Donna's travels

Packed and ready to go...

ickis — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:54:00 GMT

OK, so I've packed up way too much stuff (they tempted me with a huge baggage allowance) and I'm pretty much ready to go. We're driving to Sydney tomorrow morning and staying the night there before I fly out on Saturday morning.

Since so many people have asked me to email and keep them updated I figured I'd do another journal. I might even manage some photos this time since I won't be stuck with slow internet cafes.

Sabah

ickis — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Right then. I've forgotten whether I said anything about the elephants yet. If not - put simply, it was awesome :) We got to wash them and feed them and generally stand around gawking. Some people got elephant kisses (I chose to video them and not get involved) and everyone should go there. http://www.elephantnaturefoundation.org/

I went to Bangkok the next day and got into the spirit of Songkran (Thai New Year) by standing outside the hostel soaking everyone who went past. Some of the ladies who worked at the hostel provided us with a hose and buckets and they and their kids joined in the fun. The most fun was soaking tuk tuk drivers - everyone knows they deserve it ;)

Then I flew to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia and met up with Mum. She had a day of sightseeing while I was on planes. The next day we started out Open Water Diver course and we just finished it today. We haven't really done much else because it's pretty much an all day thing. My ears will never be the same, but it was worth it - we saw two green turtles swimming right in front of us! One of them actually swam right through our group in front of me :)

Tomorrow we're going to go white water rafting and then meet up with our Intrepid group in the morning.

I still haven't put up any more photos, but if you want some really good photos of most of the places I've been check these out: http://flickr.com/photos/wrrrbat They're from a guy who was in my group from Bangkok to Hanoi and actually knows how to take a good photo.

Now it's time to go out and have a celebratory dinner with mum - we both passed our dive courses and I passed my PhD :)

Back in Thailand

ickis — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:48:00 GMT

Yay. The internet actually works here :)

Sorry I haven't been writing much lately, but internet in Laos was really slow and annoying.

Since I last posted...

Vang Vieng was just as Stephen described - I think he'd love the place. Some people we talked to had been there for a month or more and I reckon he'd be happy doing that. The tubing was awesome - floating down the river is a great way to stay cool and you stop every 25-50m to go to a bar. I didn't drink and nor did most of our group (ok, I was given a small glass of beer for being brave enough to jump off a very high flying fox into the river) but we had a lot of fun with the "games" (flying foxes and swings). The next day we hired bikes and rode out to a cave and lagoon. It was a pretty long ride but the lagoon was awesome and very much worth it. The cave was good too but since it was late and we didn't have a guide we didn't go too far inside. It was silly enough climbing the near vertical rocks and mud to get to the entrance in the rain, we didn't need to get lost inside as well.

Next we went to Luang Prabang and did some shopping at the markets and other such things. I went on a tuk tuk ride out to see some small villages and saw how they make knives and other metal things, lao lao (horrible tasting, really strong alcoholic drink made from rice), silk weaving and other such things. We also climbed up to the temple on the hill to watch the sun set but it was cloudy so it was a bit disappointing.

We then went on the 2 day boat ride to Huay Xai, which turned out not to be anywhere near as bad as we expected because we got a private boat with comfy seats - yay for tour groups! :) We spent most of the time either sleeping or playing cards and our group leader taught me how to make crochet anklets with bells on.

I then left the group and went on the Gibbon Experience which was excellent. I'm still tired and sore, but it was worth it. The flying foxes basically link the ridges so that you don't have to walk down into the valleys and back up so they're pretty long and high. The tree houses were good, but the food was awful (pretty poor sticky rice and salty mushy vegetables). On the way back we got fried rice at a small restaurant type place on the side of the highway - I've never seen a table of people eat it so fast! We didn't see any gibbons but we did hear them and saw some brown monkeys. I don't know what type of monkeys because all the guide could tell us was "big monkeys!" (his English went little further than "left", "right, and "you zip now"). Yesterday morning on our way out we got up early and it was still foggy. It was rather pretty, but unfortunately the fog meant that the brakes don't work on the "zip lines" so I ran into the tree at the end twice. The first time the roller bounced back and hit me between the eyes so I have a bruise (but you can't see it luckily) and a sore head. The day before I was too busy trying to video a zip and hit a small bush/tree/bamboo thing (who knows? I wasn't looking) and scratched and bruised my leg. It hurt a bit, but I got an amusing video out of it :)

I'm now in Chiang Mai and it's Thai New Year so everywhere I go I get splashed with water (which is nice because it's bloody hot). I go to the Elephant place tomorrow and then fly to Bangkok the day after.

