EasternAdventure08

West Coast - Easter weekend

2009-04-26T04:46:00.010+01:00

Some photos of our trip to the West Coast at Easter. Despite everyone telling us it rains all the time there, the sun shone and we had a fantastic weekend. In reverse order because I am too lazy to reverse them...

Watch out for that rock Brian (Castle Hill - Arthur's Pass)

Cool rocks at Castle Hill

Maybe Frodo and Samwise are somewhere around here!

View from our room in Punakaki

Lovely room at Punakaki

West Coast - a bit like Ireland, eh?

Our 3 hour trek involved my first NZ river crossing

thank god the river was low otherwise this would have been our bed for the night

on the trek

We kayaked this river Easter Sunday morning and then walked above it, gorgeous scenery

Pancake Rocks

Hokitika Gorge and Brian on the bridge, I wanted to get a photo of just him on the bridge and loads of people arrived just as I had the camera ready and the sandflies had their starter, main and dessert on me while I waited for them to leave, and they didn't!

Maximum load 1 person - Brian and Greg braved it and survived

Waterfall near Lake Kaniere, maybe Dorothy Falls

Lake Kaniere and Mt Cook hiding behind that cloud in the distance

Otira Gorge Bridge (designed by Brian's firm Beca) scary looking construction site

Road to the West Coast, somewhere around Arthur's Pass

Abel Tasman National Park - Feb 09

2009-04-26T04:18:00.006+01:00

On Waitangi bank holiday weekend, we headed to the north of the south island to Abel Tasman National Park with our friend Maria from Waterford. After the 6 hour drive, a good nights sleep we got the water taxi out the coast to start on our 4 day trek back to the village camping on the way, which involved carrying our tents, food, cooking utensils, suncream on our backs. Luckily for me Brian carried our tent. The walk was beautiful, along beaches and through bushlands with some hills which were a little tougher due to the hot weather and loads on our backs. The campsites were basic some with just a toilet and a water source and others had basic kitchen facilities and picnic tables. They were great homes for the 3 nights we camped and it was fantastic swimming every couple of hours or picnicing on the beaches.
Highly recommend it!

Christmas Road Trip of South Island

2009-02-22T01:25:00.017Z

So we headed off on a road trip for our 10 day summer and Christmas holidays combined into one. Our corolla did about 2,000 km's on a loop around the south island dropping in on Dunedin, the Otago Peninsula, The Catlins, Invercargil (bbrrrrrrrrrrr!), Milford sound, Queenstown, Wanaka and Mount Cook. It was a fantastic 10 days and great not to have to carry big backpacks. We camped most nights. Boy did we get a lesson in camping off the Kiwi's. They come to the campsite with every luxury - BBQ's, TV's, microwaves, fridges.......... !

A few highlights of the trip had to be seeing the penguins on Sandfly beach on the Otago Peninsula, kayaking the Milford Sound and meeting the cousins and friends along the way.

at beautiful lake Tekapo

Hooker and Tasman glaciers at Mount Cook National Park

We did a 4 hour tramp up the Hooker glacier valley, shown here.

There was some beautiful landscapes along the way and lots of long straight roads!!!

Meeting my cousin Pip in Wanaka (third cousin once removed!!!!) and Gabby (honory cousin!!)

wanted at Arrowtown goldrush village, near Queenstown!!

Old steamer leaving Queenstown!

Jeanette meeting up with her friend Mari and Kathryn
the road to Glenorchy!

We spent a day kayaking on the beautiful Milford sound.

Jeanette's stitches!!! a fight with a tin of tomatos. I can add removing stitches now to my CV!

sunset on at the lake, Te Anau

The Catlins

Cathedral Caves, The Catlins

Kiwis going on holidays!! Every other car had a kayak and bike sitting ontop of the car! (in this case a boat.

St. Clair's beach, Dunedin (yes the sun does shine in Dunedin, sometimes......)

on a penny farthing at Settlers museum, Dunedin. Needed to work off the calories after the visit to the Cadbury's factory.

Taking a break from penguin watching at Sandfly beach, Otago peninsula.

more photos of Sandfly beach

our car overlooking Otago Peninsula

more Otago peninsula

our tent and car in Dunedin!

Jeanette at the Moreaki boulders (just after her phone went for a swim in the Pacific)

Australia

2009-01-23T08:24:00.011Z

We arrived in Oz in mid August, what a cultural shock after being in Asia for 8 months!! It was great benig able to talk to everyone without a phrase book :)
First place we headed to was Byron Bay to meet up with Danny and Megan and to celebrate Megan's birthday. We had some great days in Brisbane with them too.

We spent two and a half weeks of our month in Australia doing a help exchange, where we got our accomodation and food basics in exchange for 4 hours work. We lucked out and stayed in a fantastic location Coorabella near Byron Bay with our great hosts Racheal and Gio and shared the work with Wakaba from Tokyo. The location was amazing, we stayed in a gorgeous cabin at the edge of the rainforest without a care in the world. Some photos of this great spot are below.

Whose turn is it to do the cooking!

or collect fire wood....

Rachael hosted a masquerade ball for her birthday and we joined in the celebrations

We headed up to Fraser Island for a few days too, which was definitely a highlight. Some pictures of Fraser below...

At an Aussie Rules game at the Gabba, Brisbane Lions v Carlton, no sign of the tall, dark and O'hailpins though!

Rest of Japan

2009-01-10T00:17:00.014Z

Hi from New Zealand, my new year's resolution is to update the blog for the last few months. We are settled now in Christchurch and I can update you all on what we have been up to since we were at the Sumo in Japan, will do a few posts over the next few weeks so hopefully will be up-to-date shortly. Jeanette :)

Japan Continued....

After we went to see the sumo in Japan, we headed off to climb Mt. Fuji with Lena and her mates, it was a long slog up to our hut where we slept in the biggest bunkbed ever! about 30 people in the bottom bunk and 30 in the top, we got maybe 3 hours sleep and then up to climb the rest of the way for the sunrise. It was some traffic jam getting to the top!

Sunrise on Mt Fuji

The climbing gang

Me and Brian at the summit

traffic jam on the trek uphill

Brian travelling in style on the bullet train

Antoin my brother arrived out to Japan while we were there and we had a great time seeing all the sites around Shimane province where Lena was living. Lena was playing in a taiko drumming group and we got to see them in action at a few gigs! Some photos and a video of her drumming are posted.

Lena & Trixie in their Taiko uniforms

Lena drumming

Check out the size of the main drum!

One of Lena's fans

Somehow I didn't record the sound!!

Fireworks - this was a pretty spectular display for an hour

A little bit of Ireland in Matsue - where some Irish Olympians had their training base so plenty of Irish flags around the place.

Brian and Antoin belting out some songs at the karaoke

Tokyo

We visited the Shibuya Crossing, the busiest pedestrian junction in the world, it is pretty impressive!

Alcatras Bar in Tokyo - Brian gets locked in!
The gang at Alcatras Bar - our medicinal drinks!
The capsule beds at the hostel in Tokyo

Men in Nappies!

2008-07-29T10:33:00.010+01:00

So we decided to head to see some Sumo.

In Japan they hold only 6 big tournaments each year where the professionals strut their stuff so we counted ourselves very fortunate to get a ticket to the tournament held in Nagoya. Sumo is the one traditional Japanese sports that still makes it onto primetime TV and draws in the crowds consistently.

We queued up very early in the morning for a ticket and watched sumo from 8:30am to 6 in the evening. It was a long day, but it was great to see these guys all over 25 stone plough into each other. These guys are absolutely massive. The photos do not do their size credit. Jeanette called it the MOOB convention - Man Boob, and you couldn't argue with that assessment.

Each sumo tournament lasts 10 days. Each wrestler has one bout per day which can last a matter of seconds.

So the amateurs start off at 8:30 in the morning and then the standard slowly gets better right through to the main action around 5pm. Its like going to watch a junior c hurling match at the local field in the morning and then finding yourself in the Cusack Stand at the All-Ireland Senior hurling final come 6pm.

We spotted the amateur (junior c) sumos coming on the subway to the venue with us, whereas the pro's arrived in their chauffeur driven mercedes.

There is a whole lot of ceremony and tradion still prevalent today in the sumo bouts. In fact sometimes the ceremony lasts longer than the bout itself. The sumos begin by facing up to each other with a bit of posturing. They lift each leg up alternately off the ground and the crowd really loves it when they lift it really high - one guy had his legs almost at 180 degrees at one stage - see the photo.

Try this at home. I'm telling you its really difficult!

The the sumos go to the corner of the ring to pick up some salt which they duly throw into the ring - apparently to purify the sumo ring. Then they proceed to slap their big bellies a number of times. I loved this bit! After some more posturing the bout begins. And sometimes its over in a few seconds if one of these mammoths slips, or sometimes the battle can go on a matter of minutes which the crowd really appreciates. These guys can be real entertainers.

Its amazing how many non-Japanese sumos their are. On the programme we spotted Russian's, Bulgarian's, Mongolians' Hawaians etc. all they all seemed to win their bouts.

Another thing we learnt about sumo was that the referee carries a small dagger with him as he officiates. Apparently in the olden days the referee was expected to commit suicide if it was determined that he had made a wrong decision during a bout. Hence, the dagger was kept by his side. Sumo is serious stuff. Today, the referees only carry the dagger to continue the tradition but thankfully not the act itself.

By the way, the front row is a dangerous place to be seated. We saw a few groups getting clobbered when a sumo was pushed from the ring.

All in all it was a great day.

Sumo out shopping!

Lena's last day at school!

2008-07-18T06:23:00.011+01:00

So first stop in Japan was to meet Lena (Jeanette's sister) and stay with her for a few days. Lena has been teaching english on the JET programme in Japan for the past 3 years and is finishing up this year. So Lena took us to school one day, which happened to be her last day at Yakami high school.

