February 24, 2008 by Rick.

While Dubai was nicely warm, landing in Tanzania was immediately oppressingly hot and very muggy again. This was to the extent that we haven’t experienced since Singapore, or maybe even Fiji. Most all guidebooks and other travelers that we’ve met have given the advice to get out of Dar es Salaam as soon as possible in order to see the “Real” Tanzania. Amid 48 hour rotating fevers from me to Luke, then Alex, we took a ferry over to Zanzibar and spent a few days there. We didn’t really get the opportunity to branch out from Stonetown to other parts of the island though. After everyone was well again we did take a “Spice Tour” for a half day, and then went to a beach on the West shore, just a little North of Zanzibar Town.

The spice tour was enjoyable and very informative. There was an incredible variety of plants and trees and shrubs that either were or smelled like their originals. These included: Lemon Grass, Ginger, Tumor, Cinnamon Tree, Chocolate Fruit, Coco seeds, nutmeg bark, vanilla beans, and sweet curry leaves. Sadly though, nothing we encountered was indigenous to the Island (or even the region for that matter). Everything was introduced from India & South America by Portugese or British settlers from the 1500’s and up. all along the walk there were several boys weaving and making all kinds of leaf adornments to give to the tourists for money. I accepted a leaf wrapped as a cone, and stitched closed with a narrow gauge twig to hold my samples in. Our children however were wildly enthusiastic about accepting all kids of neat (but un-keepable) things like rings, weaved buckets, a huge hat, a tie, and a intricately done frog on a string necklace. When I reminded them that we would have to be paying in tips for everything, they started slowing down in readily accepting everything thrown their way. Alex was still a little more discerning than Luke though. I gave them each a LITTLE bit of money to give to the children for when collection time came though. In the end, Luke gave most of his items away to some much younger children we encountered in a small poor village, much to their great delight.

After the spice tour we proceeded to a beach near where a Muslim Maharajah had a large plantation and a few hundred black slaves. When the British took over governing Zanzibar from Zanzibar town not too far away, they outlawed slavery. The evil king by then had heard about this large cave in heavy tree cover on his property. He then mandated that all slaves be kept in this cave unless working to keep them hidden from the British. There were a few hundred of them in a cavern that was only about 30m wide by 100m long covered in very uneven broken ground. There were passages at each end that one “could” get out from, but both involved swimming underwater for a little ways. Several slaves did escape but apparently most people of the era were disinclined towards dark, airless cave swimming. One passage was about 500m to another exit point (with extensive belly crawling involved) while the other was 3km of twisty turning passages. The main hole over the cavern did not have walls adjacent to it, so the guards merely had to leave some food (never enough for all) down below and pull up the ladder for the night. Thankfully there was a freshwater pool in the main cavern that everyone could draw from, but I have no idea what they did with the waste of three to four hundred people in such a small place for the five years that it was their home.

A ten minute walk from the cave entrance was a gorgeous beach with only a few other tourists. There were 20m high cliffs along this area, but stairs and a passage down through the rock had been cut (probably by those same slaves sadly) to the amazing stretch of sandy beach. Since we were on the mainland side of the island, the waves were nicely small and the water was very pleasantly cool. With the extreme heat and mugginess we had so far experienced in Tanzania (with only one reprieve in a pool thus far) it was very refreshing to be immersed in cooler (in a relative way only of course) water. After an hour and a bit of frolicking, we went next door to our hotel and bought plane tickets to Moshi for the next evening. A 55 minute flight was a welcome alternative to a 2.5 hour “fast” ferry ride for $35 each (the slow one is 4.5 hours!) back to Dar es Salaam and the mainland. After that, (and entirely depending upon the schedules meshing up) we needed to take a $15 public bus for a 10-11 hour ride North to Moshi. Thrown in there somewhere would be an extra night’s accommodation, likely in some dusty bug infested place along the way. I think Claudette finally became convinced of the preference of a flight when she kept hearing other travelers refer to the bus trip North as “The Suicide Route” referring to the irresponsible manner in which the drivers guide the 20 tonnes of metallic coffins along the highways, crazily weaving in, around and through other traffic and general obstacles.

The kicker about flying is that the Kili International Airport is roughly halfway between Arusha and Moshi, and in the evening we got soaked $60 for a 35 minute drive to our hotel in Moshi. It was a fairly new and nice place, not to mention pretty reasonable at $55 per night per room, (we needed two). It had a pool and internet in every room, but the internet connection in the office barely worked never mind the room ones. Still it beat the $65/night we paid in Stone Town which didn’t have a pool. From this hotel and walking around town a bit we caught some incredible views of Mount Kilimanjaro at various times when it was un-clowded. They moved in and out incredibly fast, because I would often go to get my camera after seeing it on a walk to an internet cafe, and ‘poof’, I’d be too late. I don’t think that Alex or I got a decent shot of it for the three days we were there. We made arrangements in Arusha for one night in a hotel before our genuine African Safari was scheduled to start. I have no doubts that this will be very spectacular, but at $670/day for the four of us it had really better be! (To compare, the 15 day Peru, Machu Picchu, jungle stay, Galapagos Islands GAP tour was $934/day for us. One more comparison: to climb Mount Kili costs $680/day for four. It’s almost the same price as the safari cause you’d simply use a bunch of human porters instead of a petrol vehicle.)

2008-02-26
PS: I snuck this post in on a $10 per fifteen minute satellite connection at a lodge when I had to come in for something else. Don’t worry, we have all been typing daily logs on the safari and there will be TONNES! of stuff to read in just a few short days!

RJ

Posted in 2008-02 to 04, Africa | 2 Comments »

February 18, 2008 by Rick.

With not a little regret we departed India. Yes the filth, societal attitudes and chaotic life there were daunting to live around. But there is such a long, incredible, historical past integrated with India that makes her so majestic to travelers. Not to fear though, since we quickly discovered that there are an abundance of friendly Indians (men only of course) working and living in Dubai. We knew hotels would be outrageous when we decided to stretch our four hour flight layover between India and Tanzania to three days, but still decided to have the experience. We managed to find a semi reasonable eight story hotel close to the “action” and the airport. It still cost us $699.53 for two rooms, for two nights each. There was another one for about $80 less per room per night, but it was about another 45 minutes (outside of rush hour) taxi ride away to the far East of Dubai near the secondary airport. It also had several very bad ratings on the trip adviser web site. This one even had a roof top pool which we never had time to make it to for the two nights we were there. That evening I bought some milk and disposable bowls to go with the boxes of honey nut corn flakes we still had leftover from India. Mmmmmm. Sure beat paying $15 each for toast and eggs downstairs!

That first afternoon, after checking in we headed to the “Mall of the Emirates” to try and go skiing for a two hour block. It turns out that strong proficiency is a must before beginners are allowed on the hill at all. Those who have never skied before (like Alex & Luke) MUST take a one hour “discovery” lesson first, and then work their way up through five additional 90 minute lessons before they can go on the chair by themselves. Worse yet, we discovered that all lesson slots for that day were full up until about 9:00 PM. Thus we promptly booked a discovery lesson and then a successive (and expensive) private lesson for the kids. We spent the remainder of the evening having a meal and fighting our way through rush hour traffic back to our hotel. We planned on seeing (and taking pictures of) the 7 star sail hotel and the new tallest building in the world in the daylight tomorrow.

The next day we had planned to leave by 10:00 AM for some daylight pictures before needing to be at the ski hill by noon, but it just didn’t seem to happen. Yet another lazy day found us getting out the door barely in time to have a quick bite for lunch at the mall, before needing to get the kids geared up for their introductory “discovery” lesson. After they were good to go and waiting for the instructor, Claudette and I went to get outfitted. All equipment was supplied except for a toque and gloves, which we had to buy. Claudette and I didn’t bother with hats, and Alex still hat her hat and gloves from China that she kept forgetting to send home in parcels. Luke and I had simply (and intentionally) left ours behind at Jim & Letty’s place since we couldn’t fathom needing them again. Alex kept hers cause she liked the colors and style, and wanted to use them at home next winter. The “ski” store had cheap little fleece children’s gloves for $5 or full size adult ski gloves for $22. Claudette could fit the kids ones, and I bought some for myself as well. There was no way my fingers could fit in, but there was also no way I was gonna pay that much for full sized gloves for only a few hours! Thus, after paying, I borrowed some scissors and cut all the tips of the fingers off. The guys behind the till were shocked and then understood what I was doing. The Aussie guy even suggested that he was gonna do that too since his fingers just got too warm and sweaty in the regular gloves. My only reply was that, “Yeah! It’s a great idea and the Chicks really dig it!” gave them an even bigger laugh.

I should make a note here for posterity’s sake about Claudette’s “fears”. “Some” women’s irrationality really astounds me sometimes, (and my wife’s asound me on a regular basis). The evening before we were going to go skiing, she was Hmmming and Hawing and generally fretting about possibly joining in the beginner lesson herself! Simply CRAZY!!! It took extensive convincing on my part (with an incredulous voice at first, that I slowly tamed into a soothing, convincing tone by the end of the discussion) before she agreed to give it a try on the hill first. She was worried that after almost fourteen years of not skiing that she would have completely forgotten how. Geeeessh!

I had forgotten the larger video camera, but Alex had remembered to bring her waterproof, shock resistant one along. So Claudette and I took a few runs while the kids were getting prepped and used to their ski legs. We took a bunch of photos and some video of their first forays on skis and going up the conveyor belt lift on the bunny hill. After that first lesson (one hour) we were all even a little cool, (but in a very refreshing way for Claudette and I). The kids private lesson wasn’t for another half hour, and their previous Austrian instructor allowed them to stay on the hill with me until the next lesson. Luke was a little combative about me making him work, but we practiced some more for the next twenty minutes before they had to go and meet their next instructor for the private lesson. That one went REALLY well, and both kids excelled dramatically. With ten minutes left, the instructor suggested we take Alex on the chairlift on the big hill while he stayed with Luke to get his left leg working better. By the end of the formal lesson I stayed with Luke on the bunny hill a bit longer to make him practice, but he was very frustrated with being left behind by Alex’s methodical skill at having mastered turning while in a snowplow.

When the kids cards would no longer work to get them into the lifts, Claudette had already decided to go along with Alex after a few trips to the top of the chairlift. I then managed to take Luke for two runs up the chairlift to get him a better chance of practicing that terrible right turn. On the second run, he got off the chairlift half way (nice and smoothly I should add) and I continued on to the top for the last run of the day. The “last run of the day” for skiers is notorious for including an injury, and this first “last run of the day” for me in over a dozen years was no different. As I was doing something that perhaps maybe I shouldn’t have, I fell in a spiraling cartwheel down the hill. I quickly got up and skied down the rest of the way to where Luke was waiting for me. At this point moving my legs was excruciating! and I barely made it the rest of the way down the hill with Luke, never mind carrying our ski’s in to get changed and leave. By this point, I realized that I had pulled my groin muscle HUGELY, and could barely but one leg in front of the other. When I explained this to Claudette her immediate reaction was not quite support. She lambasted me for doing something so stupid as she was now going to have to do so much more, and work harder carrying things. Ugh!

So after a hot soothing bath that night, I felt a little better. My family (some of them openly, some of them secretly) still snickered at my waddling around the room though. At the airport the next morning after checking in I asked and found out that the check-in gate was a twenty minute walk away. I causally inquired about borrowing one of the several wheelchairs sitting there and then was asked to wait a few minutes. About fifteen minutes later a man came up and got me in one, took my boarding pass and proceeded to wheel me away. I protested saying that my family could push me and that I didn’t need the “attendant” but he insisted that I wasn’t allowed to have a wheelchair on my own. Thus we were sped through a “special” line in security and taken to an elevator just beyond. Upstairs we all boarded an electric cart and rode most of the way though the terminals and gates to a special disabled waiting to board room. There was a sign asking family members of the crippled to wait outside, but the room was empty and so Claudette and the kids came in with me. There we enjoyed a free wifi connection, comfy seats and a distinct lack of noisy crowds. Mmmm… I managed to sneak out of the room and propelled myself across the great hall to the washroom. At the time of boarding I was pushed all the way to the gate while Claudette and the kids rode the moving sidewalks and we boarded. They had arranged a special elevator bus for me too, but I insisted on taking the regular bus and climbing the stairs from the tarmac to the plane myself. Whew!

The flight was not too bad, and I managed not to cramp up too badly. When we landed in Dar Es Salaam I tried to grab a wheelchair just inside the terminal but was firmly rebuffed! Only if I had made arrangements with the flight crew before landing could I possibly enjoy such a privilege I was told. So I sighed and waddled on shaking my head at the grand inequities of a world-class port like Dubai and the backwoods firm rules of Africa. The general friendliness and desire to accomodate in Dubai was very refreshing. This of course reminds me of a little story that one taxi driver had told us. Dubai seems to be a long narrow strip of land adjacent to the ocean. there are about six or seven major 6-8 lane roadways running parallel to the oceanfront at different intervals. Unfortunately there are still just too many cars on the roads. That fact coupled with the generalization that most people work in one half of Dubai and live in the other half make “rush hour” traffic crazy at best, and a two hour almost standstill at worst. This rush hour begins at 4:00 PM and goes until about 8:30 PM though.

So, as we were stuck for an hour and a half trying to take a trip we had previously done in 23 minutes, the driver told us about the sheik there. Apparently he’s a very down to earth kinda guy. We already knew about the sheik’s incredible vision in creating an incredible upscale tourist destination and a fantastic trading/port economy with the tax free zone. The Sheik also drives around in his own car, by himself. No driver, no bodyguards, no escorts, nothing. The only way the “people” know it’s him is from the Dubai license plate, simple “1″ instead of the five digit number everyone else gets. There were a few other quaint stories that were interesting as well. the last one though involved the Sheik dressing up in old, dirty clothes. He had arranged for an old beater car, and often went driving around the town at 3:00 AM to see what tourists, the “common man” and his police force were up to. Apparently he’d made this foray into the nightlife many times, and once had caught a policeman taking a bribe or doing something bad. The policeman was fired, and all others were generally on their toes following the news. Sounds like a fun place to live, if one could afford it!

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | 2 Comments »

February 17, 2008 by Rick.

The snobbish class system we’ve encountered has been startling and frequent within Indian society I’ve noticed. Hotel managers or owners are constantly referring to their “Boys” doing this or that, and it felt like they were speaking of owning their workers. Time and time again I felt as though I was in the deep Southern States a hundred years ago. The poor are REALLY poor, and semi-content to be that way. There is an obvious aloofness or superiority with much of the portion of Indian society that we delt with. Educated tour guides would show open disdain to the poor or beggars that seemed to maraud us starkly caucasian tourists. Only one other situation stands out along similar lines outside of India, (the occasions were too numerous inside India to even discuss further). On our Laos tour, our tour guide was reasonably well educated (but a former Buddhist Monk Novice of twelve years!) and treated the hill tribe villagers we visited with seeming disdain. I was cautious about taking many pictures or walking off the beaten path, wanting to offer these people some semblance of privacy in their grass huts. He somewhat gruffly insisted that I take as many pictures of whatever I wanted, and go wherever I wanted. The exception of course being that I shouldn’t enter any huts. He did insist that I should take and pictures or video that I wanted through open doorways into their private lives. He would also portray slight arrogance as he calmly swept aside villagers in his way while walking, not even addressing them, just calmly carrying on his informative lecture and pushing them aside to walk through. It was a little weird and certainly disconcerting.

Back to Indians now for a moment. I got into a bit of a discussion upon arrival at the Dubai airport with an Indian couple in their sixties. As soon as the plane comes to a stop at the terminal people spring up and push up the isle as much as possible to get a better “spot” to get off the plane first. This means standing and waiting while crushed by a throng of others for at least ten minutes before the door at the front is even opened! I often don’t take kindly to such ridiculous line jumping, (as some of you might imagine). So, when I need to stand up and get our bags out of the overhead compartment, I simply look the person in the eye and kindly say excuse me. Not being used to direct shaming, they will invariably back up and reluctantly make room. When I hold the entire line up for an extra seven seconds to let my family out of the row, people further back seem to become incesnsed! This minimal description is ALL planes outside of North America so far by the way. Simply astounding the degradation of society elsewhere… (Not to say that North Americans are better in every way of course, I would never say such things about a continent that has produced a lying, thieving scumbag like Jean Cretin or an idiot puppet warmonger like George Bush.)

Now back to older Indian couple. Before waiting in the customs line at Dubai, I had changed our Indian currency for UAE money. They wouldn’t take several of the smaller bills however, and I was left with them. In the line, I turned to the couple beside me and offered them the money (it amounted to about $3 in several smaller bills). They were behind me previously on the plane I think, and still upset, and therefore couldn’t possibly entertain such a ridiculous thought as taking money from me. I was completely surprised by such behavior and then tried to give it to the woman who was closer to me and clearly in charge of the relationship. She tried to hand it back, and for fun I refused to hold out my hand to see how far she’d go to get rid of it. The money dropped on the floor and she lashed out at me that I should really have given it to the poor people in India! I insisted that we did indeed give abundantly to the poor throughout our trip around India. She was becoming more incensed with the money just sitting there on the floor as I continued by saying that perhaps the poor in India would do much better if the arrogant wealthier society took more care to look after them. Oooogh! I hit a nerve indeed. She suddenly took me back to an elementary school playground war of stupid words as she came out with this beauty, “at least our poor people are content in the ignorance and we need not waste any more effort on them!” My gawd, and she actually meant it too! This attitude had obviously rubbed off from several decades of British rule, but even in current day England I would sincerely doubt that such strong attitudes are still that pervasive in society. This I found absolutely depressing, similar to reading “Black Like Me” several years ago and the insurmountable obstacles he encountered with peoples attitudes.

PS: Yes, I do know I’m behind in my posts. I’m almost finished my Dubai one, but we’re already three days into Tanzania!

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | 3 Comments »

February 14, 2008 by Rick.

We try and keep blog posts in some semblance of chronological order. Even though they’re written out of turn occasionally or we have to wait a few days for internet acess to post them. And so with this series of catch-ups there are a couple of posts place previous to newer ones, that some people might have already gone through.

So, if you’re really bored; go back a little ways (February ninth-ish) and read everything!

Posted in 2008-02 to 04, Africa | No Comments »

February 12, 2008 by Rick.

My intestinal disorder had more or less cleared up and we were excited to be in what was formerly Bombay, and also sad that this was it for India. Our booked hotel (Ugh, I don’t even know if we could call it that!) was the diviest of the dives. All of the “midrange” places ($50-$125) were solidly booked when we had called them from Fort Kochi. The Hilton’s, et all at $150/room at two rooms! were right out of our budget. Especially since we knew that Dubai was going to be in that price range for just a moderate quality place. So, we were stuck with the Volga. At least it had bathrooms in our rooms for $31 (or a shared bathroom for $18). Unfortunately our two rooms were on different floors and this wasn’t the kind of place we felt comfortable with the kids being that far away from us in. Thus Claudette and I split up to the two different rooms for a couple of nights. There were lots of street vendors set up all day long down the main road we were on and there were a couple of pretty good restaurants nearby that we ate at. Mumbai has to be the cleanest city in India that we encountered. Not to say that it’s citizens didn’t just dump crap wherever they wanted, just that the municipality tried to keep up with it more I think. Outside of our room window and one floor down was the rolling fiberglass roof (the stuff we use on greenhouses) of a second floor building below. The apartments on the other side of it from us had been tossing their rubbish out the window for quite a while it seemed and I’m surprised the roof hadn’t caved in. It was incredibly disgusting, but I still forgot to get a picture in the daylight.

We were in Mumbai for three nights and two full days before flying to Dubai. On our first day we walked about ten minutes to the India Gate and had a look around. The shady tour operators gave me some ideas of stuff I wanted to see and do around town. The next day though things seemed to be off to a slow start. Eventually Alex and I took off at about 3:00PM to just get out and do something. We grabbed a taxi to go to the “Hanging Gardens” Park, about 25minutes away. There were no hanging vines or plants in the end, but it was still a pretty nice park to walk around in and escape the massive chaos of 16 million people living together in a city with not near enough roads. (That can describe all cities in India though.) There were many young couples and families having a nice relaxing afternoon, and many hedges were trimmed in the shape of animals that Alex and I tried to guess at before reading the signs. There was an incredibly huge Banyon tree there as well, about 450 years old we were told.

Just down a little ways from that park was another one offering spectacular views of the city and bay below. We had driven up quite a hill to get to the parks and both Alex and I took a bunch of great pictures of the spectacular views. This park had a cool little Bonzai section and kids playground equipment at one end. Following that tour, we grabbed another taxi down the hill and got dropped of at one end of the beach. We leisurely walked along the length of the beach and enjoyed watching all the locals relaxing and enjoying their day of leisure. There was a storm drain outlet about 30cm deep that many people were washing themselves in or with. Yeach! This is after we’ve seen losta people urinate and defecate and dump out all sorts of toxic stuff into the sewers. The one other sad thing we noticed was the cutest little puppy diligently chewing on some sort of food scrap partially buried in the sand and surrounded by crows. Those nasty birds were taking turns walking close and nipping at his tail before running away from his wildly gnashing little puppy teeth. We got close enough to scare the crows away for a bit and give the puppy a little reprieve.

At the other end of the beach was a little fair going on with some small rides. We started noticing the little “ride-on” cars and motorbikes with transistor radios blaring and guys pushing kids around in them. Then as we got closer to the far end we noticed the jumping pillow, circular “vehicles” rides, (separated into cars, planes, and motor bikes) as well as a mini ferris wheel. We were horrified to see a bunch of guys climbing up the structure and grabbing a car (with passengers inside!) and riding it down to the ground about 4m below. This kept on happening and we wondered how the safety police could possibly let such a travesty happen, even in a sociaety which didn’t really value human life that much. This ferris wheel was going so fast (and partly because it was so small, only about ten cars) that some cars were tipping backwards and going almost upside down. That is to say that they were tipping backwards at about 160 degrees! Of course as we got closer I realized something odd about all of the ride equipment. There were NO hydraulic lines, ANYWHERE. The turning rides were completely human powered! Then I looked closer at the Ferris Wheel and it to was completely human powered! Those guys weren’t “riding” it down on the outside of the car, they were in fact PROPELLING it!!! This was rather a shock to my somewhat restricted modernized “Western” thinking I suppose. But they had come up with a novel concept and adapted it to their capabilities. Inginuitive more than anything really I would think. To slow it down they simply started grabbing the spokes and held them a bit until it slowed down. truly unique and bizarre at the same time.

After we grabbed an ice cream from a beach vendor, we hopped a taxi and asked to go to the museum. We’d read and heard from other travellers that it was a fairly good one, and we figured that we could walk fast through the boring parts. (My apologies to all our friends that are history teachers.) We ended up getting dropped off in a huge crowd and he pointed out a doorway that was the museum. The crowd was due to a big organized show/fair in the small park right in front. I think that we concluded in the end it was some sort of arts festival. People could help out a potter and make their own tiny little bowls, and there was a big coloring/drawing station set up for kids. As we continued down the closed off street, there was all sorts of modern artwork on display. Most was pretty cool and we both took a bunch of pictures. There was a pretty neat multi-artists display along a 100m section of sidewalk of addictions. When I noticed we were running out of time, we headed back around to the museum entrance. It turned out that it was actually the Modern Art Gallery of Mumbai, so I guess the driver didn’t really have a clue. Admission was free and we went in anyways. There was actually lots of very interesting and cool displays, but it was so crowded from the gathering of people outside that made the whole experience intolerable. We caught a taxi back to our hotel, which was only five minutes down the road and around a few corners.