Laos

ickis — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:21:00 GMT

I'm in Vientiane at the moment and we go to Vang Vieng tomorrow. Our bus trip from Vietnam yesterday was extremely long. We started at 7am (it was supposed to be 6:30am but we were a bit slow) and at about 5:30pm with half an hour to go the bus ran out of fuel. I guess something like that had to happen some time - at least it wasn't in the middle of the mountains or something. I don't know why it happened - we'd stopped at a petrol station only about an hour before. They were going to get another bus to come out and get us but we were also near a small town so the driver walked there and brought some petrol back so in the end we didn't have to wait too long. It was extremely hot and there wasn't much shade, but at least it wasn't the middle of the day.

Our last night in Vietnam was spent in Vinh, which is a rather large town but not one that many tourists go to so it's rather lacking in restaurants. We had the worst meal of the trip there. Mine wasn't quite as bad as the spam pho in Hoi An (I'm not sure if I mentioned that before), but it was also very expensive so that pushes it into first place for bad food.

In case I didn't mentioned the spam pho before... We had an overnight train ride (no sleep), a long day followed by a 'beach party' (very little sleep), then another long day and a very rocky overnight train ride (no sleep again) and then when we go to Hoi An we couldn't check in to the hotel. The leader decided to take us for breakfast at a nice place he knows... only it was closed so we went somewhere else. Pho is the traditional breakfast food of Vietnam and is basically noodle soup with herbs and meat. Since it was too hard for us to all order seperately we all had the same thing - pork pho. Only the pork turned out to be spam and the vegetables etc were unidentifiable and the soup itself was pretty horrible. It was already ridiculously hot for so early in the morning (about 7am) and we really didn't want hot soup, let alone disgusting spam soup. Then when we finished picking over the soup we had our orientation walk - follow the leader through the stupidly hot sun while trying to stay awake. It wasn't fun.

Photos

ickis — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:47:00 GMT

I've put a few photos up on flickr. It takes way too long to upload them to put the whole lot up though.

Here is the set.

They are:

Sun rise over Angkor Wat.

Lunch at our guide's friend's house in Cambodia.

The bamboo bridge.

The backyard, bed and house for the homestay in Cambodia.

My mosquito bitten feet from Sihanoukville.

(It was raining and I didn't realise the repellent had washed off my feet until it was too late.)

2 down, 3 to go

ickis — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:38:00 GMT

Tonight is our second "final group dinner". The first time we only lost the leader, but this time we lose 3 members of the group. 1 other girl went home the day before yesterday because she ran out of money. We get 3 new people though, so that will be interesting.

I didn't particularly like Hue. The motorbike ride was fun (though the stops along the way were pretty boring) and we got a decent lunch at a nunnary too. We just got back from Halong Bay this afternoon. It was quite pretty, but the weather was pretty bad so we couldn't swim. We went kyacking this morning though, which was nice. I think the rainy weather might have been better for that because we didn't get sun burnt or anything.

We're off to Vinh tomorrow, then we cross the border into Laos and have a 12 or so hour bus ride to Vientane. I think I'll buy some cards or something before we leave Hanoi.

I've been shopping like a girl...

ickis — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:23:00 GMT

We just got to Hue after spending 3 nights in Hoi An. I've had 2 pairs of shoes made (black ankle high boots and green flat shoes), a plain black suit (which I'll probably never wear, but I look terribly grown up in it) and a light blue silk shirt that goes with the suit. I posted them home this morning so hopefully they'll show up soon (I still have the green shoes with me though because they weren't ready yet when I went to the post office).

