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what the heck is this blog about?

This blog is for me to share with you all about the exciting adventures I am having while spending all my money on travel. When not sleeping in train stations and lugging a pack around you'll find me wishing I was, in the garden city of Christchurch, New Zealand. I'm an 20-something, wishing-I-still-was-one student, worth around 100 camels according to that guy in Morocco. Lucky enough to have already been on lots of global adventures but still looking for more countries to go to with unpronounceable names. On the right you can see my progress around the world. Blogs posts are grouped in countries and in different trips. The first block is from my 2006/2007 RTW trip, below that is my 2008 'overland trip', then lay travels since then. There is also links to all my photos, video's and trip expenses. Have a look around and please leave me a comment if you like what you read! *update* I am now living in London with a job that I love and taking a break from the travelling life, one day I will return but till then...

the end…for now

February 10th, 2007

Wow…I’m home. In NZ, so mundane….everyone told me it would be the same and it really is, all the same. The most exciting new thing is that there is a new subway near my house, and thats not very exciting. I did make it home OK with all my luggage, but somehow managed to leave my tube of paintings in Auckland airport! Luckily they found them and I just need to get them sent down some time. So yeah…home. I will write some big thing about how last year changed my life or something later but right now I’m going to have a nap.

Posted in ROUND THE WORLD 06/07, Travel | No Comments »

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Last stop

February 10th, 2007

Last place before home time…scary how things creep up on you. I was pretty much fine until getting on the bus to the airport this morning and since then have been feeling freaked out and shakey…..home…one place. Well actually I don’t have anywhere to live when I get back so it could be a couple more weeks of living out of my pack until I can afford to move to a flat. Anyway Hong Kong, a weird sort of middle country, not really ‘Asia’ but more intense commercialism than anywhere I’d been in the west. Tash had long ago booked us into a 5 star hotel, that’s right 5 star, flasher than any place I’d ever stayed in and it clearly showed as the staff didn’t seem super excited to see me when I stumbled in carrying my pack looking awful after a day in airports. I didn’t quite fit in with suits and suitcases with wheels. But once I’d actually showered and stopped dressing like a backpacking hippy I was treated the same, with extreame politeness and an almost scary attitude of helpfulness. It was great! After the whole year of staying in crusty guesthouses and dorm rooms it was amazing to have staff that wanted to help you. We even had the pool on our floor, a clean bathroom with hot water and cable TV. Of course we spent most of the 3 days sitting around in bed watching TV, which was awesome. Went for a few swims, went to a great market (with shoes!) and window shopped in high class designer shops. We met up with our friend Lisa and some girls with her who had been in the Philippines on a missions trip and we heading home, so cool to be able to see them in Hong Kong, even though we’ll catch up with them this weekend.
We were feeling nice and relaxed (and clean for once) and it was time to go to the airport one last time. One problem though….weight limit.
I’d always wondered how it was possible for people to take that much stuff that they’d actually go over the weight limit, but when looking at all my stuff I was a bit worried. I’d left a bag from India in Hong Kong and once I’d picked that up it was looking doubtful that it was going to happen. I managed to fit everything in my pack, as well as a massive carryon bag that while fit the dimensions, I knew would be over the limit but just hoped it would be OK. So my pack weight 25kgs and she didn’t say anything but then she asked to see my hand luggage…and weighed it. 15kgs. Too heavy she said, but incredibly she let me check it on with out paying any fees. So I checked in 40kgs of luggage, twice the normal limit. I just hope the extra bag survives as it’s a pretty shitty bag from India not made for being thrown around planes. The only problem now is getting on the flight from Auckland to home with all my stuff because we have to recheck our bags in. So on the plane now…will be in NZ in about 8 hours, very scary to think about but don’t think it will hit me until we land.
photos from Vietnam, Laos and Thailand are here:

