Things to get used to...
Now that we are back in Singapore, for more then a couple of days this time, there are some things that we need to get used to. Like...
doing dishes by hand - it has been awhile since we have had dishpan hands
you can buy MSG is the grocery store, and seems to be a popular item
the light switches are backwards - up is off and down is on
cars on the other side of the road - we need to get used to this one fast before we walk out into traffic!
when the sign at the grocery store says 5 for $2 you really have to buys 5 - there is no price if you only want 3
outlets have to be turned on before you can use them - there is a switch at the top of the outlet
doing smaller loads of laundry - the washer is tiny
hot water has to be turned on by a wall switch
Cheerios cost $11 for a small box! - can someone mail me some honey nut?
hanging clothes out to dry on the balcony - socks just don't feel the same, I don't know if I will ever like the cruchy feeling...
Local Driving
Our last day was spent getting numb bums on a rented scooter. Driving in Thailand is similar to the Philippines, rules are only sort of followed... But Doug drove like a local and even though we didn't have the standard Buddha on the dash looking out for us we made it through the day in one piece and only drove on the wrong side a couple of times!
We drove all over the island, seeing beaches, waterfalls and a very popular sunset view point...
Overall a great 3 days. The local food was excellent, we even got to try shark! Although even after 2 weeks in the Philippines and a few days in Thailand we cannot get used to rice and noodles for breakfast, they just seen too much like lunch and dinner foods!
In general, from talking to other travellers, it sounds like Thailand is a very easy place to travel, more developed for tourism although it remains very cheap. Definitely a nice place to vacation, harder to get a feel for the locals, particularly because many Thais, especially in the south, are reaping the rewards of the tourism dollars and have become landlords rather than operators. We're told that few of the workers you see are actually Thais, but rather Burmese and Nepalese who have emigrated for opportunities.
Under the Sea
The second day was a 3 dive boat trip. The diving around Phuket is fantastic and apparently gets even better in the high season when the weather and winds shift. In the low season only day trip boats run, there are no local dives or live-aboards running until November.
The boat operator was great; good food, professional etc. We did a wreck dive, a cool pinnacle dive (with three separate pinnacles of rock) and a wall dive with a pretty cool drift. Interestingly, the boat operators were french and spoke better french and spanish than english. The wreck was pretty mediocre, but we almost got a funny picture of Sarah sitting on an old toilet (she drifted up out of the frame).
Sawasdee (hello in Thai)
Well Phuket was a fun but very touristy quick trip. The whole island caters to tourists from a gazillion hotels and resorts to souvenir shops lining the streets and tailors by the dozen. The locals are very friendly and got a kick out of Sarah's pronunciation of thank you in Thai (sounds kinda like carcoon).
We got in around 8am in the morning and headed to Kata Beach where we had decided to stay based on which dive shop emailed us back with information first (the
Phuket Scuba Club won the race). Once we got there the owner of the dive shop showed us around, helped us find accommodation (if you go in the high season book ahead) and pointed out a few of the better places to eat - very nice people. Since we were in too late to catch a dive boat we relaxed on the beach for the afternoon and played in the waves.
Yay - Luggage
We got home from the Philippines and we got to go pick up our luggage! Now we finally have clothes, books, scuba stuff, etc...
But we won't be here for long - we are heading to Thailand for a few days on Tuesday morning to spend our aniversary with some more fun in the sun, this time with clean clothes to spare!
Fun in the Sun
After touring the mountain province we decided to hit a little bit of paradise in the form of a small quiet Filippino island.
There we did 2 days of diving on sunken Japanese WW2 vessels that were completely taken over with ocean critters.
We also did a day of island hopping which included swimming at an isolated lagoon, having lunch on an amazing white sand beach and relaxing in natural hot springs.
We were staying at a really nice resort, well actually 2 of them... There are 2 resorts owned by our friend Cristina's aunt, so we spent a couple night at each place. The first one was called Dive Link and the second was Coral Bay. Both were fantastic. In particular the food was amazing, we tried all kinds of new and different Filipino dishes, most of them seafood. Since it is low season right now, so we pretty much had the resort to ourselves, (literally only us and the staff for one night) so one night they made us a very romantic candle lit dinner at the beach gazebo...amazing!
Family Values
One thing that seems to be common in the small villages is the sense of helping family. The first child does not attend university until the next one is old enough to work to pay to put them through, and then the second one goes when the first is working etc... Not many of the children want to stay in their small villages and grow rice (in the mountains they can grow only enough to eat, not enough to sell and make make money) so this is a method that is common to allow them to attain a higher education and achieve their goals. Both of our guides that we had were paying for an older sibling to go to school.