It was great to go to one of Lena's school and see what her life has been like in Japan for the past 3 years. Its clear that the kids love her.

Lena gave a speech to all the staff and students in the morning. The school brass band even played "Danny Boy" for her, which they had learned in only one day! See the video below.

We had a great time at school and were absolutely exhausted when we came home.

See Lena in action below.......

The Irish of Asia!

2008-07-09T03:24:00.025+01:00

South Korea is great!

We really struggled with getting a Mongolian visa so decided instead to travel to South Korea. We caught the overnight ferry between Dalian, in North East China, and the Korean port of Incheon, just 60 km from Seoul.

Before we came to Korea we had read in a few places that the Koreans were known as the `Irish of Asia`. They love singing, dancing, drinking, watching movies etc. and out and out are full of craic. So obviously this whetted our appetite for the place. On the ferry from China we met a group of Korean retirees who were just returning from holiday. When they asked us where we were from and we told them Ireland, they responded with `....... ah the Koreans of Europe`, so apparently it works both ways.　

The Koreans retireees invited us to try some local snacks with them which consisted of seaweed and a food called kimchi which is sort of like fermented cabbage, actually quite nice. They also tried to ply us with some local spirits, soju etc, which was great fun. The following morning we met the retirees again and they proudly announced to us that they drank the two vending machines on the ferry dry of beer last night. Definitely the `Irish of Asia`.

The first thing that struck us about the place when we arrived is that it was so clean. I suppose when your last port of call is China it would be the first thing you notice. The second thing you notice is that you can see the sky. We could not see the sky for about the last 3 weeks of our stay in China. In some cases in Beijing you could not even see some of the skyscrapers close by because of the smog. The third thing you notice is how organised and efficient everything is - the signage, the public transport, tourist information etc. We arrived in Korea without a guidebook so were literally winging it, but talk about picking the right country to wing it. This place is easy! Tourist information is in abundance. I think we were give about 10 different maps of Seoul - the walking tour map of Seoul, the bus tour map of Seoul, the metro map of Seoul, the bar and restaraunt map of Seoul, and on and on. I think you get my point. And finally, almost every local has some english it seems. At anyone time on a trip on the metro you see hoardes of people with english languauge text books in their hands. There seems to be an all consuming urge to learn english here which of course makes it easier for us.

Our visit to the ICE Bar in Seoul:

Another thing that struck us in South Korea was how polite people are. When you enter a shop every single member of the staff says hello to you! But the traffic attendents take politeness to another level. Very often shopping malls employ traffic attendents beside their car park exits to direct traffic out onto the road. The traffic attendents, normally pretty females, make an elaborate hand signal to the cars to say that it is ok to move out onto the road and then, wait for it, bow to the car!!! I honestly stood still for half an hour watching this in amazement. See the video below and then compare it to the North Korean equivalents.

North Korean Traffic Attendent

Seoul is surrounded by mountains and it being over a month since Nepal I heard them calling me! So I headed off one of the days to climb Mount Dobongsan, one of the holy mountains. I was getting on great until too old women decided to ply me with rice whiskey on the way up. I thought it was milk!!! This slowed me a little. Then I met a local `Kevin` half way up who told me I was very fast??? and so I could trek with him if I liked. So away we headed together. Well `Kevin` was a flyer, and it wasn`t long before my tongue was hanging out. Kevin didn't believe in taking breaks. When I did get him to slow down he did tell me that he has climbed the mountain almost every Saturday and Sunday for the past 7 years. In total he reckons he has climbed it over 500 times. It was a little too late to refuse the invitation at that stage. We made it to the top ahead of schedule where we enjoyed some great views. On a clear day you can seen Seoul from the top. Jeanette opted for shopping that day and highly recommends the shopping in Seoul!

On two of the nights in Seoul we met up with two friends we had met 6 months previously at the start of our trip in Borneo. We had all gone adventure caving in Mulu National park, Borneo, together. Cho Ok is a native of Seoul and Chad is from New York with Korean parents. It was great to be introduced to Korean food by some locals. The food is fantastic. Afterwards we went to a karaoke house and rented a booth and sang to our hearts content before heading dancing in a local club. Another thing we saw which is pretty unique to Korea is the DVD booth. You can rent a little room with a projector and DVD of your choice and watch away. It's like your own private cinema!

Something else that we were both taken by was the Korean version of a hotdog. Basically its a sausage on a stick but covered in french fries. Delicious. We both thought that this would go down very well in Jackie Lennox`s.

And of course it being olympic year and all we visited the Olypmic Stadium in Seoul, got out on the track and pretended that we were Carl Lewis competing in the 100 metre final!

We also paid a visit to the World Cup stadium where the opening game of the 2002 soccer world cup was held. Pretty impressive.

On one of the days we headed out to the Carribean bay water park just outside Seoul. We had some great fun on the slides, water bobsleds. Then we headed over to the Everland theme park where we had a great time on a few of the rollercoasters. Scary!!!

After Seoul we headed to Sorekson National park which one of the Koreans favourite places to go on holidays. It had some lovely walks and apparently some great mountain views but unfortunately the day we were there was quite foggy and we couldn't see a whole lot. Sorekson is only a few minutes drive from Sockho where we stayed. We had some great korean food there. The squid stuffed with fried vegetables was definitely one of the highlights.

Next, we took a 8 hour bus ride to the southern port city of Busan. From here we took the ferry to Japan. We didn't do a whole lot in Busan apart from go to the largest spa in Asia. Korean spas are interesting. Lots of types of baths here - grape baths, jasmine tea bath, salt bathsand well as the regular hot and cold baths, indoor and outdoor. You must go au naturale! There are separate male and female sides to the spa. Very liberating...... and a great way to spend a morning.

Our accommodation in Busan was an apartment on the 29th floor of a tower block. It was great if a little different. I don't think Jeanette was too comfortable with the height and was hanging on to her bunkbed at night, just in case......

After two days in Busan we caught the overnight ferry to the Japanese port town of Shimonoseki.

Beijing and North East China

2008-07-05T09:49:00.025+01:00

So then it was on to the big smoke of Beijing where we spent over a week in the Lama Temple youth hostel.

The first day we were pretty tired we just had a walk around Tiananmen square and outside the Forbidden city where we saw an army of people cleaning chewing gum off the footpaths in preparation for the Olympic games in August. No stone left unturned.

The following day it was off to see the Olympic Stadium itself. There was a whole hoarde of people taking photos of it but from behind the fence as they are still carrying out work on it, mostly landscaping etc.

The "Birds Nest"

Ciaran and Dave from Cork arrived in Beijing shortly after us so we spent the next few days hanging around with then. We first met Ciaran and Dave in Nepal and then in Guilin, China.

One of the first things we did was the lads was go visit the Great Wall. We had been told to avoid the busier sections of the wall, particulary the sections that had McDonalds outlets at. Luckily we were given a tip off about a really quiet section of the wall and the tip-off turned to be true. See photos below. For me this was one of the highlights of China.

One of the must-do's in Beijing is of course the Forbidden city. We employed the services of a tour guide called Vanilla. Young Chinese often chose to use an english name as they understand that their real names are too difficult for westerners to pronounce or remember. Hence, Vanilla.

We spent many a night with Ciaran and Dave playing cards, chatting, relaxing, slagging. It was great to be able to spend time with some people who you could hurl abuse at and know they would not get offended.

The Chinese love convening on the street for many things. They love there street food, love flying their kites on the side of the street and love playing chess on the side of the street. When I saw the below scene for the first time I thought there must a fight going on or something. No, just another game of chess. As far as I could see there was normally a few wagers being passed. Maybe this is what draws the crowd! This scene is so typical in China.

We normally choose to eat at place that had english menus otherwise who knows what could end up on your place. Sometimes a restaraunt would have a sign up to signify the fact that they had an english menu. Some got a little confused, see the picture below.

Who are they trying to kid?

One of the highlights of the stay in Beijing was a trip to the temple of heaven where we stumbled across the echo wall. It was a wall built in a perfect circle. We would stand at opposite ends of the circle and whisper something. The receiver about 25 metres away could here the whisper perfectly. Here's Jeanette "talking to the wall"!

So it was time to leave Beijing and we decided to head north east. We were having difficulty getting the Mongolian visa so decided that we would go to South Korea instead. So the plan was to slowly make our way to Dalian in North East China over a number of days and then get the ferry from Dalian to the South Korean port of Incheon.

Our stop on our journey north eastward was at Shanhaiguan - the place where the great wall meets the sea. Again we had an entertaining train journey. You could see that the locals were very curious to talk to us but of course they had no way of communicating. We were seated with young and old but none had any english. Eventually were got talking to a young student who was able to translate for the entire train carriage. It was funny when a guy came over to the kids who were sitting opposite us to give out to them for not practising their english with us.

On our first day we went to the sea to see where the wall ends/starts?! See photos

Shanhaiguan is also home to what the Chinese call "the first pass under heaven". Basically it is the first gate or pass in the great wall and was of strategic importance for various Chinese dynasties. The Chinese come in their droves to see it.

We ate some great noodle soup at Li Jiangs parents place where her father cooks the soup in the biggest pot I've ever seen.

Another amusing thing we saw in Shanhaiguan was what seemed like the entire town dancing/doing aerobics in the town square with music blasting from the loud speakers.

We dropped off at the nice seaside resort of Xincheng on our way to our next destination of Shenyang.

On our train trip to Shenyang we had some more fun with the locals. First they were offering us some hard boiled eggs and some spirit of sorts for supper. Then they were amazed at how hairy my hands (Brian's) were and were putting them next to mine to compare. It hadn't really occurred to me before that but the Chinese don't really have too much body hair. When I pulled up the leg of my trousers they nearly fainted!! Good fun.

