Good Morning Vietnam!

Right now I'm in Can Tho - a fairly large city in Vietnam situated on the Mekong Delta. But before I get into thoughts about Vietnam, let me tell you about how we arrived here.


Early May, Bianca and I arrived in Hanoi after a 30 hour mission by bus and train from the southern tip of Laos. We left Laos at 7:30 pm on a local bus destined for the Vietnam border at Lao Bao. This bus was loaded to the ceiling with approx. 6 tonnes of rice from Thailand packed in sacks labelled sugar (I know right?), and a whole bunch of other stuff and people. Ballads of love and loss spewed sporadically from broken speakers at max volume. A shrine with twinkling christmas lights adorned the front of the bus, and there was just enough space on top of sacks of rice, and between parcels for me to hug my knees to my chest while my feet hung out the window of the person who was technically supposed to be sitting in front of me, but was pretty much on my lap. There was only space on the bus for about 20 people (and I don't mean seats, I mean storage space), 2 of which were women from the Czech Republic. The close quarters and ear splitting bursts of noise from overhead were enough to finally drive one of these women to a fit of rage at about 2:30 in the morning. Bianca and I finally burst out laughing at our situation, busted open some chips and soy milk, and made friends whith the less-than-impressed women. At 4:00 am we stopped 1 km from the border, and were told that we would wait until 6:30 for the border to open. Bianca and I then fell asleep. Half an hour later we were woken up by a Vietnamese man hurriedly asking for our passports and 30 000 kip (approximately 4 Canadian dollars). Everyone else had left the bus. Awesome. Naturally I said no. Why would I pay some guy to steal my passport while I'm trying to cross a border? He starts talking in anxious broken english about how the border is far away, and that the bus is leaving at 7:00 with or without us. If we try and take our own passports to the officials, we will be too slow and get left behind. He'll do it for us. Re he he heally batman. Seeing as there was still plenty of time, and being about as willing to hand over my passport as I would be to drink motor oil, I went in search of a second opinion. This is how we met Tony.

Tony is an expat who has been living in Vietnam for about 8 years, but can't stand the place. He doesn't trust most of the people, and he doesn't like that young, beautiful women go for ugly, rich foreign men. He stays, however, because he can make money here. He knows when people are trying to rip him off (which is pretty much all the time), and he knows his way around the wall of Communism. He kindly shared some advice with us on the night of our border crossing, and has since proven to be a nice friend to have in the country.

So we handed over our passports complete with 'rush job' money, and bought some local currency at a good rate. Side note- Tony didn't seem to think that Vietnam needed to be importing rice- especially not just 6 tonnes of it on a tin can bus.

So I ordered a strong cup of coffee and a beer, because it was 5:00 in the morning, and I was sitting on suspicious parcels at the Vietnam border without a passport.

Chinese food, Japanese wife, American life

The Nepali dream.

Hello!

We are in northern Thailand. I have internet!
Bianca and I have started a tandem blog, and she is much better at keeping that updated than I am. If you are interested, the address is twentydollarsaday.blogspot.com

Coles notes on recent happenings:
- been to Nepal and back.
- travelled northern Thailand
- about to learn some serious Muay Thai ass kick-age
- going to Laos soon

For details you may want to check the other blog! I'll throw some more stuff up here from time to time, but I'm bloody useless with slow internet connections. I get bored and go in search of mangoes and sticky rice. mmmm. People are playing badminton in the street outside. Bianca decided they must be Canadian because only Canadians are willing/enjoy dodging cars whilst playing sports. We shall see in a couple of minutes.

Adieu

New Zealand in a Paua Shell

I know you're all overwhelmed by my non-stop blogging. I apologize for the inconsistency, though I must admit that it will probably get worse for the next little while. Bianca and I are getting on a plane to Kathmandu in a few hours, and we'll be on trail for a few weeks.

I just got back from New Zealand, and thought I'd share excerpts from a couple of emails I wrote during (or about) my stay. I only saw the southern half of the south island, but it was wicked. If you've ever thought about visiting New Zealand, do it. You can stay with me, because I'll be living there. 

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Having an absolutely fabulous time. Bianca's mom Pauline picked me up from the airport at 1:00am, and I stayed 3 nights at their place in Methven (nights of the 30th, 31st, and 1st). Methven is a small town that thrives in the winter with ski season, and just has one Main St. that stretches about 2 blocks. Really cute. While I was there they took me fishing in a jet boat up the Rakaia river. The water was turquoise blue like the carribean, and fresh. Mountains rose up all around us, so I climbed Mt. Summers. From the top I could see clear across the country. On my way down the mountain a thick cloud front came in. I was level with the top of the clouds, and it was possibly the coolest thing I've seen on a hike. The edge of the clouds came charging over the ridge in front of me like an army up to no good, and fingery wisps of cloud swept through every valley and trough as if it was searching, and going to pick up anyone in it's path and toss them away. Suddenly I was wrapped in a musky eerie fog. It was great.
Pete and Pauline taught me how to drive standard (and on the left side of the road!), and I only stalled about a dozen times (I need practice...). They also took me to a birthday party on a dairy farm, and to a couple of the local pubs. They put me on a train headed for the west coast early in the morning and sent me with a truck load of food. Such great people.