Up in the mountain province (and actually in a lot of the Philippines) the family are very poor - yet all seem to have email address and cell phones. It looks strange to see a person in old worn out clothes with limited electricity or hot water texting on their cell phone! A strange dichotomy of old and new - first world and third world...
Caves and Hanging Coffins
Our last day up in the mountains we were at a small, but by far the most prosperous looking, mountain town. The main attractions here are the caves and a unique tradition of hanging coffins.
The caves were awesome, once you got far enough in to stop touching bat guano as you held onto the rocks to stop from sliding in it. But once you were really into the caves it was very neat. You took off your shoes and went barefoot over smooth limestone, through the underground water system. At times it did occur to us what happens if our guide's gas lantern goes out...
The hanging coffins are an ancient tradition here. The culture is nature loving and believes that you should be out in nature, even when dead - not under ground. Also another part of the belief is that if you are underground then you have to carry the weight of the world for all enternity. Or at least that is what we understood from our guide's broken english...
Another mode of transportation
We had done the plane thing, we had done the bus thing, we had even done the tricycle thing... now it was time to try the Jeepny thing. The trip from Banaue to Sagada by jeepny was quite an adventure. The national "highways" in the mountains resemble our abandoned logging roads at home! Also they seem to fit an extraordinary number of people in, on, and hanging off these things before the driver feels it is time to go.
These are a cross between an army jeep and a bus and are all over the Philippines for short distance bus service. They come in all sorts of outrageous colours, pimped out with chrome and ground effects and all seem to have some sort of "God Bless This Trip" type thing on them - which is good because they drive like maniacs here...
A Feat of Ancient Engineering
Just a warning - Sarah is writing this post so that you don't have to put up with a long exclamation about the details of the amazing engineering that Doug would love to write. If you would like this version of the events send a comment and I am sure he will oblige, but be warned, I got a multi hour discussion on this... But to be fair they are amazing to see. Built right into the hillside, over 2000 years ago, the rice terraces are tiered to let water flow down and irrigate all of the rice fields.
The best ones to see were a hour tricycle ride and 2+ hour hike in over a mountain pass into a tiny village, Batad (a UNESCO world heritage site). The tricylce ride going there was very pleasent. The way home however was another story... It started to downpore, and by the time we were loaded into the tricycle and on our way we were going down the road that now more resembled a river! A bit sketchy in parts but our driver was amazing at keeping traction and not being swept over the side of the mountain!
But not listening to the literature about acclimatization we were hot, tired and a bit grumpy at lunch... and we still had to hike out, back up over the mountain saddle. So be warned, summer in Vancouver does not prepare you to hike for 5-6 hours in hot humid weather at altitude, or you might look like this...
The Wheels On The Bus...
Go round and round and round and...
We left Manila and headed north up to see the rice terraces in the Cordillera Mountains. But getting up there takes a long time even though it is only a few hundred kms. So our first bus, 8 hours, tooks us to a fairly big city, Baguio. And then we climbed on a second bus, also 8 hours but overnight, to get to a tiny rice growing community, Banaue, at 5am. When we couldn't sleep we were kept entertained and terrified by the sight of the narrow road twisting and turning going by quicker then felt safe.
But we are here in one piece and ready to see things...as soon as we get out the crinks in our necks.
A Series of Unfortunate Timings
Well we were in Singapore for a grand total of 2 days before we hopped on another plane bound for the Philippines. Since our bags still hadn't arrived we packed up the 3 T-shirts and 2 pairs of underwear that we had each and headed off for almost 2 weeks, fully expecting that after the 3rd day people would be giving us wide berth due to our lovely smell...
Once we were there we checked our email and discovered that our bags had arrived - one day too late!
Also in that same set of emails was a notice from Air Canada... Doug had been granted his "elite" status and was now eligible for upgrades! Less then a week too late... It sure would have been nice, not only to have the comfy seats during the 18 hours of time spent on the plane but would have been even nicer to be able to use the lounge during our extra-long layover in Hong Kong instead of camping out on the floor.
But we made it to Manila and took in the sights around our hotel before heading out for some adventures. Who thought someone would have the idea to have Mc D's delivery...
What is this world coming to!
Typhoon's and Scooters
Thanks to everybody that joined us for the farewell (or good riddance) dinner. It was great to chat one more time in person (although we're trying to setup a local Vancouver number that will get us overseas).