We got talking to a Chinese english teacher on the train also. She invited us to stay with herself and her husband at their apartment in Shenyang and also to come visit her students. Unfortunately we couldn't stay around long enough to make it to the school as the students were on holiday but we did take her up on her kind offer of accomodation. We just spent a day in Shenyang looking around the palace before we took the train to Dalian.

We spent 3 days in Dalian just relaxing, bowling, organising our ferry to Korea etc. We did have ago on the "Worlds first land-sled" however. This was great craic racing down the side of the mountain overlooking Dalian city. Dalian is noted for being China's most liveable city! In fairness we were able to see the sky there for 2 of the 3 days which was a bit of a feat in China. Dalian is noted also for its soccer team who apparently are Chinese champions on many an occasion.

So then it was off to Korea on the boat!

From Nepal back to China

2008-07-05T08:25:00.019+01:00

Hello again, sorry we haven't updated in a while but will get up to date over the next few days, the fact that its pouring rain in Seoul will speed things along!!

So our last update was from Nepal, the final few days we spent in Kathmandu updating the blog, catching up on emails and enjoying the good food and on the last morning did a little bit of sightseeing. First stop was Pashputinath a sacred place for Hindus where cremations by the river are held. I was unsure what to expect but at the gate a guide 'found' us and showed us around and it was really interesting. The cremations happen on ghats, and there are different ghats for holy people, royal people, etc and ceremonies are held here before the bodies are cremated and the ashes put in the river, we discreetly watched a cremation with the traditions being explained by the guide before exploring the rest of the holy site. There are lots of holy men who live here and are legally entitled to smoke marijuana and practice yoga and some live in caves at the site. We also saw photographs of the Milk Baba a holy man who has lived on just milk for 30 years! We didn't get to see him as he was away on a trip.

Sadly we left Kathmandu and flew back to China and went straight to the city of Guilin, Guilin and the Li River are famous in China for the karst scenery and Li River but our first day there we slept all day after the overnight flight! Spent a few days relaxing and exploring the city, met up with Dave and Ciaran from Cork who we had met in Nepal, went on a river cruise down the famous Li River. This was absolutely spectacular. The photos say it all.

The Olympic Flame Torch Relay passed through Guilin so we decided to hang around for a few more days to see it and it was totally worth the wait. A big crowd of mostly university students had gathered since early morning to see the flame but we managed to get a spot with a great view, the atmosphere was amazing, the pride beamed out from each person there. We were interviewed for local television (with a lady from the Sheraton hotel stepping in to interpret for us) but never watched the news to see if we appeared! We could see the flame for about 15 seconds but there was a parade of soliders, advertising vans, media, etc as well which also kept us entertained.

The dragon boat festival was also on the week (one of 3 main festivals in China) we were in Guilin and then we decided to hang around until Sunday to see this, it is a boating race with dragon boats made out of one piece of wood are rowed by up to 100 people in the boat to the beat of a drum, this was pretty cool and we saw plenty of practicing boats. A bit of a mix up meant we were in the city for the festival but not the race, the practice boats were pretty impressive though.

From Guilin we headed to Chenyang where one of the famouse Wind and Rain bridges is located. Chenyang is also home to many Dong minority families. We spent a few days walking around the villages, looking at their pretty unique houses which are made entirely of wood and saw and took part in one of their cultural shows - dancing and knocking back a shot of local drink. It was pretty cool and nice to get off the beaten track in China again.

Chenyang - Bridge of Wind and Rain

From Chenyang we took the overnight train to Jishou in Hunan province, Hunan is famous for spicy food and woke ourselves up with some spicy noodles for breakfast and then went onto the lovely village of Dehang. Dehang is famous for its beautiful scenery, did a few treks including walking behind a waterfall and had fun ordering food, mostly pointing at what other people were eating!

Biggest waterfall in China, apparently! I say apparently because we have come across 4 caves which claim to be the biggest one in asia.
(video of Brian and the waterfall)

From Dehang we travelled onto Fenchuang, or the Phoenix city (when translated). The Phoenix city is famous for its old town, some of its buildings which hang out over the riveron wooden stilts, including a row of lively bars, this place had one of the best nightlifes in China we had come across to date. A lot of Chinese students were there on graduation trips when we were there so it was buzzing. The night market had great food and was very cheap so we ate out and spent very little - always a bonus- especially when the hostel was only 1.50euro a bed per night.

We returned from Phoenix city to Jishou to spend the night before we caught the 24hour train to Beijing the following morning. Jishou is the kind of place where tourists don't stay or at the least only pass through without getting off the bus. Hence, when some of the locals saw us a few nearly collided with lamp posts, they were so in shock. We also had our craziest driver in China here, a feat which plenty of drivers have competed for as the drivers we've encountered would get 12penalty points in one week at home, maybe having 2 foreigners in his minivan encouraged him to do the journey in less time, but honestly some rollarcoasters aren't as scary as that trip was. On that note- taxi drivers in China get offended if you wear a safety belt in their car! we have tried to put on safety belts on the few occasions we took one and have either not found the lock to slot it into or got covered in dust from the belt!!

Back to Jishou, we decided to go to the local internet cafe; once we recovered from the minivan, where we had a pretty bizarre experience. One of the local lads was intent in talking to us but he hadn't a word of english and our Chinese is improving to the extent now we can count to ten, ask how much, order rice and find an internet cafe but that's it, so conversations are still out of the question. None the less language was no obstacle. He openend up `Google Translate`, typed his sentence in Chinese and translated it to english. And we did vice versa. This continued for an hour and a half. He then rang his sister in Shanghai and put Brian on the phone, so that her sister could talk to a foreigner! Finally, we had to pose for photos with half of the internet cafe before we were allowed leave. Perhaps we were the first foreigners to frequent the cafe. A wierd but yet wonderful experience.

Internet Cafe photos.....

Sadly we left the Hunan province and got the 24 hour train to Beijing, yip you read that right 24hour train!

Before and After!

2008-06-14T14:02:00.008+01:00

When we were reunited in Marpha - I didn't recognise the guy who knocked on the door for a few moments....

So after growing his beard Brian decided to get it shaved off, here are the before and after shots (as apparently there were no barbershops on the Annapurna circuit!!??)

(there are some extra photos in the last blog entry 'while brian was trekking' including a video of lorraine running off a cliff - with a paraglide!)

While Brian was trekking...

2008-06-02T09:44:00.018+01:00

While Brian headed off for the ten day uphill hike of the Annapurna circuit, which is not exactly my cup of tea, Lorraine and I relaxed and went on a few adventures of our own before flying to Jomsom to meet Brian for the mostly downhill part, I'll come to the mostly bit in a while!

Lorraine, Emma and I at Monkey Temple, turning prayer wheels in last photo sending the prayers within the wheels out into the universe.

Chanting at Yoga Camp

We spent an extra couple of days in Kathmandu and went to visit the monkey temple, did some shopping and relaxing before heading to the lovely city of Pokhara where we checked into the 'Peace Eye Guest House', if anyone ends up in Pokhara call in and stay there, its fab. We did some sightseeing, some more shopping (one pashmina lady was delighted to see us) and chilling around town before spending 5 days at Sadhana yoga retreathttp://www.sadhana-asanga-yoga.com/index.html. Sadhana was fantastic, we met a great bunch of people there, and the owners Ashanga and Durga made us feel like part of their family, we even were referred to as 'big sister and little sister' most of the time we were there. Our days consisted of yoga, meditation, walks, chanting (singing), relaxing, eating the yummy vegetarian food and mud baths! Mud baths were an option and we managed to cover ourselves in mud almost every day! Skin felt fantastic afterwards.

Mud Bath

Nasal Cleansing!

Lorraine relaxing on the hammock outside our room

The mudbaths were on the roof of Sadhana and we watched the paragliders fly over, on day one we were thinking they were crazy, on day 4 we booked a flight. So after a morning of yoga, meditation, walk and nasal cleansing - pouring salt water through our nostrils for a few minutes, all before breakfast, we were sad to say goodbye to our friends at Sadhana, but distracted ourselves by running off a cliff!! 40 minutes in the air was great for the views, sense of awe at the strength of the wind and the skills of the instructors. It is now at the end of the paragliding season so the winds were a bit iffy for flights, I ended up crash landing after a thermal wind picked us up just before landing, all ok though! Then I looked up so I could see Lorraine land and no sign of her, her instructor had detoured to another landing field!!

Lorraine and her Guide on a detour after the great take off in the video above

Next day, we flew to Jomsom which was great. The flight is 25 minutes through the mountains and we were treated like first class, put in the front row where we could chat to the pilots who were seated just in front of us. This was a little nerve racking when they were chatting to us and we were watching the mountains just outside the window of the plane!

We did a few short trekking days before meeting Brian in Marpha. First stop there wasn't back on the trek but a Tibeatan refugee village and then an apple brandy distillery, strong stuff it was!! The trekking over the next few days was great, one day we got caught in a rain storm and I managed to fall into not one but two big mud puddles, Lorraine figured I missed the mud baths at Sadhana. One day involved a 6 hour uphill hike to the village beside Poon Hill (a hill at 3 times the height of Carrantoohill), the uphill bit of the Jomsom trek and then downhill day of 7 hours. I don't think I've walked that much in my life, could hardly move the next day, so Lorraine and I treated ourselves to a massage session in Pokhara (11euro for 1.5hours!).

Lorraine chatting to some some local kids

Brian giving me a helping hand

A nice cuppa on Poon Hill

see the chicken in his bag!!

