Wednesday, August 13, 2008
wild photos
lizard time
Mulu was filled with colourful butterflies and moths.
Carnivorous pitcher plant
Can you spot the mating stick bugs?
Borneo!
From the islands we voyaged via bus to Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Like most SE Asian cities KL was hot and sticky, but it has plenty to offer the wandering tourist. The twin towers really are that impressive, and our timing to the city allowed us to attend an evening of the Kuala Lumpur World Marching Band Competition. Nerdy? Yes. The competition was held in Merdeka Stadium where Malaysian's independence was announced half a decade ago. It brought me back to my days as in the Mustang Band at Western! The bands were incredible. From KL we flew to Malaysian Borneo into Miri, Sarawak state. From here we caught a twin otter plane into Gunung Mulu National Park, AMAZING!
Zach has posted pictures and written on the islands, KL, and Mulu here, so I will save my precious internet time to load some new images for your viewing pleasure. After Mulu, Zach and I made our way to Kuching. We spent two days in Bako National Park where we spotted plenty of wildlife. Flying lemurs, Langors, Probosics monkeys, and the naughty Macaques. The trip to Bako involved an hour-long bus ride on the loudest city bus I've ever been on. Trust me, there were a few bolts loose on this one! The bus dropped off at a jetty where we caught a speed boat into the park.
These primates are cool! This is a langor ( also know as a silver-leaf monkey) taking a break from a mid-day snack. Just after I took this picture a shirtless and sweaty Slovenian man threw a piece of bread at this little guy and scared him off. The Langor wasn't interested in this eastern european charity. We were not impressed either! Unfortunately, the downside of Bako is the presence of ignorant tourists treating the park as a feeding zoo.
Evening Sunset.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Underwater Adventure
Sharks Ahoy!
To Laos and Back in 14 days
A jungle-view at dusk
Bathroom break anyone?
After 5 days in Luang Prabang we continued our journey southwards towards the town of Vang Vieng, infamous on the SE Asia backpack route for tubing down the river in an innertube and the slew of bars that play episodes of Friends and Family Guy on repeat. The tubing was fun, but the bars and restaurants in town were overflowing with drunken gap-year brits half-naked from the river ( the gap-year brits are everywhere, but especially in Vang Vieng). After a full day of tubing Zach in the company of Kate and Rob ( the type of brits that redeem the gappers) we made the executive decision that it was time to fast-forward into Malaysia and onto the beach. Over a period of 24hours we made an epic journey back to Bangkok and booked a cheap flight on AirAsia for Penang.....in a few hours we will be on our way to relaxing in the sun!
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Pai-radise
Our smart bungalow!
This morning we boarded a mini-bus heading north-west of Chiang Mai for the sleepy mountain valley town of Pai. Fellow travellers had told us how relaxed and beautiful this little slice of heaven was, but I had to see it with my own eyes to believe it. Pai is a town whose city-planning fits comfortably within four main streets. It sits in a valley surrounded by jungle-topped mountains and etched by snaking rivers and streams. Modest bamboo bungalows dot the riverside and hillside where backpackers converge to kick-back and soak in the beauty of the surrounding scenery.
Zach and I settled ourselved into a little place called "Pairadise", which has proven to live up to its name. For 500baht/night ( $15cdn) we have our own private cottage-style bungalow complete with a hammock on our front-veranda. It overlooks the man-made swimming lake where on occasion a fish jumps out to say hello. We are here for 2 nights before making our way to the Laos/Thailand border where an adventure with the Gibbon Experience awaits us. Here is a more detailed description of what we will be doing. Now if only the weather can hold!
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The Communist Blockade
Friday, June 20, 2008
From Bangkok To Chiang Mai
Aruna in our bamboo lodging
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Still Alive in Asia!
Bangkok- Tourist Ghetto!
Deserted resort in Mui Ne- Zach reading!
Mekong Delta- Making rice paper
Mekong Delta- Floating Market
Gate to Angkor Thom--Amazing!
Children of the Dunes in Mui Ne
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Oh, Canada 281
It was daylight and stifling hot so we quickly grabbed a taxi to whisk us into the city centre to our hostel, Canada 281. This particular hotel advertises in-room internet access and computer ( at highly inflated costs) which was exactly what we needed. Zach had a phone-interview from Canada and needed a computer. The hotel seemed promising. Sure, the room rate was higher, but the hotel had an elevator, a/c, cable TV, and a big window in the room with the personal computer.
We booked in after seeing the room and doing a quick test of the computer and internet connection. A cheaper room on an upper floor was available for our first night, but the computer room would not be guaranteed to be held for us until the next day. After some discussion, we decided to play it safe and take the computer room for both nights. I had been upstairs waiting for Zach to return the key to the room we decided against taking when he came and told me to meet him in our room, 303, one floor down.
