The Adventures of Smell and Snott

The end of the last hurrah....

2009-02-06T13:39:00.005+10:00

This post has taken a while to write, because as soon as we got back to Australia we landed in the chaos of wedding preparations and catching up on 2 months of work, so we got distracted. Anyway, it's time to write about the last few days of our trip. but first, we have put some videos up on youtube from our travels:

http://www.youtube.com/smellandsnott

We spent the last few days of our trip just chilling out on Ko Chang, an island about 6 hours from bangkok. While we were there we did a lot of serious relaxing, lying in hammocks, playing cards, swimming at the beach, drinking with other travellers, and even one infamous karaoke session in a local bar....

We did also get a bit active - we went on a jungle trek one day, through some gorgeous forest - we visited a waterfall and even got a chance to see a tarantula - we thought the guide was joking when he said he would show us one, but he got us all to squat down quietly near a hole (well the girls all stood around at the back!) while he poked into it with a stick, and the tarantula sprang out to the front of its hole, fangs bared! After we'd taken some photos the guide blew on it and it ran back inside. We were very wary of small holes for the rest of the day.

Tarantula!!

Scott the monkey

Another day we went to play with elephants! As has previously been explained on this blog, Shelley loves elephants, so she was in heaven. We got to swim with them, feed them and go on a trek - our elephant was the young naughty one who kept veering off the path to try to find some food in the trees nearby, but we still liked her. We like the naughty ones.

Finally, on our last full day we went on a snokelling trip where we had a couple of great snorkels around the islands - so many colourful fish and coral! The black spiky anenomes and the long skinny pointy fish were our favourites. We also tried some fishing - no luck, although shelley wasn't sure what she would have done if she'd caught anything - and went for some swims near a beach. There was also much beer drinking and it was a really fun relaxing last day.

Then that was it! Back to the boat and the bus and the plane and back to Australia! We did have a great time on our trip and were reluctant to come home - but we do have a lot to do now!!

Totally Terrific Thailand!!!!

2009-01-24T21:16:00.005+10:00

We crossed the border over to Thailand a fair bit earlier than we had planned, but we simply could not resist the red curries and tom yum soups any more, plus we were sick of the Laos buses and wanted to get our arses on some good old reliable Thai trains, so we quickly and very easily crossed the Friendship Bridge from Vientiane to Nong Khai.

We spent two nights in Nong Khai, checking out a couple of cool little temples but the highlight was a sculpture park built by this ex-monk, non-believer in marriage, guy who created the park in some sort of abstract attempt to display all the different forms of religion in a washing machine mix of sculptures. His messages were a little unclear but the grandure of the sculptures was second to none. There were at least 5 stone sculptures in the park over 20 metres tall and dozens more over 10 metres. They displayed mainly a mixture of buddha and hindu gods but with a twist, some with massive serpents around them, others in unusual positions, a big wheel of life and our favourite, a large stately elephant surrounded by small aggressive dogs doing a range of ‘bad’ things like gambling, drinking, smoking, copulating etc.

The rest of our time in Nong Khai was relatively uneventful except when the old English guy in the room next to us decided to bring a prostitute back to our hotel for some ‘boom boom’. The thins walls gave us a ringside seat, and Shell was not impressed to say the least.

Next we went to Khon Khaen for a quick 1 night stop over, where Shell was excited because she got to feed an elephant some sugar cane. That girl does love elephants. If we spot one in the street we normally have to follow it for at least 20 minutes, with Shell beaming the whole way – it’s pretty cute really. Other than that we had a quick look around the night markets and had a fairly early night.

Ayutaya was where we spent the next couple of nights. This town has a special place in Scott’s heart because it was the first place he went to when he began his travelling escapades about 6 years ago. The city has grown over the last 6 years but the many charming wats scattered around the town had not changed much and we had loads of fun riding around on a bike seeing the many beautiful ruins that are dotted around the country’s old capital.

After that we headed to Lopburi, which is we like to call monkey town. There are hundreds of monkeys that live in one of the temples in the centre of town and because of Buddhist belief of not killing creatures (combined with the income the monkeys bring through tourism), they are allowed to pretty much roam free. This puts them in the same category as you see many of the animals throughout the small villages (part domesticated and part wild) but none the less still very cheeky and amusing.

Needless to say we had a great time watching the monkeys eat, swing, fight and play, sometimes with each other and sometimes with us. They climbed up both Scott’s and Shelley’s backs on several occasions, elevating themselves to our heads where they proceeded to groom and pick at our hair. They especially loved Shell’s dress and Shell enjoyed swinging them around playfully. It was always the little ones that wanted to play, the big ones had obviously outgrown that type of behaviour – unlike us :) You have to be careful though, once Shell swung one of the little monkeys a bit fast and it’s mother came up and showed us her teeth unappreciatively. Also the monkeys sometimes want to keep playing when you don’t and like to continue to jump on you even though they know that you don’t want them to. Little guys are so cheeky and human like it’s almost unbelievable.

So then after monkey town we spent one night in Bangkok where we did too much shopping for Scott’s liking (he is so not a shopper), went back to our favourite Bangkok bar for a few drinks and a couple of games of pool, then took the bus the next morning back to Kho Chang where we plan on chilling out for the rest of our trip, which is less than a week away – oh well it’s been a good ride :)

Valour, velocity and vodka in Vang Vieng

2009-01-17T21:26:00.004+10:00

After our epic bus journeys down through Laos, we finally arrived in Vang Vieng!! Yay! It was definitely a change from northern Laos, a lot lot lot more touristy but the town is surrounded by impressive limestone mountains and so it has a really nice feel to it. A lot of the restaurants in town have TVs playing the simpsons or friends 24/7, which is a bit perturbing, but there are also a lot of bars and more nightlife than we've seen on the rest of our trip combined! We spent a lot of time drinking in Vang Vieng, met some English guys and Aussie girls and had lots of fun dancing around with them and drinking strange cocktail buckets.

But we didn't just drink in Vang Vieng, we also had fun exploring the area and getting pretty active! Which wasn't easy when you're hungover, but we're tough. Our first day we went for a walk to a big cave just out of town, which was great to explore because there weren't many other people there, so it felt quite eerie. There was also a spring flowing out of the cave and we swam up that for a while - well shelley made scott go first and whinged all the way about how scary it was, but she still enjoyed it - it was pretty scary to swim through a cave filled with water in the half-light, it felt like a monster was about to come up below you and swallow you whole. But we survived somehow.

The second day we went on a big expedition with a few other people - first we went to another underground cave, but this one was heaps bigger, and you went through it on an inner tube with a head torch on, pulling yourself along by a rope. At some points you got out of the tube and went crawling through the cave, squeezing yourself through little gaps and under ledges - it was hard on the knees but felt very adventurous! Scott was at the back so Shelley had fun laughing at the image of him - a small head lamp in the darkness illuminating Scott cramming himself through some ridiculous gap. Then Scott would start laughing and get stuck, so we were always trying to catch up with everyone else!

After another cave and a yummy lunch - much better than the trekking food!!! - we spent the afternoon kayaking down the river, with a stop off at one of the tubing bars for some sliding, volleyball and beers. The scenery was gorgeous and there were a lot of rapids on the way, plus it was fun to watch the English guys sink their kayak! But our arms were tired by the end of the day.
Our last day in Vang Vieng was the best - it was Shelley's birthday!!!!

