Adventures of Conor & Kadi

Santiago de Chile

2010-10-27T15:02:00.001-07:00

From Iquique, we flew to the final destination of our South American Adventure: Santiago de Chile. (The 2 hour flight was much preferred over the alternative of a 26 hour bus journey!) There is not much to say about Santiago, it is quite a modern city and has a very European feel, and it was a pleasant place to spend our final two days.

It is perhaps noteworthy that the main avenue running through the centre of the city is called Av Berdardo O’Higgins after the first president, who was actually the son of an Irish man. During one of our days, we followed the suggested Lonely Planet walking tour of the city, which brought us into one of its renowned local pubs which sells, amongst other things, a potent local concoction of cheap wine and ice-cream in a pint glass. It sounds terrible but actually tasted delicious. Unfortunately, after 2 pints of it, we were in no state to continue with the walking tour and headed straight home to bed (we were lucky to find it!) That stuff should come with a health warning!!

The one notable “attraction” that we saw in the city was the FÉNIX2 rescue pod that was used to pull the 33 trapped Chilean miners out of the mine earlier this month. It was on display in the centre of the city and there was a very long queue of Chileans lining up to have their photo taken beside it!

This marks the first stage of our trip home to Ireland. From here, we will fly to Buenos Aires, then on to Frankfurt and finally to Dublin. We will visit Estonia next week. Although we are sorry to leave the backpacking lifestyle behind us, we haven’t been home in more than a year and a half so are looking forward to it. This will be our last blog entry and we hope you have enjoyed reading it – it has effectively become a day-by-day journal of our travels and we are very happy to have it for future reference :)

Chilling in Chile

2010-10-26T19:13:00.000-07:00

During some of the cold icy nights on the salt flat tour in Bolivia, we promised ourselves that we would go to a beach resort in Chile before we went home. We picked the city of Iquique in North Chile. The 15-hour day bus from La Paz to Iquique was quite scenic – passing some impressive volcanoes on the way – but it was way too long for us. Thankfully it would be our last long bus ride. Interestingly, even though we moved West, the time-zone in Chile is one hour ahead of Bolivia (normally it works the other way around).

After being high in the Andes for the previous 4 weeks (at altitudes between 2000m and 4000m) the first thing we noticed when we arrived was the sea air which was so refreshing! We had almost become accustomed to the thin air at altitude, and it was so nice to breathe in a full breath of air again :) It took us a few days to really get used to it.

Iquique wasn’t actually as hot as we were expecting, but it was still a pleasant climate to spend a few days in. We found a really nice hostel and met a few other travellers at one of the organised barbeques. During our time there, we managed to fit in a surf lesson and also, we finally got to try tandem paragliding. It doesn’t compare to skydiving but it was nice to spend 30 minutes in the air for a change! Iquique is apparently one of the few places in the world where you can paraglide over a city so we were treated to some fantastic views of the city before landing on the beach :)

Bolivia is Unboliviable

2010-10-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

After 3 weeks in Bolivia, it is time to move on. We are sad to leave as it has so much to offer (and it’s so cheap!) but we are almost finished our trip so need to get going. We would highly recommend Bolivia to anyone considering a trip to South America.

The World's Most Dangerous Road

2010-10-25T08:55:00.001-07:00

Not far from La Paz, there is a road that joins the towns of La Cumbre and Yolosa. La Cumbre is at the top of a mountain (4700m), and Yolosa is deep in a valley (1200m) and they are 63km apart. The stretch of road that connects these two towns winds and clings to the edge of a steep mountain face. For the most part it is a very narrow gravel road (just over 3.2m wide) with steep cliffs off the edge (up to 600m drop in places) and with few, if any, safety barriers. There are even sections of the road that are currently eroding thanks to waterfalls that are landing directly on the road. It also doesn’t help that there is usually fog lingering around the road!

Sounds dangerous? It is! In 1995 it was identified as the World’s Most Dangerous Road by an Inter-American Development Bank report.....and not without good reason. Over the years, there have been numerous fatalities on (or off) this road. An average of 26 vehicles a year disappeared over the edge into the great abyss. The road itself is lined with plenty of crosses indicating the location of many of the accidents. One of the most renowned occurred in 1983, involving a flat-bed truck which went over the edge killing the driver and 100 passengers!

In 2007, a new replacement road opened across the valley, and most of the traffic now uses that new road. So the old road is perfect for mountain-biking enthusiasts. Naturally, we didn’t pass up the opportunity to ride down it....and what a rush! As we mentioned above, it is 63km long with a vertical drop of 3500m so makes for one great down-hill adventure! The first 20km of the road are actually on the new paved section and during this part we were overtaking some trucks and busses. We stopped at the first corner and (just to put us in the mood) the guides pointed out the carcass of a mini-bus down in the valley that went over the edge killing all 7 on board. The remaining 43kms are on the old gravel section and this was definitely the scariest part! However, we were so focussed on staying on the road that we never noticed just how dangerous it was in places. It was only when we were driving back up the road in the bus that we realised just how narrow some of the sections were. Hard to imagine that we went down it at such speed! Over the years there have been about 15 cyclists killed doing the ride but thankfully there were no issues with our group! The tv show Top Gear did a piece on this road, which can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXLxszv9eCM&feature=fvw

Because of the altitude difference, the area at the bottom of the road was actually quite tropical (a welcome temperature change!) and there were even some monkeys around :)

Lake Titicaca and Isla Del Sol

2010-10-23T17:19:00.000-07:00

From La Paz, we spent 2 days exploring the nearby Lake Titicaca. This is the world’s largest high-altitude lake and sits at 3808m, measuring 457m deep in places! It forms part of the border between Bolivia and Peru. We spent a night on a beautiful island on the lake called Isla Del Sol – allegedly where the sun was born (and it’s still going strong!)

Going on the island is like stepping back in time. They still use donkeys to carry tanks of water up the steep slopes of the island. We came across a local wedding where the locals were out in someone’s front garden dancing away :) The island is not very big – there are no roads only walkways – but since we had no map, we managed to get lost looking for our hostel and ended up climbing one of the peaks on the island in the process. Thankfully we eventually found somewhere to stay. Because the island is quite a steep little mountain, there are some great views from the top and we were treated to a fantastic sunset that night. We somehow managed to get lost again the next day on our way back to the boat (we were looking for some ruins on the far side of the island but never found them). It really was a very beautiful island and we could have stayed there for a week but we were short on time.

Around La Paz

2010-10-22T20:08:00.000-07:00

After a very bumpy 8 hour night bus, we found ourselves in the Bolivia’s biggest city: La Paz. Having spent the previous 2 weeks in isolated dusty towns and cities, we were happy to be back in a (relatively) modern city. We checked in to an Irish themed hostel called the “Wild Rover” and immediately ordered two cups of Barry’s Tea :) The hostel did live up to its name of being Wild...it was full of party people(there was a Fr Ted costume party one night) but we were glad of the distraction since most of the places we had stayed in up to now were very quiet.

The city of La Paz is a lot more scenic than we were expecting. It is basically built within a valley, with the central business district down along a strip in the centre and buildings extending up the three sides of the valley walls (it’s almost like a bowel). Towards the open end, there are views towards the massive snow-capped Illimani Mountain. There were some terrific views of the city from the upper rim. We took an interesting walking tour from the top of the rim down to the markets at bottom one day. It’s funny but a lot of the buildings are incomplete and some neighbourhoods do resemble a building site – people will be living in houses which are still under construction. The reason is that they pay a lot higher tax once the building has been completed, so they will often never complete the building to save money. When you’ve travelled a bit, a lot of cities can seem the same, but one of the more unusual things we found in the markets in La Paz were Llama foetuses – yes, unborn llamas! Apparently these are used by some of the indigenous people for rituals whenever they build a new house....they plant it under the ground where they will build the house as an offering to Pachamama (Mother Earth). We also learned that every year, the Bolivian people have a big carnival (similar to Brazil’s but different dances) with elaborate costumes that cost a fortune (a few thousand Euro for one costume!) and they have a new one every year. No wonder they are so poor! We didn’t see the carnival but we saw the crazy costume shops.

There is a prison in the centre of La Paz called San Pedro Prison (on which the book “Marching Powder” is based – soon to be a movie starring Brad Pitt). It is a very interesting place because the prison operates like a mini capitalist society: when prisoners enter, they have nothing and must sleep on the floor. If they want a cell with a bed then they must pay rent. Bigger cells command a higher rent. Even nicer cells have flat-screen tvs! Some of the prisoners even pay for additional beds so that their families (including children) can live in the prison with them. There is a restaurant in there also, and the prisoners can even pay to be released for the day (escorted by guards of course). Apparently, one of the wealthier prisoners had a second floor constructed on his cell at the top of the prison so that he could have nice views over the city. So how do the prisoners make their money? The prison is a highly-organised cocaine factory. They also run unofficial tours of the prison which involves paying some bribe money for the guards and being escorted around the various areas by an inmate. As we circled the outside of the prison, we were offered one such tour but declined (our guidebook warns against them and besides, we had too much valuables on us) but afterwards, we spoke with a few travellers who had taken the tour and highly recommended it (the tourists are protected inside because they represent a very lucrative income stream) but we didn’t get the opportunity to go back :(

Underground in Potosí

2010-10-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

After Uyuni, we made our way up to the city of Potosí. As well as having the status as being (allegedly) the highest city in the world (4070m above sea level), it was also at one stage the wealthiest and largest city in the Americas. The reason being, that it sits at the base of the Cerro Rico Mountain (“Rich Hill”), which over the years has produced an unbelievable amount of silver. The Spanish first discovered silver here in 1545 and continued to mine it for the next few centuries. It is said that they extracted so much silver that they could have built a silver bridge to Spain and still have some silver left to carry across it. The silver did eventually run out but thankfully the past wealth left a legacy of beautiful architecture throughout the city. Unfortunately a lot of it has now fallen into disrepair since they just don’t have the money to maintain it.

One of the buildings that is preserved is the old mint, which is now a museum with some of the original minting equipment from the 16th century. The building itself is very impressive and takes up a whole city block – the walls are a metre thick. We found it very interesting.

Woman going home from work in Potosí

The mines are actually still active today, only it is mainly Zinc and Lead that is extracted now. Almost all of the mining is carried out by “Mining Cooperatives” - groups of individual miners working for themselves and whatever they can extract they keep and sell for themselves (no tax). We did a half day tour of the mines which was very interesting....

The tour started off with a stop at the local “miners market”. Here, we were encouraged to buy gifts for the miners (since they were letting us into their mines). The gifts included: cigarettes, drinks, coca leaves, 96% alcohol (rocket fuel!) and dynamite! Did you know that you can buy a stick of dynamite (including detonator and fuse) for just €2! Our guide had us prepare ourselves for the mines in the same way that the miners would....by chewing the coca leaves and drinking the 96% alcohol (bear in mind that it was only 10am!) Next we started into the mines.

(Left) A typical miner with a cheek full of Coca, and (right) our guide pretending to smoke some dynamite.

We were only underground for 2½ hours (and didn’t even do any mining) but were absolutely exhausted afterwards the conditions were so tough. We can’t imagine how it must be to work down there....it is a job from Hell. The working conditions have hardly changed much since they started mining there. It would definitely be closed down in a normal country. The ceilings were so low that we were constantly walking in a crouch (and still hitting our heads off the ceiling occasionally). The air was very damp and dusty making it difficult to breath (apparently there was asbestos and arsenic down there.....not encouraging for asthmatics but ok for a few hours if you have healthy lungs). The temperatures ranged from 25 degrees to 45 degrees C depending on how far down you went. Many of the passageways had wooden supports to prevent the ceiling from caving in but they were obviously strained (and in many cases the wooden supports had completely broken....offering no support at all). There are over 90 km of mines in the mountain which is now said to resemble Swiss cheese. Naturally, this doesn’t do much good for the structural integrity of the mountain and there is talk that it may collapse in on itself at any time within the next 5-10 years. As you might expect, the life expectancy of the miners is not good. Miners, exposed to all sorts of noxious chemicals and gases, normally die of silicosis pneumonia within 10 – 15 years of entering the mines. Nowadays the life expectancy is slightly longer because they only work a four day week, although at times, they will work a full 24 hours straight! We spoke to some of the workers and they are extremely proud of their work (it is considered a very good job in Potosí) although they did say that they wouldn’t want their children working down there. The economy in Potosí is so bad that there are apparently some professionals (doctors and lawyers) working down there. Interestingly, the miners were quite superstitious and would regularly pay respects and make offerings to the Devil (since underground was his turf) they call him “Tio” (Uncle in Spanish). There were thousands of statues of the Tio throughout the mine and every Friday they would gather and make offerings to it and then drink themselves unconscious. If ever there was an accident, and somebody died, they said that the Tio had taken him, and would reward those remaining by putting more minerals into the mountain. There were more than 30 people killed in mining accidents in the Cerro Rico last year alone.

So what did we do when we were deep underground in this stressed, almost collapsing mountain? We set off some dynamite – YEAH! It was quite an experience indeed. Our guide assembled all the bits, lit the 2 minute fuse on two sticks of dynamite, gave them to us allowing us to pose for photos, then he planted the dynamite into the rock and hurried off (to give the lighter back to some other miners) leaving us alone - a little excited and afraid. The explosion was quite powerful, with a loud bang, a strong air blast and even the rock around us shook but thankfully nobody died :)

However, we did actually get sick here and ended up spending a few extra days in a hotel recovering. We don’t know if it was the pasta or the mines. Perhaps we didn’t have enough Coca leaves and 96% alcohol! The miners also commented that it was bad luck for Kadi to wear an engagement ring underground as the Tio would get jealous.

ATM Errors

2010-10-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

Interesting error message from ATM machine in Uyuni. They must get Arnold Schwarzenegger to do the wording!

"SORRY, ATM TEMPORARILY OUT OF SERVICE. I BE BACK IN A FEW MINUTES"

South West Bolivia

2010-10-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

We recently arrived back to civilisation after a 5 day tour around remote regions of South West Bolivia. We knew that Bolivia had a lot to offer, but we never expected to find it all in the one place! This area is just a hotbed of geothermal activity!

For the tour, we joined up with a cool French couple (Julien and Elodie) and together with our excellent guide (Freddy) and his 4-wheel-drive Jeep, we drove along a rough dirt track through the Andes from Tupiza to a town called Uyuni. We could go on for hours about the trip (it did last 5 days!) some of the fantastic things we encountered were:

· Numerous Volcanos – some active, and one of which was currently erupting and venting a continuous plumb of sulphur gas

· Bubbling hot springs – we took a nice swim in one.......ahhhh relaxing!

· A Green Lake – coloured a bright artificial turquoise colour due to the minerals in the water (including arsenic)

· A Red Lake – coloured a deep red colour due to the micro-organisms present in the water

· Steaming Geysers – cracks in the ground with hot clouds of sulphur rising out

· Weird and Colourful Rocks – lots of different and unusual rock formations

· Twisters – a number of mini and not-so-mini tornados

· The Salar de Uyuni – the world’s largest salt flat.

In addition to the above, we saw a large number of interesting animals/birds, most notably THOUSANDS of pink flamingos which seemed to thrive on the minerals in the lakes, as well as numerous Lamas, and a number of Andean Rabbits (they look just like regular rabbits only they have a tail like a cat!)

