[Since I was so busy in Bangkok for Fulbright orientation, I am doing two very long blog posts about the entire month. Woopsies! And there won't be many pictures because my camera is currently undergoing surgery, so I will be relying on Sarah Lee who takes amazing photos, to send me some of hers]
After spending two months on a crazy backpacking adventure, I was pretty excited to settle down in Bangkok and begin a new routine for a month. It had been a while since I had used the same shower twice, and I was pretty excited to have one bed and one shower for a month. I was ready to just live in Bangkok. And it started off very promising.
On the flight over, I sat behind a guy in an All Blacks fan jersey. I asked if he was a Kiwi, and we started talking about the rugby world cup. He was just in Bangkok for a week, but was staying with a friend that he used to play with, and who plays for a team in Bangkok, the Southerners. Great first connection! So he got me in touch with his friend, and I now had the name of a bar to go see the rest of the world cup games I would be missing out on, and a friend-to-be who I could watch play rugby! Long story short, after a couple trips to the recommended bar for several world cup games, and after going to one of their games in Bangkok, I had myself signed up for a co-ed rugby touch team in Bangkok! Easy as that. Talk about wanting routine, I fell into a sweet routine of rugby world cup on the weekends with the guys from the Southerners team and from my touch team, playing touch on Tuesdays, and watching the Southerners on Thursdays. And I thought I would be going through rugby withdrawal when I got to Bangkok! But this little piece of heaven could only last one month until I head up to Sukothai, where it is unheard of for women to play rugby.
The guys I play touch with are great. They’re almost all married ex-pats in their 30s that just love to play. They are a little intense sometimes, especially the French guy, he won’t pass to me. But there is an English dude that really helped me with the rules (touch is way different than tackle, and they play league rules instead of union), and acts like an uncle to me. He always tells me where to be on the field and passes to me as much as he can, then let’s me know where they’re watching the next world cup game so I can join them. Then there is Patricio from the Southerners team. He’s probably my favorite because he’s so goofy. He’s a big dude from Ecuador, and running is not his thing. He came to play touch with us one weekend, and it was the hottest weather I’ve ever played in (I've never sweat so much in my life), with no mercy from the blazing sun. He just glared at me, and said “I’m a forward. I don’t run this much” and would just roll his eyes if someone got by him. Hehe. I was sitting with him when South Africa lost (ugh) to Australia (ugh!). I was among other guys from the Southerners team (including an adorable South African that was so into the game, and constantly yelling “come on boys!” to the TV) and Patricio pointed out that the six of us were all from different continents: Keeta from Japan, Billy from Australia, Patricio from Ecuador, me from the states, Duncan from England, and Mikey from South Africa. Pretty cool. And the Japanese rugby players are really great people too. Keeta just started playing when he was 36, and is now in his 40’s. He comes to play touch sometimes too, and he’s really good! And I like him because he lets me talk to him in half English, half Japanese. The best part is he responds in half English, half Japanese. My other favorite is this little Filipino girl that has been playing touch for 9 years. She’s tiny, and not the best rugby player, but I love her because she recites the rules as she plays, constantly whispering to herself “offsides, I’m covering yellow shirt, back 5 meters” etc. So cute! So yeah, that’s my rugby world in Bangkok.
Since I’m so paranoid of getting fat from eating all this great food all of the time, I’ve been trying to keep active outside of rugby. We are so lucky to be living at the Chulalongkorn University dorm, because it’s right next to the National Stadium, a huge 1.25 km running track with soccer fields, smaller tracks and workout stations. The best time to run is at sunset, when it’s not too hot and just starting to get dark. You get the coolest mix of people! When it’s still light, there are kids playing with toys on the track, and students in dance clubs practicing. As it gets darker, these groups get replaced by skate boarders, kids playing football, and a strange sport that is a mix between hackey sack and volleyball. Meanwhile, I am the only girl on the track and constantly being passed by old athletes. I could never outrun them. At 6:00 PM everyday, (Dad, I wonder if they did this when you were growing up) they play the national anthem, and everyone stops what their doing and faces the flag as its lowered. I mess it up every time. The first time I saw it happened, I was walking out of 711, and the world stopped while the national anthem played from some discrete speakers. Everyone stood still until it was over, then continued walking, or sat down to finish their cigarette. At the national stadium, I would be caught in the middle of a run, or a stretch, and only notice when people started moving again that I had already missed the national anthem. Stupid Fralang!
Also at the National Stadium is Thai kick boxing! Which I totally tried. Me and a few other friends went to one of their free introductory classes, where we learned basic kicking and punching techniques, then got an hour of guided practice. One of the boxers that was in the ring practicing when we got in helped me perfect my kicks, and said I had real potential as a boxer because I can kick higher than his Japanese students. It’s a good back up plan if this teaching thing doesn’t work out for me.
Another back up plan is Thai Khon dancing. Our second week here, we all went to see a Thai dance performance based on the Thai epic, Khon. The whole thing was very slow moving, much like the party scene from the Nutcracker, but even worse because it took up the first three quarters of the show! Then, finally, the monkeys came into the scene! They are so cool. In boring scenes, they sit in the back and goof around, pick each others noses, do handstands, and fun things like that. And then their scenes are always upbeat and full of somersaults and lifting each other. I can totally imagine myself being a monkey dancer, even though I’m pretty sure you have to be a boy, and fully Thai. But maybe in my next life, it’s definitely something to aspire towards. Overall, even though the performance was painfully slow, the entire piece was so amazing with all of the ornate costumes and overdone makeup. Plus, as the curtain was coming down, the lead monster totally grabbed the prince's butt. Oh ladyboys.
The dorm at Chula University has been awesome because it’s for international students and almost everyone is from a different country (minus the twenty American Fulbrighers). So since I have been the self-designated outcast of the group, being gone on the weekends and most nights for rugby, and the rest of the time with one of my uncles, real (Dtaw) or fake (Fung), I moved away even more from the Fulbright mass by befriending all the international students I met. One of the first weeks, I was invited to the movies with students from Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan and Laos. We went to see some American movie with Justin Timberlake, and all the girls were going crazy over him. My favorite part of the movie was after the opening credits, you have to stand to pay respect to the King while they play the national anthem. I love it. My favorite of the international students is the Japanese girl. She’s so burnt out from having classes in Thai, then speaking English to the international students. I’ve spent so many Fulbright meetings so sleepy, because I would stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning talking to her in a combination of English, Japanese and Thai. We've picked up the habit of talking to each other in English or Japanese, using Japanese filler words like “ano”, “eto”, and “soo”, then ending our sentences using the Thai endings, “na” or “na ka”. It’s like our fun made up language. If I don’t lose sleep talking to her, I lose sleep by helping Liem, the Vietnamese masters student, work on his thesis. He asked me to edit his paper, and I said sure, thinking it would be a one-day task. So he sent me a 39-page single script thesis that took me two weeks to edit! We spent three hours on it one night, and only got through eight pages. But he vows to write in as his co-author, along with his advisor…and send me all his papers from now on.
The best thing about this return trip to Bangkok, besides being so close to public transportation (sky train is just a block from the dorm, and I haven’t had to set foot in a cab once, thank goodness! Motorcycle taxi on the other hand…) is the food! We are very close to an amazing night food market, and also have the university canteen with huge bowls of noodles for 20 bhat. Heavennnn. I have figured out which Fulbrighters I will become closest because of the food habits. My best friends have become Paul and Sarah based on dining out. We started going to the same restaurant for dinner that had the best Tom Yum Koong. We made it our Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday night restaurant. By the second time there, they knew our order (squid basil, tom yum koong, shrimp garlic, and mixed vegetables), and I only had to ask for prick nahm plaa the first time. Everytime after that, they automatically brought prick nahm plaa over, even when I wasn’t there with them. We were always the only fralang in there, and the place was always packed, so we knew we had picked a great restaurant. The best thing about going out to eat with these guys is that Paul is Korean, and everyone thinks he is Thai. Even if I start to order in Thai, they ask Paul what I said, so he would just repeat it, and then they would understand. Even though his Thai is just as bad as mine! So he’s been our go-to mai-fralang, that can get us anywhere without speaking a word of Thai.
When I don’t have my two foodies to eat with, I’ve been using the same tactic I used in Japan. Follow the old Asian men; they always know the best noodle places. It doesn’t work as easily in the area around Chula, but when I go to rugby, I can usually find some great noodle soup on the way back. And I’ve found my favorite gai-yang and sticky rice guy right outside our dorm. Best afternoon snack ever! With a Thai iced coffee from the lady next to him. I was meant to be in Thailand.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
New Zealand part 4! Final edition
(September 27- September 30)
In the morning we were off for Nelson to see our last USA game. After a nice break at Keiran and Karen’s, we had a very large agenda to see Kaikora, taste some wine in the Marlborough region, and get to Nelson in time for the game! One of the places we wanted to see but ran out of time for (in addition to the Southern sounds and Stewart Island- next time!), was Kaikora, a small town with beautiful ocean vistas and lots of opportunities to see seals and whales. I think Kaikora actually means crayfish…and they are also known for their fried crayfish. Which we didn’t try, but saw plenty of. The coolest vista from Kaikora is off a small spit of land that attracts some sun-bathing seals, and provides a beautiful view of the ocean with the Alps unbelievably close to the water, completely snow covered. I’ve never seen anything like it. And the seals of course are always a treat to laugh at. They just remind me so much of Molly.
We managed to stick to our agenda and get to the Marlborough wine country by the afternoon. With some quick peanut butter and honey sandwiches to fill our stomachs (I will never crave peanut butter and honey sandwiches again) we went to try out these Marlborough wines. The Marlborough region is famous for its Sauvignon Blanc, which I got sick of quickly. But we visited quite a few wineries, and picked up a great bottle of Pinot Rose to save for a pizza night. The last winery we visited was an organic, biodynamic winery with great Pinot Noir, then we were on our way to Nelson. Luckily we knew the town quite well since our last visit, and found parking close to the stadium just in time to head to the bar to see the second half of the Canada v Japan match. Surprisingly, it ended in a draw, the first draw of the rugby world cup. I had expected Canada to blow Japan out of the water, considering how well they play against the French. Good for Japan! We got geared up for our game, with facepaint, sunglasses, and our flag, and strolled into the small stadium. Italy sucks, and I thought we could do better. That was a frustrating loss. But my favorite player from the USA team, the winger, had a fantastic game. No tries, but amazing runs and tackles. We headed to the same bar that went to for dinner, as they promised us if the USA team goes to any bar, it will be this one. Well it was as good a try as any and we got there just a few minutes too early for the drink specials. So we sat and waited until 10 to get $4 beers when some guy in an Italian fan jersey came up and poured us champagne. He tried speaking to us in broken English, saying he could only speak Italian (me thinking, you know we’re American, and we hate you right now for your team beating us), and went on for at least 15 minutes trying to ask us about our lives, where in the states we’re from, what football teams we follow. Really random things in very poor English. Out of nowhere, he burst out laughing saying, “I’m a Kiwi! I’m not Italian!” We burst into hysterics, I thought it was hilarious. He kept apologizing for tricking us, but we said we deserve it for being dumb Americans! He said he has to keep himself entertained: he came up for the match by himself, he’s a married man and can’t hit on girls, so he thought this would be fun. I thought it was great.
We stuck around, hearing rumors that the team will end up here around 1 in the morning. We met too many Americans, the most we’d met this trip, and perhaps the least obnoxious...but I still think I want to be Canadian. We entered the dance floor around 1 where I spotted the love of my life, the winger from the American team. Like a stupid, blabbering American, I stammered that he is my hero and I want to be him, I’m a winger from Philadelphia, and other stupid remarks. And he gave me a hug and said he admires me, being a winger from Philadelphia. I got a picture with him, and was disappointed that I sounded like an idiot, and he probably just waved me off as a stupid USA fan. He didn’t stick around much longer, and the rest of the team didn’t show up, so we gave up on the stupid night club and headed to our car for the night.
So our plan was to sleep for a couple hours, then drive to Picton really early to catch the morning ferry. Well...we slept for more than a couple hours, no surprise really, and realized we had missed the ferry. We really have crappy luck when it comes to these ferries. We slept it off, hoping to make the afternoon ferry. Thank goodness when we got to Picton, they exchanged our ticket for free, something they really shouldn’t do. Jillian and I joked that we probably looked so pathetic, having slept in the car, our hair a mess, in our pajamas, haven’t showered in a couple days, that they felt like we really needed the help and did us the favor. What a relief. That was almost a 200 dollar mistake.
Even though I didn’t get to see my penguins on the South Island, I did get to see a whale on the ferry ride back! All I really saw was water spewing up from the middle of the sea, and I’m gonna just pretend it was a whale, like I’m going to pretend I met Dan Carter’s dad. Once we landed in Wellington, we had a five hour drive to New Plynouth. We’re lucky to have Keith in New Plymouth, since we missed the morning ferry and couldn’t make it up to Auckland in one day. So we crashed on our new buddy’s couch for one last night, and left early for Auckland.
On the way was a mandatory stop at Waitomo Caves (the stop we missed when we slept in one of those other mornings…). Waitomo Caves is such a necessary stop because this is where you get to see the glow worms! You can go tubing through the caves to see the worms, but for money, time, and exhaustion’s sake, we just opted for a one hour tour of the caves. Our tour guide was great: Rich. He was a very lackadaisical Maori, speaking in a very slow, swaying, Maori way. We hiked down into a cave, saw some Moa bones (an extinct New Zealand bird), and of course saw some glowworms! The glow worms are in their larvae stage, and their fluorescence attracts bugs for them to eat, which they catch with their threads of saliva that hang down from the ceiling. Almost like a spider web, with less structure. Then once they mature, they have something like two days to reproduce before they die. Tough life!
After the tour, we got some ice cream, and were on our way to our final destination, Auckland! We found a room at a questionably gay backpackers dorm...When I spelled my last name for the guy at the front desk, he asked if I was married to a Thai guy. I told him no, that my father is Thai, and he told me this story about his lesbian friend that married a Thai guy for some citizenship reason or something. We stayed in an all-girl dorm (first time that’s happened- it’s usually co-ed) and since we got there so late we didn’t get first pick on beds. We had to sleep on opposite bunks from each other, and as we were falling asleep, I realized it was the furthest away I had slept from Jillian in about two months. I really wanted to tell her that but the receptionist already thought we were gay, who knows what all these girls would think of these two American girls following the rugby. So I didn’t make the joke.
In the morning, we saw the sights in Auckland: the fan zone, the waterfront, some parks, some awesome playgrounds with so many great things to climb! We really walked the entire city. We settled down for some coffee at the only place we knew: Theatre! It was the first coffee shop we went to in Auckland when we first arrived as lost and broke tourists! Three weeks later, and I feel like I have almost mastered the island(s). Not really, there is so much more to explore. But it was nice to see our trip come full circle…on my last day in New Zealand. Very cool, but also so sad!
To go out of the country with a bang, for my last night we had tickets to see South Africa play Samoa. The game kicked off at 8:30, and my flight was leaving at 1:00 AM. Yikes. We had little South Africa flags to show our love for the Spring Boks, and facepainted up while tailgating in our car. I was going to miss our car! Our home for the last three weeks! The game was so great, the best game we had seen! The fans were all really into it, and Bismark and Yanni started!! And stupid Paul Williams, the foulback on Samoa, got a red card for punching a South African. It wasn’t a real punch, but that’s karma for being a meanie the whole tournament. I can’t stand Paul Williams.
We had to leave the game a few minutes early to beat traffic to get me to the airport, but I was confident in South Africa with a 13-5 lead. I think Jillian and I both were crossing our fingers to get a call from John Walshe, saying to come hang out with South African team, because I would hands down have missed my flight to do that. But there was no such luck, so to the airport we rushed. What a bad weekend to be leaving New Zealand! The All Blacks and the Warriors play on Sunday! And so many games in between. I did my research, and found the bars in Bangkok I’d have to go to at 9:30 in the morning to see my teams play. But the suckiest part was leaving my best friend in New Zealand.
In the morning we were off for Nelson to see our last USA game. After a nice break at Keiran and Karen’s, we had a very large agenda to see Kaikora, taste some wine in the Marlborough region, and get to Nelson in time for the game! One of the places we wanted to see but ran out of time for (in addition to the Southern sounds and Stewart Island- next time!), was Kaikora, a small town with beautiful ocean vistas and lots of opportunities to see seals and whales. I think Kaikora actually means crayfish…and they are also known for their fried crayfish. Which we didn’t try, but saw plenty of. The coolest vista from Kaikora is off a small spit of land that attracts some sun-bathing seals, and provides a beautiful view of the ocean with the Alps unbelievably close to the water, completely snow covered. I’ve never seen anything like it. And the seals of course are always a treat to laugh at. They just remind me so much of Molly.
We managed to stick to our agenda and get to the Marlborough wine country by the afternoon. With some quick peanut butter and honey sandwiches to fill our stomachs (I will never crave peanut butter and honey sandwiches again) we went to try out these Marlborough wines. The Marlborough region is famous for its Sauvignon Blanc, which I got sick of quickly. But we visited quite a few wineries, and picked up a great bottle of Pinot Rose to save for a pizza night. The last winery we visited was an organic, biodynamic winery with great Pinot Noir, then we were on our way to Nelson. Luckily we knew the town quite well since our last visit, and found parking close to the stadium just in time to head to the bar to see the second half of the Canada v Japan match. Surprisingly, it ended in a draw, the first draw of the rugby world cup. I had expected Canada to blow Japan out of the water, considering how well they play against the French. Good for Japan! We got geared up for our game, with facepaint, sunglasses, and our flag, and strolled into the small stadium. Italy sucks, and I thought we could do better. That was a frustrating loss. But my favorite player from the USA team, the winger, had a fantastic game. No tries, but amazing runs and tackles. We headed to the same bar that went to for dinner, as they promised us if the USA team goes to any bar, it will be this one. Well it was as good a try as any and we got there just a few minutes too early for the drink specials. So we sat and waited until 10 to get $4 beers when some guy in an Italian fan jersey came up and poured us champagne. He tried speaking to us in broken English, saying he could only speak Italian (me thinking, you know we’re American, and we hate you right now for your team beating us), and went on for at least 15 minutes trying to ask us about our lives, where in the states we’re from, what football teams we follow. Really random things in very poor English. Out of nowhere, he burst out laughing saying, “I’m a Kiwi! I’m not Italian!” We burst into hysterics, I thought it was hilarious. He kept apologizing for tricking us, but we said we deserve it for being dumb Americans! He said he has to keep himself entertained: he came up for the match by himself, he’s a married man and can’t hit on girls, so he thought this would be fun. I thought it was great.
We stuck around, hearing rumors that the team will end up here around 1 in the morning. We met too many Americans, the most we’d met this trip, and perhaps the least obnoxious...but I still think I want to be Canadian. We entered the dance floor around 1 where I spotted the love of my life, the winger from the American team. Like a stupid, blabbering American, I stammered that he is my hero and I want to be him, I’m a winger from Philadelphia, and other stupid remarks. And he gave me a hug and said he admires me, being a winger from Philadelphia. I got a picture with him, and was disappointed that I sounded like an idiot, and he probably just waved me off as a stupid USA fan. He didn’t stick around much longer, and the rest of the team didn’t show up, so we gave up on the stupid night club and headed to our car for the night.
So our plan was to sleep for a couple hours, then drive to Picton really early to catch the morning ferry. Well...we slept for more than a couple hours, no surprise really, and realized we had missed the ferry. We really have crappy luck when it comes to these ferries. We slept it off, hoping to make the afternoon ferry. Thank goodness when we got to Picton, they exchanged our ticket for free, something they really shouldn’t do. Jillian and I joked that we probably looked so pathetic, having slept in the car, our hair a mess, in our pajamas, haven’t showered in a couple days, that they felt like we really needed the help and did us the favor. What a relief. That was almost a 200 dollar mistake.
