Leanne & Jim in China
#China, Part I
#Episode II
#Chinese Medicine
#The Long Awaited Episode
III
#China IV
Kaari in Finland
#Finland 1 #Finland
2 #Finland 3 #Finland
4 #Finland 5
Kaari in France
#France, Part 1/5:
Friday/Saturday #France,
Part 2/5: Sunday #France,
Part 3/5: Monday #France,
Part 4/5: Tuesday #France,
Part 5/5: Wednesday
Chris and Nic in Thailand
(Keith) #The road to Langkawi
#Typhoon? What Typhoon? #Back
in Bangkok #Holy Buddhas!!!
#Daylight
mission into Cambodia
#Thailand 5
Kettle Valley
#Kettle Valley 1
#Kettle Valley 2
Wellers in Hawaii
#Hawaii I
#Hawaii II
#Hawaii III
#Hawaii IV
Geoff
#Geoff 1
#Baja California
#Los Mochis
#Sierra Madre & Guadalajara
#Southern Mexico
#Guatemala
#Hola de Frito de Guatemala
Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallalalalalalala...la!
If you remember our quote from our Thailand trip (""High season, my
ass!"")
you'll enjoy the humour and irony in what seems to be, so far, the
quote
arising from our little Boracay adventure...Typhoon season, my ass!!
It's
beautiful here! We're learning how to SCUBA (we've only been in a pool,
so
far), already watching amazing sunsets sipping cocktails (Nay! getting
drunk
on cocktails) and helping the Japanese tourists use the internet (it's
all
in English).
Lanner here, just as googly. Yes, we saw Manila in all its glory, in
the
most amazing first day of sunshine after all the monsoons and flooding,
while we waited for our domestic flight from the airport. And we saw
Boracay, in all its golden, sunny glory, as we gazed enviously over
our
shoulders from the covered area we were studying in while cramming
in
information about Scuba equipment, fresh and salt water conditions,
safety
techniques, barracuda attacks, etc... SO, tomorrow we hope to actually
frolic on ""the most beautiful beaches in the world"" (which they are),
after
we finish the last chapter of theory, spend some time getting used
to the
equipment in the swimming pool (complete with bridge, waterfall, and
wet
bar)...sigh. Apparently our instructor, Pedro, who's from Germany,
has made
arrangements for us to go windsurfing (remember that lesson we once
took, in
Japanese, on Lake Biwa, the biggest, yet clearest and calmest lake
in Japan?
Well, now we're going to try it on the South China Sea in waves as
tall as
my grandmother) but we don't know when, where, or with who!!! Should
be
interesting.
It's taken us a while to become comfortable with the laid-back
attitudes and pace of everything here after living in Japan (yes, even
with
my brief trip back to Vancouver!!). We're starting to relax more (the
alcohol helped) and enjoy the beautiful, amazing weather that wasn't
supposed to happen, and the tropical paradise setting.
In Manila we saw the Spanish ruins that were leftover by the
colonization by guess who!! and learned about the legendary Philippino
martyr, Jose Rizal, in an absolutely stunning museum that is the embodiment
of what I want to get involved in. It was great sharing a piece of
my future
vision with Jim.
I guess that's all for now. We'll write more when our holiday gets more
interesting!! With much love, Leanne and Jim
PS. Mom and Dad: did you guys ever visit the Philippines? I vaguely
think
you did. Where did you go and what did you see?
"Hi, everybody! Here's a photo from the trip for those of you who can
see it!
This was taken just after our dive on Thursday and my (Leanne's) wetsuit
is
off because as soon as we came ashore I rushed for the toilet! We figure
that somehow the urine in your bladder is compressed underwater and
so when
you return to the surface it expands....
Ok, so Pedro's English wasn't perfect - we were just impressed that
he could
speak German, English, Tagalog, and probably a couple of others we
didn't
know about!
Enjoy!
----------
From: ""Jim Rowley"" <le_n_me@hotmail.com>
To: lanjim2@grn.mmtr.or.jp
Subject: Fwd: ...Picture
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 06:01:34 PDT
>From: Pedro Lorenzo <diveped@boracay.i-next.net>
>To: le_n_me@hotmail.com
>Subject: ...Picture
>Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 21:10:43 +0800
>
>Hi honeymooners,
>I hope you can open this nice picture of yours. I would like to say
that
>you are a very gorgeous students.
>CONGRATULATIONS!
>
>Truly yours,
>Pedro
>
I woke up late with little to do that day but head for the western train
station and catch one for Normandy. Fabrice's girlfriend phoned ahead before
I left and as it turned out, there wasn't one leaving until 5:30 that evening!
(it being Sunday, I guess.) So I stopped and figured out which town I should
go to. I had planned on Rouen but having lost a day I found that trains
did run straight to Caen. So we booked a train and a guidebook-recommended
hotel there.
With an unexpected sunny day in Paris, Fabrice asked if there was anything
I had in mind to see, so I, of course, said how about the Louvre? (Crystal
was still feeling under the weather so just the two of us went.)
And it was open! unlike 1988. After balking at the lineup, we went
to the underground shopping mall attachment and had some lunch. The mall
had its own entrance and the lineup was only for security reasons, so after
less than an hour, we were inside the Louvre. Even on half-price Sunday.
To maximize time, I headed straight upstairs for the Mona Lisa (La
Jacarde in French). On the way there, we met the Winged Victory of Syracuse
and it definitely was. We dabbled a bit in the Renaissance, Fabrice remarked
that in the room with the Mona Lisa was a huge picture of the Crowning
of Napoleon - a court scene maybe ten feet by fifteen feet - yet it was
virtually ignored for the two foot by three foot canvas in the glass case.
I was just glad to be 6 feet tall as I didn't have to push through anyone
to see Leonardo's little lady. PS. I recognized a certain three-part painting
from National Geographic, because it was only recently discovered that
they all came from the same set. PPS. In the Crowning of Napoleon painting,
one of the guys on the extreme right of the courtroom looks like me.
We went left through a Greek and Roman section to get to Egypt. The
stairs that take you down into the Egyptian section look for all the world
like the descent into a tomb, the walls lined with dog statues and faint
lampglow on the heavy stone arches. Coool. Spent another half hour in ancient
Egypt. Fabrice commented on the tradition of visiting other countries and
carting off their national heritage.
There were some new-looking stairs leading away from one of the larger
Sphinxes, so we took them further down. Underneath the courtyard was an
excavation of the ""old"" Louvre, which Fabrice hadn't seen before, a medieval
fort about a tenth the size of the Louvre today.
So it is possible to go through 20% of the Louvre in an hour. Stopping
and looking around takes at least twice as long but is necessary. I thought
I could take a whirlwind tour of Mesopotamia & the Code of Hammurabi
in the last 20 minutes but I spent half that time trying to get unlost
in the Egyptian section, so we had to give up. A couple more weekends and
I'd have it nailed.
Uneventfully I got to Caen that evening and found the hotel and an
Italian restaurant.
------------------------------------------
I had bulked up on history before this trip. There were 5 major landing beaches in Normandy, codenamed Utah and Omaha for the Americans and Sword, Juno and Gold for the British. The division that landed at Juno was Canadian. The towns in the area were (and still are) Courseulles-sur-Mer and Bernieres-sur-Mer. The British and Canadian forces were tasked with capturing/liberating Caen; it took them much longer than planned to do it, as one of the German divisions opposing them were the Jugend - Hitler Youth - who belived in Hitler's cause as only teenagers can.
In Caen, I threw open the curtains of the Hotel St Jean and the sun
was shining on huge stonework architecture. This was a pretty good start
to the day. I could definitely get used to waking up with a Gothic cathedral
right outside my window. Gargoyles and everything! The guidebook says the
belfry's empty, so that low hooting must have been pigeons...I hope.
Across the street from the cathedral was a statue of Joan of Arc (Jeanne
d'Arc). Joan of Arc, at the age of 17, rallied the French army to defeat
the English in 1429. (And they say today's teenagers are rebellious.)
Route de 6 juin, named after D-day, is the main road up the centre
of downtown Caen. I hiked this several times during the few days I was
in Caen. Caen was so heavily bombarded during the first few weeks of fighting
that the arriving British had to bulldoze three feet of rubble to clear
the road, making their best guess as to where the old road used to go.
Caen fortress survived, it was the seat of William the Conqueror back
in the 1000's. I ran around the fortress a bit and took some pictures of
the Norman round towers and moats. More on William tomorrow in Bayeux.
I actually got to Bayeux this afternoon (by train) and got into the museum
housing the famous Bayeux tapestry, but after seeing the interpretation
centre I was appalled by the lineups and had to make an early exit. Even
at that it would be touch and go to get to Arromanches for a bus tour of
the American beaches that was leaving at 2:00. I asked the tourist centre
to ring for a taxi but it got there (and thus got to Arromanches) a few
minutes late. So I missed the ""DD"" bus and saw Arromanches instead. After
that I considered the bus schedule a bit and realized I could take another
couple of buses and see the Canadian landing beaches instead.
So, after getting up close to the huge and stinky remains of the artificial
harbour at Arromanches, I bought a souvenir pin and caught the bus to Bernieres
sur Mer, more or less the centre of ""Juno"" beach. A quick snack of an
apple turnover and some pain au chocolat and I started strolling the beach.
Looking both ways for traffic so as not to become the umpteen-thousandth
Canadian casualty - the irony would be too much.
At Bernieres there is a large Landing Monument and a small bunker on
Canada Square bearing a few plaques honoring the forces that took the beach,
such as ""10th Armoured Regiment (The Fort Garry Horse)"". That didn't
take very long at all, so finally I took off my hiking boots (and socks)
and went wading. My feet were reporting back how exciting and refreshing
and textured the beach was, as compared to the inside of a boot. Meanwhile,
I was looking for anything that indicated the beach had a history to it
- rusty spots, whatever - but came up with nnothing but a few shells. Seashells,
that is. No eclipse glasses either.
Next time, I recommend Courseulles sur Mer as there's more artifacts
and the bus route back to Caen also stops at the Canadian war cemetery
in Revieres. I unfortunately missed it as my map didn't show it as a bus
route.
Anyway, I got back into Caen in time to catch a city bus to La Memorial,
a ""museum for peace"" illustrating various aspects of the war. When I
got there they had just closed the cafeteria, the entrance to the main
museum - well, nearly everything - but I watched some film clips in the
centre plaza in the shadow of a Typhoon dive bomber for a while then wandered
around and accidentally :) wandered into a theatre just as the last group
of tourists were arriving from the main museum. So I saw a bit of the museum
anyway. After that film they closed the back way in, too.
La Memorial also has extensive gardens on the grounds, so before I
caught the bus back, I stuck my head into what was called the Canadian
Plaza. It was a small garden overlooking the other gardens in the valley,
with some Lexan panels listing all the support corps that kept the Canadian
infantry going. Didn't miss the bus. Pizza for dinner at a Brit-pub-style
restaurant, and struck up a conversation with a guy from LA on aspirin
in the Amazon.
I spent a little time planning the next day - I didn't want to catch
the first train at 7 in the morning to Mont St Michel, and the later train
would arrive around 4 and give me about 2 hours there. If I wanted to stay
longer, there was a train back at 9 or 10 pm as well. I could even spend
a bit of time in Bayeux as there were trains going there at a civilized
hour, like 10 or 11 am. That was all my poor brain could handle so I went
to sleep.
------------------------------------------
Today was a good day. I got to see the real tapestry, real tanks, and
a real war cemetery, all in Bayeux.
I hadn't booked ahead yesterday, but thanks to my landlady, I was able
to grab the last hotel room in Caen at another hotel. I paid aforehand
because I expected to be back late. I didn't at the time realize *how*
late...
I bought some fruit & stuff for brekkie with my bad French. Then
I caught the train to Bayeux because I figured I could spend at least 2
hours in Bayeux before catching the train that came through there on the
way to Mont St Michel, and 2 hours would give me a much better chance of
getting through the lineups I'd seen yesterday.
The lineup to get in was long, but the lineups inside were short. I
skipped the interpretation (which I'd seen yesterday) and the interpretive
film (which was half an hour to the next English-language showing) and
I finally got to see the Bayeux Tapestry, which I'd read about as a kid.
It's a story of kings and betrayals and war in 1066, woven into a diorama
230 feet long. It includes scenes of Mont St Michel being seiged and Halley's
comet appearing in the sky after the old king (Edward) dies. At least we
think it's Halley's comet - Halley wasn't around to see it until 1682,
but the years work out right. The museum has little headsets that describe
the scenes and some of the stuff you'd miss otherwise.
I also got out to the Bayeux WWII museum where I saw four different
tanks up close, and a British war cemetery, which I visited in lieu of
the Canadian cemeteries.
The tanks out on the museum's lawn included a Churchill Crocodile and
a Sherman. I even got one picture of a German tank looming over a little
red British telephone box. That was enough for me - I looked around the
lobby but really had no time for the queues or the museum.
I caught the first train out of Bayeux to Lis'something, which turned out to be the wrong train. (oops, 7 minutes too early.) I got off at the next stop and caught the proper train, Lis'something to Pontorson. Pontorson is only a small town and we had to catch a bus to Mont St Michel. Between half an hour loading the bus and an hour in traffic, two hours was going to go by awfully quickly... I would have to recommend more parking lots back in Pontorson and only buses and taxi traffic out to the Mont itself. If you find yourself stuck in traffic, you can stop at the Reptilarium for a while and see the giant tortoises. I just wasn't expecting giant tortoises in Normandy so I didn't allow any time.
Mont St Michel was something else. It rises up behind the trees like a ghost and is absolutely the most outstanding thing on the landscape for miles around. It's a castle&village&cathedral built on a rock outcropping surrounded by tidal flats. The tidal flats and their accompanying quicksands make for an excellent natural defence and the Mont has held out successfully against several sieges in its history. (One of those illustrated in the aforementioned tapestry.) Napoleon turned it into a prison for a while but it was restored as a Benedictine monastery in this century. Nowadays there's a causeway out to it, and two parking lots, one of which is tidal. I got there as the tide was coming in and immediately shot off several pictures of the waves lapping at the castle towers. It wasn't a hard decision to spend another hour there and catch the late train back. I spent that hour running up and down various stairs and ramparts, pausing once to help a British family take a group photo.
I overheard some girls speaking English while waiting for the bus back and got to talking with one of them, who turned out to be from Indiana and over to visit some of the friends she'd made as an exchange student some years ago. We wandered around Pontorson for a bit then split up to find some shops or restaurants that were open. No eclipse glasses.
In an effort to both save time and sample regional cooking I stopped at a restaurant for a dinner of fish soup (soupe de poissons) and a regional brand of apple cider (La Bolee d'Armorique). (I noticed lots of seafood but I'm just not that keen on oysters and mussels. Still, that's the place to go for them.) The soup was good and I loaded it with croutons and grated cheese. But as soon as I was done I had to move quickly for the train station.
The rush turned out not to be necessary, as after half an hour I had to believe THERE WAS NO TRAIN! A group of Spanish students waiting at the station were, in fact, camping there as the hotels were all full, and they had a look at my schedule and explained that late train ran only on Fridays, or Sundays, full moons, whatever, but apparently not Tuesdays.