Traffic conditions were superior and far more sane than anywhere else in Indi that we’d been to as well. There would only be four cars and one motorbike wide across three lanes, instead of five cars and four motorbikes across in Delhi and most other places. It was interesting to pick up a local (English) paper every week or two as well. The South has problems of North Indians coming down and stealing jobs and causing problems. In a country of 1.2 billion that has a crapload of states, I guess the long line of tribal tensions still run deep. This is a lesson difficult for most Canadians to grasp.

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | No Comments »

February 9, 2008 by Rick.

While we thoroughly enjoyed the relaxation of Kovalam and the houseboats in Alleppey, it was time to move on to a more “robust” itinerary again. We had found a little guest house in Fort Cochin a little further North. Instead of messing around with train tickets and schedules, we arranged a car to meet us at the houseboats. This turned out to be the same price (within $5 I think it was) as buying four train tickets and getting a car to drive us and our luggage to the train station. The difference was that we were not in AC, it was a little more cramped than train seating, and we didn’t have to wait around for about five hours for the next scheduled train. That’s two minor bad points versus one huge positive!

Our place in Fort Cochin was actually a families home this time, (as compared to thousands of other small places in India that call themselves guest homes, but are actually small12-20 room Inns). I had great plans for getting out and around to actually see the place over the few days we were there, but those got scuppered in the end. We started off by finding a tuk tuk driver that gave us a price of $1.35/hr. This was a great price and the only store he mentioned was the spice markets, which we’d read about and wanted to see anyways. The way that most of these guys make money is buy commission from bringing tourists to stores. In fact, just bringing tourists by will often get them a little bit of gas money even. I started off by asking this guy about a specific bank’s ATM, and he said it was very close by. We started off at the Indian Naval museum, adjacent to their large base. An American guy was coming out as we were heading in and told us that it wasn’t worthwhile at all. I quickly calculated the admission, and for three adults and one child it was all of $2.50. Alex and I had both forgotten our cameras though, which was a bit of a shame, even though still and video camera prices were $4 and $7.50 respectively. Yikes!

There was an abundance of artwork and long descriptions of the situations depicted. Naturally the West cost of India has a very long history, and many of these historical stages were described. There was also many little artifacts like old (and newer from the 30’s) ship’s wheels, uniforms and all kinds of hand weaponry. Larger, modern weapons were displayed outside in the courtyard as well. Stingers, torpedoes and sea sparrows along with Russian made radar arrays and anti-missile ships defense systems were all carefully laid out and described. The dark hour came when myself, and then Luke both had to go to the washroom. (Incidentally, they’re NOT called that here. In fact, no one has a clue on what a washroom is! Tourists simply have to ask where the toilette’s are.) I was in urgent need and didn’t have time to stop and think about asking Claudette for the TP she keeps in her purse. Too late I realized this after I had sat down. Normally I would have considered using a couple of 10 rupee bills (about 28 cents), but this “incident” required something far more substantial, like perhaps half a full roll of the super fluffy from back home. Luke was by this time waiting for me to finish for his turn. I exclaimed that there was no way he could get in here without first getting me some wrap from Mom. I started having nightmares of having to use my underwear and rinsing them in the sink, and then repeating the process several times as required. Luckily, Claudette, Alex and the Tuk Tuk driver went to a store almost 15 minutes away (and just around the corner from our guesthouse we later discovered) to buy a couple of rolls. Thus was I rescued from certain death of possibly being trapped in that bathroom forever!

After this bit of fun time, I wasn’t in much of a great mood to continue touring, but thought I’d try. That’s when the driver lost his marbles. He was driving by a really nice old building and told us it was a former Palace. Then he pulled in to the parking lot, came through the covered round-a-bout and stopped. It turns out that it was now a store, and a very exclusive expensive one at that. I calmly suggested that we weren’t interested. He replied (about eight times) that we should just have a look, no pressure. We refused to get out of the tuk tuk and after a few minutes of a stalemate, he started it up and continued on. We had travelled a fair ways from the hotel by this point and I asked him again about that specific bank ATM. He replied that it was close by, and we would get to it about 4-5 stops later. I then pointedly asked him how much further to get directly to the bank and he admitted that it was about a half hour to three quarters of an hour away. I was visibly angry at these shenanigans now and told him to return us to the hotel immediately. He stopped at two other ATM’s (and one store) on the return trip and insisted I try our bank card. We already knew that it didn’t work at these branches, but I humored him. He dropped us off around the corner from our guest house (I didn’t want him to know EXACTLY where we were staying!) and he begged me to go into one more store across the street. He insisted that I wouldn’t have to buy anything, but that if I even only just went inside they would pay him gas money. I blatantly refused and explained why, (his deceiving us about the bank, and taking us to the other expensive “Palace” store). He agreed that he was bad, but still continued to beg for either of us to just go inside and look at the store. I felt badly for him, and simply shook my head as I walked away.

There were a couple of internet cafe’s close by and we spent a bit of time there catching up and making a bunch of skype calls. Luke and I got to chat with (and see video of) Lacie, Riley and Emile which was pretty cool. I also arranged with my brother for the kids to chat with Maddie the next morning (evening for them). Sadly, I never made it back the next morning. By late afternoon I was becoming quite feverish, and my stomach was churning up a storm! I then laid down and informed Claudette that there was no way in “H”, “E” double hockey sticks that I was going to be able to make supper with the family that night. I then proceeded to lay there burning up like the shuttle on re-entry, and unable to sleep from the aches & pains, and hallucinations. The next morning Claudette took the kids to the net cafe and made the appointment with Maddie. While there she met and talked with another family from Canada who were also traveling the world for a year, and were also just over the half way point. They were a great family (even though they were from Ottawa) and they set up a dinner date that evening for our two families.

I was feeling a bit better later on, and after catching up on a bit of sleep, I joined everyone for some fine Italian food. It was great meeting up and we swapped ideas stories and hints throughout the evening. One thing they had which we’d never considered was a travel smoke detector. They didn’t always use it, especially since most buildings are brick & mortar it seems. But, when on occasion they stayed in a place that did not inspire much confidence (and we have also stayed in some doozies, believe me!) they could use it as a safeguard. For picture backups they were couriering 2GB thumbdrives home every few weeks as they filled up. We are both planning on being in Egypt about the same time and hope to try and meet up with them. They are scheduled on a “Trek Adventures” tour for a week in there though, so we’re not quite sure what our joint timings will be like.

They next morning we booked a car for the 90 minute drive to the airport for our super cheap web-purchased flight to Mumbai. Of all things funny, we discovered that our scheduled flight was actually for the previous day and we’d missed it. This was rather devastating news considering that I had gotten such a good price, and plastered all over the website and tickets was a big “NO REFUNDS OR CHANGES FOR THESE SUPER SPECIAL PRICED TICKETS!” Ooooops! Being Jet Airways (a great Indian airline to deal with) he rescheduled us for that days flight with only a $25/person change fee. Whew! in the biggest way imaginable….

Missing our plane also proved to be a bit fortuitous in that we wouldn’t have met up with the McAdams family if we had caught our flight the previous day.

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | No Comments »

February 5, 2008 by Rick.

One great thing about traveling is all the spare time. Yeah right; well I mean spare time compared to “normal” life. We met an American couple one night while on the backwater houseboat cruise that was also traveling. They landed in Mumbai, flew directly to Aleppey to take a one night cruise, and then their whirlwind started. They were next going to Calcutta for a friends wedding, then through Thailand, before finishing in Cambodia (Angkor What) and flying home from there. I asked if they had two months or three to do that in. Hah! They laughed, and told us… NINETEEN DAYS. That’s from home to home. I started calculating in my head, but they gave me the answer of nine days of travel, with barely 10 days of wedding, tours and relaxing. Relaxing indeed! Certainly not by my definition…

On to books then. The rest of this post should be considered completely whimsical and irrelevant, (dare I say maybe even boring?). We have all been reading lots while traveling. While Claudette and I are pretty selective and/or frugal about buying souvenirs and “stuph” we’re freewheeling in a bookstore. When no used stores were around, we’d even spend full retail prices on stocking up on material to read. Mostly though, there have been a good variety of used bookstores. If there’s no used bookstore in a place, then there is likely no new English bookstore as well. The exception to that is two times (once in Peru, once in SE Asia) where I thought I’d found a nice English bookstore, but it turned out to be a religious materials (typically Catholic) store instead.

Luke has gone through the latter six books of the Harry Potter series over the last five months. The only thing slowing him down is waiting to find the next number of book that he needs. Once we buy it, it’s usually devoured in a couple to several days, depending upon what other “tourist” things we have planned. Alex has gone through a pretty wide assortment as well. In Thailand I bought some sci-fi books and insisted that the kids read some before going on to their own choices. Specifically I grabbed “I Robot”, “2001” and the first “Lucky Star” novel from Asimov. Alex kinda enjoyed I Robot, but I changed my mind about making Luke read it just yet. I want them both to have a desperate fascination and deep appreciation for the genre, and that can only happen by them “discovering” it at their own pace. Alex did also read 2001, and Luke enjoyed the Lucky Star story, but what boy wouldn’t?

In Kovalam I’d picked up 3001 in paperback. I had really enjoyed the first two, (2001 & 2010) when I was younger. 2061 was pretty good too, but I’d always neglected to get 3001. I thought to myself that there was simply no way he could tie them together and make this last one worthwhile. Really though, I think I was just making excuses for not being able to afford the hardcover. Anyways, am I EVER glad I picked it up. the story was masterfully pieced together and with strong scientific fact that Asimov is so famous for. It was such a phenomenal read that I enjoyed tremendously. Most sci-fi authors create alternate realities that you escape too. Asimov immerses the reader in what raelly seems to be the future telling of mankind’s history. He makes everything so seamlessly real and integrated, that we can easily see that this is truly what will be happening to our society. Fahrenheit 451 affected me the same way, for they are seemingly more social commentaries utilizing some sci-fi concepts as a vehicle for that commentary. Gattaca, the movie, (I haven’t had the opportunity to find the book at all yet) also came across that way.

The other cool thing about 3001 was that Asimov took a few pages to describe how the stories all came together. 2001 originated as a relatively obscure short story until Kubrik contacted him to collaborate on something amazing together. I was always under the impression that 2001 had stood on it’s own as a popular novel long before the movie. The copy of I Robot that we originally got in Phi Phi Don, Thailand Alex went through only to discover that the last dozen or so pages were missing. I took it back the next day and demanded (with difficulty too!) a refund. This store was way high priced to begin with, and didn’t give us any sort of deal on buying about eight books altogether, so I was still burned a little from that. After giving me the money back, the girl started taping up the book at the back where the pages were lost from. She then proceeded to put it back on the shelf when I was outside (we were in a rush to catch our ferry in ten minutes). I immediately went back in and started to berate her (in front of many other customers) for trying to sell a book with missing pages at the back. I slyly noticed that ALL the other customers started checking the backs of the books in their arms, and one girl put one book of the three she was carrying back on the shelf. I insisted to the store clerk (in the friendliest possible way of course) that the incomplete book belonged in the garbage, where she eventually gently placed it. I’m pretty sure though that she took it out as soon as I was gone from sight.

I also had grabbed a couple of short story compilations from Bradbury, and have knocked off a few of those here and there when I only had a short time to focus. When we were in Costa Rica, the Alaskan guy we met gave me Heinlein’s “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” which I still haven’t brought myself to open. I’m not sure why… probably because he was so close to Farmer (Phillip Hose’ Farmer) in the bookstores when I was a kid, and I somehow resented that??? Who knows. The only four-time Hugo Award winner can’t be the least bit bad of an author though, and it’ll be the next one I pick up to read. I’ve also been carrying around a copy of “Cather in the Rye” for quite awhile unread. NO! This does not make me a closet presidential assassin! I finally read it on the houseboat one afternoon. It was rather anti-climactic considering infamous associations of this book. Actually, the entire story was disappointing to the end that he didn’t commit suicide when it was the most likely (in fact almost the ONLY possible) conclusion the story could have produced. Perhaps it was most notable in literary circles for the rapid fire, conversational narrative method used by this ever so “depressing” character. Those who have read it, will get the inside on that comment. Now, I just need to find “The Great Gatsby” and get it crossed off my “To Read” list.

We eventually found another bookstore in Northern Thailand with another copy of I Robot. This one was even better though because it was the 50th anniversary edition and it included all sorts of extra dialog of an interview with Asimov. His thoughts and reflections were as wonderful to read as the original and inspiring story itself. Claudette was incredulous that this book would appear one day in the “To Be Mailed Home” pile we were sorting. I tried to explain, but I don’t think I was successful. All she understood in the end was that “Yes, sending this ratty old stoopid book home is, in fact, important to me rather than buying a new one from Amazon after we get home” (As if she would really support me doing so then, never mind the difficulty in finding the same edition). Wives just don’t understand sometimes I guess… (Except for you probably Lacie!) I sure wish Asimov could have been around for the utopic world unified government that he envisioned and wrote about in so many stories for the last half century! Anyways Tim, both 3001 and that I Robot copy are on their way to you (in the next couple of days when I find a post office) for safe keeping (and reading of course) until we return home. AGH! That’s in only five months!!!

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | 3 Comments »

February 5, 2008 by Rick.

India was hit by a massive internet connection shortage a few weeks ago with an underwater cable problem. Then, a few days ago just after we left Kovalam there was another problem somewhere else which caused even more widespread outages. I’m pretty sure that the government closed down most of all the country except major IT hubs like Mumbai and Delhi that service North America. We stayed one night in Alleppey (sp?) before embarking on a two day backwaters houseboat cruise. Thus we have no internet anyways and are just cruising around in complete relaxation, devouring books and absorbing the incredible scenery. Once we get done the cruise, we still might not have access to the internet for a few (or several?!) days.

The cruise has really been amazing! The city is relatively close to the ocean, but there was a rather large inland lake only a few kilometers in. About 35 years ago the government built earthen dams reinforced with “placed” and mortared rock on the outsides for erosion protection. These dams hold in about four meters of water back from vast plains of rice paddies that are about two meters vertically lower than the canal water levels. The system of dikes is comprehensive and truly amazing! They seemingly stretch forever in all different directions. There are “homesteads” built upon small patches of raised ground all along the place. Occasionally schools, stores and general ferry drop-off/pick-up piers crop up around different corners. There was even one Catholic church (& rectory presumably) in all it’s brightly painted glory out by itself with nothing else around it but the canal on one side and hectares of rice on the other side. Just now as I’m typing, we passed by a standard highway sign telling us that it’s 79km to Kollam. Very cool! For these waterways are indeed a true local highway system just as in Venice, or the blacktop snaking across the prairies at home. Many guidebooks (and other travelers we have spoken with) have described the experience as an absolute must when visiting India, right after seeing the Taj Mahal. We all completely agree.

The boat we settled on is $125/night including two bedrooms, three meals a day, losta bottled water and a friendly crew of three. This was the least expensive boat I came upon when checking the day before we wanted to cruise. Most were another $50-$75 more, but that was certainly for nicer quarters, plus air conditioning! There are attached bathrooms in each bedroom with a poor excuse for a shower, but we’re all gonna need a good wash after the sweat of the muggy days and a tiny (and noisy!) fan in our bedrooms. There were even a couple of boats that I looked at that were more than double this one’s price. They were opulently decked all out and I presume would serve even more delux meals. Our food was OK, nothing spectacular but hearty enough. The fish for lunch was really great, but the chicken had some very weird bones in it that I’ve NEVER seen before in a chicken. Claudette silenced me immediately so as not to freak out the kids and to not appear rude to the crew. Hah! Me rude to them??? They’re the ones that are serving my family mystery meat!! Claudette also saw a fair sized rat peak it’s head out. During our second night’s meal, I waited until everyone else was done their meat before show & tell. There were many pieces that certainly resembled chicken, but… I got this one little ever so cute side of a rib cage. The little ribs were only about 2.5cm long, and I figured they were just supplementing the chicken with “other” animals or rodents. After they were done their meat, I showed the rest of the family my little half a rib cage. Horror! Claudette quickly (and forcefully) theorized that Indian chickens were built just a little differently than North American ones. She also then quickly added that it was also a STRONG possibility that this was just a different part of the chicken that we don’t typically use. I’m pretty sure her semi-panicked reactions were almost more for her benefit of keeping her head in the sand than for the kid’s benefit. Anyways, Luke was a little worried about eating a possibly not normal part of a chicken before Alex filled him in on what I was REALLY suggesting. Claudette didn’t tell the kids about the rat she’d seen the previous day. The first morning I heard them scurrying around in the ceiling like crazy, but didn’t hear them otherwise. Maybe that was cause the cook had caught them later that day after I heard them???

What I also didn’t mention to anyone else was that I went back to the kitchen for a moment on our second afternoon. The “kitchen” itself was a pretty poor excuse for cleanliness, let me tell ya! If you are booking a trip in the future, always go on the boat and check it before committing. Most people check the bedrooms and bathrooms, but I’d suggest skipping them and heading straight back to the kitchen. Naturally everything will be “tidy”, but open some cupboard doors and check the cutting board. That will really tell you a story. When I went back, the cook was outside a window on a ledge cleaning fish for supper in the canal waters. Hmmm, OK. Gross I guess but certainly not out of the norm. All day long the locals bath in the canal or swim in it as well as do laundry and catch fish to eat. I don’t even want to consider sanitation. There certainly was no capacity or infrastructure for sewage tank pump-outs in the many, many homes along the canals. That can leave only outhouses. That in a place where the water table is super saturated, and at only 0.5m below the ground level! Never mind the houseboats themselves. I would make a gross presumption that all sewage is in a holding tank and pumped out at the end of each trip, but ya just never know!

We are currently in a car driving from Alleppey to Kochin (or Kochi on some maps). This is only a distance of 65km, and we do reach speeds of 80kph, but… it will still be a 90 minute drive. That’s due to the constant braking, then abruptly speeding up again, before madly braking ten seconds later waiting to pass the next pothole/animal/bicycle/tuk tuk/car/truck/bus. I really need to write a whole seperate, (huge) post just on traffic in India. It realy does boggle the mind. We’re booked in to Kochin for three nights before our flight to Mumbai.There’s a fort here to check out, and hopefully an internet connection and maybe even a swimming pool! (That’d be nice!) In the back of my mind I kind of wanted to all go out and see a movie in India. Even if it was in Hindi with English subtitles, that would’ve been alright, but I’ve not had any luck finding one so far. I’m sure we will in Mumbai, (they likely have English “talkies” there) but it would have been cool to find one somewhere else.

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | No Comments »

February 2, 2008 by Rick.

Past half way…. How absolutely shocking!

Today we left Kovalam, (semi-reluctantly) and took the train a few hours North to Alleppey. Kovalam was a great beach, and we spent a week and a half there! (Instead of the four days we originally planned.) The guide books we had read labeled Kovalam as becoming quite expensive, but we found accommodation there as a rule to be quite a bit cheaper than Phuket in Thailand. It was similar to Nai Young beach (on the Northwest end of Phuket, by the airport) in being relaxed and very uncrowded though. The hotels here were all on the sidewalk as opposed to most of Phuket where a sea view is very unlikely due to typically being set back from the road, across from the restaurants, in front of the beach. At the high end resorts in Phuket, every room gets a sea view, (and a private pool with some) but who can affourd a few to ten grand per night!?!? There are many hotels at lighthouse beach in Kovalam, that are set back behind the ocean front hotels that offer considerably cheaper rates. For a second floor large AC room, with sea view and a nice large balcony and hanging swing, we paid $54/night. In Phuket, we paid $30/night for a kinda gungy, very basic fan room, and was a five minute walk to dip your toes in the ocean. At the same place there, we also paid $80/night for a semi-gungy AC room, same distance to the salt water. A nice AC room was $110/night! and all of these rooms were only two beds, (so we needed two rooms) while in India we got three beds and one mattress on the floor. Here at lighthouse beach, an AC room set back behind the beachfront hotels is only about $30/night, and a four minute walk to the ocean. Restaurant meals were slightly cheaper in Phuket, and alcohol was far more readily available, but the accomodation in Kearla, India gives more bang for the buck overall. If I were wanting to vacation with just the purpose of relaxing on the beach and nothing else, I’d hafta choose India. Yes, even with the craziest driving we’ve seen yet and all the filth & refuse everywhere.

The street vendors in India were far more plentiful and wickedly aggressive than we were used to from Thailand. I got bored with the t-shirt vendors and put together almost an impossible request for a shirt. I said I was only interested in the local beer logo (Kingfisher) in a L or XL tank top. I spent a little over an hour one afternoon going from shop to shop making this particular request (all in the name of my neighbor Dallas). I did actually want a shirt like that for him if someone actually came up with one, but wasn’t in a rush to get one. The purpose of spending this time initially was so that when I was walking by each of them the next day and the harranged me, I could glare at them and remind them that they didn’t have the one I wanted. After two days, I was no longer bugged almost at all. One guy cheekily suggested that all tourists looked alike, and of course I can’t blame him for such an observation. A few of them remembered me and still asked me to come inside and look at all their other stuff. Looking to make myself stand out even more, I began quizing them about their most popular t-shirt. It was the famous semi-profile of Che Guvera with his first name at the bottom. To any vendor who forced me to come in for a second look at their store, I promised to buy twenty Che shirts for a high price. The condition was that they had to tell me anything about who he was: his profession, his ideals, country he was born in, what he did in Cuba or South America or specifically Bolivia, or what happened after he died. Needless to say no one had a clue. Well, one guy knew that Che was a Commie, since the local star & sickle party uses his profile as their logo. (Quick note to Craig or anyone else planning a trip: taking twenty minutes and getting the kids (and the parents) to brush up on a little of his history will serve you all well in similar situations in South America and throughout Asia. Che seems even quite a bit more popular on shirts in Asia actually.