Even though I didn’t get to see my penguins on the South Island, I did get to see a whale on the ferry ride back! All I really saw was water spewing up from the middle of the sea, and I’m gonna just pretend it was a whale, like I’m going to pretend I met Dan Carter’s dad. Once we landed in Wellington, we had a five hour drive to New Plynouth. We’re lucky to have Keith in New Plymouth, since we missed the morning ferry and couldn’t make it up to Auckland in one day. So we crashed on our new buddy’s couch for one last night, and left early for Auckland.
On the way was a mandatory stop at Waitomo Caves (the stop we missed when we slept in one of those other mornings…). Waitomo Caves is such a necessary stop because this is where you get to see the glow worms! You can go tubing through the caves to see the worms, but for money, time, and exhaustion’s sake, we just opted for a one hour tour of the caves. Our tour guide was great: Rich. He was a very lackadaisical Maori, speaking in a very slow, swaying, Maori way. We hiked down into a cave, saw some Moa bones (an extinct New Zealand bird), and of course saw some glowworms! The glow worms are in their larvae stage, and their fluorescence attracts bugs for them to eat, which they catch with their threads of saliva that hang down from the ceiling. Almost like a spider web, with less structure. Then once they mature, they have something like two days to reproduce before they die. Tough life!
After the tour, we got some ice cream, and were on our way to our final destination, Auckland! We found a room at a questionably gay backpackers dorm...When I spelled my last name for the guy at the front desk, he asked if I was married to a Thai guy. I told him no, that my father is Thai, and he told me this story about his lesbian friend that married a Thai guy for some citizenship reason or something. We stayed in an all-girl dorm (first time that’s happened- it’s usually co-ed) and since we got there so late we didn’t get first pick on beds. We had to sleep on opposite bunks from each other, and as we were falling asleep, I realized it was the furthest away I had slept from Jillian in about two months. I really wanted to tell her that but the receptionist already thought we were gay, who knows what all these girls would think of these two American girls following the rugby. So I didn’t make the joke.
In the morning, we saw the sights in Auckland: the fan zone, the waterfront, some parks, some awesome playgrounds with so many great things to climb! We really walked the entire city. We settled down for some coffee at the only place we knew: Theatre! It was the first coffee shop we went to in Auckland when we first arrived as lost and broke tourists! Three weeks later, and I feel like I have almost mastered the island(s). Not really, there is so much more to explore. But it was nice to see our trip come full circle…on my last day in New Zealand. Very cool, but also so sad!
To go out of the country with a bang, for my last night we had tickets to see South Africa play Samoa. The game kicked off at 8:30, and my flight was leaving at 1:00 AM. Yikes. We had little South Africa flags to show our love for the Spring Boks, and facepainted up while tailgating in our car. I was going to miss our car! Our home for the last three weeks! The game was so great, the best game we had seen! The fans were all really into it, and Bismark and Yanni started!! And stupid Paul Williams, the foulback on Samoa, got a red card for punching a South African. It wasn’t a real punch, but that’s karma for being a meanie the whole tournament. I can’t stand Paul Williams.
We had to leave the game a few minutes early to beat traffic to get me to the airport, but I was confident in South Africa with a 13-5 lead. I think Jillian and I both were crossing our fingers to get a call from John Walshe, saying to come hang out with South African team, because I would hands down have missed my flight to do that. But there was no such luck, so to the airport we rushed. What a bad weekend to be leaving New Zealand! The All Blacks and the Warriors play on Sunday! And so many games in between. I did my research, and found the bars in Bangkok I’d have to go to at 9:30 in the morning to see my teams play. But the suckiest part was leaving my best friend in New Zealand.
New Zealand part 3! Exploring the (best of the) South Island
(September 21-September 26)
In the morning, Franz Josef Glacier awaited us. It took six hours to drive south along the west coast of the South Island until we got to the town, with just enough time to hike to the glacier. It’s only a twenty minute or so hike to the rock bed where the glacier has retreated from. It’s been retreating I think for several hundred years, and there is now just an open area of rock, mostly limestone, where the glacier used to be, surrounded by cliffs that were formed from the glacier however many years ago. We wandered around the rocks, past some waterfalls, to the foot of the glacier. You can’t actually get to the glacier without hiring a guide with a pick-ax, and even with a guide you can’t actually climb the glacier. So we just admired from afar, and found a place for the night. We stayed at a cute little hostel in a miniature town that only exists because of the glacier (there are more hostels and motels than homes) and watched rugby that evening. It’s funny how much of a routine we have taken on in this trip, spending the day exploring or driving, and setting aside most nights to watch rugby. It’s great that rugby is everywhere, but then every night becomes consumed with the games. On nights when there is no game, we’ve often found ourselves with nothing to do, because all we want to do is watch rugby! But it’s actually been really nice to have the consistency every night, amidst all the other activities we’ve been doing.
In the morning, we took a long hike to get a different view of Franz Joseph Glacier. It was an amazing hike. Even though we saw no more than four people the entire time, the trail was well maintained and took us through fern forests, along cliffs, through dried river beds, on top of boulders and across rivers to a little patio that looked over the glacier. It was a really cool view, and we could sometimes see parts of the cliffs crumbling down. It sounded like an avalanche, but it would usually only be a couple rocks sliding down the glacier. Round trip, it probably took us 4 or 5 hours, then we had a long drive to Queenstown.
Queenstown is a beautiful little city on a lake in the Southern Alps. It was dark by the time we got there, so driving in, all we could see were the lights from the city reflecting on the lake with the snowy mountains in the close background. We had the next day to explore Queenstown. We took a gondola to the top of a mountain, where we could “Luge” down. “Luge”-ing is like Alpine sledding, if you’ve ever heard of that…it’s basically a sled on a track without snow. Its kind of fun, and a lot of people seem to think it’s the thing to do in Queenstown. It was goofy, and worth the trip to the top of the mountain that had a gorgeous view of the lake. Later we walked around adorable little Queenstown, along the waterfront. New Zealand has some really great waterfronts. I think most countries do, it’s just that Philadelphia’s really sucks, and I’m always impressed with good waterfronts. In the afternoon, we went to try some South Island wine! The central Otago region is well known for their Pinot Gris (yuck) and their Pinot Noir (yum!). We had a tour of a wine cave where they store the wine for the fermentation period. The cave keeps the temperature consistent no matter the conditions outside, so it saves them loads in cooling costs and makes money for them because who doesn’t want to go on a wine cave tour? Then we went to a beautiful winery on a cliff with a very dangerous driveway, especially considering the copious pours of their many varieties of wine they offer for free. Not smart, but very beautiful!
That night was a dreaded night for us. It started out so promising- Jillian made mac and cheese, and we had a champagne toast out of plastic wine glasses in the hostel kitchen, in anticipation of the USA v. Australia match! We had to give up the tickets to the match to have time to explore the South Island, but I was confident the US would so okay. Well no surprise, I was wrong, and the USA lost. Pretty terribly. There was hope during the first 30 minutes, but they lost it in the end, a brutal 67-5 loss…okay that sounds really really bad, but at half time the score was only 15-5, then who knows what happened in the second half. It was heart wrenching.
In the morning, we were off to Dunedin, a college town that would be hosting the England v Romania game that night. We went in knowing there were some tickets left, and headed straight to the stadium. Unfortunately when we got there, there were only $99 dollar tickets left. No way! So instead of going to the game, we saw what Dunedin is all about. We went to a free museum, where I learned about the crazy rich geological history of the South Island. While the North Island has volcanoes from ocean plates colliding with a continental plate, the South Island, oddly enough, has so much geology because the Southern Alps where formed from two continental plates colliding. That explains while the rock is mostly granitic (as we saw on Franz Josef), and why there’s no volcanoes. No wonder New Zealand is so beautiful. It has so many geological features for such a small mass of land.
The reason I had really wanted to see Dunedin was because there are a bunch of places along the coast to see penguins! But when we got there, it was raining and so cold! (I don’t know if I will ever be this close to the South Pole ever again!) So we ditched our penguin scoping idea, and headed to Speights brewery instead! Their beer tasting is really cool (tour was kind of lame) because they let you pour your own tastings from the taps and take your time trying their selection of beers. After the tour, it was about time for the games to start, so we settled for burgers at a bar (not quite the same as the gorgeous Dunedin stadium...but good enough) and watched England completely demolish poor little Romania. Then All Blacks wiped out France, thank goodness (I still don’t like the French). Great game, and All Blacks played brilliantly. After the match was the much anticipated semi-final game of rugby league, and the Warriors won! It was a very tight match, and everyone was more excited over this then the rugby! Since Dunedin was full, we spent the night in our little car (sounds pathetic, but was actually not bad at all), which saved us a ton of money and let us get on the road fairly early to Christ Church. We stopped on the Otago Penninsula on the way to at least attempt to see some penguins, and I could say I tried! But Dunedin is really just too cold, so we drove around the gorgeous peninsula then hit the highway for Christ Church.
The cool thing about road tripping around New Zealand are that major highways are hardly highways. They’re literally all country, mountain, or coastal roads, or a combination of the three. So we constantly find ourselves winding up hills or along the beach, or riding along cows and sheep. We got to Keiran and Karen’s house in the late afternoon. They shortly started preparing dinner, and asked how we felt with the day light savings change. Then all of a sudden we realized why all the game match times were written wrong all day. How long had we been an hour behind everyone? Thankfully only one day. Thank goodness we were staying with Keiran and Karen that night! Who knows how long that would have taken us to figure that one out.
Keiran and Karen’s was the perfect rest stop. In the morning, Keiran showed us their dairy farm. We stopped to fill up large canisters of milk, then drove it over to the calves. They’re a couple months old, and they have three fields of about 50 calves each. We didn’t have to do much but just let the calves drink milk, then drive to the next field, but Keiran was really excited about it. He had a great smile on his face the whole time, and would stand and watch the calves drink and say, “Yep. And that’s how you feed the calves”. Then he had me jump out of the truck and open the gate to the next field while he drove through, so I could close the gate behind him and stop the raging calves behind him from following the milk dispenser. This, also, was anticlimactic, since the calves were quite complacent with the amount of milk they had gotten, and didn't even follow the truck. Keiran assured me that normally the calves come running after the truck, but they must have gotten enough milk that day. Regardless, I still got to open and close the gate each time, in case the calves went crazy over the milk.
After successfully feeding all the calves, and having a traditional spaghettio and poached egg breakfast (not my favorite, but not bad either), Jillian and I headed into downtown Christ Church to see the damage from the earthquake last February. It's amazing how the fault line runs right through the middle of downtown Christ Church, and they didn’t even know it was there until the earthquake last fall just outside Christ Church, closer to where Keiran lives. So the earthquake in February was the first earthquake to hit the city of Christ Church, and completely demolished their entire downtown. The impact is devastating, and the city is so eerie. It’s so sad to hear about because Christ Church, as I’ve heard, was a lovely little city, and they were supposed to be one of the larger stadiums for the World Cup. Economically, they are losing out a lot on not only losing the world cup, but because they can’t even rebuild the city yet. There are a lot of delays with insurance because they’re waiting for the earthquakes to be over before they can build again. Meanwhile all of the businesses outside the destroyed areas have closed down because there is no business, and no upcoming business. So they’re stuck in a catch 22, and all they can do is demolish the broken buildings. It’s really so tragic. We could still see a hotel that is leaning sideways, and everything around it has already been taken down. And everything is shut down, with posted signs saying things like, “7 months gone, when does rebuilding start?” Anyway, we couldn’t do much besides walk outside the blocked off downtown, so we headed back to Keiran and Karen’s for dinner.
Keiran’s son Matt took us to the local rugby club to see a bunch of rugby paraphernalia in South Bridge, hometown of the All Blacks fly half, Dan Carter. Of all the All Blacks players, I really do like Dan Carter, not only because I got to see his hometown, but he is a great player that has a lot of confidence without being obsessed with himself like Sonny Bill Williams. Haha. The place we went to was a bit lackluster, and Matt was really disappointed the owner wasn’t there to show us all the trophies and things. But we watched Wales beat Namibia on TV, but since poor Namibia is so pathetic at rugby, Wales didn’t play my favorite player. As we were leaving, Matt apologized again for it not being that cool. I said that's okay, I just wanted to meet Carter’s dad. And he said, oh shoot! He was sitting right behind you! Oh well, at least I know what his dad looks like. And if anyone asks, I’m going to say I met his dad.
In the morning, Franz Josef Glacier awaited us. It took six hours to drive south along the west coast of the South Island until we got to the town, with just enough time to hike to the glacier. It’s only a twenty minute or so hike to the rock bed where the glacier has retreated from. It’s been retreating I think for several hundred years, and there is now just an open area of rock, mostly limestone, where the glacier used to be, surrounded by cliffs that were formed from the glacier however many years ago. We wandered around the rocks, past some waterfalls, to the foot of the glacier. You can’t actually get to the glacier without hiring a guide with a pick-ax, and even with a guide you can’t actually climb the glacier. So we just admired from afar, and found a place for the night. We stayed at a cute little hostel in a miniature town that only exists because of the glacier (there are more hostels and motels than homes) and watched rugby that evening. It’s funny how much of a routine we have taken on in this trip, spending the day exploring or driving, and setting aside most nights to watch rugby. It’s great that rugby is everywhere, but then every night becomes consumed with the games. On nights when there is no game, we’ve often found ourselves with nothing to do, because all we want to do is watch rugby! But it’s actually been really nice to have the consistency every night, amidst all the other activities we’ve been doing.
In the morning, we took a long hike to get a different view of Franz Joseph Glacier. It was an amazing hike. Even though we saw no more than four people the entire time, the trail was well maintained and took us through fern forests, along cliffs, through dried river beds, on top of boulders and across rivers to a little patio that looked over the glacier. It was a really cool view, and we could sometimes see parts of the cliffs crumbling down. It sounded like an avalanche, but it would usually only be a couple rocks sliding down the glacier. Round trip, it probably took us 4 or 5 hours, then we had a long drive to Queenstown.
Queenstown is a beautiful little city on a lake in the Southern Alps. It was dark by the time we got there, so driving in, all we could see were the lights from the city reflecting on the lake with the snowy mountains in the close background. We had the next day to explore Queenstown. We took a gondola to the top of a mountain, where we could “Luge” down. “Luge”-ing is like Alpine sledding, if you’ve ever heard of that…it’s basically a sled on a track without snow. Its kind of fun, and a lot of people seem to think it’s the thing to do in Queenstown. It was goofy, and worth the trip to the top of the mountain that had a gorgeous view of the lake. Later we walked around adorable little Queenstown, along the waterfront. New Zealand has some really great waterfronts. I think most countries do, it’s just that Philadelphia’s really sucks, and I’m always impressed with good waterfronts. In the afternoon, we went to try some South Island wine! The central Otago region is well known for their Pinot Gris (yuck) and their Pinot Noir (yum!). We had a tour of a wine cave where they store the wine for the fermentation period. The cave keeps the temperature consistent no matter the conditions outside, so it saves them loads in cooling costs and makes money for them because who doesn’t want to go on a wine cave tour? Then we went to a beautiful winery on a cliff with a very dangerous driveway, especially considering the copious pours of their many varieties of wine they offer for free. Not smart, but very beautiful!
That night was a dreaded night for us. It started out so promising- Jillian made mac and cheese, and we had a champagne toast out of plastic wine glasses in the hostel kitchen, in anticipation of the USA v. Australia match! We had to give up the tickets to the match to have time to explore the South Island, but I was confident the US would so okay. Well no surprise, I was wrong, and the USA lost. Pretty terribly. There was hope during the first 30 minutes, but they lost it in the end, a brutal 67-5 loss…okay that sounds really really bad, but at half time the score was only 15-5, then who knows what happened in the second half. It was heart wrenching.
In the morning, we were off to Dunedin, a college town that would be hosting the England v Romania game that night. We went in knowing there were some tickets left, and headed straight to the stadium. Unfortunately when we got there, there were only $99 dollar tickets left. No way! So instead of going to the game, we saw what Dunedin is all about. We went to a free museum, where I learned about the crazy rich geological history of the South Island. While the North Island has volcanoes from ocean plates colliding with a continental plate, the South Island, oddly enough, has so much geology because the Southern Alps where formed from two continental plates colliding. That explains while the rock is mostly granitic (as we saw on Franz Josef), and why there’s no volcanoes. No wonder New Zealand is so beautiful. It has so many geological features for such a small mass of land.
The reason I had really wanted to see Dunedin was because there are a bunch of places along the coast to see penguins! But when we got there, it was raining and so cold! (I don’t know if I will ever be this close to the South Pole ever again!) So we ditched our penguin scoping idea, and headed to Speights brewery instead! Their beer tasting is really cool (tour was kind of lame) because they let you pour your own tastings from the taps and take your time trying their selection of beers. After the tour, it was about time for the games to start, so we settled for burgers at a bar (not quite the same as the gorgeous Dunedin stadium...but good enough) and watched England completely demolish poor little Romania. Then All Blacks wiped out France, thank goodness (I still don’t like the French). Great game, and All Blacks played brilliantly. After the match was the much anticipated semi-final game of rugby league, and the Warriors won! It was a very tight match, and everyone was more excited over this then the rugby! Since Dunedin was full, we spent the night in our little car (sounds pathetic, but was actually not bad at all), which saved us a ton of money and let us get on the road fairly early to Christ Church. We stopped on the Otago Penninsula on the way to at least attempt to see some penguins, and I could say I tried! But Dunedin is really just too cold, so we drove around the gorgeous peninsula then hit the highway for Christ Church.
The cool thing about road tripping around New Zealand are that major highways are hardly highways. They’re literally all country, mountain, or coastal roads, or a combination of the three. So we constantly find ourselves winding up hills or along the beach, or riding along cows and sheep. We got to Keiran and Karen’s house in the late afternoon. They shortly started preparing dinner, and asked how we felt with the day light savings change. Then all of a sudden we realized why all the game match times were written wrong all day. How long had we been an hour behind everyone? Thankfully only one day. Thank goodness we were staying with Keiran and Karen that night! Who knows how long that would have taken us to figure that one out.
Keiran and Karen’s was the perfect rest stop. In the morning, Keiran showed us their dairy farm. We stopped to fill up large canisters of milk, then drove it over to the calves. They’re a couple months old, and they have three fields of about 50 calves each. We didn’t have to do much but just let the calves drink milk, then drive to the next field, but Keiran was really excited about it. He had a great smile on his face the whole time, and would stand and watch the calves drink and say, “Yep. And that’s how you feed the calves”. Then he had me jump out of the truck and open the gate to the next field while he drove through, so I could close the gate behind him and stop the raging calves behind him from following the milk dispenser. This, also, was anticlimactic, since the calves were quite complacent with the amount of milk they had gotten, and didn't even follow the truck. Keiran assured me that normally the calves come running after the truck, but they must have gotten enough milk that day. Regardless, I still got to open and close the gate each time, in case the calves went crazy over the milk.
After successfully feeding all the calves, and having a traditional spaghettio and poached egg breakfast (not my favorite, but not bad either), Jillian and I headed into downtown Christ Church to see the damage from the earthquake last February. It's amazing how the fault line runs right through the middle of downtown Christ Church, and they didn’t even know it was there until the earthquake last fall just outside Christ Church, closer to where Keiran lives. So the earthquake in February was the first earthquake to hit the city of Christ Church, and completely demolished their entire downtown. The impact is devastating, and the city is so eerie. It’s so sad to hear about because Christ Church, as I’ve heard, was a lovely little city, and they were supposed to be one of the larger stadiums for the World Cup. Economically, they are losing out a lot on not only losing the world cup, but because they can’t even rebuild the city yet. There are a lot of delays with insurance because they’re waiting for the earthquakes to be over before they can build again. Meanwhile all of the businesses outside the destroyed areas have closed down because there is no business, and no upcoming business. So they’re stuck in a catch 22, and all they can do is demolish the broken buildings. It’s really so tragic. We could still see a hotel that is leaning sideways, and everything around it has already been taken down. And everything is shut down, with posted signs saying things like, “7 months gone, when does rebuilding start?” Anyway, we couldn’t do much besides walk outside the blocked off downtown, so we headed back to Keiran and Karen’s for dinner.