So after Shell had opened her presents and we had pancakes for breakfast we ventured out for our tubing day. It didn't take long for us to get stuck into a few drinks and enjoy the tubing down the river. It also didn't take long for Scott to do something stupid and hurt himself...

At the first bar we stopped at they had this flying fox thing that hung out from a platform from one of the bars and had a stop that made it stop suddenly half way across the rivers. The girls were smart and let go before the flying fox hit the swing but the guys were stupid - I mean brave, yeah that's it. They held on until the swing hit the stop and the suddenly deceleration would send fling them into a backflip. Scott thought that looked like fun, but forgot that unlike the other guys he only weighed a puny 64kg and hence was flung a lot faster than the other guys, was flipped one and a half turns and came down at top speed onto his head. Five days later he is still feeling the pain and hopes he hasn't broken his arm - Shell says he's just a big wuss bag.
The rest of the day was filled with more rope swings, lots of dancing, drawing silly pictures and pirate faces on each other and birthday messages on Shell, a fair bit of boozing, very little actual tubing, which is what the day was supposed to be about and a cool big water slide that is similar to a home made speed slide from Wet and Wild but instead it ramps up at the end and launches you about 4 metres into the air before you crash in the river - it was awesome fun. Needless to say Shell had an excellent day.

The end of our time in Laos was a couple of days spent in Vientiane, mostly recovering from Vang Vieng! We also managed a bit of a walking tour to explore some wats and a strange Laos replica of the Arc de Triomphe, as well as a visit to their huge gold national monument. We amused ourselves by calling each other stupa-heads.

Wat?

Lots and lots of tiny Buddhas in the alcoves

Stupa-head at a Stupa

But that was it, the end of Laos, we crossed the Friendship Bridge into Thailand and will now spend the next 12 days travelling down to Bangkok for our flight home. Laos was good to us but we are definitly happy to be in the land of red curry - so long sticky rice!!!

Mellowing in Muang Sing

2009-01-11T20:24:00.003+10:00

After Luang Nam Tha we headed even further north for a couple of days to stay in Muang Sing. This is our favourite place so far on our trip – just a small town with hardly any tourists, surrounded by mountains and rice paddies. Scott found us a great room with a balcony that had a gorgeous sunset view, and we had a relaxing couple of days wandering around the area. We hired bikes on one day and cycled to China (it was 12km to the border) where we turned around when we saw the scary looking guards. We also visited the morning market where all the different hill tribes around Muang Sing come to sell their wares – lots of weird and wonderful spices, vegetables, sweets, textiles and many unidentifiable objects. There were no other tourists at all and we spent a while wandering around looking at all the different people and goods.

Finally we began to head back south. It was only a two hour bus ride to Luang Nam Tha but after we arrived there, had lunch and a nap, we realised we’d left our laptop charger in our hotel room in Muang Sing – oops. So The Intrepid Scott hired a motorbike and zoomed back to get it, racing the sun – he had to do the last half an hour in the dark with a motorbike light that only illuminated his motorbike basket, so he was tired when he arrived back 4 hours later (but triumphantly holding the charger!) and we headed for the herbal sauna. We haven’t mentioned the Laos herbal saunas yet, but they are amazing, we love them! It costs you 10,000 kip ($2) and they give you a sarong, then you can go in and out of the sauna as many times as you like, and they give you tea when you come out for a break. So nice and relaxing, and very hot!

It was a good idea to have the sauna because then we ended up doing two huge bus rides in a row – 9 hours back to Luang Prabang, and then another 7 hours the next day to Vang Vieng. These buses were not as good as the first ones – a lot slower, bumpier and with one constantly sniffing Laos guy behind us, who Shelley was ready to throttle. But we got there eventually! In between the buses we crossed over with Lana and Molly in Luang Prabang, so we had dinner with them and then got up early before our bus ride the next day to see the ceremony they have in Luang Prabang –every morning the monks file down the main street where the locals (and some tourists) give them an offering of food. It’s quite a sight to see a long line of orange-robed monks being handed sticky rice, and a really touching ceremony – monks are highly respected in Laos society.

So now we are down south in the traveller’s haven and amazingly touristy Vang Vieng, where we plan to get up to a lot of general debauchery!

Trekking in Northern Laos

2009-01-11T20:02:00.004+10:00

Despite the events (or non-events) of new year’s eve, Shelley, rough and tough as ever, bravely boarded the bus up north on new years day. This was to be the first of our encounters with the infamous Laos bus system. We turned up at 10.45am for the midday bus – luckily as it turns out because it actually left at 11am. We were the last two passengers (they were waiting for two more even though there were already 12 people in the 10 seater minivan when we got there). The 5 hour ride only took 4 hours, which was good once you stopped holding your breath and closing your eyes at every corner. The day after we took another 4 hour bus ride and eventually turned up in Luang Nam Tha.

The North part of Laos is really nice – a lot less tourists around, and gorgeous scenery of mountains, jungle and rice paddies everywhere. However the people are a bit of a mixed bag – there is a lot of Chinese influence because it’s very close to the Chinese border, and some of the people seem to be less friendly than the Laos people everywhere else. Anyway, we didn’t stay too long in the town, we quickly organised a 3 day trek for the next day, in a group with a swiss couple and a german guy.

It was so nice to get out of the towns and go trekking. We did about 6 hours of walking each day, mostly through the jungle – and often along precariously narrow paths on the edge of mountains! It was great fun, and we remembered how much we love trekking around all day. Our guide told us a lot about the plants in the jungle that are used by the local people for food or medicine, and a lot of the products they collect to export to China! It seemed like pretty much everything they could find or make, they exported to China. The food on the trek was traditional Laos food of the villages we stayed in, so it was...er...interesting to say the least (strange green sticks, banana flower paste, mushy white vegetables, chicken hearts) and some of it was really nice, but after three days we were sooooooo sick of sticky rice! Cold sticky rice and banana flower paste is not the most appetising breakfast ever.

Other than the food, it was great to stay in the little villages in the middle of the jungle. The first night we stayed in an Akha village where we made friends with a bunch of the kids – Scott taught them some English and tried to teach them how to do his hand-whistling trick (no one could, including Shelley and the other tourists), and they taught Shelley one of their Akha songs. The village was quite picturesque – lots of bamboo huts in the middle of the jungle, with kids and piglets and chickens and puppies running around everywhere.

After dinner the village chief kept feeding us lao lao (rice whiskey) and made us all sing songs. The Laos people are great singers, we think it might be because their language is tonal, and also because they are brought up with singing as their main communal entertainment. Even the kids have great voices and know lots of songs! We couldn’t think of many so we sang “In the jungle” with Scott doing the wimoweh part, and then “I still call Australia home” and “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree” which they really liked. The chief was also very impressed with Shelley’s singing of the Akha song the kids had taught her! It was a great evening and then when we left the next day the chief gave us all bracelets as a souvenir.

On the second day we had more trekking, more sticky rice, and we also played a fun Akha game which involved two seed pods that you threw, flicked and then hopped along with one seed pod balanced on your foot to kick it at the other seed pod. It was fun for a while but then we got a bit over it – but we had to keep playing because our guide was really enjoying it and wouldn’t let us stop! The second night the village we stayed at was similar to the first but we think they get more tourists staying there as they weren’t as interested in us. We still had some singing and playing with the kids (and more lao lao – our guide loved lao lao!) but it was a quieter night. Scott also had a tummy bug so he had an early night. Finally we arrived back in civilisation on day three, happy and tired and very eager to get some non-rice food in town!

