So far we have been to Ko Phi Phi, Ko Tao, and lastly Ko Pha Ngan.
Ko Phi Phi was verrrrrry touristy. No locals besides those working in the tourist industry. It was a bit pricey, but GORGEOUS. There was a spit of flat land with beach on either side that contained all the buildings, and on either side were huge towering limestone mountains. Mike and I rented kayaks one day and kayaked out of one bay to Monkey Beach. We did see one old monkey while we were there. It was nice since there were only a few other people. We spent our time there constructing a person-sized car out of sand. Other than that, just relaxed, ate some good food, and went to some crazy beach bars at night that had people spinning fire batons, hot rope jump (i.e. a burning rope) which both Mike and I tried, and fire limbo. It wasn't as dangerous as you would think, somehow. A bit hot though. Spent 3 days there total.
At Ko Tao we stayed in a very remote cove that you had to take a 4x4 truck over crazy roads to get to. It was really nice, and we stayed in a bungalow with a hammock out front that overlooked the bay, beach and beautiful blossom trees below. Spent our one full day there on a snorkeling trip. The snorkeling was surprisingly very good, almost (but not quite) as good as that in Oz. The coral was beautifully and brightly coloured, yellows and oranges and blues. Lots of fish. One bay had a lot of old waterbottles and some garbage, which was sad. But lots of cool rock formations to swim through.
At Ko Pha Ngan, we spent our first few days at Bottle Beach, which is a remote beach up North that you have to get to by boat. It was a perfect beach paradise. We stayed in a nice bungalow by the beach and spent a lot of time relaxing an reading. Mike participated in nightly soccer games with the locals (my toes had raw blisters from wearing fins, so I sat out). We were very sad to leave, but decided to head south to get in the full moon party spirit. Mike threw his back out this morning, just before we were going to catch a truck into Haad Rin, which is the town where the Full Moon Party is. (Yes, the other recent option to get out of Bottle Beach is to take a 4x4 truck over some very steep, bumpy roads. Not so pleasant for Mike's back...) Fortunately they dropped us off at a clinic in Haad Rin, and I was lucky enough to find cheap accomodation near to the clinic and the beach where the party is. Don't worry, Mike is still able to walk around and he got some pain killers from the clinic. It was pretty good timing, as we will just be laying on the beach for a few days before heading back to Bangkok!
This will probably be the last post of the trip...the full moon party is on the 26th, so we are looking forward to that! The day after we catch transport back to Bangkok, where we spend one more night before our flight home!
Thanks for reading!!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Cambodia
We spent a total of...48 hours in Cambodia. We had mixed feelings about it. First we stopped over at Sihanoukville while waiting for a night bus to Siem Riep. Sihanoukville is a verrrry touristy beach town. I realllly did not like it. The beaches were overcrowded, lined with bars blasting terrible music, and you were constantly bomboarded by beggers and people selling things such as hair wax jobs using dental floss. It was way overpriced too, and we ended up spending more than double or triple on meals than we have anywhere in SE Asia. That was a surprise, since we expected Cambodia to be the cheapest. We think it's because they use the USD as a second currency, so everything is priced by the dollar. Fortunately we weren't in Sihanoukville long.
Siem Riep was very pretty, surrounded by a river/canal thing lined with trees. Sort of reminded me of Chiang Mai. Lots of guesthouses and good restaurants. We ate some DELICIOUS Cambodian food (I ate amok, which was sort of like a less-runny Thai red curry wrapped in banana leaves and served with rice, and Mike had Lok Lak)...I was very sad not to have more time to experience the delicious Cambodian food! Angkor Wat was AMAZING. Beautiful. Huge temples covered in ornate carvings, crumbling temples with faces carved in them or huge jungle trees growing through them. Saw the one in Tomb Raiders. It was one of our favs. We didn't run into as many children begging as we expected, but when we did we were ready with stickers to give them, and they were so cute! They smiled, said thank you, and then ran away. Or asked for one for their younger sibling at home. It turned what could have been an unpleasant experience into a positive one. Oh, and surrounding the temples were vast expanses of jungle with paths running throughout....with monkeys! Tons and tons of monkeys! Lots of parents holding babies. It was soooo cute. One of my favourite parts of visiting Angkor! After a day of temple viewing, we were done and ready to move on, back to Thailand. We left the next morning.
Siem Riep was very pretty, surrounded by a river/canal thing lined with trees. Sort of reminded me of Chiang Mai. Lots of guesthouses and good restaurants. We ate some DELICIOUS Cambodian food (I ate amok, which was sort of like a less-runny Thai red curry wrapped in banana leaves and served with rice, and Mike had Lok Lak)...I was very sad not to have more time to experience the delicious Cambodian food! Angkor Wat was AMAZING. Beautiful. Huge temples covered in ornate carvings, crumbling temples with faces carved in them or huge jungle trees growing through them. Saw the one in Tomb Raiders. It was one of our favs. We didn't run into as many children begging as we expected, but when we did we were ready with stickers to give them, and they were so cute! They smiled, said thank you, and then ran away. Or asked for one for their younger sibling at home. It turned what could have been an unpleasant experience into a positive one. Oh, and surrounding the temples were vast expanses of jungle with paths running throughout....with monkeys! Tons and tons of monkeys! Lots of parents holding babies. It was soooo cute. One of my favourite parts of visiting Angkor! After a day of temple viewing, we were done and ready to move on, back to Thailand. We left the next morning.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Southern Vietnam
Welll....I have a lot to catch up on! I suppose I should start from the beginning...
Hue
Another big city, but delightfully laid back compared to Hanoi. Much less honking, a pretty river running through the middle and a nice backpacker area with delicious restaurants. We only spent one day and night there, but enjoyed it. We walked around old Hue across the river and then hired a little "cyclo" (little cart towed by a bicycle) to drive us around and show us some temples and ruins and things, since it was soooo hot. We saw the citadel, which is a walled in area of temples and ruins. The ruins were due to American bombing. Wandered around some markets too.
Hoi An
Probably my favourite place in Vietnam, this was a very cute little old town with streets lined with tailors (TONS - this is THE place to get custom-made clothes, and there are about 200 tailors...don't know how they all make money!), restaurants, art and lantern shops. It had a very relaxed feel, which was much needed for us. We stayed in a nice hotel with a pool and spent much time relaxing by it during the very hot afternoons. We ate some amazing "Hoi An specialty" food too. My favourite was Cau Lao, a dish with home made noodles, pork, fresh spices and crunchy chip things. I ate it for almost every meal, and unfortunately never saw it again outside of Hoi An! There were also delicious Vietnamese savoury pancakes with meat and sprouts and other veggies, which you wrapped in lettuce and then rice paper, and dipped in a fish sauce.
Mike and I both got clothes made, of course. Mike got a suit made, which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare because at first they made it much too small. Fortunately we had a full other day and a half so we had time to demand changes, and in the end it was pretty decent. I tended to just try on clothes the tailors had on display, and ended up getting a few dresses and skirts and shorts. We spent two nights and three days there, or was it three nights and 4 days? I can't remember. It was really nice though.
I forgot to mention, we caught a few overnight buses along the way down South and they were insanely futuristic. They had three rows of narrow bunk bed type things, but one person's feet were in a little pocket under the other person's nearly fully reclined bed. It was a bit cramped (especially for Mike) but we actually slept quite well on them. I did, at least :). Mike spent his first night on one spooning with two other Canadian guys haha. (Usually there is an aisle between each row, but not at the very back!)
Mui Ne
We skipped Nha Trang, which seemed to us to be like a big touristy Honolulu, and headed straight for quieter Mui Ne. We splurged on a nice beach front room and spent a few days relaxing on the beach, eating and drinking cheap beer. We had wanted to go kite surfing or seadooing, but it was surprisingly expensive ($50/hour for kite surfing, and $60/hr for seadoo).
Ho Chi Minh City a.k.a Saigon
Saigon was quite awesome. A more relaxed, neon, less honking version of Hanoi. We stayed in a very narrow guesthouse down a very narrow alley/road thing (only wide enough for a motorbike). At night we stopped at a local beer place, which was basically a bunch of tables set up on a sidewalk, and drank "bia hoi" (fresh beer, verry low percentage but tasty) with a cool American who had been living in Saigon for 9 months and a bunch of his Vietnamese friends. Bia hoi was 12000 D per litre...i.e. Mike and I drank 5L for about $3!
Next day we went to the War Remnants Museum, which was a museum with lots of pictures and things from the war between Vietnam and the states. Very very disturbing, with very graphic pictures, especially of incredibly deformed kids who were born after the US sprayed toxic gases to kill all Vietnam crops. Definitely an eye opener. We walked back to the hotel and stopped at various local (cheap!) bakeries, electronic stores and markets. We really enjoyed the day.
Mekong Delta
Had a great two day tour of the Mekong Delta, despite a few hiccups which will discuss later. The Mekong Delta basically is a giant network of rivers and deltas/islands/the land near the river banks. It obviously has very fertile soil, so there's lots of agriculture. A lot of the people there are very poor though, and live in little stilt houses along the river bank and bathe/dump trash/swim/transport their goods via the river. The first day we took a boat to an island and stopped at a few cool places there. The first was a bee keeper/honey harvesting place, and we got to sit down and try a few honey candies (such as ginger (gross), peanut brittle (delicious) and some other little round thing I am not sure of...) and honey and lemon tea. Mike tried a snak shot too, which he says was "NOT GOOD". Apparently it had a very long lasting after taste that was even worse, and he actually ate ginger candies (which he also didn't like) to get rid of it. By the way, the snake shot was a snake preserved in some sort of alcohol. They also had scorpion liquor too. Gross.
Then we went to a fruit selling place and got to try several different fruits such as jack fruit, which is one of the largest fruits in the world, and looks like a large, roundish green bumpy thing from the outside. The inside has little orange sections with pits inside. I decided it tasted similar to juicy fruit gum, somehow. While we ate we got to listen to a Vietnamese band play traditional music with all sorts of crazy stringed instruments. Mike discovered that country music is no longer his least favourite. There were lots of clashing notes and the singing was a bit strange, but it was still cool to experience once. Then we got paddled in a little row boat for half an hour through some of the small waterways between the islands, which was very pretty. We also went to a coconut candy making place and got to see how it was made and taste it - quite delicious! That night we stayed in a hotel in Can Tao, which was actually a very large city. We spent the night wandering and found a crazy multi-floored grocery store - the third floor was an arcade! It was packed with people too. Also found some of the cheapest internet ever...3000 dong per hour (i.e. about 15 cents).
Next day we hopped on a boat and went on a tour of the floating market at Can Tao. Tons of farmers pile their boat full of one type of fruit and sell it for wholesale prices. They display what they are selling but hanging one fruit from a very tall upright rod. Then we stopped by a vermicelli noodle making factory, which was a family run business using very traditional methods. First they mix crushed rice with tapioca and boil it over a fire, then spread it like a crepe to create a rice paper type thing, then let the paper dry in the sun on bamboo mats, and then slice it into thin noodles. Very little went to waste - rice husks were burned to fuel the fire, and could then be sold to farmers (in their blackened form) to make food for livestock and possibly fertilizer. We also stopped at a rice husking/grinding factory.
Unfortunately a few things didn't go according to plan as our travel agent had told us it would, and the tour guide told us he wouldn't drop us off at the bus station as we were promised (we wanted to catch a bus down to Rach Gia to get to Phu Quoc) since it was too far from the tour bus route (8km). But he helped us get a more expensive bus to the hotel at least, and we ended up sharing an air con'd van with a broken bench to Rach Gia with some other cool travelers (who we later hung out with at Phu Quoc). We were a little worried since some things already weren't going as our travel agent promised, especially since we also booked ferries to and from Phu Quoc with her and a bus to Siem Riep (some of which we didn't have tickets for yet), but everything ended up working out very smoothly.
We didn't do much in Rach Gia except use it as a port to Phu Quoc. It was very un-touristy and no one spoke English, our hotel included. But we managed to find a post office and mail some things (although mailing stuff in Communist countries is apparently a huge pain in the ass...they check everything you are sending very carefully and make you document it all in great detail...and they didn't speak a word of English!) and we had some tasty vermicelli from a roadside vendor.
Phu Quoc
Phu Quoc was really nice - an undeveloped gorgeous beach island. We stayed in a great little place on the beach with really excellent staff. Our favourite, Hao (sp?), served us beers on the beach in our lawn chairs and got us to teach him some English phrases. And there were tons of dogs running around, including 3 cute puppies, which I loved. The bungalow we stayed in was really nice, and the resort had a beachfront restaurant which served great food.
