Around The World

Vanuatu is a great place. It is only a two and a half hour flight from Brisbane, it is a tax haven and has been voted the happiest country in the world – as the sign in the customs area of Vila airport reminds us.

Unlike the brochures in a travel agency, the 8km drive from the airport to the city of Vila does not drum up feelings of idyllic beaches and happy locals – rather it made me think that it is more like a third world country. One thing to learn about Vanuatu and the south Pacific is that things are generally done on island time. Places close down between noon and 3pm daily for siesta and Sundays are purely a day for church gatherings.

I stayed at the Sebel, a beautiful hotel on harbour. Vanuatu is not the place you want to come to if you are like to keep busy and as such there wasn’t a lot to do. You can walk from one end of the town to the other in twenty minutes.

As part of the trip we received a free meal or something at the Nambawan Café – also situated on the harbour it is the most popular restaurant in town. They serve drinks, pizza and one night even had an outdoor screening of Kung Fu Panda, which everyone gathered to watch. Of course being on island time, by the time I got my pizza the credit were almost rolling.

As far as food goes, this was one of surprisingly many places you could eat. One night I ate a beautiful steak at Shooters, another had a meal of Chinese food where I became ill. I enquired about a McDonalds and was told a small chicken and rice store was it. They didn’t serve French fries here. My favourite restaurant was one right next to the hotel – we were waited upon by a lady named Nora. The restaurant has a flag for every tourist who has been there. As this was when the Beijing Olympics were on it was easy to get patriotic and see everyone else doing so. Most of the other tourists were Australians.

Vila is situated on the island of Efate – another island in the archipelago is Tanna, which is famous for having the most accessible volcano in the world. We didn’t have enough time to get down there so our tour experiences were limited to Efate.

Hideaway Island is a famous diving spot in Vanuatu and you can catch the bus from Vila – takes maybe fifteen minutes. Hideaway also has the worlds only underwater post office. Here I was able to get certified by PADI as a scuba diver.

Another tour we received was a cruise around the islands. Although the cruise was quite slow we did manage to see some beautiful islands in and around the harbour.

The highlight would have to be an impromptu trip we took to the other side of the island one-day. Accompanied by a couple who were Swiss/American we got to see some turtles in tanks, coconut crabs and big turtles in the pools. We go to feed sharks in another pool – no five star safeties, one slip and we would have been eaten. It began to rain as were greeted with refreshments before we kayaked between the islands.

When were kayaking, one of the locals, Kali got talking to me about Australia. After we were dropped off at the hotel he said he would pick us up in half an hour and show us how the locals lived. He took us to some local bar where we began to drink kava. The bar seemed a bit dingy – Kava is a traditional pacific drink which is made from the roots of the kava plant. After a few of these you are left feeling a little hallucinogenic. Perhaps this is the reason why I decided to try my hand at blackjack at the casino after this!

It was pretty cool though to hang out with the locals. Vanuatu is an interesting place and I think I managed the perfect blend of relaxation and adventure for the place. A lot of people say that Vila is the nicest city in the Pacific – their hospitality makes me want to come back again one day.

St Augustine once said that the world is a book and those that don’t travel read only one page. My first trip abroad made me want to read the whole book – prologue to epilogue. Thailand is a Mecca for the tourist and a great place to set the first chapter– the most popular of South East Asian destination – it blends an exotic mix of culture, food, history and temples.

The national carrier, Thai Airlines, gives an excellent preview into this country – hospitable hostesses, great food and unlimited entertainment. We transited through Bangkok’s main terminal – the escalators echo ‘end of the walk’ – we then caught a domestic flight to our first destination – Chiang Mai. 

We were met at the airport by Aki, who would be our tour guide whilst in Chiang Mai. He transferred us onto the Novotel. Chiang Mai is the second biggest city in Thailand and is in the north. Founded in 1296AD the city is separated into two parts – the walled ‘old city’ or the new city. Chiang Mai offers an exciting mix of both the old and the new – a quick walk around the hotel and you can find a modern supermarket, some modern stores, and universities. Up town a bit there were shopping malls. Nestled in the streets were thousands of people on scooters, tuk-tuks, monks and temples. Being my first trip abroad it was amazing to see things like electricity lines wired in a mess, food for sale in carts and what seems like no road rules.

We had a few tours booked for us in Chiang Mai – it was good as it made us do some things we would not have thought of. Here we were feeling completely unsafe – hiding money in the kettle of the hotel room and at the end of the trip we were bartering like we had been doing it forever.

 A Kantanoke dinner and dancing show was one of the tours – I tried a few different foods but it was nothing like the deceiving Thai restaurants in Brisbane. A lot of tourists were at this dinner and the local girls treated us to some traditional dancing…by the end of the night we were up dancing with them.

Shopping is a real treat in Thailand – on the first day we were buying clothes for a real cheap price – little did we know we were getting ripped off – the shop owners must have had a guilty conscience as they ended up giving us a complimentary beer. We discovered a market place is the best the do your shopping and spend some time buying gifts and souvenirs.

I was in Chiang Mai for the local election – in Thailand alcohol is forbidden on election day – Unfortunately I didn’t get an endless supply of Singh beers but it was good because the next day was the highlight of the trip – early start to see the orchid farm and then onto the elephant park about an hour out of Chiang Mai. The elephants were people friendly and put on a show. They were able to paint, play basketball, and do a little concert. I was actually called up the stage to get a massage off the elephant. We fed the elephant’s and then were able to ride them. It went for about half an hour and was bumpy. We saw some really poor kids selling bananas. We went though the park. Afterwards we got to go on a bamboo raft up the river before being taken by bull and cart to a smorgasbord lunch, which overlooked a beautiful setting in the mountains. Hard to believe that only an hour away was the hustle and bustle of the big city

A big draw card in Chiang Mai is the trip up the mountains to see the Karen tribe. The ladies have ‘long necks’ and they are immigrants from Burma escaping the conflict and live in homesteads in the mountains. They speak a dialect that no one around could understand but we did get the idea they were preparing for a wedding that night.

Bangkok is a huge city with high rises for suburbs on end. We stayed in the Classic Palace, which was about 2kms from the city centre and about an hour from the airport.

Bangkok is the capital city and central business district – it is also one of the major hubs of Asia. Tuk Tuk drivers work on commission here and take you indirect routes to your destination – to places like suit tailors or jewellery stores where they try to sell you their products. Unfortunately the traffic is ridiculously bad in Bangkok and getting taxi is not worth it – thankfully, we discovered at the end that Bangkok has an excellent public transport network and the train station was near the hotel.

We did a few tours of Bangkok – the temple tour is a must for any tourist in the city – Thailand has thousands of temples – the Grand Palace being the most famous. My favourite was the one that housed the reclining budda. Our guide, Helen took us to a legitimate jewellery-making store before dropping us back at the hotel. We learned that the king is so revered in Thailand that it is illegal to say a bad word about him.

The night markets we went to were bigger than those in Chiang Mai but had the same sort of stuff. We went to the same restaurant two nights in a row and both nights forgot to pay for the beer.

One the last day we did a tour of the floating markets – these are traditional fruit and veg markets an hour and a half from Bangkok where the locals barter and sell with each other – it is all on the water in a river and must make some tourist revenue. Its worth mentioning that this tour takes you to a snake charmer or something similar on the way where you can put a snake around your neck.

Thailand is the kind of country which wets your appetite for travel – a place many tourists come back to again and again. I highly recommend going and saying Sawdawsee, bartering at the markets and having a Singha or two at the end of a hot day.