Loving Laos

2009-01-02T20:39:00.004+10:00

We are so happy to be in Laos. Vietnam was ok, but Laos seems great already – so much quieter, and the people are really friendly – everyone is ready to smile and say ‘sabaidee!’

We flew into Luang Prabang on the 27th and spent 5 nights there – a little longer than we had planned but we wanted to be somewhere fun for new years, and they were gearing up for it in a big way in Luang Prabang. On the night we arrived our usual search for hotels was thwarted by everywhere being full – eventually we found a place where they let us have a tent outside. It was cheap though! No sooner had we settled in to our tent than we found out the hotel owner was taking some of the other guests out to a local Laos disco, so we tagged along. It was just a tad different from a Western nightclub, mostly dark couches with a dancefloor in the middle, where the Laos youth did line dancing to a live band alternating with dj music. We joined in with the line dancing after a while, it was lots of fun!

Our days in Luang Prabang were mostly spent moseying around. We did a lot of walking around to different Wats (temples) and some museums, drinking beer and watching the sunset. We also visited a nice waterfall just outside the city (took some sweet talking to get in as we didn’t know it had an entry fee and hadn’t brought enough money) where Scott went swimming in the waterholes (Shell was too wussy – it was freezing!) and we visited some bears that were in a sanctuary after being saved from illegal wildlife trading. While waiting for our fellow minibus passengers to come back we also had fun watching baby chickens and puppies running around in the carpark. It’s always hard watching the way animals are treated in Asia. Some seem to be happy – dogs and pigs and chickens that get to roam around wherever they want – but others get treated really badly, like the little birds in tiny tiny basket cages they were selling at a temple we visited, presumably for worshippers to set free as a gift to buddha. I don’t think he would have liked the idea.

We also spent a day cycling around the countryside, and it was great to get out of town and do some decent exercise. We had lunch in a tiny village and visited some more wats – one of which was 5 levels high and was covered inside with ornate paintings of buddha’s life, and also the different types of hells! A friendly well-meaning monk offered to explain the paintings to us, but his limited english combined with his enthusiasm for the subject matter meant it was a a slow and painful process and so we escaped as soon as we could without offending him. We are enjoying seeing the monks everywhere again, the town looks so much nicer with orange-robed monks wandering around everywhere. Apparently they have a ceremony every day at 6am where all the monks walk down the main street and the villagers offer them food – we meant to go really we did but we are just too lazy for 6am.

Finally, after chilling out in Luang Prabang for a few days, it was New Year’s Eve! We were so excited! We watched the sunset with a beer and had some dinner and cards, then called our parents just after New Year’s in Oz, and headed to the pub. All was good – loads of people out, we met a few groups of people and started chatting and playing pool...

And then, at 10:30pm, Shell’s tummy decided it wasn’t happy. She thought it was the dodgy Laos cocktail she had just had, and even after we headed home at 11pm for a quick vomit, it all seemed better and we went back out to the pub. Met some more people, everywhere was packed and getting ready for a lot of partying. However, shell’s tummy didn’t want to party. In fact, it wanted to be a party pooper. At 11:50pm, it just couldn’t wait any longer, and so we ended up having our new year’s countdown in our room, in between vomits. Woooooooo!!!!! Lucky we stayed in Luang Prabang for those couple of extra nights. What a gut-wrenching story – that’s for you Brian.

Don’t worry, Shell was much better the next day, and even managed to brave a 5 hour bus trip. She’s saving her partying for later on in this trip!

Hannoying Hanoi

2008-12-27T15:04:00.004+10:00

Ok, so our time in Hanoi has been fairly up and down. Generally up in the night time and down in the day. Things started off in the usual manner. The guesthouse we wanted to stay at was full and the surrounding ones were either full or out of our price range, so Scott did the usual wandering around for an hour in the beep beep of the traffic (to be honest the continual sound of horns and dodging through crazy motorbike drivers has slowly started to send us crazy. It was fun for a while but now the thought of stepping outside to face the chaos gives Shell a small twitch in her left eye). Anyway, Scott found a pretty good, cheap and QUIET (Oh my god such luck!!!) guesthouse. We then booked a trip for Halong Bay for the next morning.

Our Halong Bay trip was not as much of an up as we had hoped. After being an hour late to pick us up and overbooking the boat, then trying to blame the guests for "making things difficult" for all wanting to actually go on the boat, having 2 stand offs on the port, 1 stand off on the boat in the port (with a break from the stand offs of a nice pleasant lunch of peanuts, cucumber and rice for the vegos), we finally left the port for the legendary Halong Bay approximately 3 hours later than scheduled.

We then got dropped off at some big cave thing, which was an impressive series of quite large limestone caverns, but then our boat broke - are you serious!!! The guide made some feeble excuses about the port being too shallow to bring the boat in but we noticed that from that moment on we found our boat being towed by another little but hopefully more reliable boat.
After that we cruised round the bay for about an hour - which was quite beautiful. We spent the night playing cards with the other guests. Made some friends with a nice NZ couple and a gang of 6 nice English lads (and one lass). Woke the next morning for a quick kayak session around the islands, which was pretty, jumped back into the big boat being towed by the small boat, back to Halong Bay City, into the bus and back to lovely Hanoi. Actually, Halong Bay itself was nice, but the organised boat trip was a bit of a cock up.

We then spent the next 4 days in Hanoi, because we decided to fly to Laos - yay - but the earliest plane was on the 27th - poo, stuck in Hanoi-ing. Everywhere we go people tell us how horrible the buses are and how difficult the border crossing we planned to use is, so bugger it, we bit the bullet and bought the flight.

The days in Hanoi were a bit frustrating - lots of wandering around avoiding traffic and being beeped at. We did get to see Ho Chi Minh stuffed in his mausoleum (which Scott thought was interesting, but just gave Shelley the giggles), and some cool markets. But the nights in Hanoi have been much more enjoyable - we spent the first night after Halong Bay going out to some pubs with the English guys we met on the boat, had 1 litre "Big Man Beers", played some pool and had a dance - it was nice for us both to have some other people to play with!
The next night was also fun as the soccer final (Vietnam and Thailand) was on, being watched by everyone in town, and luckily Vietnam won, so the streets were full of motorbikes and people waving flags, everyone driving round and beeping for hours after the game! Since it was Christmas eve there was a mixture of Vietnam flags and santa balloons being waved around, and our waiter was a santa who gave us lollies - yay. Christmas is celebrated heaps more than we thought it would be here - well at least the commercial aspect is everywhere, with tinsel, santa suits and christmas trees in almost every shop. Our Christmas day was nice and relaxed - we had bought each other some cool little gifts, then we rang our parents and went out for a decadent Christmas breakfast of pancakes and chocolate ice cream -yum!!

Last night was also fun - we went to see a water puppet show, which was entertaining and very pretty, accompanied by a band of traditional vietnamese instruments. So now it's off to Laos - Gooooooooooood Bye Vietnaaaaaaaaam!!!

The High Road to Hoi An

2008-12-20T13:22:00.002+10:00

After the excitement of Dalat we decided we needed some relaxation, so we headed to the much-rumoured (but difficult to track down) Jungle Beach resort. While the water wasn't as clean as we hoped and it was a bit on the expensive side, it was still nice to chill out there for a few days, away from the constant horn-tooting that pervades the rest of Vietnam. We had sent our trusty guinea pigs (Sarah and Chantal) on ahead so we knew how to get there and we managed to convince them to stay an extra day so we could pester them. Notable events at Jungle Beach included lots of reading, card-playing and beach-walking up to the local fishing village, as well as the appearance of a cobra (very exciting) and shelley getting bitten by a dog (small panic until we found out it gets yearly rabies shots). Shelley is now banned from hurting herself any more for at least another week.

