Mirling Around the World

Fishing Villages in Lan Ha Bay

mirlingabroad — Sat, 17 Feb 2018 15:23:00 GMT

What is the most different type of lifestyle you can imagine? I'm guessing that many people reading this post have a home in a city, either go to school or to work from 9 to 5, and buy their food in a grocery store. I know that until January 2018, I certainly fit the bill. Sure, every now and then I bought food at a farmer's market and at one point had three part-time jobs with odd hours, but I'd call it a pretty typical way of life (at least in Canada). Even as a decently-travelled person, I had typical travel experiences: trips to Mexico or Cuba or the Dominican for 7-10 days, trips to Europe with family or backpacking with a friend, trips to various destinations in the USA.

This past month, my boyfriend and I have been working our way through Vietnam, and it must have been the most interesting travel of my life until this point. We have crossed mountains, clambered through caves and climbed waterfalls. We have risked our lives (or so I felt) crossing the busy roads of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and racing around the highlands on a motorbike. We've sat on tiny red plastic chairs drinking keg beer on the side of the road for ~20 cents CAD, had clothing and leather goods tailored for us in the old town of Hoi An, and we've even hung out in a bar called the Bomb Crater Bar (named for obvious reasons once you climb down into the place). Even so, one of the most interesting experiences came near the end of our time in Vietnam.

Cat Ba Island is a really cool spot by Ha Long Bay. You know the place: remnants of the world's once-largest mountains still jutting up out of the turquoise ocean, with stark stone walls and tangled jungle towering above the seascape. We were lucky enough to find an outdoor adventure tour company called Asia Outdoors that took us rock climbing and kayaking on and around the islands in Lan Ha Bay, (beside Ha Long Bay but with fewer tourists). The kayaking was beautiful and the rock climbing was fun, but for me, the most interesting part of this trip (and maybe the whole month?) was observing the fishing villages in Lan Ha Bay.

There are people living in permanent homes built on styrofoam rafts, forming semi-mobile villages in the water of Lan Ha Bay. They used to live in Ha Long Bay, but there was so much water traffic and tourism that they picked up and relocated to the intricately winding, calmer waters of Lan Ha Bay. Their homes are surrounded by repeating wooden squares approximately 2.5 m by 2.5 m containing nets of fish, and each home has two or three guard dogs that spend their lives running about these narrow wooden squares and on the rafts, barking at passing boats and at each other. The people farm fish and attract squid in the evenings by shining lamp light over their nets. They grow some small produce, and buy the bulk of their vegetables from a woman who drives a boat from the mainland. They hang their laundry from the rafts, play the radio echoing across the bay, and smile and wave pleasantly at the tourists riding by with mouths agape. It seems such a peaceful life out in the bay, although it must come with its hardships; no heating, it is very expensive for their children to go to school on the mainland, and apparently most of these people spending their lives on the water have never learned to swim.

In my 31 years of moderate travel experience, I have never seen anything to equal it; I look forward to the rest of this Asia Adventure to continue opening my eyes!

Tales from a Sleeper Bus

mirlingabroad — Sat, 3 Feb 2018 22:42:00 GMT

Riding the bus across Vietnam, there's a strange pattern, an ebb and flow. In my opinion, for travel to be worthwhile there needs to be enough time in a place to settle in, get to know the lay of the land, and have a couple of nights to get the sense of a city. We've been travelling in sets of 3-4 days through the country, each paying $47 (CAD) for an open bus ticket from the south to the north. With no prior set dates, these tickets will take us from Saigon --> Mui Ne --> Da Lat --> Nha Trang --> Hoi An --> Hue --> Hanoi, across the entire country (~1,600 km). What a deal!

I'd like to describe these 3-4 day long “travel sets”. Day one is taken up in part or in whole by time on the bus, finding your hostel without getting too much help from the local “easy rider” guys, and getting food to fill your belly. Even though you've spent hours reclining on a sleeper bus, somehow you still feel exhausted once you arrive.

