Deux Grandes Aventures - in France!

Right now Trav and I are having two grand adventures: living in France while I’m busy writing a new book loosely based on my own travel experiences for HarperImpulse - the romance imprint of HarperCollins UK Publishers!

Great excitement - signing my Harper Impulse contract!

Until fairly recently these were both totally unexpected opportunities!

HarperImpulse offering me a book contract prompted us to decide that we needed to settle down somewhere - at least for the time it would take me to write the book - but where?

When you have no fixed abode then your only options are to stay in an affordable hotel or rent a house or an apartment within your budget OR to do some housesitting and live somewhere for free in exchange for looking after the homeowner’s property and perhaps their livestock or pets.

As we have never done any housesitting before I checked out some of the house-sitting websites. The more I read about it the more appeal the housesitting idea had for us. Some people only needed a house sitter for a couple of days or weeks but some needed house sitters for a few months.

We were actually in Vietnam at the time of doing this initial research into housesitting and we already had plans in place to travel to Kuala Lumpur, Macau, Hong Kong, and South Korea over the coming weeks – so we decided that after South Korea - we would be prepared to pay the airfare to travel onto somewhere/anywhere in the world where we could stay for three months or more without having to pay any rent.

So we applied for an assignment in France through the website called MindMyHouse.com.

The assignment was to live in and look after a beautiful chateau in South West France owned by a UK couple who needed caretakers/managers for up to six months. The house was in the French countryside, just outside the beautiful and historic city of Perigueux,  and the home of a cat called Monsieur Smudge. There were also a couple of gites (cottages) on the property that were rented out and a large garden and an outdoor swimming pool to maintain.

The beautiful countryside of SW France and the housesitting assignment caring for Mr Smudge

All these jobs at the house were easily within Trav’s remit (plus there was a ride on tractor to cut the grass!) and, although it wasn't an island in the tropics, it was certainly a wonderful and idyllic setting for me to actually get some serious writing done - and being South West France - it's not as if it would ever get really cold in the wintertime either.

You can imagine how delighted we were when after a few emails back and forth and a skype interview with the homeowners – we were offered the French Assignment - and Trav and I were going to live in France from the end of September to the end of March!

The perfect writing spot...

In order to get to France as cheaply as possible from Asia, we took four flights and two long train journeys and a bus across London.

First, we took the KTX bullet train in South Korea from Daegu to Seoul and then we flew from Seoul to Hong Kong. To save on a hotel we slept in the airport in Seoul as our flight was so early in the morning. From Hong Kong our flight was delayed. After a bit of stress, we managed to get to Kuala Lumpur just in time for our direct flight to London. In London, we had to get from Heathrow to Gatwick to meet with a flight to Bordeaux, after which we took a train to Perigueux - the capital of the Dordogne Region of France.

At Perigueux train station we were met by our lovely homeowners!

The first few days we slept lots (as you can imagine) in our super comfortable and gorgeous bedroom in the beautiful chateau and we ate lots of lovely French food. Our lovely homeowners kindly showed us around the area so that we would know where to find the local shops and markets and vineyards etc.

The lovely homeowners Piers and Fran gave us a tour of the area, the vineyards, and we stopped off for lunch in a cafe

This area has so many beautiful old buildings and cathedrals and vineyards and chateaux

It was the end of September when we arrived in France but it was still hot and sunny. After being so long in SE Asia it was especially thrilling to see so much wonderful food and cheese (I LOVE cheese!) and (as we were in wine-country) lots of wine (I LOVE wine!) and it is so very inexpensive here because wine isn’t taxed as the French consider it to be a food. What a civilised country!

I knew we were going to love France!

We don’t actually speak French but were certainly keen to learn – especially as in this part of middle France - most people (including our neighbours) don’t speak any English (and why would they?) 'Bonjour! Ca va? Et vous?'

