Where we live now

Where we live now, a small insight into our new lives

New Zealand - New Start

I've not updated things in a while as we've had a very rapid start to things over in Kiwi land. We arrived safe an sound on the 8th of April and within 2 weeks we had rented ourselves a little house in a area of Christchurch called St Albans. We didn't have a vehicle for about 4 weeks so Danny bought push bikes and we went everywhere on them. Christchurch is mega flat, it is amazing dull as landscapes go and we try and escape to the hills as much as possible. The picture on the left is our new favorite place, Orton Bradly Park

The winter has set in now and our house is freezing, they don't do central heating over here or double glazing so the house doesn't retain any heat. Danny doesn't seem to notice as much as me as I'm working in my office upstairs a lot of the time.

Danny got a job as a assistant store manager for MacPac an outdoor company, i think he finds the job a little dull after the intenseness of life with Go Outdoors. I'm enrolled at the university in the Human Interface Technology Lab researching computer games and education for my PhD. It seems to be going OK but I've not had confirmation of funding yet so it could all go wrong very soon :)

I am enjoying being able to cycle to work it was one of my goals when i left the UK to not have to drive to work. Now instead of the M1 and Leeds each day i have a 25 minute cycle which takes me through the park, it's great until the rain started.

I'm also working as a relief tutor for a local technology college called NatColl. It's better than teaching in the UK as i have absolutely no responsibility in this role, that means no admin and no nurturing students :)

We bought a camper van a couple of weeks ago, a 1984 Toyota hiace. It's like driving a tank and the heater is broken so it's bloody freezing and like driving a tank. We've had one trip down to the south of the South island which was really awesome (if a little cold). Milford Sound is a great place to see and Mount Cook (below right), looked massive obviously Danny wants to climb it and I'm sure he will in a year or so.

We're not getting out and about so much at the moment due to work commitments and the fact it's winter and cold. But the snow should arrive soon and then we're going to start skiing. I'm gonna have some lessons ad try to learn properly so i don't break any limbs.

I'm sure there's lots of important things I've missed out but I'd have nothing to share with you all next time.

Arrived in Christchurch - NZ

Here we finally in Christchurch New Zealand and this is the view from the Port Hill, awesome

The Wilds of Borneo

We’ve been in Australia for a month now, we are about to leave for New Zealand, with all the hassles we’ve had with NZ visa’s I’ve not had the chance to bring you all up to date with what we’ve been doing.
This is a very brief rundown of what we got up to in the month we were in Borneo. As I mentioned we escaped Vietnam and ran away to Kuala Lumpur from there we took a cheap flight over to Borneo. It’s massive by the way, we only visited the ‘Saba’ region but that was enough.

We got in touch with a friend of a friend called Simon, who runs an outdoor adventure type business, Simon and his wife Christine made Borneo for us by getting us cut price deals on activates and towards the end of our stay they put us up in their home. Without them the Borneo blog would be a blank page. I’m going to do this as a list of events so it’s not going to be much of a story.

Mt. Kinabarlu (4100m)

We climbed the highest mountain in South East Asia in 2 days and on the way back down we did the highest Via Ferata in the world. I have never been in so much pain after coming back down.

 

 Manucan Island

In the bay around Kota Kinabarlu (the capital of Saba) there are about 6 islands with the warmest sea I’ve ever swam in. it’s a same that most of the coral is dead. This is happening all over Asia and it seems that there is no stopping its decline.

We did see the biggest moth/butterfly it was the size of danny's hand and it's alled a Nymph.

Sepilock – Orang-utan sanctuary

We headed out to the rain forest proper to visit the orphaned orang-utans. Most of Borneo has been extensively logged and the rain forest replaced with palm oil plantations. The Orang’s can’t cross the land anymore so many babies are found in the plantations starving when their mothers have been killed.



The baby and adolescent Orang’s live in the jungle near the centre and twice a day they get fed. They build nests in the trees and when it feeding time they climb down the ropes and drop onto the feeding towers. They share the second meal of the day with the monkeys and it’s a full on battle and very amusing to watch.


Kinabatangan – Wildlife River cruise

After visiting the ‘tame’ Orangs we travelled to the river area of Kinabatangan to go and spot the really wild wildlife. We spent 3 days in a bunk house and at 6am each day we took the first of our river trips. It was beautiful having the sun come up over the river and watching the mist lift off the water.

We had another river trip in the afternoon and it’s on this one that we saw all the big animals such as a female Orang and her baby (a rare site), lots of Proboscis monkeys with the big round bellies and long wobberly noses and of course troop after troop of Pig Tailed Macaque who were the most fun to watch play.

