More Chiang Mai Fun

It's now Monday and we have had lots more fun in Chaing Mai. On Saturday, we got the bus to the top of Doi Suthep, the mountain overlooking the city, in order to visit the temple at the top. Getting the bus was a tricky proposition and it took us a while to find the "bus stop". Once on board the truck that was to take us to the top, we realised that we'd have to wait until the driver had filled his vehicle with passengers. After an hour or so, a group of four novice monks joined us for the journey.

The temple was very beautiful and I will try to post some pictures at some point.

On the way out of the temple, we were collared by a lady selling "tapestries", which were rather nice. We ended up being ripped off massively, paying 800 Baht (the equivalent of £16) for a couple of pictures. The worst part came when other vendors of similar pictures noticed that we had just paid over the odds for these pictures and wouldn't leave us alone. Through this process, we discovered that the correct price was 100 Baht, a quarter the price that we had paid. When one lady pursued us into our bus and begged us to buy a picture from her for 100 Baht, we tried to explain we would have loved to have done so but that she was five minutes too late. Eventually, she left, uttering what we were pretty sure were swear words.

On Sunday, we visited the Sunday market in Chiang Mai's main street. This was an excellent opportunity to practise our bartering skills (which are still not that great) and also to sample some excellent Thai food. This we did with relish. My favourite was a kind of sausage-dumpling; a long tube made of rice flour with pork inside. While eating dinner, we were cornered by a guy offering foot massages, who seemed perfectly happy for me to eat my dinner while being massaged.

Today, I had my first proper Thai massage. This was a painful and yet strangely satisfying experience. A bloke spent half and hour massaging my back so hard that it was excruciatingly painful at times. After that, he spent the next half hour twisting my arms, legs and fingers into slightly unnatural positions, standing on me and periodically hitting my muscles. I wouldn't describe it as having been an enjoyable experience at the time but afterwards I was rather chilled out, albeit sore and bruised. Hannah went for the slightly less intense foot massage.

We're now in a cafe, having a quick drink and looking forward to tonight's entertainment: a Muay Thai boxing match. Wish us luck!

Week in Chiang Mai

We arrived in Chiang Mai on a plane from Bangkok on Saturday evening and checked into what was meant to be interim accomodation in SK House, a guesthouse at the north-eastern corner of the old town. Hannah was feeling extremely ill when we arrived so we took it easy for the first few days until she felt a bit better.

On Tuesday, we went on a one-day Thai cooking course, where we learned to cook such delights as tom ka gai (chicken soup with coconut milk - awesome) and green curry (also awesome). I was very pleased with how this went; we each managed to cook five dishes over the course of the day, all of which tasted reasonably authentic and most of which tasted good. I'm going to attempt to cook some Thai dishes when we return to the UK, although I can't see it going as well without constant supervision from an expert teacher.

On Wednesday, we explored the city a little more, visiting Wat Phra Sing, one of the larger temples in Chiang Mai. Thailand's Theravada religion is everywhere, especially in Chiang Mai, where every street seems to have multiple beautiful temples on it and where monks can be seen on the streets in their distinctive orange robes. We witnessed the monks in Wat Phra Singh drawing beautiful works of art, with reference to the artwork on the walls of one of the temple buildings. I'm hoping to visit another temple on Saturday for "Monk Chat" to ask the monks about their religion.

That evening, alas, I came down with a rather bad case of traveller's diarrhoea. This rather cussed our plans for Thursday and Friday. Luckily, I seem to be getting over it now so we hope to take a bus to the top of Doi Suthep tomorrow. This is a large hill overlooking the city, with a famous temple at the top.

I'll try to post some photos at some point. Until then, adios.

Sickness in Bangkok

Well, that didn't take long. 24 hours after arriving in Bangkok and I'm being sick. I don't know whether to blame the awesome chicken and coconut soup that I had for dinner or the surprisingly strong Thai beer that I washed it down with. As a result of the above, we haven't managed to do much today. Tomorrow, we hope to figure out Bangkok's public transportation system well enough to get across town to satisfy our dual objectives of meeting Katrina and buying train tickets to Chiang Mai. For now, we are enjoying another warm evening sipping Coke Zero and, in my case, enjoying a lovely red curry.

Arriving in Bangkok

We have now arrived in Bangkok after a month of not blogging much. I have a tonne of blog posts in draft which will probably get published at some point.