Keiran’s son Matt took us to the local rugby club to see a bunch of rugby paraphernalia in South Bridge, hometown of the All Blacks fly half, Dan Carter. Of all the All Blacks players, I really do like Dan Carter, not only because I got to see his hometown, but he is a great player that has a lot of confidence without being obsessed with himself like Sonny Bill Williams. Haha. The place we went to was a bit lackluster, and Matt was really disappointed the owner wasn’t there to show us all the trophies and things. But we watched Wales beat Namibia on TV, but since poor Namibia is so pathetic at rugby, Wales didn’t play my favorite player. As we were leaving, Matt apologized again for it not being that cool. I said that's okay, I just wanted to meet Carter’s dad. And he said, oh shoot! He was sitting right behind you! Oh well, at least I know what his dad looks like. And if anyone asks, I’m going to say I met his dad.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
NZ Part Two: Wellington and Nelson edition
(September 17- September 20)
Jillian and I left our dear friends of New Plymouth in the morning (on time for once!) and were in Wellington by the afternoon. We met our new friend, John Walshe, who took us to his cousin’s house to stay for free! What great luck. We all went into Wellington to get a couple drinks downtown on the waterfront before the South Africa game. What a beautiful day! Wellington’s waterfront is really amazing. Very pristine, a lot of public art, and exciting. A bit high so, but what waterfront isn't? We met Keiran and Karen (Moira’s brother and his wife) at a bar before we headed to the game. On the way to the game, John announced he only had two tickets to the corporate box seats (or the VIP seats from the top of the stadium), the other 4 were for just behind the media. So he gave the corporate box seats to us! I think the media seats were actually better because they were right behind the team, but we got to sit way up with the fancy people with our own section that we shared with a rugby union from South Africa, private bathrooms and everything! The people we were sitting with must have known one of the players, Bismark, because when he came on they erupted and were calling “Go Bismark!!” the whole time. So cool! Of course South Africa won. Fiji didn’t stand a chance against the Springboks. After the match, we headed to a fancy little bar on the waterfront to watch Ireland beat Australia. What an upset! And well deserved. I don’t like Australia. Sorry Wallabies, but your winger looks like Justin Beiber.
Kieran and Karen left for their hotel, and I thought John was going to take us back to his cousin’s house. He nonchalantly said, we’re meeting up with some players from South Africa for coffee. It’ll be quick because they need to be on the road. !!! So he took us to the hotel where the team was staying, and we’re waiting in the lobby and can see the team just hanging out on the mezzanine above us. Yonnie DuPlussy came down for a quick hello while we waited for Bismark (!!!!!) So Bismark came down and we all sat in the lobby while he waved people off asking for autographs, saying he was in a meeting with us. We ordered hot chocolates and Bismark and John caught up on each other’s lives. Normal. Bismark is a giant. He plays hooker (yes, that is a position in rugby) and his arms are about three or four times the size of mine. He was really shy, and didn’t address anyone but John. He gulped down his hot chocolate in three swigs, before Jillian had even taken a real sip from hers, and we just kind of watched in amazement, too shocked really to say anything. At all. He went on to talk about how he is only allowed to bring three bags with him, and it was so hard for him to pack because his shoes are too big! One shoe takes up half the bag! And that is really what this international rugby player from the South African team chose to talk about. And that he calls his mother every day.
We let Bismark get back to packing his large shoes, and headed to John’s cousin’s house for the night. John’s cousin’s husband actually coaches the Tongan team. I think that’s how he has all these great connections, and can get us corporate box tickets to Bismark’s section. John’s cousin’s house is a beautiful country home just outside of Wellington with horses, a little lamb, and a pool! They made us a Kiwi breakfast in the morning, which is, get this: baked beans and spaghettios over toast?! We opted for just the poached eggs and toast. Spaghettios for breakfast is just too weird.
John’s cousin was so nice to let us spend another night in her home, which allowed us to have a day to see Wellington before heading to the South Island. We did the only free thing I have seen so far in New Zealand, which was the Te Papa museum, New Zealand’s national museum! It was an insanely huge museum, and really really interesting. It touches on the Maori’s shady history of being screwed over by the Brits, but its funded by the government, so some parts are kind of covered, or euphemized. There are definitely pieces missing in their history. Also, did you know that New Zealand has only two native mammals? There are two species of bats that are native (there used to be three, but one went extinct), but of course now they have tons of mammals that have been imported for farming, for sport, and then more brought in to control the species that were previously introduced. Since New Zealand has no native predators, mammals like rodents and rabbits went wild and then had to be controlled by new invasive species. And many of New Zealand’s native species have gone extinct with the introduction of more robust invasive species. ‘Tis evolution, with some help from colonization.
For the remainder of the afternoon, we explored downtown Wellington by bar and restaurant hopping to see the three games that night. We watched my boyfriend on Wales (Mike Philips) beat Samoa, and France be mean to Canada (you know, reading this over I am such a girl when I chose which rugby team to support. I love Wales because their half back is cute and has good control at the ruks, and I don’t like Samoa because their foulback looks mean. At least I like Canada because they’re close to the US. And the blond twins on the team are freakishly good. And I just don’t like the French, no offense Rue’s). Between games and sometimes at half time, we picked a different place to watch the games. For half of England v Georgia, we found an outdoor screen on the waterfront and had hot chocolate. That was really cool, and should be replicated in every city. Outdoor venues are the best.
After a full afternoon of rugby, we headed back to John’s cousin’s house to prepare for our trip to the South Island very early in the morning. Well, you may have guessed by now that by this point in me and Jillain’s adventures, we don’t do things very punctually. We were supposed to get to the ferry by 7:00 to check our car in, and the ferry would leave at 8. Well, instead of waking up at 5:30, we didn’t wake up until 6:35, and the ferry is half an hour away. We threw our things together, cursing ourselves for oversleeping, we open the living room door, and there is the baby lamb sitting at our door inside the house baa-ing. No time to address that, we just ran to the car. So apologies to John Walshe’s cousin, I swear we didn’t let the lamb into the house. It was there when we woke up.
We got to the ferry at 7:20, sure they would reject us, but they just waved us right in! A freakin miracle. So we had a three hour ferry to the South Island through the gorgeous Marlboro sounds, then drove right into Nelson. And by some random chance, we arrived the day before Nelson’s first rugby game of the world cup, Italy v. Russia (true rugby fans we are, this is the second time we arrived in a city hosting a world cup match without knowing it). In celebration of their first world cup game, they were having an art fair in front of Christ Church. We walked around the fair, which had a few people in costume pretending to be Kiwis in the 1800’s, trying to shine our shoes. The whole thing, we found out later, is Nelson’s way of bragging that they were the birth of rugby in New Zealand. So tomorrow, in celebration of their kick-off game, they are having a re-enactment of the very first NZ rugby game of Nelson rugby club vs. Nelson College rugby team. We explored the rest of the town, and hiked to the “Centre of New Zealand” which is just a 20 minute hike up a little mountain. When we got to the top, there is a great view of Nelson and of the Tasman Sea. Not as good as the view from New Plymouth’s little mountain, but it is the centre of New Zealand, and there was a double rainbow. We may not have seen any kiwi birds yet this trip, but we’ve seen plenty of rainbows.
We were lucky again to have a place to stay that night at Moira’s cousin’s house just outside of Nelson. So we drove over for dinner with Moray and John, and had the best meal we’ve had, probably since getting to New Zealand. It was just chicken and wild rice with vegetables, but we’d been eating so poorly, so that meal made miles of a difference for us. After dinner we had some tea with Moray and John and told them about our travels so far, and how we liked New Zealand. We decided to stay an extra day in Nelson for the reenactment game. They opened by having the Nelson secondary school do the Haka on the stairs of Christ Church. I imagined there would be like 6 or 7 kids doing the Haka, but I was way wrong. It was more like over a hundred kids flooding the stairs. Really really cool. Then we walked over to see the rugby game. The teams all dressed up in late 1800’s school uniforms, and used a leather rugby ball. They played with the old school rules, where there isn’t really tackling or rucking, but rather frequent rolling mauls, passing is considered cowardice, and trys don’t award points, only conversion kicks do. Games often went on three to five days until a team scored two goals. They even had a pretend streaker, outfitted in a flesh-colored body suit. We didn’t stay to the end, giving up after an hour and a half, so who knows how long the game actually went on. We walked downtown to the Founder’s Brewery to do a beer tasting (don’t recommend it, for being the oldest brewery in New Zealand, they really haven’t gotten a good recipe down yet) before setting in for the match that night. They still had cheap tickets left for the game, so we got two tickets and looked for a place to stay the night. Well, conveniently the hostel directly across the street from the stadium had two beds left, so we booked them before getting dinner. We got a couple margaritas, and met a couple obnoxious Americans. They bought us a round of margaritas, and were surprised when we didn’t want to drink with them. When we told them where we were from, the one guy said, “oh you’re from Philly? Fuck you! No wonder you didn’t want to drink with us! It’s cause you’re from Philly”. Hands down, best response I’ve ever gotten about being from Philly.
The backpackers hostel was quite cute. It was the first place we’ve stayed in where no one had any interest in rugby. They all were going to the match, and uniformly decided to root for Italy. Funny how the hostel closest to the stadiums had only two people interested in rugby staying there, and that was Jillian and myself. Kick off was at 7:30, and we had the luxury of waiting until 7:25 to walk over. We walked into stadium and our seats were basically right in front of us, and we sat down just in time for kick off. It was a terrible match. If you ever get the chance, check out Italy’s jerseys. The front has this weird design that gives it a saran wrap effect…basically it’s shiny. I don’t know how they get away with wearing those hideous jerseys, but Italy won, which makes things look bleak for USA when they play Italy in Nelson in exactly one week.
After the match, all the people staying in the hostel came back with hardly anything to say about the rugby except that it was the coldest night they’ve had in a while. In their defense, that was a terrible introduction to the game of rugby, and the most bored fans we’ve ever seen. They managed to get the Mexican wave to go around the stadium eight times, and it wasn’t because they were excited over Italy’s try.
Leaving Nelson in the morning, we had exactly one week to see the entire South Island before returning to Nelson on Tuesday to see USA’s last match against Italy. So here goes!
Jillian and I left our dear friends of New Plymouth in the morning (on time for once!) and were in Wellington by the afternoon. We met our new friend, John Walshe, who took us to his cousin’s house to stay for free! What great luck. We all went into Wellington to get a couple drinks downtown on the waterfront before the South Africa game. What a beautiful day! Wellington’s waterfront is really amazing. Very pristine, a lot of public art, and exciting. A bit high so, but what waterfront isn't? We met Keiran and Karen (Moira’s brother and his wife) at a bar before we headed to the game. On the way to the game, John announced he only had two tickets to the corporate box seats (or the VIP seats from the top of the stadium), the other 4 were for just behind the media. So he gave the corporate box seats to us! I think the media seats were actually better because they were right behind the team, but we got to sit way up with the fancy people with our own section that we shared with a rugby union from South Africa, private bathrooms and everything! The people we were sitting with must have known one of the players, Bismark, because when he came on they erupted and were calling “Go Bismark!!” the whole time. So cool! Of course South Africa won. Fiji didn’t stand a chance against the Springboks. After the match, we headed to a fancy little bar on the waterfront to watch Ireland beat Australia. What an upset! And well deserved. I don’t like Australia. Sorry Wallabies, but your winger looks like Justin Beiber.
Kieran and Karen left for their hotel, and I thought John was going to take us back to his cousin’s house. He nonchalantly said, we’re meeting up with some players from South Africa for coffee. It’ll be quick because they need to be on the road. !!! So he took us to the hotel where the team was staying, and we’re waiting in the lobby and can see the team just hanging out on the mezzanine above us. Yonnie DuPlussy came down for a quick hello while we waited for Bismark (!!!!!) So Bismark came down and we all sat in the lobby while he waved people off asking for autographs, saying he was in a meeting with us. We ordered hot chocolates and Bismark and John caught up on each other’s lives. Normal. Bismark is a giant. He plays hooker (yes, that is a position in rugby) and his arms are about three or four times the size of mine. He was really shy, and didn’t address anyone but John. He gulped down his hot chocolate in three swigs, before Jillian had even taken a real sip from hers, and we just kind of watched in amazement, too shocked really to say anything. At all. He went on to talk about how he is only allowed to bring three bags with him, and it was so hard for him to pack because his shoes are too big! One shoe takes up half the bag! And that is really what this international rugby player from the South African team chose to talk about. And that he calls his mother every day.
We let Bismark get back to packing his large shoes, and headed to John’s cousin’s house for the night. John’s cousin’s husband actually coaches the Tongan team. I think that’s how he has all these great connections, and can get us corporate box tickets to Bismark’s section. John’s cousin’s house is a beautiful country home just outside of Wellington with horses, a little lamb, and a pool! They made us a Kiwi breakfast in the morning, which is, get this: baked beans and spaghettios over toast?! We opted for just the poached eggs and toast. Spaghettios for breakfast is just too weird.
John’s cousin was so nice to let us spend another night in her home, which allowed us to have a day to see Wellington before heading to the South Island. We did the only free thing I have seen so far in New Zealand, which was the Te Papa museum, New Zealand’s national museum! It was an insanely huge museum, and really really interesting. It touches on the Maori’s shady history of being screwed over by the Brits, but its funded by the government, so some parts are kind of covered, or euphemized. There are definitely pieces missing in their history. Also, did you know that New Zealand has only two native mammals? There are two species of bats that are native (there used to be three, but one went extinct), but of course now they have tons of mammals that have been imported for farming, for sport, and then more brought in to control the species that were previously introduced. Since New Zealand has no native predators, mammals like rodents and rabbits went wild and then had to be controlled by new invasive species. And many of New Zealand’s native species have gone extinct with the introduction of more robust invasive species. ‘Tis evolution, with some help from colonization.
For the remainder of the afternoon, we explored downtown Wellington by bar and restaurant hopping to see the three games that night. We watched my boyfriend on Wales (Mike Philips) beat Samoa, and France be mean to Canada (you know, reading this over I am such a girl when I chose which rugby team to support. I love Wales because their half back is cute and has good control at the ruks, and I don’t like Samoa because their foulback looks mean. At least I like Canada because they’re close to the US. And the blond twins on the team are freakishly good. And I just don’t like the French, no offense Rue’s). Between games and sometimes at half time, we picked a different place to watch the games. For half of England v Georgia, we found an outdoor screen on the waterfront and had hot chocolate. That was really cool, and should be replicated in every city. Outdoor venues are the best.
After a full afternoon of rugby, we headed back to John’s cousin’s house to prepare for our trip to the South Island very early in the morning. Well, you may have guessed by now that by this point in me and Jillain’s adventures, we don’t do things very punctually. We were supposed to get to the ferry by 7:00 to check our car in, and the ferry would leave at 8. Well, instead of waking up at 5:30, we didn’t wake up until 6:35, and the ferry is half an hour away. We threw our things together, cursing ourselves for oversleeping, we open the living room door, and there is the baby lamb sitting at our door inside the house baa-ing. No time to address that, we just ran to the car. So apologies to John Walshe’s cousin, I swear we didn’t let the lamb into the house. It was there when we woke up.
We got to the ferry at 7:20, sure they would reject us, but they just waved us right in! A freakin miracle. So we had a three hour ferry to the South Island through the gorgeous Marlboro sounds, then drove right into Nelson. And by some random chance, we arrived the day before Nelson’s first rugby game of the world cup, Italy v. Russia (true rugby fans we are, this is the second time we arrived in a city hosting a world cup match without knowing it). In celebration of their first world cup game, they were having an art fair in front of Christ Church. We walked around the fair, which had a few people in costume pretending to be Kiwis in the 1800’s, trying to shine our shoes. The whole thing, we found out later, is Nelson’s way of bragging that they were the birth of rugby in New Zealand. So tomorrow, in celebration of their kick-off game, they are having a re-enactment of the very first NZ rugby game of Nelson rugby club vs. Nelson College rugby team. We explored the rest of the town, and hiked to the “Centre of New Zealand” which is just a 20 minute hike up a little mountain. When we got to the top, there is a great view of Nelson and of the Tasman Sea. Not as good as the view from New Plymouth’s little mountain, but it is the centre of New Zealand, and there was a double rainbow. We may not have seen any kiwi birds yet this trip, but we’ve seen plenty of rainbows.
We were lucky again to have a place to stay that night at Moira’s cousin’s house just outside of Nelson. So we drove over for dinner with Moray and John, and had the best meal we’ve had, probably since getting to New Zealand. It was just chicken and wild rice with vegetables, but we’d been eating so poorly, so that meal made miles of a difference for us. After dinner we had some tea with Moray and John and told them about our travels so far, and how we liked New Zealand. We decided to stay an extra day in Nelson for the reenactment game. They opened by having the Nelson secondary school do the Haka on the stairs of Christ Church. I imagined there would be like 6 or 7 kids doing the Haka, but I was way wrong. It was more like over a hundred kids flooding the stairs. Really really cool. Then we walked over to see the rugby game. The teams all dressed up in late 1800’s school uniforms, and used a leather rugby ball. They played with the old school rules, where there isn’t really tackling or rucking, but rather frequent rolling mauls, passing is considered cowardice, and trys don’t award points, only conversion kicks do. Games often went on three to five days until a team scored two goals. They even had a pretend streaker, outfitted in a flesh-colored body suit. We didn’t stay to the end, giving up after an hour and a half, so who knows how long the game actually went on. We walked downtown to the Founder’s Brewery to do a beer tasting (don’t recommend it, for being the oldest brewery in New Zealand, they really haven’t gotten a good recipe down yet) before setting in for the match that night. They still had cheap tickets left for the game, so we got two tickets and looked for a place to stay the night. Well, conveniently the hostel directly across the street from the stadium had two beds left, so we booked them before getting dinner. We got a couple margaritas, and met a couple obnoxious Americans. They bought us a round of margaritas, and were surprised when we didn’t want to drink with them. When we told them where we were from, the one guy said, “oh you’re from Philly? Fuck you! No wonder you didn’t want to drink with us! It’s cause you’re from Philly”. Hands down, best response I’ve ever gotten about being from Philly.
The backpackers hostel was quite cute. It was the first place we’ve stayed in where no one had any interest in rugby. They all were going to the match, and uniformly decided to root for Italy. Funny how the hostel closest to the stadiums had only two people interested in rugby staying there, and that was Jillian and myself. Kick off was at 7:30, and we had the luxury of waiting until 7:25 to walk over. We walked into stadium and our seats were basically right in front of us, and we sat down just in time for kick off. It was a terrible match. If you ever get the chance, check out Italy’s jerseys. The front has this weird design that gives it a saran wrap effect…basically it’s shiny. I don’t know how they get away with wearing those hideous jerseys, but Italy won, which makes things look bleak for USA when they play Italy in Nelson in exactly one week.
After the match, all the people staying in the hostel came back with hardly anything to say about the rugby except that it was the coldest night they’ve had in a while. In their defense, that was a terrible introduction to the game of rugby, and the most bored fans we’ve ever seen. They managed to get the Mexican wave to go around the stadium eight times, and it wasn’t because they were excited over Italy’s try.
Leaving Nelson in the morning, we had exactly one week to see the entire South Island before returning to Nelson on Tuesday to see USA’s last match against Italy. So here goes!
