Homeward Bound and Home at Last

We're now safe and sound in our not so little home in Winnipeg. It's -30C and fluffy snow has coated the cars and fence posts. Greg and I have enjoyed home brewed coffee just the way we like it with some Tall Grass cinnamon buns--a few of the things we dreamt about while we politely tolerated a few unsavoury hotel breakfasts consisting of instant coffee(with coffee whitener) and greasy fried eggs with white bread. Don't worry, we also recall some lovely tropical breakfasts as well:). The boys are settled back into their school and extracurricular activity routines and are very happy making up for lost time with their buddies.

 Our trip has officially ended. However, we feel we owe all our loyal followers one last blog about the last days of our sojourn. Well, that and writing it allows us to indulge ourselves once more in memories of warm sunny skies and turquoise beaches, free from piles of laundry, heaps of unread mail, and red-looking bank balances...

 January 6th: we flew out of Hanoi in northern Vietnam and were keen to trade the cool grey skies for some sunny beach weather. Destination: Koh Lanta, an island in south Thailand. On the map below I've dropped a red pin.

We had already spent some time in Northern and central Thailand at the beginning of our trip but never spent any time on the famed Thai beaches of the southern peninsula. We also were eager to revisit some good Thai delicacies like green curry and mango sticky rice.

 Unfortunately, our timing for a beach holiday was not great as we arrived in the peak tourist season. Alas, many of the highly recommended backpacker(or "flash packer" as we are more aptly described) budget accommodations were full on the more popular destination of Koh PiPi island. Koh Lanta island is a less glamorous cousin but still warm and welcoming. We settled into our little beach side huts but it was hard to hide our disappointment in the beach itself. At low tide the rocky sea bottom was unwelcoming and the boys complained of water bugs that nipped at them underwater.

 However, our search for the idyllic beach experience was not in vain when we shelled out some cash for a one day snorkelling tour to Koh Rok.  We can say without a doubt that we found the ultimate beach experience on this little island that is a Thai national nature reserve and hence has been spared any commercial development. The snorkelling was fantastic too! We didn't spend much time taking pictures, so its hard to do it justice.

An unexpected highlight of Koh Lanta Island was an excursion to a pet rescue/shelter for dogs and cats. We were surprised to find that a visit to the shelter was the #1 rated activity in the area on "Tripadvisor"(our web best friend throughout the whole trip). The shelter was started by an American-Norwegian restaurant owner who took pity on the stray, and often detested, dogs in the area and soon was taking on more pets than she could really handle.

The shelter was then born and has been running for several years on donations, volunteers and the proceeds from her restaurant,"Time for Lime".

I'm putting in the link to the shelter because if any of you readers are ever looking for a great 1 month volunteer opportunity in Thailand you should really check this place out! Our family had a tour of the facility and then took a mama dog with her two grown-up dogs for a nice walk. http://www.lantaanimalwelfare.com/

After our stint in Thailand we headed back to Singapore to spend our final days in Asia with Rob, Anjali and Fischer(Cynthia's brother's family). Once again, we marvelled at the clean orderly city and revisited some of our previously enjoyed sites: "Sticky", the home made candy store, cycling along the beautiful East Coast Parkway,and a feast of chili-crab at a Hawker stall.

Naturally we felt the need to unwind by the pool and de-stress from all the strenuous travelling we had done... ...of course, I say this tongue firmly in cheek. Now that we've been back into the swing of work and Winnipeg life in - 30 weather I find myself just shaking my head at my former self :"really Cynthia....travelling was stressful at times was it...oh yeah, having to agonize over whether to wear your sun dress or your Thai fisherman's pants was hard work wasn't it?" Or those tough choices of whether to order the red curry or the green curry--as if I was caught between a rock and a hard place.

 Ah well, we had our fun and now the filtering of memories and nostalgia has begun. There were times of yearning for the company of friends and family, times of feeling like we fulfilled every stereotype of the stupid white backpacking foreigner(every country has a slang word for that you know)who doesn't know how the microsystems of the community worked. And let's not forget the literal pains of lugging around backpacks full of sweaty clothes and souvenir trinkets and manoeuvring through crowded buses, trains, taxis and planes. I don't miss all that.

 But the unsavoury memories have already started to dim as we recall the highlights: scaling medieval castles in Europe, trekking up hundreds of step in bare feet to reach towering temples, and hiking through lush thick jungles. We mud bathed with elephants, had some mean encounters with monkeys and fed a ridiculous amount of semi-domesticated animals in urban zoos. We visited no less than 5 UNESCO world heritage sites and  can tell a funny story about experiencing an earthquake.