I ran into Indiana Jane again and discussed my options. Although I had an offer to spend the night in a heap of Spanish students, I only had my own clothes and the souvenir teatowels to sleep in, and the morning trains back to my luggage at Caen might not get me back to Paris in time for my flight, never mind the eclipse. So in desperation I slit my wallet and called a taxi. What with waiting for the taxi to come back from Rennes (drinking fruit juice and coffee in the pub) and the ride back, I didn't get into Caen until 3 am or so. I had to direct the taxi driver with my bad French as he had never been in Caen before. Bleah. We got lost for a bit which had its upside in that we passed an abbey I hadn't had a chance to visit during the day. Luckily the hotel key worked. Just before I went to bed, I arranged all my stuff so I wouldn't forget anything in the morning and double checked my alarm was set for half past six. Climbed gratefully into the sheets and couldn't get to sleep because of the darn coffeezzzzzzz.....
------------------------------------------
Actually made a 7am train to Paris and took the bus to Paris-North train
station. Once there I had some time to check out the train schedules to
the eclipse zone, find the location of the train to the airport, and verify
that yes there was a train expected back from the eclipse zone. I also
bought another baguette sandwich and a bottle of champagne, poked my head
in an East Indian shop, and mailed some postcards.
Then I crossed my fingers - if my schedule was wrong by an hour, I'd
miss my flight - and boarded the train.
The train north was pretty packed. Lots of people had the same idea.
One man who knew a little English said that most people were only going
as far as Creil, because by the time this local reached the exact centre
of the eclipse zone, the eclipse would be over. So I got off at Creil too,
not 100% sure it was in the totality zone.
On the way, people were putting on their eclipse glasses and looking
out the window. I dug out the card I was using to make a pinhole camera
and when I finally found the focus, I was stunned to see only a crescent
of the sun remained.
When I got out at Creil, I asked a guy with camera equipment if I could
borrow his eclipse glasses for a moment. He said I could take them, I guess
he had another pair. I couldn't believe it. The increasing desparation
of the eclipse-glasses search had evaporated in a single moment of kindness.
I barely had enough time to get out of the train station and stake out
a patch of the plaza outside. The sky was rapidly dimming and every time
I used the glasses, the crescent was shrinking. (Without the glasses, the
sun was indistinguishable from its usual glare.)
And then...(a cloud was in the way, oh my goodness, allez-vous)
And then...(the cloud moved, the sun was the tiniest sliver)
And then bip! it was out. And foomp! the corona ring sprang into life
against a black sky. The sky was dusky purple blue around the edges, I
think because we were near the edge of the totality zone. A plane lazily
flew across the sky. Two points of light, one of them probably Venus, appeared.
There was a sigh and applause from the crowd.
I stared up with the naked eye at the hole where the sun used to be.
It looked like a pupil and iris looking back. I took two pictures with
my rather battered camera. I have no idea how long totality lasted - probably
about a minute - or if I remembered to breathe during that time.
And bishOOOM! the sun came back on and in less than two seconds it was impossible to look at without the mylar glasses again. I was among the first to lead the applause at the return of the sun.
And now the denouement.
For once my perceptions matched up with the train schedules of reality
and I was able to catch the train back to Paris, find the platform for
the airport RER train, use my RER ticket, ride an absolutely packed shuttle
bus (we're talking Tokyo style here), get lost in the airport, stumble
across a post office and mail a last postcard, check in, spend money frantically
on gifts and stuff, and reach my gate before my 3:20 flight. Cooling my
heels in Shannon about two hours later. (I keep ending up back in Shannon.
There's got to be nicer places to finish a journey. Vancouver, say.)
And, as I lugged my pack into the elevator of my apartment block, I
realized it was over.
I spent the evening watching eclipse reports trying to let the grandness
of it all sink in.
The end.
------------------------------------------
//// Credits ////////
///Guidebooks:///
Lonely Planet: France, 2nd edition 1997
Visitors Guide France: Normandy, Moorland Publishing Co. Ltd. 1994
D-Day:The Illustrated History, Stephen Badsey, CLB, 1994
A map of France from a travel agent in Finland
///Tickets: ///
USIT travel, Limerick
www.trip.com - for pricing
Des Ryan travel, Shannon
///Related websites:///
France SNCF rail http://www.sncf.fr/indexe.htm
Bike touring in Normandy http://www.sheldonbrown.com/france-balter.html
Normandy 1944 http://198.103.134.2/historical/secondwar/normandy.htm#carpiquet
Eclipses 1999 http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/OH/OH1999.html
Canadian Normandy Foundation http://www.sfu.ca/~dann/nn4-4_7.htm
///Gear:///
The same hiking boots have carried me through more countries than I
care to list now. I never had a reason to wear my spare shoes or sandals.
The backpack was from Canada (veteran of the 1988 Europe trip) and
the daypack from Finland earlier this year. To all the patient waiting
people, I promise to finish my Finland story really really soon.
--
Best wishes,
Kaari
Kaari Proudly Presents
Your 5-day Tour of Paris and Normandy
aka Bring Your Own Boots
-------------------------------------
Friday August 6: Flight & a Timely Coincidence
This is the story of a 5-day trip to France, made possible by a direct
flight service between Shannon and Paris. With no hotel bookings, no train
bookings, and no idea where to get the special glasses for viewing the
eclipse next Wednesday, I packed a backpack and daypack Thursday and left
Friday.
Fabrice, a former NTS co-op now working in Paris, had offered to put
me up for a couple of days and even to meet me at the airport, so hats
off to him. The flight left about 5:30 Friday afternoon, and I did actually
work Friday, until 3:30 rolled around, and some of that work may even be
useful.
Through no pre-planning whatsoever, I ended up sitting next to someone
I knew - another NTS employee from France, Catherine Chevalier, and her
boyfriend. They were going to visit her sister in Paris. Catherine was
surprised. It was weird but definitely helped the time fly. :)
Not much else to report from Friday other than the airport security
carried submachine guns and Fabrice graciously drove Catherine to her sister's.
We agreed to meet for dinner or something tomorrow.
------------------------------------------
Saturday: Paris and the Exposition of 1889
Fabrice lives up 6 flights of stairs (no lift) near Place de la Nation.
We went out to a street market for some groceries (no eclipse glasses)
then Fabrice and I hit the city transit system to do a little touring.
(His girlfriend Crystal was meeting her sister that evening and couldn't
come with us.)
From the roof of University de la monde arabique, we got a good vista
of Paris. The building itself was interesting; as Fabrice pointed out,
the southward windows were decorated with mechanical irises that closed
to keep the sun out. The view of the city helped me to settle in and feel
like my feet were on the ground.
The closest ""sight"" was Notre Dame. They're currently refinishing
the stone, cleaning it up, and have instigated a new rule that all tourist
buses must now park further away to keep the pollution down. We skipped
the lineup and moved through the hordes of tourists to take a sightseeing
cruise along the Seine.
The boat dropped us off at the Eiffel Tower. There's a big light display
on the tower counting down to the millennium, 147 days to go when I was
there. There were lineups for the elevators and even for the stair admission,
so we just spent some time looking up. Then I went over and kicked one
of the tower supports to test it. It held. The path leading away from the
support looked awfully unused...I followed it and Fabrice came looking
for me a minute later to find me wandering around a small duck pond quietly
hidden behind some trees. I do prefer my Eiffel tower with ducks.
We crossed the street to the Humanities Museum (closed) to get a different
perspective on the tower and some other statuary. The tower is now painted
brown. Fabrice said the red color I remember was only rust.
Anyway, we took a bus to our next destination, Sacre Coeur cathedral.
The bus took us past Arc de Triomphe and the Pagalle sex district, so I
can count them as sights seen. We climbed the many stairs to Sacre Coeur
and met up with Catherine's group, then retired to a sidewalk cafe (on
a steep hill) for a bit of refreshment.
Next, Fabrice took us to meet some friends, a couple who invited us
in for apertifs (mostly anise liqueur, a potent clear stuff that goes smoky
when you dilute it with water). A lot of French conversation and snacks
later, and we were too late for our original choice of restaurant, so hemmed
and hawed a bit and ended up in a small restaurant where there was much
carousing. I particularly admire the efforts of Fabrice's friend who told
a joke about two farmers in the Boscone? region of France, throwing in
the regional accent for effect, then was forced to translate to English
- while keeping the accent. Around midnight we found a bar that served
us at an outdoor table, and we didn't have to move until they closed at
1 am - a nice change from downtown pubs in Ireland. A good night out and
now it was (ulp) up six flights of stairs to bed.
------------------------------------------
Take care, all, Dave.
Well I am back from my big latin american trip. Well I've actually been
back for a while now, a few weeks. I have been in hiding, culture shocked,
trying to adjust, taking things slowly, trying to get back into my
life
here. So I haven't contacted many of you, I apologise, but I wasn't
ready
to just jump in and see or communicate with everyone right away. But
I am
coming out of hiding now. Anyways, its been a long time since I have
emailed anyone. I think my last big email of the trip update was back
in
June from Guatemala. Guatemala seems like years ago for me, much has
happened since then, but I'll give a really quick summary.
Well after leaving GUatemala in the middle of June, I was travelling
on my
own and went into Honduras. I was supposed to meet up with Nando (Freddy)
later in Nicaragua. I liked travelling on my own for a while, you feel
very
independent and can do whatever you want when you want. Honduras and
all
the rest of the countries I visited, unlike Guatemala, had a very small
minority of indigenous people. Anyways, I visited Copan, Honduras first,
a
very beautiful ruined mayan city, that was smaller and less impressive
than
other mayan sites, but had excellent well preserved sculptures, artistry
and
decor. Then I went to a national park and climbed the highest peek
in
Honduras at 3800m elevation. What an adventure, climbing through cloud
forest, locally called ""enchanted"" forest and that it was. Then on
to the
old capital of Honduras, Comayagua, a beautiful, but rundown colonial
city.
There I met a local who owned a pizza joint, who skipped out of his
work for
a few hours and showed me around the town for fun. A really good person
and
very knowledgeable in the history of his home town. Then onto the big
and
ugly capital of Tegucigalpa (a mouthfull). Until then I haden't really
seen
any damage done by hurricane mitch, except for some bridges and areas
near
rivers swept away by flooding waters. The capital is built on the banks
of a
large river. Damage was devastating, large buildings, bridges, cars,
houses
were partially or completely destroyed by raging waters. I talked to
a few
homeless people that pointed out where there houses used to be and
talked of
their hurricane experiences, when the river turned into a fast moving
sea of
water and debris, filling much of the city. So the big city was still
trying to put itself together. Well the city had a wonderful art gallery
though, that I at least enjoyed.
Well then I was off to Nicaragua around the end of June. I really enjoyed
Nicaragua, the people had alot of energy, were very warm, very politically
aware, loved to talk to foreigners. They have had a tumultuous recent
political past, from rightwing terrorising dictator, to the 1979 revolution
where practically the whole country fought against the military regime.
The
socialist Sandinistas, with Daniel Ortega as leader, rose to power
after the
revolution and did many positive changes for a poor and terrorised
people.
BUt of course the good old united states of america was not happy with
this
new government and created the contra war, training and supporting
right
wing anti-sandinistas (hence the spanish word ""contra"" or counter,
against).
This wore down the country and its morale and an election was called
in
1990, where Ortega lost, and an american supported leader won promising
to
end the war. Since then the government has returned to a typical latin
american, american supported, corrupt ""democratic"" one where only
the rich,
who are most literate, vote to elect a government for themselves, with
ministers and senators doing alot of talking, not acting, except when
embezelling as much money as they can while in power. Well anyways
I
learned alot from local people talking to me about politics and other
things. Some say that even the sandinistas weren't all that good either,
just as corrupt as other governments. They also told me about hurricane
Mitch experiences, how they suffered and how many had to fend for themselves
for food, drinking water and shelter, without aid from their government
or
international aid which never reached them. They said international
aid
would come to the country, the government would pocket the donation
money
and sell the food supplies on the black market, thus very little aid
actually reached people in need except aid brought by organisations
not
affiliated to government. So many told me to tell people in my country
this
and that if anyone in the future wants to donate or help out or volunteer
or
something that they or the helping country or organisation should work
directly with the people and community in need, not through their corrupt
government. This sounds like it would go for latin america in general
and
probably many third world countries. I talked to a guy who really likes
and
respects canadians and other europeans, since thay are doing many
development projects directly with communities directly with positive
results. I would love to go back to Nicaragua and work in one of these
projects. Anyways, I guess it was the people in NIcaragua that were
most
amazing, more than the places, since it doesn't have really big attractions
and has probably the least developed tourist industry of all the countries
I
visited. After, visiting several small norhtern mountain towns I went
to
the hot southern lowlands to the colonial rundown town of Leon, my
favourite
place in Nicaragua. Leon (meaning lion), with the largest university,
is
and has been the radical and intellectual centre of the country. I
talked
to many people there. Many murals and statues, and a very politically
aware
energy is present in the town. It also has the largest cathedral in
the
americas (I think?). Then onto the capital Managua. It was destroyed
by
earthquake in 1972? and geologists found many faults under the downtown
area, so the downtown area was never rebuilt, abandoned, with only
ruins
remaining. A new downtown was never made elsewhere, so the city just
spread
out in all directions, a sprawl, unorganised. I only went to the old
downtown area to change buses, it seemed like a ghost city, with haunting
ruins of buildings. Then onto Granada on the banks of the very large
lake
Nicaragua. Granada has beautiful well kept colonial buildings, but
unlike
its historical rival city Leon, it is a snoby conservative city where
the
rich of Nicaragua did and still do live. So I didn't spend much time
there
and so onto the island of Ometepe, inside of Lake Nicaragua. The island
was
created and encompasses two volcanoes, one of which I climbed with
two
Quebecers and an american Harvard guy. These were pretty much, except
for a
few others, the only foreigners I met in Nicaragua. It was good, different
from Mexico and GUatemala that are full of foreigners. Thus, throughout
Nicaragua I talked and hung out with locals, even the poorest people,
would
be so warm and invite me for tea, beer and even for dinner in their
humble
homes. Amazing experience.
Well then cross the border into Costa Rica. Wow culture shock!!! Talk
about
Gringolandia!!! Guatemala, HOnduras and Nicaragua were the poorest
countries I travelled through and I had been in these three countries
together for over 3 months and then boom into Costa Rica (meaning rich
coast), richer, much better off, more expensive, teaming with foreign
tourists, especially americans. Most tourists were vacationers, not
travellers, so it was difficult to relate to them. I was in culture
shock.
I decided I didn't want to spend much time in Costa Rica. I had already
done a 3 week trip to Costa Rica after high school anyways. Plus, Nando
(Freddy) was ahead of me, I didn't manage to catch him in Nicaragua,
and was
waiting for me on the carribean coast of Colombia and I was itching
to meet
him and to get to Colombia. So I only spent 4 days in the Costa Rica.
1 day
in the capital San Jose and the rest of the time on the carribean coast
(which I did not visit on my last trip to Costa Rica) in the town of
Puerto
Viejo de Talamanca. This was a rasta town, the locals were black carribean
rasta people, sort of like Jamaicans. They are a great laid back people,
living on the beach, fishing, dance reggae etc...just like you picture
their
stereotype. It was fun hanging out on the beach and dancing reggae....