Vietnam Laos Thailand

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Backpacking ground zero

February 10th, 2007

There was really only one reason for going to Bangkok and that was to spend whatever little money we had left. Heading straight for Khao San road the ultimate backpacking area in the world we found a cheap cell like room at one end for the next 3 nights. We had arrived early from our overnight train so had some breakfast and checked out the shopping in the constant market that runs along the street. There’s so much to buy!
I decided to get a dress made for my 21st so we spent a good part of the day sitting around in a tailors because Tash decided she wanted something made as well. It all would have been fine if when Tash tried to pay on credit card we discovered that a travel agent in Vietnam who we’d brought airline tickets from had charged her twice! So we spent ages trying to sort it out and get some money sent over because now her credit card was over the limit. Basically the bank said it was fraud and we’d have to wait till we got home to sort it out. Luckily a few days later the travel agents must have realised and the money was put back in, but a bit stressful at the time. Found some cheap food for dinner, Thailand has the best cheap food, yummy street side noodle for 50 cents and lots of fruit around. The next day was market day! We caught a bus out to the massive weekend market and came back weighed down by bags. We thought there would be lots more fake stuff there but actually there were heaps of funky Thai designed, very cool clothes, which was actually better as our road had all the fake designer stuff we needed. Big morning and came back exhausted. We had a dress fitting and my dress was all finished and looking great, hard to believe I had only ordered it the day before. More cheap food and a bit more shopping before dinner.
The our last day in Bangkok we went for a bit of walk around the river, went out to the grand palace but didn’t go in because of the $10 entrance fee. There’s pretty strict rules about clothing and even though we didn’t go inside I had to borrow a hot looking shirt because I was wearing a singlet. I think it’s a good idea because so many people wear such inappropriate clothes to important places. My singlet wasn’t exactly revealing but some girls turn up in mini skits and tank tops and at Angkor Wat in Cambodia we saw people dressed like that at the countries most important religious site.
Tash picked up her dress in the afternoon and we went out to one of the big malls for a fruitless search for shoes. Back home to try stuff everything in our bags for the flight to Hong Kong the next day. Me and Tash were on different flights, she left a couple of hours earlier so I had a long day waiting around by myself. Left the guesthouse at 7.45am and got to the hotel in Hong Kong at 7.45pm, so long day for a 2 1/2 hour flight.

Posted in Thailand, Travel | 1 Comment »

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Where’s my passport?

February 10th, 2007

So we arrived back in Vientiane with no money, since the only ATM in the country was here we were planning to head straight there. We just had enough money to get a tuk-tuk to a cheap nasty hotel. We dumped our bags and were about to go get some money when I suddenly realized I didn’t have my passport. It was in my daypack. Still on the bus.
Not only my passport but my air-tickets, laptop and every other important thing I have. I had put my bag up on the shelf above the seats and somehow just completely forgotten about it, you would think that by now I would be a bit smarter but obviously not. So I completely panicked, dropped everything and ran out of the room with Tash running after me. I must have looked hysterical as the guy at reception changed some money for us (the little we had about $4 worth) and we got a tuk-tuk driver to take us back to the bus station for half the normal price. The whole journey there I was making back up plans in the likely event that everything was stolen. We arrived and I ran to the office trying to act out to the non English speaker how I’d left my bag on the bus. Not too much help but we found the bus being cleaned in the car park and there was my bag, just where I’d left it. The cleaner who was cleaning it when we arrived hadn’t even noticed. So Laos’ ‘not caring’ attitude had worked out very well for us! I’m pretty sure that in any other country in Asia my bag would have been stolen even while I was on the bus. We got the tuk-tuk driver to take us to the ATM which of course wasn’t working, a bit paranoid that we were truly screwed with no money we found out it actually was working so we paid the rest of the money to the driver and took a bit of time to relax after a very stressful hour! We only had one night so we just had a walk around and had dinner down by the river and headed to bed.

Up early in the morning for a quick journey over the Thai-Laos friendship bridge into Nom Kai, a relaxed border town on the Thai side. We brought overnight train tickets for that evening and spent the day waiting. Walked to a giant Buddha statue and then had lunch at a very relaxed guesthouse. It was one of those super hippy places, with advertisements for yoga and meditation courses and the American guy on the desk was frustratingly calm. But good food.

For our last couple of hours we went out to a statue park which had a lot of very big Buddhist and hindu statues. The coolest being this big circle of life which we had picked up a guide for at our hippy lunch place. First you climb through the jaws of life, as sperm (we took photos swimming through the entrance) and go round looking at different statues representing different stages of life with a big thing in the middle with something to do with reincarnation. Really interesting especially with our guide. We also feed some giant ugly fish then headed back to the train station for an 11 hour train ride down to Bangkok. Pretty nice train, and despite the fact that they kept the intense fluorescent lights on all night it was a good train ride and actually got some sleep.

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coming home

February 6th, 2007

well Ive been getting a bit behind in blogs and actually having my last day of my trip in hong kong. Ill update the last week in thailand on the plane but we are all ready to come home just need to somehow fit all my shopping into my pack….hopefully we’ll make the weight limit but Im not so sure!

If you in CHCH we arrive home at 10.20am on friday so see you then!