Alex and I also collected some clothes together to take to one of the many tailors around for some repairs. Various rips, holes and weak threads at seams and on buttons just seem to happen more when you’re only wearing two (or three sets of clothes) it seems. My suitcase handle (nylon webbing on cordurra) also needed a corner strengthened a bit after some airport handler had obviously reefed on it a little too hard. So we went for a walk down the beach and found one guy who gave me a pretty reasonable price, ($2.20 for about 25 minutes work on seven pieces). He couldn’t do the suitcase though, and pointed me in the direction of a couple of cobblers who had sturdier machines. The cobbler also charged $2.20 but he had to take apart a dual liner to sew it inside properly, so it was about a half hour of work. Well worth it to me anyways. At the first tailor, I aksed him to try and sew a secret pocket in my Eddie Bauer shorts identical to the one in my Tilley shorts. That was out of the question and far too much work apparently. When I returned to pick up our stuff he said he could make me the secret pocket after all. I was pretty excited and asked how much. He replied that he’d do it for $17. I thought about how much stitching he’d have to carefully take apart to do this propperly and agreed to what I thought was a fair price. Then he takes me in back of the shop where there are rolls and rolls of various material. I told him just make it a close match to the existing shorts. He looked at me funny and suggested that maybe I’d want a different color to have more variety. I was puzzled, but then he also commented that he wanted me to pick the thickness of the material from the huge variety of rolls. I told him to just pick some smaller sized left over scraps from a previous tailoring job. Now he really looked at me funny and picked up a piece the size of which was perfectly suitable for a pocket. He’s semi-excitedly (in a freaky, worried way) shaking the piece and saying, “I can’t build shorts out of this!!!” The light goes on! He had quoted me $17 for a whole new pair of custom designed shorts, copied from the Tilly’s complete with a secret pocket! Wow! I explained the communication/perception problem and we both got a chuckle. He also made sure to let me know that even for that price he wouldn’t take apart the existing ones and add the pocket. Still way too much hassel and work apparently. The good news is that I have a new, very well done pair of custom shorts (complete with secret pocket) for a great price! He even brought the waist in 4cm to fit me better than the Tilly’s. Life is good…

The train ride this morning was nice but pretty uneventful. We paid extra for an AC car, so it was pretty uncrowded. None of the stops were announced or had signs outside as Malaysia & thailand did. Thus we had to keep pretty good track ourselves or miss out. Our room in Alliepey is really basic, with a bathroom, a fan and no AC. It is also only $23 for four beds though. The main purpose of tourists coming here is for their famous houseboat tours. These are quite large boats, fairly wide and with wicker and thatched superstructures, (by looks from the outside). On the inside though, they are pretty delux mansions to tour around the backwater canals and see country life at a relaxed, pastoral pace. I looked at several before agreeing on one for tomorrow, for a two night cruise. They are about $125/night for four people for fan rooms and three meals a day. AC rooms run about another $40/night. Some of them were decorated more sumptuously than the nicest home I’ve seen, with crafted wood cupboards and wardrobes, and marble finished bathrooms. Those run about $300/night, (including AC of course!). We shall see what tomorrow brings!

In the meantime, I secured a fantastic deal on flights from jet Airways while scouring the net a few days back. This was the same airline we flew business class with just after Christmas, and Claudette had also found that deal on the net. We were planning on a 22 hour train ride from Kochi up to Mumbai, but I found a 100 minute flight for only $10 more each. Hmmm, not a tough decision!

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | No Comments »

January 27, 2008 by Rick.

We keep hearing stories from other travelers (friends & strangers alike) about how carzy busy and expensive Goa is. Kevin & Laura even strongly suggested staying either North or South of the tiny state. So, in kovalam we switched hotels to a much less expensive one that’s right on the beach, and have decided to stay even longer and do nothing. Claudette had a slightly adverse reaction to the Malerone, and has stopped taking it. The kids and I are generally fine with it though.

The beach is nice, with a pretty big wave, and a nice (but short when the tide is in) beach. We’ve negotiated down to $54/night for the room, so that helps our bank account a bit. The sun is shining and life is good! We plan on leaving Kovlam now about Jan 31. From here wee will head North a bit to Kollam or Allipy (sp?) for a houseboat tour, and then wander further North to Mumbai for our Feb 11 departure.

Hope all is well back home (and by home, I am of course referring to Canada AND Australia) with everyone!

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | 2 Comments »

January 24, 2008 by Rick.

We have finished getting caught up on picture uploading today finally.
http://pics2008.jamesworld.ca
Tomorrow we switch to a cheaper hotel, but are still at Lighthouse Beach in Kovalam in Southern India. We will not have as decent internet there, but we won’t be doing anything but relaxing anyways, (and that’s hardly worth reporting).

Alex is becoming wonderfully experimental with her new digital camera. The kids were taking all sorts of wild shots with it in the water as well. The first couple of underwater shots are of fish in a Spring fed pond in the middle of a Sikh temple complex that has a real gold roof. She also took a picture of a large framed photo of another more famous one in NW India that had even more gold. While we didn’t get to it in person, she insisted it’s worthiness for the gallery.

Other notable shots include a cannon ball hole in the wall of a building at the Agra Red Fort. This was the governing Palace and garrison of the King (Maharajah really) that built the Taj Mahal. The very hard white marble of this royal family residence is the same that built the Taj and with the same beautiful precious stones inlay artistry. In Delhi we also saw a regiment of camel calvary going down the street which was pretty cool. Right out of AOE!

There’s also a couple of shots of Luke at various monuments when he was captured by other tourists for photos with them. Alex has been asked a couple of times too, but fat chance of that! Luke is also shown sprawled out on a super soft silk carpet that was dirt cheap, and still miles out of our reach.

Pictures of the World’s largest Cannon and the baby brother of the World’s largest sundial round it all out. This sundial (with Luke posing at the top) was one of many very cool astronomical instruments that the Maharajah built in Northern India. This one could read time in 20 second increments, while the larger one (not shown yet) is 20+m tall and can read time in two second increments. The cannon was only fired once. It was a test shot and the ball traveled over 35km!!! About the same time the cannon was done at this Jaipur fort, a wall (similar to China’s) was completed all around the area. It was along the tops of mountain ridges, and probably included only about 20 square km.

How do you get another car of tourists to stop when you know that they’re from Canada? Lastly is a shot of Rick holding up his makeshift sign that made the Gunn family notice us. We stopped and chatted along the side of the road for a bit and then later in town. They had the exact same MEC rolling duffel’s that we are all using. Patti had the same one as well, which shows to go ya what a fine product it must be, (and super handy for world traveling!).

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | 2 Comments »

January 23, 2008 by Rick.

That’s right… For all our friends and family to throw up some news, gossip tidbits or whatever. Being that we’ve missed some pretty major events while traveling. (Examples: Canadian dollar above the Bush dollar, $100/barrel of oil, Alice’s accident, Lawrie’s passing, economy purported to be about ready to tank, Aussie election results, Brian & Coco leaving town.)

Sadly, this means that people will need to sign up again for the new blog. Luckily you’ve (mostly) all done it once and are easily familiar with the simple process. The address is as simple as this one:

http://friends.jamesworld.ca

So come one, come all! Send us your dinner stories, birthday party stories, and home news that comes to mind that we won’t read at www.cbc.ca. It’s even really simple to upload pictures to within the same blog posting you are making. Have Fun!

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | 1 Comment »

January 22, 2008 by Rick.

We have exchanged reviews of hotels with many other travelers which has been quite valuable. We’ve also had a couple of e-mail requests for suggestions in various places so I’ve compiled a separate web page discussing accommodation and reviewing hotels for our complete trip. It is: http://hotels.jamesworld.ca Many of the places we’ve been to are empty still, but Claudette and I will work on that over the next several weeks. There are a few different managed websites that allow users to rate places as well. We haven’t done any yet, but Claudette plans to put some in at: http://www.tripadvisor.com

The airports here in Delhi (and probably most of the rest of India) are what I would consider to be a disaster. The international terminal (we saw arrivals only) is small, enormously crowed and a complete unorganized madhouse of taxis, hawkers and scoundrels outside. Even late at night when we arrived, there was such an immense throng of crowded people that it was very difficult to find our pre-arranged guide. After he called the driver, it took another 25 minutes or so for the car to get close enough to the exit to pick us up.

We just went through domestic boarding for our flight to South India, and it was a similar madhouse. First of all, there are two separate terminals for domestic departures not close enough together to walk in between with baggage. Actually, robust go-getters probably could walk the just under 1km distance, but there is no allowances for foot traffic. It would be absolutely suicidal to attempt this without a protective car body around you. Once you figure out which of the two domestic terminals you are going to (it’s not marked on the tickets!) more pushing and fighting begins. In the foyer of the terminal are the ticket counters of the various airlines. We had to go through a secure door first to get to the check-in counters area. First in this area though each airline has a checked baggage X-ray. At the check-in counter all carry-on pieces are given special tags that must be filled out and attached. Security is a crowded unorganized affair starting with two long lines. Women are taken in separately on the left side, and at the front since there are so few of them traveling. As with all security screenings so far, (at airports & monuments) they are checked behind a curtained wall by other women. The men have two badly overloaded x-ray machines for carry-on baggage and jackets. Trays are only begrudgingly offered, and everyone is asked to put their cell phones and personal effects in their bags. This is to prevent theft on the other side, since the lineups for walk-throughs are much longer and bags will sit unattended for a few (or several!) minutes while people go through the body pat-down. After the mad zoo that is security, the noisy and crowded (but thankfully smoke free) waiting room sits, taunting you to find two seats together, (much less four). There are no planes at all that dock at the domestic terminals, so every goes to and fro by tarmac bus.

Delhi is constructing a new airport in time for them hosting the 2010 Commonwealth Games. This will combine all terminals and passenger services into one building thankfully. Driving by it, I have my doubts that it will be completed (and the old ones demolished, cause they’re in the way) in the next thirty months, but I guess we’ll see. When fully completed and operational, they will have a whole bunch of buses looking for a new home. Actually, there are quite a number of new projects on the go for the 2010 games. Very similar to Beijing (who are in the frantic last six months of construction projects before hosting the Aug 2008 Olympics) there is large scale construction everywhere. Subways, hotels, roads and raised expressway construction are constant headaches to the already extremely chaotic traffic.

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | 1 Comment »

January 20, 2008 by Rick.

I have completely given up maintaining a separate electronic log as well as occasional blog posts. Instead, I seem to have switched my thinking to focusing my own personal journal of events and activities into the blog as well. This naturally makes the posts longer, and with occasional more frivolous detail, but a large part of it is to be my own personal record of memories for when I’m too old to get out of bed, (much less travel). I won’t feel the least bit slighted when people skip large sections. Exceptions of course are for my parents, Keizer’s, and the Gauthier’s. There will be a test on everything later to ensure your complete absorption of every word and punctuation mark.

A couple of responses to my last post about India’s omnipresent filth necessitate some further explanation. The origin of the feces common everywhere is not limited to animals sadly. The second worst smells encountered are the horrid stench of rotting discarded food. The abundance of roaming animals (dogs, cows, pigs, goats, monkeys, camels, elephants and occasional cats) seem to eat a lot of these food scraps thankfully. Rotting food smells still abound everywhere one walks though. Even though it’s “winter” here it’s nicely warm enough during the day to wear sandals. We are hesitant to though, due to the refuse everywhere and the possibility of getting it in our toes and on our feet so easily. The worst smell I alluded to a few sentences ago is urine. The stench is constantly overpowering. Obviously it’s mostly from men, (we’ve walked or driven by many) but we’ve even seen one woman hike up her dress a bit and squat and go. We saw a few women go in the street or alley in China though. Anyways, the ridiculous controversy last summer of a few public urinals along Whyte Avenue in Edmonton (removed during the daytime) seems crazy when considering the alternative smells that will offend everyone long after the fact.

Back to the animals for a moment. We had long heard stories of cows roaming the streets etcetera, but were really unprepared for the immensity of them everywhere. I think that the kids have counted more dogs here in India so far than the rest of the world combined! After the tonnes of roving K-9’s in Latin America and Southeast Asia, that’s a whole lot of dogs!!! The cows are numerous as well. What a huge shame we can’t get a good prime rib on any menu here. The interesting thing is that they are not skittish at all, having grown used to just being there. Cars drive past both sides of a cow standing and relaxing in the middle of a road without slowing down to less than 60KPH. There’s no swerving either, if I rolled down the window and reached my arm out I could touch the animals as we race past. Goats and pigs are equally un-startled, but usually stay in the ditches or along the sidewalks nosing around for scraps. Driving in India is bad enough, but to create a good traffic jam, one would only have to dump a bunch of old rotting food in the middle of the road. Drivers would be stymied waiting for the huge crowd of animals sure to gather in the area and blocking all accesses. At least the elephants and camels had “drivers” as they plodded along.

Alex and especially Luke have had a tough time (mainly since entering Asia) not petting dogs, or touching other animals even though it would be easy to. The diseases, filth, fleas and mange are just rampant. The mange especially is horrible! So many dogs we’ve seen since entering Thailand have just scratched themselves raw and have open wounds from the mange. It is terrible and very sad to see. It also took frequent explaining to Luke to convince him to just say a prayer for them rather than helping them scratch.

I had forgotten also in the previous post to describe our guide in Jaipur. He was certainly the best one we’d had yet in India so far and was very knowledgeable. Still though, he took us to some pretty high pressure shops which was quite annoying. One other thing he did was also a little sneaky. At the original Jaipur Fort and Palace just outside the city proper we have to walk a ways up the hill to get to the entrance. The hill has stairs for people, and a switchback ramp for vehicles or elephants. At the bottom in the parking lot, the guide said we could either walk way up there, (just over 110m vertical maybe) rent a 4WD jeep, (with emphasis on the excitement of a 4WD) or take an elephant ride, (with the most emphasis on this option). Walking in the end only took us just under fifteen minutes. The jeep option was only $6 for the five of us (including the guide of course). The elephant was $16 for only two passengers, so we’d need two for $32 for a little walk up the hill. There were LOTS! of people taking this option though. Many were old and needed to save their energy for getting around in the Palace I guess. Most were just doing it for the experience though. The part where the guide disappointed me though was his heavy emphasis on the two money options. We had hired the Toyota wagon and driver for the week though. So I asked the guide if we couldn’t just drive up there with our current vehicle rather than paying for a 4WD. The switchback road looked entirely doable by an old Austin Mini, never mind our six cylinder wagon. The guide stumbled a moment, and then agreed that, yes, if we wanted he supposed we could just drive up to the entrance. I guess they just have to spread the tourist wealth around. I’m sure I saw a little wry smile from our driver though, since he’s been incredibly fair and respectful of us so far. He also seems to know that we are not filthy rich and appreciate not getting screwed over. As Alex mentioned though, the driver can’t really object to the guides suggestions in front of him though.

While shopping at one textile store I abandoned Claudette a few minutes early while she was being shown the progressively nicer works. I had seen a tiny kite store a little ways back down the alley and wanted to have a look. It was about 2m x 3m, but the guy had a lot of stuff. Reels, (plastic, wood & homemade bamboo ones) string, and all kinds of basic designed kites. The homemade bamboo reels were about $0.58 while the plastic ones were about $1 (string for bot6h sold separately). The kites were made of two splintered bamboo sticks with a rectangular piece of heavy tissue paper glued on as the surface. They were only about thirteen cents each. Most had strips of the colored tissue paper cut out with different colors glued in. In Jaipur there had apparently been a big kite festival a few days before we arrived. There were hundreds of kites flopping around in all kids of trees and in the massive tangle of power lines snaking every which way through the city.

After having a look at the little store I walked back to outside the textile shop. It was on a corner of alleyways (really considered roads here). Down the side direction was a local boy, clean and well dressed, trying to fly a kite. He had difficulty getting it higher than about 5-6m though due to the narrowness of the buildings, trees and power lines encroaching his makeshift playground on both sides. I was vocally cheering on with oohs & aghs as it went higher or lower. After a few minutes I was playfully shouting at him and waving wildly to get it away from the power lines. After a few futile minutes of deft maneuvering he lost the battle and it was tangled. I knew I couldn’t buy a kite for Alex and Luke (no matter how cheap they were) but I jumped at the opportunity to run back to the store and pick one out for this other boy. I picked out a nice purple one, but clearly my kite pre-purchase analysis skills are utter crap. So I proudly took this new pristine purchase back to the boy and gave it to him. He readily accepted, and began poking small holes in it to attached the string line. I held it up while he ran the string out about 10m for its maiden flight and on the count of three I tossed it straight up while he pulled the string to birth this majestic paper into the wild blue yonder. We were as a well oiled machine, but the kite did not participate in our desire to have it soar with the pigeons. (No eagles here, but thousands of nuisance birds.) The purple pig-headed kite took a quick U-turn at 3m and nosedived straight into our car. Balgit, (our driver) was chuckling at our earnest yet failed attempt. I avoided all further contact and possible jinxing of the kite after that. The boy tried again a few times on his own with his tried and tested techniques. After a mere six attempts the nose was tattered and the bent bamboo was splintering too much and loosing the flexing elasticity needed to maintain a taunt flying surface. Disgusted with myself I pulled another five rupee bill (thirteen cents) from my pocket. I stomped on the kite before the boy could pick it up again, gave him the money and pointed him down the alley to pick out his own with hopefully better results.

Alex and Luke came out to see what was happening sometime around here, and watched the boy bring back the new and improved spoils. He came back with a plastic one that I hadn’t even seen in the store. It was recycled bag plastic and was the same price as the tissue paper ones apparently. I still chose to have nothing to do with this new launch though, just in case… It was flying with 30m of string out in no time! I then went back inside for a moment to check on Claudette. When I returned outside the kite was so incredibly high up that it was barely visible. The immense smile on this boys face was prominent for anyone to see though. He gave Luke the reigns for a bit too which was pretty cool. I came in second in a kite flying contest when I was about eleven or so. It was open to all ages, and first place went to some early 20’s guy who made a 3m square behemoth (sp?) that didn’t even fly. I used my plastic drugstore $2 special and kicked butt against all of the 30 or so other entrants. I should have remembered the lessons of flying with plastic, but I guess I’m old and it had slipped my mind. I tried telling the boy that I’d won this contest when younger, but I think the significance was lost on him. I won a $50 voucher for the toy store in Bonnie Doon mall that had sponsored it by the way. That was 1978ish and huge money for a kid in a toy store! It was also significant since my Grandpa James was in Edmonton visiting and got to see me do very well along with my Dad. K, sorry… enough childhood reminiscing.

Along the same kite story lines we enjoyed our un-guided fort visit yesterday afternoon. This one was at the high hill directly adjacent to the new Jaipur city. We climbed the stairs to the roof and had a spectacular view of the city. Being Saturday, there were lots of kites flying way below us. We were quite a ways up, and the hill was very steep, so buildings of the city were just below us, and not too far (50-60m) laterally. As we looked further off in the distant horizon we could actually see several kites at our level. These were actually the tissue paper kind and obviously of superior construction to the one I had previously bought. Then, I’m not sure why but I turned my eyes even higher and spotted a few more kites flying a ways above even our heads! The ones even with us must have been bare specs in the sky to the kids on the ground. The higher ones though must have been completely invisible! They could probably only feel tugs on the strings as the wind carried it too and fro well beyond their eyesight. The fort we were at was about 220m to 250m elevation above the city. This means that those kids had probably a whole roll of 1000′ of string spooled out! Oh what a life…

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | No Comments »

January 19, 2008 by Rick.

Wow, what a beautiful and yet filthy country so far (in the North). Dirty does not quite do it justice. Filthy barely addresses the litter, sand and feces strewn about the countryside and everywhere in the cities. The sights and people are beautiful though. Well, except for the hawkers, taxi drivers & beggars I guess. Actually, the beggars are far fewer than I had expected or been told about for India. From other blogs or speaking with fellow travelers I expected to be almost constantly marauded. At many busy intersections there are two or three beggars, holding their fingers closed and motioning towards their mouth. They are mostly kids, with some women (always holding a baby) and only one man begging that I’ve seen so far. Luke hasn’t been quite as outwardly affected by the kids begging as Claudette and I expected. The sandy, refuse littered areas (roads, cities and countryside) remind me quite a bit of Goa haven, in Western Nunavut.

We drove on from Agra to Jaipur, a city of about 2.5 million. It is the first ever “planned” and structured city in India. So being laid out in rectangular blocks make life and navigation fairly easy. Unfortunately, the city has long outlived the 40,000 population designed size, and the majestic but narrow seven gates into the “old” city are major traffic choke points. Lots of forts and palaces though! We are pretty much palace’d out I think. The views, the work and the grandeur; they’re all amazing. But there’s just so much to see. We’ve heard the same about old churches and stuff in Europe… they apparently just start to blend together in their looks and historical significance after awhile, (sadly). Tonight we went to a revolving restaurant in Jaipur. It was only ten stories high, but the view was still far reaching because all of the city is typically only three and four story walk-up buildings until you get about 10km out from the relative core where we are. There were a bunch of fireworks being shot tonight which was pretty cool to see from up there too. Sadly, the place turned out not to serve wine. Then (even worse!) when we got the menu’s there wasn’t any meat dishes to be seen. After checking the front of the menu Claudette noticed the “(Veg)” written in small text… I politely asked if we could leave and find somewhere else. The look on my wife’s face said that that was apparently not a possible plan of action. She then ridiculed me further by insisting that surely I find something on the vast menu that was good. And surely I could eat one night without meat. I ended up having mushroom soup (it was OK) and rice, with a little bit of the kids cheese noodles. Yipee… At least we shared a couple of banana splits at the end which made it ever so slightly bearable. Still though, the total bill was $50!!!! For a full non-meat meal in India, I’d say we got taken.

Along this drive we have made a few (non-electronic) purchases as well. Some beautiful table covers & napkin sets, and a fine silk padded bed duvet for a crazy price of $90. These stores all start off saying that there’s no pressure and they serve pop & teas, but when you try and get out of there without buying 20-30 minutes later, the guide directed stores pour on the pressure like crazy. The driver directed stores however have always been nice, genuine, and have the best prices, (by far!).

We’ve also met up with some other Canadians along the route. We saw another Toyota wagon that passed us on the road. On the roof were the same MEC bags we have. I made a sign on a sheet of paper (photo to show up in the picture gallery soon) and had our driver go up beside them when there was no oncoming traffic. They got a chuckle and we both pulled over to chat for a few minutes. They are traveling off and on for a year with four (4!) kids from grades 5-10. We met up again briefly in Jaipur, but got cut short again there. It was a shame. It would have been nice to swap some experiences and advice on traveling. The next evening at our hotel was a single Canadian lady we spent the evening with though. We were doing some areas in reverse and were able to give each other great advice on our future places to visit. Both have blog links that I added to our blogroll list on the left.

We are heading back to Delhi a day early (tomorrow) and skipping a town further South that we were going to see due to a general strike that’s supposed to hit this state on Monday. The state and the federal government are bickering about highways and funding (or control of roads something). The state has organized a blockade of all highways and the police will not interfere, (there is no federal police force like the RCMP). Our driver is very worried and says that any cars on the road will be stopped, people pulled out and the vehicle destroyed by a beating and then burning. Nice, eh… The blockade will show the feds that the state has the real control over when the roads will work. All in all, I have found India to be the most fascist, oppressive country we have visited thus far. Way more so (outwardly, in tourist noticeable ways) than in China even! Clearly India has a thinly disguised democracy that really isn’t. A few quick examples are showing (and having photocopied or scanned) our passport info (or local ID for Indian tourists) for everything from major purchases (over $50), using internet or even just to use a computer, and to stay at any hotel. All four of our passports have to have all sorts of info written down on three different forms at each hotel. This info includes the passport number, issue place, DOB, date of issue & expiry, our individual Visa numbers within the passport, when we arrived in India, when we are leaving India, what town or city we just arrived from, and what town or city we are going to next. Simply crazy…

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | 3 Comments »

January 17, 2008 by Rick.

We managed to get some sort of weird seat sale on business class tickets from Bangkok to Delhi (a five hour flight) a few months ago when we looked into it. The economy tickets were the same price as usual, but the business class tickets were almost half of their regular price!. For only $25 more per person compared to an economy class ticket, we had a glimpse into a lifestyle that is regretful to even know about now… (I am a bit of a hic, for anyone new here.)

First we got to que jump the check-in and waited barely a couple minutes for one guy at the counter ahead of us. Sadly, the economy fare line was only about a dozen people and not the 40-50 people (90 minute wait) that we had sometimes encountered previously. It was still nice even just skipping a few people though. Then it was off through security and to our own (almost) private lounge. There were big comfy chairs, huge windows with a view of the tarmac, and power plugs galore to use! There were also a half dozen internet enabled computers (only one of which was being used). This was one lounge out of three available near different gates in the International terminal. About a half hour before our flight, Luke found the complimentary food and drink area (beers, pops, highballs) and we pigged out on a variety of snacks and deserts. This abundance of luxurious living was all before getting on the plane even!