Then onto Panama. Another richer country comparable to Costa Rica, without
a flood of tourists. Their currency is the american dollar - weird.
I was
really anxious to get to Colombia, meet Nando, was running out of money.
sO
i rushed through Panama, too fast, only spent 5 or 6 days there, I
need to
back to really check it out. Spent a few days on carribean islands
of Boca
del Toro (meaning mouth of the bull), relaxing and snorkelling - amazing,
best I've ever done, saw really neat looking fish, coral and algae.
I
travelled there with three american girls - good people. Then to Panama
city, on the pacific side of the canal. It is a very large city, very
northamerican in character with modern skyscrapers in one part and
slums in
the old part (where of course my cheap hotel was). A very large american
vibe and presence in the city, since the adjacent canal is owned and
controlled by the US, but only until the end of this year when its
handed
over to Panama. And of course I went to check out the canal at one
of the
locks, not that exciting, better I guess when a ship is passing through
the
locks.
Anyways, this is a very long email, I didn't realise it is so long,
yikes
I've been sitting here writing for a while now. Well Colombia will
have to
wait on another installment. Anyways, hope you are all well.
Love Geoff
Part IV
Fri
We got up, walked, shopped, ate, walked and shopped
way back to the hotel and pool.
Then we walked, went to Duty Free and I got some
chocolate and a big, 1L Kahlua for $18 US or about $27
Can. Kahlua floats, sundaes, brown cows, black
russians, coffees, hot chocolates, and paralyzers HERE
I COME!
Then we walked, went for supper to an outdoor cafe at
the Hilton village which was almost on the beach. It
was very nice, we had live music, the waves crashing
and a beautiful sunset to have supper by. I also got
to see a Sacred Ibis for the first time.
Then we played on the beach and watched the Hilton's
fireworks show.
We then retired to the hot tub before bed.
Sat
We got up and had breakfast at the hotel.
Then we walked, shopped, walked, shopped, walked,
went to the hotel and had a nap. Then we packed the
luggage and left it with the hotel bell hop.
Then we went to Waikiki beach and found a nice shady
spot to relax. We napped, took some pics, and snacked
(we tried a rainbow shave ice - a Hawiian version of
snow cones but the ice is a lot finer - more like real
snow). Brad and I went for a swim. The water was VERY
warm, clear and clean. You can't taste sewage (what a
concept!) and you could swim for probably hours and
not have to worry about getting cold. Brad and I had a
good time in the water (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
When we had enough beach we went back to the hotel to
hang out at the hot tub and have a drink. We were
supposed to be having Blue Hawiians (Alanna was having
a Shirley Temple. It's weird though, they didn't make
it with orange juice. Just the Grenadine and 7-UP) but
it wasn't until she was half way through making the
drinks that the bartender realized we asked for Blue
Hawaiians and not Mai Tais. So we got the white rum
and orange juice of the Mai Tai and the Vodka and blue
stuff of the Blue Hawiian. An interesting concoction.
After that we hung out at the hotel laundry to dry
our beach stuff. Then we walked to the Hilton Hawiian
Village Steak and Lobster House for a fancy dinner and
I tried Prime Rib for the first time. It was
surprisingly good (I’m not a red meat fan).
We went back to the hotel, got changed and met some
local colour (a lady who was plastered and talking
about how the doctors at the hospital had destroyed
her and when she looks in the mirror she doesn't see
herself and that she's going to shoot them all so she
can have her day in court) after I finally got Alanna
out of there (she didn't want to leave incase the lady
got mad at us for leaving) we waited for the shuttle
and went to the airport. While there I used my
allotment of duty-free alcohol to buy a 1L of Smirnoff
(for about $13 Cdn) to go along with Brad’s allotment
of my Kahlua.
When we finally got on the plane (about 12:30am) and
my head hit the head rest, I was out.
I woke up a few hours later and had fruit for
breakfast. Not smart seeing as how I was still getting
over having a fruit O.D. earlier in the week. There IS
such a thing as too much of a good thing.
We landed and waited our way through deplaning,
immigration and customs and then made our way home
tired, a little burnt and full of stories.
I hope you somewhat enjoyed my rendering of our
Hawaiian adventure and I look forward to sharing any
adventures you or I have in the future.
Ciao.
Trish.
Wed
We got up, walked (to save my fingers and your time,
from now on when I type “walked” I want you to say an
extra “and walked” to yourself three times), ate,
walked to the Kodak Hula show but missed it.
So we walked, took pictures, walked, shopped, walked,
took pictures, walked, and went to our room
We went out to supper, watched the hula show by
Duke’s, shopped, walked and played on the beach.
Went to the pool and to bed.
Thu
We got up and walked (are you saying those extra “and
walked”?), had a cheap breaky then got Alanna some
sneakers (someone needs to teach this girl how to
pack. A 15 year old and she packed less than Brad then
winds up wasting a lot of her spending money buying
things like sneakers and shorts.)
We went to the Kodak Hula show. It was flashy and
touristy but neat. After that we bussed to Diamond
Head State Monument. The Bus let us off at the bottom
of the entrance road which we had to walk up and up
and up (a little less? than 1Km) to get to the trail
head. Then we hiked to the top of Diamond Head. It was
a short (1.4mi return) but challenging hike from the
trail head. It used to be an old military lookout
(there's still a small base in the crater. The
mountain is actually an extinct volcano). You climb a
hot (it was definitely in the high 20's or low 30’s)
winding, meandering, rocky, uneven, ankle breaker path
to the blessed half-way point where you get to stand
by an old winch where the smart military people would
haul things up instead of hiking up like the gullible
tourists. You look out over the bay one way and the
crater the other and think “this is a nice view. Do I
really want to do the rest?” But then you think “I’m
half-way up and I didn’t come all this way to do half
the hike.” So you start the rest of the hike and after
a few moments you begin to think that one shouldn’t be
so greedy and that half a hike really is good enough
for one day. In the second half of the ascent you
trudge and haul your butt up one stair case and
through one tunnel and then you come up to the BIG
stair case and tunnel and all you can hear from the
other hikers is “doing good”, “take it slow”, and
“stop for a break if you need to”. Not one word of
“where are you from?” or “which Outrigger are you
staying at?”. Then you come to the last stair case. A
spiral case enclosed in a bunker that supposedly has
all kinds of neat entries to other closed off parts of
the bunker that are so nicely drawn for you on your
souvenir flyer if only you could see past your toes
with all of the darkness. Then you get to an opening
in the bunker and there’s a guy set up with his table
of souvenir “You survived Diamond Head certificates
for only $2!” and did I waste my money on this? Darn
tootin’ I did and I wrapped it up in my free tacky
t-shirt from the water park so it wouldn’t get wrecked
in my suitcase. Then you crawl out an opening in the
bunker and think to yourself: “I made it!” but then
you look off to your left and notice a little trail so
you go to have a look and say some words that would
make a Long Shoreman blush in shame. So you climb up
o n e m o r e stair case and finally! The bliss!
The joy! The rapture! The relief! The water bottle!
The buff babe in his cute little coordinated hiker
outfit educating the 30 tourists squished on top of
the bunker! The elbow from the winking old lady! The
water! The camera . . . . yes . . . . the camera . . .
. looking out at the pretty ocean . . . . and the
mountain and stuff . . . . and then Brad saying “can
we go now? Alanna’s scared of heights.” W H A T ! ! !
We climbed up a road then a nasty trail, a total of
271 stairs and through tunnels and bunkers and NOW she
says she’s afraid of heights? Then you think “if she’s
afraid of heights I can come up with a real quick way
for her to get back down”.
When we got back to the hotel we rested and I called
Long's Drugs (the U.S. version of London Drugs) and
they said that if I only have one drink every few
hours I should be ok (I got a sinus infection the day
before we left and had to go on antibiotics) so I went
down to the pool for a swim, hot tub and MAI TAI! I
discovered I LIKE Mai Tai's and it’s a good thing that
I can only have one or I’d be in real trouble.
Then we all retired for a nap then went to McD's.
We wandered back to our hotel and spent the evening
at the pool with a bunch of disgusting Long Shoreman
(like Brad said: “I can’t believe they eat with those
mouths. Believe me, that says a lot.) and a
vacationing cocktail waitress telling them to keep it
under control since we had Alanna with us.
Unfortunately my evening came to a quick conclusion
when I had a bad attack and had to go to the room
early.
Brad's mom called to say that she just wasn't going
to make it out with us. I felt bad for her especially
since she paid for the room.
WHEW!
Only one more part to go.
Ciao.
Trish.
Kay so here’s part II. Kay? Kay.
Mon
I decided that Imust get over the time difference
because being up and ready to go willingly and with no
mechanical help at 6:30 sucks. We had breakfast at
Perry’s (boy do I pig-out at buffets). Then we caught
the #8 to Ala Moana Shopping Center (a 200 shop
open-air mall) then #51 to the water park. We got a
free tacky T-shirt, slid, lounged, felt guilty, ate,
and relaxed on an inner tube river with a water fall
running into it. Then we waited for #51, false alarm,
waited and waited and waited, false alarm, waited and
waited and waited, false alarm, waited and waited and
waited, “FINALLY! THE BUS! SHE ARRIVES!!!”
We caught #51 to Ala Moana and had to change busses
en route. I think there were mechanical problems. We
shopped and ate and caught #8 to the hotel. We got off
early and walked and shopped our way back to the
hotel. Alanna and I vegged in front of the boob-tube
with salad shakers and Brad went to the hot tub. After
making jokes about seeing the bikini girls that is. 2
girls from England? New Zealand? one of which just
barely kept her top on while she ran around the pool
deck. We saw the girls at the water park too. ""Itsy
bitsy teeny weeny yellow bikini"" no polka dots. No
room. She also had a black one.
Tues
We got up and instead of foraging for food we took a
shuttle to Hilo Hattie's (THE shop in Hawaii) flagship
store and planned to eat when and if we found a place
that has food. Hilo Hattie’s had basically everything
including an in-house sweat shop.
On the shuttle we found out that the main activities
in Hawaii are eating (calories don't exist here),
drinking, sleeping and celebrating (instead of just
celebrating American holidays, they celebrate the
holidays from all of the major cultures that make up
HI such as Chinese, Japanese, Portugese and a bunch of
other cultures). The big joke on our bus was: ""I'm
staying at the Outrigger by the ABC on a street that
starts with 'K'"". In the Waikiki/Honolulu area there
are 20+ Outrigger hotels, 30+ ABC's (U.S. looney
stores), and half of the streets start with ""K"".
At Hilo Hattie’s we got leid, FINALLY!! And wonders
of all wonders, I FOUND A DRESS!! It wasn’t perfect
but it was definitely wearable.
We then went to Ala Moana to shop and eat brunch at
McDonald’s. We’re in Hawaii and we eat at McDonald’s.
Sad, I know.
We made our way back to the hotel and relaxed.
At dusk we went for a walk and walked and walked and
walked (getting any sense of theme yet?) and we found
a big side-street market named ""Duke's Lane"". It was
one of those markets where you only asked ""what have
you got?"" and ""how much?"" because if you knew too much
you might get arrested for being involved with theft
or something. We got some souvenirs and I got a great
deal on a pair of opal earrings for Julie. Across from
the market we saw a short hula show. The first thing
my brain said was ""COOOOL!"" the first thing my body
said was ""you have GOT to be kidding. Alright, where's
the smoke and mirrors.""
After that we played at an arcade and blew a little
on some stupid game were you try to win quarters. We
walked and walked and walked and walked by the beach
back to the hotel. The water was SO warm! You didn’t
have to wear a heated wet-suit and you didn’t get a
polar bear t-shirt after you went in.
We went back to hotel for a snack and to wait for a
call from B's mom to see if she finally got on a
flight. She didn’t.
Like Part II?
Wait ‘till you read Part III.
Ciao.
Trish.
#Index
How's it going? Now that I will have mailed all of
you...YOUR TURN!!!
At this time I would like to take the opportunity to
welcome Auntie Taru (after 5 years of treating our
animals you're kind of stuck with ""Auntie"" now. Sorry.
Hope it's okay.) to ""The Family"". If you haven't
already discovered this, the Italian Mafia is nothing
compared to us. Neither is Ringling Brothers but we
try to keep that side locked in the attic and only let
them out for reunions and special effects. Right Uncle
Leo (aka Uncle Gum, an Uncle of many flavours)? Mom
(not sure about her name. everyone just calls her
""Mom"")? Jules (aka Catacomb. but you didn't hear it
from me)? Rotten Russ (doncha luv cuzins)? Flip the
Redneck? Sherri (gotta work on that. how dull.)? Sir
Kaari the Broken Hearted? Lanjim (really, Lanjim is
two separate people with separate interests, separate
lives and separate identities. honest.)? Shell? Bud?
Anyone?
This is just a small sampling of our interesting and
diverse family (okay. they're the ones with e-mail.)
and are usually quite chatty except for now. I don't
know why they're not talking. Maybe ""the cat"" got
their tongues. Hellooooo! Anybody there? Somebody talk
to me! Why won't you talk to me? Don't you love me?
Did I do something to bring shame upon ""The Family""?
Fine! I'm not talking to you either. Instead, I'm
going to torture you with stories of my trip and I'm
not going to talk to a single one of you. So there!
Still want to be part of ""The Family"" Taru? Too late!
As some of you do and some of you don't know, I just
got back from Hawaii.
Since one of my bestest friends, Kaari, likes to
torture us with the tales of his wonderful European
adventures, I thought I'd torture you too. Only they
won't be European, they will be Hawaiian adventures.
To make it a little less torturesome I will break it
up into a few mailings so you don't have to sit there
for 1/2 hour reading something that you may or may not
be interested in.
We took what money we had, hopped a plane and went. We
did the poor-man's vacation. Lots of walking and
window shopping. It was very nice there but very
expensive.
Besides some interesting birds, the only wildlife we
saw were cockroaches (I'm so glad we live where we do.
No roaches!) and a bunch of feral cats that you wanted
to rush to the Vet's for a check-up and neuter or
spay. I guess they haven't heard of Cat Math:
1+1=32000.
Anyway, here's part 1 of my Hawaiian Trip Log.
Hawaii Trip Log Oct. 1999
Sat Oct. 9/99
After a semi-restfull sleep (my babies were already
at Mom’s so I couldn’t snuggle up to them) Brad and I
got up and took some of the luggage to his truck. Then
we hauled our less-than-enthusiastic-butts to Brad’s
mom’s family reunion. We sat around, chatted, and
drank coffee for an hour or so.
On the way home we picked up some Sudafed (I thought
it might be fun to get a sinus infection the day
before we left.) and gum then got cleaned up, changed,
ate and finished packing so we could leave. We drove
out to New West to pick up Alanna and then we were off
to the airport.
After a nice and snuggly drive (we had three people
and all of their luggage in the cab of Brad’s truck)
we got to the airport. We checked in and then waited
and waited and wandered and waited and waited and
snacked and waited and waited and wandered and waited
and waited so that we could get in line to wait to see
if we could get on the plane (we have to fly standby).