Volcano Climbing

One of the highlights of the tour was climbing the 5960m volcano Licancabur, right on the Bolivian Chilean border. We had heard conflicting reports about the difficulty of the climb....the Lonely Planet guidebook indicated that it was 8 hours up and 2 hours down, whereas our own tour guide said it was much easier than that and it could be done in 4 hours up and 1 hour down. Unfortunately the Lonely Planet was right and it proved to be more difficult than we anticipated.

We commenced our climb in (freezing) pitch darkness at 4am in the morning – the reason being that if we started too late, then the winds at the top of the mountain later in the day could be too strong. The stars out there (far from any artificial light) were some of the best we remember seeing anywhere. After a time, the moon emerged giving us some light, and then later we were treated to a fantastic sunrise – truly amazing!

The base of the mountain was at approximately 4400m so we had a climb of about 1500m to do. (To put some perspective on this for the non-skydivers out there, we normally jump out of planes at 4000m above sea level!) The climb itself was not so technically difficult but the real problem was the lack of oxygen as we got higher and higher. At the base, the air was already quite thin but we had become relatively accustomed to this so apart from occasional shortness of breath, we were largely unaffected by it. However, as we got higher, the lack of oxygen was affecting us more and more. Altitude sickness started to set in as we got closer to the top.....nausea, headaches, blurred vision, light-headedness....it was just like being drunk but without the benefits! At this stage, we were moving very slowly, taking just one slow step at a time and frequent rests.....we must have looked like walking zombies! Thankfully we did eventually make it to the top after 7 hours and the views were really amazing.

You might wonder how a volcano that takes 7 hours to climb only takes 2 hours to get down...well so were we....and we found out soon enough! The route down was different to the route up and basically consisted of a 1500m slide of loose stones. Yes, believe it or not, but to get down, we were basically expected to start a mini rock-slide and surf it down bit by bit. As exciting as this sounds (and it was exciting at times) it was a bit scary and very draining. It actually took us 4 hours to get down due to the altitude sickness (especially Kadi) and we were so happy to finally have our feet on solid ground at the bottom! It was probably the toughest hike we’ve ever done but very rewarding.

Salar de Uyuni

One of the main reasons for us to come to Bolivia was to check out the Salar de Uyuni....the largest salt flat in the world. It is basically a massive bed of salt that formed thousands of years ago when some mountainous salty lakes dried up. What is impressive about the Salar is the sheer size: it stretches for hundreds of miles in all directions and when you are in the middle of it, there are places where the salt goes all the way out to the horizon. Very surreal, especially when the sun creates a reflective mirage effect on the horizon. The mountains nearby look like floating islands on the Salar. So the thing to do when you are at the Salar de Uyuni is to take loads of funny photos of people looking big and small like below :)

As part of the Salar trip, we spent one night in a hotel made completely out of salt! Yes, the floors, walls, tables, chairs and beds (excl mattress) were all salt! Thankfully the food wasn’t!

Into Bolivia

2010-10-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

Land border crossings can sometimes be quite eventful but thankfully getting from Argentina to Bolivia was not too dramatic. Where we crossed, there was simply a bridge that you can walk across with border check points at each side. The whole area was full of activity as the locals would carry big bags of goods across from Argentina to Bolivia, and then hurry back to get more – they looked like a line of ants! The paperwork formalities on the Argentinean side were straightforward although the Bolivian guard had to check his list a number of times to make sure Estonians were allowed in. He gave Kadi one stamp, had to re-check his list, hesitated a little (probably still couldn’t find Estonia) and then gave her the other approval stamp anyway. They also ask your occupation and for some reason when Kadi said she was a Nurse (“Enfermena” in Espanol) the guard sought some clarification, but when Conor explained he was an Actuary, there were no questions asked (they must have loads of actuaries passing through these parts!)

The Bolivian side had a lot more activity than the Argentinean side. It was funny to see massive bags of Coca leaves for sale: the leaves that they use to make Cocaine with. They are legal here and they also chew them (for a mild stimulant effect) and drink it in their tea (to help with altitude sickness). From here, we took a 2½ hour bus up to the tourist town of Tupiza, where we spent the next few days. Things are a lot poorer here (as was obvious from the state of the shoddy bus and dusty roads) but also a lot cheaper (the bus ride cost us just €1.50 each).

Tupiza itself is a nice little town and there are a range of activities such as hiking / horse-riding / mountain-biking to keep you busy during the day, but we planned to use this place as a base to start our tour of the nearby Salar de Uyuni (more on that later). However, things are extremely quiet here at the moment so it took us a while before we could find a group who wanted to do a similar tour as us. (The guest houses and restaurants are empty, and tour agencies are regularly harassing us to take tours with them....hard to believe that in August, the town was so full that some back-packers were even sleeping on the streets!) Nevertheless, we passed the time easily, and managed to fit in a 2-day horse-riding trip into the countryside.

These were our horses, Spirit (left) and Moro (right)

The horse-trek was fantastic, and we passed through some really stunning scenery (around mountains, through valleys and towns, across rivers and long grassy fields). We both had minimal horse-riding experience before but we were equipped with genuine cowboy hats and bandanas so we looked like the real deal :) The horses were fairly well trained and (usually) did what they were told. Most of the time we were just trotting along but every so often the horses would get a notion to just go for it and they’d gallop along with us holding on tight! Some experience! Most of our pictures are of the back of Kadi since her horse (Moro) had a bit of an attitude and always wanted to be in front. Whenever Moro would stop to eat some grass, Conor would use the opportunity to get in front and go for it with his horse (Spirit) – but sure enough, when Moro was finished the grass, it would start galloping until it was in front again! :)

We stayed in a very quiet town that night when seemed to have no life (it had no shops or bars) and it wasn’t until we were eating dinner in the homestead later that we realised THIS was the happening place, as some locals came in and bought beer from the house-keeper and sat down to watch the tv. After 2 days on the saddle, our butts were glad to take a break for a while!

We should make a special mention of the restaurants in Tupiza. There are about 6 tourist orientated restaurants in the town and they all seem to look exactly the same and have the same menu. They also like to blast(!) the tv showing coverage of some recent street festival or Bolivian folk music. Plus (probably because it is out of season) they are all fairly empty all of the time so the service is fairly unenthusiastic. Just yesterday, we were in a family-run place where we were served dinner and drinks by a 12 and 14 year old, while their older sister breast-feeded her baby nearby and the brother lounged on the chairs and watched the tv. It’s a different world here :)

Tomorrow we are setting off on a 5-day tour of the South-West Circuit (including the Salar de Uyuni) and we’ll update you on that when we get back (if we can find interweb!)

Bold Computer!

2010-10-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

So far, internet in Bolivia is as bad as expected! But bear with us and we´ll try to keep you updated whenever we get a good connection!

Leaving Argentina

2010-10-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

After our road trip around Salta, we ventured further north towards the Bolivian border. Some of this trip we made as part of a guided tour up through the Quebrada de Humahuaca - a UNESCO recognised valley with numerous interesting colourful rocky landscapes and little towns. The towns along this route were very nice but very touristy (everywhere is just covered with tourist markets selling all kinds of fabrics and crafts). We did visit some interesting (pre-Inca) ruins in a place called Tilcara. Archaeologists had partially reconstructed the site which was originally built over 500 years ago before the Spanish Invasion – it was like a mini Machu Picchu. Amazing how the thick walls of the structure kept the inside cool even though the outside was roasting! As we travelled further north (climbing higher as we did) we noticed the climate become a lot hotter, yet we continue to be surprised by the thick heavy clothing the locals wear (it much be at least 30 degrees and they are all wearing heavy sweaters, jeans and jackets). The air also became much thinner with the higher altitude making it a strain to breath (and Bolivia will be higher!)

After our tour, we continued north by public bus from the town of Humahuaca to La Quiaca on the Bolivian border. We must have paid the tourist surcharge because as we boarded, the bus attendant removed one local girl and her bag from a seat and allocated those seats to us. Other locals on the bus sat wherever they could (such as on the floor or the stairs). Still, we didn’t have the energy to feel guilty because the bus was really hot (and smelly). The air conditioning didn’t seem to work at all and the hot sun and thin air really drained us. Of course the locals were wearing multiple layers! The journey itself wasn’t spectacular but the landscape outside was interesting – we were travelling at an altitude of about 3400m yet the land around us was flat for miles and miles.

We are in La Quiaca now – still Argentina – but tomorrow we will head across the border to Bolivia. We are not expecting such regular Internet access in Bolivia but hopefully you will hear from us soon!

Road Trip

2010-09-28T18:09:00.000-07:00

We rented a car for a couple of days and decided to do a 500km circuit around the mountains and countryside near Salta. The scenery here was really fantastic and seemed to change dramatically every 25km or so (from winding mountain roads, to lofty vistas, to massive cactus fields, to flat dusty plateaus, to rugged rocky formations). The towns along this circuit were very isolated and very quiet! We stayed in one town that had a population of about 1000 people. We could only find one restaurant in the place and when we went there it was completely empty for the duration of our meal (and this was 9pm on a Saturday night!) We did eventually reach Cafayate (one of the wine regions of Argentina) which thankfully had a bit more life. Kadi was particularly pleased to try some wine flavoured ice-cream...white and red :) Anyway, they say a picture paints a thousand words so here are a few thousand for you:

Oh yeah...the Argentinean busses again!

2010-09-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

Since we are anticipating some long and rough bus rides throughout Bolivia, we decided to go all out in our night bus from Córdoba to Salta (in the North West Andean region of Argentina). We paid a little extra for “Executive Class” seating on the bus. We’ve been talking about these busses in our blog before but they are totally different from what you expect from a bus....they are more like first class in an aeroplane (maybe better?)

We’ve now arrived in Salta. We’ve only spent a day here but it’s the nicest city we’ve seen so far. It’s a bit touristy but most of the tourists are Argentines so for us they are still locals. We took a cable car up a mountain with some nice views of the city and the Andes as a backdrop.

We visited the first museum of this trip and saw a 500 year old (at least) preserved body of a child (basically they got the child drunk and buried it alive on top of a 6000m mountain as an offering to the gods. The cold temperatures preserved the body extremely well and it is still kept at -20 C in the museum.)

Anyway tomorrow morning we are renting a car and will be off for a bit of a road trip so it could be a few days before our next blog update. Oh yeah....just now, Conor went to the shop to buy some water. He actually went to a pharmacy because it was the closest. So when the shop girl didn’t have the correct small change (equivalent to 10 euro cents), she gave him 3 aspirin tablets instead(!!)

Moving on to the Centre

2010-09-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

After Buenos Aires, we took a 10 hour overnight bus into the Northern Central part of Argentina to the city of Córdoba (700 km northeast of BA). It’s amazing how much the temperature can change after a bus ride: we left BA in 20 degrees heat and it was 34 degrees the next day in Córdoba. The city itself is quite nice. It has a lot of old buildings providing character and history, but it also has 7 universities giving it a young vibe and also plenty of modern shops. It has a population of 1.5 million but it feels quite compact and has a fully pedestrian zone in the centre making it easy to stroll around. However, we were all citied out at this stage so after just one night we made tracks again and headed to a small town called La Cumbre, 2 hours away into the nearby Central Sierra mountains.

La Cumbre was exactly what we were looking for....a very quiet little country town with scenic views, a number of activities to keep us busy during the day, and a selection of restaurants/bars to pass the time at night. It is an extremely tidy place and all the buildings are very well maintained. It has its own Christ the Redeemer statue on one of the hills overlooking the town - very similar to the one in Rio de Janeiro only a lot smaller and the view is not as impressive. Still makes for a nice hike though :) Another day we rented bikes and cycled all over the place, including up to a nearby “Estancia” (that’s basically an Argentinean ranch) where they make and sell their own brand of foods including jams, chocolates and dulce de leche (Argentinean milk caramel which they eat with everything!) We got a tour of the place which was quite funny: at the beginning it was established fairly quickly that we had no Spanish and the guide had no English, but he still proceeded to talk in detail to us about all the different aspects of the production processes and operation!

La Cumbre actually has a bit of a name for itself on the Paragliding scene – it hosted the Paragliding World Cup in 1994. We had hoped to do a tandem paraglide but unfortunately being a mountainous town in the spring, the weather was quite changeable and we never had the opportunity :(

The above photo is our hostel :)

So instead we went for a tour of the nearby village of Capilla del Monte and surrounding countryside. It was quite nice but is most famous for its numerous encounters with UFOs (they even have a UFO information centre in the town). Some of the recorded incidents include:

In 1935, a local reported seeing a strange being dressed in a tight fitting suit while he was out walking on a country road.

In 1986, two other locals saw a “spaceship” so big that its lights illuminated the surrounding countryside. The next day a burn mark measuring 122m by 64m was found at the point where it reportedly landed.

A couple of years later, 300 people witnessed another “ship”, which left a burn mark 42m in diameter.

In 1991, another burn mark was found. This one measured 12m in diameter with a temperature of 340 degrees C. Geologists were called in and they claimed that nearby rocks had recently been heated to a temperature of 3000 degrees C.

Unfortunately we didn’t witness any such excitement :( Or maybe fortunately!

Buenos Aires

2010-09-21T06:18:00.000-07:00

We had visited Buenos Aires on our first trip to Argentina and so didn’t really intend to stay long this time around - but we ended up staying for 5 days. Partially because we were getting over jet-lag (it takes a while to adjust when day and night just switch places), partially because we needed time to plan our itinerary (we did no planning for this trip before getting here) and partially because we met a friend here (Adrian, an Irish guy we know from Australia) but mostly because we really like BA and it is easy to lose time there.

It was actually quite a coincidence how we met Adrian: We had found out the week before we left that he would be in Buenos Aires around the same time as us so we intended to catch up at some stage. When we arrived, we decided to get a hostel a bit out of the city centre (because we had stayed there last time and wanted to see somewhere different). Later, in a coffee shop we got chatting to him on Facebook and it turned out that he was in an internet cafe just a few doors down the block! BA is a big city and there are many neighbourhoods but the chance that he was so close was amazing!

So what did we get up to in BA?

There is a famous cemetery in the city, Cemeterio de la Recoleta, where all the coffins are placed in crypts rather than buried underground. It is like a town with lots of streets, and all the crypts are like little houses. It is a bit weird because you can look in the doors/gates of each crypt and see the coffins and some are very old at this stage. Evita is “buried” there along with a lot of other rich and famous.

One of the nights we went for a Tango lesson with Adrian and his friend Jamie (another Irish guy who recently moved out here). Jamie had heard about these lessons and we went for them because they were a lot cheaper than the ones for tourists advertised in the hostel. When we got there, people were already dancing and we didn’t see any other foreigners. We weren’t very sure about the whole thing....it looked just like some local party. But eventually the dance floor was cleared, they put on a quick Tango performance and then the lessons started....in Spanish! We don’t speak much Spanish beyond buying bus tickets and ordering food so it was a bit interesting to say the least! But it was all right because it’s all about body language.

Afterwards, we went out to a Night Club and were pleased that as we entered, we were given “VIP” wristbands...permitting us access to the VIP area of the club. It was kind of confusing as to why we got them (we thought it was a mistake), but we found out afterwards that they give them to all the Gringos (foreigners) so we will feel special and spend more money.

Another night, we had the opportunity (through Jamie) to join a barbeque with some local Argentineans. Barbeques are a big part of their life – they eat on average 70kg of meet per person a year! They eat meat every day and the barbeque had a LOT. No bread and very little side salad (which only the girls ate). Basically a plate full of different kinds of meat! It was a pleasure meeting the locals: we found them very friendly and welcoming (even though we were only friends of a friend of a friend). They were very chatty and even though most of their English was poor, they were very excited to talk to us.