Bahala Island
On our return to Kota Kinabarlu we stopped off at a little island that had been bolted for climbing. We got a very dodgy speed boat to drop us off and arranged for him to return the next day. We hoped he would as there is no other way off the island. We had great fun pretending to be Robinson Cruiso, cooking directly on our camp fire and making tea cups with old beer cans.

The only downside of the island was the huge amount of plastic that had washed up from the mainland and boats. The problem of plastic waste in South East Asia is huge, nobody is promoting recycling and very soon they will be drowning in plastic. It will be our problem very soon!

Tambayukon – 3rd Highest Mountain
The main feature of this 3 day trek and climb was the leeches! The climb took us into remote forest which doesn’t have that many visitors. The path was non existent at most points, it was very very humid and on top of that it rained. I spent 3 days wet through and at the end of the day it was impossible to dry your clothes.

All the wet weather brought out the leeches and there were hundreds of them. They are made of elastic bands and teeth, you can’t kill them unless you cut um in half. We had to wear ‘leech socks’ baggy cotton sock which you tie under your knee and this stops them getting into your feet. But they climb up the walking poles and drop from the trees. It was the grosses 3 days I’ve ever spent and I’d never do it again.

On the 2nd day it was summit day, I elected to stay in the camp while Danny and the 2 guides went off to the top. It was only 2k but it took the 6 hours as there was no path and they had to climb through the low laying densely packed trees.

It was a very unique experience and I doubt many people in the world will ever do anything like it. I’m glad I got the chance to see that aspect of our planet but I’d not choose to do it again.



White Water Rafting

The day before we were due to leave for Australia we had a day on the white water. Unfortunately the river level was so low that we sent a great deal of the time paddling. We ended up with a group of Brits and Aussies, we were in one boat and we were pitted against 6 boast of Taiwan or Koreans.

We decide that dirty tactics were the best way forward so we as better paddlers rammed their boats and mounted boarding parties, which invariably left us in the water and our paddles missing.

It was a great way to finish our time in the Wilds but we were very sore all over for the next 3 days. We had a great welcome in Aus and the chance to rest and recover.

What We Did on the Way to Borneo

What We Did on the Way to Borneo? It’s a bit like what I did on my school holidays... except with better weather. Well the last Blog entry told you all about the New Year epic trek and Danny's food fear. This blog is all the bits that have happened since then that got us to Borneo now.

Well after we left Laos for the last time we both went back to Thailand to meet up with our respective friends who came out from the UK to get in on the travellers lifestyle... which was basically being hot, dirty and skint :)

Danny met up with Sarah and Anne and went off to Krabi climbing, I followed on a few days later and met Shane in Bangkok. He had jet lag, no sleep and the airline had lost his bags so the solution was to start drinking as soon as possible. They do something called a tower of beer in Thailand and it holds 4 litres of beer... we had 2, then nearly died when we had to get up at 7am the next day for an outing to the Bridge over the river Kwai and some really cool elephant trekking. Lucky for us the elephant trekking fun was the day after the world’s worst hangover.

So we leave the flumps and head down Thailand to the coast on the night train, this also happened to include a lot of beer... we arrived having not slept to find that Danny who we were supposed to meet had headed off back up the coast to Ko Tow. Nevermind we had a nice hotel and of course cheap cocktails.

So we did sun sea and snorkelling in the amazingly nice islands of southern Thailand. We even spent a couple of hours on the beach where they shot the film The Beach. Shane managed to damage his foot on some coral and ended up a few days later having the rotting flesh cut away from his toes in the local clinic... I’ve never heard a man laugh so much... he must of really enjoyed the experiance.
Danny rejoined us for the trip back to Bangkok where we said our goodbyes to Shane and took the bus to the Cambodian border.


The Ruins of Angkor

We did a tour of Cambodia which lasted 7 days. We arrived in Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat. I've wanted to see this place since saw it for the first time on TV when i was a kid. I was fascinated by the trees that had enveloped the old temples.

They resemble some kind of alien tentacled creatures who spend their slow lived days devouring the last pieces of a human civilisation. The temples of Angkor are a feet of human engineering and civilisation. At its height Angkor Thom city housed a million people and that was about 1000 years ago.

The city, it's thought was abandoned when its success killed it... too many people and not enough water or food. There are two, 2 mile long lakes on either side of the city complex but one is now completely silted up but the other still holds some water. The area Angkor covers is immense. We spent 3 days exploring by local tuk tuk and our own peddle power.

One of the most arresting temples beside Angkor Wat is the Bayon which is inside the old city walls. This summer palace complex had been adored by several dozen carved stone faces who have the most serine and enigmatic smiles.

