Carl's Circuit - GoBlue

Ah Flossie, you break my heart

GoBlue — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Our last week of true vacation . . . I start work two weeks ago yesterday, we have a wedding this weekend, family visit next week and travel to Seattle after that. This is it, but what better place to spend the last week of true vacation than in Hawaii?

As usual, it has been fantastic here. First of all, a truly comfortable bed to sleep in for the first time in months! And I’ve been taking definite advantage of that by sleeping many hours every night. Other than sleep, we have been doing the normal Hawaii things: a little golf, beach time, pool, croquet, grilling, reading, etc. It has been quite nice. I have also been attempting to catch up on computer-related activities while beginning some of the logistics of moving to a new city. What better place to do it?

The only thing not going as planned is Hurricane Flossie. She started rearing her ugly head yesterday as winds picked up dramatically. They continue today and should bring some rain with them before too long as the Hurricane passes close by the island this afternoon. We are hoping she passes today as planned so that tomorrow and Thursday morning we can enjoy a bit more beach time before boarding our plane back to the continental states.

In the meantime, I’ve been reflecting how incredible the last 3 months have been. I was fortunate enough to visit 7 countries while hanging out with great friends—and all safely. As part of this reflection, I’ve been contemplating some superlatives related to my memories of the trip. Here goes my list so far:

• Favorite city visited: Sydney, Australia
• Best wildlife encounter: Kangaroos in Grampians National Park, Australia
• Best Lodging: Cabin in Grampians National Park
• Most beautiful temple: Borobudur, Indonesia
• Best surfing: Bali, Indonesia
• Hottest city: Bangkok, Thailand
• Best Food: Thai food in Chiang Mai, Thailand, courtesy of none other than world-class Thai chef Sompon Nabnian
• Loudest city: Hanoi, Vietnam
• Best night of drinking: Rice Wine with village family near SaPa, Vietnam
• Most stunning scenery: Halong Bay, Vietnam
• Most painful experience: Mountain biking in Dalat, Vietnam
• Most interesting history: Hearing about Khmer Rouge from Cambodian local
• Most beautiful sunset: Railay Beach
• Best climbing: Railay, Thailand
• Cleanest city: Singapore, Singapore
• Best weather: Darwin, Australia

These are the first to come to mind. Perhaps I will update this blog in the future as I continue to reflect on what an awesome trip it was.

Incredible Hawaii Sunset

Flossie is coming

Visible from Space?

GoBlue — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

One of the lines they like to tell you when visiting the Great Barrier Reef is that it is the only living organism that can be seen from space. Actually, you hear this often about a lot of things. Turns out it isn’t quite true—lots of things can be seen from space (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp7/luletters/lu_letter5.html).

But anyway, the Reef was amazing in so many ways. The fish life, coral life, colors, etc. It was also a lot of fun to do an introductory dive in the Great Barrier Reef. The day was even more enjoyable because we successfully were able to dive with no accidents and neither of us became sea sick! Woo hoo! I think we would have liked to do it again, but the weather turned nasty with high winds and it would not have been nearly as enjoyable.

Instead, we spent our last few days indulging in other outside activities and enjoying the great weather. We golfed at the Cairns Country Club and climbed/bouldered on some really interesting, sharp volcanic-like rock on Trinity Beach near Cairns. We contemplated driving 250km south to Townsville for a few days of climbing, but opted out of it. In doing research for this though, it looks like there are literally thousands of climbing route options in Queensland that haven’t been fully explored or developed yet. Any climbers out there looking to put your mark on Australian climbing? Queensland may be your place . . .

So, an enjoyable, low-pace last few days in Cairns wrapped up our time not only in Australia, but also abroad. I think almost three months traveling was just what the doctor ordered to recover from school, as I am feeling ready to dig into some work! Crazy, but true.

Joc on Rip It Up, V1+

Bouldering in Trinity Beach

Outer Reef--Turtle Reef

Litchfield and Kakadoodle-do

GoBlue — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Returning to Australia was both amazing and shocking. We walked out of the airport to a perfect tropical temperature, no sweltering heat but a great breeze and pleasing aroma. Plus, not one person was in our face trying to sell us a ride or lodging or anything else for that matter. The ease with which we navigated indicated that we had arrived back into a more established, richer culture. The shock came when we were confronted with how much one has to pay for this type of culture. Australia is expensive!

