Bolivia (Part Three)

Rurrenbaque

We arrived in Rurrenbaque after one of the most terrifying journeys of our life. We thought it was a bit of a tight squeeze riding our bikes down the World’s Most Dangerous Road – picture us on a bus! Especially one that REVERSED every time another bus headed in our direction! It was petrifying. But we made it in one piece and had to face the tough decision of picking a tour guide for our Amazon Pampas tour. It was tricky – every second store advertises ‘PAMPAS TOUR! ADVENTURE! LIONS TIGERS BEARS OH MY!’ so we based our decision on two things. 1) who gave us the best deal and 2) who flirted with us the most. The winner was Johnny, of Amazonico Tours. He told us (in hushed tones) that normally the tour cost 720 bolivianos, but he was going to give it to us for (shhh) 600! He pleaded with us to keep it quiet, he begged us not to tell the others how cheap we’d got it… But as soon as we got in the van, we found out EVERYONE had received Johnny’s ‘special’ price.

Pampa’s Tour Day #1

Our tour group consisted of Hayley, Nikola and myself, our English pal Jeni, a Welsh couple on their honeymoon, Lisa and Toby, and a small Israeli with an amusing accent named Eyal. We could never quite remember his name so he instead became Akmal, which he didn’t like because apparently Akmal is an Arab name and since he was from Israel… Still, the name stuck. We stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch of soup, rice and egg. Mmmmm we were spoiled, weren’t we? Anyway this place was like a zoo! First there was a litter of the sweetest little Labrador puppies that all had skin infections, but were still extremely lovable. Then we stumbled upon a cross-breed of a porcupine and a pig – it was definitely bovine, but it was covered in hundreds of little spikes. It also thought it was a dog and rolled on its back to receive a tummy scratch. Cute! THEN Nikola spotted a massive black chimpanzee dangling from the rafters above the kitchen, swooping down every five seconds to cheekily steal an olive. This caused mass excitement/ hysteria, especially when we noticed (forgive me for being crude) that he had a penne pasta noodle for a bumhole! I know that sounds odd but you know how most anal passages tend to be on the inside? This monkey’s was on the outside. And it really did look like a leftover from an Italian dinner. Anyway, we were all gagging because Pasta-Ass was sitting on the kitchen top from which our lunch had just been cooked, when he decided to come and check us out. Bounding towards us and causing me to smack my head on a bit of dangling meat in my haste to get away, he soon got caught up in a scuffle with the dog. Then he lay next to the porky-pig (get it?) and tried to have a cuddle. All the while there were birds of prey circling us and Blue Macaws pecking at our feet. We knew we needed to leave this crazy place. We all piled back into the jeep except Akmal, who came walking out 10 minutes later, grinning ear to ear, with the monkey in his arms! Lunatic.

An hour and a half later, we arrived at the boat docks where we were thrilled beyond belief to spot our first pink river dolphins. We only saw a fin here, a flash of pink there, but it was still so exciting. We were introduced to our tour guide Bizma, who quickly became known as Bizzle, Bizzy-Shizz, Bizmiester etc. We got into our little boat and made the two-hour journey to our camp. On the way, Bizzle pointed out all the wildlife and told us fun facts about the Pampas. It was so hot, such a change from La Paz. We saw turtles, about a hundred different species of birds and we were absolutely besieged with a group of yellow-armed monkeys. They were so cute, but I couldn’t appreciate them sitting on my head or lap because Biz had pulled out a box full of bananas. Now, for those who don’t know, I have a very special condition – I’m absolutely petrified of bananas. As a teen, I refused to apply for a job at Woolworths because I knew I’d have to scan through bananas at the checkout. If someone eats one within 10 yards of me, I fret that they will ask me to take the peel to the bin. In short, bananas are the undoing of me. So while I ADORED the monkeys, I still screamed like a banshee when they climbed all over me because it meant Biz had just placed a piece of banana on my hat. It got very embarrassing. People tend to regard my phobia as a joke or an overreaction and this time was no different. Biz continued to put bits of disgusting, mushy crap all over me until I ended up using my hysterical ‘I’M NOT FUCKING JOKING, GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME OR I’LL PUNCH YOU IN THE MOUTH!’ scream that makes me everyone a little awkward.

We arrived at camp and saw to our astonishment a massive black alligator sitting calmly on the shore outside our dining hall! Biz got angry at us because we all jumped out of the boat to take photos of the beast instead of helping him bring in the food crates. We got set up in our dorm, complete with inch-thick mosquito nets. The mozzies in the Pampas were RIDICULOUS! They became the main topic of conversation for the three days we were there, along with insect repellent, the pros and cons of using Deet (apparently it causes cancer) and how many bites we each had received that day. Poor Akmal was COVERED in mosquito bites. They loved him! At night, he’d shout from his bed, in his funny little cannot-pronounce-the-letter-H-accent, “Bah! I ‘ate zee mos-kee-toes! I ‘ATE ZEM!”
“You ATE the mosquitoes, Akmal?” we’d all ask him, sounding shocked.
“No, no, no! I ‘ATE zem! ‘Ate!”
“Yes, we know, you’re eating them. How do they taste?”
Mean! But luckily Akmal was a good sport. He muttered darkly that God was going to burn all our countries and everyone was friends again. Anyway, Hayley, Nikola and I all used the cancerous Deet so we were pretty well protected except for the bits that were exposed – our necks, hands, ankles and, thanks to that unavoidable task of going to the toilet, our bottoms. We all prayed we wouldn’t meet the man of our dreams once we were back in La Paz… how would we explain our pizza asses? We had a snack of cordial and popcorn before we set off to watch the sunset at a riverside bar. It was beautiful as we sipped our beers and watched the pinks and purples of the sky slowly fade. It finally got dark and we wanted to leave because Biz had promised us we would go crocodile hunting. However Biz was relaxing in a hammock with his friends and didn’t want to leave so we gave him the washing-machine treatment. It still didn’t work, causing Jeni to sigh, “aww Bizzle doesn’t give a shizzle”. Hah! Finally, after we were pretty much kicked out of the bar for being rowdy and causing damage to the hammocks, we went hunting for crocs! The mosquitoes were out in full and everyone was jealous of the mosquito net I had over my head, although they pretended I looked stupid. We all had torches and our job was to spy red eyes in the water. Suddenly, Biz threw himself bodily across the boat and snatched something out of the water… it was a baby alligator! We named him Chester and we all had a hold of him. I think it’s illegal to manhandle the wildlife but it was such an amazing experience holding a wild alligator!

Pampas Tour Day #2
We woke up at 7.30 the next morning and got dressed to go piranha fishing. It was a tricky business – we had to thread bits of meat (unpleasant) on our lines then dangle it tantalisingly into the water. I got my line caught in about 10 trees and Biz got angry at me again. We tried heaps of different spots of the river but didn’t get any action for hours. Finally Biz caught one! It was red and weird looking. Nikola posed with one for a photo and then tried to give it a drink of water before the rest of us had a hold but it wriggled out of her hands and swam away. We thought that was enough fishing and it started to rain so we headed back to camp for a siesta on the hammocks. We read our books with an alligator that had a missing foot (Biz told us he came out second in a fight, poor love) sitting five feet away from us. Biz kept approaching him and stroking him on the nose. Loco! Akmal entertained us by putting on Jeni’s pink raincoat and pretending to be one of the local dolphins when Biz suggested we go swimming with the real things! Yes please! We were a little concerned because the dolphins shared the river with alligators, piranhas and all other sorts of nightmarish stuff, but Biz assured us dolphins are the tough guys of the river and the other animals don’t go anywhere near them. OH MY GOD! It was actually the most amazing experience of my life. We all jumped out of our boat and waited nervously in the murky water then suddenly there were fins breaking the surface all around us. We all got to touch them – sometimes they swam underneath us and we would accidently kick them as we tread water and they would pay us back by flicking us with their tails. We got empty water bottles and the dolphins would poke at them curiously. It was a-maz-ing! Especially for Hayley – swimming with dolphins has been her dream ever since she was little, but she never wanted to go the SeaWorld route. To swim with them in the wild was just incredible. We went back to the camp absolutely GLOWING.

After dinner, on his suggestion, Hayley and I had story telling time with Akmal.
“You first,” he urged Hayley.
“Umm ok… today I swam with dolphins and it was the most amazing moment of my life.”
Then it was my turn.
“Errr… I am in love with Bolivia.”
“Ok, now my turn,” Akmal said excitedly, before lowering his voice and looking us seriously in the eyes. “When I was twenty-one years old, my name was Kamal Mohammad Shereef and I was a Muslim spy for the Israeli army.”
He went on to tell us how he spent his three-year army service, which all Israelis have to do after they leave school, planting bugs in the enemies houses, growing a beard and learning the Koran. He even recited a passage for us! It was actually really beautiful. Then he sang us the Israel national anthem before heading off to bed. Hayley and I went to sleep that night feeling our lives were extremely dull in comparison.

Pampas Tour Day #3
The next morning we were supposed to wake up early to see the sunrise, but it was raining so we had a sleep in instead. We wanted to go swimming with the dolphins again, but Biz (who we were steadily growing to hate due to his bad moods, B.O and sleazy behaviour) insisted we go snake hunting. Didn’t matter that they hadn’t seen an anything for eight weeks! We grudgingly put on our mis-matched and oversized gumboots, smothered ourselves in Deet and went to an island which should be named Denge Fever Land. The mosquitoes SWARMED! After that we got taken (against our will) to a tall-grassed area where Akmal, Tobi and Lisa went trudging through thigh-high mud looking for anacondas while the rest of us sulked in the boat. We didn’t give a shit about these non-existent snakes, we wanted DOLPHYS! They didn’t find anything, as we knew they wouldn’t, and then Biz got angry at us (again… were we paying him for this?) because we didn’t get out and help turn around the boat. Our logic was we hadn’t wanted to go there, it wasn’t OUR idea to be stuck in a bog so why should we help? But then, Tobi yelled at us.
“Aren’t we a group? I thought we were a team, but you guys are just sitting there doing fuck all!”
It was extremely embarrassing and we all sat in an ashamed silence on the way home. We had to beg Biz to take us to see the dolphins again. He only allowed it after we had apologised to him and Lisa and Tobi for not helping with the boat. Unfortunately the dolphins weren’t feeling to playful this time and we only saw a fin from far away. I blame Biz. He hated us so he made the dolphins hate us too. We left feeling quite down-hearted. In the jeep back to Rurrenbaque, we saw Casawarras, which looked like giant guinea pigs. They were so cute! We also saw a brown lump in a tree that Biz told us was a sloth but could’ve just been a bunch of coconuts. Biz then spent the entire car journey back ignoring us. At first we thought he had headphones on because we’d ask him questions and he just wouldn’t answer but then we figured out, no, he DIDN’T have headphones on, he was just ignoring us. What a grumpy A-hole! When we got back to town, we asked him to be in a group photo with us, but he said no and just stomped off. I really wanted to give him a bad report, which I had been threatening him with the whole trip, but unfortunately they didn’t make us fill in a satisfaction report. Damn! I love nothing better than a good complaint.