Days 2/3 are the best – you've woken up where you will spend your day, and you get to head out and explore a new city! We often rent a motorbike and head out into the surrounding countryside to see sights less accessible by foot. If you've read my last blog, you know how I felt about this type of sightseeing in the mountains around Da Lat. To be fair, now that we are back out of the highlands, away from the cliffs and the careening trucks, I've found the motorbike much more enjoyable. It really is a wonderful feeling of independence to be able to take the bike wherever you want, whenever you want. Often on these second/third days, we seem to run into people who are travelling along the same route northwards, and end up making plans to see them in the next city. This adds a nice feeling of recognition and home to each new place, and we've swollen our little party of two to a party of eight! (Two Canadians, five Brits and one (lovely) local.)

Nearing the end of the second or third day, booking the next bus you experience a sense of winding down, or closing a chapter on the city. If you've made new friends travelling in a different direction, or even if you've found an incredible Banh Mi (a Vietnamese sandwich) shop that you've become loyal to, it can be sad parting ways. There's something disquieting about travelling a country that you may never see again and hopping so quickly from place to place. I suppose I'll adjust to this; we've only been travelling this way for two weeks, and prior to this trip, I've typically spent 7-10 days in the same place on holiday – a much different experience!

Day three/four is (you've guessed it) another travel day. There are usually three times a day that buses leave cities: if it is a day bus it will leave early in the morning or just after lunch, if it is a night bus it will leave around 7 pm. These days begin with a flurry of packing, showering, re-packing to have less bulk in your carry-on baggage, and checking out of your room. It's an odd rush compared to the timelessness of the other days (when you don't even really need a watch), but not too unpleasant if you give yourself enough time. Then you find yourself again on a bus. I happen to be on a sleeper bus right now as I type.

The buses are loud (constant honking), packed with people (6 rows of three across, double decker/bunkbed style), and your personal space is Vietnamese-sized. (How can I describe this .... one tourist attraction legitimately described needing to make spaces 20% larger to accommodate the “western-sized body” - I wasn't even mad). My recommendation is this: if you are travelling on a budget, if you are under 6 feet tall, if you can sleep anywhere and if you don't mind rude bus drivers, TAKE THE BUS!

Photos: Vietnam

mirlingabroad — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 18:07:00 GMT

Travel by Motorbike in Vietnam

mirlingabroad — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 18:03:00 GMT

I thought I was going to die today. Careening down the steep mountainside on the back of our rickety rented hostel motorbike, whipping around curve after curve of thin roadway hugging the cliffs, facing multiple moments of certain head-on destruction in the shape of a tour-bus-passing-a-transport-truck-going-round-a-curve, I thought I was going to die today.

Sterling and I are in Ðà Lat, the capital of Lâm Ðőng; a beautiful surprise of a city in the highlands of Vietnam. It was built as a resort centre by the French in the early 1900s, and the architecture really shows. It comes as a refreshing surprise compared with the heavy, thick smog of Saigon. We decided to rent a motorbike from our hostel and take it touring around the city to see the nearby attractions; this is a much cheaper way to see what's around without paying jacked up fees for tour groups. Little did I know that by accepting this plan, I was agreeing to approximately 45 minutes of fearing for my life on the hills.

For those who haven't experienced driving in Vietnam, there are no obvious rules. If you want to enter traffic, you pull out into the road without looking. If you want to turn left (across oncoming traffic), you trend towards the left and assume others will go around you. If you are driving a bus full of sleeping travellers on a mountainside and you want to pass another vehicle, you pass at breakneck pace going uphill coming up to a curve around the mountain. You are comfortable in the certainty that your honking will be enough to warn the vehicles smashing down the mountain of your approach. Oh, and don't worry: there are no blind-spots in Vietnam, so don't bother checking them. I'm actually certain that here, one navigates traffic by sound instead of sight. Constant honking seems to be the only way to know where to go and what is safe.