The Economist’s Big Mac Index recently showed that Australia’s currency is about right on the mark—which is entirely impossible. I tend to agree more with a recent McKinsey report stating that the Australian dollar is about 20% overvalued. Even still, I’m not sure this goes far enough . . . The Carl Index (in which the world will soon be placing its trust) indicates that the Australia dollar may be overvalued by as much as 70% compared with the US dollar! As an example, we paid $130 for our first full night of lodging at a place that would go for maybe $60 in the US (in an expensive, more-demand-than-supply type US city). The amount of money we spent on this one room equated to what we spent for a similar style room in Railay Beach for 8 days! (I know this isn’t exactly an equal comparison, but shocking nonetheless). Long story short, I spent as much during our last week in Australia as I did traveling for a month in SE Asia. Australia is expensive!

Ok, with that out of my system, I can now explain how cool the Darwin area is. Darwin itself is an inviting little town that serves well its position as a jump-off point to local National Parks, Kakadu and Litchfield. We spent 2.5 days in Kakadu and 1.5 in Litchfield—both great places. We were warned that Kakadu is a huge park that requires long drives between notable sites and that in August it would be extremely busy because of local holidays. We found the first warning to be right on, but not so much the second. Because of the long drives, we opted to rent a campervan from Wicked Campers, drive at our own pace and stay where we like in lieu of paying for a tour from Darwin. In the end, we were extremely happy with our decision. We saw all the major attractions at Kakadu, including aboriginal paintings, amazing vistas, crocodiles, lots of cool birds, amazing forests and waterfalls with beautiful pools. Theses attractions were a fair bit away from each other and each beckoned for different amounts of time, so it was pleasant to have our own transportation and go at our own pace. Although I expected a Yosemite level of “busy”, including thousands of visitors at each site, we only found a few dozen each place we visited—not bad at all.

From Kakadu, we headed to Litchfield National Park. Along the way we stopped at Robin Falls and climbed for an afternoon. We jumped on half-a-dozen slab-like lead climbs on shoddy rock and had a blast! From there we drove into Litchfield where we found a lot more of the same that we found at Kakadu, except I think the waterfalls and pools were more magnificent (for starters you could swim in them without fear of crocs) and the attractions were much, much, much closer to one another, also convenient. Also, there is a part of the park called the Lost City that contains hundreds of sandstone boulders that makes for great bouldering (it was a lot of fun watching Joc send The Dusty Mutt Traverse, a V1 boulder problem we created).

Darwin and the local parks is a must-see for anyone going to Australia—great, unique scenery and culture.

Ugly brute

Florence Falls--from base

Joc on The Dusty Mutt Traverse, V1

Singarich

GoBlue — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So, we've been traveling frequently on “discount” airlines. Either there is no such thing as a discount airline or the old adage of getting what you pay for is without a doubt true. I think the truth may be somewhere in between. Joc and I chose to fly Tiger Airways from Krabi, Thailand to Darwin, Australia because it was less than $100 (without taxes and surcharges, of course) to do so. However, this approach required a 24-hour layover in Singapore. No worries. We’ve never been there, so we thought it would be cool to check out a new city for a day.

It really is an amazing city. It is so rich with culture, commerce and history that it was well worth the visit. In our 19 hours in the city, we managed to see a large chunk of it, including the Arab quarters, Little India, Chinatown, the Central Business District (CBD) and the Government district. By the end of our day I was beyond tired from walking, but I am really happy to have seen the colorful neighborhoods, tried some various ethnic foods and somewhat experienced a truly world-class city.

I can clearly see why every Singaporean I’ve ever met is proud of their city state. It is an incredibly clean city with amazing public transportation. It has food from everywhere, business from everywhere and cultures from everywhere. Overall, an impressive place that I highly recommend checking out.

As far as Tiger Airways, they were pretty good as far as discount airlines go. They only charged us for excess baggage upon leaving Singapore, so we got away without paying extra on one-leg. The planes also had enough space and the personnel were friendly.

Hindu temple in Singapore

Railay--Quite Amazing

GoBlue — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Jocelyn finally finished her self-indulgent trip to Malaysia and joined me in Railay Beach on July 21 for six days of climbing and beach relaxation. It was a great time. In fact, so great we decided to shift all of our plane tickets back two days to spend extra time in Thailand and less time in Cairns at the end of the trip.