Then we took our seats in row three! We watched as our delightful stewardess closed the curtains on the cattle packed back in economy class, looking forlornly at us before being cut off. We had super deluxe touch screens with all sorts of programming and games. Economy had only audio and dinky little shared ceiling screens (with common programming) every six seats or so, (I went and checked). Of all our flights so far (25) we had only had these super deluxe touch screens with customizable programming twice before in economy.

Before departure came the menu choices. It wasn’t a slap down of a tray of commonly heated food, no sir-ee! We had a five course dining experience where we had to choose between one of three items in most categories. Mmmmm, even after pigging out on the free goodies in the lounge I was salivating at the thought. I also kept the menu to mail home later as a souvineer. yeah, I’m a big hic, but I warned everyone of that before.

During the entire flight we had two stewardesses devoted to business class. That was only six rows of four seats, but just thirteen people! What a ratio! After a most relaxing plane ride, we disembarked before the curtains behind us were lifted and got on a tarmac bus to take us to the terminal. We got standing area near the door and were prepared to be crushed by the throng of people. Odly (to us) people stopped coming off the plane and the bus doors were closed after us thirteen snobs got on, and we went to the terminal in golden silence and comfort. This is a HUGE deal of course, not only for the uncrowded five minute bus ride, but to be first in line for immigration and passport control meant another 20-45 minute lineup was gone out the window.

Lastly, our bags were previously marked as “important!” and they were collected from the luggage conveyor and brought to a certain area. It had a sign requesting that Business & First Class passengers need not rub elbows with the riff-raff pushing and crowding around the turnstile. We need only wait there at the sign, away from the melee, and our bags would be fought for and courteously brought to us. What a way to go! I don’t know how I can ever go back to economy class again!!!

Posted in 2007-12 to 2008-01, Hong Kong & China | 1 Comment »

January 17, 2008 by Rick.

The night before, we went to see the “Red Fort” in Agra, (or Agra Fort as it is now called so as not to be confused with the “Red Fort” in Delhi). It was even larger and more spectacular than the Delhi one, with more areas open to the public. It was the main residence and ruling location for the King who built the Taj as a mausoleum for his favorite wife. This one had an “S” curve, three gated, upwards sloping entrance, which apparently had made attacks nearly impossible. The seventy foot walls probably helped with the “impenetrable” reputation it had as well. Just across a very wide (and currently dry) riverbed the Taj Mahal stood, even more majestic than all the pictures I had previously seen.

We had many early mornings in China, but still found it difficult rolling Luke out of bed (not to mention ourselves of course!) early enough to see sunrise at the Taj Mahal. We arrived a little after the sun had lit up the sky, but a half hour before it crested the buildings on the horizon. Quite a few tourists were crowded just inside the main gate getting early morning light pictures of the Taj Mahal in the reflection pool. This was a few hundred meters away from the actual Taj. It looked fairly close, but then we could see the little tiny people up on the base of the Taj who were incredibly small. That helped put the scale of the building into much better perspective. There were lots of “staff” (or so they said they were) around who were only too helpful in grabbing people and (almost forcibly) guiding them to various specific spots to get all types of “perfect” pictures of the Taj. A couple at different spots of the reflective pool, and a few to gain all manners of artistic perspectives of beautiful pictures.As soon as several outstanding shots were gained, the staff member would maintain a perfect smile while semi-demanding a tip. I only paid the first guy about $3 of the $6 he was asking and then kept only small bills (equivalent to about eighteen and thirty-five cents) in my shirt pocket for any future scoundrels. Any that greeted me after that first one were initially thanked by me and then warned very sternly that I was out of money! They would then only show one good spot, still ask for a small tip, and then wander off to find more lucrative tourists.

Our guide was supposed to be provided, and while our driver (for the eight day circular tour out of Delhi to Agra and Jaipur) is great, the guides have been very poor so far. Just before leaving the hotel for the Red Fort, our guide changed. He knew very little about the fort and a pushy photographer was obviously (in Hindi) feeding him bits of info. This was after telling the “professional photographer” (as he kept on referring to himself as, it reminded me of Denzel’s experience in Man On Fire) many, many times that we didn’t want his amazing, photoshopped pics of us around the fort.

On the left side was a fairly large Muslim Mosque and on the right was a similar sized guest house house. Both of these were about three quarters of the height of the Taj, with about the same footprint as the Taj, (excluding the large 3m high plaza base all around the actual building that is). The two side buildings were a red stone, but with very similar exquisite craftsmanship in the hand carving and sculpting of the stone. All decorations in the three buildings were made purely from inlay of other types of stone, or precious and semi-precious jewels. Inlay means that the grooves are carved out of the larger marble and then precisely the same sized pieces of other stones & jewels are laid in to the grooves with a heated glue (from a top secret formula of course). The building(s) was (were all) spectacular by sheer size and logistics of moving such a massive amount of large pices of marble from a different area of the country a few hundred kilometers away. The artistry of all of the inlays, and piecing the marble (almost seamlessly) together however is just totally amazing! Along with the flowers, and general patterns were scribed text (in who knows what language?, arebic presumably) from the Koran.

We later went to a marble inlay factory and showroom, which had tonnes and tonnes of amazing pieces. There were tables which they insisted could withstand and pop spills or any winter temperatures that we could throw at it. The size was irrelevant to the price, everything was based on the quantity and difficulty of the inlay work. He showed me a small (football) sized elephant with to most exquisite and delicate inlay work all over the body. He said it took his master craftsman eleven months to make and was selling it for about $15,000, (and well worth it for the beauty and craftsmanship that went into it). This place also had inlaid designs on marble wine goblets which would have made an excellent addition to the Gauthier collection, but $300 was just a wee bit out of our reach (we still Love you guys though!). They also had some small (and not too heavy earrings that would have been nice to get for a friend in Smith who paid me some cash to buy his wife odd $5-$20 earrings from around the world on our travels. These ones were $85 though, but were probably the most unique ones I’d seen so far.

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | No Comments »

January 13, 2008 by Rick.

With over 600 quality photographs in our original travel web gallery, we decided to start a new one for 2008 pictures. Unfortunately though, I haven’t had a chance yet to update our main http://www,jamesworld.ca index page, so there is no link to the new gallery from there. Hopefully I can get to fixing that in the next two weeks. In the meantime, the direct link can be accessed from the blogroll on the lower left portion of any blog page. Or you can memorize the link:

http://pics2008.jamesworld.ca

I also added a (slightly longwinded) description of some aspects to consider when planning a similar RTW trip accessible from the upper left corner of the blog pages, (just below “The Adventrures Of Pete”).

Posted in 2008-01 to 02, India | No Comments »

January 12, 2008 by Rick.

We had an incredible few weeks in the city. Not the least of course which was the fantastic hospitality! After Jim came back we toured around a variety of amazing sites, (most with Jim, some without) with occasional CJ recharge time here and there. Our first day back to Beijing I (stoopidly) made a sarcastic remark to Jim about his toque and insulated gloves. Well, we quickly went to a market in the neighborhood and bought some North Face imitations for all of us as well. It was rather nippy! Especially since none of us had really really worn long pants or shoes since departing Edmonton six months previously.

Our week with Jim (and also the few days of the six of us after Letty returned home) can pretty much be considered an orgy of eating! We saw lots of amazing sights too of course, but the food stands out as a very fond portion of our stay there. Even if I had cared particularly about loosing weight before, these two weeks would have blasted me back up into the 210+ pound realm. We naturally went to a famous (and down to earth) place that specialized in Peking Duck. (The city of Beijing was formerly called Peking.) This ranked right up there with having a Singapore Sling in Singapore (well, except for the fact that Claudette and I chose NOT to have such an expensive girly drink while we were in that nation/city.) except the duck was great! We were a little short on actual duck meat for the five of us, but got by and really enjoyed it. On some other nights we had incredible beef ribs at a place where we ordered them a half day in advance since they usually run out. We finished off three huge plates, (along with other plates of dumplings & greens and stuph) and none of us left hungry for desert that night, (no matter what Luke might say now). Yet another places’ specialty was some sesame coated and glazed ribs which were also delicious. The table next to us got a Peking Duck, and we longingly watched their plates go by, before turning back and digging in to our excellent ribs. There was just amazing food every which way we looked. (Oh, and cool cultural stuph too… Yeah, lots of goodly cultural stuph…) One other meal (and dining style in general) worth noting were the “Hot Pots”. This can be done different ways, and typically just includes a can of sterno (a jellied type of Kerosene) under a frying pan still burning. It is set in the middle of the table for everyone to extract the sizzling food from. Very Nummy! Another derivation of this that we went to was actually a type of fondue though. It had a double style of pot in the middle of the table. The middle section was for charcoal briquette’s (sp?) burning, and the “outside” attached pot had boiling water in which we put all sorts of raw food to cook it. The raw foods included a variety of vegetables, thinly sliced red, meats, tofu chunks (just for Jim) and fish meatballs. The food was really good, but the concept was way cool! We all enjoyed ourselves so much that we looked around for, and eventually bought one of those pots. It cost just under $50 to buy, and another $35 to mail home. (Keizer’s and Gauthier’s, buy some charcoal so you can be ready and try it when it arrives! The kicker is, ya hafta use chopsticks to get everything out! My pot, my rules…)

All in all, it was really great to see Jim and Letty again. Our visit was just too short, (plus they have a HUGE! LCD TV that we all enjoyed watching. I wonder if he’s compensating for something though???). Our entire visit there consisted of us (together and individually) all asking them to come and visit us in Smith. Airfare of $800 each from Edmonton seems to halt most people’s aspirations of coming for a visit though, and the Gerber’s were no exception. We will continue resorting to pure guilt to get our way though…

The only other regrets I have for our visit in China was not being able to fit in (monetarily and time wise) the Three Gorges Dam, and much of Western China. There is so much more to this vast and culturally rich country than just the little swath of Eastern section we made it to. I didn’t push it too hard though, since it’s obvious that China should really almost be a two to three month (minimum!) trip unto itself. We’re very happy with the sights and activities we managed to fit in though. And we’re most happy of all to have been able to visit with old friends who don’t look as though they’ll be returning from foreign teaching anytime soon.

Lastly, I should casually mention that leaving Beijing and arriving in Bangkok marked the extent of our bulk Airtreks purchased tickets almost a year ago. The remainder we have just purchased ourselves a few weeks or months or so in advance, as we cruised along. While we are confident now in “winging it”, it was sure nice having the first half all scheduled and looked after for us (and tickets in hand).

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January 9, 2008 by Rick.

While the web is a spectacular resource, the abundance of misinformation (sometimes intentional but mostly human stupidity or laziness I believe) seems to cast a shadow over relying on it too much. We looked up information on getting travel Visa’s to India and their site said we needed bank statements with $1500 per person and we needed to show purchased tickets OUT of India as well. So, we diligently went to the Emirates office in Shanghai to purchase tickets out of Mumbai to Nairobi Kenya, smugly thinking to ourselves; “What could possibly go wrong?!?” Well, two days later was the election, the rigging and the pursuant chaos and killings. What could go wrong indeed…. We are currently tentatively planning on maybe changing our tickets to go to Tanzania instead of Narobi from Dubai.

The cool thing about buying Emirates tickets was that it was only $25 more per person than some other smaller airline, but allows multi-day stays in Dubai while passing through without a monetary penalty. We have three nights planned there now so we can take the kids skiing, for the first time ever in their lives, at the indoor ski resort in a +40 degree desert. A very cool (yet likely expensive) opportunity to be sure. I’d also like to see the “soon-to-be” tallest building/tower/structure in the world, not to mention the sail hotel and all of the outrageous manufactured palm resort islands.

So that portion after Dubai is still up in the air. At the airport tomorrow we’re going to try and change the tickets to Dar Es Salom (sp?) instead of Narobi. We only just booked a Delhi hotel tonight and have yet to design any sort of route or plan for India at all! Much to do… In India we have to do about three mini DVD video camera backups and uploading of still pictures to the gallery. Luke had told me the other day that the gallery wasn’t fully loading when he showed his “classmates”. I think that there’s almost 600 pictures there now, so we might have to delete some. It all loaded fine for me tonight though. We had planned on using a second gallery for 2008, but I just haven’t been able to get the pics off of those discs yet. Plus I need a computer with an FTP program to change our main index page with the links to everything, (including the new picture gallery page). Hopefully in the next week!

I received an e-mail from another “James” family in Washington who are planning a similar twelve month trip to ours for July 2008. He was casually asking about any suggestions or recommendations. Hah! I have tonnes… I plan on writing them out on a separate page linked from the top left in the next month or so, with additional updates and edits along the rest of our trip. Their website is:
http://thewidewideworld.com/

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January 7, 2008 by Rick.

This morning we are heading to the great wall near Beijing. We booked a driver for early so we could get there by about 7:30 AM to see the sunrise. We couldn’t get the driver any earlier, but it’s a great price. Travel time is about an hour each way from the Gerber’s place. Then, we will be taking a gondola ride up the mountain to a high point on the wall. The driver apparently will just stay and relax in a tea shop as long as we want, waiting for us for a whole day “rental” of about $70. To get down the hill there is a concrete sled run similar to the one at Paskapoo, (Canada Olympic Park ow I think) in Cowtown. That should be a blast! We packed a lunch so we can sit and relax for a bit along the top just taking it all in (and avoiding the hawkers at the parking lot).

We’re on our way back to Beijing now; what a day! The kids both wrote a bit about what an amazing visit it was. At the bottom of the hill my chest felt compressed with the sheer majesty of the view. For a full 180 degree view we could this this incredible structure snaking up and down, curving and flowing, following the ridges of the mountain. “Breathtaking” barely describes the feeling, and that was before even getting up the hill and touching it! The hill wasn’t much, we would have only taken 40 minutes or so I’d say to climb it. We still opted to ride up though in order to have more time for traversing along it. The gondola was out for a three day service, so we took the chairlift up instead. It was a simple ski hill chairlift and we bought tickets to take the wheeled sled back down. That was hours off though!

The workers started up the chairlift just for us and stopped it to run back inside their break room once we jumped off at the top. I guess they weren’t expecting anyone else for awhile. We actually were the first ones up that morning. That was even cooler than just being there. While the sun was certainly above the horizon, it hadn’t yet crested the hills. First things first, Luke had to go pee, and the lifties told us there was no bathroom close by. So, he got to stand on the lift exit sidewalk and urinate adjacent (a few meters away of course!) to the wall. Then we climbed up and were immediately wowed! The view all around was incredible, and the stonework was just immense.

We later surmised that a few kilometer section had been redone with new large cobblestones for tourists to walk on. This section also was structurally maintained compared to most of the rest which was left to slowly crumble under the elements. I’m not sure how many stratiegic sections like this had been set aside for tourism, but there’s abundant opportunities in 5000km of wall…

We took our time wandering West, stopping to thoroughly explore the towers along the way. At the first tower in that direction we stopped for a snack. We’d all had a quick bowel of cereal before jumping in the car at 6:30 Am in Beijing, but I brought along some leftovers from Sunday Brunch the day before. Who would have thought cold Letty’s brown sugar, maple syrup, special, ultra french toast concoction would be so incredible as I barely got my fork into the shared tupperware with my ravenous family. We had also packed some cheese bread sub sandwiches for later. We discussed going along up to the gondola and then perhaps to the top of the adjacent peak depending upon the time. We had a self imposed deadline of leaving by 1:00 PM in order to pickup our passports and travel Visa’s at the Indian Embassy.

After a very leisurely 40 minutes or so up there alone we heard the chairlift start up, inevitably bringing us some tourist company. We still continued at a pretty leisurely pace, and the young Aussies aught up and passed us while we were exploring an offshoot wall section and they were in a rush. We later caught up and visited with them at the gondola station. The two guys in their tour group had hustled along ahead to reach the top of the peak. We later chatted with them and were told that the last bit was incredibly steep and starting to be a lot more of a ruble walkway than freshly laid stone blocks (in the last 20-40 years I would guess). At the top was a sign forbidding anyone to continue. They also noted that the remainder of the wall was in a fairly decrepit state of disrepair. (As would be expected from 500-600 years of Mother nature’s elements.) They both seemed pretty proud of seeing the “untouched” section of wall in it’s naturally depleted state. I asked if they had taken pictures, but they were in such a rush that they had forgotten.

The girls in their group were fun to talk with. One lady (the lone Canadian in the GAP tour group) said she was from Edmonton when I asked. I asked what state of the US that was in to Claudette’s horrified chagrin. The woman started to try and explain that it was a major city in Canada before I broke into a smile and informed her that I was in fact born and raised there. She was actually from Sherwood Park and was equally shocked when Claudette said her sister, father, Aunts & Uncles and her grandmother all lived there. Here we ate our sandwiches which hit the spot quite nicely. After the girls departed we were along on the walkway and steps of the gondola access, (I need to emphasize that we were not actually on “The Wall”. I then felt the need, and found a nice ledge from which to launch a decent stream. While urinating into the bushes and grass below I sang aloud “I’m the king of the castle…” just to give my grandmother a good chuckle later when the story would be retold to her. Claudette didn’t seem to buy in to this excuse, but it was too late. We then began to head back to the other end for the sled ride down. Along the way vendors had now taken their positions at intervals to hawk ridiculously high priced snack goods to the unprepared tourist (not us in other words). They were pretty aggressive since there was probably only about 100+ tourists along this section which in the Summer Jim estimates the daily crowds to number at almost 1000.

We took the awesome sled ride down and at the bottom of the hill were rows and rows of hawkers and peddlers selling everything one could want. T-shirts were dirt cheap here too, only $1 for the cheap thin cotton and $3 for the heavy & thick nice cotton that won’t fall apart for a long time. We bought a “I climbed…” plaque and a t-shirt or Claudette and I to share. Also, while I was negotiating for a dragon embroidered Hugh Hefner silk robe, the kids were playing hacky-birdie (hacky sack with a large flat nosed end with feathers) with another vendor, so we grabbed that for them to play with too.

We headed back all promptly fell asleep in the car after such an early morning (and late to bed the previous night). The kids came up with an idea I thought was pretty cool. They wondered if someone could walk the entire length of the wall and make a film documentary of that trek. (With all government permits and clearances in place of course!) I’d like to see someone do that some day. Hopefully even, one of them!

Posted in 2007-12 to 2008-01, Hong Kong & China | 2 Comments »

January 6, 2008 by Rick.

We have had a great week with Jim in Beijing. He had a great itinerary worked out for us in half day blocks. We have managed to see The Forbidden City, Tianamen Square, The Llama Temple, the Confucious Temple, a variety of shopping from expansive inexpensive markets, to reasonable and super deluxe (not so reasonable) shopping malls, and an exquisite menagerie of fantastic restaurants. Jim’s wife, Letty, only got home from Mexico on Saturday and spent Sunday catching up on work and sleep before they both had to return to work this morning, (Monday January 8).

The Forbidden City was a large walled and moated administrative center for the Chinese government starting around the mid 1400’s. It was pretty vast, but cool to see the incredibly old buildings and huge piazza’s. The cobblestone here is about the same age as Machu Picchu but was in much worse shape. They have redone sections of about 3m wide pathways for tourists, but left most of the other areas. The buildings were in pretty good shape and Jim emphasized how packed it would be in the Summer, Spring and Fall seasons. We didn’t take much time to wander through most of the buildings, only stopping in a few at the core to check out the artifacts. At the entrance was a gate tower, (really a taller gymnasium sized building) over top of the moat that provided a fantastic view of Tienanmen Square.

Tienanmen Square

After touring the Forbidden City we ventured to the edge of the road to take in where all the tank action had happened. The road here is huge (eight lanes) and completely uncrossable, so we used the subway access to get to the other side. The square was incredibly vast and just emanated “history” as we strolled along in no particular direction. “If only these bricks could talk” was a lament that frequently buzzed through our minds. I later read that Tiananmen is the largest civic plaza in the world, and at 500m by 800+ that’s easy to believe. It was pretty impressive with only one obstruction, and tall monument, near one end. Beside the square is Mau’s mausoleum which wasn’t open at that time of day (the afternoon). Across the street on one side was the monstrous Beijing Museum of Natural History. We had heard from many people how impressive and enjoyable a tour through it was and trekked off in that direction. Unfortunately it had just closed down a few months previously for a massive three year renovation.

Around Town

While Beijing is one of the largest cities in the world (population wise) it is laid out quite well with pretty decent transportation infastructure. There are four major ring roads allowing for fairly straightforward travel. the difficulty lies in the large density of cars now travelling these roads. While there are some cyclists who just won’t ride in the colder winter months, most of the cyclists have upgraded to cars in the last several years. I recall seeing many media pictures that always showed four or five lanes of road full of bicycles for a couple of city blocks of length. That is no more due to the robust economy and mass production of very inexpensive cars. At one dirt market we went to there were a few hundred three wheeled cycles all propped up (to save space) outside that all of the vendors had arrived on. I took a few pics of the line of them all piled up just because it was so amazing to see so many all stacked up in one place.

The Confucius Temple was nice and immediately brought about a calmness to us. Jim’s school had somehow arranged to have their (first ever) 2007 Graduation take place in the main Confucius Courtyard which I thought was extraordinarily cool. across the street and down a block was the Llama temple. This was very similar architecture and artistic painting styles to most other “old” buildings in Beijing, such as The Forbidden City. The temple though consisted of room after room (in between courtyards) of various Buhda statutes. At the very back of the temple complex was a huge Buddha, certified by Guinness, carved from a single tree. It was absolutely huge at about 3m across and maybe 8m high. The whole temple complex was considerably larger than any of those we had toured in Thailand or Laos, but I’m not sure if that’s simply due to age, or the fact that there’s far more people to “service” in China.

We also went to a little lake park in the city called “Ho Hi”(not that spelling, just the pronunciation). It was frozen over and there was skate and sled rentals with a bunch of people out enjoying themselves. There were also a dozen or so guys playing hockey (mostly Caucasian expats by the looks of it) in a section away from the leisure skaters, and lastly, one guy with speed skates who was taking himself way too seriously. Just around the corner was a restaurant supply services store where we finally found a charcoal burning hot pot. The prices were pretty good and we bought a medium sized one. Jim asked only once for us if they could discount the price at all and got a look that was deadly at best (and killed & chopped him up into little pieces before feeding those to some pigs at worst). Apparently negotiations are only expected in every other aspect of Chinese retail, but not in the services reseller supply market.

Down a little further was the Drum Tower. Jim said he had walked there with other guests and friends several times previously, but had never gone in before. It was a great little exhibit of drums in a higher tower used to convey the time to people. All the doors on the top would open to allow the sounds to penetrate the suburbs of the city. The staircase climbing up was incredibly steep, and took a bit of wind out of all five of us. At the top was a water clock as well. This series of bins and narrow diameter pipes was very cool, and ended with a 1m statute clanging his similarly scaled cymbals every quarter hour. Every half hour several drummers put on a few minute show banging out a beat on a bunch of the massive drums in the tower. Also housed off to the side were some of the original (now rotted) drums from the 1400’s, with different sizes and sounds depicting different times. Behind those in the corner is the world’s largest drum (or so the sign says) at 2.61m face diameter, 2.89 width diameter, and 1.2m in height. Across a small park was a similar tower called the “Bell Tower” with a huge bronze behemoth that we could even see quite vividly from about 200m away. We were running out of time to go check it out unfortunately.

