If you have to choose one big city to visit in Vietnam make it Saigon. Unless you’re into the whole overcrowded, bad food, not enough room to walk on the street but too much shit on the sidewalk thing that Hanoi is offering.

The view of Laos from our Thailand balcony

Chang Khong is a wee border town on the way to Laos (or on the way out, depending on your direction). Picking a guesthouse straight out of the LP lead us to Banrimtaling Guesthouse, and a room with such awesome views over the Mekong river and into Laos that I suggested we stay another night.

It was in Chiang Khong that we experienced one of the more perplexing moments of our trip thus far. A Songkran (still going!) concert was being held about 1km down the river, so with some newly made American friends and a half time Chang Khong local we made our way toward the music.

We arrive to find a huge open air stage – the back lined with musicians, the front featuring a few male singers and 8 scantily clad young Thai girls doing sexy stripper dances and grinding on amps. Occasionally a different girl would take the stage to sing by herself and had men groping and putting money in her bra and underwear. We still have no idea if this was part of the Miss Songkran festival, our local Thai friend’s English was limited when it came to us exclaiming “WTF”.

The audience in the field was made up of, almost exclusively, very very drunk Thai people. The males generally old and lecherous; some of the women found the tall white girl (me) quite an entertaining sight and gave me drinks and dried banana chips and danced with me.

Not being able to drink beer has been the biggest hassle of this trip. I’m sure weird stripper show would have been more fun if I was drunk like everyone else. But I think our friend D, drunk and missing his girlfriend, had a good enough time for everyone.

The rest of the night was spent circling our guesthouse trying to find a way to get back to it without passing the 3 barking stray dogs in our path. They were at every turn. Eventually we gathered D and our new friends, along with some bamboo poles, only for the menacing dogs to be gone!

After being smeared with talc and given whisky shots by locals

Thankfully if you have some wits about you the lessons you’ll learn in Bangkok shouldn’t cost too much.

Stupidly we fell for the ol’ scammy scam scam twice. And didn’t even recognise the first time was scammy till it happened again. These bastards are subtle!

Day one in Bangkok was split between taxis and tuk tuks.

Taxi

The taxi from the airport was a fantastic first Bangkok experience. This city looks nothing like I expected. it’s beautiful and grimey and full of trees. No one cares much for road rules, but I trust the weavin, dodging, drivers here more than the slow moving vehicles of home because the drivers seem to be far more awake, making sure they don’t crash into any one of hundred obstacles.

Our taxi driver wasn’t out to make a quick buck. Instead of sitting in a traffic jam and watching the meter tick over he followed a small line of cars turning around and going up an off ramp the wrong way to get to a less congested part of the highay. Fuck yeah.

Tuk Tuk

The scene.
We decide to have a first explore of the city, walking in the hot sun in the vague direction of something or other and our friend D spies a guy bowing his head three times at a temple. He asks why and the guy says it’s for good luck.

This guy is going to become our unofficial tour guide.

He tells us about the best temples to see. That today is a special holiday so they have free entry (which did see to be correct?), that our tuk tuk driver would take us to all these places for 30 baht, and that this huge factory is open for today only for a look around (ding ding ding).
He pulls up a tuk tuk for us and hands the driver our map with Thai scribbled all over it and we’re away.

Dodging weaving, seemingly risking our lives. But I feel safe. We see a huge standing buddha, we see the lucky buddha – 700 years old and solid gold, we see the factory. Or rather we see a suit shop – the factory is glossed over when we ask to see it. We get a free beer and we leave after much awkward conversation about how we are not going to buy anything. Our driver asks for his gas voucher. We tell him we’re not buying anything so he doesn’t get one. He seems sad and annoyed but I’m thinking he can get fucked. The boys offer him 100 baht is he’ll just drop us at China Town. He Does.

We don’t even realise this is a scam. Our unofficial tour guide has given us his “name”, “number”, and says he works for the official tourist agency in Chiang Mai.

Even so, 100 baht is less than $5nzd. We got a driver for the avo and actually started exploring right away rather than pissing around trying to figure the city out.

*More stories soon. I’ve entered Laos where wifi is not so common and I’ll probably use the compy more than my phone for the net.

Yesterday morning I almost threw up because I was standing over a frying pan, drinking a cup of tea, and wearing a fluffy dressing gown. I started to overheat and wretched a couple of times before downing a glass of cold water. Yes gross, but I promise there is a point to this story.

