Chris & Jen Travel the World

A visit from Jen's Mum and Dad

2007-08-02T11:48:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad

We've been living in Hastings for about 2 months now and my Mum and Dad thought it was about time that they paid us a visit. We had a lovely couple of days showing them the local sights. We walked around the old town and had some lunch at the Pump House, then took the funicular up the west hill to admire the views across town, the beach and onto the Channel. We then walked along the pebble beach. Mum wanted to dip her toes in the sea so we ventured down to the waters edge where she tentatively stuck her shoeless foot out. A few waves didn't quite reach her but then one came in much further and soaked both feet! There was a little shrieking!
After some tasty dinner back here we went out for a round of Crazy Golf! It's great! Chris won by quite a margin but Mum, Dad and I were all quite close.

On the second and final day of their visit Chris had to work, but I went with them to Battle Abbey. We did the whole audio tour of the battle field which was pretty and interesting, and looked around the ruins a bit before heading back to Hastings. Mum bought some rock for Dan & Amy and then they headed back to Norfolk feeling relaxed and refreshed by their visit.

Mr & Mrs Jones

2007-08-02T11:38:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad

We were lucky enough to witness another wedding this summer, this time it was our friends Mike and Rachel who tied the knot. We had a fantastic day in the sun at Hales Hall sipping Pimms, playing games and then dancing in the evening. It's always great to meet up with all your friends, but it makes it even more special when you're gathered for such a momentous occassion, so thank you to Mike and Rachel for a wonderful day.
Congratulations guys, hope you have a great honeymoon and a very happy life together!

Mr & Mrs Wise

2007-08-02T11:34:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad

Huge congratulations to our sis Hannah and ger new husband Jimmy who got married in Leighton Buzzard on the 21st July. It was a lovely ceremony with both Bride and Groom looking fabulous. Hannah did have slight hysterics in the middle of her vows, but the words were heartfelt and well thought out by them both. We had a wonderful afternoon witnessing their marriage and then helping them to celebrate back at their house. The food was yummy, the cake gorgeous and the champagne free flowing!
We hope that they will have a very long and happy life together!

Time to come home - Fun Facts!

2007-05-05T22:33:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We can't believe it's time to come home! It doesn't seems like very long ago that we were saying goodbye to our parents at the airport, but I suppose it does feel like a long time ago since things like overnight trains in China and learning to dive in Vietnam.

So, here are some interesting facts about our travels....

We've visited twelve countries and ten capital cities. We don't really have a favourite country, but Mexico City was by far the best capital city.
We've been speaking quite a lot of Spanish over the last three months but have also learnt some words in Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and Maori. Usually how to say 'Cheers!'.
We've been to 23 airports and have taken 18 flights (but it's okay because we bought energy efficient lightbulbs for Jamaicans). We've been on 5 trains, 2 campervans and god knows how many buses and taxis!

We've had good and bad weather. The hottest place was King's Canyon in Australia, at about 47 degrees, and the coldest place was the desert in Bolivia before sunrise, at about minus 5 degrees. This was also the highest place we went to at over 5000m. The lowest place was next to an octupus in Koh Phi Phi, at 19m below sea level!

The longest time that we spent travelling was the 27 hour train journey from Shanghai to Guilin, after which we had to take a bus for a couple of hours to get to Yangshou.

The worst thing that we did on the whole trip was early on, in China. We cycled to Moon Hill and then climbed it. It was ridiculously hard work in the blistering heat and not at all worth it, as the nice moon shape of the hill was perfectly visible from the bottom, and the view from the top was rubbish.

We don't really have one best thing, but some contenders would be (in order of doing them): The Great Wall of China, Angkor Wat complex, Mui Ne beach, staying with Stuart & Wiccha in Chaing Dao, Sydney, driving around in our van in Australia, glow worms, sperm whales, staying in the Mezkalito hostel in Oaxaca, Chichen Itza, Nazca lines, Machu Picchu and the Uyuni salt flats.

We've eaten well, but more often not so well. The best food we've had was at the Friends restaurant in Phonm Penh, Wiccha's cooking in Chiang Dao and the Hangi in New Zealand. Of course, our campervan-cooked food in Australia and New Zealand was pretty yummy.
We've eaten at some truly diabolical places (as proven by the nice food poisoning). The worst place is hard to pin down, but generally nowhere in Vietnam or Peru was very good.

We've been very lucky and have met some really nice people along the way. Most of group in China were fun to be with, Vicky our dive instructor was cool, it was nice to see Stuart and meet Wiccha and Joseph in Chiang Dao, we had fun with a group of people in Oaxaca, we met a couple from Wymondham whilst we were in Nazca, we loved staying at the Frankenstein Hostal in Cusco with Ludwig, Maritta and little Fiona and the people on our Uyuni trip were very nice too.

So this adventure is over, but we plan to have many more. We're really loking forward to coming home and seeing everyone, being able to eat good food, flush paper down the toilet and catch up on pop culture (all the TV we've missed!).

We've missed you all and look forward to seeing you very soon!

Buenos Aires

2007-05-05T21:39:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Buenos Aires seems like quite a nice city. There are lots of cafes and restaurants around, and lots of shops. It seemed pretty wealthy too until we were sat outside a cafe in the evening and a constant stream of children came over asking for money.
On our first day here we looked around the central part of the city including the main plaza where the palace is situated. It is from the balcony of that palace that lots of people have given various rousing speeches, including Eva Peron. We also looked up and down the shopping streets and went to the cinema to watch Spidey 3.
That evening we went to an old tango cafe to have dinner and see a Tango show. It was quite fun. The band consisted of three old men - one with a keyboard, one with an accordian and the other with a double bass. There were two singers and two dancers. We thought it might be a bit more steamy, but it was quite good anyway.

Yesterday was a typical autumn day, with grey skies and plenty of drizzle, so we didn't really do very much. Today we ventured out from the centre to one of the barrios - Recoleta. We went to a cool cemetery with row upon row of above ground tombs. It was a goth's paradise. Lots of eerie statues and cool twenties font on the tombs. It's all mostly the tombs of generals and doctors from the late 19th century and early 20th century, when Agentina was rich. Lots of people go to the cemetery because that is where the Peron mauseleum is, but that one wasn't very interesting compared to a lot of the others.

All around the cemetery there were craft stalls. Proper caft stals too, which was nice, rather than the craft stalls you get in Peru and Bolivia, which all sell exactly the same stuff. We bought a couple of final souvenirs and then headed across to the National Art Musuem. There was a good display of work by one artist who painted form the 60s until now, but the rest of the art was a bit dreary.

This evening we'll pack our rucksacks for the final time (hooray!), and then we'll catch a flight home tomorrow to arrive back in the UK on Monday morning.

Santiago

2007-05-04T00:20:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

So we did go to see the Giant Mary, but we didn't like her as much as The Jesus in Cusco. He was much cooler, with wild scary eyes, and had less people worshipping him. It was Labor day on Tuesday so Santiago was like a ghost town. There was hardly anyone around and most of the shops were closed. Unfortunately the art museum that we wanted to go to was closed too, so after we walked back from the Mary hill we went to the cinema (twice).

Chile was an okay place to visit. We liked the telescopes a lot, and it was quite nice to be in a more developed place, but in the North, there's not a huge amount to see. It's quite a scuzzy place in parts too, lots of graffitti and stray dogs everywhere.

We flew to Buenos Aires yesterday and will mostly be eating steak and drinking red wine for the rest of the trip.

Chile and Buenos Aires were kind of bonus places that we came to because thats the way the flight home goes, so we're not really doing that much that's exciting at the end of our trip. So appologies for the lack of blog and photos.

Going to see some Tango this evening!

One more blog, and then we'll be home!

La Serena and Valparaiso

2007-04-30T17:56:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Our bus journey to La Serena was nice and comfortable. Lots of leg room and the luxury of tarmac roads, meant that the 12 hours went by quite quickly. We didn't arrive in La Serena until nearly midnight though, so we were glad that the hotel we'd chosen was still open and that they had a room. La Punto Hostel, is the nicest place we've stayed in ages. The room had actually been thought about and it was really pretty with our own little outside area. They also included a good breakfast in the price.
La Serena itself was quite a nice town, some interesting old style buildings mixed in with some very modern shops. Chile is far more developed than Peru and Bolivia. We had a look around a little craft market and went to visit the archeological museum. We mostly wanted to go there so that we could see their Moai, it's too expensive to fly to Easter Island, so that was quite a good find. They also had more dead people, which seems to be obligatory in Chilean museums, and a couple of completely disgusting shrunken heads! We also went for a walk around their pretty Japanese garden, which had some tranquil water features and some nice ducks.
For our second day in La Serena we took a walk to the coast. Unfortunately we are approaching winter time, and the weather wasn't really conducive to sunbathing. But it was a nice walk and made a change from all the high up places we've been recently. There wasn't much to see along the seaside, except for a lighthouse (which was quite tacky).

On Saturday we took another long bus ride, this time to Valparaiso. Chile is a long country and that makes for long bus rides, but it was another comfy journey. Valparaiso is by the coast but most of it's houses are up on the hills and as such it has 15 acensors or funicular railways, to get people up and down. We stayed the night in a rubbish hostel and then spent Sunday (or funicular fun day sunday, as we liked to call it) going up and down the ascensors. Again, it was a grey day, but it was still fun. Although, we weren't really convinced of the structural security of the railways.
Valparaiso is a funny town. It had some really beautiful buildings, but also a lot of horrible areas that had never been cleaned up or fixed. There were lots of tramps and stray dogs but also cool murals and interesting funiculars. Once we'd had enough of the funiculars we took a shortish bus ride to Santiago.

Santiago seems like an okay kind of capital city. It's pretty modern, but also has interesting old stuff to look at. We're spending today having a look around and then going up a hill to see the giant Mary tomorrow (it's very catholic around here!).

Into Chile

2007-04-25T01:46:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We spent quite a long time waiting in our bus at immigration, but then went through smoothly and drove to San Pedro de Atacama, a village on the edge of the Atacma desert - the driest place in the world! We had some lunch with Stu and Mark and then found ourselves a hotel. The prices were a bit high after Bolivia, but we were expecting it.

Yesterday we had a look around some nice artisan shops, and I got a cool copper necklace. We also went to the museum. Because the desert is so dry, it preserves everything really well, so there were some gross skeletons to look at, with bits of skin and hair still attached. It was really disgusting.

Last night we had a very exciting time looking through a Frenchman's large telescopes. The Atacama is one of the best places in the world for looking at the night sky, so this Frenchman has set up a good business letting tourists use his telescopes. We looked at the moon, and were able to take a photo through the telescope. He explained lots of things to us and we looked at some other stars and nebulae. The coolest thing was looking at Saturn. It was as though someone had stuck one of those glow-in-the-dark stickers onto the end of the telescope. It was unbelievable.

We caught a bus today to Antofagasta, which is a bit of a dump, but has a decent internet connection. We've got a 12 hour bus journey tomorrow to La Serena, where we'll be on the coast again.

Salar De Uyuni Trip - Days Two & Three

2007-04-25T01:20:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We had a surprisingly good night's sleep in our salt bed. It was quite comfy and we were snug in our sleeping bags with blankets on top. We got up at 5am for breakfast before driving back out to the salt flats to see the sunrise. It was really quite cold, but worth it for the array of colours. The sky around the sun was oranges and yellows, and opposite, the mountains were pinks, reds and purples. We also had a lot of fun with our unbelievably long shadows!
Unfortunately from that point the trip went significantly downhill. We'd read some bad things about the trip, but they mostly involved the cold and bad, irresponsible drivers. They didn't mention the very long drives on very bumpy ground. Luckily we'd done our stint on the back seat on the day of the smooth salt flats so were a bit more comfortable than those on the back seat, but even so, it was dusty and quite boring. We had a look at a volcano and then drove to various lakes where flamingos like to hang out. It's quite cool, because they're not that pink because there's not so much of the algae in those waters that makes them go pink.
Sometime after lunch we had our second flat tyre. Fortunately, the jeep carries two spares, so we were quickly on our way to the weird rocks. They have been shaped by the wind and sand into some odd shapes.The most famous of which is supposed to look like a tree. Our last sight of the day was the Laguna Colorada. The Laguna was a quite impressive reddish brown colour, but by that time of the day it was freezing cold so we didn't want to look at it for long.
Our hotel for that night wasn't great. We were in a dorm room together and you had to leave the relative warmth of the building to got to the bathroom. We played more cards until we thought the electricity was going to be turned off (9pm) and then were warm in our sleeping bags with balnkets again.

It was another early start so that we could get to the geysers for sunrise. It was horrible though because there was no electricity, so we had to do everything by torch light.
Our driver had done his best to fix the tyre that had gone the day before so we had a spare to put on when a tyre fell off as we were driving along. Luckily we weren't going very fast because our clutch wasn't working and we couldn't get above 2nd gear!!
The geysers were nice and steamy but it was stupidly cold at almost 5000 metres. The plan was to go on to the natural hot baths but our car just wasn't road worthy. We lost another tyre about 500 metres after the geysers, and with no spares left we were stuck in the freezing cold desert until someone else drove past. We were just about to drive on the rim when another jeep came along and kindly lent us their spare. It was hilarious because their tyre had tread, so it almost didn't fit our crappy jeep.
Not much further along, another tyre went and we were starting to worry that we wouldn't reach the border in time, as the buses only go between 10am and 11am. After that there's no way across. Luckily another jeep lent us a tyre and rather than visiting the hot baths we drove straight to the border with a quick stop off at the Laguna Verde, which wasn't very green but did have nice mountain reflections in it.

We made it to the border without losing any more tyres and caught a bus to Chile. Tom, Vicky and Peter were headed back to Uyuni so went in some different jeeps, but we couldn't believe it when our driver managed to 'fix' the tyres and put a new load of people in the jeep for a tour back in the other direction! We hope they made it, but doubt they did.
On that note, there were some crosses in the salt flats where a group of Argentinians had got lost during the rainy season and then when they broke down had tried to walk out but never made it. The crosses were really close to the edge.

So all in all we wouldn't recommend the salar trip to anyone past the first day, which was great. The companies in Uyuni have lowered their prices so much that they can't keep their vehicles maintained properly, and their drivers get two pounds a day. We tipped him big because we felt so bad for him having to drive such a rubbish vehicle and get on his hands and knees constantly to keep it running.

Salar De Uyuni Trip - Day One

2007-04-25T00:37:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Last Thursday we took a bus from Potosi to Uyuni. Bolivia is such a barren country. There was some spectacular rock formations and colours, but no people for almost the entire 6 hour journey. There were lots of animals though - llamas, donkeys, etc. It was quite a bumpy journey as there wasn't any tarmac on the roads, but we got to Uyuni on time and in one piece.
There are a huge number of companies in Uyuni who offer the same salt flats tour so we went to a place run by a gringo, who ranks them all from customer feedback forms. Having got a list of six or so good companies (in theory), we booked up a three day, two night trip to take us across the salt flats, into the national park and then into Chile.
Friday morning, filled up with a nice breakfast of American pancakes, we arrived at the company to find a man arguing a lot with the owner. A while later a jeep finally arrived to take us on our trip. We found out that the arguing man was a photographer on government business and had been put onto our trip because of a cock up organising him a private trip. So instead of an almost comfortable six people in the jeep, we were to have seven. It was quite a tight squeeze on the back row.
We had some nice people to share the jeep with. Tom and Vicky from England, Stu and Mark from Oz, but living in Edinburgh, and Peter the photographer from Bolivia and Chile and Germany and Canada!
Our first day was amazing. The first site was the train graveyard, just outside of the town. Lots of rusting old trains to look at. After that we came to a small village. The people who live there are the only people allowed to mine the salt from the flats. They dig it up into little piles and then put their initials on the top so that they know which family it belongs to. The village wasn't very interesting, but a llama did spit at Chris, which was very mean.
Next stop was the salt hotel. It's no longer allowed for people to stay on the salt flats in this hotel, but you can look at the tables etc made from salt. On the way to the Isla Incahuasi, we had to stop so that the driver could change our tyre. We were actually quite pleased because the salt flats are so beautiful, and in that particular area there were lots of hexagonal formations covering the surface. We had to keep reminding ourselves throughout the trip that it was salt, and not snow or ice.
The Incahuasi island was extremely cool, with giant cacti growing all over it. Apparently the tallest one is 12metres. We had some llama steaks and quinoa for lunch and then played around with the camera trying to get good pictures due to the lack of perspective. It almost worked!
That was the end of our sightseeing for the day and we drove along the lovely smooth salt to our hotel. We were very lucky (probably beacuse of our govenment photographer) and were the only people staying in the salt hotel just beyond the salt flats. It was fun. Everything was made from blocks of salt, beds, tables, seats, walls etc.
Whilst we were having a cup of tea and biscuits or a beer the young girl that lived in the hotel hinted heavily that she wanted up to play basketball, so a few of us went outside and played with them. It was good fun. I was on the Chica team, who won! We had a small advantage of not having beers in our hands and the little girls did employ some tickling and grabbing tactics. Basketball is quite hard work at 3800m. After dinner we played some cards and then went outside to look at the amazing sky. With very little light pollution we could see heaps of stars and an Incan Giant Llama in the milky way.

Potosi

2007-04-18T21:14:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We are currently in the highest city in the world - Potosi! It's at 4100m, making it pretty short on oxygen, which combined with the lovely fumes from all the old buses, makes it quite tricky to breathe. Potosi used to be the third richest city in the world, but is now just another poor Bolivian city with some pretty colonial buildings. The reason for all the wealth was the Cerro Ricco (Rich Mountain). One day, back in the early 1500s a llama farmer was a bit chilly and lit a fire on the side of the mountain. Imagine his surprise when molten silver came out! After this the city's population swelled to 160,000 and around nine million miners were killed over the three centuries that silver was mined here.

Many tourists visit the mines, which are now tin mines, but I really didn't fancy spending a couple of hours stuck in small tunnels, surorunded by arsenic fumes and watching young people working. It's a sad city.

The Cerro Rico dominates the sky line of Potosi and is a formidable presence. We wanted to vist the old mint, but it had strange opening hours and weird rules about being in tour groups, so we didn't bother. We did climb up an old, beautiful tower though, which gave us good views acros the city.

Tommorow we will get a bus to Uyuni. From there we will hopefully be going on a four day salt flats trip and ending up in Chile.

Sucre

2007-04-16T23:26:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

This morning we left the fake capital of Bolivia and flew to the real capital – Sucre. It was only a 45 minute flight but we didn’t really fancy the 16 hour bus ride that was the alternative. Bolivians aren’t the best drivers in the world, and the buses are quite small. We not only flew, but flew first class! The plane was full for days, with the only seats available being nice first class ones so we paid ten quid extra and had a comfy fast flight. We are mostly following the tourist route in Bolivia. Starting in La Paz and ending up at the salt flats, with Sucre and Potosi in between to break up the journey.

Sucre is a pretty little city with lots of nice white buildings, but the main attraction is the dinosaur footprints. Ten years ago or so, in a limestone quarry/cement factory the workers found some footprints which palaeontologists later identified as being over 5000 dinosaur prints. It was lucky that in that area of the quarry they had found magnesium so hadn’t excavated it and destroyed the footprints which are all the way along a one and half kilometre long wall.
To get to see them we took the Dino Truck, a glorified taxi with a plastic dinosaur on the front! It used to be the case that the truck drove you past the footprints, but nowadays there’s a visitor centre which keeps you a fair distance away in order to preserve them. The visitor centre, Cretaceous Park, was quite fun. We had a guide to tell us about all the different dinosaurs that used to live in the area and so left footprints. There were also some nice life sized fibreglass models.
It was quite cheesy, but fun to see the world’s largest collection of dinosaur footprints!

The World´s Most Dangerous Road

2007-04-15T21:37:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

On Thursday we got the bus from Puno to La Paz. This interesting journey involved first travelling to the Peru/Bolivia border where we had to get out of the bus, go though immigration and then walk 300m up the road. Very smooth and well organised though. Back on the bus to Copacabana in Boliva, where I had a delicious chilli con carne. Then we had to get onto a different and altogether inferior bus, where our luggage was thrown onto the roof and then we were packed into tiny seats. About an hour or so later, the bus stopped and the driver informed us that we´d have to get off the bus and onto a boat, while the bus would get on a bigger boat. Well, this worked well enough and we watched the bus come in to the other side on it´s barge. Another couple of hours later and we were in La Paz and being ripped off by taxi drivers (it happens).

Yesterday I rode a mountain bike down the World´s Most Dangerous Road (WMDR), previously called the Death Road. The WMDR decends from 4700m to 1200m over the course of 64km. It hugs the side of the mountains with drops of up to a kilometer to one side, and no safety barriers.
Apparently only 12 cyclists have been killed there in the last 4.5 years, which isn´t bad as it´s one of the top things to do in Bolivia. I´ve no idea how many cars/busses have gone over the edge. The road is no longer used by motor vehicles as a new road with tarmac and safety barriers has been built to replace the existing one.
We arrived at the top of the pass at 4700m and got sorted out with our bikes and kit. I´ve never ridden such an expensive bike. It had nifty things like full supension and hydraulic disc brakes and stuff. Needless to say, at 8:30am at that altitude it was pretty chilly. The first 27ks of our ride were a gentle downhill on proper road past the cocaine smuggling checkpoint and the toll booths for the WMDR (3$ per bike). Got up some pretty good speed on this section. We then, at about 3400m, had a couple of uphill sections, which at that altitude are no fun at all. After a rest and a snack we got on to the gravel section. This is where the WMDR starts properly. We then got to cycle downhill for 42km on rough gravelly paths by the side of the cliff, through streams, under waterfalls and down into the blistering heat of the rainforest. It was pretty hairy at times trying to keep up with the guides, but I only locked the back wheel once, and that was round a left hand bend so I wouldn´t have died anyway...
There was only one real crash, and that was when Matt our Kiwi guide went over his handlebars trying (unsucessfully) to avoid a four year old kid running out in front of him. He´d only just been telling us how he hadn´t had a crash on this route. He won´t be able to tell anyone else that...
At the bottom we had hot showers and beer in a little rainforest resort place with monkeys and macaws and gibbons, before getting the bus back up the new road to La Paz, which took about as long as riding down did.

Today, we´ve been looking around the markets in La Paz. In theory you never need to go into a shop as everything you might want to buy is available on the street. Particularly interesting was the Witches Market where you could buy such delights as dead Llama foetuses. Nice.

Lake Titicaca

2007-04-12T02:48:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We said adios to our lovely hostel owners and caught a train on Monday from Cusco to Puno. It was another Perurail affair, and wasn't too bad a journey. The rails were a bit bumpy at times and very bumpy at others but we didn't have any delays or anything and arrived in Puno on schedule at six in the evening. Peru is very sparsley populated from Cusco to Puno. We saw a few mud houses, the odd donkey, llama, pig and cow and lots of dogs. There are loads of stray dogs in Peru. Chris & I got a bit sad about it the other day when we realised it's because the children who walk around in traditional dress so that tourists can take their photos, carry puppies with them, but when they get too big they just let them go stray. Poor little fellas.

We were quite lazy when we arrived in Puno and went with one of the people who was hanging around outside the train station. The hostel that she was advertising was one that we'd thought about going to, and was quite nice and cheap, so we did okay. We also booked a Lake tour and our bus tickets to La Paz, so she did quite well out of us!

Yesterday we got up early and caught a boat with 12 other people for our two day/one night tour of Lake Titicaca. Our first stop was one of the Uros Islands - Chumi. The Uros Islands are extremely cool as they are artificial and made from the totora reeds that grow on the lake. Whilst we were there, one of the locals told us about how they make and maintain their islands by piling more layers of reeds on top when needed. Chumi was seven years old and about a metre and a half thick. The people live on about 40 different islands and they have a mayor, a school and a health centre. Usually the people make their living from fishing but the women also make things to sell to the tourists. Our guide book was quite negative about them, but we thought they were great, and that if the people didn't try to sell things then they'd be crazy. We bought a little reed boat, and also went for a ride on one.

Our next stop was Amantini Island, which was a 3 hour boat ride away. We arrived at around one o'clock and were met by some members of local families that we would be staying with. Our host was a little old lady called Isedora and we followed her up the very steep and long path to her family's house. The walk was very tiring as we were at about 3,900m.
The house was, as we were expecting, pretty basic; no electricity, running water or inside toilet. We were served some lunch and then taken up to the island's stadium. There are six separate villages on the island and they had come together for a big Easter celebration. There were brass bands from all six villages playing different music at the same time whilst the locals danced in amazingly elaborate costumes and drank beer. We sat and watched for a while and then decided to try to find the main plaza. We'd got about half way when the little girl from our family came running after us and took us back to the festivities. We didn't have enough Spanish to explain what we were doing and that we weren't lost, so we followed her back. She kept a close eye on us until it was time to go back to the house for dinner.

When the sun went down the temperature plummeted and we were very cold in our little room. We wore all our clothes and sat around our one candle playing cards. At around 9 o'clock we ventured out to the toilet and were taken aback by the beautiful sky. We could see so many stars that it was difficult to make out the constellations!
As it was so cold that our bones hurt, we decided to go to bed and get warm under the six blankets. The rain pounded down on our tin roof all night and we were awoken early by a sheep.

After breakfast we took a few photos of our family. The little girl is so beautiful, but unfortunately not used to having her photo taken. I took two polaroids and gave them one as a present before we walked back down the hill to get our boat.