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December 31, 2007 by Rick.

While the trip we have taken so far (and will continue on) has been nothing short of spectacular, the toll of inanimate hotel rooms quickly begins to wear. They have ranged wildly from the very basic to rather deluxe, ($18-$280 per night). We have had some amazing exceptions on this trip of being invited to friends homes to stay for a few days. The first in Costa Rica at Maricela’s which we had paid for as part of our Spanish lesson’s. In Australia we met up with Robert & Leesa-Maree who graciously invited us to veg out in their spare room a few times for almost a week. Now in Beijing we stayed at Jim & Letty Gerber’s place a few days before heading to Shanghai. There we stayed at Gerber’s friends who were back home in North America for the holidays. This was simply wonderful to be able to buy some groceries and relax in a true home. Never mind that they had left their Christmas tree and decorations up all around the house. This was a wonderfully warm environment to spend our first Christmas away from home in and we really appreciated their hospitality. Especially since they had never met us and were just going off of Jim’s word. Jim and Letty’s apartment is great too, even more so now that He’s back and she’ll be joining us in a couple of days. All in all, there’s nothing quite like a big old couch to stretch out on a recuperate from a few days of travel and sightseeing!

Thanks Everyone!!!!

PS: HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

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December 25, 2007 by Rick.

It was a pretty subdued affair for us. Santa had to make two trips since our presents were misdirected to the Canada Bag, so he returned to China after delivering to the Great White North. While there were decorations and carols playing in the public spaces, it was still a regular workday for the proletarian masses. This naturally involved an early awakening for Claudette and I due to the 7:00 AM pounding and sawing construction noises outside our window.

I’d forgotten to mention in the previous China post how it seems MOSTLY like a regular capitalist pig society here, and there are not strong undertones of the oppressive communist rule that we expected. The shopping malls are packed with people spending lots of money, traffic is very abundant with lotsa new vehicles and fashion clothing is on everyone. I’m sure that if there was a gathering of more than twenty people in any public area the police would come out of the woodwork to quash it, but on the surface things seem very “normal” and semi-democratic. Another odd thing I’d forgotten to specifically point out previously was the almost absolute lack of motor scooters & motorbikes around. There’s even less here than in Edmonton in the Summer! Very different considering that they seemed to make up 90% of all vehicles on the road in the rest of Southeast Asia.

Posted in 2007-12 to 2008-01, Hong Kong & China | 1 Comment »

December 25, 2007 by Rick.

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December 24, 2007 by Rick.

We’d heard from many other travelers and some friends that Beijing was the city with the most smog & pollution that they had encountered. No ones comments prepared us for the heavy set haze and absolute lack of view that we encountered. The ride from the airport to Jim & Letty’s apartment was pretty quick though, only about twenty minutes or so. Major roads along the route had side lanes for bicycles and animal carts. We know this of course from the pictures signs indicating such. Jim had helped us book a flight to Shaing Hei (sp???) for a week over Christmas starting two days after we arrived in China. So we had a complete Veg day, and watched a whole bunch of movies at their place (along with a quick spurt of grocery shopping across the street). We arranged with the same driver that picked us up from the airport to take us back early (5:30 AM) in two days. Their apartment has a spectacular view! It is nicely done up as well, but Claudette and I both noticed the lack of Mexican or Spanish adornments.

At the airport we had trouble figuring out which domestic airline counter to go to as their were about fifty of them. When I was at the cell phone counter for a minute, Claudette started receiving help discerning our tickets from a couple Chinese ladies who seemed to know English fairly well. They took us to the counter to check us in, and verbally accosted me for trying to help with baggage or trying to communicate with the ticket counter lady. They had name tags, but only from some hotel. I tried to get ahold of my tickets again after we had checked in to no avail. Instead they led us to the correct entry gate, which was helpful but still something we could have stumbled through ourselves. After I got my ticket back her shrill arrogant voice could be heard demanding a “Tip?”. Instead of making a scene in front of my darling wife at being held hostage by this petty criminal, I sent her to Claudette to get some cash for being “helpful”. Of course I kicked myself afterwards for not remembering the hotel name so I could vehemently complain to the management about her behavior when we returned to Beijing. Luckily Claudette sternly negotiated her down from the $30 tip she originally wanted to a little over $10. The flight was a larger plane packed full, but pretty uneventful. It was raining in Shang Hei when we arrived, but that still didn’t dampen our spirits cause we were about to ride the FLANE! The airport here is about 30km from the edge of the city proper and we were gonna be taking the MagLev train (or “floating Train” as Luke called it). It is supported and propelled by electromagnetic currents along the track at a top speed of 341 km/hr we soon found out. To say that the scenery absolutely flew by is rather an understatement… It was amazing! The ride only took a few minutes and when we started slowing down to approach the end station it seemed as though we were crawling along at a human running pace even though the digital speed readout still said 95kph!

It was still late morning when we had arrived so we leisurely made our way by Taxi from the MagLev station to Jim’s friend Neil’s home. They had taught together previously and Jim made (Awesome!) arrangements for us to stay in their vacant apartment while they were home visiting for the holidays. Luckily there was another huge grocery store just across the street and this home was incredibly nice as well. I’d love to ask about the cost of rent just for curiosity sake. They have a tonne of movies and a maid who visits every day to do dishes, laundry and cleaning ‘n stuff. What a way to go! Jim has one too, (a maid) and I mentioned to Claudette that we gotta look into this phenomena as well! This family has a beautiful Christmas tree set up unlike the infidel Gerber’s…

After a (yet another!) day of relaxing we went touring a bit yesterday and visited the Oriental Pearl Tower. It is such a cool design for towers that makes it still worth visiting even though it’s small than the CN tower in Toronto. We had a pretty good buffet lunch up in the rotating restaurant before heading up even higher to check out the even better view from the Space Pod deck. While the pollution wasn’t as bad as it was in Beijing, it was still fairly dense here in Shang Hei. Luckily, the day we chose to go up the tower was not too bad for smog (plus it had stopped raining!). We could see “city” as far as the eye reached in all directions, which was only about 15+ km I would think. Still a pretty cool experience.

After the tower we went across the street to a ten story high shopping mall and got pushed and shoved around by the crowds there for a couple of hours. We didn’t really buy anything, just checking the place out. They did have a skating rink on one of the upper floors which looked pretty cool. We’re gonna go back on boxing day for a skate. Other than that we don’t seem to have any other major plans here. Once we get back to Beijing it’ll be gangbusters tours again though.

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December 21, 2007 by Rick.

In the ritzier hotel in Hong Kong, I went out shopping alone one evening and came back with the new Sanyo waterproof digital video (640×480 only) and 6MP digital still camera for Alex that we had been eying up for awhile. We first saw he Olympus one in Fiji back in Sept for almost $500. That included a lot of extras, but I still didn’t care for the fact that it used an XD card, since we already had various devices with SD and Sony Memory stick cards on the go. The thought of having another format of card to carry around all manner of accessories for just made my head spin. Luckily the Sanyo one uses SD, and the price on it had been slowly decreasing as we made our way North up through Asia. Prices on electronics in Hong King were generally OK, but not near as spectacular as I had expected. MP3 players specifically were no better, and in fact were often higher than North American or Australian prices. Ipods of every color, size and derrivation filled up huge amounts of every store. I had no interest in a genuine ipod due to the highly restrictive software and their poor price/feature index compared to almost every other brand available. Anyways, I digress… At the same place I bought Alex’s camera I also grabbed a 120GB hard drive small size media player. The brand is not one I had heard of in North America before, but that hardly means anything. It is a Vosonic 8360 and includes integrated video and audio recording. It’s not near a large and bulky as the Archos model I intended on buying, but the Archos was slightly more money and on top of that it still requires a separate cradle for about $120 to hook up to a larger sound system or to record. Another bonus on this one is that it includes a SD and CF cardreader into the chassis for PALM or Alex’s Sanyo camera backups. Very cool and handy! Our intention when we get back home is to have this adjacent and hooked up to the living room stereo system for playback of any of our entire music collection, without needing CD’s ever again. We concluded that this was maybe a better option rather than streaming them by WIFI from a server computer downstairs. We will probably still buy one video/audio streaming receiver when we get home for playback on the TV and audio system downstairs though. Lastly I managed to grab a CREATIVE brand MP3 player speaker set that’s specifically designed for the Zen V we have. It docks right in the front of the speakers and they provide incredible portable (or plug-in) sound while charging the player. Since the Zen V model is discontinued the speakers were about 1/3 of the original price! Well, they were half but since I bought them with the camera and 120Gig portable player the total price got drastically reduced. That cost a good hour investment of my life, but it was pretty worth it considering what I ended up paying for everything.

A few days later we all went about ten blocks North to another shopping district known to be not quite as ritzy as the one by our first hotel. This one area had all similar stores focussed in an area, so the consumer didn’t really have to go far to compare. The prices here were actually stickered (marked) on most items and were cheaper than the fancier area at the very South end of Kowloon. At the South end the stickers just had cost codes that the clerk would look at and then look at the consumer to size up how much he thought he could get away with before reciting a price. So while the Northern area prices were all cheaper, there was very little (if even none at all!) room for negotiating. In this area we were slightly looking for a new, larger, MP3 player for Alex and I was checking prices on a bluetooth microphone for our video camera. This would allow the person to wear a mike and transmit the audio up to 30m away to the cameraman. It was pretty cool, and something I had been looking at since we left home (at $400!). In Malaysia the price was about $300, (but that’s also possibly mainly due to the decreasing price over time) and in Vietnam I saw it for $250. In a couple places in Hong Kong I saw it for $175, and then $151 that day. My target price had always been $150, but I held off to try and get it with other things for a combined reduced rate. At one place we saw a new mini computer from Asus, called the EeePC 1701 that had a 7″ screen, was ultra portable with a battery, ran Linux or Windoze XP, had WIFI, a built in web cam and was only $385. This was a brand new item and NO STORE would go down on price, (as we eventually found out from repeated asking). So, finally at one store (we were running out of time before a booked space show at the science center that evening) I arbitrarily asked for a price on the 16GB flash MP4 player Alex had been eying up. The attendant made a mistake of $74 less on her verbal quote to me. I immediately agreed to buy it and also inquired if the had the Sony bluetooth mike. It turns out that they did, and better yet it was the best price I had ever seen at $138!!! I didn’t even bother trying to negotiate and just whipped out my VISA urging her to ring it up before some manager came along and knocked her to her senses.

We had been having quite a bit of difficulty connecting to the internet lately, (since half way through Thailand). It was becoming increasingly expensive, and the hotel “business centers” were almost cost prohibitive! The funny part was, most hotels we had stayed at in the latter part of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam & Hong Kong, all provided wired internet access for free in the rooms. This must have twigged Claudette’s nerves, because she was actively pursuing this little Asus ultra-light laptop, (with my approval of course!). We went back to the original place we hahd seen it and grabbed one before rushing off to the show on Black Holes. So, we spent a poopload of cash, but got some pretty good deals on “stuff” that we were planning on buying anyways or would be quite useful to us. I’m still typing this on the Palm, but no one else seems to like using it due to the keyboard occasionally acting up. For two thirds of the rest of the family, it has become a very expensive portable solitaire game…

Posted in 2007-12 to 2008-01, Hong Kong & China | 1 Comment »

December 21, 2007 by Rick.

This “Administratively distinct” region of China was really fun and interesting. Well, except for our feeble attempts at finding a reasonable hotel of course! We expected that before arriving, but we were still shocked to be paying CAN $300/night for only three beds, but downtown. Crazy! We stayed on the Kowloon side, across Victoria Harbor from Hong King Island. It was pretty cool, but we later discovered that we were in the slightly ritzier district for shops and hotels. Traffic was solidly busy everywhere we could see as well, so NOBODY jaywalked here. Hong Kong reminded both Claudette and I of Singapore in a lot of ways. After watching the discovery channel Extreme Engineering show on building the Hong Kong airport, tunnels, bridges and high speed train system it was pretty cool to see it all and ride it.

Sadly, a few days before while looking up activities to do in HK we found out about the gondola car dropping from the cable thus closing down the entire ride to the big Buhda that we had also watched an episode about on Extreme Engineering. We had seen quite enough Buhda’s in all shapes, sizes and mannerisms (believe me!) in Thailand and Laos, but we had been looking forward to this billion dollar gondola ride. We still managed to take the street cable car up the side of very steep hills on Hong Kong Island though. That was certainly a big highlight, even with heavy smaug obscuring the other side of the harbor, (At least, I thought I saw a dragon flying around???). Madam Tusseau (sp?) had a wax museum up there too, but we didn’t bother buying tickets since Claudette only wants to see the original (apparently?) in France. From the top we could see down to the ocean on both sides of the mountain. There were some pretty spectacular homes up here too! I can’t even imagine the price…

We looked for a venue to watch the (Guinness Book of of World records approved) world’s largest permanent light show, and caught most of it for fifteen minutes at 8:00 PM. It was OK, but not near as spectacular as we had heard and read about from so many different sources. We assumed that there was music, but it wasn’t played at our location and we didn’t have a radio. The next night though, after watching a great show on Black holes at the Science Center, we watched the light show from the opposite side. The whole area alongside the harbor was developed and had speakers to play music matching the light show. This was clearly the place to be to see it, and we went to the second floor balcony of the Art Museum to get an uncrowded view. There were scads of people crowding and elbowing in the other areas, but apparently none had thought hard enough to look for the obscured stairway coming up where we were, with only five or six other people along a huge 200m long deck area. On some of the video we captured, it can clearly be heard two and a half of us saying:

“WOW!!! Halifax doesn’t have ANYTHING like this!”

Posted in 2007-12 to 2008-01, Hong Kong & China | No Comments »

December 20, 2007 by Rick.

The motor scooters in Vietnam were so amazingly plentiful, that it was simply a remarkable sight to watch a continuous wave of them driving in traffic. There seemed far fewer four wheeled vehicles here than anywhere else we had been, including Thailand and Laos. We at at one restaurant on the fourth floor balcony and looked out over a fairly major “X” shaped intersection, compounded by having a traffic circle off to one side of one of the arms, and by the middle section being elongated, (with only two lanes for about 50 meters, before splitting off again). It was a completely astounding sight to see, and we found it worthy of several minutes of videotape. There were so many near misses it seemed, but not a single accident. As a matter of fact, with traffic as amazingly crazy as it seemed all around here (less so in Laos, where there’s not quite as many vehicles as Thailand, Malaysia or Vietnam, and certainly less so than Singapore where everything is so strictly orderly), we only saw three accidents. One actually involved Luke and I in a taxi that was following WAY too close in Thailand. The bus in front of us came to a screeching halt, and a few seconds later so did we, barely a few decimeters from the bus I’m sure. Then, to add to our loudly screeching tires, the taxi behind us came to a stop only a few centimeters from us. As would be expected then, the car driver behind him wasn’t so quick on her brakes and caused a three vehicle domino collision. We barely felt it, since the sudden stop a few seconds earlier had been far more abrupt. Our driver however was very distraught, and got out in the center lane of four lanes of traffic whizzing by to check things out. I was worried about the delays and was looking to see if Luke and I could safely exit to the curb and flag down an alternate taxi. Not a chance! Inside the vehicle was by far the safest place for us! Our driver and the other, and the woman chattered for about ten minutes, and then he returned to the car. I insisted we get out immediately without paying when he said we were just going to stop off at the police station, (we were only six minutes away from the hotel after a half hour ride). He quickly radioed the other taxi driver and said he was gonna drop us off first and meet them at the police station to file a report. He was pretty upset, mainly at the woman because she had only caused just under CAN $1000 of damage to the two taxis, yet she was insisting on going through insurance. This created (as it does in Canada) mounds of paperwork and governmental red tape that no one else wanted to deal with. Our taxi only had a small dent in the bumper, and yet he was practically in tears regarding the damage to his baby. At least he looked after it I guess.

Claudette and Luke had also witnessed a motorbike getting hit by a taxi at slow speeds in Bangkok. It caused damage to his bike, but he got up immediately with barely a bruise by the looks of it. The third one we just barely saw in Vientiane, (the Capital city of Laos). It was at an intersection, and we were behind a bus and a couple other cars. A dump truck swerved abruptly to avoid crushing a crazy motorbike driver trying to scoot across in front, but miscalculating the speed of the dump truck. The truck swerved and rode up on a high median ripping apart it’s undercarriage as well as a fuel and hydraulic oil tank. The driver scurried out of the cab and away from the truck in a huge hurry, and went to check on the motorcyclist. When we finally got up to and through the intersection a few minutes later, the bike driver was being attended to and looked like he had some ripped clothing, road-rashed face, and a compound fracture of the lower leg. As we continued driving away we didn’t hear any explosions, so the dump truck’s ignition sources must have been turned off.

All in all though, I would still say that traffic in Latin America is slightly worse, in that there seemed to be way more disorderly conduct, and people constantly and very inconsiderately pushing there way in this way and that. Southeast Asia is still pretty wicked of course, just not quite as bad as what I remember from Latin America, and especially Peru. Our guide in Laos had disdainfully told us how all the nation’s roads had previously been filled with bicycles, but people started buying more and more scooters. Then the Chinese started making and selling really cheap scooters in Laos and sudden no one but kids under ten years old used scooters anymore.

Motor-scooter and motorbike drivers are simply suicidal, or they collectively have the combined fore thinking brain power of a pea. The cutting in and out of traffic, and speeding along in between lanes of cars, (while stopped at lights, or at 80KPH, it don’t matter!) is just nuts. I suppose such crazy behavior is offset lightly by the expanded awareness of the drivers, but they still make me shake my head in horrified wonderment. The car and truck driver’s inherently (generally) know and prepare for the crazy sudden turns and budding in front by the bikes, and drive accordingly. Most Westerners who get behind a wheel in Aisia or Latin America would be very likely to quickly wipe out several bikes since they would not be anticipating the two-wheeler movements without observing for awhile first. On the other hand, if a bike were to take up the center of a lane (as is propper and safe to do) most four wheel vehicle drivers would be cussing and swearing since the motor scooters are quite underpowered compared to even a four cylendar car or lorry.

Sadly, this myopically selfish viewpoint of cutting in wherever one can, generally seems to carry over into pedestrian traffic as well. None of the reading in various guidebooks prepared us for the disdainful stepping on our toes, pushing out of the way, budding in front of us, ect, that we constantly seem to be experiencing in Asia so far. China is supposed to be the worst even, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

The one cool thing about entering Laos was that the sides of the road that everyone drove on were switched again. This I had mentioned in a previous post I believe. It was still refreshing to see the steering wheels back on the left side of the vehicle again though. We all easily adapted to getting into mini vans on the right side again. This was short lived of course, only in Laos and Vietnam did vehicles use the “right” side of the road again. As soon as we hit Hong Kong, the grand old former British Colony, everything was switched back to the “wrong” side, and we kept going to the “incorrect side to get into taxi’s. That should be short lived again though, since as soon as we get to Beijing in a couple days it will be back to the left side with steering wheels, and to the right side of the road with vehicles themselves.

One other cool thing we’ve noticed in many Southeast Asia countries so far is an extra, smaller sized lanes on the “ditch” side of traffic. These are not wide enough (safely) for a car to travel, and are generally meant for animal carts, bicycles, motorbikes and pedestrians. In Thailand they are almost exclusively used by motor scooters. In Laos there weren’t many except in towns, and they were most often used for parking, or as motor scooter lanes when clear. In Vietnam we actually did see a couple ox-carts and bicyclists using them, even along the side of an 8 lane raised highway. That was certainly quite the contrast!

Posted in 2007-12, Laos & Vietnam | No Comments »

December 18, 2007 by Rick.

Our flight leaving Laos to Vietnam was slightly delayed and we didn’t get in until later in the evening, almost bedtime. We explored a little bit before eating a late supper upstairs at this nice but very narrow little new boutique hotel.

(Mary Jo, Caleb or Connor, if you’re reading before getting to Hanoi on Dec 20 pay attention for some tips! And make sure to see the puppet show!)

Food near the hotel was difficult to find. We could go about 5 blocks one way (South I think it was, but the maps were not oriented to the “standard” North, so it’s difficult to be sure) near West Lake were a bunch, (as well as the nummiest chocolate/pastry shop I had encounered since Cusco in Peru!). Heading East from the hotel a few blocks took us through a major shopping district and various daily markets. A few blcks frther East was a much larger lake, some geat restaurants and the highlight of our trip to Vietnam, the wateer puppet how. I show preface such a grandioise comment with the explanation that we only had tyhe smallest amount of time in Hanoi and in fact all of Vietnam. We flew in late one afterrnoon, got to the hotel in Hanoi in time to have a meal, unpack a bit, walk up and down one road and then pretty much go to bed. With only one free day in the capital city before flying to Hong Kong we weren’t really sure what we would be able to accomplish.

The half day or full day city, countryside, or ocean bay tours all started no later than 8:00 AM! Not our cup of tea at the best of times. Never mind the extremely heavy emphasis towards Ho Chi Min! Good gawd! There was his mauseleum where the body is on display with twice yearly fesh changes of embalming fluid and skin moisturizer. After that was his statue (and park) errected (constructed) to celebrate his life, then there’s another Ho Chi Min monument to celebrate the commie victory in the war, the Ho Chi Min this, and the Ho Chi Min that… The current government is clearly hanging on to him as a strong focal point while letting go of most of his ideals. There was also a visit to “Lennin Park” (and statue) on a tour. We opted for none, and instead I wandered out mid morning and eventually worked my way to the water puppet show box office only able to get tickets for the 9:15 PM show! (There were five shows per day.) The puppets all had elongated horizontal sticks controlling them which were hidden by the water. There was a six piece band adjacent to the water stage as well that were excellent! The puppet show was in 11 stages, or scenes. There were obviously elaborate wires and trigger mechanisms threaded through the sticks and up into the puppets that controlled extra lateral movements, mouth, arms, tails and whatever other apendage individual puppets may have had. It started off with fire breating dragons, complete with lit up sparklers, coming up from under the water and completely captivated us for the rest of the show. (Except for Luke a bit who struggled heavily three-quarters the way through to keep his poor tired little eyes open.) I got some spectacular pictures and video throughout.

After that, we grabbed a taxi home to rest before heading to the airport first thing in the morning. Our hotel was very newly built, and very boutiqeish without being outrageously expensive. This was the last of our second GAP tour, and the booked accomodations were way more extravegant than we would have stayed when booking on our own. This hotel was very narrow, (along with most all buildings we saw in Hanoi) but was 11 stories tall. It only had six to three suites on each floor but was very nice. The restaurant at the top was also amazing, with corespondingly high prices. Gone were the days of ordering a full plate meal (from Thailand & Laos) for $3-$5. Instead we were back to paying $14 for a burger and upwards of $30 for a steak. The view was nice at least!

Posted in 2007-12, Laos & Vietnam | No Comments »

December 18, 2007 by Rick.

The rest of Laos was very enjoyable. We started seeing the same other caucaision tourists at different temples and museums, and then again in the next day or two in different towns. It was as if there was a standard itinerary that all tour companies followed. The capital city of Laos, Vientien, has less people than Red Deer, at around 100,000. That province (one of seventeen provinces in Laos) has the highest population of all provinjces in the country at just barely over one million. I think that the total population of Laos is just around six million. WIth few people in the cities this means that there is an unnatural amount of rural population still living along waterways, in the abundant backcountry, and all stretched along the highways and roads. Urbanism has yet to explode here.