Another big part of Argentine culture is drinking “Mate” (pronounced mat-ay). This is a tea-like drink made from some sort of grass mixed with hot-water. The cup is full of grass with only a little bit of water that they keep topping up from their flask. They use a special cup and drink with a special filtered metal straw. All over the city, you see them carrying their mate cups and flasks and they drink it on the street, at home, at work....everywhere. Mate is all about sharing. One person will make it and pass it around the group, while keep refilling the same cup. The thing is, you can’t actually buy mate in restaurants so the only way to taste it is to be invited by the locals for mate...and fortunately we were at the barbeque. Kadi got a bit of a taste for it but Conor didn’t enjoy it (too bitter).

BA is a very nice city. Full of grand old buildings, crazy traffic, dogs (and professional dog walkers!) and loads of cafes and restaurants. After 5 days there, we boarded an overnight bus for our next destination: Córdoba.

On the Road Again....

2010-09-17T20:04:00.000-07:00

Wow! Hard to believe that last year went so fast! It has been almost 12 months since our last blog entry and after a great year we have now outstayed our welcome in Australia. We are very sad to leave, but it gives us another opportunity to do a bit of travelling and it will be good to see all our friends and family when we get back home.

So what are we up to now? Before we go back to Ireland (and Estonia) we will spend 6 weeks in South America checking out some of the places that we never got to see on our first trip here. Some of you have been asking for us to keep up the blog so we figured we might as well!

We left Sydney at 10:30am on Wednesday 15 September and magically landed in Buenos Aires (Argentina) 13 hours later at 10:30am on Wednesday 15 September (the exact same time)! The flight was interesting because we flew very close to the South Pole (we could see frozen ice on the water beneath us) and as well we could freeze time! The novelty of this time travel was fairly satisfying initially as it meant we could steal back the day that we lost on our way out to Australia in the first place, but we discovered fairly quickly that 13 hours cannot be subtracted from the day without jet-lag taking its toll....and indeed it did! After finally organising a hostel we fell asleep at 3.30pm (we had been awake for about 22 hours at this stage) and slept for 12 hours - waking up again in the middleof the night with 5 hours before breakfast was served.

We are still working out our itinerary for the next 6 weeks (suggestions welcome!) but we are loosely planning to travel up through Argentina to Bolivia, then perhaps head South into Chile before returning to Argentina and Buenos Aires to fly home.

We have been in Buenos Aires a few days at this stage (and we'll update you on that later) but initial impressions are:
- oh yeah, brushing teeth with bottled water again!
- funny how quick you get back into the travel mindset (Australia/Pyrmont no longer feel like home)
- hard to get used to having so few clothes (we aim to have very light backpacks)

The Dancing Video

2009-10-26T04:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, we've finally got around to finishing our dancing video. We've posted it to YouTube but hopefully you'll be able to view it below. Well.......Enjoy! :)

End of the Road

2009-10-07T01:47:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this is it! We’ve been travelling since 6th March 2009 and after all that time on the road, we have finally reached our destination: Australia! It is sad to leave the backpacking behind us, but at this stage, we are looking forward to having somewhere more permanent to live and to have a home. We are currently trying to organise employment.....it’s been a while so we hope we remember how to do everything!

We’ve been in Australia now for 2½ weeks already. We spent the first week in Sydney with our friends Barry and Emily, and then the next week and a half with Conor’s brother John and his wife Kate in Canberra. So far, in our short time in Oz, we have checked out the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House and also managed to get a close up look at some wild Kangaroos bouncing around a hill near John and Kate’s house.

Some facts about our trip......

Time travelling: 6.5 months

Countries visited: 15 (USA, Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, South Korea)

Miles travelled: Unknown!

No of separate flights: 25

No of different hostels/guesthouse stayed in: 74

Size and weight of our bags: 45L weighing 8-10kg

Modes of transport used: Walking, bicycle, motorbike, horse, tuktuk, car, pickup, bus, boat, tram, train, helicopter, plane.

No of nights spent sleeping on overnight busses/trains/boats/flights: 20

No of rats encountered in our rooms: 2

No of Irish pubs visited: 5

No of weddings missed: 1 (sorry Henry!)

No of photographs taken: 12,500 (that’s 46 GB)

No of embarrassing dancing videos: 68

No of blog entries: 83 (well done to anyone who’s read them all!)

No of old friends met along the way: 13 (Darin, Stan, Cónall, Ena, Fenton & Angela, Marcel, Myra & Graham, Helen & JP, Charlie & Pippa)

No of new friends met along the way: Too many to count, but special mention to the slow-boater in Laos!

Most useful items packed: Laptop, guidebooks....it would have been very different without them

Least useful items packed: Water purification tablets, rain cover for our rucksacks, PADI dive manual (we had to buy a new one when we started the course anyway)

Things we wished we brought: Map of the world (to show where Estonia is!)

Most luxurious place slept: Las Vegas (with Sapa, Vietnam a close second)

Least luxurious places slept: Hut in jungle in Thailand, Four Thousand Islands in Laos, Piste in Mexico

Items lost/stolen: None!

Length of time since Conor last had a hair cut: 7 months (and counting!)

Length of time since our last skydives: Too long!

No of Seven New Wonders of the World visited: 4/7 (Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, Rio Statue of Christ, Chinese Great Wall)

We will miss:
- Exploring new and famous places
- Complete freedom to go wherever we want
- Some great cheap food and beer
- Not working

We will not miss:
- Brushing teeth with bottled water
- Wearing the same clothes everyday
- Constantly finding new places to stay
- Night busses

Well, we hope you enjoyed reading our blog along the way. As we’ve reached our destination, we don’t intend to keep it going, but fear not, this is not our last blog entry!!! Stay tuned as we are currently working on the video of embarrassing dances around the world and we’ll post it here whenever it’s ready.

The Seoul of Asia

2009-10-04T23:49:00.000-07:00

The final country of our travels (before Australia) was South Korea. Admittedly it is an odd destination, it is certainly not on the backpacker hitlist, and we didn’t meet anyone along the way who was going there or had been there. In fact, we never planned to go there ourselves! We originally intended to go to Japan, but when we were purchasing tickets, we found that flights from Japan to Sydney were very expensive and we could save €1000 each by flying from their next door neighbour: South Korea. Along the way, our plans to visit Japan were dropped and so South Korea became the last destination of our backpacking.

We only had five days so we spent the entire time in and around the capital, Seoul. However, the city has a population of 10 million people (that’s half the population of Australia!) so it is quite a developed and built up place, and was easy to spend a few days investigating.

What struck us as odd initially was the distinct lack of English (throughout Asia, we had become accustomed to English signs and menus etc everywhere). Even the Starbucks sign was written in Korean! As mentioned in our previous post, most of the ATMs didn’t have any English – even those that did have some English usually gave us a Korean error message before spitting out our cards (thankfully we did eventually find one that liked our cards). There were also very few foreigners about – of course we were the subject of photos for a few people that wanted to pose with us. It’ll be tough giving up this celebrity lifestyle in Australia!

So what did we get up to in Seoul?

We checked out the N Seoul Tower. A large tower built up on a hill in the middle of the city, which offered great views of the city. But the best bit was definitely the view from the urinals.....check out the picture below! After 15 countries, Conor can safely say that these are the BEST TOILETS IN THE WORLD!

We came across hundreds of police gathering around a central square with riot gear all ready. They looked like they were ready to pick a fight. We asked them what was up but they were really serious and wouldn’t tell us.....but when we asked for a photo they were all smiles :)

We found a parking space for “women only”.

We found a bunch of trees with medical drips hooked up to them (yes, IVs)!

We wandered the streets and observed the many lit-up signs advertising various shops.

We ate some food like the locals. (All over Seoul, they have restaurants where there is a barbeque grill built into the table and you cook the meat yourself. There were not any other white travellers dining in any of the restaurants and it was great atmosphere being immersed in the Korean culture.)

We visited a Palace and appreciated their old Korean style architecture.

We checked out their National Museum and found an impressive collection of old tanks and aircraft (along with a bunch of other stuff).

And Korea has a laser show of its own......a mist spray provides the surface for their enjoyable 3D projection along a river in the middle of the city.

Yes, Seoul turned out to be a worthwhile destination and it was nice to spend a few days in a place that we knew nothing about and had absolutely no expectations.

Blog Updates

2009-09-28T03:33:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the delays in updating the blog recently. As most of you are probably aware, we’ve now reached Australia and have been taking it easy, catching up with friends and basically enjoying doing nothing. But stay tuned....we still have a few more entries to post.

From China to South Korea

2009-09-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

We had heard that it was possible to get a Ferry from China to Korea. We were keen to do as much of our trip as possible without flying but doing so proved more difficult than expected.

For starters the ferry company website was only in Chinese and Korean and none of the travel agents we found seemed to be able to help us. Our guidebook was of very limited help but we eventually found an office that sells tickets – only to be told that they couldn’t sell them to US because we weren’t Chinese, Japanese or Korean (they couldn’t be sure if we would be allowed into Korea). So we would have to go to the port to buy them before we leave. This was cutting things a bit close, because there are only 2 ferry sailings a week and if we missed the Sunday one, then the next one would be Thursday which would be too late for us to catch our flight to Sydney. The ferry port is actually in a town called Tanggu, about 200km from Beijing.

Nevertheless, we set off on Saturday evening, taking the train to a place called Tianjin. That was pretty cool because this is apparently the fastest intercity train in the world and travels at 330 km/h. We covered the 120km trip to Tianjin in just 30 minutes – less time than it took us to get from our Beijing Hostel to the train station. In fact, we were very impressed with how modern the train station and train was – it was by far the most modern we’ve seen, the station was more like an airport. Who said travelling in China was difficult?

We spent the night in Tianjin which turned out to be a very nice city. It was immediately clear that this place doesn’t get any tourists because (1) our guidebook had very little to say about it (2) nobody speaks ANY English (3) we foreigners were a bit of a novelty and had to pose for a number of camera-phone photos. All this was surprising as we later learned that it’s the 6th largest city in China with 11 million people!

Next morning, we were up early to get a bus to Tanggu port. Again, from the one single paragraph that our guidebook gave to this town, we were expecting something along the lines of Rosslare Harbour in Ireland, so were very surprised again to see another sprawling metropolis with skyscrapers and massive apartment blocks as far as the eye could see! Just another example of the sheer scale of China!

Thankfully, we were able to buy tickets there at the port but getting onto the boat proved to be another ordeal. For a start, it didn’t help that the name on Conor’s boarding pass was “Conor Eireannach Irish” (Tanggu port officials are obviously not familiar with the layout of Irish passports). Also, the fact that Conor’s hair now looks significantly different from his passport photo prompted suspicious staring and further questions from the immigration official. We were both pulled aside while some senior official scrutinized our passports and checked against his list, however, in the end we were both allowed onto the ferry.....horray :)

The sailing itself was largely uneventful. There were no other westerners on the boat....we were the only ones. The food was all unusual looking stuff and since everything was written in Korean and no one had any English, we didn’t really know what we were eating. The sight of a young child peeing into a paper cup at the dinner table was a little off putting (but apparently it’s normal here as no one else noticed)!

After 28 hours on the boat, we finally arrived in South Korea. We will spend 5 days around the capital Seoul before flying to Australia on Friday. Our initial thoughts are one of surprise about the technology here: This is a modern developed country but it’s the first country in all the places we’ve been where our phones don’t work and the ATMs don’t offer instructions in English.

A week in Mainland China

2009-09-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

Our short time in China started with a 24 hour train journey from Hong Kong to Beijing (we had thought about spending that time watching a full series of 24, but then decided against it). Considering that we had completely under-researched this section of the trip, everything went much easier than expected. On the train we had a 4 bed cabin all to ourselves and the journey was very smooth. Covering 2,000km in just one day in such comfort is a stark contrast from the bumpy bus journeys with frequent stops that we had become accustomed to in South East Asia and the change was very welcome. And not only that, when we got to Beijing, we finally had a chance to tell the immigration officials what we think of them......yes, after they stamp your passport, you are given a keypad in which you press a button to indicate if their service was Very Satisfactory / Satisfactory / Unsatisfactory / Very Unsatisfactory. Didn’t have the balls to press Very Unsatisfactory just in case they pulled our passports back! All in all, rather painless going from Hong Kong to Beijing.

Arriving in Beijing provides a good lesson in feeling very, very small. The population is about 16 million but looking beyond population numbers, the buildings and streets and open areas are just enormous! The train station we walked out of was massive and the 10-lane dual carriageway in front of us was just a typical street forming the blocks of the city. However, despite its scale it struck us as a very clean, organised and orderly place....suppose this is what Communist HQ should look like! We stayed in a quieter backstreet area of the city that had real character – recommended to us by Conor’s friend John Pender who had visited here recently and it was really nice (thanks John!) One thing we’ve noticed from travelling to larger cities is that there are so many locals, the tourists tend to get “diluted” and so there are fewer people trying to sell you stuff or offer taxi/accommodation etc. However, both of us being taller and fairer than the average Chinese person, we did get plenty of stares.....it sure is a funny feeling walking into a restaurant and having eye contact with everyone that you look to.

In Beijing city, we visited the main touristy areas....Tiananmen Square, the world’s largest public square (can hold up to a million people) and the scene of a government assault on pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989: the government sent tanks in and opened fire on the crowd, killing a load of people. Today, security is tight around the square and you need to pass bags through an x-ray before you can get access. We also checked out the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace where the Emperors used to live. The Forbidden City is so called because it was off limits for 500 years – the price of uninvited admission was instant execution (a bit like Tiananmen square)! The Summer Palace was their summer retreat. One Empress expanded the Palace using money earmarked for the Navy. To satisfy the navy, she built a large ship made of marble to decorate the lake. We guess they weren’t so happy about that. The hill at the Palace offered some very nice views of the city.

However, our main reason for visiting Beijing (and China in fact) was to see the Great Wall of China, and indeed it was Great! We spent a day walking 8km along a stretch of the wall (from Jinshanling to Simatai). Being a bit further from Beijing than other sections of the wall, and being a bit dilapidated in places (i.e. a bit more natural and less reconstructed than some other sections) meant that the wall we visited was not overrun with tourists and we got to see it in a purer form. The walk was quite steep in places and also a bit dangerous as sections of the wall had crumbled away, but we got some fantastic views along the way and it was indeed a Great Walk of China (ha ha ha).

One Country, Two Systems

2009-09-09T01:26:00.000-07:00

Our flight from Hanoi to Hong Kong brought us through Bangkok again, thanks to the great prices of (Ryan)Air Asia. For some reason, Kadi needed to get a Visa on arrival in Thailand (Conor didn’t) but it just seemed to be an exercise in stamping passports because the Visa stamp itself was free and she was automatically entitled to it – so basically, Kadi needed to get a visa stamp before getting a normal entry stamp, whereas Conor just needed an entry stamp. The mysteries of international travel permissions will never cease to amaze us! It was great to be back in Thailand (even briefly) just for the food :) Anyway, onward into Hong Kong without any problems.

So what is the deal with Hong Kong? Well, as it says on the title above, it’s basically part of China once again (since 1997, after about 100 years under the reign of Britain), but under the terms of the handover, it is continuing with the free market system that existed prior to 1997, rather than switching to communism like the rest of China. This “one country, two systems” approach will remain in place for 50 years and we don’t know what’s going to happen after that.