They called Brad and I but not Alanna because she
has a lower priority so we told the ticket person we
would wait to see if Alanna would get on. We waited
and waited and waited and waited. Alanna eventually
got the very last ticket because a couple didn’t want
to split up.
We raced our butts to the gate and got on the plane
just as they were closing it up. Good thing the plane
was 1/2 hour behind schedule. We got a 747. It was my
13th flight and my and Brad’s first time on a 747. It
was Alanna’s first time period. The flight was good
except for a little turbulence and a fainting lady. I
had what they called teriyaki chicken for supper. The
plane landed in Honolulu and we waited and waited and
waited and waited and waited. We deplaned then waited
and waited and waited and waited. Then we took a bus
to customs and waited and waited and waited and
waited. We eventually got to the border guard and he
only checked our passports to see if there were any
warrants. He didn't ask us anything! We waited and
waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and
waited and didn't even have the fun of saying we're
just a bunch of broke Canuckleheads on vacation!
JIP!!!
When we actually got out of the airport and got to
breathe the air, it wasn’t the heat and humidity that
I noticed. It was the sulphur smell (Imagine that. A
smell of sulphur on a volcanic island. Who would’ve
thought?) We took a shuttle to our hotel (the
Outrigger Maile Skycourt. I don’t recommend it. The
nicely decorated and well-kept building ends at the
lobby.) We then waited and waited and waited and
waited for them to figure out how to bill the room
until Brad's mom was supposed to get there to pay for
it (why they didn’t just bill her card when she booked
the room like she wanted them to, we may never know).
Then we went up to the 26th floor to bed. At least we
got a nice view.
Sun
We dragged our not-yet-completely-jet-lagged butts
out of bed and went out to forage for our breakfast.
After eating we walked and walked and walked and
checked out the beach and walked and shopped and
started hunt for a sun-dress for me but it proved a
challenge. It appears as though Hawaiian women have no
boobs. No consideration whatsoever for good Canadian
girls.
Then we walked and walked and ate and walked and
walked and walked and shopped and walked and went to
the hotel pool. It was an adventure getting to the
pool. We had to wait and wait and wait for the
elevator, take it to the third floor, wait and wait
and wait, then take the other elavator to the fifth
floor where the pool and bar is. I then had a nap
because not only had jet lag reared its ugly head, it
beat me about every body part within and without
reach. Then we walked and walked and walked and ate.
We went to Perry's Buffet it didn’t have a huge
selection but it was reasonably priced and had good
basic food. I tried papaya for the first time. It was
good but earthy and tasted like a melon/pineapple
cross.
We walked and walked and shopped and shopped and
walked and shopped and walked and went to the hotel
and had a jacuzzi and went to bed.
End of part 1.
Like it so far?
Trish.
Ciao.
Since your last chapter in August, Leanne's run a marathon & LeanneJim
learned to scuba in Boracay, Chris&Nic did Thailand, Geoff's returned
from South America, Trish even made it to Hawaii, and I was nearly blown
off an Irish mountain.
Northern Ireland's formed their own government.
In this episode: Reindeer kisses, big brown bears, tatami mats, and angry ants!
********************************
Thursday, June 10: Top O'The World, Ma!
The next stop on my tour of Finland was Rovaniemi, a town that billed itself as the ""Gateway to the Arctic"". Only a stone's throw from the Arctic Circle, I had somehow stumbled across their tourism centre on the internet and they sent me a bunch of brochures, and pretty soon it was a ""must see"" on my tour. I gave it 1&1/2 days.
From Alavirre at 7 am, Aimo drove me to a railstation in a smaller town, small enough that the ticket window didn't actually open that early. Luckily you can buy tickets on the train. Unluckily I was short on paper money. We struck off in search of an all night bank machine so I wouldn't have to pay the conductor with Mastercard. (FFF#24: Finland apparently does have a few homeless, and the bank alcoves were perfect winter shelters so cameras were installed.) Well, we made it back in time, and it was time to say goodbye.
I got to Rovaniemi at about noon. My plans for Rovaniemi were to catch my Lapland Safaris tour, find my hotel, see the Wildlife Zoo in Ranua, and to visit this little place called ""Japani-talo"" (Japan House). To do all this, I needed to get my bearings, so I set off in the approximate direction of the tourism centre.
Along the way, I tried to order a burger by using the Finnish word, but that didn't work, and I had to resort to English (sob). I also got lost a few times, but when it started to rain, I ducked inside a large public building which turned out to be the town hall. It had brochures with maps (in eight languages, including Japanese) and the tourism centre was found quickly after that.
The Rovaniemi tourism centre was next to the Lapland Safaris office,
so no problem with phase 1.
But the bus service was very rare, so although I could catch a bus
to Ranua and back, it would be impossible to get to the village near Japanitalo
and back by bus. I was despairing but hey! Hertz car rental was also next
to the tourism centre and I did have my international drivers licence.
So I went in and arranged a small car for the next day. I just had time
to drop off my stuff at the hotel and grab a sandwich from the bar before
it was time for the safari.
I had booked the hotel and the safari through the Internet, to try
and maximise my Rovaniemi time. It was expensive but so far my expenses
had been low. So at this point I was playing ""well-off tourist"". Most
of the tour group consisted of Americans, rather heavy Americans, some
of them, but nice enough.
Here's what you get for your money:
a) Admission to ""Arktikum"" museum. We only had 45 minutes before closing, and it was a really good museum, and I think I gave it a fair shake for the time we had. Lappish costumes, Finnish history, Arctic sea life, and so forth. I especially liked the Arctic Circle room because it emphasized how the Arctic environment was the same whether you were in Scandinavia, Russia, Alaska, or Canada. I thrilled each time Canada was mentioned. The centre of the room was the top (Arctic) slice off a giant globe, maybe 20-30 feet across, and I had the funny feeling I'd seen it before.
b) A boat trip to a reindeer farm. We took a motorized longboat 15 minutes up the river. Even though I had been wearing my T-shirt earlier, we were now in overalls, lifejackets, and ponchos - the tour operators taking no chances. It was a little chilly. In winter, they do the same trip with snowmobiles.
At the end of the boat ride, we followed a boardwalk across a mossy marsh and through the trees. And there were two reindeer browsing in the marsh! Being summer, the reindeer were losing their winter coats and looking a bit patchy.
It ended at a fenced enclosure with a few buildings. And there was a sign marking the Arctic Circle, so I guess we were there! A guide dressed in Lapp traditional outfit took us through the ""crossing the arctic Circle ceremony"" in a wigwam, which involved drinking reindeer milk, being marked with charcoal, and having a skinning knife touched to the nape of your neck.
I was feeding one of the reindeer cows in the fenced enclosure, and
as she went for the last mouthful of grass, I bumped her nuzzle with my
cheek. That's the reindeer kiss I was looking for.
We also did some lasso tossing on a practice sawhorse with reindeer
horns. The lassos are used to catch new calves for branding. Well, not
actually branding, but ear-notching. Each herder has his own notch pattern.
I did get my loop over, but I don't think I'll be coming back for the calf
season.
Because it was early June, the mosquitos weren't yet out in force. By the end of the summer, they are so thick that the wild reindeer come out of the woods into the open meadows so that the breezes help keep the mosquitos off. The reindeer herders then have a much easier time of finding the reindeer.
c) Dinner
This was out at someone's home, rather than a fancy restaurant, but
they seated all 10 of us. Reindeer with wild mushroom gravy and other similar
delectables, served by a host of character. I commented to the guides (two
guys in their 20's) that at least their guide work entitled them to food
like this, and they said it almost made up for the low pay.
One of the Americans said he had gone for a sauna in his hotel the previous night, and it had been full of reindeer herders, so we reckoned there was a convention in town or something. Since he didn't speak much Finnish, and since you don't wear your traditional outfit in a sauna, I asked him how he had known they were reindeer herders. He said it was the ear notches.
d) Panorama view of the midnight sun, and a certificate. The lookout tower was on a hill east of Rovaniemi, so the view was good, but a bit cloudy. We didn't see the sun set that ""night""- we couldn't see the sun at all. I guessed but I was probably wrong.
My hotel was on the same hill so I was dropped off first afterwards. (Sky Hotel Rovaniemi, for the record.)
Since it was still light, I hung out at the sled dog kennel behind the hotel and listened to the wind with the huskies for company. I got the rooftop view from the hotel and inspected the summer luge track. Too bad all the wheeled luges were locked up :)
I wandered back to my room and had to close my curtains to make it dark. There was a silly movie in English and some MTV to provide a soothing if unusual bedtime lullaby.
Friday, June 11:
This day turned out pretty well. I had nothing formal booked and a
car rented, so I could dictate my own schedule. My only restriction was
to be back at the train station for my overnight train to Helsinki that
evening.
My plan was to wake up, dress, pack, have breakfast, and meet up with
the man from the car rental. Unfortunately with the curtains closed, it
was darker than it had been all week and I slept solid. I woke up once,
turned over, and woke up an hour later than planned and five minutes later
than my pick-up time. SO I dressed, met up with the man from the car rental,
finished dressing, rented the car, drove back to the hotel, woke up....
If they had seen the delighted look on my face when it turned out to be a Ford Ka they would have charged me extra. If you've never seen a Ka, it's a strange curvy car, with a back end that makes the rear wheels look crouched to hop. It's my favorite lately. I drove up to the lookout mountain and took a picture of the car against the skyline that would make a pretty cool advertisement.
Breakfast buffet at the hotel was pretty cool too. Along with all the fixin's for open-face herring sandwiches on rye bread, they had a make-your-own waffle iron. I'm not sure how this counts as a luxury but I took advantage of it.
And then Kaari hit the road.
At the Ranua Wildlife Park, 80 km south of Rovaniemi, highlights were
polar bears, brown bears, eagles, and owls. (""Bear"" is ""Karhu"" in Finnish.)
At the elk pen I practiced moose calls and got a bit of a response. I'm
half convinced the ""elk"" they keep talking about are actually moose -
palmeated antlers and a snout - and that someone got the translation wrong.
Murrr Murrr castle outside the gates had an exhibit on the Finnish
epic poem Kalevala. It was first set down in writing 150 years ago, and
was an important factor in Finland's national identity. Since then, some
of the tales have made into plays, and I picked up a theatre poster for
one of them.
Drove for another half hour.
I found Japanitalo at the end of a dirt road, very well hidden considering
its coverage in the tourist literature. It was a genuinely styled Japanese
wooden B&B-type house. The young lady doing the caretaking (Katja)
explained that the reason the landscaping wasn't finished was that they'd
only finished the building in November, for the opening ceremony. The publicity
photos were taken with the landscape disguised by a snowfall. The signs
I followed had only been put up the previous week!
It was built by a Finnish businessman who liked Japan and wanted his
place to be a reference point for visiting Japanese businessmen. I got
to have tea on the tatami and see the formal dress kimono.
One of the memories I'll take back from this trip is bombing along these nearly deserted roads in the Ka, sun shining, views of nothing but endless coniferous forest interrupted by lakes or sometimes logging, listening to (of all things) a discussion of the new Star Wars movie on the radio.
After becoming so unsure of my bearings that I had to stop the car and
try a side road, I got to my final destination, a park called Auttinkongas
80km southeast from Rovaniemi. They had waterfalls and a nature trail,
with signs in Finnish, Swedish, German, and English. I pretty much had
the park to myself. Highlights:
- Log flume. There were stairs leading down to the base of the falls
and the flume, but the water was high and frothy and slopping onto the
stairs, making the flume look like an insane splintery waterslide. I left
it alone. In truth it was dangerous enough on the stairs.
- German trenches. Real ones from WW2, overlooking a bend in the river.
One pit was probably a bunkhouse. I jumped down to have a good look around.
They were never attacked here, they withdrew first.
- Ant hills and formic acid. These mounds of fir needles nearly four
feet high were the undisturbed workings of countless generations of ants.
I had to poke one with a stick and immediately got the strong stench of
either ant B.O. or their alarm scent. I don't think they were too happy,
considering the platoon that actually started attacking my boot. I wouldn't
be surprised if one dedicated warrior hid in my clothes all the way back
to Ireland waiting for an ambush.
- Weird underwater jelly. As the boardwalk crossed a steep & rocky
streambed, I noticed one pool had something clear streaked with white resting
on the bottom. Again, I applied the scientific ""poke it with a stick""
method and it was actually hard - and a touch confirmed, it was ice leftover
from winter. I wonder where the permafrost starts?
I made it back to Rovaniemi with an hour to get some dinner and fill the tank. Benzene, petrol, gasoline - it's all the same to me now. Spent another quarter of a tank finding a gas station, and sandwiches for dinner. Said goodby to Ka.
I had booked a sleeping berth for the overnight train to Helsinki. I was sharing the compartment with two other guys. I got into a conversation with Jakko. (sounds like Yakko, which I remembered by thinking of the Warner Brothers cartoon. Julie Weller would be so proud.) He was an architect working in Rovaniemi who did the overnight commute twice a week. We went for a drink in the bar car.
Jakko was momentarily distracted by someone else and I noticed a woman
nearby watching the scenery, so I tried striking up a conversation. Tarja
(sounds like Daria) was a flamenco dancer who had just finished teaching
a beginner's course in Rovaniemi. She had lived in England for nearly a
decade, had been on tour, and had visited Canada - and even Limerick in
Ireland - as part of the tours. The conversation careened from flamenco
to martial arts and from the teaching of complex movements to education
in general.
Some time close to midnight, we convinced ourselves we saw the midnight
sun. (I got her number.)
********************************************
Stay tuned for our exciting conclusion: ""On The Streets of Helsinki""!
(And pictures! for those who can receive them)
Love all
Kaari
In this episode: Samba dancers, German observation posts, asphalt skiing,
and architecture! Plus cappuchino with a nice lady.
**************************************************************
Saturday, June 12: On the Streets of Helsinki
The train pulled into Helsinki at 8:40 am on schedule and I staggered
out with no idea where to go or what to do other than a nervous rumbling
about breakfast. Even the first McDonalds I spotted (ah McDonalds, a golden
beacon to so many world-weary and bewildered travellers) was closed, so
after banging into the glass doors a few times I flitted off down a side
street and came to a bus stop bench. It was already getting very sunny
so I stopped and unpacked in the middle of downtown and put on sunscreen,
which turned out to be a very good idea. It was getting _very_ sunny...
By the end of this exercise, the McD's was open so I took some breakfast and pulled out a map to figure out some goals for Helsinki. One of them was definitely the fortress-island of Suomenlinna, and I'm already despairing of having to type that name more than once. It was built by the Swedes, shot at by the British, surrendered to Russia, and reclaimed by Finland.
I wandered down the tourist-packed Esplanade and around the Market Square, the harborside market selling fish and misc. ""Meiltaa myos palkittu psycho-killer-paita!"" -on a t-shirt. I bought some fruit and some fresh-squeezed orange juice (seeds and all) but didn't think I had enough money for the ferry to Suomenlinna so I headed away from the harbor to find a bank machine. I went up a few blocks and came into a square below a massive cathedral glaring stark white in the noonday sun. Something strange seemed to be going on - lots of people milling around. A man walked by dressed as an Egyptian, obviously on his way to the pyramid parked nearby. The women there with the ostrich feather fans were dressed for the warm weather in sequined bikinis with more feathers.