We caught a Tiger Airways flight from Singapore to Bangkok yesterday, which was an interesting experience. A large group from China found themselves separated from each other. Those members of the group further back in the queue attempted to join their friends by pushing ahead of other passengers in the queue, causing angry exchanges with both the other passengers and checkin staff. Matters were eventually resolved when the checkin staff threatened to either close the checkin desk or call the cops. After that, the flight was pretty uneventful.

Arriving at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport, we made it through immigration after a wait of an hour or two and got in a taxi. Unfortunately, the taxi driver spoke as little English as we spoke Thai but, after a phone call to the hotel, he figured out where we were going and we set off at breakneck pace down the motorway. It was at this point thatwe realised that the taxi driver was a bit of a maniac, swerving between lanes or straddling two, depending on what he felt would be quickest. We made it to our hotel in Banglamphu in one piece and paid our fare, rounded up to the nearest hundred baht, in crisp 100 baht notes. Before I could consult my phrasebook for the Thai for "keep the change, mate", the taxi driver had already sped off. What a mindreader!

New Zealand to Singapore

My previous experience of air travel had been that one went through security before getting on a plane. This seemed a very sensible measure, given the need to ensure the safety of the aircraft. This trip has introduced me to the thrills of going through security after getting off a plane. On the way from London to Melbourne, our plane refuelled in Hong Kong. All the passengers were therefore herded off the plane, through security (who confiscated any dangerous items such as the bottles of water that had just been taken off the plane) and then back onto it.

The same thing happened during our trip from Auckland to Singapore, via Melbourne. Disembarking from the first plane, our trip to the transfer lounge had an element of farce about it. The captain led the passengers down a featureless corridor with a locked door at the end. Hannah likened it to the depiction of pergatory in an episode of South Park. After the captain had an argument with security over the intercom, we were finally allowed through the door, all so that we could go through security before being allowed into the transit area. I was left feeling slightly miffed by this experience because they confiscated my bottle of water.

The transit area at Melbourne Airport doesn't come close to the awesomeness of Singapore Airport's transfer lounge. Nice though it was to be "back" in Melbourne, we couldn't wait to get going again, on the way to Singapore. Luckily, our plane soon arrived:



We boarded the plane, sans water bottle, and were soon underway, heading for Singapore.

Auckland Part 2

On Tuesday, we woke up early and left our very last campsite. The rental company were expecting their Spaceship van back later that day so we sped south, arriving our hostel, The Oaklands Lodge in the Mount Eden district of Auckland, arriving just after 2pm. The reception turned out to be closed so we were unable to check in. Reluctantly, we left the non-valuable parts of our luggage in the hallway and made our last journey in our Spaceship, handing it back in plenty of time and returning to the hostel to check in.



We returned to the hostel and immediately discovered that Hannah's phone had gone missing. A quick call to the phone revealed that it had just been found under the driver's seat in our van, necessitating a trip back to the depot the next day. We combined this with a spot of sightseeing. Auckland is a nice city and, despite being much smaller (and having much worse public transport) than the likes of Sydney and Melbourne, is rather large compared to anywhere else in New Zealand.

While exploring the city, we were rather pleasantly surprised to find the presumed inspiration for New Zealand's most successful soap opera:



One of the main attractions in Auckland is the Sky Tower, the southern hemisphere's tallest building. We considered paying a fortune to go up to the top but decided against it because we were staying right next to Mount Eden, a volcanic cone of similar height from which views of the city can be seen. On Wednesday evening, I left Hannah in the hostel and climbed to the top. It quickly became apparent that this is indeed a volcanic cone, as I found the crater:



I would have loved to have explored the crater but the sign persuaded me not to:



From the top, there were views of the other volcanic domes that are scattered around the city:





The harbour bridge could be seen in the distance:



...as could the tall buildings of the CBD:



Our time in Auckland came to an end rather too quickly. We donated what was left of our food to the free food shelf in the hostel and headed to the airport to catch a plane to Melbourne, the first leg of our journey to Singapore and then Thailand.

Dolphins in the Bay Of Islands

On Saturday, we visited the lovely seaside town of Paihia. Here, we booked a dolphin-watching trip in the bay.

Early on Sunday morning, we joined our hosts on the wharf and set off in a big catermaran, searching for dolphins. After a few false alarms, dolphins were finally sighted. I did my best to take pictures:



As if that ace picture wasn't enough, here is another one:



Here is a picture of a dolphin being much more friendly with another boat than with ours.