The city itself is fantastically modern, clean and efficient. That’s quite an achievement in this part of the globe we can tell you - and it was a very welcome change! Geographically, the city doesn’t actually take up much space so it’s fairly easy to get around and see it all, but does house 8.5 million people, so this means that it’s fairly densely populated and full of high-rise buildings and skyscrapers. With so many people living in such a small space, you can imagine that property gets fairly expensive and there are reportedly tens of thousands of people living in little make-shift huts on the roofs of buildings across the city. The high property prices also had an impact on our accommodation and we ended up staying in a Getto called “Chungking Mansions”. Despite its plush name, this was the only dilapidated building we saw amongst all the glitz, glamour and neon. On the outside, it looked pretty dodgy but our room was fine and served us well during our 5 nights in Hong Kong (although it was very very small)!

Although it’s a very safe city, we did narrowly avoid a bit of excitement! After strolling a shopping area one day, we went home and noticed on the local tv news that there had been an incident of someone throwing acid on people, right in the area that we were in and at the time that we were leaving. Luckily, we didn’t see any of it.

We basically spent our time checking out the sights, doing some shopping and just enjoying being in civilisation again! During our time there, we had the opportunity to ride what is allegedly the longest escalator in the world. It is an outdoor escalator which takes 20 minutes to get from the bottom to the top - but it's kinda cheating since it's actually a series of separate escalators. One of the more interesting spectacles was the nightly lightshow: Every night at 8pm, the skyscrapers light up with moving neon lights and lasers, all coordinated to music. The show lasts 15 minutes and it was so good, we watched it nearly every night. It really has to be seen to be believed.

And what do Hong Kongians do on Sunday afternoons? Well, we were very surprised to find them having picnics all over the city in the most unusual urban places – in car parks, on pedestrian walkways over main roads, even on the common area under skyscrapers. They simply throw a sheet down on the concrete (yes concrete), sit down, and have a bowl of noodles and tea while playing cards, knitting, or surfing the internet on their notebooks using the public wifi. Very strange sight!

Thankfully (as hoped) we had no problems getting our China visa from Hong Kong. So after our time there, we got our train ticket to Beijing (a 24 hour journey) and off we went!

Postcard Competition – Winners!

2009-09-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

The American countries that we visited during the first 3 months of our trip were: USA, Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, Peru, Brazil and Argentina. And the winners are:

Fearghal King
Barney Henry

Congratulations guys. Postcards on their way to you!

Farewell South East Asia

2009-09-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

We are now leaving Vietnam and South East Asia and heading to China. We had intended to spend just 2-3 weeks in Vietnam but everywhere we went, we really enjoyed it and ended up staying longer than planned, and now, almost 4 weeks later we must leave as we have to hurry up to South Korea to catch our flight to Australia.

This means we must severely limit our journey through China to just a couple of destinations: Hong Kong and Beijing.

Our original plan to get to Hong Kong was to go overland on the train from Hanoi, but it turned out to be very difficult to get the China visa from Hanoi, so we have decided to fly to Hong Kong instead – we don’t need a visa for Hong Kong and it is apparently (hopefully!) easier to get a China visa there. We are looking forward to flying again after all the busses and trains recently.

North Vietnam: Hanoi, Sapa and Halong Bay

2009-09-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

We’ve spent the last week or so checking out what North Vietnam has to offer. A lot, it turns out. Therefore we have like a million photos. Very tough to pick the best ones so we have a lot in this blog entry!

Hanoi

Hanoi was just another busy big Vietnamese city and not particularly noteworthy, in our opinion, although we did enjoy it there. One of the more interesting attractions was the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh (Uncle Ho), a past Prime Minister and communist revolutionary who died 40 years ago tomorrow (2 September 1969). Although he requested to be cremated after his death, his body was instead put on public display inside a large elaborate Mausoleum where it still remains today, and every day thousands of people flock to see him. We were very surprised at the large number of Vietnamese coming to pay their respects. One woman was even crying as she walked through. The tour also brings you around to the old house where he used to (apparently) live. It shows some very basic and simple furnishings and tries to convey the minimal non-materialistic life he led.....but we don’t buy it....it looks like communist propaganda to us!

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of dead Vietnamese people, we recently learned of an unusual belief that they have: Every month, some Vietnamese burn some fresh crisp bank notes – the theory is that they are sending the money to their dead relatives so they can buy some food (or beer or wine!) in the afterlife!

Sapa

After Hanoi, we took an overnight train (our first) up to the mountainous countryside of Sapa. The train journey itself was an experience, or rather the company in our 4-bed cabin was. We arrived to find a few Vietnamese people sitting on our beds. They stood up to let us in, but when we sat down, they shoved us over and sat down beside us (on our beds)! They settled in quite comfortably in fact – even putting their feet up on the sheets. We didn’t know what to make of them but they did eventually get up and go to sleep on their beds. Although the next morning, the older guy (who was getting off at an earlier stop) came back down, pushed Conor’s legs out of the way and sat back down again (although Conor was asleep at the time). When the guy finally left, he helpfully left the door open and the lights on....this was at about 4.30am. We had heard that people in South East Asia don’t have the awareness of people’s personal space, although this was the first time we experienced it so can’t complain.

The climate in Sapa was a lot cooler and less humid than we’ve had recently so it was a very pleasant change. All the restaurants and hotel rooms have fire places and we even managed to have a cosy fire one night (and some wine).The town reminded us of the Livigno ski resort in the Alps....this must be how they look during the summer without snow.

The real beauty of Sapa lies in the fantastic scenery, in particular the terraced paddy-fields on the various hills. We rented a motorbike and spent a few days just cruising around and taking it all in. It was a bit difficult at times because the road was non-existent in some places (like with streams going across the road, or the surface just collapsed away). It was definitely one of the most scenic places we’ve visited on our whole trip so far. They say a picture paints a thousand words so here are a few thousand words that will describe it better than we can:

The town, and surrounding countryside, is full of people from local hill-tribes. There are a number of different tribes and they all speak their own languages (and English). They wear traditional dress and try to sell their hand crafts. One tribe has a weird sense of fashion, wearing a ponytail on their forehead, and fix it in place with a random comb. They were interesting in how they lived but much of what they did, appeared to be for the tourists.

Oh yeah, and for those keeping track of the various foodstuffs that we’ve encountered, one of the less pleasant sights in Sapa was the dog meat available in the local market.

Halong Bay
We finished off our tour of North Vietnam with a short trip to Halong Bay. It’s a large bay with thousands of limestone mountains/islands jutting out of the water in unusual jagged and rounded shapes. We spent two days and one night sailing around the bay on a very nice boat with a fun group of Germans – yes they do exist – and one English guy. The tour included some kayaking around the bay and into some tight hidden caves. When we kayaked out the other end of one of the caves, we found ourselves inside a lagoon that was surrounded, all 360 degrees, by rocky mountain. But we couldn’t stay long because the tide was rising and our tiny exit was closing! We also explored (by foot) the local “Amazing Cave”. It was very large, possibly the biggest cave we’ve ever been in, and it lived up to its name being actually pretty amazing. And of course there was some craziness of jumping off the top floor of the boat into the water. It was quite hazy during our time there so our pictures don’t really do it justice.

Vietnam has a Road Death Epidemic!

2009-08-30T07:34:00.000-07:00

From the first moment we set foot in Bangkok, 2½ months ago, we’ve noticed that the rules of the road in South East Asia are understood differently from back home. What is reckless or illegal in Ireland/Estonia, is often the norm here. This includes....

Multiple people on motorbikes. A family of 4 or 5 on a single bike is not unusual...normally with a baby in there aswell. Kadi even saw 6 once.

Overtaking on blind mountainous corners. The more dangerous the better it seems!

People sitting on the back or roof of vehicles. People are ferried around like cargo here. Whatever doesn’t fit in the back can often be seen sitting on the roof.

Driving on the opposite side of the road (against the traffic) is acceptable, provided you don’t hit anyone. One day we saw a motorbike driving against a big flow of traffic – in fact the sole motorbike had the right of way!

Driving in the dark with no lights on (we see this all the time)!

Driving motorbikes with no helmets.
Carrying the most unusual objects on the back/front of the motorbike. The list is endless but we’ve seen furniture (a big couch, a bed headboard, chairs), all sorts of animals (alive and dead), a person on a drip, ladders, big boxes of various stuff, big blocks of ice, children’s high chairs (with children sitting on them), etc.

No mirrors. We’ve seen plenty of bikes where the only rear-view mirror has been twisted around so the driver can check their appearance while sitting in traffic (or maybe while driving too!)

Children (age 10 or younger) driving motorbikes.

Plenty of babies being carried on bikes (of course no helmets, because there are no baby motorbike helmets). Many are asleep in fact!

The biggest vehicle has right of way. Pedestrians give way to motorbikes, motorbikes give way to tuktuks, tuktuks give way to cars, cars give way to busses, etc. It is not unusual to see a car/bus cut across a line of motorbikes, not necessarily waiting for a clear patch, but just driving out in front of them knowing that they will stop because they are smaller.

The horn is used as a conversational instrument. Surprisingly, the motorists will not blow the horn in anger when someone drives against them or cuts out in front of them, but they will sound it whenever they are approaching or overtaking someone. It is like saying “hello, hello, I’m coming you better make room and watch out”.

But this all took on a whole new dimension when we reached Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in particular have millions of people living in them and this means there is a constant flow of motorbikes on the road, moving around the city in some chaotic yet structured manner. They seem to flow like a big swarm of fish. Zebra crossings and pedestrian lights are ignored so crossing roads becomes the most extreme game of chicken we ever played. We’ve learned that the trick is to walk across with determination, and don’t step backwards. Check out the video below for a demonstration of Conor crossing the road in Hanoi.

The other law that they break here is one that the Fashion Police should be enforcing! The Vietnamese (and South East Asians in general) consider pale skin to be more pleasing to the eye than tanned skin. As such, they shade from the sun at every opportunity. So when they are driving their motorbikes, they are often seen wearing hats, sunglasses, face masks, hoodies, gloves, socks and shoes, and specially made jackets with flaps to cover the hands....all this despite the extreme heat here. You can’t see any of their exposed skin – we call them little Michael Jacksons!

Accidents do happen though and in fact, during one taxi ride, our driver managed to knock a middle-aged woman off her bicycle. Thankfully she was ok, but the driver didn’t seem to care as she apparently pulled out in front of him, and she was just a bicycle and he was a car afterall.

They are without a doubt the worst drivers in the world! In fact, there are apparently 12,300 road fatalities in Vietnam a year (population of 85 million). That’s 33 deaths a day!!

Despite all the craziness, this (surprisingly) is the first country where we see some people wearing helmets!

Postcard Competition

2009-08-27T10:13:00.000-07:00

Ok - this is a bonus competition so everyone who gets the right answer will get a postcard :)

Question: We spent the first 3 months of our trip travelling from North America through to South America. List all of the countries that we visited during that time.

Email your answers and your postal address to competition closed

Deadline for entries is Friday 4th September.

Next stop: Hoi An

2009-08-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

As we continued up the coast of Vietnam, our next stop was a beautiful town called Hoi An. What is different about this town is that the old town was not destroyed in the war and the old French colonial architecture is very well preserved. The old town itself is actually a UNESCO World Heritage site and you need to buy a ticket to get into it. However, as there are no boundaries, the ticketing system is completely unenforceable so naturally we didn’t buy any tickets.

It was once a quiet fishing village but the tourists have taken over and it is now home to over 200 tailor shops. Amazingly they all have enough business to survive. While Kadi spent a few days and a few dollars having dresses / coats / tops / etc made up, Conor decided he didn’t need suits (painful memories of work) and just strolled the streets during our time there. It is a very pretty town to be just lazing about: no litter, flowers and trees everywhere, nice architecture, cosy coffee shops, clean and tidy buildings and a river passing through the town as well. In the evening, many of the restaurants and shops switch on old style lanterns outside giving the streets a nice warm glow. All these made it very different from other Vietnamese towns we’ve been to so it’s no surprise that it’s a tourist hotspot.

There’s also a lovely beach nearby. One day we rented bikes and cycled out to it. As we got there, a guy stopped us and told us we must park our bikes in the designated bike park there, telling us we can’t take them any further. He wanted to charge us a parking fee of 5,000 dong (20c) but we started to give out, knowing that the fee should be just 2,000 dong (8c). Yes, we are talking about just a few cents but still he wanted to charge us more than double and we don’t like getting ripped off. 5,000 dong can buy a bottle of water here. After our repeated objections, he finally agreed on 2,000 dong, but he then moved our bikes out of the shade and into the sun. At this stage, we gave up, took our bikes and cycled down to the beach anyway where a restaurant let us park them free of charge. Typical Vietnamese experience of attempted overcharging! Sometimes we are smart enough to avoid it but for sure we get overcharged with loads of things, and probably more often than we realise.

We eventually left Hoi An on a long and painful 16 hour night bus up to the capital, Hanoi. It was probably one of our worst night busses, what with all the bumps and the driver constantly trying to overtake slow moving trucks in front of him, but we won’t start complaining now because it looks like it will have been the last overnight bus journey of our trip.

A Week in Nha Trang

2009-08-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

We’ve just spent the last week having a mini “holiday” in the beach town of Nha Trang, Vietnam. As mentioned in our last post, we stayed with our friends Charlie and Pippa and it was nice to just hang out with them and their friends – having a break from organising sights to see, accommodation to stay, busses and transport, etc. We also took the opportunity to do some more diving and completed our Advanced Open Water course (tried to find Nemo but couldn’t see him anywhere). It was good to get back in the water and the activity was a welcome change from all the sightseeing we’d been doing recently. As well as scuba diving, we also managed to fit in fun session on the local waterpark. No rules here and on one occasion we managed to squeeze a train of ten people on five tubes into one of the slides, which resulted in a number of injuries - ouch! Aswell, we visited a nearby mudbath where we had the satisfying sensation of covering ourselves in filth and letting it all dry on in the hot sun :)

If you’ve been following our blog closely, you may have caught reference to our “project” that we are working on. Basically we have been recording videos of us doing a dance in various locations around the world (similar to Dancing Matt from YouTube for anyone who knows it). Where we meet friends, we get them to dance with us too :) Well Charlie and Pippa are actually out here teaching English and one day they managed to persuade their whole class to come down to the beach and dance with us. They told the class that it was to be used as a promotional video for encouraging English teachers to come to Vietnam! You’ll have to wait until we finish our trip before you can see the videos though.

One of the more memorable events of the week was being refused entry into a nightclub by a doorman who is about 3 feet tall and looks to be age 5 (honest!) We thought it was some kind of joke but the other doormen (who were proper adults) were carrying out his instructions....he was obviously the boss. We were very surprised to hear that he was actually 27! Judge for yourself from the photos below.

The other day we were talking about our further travel plans and came to the painful realisation that we only have one month left. This seems to have come from nowhere and the countdown is now on. We’re trying to decide how to spend this month given that our planned itinerary doesn’t fit with this timescale and we have to get to South Korea by September 18th for our flight to Sydney.

Oh yeah, and Conor bleached his hair in Nha Trang!

Up The Coast

2009-08-15T03:36:00.000-07:00

From Ho Chi Minh we headed up the Vietnam coast to a small beach town called Mui Ne. We had heard that this was the Mecca of kite surfing in Vietnam so we were keen to get back into it again. However, the tourist prices were well and truly in force here: kite and board rental was 3-5 times the price we paid in Thailand which unfortunately put it outside our budget so we had to give it a miss until we get to Australia. We did take the opportunity to rent a scooter and take off to the nearby sand-dunes which were actually very impressive.