We spent the first two days exploring the island along its undeveloped dirt roads via motorbike. Day 1 we went to Sao Beach, which is a gorgeous beach with pristine, calm turquoise waters, white sand and palm trees. We stopped at a fishing village in the south (the least touristy place in Vietnam thus far), which smelled pretty bad. (I think due to all the dried seafood sold along the road?) Day 2 we road up North along some slightly crazier, bumpy roads. We spent some time at a secluded beach where we saw not one other person. It was very nice, except I stepped on a sea urchin (I think, it left a bit of a whitish spine in my foot at first) which was fairly unpleasant. Fortunately it didn't bleed/sting much after I got out of the water. Then, as we drove up to the Northern most fishing village, we found out our bike's tires were flat. We had managed to pull over right in front of a motorbike mechanic so he fixed our tire. However, shortly after we left, our other tire blew, so we had to drive back and get that one fixed. Then again about 5 minutes down the road, the back tire blew again (this time the valve patch just blew straight off...perhaps a crappy tube or they overfilled the tire?) It was a VERY frustrating experience (although the locals, who were very difficult to communicate with because of the language barrier, thought it was hilarious) and we ended up not getting home until 6pm, but we had a very nice dinner/drinks with the friends we met previously afterward, which made up for it. The next day we abstained from the motorbike and spent the whole day relaxing on the beach. It was great.
The next morning we caught a ferry to Ha Tien and then a bus to Cambodia...more on that later!
Hue
Another big city, but delightfully laid back compared to Hanoi. Much less honking, a pretty river running through the middle and a nice backpacker area with delicious restaurants. We only spent one day and night there, but enjoyed it. We walked around old Hue across the river and then hired a little "cyclo" (little cart towed by a bicycle) to drive us around and show us some temples and ruins and things, since it was soooo hot. We saw the citadel, which is a walled in area of temples and ruins. The ruins were due to American bombing. Wandered around some markets too.
Hoi An
Probably my favourite place in Vietnam, this was a very cute little old town with streets lined with tailors (TONS - this is THE place to get custom-made clothes, and there are about 200 tailors...don't know how they all make money!), restaurants, art and lantern shops. It had a very relaxed feel, which was much needed for us. We stayed in a nice hotel with a pool and spent much time relaxing by it during the very hot afternoons. We ate some amazing "Hoi An specialty" food too. My favourite was Cau Lao, a dish with home made noodles, pork, fresh spices and crunchy chip things. I ate it for almost every meal, and unfortunately never saw it again outside of Hoi An! There were also delicious Vietnamese savoury pancakes with meat and sprouts and other veggies, which you wrapped in lettuce and then rice paper, and dipped in a fish sauce.
Mike and I both got clothes made, of course. Mike got a suit made, which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare because at first they made it much too small. Fortunately we had a full other day and a half so we had time to demand changes, and in the end it was pretty decent. I tended to just try on clothes the tailors had on display, and ended up getting a few dresses and skirts and shorts. We spent two nights and three days there, or was it three nights and 4 days? I can't remember. It was really nice though.
I forgot to mention, we caught a few overnight buses along the way down South and they were insanely futuristic. They had three rows of narrow bunk bed type things, but one person's feet were in a little pocket under the other person's nearly fully reclined bed. It was a bit cramped (especially for Mike) but we actually slept quite well on them. I did, at least :). Mike spent his first night on one spooning with two other Canadian guys haha. (Usually there is an aisle between each row, but not at the very back!)
Mui Ne
We skipped Nha Trang, which seemed to us to be like a big touristy Honolulu, and headed straight for quieter Mui Ne. We splurged on a nice beach front room and spent a few days relaxing on the beach, eating and drinking cheap beer. We had wanted to go kite surfing or seadooing, but it was surprisingly expensive ($50/hour for kite surfing, and $60/hr for seadoo).
Ho Chi Minh City a.k.a Saigon
Saigon was quite awesome. A more relaxed, neon, less honking version of Hanoi. We stayed in a very narrow guesthouse down a very narrow alley/road thing (only wide enough for a motorbike). At night we stopped at a local beer place, which was basically a bunch of tables set up on a sidewalk, and drank "bia hoi" (fresh beer, verry low percentage but tasty) with a cool American who had been living in Saigon for 9 months and a bunch of his Vietnamese friends. Bia hoi was 12000 D per litre...i.e. Mike and I drank 5L for about $3!
Next day we went to the War Remnants Museum, which was a museum with lots of pictures and things from the war between Vietnam and the states. Very very disturbing, with very graphic pictures, especially of incredibly deformed kids who were born after the US sprayed toxic gases to kill all Vietnam crops. Definitely an eye opener. We walked back to the hotel and stopped at various local (cheap!) bakeries, electronic stores and markets. We really enjoyed the day.
Mekong Delta
Had a great two day tour of the Mekong Delta, despite a few hiccups which will discuss later. The Mekong Delta basically is a giant network of rivers and deltas/islands/the land near the river banks. It obviously has very fertile soil, so there's lots of agriculture. A lot of the people there are very poor though, and live in little stilt houses along the river bank and bathe/dump trash/swim/transport their goods via the river. The first day we took a boat to an island and stopped at a few cool places there. The first was a bee keeper/honey harvesting place, and we got to sit down and try a few honey candies (such as ginger (gross), peanut brittle (delicious) and some other little round thing I am not sure of...) and honey and lemon tea. Mike tried a snak shot too, which he says was "NOT GOOD". Apparently it had a very long lasting after taste that was even worse, and he actually ate ginger candies (which he also didn't like) to get rid of it. By the way, the snake shot was a snake preserved in some sort of alcohol. They also had scorpion liquor too. Gross.
Then we went to a fruit selling place and got to try several different fruits such as jack fruit, which is one of the largest fruits in the world, and looks like a large, roundish green bumpy thing from the outside. The inside has little orange sections with pits inside. I decided it tasted similar to juicy fruit gum, somehow. While we ate we got to listen to a Vietnamese band play traditional music with all sorts of crazy stringed instruments. Mike discovered that country music is no longer his least favourite. There were lots of clashing notes and the singing was a bit strange, but it was still cool to experience once. Then we got paddled in a little row boat for half an hour through some of the small waterways between the islands, which was very pretty. We also went to a coconut candy making place and got to see how it was made and taste it - quite delicious! That night we stayed in a hotel in Can Tao, which was actually a very large city. We spent the night wandering and found a crazy multi-floored grocery store - the third floor was an arcade! It was packed with people too. Also found some of the cheapest internet ever...3000 dong per hour (i.e. about 15 cents).
Next day we hopped on a boat and went on a tour of the floating market at Can Tao. Tons of farmers pile their boat full of one type of fruit and sell it for wholesale prices. They display what they are selling but hanging one fruit from a very tall upright rod. Then we stopped by a vermicelli noodle making factory, which was a family run business using very traditional methods. First they mix crushed rice with tapioca and boil it over a fire, then spread it like a crepe to create a rice paper type thing, then let the paper dry in the sun on bamboo mats, and then slice it into thin noodles. Very little went to waste - rice husks were burned to fuel the fire, and could then be sold to farmers (in their blackened form) to make food for livestock and possibly fertilizer. We also stopped at a rice husking/grinding factory.
Unfortunately a few things didn't go according to plan as our travel agent had told us it would, and the tour guide told us he wouldn't drop us off at the bus station as we were promised (we wanted to catch a bus down to Rach Gia to get to Phu Quoc) since it was too far from the tour bus route (8km). But he helped us get a more expensive bus to the hotel at least, and we ended up sharing an air con'd van with a broken bench to Rach Gia with some other cool travelers (who we later hung out with at Phu Quoc). We were a little worried since some things already weren't going as our travel agent promised, especially since we also booked ferries to and from Phu Quoc with her and a bus to Siem Riep (some of which we didn't have tickets for yet), but everything ended up working out very smoothly.
We didn't do much in Rach Gia except use it as a port to Phu Quoc. It was very un-touristy and no one spoke English, our hotel included. But we managed to find a post office and mail some things (although mailing stuff in Communist countries is apparently a huge pain in the ass...they check everything you are sending very carefully and make you document it all in great detail...and they didn't speak a word of English!) and we had some tasty vermicelli from a roadside vendor.
Phu Quoc
Phu Quoc was really nice - an undeveloped gorgeous beach island. We stayed in a great little place on the beach with really excellent staff. Our favourite, Hao (sp?), served us beers on the beach in our lawn chairs and got us to teach him some English phrases. And there were tons of dogs running around, including 3 cute puppies, which I loved. The bungalow we stayed in was really nice, and the resort had a beachfront restaurant which served great food.
We spent the first two days exploring the island along its undeveloped dirt roads via motorbike. Day 1 we went to Sao Beach, which is a gorgeous beach with pristine, calm turquoise waters, white sand and palm trees. We stopped at a fishing village in the south (the least touristy place in Vietnam thus far), which smelled pretty bad. (I think due to all the dried seafood sold along the road?) Day 2 we road up North along some slightly crazier, bumpy roads. We spent some time at a secluded beach where we saw not one other person. It was very nice, except I stepped on a sea urchin (I think, it left a bit of a whitish spine in my foot at first) which was fairly unpleasant. Fortunately it didn't bleed/sting much after I got out of the water. Then, as we drove up to the Northern most fishing village, we found out our bike's tires were flat. We had managed to pull over right in front of a motorbike mechanic so he fixed our tire. However, shortly after we left, our other tire blew, so we had to drive back and get that one fixed. Then again about 5 minutes down the road, the back tire blew again (this time the valve patch just blew straight off...perhaps a crappy tube or they overfilled the tire?) It was a VERY frustrating experience (although the locals, who were very difficult to communicate with because of the language barrier, thought it was hilarious) and we ended up not getting home until 6pm, but we had a very nice dinner/drinks with the friends we met previously afterward, which made up for it. The next day we abstained from the motorbike and spent the whole day relaxing on the beach. It was great.
The next morning we caught a ferry to Ha Tien and then a bus to Cambodia...more on that later!
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Northern Vietnam (Sapa, Halong Bay and Ninh Binh/Tam Coc)
Well, so far we can say we've had a very bitter sweet experience in the North of Vietnam. Some people have been just great, and other experiences have been pretty bad. Let's start with the good though...
Sapa
Perfume (the lady at our guesthouse) booked us on a great Sapa tour and pretty decent Halong Bay tour, and gave us a good price on each. For the Sapa tour, we took an overnight sleeper train. (So nice! not used to having beds with pillows and blankets to sleep on! Had two other Vietnamese guys sharing our berth, who were nice although slurped chicken feet for about an hour when they first got on - gross!) Then took a mini bus from Lao Cai to Sapa, passing beautiful scenery on the way. Huge mountains and rice fields. In Sapa we were dropped off at a really nice hotel where we ate an amazing buffet breakfast before heading out on our trek. As soon as we got off the bus we were surrounded by little ladies from the local tribes who were dressed in traditional clothing, and they ended up following us on our trek too. They walk with you the whole way and help you on the slippery parts in hopes that you will buy something from them after. They were actually quite funny and it wasn't as annoying as we expected it would be. They all asked the same three questions - "Where you from? What your name? How old are you?" The lady who chose to focus on me was named Za, and she was pretty cool. 50 years old but looked whithered enough to be 70 or 80. She made me a few little gifts out of grass and flowers along the way, and helped me from bailing into a rice pool at one point (the trails we walked on were VERY slippery and muddy as it rained a lot up there, and sometimes you had to walk on little rock ledges between rice paddy terraces/pools). So we didn't feel too bad buying a souvenir from her at the bottom. She deserved it. All of the ladies sell about the same 7 souvenirs. Same colour, everything. I think she liked us, as she gave us free bracelets afterwards. Either that or she was marking us as suckers. :)
We hiked to our guide and Za's village for lunch (Lo Chai? Lai Chao?) and fortunately no other village ladies followed us after that. Then we hiked to the Te Van village to our homestay where we would spend the night. It was really more like an inn for travelers, which was kind of weird, but we still get a cool experience of watching the people in the village pass by with all their animals, and there were chickens and all sorts of animals running around our homestay, including a pack of about 8 puppies!!! They were soooo cute. I spent most of the night playing with them. There was also an old pool table and some games to entertain us.
Our guide, Chi, was AWESOME. She was sooo funny. Spoke very good English and would say just the funniest English phrases, like "bloody hell". She was a cute little 25 year old with a gold tooth who again looked older, and would yell at us to "slow down! My legs are too short! Your legs are long!" She called Mike a cheeky monkey at one point. Mike and I joked around with her all the time, and she loved us. She really made the trip for us.