We had one more night in Rurrenbaque before getting the death-trap of a bus back to La Paz the next day. It was on this bus that The Most Traumatic Event of My Life occurred. I watched out the window as a man came hurrying towards the bus with the baby cow in his arms.
“Oh god,” I said to Nikola. “There is a cow coming on the bus!”
We already had a box full of puppies, a baby monkey and several fully-grown dogs. Sure, why not a cow? But then, to my horror, I saw the bus driver open the LUGGAGE COMPARTMENT AND PUT THE BABY COW IN THERE!!!! Flinging open the window, I shouted “NO! THAT’S ANIMAL ABUSE!” They ignored me and I spent the next two hours in hysterical tears, wincing every time our bus went over a pothole. It was boiling hot, that luggage compartment was full of unsecured, heavy objects and there would be absolutely no air down there. I have never been more furious in my life. I’m aware that South America is a poor continent, and cruelty to animals doesn’t really rate when compared to some of the hardships the people have to live through. But come on. A cow, a living, breathing baby cow, in a LUGGAGE COMPARTMENT!? There was enough room on the bus.

Bolivia (Part Two)

BOLIVIA!!

Hola mi amigos!
Let us pick up where we left off, shall we?

Sucre

We’d been wanting to do Spanish lessons pretty much from the moment we set foot in South America. If for nothing else, we wanted to avoid making the same perplexed face at people when they started rapid-firing Spanish at us. The tiny town of Sucre seemed like the perfect place. On our arrival, however, we were told that our reservation at our hostel had been screwed up and we now had to be in separate rooms. Normally that would suck and we’d deal with it, but we needed to be together so we could study.
‘That is unacceptable,’ I roared at the man who shrugged and said it wasn’t his problem. We tearfully demanded a refund on our deposit which he refused to do and then he goes ‘oh, there is a 3-bed room you can have’. Ummmm???? It ended up being an amazing room, but that man continued to baffle us for the week we were there. He’d always tell us one thing and then change his mind mid-sentence, without any obvious reason. So strange.
Anyway we ended up spending 90% of our time in that room. ALL WE DID WAS STUDY!!! We’d wake up at about 9am, study, have breakfast, study, go out for lunch (taking our books with us so we could quiz each other on verbs), study, go to class, study, have dinner and then update our vocab list before bed. Our profesóra Monica, a kind woman who always wore red, loaded us up with so much homework every class because she said we were such ‘muuuuy bien estudiantes’ (very good students). We, being the nerds we are, didn’t want to disappoint her and nearly killed ourselves in the effort. We ended up hating Monica, despite her kindness, just because of all the homework and we practiced our Spanish with sentences like ‘I do not like Monica’ and ‘my teacher is not very good’ (hey, we never said we were any good!)

La Paz

Where do I start with La Paz? It was basically just a cesspool of drinking, inappropriate behavior and an abundance of smelly chat. Nik and I especially out-did ourselves in the obnoxious mole department. But more on that later. We arrived in La Paz after a comfortable-but-oddly-sleepless night on the bus (perhaps it had to do with Nikola eating an apple in my face… core and all!). We were all feeling a bit stressy as we’d witnessed Nik and my bags being put on the bus but not Hez’s. Alas, when we collected them in La Paz, Hez’s was AWOL. Luckily, we found it… it had been put on another bus that was thankfully headed for La Paz as well! Naughty Bolivian bus system!
Anyway we got to our hostel, the wonderful Loki, and was thrilled to discover they had effed up our reservation and we were now in a private 3-bed dorm! We couldn’t check in right away so we decided to go for a stroll. It is a beautiful city in the way that those rolly dogs are beautiful… ugly, but utterly appealing. That night we got smashed on red wine (remember people, we hadn’t gotten drunk since Brazil!) and behaved appallingly (can’t say more than that as family members read this!)
The next night was pretty much a repeat except this time Nikola and I went out. Hez was supposed to come too, but at the last minute she peeped out from behind a pillar nervously and told us she didn’t want to. Uncool Hez! So Nik and I were let loose on the streets of La Paz and we ran an absolute muck! We bumped into a troop of policemen, attempted to steal their hats and chased them up the street yelling ‘WE LOVE POLICE’ in extremely poor Spanish. At first they were refusing to partake in our mischief, but by the end they all had their camera phones out and were taking photos of us sprawled all over them! Hilarious. We went to a bar after that and didn’t emerge until 9.30 the following morning.
We actually did cultural things as well (although it still involved drinking)… we saw a futball (soccer) game!! Bolivia v Argentina, the World Cup Qualifier! It was AMAZING!!! Everyone in our hostel drank together before. All the people who knew anything about soccer were going for Argentina. Accordingly, we went for Bolivia. And guess what? THEY WON! Not only that, they SMASHED THEM!!! Six points to one! Haha! Take that Argentina, you big thieving bullies! It was so funny though, because La Paz is at an altitude of 4200m, everytime Bolivia scored we’d all jump and down screaming for about two seconds before we’d get out of breath and have to sit down. It was especially bad for Nik, who after the game pretty much collapsed! Nothing a bottle of water and a KitKat couldn’t solve!
That night there was a trivia quiz on at the hostel to raise money for a local orphanage. Excitedly, we signed up. Oh dear. it was AWFUL! The questions may as well have been written by a three-year-old, the amount of sense they made. Most were about movies from the 70s that nobody had heard of or events that only caused a minor scandal in Bangladesh. We thought Nik the bartender, who was reading out the questions, was the one who had wrote them and we were heckling him pretty bad. However, it turned out to be the orphanage owner who wrote them and he read our answer sheet on which we had scribbled ‘THIS QUIZ IS SHIT!’. Whooooops!!!! Insulting an orphanage owner… that is a new low. Naughty girls.

WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS ROAD

No, the title does not lie. We really did ride down (on a mountain bike, no less) a road named most likely to kill you. I think 13 tourists have died doing it and thousands of Bolivians too. The number of crosses on the track were ridiculous. Basically, its just a narrow, bumpy dirt track perched on the edge of thousand foot drops. So scary. But the worst part was the pain! Have you ever clung for dear life onto bike handles for five hours? Have you? Give it a go. Our hands were BRUISED at the end. So sore. In our group we had four Israeli girls who made it pretty clear they had no desire whatsoever to befriend us. We’d ask them questions and get a sullen ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and then they’d just speak to each other in Hebrew. It was so annoying. They were also ridiculously slow going down the hill so we ended up being the last group to finish the track. The other groups were psycho though, so its maybe it was a good thing. They were all yahooing (grandma-sounding word but that’s exactly what they were doing) down the hill, being so reckless and nearly side-swiping me! I was nearly in tears.

We went to the Amazon jungle and did the pampas tour after this, but that will be a long article so I’ll put that in the next one!

Adios! xxxx

Bolivia – snow, salt and hot springs

ARGENTINA (AGAIN)

To get from Brazil to Bolivia, we first had to venture back into rob-tastic Argentina (plus we wanted to see the pretty waterfalls of Iguazu Falls). It was a sleepy week and half… Hez, Nik, Ty and I ALL got sick at some stage so a lot of time was spent sleeping, weakly requesting glasses of OJ and putting damp towels over our inflamed foreheads. But we survived and saw the absolutely MAGNIFICENT falls… I’m not one to throw about words like `magnificent´ but it really calls for it here. They were enormous and so powerful. We also encountered a rare little animal that looked like a cross-breed of a racoon and an anteater. It was very alarming when 20 of them came galloping towards us first thing in the morning, however, by the end of the day we saw them so often we were shooing them away like mosquitos.

BOLIVIAAAAAAAA!!

I hope the dragging of the letter `A´ conveys just how in love we are with the beautiful little country of Bolivia. I´m going to put it out there… it is the best country in the world! Ooooh bold claim, I know, but there you go. We saw and did so much that its going to be tricky fitting it all in here (there might have to be a sequel people! You’ve been warned!)

Tupiza

At the border crossing into Bolivia, we realised we didn’t have any money so we asked these two Canadian girls to borrow 20 bolivianos (about $5 aus) for a cab, which turned out to be a monumental mistake as we then had to spend the next week with two of the most boring girls in the world. Their names were Tammy and Tina and if I never see them again, that would be lovely. Anyway we caught a train to Tupiza, a small little village that remarkably resembles the wild, wild west… red desert, cactuses (or is it cacti?) and men who tip their hats at you in the street. We relunctantly followed the awful TammyTinas to our hotel (we had already booked) where we were roped into doing a four-day tour of Tupiza to Uyuni with them. NOOOO!!!! We didn’t know how to politely say ‘no, we dont want to do the tour with you as your actually the most boring people on the planet’, so instead we just meekly said ’sure! that sounds great!’

The next day we went horse riding!!! It was sooo much fun! In line with tradition of me getting the faulty forms of transport, my horse was, of course, the naughty one, constantly swerving off the track to eat shrubs and nipping the other horses who tried to pass him. Hayley’s horse was a fat lady horse named Sewa who had a severe case of wind. Nikola took to horse riding like a fish to water. She was always the one up front, her feet nearly touching the ground (for some reason they gave the smallest horse to the tallest person???). TammyTina tagged along as well, but it was worth it when Tammy’s horse broke into a gallop and she fell off, hahahaha! At one point the horses had to cross a river and my horse did a jump over it!! Sooo exciting! By the end Hez, Nik and I were letting out yee-ha’s and making our horses canter every 5 seconds. TammyTina got off their horses and were like ‘well, that was o-kaaay I guess’.