As it turned out, those were the last pictures that I took with my camera before it broke; every picture I take now comes out overexposed and rubbish.

I had been hoping for the opportunity to jump into the water and snorkel with the dolphins. As usual, New Zealand's changeable weather cussed these plans; the sea was far too choppy and we were forced to watch from on-board the boat.

The Bay of Islands was nice but we were running out of time and had to leave. We jumped in the van and headed north on what was left of State Highway 1, aiming to reach Cape Reinga by the end of the day.

Auckland Part 1

On Thursday, after leaving Hot Water Beach, we headed for Auckland. We had a shopping list of things to buy for our trip to Thailand. We camped for the night in a place called Manukau near the airport, an experience which was unremarkable except for two things.

Firstly, the campsite placed us in a site next to the recycle bins which seemed to already be occupied by a seemingly abandoned van.

Secondly, when I went to take a shower, I noticed that the shower cubicles had no privacy, being next to open (and uncloseable) windows. At least I was able to keep an eye on the van while taking a shower.

On Friday, we popped into Auckland and visited a few outdoors-ey shops, stocking up on mosquito coils and the like. Then, we returned to the van, payed a small fortune in parking fees and headed north on the motorway, aiming to reach The Bay Of Islands that evening.

Taupo

On Friday, we arrived in Taupo and checked into out luxurious and spacious cabin, ready to celebrate the arrival of 2011 in style. We were certainly glad to be out of our increasingly claustrophic van.

We had been planning to go into town, where we were told we would find a free concert. Rather annoyingly, we never made it; falling asleep for a short kip, we were awoken a few hours later by the New Year fireworks. Annoyed at having been woken from my slumber, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

On New Year's day, we decided that we had better make the most of Taupo so we drove to Hot Water Beach, an area of the lakefront where geothermal springs belch out hot water into the lake. I went for a quick swim and discovered a number of things.

Firstly, the lake is actually pretty cold. There were a few patches where the lake bed was slightly warm and one rather hot stream flowing into the lake a little further down which had already been monopolised by a group of kids. Other than that, it was a struggle to stay warm.

Secondly, we were sharing the lake with the local ducks and swans. I found feeding the ducks to be a lot more fun than swimming with them:



The swans round here were black and looked rather fearsome:



Here is a picture of a family of ducks that like to say quack:



After we'd had our fill of lake+ducks fun, we headed into the town for lunch. It was nice enough, in a "heavily touristed" way. We discovered one shop which, I'm pretty certain, was being slightly economical with the truth:



Now, I don't know about you, but I take "World Champtions" to be predicated on winning the world cup, which the All Blacks haven't done for, ooh, 23 years. Surely they meant to say "All Blacks: Champions Of The World (1987)".

Pelorous Bridge

On Wednesday night, we camped at the DOC campsite at Pelorous Bridge in the mountains between Picton and Nelson. This was a "serviced" campsite and, as such, had the greatest range of facilities of any of the DOC campsites we had stayed at so far. Warm showers? Gas hob for cooking? We were impressed.

It also had great views of the river which was still swollen after the recent rain. Here is the view from our van:



We arrived early enough to go out and explore the area a bit too. We were advised to check out the swing bridge over the nearby river Rai:



I was able to tempt Hannah to cross this bridge, from which can be seen the confluence of the Rai and the Pelorous in the distance:



We also climbed on the rocks by the Pelorous River. As you can see, these rocks are particularly geological:



Our hosts at the campsite also recommended walking to a nearby waterfall where glow worms can be found. We duly did this and found our path blocked by a stream gushing with the water of the recent rains. Hannah was unable to cross but I made it to the other side and found where I thought the glow worms ought to be. I'm not sure if the worms were actually glowing at the time, mind, since the sun had yet to go down completely.



The waterfall itself was pretty beautiful:



DOC campsites never cease to amaze me. The are the cheapest campsites available and are also almost always sited in the most wonderful locations.

Fox Glacier

We spent Friday night in a campsite near Haast, the rain hammering down on our puny little campervan from dusk til dawn. I was woken by Hannah's distressed cries; she had just discovered that her trousers had fallen out of the van when she went to the toilet during the night and were now lying in a muddy puddle.