Saturday, October 8, 2011
New Zealand part 1! New Plymouth edition
(September 10-September 16)
New Zealand is a lot further away than one would expect, and really freakin close to Antarctica! As our plane descended into Auckland, we were inches away from touching down when the aircraft suddenly lifted up again. The pilot came on the speaker and said, “sorry about that folks. There were some birds on the runway, I’m just going to circle around and hopefully they’ll clear off.” Where else does that happen?! I liked New Zealand already.
We flew in on a Saturday morning, with really no game plan. The kickoff game was the previous day, and we had tickets to see the USA play Ireland tomorrow in New Plymouth. Jillian and I were getting our things together at the airport when we realized Jillian’s money transfer didn’t go through so she couldn’t take out any money, and I had lost my debit card in Bali, so had only my credit card. Being Saturday morning in New Zealand, all the banks were closed and all the banks in America had just closed, being a Friday afternoon, for the weekend. So there was no way for either of us to get any cash until Monday night in New Zealand when the banks in America would open back up. Great. We managed to get tickets to the bus downtown, and found a café to use internet and organize ourselves (all on my credit card). We couldn’t buy a car because we needed cash, so we had to rent a car. A lot of the rental companies were all booked up from the world cup, but after a few tries we managed to get a little (tiny) hatchback from Jucy. We walked down to the car rental place, and luckily their computers were down, so they couldn’t process my payment, which would have surely been declined. So we were off in our little rental, which would be our home for the next three weeks. New Zealand is a funny little country. Being an island, they're oddly behind in some things like movies, they have to import so many things so its expensive, yet they're up on odd pop-culture things, like Jersey Shore (unfortunately) and some terrible Bruno Mars music (sorry, I really don't like him). AND! They drive on the left side of the road. Of course our car was manual, and the shifter on the left side of the driver’s seat (thank goodness the clutch is still on the left). Driving on the left wasn’t too hard to adjust to, but those darn windshield wipers I still can’t get a handle on. Every time I try to use the turn signal, the windshield wipers come on.
Jillian had signed up for couch surfing, a network of hosts and travelers finding free places for backpackers to stay. This group of guys in New Plymouth were willing to host us for the game, so we were on our way to New Plymouth! With a stop on the way for a cell phone, pants! (who knew it was going to be so cold here) and some other essentials. We arrived at Keith’s house around 9 that night. Three guys lived in the house, just a year or two older than us, and were the sweetest, goofiest guys I had ever met. They let us drop our stuff, gave us funny looks when we said we don’t need to shower, then took us to their friends’ house down the road. In preparation for the USA v. Ireland game, a bunch of Irish girls from Auckland and Wellington were coming to New Plymouth. The guys kept saying the Irish want to fight us, but we got in and they were so welcoming and friendly, though confident they were going to win tomorrow (and rightly so). They were all pretty drunk when we got there, and before long all the girls were saying, let’s go into town, we’re going into town! We apologized and told them how pathetic we were having absolutely no cash, but they took us anyway, paid for our cab (so expensive!) and for our drinks! So we went to this spot set up for the world cup, which is really just a tent over a street downtown, with a bar set up and a band. It was okay, kind of weird, but they were all into it. We walked home since all the cabs were full, and finally went to bed, having not slept on the plane and still sore from hiking up that darn volcano, at 4 in the morning.
We woke up to our first day in New Plymouth with miserable weather. Keith made us breakfast (seriously, nicest guys ever) and asked us what we were going to do today. We looked outside, and just really didn’t want to do anything. We were still jetlagged, disorganized, and cooold. They kept coming up with things for us to do. Kade suggested we should go see the fastest waterslide in New Zealand! since it’s in Taranaki (the region where New Plymouth is) and he was really excited about that. Keith came up with the idea that we could go blow bubbles on the top of the mountain. Genius, Keith. So we just left the house in search of coffee (all they had was instant, and were disgusted that we drink it black. I had to put some milk in mine to appease Keith). We managed to find a coffee shop with the most avid USA supporters (just a quick note about coffee in New Zealand. No one has drip coffee, it’s all espresso. And don’t expect a cappuccino when you order one. A cappuccino, latte, and a flat white is all the same thing.) who offered to drive us to the game! After some planning and coffee, we went to explore New Plymouth in the rain. We did so by just driving around Mt Taranaki. It took forever on the “surfer highway” and we actually couldn’t even see the huge mountain because visibility was so bad from the rain. Mission failed. But we did see a lot of the beach!
We managed to get back to Keith’s later than we wanted to get ready for our first game!! We were busy getting our little pathetic outfits on, which was just our temple rugby tee-shirts and awesome USA sunglasses we got in Bangkok (don’t worry-our outfits will get better), while frantically looking for our ticket confirmation. Keith just looked at us in disbelief, saying, “you have 45 minutes to kick off, and you don’t know where your tickets are?” Heh, of course not. He took pity on us, and drove us to the stadium, still cashless. We got our tickets for all the games at the box office no problem, but couldn’t buy any food or drinks. But that’s alright cause our seats were amazing! We were about 10 rows back from midfield, right behind the USA team! They even face us for the national anthems. Oddly enough, the game was on September 11th, the tenth anniversary no less, so we had a moment of silence for the states, which some dude ruined by screaming “GO USA” after not a full moment of silence. The Irish supporters completely outnumbered the USA fans…by a long shot. And no surprise we lost 22-10, but we actually had a fairly good game, and scored our only try in the last 30 seconds, so at least we had an exciting finish.
After the game we didn’t have the cash to get into the bar that the USA team was supposed to show up at, so we had to settle at a bar down the street where we had fish and chips (yuck. no offense) and watched Wales play South Africa. Wow!! What a match. And that is when I fell in love with the scrumhalf from Wales, Mike Phillips. Almost as in love as I am with Waisalle Serevi from when he played for Fiji 7s. It was a tough match to watch, because I love how both teams play and I would love for either of them to win the World Cup. I think over any other team, maybe even the All Blacks. Maybe. South Africa just scraped by with a 17-16 win. We watched the game at two different bars, leaving the first bar to escape from creepy Americans, only to be approached by even worse Americans at the next bar. Maybe we should have ditched the USA sunglasses.
Keith picked us up from the bar and let us sleep on the couch another night. We were planning on getting up early and starting our circle around the North Island, but considering what we had gone through the past couple days, we slept in. Really really late. It was kind of embarrassing when Jimmy came in on a break from work at noon, and we were still in our sleeping bags. So we skipped out on the glowworms at Waitomo Caves (too expensive anyway, you go tubing through a cave with glowworms, but it costs over a hundred bucks) and went straight to Taupo for the night. Taupo is a cute little mountain town on Lake Taupo. Really the thing to do there is to see the lake. So we only stayed the night there, having seen the lake, checked in at a backpackers hostel, made a ravioli dinner and watched the replay of the World Cup opening match, New Zealand v. Tonga. Poor Tonga.
In the morning, we were off to Rotorua, land of Labyrinth stench (if you’ve ever seen the Labryinth, the one with David Bowie, bubbling sulfur pools always reminds me of the bubbling ooze in that movie). Rotorua is a thermal landmine, with hot springs, thermal springs, and steaming sulfur pools galore. We got into town, not even realizing that Samoa and Namibia were playing at the Rotorua stadium the next day, and luckily found accommodation easily. Who said it was going to be hard traveling with the world cup? The problem only still remained the price of things, regardless of the world cup. The hostels in this area are all licensed, so you can’t bring in your own alcohol. Even though the prices at the hostels are on the cheap side, it’s never as cheap as bringing your own. So we had to be a little ghetto to save some cash. Ever see “It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia”? Then you would appreciate us buying cans of soda to drink specifically so we could pour wine in the empty cans. Yep, we did it. We snuck in a bottle of wine with our bread and cheese dinner, and drank it out of soda cans. It was probably completely unnecessary, I really think opaque glasses would have sufficed, but who doesn’t want to drink wine out of a soda can and be like Danny Devito? We also made our own guacamole, and dined in style.
Having saved a penny or two, we spent all of our money on adventures in Rotorua. In the morning, we went rafting! And to appease those New Zealand superlatives they love so much, the river we rafted has the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world! 7 meters. Which really makes it the best rafting in the world. But really, it was just the best guide in the world: Bradley. Bradley was a riot. He had to do all the generic jokes scripted into the guides’ routine, but he did things like push off the landing without letting the last guy in, so we all had to back paddle while he sat and laughed at him. Later, we were going over some rapids and Bradley says, “keep paddling, don’t stop, keep paddling!!” to which, of course, Jillian and I diligently obeyed. He cracked up, saying no one ever actually listens to him, no one paddles through the rapids! And of course we don’t learn our lesson, when he yells, “okay jump in! go for a swim”. I look at the other rafts ahead of us, no one else is going swimming…but Bradley insists we swim, so we jump in. Then he immediately yells, “get back in the raft! Get back in, there’s rapids ahead, hurry up!” So we all struggle to get back in the raft before we hit the rapids. And Bradley’s just cracking up. How did we get stuck with this guy? But we made it through the rafting fine, and only one guy fell out over the 7 meter waterfall (I blame that on Bradley’s instruction, not on me and Jillian’s bad steering being from the front of the raft)
That afternoon was the Namibia v Samoa game in Rotorua, which we managed to get back in time for…but we had other priorities while in town. After a quick financial analysis, we decided to go for the 3D maze! (and who wouldn’t chose the 3D maze? I hate to say it, but it’s just so hard to watch Namibia get beat so badly every time, I feel so sorry for them!) The maze was awesome. Some guy built this large maze that has stairs to connect different parts of it. The objective is to get to every corner and exit from the same door you entered- and there are three places you can enter from. Rotorua really is like the Labyrinth! So Jillian and I picked different entrances, and raced. I would say it was a tight race, and it seemed like it would be at first, but I did have to go back in to help Jillian get out. But we won’t talk about that. We had a picnic lunch of peanut butter and honey sandwiches, our daily special, then headed back to town to watch a bunch of rugby. It was the first time I had seen Canada play (against Tonga) and I fell for them instantly. Good thing they’re on the same continent as us so I can cheer for them, and now when the US continues to not do well, I can just say I’m Canadian and gain just a little respect (maybe avoid some creepy Americans).
Our lost stop in Rotorua before heading out was Hell’s Gate, New Zealand’s top thermal attraction. We left in the morning for our three hours of mud baths and sulfur spas. First, we got a tour of all the bubbling sulfur pools, all named something profound, like “infant” because it reminded the founder of little kids playing, or “pig roast” because the bath was hot enough to roast a pig. Actually, I think I made that second one up, but the Maori tour guide said he thinks we should really use these pools for cooking because we would save a lot of energy. And what is a tour in New Zealand without a superlative: Hell’s Gate has the largest thermal waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere! So if you ever see a thermal waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere, just know the one in Hell’s Gate is bigger. We concluded of course with our luxurious mud bath and sulfur spa, and ended smelling like crap! Our bathing suits tainted by the smell of sulfur. Just in time to return to New Plymouth!
We drove the few hours back to New Plymouth, ready to see USA take on Russia! We got to Keith’s house (so nice for letting us stay on their couch again!) and this time, we were so ready! We had face paint, an American flag, ribbon for our hair, and the best part: we finally had cash! The boys were all coming to the game too, so after writing “I love USA” on all their cheeks, we were good to go! It was raining and cold, but it was so much fun, and the guys were great. Some of them dressed like Bruce Springsteen, Keith wore a Hawaiin shirt, and they were louder than any of the fans. We had to ditch them for our totally awesome seats right behind the team, even closer than last game, and best part of the night…we were on TV! I don’t know if it was on real television or not, but it was on the big screen in the stadium! That was even cooler than winning the game! We went into town and hung out under the tent again, which is apparently all there is to do in New Plymouth. And honestly, I was relieved to finally be in an English speaking country after spending 5 weeks in Southeast Asia, but I think it’s even harder to understand people here! I met Keith’s boss at tent, and I really couldn’t understand a word he was saying cause his Kiwi accent was so thick!
We stayed one more day in New Plymouth to recharge and make the boys dinner for being such great hosts. For the first time in our New Plymouth experience, the sun was out! So we climbed a little mountain because the big mountain, Mt. Taranaki, is too harsh for us. It takes a whole day and some snow gear to climb. And by little mountain, I mean we just climbed up a big rock, and it took like 15 minutes. Keith told us we would be able to see all of New Zealand, which was a lie, but we could see a lot of New Plymouth, the ocean and the farmland outside of Taranaki. It was a gorgeous view. We headed back to the boys house for the rest of the afternoon, and they wanted us to watch a movie with them. Sounds cute, but they put on the worst movie I have ever seen: Once Were Warriors. It’s a stupid movie about Maori culture and all you get from it is domestic abuse, a lot of violence and kids rebelling and misery. Why wouldn’t they pick Whale Rider? That Maori movie is great.
After the stupid movie, we made our fancy dinner for the boys: strawberry and almond salad, tomato tarts and shrimp linguini, then watched the All Blacks crush Japan. Poor Japan. After the match was the quarter finals of the National Rugby League, a mostly Australian sport. It’s similar to the rugby I know, but some of the rules are different and the tackling is kind of lame. There are 15+ rugby league teams in Australia, and one in New Zealand, the Warriors, and they were in the quarters, so it’s very exciting for New Zealand. And they won! There were two faulty calls from the ref that won them the game, but still they won! Keith’s friend said well, I don’t think they should have won that one, but I’m really glad they did. So they’ll play in the semis next weekend!
In the middle of the games, I got a call from one of Moira’s friends, John Walsh. Moira is a Kiwi that has been living in the states, but has some great connections for us in New Zealand, such as John Walsh. He called me, asked where I was, and if I wanted to go see South Africa play Fiji tomorrow in Wellington. Of course!!! SA is Jillian’s favorite team, and I love watching them play. So just like that we had two tickets to see South Africa, and we will be on our way to Wellington in the morning.
New Zealand is a lot further away than one would expect, and really freakin close to Antarctica! As our plane descended into Auckland, we were inches away from touching down when the aircraft suddenly lifted up again. The pilot came on the speaker and said, “sorry about that folks. There were some birds on the runway, I’m just going to circle around and hopefully they’ll clear off.” Where else does that happen?! I liked New Zealand already.
We flew in on a Saturday morning, with really no game plan. The kickoff game was the previous day, and we had tickets to see the USA play Ireland tomorrow in New Plymouth. Jillian and I were getting our things together at the airport when we realized Jillian’s money transfer didn’t go through so she couldn’t take out any money, and I had lost my debit card in Bali, so had only my credit card. Being Saturday morning in New Zealand, all the banks were closed and all the banks in America had just closed, being a Friday afternoon, for the weekend. So there was no way for either of us to get any cash until Monday night in New Zealand when the banks in America would open back up. Great. We managed to get tickets to the bus downtown, and found a café to use internet and organize ourselves (all on my credit card). We couldn’t buy a car because we needed cash, so we had to rent a car. A lot of the rental companies were all booked up from the world cup, but after a few tries we managed to get a little (tiny) hatchback from Jucy. We walked down to the car rental place, and luckily their computers were down, so they couldn’t process my payment, which would have surely been declined. So we were off in our little rental, which would be our home for the next three weeks. New Zealand is a funny little country. Being an island, they're oddly behind in some things like movies, they have to import so many things so its expensive, yet they're up on odd pop-culture things, like Jersey Shore (unfortunately) and some terrible Bruno Mars music (sorry, I really don't like him). AND! They drive on the left side of the road. Of course our car was manual, and the shifter on the left side of the driver’s seat (thank goodness the clutch is still on the left). Driving on the left wasn’t too hard to adjust to, but those darn windshield wipers I still can’t get a handle on. Every time I try to use the turn signal, the windshield wipers come on.
Jillian had signed up for couch surfing, a network of hosts and travelers finding free places for backpackers to stay. This group of guys in New Plymouth were willing to host us for the game, so we were on our way to New Plymouth! With a stop on the way for a cell phone, pants! (who knew it was going to be so cold here) and some other essentials. We arrived at Keith’s house around 9 that night. Three guys lived in the house, just a year or two older than us, and were the sweetest, goofiest guys I had ever met. They let us drop our stuff, gave us funny looks when we said we don’t need to shower, then took us to their friends’ house down the road. In preparation for the USA v. Ireland game, a bunch of Irish girls from Auckland and Wellington were coming to New Plymouth. The guys kept saying the Irish want to fight us, but we got in and they were so welcoming and friendly, though confident they were going to win tomorrow (and rightly so). They were all pretty drunk when we got there, and before long all the girls were saying, let’s go into town, we’re going into town! We apologized and told them how pathetic we were having absolutely no cash, but they took us anyway, paid for our cab (so expensive!) and for our drinks! So we went to this spot set up for the world cup, which is really just a tent over a street downtown, with a bar set up and a band. It was okay, kind of weird, but they were all into it. We walked home since all the cabs were full, and finally went to bed, having not slept on the plane and still sore from hiking up that darn volcano, at 4 in the morning.
We woke up to our first day in New Plymouth with miserable weather. Keith made us breakfast (seriously, nicest guys ever) and asked us what we were going to do today. We looked outside, and just really didn’t want to do anything. We were still jetlagged, disorganized, and cooold. They kept coming up with things for us to do. Kade suggested we should go see the fastest waterslide in New Zealand! since it’s in Taranaki (the region where New Plymouth is) and he was really excited about that. Keith came up with the idea that we could go blow bubbles on the top of the mountain. Genius, Keith. So we just left the house in search of coffee (all they had was instant, and were disgusted that we drink it black. I had to put some milk in mine to appease Keith). We managed to find a coffee shop with the most avid USA supporters (just a quick note about coffee in New Zealand. No one has drip coffee, it’s all espresso. And don’t expect a cappuccino when you order one. A cappuccino, latte, and a flat white is all the same thing.) who offered to drive us to the game! After some planning and coffee, we went to explore New Plymouth in the rain. We did so by just driving around Mt Taranaki. It took forever on the “surfer highway” and we actually couldn’t even see the huge mountain because visibility was so bad from the rain. Mission failed. But we did see a lot of the beach!
We managed to get back to Keith’s later than we wanted to get ready for our first game!! We were busy getting our little pathetic outfits on, which was just our temple rugby tee-shirts and awesome USA sunglasses we got in Bangkok (don’t worry-our outfits will get better), while frantically looking for our ticket confirmation. Keith just looked at us in disbelief, saying, “you have 45 minutes to kick off, and you don’t know where your tickets are?” Heh, of course not. He took pity on us, and drove us to the stadium, still cashless. We got our tickets for all the games at the box office no problem, but couldn’t buy any food or drinks. But that’s alright cause our seats were amazing! We were about 10 rows back from midfield, right behind the USA team! They even face us for the national anthems. Oddly enough, the game was on September 11th, the tenth anniversary no less, so we had a moment of silence for the states, which some dude ruined by screaming “GO USA” after not a full moment of silence. The Irish supporters completely outnumbered the USA fans…by a long shot. And no surprise we lost 22-10, but we actually had a fairly good game, and scored our only try in the last 30 seconds, so at least we had an exciting finish.
After the game we didn’t have the cash to get into the bar that the USA team was supposed to show up at, so we had to settle at a bar down the street where we had fish and chips (yuck. no offense) and watched Wales play South Africa. Wow!! What a match. And that is when I fell in love with the scrumhalf from Wales, Mike Phillips. Almost as in love as I am with Waisalle Serevi from when he played for Fiji 7s. It was a tough match to watch, because I love how both teams play and I would love for either of them to win the World Cup. I think over any other team, maybe even the All Blacks. Maybe. South Africa just scraped by with a 17-16 win. We watched the game at two different bars, leaving the first bar to escape from creepy Americans, only to be approached by even worse Americans at the next bar. Maybe we should have ditched the USA sunglasses.
