Cara and Sophie's most excellent adventure 2009/10

The final one, hope you all like it!

2010-06-18T01:22:00.000-07:00

And onto Boston…

The main notable part of Boston was our trip to the Harvard Campus, which was complete with its own Wagamamas (it had been 4 months since we’d had one!) Harvard was very Harry Potter-esque having being modelled very closely on the Christchurch College in Cambridge. At the time they were setting up for their graduation ceremony which 21,000 people would be in attendance including the 4,000 graduates. The house flags decorated the grand buildings in between the massive TV screens set up to ensure everyone could see. We were shown around by students who gave us a good insight into the life there and a few good stories. We saw where Matt Damon and Bill gates lived when they studied there (both did not graduate but still did pretty well in life!) What pranks had been pulled by the nearest competing university; MIT, who once turned around the 21,000 chairs on the evening before the ceremony.

Interestingly the main gate is only passed through twice in a students career, when they first enter and when they are fully graduated. They have lots of traditions such as ‘Primal Scream’ which takes place before finals. Harvard in the winter gets to minus temperatures and to let off a little steam the students all get together in the main quad and run around and scream…naked. It’s a age old tradition which can be viewed on youtube if you don’t believe me.

The left foot of the statue of Mr Harvard, the founder of the university is now a shiny gold compared to the rest of his body. The students used to rub the foot for good luck and now it is mainly tourists who tap, rub and even hoist babies onto it in a lion king type tradition. This statue is the 3rd most photographed in the entire USA, after the statue of liberty and the Lincoln memorial, which we both saw earlier in this trip!

Also in Boston we did a tour of Fenway Park, home of the baseball team the Red Sox. The colour Fenway green apparently copyrighted by the club and costs thousands to reproduce, although I don’t think they’ve been to B&Q where you take a swatch and Dulux can make any colour!

The wooden bleacher seats are the oldest in the game, they are still in situ due to tradition and also because the ground would loose 300 seats (and money) if they re-did them all. Because of up-to-date health and safety laws there would need to be more isles, larger gaps in the rows etc. At the moment if you are over 5’6 and 12 stone you have real problems fitting into the seats (which is basically the whole baseball fan base!) They claim to have invented the Mexican wave (that was the Mexicans right…?!) As anyone trying to leave their seat midgame for a hot dog or beer would disrupt everyone on their row, they would have to stand up, then the people behind the would have to stand up, creating a wave. Which is why now everyone is such a fan of the walk-around vendors…‘butt-scratcher anyone…butt-scratcher..!’

At Fenway Park they have the only manually operated scoreboard still in action in the league. The job is so highly sort after as the scorers get paid to watch all the games, also every player of the Red Sox has been into that room and signed their name. There is currently a 50 year waiting list for this job which has no running water, no heating or air conditioning – it shows what people do for their sport!

Our return leg from the US was scheduled from LA so even though in Boston we were on the eat coast and closer to home we still had to fly the extra five hours and add another five hours time difference to get back to LA. We had booked our east to west coast flight in Hawaii but somehow wires got crossed and we managed to miss our flight, BY A DAY! We’d arranged to stay in Long Island an extra day and that probably was our downfall. We’d managed nine months of not missing flights, loosing passports or each other; it seemed so idiotic that we both just laughed. We frantically checking every airline and finding to replace the flight it would cost us about $400 dollars…eeek! Just by chance I checked our original itinery on Delta and found our flight had been delayed and they had given us the option to change it-too good to be true. We rebooked ourselves on a flight for the next day and assigned ourselves to the fact that we could be spending next night in the airport waiting on standby. We couldn’t believe it when we were handed tickets and still had to pinch ourselves even when we were sat on the flight – jammy dodgers I know!

In San Diego our luck continued and we came across amazing Abe on Couch Surfing; again great US hospitality was shown, he gave up his bed and gave us a whirlwind tour of San Diego in the three days we were there. His previous guest had come for three days and stayed for two weeks, which shows how much of a great host he was. If we could’ve extended our time there we would’ve, damn Amy and the wedding *shakes fist* !!