We soon settled down to living and working at our new home in France

Things I love - markets where dogs round up ducks - Authur the donkey and our neighbour's piggies  - and cafes and wine

A week or so after arriving in France, we invited (with our homeowner’s approval) my Aunt Dawn and Uncle Ed, who were in Europe from Vancouver, Canada, to stay with us for a few days. We had stayed with them last year and we were keen to see them again. We had a lovely week with them here in France before they flew back to Vancouver and I have lots of photos to show you of our wonderful days out to vineyards and medieval towns and chateaux and the time we spent together.

We had such a great time when my Uncle Ed and Aunt Dawn came to stay with us in France

Ed and Trav in old Perigueux France

Trav and I in beautiful old Perigueux France

Back at the house... Dawn and I enjoying a glass of wine and conversation by the pool...

The lazy hazy days of a French summer with Ed and Dawn and our lovely French neighbours Charles and Christelle

The autumnal courtyard through an open window

The weather stayed amazing for us all the way through October - warm enough to use the outdoor swimming pool a few times. We took a delivery of chopped wood for the winter courtesy of Fran and Piers – which we stacked into the woodshed while it was around 26 deg C. But, once November came around, the weather turned very cold.

In November it is Trav's birthday and this year he was delighted to receive a bottle of his favourite tipple (thank you Ben and Hayley) and something he'd enjoy whiling away any free French time - a drone. Happy Birthday Trav!

SHOCK! I could hardly believe it! In December it snowed and it was apparently the first time it had snowed in this part of France in FIVE years – and as we have lived in mostly hot and tropical places – it was the first time WE had experienced snow in around five years too!

We spent our French autumn evenings by the cosy log fire...

As we didn't actually have any cold weather clothes, we had to buy a couple of cold weather outfits to wear over the winter. Leggings and sweatshirts and socks. Our lovely homeowners did send a message to say we could use some of their knitwear from their wardrobes – which was very kind indeed – as we were reluctant to buy too much of anything that couldn’t go in our backpacks when we leave here in March.

I find this to be the most difficult thing about being a (woman) traveller. 

There is only a limited amount of stuff you can own and buy - as you have to be prepared to carry it around in your backpack with you - so less is always better.

We had a nice quiet Christmas – just the two of us and, of course, Mr Smudge – sitting by a lovely warm log fire with lots of wine and cheese. We didn’t have a Christmas tree but Trav found a string of lights to wrap around a tree in the courtyard outside. We did miss our family and friends but we did get to send and receive cards this year at least and to chat with most people on Messenger and Facetime and Skype.

Our lovely neighbours Charles and Christelle took us out for a pre-Christmas traditional French meal and also to a fabulous Christmas market in the nearby historic medieval town of Sarlat. This year’s market was on a British theme!

It was great fun and I took lots of photos!

And, except for these occasional outings, I was writing All The Time!

Harper Impulse had sent me a contract to sign and I was working to a tight end of January deadline. This meant I had just three months to write a full-length novel and to submit it on time. As an author, I’m often asked the question ‘how long does it take you to write a book?’

Well, my first book took me four years to write (I had three youngsters and two day-jobs back then) and the second one took two years. The third book, I recall, took three years. From then on, books usually took me about a year to write. So, I’ve never had to write a book quite as quickly as this before.

No pressure then!

To help, I made a spreadsheet and gave myself a set word count to achieve each week and a set time to work each day. I did try to include an hour of exercise each day too - walking in the beautiful countryside surrounding the house - as all the wine and the cheese I'm eating has piled on the weight. Consequentially, I’m a stone heavier than I was when I first arrived here. The countryside here is beautiful and reminds me very much of South West Scotland where we lived for many years.

But I'm now delighted to be able to tell you that the story is written and it's currently with my lovely editor. I do hope she loves it as much as I do. There will be of course be revisions to work on next. I expect to be working on them over the next couple of weeks. After which, the manuscript will go back to the publisher once again for line edits and then digital publication.

The title of this book – to be published as an ebook in Summer 2018 is:

‘The Backpacking Housewife’

I’m very excited about it I can tell you!

