Introducing... our fridge

Today we thought it would be fun to feature the most-decorated part of our new apartment: the refrigerator!

The fridge itself isn't anything special-- in fact, it's missing a shelf and it's only now beginning to collect some vegetables and a few necessary condiments. But in this case, it's what's on the outside that counts.

Somewhere along the way in Australia, we began collecting a fridge magnet or two from our temporary hometowns and some of the more memorable stops along the way. We accumulated a few more during our jaunt over to Hong Kong and Taiwan. And once we hit the road with Daisy (our van), our magnet collection just grew and grew. Luckily the inside of Daisy had a lot of metal panels above the doors-- plenty of room to display our budding collection.

Turned out there was no shortage of souvenir magnets in Oz-- even the tiniest towns, like Hawker, at the base of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, with a population of 300 people was selling fridge magnets. So was William Creek, SA-- population 6. Any town with the slightest claim to fame sold magnets-- like Wycliffe Well, NT, home to many UFO sightings, or Goulburn, NSW, which had a giant merino sheep to lure in tourists. We bought a boomerang magnet from Broome, WA, a large plastic banana from The Big Banana in Coffs Harbour, NSW, and more still. Kitsch is alive and well on the highways of Australia and we're not at all embarrassed to have bought into it. We even continued collecting during our journey through Southeast Asia, though we had to be a bit more choosy when lugging our souvenirs around in our backpacks. Still, we found ourselves a tin boat from Vietnam, ceremonial dance masks from Bali, a tuk-tuk from Thailand. It was only Burma that didn't have a souvenir magnet industry... yet.

And while we may or may not have spent a small fortune shipping all of our magnetic goodies home, it was worth it. We consider it a form of visual diary to our adventures-- one that we get to review every time we go for the milk.

Kitsch in the Mountains: Dalat

After a few weeks of sweating out the muggy days and nights in Saigon, a visit to the charming mountain town of Dalat was a refreshing change (in temperature and in pace).

As soon as we stepped off the bus ($11 AUD/$6 USD for the six-hour ride!), we felt like we'd reached another country. Surrounded by tall mountains, the "small town" of about 185,000 people is built in tiers, so looking around there are layers and layers of colourful homes everywhere. It's got a bit of a European Alps feel to it, with stone steps and old-looking buildings. Without much of a search, we found a decent guesthouse on one of the main streets for $8 USD a night with a big balcony overlooking the street-- an excellent vantage point for watching a torrential downpour the next afternoon we learned!

Dalat is a bit of a honeymoon spot and weekend getaway for Saigon residents, evident in the many dimly-lit, French-style restaurants around town. It's also a place that loves its kitsch, and in embracing the cooler climate, we even saw a few Swiss-chalet looking hotels (one complete with plastic snow and icicles hanging from the roof). We wandered around the street market in the centre of the town and found everyone milling about in thick sweaters, scarves and mittens (OK, it was cold, but not that cold!) One of the nicest parts about Dalat for us as well was that despite being a tourist town, many of the visitors were Vietnamese, and we felt like we could blend into the background more than other places without being bombarded by sales pitches from everyone we met.

Dalat is also somewhat of an artist's spot, so on our second day we took a walk to visit a real architectural wonder-- Hang Nga Crazy House. Nope, not a lunatic asylum, but a bizarre creation by a Vietnamese architect who had the cash and inspiration to build a very Alice-in-Wonderland-meets-Gaudi complex which is part hotel, part playground, and part tourist attraction. It's a tribute to the nature Madame Hang Nga loves, with the structures shaped as giant trees, with fishponds, toadstools, and giant concrete giraffes hanging out together. We spent hours exploring the many themed animal-themed hotel rooms and climbing windy bridges between the concrete "branches" of the zany artifical trees. One of the other cool things is when we asked the lady selling admission tickets what the house was made of, she replied, "I made it from concrete..." and we realized it was the architect and mastermind herself, Mrs Hang Nga, humbly hanging out in the ticket booth, answering questions and selling admissions-- amazing!

We noticed some black storm clouds coming in thick and fast and just as we arrived back at our hotel to drop off some things, the rain started. There was so much water coming down the street in front had become a series of lakes and people were madly trying to get shelter and get off their motorbikes. We witnessed a few kamikaze trucks zooming down the road, splashing all the way to the buildings (and anyone unlucky enough to be in between!). It was quite the sight... and of course, in an hour, was all over and sunshine again!