After a fun day on the scooter and a dose of sunburn, we left Mui Ne for the next city, Nha Trang. This will be our base for the next week or so as we have met up with our skydiving friends from Ireland, Charlie and Pippa! We are also doing some more scuba diving here. Nha Trang is much bigger than Mui Ne but the way they have built up the city has preserved the beach. It is very scenic. The weather recently has also been perfect which is great so we’re in no hurry to leave here just yet!

Special mention to regular blog reader Henry Jakobson who is getting married today :) Congratulations! Even though it is so nice here, we wish we could take a day off and go to the wedding in Estonia.

Good Morning Vietnam!

2009-08-10T23:36:00.000-07:00

Throughout our travels, we had heard a number of negative things about Vietnam (especially the South) from fellow travellers....mainly the unwanted attention that tourists get from people trying to sell books, guesthouses, tuktuks, tours, etc. As such, we didn’t have high expectations from our first port of call, Ho Chi Minh City (previously called Saigon) but were pleasantly surprised by what we found. The city is very clean and tidy, with nice parks and gardens and apart from the chaotic traffic (we’ll get to that again) it is a lot more relaxed, organised and easier than we were expecting. It has a lot of nice architecture both in its old historic buildings as well as the modern buildings. We even took a taxi out to some random local market away from the backpacker/tourist area just to see the real Ho Chi Minh, and although it was a bit less polished, it was still a very nice place to stroll around.

By chance, we had bumped into two Irish girls (Emer and Noelle) that we previously met in Laos, and they made our stay even more fun. We spent our time hanging out with them and enjoying lots of margaritas :)

We visited the local War Remnants Museum which had a lot of interesting information about the Vietnam War (or as it’s known over here: The American War). The Vietnam version of events is very different from that portrayed in American movies and it was interesting to get their perspective. The museum is not for the faint hearted and shows plenty of gruesome images of the victims of the war and the effects of the chemical warfare used by the Americans (“Agent Orange” containing dioxin, the most poisonous chemical created by man).

One of the most popular sites around HCMC is Cu Chi tunnels. This is an underground tunnel network that once stretched out 200 km and is built in 3 levels going down to 10 m deep. Viet Cong (Vietnamese communists) were hiding here from Americans for almost 20 years. We got to go into the tunnels.... they were very, very small and dark and hot and claustrophobic... can’t imagine living there for 20 years. Can’t even imagine being there for 20 minutes. And this particular tunnel where we were was even enlarged for the tourists (cos Americans have big asses according to our guide).

The highlight of the trip to the Cu Chi tunnels was the opportunity to shoot an AK47. We had both fired guns before, but never a machine gun! The safety briefing consisted of “Who’s next? Ok, go!” and despite the extremely loud bang when the gun fired, the hearing protection consisted of a set of old Sony music headphones with the chord removed!! As much as we wanted to go crazy with the gun and spray bullets like in the war films, at €1 per bullet we decided not to get carried away.

A Note on Cambodia

2009-08-07T04:59:00.001-07:00

From Siem Reap, we back-tracked South East again, down to Phnom Penh (pronounced “Pnom Pen”), the capital of Cambodia. This city has the main “attractions” concerning the whole Khmer Rouge genocide atrocities that took place during 1975-1979.

We don’t normally get into the history of countries in our blog but we felt that this country needed some awareness. For anyone not familiar with Cambodia’s tragic history (we weren’t either before we came here by the way), basically the Khmer Rouge were a communist party who forcefully took control of Phnom Penh (and later the whole country) back in 1975. Their crazy idea was to create a perfect “agrarian” society whereby everybody lives in the countryside and works in the fields so the country would be completely independent and self-sufficient and wouldn’t rely on any outside countries. To achieve this, they evacuated the cities (they told everyone that the US were planning a bomb attack) and moved everybody to villages and forced them to do hard labour on the rice-fields. Everything was communal/shared (the clothes, food, living conditions, etc were all the same). Money was abolished. TVs, radios, watches and anything mechanical was denied. The people were not allowed to own anything or grow their own food. The only food they got was from the community but even that was so little that many starved to death, and those that didn’t looked like the kids from Africa with the swollen bellies that you see on tv. They were actually producing enough rice for the population but the government was exporting most of it to China to buy more weapons.

To prevent any uprising, the Khmer Rouge (who became the government) decided to torture and kill any apparent intelligent people: All the doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, bankers, journalists, etc as well as all the people who worked for the previous government were detained, tortured and most were killed. Anyone who wore glasses or spoke another language was deemed intelligent (regardless of what they worked at) and so was captured. Not only that, but the government also decided to kill their families and children (including young babies) just to prevent them getting revenge in later life!

In all, about 2 million people were killed within the 4 years - more than a quarter of the population! It’s amazing that all this happened in such recent history (Kadi can’t believe that Conor was born already.......”just barely!” Conor says). 40% of the population are under age 15. Everywhere we went, we would see older people and we couldn’t help but wonder what they went through during this time? What is most disturbing is that this was not Cambodia against another country, but Cambodians fighting amongst themselves. All the killers and torturers were the same people as the ones they tortured and killed. And now that the war is over, they are still living amongst everyone else. They could be tuktuk drivers or shopkeepers now.

The main Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 while in exile in Thailand, before he could be brought to justice. Some of the other leaders are currently being tried, but only one of them acknowledged the atrocities that took place and expresses any remorse. The others deny that they knew anything about the torture and killings.

So in Phnom Penh, we visited two main sites of this killing regime. The first was the S21 Museum, which used to be a high-school before the Khmer Rouge converted it to a prison/torture centre. We found the place very enlightening and disturbing. It had a lot of gruesome information about the people who were detained there and you could also see some of the cells that the prisoners were kept in. From there, everybody was eventually sent to the nearby “Killing Fields” which we also visited. There is not much to see here but it was the site of almost 200 separate mass graves, each containing around 100 bodies (but one contained 450 bodies, another contained 100 bodies of women and children). An average of 100 people were killed every day here, most were just beaten to death to save bullets. Chillingly, there is a monument in the centre of the place that contains a thousand human skulls. There were actually a few hundred of these killing fields throughout the country.

Despite the gruesome history, we found Phnom Penh to be a nice, lively city. It is a safe place and for the last 10 years, the borders have been open for tourists again. After a few days in Phnom Penh, our Vietnam Visa was processed and we left Cambodia for Vietnam.

We noticed that someone has rated the above story "funny" using our voting buttons below! Twisted sense of humour whoever it is ;p

Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

2009-08-03T07:58:00.000-07:00

We came to Siem Reap with the intention of visiting Angkor Wat – Cambodia’s biggest attraction and the largest temple in the world. But it’s wet season here and the weather gods didn’t cooperate, so we ended up spending the a few days just hanging around the city and trying not to get pissed on. During one short pause in the rain, we visited the nearby “floating village”…. basically a community of hundreds of boats in which people live. As part of the community, there is also a floating school, a floating basketball/volleyball court, a floating police station, a floating restaurant, a floating church and a number of floating shops! There was also a crocodile farm and many of the children floated around in little basins and played with snakes!

Siem Reap itself is a nice enough city, but it can only hold your attention for so long. So thankfully the weather gods eventually smiled on us and the rain finally stopped, allowing us to check out the nearby famous ruins.

So what can we say about the ruins at Angkor Wat? Well they really are very very big. They are very old (about 1000 years) and it’s amazing that they are still standing. They were used as the set in the film Tomb Raider. There are many ruins nearby that are also pretty spectacular (one set has a bunch of large trees growing through the structure and it is interesting to watch how the roots have grown around and crumbled many of the very large walls). And one temple had 260 faces carved into the rock, looking down on us and being mysterious. All in all we have to admit that we were fairly impressed by everything but one day was enough for us….there is only so much enjoyment you can get from looking at temples and ruins, and we were thankful that we hadn’t visited any temples since Bangkok over a month ago.

Oh yeah, we couldn’t possibly finish our report on Siem Reap without talking about the fish massage. Basically, it’s a large paddling pool filled with little fish, you dip your feet in and they EAT away at the dead skin on your feet. Of course we had to try it and it was the most unusual sensation ever! The fish must have been fairly hungry as they really swarmed our feet and didn’t let up for the 10 minutes. Couldn’t call it therapeutic though…..we just found it ticklish and Conor couldn’t stop laughing the whole time.

From Laos to Cambodia

2009-07-31T04:18:00.000-07:00

Warning: Long post alert! You may want to get a cup of tea before reading!

We often update our blog with activities we do or sights we see, but for a change, we figured we’d let you know what we go through when travelling from A to B.....in this case, from Don Det Island in Laos to Siem Reap in Cambodia. The trip would be a day and a half of travelling with an overnight stop in some town in Cambodia. We bought our ticket the night before and the travel agent talked about VIP buses, a guide to assist us at the border crossing, and travel duration. The truth, as usual, is very different from what we were told.

06.30 Alarm goes off. It’s raining outside. Snooze.
07.00 Alarm goes off again. Wake up. Get up. Too late for a shower. Pack bags.
07.30 Find a place for breakfast. Order French toast (we don’t bother with Asian breakfasts, not since we were offered curried fish in Thailand). The breakfast arrives but the French toast was deep-fried rather than pan-fried. Also the tea already has sugar added....too much. The food in Asia is usually very good but occasionally they do get it wrong.
08.00 Go to the dock to meet the boat. There are a bunch of small boats there and a bunch of backpackers. Nobody knows where to go. We eventually find a boatman who’ll accept our ticket and bring us back to the mainland.
08.30 On the mainland, we are led down the road to a shelter. People are standing around. Nobody knows what is happening. Nobody is doing anything.
08.45 Still standing around. Some crazy Asian music is playing in the background....sounds like a cat being killed, accompanied by drums. A man walks by holding 3 chickens by the legs. They are plucked but still alive. Too early in the morning for all this.
09.00 A man comes in eventually, finds us, and points at a nearby minibus. We get on.
09.01 Man comes back, tells us we are on the wrong bus. We get off.
09.05 Find a new minibus (the correct one) but there’s only one seat left. They try to separate us on different busses. We refuse and squeeze into the front beside the driver. Sorted. It is starting to get hot already and people in the back ask about air-conditioning. The driver says fresh air is better, and so opens the windows, but we are not moving and there is no breeze, so it is still hot.
09.15 Bus eventually pulls out.

09.30 Arrive at Laos-Cambodia border. We had heard about corruption of border guards but had been told we would have a guide to negotiate things. No sign of any guide here. We go to Laos departure office. They stamp our passports, then look for $2 each (US dollars) to get them back. We act shocked. What is the $2 for? we ask. Passport stamp, they say. We don’t want any stamps in our passport, we say. Still no good, they have our passports. So we tell them that we don’t have $4. Ok 40,000 kip, they say (the equivalent in Laos currency). We give them 27,000 kip instead and tell them it’s all we have, showing them an empty wallet (we actually had about 700,000 kip stashed elsewhere but had prepared our wallet for this). They give us our passports back. A minor victory :)

09.45 We walk across the border to the Cambodia side. More fun and games. We need a Visa first. A sign declares that the Visa fee is $23 each. We know that officially it should be $20, so the extra $3 is their extra take. No way around it – bastards. Next, we need our passports stamped (on the Cambodia side). A queue of backpackers has already formed, and this time there is no discussion, the border guards want $1 before you get your passport back. The money is going straight into their pockets (literally). As Conor went to retrieve his passport, the guard just waited until he took his dollar out. As Conor passed over the dollar, he flicked it away just as the border guard was about to reach it, and at the same time snatched his passport back. The guard has to bend down and pick it up. May not have been a victory but we felt good disrespecting them like that. (The money may not seem much but when you consider that we are living on less than €15 a day each, that our accommodation on Don Det cost us €2.50, and that our meals cost €2-€3 each, then you will appreciate how much these bribes are. In any event, we disagree with the principle of paying them.)
10.30 We walk into Cambodia and there is no sign of our VIP bus. There is a minibus or two, a few motorbikes and what looks like a beat-up old bus. No guide. No one telling us where to go. There is on one to ask. We stand around in a small group with other backpackers. We eventually learn that the beat up old bus is our VIP bus. We all file on and take a seat. They are small and cramped (Asian sized). There is absolutely no room for all the bags, so once people are sitting down, the bags (which had all been left outside) are loaded into the centre aisle. Still some confusion about this bus since, from speaking to other backpackers, we have learned that we are all going to different destinations.
11.05 Bus pulls off.
12.15 Bus pulls into a small town in the middle of nowhere and stops outside a shack. Nobody knows what is happening. Bags are taken off, followed by backpackers.
12.20 We discover it is a lunch spot. We order and eat food which is uneventful. Safe options, curry chicken and chicken fried rice. We do get screwed on the currency exchange but you have to eat. We sit and wait to see what happens next. Westlife play on the radio. A little scooter motorbike drives by with a whole family on it (mother, father and 3 children....they just all seem to fit somehow). Another scooter drives by with someone carrying a large kitchen table on the back. Not so unusual in this part of the world. Nobody even looks.
13.20 After sitting around for 30 minutes wondering what happens next, the Siem Reap travellers (us) are told to get back on the bus. Bags are loaded on. For some reason, following the change in passengers, there are now more passengers than seats. Thankfully we have our original seats, but there is some commotion when the last 2 passengers are told to sit on the floor...for the remaining 5 hours of the journey.
13.35 This is resolved when it is discovered that there are two seats on the back row. The bags and the people are switched and the journey resumes. It is a long and painful trip. The bus seems to have no suspension and as we are sitting above the wheel, we catch every bump on the rough uneven roads. Cambodian roads don’t have much traffic so people and animals constantly walk in the middle of the road, so the driver is constantly blaring the horn.

16.45 Driver needs to go to the toilet. The bus pulls in to the side of the road and he gets out. As we are waiting, someone from the back decides she needs to go too so climbs out over the bags and goes too. Soon, the whole bus unloads (everyone climbing over the bags in the centre) for a pee-break or smoke-break. The chance to stretch our legs feels really good! Then back on the bus.
18.20 We eventually arrive in Kampong Cham (our overnight stopping point). The lights of the city are a welcome sight. As we pull in, we notice a very large group of people by the waterfront doing some sort of coordinated dance, or step aerobics or something. Very strange. We find a guest house, get some food and settle in for the night, very glad that the bus journey is over for now. Early start tomorrow morning again.

Next Day
06.00 Alarm goes off. Snooze.
06.20 Alarm goes off again. Get up. Get dressed.
06.30 Find a nice place for breakfast. Beans on toast. Not bad actually, although Conor’s tea came with a lime, and Kadi’s shake tasted of yogurt.
07.00 Go back to bus stop to meet bus at arranged time. No sign of bus. No sign of guide. No sign of other backpackers. So we wait.
07.15 The guide from the bus comes along and gives us a new ticket for the journey to Siem Reap. We sit and wait some more. A local drives by on a scooter, somehow balancing 6 stacked boxes on the back (they are not even tied down). They look like they’re ready to fall off at any moment but again, no one even bats an eye-lid.
07.20 Our bus pulls up and we get on. Compared to yesterday, this is a luxury bus! It has spacious reclining seats, air con and luggage storage. Ahhh the luxury :) But of course it was too good to be true. Within minutes the “entertainment system” is started up: They have a tv up the front blasting out Cambodian music....sounds like a cross between X-Factor rejects and a televangelist preacher. Ear plugs and a book pass the time.

