Good morning Vietnam....

Firstly I apologise for the very obvious title...I couldn't help myself! Secondly I apologise for not blogging for a while. In our defence it has been pretty difficult to find internet access fast enough to check our emails, let alone write a blog!

We're in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City to be precise, or Saigon if you're as old as M! We've been here for 5 days and leave tomorrow for Sri Lanka with an overnight stop in Kualalumpa (another sleepless night under an escalator in an international departure hall). Unfortunately we were introduced to the city of Saigon by two young men who attempted a drive by bag snatch on Emma, who valiantly clung on for dear life. Thankfully everyone in Vietnam is around 5ft tall and 7 stone, even M feels beefy in comparissom. After a nice couple of months of blending into the background in NZ and Oz, I'm back to looking like a giant blond freak! Thankfully nothing was stolen, and despite our first impressions, Vietnamese people are very friendly and the country is beautiful! More on that later though.

I've got to write something about Cambodia. Cute little Cambodia! We spent 3 weeks in Cambodia. Firstly in the Capital Phom Penn where we visited Aki Ra's Landmine Museum. What a fantastic bloke, he was recruited by the Khemer Rouge as a child and ordered to lay thousands of land mines until the Vietnamese invaded and he was recruited by them to lay some more. He has spent all of his adult life clearing landmines in Cambodia, training local people to defuse them, setting up a museum and an orphanage for children who have lost limbs or parents through land mines. You can learn more about him and his charity here:
http://www.cambodialandminemuseum.org/history
We donated some of the money that friends donated at our leaving party to this charity so thank you everyone who contributed! Xxxx

We also visited Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor Wat. Of course, it was breathtaking. Built in 1113 it is the largest religious site in the world, first Hindu and then Buddhist. We woke at 5am to get to the temples for sunrise and witnessed the sun come up over the largest lake in the Angkor complex, the God's swimming pool! We then spent a day exploring some of the lesser known temples, the Bayon and Angkor Thom before the main attraction Angkor Wat itself. Unfortunately, just like some of the other fantastic sites we've visited on our travels (Macchu Pichu, the Great Barrier Reef) Angkor Wat has become a bit like Disney Land for tourists. We had to negotiate hordes of 'package tourists' with guides with giant umbrellas and squeaky microphones, people trying to sell knock off sunglasses and poor little children pushing dodge postcards. I'm not a fan of people particularly...so this was a bit of a shame.

It didn't distract from the magic of the place though, particularly Angkor Thom where trees grow out of the sandstone, looking like their giant roots have kicked over the walls in frustration! Fantastic. My favourite temple however was the tiny little one, next to where we saw the sun rise. I can't even remember its name. But we explored it alone, at about 6am, before the souvineer stands had been set up, and as the sun moved across the sandstone walls, turning them blood red, it felt like we had discovered our own little Angkorian temple!

I don't want to go on and on about Cambodia, but I love it! Unfortunately, however we visited Sihanoukville for a couple of days on the recommendation of a few friends. The only good thing about this visit was that I completed my PADI for half the cost as in the UK even though the visibility was approximatey 10 cms. There is nothing good about this place, it's a tacky, filthy, faded, wannabe Thailand. If you like your beaches packed with litter and deckchairs and spending time with lager louts or pervy old men looking for a Cambodian wife then Sihanoukville is the place for you. We don't, so we left sharpish.

Needing space from the crowds we headed north to Kratie, famous for visiting the Irrawaddy Dolphins. They are the sweetest looking things with tiny little noses. There's said to be less than 100 left in the Mekong and are suffering great numbers of deaths of their calves due to the awful state of the water. Very sad.

Enjoying our break from the hordes, but saddened by the plight of our dolphin friends, we decided to visit Sen Monorom in the very East of the country. This journey was an interesting one. We are now used to being crushed into minibuses, having to share our seats with two other people and their chickens, but some tourists aren't. Some tourists are unaware that life is difficult in countries other than their own, that people don't have enough money to pay for delux VIP buses, and that people have to share. Not enough touists want to visit Sen Monorom for it to be worth putting on a tourist bus, so people travel local style- we like it this way. Others don't. Especially Russians. One particular Russian lady was so incensed that she had to travel like a local that she shouted hysterically at the driver, who looked like he was about to cry, and then climbed over everyone in the bus,including an elderly blind man, to sit in the front seat and refuse to move. Dispite our suggestions that in fact the back seats were the best seats and that the driver was being kind in giving us the most comfortable places to sit, she would not be moved. She even took control of the radio! Seething with anger, we bit our tongues knowing that she would get what she deserved. And she did. Sitting at the back means that you don't have people climbing in and out over you all the time. The front seat next to the driver is usually reserved for little old ladies who can fit two or maybe three on a seat. You also get the benefit of the air con at the back. Happily for us, and the Cambodian lady who got to sit in the 'tourist seat', our Russian friend was forced to share she seat with two other people, one of whom fell asleep on her shoulder. Her horrified looks back to her boyfriend only made the journey for me much more enjoyable. Emma says I must try to be more Buddhist.