Tupiza to Uyuni Tour – Day One

Bright and early the next morning, we got all rugged up and loaded our packs on top of our jeep. We were introduced to our driver/guide Alberto, who didn’t speak a word of English and our chef, whose name we all forgot so she became simply known as ‘chef’. We spent the morning driving up mountains, spying goats and llamas and the most beautiful views. We chewed coca leaves to help with the altitude sickness ,which made our mouths numb (not surprising considering it is the stuff they use to make cocaine). It tasted a little like chewing grass, but it definitely worked. We stopped for lunch in some old ruins, but it was too cold so we just ate our sandwiches in the car and oooh-ed and ahhh-ed from the safety of behind the window. After lunch we went to an indigenous village where they didn’t even speak Spanish, but a native language calld Quechua. We attracted mucho staring, especially from the children who peeked shyly around every corner. One brave soul (who we’re fairly sure was retarded) came bounding up to us and stood so close to our faces; it was soo hard not to laugh. Hayley gave him her lolly wrapper, which he seemed to treasure as much as if we’d given him a 100 dollars. We saw him showing his friends it as we drove off. Later we arrived at our sleeping quarters, which were absolutely horrifying but hilarious. A cluster of small, thatched huts with cement slabs as beds and dirt floors. Then, to make matters more extreme, it started SNOWING!!! We were sooo excited. All the other people in tour groups (mainly a collection of Brits, Canadians and Scandinavians) all looked at us like we were crazy as Hez, Nik and I pressed our noses against the chilled window and squealed with delight at the sight of white. I wasn’t so cheerful later when I had to sleep next to Hayley, the human vibrator. It was absolutely freezing!!

Tupiza to Uyuni Tour – Day Two

It felt like we’d barely shut our eyes when Alberto was rapping on our door shouting “amigas! amigas! vamos!” It was actually painful getting out of bed and getting ready. It was 5am, pitch black and still snowing. We were heaving and puffing just from putting pants on… we were at an altitude of 4200m above sea level, which makes even the most mundane things seem like a marathon. I actually witnessed Hayley red-faced and trembling in the arms as she tried to put her hair in a ponytail. It was worth all the pain though when we got to see the sun rise over a beautiful snow covered scenary! It was glorious! We drove for ages, Nik, Hez and me chatting the whole way, probably annoying the Canadians, but not giving a shit. They were probably too busy air-guitaring in the back seat anyway… they were both really into “mental, man”. We stopped at Laguna Celeste where we saw flamingos!! They were a bit far away, but so amazing. I find it really weird that flamingos live there, where it is sooo cold. I always imagined them to be tropical creatures. We saw heaps of other lakes, lagoons and gorgeous scenary that day. At lunch we stopped at a hot springs! It was pretty rock bottom putting our dry, white and hairy bodies back into bikinis but the hot springs were sooo nice. One guy nearly fainted though from the heat at such an altitude. We befriended four Scandinavians that day. There names were Pear, Jacob, Hega and Kristy (at least, this was the nearest we could get to the hocking sounds they were making when introducing themselves!). Our last stop for the day was at the Geisers Sol de Manaña, these amazing geysers that come from a volcano. They looked like big, bubbly vats of mud and emitted an eggy-fart smell that had Hez, Nik and me running back to the car, scarves over faces. We got to new place, which was a slight improvement from last nights accomodation but still had no heaters or showers.

Tupiza to Uyuni Tour – Day Three

The next morning we actually got a sleep in – 7am!!! Our first stop was Laguna Colorada, which is normally a deep shade of red but was actually the colour of dried blood when we saw it, as it was too early in the morning. Next we went to the Valley of the Rocks, which is all these weird rock formations, including one shaped like a tree. They were awesome. We spent the rest of the day driving through the desert. We even saw some mirages! We thought we were looking at big lakes, but it was really just the naughty desert playing tricks on us! We went to a few more lagoons, which were beautiful and we pretended to be flamingos which was fun. We had another delish lunch then set off to see a real live volcano!! Now, when I heard this was next on the itinerary, I imagined we’d be side-stepping lava, dodging magma and fogging up in the sunnies from all the steam. Really we just parked at a random spot and Alberto pointed into the distance at a thin flume of smoke travelling gently into the sky. I was a little disappointed, to be perfectly honest. We took a couple of photos then just sat on a rock and bitched about TammyTina. Tina is a siliac, which means she can’t eat wheat and no matter how hard poor Chef tried to accomodate her plus two vegetarians, Tina would shriek “DOES THIS HAVE TRIGO (spanish word for `wheat´) IN IT??? NO TRIGO, NO TRIGO!!!” That was seriously all she said for those four days “no triiiigoooo”. We wanted to punch her. Anyway my disappointment at not being Volcano Joe was short lived when we kept driving and saw… a TORNADO!!! It was only small, but still! We were so close to it too. Alberto was just like “oh yeah, a tornado”, but we were all going wild! I felt like Helen Hunt in `Twister´!! We had a baño (toilet… see everyone, you’re getting a blog AND an education!) break in a small town where I befriended a little boy named Horsey. He challenged me by counting one to ten in English and I reciprocated by counting in Spanish and from then on, we became firm friends. As we were driving away he chased after our car, trying to give me a wet bar of soap! It’s the thought that counts, Horsey. We finally got to our last resting place, a `hotel´ made entirely out of salt where we got to have our first shower in 60 hours! We had an absolutely outstanding dinner that night, Chef really outdid herself. Vegetarian pasta PLUS soup! We applauded her and shouted “múy bien!!” as she blushingly cleared the table. We played cards with the Scandys for a while before rugging up in our sleeping bags and going outside to look at the stars. There were sooo many of them!! I think it’s because we were closer to them then usual they looked so amazing. It was freezing though so Hez and I went back inside, which I later regretted because the Scandys gave Nik an impromtu performance of a typical Norwegian dance. Apparently there was lots of kicking involved. I was very jelly.

Tupiza to Uyuni Tour – Day Four

We were woken up at 5am again, this time so we could go watch the sun rise over the salt flats. It was sooo glorious and we took the BEST photos. We had breakfast at the Isle del Pescado which was this weird island in the middle of the salt flats, absolutely COVERED in cacti. They were massive and we read that they only grow of a rate of 1cm per year! Some of them were over 10m tall! Prehistoric! We spent pretty much the entire morning taking awesome photos on the salt flats, which create an illusion that things are smaller the further back you go (see Hayley’s photos for further details). We finished off the tour in the town of Uyuni where we visited a train graveyard. Bit of an anti-climax to what was the most amazing four days EVER! We gave Alberto and Chef tips and said farewell and good ridance to TammyTina as we set off to a town called Sucre. TO BE CONTINUED….

Brazil – partay time!

We were a little apprehensive about going to South America´s biggest and badest country. For one, we had sort of picked up a little Español and didn’t like the idea of going to Brazil, where they speak Portuguese, and forgetting it all. And two, we were scared! If Argentina could be so unkind to us, what would Brazil do? Luckily we had our strapping solider Ty with us so no Brazilian robbers could touch us!

Florianopolis – CARNAVAL!!!

When we tell people we were in Brazil for Carnaval, everyone assumes we were in Rio. Unfortunately we’re not made of money and therefore chose Florianopolis to celebrate (although this turned out to be just as expensive!) We had a few dramas on arrival… our bus was three hours late, causing us to wait in the middle of a road until 11pm, with all the lights going out and hooded-up cars cutting laps around us. Then, once we arrived in Florianopolis, Ty, Hayley and I got into a taxi that dropped us off 30 minutes away from our actual hostel, forcing us to catch a local bus with two surfboards, our 20kg backpacks and all our prized possessions. We finally got to our hostel and found Nikola hyperventilating, imaging that we had been gang raped by our driver. We were shown to our room, which was at the bottom of 150 steps (by rough count) and was unfortunately located right outside the sewage tank. The room smelt (as Ty put it) “like someone did a shit in a wet sock and the reason that sock was wet was someone pissed on it first”. It was so unfair, the rest of the hostel was absolutely beautiful – sweeping views of the lagoon, verandas, hammocks, fire places… ours was the most cramped little box that we had to share with two 30-year-old Australians (one of whom may have had a bed-wetting problem… this would also explain the piss-smell), a Dutch man who just sat and stared at everyone and never said a word, and a creepy Frenchman who, when asked what his favourite sport was, replied “love making, of course”.

Carnaval wasn´t quite the ‘large-bottomed woman wearing a dental floss bikini makes out with 7ft drag queen on a pink frothy float surrounded by bubbles’ affair we’d all expected (or perhaps we were imagining Mardi Gras?) It was a fun, alcohol-filled week, but a week we could’ve had any other time of the year for half the price.

Paraty

Paraty is a quaint, cobblestoned little village on the coast of Brazil where we discovered one of the best meals, the nicest hostel owners and the cutest little girl in South America. It was absolutely POURING when we got to Paraty and Ty had to run around looking for a hostel because Hayley, Nik and I were all too afraid to ruin our hair. Just joking… we had long given up on attempting to look presentable. We found one, run by the friendliest couple in the world. The man was an eager little soul, scrambling around recommending us restaurants and scrawling frantic maps. The woman sang ‘my name is Luka!’ and giggled like a hyena at her poor English skills. They were delightful. We had a magnificent seafood dinner, but we were less than impressed when we were charged 20 Real ($12!!!) for the shitty musician warbling away in the corner who we weren’t even listening to. The next day we went for a walk to the beach and were thrilled to stumble upon Hannah and Helen! We agreed to meet them later at the beach, but on arrival found the poo-brown water (remnants of last night’s storm) less than inviting so we settled on an outdoor shower instead. There we met an extremely over-confident 8-year-old who wore the typical Brazilian bikini and shook her ass underneath the shower like she was Beyonce! So funny!

Trindade

Or should it be called Sweatsville? This tiny little coastal town sent our glands into such an overdrive, we were forced to forget our sense of modesty and propriety and sleep nakey covered in wet sarongs. It might have simply been our crack den of an apartment that caused such sweltering (and my god, was it a crack den!). On our first night, we spotted a rat scurrying across our bedroom, dodging all of Nikola´s stuff that managed to cover the floor within minutes of our arrival, before disappearing underneath the stove. We thought that was the last of him until our second night when we woke up to Nikola’s 100 decibel shriek and her flying leap on top of Hayley (who was on the top bunk… really quite an impressive feat). Apparently, Ratus the Rat had decided to take a night trip on top of Nik and Ty´s bed head! We were all pretty freaked out after that, especially Nik who was sobbing hysterically and organising rosters for guard duty.