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Monk Stalking

February 6th, 2007

Luang Prabang would have to be one of my favourite spots in Asia, its beautiful and clean, streets are actually paved, its Laos so everyone is friendly. Unfortunately its everyone elses favourite place and we had a tough time finding a room under $15. Normally we don’t pay more than $6 so we weren’t too happy with paying double but after asking over 10 places we settled with a $10 average room with rats running around in the roof. Luckily we found a much nicer $6 place in the morning for our last 2 nights.

In the evening there is an amazing night market so we checked out that and made shopping lists, so much to buy! We had a pretty low key day our first full morning there, cheap baguettes for breakfast which is always good. Walked up a hill to have a look at some important temple thing. It’s a really small town so didn’t take long to walk around, really beautiful buildings and lots of temples. The town is a full of monks so every so often there are flashes of orange robes followed by tourists with cameras, myself included. I don’t know what is about monks but they look so cool wandering around in groups, unfortunately its actually really offensive to hover around taking photos, and while some people seem to think its fine I feel too bad, so I spent most of the time trying to secretly stalk them. Tash thought I was crazy but did end up getting a few good photos. Early in the morning is the alms ceremony where the monks all walk down the street collecting food offerings from people. So I made us get up at 6am 2 mornings to sit in the coffee shop across the street and secretly take photos of the monks. Its really cool to watch but some tourists get a bit carried away despite the signs everywhere with ‘rules’. But anyway we did get to see lots of monks.

We did a lot of shopping at the night market (all very cheap) and ate at some excellent street buffets, with various meat on sticks. We spent our other full day on a tour, first out to see some caves with lots of statues of Buddha in them. It was OK, it just took over an hour on a boat to get there which wasn’t so fun, and we had to do cultural village visits on the way. We tried to find a tour company that didn’t do village visits as they are inevitably awkward but no, all of them proudly advertise it.

After our cultural morning it was straight into a mini van and out to these amazing waterfalls. Set in beautiful forests , first you walk past bears and a tiger in cages…weird. The falls are amazing, you can swim in them but unfortunately I had forgotten my togs. Still was really amazing to see, all these little waterfalls coming from a big one into these aqua pools, the colour of waterfall was really incredible, looked like a swimming pool. In true Laos safety you could basically stand at the very edge of a massive drop. I somehow talked Tash into climbing up a massive hill to the very top of the waterfall. Not the best track and came down mostly on our butts just in time for our mini bus ride back to town, via a village of course.

(food on sticks, yum)

After 3 nights we were off again. We were planning to go across to Chang Mai in Thailand. Apparently there was a bus but for some reason it wasn’t happening at the moment so there were boats, either a 2 day slow boat or a 10 hour fast boat. Both cost heaps, especially the fast one but we didn’t really have time for a 2 day boat ride. So we’d asked a few places the day before about the speed boat and went back to book it but now…no speedboat. Why not? Pollution, apparently….something didn’t seem so right. Another place we asked at had one of those guys who just couldn’t lie and when we asked him, he tried to avoid the topic and eventually told us there had been a crash! They hadn’t died but just “got very wet, very very wet”
So no speedboat, probably a good thing!

So we were back on the bus back down to Vietianne, over the worst road ever again. I’d heard stories about this stretch of the road being one of the most dangerous because of bandits and up until a couple of years ago they recommended you didn’t drive on it. But I didn’t think it was that bad until we had an armed guard on the bus, just sitting across from us…a little disturbing but we made it back to the capital safe.

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Tubing with Friends

February 3rd, 2007

After lugging our bags around the small town we settled in at a nice guest house over looking the river. Had a very long lunch break in the sun and walked down to check out some of the caves Van Vieng is famous for…they were closed. So we just mucked around until dinner time. After dark people come back form their day trips kayaking, caving or tubing (what Vang Vieng is famous for) and the restaurants fill up with tourists watch Friends. Don’t ask me why Friends is so popular but it just seems to be the show of choice and lots of restaurants are set up all facing the TV. We had dinner at a place the advertised no Friends…we watched Kath and Kim instead. Back home to watch another movie on my laptop. ‘Little miss Sunshine’ if you haven’t seen it go see it soon, its hilarious.

Had a nice sleep in in the morning and breakfast at a french cafe with yummy croissants, Laos has a very french influence because of the dirty french who also took over Laos. In fact Laos is supposed to be spelled Lao, but is now Laos because of a french misspelling…just in case you wanted to know.