One of the highlights of the trek was Lorraine being interviewed by a Nepalese woman as a future daughter in law, we'll get Lorraine to write about this bit!

negotiations begin for Lorraine

We were sad to say goodbye to Lorraine last week on the day of Munster's victory. We didn't get to see or hear the match unfortunately but delighted with the result. The Nepalese aren't into rugby - on one of our first days in Kathmandu we were approached by a tourguide touting his services. As an opener he asked where were we from and the conversation went like this:

TourGuide: So, where are you from?
Me: Ireland
TG: Oh, Ireland, I watched you in the World Cup last summer, you did really well
Me (a bit perplexed): Really? The rugby??
TG: No, the cricket!!!

Brian has written about the rest of our adventures in Nepal with some photos in the next post...

A Kingdom or a Republic?

2008-06-01T07:44:00.012+01:00

First of all apologies, we haven't made a blog entry since May 3rd because...................................

we are having lots of fun in Nepal.

Secondly thanks to everyone who texted to see if we were ok, our last blog entry being from the earthquake region of Sichuan in China. Everything is fine. We had left China about 2 weeks before the earthquake occurred. Tomorrow we leave Nepal to go back to China.

We are in Nepal during historic times. The Maoist party are now in government following the elections in April and the king is abdicating his throne. So on the 25th of April we entered the "Kingdom of Nepal" but tomorrow we leave the "Republic of Nepal"!!! A strange situation to be in.

Ok, so for those who don't know Nepal is like one big adventure sport mecca. You've got the highest mountains in the world in the Himalayas, some of the best white water rivers in the world for rafting and kayaking, biking trails, paragliding, safaris and the list goes on and on.

So we arrived from China on the 25th of April and the following morning we met our friend Emma from Sweden, whom we first met two months ago(with her boyfriend Chris) during our mammoth journey from Laos to Cambodia.

We spent our first few days sightseeing around Kathmandu. The Kathmandu valley has the highest concentration of UNESCO world heritage sites in the world. First stops were to see the Durbar squares in kathmandu and Baktapur.

Lorraine (Jeanette's sister) arrived in Kathmandu two days later for a months holiday and we were very excited when we saw Lorraine coming through the arrivals gate at Kathmandu airport.

Then it was off to the Bhote Kosi river to do a 4 day whitewater kayaking clinic. Day 1 we were learning to do "Eskimo Rolls" at the resorts swimming pool. Good fun but a lot of water was swallowed and the following morning Jeanette, Lorraine and myself all woke up very sick. Not good. The two girls headed back to Kathmandu to recover. Not a good start for us in Nepal.

I decided to hang around and was able to get back on the river the following day. The Eskimo roll technique was honed further and I got a chance to try out some whitewater rapids. The other thing I got to try was travelling on the roof of a bus. Its something of a national pastime here in Nepal. Each day we would kayak a few km's down the river, pull the kayaks onto the river bank and head for the road. Then its wait patiently until a bus comes along, pile the kayaks and ourselves up on the roof and away we go again. The only thing is that there are a lot of low hanging wires around so you have to watch carefully so you don't get beheaded or electrocuted! Aside from that its a great way to see the surrounding landscape.

After the 4 days kayaking it was back to Kathmandu for a short stop before I started on the famous Annapurna Circuit trek (16 days of of trekking almost 300 kilometres and climbing over a 5,416 metre high pass). In Kathmandu I met my trekking buddy Tina, from Colorado and the following morning it was off on the bus to Beisishar, the village at the start of the trek.

The trek was definitely one of the highlights of the visit to Nepal. We met so many great people along the way, saw some amazing mountain ranges, ate a lot of Dahl Bhat (dahl bhat to the Nepalis is like potatoes to the Irish), and played alot of cards. See the photos below.

Once I made it over the Thorung La pass I was looking forward to seeing Jeanette and Lorraine in Jomson. Jeanette and Lorraine flew up to Jomsom to trek the last 8 days with me. Our last day trekking began with a hike up to Poon Hill (at 3,200 metres its hardly a hill!!!) Poon hill is a famous dawn vantage point overlooking the Himalayas - Annapurnas, Dhalguri, Machapuchare etc., these mountains are huge! See more photos below.

When we finally made it back to Pokhara we relaxed for a few days. I got my beard shaved off - see before and after photos (coming soon)!

Last Saturday we thralled the town looking for a place to watch the Heineken cup final. But no joy, so we ended up finding an Internet cafe to get text updates from the RTE website. It was a bit of a surreal experience being in an Internet cafe in Nepal and Munster after winning the final. I think the two of us wanted to jump and shout etc. etc. to celebrate but it would have been a little out of place. We decided to head for the nearest pub for a celebratory drink .......... but Pokhara had closed up shop for the night so it was back to the guesthouse - in one way feeling elated that Munster had won but in another way feeling unsatisfied that we couldn't join in in the celebrations. We could only imagine what the celebrations must have been like at home.

While I was doing the first 10 days of the Annapurna Circuit trek Jeanette and Lorraine headed to a Yoga and Meditation camp for 5 days where they did all sorts of things - asanas?, chanting, karma yoga??, mud baths!!!???? I let Jeanette fill you in. They also did a paragliding flight.

Lorraine left on the 28th of May to go back home ( we miss you Lorraine!). We spent another day or two in Pokhara and then headed south to Chitwan National park to do a little safari. It was a bit of an experience. On our bus journey down we came across our first experience of the famous Nepali "Bandh" or shutdown. In Nepal if you want to protest against something you block the highway. A huge traffic jam develops and then you play the waiting game until the protesters decide to close up shop for the night. I ended up passing the time by playing imaginary cricket with a 6 year old Indian boy. We spent most of the time sitting on the side of the road for almost 7 hours waiting for the roadblock to be lifted!!! Ouch. It took us 13 hours to reach our destination!

So the following day we were delighted to get out into the national park. We did an early morning canoe trip down the trip seeing a lot of the unique bird life, and also got to see some crocodiles or "Marsh Muggers" as they are know locally. Apparently this is where the word "mugger" in the English language originates from! The crocs have been known to prey on the unsuspecting locals whilst they come down to the river at dusk to wash. The locals get mugged by the crocs!

It was great to see the crocs but lucky us got to see two " one horned rhino's" chasing each other around the park. In fact you hear them before you see them. They are huge animals and they can move at some speed. Its currently their mating season so were quite aggressive. And our two guides were carrying around bamboo sticks to protect us, not very reassuring!

Later in the morning we got to bathing with the elephants in the river. See photos below. This was great fun. In the afternoon we went elephant trekking and we were very excited to see a mother and baby rhino in the jungle.

So we both left Chitwan national park with dreams of going on Safari in Africa. It was a great experience.

After Chitwan it was off to the lovely village of Bandipur to relax for a few days before heading back to the mayhem of Kathmandu.

Next stop is China for 2/3 weeks and then its off to Mongolia.

Ok, talk soon,

Brian

China - Siuchan Province

2008-05-03T13:01:00.008+01:00

As you read in Brian's last post, we love China!! After 3 weeks in Yunnan, we headed to Siuchan for a week, the home of spicy food! First stop was Chengdu where we bumped into Michelle who we last met in Borneo in Sims Cozy Hostel! Small world. Sims is one of the best hostels ever and if anyone is planning on going to Chengdu stay there - the hostel gym they are building will be open by the time you get there! So, with Michelle, we headed off to see a temple, the Pandas and a sichuan opera, good thing too because we were running a risk of not leaving the fantastic hostel!

The Sichuan opera was really entertaining, didn't know what to expect but it was a taste of lots of different styles of opera - acrobatics, singing, comedy, facechanging, puppets, all really entertaining but the two girls who juggled garden pots, tables, etc in synche on their legs that impressed most!

Next morning we went to see the Pandas, who are so cute, and lazy, they have a great life, sitting around eating bamboo. They are quite fussy about the bamboo they will only eat a type from the mountains which has to be fresh, they don't like the 14 types that grow in the sanctuary and Brian says I'm a fussy eater??!!. Pandas used to eat meat but have evolved to be only bamboo eaters so have to spend the whole day eating to get their nutrients. There are signs all over the sanctuary requesting quiet around the pandas, it was lovely and quiet until a tour group of about 1000 chinese children arrived. Bedlam! The funny thing is it wasn't the Pandas they were shouting at, it was us!!! 'hello, hello, welcome to china, good morning, etc'

Michelle and I went on an adventure to see the grand buddha the afternoon after the Panda

visit. We got to Leshan the location of the buddha at 5pm, the last bus back to Chengdu was at 7pm and a whirlwind ensued to get to see the buddha. We ran up stairs, got locked into a section of the park, posed for photos with a local tour group (again we were as much as a novelty as the novelty itself), got a crazy driver who deliberately went so slow i'd miss the (last) bus so he'd try and get me to pay for him to drive me 2 hours, not a chance! phew but we were rescued by a tour bus who dropped us to another bus station where they had rang ahead for another bus to take me back to chengdu and michelle got a taxi ride to her destination. Great fun though!

Jazzy Jeff - The buddha is grand like...

Next morning Brian and I headed off on a 12hour bus journey to Juizhaigao National Park in northern Sichaun. 12 hour bus journeys are (unfortunately) second nature to us. A regular bus journey is maybe 6 hours and not a bother. I can't believe I used to give out about the Newcastle West to Cork bus when I was in college! In Juizhaigao we stayed with 2 Irish guys working in the national park, Andrew and Kieran. Andrew is a friend of Richard Langford who has 3 of the Fitzsimons girls visit in the last year, he will be thinking of twinning Shanagolden with Juizhaigao soon. The lads gave us a great welcome, fed us plenty of barrys tea (yum!), and we got to explore the national park and valley nearby. Its a beautiful part of the world. A few days eating, drinking tea and seeing the sights and we headed onto to Songpan, 2 hours south of Juizhaigao. Where we met Emma, the fluent english speaking local coffee shop owner who looks after everyone who calls to the town. Emma's place provided a refuge while the electrity and water in the town were both on the blink! We went on a horse trek which was good until Roger my horse decided I should fall off without telling me, but all ok.

