Posts from — March 2010

The one night we stayed in Guilin, we had to venture out to find some dinner.  We soon discovered that not only do the restaurants keep giant fish tanks so you can choose your fresh fishy dinner, you can also choose your duck or chicken from a cage out the front.  One near our hotel had a pheasant as well. 

We all quite like the cute little duckies who live in the lake near our home in South Perth and every spring, parade their ducklings through everyone’s gardens, so it wasn’t particularly nice to see a couple of them locked up in a tiny cage, quacking away, knowing they were only another menu order away from the barbeque!  We have seen the photos of the duck dishes – they come basically whole (just chopped into bits) with the head and beak still on the plate – it’s really gross! [Read more →]

Yangshuo is a big town by Australian standards and then in the middle of it, there is a tourist precinct which is pedestrianised (thank goodness) based around West Street.  This whole area consists of lots of cobbled streets and alleys with old style buildings, lots of shops and craft stalls and restaurants. 

 It is apparently one of the favourite Chinese tourist destinations and caters mainly for this market.  We got a hotel right in the middle of West St and stayed there for almost a week.  We could find our way around really easily and after a while started to feel right at home. 

We met an American family from Salt Lake City who had 4 children as well, so we caught up with them a few times and they took us to a restaurant they had found.  The 8 kids sat at one table and the four adults at another and naturally it wasn’t long before we started to attract attention.  We were sitting outside and lots of people were walking past and starting taking photos of the kids.  Three of the Isom kids are adopted from China so they have been learning Chinese as a family.  As a result, when the paparazzi gets a bit over the top, their family joke has been to ask for money from the snappers – this usually puts them off and gets rid of them. 

On this occasion, it started to get a bit out of hand, as the restaurant was becoming surrounded by people with cameras – there was even a lady who set up a tripod!  The kids were starting to get a bit over it and so Bella, the eldest of the Isom kids, started calling out “yi kwai”! “yi kwai”!  which means one yuan (our equivalent of about 20 cents) for a photo.  A lot of the Chinese snappers laughed and immediately started to move on – the tripod lady carried on setting up her perfect snaps but didn’t want to hand over the dough – for some reason she didn’t think it was funny, although all the kids thought it was hilarious – as did most of the Chinese tourists.  One man who had come and asked us if it was ok to take photos (most never do this, they just go right ahead) suddenly whipped out his wallet and handed each of the kids a one yuan note.  They were in raptures by this stage and all thanked him profusely. 

After dinner we all went to a craft shop in the main street where the Isom kids had spotted some glassware earlier.  While the girls were all shopping, it didn’t take long for Michael to be surrounded by tourists.  He immediately whipped out his yuan note and started waving it and yelling “Yi kwai”!  They obviously thought he was very cute as they were all laughing and stuffing money into his hands while posing for photos with him.  One man gave him a 10 yuan note.  I tried to give it back to him and make him understand that I thought it was too much but he shook his head and walked off into the crowd, refusing to take it back.  Michael was loving it and suddenly the boy who hated to have his photo taken was posing sweetly!

We went to a little toyshop so he could see what he could spend his money on and suddenly a group of girls came over and indicated to us that they wanted to get their photos taken with the kids and held out their yuan notes.  We realised they must have been amongst the crowd in the main street, and thought they had to pay!  By the end of the night, Michael had accrued 21 yuan and thought he had found his entrepreneurial niche!

The bus trip from Nanning to Guilin was a short one of only 4 hours.  Luckily the bus station (and most of Nanning) has signs written in both Chinese script and English, so we were able to find out which gate our bus left from easily enough.  

Guilin is a lot smaller than Nanning and probably more like what China was like before it’s economic boom.  There were no English signs (or romanic characters) and very few people speak English.  This makes life very interesting to say the least, as trying to follow a map or ask directions is really hard. 

The staff in our hotel spoke no English beyond “passport”.  We have become quite good a charades as we always have to ask for extra pillows and towels – although Caitlin has declared she will never go ask for extra toilet paper!!  [Read more →]

While we were in Vietnam, we were consistently amazed by the quality of English on menus, hotel signs and travel brochures.  They were obviously intended for English speaking tourists but sometimes we had trouble understanding them!  (Think those instructions you get with flat packed furniture!)

We believed there could be a good job going for someone to freelance their translation/spellchecking skills to all those tourist places. 

In China, we were amazed that even the government doesn’t pay for a proper translater – unless of course they’ve got the guy who played Yoda in Star Wars? [Read more →]

It’s 90 days since we took our first flight and left Australia for Singapore.  In about an hour, we will take our second flight from Guilin in the South East of China to Chengdu in Sichuan province in the South West.

While waiting for the plane we’ve had some fun thinking and talking about our 90 days of travel.  It’s amazing that we can all recollect every day together so far.  This was definately a dream of mine before we left – I had visions when we were planning this trip that we would be able to reminesce about our great adventure together.

We have had quite a few  comments on our blog asking questions like – “Are you all enjoying it?”,  “Do you get enough downtime?” and “Don’t you get sick of living out of a suitcase?” etc.

The answer to most of those questions is based on the fact that this is not a vacation.  We still do homework, laundry and get up and organise breakfast every morning.  Obviously we do activities and some sightseeing that is specific to the area we’re in, but we still have a routine.  The lack of routine is, what I think, causes a holiday to be so exhausting.

We are also very mindful of not overdoing it with the kids, so we generally do an activity one day and try to follow up with a recovery/easy day the next, where we also try to fit in some schoolwork.