10.05 Bus pulls into a roadside rest area for a break. Some children come along and beg quite aggressively (“money, money, money”). We stroll around looking at the different foods offered in the restaurant but we’re not really hungry. We come across a pot with something unusual inside. Try to figure out what it is and then realise they are cooked turtles...full bodies with shells. They must have been boiled or something. No thanks.

10.30 Back on the bus and off we go again.
12.00 We finally pull into Siem Reap. There is a flurry of tuk tuk drivers outside waiting for the backpackers. As we get out, we notice one has a sign with Conor’s name on it. He says he was connected with our guesthouse last night and wants to bring us somewhere cheap. As a rule, we generally avoid getting brought anywhere suggested by a tuk tuk as they operate off commission (which we would be paying indirectly) and also, once they have you, it’s hard to shake them off as they want to bring you to a restaurant, or, in this case, bring us on a tour of the nearby temples. So we declined and got our own transport to the city centre.

12.20 We needed some cash so found an ATM and took out $115 (they use US Dollars here). Machine helpfully asks if we want large notes, small notes, or a mixture, so we select a mixture. It gives us a $5 note, a $10 note and get this.....a $100 note! Don’t know where we are going to find anyone with change for that! We use the machine again and take out $200 (this time it gives us all $5 notes).
12.25 Off to find somewhere to stay. Every time we stopped to check our map, we were harassed by more tuk tuk drivers. One in particular was shouting at us from across the street and ironically waving a sign reading “Tuk Tuk NO HASSLE”.
12.40 We eventually find a nice guest house not far from the centre. After our previous few days and our time without electricity on the Four Thousand Islands, we were delighted to spend a little bit more and get a room with air-con, fridge, etc! Now, off to see Siem Reap!

Ok, hope this post wasn’t too long and that it gives you a flavour of some of the issues we encounter in changing cities and changing countries!

Further South into Laos

2009-07-30T04:21:00.000-07:00

Next, we headed to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and met up with some travelling friends. Not much to say about this city really, it only has about 200,000 people but it was a welcome stopover for a few days for us while we enjoyed air-con, good coffee and nice restaurants. Recently, the heat here has been unbearable so a few days of doing nothing was just what we needed. One interesting construction they have is a large monument like the Arc de Triomphe. However, it was actually built with cement donated by the USA for construction of a new airport, so it is known as the “vertical runway”. We also visited their National Museum which has to be one of the worst ever. ...so bad it was funny! It had plenty of photos and objects with no description whatsoever, for example, a large stone with some engravings on it and a sign saying that it was “many hundreds of years old”. Elsewhere, there was a collection of guns with the simple sign: Don’t Touch! We actually got stuck inside the museum because after we entered, a thunderous downpour started outside – we couldn’t think of anywhere worse to be trapped!

From there, we took an overnight sleeper bus right down to the southern tip of Laos...the “Four Thousand Islands”. The bus itself was interesting as there were no seats, just bunkbeds (simple metal ones like from a dorm). We were glad of somewhere to lie down for the overnight trip but some of the other passengers weren’t so pleased when they realised that they had to share a bed with a stranger – the beds were intended for 2 people but were narrower than a single bed (just a seat width for each person).

Considering that Laos doesn’t have any sea or big lakes, it is perhaps unusual that it has any islands at all but these are formed within the massive Mekong river. There may not be 4000 but there sure are a lot. We stayed on one of the islands (called Don Det) which had no electricity (apart from generators from 6pm-10pm). We had been hoping to see some of real Laos and finally got the chance here. We rented bikes and took off into the rural farmland in the middle of the island. It is amazing how basic many of the houses are, usually just a few simple wooden walls, with no running water and no bathroom (everybody washed in the river). Most houses had a few chickens running around and usually have a few lost children aswell. The people all seem to work either as fishermen or farmers, plenty of women were out “picking rice” in the paddy-fields (we’re still not quite sure where the rice comes from) and the men (boys) are often seen working the land with some crude ploughing device pulled by a buffalo or something. One thing that did surprise us though, especially considering the limited electricity.....many houses seemed to have satellite dishes outside and a lot of locals also seemed to have mobile phones. One house we walked by, we saw a woman outside washing herself standing inside a big basin, while at the same talking on a mobile phone.

Afterwards we took our bikes to check out a local waterfall (not so impressive) and then a short boat trip to go out and see some river dolphins (impressive but difficult to see in the murky water).

Postcard Competition - Winner

2009-07-29T03:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, thanks to those who entered the postcard "caption" competition. It was tough but we thought the best one was from:

Fearghal King!

So Fearghal, send us your address and we'll get a postcard out to you!

Strange things in this part of the world!

2009-07-24T01:11:00.001-07:00

Oh yeah.....we forgot to mention in the last post: One day when Conor was out walking on his own in Vang Vieng, he came across....get this....a chicken with FOUR LEGS!

Yes, believe it or not, but it had two normal chicken legs, and then it had two EXTRA chicken legs stuck out the back. It didn't walk on them or anything but they were clearly legs (had toes and everything). Unfortunately no photos :(

Henry's comment:
yeah, you have photographed all 400
Kädi's monkey petting sessions and, when you suddenly see
four-legged-chicken, you don't have a camera:)

Ok, well we actually do have a few photos but they aren't great....but if you insist. Check out the photo below. You may want to click to enlarge (if possible). Those are two right feet you can see there.

Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng (Laos)

2009-07-22T07:23:00.000-07:00

The town of Luang Prabang has a strange custom. It is home to hundreds of monks and every morning, they take to the streets and line up to collect food donations from the local residents. Each monk carries his own food tin and walks down the main road, where the locals put some offering into it. We’re not quite sure where the tradition started but it sure seemed odd. We got up at 5.30am one morning to witness the strange event. We were happy that there were very few tourists up doing it – it is mostly locals. It is not common in this part of the world to participate in any activity that has more locals than tourists doing it.

Continuing further South in Laos, we made our way to Vang Vieng. Our reason for stopping in here was to try “Tubing”. All over South East Asia, we’d seen plenty of backpackers wearing “Vang Vieng Tubing” t-shirts so it is well and truly hyped and we were really looking forward to it. By this stage, we had teamed up with a group of 8 other travellers that we had met on the slow boat: a Canadian couple, two Swedish brothers, two Irish girls, an American guy and a German guy. We got on really well with this group and they are the ones who made our trip to Vang Vieng so memorable. We'll miss you guys!

So what is tubing?

It’s fairly simple really. Basically, you just float down a 5km stretch of river lounging on an old inflatable tube from inside a tractor tyre. The whole thing is made more interesting by having a bunch of bars littered along the riverbanks which have a range of activities/games such as mud tug-of-war, mud volleyball and giant slides, zip wires and trapeze swings all designed to drop you into the water from great height. Despite the high numbers of extremely drunk 18 year olds who were probably let out of home for the first time, we all had a great time and it did actually live up to the event it promised to be.

Vang Vieng itself is surrounded by fantastic scenery and should be a beautiful place (we spent a day on bikes exploring some local caves, and another day kayaking down the river) but the town is spoiled by the numerous tacky bars/restaurants/tour companies/ etc that have removed any trace of charm it might once have had and we’ll be happy to leave it tomorrow as we head further South.

Oh yeah....one funny thing we’ve seen quite a bit of here is people on motorbikes or bicycles using umbrellas!

Postcard Competition

2009-07-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

Come up with a suitable caption for the above photo. The best one wins a postcard! (Stick them in the "comments" section.)

Two Long Days on the Slow Boat

2009-07-19T07:03:00.001-07:00

A typical backpacker entry into Laos from Northern Thailand is to cross the border at a place called Huay Xai, and take a boat down the Mekong River for 2 days into Luang Prabang. (An alternative is to take a faster speedboat that covers the distance in one day, but is smaller, louder and significantly more dangerous....we saw a few pass us and the passengers were wearing crash helmets!)

The slow boat was not particularly comfortable...or rather, it was uncomfortable: it was way overcrowded so there was not much room, there were just wooden benches (although you could buy a cushion) and the backrest for our bench broke within a few hours, there were a few drinks and crisps for sale on the boat at way overinflated prices. It looked like it was going to be a LONG two days, and it was! The boat made numerous stops along the way to pick up and drop off a few locals, and at one stage a woman got on carrying a bunch of live fish on a line. We later spotted these fish wriggling in a bucket in the non-too-hygienic toilet down the back!

We spent the night at a cute little town called Pak Beng half-way down the river whose sole function seems to be to serve the backpackers from the boat. It was just full of little stalls, restaurants and guesthouses. Interestingly it had no mains electricity supply and the town pretty much shut down at 11pm when the local generators went off.

However, being cramped in a confined space with so many backpackers proved to be a great way to meet people (Conor even met another actuary!) and we made a bunch of friends on that boat. The time passed over card games, games of chess, guitar playing, recounting travel stories, book reading, ipod listening and talking about people’s phobias (some of the more interesting ones included a fear of fish, and a fear of necks!) In the end, we actually had a great time on the boat, but were glad to step onto dry land when the boat finally pulled into Luang Prabang.

Last few days in Thailand

2009-07-19T06:55:00.000-07:00

Chiang Mai turned out to be a lovely little city so we spent a few days there just hanging out. Our hostel had a nice swimming pool which was perfect for cooling down in each day. During our last few days, we occupied ourselves doing....

....a Thai cooking course.

....and we tried the Zorb-ball. (Basically, you just climb inside this big inflatable ball and they roll you down a hill onto a lake....where it floats).

Ants, Elephants and Rafting

2009-07-14T05:03:00.000-07:00

We’re just back from jungle trekking in the hills near Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand, visiting some tribal villages and paddy fields along the way.

Our guide was an odd character who wore a Dublin Gaelic football jersey and spoke like an electronic translator: good vocabulary but speaking very slowly with random pauses mid-sentence and most words with misplaced emphasis...sounding like a robot actually. He also sang random Lion King songs as we trekked!

Along the way we came across these local tribal children. They weren’t totally secluded from Western Culture, however. Rather than being fascinated with cameras like we might have expected, they were well used to them, and always insisted on doing some “cool” pose for the photo....like something from a teen magazine.

Camp.....earlier that day, we had commented on the number of ants we spotted on the trail. Someone observed that there are apparently more ants in the world than grains of sand. Interesting information, we thought, but didn’t really believe it. Moving on...our camp was a makeshift hut from bamboo. We all slept on mats on the floor in the one room. It appeared relatively comfy at first (for a jungle camp) but as we drifted off to sleep, we noticed occasional nipping and itching. It seemed that there were “one or two” ants in the hut, so we squished the ones we saw, moved around on the floor a bit, and went back to sleep. But the biting and itching got progressively worse as the night went on. We found ourselves not really getting to sleep because as we drifted off, we would soon have to shuffle around again to shake off the ants, so we could never really relax. It got worse and by 2am we were still awake and looking around the room we realised that ALL of our fellow campers were up dealing with their own personal ant crisis. The little buggers were everywhere! By this stage, one chain of ants had made a busy path going right across Conor’s pillow, Kadi had an ant in her ear, another girl had a number of ants in her hair. They were everywhere and it got very frustrating. We eventually got tired of constantly squishing them one by one so we went back to our insect repellent and after trying it on a small sample of ants (they didn’t like it)...we put plenty of it all over ourselves, and then sprayed it in a big circle all around our bed/mat. Thankfully, this seemed to do the trick and we had a relatively peaceful night after that....but used more than half a bottle of insect repellent in the process!

As part of the trek, we got to do some elephant riding :) We had only really seen elephants in a zoo before but seeing them up close (and sitting on top of them) you just realise how big they actually are, and they are huge! (Interestingly, elephants are apparently native to this part of the world but they’re not the sort of animals you see around the place. However, as we were being driven home later, our jeep passed a guy on the side of the road who was actually riding an elephant. He looked so casual about it that he may just have been going down to the shops for some milk!)

We finished off the trek with some rafting down a local river. When we saw the rafts first, we weren’t particularly excited because we actually did a few hours of rafting when we were in Jamaica. But then we learned that there would be no guide for this stage of the trek and we were responsible for navigating the raft down the river, it proved to be a lot more fun....crashing into the sides and submerged rocks as we went along.

Petting Tigers in Chiang Mai

2009-07-13T21:48:00.000-07:00

Back in Thailand! We visited a place in Chiang Mai, where you could go into a cage with Tigers (little cubs up to big cats). They were fairly tame and we were expecting them to be extremely well behaved....well, they’d want to be if you are letting tourists in with them. But surprisingly we still had to sign waivers saying that we wouldn’t sue if they attacked us (why would they....they’re tame aren’t they?)

Well tigers are still dangerous animals and although they allow you to pet them, there are all sorts of rules like: don’t touch their head/face and don’t touch their paws. It turns out that they do actually bite sometimes....the staff guy showed us some scars on his arms from when they got a little too “playful”.

But thankfully we didn’t get bitten :P

Kuala Lumpur

2009-07-09T01:43:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in our previous post, we never intended to see Kuala Lumpur on this trip but since our flights brought us through there, we decided to make the most of the opportunity and spend a few days checking out the Malaysian capital.

KL, as it’s known locally, is quite a bit more cosmopolitan than we’ve been used to in recent weeks. It has plenty of large skyscrapers, nice parks, shopping centres, restaurants and coffee shops and is a bit more expensive than our recent destinations (but still cheap compared to Ireland). After spending a week in smelly Semporna, we decided to relax our budget a bit and enjoy a few days of relative luxury before heading back into Thailand.

There is not actually that much to do in KL apart from shopping and checking out the sights, but we found the city centre parks to be a great place to just lounge around and chill out. KL is home to some fantastic skyscrapers including the “twin” Petronas Towers (once the tallest skyscrapers in the world) and the KL Tower (the 4th tallest communications tower in the world). We took a tour of the KL Tower right in the middle of a thunderstorm. It was cool watching lightening strike down in different places nearby – we’re surprised the tower itself didn’t get hit given its height. The Petronas Towers themselves are a pretty well known symbol for this region, and we were not expecting them to be so impressive, but they were! Particularly at night time when they were all lit up. You just have to see them to believe us!

By the way, there doesn’t seem to be any recession here.....everywhere we went we saw Job Vacancy notices and the Recruitment sections of the newspapers were packed.

Leaving Borneo

2009-07-06T20:27:00.000-07:00

We’re just waiting for a flight to leave Borneo now. We are heading back to Northern Thailand, but since our flight has a stopover in Kuala Lumpur, we plan to spend a couple of days there having a look around.

Our bus ride to the airport here was a bit interesting. Some local children in front of us just stared at us constantly throughout the journey. And as we were getting off the bus, one girl discretely took a photo of Kadi with her camera phone!

Scuba Diving

2009-07-06T00:49:00.000-07:00

One of the things we were both very keen to do on this trip was learn to Scuba dive and we finally got a chance to do the PADI Open Water course here in Semporna, Borneo. Over the last number of days, we’ve been busying ourselves with the 3 day course and then did a further 6 dives over the next two days.

We consider this to be a great place to learn to dive as the weather was fantastic, the water was very clear and in our few dives here, we’ve seen some very interesting things such as...large sea turtles, rays, massive grouper fish, plenty of varied tropical fish, a large vertical sea wall, a toilet, loads of ship wrecks, large old submerged wooden towers, and even a fish eating another fish’s poo(!) In some ways, scuba diving reminded us of skydiving, what with all the equipment and being in a 3D world - except it’s a lot slower than skydiving and more mechanical, using buttons to go up and down.

