Off the grid?

Hello loyal readers! We write to you from the happy (if mosquito-ridden) kitchen/lobby of our riverside guesthouse in Bangkok. Tomorrow morning (whoa, we can hardly believe it!) we fly off to Burma for what will most likely be a really interesting three weeks. We've got a pocket stacked with "crispy" US$ bills (we actually had to be real bastards and reject some of the bills at the exchange place today, just in case we couldn't exchange them for the local Kyat!) and we're raring to get truly off the beaten path on the other side of the Thai border. We can't wait to show you what's there, and to tell you whether all the strange things we've read about the place are true.... the horse-drawn buggies, the men in skirts, the online censorship, you know, that stuff.

We have read that there's a good deal of websites blocked-- so we'll have to find out whether Blogspot's on that list-- not to mention sketchy electric power and perhaps a lack of internet cafes as we head further away from big-city Rangoon/Yangon. We'll try our best to post as much as we can, but please don't fret if you haven't heard too much from us in the coming weeks. We're probably just climbing a mountain or riding the bus along a very potholed road or something. Perhaps a little internet detox will do us good-- though we will miss all of you and our wifi a lot! ;)

We have heard Gmail's quite accessible though, so keep in touch with us at thebigquestionmark@gmail.com. Catch you soon! xoxo, A&D

What they don't know won't hurt them...

So in a slight change of plan... folks, we're heading to Burma!

Maybe it was a strange choice to make, seeing as we still have all of those glorious Thai beaches and Indonesian islands ahead of us, but somewhere along the way we started feeling real curiosity about the little-traveled neighbour of Thailand. The more we read-- about the military junta; about the brand-new capital city, Naypyidaw, so new it's not even on our maps; and the fact that there's not a single ATM in the country due to international banking sanctions-- well, we've only become more intrigued. OK, we've also read and heard that the locals are sweet as can be and that the scenery around the country is astounding, and there's definitely a long and interesting history to uncover. Politically, it's just awful: ruled by a military junta since 1962, it's been in the news plenty these days after that crazy American swam across a lake in Rangoon to the house of (wrongfully imprisoned) opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi-- hope you've been following, as we sure have been.

The visa application process was an ordeal in itself! First off, you need an advance tourist visa to get into the country-- and there's only an embassy in Bangkok, so on Monday morning we found ourselves lined up by the creepy grey steel door for the visa department, around the side of the embassy. There were actually a bunch of us stuck out there for hours, because although we showed up well within the opening hours (9am-12pm and 1pm-3pm), there was a "problem", as an embassy staffer called it-- a protest of about 60 people out front of the embassy, chanting and singing "Dust in the Wind"-- yup, we had arrived on the first day of Aung San Suu Kyi's trial, and here in Bangkok, people were using their freedom of speech to (very rightly) speak out on the retardedness of this lady facing prison after some dude swam to her house! Nonetheless, we wanted our visas, so we avoided the cameras and the protest itself (though now we're kicking ourselves for not snapping a few).

Luckily, by the afternoon, after a teeming rainstorm and some time-killing in a bookshop, the embassy had reopened its creepy side door and we were permitted to come inside the very dingy visa waiting room to fill out a lot of irrelevant information on forms. We had to answer questions like "hair colour" (always a toughie!), eye colour, complexion (how un-PC!), and then a whole page of our employment history: note, definitely the place where you don't write "journalist". So Dayle listed a bunch of prior office jobs and hoped like hell they wouldn't Google one of her stories online, and Adrian put "programmer".... and got questioned by the official. "Who do you work for? Government?" he asked suspiciously. "No, no, for a bank. Private company!" says Adrian. "Well why didn't you apply for the visa from Canada?" asks the official-- a dumb question actually because the 28-day visa started ticking away from the day we FILED the paperwork, not even from its approval two days later. And then we spent the next few days, waiting and hoping we didn't waste our 800 baht, only to get turned away by the evil junta!

But nope, I guess they aren't the sleuths we thought they were, and very happily left the embassy with shiny stickers in our passports. Since you can't travel far across the border by land (those main roads are closed), we had to get flights into Rangoon-- we fly in this Saturday and fly back to Bangkok on June 12-- hopefully we'll be able to post from the road, though we hear internet's hard to come by and very much censored. It'll be our first trip to a country that seems so challenging, but hopefully that will mean it's extra rewarding. Tomorrow we'll exchange our money for a stack of "crispy" US$ bills, as there are no cash machines in Burma, and you cannot buy local currency (the kyat) without US$ bills, and bills with folds, rips, or marks on them will not be accepted. It's a puzzle, that's for sure. It'll be a challenge to avoid supporting the government but we'll strive to support local businesses only, and we hope our meagre tourist funds can help out the locals a bit in a country that probably really needs it.