One very cool thing we saw throughout Laos (but no other Southeast Asian country, including our future visit to Vietnam) were the tractors. They were not traditional ride-em tractors as we are used to. Instead they are a direct replacement for oxen or water buffalo. I have a couple of pictures on our web gallery already. Essentially, they are a big engine, with a visible, open clurtch, on top of two larger, fat drive wheels. Extending out the back is a long arm with two handles that house the controls. Think of a large rotertiller with two big wheels at the front instead of the tines, and then extend the control handles to an overall length of about 2.5 meters. This allows the “driver” to still sit at the front of a wagon and hold the handles just as if he were almost still controlling water buffalo by reigns. We saw lots of these things plodding along the side of highways, or going through town. Most had families riding in the four-wheeled wagons, but some had huge piles of cargo. This could be crops, to huge bundles of bamboo or wood, or even furniature and other goods going to stiores to be sold. For crop work I suppose that the farmers would merely replace the wagon with wahtever field implement they needed at that time.

Our guide told us that several years ago the goveernment decided to subsidize these mechanical animal replacement beasts, and pretty much every one in the country jumped at the opportunity. Originally they just offered a little money for villiagers to help them build fences for their animals OR a little more money in exchange for the animals in order to get a tractor. Our guides strong impression was that the people thought that the building of fences (even with a little monetary help) was just WAY too much like work and they opted en mass to get modernized instead. I asked how these subsistence farmers (about half of the people that have these walk behind tractors) could possibly afford gas!!! The guide said that they just adapted and learned to make or grow more goods to buy fuel. He said that there are barely any beasts of burden in the country at all anymore. To partially substantiate this, none of the five of us saw an oxen or water buffalo anywhere along our route. This naturally leads me to be highly suspicious of restaurants that have water buffalo on their menue’s. I can only presume that they were really offering dog meat from the abundance of local strays…

In Vientien (the Capital City of Laos) we met and visited over two days with a family from Sydney, Australia. The two boys were almost exactly the same age as Alex and Luke and they had a blast visiting and swimming in the hotel pool. On the second day, us three parents even consented to the four kids having a “sleepover” in our kids room. Us adults also shared a few bottles of wine and many great stories during and after supper. The next morning we had a leisurely schedule of sleeping in and packing up before needing to leave just after lunch.

The night before we were to fly out, we went by ourselves to a Lao Traditional Dance show. It was pretty inexpensive and very cool. The restaurant at the hotel we stayed at in Phalong Pabang also had a nightly show of Lao Traditioanl dance, but it was free and slightly more ametuerish. Before going to the airport, we had time for one last tour about a half hour away to the “Buhddist Park”. It was really nice with all sorts of Buhda & friends statutes and sculptures in a grassy park area. At the opposite end from the parking lot was a restaurant beside the Mekong River overlooking Thailand on the other side. There was some sort of large (about three stories high) round concrete climbable sculpture with a wild concrete tree at the top that I took pics of Claudette, Alex & Luke on from below. We’ll get those uploaded to the gallery as soon as we find a computer with DVD to extract them from…

Posted in 2007-12, Laos & Vietnam | No Comments »

December 15, 2007 by Rick.

Malaysia and Singapore had been like a direct time warp to the 70’s! The Bee-Gee’s were fresh in my mind every night before going to bed, and I heard Barry Manilou’s MANDY more times in that past week than all of my previous life combined I’m pretty sure. Even greats like Chicago and ELO were wearing thin those days… and I really LOVE both of them!

Southern Thailand was seemingly slightly more modern. The North of Thailand had a lot of 80’s pop stuff though. Very weird…. (since not all of it was actually “good” 80’s music).

In Laos at the hotel rest. for breakfast every morning they played instrumentals (mostly pan flute) of old rock/pop songs. Imagine my divine prowdness when Luke and Alex were constantly recognizing the songs, (though not always the artist). The best moment came when after only about four seconds (or ten notes) Alex blurted out the name of the newly playing song and immediately after announced that it was by the Beatles! Luke was only a second behind her. It was especially pleasing to see another tourist a few tables away cock his eyebrows, slightly impressed by the musical prowess of my darling children.

In the more populated (and later visited) areas of Laos we began to hear much more local flavor of music rather than imported old Western stuff. This was nice, but we still didn’t buy any since the disks were pretty high priced (about $4-$5) for bootleg copies. I brought our entire MP3 music collection along on one 2.5″ portable drive. So in Hong Kong the kids and I are looking forward to buying newer, fancier and larger MP3 players for an abundance of musical choices.

Posted in 2007-11, Thailand | 2 Comments »

December 10, 2007 by Rick.

After a night at a small Inn in Chaing Khong right on the Mekong River we took a long tail boat Ferry ride accross to Laos. Communism is the rule of law here, and it was not overtly noticeable, (not like I expect it to be in China anyways…). People can easily go from one country to the next accross the river and walk right past (or around) the immigration office to spend as much time as they want doing whatever in the other country. The only (minimal) catch is that all hotels on both sides require registration of your passport and in Laos they also take careful note of your VISA number. The injustice of the VISA for us was extroirdinary and hurtful. Most all Aisian, European and South sea countries were charged US$30 for a tourist VISA. Americans are charged US$35, and Canadians are charged US$42. Ogh! the injustice… The first thing we noticed after clearing all that stuff up was a left hand side drive vehicle! Way cool! Back to the side we are used to from home, even though it took some getting used to again, getting into a vehicle from the opposite side as Australia, Singapore, Malaysia & Thailand.

On our first night in Laos, luke was playing with a pet monkey. It crawled on his head and the owner took it off. When it satrted climbing up Luke’s leg again, the owner pulled it’s tail to prevent uit from climbing up onto his head again. Not enjoying being pulled off, the monkey held on to Luke even more, and then eventually bit Luke’s leg to get a better grip. So, we added a new Top four list entry to account for all of these “encounter’s” we seem to be having. It is available from the links at the top left of any blog page, or directly from:
http://weblog.jamesworld.ca/top-4-lists/

As soon as we got VISA’s and passports straightened out, we took a ride to a steel hull long boat on the Mekong River. We were going to another town, about 14 hours drive down the river. It was broken up into two days of travel on the boat by ourselves with four relaxing reclining chairs and amazing vies out the sides of the boat. Pictures of our boat (and some other larger tourist transport boats) probably won’t show up in the online gallery for a another week or two yet, once the camera DVD is finalized. It was quite nice and relaxing though at six hours one day, and eight hours the next. In between we stayed at a pretty delux hotel in the middle of freak’in no where.

Once we got to Luangprabang, (where we’re still at now) we did several tours of various temples which sadly being to blend together. The cool part of our tours here however is the guide. He grew up about a four hour drive from here in a small farming villiage, but left home at age 11 to join a temple as a buddist Monk Novice. Apparently the learning and lifestyle prospects in his villiage were pretty slim, so he decided to enter into the “novicehood”. It would typically take a boy about 20 years as a novice before becomming a monk. He spent his first six years here at a temple in Luangprabang, and then went to the capital city of Laos for another six years learning pretty decent English along the way. So, when we toured his old temple where he lived as a child (and another where he walked to school each day) the insights and stories were incredible and much more interesting than the standard tourist explanations given to everyone else. We had several others at different times leaning in to our small group of five to overhear his recollections before they were admonished by their own tour guides for falling behind.

Tomorrow we have a five hour (150km) bumpy bus ride to the next town on our tour stop. In the end we won’t be going through Vietnam much at all other than flying directly to Hanoi from Vientiane (the Laos capital city) and staying there for two nights before our Dec 16 scheduled flight to Hong Kong.

Posted in 2007-12, Laos & Vietnam | 2 Comments »

December 6, 2007 by Rick.

For her last week with us we went to the North of Thailand with Grandma Vi. We flew up to a city cmalled Chaing Mei. We had planned on taking the train up and back with her, but it was a 14 hour trip for 12,500 baht (1,000 Baht = $30) for a first class sleeper bed, (two beds with it’s own cabin). Sadly, a sixty-five minute flight with a discount airline was only 17,500 Baht which made it far more worthwhile, but lacking in that cultural experience category. We made up for it by taking Grandma on a whitewater river rafting trip though! It was over two hours drive just to get to the start point, wheer we had lunch before launching down the river. It wasn’t near as hairy as the trip we took in Costa Rica, but still pretty good for Grandma’s first time EVER. (Never mind her general lifelong aversion to water.) We all got good and wet while having a fantastic time. This one didn’t have still camera pictures available, but they videotaped everyone who went rafting that day and sold the DVD for a very reasonable price (just under $10). Funny part is though, that we didn’t get the video that night or before we flew back to Bangkok the next morning. Instead, I went back to this hotel in a few days once we returned to Chaing Mai on our official GAP tour and picked up the DVD. I finally got a chance to watch it the next day and it was great! Fantastic video of the five of us in some tricky sections and going through chutes and over shelves. All were smailing and laughing throughout though, (even Grandma Vi).

The day previous to river rafting we had take a tour to the Thailand Elephant Conservation Center. There are several elephant camps with a 30-60 minute drive people can get to for a show and a ride for pretty cheap. We had read about the work of the Thai Government sponsored Conservation center though, and opted to pay a little more, (and drive a little further) to see it. They also had a hospital there which was sad and heartening to see at the same time. We were pretty sure that this was the place the Reader’s Digest featured Cowtown “Voluntouring” family had gone to. There was an option to stay there and learn about elephant training (in fact, you star in the shows!) and to care for the anuimals for one or three days. All meals and lodging are included for $80/day, which I thought was pretty reasonable considering the experience one would get. If I had known more beforehand I certainly would have arranged it for us all after Grandma left, (can you guys who know her imaging GV shovelling elephant poop, or riding one all by herself around the neck while it pulls logs and paints pictures in the show???). The show included showing different ways elphants pull, move & manipulate huge logs for the forestry industry, painting pictures with a watercolor brush, and doing various physical tricks, (such as walking along a 7m log as a balance beam, turning around on it and walking back!). We really enjoyed being there, except of course for learning about all of the injured elephants who have portions of their feet blown off by land mines from the war.

Once we returned to Bangkok, it was Grandma’s last night for shopping (like we could fit any more in her bags!!) and relaxing before the 26= hour journey home. Luke bag was just a little bit too small, so we packed all our stuff (inc. an abundance of heavy DVD’s) in Luke’s small MEC bag for Grandma to take back as her second piece of luggage. Then we stole Grandma’s MEC larger bag (the same as Claudette’s and mine) and bought her a cheap rolling duffel to get home with. We looked up Cathay Pacific’s luggage weight guidlines on the net and discovered that her two bags were more than double the allowable economy ticket weight. Very nervously we approached the desk and the ever so friendly agent just shuffeled the bags on through without a second glance! One obstacle down one to go… The only other concern we had was her getting the bags througfh customs in Vancouver. Luckily, she claimed $680 of the allowable $750 amount and the “nice little old (but semi spry) grandma” card palyed out well as she waltzed right on through with a few hundred pirated DVD’s and computer software worth about $30,000! (But “Shhhhhhhh”, don’t tell anyone.)

After she left we began our second GAP tour with an immediate upgrade in hotels from a $18/night ultra basic one that we were willing to pay for to a $150/night one with a huge pool, crisp nice sheets and gorgeous decor and furnishings. The internet prices also jumped from about 28 cents/hr to a little over $10.00/hour! Needless to say we checked e-mails and did picture backups down the street at $1/hour. The next day we spent wiuth a great tour guide going through various markets and sights of Bangkok. One of the coolest things was going through a six day a week morning wholesale flower market. The smells and colors were tremendous and beautiful! A few of these pictures are in our on-line gallery. We also toured some well irrigated farms between Bangkok and the Ocean (about a 12km streatch) and then flew to Chaing Mei again the next day. Back in the North we spent the afternoon touring some more Buddist Temples and sights before driving five hours the next day through the town of Chaing Rai and up to the tiown of Chaing Khong on the Meekong River, adjacent to the Laos border. There wasn’t much to see in this sleepy little villiage, but the kids and I found an internet place with blistering fast speeds that we hadn’t experienced for uploading pictures since Australia!

Posted in 2007-11, Thailand | No Comments »

December 5, 2007 by Rick.

Back at the end of Novemeber, (when we were still in Phuket) a bunch of staff from Phil’s company were planning a friendly airball game. Luckily I was invited along and graciously accepted. Airball is a less expensive alternative to paintball, (and the little solid plastic balls hurt less too!). There are some inherrant problems with airball comparred to paintball though. Mainly, bad players with a little bit of pain tollerance can cheat really easily. Over longer distances the smaller airballs lose quite a bit more of their velocity (and hence trajectory) over paintballs. Thus if you shoot an opponent at a distance of more than 15m they can easily shrug off the shot, bite their tongue from exclaiming out loud and tuck in behind cover a little more. This helps them pretend that they were never hit, and that the shot was really “close” and nothing more.

We arrived after a half hour drive to find about 5 Thai guys, 6 American and Canadian expats and 2 Thai kids (around 11) waiting to play. There were two fancy guns which could shoot incrediby rapidly and had accurate scopes attached. When any of us “new” guys tried to get those guns we were quickly told that they were privately owned by two of the guys and we could only use the heavy, slower (and way less “attractive”) rental guns. When it came time to dividing the teams, it somehow went with Thai versus Caucaision except for Phil. This made the teams rather uneven at 6 to 7 but they claimed the kids only counted as healf each. I should clarify here that the kids were in full body armour (heavy padding like an umpire wears) and looked VERY comfortable handling their weapons. I wondered if they slept with them perhaps….

So, here we were about to seemingly recreate the Vietnam war from the 1970’s. Complete with several big burly (or more easily targeted) beer bellied white guys all over or close to six feet high, and several little “Charlie’s” that were tiny, hard to track targets and could scramble around as quietly and as efffortlessly as the most deadly jungle cat. These enemies had guns though. Rapid fire, sleek, lightweight chinese manufactured guns… In the end we did fairly well. At the beginning of the first game Phil was duly sacrificed by his Charlie teammates. He suggested it was miscommunication afterwards, but they told him to go one way where three of us shot the snot out of him very quickly. Meanwhile his teammates all stealthily went the other way once we were all distraced with the high of our first kill. I didn’t make it to the end of that first game, but I was proud in getting a great surprise kill in before I was taken out later. We somehow won that first game and we started to consider that perhaps we had a chance. Then in the second game their overrall plan began to take hold. Our batteries that provided the “Oomph!” in the propulsion system were getting low. I had the key “lookout” position and my rental gun jammed at a very important moment. Naturally I was allowed to go off the course unharmed and perform any nessesary repairs. By the time I returned however our position was severely compromised by an influx of enemy sneaking up along the side that I was supposed to be protecting. We lost that next game, but still did incredibly well considering that our batteries barely seemed to be pushing those plastic beads out at all.

We insisted on charging up the batteries after that in preparation for the second game. Then we enacted our sure-fire stategy. It wasn’t so sure faire we quickly discovered. This is where the rampant cheating came to light in our minds. We had two guys surrounded o twosides and were firing like cazywith no apparent effect. He just didn’t flinch and adjusted his body so that he was just barely protected a little more. We could see each other shooting at him abrely 4m away but he was just taking the shots and pretending he wasn’t hit. (I made a point of lookig at his back when he changed shirts at the end of the games and he was riddled with welts. That gave us a minimal smug satisfaction…)

Posted in 2007-11, Thailand | 2 Comments »

November 30, 2007 by Rick.

The island was very wonderful for a vacation spot. Maybe even to live there! (Guess we’ll see about that one). There were some relaxing places as well as an abundance of much busier beaches & towns. Most of the island is populated, certainly around the ocean touching circumfrance and along all major transportation corridors. There were some pretty exclusive resorts here too. The young Spanish couple living adjacent to the house we rented both worked at very nice resorts. One had individual two story buildings, on stilts, overlooking the ocean for each guest! Oh yeah, and each villia had there own private pool also overlooking the ocean. I have a powerpoint presentation that I will try and upload with a link for anyone who wants to download it and eat their heart out. It is a fairly large file, since the pics are all high resolution. For a few months or so, I have a seperate gallery with a few pictures of the house we stayed at adjacent to Phil & Joy’s in Phuket. There is a neighboring house, just about finished being built, that is very similar in style and is for sale. This new place includes it’s own pool rather than sharing one pool among four homes as the one we stayed in did. The gallery is at:
http://s114284247.onlinehome.us

One night while staying at the house, a bunch of staff from Phil’s company were planning a friendly airball game. Luckily I was invited along and happily accepted. The story on that evening is written as a seperate BLOG post in early December. All in all we had a great time and are VERY thankful for Phil and Joy taking us in (so to speak) and helping out so much with stuff. Joy also helped to arrange for Alex and Luke to attend a day of school with Josh and Kyla at the Thai English public school they attend. They had a great day there, and Luke later met a “classmate” on Phi Phi Don Island where her parents owned a diving company.

To say that our “Trip of A Lifetime!” seems to be gathering great speed and going by very quickly is a huge understatement!!! Grandma Vi is almost due to go home already too, and her three weeks has similarly gone by incredibly quickly. Our original plane tickets were only booked to getting out of China. The ticket stopped in Bangkok though, so we have yet to get some flights arranged onward to Delhi in India. We had originally planned for six weeks throughout India after two weeks in China. We added on four days to the end of China though, and are thinking of lopping off another five or so days from the other end of India to spend five extra days (than the originally planned two weeks) in Kenya nd Tanzinia. That leaves India with just barely four weeks now. This is significant simply because I am almost tempted to spend another week in Thailand when we pass through after China. Claudette probably won’t let that one fly though…

Posted in 2007-11, Thailand | 1 Comment »

November 16, 2007 by Rick.

Our hotel was fully booked from today and we had to leave. Luckily we found even nicer digs! Story below…

===============================================

Upon entering Thailand we went first to Krabbi, only a few hundred KM North of the Border with Malaysia. Krabbi was OK, we were a bit confused as to all the fuss of the travel books. The beach is about a half hour drive from town, but there are an abundance of tours to all sorts of islands and spectacular sights available. After asking around to other travelers, the lure of Krabbie would merely seem to be slightly cheaper accommodation and food prices with the inconvenience of traveling a bit more back and forth to the beach. It had a small market, and lots of GREAT! Inexpensive food so we enjoyed it for a couple of days. Alex got her hair done in a whole bunch of mini braids. This took two and a half people almost three full hours to accomplish! She loves it now, keeping her hair long, but not getting so sweaty and hot in the often muggy weather.

After Krabbi we chartered a large van to take us to Phuket for a week or two. Grandma Vi would be joining us here after a couple days. Claudette found a hotel on the web somehow that had two rooms available. These were pretty basic rooms, with a washroom and a large ceiling fan for about $30/night. These rooms sure smelled musty and possibly mildewy though, so people wouldn’t want to stay there more than a week or so… This place had only 14 of these fan rooms open, but they were constructing another 50 or so units on the same property, (right beside our rooms, from 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM each day!). There were already 15 or so of these newer rooms (post Tsunami) open, but they cost a minimum of $16/night! We were here to save lots of money, not just a tiny bit. These other rooms had beautiful marble throughout, as well as air conditioning and king sized beds. A couple of them also had private hot tubs for only $165/night.

We had originally only booked for two nights in case it was a dump and we wanted to go elsewhere. This beach we were at was amazingly gorgeous, and very deserted generally. I walked a kilometer or two in both directions and there was nothing better for the same or cheaper money. The problem came though when we went to extend our booking and found out that all but one of the cheap rooms were booked for the next two weeks! So, Claudette and I ended up in a room with two single beds and the kids and Grandma Vi got a king sized bed altogether in another old room that was being renovated, (but that they opened up just for us at $60/night cause it was old but had air conditioning). After Grandma Vi arrived we did lots of relaxing, a fair amount of eating, uploading pics of GV relaxing for all her co-workers to see and some Blog posts (including the invention of Pete’s Blog, linkable from the upper left hand corner of this page). Luke made friends one day with a couple year younger boy who was Canadian and living here with his family. They had even just moved here from Oilberta! They didn’t make it back to the beach for a couple of days, and Claudette got a chance to meet the parents briefly. Close to our last scheduled day there, she gave Phil and Joy a call to try and arrange supper together some evening. This worked out wonderfully and we all had a great time catching up. He was a pilot and their kids attended a Thai public school (with an English program) rather that the English International school that is private. Better yet, they lived in a spectacular! House barely a seven minute walk to the beach, with three bedrooms, stunning marble floors and a shared swimming pool among four homes!!! Now the best news; one of these homes was empty and due for new tenants in another month so they arranged through the landlord for us to stay in it for a week, for the same price we got one two person fan room at the current hotel. Needless to say we jumped at it and decided to stay for an extra week.

I took a bunch of pics of the amazing house we stayed in as well as the deck area, BBQ, massage bed (they book to have them done at home once a week) and the pool. There were three other units almost finished being built in the same complex that were for sale. These all had their own private (un-shared) pools though, and are only priced at CAN$245,000. My mind was clicking away, working out how many other families we would want to buy with at 30, 40 & 50 thousand dollars each. The trouble is that most friends or family that we would trust enough to buy in with, are people that we’d want to go at the same time with. I mentioned this to a few friends with keen interest, but Claudette quickly smashed me back into reality, saying that we wouldn’t be able to continue our trip past Christmas, flights are $2,000 each from Edm, and take a little over 24 hours with layovers each way. Thus the idea has slightly waned… (Certainly NOT died…)

Posted in 2007-11, Thailand | 6 Comments »

November 15, 2007 by Rick.

NOTE: spelling errors abound in this post since there’s no firefox 2 browser or word processor to check in. Sorry!
=====================================================================

Even though we actually had a well trained and registered massage therapist in Fort Smith for a few years, I had never gone to one before this trip. Even at Daivik a girl from Yellowknife would fly in for a week or two at a time and offer evening bookings for anyone who could afford her. This all changed in the last month of course…

I woke up one morning in our little Toyota camper van with a pretty good knott in one muscle next to my shoulder blade. This was at about the end of our second last week in Oz, and it got progressively (and uncomfortably!) worse over the next two days. I managed to find a massage place open on Sunday’s (it was a Saturday when I realized that walking hunched over in a very slow and decrepid manner was not a long term option) in Mooloolaba and booked the soonest appointment I could get. She was a fair sized girl. I’d booked in for an hour. The first seven to nine minutes were spent talking about the main problem, reviewing (quite extensively!) my health and body status questionaire, and generally sorting out what I needed. Then the pain! Oh, the sweet pain… I knew it was all for a VERY worthwhile result, but Man! did this girl (all 240 pounds or so of her) ever have some strength and Ooomph! in her. I didn’t call her off once, (sure came close twice though) and she worked out tense stuff I didn’t know I had.