Leaving the hostel, we headed through town at one of the busiest times of day (lunch time). The bike felt flimsy even to my inexperienced legs, and it seemed to shudder and jump for no reason at all. It was narrow and also short, so the combination of Sterling in the front with me behind meant that the back of my bottom was almost hanging over the edge. With no backrest to speak of, the only thing keeping me from sliding off the seat was a combination of my squeezing thighs and a wee little handrail for my left hand (my right hand held my phone, navigating). The plan was to make our way to the Elephant Waterfall, have some lunch and then maybe continue on to see Pongour Waterfall, about 50 km out of the city.

At certain points during this first ride, I closed my eyes and left it to fate. Being the passenger instead of the driver, basically all you have is blind trust in the driver and in the system. I'm sure that there is more of a system in place than I can follow, because with all of our time watching traffic, we are yet to see an accident. I still couldn't help being acutely aware of my bare legs and of the very firm road surface. I was also unashamedly tearing up from fear (I'll admit it), even while entire families with young children passed by us on their motorbikes, laughing and chatting. We even saw a pair of local women, each absorbed in a cell phone, comfortably winding their way up the mountain to the city.

I will say this: there is something very exhilarating about this type of travel. The wind whipping through your hair, the freedom and the view from the bike really makes for an incredible experience. It is also less frightening the more that you do it. On the way back to the hostel I was happy enough on the seat with my phone in one hand and our GoPro in the other. And the money you save! Instead of paying $35+ dollars for our day, plus food, we paid $5 for the motorbike for the day, and about $1 each in entrance fees. For the budget-conscious tourist, this is certainly the way to go. Would I do it again? At the risk of contradicting everything I've just written... absolutely!

Sushi, Craft Beer and Hungover Hikes

mirlingabroad — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 23:23:00 GMT

Our first week away from home was an easy introduction to the backpacking year. We had friends and family put us up, take us out, and show us an incredible Canadian West Coast experience!

Vancouver has a great bus system. We were able to travel for several days, from the airport to my uncle's home, back and forth across town, and out to Port Moody for about $20 each – not shabby! We managed to find a craft brewery on Granville Island, bike around Stanley Park, and have two excellent (if very different) sushi experiences.

The first was with Sterling's friend Tunny and his girlfriend Carly at a modern, funky place called the General Public Sushi Lodge on Main street. This place had bright flashing art pieces hanging from the ceiling (including a massive ruby-red hand displaying a prominent middle finger), menus quoting The Shining and multiple televisions showing Zoolander with subtitles. It was awesome and I definitely recommend it.

I'd like to delve into the second sushi experience a little further. Uncle Mark and Aunt Lettie wanted us to have a real Vancouver sushi experience to compare with the sushi in Japan, so they took us to Miku Vancouver, a restaurant on the waterfront. Some of the standout dishes from this meal included the Kaiso Seaweed Salad (best I've ever had, and I love my seaweed salad), the Aburi Beef Carpaccio, and an absolutely gorgeous selection of sashimi (below center).

On the beef carpaccio plate, there was a sous-vide soft boiled organic hen's egg that I was nominated to eat whole (above right). Now, I'm no food critic, but I've got to try to describe eating this thing: it was dripping and wobbly on the spoon, and you had to eat it all in one go or you risked your shirt. It melted like butter with a silky smooth centre, as if instead of eating a regular bite of chocolate, you were eating a high quality truffle. Needless to say, if you order a meal with one of these babies, don't be afraid of the texture!

From Vancouver, we took the bus out to Port Moody to visit our friends Julie and Dom. What a beautiful city! Sterling and I don't have solid plans for our return to Canada from our trip, and I've got to say J + D did a good job enticing us out west with this stay: greenery, mountains, hikes all over the darn place and 4 breweries along a strip within walking distance from their home. (I can just see my mom wincing reading this – sorry Mom!)