The second day we hiked to another village and a waterfall (not that impressive), then back to the hotel to spend the night there. It was a very deluxe room, with a jet shower! I have never even seen one of those before! For the last day, we hiked in the POURING rain to Cat Cat village and another waterfall. This time we stopped in one of the village houses (very dark, no windows, and smoky since they cook over the fire, a lot had TVs), and got to see the old fashioned machines they use to remove the shell of rice and corn off the cob.
All in all we really enjoyed the tour. We had one sour moment though upon return to Hanoi, when our hotel forgot to pick us up from the train station at 5:30 am in the morning. And of course I had lost the little hotel business card and we had left the map at the hotel, and turns out none of the taxi or motorcycle drivers know where F Hotel is! (Although they try to get you to hop in anyway, which is ridiculous.) So we had to walk there blindly, and it ended up taking us an hour and a half since we got lost a few times and didn't know exactly where it was. It was brutal. When we arrived at the hotel, Perfume's brother was there (sleeping) and realized he had forgotten to come get us, and was very sorry. Clearly not as competent as Perfume. He took $5 off our Halong Bay trip, which we fortunately were still able to book for an hour and a half later.
Halong Bay
Our Halong Bay tour was also quite good, although you always feel like you are being hearded from vehicle to boat to vehicle/etc, so it's not very relaxing and there's a fair bit of waiting around. It's amazing how many different people and companies these tours coordinate in order to transport you around and do the various activities. First we took a bus to Halong City, where we then caught a gorgeous "junk" boat out to Halong Bay. It was so nice, our bedroom was big (for a boat), air conditioned and had its own bathroom, the top deck had lawn chairs, etc. We were served fresh sea food for all of our meals, including large prawns, fish and shellfish. Oh, and delicious crab cakes cooked in half the shell too.
Halong Bay was gorgeous, although very un-environmentally friendly. There were locals who lived in little floaty houses on the water, and they just threw their garbage into the water! There were lots of plastic bags and water bottles floating around all over the place, it was really a shame. Especially for a world heritage sight. People seem to have very little regard for the environment here, which really bothers me. There were TONS of boats in Halong bay so it felt very touristy, but it was still beautiful, with tons of little limestone karst islands. The first day we went to a cave that was also very touristy, all sorts of coloured lights shining on the various structures. Still a very amazing cave though. Then we stopped on an island with a lookout point you could hike up to and a beach where we swam. The water didn't seem too bad there. That night we slept on the boat.
The next day, we went to Cat Ba island (the only populated island in Halong Bay). A very slow boat took us through the karsts near Cat Ba, which turned out to be even more beautiful and much less touristed (we only saw maybe one other tour boat) than those in the rest of Halong Bay...however, there were far more locals living there who had fish farms, and so the water was even dirtier than before! We stopped at "Monkey Island", where Mike and I hiked up this path to a lookout. There was a very old monkey sitting right in the middle of the path about halfway up, and he wouldn't move! We just had to walk past him! It was so funny! Fortunately he didn't attack us or try to steal anything from us. We saw a few other monkeys later on by the beach.
After that we went biking on Cat Ba to a little village, and from there hiked through the jungle to a cave. Then we went and had dinner/stayed in a very nice hotel on Cat Ba. It was normally $65 a night, which is really expensive here! Our whole tour only cost us $85! It was also a very good tour, but by the end we got really tired of the same food for every meal (which was pretty much the same in Sapa - rice, greens, stir fry, prawns and spring rolls). We vowed not to eat rice again for the next few days we are so sick of it, and went for a good old Western pizza when we returned to Hanoi. It was delicious. Hanoi was a bit nicer when we returned, now that we were getting used to the pace and crossing crazy traffic streets. We walked along the lake and it had all sorts of pretty, coloured lanterns hanging from the trees. We had delicious icecream too. However, we were still very ready to move on further South.
Ninh Binh/Tam Coc
Perfume tried for a long time to convince us to book an open bus tour with her, and I think she was pretty choked when we wouldn't. We looked up the company she was selling us, Camel, and read in hundreds of blogs about the horrible experiences people had with their open bus tours. She seemed to genuinely think it was ok, but we just had to go with the advice from other travelers. I think she was annoyed with us because the bus she booked us on for Ninh Binh was overpriced and turned out to be a tour! Mike and I had to stop with them at these temples at Hoa Lu (the ancient capital of Vietnam) for 45 minutes, and even though we weren't that interested we didn't want to wait around, and so we had to pay extra money to go with them. Then they dropped us off on the edge of Ninh Binh city and we had to walk for at least 15-20 minutes just to find someone who could speak English! We were feeling a little bit fed up with Northern Vietnam and all the scams, so we decided we would just spend the day at Tam Coc and then take an overnight bus south to Hue. Apparently people in the south are more relaxed, nicer and don't try to scam you as much.
Fortunately we found a nice guy at a hotel who booked us on an overnight sleeper bus (only 50% more expensive than what should have been a 2 hour bus we took from Hanoi to Ninh Binh!) rented us bicycles to bike to Tam Coc, let us store our bags for the day and let us shower afterwards! Even better, another very nice guy at the hotel offered to bike with us and show us the way through the local village streets and alleys, for free! This is SO rare in Vietnam! We thought for sure there would be some catch, but he just biked with us the whole time, and even waited for us when we stopped for each activity! He even refused to let us pay for parking our bikes at the pagoda (he paid) and refused to let us buy him a beer/drink after! It was really nice, and we totally appreciated it, especially after our horrible experience on the river boat....
Tam Coc is basically Halong Bay inland, on a river. The best way to explore it is to have a little lady row you in a row boat 4 km down the river and through the caves on route. So that's what we did. And it was absolutely gorgeous, with rice fields on either side and large, towering limestone karsts. I may have even liked it better than Halong Bay. However, we were wondering why all the tourists heading back in the other direction (the ones on the day tours from Hanoi) had sour looks on their faces. We soon found out. When we reached the turn around point, we were the only boat in the river besides boats selling drinks and things. First, some lady came up to us and pressured us to buy a drink for our rower. We thought, why not, even though it was overpriced, we'll be nice. It was a long way to row. Then about 2 minutes later our rower lady stopped and started hounding us to buy something from her. Everything she was offering was WAY overpriced, up to $20!! We didn't want any of it. We tried to just tip her a smaller amount, but she would not accept nor relent with her sales pitches. Worse, all the ladies around started pressuring us too. We only had 200000 D on us for the rest of the day, still had to buy dinner and water, and the ATMs don't work on sundays! We showed her what we had, yet still she kept saying 300000 D and 250000 D! She refused to row until we finally bought something from her for 60000. We barely had enough to pay for dinner, and we have nothing left over for arriving in Hue tomorrow. It was really a horrible experience, and we felt totally cornered, because the only way back to solid ground was down a 4km river. At the end she wanted a tip too, but we refused. Had we not had such a fantastic bicycle guide, it really would have soured us to Vietnam (still did a bit).
After the river trip we went to a pagoda nestled against the limestone karsts, and it was so beautiful! The whole place was really magical. It would have been nice to have more time to explore the area, but we are just really done with Northern Vietnam and had already booked our bus trip south. The hotel has been great to us since (free internet), and we will definitely recommend them to other travelers. But on to Hue! Hope our sleeper bus is what we were told it is!
Sapa
Perfume (the lady at our guesthouse) booked us on a great Sapa tour and pretty decent Halong Bay tour, and gave us a good price on each. For the Sapa tour, we took an overnight sleeper train. (So nice! not used to having beds with pillows and blankets to sleep on! Had two other Vietnamese guys sharing our berth, who were nice although slurped chicken feet for about an hour when they first got on - gross!) Then took a mini bus from Lao Cai to Sapa, passing beautiful scenery on the way. Huge mountains and rice fields. In Sapa we were dropped off at a really nice hotel where we ate an amazing buffet breakfast before heading out on our trek. As soon as we got off the bus we were surrounded by little ladies from the local tribes who were dressed in traditional clothing, and they ended up following us on our trek too. They walk with you the whole way and help you on the slippery parts in hopes that you will buy something from them after. They were actually quite funny and it wasn't as annoying as we expected it would be. They all asked the same three questions - "Where you from? What your name? How old are you?" The lady who chose to focus on me was named Za, and she was pretty cool. 50 years old but looked whithered enough to be 70 or 80. She made me a few little gifts out of grass and flowers along the way, and helped me from bailing into a rice pool at one point (the trails we walked on were VERY slippery and muddy as it rained a lot up there, and sometimes you had to walk on little rock ledges between rice paddy terraces/pools). So we didn't feel too bad buying a souvenir from her at the bottom. She deserved it. All of the ladies sell about the same 7 souvenirs. Same colour, everything. I think she liked us, as she gave us free bracelets afterwards. Either that or she was marking us as suckers. :)
We hiked to our guide and Za's village for lunch (Lo Chai? Lai Chao?) and fortunately no other village ladies followed us after that. Then we hiked to the Te Van village to our homestay where we would spend the night. It was really more like an inn for travelers, which was kind of weird, but we still get a cool experience of watching the people in the village pass by with all their animals, and there were chickens and all sorts of animals running around our homestay, including a pack of about 8 puppies!!! They were soooo cute. I spent most of the night playing with them. There was also an old pool table and some games to entertain us.
Our guide, Chi, was AWESOME. She was sooo funny. Spoke very good English and would say just the funniest English phrases, like "bloody hell". She was a cute little 25 year old with a gold tooth who again looked older, and would yell at us to "slow down! My legs are too short! Your legs are long!" She called Mike a cheeky monkey at one point. Mike and I joked around with her all the time, and she loved us. She really made the trip for us.
The second day we hiked to another village and a waterfall (not that impressive), then back to the hotel to spend the night there. It was a very deluxe room, with a jet shower! I have never even seen one of those before! For the last day, we hiked in the POURING rain to Cat Cat village and another waterfall. This time we stopped in one of the village houses (very dark, no windows, and smoky since they cook over the fire, a lot had TVs), and got to see the old fashioned machines they use to remove the shell of rice and corn off the cob.
All in all we really enjoyed the tour. We had one sour moment though upon return to Hanoi, when our hotel forgot to pick us up from the train station at 5:30 am in the morning. And of course I had lost the little hotel business card and we had left the map at the hotel, and turns out none of the taxi or motorcycle drivers know where F Hotel is! (Although they try to get you to hop in anyway, which is ridiculous.) So we had to walk there blindly, and it ended up taking us an hour and a half since we got lost a few times and didn't know exactly where it was. It was brutal. When we arrived at the hotel, Perfume's brother was there (sleeping) and realized he had forgotten to come get us, and was very sorry. Clearly not as competent as Perfume. He took $5 off our Halong Bay trip, which we fortunately were still able to book for an hour and a half later.
Halong Bay
Our Halong Bay tour was also quite good, although you always feel like you are being hearded from vehicle to boat to vehicle/etc, so it's not very relaxing and there's a fair bit of waiting around. It's amazing how many different people and companies these tours coordinate in order to transport you around and do the various activities. First we took a bus to Halong City, where we then caught a gorgeous "junk" boat out to Halong Bay. It was so nice, our bedroom was big (for a boat), air conditioned and had its own bathroom, the top deck had lawn chairs, etc. We were served fresh sea food for all of our meals, including large prawns, fish and shellfish. Oh, and delicious crab cakes cooked in half the shell too.
Halong Bay was gorgeous, although very un-environmentally friendly. There were locals who lived in little floaty houses on the water, and they just threw their garbage into the water! There were lots of plastic bags and water bottles floating around all over the place, it was really a shame. Especially for a world heritage sight. People seem to have very little regard for the environment here, which really bothers me. There were TONS of boats in Halong bay so it felt very touristy, but it was still beautiful, with tons of little limestone karst islands. The first day we went to a cave that was also very touristy, all sorts of coloured lights shining on the various structures. Still a very amazing cave though. Then we stopped on an island with a lookout point you could hike up to and a beach where we swam. The water didn't seem too bad there. That night we slept on the boat.
The next day, we went to Cat Ba island (the only populated island in Halong Bay). A very slow boat took us through the karsts near Cat Ba, which turned out to be even more beautiful and much less touristed (we only saw maybe one other tour boat) than those in the rest of Halong Bay...however, there were far more locals living there who had fish farms, and so the water was even dirtier than before! We stopped at "Monkey Island", where Mike and I hiked up this path to a lookout. There was a very old monkey sitting right in the middle of the path about halfway up, and he wouldn't move! We just had to walk past him! It was so funny! Fortunately he didn't attack us or try to steal anything from us. We saw a few other monkeys later on by the beach.