Our hut at Jungle Beach

We then sent our faithful guinea pigs off again ahead of us, to discover that the night bus was not a very good idea (something to do with drugtaking bus driver and plentiful horn beeping) so we backtracked to nha trang and got the overnight train to Hoi An instead. This turned out to be a great idea since we spent a lovely afternoon in Nha Trang visiting a big buddha and a great photographic exhibition and walking along the seaside, and the train was quite comfy. We took our poor guinea pigs out for dinner in Hoi An to thank them for their suffering on our behalf :)

Big buddha in Nha Trang

So we finally arrived in Hoi An, which has turned out to be a great little town, full of life and little streets, old buildings and most of all - clothes shops! There are no photos of our (many) purchases yet as they are still being altered to our size, but we have definitely done our share of shopping for the year! It's quite fun being measured and getting things made especially for you. Scott especially looks very spiffing in his wedding tux!

As well as shopping (it takes lots of time!) we have been wandering the streets of Hoi An and eating the yummy and cheap food here (3 course vego meal for $3!!). It's great seeing the pretty temples and just watching the street life go by - yes pretty much everyone wears the pointy conical hats and they manage to balance ridiculous amounts on motorbikes and bicycles! We really like the Vietnamese, they have a good sense of humour and seem to be very playful and friendly all the time. Bargaining involves lots of laughter (what! noooo! i not buy the material for that! You help me, you no worry! you give me little bit more!)

Boats on the river in Hoi An

Pretty pagoda

We have managed one side trip while staying here - to the ancient Cham ruins of My Son. They were pretty (very old and covered in grass and ferns) but the girls had most fun taking photos with the large Lingum statues :)

Deafening, Dangerous, Delightful, Death-Defying Dalat

2008-12-12T21:22:00.006+10:00

Ok, so we had to get out of Saigon quick smart because it didn’t really suit our style. Big noisy Asian cities never do. We had heard about Dalat, which was supposed to be this nice little place out in the mountatinas, so we made a beeline for it pronto.

Unfortunately Dalat was not as quiet and as little as we had hoped. It actually attracts over 800,000 Vietnamese tourists every year and we were hoping it would be because of it’s nice quiet scenery but apparently Vietnamese tourists like kitsch attractions, because Dalat is full of pig-shaped balloons, rollercoasters down to waterfalls, and locals dressed as cowboys and bears.

The first night and most of the next day we spent valiently trying to find a room that wasn’t noisy (Shelley’s criteria) and had a view (Scott’s criteria). This isn’t easy with the constant beeping of motorcycles, taxis and buses everywhere. We finally found somewhere a bit out of town, which we could get to easily as we hired a motorcycle! Scott has become adept at negotiating the crazy traffic here, which never involves traffic lights, rarely involves giving way, and often involves people driving on the wrong side of the road or cutting across in front of you. But there is some sort of order to the chaos, and we haven’t hit anyone yet.

His best feat involved the two of us on the motorcycle with our two big bags and the one small bag (drving quite slowly I might add) to our new temporary home outside of the city. Next we thought it would only be fair to let Shell have control of our new toy. Ten minutes later we had our first motorbike accident. Well, not so much an accident as Shelley driving the bike into a ditch. It would be nice to say that it was a tricky turn, but it wasn’t. There also wasn’t any traffic to be seen anywhere, it was quite a wide road, and the bike wasn’t very difficult to drive.

Note to Jill and Chris that nobody was really hurt during our crash. Shelley got a few little scrapes and bruises (it was her pride that was hurt the most) and Scott being the big brave man that he is jumped off the motorcyle just before it hit the ditch so he got away pretty much scar free except for Shell calling him a big wussy wus bag for the next 2 days.

So our first 2 days in Dalat weren’t exactly success plus. But we had our motorcycle and our health and were going to find some nice places to explore God damn it. And we did! In fact we had a really great 3rd day of cruising around on the bike (this was the beautiful mountain scenery we were hoping for ) looking at a couple of random waterfalls, getting a cute duck paddle thing and having an explore around a man made but very pretty dam, playing pool and having a few beers with some other random travellers and finding the weirdest “waterfall” we had ever seen, which was more like a continuous mudslide.

The best part of the day was finding this amazing six tier pagoda, which we spotted randomly as we were cruising around. It was really beautifully coloured with pieces of ceramic plates and you could climb up through the inside to the top, which offered some amazing views of the local country side.

The most interesting part of the pagoda was this massive 3 metre tall, 2 metre diameter bell, with a big piece of log hanging next to it that you could use to ring the bell, so of course we did and we took a video of it, but the strangest thing is that you couldn’t hear the bell on the video. We tried three times and it made a really loud noise and you could hear the kids outside of the pagoda and other background noise on the camera but for some reason not the bell. Scott’s therory was that the bandwidth of the transducer of the camera was too narrow to capture the low frequency noise the bell made but Shell’s theory was that the bell was holy and therefore magical so its sound could not be captured (either that or we haven’t figured out how to use our new camera very well quite yet – nah it must be magical)

As if the success of our third day wasn’t enough, our 4th and final day in Dalat was so awesome!!! We went canyoning and it was great!! I’ll let the photos tell the main part of the story but basically we went for a 5 hour walk/climb down a river with 4 parts that we had to abseil. The highlight was abseiling down a 25 metre waterfall (not just a little trickly waterfall but a full on gushing, spraying, “what do you mean we’re going to absail down through that” waterfall). We also went down a natural waterslide and we were supposed to jump off a cliff into a rockpool at one stage but just before Scott was about to jump a 2 metre snake swam into the spot Scott was going to jump into so we decided to let the snake have that one.

Overall, Scott was stoked that Shell took an awesome photo of him doing a big jump off the abseil rope and into a rockpool and Shell was stoked that she did every single abseil even though she was scared out of her wits and that she was not a big wussy wus bag even once (unlike Scott who jumps off motorcycles just because of a little incy wincy ditch).

Swimming under a waterfall

Shell going down the 'Washing Machine'

Scott about to venture down the big waterfall

Scott's big jump at the end of the big waterfall

Saigon is super speedy

2008-12-08T21:14:00.003+10:00

Well we made it! We're on holidays again! Yaaaaay! It's great to be back in Asia, almost feels like coming home. This is just a quick first blog entry to let you all know we're alive and having a great time - Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) has manically crazy traffic but it seems to have some sort of order - you just have to walk slowly across the road and hope it all goes round you! We have been having fun seeing all the weird and wonderful things people can put on motorbikes: families of four, bus windshields, huge hands of bananas, steel pipes..... we've also been wandering around seeing some museums and things and learning lots about Vietnamese history - so much walking!! We are going to have buns of steel. One fun random event yesterday was we happened to find the finals of the Vietnam Open (badminton) so we went along to that - the crowd went wild because the Vietnamese guy won!

Will do some fun stories in a few days, for now here's a couple of photos:

Incense coils in a pagoda we visited

Bananas!

Elephants feet at the reunification palace....weird...

Let's Do That Again!!

2008-11-25T13:00:00.002+10:00

So you all probably know we are heading off into the wide world again on December 6th. This time not such a long trip - just 2 months - but we thought we would restart this blog again so we can keep you up to date with our adventures.