So, our planned five days of "hard" climbing turned into six days of "hard" climbing. We actually did climb pretty hard considering neither of us have been climbing much over the last 5 years. We visited 7 walls in six days, climbing approximately 26 5.10s and 5.11s. It was a great time. I don't feel as strong as I once did, but I am inspired to start climbing more again.

Given that climbing was our focus, we also managed to do a few other activities during our off-days, including beach reading (yeah, we both devoured the newly released Harry Potter 7 while in Railay--bought it at the Bangkok airport), kayaking to an island that was probably 1 mile away from our beach (it was a beautiful day with brilliant green water and amazing clouds in the sky), soaking in amazing sunsets (by far the best of the trip) and eating (we ate almost every meal at Mom's Kitchen, a cheap place with great food and an entertaining 50-something, free-spirited Thai women to talk to).

For sure, Railay is a great place to climb/hang out and a great place worth spending 3 weeks.

Sunset in Railay Beach

View from Tyrolean Wall in Railay

Joc climbing A Man Can Tell 100 Lies (6a), Wee's Present Wall

Carl climbing The Sit Spins (6b+) , Dum's Kitchen Wall

View from top of Wee's Present Wall

Amazing sunset in Railay

Green Season

GoBlue — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Hello everyone. I haven't written much the last two weeks because I didn't think my updates about another day on the beach or yet another day of climbing would be all that fantastic of a read . . .

So, instead I've waited ten days to write that I've spent all my time hanging out on the beach, climbing, reading and in general relaxing. As usual, I wish I had some pictures to post to show you how beautiful it is here, but I always seem to have a hard time getting my pictures online. However, Jocelyn is finishing her time in Malaysia today and will be joining me in Railay Beach tomorrow and I will be able to upload some pictures then (using her equipment).

For those interested in stunning scenery, the beaches here have amazing white sand, clear blueish-green waters and vistas that include limestone cliff islands that jut out of the clear blue water. It is incredible. Also, even though it is supposed to be "green season" (a.k.a rainy season), the weather has been phenomenal--no rain for 4 days in a row now, which leads to stunning orange/red/pink/purple sunsets from the beach.

For those interested in climbing, Railay has over 700 sport climbing routes on beautiful limestone cliffs, all within a 15-minute walk from where I am staying. It truly is an amazing climbing destination. Again, the lack of rain has made the climbing enjoyable.

The wildlife here is also quite impressive. The other day, after I finished a climb, I was untying my knot while talking to the guy who belayed me. At the same time a twig fell off a nearby tree and landed on my climbing knot. I wasn't paying much attention, but when I looked down I realized that said twig was in fact a 12" brown snake with a greenish head that was draped over my knot! I quickly grabbed him near the tail and flung him away. No harm, no foul. However, I found out later that there are a number of dangerous snakes here, including king cobras, pythons and vipers! I haven't seen any of those yet . . . but I have also seen very brave monkeys and a few freaky looking large spiders with green bodies (many of you know my love for spiders).

As usual in Thailand, the locals are very friendly. I was speaking with a woman the other day about the Tsunami in 2004 and found that she believed that Railay wasn’t as badly hit as Ko Phi Phi or Phuket because there is far less prostitution here than in those places. I thought about asking if she was a fan of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson (who announced similar views about why America was hit by terrorists on 9/11), but then I thought it was better to smile and look surprised rather than judge her outright for such misguided thinking.

Anyway, there is also a lot of “herb” here, as the locals call it, due to the westerner, tourist influence, which is highly unfortunate because the locals don’t actually need anything to lower their already low ambitions. Then again, this is a Western way of thinking . . . According to Buddhism, not being overly ambitious leads to a happier, more peaceful life. So who am I to judge lifestyles that have been thousands of years in the making? Still, smoking or selling too much pot can’t be great for the locals in the long-run. In fact, just last week two local, well-liked businessmen were separately arrested for bringing over 30 kilos of weed into Railay. It is too bad that the locals are paying the price for Westerners who want easy-to-get and cheap-to-buy “relaxation” while on holiday . . .

So, thus is my time in Railay to date. I could write more, as usual, but perhaps for another time.

You can do it, put your back in to it.

GoBlue — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Ok, so I’m all alone now. So sad, kindof. Although I miss my travel companions (and especially Joc), the upside is I’m completely on my own schedule and free to make as many bad decisions as I’d like with no one else to blame. Wait, that’s not necessarily an upside . . . Anyway.