The door to room 303 was left open so Zach hurried ahead to the room, not wanting to leave our bags unattended. Not sure whether he took the stairs or elevator, as he was quickly out of sight, I opted for the elevator that we had taken only moments earlier to the 4th floor. This was certainly the lazier option, but I was unsure if the staircase I saw did indeed lead to our floor. I stepped into the elevator and pushed my finger against the three. The elevator brought me down to the ground level. Hmm... strange, so I pushed the three again. Up I went, and the elevator stopped on three. The door seemed slow to open, so I encouraged it by hitting the door open button. Nothing. Now the elevator is taking me to floor 2, and finally the ground level but keeping me in its shiny silver metal trap, I can't get out!! The door is not opening! OK, I decided not to panic and do the most logical thing I could think of. That is what the intercom button is for, right? Hmmm... no response...The emergency ring will surely alert somebody, anybody, that I'm trapped and can't get out! After 5 minutes, panic really began to set in and I started shouting out, "Hello!!!! I'm stuck in the elevator!" At this point the elevator was stopped on the ground level, and I knew front desk was a few feet away. Couldn't they hear me? Or the irritating emergency ring of the button I kept pushing??!!
I was really starting to lose it. How long would I be stuck here before somebody realized where I was?! Fearing the worst, I began to imagine hours of confinement in an elevator with thinning air and no company. How could the elevator have worked only minutes ago, and now, like a stubborn child that refuses to move, have its doors tightly closed? After what felt like an eternity, the elevator began to move up to the third floor with me still shouting out "HELLO!!?" A familiar voice emerged from the other side, Jennie? Where have you been? Open the door." It was Zach, THANK GOODNESS! "Zach! I can't open the door, I've been stuck in here for 5 minutes!" Always the sympathetic companion, he replied "Why the hell did you take the elevator to go down one floor?" With one last gust of desperation I tried prying open the elevator doors. Moments passed that felt like frozen time until a miracle happened. Without any explanation the doors opened and released me from its iron grip, I was free! Zach's perplexed face greeted me, "Where have you been??" My hands shaking, I walked towards room 303 and answered "Stuck in that piece of sh*** elevator is where I've been."
I collected my composure before heading down to front desk to let them know something was wrong with their elevator. I turned to Zach as we walked down the stairs and said "I will lose it if they say, 'Oh, that happens' " Politely, I informed the girl behind the counter what had happened and mentioned I had been pressing the emergency and intercom buttons during my confinement in the lift that they advertise on their website ( www.canadianhotel281.com). Barely a muscle moved on her cool face. I expected an apologetic reaction, or at least some sense of concern that hotel customers were being caught in elevator purgatory, right within the very walls of their establishment! Her response was curt and calm, "Sometimes that happens when the elevator doesn't have enough electricity and stalls".
I was so perplexed by this response that I walked away without any sort of angry rebuttle. How can a hotel have an elevator if it regularly stops working WITH PEOPLE INSIDE? Had they heard my desperate cries and carried on with their text-chats on their mobile phones?? How does the elevator not get enough electricity, and why weren't we told upon check-in, "By the way, avoid the lift because you might get stuck." Hmmm.
Zach and I spent our two nights in room 303 with his interview passing without issue ( thankfully!). In the span of two days, the computer could not stay open more than 15 minutes before crashing, that is, if we were able to get it to work at all. The bathroom smelt like something died in it and had been burried below the rug with a bucket of mothballs to try and cover the smell. The large window looked out onto a brick wall less than a foot away, and the TV cable was left unplugged leaving us wondering about the advertised TV fare. The receptionist accused Zach of holding onto the room key of the first room we checked out, although he had returned it hours before. The hotel was cold and unwelcoming- by far the worst place we've seen yet in Vietnam.
Today we checked into another hotel a street over that is brimming with character. At half the price, we may not have a computer in the room, but breakfast and dinner is included and tea/coffee/juice is offered all day for free. We have to hike up a long flight of stairs to reach our room, but the hotel has a pully to lug our bags hilariously up the centre of the open staircase. At the end of the day, the most irritating part of the Canadian Hotel 281 experience is the fact that Canada is at all affiliated with this place. Supposedly a Canadian owns the hotel, but aside from a penguin-adorned shower curtain there was nothing Canadian about it.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Pictures
Vietnam Oddities
Perhaps a sparkling gown for that special occasion...