After that we went biking on Cat Ba to a little village, and from there hiked through the jungle to a cave. Then we went and had dinner/stayed in a very nice hotel on Cat Ba. It was normally $65 a night, which is really expensive here! Our whole tour only cost us $85! It was also a very good tour, but by the end we got really tired of the same food for every meal (which was pretty much the same in Sapa - rice, greens, stir fry, prawns and spring rolls). We vowed not to eat rice again for the next few days we are so sick of it, and went for a good old Western pizza when we returned to Hanoi. It was delicious. Hanoi was a bit nicer when we returned, now that we were getting used to the pace and crossing crazy traffic streets. We walked along the lake and it had all sorts of pretty, coloured lanterns hanging from the trees. We had delicious icecream too. However, we were still very ready to move on further South.
Ninh Binh/Tam Coc
Perfume tried for a long time to convince us to book an open bus tour with her, and I think she was pretty choked when we wouldn't. We looked up the company she was selling us, Camel, and read in hundreds of blogs about the horrible experiences people had with their open bus tours. She seemed to genuinely think it was ok, but we just had to go with the advice from other travelers. I think she was annoyed with us because the bus she booked us on for Ninh Binh was overpriced and turned out to be a tour! Mike and I had to stop with them at these temples at Hoa Lu (the ancient capital of Vietnam) for 45 minutes, and even though we weren't that interested we didn't want to wait around, and so we had to pay extra money to go with them. Then they dropped us off on the edge of Ninh Binh city and we had to walk for at least 15-20 minutes just to find someone who could speak English! We were feeling a little bit fed up with Northern Vietnam and all the scams, so we decided we would just spend the day at Tam Coc and then take an overnight bus south to Hue. Apparently people in the south are more relaxed, nicer and don't try to scam you as much.
Fortunately we found a nice guy at a hotel who booked us on an overnight sleeper bus (only 50% more expensive than what should have been a 2 hour bus we took from Hanoi to Ninh Binh!) rented us bicycles to bike to Tam Coc, let us store our bags for the day and let us shower afterwards! Even better, another very nice guy at the hotel offered to bike with us and show us the way through the local village streets and alleys, for free! This is SO rare in Vietnam! We thought for sure there would be some catch, but he just biked with us the whole time, and even waited for us when we stopped for each activity! He even refused to let us pay for parking our bikes at the pagoda (he paid) and refused to let us buy him a beer/drink after! It was really nice, and we totally appreciated it, especially after our horrible experience on the river boat....
Tam Coc is basically Halong Bay inland, on a river. The best way to explore it is to have a little lady row you in a row boat 4 km down the river and through the caves on route. So that's what we did. And it was absolutely gorgeous, with rice fields on either side and large, towering limestone karsts. I may have even liked it better than Halong Bay. However, we were wondering why all the tourists heading back in the other direction (the ones on the day tours from Hanoi) had sour looks on their faces. We soon found out. When we reached the turn around point, we were the only boat in the river besides boats selling drinks and things. First, some lady came up to us and pressured us to buy a drink for our rower. We thought, why not, even though it was overpriced, we'll be nice. It was a long way to row. Then about 2 minutes later our rower lady stopped and started hounding us to buy something from her. Everything she was offering was WAY overpriced, up to $20!! We didn't want any of it. We tried to just tip her a smaller amount, but she would not accept nor relent with her sales pitches. Worse, all the ladies around started pressuring us too. We only had 200000 D on us for the rest of the day, still had to buy dinner and water, and the ATMs don't work on sundays! We showed her what we had, yet still she kept saying 300000 D and 250000 D! She refused to row until we finally bought something from her for 60000. We barely had enough to pay for dinner, and we have nothing left over for arriving in Hue tomorrow. It was really a horrible experience, and we felt totally cornered, because the only way back to solid ground was down a 4km river. At the end she wanted a tip too, but we refused. Had we not had such a fantastic bicycle guide, it really would have soured us to Vietnam (still did a bit).
After the river trip we went to a pagoda nestled against the limestone karsts, and it was so beautiful! The whole place was really magical. It would have been nice to have more time to explore the area, but we are just really done with Northern Vietnam and had already booked our bus trip south. The hotel has been great to us since (free internet), and we will definitely recommend them to other travelers. But on to Hue! Hope our sleeper bus is what we were told it is!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Hanoi, Vietnam and end of Laos
Fortunately we ended up feeling better for the Gibbon Experience, and it was awesome!! Everything we hoped it would be. Mike and I had a treehouse to ourselves with running drinking water, a shower, hammock, snacks...it was awesome. Oh, and no climbing up to it, you had to zipline in and out! Meals, although a bit bland, were served to our treehouse. They pretty much gave us a harness and let us roam free on the ziplines all day, except when the guides took us hiking. Our guide showed us all the plants in the jungle they eat/use for medicine too. We got up really early one morning after a crazy thunder storm and saw gibbons! There were at least 3 of them, two black males and one light brown female. All of the people we met on the gibbon exp were really awesome too, and we ended up hanging out with some of them after in Luang Prabang too.
Back in Luang Prabang, this time able to explore, we went to a nearby waterfall that was AMAZING. It was a multi-tiered waterfall with various swimming holes throughout and turquoise water. Mike was convinced it was fake, it was so beautiful. We also went to the night market and out with our Kiwi friends at night. Oh, at an internet cafe my camera was stolen, so that is very sad :(. I accidentally left it for 20 min there after uploading pics, and when I came back only my camera cord was left behind :(. Fortunately I had just finished backing all of my pics on my USB, so no pics lost. Thank god.
After Luang Prabang we took a slow boat up the Nam Ou river to Nohn Khiaw, a gorgeous little town nestled between huge limestone mountains, with the river running through the middle. It was so cool seeing the locals fishing, the kids swimming and the buffalo sitting in the water. The kids seemed to be having SO much fun, it was a really happy place to be. The town itself was very small, only had one paved road (the rest dirt) and a couple of guesthouses/restaurants. Mike and I stayed in a bungalow with a balcony with hammocks that overlooked the river. It was like paradise, very peaceful. And the people were SO nice, they always smiled and said hello when we passed.
On our second day there we were walking up to some nearby caves when we saw a girl fall off a bicycle while doubling with another girl. She was unconscious on the ground, so Mike and I ran over to help. Mike carried her and we lay her down at a house and checked for breathing/etc. They really didn't know much about first aid there. After about 5-10 minutes she stirred awake, but then passed out again. The people gave her some drink which woke her up again, and when Mike asked what it was, we were told via charades that it was PEE. Gross! Did the trick of waking her up though :S. After her dad came and picked her up and we went with them to the "hospital" (not much there), where she was given medicine and looked at by a doctor. The dad and family were very thankful towards us.
Came back via local bus (very packed, shared with several sacks of rice and veggies and some animal...a guinea pig?) and then a tuk tuk which ran out of gas 2 minutes after we started driving...quite the travel experience. Oh, and Mike got puked on by some lady in the bus who was sitting in the front seat. And the bus wasn't actually a bus, it was a covered truck bed with seating on either side. Not very comfortable, but very cheap! I thought it was a cool experience, although Mike (for very good reasons!) did not enjoy it. We may not be taking one of those again for a while.
Same day caught a flight to Hanoi in Vietnam via Lao Airlines, which is supposed to be unsafe at times but it was no problem for us.
Now Hanoi....what a crazy crazy place. This is definitely an Asian city. Very fast paced, horns are used every 3 seconds by each and every car and motorbike on the road. Sidewalks are a place for people to spread their wares to sell or are used as a parking lot for motorbikes. There pretty much is no road line system, just a massive free for all. It is absolute madness. Cool experience though, very different from slow paced Lao. Mike and I have already been scammed twice, once by a taxi meter that miraculously jumped by 40000 dong when we weren't looking, and another time when we were eating hot pot at the night market. They told us the whole hot pot was 150000dong, and then served us plates of mushrooms/etc to put in it and charged us extra. Fortunately some nice English-speaking Vietnamese guy heard us arguing with the people and he helped us reason with them, and in the end we didn't have to pay for the extra plates. Thank god for that guy, the price was about double it was supposed to be! Oh, the night market was pretty cool. Mike and I bought sun glasses.
We are staying in a hotel with a SUPER nice, cute lady who owns it. She serves us fresh lemonade when we're thirsty, and breakfast! She was so good to us we booked a 3 day Sapa trek through her, and we leave tonight via overnight train. Hope it goes well!
Oh, and today in Hanoi we went to The Temple of Literature, which is some cool old bit of architecture where Confucious students (used to?) study. We also went to the Museum of Ethnology and learned about Vietnamese and all the hill tribes' culture. We saw some crazy water puppet show there, which is basically a puppet show in the middle of a lake with swimming puppets, created in Vietnam I think. We couldn't understand what they were saying, but still amusing.
PS!!! For those of you who read this, facebook is banned in Vietnam so you'll have to contact us via email (or the blog)! Mine is smeyers@ualberta.ca and Mike's is stick_man000@hotmail.com.
Back in Luang Prabang, this time able to explore, we went to a nearby waterfall that was AMAZING. It was a multi-tiered waterfall with various swimming holes throughout and turquoise water. Mike was convinced it was fake, it was so beautiful. We also went to the night market and out with our Kiwi friends at night. Oh, at an internet cafe my camera was stolen, so that is very sad :(. I accidentally left it for 20 min there after uploading pics, and when I came back only my camera cord was left behind :(. Fortunately I had just finished backing all of my pics on my USB, so no pics lost. Thank god.
After Luang Prabang we took a slow boat up the Nam Ou river to Nohn Khiaw, a gorgeous little town nestled between huge limestone mountains, with the river running through the middle. It was so cool seeing the locals fishing, the kids swimming and the buffalo sitting in the water. The kids seemed to be having SO much fun, it was a really happy place to be. The town itself was very small, only had one paved road (the rest dirt) and a couple of guesthouses/restaurants. Mike and I stayed in a bungalow with a balcony with hammocks that overlooked the river. It was like paradise, very peaceful. And the people were SO nice, they always smiled and said hello when we passed.
On our second day there we were walking up to some nearby caves when we saw a girl fall off a bicycle while doubling with another girl. She was unconscious on the ground, so Mike and I ran over to help. Mike carried her and we lay her down at a house and checked for breathing/etc. They really didn't know much about first aid there. After about 5-10 minutes she stirred awake, but then passed out again. The people gave her some drink which woke her up again, and when Mike asked what it was, we were told via charades that it was PEE. Gross! Did the trick of waking her up though :S. After her dad came and picked her up and we went with them to the "hospital" (not much there), where she was given medicine and looked at by a doctor. The dad and family were very thankful towards us.
Came back via local bus (very packed, shared with several sacks of rice and veggies and some animal...a guinea pig?) and then a tuk tuk which ran out of gas 2 minutes after we started driving...quite the travel experience. Oh, and Mike got puked on by some lady in the bus who was sitting in the front seat. And the bus wasn't actually a bus, it was a covered truck bed with seating on either side. Not very comfortable, but very cheap! I thought it was a cool experience, although Mike (for very good reasons!) did not enjoy it. We may not be taking one of those again for a while.
Same day caught a flight to Hanoi in Vietnam via Lao Airlines, which is supposed to be unsafe at times but it was no problem for us.
Now Hanoi....what a crazy crazy place. This is definitely an Asian city. Very fast paced, horns are used every 3 seconds by each and every car and motorbike on the road. Sidewalks are a place for people to spread their wares to sell or are used as a parking lot for motorbikes. There pretty much is no road line system, just a massive free for all. It is absolute madness. Cool experience though, very different from slow paced Lao. Mike and I have already been scammed twice, once by a taxi meter that miraculously jumped by 40000 dong when we weren't looking, and another time when we were eating hot pot at the night market. They told us the whole hot pot was 150000dong, and then served us plates of mushrooms/etc to put in it and charged us extra. Fortunately some nice English-speaking Vietnamese guy heard us arguing with the people and he helped us reason with them, and in the end we didn't have to pay for the extra plates. Thank god for that guy, the price was about double it was supposed to be! Oh, the night market was pretty cool. Mike and I bought sun glasses.
We are staying in a hotel with a SUPER nice, cute lady who owns it. She serves us fresh lemonade when we're thirsty, and breakfast! She was so good to us we booked a 3 day Sapa trek through her, and we leave tonight via overnight train. Hope it goes well!