With two weeks completely to myself, I’ve been struggling with the decision of what to do. Visit Laos? More of Cambodia? Back to Northern Thailand? Viv’s family in Hong Kong? A bit of Malaysia? In the end, I decided to come to Southern Thailand for a few weeks of both rest and recreation. I’m now in Railey Beach, one of the top climbing meccas in the world. It is comprised of amazing overhung limestone jetting out of beautiful beach and surrounded by lush jungle. I chose to come here, to only one place, in large part to hopefully heal my back and then climb a bit while I wait for Joc to finish with her good karma acts in Malaysia (I’m hoping she is working hard enough to provide good karma for the both of us because I am being satisfyingly selfish and lazy).

Although this place is gorgeous, I had one of the worst days of the trip so far getting here . . . good story. I read in the guide book that the only way to get to these beaches is by long tail boat from the port city of Ao Nang. So, when I arrived in Krabi by plane I took a taxi to Ao Nang and stayed there for the night because a storm was coming in and the long boats were done for the night. The next morning I awoke to an amazing monsoon-type storm at 6am that must have had sustained 40mph winds (it was crazy for about 1 hour). By the time I loaded onto the boat the seas were pretty rough (and as a side note, the rain cover for one of my packs ripped while getting to the boat). About 3 minutes into the 20-minute boat ride a wave came up and over the front of the boat, completely soaking me and both my bags.

The boat then dropped me off at Railey Beach and refused to take me to the neighboring Ton Sai beach even though that was what I paid for. Then as it started raining (which really didn’t matter given my status) I headed to the nearest climbing shop to get the low down on the area. I ran into a kid who was staying at Ton Sai and told me that I didn’t have to wait till low tide to walk to Ton Sai, I could instead walk over a rough, bushwacking trail to get there earlier. I decided I would like to get to my bungalow to get all my stuff out of my bag and start drying as soon as possible, so I started walking. I got on a trail that was definitely not easy and could be described as “bushwacking” so I continued. I realized later that I was WAY, WAY off course! 1 hour later and a frighteningly close call with slipping on a cliff and almost tumbling into the sea (my hand and wrist are now all cut up from my “heroic” save of myself and bags), I found the real trail and ended up in Ton Sai. Only after hauling my 70lb bags for 1.5 hours did I find out that it is low season so they only have electricity in Ton Sai for a few hours a day. Despite what the website showed, I would not be getting an A/C bungalow with warm water . . . I thought this would make for a difficult time drying all my wet belongings. Turns out I was correct.

After two nights of effectively camping out in Ton Sai I put my heavy bags back on and trudged another 45 minutes back to Railey to a bit better bungalow with electricity all day. Now I am chilling for a few days, sleeping, reading and exploring the cliff faces. I climbed two days ago and my back wasn’t too happy about it, so I’m hoping that a few days off will set me up. In the meantime, I’m finding the best crags to visit and recovering a bit. Provided the sporadic, heavy rains cooperate, I think I’m in for a great time here over the next few weeks.

PS - I tried to upload some pictures today, but was thwarted again . . . I might have to wait till Australia to find a good connection, but I'm hoping not.

Large Lizard near Escher Wall in Railay

View from top of Gengis Bond (6b) on The Keep Wall

You can do it, put your back in to it.

GoBlue — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

PS - I tried to upload some pictures today, but was thwarted again . . . I might have to wait till Australia to find a good connection, but I'm hoping not.

Enough with the Nam and the Viet

GoBlue — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Finishing up Vietnam. It has been an amazing and educational 3 weeks. Joc and I ran into a chap from Australia the other day who followed a similar path to ours through Vietnam. We asked him what he thought about it and his answer was incredibly accurate and simple: There are a lot of things to like about Vietnam and a lot of things to not like. With that in mind, I thought I’d make a short list regarding my top likes and dislikes:

Likes
1. Scenery was absolutely amazing.
2. Interesting people/culture that have suffered through many years of hardships but are progressing nonetheless.
3. Ability to travel freely and affordably

Dislikes
1. Constantly circling, aggressive merchants
2. Hanoi (specifically the pushiness of people)
3. Excessive honking

This is a very short list, off the top-of-my-head. I’m sure in hindsight there will be many more things that can go in both of these columns.