We sheltered from the rain in the kitchen, finding time to chat to a Kiwi couple who, it turned out, had worked at the same place as Hannah in Lymington during the 90s. Finally, we plucked up the courage to high tail it out of there. We headed for the most southerly part of the west coast that can be reached by road (apart from Milford Sound): Jackson Bay.





Unfortunately, Jackson Bay was a bit rubbish in the rain and we only spent a few minutes there before the sandflies chased us back to the van. It's a shame that the weather was so terrible because I bet that there would have been some lovely views of the mountains on a sunny day.



Next, we headed up the coast to the Fox Glacier which might or might not have been named after a brand of sweets. We decided to visit the glacier ourselves, rather than paying a fortune to take part in a guided tour. The torrential rain again cussed our plans:



Still, we could see some of the glacier beyond the safety barriers and it was an awesome sight.



The cliffs at the side of the valley were impressive too. Notice how the strata in the rock are nearly vertical, which is indicative of some kind of geological process having folded the rock.



One result of the recent rainfall was that, downstream from the glacier, the Fox River was a raging torrent of water and ice:



On our way back down the valley, we sighted a "historic bridge". This was built many years ago and was used by visitors to access the glacier back when the glacier extended a little further down the valley.



Hannah didn't fancy crossing the bridge for some reason so I crossed it alone. It was actually pretty scary with the river below in full flow:



Sadly, we didn't have time to stick around any longer and we headed off to the DOC campsite where Hannah attempted to dry her trousers out on our Bear Grylls style washing line. It was a shame to have to leave so soon. I would have loved to get a closer look at the Fox Glacier or its slightly more famous neighbour the Franz Joseph Glacier.

Mount Cook

On Thursday, we made a quick dash up from Wanaka to visit Mount Cook, New Zealand's tallest mountain. Eventually arriving at Mount Cook Village, we were as close to the mountain as we could get by car. Mount Cook could be seen in the far distance.



A glacier (I forget which one) was easily visible above where we stopped.



We decided to pop in to the Edmund Hillary Centre, dedicated to the legendary Sir Edmund, a local Kiwi hero who led the first expedition to conquer Everest.



Interesting though the Everest stuff was, I was intrigued to learn that Hillary had also been a legendary explorer of the Antarctic. In 1958 he led the first team to reach the South Pole since Scott in 1912. It was on the snowfields around Mount Cook that the team did much of the training for their expedition.

The centre had some tractors that saw use in the Antarctic.





Upon seeing them, I remembered my dad's Antarctic stories and wondered what would happen if one of them fell down a crevasse...



As evening was drawing in, we made camp in the nearby DOC campsite, resolving to make the walk up the Hooker Valley to the end of the Hooker Glacier the next morning. The sunset was beautiful and that ought to have been an omen of good weather to come in the morning.



Of course not. During the night, the heavens opened; it turned out that this was the end of a long drought and that the rains were welcomed by the area's farmers. It was still raining heavily in the morning, cussing our plans of making the walk up the Hooker Valley. We made plans instead to head straight to the Fox Glacier, which also originates from Mount Cook and heads west, down the other side of the mountains from where we were. Despite its proximity, we had a day's drive ahead of us to get there since there was no direct route across the enormous mountains of the Southern Alps. Our route therefore took us, back to Wanaka and across the Haast Pass. This we did in a hurry as the rain beat down.

We camped at a campsite near Haast that evening, hoping that the weather would clear up by morning.

The Road To Wanaka

On Wednesday, it was finally time to leave the Queenstown area. After spending a few hours running round town in a vain attempt at finding my lost phone, we hit the road. We decided to take the cross country route out of town, beginning with the bridge over the Shotover River.



Our route crossed the Crown Range. As we climbed the zig zag into the mountains, we could see views back in the direction of Queenstown which was by now hidden behind an inconveniently placed mountain.





The Remarkables range of mountains could also be seen behind us.



We didn't realise it at the time but we were heading into one of New Zealand's driest areas. It didn't take long for the hillsides to lose their green shade.



The views along the road were both beautiful and strikingly different to what we had seen so far.





I can only assume that the geological makeup was just as different from that we were leaving behind. I don't know what sort of rocks made up this terrain but I saw, at various times, what looked like limestone, sandstone, chalk and, finally, slate:




As we crossed the watershed and began descending towards Wanaka, the transformation in the landscape was nearly complete:



Here is a picture of Hannah showing her appreciation for all my geological musings:



When we arrived in Wanaka, the guy at the campsite complained about Wanaka's lack of rainfall and, after showing us to the best site in the place, put the sprinklers onto his parched yellow grass. Little did he know that, a couple of days later, the months long drought would come to an abrupt end.