After some wrestling with this blogger site (what do you mean that's not my username? What do you mean I don't have a blog? What do you....... ah I was using the wrong password) we have regained control of our blog and will (hopefully) provide you with regular updates and silly photos.

See you at the end of January!
Smell and Snott :) :) :)

Back in Brisbane!

2007-06-05T12:17:00.000+10:00

So now our travels are at an end - for now at least! We flew back into Brisbane on May 30th and now have the exciting prospect of finding jobs and coping with being back to "reality".... It's been fun catching up with everyone though, and here's a few photos from our first week back. We surprised Shell's dad for his 50th birthday and then had a great time at his 50th party.

Bank St reunion at the Rumpus Room

Brian's 50th party

Shell and Brian demostrating how bad dancing is hereditary

Thailand!

2007-06-05T12:08:00.000+10:00

The plan in Thailand was to do as little as possible and being the great little organized pair that we are we were able to follow the plan to perfection. After landing in Bangkok we spent a couple of drunken nights out and caught a ferry to glimpse Wat Pho, one of the many amazingly beautiful temples in Bangkok. After that we caught a bus to Ko Chang and spent the next 10 days lying on the beach, eating, drinking and generally undoing all the good work we had done trekking in Nepal and watching our tummies return.

Scott was able to go on one little adventure when he swam across to a nearby deserted island, exploring an abandoned resort – it was off season so the place had just recently closed down and because they didn’t expect in idiots to swim across from the main island everything was unlocked so Scott continued to have a little sticky beak until finally he was discovered by a group of wild snarling and barking dogs in which he decided it was a good idea to swim back to the main island.

So after our 10 lazy days in Ko Chang, we headed back up to Bangkok, where we met up with Nun (Shell’s friend from Summerville) and John (Shell’s Dad’s friend from the dinosaur days). It was fun catching up with them but the highlight was meeting a group of young Thai girls in this cool little half local half expat bar we found near our place. They kept buying us drinks and got us into all this cool nightclubs for free. We were sure that a catch was about to come every time we went out with them but it never did. Anyway it was a great laugh and we all had fun dancing around together like the drunken fools we were.

Partying with the locals in Bangkok

Coffee with Nun!

Khaosan Road (backpacker area of Bangkok) at sunset

Drinking Chang with John!

Wat Pho under monsoonal clouds

The 46m reclining Buddha in Wat Pho

Sunset from Kho Chang

Shell relaxing in a hammock at our bungalow

On our snorkelling boat trip

Kathmandu

2007-06-05T12:03:00.001+10:00

We ended up finishing our trek way quicker than we intended coz we’re super doper fitness freaks – cough cough. So we ended up with 10 days to kill in Kathmandu, which isn’t too bad really. Kathmandu is a pretty funky little place to hang out for a while but we have to admit after almost 5 months on the road (after our volunteer work) we were starting to get sick of trudging around from place to place taking pictures of touristy things so we pretty much just camped ourselves in Kathmandu for the 10 days, started plowing the internet for jobs back in Australia (excitement plus) and went out drinking far too often – surprise surprise. Then we caught a plane out of Nepal – said one last good bye as we flew level with the peaks of the Everest mountain ranges and headed for two weeks of hedonism in Thailand. Here’s a couple of photos of the touristy things we did bother to see over those last days in Nepal.

The Buddha Eyes Stupa on a hill above Kathmandu

Shell and a monk survey Kathmandu

Langtang trek 3 - Over the pass

2007-05-13T19:19:00.000+10:00

So after some fun in the snow at Kyangin we headed down (to 1660m) and then up again towards our highest point, the Laurenbina La pass at 4610m. As we may have mentioned, the Nepali people are lovely but have this annoying habit of making tracks that go over the mountains instead of around them. They probably invented the term 'As the crow flies' and so we use the term 'Nepali Flat' a lot - up and down, up and down, up and down......

Along the way we were very happy to find someone with a battery charger to lend us, as we used up all our camera batteries taking photos of snow, and being organised as alway, we hadn't charged our other batteries before the trek. Luckily a nice French girl saved us. And the next day we ended up following their group, because we got lost on the way to our original destination, so gave up and decided to follow the groups with guides, even though it did entail a 1700m climb in one day - we earnt a beer that night! The view was amazing up at Laurenbinayak - see a movie we took at a Stupa nearby.

We visited the holy Gosaikunda lakes at 4380m, which were surprisingly warm at the edges (Hindu faithful bathe in them in summer - brrrr!) and then crossed the pass the next day (see the picture above). Neither of us had ever trekked in snow before so we were a bit frightened (Shell especially) and there were a few stops for Shell to cry and Scott to say "It'll be ok baby, we can do it". Actually, if not for some helpful pointers from an English birdwatcher, we might have given up and turned back. There was one section of snow that looked particularly scary with a big drop beside it, that Shell made Scott climb halfway down the hill to go around, and then climb back up through what we discovered (the hard way) to be thorn bushes. Still, we made it and it was gorgeous!

Then it was a few days trek back to Kathmandu through a different sort of landscape - terraced hillsides and lovely little villages and cows instead of yaks. We were ready to stop by the end of 16 days, but coming back to civilisation was a bit of a culture shock. The food in Kathmandu is so much better and cheaper than mountain food - of course you have to pay for someone to carry everything up there on their backs, so you don't complain! All together we had a brilliant time, and are now the proud owners of sturdy calves and pert bottoms!

N.B. we worked out that a lot of our videos weren't actually visible unless we gave a direct link to them. So now we've made them visible - if you follow the Our Videos link in the right hand column you can have a look at lots of them!

Shell writing her diary

Climbing 1700m....

Well-deserved beer after 1700m climb!

Checking out the guide book at Laurenbinayak

Shell and the Gosaikunda Lake

Scott on a frozen river

Langtang trek 2 - Snow in Kyangin!!!!!

2007-05-10T17:42:00.000+10:00

It snowed. Wow overnight it had snowed at least two inches and we awoke 5am the next day acting like kids. And even better, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it lasted like that all morning. Now if you’ve ever been high in the mountains, you probably realise that clouds normally start appearing pretty quick in the morning and don’t leave all day ruining all your views and atmosphere, but luckily we were free to walk down the valley in the snow, giggling, taking about 100 photos, making a snow man, Scott writing his name in the snow and awing at the absolute beauty and spectacular mountain peaks which were all around us. It was perfect!!!

Have a look at a movie we took

we 'made' a friend - scott's first ever snowman!

on our long walk

yak and yak impersonator

Kyangin covered in snow at dawn

Langtang trek 1 - off we go again!

2007-05-10T16:25:00.000+10:00

So after 12 days trekking in Annapurna, you’d suspect we’d have enough of tired legs, sore shoulders and freezing nights but just 10 nights after we stepped off the Annapurna range we were on a bus heading for the Langtang Mountains. Unfortunately it didn’t start quite as we planned. As we were packing up our stuff before heading for the bus, Shell said, “I don’t feel so well.”

Long story short, three days later Shell had developed Giardia, which is a bacterial parasite quite common in the Nepalese water. We’ve read it can take up to three weeks to develop in your system so she probably got it in the Annapurna region.

So we camped out in a town called Lama Hotel (funny name for town, I know) and stayed at a place called Friendly Guest House. We initially chose the place because it offered us a good discount but it ended up more than living up to its name.

The old constantly smiling lady there had some Japanese natural medicine for digestion problems called Seirogan (don’t ask where the hell she got it from), but she gave Shell that for a couple of days and next thing we know she’s good as new – damn those Japanese are the bomb at making everything!!!