The next night, we were enjoying our typical Brazilian dinner of beans, fish and rice when a dog came up to us. Now, Ty simply cannot leave South American dogs alone, no matter how tatty they are. He calls them all `Chico´ followed by a description of the dog in question. For example, if a dog has quite a lot of hair, Ty will say, “awww Chico…. fluffy Chico.” Anyway, this night was no different. Ty noted the dog´s appearance, commented on it and then fed her his leftovers. Within minutes, we were surrounded by strays. ‘Oh dear,’ we thought. ‘The dogs must have heard we were giving out scraps.’ But no, these dogs had other things on their mind. Apparently Ty´s Chico was quite the desirable creature and she was soon surrounded by dogs trying to mount her.
“Awww Chicos!” Ty said. “Toey Chicos!”

Illha Grande

Illha Grande, literally means `Big Island´ and therefore we had to get a boat to reach it. We´d heard that we would have to catch a ferry so imagine our surprise when a glorious yacht turns up and toots for us to get on! We spread out like kings in the middle of the boat, ignoring the grumblings of all the other passengers who had to sit on the boat´s edge, and had a lovely couple of hours reading and relaxing. When we got to the island it was getting dark, but you could still make out the absolute BEAUTY of it. It was also boiling hot so we thought we’d take a midnight swim amongst the boats. Ty (who has worked on boats in the past) told us how boats often dump their waste when they dock so we were a bit worried we were swimming amongst feces and oil, but the water was so nice and cool we chanced it. After a delicious pay-by-the-kilo dinner (very dangerous for big boys like us) we purchased liquor from a small bottle shop and had a sing-a-long with at our hostel. This turned into quite a party, leading to Nik and I getting rather rowdy and knocking off the curtain rod, waking an entire roomful of people. Whoops. We were sooo hung-over the next day. Like white-face, vomit-burp, mascara-down-to-the-chin hung-over yet Ty still forced us to get out of bed and go to the beach. This would’ve been fine except to get to said beach required a 20 minute climb through the sweltering Brazilian jungle. Not cool.

Rio!!!!

We were getting settled in our dorm, on our first day in Rio, when a New Zealand couple named Emma and Ash walked in and immediately pointed to a bed in the corner.
“Which one of you is sleeping there?”
Of course, it was me. “Why?” I asked nervously.
“Oh, the guy in the bunk underneath you just has rampant sex with one of the hostel workers every night,” they said. EFFING TYPICAL!!! The next morning, true to form, I was awoken with sea-sickness as my bed swayed back and forth repeatedly for three hours. I swapped bunks immediately.

Anyway, on our first night we had a dorm party as this was the only place with air-con and we were all dying! It ended up getting quite rowdy. Ty, who is normally quite composed, even when drunk, was an absolute mess! He kicked Emma in the head, then spilt his beer on her, then knocked the communal alcohol over and then ended up at the bar in his trunks and a shower cap.

The following day we signed up to attend a real live football game at the famous Maracana Stadium… oh dear. It seems we missed out on football season and instead paid full price to see a bunch of teenagers kick around a ball in an absolutely dead stadium. We were so disappointed. No dead chickens being thrown? No bottles of piss? No gun shots or brawls?
The next day we went to Copacabana Beach (que Barry Manilow) which was cool but so ridiculously hot (have I stressed enough people, just how HOT Brazil was?) They had to have sprinklers on the beach so people could walk to the water. Even in thongs, your feet still burned. We could only last an hour which was fine because to be honest the sellers were a nightmare. “AGUA!COCACOLA!CERVEJA!” “AGUA!COCACOLA!CERVEJA!” (Water! Coke! Beer!) over and over again. Some turned it into a song and danced up and down the beach while others shouted it angrily at us as they stormed past. That afternoon we did a city tour of Rio, visiting Christ the Redeemer (the giant statue of Jesus), the Maracana, the Catedral, a beautiful stain-glassed cathedral and finally the Lapa Steps, made famous by Snoop Dog.
That night we had a BBQ at the hostel and were entered in a raffle for a free boat trip! Ty, throwing his ticket on the table, said “I never win these things” and left. Surprise, surprise, he won! Nikola had to accept his prize and was also forced to do a local dance, the Capawara. It was HILARIOUS!! Luckily she’d had two glasses of wine. She was cart-wheeling all over the place, kicking her legs over a man´s head, rolling on the ground like a worm. It was outstanding. We went out in Lapa that night, a notoriously dangerous but awesome place where all the Rio-ians go out. However, after one of our group was busted by the police with naughties in his pocket, then robbed by the same police of $150, we thought it was time to bail.

SIDE NOTE – Nikola had an interesting insight during our time in Rio which I thought I´d share with you all. When you go travelling as a young lad, all you basically do is get drunk, party, sleep around, lay on a beach all day and spend a shitload of money yet everyone thinks travelling is such a commendable thing. Parents proudly tell everyone in ear shot, “oh yes, my child is currently travelling in Brazil”, but if you acted at home the way you do overseas your parents would disown you!

Finally, on our last day in Rio, we went on a boat trip with pretty much everyone from our hostel. It was so much fun! The caprihinas (the national Brazilian beverage) were FREE, FREE, FREE so therefore everyone was PISSED, PISSED, PISSED! That, combined with a slippery deck, plus extremely rocky waves meant that by the end of the trip we had one girl with a broken hand, a boy who required stitches in his shin and everyone else covered head to toe in Caprihina. I myself sloshed my entire drink in both my eyes after a particularly rough wave.

Uruguay – sleazy men, cute Cappy and another year goes by

URUGUAY

Uruguay was like a breath of fresh air after being in frightening Argentina. Yes, I must admit, it took a while to get used to bringing out the camera again. But with the help of some new friends and the surprise arrival of some old ones, we managed to get our groove back.

Our journey into South America´s often-forgotten little country didn’t exactly start off smoothly. In booking the tickets online, we were under the impression you were only allowed to book one seat at a time, because every time we went to select ‘number of passengers’ it would only allow one. `That’s fine,´ we thought, and booked Hayley her ticket first. We went back to do mine and discovered that there were no tourist seats left! Hayley got the last one! So we really had no choice but to book me a first class seat! Hah! So while I sipped champagne and spread out on my recliner, Hayley slummed it down in steerage, amidst crying babies and bleating goats (or so I liked to imagine).

Montevideo

Uruguay’s capital city couldn’t exactly be put on the World´s Most Outrageous Cities list. It’s nice, it’s attractive and the people are friendly (even if they do act like they´re all on Xanax) but it was a bit boring, to be honest. We had to spend a couple of days there as we had applied for our Brazilian visas and we didn’t really do much. On the first night though, we met Hannah and Helen, two lovely British girls who we ended up travelling with for the next two weeks. We went out to dinner with them the first night, which was interesting to say the least. Thinking they would be good, all three H´s decided to order a salad while I (big boy) got a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. First of all, my sandwich came out with ham in it (I’m one of those awful vegetarians) and again being a big boy, I eagerly devoured it and didn’t realise until the pig was already halfway down my esophagus. Then the salads came out. Oh dear… it looked like something you’d give your fussy three-year-old. Square chunks of cheddar cheese in one corner, tinned corn in the other, two boiled eggs cut up into easy-bite-size pieces and two chunks of tomato to finish. Not a leafy green in sight! It would´ve been horrifying if it wasn’t so funny. The next night, H3 and I got onto the wines and hung out in the hostel’s ‘chill out zone’, which was really just a bright orange room with a couple of mismatched sofas and a guitar. I ended up having a fight with a repulsive Canadian man who will appear many times throughout future blogs as we just couldn’t seem to shake him! Him and his Johnny-Depp-lookalike friend who Helen was in love with. He was the world’s biggest dickhead and we met other travellers along the way who have met him and hate him! He’s famous across South America as being ‘that bleached-haired Canadian git’! That night I had the fight with him because he told me that every night, before he goes to bed, he hugs himself and says “I get to go to bed with ME!”
And he wasn’t joking either.

La Pedrera

H2 had discovered a little beach town further along Uruguay’s coast so we decided to meet them there. It was such a cool town, so chilled out and relaxed. Lots of hippies openly smoking bongs, bonfires every night and delicious shirtless surfers… Dreamy!
One of the nights we were drinking at the hostel and a girl came home with a little kitten in her arms! Somehow Hayley, Helen, Hannah and I became its mothers. We named him Capsicum. The reason behind this choice was that H2 were going to Australia and we had been educating them on word-differences between our two great countries. They had never heard of a ‘capsicum’ so we explained they were what they call `peppers´. Anyway Helen, Hannah and I decided we wanted to go to this party at the local reggae bar. Hayley was feeling tired so she went to bed while the three of us went out. We tried to leave Cappy at the hostel but the little lamb didn’t want us to go and followed us down the street, meowing pitifully. Who could resist? I ended up just picking him up and taking him with us to the bar. It was so funny. If I brought a cat to a bar in Australia, I would be escorted off the premises. In Uruguay, all the bar staff patted him and asked for holds. It ended up being a really fun night, we sat around a big bonfire drinking beer and chatting to locals. I got stuck talking to a total geezer though. He kept saying things like, “we are all walking pieces of art, our movements embody a spiritual beauty that blah blah blah…” At one point he started rhythmically beating the air because he “felt the vibrations of life drumming his soul”. It was the most awkward half an hour ever. Cappy was long asleep in my jumper by the time we got home at 5am and it was heartbreaking to say goodbye to him. He meowed at our window for about an hour.

The next day, the four of us went for a walk around town as we were all very sunburnt and couldn’t really go to the beach. As we were walking home, we heard a loud, “HAYLEY SPURGIN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!???” Who should walk towards us, but Nikola and Ty!!!! It was so exciting! Hayley and I screamed like banshees and jumped all over them, probably a bit inconsiderately as they were still loaded up with all their stuff. We weren’t supposed to meet them until the next town but they caught the boat from Buenos Aires early to surprise us! It was thrilling! We went out for dinner to catch up and then all of us got absolutely bollocksed (British word we´ve picked up) around the campfire with some very creepy locals. One of them was the biggest sleaze ever! He force-fed Ty and Nikola meat, then tried to steal our wine, then touched all our legs inappropriately and then vomited everywhere. Hideous. Hannah had a headache so she went to bed, but Helen hung out, earning herself the title of the World´s Most Clumsiest Woman. In the space of an hour, she had knocked over every single person’s drink… twice! The poor lamb. I love hanging out with her though because she makes me look coordinated!