In the early weeks, we all went through our own forms of adjustment to travelling, both with being together all the time and with the foreign cultures.  The kids found it quite hard earlier on, with a couple of nights of one crying and then like dominoes, the whole crew would be crying.  I personally found this quite hard as I would then question my own motives for the trip – why was I putting the kids through this if we weren’t enjoying it?  By the end of the second week, they had got into the swing of things and got a bit more used to Asia and we were starting to get into the travel groove.

Also, Amanda and I found ourselves in a new position of having to work out our roles.  After a few “discussions”, we have continued to try to work to our strengths and make it all come together.  We try to plan in advance and I have the role of going out to book tickets etc, while Amanda stays with the kids.

To answer the question specifically of “Are we enjoying it?”  we can definately say “Yes!” especially as this now feels like normal life and has been for a while – and hey who would miss shopping, cleaning, gardening, cooking and going to work!!!

The other question – “Are we sick of living out of a suitcase?”  Easy answer is No!  Anyone who knows Amanda and I well knows that we are planners and we planned well in advance our travel wardrobe and how we were going to pack it.  We all have a very small number of clothes packed in labelled packing cubes -sounds anal I know, but it has paid off being so organised when we have stayed in 31 different locations in 90 days and we always know where everything is!!  (So far we have lost 1 item of clothing…)

We caught a bus from Hanoi to the nearest large Chinese city over the border – Nanning.  We had another cultural shift when we crossed the border – going from the Vietnamese passport control where everyone just pushes to the counter and if you don’t push hard enough you won’t get there, to the shiny, organised Chinese immigration.  We had to put our bags through a couple of xray machines, walk through the fever monitor and fill out declarations to say we weren’t suffering from any sort of illness.

The Chinese passport officers get our award for the nicest border control we’ve had so far.  They were friendly and actually smiled and said “Hello!”, laughed and joked with the kids and generally were very nice.  (As a side note – we did not get our bags searched and therefore did not have our Lonely Planet confiscated, as we’ve heard from others).  In fact, the security was far tighter at Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum! [Read more →]

What to say about Vietnam…  We came here with much excitement and possibly too high expectations.  We have now learned that what makes a place is not so much the sights or the food or whatever – it’s generally the people.  I think that’s why I personally loved Cambodia – there aren’t a lot of sights (particularly in Phnom Penh) but the people are super friendly-even given their history – they always seemed happy.

 Before we went to Cambodia we were warned that the locals basically view you as a walking ATM and while there were plenty of booksellers and beggars etc we didn’t think it was really any different from Thailand in that respect.  Vietnam on the other hand was really where the walking ATM analogy should be used.

The hotels, travel agents, tour guides, book sellers, taxi drivers all wanted more.  “You are rich.. you can afford more.. so you give me more!”  That was the attitude everywhere we went – irrespective of whether the service or whatever we were paying for was up to scratch or overpriced by local standards etc etc.  It got really painful after a while and after our Halong Bay cruise, where we got well and truly sick of it, we were really looking forward to leaving for China.

Saying that though, we did enjoy our time in NhaTrang, Dalat and HoiAn and the Mekong Delta was well worth the trip. [Read more →]

The trip at the top of our list for Vietnam was to sail on a junk overnight on Halong Bay.  When we arrived in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, it was clear that this is what most people come here to do – every single hotel, hostel, guesthouse and hole-in-the-wall travel agency sells these cruises.

Unfortunately, I think the sheer numbers of tourists means that the boat operators pretty much get away with whatever they want and once you are on board there  is nothing you can do about it.  Our boat was ok but certainly not what we were promised – the service was non-existent and the food barely average.  The weather was also against us – for our whole time in Hanoi it has been misty, cold and overcast and so the famous karsts of Halong Bay were pretty much hidden.  The kids however were telling us they thought  it looked like a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean which certainly gave it a mysterious, eerie quality!

Oh well, cruise done…  Now we’re back in Hanoi waiting for our Chinese visas. 

(Just a note about Chinese visas – anyone planning on travelling through Vietnam into China – you cannot apply for your visas at the embassay in Hanoi.  You can use a travel agent and pay a little extra in commission or apply in Saigon – allow 6 working days).

We caught the sleeper bus from Hue to Hanoi, this took about 14 hours, which was fairly uneventful (thankfully). We are getting quite use to long distance travel now, the kids are generally very good, they know the drill.

I mentioned uneventful, well everyone else appeared to have a good nights sleep, while for some reason, I found myself wide awake at two in the morning, only to see a truck that had just overturned, with people crowded all around. Next we go past the other vehicle involved, which looked like a minibus with its front all smashed in – suddenly I’m even less likely to sleep!

I looked back at my family, they were all sleeping peacefully at the back of the bus, and again like a few times on this trip, I heard the voice in my head saying, you shoudn’t be doing this trip, its too dangerous – followed up by the voice saying, you shouldnt be doing this, you should be at home working like everybody else.   I write this, not to sound kooky, but to let other readers know, especially those people planning a trip like this, not to let anyone or anything rob you of the dreams that are placed inside of you. [Read more →]

My main reason for wanting to go to Hoi An was it was close to China Beach.  I was a huge fan of the show so couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go there.  As it turns out, China Beach is the name the GI’s gave to the beach which stretches all the way from Danang to Hoi An and all the different communities along the way have different names for their own bits of the beach.

Hoi An also has it’s own World Heritage listed “Old Town”.  Apparently, both sides agreed in the war to not destroy Hoi An and it is largely intact of its French townhouses and also the original ancient Chinese architecture.  At night, motorbikes and cars are banned from the Old Town which is a massive relief.  All the streets are lit up with lanterns and you can walk up and down the alleyways relatively unhindered (except for the shopowners who continually yell out to you “Madame! Madame! You buy something!”) [Read more →]