Anyway the next couple of nights we climbed slowly up to the peak of the first part of our journey, a village called Kyanjin Gompa at 3730m. It was a beautiful little climb that started through the forest, which always took Shelley ages to pass through, sometimes to poo and sometimes to explain to Scott something botanical that he normally didn’t listen to and said “Yes Dear”

Once the forest cleared we started to get a tantalizing view of the spectacular Langtang range, with its peaks in the distance and all around us slowly starting to swallow us within as we climbed deeper into its belly.

We saw loads of cool little things on the way, including some amazingly brightly coloured Tibetan people, with all the women wearing belts that hung fabric from behind them, starting from their waist and falling to their ankles, decorated with large horizontal stripes of all types of different colours. Pretty much every woman we saw around these regions would wear one of these belts.

But Scott’s favourite sight around this range (other than the mountains – oh sorry yes and of course you too Shell - blurgh) was the yows. What’s a yow you say. Glad you asked. A yow is a cross breed between a yak and a cow. They supposedly give more milk than a yak or a cow but like most things, the male is useless and infertile. Anyway they are so funny coz most the time they just look like hairy long overweight cows but with slightly more placid faces. Its hard to explain. You have to see one to know what we mean.

So on our 5th night in the Langtang mountains, at Kyanjin Gompa, we went to sleep in a cloud. The weather had turned pretty bad and we didn’t have high expectations for the next day but we went to sleep hopeful and awoke very joyful for we had received a fantastic present overnight and the next day turned out to be one of the best days we’ve had on the trip so far....

a yak! or is it a yow?

look at me!!!

chilling in the Langtang amphitheatre at Kyangin

so cute!

kids and prayer flags - lots of both in Nepal

birds-eye view of a village on a terraced mountain

scott crossing a precarious bridge

bath time!

prayer flags in the mist

Trekking in the Himalayas....

2007-04-09T17:12:00.000+10:00

Phew! After 12 days of trekking, our butts are firm, our legs are strong, our feet are blistered, our eyes are still full of the amazing views and our bag is slightly lighter from losing our camera. Sigh. But not to worry, we still have half a trip's worth of photos, thanks to an old style camera we bought from an old style Nepali couple - it has been renamed our super-dooper camera, due to its lack of zoom, constant flash, sliding shutter, manual wind-on and rewind, and dodgy photo quality. But we love it. Luckily we still have Shell's camera that we left in Pokhara, so there will be more photos soon, but no photos from this trip on the blog sorry unless by some miracle we find a scanner round here. You'll have to wait till we get back to Australia to look at them.

But you can take our word for it - the scenery was amazing. Stunning. Gorgeous. Huge snowy mountains all around us, pretty flowers, little villages, smily people. Lots of tourists too and little stalls trying to flog the same things to you, but they weren't nearly as hassly as the Indian equivalents. We started off at 1100m and climbed to 3200m over a few days, only to descend back to 1100m (admittedly at a town with hot springs so we didn't mind and took the opportunity to have a day off!) and then climb up to 3700m, with a side trip to a tea house at 4200m. It's harder to climb at that altitude, and you start panting as soon as you start moving, but the air is crisp and pure and there's lots of snow and yaks to look at. We were quite proud of ourselves on our longest trek ever (shelley especially is proud anyway, cause she wasn't even going to go initially and was, don't tell anyone, a bit scared) and we're planning another one before we leave Nepal.

Some of the best bits were:

- the yak who waited for us to move to the side of the track until he would go past
- the many coloured spring flowers all around
- snow! yaks! yaks are so cute in a kind of scary looking way.
- shelley getting blisters and doing half the trek in the oh-s0-sexy combination of thongs and socks. Either tough or stupid.
- climbing to our highest at the 4200m tea shop, only to decide to try the local Tibetan tea, which turned out to be salty and almost undrinkable even with 3 spoons of sugar, but both of use didn't want to offend the lady so we drank some, making horrible faces, and then tipped the rest into the bushes
- having homemade apple cider in Marpha, the Apple Capital of Nepal (again, mainly shell's opinion here)
- food tasting sooooo good after a whole day's trekking
- our cool walking sticks we're going to try to bring back to Aus
- sunrise over the mountains from Poon Hill, a gorgeous panorama that was spoilt a bit by the 200 tourists up there for the sunrise.
- meeting lots of different people and playing lots of cards with an English couple
- the poor porters carrying 3 or 4 bags each. We carried our own, though i have to admit sometimes we would have wished for a porter....
- just the mountains everywhere, the quiet and the trees and the desert and the birds.

So you'll have to imagine! It was a great trek, but next time we want to do the whole Annapurna circuit and cross the Thorung La pass like a lot of the people we met. Have to come back to Nepal one day then....

Oh and by the way we've uploaded some new movies and I'll be uploading some more over the next few days. Take a look at the link to our movies in the right hand column of this page, inparticular check out the ones at the end of Scott and Shell feeding the baby elephants and playing with them in the water, plus Scott climbing up one's trunk..... (if myspace tells you it has an error, just refresh the page)

Royal Chitwan National Park

2007-03-26T23:08:00.001+10:00

Hey again! Have a fast internet connection now so here are some photos - check out this entry and the Varanasi entry for new photos if you like!

Scott showing off his soccer skills

I think they like posing for photos...

Yum, elephant snot!

The playful elephant all by himself

Oooo, he likes that..

A gharial - small crocodile

Very excited baby wants our biscuits!

Buffalo crossing

Like a tank! Lucky we were on an elephant.

Ready for our safari on Emily.

Yay, we're still on, don't roll over yet - argh! (spot shell's leg below)

All the worries and bad feelings we still had concerning the problems we encountered at the border were completely extinguished soon after reaching the Royal Chitwan National Park. We had such a great time there and there’s so much we could tell you. We could go into detail about the beautiful boat ride we did up the river spotting various animals and birds including a stork and a crocodile, or we could try to explain to you how we were scared senseless before undertaking a bush walk with our local guide because of the countless warnings he gave us and the tactics needed in case we ran into a variety of different wild beasts that seemed to be present (like ruhnning in zigzags if a rhino charged us). Or we could give descriptions of how it felt to see, 2m away from us, a massive rhinocerous (about 2m long by 1.5m high by 1.5m wide), which we would not surprised if they were the orginal inspiration for military tanks, from the top of an elephant on our elephant safari, or we could try to explain what it was like to witness the unusual cultural/homosexual show that seemed to blend traditional stick dances with transvestite dances, or we could describe how we oohed and aahed over the absolutely gorgeous baby elephants that we fed and that chased us round wanting our cookies in the elephant breeding grounds, but we’ll skip all that and instead focus on the highlight of our time in the park... the bathing with elephants.

We had heard there was an area where we could go and they would let us swim and bathe with the elephants. We had to admit we were sceptical, but when we got to the area where the locals bring their trained domesticated elephenats to wash every morning we were pleasantly surprised to see four elephants playing around and splashing themselves with the water. Two of them already had tourists struggling to hold onto their backs as they squirted their riders with water from their trunks and wriggled their bodies in a playful way in order to try and dislodge their passengers.

The third elephant was allowed to play by himself. We have to admit, he seemed the happiest with his trainer siiting on the bank watching him. The great beast continued to play and splash himself with the water the entire time we were there. In fact when we left he was still playing, with his trainer patiently waiting for him. He seemed a little smaller than the others so he was probably younger and more playful and although sometimes it’s hard to tell when an animal is happy, we both agreed that we think that elephant was definitelty smiling.