The last island on our tour was Taquile, an hour's boat ride from Amantini. Like Amantini, it was a real island with hills, so we had another long walk to the main plaza. Taquile has a cooperative system in place with regards to their handicrafts. They are all sold in the same place and they take turns in manning the shop. Like on Amantini the people dress in a very traditional way. On Taquile, if you are a married man you wear a red hat, if you are single, you wear a red and white hat. Married women wear red skirts, whereas unmarried women can wear more colours.
There was a festival going on here too, so we saw some more great costumes, including a little boy in a gorilla suit. In the main plaza there were lots of children trying to sell braclets. We had brought our pencils with us so gave them out to them, for which they were very grateful. Another member of our group had brought balloons and made them all balloon animals, they loved it. It's a great idea.

On our way back down to the boat there were various stalls. The last one that we came to was manned by a cheeky little boy. Chris was trying to take a photo through an arch, but the little boy kept sneaking in and asking for a tip to take his picture. We gave him a pencil!

The boat trip back was fine, we passed the Uros Islands again and then got back into Puno as it started to hail. Tomorrow we say adios to Peru as we get our bus across the border to La Paz.

Machu PIcchu

2007-04-08T20:49:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

On Friday evening we caught a train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes. We’d spent the afternoon using the internet a bit and having dinner and got to the station a little early. That turned out to be a mistake as they didn’t let anyone past the station gates until about quarter of an hour before the train was due to leave. We then stood around in the cold for another hour waiting for an engine to pull the carriages. We could see our train, but we weren’t allowed on it. We finally got going at about nine o’clock and arrived in Aguas Calientes at 11pm. It was an odd train as only two carriages were designated backpacker carriages, all the rest were for locals. It seems to us that it’s not a very good way to organise your transport system especially since the only way from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes is by train. Peru rail have a huge monopoly over the tourists and so charge about 100 times what a bus would cost for the same distance.

We quickly found a hotel for the night in Aguas Calientes. It’s a funny village that seems to exist purely for tourists to catch the train. There are some hot springs around and a few shops, but it’s mostly hotels and restaurants. We paid 40 soles for our room for the night. The bus in the morning up to Machu Picchu cost 40 soles each! Nice bit of profiteering, as again your only other option is to walk up the mountain for three hours!

When we arrived at Machu Picchu we had a steep climb up to the watchman’s hut. Unfortunately we were a bit disappointed as we couldn’t see the ruins through all of the cloud that was surrounding us. But it turned out to be perfect. As we waited around the cloud slowly lifted to reveal the beautiful site that is Machu Picchu. The cloud stayed around for a bit longer on the mountain behind the ruins, but soon the sun came out and it was spectacular. We got some very cool photos and then walked down to the ruins themselves.

The craftsmanship on a lot of the buildings wasn’t quite as impressive as the Temple of the Sun at Pisac, but you could tell the important buildings as they had the straight edged large blocks and looked pretty amazing. The Incas were a hard working bunch of fellas, lifting all that rock around. We were wondering whether there was some kind of prestige involved in how big a piece of rock you got to work on.

There were some nice llamas hanging around the watchman’s hut, which gave the area a particularly Peruvian feel. We also met a chinchilla. He was a funny guy with a long tail who likes to live in the gaps in the rocks.

It’s a very expensive place to go but worth every penny. The ruins themselves are impressive, the sheer number of remaining buildings and the block work. But it’s the scenery that really makes it. The beautiful imposing mountains and the roaring Urubamba River make it a truly fantastic place to visit.

We spent most of the morning at the ruins and then headed back to the village where we had pizza at one of the many pizzerias and cooled off with a beer. The train back to Cusco was full days in advance so we could only go back as far as Ollantaytambo. The train left on time this time but did stop for forty minutes due to technical difficulties. When we arrived in Ollantaytambo we got a taxi with a Finnish girl who wanted to be back in Cusco quickly to catch a bus. At the last minute a Peruvian tour guide hopped in too, making it a cheap journey. It was quite good having him in the car as he told the driver to slow down a few times when the Finnish girl wanted to go quickly to catch her bus.

We arrived back in Cusco just after 8pm and headed back to our great hostel. The owners, Ludwig and Marita had cooked us a German roast dinner to come home to. It was delicious. Roast beef and elderberry sauce with potato dumplings and red cabbage and gravy. Yum! They are a lovely family and have looked after us very well. Their little two and a half year old Fiona is very cute. We played with her for a while too, but she’s not sure if she likes Chris and is sometimes a bit mean to him in Spanish.

Today is Easter Sunday and we hope everyone is having a good bank holiday weekend. They don’t do Easter Eggs around here but we do plan on buying some chocolate later.

Tomorrow we catch a train to Puno and Lake Titicaca – the highest navigable lake in the world!

Our own Inca Trail

2007-04-06T22:58:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

As we were unable to walk the Inca trail in the end we decided to get to Machu Picchu via our own Inca ruins trail. The majority of people get there via the train from Cusco, and head back on the same day, but if you do that then you are arriving with hundreds of other people, and we fancied getting there a bit before the train. So we started our journey on Wednesday.
We got up in the morning, left the majority of our stuff in our nice hostel and caught the local bus to Pisac. The journey was quite nice down from Cusco into the Sacred Valley along the Urubamba River. It took us about an hour and we arrived in Pisac in the late morning. It was a bit hard to find somewhere to stay as we didn’t have a map of the village, but we eventually found somewhere on the main plaza, which was rather overpriced but nice enough. If you take a sacred valley day tour from Cusco they bring you on a Pisac market day, Wednesday not being one of these days, we were surprised to find a huge market in the main plaza. We spent quite a long time having a look around at the nice crafts and fabrics and then had some lunch before making our way to the Incan ruins.
We had decided to get a taxi up to the ruins and then walk back down again. Pisac only gets a paragraph in our guide book, so we weren’t really sure what this would entail, but it seemed like a fun plan. The taxi took us up the mountain to the highest part of ruins where we could see a few huts and things. We walked around to where we could see some nice terracing and a small ruined area of houses. We then walked along a ridge to the next part of ruins which was a military area. It was really beautiful walking around as we were up in the mountains and there was a Peruvian man playing his flute, the sound from which carried all across the valley. It was quite haunting.
The walk to the next area was a little dangerous, with huge drops to the sides of the steps that we had to climb. Apparently a German fell and died four months ago. We also squeezed ourselves through a tunnel in the rock before coming to the Temple of the Sun. This was an incredible collection of buildings which had been constructed with very large blocks of stone. It was all very straight and well crafted. It was very impressive and looked a bit like a mini Machu Picchu. After this we looked down on another set of ruins before making our way down the mountain back to Pisac.
If you ask Chris, this was a cool walk with lots of fun steps to go down and rocks to hop on, but I on the other hand thought that it was a bit scary and quite dangerous! My legs hurt quite a lot the next day from going down all the steps, but it was quite cool to make our own way back. At one point we could hear voices, and as we came around a corner there was a group of Peruvian ladies who wanted to sell us water and woven belts. We gave them a bit of change so that we could take a photo and then carried on with our walk. A while later one of them came zooming past us, obviously more used to the terrain than us.
Pisac is a far cry from Cusco, with hardly any tourists there in the evening. When we were trying to find somewhere to eat, all the restaurants were full of locals watching a football match. We attempted to use the internet, but it was the first place we’ve come across on our whole journey that didn’t have broadband, so we didn’t bother doing very much.
The next morning (an advertised market day) the market had grown and there were bus loads of tourists walking around bargaining for alpaca wool hats and the like. Chris bought a poncho for his new gathering character and then we caught a taxi to our next destination – Ollantaytambo.

Ollantaytambo is another small village that gets taken in on the day tour from Cusco. It is nestled between the mountains and has some very cool ruins to explore. On one side of the village are some old grain houses quite high up on the mountainside, next to which is a giant face that has been carved out of the rock. The Incas were quite amazing.
On the other side of the village is the fortress, which we decided to leave until today to explore as yesterday there were too many tourists and the light wasn’t very good for photos.

Unfortunately this morning it was pretty cloudy and rainy, so we waited around looking at the craft stalls for a little while. When it didn’t really show any sign of clearing we decided just to go in to the ruins. It was a steep climb up the steps next to the terraces before we reached the cool walls and doorways that we have began to recognize as being typically Incan. The fortress was one of the last Incan strongholds against the conquistadors and was very nice to visit.

For lunch we went to a café recommended to us by a Dutch couple that we met in our hostel. It is run by a 76 year old English lady who moved to Peru four years ago and lives out in one of the small villages nearby. The café has only been open for three weeks and she is giving all of her profits to the women and children of the village she lives in and five other villages. She has set up a kindergarten and a home for abused women and children. A very commendable and cool thing to do with ones retirement.

This evening we are catching the extortionate train to Aguas Calientes where we can get an extortionate bus early in the morning tomorrow to Machu Picchu.

Inca ruins around Cusco

2007-04-03T01:52:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

For the first time in forever, I actually felt quite well today, so Chris & I decided to explore a bit further afield and take a look at some of the Inca ruins that are close to Cusco.
We walked to get a bus but were stopped by some collectivo people before we got there, so took that instead. It's a weird way to travel though, you have to sit and wait in the taxi until there are 5 passengers, making it quite cosy on the backseat. The taxi dropped us at Tambo Machay, a spring shrine with ceremonial water fountains. It was quite pretty, with some nice arches.

After there we walked across the road to Puka Pukara (The Red Fort). This ruin was probably a kind of post house where travellers stayed temporarily. It was pretty cool, with lots of levels to explore and the odd alpaca wandering around.
The next site was a 6km walk across country. We could have taken a bus or walked along the road, but as I was feeling quite well we thought it would be nice to have a walk. It wasn't very clear where to go, but we did a good job of following horse hoof prints. We passed through some nice fields containing cows and pigs and sheep, jumped over a few streams and eventually found our way to Q'enqo.

Q'enqo is a weird carved rock. The Incas used to sacrifice llamas there to predict the next year's fortune at the Winter solstice. From Q'enqo we walked along to the Cristo Blanco (The Jesus). You can see him from in town and the views from him were really good. He had mad starring eyes though, which were a bit scary. There was a nice alpaca hanging around near him that we managed to get a photo of before a little girl in traditional costume came to get him and ask the tourists for money for photographs.

Our final ruin was Sacsayhuaman. We had just arrived at the site and climbed over a ditch as the rain started. It got heavier and heavier, and turned to hail so we took shelter under a rock and waited for it to stop. But it didn't, so we decided not to look around and to get a taxi back down to Cusco instead of walking.

We warmed up in a nice cafe where we had some late lunch and then went back to the hostal.

Cusco

2007-03-30T01:21:00.001+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

OK, so it´s been a week since the last blog, but honestly we haven´t done that much...
Cusco is a really nice place literally built right on top of an old Incan town. A number of the buildings have the original Incan stone work for the first few feet, and the bricks they used were not uniform. There are also lots of impressive old collonial buildings, and houses built up the sides of the hills.
Unfortunaltely, Jen at some point contracted salmonella. We visited the doctor on our 2nd day here and he prescribed some drugs to fight it. When Jen was feeling worse 4 days later and we went back to the clinic they decided to keep her in and administer the antibiotics intravenously. She´s still there now, 3 days on, but she should be able to go home tomorrow. She´s feeling pretty much better except for a bit of a stomach ache.
The hospital is actually not that bad. All the needles and things come from steralised bags, her private room has a spare bed that I can sleep in, the room has cable TV, there´s a great view from the window and they´ve sorted all our insurance stuff out for us.
The owner of our Hostel´s wife and 3 year old daughter came to the hospital last night to visit Jen wich was an unexpected and lovely surprise.

We were due to walk the Inca trail tomorrow, so obviously that´s out, but we´ll still be able to take the train to Machu Picchu in a few days when Jen´s fit and well again. We´d allowed plenty of time in Cusco, and we´ve gained 3 days from not doing the trek so aside from the walk (which Jen was never that keen on) we´re not missing out on anything.

Fingers crossed that they let Jen home tomorrow!

The Road to Cusco

2007-03-22T00:33:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Our bus to Cusco from Nasca was supposed to be a 14 hour journey, leaving at 11pm and arriving at 1pm the following day. We booked some comfy seats and hoped that we would have a relatively hassle free journey. The guide book recommends not to take night buses as there are high instances of theft while you sleep, but we knew from when we caught the bus from Lima that the Cruz de Sur company films everyone getting on, and we knew there'd only be 9 people in our section.

It was not, however, a very hassle free journey!
The seats were comfy enough, but the road was very windy and uphill so there were lots of gear changing jerks. We managed to get some sleep but did feel quite motion sick. That turned out to be the least of our worries!
We woke up at about 9am to find that we were stationary. There had been a lot of rain and it looked as though a river had burst it's banks, turning the road into a bit of a river. It was okay though, as we manged to cross the water eventually.
A couple of hours later we came around a corner to find lorries parked along the side of the road. The bus driver kept going, but soon we were reversing to join the quene of staionary traffic. There was an announcement, but our spanish isn't yet good enough to understand what was said, but we did catch the word mañana (tomorrow), which is never a good sign. We sat around a bit, a few people got off the bus, and there were quite a few locals milling around.
After half an hour or so of waiting we went to find out what was going on. It turned out that there had been a huge rockfall which had completely blocked the road, and at best it would be cleared by the next day.
The concept of spending that long on the bus without any food didn't really appeal so we took the offer of a taxi from a local guy by the bus. The guys carried our rucksacks down past all of the parked traffic and over the rockfall where we gave them a few soles for their trouble and got into a taxi which we thought would take us to Cusco - another 3 or 4 hours away.

Around 3 or 4 minutes down the road we were stopped by the police who were in the process of retrieving a lorry from a ditch with a worn out rope and another truck. They told the passengers in the boot to get out and we squeezed past that little mishap. Once we were out of sight of hte police, the guys jumped back into the boot and we were on our way.

Until, 5 minutes later we encountered a mudslide, which was blocking the road. We had to abandon our taxi and take our things around the road, over a kind of verge to the other side of the slide where there were more taxis waiting. As you might expect, the verge was very slippery and we both fell over. I went down on my butt, and Chris broke his fall nicely on his rucksack.
We piled a lot of people into the car, three in the boot with our muddy rucksacks, and carried on with our journey.

This time we managed around half an hour before we had to get another taxi. We had thought that we were being taken all of the way to Cusco, but the driver just wanted to go to the next village where we were dropping off most people. We then had to wait around for our next taxi to fill up with passengers. Despite the obvious illegality, the car isn't full until there's someone in the boot!

Luckily, this taxi did take us all the way to Cusco. There were many more rockfalls to negotiate, but they only took up half the road, so we could still pass. The driver was a maniac though, and we occassionally feared for our lives when on the wrong side of the road going around a corner at 60kmph.

We arrived in Cusco at about 5pm, with very sore legs from being squashed into the back of the taxi, but glad to finally be at our destination. The git of a taxi driver wouldn't take us all the way into town though and ushered us into yet another taxi for our hotel. We were quite cross when we found out that it was in easy walking distance, but too tired and thirsty to care.

We stayed our first night in a charity hotel called Hotel Niños. It was nice, buit we didn't have our own bathroom, so this morning we moved ot a lovelly place for 40% of the price called Hotel Frankenstein, which is also nearer town. It's a very homely hotel, you can use their kitchen and living room, where there'a a nice wood burning fire. We have to negotiate our way around their pet Iguana - Martin in the mornings as he sits at the top of the stairs where there is the most sun.

Cusco seems very nice. We've spent today wandering around a bit. Have already bought a few things, and we're thinking that we are going to buy an extra bag! I've got a nice hat to keep my ears warm, as it gets pretty chilly up hear at an altitude of 3500m, it also makes it a bit tricky to breathe. But we should acclimatise in a few days.

Lima and Nasca

2007-03-18T19:01:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We took the overnight flight from Mexico to Lima on Wednesday. It was only 6 hours but we got some sleep. We took the overpiced taxi from the airport (It´s 4 times the price of the taxis outside the airport, but at least you don´t get ripped off). We´d booked a hostel in advance and it was manky. Lovely location in Miraflores though. It´s not recommeded that you stay in Lima centre.

We snoozed until lunchtime and then went for a wander. We weren´t very adventurous in Lima, we just looked around shops, went to the cinema and ate. We went to a place called Pizza Street, which is pedestrianised and almost purely Pizza restaurants and bars, with people grabbing you and offering free Pisco Sours to eat in their restaurant. We found a nice Brazillian place with cheap Brahma and bottom wiggling dancing.

Yesterday we got a lovely coach, perhaps the nicest we´ve ever experienced, to Nasca. It only had 3 seats per row in the downstairs 1st class compartment. We felt very posh, and very comfortable. It also had films either in English, or with English subtitles which is better than the buses in Mexico with their very spanish films. We spent the whole 7 hour trip driving through barren desert.
We arrived in Nasca to a hoard of Peruvians shouting at us to come to their hotels. We walked straight past them to the hotel in our guidebook which was visible about 50m away. It´s much nicer than the place in Lima, but Nasca is hot and we don´t have air con or a fan. Apparently there´s been no significant rainfall here since the last ice age. I expect that could change now that we´re here.

Today we got up early to get on a Cessna 6 seater plane to fly over the Nasca lines. These mysterious and beautiful lines were created from about 500BC to 500AD by the ancient Nasca people (or, according to some theories, put there by aliens). The only reason they´re still there is because of the lack of rainfall and it´s forbidden for anyone to go there by land. We flew for about half an hour at between 300 and 1000 feet, and saw lots of geometric lines and pictures of a spider, a monkey, a whale, a humming bird, a condor, a parrot, a dog, an "astronaut", amongst others. The largest picture is about the size of a football pitch. We banked and turned around them in a stomach churning sort of way, before coming back for a very smooth landing.
There are various theories as to what the lines were for, including extra terrestrial landing strips, a giant calendar, and others which hopefully we´ll find out more about when we attend a lecture on the subject this evening.

Back to El D.F.

2007-03-14T21:51:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

It can be quite confusing whilst in Mexico, that the Mexicans refer to the city as Mexico too. So to avoid confusion, it is also called El D.F - the Distrito Federal. We enjoyed our first lot of time in D.F and decided at the time that there was so much to do that we needed a few days at the end of our trip here to do everything we wanted.
We arrived back from Cancun airport on Saturday and decided to stay in the Zona Rosa area rather than the Zocalo area. We thought it would be good to experience a different part of this vast city. In theory the Zona Rosa is quite an upmarket area with restaurants and night clubs along with nice shops. But we didn´t like it! We tried to find somewhere to eat, and it was quite a mission, plus on the way back to our overpriced hotel we shared the pavement with some rats and some very unpleasant smells. So on Sunday morning we checked ourselves back into the Hotel Canada near to the Zocalo. We are really impressed with that area of the city. It´s reasonably clean, has great architecture and there´s lots to do. There's also a nice atmosphre with all the noise created by the traffic police blowing their whistles all the time, and the organ grinders grinding thier organs.

On Sunday afternoon we took the Metro to the Dolores Olmeda museum which holds the largest number of Diego Rivera paintings in the city, plus some of Frida Kahlo´s work. Unfortunately the line that we needed was closed for refurbishment so we got the train a little way, then got a bus, then got another train. It was worth the long journey though, the house itself was impressive. Dolores Olmeda was a friend of Rivera´s and collected his work, which she left to the city when she died a few years ago. Rivera´s paintings are very good, we really liked his style. Frida´s paintings are very strange, but also cool in their own way. We bought a couple of postcards and then repeated our journey.
Luckily the Metro is very cheap. 2 pesos gets you to anywhere.

On Monday we went up the Torre Latino Americana, which is quite a big building, but not really as bid as the Auckland Skytower, or most other tall buildings built since the 50s. It's ugly from the outside, but gave us great views of the city. Just outside the tower was a display of one artist's sculptures. That´s a great thing about being in a big city, you can just stumble across really cool stuff.

Yesterday we took another mission on the underground to get us to Chapultec Park. The park is huge and houses various museums and a free zoo. We started off with the zoo. We mostly wanted to go there to see their Giant Pandas (they were very snoozy), but they had some other interesting animals including a nice fat hippo. After a long walk back to the entrance where you have to leave your bags, we had some lunch and then went to the Museum of Anthropology.
The museum was good as it contains lots of the artefacts that they have removed from the sites that we´ve visited. Including a very intact Chac Mul and a huge head.

Today we took advantage of the late check out time at our hotel and then went to the Diego Rivera Mural Museum. We really liked his murals at the palace and this one was just as good. It´s a big park scene containing lots of Mexican figures from throughout history, and the ever present image of the skeleton. It took him 3 months to paint in 1947. The rest of today we are using the internet and then going to the airport for our late flight to Lima, when we´ll be close to home at only 4 hours behind you.

We´ve realy liked Mexico. It´s a testament to how cool a country it is tht we´ve been ill for around half our time here and have still had a great time.
The architecture is beautiful and colourful, the history is interesting and it´s cool to be able to visit so many ruins. The food has been good sometimes - mole is nice as are tacos, but it´s nothing like we have at home!
There has been so much stuff that we would have loved to have bought, both for ourselves and as presents, but we just don't have room for colourful blankets, and bottles of chilli suce and tequila would get broken as would little carved animals from Oaxaca.

Xcaret Park

2007-03-13T00:32:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We spent our final day in Playa Del Carmen going to the Xcaret Park. We mostly wanted to go there to see toucans, but they had lots of other cool stuff too!
It was quite an expensive place to visit but the money was worth it when we realised how much conservation work they do, particularly with breeding scarlet macaws and turtles (not with each other). We had a look at the native species area first. There were loads of scarlet macaws and other kinds of parrots, flamingos, beautiful toucans, crocs, a type of small wild cat and a very impressive king vulture. After that we watched the Papantia fliers. These crazy guys do a little dance before climbing up a tall pole. Whilst one of them stands on the top playing musical instruments, the other 4 spin the top of the pole so that their ropes unravel and they fly down to the ground. It was very impressive.
We spent the rest of the day exploring the park. There were areas of rain forest, beaches and ruins to look at. Plus cave systems and an underground river. We went for a peaceful boat ride along a different part of the river and spotted many lizards sunning themselves.
We visited some more nice animals including turtles, dolphins, a tapir, racoons, jaguars and pumas. They also had a nice aquarium.

In the evening there is a "spectacular" show, which is included in the entry. It was quite cool, they had good costumes for the Myans and played out that part of their history, including the ball game, although they missed out the human sacrifice part! The second half wasn´t quite as interesting as it was mostly dancing, but it was still good.

Overall the park was a bit touristy (we´ve never been in a crowd with that many Americans before, they just can´t help themselves - whistling and whooping galore), but well worth the vist. The toucans and Papantia fliers were worth the entrance fee by themsleves.

Playa Del Carmen

2007-03-04T23:36:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

At around and hour further along the coast from Cancun, Playa Del Carmen is the most touristy place that we have been so far on our whole trip. Lots of the Mexican people speak English, something that we haven't come across elsewhere, and everthing is around twice as expensive as in the rest of Mexico. But there is a stunning blue Carribean Sea and nice white sand beach here.

When we arrived we walked around getting extremely sweaty, trying to find somewhere cheap enough to stay. Our guide book and the internet had been no help so we had been a bit worried that we'd end up spending far too much money. We have ended up in a $50 a night place, not quite the $16 a night we paid for our time by the beach in Vietnam!

We went for a look around the town, which mainly consists of a long pedestrianised avenue one road back from the sea front. Playa is a new town that was built to accomodate people who were taking the ferry across to Cozumel, but has grown into a resort in it's own right. As a result there is no plaza or cathedral or any of the other features typical of every other Mexican town. The avenue is full of expensive restaurants and souvenir shops, not much else. As we were walking along a guy asked us if we were interested in going diving. After we had been talking to him for a while he offered us a special promotion! As we were English, married and over 30 we could go for a 90 minute sales presentation and breakfast at the Mayan Palace Hotel and in return he would give us a snorkle and dive trip, 2 ferry tickets to Cozumel and a bottle of tequila & a bottle of kahlua for just $20, not bad we thought.

So yesterday morning we were picked up in a taxi and taken a bit further than we realised to the hotel. We then spent from 10 o clock to around 1:30 listening to a lady trying to sell us a timeshare in their hotel. Except she said empatically that it isn't timeshare, but a vacation club! We said no to her, then her manager came and offered us a deal, we said no to him, and when we thought we'd escaped and could get our gifts another guy started offering us reduced packages, we said no! In the end we got our tickets and stuff though. The time spent was irritating, but didn't matter that much to us, but we did feel sorry for the people who were in the taxi back with us who had spent a day of their 6 day holiday being hassled.
In the evening we went down to the beach to watch the beautiful lunar eclipse. We thought that it was pretty cool that there might be people at home watching it at the same time as us. It wasn't quite as impressive here as it was still quite light, but got darker for watching the full moon return.

Chichen Itza

2007-03-04T23:15:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Around midday on Wednesday we walked in the sticky heat with our bags to the bus station. We have decided after 6 months of study that rucksacks are a stupid way to carry your belongings and that suitcases with wheels are clearly a better option!
We didn't know what time the buses went to Chichen Itza, but luckily there was one leaving about 20 minutes after we arrived so we hopped on that and took the 2 hour drive to Chichen Itza. There are a few hotels near the ruins and we had booked ourselves into the sister hotel of the hotel we stayed in in Merida. It was quite nice and had a pool, but pretty crappy food that wasn't really Mexican, but wasn't Western either and generally arrived at the table luke warm.