Another 12 hour journey back to Chengdu, roadworks!, relaxing night at Sims guesthouse and off to Nepal to see Lorraine.

China - Yunnan Province

2008-04-16T04:04:00.006+01:00

Enter China - Oh where to start. This place is amazing and a country of contrasts! Definitely our favourite country yet.

What a breath of fresh air after Vietnam. We decided to skip the big tourist spots of Halong Bay and Sapa in northern Vietnam and head straight for the Chinese border. We really couldn't leave Vietnam quick enough.

We crossed the Chinese border and Hekou and what a difference - order, friendly people, clean streets, no chaos, no longer being seen as a dollar sign!! Yunnan and China is great.

So first on the list was to visit the famed rice terraces of Yuangyang. We took the bus from Hekou toYuangyang.

Every bus journey in China is an adventure!

The bus took about 5 hours on a dirt road driving alongside the amazing Red River and underneath a super-duper 4 lane highway which is almost totally suspended in the air due to the mountainous terrain. I have never seen so much concrete in my life. One one hand you have a world class motorway above us and underneath you have a third world road, alongside and underneath which, the locals live in some of the most basic accommodation we have seen on the trip. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground.

Straight away you can see the minority presence on the bus. The Yunnan province is home to something like 27 of the 50 + minority peoples living in China. The colour of their dress is amazing. Obviously the locals aren't used to buses as some spend more of the time with their heads outside the bus than inside it - getting sick. One mother holding her child got a sudden urge, handed her child to a complete stranger and stuck her head out the window to vomit.

Eventually we reached the mountain town of Juangjang, the tourist centre for the rice terraces. But where are all the tourists? We only saw one other westerner in our first day there. What a breath of fresh air. So booked into our accommodation and went for a dinner of chicken and bones, rather more bones than chicken - a speciality in Yunnan. They don't believe in wasting any of the animal here. I suppose when you have a population of 1 billion plus people you get pretty resourceful.

The following morning we set off on our quest to locate these famed rice terraces. So down to the square to get into a micro bus driven by a local Hani (minority woman) in full regalia. This kind woman drove us around the amazing terraces for the day. I promise some photos soon.

One of the best things about the terraces is that their is no entrance fee!!! In China they charge for everything and their entrance fees into most tourist sights are exorbitant.

The following day we headed to the Sunday market in a place called Laomang. This was amazing. We saw 8 different minorities there - Hani, Bai, Yi, to name a few. The colours and dress were incredible. What was also incredible was the fact that you could get all your medical needs seen to at this market. There was a stand for false teeth (I kid you not) which did a roaring trade. There was an open air dentist where many an extraction was performed that morning and of course the local GP or quack (not quite sure) was also on hand.

We ate some tofu (which is a Yunnan speciality) with the locals. Its tasteless, but boy do they know how to spice it up. The chilli dip burned the mouths off us. Luckily the dentist and doctor were close at hand!!!

We took some photos but it can be difficult to get good shots. The locals believe that if you take a photo of them you are taking part of their spirit away and can be hesitant to pose.

Back to Yuangyang and we went to another rice terrace for sunset. This was amazing. I promise lots of photos of this.

The following morning we went to a place call Jianshui (about4 hours on the bus) which broke our journey to Kunming. Again this journey was exciting. We pulled out of the bus station with passengers on board, passed the checkpoint, over the bridge and then the bus pulls over to leave in the rest of the crew. We counted 39 people and 8 chickens in an 18 seater bus. The bus conductor had to enter the bus through the window twice, such was the pressure for space. At one stage we came to a police checkpoint, where the conductor orders everyone to lie down (as clearly the bus was illegally overcrowded. At one stage I had the bus conductor lying across by lap! Everything is pushed to the limit in China. Every inch of arable land is planted with crops, every lorry and truck is full to the brim and overweight and every bus is filled to the brim with people. I think the term is called maximising return on capital - and they know how to do it. There are checks and balances in existence but it seems that all you need is a cigarette or two to buy your way past the checks.

Jianshui is a lovely town off the beaten track. The highlight of this town was the market where you could buy the following for consumption - dog, dragon flies, maggots, wasps, etc. etc.

Onto Kunming the following day and stayed at the magnificent Cloudland hostel. There we bumped into two ozzies from Melbourne - Jeff and Rachel who we spent the next week travelling with.

From Kunming it was onto Dali and its famous old town which was pretty nice. Day 1 in Dali consisted of a hike up the local mountain. On the way we passed a lot of graves where families were sitting out having picnics and the gravesides. Along the way we saw a lot of what appeared to be 100 RMB notes (about 10 Euros). On closer inspection these were fakes, issued by the
"Bank of Hell" - a bit eerie. We later found out that it was the day of "The Grave Sweeping Festival" where all their locals clean up their loved ones graves and have a picnic on site with their families.

From Dali it was a short 4 hour bus ride to Lijaing, with again a beautiful old town full of canals and waterwheels. From here it was onto Tiger Leaping Gorge (TLG) to do the famed trek.

TLG took us two days to complete, stopping off at the Tea Horse guesthouse on the way for a nights kip. Tea Horse possibly has some of the best views in China! We arrived into Tea Horse around 4pm and had a great night there meeting other trekkers - Brad and Jackie from South Africa and David and Jenny from England. The following day was again spectacular. We had to cross through 3 waterfalls to continue on our trek. It was a little amusing and annoying that the locals block all the best photo opportunity sites so that they can charge 10 RMB for a picture. Again, anything that can be charged for in China is charged for.

Unfortunately we missed our bus to Baishuitai and its famed water terraces. So it was straight onto Shangri-La that night for us instead. Shangri-La is on the way to Tibet and you can really feel the increase in altitude when you walk around the city. God know how the locals can manage two hours of traditional Tibetan dancing in the square every night. Jeanette and myself gave it a go one of the nights. Video on the way.

On our second day in Shangri-La we hired a couple of bikes with David and Jenny and headed out to the local Tibetan monastry. This was pretty nice with great view of the town. When we were just about to head home we heard some singing coming from behind us. We went to investigate and there was a bunch of monks onto of the walls of a building site singing in unison as they worked pounding the clay walls into place. Hauling basket loads of clay upto the monks were an little army of tiny Tibetan women, ranging in age from 30 to 60!!! We went down for a look and within a few seconds myself and David were handed a basket each to haul the clay upto the monks. So away we went, tough work, I don't know why all the woman were doing the toughest job and the young able body monks were taking it easy singing away to their hearts content. Its nice to say that my first day on a building site was in a Tibetan monastry.

From Shangril La we decided to head to Dequin, about 6 hours over the mountains close to Tibet. Dequin is over 80% Tibetan so even though we missed out on our planned trip to Tibet we still got to see a lot of Tibetan culture which was great. We passed over a mountain pass 4300 metres high along the way. It was snowing so hard that it was coming in the window ontop of Jeanette. Our bus driver had x-ray eyes. I don't know how he could see out the window with the blizzard and no windscreen wipers.

So we arrived in Dequin and booked into a hostel called Tashi's that happened to be ran by two Irish guys. One of them, the cook, was trained in Ballymaloe house and the food was fantastic. Tashi's was a traditional tibetan house so was pretty cool - and we spend a lot of time huddled around the fire trying to keep warm. Dequin is famous for its proximity to the Mingyong glacier and lots of treks in the area. We saw an inordinate amount of cherry blossom trees in the valleys which was really beautiful. Dequin was also great training for the high altitudes we are going to experience in Nepal.

In Dequin we met an amazing English guy called Charlie who has been cycling all over the world for the past 7 years. He has covered over 110,000 km's on his travels. He tells us that his aim is to do 240,000 km's because apparently that is the "distance from the earth to the moon".

Now we are in Chengdu in the Sichuan province and looking forward to 10 days here, before heading to Nepal where we are going to meet Lorraine (Jeanette's sister).

Ok, talk soon,

Brian

Vietnam

2008-04-10T09:43:00.006+01:00

Sorry its been a while since we updated the blog but things have been hectic!! Also, we are now in China and the 'great fire-wall of China' means getting onto certain websites difficult, e.g. we can't see our own blog!! but Lorraine tells us ye can see it at home so here goes. Brian will update on China later and we will get a few photos up over the next few days.

We arrived in Vietnam, weary out from the tuk tuk drivers in Cambodia and found Saigon / Ho Chi Minh city a welcome relief. Really liked the place, it was hectic - bicycles, motorbikes, etc flying around the place but we had good fun and the city has really nice atmosphere. We kicked back for a few days wandered around the place and saw the sites. The one that really sticks out is the War Remnants Museum, a museum which has galleries of photographers who died in the vietnam war's last photos from the front line, a land mine impacts gallery and also a gallery about the victims of chemical warfare. This place was really worth visiting but gruesome, its crazy to think its all so recent and that there are loads of people still suffering the consequences of the war. We visited the CuChi tunnels too where the VietCom lived, fought, hid underground in tunnels and that was really interesting to visit, but there was a firing range in the middle of it - a bit of an odd choice in the middle of a place where the reality of war is being shown.

Brian heading into one of the tunnels

Me trying to escape the tunnel!

Us and some Viet-com statues!