 

The train ride from Christchurch to Greymouth on the west coast goes through the mountains and Arthur's Pass. Beautiful 4 hr trip. From Greymouth I caught a bus north to Punakaiki where I stayed last night. I'm still there actually, just waiting for the bus down to Greymouth. Yesterday I walked around the pancake rocks and blowholes on the coast, walked the grey/black sand beach, and hiked in the rainforest of paparoa national park. This country is phenomenal. I could stay here for a long time. You would love it. I feel like a wind up toy- I get off a buss or train, and there's always something to do, somewhere to hike, something to see. I'm going to spend the night in Greymouth tonight, then head to Franz Joseph to hike the Fox Glacier.

New Zealand is the land of contradictions. Rain forests grow beside glaciers. Rain forests also turn directly into deciduous forests (like there is a definitive line that you can stand on both sides of at once) for no apparent reason. Birds have no wings. The rivers are turquoise blue like the tropics, but they are fresh water. In the salt water fiords there can be anywhere from 0 to 8 meters of fresh water sitting on top of the salt water because it rains SO much there. It is the one place I've ever seen where the sky was saturated with water, but the rain wasn't angry. It was gentle, heavy, soaking rain. But the effect was absolutely violent. It's as if the land collected each benign individual droplet of water in a glacier carved crater, and churned them all together, mixing, and spilling, and pissing them off, then violently throwing them off the edges of cliffs. Hundreds of new waterfalls were born on the one day that I was paddling in Doubtful Sound (misnomer) because of the volume of water that was being processed. The water was escaping from the rock faces via the root systems of mosses so that it looked like someone had buried a fire hose in the side of the cliff under the moss, and turned it on full blast. Water was launching off of peaks and turning into mist whereby it was blown 30 feet across the face until it hit rock once more and became another waterfall careening down the side of the peak. In other places that mist just blended back into the thick dripping clouds that blanketed the fiords.

There are 30 million sheep in New Zealand, and just over 4 million people. Yet sheep farming is on the decline, and dairy farming is gaining speed. Why? Because Asians want more protein. 

Queenstown is the adrenaline center of the world. You can do anything- sky diving, jet boating, bungy jumping, paragliding, kite boarding...the list goes on. It is expensive, and the tourists that stay there are around to scare themselves silly during the day, and drink it off at night. Holy pub scene batman. But the town is beautifully set on a lake that is surrounded by mountains and fruit trees. I spent an entire afternoon in a chair on the side of a hill knitting a merino wool scarf and eating plums and apples off the tree. When I did finally get up to do the token bungy jump, it was so windy that once strapped in the guy tells me that I go when he counts down, or not at all. So I waddled to the precipitous edge of a platform suspended 200 m in the air on a high wire that stretched across 2 peaks, and threw myself off of the perfectly stable structure when he said go like a lemming taking one for the team. 

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Never say no to a mint.

Wages in Sydney are exceptionally high. The average hourly pay for someone my age doing mundane work is about $20 an hour. This is great if you're working, but to match high wages is an equally high cost of living. As my wallet has been losing weight, I decided to work for a weekend at the Masset Mega Market (nauseating and unnecessary alliteration) passing out balloons and flyers for the Oncology Children's Foundation, and Academic Solutions. Sounds dry, but it wasn't so bad- I met some pretty old school Slovenian riggers that were making jewelry by splicing steel cable and attaching the ends so that you couldn't actually see the joint. Very cool. Not as cool as a surfing trip up the east coast though! Nice segue right?

I went surfing. I LOVE surfing. More than surfing, I love the surfer dude lifestyle. I got on a Mojo Surf bus with 34 fellow travellers, and set off up the east coast for a hilarious week of surfing and partying by the beach. The only people to rival Australian surfer dudes at a party are Swedish boys. At least you expect it with the surfers- when we were picked up, our bus driver/surf instructor/legend was an obvious life-of-the-party type. The Swedes (all 9 of them) however, were polite, reserved, and generally blended in...until their first beer and the first 3 chords of any song by Kings of Leon. We'd get up early (6 ish) to surf, sleep/read/play guitars through the hottest part of the day, then surf again for a few hours before dinner. After dinner good friends became great friends, and we'd wake up and do it all again. I survived surfing reasonably well, but I managed to sprain my ankle running on the beach on the last day. By the end of the week we had arrived in Byron Bay with sun burns, board rashes, and a pile of dirty laundry. I stayed there for a few days with the crew from the bus, and now I'm back in Sydney. Laura from Scottland is here as well, and we're just waiting on Charlotte from New Zealand to get here before Big Day Out in Sydney (big festival with lots of bands), and our own little UN convention.

rippin'

...and then I found $10

I've developed a new love for all things 2-wheeled. I've always enjoyed a bicycle- it is a quick and effective mode of transportation. But a motorcycle!! They're way too much fun. There is no more enjoyable way to explore Sydney's northern beaches in the summer time than on the back of a bike with a friendly local as your tour guide.