The point is – if I can’t drink a cup of tea in 19 degree weather then HOW THE FUCK am I going to explore a new city in 40 degree weather?! Also WHY THE FUCK did I decide to go to Asia in the hottest time of year?

It’s not over till it’s over. And my 1001 days don’t end till the 29th of September 2011.

It’s still not looking good for Germany though.

While I’d love to go there, and to the arctic more than anything, I’m unwilling to travel alone. So I compromised and booked tickets to Asia instead. It’s where Brend was planning to go to, it’s where he can afford, and it’s somewhere he hasn’t been before. That makes it sound a little like it’s all give and no take, but it’s really not like that.

There’s no doubt I’ll get to Europe sometime in the next few years. In the mean time I’ll become invincible by diving in the deep end of travel – budget backpacking through developing and third world countries. And I’ll continue dreaming of polar bears and narwhals and the Northern Lights.

The tickets are booked, and even if the passport hasn’t been renewed, the insurance hasn’t been paid for, and the malaria drugs haven’t been purchased come April 7th 2011 I will be boarding a Malaysia Airlines flight bound for Kuala Lumpur and then Bangkok.

The plan is to not plan too much. We want to keep it simple so we don’t feel like we have to rush anywhere.

A night or two after arriving in Bangkok we’ll be on a train northwards to Chiang Mai to celebrate Songkran. Here’s hoping I don’t catch a terrible cold (or pneumonia :\) after 3 days of having water dumped on my head.

There are tentative plans afoot in my world.

Plans that could finally kick me in the ass and stop me from living such an idle life.

It’s not that I don’t love my idle life. Being able to make enough money to live while working only a handful of hours a week is amazing. I have had the best year! I get to sleep as much as I want, I’m always available for parties, lunches, and movies. I get to read. A lot. And I pretty much don’t have to do anything I don’t love.

Society tells me I’m wasting my life if I continue to just laze around doing only the things I like to do.

But I disagree.

I’m wasting my life if I don’t do the things that set my heart on fire. Things I’m so excited about I find it hard to sleep from the ideas running in my head. Just over a year ago it was the prospect of quitting my lucrative office job to run my own jewellery business and live off less than minimum wage.

Now it’s the prospect of travelling the world and seeing amazing things. Wanderlust has finally got me. The thought of actually relocating so very far away from the safety of my friends and family is still one that fills me with anxiety, but who knows how I will feel in a few months. Or next year when I’ve actually visited other parts of the world.

Wow!

Had to open with that because man was it good! The scene is set as we pull onto the gravel road at Pourerere Beach in Hawkes Bay. There are plenty of parking spots available up the driveway because we’ve taken the day off in order to enjoy the weekend to its full potential. The tent is the only thing taken out of the car until we find a camping spot, and soon I’m glad we didn’t lug the suitcase around the hill to start with.

For camping we are instructed to find a spot and huddle together so there is room for everyone. The land has been flattened in pockets up the hill. The spots are all pretty private, surrounded by trees, it’s insanely cute and I want to stay there forever.

We are first met with the sight of a bach with a huge deck, there is a large tent pitched beside it with a sign saying it’s the girls powder room “No Boys Allowed”. It makes me groan that some girls can’t go two days without needing a large mirror to apply their makeup, but then some girls are just like that.

Behind the house is huge marquee, with a stage for the bands, and behind that the hill extends upwards. When the owners bought the land 15 years ago they were told nothing would grow on it, that didn’t stop them from covering it in trees though. Now it’s the only place on the hill with bush land. It’s truly beautiful.

Night one

Alone in the tent, I’ve “showered” with baby wipes, I’ve got my bright pink PJ pants and the blow up bed makes sleeping in the bush more comfortable than I ever would’ve guessed. It’s 1.30am and I can hear people having fun to 60s music in the distance and crashing waves setting the scene. I’m warm, there’s fresh air all around and I’m reading Angels and Demons.

That was how night one of Super Summer Started ended for me. It’s been a fantastic day, starting at 9am from Wellington with my partner in crime and two mates and arriving at the beach just after 3pm. The next few hours were spent ferrying gear to our chosen campsite, drinking, and reacquainting ourselves with freedom. The water is just “warm” enough to paddle in. I’ve been trained in how to throw a frisbee properly by two Ultimate players but I still can’t do it very well. I can catch though :D

We enjoyed girls against boys soccer game for a short time, running on the beach uses a whole different set of leg muscles!

Dinner is green salad, potato salad, sausages and bread. By then we’re all starving and most are drunk. The sun goes down and a bright red full moon comes up. We drink to the moon.