As we had spent lots of time on the Mekong River, we headed down to its Delta, met two great Vietnamese-Americans Lee and Chou who showed us about. We got a lift from the bus on motorbike, our rucksacks between the legs of the motorbike driver with me on the back and my day pack on my back - same for Brian on his motorcycle, we must have looked mad!! There are some photos of the Delta and the floating market on the last post, unfortunately though both our camera batteries died and we missed out on a classic photo, so picture it, we are floating along the river when we spot toilet portaloos at the river edge with the outflow pipe hanging directly over the river and the portoloos were clearly marked as toilets!! Our suspicions of the river been dirty were totally confirmed then, didn't chance a swim!!

Started to move north along the Vietnam coast and the first stop was Mui Ne Beach, Fantastic spot!! We had a fab bunglaow a stone's throw from the beach where there was a 11km strand with kite surfers and wind surfers doing there thing so we spent a few days chilling by the beach, having a few drinks by moonlight and relaxing, bliss!

Back to the travelling then and onto the overnight bus to Hoi An. The relief bus driver took a fancy to the guy from Wales sleeping beside us and kept tickling his toes!!! Hoi An is a manic tourist town with 200 tailors all trying to get us to go in and get clothes made up. The town was pretty with fab architecture but after a day we were allergic to the tailors hassling us and decided to move north again. I went to see the anchor wat of Vietnam - My Son, which was really interesting ruins but had been heavily bombed during world war 2 and i can't imagine how nice they would be intact. In SE Asia, the locals tend to use the phrase 'same same but different' to describe how something is similar, and our guide at My Son was describing religions and said 'its like Protestant and Catholic - same same but different!!' I can't imagine how certain N.Ireland politicians would react if they were on the tour!!

Next stop Hue, the former capital of Vietnam, we went on a motorbike tour of the city and surrounding paddy fields and sights. We had a great guide and this was a brill way to see the place. The imperial city here had been bombed as well during the war and what we saw was impressive and its so sad that it doesn't remain intact. Another interesting overnight bus trip after that where a local guy decided to chat up a norwegian girl by playing the theme song from titanic from his phone and singing along in the middle of the bus!!

Last stop in Vietnam was Hanoi. To be honest we didn't do much here except a bit of shopping, walking around, eating at street stalls and hiding from the tourist touts in coffee shops so decided to exit swiftly from Vietnam and get the overnight train to China where hopefully we wouldn't be attacked by a hotel, tour or shop person selling something. What had taken the biscuit was a hotel owner spitting at us because we didn't want to stay at his hotel in Hanoi!! Roll on China :)

Some additional photos from Jeanette's camera!

2008-03-18T09:45:00.013Z

Hi all some more photos from my camera...

Vang Vieng: we had a good laugh at Vang Vieng with some great people we met on the slow boat to Luang Prabang and spent the day relaxing on the river and the bars on its banks..

the gang - suzanne, caroline, nick, me, nic and brian. steve must have been at the bar!

chilling on the river

steve in flight

sharing a cocktail bucket

Four Thousand Islands - Laos

the bus stop!

some of those 4000 islands

Ankor Temples

We're at the 'tomb raider' temple here

brian & statue!!

emma and chris

exploring temples

young boysbecoming monks

tomb raider Brian

one of the faces in Ankor Thom

Mekong Delta: we're in Ho Chi Minh and just back from a couple of days in the Mekong Delta where we had an 8hour boat ride along the river network, going to floating markets, etc

fruit on sale in the floating market

the delta rivers

brian thinks about getting some diesel for the boat from the floating station

fun guys from japan

St. Patrick's day - the other Irish on the river, in green!

Tuk Tuk'd out!!!

2008-03-14T12:27:00.007Z

Heh,

Sorry for haven't been so good at updating the blog the last few weeks. We've been hiding out from the tuk tuk drivers. I'm telling you nobody, I mean nobody is safe from them!! Currently in Ho Chi Minh City, southern Vietnam. We made a swift exit from Cambodia today (only 6 days there in total) . Well as swift as you can get when the fan belt goes on the bus you are travelling on, and you have to wait a good hour for emergency repair parts. Apparently one hour is excellent time in these parts, and of course another hour to perform the repairs!! Will tell you more about Mr. Tuk, Tuk in a while.

So since Jeanette made the last post we moved south through Laos and been and gone from Cambodia. So from Luang Prabang, Laos, we took the horrendous 9 hours bus journey south to backpacker mecca of Vieng Vien. Signs were ominous when the bus conductor started handing out plastic bags before the drive even turned on his engine. Our suspicions were satisfied when we started climbing and winding our way through the Laos mountains (really spectacular scenery) but a guranteed recipe for making you sick!! On the journey we met "Ray Foley" from Carrigaline, no not the award winning DJ but our Ray has his own claim to fame. Ray features in the Denny Sausage "Posh Surfers" add on TV. Remember it.... and also did a RAY on RAY sketch with Ray foley the DJ live on the radio, akin to the famous "Roy on Roy" gift grub sketch on Today FM. Anyway it was great to meet up with another Irish person, and the three of us quickly descended into Cork accents (I'm afraid to say) Don't think anyone else on on the bus had a clue what we were saying.
So anyway, arrived in Vieng Vien, and did the obligatory tubing down the local river stopping off at the local bars along the way. Unfortunately the river level was pretty low so not much white water, but there was plently of craic at the watering holes along the way.

From Vieng Vien it was a short hop (only four hours) onto the really chilled capital of Vientiane. We spend two days here sorting out a Cambodian visa and just relaxing. Not a whole lot to see in Vientiane but its still a really nice place to visit. We rented bikes for the day and had a really enjoyable cycle around the city visiting the local landmarks. See photo of colour coordinated Jeanette!!!

From Vientiane we took an overnight bus to Pakse, and then onto the "Four Thousand Islands" on the southern Laos border. Yes, its a bit confusing, Laos is South East Asia's only totally land locked country but yet has over 400o thousand islands! Figure that one out. Basically the huge Mekong river has cut out over 4000 islands (they claim) from within its expanse. We spent 2 days on the lovely Don Khone island where we tried some fantastic "Pumkin Burgers"! Watch out Burger King!

So its was time to leave Laos and head onto Cambodia, more specifically Siem Ream and the temples of Ankor. We booked ourselves onto a bus package that would deliver us in Siem Reap within 48 hours. Little did we know the mammoth journey we were undertaking, with confusion, frustration and adventure at every step of the journey.

Here goes:

Mini Bus no. 1 - air con leaked and we are got soaked at the back of the bus
Mini Bus no. 1 - boot opens whilst in top gear motoring down dirt road, bags fall out the back narrowly avoiding woman on scooter
Transfer to Mini Bus no. 2 as mini bus no. 1 is clearly not up to it!!!
Carryout border formalities only to find that there is no Mini Bus no. 3, or at least not for myself and Jeanette and 3 other unfortunates. An hour later a banger Toyota Camry along with driver and his husband and child arrives and takes us onto Stung Treng. This was gas. There were four in the back( jeanette, me, Chris and Emma - our new Swedish friends) and wait for it, four in the front (driver, wife (sitting on gear stick), child, and Utto (from Germany). Poor Utto had to hold the 3 month old child. Eight in an old Toyota Camry isn't bad going. Don't ask how gear changes we carried out!
Cross the river in Mekong by ferry. Surprisingly straight forward.
Get on minibus no. 3 and drive about 60Km's to Kratie.
Wait in Kratie for 2 hours for Mini bus no. 4.
Mini bus 4 no. finally arrives and all 12 of us pile in! It was really overloaded at this stage, and then the driver stopped for 4 more, who proceded to climb onto the roof. This would have been fine only that the driver decided to drive on the worst mud road known to man. To top it all off the bus's lights kept failing with lots of oncoming traffic! Thanks be to god we made it to Kompong Cham safe and sound to overnight there.
Bus no. 5 was surprisingly pleasant. This was the public bus from Kompong Cham to Siem Reap.

So 4 bus's, 1 boat, 1 car ferry, and 1 toyota camry to travel a total of 120 miles in 13 hours!!

Jeanette crossing no-mans land between Laos and Cambodia

stranded on the Cambodian side of the border

need to get onto Jackie Healy Rae about this road!

One upside to the entire experience was that we really made some great friends during the trip, friendship through adversity Kim, Rosalee, Chris and Emma so we met with and bumped into a couple of more times in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh.

So onto Siem Reap it was to see the famed temples of Ankor. It was an early start 4.30am to get up in time to see the sunrise over Ankor Wat. The next 12 hours or so were spent visiting the spectacular temples around Siem Reap including the famed "Tomb Raider" temple where the trees are engulfing the ancient buildings. See photos.

So without delaying in Siem Reap we headed for Phnon Penh, the capital of Cambodia. We had some interesting bus stops along the way, one in particular where they were selling hairy tarantula spiders as a light snack, I kid you not. Apparently its a delicacy.

So onto Phnom Penh and into the realm of the Tuk Tuk driver. They are all over the place and always at your service and thats the problem. We were staying on the 3rd floor of a building blog and would sit out on the balcony for breakfast. Straight about you would have tuk tuk drivers on the road below waving at us trying to solicit our business. Once we left the business we were asked where we were going today, and tomorrow and the next day. Its seemed like they thought we couldn't walk. But the pits was yesterday morning, we were out waiting for breakfast again, when one of the tuk tuk drivers decided to come up and serve us the breakfast. He walked straight into the guesthouse kitchen, aquired the tray and brought us out the omelletes. Honestly there is no escaping them.

In Phnon Penh we visited the horrific Choeng Ek memorial at the infamous Khmer Rouge's "Killing Fields". We also visited their S-21 interrogation centre, based in a former high school, to see where the poor unfortunate Cambodians citizens spent their last few months being interrogated before being sent to Choeng Ek for extermination. Its hard to believe that all this happened within our own lifetimes and that many of the perpatraitors were young teenagers!