Anyway, we visited an elephant sanctuary in Sen Monorom run by a crazy but brilliant English guy called Jack. Its one of the most inspiring things I've seen on our travels and really shows what one person can do if they believe in something. Jack has a team of people who help him to rescue

mistreated working elephants in Cambodia. He buys or rents them from families and brings them to live on a piece of land he rents from farmers. He has built a brilliant visitor centre where visitors can stay in the jungle, he employs local people to be mahouts (elephant handlers) and is doing

important education work in the community. If you visit Cambodia you should spend some time with mad Jack at the elephant valley project! It is beautiful.

We travelled from Sen Monorom to the Vietnamese border, first by bus and then a terrifying moped ride (experiencing massive backpack issues), walked into Vietnam, payed for an extortionate taxi to the nearest town and then another crowded, terrifying bus ride in a vehicle that couldn't go over 40 kph and played twinkle twinkle little star when it reversed. Weird, but South East Asia is a bit weird. Our time in Vietnam has been spent mostly resting in anticipation of an exhausting time in Sri Lanka, but we have managed to see some sites, the amazing system of tunnels used by the Viet Cong and some of the Mekong Delta, but all in all we have spent a lazy time in 'Nam! It's unlikely that there will be Internet at the girls home in Sri Lanka but we will try to keep in touch as often as possible. Sorry for the rambling, awfulness of this post, it's 2.00am, and I'm keeping Emma from her beauty sleep so I'll stop my manic typing!
Love,
Roo
X

Cambodia photos

Hello
I can't seem to make this link work....not sure why.
You might have to copy and paste this into your navigation bar.
Sorry

http://photobucket.com/albums/ff385/workerbee30/Cambodia

What we noticed during these months of travelling is that roo and I have a useful habit of coinciding our arrival in places with a significant happening of one sort or another. Thankfully these have not been of the natural disaster act of god type (thus far!), with the exception  of the volcano just behind the Andes. 

We arrived in Peru during the 100 year anniversary of the (re) discovery of Macchu  picchu and arrived in Santiago just as students started rioting.  We arrived in towoomba just at the right moment to meet the lovely students from qut and lynne and jak to help rebuild the most glamorous looking shed you'll ever see and we arrived in Singapore the day before Chinese new year.  Not forgetting the coincidence of the rugby world cup in New Zealand (although I have a sneaking suspicion that roo planned that bit, unlike the rest of our trip which has been largely left to chance!)

To arrive in Singapore on the day of Chinese new year to some might seem lucky, to us it marked the beginning of the closing down of most of south east Asia for a week. We also have a habit of arriving at a place and falling asleep and missing the most mind blowing unmissable event in the history of the world according to those who where there, so determined not to 'miss out' we ventured into singapore's modern beyond belief high techness and caught the mrt (think London underground without the dirt, smell and inefficiency - so nothing like the London underground) to the centre of singapores china town.  It was drizzling which is a sign of prosperity along with the red decorations and the dragon which happens to be this years sign of the zodiac, good news as we are now as poor as church mice.  