My proudest moment came near the end when she casually commented on how much I had taken. “Most Aussie guys are absolute whimps, and will call me off after only a bit of pressure. It’s very frustrating when if they’d just take it a little more, I know that I get get them all sorted out in one or two visits, rather than a string of eight or ten visits over two or three months. I’d rather help them more efefctively and work myself out of some work. You have taken more than any of my customers in at least five years!” Whew, so I was tougher than most Aussie business executives who could actually afford such regular treatment, hardly something to be extroirdinarily prowd of…

The weirdest part was that she seemed to focus slightly more on my oposite shoulder muscle that I had mentioned to her. When I brought this up (casually of course) she insisted that it was in much worse shape, and liable to “go” at any time. Confused I just accepted this. I had gained instant respect for her earlier though when she quickly identified that I had had a shoulder seperation on my left side over 10 years ago (it was 20) and she quite accurately described the scope of severity. She had used her elbows and massive forearms quite a bit throughout, and near the end, those rounded blunt objects of death midway in her arm found their way into my thighs to some nerve I had never heard of before. (Leesa-Maree told me but I’ve erased that “full-on” experience from my memory.) Once again she kept going longer and longer, and I refused to say “STOP! No more please!!!” until she saw the tear starting to form in my eyes and gently let up. The second one on my right side was absolutely worse cause I knew what was coming this time. Like the dreaded spanking that a child doesn’t get right away, (he gets to think about it and dwell on the scope of severity for a few hours first) I almost cried knowing the excruciating torture I was about to endure… Sure enough she held this one longer! Truely a sadist (in such a good, well meaning way of course) I suffered gleefully at her hands knowing (in my heart at least) that it was all working towards a tremendous benefit (me joining the last fourty thousand generations of mankind in walking upright). At the end, as I was getting dressed, I asked her how many marriage proposals she received from first time paitients. She had an instant reaction of slight panic, until she saw my laughing eyes. Then I further commented that I had to get my wife a year off of work and send her to massage school for a couple semesters. She then gave me a couple addresses of two on the East Coast of Oz, but I reluctantly (and very sadly) threw them into a rubish bin outside knowing Claudette would never have the slightest interest in such a thing as a “more than a five minute massage” never mind actually having to go to school for it.

After that first time I was naturally hooked. The difficulty was in how to absorb the astonishing (yet VERY worthwhile) $75/hour fees. Luckily we are travelling, and economically repressed areas represent a repreive from said “Western” styleized fees. At the entry to Malaysia, when we were killing several hours at a huge shopping mall until our train left for KL I had my second massage. They had nine chairs lined up for doing pedicures and foot massages, but only one body massuse. I had to wait three hours from my enquiry time until there was a free booking. He was a little 145 (or so) pound guy, and I was the last hour of a twelve hour shift for him. It too felt really great, especially since he did my feet quite thoroughly first. The hour long combined back, arm and foot massage worked out to be about CAN $23. I even snuck Luke into the chair for five minutes of a back rub since he was sore after wandering around town for several hours too. This little guys pushed, massaged and bent my muscles very effectively (and wonderfully) for 46 minutes before he stopped and said I was done. I looked at my watch wondering about the remaining eight minutes that I had pre-paid for. He just sat there looking quite exhausted himself saying in very broken English while looking at his hands, that “there’s nothing left, I am out of power”. I let him off (”white devil” that I am) since he had very reluctantly fit Luke into my time. Not to mention I guess that he had done a pretty effective overall job, (with the exception of bending my RSI entranced thumbs back way too far). Claudette continually declines my offers (and strong recamendations!) for a massage herself. I will keep offering just to ensure she doesn’t have amunition to consider me too much of a selfish bastard spending the family money on such luxury.

My third massage was last night. Ummmmm, the memories come flooding back. There are quite a number of massage places on either side of the beach road, and we are in a VERY uncrowded area of Phuket. Many of these are just open air places with basic beds or even mats on the floor. On the inland side of the beach road there are a half dozen or so in buildings with actual walls. I had heard of the “special” massages available in Thailand from many people back home, and from other travelers we’ve met along the way. An English guy we met here (Dan) had told us about a busier area they had been to last week where there was a huge string of massage parlors along the roads. In this, the much more populated area, the signs were actually labeled occaisionally (every forth or fifth one he said) with “No Sex” for the parlors where the girls were gaurenteed NOT to hassel you at the end of the main one.

I went to check e-mail and type in the start of a BLOG post last night, but was actively canvased (being late at night) to come in for a cheap massage at various places along the way. I started thinking how nice such a gentle rubdown would be after a long day (it was almost 10:00 PM, and all other family members were in bed). I headed to the little sideroad that the internet cafe was on. This also had a pathway to a tremendously nice (and crazily expensive!) resort. I figured that the more reputable places would be adjacent to this resort’s beach entry path, and picked one there. The prices seemed amazingly reasonable (if not downright bloody cheap!). A twenty minute foot massage was (all prices converted to CAN $) $4.50; a half hour back rub $6; a sports massage (meaning vigerous?) was $10; an all over 60 minute body massage was $9; and an all over 60 minute “oil” body massage was $12. I opted for the 60 minute oil one, and then sent me to the open air roof with a little 120 pount thai lady who knew very little english. She gave me a 65 minute wonderful workover everywhere but “there”… (thank gawd!) and I felt compelled to still tip her another 100 Baht (equivelent of $3, since the original massage price was only 400 baht! or $12).

Most bizzarely though, on my way back to the hotel I was canvassed again. Here I was still outrageously reeking of linament oil, and with my skin all glistening, and she wanted to offer me a massage??? I kindly explained that I had only just had one and began walking away. She called me back suggesting that I might need a “special” massage now. I then realized that she must have seen me come out of the “reputable” place and figured I was disappointed or something??? So, mildly curious (nothing more than curiosity, HONEST!) I asked how much. She asked how much would I pay. I was growing impatient and wanted to go, so I exasperatedly replied that I had no idea since I’d NEVER had one before and was just curious, but really wanted to go to my hotel and get to bed. After more talking among the two girls, the English speaking one replied that a “specail” massage would be 1000 baht. She asked more in a negotiating tone of voice expecting me to come back lower I guess. Naturally I said thanks, bid them a good night and ended up somehow at Les & Tina’s room (Dan’s In-laws) swapping stories over a beer for another hour. I have no idea what “special” is: being full on, or just a hand; don’t care either… But I know there are many readers who would be “curious” to know the price. So it’s 1000 baht, or CAN $30 and is most likely negotiable down from there…

Grandma Vi is gonna get one (or more if she gets hooked like me!) tomorrow at the reputable place. Just for fun I might send her to other place and tell her to ask for “special”. But, knowing Grandma Vi, she would be slightly suspicious of my wry smile, and then Claudette would spill the beans. I’m sure that the massage girls would just laugh at her anyways… At least, I hope so! (Eeeeeewwwwwweeeeee!!!!!!)

Posted in 2007-11, Thailand | 6 Comments »

November 12, 2007 by Rick.

A wonderful (and faithful) blog reader suggested that: “We could start a new game called “where is Grandma Vi”" Well… neat idea, but that’s a little ahead of the game. She’s probably over the Pacific right now, about an hour or two your side of Hawii still. She doesn’t land here for another 15.5 hours! Since there’s no doubt that she’ll be plenty tired, we’re planning very little for her first afternoon and evening here. After that though, it’ll be GANGBUSTERS crazy busy! We have tonnes of stuff planned: like relaxing on the beach, relaxing by the pool, relaxing at the beach front restraunts for three meals a day, and then occaisional leisurely strolls down the beach once we build up our strength. Agh……..

Actually, we have two “busy” activities planned while she’s here with us in Phuket. One is an evening spectacular buffet and elephant (50 of ‘em doing stuff) and acrobatics show. The other is an all day (8:00 - 5:00) guided slew of activities including: whitewater rafting, (YES! we’ll post the pics of her screaming) an elephant ride through the jungle, an ox cart ride, posing on a water buffalo, 4×4 backcountry tour and swimming in a warm jungle waterfall pool. Their websites are: www.islandsafaritour.com and www.phuket-fantasea.com

After Phuket we have no idea specifically where we are going. We just plan on heading North up the coast to Bangkok and then Cheng Mei and seeing what happens?

I wonder if my Mom took one of her computers over to grandma’s house so she can still read the blog postings and see the pics? Maybe someone else is printing ‘em off for Grandma, Idaknow…

We still have plenty of itinerary left for anyone else who wants to meet up somewhere… Start planning.

Posted in 2007-11, Thailand | 10 Comments »

November 10, 2007 by Rick.

Telephones & telecommunications the world over (so far) are an interesting thing. In Central and South America, everyone had cell phones. Not just one per household even, I mean almost all individual family members over 16 it seemed. The best part for us was that the internet WIFI VOIP phone worked in many many places, so we made many fun calls to various family and friends that were dirt cheap and quite a reasonable quality (considering!!!). Thanks gawd for Robert & Leesa’s home internet connection for making calls while we were there. Other than that, I only found one place with an open connection fast enough for us to use in a little strip mall a few weeks into our travels there.

The best way to communicate we’ve found, is by gmail chat. It is an instant messaging (IM) piece built directly into their online webmail page. No extra chat software need be downloaded and installed (like MSN, yahoo chat, ect) since the google chat works directly from a browser window after logging into a free Gmail acount. Quick & easy! And you can see people logged in and start chatting immediately! For anyone who wants to sign up (or has an account already) go to:
http://www.gmail.com and our user name is james.rick@gmail.com

As cool as the WIFI internet phone was, it proved to be pretty much useless in Australia as I mentioned above. At least we used it quite a bit in South & Central America before I lost the darn thing in Singapore. Instead, in Malaysia we bought a new cell phone. While this is something I always believed (and said occasionally to some people) I would avoid, it just proved to be absolutely invaluable while traveling. Throughout practically the whole East coast of Australia that we traveled, public payphones were few and far between. Most campgrounds had one, but they were a pain to use! They were often vandalized and required specific coins (which we didn’t have eight of to call around to different campgrounds or tour operators to check availability and pricing) or not giving change for the larger coins that we did have an abundance of. It was also incredibly useful to be able to make calls while driving to make arrangements for a couple of days ahead, but during business hours.

In Australia I bought the cheapest, most basic phone (Vodaphone) that I could find (for about CAN$50) to use there. The rates were OK, mostly about AUS $0.30 per minute (I think?) to call around within the same State, and AUS $1.50/min to Canada. I had planned on using the WIFI phone throughout Asia and didn’t worry about getting a more versatile cell phone. That turned out to be a huge mistake of course, since the Vodaphone was VERY expensive per minute to use in Asian countries, and (EVEN WORSE!) it didn’t work like they said it would in Singapore and Thailand. That’s a $50 credit I will likely NEVER see again from Vodaphone. Worse yet, their customer service numbers can’t be reached from any phone so far here, so I can’t even demand a refund… Live and learn.

After the vodaphone hassle, I did some quick self education on cell phones and bought the cheapest tri-mode one I could get in KL. It was only about CAN $110 and included tonnes of fancy options! Somehow I restrained myself from getting the Nokia E90 messaging phone (about CAN $1,200 in Malaysia) which was about the coolest thing ever! All phones over here have removable SIM card for changing providers (and as a result, phone numbers) in different countries that you travel to. This is incredibly uncommon in North American cell phone models. We seem to get completely screwed by the providers there! (And I haven’t even talked about rates yet!) The versatility of giving the consumer choice with changeable SIM cards is such a fantastic idea, yet we don’t even know about it or consider it. We just eat up the crap and garbage that the huge money making cell phone corporations feed us. Most phones here don’t seem to have nasty, locked in, incredibly expensive plans either. They are mostly all pay as you go with incredibly friendly and adaptable plans and rates. Even in Australia the pay-as-you-go plans were nice. The vodaphone let us pay $29 for $139 of credit that expired in thirty days, (but could not be used to call from other countries). For $30 we got $60 of credit that expired in 90 days (and could “supposedly” be used overseas). Or for $50 it was $100 of credit for 90 days. In Malaysia & Thailand the rates are even better! While the vodaphone was “locked” and couldn’t use other SIM cards, these phones here (in Asia) are completely open to change around cards at the wonderful whim of the owner. A SIM card here (so far in Singapore, Malaysia & Thailand) costs between CAN $8 and $15 which usually includes about $2 to $3 of “starter” credit. After that, “top up” cards can be bought for $3 to $10. These allow the user to just enter an unlocking code and “poof” more calls.

In Malaysia the local calls were very cheap, and even calls to Canada we calculated out to be about 30 cents! (Yes, Canadian cents!) Thus, we were making calls to Canada like crazy at the train station trying to use up our $15 balance. Even after three long calls, we still have a $9 credit on that SIM card that doesn’t expire for another two months. Way cool!

In Thailand, the calls to Canada seem marginally more so far (about CAN $0.33 per minute) but local calls are also so quick and easy! The one bad (sorta) thing about the Malaysian SIM card we bought was that text message sending capabilities (plain or multimedia SMS) required a separate VISA registration and charges, whereas the Vodaphone in Australia was just AUS $0.50 per 160 character message sent. I haven’t looked into yet for Thailand since we only just got here yesterday afternoon, and picked up the new SIM then.

So, sadly a tri-mode cell phone is something we would probably consider a necessity for traveling on your own (not an organized tour), when traveling for more than two months or so. I have no idea what we’ll do with the phone once we get home since we really have no use for one in Fort Smith, (never mind the fact that Northwestel only has analog service!). I’m not even sure if we can get a “Mobility” SIM card in Canada?!?! The cheapest tri-mode phone that I could buy in KL has a video/still camera, push to talk, and all kinds of other features. We might sell it (privately or pawn shop? who knows?) or I might just keep it for when the travel bug hits again!

For anyone who wants to send us an SMS (since we rarely have the phone turned on to receive calls) the number is:
+66-085-790-0565

Although someone told me that the “zero” preceeding the area code is only used when dialing within Thailand. If this is true then the number will be:
+66-85-790-0565

Posted in 2007-11, Thailand | 2 Comments »

November 9, 2007 by Rick.

Was one of the most pleasantly surprising countries we have visited so far. The lodging was slightly less expensive (perhaps about 75%) than the same type of room in North America, but the food was quite a bit cheaper, (and Nummy!). Malaysia is a remarkably progressive country. There were certainly some poorer areas, but they were seemingly much fewer than in the other countries of the Southeast Asia region. The larger portion of the population are Muslim, but there are also very significant portions of forth, fifth and sixth generation Chinese and Indians.

I mentioned in a previous post comment that the later two seem to feel significantly discriminated against for government jobs, holding office, getting post secondary student financial awards (even though their proportion of higher academic achievement is significantly greater) and other such things. Once again, this is merely the strong perception of most residents we spoke with and not a result of our own observations (which were not exposed enough to said areas to draw a relevant conclusion. The one thing that we did notice was that a highly dsiportionate amount of the shopkeepers and restaurant owners (and workers) were Indian and Chinese.

Market prices here were generally OK. Services and food were distinctly less expensive (20-50% of the full cost) of North America. Goods however varied. We bought a (cheap) short “D” handled spade at a hardware store for CAN $2.30 that would have cost at least $15 (or more like $20 if not on sale) in Edmonton. We also bought a couple of plastic buckets (about 3L and 8L) for just under and just over CAN $1. Computer software, audio CD’s and all DVD movies are astoundingly cheap, but presumably that’s because they are all pirated. Electronic hardware on the other hand is barely less than what we would pay in Edmonton. Maybe about 85-90% of the sale prices at home for brand name TV’s, computers, portable audio players and game consoles. There were some audio systems (and an awesome looking DJ system Robert!) for phenomenal prices (maybe 15-25% of Canadian & Aussie prices) but they were names I’ve never heard of and were likely of very dubious quality.

The economy seems very robust, both in the larger and smaller cities. The most significant thing that we noticed though was the strong proliferation of English everywhere. All the street and store signs were in two (or occasionally three) languages. English was generally spoken practically everywhere we went including the somewhat remote back alley eateries that all the locals (and us stark white Canadians) would go to. We “sorta” noticed this a bit while we were there, but admittedly (now) took it quite a bit for granted as well. The wake up call came as soon as we entered Thailand and English was immediately barely spoken or understood right from the street vendor, to snack bar cashier to train ticket window. Clearly the Malaysians have very strongly assertive English schooling in their model public school system right from an early age. All in all we were pretty impressed with Malaysia as a very economically advanced country. While we saw the destitute shanty towns on the edges of town, the majority of the population was well educated and quite progressive. This point is extra funny of course when I reflect on the opinions of most Singaporeans (sp?) about Malaysia. They were like the embarrassed upper class cousins, when Malaysia is really quite middle class compared to other far less developed countries in the region. One last example: Shopping malls in Malaysia were for practically everyone except for the poorest of citizens. Department stores and larger malls in Thailand (so far) would seem to be targeted mainly only for tourists and the very few richer people of the upper class.

So, while not quite as “cheap” as we perhaps expected, Malaysia was a very enjoyable touring experience for the nine or so days we spent there. I certainly learned much more about it than I knew beforehand. That’s to be expected of course, but most other countries (ie: Thailand or China) we here about considerably more in the media or from friends. One last forecast for KL: I expect them to build an even larger tower than Dubai, to reclaim the title, by 2020. That may sound like quite a ways off, but in the timeframe of planning and actually constructing such a monstrosity, that is very quick indeed. And as much as we enjoyed Malaysia, thank gawd (for our budget) that we’re now in Thailand where hotel rooms are $25 per night instead of $85 (or $115 in KL).

Posted in 2007-10, Singapore & Malaysia | 2 Comments »

November 7, 2007 by Rick.

Claudette brought over the “Top Four” lists from her “Claudette” blog to the main blog. It is something that we will update and change as we continue to travel. The link is reachable from any reading blog page at the upper left hand corner, underneith the “home” link.

Also, just to break things up a bit, I made a seperate page for NEWS items that we might have missed normally. A few of you who requested it I have upgraded to “Editor” status to be able to add to this timeline list. Anyone else who wants to add things from their neck of the woods on occaision need only send me an e-mail ( rick (at) jamesworld dot ca ) or write a quick comment requesting to get access to edit this page. It can be reached from any blog page in the upper left hand corner, under the “Home” link, labeled “WORLD NEWS”.

Simply click on the “WORLD NEWS” link, and then click on the “edit” link in the lower right area of the page (after the last current entry) and add a date and the news brief. I put a few things there already that people have mentioned in the comments, but anyone who’s registered should feel free to add more. (ie: Leesa or Robert: we’ll be expecting federal election results please… )

I realize that we could also read a newspaper (on-line or otherwise) much more thoroughly and regularly than we already do, but internet time just goes so fast, and time in general to spend on this versus relaxing seems sparse for some reason???

Lastly, Claudette and I have been periodically quizzing the kids on all sorts of things that come up as a semi-academic review of things we’ve done, places we’ve been or questions that somehow arise. Some things that I will ask again they have put in a REFERENCE PAGE, also linked from the upper left corner of readable blog pages.

Posted in 2007-10, Singapore & Malaysia | 5 Comments »

October 31, 2007 by Rick.

EVERYONE here (and even in Fort Smith, just ask your friendly neighborhood reporter) calls their capital city, “KL” with affectioate reverence.

We arrived in Johur Bahru a little after lunch on Tuesday and weren’t due to leave for Kuala Lumpor (KL) until almost midnight. Thus we had several hours with nothing to do but go shopping!!! Luckily this city on the edge of the border with Singapore had some pretty impressive shopping options. The mall we hit had five floors up, a ground floor, and one basement floor. The ground floors are considered G here, and the first floor is pically the second story up. Thus, in our current hotel, while the elevator says floor nineteen, we are actually up on the twentieth story. This mall was huge! It seemed to stretch back into far corners that were not even fathomable from the central court. There were numerous electronic stores offering all sorts of camera equipment, personal audio players, ten tonnes of cell phones, computer gear, console & portable gaming, and of course all kinds of software… And what prices!!! Unbelievable they were… $5000 plus AutoCAD for only $3, and the latest $80 computer games for $5. All vendors assured me that they were perfectly legal legitimate copies, and so I indulged with a few titles that would be handy later once we bought a computer.

We also are fortunate that I had alreaady hacked our two PSP’s with an open version of the operating system. There were tonnes of PSP games for sale as playable image files on large sized DVD as well as UMD’s. The image files allow the games to be played directly from the flash card instead of having to carry the PSP designed UMD around, and having to physically swap them out. Most outlets also sell already hacked PSP consoles for the same equivelent price as what they are sold for in Canada ($200).

Our train ride was not quite as we expected since all of the first class bed suites were sold out. Thus we were stuck with second class beds down a long hallway. It was an OK experience and interesting to experience at least once we figured. The price of the First Class cabins are so disgustingly cheap that they are easily worthwhile though. The second shock came today when we tried to book first class bed cabins to the next town (7 hrs) near Penang and were told that all were long since booked. Even worse though was the fact that the second class lower beds (down the long hall with individual curtains) were booked as well. The upper bunks are slightly less money, but we would have to load our suitcases up there as well as us two Forty year old’s having to clamber up there!

Speaking of bags, we saw another caucasian couple (much younger of course, and no kids) travelling with just a small, carry-on size, hard sided suitcase and a small rucksack each. The contents of these four bags combined would probably have easily fit into Alex’s suitcase I think. Both Claudette and I stared at them in open mouthed wonderment, admiration and not a little jealousy. Clearly they had no electronics, (with associated chargers and converters), mosquito nets, and sleeping bags for hostels, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…

The hotel we ended up booking in KL was quite a bit nicer than we could afford, but we didn’t really make arrangements before arriving. The Concord is walking distance to all the major sights right downtown though. It also has very good rates for an upper class type business hotel. We’re paying CAN $100 per night for a very large room on the top floor with a king sized bed (and cots) and it was highly recamended in the Aisia Frommer’s book we have. Hopefully we’ll make up for this higher price in Thailand. Food prices here are quite reasonable though. Rotten Ronnie’s today cost us CAN $15 for lunch and desert for four. Plus it helps a bit that a huge breakfast every morning is included with our room price.

Our first day we went to the KL tower, a single structure similar to (and slightly smaller than) the CN tower for cityscape viewing. It offered a spectacular view all around and we could easily see all of the Petronas twin towers several blocks away. he smog here was noticeable at that height, but we could easily see about 8 km, before it started to become pretty hazy at +10 km. We went yesterday to the twin towers for the free tour of the linking bridge, but the available tickets for the day were sold out long before lunchtime apparently. So, after breakfast today we went right to the ticket booth at the site and only goy 5:15 PM tickets! When we finally made it up the view and feeling was very cool. The “Eye of Malaysia” ferris wheel was a tiny dot in the distance and we quickly realized that it wasn’t worth going to after being in both tall KL landmarks. The Petronas twins are named for the Government owned Multinational oil and gas corporation which operates in Malaysia. Sadly this means that when I would say Pet-ron-as thinking it was some exotic Malay word, I was completely wrong. Turns out that it is Pet-ro-nas, simply derrived from “petrol” like seemingly all other aspects of our world these days.

Compared to the Malaysia & London tourist ferris Wheels, the “Eye of Singapore” was huge though, and sadly wasn’t opened yet when we passed by there. It is larger than London’s and is slated to be open in mid 2000. The KL Tower is the currenty the third tallest tower in the world, after the CN tower in Toronta and one in China. The display downstairs had a very nice gallery and displays on all of the worlds 20 tallest towers. The Petronas twin towers were actually the tallest buildings in the world for several years until Taipe 101 opened a few years back. Now, those crazy, “money growing out of their ears” guys in Dubai are building the hugest of all! It will be open in about 20 months I think I read, and once finished will not only be the tallest building, it will exceed the CN tower as the tallest tower, and also will take the coup de grace over some (unmanned) TV tower in the midwest States somewhere as the tallest manmade structure on the EARTH! While the Taipae building is 101 stories, the Dubai one is about 160!!! These guys don’t want anyone breaking their record anytime soon it would seem.