Oh, and today in Hanoi we went to The Temple of Literature, which is some cool old bit of architecture where Confucious students (used to?) study. We also went to the Museum of Ethnology and learned about Vietnamese and all the hill tribes' culture. We saw some crazy water puppet show there, which is basically a puppet show in the middle of a lake with swimming puppets, created in Vietnam I think. We couldn't understand what they were saying, but still amusing.
PS!!! For those of you who read this, facebook is banned in Vietnam so you'll have to contact us via email (or the blog)! Mine is smeyers@ualberta.ca and Mike's is stick_man000@hotmail.com.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Laos + journey there
Well, haven't had time to get to a computer for a while but here it is.
Journey to Vientiane in Laos was pretty terrible. The road from Pai to Chiang Mai has something like 270 curves in it and our van driver refused to go under about 80 km/h the whole way, i.e. what should have been 20 km/h blind, hair-pin corners, passing in the oncoming lane, going 80. The driver even hit a post on the shoulder at one point. There was this hilarious loud Spanish girl who at one point shouted out "I don't wanna die!!!". Several people puked in cups, and fortunately I couldn't smell it otherwise I would have too. Mike was verrrry car sick the whole way. After Chiang Mai we took an overnight bus which turned out to be a cramped van that was impossible to sleep in. We arrived in Nong Khai at about 5:30 am and had to wait to take a tuk tuk to the border, from there took a bus across and got our visas, and then shared a taxi thing on the other side to town with a couple other girls we met along the way. We were somewhat insulted to find out that Canadians have to pay the most for a Lao visa - about $10-15 more than all other countries! Not sure what they have against us!
When we arrived in Vientiane, we found a guesthouse and immediately went to sleep for 2+hours. But we had to get our Vietnam visas, so we hunted down the embassy on bicycles and got one made for the next day. Vientiane wasn't that exciting...it was really dusty and at one point it got so windy we got whipped with dust in our eyes. There was a thunder storm that night, and that was pretty cool. We went to one temple that was alright. That was about all we did there.
Next day we caught a last minute bus to Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is a crazy tourist town surrounded by gorgeous, towering limestone mountains that is famous for its tube ride down the river. You rent tubes and float down the river, and all along the way there are bars blasting music, and huge rope swings and slides to go off of. It was definitely an experience, very surreal at first. Pretty fun though. I wouldn't do it for more than one day though. Sort of a backpacker right of passage though, so we had to do it. Next day caught a bus for Luang Prabang...and unfortunately now we are both sick (some food/drink in Vang Vieng? Maybe accidentally swallowed some river water? no idea). We haven't been able to go out/eat much since we've been in Luang Prabang, which is really a shame because it is beautiful. Today we had to check out of our guesthouse since we are catching an overnight bus to Huay Xai tonight to get to the Gibbon Experience, and they wouldn't let us stay in our room until then. Luckily we found this riverside restaurant with cool bamboo huts and comfy floor mats/pillows to lie on, so we just lay around there, attempting to eat/enjoying the amazing view for a few hours haha. The view of the river was absolutely gorgeous. The river is surrounded by very lush, green vegetation, palm trees and orange blossum trees. Would have been nice to explore it more, but we will be back in Luang Prabang after the Gibbon Experience so hopefully we'll get another chance.
Really enjoying Laos besides being sick. It is more lush and green and gorgeous than any other country I've been too, and the people are very laid back, polite and friendly. We've stayed in some amazing guest houses too for about $7 total, with cable TV, towels and fully functioning toilets with TP! Hopefully the sickness won't last long because our long awaited Gibbon experience starts on the 16th!
Journey to Vientiane in Laos was pretty terrible. The road from Pai to Chiang Mai has something like 270 curves in it and our van driver refused to go under about 80 km/h the whole way, i.e. what should have been 20 km/h blind, hair-pin corners, passing in the oncoming lane, going 80. The driver even hit a post on the shoulder at one point. There was this hilarious loud Spanish girl who at one point shouted out "I don't wanna die!!!". Several people puked in cups, and fortunately I couldn't smell it otherwise I would have too. Mike was verrrry car sick the whole way. After Chiang Mai we took an overnight bus which turned out to be a cramped van that was impossible to sleep in. We arrived in Nong Khai at about 5:30 am and had to wait to take a tuk tuk to the border, from there took a bus across and got our visas, and then shared a taxi thing on the other side to town with a couple other girls we met along the way. We were somewhat insulted to find out that Canadians have to pay the most for a Lao visa - about $10-15 more than all other countries! Not sure what they have against us!
When we arrived in Vientiane, we found a guesthouse and immediately went to sleep for 2+hours. But we had to get our Vietnam visas, so we hunted down the embassy on bicycles and got one made for the next day. Vientiane wasn't that exciting...it was really dusty and at one point it got so windy we got whipped with dust in our eyes. There was a thunder storm that night, and that was pretty cool. We went to one temple that was alright. That was about all we did there.
Next day we caught a last minute bus to Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is a crazy tourist town surrounded by gorgeous, towering limestone mountains that is famous for its tube ride down the river. You rent tubes and float down the river, and all along the way there are bars blasting music, and huge rope swings and slides to go off of. It was definitely an experience, very surreal at first. Pretty fun though. I wouldn't do it for more than one day though. Sort of a backpacker right of passage though, so we had to do it. Next day caught a bus for Luang Prabang...and unfortunately now we are both sick (some food/drink in Vang Vieng? Maybe accidentally swallowed some river water? no idea). We haven't been able to go out/eat much since we've been in Luang Prabang, which is really a shame because it is beautiful. Today we had to check out of our guesthouse since we are catching an overnight bus to Huay Xai tonight to get to the Gibbon Experience, and they wouldn't let us stay in our room until then. Luckily we found this riverside restaurant with cool bamboo huts and comfy floor mats/pillows to lie on, so we just lay around there, attempting to eat/enjoying the amazing view for a few hours haha. The view of the river was absolutely gorgeous. The river is surrounded by very lush, green vegetation, palm trees and orange blossum trees. Would have been nice to explore it more, but we will be back in Luang Prabang after the Gibbon Experience so hopefully we'll get another chance.
Really enjoying Laos besides being sick. It is more lush and green and gorgeous than any other country I've been too, and the people are very laid back, polite and friendly. We've stayed in some amazing guest houses too for about $7 total, with cable TV, towels and fully functioning toilets with TP! Hopefully the sickness won't last long because our long awaited Gibbon experience starts on the 16th!
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Pai
Been in Pai for...2 and 1/2 days and it's been awesome! It is a little hippie town in the mountains. We met a British guy and two Austrians in the bus we took here, and ended up staying in the same guest house and have been hanging out, so it's fun! We found this amazing guest house on the river (we had to cross a very rickety bamboo bridge to get there!),
with gorgeous bamboo cottages for 200 B/night ($7!!). We have a king sized bed with a canopy/mosquito net, there's loung chairs in the covered patio outside that we've been relaxing in, and there's even a separate shower area and a TV! We're pretty certain this is the best deal we'll ever encounter.
Fortunately it's low season here, so we can get great deals and don't have to worry about not being able to find a place to stay! (Pai is very popular with travelers.)
Pai is very cute, lots of little restaurants and hippie bars and little shops. We rented a scooter and have been exploring around Pai with it and wow is it fun to drive! Remind me when we get back and I'll tell you a funny story about Mike driving the scooter... Yesterday Mike, Nick (British friend) and I drove up to a waterfall, which was like a big water slide
you could slide down! It was so cool! It actually didn't scrape your bumb up like those normally do. It was very refreshing in the 40 degree weather. Just as we were leaving it started to POUR rain and got very windy. This was the hardest pouring rain I have ever seen. It hurt. We biked in it for a while and then took refuge in a cafe. Fortunately it was finished by the time we left.
Today we drove up North to Lod Caves. The drive up wound through the mountains, passing some hill tribe houses and farmer's fields. It was beautiful! We weren't sure if our little scooter was going to make it up some of the steeper parts though haha! We hired a guide with a lantern and got to explore 3 massive caves. The formations in them were incredible...all sorts of stalactites and stalagmites
and columbs. The cave at times must have been 80 m high, and some of the stalactites were several metres long. For the third cave we got to take a bamboo boat down a river into a chamber full of bats. There was bat poo everywhere, including Mike's shoulder :). There were also little newborn bat bodies scattered around on the ground (most dead). That was kind of sad. The water in the rivers was FULL of fish.
There must have been over 50 decent sized fish surrounding our boat, waiting to be fed. And when you threw food at them they would nearly jump out of the water! The third cave had remnants of old tombs and paintings on the wall, so that was cool to see.
Afterwards we went for lunch at a little cafe in the little town nearby called Pang Ma Pha, and wow was that cheap/sketchy (under $1!). There were all sorts of weird parts of cow/chicken floating in our curry, and we only ended up eating about half of it. So far our stomachs are holding up ok, but we'll see how long that lasts!
In this pic I was on a swing out in front of our guest house, and a cow nearby walked right up to me and stared at me. At first she let me pet her, but I think she started to get territorial after a while.
with gorgeous bamboo cottages for 200 B/night ($7!!). We have a king sized bed with a canopy/mosquito net, there's loung chairs in the covered patio outside that we've been relaxing in, and there's even a separate shower area and a TV! We're pretty certain this is the best deal we'll ever encounter.
Fortunately it's low season here, so we can get great deals and don't have to worry about not being able to find a place to stay! (Pai is very popular with travelers.)
Pai is very cute, lots of little restaurants and hippie bars and little shops. We rented a scooter and have been exploring around Pai with it and wow is it fun to drive! Remind me when we get back and I'll tell you a funny story about Mike driving the scooter... Yesterday Mike, Nick (British friend) and I drove up to a waterfall, which was like a big water slide
you could slide down! It was so cool! It actually didn't scrape your bumb up like those normally do. It was very refreshing in the 40 degree weather. Just as we were leaving it started to POUR rain and got very windy. This was the hardest pouring rain I have ever seen. It hurt. We biked in it for a while and then took refuge in a cafe. Fortunately it was finished by the time we left.
Today we drove up North to Lod Caves. The drive up wound through the mountains, passing some hill tribe houses and farmer's fields. It was beautiful! We weren't sure if our little scooter was going to make it up some of the steeper parts though haha! We hired a guide with a lantern and got to explore 3 massive caves. The formations in them were incredible...all sorts of stalactites and stalagmites
and columbs. The cave at times must have been 80 m high, and some of the stalactites were several metres long. For the third cave we got to take a bamboo boat down a river into a chamber full of bats. There was bat poo everywhere, including Mike's shoulder :). There were also little newborn bat bodies scattered around on the ground (most dead). That was kind of sad. The water in the rivers was FULL of fish.
There must have been over 50 decent sized fish surrounding our boat, waiting to be fed. And when you threw food at them they would nearly jump out of the water! The third cave had remnants of old tombs and paintings on the wall, so that was cool to see.
Afterwards we went for lunch at a little cafe in the little town nearby called Pang Ma Pha, and wow was that cheap/sketchy (under $1!). There were all sorts of weird parts of cow/chicken floating in our curry, and we only ended up eating about half of it. So far our stomachs are holding up ok, but we'll see how long that lasts!
In this pic I was on a swing out in front of our guest house, and a cow nearby walked right up to me and stared at me. At first she let me pet her, but I think she started to get territorial after a while.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
THAILAND!!! So far...
Well, we have taken the step into a completely different traveling experience and are loving it. We flew into Bangkok on the 1st, despite the travel warnings. Fortunately we barely witnessed any evidence of the protests, besides the army very carefully guarding the airport (thank god for that). However, we limited our stay in Bangkok to one night just in case. When we arrived we headed to Th Khao San, which had a ton of guest houses, travel agencies, vendors and restaurants. We got in at about 8 pm on a Friday night, and there was a music festival at the time with bands playing on a stage, so it was packed! Too bad it was 3am NZ time so we were too tired to really go out and enjoy it.
We found a cheap guest house down a little alley, which seemed pretty trustworthy and clean. And for the most part it was,...although shortly after lying on our beds, Mike came across a bug. I haven't seen bed bugs before, but I had an idea what they looked like and that was it. We tried sleeping anyway, but I soon felt a bug crawl on my hand. I turned on the lights and sure enough it was, and Mike found several crawling on his bed - gross!!!! I ran downstairs and asked for another room. The girls who worked there seemed very surprised and apologetic, and gave us another room which turned out to be perfectly fine. Thank god. Guess you get what you pay for!