We knew that the hordes from Cancun started arriving at around 10:30, so we got to the ruins nice and early. There were a few people about, but not many and we managed to get a few snaps of the Castillo without people in, something I doubt people managed later in the day.
Another reason for arriving early was to climb the Castillo (main pyramid) before it got too hot, but it was roped off and stayed that way all day. This is a new thing, as in our 2004 guidebook it says that you can do it. We're not sure why they've stopped people going up there, but if you fell you'd probably die, so better safe than sorry!

It was an amazing place to look around. There are many other buildings than just the Castillo. The group of the 1000 colums was pretty cool and you were able to climb onto a part at the back of there. All around there was intricate stone carvings, they looked great, but would have been even more stunning with all the original paint. There is also an observatory which they think was used for astronomical purposes. It looks just like you would expect. There was a huge ball court with nicely carved goal rings and various other pyramid shaped temples.
Defintely worth the visit.
On lots of postcards there are pictures of a Chac Mool that is relatively uneroded, but we hadn't seen it, we thought it was probably in the museum. Unfortunately they had closed the whole museum for renovation, which was quite disapointing. We had a look in a book and discovered that the Chac Mool was at the top of the Temple of Warriors so we had some lunch and then headed back in.
We were very glad that we had done our sightseeing in the morning as coach load after coach load of people had been arriving and when we went back in there were loads of groups of 30 or so people all around.
We found the Chac Mool but it was at the top of a closed off pyramid, presumably recently closed off, so we were unable to get very close.

We spent the rest of the day cooling off by the pool back at the hotel.

On Friday morning we needed a bus to take us 40km up the road to a large bus station in Valladolid. This meant we had to take our things and wait by the side of the road until one came along. We knew the rough times, but this is Mexico and they tend to run on their own special time. It was hot and dusty but eventually a bus came and we manged to get another bus from Valladiod to get us to Playa Del Carmen by late afternoon.

Campeche and Merida

2007-02-27T19:43:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We arrived in Campheche in the mid afternoon and got the taxi driver to drop us at another hostel in the same chain as we had been using. It wasn´t great, but in quite a good location and we were able to have a private room. In our guide book, Campheche is in the highlights section for the Yucatan, but it didn´t really tell us much about it or give us a map! So we decided to take the tourist tram for a little sightseeing trip around the city. We saw lots of important churches (we suspect they were interesting) and the nice old walls. It made a nice change to be near to the sea again. There is no beach at Campeche but we could sit on the promenade and enjoy the sea breeze and look at the huge pelicans.
Campeche was nice enough, but we felt an afternoon was enough time there, so we caught anohter bus to Merida on Saturday.

Merida is quite a big city, but like all Mexican cities it is quite manageable as it is built around the central square and cathedral. We decided to splash out a bit on our hotel, as the last few had left quite a lot to be desired. The hotel Dolores Alba is a palace in comparison to where we stayed in Palenque. Our room is huge with a/c and a tv and it overlooks the swimming pool.
Sunday appears to be a very social day in Mexico. The roads surrounding the plaza were pedestrianised and we went for a walk up to the local museum. On our way we passed a band playing for lots of people of a certain age, who were having a great time salsa dancing. The museum was quite interesting, with quite a few artefacts from nearby Chichen Itza. In the afternoon we relaxed and then sat out at a couple of street cafes watching lots of people and listening to the various bands that were playing either at the cafes or along the streets.
Yesterday we decided to indulge ourselves with a day by the pool. We´ve been looking at where to go to the beach, and it all looks at bit pricey, so we are taking advantage of our pool whilst we are here in Merida. It´s good because it doesn´t get too much sun during the day, so we don´t have to worry too much about sunburn, but that does mean that the water´s a bit chilly.

Today we have had a look at a couple of local markets and a craft shop. We´re going to the art museum later and then will probably have a dip in the pool!

Chichen Itza tomorrow! Yay!

From Oaxaca to Palenque

2007-02-23T01:36:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We hung out some more with people from the hostel in the evening in the end, so it was quite a quiet one, but fun and late. We got up the next morning and went back to the market that we had eaten in the previous day. It was very cool. There were piles of dry chilies in baskets, all different sorts.There was an aisle full of huge piñatas - snow white, spongbob squarepants, you name it, it was there. There were also stalls selling packets of mole ingredients. If we were coming straight home form here we would have bought some, but it wouldn´t travel very well in our rucksacks. Also in town there were a couple of shops selling the bitter chocolate. We bought a bar - 52% cocoa solids, so we´ve been eating it in very small quantities!

That evening we caught an executive(!) overnight bus to San Cristobal de Las Casas. We had a lot of leg room, enough even for Chris, and there were tv screens. In our guide book it had said that usually films are in their original language with Spanish subtitles, but unfortunately for us, they were dubbed. We got a little sleep and arrived early enough in the morning to check into a hotel and have a bit more sleep. We did have to have an extremely confusing conversation with the receptionist though. He came up to our room a few minutes after we´d checked in and started saying things we didn´t understand. We think he was just trying to tell us that we had to check out the following day at 1pm, but we´re still not really sure!

Refreshed and ready for more exploring we headed out into San Cristobal. We were quite intrigued about this area. In 1994 there was a rebellion by The Zapatistas, who overran the city wearing balaclavas and wielding guns. When the Mexican government tried to oust them, the people of the city refused and gave the Zapatistas their support. It all stems from there being such a large indigenous population in the area, who are somewhat overlooked by the Mexican government. As we were walking around, there were quite a few men standing around in uniforms carrying assault rifles, we don´t really know who they were!

The indigenous people make very nice crafts, so we had a look around the large market and bought a couple of things. We also encountered some children who wanted to know our names, ´for school´, after we´d written them they asked us what donation we´d like to make to the school. We gave them a bit of money, hoping it goes where they said it would. When we walked up to the San Cristobal church we met some more children doing the same thing. We gave them 50p or so and then went to a stationers and bought a packet of pencils, so that the next children we meet can just have those instead of money!
The walk up to the church was worth the effort, as we could look out across the city. A beautiful blue church that we had walked past earlier, really stood out. That evening, we ate in the best restaurant so far in Mexico - Emiliano´s Moustache. The food so far has been quite hit and miss. It is very different to our idea of Mexican food. For a start, there´s hardly any cheese, and the cheese you do get is crumbly goats cheese. Most dishes involve a small amount of slightly dodgy meat, tortillas and mole. Some of the mole we´ve had has been great, and some pretty tasteless. It´s not spicy either, but usually there´s spicy salsa on the table for you to add. Both our tummy´s are feeling slightly upset by the food!
In Emiliano´s, we had tacos. There were lots to choose from. On our table there was 2 different salsas, a mole, limes and onion & corriander. When the tacos came, it was meat sizzling on a plate accompanied by lots of soft tortillas. It´s very hard to know what you are going to get, but that was pretty good!

Yesterday morning we caught a bus to Palenque. A shorter ride this time through some very verdant scenery, quite surprisingly so as this
is Mexico´s dry season. Our guide book reckons that all Palenque has to offer is it´s ruins, and it´s not wrong! The town seems very polluted, and there´s not much to see really so we got some dinner and then watched some tv in our room.

Today we caught a collectivo (a vw van) to the Mayan ruins of Palenque. They are set in amongst the jungle, so it was very hot and humid walking around them, but it did make it all look very cool. Talking of temperature, it has been pretty hot and dry in the day up unitl now but then with very cold nights. In Oaxaca, I stood with a blanket around me! Since we got to Palenque it has been hot all of the time, it´ll probably stay that way for the rest of time here as we´re mostly staying at sea-level.

Anyway, the ruins looked very cool, and it would have been spectacular in all it´s glory. The attached museum had intersting artefacts that they found in the tombs, including jade death masks.

Tomorrow we are getting another bus, this one´s headed for Campeche in the Yucatan.

Some other things that we have forgotten to mention about Mexico - there are a lot of VW Beetles. In Mexico City, about every 4th car was one. Also we are surprised by the small number of people who can speak English, and are pleased that we took some lessons in Spanish before we came here.

Oaxaca

2007-02-19T04:41:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We caught a bus from Mexcio city to Oaxaca (pronounced wahagca) which took us about 7 hours and was fairly uneventful. We arrived quite late in the evening so caught a taxi from the bus station to a hostel that we saw a leaflet for at the hostel that we went on the wrestling trip from. It is part of the same group the Hostel Moneda, but we hoped for better luck this time! It is a really nice place with an open air courtyard in the middle with a bar. It's really pretty with brighlty coloured arches. Much better than the Moneda!

We went and found ourselves some dinner in the town. We had been a bit disapointed with the mole sauce after hearing so much about it, but we we had some really nice mole negro in the restaurant. It's made from lots of different chillies and really bitter chocolate. It's nice, not spicy really and just a bit chocolatey.
When we got back to the hostel the Mexican barman offered us far too much to drink and consequently we have now had Tequila in Mexcio and have had hangovers today!

When we got up the barman/tourguide/receptionist announced that he was doing a tour of the town so we signed up for that before going in search of breakfast. The tour grew into a ride to Monte Alban and a trip to the market and was pretty cool.
We had planned on going to Monte Alban. It is a Zapotec ruin built between 300 and 900AD. Our first trip to a ruin was all it promised to be. Lots of shambly pyramids and nice views from the height of the mountain. It was quite fun to be in a group for a change, we had Slovenians, an Australian and two Mexican for company.
After visiting the ruin we drove back into the town and visited the market. Oaxaca is famous for it's crafts as it has a high number of indigenous people living in the surrounding area. There were some lovely brightly coloured blankets and lots of wooden animals. We bought a picture and a flat metal skeleton.

This evening has been a quiet one after the excesses of last night! Tomorrow we will have more of a look around the town and then probably catch a night bus to our next destination.

Lucha Libre

2007-02-18T17:33:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Friday night, we went to watch the wrestling (Lucha Libre). It was fantastico!

We were in a great big stadium with giant TV screens and vendors walking around selling Corona and pizzas. It all felt very american, and the wrestling was a lot like the WWE, except that 90% of the wrestlers were wearing masks. Its a big dishonour to have your mask removed apparently.

They were all very athletic, lots of jumping off the ropes and stuff. The final fight was some sort of three on three battle which ended up in the team who were clearly the peoples favourites winning with a double pin.

PEDROS! PEDROS!

Mexico City

2007-02-16T18:13:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We arrived a bit blurry eyed in Mexico City airport and easily got a taxi to our hostel that we had prebooked whilst in Auckland with STA Travel. The hostel is on a street just of the Zocalo - the second largest square in the world after The Red Square (we think Tianamen square was bigger). It seemed an ok hostel to be in so we left our bags and went down in to the square to have a little look around and then get some dinner. Armed with our phrase book and our few classes worth of knowledge we looked at a few menus and finally settled on the Cafe Popular. I ate Tacos (Yay!) and Chris had chicken with salsa sauce, quite a succesful start. We went back to our hostel and tried to go to the roof top bar but were told that it was closed, so we went back to our room. It was around 10pm at this point when we got a knock at the door. Our vistor was a man telling us to leave the hostel as it was unsafe, I think we heard the word fire in there somewhere, but we don´t really know what the problem was! We packed our bags, asked for our money back and found ourselves a new hotel on the other side of the square! It`s much nicer and not too expensive so we don`t mind too much. Quite a funny start to our time in Mexico!

We slept in yesterday to catch up on the sleep we missed the previous night and then went to the Zocalo for some sightseeing. The Catedral Metropolitana is the largest cathedral in Latin America and it looks really impressive form the outside. Attached to it is a church that gets used for everyday things which is also really cool, with it´s heavily carved facade.
We also went into the Palacio Nacional to have a look at some Rivera murals. They were very impressive. The largest depicted Mexican history, with other smaller ones depicting life before the Spanish. We might go to RIvera & Frida Kahlo´s house & museum when we come back to Mexico City at the end of our trip.
We had more good Mexican food for our lunch - fajitas. Yum scrum.

The Templo Mayor is the last thing that we visited at the Zocalo. It is the site of a big Aztec temple which was only discovered in 1978 when some workmen found a huge stone with the goddess of the moon carved into it. We had a look around the ruins where you can still see some of the carved sepants and things, some of which still have quite a lot of colour on them. The musuem which they have built next to the ruins contains the largest collection of Aztec artefacts in the world, it´s pretty cool stuff like skulls and sacrificial tools.
When we came out, the square was full of soldiers lowering the enormous national flag. They do this everyday at around 6pm and lots of Mexicans watch them.

In the evening we went to the Plaza Garibaldi. This is where all the mariachis hang out. It was fantastic! We watched from a distance for a while and then paid a group to play for us. A bunch of old guys with spangly trousers, it was great!

So far we like Mexico a lot. The architecture is beautiful, the food is yummy and there`s a lot of interesting things going on all the time. There are loads of policia all around where we are and we feel pretty safe (not particularly because of the ploilce though).
We are very excited as tonight we are going to the Luche Libre!

More Hollywood

2007-02-16T17:41:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We took a Limo tour of Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, Sunset Strip, etc. We looked at all the celebrity´s homes (or gates in some cases), but we didn´t see any famous people. We did get to sit in the back of a nice limo with some obese people from Detroit though. We didn´t really understand what they were saying because they used the word dawg too much.
We didn´t go to the Viper Room in the end. The tour guide said that it had a bad rep these days. Instead we stayed at the hostel and enjoyed their surprisingly good "Open Mic Night". After that we managed about an hour and a halfs sleep before we had to get up to go to the airport. We had a connecting flight in Dallas, which seemed to be the largest airport in the world. Probably isn´t though.

Welcome to Hollywood (La la land)

2007-02-13T22:15:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

On our last day in Auckland we took a Harbour cruise and visited the Maritime museum before getting the bus to the airport. So far on our trip we’ve got to airports a few hours before the flight, checked in and then sat around for a while, but flying to America pretty much means you’re in a queue for the three hours. First there’s the long check in queue, then the passport control and bag scan queue and then the second bag scan and full body scan for when you go through to the gate. We weren’t allowed any liquids or gels still. We did have a good flight though as the plane had a new fangled entertainment system which meant that you could watch any of the 50 or so movies and TV programmes whenever you liked with the added bonus of being able to pause it when you have your dinner. Chris watched The Departed and Black Dahlia, and I watched Little Miss Sunshine and Marie Antoinette. It was a bit of shame that it was a night flight as we wasted valuable movie watching time by trying to sleep!

We arrived in Los Angeles and cleared customs in an hour or so, it wasn’t as bad as we thought it might be and the customs officials were very friendly unlike in most other places that we’ve been. We caught a shuttle bus and got dropped off at our hostel which is conveniently located on a road linking Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard.

We took a walk along Hollywood Boulevard looking at the stars on the pavement which was pretty cool and then went into the mall where the Kodak Theatre is to look out across the hills to the sign. They’ve got the Oscars on display at the moment so we went and had a look at those and I held one!
In the evening we went to a comedy show upstairs at our hostel which was quite a lot better than we were expecting. One guy was extremely funny.

Yesterday we took the tube to Universal Studios. It’s great because the theme park is on the same plot as the actual studios so you can take a tour of the studios as well as the park attractions. While we were there they were filming Desperate Housewives, but unfortunately it was a closed set so no celeb spotting for us. It was cool to drive around though and see some old sets and props. The attractions at the park were fun, especially the special effects show and the stunt show. Afterwards we went to Universal City which is just like an outside mall next to the park with some cool shops and lots of restaurants. We had burgers in the Hard Rock Café for dinner. When we got back to Hollywood Boulevard we watched Smokin’ Aces at the Chinese Theatre, which is where a lot of the movie premiers take place.

LA is enormous and we’re a bit lost here really, we tried to walk to Melrose Avenue to look at the shops, but it was miles and when we got there, it didn’t seem that great. We don’t fancy the tours of streets where film stars live and it seems too far to go to downtown LA. So tonight we’re going drinking on the Sunset Strip and we’ll see if they’ll let us into the Viper Room!
We’ve seen a fair few weird people in our 2 days here but no celebrities!

Auckland

2007-02-10T03:51:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We've spent the last few days of our time in New Zealand in the largest city and home to most of the population - Auckland.
Recommended to us by Lulu was the Domain museum. It's set in a large park, where we happened to see some people filming what could only have been Power Rangers! The museum was interesting and had some nice Pacific Island artefacts including quite a lot of Papua New Guinean stuff which was cool to look at. We particularly liked the spear edged with sharks teeth. After visiting the musuem we dropped our van off and walked into the city centre to our hostel. We've got a nice double room with a shared bathroom for 25 quid a night which is pretty good.

Yesterday (Friday 9th) we went to a market in the morning, had a bit of a look around Queen Street, the main shopping road, and did a few chores. In the evening we went to the Sky Tower. At 328m high it is the largest man made structure in the Soutern hemisphere and is 4m higher than the Eiffel Tower. The lift goes at 40kmph and is a pretty cool ride, with glass panels in the floor of the lift and in the side of the building to freak you out slightly before you reach the observation deck. We had good views out across the city. We could see our hostel, the harbour, Rangitoto and One Tree Hill, to name just a few things.
We decided to put our bad high tower experiences behind us and ate at the seafood buffet restaurant 2 floors above the main observation deck. We had a really nice dinner of quite fancy seafood and looked out across Auckland as the sun set and all the lights came on.

We didn't jump off the Sky Tower, unlike some unhinged people, although as you can imagine, Chris was tempted!

Today we checked out the slightly more alternative end of town, went to Albert park to eat our lunch and then on another of Lulu's suggestions, went for a drink at The Hog at the Viaduct Harbour. We are going to take a ferry across to Devonport this evening, to have dinner and find one of the rock pubs that we've been told exist over there!

Tommorow evening we fly to LA. We get there in the morning before we leave, which is all a bit worrying really. We're not sure if we'll be a day older or not and might have to move our birthdays. We'll let you know.

Bungy Chicken!

2007-02-08T23:58:00.001Z

Yippee! I did a bungy jump!

Kia Ora

2007-02-04T02:49:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

That evening we went to a Maori cultural show and dinner. It was really good. We were picked up buy the coach and taken to the village a few kilometers out of town. It is a replica village put there about 20 years ago on the site of an old village to take the Maori shows out of the hotels and back into the natural environment. Whilst on the coach our driver, Dennis, asked for a volunteer chief, we also learnt a few words of Maori. Upon arrival in to the village the chosen chiefs had to stand in front of everyone else and be welcomed by a warrior from the village. We were all warned that laughing would not be tolerated before the warrior ran out, eyes bulging and tongue protruding. It was very cool. Luckily they decided we came in peace and we could have a look around their village. There was carving, clothes making and some other stuff going on to look at before we headed into the meetinghouse for the show.
The show was really good to watch with men and women singing to us and they did the Haka. Interestingly, the women were using poi which we didn’t know were a Maori thing, but apparently they were used by the men to limber up and be flexible for using their weapons.
After the show we had a scrummy hangi dinner. Lamb and vegetables cooked in an under ground oven. It’s such a great way to cook for lots of people. They heat up the rocks and then bury them in the ground with all the meat first then potatoes then veg, cover it over with hessian sacks and then burry it with earth, trapping all the steam and cooking it all perfectly. Yum.

Today we looked at the meeting house and church by Lake Rotorua. They sit opposite each other with the church having a lot Maori influences in its design. We had a round of crazy golf, because it’s fun and then went to our final volcanic park. The park is called Hells Gate because when George Bernard Shaw visited he joked that he’d been brought to the gates of hell for being an atheist! He also named some of the features. It was similar to the other parks but had big pools of stupidly hot bubbling water and mud and also had a mud volcano. We could have had spa treatments with the mud from the area but I just bought some samples instead.

This area has been cool to visit. It’s nice to have hot pools at your campsite and fun to be driving around and pass steaming areas of ground just to the side of the road. We’re heading further up the coast this evening to a beach where you can dig in the sand for your own hot water.

Geo-thermal adventures

2007-02-04T02:48:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We’ve had quite a busy few days sightseeing around this area. We started with the Huka falls, which are in Taupo just outside of the town center. They are pretty impressive with a huge amount of water rushing through constantly. Whilst we were there one of the jet boats came for a bit of a play in the swell. Looked quite fun but we reckon rafting is better!
After looking at the falls we moved on a bit further to a place named ‘The Craters of the Moon’. There is a lot of geo-thermal activity in the area and this is one of the places nearer to Taupo rather than in Rotorua so we thought we’d give it a look before we went for the big guns in Rotorua. It did look surprisingly moon like, with lots of barren steaming ground. There were quite a few colours because of the sulphur and the different algae but not as much as we saw later on at other places. It was quite cool there, for our first experience of a volcanic area.
Before we headed off to another thermal park we stopped by at the Aratiatia dam, which we’d passed the previous day when we drove back from the rafting trip. The dam gates were closed so there was just a small pool of water. Luckily we got there just as the sirens were going and we were able to watch the water gushing through the opening gates and filling the area so that there was water as far as we could see along the river bed.

When we were looking at where to go to see cool geo-thermal stuff we’d seen quite few leaflets and things recommending Orakei Korako, so we thought we’d go there. It’s in the middle of a lake and so you have to take a short boat ride before wandering around for an hour or so. The area used to be called geyser land, but they haven’t really got any active geysers anymore. We waited around by the Diamond Geyser (!!) for a while but nothing happened, not even any steam really. There was some nice bubbling mud that makes good plopping blobbing noises and some nicely coloured areas. Again nice, but we wanted a geyser!

Rotorua is the most popular tourist destination in New Zealand and we’ve had a good time here. We found ourselves a really nice campsite which we took full advantage of on our first night. It had a BBQ which we used before having a soak in the hot pools, one of which was about 40 degrees and the other about 37 degrees. That made us pretty hot so we had a swim in the swimming pool, but that made us chilly so we got back in the hot pool. Nice.
For a change we weren’t leaving the campsite in the morning so we were able to have a relaxing morning and then go to Te Puia. Te Puia is a Maori cultural center and geo-thermal area, but most importantly it has geysers. We spent around 2 hours watching the Prince of Wales feathers geyser going off and waiting for Pohutu – the biggest of their geysers which erupts of average 1-2 times an hour. In theory it goes to 25-30m but we didn’t see that happen. As it all steamy it’s tricky to tell which geyser you’re looking at. We waited to try to see it go really high, but aren’t really sure if we saw it or not! They also had the ubiquitous steaming ground and bubbling mud. We had a look around the village part of the park and looked at the beautifully carved meeting house and food storage house.

Whitewater rafting

2007-02-01T05:00:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We went white water rafting today on the Rangitaiki river just outside of Taupo. Chris has been rafting twice before but I've never been so I was quite nervous. Wasn't really sure how bumpy it would be or how likely I was to fall in. Turned out that it was Awesome!! (officially kiwi term btw).

We were picked up from our campsite and drove an hour or so up to the river where they have a permanent building. We were kitted out with wetsuits, life jackets and helmets and then drove a bit further up to the start of the rafting area.

We had a quick saftey briefing which did nothing to allieve my fears so I sat at the back next to the guide whilst two guys who were quite experienced got the front seats. We mossied along for a few minutes before going into a huge rapid. I instantly forgot everything we'd been told about paddling and just held on! We all got very wet but no one fell in. The second big rapid was the biggest of the day and bashed us around a fair bit, we paddled, held on and ducked down. We got drenched but it was fun.

The rest of the trip was good fun with lots of rapids and one long calm part. We played in one bit of rapid called 'the flush'. One lucky person - Chris, got to sit in between the guys at the front whilst we all paddled into the rapid. The result of which is lots of water flowing over us and we spun around!

We had a great time. No one fell in and we all paddled in the right direction and stuff when he told us to. It's about as extreme as I've ever got so am quite proud of myself. Chris wants to do bigger rapids!!!

Bungy!

2007-01-31T02:42:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

I jumped. It was cool! Got a bit wet though.

Everyone should bungy (Except Jen who doesn't have to).

Offical photos which we have copies of should be available here shortly. Just search on the 31st Jan.

White water rafting tomorrow.

Edit - The photos are available at that site, but I've put them on Flickr as well.

On to North Island

2007-01-30T02:19:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We've done lots of little things since we went whale watching in Kaikoura.

We drove up to Nelson where we stayed at a really convenient in-town campsite. It's really a motel but the couple who run it bought a power lead and rent out a spot under a jacunda tree to someone every night, then let you use the motel unit in the morning. We had a look around the town which was nice enough and then went to the cinema to watch Blood Diamond. It was quite good once you got used to Leo's accent, but quite depressing also. The next morning we went to the Saturday market which was pretty cool as Nelson is a really arty area so there were lots of crafts to look at and locally grown produce.
After the market we visited the World of Wearable art museum. Lots of wacky outfits to look at plus they have joined up with a car museum so there are cool Cadilacs and engines!

From Nelson to Picton is a scenic drive through the hills and along the coast called the Queen Charlotte Drive. It takes you past the beautiful Sounds. We had a nice sunny day for a change and when we arrived in Picton we played a spot of crazy golf. Our reason for going to Picton was to catch the ferry but we were lucky enough for there to be a maritime festival on so there was music and fireworks to enjoy.