We stayed overnight with Matt and Sonja, had breakfast with them and the Gonellas and then got on a plane. The flight actually left about 5 mins early, but things went downhill from there...
We got most of the way into the flight (the food was horrible this time around), and found out just over Taiwan that it had been confirmed that a typhoon was hitting Hong Kong and we could not land as planned. We got diverted back to Osaka and flew about 90 mins towards Japan before Air Canada decided to turn us around and land in Taiwan (about 90 mins back). It must of looked funny on the radar screens to see us going back and forth. Anyway, it turns out that we got to see Taiwan and had to spend the night.
Taiwan was really cool, it has a huge scooter culture with dedicated highways and right of ways. This guy was even using his to transport propane cylinders, although we could probably use it in a Westport presentation and tell people it was an LNG motorcycle. Tons of greenspace, pretty good air quality, and pretty good traffic.
They got us up on Thursday morning and then we had to wait in the airport for three hours at the airport. Then we got to Hong Kong and waited for another 9 hours before they finally found us a plane for Singapore. HK was CRAZY, there were thousands of people everywhere, everything was booked solid and nobody knew anything. We finally got to Singapore after almost 48 hours of travel, without our bags, and nowhere to stay, more next time...
What the Guate'?
So Doug flew to Antigua, Guatemala for two weeks to work on his spanish. INSEAD (Doug's new school), requires three languages and his spanish is pretty weak. He studied for two weeks in a one-on-one class for 6 hours per day. (classes and yard shown above). His spanish improved to the point that he could communicate on most subjects although pretty choppily. He stayed with a homestay in Antigua, (also shown above with some of the family and co-students). The family had excellent food, was very nice and we very inexpensive. Doug would definitely recommend them for anyone wanting to visit Guatemala in the future.
Antigua was a really neat town; its an international historic site and the buildings have all been maintained in the original cobblestone and walled courtyard style of the 1800 spanish. Its impossible to tell what's inside any building until you actually step inside. Also above is a picture of a "chicken bus". These things literally get packed to the gills (I saw a driver hanging out the window and steering through the window because there was no room). The ticket take leans out the door and yells "Guate, Guate, Guate" for buses going to the capital, its quite a sight to see pimped out schoolbuses from Canada with chrome, fancy headlights and groundeffects bouncing down the road.
Doug did manage to do some sightseeing to Lago de Atitlan; shown above, it is surrounded by volcanos and is very beautiful. There are mansions on the lake that are just incredible. Doug also hiked up a volcano and got within about 6 feet of a live lava flow (safety standards are a little looser than Canada).
In general, Guatemala is a fascinating place, there is tons to see, the food is fantastic, the people are friendly; but they have serious problems as well: there is almost no industry and people have almost nothing. Although people are generally well fed, there is absolutely no safety net for people who fall through the cracks. Crime is also a big problem and it is commonplace to see guys riding shotgun on the Coke and Fritolay trucks because they are hot commodities on the black market. People are in general very proud to be Guatemalteco, but they have relatively little hope for the future. Definitely worth a visit, ask us for more detail if you're interested...
Home Sweet Home - no more
July 14 was the big day. We moved all our stuff into storage on Tuesday and then ran errands for a couple days before handing off the keys on Friday. We got the cheque transfered with no fuss and we got to meet the new owners and give them a tour of the house. That was nice for both of us I think, because it was easier handing off to someone we had met and liked.Rumour has it that they have already started tearing up the backyard which we are pretty happy about since that would have been out next project too...The very afternoon that we handed off the keys, Doug climbed on a plane for Guatemala and Sarah headed up to Alice's stag in Whistler and then to do some assorted visiting in Calgary and Kelowna.
Wild n' wet
Ok, so maybe not so wild...
The weekend of July 7-9, we headed up to Okanagan Lake to do some camping opposite Peachland. Sarah and Doug staked out a spot on a wilderness site just at the base of Okanagan Mountain Park, the site of the infamous 2003 forest fire. Seeing the burn area is pretty interesting (Ellen's Dad explained that it was a "stand changing" burn meaning it will be all new trees), already many gullies are starting to green up.
We got the prerequisite campfires, beer and waterskiing taken care of, and everyone had a few goes. The weather was great, and we had flat water for most of the weekend. Peter and a couple friends came up for Friday night, Ellen came for Saturday night, and Matt, Jason and Sandra were there all weekend. Honours for the most surprised looking wipeout go to Matt who could NOT believe how hard he was about to bail...
doing dishes by hand - it has been awhile since we have had dishpan hands
outlets have to be turned on before you can use them - there is a switch at the top of the outlet
