Eight Days in Bangkok

It's hard to believe how easy it was to spend eight days in Bangkok. OK, we did spend some time running errands (sorting Australian bank stuff, etc) but mostly we were enjoying the city life-- shopping, hopping around town on public transit (something there wasn't much of in Vietnam), just taking in the action in the biggest city we've been in in ages. It's funny to think that on our first visit, we barely lasted 4 days before we were dying to leave. All we can figure was it was too much culture shock, a fear of spending too much money, and maybe spending too much time in the neon-light, "very strong cocktails", dreadlocked hippie tourist circus around Khao San Road.

This time we took a few days venturing into the thriving Siam Square area, the ultra-modern area in the centre of the city, full of megamalls and skyscrapers. We spent a whole day wandering the seven floors of the MBK Centre, a mall full of trendy Bangkok teenagers, with an entire floor devoted to all things mobile phone (we got utterly lost there and will never return to "cell phone purgatory" if we can help it). But what other downtown shopping mall can you arrive at by taking a riverboat past old temples and then a monorail between modern towers? The journey's half the fun! On our first visit to Thailand, coming from Canada, finding chain restaurants like Pizza Hut and A&W would not have thrilled us-- but after two months in Vietnam (where the only chain eatery is "Ga Ran Kentucky", or KFC) it was a real treat to have a DQ ice cream, a Starbucks frappuccino, a Pizza Hut pizza, and an A&W root beer. Maybe we're just too North American!

We finally visited the Grand Palace-- which was very grand and beautfiul. It was incredibly hot though and hard to really enjoy wandering the grounds, and despite our tries to dress the "proper" way this time (we failed twice last time!) we were still forced to wear the prescribed hospital-style pants (Adrian) and Thai silk wrap-around long skirt (Dayle) to tour the place, since our shorts were just not long enough!

And the best thing about Bangkok: Chatuchak Market. It's got to be one of the biggest markets ever-- our Lonely Planet says it has 15,000 stalls-- and only runs on Saturday and Sunday. It's a madhouse of people in a shopping frenzy; if you hate crowds, it's not a good place to be. You can buy just about anything there: clothing, paintings, furniture, used books, garden supplies, ladyboys (well, that's a guess), even pets. In fact, pet squirrels were all the rage when we were there, and some were even dressed up in little t-shirts. The puppies and the kittens were unbelievably cute too, and if you were the proud owner of a cute pet, you'd best bring it to the market to show it off. We were blown away by all the cool fashion shops and cool t-shirts galore- it's all a real fashion show, and in the three days we went to Chatuchak, we spent so much time browsing and people-watching we hardly bought a thing. Good fun though!

We've found the key to really enjoying Bangkok (besides shopping your heart out!) is just to sit back and enjoy the show. Check out our pics from the last few weeks in Vietnam til Bangkok-- we went on a little uploading spree a few days ago. Enjoy!

Catching up—10 days in Hoi An

It’s well established on the Vietnam tourist trail, so we weren’t sure how we’d like it after spending a few days as the only tourists (and thus quasi-celebrities) in Quy Nhon. It’s unlike any other spot we’ve been to—on one hand, a somewhat quiet & conservative town that goes to bed around 9 pm, but it’s also a mad mix of history, shopping, and quaint charm. By our third full day of exploring the easily walkable and incredibly picturesque town, we were far from that feeling of “we’ve seen it all”.
Hoi An has been a trading port since the 17th century located on the Thu Bon River, just a little inland from the South China Sea. A stroll through the narrow streets past the old, comfortably decrepit buildings one can feel very much like you’ve stepped into another time. Various influences—French, Chinese, Japanese—blend together in the architecture, making “Ancient Town” a charming collection of buildings with faded yellow plaster walls, mossy roofs, dark wood shutters, and bougainvillea… many of the houses have been passed down within families for hundreds of years; there’s many ornate temples and congregational halls to explore, and then there’s the old tea warehouses, which convert beautifully into restaurants and shops! It’s all set along a (slightly stinky) river and with a strict ban on cars (only “primitive vehicles and walkers” allowed, according to signs), it’s a little reminiscent of one of the islands of Venice.

