they're short and blue and are known to start singing while hiking in the forest. kim and yu are our hiking partners, our van co-owners, and our daily exploration companions... and they are stylishly dressed all the while.
laura's pretty happy about it. first night in town she got a cheese platter and downed a liter of milk the next morning. i'm more a fan of the fish and chip shops that are so plentiful here. at least i thought i was until we overdosed on the greasebombs in some roadside chip shop. the first kilo of deep fried potatoes were good, but the next 3 made me feel like yuking.
this toyota hiace supercustom is a beast. for the first week of traveling we lugged around 8 people, a sporting goods store worth of gear, and a trailer across 500 kilometers of gravel roads, coastal hills, and the southern kiwi alps. she's a magnificent beast.
we secured the van in christchurch, gathered up a few friendly hobos, and set out for the abel tasman track on the north end of the south island. spent 4 days hiking and kayaking, then we hustled back across the country to send our friends home. just got back to christchurch a few days ago. i'll get some pics and stories up soon... some pics up on picasa now.
took a moto through bali for 4 days... here's some pics. i'm getting lazier about posting now that we're in new zealand and traveling with friends... check the picasa page for more bali pics.
absolutely terrified. we went to the monkey forest in ubud and it was crawling with the little creature. hundreds of them. and judging from their actions, they don't believe that they are the lesser mammal. the monkeys are aggressive and they jump on people and rifle through bags. they grab hold of water bottles and start gnawing at them. in short, they've got bad attitudes.
fortunately for lkm, she had her motorcycle helmet with her.
we're off to new zealand and very excited about it. asia was incredible, but it'll be good to be in a western country with cheese and decent red wine. cheese is what lkm is missing most. she couldn't live in asia long term for the sole fact it lacks good cheese.
just spent a week in bali. if we could do it all over again, we'd stay a month in indonesia and cut a week off the other southeast asian countries we visited. the beaches are beautiful, the food delicious, and the lodging palatial. we'll get some pics and stories up soon...
flying into christchurch and immediately meeting up with a hoard of people. kim and yu, our hobo buddies that we're going to buy a van with and travel across NZ; smitty, my good buddy from college; julie of notorious gambling fame; and tim and jenny who have never let me take a picture of them. ever.
here's the vehicle we've got our eyes on... a 1994 toyota hiace supercustom. we put in a winning bid for it on trademe, which is the craigslist of new zealand. if its running well, we're taking it.
since we arrived in asia, i've been trying every local alcohol i can find. i attribute this tendency to my father, who has always said its safer to drink beer than water in foreign countries (or something to that effect). beers have been pretty tasty everywhere- except they're sorely lacking in porters, stouts, or anything with big flavor. as far as hard alcohol goes, there's been some good ones, but most of them have been terrible. this has something to do with our travel budget... its way cheaper to buy a small bottle of local whiskey for a week than it is to drop 3 night's lodging money on a few import drinks in an english-style pub.
here's the summary so far: -singha beer (thailand): good tasting beer. nothing special, but consistent and satisfying. a little pricey compared to the alternatives. -chiang beer (thailand): sometimes good, sometimes bad... sometimes it costs 50 baht, somtimes 100. rumors are theres no quality control in the factory and that the alcohol content can vary from 4-10% regularly. buying chiang is like playing russian roulette. -beer leo (thailand, cambodia): a happy medium of taste and price in thailand. my beer of choice here. -mekong whiskey (thailand): not good, not good at all. mekong and coke was my 'go to' drink when we first arrived in thailand. i would have 1 or 2 drinks in a night and the next day wake up with a headache. it took a while to connect the dots. i should have been tipped off when the old thai ladies running the markets would laugh at me when i asked for mekong. -sangsom whiskey (thailand): not bad. sweet like a rum, but they call it whiskey. its palatable. and comes best served in a bucket, mixed with coke and soda and ice. -hong thong whiskey (thailand): not terribly bad. similar to sangsom, but with a little more bite. goes well with coke and gingerale or soda water.