One quick note on Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City): it was great. WAY better than Hanoi, and if I had the experience, I would have done the Vietnam traveling in reverse, starting in Saigon and ending in the north (This is one of the interesting things about Vietnam. You will inevitably do a lot of things wrong that will cost you time or money or both before “learning your lesson”. However, the chances are you will not encounter quite the same thing again so the lesson is a bit lost. Alas.) Anyway, Saigon is a bustling big city on the verge of becoming a true cosmopolitan city but it is missing the deceitfulness and constant noise (at least to the same degree as Hanoi). So, overall, I enjoyed it immensely more than Hanoi. It was a great way to leave the country, helping my entire Vietnam experience to sit incredibly well.

Cambodian Delight

GoBlue — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Angkor Wat was absolutely amazing. I’m not sure I can say much more than what others have already typed here. I can definitely echo the sentiments that it was way better than expected, and I wish I could have spent a bit more time. After my limited Cambodian experience, I was especially interested in traveling throughout Cambodia. In fact, I almost skipped some of my time in Southern Thailand to travel more in Cambodia, but at the end of the day, I didn’t want to be on the move so much with my back as irritated as it has been . . . I guess it is for another trip. I hope to get some more pictures of the temples here because they were great!

PS – I’m not sure that Joc or Viv mentioned the interesting conversations we had with our Angkor Wat tour guide about the Khmer Rouge brutality experienced in her country in the late 70s. Suffice it to say, I am incredibly fortunate to have been born in the USA where I was never limited to one handful of rice each day, forced to marry a particular woman for breeding purposes or found my grandfather shot because he was trying to feed his family by fishing in a plentiful lake. The Khmer Rouge was an incredibly merciless regime that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the name of socialism and creating an enlightened society. Absolutely amazing what some people have had to live through. We are a blessed bunch.

The cool side of Vietnam

GoBlue — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Apparently it has been a while since I’ve posted . . . I guess I was preoccupied with physical aliments for a bit, but I’m up and around again (sort of). Well, since Joc and Vivian did a great job of keeping everyone apprised of what we were up to, I don’t have to put a lot of info here, but I’ll just add a quick word for each of the places we visited.

First, Dalat. It was amazingly cool compared to the rest of the country. Where everywhere else we visited was in the 90s, Dalat was in the low 70s (or maybe even upper 60s). This was a welcomed change. The other cool thing about Dalat was the architecture. There were some cafes where we ate that if we looked out onto the street corner it would feel like a little French villa—overall, the landscape was beautiful. Although we weren’t able to climb, it was still worth the trip to this mountain town.

As far as my mountain bike injury, I’m not a young pup anymore. At least that is what my body keeps telling me. The cold I had turned out to be a 24 hour deal, which is better than I can say about my back . . . I stepped off my bike on a muddy downhill in order to avoid running into Joc and as soon as my foot hit the mud it slide while I was simultaneously trying to stop the momentum of my body from going down the hill. My back didn’t like this combination too much and it seized up immediately. The seizing really did some interesting things to my posture, including pulling my right hip forward and to the right of center of my central body line. For a few days if you looked at me, it looked like I had some serious scoliosis.

So, that was Dalat from my vantage point (although close, it wasn’t just the inside of a hotel room).

The cool side of Vietnam

GoBlue — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So, that was Dalat from my vantage point (although close, it wasn’t just the inside of a hotel room).

Turns out I'm not a very good pool player . . .

GoBlue — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So, since my last post, we have left Hoi An, the tailoring capital of SE Asia. For more on how our tailoring experience turned out, read Joc and Vivian's blog entries. I refrained from spending too much money on the process, but our group as a whole spent a lot of time and money getting "cheap" tailored clothes made from scratch. It is a fascinating and scary process because you have no idea what you are purchasing, but fun nontheless. Aside from tailoring, we spent a wee bit of time at the beach and hanging out at restaurants and local bars. Oh! I almost forgot . . . we also had our first motorbike rental experience in Vietnam. From our previous posts, you might surmise that this was quite an experience. I thought it was fun and no one was hurt, so it was extremely worthwhile.

After leaving Hoi An two days ago, we flew to Nha Trang in a two-engine prop plane. We've since spent a lot of time relaxing--watching Wimbledon in our room, playing pool at a local pub, hanging out on the beach, and visiting local herbal mud baths. (On a side note, I irritated my ankle a week ago by hiking, not stretching and doing back flips off of our junk boat in Ha Long Bay. So, I am looking for a few days of down time to give my ankle a chance to let the swelling subside--almost there). Part of my Nha Trang experience has involved multiple rounds of "haggling" with a local boy over purchasing some of his postcards. He immediately challenged me to a game of pool with the condition that if he won, I would buy his postcards. I knew immediately that because he challenged me to this, there was no way I could beat him. Still, after a number of conversations with this kid (I thought he was 10 or 11, turns out he is just about 16), I decided to play him just to see how good he was . . . the short of the story is I will be sending 10 people a beautiful postcard from Nha Trang, Vietnam (if you'd like to be one of the 10, please send me your address!).

