

Waiting to sell the last tuna fish of the day, Galle

Arangawan, the sweet tuna fish seller, Galle

Had a great chat with Saman, Galle

Galle coast, Sri Lanka

We all love watching a stunning sunset, Galle

Fishing boats, Galle

Early morning fish market, Galle

School girls, Galle

Train timetable, Galle, Sri Lanka

Galle, Sri Lanka

Although we have one more stop in Singapore to see our friends and our godsons before getting home to Brisbane, this feels like the end of the road. We celebrate with a Sri Lankan dinner at the ‘Ministry of Crab’ – guess what we had for dinner. It was superb and a great way to celebrate the end of RTW2.

– Anthony

Oct 20 2017

First stop

Oooo that hot, steamy, salty air that hits us as we get off the plane feels good. It feels and smells like holidays. We are quickly greeted by hotel staff at the airport and taken to our transfer vehicle:

We’re here!!


Yes, we’re in the Maldives!

This is an exciting way to get to your hotel:

Leaving Malé airport for our hotel

Not a bad first glimpse of our island

Flying back to Brisbane from Europe with the inevitable jetlag from the 10 hour difference has steadily got harder for us to recover from over the years so we decided to include a stopover longer than the overnighter we’ve done on occasions.

Not only was the flash speedboat, rather than a ‘rustic’ old boat which I expected, a lovely surprise, the garden bungalow I booked was upgraded to this:

Not sure why we got this incredible upgrade, but we are extremely grateful – thank you Kurumba Resort.

Our own numbered recliners

The beach and garden

Kurumba Resort website photo

Perfect spot to read a book

Lovely spot for a couple of days!!

Enjoying this rest

Our pool at night

So here we are in the Maldives with the only decisions we have to make being whether to eat, swim, swim in the pool or the sea, read or sleep, swim with the reef shark or get out of the water. The 1 metre long shark appearing in 50cm deep water just in front of us was all my fault: Anthony did tell me I should not have hummed the Jaws movie song!! He was right!

This place is truly amazing: the food is superb and we have only eaten at the cafe so far, not at any of the 7 restaurants. And although the resort is currently 95% occupied, we hardly ever see anyone. This is a once in a lifetime experience for us and we are loving it. It will be back to canned tuna and crackers or baked beans on toast when we get home and that’s fine.

Goodnight from the Maldives

So over and out until … the next stop over. This should be easier for you to guess where that will be!

– Anne

Oct 18 2017

Wrapping up and starting to head home

Over a week has passed since engines off, no more morning helmet visor cleaning for Anne, it all seems a little surreal. I have adapted to driving a wider vehicle although I still cannot understand why cars continue to drive on my side of the road flashing their lights as they head straight towards me, puzzling.

How are we adjusting some people have asked: not too badly, we both still miss being on Streak and Storm from time to time, but that journey was not open ended and is finished. We move on, what to, I am not sure, we will need a little time to get home and think about the future – home still needs painting, our seven month absence will not have fixed that. We have decided that we will just pick a ‘white’ paint from the forty or so shades on offer, then comes the problem of which brush to choose.

As Anne mentioned in her last blog entry, this will be our last long haul motorcycle trip. While we achieved our objective of circumnavigating the globe for a second time, we now want to explore at a slower pace with focus on a particular region or culture. While it is a departure from our previous two adventures, we both came to a realisation that while we were forced to move on due to time or visa constraint, we would in future like to travel at a more leisurely pace and explore those small villages, open spaces and intriguing laneways that were always beckoning us as we rode by. Quite what and where is still to be debated, along with mode of transport, no more flying for Steak and Storm: you may not realise it, but they have been on 8 separate flights. Streak and Storm will be Europe based in future, which is still a huge and largely unexplored region for us. We still may decide to part with them but that is a decision for the future.

We have spent the time since our return catching up with some family and friends in a little bit of a whirlwind over the past 10 days, there is just not enough time to see everyone and we hope those we missed will understand and we will try and meet next time. Sorry. We were glad to see everyone was well and enjoying life and most passed the 2slowspeeds blog Q&A session. Yes we do really monitor who is reading the blog, just kidding, although if you want to appear knowledgeable, do not, as one nameless person we spoke to a couple of months back when we are in Azerbaijan, say ‘I thought you were back in Australia’, it gives the game away.

Our journey home will take 9 days: we decided to take the opportunity to break what we are finding more and more is a tiring journey for us both that leaves us jet lagged for up to a week once home. We, well I thought that it would be fun to keep our destinations a surprise for our followers, and family for that matter. Anne thought it a little strange, but went along with it to humour me, my thought was a extra for our followers, although it does not involve motorcycles or 4×4’s. It also takes us to a couple of destinations we have not visited before. We only have a couple of days in each place, but it will give us a sampler of the chosen locations.

Our flight leaves Heathrow and in less than half a day we have this view as we descend to land.

Like all good serials, we leave our viewers wondering what comes next.

– Anthony