The next morning we caught he 8am ferry across the Cook Strait to Wellington. It was Sunday so when we arrived we were able to park near the centre of the city easily and cheaply. We were very peckish and spent a while walking around Wellington looking for a pizza restaurant; not something that existed very much in Wellington unfortunately, but eventually we found somewhere and satisfied our craving. We spent the afternoon in the Te Papa museum. It is the national museum and celebrates New Zealand. It has geological exhibits telling you about volcanoes and earthquakes, New Zealand history stuff, sheep, maori meeting houses and carvings and lots of other interesting things. It was really good.
We spent the night at a campsite around 20 minutes outside of Wellington and then drove back into the city the next morning.

Parking on a Monday was much trickier than on a Sunday and we drove around the city centre for a while, eventually parking near to the Botanical gardens. We had a walk around and a little picnic. It was nice but Wellington is so windy! We also visited the outsides of the parliament buildings. One of which is an oldfashioned looking marble building and the other is a beehive. Being slightly defeated by the parking situation we drove to a small suburb where we think Peter Jackson lived and looked around the shops there a bit before making our way further North.

We had a really pretty drive to a place called Woodsville. There were rolling hills, a metal guy, a full size modern stonehenge and Rivendell.

Today we drove to Napier which is famous for having lots of Art Deco buildings. It's quite pretty. We are on our way to Lake Taupo (which is the size of Singapore) to do our extreme stuff.

Chris is going to bungy...

Buskers, Springs and Whales!

2007-01-25T04:31:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Christchurch buskers festival kicked arse. We spent an evening watching a comedy show in a pub, then the next whole day watching comedians, jugglers and acrobats, then that evening we watched another comedy & acrobat show.

The Hanmer hot springs were very hot! Especially since we visited them on the first hot day we've experienced so far in New Zealand.

Whale watching was bloody amazing! Sperm whales are huge and when their tales go up in the air it's one of the coolest things you'll ever see.

Fox Glacier

2007-01-22T05:29:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Yesterday we did something very cool. We walked on a glacier! There are only 3 places in the world where you can just walk from rainforest onto a glacier: Fox glacier, where we were, Franz Joseph, 20km up the road and Patagonia. So we considered ourselves quite priveleged to be able to do it.

We were told to wear 3-4 layers of upper body clothing including a raincoat and they provided us with some sturdy boots.
We rode on an old fashioned bus to the viewpoint carpark. The company have been running tours for around the last 100 years and they like to use old style buses. They had some great old photos of people too, dressed quite differently to how we were all dressed!
We walked across the car park and were standing on some small rocks. Our guide asked what we were standing on. A few people named some rocks before the guide took his pick axe and chipped away - ice flew up. It was pretty weird to be standing on camoflagued ice.

We had around an hour and a halfs walk from the car park to be actually standing on the glacier. Our first glimpse of the glacier took our breath away. It was amazing to just see it sitting there filling up the valley. We could also see the part that feeds down into the part we were going to be on. The bottom part that we were on moves at around 20cm a day at the moment where as the feeder part moves at 9m a day. Apparently people have tried to climb up but no one has ever succeeded because it moves too fast.
Our walk took us over a few fast flowing streams and into the rainforest where we mostly climbed steps up to the top of the ice. One part was a little hairy with a steep drop to one side, so they give you a chain to hold onto. Once we were out of the forest and next to the ice it got a bit colder and we replaced the layers that we had shed whilst walking through the forest, we also strapped on our crampons so that we'd have grip on the ice. Usually at this poiont we would have gone for our walk on the glacier, but we had to wait for about 20 minutes because the other groups hadn't come down yet because the route that they take through a crevase had collapsed a bit. So our guide had to go and help carve some new steps at which point the groups came down very slowly one at a time.

Being on the glacier was incredible. Usually they're all covered in snow when you see them in the Alps, but this one had deep crevases and peaks, and was a deep blue colour under the dirt. We took lots of photos to prove how cool it was!

Today we made our way back to the east coast, where the sun shines, via Arthurs Pass. We are staying in Christchurch tonight and tommorow to watch the Buskers Festival and then will head up the coast a bit.
By the way, we found out why it's rained on us so much. It's because it was so hot in Alice Springs! All that hot wind comes across the Tasman sea sucking it up and then drops it all on the west coast of New Zealand when it hits the cooler mountains. So at least we know why we were constantly soggy. We should be ok now!

Milford Sound

2007-01-19T05:42:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

It's not a sound it's a fiord!

Today we drove 120km from Te Anau to Milford Sound for a boat trip. It was, as always, fairly cloudy but we enjoyed some pretty cool views as we drove along. There were temporary waterfalls along the mountain sides and some tops still had snow or ice on them. About two thirds of the way along the road there is a one way tunnel. Some clever Keas have made the waiting area their home, so we got to get quite a close look at New Zealand's alpine parrot. The tunnel doesn't seem to have had any work done to it recently and it was very dark inside.

We arrived at the visitor centre car park in the rain which didn't stop until we got back to Te Anau. We are officially cursed. Apparently only 1 in 6 people see Milford Sound on a clear day, but most of those must be in the summer.

We did have a pretty cool trip anyway. The low cloud made the whole area very atmospheric and dramatic looking, plus the waterfalls were very splishy. We managed to see all of the advertised wildlife - some seals, a pod of dolphins with a little baby one and a solitary fiordland crested penguin who was back early for the molting season. so we counted ourselves quite lucky in that respect.
We had chosen the nature cruise over the ordinary cruise so we had someone telling us interesting things about the formation of the fiord and about the area in general. The most famous landmark is Mitre Peak, but we didn't see it!
We had a good time but returned to our van quite chilly and quite soggy and very thankful that we packed fleeces and waterproof coats and shoes.

Glowworms

2007-01-19T05:25:00.000Z

Glowworms are beautiful magical little fellas.

We went to quite a scary cave system where there is fast flowing water and low ceilings to see them, once we had walked through for around 250m we got in a little boat. It was completely dark and everyone was silent. All over the ceiling shone the tiny glowworm bums, it was a bright green light that shone brighter the hungrier the worm. It was extremely cool!

Southern Scenic Route (Dunedin - Invercargill)

2007-01-18T02:54:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Tuesday was a bit of a bad day. We got up, and it was sunny and nice, and we drove around the Otago Peninsula. We had intended to go to Lanarch Castle and to the Albatross colony. Unfortunately both places charged far more money than we wanted to pay for entry. The drive on the other hand was really nice and scenic.

After a bit of lunch we set out on the "Southern Scenic Route". We had a map with all the interesting places on route marked on it. What wasn't on it were the roads that were sealed and the roads that were unsealed. Unsealed roads suck. The first site we tried to get to we drove for 20km on a gravel track at about 20-30kph before finding a sign saying that it was a further 12km to where we were going. We gave up on that and drove back another 20km further along unfinished roads back to the main route. We then missed the next stop completely somehow. By this point it had clouded over and after another "short" 10km off-road drive we reached Nugget Point, which was lovely, but extremely cold and windy, and it started to rain. We walked along the cliff to the lighthouse and saw a whole load of seals playing on the rocks below us.
We found a nice Christian campsite to stay in, but it was a slightly disappointing day.

Yesterday was much better (for the most part). We stopped off for short walks to 3 different waterfalls in the morning, the most impressive of which was the McLean falls. The sun came out in the afternoon and we only had 8km of unsealed road to drive all day!

We visited Curio Bay which is the site of a fossilised forest which died 180million years ago and is perfectly preserved on the rocks. "It looks like wood, but feels like rock!".

We also went to Waipapa Point which is the site of the worst shipping disaster in Kiwi history. We had heard that there might be rare New Zealand Sealions there, and there were. There were 3 just lying on the beach. The one on its own when we got there was being crept towards by a stupid girl who was choosing to ignore the warnings and advice not to get too close to them. It was only a female, not a 500kg male monster, but nevertheless it'd give a nasty nip. As it rose up and started to give chase, she legged it as fast as her little legs would carry her, and I got a few decent snaps.

So far so good. We were having a lovely day. Unfortunately, having arrived in Invercargill and having spoken to a lovely lady who pointed us to our campsite, we discovered that our cards wouldn't work to let us take out any money. Fearing the worst, we logged onto our online banking site to check out the account, to find that it had disappeared...

Oops.

Anyway, we spent the rest of then night talking to Natwest on the phone to see what had happened and what we could do about it. Seems that our cards may have been compromised due to someone stealing card numbers from a website that we'd both bought something from (dunno which). So Natwest decided to just stop the cards working. The situation is not quite resolved as yet, but it will be, probably. We're gonna get new cards sent somewhere we can get them, and then it should all be OK. It was pretty worrying for a while when we were sitting around waiting for Natwest to open though.

Off to the Glowworm Caves in a bit then Milford Sound tomorrow.

Penguins!

2007-01-15T22:52:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

On Sunday we saw 97 penguins and 2 bonus seals!

We waited in our van playing cards at the beach where the Yellow eyed penguins come to shore. We were going to just visit the hide along the beach to watch them but decided instead to pay the $13 and take a tour. There were just 6 of us with Denis the guide. We walked through some bush and then along a ridge before we stopped. Chris and I were a few people along so were quite surprised when we realised we stoppped really close to a Dad penguin and his 2 chicks. We stood for about half an hour taking their photos and watching along the beach to see if anymore were coming home after a hard days fishing. We spotted two more coming in but they were quite a long way away down on the beach so it was great to be with the guide right near to the ones that had stayed home to look after the chicks. Apparently they share the role 50/50 with one parent going to sea fishing one day and then staying home with the chicks the next day. As we were leaving someone from the group spotted a seal coming ashore down on the beach, buy one penguin tour and get one bonus seal - can't be bad.

After some tasty chilli-con-carne and another game of cards in our van it was time to see the Blue Penguins at their colony in Oamaru Harbour. The Blue Penguins are a rare species of penguin and are quite unique becaue they come in just as it's getting dark, they also tend to come in in groups. We found a seat in the hide and sat for about three quarters of an hour waiting for the little guys to turn up (they only stand about 25cm tall). It was extremely chilly but worth the wait to see 6 penguins surf to shore, shake themselves off and start the climb up the rocky slope. This was quite a slow process with the penguins looking around nervously. One brave one took the lead and scouted ahead. They were almost at the top of the slope when a flock of noisy seagulls flew over and scared them. Four ran back down the slope and back to the water, but the brave scout and his friend carried on to run across the road and to the grassy area near to where they nest. The other four came back out and completed their journey too. As the night progressed we saw about 5 more groups come to shore of between around 5 and 20 penguins. They all went through the same slow process and all were ashore by 10:30. Quite a lot of people left before that point but we waited until they were all back. One little fella came in the opposite direction to the others and walked along the edge of the rocks near the hide, as we were leaving we saw him walking along the path back to the car park. We were really close to him but he didn't seem too bothered. Chris went and told one of the guides so that they could keep an eye on him, there's been some problems at the centre with people running the penguins over as they drive home.
Oh, and we also saw another bonus seal.
We camped at a free site that night in the middle of nowhere which we suspect may be frequented by axeweilding murderers.

Yesterday we drove on to Dunedin. Along the way there is a beach called Moeraki that is famous for having almost spherical boulders along the shore, so we stopped in for a look. They were pretty cool. One had broken open so you could see that it's formed around a core.
We spent the rest of the day looking around Dunedin and doing a bit of shopping. The staion is the most photographed building in the whole of New Zealand, it did look nice. The first church was a cool building too.
After booking in at our campsite we took a drive out across the penisula to a beach called Seal Point in the hope that we might see a few. We walked along the path and met a few people coming the other way who had seen sealions further along the beach and a few yellow eyed penguins coming ashore. We could see a brown splodge on the sand which we distinguished with our new binoculars as a seal, so we careered down the sand dunes to take a closer look. He was a nice fella but quite sleepy and covered in flies. He moved around a bit though to prove he was alive. We sat on top of a small dune and kept our eyes peeled for more wildlife. We were rewarded with a yellow eyed penguin coming ashore, we watched him dry off and reoil his feathers but unfortunately something or someone scared him and he went back out to sea. A few minutes later he came back but went almost straight back out to sea again so hopefully what ever was scaring him went away and he managed to get back to his nest. The sandy dunes were very steep trying to get back up to the van afterwards. We didn't see any sealions, but there's a place we're going to visit a bit further up the coast where there should be some.

Kiwiland

2007-01-14T02:55:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We caught our flight from Melbourne and arrived in Christchurch on Thursday (11th). It was quite a short flight but we had to wait ages to get through customs. Because we had walking boots we had to go to a special area so they could see if we were bringing in any dirt with us. Some people were having to unpack their tents and stuff, quite annoying but if it helps keep New Zealand beautiful...
We checked ourselves into our cheap backpackers and then set about finding ourselves a campervan. Our Wicked van was good but quite cramped so we've upgraded a bit to an Ezy Cruisa. We can stand up in it and it has a fridge and indoor cooking area which is quite handy considering it's not quite sitting outside weather like we had in Oz. It's definite jeans weather!
Christchurch was quite pretty and fairly English. We had a bit of a look at the cathedral and the market and walked along the river before starting our road trip.

The first bit of our trip on Friday evening was to Ashburton and we didn't really see much. Yesterday we drove to Lake Tekapo and the scenery started! Beautiful hills and rivers, the colours are amazing with the hills being coloured by the hundreds of lupins growing around, and the rivers and lakes are an icy blue. We should have been able to see Mount Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand, but it was far too cloudy. The clouds did look cool hanging low over the hills though. We carried on past another huge lake to Twisel where we stayed the night.

This morning we drove to Oamaru (where Hannah lived for a bit?). It's quite a pretty little town with nice white stone buildings. We walked along a jetty to see if we could spot any seals, but no luck. Tonight we're going to go penguin spotting. Should see some nice yellow eyes a bit further along the coast and then we're coming back to see the blue penguins nest at a special site in the harbour. Should be cute!

Adios Australia

2007-01-10T03:53:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Hooray!
We have succesfully managed to survive our time in Australia. No sunburn despite the extreme UV rating, we went in the sea and didn't get eaten by sharks, stung by jellyfish ar left behind. We went to Queensland and didn't get eaten by crocs. No snake bites in the outback or redbacks or funnelwebs in any of the toilets we sat on and we have had a really rather marvellous time.

The things we liked best about Australia include Sydney & the Blue Mountians, the wildlife, learning to surf, Kings Canyon, the reef, the rainforest...er everything really except for the persistant flies and the blazing heat.

We're off to New Zealand tomorrow and are quite excited about that too. Anyone got any tips?

Melbourne

2007-01-10T03:46:00.001Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Melbourne's chilly. Well 26degrees of so seems pretty chilly after Alice Springs. We like it.
We checked into our Hostel which is OK, except that the room hasn't got any windows, but then it's pretty cheap.

First morning in Melbourne we headed straight to Federation Square (about 150yds from the hostel) and had a look around the ACMI (Australian Centre of the Moving Image), which had lots of fun illusions and zoetropes and that sort of thing. They also had an exhibition of 1980's Australian computer games so we got to play "Horace goes skiing" and "Way of the exploding fist" for a bit.
We decided to sit on the steps of Federation Square and watch a street entertainer whilst having our packed lunch. Seemed like a good idea for a bit. He was pretty funny, did a bit of diabalo, bit of juggling etc. Unfortunately he then started picking on people in the audience and making them join in. That still might have been quite funny if he hadn't picked on me (Chris). I always get picked on. It's not fair. Bastards! Anyway, he made me and a couple of other people disco dance. Nuff said.
In the afternoon we strolled up to the melbourne museum. The building is only a couple of years old so it was extremely well laid out and very entertaining. More than your average amount of nudity for a museum though. Chinese food for dinner in Chinatown.

Yesterday we went for a stroll in the botannical gardens. Nice enough place. Then we went to the casino because Bill Bryson and Kim (from Mui Ne) said that we had to. The Casino is enormous. Housed within a shopping mall/hotel/nightclub complex there are several football pitch sized rooms full of every game you might want to play. We avoided the $50 minimum bet tables and headed to the 2c a go pokies. We stuck a dollar in each. Jen won 15c back and I won 10c. Not bad going really. We didn't have a clue what we were doing. It's not like the fruit machines at home. We headed back to our hostel for their free barbeque night. Couple of sausages and a fish finger each.
After the barbeque (and a couple of peices of toast) we went looking for a bar. Not as easy as you might think. The first three we tried were all closed, possibly permanently, possibly until they reopen as karaoke clubs. We found somewhere nice in the end and consequently are a little hung over today.

Just watched Borat and laughed a lot. Might have to get a burger in a moment.

The Outback - Day Three

2007-01-06T08:16:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Another 4am start for us so that we could do our King's Canyon rim walk in the relative cool of the early morning. We arrived at the canyon just as the sun was rising, it was beautiful. We realised the kinds of colours that we would have seen if the sun had been on Uluru while we were there!
The first part of the 3 1/2 hour walk was a quite steep climb but once at the top of the canyon it was pretty flat. The views were amazing.

Half way round the walk we went down into the 'Garden of Eden' where there is a water hole. Quite a lot of people went for a swim, and everyone used it as a place to cool off in the shade and reenergise with a biscuit or two.
Once we left the waterhole we walked up on to the rim where the sun blazed down on us. Our group was being quite slow so Chris and I went ahead a bit with a few others to avoid being in the sun for too long.
The top of the canyon was covered in domes which the Anangu people believe are the remains of hunters who found the abundently fertile valley and proceeded to eat all of the food. They became so fat that they couldn't move and the people who they were collecting food for died. So share your food or else!

Reaching the end of the walk at about 9:45am the temperature had risen to around 37 degrees and we were a bit hot. We returned to our camp for lunch and then spent the next 6 or so hours driving back to Alice Springs.

We enjoyed our trip a lot. Uluru is very cool, but we loved the King's Canyon, it was beautiful. We did get very hot though and the flies were extremely pesky! We are pleased that we survived being in the outback without being got by any critters, getting suburned, dehydrated, or lost.

Off to Melbourne tomorrow.

The Outback - Day Two

2007-01-06T07:59:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We were woken by Steve at 4am so that we could have breakfast and be back at Uluru for sunrise. We were pleased to be able to be out of our tent in the slightly cooler air, but still rather snoozy. We had 3 options for what we could do, we could climb the Rock, do a 7km base walk or go to the sunrise area and then do a 5km base walk.

The Anangu people see Uluru as a very sacred place and it features heavily in their dreamtime stories. It is still used by them for initiation ceremonies and the only people allowed to climb the rock are the Anangu male elders. As such they prefer you not to do the climb. The Aboriginal culture is very much one of making your own choices and mistakes so there is the option to climb, but they refer to the people that do as ants. It's quite dangerous to climb it though, there's a chain at the begining and then nothing, it gets extremely hot and can be windy at the top so often the rangers close the walk anyway which is what happened on our visit. The forcast of rain meant that no-one could climb that day. Chris quite wanted to climb but had already made the decision not to, but quite a few people from our group were going to climb. A little way around from where the chain is are some plaques in memory of the people who have died doing the climb.

Chris and I decided to go to the sunrise viewing area even though it was cloudy. We thought it was worth seeing just in case there was a break in the clouds. There weren't any spectacular colours but the rock looked pretty cool anyway! Afterwards we took a 5km walk around the base. Uluru is very cool. It's as red as you think and has lots of interesting textures and shapes in it. As you walk around there are some parts that are particularly sacred to the Anangu people which you can't go near, but a lot of it you can get right up to and explore. It was very peaceful and not too hot at that time in the morning so we had a very enjoyable walk.
Steve then took us to the Yulara waterhole. The reason that Uluru is so important is because when it rains, water cascades off of it into the waterhole, which collects far more rain than if the hole was out in the open. Accoring to the Anangu dreamtime stories different parts of the rock were formed by different animal ancestors. Around the waterhole is the reamins of two snakes which had a big fight with the winner turning into the rainbow serpent. There are also some very old cave paintings in a part that used to be used as a school.
After our guided walk we visited the cultural centre to gain a bit more info and have a snack and then went back to our campsite to clear up and have lunch (at 10:30).

For most of the afternoon we travelled to our next campsite at Kings Creek Cattle Station. We were relieved to be in the bus for a while as the temperature was 32 degress at sunrise and rose to 42 by the time reached the Station. On our way to the campsite we slept quite a lot but had to wake up just before we got there so that we could gather firewood. A nice surprise for us! When someone asked if there would be snakes Steve replied that it was too hot for snakes. Everyone was quite indignant, but we quite quickly and efficiently collected enough firewood so that we could cook that night. It did seem very crazy to be building a fire in 40 deree heat.
Our dinner was scrummy though, chicken and veggies and homemade bread cooked in the coals of the fire all washed down with a couple of cold beers.
That night we decided to bring our beds outside to see if we'd sleep a bit better. There were far less clouds so it was a little cooler and there was a nice breeze so we slept pretty well. The moon was almost full so it was quite bright and we didn't see anything gribbly, just stars.

The Outback - Day One

2007-01-06T07:10:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We had to get up before sunrise to be picked up at 6am for the start of our adventure into the Australian outback. We saw a beautiful sunrise whilst waiting outside the hotel and then got into our slightly weird looking bus. It had a bus main section and more of a lorry style cab. Our guide was a guy called Steve who has lived in the area for 20 years doing different tourism style things, he told us heaps during the trip so appologies if during these blogs I go off on tangents!
After picking up 15 or so more people we started our long 500km drive to Ayers Rock.

Our first stop, after an hour, was a camel farm. When the first explorers came to the centre of Australia they mostly used horses, but a brighter explorer thought it would be wiser to use camels. This was how people travelled to the area until the railway line so now there are around 1 million wild camels in the area. It's a bit weird because you don't really realise they're a wild Australian animal until you get here. We saw a few at the farm and then after we left we saw a couple of wild ones wandering around. There's something like 350 different plant species in the desert and the camels eat 325 of them, so they're pretty well suited to the area.

The entire time we've been in Australia we've been surprised by how the country looks, until we got to the desert. This is how we pictured Australia - red sand (caused by the iron oxide), big open spaces and long straight roads.

We had a few stops along the way to restock on cold drinks and to keep Steve awake. One of which was at a lookout point from which you can see Mount Connor. It's a tabletop mountain, a little bigger than Uluru and often people mistake it for The Rock. We walked a bit of way up a sand dune to look at a salt lake and then quickly got back into our airconditioned bus.

After picking a few more people up form the airport (who knew you could fly directly to Ayers Rock?) we went to our campsite. It was quite nice with permanent tents with 2 beds. Plus a kitchen / eating area and a couple of barbeques.

We spent the afternoon at the Kata Tjuta National park where there are rock formations known as The Olgas. They are big dome shaped rocks which the Aboriginal people refer to as many heads (Kata Tjuta). It was quite cloudy but the temperature was around 40 degrees. The rangers close the longer walks if the temperature exceeds 36 degrees so we walked around 1km through the gorge and back. It was pretty cool. Up close the Olgas looked like bees nests.

Chris & I are going to make our fortune as bringers of rain. You would think if you're in a desert then it's probably not going to rain. But when we go to deserts it does rain. And so unfortunately it meant that there wasn't really a sunset to see over Uluru. But we did go for a short walk at the base and then to the sunset point anyway, just in case. There were a lot of buses there, some people had fancy champagne things going on, but there really wasn't much colour in the rock as we didn't know where the sun was!

Back at camp we had a good Aussie barbeque with steaks and sausages and then retired to our tents. We ddin't really sleep very well as the temerature didn't get much lower than 26 degrees and with the bit of rain it made it stickier. In our tent it was even hotter than outside, which is where some people chose to sleep but had to come in from the rain.

Happy New Year!

2007-01-02T07:54:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We had a nice New Years Eve. We went to watch Eragon in the afternoon (don't bother, watch Lord of the Rings at home instead) and then cooked up some salmon for our tea before walking into town to watch some fireworks. There were lots of people sitting along the esplanade on blankets in the heat of the evening, it's pretty cool to be able to not freeze to death whilst you watch fireworks! Some were sitting along the edge of the esplanade, legs dangling over the edge just along from the signs warning you of crocs! Foolish Queenslanders, we think the sun affects their brains. We stood at a safe distance and oohed and aahed appropriately. Afterwards we took a bit of a walk to find a bar that didn't charge to get in and stayed there until midnight. They had some quite good music on and sold bottles of fizzy Hardy's wine for a fiver! Great!
It was fun to phone home and speak to a couple of people, a guy passing us told us to say "AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE" (so there you go).
We got up unfeasibly early for New Years Day as our van is like an oven in the Quensland heat but luckily we had a pool to cool off in. We bought some bacon and then took a drive into the Atherton tablelands - Cairns' highlands. We found a nice spot to cook our bacon sandwiches although we were a bit worried about the croc sign further down the road. It was ok though as we were high up from the river and away from the edge!
We had a nice morning exploring the area and looking at variuos waterfalls and rainforest. We ddin't see a cassowary despite signs saying we might, which is quite lucky as they're a bit feisty.
In the afternoon we went to Tjapukai, an aboriginal culture centre where we watched some dancing shows, a didjeridoo demo, spear throwing, boomerang throwing and watched a short history film about the tribe - the Tjapukai - who run the centre. Chris' boomerang came back, but apparently I didn't have enough snap in my wrist! There was also a good show about their creation stories, where the people interacted with holograms.
It's been quite hard to see Aboriginal people in Australia, up until we visited the Tjapukai centre we'd only really seen them on park benches, so it was cool to experience some of their culture. For such a modern country that seems to be pretty well run, the intergration of Aborignal people seems to be a big problem.