We've started popping malaria pills, and treated ourselves to a night at the cinema and a burgers-and-pasta dinner at an American-themed restaurant (we're sure we'll be having none of that in Burma!) and we're getting pretty excited-- but we'll definitely appreciate a week on a Thai beach after this adventure!
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In the meantime, if you're up for some reading on Burma, here's a few links:

-- On Burma in general (including why some call it Burma and some Myanmar)
-- On Naypyidaw, the new capital (check out the stuff about numerology!)
-- Aung San Suu Kyi's web page
-- A biography of Aung San Suu Kyi (from the Nobel Prize website)
-- Today's news from the Aung San Suu Kyi trial
-- BBC's Inside Insein Prison (where the trial is being held-- you know John Stewart's having a field day with a name like that!)

Spending Like Millionaires.... of Dong

We've just woken up to our second morning in Vietnam a little fuzzy-- maybe from the 4 hour time difference from Melbourne, maybe from the million or so dong we spent on a big day of eating and drinking. EEK! OK, so a million dong (that's the Vietnamese currency) works out to be about $90AUD, and less than that in Canadian, but we've now learned it's still definitely possible to spend lots of money, even in a place with prices as cheap as Vietnam. So today we'll live frugally! Except for our "extravagant" hotel room, that is-- with TV, free internet, A/c, balcony, ornate sculptured ceilings, private bathroom, fridge, and enough room to fit two dressers and a desk-- for $15 USD. Sweet!

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City at about 8pm on Feb 20, and were immediately awestruck by all of the people and the lights-- the neon light signs were visible even from the plane! After spending so much time in the vast empty parts of Oz, riding streets alongside hundreds of buzzing motorbikes was a trip! We checked into out guesthouse and hit the town with our friend Warren, who is teaching English here (Adrian used to work with him at ANZ bank). Good times on the tourist strip-- eating great noodles from a street vendor on child-size tables and plastic stools!-- for less than a $1 USD pp., drinking Tiger beers for next to nothing too, and people-watching... welcome to Asia! Warren's been enjoying the HCMC life for about 8 months now, and isn't at all ready to say goodbye to the city-- something we're starting to understand as we get into its energy, which is sort of laid-back but a little nuts at the same time. Got scared half to death by a giant rat scurrying through our laneway on the way back to our hotel (seriously bigger than the stray kittens hanging out on the street) and we were thankful to be staying on the 4th storey of our building.

Yesterday we woke up with that "Oh my god, where are we?" feeling that happens on the first morning of any trip and ventured out in the humid sunshine (29 degrees). I grabbed a Western breakfast and Adrian went straight for the pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) and we took a walking tour of part of the city, marvelling at the scenery and practicing our street-crossings. First lesson: There are crosswalks painted on the roads, but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference where you cross. Lesson 2: Find a tiny gap in the constant barrage of cars, buses, and motorbikes, and start walking across very slowly... something that goes against all instinct when a speeding bike's coming at you, but if they'll steer around you with ease if they can tell where you're heading and how fast. Cars are another story-- GET OUT OF THE WAY! is about the best advice to follow.

We wandered through some street markets (vendors very grabby in parts) and managed to find the necessities-- a SIM card for our phone ($6 AUD!), a plug converter, and a bath pouffe-- which all took a bit of Charades and Pictionary, as we're finding Vietnamese is a very hard language to pick up quickly! But we've learned a few basics already and we're working on mastering the conversion math [11,000 Vietnamese dong equals $1 Aussie dollar; $1 USD equals 16,000 dong. We'd like to eliminate one currency, but our savings are in AUD and some of the prices here are in USD and some in VND.... and then there's all the bloody zeroes to deal with..... yarrrrrrrr!].