Carl being bested my a mini poolshark

Anyway, after a brief visit to Vietnam's favorite beach town, we are leaving Nha Trang tomorrow morning for a "very Bohemian experience" in the temperate mountain town of Dalat. I'm looking forward to some more beautiful vistas and potentially some mountain biking, climbing and golf, depending what my ankle allows.

I know I've been promising pictures for a while, but we have been struggling to find internet with decent speed that will allow for picture uploading . . . hope it is coming soon.

PS - I met a a 53kg female Rottweiler yesterday named Su Su. She is a large, gorgeous dog who is in way too hot of an environment for how large and black she is . . . still, despite losing a fist full of hair to my hand while petting her, she was happy to see me . . . I miss dogs.

Adolescence can suck, kinda.

GoBlue — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well, everyone knows how difficult the teenage years can be . . . I've decided that Viet Nam is firmly in the middle of its teenage years . . . It is not quite the young, developing country that makes one appreciate the difficulties of life; yet, it is definitely not a fully functioning, healthy country (politically, economically, or otherwise). This, I'm learning, can make traveling difficult.

For instance, you will learn from reading all our blogs on this site that we haven't yet met a foreigner traveling in Viet Nam who has not been ripped off (to varying degrees). From a different angle, we also have found it incredibily efficient to book tours to see the country (so far Sa Pa and Ha Long Bay), but with this comes a certain feeling of being part of a large herd. Because of the infrastracture here we have found it difficult to get too far off the beaten path, forget about planning an adventure on our own sans tour guide.

Still, all that said, I have been incredibly happy with my Viet Nam experience so far. Ha Long Bay was ridicuosly gorgeous, great green "mountains" rising out of calm, warm bay water (pictures coming soon). Even Hanoi grew on me after a while, granted for a while there I thought I was going to go the way of my father and also loose my hearing in Viet Nam, but I eventually learned to tune out the constant honking. I also became less concerned with walking into oncoming traffic (because every place I walked there was oncoming traffic of some type).

Now that we are in Hoi An, I'm also finding the Viet Namese people to be more warm and friendly. We aren't exactly off of "tourist row", so I don't think it is purely a result of leaving the heavy tourist areas . . . I can only guess that people in the North might be less welcoming, but I have had such a limited experience here that I couldn't say for sure . . .

So far Hoi An seems like a great place. We saw an amazing sunset as we drove from Danang to Hoi An last night (as a side note, we passed the old US Army base in Danang and I was wondering if my Dad had been to the same place before . . .). Hoi An is a sleepy little town that has over 200 tailors! The ladies who form my traveling entourage were fitted today for various pieces of clothing that will be made from scratch for them tonight and ready to be tailored tomorrow. Pretty cool. The town also has some great restaurants, bars and other shops, making it a great place to spend a few days. I'm also hoping while we are here to spend some time finally uploading some pictures . . .

Northern Vietnam

GoBlue — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

We are currently in the northern mountains of Vietnam after finishing a two day trek and spending the nights in local villages. It was a great experience, something I will remember for a long time to come. That said, I continue to get the feeling that Vietnamese people are not quite as warm and welcoming as other Asian cultures. However, I may not be getting a representative sample . . . it may be a result of finding ourselves on "tourist road".

The trek we walked is the common trek that most foreigners do when they come to Sa Pa. Jocelyn did this same trek 7 years ago and found no other foreigners on the trail and was not accosted by any village people who were looking to sell their trinkets. Now, however, at times we were literally in a line of people walking the trail and were asked at least 60 times a day "you buy from me?" by a local village person (usually young girl or woman with a baby on her back). Along these lines, the homestays where we stayed were lacking the interaction we were hoping for. I speculate this is an extension of the local people seeing hundreds of tourists a week and not being especially interested in interacting . . .

All that said, there were some amazing positives to the trek. The scenery is stunning. The manner in which every inch of a mountainside is used for either rice or corn crops is amazing, and the simple, demanding nature of farm life was understood and appreciated. Once again, I hope to have some pictures soon to show the beauty.

