Seaweed and Sheep

After our friends Mike and Nancy went back to SF Rich and I rented a car to head up north on the South Island. We wanted to hike and visit the wine country. The areas of New Zealand that have only one main road are not the best for bicycle touring so we decided that a car was the way to go. And we wanted to hike. To get to many of the hikes you have to drive up dirt roads and park on or near private farms or ranches.



These majestic looking sheep were guardians at the trail head of a hike we did up to SawCut gorge. The trail is just a walk up the river, in the river, with an occasional scramble over bigger boulders. The gorge is beautiful and can only be walked through during low water times.



Rich went for a chilly swim au natural, I stayed on the river bank taking photos.



New Zealand is just lousy with great walks, hikes, and tramps of varying length, vistas, and weather. One particular favorite was along the shore of the Kaikoura Peninsula. If you walk the shore around low tide you can make it past all the bluffs at water level - you will be sharing the rocks with red beaked gulls and fur seals, both of which will feel threatened if you get too close. The gulls retaliate by dive bombing you, the fur seals retaliate by scaring the pants off you as what you thought was a rock barks and makes a dash for the water.



The varieties of seaweed along the walk were amazing,





And of course it was New Zealand so there were sheep on this walk as well.



The sign says it all, watch out for sheep everywhere.



We're in Australia now, with our bikes, and after five days in Melbourne we're heading off to Victoria's High Country and then to Sydney.

Push me, pull you.

Cycling in New Zealand has a been a lesson in love versus hate, or desire versus reality. My hatred of going fast downhill (or fear) is outweighed by my desire to coast as far as possible on the bike loaded with gear.



My fear of New Zealand drivers, including the very able and aptly named Sonic Shuttles (so named because at any moment they may actually break the sound barrier) has twice won over my hatred of cycling 70 km into a headwind with rain threatening at any moment.

(note on NZ drivers - they go fast. They don't like to move out of their lane, even if no cars are coming towards them in the easily visible and straight opposite lane. yes, even if it means buzzing a cyclist at 100kmh with less then 1 meter to spare.)

But, the love of cycling with friends and Rich definitely wins out over every hardship we've encountered so far. Yeah I know, boo hoo, poor us!





And the sheep viewing never gets old!



Or the kitty petting.



The dogs are all friendly.



And the beer is always cold.

Turning over the pedals in NZ

Boy am I tired. All I can say is that NZ sure has some hills. Or are those mountains? Our friends Mike and Nancy are here and we are all cycling on the South Island.



Today was an 80+km day with warm weather and uphill (not all the way but a lot!). My back hurt and Rich claims his ears hurt from hearing me complain about my back.

However, this is NZ so a fantastic glass of white wine made me feel much better.
It's great to be back on our bikes.

Hong Kong and Hello Kitty

This one is for you Cecily!



And lest you think that is a small little window display of Hello Kitty and her gay vague love interest, Darling Daniel, (Darling Daniel or Darling David - I can't remember) here is the duo with crowd added for scale.



And the poster from the subway. Apparently you could call and get Hello Kitty messages on your cell phone!



I haven't gone online to check - but it appears that Hello Kitty has been married off to this charming little kitty, Daniel. Come on, he does look kinda gay vague.



More on Hong Kong later, it is a wonderful city, (the public transit is the best in the world as far as I can tell) but I had to get these photos out to show what lofty thoughts I pursue on my year off.

The perfect vehicle

Before coming to Vietnam I already thought the bicycle was the perfect form of transportation. Suitable for all ages:





Now I am more convinced of this then ever. Bikes are a great way to meet people and chat with them:





They can carry much more of a load then most people think. Especially when the terrain is flat.









And no form of transport can match the sociability aspects of bikes. As you pedal along you see a friend. You can either ride along with them:



Or have them hop on:



Excuse the poor framing on some of these shots, most were taken by me while riding a bike. All the urban bike riding we do at home sure comes in handy when trying to negotiate a sea of bikes and scooters, and the occasional car or bus, one handed while taking photos. (You didn't read that Dad!)



