week 14 (and whatever's left)

god it's cold in this country. this is the last post of this leg of the travel blog.. i hope it has in some way encouraged people to travel.

one last round of pictures is up from australia. thanks for reading.


Dec 3rd.

up early to switch guesthouses, i find something suitable and settle in. next is the famed bangkok chatuchak market. i barely had to navigate as the crowd simply led me straight to it. once inside, navigation became increasingly difficult. narrow passageways link the blocks of booths together in a rough grid pattern. traffic is stifling and footwork is key unless you're happy to push and barge your way to the next place. the variety of products is like nothing i've ever seen. art, furniture, trinkets, souvenirs, clothes, leather, food, even a huge pet section.

though i was lost by the end, i must have walked through at least two thirds of the place in 4 hours. content with my purchases, though they weren't much, i leave sweating and dragging my feet. it was heaven to lay back and put up my feet back at the room.


Dec 4th.

slept in and skipped breakfast. the first thing i ingest is a sip of heineken waiting for lunch to arrive. i head to the thai royal palace and pay a gouging admission fee. drifted around for and hour snapping photos of whatever captured my attention. the place was packed with tourists because the king's birthday was the next day. it all became tiresome and a riotous tuk tuk ride through traffic in bangkok took me back to the guesthouse.

a meal of spicy basil chicken cleared my sinuses and i relaxed back in my room watching the asean games.


Dec 5th.

i fly out of bankok without too much trouble and am in singapore by 3pm. danielle was still in hanoi at this morning after losing her passport. it's a toss up as to whether she'll actually make it and if she misses her flight from singapore it would cost her another fortune to make her way back missing a chain of flights. when i check in they ask if we're travelling together and they confirm that she is in fact somewhere at the singapore airport. hours later at the gate to our flight, we reunite and laugh out a sigh of relief. her story is one for the books, but it's really not mine to tell here.


Dec 6th.

served breakfast at 4:30 local time on the plane... or 1:30am as we felt it. i can't get to sleep and will greet melbourne with dry red eyes and a sick look on my face. while i fly on ahead to the sunshine coast, danielle is retrieving her belongings stowed in melbourne and we'll me later today in noosa.

with a heavy load on my back, i walk out of the small airport outside of noosa to the local bus stop. a few ginger beers and book shopping tides me over until danielle arrives with her friend G to pick me up.

at g's house, it was straight into the beer and we headed out for a late pizza dinner that was exquisite following our asian pizza experiences. later we hit a dirty dance bar that had a decent live band and celebrated our return to "western" culture.


Dec 7th.

i sleep in till about noon with the alcohol in my blood adding to the jetlag of a 4 hour time zone transition. danielle headed out with the crew from breakfast and surfing. we chill out, cook up some good food and crash at a reasonable hour.


Dec 8th.

a leisurely approach to the day, we head to the national park beach with g in the afternoon and i try surfing for the first time. i only managed to catch a few waves and made one poor attempt to stand up. the surf itself is incredible. long and straight, 3 feet high, curling over from left to right into shore. 50 or so surfers bobbing and paddling amongst the breaks in the perfect blue water.

those first few waves i catch surprise me with their power and speed, and it's enough to concentrate just on holding the board.


Dec 9th.

in no rush, we head to another suburb of noosa renowned for its weekend market. danielle bought a new handkerchief, but we were in shock over the prices and my wallet stayed hidden. when we ere ready to leave, the bus decided not to come as it was listed and danielle stuck out her thumb for a while before a kind local woman picked us up and took us back to noosaville. grabbed some groceries and booze and danielle unwittingly attempts to quench her thirst with a carton of mango/orange concentrate...


Dec 10th.

without so much as a moment to change my shirt, i was awake and getting a ride into town. had a wild breakfast of mexican eggs (avec jalepenos) and quesadilla. we checked out the surf and went for a walk in the national park to check out martin's "ladder tree". along the way there we stopped at a busy beach and did some crazy bodysurfing in big waves. by the end i was tired and lazy and the waves were sending me tumbling all over. try as i might to shake it out, the water in my ears never came out of my ears... but it poured freely from my nose.


Dec 11th.

making our way back to the airport for our flight to sydney, we're dropped off by the local bus 2km from the terminal and we hike in with 50kg between the two of us. i've never looked so fondly at a luggage cart. in sydney we check in and head to the harbour to see the opera house and bridge in the rain. a "cheap" meal of singapore noodles holds me over till morning.


Dec 12th.

AC34 leaves sydney international 20 minutes late as we wait for all passengers to make it through security check and re-check. come lunch time danielle and i are into the booze. at this point we'll be in canada in 12 hours. i watch for the sunset from our midsection seat but as the plane flies east, away from the sun at 900km/h the sky goes black in an instant.

week thirteen

sunshine coast is living up to its name.. it couldn't be more beautiful and breezy on the central east coast of australia.


Nov 26th.

day trip to a cuc phuong national park. a leg-numbing 45km moto ride takes us to the park with beautiful views of the rural landscape and agriculture. the attraction to the park was a primate rescue centre which houses displaced or orphaned langurs and gibbons. we weren't allowed to linger too long, but it as mezmorizing to watch the amazing creatures swing skillfully through the air back and forth in their cages.

from the park we moved on to the ancient vietnam capitol from around 1000 years ago named hoa lu. the area had many industrious children who gave us impromtu tours through the ruins despite speaking little english.