Shotover Swing

We spent a little under a week in the Queenstown area. We had previously been advised by pretty much every Kiwi that we met that Queenstown is "too commercial" and has been "ruined" by the "tourists". Being tourists ourselves, we couldn't help but feel slightly guilty as we pulled into town. People were half right, too. Queenstown is very touristy and rather commercial. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that it wasn't rubbish, however.

Our campsite was the slightly oddly named QBox site. Despite the odd name, it was actually rather awesome and I feel obliged to plug it to the max on this blog. It was owned by a couple who had recently bought the land and used old shipping containers to build the buildings that housed amenities such as toilets, laundry and kitchen.

What about the town itself? Everything that we had read about Queenstown had billed the attractions as being exciting and adrenaline fuelled. Having already sampled the rather tame excitement of kayaking on Lake Wakatipu, we had to push the envelope a little. I decided that it would be a good idea to go on the Shotover Swing. This is billed as "The World's Highest Cliff Jump" and involves jumping off a cliff, freefalling for 60m and swinging across the bottom of Shotover Canyon.

Our host, Nick, picked us up from the office in Queenstown and whisked us up to the canyon in his 4WD minibus. The drive itself became pretty scary towards the end but we made it in one piece.



Before heading down to the jump, I decided to use the only urinals on site. Here is the one that I used.



On the way down, a sign pointed out the distances to all of the places that we might never see again in the event of a horrible bungee accident. I was particularly impressed to see Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobollantisiliogogogoch on the sign, although I'm not sure if the direction is 100% accurate.



We then headed down to the jump platform, which was at least as scary as it looks here. Lord of the Rings fans might recognise the canyon below; the Ford of Bruinen is set a few km further up the canyon (that's the scene where Liv Tyler is carrying Frodo on her horse and summons up the river waters to drown the persuing Ring Wraiths).



Nick cruelly decided that I was to be the first to jump so I was quickly harnessed up and standing on the jump platform before I knew it. This was intensely frightening and I wouldn't go anywhere near the edge in case they pushed me off it. After taunting me for my lack of jumping off, the jump master eventually agreed/ that my jump would be a cutaway. I was attached to another wire and hauled a few metres off the platform and suspended above the canyon. I was then invited to pull a wire above my head in order to be released. This I did and...

...

To be honest, I'm not really sure what happened next. I have a vague memory of a rush of sheer terror and I remember swearing uncontrollably. The next thing I knew, I was swinging around the bottom of the canyon, completely disoriented, with pins and needles in my arms. After a few seconds, I was winched back to the top and the ordeal was over.



Unless I wanted another go, of course. Which I did. I had to wait for everyone else to have a go (sadly not including Hannah, who had decided not to participate) before heading back to the platform for my second go. This didn't go as smoothly as the first one; the jump master told me that I wasn't allowed another cutaway and this time would have to jump off. This sent me back into panic mode and I spent the next 15 minutes being berrated and insulted for my refusal to go anywhere near the edge. I tried to explain that I have a slight fear of hights and, besides, it's rather unnatural to hurl yourself from the top of a cliff but to no avail.

Nick eventually came up with a compromise: He would hold onto the rope attached to my harness as I leaned from the edge of the platform. Then, when I was ready, he'd release me. Naturally, him being a totally swine and all, he dropped me as soon as I started to lean off the platform, leaving me swearing profusely and uncontrollably again on my way down. Again, I don't really have much of a memory of the actual drop, just a feeling of sort of "coming to my senses" afterwards, noticing that I was swinging around the bottom of the canyon, wondering what was going on. And that was that. I didn't fancy doing it again so I paid an extra $70 for a DVD of my (first) jump and we headed home. I swear I must have been in shock because the rest of the day was a bit of a blur. And I lost my phone.

Was it worth it? I don't know. I certainly wouldn't describe the experience as being enjoyable. Clearly I am not enough of an adrenaline junkie for this sort of thing because there was a little too much adrenaline. I would put it into the category of "things you do because you don't want to see yourself as the person who chickened out of doing that thing". At least I was successful in that. Sort of.