 But the good times, the family bonding moments were often had during those less sensational moments in between: evening walks beaches dodging the waves as they curled onto shore, seeing the women in the markets smile at our enjoyment of ripe mangoes with juice running down our hands and faces, wandering in big cities with the boys scampering around us doing parkcour moves on benches and monuments of boulevards attempting to be grand( the boulevards and the boys!), the collective pride and joy we all felt when we found good food at little restaurants off the tourist track(we'd often go back again and revelled in being recognized as return patrons!), Christmas morning when we took turns unwrapping our $5 gifts to each other wrapped in newspaper. Those were the good times we will never forget. And the good part is we get to enjoy those moments from the snugly comfort of our home and our own beds. Perhaps the best part of trip has only started.

 As a final farewell, we bid you adieu dear readers. We have been touched by all the positive feedback we have received about ricewhine and are touched that so many have taken an interest in our little adventure. (Incidentally, Greg should take credit for the majority of photos, I rather lazily let him take charge of this aspect of our trip with frequent casual commands of "get a shot of that will you".)  I will admit, writing the blog entries was occasionally a chore but now I think it's quite possibly the best keepsake we have of our "trip of a lifetime".

 If any of you are ever planning a trip to South-east Asia, we are more than happy to don our "we are travelling experts" caps and go into a lot more detail about our experiences. Actually the mere mention of anything remotely linked to SE Asia will likely get us us started so just give us a signal to quit....after an hour or two.

Caves, Crotch-grabbing and Cats on the menu: Tales from Vietnam...

Cynthia:

We have been in Vietnam for sixteen days, traveling northwards. Yesterday we arrived in Hanoi. It's huge, dense and very chilly (~14*C) city right now and I find myself woefully underdressed both in terms of R- factor and style. I kid you not, everyone here seems to be wearing designer labels-- granted the labels are all misspelled but design labels nonetheless! My one pair of quick-dry traveling pants and flimsy rain jacket just don't cut it and I can't find a pair of knock-off designer jeans in the shops that I can fit my menno thighs into.....enough ranting.

Week one in Vietnam was spent in Hoi An, an old city known for its food, the old well preserved historic buildings that survived the 'American War' and tailor/custom made shoe shops. The boys and I all had shoes made to fit and I also indulged in a couple of dresses!

This dress was made in two days.

We celebrated Christmas here and stayed one more day to see the monthly Full Moon festival. Per (?tourist) custom, we were paddled out onto the river by a rather elderly Vietnamese woman, and in the dark of the evening we set our candles afloat. It was very touristy but really pretty nonetheless.

Lanterns floating on the river.

Such little events are never without their follies, however, and in this case I had to laugh as our non-English speaking paddler all at once started saying something and then motioned for us to squish down low into the canoe as we passed under the approaching footbridge. The river had risen from the recent rains and the bridge clearance was tight, but not prohibitive with a little ducking! We all made it back to shore with nary a scrape.

On to Dong Hoi to see the magnificent and newly discovered 450 million year-old Phong Nha and Paradise caves, only open to the public in recent years. Now I'm no spelunker but these caves took our breath away. Our pictures likely don't capture the scale of Paradise cave but think airplane hangar with stalagmites and stalactites (i still forget which is which) the size of 4 story buildings and you might get the picture. Even Thomas, who usually doesn't impress to easily thought it was "pretty awesome".

Paradise Cave

Next stop: Halong Bay. Our journey here started off on a sour note. We had taken an overnight sleeper train to Hanoi and at 5 am taxied to the bus station. The ticket office was closed but the route we needed (a complex all in one bus-boat-bus combo ticket, as per our guidebook) was clearly posted with the fare and the departure time of 0520. A bus and driver were parked in the station...

Cynthia and Greg: "we go to Cat Ba island, bus and boat and bus?"

Driver: "ya ya, Cat Ba island...office closed...ticket on bus"

We proceeded to board the bus quite readily and happy to avoid a cold dark wait at an empty bus station, and forked over the 190 000 dong(=$9.50) per person. Three hours later we arrived at a bus terminal and we were whisked off the bus, the driver motioning to a shack on the lot. The bus speedily pulled away. Something didn't seem quite right.