Today we handed back our Wicked van and flew to Alice Springs. It's hot here, hotter than Queensland! It feels like when you stand too close to a fire. We're quite proud of ourselves that we didn't get sunburnt while we were in Cairns as most other people we saw were. The sun index is 14, which is classified as extreme. Hopefully we'll stay the right colour for our time here as well. It's forcast to be 42 in the shade for our trip to Uluru tomorrow!

Cairns & The Great Barrier Reef

2007-01-02T07:16:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We drove up to Cairns on Friday the 29th. It was another long journey, about 600km, but there didn't seem like there was much to do in between Airlie Beach and Cairns so it was worth the long stint. The area around Cairns is called the Wet tropics. We found that name very apt as for most of journey it was pissing it down with rain!
We found ourselves a quite nice campsite within walking distance from the city centre and cooked up some grub and had a few cold ones.

For our trip to the Barrier Reef we decided to go with a company that visits reefs different to most other companies. We hoped that by spending the extra cash it would avoid there being a pontoon so the reef is less damaged and there would be more to see. It was good as when we were at the different parts of reef there was only one other boat and we didn't bump into anyone from there.

We were picked up from our campsite and taken to marina where it felt a bit airport like, checking everyone on to the various boats. We filled in a couple of disclaimers and then were on our way. Unfortunately the wind was quite high that day and the catamaran went pretty fast so a few people looked quite green by the time we got to our first site, Chris included.
After torrential rain all night, the clouds parted and we had a bright clear day. Looking forward to our once in a life time snork & dive off the Great Barrier Reef we got straight to it and had a look around. It was amazing! There's so many different types of coral, beautiful colours and shapes. Chris was lucky enough to see a couple of reef sharks (harmless nice fellas) and I got quite excited over some nice nemos with blue stripes. It was a bit crowded with divers as they all swam around a bommie and a few times I got a bit close to other snorks for my liking, but we definitely made the right choice to go to a reef that was further out than others. Whilst we were on the sun deck listening to a reef talk we saw a Green turlte coming up for air - very cool.
The second & third sites were also pretty cool with more fish and coral to be explored. Amongst all the cool stuff we saw, there were a few enormous parrot fish and I think I saw a Maori Wrasse, and Chris saw a black spotted puffer fish and played with a sea cucumber. It was a very well run boat with a slap up lunch and afternoon tea and quite proffessional staff reminding people that it's up to a $20,000 fine for taking anything from the reef.

I was officially a doofus on the trip though and am now not to be trusted (with anything). I took our nice waterproof camera snorkling and took some nice pics, but when the battery ran out and I changed it I forgot to lock the case, hence when I got out of the sea later on and a wave bashed me the door came open and water went in. Oops...
It still mostly works, except for the flash, which probably won't ever work again. We've bought a disposable camera as a backup just in case but it seems to be ok. Luckily I didn't get too told off.

Our Whitsundays Adventure.

2006-12-28T02:25:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

A lot of people come to the Whitsunday Islands to get on a sailing boat and sail around for 3 days and 2 nights. We don't really have the luxury of time to be able to do this so when we finally arrived in Airlie Beach we took ourselves off to a travel agent to see what day trips were available. Ideally we would have liked to have done a dive/snorkle trip but unsurprisingly they were already booked up for the following day so we opted for just a snorkle trip aboard a boat called The Fury.
The Fury has 4 outboards and is 900 horse power so we thought that would be quite fun.

We had a cool day. The boat went very fast and felt a bit like a rollercoaster at times. We stopped for a snorkle, but before we could go in we had to don a rather attractive and stylish stinger suit as the stingers in these parts kill you quite frankly and we don't really want that. We're at the end of the Great Barrier reef here and so we saw an amazing amount of coral, it was stunning. We also saw some nice fish, including anemone fish with bright blue stripes and huge parrot fish, we might have seen a maori wrasse too but we're not really sure - it hid under some coral too quickly. Luckily we didn't encounter any stingers so we live to snorkle another day (the 30th on the Great Barrier Reef to be precise).
We had a spot of lunch on the boat before we were whizzed off to our beach destination - Whitehaven Beach, which is apparently one of the top 10 beaches in the world. It was very nice, with clear blue water and fine white sand.
We had quite a cloudy day, but we were quite grateful for that really as when the sun did come out it was scorchingly hot. Queensland is much hotter than we've been experiencing, very humid and in the middle 30s. Not as hot as it's going to be when we go to the middle though!

An Aussie Christmas

2006-12-28T02:10:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We had a very nice Christmas Day in Agnes Water and hope that everyone at home had a great few days too!
We started our day in the traditional way - with a few pressies. We'd done our shopping in Brisbane and bought presents that could be used like books and cds. I am also now the proud owner of a small wombat called Aussie Bob (watch out for him!).
We sat around a bit for the morning, I made a bracelet and Chris played on his new Mario game that I'd bought for him. Feeling quite hot we thought it would be fun to go for a swim. It felt very odd to be in a swimming pool on Christams Day!
We barbequed up our nice fresh reef fish and had our christmas dinner hiding in the van from all the flies who wanted to share it with us. In the afternoon we took a drive to the main beach and sat for an hour or so reading our books and people watching. There were quite a few people down there, it seems like the Australian thing to do after Christmas lunch is go to the beach for a boogie board, a surf or for a game of beach cricket.
We had a nice evening - turkey sandwiches, fizzy wine and silly hats. We queued for the pay phone with all the other brits to phone home and then retired to bed after a few more glasses of wine.

Rather than lazing around and eating more turkey sandwiches as should be done on Boxing Day, we decided to do our longest drive so far. We're running short on time a bit and it's a bloody long way to Cairns. We drove around 700 kms up the Bruce Highway (!!) to Airlie Beach the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands.

CRIKEY! We went to Australia Zoo!

2006-12-24T07:30:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

It had to be done really, we couldn't come to Australia without visiting the home of that loveable legend Steve Irwin. We weren't disapointed either - it was an excellently run Zoo, with lots of cool animals.
We saw...
kangaroos, wombats, dingoes, snakes, spiny echidnas, cassowarys, emus, lizards, parrots, koalas, camels, otters, elephants, tigers, aligators and of course crocodiles.

We were really impressed by their show. They do a snakes alive / birds alive/ crocs alive show in the middle of the day in their Crocoseum. The snake segment was good and told you about how to avoid being bitten and also showed off some rather large Pythons. The birds were pretty and the croc was impressive. We really liked the way the show was centred on respecting the crocodile as an apex predator and learning how to be safe around crocodile waters. The show was funny and still included a short documentary by Steve.

As yet there's no memorial to Steve, but there is long section of gate where people have put up khaki shirt's with messages on. It's very touching and I'm sure there'll be something more permanent in the future.
We had a great day and again in the later part of the afternoon we thought we'd make up some more km's and drive on up the coast to Hervey Bay. Lots of people come to Hervey Bay to get to Fraser Island, but we'd decided we haven't really got time to visit the island and just went to Hervey Bay because it was in the right direction and we thought we might get to use the internet there.
We found one of the campsites in our handy book and checked in. We were greeted by a very drunk bloke who invited us to come and join him and some English girls in the camp kitchen. We had quite a strange night as he was very very drunk and the campsite was more of a trailer park than a caravan site for tourists. There were some odd people around! But it's okay because we've since noticed in our campsite book that it tells you if they're tourist or tourist & resident parks, so we can avoid the ones that have residents in the future.

Today we drove to a little costal town called Agnes Water where we'll stay until Boxing Day morning. We're planning on having a picnic on the beach and have just bought a fresh fish to barbeque up for our Christmas dinner.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Brissie

2006-12-24T06:59:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

It's Wicked's rules that if you're travelling up the East Coast you have to take the van in for a safety check when you get to Brisbane, so that's the first thing we did on Friday. It wasn't too long a wait with a few other vans before us - and we got a bottle of fizzy wine for our trouble, which always goes down a treat.

We caught a bus into the city centre and then went our seperate ways for an hour or so to do a bit of Christmas shopping. We went for a drink on the Queen Street Mall where it's pedestrianised and a few different street performers were doing their thing. We watched a Charlie Chaplin guy for ages - it's funny watching people's reactions from the safety zone of a barstool. We also watched a Didjeridoo player who was also quite funny. We bought one of his cds. It was interesting when a litltle girl asked him what country he was from!

For the rest of the afternoon and evening we headed to the park area of the South Bank which they built for the 1988 Expo. We caught a City Sea Cat to save our weary feet, it was great, our bus tickets were valid all day for the public transport network. Bargin!
We had a look around and then had some tasty Turkish food. We'd decided to go to that area because they had Christmas stuff going on. There was a Santa in his Ute with 6 White Boomers (Kangaroos), which goes along with a Aussie carol that we heard later that night. We went to a carol concert and watched some fireworks, it was a really good evening. We learnt a new song:

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,
Christmas in Australia
on a scorching summers day, Hey!
Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut!,
Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden Ute.

We could have stayed to watch a film in the park but we were a bit knackered so caught our bus back to the caravan park.

Surfers Paradise and Beyond

2006-12-24T06:41:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We moved on from Byron Bay on the 20th to try to travel a bit further on towards Brisbane. Along the way is a town that someone rather cleverly named Surfers Paradise - from what we'd heard and read it not actually much of a paradise so we didn't want to stay there but did drive by for a bit of a look. It's very built up with what look like quite expensive hotels and it had miles of sand. It's where the Aussies come on holiday - very nice! Around the area are several theme parks and we thought we'd treat ourselves to a day at Movie World. We decided to camp in the nearby Mount Tamborine National Park so that we could be close for the following day.
We have found that the people who run campsites are generally a bit odd and standoffish so it was lovely when we found a campsite in Mt Tamborine where the lady was kind and helpful and chatty. We liked her very much. The campsite was situated beside a creek which we walked along and we also took a look at the local waterfalls. From the other side of the mountain we got some very good views back over to the coast - we could see the sea and all the highrises of Surfers.

That evening, excitingly, we had our very own campfire and toasted marshmallows. To make the most of our fire we sat around and made up stories about Kookaburras!

MovieWorld was pretty cool the following day (21st). It was a bit smaller than Alton Towers but with around a 10th of the people. We hardly had to queue to go on the rides or to get into any of the shows. Chris had fun on the Batman space shot, and luckily Superman rescued him from a subway a couple of times. We saw a funny Shrek 4D show where the seats move you around a bit and Donkey sneezed on us!
Continuing our hectic shedule we drove onto Brisbane late that afternoon. We visited a not too helpful Tourist Information place in the city centre who told us there were no campsites near Brisbane. We knew this wasn't true as we'd found one on the internet which we'd forgotten to write down the directions for, but with some greatly inspired bus following by Chris we found it!

Byron Bay

2006-12-18T01:37:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Apparently, Byron Bay is historically significant, but it's mostly for surf dudes and aging hippies these days. In an attempt to fit into at least one of these stereotypes I went for a surf lesson yesterday. As it had been since we got here, it was a grey overcast day. It wasn't raining, which makes a change. Anyway, having got kitted out with wetsuits the 3 other noob surfers and I got into the van and were driven off to find some waves.

Clark's beach was apparently the place for beginners so we carried our boards down to the beach and went through the process of lying down and jumping up and running around and lying down and jumping up and running around and that sort of thing that you need to do before you actually get out into the sea.

I was a little distressed when the first person to try and catch a wave got onto it perfectly and surfed all the way to the beach. Needless to say, that was probably the best wave anyone caught all day. I certainly never surfed that far, however I did catch some good waves and stood for quite some time. More often than not though I wiped out. On probably the largest wave all day I somehow contrived to get the board a bit too far sideways at which point I was taken sideways on to the top of the wave and pounded into the ground when it broke. Anyway after 3 hours of that sort of treatment I ache today, but I'm looking forward to hiring a board tomorrow and getting out there again.

Jen's feeling a bit poorly at the moment. Her foot is a little bit infected and it's a bit painful for her to walk around. She's got some cream to rub in and it's getting better, but we'll probably stay in Byron Bay until she's up to walking around all the surf clothes shops. In the meantime she's going to attempt to fit into the other sterotype and sit around making some jewellery.

Cute Koalas in Port Macquarie

2006-12-14T22:44:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We drove on from our bush campsite fairly swiftly to get to Port Macquarie futher along the coast. We had some very good fish and chips for our lunch. I'm tempetd to say that the Aussie fish & chips are superior to British ones. Far less greasy with just a bit of batter and they use all different sorts of fresh fish.
The Port Macquarie area is somewhere you're supposed to be able to see Koalas in the wild so we took a walk along a trail that led through some forest and over the beach. We had our best koala spotting eyes on but didn't manage to see any.
Since we were staying in a town we thought we'd take the opportunity in the evening of experiencing a bit of night life. We walked a few km into town expecting to come across a pub or 2 on the way but we didn't really find anywhere until we got to the main harbour. We sat in a very Aussie pub/hotel which has designated betting & Pokie areas.

Following our disapointment with spotting any wild animals we took a visit to the Bilabong Koala Breeding Centre. They have many very gorgeous koalas who we're all having a nice snooze or a bit of a scratch. We didn't realise quite how cute they are - I took a polaroid photo and it looks as though I stuck a teddy bear in the tree. There were some other nice fellas at the centre including some 'roos and wallabies, lizards just wandering around, scary emus, scary cassowarys, pythons, wedge tailed eagles, sleepy wombats and possums and a nice long billed cockatoo who talked to us. It was a cool place to visit - all native Australian species, something you don't really get when you visit similar places at home unless it's a farm.
On our drive back into town we spotted a mob of Kangaroos chilling out on the golf course - very cool to see so many in the wild after meeting a few captive ones.
That night we moslty sheltered in our van and ate cheap pizza to keep out of the rain. We thought that Australia was having it's worst drought for 200 years but so far it's rained about 3 nights out of our 7 in the van!

The following day we drove to Coffs Harbour via inland a bit to Dorrigo National Park. We visited their visitors centre and walked along a skyway to get some pretty nice views across the rainforest. We felt quite intrepid and a bit under prepared afterwards as we took one of the advertised walks through the rainforest to Crystal Waters Falls. I was very nervous that a python might fall from above at any moment but Chris assured me that they only squeeze you to be friendly ! We were impressed by the falls as you could walk behind them and they had quite a lot of water running through.
Our drive to Coffs Harbour was easy enough and we booked ourselves into a fancy campsite with swimming pool.
Yesterday we did what had to be done when you come to Coffs Harbour and went out to the BIg Banana. It's not quite as big as we expected but quite funny. We hope to see more Big things as we make our way around. Had a nice BBQ for lunch and a swim in the pool in the afternoon. We were a bit disapointed when we couldn't find a cheap small BBQ to use from the supermarket until we realised that there are BBQs everywhere - campsites, rest stops, near to beaches - it's great.

Today Chris was meant to go out diving but unfortunately it's too windy ( I don't know - Aussie weather), so we're catching up here and then are making our way to the surf capital of Byron Bay.

Blue Mountains

2006-12-11T04:20:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Just an hour and a half's drive from Sydney are the beautiful Blue Mountains. We decided to stay near to the biggest town in the area - Katoomba which also has the biggest tourist attraction in the area - Scenic World (more about that later). We visited the supermarket to stock our new kitchen, filled the esky up with stubbies and ice and made our way to the campsite. We can park our van and stay the night at a variety of places, some free and some not. The site in Katoomba has showers and plugsockets so we paid for a couple of nights.
After parking our van we got our first Australian wildlife experience - a Kookaburra flew into a nearby tree and let us get quite close to look at the lovely little fella. He even gave us a little laugh - very cool.
We still had a few hours of daylight left so went for a walk. We went a few minutes down the road to Katoomba falls and then took the sign posted walk around the cliff edge to Echo Point. There are lots of lookout points along the way that give stunning views, but make your knees go a bit wobbly. We saw and heard some more interesting birds along the way including some rainbow lorikeets, crimson rosellas and some big white cockatoos.
We enjoyed being able to cook for ourselves for a change, and spent a cosy first night in our van.

The next day we woke up to the sounds of cricket and Chris enjoyed watching them play while we had some brekkie. We walked along the road to Scenic World - a place where you can view the mountains & rainforest from 4 different perspectives - a railway, a cable car, a walkway and a glassbottomed cable car. It was quite cool as it took you through the rainforest which is quite difficult to get to otherwise and the views form the skyway (glassbottomed cable car) were pretty amazing.
We spent a bit of the afternoon shopping in Katoomba as we were getting worried that we had no adaptor for our plugs and the camera was running out of battery. Later, we explored a bit further afield and went to Wentworth falls. We walked down quite a few steps (and hence back up them again) but it was worth it.

The next day we left Katoomba and drove about 4 hours to the Hunter Valley - a wine growing area. It was bendy and bumpy and invloved lots of quite steep ascents and descents. We were again really impressed by the scenery, but a bit worried when we drove through areas that had clearly been badly burned at some stage. Unfortunately our next wildlife spots weren't very alive anymore. We saw the weirest dead wombat at the side of the road that looked like it had just died of old age! It was very fat! We also saw a few poor Roos.
We stopped in at a couple of Vineyards for a spot of tasting and bought a couple of bottles before continuing our journey to the Pacific Highway and the coastal region of Myall Lakes.
We spent the night in an unusual campsite that had been marked in our map book as being full of facilities but it just had some toilets with no lights and lots of flies.
On the subject of flies, for those of you that have read Bill Bryson's Down Under, we've experienced flies like he experienced. They land on your mouth and near your eyes and don't go away when you flap at them. It's definitely the worst thing about Australia, that and the constant fear of Redbacks & crocs!

Our Wicked Van

2006-12-11T03:39:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We picked up our home for the next 25 days - it's Wicked! It's got all we need for travelling around Australia - air con, a bed, a kitchen, and a table & chairs. We bought a little i-pod radio transmitter so we can listen to our tunes while we're driving.

Incidentally we had no choice over what van we had - just good luck.

Bondi Explorer Bus

2006-12-11T03:35:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Having seen the iconic sites of the city centre our next day in Sydney needed to be a day to see the sea. We hopped aboard a Bondi Explorer tour bus and had a very nice day driving around a few of the coastal sites. There are some gorgeous places to live in Sydney if you've got a few bob - amazing views. We stopped near to a girl's school where you could look back across to the city to see a long stretch of skyscrapers and the harbour.
We arrived at our main destination - Bondi Beach a little before lunch and were suitably impressed with the only beach we've ever actually heard of. It's a huge stretch of near perfect sand and beautiful blue sea. We were pleased to see a few people surfing, and the life guards patrolling. After a bit of a wander up the beach we took the coastal path along to the next beach, the path led you past some more stunning views. We looked at a couple more gorgeous beaches before getting back on our bus to take us back into the city. Sydney seems so very well thought out. The beaches all had plenty of bins, useful signs, lifeguards and places where you can sit in the shade, and our bus came at the time it said it was going to. Bonza!

We thought we'd go to the cinema in the evening and watched The Prestige - very good film, but don't let anyone talk to you about it before you've seen it!
After that we checked out the harbour in the dark, still looking pretty cool. Back to the hostel, via a bar having an open mic night, to pack before heading out to the Wicked office to pick up the van the next day.

We're in Oz!

2006-12-05T09:40:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Wow - We're in Sydney! It's a bit nice here. We arrived on our flight from Bangkok safe and sound and checked into our room at The Jollyswagman Hostel (we've been singing the song quite a lot, along with 'Tie me kangaroo down sport'!). We opted for a dorm room as accomodation here is a bit more expensive than in Asia. It's okay, fairly clean and not too noisey but it is a bit like being back in Waveney except without the luxury of having your own room. Seems like there's a few evening activities we can get involved in if we like though which is quite fun.
We spent our first morning here in a shopping mall where we discovered it's Christmas time. Hadn't really noticed until now. Having said that though, it is a lot more subtle here, not that many decorations up.
In the afternoon we did what had to be done and walked through the botanical gardens to Mrs. Macquarie's Point to look out at the Harbour Bridge and Opera house. We'd caught a glimpse of the Opera House from the aeroplane window which was pretty cool, but it was amazing to look at from the Point.
We were quite surprised by the colour of it, not really as white as it looks on the photos you generally see, more of a cream colour with quite a lot of the brown metal showing through.
We were really impressed as we walked round at how green a city Sydney is, with plenty of nice places that you can sit and absorb the view. After walking to the front of the Opera house we thought it was time for a beer and a look at the cricket score. Later on we carried on defeating our jet lag for a few hours longer before falling asleep for a long time!

Today we visited the fabulous Sydney Aquarium. By all accounts we saw quite a lot of lovely little fellas! It's a nicely done place, with a few big tunnels to walk through to admire the sharks & fish. It was great! The Aquarium is situated in Darling Harbour which seems like quite an upmarket part of Sydney. Figuring we were on for a draw in the cricket we thought we'd have a look at the score in a bar for a while, but it turned out to be a bit of a match so that's where we continued the rest of our day really. Apparently when they win a match the Australians shout 'Aussie Aussie Aussie!'. We left quite sharply.

Sydney is a beautiful city, and we have a couple more days here to explore.

Chiang Dao continued...

2006-11-29T11:08:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We mostly spent the day after the party/festival/rave relaxing at Chiang Dao Nest. They’ve got a nice shady open sided hut that you can sit in. We spent the day in there, reading and playing games. We walked up the road in the evening to Nest 2, which is run by Wicha’s sister, for some Thai food. Surprisingly, Joseph wanted to play Uno with us when we got back! It was cool though, when we told him it was 9 o’clock and time to go to bed he shot off, without so much as a ‘Good Night’!

For our last day in Chiang Dao we hired a couple of bicycles and went exploring armed with a packed lunch and Wicha’s hand drawn map. We rode the 7km into town and walked around the weekly market. Thee were quite a lot of minority people there who come down from the hills once a week to do their shopping. After that we stopped in at the Internet cafe for a quick email to worried parents. The next part of our ride was quite tricky – a bit uphill and not really a proper road. We stopped for some lunch by the side of the road and then continued to the village on our map. Chris got looked at by a pig!
Eventually we got back to the main road and enjoyed some downhill bits! Cycling is more fun when you don’t have to pedal. Feeling quite tired we cycled back to the Nest for a beer and a snooze before setting off again in the cooler part of the afternoon. We visited a nice temple/monastery which is built into a cave. Unlike the monastery that we climbed up to on Sunday, this temple in through a door and actually in the cave rather than just at the entrance, it was quite cool. Check out the photo of the golden statue though – it was really freaky in the semi darkness of the cave – it looked like a monk had been turned to gold. We treated ourselves to another one of Wicha’s slap up meals in the evening and spent a nice time chatting to Stuart and giving Joseph a final few games of Uno.

We left Chiang Dao this morning. We were sad to leave and will almost certainly go back there again one day. We caught the bus back into Chiang Mai. As we were going along we spotted some elephants out of the window – very cool! Taking a cookery class tomorrow, then traveling south to Ayuthaya before we catch our flight to Sydney on the 3rd.

Chiang Dao party

2006-11-29T10:46:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

After some excellent pizza we got into a songthaew with Stuart and went off into the night! Apparently these kinds of festivals are held quite regularly across the area, with each village having about one a year. Chris thought that it seemed like a mix between bonfire night, an illegal rave and a village fete – and that pretty much covers it!
There was a stage where different people sang and danced in an almost professional fashion, there were food and drink stalls and there was the Thai boxing ring & VIP area. We got ourselves a can of Chang for 30p each and stood back to take it all in.
We were celebrities for the night, everyone was interested in us and smiled at us all the time. One guy asked Chris if he was going to be boxing that night! After a bit of a look around we ventured down towards the stage so that Chris could take a few snaps. We were kind of mobbed by Thai ladies and a few Thai men forcing us to dance! It was great fun!
After quite a lot of boogieing we headed over to the boxing ring to see what was going on. A couple of young lads were in the middle of their fight, and it wasn’t as violent as I thought it was going to be. We continued to stand around and half watch the boxing whilst also chatting to local people including the Chief of the village.
The rest of the evening carried on in a similar vein. The local people got steadily drunk on rice whisky while we drank more Chang, danced some more, and the adult boxers mainly drew their fights. They did some sort of strange ritual thing before each fight, praying at each corner and things. The last fight ended in a KO.
It was a surreal and very fun night (check out the photos)!

Chiang Dao

2006-11-29T10:05:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

A few years ago Chris used to work with a guy called Stuart who upped sticks with his Thai wife and set up home in Chiang Dao. They run a guesthouse & restaurant which we thought it would be rude not to visit!

It was easier than we thought to get to Chiang Dao. We caught a taxi to the bus station and then caught the local bus. When we arrived there were a couple of songthaews waiting to take people to wherever. We climbed in with a couple of Aussies and talked cricket for the 10 minute drive.

It is beautiful. A lot of people visit the Chiang Mai area with the purpose of going into the hills trekking. We weren't sure what we were going to do in Chiang Dao but the scenery was amazing.
Chiang Dao Nest is a lovely cluster of bungalows centred on the restaurant. We arrived on the Saturday so it was quite busy. Wicha & Stuart who own the guesthouse get a lot of trade from local expats getting away for the weekend. We mostly chilled out on our balcony for the afternoon, admiring the scenery before we went to Wicha's restaurant. People also travel from Chiang Mai just to eat there! We had a 3 course feast - homemade pate & fresh bread, roasted duck, tuna in sesame, white chocolate mousse & almond ice cream. Yum Yum! Not quite what were used to in Thailand and a little more than we've been paying, but excellent food & value.
We must mention that before we had dinner we had to go and get changed into our jeans, and put our fleeces on (for the first time on our trip) as it was a bit chilly! How marvellous!
We did some star gazing that night - the sky is so clear and there's no light pollution so you can see so many stars.