Punta Del Diablo

We spent the first night in the lovely Punta Del Diablo at a hostel, which was a cramped little sweat box, but had the redeeming feature of a dog who had just had puppies! Oh, they were so sweet! We all named them. They were Empanada, Patricia (after a local beer), Chicco and Fat Whinger. We loved them, but wanted to get our own bungalow so we moved out (but still visited the babies often). The next morning, we moved into our beloved bungalow, a yellow two-storey house with ocean views, a hammock and our very own empanada (a South American pastry snack for which the puppy was named) shack next door. We even had our own two dogs, although none of us wanted to touch them. One of them was a big black and white mutt with a red eye and permanent lipstick while the other was coined `Falling Apart Dog´ due to its nipples grazing the ground and its various skin diseases. Hayley was getting angry at all of us for being mean to them, but she couldn’t look at them either. Still, our bungalow was the best! Nikola and Ty got the parents room, while H3 and I had the kid’s room upstairs. Ty was initially a bit concerned about sharing a house with five girls but we convinced him he would grow to love it. That night we had a housewarming party where we played Four Kings and got ridiculously drunk. Nikola and I ended up dancing on the couches so we all knew it was time to head out. Unfortunately, Uruguay doesn’t seem to follow Argentina´s rule of ‘the later the better’. We walked out into a ghost town (it WAS 4am I suppose). On the way home from that disappointing outing, we stopped at a supermarket where I flirted outrageously with the 60-year-old owner and his 15 year-old grandson, calling them `bellisimo hombres´ (“beautiful men”… oh the shame!)

The Toilet Incident

The next day, there was a bit of a situation with the toilets. Now, in South America, it is practice to not flush toilet paper, but instead put it in a stinky bin next to the toilet. It’s disgusting, but you get used to it. Anyway, Nikola wasn’t quite used to this custom yet and flushed, causing a blockage in the pipes and a regurgitation of all that mornings… erm… deposits. It was sooo disgusting and we couldn’t find our landlord to come and fix it. It was especially hard for Ty, who previously chose to believe that girls didn’t go to the toilet. I like to think we educated him well that morning. Anyway Helen, the trooper, decided enough was enough and took matters into her own hands. While the rest of us dry retched in the lounge room, Helen got the fire poker and used it has a stick to try and clear the pipes. What would we do without her?

Hez´s 23rd Birthday

While in Punta Del Diablo, Hayley celebrated (well, commiserated really) her 23rd birthday. We woke her up in the morning with a handmade, shitty card, two flowers, a fruit salad for breakfast and the promise that as soon as she finds something she likes, she can buy it. Slack, yes, but Hayley is more a buy-my-own-presents kind of girl. Plus Diablo didn’t really have anything great to buy. She seemed happy though. That night we had another party, this time a themed one. Well, sort of. We were trying to think of different themes but it’s quite difficult while travelling (you just don’t think to pack your Wonder Woman costume!) So we settled on all wearing black, Hayley’s favourite colour. It was such a nice night; we all sat outside and had dinner of wine, beer, Lays chips and nibbles. Hayley’s birthday cake was a cracker with cheese as the icing and a cigarette as the candle. She seemed satisfied. We decided to play drinking games. I suggested `Celebrity Heads´ which everyone said would be crap, but ended up being so much fun. Very upsetting though when my clue was `he´s very similar to you´ and it ended up being Shane Warne! Nik and Ty stayed at home while H3 and I went out to a party in town. I befriended a table full of locals who called me a `retardo´ because my Spanish is so shit (I understood that word though!) while Hayley, Hannah and Helen got stuck talking to a sleazy American. Helen ended up staying back at the party while we went home but not before we threatened the boy she was with.
“If you robado her, we kill you” we told him while he looked nervous. The next day H2 left for Brazil and the four of us just nursed our filthy hangovers.

Argentina – land of the flying ice cream

ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires

I’m assuming you’ve heard this story by now – we told EVERYONE we met this story, friends, taxi drivers, the lady selling fruit on the street. But if you haven’t heard it, or you didn’t see it on the news (because yes, it made headlines) this is the story of how Hayley and I were robbed, not once but twice in our first week in South America. I hope you won’t leave feeling bitter about Argentina – despite the effed up things that happened, we still fell in love Argentina (especially the people… the most beautiful race in the world? I think so…)

Robbery #1

The first robbery occurred on our very first day in South America. Well, technically, it was our second day but considering we arrived late in the afternoon and fell asleep at 6pm the day before, we counted this day as our first. We had moved to a new hostel, the most wonderful hostel in the world, The Clan. Unfortunately we couldn’t check in until 1pm, so we decided to leave our big backpacks there and go to the Brazilian embassy in the meantime, to get our visas.

This was unsuccessful however so we returned to our hostel. On the walk back (please, everyone remember this was our FIRST day and that was why we were such gullible fools) we felt something wet hit us on our backs. We turned around and there was something like chewed up ice-cream cone all over our hair, necks, clothes and backpacks. Behind us were two young local girls, about 20 years old. They looked normal, were well-dressed (well, as well-dressed as Argentinean girls can be… the fashion there is hideous!) and they were about 5ft tall. Hardly dangerous looking human beings! Anyway, one of them had this mushy stuff on her face as well and they were both pointing upwards towards a balcony and basically insinuating (we couldn’t understand a word they were saying as it was in rapid Spanish but we got the gist) that someone up there had just chucked this stuff on us. They beckoned us to come underneath the balcony where they were pulling out tissues from their pockets. They started wiping at our hair, our shirts, all the while distracting us by speaking in Spanish, even though we clearly couldn´t understand them. One of them went round behind me and started ‘cleaning’ my backpack which copped the most amount of mush. I feel so stupid now thinking about it but it was really confusing what was going on, especially with the other one talking and touching my hair. Anyway, the little c-bombs then gave us a kiss on the cheek, we thanked them profusely for all their ‘help’ and we walked away. We were so flabbergasted over what happened that we walked too far, past our hostel so we turned around and saw the girls again. We didn’t think anything at the time (having not realised what happened) but they ducked their heads when we walked back past them and sped up their walk.

The next morning I woke up to discover my passport, my credit cards, my flight tickets, my bus tickets, every single form of I.D. I owned, all stolen out of my backpack. We figured out pretty quickly what must have happened and I burst into tears and didn’t stop crying for the rest of the day. I went to the tourist police where they didn’t speak a word of English. I had to wait three hours while they got a translator in. She translated my sob story for the police, only for them to go, “oh yes, the ice-cream scam, we know all about that!” Apparently it’s common!

We had many things to organise so luckily I’m travelling with Miss Organisation 2009. Hayley cancelled all my credit cards, rang the Australian embassy and generally got proactive while I wept in the corner, feeling like I’d never be able to trust anyone again. We went to the Australian embassy where a heavily pigmented but very kind woman issued me a temporary passport. I had the ugliest passport photo alive taken and off we went.

The Clan

We were so lucky that our hostel was amazing otherwise I think we would’ve just curled up into little balls and never left our room. By dinner time that night, everyone knew about what had happened to us and made it their mission for Hayley and me to forget all about it. We got onto the vino (our first in two months… Asia was lacking in the wine department) and we all went out dancing at a club called Crobar. In traditional Argentinean fashion (although we hadn’t realised it yet), dinner wasn’t until 10pm so we didn’t go out until about 2am and got home at 6am the next morning. This behaviour pretty much continued all week. Our days were spent organising my life, our nights spent drinking and being boisterous with our hostel friends.

Robbery #2

 

Our friends Kelly and Anna were going to Mendoza, a little wine village on the other side of Argentina. We decided last minute to join them, thinking we would like a nice little break from all the going-ons in BA. Twenty-four hours later, we were in Mendoza. Kelly got food poisoning after some dodgy ham sandwiches on the bus so we put her to bed and Hayley, Anna and I set off to explore Mendoza. We read about this big beautiful tourist park that had a zoo and, after reassurances from our overweight, car-salesmen-style hostel manager that the park was “very safe”, we set out for it. We had taken three photos when suddenly a man stepped out of the bushes in front of us. He had a gun. Pointing it at us, he instructed that we hand over our bags, cameras, everything. Not believing our luck, we did. He got US$50 and a brand new camera off Anna and he took Hayley’s entire bag which had her camera, phone and all our other nick-nacky things that he would have no use for but which we loved. Like our Spanish phrasebook, our paw-paw, our flashlight etc. We tearfully asked him if we could please have our memory cards out of our cameras back. He obliged, sweating bullets and shaking like a gum tree. I think he was more scared then we were. Then, once we were all set, he actually thanked us (he had manners, at least) and ran away. Hayley and I were about to have a nervous breakdown when a police car drove past us, less than three minutes after this all happened. We got in the car and they drove us all around the park, looking for the guy. It was ridiculous, we drove about two streets away and we were in the slums… how on earth could that be considered safe? Why would a tourist park back onto a place where Mendoza’s most desperate people live? It doesn’t make sense to me. Anyway they couldn’t find him so we drove back to the police station, filled in yet another police report and then were driven home by a lovely policeman who stopped at a grocery shop on the way because we were hungry. We seriously couldn’t believe it happened twice to us… in one week!! We are seriously the most unlucky travelers in history.
The next day we had journalists knocking on our hostel, begging us to be interviewed. We said no at first… we didn’t want to be on Argentinean TV! But they made us feel guilty saying it would help Argentina if more awareness was brought to the subject. So we were interviewed (I was elected the main speaker) and we were on the Mendoza news that day. We missed it, as we were out at the vineyards but our hostel manager (who featured in the news clip as well, explaining how he TOLD us it was dangerous, he WARNED us… what a wanker!) told us we looked good. Later I got an email from a boy I met in Buenos Aires, saying he had just saw me on BA news!! It made national news! We were famous!