Turned out we were nowhere near our intended route. After taxing to a tourist information centre (with English speaking personnel) we figured out what city we were in and how to get back on track. We loaded another rather overloaded bus and eventually got to our final destination of Nam Cat Island Resort. The whole trip from hotel to hotel had taken around 24 hours and looked something like this: Taxi--overnight train--taxi--bus--taxi--taxi--bus--15 minute walk to the port-fast boat to island #1--taxi overland to different port--fisherman's boat to island #2. We arrived exhausted but proud. In spite of being scammed by a bus driver (apparently not an uncommon occurrence) we made it to Halong Bay that day.

...and how beautiful it was. Declared a world heritage site in 1994, Halong Bay is a an archipelago of 2000 indigo limestone peaks rising from emerald waters. We spent two nights including New Years Eve on this beautiful, but cold bay and enjoyed some wonderful seafood barbecues and evening bonfires in the cool night air.

This was the view from just outside our room at high tide.

Three pictures above are from a floating fishing village in Halong Bay

On New Year's day we moved on to Hai Phong, a city of one million and according to tripadvisor.com forums it's a city worth overlooking. Our family wholeheartedly disagreed. Hai Phong is definitely not a tourist town but it has many trees, cafes, friendly people and roads one can cross without having to muster up too much courage (more on this later when we get to Hanoi). Not much English was spoken here and we definitely felt we got a glimpse of the real Vietnam. And truthfully, sometimes it was a bit too real. One night we went to a guide book recommended restaurant and sure enough, there was cat on the menu. I wasn't all that surprised though, as I had heard that the robust looking dogs at our island hotel in Halong Bay and the other dogs roaming village and city streets were hardly street dogs but actually livestock and hence they look healthier than any other dogs we've seen in Asia!

Another encounter with the "real Vietnam" occurred as a grinning elderly woman at a market stall expressed some delight upon seeing our boys...this we were used to but her hand darting in for a groin grab was a first. My hand was equally quick to intercept and this gave her a good laugh. Ironically it was just the day prior that I had read in our guidebook that such demonstrations of affection towards boys might be encountered. We moved on, our boys' prides and anatomy intact.

One unexpected highlight of Hai Phong was our discovery of a little amusement park in the centre of town. Among the rides, some of which had definitely seen better days, we came upon a crowd of roller skaters! We each doned a pair of sorry looking roller skates and Greg and I relived some good times from the eighties albeit among swirling Vietnamese hotshots and blaring K-pop. Thankfully none of us tripped on any of the potholes or cracks in the concrete and the boys moved on to the ball pen. They spent a good hour jumping and sliding around and even had a few local kids in on their fun. We returned the next day for more though park was substantially less populated.

An alley in Hai Phong. The state flags looked quite striking.

This was our second day of roller skating and the rink was much emptier than the previous evening.

Max posing in a store selling mannequins.

January 3: arrival in Hanoi.

We were warned that Hanoi would be dense and kind of crazy but it doesn't seem so unmanageable. Yesterday we walked about the old quarter close to our hotel and also took in the Vietnam Women's Museum. It was really well done. Thomas has celebrated his first meals eaten entirely with chopsticks and the boys readily dig into the Pho Bo ( beef noodle soup) at small streetside restaurants. Greg and I prefer the Ban My (French inspired grilled pork sandwichwiches on freshly baked demi-baguettes) and the fantastic sweet and savoury vermicilli salads. We've gone from fearing street crossing to enjoying the challenge of slowly wading forward in a line parrallel to the curb. The motorbikes and cars zing around us like a school of fish on a mission and occasionally we arrive on the other side a bit disappointed if it seemed too easy!

Today we will do more walking, dining on street food and people watching. We also have tickets for the municipal water puppet theatre this afternoon which comes highly recommended.

A typical view of motorbike drivers. Note the face/ breathing masks which are worn to prevent suntanning, and inhalation of germs and fumes.

Another typical street scene in Hanoi. These hanging bamboo carriers are only used by women ( often vendors) and anything and everything can be carried in them.

Smoking is ubiquitous in Vietnam. Cigarettes can be bought everywhere.

A Vietnamese couple getting wedding photos taken on a celebrated footbridge in Hanoi.

Greg and I trying to warm up over a cup of sweet slowly dripped Vietnamese coffee.

Tomorrow we depart for our second last location: 4 days on a warm tropical Thai beach. Hopefully my teeth will stop chattering by then....

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