On Sunday we visited the local Monastry - Tham Pha Pong. It's a bit of a climb - 200 steps then a further gentler 300, but worth it. As you would expect the view from the top is incredible and it was quite a pretty temple in the entrance to a cave. We came back to the Nest for lunch - which was of course yummy - garlic bread and warm chicken salad.
Wicha & Stuart have a 5 year old son called Joseph who likes to play Uno. During the course of our stay we've played many hands with him (most of which he won), our first session was that afternoon.
After lunch we walked down the road to the local caves. They are very extensive. A few of the caves are accessible by yourself as they are quite high and electricaly lit, but once you've been through those ones a guide is offered to you. We weren't sure what to expect but paid our 100 baht (1.50) and followed a man with a kerosene lantern into the dark caves! They were stunning, he pointed out various formations to us - the chicken, the elephant ear, the lotus flowers, the illithid (or waterfall) etc. There were many different formations and some parts that were really sparkly. Around four times we had to literally crawl through to the next part of the cave system but generally as we were walking around we had a lot of head room. Definietly worth the visit.

When we got back we had a few beers with Wicha, played some more Uno with Joseph and then Stuart joined us. A local Lisu family turned up offering Stuart a chance to watch some Thai boxing. I wasn't really sure but Stuart explained that it was quite a festival and worth seeing - it was, and deserves a blog all of it's own!

Chiang Mai

2006-11-29T09:29:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Sorry for the lack of updates in the past week but we've been up in the hills and there's not much internet up there unless you've brought your own laptop and can catch those WIFI thingies.
So anyway, we'll start from the 22nd November when we caught 2 planes to Chiang Mai - the first got us from Krabi to Bangkok and the second on from Bangkok. Luckily for us there's been a bit of a boom in budget airlines here recently so it's fairly cheap to fly and it meant doing the whole journey in a sensible day rather than several days using the night buses/trains.

So we got into Chiang Mai in the early evening and eventually found ourselves a decent enough guesthouse. There's some very cheap accommodation here - anything from about 3 quid a night, so it takes a bit of looking around to find somewhere with a private bathroom and clean walls!
Chiang Mai is quite famous for it's Night Bazaar so we visited that. It's enourmous! We didn't buy anyhting but will probably go back tonight and see if there are any clothes we need. We ate at a nice food court where you buy coupons in advance and then go to the different vendors. Very cheap and quite tasty!

The next day (23rd) we had to move guesthouses as the one we'd found only had a reasonably priced room for that 1 night. We found a nice little soi (lane) with lots of guesthouses on and found a double room for 6 pounds. We wandered around the city a bit, looking at Wat Phra Singh as the sun started to set.
We rather foolishly entered ourselves into a pub quiz at an Irish bar. We thought we'd be ok against lots of stoner hippies but when we arrived it was full of old bloke ex-pats! We didn't come last and it was fun!

The 24th brought a trip to Doi Suthep. The public transport around here mostly consists of songthaews which are pick up trucks with two rows of seats in the back (it's not quite as bad as it sounds). Some have set routes and you can also stop them like a taxi. We were on our way to the main area for cathcing the songthaew to Doi Suthep when we noticed a tall ruin that we thought might have been old wall. It turned out to be a partially ruined stunning temple complex (it's the one in the photo). We spent quite a while looking around, it was beautiful.

As we got close to the area where the songthaews go to Doi Suthep we were collared by a couple of drivers who pointed us in the right direction. Unfortunately they have to be full before they'll leave if you want to pay the cheap price, so we waited around for a bit until we had 8 people and then drove up the mountain.
The story goes that someone had an important Buddhist relic that they needed a resting place for. They put it onto a white elephant and sent if off. The elephant went up the mountain and then died. So now there's a great big golden chedi there along with other temples and areas of worship. It also has great views across Chiang Mai.
We couldn't believe just how golden a place it was, and the sky was incredibly blue that day to highlight it even more.

We caught another songthaew down the mountain and got it to drop us off at a cinema that we'd scouted out the day before. We watched Casino Royale in English! Did have to stand up before it started to show our respect for the King which was slightly unusual but apart from that a pretty normal cinema going experience, except that the tickets were only 1.20 each! We liked the freerunning scene at the beginning.

Phi Phi Dive Trip

2006-11-21T06:30:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We had a great day yesterday (a budget buster of a day).
Chris' first dive trip since passing his open water had to be somewhere good, so we decided on a trip to one of the best places to dive in Thailand - Phi Phi (pronounced pee pee by the way).

The first stop after our 2 hour boat ride was Losama Bay. This was a wall dive along Whale Shark Wall. Chris had a bit of difficulty getting down to begin with - too little weight on his belt and ear equalisation problems, but got down eventually for a cool dive. He saw a giant octupus! Lots of other pretty fish & corals and stuff. Not down for long though - 30 minutes before he and another new diver got a bit short on air so surfaced.
The snorking wasn't bad either - after a bit of a hard swim in the current over to the wall there were lots of fish to see, including quite excitingly, some anemone fish. I got a bit scared of a jelly fish though - nasty little fellas.
After a spot of curry & rice for lunch we sailed a bit further on to Maya Bay.
Wow! They chose this location to film the film The Beach for good reasons - it's stunning. As we approached I wondered if I'd actually need to snork - the water was so clear. It was incredible. I could see at least 3 metres down, at times probably 5 metres and was surrounded by fish. Sergant Majors, parrot fish, surgeon fish, a porcupine fish and 2 kinds of moray eel.
Chris had an easier dive 2nd time round, a bit more weight and confidence. They had visibility of around 15m and saw puffer fish, lion fish, angel fish and loads of other stuff.
There's such beautiful coral around and the fish are so colourful. It was worth the money to just go to that one bay.

There was a guy on our trip who's job it is to make underwater films. He made a film of our day which we watched in a bar later that evening. He got a fair bit of Chris, including one close up of the hand signal for lion fish! We might buy the dvd when we get back to the UK and are feeling a little less stingy with our money!

If you look closely at some of the pictures you might be able to spot a porcupine fish & a moray eel!

The Beach

2006-11-19T10:46:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Well, not the Beach because you can't stay there, but we've just got back from a fantastic week on our very own island paradise - Koh Jum.
We caught a ferry that goes from Krabi to Lanta. Halfway across, the ferry slows and a few longtail boats chase the ferry until it stops! One of those longtails was our way to the island, we climbed down to it from the ferry and left all the other poor suckers behind to go to Lanta (which is probably nice enough!).
We weren't disapointed with the view from the boat. The island is mostly jungle which gives way to small stretches of beach along the coast line. Once we had landed we were taken up to the reception where we had a nice cool glass of fresh orange juice while a kind Thai guy took our heavy rucksacks to our house.

It's pretty basic living on an island like Koh Jum. We only had electricity from sunset to around 3am, with a fan in the room and no hot water. We also had to flush the loo with a bucket, but hey it only costs 6 quid a night and the surroundings were beautiful, plus we had a balcony!

We mostly spent our days lazing around, reading books, doing puzzles, brain training, playing cards, backgammon & xiangqi and trying to stay in the shade. They had some nice chairs to sit on on the beach and also had great beach huts where it was always shady.

We were a bit surprised by the weather. We purposefully came to the West coast of Thailand to avoid the East coast monsoon, but it didn't seem like the rainy season had completely finished from where we were standing! Pretty much without fail we had a beautiful sunny morning with a slight breeze until around lunch time when the wind really picked up, it rained for a bit and then stayed a bit cloudy for the rest of the day with a nice cool breeze. It suited us really - not too hot but still nice to sit around on the beach.

Some days when it was clear we could see all the surrounding islands, including Phi Phi (where The Beach was filmed). We had agreat sunset one evening, with clear views of Phi Phi and gorgeous colours.

On our second day, it started to rain while we were sitting on the beach and as we were quickly packing our stuff up I noticed something moving up on the bank behind the beach. It was the most amazingly cool lizard! He was around 4-5ft long and had big stomping shoulders. We couldn't believe our luck at seeing such an amazing animal out in the wild. We took a couple of snaps of him before he hid from us & the rain.
We were really lucky again the next day. We we're sitting on our balcony waiting to go further down the beach for a spot of snorkling, when Chris heard the sound of breaking branches in the undergrowth behind our house. We're not sure if it was the same lizard or if a few live around the resort, but he posed for us for a long time. So very cool!

We saw a bit more good wildlife down on the beach in the way of crabs. You have to watch out for the little fellas as you walk along, and we were quite scared of the great big hermit crabs. It's quite odd to see a big conch shell walking along the beach!

We ate good food too (as long as we remebered to stick to Thai and steer clear of Western). The curries were scrummy - Mutsuman curry in particular was nice, and we had a spicy grilled White Snapper. We also thought it quite cool that we had fried barracuda.

We were just going to spend 4 days there, but at the end of the 4th day neither of us felt ready to leave so we stayed a couple more days. we think it was a family run place and they were all really friendly staff which made our stay even better.

Back in Ao Nang now where it's bloody hot! Going out on a dive boat tomorrow (Monday) to dive & snork around Phi Phi. Enjoy all the photos!

Ao Nang

2006-11-12T15:21:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We caught our overnight bus from Bangkok to Krabi on Friday after a few days around the Khao San Road to catch up on chores and eat scrummy Pad Thai!
The 15 hours on the bus went surprisingly quickly, the only problem being that they turned the lights off at 19:30 and back on again at 23:00, off again at 1am and back on again at 5am! Still, we managed to get a fair bit of sleep as the bus wasn't full and we could spread out a bit. We shared a cab with another couple from Krabi to Ao Nang.

On first impressions, Ao Nang seemed a bit built up and not really what we had wanted from a Thai beach, but we thought it would be a good central place to start and to maybe get a trip around some islands from. It turned out htat there's a nice beach here with a cool cliff at the far end. We spent a bit of time looking around the town and checking out the dive shops. The best places to dive on the West coast are Phuket & Koh Phi Phi. With Phi Phi just a couple of hours boat ride away we're going to do a dive/snork trip there on Saturday. (We can't stay at either of those places as the popularity has priced us backpackers out of the area!)

Today we went on a 4 Island boat trip. We thought it had all gone a bit wrong this morning when they didn't show up at the time they'd said, but an hour later a guy ran up the road and put us in the back of his truck! (The main method of transport around here is converted pick-up trucks with 2 lines of benches - not too bad really, better than a moto).

The trip was beautiful , we visited a set of islands that because of the low tide were accessible, one from the other by just walkking along the sand bank. We went to Chicken Island - so called because of the stone formation that resembles a chicken's head, and did a bit of snorkling around Koh Si. A lovely day on the boat! It did piss it down with rain the afernoon, but that was ok!

Any ho - the man at the hotel wants to shut up shop, so I must go. We're off to Koh Jum tomorrow until Friday when we're back in Ao Nang. Not sure if there'll be any internet access there as we're hoping it'll be our desert island paradise, so we'll probably upload lots of idylic photos at the weekend!

Impressions of Vietnam

2006-11-09T10:20:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

The Good, The Bad, and the Down Right Odd!

The Bad:
* People thinking that because you're a Westerner that equates to you being a walking cashpoint.

* Pavements: we've spent most of our time wallking in the gutter or in the road. Where there are pavements, they are used as somewhere to ride or park your motorbike; have dinner; set up your stall or put rubbish, making it near impossible to walk along the pavements.

* Rude Vietnamese people: They push infront of you, sweep the street onto you, put their seats right back, smoke too close to you and generally are quite self absorbed as shown by their driving habit of not looking around themselves at all.

*Phlegming: As in China, people are constantly clearing their throats and spitting on to the road. Yuk!

* Food: Whilst some food has been good we've been a bit disapointed with Vietnamese food. We were expecting great things but often only got average things. They also use far too much squid (or squit as it said on one menu) and serve up shark's fin soup in too many restaurants.

The Good:
* Vietnamese children. They are all so friendly and love to say "hello" or try out their other greetings like "good afternoon". We've had lots of smiles whenever we've encountered children in Vietnam, particularly the bunch we met in Hanoi at the Temple of Literature.

* Food: We've had some quite good food, including Cau Lao - noodles with beansprouts, pork and crispy rice cracker; Peanut toffee - they stir up lots of peanuts with ginger and carmel and then set it onto a rice cracker base - chewy & slighty spicy goodness; Ginger tea is also really good; we ate some tasty fish in Mui Ne and were ecstatic to find that the VIetnamese eat a lot of baguettes (there's no bread in China!).

*Mui Ne: We really enjoyed this sleepy beachside town. There were hardly any tourists and so not many people trying to sell you things. The weather was excellent - hot but cool in the shade, we had a pool and could see the sea.

*Diving & Snorkiling: we hadn't really planned on doing anything like that in Vietnam and it worked out nice and cheap compared to anywhere else in the world.

* Other travellers: We've met some really nice people as we've been going around - a Swedish couple on our boat trip, a German couple on our tomb tour; Vickie our dive instructor and a cool bunch of Ozzie & Kiwi guys in a Bia Hoi place in Hanoi. We've also enjoyed chatting to Vietnamese students who want to improve their English and love that we're English rather than a different nationality that speaks English.

* The Scenery: Vietnam is truly beautiful in places. The sun is completely round & orange as it sets.

The Odd
* The way the women dress: It seems that there are 3 different ways that you can dress if you're a Vietnamese lady. 1. In Western style clothes; 2. In traditional dress of Ao Dai - a beautiful and elegant long dress over trousers or 3. in pyjamas! Lots of ladies particularly in the South and particularly older ladies just wear pyjamas all day - sometimes they've even got cute kittens on!

* Trees: because of the Agent Orange deforestation, a lot of the trees are in straight lines and it looks really weird!

So all in all we enjoyed our time in Vietnam, but it definitely had its plus and minor points, with the money grabbing getting us down at times but the kids giving us hope! It's certainly worth a visit.

Halong Bay

2006-11-07T11:47:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

According to legend, Halong Bay was formed by a dragon descending from the heavens and refusing to leave (or something like that, can't quite remember and we just sold our guide books!). Whilst it is a bay, I didn't quite realise how vast it was, there's something like 2000 islands (most of which are uninhabitable).

There are tonnes of places in Hanoi offering trips to the bay so we figured it would be pretty busy when we arrived but we weren't quite prepared for the scrum that was the harbour. You would think that since it's so popular they might have more than one place that you could get onto the boats, but not so, everyone goes through the same one person ticket check and then you have to climb onto and through several boats until you reach the one you're supposed to be on! The boats are then driven in much the same way as other vehicles in this country, so it's a free for all until you manage to get out in to the open water and the boats dispurse, you can breathe again (the fumes were choking) and sit back on the sun deck to enjoy the ride.

We are plagued by haze. The karsts in photos are crisp and clear, backed by blue sky. On our first day they were quite difficult to spot at first, but as we got further into them they were quite stunning.
We lazed on the sundeck after a spot of lunch and then arrived at a large cave. All the tours we'd seen took you to a cave for an explore and we were expecting a ittle cave at sea level. About 10 other boats were at the cave when we arrived, and little the cave was not, nor was it at sea level. We climbed up quite a lot of steps and then descended into quite an impressive cave (it's called the surprising cave because the fisherman was surprised when he discovered it!- you've got to love that logical name giving!. That particualr cave is UNESCO funded so it's pretty devoid of rubbish & graffitti which was surprising(!) and had some good lighting and safe paths around.
After the cave we had a short sail across to an island where there's a bit of beach. We got off the boat for a swim, but thought better of it when we realised the water was bloody freezing-23c, so got back on the boat for a bit more chilling out.

We sailed a bit further along the bay and anchored at our spot for the evening. The sun seemed like it was starting to set but it was time for some sea-kayaking action! (By the way, does anyone know if there's a difference between a kayak & a canoe?). Luckily for me it was a double kayak and I didn't need to worry about technicalities such as steering. We paddled our way through an opening in the karsts and through a little under pass before being in a lovelly still cove. Well worth it, but we thought we best paddle back before it got dark and we weren't sure which boat was ours anymore. A nice fresh water shower followed by some quite good dinner and then a few games of cards before bed. It was much calmer sleeping on the boat than I'd expected and quite peaceful except for the crew watching tv & drinking beer.

This morning we woke to a slightly clearer day and spent around 4 hours sailing back to the harbour. We noticed quite a large fire on one the karsts that looked as though it had started quite low down and travelled up the rock, not really sure how it started - a rogue cigarette butt maybe. There were loads of differently shaped karsts as we sailed along, we named a few - lion stone, big belly stone, giraffe neck stone & ski jump stone! There was also some good wildlife to look at - sea eagles soaring above us, and according to legend a Tarasque swimming around below us!

We arrived back in the harbour for another scrum and then drove back to Hanoi. We catch a plane to Bangkok in the morning and then are slightly stuck as to where to go! We think we'll probably go to Phuket to start with and then move on. Has anyone got any good suggestions from their visits? We're a bit worried Phuket might be a bit expensive for the likes of us!

Still in Hanoi

2006-11-05T09:45:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We've changed our plans and have had a bit more of a look around Hanoi. We'll be heading out to Halong bay tomorrow and then catching a flight to Bangkok on Wednesday.

Last night we discovered something wonderful! Bia Hoi is fresh beer. It's made without preservatives and new barrels are delivered daily. But the best bit is that they sell it at 2000VND per glass. For those without calculators, that equates to about 7p. You don't get a full pint for that price, but you do get some well chilled, pretty good lager and a nice plastic seat on the street to sit on. Great stuff.

Anyway... Today we visited Ho Chi Minh's final resting place. Well we had a look at the building, not the corpse itself, which apparently isn't on display on Sundays, not that we really wanted to see it anyway. It was an impressive building anyway, which gets theme park sized queues outside when the dead guy's on display. We also had a look at the One Pillar Pagoda (See pic) which was originally built in 1049, but destroyed by the French in 1954 and rebuilt more recently. We then went for a bit of a wander through the botannical gardens and past the presidential palace which is a nice yellow colour, and down to the Temple of Literature.

The Temple of Literature was the first university in Vietnam, built in 1070. Not an easy place to study at; in 1733, out of 3000 students only 8 passed their exams to become mandarins. Anyway, it was one of the least gaudy temples we've been to. There was a bonsai tree exhibition on, and there was a whole group of schoolchildren mobbing us with shouts of "Hello!", "How are you?", "What's your name?", "Where you live?". Answering their questions to the best of our abilities, they all decided that they should shake hands with us, and get photographed. Very friendly kids like most that we've met.

Unfortunately, they'll probably grow up to be money grabbing bastards like the cyclo drivers. We decided to get a cyclo for the second time ever today. It nearly worked out OK, having negotiated a price that was acceptable to both of us, however having been taken a few hundred yards the driver said that we had to get into another cyclo instead and that the price would still be that same, which would have been fine if the next bloke had spoken any english and had taken us to the right place. Never mind, you live and learn. What we have learned is that the majority of Vietnamese are out to rip you off at every opportunity. That's just the way it is over here.

Halong Bay tomorrow.

Chris

It's the return of the Chicken.

2006-11-02T06:45:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by chickencoleman.

Hi chaps! I'm Back!

The Chicken

Hanoi

2006-11-02T06:29:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Wow - we're certainly in the capital city! There is so much traffic here, it was quite scary to get out of our taxi from the station to find a hotel. The drivers of all vehicles rarely look where they are going and beep continuously.
But we found a decent hotel, with a room on the 6th floor (many many steps).
We thought we'd give the Lonely Planet walking tour another go here. It was a good one! Hanoi's shops are mostly really narrow and long so that they could fit more onto a street. They are also in very distinct areas - hat shops, ironmongers, shoe shops, rope shops etc. It was very intersting to walk around the old quarter. Some streets have stopped selling what their name suggests. We only noticed one chicken on Ga Street. We did have to avoid women tring to put their very heavy fruit basket poles on our shoulders though! 'Photo?'

In the centre of Hanoi there is a large lake which may or may not have giant turtles living in it, depending on who you believe! We kept an eye out just in case. On a small island in the lake is the Ngoc Son Temple. We really liked it there, it was peaceful and full of interesting artefacts. Including a few cranes standing on tortoises and a preserved giant tortoise (we are very undecided as to whether it was genuine).
We booked our trip to Halong bay at the only western run tour operator. It's so difficult to go with a local company - there are too many dodgy ones who tell you one thing and deliver something far inferior. Plus they put fake signs up so even if you know the name of reputable company there's no real way of telling if you're in their office or not.

In the olden days, in the paddy fields a tradition of water puppetry developed. There is a theatre here that has continued that tradition and we saw a fantastic performance. The puppets are controlled by mechanisms under the water and puppeteers behind a bamboo screen. There were golden dragons with fireworks coming out of their mouths, fishermen, buffalo, harvest processions, lions and phoenix. It was a great performance. We didn't take any pictures as it was all a bit low down, but they sell miniature puppets everywhere so if we see a nice one we might get it.

We changed hotel this morning as the other one was only available for 2 nights. We 're here tonight before going on our Halong Bay trip (yay!) and then we fly back to Bangkok on the 6th November.

Hue

2006-11-02T06:05:00.000Z

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We arrived in Hue at lunch time and checked into a perfectly adequate hotel before finding ourselves some lunch. We went to a cool local cafe where the owner is a photogrpher. You can sit and browse his pictures while you wait for your food. One group of Australian ladies left with a print each - not a bad day for the owner!
The citadel in Hue is the main tourist attraction so we wandered there avoiding all offers of motos and cyclos. Vietnamese people don't really walk anywhere, they think it quite odd when you refuse transport!
The approach to the main citadel is cool with an enormous flagpole flying the star. It was Sunday and we were watched by a couple of cheeky boys riding their oversized bike around the wide open paved space. They shouted 'hello' and 'good afernoon' at us, and tried to creep into our photos! Very funny!
As you enter the main part of the citadel you go over a bridge where, at the start you can buy some fish food. We did. These goldfish are hungry! We managed to create many feeding frenzies and got them to follow us all the way along the bridge by putting in a bit of food at a time!
The citadel was well worth the visit. Many of it's buildings were destroyed by American bombs, as the Viet Cong thought it would be a good place to set up base, but there are still some great things to see. There's an old theatre where they still perform court music - with dancing dragons & ladies with fans. We very much enjoyed strolling around the grounds in the late afternoon sunshine.
We wanted to visit a local pagoda and thought that as it was 4km away we would enlist the services of a cyclo driver.

Cyclo drivers are often non-citizens of Vietnam. After the war the vietnamese government 're-educated' all those who were in support of the American forces. After this they were denied citizenship of hte country and are not able to get jobs or own property, so Cyclo drivers they became, which explains why they are all quite old blokes.

After a healthy bargaining session we agreed 65,000 VND (2 quid) for a ride to the pagoda and back to our hotel. Chris sat up on a wooden seat while I sat on the cushion between his legs. The driver earnt his money! We're a bit heavy! The usual conversation ensued - where are we from, what are we doing tommorow. Luckily we found out that the boat tour we were planning on taking would go to the pagoda, so instead the cyclo took us around the local streets and to a lake. It was quite scary at times, having motos driving towards us, but it was a great way to see some local life.
Hue is about the most touristy place we've been to so far, we kept noticing people that we'd seen in Hoi An! The restaurant that we went to for dinner was full of westerners including an intrepid tour group.

The next day (monday) we went on a tour of the tombs. The kings spent their whole lives designing & having huge tombs built so that they would have somewhere nice to live in the afterlife. They are pretty extensive and quite impressive.
The tour took us to 3 different tombs. The first was Tu Duc's tomb - this was quite similar in style to the citadel, with a nice pagoda by the lake where Tu Duc used to sit and write poetry apparently.
The 2nd tomb was that of Khai Dinh. He took 11 years to build his tomb. The walls are completely covered in mosaic pictures - it was amazing.
The 3rd tomb was that of Minh Manh. This was bulit in the shape of a bird (?), with 2 lakes as wings. It was the most run down really but would have been huge and impressivce in it's day.
We had some good local lunch included in our tour. It was a set menu of Hue's specialities including tuna fish with seasame which you eat on bits of rice crackers. Yum.
The tour ended with a dodgy boat trip along the perfume river. The problem with the part of the river that goes through Hue is that there is no scenery. The boat was ok, but basically a floating shop with potential customers that can't escape!

We got quite ripped off when buying our train tickets to get to Hanoi. In Nha Trang we'd been close to the station so bought them ourselves, but here we went to an agent. The first place tried to charged us a few dollars more that the 2nd place we went to and even the second place charged us about 30% commisson. We weren't very impressed!
We felt quite a lot like we were being taken advantage of in Hue - with inflated westerner prices for drinks and food. Luckily we frequeted a little shop by our hotel for our water and when we went to buy our train snacks we were charged a normal fair price. There was also a very cute baby who wanted to share his biscuit with Chris!
We caught our train the floowing morning - a mere 12 hours to Hanoi!