We had one scary moment during our training when we heard an extremely loud metallic bang underwater. It sounded like someone’s tank had exploded and we all looked around to see what it was. It turns out that some locals were dynamite fishing nearby. Sound travels much faster and further underwater but it sure sounded close! :O

Semporna itself is a fairly unimpressive town. Quite dirty and smelly in places and we had to move out of our first hostel because we heard rats running around on the ceiling at night....and in our third hostel, we actually saw rats in our room! But it is the diving that brings people here and all the diving takes place off a number of the islands nearby and these are really nice places. There are plenty of people living on the islands and there’s an interesting story about them: They originally came from the Philippians (generations ago) after some dispute with the government. They established settlements on the islands and have been living there for quite some time. They are effectively nationless as they are not recognised as citizens of either the Philippians or Malaysia and so cannot go anywhere. They live by selling coconuts and fish. Some of the islands are very small (the size of maybe two football pitches) and some of the children don’t even go to school. The ones that live on the island are relatively lucky because others were just sent out to sea on a ship with nowhere to go. Special mention to Sinead, the wacky Irish girl we met on Mabul island who gave us a quick tour...including bring us to a great pancake stand :)

Monkeying around in Sepilok

2009-07-01T05:48:00.000-07:00

Watching and feeding monkeys seems to be a recurring event on our trip to date, but Kadi and Helen have still not had their fill and were very keen to visit the Orang-utan sanctuary in a place called Sepilok, north east Borneo, where they have one of just 4 orang-utan sanctuaries in the world.

Orang-utans live only in the islands of Borneo and Sumatra and are nearing extinction thanks to human interference. The sanctuary takes orphaned babies and tries to rehabilitate them, teaching them how to climb, and what to eat so that they can go back and survive in the wild. They are one of the more intelligent types of ape and this is evident in their very humanlike behaviour and expressions.

Most of the time, the orang-utans in the sanctuary are shy and stay hidden in the trees – only coming down to the feeding platforms to eat. But we were lucky that on our visit there, we came across one of them just sitting on the handrail on one of the trails, just posing for photos. She sat patiently for a few minutes before taking an interest in one of the tourist’s backpacks.....so she climbed down off the rail, ambled over to the tourist and started pulling at the bag. Two rangers were there now and tried to pull her back but she was much stronger and was having none of it.....having opened the zip at this stage and was rooting inside. Very funny to watch! The rangers did finally get her off the backpack and the orang-utan got a bit pissed off at this stage, so she just lay down on her back in the middle of the path....in a sulk. The rangers tried to coax her up but she just slapped them away.

After Sepilok, we said our goodbyes to Helen and John Paul who are moving on to Australia now. We are now on our way to Semporna where we hope to do the Open Water Scuba diving course. Semporna is a base for Sipadan and Mabul islands, which apparently have diving as good as the Great Barrier Reef.

Climbing Mount Kinabalu

2009-06-29T09:52:00.000-07:00

After a few days lounging around Kota Kinabalu (in Borneo), we decided to climb the nearby Mount Kinabalu. With a peak at 4095m (about 12,300ft) this is the highest mountain in South East Asia, and all the more impressive since it stands on its own and is not surrounded by other tall peaks. This was sure to guarantee a great view from the top!

Conor’s cousin, Thomas, had climbed it a few months before (and proposed to his fiancé at the top!) and had told us it was well worth doing. Getting one of the limited permits to actually climb the mountain proved to be a bit of an ordeal.....it would have helped if Thomas had warned us that it needed to be booked well in advance.... but thankfully due to a very last minute cancellation we got it at the last moment (literally 10 minutes before we set off to climb).

Well, getting a permit was hard, but climbing the mountain was much harder than we were expecting. We had already climbed two fairly deep Canyons on this trip so far (Grand Canyon in USA and Colca Canyon in Peru) so we considered ourselves relatively seasoned at such hikes, but Helen and JP had never actually climbed a mountain before so picking this one as their first surely was some challenge. Nevertheless, none of us were prepared for just how tough it was going to be. It was very steep and the conditions changed drastically during the climb (it was tropical heat at the bottom, thunderstorms in the middle, and almost freezing at the top) and the thinning air as we got higher didn’t help the breathing!

Day 1 involved a 6km hike up to the overnight resthouse about 2/3rds up. This was not too bad and we managed to do it in 5 hours. We were rewarded by a great sunset and then a lightning storm in the clouds down in the valley beneath us. Day 2 began at 2.30am (yes in the middle of the night) and we made the 3km hike up to the summit. The idea of the early start is such that you reach the top in time for sunrise. Sounds great but climbing in the dark is not something you ordinarily do and it didn’t help that all of our head-torches failed along the way (only giving out a minimal glow). The later stage of the hike involved pulling ourselves up very steep sections of rock with a rope! Anyway, you’ll be glad to hear that we did all make it up to the top and the sunrise was really spectacular, as was the view of the surrounding area, which gradually revealed itself as the morning got brighter.

The 9km hike down to the bottom afterwards was the real killer. The next day we were all walking around like 80-year-olds with our sore muscles but it was well worth the pain....we’re just not sure why!

Helen and John Paul!

2009-06-29T09:45:00.000-07:00

Throughout our trip we’ve been lucky to meet many friends along the way and it was great to now meet up with Helen and John Paul in Kota Kinabalu. Fearghal, you’ll be pleased to hear we had a few drinks in your name as promised!

A detour...

2009-06-23T17:52:00.000-07:00

After a relatively short time in Thailand, we have decided to make a last minute diversion from our intended travel route and get a flight to Malaysian Borneo, where we will meet Conor's cousin Helen and her boyfriend John-Paul before they head on to Australia. For anyone who knows JP, we will report back about whether that unfortunate facial growth is a disease or just bad Portugese taste :O

Ahhh....the freedom of being able to go anywhere we want is great :) We don't have a return flight out of Borneo and as we write this, we are checking out potential onward destinations from the in-flight magazine.

Kitesurfing

2009-06-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

After a few days in the Capital, the “temple tedium” (as Myra and Graham call it) set in and we decided to head south to a coastal town called Chuphon, hoping for a bit of kitesurfing.

(Along the way, our bus made a pit-stop at some roadside rest area and everyone got off. We weren’t quite sure what to do but we obviously stood out as clueless foreigners because one lady got our attention and led us into a back room where all the passengers were being served some food. The lady then brought us to her table and gestured for us to eat the food (helpfully demonstrating the motions of putting food into her mouth), and then proceeded to stare at Kadi continuously as she ate….presumably checking that she was doing it right!)

Chumphon itself is not a particularly noteworthy town (like a Thai version of Naas) but nice to see some non-touristy Thailand with real Thai people. As they don’t get many tourists, there was a distinctive lack of taxis, but nevertheless, we eventually found a Sawngthaew (basically a pickup truck with benches in the back) to take us to our final destination of Tung Wa Laen, a tiny beach town nearby.

We first went kitesurfing last summer but because we were tied up with the Irish skydiving record, we never really got into it and then the Irish winter came. So we wanted to do about a week here to shake off the cobwebs so we can start up again in Australia. As it turns out, this is not the best time of the year for it, as the wind is less predictable around now, but nevertheless, we’ve been out for a few hours each day and it’s great to be back doing it. The best thing about doing it here is the water is UNBELIEVABLY warm. It’s like being in a bath. You don’t need wetsuits and even after being out for a few hours, you just don’t get cold.

During the down time, our instructor brought us on a bit of a sightseeing tour of the area which included a temple with….guess what....more monkey feeding!

Bangkok

2009-06-21T21:57:00.000-07:00

So what about Bangkok?

It’s a very big place (7-10 million people depending on what source you look at) and very frantic.

A great spot to do some cheap shopping too (if you’re prepared to haggle away with the locals….but that can get tiring after a while)! They do like their fake merchandise though :o

Plenty of temples around. A lot of them are finished with pure gold (gold leaf) so they are VERY shiney. You have to cover up when you go in (wear long trousers and cover your shoulders). The monks are not allowed any direct contact with women.

It’s a serious offence to disrespect the King.

Some “helpful” locals have the scam of telling you that the place you’re trying to visit is closed (it isn’t) and instead strongly persuade you to go to some other attraction (which no doubt turns out to be somewhere they can sell you stuff). We had been warned about these guys and they’re already proving to be a nuisance.

Massages are widely available and great value.

They serve your meals with a fork and spoon! No knives here.

We’ve become college students again….well, according to the fake ISIC student cards we picked up on Khao San road anyway :)

From Christchurch to Bangkok

2009-06-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

We had intended to title this post: "From Christchurch to Krungthep mahanakhon amonratanokosin mahintara ayuthaya mahadilok popnopparat ratchathani burirom udomratchaniwet mahasathan amonpiman avatansathit sakkathattiya witsanukamprasit (aka Bangkok)"......but it wouldn't fit!

Believe it or not but that essay above is the formal official name for Thailand’s capital, Bangkok!

Our trip from Christchurch to Bangkok had a stopover in Sydney. It felt very odd hanging around the airport, being in Australia and looking out at the Sydney skyline, knowing that we’ll be living in this country when we finish this trip. Due to the cancellation of a flight, the airline actually wanted us to spend the night in Sydney and catch a new flight to Bangkok the next day. This would have been cool as we could have met up with Conor’s old flatmate, Barry (who lives in Sydney)….but unfortunately this wasn’t an option for us as if we left the airport, it would have activated our 1 year Visa, so they found us a new flight on a different airline. Oh well….see you in 3 months Barry and Emily!

Apart from Kadi being pulled aside twice for “random” security inspections by airport security, the trip was uneventful. Interestingly, the airports are now using heat sensitive cameras to scan arriving passengers to identify any with flu symptoms. This means that thankfully we haven’t caught the Swine Flu yet.

It’s funny how we’ve settled into the travelling lifestyle….on any normal holiday, you might arrange where you’re staying in advance, and have researched the country to some extent. The total of our preparation for Thailand involved downloading a chapter of the relevant guidebook from the Lonely Planet website the night before and having a quick scan through it before we got off the plane! We got a taxi to the tourist centre and arrived there at about 1am and looked for a place to stay (thanks to the delays involved in the flight cancellation, this was about 26 hours after we woke up that morning!) Even the next morning, we still weren’t quite sure where in Bangkok we were due to inconsistencies in spelling streets between our guidebook and the local map. (Because Thai’s don’t use the Roman alphabet, it is perhaps understandable that there are slight variations in how they might spell words in our letters, but “Jakkapong Road” and “Chakrabongse Road” are the same place? Come on!)

Anyway, first impressions of Bangkok: It is extremely hot and humid…..all the more noticeable because we’ve been in southern hemisphere winter for the last month or so.

Conor is not a fan of taxi drivers back in Ireland and the Bangkok variety are no different! You have the option of a fixed price or meter fare. On entry, the driver will always try to agree a fixed price on the basis that the meter fare will be ridiculously high (they are doing us a favour apparently)! As you might expect, the meter fare always turns out to be about ¼ of the original quoted price. (This practice can be particularly annoying sometimes because they will sometimes refuse you if you don’t want a fixed price!)

We did have to opportunity to take a ride in a Tuk Tuk (basically a 3 wheeled motorbike with a back seat and roof….often used by the locals for “see how many people you can squeeze into a Tuk Tuk” competitions). These taxi rides are like a rollercoaster providing some excitement as they weave through the busy city traffic, but unlike rollercoasters, they don’t have any seatbelts or safety restraints :O

Kadi loves all the New Zealand wildlife...

2009-06-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

There is so much cool and weird stuff on this side of the planet. Well… Conor doesn’t find that cool now, but I do and want to talk about it. So if you’re not much into the birds and flowers then you can skip this one.

So… there’s this mad looking moss on the trees that looks like an old man’s beard. It’s white and long and hanging down the branches everywhere. Like this…

Also there is this black one that looks like a disease (no picture).

Another thing that I didn’t get my head around was a fern tree (s6najala puu for Estonians). Ferns are not meant to be trees… They look like something surviving here from dinosaurs’ era. (We actually saw them in Jamaica too.)

These birds are called keas. They are really alpine parrots and they don’t seem to mind the snow much at all. Keas are very funny… they walk like they are drunk, they’re curious and smart and love to eat rubber (so maybe not that smart after all). I had a bit of trouble of taking pictures of them. No, not because they won’t stay still or fly away. But because he wanted to check out my camera and got too close for focus :P

These blue ones have oddly big feet and that’s why they walk funny too. Especially the chicks!

-Kadi

A stopover in New Zealand!

2009-06-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

After travelling for 3 months through the Americas, it’s nice to be taking a short break in New Zealand. Some of the simpler things that we appreciate (that we hadn’t really realised we were missing) are...

English – When everyone speaks a language we can understand, it makes things so much easier. Not to mention that we now fully understand food menus, supermarket items and the book shops have a load of titles we might actually want.

Tea – Being a British colony, they appreciate a good cup of tea. We’ve been drinking mostly coffee for the last 3 months, and surprisingly, South America didn’t have the great coffee we were expecting from it (some exceptions!) So it’s nice to have some nice normal tea again....they also have great coffee!

Carpets – Airports, apartments, hostels, bars, etc have carpets. Most places we’ve been so far (bar USA) have mostly stone/tiled/wooden floors. You just realise how comfy carpets are for lounging around in.

Yes...we are easily amused :)

When we arrived, we immediately went to Christchurch and met up with Myra and Graham, two of Conor’s old friends from Ireland who have been living here for the last 3 years. It was great to meet them and they were very hospitable during our short time here. Thanks guys! Especially for lending us the warm clothes for our stay...how can we forget that Chubaka outfit Graham!

Ok, New Zealand is a large enough country (bigger than the UK) split into two islands and with mountainous terrain, so there is only so much you can see in 1 week. We decided we’d rent a car and go for a road trip from the east coast to the west coast and loop back again. This gave us a chance to see some of the fantastic scenery, wildlife and geographical features that NZ has to offer such as.....Castle Hill, a bundle of interesting boulders perched on top of a dramatic hillside (the area resembles the ruins of an old castle and was used in the film Narnia apparently).....Pancake Rocks & Blow-holes, unusual shaped rocks with little tunnels carved out by the sea, and when the tide is high and waves are strong, they spurt out massive plumes of steam and foam.....but the nicest scenery around had to be the rugged snow-capped mountains, the valleys with rivers and lakes, and low cloud in between. No one place in particular stands out but the country seems to have unlimited impressive views.

But New Zealand is the adventure capital of the world and no trip there is complete without risking your life to some extent! So we spent an evening rock climbing with Graham (great fun), did a few hikes, and also got a chance to do a bungee jump off a bridge (Kadi’s first!) :)

One thing that struck us as odd about NZ was the place is very calm and quiet. The streets are empty, very few cars on the roads, coffee shops and restaurants have very few people in them, hostels and shops close up very early in the evening. Kiwi’s obviously live a different type of lifestyle....they get up early, tend to be fairly active (running/cycling/etc) and go to bed early. Something we were not expecting. But all in all, it was great to spend a week there between South America and South East Asia.

The Longest Night

2009-06-08T21:45:00.000-07:00

We've now left South America and landed in New Zealand, where we will stay for a week and meet Conor's old work mate Myra.

Aerolineas Argentinas are obviously the Ryanair of the Pacific...but all in all, the 13.5 hour flight was not as painful as we were expecting. Somewhere along the trip, we lost Monday and experienced 22 hours of darkness as we crossed the International Date Line and travelled the same direction as the sun (but way behind and just couldn't catch up with it).

Buenos Aires Continues...