Bangkok was a huge, sprawling city. Th (Th=thanon=street) Khao San was pretty cool, although it smelled pretty bad. We didn't like getting constantly harassed by tuk tuk drivers and suit taylors, but other than that it wasn't bad. Lots of cool little stores and things. Still tons of tourists there, despite the Bangkok situation. We caught a flight the next afternoon to Chiang Mai, up in Northern Thailand. So far we are loving Chaing Mai. Have been here for 3 days, and planning on staying a couple more. Chiang Mai is pretty much the cultural capital of Thailand, and even Thai people come here to pay their respects to the temples. We went on a tuk-tuk tour of some of the temples yesterday.
They were so gorgeous, with red carpet, painted murals and huge gold buddha statues. Most were built 700 years ago when the city was built. The monks in/around the temples wear orange robes and have shaved heads. The land around the temples was gorgeous too, with lots of trees, gardens and grassy areas. Would be a nice place to live!
Chiang Mai is a very pretty city, much smaller and cleaner than Bangkok. The city centre was built in a symmetrical square shape, with a square canal surrounding it.
We are staying just inside the canal in a very cheap guest house - 200B = $6-7 for the two of us in a double room with private bathroom! It was such a good deal compared to the 500 B air conditioned rooms in other places, we decided to rough it and go for the fan, hoping to acclimatize to the ridiculously hot weather here. It actually really isn't that bad at night, although the days are roasting - about 40 degrees! Yes, we are already in the mindset of the currency here, and have turned down $12 AC'd rooms haha.
First night we arrived there was a very cool market with people from all over Northern Thailand selling their crafts. I admit I already bought a few souvenirs... We also went to the "Night Market" last night, which had hundreds of vendors all selling the same sorts of fake brand name stuff...not really our cup of tea, although I bought some COMFY "burkenstock" sandals for $6 which were amazing after all the blisters I had acquired that day from my cheap flip flops! It's actually a bit sad though, a lot of the vendors at the night market seemed extremely desperate to sell stuff, since Thailand has been taking such a hit in the tourist industry due to the protests :(. The taxi driver who picked us up in Bangkok said he had to wait 4 hours before getting a fair. So sad. It makes me feel pretty bad bargaining them down to lower prices, although they always start ridiculously high. Mike wanted to buy a really ugly, cheap digital watch and the guy tried to start at about $20! I guess they have to though.
Today we did a full day Thai cooking class. It was so fun! First they took us to the local market and showed us where to buy all the ingredients they use for cooking and some of the local fruits.
Then we went back to their kitchen and got to make 7 delicious meals/meal components...finishing the day with VERY full, satisfied stomachs! We made a curry paste and then used that to make a curry dish, a noodle dish (I made pad thai), spring rolls, a DELICIOUS prawn/coconut milk soup, a stir fry (Mike-chicken cashew/me-chicken with basil), and mango with coconut milk dessert. We got to try some very tasty fruits too, including rambutan and longan, which I believe are in the lychee family. Even I liked them. Mike didn't finish the day off so well though...got another allergic reaction and completely broke out in hives! This time it hit his face first, which swelled to about 3 times the size and turned red :(. Poor guy. Fortunately I had allergy meds with me in case something like this happened, so I gave it to him right away. We really think it was the prawns, because that is what he ate right before. Don't worry, he's ok now! Just took a few hours for the hives to go away. No more prawns for him.
Other things about Thailand...the people are very friendly and the girls are gorgeous. We see "sex tourists" all over the place, i.e. gross old men with Thai hookers :S. They're always in the pubs. The showers usually consist of a hand held nozzle that just hangs somewhere near the toilet. It's like on sail boats, sink space=toilet space=shower space. ie there's no designated shower space. Fortunately we've only encountered flush toilets so far, but you can't flush TP down the toilet here, you have to put it in a garbage by the toilet. But that's probably just an option there for Westerners...I think the Thais normally rinse off with the water from the nozzle.
Today we went on a day "trek" to the jungle about an hour outside of the city. First we got to ride on an elephant, which was pretty cool, although the elephants did not seem to like having people riding on them. They kept stopping and occasionally sprayed us with...spit? I hope they aren't unhappy/treated poorly... Since our little seat on our elephant was leaning precariously to one side, eventually the driver guy got off and let me take his place. I got to ride right on the elephant's head/neck area!!! Then we went on a "hike" up to a local Hmong hill tribe, along a dirt road that turns out tons of other tour buses drove up/down. So it wasn't that great, as there were tons of other tour groups and so we weren't really seeing the authentic tribe lifestyle. They lived in little bamboo huts. The tribe originated in China I think.
Then we continued to hike to a waterfall swimming hole, which was very refreshing and quite nice. Our favourite part was when we got to go on a one hour bamboo raft down the river. It turns out our "captain" was a ten year old boy...and he turned out to be a pro! There were lots of other rafts because it was a Thai holiday celebrating the king, and apparently it's a pretty popular pastime (Thai equivalent to canoe/air mattress trips with coolers full of beer). Other boats were getting stuck in the rapids all over the place but our little captain steered us right through!
We visited one more hill tribe called the Karen. They live in stilt houses so that in rainy season their livestock can take cover underneath. The roofs were made of leaves found in the jungle, and I think the rest was bamboo. When we were there we saw a pig with little piglets, and lots of chickens with little chicks - so cute! Oh, also saw a baby elephant that was adorable. That wasn't at the tribe though.
Have really enjoyed Chang Mai, but tomorrow we are moving on to Pai!
We found a cheap guest house down a little alley, which seemed pretty trustworthy and clean. And for the most part it was,...although shortly after lying on our beds, Mike came across a bug. I haven't seen bed bugs before, but I had an idea what they looked like and that was it. We tried sleeping anyway, but I soon felt a bug crawl on my hand. I turned on the lights and sure enough it was, and Mike found several crawling on his bed - gross!!!! I ran downstairs and asked for another room. The girls who worked there seemed very surprised and apologetic, and gave us another room which turned out to be perfectly fine. Thank god. Guess you get what you pay for!
Bangkok was a huge, sprawling city. Th (Th=thanon=street) Khao San was pretty cool, although it smelled pretty bad. We didn't like getting constantly harassed by tuk tuk drivers and suit taylors, but other than that it wasn't bad. Lots of cool little stores and things. Still tons of tourists there, despite the Bangkok situation. We caught a flight the next afternoon to Chiang Mai, up in Northern Thailand. So far we are loving Chaing Mai. Have been here for 3 days, and planning on staying a couple more. Chiang Mai is pretty much the cultural capital of Thailand, and even Thai people come here to pay their respects to the temples. We went on a tuk-tuk tour of some of the temples yesterday.
They were so gorgeous, with red carpet, painted murals and huge gold buddha statues. Most were built 700 years ago when the city was built. The monks in/around the temples wear orange robes and have shaved heads. The land around the temples was gorgeous too, with lots of trees, gardens and grassy areas. Would be a nice place to live!
Chiang Mai is a very pretty city, much smaller and cleaner than Bangkok. The city centre was built in a symmetrical square shape, with a square canal surrounding it.
We are staying just inside the canal in a very cheap guest house - 200B = $6-7 for the two of us in a double room with private bathroom! It was such a good deal compared to the 500 B air conditioned rooms in other places, we decided to rough it and go for the fan, hoping to acclimatize to the ridiculously hot weather here. It actually really isn't that bad at night, although the days are roasting - about 40 degrees! Yes, we are already in the mindset of the currency here, and have turned down $12 AC'd rooms haha.
First night we arrived there was a very cool market with people from all over Northern Thailand selling their crafts. I admit I already bought a few souvenirs... We also went to the "Night Market" last night, which had hundreds of vendors all selling the same sorts of fake brand name stuff...not really our cup of tea, although I bought some COMFY "burkenstock" sandals for $6 which were amazing after all the blisters I had acquired that day from my cheap flip flops! It's actually a bit sad though, a lot of the vendors at the night market seemed extremely desperate to sell stuff, since Thailand has been taking such a hit in the tourist industry due to the protests :(. The taxi driver who picked us up in Bangkok said he had to wait 4 hours before getting a fair. So sad. It makes me feel pretty bad bargaining them down to lower prices, although they always start ridiculously high. Mike wanted to buy a really ugly, cheap digital watch and the guy tried to start at about $20! I guess they have to though.
Today we did a full day Thai cooking class. It was so fun! First they took us to the local market and showed us where to buy all the ingredients they use for cooking and some of the local fruits.
Then we went back to their kitchen and got to make 7 delicious meals/meal components...finishing the day with VERY full, satisfied stomachs! We made a curry paste and then used that to make a curry dish, a noodle dish (I made pad thai), spring rolls, a DELICIOUS prawn/coconut milk soup, a stir fry (Mike-chicken cashew/me-chicken with basil), and mango with coconut milk dessert. We got to try some very tasty fruits too, including rambutan and longan, which I believe are in the lychee family. Even I liked them. Mike didn't finish the day off so well though...got another allergic reaction and completely broke out in hives! This time it hit his face first, which swelled to about 3 times the size and turned red :(. Poor guy. Fortunately I had allergy meds with me in case something like this happened, so I gave it to him right away. We really think it was the prawns, because that is what he ate right before. Don't worry, he's ok now! Just took a few hours for the hives to go away. No more prawns for him.
Other things about Thailand...the people are very friendly and the girls are gorgeous. We see "sex tourists" all over the place, i.e. gross old men with Thai hookers :S. They're always in the pubs. The showers usually consist of a hand held nozzle that just hangs somewhere near the toilet. It's like on sail boats, sink space=toilet space=shower space. ie there's no designated shower space. Fortunately we've only encountered flush toilets so far, but you can't flush TP down the toilet here, you have to put it in a garbage by the toilet. But that's probably just an option there for Westerners...I think the Thais normally rinse off with the water from the nozzle.
Today we went on a day "trek" to the jungle about an hour outside of the city. First we got to ride on an elephant, which was pretty cool, although the elephants did not seem to like having people riding on them. They kept stopping and occasionally sprayed us with...spit? I hope they aren't unhappy/treated poorly... Since our little seat on our elephant was leaning precariously to one side, eventually the driver guy got off and let me take his place. I got to ride right on the elephant's head/neck area!!! Then we went on a "hike" up to a local Hmong hill tribe, along a dirt road that turns out tons of other tour buses drove up/down. So it wasn't that great, as there were tons of other tour groups and so we weren't really seeing the authentic tribe lifestyle. They lived in little bamboo huts. The tribe originated in China I think.
Then we continued to hike to a waterfall swimming hole, which was very refreshing and quite nice. Our favourite part was when we got to go on a one hour bamboo raft down the river. It turns out our "captain" was a ten year old boy...and he turned out to be a pro! There were lots of other rafts because it was a Thai holiday celebrating the king, and apparently it's a pretty popular pastime (Thai equivalent to canoe/air mattress trips with coolers full of beer). Other boats were getting stuck in the rapids all over the place but our little captain steered us right through!
We visited one more hill tribe called the Karen. They live in stilt houses so that in rainy season their livestock can take cover underneath. The roofs were made of leaves found in the jungle, and I think the rest was bamboo. When we were there we saw a pig with little piglets, and lots of chickens with little chicks - so cute! Oh, also saw a baby elephant that was adorable. That wasn't at the tribe though.
Have really enjoyed Chang Mai, but tomorrow we are moving on to Pai!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Last of NZ
Not too much to add, but last morning in Queenstown we went to the Kiwi Birdlife Park, because I decided that I didn't want to leave NZ without seeing a kiwi. It was worth it. They are soooo funny! They are like bumbling little brown, furry round soccer balls with long pointy beaks. The whole time we watched, this one just walked back along the wall, poking his beak into the ground. It was really funny. The Keas were also funny. They are large, cheeky parrots who are very intelligent (comparable to monkeys) and are capable of biting through rubber/other materials and destroying things such as windshield wipers (we watched one chew a large hole in a milk carton).
As rain was the forecast for Mt Cook, we instead headed to Dunedin to go up the east coast. At Dunedin we went to Cadbury World...i.e. the CHOCOLATE FACTORY!!! It was so cool. And we got a big bagful of free chocolate. But I have decided that the Kiwi chocolate bars aren't as good as the Canadian ones, as they don't have any peanut butter ones and prefer marshmallow filling. Boo.