Anyway, it didn’t take us long to skip down to the waters edge towards the fourth elephant (the biggest one). At that stage he was lying happily in the river with his trunk sticking out of the water like a massive snorkel. Scott nodded to the local indicating that we were keen to play with the elephant, where he held out his hand and helped us onto the elephant’s side. He then moved towards the back of the elephant and said repeatedly in a stern voice but not actually shouting "Hazza hazza hazza" or something like that at which the elephant began to roll from its side onto its legs. When this happened, we had to scramble from the side of the elphant, towards it back and then edge towards its neck for a steadier position.

Smiling and laughing as the beast stood and steadied itself, we waved like the tourists we were to our guide who was busy taking photos for us. It didn’t take the elephant trainer long to command "Chop chop", where the elephant, unknown to us, started to fill his trunk from the river. A couple of seconds later we felt the impact of the animal releasing its load of water, Scott especially who was in the front and hence received the direct impact and felt the force of the water hitting him like a firehose.

After another half an hour of the elehpant trying and succeeding in throwing us from its back and dozens more squirtings we left smiling from ear to ear after paying the owner of the elephant a tip of 100 rupees (probably the best 2 Australian dollars we’re ever spent). We took a couple of videos there too – will upload them soon!

It was a magical experience and we decided to stay another night simply to do it all again the next day, where Scott was able to convince one of the elephant owners to let the elephant pick him up with its trunk - something he’d seen one of them do earlier and was determined to give a try. Basically the elephant stands still and you stand in front of him, hold each of its ears with each of your hands, place one of your feet on his trunk and when you lean forward, it lifts you with ease where you walk up his trunk and onto his head. Then it squirts you when you get there, but we think it did that bit just for fun.

Crossing The Border...

2007-03-26T23:08:00.000+10:00

Well, crossing the border from India to Nepal was an exciting and emotional day. At the beginning of the morning we knew that it was going to be our last day in India and Shell’s first ever overland border crossing. What we didn’t realise was that it would turn out to be also her first ever illegal border crossing. We were shocked and not surprisingly quite fucking pissed off when we got to the border and opend up the part of the bag with our backup English pounds, American and Australian dollars to find out that it had all somehow magically disappeared.

We still haven’t quite figured out exactly when and where this occurred but it didn’t change the fact that we were now stranded at the border with no more cash than about 30 Australian dollars between us and hence no actual way of paying for visas into Nepal. No problem, we thought, very pissed off and inconvenienced but nothing too major – they didn’t steal any cards or the cameras or laptop or anything. We’ll just have to go to the ATM. Oh, there’s no banks or ATMs in the town on this side of the border. Look, there on the other side, in Nepal, where you’re not allowed to go yet.

So after a small sob story they let Shell sneak over the border and change some money while they held Scott as bond. Needless to say Scott was quite pleased to see Shell return with the 60 US dollars we needed to pay for our visas, so we started our time in Nepal a little displeased but at least there. However we soon discovered some cheap but good whiskey and set about forgetting our troubles.

Varanasi

2007-03-26T23:06:00.000+10:00

Bathers at the ghats

Cow trying to play hide and seek, not very successfully

Sunset ceremony

Painting in the Tibetan Buddhist Temple

Scott with a huuuge prayer wheel at the Tibetan Buddhist Temple

An old temple half sinking into the river

Boats on the Ganges

Monks with video cameras! Scott loves these guys.

Our rower at sunrise

Saris getting dried after washing in the Ganges

Our last stop in India was a few days in the holy city of Varanasi. Despite some of the worst harrassment (beggars, rickshaw drivers, shop owners, hash sellers, religious sadhus, etc) we’ve come across in India, it was an intriguing place to stay for a few nights. The town is strung along the holy Ganges river, with over 80 bathing ghats on the riverside, each of which has a different special purpose or property. It was a great way to spend your days, wandering up and down the river, watching pilgrims bathing, people washing clothes, boats, sadhus, and just generally life going on. That’s pretty much how we spent our time in varanasi, although we did get up ridiculously early one morning to go on a boat ride at sunrise, which turned out to be worth it, it’s such a pretty time of day and the ghats were bustling already. We also saw some of the sunset ceremony they seem to put on mainly for tourists, with lots of smoke and bell ringing down by the main ghat. Of course this is India, so it didn’t start till an hour after sunset.

One of the most confronting experiences here was watching the cremation ghats. You can’t watch from too close because the families (understadably) don’t want tourists at their funerals, but from a nearby balcony you can watch all you like. It was morbidly fascinating, seeing them bring down the bodies all decorated and covered in shawls, where they were taken down to the river to be immersed in the holy water, then brought back to a stack of wood, removed from their decorations until they were just in a white cloth, placed on the pile and a fire was lit. There were pyres everywhere, and it was quite unnerving seeing charred body parts sticking out from the flames. We watched for a long time, it was hard to look away. Apparently they have 200 or so cremations a day – and it takes 360kg of wood each – so the place is covered in wood piles 2 stories high, and boatss keep pulling in stacked high with logs. It’s an auspicious place ot be cremated if you’re a Hindu, and there are more than enough people wanting to be burnt there to keep them busy.

We also took a day trip out to Sarnath, just outside Varanasi, supposedly the place where Buddha gave his first teachings. There’s a monument and a deer park, but the most interesting thing there is all the different Buddhist temples from around the world, which have very different feels to them – the neat Japanese one with a pretty garden, the colourful Tibetan one with prayer wheels and paintings, the austere and huge Chinese one with enormous statues, and the simple Thai one where 10 year old trainee monks were studying and were very keen to show us around – sooooooo cute! We managed to piss off a rickshaw driver who’d agreed to wait for us there and then take us back to Varanasi, but who kept following us around and showing us his watch, so we eventually paid him for one-way and told him to get lost.

Delhi

2007-03-26T23:04:00.000+10:00

We turned up in Delhi on a train 4 hours late (fitting for our last train in India) at almost midnight, in the rain. We were very happy to have booked a place and went straight to bed! The next day was similarly rainy so we spent the time playing cards and doing mundane stuff like washing and buying a Nepal Lonely Planet and ringing the ATO. Woohoo! Actually Scott and I were sight-seen-out so we declined to go on a whizzbang taxi tour of Delhi on the last day there, when the rain cleared up a bit. We weren’t too upset – the Red Fort sounded nice but we didn’t mind missing the lengthy excursion to the taxi driver’s sister’s friend’s shop. So pretty much Scott and I saw nothing of Delhi in our 2 days there, but it seemed like a nice enough place! We were happy to hang out with Drew and Chris for our last couple of days together, before they headed to Eygpt and we headed to Varanasi, en route to Nepal.

We did, however, spend our last night together by going out on the town. We saw a show that went through some of the major folk dances in India, including a harvest dance, a demon vs god dance with extravangant costumes, a drum dance and a stick dance where the guy did impossible things with an oversized diabolo. We’d thought it might be a bit touristy but it was actually really entertaining and well worth it. Forgot to take our camera though. After the dancing, we splashed out on dinner at a revolving restaurant, 24 floors up. It was a strange experience – fun to be in a posh place with an amazing view over nightime Delhi, and the food was delicious – but Scott escpecially found it a bit of a culture shock to be somewhere so decadent in a country with so much need. We’d spent 5 months eating simply, spending little and dealing with everyday Indians like beggars and rickshaw drivers and tea-sellers, so to be suddenly surrounded by rich Indians spending on one meal what could feed another family for months – was weird and made us feel a bit guilty too, wondering why we were there. Although the truth of it is that spending less on that meal wouldn’t have meant we would give more to beggars or something, it just felt out of place. Anyway, we still had a nice meal and it was pretty fun watching the floor move!