2009-06-08T17:27:00.000-07:00

We spent the final few days in South America chilling out in Buenos Aires. Apart from a crazy pub crawl on the first night with a group from the hostel, we didn't do much else.

BA is a nice city, very much like a European capital but surprisingly cheap! So we stuffed ourselves with gorgeous but cheap steak and local wines :) You can get a great steak for €9 in a top quality restuarant....and you can also get a descent bottle of wine for €2.50.

Before we left, we fitted in a Tango show. Kadi liked it and Conor doesn't care about it.

A few more photos from Buenos Aires....

Small change in BA

2009-06-05T16:36:00.000-07:00

If there’s one thing that Argentinean vendors like more than large banknotes, it is small change. Whenever we pay for something with anything other than the exact amount, they always ask do we have anything smaller. When we say no, they put on an expression of concern, fumble in their pockets and under the till, and eventually (begrudgingly) give us the required change.

This reached new heights today when we went to visit an old Navy ship in the Buenos Aires docklands. The entrance fee was P$ 2 each (about 40c). We handed in a P$ 10 note, expecting P$ 6 in change. The guy uttered something in Spanish and gave the typical expression of concern, showing us the note. In return, we put on our well practiced lost look, tapping our pockets to show we had nothing smaller.

Even though he had the change in front of him (we could see it in the till), in the end he gave us back our money and let us onto the boat without paying at all. He’d rather let us on for free than hand out his precious change!

Hello Buenos Aires

2009-06-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

When we were originally working out the plan for our World Trip, we never intended to see Argentina. But when we went to actually buy the flights, we saw we had a connecting flight into Buenos Aires, so we decided to extend our stopover and spend a few days there. And it turned out to be a good decision, because what we've seen so far, we love! Think we'll need to make another trip back here.

Somewhere along the planning, we dropped the flight and decided we’d get the bus from Brazil....and what a bus it was! Fully reclining leather seats, individual tvs for everyone, meals, wine and champagne :) 17 hours being pampered for just €30.

Check out that luxury! The legs go up also :)

So we have now just arrived in Buenos Aires, midway through our trip, spending our last few days in the America continent before crossing the Pacific.

Iguazu Falls

2009-06-04T11:50:00.000-07:00

On the border between Brazil and Argentina (and Paraguay nearby) lie South America’s biggest waterfalls. It consists of 275 separate falls covering a distance of about 3km. We spent a day on the Brazil side first before moving into Argentina.

The Brazil side is pretty spectacular, allowing you to stand back and get a good wide view of the whole place, while also allowing you to get close to the actual falls. They’ve constructed little trails that lead you upriver and as you progress along, more and more falls are revealed to you, eventually bringing you to the biggest of them all, El Garganta del Diablo (“the Devil’s throat”).

After having visited the Brazilian side, it was hard to imagine what more the Argentinean side might have to offer. But we were not disappointed. The Argentinean side brings you right up close to the various falls, allowing you to peer over the edge and watch the water spill right over. The view of the Devil’s throat is amazing. It is difficult to describe the sheer volume of water that pours over the edge and the constant thundering sound as it hits the bottom. You don’t actually see the bottom because of the large mist cloud that forms there. It’s amazing that the lake feeding the waterfall hasn’t emptied itself yet there is just so much water falling....and this is apparently the “dry” season for the falls!

Rio de Janeiro (January River)

2009-06-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

"Tall and tan and young and lovely. The girl from ipanema goes walking. And when she passes, each one she passes goes - ah.... When she walks, shes like a samba. That swings so cool and sways so gentle. That when she passes, each one she passes goes - ooh....."

Take a large city. Give it a twisted coastline and a number of beaches. Place a few steep jagged mountains in the middle of it. Put a jungle around the far side of it. Fill it with a mix of people from around the world. Build a large statue on a big mountain in the centre of it. What have you got? Rio de Janeiro...a fantastic city with incredible natural beauty.

We expected that Rio would be nice to look at but we were amazed at just how stunning it actually is. We think that it is the odd shaped mountains that are scattered throughout that really make it. You just don't see them in a city normally. The city has two main viewing points (the statue of "Christ the Redeemer" and the "Sugar Loaf" mountain) and because of the varied landscape the city looks different from both viewpoints.

Unfortunately we had a few cloudy days during our stay there so our pictures just don't do it justice, but we'd highly recommend anyone in that neck of the woods to visit Rio and see for themselves (Marcel!)

Of course Rio has it's darker side aswell. There are apparently 700 slums and you can see them easily as they're on the hills throughout the city. But when you're smart enough, it's easy to stay out of trouble.

Oh yeah....and Kadi even got to do a bit more monkey feeding, with some wild monkeys on the Sugar Loaf :)

It was in Rio that we had a bit of an embarressing moment for our little "project". (More about our project later in the future.)

Sao Paulo

2009-05-30T17:14:00.000-07:00

Apologies for not updating the blog recently. Since arriving in Brazil last week, we’ve had limited access to internet.

When we touched down in Sao Paulo, it reminded us of being back in Dublin. Grey overcast skies, about 20 degrees C, and Marcel meeting us at the airport (Kadi’s old housemate from Dublin who has now moved back home to Brazil).

The first day or so in Sao Paulo was great, going to a few parties with local Brazilian people (including a Samba party), trying any of the fantastic local restaurants, and living it up in Marcel’s lovely apartment. But then Conor’s stomach decided not to cooperate anymore and he pretty much stayed in bed sick for the next 4 days trying various different drugs but to no avail.

We eventually left Sao Paulo a few days later than planned. Special thanks to Marcel and his mother Elza for looking after us so well in Sao Paulo.

It was nice to see another city that is not on the typical tourist’s checklist because you generally get a different experience from the other touristy places you might ordinarily visit (we probably would not have gone there except that we knew Marcel). For a start, we were meeting local Brazilians who speak the lingo and know the best places to go. You get to see some of the local hotspots that don’t even make it into the guidebooks (the place where Brazil declared its independence from Portugal, for example). Sao Paulo itself is not an insignificant city. It is very cosmopolitan! With its suburbs, it has a population of 20 million people...yes, 20 million people! With that brings a lot of poverty and crime, and on the night before we left, Marcel took us on a drive through some of the dodgier parts of the city (obviously not into the downright crazy places). It was an interesting sight, and not a place you’d like to walk along.

If you want to watch very good movies on the crime and drug-wars in Brazil, then download “The City of God (2002)” and “The Elite Squad (2007)”. They’re both in Portuguese so you’ll need to download appropriate subtitles aswell. They’re both set in Rio de Janeiro.....our next destination.

Leaving Peru

2009-05-21T12:46:00.001-07:00

We’ve now said goodbye to Fenton and Angela and have started our journey to Sao Paulo, Brazil. We have to say that after 2 weeks in the country, we thoroughly enjoyed our time here. Peru really has a lot to offer such as ancient historical sites, numerous trekking opportunities, fantastic scenery, great food, jungle excursions, cosy little country towns, as well as some lovely people. There are also many adventure activities on offer in various places like white-water rafting, mountain-biking, sand boarding and bungee jumping which unfortunately we never got a chance to try. If anyone was considering a trip here, we would highly recommend it! We are sorry to leave Peru, but at the same time, looking forward to Brazil, and meeting Marcel (Kadi’s old housemate from Dublin).

The Nasca Lines

2009-05-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

So about 2000 years ago these Nasca people decided to make big drawings into the sand in the desert. The lines were drawn by basically clearing stones out of the sand and they used these lines to form massive shapes or objects (such as a dog, a whale, a monkey, a spider, a tree, etc). These mysterious desert lines were known for quite some time, but it was only in the 1920’s, when commercial airliners began to fly overhead, that they noticed the lines actually formed different shapes and pictures. We took a 30 minute flight over them and got a great view of them (for all you skydivers, we flew in a Cessna 206 WITH SEATS AND A DOOR!)

Above is a photo of a large man drawn into a mountain (waving his hand saying "hello").

A monkey!

A spider in the sand (left), and (right) a bus shelter with a spider symbol recreated. These images are recreated all over the town.

Click on small photos to enlarge

2009-05-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

By the way, in case you didn't know, you can click on small photos to enlarge them. (Only seems to work the small photos.)

Colca Canyon – The deepest* canyon in the world

2009-05-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

We just spent 3 days with Fenton, hiking down into and then up out of Colca Canyon. It is apparently the deepest canyon in the world, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon (but the canyon next door is deeper).

Before any hiking, we stopped off at a viewing point for Andean Condors, which are the largest flying birds in the world. They have a 3m wingspan, and are 1m in height when standing. Every morning, they catch thermals rising out of the canyon and use this to lift them out. Very impressive to watch them glide just a few metres over our heads....making a swoosh sound like a parachute as they pass by.

The hiking itself was easy enough when spread over 3 days (with just 3-4 hours per day). Great scenery as you’d expect. The cool thing about the canyon is the little villages down at the bottom. They have no roads down to them and the only way to get to them is by hiking (or by mule if you’re a loser).

On the picture below left, those white streaks in the opposite side of the valley are the little villages (with no roads down to them).

* As our guide explained: “Colca Canyon is the deepest canyon in the world....well, there’s one nearby that’s about 150m deeper, but Colca Canyon is more famous so it’s the deepest.” Go figure!

Machu Picchu

2009-05-18T22:37:00.000-07:00

Apologies for lack of updates recently...we've been out of coverage a bit.

After the jungle, we returned to Cusco and met our friends from Ireland, Fenton and Angela, and together made our way up to Machu Picchu by train.

Machu Picchu is amazing. It is another of the New Seven Wonders of the World and is apparently South America’s number 1 tourist attraction. Basically, it is an abandoned ancient Inca city that is very well preserved (since it was never found by the Spanish). It is not just a ruin of one old castle/temple/building, it is a full proper city with all the streets, guesthouses, residential houses, temples, observatory, etc. Apart from a few fallen walls (and roofs) the city is practically entirely as it was when it was deserted over 500 years ago. It was only discovered relatively recently – in 1911. In terms of its size, it would only be a small town in today’s terms with only 500-750 people living there, but it was regarded as a city back in its day.

What is impressive about Machu Picchu is that it is nestled up high in the Andes, on top of very steep mountainside, with absolutely terrific views in all directions. The site includes another peak (on top of the mountain) called Wayna Picchu which involved a 1 hour hike up very steep steps. When we made this hike, we were rewarded by even more fantastic views – definitely the highlight of the visit. It was especially a privilege to climb Wayna Picchu as only the first 400 people in are allowed to climb it. Considering that there are 3,000 to 5,000 visitors a day, this involved us queuing for the bus from 5am and even then we were 345 on the list. To celebrate conquering Wayna Picchu, we played a game of “extreme frisbee” on the rocks at the very top.

Into the Jungle

2009-05-14T14:34:00.000-07:00

We just spent 4 days in the Amazon Rainforest at an “ecolodge” called the Explorer’s Inn in the Tambopata National Reserve. Even though the place was fairly remote (it was about 3 hours by boat up a river into the jungle) and had practically no electricity, we were impressed with the high level of food and service available. On one night, we went camping a further 3 hours up river and there were 4 members of staff serving just us two (one boat driver, one guide, one chef and another support guy). As well as our own tent (which they erected for us) they had effectively built a separate kitchen and dining room tent (with proper table and chairs) as well as put candles throughout....all just for us. Very unreal.

It was all good but very hot and sticky. Humidity was apparently close to 100%. Don’t know what that means but it’s the maximum (when we came back, we had to wash ALL our clothes...even the ones we didn’t wear, because they were all damp).

When we weren’t being served and looked after, we spent the remaining time either on hikes with our guide, or relaxing. During the 4 days, we got to see a good amount of wild animals.

No sooner had we stepped off the boat on arrival, than we saw monkeys in the tree above us. We saw a number more over the next few days and Kadi even got to feed one. As well as monkeys, we saw....

Snakes! A tarantula! Loads of Macaws (like a big parrot). Caimans (a type of crocodile). Capibaras (giant guinea pigs). Toucan (the bird from the old Guinness ads). A herd of jungle pigs (sorry no photo). “Stinky bird”. Giant sea otters. Turtles. Loads of big colourful butterflies. Plenty of big insects and frogs. Jungle turkey and chicken. We never saw any Piranhas although they were lurking in a nearby lake that we took a boat ride on.

This part of the planet is very diversified and as well as varied animals, birds and insects, there are also a huge number of interesting plants around. The bark of one tree smelled like garlic, and another smelled like menthol (it was actually a menthol tree). Some of the plants are used as natural remedies (to treat snake bites for example) and we tasted some leaves that had the effect of numbing our mouths like a dentist injection....good for tooth aches apparently. We also saw some glow-in-the-dark fungus (real cool)!

Oh....and hi to the 3 Canadians: Jason, Bill and Paul. It was nice meeting you guys and sorry we couldn't spend more time with you.

Overall, it was a great experience. Love the jungle :)

Into the Southern Hemisphere!

2009-05-06T14:59:00.000-07:00

So we’ve now left Jamaica and the Northern Hemisphere and entered Peru and the Southern Hemisphere. It was quite a long night with our journey broken up into 3 flights. The first stop was into Panama City. Although it was dark and we never got to see the Panama Canal, from the plane we did see the lights of a LOAD of ships out in the water waiting their turn to go through the canal. Quite impressive.

When we finally arrived in Lima (our second stop), Conor naturally rushed off to check the most important thing....does the water in the toilet swirl the other way down here? Well, we can disappointingly conclude from our experiments to date that NO, it doesn’t! It still seems to go counter clockwise – the same as we observed from up north. Perhaps it is more to do with the toilet design than the coriolis effect from the spinning of the Earth. We’ll keep observing...

On a side note, there were plenty of people in the airport wearing face masks, presumably as some protection against the swine flu. We thought it was quite funny to cough sickly whenever these people passed by :)

Our final flight brought us to Cusco, and our initial impressions were...wow, this is a bit chilly! Having spent the last few weeks in the tropical sunshine of Jamaica, Cuba and Mexico, it was a while since we needed long sleeves or socks! But Cusco is actually 11,oooft / 3,500m up in the mountains (one of the highest cities on the planet). This means that the nights and mornings can be fairly cold, but during the day when the sun is up, it is actually quite hot. We also noticed fairly quickly the effects of the thinner air up here. You can feel quite breathless and a bit dizzy at times from only mildly strenuous tasks. Apparently takes a day or two to adjust.

Our reasons for coming to Cusco, are to visit the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu and also to visit the Amazon rainforest. So tomorrow, we’ll set off for a 4 day excursion into the Amazon jungle (this inevitably means we’ll be out of contact until next Monday/Tuesday). We’ll update you on how we get on when we come back. We also plan to meet our friend from Ireland, Fenton, here next week, so looking forward to that.

Oh yeah....and for those who may not know, they actually eat guinea pigs here in Peru, and we got a glimpse of our first specimen on a roadside stall near our hostel....

North East Jamaica

2009-05-03T21:06:00.000-07:00

We rented a car with Ena and spent a few days up on the North East corner of the island in a sleepy little fishing village called Port Antonio. We didn’t spend much time there but managed to squeeze in swimming in two waterfalls and a rafting trip down 8 miles of the Rio Grande River. While the rafting started out nice and sunny, it’s getting into the wet season here in Jamaica so we soon found ourselves in a torrential downpour, sheltering under banana trees at the side of the river! They also have a beautiful lagoon (known as the "World Famous Blue Lagoon") where several movies have been shot....apparently.

Some photos....(click to enlarge)