It felt very peaceful being at Angkor which was such a contrast to the modern day horrors of Pol Pots Killing Fields.

 Khmer Rouge and the Killing fields

We travelled to Phnom Penh capital of Cambodia and stayed in a hotel that was directly opposite the Genocide Museum; Tuol Sleng. This was a former school building that was taken over as a ‘security office’ called S.21. What we didn’t know at the time was that this museum/former school was the centre of torture and murder of at least 10500 men, women and children. We saw it in a different light after that.


The people sent to S.21 were disposed of in the countryside in what has become know as the killing fields. We took a moto ride out to the site that was used as a killing ground for the S.21 prison. The area now houses a memorial tower of human remains found in the mass graves. There are still graves there that haven’t been excavated and it’s very strange now walking around both the killing fields and the prison as it’s very quiet and almost peaceful. Out of the 10500 people to go into the prison only 7 came out alive.

The museum now hosts many of the photographs of the inmates and shows the way in which they lived and died between 1975 and 1979 in the then ‘Kampuchea Democratic’. In all Pol Pot murdered 3 million of his own people in a twisted ‘social experiment’ lasting 4 years. It is good to see that the Cambodian people have not been twisted by the slaughter and still remain kind and caring although deeply scarred.

 From one former war zone to the next – Vietnam
 

We thought it would be nice to travel into Vietnam via the Mekong river from Cambodia. It takes about 5 hours and is a nice relaxing way to get into the country. The problems only started when we got into Vietnam. We arrived at a place called Chou Doc, a run down little boarder town with a very limited charm and a million mosquitoes. We foolishly decided that a nice way to get up to Saigon (now Ho Chi Min City) would be to book onto a 3 day Mekong delta trip. What a nightmare, it was so badly run and none of the guides/idiots took any responsibility for the passengers. At the end of day 2 the bus pulled up in the middle of nowhere and told us to get off and take a taxi to our hotel. This is the point where both me and Danny went metal. We refused to get off the bus until a tour guide with proper information came and took us to our hotel. The bus guy and Danny were toe to toe and I was sure it was gonna come to blows. I was very proud of Danny he was 'battle squirrel' ready for the kill.

We eventually got to Saigon after another awful days touring only to find that in 2 weeks it was Tet New Year (the lunar new year) and all and I mean all the transport up to Hanoi where our flight was due to leave from was fully booked. There were no trains; or they wouldn’t sell westerner the tickets, no busses and only really expensive flights. So here we were trapped in Saigon, with the whole country about to shut down on us.

This might not have been so bad if it weren’t for the fact that the Vietnamese people really really hate the westerners, I think after what the US did over there they have no respect, no time and no thought for tourist except to part them from there money as fast as humanly possible. I can’t blame them for this attitude after visiting the war museum and seeing the photos of what the US dropped on the people over there it’s horrifying. Just the Agent Orange and the Napalm alone was enough never mind the hundreds of tons of bombs. It will take Vietnam longer than it’s already had to recover from the devastation the US caused and having seen its fallout first hand, it makes me afraid for the consequences of what will come to us from Iraq.
 So, as we couldn’t get to Hanoi for the flight out we booked new flight out to Borneo, I’ve never been so relieved to get out of a country as I was from Vietnam.

New Year Survival Trek – Laos

Well after the excesses of Christmas day we decided that having a quiet New Year would be better. So we left Vientiane the capital of Laos to try our luck at finding a trekking guide in the Phu Khao Khuay national Park.

You can do this trek through a company called green discovery, which is fine if you have a shed load of money to burn, which we didn’t. So we took some advice from the tourist office and decided to wing it.

We caught a local bus to a small place called Thatbot. The local bus was so amazingly slow and filled to the rafters with not only the passengers but the large array of goods they were also transporting. We had at least 3 full car exhaust systems laid out in the aisle, nestling alongside the sacks of rice. Each bus also carries a small contingent of women selling food for the journey. They get on and off the buses at different places and that’s what they do all day. We bought some baguettes but there was BBQ chicken, sticky rice and other items not identifiable to us.

We were safely unloaded at the right stop where were had to find some kind of transport to the village of Ban Hatkhai about 8km away. We had tried to phone the village elder who organises the treks but couldn’t get through the day before, so we had no one to collect us. We walked into Thatbot village and were told that a bus would be about a 3 hour wait so we persuaded a local guy heading towards the village to take us… cost us 20,000 kip (£1.60) for the ride. So there we were speeding up this dirt track sat in the bed of a pick up truck feeling very intrepid but still not sure if we had a trek or place or stay that night.