Currently in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and guess what - zero sightings of tuk tuk drivers!

Heaven!

Hope all is well at home.

Brian

Laos

2008-02-29T07:10:00.021Z

hello from Laos,
we are here for the last 5 days and must say Laos is fantastic! We arrived across the border from Thailand at Huay Xai to take the slow boat to Luang Prabang down the Mekong River, slow being the word alright, it takes 14 hours!!! But it does stop for a night halfway. The guidebooks all say - don't get on if the boat is overpacked etc, so when we arrived with the 30 or so other people who were staying in our guesthouse to see a nearly full boat, the last one to leave that day, we had a stand off, with all of us on the shore looking for a new boat to be put on. Half hour later and no movement from the increasingly irate driver and someone broke ranks and went on. turns out there was enough seats, but we suspect locals were 'moved' to the back of the boat to make room. Brian & I were last on and thought we'd be standing but luckily got the best seats in the house!! On the luggage. Brian has a photo of this and i'll get him to put it up soon.
locals on the slow boat wondering what all the fuss was about while the standoff was on.

Not much to do on the slow boat but read, watch the world go by and chat to the other people around. another slow boat goes by
Both days the slowboat had to make unscheduled stops to ease the thirst of the boats passengers - see photo!!

Now we are in Luang Prabang, it used to be the capital of Laos and has a great laidback vibe and lovely coffee shops with good coffee and baguettes (french legacy) which makes a nice change to rice!! We went on a 2 day trek and kayaking to the Hmong tribal villages in the mountains for the last 2 days with Lucas from Switzerland and Mark from Sydney and our two local guides Chou and Guy who are brill craic. Met loads of really friendly villagers, especially the kids, and stayed the night in a village chief's house. Great night sleep here after the tough trek but woken but cockcrow, kellogs cornflakes have a lot to answer for, cockcrow doesnt start at dawn, more like 4am!!!!

The chief had been out hunting the night we were there and we were offered jungle rat stew as part of our breakfast, yuck!!!! Brian tried it and I declined, I'll let him describe the taste in his next post!

A nice stroll down the mountain to the river where we went kayaking finished up the day, we kayaked over some whitewater rapids and all of our kayaks ended up upsidedown. Two old ladies in their 70s kept us with us on the walk while carrying a sack of rice each on their heads - amazing!!

who needs bridges!!local kid at work

The Pied Piper of Laos
Brian showing kids photos he took

farming Laos style

A makeshift dam that powers one house on a village we visited

Kids at their front door, the mobile is for catching bad spirits, like a dreamcatcher. Interesting because the Hmong tribe have travelled to Laos from North America - Alaska - Mongolia - China to Laos.
lady at work in local costume

kids grinding corn - and having a great time doing it!

so Brian gives it a go in the next village.

Brian having a game of Rattan (like volleyball but you can only use the head and feet to get the ball over the net) while a local lady looks on.

Brian is gone mountain biking today and I chose to do some shopping (browsing) and pampering - an hour massage plus pedicure for 6 euro, I know the girls reading this are envious :)
Chat soon, hope you all are well, Jeanette

There's a rat in the kitchen, what am I gonna do?

2008-02-22T14:22:00.018Z

Heh,

Back on the main land again. After Ko Mook (last post) we headed north again to Railay (or more specifically Tonsai beach).

Jeanette says 'hi' from Railay West

Railay is rock climbing central in Thailand so we had to give this a go. As you can see Bob Marley was drafted in to belay Jeanette.
Jeanette v the wall

We met up with Eimear O'Malley and her cousin Helen in Tonsai for a few days. We booked into some lovely!! bungalows until we found that we had some intruders(rats!!!). One of them took a liking to Jeanettes vitamin C container and ate the top clean off (unfortunately no photos). So we upped and left the next day and headed to another resort. And here we were paid another visit by the first cousins from the first accommodation. Not good. To distract ourselves from the rats we headed off on a couple of day trips to the surrounding islands. The following day we headed off on a kayaking trip to Ao Thalane to visit the mangrove forests (forests that grow on sand and feed off the salt water. It was pretty spectacular. After the mangroves it was on to Hong island.

Even with our rodent experience we all had a great time!!

After saying goodbye to the two girls it was onto Bangkok via the night train. Bangkok was a fly by visit, we got to see the grand palace, the emerald buddha, and Wat Pho - the thai massage school. Having spent only a few hours we flew onto Chang Mai.

In Chang Mai we met up with a friend of mine from home, Paddy Fahey and his girlfriend Lindsey. The following morning we joined a 2 day trek to visit the hill tribes in northern Thailand. Unfortunately Jeanette wasn't feeling the best so had to give it a miss.

The trek for me was one of the highlights of the holiday so far - its was great when you have walked for a couple of hours in the blistering heat to be able to jump in under a waterfall to cool off. Much of the trek was spend walking through rice paddy fields and watching the local people at work in the fields still using traditional methods to cultivate their crops. After a climbing to a height of about 1,500 metres, our guides asked us to join in a soccer match with some of the local villagers. It was the last thing we wanted after trekking 4 hours but turned out to be great craic. The mud pitch (with spectator stand!!!) was dug out from the side of a mountain and every time the ball went out of play 'mountain resuce' had to be called to retrieve the ball. It was great for the unfit (me!) for catching a breather.

Afterwards it was back to our lodgings to enjoy some local thai food, singing, dancing, rice whiskey and plenty of card games.

No real story to the next picture except that we had to get our picture taken with a Tuk Tuk driver so here it is. Tuk Tuk's for those who don't know are like taxi's except you get a free ticket to the Merries at the same time. Some experience!

Mr. Tuk Tuk, Me, Paddy

Off to do a thai cookery course tomorrow in Chang Mai. Looking forward to seeing Ireland playing Scotland aswell in O'Malleys Irish bar. Then its off to Lao for the next week or two. Talk soon,

Brian

PS. Jeanettes phone is working again

The Islands of Thailand Update

2008-02-12T07:43:00.000Z

Hello, both of us here writing this post -alls well here :)
So, we had planned to come to Thailand for a week or so and now its week 3 in Thailand!! We were well warned before we left that Thailand would be fab but didn't think we'd get this sucked in.

The last post was a quick overview, we were in Ko Lipe for 3 nights, the most southerly island in Thailand. Took the culturally scenic route to here via the 'dont go there zone' according to the government websites but sure 'twas grand, although it was hard to find a public bin, something about them expoding according to a vendor. We didn't see any other tourists there and the bus conductor (on a psycadellic bus) thanked us for visiting this section of the country, the reason why became obvious a few days later but after a noisy overnight train we were oblivious!!

Ko Lipe - view from our accomodation

Ko Lipe is lovely, really laid back vibe. Nice beaches, 6 euro hour long thai massages, nice food, we didn't do much on Lipe to tell the truth but relaxed after the hectic first few weeks in Malaysia. The most activity was when a longtail boat sank when the boatman was loading bricks into it!!

Then onto Bulone Lae island for 4 nights which was really really quiet, we were amongst about 50 other tourists, as you can see from the police station photo, not much happens here. We kayaked around the island, went for walks, swims, massages, read books on the balcony of our hut, etc. You get the drift!!

\Decided to move to a livelier spot - Ko Mook (Ko means island in Thai) which was gorgeous. It wasn't as busy as Lipe and more busy than Bulone so a good balance. Met some great people here who we celebrated Chinese New Year in fancy dress with in Mookies bar.

Chinese New Year with Paul, Susie, Jim and Brian the barman (aka Mr. Wong)

The main highlight at Mook is the Emerald Cave, a beach within a cliff that is accessed by swimming through a 80m cave - in parts in the pitch dark. We went with Paul and Susie (pirate and cowgirl in photos!!) before the crowds arrived one morning and it was fab. Thought our guide Yong was joking about swimming in with the seasnakes, turns out he wasn't!! but they aren't big enough to bite us - thank god!! The cave is fab, has a beach, trees etc and was where locals hid during WW2 and pirates hid loot in the good auld days of pirating.

Also went snorkelling on Ko Kradan that day, beautiful spot, where they have an underwater wedding ceremony every Valentines day with pink oxygen tanks etc. Unfortunately we heard about a young groom who took off his mask to kiss his bride and didn't survive a few years ago.

Ko Mook sunsets

Spent a week on Ko Mook and now are on the mainland in Krabi where we are planning our next few days with Eimear and Helen who arrive tomorrow.

Keep up the emails - its great to hear news from home (even if its about Ireland loosing in the rugby!!)

ps. My phone drowned in the Andaman Sea so didn't work for a week, it seems to like the mainland and is back working so if anyone sent me a text last week that i didn't reply to - sorry but i never got it, its with the fishes!!! J

The Islands of Thailand

2008-02-04T12:56:00.000Z

As you've guessed we are in Thailand at the moment. Just a quick note to update on our progress. After travelling up by train and bus through Southern Thailand from Malaysia, passing a lot of army check-points!!! , it was just like being back in Queens in Belfast. Apparently the muslims and the Thai government are in disagreement about something?? at the moment! Won't go into it here.

So first stop was Ko Lipeh, one of the furthest south of the beautiful Thai islands, where we ate like kings at the same restaraunt . Beautiful beaches, great food, pretty cheap, although the dutch tourist tell us not as cheap as last year!! After 3 nights we headed onto much quieter Ko Bulone where we had a 2km beach all to ourselves, almost!!

Now in Ko Mook, further north up the coast. Looking forward to visiting the famous Emerald Caves tomorrow.

Will update properly soon, with photos etc.

