Cambodia and Laos - so hot right now

Sua s'dei (Cambodian) or Sabqai-dii (Lao)!

April is the hottest month in Cambodia and Laos with temperatures in the mid forties and humidity at 90 - 95%. While we like hot temperatures normally, this was ridiculous. We braved these conditions to focus on the tragic history of Cambodia in Phnom Penh including the S21 torture prison and the Killing Fields, the amazing Angkor temples in Siem Reap and to explore the rugged terrain and waterways of Laos.



HAPPY NEW YEAR - That's right, we have just celebrated New Year again, as Cambodia and Laos celebrate their New Year during April 14 - 17. We think that this begs the question as to how many New Years you can celebrate in one year. Like New Zealand, binge drinking by the locals hits an all time high, the difference being the whole country also engages in one massive water fight, with locals driving down the main streets in Utes filled with people with water guns and massive buckets of water. Participation is compulsory and yes, we did get drenched.



SCRUMPTIOUS SIEM REAP - $1 - $2 mains, $0.50 handles of beer and a road called Pub Street; need we say more? Oh yeah, there were also these things known as Angkor temples that were built just a few years ago. Yet again, we took the bicyle option to explore some of the temples. The locals were amazed we wanted to cycle and tried to discourage us. They may have had a point given the temperature, heat exhaustion and the sweat pouring off us. Needless to say, we eventually replaced the bikes for a tuk tuk with a chilly bin full of cold water for the further afield temples.



CHARTERED FLIGHT - Our international flight from Siem Reap to Vientianne, Laos felt like a chartered flight, as we were only joined by 3 other people. This was very amusing when the flight attendant insisted on completing the safety announcements from the back of the plane over the microphone, despite the fact that we were all sitting together.

DEATH BY BUS - In Laos we had 4 bus trips totalling 26 hours of travel. Based on this, you would have thought that we had covered thousands of kilometres but thanks to highways which resemble Akatarawa's Road in Wellington and on occasions a stage from the World Rally Championships, we only covered 600kms. Bus scams are common all over Asia but Laos seems to be leading the charge. For example, for every journey we took the vehicle resembled nothing like the one in the picture we were shown as we purchased the ticket. Without fail the driver would stop several kms away from our final destination, where our only option was a tuk tuk with grossly inflated pricing. Further, an express buses in Laos actually means a bus that stops every 1 - 2 hours at an isolated restaurant where the driver receives commission from your purchases and you are charged to use the toilet. Needless to say, Rodney's well renowned patience for regular stops and slow travel was significantly tested.



WANT OPIUM WITH THAT? Despite the large warnings on arrival in Laos that you would receive the death penalty for importing drugs, it is common practice for mini marts and restaurants to try to upsell your order with offers of opium tea, Valium tablets and happy pizza (marijuana pizza). Who needs Fly Buys?



CHILDHOOD DREAMS - For anyone who dreamed as a child of living in a tree house and swinging from trees, get yourself to Laos for the Gibbon Experience. While we enjoyed our other treks in Laos, our highlight was spending 3 days trekking, zipping between trees on over forty 200 - 600 metre zip lines and sleeping in tree houses 70 - 80 metres above the forest canopy. We heard Gibbons but weren't lucky enough to see them (potentially due to Kirsty's "woop woops" down the zip line) but we did see lots of leaches, both of us falling victim to a leach bite. We had 3 great Brits on our group but one American/German who amongst many other faux paus asked us what the differences were between cricket and croquet. At this stage, we thought that we were going to have to hold back our highly offended English friends from doing her harm.



We are currently uploading our photos to flickr and hope to also upload video footage of ziplining too. Go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/rodneykirsty/sets.

We are currently in Chiang Mai Thailand and are uncertain as to our next move due to the current political situation. It is fair to say that all our red and yellow clothing has been put to the bottom of our packs until further notice.

Lots of Love, Rodney and Kirsty.

Back when we were in Nam

Good Morning Vietnam or simply Xin Chao as the locals would say. Our tour of Nam took us to Hanoi, Halong Bay, Sapa, Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and Mui Ne Beach. Our tour had many ups and downs and here is a selection.