Lucky for us the pick-up driver dropped us off at the headman’s house who understood that the only reason ‘falang’ (white tourists) come to the village is to trek. His English was about the same as our Laos, Danny resorted describing the trek we wanted in pictures and that seemed to work a treat. That night we stayed in the headman’s house; a privilege for us and he was very generous with the rice whisky called ‘LaoLao’. We ended up having a great time trying to teach each other our languages. We weren’t feeling so happy the next morning when the village awoke with the dawn and therefore so did we.

There are a great many puppies in the village, during the night one of the little buggers had run off with Danny’s walking socks. Only the night before we realised that there were a lot of puppies and not many grown up dogs… We decided that Puppy Pie must be a village favourite, Danny wasn’t so happy about it… until the morning when he was sockless :).

Unsure how the days trekking was due to start we hung around, until a guide appeared. We had established that during the 2 night trek we would like to stay out in the wilds rather than back in a village. To do this we would have to sleep under the stars something I’d never done before. We had all the gear and borrowed a mosquito net. Our guide took us down to the river where we would begin our trek by travelling up stream for about 50 mins by canoe.

The guides carried all the food we’d need for 2 days away. They showed us a very small basket that contained two dead ducks that we would BBQ for the next few days. It was only when we got out of the boat at the other end we realised the ducks weren’t dead at all… how they got them into the basket I never want to know but their poor carriage conditions started to wear on my conscience by the time we had stopped for the day.

The boat we were to use for the next 2 days was a thin plank construction which was very low in the water with all the bags and food. The river level was also very very low so at times the boat had to be pushed off the sandbars that caught it as it was propelled up river by the ‘longtail’ motor. I was in charge of bailing the water out of the boat as we moved along.

The first day we trekked to a large 7 tier waterfall where we made camp for the day. After a simple luch of local foods, we went off to investigate the area while the two guides we had with us ‘Bundee’ and ‘Bundeyang’ dispatched the ducks and built a fire.

We were looking forward to BBQ duck roasting over the fire… but, it was not to be. For dinner the guides had made a very nice noodle soup with the carcass of the ducks the backbone mainly. And the heart, liver and lungs were given to us to eat along with the ducks head and feet. Never in the history of man was has one man been soooo disappointed with his dinner. I tried a little of the duck head, a bit of brain an beak but Danny was not feeling like eating wobbly bits he couldn’t readily identify.

It really bought us down to earth as nothing is ever wasted when the Lao people kill and cook an animal, it made me realise how much we throw away as inedible in the UK. Mainly the bits we were now eating. What we really wanted to know was what had happened the meat? We joked that they throw the good bits away as rubbish.

Soon after dinner the boys clean a nice rock by the river for us to sleep on and Danny set about building a frame to house the mosquito net. It was quite impressive and worked a treat. We spent a very comfortable night out on our rock listening to the frog chorus.
We were treat for breakfast to boiled river shrimp that the guides had caught overnight. I little over powering for me in the morning but Danny scoffed the lot.



Today was New Years Eve and we had another boat ride up the river to where the rapids started. At this time of year the water was very low so it was easy to scramble over the rocks to find ourselves a campsite for the night. The guides were worried it would rain so they found us a spot under a large bolder. We left our gear in camp and after lunch started the walk up the side of the gorge. We were heading up the steep side where we’d be rewarded with a view across the gorge and the Mekong river plane.

The walk up though the jungle was hard work in the heat. We followed a tiny path though the thick bamboo, which took us across dry river beds and eventually we followed a dry bed which bought us out of the jungle onto a very old lava flow. We weren’t expecting this as there are no volcanoes in Laos but it was unmistakeable. We followed the lava flow to the top of a cliff which dropped away dramatically in front of us to reveal the river way down in the bottom.

It was a real breathtaking view and Danny managed to scare the crap out of our guide by getting to close to the edge… as usual.

That evening we were treated to the remained of the duck, the good bits of meat this time, as well as some homemade soup and sticky rice. I’d of given anything right then for some mashed potatoes or some custard, I know strange choices but you get some weird craving s for western food. So there we were New year eve laying on a rock by this river watching the full moon rise over the jungle.

Earlier we’d used the river as our bathroom and jumped into a large pool and lathered up. It was all a great experience and the guides gave us some LaoLao, which kept us happily singing songs sat on our rock, till not quite midnight, but we were very tired.

The whole experience of the trek and village stay was so memorable. We had found some of the realness of Laos after the unrealness of the bars and drunk English that we had found in the bars of Vang Vieng at Christmas. I enjoyed being in Laos more than Thailand and Nepal, the Laos people are the ones that make the difference and for me these memories will stick with me the longest.

Vang Vieng Trek Laos