We also did a pretty decent cooking class (at a much classier looking place than the one grant put up a photo of :P), went on a bike ride in the surrounding area and looked at the old houses and stuff in the town. But mostly we just shopped.

We're about to go out to a Royal Banquet. Apparently we get to dress up like royalty, eat like a king (whatever that means), taste the "special" wine and have music played for us. Then we go on the motor bike ride tomorrow. Grant warned me the ride would be very dirty - it's raining right now so I expect it'll be very muddy.

More Vietnam

ickis — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:20:00 GMT

So then we went on an overnight train to Hoi An, where I am now. We got to here about 6am but our rooms won't be ready until 11ish. So we've had a walking tour around the town and we're all in desperate need of a shower and a sleep. I couldn't sleep properly on the train again so I'm pretty damn tired right now.

I've also been a little sick since somewhere in Cambodia and decided that since it hadn't gone away I should see a doctor. It cost me a reasonable amount (but still less than it would at home) but the doctor I saw was quite good and spoke very good English. He said I had giardia and E. coli probably from bad hygiene (not surprising considering the water you have to wash your hands with in Cambodia) and gave me some drugs to make me better. That was yesterday afternoon and I feel better already.

We stay here in Hoi An for 3 nights (yay for staying still!) and we're going to do a cooking class tonight. We're also all planning on seeing about some tailored clothes.

I sent the cane basket and a couple of other things home from HCMC the other day so they should get there soon. If I get any clothes made I'll also send those home. I'm off to find some food now - we had noodles for breakfast and I just couldn't eat it (too damn hot for hot food and their version of 'pork' was actually spam) so I'm pretty hungry. Bye!

I am still alive... I just got sick of shitty internet places

ickis — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:10:00 GMT

It seems I haven't written anything since we left Phnom Penh. I'm now in Hoi An. We spent a few days in Ho Chi Minh City and it was nice to just stay in one place for a few days (3 nights). We didn't really do a huge amount while we were there, but we did go out to see the Cu Chi tunnels. I have a rather nice bruise on my knee from crawling through them. You can also pay to shoot a rather big gun if you want to but I just watched. It did bring up a question I have about war though - how the hell does anyone shoot those things multiple times and not go deaf?

After HCMC we went on the overnight train to Nha Trang and did another snorkelling trip. The water is much cooler there than it was in Sihanoukville since it's further north, but it was also a lot clearer. Our snorkelling trip ended up turning into people just jumping off the roof of the boat. It was about 3m above the water and one girl decided she wanted to dive but chickened out too late and belly flopped so badly that she has massive bruises on her thighs. On the same boat trip we walked through a small island village and had lunch there, then went and fell asleep on the beach. I didn't sleep at all on the train so I was really really tired by then.

We then had one night in Nha Trang and instead of going to bed early like we all felt like, we went out to the Sailing Club which had extremely cheap drinks... Quite a number of people from the group had money stolen out of their wallets (but the wallets, cards etc returned) and the guide was more upset than anyone else because that had never happened to his groups before. He got the number plate of one of the people's scooters and reported it to the police, but their style of investigation was to call the owner and ask them to come to the station... do you think they showed up? I didn't have anything stolen (the only thing I've lost so far is half a bottle of water).

Cambodia

ickis — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:27:00 GMT

Today is basically our last day in Cambodia. We go to the genocide museum and the killing fields this afternoon and then drive to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow morning.
We just spent the morning at the "Russian" market in Phnom Penh and it was bloody hot.
I'm currently trying to get my photos backed up to CD. I tried to upload a few so you could see them but the internet connection here keeps dropping out and pages don't finish loading so it's a pain in the butt. I also tried to reply to your emails but I have no idea if they went through.

The homestay was very interesting. There were cows in the backyard and we had very simple beds with mosquito nets. We played cards and it rained a lot. The food was served away from the houses where we stayed and was simple but nice. We played volley ball while we waited for the food and then remembered that we weren't going to get to shower until the evening of the next day after a long bus ride... oops.