Serendipity had presented itself in the shape of the Helsinki Samba Parade (and what lovely shapes they were, too!) They had sections of the parade dedicated to Eastern Culture Appreciation (with geishas, a half-naked golden Gong Boy, karaoke Buddhist Monks, and a Samurai Marching Band), European Electronic Monetary Union, and (my favorite) the Haakiden Grand Prix Racing F1 Samba Squad. Dedicated, of course, to Finland's golden boy of international F1 racing, Mita Haakiden.
Some time later I had the vague notion that I had come to this part of town for some other reason than watching samba dancers. The EMU float went by. Ah yes, money. Soon enough I was on the ferry to the fortress of Suomenlinna. Lots of people were heading there to enjoy the weather and sunbathing, but I was there for the thick walls and big guns. Of course, draping a fortress with sunbathers doesn't _lessen_ it's appeal any...
Serendipity #2: Lo and behold, this turned out to be Helsinki Day and admission to all the museums was free. No fare for the ferry or the museums on the island. I saw a German military museum with their WWII-era equipment and dioramas, had cucumber sandwiches at an outdoor cafe frequented by sparrows, went wading briefly among the sunbathers, and walked through lots of old drafty tunnels. I even scared some kids coming the other way by making loud echoy footsteps, which is the best part of old drafty tunnels.
I bought some brioche bread at the market on Suommolina and was so happy with how the day was going that I tried chatting up a girl buying bandaids. No luck. Her boyfriend was waiting outside. That was about all I wanted to see of Suommolina anyway.
It was well past time to get myself up to the Stadium Hostel. Helsinki's
Olympic Stadium has a hostel where you can sleep under the bleachers, so
to speak.
I checked in 9-ish and got scolded for not showing up earlier. They
still had my bunk bed, though. I spent some time looking at the various
maps and hostel guides from all over Europe and took a shower and a nap.
It was hot!
Midnight arrived and Tarja wasn't up to going out, but agreed to do
something in the morning.
I wasn't up for anything more thrilling at that point either, so I
went to sleep again. Endless excitement of Helsinki nightlife... My only
regret now is that I never made it to Zetor's Tractor Bar and Grill, and
even that was offset by meeting Aimo's tractor.
I had no idea what I was going to do with the brioche bread.
Sunday:
Took advantage of the showers and found the stripe on my neck where
I had missed with the sunscreen. The brioche bread, half the grapes, and
the juice from the waterfall (squirted into a bottle of sparkling mineral
water) turned out to be breakfast. I think I would appreciate my subconcious
more if it had let me in on its little plan, but I was happy nontheless.
Decided to hoof it into town instead of calling a cab again, as it turned out this was a very good choice as there was a parade coming the other way. Helsinki's Athletic Associations were marching from downtown to the Olympic Stadium. While traipsing down the sidewalk, I occasionally stopped to take pictures of the parading atheletes such as the judo team and a fleet of skiers. (Said skiers were in fact skiing up the street in special wheeled boards that acted as cross-country skis for the summertime.)
I dumped my pack at the train station lockers and met Tarja by the fountain. She was going to suggest the Helsinki zoo, but I had forgot to mention I was flying out that afternoon & we settled for something shorter-term. I wanted to se a unique piece of Helsinki architecture called the Stone Church and she knew of an interactive modern art museum called Kiasma. So off we went. She took a picture of me by a statue of a famous Kallio and doing cartwheels on the court house lawn.
Stone church (Temple church) from the wrong side looks like a hill. We clambered around it until we found the real entrance below us, and nearly had to backtrack to find a way down to street level again. It's a copper dome roof with skylights, sunk into a protruding hill of bedrock. Very interesting inside, a modern church but still cavelike. We sat for a bit to soak it in.
On the way to Kiasma, we passed a poster of ArnoldSchwarzenegger on
horseback from an Annie Leibowicz exhibition. Tarja mentioned how much
she liked that poster. So I had to do my Terminator impression. Which was
appreciated. :) ""Come wit' me..if you want to party.""
Kiasma for coffee - wait a minute, they have iced cappuchino - two
iced cappuchinos.
Weird stuff at Kiasma included a man with a lot of body piercing working
on his art exhibit while we were watching. It was a huge maze of black
felt marker lines resonating around ideas of religion and art. They were
reworking most of the exhibits so there wasn't a lot more to see. But we
played with some computers and audio samples including a modernist something
or other that sampled flamenco music.
After that, it was time to move...I got a stranger to take our picture, then picked up the backpack and said goodbye at the bus to the airport. (Thoughtfully marked with a plane symbol for the non-Finnish-speakers among us.)
Frantic attempt to spend the last few FIM at the airport was thwarted
by long cashier lineups.
Airport loitering with Oxford university people, I joined a conversation
about the social status of women in Africa.
I was on the London Heathrow to Shannon flight beside a Bio professor
and his giant Powerbook. So of course we talked a lot about Macs.
Coming from Shannon Airport, I shared a cab with a chemistry researcher
(Pfizer?) attending a conference at Dromoland.
And then I was home! Somehow I keep ending up back in Shannon. But
I've seen more of Europe now, and have the mosquito bites to prove it.
***********************
That's it!
If you read this far, thanks!
Merry Christmas, everybody!
Love Kaari
I figured I'd better take a stab at finishing off the travelogue of my last trip before I take my next one. Since the previous installment, I've seen Star Wars Phantom Menace and hosted Niki from Kentucky, also gotten my official Jiu Jitsu suit and white belt. And as I write this, it's just over a week until my flight to Paris.
*****************
Tuesday morning, June 8:
I got up early today and said goodbye to Pirjo and Ove before they
left for work because it was time to move on from Alavetili. It was probably
one of those goodbyes with a few years in between.
I wrote letters and postcards for a while, and got a haircut from Annette.
(In case I forgot to mention it, Annette is working as a hairdresser and
Kristian has won countless awards for cross-country skiing and orienteering.)
If I had given her a day's warning, I might even have got it colored. But
the plan for today was to get me to another cousin, Aimo, who lived even
further north.
Annette borrowed the family car and we made a last stop in Alavetili
to see the taxidermy museum, which was open. There were shelves and shelves
of wildlife, sea life, birds, all stuffed and mounted, sometimes in a diorama,
everything from Canada geese to a moose calf labelled in Latin, Finnish,
Swedish, English and German. It was something to see but more than a little
macabre. The Siamese-twin rats made an impression. I also remember a tall,
pretty blonde guide who was very much alive, and spoke English....then
I got dragged away. Odd bit: a pre-Expo86 poster of Vancouver in the entry
hall.
Annette drove for about an hour which delivered us at Aimo's farm in
Alavirre. (Which I think means ""Lower Virre"".) Aimo was tending the cows
when we drove up. Kristian and Annette had been coaching me on phrases
like ""Isn't the weather lovely today?"" (""Doci hyvaa ilmaa?"") so when
I met Aimo's mom (who spoke no English), it rolled off my tongue and she
looked pleasantly surprised and I was very pleased with myself. Annette
and Kristian stayed for a spot of tea and then left. Aimo, his Estonian?
farmhand Myndaugas, and I went over to another relative, Juhanni Kaupilla,
and he took us out on his motorboat to visit the summer cottage in the
island archepalago. (I'm actually related to Irma, Juhanni's wife, but
his brother married Irma's sister - confused yet? - and lives in Australia,
which is why I'm related to Kaupillas there as well. Juhanni's house has
lots of Australian souvenirs.) We had a sausage-and-mustard picnic on the
rocky beach and walked around this particular island.
I found some interesting pink granite and quartz and made the mistake
of carrying rocks in my backpack for the rest of the trip. Aimo tells me
that beachfront cottages are in great demand, as you'd expect, but zoning
laws keep them a certain density and far back enough from the shore that
the trees can hide them a bit, so it looks relatively unspoiled. Juhanni
thinks it's still overcrowded compared to when he was a boy. But there
were ducks, so it can't be that bad.
Finnfacts: In winter, you don't boat out to the islands, you drive out.
You can just about drive to Sweden, there's so much ice.
One of the zoning laws seems to be that all the cottages must be painted
""fishing cottage red"".
And it's not a zoning law for every cottage to have its own sauna outbuilding,
but they all do.
We got back late but the sun still hadn't set. When the three of us got back to the farm we stayed up talking. Mindaugas had to get by on his English as he was only slowly learning Finnish, but he admitted Aimo and I spoke fast enough that he missed a lot. His English-Russian dictionary was pretty old and I may have confused him further by trying to use it.
Aimo has an ""amusing"" story about visiting a tropical country and
being arrested on suspicion of posessing monopoly money. His heavily bribed
release from the corrupt justice system somewhat biased his memory of (Jamaica?
Barbados? Honduras?) the vacation.
**
Wednesday, June 9:
The hardest part of farm life for me was trying to get to sleep when
it never really got dark.
Aimo's mom was great. She kept feeding us and I was greeted with a
cheery ""Huomenta!"" both mornings. I stuffed myself on the boiled-oats-in-pita-bread
type snack I had fondly remembered. Not too much chance of a hypoglycemic
episode here.
In the morning Aimo was showing me some of his computer stuff. He designed
a web site for the farming community (www.lohtaja.fi) which had a picture
of a tractor for sale last time I looked. On a whim I decided to run a
search engine on cow-cams - or sites where people have used cheap digital
cameras to show live pictures of their cow pastures - and was successful,
turning up two cows in a field in New Hampshire.
I wandered around the fields and took pictures of the settling pond
and Aimo's tractor while they did the morning cow stuff. Aimo showed off
a pond dug in the forest for swimming - a mosquito hotspot, if you ask
me - and convinced me to drive the tractor for a bit. He had some antique
plows and farm equipment - ""junk"" - stored in one of the barns but was
too embarrassed to be photographed with it.
The Finnish, the Estonian, and the Canadian took a road trip that afternoon,
driving out to a point that jutted out into the Bay of Bothnia south of
the islands we were at yesterday. On the way we stopped at a waterslide
park (that was partially glassed in, so it could be open during the winter
as well) and a campsite and a sandy beach with an ice cream stand. So we
had ice cream on the boardwalk.
We did some shopping and I was able to price the vegetables because
the scales had pictures on them. I also bought some pretzels as I needed
to pack supplies for the continuing trip north.
For the rest of the evening, we drove out to a lookout point where
I got my picture taken with some rocks on a beach.
There was a military artillery test range further down the beach, with
warning signs in Finnish, English, German, and Russian that looked like
a great backdrop for a cold war spy story. I waited a while for my contact
but they never showed up. The pictures look kinda cool, though.
At a harbor on the way back, we stopped for a beer. Aimo got into a
political discussion with someone so I just slapped mosquitos and drank
beer. The beer was named after a part of Finland, Karjala, that was annexed
by the Russians earlier this century and the Finns would like it back,
please. Continuing on the Russian theme, I would swear that one of the
fishing boats at the dock was an old Russian army patrol boat and I don't
know if they know it's here.
After dinner and a sauna, I stayed up late talking with Aimo about computers
and the Finnish creator of Linux software and Europe and industry and stuff.
********************************
Next chapter: No more relatives, lots more reindeer as we head north
to the Arctic Circle!
I've still got four days left to cover, so I may have to step up my
current rate of a day a week...
Love all
Kaari"
"Greetings all, and a happy 2000.
New Years was swell, though I was suffering from a bit of
flu. I had to limit my Vintage Bollinger intake to 5
glasses. Fortunately for me, the main party of the night
(drag queens; Singapore airlines stewards, as it turns
out - if you ever had any doubts...) was in the same
building where I was staying (Alan and Carol's place).
So, when the fever broke, I didn't have far to go. I
almost always leave a party stumbling, sweaty and
incoherent, but this was a little different.
New Years Day (western style) is just another day in
Asia. Shops were open 'til 9pm. There was a 3 block long
line of cars to get into IKEA. A Y2K bug slowing things
down in the Sweedish machine? Not a chance. It was the
beginning of Hari Raya (the end of Ramadan Month) and one
of the traditions is to buy new things for the home.
Also, Muslims, weakened by fasting were enthusiatically
queing up for the free samples of crispbread and Glogg.
It was time to leave the big city of Singapore. Beautiful
and interesting as it was, I didn't travel 20,000 miles
just for bad driving and a Starbucks on every corner. It
was off to the Malaysian island of Penang which boasted
beautiful beaches, fresh seafood and a colourful history
(having been colonized by pretty much everyone). If this
trip could be summed up, it would be the food. We would
take the suggestions of locals, cab drivers and guide
books to find the little, family-run hole-in-the-wall
places and proceed to pay the staff's wages for a month
or so. Fresh fish and crustaceans like you have never
seen before, all cooked it the famous, local style.
Gotta keep moving. Next stop, the island of Langkawi.
Famous for the filming of Fantasy Island (see, you're
picturing the place already) and Anna and the King (along
with Penang). Now, there is a hovercraft that liks the
two islands in about 2 hours. But it left at 8 am (way
too early) and cost too much. Besides, it's about time to
do some actual traveling and see the country side. Thus:
(RM = Malaysian Ringgit, the local currnecy: RM$2.8 -->
CAD$1.00, RM$4.00 --> US$1.00)
1. Cab to Ferry in Georgetown (Penang). RM$10.00, 15 mins
2. Ferry from Georgetown to Butterworth. Free, 20 mins.
See we're doing well already.
3. Train from Butterworth to Alor Setar. RM$6.90 pp (+
RM$5.00 to bribe the conductor to sit in the air
conditioned car), 2.5 hrs. Actually 4 hrs. as your
journey will be delayed many times by cows.
4. Cab from Alor Setar to Kedah. RM$15.00, 30 mins. The
term ""cab"" is used loosely here to describe a motorized
vehicle that will transport you for money.
5. Boat from Kedah to Langkawi Jetty. RM$15.00 pp, 1 hr.
By this time, the evening storm had set in. The open sea
could best be described as ""roiling"". If we had had
lunch, it would surely have been lost by now.
6. Cab from Jetty to Berjaya. RM$20.00, 40 mins. It's a
damn big island as it turns out. This journey will also
be delayed by cows.
7. Jitney bus from check-in counter to jungle hut. Free,
5 mins. Charming place, really. With the possible
exception of the monkeys which were really determined to
keep all awake.
8. Boat from beach to Floating Restaurant. Free, 10 mins.
My God, will the motion ever end? I am starting to look
around for Steve Martin and John Candy.
The Rewards:
- Pint of Guiness (believe it): RM$4.00
- Local fish (grouper) and squid caught right here, right
now and served in beautiful local curries and masalas.
- white sand beaches, ocean the temperature of a nice
bath, and a true islands paradise.
And the return journey to Penang to catch our connecting
flight to Singapore? Yeah, right.
1. Silk Air Flight 836 Langkawi to Singapore. RM$340.00
pp. 1hr., 10 mins.
-K.