And then there’s the shopping…

Besides being a magical and historical place, Hoi An is tailor central. Thanks to the availability of gorgeous silk of every colour and texture, about a zillion tailor shops offer to make shopping-hungry tourists custom-made clothing unbelievably quickly and for supercheap. At first, these shops are a bit overwhelming—there are so many of them, for one thing! And then there’s the sales tactics—pressure, more pressure, lots of false flattery, calling out to you to come into the shop as you walk by… just walking down the street can be a bit harrowing, so we avoided them as much as we could for the first few days.
Inevitably, we all get a little braver and enters their first shop. At first we tried to enter and leave as quickly as possible—get the basic info (prices, how long everything takes to make, and take a peek at fabrics and clothing samples) and a business card and get out while you can. We browsed many good and bad reviews of various tailors online before coming, and perhaps were a bit warier than some after reading quite a few horror stories. While Dayle was thinking more about a few dresses (something that can’t be messed up too badly), Adrian was hoping for a nice suit. We visited about 12 shops or so—from tiny and dusty, to high-end ones with elaborate fishponds and lounge areas within the shop—and finally settled on Mr. Xe, a guy who’d gotten great reviews online for his tailoring. At $85 USD for a tailored wool suit, he was somewhere in the middle (we found $60 to $120 was about the average price) and very firm on needing a few days to sew everything well and fit it properly—while some prided themselves on speed, we had a good feeling about the very flamboyant Mr. Xe (if not mixed feelings about the very friendly and extremely “encouraging” salesgirls). And our instincts turned out to be right—Adrian’s suit (and his dress shirts, and pants) turned out great! On the other hand, the dress Dayle asked for to be copied out of a magazine (in a way, to see how well they’d do) turned out to be a little more Amish than Lily Allen. Which brings us to our first lesson of Hoi An tailors: they all have their fortes, so work with them, not against them! Later we found another shop, Blue Rose, with a couple of very trendy shopgirls and clothing samples and great fabrics. The garments we got made—a mix of dresses, casual shirts, and a sporty jacket—look fantastic on, but the sewing and construction is pretty much nowhere close to Mr. Xe’s in quality. We even went to a third shop, which we found to make gorgeous silk dresses and really cool winter coats, but the tailored items were definitely not up to the fit standard we now had to compare to. But we still came out with a lot of cool, really original and well-fitting clothes made for a fraction of the cost you’d find them for in a store back in Canada or Australia (and sometimes for less than what we’d pay just for the fabric). And we had a great time doing it! So Lesson #2: if you go in to have some fun, and don’t expect haute couture for $25 a dress, you’ll leave with a great experience and a wicked new wardrobe.Another thing to think about if you’re going to Hoi An and planning for some tailoring, give it time! Not that we spent 10 days in fittings, but nearly every day there were a few adjustments (and often new orders to make). One of the most frustrating experiences was when Dayle had a pair of shoes made (honestly, she would have been happy just to shop around til one store had the right size). Somehow the cobbler must have cut the shoe too small to begin with, and though each fitting found them a little bigger, there was still that toes-jammed-against-the-front feeling (Ouch!) until they finally agreed to redo it completely. And you feel a bit bad making people adjust things so many times, but you wouldn’t purposely buy shoes a size too small normally, would you? So Lesson #3: Allow time to get things fitting properly, and don't be afraid to be picky! All we lost was time, and we managed to discover many great restaurants and street scenes in the many walks back and forth between tailors and the shoe shop.

And we must mention the restaurants! Hoi An has a few culinary specialties of its own—ie. the noodle dish Cao Lau, made authentically only with the water from the ancient Ba Le well, located in a tiny laneway in a residential area of town. We were never up early enough, but apparently there’s a daily pilgrimage of little old ladies to the well. And Cao Lau (which also comes in a splendid vegetarian version) and Adrian’s favourite, fish grilled in a banana leaf, are the perfect foods to eat at a riverside restaurant, under glowing silk lanterns and washed down by 4000 dong (that’s about 40 cents) glasses of bia tuoi (draught beer).

On the complete other end of the scale, there are the posher eateries, like Tam Tam Café, set in an old tea warehouse with a menu of fantastic salads and French-style sandwiches (hard to find in Vietnam!). And across the street there’s Cargo Club, part white-tablecloth restaurant and part patisserie, which we’re positive makes the best chocolate mousse on the planet!

And if it is possible to get bored/sick of Hoi An, there’s always the peaceful 4km bicycle ride to beautiful China Beach, where American GIs used to head for some relax time during the American/Vietnam War. And there are the ancient Cham ruins of My Son, a sort of mini Angkor Wat set in a steamy butterly-filled jungle (and also decorated with bomb craters from the war), a very fun motorbike ride away from town through the rice paddies.