San Diego is a large navy base, with friendly people, good weather and great food especially cooked by Abe, who’s parents had come from Mexico and he’d kept the cooking gene. Potatoes for breakfast? – Yes please! He knew the way to my heart. Abe took us to our first baseball game, although the San Diego padres lost it was very enjoyable day out in the sun with a few beers.

As we were lucky enough to have a host who spoke Spanish and only lived 20 minutes drive away from Mexico we went for an international road trip! For that day we were Mexi-cans not Mexi-can’ts and sampled tequilas, sangria and margaritas. Ordinarily the Mexican border doesn’t stamp passports but after jumping through hoops and running around like headless chickens looking for the stamper we got a beautiful green one to add to our collection!

The picture of the Mexican flag, hopefully shows the astronomical size of it. Abe claimed it was bigger than the floor plan of his flat – 7m x 3m! After giggling at the strange signs and trying our luck at Spanish previously learnt in Florida via Dora the Explorer; largo - long, corto- short, !Lo hicimos! – We did it!

We stopped at a locals restaurant for dinner and were handed what looked like large avocados, these actually turned out to be large rocks which after some pointing, laughing and demonstrating by our waiter/chef/owner he showed us they were for breaking open the giant crabs he served to us as an starter.

Our short time in Mexico was a real eye opener, although Tijuana isn’t really representative of the entire country it gave us a taster. The people are friendly and very family orientated, the idea of an old person’s home to them doesn’t exist, the younger generations take in the older ones.

What surprised me, being though Tijuana was so close to USA it reminded me of being back in Vietnam. It was like a third world country, not everyone can have an education (which is free) because parents can’t afford the $120 costs for uniforms, books and stationary etc. Children can earn more than their parents on the street by begging or selling cheap souvenirs which is more advantageous to the parents in the short term than sending them to school.

The next day after a quick game of (American) football on the street we said goodbye to our friend and headed up to LA. Just another quick thank you to Abe, he really treated us like family…teased and made fun of us! He really epitomised our couch surfing experience – someone who wanted to share their little part of the world, spreading the love.

It is a bit illegal in the couch surfing world to advertise the site; we don’t want just anyone joining. But here is the website if you want to have a look, maybe join or even host or couch surf yourself. Their ethos ‘Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch At A Time’ http://www.couchsurfing.org/

For LA we booked our hotel on Hotwire.com, on this website hotels don’t give their names as a way to fill their rooms cheaply and anonymously. We booked a 3.5 star hotel by LAX for $50/night, ( a bargain bearing in mind a hostel is $30 each – a far cry away from our $10 delux suites in Asia with air-con and ensuite!) The address that turned up in our email alter – the Hilton – jackpot! So our last few days were spent by the pool, watching a LA Dodgers baseball game and going to one of the many theme parks there; La was the location for the first ever Disneyland.

We went to Six Flags Magic Mountain. In total it had around 15 giant roller coasters and was only $30 entry fee – great compared to the Disney and Universals extortionate £75/day. We were treated to the first stand up roller coaster, the longest, fastest, flying (laying down) roller coaster. One with a 350ft drop and the first 5th dimensional roller coaster – on every twist and turn, loop and roll like a normal coaster, the X² has specially designed seats which roll an additional 360 degrees on top of that. The whole day equalled puke city.

So now we are back in the UK after a brief jaunt to Ibiza and a weekend away in London, we can safely say we have been brought back to the real world with a crash! We have had an amazing time and that wouldn’t have been possible without our families help.

Looking back on our blog, way back in July 2009 I put up a map of our planned trip, only now can we understand how unrealistic it was and how necessary it was to be flexible. We missed out our Australian leg in favour of a full moon party in Southern Thailand and a trip to Sri Lanka, a great decision. Our bike accident but us back 3 weeks on our ‘schedule’ but it led us to a few mad days in Laos with a river, a few bars, a inflatable tube and a couple of crazy Americas and some Winsor boys. So a basic route is good, but people, the weather, political climates can change very quickly so being adaptable is the best.

I’ve made another map hopefully you can see of our original trip (in blue) compared to our actual one (pink.) Although our trip was 9 months, we were never anywhere long enough to feel like we stayed anywhere too long, so we would

To all those who don’t think they could up sticks and leave for a year need to really consider their options. If you’re tied down with a mortgage and kids then fair enough but anyone else….there is so much more out there!!! Economical Crisis-shmisis, you could fly out and live in Ho Chi Minh like a king for £1500 for 3 months AND help hundreds of children.