Taman Negara

2008-01-26T03:07:00.000Z

Another rainforest!!
Hi all, we're just leaving our third rainforest in 2 weeks, this time it is the national rainforest of penisular Malaysia, Taman Negara, which apparently is older than both the Congo and the Amazon rainforests.
We stayed in luxury here as a treat for Brian's birthday so had our own cabin overlooking the river and only one monkey tried to break in :) The package also included all you can eat breakfast and dinner buffets, the bags are stuffed with ahem leftovers as we have left the resort and will be living on bananas and rice for a few days to detox from the gluttony!!
Did a jungle trek, canopy walkway and a boat trip to go swim in some rapids on the local river, a natural jaccuzzi - lovely!!
This trip to the internet cafe is unplanned as we missed the bus to Jerantut where we are getting the train north. Now, I use the word 'we' there liberally as most people who know Brian probably know this is the first time in his life that he has ever missed a bus!!! And those who know me know its not my first time missing a bus :)
(post script - a few hours later, we waiting 5 hours for the nect bus and it left an hour early luckily with us on it so i think it was the bus's fault this morning, he he)

So our stint in Malaysia is almost up, heading to the islands in the south of Thailand for a few days. If the Perenthian islands are open we might pop there depends on the weather!!

Some final thoughts on Malaysia -

The people here are fab, really friendly, helpful and most speak English which is an added bonus.
However, the insects here are not! But learned a few curious bits of trivia.... A leech is male until it sucks blood, gets fat and sleeps for 5 months he then wakes up female, mmmm.... Brian is correcting me here saying that he turns female straight away I'm sticking to my version. A spider in a web is not poisonous because he has to catch his prey so no need to be scared of them, a spider lurking around a tree is another kettle of fish. And apparently mosquitos don't hang around sea water and if you ever are being chased by a heard of bees hop in a river they don't like water!!!! (our poor guides - they were showing me wild boar, otters, etc and i was asking about insects!!!)
Speaking of guides, our guide in Teman Negara, Roslan, was brill and works freelance and if you are ever here and need a guide we'll give you his number.

And ta da...... we have photos!!!!

Off to Thailand on the 11pm train.....

Caves, Bat dung and Taipusam

2008-01-23T14:33:00.001Z

Ok we've been missing in action the last few days so here's the update!

First of all, apologies on the photos front. I was uploading some there onto the PC and my camera battery just died so will have to wait a few more days unfortunately.

We visited a city called Kuching in Borneo where we were invited to both a Malaysian rugby match? and to the home of a Muslim family living in KL.

Unfortunately had to turn down both offers as time was limited. Eric, our host, took us to visit a Long House where one of the native tribes of Borneo still live!! We got to drink some "rice whiskey" with one of the local elders after eating dinner with him! Not bad stuff at all. God knows what was in the bottom of his bottle.

After our quick tour of Kuching we flew back to Miri and then onto Mulu National Park famous for its caves and bats. Our first days activities involved watching over 3 million bats exiting a cave all within 30 minutes, pretty cool if you are into bats!!

The next days we did a tour of the 4 show caves which includes the largest cave passage in the world. We also got to see a lot of bat sh1t. Gwano as the locals call it!!! Apperantly the deer love it out here!

On the third day we decided to try our hands at some adventure caving. This was the highlight of the trip to Mulu without a doubt. We spent two hours exploring Racer cave (named after the type of snake that calls it home!!), climbing over and squeezing through rock, and all in the near dark! This was great fun.

By the way Jeanette added considerably to her bite count in Mulu.

Arrived in Kuala Lumpur last night and had the pleasure of going out to the Batu caves this morning to watch the Hindu Taipusam ceremony unfold. Taipusan is a kind of pilgrimage for Hindu people from all over the world. They come to the Batu Caves, Kuala Lumpur on a yearly basis to celebrate their belief by offering up burdens to their gods (by carrying them up the 272 steps to the temple) and in doing so carrying out some pretty grotesque stuff to their bodies. I could go on about this but I think the pictures below say it all. Enjoy!

Heading north to Taman Negara national park tomorrow morning and after that onto the Thai islands hopefully.

Ok, talk soon,

Brian

The Jungle - orangutans and leeches!

2008-01-17T14:08:00.000Z

we have survived!! 4 days in the jungle :)
after a lazy day in KK wandering around the markets and having a celebratory bbq at the guesthouse with the owner lucy and other guests on the 13th anniversary of the guesthouse we headed for the jungle. A few hours by bus past Mt. Kinabulu (largest mountain in these parts) and seemingly endless miles of palm tree plantations we arrived at our jungle home for 3 nights.

(River Kinabatangan)

Here we went for river cruises, night walks in the jungle and jungle walks and despite all my leech protection i got bitten by 2 of them, even brought one home on my leg without knowing it and he was very fat with my blood. So now along with the mozzies, there are leeches in Borneo with my boodtype and Brian still has to be bitten by either!!!!

(me running from leeches and Brian fighting them off)

on the boat trips saw loads of monkeys -

On the second day's dusk cruise we came across a pair of pygmy elephants feeding by the river and we sat in the boat beside them for 45mins and man they can eat, took no notice of us and kept on chomping those leaves.

We thought we'd gotten lucky until the dawn cruise the next morning (Brian's bad influence meant i was up at 5.45am 3 mornings in a row and i know many of you are gasping at the shock of that!!) we saw a croc lurking about, then some monkeys in the trees a while later including the protected Probiscis (or promiscous monkeys as i keep calling them, turns out they are not the only promiscious things out here, more on that later) and then we saw 2 wild Orangutans. They were on opposite sides of the River Kinabatangan so we were extremely lucky to see two. After this we headed to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre for the afternoon feed. (Brian had chicken curry and i had an omelette, he he) Seriously, about 12Orangutans arrived for lunch and were highly entertaining with their mucking about, two of them got a bit more frisky than the others if you know what I mean ;) some photos to prove it. hopefully we'll get them up soon. The 4th night in the jungle was in a plusher venue at a local resort to spoil ourselves. Didn't take any photos of that fancy place though!

Now we are in Kuching in Sarawack the other Borneon state of Malayasia. We toyed with the idea of climbing Mt Kinabulu tomorrow but as the rain meant you couldn't see 10m ahead we went to the airport and got the first flight out. The accommodation hasitly booked in departures is a really nice guesthouse where the owners picked us up from the airport and have arranged a day of activities for us tomorrow.

Promise we will put up photos soon. This post is written by me (jeanette) but Brian is right beside me he says hi :)

My turn :)

2008-01-12T13:30:00.000Z

Happy New Year!!!! today we had chinese happy new year dinner (which is a bit confusing because thats a few weeks away yet!), we were in KL for Islamic New Year and I haven 't seen most of you since our new year so hope you all are in good form!

So far so good on the trip. The rain has finally stopped, not for long I think and I only have 6 (although they are huge) mosquito bites, oucharama, the mosqituos don't like Brian and haven't bitten him yet!! So I am trying all the remedies - inspect spray, vitamen B and gin and tonics - trying these remedies on myself and not Brian!!

I know this next paragraph will make those in lovely wet ireland seeth, we spent today on tropical islands, trekking through the jungle; saw a huge lizard there, then relaxing on the beach in the basking sun looking at all the other tropical islands till our speedboat picked us and Michelle from our hostel to go to the next island. Bliss!! Brian will upload photos soon to make ye even more jealous.

Yesterday, we went to a water village with Michelle and Kim, where wooden houses are built on stilts at the edge of the jungle on the water. The locals in the village we visited Penambawang, were lovely, we even played tabletennis in the floating community centre!!

All the locals are great here, Brian and Michelle both joined in on a tug of war on one of today's islands.

We're heading west of Kota Kinabulu tomorrow for jungle, mountain climbing (eekk!) and hopefully will spot some Orangatangs so probably won't be online to blog for a few days but take care and hope the rain stops soon and munster win!!!

Arrived in Malaysia

2008-01-10T09:19:00.000Z

Alright folks!

Finally arrived on Tuesday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, via Bangkok.

We flew with airasia.com from Bangkok to KL. They're basically the Ryanair/Southwest Airlines of South East Asia. Fell asleep on the flight, when I woke up an air steward had changed into the full Manchester United strip!!! and was pushing the food trolley up and down the aisle flogging Man U caps, scarves and jerseys. Capitalism is alive and well in SE Asia. Watch out Michael O'Leary!

We spent two days around KL visitng the Petronas Towers

and Chinatown where we met some interesting characters:

Our Friend Li!!

The weather has been mixed. About 30 deg C during the day, with normally at least one big rain fall during the day. Its very humid! That has been the pattern so far.

Just arrived in Borneo today (Kota Kinabalu), Thursday 10th Jan. We are planning a couple of days on the beach relaxing, exploring the interior (jungles, orangutans, monkeys etc) and then an attempt at Mount Kinabalu hopefuly (4000m +).

Brian

The Itinerary

2007-12-18T21:39:00.000Z

You've got to start with a plan, so here it is!

The next 9 months

Fly from Shannon Jan 7th 2008!

Then its:

Borneo (beaches, Orangutans, Mt Kinabalu, head hunters!) 9 - 21 Jan
Malaysia 21 - 31 Jan
Thailand 1 - 8 Feb
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos 9 Feb - 13 Mar
South West China 14 Mar - 17 April
Tibet 18 April - 2 May
Friendship Highway from Lhasa to Kathmandu
Nepal (anyone up for the Annapurna circuit?) 3 - 31 May
back to China!! 1 - 14 Jun
Mongolia (mutton and yurts) 15 Jun - 10 Jul
Trans Siberian from Ulan Bator to Vladivostock (Russia)
Ferry from Validvostock to Japan
Japan! 20 Jul - 15 Aug
Australia15 Aug - 15 Sep

and finally New Zealand (12 months) Mid/Late Sep 2008

and if there is any money left in the kitty after all that who knows!!!!

Brian