One of the highlights of the trek was our first night homestay. We were introduced to what the locals call "happy water" (aka rice wine)--the more you drink, the happier you get. There were 5 of us from Ross (Joc, Viv, Ben, Aaron and me) and we were joined by two people from Ireland and the family whose house we were staying in. We thought it would be a glass or two of the Rice Wine (which, by the way, drinks way more like grain alcohol or vodka than wine), but they continued to fill up the bottles and pour the shots. Before it was all done, we had 13 shots (smaller than normal) of rice wine and some beer and Aaron paid the family $10 USD for a duck so we could chase it around the yard . . . enough said (I will elaborate for you poultry lovers out there. After realizing that if we chased the duck they would then kill it and eat it because it would sustain injuries during the chase, we opted for a few pictures with the freaked-out duck instead of a chase).

On our way out of the last village we stayed in, we opted to ride on the back of motorbikes up a dirt road being turned into a paved road. On this day though it rained incredibly hard and the dirt road quickly became an ultra-adventurous mud road! Aside from driving up the mud road on the back of a motorbike, we also stopped twice as the road workers blew dynamite, sending huge boulders into the air. Pretty crazy. What was also somewhat crazy to me were these young Vietnamese guys driving us up what was most likely an unsafe mud road . . . when a generation ago we would have been pointing semi-automatic weapons at each other. In that sense as well as how touristy this area has become so quickly, it is quite amazing how times and places change. All for the better? Again, only time will tell.

All-in-all a great trek with amazing scenery I hope to share soon.

Good Morning Vietnam!

GoBlue — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

After an incredible week in Thailand, good people, good food, good countryside, we have landed in Vietnam . . .

To give you a sense of how I feel about the place so far, I'm going to rank order the cities I have visited so far:

1. Sydney
2. Chiang Mai
3. Melbourne
4. Bangkok
5. Kuta (Bali)
6. Yogyakarta (Java)
7. Hanoi

As Joc mentioned in her blog, we were greeted in Vietnam by both incessant horn honking and getting ripped off (read Jocelyn's blog for the details). In general, Hanoi is a big, dirty, loud city with non-descript food and scenery and aggressive merchants. We recently found out that our friends were ripped off twice in taxis by paying with large bills and being refused their rightful change. It is also not uncommon for foreigners to be required to pay for many things that are free for locals. In general, I get the feeling that we are viewed as a means to making money with little interest in or concern for us otherwise (I mention this specifically because this is not at all what we experinced in Thailand). Long story, short: I'm happy for the experience but will be equally happy to move on earlier than planned . . .

PS - Did any of us mention yet how much horn honking is here? It is indescribably unbelieavable. Think New York city times 200!

Northern Thailand--Part 2

GoBlue — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

After a great introduction to Northern Thailand, we set off for a few days of cooking school. I think Joc, Viv and Jennie have all written about this, so I won't spend much time on it. But I will say it was a fantastic few days. If you are a Thai food fan and find yourself in Chaing Mai, I highly recommend the Thai Cookery School (http://www.thaicookeryschool.com/). We had the luxury of spending some time with Sompon Nabnian, the school's owner, and it was a great experience to see a successful entrepreneur in Thailand.

To finish our time in Chiang Mai, we hit the crags for another two days. We enjoyed the climbing destination so much the first time we went, we decided to return for our last two days. Our last day was an adventure on a number of fronts . . .we rented a vehicle and drove to the crag--very entertaining. Turns out by renting a vehicle, we actually just borrowed someone's personal car for the day and paid her for it. Seemed crazy, but it worked. Then during the last hour at the crag, we noticed a large, ominous cloud coming our way and we thought we had maybe an hour before it would start to rain. We actually only had about 20 minutes before an incredible wind and rain storm came through and left us huddling under the bamboo hut for dry warmth (that's right, after non-stop heat for a week, it actually was a bit cool!). However, the rain didn't keep us down. We retreated to a nearby cave-like structure and climbed there till dark. We then drove back to the city in the rain (3rd adventure of the day) and finished our last night in Northern Thailand with a simple meal at a nearby restaurant. Again, I hope to post some pictures soon . . .

Northern Thailand--Part 1

GoBlue — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Our first few days in Chiang Mai were incredible. Joc and I found a great place to rock climb about 40 minutes outside the city. We booked transport with some local guides, rented a guide book for the day and Joc, Vivian and I headed out for a great day of climbing on some solid Limestone crags.