The organisation we volunteered for at the start of our trip is CNCF; if you want to have a look at the work they are doing in Mongolia and Vietnam please take a look; https://www.cncf.org/. Me and Sophie are now in the process for sponsoring two little girls with plans to go back to the orphanage as soon as humanly possible.

So after a whirlwind tour of ten countries, eleven American states, two elephants, one too many motorbikes, a pod of dolphins, one dancing bear, a couple of surf boards, 40 hours on Vietnam buses, one missed flight, a few litre bottles of beers, some amazing couch surfing hosts and a lot of new friends (and a realisation of how great our old ones were.)

In summary, we’ve had an amazing trip and it won’t be the last, its only fuelled our desire to travel. Though we’ve been and seen so many cultures we’ve realised there’s probably no where better than England in terms of schooling and healthcare, if only the weather was better! So no matter how long we are away, we’ll always be back!

I’ve made a little chart up of pricing comparisons, hope you like it.

$30 = 20mins on the net in Boston
or 1 nights accomodation in Laos

$9 = 1 beer at Madison Square Garden
or 1 night with a lady of the night in Thailand ($10 boom boom!)

$20 = A whole pizza pie with cold cheese on Huntindon, Long Island
or A custom made dress in Hoi An Vietnam (which Sophie wore to Amy's wedding!)

$100 = A day's car hire in Nevada
or 2000 pineapples sliced on the spot in Ho chi Minh

$5 = A big Mac meal in Hawaii
or Motor bike hire in Mui Ne

$2.25 = A slice of Pizza in NY
or 5 litre bottles of Saigon Green in Ho Chi Minh

$15 = A tour of stars homes in LA
or Pays for school/ food/ clothes etc for a child for a month in CNCF

$50 = Bottle of fizz in NYC
or A days mountain biking and a day canyoning in Vietnam

$3 = A metro journey on the subway
or A quart bottle of gin and two tonics in a bucket in Thailand

$18 = A days parking in Disneyland
or A month's visa in Vietnam

$5 = A footlong sub at Subway
or A custom made pair of boardies in Sri Lanka

$25 = A Ski Pass and gear in Arizona - no that actually was a bargain.

To Orlando and beyond!!!

2010-05-18T09:10:00.001-07:00

So we made it to Orlando in one piece and met Sophie's family who had the Gods on their side and managed to make it to America. They came on pretty much the first long haul flight allowed from Heathrow after the ash cloud. Any worries on Sophie's behalf as to whether Izzy would remember her were quickly dispelled after a tired little girl came running full pelt to greet Auntie Sophie after not seeing her for 8 months.

Sophie's other niece Holly on the other hand had changed dramatically becoming more like a little girl than the baby we had left in England. Our first morning was spent in awe when we asked Holly questions, she could reply! 'Should we put the TV on?' - Holly; 'Da!'

The next three weeks our mission was to get Holly to say both of our names, which was accomplished to the point where she could chant 'Cara, cara, cara' in a Northern accent - get in! Though the rest of the southern contingent didn't really appreciate this!

We had an amazing villa, with a pool, four bedrooms and Dan and Lisa were even treated to an en suite with a walk in wardrobe.

Our days at Disney were in constant search for characters; Izzy acquired a autograph book which was completely filled at the end of our trip by all the big five; Minnie, Mickey, Goofy, Donald and Pluto, newer characters from Toy Story and even a few sacrilege Universal characters; Dora the Explorer and Scooby Doo.

I'd been to Orlando parks not too many years ago and it was even more fun from a kids perspective. By having our own child swap program everyone was able to do what they wanted.

Universal Studios held more of the bigger rides and was a bit more appealing to us bigger kids; one day me and Sophie smashed 16 roller coasters. We even got a sneak peek at Hogwarts which on a 40 degree hot and sunny day to seeing snowy castle high on a hill does seem a bit strange, but unluckily for us the opening date is in June (Spring 2010, yeah right!) So we weren't able to sip Butterbeers in Hogsmead or get to ride broomsticks, but when we visited the parks it was very quiet we never had to wait more than 10 mins for a ride and I guess when Hogwarts does opening up the population of Universal Studios will increased dramatically.