Mendoza

So that was our first day in Mendoza. Again, we decided to drown our sorrows by going on a vineyard tour and getting lovely and drunk. Our group of about seven all hired bikes and we rode around all day in blistering heat to the various vineyards Mendoza had to offer. It wasn’t quite the picturesque-Tuscany-in-the-springtime bike ride we had imagined… we basically were riding down the main street of some dusty old town, with big monster trucks roaring past us every five minutes. But the vineyards themselves were beautiful. We even did an olive farm tour which was delish!

Back to BA

We headed back to Buenos Aires, feeling a little bit worse than when we left. We were paranoid messes walking down the street by then. It was so frustrating. All our friends were going out by themselves, with handbags flailing about and cameras clicking on every corner. Hayley and I redefined the word ‘minimalist’ and still cringed every time an elderly woman with a walking stick and poodle walked past us. It sucked. We were looking forward to getting to Uruguay, where we would be meeting up with our friends from home, Nikola and Ty. Safety in numbers, we chanted to ourselves. Safety in numbers.

Cambodia and Thailand – a whitey’s baking bliss

CAMBODIA
Phnom Penh

We arrived in the capital of Cambodia at 10pm, four hours later than the estimated time of arrival (we travel folks call it the ETA, and yes we feel like wankers). Tired and sweaty, we drove around for what seemed like forever looking for accommodation. It was made slightly more entertaining by the many men who ran alongside our tuk-tuks trying to sell us drugs. We finally found a cool little place, right on the lake and sat out on the back deck drinking beers until 3am (yes we were tired but that’s no excuse for being anti-social!) The next day, we wandered around for a little bit, bought some photocopied novels off a flirtatious 8-year-old boy and hoped on the bus to the land of dreams, Sihankoville.

Sihankoville

For the first couple of days in Sihankoville (anyone labour a guess at pronouncing this name? We were there for a week and still referred to it as ‘S-ville´) Anyway, where was I? Oh, well for the first couple of days in S-Ville, all Hayley and I did was lay on the beach, read books, get massages and EAT! It was truly heaven. We became so much a fixture on the deck chairs that once, an Australian man came up to me and shouted “DO – YOU – SPEAK – ENGLISH?”
“Umm, yes, quite well,” I told him, frightened.
Turns out, he just wanted to congratulate me on reading a good book (Life of Pi by Yann Martel, anyone read it? It’s amazing!!) I’m not sure why he was under the assumption I was a deaf foreigner, but still it is lovely talking books.
So as I said, we were very mellow for the first couple of days. To be honest, all we wanted to do after a long day’s relaxing was crawl into bed with an Almond Magnum and watch ‘Titanic’ on cable. But we thought we should experience the famous Sihankoville nightlife so we booked a ‘Booze Cruise’, which we felt tacky saying but which turned out to be loads of fun! It was basically just a small boat with about 40 drunken tourists, one Cambodian man to steer and a little boy who for some reason wore a box on his head. We drove around to all the islands, which were beautiful, swimming, playing volleyball and generally being very Spring Break. That night, we all went to this party on the beach and we danced all night. Unfortunately, my night was cut short when one of the girls, a very spirited 19-year-old who was celebrating her birthday, flung her sandy thongs in the air, whacking me in the eye and leaving me temporarily blind. Very funny trying to explain to people that what was wrong with me was that “I got a sandy thong in my eye!” Especially for non-Australians, to whom ‘thongs’ are a provocative underwear and not a shoe.

The next morning was like something out of CSI. We woke up to loud noises coming outside our room and banging on the door. We opened up and there was our hotel manager, flanked by policeman telling us we had to leave the hotel as it was being shut down! There were policeman and reporters and cameramen EVERYWHERE, right outside our room! They all seemed to be congregating around the room next door and we tried to have a peek but couldn´t see anything. Anyway, it turns out the guy that was staying next door was found to have two little Cambodian girls in with him and he was filming himself molesting them!!!! WE WERE STAYING NEXT DOOR TO A PAEDOPHILE!!!! We could not believe it. We felt so sick. Especially since every morning we said hi to him. So disgusting. Thank god Cambodians are really tough on sex offenders so he´ll be locked up for a loooong time. We moved to another guesthouse, but still couldn´t shake the creeps we had knowing what was going on next door.
Anyway let’s move on from that yucky subject. One thing we really noticed about Cambodia (and Asia in general) is the obsession with being ‘white’. As one of the darkest-skinned races in South-East Asia, Cambodia seemed to be full of advertisements for skin bleaching and pictures of Westerners. While we were sunbaking one day in S´Ville a little girl selling bracelets came up to us. We got talking and she told me that she was a dancer and had just gotten some professional photos taken for her to take to auditions. She showed them to me.
“You look different,” I told her. I couldn´t quite put my finger on it.
“Yes, they photoshopped my skin to look white,” she said.
“Why did they do that?” I asked her, outraged.
“Because I asked them to,” she said. “I want to be white.”
I was furious!
“But you have gorgeous skin,” I told her.
“No, no, I want skin like yours,” she said, stroking my freckled and sun-damaged arm. I told her I lay in the sun for hours so I can have skin like hers. That´s when a young boy on my other side said solemnly, “Aahh, yes, we all want what we can´t have.”

THAILAND
Bangkok

We got to Bangkok quite late in the night, but you know what they say… Bangkok never sleeps (or is that New York?) Well, whatever, Bangkok was still bustling with tourists and stall vendors and prostitutes so we wandered around for a bit looking for somewhere to stay, finding one in this back alley for AU$10 a night (pretty cheap for Thailand). We got the thrill of a lifetime when Belle, our friend who we travelled with in Vietnam, opened the door to the internet café we were sitting in. Of all the internet joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into ours. Very exciting. That night we realised our mistake in staying in a $10 a night place… it backed onto Koh San Road, which is a notorious backpacker area, full of loud, raucous bars. So, with ‘YOU!! SHOOK ME ALLLL NIGHT LONG!’ blaring in our ears and the light from outside shining so brightly, you could’ve sworn it was noon, we fell asleep. The next day, we set about on running several urgent errands including: getting fake student IDs off a street vendor as they guarantee cheap rooms in South America and getting Hayley’s nose pierced. Wild! We then set off for the south islands…

Phi Phi

Anyone who has seen ‘The Beach’ starring Leonardo DiCaprio knows what I´m talking about when I say Phi Phi is like heaven on Earth. Or, it would be, if everyone just left it alone. While the island itself is absolutely stunning, the thousands of overweight, sunburnt British chicks and the muscled, shirtless beefcakes walking around with their undies up to their nipples… well, they are not. We had fun at Phi Phi, we met some really cool people and got to see some absolutely gorgeous sights. But to be honest, Phi Phi is drowning in tourism. Everyone who seems to go there (excluding yours truly, of course) seems to have one mission in mind: get wasted. And, whenever possible, get laid. But I’m sounding very snobbish! We did have a great time there. Highlights include exploring the surrounding islands and having a monkey grab me on the leg and drink from my water bottle, snorkeling in crystal blue water and taking underwater snaps on Hayley´s waterproof camera, and eating the best Pad Thai in the world.

So that was the end of our South-East Asia adventures. Next, was the ginormous and slightly scary land of South America…

Laos – how I love you

LAOS

Vientiene

The 20-hour bus journey to Vientiane, the capital ‘city’ of Laos was a nightmare. Luckily, Hayley, Kaie and I got the backseat so we were able to spread out a bit. Unluckily, it was a local bus so mucho spitting into the bus aisle occurred. I don’t know why the men (and women for that matter) of South-East Asia think it more socially acceptable to spit on the nearest surface rather than say, into a tissue. But they do and no-one (except the scandalised foreigners) blinks an eye. It’s absolutely revolting. Anyway we arrived in Vientiane, which was hilarious… it’s the capital city of a country but it looks and feels like Byron Bay. It’s so small and so chilled. After coming from Hanoi in Vietnam, it felt like heaven. The best bit? We discovered a bakery that had… wait for it… RYE BREAD!!! Sooo rare in Asia, the land of the starchy white!

Vang Vieng

Ahhh, Vang Vieng! Good, honest, touristy, tacky, delicious fun. This is where we welcomed in the 08/09 New Year. And how! The day before the big day we spent floating down a beautiful river on rubber tubes, admiring the scenery, breathing in the fresh air and getting absolutely off our faces. See, along this glorious river are numerous makeshift-bamboo bars that welcome you aboard with a free shot of Lao whisky. These bars also have swings, slides and flying foxes off them so many injuries are sustained. I personally experienced the worst pain imaginable… I flung myself 20 feet through the air off a swing and belly flopped in the water below. I’ve never been winded before and I never plan to again. It was like all I could do was open my mouth and make this weird ‘gaaaaaah’ noise… I could not get air in. Hayley saw my spectacular fall and made the wise decision to hold on to the swing until the momentum died down before landing neatly into the water. So since I felt as though my torso had been pummeled with a baseball bat and since the sun was setting and Hayley began her inevitable shivers and since Kaie already had a hangover, we decided to paddle our way (using our thongs) back down the river. This took way longer than we’d thought and we had to be back at 6pm in order to get the $12 Australian deposit back from the tube rental place. We got back with 5 minutes to spare (but not before the owner yelled at us for running through the town in only our bikinis… disrespectful tourists!) We spent New Years at a bonfire party right on the river, dancing on bamboo platforms and drinking our weight in Barcardi. ‘Twas truly a wonderful night.