And I can hardly wait to see what the cover will look like and for it to be finally available on Amazon and on Kobo and Apple’s iBook stores. I'll be sending out a newsletter to my newsletter subscribers (see the top right sidebar of this page) when The Backpacking Housewife becomes available and also to alert you to any offers and competitions and prizes to be won around publication day.

So what’s next?

Well, we have some lovely friends from Scotland coming to stay with us for a few days soon and, if the weather allows, we’d love to take them out to a few vineyards and to explore some of the beautiful and historic local towns and to have lunch in some French cafes.

As for our onward travel plans, we do already have plans in place to leave France in mid-March. Our plan is to fly back to Asia initially, as we will be attending our son and daughter-in-law’s wedding in South Korea at the beginning of April. So, we will fly from Bordeaux to London, and then directly to Singapore. We’ll spend a couple of weeks in Malaysia (exact plans not yet decided on) before we fly over to Korea to meet up with family.

After our week in South Korea, we will fly directly from Seoul to San Francisco USA. I’ve always wanted to go to San Francisco – and I'm super excited about it so we have planned a three-day stopover there - I’ve already pre-booked our tickets to go over to see Alcatraz!

From the USA we will fly to Honduras and then onto the beautiful Caribbean island of Utila.  If you've followed this blog for a while, you'll know that Utila - the smallest of the Bay Islands - is our favourite island in the Caribbean and, although we have stayed on this beautiful island many times, it will have been two and a half years since we were last there.

I’m really looking forward to going back to Utila, hopefully, we'll stay for the whole summer, and to seeing all our island friends again. Trav, as a PADI Staff Instructor, is also looking forward to diving in the sea every day again as I know he’s really missed being in the water.

So lots of posts and lots more adventures to come in 2018.

Thanks for reading and visiting my blog. Please do pop back soon for more writing and travel news and please do consider signing up for my newsletter - I hardly ever send one out - only when I have news - so promise not to spam you.

Until next time

Love, Janice xx

An amazing month in beautiful Vietnam…

The end of July through August is a tricky time of year in South East Asia – as many places are having their monsoon season. Having spent a month on Koh Chang in Thailand in the rainy season and then a few fun days in Singapore and Batam Island, which you can read about in previous posts, Trav and I were back in Kuala Lumpur and looking for somewhere to settle down for a month or more, where I could get down to some concentrated work on my current writing project and where he could get in some scuba diving.

We were also looking for somewhere that satisfied several other criteria too - hot sunshine, a nice beach, and most importantly, affordability. And, quite crucially, to satisfy our wanderlust, it also had to be somewhere we hadn’t ever been before.

So, rather than stick a pin in a map, we did our usual research. I’m aware that my posts and photos on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram just show us jetting off and exploring places - but I think you might be really surprised at how much time and effort we spend on planning our travels. Actually, we often don’t go to our first choice of destination. This could be because it would prove too damaging to our current budget or because of the possibility of violent weather (like somewhere being affected by a category tornado/hurricane) or simply because we have reluctantly decided to heed the advice of the UK government’s warning about a place being deemed too unsafe for travel just now. (The UK Gov's website is a good place to check on your travel plans HERE).

Anyhow, after doing our research, we decided on beautiful Vietnam.

Vietnam ticked all our boxes.  We hadn't ever been there before and August is at the end of their hot summer dry season. Our research told us to expect the weather to be good there for at least another month. The coastal regions are renowned for their stunning white sandy palm-fringed beaches and scuba diving and, because it was the end of the season, we expected the price of accommodation to be low.

Also, we had spotted that Air Asia had a bargain flight from Kuala Lumpur to Da Nang in Vietnam, which is very close to the coastal resort of Cua Dae Beach and the larger An ban Beach, and the beautiful ancient town of Hoi An, which is one of only seven UNESCO World Heritage sites in Vietnam.

The river running through the old town at Hoi An Vietnam

At this point - but only once I had completed my writing project - we thought our tentative plans might even lead us up the coast to Na Trang and onto Ho Chi Minh City too, as we have friends there whom we’d love to catch up with again. Then maybe to even flying on from HCMC to Siem Reap Cambodia, to take in the amazing sights at Ankor Wat as it has always been on my bucket list?