Or maybe something trendy for the kids.....Sunday, May 11, 2008
The Wild East
We spent three days in Halong Bay bike riding on one of the islands, kayaking and swimming off our boat. The weather was gorgeous and the other people on the tour group were great. In the evening the group sat on the upper deck level of the boat surrounded by the faint light of the other junk boats anchored in the bay sharing travel stories over Bia Ha Noi and Tiger Beer. For the first time since we left we could see the stars in the night sky and a light breeze kept us cool. A tourist trap? Perhaps. Women from the nearby floating villages and huts rowed their boats from junk boat to junk boat ( sometimes staying at the same junk boat for hours) selling warm beer and choco-pies, or trying to. The vendors in Halong Bay are persistent, continuing their sales pitch "You buy somesing?" long after you have smiled and said no, or already bought "somesing".
Our other excursion brought us by train and bus to Sapa, a small town located at the top of a beautiful mountain valley shrouded in mist and landscaped in cascading rice paddies lining the hillside. I had mixed feelings about our excursion, as the region of Sapa is surrounded by local hilltribe peoples that are part of the attraction of the region. The scenery of the area is unreal. Mount Fansipan looms in the background and there are lush green rice paddies as far as the eye can see. I had lots of questions about the relationship of the local village peoples with the tour companies and tourist industry that I was taking part in with some unease. We had wanted a local guide from one of the villages that could tell us about the area ( many of the local guides speak several languages really well). Our guide did not speak the local dialect and could barely speak English ( as the tour advertised), giving us little information. We had chosen a tour with a homestay option which turned out to be more of a small guesthouse catering to tourists located in one of the villages. Some of the tours did in fact stay with local families, which I would have preferred. As it is, the most I learnt about the area I was visiting came from scouting articles on the internet before I left. Sapa is but a few kilometers from the Chinese/Vietnamese border and as such has been the site of much conflict over the years. The growth of the tourist industry in the early 1990s brought renewed propserity to the region, although there is little information on how this has affected the local populations. It has been difficult to determine whether the tourist footprint I left behind in Sapa was positive or negative. At certain points of the trek I felt very uncomfortable, as my tour guide ushered us into a home of a local family to take a look around. It was voyeuristic and I am sure the family recieved little from the tour company that trapses tourists through there home every day. I took few photos in my three days in Sapa, capturing the landscape but consciously abstaining from photographing the local people we encountered as I saw many other tourists doing. It didn't feel right to take photos of this family's home, their small children staring blankly at the strangers walking through their kitchen.
Vegas 2.0
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Lamma Island
Yesterday it was time to escape the city. Lamma Island sounded promising- the Hong Kong Tourist Bureau Guide boasted it was an island without cars and with idyllic beaches and fresh seafood. While some of these promises were delivered, Zach and I found the island to hold the same of the same inconsistencies as the island of Hong Kong. We left for our excursion in the morning to catch the ferry from central pier to the auto-less island. For around $2 Cdn, the boat chugged us across Victoria Harbour past everything from small fishing boats to huge container ships. In the distance we could see the flags of several large American naval vessels ( including an aircraft carrier), an odd sight by our account! Once on the island we sat down to a Dim Sum breakfast of fish balls, prawn dumplings, spring rolls, and delicious jasmine tea at one of several harbour front seafood restaurants serving fresh fish caught by local fishermen and fisherwomen. We set out to hike to another small village on the north side of Lamma Island, hoping to stop at the beach along the way to play some frisbee. As we hiked along ( taking some quick-dissolve immodium breaks for my benefit) the view from the elevated trail boasted an enormous coal-power plant that jets out like an industrial arm from the picturesque island. The Hong Kong Tourist guide encourages you to stop and take photos from vantage points offering full views of the plant, expressing an unapologetic pride in the island's industrial wart.
In Hong Kong it seems like these two concepts- nature and industry- are not as opposed as we like to think of them in North America. An island advertised for its value in escaping the city sits comfortably with the fact that a huge development project dominates the island's landscape. A beach merely metres away from the polluting muscle of industrial energy is written and spoken of in normative terms. I noticed this harmony on the island of Hong Kong, too, during our excursion to Victoria Peak on the tram. The high-end shopping mecca that awaited us at the end of our tram journey, and the high-rise condos we discovered on our hike around the summit sat uncomfortably with me. The handful of new building projects we saw underway from these heights of the city suggest this is just the way it is in Hong Kong.
Tomorrow we make our way on a hydro-foil jet to nearby Macau for a day and night before flying to Hanoi on Friday. We booked our hostel just moments ago for a bank-breaking $7/night each for a private room and ensuite bathroom. I like Vietnam already! We've been getting by on around $50 Cdn/day in Hong Kong and paying $24/night for our hostel ( this is about as cheap as it gets in HK without living in a ratden). $7/night in Hanoi is music to my ears....
I'll write again when I can, but for now I have to make my way back to our hostel. Good night!