The Mud Story

This is both one of the highlights of my time in Laos and the most embarrassing moment EVER! We were leaving Vang Vieng, to head north to Luang Prabang and we had decided we were going to slum it and catch the 11pm local bus. In order to catch this, we had to walk across an air field and flag it down. So we set off, with our backpacks on, across the pitch black field, the main road welcomingly us in the distance. Despite Kaie tentatively suggesting we be careful, I confidently marched across the field shouting ‘we’ll be right!’ (true Australian here folks!). The next thing I know, the solid ground I was so boldly walking on disappeared beneath me and I found myself thigh-high in the thickest mud imaginable. I can’t really remember much (all that adrenaline) but Hayley reckons I yelled ‘MUD!’ and sort of fell forward, trying to save all three of my bags. Hayley was going ‘what are you doing, turn around, come back!’ but I literally couldn’t move my legs. Just then, when all seemed lost and Hayley and Kaie were going to have to go on without me, a car load of Laos teenagers pulled up to the bank to shine their car lights on the stupid westerner who was literally stuck in the mud. Two of the boys came sliding down the hill to help me. I gave Hayley my small backpack and handbag and then the two boys pulled me, complete with 20kg backpack out of the mud and up the bank, my legs dragging out behind me. I lost my thongs in the effort. Once at the top, the locals were busy fussing over me, helping me wipe away the green goo that now totally covered my legs, running back and forth with water bottles to help clean myself up and generally making fun of me, in the nicest way. One of the girls noticed that I was no longer is possession of foot wear so she hurried back to the car and presented me with a pair of black, fluffy slippers!! I was so touched, I nearly cried!! They didn’t speak any English and the only Laos I knew was, ‘Kop jai’ which means ‘thank you’ so I just repeated that over and over again. Truly one of the best memories I have of Laos. The next day, as I walked around Luang Prabang, my new shoes got a lotttt of stares but I wore them with pride.

Luang Prabang

We arrived in Luang Prabang early in the morning, grumpy, stinky (in my case… the mud, you know) and tired. However, we were instantly perked when we realised we had just stumbled upon the Laos tradition of feeding the monks! Every morning at 6.30 (way too early for us normally), the people of Luang Prabang line up along the main street and offer the all the monks little portions of fruit, rice and anything else they might like. It was an amazing sight, over 100 monks in a straight line, arranged from oldest to youngest. Some of the youngest monks taking up the rear were only about 4 years old! How a four-year-old understands the concepts of Buddhism, I don’t know. They’re very cute though. All shaved-headed and suppressing smiles as foreigners get in their face, snapping away. After that, we were brought back down to our original mood as we walked for over an hour looking for accommodation. There was nothing! It was either way too expensive (one guesthouse had the nerve of asking US$60 a night!!!! We snorted at them and walked out and I heard the work ‘falang’ muttered as we left, which basically means ‘foreigner’ but is often used as an insult). We finally found one (still way too expensive) and I promptly fell asleep for the rest of the day. The next day we got bikes and rode around the town, as we couldn’t really afford to do anything else. We went to the night markets, which were amazing. The best jewellery, bags and scarves I’ve ever seen. We could only afford the scarves haha. Slight drama… Hayley and I told Kaie we would meet her out the front of the markets as she still had some things to buy. An hour later, we were running around panicking, thinking she had been kidnapped and sold into the Laos sex-trade as we still hadn’t found her, the markets were being packed up and a quick trip back to the hotel revealed her bike wasn’t out the front. After doing two laps of the town to try and find her we decided to try the hotel again. Lo and behold, she was curled up asleep in bed!

Phonsovan

Phonsovan truly is on the corner of bum-fuck and nowhere but it’s a cool little town. On arrival to the dusty little one-street town, we were called over by a group of drunken locals to have a beer with them. It turns out, they were celebrating New Years (this was the January 4, mind you). I told them they were a little late, but they said they celebrated New Years every day until another reason to celebrate comes about. A very good philosophy, I must say! They taught us how to say ‘cheers’ in Laos which was simply ‘duuuhh!’. It sounded more like a grunt than an actual word, but we grunted along with them. The next day we went to the see the Plain of Jars. They are these really weird stones jars from the Stone Ages. Archeologists have no clue how old they are or where they come from, or who put them there… (que X-Files theme song). We took various snaps with them… me crawling out of the jar, Hayley on top of a jar, me IN a jar, Hayley trying to lift the lid of a jar… you get the picture. All the while, we had to be careful to stay inside the ‘white zones’, which had been cleared of unexploded bombs. During the war, Laos became a sort of hideout for the Vietnamese who were seeking refuge. The Americans couldn’t have that so they decided to bomb Laos too. They dropped hundreds of millions of bombs, 30 per cent of which failed to detonate. Our guide told us around 100 Laos people die every year from these bombs going off, usually children who think the bombs are toys and play with them. It was so sad.

Our bus from Phonsovan to Vientiane was the worst one yet. EVERYONE VOMITTED!!!! We have no idea why this phenomenon occurs, but Laos’s people are simply prone to motion sickness. This was especially bad for Kaie and Hayley who can’t stand vomit. I’m not too bad with it… actually, to tell you the truth, I did sneak a peek. Its like a car accident… you know you shouldn’t look, you know what you glimpse will make you feel sick, but you just can’t help it. At the halfway pit stop, all the Laos peeps filed out of the bus clutching their little plastic bags full of green goo to empty it out for round two. Lovely.

Vientiene again

After one more night in Vientiane, eating Laap (a traditional spicy Laos dish) and drinking Beer Lao, we farewelled Kaie, and Hayley and I set about getting our travel plans together. We decided, against our original plans of going straight to Thailand that we were going to visit the great land of Cambodia. But first we needed a visa. We got on our two bikes and set off to make the 4km ride to the embassy. POP!!! SHHHHH…. Hayley rides over the top of broken glass and gets a puncture. Right. Well, the bike I was riding had a little seat on the back so we could ride tandem, not to worry. We set off again across the busy road. CRASH!! CLANG!!! OW!! My front tire is side-swiped by a motorbike and the bike and I fall to the concrete, in the middle of the main road. The motorbiker drives off without a second glance and I have to hurriedly pick myself up before I get run over! Several tuk-tuk drivers came rushing over.
“You OK miss?”
“You hurt miss?”
“Yes OK, no not hurt, kop jai,” I muttered, a beetroot. So far, so good in our attempt to get a Cambodian visa! Was Buddha trying to tell us something? Anyway we successfully became owners of Cambodian visas and set off to the South of Laos.

Dong Det (Four Thousand Islands)

Going to Dong Det is like going back in time. There are no roads, little bamboo bungalows everywhere and electricity (powered by a roaring generator the size of a house) only comes on between the hours of 6 – 10pm (if you’re lucky). We stayed at a gorgeous little bungalow, right on the river, that’s only contents were a hammock and a bed. No electricity and an outdoor, ice-cold shower. It felt like camping and we loved it! One of the days we headed down to the ‘beach’, which was actually still the river with a bit of sand on the edge. Still, we had a lovely day. Reading our books, sun baking and playing with these two gorgeous little Lao girls. At sunset, Hayley, this German girl we met and I sailed out to the middle of the Mekong River and saw the incredibly rare Irrawaddy dolphin. It was amazing. We were talking to this American guy who had been out four times already to try and see these dolphins but no dice… until then. We saw them within the first five minutes of heading out! There are only around a dozen left in the area and less than a hundred in the world. It was so special to see them. That night, the three of us, along with several others, attended a local festival and danced the night away to these Lao rock bands. Laos is incredible!

Vietnam – mountains and mulberry magic

VIETNAM
Ho Chi Minh City

Travel tip: if you go to Ho Chi Minh, always ALWAYS get a taxi with a meter. We were approached outside the airport by a man offering to drive us to the backpacker area for the bargain price of $50! We found a metered taxi and (after much yelling to get him to turn it on) we got to the place we wanted for under $10! Tricky little devils. We didn’t stay long in HCMC – it was too hot and after Malaysia, we just wanted to go to a beach!

Mui Ne

When we bought our bus tickets to Mui Ne, the travel agent said to us, ‘Ahhh yes, Mui Ne very romantic place’.
‘Oh, so a good place to go with my sister then?’ Hayley asked cheekily.
The woman’s face became very troubled. ‘No… Good place with boyfriend… No sister.’
There did prove to be quite a lot of couples in the charming one-street beach town – pretty annoying considering most couples who go travelling (at the risk of causing offense) do tend to be a little unapproachable. It’s not really their fault, it’s just you often feel like you’re interrupting a private moment. We didn’t really worry about being the only platonic twosome though because we had the BEACH! It was lovely, relaxing and going swimming, although on the first day I was a little hesitant about getting in the ocean. While Hayley ploughed into the waves like she was on fire, I paced nervously on the shore, muttering things like ’sharks’ and ‘murky water’. I felt better once there were other tourists for the sharks to eat and so overcame my fear. Later, as we toweled off and I was congratulating myself on my bravery, we saw a horrific sight – a drowned kitten lying 10m away from where we were sitting! We were absolutely devastated and showed our outrage by moving our towels further down the beach.
In the afternoon we hired bicycles to ride around the street (singular) of Mui Ne. However, we were five minutes down the road from the hire place when my pedal fell off, mid-rotation! This was to become the first in many bicycle-related catastrophes that frequented my trip. I put the offending item in my basket and scooted back to the shop (not an easy task) where the man behind the counter laughed and implied the incident was my fault!!! ‘You very big and strong,’ he chortled. Translation: you’re a fatty who broke the bike!! Highly embarrassing!
The next day, we got two lovely locals to drive us around Mui Ne to see the sights. We went to the Fairy Springs, which were these really shallow and scenic red-clay streams. The experience was slightly marred however, by a little boy who followed us for the half the time pleading for money.
‘Me so huuuuungry,’ he wailed, the picture of wide-eyed innocence and pity. Unfortunately for him, I saw him gobbling down a yogurt 10 minutes prior! Our motor bikers then drove us to the red sand dunes where we went sand sledding. These little local girls took us up, all sweet as pie in the beginning until the end when they demanded 10,000 Dong (about $1) each for the pleasure of their company. It was still very fun, although Hayley face-planted on one of the big dunes and got sand EVERYWHERE!