The first thing we had to do, however, to get into Vietnam, was to secure a tourist entry visa. We applied online, and as there wasn’t much difference in the price between a one month or three-month visa, and as we were still unsure of our onward plans, we went for the longer one. Then once the visa came through into our email we were able to go ahead and book our flight with Air Asia.

For our accommodation, I looked at Agoda and Booking.com. First, we stayed in a homestay right opposite Cua Dai Beach. It was clean and reasonably priced – a little bit pricier because of its beach location – but we were swayed by the sea, the sand, the seafood restaurants nearby, and so we booked for two weeks.

Our homestay on the beach at Cua Dia Vietnam

An Ban Beach Hoi An Vietnam

During those first two weeks, Trav went diving and I sat on the bed writing. Really, for almost two weeks, I hardly left the room in daylight hours and because there was no desk I had no choice but to sit on the bed! When I did FINALLY finish my project (seriously concerned that I'd damaged my bum irreparably) I really wanted to spend my days lying in the sun and swimming in the sea, but by this time, we decided we needed to move into town, where the accommodation was a bit more affordable.

Trav enjoying the diving off Cham Island Vietnam

So we moved into Hoi An. Again we stayed in a family homestay – there are so many of them in Vietnam and they are run like small boutique hotels.

We had a nice room with a balcony overlooking a pool. Luxury in this incredible heat! I should mention that during this time, the weather was so HOT that it was almost unbearable at times. We have been to many hot and humid places in the world and we can usually cope with it - even when we don't have air conditioning - but my goodness I can’t think of anywhere hotter than Vietnam!

Consequentially, we spent our days not in town but back on the beach at either Cua Dai or An Bang (and that's when I took all the photos). In the early evenings, however, having gone back to our homestay in town for a lovely swim in the pool and a glass of beer, we often took a walk into Hoi An looking for either a restaurant or good street food.

With the fruit sellers in Hoi An Town Vietnam

Hoi An is at its best at sundown when hundreds of lanterns are lit and all the traditional old boats are on the river. Also in the evenings, the use of motorised transport is banned in the old town and so it is enjoyable to explore the pretty streets at this time, either on foot or in an old-fashioned cycle tuk tuk.

As well as the historic buildings in Hoi An, a must-see sight is the iconic old wooden covered Japanese Bridge dating back to the 16^th century, built by the Japanese community.

The Old Japanese Bridge in Hoi An Vietnam

One of our favourite spots in the Old Town was the White Marble Bar – where you can sit in the open (no glass) windows (opposite a fan!) with a vodka lychee martini cocktail (oh wow – they were good!) and watch the world and the hundreds of beautifully dressed Chinese tourists wearing Vietnamese hats being transported around in those cycle tuk tuks.

Hoi An is also very famous for its tailors. You can get beautiful clothes made to measure very inexpensively here. It seems that every Vietnamese in the town is a dressmaker or seamstress – as was our landlady, Moon. I had a dress made by her during our stay (that's the fabric below right) and Trav had two linen shirts, a pair of smart city trousers, and his old denim shorts that were falling to bits perfectly replicated. We were delighted. You'll see the resulting outfits being worn in an upcoming blog post!

Moon, our landlady, was also an expert tailor and we had our new clothes made to measure

After spending a whole month in Vietnam in Cua Dai and Hoi An, quite spontaneously, we spotted an absolute bargain flight to Seoul in South Korea. 

We immediately called our son James and his wife Sujeong, to ask if they were up for having us come over to see them and our grandson Aaron and the Kang family of South Korean in-laws. Like many of our spontaneous trips – they are booked on the basis of a favourable price – and this flight, in ten days time, was from Hong Kong to Seoul return.

So we just had to plan to be in Hong Kong in time for our flight.

We had been to Hong Kong once before – but only as a transit stop between flights. I fell in love with Hong Kong when I had looked down at the city from our plane and saw it lit up like a Christmas tree as we flew in. So this was our big chance to spend a few days and nights there before flying onto Seoul. 