And onto Washington;
After a brief stop in Atlanta, Georgia (yep we count that as another state visited!) We landed in Washington DC (the District of Columbia) a city steeped in American history. We saw the Lincoln memorial, Washington monument, the actual place where Martin Luther King Jr gave his ‘I have a dream speech,’ and where the first black president was sworn in. In the Lincoln memorial we recognised the first line on a tablet; ‘four score and seven years ago, our forefathers…’ by its reference from Kindergarten Cop – this is a major theme from our visit to Dc and NYC; trying to match places to films.

On our manhunt to see Barak Obama, or Bob as we liked to call him was fraught with disaster, firstly we confused the Whitehouse for the Capitol Building. Also every senator has a six police bike escort (complete will cell phone disabling technology) so we couldn’t even look out for his car, plus he wasn’t hanging out in his garden with his dog, so we had no chance! We did eventually found him in Madame Tussauds and Sophie got straight on the famous red phone and gave his what for!

Onto another state and we hit NYC, we did all iconic touristy activities such as crossing the Brooklyn bridge, stuck our heads up the Wall Street Bull’s butt, ate a slice of pizza the size of your head like the locals (rolling it up is the key!) We visited the Rockefeller centre and journeyed to the ‘Top of the Rock’ and saw the five districts of NYC from a birds eye perspective. The size of central park is astonishing it spans 80 blocks, we tried to cover it by bike but we were met by an aids march and forced to travel the wrong way down the one way biking system (sacrilege!) Plenty of ‘hey lady, get outta my way’ banter.

Unfortunately the horse and carriage ride around Central Park wasn’t within our budget but we visited the Home Alone 2 sights (see reoccurring theme); the world renowned Plaza Hotel and the (not so) snowy bridge in the park.

Bad news for us again the NY Knicks had finished playing this season (and also aren’t the greatest team in the world as Joey from friends would have you believe, they haven’t won since 1991!) Instead we saw a WNBA team play at Madison Square Garden. A lot of fun, although not too much as the beers were $9 each, (we had only paid $15 to see the game!) We managed to get courtside (after the match) and stand beside the players who are as huge as their 7’ male counterparts. If you see the picture of me next to the famous Chinese MBA star Yao Ming at Madam Tussauds who is 7 ft 6 in, you’ll get an idea for the size!

NYC was like no other city we have visited this trip, around every corner was a famous landmark we recognised. They cram so much into this city that even the car parks are four stories high – I don’t mean a multi-story they actually have contraptions which raise cards in a car park over each other maximising space.

It’s a small world after all… we met an American earlier in our trip in Laos (he was at the time teaching in Bangkok,) who now is living in Philadelphia, (very tenuous link hey, but a very cool guy!) Brian hooked us up with a NYC pass which gave us free entry into 50 city attractions so we had one extremely active day; We started with the statue of liberty; after a 90 minute wait at security and a police escort boat complete with machine guns we gazed up at ‘lady liberty’ in her entire glory. Tourists are now able to go up into the crown, but these tickets are harder to acquire than a yellow cab in the rain. After a brief jaunt with the statue we headed onto Ellis Island. This was the first stop for many millions of immigrants who came into the US. There were harrowing stories about the few who were let into the country, those who were sent to quarantine and the unlucky ones who were deported back even after months and months at sea. One of the pictures I took was of the graffiti of poems and messages to loved ones from aliens who were held on Ellis Island, written in many different languages.

Times Square is iconic for where the ball drops on New Years Eve and has great shopping, as Sophie’s credit card will testify. Its nearest comparison is Piccadilly circus but I hope our photos will do it justice because it poos from a great height all over that!

I cannot say enough thanks to Brian Magoolaghan (a distant relative but we don’t discriminate against the H!) He opened up his home (on the upper east side no less) to two disheveled (probably smelly) strangers and I believe that we have left life long friends. Not only did he give us food and shelter he gave us a great insight into how the locals see NYC. We mastered the metro in a day, learnt about avenues and streets, ate a great steak and giant shrimps and were shown a great night on the town, New Yoyk stylee.