We followed the hordes of merry makers and arrived where it was all at. There were a smattering of western looking people knocking around too and as there were some security railings cord ending off the road we thought we had better get a good pitch and duly staked our claim at the very front. As one hour became two, we began to notice that the only people standing at the railings were in fact the western looking types, whilst everyone else had taken to sitting in more comfortable locations like the pavement or cafes. Two hours became three and literally nothing happened, even the stage that was set up a 20 meters away never really sparked into life. After four hours of sitting in the middle of the road, the heavens truly opened and torrential rain poured onto our heads, the chap next to us sheltering under an umbrella helpfully suggested we go and buy one (or we could share?) so off I trotted to find a shop at 11.45 pm on Chinese new year splashing through puddles the size of swimming pools and dogging raindrops the size of bullets. Surprisingly there was no one selling umbrellas but I found some cardboard and improvised! When I got back to where roo had been saving our spot, she was nowhere to be seen, I asked the dry man if he'd seen her and he said that he had suggested she go and stand under the shelter of the shops awnings (or maybe we could share your umbrella, it is quite large?) I searched for her whilst holding the cardboard over my head, much the amusement of the locals. I spotted poor little roo (which is quite easy in Singapore as she stands out somewhat) looking like a drowned rat. we dashed back to the railings as midnight approached with renewed hope that something, anything might happen to make this worthwhile. We counted down in a language which we made up to join in with everyone else and then nearly had a heart attack as about a million firecrackers were left off 10ft away, promptly followed by an apparently spectacular fireworks display, the appreciation of which was marred only by the sky scrapper completely obscuring our view. And that was that, 4 hours of hopeful waiting followed by 1 minute of loud banging, there's a joke in there somewhere! Brilliant, to some that might have been worth the wait, but not me. But hey we were in Singapore and that in it's self is quite something. 

New photos of Australia!

Great Barrier reef photos - http://s1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff385/workerbee30/Australia/Great%20Barrier%20Reef/

Roo's birthday photos - http://s1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff385/workerbee30/Australia/Roos%20birthday/

The finished building and opening day photos - http://s1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff385/workerbee30/Australia/Grand%20opening%20of%20the%20Real%20Studios%20QUT%20Project/

Terrence the....

Hello everyone!

We are leaving Australia in a couple of days. We are sad to go and leave our fantastic new friends but we must head onto Cambodia and Vietnam for another adventure!

We witnessed the opening of Lynnes new building which was a brilliant day. For those who don't know, we have spent most of our time in Oz helping a bunch of students rebuild a flood destroyed shed which was used as a halfway point for people walking the Bicentenial national trail. Lynne is really passionate ablut the trail that runs the length of the East side of Oz, so it has been lovely to help build her a lovely new place. (We are now experts at stone walling so if anyone needs a wall building when we get home, we're your women! ) Lynne has been so kind to us during our stay, as has her son Jak. We have been made to feel part of the family. We will truely miss them both, as well as Killer, the chickens and other wildlife that live in and around her farm! Our new Ausie freinds have promised to come and visit if they ever come to the UK so maybe we will see them again!

The finished building

We took a week off from building over my birthday and travelled up to Cairns in a campervan. We found a relocation service called 'Standby Cars' which allows travellers to drive vans to another location for free, we just paid for our petrol! We managed to get one to Cairns and one back, which turned out to be much cheaper than flying as we didnt pay anything for our accomodation (it was just like being back in Olive in NZ!). It took 2.5 days to drive there from Brisbane so we only managed to get one full day in Cairns but that was enough to explore the Great Barrier Reef!

The only reason we came to Oz was becasue I wanted to dive the GBR! We paid for a day's snorkling trip and an introductory scuba dive. I had scuba'd before in Fiji but it was Emma's first time and she was TERRIFIED! Our first snorking spot was beautiful and we were the first group to put on our tanks and masks and brave the crystal clear water. Our insrtuctor held Emmas hand the entire time but she did it, despite her irrational fear of crabs, fish, sharks, snakes and other sea based creatures. I think she even enjoyed herself a little bit! I need to convince her to do her PADI in Cambodia. We didnt see anything big, just a lot of fish. We had some lunch and the boat took us to our second snorkling spot. We had been in the water for about 10 minutes when Emma spotted a little Green Turtle! I was beyond excited and followed him around for ages, trying to take some photos on the underwater camera we had hired for the day. I managed to get some, having to dive down pretty deep, until my ears felt like bursting, but it was so worth it. He was beautiful! It was worth a 7 day round trip, driving for 14 hours most days just to see him, it was the best birthday ever!

We drove back to Brisbane and got a lift back to Murphy's Creek the day before the grand opening, where we worked until 3am to finish the painting on the building . We are glad we came back to see it in all its glory, it really is beautiful and we helped to build it! It took 2 months of working from 5am till 10pm in blistering heat. The students designed it, all the materials were donated and I hope it goes some way to help rebuild the community of Murphy's Creek after the deverstation and misery of the last year.