Tonight is amateurs night in the marquee. The musicians are bloody fantastic and manage to get the crowd dancing and singing (when we know the words). The final act is Afternoon Raj, a Wellington five piece which have been on and off since 2005. They pull out three awesome originals and a fantastic cover of Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time. I really hope they carry on with the band because I can’t wait till they have their songs recorded and I can share them with you.

Night two

In preparation for the final night the tables were moved under the marquee for speeches and prize giving. Dinner was burgers with green salad and potato salad again. Making it two nights in a row of salad sandwiches and potatoes for dinner because I don’t eat meat. Thankfully breakfast and lunch was hot food; hashbrowns, eggs and english muffins (and bacon for the omnivores) at breakfast, and nachos at lunch. There were woodfired pizzas all through the afternoon too. I’m not exaggerating when I say these pizzas are the best I have ever had. So simple! Some mozzarella and herbs and hey presto, mouth orgasm. If you’re in Wellington look out for the guys with the portable woodfire oven, red base and white oveny bit. They’ll be starting up business soon.

My day had been spent reading in the tent amongst nature and listening to the boy spew about 7 times. He got so drunk on Friday night! After all the spewing and 4 naps he was becoming human again.

A waterslide was set up and we got to see a lot of guys blind themselves with detergent and scratch themselves up by sliding off the end onto the grass.
This video pretty much sums it up.

After dinner and speeches it was down to the beach for a bonfire and sparklers. I discovered our cameras fireworks settings for slow shutter speed just in time. By now the boy and I didn’t feel like drinking and went back to the tent for a 20 minute rest before the Thomas Oliver Band played. I should’ve realised that with the boy’s lingering hangover that we were never going to see the band. He was snoring a few minutes later, leaving me to lie awake another night with the bass pumping through the ground unable to sleep. Thankfully the bass was good.

Morning two – Final day

Sunday morning was pack up time. Traipsing the hills with rubbish bags collecting bottle and cans. The marquee now smells like a long established bar with the disgusting smell of warm spilt beer. Urgh.

Breakfast was quite late so we were starving by the time it was served at 11.30am. No one went hungry though with the mass piles of hashbrowns and bacon left over, people were either too hung over to leave their tents or had left early to go back home, perhaps trying to avoid the Toast Martinborough traffic down the road.

Thanks SO much to all of the organisers and especially to the Masons. It was so nice to see a large group of young people looking out for each other making it a fantastic and safe weekend despite all the booze and drugs :D

Looking forward to the next one already.

The rest of the photos and videos

I returned to work today after our weekend dash to Taupo which was full of cafe dining and sun. The trip was marred only by the fact I realised an hour and a half down the road the boy had not put my chargers, the laptop, or the toiletries bag in the car.

Before you get all “why didn’t you put it in yourself”, it’s because he was picking me up straight from work. The plan was to leave everything I wanted to take on the couch and he would put it all in the car when he came home to pick it up…but he didn’t. I made him buy me some tinted moisturiser, face wipes, deodorant, a new toothbrush and toothpaste and razors so I could cope.

While in Taupo I was given a manicure for a birthday present. It was my first ever manicure from a professional! Just a simple shape and polish but it was great. I chose the brightest pink nail polish in a shade by China Glaze called “Make An Entrance”. It’s super fast drying which is perfect for me.
I took some pictures but they all make the colour look red. The bottle gives you a pretty good idea of the true colour though :]

The rest of the time was spent shopping and eating. There are some fantastic cafes in Taupo, we went to Fine Fettle a couple of times and Replete and I’d recommend both to anyone in the area. Fine Fettle is especially good for anyone who doesn’t eat gluten.
We had a nice long soak in the Taupo DeBretts natural mineral water hot pools. The boy got to go sailing (I hate boats!) and then we drove home again.

And although Lotto jack potted again and I didn’t become a millionaire at least the weather was beautiful the whole time!

It may be the Gods or it may be that my partners cousin is one hell of a good guy and has managed to get our first two nights in the hotel as well instead of us having to stay at a mates house.

Due to the long weekend all of their Melbourne hotels are fully booked, so we got upgraded! We will now be staying in a premier one bedroom apartment, we just have to put up with the shower missing it’s screen until Monday. No problemo.

Thank you Mr Simon and Mr Andrew, you’re fantastic! xxoo

So, that’s me for just over a week. I’ll be back in Wellington on the 14th with lots of photos and hopefully lots of new clothes :]