After breakfast and feeling super energetic we hired bicycles with the great intention of biking the 14km out to some caves to have lunch. After about 6 km we turned back….but we did stop at an organic farm to have a super good mulberry shake. So back in town we returned our bike and signed up for tubing ‘the thing to do’ in Laos. Joining up with a cool swiss chick we were driven down further down the river with massive inner tubes to float down the river with all the other people. This would have been a great idea if it was hot, unfortunately it was a bit overcast after a couple of hours in the water we were very cold and very over it so got a boat the rest of the way!

The first part was fun though, there’s lots of bars set up along the river where you can stop for food and of course beer lao, which is sold by kids in the river, people in boats, people under bridges…there is a lot of beer lao. The bar we stopped at had a massive rope swing into the water, music, vollyball, a fire and general other hip touristy things while we all stood round shivering in wet clothes. Time to move on….

So yes we payed some 10 year old kids to row us to the end but we did it, tubing in Laos for whatever its worth. After a much appreciated shower we sold out and watched Friends for awhile before bed. Back on the bus the next morning for a horribly windy road further north…I never though I go car sick before but this road was not making me feel too good. We luckily survived with only dodgy stomachs after the 9 hour journey which should have taken 6 if we didn’t stop 4 times…but this is Laos!

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Vientiane: Country town Capital.

February 3rd, 2007

Laos is not a huge country, about 6 million people, but still you think the capital would be more than a few roads and some big banks. It does kind of seem like a small country town and the capital must be somewhere else…but no this is it. Not that its bad, its just quiet. Laos had not yet reached the tourist status of Thailand or even Cambodia but are clearly rushing forward into the 21st century with building going on everywhere. They’re even paving the footpaths here in Vientiane and the town now has a ATM that takes international cards, the only one in the country that often (as we found) runs out of money, due to all the tourists in the country trying to get out money for the whole trip. Unfortunate that the maximum you can get out is the equvilent to $70. Strange thing with their currency is that it is so incredibly worthless that the highest value note is equal to $5. However Laos is great! And its general uselessness makes it all the more interesting. Laos is different from other south east asian countries in that it is so incredibly relaxed, the lonely planet even says that Lao people feel sorry for “those who think too much”.
Everything is at a slow pace and the people just don’t really care if you stay at their guest house, buy their stuff or take their tuk-tuk. A nice change from the intensity of Vietnam. We even had a tuk-tuk driver tell us to walk because it was close, and we actually had to convince him to drive us. (anyone who’s traveled in asia knows that this would never happen in any other country). It’s a cool place to travel though, the people are all really friendly and theres lots to see. We only had a week but still got to see a couple of the main places.

As Vietiane isn’t the countries biggest drawcard we only stayed a night, spent the afternoon wandering aimlessly and trying to change money. Great to have warm weather again after freezing cold Hanoi. Did manage to go out and see Laos’ famous golden monument and also some important looking temples. Which is pretty good for me and Tash as we normally avoid anything ‘important’. We had drinks on the banks of the Mighty Mekong river, not looking so mighty in dry season and checked out the market before bed in our cell like room. In the morning we were heading off north to VangVieng so we set off early to the bus station and stopped for breakfast on the way. The not so good side about the whole relaxed thing is the service in restaurant and we ended up ordering baguettes 3 times from the same person and getting them 45 minutes later minus our drinks which they forgot. We made it to the bus on time, a cheap local bus that was more like a big metal shell with wheels. We made it through to our destination OK after learing that Lao’s will eat anything, including fried cockroaches on sticks that a kid was trying to sell….mmmm roasted roaches. So Vang Vieng is about touristy as you can get in Laos, good for a couple of days of eating Pizza and watching TV.

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Halong Bay

January 31st, 2007

Halong Bay is this incredibly beautiful and massive bay east of Hanoi. Filled with rocky hills, caves and national parks as well as floating fishing villages and lots of tourists.

We were on an overnight tour so after a 3 hour drive ended up on a pretty cool old school wooden boat with about 20 others. Spent the day cruising around through the amazing misty scenery. Stopped by some big caves which would have been a bit cooler if they weren’t for the neon lights all through them, making it look like a dance party.

Unfortunately it was freezing cold so there was no swimming which would have been great but did get to go kayaking which was nice. Met loads of cool people on the boat and spent most of the day just playing cards and watching the rocks go by, very peaceful and relaxed….apart from the crazy dinner lady.

The crazy dinner lady served us our meals but was a bit pedantic about where we had to sit, moving people from different tables and yelling at you if you sat where you wanted, rather than where she wanted. Her lack of english made it difficult to explain that we just wanted to sit with there with our friend. Always interesting…..