Hoi An & My Son

2006-10-28T10:30:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

So the sun does actually shine in this part of Vietnam after all! The rain cleared up mostly after lunch yesterday but stayed pretty cloudy & menacing for the rest of the day. We ventured back to the local market to see if we could pick up a set of chinese chess pieces. Everywhere we've been we have seen men on the street playing it and it lokoed like a good 2 player game. We'd seen 1 set in a shop for $7 but thought we might get some cheaper. We browsed the stalls to the calls of "you look", "you buy something", and asked one lady if she had them. She didn't but said to wait one minute. At this point she sent an older lady running off to god knows where to pick up a set. We waited around for about 5 minutes and were just leaving when she came puffing back with 2 sets. Needless to say she was rather pissed off when we told her we didn't like them as much as the ones we already seen. She chased us up the road a bit lowering her price but didn't understand that we simply didn't want them. It's like that in most shops, they think that you should buy something and will lower their price, but don't understand that you actually have to like or need something to buy it, not just buy it because it's cheap!
We bought a nice small wooden set and then went for a drink in a bar that gives it's profits to the 'Blue Dragon Foundation' - an Australian charity who help street kids in Vietnam.

Today we have visited My Son (pronounced mee sun). It's a ruined set of very old Champa temples similar in style to Angkor. Unfortunately the Americans bombed the hell out of the site during the war so there are hardly any of the structures remaining. They looked good in the sunshine though.
We had a bit more of a look around town in the sunshine this afternoon, you could certainly tell it had been raining though with the river flooding over onto the main path!
We catch another bus in the morning, this time we're going to Hue.

Hoi An & Internet censorship

2006-10-27T07:33:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We caught the overnight train to Danang from Nha Trang successfully, even though there were no signs at the station at either end! We knew it should be arriving at 05:23 so made sure that we were up and ready to get off. Chris managed to hear the word 'Danang' in an announcement and luckily we got off in the correct station. We didn't really want to be in Danang, it was the best place to get the train to and then get a mini bus to Hoi An. After a slight wildgoose chase, we found a nice little hotel near to the centre of the old town, had some breakfast and then went upstairs to catch up on the sleep we didn't get on the train.
It rains a lot here!
A lot!
We decided to go for a walk around the old town, there are many old buildings left here as it was largely neglected in the war. There are old assembly halls that the Chinese merchants used plus lots of pagodas and old houses. They are generally in good repair and some had fantstic details on the roofs. We also had a look at he Japanese covered bridge and had a walk along the river. Hoi An has quite a pleasant feel to it, not too many people trying to sell you things, except for the tailors. There are about 200 tailor shops in what is really only a town. They will make you whatever you like, including what ever you fancy from the most recent Next catalogue. If we were coming straight home I might have bought a new bag to fill up but as it is, I'm having a top & trousers made. Going for a fitting in a little while. As with most things in Vietnam it's pretty cheap. My outfit is going to cost 13 pounds. Not too shabby.
Today we have mostly been playing cards as there has been so much rain that the road looks like a river. It's been torrentially raining since we got up and appears to be easing off now so we'll probably go back into the old town this afternoon.
There are quite a lot of local speciality dishes in Hoi An. We're having Cau Lao for lunch, which is like the Pho that you get all over Vietnam but is made with water form a particular well and has less soupy bit and fatter noodles. It's nice!

Apparently Vietnam is a bit more communist than we gave them credit for and they don't like blogging! So we're not going to be able to view our blog for the rest of our time here as far as we can tell. Apparently they monitor the cyber cafes for subversive behaviour etc and several people are in prison for what they've written!
So we'll continue to post to our blog via flickr, but if you've got any comments or questions you'll need to email us rather than comment on the blog.

A bit more diving.

2006-10-25T10:35:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Hooray! Chris is clever and passed his Open Water Course today. Yay! (Or more correctly - AWESOME!)

We're catching a night train tonight and then will be in the pretty old town of Hoi An. Hopefully it won't be a place where they ban blogspot - we're still not able to read our blog & comments or the Live from Norwich one whilst in Nha Trang!

Cheery-bye!

PS - how coincidental that we did our diving with Rainbow dive school!

Dive School

2006-10-24T14:17:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Slightly hungover from our bucket escapades we made the long journey across the road to the Rainbow Dive Centre to begin our Open Water Course(OWC). For those that don't know, it's a 4 day course which once completed enables you to go diving anywhere in the world down to 18 metres.
Luckily it was a pretty easy start. We sat in a nice classroom and watched "awesome" PADI instruction videos. They were awesome simply because they are the most American thing you could possibly watch, with people high5ing every time they do something right. Very cheesy! (Chris now high 5s on a regualr basis!) (That's not true)
After the videos we filled in a few quizes and then talked it all through with our very nice instructor - Vickie.
The afternoon was our first pool session. We learnt how to set up our equipment and take it all apart again and then made our way over to an ex-navy pool. They use it because conveniently the deep end is very deep - 4m.
First of all we had to prove we were confident swimmers and swam 200m and then trod water for 10mins. Then it was time to get stuck in! Wet suits, fins (not flippers or you owe Vickie a beer), masks & snorkles on and into the pool. Once we had our BCDs and tanks on we started practising the skills. A lot of the skills we learnt are 'just in case' kind of skills so we began by learning how to empty our mask of water whilst under water, how to clear our regulators and a few other things. So far so good. We were in the pool for a few hours practising various things and then went for a little swim in the deep end! Chris did well with this, managing to equalise and be quite comfortable except for buoyancy control issues. I had trouble equalising my ears - the air you breathe is so dry I couldn't swallow to clear them and got a bit stressed. They started hurting a lot so we ended the day there.
Day 2 was another morning of classroom stuff and then back to pool in the afternoon. After a scary giant step into the deep end we tried again to dive down. Vickie & I both had problems with our ears again so we went shallower to practise the skills. It was at this point that I was starting to think it probably wasn't for me. I find the whole surrounded by water thing a bit claustrophobic and decided to call it a day, so I'll hand over to Chris..

Er... We did a load more skills, practicing buoyancy control and emergency ascents etc. All went OK really. Jen was very brave to go as far with it as she did, but it was probably about the right time to call it a day.
Came back from the pool a little earlier than planned and did our exams. Passed them! Yay! No more classroom stuff to do, just 4 dives in the sea.

Early night that night, then we got up early this morning to go out on the boat. Jen was a snork, while I went for my first deep(ish) sea dive. No skills for the first dive, I just followed Vix around for half an hour or so at 10-12metres down, checking how much air I had left all the while. It was great. Snorkling's pretty cool, but with SCUBA you get so much closer to all the corals and fish. We saw a stonefish hiding on the bottom, a nice trumpetfish, and a whole load of Nemo type anenome fish guarding their nest. It all went pretty well. I didn't hit the bottom or float up and away or anything.
Back to the boat and along to our second site. Back in the water and down to 12m again, but this time we had to practice things like taking the regulator out and stuff. I had a bit of a problem clearing the water out of my mask having had to take it off and put it back on again, but I got over it and we went for a swim again. Unfortunately clouds had come over and the water wasn't very clear, but it was still fun.

2 more dives tomorrow and assuming it goes OK I'll be a PADI certified Open Water diver - Awesome! Jen will still be a snork, but she's happier that way.

Chris' birthday - Part 2

2006-10-24T13:47:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

I shall continue staright from where we last left you!
Chris' hair has been getting a little on the long side and quite frankly he needed a haircut, so what better time than your birthday to spruce yourself up a bit and get a quick short back & sides? We'd noticed a few barbers working on the streets as we'd been walking around town and passed a cheerful looking guy on our way for Chris' birthday curry. 'You wan' haircut?' he shouted as he caught us looking. 'Yeah, I want a haircut'. It was a great hair cut too - very thorough and precise, including a slightly nervous straight razor moment. Everyday as we walk past, the barber gives us a big smile and checks Chris' hair. Very Cool (oh and cheap - less than a quid).

We had a fairly decent Indian curry for our dinner and then proceeded to one of the bars we'd been given a flier for previously. These fliers had all been advertising Vietnamese cocktail buckets - we had to try them! They were about 60p for a large plastic jam jar of Long Island Iced Tea. Quite strong and just about drinkable (we managed a few). We later found out that because Vietnamese vodka is cheaper than the Coke they can make them very strong for cheaper than if they were weak. We had a good time chatting to a couple of Kiwi girls, an Argentinian girl with 1 kidney, and a Slovenian couple. We stumbled home late to find our hotel shuttered, we panicked slightly as a wee was needed pretty badly and make enough noise for the night porter to let us in. This noise making may have invovled a door bell but we can't really remember! Just to add to how drunk you think we were - when we got into our room we thought the power was out but in actual fact we'd simply hit the mains power switch instead of the light switch on our way in!

Happy Birthday to me!

2006-10-21T10:42:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Hello all!

It's a Chris blog today, 'cos it's my birthday.

Er... since we blogged last we've eaten, played cards, watched Cartoon Network, slept, got up and gone snorkling. The snorkling was pretty good actually. Didn't choose a great day for it, 'cos the sun kept going in, and you really want bright sunlight to penetrate the murky depths. Saw lots of fish though. I spent a good few minutes chasing a clown triggerfish around. He was a lovely little fella. Saw some nice long trumpetfish as well. They're Jen's favourites, apparently. There were loads of jellyfish around, but they were tiny little ones that don't sting really. We had full wetsuits on to protect us from them and the sun anyway.
So afterwards, we signed up for the 4 day PADI Open Water course. Jen's a bit scared, but I'm sure it'll be OK. She'll get to see loads of nice fishes and not drown or anything like that. Gonna go for a curry in a minute, then maybe some happy hour cocktails... who knows?

PS. For some reason we're having trouble getting to see our blog (or the live from Norwich one). Probably some firewall thing in this internet cafe, but it does mean that we can't read or post comments at the moment. Keep posting though, and we'll read them at some point.

Evil Jellyfish.

2006-10-20T11:04:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

After our day of exploring on the scooter we had 2 more days of relaxing by our pool. We thought that it would be a good idea to have a dip in the sea since we were so close. Bad idea!
As we went in Chris spotted a jellyfish! 'Oh no, quick, get out' we thought, but they were everywhere! A new experience to add to our list then - being stung by a jellyfish. Not too bad, hurts like anything for a few hours and then mostly felt ok. We checked with an Aussie guy who we thought might know a bit more about it than us and he didn't seem worried, so neither were we! Hurt our feet though!
We went back down onto the beach to watch the sun set and noticed loads of them along the sand where the tide had gone out - evil meanies!

Had another nice mornning by the pool beofre getting our afternoon bus to Nha Trang.

We haven't had much luck with getting trains as yet which had been our plan whilst in Vietnam - haven't quite been going to the correct places. So we got on another stinky bus to take us to Nha Trang. (Vietnamese people are similar to the Chinese in their lack of respect for other peoples personal space! They put their seats back as far as they go, suck on rambutans and smoke, also if you're lucky, they phlegm a lot!)
In our guide books it describes Nha Trang as a bit of a party place which is why we decided to go to Mui Ne instead, but it's on the way to where we're headed so we thought we'd have a look. It's also got a train station - yay!

We arrived in the early evening and experinced Nha Trang in full swing. There were people leafleting us constantly to get us to their bar. Happy Hours all evening and many many bars serving cocktails & shooters. Hmm not too sure about Nha Trang.
However, we discovered almost as many dive tour operators as bars, all offering snorkling trips which is what we thought we'd do here. They also offer very cheap diving. We can take our Open Water course for $225 each. We think this is about half the price of doing it in Thailand or Oz. So we're quite tempted and think that we'll go snorkling tomorrow & then start our 4 day course the next day.

Today we looked at the Nha Trang sites. In the blazing sun we walked to a local photographer's studio. He has amazing black & white photos of Vietnam. Then we strolled to the Long Son Pagoda. They have a 24 metre high white buddha which was built in 1963 to commemorate the monks who killed themselves in protest at the start of the war - I think this is what got the Americans involved (?). It was weird to see the swastica symbol everywhere too, but in reverse we think.

We are staying in our cheapest hotel yet here - $9 a night. Nice place though - big room with a balcony!

We didn't crash - not even close!

2006-10-17T06:24:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Check us out on our suntan scooter!
Mui Ne beach resort is surrounded by huge sand dunes, so we thought we better get our lazy arses up off our sun loungers and go and see the natural sites. We hired our scooter fpr the day for $6 - the guy took $1 deposit and told us to bring it back when we felt like ít! No need for technicalities like driving licenses or insurance documents. With a quick lesson (keep it in 4th gear) he just took the dollar and let us go!
Unfortunately our malaria tablets made me a bit sick this morning so we hung around the hotel room a bit and then went out to find some lunch.
Scooted about 8km down the road into the resort centre where we found a nice BBQ place. Fish cubes, scallops & thin strips of meat to cook at your own table - 6 sauces to dip it all in. Yum Yum Yum.
The sun is extremely strong here and with Chris' bit of sun burn we thought it best to wait until later in the afternoon before we set off on our sand dune exploring adventure.
The first set of dunes we came to were the red dunes. We were a bit worried we might not find them as all the tourist maps you see are only really telling what there is to see rather than exactly where it is, but we needn't have worried. As we rode up about 10 kids with plastic sheets for sand sledging came running after us! "You want to slide? You slide with me!" We tried to tell them we had just come for a look but several of them followed us for a while, asking us our names etc. The dunes were pretty impressive, but there were more to see further along the road.
The next set of dunes were about 20km away. It involved a bit more navigation but when we looked lost local people pointed us in the right direction! We didn't go as close to the white dunes as it involved going along a very stony dirt track - not quite stable enough on a scooter with 2 people. It still looked good though, with a lake infront of the dunes.
On our way back to Mui Ne we stopped at a 'petrol station' who had given us directions on the way. It was a bizarre experience. The attendant had to hand pump the fuel into a measuring vat before he hose piped it into the scooter. It was a family affair, with a woman and her baby and 2 little girls coming to watch!
We carried on back to Mui Ne. The drive wasn't too bad, just a few herds of cows to negotiate on the way and some slightly scary trucks coming up behind us beeping.

It took Chris several days to persuade me that getting a scooter was a good idea! It felt quite safe most of the time and we realised that beeping is quite useful when no one has wing mirrors or looks around.

We had some great dinner in town when we got back - they barbequed a huge fish for us with rice and salad for 85000 dong (about 3 quid!).

Mui Ne Beach resort

2006-10-16T05:51:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Sun. Sand. Swimming Pool. Suncream. Sunburn. Mosquito net. Lizards. Blue Lagoons. Relaxing. Reading. Cards. Snoozing. HBO. Fish. Scooters. Dunes. Relaxing again. Splish Splash. $16 a night. Cheap food. Cheap Beer. Wish you were here!

Ho Chi Min City

2006-10-13T12:54:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Our hotel is in a very backpacker oriented part of the city so on the first afternoon we had a wander around the block and then thought we'd up date you with tales from Phnom Penh. There are lots of restaurants round here catering to lots of tastes but we wanted Vietnamese for our first dinner here and ended up in a small restaurant called Kim's Cafe! The food was lovelly - I had grilled fish in fish sauce and Chris had the ubiquitous lemon chicken! Delicious & very cheap.

We bought a knock off copy of Lonely Planet Vietnam when we were in Phnom Penh to supplement our 3 country Footprint guide. The pages are a bit faded but it works! It's got some walks in it that it suggests so we decided to take the HCMC walk on Thursday (12th).
It led us past some good places that we may or may not have gone to otherwise, namely:
The Ben Thanh Market - we went to some pretty harrassing markets in China, but this one was great! As we walked in some ladies on a t-shirt stall started talking to us, we said our very practised 'no thank you' with a shake of the head, but they were persistent & very cheeky. I had a painted set of chopsticks in my bag which they reckoned they just wanted to look at and I didn't have to buy anything. The lady started chatting to me whilst behind my back Chris was being stolen in to the shop and the next thing I knew he was negotiating a price on a t-shirt! The ladies were very funny and knew they were being cheeky - much more fun that way!

Tran Nguyen Hai statue - in the middle of a roundabout is a guy on a horse - don't know who he is but he looked nice!

Fine Arts Musuem - very quiet place with just a few visitors. Some interesting photography displays, we think there had just been a competition.

Centre of town - there are quite a few colonial buildings here including the Municipal Theatre, Rex Hotel & Hotel de ville. All quite pleasant and tasteful.

Musuem of HCMC - Again pretty quiet place with a few interesting exhibits, including a plane in the grounds (which I'm told is interesting!).

At this point in the tour it was getting into the afternoon and we needed some lunch. Not very easy to find - even with 2 guidebooks! We walked up and down several streets looking for anywhere to eat and eventually came across a little Pho place. We ordered Pho Bo (beef and noodles in lots of stock with beansprouts) and it was quite yummy.

As it was fairly late we cut the tour down a bit and finished off by visiting the Jade Emperor Pagoda. It was quite a weird place - lots of imposing colourful statues and many people praying.

Tired and with very sore feet for a Jen we walked home. The traffic had been quite bad during the day but not as bad as in rush hour! The roads here are full of scooters and quite a few more cars than in Cambodia. They have a few pedestrian crossings but it's fairly optional to stop at them, in the same way that it's optional to stop at red lights and to stay on your own side of the road! You have to be very brave and just cross the road even though there are things coming (we tend to wait for it to be just scooters). In theory if you go quite steadily and straight everything will go round you. It's worked so far! At a particularly busy bit we hesitated for a while, but then a monk came to cross so we just went with him - figured we'd be pretty safe!

Today (13th) we visited the War Remnants Museum (or the Musuem of American & Chinese war crimes). It had been on the tour from yesterday as somewhere worth going to and seemed like it would be quite interesting. It had some great and disturbing photos and disgusting pickled deformed embryos, a few weapons and a tiger cage. It was a bit like Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh though in the way that it didn't really give you any information - maybe events are still too close in history.

Again, we had a bit of trouble finding a place for lunch. We were feeling adventurous and went into somewhere full of locals having hotpot. We sat down in there but the menu was entirely in Vietnamese. No worries we thought - we've got a phrase book & 2 guidebooks! Hmm...we'll just have a beer & a water! They thought we were pretty funny and brought us this delicious giant slightly spicy prawn cracker.
We eventually had a bit of lunch in a shopping mall foodcourt and then took a break from sight seeing and had a few games of ten pin bowling!

We just came from the park where we were going to sit in the shade (it's been very hot & muggy today) and play cards. Instead we talked to a local guy who is studying English and asked if he could practice with us. We chatted for about an hour about all sorts of things, a very nice guy who is also studying computer programming and Japansese at uni.

We get a bus to the beach tomorrow - Mui Ne. Should be good!

Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Min City

2006-10-11T12:39:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Cambodia was a good country to visit. Far poorer than anywhere we've been before or will go on this trip. It had a lot of beggars but also lots of people who were trying to make their own way. The scenery was great - lots of lush vegetation and houses on stilts, and of course the Angkor complex. When we visited Angkor a lady from the WWF interviewed us about a new nature reserve they are opening, I think if it had been open we would have spent a few more days there but as it was it seemed we'd seen what we came to see and so got another 'limousine' bus to Vietnam.

During the 6 hour trip we had lovely sunny weather, a very easy immigration process and a comfy seat - a breeze! The lovely weather continued until about 5 minutes before the bus stopped at which time the heavens opened and a truly stupid amount of rain fell out of the sky!
This is the first time we've winged the accomodation, waiting until we arrived to find somewhere so all the taxi drivers asking us where we wanted to go had to wait a while until we decided. The places were all within easy walking(swimming) distance but we were already very wet and got a taxi to Nga Hoang (recomended in our Lonely Planet).

We've done well with all our rooms so far on the trip - never spending more than 7 pounds between us for the night, except for one night when we paid 10 for the last room. Luckily the Nga Hoang had available rooms and we chose a double with a/c & fridge for $12 a night. Splendid.

The rain finally died down after we'd been in the hotel for a few minutes and we ventured out for some lunch. HCMC looks like it will be good, lots to do and lots to eat!

Happy Birthday Jen day!

2006-10-11T12:26:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

It's always a bit weird being somewhere different on your birthday, it didn't feel a lot like a birthday but we had a good day...

I'd read in our guidebook about a non-profit restaurant (called Friends) that is run by street kids being trained in the hospitaltiy industry, the review said it was clean and the food was good. I wanted to go their for my b-day lunch so go there we did!
It was fantastic! Probably the best meal we've had all trip. The menu is tapas style so you can order lots of small dishes. We had - houmus on crispy wontons, chicken Khmer curry, fish with salsa verde, prawn in crispy wonton parcels, pork&beef honey meatballs, chilli beef pastry pockets and some rice & french bread.
It was so yummy! The teenagers serving us were brilliant too, they did everything you'd expect from a good/posh restaurant - there were teachers on hand but they didn't seem to need them. It was a good start to the day.

Coming to Cambodia, you can't really ignore the terrible war torn history that the country has had and it seemed like the right thing to do to visit Tuol Sleng - the Genocide Museum. They have kept the high school were Pol Pot & his cronies kept thousands of people prisoner and have turned it into the museum. It's full of haunting mugshots of the victims, alongside other photo exhibitions that tell the stories of individuals involved on both sides of the prison. We didn't know much about the Khmer Rouge before we went, and I'm not sure we know that much more now but it was worth a visit to realise the attrocity. We didn't really fancy the killing fields though- too depressing.

We visited the Royal Palace after the museum. It was quite nice, the usual kinds of temples and shoe taking off! Had some very pretty bits and some quite dowdy bits - far less brash than Bangkok.

It seemed that it must be time for a cocktail so we went back to the main bar street and played some cards while I sipped a gin fizz! Had a quick look on the internet for birthday greetings - Thank you!
Seemed like time for a 2nd cocktail - the food looked ok in the Cantina bar so we had a bit of mexican food while I drank my Cosmopolitan!

We had been tempted to go back to Friends for dinner but didn't know what we'd have as we'd eaten half the menu for lunch, but we did decide to go there for pudding (& 3rd cocktail!) What a good decision - Chris had a lovely crepe with choc sauce & ice cream, and I had pineapple in toffee sauce with icecream, all washed down with frozen lime daquiris.

Excellent!

Siem Reap to Phnom Penh.

2006-10-11T12:01:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We got up nice and early to get in breakfast before catching our 'limousine bus' to Phnom Penh. After waiting around for about half an hour past the time they were supposed to come and pick us up, this tiny run down minibus turned up! We giggled nervously, knowing our legs would be too long to fit behind the seats and wondering if we would be in that bus for the whole 6 hour journey! The guys on the bus obviously saw the scared looks on our faces and told us it was ok - they were taking us to the bus station - phew!

The limousine bus was an ordinary coach, not too shabby! They gave us a box with 2 pastries in, some water and a refreshing wipe - and we settled in for our journey. The roads are a lot less scary form up in a bus - things tend to get out of your way more.

We are quickly realising that visiting countries that have a rainy season at the end of that season doesn't mean that it won't rain! It rained steadily for the whole of our journey!
We arrived safely in Phnom Penh and despite warnings from the guy at our last guesthouse, there was a little bus waiting to pick us up. It was a real relief since the throngs of tuktuk drivers wanted to know where we were going, pushing and trying to vie for our business.

Our hotel was nice enough for $13 a night, and in a convenient part of the city. PP didn't really feel that much like a city at first though, more of a big town - and certainly not a capital. A far cry from Beijing or Bangkok in size and traffic. There were very few cars on the roads, whole families choosing instead to ride on one scooter. The roads were full of bikes & tuktuks.

We looked at our guidebook, which showed the main bar & restaurant street being just a couple of streets from our hotel, and opposite the river.
We mostly spent the evening going to a couple of touristy/expat bars and treated ourselves to some western food in the Frog & Parrot! Chris had a particulary good steak for less than 3 quid and I had a great bowl of chili.

While we were out it started throwing it down again so we got a tuktuk back to the hotel. We keep paying a bit too much for our tuktuks! A notice in the bar said if you wanted to buy a waitress a drink give them $1 as they only get $2 wages a day. We paid our tuktuk driver $2 to take us 3 roads! But I think he probably needs it more than we do - we're quite happy to pay 1 pound to get back to our hotel in the rain in the dark!

Cambodia - Siem Reap

2006-10-08T08:25:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Having decided that the border crossing all looked like a bit too much hassle, we booked a cheap flight from Bangkok to Phonm Penh and arrived on the afternoon of 6th October. We had booked some accomodation in advance and decided to get a taxi for the 5 hour drive from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap ($50).
The ride was scary! The roads are a lot better than they used to be but it still isn't great tarmac. The vehicles tend to stay in the middle of the road until there's something coming at which point they get over at the last possible moment! There are also quite a lot of large pot holes to avoid, cyclists & pedastrians to manouver around and cattle & dogs to steer clear of!
The cattle are working animals here and we couldn't quite believe it when we saw several carts being pulled along the side of the road by pairs of cattle (so skinny that you can count their ribs).
We had our most socially awkward moment of the trip so far when we stopped for something to eat a few hours into our trip. The driver sat with us but we assumed we'd all order our own food so Chris & I ordered 2 dishes and rice. The driver spoke in Cambodian to the waiter and all was good. When our food came the driver moved it towards us and after we took some, helped himself! Some other food came but none of that really got eaten! At the end of the meal we paid. Not really sure what should have happened but it was okay!

We arrived at our Guesthouse in Siem Reap at around half past 9 after driving through some torrential rain. A man and a lady took our bags in for us and once in our room the man said - 'Hi, I'm Booni and if you want to go to the Temple tommorow I'll be your driver'. His English seemed quite good so we said yes please and arranged to meet him at 5am the following morning. A quick drink and then straight to bed!

Getting up when it's still dark just isn't very natural, but I doubt we'll ever come back here so we wanted to see the sun rise over Angkor Wat. We met Mr.Bunny and rode our TukTuk to Angkor Wat.
Quite a few other people had the same idea but that was the only time during the day that it felt busy.
Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy to see a good sun rise so we waited until it got light and then got back in our fab tuktuk to see where Mr.Bunny would take us next!