It's hard to choose my favourite part of the visit, but I'm going to list the highlights:

part of Thursday night was spent in an outdoor hot tub wearing toques in the rain (this activity in January is incredible to me, an Ontarian)
Saturday evening we did a 4-stop walking brewery tour, which according to Dom is a first for them. I'm fairly certain it's a first for me as well. We had the best of intentions to try everything and rate our favourites, but splitting two different flights of four beers at four different breweries ends up with a hell of a lot of comparisons. (Quick math: Sterling and I each tasted 32 beers that night. Yikes.) That evening's fun-tivity leads me to...
Sunday's Hungover Hike! Buntzen Lake is the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. Multiple times on this 10 km hike in the hills around the lake, I mentionned that I would happily move to the lake and live as a hermit. (Sorry Mom!) Yes, I am excitable and yes, I am prone to exaggerate.... but don't take me for my word, look at the pictures below. I can't seem to enlarge the pictures in this story, so if you'd really like to look at them, check them out in the Vancouver photo section!

That about sums up the highlights of our Vancouver trip – I can't say enough for our hosts, who went above and beyond to show us a great time!

Now onto the next ... Saigon in Vietnam!

Photos: Vancouver: biking, hiking, breweries and sushi

mirlingabroad — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 07:59:00 GMT

A week in Vancouver and Port Moody spent with incredible hosts, eating, drinking and having a great west coast experience.

The Beginning, or "WHAT are you doing?!"

mirlingabroad — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 07:50:00 GMT

Here I am, sitting in a Starbucks on Granville Street in Vancouver, trying to spend the last couple of dollars on Sterling's Starbucks card. I'm staring at a blank computer screen, getting up the courage to write my first blog. I'm a perfectionist, and because of this I can be a serious procrastinator. How do you start a big, ambitious job (like writing a cool, follow-worthy blog once a week for a year) when you know that you will obsess over perfection? The answer is, just start throwing words on a page and see where it takes you.

Now let me back up a bit. I'm Miriam, a physiotherapist from Ontario, Canada. My boyfriend Sterling and I have decided to take up “early retirement in our thirties” in the form of quitting our jobs, shoving everything we'll need for travelling multiple climates into two backpacks (each), and leaving home for Asia. Ideally we hope to spend one year finding adventure, challenging ourselves, and experiencing different cultures and ways of life. It's important to do something that scares you, right?

So while our friends have been getting married, buying homes, and having children, we've been sticking it out and slowly saving money to jet off on our Grand Adventure. We have no mortgage, no children, and no pets – when better?

It's been interesting to explain what we have been planning to friends, family, co-workers, and clients. Most people have been truly interested and excited for us (and dare I say, a little jealous?). There have been a few who have had questions: “WHAT are you doing?!”, “What about buying a house?”, “Why not Europe, why Asia???”; but luckily these people have been in the minority.

Why are we doing this? Why make the decision to be purposefully homeless? (Literally right now the only thing on my key chain is a bottle opener).

The real answer is, we've felt stuck in our lives and in our jobs and we've been hungry for change. A good friend recently described an exchange between Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, and Doug Tompkins, founder of North Face during the movie “180° South”:

“The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life. It's so easy to make it complex.... What is important is to lead an examined life.” (Chouinard)

“In response to people who say you can't go back. Well, what happens when you get to the cliff? Do you take one step forward or do you make a 180º turn and take... one step forward? Which way are you going? Which is progress?” (Tompkins)

“The solution might be to turn around and take a forward step.” (Chouinard)

Regarding big choices in life and regret, Sterling has a clear, simple view on the subject. He likes to take the perspective of looking back at life from his deathbed, and think “am I going to look back on my life and regret making this choice, or am I going to regret not taking this opportunity? Having some regret is unavoidable, but if you always try to be aware and actively involved in your life choices, regret can be minimized”.

So here's to minimizing regret- cheers and with love,

Miriam

Photos: Profile Photo

mirlingabroad — Tue, 26 Dec 2017 03:18:00 GMT