Not only did Brian put up with our nomad ways but his housemate (Brandon Chase – most American name ever) managed to survive with us in the house for a week while we was (trying) to sleep during the day.

The Magoolaghan hospitality didn’t end there, we headed out east to Long Island to meet the Boziwick family branch. Again, having never met us we were graciously accepted into Caitlin and Stew’s home and we were shown a great night out. On that weekend we went to a birthday party of a sprightly young man aged 90, in the weekend holiday location of the Hamptons. We weren’t disappointed by the sizes of the boats and houses – the movies don’t lie! The Boziwick’s were happy to take us under their wings and let us join in the festivities, we had a great meal and speeches moved everyone to tears. Some were tears of laughter after a elderly lady explained how she had know the birthday boy for 86 years and she and her friend used to go down to the park to pick up boys, namely Mr Boziwick – how times haven’t changed! A nice touch I noted was in the carpark it was like the Thunderbirds – Boz 1 through to 5 were all present registrations on the cars.

Thanks to everyone who made our east coast adventure so amazing, the next blog contains our final round up including our times in Boston, San Diego, Mexico and finally LA.

Cheers Cara and Sophie x x

Elvis isn’t dead I saw him 5 times today!

2010-04-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the delay in blogging, we've put up an extra long one to compensate!

After our flight from Hawaii we stayed in la-la land (LA) for 2 days before heading up the coast on the famous “Route 1”. After a brisk walk up Sunset Boulevard we made it to Hollywood Blvd, where the famous stars are set into the pavement. These are less credible than previously thought as the “celebritites” have to request their star to be set, at a price tag of $10,000! On this street the Oscars are filmed (in the Kodak Theatre) and you can see Mann’s Chinese theatre with hand and foot prints of the stars. These are the ones you realty want to see, as these people have indeed been asked to be there!

While in Hollywood we took a tour of houses of the rich and famous. We saw Britney house and Justin’s old property across the road from when they were dating. Jennifer Aniston’s house was amazing and Courtney Cox lived opposite her. The Osborne’s house is pretty iconic from their TV show and you can even see the tennis court next door where in one episode they threw raw turkeys over the fence into.

Michael Jackson’s LA house is there and there are always hundred of roses posted on the gate. The playboy mansion is visible over the tree tops and we saw a couple of bunnies go in through the front gate! The nicest house by far was Dr Phil’s and the biggest house in USA is in LA, with 300-some bedrooms and a square footage bigger than the White House!

After a quick stop off at the Hollywood sign we checked out the celeb hangouts on Rodeo Drive and around Beverly Hills.

After a few days in LA we were ready to venture into the real world and so began our Californian road trip;

After picking up our new transformer campervan decorated with Optimus Prime and his associates (possibly the best vehicle on the face of the earth) we headed out on our tour of California. A few things we learnt very quickly after entering our first 14 lane freeway;

All lanes are just queues of traffic, if your lane is travelling faster than my lane I want in! Therefore;
There are no problems with undertaking.
It is perfectly acceptable to drive within a metre of the car in front, even when travelling at 80 miles/hour.
Never, under any circumstances, change lanes to help out a car in a merging line of traffic.
The brake light on the back of a car is also the indicator so try not to get confused between stopping and turning…?!
Turning right on red is a-ok, (though even we liked that rule.)

Our hire van; Optimus Prime was the same layout of its Kiwi cousin we hired in New Zealand, with a bed/lounge/dining area and a kitchen in the back. Though Optimus Prime had pure American grit included. Rather than being a transit van transformed (excuse the pun) into a campervan it was a luxury people carrier so had the added extras of electric windows and seats, headphone jack in the back, carpets etc. It was a lot wider than the previous edition so three of us sleeping in there would’ve been a breeze. One main benefit was that instead of 300 km to the tank we got in NZ, we got 600km and with petrol being $3/gallon (which is around 4 litres) we were getting about 50p per litre of petrol. To fill up this beast of a car was only $50 so we were winning on that front too!