I’d also always wanted to tag a couple of nights in Macao onto a Hong Kong trip too. Macao, known as the Las Vegas of Asia, was just a one hour ferry from Hong Kong. I could see a fabulous adventure materialising before my eyes!

So we abandoned our plans to explore more of Vietnam and Cambodia (for another time) and we flew back to Kuala Lumpur for a few days - not exactly a direct route to Macao and Hong Kong - but it actually worked out cheaper as all the bargain flights were out of KL. Good job we don't mind flying!

So, at the end of August after spending a whole month in Vietnam, we were back in our Asian hub of Kuala Lumpur for a few days. We relaxed at our favourite hotel just outside the city and we booked flights, hotels, and looked up transport schedules for buses, ferries, and trains in Macao and Hong Kong and South Korea. See, I told you we did a lot of research and planning.

While we were back in KL at this time, through his own research, Trav happened to find the right tattoo artist to do our ‘his and hers half-sleeve travel tattoos’ that we had been talking about doing this year for our thirty-fourth wedding anniversary, and so we jumped at this fabulous window of opportunity.

These are our final fabulous designs for our tattoos.
You see mine (left) has a feather pen to represent my writing.
Trav's (right) has a diver to represent his passion for scuba diving.
Both tattoos have a compass and a map and palm trees and our astro signs.

Please do join me in my next post, where I’ll be excited to show you our fabulous new half-sleeve matching travel tattoos now permanently on our arms!

Love, Janice xx

Adventures in Borneo (1) Kota Kinabalu and The North Borneo Railway

There are two distinct sides to Malaysia. West (Peninsular) Malaysia and East (Borneo) Malaysia and they are separated by the South China Sea.

Trav and have explored most of the Malaysian peninsular including the islands of Penang and Langkawi on the west side and Perhentian Islands on the east but up until now we haven’t ever ventured across to Malaysian Borneo. That all changed when we flew from Kuala Lumpur to the town of Kota Kinabalu.

Kota Kinabalu or KK is known is the capital of the northern part of Borneo and is the gateway to the Kinabalu National Park. Many people come here to climb Mount Kota Kinabalu – but not us – we were here for a train ride!

Riding on the North Borneo Railway is like stepping back in time and travelling through towns and jungle in the heart of Borneo on one of the very few wood-fuelled engines left in the world today. Originally manufactured by the Vulcan Foundry in Newton-le-Willows Lancashire UK and part of a fleet that have plied the tracks through Borneo since the late 1800’s.

We had the most amazing day travelling on this fabulous old steam train re-living the by-gone era of old colonial times. We were given travel 'passports' and they were stamped at every town we went through. We had breakfast on the outbound journey and a traditional 'Tiffin Lunch' on the way back as we passed through town and tunnels and jungle and waved at cheering waving people as we chugged along. It felt so romantic and nostalgic - and steamy hot. The carriage windows were open for the whole time and it felt wonderful once we got up some speed to have a breeze coming into the train along with wafts of wood smoke from the engine. You can find out more about the historic North Borneo Railway on their website HERE.

All aboard the North Borneo Express!

Back in Kota Kinabalu, we spend the first few nights in a budget hotel in town, so we could enjoy the waterfront bars and restaurants.

But after a few days in KK, we wanted to get away from the busy crowds and after spotting an out-of-season offer on Booking.com we moved up the coast a little to stay for a few nights at a fabulous beach resort. It was great to mix up a bit of cheap and basic with a bit of bargain luxury!

After a few days at the beach, we were keen to be back on a plane and to fly a considerable distance across the country to Sandakan in the Sabah region of Borneo.

The reason for this trip was to see Orangutans in the wild at the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre – the precious home of the last wild Orangutans of North Borneo. I was SO excited!

Meeting Orangutans in the wild in Borneo is the subject of my next travel blog post – so please pop back soon - until then I’ll leave you with this sweet photo!

Love, Janice xx