That's why you mostly see the back of Rich in these photos. If he sees me riding one handed while taking photos he get a bit nervous. So I lurk behind him and take pics, and occasionally make him stop when we see something scenic.






Getting out on a bike is not only a great way to meet people and see things off the beaten track, but we've had some of our best food when out biking. You get tired and hungry and try places that you would never see otherwise. Or wouldn't be brave enough to try. And you realize that people are just people, and most are friendly and nice.

vietnam

As much as Rich and I don't like organized trips while traveling, we signed up for a Junk Boat trip on Ha Long bay. It is one of those "must dos" that most of the tourists to Vietnam take part in. We arrived at the cafe in Hanoi where the mini van would leave from, worrying about our fellow tour groupies - would we like them? Would they be lame? and immediately meet a lovely couple from Australia and thought, oh good, people we get along with. All of us were thrilled...up until the point we got put into different vans because they were doing two nights on a boat and we were one night on a boat and one in a hotel. Oh well. It was a brief, very brief friendship.

The dock at Ha Long City is littered with boats. The boats are double and quadruple parked. In order to get onto our boat we had climb across three other boats.



At this point I'm wondering what type of tourist hell we've agreed to for two nights and three days, but the reality was quite nice. Although there were dozens and dozens of boats, once we headed out into the bay, with its thousand or so islands, and the boats thinned out, the magic of Ha Long Bay appeared.



We spent one day kayaking which is a great way to really appreciate the enormity of the rocks jutting up out of the water. The water is clear and cool and there are lagoons totally enclosed by the rocks except at low tide when you can kayak through to the inner lagoon.



After lunch on the kayaking day we paddled to the floating village.





The village has 1,000 people and probably 3,000 dogs and a few pissed off cats. On the plus side of being a cat on a floating village - lots of fish. The negatives? Surrounded by water and dogs.



The village used to have over 20,000 people, but they lived a subsistence life, catching fish and burning wood from the islands. The government realized that the area was being damaged by the way of life and switched people to an aqua culture life. Now, the villagers farm dogfish and grouper in pens created from plastic drums lashed together with 3x4s. The dogs run along the boards like teenage gymnasts on the balance beam, and skitter to a stop at the edge to bark ferociously at the kayaks. We were waiting for a dog to jump in and swim after us, or to leap on the kayak but none did. I was in the rear of our double kayak and had control of the rudder so I kept us about six feet from the dogs, figuring they couldn't jump that far.

What started out seeming to be a group tourist trip from hell ended up being very nice.



There are more photos on the flickr site, just click on one of the photos to go the whole set on line.

Beach cottage in a box

After a total of about two weeks on the Islands of Thailand I feel confident in my ability to offer a product which will allow the masses to recreate that "beach cottage" feeling we got so effortlessly in our Bungalow on Koh Phi Phi.

Beach cottage in a box contents:

Three stands of fishing line strung with random shells and bits of coral to hang from the eaves.
Five to six geckos who will appear at eye level anywhere in your cottage at any time.



One bottle of salt water to spray on your curtains, your sheets, your clothing, and your spouse for that salty island breeze feeling.
Two bottles of sand to sprinkle in your bed and on your floor.




One powerful heater to re-create the feel of the relentless mid day sun beating down on your bungalow.
One tiny air conditioner to try and combat the fierce heat.

Take a look at the YouTube video of Rich on the beach to get the true feeling of the beach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GoeghcVfL8





Next: Vietnam.

Kennel Cough

A lot of good it did me not cuddling the pets at the Chatuchak Weekend market. Don't touch anything, I warned Rich, no matter how cute they are, all those puppies and kittens and baby squirrels. I know that my sister who is a vet would shake her head and intone the names of several diseases which a good portion of the critters would have. So, there was no petting, no picking up, no snuggling. And I got sick the very next day. Kennel Cough.




OK, so it's probably not kennel cough, but for a cold it really wiped me out.