Anyway, we have immensley enjoyed our Ozzie adventure and even though we didn't visit all the tourist hotspots, we had a unique experience and hopefully left the place a bit better than we found it!

We'll update you on our Cambodian whereabouts asap,
love,
Roo and M
xxxxx

Hi,
here is the link to all of our Australian photo albums. Look to the left hand side of the screen and you'll see the options.

x

http://s1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff385/workerbee30/Australia/

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry that it's taken so long, yet again to update you on our whereabouts! We are still in Australia, in a little village called Murphy's creek close to Toowoomba, about 2 hours drive south west of Brisbane. We left our original placement (Barney's bubble) for a number of reasons but mostly we weren't learning much about building, which is the only reason we went there. After a few panicked days of trying to find another volunteering project we stumbled on Lynne's place where a bunch of students from Queensland University of Technology are rebuilding a cabin that was washed away in the January floods last year. The original building stood meters from the creek at the bottom of Lynne's garden. It marks the halfway point of the bicentennial trail, a walk from the top of the west coast of Oz to the bottom which takes 12 months one way! People walk it, ride horses and sometimes cycle it. Lynne has provided hundreds of people a place to recuperate and rest their horses and weary bones. Unfortunately on the same day as Lynne's house was washed away, her neighbour's was also destroyed, killing a little girl and her father. The water was recorded travelling 200km/h on that day, 28 people in total were killed in the area, 3 are still missing. If we look across the creek from the new cabin we can see the concrete foundations which is all that is left of the little family's home. It is very sad. 

The half-finished new cabin
The group of students, working in the project are all studying architecture and have given up their summer holidays to help complete the project before the anniversary of the floods on January the 10th. We all work from sun up to sun down in 30c heat, 14 hours a day. Em and I have no idea what we're doing so get given the 'easy' jobs which generally involve lifting rocks, shoveling sand and moving bricks, although we have become masters of rock walling (you can see our efforts in some if the photos!) It is absolutely knackering but everyone is so kind and friendly, especially our Australian adoptive mother Lynne and her son Jak who cook us delicious meals, force feed us cake and cups of tea...its just like being at home! 

We had a break from building over Christmas and spent it with Lynne and her family. The day was beautifully hot. We spent it playing tennis, eating prawns, mango, smoked salmon, chocolate and drinking champagne. Lynne and Jak run a chilli chocolate company and make a variety of different products, so most of our meals involve chilli in some form- chocolate, jam, chutney, sauce! It's a good job I'm used to my dad's hot cooking! 

African Drummer at Woodford

During our time with the students we had discovered about Woodford Folk Festival. The festival lasts a week and cost $600 per person! Lynne, who is about 21 at heart, had bought her ticket months ago! We have no money, but fortunately managed to get accepted as 2 of the 2000 volunteers who work at the festival! We were given the very prestigious role of Garbologists (litter pickers!) and had to work at 6am every morning, cleaning up after the night before! IT WAS AMAZING! We camped with Lynne who set up a miniature version of her house complete with door mat, kettle, kitchen cupboards, coffee table and fridge! We worked every morning but got to spend the day watching bands we had never heard of, buying hippy clothes and eating vegan food! The weather was gorgeous and we met some lovely people who were on our Garbology team- Nate and Dee from Ireland and Julie and Anja from Germany. Unlike festivals at home there was no obnoxious drunkenness, no fighting and there was hardly any litter for us to pick up! We got thanked by most people who saw us working, we got free water, cheap food and free gifts as well as our tickets paid for! We discovered some new music- Xavier Rudd, Goyter, Frank Yamma, Tom Thum, Benjalu....all Australian and all awesome! We spent new years eve there, listening to some incredibly loud African drumming that Emma liked. We saw Buddhist Monks complete a sand Mandala, Indian performers, Japanese interpretive dancers, Aboriginal performances and Emma danced at a Ceili for the first time instead of having to play in the band! All in all we had a brilliant time!

We are now back at Lynnes ready to continue with the building work. We are planning our next stop in Oz as we only have a few weeks left here. Our rough idea is to go North to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef and then head on back to Sydney to catch our flight to Singapore which is booked for the 15th Jan. We'll keep you all updated on our plans and hopefully post some photos of the finished cabin.

Miss you all,

Love Roo and M

x