-'38 whiskey (thailand): disgusting. got this up near the burma border. we were in a market and eating noodles when the cook offered us a small drink of mulled '38 that was marinating in wood chips of some sort. it tasted good. so i bought a small pop-top bottle (see above). turns out you need to mull it with the wood chips to make it taste anywhere near palatable.
-X.O. (cambodia): this liquor, advertised in the airport (above), reportedly makes you strong and healthy. i found neither to be true. -klang beer (cambodia): the name says it all. klaanggg! -beer lao (laos): best beer in southeast asia, hands down. don't let anyone tell you different. -dalat red wine (vietnam): surprisingly good wine. its locally made in dalat, vietnam. we were wine starved and took a chance on a bottle that costs about $2.50. it was delicious. we also tried the more expensive "superior" dalat wine which turned out to be mostly vinegar. avoid superior at all costs. -hanoi vodka (vietnam): decent when mixed with fruit drinks. -bia hoi (vietnam): tasty local brew served on street corners in all parts of vietnam. low alchol content and very little hops. at ~20 cents a glass, its been the brew of choice in vietnam. -tiger beer, beer hanoi, beer halida (vietnam): mediocre substitutes for bia hoi. when in a bind, halida is your best choice. if its anywhere near room temperature, it won't be good.
and, saving the worst for last: lao lao! its rice moonshine! its terrible! you can find this everywhere in laos, cause everyone with leftover sticky rice can distill it. we got some from a little ole lady shopkeeper who poured it from a 5 gallon tank into a small soda bottle for us. capped it with a plastic bag and rubber band. high class.
one night in muong ngoi village we wandered into a big going away party. a good quarter of the village was there to send off a young woman to vietiene, the capital. we found all the men drinking full glasses of lao lao, and they were all the worse for it. the men gave us glasses of lao lao and wouldn't leave them empty. lkm wasn't a fan- she thought we were going to go blind on the moonshine.
we're in bali now! the island is a thick, heavy jungle laced with incredible hand-carved stone statues and surrounded by beaches. this'll be the last of our eastern lands tour... and the last of delicious asian food for pennies. gotta enjoy it before we start our diet of peanut butter and tuna fish.
after the ha long bay tour we got back to hanoi and hopped on an overnight bus south. we reserved space on the premier sleeper bus. laura and i took another one of these sleeper buses down to mui ne after alicia and nico departed (they wisely flew to saigon and onto pho quoc for some beach time). both bus trips we took were 19 hours long. 19 hours! these are buses from hell. never again.
on our first bus ride, a good portion of the time was spent watching music videos from the 80's... except the music didn't always match the video. when they didn't have the actual video for the music, a segment of a random movie was played in its place. this may have been the only highlight of the bus ride: 3 minute segments of terminator, indiana jones 2, and some ninja movie. thats 9 minutes total. the remaining 1131 minutes were spent in pain.
spent a week in hoi an- its an amazing small town half way down the coast of vietnam. we rented bicycles every day and rode around town. also went out to the beach about 20 minutes away.
hoi an is famous for its tailors. we dropped more money here than during 3 weeks in laos. but i ended up with a few sweet suits, cowboy shirts, a corduroy jacket and laura got like 15 dresses. shipped them back sea mail, so they'll make it to the US in about 4 months.
had great food in hoi an. we ate at this street vendor table a few nights in a row. alicia asked how they made their special fried wontons and they immediately put her to work behind the stove. she loved it.
we also took a great cooking class here. walked through the market and learned about local veggies and fish, then took a boat ride over the restaurant. cooked up 5 vietnamese dishes while getting poured homebrewed rice wine from our instructor. funny vietnamese guy with a thick australian accent.
this toyota hiace supercustom is a beast. for the first week of traveling we lugged around 8 people, a sporting goods store worth of gear, and a trailer across 500 kilometers of gravel roads, coastal hills, and the southern kiwi alps. she's a magnificent beast. 