We met up with Warren in the late afternoon at Fanny, a great ice cream shop with delicious flavours and very artistic sundaes (I had a Canard, ice cream in a duck-shaped basket with wafer wings!) and the evening went on from there-- to gorgeously decorated, swanky coffee shops, a Pho restaurant, and a bar or two. But most memorable of the night was when I got entirely lost in the city on the back of a motorbike taxi-- it's scary enough being right in the thick of the traffic, but then my motorbike taxi driver lost Warren and Adrian, who were on Warren's bike and said "Follow us!" and zoomed off to disappear into the crowd. Everything looks mildly familiar in HCMC, but the street names are long and difficult to remember, and I have a terrible sense of direction without a map or the sun to guide me. So I spent about 45 minutes on the back of this old man's (who didn't speak a word of English) motorbike, reading street names aloud and hopelessly trying to communicate with him. Of course, Adrian had our phone, the hotel key, the backpack.... I was lucky we split up our money in the morning and had 500,000 dong in my pocket, as I'd left my wallet in the backpack on Adrian's back too! I also had our new phone number in my pocket but didn't know how to use a payphone, let alone speak the word "telephone" to the driver. Eventually he pulled over and had me speak with some other motorbike drivers, and I managed to write down our hotel's address, as I guess I'm hopeless at pronouncing it properly.... and then my driver couldn't find the street.... it went on and on.... finally in some miracle we came across it, and I had to run around trying to change this big VND bill to pay my 50,000 ($5) fare. Somehow Warren had a feeling to check our hotel, and I was just about to call the guys when he appeared on his bike to save me! We zoomed back to where he left Adrian, and who was Adrian hanging out with but the old motorbike taxi driver who didn't know his way around town! We decided to go to a bar close by, this time split up the mobile phones, and when Warren and I got to the bar, this time it was Adrian who had disappeared.... well, I guess we shouldn't have used that driver's services again, cuz he dropped Adrian right off at our hotel, despite the driver and Warren's agreements to meet on a certain street. At least Adrian's ride was a bit cheaper than mine.... needless to say a lot of beer was necessary after that.... and that's about all I can say about our second day in Vietnam!

PS. If you can figure out how to call/text Vietnam, we'll be reachable for the next month or two at +84 (that's the country code) 1265772662. Good luck & miss you all! xoxoxo Dayle & Adrian

Yup we're in HONG KONG!

Yes, yes, the rumours are true, we're in Hong Kong. It's a long story so bear with us!
There we were on the pruning fields of Farmer Bob's slave emporium, working for some extra money and visa time. It wasn't the worst job in the world but for that second visa, it was kind of easy. Basically we just had to thin some fruits off the trees by picking off some of the smaller nectarines so the others can grow big and juicy.

Anywhos, here's how this crazy adventure began (so make sure your sitting down, because it's so amazing and crazy you'll fall over or cry blood):
Friday, TGIF, we finished work and we're heading back from the farm when I noticed we needed to fill up old Daisy (the van), the problem was we were kinda low on money (one of the pitfalls of traveling for 2 months straight), so we made our way to the ATM. The logic being that one of us had more, thus the gas buyer.
As I (Adrian) was waiting behind Dayle, admiring the sleepy little town of Stanthorpe, was shaken when Dayle began to screech with joy. I thought something had gone horribly wrong but was corrected by Dayle when she announced that our tax returns had gone through-- making us $4000.00 richer!

Back at the caravan park we were celebrating with a beer as the night was preparing to drop to its usual 3 degrees (at this time it was our 4th day in Stanthorpe, and our 3rd day of 'work'), when one of us came up with the brilliant idea - "Who needs this crap, what if we used our return plane ticket to go to HONG KONG!?"
Some back story: our return tickets to Canada (which had a stop over in Hong Kong) were scheduled to leave on October 20th at 11:30am, it was already Oct 19th at 6pm.
Hell why not?! Quick like a bunny we packed up all our stuff, the whole time wondering if this was the stupidest thing ever. (We didn't even have time to quit our jobs.....er, and still haven't gotten around to it) Some quick phone calls and a lot of help from the most awesome guy ever - THANKS GRAEME!!! - We had our return tickets figured out and were driving like mad in the dead of night the two and a half hours to Brisbane International Airport (and we made it with time to spare).

Now here we are, in Kowloon, Hong Kong sleeping in a closet of a room with a coffin sized bathroom attached. Our window looks out to a moldy, dank elevator shaft, but we have free internet! We love it!
It's busy, crowded, a little smelly but beautiful. Hong Kong is very cool. Not 3 days ago we were freezing our butts off in a bumpkin town in rural Australia and now we're taking on the big city.
We're doing lots, and trying to take in as much as we can. Yesterday we took the tram to the 'Peak' of HK and had a bird's eye view of the city's skyscrapers, and somehow spent the night drinking with Triad members, paralegals and cops - whom all burst into random karaoke between 'Liars dice' games and shots of whiskey! Today we're recovering by going to someplace quiet, probably at a museum or two, and maybe even Starbucks.
We've mastered the brilliant subway system, and already have a free junk boat trip scheduled for Thursday.
We'll post tomorrow or tonight of our adventures thus far, but for the meantime we're okay, we're just in Hong Kong looking for congee breakfast.

-love D&A