" Keith Lay
"Hello Everyone
WE are here in southern Baja California. We were omn the bus down here
for 4 days. WE have spent some time on the beach camping to try to
recover and then we are off to the mainland to do the copper canyon
railroad. Well got to go, going to shave my head today!! Anyways if
anybody would like to write me here are some addresses
Till the middle of February
Viajes Mexico Istmo Y
Caribe, S.A.
Dr. Aurelio
Valdivieso No. 2
Oaxaca
Zip: 68000
Until the end of March:
American Express Travel Service
Paseo de Montejo
#494
Entre 43 y 45
Merida
ZIp:97000
Take care
Frito (aka Geoffrito)
I am here in Los Mochis, a city in the state of sINALOA, NW Mexico.
Took the ferry from La Paz , Baja. Tommorrow tAKING THe train to Creel,
state of Chijajua in the mountqins of the SIERRA mAdre along the
scenicand famous copper canyon. Nando and I are very well, we are
learning patience waiting hours and days for ferries and trains. >Not
much to do here in Los Mochis, just a big ugly city. Well I hope
everyone is well. >Write more later.
Chao
Frito (aka Geoffrito)
I´m having a wonderful time here in Mexico. We took a spectacular
train
ride along the Copper Canyon into the northern Sierra Madre Mountains
to
a town named Creel. The train rides precariously along very steep
canyons and over many bridges and 86 tunnels. From the lowlands of
dry
cacti and scrub to the high mountain vegetation of oak and pine. Creel
is a great little mountain town at 2300m elevation, so it gets pretty
cold, especially at night (-5). We stayed our first and third night
in
a very cool hostel where we hung out with alot of interesting travellers
with interesting stories. Thhe second night we spent camping at the
bottom of a canyon. Hiking down into the canyon was great with
fantastic views. We relaxed in hotspring natural pools of a creek down
in the bottom. Then train back to Los Mochis and a bus to Mazatlan
with
two excellent travellers from Norway named Sandro and Anne. They are
renting a palapa house (made of palm fronds) on the beach on an island:
Isla de la Piedra or Stone Island just of Mazatlan harbour where we
stayed a few days. We just hung out, relaxed and did absolutely
nothing. There were other interesting travellers there that have
interupted their travels for months living there. Let´s just
say that
there lack of motivation to keep moving has to do alot with the name
of
the island. Anyways we managed to escape and head on south. Oh yeah,
while on the train to Creel we met a canadian from the maritimes: Max
who has kayaked solo from Vancouver to Mazatlan and will continue to
Nicaragua and then cross over to go up the east coast all the way back
to Halifax. A pretty amazing, focused and determined guy. He has taken
a break at Stone island and took a little side trip to Creel. Well
he
has been documenting his voyage on the internet where there will be
pictures and info posted of Stone Island, Copper canyon, Creel and
of
course the rest of his adventures. (Note Nando took the picture of
him
eating sugar cane). Go check out his web page at http://www.solomax.com
Anyways, we are now in Guadalajara, Jalisco State, Mexico´s second
largest city of 5 million. It is a relatively clean, safe and middle
class (at least near historic downtown). It is also a very beautiful
city with many old colonial buildings, plazas and squares, fountains,
museums, galleries, boulevards, parks and greenery. You feel more like
you are in Spain than Mexico. It´s the 457 birthday of the city
so
there has been alot of celbration including many free street
performances of dancing and singing and others. It´s a great
city! But
it is still a city, so I´m sure we can´t wait to get out
in the
countryside. We´ll be off to check out a little village called
Jichilpan, Michoacan state where Nando´s father used to hang
out alot
when he was younger. Then, of course we keep on heading south.
Anyways, Nando and I are in very good spirits and enjoying ourselves
lot´s. I hope everyone is well. Write you later.
Frito (Geoffrito)
Ok, new plans - we're skipping the windsurfing because we are totally
hooked
on scuba diving! It is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO amazing!! I was really
scared
of it at first, so I studied like a demon and memorized everything
and it's
really paid off!! We did two dives into the ocean yesterday on the
east
coast and two today on the west coast. It was so beautiful that tomorrow
(our last day here- fly to Manila on Friday and back to Japan on Saturday)
we're going to take the specialized ""Underwater Photography"" course
and make
another dive. The dives were indescribable...but I'll try anyways!
Until now
we've only seen the surface of the water, or seen the underwater world
through photographs, but there is such an expansive, fascinating world
beneath it. I immediately felt a part of the relatively few people
of the
world's population that have experienced this world firsthand. Snorkeling
is
one thing, scuba diving is like heaven. I don't think I could go back
to it
now. The underwater plants, the COLOURS, the fish - we went to a site
today
where the fish are used to divers with bread to feed them and we discovered
that fish can be as greedy and obnoxious as chickens (or deer if you've
ever
been to Nara Park!)! I was holding a clamshell that our instructor
gave me
and they all thought it was bread and started crowding around me! I
even got
bit by one of them!! Another cool thing about diving is that you can
do
weightless somersaults. We both now have our PADI (Professional Association
of Diving Instructors) certification for open water diving that is
recognized around the world. This means we could just go to a dive
shop
anywhere, rent some equipment, and plan and execute our dive - just
the two
of us! (although an orientation dive with a local is recommended)We
should
go now - we're a bit tipsy again from watching the sunset (actually
a
cloudset tonight) at a bar that has chairs and tables on the beach.
We also
get this free internet coupon from a superb restaurant called ""Nigi
Nigi Nu
Noos 'e' Nu Nu Noos"" (don't ask, we don't know) where they have a
dinner set
with great cocktails. I mean, what is it to go to a tropical paradise
and
experiment with weird and exotic cocktails?! Ok, we're off for dinner.
Hope
you enjoyed this latest drunken rambling!
With much love and slobbery kisses, Leanne and Jim
ps. did you guys realize that Jim wrote the first paragraph of the last
email? This one is all from me!!
Greetings from southern Mexico. Nando and I are doing really good. We
have visited some amazing places, met excellent travellers and some
locals. Most travellers have actually been canadians, heck you cannot
get away from fellow country people, even here in Mexico. But they,
together with Germans, English, Australians, only a few Americans and
various other Europeans, have been all great people. In the last few
weeks we have been to Oaxaca city, a beautiful colonial city where
we
saw some Zapotec indigenous city ruins of Monte Alban and the worlds
largest tree (in 14m diameter), Arbol del Tule. Then we went down to
the
pacific coast of Oaxaca state to camp on the beaches of Zipolite and
Mazunte. Amazing beaches, very laid back, some very lazy days, but
it
was good to do a little vacationing between travelling. We are now
in
San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas state. It is another beautiful
colonial city with a great vibe and good people. Many indigenous
people, descendents of the mayas and who are good gentle people, from
surrounding villages come to town to sell there beautiful hand made
crafts. Unfortunately most are very poor. The Zapatistas are quiet
here at the moment and there are many tourists here in town. Nando
and
I visited two indigenous villages with a wonderful indigenous women
as a
guide. She shared so much information on all aspects of indigenous
life, past and present. I learned so much from her. She is a great
storyteller and natural teacher. We have also visited some caves, a
mayan traditional medicine museum, the two excellent food and craft
markets here in town and have just hung out in town with other
travellers from our hostel. I am having an excellent time, learning
alot about Mexico, people and about myself. We are on our way next
to
the rainforest jungle and the mayan ruins of Palenque. Then we go on
to
the Yucatan Peninsula. I hope everyone is well and it is not too cold
and snowy up there :) Take care.
Love Frito
PS. Please stop sending mail (if you are) now to Merida, because I
will
probably be arriving there the second or third week of March (about
two
or so weeks from now) and not right at the end of the month as
originally planned. I have not figured out the next address for people
to send me mail yet.
It's been a long time since I emailed last. I'm in Guatemala now and
having a blast. After spending an fantastic time with excellent
travellers for Nando's birthday (March 12) in Palenque we were off
to
the Yucatan peninsula. The yucatan turned out to be not as great as
expected (but still good) since its a bit too touristy and expensive
as compared to my favourite places in Mexico, Chiapas and Oaxaca
states. We checked out beautiful Tulum beach, with white sand and
the different shades of blue of the Carribean sea. There we also
checked out the small, not as impresive as Palenque, mayan ruins of
Tulum, overrun by tourbuses full of vacationers. Then off to Isla
Mujeres which is near Cancun (which we went through briefely, insane
""gringolandia"", as they call it). We were told by some that this
island was good, but it turned out to be a mini Cancun, full of drunk
obnoxious american vacationers and expensive! So we were out of there
fast and on to Vallodolid, a quant Yucatecan city with a much better
vibe. From there we went for the day to Chichen itza, an impressive
large mayan site. We went there the day of the spring equinox (March
21) and, because of the alignment of the sun that day, we saw a great
shadow of the plummed serpent coming down one of the four staircases
of the largest pyramid at the site, el castillo (the castle).
Impressive, but could of been better, maybe even spiritual if it
wasn't for all the thousands of tourists (foreigners and Mexicans)
there to see it too. Oh well, it was still pretty neat and there was
mayan music and dance performances on at the site. Then on to Merida,
a large, but beautiful colonial city with yucatecan charm. Lots of
tourists there too, but because its such a large city you don't notice
them as much and its not too expensive. Then back to San Cristobal
briefely and then crossed the border into Guatemala. Nando and I went
on to Antigua, a beautiful colonial city with really good food, for
Easter week. Being so catholic, easter is a really big deal here in
Guatemala as in most of latin america. Especially big and special
events happen in Antigua and thats why we were there along with the
thousands of other Guatemaltecos and foreigners. They make really
beautiful and elaborate carpets on the streets out of coloured saw
dust and sand and pine needles and flowers. Only to be soon after
destroyed by the large processions that are famous in Antigua. These
large and elaborate processions consist of roman soldiers, then jews,
then incense and candles held by people, then a massive float of solid
hard wood of Jesus carrying the cross, carried by up to 80 men. Then
immediately following a brass band and drummers and then another
massive float of Virgin Mary carried by up to 80 women. I guess the
processions and carrying great heavy floats is imitating the
procession of Jesus suffering and carrying the cross and his eventual
crucifixion. The incence smoke and strong scent, along with candles
at night, along with these great floats and pounding drums that you
feel inside your gut made it pretty intense. Anyways, now I am in
Quetzaltenango (or Xela, pronounced Shela, as the locals call it)
Guatemala's second largest city after Guatemala city. I'm
volunteering for a week or two with the local department of
environment and forests. I don't exactly know what I am all supposed
to do yet, but so far I've been up in the woods with indigenous forest
rangers, excellent people, learning a whole bunch, including the
species (indigenous names of course) and there traditional uses as
food and medicine. It's great so far. Anyways that's it for now, I
hope everyone is doing well. Take care.
Love Frito.
PS. I now have another email address that I use too at
geoffsen@yahoo.com. Sometimes hotmail is too overloaded and slow and
crashes (too many users) so I'll use the yahoo one. So write to
whichever, I'll be using them both.
Sigh.
Time has fled again. This was to be the Great China Epic but it needs
must
be but Episode I. Hmm... good title...
Well, we spent two days in Tokyo where it rained really hard, flew to
Beijing for 4 days, flew to Xi'an for 1 day, flew to Guilin for 2 days,
flew
to Shanghai for 1 day, flew back to Narita and took the Shinkansen,
etc.
back to our home, eshausted. It doesn't quite add up to the 9-day holiday
it was but I guess there was time lost in transit, eh?
Wanna hear more?
It's a difficult trip to describe because the experience affected us
so
deeply. We were together with 31 other people from various English-speaking
countries. They were all teachers in Japan like us except one, who
came to
enjoy the tour with her daughter. It was a good group of people and
we all
had a lot of fun together.
Maybe I should start by listing what I can remember we did. While staying
in the four-star Xiyaun Hotel in Beijing we toured Tiananman Square
(closed
for repairs), the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace (of some Emperor
or
other), and one or two Ming Tombs. In our three evenings in the city
we saw
the famous acrobatic show, went to the Peking Opera, and, of course,
had
natchos, burgers and Margaritas at the Beijing Hard Rock Cafe. In the
days,
on our way to and from the sites we also visited three state-run factories
producing products made from Jade, Pearl and Cloisonne on our
(state-directed) tour. We soon grew accustomed to the routine quick,
well-spoken English tour followed by a 3/4 hour in the gift shop. ""If
you
spend over US$100, you will get a free gift!"" We came away with 2
free
gifts. Everyone laughed at our lack of will-power as they examined
with
envy what we had bought at very good prices. Soon we became the bargaining
experts; sought far and wide whenever anyone wanted to buy something.
The
other thing we did was climb the Great Wall of China. It was a lot
of very
steep stairs but what an amazing experience: incredible to see it stretching
across the landscape under you, to feel the history of it, to simply
enjoy
the view, and to be able to say, ""I climbed the Great Wall!""
Well, that's all the time I have. Leanne's picking me up and we're going
to
study some shamisen playin'!
Stay tuned for Episode II
Love to you all!
Jimmy
Well, my morning's almost over - I'll leave Guilin and Shanghai for
Episode(s) III (and IV?).
With much love, Leanne and Bailey (Jim's at work!)
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
----------
From: ""Leanne and Jim"" <lanjim2@grn.mmtr.or.jp>
To: Brian Rowley <browley@galaxy.ucr.edu>
Subject: Chinese Medicine
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 19:51:33 +0900
One of the China stories we haven't told everyone yet is the one about
our
morning visit to the famous Guilin TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine)
Hospital in Guilin. There we watched a description and demonstration
of
""electric massage."" Two masseurs, each holding the end of a wire
connected
to a wall socket, massaged a patient with neck or shoulder pain. The
current does strange things. I was the third and last subject and I
found
my right arm moving all over the place with no direction from me. My
head
also pulled itself back and to the right involuntarily at one point.
This
was all accompanied by a buzzing sensation, a small humming sound and
one
of the
masseur's finger tips got pretty hot--almost to the ouch stage. Anyway,
that
was fun, though I can't say I felt much different after the buzz wore
off.
Just after the electro-shock therapy demo, traditional Chinese herbal
medicine was described and, of course, sold. Mad shoppers that we are,
we
bought something for Leanne's anaemia. This stuff is touted to eliminate
the condition, not simply relieve symptoms, with no side-affects because
the
effective compounds are naturally balanced by other naturally-occurring
stuff in the herb. I thought you might be interested, so here's a word
for
word account of the sales-pitch and the bottle-label.
3. KIDNEY-TONIC PILLS
Function: for a morbid state of insufficiency of essence and energy
of
the kidney
Indications: general-debility, lumbago, hypotension, anaemia, tinitus,
vertigo, hair-lost, men's sexual debility, etc.
Dosage: 20-30 pills each time 3 times a day after meal
They're small pills. It's the ""etc."" that scares me.
On the bottle:
PROVED SECRET RECIPE
KIDNEY TONIC PILLS
APPROVAL No. (1992)10067
MAIN INGREDIENTS:
Semen Cuscutae
Fructus Rosae Laevigatae
Rhizoma Polygonati, etc
(That ""etc."" again!)
Well, what do you think? Are we suckers? Leanne plans to give blood
this
summer WHEN SHE VISITS VANCOUVER FOR NINE DAYS AT THE END OF JULY (did
you
know?). Then she'll find out if her anaemia is cured forever, or not.