Nov 27th.

slept in till 6:35am but had to catch a bus to halong city which we were assured would leave no later than 7am. arriving by moto with minutes to spare but had a surprisingly difficult to explain that we did not in fact want to go to hanoi.

in halong bay, without a map.. we bump into a guesthouse owner who hooks us up with a room and an immediate boat tour of the bay which is reknowned for its rock formations. $35US not only gets both passage on a 6 hour voyage, but as we later discovered, charters the entire 40 seat boat just for the two of us.

we forgot books and cards, so the ride gave danielle and i a chance to catch up on a few of the finer details in each others' lives. the bay was spectacular and it was dark when we finally returned to land to wander around town.


Nov 28th.

on to hanoi via a bumpy back-of-the-bus ride that takes us into rush hour in the city. a couple of motos get us to our seedy hostel and a we take a walk to get to know our area of town.


Nov 29th.

an extensive search for more tailored goods yeilds nothing, and instead we find a $10 bottle of bacardi that was tempting enough to purchase. hanoi is a smaller copy of ho chi minh city in its wild moto traffic and intricate back alleys packed with action.


Nov 30th.

visited the temple of literature dedicated to confucianism, one of the first universities in vietnam. the ho chi minh museum turned out to be one of the most interesting of all southeast asia. the elaborate display style and symbolism used were very impressive... an unexpected treat.


Dec 1st.

headed to a free-trade craft store. danielle buys an interesting piece for over 1million dong and we pick up a few other trinkets.

caught a performance of water puppetry which was intensely interesting at the beginning, but i lost the ability to keep my eyes open at some point.

we browse a lively street market but nothing catches my eye -- we head back to the guesthouse to tap the rum.


Dec 2nd.

******** ******.

it takes 3 hours of wandering around the streets in bangkok before settling in a cheap room, and one of very few available. it's musty and uncomfortable, but it does the job for the night. of course on the first night back in thailand i went straight back into the pad thai and devoured it at an inhuman speed.

week twelve

more pics from vietnam up.

Nov 19th.

the vietnamese national history museum was closed until we'd planned to be on the road.. so we skipped over to the war remnants museum (formerly the museum of american atrocities). a massive collection of vietnam war photos immersed us in the horror of combat. an equally large collection of photos showed the effects of agent orange, napalm and other substances that affected innumerable civilians.


Nov 20th.

joined a tour to see two sites in the area around saigon. the first was a caodai temple (more like a compound) that houses a young religion/cult founded in the 1920s. the cult appointed the long deceased french poet victor hugo as "spiritual chief of the foreign missions of caodaism".

the second site was the infamous cu chi tunnels which were used by communist guerillas to fight the americans and south vietnamese. the tunnels were extremely effective in sneak attacks but were bombed to smitherenes after they caused enough casualties... parts of the 200km network have been reconstructed and we ventured in. tiny crawlspace, difficult to breath and really dirty.


Nov 21st.

day trip to the mekong delta. we see a boring floating market as well as the popping of rice which then forms the main ingredient in some home-style rice crispy squares. free snacks preceded a fried fish lunch which we're sure must have been from the dirty mekong.

arriving back in saigon, we're ready to move on and our overnight train to danang awaits.


Nov 22nd.

watched 4 hours of landscape go by as we arrive in danang in the afternoon. the train food is nasty so we relish our banana crisps bought at the mekong delta. a quick ride takes us to hoi an, a small town known for not much other than a beach and custom tailoring. if you tossed a stone half heartedly in any direction, you'd hit 3 different tailoring shops. they line the streets and the workers sometimes try to rope you in to their stores from across the street.. it's unfathomable.


Nov 23rd.

and so we oblige. i get a blue shirt done up and we head to the beach on rented bikes while they work on our stuff. the sea air is great.. the water is gorgeous and we get some sun. danielle has a chuckle with one of the old ladies selling snacks about her "ooh la la" painted toes...


Nov 24th.

a cab takes us to the marble mountains near danang on our way to the train station.

the mountains are aptly named as huge marble sculptures line the streets around the site. one after another, literally hundreds of marble carving souvenir shops are selling seemingly the exact same designs at "foreigner" prices.

the hike up the mountain is aided by a stone staircase completed entirely without a level if any measurement at all. and it shows. at the top, there are caves cut into the mountains that display the natural, colourful rock. after climbing a bit higher, we're afforded an incredible view of the south china sea and the never-ending beach streching across the horizon with the city of danang far below.

at the train station, the only available train is at 5:40 and its sleeper section was mostly sold out. we would be on the top bunks in a 3-level, 6-person cabin. no problem. and then we saw it. 6 feet in the air -- lateral with the fan on the celing, 2 high steps, a handle and a deft ass swing up.

the other 4 bunks were occupied by 7 people including 3 loud children. fighting back both laughter and tears, we climb in, and crawl into position, with me completely unable to sit up. leaning back on one elbow to eat our dinner of a cheese baguette, we surveyed our surroundings more intently with silent dread.

the bunks were a steel frame filled with a wooden slab and a thin straw thatched mat to hold that old crooked spine in shape. the fan provided no relief from the sweat that took us, but it did kill hundreds of bugs in its blades that were congregating in the flourescent light positioned at our midriffs.

if i hadn't been coughing due to a flu bug, rather, healthy like danielle, i may have slept for half of the 15-hour trip. as it stood, i have no idea how much sleep i had. i tossed and turned and it never provided any relief from the previous arrangement.

i stumbled of the train at ninh binh, more sick, exhausted and now, sore.


Nov 25th.

after checking in, we jump on the back of our umpteenth moto of the trip and headed out on a tour of the area around ninh binh. we were dropped off at a row boat that took us down a waterway set between huge rock bluffs and it made for a very peaceful afternoon.

the town children were amazingly friendly when they saw us riding by on the bikes. some waved from the roadside, and others yelled hello from the fields or their doorways.