Nha Trang

We were very excited to go to Nha Trang because we had plans to meet up with our friends from home, Ali and Belle! They, too, are siblings, so they had the inevitable, “what!? You’re sisters?? How have you not KILLED each other yet?” question hurled at them just as much as Hayley and I had. Nha Trang is also supposed to have some of the most beautiful beaches in Vietnam, but of course on the night we arrived it was absolutely bucketing down. It took us so long to find the hostel the girls were staying at and we got lost several times. But we found them and the rain cleared long enough for us to go out. We had dinner (rice paper rolls are God’s snack, I swear) and then went to a bar called ‘Why Not?’ Oh dear… I’ll tell you why not! Two buckets (for those who haven’t been to Asia, yes, you actually do drink out of a child’s sand bucket) of cheap Bacardi and Red Bull + two shots of orangey vodka + two cigarettes = me passed out and vomiting in the gardens. Needless to say, I was devastated at my behaviour. Poor Hayley had to play Snake on her phone (though she didn’t seem to mind – any opportunity to play Snake, she’ll take it!) until 2.30 in the morning! Oops! I do remember it was a fun night until then! The next morning was pretty rock bottom for all of us. None of our rooms had windows so when we woke up at noon, it was pitch black. We made ourselves get up and make the most of the day. We had read about these mud baths near Nha Trang and really wanted to go. We were tossing up between hiring motorbikes or bicycles when we walked past two tandem bikes on the footpath. Sold! It was so funny riding them but extremely painful going over pot holes. We rode through the local markets, cone hats whipping around to stare in shock at the four white women zooming past on tandem bikes, the colours from the fruit and flowers blurring into rainbows (was that a touch poetic?)
The baths turned out not to be the thick, hot mud we expected but slimy poo-coloured water about the density and temperature of refrigerated milk. We weren’t very impressed as it was quite a cold day, we were hungover and we were feeling very tender. Is a steaming vat of sludge too much to ask? But all was well when we got to the hot springs! Ahhhh… bliss! As it was raining again the next day, we decided we were due for a little pampering and had a trip to the spa. Very enjoyable except Vietnamese massages can almost be classified as an extreme sport – basically, you’re thrown around like a rag doll and no bit of your body is left untouched. None. It’s hard not to get the giggles when someone you just met knows you more intimately than your last boyfriend!
We had to wake up really early the next day to go on a boat trip, and as we only got home at about 4.30am that morning we weren’t too happy. It was awesome on the boat though – we sunbaked on the roof, drank beer and swam all day. At one point we were given these tubes to sit in and a man paddled around the water giving us shots of wine! It was made from mulberries and tasted like gasoline, but it was free so we drank it! The next day Belle and Ali left which was very sad. It was so good having other people to hang out with (no offense Hayley!).

Hoi An

The town of Hoi An is quaint and gorgeous but boring as bat shit (to borrow a phrase from my mum). We hired bikes and went to the beach one day, but that seemed to be about the only thing to do. We got quite hammered on Gin one night but ended up back at the hotel early as all the bars were about as exciting as a wet towel. We had our own excitement though! At about 10pm (wild night out girls!), we started to hear a kind of shuffling around in the bin near our beds. Further investigating by me (Hayley is not the best in a bug/rodent-related emergency) proved that there was indeed a cockroach the size of a small dog in our bin. I couldn’t see it properly so I grabbed my torch from my bag (this also doubles as an alarm if we get attacked). Anyway, I was shining the light on Goliath when he moved and, in my shock, I set off the alarm! A 100-decibel shriek filled the room, shattering glass and causing dogs in Hong Kong to howl. After a moments horrified pause, I scrambled around with my hands over my ears, trying to find the pin that would silence the beast. Hayley helped by diving underneath her bed covers.

Hanoi

We arrived in Hanoi after a 17-hour monster bus ride and got a taxi to take us to the hotel of our choice, which of course meant we arrived at the driver’s friend’s hotel! We got out without paying and walked to the place we wanted to stay. Anyway, the next day was my 21st birthday (!) so Hayley and I decided to celebrate that night. By chance, we stumbled upon a magical little intersection that sold – wait for it – 30 cent beers. As you can imagine, it was overrun by backpackers (mainly Australian and Irish – Naturally). We made a couple of friends and all went out to a bar called ‘Hair of the Dog’. It was just madness. Everyone soon found out it was my birthday and Hayley and I were overcome with tequila shots being bought for us! At one point, the bar owner to brought out a tray full of mint-flavoured shots and everyone sang Happy Birthday! It was the nicest thing that’s ever happened to me. At some stage of the night, someone discovered a Niko pen and suddenly everyone was walking around with cat whiskers drawn on their face!
The next day (my birthday!), we were feeling absolutely rock bottom so we decided a nice movie might be in order. We looked to our bible, the Lonely Planet guide and found a cinema not far from where we are staying. We found two motorbike men to take us (they swore they knew where it was but spent 15 minutes riding around, asking other people directions) only to be dropped off at this abandoned old building that had ‘Mr Magoo’, a 1997 film starring Lesley Nielsen, in the ‘Coming Soon’ poster section! Damn you Lonely Planet! That’s not the first time LP has let us down – we once spent two hours looking for a sandwich bar that ended up being about 2km in the other direction from where it was supposed to be.

Sapa

We were a little worried about our trip to the mountainous region of Sapa – although we really wanted to do it, we were pre-warned that it was going to be freezing and as we would be doing a home stay with a local family, in the middle of nowhere, we weren’t confident they would be well-equipped to deal with two wussy westerners… especially one like Hayley who, in the middle of summer, laying on the beach, has been known to chirp, ‘ooooh its a little bit nippy!’. But we did it and oh my goodness, we are so happy we did! It was freaking AMAZING! The first day we did a 16km trek through the mountains! Physically, it was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was so steep and muddy and we all fell over numerous times. A small group of local women did the entire trek with us and I swear if they weren’t there, half of our group would still be in a ditch in the Sapa Mountains right now! These women are all about four feet tall, but they were all as strong as an ox! They were practically pulling everyone up the mountain while carrying their own loads – the baskets they had strapped to their backs often contained small children! We showed our appreciation to these she-warriors by buying something off them at the end. Hayley and I purchased these beautiful silver cuffs that we probably would’ve bought anyway! Along the way we saw lots of incredible sights and heaps of wildlife. A buffalo nearly charged at Hayley after she stood too close for a photo… all the locals came running towards her shouting, ‘Move! Buffalo kill you!’
I know we were worried about the accommodation, but it turned out to be the best night sleep we had so far! It was basically just mattresses on the floor but it was so comfy and warm! The next day we had the option of doing another trek or getting a motorbike back up to Sapa town. Being the lazy sluts we are, of course we chose the latter. We got a massage and read our books for the rest of the day while the rest of our group trudged their way back up the mountain in the drizzling rain. Ha!

Tam Loc

The day before we set off for Tam Loc, we had more friends from home arrive – Riley, Jenni and Kaie were their names, and they all worked with Hayley. Yes that’s right; I travelled for over a week with FOUR accountants… God have mercy. But, weirdly, it wasn’t the snoozefest I had imagined! They could be quite rowdy once they were removed from their calculators and pencil skirts. In Tam Loc, we did a 12km bike ride that wove through these gorgeous mountains. Of course, given my history of having shit bikes, I received the only bike out of 50 that didn’t work. At first, the chain would come off the second I slowed my bike down (my motto for the day was ‘NEVER STOP!’ which was chanted at me continuously by the tour guide… you try riding 12km without ever stopping buddy!). Next, my bike decided that since I was never able to stop, I should have to work even harder for it. It switched itself on to the hardest speed so I had to stand up on my bike to pedal it! For 12km! After lunch, we went on a little boat trip and the tour guide sank even lower in our good books by telling Hayley and Kaie they couldn’t be in a boat together because they were ‘too biiiiiig’.

Halong Bay

Over the Christmas period, the five of us went on a boat trip to Halong Bay. Google Picture it; it’s so effing beautiful. Unfortunately we weren’t able to experience a vast part of this beauty as it was overcast and freezing!! Devastated but not letting it bring our spirit down, we instead devoted the time we were given to getting lovely and drunk. One night on the boat (with six other Australians) we played Four Kings and things just got outrageous. At one point everyone had to speak in a French accent (for those who don’t know Four Kings, failure to comply with a rule results in the person having to skull their drink), next we had to have one eye closed for an entire cycle (so much harder than it sounds… try reading the rest of this with one eye shut! It’s ridiculous!) Hayley was to only be referred to as ‘Miss Apple’ and we had to come up with descriptive terms for our private areas. Hilarious!

Sorry for interrupting this program but I need to tell a joke I heard over this Christmas break:

A woman was sitting down with her three daughters, telling them each how they got their names.
“How did I get my name mummy?” the eldest daughter asked.
“Well Rose,” the woman said. “One day while I was pregnant with you, a rose petal fell on my stomach.”
“How did I get my name mummy?” the middle daughter asked.
“Well Lily,” the woman said. “One day while I was pregnant with you, a lily flower fell on my stomach.”
Then the third daughter opened her mouth and said “Uggggghhhhhhhhh”
“Shut up, Cupboard!” the woman snapped.

We were all in hysterics listening to this joke and Hayley goes, “Ohhhh, I get it! Because a cupboard goes ‘ugggghh’ when its opened!”

Hayley’s name quickly changed from Miss Apple to Cupboard after that.

Anyway on Christmas Eve, we docked on Cat Ba Island, did a massive trek up the top of a mountain and then spent the rest of the day riding around the island on motorbikes. That night we had drinks in the boy’s room before heading to a little bar next door and absolutely trashing the karaoke system. Those poor, poor owners. We moved on to a proper Christmas party at a local bar and at midnight, an Asian Santa came out bearing gifts (I got a string of blue tinsel, the boys got a bottle of vodka… how fair is that?)

So that was the end of our Vietnamese journey! Our next pit stop? The little country of Laos!

Malaysia – not quite fast enough

MALAYSIA

Kuala Lumpur

If this trip was our version of ‘The Amazing Race’, then that made Kuala Lumpur our first pit stop (only without Phil there to tell us we were team number one). We probably wouldn’t have chosen to visit Malaysia – to be honest, unless you enjoy feeling inferior as you wander around the side-by-side Louis Vuitton stores in hemp pants and headscarves, then I don’t know why you would want to go there – but we flew with Malaysian Airlines so we had to make an appearance. We struggled our way through the bustling heat and crowd of China Town, looking like sweaty, overgrown turtles until we found a cute hostel to dump our packs. We were determined to explore the city, in spite of the heat. Our first stop was the Low Yat Centre (we humorously referred to it as the ‘Low Fat Centre’ – clever, no?) to inspect the ‘cheap’ electronics… au contraire, my friends! Perhaps we are stingy (this argument has been made on our behalf many time before) but $200 for a portable DVD player?? Dick Smith has them for half that! We walked away huffily and instead amused ourselves by taking snaps in front of various landmarks. At the second-most-famous Twin Towers in the world, we took a photo which had me standing over the camera looking like I’m falling headfirst into the lens… too soon for 9/11 jokes? That was pretty much the highlight of Malaysia, so you can probably tell we weren’t too impressed! We flew out the next day to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam.

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