We killed the day waiting for our free bridge tour with some other errands and attractions. The best was a 30 minute demonstration of Malaysian dancing put on at the Tourism Information center halfway between the twin towers and our hotel. A dozen men and women in extravagantly colorful outfits (which changed multiple times throught) gave wonderful displays of various regional dances. Most were all very lively and upbeat, and Luke even joined them for one dance when audience members were invited up. Sadly, his extreme caucasionness came through loud and clear as they tried to teach him the steps to the national dance in under 300 seconds. At the end the MC invited audience members to come up on stage for pictures with the troup, and said that she would give “The Foreigners” the first opportunity. I nodded yes, and she invited us up immediately. So, I stood up and strted going to the end of the isle only to find that Claudette was sitting there calmly waiting for all the other foreigners to go up first. When I pointed out that we were the only “whity’s” among a packed gallery of about 100 school kids, and other Asian (Chinese, Indians, etc) tourists. She and the kids joined me after Claudette stood up and looked around at the rest of the crowd.

We have to stay one extra day in order to catch the Saturday train to Butterworth (near Penang). Saturday is the only day that there is a daytime train sceduled. Then we plan on spending almost a week luxuriating on the beaches in Penang before heading accross the border to Thailand. We have amost confirmed our GAP tour from Northern Thailand, through Laos and ending in Hanoi on our flight date. We (half of us anyways) just thought it would be easier than stumbling along in a country which isn’t quite touristy and organized with that focus yet.

Posted in 2007-10, Singapore & Malaysia | 2 Comments »

October 28, 2007 by Rick.

What a huge city/country…

After an eight hour flight (I was expecting something much shorter from my memory of looking at the globe) we arrived to full darkness at 2:00 AM. Speaking of globes… before we left I aked Leesa-Maree to borrow one from school and bring it home to show everyone Canada versus Australia. She managed to find a little tiny one (about 10cm in diameter) that showed political boundaries from a few years ago and had a couple towns marked. Funny enough though, the ONLY town marked in the Northwest Territories was PINE POINT! Very odd of course, since Pine Point has not existed as a town for probably around twenty years! It was a mine town, and one the mine was closed all houses, buildings, power poles were removed when the mine shut down.

Singapore was quite an interesting visit for the few days we were there. Our plane arrived an hour later than scheduled which meant we arrived at the hotel about 1:00 AM! Yes, we were all tired and cranky. The plane was quite nice though… It was a boeing 777 with all the fix’ins. 10 seats accross a row and a fully customizable entertainment console in every seatback. This one was even better that the 747’s though because we could play networked games (checkers, backgammon ect) with each other. Plus these phones could call other passengers, dialled by seat number. What a great way for singles to meet up to possibly join the “MH club”.

The taxi (or “taksi” as they spell it here) system was pretty cool in that everyone lined up at a booth inside and prepaid the fare to whatever part of town you wanted to travel to.Very efficient and saves negotiating with (and/or getting screwed by) the individual drivers. The first thought as we emerged from the aic conditioned terminal building was dealing with the overwhelming heat and humidity. We all agreed that it was just as bad or even worse than Figi. Our second vivid impression of Singapore was while driving from the airport was watching a cab just ahead of us in the adjacent lane at a stoplight. A rear door causually opened and an early 20’s guy began expelling the contents of his stomache on to the pavement. Now, as one might imagine, we were not a little stunned to witness this after hearing so much about spitting in public and posession of gum being illegal in Singapore. Thus we were slightly relived to see that perhaps they weren’t quite as stringent a society as travel reports (both published and verbally from others) had led us to believe.

Our hotel was actually a large hostel complex with larger patio areas in front of each single story, “condo” style unit. There were many people milling around even in the wee hours when we were walking to our room. This unfiled fact would come to haunt us the next night. To check in we were actually dropped off at the wrong part of the resort. The driver had dropped us off at the slightly) nicer part of the resort complex. The night desk clerk there called the other officeo get an electric cart to pick us up.

We slept in the next day, and wandered a few blocks away to semi shopping complex called “Downtown East” for some 11:00 AM fast food breakfast. With a variety of western franchises and some local ones we chose an elaborate buffet place to pig out at. After walking back through to the main complex we decided to hit the waterpark there. It was smaller scale with a slant towards younger families. They did have two water slides which were rather tame with gentle curves compared to West Ed. This place did have a huge tube (8 passengers!) river ride which we had to force Luke to go on and all enjoyed a couple times together. The wave pool was very small, (even slightly smaller than the Millwoods pool) but right beside it was a two person tube half pipe. This was VERY cool! Alex went with me the first time and she was too speechless with fright to even scream!!! Somehow, (under deep coercion and trading a variety of privelidges) I even concvinced Claudette to go with me. Alex forgot to warn her mother NOT to go down first (with her back to the downhill slope and looking up at me) and all Claudette said she saw was my bulk blocking out the sun and sky above her as we went hurtling down at about a 75 degree slope. It is rather difficult to explain but I will try and find a website link.

That night the neighbors partied until a little after 4:00 AM. Worse was the fact that we had an adjoining door though which all noise easily flowed (in fact it semmed as though it might have been amplified!). My loving supportive wife refused to allow me to ask them to tone it down a bit or to even phone the front desk. We asked around the next morning and quickly realized that since most homes here were very small that this was a cheap way for friends and/or family groups to get together for a party. The room next door to us was completely vacant (and unslept in by the looks of it through the open curtains) so everyone just took a cab home when the party wound down. During the day as we had walked through, there were very large groups BBQing with charcoal in front of rooms which we knew could only sleep 4. Now we know better! It also probably didn’t help that we were booked in there during a weekend, never mind the fact that it was a long weekend!

Since we had originally only booked for two nights, when we decided to stay a third night we had to change rooms. Also in this area was a small amusment park called escape. It also had most rides for slightly younger families. Claudette stayed in the room to do some more relaxing while Alex, Luke and I went in the rain to check it out on Sunday night. Most rides were closed during the rain but we went inside to wait anyways. The kids went through the haunted house a few times while I threw some cash away at the typical midway games. I tried one however where I won on the first try (MR2, or about CAN $0.62) of rolling balls down into slots to accumulate a small or large number, but not the range inbetween. Cleary the gods were smiling on me and I scored a huge purple Snuffelupagus. The kids were impressed by it, but insisted on calling it just a plain old elephant. I think it had big sweet droopy eyes just like Snuffy though. Since it was much too large to take with us, I gave it away to the lifegaurd at the pool as we went to check out.

We booked ourselves a mid afternoon train trip to the main Malaysian city (Johor Bahru) just on the other side of the border. This took one hour, and to save a huge amount of money we had to buy tickets to the rest of the way to Kuala Lumpor from within Malaysia. Unfortunately all the first class sleeper cabins were booked, so we were stuck with the second class sleeper hallway. It’s difficult to describe but I shot a few pictures. The carriage is lined with top and bottom bunks with individual curtains.

Posted in 2007-10, Singapore & Malaysia | 5 Comments »

October 27, 2007 by Rick.

It was incredibly difficult spending our last few days in Brisbane with the Dray-ras family knowing that our full six weeks in Oz just “whooshed” by. While we all knew our continued journey would by amazing and have lots of great, new experiences, it was still troublesome building up to a goodbye (for a couple years until they come and hit our Northern climate!). Their kids spent the last two days at home with us fooling around, playing and relaxing which was very nice. Then they dove us to the airport for a last big meal together before we ran off to security just in time to board the plane to Singapore. Robert, Leesie, Riley, & Emile… we’ll miss you guys! and thanks for making our visit down under so hospitable and memorable!!!
_______________________________________________________________________

A few last (last for Australia that is) differences in things that struck us are noted below:

Fuel pumps - To fill up vehicles is much slower because there is and less pull distance, and not once have we seen a holding catch. Bummer for us lazy people. The flow still stops as soon as there is the slightest bit of backsplash into the nozzel though.

BBQ’s - One campground we used in the last week had a half grill / half fry plate. The open flame side was filthy though so we bought some gorgeous porterhouse steaks and a brush and received serveral weird looks from others walking by that night. The one REALLY cool thing here is that many public parks have free or low cost ($1 for 20 min) coin operated ones available for use. On one tour boat we took, they BBQ’d on a half ‘n half, but sadly only used the open flame part to warm a large pan of poached fish…

Farm fields - same as Oilberta except the trees are much closer to the road here, and roads tend to be quite a bit windy-er on the secondary highways.

Crib boards - haven’t seen one at all in Oz, never mind a fold up travel board for us as a family

Toilettes dual flush mode - We started noticing this in Latin America but it seems to be practically EVERY single toilette here in Australia. Their are typically two buttons: with with a low volume of water and that doesn’t seem to have excessive force, (for urine). This lighter stage probably uses slightly less water than our usual single flush toilettes in Canada. The other “ferocious mode” lasts about 3-4 seconds longers, seems to have much more water behind it, and has an abundance of pressure that I would expect to force even the biggest of pices of solid human waste down the tubes. If you try and do two stage flushing while sitting down, all of your cheeks are gonna be soaked! Often times you’ll need to wipe the seats of fresh water that splashed up as well. This of course goes hand in hand with:

Water Conservation: For the Alberta government Enviroment departmet (or the GNWT’s for that matter) to talk about water conservation seems completely off track and irrelevant for most of Canada. Here, it is a simple fact of life, and not something to be (even slightly) trifeled (sp?)with. They have increasing levels of severity with all kinds of associated restrictions for each. The Brisbane area has apparently been at level for for well over a year now which means they get penalized havily for any quantity used over a monthly quota. I forget what that number is (I’ll ask Claudette and update this space later) but it was not at all less than the amount that almost all homes in Taloyak used due to in-house water tank deliveries and no underground lines. It was ample for a family of four to live life and do laudry on, but certainly not enough to water lawns or gardens with, (or wash cars ect). Most people here are buying large plastic tanks to drain their gutters into to use outside.

Urinals - have all been troughs since we left Canada. I haven’t seen a single stall porcelin urinal other than passing briefly through LAX way back… The urinal troughs can get quite creative however, from creatively tiled artwork, to stainless steel beamoths that are shiny and blinding to look at (especially when there are skylights above.

Public bathrooms - are seemingly few and far between! Practically no restraunts have them (as is the law in Canada) and we frequently struggeled in small towns to find public facilities. Most often they were in the main town square park or behind the largest pub. When needing to wash up before or after a meal out, waitresses or owners were only too happy to tell us that the nearest sink was “just accross the street, down a block and a half, and then a dogleg left accross the forest over there between those two tall buildings” Rather exasperating…

Eggs - In Latin America and all throughout Australia eggs are not refrigerated. There are sold in stores on a regular shelf and people don’t seem to bother about refridgerating them at home or camping either???? I forgot to ask Leesa-Maree about this…

My Beard - must be weird chemicals in the air here, but on occasion when it grows for a few days, it seems to be bleached considerably from the usual dark brown/black to a much lighter color. Almost grey… very bizzare!

Shopping carts - all four wheels swivel, which makes it seemingly much more awkward to control. Good in tight spaces but terrible for tracking a straight line down the aisles. Even worse is watching customers come out with loaded carts and the entrance ways and parking lots have slopes. A few baby carriages I’ve noticed lately are like this as well.

Posted in 2007-09 to 10, Austrailia | 3 Comments »

October 24, 2007 by Rick.

We spent all day Tuesday at the Australia Zoo, and it was SPECTACULAR! Everything was laid out well, and the animals had tonnes of room! (unlike Lucy at Edmonton’s Story Land Valley Zoo). There was (quite understandably) a very strong conservation message at all exhibits and shows, but it was well done. We hit it first thing when the gates opened at nine, and stayed right up until they closed the park at 4:30. The highlights were many of course, and everything, from the displays, to shows, to animals and even the food services were done up very well.

We got lots of pets and cuddles in all types of animals and even paid for a family picture with a super soft (and inherently cuddly) Koala Bear. Many of our zoo visit pictures are uploaded to the website picture gallery now too! We had a wonderful hot day all in all, (drinking tonnes of water naturally) and even shot some pics of the Tasmanian Devil. It was much cuter than I ever would have expected! The staff also took our camera and shot some extreme close-ups of the zoo’s tiger cubs. The croc show was stunning, never minds the snakes… AGH! There was even the most amazing picture or Terry, with her pet cougar, before meeting Steve. We’re talking amazing Farah Fawcett, big, beautiful feathered back hair here; Claudette had the drag me away from the huge wall picture… Mmmmmmm…

Posted in 2007-09 to 10, Austrailia | 3 Comments »

October 23, 2007 by Rick.

We managed to sneak into Brisbane Monday morning and grabbed the Chinese VISA’s without a hitch. After a bookstore stop (for Lonely Planet Asia books) we headed an hour North towards the zoo. Instead of staying inland close to the zoo, we read a brochure that described how the had free shuttle buses that pick visitors up from 6 coastal towns. Claudette and I promptly decided that staying adjacent to the ocean again was a far more interesting option. Sadly though, when we phoned to book spots on the bus, we discovered pickup times were only 10:00 with a half hour drive, whilst the zoo opened at 9:00 AM! We therefore set the alarm and drove ourselves out early to get a full day in there.

We had a wonderful last frolic Monday afternoon, after arriving at our campground early afternoon. We toyed with visiting the zoo for a few hours as well before spending the full day there Tuesday. Instead Claudette and I decided to rent a surfboard, and spend one last afternoon at the beach. The waves were more volatile here than we’d experienced at other beaches and we all took a pounding trying to stand up on that bloody thing again. The wax was poorly done on the board which didn’t give the kids as much grip as they needed. As a result they were sliding off really easily in the heavy waves. My excuse is that the board was just too darn sort for my weight and as a beginner, it was too small to support me. That coupled with the poor waxing meant that I would easily slide off even just ducking under a wave.

The kids built a few sandcastles over the afternoon, which of course were subsequently eaten by the oncoming tide. Alex and Luke still haven’t come to grips with the fact that anything they build in wet sand is gonna be toast in a few hours… Two Aussie kids (a sister & brother about 16 and 13 or so) were playing catch with jellyfish upper body parts that had washed up on the beach. Well, catch is a generous word. They were actually trying to throw the pieces 3-6m and smack each other. It was pretty funny to watch. I couldn’t get the kids to kick the soccer ball around with me much cause they were gravely concerned with building the sand walls higher and thicker to combat the ever encroaching water. Claudette however kicked it around for a bit and we had some great smacks back and forth.

Posted in 2007-09 to 10, Austrailia | 1 Comment »

October 19, 2007 by Rick.

We are (very sadly!) winding down our Aussie visit. We left the mine after I had a great visit (and an up close tour) with the guys there and went about an hour South before camping. The next night we traveled to Cania Gorge National Park and spent a night in that beautiful spot. It was not unlike even more spectacular ones we have visited in the Rockies before, but still a nice change of scenery for a day. For Friday night we headed East, and almost made it back to the coast. On Saturday or Sunday we are going to try and meet up some friends of Claudette’s girlfriend who live in Mooloolaba, (a little ways North of Brisbane). On Monday we are going to try and sneak back to Brisbane to pick up our passports and Chinese VISA’s, (or to re-apply if there were any problems). Monday afternoon we are heading back North for an hour’s drive to hit the Spectacular “Australia Zoo” on Tuesday. Somehow on Monday we are also going to pack up a schwack of stuff to send home by mail.

The kids (via Luke of course) are making tonnes of friends wherever they go, and there is never a dog at any of our campgrround’s that goes un-pet by Alex Luke (and often me when I go to track them down to come back for bedtime!)

We’ve spent a little bit of time looking into places to stay in Thailand, but if anyone has experience with a great place, or has any other reasonable suggestions feel free to send us a note!

Posted in 2007-09 to 10, Austrailia | 3 Comments »

October 14, 2007 by Rick.

After the caves we drove a few hours North to Airlie Beach. We went again to the outer reef on a super fast and remarkably stable boat. At a 1770 campsite we met up with a couple who worked on that boat who had previously worked up North at a company in Airlie Beach. They both strongly suggested that we use a company called “Cruise Whittsundays” if we wanted do do a similar trip. So, in Airlie Beach we booked another Great Barrier Reef cruise and booked a wickedly fast (and beautiful) sailing cruise for the next day with the same company.

This GBR trip was very similar to the one we had taken from 1770. The main difference was the boat. While the other one was a nice twin hull that rode the rough seas reasonably well, this one had computer controlled anti-rocking mechanical devices built in which made the ride even nicer for the weak stomaches of Rick & Luke. There was also something not easily pinned down that made this cruise seemingly quite better than the previous one from 1770. There was just a stronger seemless integration of how everything ran and the general feelings of confidence and friendly professionalism conveyed. It probably also didn’t hurt that there was a little over 30 crew members for about 86 passengers! The boat usually carries around 340 people but we were lucky enough to have picked a light booking day I guess. I certainly couldn’t complain about any aspect of our tour from 1770, but… if I had to suggest one, then Cruise Whittsundays would be our strong recomendation by the entire family. Of course there was one tiny little incident with the prissy little photograpgher (Antoine I think the whiney little bitches name was), but he got over it after we chatted a bit. Like many tours these days with a situational advantage, they had a good scam of pictures going. At least they generally allow us to purchase copies of the digital pics these days, not like a few years ago when you could only get a crappy print (rarely done with dye-sublimation). Of course you have to pay $20-$30 each for printed photos before you are allowed to pay an extra $5-$10 for a digital copy. Capitalism is certainly alive and well in the tourism industry! They did get some excellent shots us of course! (Which we bought digital copies of and are currently uploading to our galery.

In addition to offering diving they also offered a non-certified “beginner” dive for those 12 and up. Luke was naturally disappointed, and then Claudette was ruled out due to the open heart surgery she had undergone over 33 years ago. Alex and I jumped at the ($120 each) opportunity. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life so far!!!! The guide tightly clasped each of Alex’s and my hands in hers and after a brief intro off we went! It was very controlled and we didn’t go any deeper than 6m. I used to say that diving was probably no big deal because you get to see the same stuff snorkling… Clearly I was absolutely delusional and was only fooling myself all these years! I sorta wanted to take a diving course before, but it just never worked out with timing and arrangements and stuff. Now I hafta take one as soon as I can. I was a little freaked at first just sitting on the edge of the platform breathing with my head less than one meter submerged. They gave us three or four minutes to get accustomed and during this time slight panic gave way to abject wonderment! Alex REALLY enjoyed her experience as well. (Hopefully she writes about it VERY soon!) Seeing the coral and all sorts of fish and plant organisms close up was phenominally more amazing than snorkeling unfortunately. My first words upon surfacing at the end were, “WOW! I’m gonna go broke doing this now I think!”. That trip is listed at:

http://www.cruisewhitsundays.com/gbra.aspx

On the next day (Sunday) we went on a sailing tour on a stunningly gorgeous ($4.5 million dollar) sailing boat. It was sleek, fast and very comfortable. They just went around a few of the Whitsunday Islands. We did another snorking tour on another reef which was stunning. Then we went to an amazing beach with sand that was 98% pure and actually squeeked when we walked on it. The beach was about 7km long, stunningly beautiful (along with all the Assuie & German bikini’s of course) and we smam, relaxed and frolicked for an hour or so. After heading back to the sailboat we had a magnificent BBQ meal (they had been feeding us snacks all day long previously as well of course). Then the free booze was available and Claudette heartily indulged (for both of us) on the couple hour sailing trip back to port. That tour is:

http://www.cruisewhitsundays.com/camira.aspx

Posted in 2007-09 to 10, Austrailia | 2 Comments »

October 14, 2007 by Rick.

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2007

After leaving 1770 we headed North a few hors to a town called “The Caves”. Here there is privately owned land with a series of spectacular DRY caves on it. They had been running tourists through this area for well over two hundred years now, and they even had a little campground beside the reception. We got there in the late afternoon and only planned on staying one night. So the next morning we woke up planning to take the tour, then check out and head North. The “basic” one hour tour was so incredible and enjoyable that we needed more! The “intro” tour (as we now call it) is suitable for all ages, (babies in strollers to 100+ year olds) and has a couple sections of stairs, some handrails and has switchable illumination all the way along. The sights and inside views were amazing and we barely had to crouch slightly in one or two spots. During this tour our guide alluded to a slightly more complex “Adventure Tour”.

It took some convincing on the part of Luke, Alex and myself; but eventually Claudette consented to staying an extra night, and staying for a second, longer adventure cave tour in the afternoon. She went along because the guide insisted on having two other s for safety. Claudette went on the understanding that she would NOT be crawling and that she would be taking the easy way around whereever possible. It was along some of the same portions of routes as before, but there were crawl holes and thin passages to go through. The first few were pretty cool and we got a little dirty slithering around. Then the guide sent us (kids and I only) into one set that had a small entryway, and larger cavern inside with lots of short dead end passages and only one way out via a boost into a hole in the ceiling. The kids had a tremendous time excitely going too and fro, here and there looking for the way out. The guide had told me approximately where to look so I let the kids explore all of the other options first with their flashlights darting around all over the place in front of them. Eventually I gave them a little boost at the spot and jumped in myself to find the passage back to Claudette and the Guide waiting for us in the main cavern.

After that we (the three us only of course) went in to “The Whale’s Belly”, a spot where the original guides kids used to crawl into and hide scaring original tourists by making screaming sounds and crazy noises. There was a crack in the Whale’s Belly which allowed sounds to get out into the main cavern. Getting in entailed going up a fairly steep incline, which quickly went down at a similarly steep incline for a few meters. To continue on out of this spot was a very tight squeeze wiggling around through a passage called the “Nutcracker”. There was a small (large fist sized) outcrop right in the middle which affects most men’s ability to safely navigate this particular twisty, 35 degree incline passage. Luke and then Alex both bot through without too much problem. I was forwarned that all adults would have to have their arms straight out ahead of them to narrow up the shoulders to even have a hope in hell of worming through. I got lodged partway into the passage, (right at the nutcracker) and quickly determined that it would take considerable effort (and maybe about 20 minutes!!) to finish getting through the 5m or so long passage. Suddenly a thought flashed into my head that expending such effort would no longer be fun, and I wormed my way back down into the whale’s belly. Backing out from that point to the main cavern was no easy feat, but I managed to scramble up the steep slope backwards to ensure that I would land feet first into the cavern where I had begun. The guide was quite shocked that I was already out, since most people who chicken out tended to come out the wrong way (head first), and wait for help from a few others on the outside.

After that she took us to a couple spots that only the kids could do while we watched from either end. I took some spectacular photos and a bit of video using the light and the enhanced night mode at different times. One other favorite part of all of us was the cathedral. This was one cavern with stunning vaulted ceilings and a bunch of pews brought in for weekly church services. They also book weddings and all sorts of other meetings and socials in there. She told us that there was a two year waiting list of weddings and other bookings! On the first tour she asked for volunteers to sing and Luke went up to the front and gave us all a beautiful low key rendition of “Put A Little Love in Your Heart” to a round of wild applause from everyone at the end.

The caves tour was an absolute highlight for Australia and for Luke and probably Alex, almost of the entire trip so far. A website with further information is: http://www.showcaves.com/english/au/showcaves/Capricorn.html

Posted in 2007-09 to 10, Austrailia | No Comments »