I haven't ventured too far away from Sydney yet. There's lots to do in this fine city. Since I've last written we've been mountain biking and motor biking, rock climbing, beach bumming, dinner partying, and hiking in the blue mountains. The blue mountains are actually mildly blue in color thanks to a fine mist of eucalyptus oil. They also smell fantastically of eucalyptus (how do you smell a mountain??). I won't fill this with exhausting details, but I will say that in the small town of Katoomba (the access point to the blue mountains about 2 hours by train away from Sydney) there is a food co-op. At this co-op they make peanut butter right in front of you with a peanut grinding machine. 50 cents gets you a small tub of freshly ground peanut butter. Needless to say I was amazed. And never hungry.

Tonight Bianca and I are heading into Coogee beach because it is rumored that there is a restaurant that gives you a free steak with every beer you buy. It'll be a red-neckin' good time!

mooo.

Second Time's a Charm

Happy new year!

I am now in Sydney. Note to self or anyone else that wishes to travel: book for ANY day but Sunday. Sunday travel agencies are not open (or don't open until noon), and so no matter how much money you forked over for insurance, your policy means nothing.

Dec. 27th My flight was canceled thanks to fog. Blessing in disguise actually, I wasn't in much shape to fly.

4 flights, 3 stopovers, and 2 days later I landed in the heat of the Australian summer.
My new itinerary had me flying first to Winnipeg, then on to Denver, Los Angeles, and Sydney. In Winnipeg I met Janelle Fletcher who danced with Deanne Magnus. Small world! She was on her way to Melbourne, so we killed some time in LAX airport together.

So what is a 15 hour flight like? Firstly the plane is a flying double decker bus on steroids. How it got off the ground I don't know, but I've never felt so light and so heavy at the same time. I had a window seat, and managed to get 2 or 3 hours of sleep between dinner and lunch. They served the meals backwards on the flight- we had dinner at 10:30 pm (LA time), lunch about 6 hours later, and breakfast just before we landed at 8:05 am local time. It was genius. The first 10 hours flew by, but by hour 12 my legs were freezing and my upper body was boiling from lack of circulation. I consequently toured the bus a lot in the last few hours. I thought that my journey had been long until I met the couple from Belfast that had come the long way around the globe simply to avoid the airports in Thailand and Singapore. Silly.

Jet lag passed by the next day, but I still woke up earlier than the house so I took their dog for a jog around the neighbourhood. We got lost. SO lost. There is no grid system in Sydney. So we ran and ran until I saw the water, and finally the beach near Bianca's house. The dog and I went for a swim in the ocean beside a beautiful golf course, and got back just in time for breakfast. I think the 2 of us will become good friends!

New Year's Eve in Sydney involves Pink champagne, prawns, and a 5 MILLION dollar fireworks display. holy explosions batman. The best fireworks I've ever seen ever. We saw the 9:00 display from the balcony of an office building on the south side of the city with Bianca's family, then went to a house party and saw the midnight display from Lavender bay on the north side of the bridge. Fantastic view. On the way home we danced under the bridge with a couple hundred of our closest friends while a few drummers jammed. We walked across the bridge and all around the city in search of a bus, and 3.5 hours later got home. Great night.

Notes:
- Driving on the wrong side of the road is terrifying. Also, the left lane applies to walking too! Keep left. Left, left, left.
- A liquor store is called a bottle-o
- You can't eat wild kangaroo, only farmed. Go figure.

I'm new at this, bear with me

Penny for my thoughts? I might need it to buy my way out of prison, or maybe just for a plane ticket home... Do they pay your way if you get deported?

I wasn't kidding when I called this blog my internal monologue externalized. My apologies in advance for run-on sentences and tangents.

So for anyone who is interested, the plan so far is:

Leave Toronto at 2:30 pm on Sat. Dec. 27th
Meet Bianca in Sydney at 8:05 am on Mon Dec. 29th (Their time)
Be nearish to home by Christmas

I've got a pile of malarone, some antibiotics, a book, a bathing suit, a slingshot, and a snazzy new backpack (seeing as the school bag didn't fare so well last time...). I just have to find it all...

Merry Christmas, and alotta love!

Kate