The next morning was all gorgeous blue skies and we seized the opportunity to rent a motorbike ($6 USD for an automatic) to explore the sights in the hills outside of town. There are countless motorbike riders selling personal tours of the surrounds (the Easy Riders, they call themselves) but as we like to do things our own way-- and were sick to death of their pestering-- we opted for our own wheels. It wasn't long before we were off the map and totally lost in the mountains, trying to find our way to the scenic-sounding Tiger Falls. We zoomed past the proper turnoff about four times and the villagers on either end had probably seen enough of us by the time we made it... but it was a beautiful way to take in the countryside-- Adrian as the driver and Dayle as the hand-signaller. :) We did a bit of off-roading-- Vietnam mountain roads are not as smoothly paved as Thai mountain roads, it seems!-- and eventually found our way deep into a valley to the Tiger Falls, named so apparently from a legend that there once was a mean tiger who lived there. All we found was an old man, a few cute humpy dogs, and a big concrete tiger to climb inside of (oh Dalat!), but it was good times. We finished off our cruising at the "Valley of Love", a cheeseball Disneyland-for-couples attraction that's a bit hard to visit seriously-- two-person swings, naked statues, heart-shaped painted wooden frames to take photos inside of, staff dressed up as cowboys-- well, of course we opted for the super-cheese and squeaked our way into the Valley of Love's lake on a rusty, creaking swan-shaped paddleboat...

And just when we had had our fill of cheesiness for the day and were going to make a quick escape from the "Valley"... we found ourselves with a flat front tire! Oh damn, we thought, how much will this cost us? And however will we explain this, in our feeble Vietnamese, to the hotel staff who rented us the bike ? Well, it turns out that there are motorbike mechanics everywhere, and it takes about 15 minutes and costs about $1.50 AUD to fix a flat in Vietnam. Woohoo! Now that's true love!

Fighting Ageism Across The Outback... and other adventures

Hello all! We're in the pleasantly-named town of Emerald, writing to you from the Tropic of Capricorn. We thought we were in the Outback again but it might still be too "urban" here. Later today we're off to Carnarvon Gorge National Park, to go try out our new hiking boots and see some cool Aboriginal rock art. Hopefully there will be lots of lizards and no dingoes (we've managed to hit school holidays by accident, so we also hope it won't be overrun by rugrats).

It's been a while... since we last wrote we've made some progress south. The scenery has gotten much drier and hotter, but we're still enjoying the camping life. The accomodation has been okay (anything from beachside caravan parks to roadside rest stops) Lately we've come across a few cranky caravanning seniors, who come storming out of their trailers if we've parked "too close" to their shade tree. There was one especially awesome dude in a place called Carmila Beach who came out at this FREE rest stop by a beach, hands on hips, and was like "are you going to pitch a tent there?" and we're like "no, we have a van" (duh). and he's like "well, what time are you leaving in the morning? because I need to get my caravan out that side right threr" (points to the big open free sand patch we have parked in, that somehow he has laid claim to). we kindly move back a bit while the old cranky dude watches us the whole time, since we're sleeping definitely in the next day and are not moving for his big gas guzzler. Without a thanks or anything, him and his wife drive off to town later that night, and he says "Well, I suppose that will work." and from then on he became the "mayor of Carmila Beach" (and we've encountered a few more mayors of free rest stops since then too). We've found that going off the main backpacker trail on the coast means fighting with these caravan lifers sometimes... but it's also good for laughs when they eat our dust and we blare whatever hiphop we can find to play on our crappy stereo! (gotta keep up stereotypes, yo!) The funny part is, we met a great couple in Ravenshoe, wheat farmers from Western Australia who were in their 50s, tops, and they even said they've gotten attitude from the really old folks-- like 'you aren't old enough to be living this kind of life' attitude. Strange!

Things we've noticed/love lately:
-Big things- We're starting to see some goodies... the big cassowary, the big cane toad (ugly!), the big mango (so big, Dayle tripped down some stairs looking at it. Her knee is still healing)
-We love Utes! They're like cars mixed with pick-up trucks, and "Ute" is short for "utility vehicle" or something. There are old clunky ones everywhere, and then some people have sparkly shiny bright coloured ones, like sportscars. We're currently compiling a ute photo album, for all the hoons to check out (see next)
-Our current favourite Aussie term is "hoon"... which we've read means delinquent, but it also has to do with street racing (ie. "hooning around"). Maybe Daisy can be our hoonmobile...
-People (maybe hoons!) like to hang big gutted fish from the roadsigns marking creeks and rivers. ew!
-Sugar cane is king (never thought of Oz as a cane farming country but it's everywhere!)
-Either the wood here is really hard to burn or we're really out of practice with our campfires. We sit shivering and jealous of all of our neighbours whenever there's a firepit.
-Kookaburras are really cute... until they swoop onto your table and steal a chunk of pancake (they did this to Adrian not long ago!) Yarrrrr!
-The Chaser-- A guy on ABC TV (like CBC back home) made big news here when him and his TV show team crashed the APEC meetings in Sydney saying they were the Canadian motorcade (who weren't even in the country yet)... and they got through tons of security as a prank and basically just stirred things up. Check out his show if you can... he rocks!
-Our favourite thing of all is our little tiny radio that we bought for $20. We're in touch with the world again-- country stations, top 40, and really bad comedy shows. Yippee!
Catch you soon... xoxxo, D&A
PS. We just put up lots of new pictures on Flickr (ok, the scuba ones are old now but we found them in the van finally!)