Then we went to the beach at Sihanoukville. That was nice. We went snorkelling and everyone except me and one other aussie got really burnt. Silly poms just don't get it... although, in defence of my room-mate she constantly covered herself in 30+ sun screen and still got badly burnt. Oh well. It rained a lot and on one night we walked through the rain to get dinner and the mozzie repellent got washed off. Then we sat on the balcony all evening and forgot about reoding the repllent so we all got very badly bitten. My feet look like I have chicken pox. We've all learnt that tiger balm is awesome on mozzie bites though :)

I have to go now or I'll miss the bus to go out to see the killing fields etc...
I hope all is going well. Bye for now!

Cambodia so far

ickis — Thu, 6 Mar 2008 15:44:00 GMT

I've now been to Angkor Wat and enjoyed very yummy Cambodian food. We also went to an orphanage, swam in an ancient man-made resevoir (although I didn't swim), saw the floating village at Tonle Sap and saw a silk farm. I got given a really nice cane basket at the orphanage but I'm not sure it will get home in one piece. At the floating village we were constantly attacked by small children yelling "one dollar" at us over and over and over.

Yesterday we went on a nice bike ride at Kampong Chan which included riding over a bamboo bridge about 200m long (you would've loved it, mum... motorbikes over taking you on it and all!) and we stopped in at an English school and got put on the spot to teach the class. So we told them about where we live and someone drew a kangaroo for them. While on the ride the children just yelled "hello" at us over and over. It was a nice change from being asked for money constantly.

Right now we're in Phnom Phen and have 2 hours to kill in a shopping mall while we wait for our bus to take us to the homestay. On the bus ride this morning we stopped at a road side rest stop to get food and were attacked by small children selling fruit for "one million dollars!". I think the idea was to make us think it was cute rather than annoying. I didn't buy any fruit because I strangely wasn't hungry even though I'd only had a small bread roll for breakfast. They were also selling fried spiders - I didn't buy those either.

I'm off to find some lunch now. Tata!

One more thing about today

ickis — Sat, 1 Mar 2008 19:09:00 GMT

I was a little worried before that Intrepid had stuffed up my booking even more because I had lost faith in the whole system after the hotel issues and there was no notice on the board for my trip (but a number for other trips). There was also a Malaysia trip that had my name on the list... only first names, so it could've been someone else and I told myself that.

When I checked just before it turned out that it was someone else. The notice is now up for my group and I'm on the list. I have another 3 hours to waste until we meet this evening. I'll go wander around the streets a bit and see what I can find. :)

Baipai cooking school

ickis — Sat, 1 Mar 2008 19:03:00 GMT

This morning I went to the Baipai cooking school and learnt four thai recipes. We did a topping for rice crackers with pork and prawn in a yummy sauce, pomelo salad, musaman curry and stir-fried chicken with basil.

The class was really well done. There was a chef who spoke some English and an assistant who translated. They demostrated first and let us taste what they made, then we had a go ourselves and sat down to eat what we'd made. All of the food tasted great and they took a lot of photos (and so did I) which they'll email to me later. They also gave us all one photo of ourselves in a magnet photo frame and the recipes for each thing we made.

I'll certainly have to cook some of them when I get back. The pomelo salad was really tasty. It was just pieces of the fruit in lime juice but with deep fried shallots, crushed dried prawns and a few other things like that. I think the curry was my favourite. :)

Siriraj hospital

ickis — Sat, 1 Mar 2008 18:54:00 GMT

So where did I go when I went out yesterday afternoon?

I walked down to the river and got on a ferry to go across to Siriraj hospital. I'm rather glad that I did some research beforehand and knew to get the orange flag ferry because there is no signage at all.

There is a museum at the hospital that is split into 6 parts. It's mainly anatomy and forensics stuff, but also a new exhibit on the 2006 tsumnami and some parasitology stuff. The exibits were really interesting. Lots of deformed babies, bones and the like. They also have several full naturally mummified bodies (including murders etc) and lots of photos of different types of wounds and the bones from people who had those types of wounds. The museum is mostly set up for medical students, but a lot of other people go there too. Because it's set up mainly for self-learning by medical students there isn't much in the way of explanation about things, which was a bit disappointing for me - I like to know the stories.