We must have visited at the most exciting of times too—while we were (sort of) sticking around for Earth Hour, where the town would shut off the lights with many other world cities, there was also a major build-up to March 28 which we were puzzled about. Banners around town mentioned the 28^th with a slogan in Vietnamese punctuated by an exclamation mark. Every evening there seemed to be another lit-up, music-blaring boat dressed up in brightly-coloured fabric, flags, and images/statue busts of Uncle Ho. There were musical performances in public areas and finally, a parade of blindingly bright floats covered in Ho Chi Minh, sparkles, and peace doves (complemented by a sky covered in lightning streaks and thunder!) As we noticed more and more Vietnam flags decorating the shops, we also learned in a loose translation, that March 28 is Hoi An’s (and nearby Danang’s) Liberation Day, when the Americans finally left (in defeat?) the area. So while we were getting excited to see the lights go off and candles float down the river, the townspeople were getting excited for a much more patriotic kind of occasion. It was quite the buzz… though not that Hoi An isn’t every day!

Hooray for Hong Kong!

Hello everyone from sunny Brisbane, where we've returned to after our crazy 10-day whirl in Hong Kong! I guess we were a little too ambitious in planning to blog daily-- first our free "hotel" internet stopped working for days, and there was just too much to do to have time to write about it!

To our HK-born friends: we now understand why you love the place so much. And to everyone else, go visit! (We're going back the first chance we get). We saw tons in our time there: took in some legitimate culture at the massive art and history museums, oohed and ahead at the skyline from The Peak, cruised around Victoria Harbour in the Duk Ling junk boat for free (thanks to the tourist board), and got our photos taken in crazy Japanese photo booths (so much fun we did it 3x! we'll try to scan them for you at home). We ate as much authentic food as we could, but treated ourselves to frequent Starbucks frappuccinos too (hey, we had to make up for all our time in the boonies of Australia). Best coffee spot-- Pacific Coffee Company on the Avenue of the Stars, where you could sit and sip for hours and gaze at the lit-up skyscrapers of Hong Kong Island.

And then there was the shopping (Adrian rolls his eyes here, but he loved shopping as much as me)! Every day, a new neighbourhood to shop in. We cruised around Causeway Bay a bit, though it was too designer for our tastes. There seemed to be a Louis Vuitton on every corner-- all of them with had roped-off queue areas, sheesh! We stayed right by Granville Road, which was full (and I mean 6 storeys stacked) of trendy clothing shops, many with awesome sales (and one day we'll go back and get our hair cut at "Hair Potato"). My personal favourite was the market on Fa Yuen St in Mong Kok, where I got the best boots in the world.... they made me feel like a million bucks but also stopped my limping. One thing no none warns you about is the terrible foot-aches and blisters you get about two days into a HK trip. Yeowch! I broke a pair of shoes on the first day :( Oh yeah.... and there's H&M! (none yet in Oz, I don't think) We were in there about an hour when I thought, "Gee, I've sure taken quite a while in the changeroom. Oh, poor Adrian must be bored to tears".... well, guess who I found with an arm-shattering heap of clothes. It's hard to tell who's the biggest shopper out of us!

If we went back (when we go back!) we'll have to explore a bit more of the nature side of things-- we took a day trip out to Lantau Island to climb a boatload of stairs to see the big Buddha on a hill. It was gorgeous countryside, mountains and temples, and hard to believe it was still Hong Kong! It also happened to be a full-moon evening, and our bus back to the city passed a lively-looking jail, bulls locking horns and wrestling in the road, and then after all that, our bus broke down to a literal GRINDING halt on its way uphill--on a 45 degree angle--on a winding road... scariest thing ever. But, we made it out OK, quelled our worries in more shopping and ice cream, and really, it made us feel even more like yay, we're really in Asia!

On the flight back (thanks again Graeme for making sure we got out!), we stopped off in Taiwan and with our 7-hour layover, HAD to go visit the tallest building in the world, the Taipei 101 (which may soon be dwarfed by the Burj Dubai. Honestly, from the ground, it didn't look THAT high, and then we got up to the observatory, and we were promptly corrected. And the elevator took just over 30 seconds to get from floors 5 to 89! (and felt nothing at all like the death-elevator we rode to our "hotel" room every day in HK)

Now that we're back in Oz, we've been sleeping a lot. The adjustment was pretty extreme-- from hellish smog and no birds to trees everywhere and big bites and camping. All we smelled was TREES (yay!) when we left the airport. But then we got depressed because Brisbane's not half as exciting as HK. Soon, it's back to work on some farm (ugh), but for now we're easing ourselves in gently with a little city livin' in Brizzie and some partying with our good Scottish buddy Stu (you may remember him from our pear-picking photos). Hey, Brisbane's not so bad, really... we've designated our new all-day breakfast hangout today, and the weather's pretty good. Maybe we'll be back here in a few weeks!
Thx for the comments and for reading. There's "heaps" of new photos online, if you're bored...
PS. Daisy was fine and happy to see us. Aside from a dent (that maybe was there in the first place) and some mouldy hummus in our fridge (oops), everything was all good and she forgave us for leaving :)

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