Keith picked us up from the bar and let us sleep on the couch another night. We were planning on getting up early and starting our circle around the North Island, but considering what we had gone through the past couple days, we slept in. Really really late. It was kind of embarrassing when Jimmy came in on a break from work at noon, and we were still in our sleeping bags. So we skipped out on the glowworms at Waitomo Caves (too expensive anyway, you go tubing through a cave with glowworms, but it costs over a hundred bucks) and went straight to Taupo for the night. Taupo is a cute little mountain town on Lake Taupo. Really the thing to do there is to see the lake. So we only stayed the night there, having seen the lake, checked in at a backpackers hostel, made a ravioli dinner and watched the replay of the World Cup opening match, New Zealand v. Tonga. Poor Tonga.
In the morning, we were off to Rotorua, land of Labyrinth stench (if you’ve ever seen the Labryinth, the one with David Bowie, bubbling sulfur pools always reminds me of the bubbling ooze in that movie). Rotorua is a thermal landmine, with hot springs, thermal springs, and steaming sulfur pools galore. We got into town, not even realizing that Samoa and Namibia were playing at the Rotorua stadium the next day, and luckily found accommodation easily. Who said it was going to be hard traveling with the world cup? The problem only still remained the price of things, regardless of the world cup. The hostels in this area are all licensed, so you can’t bring in your own alcohol. Even though the prices at the hostels are on the cheap side, it’s never as cheap as bringing your own. So we had to be a little ghetto to save some cash. Ever see “It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia”? Then you would appreciate us buying cans of soda to drink specifically so we could pour wine in the empty cans. Yep, we did it. We snuck in a bottle of wine with our bread and cheese dinner, and drank it out of soda cans. It was probably completely unnecessary, I really think opaque glasses would have sufficed, but who doesn’t want to drink wine out of a soda can and be like Danny Devito? We also made our own guacamole, and dined in style.
Having saved a penny or two, we spent all of our money on adventures in Rotorua. In the morning, we went rafting! And to appease those New Zealand superlatives they love so much, the river we rafted has the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world! 7 meters. Which really makes it the best rafting in the world. But really, it was just the best guide in the world: Bradley. Bradley was a riot. He had to do all the generic jokes scripted into the guides’ routine, but he did things like push off the landing without letting the last guy in, so we all had to back paddle while he sat and laughed at him. Later, we were going over some rapids and Bradley says, “keep paddling, don’t stop, keep paddling!!” to which, of course, Jillian and I diligently obeyed. He cracked up, saying no one ever actually listens to him, no one paddles through the rapids! And of course we don’t learn our lesson, when he yells, “okay jump in! go for a swim”. I look at the other rafts ahead of us, no one else is going swimming…but Bradley insists we swim, so we jump in. Then he immediately yells, “get back in the raft! Get back in, there’s rapids ahead, hurry up!” So we all struggle to get back in the raft before we hit the rapids. And Bradley’s just cracking up. How did we get stuck with this guy? But we made it through the rafting fine, and only one guy fell out over the 7 meter waterfall (I blame that on Bradley’s instruction, not on me and Jillian’s bad steering being from the front of the raft)
That afternoon was the Namibia v Samoa game in Rotorua, which we managed to get back in time for…but we had other priorities while in town. After a quick financial analysis, we decided to go for the 3D maze! (and who wouldn’t chose the 3D maze? I hate to say it, but it’s just so hard to watch Namibia get beat so badly every time, I feel so sorry for them!) The maze was awesome. Some guy built this large maze that has stairs to connect different parts of it. The objective is to get to every corner and exit from the same door you entered- and there are three places you can enter from. Rotorua really is like the Labyrinth! So Jillian and I picked different entrances, and raced. I would say it was a tight race, and it seemed like it would be at first, but I did have to go back in to help Jillian get out. But we won’t talk about that. We had a picnic lunch of peanut butter and honey sandwiches, our daily special, then headed back to town to watch a bunch of rugby. It was the first time I had seen Canada play (against Tonga) and I fell for them instantly. Good thing they’re on the same continent as us so I can cheer for them, and now when the US continues to not do well, I can just say I’m Canadian and gain just a little respect (maybe avoid some creepy Americans).
Our lost stop in Rotorua before heading out was Hell’s Gate, New Zealand’s top thermal attraction. We left in the morning for our three hours of mud baths and sulfur spas. First, we got a tour of all the bubbling sulfur pools, all named something profound, like “infant” because it reminded the founder of little kids playing, or “pig roast” because the bath was hot enough to roast a pig. Actually, I think I made that second one up, but the Maori tour guide said he thinks we should really use these pools for cooking because we would save a lot of energy. And what is a tour in New Zealand without a superlative: Hell’s Gate has the largest thermal waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere! So if you ever see a thermal waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere, just know the one in Hell’s Gate is bigger. We concluded of course with our luxurious mud bath and sulfur spa, and ended smelling like crap! Our bathing suits tainted by the smell of sulfur. Just in time to return to New Plymouth!
We drove the few hours back to New Plymouth, ready to see USA take on Russia! We got to Keith’s house (so nice for letting us stay on their couch again!) and this time, we were so ready! We had face paint, an American flag, ribbon for our hair, and the best part: we finally had cash! The boys were all coming to the game too, so after writing “I love USA” on all their cheeks, we were good to go! It was raining and cold, but it was so much fun, and the guys were great. Some of them dressed like Bruce Springsteen, Keith wore a Hawaiin shirt, and they were louder than any of the fans. We had to ditch them for our totally awesome seats right behind the team, even closer than last game, and best part of the night…we were on TV! I don’t know if it was on real television or not, but it was on the big screen in the stadium! That was even cooler than winning the game! We went into town and hung out under the tent again, which is apparently all there is to do in New Plymouth. And honestly, I was relieved to finally be in an English speaking country after spending 5 weeks in Southeast Asia, but I think it’s even harder to understand people here! I met Keith’s boss at tent, and I really couldn’t understand a word he was saying cause his Kiwi accent was so thick!
We stayed one more day in New Plymouth to recharge and make the boys dinner for being such great hosts. For the first time in our New Plymouth experience, the sun was out! So we climbed a little mountain because the big mountain, Mt. Taranaki, is too harsh for us. It takes a whole day and some snow gear to climb. And by little mountain, I mean we just climbed up a big rock, and it took like 15 minutes. Keith told us we would be able to see all of New Zealand, which was a lie, but we could see a lot of New Plymouth, the ocean and the farmland outside of Taranaki. It was a gorgeous view. We headed back to the boys house for the rest of the afternoon, and they wanted us to watch a movie with them. Sounds cute, but they put on the worst movie I have ever seen: Once Were Warriors. It’s a stupid movie about Maori culture and all you get from it is domestic abuse, a lot of violence and kids rebelling and misery. Why wouldn’t they pick Whale Rider? That Maori movie is great.
After the stupid movie, we made our fancy dinner for the boys: strawberry and almond salad, tomato tarts and shrimp linguini, then watched the All Blacks crush Japan. Poor Japan. After the match was the quarter finals of the National Rugby League, a mostly Australian sport. It’s similar to the rugby I know, but some of the rules are different and the tackling is kind of lame. There are 15+ rugby league teams in Australia, and one in New Zealand, the Warriors, and they were in the quarters, so it’s very exciting for New Zealand. And they won! There were two faulty calls from the ref that won them the game, but still they won! Keith’s friend said well, I don’t think they should have won that one, but I’m really glad they did. So they’ll play in the semis next weekend!
In the middle of the games, I got a call from one of Moira’s friends, John Walsh. Moira is a Kiwi that has been living in the states, but has some great connections for us in New Zealand, such as John Walsh. He called me, asked where I was, and if I wanted to go see South Africa play Fiji tomorrow in Wellington. Of course!!! SA is Jillian’s favorite team, and I love watching them play. So just like that we had two tickets to see South Africa, and we will be on our way to Wellington in the morning.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Living the Dream in Bali (no, this is not Eat, Pray, Love)
(September 2-September 9)
Bali welcomed Jillian and I with a daunting task. First, we had to get around without Kayleigh. Secondly, we wanted to fit the same adventures we had over three weeks in Thailand and Cambodia, into one week in Bali. Luckily, this little island made the second part easy for us.
Bali is a unique little island, even to the rest of Indonesia. While Indonesia is mostly Muslim, Bali is actually Hindu, and is never ashamed to show it. Processions often roam the streets, blocking traffic at random times, and offerings are put out every day in every home, guesthouse, restaurant and store. Though our stupid guidebook taught me how to say thank you in Indonesian, the locals actually speak Balinese to each other, though also know Indonesian for immigrants downtown, and English for their immensely growing tourist population. Tourism is their biggest industry, fueling rapid development all over country, and is growing more popular thanks to that dreaded book, Eat, Pray, Love.
Now that you’ve gotten the first paragraph of Bali from Wikipedia (I actually wrote that myself, from memory of reading the Bali page on Wikipedia so many times) let me tell you how different the locals are from our previous Southeast Asian experiences. Jillian and I got off the plane, took out 2,500,000 rupiah from the ATM (which sounds exciting, but is only 300 dollars) and went to catch a cab to Ubud. As expected, we got bombarded with taxi drivers, asking outrageous prices for the hour long cab ride, prices we could never attempt to barter to close to what we wanted. One guy kept pestering us, saying out here we’d have to pay more. Then he saw Jillian’s computer, and asked if we were students. Out of habit, we said yes (I still fill out my occupancy as student on all my departure forms) and he said, oh, students! Follow me! He rushed us through the crowd of taxis and took us to the official taxi stand that would only charge us 200,000 rupiah for the ride, exactly what we wanted to pay. Then he disappeared, after bidding us good luck in his country. Bizarre. So we met our taxi driver, who asked every person we passed if they knew a cheap place to stay in Ubud. He wasn’t very conversational on the ride there, just telling us it was Ramadan, and Bali was exceptionally busy, which didn’t really made sense since Bali has only a very small Muslim population. When we got to Ubud, he drove us to three places, going up first to ask what the price was, and reporting back to us. What service! We weren’t getting the prices we wanted, so he took us back to the first place, and we left him an unexpected tip for being so helpful.
In the morning we set out to find a cheaper place to stay, after free breakfast at our resort with a swimming pool. We went from paying 35$ for the night, to about 15$ for an adorable little guesthouse with the most adorable staff. Everyone along the way sees a foreigner and asks, where are you from? Where do you stay? Things like that. It apparently comes from a long tradition of tribal greetings, always asking what tribe you are from. It gets a little over the top when this is brought into tourism. As two young girls, it was intimidating having everyone know where we were staying. We got the same greetings at our new place, Teba Guesthouse, but they were adorable about it. Once they showed us our room, one guy came over to bring us coffee. He sat on our stairs and asked where we were from, how long we were staying. He was so sad to hear we were leaving Ubud tomorrow. He wanted to know what we wanted to see in Ubud. And how we were getting to Ahmed tomorrow. Did we want motorbikes? We could rent them from him. Do we need to leave our stuff there? We can leave it with him if we come back to Teba. And they do all these things without getting a tip a lot of the time.
After getting settled in at our new place, and getting some laundry done (finally!) we walked into Ubud’s downtown. Ubud is an artisan town, filled with crafts, artwork, clothing, jewelry and just tons of shopping. Not much to do unless you want to spend a fortune. We visited the monkey sanctuary on Ubud’s main road: Monkey Forest road. Thank goodness we didn’t stay at one of the many hostels on this road, because we soon found out that Jillian is terrified of monkeys when one jumped on her and tried to take her camera, thinking it was food. I had a bunch of bananas with me for defense, and we briskly toured the sanctuary, as monkeys climbed on me to steal my bananas without even asking. They were mean little monkeys.
We browsed some of the stores with somewhat feigned interest, then continued to walk out of town to see some of Bali’s famous rice paddies. We had a direction we wanted to follow, but most roads in Bali don’t have names, so we got horribly lost. I could see we were heading in the entirely wrong direction when people stopped asking us where we were from and instead just look at us, their expressions saying, what are you doing here?! But we did see some amazing rice paddies, as well as many artists working on carvings, and kids flying kites. I was pretty exhausted from all the walking around, so we had an early dinner on the second floor balcony of a little restaurant, attempted a couple drinks at a rooftop bar with live music, then had to head home. We had a big day in the morning to go see some beaches!
For a little more than $5 a day, we rented two motorbikes that would get us around the island. We woke up early(ish) for our drive to Ahmed, which, with only a couple stops included, took us the whole day. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant on the beach (fried rice, fried noodles, and Balinese iced coffee, yum yum) and at a beautiful water palace we had no idea existed. It was at one point royal grounds, but now open for views of rice paddies and a (small) palace over water, with the ocean in the background. Gorgeous. The rest of the way to Ahmed was on a coastal, poorly maintained road. It was obviously built for motorbikes; a full sized vehicle would take up both lanes. I haven’t decided if this was my fault for being a bad motorbike driver, or my bike’s fault for being flimsy, but every time the road turned to gravel, my bike was a little unhappy, and I scraped up my knee pretty nicely. It was quite an embarrassing wound, only because every person I would pass after that would look at my knee and say, oh! Motorbike! (My favorite remark was on the beach, a guy asked what happened to my knee. I shamefully responded that I fell off my motorbike, to which he exclaimed, it’s better to fall in love than to fall off motorbike!) It seemed like we were just taking random roads; at every intersection, it was a true guess in which direction we should continue on. We passed through many villages, and you could tell from how friendly people were that they don’t get many tourists, because as soon as we got closer to Ahmed, people were a lot less friendly, and a lot less excited to see us pass by. We managed to make it to Ahmed (I don’t know how) just as the sun was setting. We stopped here and there looking for the cheapest accommodation, hopefully with a dive shop attached. One resort caught my eye thanks to the “budget rooms” sign. I slowed as we biked by, and the guy sitting out front asked me how much. I said 200, since that was what the last place had told us and I still don’t know how to bargain, and he said yes, we have rooms for 200 (meaning 200,000 rupiah, roughly $22). I told him we’d come back, and we kept biking. Well the guy chased us down on his motorbike, telling us to come see the rooms, and we wouldn’t be disappointed. Pretty ballsy of him. So we checked it out, and they were definitely gorgeous. He wanted to give us the deluxe room, with a queen bed and a single (we needed Kayleigh!) with ocean front views of the sunrise and sunset for 150, so we took it. Later we found out that someone had already booked the room, but hadn’t shown up yet. Silly man, he could have given them the room at a much higher price than we went for. But we were happy to have the luxury room on the hill, with free breakfast, hot water, and a patio overlooking the ocean. We also got more than we bargained for because we had a big spotted lizard that hid in the room and only peeked out from behind the dresser at night. Sounds scary, but he was adorable.
For dinner that night we biked to a place called Wawa Wewe. The sign outside boasted live music, which caught our eye, but we got our days mixed up, so it was just a regular restaurant that night with decent prices. I tried the fish satay, and fell in love with Balinese satay. Still not as good as Dad’s, but I like their style. Mid way through dinner, we found ourselves swarmed with Balinese guys, each one introducing themselves, asking our names, where we were from, the usual. It was somewhat intimidating, being two young girls (we needed Kayleigh!) with all these guys interested in talking to us. It made me feel better when we saw them speaking to an older French couple with the same interest that they spoke to us. They asked us about our “program”, meaning our agenda while we were in Ahmed, and we realized this is because they wanted to be the ones to take us to the diving school or to get snorkel gear because they can get commission from it. All in all though, they were really sweet boys, and really wanted to practice their English. One of them even offered to take us to Mount Agung for half the price the tour groups would take us for. The boys also introduced us to Arak, Bali’s liquor of choice. It’s not terrible stuff, probably because they take it with honey which masks the flavor. One of the most popular cocktails is Arak Attack, but they like to just drink shots from BinTang beer bottles. Arak really comes in beer bottles, oddly enough, even at all the bars.
The one creepy thing about being bombarded by all the guys is that they all asked where we were staying. It took us a while to remember the name, but of course they all know all the places in the area. So we wake up in the morning, about to take off for a dive shop, and two of the boys are waiting for us outside Beten Waru! It was harmless really, they just wanted to take us to the dive shop, so they can make some commission off of it. It took them a while to back off and realize we’re too unorganized to know what we’re doing yet, and want to just drive around, so they let us be. We started with snorkeling. There is a great reef just down the hill from our resort called coral gardens. There is actually a lot of artificial coral in the area because the coral got ruined from WWII blasts. This was actually probably artificial coral, because it was surrounded by dead coral. Other than that, I would have no way of knowing it was fake. We spent quite a bit of time on that reef, and got to see a bunch of huge blue starfish, lots of parrot fish, a puffer fish, and a LION FISH!! Coolest fish I’ve ever seen. After that, we biked up to Tumbalen, the next town up the coast that has a lot of great dive spots. Tumbalen is only 20 minutes up the road, but you would think you had been driving for hours after seeing the change in landscape. Ahmed is very lush with fruit trees all over the hills, but Tumbalen was like a desert. And just as barren, with just a scattering of dive shops and lousy accommodation. We weren’t really finding a good price for a dive, so we settled for lunch on the beach, and biked back to Ahmed to book a dive with one of the local dive shops there. Jukung Dives, a Dutch dive shop, signed us up for two dives for the next day, and told us the history of how they branched off from the evil Euro Dive, who dominates the dives in Ahmed. A lot of the people trying to get us to dive, including the owner of our resort, had tried to get us to sign up through Euro Dive, and I’m glad we didn’t. They seem like jerks.
To finish our day, we headed to the other end of Ahmed to snorkel the Japanese shipwreck. The wreck is really just offshore, and it is beautiful! There are reefs all around it, and just 10 meters in from the shore is the wreck. You don’t even need to dive to see the whole thing, you can see it all from snorkeling. The only thing that made the Japanese shipwreck slightly less cool was the lack of giant blue starfish. We spent a fair amount of time there as well, going back to the shipwreck twice before hurrying home from the beach. A little hungry, and definitely needing a beer, we stopped at a little shop on the way home. We were just going to pick up a couple of BinTangs, but the woman at the shop had some home cooked Balinese food on display, and it looked amazing. She made us a quick little package of rice, suckling pig, roasted peanuts with greens and coconut, and some spicy sauce for less than a dollar. We took it home and devoured the entire thing before the sun even set. It was by far the best food we'd had in Bali. We took our time getting showered and dressed before heading out for a light dinner. As we were walking down the hill, we heard a couple guys from a motorbike yelling “Hey hey!! Remember us from yesterday!?” It was Wayan and Ben, two of the nicer boys from the restaurant last night. They invited us to live music at another Wawa Wewe (apparently it's a franchise). We thought, why not, so we headed to the cute little beach restaurant. We got fish satay to share, and had some Arak as the rest of the boys started coming in, some that we had met the night before. I had to smile when I saw that the table we were sitting at had “Ahmed Boys” sloppily etched into it. They must hang out here often. The band was actually pretty good, playing of course mostly a selection of Bob Marley songs with some originals mixed in there. The bassist was the best, with a cigar hanging out of his mouth, facing away from the band in his own little dread-lock world. I felt a little better when some other tourist friends of theirs came in and sat with us, but it was really strange that only the Balinese boys were hanging out with us, and not the girls. I had asked Wayan why they don’t hang out with more Balinese girls, and he didn’t really have an answer. He just said there aren’t many girls in Ahmed. There is a weird divide between the genders that I don’t understand, and I don’t really like. The girls are very laborious, and seemingly unresentful about it, but it’s still weird. Jillian and I exchanged our code word to get out of there after the band finished up, and we quickly went home.
We had to get up early in the morning to go for our dive, both of us grumbling about Arak as we tried to get our things together. Jukung Diving picked us up at eight, and drove the bumpy, windy road to the dive shop, making us feel sick in the backseat. We met a couple of other divers and headed over to the site in Tumbalen. As we were getting our gear on, eager to get in the water to kill this hangover, another dive instructor, said “hey I saw you girls last night!” Oh god. “Yeah, you were at Wawa Wewe! So where’s the party tonight?” We totally didn’t recognize him, and thankfully had no idea where the party was tonight, as we would be avoiding it. He laughed at us when I told him we were hung over from too much Arak. Ugh, Arak.