Then finally, after a fun 3 weeks in which we all had (mostly) a good time and nobody killed each other, we bid goodbye to Chris and Drew and set off on our train to Varanasi, having seen pretty much nothing of Delhi but not minding all that much – we were getting pretty sick of the constant harassment in touristy places. It wasn’t so bad at JITM when we worked there, the locals just wanted to say hi and sometimes ask questions or show us their homes, and the teachers at the college were really friendly, but in tourist places there are so many people trying to get you to buy things or give them money or come look at something or ask you your life story or tell you theirs, that it can get tiring and you’re not so inclined to go exploring. It’s not a good attitude because it stops you from giving your attention to genuinely nice people, and from getting to know some interesting new people, but in the end you just become that way in India to stop yourself going crazy. It hits you sometimes, when you just walk past a crippled beggar without really seeing him, or wave your hand in dismissal at a scruffy child saying "one rupee", or tell a rickshaw driver to get lost when they pull up beside you to ask if you need a rickshaw. It hits you how easy it is to become complacent about things that might have made you cry when you first arrived. Maybe it’s the ubiquity of the poverty, or maybe it’s getting sick of the invasion of your space, or maybe it’s because our efforts to help at JITM seemed more like banging our heads against a wall, or maybe it’s because we’ve been eating similar food and using squat toilets and squeezing in overcrowded buses/trains and sleeping in flea-ridden beds too, so we don’t feel as different from the people in the street as we should. And I think that’s why we’re happy to be going to Nepal – we need some space, and some perspective.

The Breathtaking Taj Mahal and Other Events in Agra

2007-03-26T22:26:00.000+10:00

After our relaxing time in Pushkar, it was back into the fray of harrassment in the tourist Mecca of Agra. We couldn’t spend 5 months in India without seeing the Taj Mahal. And it was definitely worth the visit. While you have to navigate your way through the thick throngs of tourists, they kind of make the place more alive and colourful. The Taj mahal itself has a peaceful aura, and is breathtakingly beautiful – made completely of marble, inlaid (by hand) with millions of precious stones from around the world. The work is so precise and detailed you have to admire it, and the place put tears in our eyes (ok maybe just Shelley’s eyes) because of the love that inspired it. If you didn’t know, the Taj Mahal was constructed by the Mughal emperor Shar Jahan in the 1600’s when his wife died in childbirth (of their 14th child!) – she made him promise to build a monument to their love. Or, as Drew says, it’s man’s biggest erection for a woman.

So we spent a pleasant couple of hours exploring the Taj (incidentally the most expensive place to visit we’ve been to in India – 750 rupees, about $25 – but you do get a free bottle of water). We didn’t get up to much else in Agra, since Drew and Chris both has short bouts of stomach upsets, something we’d all been expecting but thankfully lasted less than a day each. While Drew was having close encounters with his toilet one morning, Scott, Chris and I went off for a walk to explore the Baby Taj – a monument to the father of a Mughal empress, that was the predecessor of the Taj Mahal – and ended up surrounded by about 30 inquisitive kids while we stopped to drink chai on the way home. They were only mildly interested until Shelley decided to show them how to make houses from cards, and then Scott and Chris got their cameras out, at which point mayhem commenced. It was all fun until we paid and left, and then predictably some of the kids followed us to pester us for money and pens and sweets.

Chilling out in the holy city of Pushkar

2007-03-10T22:05:00.000+10:00

Ok then, we will! A great cause.

The holy lake at Pushkar is believed to be one of three places in the world where water spurted forth after Brahma, the Lord of creation, laid down a lotus flower to begin the world. So it’s very popular with Hindu pilgrims, and the lake itself is square-shaped, bordered on all sides by the steps of bathing ghats. We have to admit, all four of us got suckered in, and followed some Brahmins (religious caste people) down to the lake to put the flower they gave us into the water. Of course it was more than that, and they made us repeat mantras after them and sprinkle flowers, coloured powder and sweets into the water, then gave us a coconut to hold while they started to tell us about how much money other tourists usually give them. Unsurprisingly “donations” were asked for afterwards.

Pushkar was a chillout place for us – we spent a fair amount of our time in an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet ($1.50) where Scott got our money’s worth and Shelley enjoyed as much muesli as she could eat, and everyone experimented with pancake toppings. We spent lots of time wandering round the lake, climbed up a mountain to the little temple at the top to watch the sunset (and marvel at the disco lights surrounding the idols in the temple – did they bring electridcity all the way up the mountain just for that?). Here's a few hill-climbing photos...

We also witnessed a couple of days of the leadup to an Indian wedding, which included much decoration, boys carrying lanterns in the streets, horses and parasols and jewellery-encrusted women, but most annoyingly, the loudest and most terrible brass band you have ever heard. Not one member seemed to understand melody, rhythm or the point of listening to anyone else in the band. And unfortunately they had that dreaded combination: loudspeakers and a superhuman stamina. We’d go to sleep to their clashings and bangings – no matter what part of the city they were in – and wake up to them 8 hours later. But it’s India, and you couldn’t really get mad at them, you just have to smile at the inanity of it all!

Scott has come up with a great analogy for India – it’s like kids cooking a mother’s day breakfast. You might not get what you wanted, the food will probably be cold or undercooked, and it might come 2 hours late. But it’s delivered with love and a childlike innocence, and there’s a certain beauty in the earnest smiles, so you just eat your cold burnt toast, and sometimes you even like it.

Oh, and Pushkar was also the place where, against all odds and expectations, we managed to get Chris onto a moped! Admittedly she clung onto Drew the whole way and used up a year’s supply of swear words, but we think she might have even enjoyed it by the end of the excursion! They weren’t the flashiest mopeds, but we had lots of fun whizzing round the desert scrub and little villages. We were looking for some Shiva temples – didn’t find them but it didn’t really matter! Shelley had a go at driving this time – so Scott found out how much bumpier and scarier it actually is on the back – and now we both want to get a motorbike back in Oz!

Pretty Pushkar Lake

Colourful saris everywhere...

Colourful turbans in the Pushkar streets

Riding with the wind on speedy camels

2007-03-10T21:55:00.000+10:00

The highlight of Jaisalmer was definitely our camel safari. This involved a jeep ride out into the desert where we hopped onto some camels for an hour or so, to wander around the dunes. Scott’s camel was led by a cute but serious 10 year old boy, the son of our guide, who we nicknamed the “maharajah” because he supervised the preparation of dinner later with a very regal solemnity. (Or maybe he was just staring into space and thinking about bugs, but he seemed to be supervising!) The guides started preparing dinner and left us all on top of a dune to watch the sunset. No sooner had Drew commented “Gee it would be nice to have a cold beer right now!” than an enterprising young man from one of the villages hiked up the dune with a sackful of beer! Not cold, but we were still impressed enough to buy some! After a yummy dinner cooked right there in the desert by our guides and driver, and some wandering round the dunes by the light of a full moon, we headed back in the jeep to town, satisfied and smiling.

Drew, Chris and Tomas watching the sunset

Scott flipping - anyone on his African trip may remember similar photos..

Happy alcoholic

We have to have the occasional romantic photo

The maharajah - Scott's escort