Will write again soon.
Love, Jim ?? This is my name in japanese but I bet your computer can't
read it. Oh well!
On that fragmented note, I'll sign off, but not before whetting your
appetite for the wild and exciting news to come in Episode IV, The
Final
Frontier (why does that sound so familiar?). Yes, there our heros will
travel to that 21st century metropolis, Shanghai.
With much love, Leanne and Bailey (Jim's at school, again!)
xoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
It has been a while since I last emailed. I am having a great time here
in
Guatemala! Well alot has happened here in the last couple of months
or so.
I did some volunteer work for a couple of weeks with the municipality
of
Quetzaltenango (or Xela as the locals call it) department of forests
and
protected areas. I basically hung out in beautiful pine forests outside
of
town with indigenous forest rangers. They were great and I learned
alot
from them about the forests, common names of plants in the Quiche language
(one of 21 different mayan languages in Guatemala) and traditional
uses of
some of the plants. At the end I wrote up a descriptive and brief report
of
the ecology and soils of the area we were in (superficially and visually)
and some of what I learned. I learned alot, but I don't know how much
they
learned from me, I am sure they already know what I told them and more,
but
they said they would get a different perspective and even that alone
would
be helpful. It was a great experience. It was like I was living in
a place
for a while, going to work, coming home and cooking dinner (the place
I was
staying at has a kitchen) and hanging out with good people (mostly
foreigners).
Then, Rachel, who I was seeing back home, came out and joined me for
7 weeks
and we had a good time travelling together all over Guatemala. We travelled
to many places in the highlands of Guatemala, our favourite region
in
Guatemala. The highlands include beautiful mountains, volcanoes, pine
and
cloud forests and are alot cheaper and cooler than the lowlands. There
also
remains a large indigenous population, descendents of the ancient maya,
in
towns and villages surrounded by corn fields and pine forests in the
mountains. Many have retained much of their customs, culture, traditional
dress and way of life. Many, especially women, still wear their handwoven
traditional dress with beautiful patterns and bright colours (that
are
different between and even within communities). They are a beautiful,
proud, gentle and respectful people with a very different and interesting
way of living. It has been great spending time in their villages, learning
and experiencing a little of their way of life, a way of life that
has
worked for thousands of years. Well some highlights of the highlands
include visiting: Lake Atitlan - a large and beautiful lake bordered
by 3
volcanoes and numerous indigenous villages; climbing volcan Tajumulco
- the
highest point in central america (a good overnight hike with some good
people); volunteering a few days in Xela teaching (or at least trying
to
with rowdy kids) reading and math with poor children; Todos Santos
- a town
deep in the beautiful Chuchumatanes mountains and where most of the
men,
women and children wear their traditional handwoven dress; the Biotopo
(nature reserve) of the Quetzal - a great cloud forest with a high
diversity
and abundance of mosses, ferns (tree ferns too!), epiphytes/plants
growing
on trees (bromeliads, orchids), vines and many other plants. We were
fortunate enough to also see there the beatiful and rare Quetzal -
national
bird of Guatemala, that is very colourful and has a very long tail.
Rachel and I also travelled to the lowland jungles of Guatemala, which
were
really hot and humid and full of a rich diversity of trees, plants
and
animals. We saw toucans, parrots, monkeys and other animals. There
we also
visited the ancient and now ruined city of the mayas called Tikal.
It is a
huge city with large and impressive temples and pyramids deep in the
heart
of the jungle. Most of this once great and powerful city is not uncovered
and still claimed by the tangle of the great jungle. Well there is
tons
more I want to tell you all, but this is getting already long. So now
I am
off to Honduras for a week or two and then on to Nicaragua. I hope
you are
all doing well. Thinking of you all. Love Frito (Geoffrito)
"Hey everybody! It's me and my Finnish travelogue! I went for a
week to return a visit paid to me by Heidi Abacka last year, and to learn
a little bit about another country with some ties to my family, and both
came off wonderfully. I went with the phone numbers and addresses of a
few relatives and hotels, and vague 12-year-old memories from our family's
backpacking tour of Europe. I came back with my head and pack stuffed full
of Fun Finn Facts and can now comfortably stock my own Finnish Tourism
Office.
DA DA DA DUMMM......
Friday June 4, 17:00. [Arrival in Finland, aka Suomi]
Helsinki Airport, like most of Finland, is in a small clearing in the woods. They were cutting down more trees at the side of the runway, this was either part of an expansion project or a periodic effort to keep the forest from taking over.
After I fought my way past all the duty free shops and departing passengers, a friendly attendant directed me to the bus downtown. I was very paranoid on the bus because I didn't know the trip terminated at the rail station and I kept seeing possible rail stations everywhere. I think I annoyed the bus driver, who didn't speak much English. I knew 3 words of Finnish and none of them seemed to apply. But the station was unmistakable when we got there - huge bus terminal, sweeping archway of red brick, giant granite pillars. Helsinki (I found out later) is reknowned for its architecture. I didn't have much time to look around, as I was running late. I had to catch a train to Vaasa where cousin-once-removed Heidi was waiting.
I had tried to save about 150 marks by asking the rail station to save me a 3-day railpass, even though the regular office would be closed by my arrival time. Due to luggage and bus delays, I was even later than my plan, and I spotted a train to Vaasa leaving in 20 minutes. 5 minutes talking unsuccessfully to one of the ticket ladies, a few minutes fretting, 5 minutes standing in line, 2 minutes to purchase a regular ticket to Vaasa (from the same lady), and the train left on time. With me. Which was nice.
On the trip out, I plonked my pack next to the duffel of a Finnish soldier on a weekend visit to his parents in Kokkola. (In Finland, there is conscription and everyone suitable serves some time in the army when they're young.) He had served up north at a guard station on the Russian border and had recently been reposted to Helsinki. His specialty was journalism. Apparently patrol exercises on the Russian border is a nice break from officers breathing down your neck, even in winter.
I used the little text-message feature on my phone to send a note to Heidi telling her my new arrival time - 23:30. When we arrived, I didn't recognize her as she was standing with this big guy - her boyfriend, Kim. She hadn't mentioned him and in the family photo she had sent, he had been taking the photo. Anyway, his first language was Swedish but his English was good. Heidi spoke Finnish, Swedish, and English fluently. I think in general people spoke more English than during our family trip 12 years ago.
It was still pretty light so I got a walking tour of downtown and we managed to find a bar that served coffee at 1 am. For me of course it was only 11am with the time zone change but soon after that we were all ready to call it a night. I think we had rye bread sandwiches as a late snack.
Saturday, Vaasa: After a breakfast of open-face rye bread sandwiches (a food I was to get very familiar with), we went on a tour of Vaasa. Heidi's sister Annette had graduated senior high on Friday, so although she stopped in for a bit, she had to be back at the A'backa place in Alaveteli to meet all the friends and relations that would be stopping to visit. (The first 'A' in 'Abacka' sounds like the 'a' in 'raw'.)
More than 50% of Finland's population now supposedly own a mobile phone. In the stores I bought a small black daypack with a special pocket for phones, that should come in really handy next time I make a phone call from my bicycle.
There's not a lot in Vaasa, frankly. I took a photo of a Russian Orthodox church's onion domes, smelled the farm/fish market, and got my boot wet in the Baltic Sea's Bay of Bothnia. Yet another exotic dip for the ol' hiking boot! I could have caught a ferry trip to Sweden, but I didn't have 7 hours to spare for the round trip.
Heidi presented the photo album of her England/Ireland trip - you can namecheck a lot of England in three weeks - and I started reading a copy of The Great Gatsby she had from her English Lit class. Which goes to show just how seriously you can take foreign language studies.
We went out on Saturday night with some of Kim's friends. Lots of freshly graduated students also celebrating, even (especially?) in the out-of-the-way bar we picked. Bar was still going strong at 2:30 am when we left, and it was light enough to not need streetlights, both marked differences from Ireland where they make the bars close before midnight. (More rye sandwiches as a late night snack.)
Sunday: Drove to Alaveteli, with stops at a war monument (Swedish-Russian) and a mooseburger shack. Small-world syndrome: The lady at the counter asked where I was from, I said near Vancouver, Canada, and she said she had visited friends who live near Vancouver! It wasn't all that small a world, though. I was from Maple Ridge, and her friends were in Langley, which is really 30km south, across the Fraser River.
Lots of people in Alaveteli, more relatives for coffee and cake and flowers for Annette. I more or less recognized Pirjo and Ove and got the names straight first try. Yay! Aimo and his sister were there so we had a big family photo. Aimo's sister was married with two young boys, one of them was described as ""a little terror"" and I was very uncomfortable about how he was using his toy gun. The other was willing to play catch with a soccer ball and seemed much more, um, sane.
Heidi and Kim were going to head back to Vaasa the next morning, as Heidi had work as a supervisor on a children's TV programme. (Pretty cool kids! She showed me some taped episodes where the kids presented cartoons, science experiments, and skits very naturally. In Finnish of course.) I presented my gifts to the family that evening (some Irish souvenirs from the airport duty free) and showed the pictures I had brought of the Japan-Australia trip and Leanne's wedding.
Some more stuff happened that evening. I think I hurt myself trying to club a fish we caught in the nearby river, but it was undoubtedly worse for the fish.
Hope this isn't too boring. We haven't gotten to the first sauna yet and already I feel this is getting long.
Love all
Kaari
International Man of Mystery
******************"
After a sumptuous breakfast, Pirjo dropped Kristian, Annette, and I off on the outskirts of Kokkola on her way to work, so we could check out a recreated turn-of-the-century village. Which was closed. I took a photograph of the wooden windmill and we hiked into town, through a church and several backyards. We got to the supermarket post office where Pirjo worked, bought some ice cream, and headed up the bike path into Kokkola proper. Weather was nice and sunny, and the town had a relaxed layout with wide bike paths and sidewalks. We arrived at the tourist office unexpectedly (for me, anyway) and I picked up a few maps. Kristian found a walking tour pamphlet of Kokkola which was to be his downfall that afternoon.
A quick walk took us through the historic part of Kokkola with a brief stop in an antique store. I started to fiddle with an old crank telephone but stopped myself from actually trying to create a ringing voltage. The historic part is all wooden buildings and the bylaws dictate the exteriors have to remain in a roughly 1930's style. Some of the cars looked almost as old.
In the central park we came across an English gunboat captured during the Battle of Halkokari in 1854. The park and indeed the town is bisected by a canal from the sea, and once upon a time England and France were shelling the fortress at Helsinki and sent a few boats to harass the next biggest harbor, which was Kokkola. They sailed up the canal, found it very well defended, and said gunboat ran aground during the retreat. Since then, the rising bedrock has made the canal considerably shallower (about a centimeter a year?) so it's useless for transport. A mother duck and her ducklings found it useful, though, and since I'm extra kind hearted around ducks, I fed them a good portion of one of my cereal bars.
We took a peek at the municipal pool complex, with the underwater hockey viewing gallery I remembered vaguely from the first trip, and looked in on the ice hockey stadium which was being repaved. My highlight was rescuing a coin from a grating. Sad, des-ne? I even dragged Kristian to a ""bailiff's house"" described on the walking guide, for the sake of a ""secret passage to the canal"" mentioned in the blurb. It was a nice big historic house, organized as two large rooms with several smaller flanking rooms. It was used as a courthouse for some time. There were people doing a bit of landscaping and a little cafe service in one of the large rooms, but the secret path remained a secret while we were there. The canal was probably a bit closer in those days.
We drove a little further and went into the town hall to see Ove, but he wasn't in his office, so we looked at a very large mineral collection that took up one long corridor and had everything from Australian opal to Canadian asbestos. We walked south trying to find a taxidermy museum, music studio, and kokko-bird statue described on the walking guide. We did well on the last two but the taxidermy museum stumped us. Kristian finally asked directions and we raced down the street to find it was closed. In dejection we tramped around a bit more and I guided us to Lansipuisto park, where I spent a few moments interpreting a fountain sculpture of a breaking wave.
Annette took the car to pick up Pirjo from work, and Kristian and I went back to the town hall to get a lift back with Ove. Kristian went surfing on his dad's computer and I e-mailed myself a reminder - http://www.kokkola.fi/ has a webcam with a view of the city square, approximately the view from Ove's office window in the town hall.
After dinner, Ove and a friend drove Kristian and myself around Alaveteli's countryside. We drove along an old glacial dike to a campground where a Tunguska-like crater 20 feet across nestled in the clay among the pine trees. This was a recreation of a tar-harvesting pit, where tar is a mixture of pitch and charcoal, formed by smouldering pine trees under an airtight layer of dirt, that was in great demand as a waterproofing coating back when everything was made of wood.
We finished off the evening with a sauna. I managed to sauna with the menfolk without fatally embarrassing anybody, and with Kristian's help carried on a conversation with Ove about Polish saunas and Japanese hot spring bathing. Afterwards we stood outside steaming in a most refreshing light rain and no mosquitos to speak of.
Had a dream about having a girlfriend named Sarah Powell, for no apparent reason. Maybe she was the zoologist in Jurassic Park: The Lost World.
*****************
Nakemiin! That's ""see you later""!
Kaari
Lots of love to everybody and a big THANK-YOU to all those who helped
Yuka and I have such an awesome vacation there!
Love, Leanne, Jim, and Bailey (our cat)
PS. (from Jim) Uh, I dunno. I can't think of anything witty. (he just
woke
up) I wanna tell everybody that Boracay's beaches are supposed to be
the
best in the world . . . whatever that means.
Well, we've been back in Bangkok for a few days now. It's a little hard
to
get used to the hustle-and-bustle of an extremely big city after the
beautifully slow rythym of Krabi. But if you're into shopping for darn
near
anything, Bangkok is the place to be! We started off down on Kao Sarn
Road,
which is the touristy part of Thailand. It's where most non-asian travellers
go to stay and buy lots of crap. We aren't staying there (to noisy)
but its
a fun place to visit, and some pretty great deals on clothes and stuff.
It's
kind of like Robson St., Granville Ave. And Water St. all rolled into
one.
For those of you in the east, kind of like Younge St. compressed into
a
couple of blocks. We also wento this 4 story building that was absolutely
full of computer stuff. The odd thing was that there were ligitamate,
licenced stores sellin right next door to a place that sold nothing
but
pirated software. In fact the Pirate stores far outnumbered the
""above-board"" stores. there were also tonnes of MP3 compilation CDs.
I
bought most of Pink Floyd's albums on one CD for about $4.00 CDN.
Today we wnt to to the Weekend Market, somewhat like the West Edmonton
Mall
of little booths that sell stuff. And you can buy anything from clothes
to
gadgets to antiques to other people's mail (not kidding here). Hmm,
where
are we going to put this life-sized wooden elephant? ;)
Needless to say, we are a liitle pooped and I think we are going to
head off
to bed now. Watch this space for further Thailand adventures!
Later all,
Chris and Nicole.
Well, we decided to take today and do some real touristy stuff. We ventured
out on our own, excercised the little bit of Thai that we've learnt,
and
caught the river ferry and went out and saw a couple Wats (temples).