Thankfully Bangkok has pretty good public transit, so we stuck to things along the Sky Train route for a few days. The sky train is Air Conditioned to a temp slightly above frigid, so the continual shock of going from hot to cold is probably not helping my kennel cough.




We visited the Jim Thompson House, a museum created from the home of a US born architect who helped to revitalize the Thai silk weaving industry in the 40s and 50s. His home was created from several traditional Thai village houses, transported and put back together with a few western touches. He vanished in the jungles of Malaysia in 1967.


It's a beautiful place to visit. http://www.jimthompsonhouse.com/



Also on the Sky Train routes are quite a few shopping malls.



Loaded with a variety of new and different shops.... and a bunch of the same old stuff with a new twist. Like Ronald making a Wai, the traditional Thai greeting. Rich could not be stopped from joining in.



Short post, still feeling a bit under the weather but the Kennel Cough is clearing up slowly. We've been so lucky in Bangkok to have friends to stay with. First it was Charlie and Lizzie, friends through my Sister-in-law, and now Kathy, a former co-worker of mine. It's been a great break to stay in a home again. And such fun high rises! Great views.

City LIfe

We left Laos via a boat trip up the Mekong River. It was a fancy pants boat, complete with lunch on board and a bar, and the trip took two days. The alternatives were the bare bones boats, which would have been fine, or the speedboats, for which you wear helmets and life vests and hope for the best. Apparently they are quite prone to flipping over and oh...killing their passengers. Whee!

Many of the villages along the river are accessible only by river, and what a river! This is the low water season so you can really get a good idea of how tricky this river is to navigate. The rocks reach up from the bottom of the river looking like giant teeth waiting to eat the bottom of a boat. The water runs brown like the Mighty Mississippi with a strong fast current and the banks on both side are about 10 to 15 meters below the trees, it gets that much higher during the wet season. The exposed sandy riverbanks are planted with crops near the villages, peanuts and sweet potatoes mostly.





We came back into Thailand and went first to Chiang Rai, where I fell in love with a hedgehog at the night market. I was persuaded that travel with a hedgehog would be difficult so I eased the pain of separation with much shopping for silly cute things that only a pre-teen girl would love. Thankfully, we have about five of those back in the US who will be getting packages from Bangkok so I'll be able to close my backpack again. From Chiang Rai we went up to the mountains, near the border with Burma, the tea growing region of Thailand. It was nice, but a bit dull, so we hightailed it to Chiang Mai, where we've been for six nights now.

What do we do when we get to a City? Go out to dinner, go to movies, ride around on bikes, shop, all the usual. But wait, I hear you say, why did you leave SF 'cause that's pretty much what you did there? Uh, yes... yes it is. We saw three Hollywood movies in five days. (Night at the Musuem, funny, American Haunting, stupid, and Holiday, sweet chick flick complete with crying SNAGS, sensitive new age guys.) The air conditioned shopping mall/ movie complex is a good place to be during the hot part of the day and the food court serves some of the best Thai food we've had, and definitely the best Pad Thai. I said to one of the owners of the first guesthouse we stayed at that we were going to a movie for the hot part of the day and he gave me a puzzled look, "Hot? It's not hot in January." It is if you're a weak blooded westerner.



A word on shopping in Thailand. Hello size extra-large. Most of the teeny tiny little women in the department store where I went to try and buy underwear (mine was holding together by mere threads after five months) would have had to shop in the children's section in the US. The poor saleswomen helping me finally found some that were XL and didn't look like big granny pants. I stocked up. The t-shirt I bought? Size XL. The Capri length sweats to bike in since my Capris are falling apart and are held up at the waist with a safety pin that keeps stabbing me? Size XL. And I've lost weight since we started traveling. Sheesh.

Apparently there is big bussiness in having suits made for you when in Thailand. Loads of shops offer 24 hour turn around. They do dresses too, but everything looked too much like something one would wear to a job, if one had a job, and it freaked me out. So instead I went to a little shop run by a brother sister team - he designs, she sews, and bought two dresses and a top (one size fits all thank you very much!) and then shocked Rich by actually having new clothes on when he got back from a bike ride.