It felt great to get into the water again, and I had missed diving so much. Our dive master was great. Through his mask, he looked furious at us, but as soon as we got to the surface, he was all smiles. Kind of how our scuba instructor in Thailand always looked like he was surprised. I wonder what I look like through my mask. Jillian looks the same. Our first dive was around the Liberty Shipwreck. It’s an American ship from WWII that got wrecked by a Japanese submarine. The ship had made it to the shore in Tumbalen, but got washed out to sea when Mt. Agung erupted in the 60’s. So now its just a few feet off shore, and a very popular dive site. We circled the ship, looking in all the crevices and at the coral that has grown onto the wreck. As we were approaching the shore at the end of our dive, we saw these crazy garden eels, that stick out of the sand like shoelaces, and swaying back and forth with the waves, with one neon eye peering out the tops of their head. They're creepy little things. After an hour rest period, we went back in for our second dive through the inside of the wreck! There is less going on inside, not as much coral growing, so not as many fish. But it was really cool and totally eerie swimming through the boat. I felt like I was in the Titanic, though this ship cannot even be compared to it in size. The only feature you could really make out on the ship is the huge steering wheel. Before we surfaced, we saw this enormous school of jackfish, making a whirlpool with their movements. We paused for a minute looking up at the swirling school of fish, with the sun rays piercing through their whirlpool. I wish I could take pictures underwater.
They gave us a free lunch at the end of the dive, and we got to talk to the other divers and compare what they saw. It would help if we knew the names of any fish so we could pretend to know what we were talking about. The two Germans invited us all out to have dinner at a beach side restaurant they had eaten the night before. So we took a long afternoon nap, with a quick snack from our new favorite little shop, then headed to the restaurant. We made sure to wear different clothes so we could go past the multiple Wawa Wewe’s without being noticed. The restaurant was great, and we were with the two Germans, and two Spaniards, again all speaking in English. It was a totally polar opposite night from the night before, and we had a very mellow night with calamari, and some card games with the Europeans. Fact: scuba divers make more friends.
In the morning, we were happy to leave Ahmed. Though I love this little fishermen’s-village-turned-tourist-town, it was a little too small to spend too much time there. I think everyone in the town knew where we lived (we had to start telling people, we’re at the resort two hills in that direction). We didn’t trust that our new friend Wayan would take us to Mt. Agung for half price, so we went out to climb it on our own. Sorry Wayan. We hopped on our motorbikes, and tried to find our way to Selat. It didn’t take long, and we ended up on the road that takes you halfway up the mountain. We drove to the end of the road, being stopped by an old man who prayed for us, splashed some holy water on us, then asked for a donation. We obeyed, and continued on our way to the top. We hiked up 100 stairs to the temple, and looked at the rest of the volcano mountain teeming over us. In the morning, we would climb to the top. On our way back into town we looked for a place to stay the night. We followed signs to a place called Great Mountain View. Sounded promising. The signs took us through these tiny roads in a tiny village, and into a paradise resort. The place was very expensive, and we would have to hire his tour guide, but he lowered to half the price for everything because we hesitated on it for so long. We did save some money by not hiring a tour group from Ahmed or Ubud, but not much. It was worth it though, for the great staff, and the great mountain view. Nyoman, the owner, had two cousins getting married that day, so he asked us to put on sarongs and join him, if we wished. The ceremonies were beautiful, the first an untraditional couple. They were in their forties, the man from Bali, the woman from Sumatra who couldn’t even speak Balinese. They fell in love over the phone, and he sent his son to get her from Sumatra. They had a Brahma priest who conducted the ceremony on her gold pedestal, and then she had to walk across the village to the second ceremony. At both, we were greeted with such respect and intrigue, and offered many fruits, sweets, coffee and roasted pig skin. I felt a little silly carrying around a handful of mango, snake fruit and apples, but they just kept handing us more little treats. The second ceremony was more tightly orchestrated, with places for everyone to sit on these bamboo slabs under a tent, and a gorgeous young couple very done up. The groom looked like a prince. With a lot of makeup on. They went through the same procedures as the last couple, walking up to the temple, standing in front of the priest as she rang some bells and splashed holy water on them. The whole thing was very lackadaisical, and it seemed like no one knew or cared what was going on, but were all excited about passing around the food and coffee.
We got back to Great Mountain View for a dinner on the patio looking over the rice paddies with Mount Agung in the background, completely cloud covered. Despite the gorgeous foods, we had to head to bed early that night, because at 1:00 AM, we had to get up to get to the volcano! The owner drove us to the temple where we waited for our tour guide. It sucks that you can’t get to the top without a tour guide (since they are all so expensive!) but I can see why we would need one. We started the climb in the pitch back, following some indistinguishable trail through a forest. We climbed seemingly straight up for two and a half hours, the landscape changing from forest to volcanic rock. It took over an hour to get above the trees. We got to the top just as the sun was rising. Perfect. Of course we had been warned that it was cold at the top, but we didn’t have any warm attire with us, so I’m shivering at the top in my shorts and sweatshirt. Our tour guide brought hot water for some Balinese coffee. We took heaps of pictures of the clouds below us, the sky changing with the rising sun, and some monkeys that were hanging out in the crater. We started back down the volcano, the landscape having completely changed in the daylight. If I hadn’t recognized the way the path snaked around, I would never have thought we had taken that way up, and for the first time could see a clearly defined trail that we had been following. The volcanic rock were all sorts of colors along these sheer boulders, completely open with no trees or soil in sight, and we could see the clouds really thickening up as we approached the forest, then the entire second half of our hike down was immersed in clouds. Our tour guide was of really no use to us in the end. He could barely speak any English (though the whole time he was practicing the phrase, may I help you with your bag), and he had to take breaks often. We still made it down fairly quickly, and got a ride back to our resort. Then, after a quick, delicious, banana pancake breakfast, we were on our way back to Ubud.
I think we really started to get the hang of the motorbike thing (well, really just I got the hang of it, Jillian already had it). The road to Ubud was very well paved, and we were only delayed behind one procession, but we made great timing to Ubud, flying by other amateur tourists along the way. This was our last night in Southeast Asia, and we treated ourselves like royalty. We (accidentally) got the deluxe suite at Tebu House, did some last minute souvenir shopping, got massages, some happy hour mojitos, and to top off the night, CRISPY DUCK! Best thing I have ever tasted (since Thailand). With satay, green beans, rice and some other Balinese treats. And in the morning, we were off to New Zealand.
Bali welcomed Jillian and I with a daunting task. First, we had to get around without Kayleigh. Secondly, we wanted to fit the same adventures we had over three weeks in Thailand and Cambodia, into one week in Bali. Luckily, this little island made the second part easy for us.
Bali is a unique little island, even to the rest of Indonesia. While Indonesia is mostly Muslim, Bali is actually Hindu, and is never ashamed to show it. Processions often roam the streets, blocking traffic at random times, and offerings are put out every day in every home, guesthouse, restaurant and store. Though our stupid guidebook taught me how to say thank you in Indonesian, the locals actually speak Balinese to each other, though also know Indonesian for immigrants downtown, and English for their immensely growing tourist population. Tourism is their biggest industry, fueling rapid development all over country, and is growing more popular thanks to that dreaded book, Eat, Pray, Love.
Now that you’ve gotten the first paragraph of Bali from Wikipedia (I actually wrote that myself, from memory of reading the Bali page on Wikipedia so many times) let me tell you how different the locals are from our previous Southeast Asian experiences. Jillian and I got off the plane, took out 2,500,000 rupiah from the ATM (which sounds exciting, but is only 300 dollars) and went to catch a cab to Ubud. As expected, we got bombarded with taxi drivers, asking outrageous prices for the hour long cab ride, prices we could never attempt to barter to close to what we wanted. One guy kept pestering us, saying out here we’d have to pay more. Then he saw Jillian’s computer, and asked if we were students. Out of habit, we said yes (I still fill out my occupancy as student on all my departure forms) and he said, oh, students! Follow me! He rushed us through the crowd of taxis and took us to the official taxi stand that would only charge us 200,000 rupiah for the ride, exactly what we wanted to pay. Then he disappeared, after bidding us good luck in his country. Bizarre. So we met our taxi driver, who asked every person we passed if they knew a cheap place to stay in Ubud. He wasn’t very conversational on the ride there, just telling us it was Ramadan, and Bali was exceptionally busy, which didn’t really made sense since Bali has only a very small Muslim population. When we got to Ubud, he drove us to three places, going up first to ask what the price was, and reporting back to us. What service! We weren’t getting the prices we wanted, so he took us back to the first place, and we left him an unexpected tip for being so helpful.
In the morning we set out to find a cheaper place to stay, after free breakfast at our resort with a swimming pool. We went from paying 35$ for the night, to about 15$ for an adorable little guesthouse with the most adorable staff. Everyone along the way sees a foreigner and asks, where are you from? Where do you stay? Things like that. It apparently comes from a long tradition of tribal greetings, always asking what tribe you are from. It gets a little over the top when this is brought into tourism. As two young girls, it was intimidating having everyone know where we were staying. We got the same greetings at our new place, Teba Guesthouse, but they were adorable about it. Once they showed us our room, one guy came over to bring us coffee. He sat on our stairs and asked where we were from, how long we were staying. He was so sad to hear we were leaving Ubud tomorrow. He wanted to know what we wanted to see in Ubud. And how we were getting to Ahmed tomorrow. Did we want motorbikes? We could rent them from him. Do we need to leave our stuff there? We can leave it with him if we come back to Teba. And they do all these things without getting a tip a lot of the time.
After getting settled in at our new place, and getting some laundry done (finally!) we walked into Ubud’s downtown. Ubud is an artisan town, filled with crafts, artwork, clothing, jewelry and just tons of shopping. Not much to do unless you want to spend a fortune. We visited the monkey sanctuary on Ubud’s main road: Monkey Forest road. Thank goodness we didn’t stay at one of the many hostels on this road, because we soon found out that Jillian is terrified of monkeys when one jumped on her and tried to take her camera, thinking it was food. I had a bunch of bananas with me for defense, and we briskly toured the sanctuary, as monkeys climbed on me to steal my bananas without even asking. They were mean little monkeys.
We browsed some of the stores with somewhat feigned interest, then continued to walk out of town to see some of Bali’s famous rice paddies. We had a direction we wanted to follow, but most roads in Bali don’t have names, so we got horribly lost. I could see we were heading in the entirely wrong direction when people stopped asking us where we were from and instead just look at us, their expressions saying, what are you doing here?! But we did see some amazing rice paddies, as well as many artists working on carvings, and kids flying kites. I was pretty exhausted from all the walking around, so we had an early dinner on the second floor balcony of a little restaurant, attempted a couple drinks at a rooftop bar with live music, then had to head home. We had a big day in the morning to go see some beaches!
For a little more than $5 a day, we rented two motorbikes that would get us around the island. We woke up early(ish) for our drive to Ahmed, which, with only a couple stops included, took us the whole day. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant on the beach (fried rice, fried noodles, and Balinese iced coffee, yum yum) and at a beautiful water palace we had no idea existed. It was at one point royal grounds, but now open for views of rice paddies and a (small) palace over water, with the ocean in the background. Gorgeous. The rest of the way to Ahmed was on a coastal, poorly maintained road. It was obviously built for motorbikes; a full sized vehicle would take up both lanes. I haven’t decided if this was my fault for being a bad motorbike driver, or my bike’s fault for being flimsy, but every time the road turned to gravel, my bike was a little unhappy, and I scraped up my knee pretty nicely. It was quite an embarrassing wound, only because every person I would pass after that would look at my knee and say, oh! Motorbike! (My favorite remark was on the beach, a guy asked what happened to my knee. I shamefully responded that I fell off my motorbike, to which he exclaimed, it’s better to fall in love than to fall off motorbike!) It seemed like we were just taking random roads; at every intersection, it was a true guess in which direction we should continue on. We passed through many villages, and you could tell from how friendly people were that they don’t get many tourists, because as soon as we got closer to Ahmed, people were a lot less friendly, and a lot less excited to see us pass by. We managed to make it to Ahmed (I don’t know how) just as the sun was setting. We stopped here and there looking for the cheapest accommodation, hopefully with a dive shop attached. One resort caught my eye thanks to the “budget rooms” sign. I slowed as we biked by, and the guy sitting out front asked me how much. I said 200, since that was what the last place had told us and I still don’t know how to bargain, and he said yes, we have rooms for 200 (meaning 200,000 rupiah, roughly $22). I told him we’d come back, and we kept biking. Well the guy chased us down on his motorbike, telling us to come see the rooms, and we wouldn’t be disappointed. Pretty ballsy of him. So we checked it out, and they were definitely gorgeous. He wanted to give us the deluxe room, with a queen bed and a single (we needed Kayleigh!) with ocean front views of the sunrise and sunset for 150, so we took it. Later we found out that someone had already booked the room, but hadn’t shown up yet. Silly man, he could have given them the room at a much higher price than we went for. But we were happy to have the luxury room on the hill, with free breakfast, hot water, and a patio overlooking the ocean. We also got more than we bargained for because we had a big spotted lizard that hid in the room and only peeked out from behind the dresser at night. Sounds scary, but he was adorable.
For dinner that night we biked to a place called Wawa Wewe. The sign outside boasted live music, which caught our eye, but we got our days mixed up, so it was just a regular restaurant that night with decent prices. I tried the fish satay, and fell in love with Balinese satay. Still not as good as Dad’s, but I like their style. Mid way through dinner, we found ourselves swarmed with Balinese guys, each one introducing themselves, asking our names, where we were from, the usual. It was somewhat intimidating, being two young girls (we needed Kayleigh!) with all these guys interested in talking to us. It made me feel better when we saw them speaking to an older French couple with the same interest that they spoke to us. They asked us about our “program”, meaning our agenda while we were in Ahmed, and we realized this is because they wanted to be the ones to take us to the diving school or to get snorkel gear because they can get commission from it. All in all though, they were really sweet boys, and really wanted to practice their English. One of them even offered to take us to Mount Agung for half the price the tour groups would take us for. The boys also introduced us to Arak, Bali’s liquor of choice. It’s not terrible stuff, probably because they take it with honey which masks the flavor. One of the most popular cocktails is Arak Attack, but they like to just drink shots from BinTang beer bottles. Arak really comes in beer bottles, oddly enough, even at all the bars.
The one creepy thing about being bombarded by all the guys is that they all asked where we were staying. It took us a while to remember the name, but of course they all know all the places in the area. So we wake up in the morning, about to take off for a dive shop, and two of the boys are waiting for us outside Beten Waru! It was harmless really, they just wanted to take us to the dive shop, so they can make some commission off of it. It took them a while to back off and realize we’re too unorganized to know what we’re doing yet, and want to just drive around, so they let us be. We started with snorkeling. There is a great reef just down the hill from our resort called coral gardens. There is actually a lot of artificial coral in the area because the coral got ruined from WWII blasts. This was actually probably artificial coral, because it was surrounded by dead coral. Other than that, I would have no way of knowing it was fake. We spent quite a bit of time on that reef, and got to see a bunch of huge blue starfish, lots of parrot fish, a puffer fish, and a LION FISH!! Coolest fish I’ve ever seen. After that, we biked up to Tumbalen, the next town up the coast that has a lot of great dive spots. Tumbalen is only 20 minutes up the road, but you would think you had been driving for hours after seeing the change in landscape. Ahmed is very lush with fruit trees all over the hills, but Tumbalen was like a desert. And just as barren, with just a scattering of dive shops and lousy accommodation. We weren’t really finding a good price for a dive, so we settled for lunch on the beach, and biked back to Ahmed to book a dive with one of the local dive shops there. Jukung Dives, a Dutch dive shop, signed us up for two dives for the next day, and told us the history of how they branched off from the evil Euro Dive, who dominates the dives in Ahmed. A lot of the people trying to get us to dive, including the owner of our resort, had tried to get us to sign up through Euro Dive, and I’m glad we didn’t. They seem like jerks.
To finish our day, we headed to the other end of Ahmed to snorkel the Japanese shipwreck. The wreck is really just offshore, and it is beautiful! There are reefs all around it, and just 10 meters in from the shore is the wreck. You don’t even need to dive to see the whole thing, you can see it all from snorkeling. The only thing that made the Japanese shipwreck slightly less cool was the lack of giant blue starfish. We spent a fair amount of time there as well, going back to the shipwreck twice before hurrying home from the beach. A little hungry, and definitely needing a beer, we stopped at a little shop on the way home. We were just going to pick up a couple of BinTangs, but the woman at the shop had some home cooked Balinese food on display, and it looked amazing. She made us a quick little package of rice, suckling pig, roasted peanuts with greens and coconut, and some spicy sauce for less than a dollar. We took it home and devoured the entire thing before the sun even set. It was by far the best food we'd had in Bali. We took our time getting showered and dressed before heading out for a light dinner. As we were walking down the hill, we heard a couple guys from a motorbike yelling “Hey hey!! Remember us from yesterday!?” It was Wayan and Ben, two of the nicer boys from the restaurant last night. They invited us to live music at another Wawa Wewe (apparently it's a franchise). We thought, why not, so we headed to the cute little beach restaurant. We got fish satay to share, and had some Arak as the rest of the boys started coming in, some that we had met the night before. I had to smile when I saw that the table we were sitting at had “Ahmed Boys” sloppily etched into it. They must hang out here often. The band was actually pretty good, playing of course mostly a selection of Bob Marley songs with some originals mixed in there. The bassist was the best, with a cigar hanging out of his mouth, facing away from the band in his own little dread-lock world. I felt a little better when some other tourist friends of theirs came in and sat with us, but it was really strange that only the Balinese boys were hanging out with us, and not the girls. I had asked Wayan why they don’t hang out with more Balinese girls, and he didn’t really have an answer. He just said there aren’t many girls in Ahmed. There is a weird divide between the genders that I don’t understand, and I don’t really like. The girls are very laborious, and seemingly unresentful about it, but it’s still weird. Jillian and I exchanged our code word to get out of there after the band finished up, and we quickly went home.
We had to get up early in the morning to go for our dive, both of us grumbling about Arak as we tried to get our things together. Jukung Diving picked us up at eight, and drove the bumpy, windy road to the dive shop, making us feel sick in the backseat. We met a couple of other divers and headed over to the site in Tumbalen. As we were getting our gear on, eager to get in the water to kill this hangover, another dive instructor, said “hey I saw you girls last night!” Oh god. “Yeah, you were at Wawa Wewe! So where’s the party tonight?” We totally didn’t recognize him, and thankfully had no idea where the party was tonight, as we would be avoiding it. He laughed at us when I told him we were hung over from too much Arak. Ugh, Arak.
It felt great to get into the water again, and I had missed diving so much. Our dive master was great. Through his mask, he looked furious at us, but as soon as we got to the surface, he was all smiles. Kind of how our scuba instructor in Thailand always looked like he was surprised. I wonder what I look like through my mask. Jillian looks the same. Our first dive was around the Liberty Shipwreck. It’s an American ship from WWII that got wrecked by a Japanese submarine. The ship had made it to the shore in Tumbalen, but got washed out to sea when Mt. Agung erupted in the 60’s. So now its just a few feet off shore, and a very popular dive site. We circled the ship, looking in all the crevices and at the coral that has grown onto the wreck. As we were approaching the shore at the end of our dive, we saw these crazy garden eels, that stick out of the sand like shoelaces, and swaying back and forth with the waves, with one neon eye peering out the tops of their head. They're creepy little things. After an hour rest period, we went back in for our second dive through the inside of the wreck! There is less going on inside, not as much coral growing, so not as many fish. But it was really cool and totally eerie swimming through the boat. I felt like I was in the Titanic, though this ship cannot even be compared to it in size. The only feature you could really make out on the ship is the huge steering wheel. Before we surfaced, we saw this enormous school of jackfish, making a whirlpool with their movements. We paused for a minute looking up at the swirling school of fish, with the sun rays piercing through their whirlpool. I wish I could take pictures underwater.