The
first one was called Wat Arun. It was quite beautiful and unique because
it
was decorated with thousands of pieces of porceline that came from
18th
century Chinese trading ships that used the porceline for balast. We
even
gave offerings to the various buddhas (one for each day and two for
wednesday).
Our next stop was across the river at Wat Pho. It was a rather large
compound and one of the buildings housed the largest reclining buddha
(Buddha ascending into Nirvana). I think it was something like 13m
long and
covered in gold leaf. Quite impressive! Lots of pictures to show of
both
Wats.
We then headed back to Kao San Rd. where nicole got an hour long traditional
Thai massage. Concentrated a lot on pressure points and we are waiting
to
see if any bruises arise. Quite satisfying nontheless (and less than
$6).
Chris' therapy included sitting in an airconditioned pub for an hour
sipping
a frosty cold pint. To each their own.
Tomorrow we are heading to Buri Ram in the Northeast on a bit of a Khmer
temple and temple ruin tour (not to be confused with the Khmer Rouge).
This
is somewhat off the beaten path and not visited by most tourists, but
thanks
to our Thai speaking friend, Micheal, we will be able to do this with
very
little worry. Email abilities will be sparce so it will be a few days
until
the next update of our adventures. BUT STAY TUNED....
Lots of love,
Chris and Nic
Despite the weather reports, the weather in the south of Thailand has
been
absolutely fantastic. It only rained one morning before we were even
out of
bed. We unfortunately couldn't do any kayaking, but we did get to do
some
fabulous snorkling, albeit a little sunburnt.
We have met some really great travellers from all over the world. We
are now
heading back up to bangkok on the overnight bus (ugh) and should be
there
sometime tomorrow morning.
Hope all is well back home and we are thinking of you all the time.
Later,
Chris and Nic.
So we've been continuing our textile buying and temple ruin tour of
the
northeast of Thailand. We have seen some fascinating temples that have
dated
as far back as the 10th century! Quite possiblt the most fascinating
is a
place called Khao Phra Vihan, a rather large temple site that is actually
located just inside Cambodia. After grabbing rides in a bus and the
in the
back of a pickup truck we were at the bottom of the site, where all
of the
souvenir shops are (lots of crap). From there we climb up this huge
set of
stes carved into the hill towards the first of three temples on this
site.
All along the way are sign telling us not to stray from the path, as
there
are a whole lot of land mines in the area. The first temple is quite
a small
building and not terribly ornate, but the interesting bit was the huge
Russian Helicopter that had crashed right beside there a number of
years
ago.
We continue farther up a large roadway made of large stones and partly
of
the natural bedrock towards the second temple which is much larger
and much
more ornate. All kinds of carving on the walls and doorways made with
massive stone cared in interesting angles. Lots of ornate pieces lying
on
the groud where they have reste for hundreds of years.
Finnaly up to the third and final temple, very similar to the second
only a
bit larger and situated on edge of a several thousand foot cliff, straight
down. Absolutely Breathtaking View if the Cambodian Jungle for miles
and
miles, a dirt track here, a small dwelling there.
This site has been open to tourists for about a year now, but for the
previous six years and off and on for years before that the Khmer Rouge
(a
nasty bunch, to say the least) had occupied the area. We met a couple
of
Cambodian Soldiers that were also sightseeing and pointed out a couple
of
the temple walls were riddled with little cavities made by bullets,
and that
there were still some fragements of the steel AK-47 rounds wedged in
the
walls. It was somewhat unclear, however, if they were made by gun happy
Khmer Rouge soldiers just firing for target practice, or if it was
the
result of a firing squad. YIPES!!!
We have also toured some current buddhist temples and have met some
very
interesting young monks, who have been very eager to give us a history
of
the temple and to practice their english.
We have tonnes of pictures of all of this and more to show.
We have also been doing some textiles purchasing along the way, picking
up
some beautiful silks and cottons. Nic has also picked up some very
neat
little handmade baskets used for all kinds of different things. Apparently
it has been somewhat amusing for the locals to see the Falung (foreigners)
carrying around these baskets that are used in everyday life.
Well, best get going to meet Nic and Carol after their Thai massage.
After
here we are heading north to Udon Thani before we head back to Bangkok
and
then home.
Later,
Chris and Nicole.
Hope everybody's well! Write us soon! Love, Leanne and Jim
PS. Our last exciting installment will cover our final day in Manila...stay tuned!!
Leanne's been writing all the travel tales, did you miss my voice?
This has been billed as ""The Last Exciting Installment"". But remember
you
didn't pay for it, okay?
Our flight from the airport near Boracay Island to Manilla was in the
smallest aircraft I've ever been in, but at least it wasn't one of
the
six-seaters we'd heard were doing the same route. Our weather charms
had
worked wonders once again, but the rain that was coming in to signal
the end
of our stay in paradise caught up to us about half an hour before we
arrived
in Manilla. The turbulence was the kind which could have been fun if
it
hadn't made my breakfast so upwardly mobile and we had been better
reassured
of the safety record of the airline. Leanne seemed just fine, and at
least I
was successful at keeping my cookies in their jar, unlike some of the
Japanese passengers who were crying out in alarm and disbelief that
an
aircraft could move like that and up-chucking left and right.
Our adventures in transportation go on. Next, the Manilla taxi, an
observer's guide. We arrived at noon and were due to leave at 6:30
the next
morning, so we were looking for a way to kill the rest of the day.
Having
read stories of taxis at the domestic terminal using ""faulty"" meters
(meaning ""rapidly climbing"") we decided it was a nice, rainy day
for a walk.
(Those taxis take advantage of tourists who are told to make sure the
meter
is on, and then relax. The next time they look at it, it's up to 50
bucks
(US) and the doors are locked.) One of the things about Manilla is
the
streets are a mish-mash of dirt, garbage and broken concrete. Great
pits and
potholes abound, but one frequently comes across an old wheel-chair
ramp
(complete with the universal wheel-chair symbol) to help the disabled
get
from one yawing, impassable chasm to the next. It's bizarre. Evidence
of the
wide-spread corruption in government we read about, I suppose. After
getting
nice n wet, we took a nicer taxi to our hotel.
Ever heard of Jai Alai? I only remembered this name in connection with
the
title credits of Miami Vice. Apparently, in Miami, everyone wears pastels
and loves Jai Alai. I didn't know if it was the same sport, but after
stuffing ourselves at a very western (a la Milestones) restaurant,
we
grabbed a cab and headed over to ""Jai Alai Manilla"". Here's Jim watching
the
meter. Here's both of us, stopped at a light, having fun making faces
with
the child outside while he's trying to get us to give him money. Here's
Jim
again, checking the meter just before we arrive, and noticing the numbers
just doubled. Well, I opened the door a crack, just in case the locks
were
about to kick in and we paid the driver what we guessed the ride was
worth.
Funny, he didn't complain. Times like that make ya feel like such a
wizened
old globe-trotter. Or James Bond--there's that theme music again.
Jai Alai is what I thought. We found ourselves in a less 80's, although
well
kept, scene from ""the Vice"" with better music. A large audience area
faces a
huge court behind a great chain link fence. The game is like hand ball
but
the court is much bigger, viewed from the side by the audience, and
the
players hurl the ball at the wall with the help of a long scoop-like
implement which seems grafted to the end of one arm. Dat ball goes
fast,
kids. It's exciting, and a betting sport. We committed 50 pesos (about
CAN$1.75), making bets of 10 pesos each time. It's a little hard to
explain,
but it's an individual sport with six players rotating; two players
on the
court at a time. After each point, the loser is replaced by the next
player,
and the winner stays on the court with a chance to win another point.
You
bet on who will come in first and second place. It's not easy, but
after
losing twice, we won at good odds and collected a whopping 100 pesos.
You
can picture us jumping up and down, the only foreigners for miles,
making
idiots of ourselves. It was a big moment. I mean, $2.50! We walked
home,
saving the cab fair and leaving us 90 cents in the green! Oh, sure,
we had
to get up at 3am the next day to get to the airport on time, but that
didn't
ruin our gamblin' high! Now I want to try horse bettin' fer some real
money!
Not really, though.
It was hard to return to Japan. Especially for me because I haven't
been
home to Vancouver in over a year, but things are picking up. Everyone
in
Vancouver can start getting excited now because I'm coming home next
month!
Sept. 21-28! Today I'm starting to think of what I want to do there.
Most
importantly, I want to see as many people I've been missing as I can.
I also
want to hang out with Leanne's nearest and dearest who I still feel
I
haven't really had a chance to get to know. (Maybe because that's true!)
My
past life in Vancouver seems a lot like a dream now, and I feel like
a
different person in a lot of ways. It's going to be an interesting
trip, to
say the least, and if I start whigging out and frothing Japanese, well,
just
take me to Tsunami Sushi. Don't worry, you don't have to buy me dinner,
I
just may need to smell that sashimi!
I'll be writing soon!
Love to you all,
Jim
Well, here we are, back in Bangkok. We continued our tour of the northeast
of Thailand along the Makong river (the border between Thailand and
Loas) to
a place called Tat Phenom. Here is a temple and massive Chedi (tomb,
of
sorts) that contains the chest bones (ribs?) of Buddha himself. The
site
dates back to 8 years after Buddhas death over 2500 years ago, and
has been
rebuilt several times throughout the past. Also a great little nigh
market.
Next we wnt to a very small village that was the site of a very important
archealogical site called Ban Chien. Some time in the mid sixties,
an
American student was doing an archealogical srvey of a village that
was
supposed to date back to about 200 B.C. While walking down a small
trail in
the Jungle, he tripped over a root and came face to face (literally)
with a
perfectly round object poking out of the ground. Some further digging
revealed a burial site that contained many Human remains alonng with
all
kinds of pots and works of Bronze (spearheads, Jewellry). This wasn't
totally out of the ordinary as the ""Bronze age was thought to hae
reached
here aroun 300-200 B.C. But through some fancy dating techniques, they
found
that the objects dated as far back as 5000 B.C.! This matches and even
pre-dates Bronze working civilizations in Europe, the middle east and
Africa, suggesting that the ""Bronze Age"" Began here independantly
of the
rest of the world, or even started here all together!!! A remarkable
find to
say the least, and a pretty cool place to visit. They had preserved
part of
the original dig site complete with bones and pottery.
From there it was off to Udon Thani, arather large, noise town in the
North.
We went even father north to a town who's name I cannot remember but
was a
gateway of sorts to Laos. All throughout our travels of the northeast,
we
were the only Fahlung (foreigners) that we saw, and were treated as
a bit of
a novelty. As a result we met some facinating people, including a young
monk
dying to practice his english with sombody. But once we reached this
border
town in the North, it was full of Fahlung! And suddenly we were treated
more
like tourists with tuk-tuk drivers trying to hustle you into their
vehicle,
and aggresive shop owners. A lot like Bangkok. It was a bit of a shock.
We went back to Udon Thani very early the next morning to catch a flight
back to bangkok and here we are, just a few hours short of our departure.
We
have had to check out of our hotel but we should be able to hang out
for a
while in the lobby.
Here ends the final installment of our trip to Thailand. I hope you
have
enjoyed these little monologues (OK not so little).
Our Hotmail account will remain active, however we will be checking
it
sparingly. Any further correspondance should go to our home address:
chris_nic@bc.sympatico.ca
For those of you at home, we will see you soon, and hope to see the
rest of
you sometime in the not so distant future.
Sawat dii and much love,
Chris and Nicole
Actually, you’ve probably all forgotten that we went to China. It was
so
long ago and so much has happened. People got married, new jobs started,
ER
broadcast a live show...
Well, from Guilin, we took a DOMESTIC flight from the ""CIVILIZED""
airport to
Shanghai, where we were met by another nice government tour guide with
equally skilfull English. (One of the people on our tour, Vicky, just
sent
us a list of interesting facts, one of which is “China has more English
speakers than the United States.”) The bus ride to our hotel was mainly
on a
very modern highway which was mostly viaduct. Our guide pointed out
where
the old English Quarter was along with other European “Quarters” which
were
mini replicas of their home countries bustling with activity for a
long time
until sometime around the 1930’s(?). We couldn't see them from the
road--too
many other buildings. We passed a lot of tall apartment buildings,
a huge
stadium, and the ultra-modern city hall. Soon we were slowly traversing
“the
Strand” where the great old 19th century European banks, etc. are lined
up
facing the water-front. Our guide seemed very excited about them, I
guess
because of the boom-town history they represent and because they’re
very
unusual in China. We westerners, of course, wanted to see more Chinese
stuff.
Across the water from these remnants of pre-communist capitalism is
the
symbol of the hopes and dreams of 21st century Shanghai. Out of the
old,
grey carpet of the low buildings on the other side of the river, one
of the
tallest buildings in the world juts, glittering, into the sky like
a great
red Christmas ornament scewered on a huge silver spike. There are a
couple
more only slightly less massive Christmas balls at its base which contribute
unfortunately to the ease of describing the building phallically. The
sight
was one of the most surreal I’ve ever witnessed. Nothing could more
clearly
state the divide that is so apparent in Shanghai between the very rich
and
the very poor.
Soon, however, we were to see more of that divide when we arrived at
our
hotel, a very tall, new building rising out of rubble. Just when we
thought
we were about to arrive, the concrete disappeared. Our bus had to take
a
slow, careful, round-about route on an uneven dirt road that wound
its way
through abandoned concrete buildings and their remains as the sounds
of
construction assaulted its tinted windows. Once we reached the lobby,
of
course, we were all opulence again.
In Shanghai we visited a beautiful traditional garden and learned about
the
elements that make up the best Chinese gardens. These elements can
be seen
widely in Japanese gardens. We did a little shopping, but the prices
were
much higher than in Guilin, etc. I can’t remember too much more except
our
last night out with our wonderful tour group at the Hard Rock Cafe
where we
danced to an Australian band. We only had a day and a half in Shanghai,
which is not considered to be culturally very interesting. It’s claim
to
fame is its capitalist history and its capitalist future. I can tell
you
that the mystique, electricity and excitement you hear about Shanghai
is
definitely in the air.
Then we went home.
We’ve both been sick with a nasty cold, complete with fever, for two
weeks
now. The last week it hasn’t been bad enough to stop us working, but
we’re
afraid we won’t get enough rest to get rid of it completely and we’ll
be
sick till Christmas. At it’s worst, Leanne lost her voice for about
a week!
None of this made us cancel our planned attempt at wind-surfing last
Saturday. Our friend, Leanne’s student Yuka, who is going with her
to Canada
in July, and her sister, Chika, took us to nearby Lake Biwa where we
had a
free trial lesson. It was great. We got to see how we look in wet-suits
in
anticipation of trying SCUBA diving in Bali in August. Wind-surfing
was fun
but it was a little tame because there was very little wind. Now, however,
we won’t have anything to stop us trying it more often when we finally
get
back to Vancouver, the wind-surfing capital of...Canada.
Well, I gotta go. Hope you enjoyed the Final Installment. Hopefully
we’ll
write more often now that we're better. We love and miss you all so
don’t
stop sending that news!
Love, Jim, Leanne (who is now on her way to Shamisen practice), and
Bailey
(who seems to be hiding but who is probably right lolling right under
my
nose ACHOO! Oh, there she is.)