We also went on a ridiculous drive through the Otago Peninsula (a weird outcropping of land by Dunedin), following roads on a Lonely Planet map that turned out to be crazy hilly gravel roads through farmer's sheep fields..(shhhhh our camper wasn't supposed to drive on those)...how nice of LP to post a map of small, ridiculous gravel roads through Otago Peninsula, even though it couldn't provide a decent map of Dunedin... Anways we were looking for this "chasm" that was supposed to be really cool. We finally arrived there, and we had to walk 15 minutes right through a farmer's land, scaring all the sheep along the way, and eventually reached the chasm. It was kind of like a canyon type thing right by the ocean. It was fairly mediocre. Quite the adventure though.
We continued on to Omarua the next day and saw PENGUINS!!! Yayyyy. Cute little blue penguins. They were so cute. We watched them come up from the sea in groups of about 12, wait cautiously to see if it was safe, and then scurry into their little homes/nesting areas on land. We even saw two of them fighting, likely over a female or a nesting area, and we saw two mating...ewww haha. They were soooo cute though.
Back in Christchurch now, said goodbye to our lil camper. Flying out to Auckland tomorrow for our last day in NZ!!
As rain was the forecast for Mt Cook, we instead headed to Dunedin to go up the east coast. At Dunedin we went to Cadbury World...i.e. the CHOCOLATE FACTORY!!! It was so cool. And we got a big bagful of free chocolate. But I have decided that the Kiwi chocolate bars aren't as good as the Canadian ones, as they don't have any peanut butter ones and prefer marshmallow filling. Boo.
We also went on a ridiculous drive through the Otago Peninsula (a weird outcropping of land by Dunedin), following roads on a Lonely Planet map that turned out to be crazy hilly gravel roads through farmer's sheep fields..(shhhhh our camper wasn't supposed to drive on those)...how nice of LP to post a map of small, ridiculous gravel roads through Otago Peninsula, even though it couldn't provide a decent map of Dunedin... Anways we were looking for this "chasm" that was supposed to be really cool. We finally arrived there, and we had to walk 15 minutes right through a farmer's land, scaring all the sheep along the way, and eventually reached the chasm. It was kind of like a canyon type thing right by the ocean. It was fairly mediocre. Quite the adventure though.
We continued on to Omarua the next day and saw PENGUINS!!! Yayyyy. Cute little blue penguins. They were so cute. We watched them come up from the sea in groups of about 12, wait cautiously to see if it was safe, and then scurry into their little homes/nesting areas on land. We even saw two of them fighting, likely over a female or a nesting area, and we saw two mating...ewww haha. They were soooo cute though.
Back in Christchurch now, said goodbye to our lil camper. Flying out to Auckland tomorrow for our last day in NZ!!
Monday, April 26, 2010
Queenstown and Fiordland
We had went on what turned out to be a very luxurious overnight cruise through Doubtful Sound. Doubtful Sound is basically a very long, narrow inlet from the ocean, surrounded by very steep, high mountains. All the "sounds" (actually fiords) were carved out by glaciers. The weather was very misty and quite wet when we were there, which gave the narrow sound a very mysterious look. It was so cool. When it rained, waterfalls poured down the cliffs surrounding because the water had no other place to collect higher up. At one point during the cruise we got to go out on kayaks, which gave a really cool perspective of the sound and also allowed us to go up right underneath some of the waterfalls! We also went for a quick dip in the ocean after...fortunately our boat had hot showers for afterwards! There was lots to see/do on the cruise...stopped by a huge seal colony, the boat drove right up under an overhang and someone filled up glasses of water from the waterfall gushing over the overhang (it tasted fresh and cold, although it was a bit brownish in colour...which apparently is due to the water "steeping" like tea in all the rainforest vegetation it passes through), and Mike and I definitely ate our money's worth of the delicious food that continually flowed out of the kitchen. We also met an Israeli couple and hung out with them the whole time. It was really fun.
After the cruise, we drove partway up to Milford Sound on the long, twisty road, and camped at one of the little sites on the side of the road. In the morning, despite the weather warning for Milford, we went on a 1 and 1/2 hour cruise of the sound. It was POURING. We were soaked from the walk over from the parking lot. My jeans took 2 days to dry. The cruise was actually really fun even though the visibility was poor, since there were TONS of waterfalls everywhere and the wind was so crazy it was actually really fun to stand out on the deck...winds were up to 140 km/h! And the water was very rough. It was so windy, in fact, that some of the waterfalls were actually being blown UPWARD. I have never seen such a thing, and probably never will again.
The weather turned out to be not so fortunate in the end, because the long road out of Milford was closed down for most of the afternoon. The waterfalls all throughout had washed over the roads, carrying big chunks of rock and gravel. We had to wait for 5 hours before the roads reopened and we could drive out in a convoy. We were sitting in a cafe that whole time with many other stranded people, and when someone came in and said "if you want out, go now. the roads are opening briefly" everyone cleared out soooo fast and literally ran to their cars. Including us. It was really funny. We all had thought we would be stranded until the next morning at the earliest, so it was great news.
Back at Queenstown...it was still raining. Not much exciting news to update you on there. Oh wait, we went to the craziest indoor mini golf course I have ever played on. For example, one hole literally had mini chairlifts that took your ball up a ski hill structure, where your ball rolled down and fell into one of three holes, which took it to some other location...it was crazy. We also went to some cute little theatre in Arrowtown to watch Boy, a Kiwi movie about a Maori kid. It was pretty good.
Not sure where we'll be heading next...our plan originally was to go to Mt Cook, but apparently that sucks in the rain so we may have to reroute. Then on to Christchurch where we fly back to Auckland, and then fly out again to SE Asia!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The South Island so far
Mike and I have been on the road since April 16 in our own little camper home! We found a great deal so we ditched the tour bus idea to go explore the island on our own. The camper is really great...it's got a stove, fridge, comfy bed and everything...even got a toaster! No toilet, which I am fine with as it would be very gross to empty. We've mostly been staying in campgrounds (Mike likes to be plugged in so we can use the heater haha, it gets fairly cold at night), although I found a sweet parking lot near a bathroom at one point hehe. That was when the only campground around was $38. Forget that!
So far in the South Island we've spent one night in Christchurch, where we didn't do much besides eat a gross Chinese dinner and I frantically ran around buying Mike's bday presents lol...hard when you're never apart! We left pretty much right away to drive north to Kaiteriteri, where we did a kayak/hiking trip through the Abel Tasman National Park. It was very beautiful, great weather. In 2 hours of kayaking we saw a huge group of seals lounging on rocks, including a mother nursing a baby and two young ones play fighting, many gorgeous sandy beaches and coves and cool rock formations and caves that you could kayak into! Mom you would love it! For the rest of the journey we hiked, stopping over in a hut for one night.
The hike wasn't quite as exciting, although it was still very pretty, passing through nice beaches, and had very nice viewpoints of the beaches. The one funny part was there were a couple of low tide routes (to hell if we're going the long way around for the high tide route! an extra hour and a half!) where you had to take off your shoes, walk through a giant stretch of mud covered in crabs and clam shells
and wade through washouts from the ocean. The beaches there were crazy...when the tide was out there were tons of boats just sitting stranded on the sand, and when the tide came in it came wayyyy in to places you would not think it could make it to! The afternoon of the second day, we caught a water taxi back to the starting point. To our surprise, the boat drove right up on to a trailer pulled by a tractor, and we were given a ride back to our camper! It was hilarious. That is the only time we will ever ride in a boat on land.
After Abel Tasman we drove down the west coast, stopping in various cute towns along the way such as Hokitika and Greymouth, which had cute little shops which I enjoyed. We camped at Punakaiki and in the morning went on a walk to see the Pancake Rocks - absolutely amazing, layered rock formations on the coast (looked like precariously stacked pancakes!)
We also explored this cave to the side of the road, which was very cool, even though our only light devices were a dying head lamp and a small MEC LED light. We had to take pictures with a flash to see what was in some parts haha.
We proceeded down the coast to Fox Glacier (we decided to skip Franz Joseph, as it is harder to access cheaply/without going on an expensive tour). We were able to walk to within 80 m of Fox Glacier.
It was quite cool looking (ha ha), although we've seen better in Canada :). We also tried to go sky diving again but too cloudy. Thus, we continued on to Wanaka. The drive along the west coast was absolutely stunning. And if you think driving the Sea to Sky is crazy, just wait til you drive NZ roads. So much fun to drive...VERY curvy. And they don't seem to like building two lane bridges here either. They're all one ways. In Wanaka we stayed in a very beautiful lake front campground. We went to this VERY cool movie theatre called Cinema Paridiso, which had all sorts of old comfy couches and chairs to sit in, fresh baked big cookies during intermission and homemade icecream. We watched a Swedish subtitle crime movie that was really good. I absolutely loved the cinema.
The next day we....finally went sky diving!!! The views around Wanaka were GORGEOUS. Beautiful blue lakes, dry hillsides and huge, jagged mountains. And the sky diving itself was so exhilerating. We were super excited and it was even better than we hoped it would be. We jumped from 12000 metres and had about 45 seconds of free fall, followed by a couple minutes of parachuting to the ground, and on the way down we got to do cool 360s and such. It was amazing.
Now we are in Queenstown, finally getting some internet time. Many more exciting adventures to come, including jet boating and exploring the Sounds! Can't wait! More updates soon!
So far in the South Island we've spent one night in Christchurch, where we didn't do much besides eat a gross Chinese dinner and I frantically ran around buying Mike's bday presents lol...hard when you're never apart! We left pretty much right away to drive north to Kaiteriteri, where we did a kayak/hiking trip through the Abel Tasman National Park. It was very beautiful, great weather. In 2 hours of kayaking we saw a huge group of seals lounging on rocks, including a mother nursing a baby and two young ones play fighting, many gorgeous sandy beaches and coves and cool rock formations and caves that you could kayak into! Mom you would love it! For the rest of the journey we hiked, stopping over in a hut for one night.
The hike wasn't quite as exciting, although it was still very pretty, passing through nice beaches, and had very nice viewpoints of the beaches. The one funny part was there were a couple of low tide routes (to hell if we're going the long way around for the high tide route! an extra hour and a half!) where you had to take off your shoes, walk through a giant stretch of mud covered in crabs and clam shells
and wade through washouts from the ocean. The beaches there were crazy...when the tide was out there were tons of boats just sitting stranded on the sand, and when the tide came in it came wayyyy in to places you would not think it could make it to! The afternoon of the second day, we caught a water taxi back to the starting point. To our surprise, the boat drove right up on to a trailer pulled by a tractor, and we were given a ride back to our camper! It was hilarious. That is the only time we will ever ride in a boat on land.
After Abel Tasman we drove down the west coast, stopping in various cute towns along the way such as Hokitika and Greymouth, which had cute little shops which I enjoyed. We camped at Punakaiki and in the morning went on a walk to see the Pancake Rocks - absolutely amazing, layered rock formations on the coast (looked like precariously stacked pancakes!)
We also explored this cave to the side of the road, which was very cool, even though our only light devices were a dying head lamp and a small MEC LED light. We had to take pictures with a flash to see what was in some parts haha.
We proceeded down the coast to Fox Glacier (we decided to skip Franz Joseph, as it is harder to access cheaply/without going on an expensive tour). We were able to walk to within 80 m of Fox Glacier.
It was quite cool looking (ha ha), although we've seen better in Canada :). We also tried to go sky diving again but too cloudy. Thus, we continued on to Wanaka. The drive along the west coast was absolutely stunning. And if you think driving the Sea to Sky is crazy, just wait til you drive NZ roads. So much fun to drive...VERY curvy. And they don't seem to like building two lane bridges here either. They're all one ways. In Wanaka we stayed in a very beautiful lake front campground. We went to this VERY cool movie theatre called Cinema Paridiso, which had all sorts of old comfy couches and chairs to sit in, fresh baked big cookies during intermission and homemade icecream. We watched a Swedish subtitle crime movie that was really good. I absolutely loved the cinema.
The next day we....finally went sky diving!!! The views around Wanaka were GORGEOUS. Beautiful blue lakes, dry hillsides and huge, jagged mountains. And the sky diving itself was so exhilerating. We were super excited and it was even better than we hoped it would be. We jumped from 12000 metres and had about 45 seconds of free fall, followed by a couple minutes of parachuting to the ground, and on the way down we got to do cool 360s and such. It was amazing.
Now we are in Queenstown, finally getting some internet time. Many more exciting adventures to come, including jet boating and exploring the Sounds! Can't wait! More updates soon!