HITTING THE JACKPOT: On arriving in Vietnam, we withdrew the maximum amount of Vietnamese Dong from a nearby ATM. To our surprise, we discovered that we were instant millionaires - 20 times over in fact! Unfortunately, 12,800 Dong only equates to NZ$1 so the smallest purchases seem expensive.

CULINARY TREATS: If there is a positive consequence of the French colonial occupation of Vietnam, it has to be the food (never mind the French architecture Becs). With the past 2 months being dominated by Asian orientated food, we were happy to gauge ourselves on baguettes and pastries full of sugary goodness. We also happily got stuck into Vietnamese favourites of rice-paper spring rolls, pho (rice noodle soup with chicken or beef), anything with seafood and of course the occasional Bia Hoi (local beer).



MOTO MANIA: After crossing the road in India and China, we thought we had crossing the road in Asia sorted. But crossing the road in Nam is simply perilous thanks to literally millions of scooters and motorcycles all referred to as motos by the locals. Once we got to a quieter location, we decided "when in Rome" and hired a moto for ourselves.



CHEAP CUTS: After 10 weeks since a haircut and with an afro barely controlled by a hat, Vietnam signaled the time for Rodney's first non-NZ haircut. Despite no staff speaking English, the result was surprisingly good and the two hair washes and accompanying head massages were nice bonuses. Best of all, it only cost NZ$8.



"WHAT RUDDER?": We experienced the islands rising from Halong Bay's famous emerald waters less passively than most. After a night on our boat ("junk"), we boarded a double sea kayak and paddled around the Bay. Growing up in NZ meant that we had regular exposure to many outdoor pursuits, including kayaking. It would seem that this isn't so in other countries, as we discovered following a very brief "safety" lesson. Our guide helpfully instructed us that the person sitting in the rear of the kayak would be able to steer, but declined to explain how to release the kayak skirt in the event of an emergency, or that before you can actually steer the kayak with the pedals, you firstly need to unhinge the rudder. We were a long way into the distance with the guide before we turned around and saw the 2 American couples on our trip practically going around in circles. When we paddled back to them to see if we could help, we were met with "what rudder?" followed by "oh, that thing". Needless to say, the Vietnamese don't seem to place too much emphasis on safety messages.





MAN/WOMAN vs WILD: Our main mission for visiting Sapa was to climb Vietnam's highest peak, Mt Fansipan. Little did we know, that the climb would only be one aspect of the challenge. The trekking information on Fansipan should be amended as follows:

It is a 25km return walk to the summit, which the fit can trek in 2 days but you will be told that this is impossible because they want you to pay for an extra day. You only have a 2% chance of seeing more than 2 metres in front of you when you get to the top. Guides are compulsory by government order but they may want regular rest, may struggle to keep up and may not actually make it to the summit. "Tents will be provided" actually means tarpaulin (with holes) thrown together with bamboo and / or tin in a campsite which best resembles the Happy Valley rubbish dump. You will see many examples of local wildlife, including monster rats running around below your bamboo bed. The food will be of varying standards; the chicken will be ok as it will be carried up the mountain and killed shortly before dinner but the bread will be so stale that your guide won't even eat it.

Upon learning the above factors once it was too late (i.e. we were already up the mountain) we told our guide we were doing it in 2 days not 3. In particular, we wanted to avoid another sleepless night of being too scared to go to the bathroom (rats being nocturnal). However, this did provide Rodney with a Man vs Wild moment when he set up his headlight to shine over us during the night in the hope that it would scare the rats away. Subsequent Google research has confirmed this as correct.




24 HOURS FROM NAM: To assure you all that not every day is another day in paradise, here is an outline of our worst day since we left NZ. Our departure from Sapa to HCMC on the night train to Hanoi began innocently enough, but culminated in a series of misfortunes. On arrival at Hanoi airport after minimal sleep we discovered that JetStar had no record of us despite us paying for our ticket. After much frustration, we were forced to buy new much more expensive tickets. On arriving at HCMC airport we followed all advice on how to get a reputable taxi but ended up with a nutter who tried to drive us round in circles to get a higher fare. We eventually told the driver he was ripping us off, that we weren't paying the whole fare and to stop and let us out. Once on the street he became very abusive and aggressive, trying to grab both of us while being held back by friendly locals. Given our flight and taxi woes, we were late arriving to our hostel and they had on sold our room. To finish things off Kirsty then started suffering from gastro issues. What a day in Nam.