They gave us a free lunch at the end of the dive, and we got to talk to the other divers and compare what they saw. It would help if we knew the names of any fish so we could pretend to know what we were talking about. The two Germans invited us all out to have dinner at a beach side restaurant they had eaten the night before. So we took a long afternoon nap, with a quick snack from our new favorite little shop, then headed to the restaurant. We made sure to wear different clothes so we could go past the multiple Wawa Wewe’s without being noticed. The restaurant was great, and we were with the two Germans, and two Spaniards, again all speaking in English. It was a totally polar opposite night from the night before, and we had a very mellow night with calamari, and some card games with the Europeans. Fact: scuba divers make more friends.
In the morning, we were happy to leave Ahmed. Though I love this little fishermen’s-village-turned-tourist-town, it was a little too small to spend too much time there. I think everyone in the town knew where we lived (we had to start telling people, we’re at the resort two hills in that direction). We didn’t trust that our new friend Wayan would take us to Mt. Agung for half price, so we went out to climb it on our own. Sorry Wayan. We hopped on our motorbikes, and tried to find our way to Selat. It didn’t take long, and we ended up on the road that takes you halfway up the mountain. We drove to the end of the road, being stopped by an old man who prayed for us, splashed some holy water on us, then asked for a donation. We obeyed, and continued on our way to the top. We hiked up 100 stairs to the temple, and looked at the rest of the volcano mountain teeming over us. In the morning, we would climb to the top. On our way back into town we looked for a place to stay the night. We followed signs to a place called Great Mountain View. Sounded promising. The signs took us through these tiny roads in a tiny village, and into a paradise resort. The place was very expensive, and we would have to hire his tour guide, but he lowered to half the price for everything because we hesitated on it for so long. We did save some money by not hiring a tour group from Ahmed or Ubud, but not much. It was worth it though, for the great staff, and the great mountain view. Nyoman, the owner, had two cousins getting married that day, so he asked us to put on sarongs and join him, if we wished. The ceremonies were beautiful, the first an untraditional couple. They were in their forties, the man from Bali, the woman from Sumatra who couldn’t even speak Balinese. They fell in love over the phone, and he sent his son to get her from Sumatra. They had a Brahma priest who conducted the ceremony on her gold pedestal, and then she had to walk across the village to the second ceremony. At both, we were greeted with such respect and intrigue, and offered many fruits, sweets, coffee and roasted pig skin. I felt a little silly carrying around a handful of mango, snake fruit and apples, but they just kept handing us more little treats. The second ceremony was more tightly orchestrated, with places for everyone to sit on these bamboo slabs under a tent, and a gorgeous young couple very done up. The groom looked like a prince. With a lot of makeup on. They went through the same procedures as the last couple, walking up to the temple, standing in front of the priest as she rang some bells and splashed holy water on them. The whole thing was very lackadaisical, and it seemed like no one knew or cared what was going on, but were all excited about passing around the food and coffee.
We got back to Great Mountain View for a dinner on the patio looking over the rice paddies with Mount Agung in the background, completely cloud covered. Despite the gorgeous foods, we had to head to bed early that night, because at 1:00 AM, we had to get up to get to the volcano! The owner drove us to the temple where we waited for our tour guide. It sucks that you can’t get to the top without a tour guide (since they are all so expensive!) but I can see why we would need one. We started the climb in the pitch back, following some indistinguishable trail through a forest. We climbed seemingly straight up for two and a half hours, the landscape changing from forest to volcanic rock. It took over an hour to get above the trees. We got to the top just as the sun was rising. Perfect. Of course we had been warned that it was cold at the top, but we didn’t have any warm attire with us, so I’m shivering at the top in my shorts and sweatshirt. Our tour guide brought hot water for some Balinese coffee. We took heaps of pictures of the clouds below us, the sky changing with the rising sun, and some monkeys that were hanging out in the crater. We started back down the volcano, the landscape having completely changed in the daylight. If I hadn’t recognized the way the path snaked around, I would never have thought we had taken that way up, and for the first time could see a clearly defined trail that we had been following. The volcanic rock were all sorts of colors along these sheer boulders, completely open with no trees or soil in sight, and we could see the clouds really thickening up as we approached the forest, then the entire second half of our hike down was immersed in clouds. Our tour guide was of really no use to us in the end. He could barely speak any English (though the whole time he was practicing the phrase, may I help you with your bag), and he had to take breaks often. We still made it down fairly quickly, and got a ride back to our resort. Then, after a quick, delicious, banana pancake breakfast, we were on our way back to Ubud.
I think we really started to get the hang of the motorbike thing (well, really just I got the hang of it, Jillian already had it). The road to Ubud was very well paved, and we were only delayed behind one procession, but we made great timing to Ubud, flying by other amateur tourists along the way. This was our last night in Southeast Asia, and we treated ourselves like royalty. We (accidentally) got the deluxe suite at Tebu House, did some last minute souvenir shopping, got massages, some happy hour mojitos, and to top off the night, CRISPY DUCK! Best thing I have ever tasted (since Thailand). With satay, green beans, rice and some other Balinese treats. And in the morning, we were off to New Zealand.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Hello Cambodia
Getting to Siem Reap is a true nightmare. I knew that hundreds of tourists make the trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap daily, but I was still petrified to do it. I had read every guide and travel tip available, and had the whole thing calculated out in my head, but the whole thing still made me nervous. After the overnight bus to Bangkok, and a four hour bus to the border, we arrived at Aranyaprathet to a parade of tuk-tuks, loading all the bus passengers into their vehicles, without a word of where we’re going or how much it would cost. They demanded a hundred bhat from us, and dropped us at an unofficial building to get visas. We luckily got out of there without paying, leaving other frazzled foreigners left to get scammed (sorry guys! We met up with one of the couples later that had ended up paying twice as much for their visas as they should have). We got kicked out of the building for refusing to get the visas with them, and looked around helplessly for the border. It was really only a short walk away, and we were able to get through Thai customs and make it to the Cambodian border where we could process our visas for the actual price. Getting across the border was such a relief, and it was basically cake after that, since the stupid Cambodian tourist agency has a monopoly on the transit from Poipet to Siem Reap, so we had no options and no bartering to get to Siem Reap. We had to pay the monopoly price for a bus, which was really only 9 US dollars.
The whole thing was kind of dumb and made me feel bad for Cambodia. First, they have to deal with all these tourists that can’t, and don’t even make an attempt to try to speak Khmer. I made it a point to learn hello and thank you in Khmer so I could at least be respectful of the people at the border and the stupid tourist agency, and everyone was surprised I could say thank you! Does really nobody else say thank you to you in your own language? And secondly, because so many tourists go to Siem Reap, they hardly use their own currency. They use mostly American dollars and give you change in their currency, Reel, and they also take bhat! I watched our tuk tuk driver one day give a store US dollars for gasoline, and get change in bhat. That is a lot of currency conversions, and I really don’t trust that they’re doing it right. I wonder what its like on the Eastern side of the country. I hope they don’t have to deal with American currency over there too. That would be quite sad. Also, the whole Khmer Rouge thing in Cambodia is incredibly overlooked in world history. How many Americans do you think know that Cambodia had basically a holocaust only 20 years ago? I certainly didn’t know much about it, and I study Asian history a lot.
So anyway, we arrived in Siem Reap fairly late at night. As we gathered our things off the bus, a tall, fairly built Cambodian introduced himself by saying “Hello, I am your tuk-tuk driver”. He was so cool! He showed us to his cute little tuk-tuk, and took us straight to our guesthouse. The tuk-tuks in Cambodia are a little different than Thailand; they’re just little carriages attached to motorbikes. He dropped us at the guesthouse, and asked if we needed a driver for the next day to see Angkor Wat. What a professional! So we hired Tull for the next day, without even thinking to barter with him, cause we loved his style. And that was the third guy Jillian fell in love with this trip.
After dropping off our belongings, we went to explore the streets of Siem Reap. It’s a pretty cute town with a lot of shops and restaurants very close to our guesthouse. As you can imagine, it is full of tourists, and everything is in English. It’s so weird to talk to Cambodians, Spaniards, Germans, everyone in our language, knowing their all using their learned language. And even if they weren’t talking to us, the Europeans talk to each other in English. It’s so strange and kind of off-putting. But I guess that's why I was hired to teach English in Thailand for a year. So being in Cambodia for the first time, we opted to try Cambodian BBQ. It’s pretty much a Korean BBQ/hot pot kind of deal. There is a raised grill to cook the meat, above a moat of broth to boil the vegetables and noodles. It’s served with a side of rice and was pretty tasty except for the gross Italian dressing they supplied on the side. Yuck. I don’t know how authentically Cambodian that really was. If it is authentic, I don’t think I care for Cambodian food. I missed Thailand already.
The next day was our introduction to the city of Angkor. It’s hard to really describe the amazingness of the ruins, and though the pictures don’t do it much justice either, it’s probably better than me trying to explain how beautiful it all is. Basically, Angkor Thom, or the Great City, was the last capital city during the Khmer empire. Established in the 12th century, Angkor Thom is now a city of ruins, having been abandoned sometime in the 1600’s. The city is most known for Angkor Wat, or the Temple of Angkor, though the entire city is an endless spectacle. We started with Banteay Kdei and Sra Srang. Kayleigh, Jillian and I adopted an unspoken ritual of exploring the temple at our own pace, finding our own way around, and somehow finding each other in the end. Our system worked surprisingly well, as we found out with this first temple. We split up almost instantly, and reconvened at the end, telling each other what we saw. Kayleigh bought some beautiful artwork, Jillian ate some yams with an old man and his son, and I had hired a tour guide to tell me about the temple. I didn’t really hire Sao. He just started following me around telling me different details about the temple, like all of the Buddha’s heads are missing because they were taken by the Khmer Rouge, he showed me the dancing halls where the Upsara would perform their political dances, pointed out a huge, grotesque spider, and showed me where the French had tried to restore some of the structure with cement. The coolest thing was the types of rocks used (you know I love my geology). They had used two types of rock: sandstone for carving, and volcanic rock for building blocks since volcanic rock is much harder to carve than sandstone. Sao told me he was in school for engineering and wanted to continue his studies in either history or engineering. He was adorable. Jillian said he probably made those things up, which he probably did, but I liked his little facts and I’ll pretend that they’re true. Who really knows if they’re accurate or not, they may as well be truth.
Exiting the temple we got bombarded with little kids trying to sell us shirts, sodas, artwork, anything. They were adorable, but sometimes a little evil. Each one greeted us saying, hello, where are you from? When we answered America, the typical response would be: "America. Capital Washington DC. President Barack Obama. He has two daughters and one dog named Bobo." And this was their routine for any tourist that passed their way. They could also count to ten in more languages than I could name. I saw a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, trying to sell postcards in Japanese. And they were relentless. We got swarmed at this temple and had to disappoint every single one of them by not purchasing anything. The little girl that bugged me, Tanika, got really upset with me, and gave me this dark look saying, you’re a bad tourist. You didn’t buy anything from my store. Her voice was scary enough to give me nightmares.
After Sra Srong, we explored Pre Rup, Eastern Baray and Eastern Mebon before stopping for lunch. We invited Tull to have lunch with us, which I couldn’t really tell if he wanted to do. But we asked him to help us with the menu, and he was delighted to do so. Without really asking, he ordered Amok for me, curry for Jillian, soup for Kayleigh and fried chicken for himself. It was actually delicious. My Amok was served in a coconut, and is almost like a light curry, with a ton of dark leafy greens. Yum yum. After lunch we went to the coolest ruin we had seen all day, Preah Khan. The grounds were huge, with endless halls to explore, rubble to climb and pictures to take. We walked in different directions, from one end to another, and all came back with stories of where this wild flower garden was, getting lost in halls, climbing on top of the rubble, it was really a huge maze. I think we could have spent an entire day there. But that was the last stop of the day, and we were quite temple’d out.
That evening we headed back out to the center of the Siem Reap night life. Jillian and Kayleigh were craving pizza, and the international food in Siem Reap is supposed to be quite good, so we scouted a place in our guide book called Happy Herb Pizza. The description was hilarious, saying something about the pizza being great, and the questionably legal ingredients will be sure to have guests leaving happy. So we found the restaurant, and when you order you pizza, they ask if you want it “happy”, and of course we said yes. I think their secret ingredient was really just oregano. Didn't feel a thing. After happy pizza, we headed to the night market. It is exactly what you would expect of a night market in Siem Reap. A lot of Angkor Wat shirts, some "I love Cambodia" shirts, wood carvings, Cambodian silk scarfs, and other great souvenirs. I bought a hammock for my house in Sukothai.
Day two in Cambodia, Tull picked us up at 5 in the morning to see the sunrise in Angkor Wat. Since we were in Cambodia during their wet season, it was really no surprise that the sky was covered with clouds and all of the sunrise we could see was the changing light in the sky. But we took our time exploring the famous temple with less crowds than we would encounter later in the day. It is still amazing though that there were still maybe a hundred tourists at Angkor Wat at 5 in the morning during their wet season. The actual temple was actually not that amazing, compared to all of the other amazing sites the city of Angkor has to offer. I think because it is the most famous, it is the most well preserved and restored temple of the lot. The unkempt ruins, in my opinion, have more character and authenticity.
After some coffee and breakfast at one of the many food stalls nearby, we explored the rest of Angkor Thom, starting with Bayon, which marks the center of the city. The rest of Angkor Thom that we wandered through included Baphuon, Phimeanakas, South and North Kleang, Preah Pithu, Tep Pranam and Preah Palitay. We took a break from temple hopping, and headed outside of the Angkor city back to Siem Reap for lunch in a butterfly garden. The food was crap, but the ambiance made it worth it. The tables are spread through a garden, with butterflies all over. When we returned to Angkor, we visited the last temple on our agenda, Ta Prohm, where parts of Tomb Raider was filmed. Jillian had the genius idea of us all French braiding our hair so we could take a picture, Laura Croft style, at Ta Prohm. That was possibly the best picture we have of the whole trip, except for maybe the picture I took of Joe with a flower in his hair. Ta Prohm was another really cool temple that I liked more than Angkor Wat. This temple has been left to nature for the most part, with some restoration happening, but its mostly been left for the jungle to take over. There are huge trees growing on top or on the sides of walls, their roots now reaching to the ground, tearing down the sides of the temples. It’s really an amazing thing to see how nature just demolishes these carefully orchestrated structures. We took too long in Ta Prohm, that we nearly missed the sunset. Tull sped us over to the hill across from Angkor Wat that we had to hike up to see sunset. By then the clouds had rolled in, so it was okay that we were late to miss the sunset we wouldn’t have been able to see.
For dinner that evening, we went to explore a quieter street behind the hubbub of Siem Reap. We found this adorable Khmer food restaurant with the goofiest staff, which was an anomaly to the serious service we had been getting. The waiters were kind of spastic, and joked with us, making sure we knew that cocktails were buy one get one free. The best part is that they serve you free popcorn when you sit down. That’s really what won me over, and their Amok was pretty good too. Following dinner, we had to try drinks at the bar named “Angkor What?” The bar was totally goofy, and attracted us not because of the 50 cent draft, but because of the name. Towards the end of the night though, the bar turned into a total tourist party scene, and it was time to get out.
Our last full day in Cambodia, we decided to skip the city of Angkor, and try something different. The problem with trying something different, of course, is money. We wanted to see Tonle Sap, SE Asia’s largest lake, but to do so was going to cost us a fortune thanks to Cambodia’s lovely monopoly on tourism. Tonle Sap, as I had learned under the great instruction of Dr. Robert Mason, fluctuates massively in size throughout the year. During the dry season, there are roads and forests that are covered by the lake or tributaries during the wet season (now), as it expands to about four times it’s size. The forest and villages around Tonle Sap morph into the “Floating Village” and the “Flooded Forest” during their high season. I talked to the staff at our hostel about getting a ride to one of the tributaries to the lake, Kong Gneash. He said one of his drivers could take us there for 6$ round way, but it would be hard because it’s flooded. In my head, I said yeah duh it’s flooded, that’s why we want to go! Thinking he was talking about the flooded village. Well we came to find out he was talking about the road to Kong Gneash being flooded. It was a mess! This was a fairly busy road in Siem Reap, and must get flooded often, because some shops and homes were set up for the flood either by putting their store on stilts, or blocking the river-road off with rice bags. It was insane. Several times our tuk-tuk driver got stuck, and we would have to get out and wade through the knee-deep water until he could carry us again on the tuk-tuk. By the time we got to the port of Kong Gneash, this mean tourism police guy told us it would cost us $150 to take a boat to Tonle Sap! Lies. It should really have only cost us 80$, max. We walked away, and tried to find another port. Our tuk-tuk driver kept saying no, no, the police will stop you, to which I replied, good. This is a scam and I want to talk to the police. Well the police did stop us and told us we had to pay the mean guy at the port if we wanted to get to Tonle Sap. Bummer. So our poor little tuk-tuk driver led us stupide tourists back through the flooded streets to another port about an hour away so we could pay the stupid tourism authority half price, and our tuk-tuk driver double, to take a smaller boat half the distance to Tonle Sap. At least we know the money goes straight to the tuk-tuk driver. Who knows where our money to the tourism authority go. When we got there, luckily our tuk-tuk driver told the police how much he had told us we would have to pay, meanwhile the Australians ahead of us paid double cause the tourism authority just make up prices, won’t barter, and there’s nothing you can do about it except watch the boat drivers not get paid their fair share. Cambodia is wacky.
All in all though, the trip to Tonle Sap was really cool, flooded street included. Our little boat driver didn’t say a single word, but he took us along this river that would have been a street during the dry season. Our tuk-tuk driver, who came along for the ride, tried to explain some things to me in his broken English, like how much the boat driver gets paid (less than half), that there’s snakes in the river, and that during the dry season, you can drive to the village on this river. We passed rice paddies, the floating village that was constructed entirely on stilts, and the mangroves. Finally we made it out to Tonle Sap, that looked as big as an ocean. We sat on the lake as we watched the sky change from perfectly sunny to incredibly ominous as a huge storm approached. We started heading back up the river, but barely made it off the lake when the sheet of rain reached us. The storm was intense. We stopped at a floating restaurant for cover, where we met a boy, younger than us, who was a radio DJ in Siem Reap. He gave us his facebook information, and hoped that we’d tell our friends about him. He also showed us his catfish farm, which many homes along the river have to sell to Siem Reap merchants. Once the rain subsided, we made our way back to the port, shivering all the way back to Siem Reap.
That night, our last night in Siem Reap, we went out in style. We decided to treat ourselves to really fancy BBQ at a cute restaurant with linen napkins. With two mojitos each, meat skewers, noodles and some BBQ squid, we left with very happy tummies with a whopping balance of $23 total for the three of us. We headed down to pub street to sit at a bar and play cards. I had spent some time with the Cambodians at the hostel learning their card game that was supposedly very difficult (it was really just Gin Rummi), and we rotated between that, Thai Rummi, Gop Don Gop Dang (Thai Ten) and Kang. We were probably there for quite a while, and left once we realized we were the last ones there around 12:30. But, just across the street, Angkor What?! was just getting started, so he hopped over for some dancing with a bunch of European tourists. They really do party a lot, those tourists.