In the anatomy part they had quite a number of full bodies, including a the full nervous system and full arterial system disected from two adults. Those were rather amazing from the point of view of actually managing to do that and keep it in one piece. There was also some weird stuff like where they have the bones of the middle ear there is also a full, but tiny (maybe 5cm diameter) skull for no apparent reason. That skull was rather freaky jsut because it was so small. There was also another skull that looked way too big to be normal.

Grant - you'll just have to go there. You're not allowed to take photos and my camera was playing up anyway. That was another potential disaster (I didn't have a very good day yesterday), but it turned out that it's my battery charger that's stuffed not the camera. I've bought some disposable batteries and I'll see about finding a new charger at some point.

2nd time lucky

ickis — Sat, 1 Mar 2008 18:48:00 GMT

I tried to put this bit up yesterday too, but my internet time ran out.

So anyway, I think I was up to checking in to the hotel.

That should also be reasonably easy, yes? Well no, I booked through Intrepid and the hotel denied having a booking for me. Luckily the Intrepid office is in the hotel so I talked to them and waited while they discussed it with the hotel and eventually it turned out that I had a room.

Then I went back later to make sure that I would have the same room tonight and they denied having a booking for me for tonight... so I went back and asked the Intrepid people and they said that my group might be going to a different hotel and they'd leave me a message. So I went out for the afternoon and hoped it'd all work out... when I got back they said that I could stay in the same room but that I would be sharing with someone else from my group. Good enough for me. The other person has now checked in (their stuff is in the room) but I haven't met them.

Proving Murphy's law

ickis — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:37:00 GMT

Ok, not _quite_ everything has gone wrong that could have gone wrong, but I'm getting pretty close. I'm rather hoping that I'm just getting the problems out of the way at the start and things will improve from here.

So here are my tasks so far:

Fly Canberra to Sydney. Sounds simple, done it enough times before, what could possibly go wrong? Bad weather in Sydney, all flights very badly delayed. And I'm supposed to be on the only VirginBlue flight... there's no earlier choice to change to. If I stick with this one they say I'll leave Canberra 10min after I was supposed to arrive in Sydney. And there's a good possibility it could be even later since the plane is still in the air on the way to Sydney. Luckily for me I have a nice mother with a credit card! So $160 later I'm on a Qantas flight. One that due to being delayed is leaving an hour late, but it's only 15min later than I was going to be leaving originally.

Get from domestic terminal to international terminal in Sydney. Also sounds pretty simple - you just get the shuttle bus, right? Well no, it turns out that if you fly in on Qantas but fly out on something else you can't use the Qantas shuttle and the other shuttle goes from the other domestic terminal. It took me about half an hour of asking random staff members where to go before I realised that all they had to say in the first place was "go to the other side of that carpark". Blah. So I get to the bus stop with 10min to spare before the last bus. Phew. If I'd missed that I would have had to line up for a taxi (or push in, I suppose). So I got the shuttle over to the international terminal, checked in and got to my gate just before boarding was scheduled to begin. Yay! Something worked. I thought all would be fine...

Nearly time to go...

ickis — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:53:00 GMT

I've finally handed in my thesis and done my seminar, so now I'm free to go :)

I've also packed my bag and nearly finished sorting out my list of things to do before I go. I still need to call the bank and decide whether to take a jumper, but other than that I'm pretty well set.

Yay!

Introduction

ickis — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:52:00 GMT

I will be using this journal to let you all know what I'm up to while I'm away on my post-thesis trip. Hopefully I'll be able to update it reasonably regularly and won't bore you all to death.

Please leave comments so I know people are reading this - if I don't get any comments I'll stop posting because I'll assume no one's interested.

If you want to contact me by email please use firstname.lastname at iinet dot net dot au, if you can't figure that out then I probably don't want an email from you :P