We went to the Bayon. It was incredible! You look up at the towers and gradually notice all the heads looking at you, welcoming you to the temple. It is all quite erroded as you would expect but it's still possible to see a lot of the carvings. It must have been so amazing when it was first built.

We spent the day looking around the different parts of the Angkor complex. It was truly stunning in a lot of places - particularly the Bayon and Angkor Wat.
There is one temple where lots of Banyan trees have broken the walls - it looks as thought he temple is growing out of the jungle.

At Angkor Wat we spent a lot of time looking at the bas reliefs. It's the longest collection in the world and tells the stories of Vishnu, Sita
and other stories of HIndu origin. Most importantly (for boys)- it show the churning of the sea by the gods & demons to make ambrosia and create the apsaras (pretty ladies who make your stay in heaven quite pleasurable!).

We were very pleased that we took a tuktuk around the area - it's too spread out to be able to walk around, and it meant that Mr. Bunny told us interesting things about the temples and was able to show us the head in the photo which you wouldn't notice if you just drove through the gate in a taxi.

We spent the afternoon and evening relaxing in our lovelly $12 a night guesthouse and are spending the day today taking it easy before our bus ride back to Phnom Phenh tomorrow.

PS.
As we've been travelling one of the worst things we've seen has been the begging children. It's heart breaking to be asked for money by a child too young to be in my class. Quite often they are selling things but you know that there's a fagan style adult waiting around the corner to take the money. Particularly in China - the children we saw had probably been sold by their parents to these people.
We ve mostly avoidd buying anything or giving money for this reason, but did give a lad $5 yesterday when he pounced on us to guide us through one of the temples. He told us he needed the money for school and did we realise how poor he was, but that he was learning 3 languages so had to pay his teacher! How can you refuse?

So, we were thinking, as it's both Chris & my birthdays soon, if you would normally buy us a present, perhaps you would think about giving the money to a children's charity that works in SE Asia or China. It would help us to see the children and know that we are helping in a small way. Thanks xx

Bangkok

2006-10-05T12:21:00.000+01:00

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Help!
We're drowning in hippies..we can't breathe through the incense or see past all the dreadlocks - we must have reached the Khaosan road!

Wow - what a difference from China. The past 3 weeks, the only western people we've seen have been our group plus a few French & Dutch people at the odd tourist spot. We were so unusual we got starred at a lot and sometimes even photographed. Here, we are one of hundreds of white people looking to have a good time.

We fully expected to hate the Khaosan road but it's popular for a reason and we actually quite like it! You can switch off for a while. Most people speak English, there are nice stalls to buy Thai fishermans trousers (Jen is currently sporting a nice dark green pair!) and the restaurants all have English menus. In all its chaotic activity it's surprisingly relaxing to be here.

Our hotel room is fine for the 7 pounds we're spending on it a night and we've been splashing out a bit on dinners - 2 pounds each for a curry with rice and a drink!
It's so cheap here - you can see why so many people just spend ages hanging around before going to the beach.

Yesterday (4th October) we explored for a bit and then went to walk up the Golden Mount. It's not very easy to get around Bangkok and we wanted to see if we could go to the cinema so we caught a river taxi. Definetly the best way to travel here - no touts, not many car fumes and it's quick. Luckily we had a very helpful lady sitting next to us who told us which stop we needed and told the ticket guy what we wanted. It's unfortunate though that after just a few weeks of travelling we were a bit suspicious of her...what might she be trying to sell us?
Today we visited a huge monastary called Wat Pho. It was interesting to look around but we weren't very impressed by the state of the place. Needs a good clean & repaint! There was an amazingly large reclining gold Buddha though with mother of pearl feet - very impressive.
It was our plan to go to the Grand Palace after we'd looked around the Wat but we weren't really sure if it was open or if we could go in with t-shirts and sandals on so we walked back home instead.

Being in Bangkok has enabled us to discover another 2 rules of travelling:
1. Don't trust Tuk Tuk drivers. (they kept telling us places were closed so that they could take us further afield)
2. If someone asks you where you're from then they are trying to sell you something!

It's raining a lot here at the moment!

Catching a flight to Cambodia tomorrow so lots more to report soon!

Impressions of China

2006-10-04T16:27:00.000+01:00

Bests and worsts in no particular order...

Best stuff:

Yangshuo Scenery
Great Wall
Rice Terrace Scenery
Food (mostly)
Beer on street corners
White water rafting!

Worst Stuff:

Hole in the floor toilets
Constant smog
Food (occasionally)
Traffic and road crossing
Climbing lots of steps
Pissing around trying to get to the top of Jinmao tower

Take it or leave it:

Overnight trains

Hong Kong

2006-10-04T15:29:00.000+01:00

Hong Kong apparently still counts as a different country - Qimin had to come in the Foreigners queue with us! She needs a visa to enter, where as we wouldn't have done if we had just been visiting without going to the rest of China. It was China's national day - a public holiday,
customs at the train station was as in an airport, it took a little while but then we were on the nice clean, fast, a/c KCR into Hong Kong.

Our hotel was in Kowloon - not so different in feel to mainland China as we had expected Hong Kong to feel. Chris & I decided to go for a shop. Ali had been using a cool Polaroid camera all holiday and it had made me want one (Chris has our camera on him most of the time - so it will be nice to have my own photos).
We encountered a huge demonstration - apparently there has been organ harvesting going on in concentration stlye camps. It was interesting talking to Qimin later on about it - she giggled and didn't believe it was true until we questioned her and she had to think about it. China's censorship is scary - but Qimin thinks that the country wouldn't work without it as there are so many people.

We were all looking forward to our final meal together and got a bit dressed up for the occasion (as much as people living out of backpacks can get dressed up for anything!). Qimin took us to the dodgiest looking place yet! There weren't really any walls just strips of plastic and the tables looked like they hadn't been cleaned all day. We sat down sceptically. The food was tasty and cheap - we really should have learnt to trust Qimin by now, but it was hard sometimes as she took us places with little consultation. I think we all would have happily paid a bit more for our dinner since it was the final night - but didn't need to.

As it was National Day there were fireworks to watch at the harbour. Unfortunately half of Hong Kong had been waiting since lunch time and no more people were allowed through by the time we got there. We could just about see from where we were - it was an extravagant display! There were almost 1/2 million people around the harbour watching them for free!
Qimin had met up with her local friend and we asked to be taken to an inexpensive bar. We were taken to a sports bar called Friar Tucks and bought a beer each for 50 HKD - about the same as we were paying in the posh places in Shanghai. Most of the group don't go to places like that at home and we weren't best pleased so drank up and went back to the street near to where we'd had dinner - it all looked pretty cheap!
All of us except Graham & Patrick sat and had some beers at a restaurant table outside, where we could watch the world go by and only pay 10 HKD. It was sad to think that it was our last night together. Chris & I feel as though we've made some good friends and it was a shame to say good bye.

Whilst we were sad to say good-bye the next day was one of our best. We were free to do things at our own pace, not having to be back at any particular time. We left the hotel at 10am and didn't get back until around 10pm!
We rode the star ferry across to Hong Kong island and then got the funicular tram up to 'the peak' of Victoria Peak. Great views across the harbour of all the skyscrapers.
We treated ourselves to a seafood lunch (thanks to Chris' Mum). It was delicious - shrimp, Mahi Mahi and lobster. Yum Yum Yum!
We decided to go to the Zoological & Botanical gardens and were really pleased with our decision. It was completely free and there were lots of animals to see - in particular some big orangutans.
We had a bit of a look around some shops - we really noticed the difference between Hong Kong and mainland China here. Lots of designer shops, huge adverts for things we can't afford!
Feeling a bit tired we found another park to sit in and played some cards.

We had picked up a leaflet about a lantern festival and so made sure that we stayed on the island until it got dark. We finally found me a polaroid camera on the way to Victoria Park. I love my new toy!
The lanterns were beautiful and slightly strange in places. The red sphere lanterns that you see in Chinese restaurants looked amazing all hanging together. There was also a set of tall 'dancing' lanterns which moved up and down to music - kinda cool. Again, it was all free!

We wanted to get back across to Kowloon for the light show so took the clean a/c underground. Very swift. This time we could get to the harbour edge and had a brilliant view of the lights on the skyscrapers and the bonus fireworks that they set off because it was the national holiday.
We got ourselves some relatively cheap Chinese food for dinner and then went home to bed!

Our trip to the airport was easy - caught a bus from down the road which took us all the way to departures for a mere 100 HKD for 2(6.50 ish). We then enjoyed the very western nature of the airport.
Don't tell anyone, but we had Burger King and cookies form Millies!!

Cathay Pacific were great to fly with - no queues and good food.

The group's first calamity!

2006-10-04T15:05:00.000+01:00

We had quite a lot of spare time in Guilin beofre our train left at 8pm. We got a chinese meal together and then went to the supermarket to get train supplies (water, crackers, biscuits, pot noodle, crisps, breakfast rolls - all that good healthy stuff). A few of us then went to the internet cafe to use up the last hour - Qimin had asked us to be back at the train station by half past 6.
Chris, me & Kate were sat together and decided to leave at around 6:15 but Ali and Paul hadn't quite finished so we said we'd get a taxi for 3 and they could get one for 2 as we wouldn't all have fitted in one taxi anyway.

The 3 of us waited for a while but all the taxis coming past were full so we decided to walk the 20 minutes back to the station. We were a few minutes late but collected our bags from the luggage room and got our train tickets in plenty of time.

Then we waited...and waited. Where were Ali & Paul? Even if they'd decided to wait for a taxi surely they'd be here by now?

We waited a bit longer. No one had their mobile number and we mostly didn't have phones with us.
We were all getting pretty worried as time to board the train got nearer. At around 7:15 Qimin told us all to go into the station and get on the train, she would wait as long as she could and then leave their tickets in the luggage room if they didn't show.

Members of the group started to et a bit panicky, looking round every 2 seconds to check we were all together! We left it as long as we could and then boarded the train without them. Ali & Paul were great members of the group, lots of fun and we really didn't want to leave without them.
A few minutes before the train was due to leave they boarded. Hooray!

They had been completely ripped off by taxis. Qimin had written "Railway Station" on slips of paper for us to get taxis. The taxi they had took them to the wrong station - even though Paul kept telling her it was the wrong way. Then they had to get anoher taxi back into town and run for the train! Very stressful - we'd had a pretty smooth time of it unti then!

But we all managed to be on the last train of our trip. It was the nicest yet. We played Mahjong in the beer car, I mean dining car until 1am and then slept our way across the country.

The Beautiful Lonji Rice Terraces

2006-10-04T14:15:00.000+01:00

We travelled from our guesthouse to Guilin by bus before changing to a smaller public bus for the trip to the bottom of the lonji area. We then got another public bus for the ride up into the hills (mountains?). Driving up steep roads with sheer drops to your sides is scary at the best of times, but in China it just seemed that extra bit frightening! Not sure the driver always looked where he was going. Also, whilst beeping your way around the corner is quite a good plan, it doesnt really help if you don't slow down at all!

But as has luckily been the case so far, we got to our destination safe and sound!

You have to buy a ticket to enter the area of Lonji. It is the most extensive area of rice paddies in China and also home to some minority tribal groups. One of these groups has been awarded the record for the longest group hair (or something like that!). The women all have extraordinarily long hair which they wear in a kind of coil around their head. If you pay them 4 yuan they'll get it out for you! And maybe even wash it in a waterfall. We decided against that little bit of weirdness. There was a very fine line whilst we staying there between supporting the local people making a living from tourism and exploiting them.
Some people (not in our group) rode up the terraces in a sedan chair! Quite sickening, or paying someone a decent wage? Discuss.

Anyho, the buses can only go so far. So we walked the rest of the way up to our guesthouse. The rice terraces looked amazing. Definietly on a par with the Great Wall for sheer scale and beauty. They were created around 600 years ago at the same time as the Great Wall to help to feed the growing population and they take your breath away ( not just becasue they're quite steep).

Our guesthouse was simple, clean and had a stunning view. We were all hot and hungry, so after a hearty lunch our local guide showed us the way to a pool so that we could dip our toes!
The guide was great! His name was Farmer Tang. He was so sweet and funny, really good natured - he brought us a bag of mandarins from his farm to share. He was the only guide that we all put extra in for his tip! A really nice guy! Check out the photos of the walk - he's the short Chinese one!!

It was a quiet evening - not much to do around those parts and we had to get up early the next morning so that we could make an early start on the 5 hour walk to the next guesthouse before the heat set in .
Not everyone decided to do the long wwalk. Whilst the up bits are quite exhausting, they're okay but the downward slopes were often a bit too tricky for Jen - I didn't want to lose my footing and end up rolling down the steps. Some other people were ill so 6 of us climbed back down to the buses to drive to the guesthouse and 7 people walked.
Those of us that took the bus actually ended up with a harder climb in the end as we were back at the bottom again!
The group that did the long walk enjoyed the fantastic scenery and lots of informative and not so informative comments from Farmer Tang.

We all met up again at lunch time at our new guesthouse. That afternoon was spent snoozing and relaxing.
Chris & I learnt how to play Mahjong. It's cool.
We were treated to a show by some women who live in the area. We were all a bit sceptical and nervous about joining in at first but it turned out to be hillarious! They were quite am - dram about it - geting their pompoms stuck in each others pompoms and giggling! They made us join in. One dance was in pairs going under everyones arched arms in turn untill they decided to catch someone. That person happened to be Tom who was then blindfolded and had to find his bride in the circle. We all got out of the way so that he picked his girlfriend. They then had to try to get out of the circle - Rosie on Toms back! We think they're married in the Lonji area now!
We also did some bamboo pole dancing! Hopping in and out the poles as they tap them together on the floor!

It was a great area to be in after we'd spent so much time in the cities. The next day we left at midday so we took one final climb up to a view point to see the terraces in all their splendour and then climbed down to where the buses are for our ride back to Guilin for our last overnight train.

More adventures in the Chinese countryside.

2006-10-04T13:48:00.000+01:00

The next day was another cycling day. It had been advertised on our itinerary as an all day cycle ride through the countryside...
Our ride started at our guesthouse. From there we went past some farms and down along side the river. It was a very calm and peaceful ride, a far cry from what it would have been like to cycle in Beijing! The scenery was spectacular - lime karst cliffs, paddy fields and the occasional water buffalo as we went along the dirt track road. We were headed for a place called Moon Hill, around 10km away.

(As we approached on our bikes ladies started running along side us talking and pointing to each other. It was quite disconcerting. Later we realised that these women follow you the whole way up, fanning you as required and trying to get you to buy a drink. They fluctuated between being very useful - cooling you down, and being very annoying and getting in the way. We had a lot of admiration for them though, climbing up and down all day.)

A lot of the local tour operators advertise Moon Hill as somewhere to go to go caving and swim in the pools after you've gone down the mud slide, but this wasn't on our schedule. Instead, when we got there we bought tickets to climb to the top. As you probably know, i'm quite a lot lazier than Chris, and a climb to the top a big hill isn't really my idea of a good time, but I was told it would be worth it so up we went. 850 steps! No real break between them - just straight up. Even the fit members of our group were sweating half their body weight in the mid 30 degree heat. But unfortunately, for pretty much our entire time in China, there has been a haze over the country. Initially in Beijing we thought it was pollution, but it was everywhere and hence the view from the top of the hill was pretty crappy, in fact the view from the bottom was better because you could see the moon shaped hole in the hill. Never mind!!

Later we cycled back into Yangshou. A bit hairy at times, going around roundabouts, but generally a nice days cycle ride.

We got a bus back to the inn that we were staying at further afield in Yangshou. This was one of our more basic accomodations. Our room was further out than everyone elses and backed on to a private farm. There were some very loud dogs for a lot of the first night.
Things that people found in their rooms included spiders with bodies the size of a tennis ball, a toad, cockroaches and we had a giant beetle which I mistook for a tortoise (a small tortoise!). It was quite hard to get to sleep there at first, not knowing what might be creeping over the mosquito net, but the 2nd night we were so tired from cycling that we slept well.

The Chinese countryside

2006-09-30T11:20:00.000+01:00

Quick blog update as were still a bit behind with them! Hopefully we'll get some photos to you soon. We've been very busy for the past 4 (?) days!.

We arrived in Guilin after our long train ride and had to get a bus to Yangshou - described in the Lonely Planet as a backpackers haven. There were certainy more westerners than we had seen up until that point but it was still a nice enough town with trinket stalls and nice food. The surroundings are what draws everyone to Yangshou, it sits on the river Li and is surrounded by huge limestone karsts - truly beautiful.

By the way, we stayed at the Fawlty Towers hotel - the manager's name was Basil!

As it is a small town we signed ourselves up for some activities. The first morning we thought we'd try our hand at some caligraphy. 6 of us turned up at the hotel lobby for our lesson and were met by 2 teachers who said there were too many of us and we'd need to be in 2 groups. The others went across the road to their lesson and we waited with the teacher. He said just a moment and the motos will be here to pick us up.

!!! Motos!! My obvious reaction was that I wasn't getting on the back of a motorbike, but Rosie said that's what all the taxis will be like in Vietnam so I gritted my teeth and held on tight and we're both still alive to tell the tale! Chris thought it was fun!
It turned out that there was plenty of room at the other lesson and we were diddled a bit some how. But it was a good lesson with a nice guy so we don't mind too much.

That evening we went on an hours boat ride along the river. The scenery was stunning (photos soon) and we ate in a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere at the end of our journey.

Chris went white water rafting with our guide the next moring. Everyone else was playing it safe and either went Kayaking or stayed in town. It turned out that Chris had by far the best time out of everybody! Qimin said it's twice as scary rafting with Chris than the times she's done it before!!

That afternoon we took part in a cookery school, it was great. The teacher picked us up from our hotel to take us to the local market. Big piles of chilis, ginger, unidentifiable greens, chickens in cages, toads in nets and somewhere in the background yelping dogs.

We cycled (yes Dad, I cycled) 1/2 hour to the hostel we were staying at that night and then walked down to the school.
We were taught how to cook steamed chicken, chili pork, garlic greens and egg wrapped dumplings. It all tasted yummy, and we bought a cook book so that when we eventually returned home we can have a go at cooking it again.

Sorry but you're still not up to date.
We've got to go and catch our train to Hong Kong now.

5 great things to do in Shanghai

2006-09-26T05:34:00.000+01:00

Sorry about the lack of picture for this blog, I am having a complete nightmare as far as interenet connections and passwords go and have hopefully clicked on the correct Chinese part of the blog website to figure out how to add a blog without photo!
Our 2nd train journey was far better than the 1st, we were in a compartment with people that we knew so slept a lot better and so it all went far quicker.

Great thing #1: Visit the Bund: The buildings on the far side of the river have only popped up in the last 20 years, it unbelievable to think that there were'nt high rise building until then. But now Shanghai is sinking because there are too many of them! The tallest building is the JingMao tower, but the coolest is probably the Pearl Tower because of it's weird spheres.

Great thing #2: Walk along the Nanjing Road: Hmm, actually that wasn't exactly great, but well worth a look. A lot of shops!! Plus someone every few meters saying "GucciPrada watchbagdvd" we became quite accomplished at saying no thankyou and giving them a stern look!

Great thing #3: Visit the Old City: This was definitley the best thing that we did in Shanghai. Our guide had reccomended that we visit the Yu Gardens, which we did but they weren't really what we were wanting - lots of big tourists groups led by a guide with a flag so we looked at someone's Lonely Planet and realised we were close to the old city. We didn't really know what to expect. It was how most Chinese live. Working and living out of one room. Preparing their lunch on the street. Washing hanging from the outside of building. Buildings that people live in next to ones that have fallen down.
All of this with a back drop of skyscrapers.
It was a good insight into the real Shanghai, we occassionally felt like we were intruding but I think that we were as interesting to them as they were to us.

Great thing #4: Have a beer on the roof top garden at the Peace Hotel: This felt a bit weird after we had been walking around such a poor area of Shanghai. But we were hot, thirsty and wanted to see the views. It was fantastic - looking out across the Bund. Definitely how the other half live though (50 yuan for our beers rather than the 5 we often pay) and it was full of westerners. Very relaxing though.

Great thing #5: Have a beer on a street corner(so great we did it twice!): We successfully managed to find a Chinese style restaurant that had an English menu and had a tasty lunch. After which we quite fancied another beer (we're not alcoholics honest) but there weren't any bars really - only one but they wanted 25 yuan for a beer! We found a little refreshments stand that sold cold beer so we bought one each and sat on this stone bench and watched the world go by. It was amazing. The hundreds of bikes riding fast and all missing each other were fascinating to watch. We watched them and they watched us, it was great!

The worst thing to do in Shanghai: Go to the JingMao tower: Chris & I have a new travelling rule - don't go to places that are high & expensive because it will be disapointing!
We wanted to go to the JingMao tower because it's the tallest building in Shanghai and they have an a bar on the 87th floor from which to see the views. We turned up nice and early on the first night we were there but they have a dress code - no sandals for men. So because Chris had his sandals on we couldn't go in . Scruffy trainers ok, smart sandals not ok!
We tried again the following night but had been to dinner before hand and it was much later when we arrived so had to wait in the bar on the 54th floor until a table became free upstairs.

It was hideous. Just full of overly made up wives of stuffed shirst! We were very unimpresesd especially after being in the old city for a lot of the day.
To top of a bad experience when a table finally came free upstairs it was too late - just as we got there the light on the buildings went off!!

Never mind though - we rectified the situation by getting beer from the supermarket next to our hotel and sat on the steps!

The following day we mostly got supplies for our mammoth 27 hour train journey into the countryside!

Hopefully we'll be able to put some more photos up soon. Currently in the beautiful countryside and going ot a cookery school this afternoon.

Terracotta Warriors

2006-09-25T03:18:00.000+01:00

IMGP0711
Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Sorry we've been a bit quiet recently, but when there's a whole load of China to see, we don't really want to be sitting in front of a computer too much.. But we're seizing our opportunity today and will hopefully get you up to date with all our shenanigans!

We took a PUBLIC bus for about an hour and a half out of Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors. The bus was so bumpy and smelly and the driver beeped the loud horn incessantly! Horns are used here like in Sri Lanka - to say "hello", to say "get out of the way", "I'm overtaking", "I've overtaken you", etc, etc. Very irritating!
But we arrived safe & sound.
We watched a film when we got there in this weird 360 cinema. So we can tell you that the Warriors we made by loads of craftsmen for the Emperor who was responsible for unifying China (a long time ago). He wanted them for his tomb so that he would be protected when he died. It took the craftsmen 40 years to make them all, and the revolting peasants a day to destroy them!
In 1974 a farmer was drilling a well and found a warrior head! (In the gift shop they've got an old guy smoking a pipe who'll sign your book - he may or may not be the farmer who found the warriors!).
There was only one warrior whole when they uncovered them, all the others have been painstakingly reconstructed in the pits. There are 3 pits that you can look at. The first pit was the best one, with thousands of warriors. It was amazing. The other pits we're less impressive but still cool.
They know that there are lots of other pits surrounding the burial mound but they don't want to uncover them until they have the technology to prevent the paint from evaporating straight away. Also they think that there are mercury rivers running through the tomb.

Overall, well worth the hairy bus ride! Back to Xi'an for our 2nd overnight train.

Xi'an

2006-09-19T10:45:00.000+01:00

IMGP0668
Originally uploaded by theslaad.

After the train ride we had breakfast in a local youth hostel. A little break from the Chinese food for some cooked breakfast. Quite nice! We are enjoying the local food but it is getting slightly monotonous, so having something a bit English was a welcome change.

We prefer Xi'an to Beijing. It's still a big city (6 million people) but it seems far more spread out, with wider pavements and slightly less traffic. It seems a bit more developed whilst keeping a lot of the traditional Chinese stuff which seemed missing from Beijing.
Qi'min took us for a walk around part of the city and we ended up in the Muslim quarter.
There were loads of stalls selling all sorts of different things - shadow puppets, little red books, tat, paintings, cricket cages etc. Rosie bought a cool antique Mahjong set - we were very tempted but our rucksacs are too full already!
It was a great place to spend a couple of hours exploring.

The city has a Bell Tower & Drum Tower which used to be used for telling the time. We had a look at the Bell tower - great views across the city.

In the evening Qi'min took most of us to a traditional Xi'an hot pot restaurant (Some people chickened out - something about hygeine, I don't know). It was a bit like fondue, with a boiling pot of stock in the middle of the table. Everyone goes and chooses their sticks to dip in - meat, fish, different sorts of veggies. You plunge it in for a few seconds and then dip it into your bowl of seasame/peanut/oily stuff. Quite fun & tasty. They count your sticks at the end to see how much you owe - very cheap at around 7p for 5 sticks.

After that we had a whole bunch of beers in their bar street and then went to a Karaoke club...

Wow - very weird, It was like being in a posh hotel. Lots of suited polite waiters to show you to the ladies and carry your basket of beer. It was spread over several floors, with lots of different sized private rooms. You pay by the hour and just occupy the room, singing bad songs (Kylie & Jason featured at some stage, as did Black Sabbath).
We had great fun, gettign back to our hotel at about 3am!

Tommorrow we are taking a bus to see the Terracotta warriors and then come back into Xi'an to get our next overnight train to Shanghai.

Hope everyone is ok xx