In the morning, Kayleigh and I were not feeling great, though Jillian was somehow not a pinch hungover. And we had a full day of bussing back to Bangkok. Great. Even though we weren’t too crazy about our hostel at first, the little place had grown on me, and I was kind of sad to leave those guys. The owner set us up on the minivan, while everyone got on the bus, insisting the mini-van would get there quicker. How much quicker? Someone asked. About 10 minutes was his response. One of the guys helped me put my bags on the bus, and said I should stay here for a year, and he would find me a job at a hostel, so I could come play cards with them. Tempting, if Cambodia wasn’t a wacky country. We got to the border before the bus, crossed over into Aranyaprathet, and waited for the rest of our ride to Bangkok with only white stickers on our shirts as evidence of our bus tickets. Well, we beat the bus from Siem Reap alright, by over an hour, then had to wait for them! We waited and waited, seeing people with purple stickers, green stickers, red stickers, pass us by and get on buses to Bangkok. I asked a guy leading green stickers around why we still had to wait, and he just looked at my shirt and said, white sticker, you wait over there! I can never tell if they’re making these things up, or if they are really that organized. I guess I shouldn’t doubt them, because as soon as the rest of the white stickers showed up, so did our bus to take us to Bangkok.
We found a hostel for the night on the infamous Kaosan road, otherwise known as backpackers road. It’s a total mess. It’s pretty close to central Bangkok which is nice, and there is a plethora of hostels to stay in, though compared to what we’ve been paying they were quite pricey. I really don’t know why it’s backpackers road. It’s so trashy! There’s a bunch of stores that line the streets, selling a variety of tee shirts, jewelry, fake diplomas, and other odds and ends. There is also plenty of food vendors to compete with the Subway, McDonalds and KFC that populate the street, but all the carts were pretty much only selling Pad Thai. It was an interesting scene. When we met up with A-Dtaw and A-Fung that night, A-Fung’s eyes went wide when I told him we were staying at a hostel behind the Subway on Kaosan street. He said, you know that Kaosan never sleeps! But A-Dtaw was excited for us, saying we need to experience it. I think he wanted to join us. We had an amazing dinner with crab curry, roasted duck, tom yam pla and shrimp. A-Fung kept us amused with stories of his friends winning tons of money in Las Vegas. When he told us his one friend lost 35 million US dollars, Kayleigh said what a waste! He could have given that to me to take back to America! And A-Fung said no, no no…that’d be too heavy! You wouldn’t be able to carry that all! Then A-Dtaw and A-Fung spent the next 5 minutes discussing in Thai how many suitcases that would fill up. They decided on ten. As we got to the end of our meal (seemed like an eternity with all that food!) A-Fung was trying to make us eat the last few pieces of shrimp and vegetables, telling us that the person who takes the last piece of food will have good fortune finding a boyfriend (but I think he was just saying that to get us to eat more). Jillian took the last shrimp, and A-Fung pointed to the last vegetable and said, Kayleigh, this is your last chance! So she took the last vegetable. Funny little A-Fung. We caught a cab back to Kaosan street, and hit the street for last minute souvenirs. After scanning all of Kaosan, we headed to a reggae bar. Of course it was packed with drunk Europeans, and had the most expensive drinks I’ve ever seen in Thailand. I really don’t understand why Kaosan is supposed to be for backpackers, they must be quite posh backpackers. Surprisingly the bar closed at 1, but as we made our way back to our hostel behind Subway, we saw a whole new set of vendors set up on the street. Luckily our room was tucked away from the party scene, so we could sleep soundly through our last night in Thailand.
The whole thing was kind of dumb and made me feel bad for Cambodia. First, they have to deal with all these tourists that can’t, and don’t even make an attempt to try to speak Khmer. I made it a point to learn hello and thank you in Khmer so I could at least be respectful of the people at the border and the stupid tourist agency, and everyone was surprised I could say thank you! Does really nobody else say thank you to you in your own language? And secondly, because so many tourists go to Siem Reap, they hardly use their own currency. They use mostly American dollars and give you change in their currency, Reel, and they also take bhat! I watched our tuk tuk driver one day give a store US dollars for gasoline, and get change in bhat. That is a lot of currency conversions, and I really don’t trust that they’re doing it right. I wonder what its like on the Eastern side of the country. I hope they don’t have to deal with American currency over there too. That would be quite sad. Also, the whole Khmer Rouge thing in Cambodia is incredibly overlooked in world history. How many Americans do you think know that Cambodia had basically a holocaust only 20 years ago? I certainly didn’t know much about it, and I study Asian history a lot.
So anyway, we arrived in Siem Reap fairly late at night. As we gathered our things off the bus, a tall, fairly built Cambodian introduced himself by saying “Hello, I am your tuk-tuk driver”. He was so cool! He showed us to his cute little tuk-tuk, and took us straight to our guesthouse. The tuk-tuks in Cambodia are a little different than Thailand; they’re just little carriages attached to motorbikes. He dropped us at the guesthouse, and asked if we needed a driver for the next day to see Angkor Wat. What a professional! So we hired Tull for the next day, without even thinking to barter with him, cause we loved his style. And that was the third guy Jillian fell in love with this trip.
After dropping off our belongings, we went to explore the streets of Siem Reap. It’s a pretty cute town with a lot of shops and restaurants very close to our guesthouse. As you can imagine, it is full of tourists, and everything is in English. It’s so weird to talk to Cambodians, Spaniards, Germans, everyone in our language, knowing their all using their learned language. And even if they weren’t talking to us, the Europeans talk to each other in English. It’s so strange and kind of off-putting. But I guess that's why I was hired to teach English in Thailand for a year. So being in Cambodia for the first time, we opted to try Cambodian BBQ. It’s pretty much a Korean BBQ/hot pot kind of deal. There is a raised grill to cook the meat, above a moat of broth to boil the vegetables and noodles. It’s served with a side of rice and was pretty tasty except for the gross Italian dressing they supplied on the side. Yuck. I don’t know how authentically Cambodian that really was. If it is authentic, I don’t think I care for Cambodian food. I missed Thailand already.
The next day was our introduction to the city of Angkor. It’s hard to really describe the amazingness of the ruins, and though the pictures don’t do it much justice either, it’s probably better than me trying to explain how beautiful it all is. Basically, Angkor Thom, or the Great City, was the last capital city during the Khmer empire. Established in the 12th century, Angkor Thom is now a city of ruins, having been abandoned sometime in the 1600’s. The city is most known for Angkor Wat, or the Temple of Angkor, though the entire city is an endless spectacle. We started with Banteay Kdei and Sra Srang. Kayleigh, Jillian and I adopted an unspoken ritual of exploring the temple at our own pace, finding our own way around, and somehow finding each other in the end. Our system worked surprisingly well, as we found out with this first temple. We split up almost instantly, and reconvened at the end, telling each other what we saw. Kayleigh bought some beautiful artwork, Jillian ate some yams with an old man and his son, and I had hired a tour guide to tell me about the temple. I didn’t really hire Sao. He just started following me around telling me different details about the temple, like all of the Buddha’s heads are missing because they were taken by the Khmer Rouge, he showed me the dancing halls where the Upsara would perform their political dances, pointed out a huge, grotesque spider, and showed me where the French had tried to restore some of the structure with cement. The coolest thing was the types of rocks used (you know I love my geology). They had used two types of rock: sandstone for carving, and volcanic rock for building blocks since volcanic rock is much harder to carve than sandstone. Sao told me he was in school for engineering and wanted to continue his studies in either history or engineering. He was adorable. Jillian said he probably made those things up, which he probably did, but I liked his little facts and I’ll pretend that they’re true. Who really knows if they’re accurate or not, they may as well be truth.
Exiting the temple we got bombarded with little kids trying to sell us shirts, sodas, artwork, anything. They were adorable, but sometimes a little evil. Each one greeted us saying, hello, where are you from? When we answered America, the typical response would be: "America. Capital Washington DC. President Barack Obama. He has two daughters and one dog named Bobo." And this was their routine for any tourist that passed their way. They could also count to ten in more languages than I could name. I saw a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, trying to sell postcards in Japanese. And they were relentless. We got swarmed at this temple and had to disappoint every single one of them by not purchasing anything. The little girl that bugged me, Tanika, got really upset with me, and gave me this dark look saying, you’re a bad tourist. You didn’t buy anything from my store. Her voice was scary enough to give me nightmares.
After Sra Srong, we explored Pre Rup, Eastern Baray and Eastern Mebon before stopping for lunch. We invited Tull to have lunch with us, which I couldn’t really tell if he wanted to do. But we asked him to help us with the menu, and he was delighted to do so. Without really asking, he ordered Amok for me, curry for Jillian, soup for Kayleigh and fried chicken for himself. It was actually delicious. My Amok was served in a coconut, and is almost like a light curry, with a ton of dark leafy greens. Yum yum. After lunch we went to the coolest ruin we had seen all day, Preah Khan. The grounds were huge, with endless halls to explore, rubble to climb and pictures to take. We walked in different directions, from one end to another, and all came back with stories of where this wild flower garden was, getting lost in halls, climbing on top of the rubble, it was really a huge maze. I think we could have spent an entire day there. But that was the last stop of the day, and we were quite temple’d out.
That evening we headed back out to the center of the Siem Reap night life. Jillian and Kayleigh were craving pizza, and the international food in Siem Reap is supposed to be quite good, so we scouted a place in our guide book called Happy Herb Pizza. The description was hilarious, saying something about the pizza being great, and the questionably legal ingredients will be sure to have guests leaving happy. So we found the restaurant, and when you order you pizza, they ask if you want it “happy”, and of course we said yes. I think their secret ingredient was really just oregano. Didn't feel a thing. After happy pizza, we headed to the night market. It is exactly what you would expect of a night market in Siem Reap. A lot of Angkor Wat shirts, some "I love Cambodia" shirts, wood carvings, Cambodian silk scarfs, and other great souvenirs. I bought a hammock for my house in Sukothai.
Day two in Cambodia, Tull picked us up at 5 in the morning to see the sunrise in Angkor Wat. Since we were in Cambodia during their wet season, it was really no surprise that the sky was covered with clouds and all of the sunrise we could see was the changing light in the sky. But we took our time exploring the famous temple with less crowds than we would encounter later in the day. It is still amazing though that there were still maybe a hundred tourists at Angkor Wat at 5 in the morning during their wet season. The actual temple was actually not that amazing, compared to all of the other amazing sites the city of Angkor has to offer. I think because it is the most famous, it is the most well preserved and restored temple of the lot. The unkempt ruins, in my opinion, have more character and authenticity.
After some coffee and breakfast at one of the many food stalls nearby, we explored the rest of Angkor Thom, starting with Bayon, which marks the center of the city. The rest of Angkor Thom that we wandered through included Baphuon, Phimeanakas, South and North Kleang, Preah Pithu, Tep Pranam and Preah Palitay. We took a break from temple hopping, and headed outside of the Angkor city back to Siem Reap for lunch in a butterfly garden. The food was crap, but the ambiance made it worth it. The tables are spread through a garden, with butterflies all over. When we returned to Angkor, we visited the last temple on our agenda, Ta Prohm, where parts of Tomb Raider was filmed. Jillian had the genius idea of us all French braiding our hair so we could take a picture, Laura Croft style, at Ta Prohm. That was possibly the best picture we have of the whole trip, except for maybe the picture I took of Joe with a flower in his hair. Ta Prohm was another really cool temple that I liked more than Angkor Wat. This temple has been left to nature for the most part, with some restoration happening, but its mostly been left for the jungle to take over. There are huge trees growing on top or on the sides of walls, their roots now reaching to the ground, tearing down the sides of the temples. It’s really an amazing thing to see how nature just demolishes these carefully orchestrated structures. We took too long in Ta Prohm, that we nearly missed the sunset. Tull sped us over to the hill across from Angkor Wat that we had to hike up to see sunset. By then the clouds had rolled in, so it was okay that we were late to miss the sunset we wouldn’t have been able to see.
For dinner that evening, we went to explore a quieter street behind the hubbub of Siem Reap. We found this adorable Khmer food restaurant with the goofiest staff, which was an anomaly to the serious service we had been getting. The waiters were kind of spastic, and joked with us, making sure we knew that cocktails were buy one get one free. The best part is that they serve you free popcorn when you sit down. That’s really what won me over, and their Amok was pretty good too. Following dinner, we had to try drinks at the bar named “Angkor What?” The bar was totally goofy, and attracted us not because of the 50 cent draft, but because of the name. Towards the end of the night though, the bar turned into a total tourist party scene, and it was time to get out.
Our last full day in Cambodia, we decided to skip the city of Angkor, and try something different. The problem with trying something different, of course, is money. We wanted to see Tonle Sap, SE Asia’s largest lake, but to do so was going to cost us a fortune thanks to Cambodia’s lovely monopoly on tourism. Tonle Sap, as I had learned under the great instruction of Dr. Robert Mason, fluctuates massively in size throughout the year. During the dry season, there are roads and forests that are covered by the lake or tributaries during the wet season (now), as it expands to about four times it’s size. The forest and villages around Tonle Sap morph into the “Floating Village” and the “Flooded Forest” during their high season. I talked to the staff at our hostel about getting a ride to one of the tributaries to the lake, Kong Gneash. He said one of his drivers could take us there for 6$ round way, but it would be hard because it’s flooded. In my head, I said yeah duh it’s flooded, that’s why we want to go! Thinking he was talking about the flooded village. Well we came to find out he was talking about the road to Kong Gneash being flooded. It was a mess! This was a fairly busy road in Siem Reap, and must get flooded often, because some shops and homes were set up for the flood either by putting their store on stilts, or blocking the river-road off with rice bags. It was insane. Several times our tuk-tuk driver got stuck, and we would have to get out and wade through the knee-deep water until he could carry us again on the tuk-tuk. By the time we got to the port of Kong Gneash, this mean tourism police guy told us it would cost us $150 to take a boat to Tonle Sap! Lies. It should really have only cost us 80$, max. We walked away, and tried to find another port. Our tuk-tuk driver kept saying no, no, the police will stop you, to which I replied, good. This is a scam and I want to talk to the police. Well the police did stop us and told us we had to pay the mean guy at the port if we wanted to get to Tonle Sap. Bummer. So our poor little tuk-tuk driver led us stupide tourists back through the flooded streets to another port about an hour away so we could pay the stupid tourism authority half price, and our tuk-tuk driver double, to take a smaller boat half the distance to Tonle Sap. At least we know the money goes straight to the tuk-tuk driver. Who knows where our money to the tourism authority go. When we got there, luckily our tuk-tuk driver told the police how much he had told us we would have to pay, meanwhile the Australians ahead of us paid double cause the tourism authority just make up prices, won’t barter, and there’s nothing you can do about it except watch the boat drivers not get paid their fair share. Cambodia is wacky.
All in all though, the trip to Tonle Sap was really cool, flooded street included. Our little boat driver didn’t say a single word, but he took us along this river that would have been a street during the dry season. Our tuk-tuk driver, who came along for the ride, tried to explain some things to me in his broken English, like how much the boat driver gets paid (less than half), that there’s snakes in the river, and that during the dry season, you can drive to the village on this river. We passed rice paddies, the floating village that was constructed entirely on stilts, and the mangroves. Finally we made it out to Tonle Sap, that looked as big as an ocean. We sat on the lake as we watched the sky change from perfectly sunny to incredibly ominous as a huge storm approached. We started heading back up the river, but barely made it off the lake when the sheet of rain reached us. The storm was intense. We stopped at a floating restaurant for cover, where we met a boy, younger than us, who was a radio DJ in Siem Reap. He gave us his facebook information, and hoped that we’d tell our friends about him. He also showed us his catfish farm, which many homes along the river have to sell to Siem Reap merchants. Once the rain subsided, we made our way back to the port, shivering all the way back to Siem Reap.
That night, our last night in Siem Reap, we went out in style. We decided to treat ourselves to really fancy BBQ at a cute restaurant with linen napkins. With two mojitos each, meat skewers, noodles and some BBQ squid, we left with very happy tummies with a whopping balance of $23 total for the three of us. We headed down to pub street to sit at a bar and play cards. I had spent some time with the Cambodians at the hostel learning their card game that was supposedly very difficult (it was really just Gin Rummi), and we rotated between that, Thai Rummi, Gop Don Gop Dang (Thai Ten) and Kang. We were probably there for quite a while, and left once we realized we were the last ones there around 12:30. But, just across the street, Angkor What?! was just getting started, so he hopped over for some dancing with a bunch of European tourists. They really do party a lot, those tourists.
In the morning, Kayleigh and I were not feeling great, though Jillian was somehow not a pinch hungover. And we had a full day of bussing back to Bangkok. Great. Even though we weren’t too crazy about our hostel at first, the little place had grown on me, and I was kind of sad to leave those guys. The owner set us up on the minivan, while everyone got on the bus, insisting the mini-van would get there quicker. How much quicker? Someone asked. About 10 minutes was his response. One of the guys helped me put my bags on the bus, and said I should stay here for a year, and he would find me a job at a hostel, so I could come play cards with them. Tempting, if Cambodia wasn’t a wacky country. We got to the border before the bus, crossed over into Aranyaprathet, and waited for the rest of our ride to Bangkok with only white stickers on our shirts as evidence of our bus tickets. Well, we beat the bus from Siem Reap alright, by over an hour, then had to wait for them! We waited and waited, seeing people with purple stickers, green stickers, red stickers, pass us by and get on buses to Bangkok. I asked a guy leading green stickers around why we still had to wait, and he just looked at my shirt and said, white sticker, you wait over there! I can never tell if they’re making these things up, or if they are really that organized. I guess I shouldn’t doubt them, because as soon as the rest of the white stickers showed up, so did our bus to take us to Bangkok.
We found a hostel for the night on the infamous Kaosan road, otherwise known as backpackers road. It’s a total mess. It’s pretty close to central Bangkok which is nice, and there is a plethora of hostels to stay in, though compared to what we’ve been paying they were quite pricey. I really don’t know why it’s backpackers road. It’s so trashy! There’s a bunch of stores that line the streets, selling a variety of tee shirts, jewelry, fake diplomas, and other odds and ends. There is also plenty of food vendors to compete with the Subway, McDonalds and KFC that populate the street, but all the carts were pretty much only selling Pad Thai. It was an interesting scene. When we met up with A-Dtaw and A-Fung that night, A-Fung’s eyes went wide when I told him we were staying at a hostel behind the Subway on Kaosan street. He said, you know that Kaosan never sleeps! But A-Dtaw was excited for us, saying we need to experience it. I think he wanted to join us. We had an amazing dinner with crab curry, roasted duck, tom yam pla and shrimp. A-Fung kept us amused with stories of his friends winning tons of money in Las Vegas. When he told us his one friend lost 35 million US dollars, Kayleigh said what a waste! He could have given that to me to take back to America! And A-Fung said no, no no…that’d be too heavy! You wouldn’t be able to carry that all! Then A-Dtaw and A-Fung spent the next 5 minutes discussing in Thai how many suitcases that would fill up. They decided on ten. As we got to the end of our meal (seemed like an eternity with all that food!) A-Fung was trying to make us eat the last few pieces of shrimp and vegetables, telling us that the person who takes the last piece of food will have good fortune finding a boyfriend (but I think he was just saying that to get us to eat more). Jillian took the last shrimp, and A-Fung pointed to the last vegetable and said, Kayleigh, this is your last chance! So she took the last vegetable. Funny little A-Fung. We caught a cab back to Kaosan street, and hit the street for last minute souvenirs. After scanning all of Kaosan, we headed to a reggae bar. Of course it was packed with drunk Europeans, and had the most expensive drinks I’ve ever seen in Thailand. I really don’t understand why Kaosan is supposed to be for backpackers, they must be quite posh backpackers. Surprisingly the bar closed at 1, but as we made our way back to our hostel behind Subway, we saw a whole new set of vendors set up on the street. Luckily our room was tucked away from the party scene, so we could sleep soundly through our last night in Thailand.
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