TINY TUNNELS: With Kirsty being a bit of a history nerd, Rodney has accompanied her to many Vietnam War (or as commonly referred to here, "The American War") sites with the Cu Chi tunnels being the highlight. We were among a mere handful that managed to fit in the secret Viet Cong entrances - it would seem that the average soldier was smaller than the average westerner (American soldier). Following our adventure through the tunnels, we were shown a video made by the Vietnamese shortly after the war. Given the number of Americans on our trip, we were surprised by some of the content of the video, specially the emphasis on the heroic Viet Cong who were awarded "the American Hero Killer award".



You will note from the blog post below that Kirsty lost her grandmother on 4 April. Our first bit of down time since leaving NZ was therefore well timed at Mui Ne Beach. We are leaving for Cambodia tomorrow so have updated Flickr with our Nam photos for those of you who are interested. Hope you and your families are all safe and well, take care.

Farewell Nana Berry

Sadly at 8.45am on Sunday 4 April Margaret Berry (Kirsty's Nana) passed away in Tauranga Hospital holding the hand of Mick, her husband of over 60 years.

Before our departure Margaret told us that we were not to come home in the event of her passing. Therefore once we found out about Margaret's passing, we drafted the message below for Kirsty's dad to read out at the funeral on behalf of ourselves and Kirsty's brothers Adam and Tim. The message read as follows:

Unfortunately the 4 of us are all currently overseas at the moment and Nana, forever being organised, efficient and sensible, made it known to us at various times that we were not to return from overseas in the event of her passing. While this is difficult to respect in such a time as this, that is exactly what we must do.

Nana was many things to many people, to us over the years she really was just Nana. Nana was a very much loved figure usually referred to in reference to Grandad and usually as one word - "NanaandGrandad". Nana, for us, can be remembered for many things including and most certainly not limited to:

Nana's love of cricket, whether it be listening to it on the wireless in the car parked at Pilot Bay or watching on the television to get the full benefit of the hairstyles of the Indian cricket players. While we never watched cricket on TV with Nana, we did go to a lot of Northern Districts games at Blake park.

Nana's recognition when we were teenagers growing up in Tauranga that anything surfie was cool. Her visits to the surfshops around the Mount to buy us birthday presents were probably legendary. She became a well known figure in these shops, with the assistants turning the loud music off for the duration of her visit.

Nana's ego boosting comments. These were plentiful and often along the lines of, "That skirt looks fantastic on you, you look just like a model." This type of comment would be backed up by a comment to those in the vicinity along the lines of, "well, she's looking lovely isn't she??? Don't you think that she is looking lovely? "

Similarly, Nana's love of fashion and her own self - presentation. In particular, Nana's eye for what does and does not work on other women. While she was often right, the volume of Nana's comments were perhaps not always appreciated by the particular fashion offender in question. Not that Nana was too worried.

Being given Werther's Originals every weekend and tinned Cavendish and Harvey sweets when we were good or at Christmas. Of course, this was not including the not so secret supply of 'crisps' and chocolate eclairs in the pantry, together with lemonade and a mandatory straw.

Nana practised sport, music and sewing with us growing up. None of us learnt the piano properly but our thudding of Nana's piano was always tolerated; we think.

Her family imposed love of pig paraphernalia. Somehow, Nana tolerated somewhat bemusedly our various jokey pig presents over the years. Perhaps not so funny for someone allergic to pork.

Nana's love of a good gossipy conversation. She was always a willing participant in a good old yarn.

Nana's love of the Mount, its beaches, ports and walking tracks. Nana loved drinking a coffee brought from home in a thermos while the big ships came in.

Finally, Nana's unfailing love for the city of her birth, Liverpool. It really is true that in her life, the song "you'll never walk alone" was very apt.

Grandad, our love and thoughts are with you in particular at this time. Nana was very much treasured to us and we will miss her deeply.