Once the sun went down there wasn’t too much to do so we retired to our cabin after I was given the entire history and culture of Iceland by an over enthusiastic Icelandic guy.

The next day we headed back to port for an incredibly unorganized ride home where we all just ended up in random vans. The trip was beautiful but like all tours in this part of the world, no information about anything so its kind of like “surprise, we’re going over here now”

But had a good time meeting people and I like just being on boats, especially on super calm water like this. Would be an awesome place in the summer, jumping off the boat and things but there’s always next time!

So back to Hanoi where Judah and Brett had finally met up with us, we were only together for one night as me and Tash were leaving the boys to fly to Laos in the morning. We had a pretty relaxed evening at a bar and then eating huge ice cream sundays at “Fanny’s Ice-Cream.” Off to the airport bright and early for a short flight over the border to my final new country, number 24!

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Snakes and Planes

January 31st, 2007

You know how on planes everyone rushes to get off really quickly? Well in our overtired-everything-is-funny state we waited until people had gotten off….so talking and laughing away we suddenly realized that EVERYONE was off the plane and only the air-hostesses were left giving us funny looks. So we quickly grabbed our stuff and ran out down the stairs to the bus where the entire plane was waiting for us. But somehow Jeff came out after us as the bus was driving away and ended having to get a whole other bus just for him. This was obviously far too much for us and while we laughed hysterically the rest of the plane just gave us evil looks….anyway guess you had to be there.

So we were in Hanoi, got to a nice little hotel in the old quarter, very French influenced architecture and cafes on corners, as well as the usual crazy motor bikes seemingly trying to run us down. The only down side was that is was freezing and raining, not what we wanted after we had left Nha Trang with perfect weather. So after a vague walk down the street trying to find somewhere cheap for dinner we somehow ended up at a not cheap but warm Irish pub, for pasta, tea and other un-asian type food. We meet a swiss guy and agreed to meet up the next day to find the infamous snake restaurants. The weather the next day was no warmer but at least not raining. Checked out the area, around the lake where we saw some important looking thing on as island, saw a lot of things to buy and Jeff and Tash got measured up for some tailor made clothes. Then we headed back to meet up with the Swiss guy and another German and headed out on a local bus using charades trying to describe where were going. “You know, snake, eat”
We did actually make it there surprisingly, an area called Le Mat where you can eat snake in 10 different ways and drink its blood along with the beating heart….very pleasant.
We headed down some quite streets until we saw a sign with a snake on it, inside were massive bottles with alcohol and huge snakes coiled inside, in a cage near the door we could see movement from the snakes that didn’t have a bright future ahead of them.
A man came out.
Sit down please.
We sat.
Awkwardly.
Kind of felt like we had entered some sort of snake mafia circle. Nothing was said about the snakes, we were offered tea, cigarettes, some sort of bong. Then the guy in the suit got down to business. After a big of arguing we finally agreed on a price for the 3 boys as by this stage I had backed out of any claims I had bragged about doing.
Out comes the snake.
It wasn’t super massive just very long. With us all hovered around with cameras the guy expertly slit the throat (do snakes even have throats?) dripped the blood into shot glasses with vodka, the greeny-black vile into another glass and then…wait for it…the BEATING HEART. Yes actually beating away in the glass.

So we were taken upstairs to our own private table where the boys downed the blood, the bile and the heart (not beating by now) and we were brought 5 courses of snake, spring rolls, soup, crunchy skin, salad and a plate of meat….mmmmm…..snake.

It was very interesting and cool to watch but there was no way I could have done it, at least we got some photos and some disgusting video footage though. After it was all over, we went back into town for me and Tash to get some real food at a nice french cafe. Chilled out in our room with some cheap takeaways and to bed.

In the morning we discovered we were being kicked out of our hotel for not booking a tour. The place we were staying was really nice but they were ridiculously insistent on us booking tours through them, to the point where we had to run through the lobby to avoid them. The ironic thing was is that we were about to book a tour but wanted them to wait till we approached them. However not soon enough as they told us to leave then tried over charging us for ‘room tax’ a few arguments later we were out with the right change directly next door to a nicer place and me and Tash booked our Halong Bay tour for the next day. Judah and Brett from home were heading to Hanoi so Jeff was going to stay and meet them. Spent the day hanging out at the markets and sitting by the lake. Evening came and went and it was early to bed as we were heading out to Halong bay early the next morning.

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