Matamata, the Bay of Plenty, and another unfortunate stopover in Taupo, followed by Wellington
While we were staying over at Gay and Bill's Mike and I took a brief road trip out to Matamata and the Bay of Plenty. In Matamata we went on a Hobbiton tour...which was a bit overpriced for what it was, but still kind of neat. Hobbiton, or the Shire from Lord of the Rings, was mainly filmed on this giant sheep farm in Matamata. They took down/destroyed most of the set for copyright purposes, but left the remains of the hobbit hole structures. We got to walk in Bilbo Baggin's hobbit hole hehe. Even though it didn't have any of the original decoration it was still kind of cool to see the little homes built into the hillside. They threw in a sheep show thing at the end for some reason, and I got to feed a lamb. It was very hungry. Reminded me of Mike and I.
We then proceeded to the Bay of Plenty/ east coast. We went to lots of gorgeous beaches there. The ones in Mt Manganui and Ohope were our favourite, and I especially loved them because there were toooonnnnns of amazing shells to collect there. Which I may not be allowed to take through airports, but I will try to find a way around that. So far successful.
Ohope beachA couple days later Dan and his wife Jan came to pick us up on their way to Wellington, where they live. However, the car's alternator died and we were left stranded in Taupo for yet another night while we wated for repairs. We had good company, so it was fun anyway :). Mike and I got to ride in the car on top of the tow truck. We even signed up for sky diving yet again for kicks, but ended up leaving before our reservation for Wellington. No more waiting around for sky dive Taupo.
We stayed with Dan and Jan and their family in Wellington for 3 nights, and had a really fun time there. They are just like the Vancouver Stickneys...very laid back, great sense of humour and fun to be around! We had some fun dinners and movie nights with Dan, Jan, their two daughters Beck and Kim and two Thai kids staying with them, Pecky and Mark. We watched some good kiwi flicks including the Whale Rider, In My Father's Den and the hilarious Eagle vs Shark with Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords.
Wellington and the surrounding areas were gorgeous...there was TONS of waterfront area since there were so many inlets and out-croppings of land. It was very hilly and VERY windy. Houses were built on the edge of steep hills with no road access, so you had to either had to walk up steep staircases or have tram things up to your house! Jan and Pecky showed us around a bit. We went to WETA, which is the studio
where they do basically anything creative for movies such as Lord of the Rings and Avatar, i.e. make costumes, computer animation, props, miniatures, makeup, etc. That was cool. We also went to the museum there, Te Papa, which was very interesting. Sort of reminded me of the museum in Victoria. The best in NZ.
We had a lot of fun in Wellington and were sad to leave :( but it was time to move on to the South Island, so we had to say good bye to the Stickneys. We caught the ferry over to Picton on the South Island and then took a train along the coast to Christchurch.
Tongariro, Taupo and Rotorua
Well...this is long overdue, but here it is!
Tongariro
After the caves Mike and I headed down to National Park and stayed at this awesome old ski lodge hostel called Skihaus! The hot tub came in handy after our long hike in Tongariro National Park! I actually convinced Mike to go on what we thought was an 8 hour hike called the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. It was quite an amazing hike. The whole area was full of volcanoes (a few are sometimes active!) and so most of the hike was over barren land, up the sides of volcanoes and along the edge of craters such as the Red Crater,
which was a very cool red colour. One volcano we hiked past, Ngaurahoe, was Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings! It was a perfect cone shape and looked very dark and foreboding – a perfect choice for the movie! We originally had thought we wouldn’t have time to climb it, as we thought the hike might take us 8 hours and we had to make a shuttle at the other the end. However, the hike ended up taking us 6 ½ hours (including a very long stop at a hut for lunch!) so we were a bit disappointed we didn’t do it. Maybe next time in NZ! Other sites on the hike…lots of sulfur gas leaking from the sides and craters of the volcanoes (stinky!) and very beautiful blue lakes. I reallly enjoyed the hike and I think Mike may even have enjoyed it too (although he probably won’t admit it later!) I was sad we didn’t have time to do more hikes, but alas we had to keep move along…
Taupo…
…was pretty much a waste of time. We essentially waited here for sky diving, calling every couple hours for updates from a pay phone since we don’t have a cell with us, for a full day. And we tried the next day too, although we didn’t let it ruin our plans this time. The weather was either too cloudy, or sunny but too windy…very frustrating. Taupo itself was a fairly small town on the edge of a giant lake (which is actually the crater of a volcano!) and unfortunately there wasn’t a whole lot to do there at the time we were there, as it was a bit too cold to go swimming in the lake and that sort of thing. But I am sure it would be a very fun place in summer or winter for skiing. We spent a lot of time in a cheap internet café we found one night.
The second morning there, however, we went on a bit of a hike to a very cool hot water stream near Huka Falls (which weren’t too impressive, although the sheer volume of water that flowed over them was). There were several natural, rocky pools joined by waterfalls you could sit in or stand under, and it flowed into a cold river so you could swim in there to cool off! They all had different temperatures, but some parts (especially sitting in one of the falls) were as hot as a very hot hot tub. I’m gessing 104 degrees? We spent a fair bit of time there relaxing/swimming. There are tons of thermal pools and streams in NZ…the whole place is basically a giant volcano waiting to erupt! It’s really interesting.
Rotorua
We met Mike’s uncle Dan in Rotorua and stayed with some of his friends there, Gay and Bill. They lived on a gorgeous lake front property just across the lake from Rotorua, on Maori land. They had a gorgeous view of the lake from their living room, a huge yard with a beach and a vegetable garden that produced tons of delicious veggies! Gay made the most delicious meals with the fresh veggies. We were very lucky to stay there. Bill is Maori and it was a very neat cultural experience for us. Rotorua is sort of like the centre of Maori culture in NZ. Because of Gay and Bill’s connections, we got a good deal on river rafting with a Maori company and an amazing deal on a Hangi (basically the Maori version of a Hawaiian luau...oh interesting tidbit…the Maori supposedly descend from the Polynesians, who travelled over to NZ by boat, hence the similarities between the cultures!)
Dan, Mike’s uncle, was super nice and really good to us. He took us river rafting that first day, and then to warm up in some very relaxing hot pools in a Polynesian spa, a very gorgeous outdoor setting right on the edge of the lake. The river rafting was really fun. We went over several waterfalls – one 2 metres, two 3 metres and the big one – 7 metres! I almost fell out. Beforehand they gave us talks about what to do if you fell out…such as just curl up in a ball if you are submerged, as you may not know which way is up and so you may swim in the wrong direction! That sort of freaked me out, so I was VERY happy that our precariously leaning boat didn’t end up tipping over! What an adrenaline rush though.
Oh, and Mike and I tried ZORBing!!! It was invented in Rotorua. It is basically rolling down a hill in a giant, clear human bubble. It was a RIOT. You had to superman dive through this small opening into this bubble, and then they filled it with some water and covered the hole, and then you essentially tossed and tumbled head over heels down this marble course that wound down the hillside. It was short lived but soooo much fun, and you really picked up speed! I couldn’t stop laughing the whole way down.
The Hangi Mike and I went to was really cool too. Gay’s friend Auntie Bea invited us to come to the one she performed at, at a hotel. She was just the nicest, warmest person I’ve ever met, and really was an amazing performer and singer. The hangi food was pretty decent…traditionally the Maori cook food in the thermal pools, so there were a lot of steamed meats. There was a delicious pudding desert too, with custard and ice cream. After the meal Bea and her crew put on an amazing show with lots of singing (they were all amazing singers!), dancing, etc. The girls did a dance with “poi”, which are two balls joined by a string that you swing around, and the guys did a war dance where they made very scary faces, sticking their tongues out far and bulging their eyes. At one point they invited the audience up so I got to try poi and Mike learned the war dance, along with several other HILARIOUS Koreans who made up the majority of the rest of the audience. It was really funny watching them all try to make scary war faces. Mike was invited up to pose as an honorary chief during the show too. That was hilarious. It was a very cool experience for us.
We did lots in Rotorua…also went for a walk in the Redwood forest there…which they imported from California! So weird. They import a lot of their forests from North America because they grow well and are used for the forestry industry. The Redwoods were not nearly the size of the Redwoods in the forest in California, however, but the walk was still nice and we got a nice view of a thermal area with steaming pools and boiling mud. We also went to the Rotorua Museum of Art and History, which was very interesting. We learned all about the huge volcanic eruption in 1886 that destroyed the once 8th wonder of the world Pink and White Terraces near Rotorua, which had once brought visitors from all over the world. The museum was in a very cool old once bath house building, where they used thermal pools as an alternative medicine…and gave treatments including shock therapy (shocking people while they were sitting in a bath full of warm water!) to treat arthritis and bad nerves, etc… it was very interesting! We also visited a Maori church that had very cool carvings all over it.
Oh, and on the last day I borrowed Gay’s kayak and went for a quick kayak out on the lake. It is a very important bird habitat (although not such a good people lake – very shallow and gross on the bottom!) so there were lots of cool birds to see, including black swans!
Sunday, April 4, 2010
New Zealand - Auckland, Hahei beach, and Waitomo Caves
Auckland
First night in Auckland, we went to the hostel bar and partook in a silly game - who could fit the most elastic bands around their head! Mike won of course, and he won...a free bungy jump off the Auckland harbour bridge!!! So the next day we went bungy jumping! It was only 40 m but very fun. We weren't scared or nervous at all! We discovered that day that our last minute planning did not work well with public holidays (i.e. Easter)... We were hoping to rent a camper for the next 5 days until we were going to meet Mike's uncle Dan in Rotorua, but we were unable to get one. We had a hard time finding a rental car as well, but we finally found one that was quite cheap and could be taken one way (even if it meant we had to bus back to the airport to pick it up!) After coming up with a plan for the next few days, we wandered around the city a bit and then went to see Avatar at the IMAX. There wasn't much open on Good Friday!
Saturday, April 3
Went to pick up the rental car after a little fiasco (not being able to find the company, different phone book, not writing down phone number...) but eventually we were on our way. We drove to Hahei beach and after a couple tries found a hostel to stay in within a campground. We went to Cathedral Cove, and hiked into a beach with cool limestone formations (including a big limestone arch).
We shortly discovered, however, that everyone in NZ was spending their easter long weekend up there too, and all tourist attractions were very busy. We tried going to Hot Water Beach, where you can dig a hole at low tide and sit in a natural thermal pool, but when we arrived we realized the only thermal region was surrounded by a hord of about 50 people! It was really crowded and the holes people had dug were just deep enough to stand in, but the water was warm...we left shortly after haha. We met a cool NZ guy that night at the hostel who told us the Tongariro Alpine Crossing day hike was really great, so we decided to do that after visiting the Waitomo Caves.
Sunday, April 4
We drove through Matamata hoping to go on a Hobbiton Tour, but we didn't end up having enough time to do it. However, we drove past the place where Hobbiton was filmed for Lord of the Rings and it definitely looked like the Shire! In fact, a lot of the scenery we've seen so far has looked like it - beautiful hills with pastures full of sheep and cows and scattered forests. I call it all the Shire.
We went on a 4 hour caving expedition called "The Lost World" in the Waitomo Caves region. We soon found out why it was called that. Hidden in a farmer's sheep pasture, amid a forest was a giant gaping hole into a cave, 100 m deep! It was absolutely the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen, and had vines and other vegetation growing down the sides of it. We got to do a 100 m abseil down into the cave (a little uncomfortable on the crotch and legs...Mike's leg went very numb and took a little while to recover haha), then we climbed up various rocks and ledges into the dark tunnel and saw some glow worms. They are basically maggots that are the length of a match stick that emit a glow from their stomach. They don't have bowels or anything, so they burn their waste in their stomach, emitting a light! It looked like a starry sky. Apparently they spend most their life in the larval stage where they catch flies and bugs with the long sticky strings they hang from the roof of the cave. Then later they become a fly for 3 days that is incapable of eating (no mouth), so they reproduce and then are eaten by other glow worms. Crazy life.
Waitomo comes from the Maori (aboriginal) words "tomo" which means hole, and "wai" which means water. A lot of the names here are Maori and hard to pronounce. "Maori" is pronounced "mow-ree" (mow like cow).
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Oh, and near the end of the caving we had to climb up a 30 m long ladder. That was reallllly sketchy, especially because it was so slippery and you couldn't see into the darkness you were climbing into. When we reached daylight again, we were in another cave hole surrounded by cool limestone formations covered in vines. It looked like some temply out of Indiana Jones. Sooooo cool.
We found out that people in NZ hate possums because they are the reason kiwi birds are going extinct and now can only really survive in reserves - they eat the eggs. Our caving guide told us if we see one at night on the road we have to run over it. We have seen TONS of dead possum road kill (about 50 so far), but no live possums yet.
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