The next day we booked a local tour that included an elephant ride (they are huge, powerful, and hungry animals--they also blow elephant snot in your face if you don't feed them bananas on a frequent schedule), trek through two hilltribe villages, a waterfall and bamboo rafting down the Maung River (I think that is what the river was called). Toward the end of the rafting trip we stopped for some swimming and cliff jumping (video and pictures to come soon).

After touring the countryside we stopped at the Wat Suen Dok Buddhist temple for "Monk Chat" where we spent 1.5 hours discussing Buddhism with young monks who were finishing their university studies and wanted to practice their English. So, we got a very enlightening discussion about their religion and they got to practice English--win-win (and also a fantastic experience).

After our first few days in Chiang Mai, it is definitely one of my favorite cities on the trip so far.

And The World Is Your Oyster . . .

GoBlue — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So, in the early 80s Murray Head wrote "One night in Bangkok" . . . "and the world is your oyster" . . .

Well, we spent two nights there. I'm not sure exactly what that entitles us to, but it was a good time. It was a short 40-hour visit, but we saw a lot of the city, making it worthwhile. I think one word adequatly describes 80% of my Bangkok experience: hot. The city was ridiculously hot. I'm not sure, but I'll guess ~95 degrees with 90% humidity (I might be exagerrating, but you get the picture). Not only was the weather hot, but the food was hot (tasty, but hot).

While in the city we toured the King's palace grounds and temple--all of it was incredible. On of the most enjoyable places within the grounds was the temple that holds the old and famous Emerald Buddha (he is actually carved of jade, but his is very green, thus known as Emerald). While visiting this area we learned how adored the current Thai King Rama VIII is (it is not uncommon for people to wear Lance Armstrong-like "live strong" bracelets that say "long live the king"). The current king is 80 years old and at ~60 years is the longest reigning monarch in history. Pretty interesting stuff.

We also visited the renowned Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho ("Wat" is Thai for temple). This was also quite incredible. As you may have seen lately in the news, Thai people are deeply intertwined with Buddhism and very much respect the teachings of Buddha, so this was a fascinating visit as well.

Bangkok turned out to be a "must see" and like many other areas, I would have loved just a few more days . . .

Cheap, cheap. Look, look.

GoBlue — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The rest of our time in Indonesia was pretty fantastic. At first, I wasn't sure I liked the place too much, but once again I left wishing I had more time.

A little more background on Kuta: almost every street I walked down, I initially have the feeling that I shouldn't be there because it might not be safe. Quickly, I realized that the seven foot wide street/sidewalk combo is actually safe despite dozens of motorbikes flying around in both directions and cars barely squeaking by and almost pinning me to the side of a building . . . as I walked down the street there was a local every three feet asking if I'd like to buy some of their goods. "Excuse me mister, you look, look it is cheap, cheap . . . you like it, it is good, good." I also got a lesson in negotiating from a local 17 year old kid named Coco. He told me I could rent a surfboard from him for 90,000 rupiahs ($10 USD) for two hours and I responded by saying, "woah, thats expensive". He told me "to bargain, its good for you, good for me".

At the end of the day, the Bali people are good people who are trying to make some money to support themselves or their family. Ever since the bombings in Kuta (2002 and 2005) they have had incredible excess supply without much tourist demand. Most of the people there make ~1500 Rupiah each day ($1.50 USD), so they are doing their best to survive. Still, despite what are probably slightly desperate times, they were very welcoming and for the most part trustworthy.

Other than hanging out in Bali, Joc and I were fortunate enough to surf the last morning we left (the waves were amazing). We also took a few days to go into the island of Java to the town of Yogyakarta. We visited one of the 7 man made wonders of the world, the buddist temple Borobudur--absolutely amazing

We also visited the temple of Parabanan, also very cool . Other than these great temples, I found the town of Yogya (Jog-ja) to be not very impressive, slightly dirty and not incredibly safe feeling. Still, really happy for the experience.

To wrap up Indonesia, I give it an 8 out of 10 to visit and a high recommendation.

PS - Did I mention that we visited a monkey forest and a small monkey bit Jocelyn? It was quite amusing since he didn't break the skin or cause any damage. So far on the trip, Joc has hung out with kangaroos, kualas and now monkeys . . . pretty cool.