One major problem we encountered was that in the state of California it is prohibited to sleep in your vehicle, (even if that vehicle is a campervan), unless in a designated zone, i.e. a campsite (which cost precious money at this stage in the trip!) So one night in Santa Cruz in a quiet residential street, we woke to flashing lights and someone knocking on our door. The Po-Po (the police, if you’re not a gangster rapper) had arrived. The very nice gentleman explained that the neighbours had rung and were worried about hippy riff-raff sleeping on their doorstep. As he saw we were polite English girls not causing any trouble, (we had been asleep since 9pm – it gets dark early!) He did explain it was illegal to sleep in our van but he wasn’t going to tell us to go, just to lock our doors, be safe and sleep tight.

So after that experience we decided it was better to stay in campsites which with the ones run by the national parks being around $15/night. Also the general public generally view you has a homeless person when you brush your teeth in a public toilet in a morning. That was the only one up NZ had over the US, parking anywhere was safe and not prohibited. Every man and his dog washed his teeth, hair and plates in the sinks in public toilets.

NZ was more geared up to campervans as every 3 vehicle you saw on the roads was a caravan of sorts. The day we left Wicked Campers in Christchurch there were 18 vans out by 11am, in LA when we enquired there were only 13 of their vans on the road in the entire country!

On our way up Route 1 up to San Francisco or Frisco as the locals call it we came across the largest colony of elephant sea lions in America, literally thousands were basking in the sun trying to heat up against the chilly sea air.

We drove straight North for a day to reach Frisco and our temperature gauge in the van (yes it was a pimped out ride) slowly decreased every hour we drove. We started off with blazing sunshine in LA, 28°C and by the time we hit San Fran it was around 8°C, not what we were anticipating with our view to follow summer around the world.

Completely unprepared even with our king-size double all seasons duvet we had been carrying since NZ, (getting some funny looks in Fiji), we did suffer some chilly nights in the van. After buying some trainers, donning socks for the first time in 7 months and our matching North Face jackets we were prepared for a normal spring day in the city.

Our first sightseeing mission was to the golden gate bridge, an amazing feat of engineering. We also went over to Alcatraz, a state penitentiary where high profile criminals were sent.

‘Break the rules and you go to prison. Break prison rules and you go to Alcatraz.’

The fortress was built on an island only a mile from the city of San Francisco but with unpredictable currents and freezing water it made the coast unreachable if anyone attempted to swim across.

The prison ran for many years with one possibly successful breakout (the prisoners were never found but were taking Spanish lessons before there escape, so best guesses are they went to Mexico.)

The prison eventually closed because of the costs of getting electricity and fresh water to the island made the overheads enormous and so to have a prisoner there cost more than putting them up in the Ritz.

We took an audio tour around the cells, the rec room, the yard, officer quarters, it was very interesting and they had actually prisoners and guards commenting. There were mock ups of the fake heads made of wax which the prisoners used to con the guards into believing they were still in their beds. The Clint Eastwood film is a fairly close enactment of their escape.

The lines of cells, showers, rows of uniform really gave a feel to how scary it would have been to be sent there. Prisoners weren’t people they were a number.

The cells were tiny, with a small cot bed, a toilet and a fold down table. A man could lie on the floor and touch both walls with his feet and hands, by spreading your arms our wide you could touch the walls widthways. ‘The Shoe’ (solitary confinement) was even worse with no bars or windows making a completely pitch black room. The main wing had a hundred cells in a row, with three levels, and there were around 4 corridors of these cells within the main cell block.

After San Fran our first choice was to visit both Death Valley and Yosemite National Parks but after looking at the weather forecast of Yosemite it got to -10°C at night and with us having no heating in the van we both agreed we wouldn’t enjoy the experience.

Unfortunately by passing up on the park we missed our main chance to see a bear in the wild. We were told in our van we would be perfectly safe as bears (without their opposable thumbs) cannot get in. We weren’t allowed to cook in our van as it was really dangerous with the gas canister could set the rest of the van on fire. We asked if this had happen before, one woman was cooking in the back and a bear came along and she ran off screaming leaving the van burning to the ground.

Our journey to Death Valley began at 9am in Napa Valley north of San Fran at 8°C we got to Death Valley that evening with a scorching heat of 27°C, more like our kind of place! The camp sites were really cheap, with rustic amenities but the scenery was spectacular.

Badwater basin is the lowest point in USA at nearly 300 feet below sea level; this is why the temperatures reach such high levels, to do with warm air currents generated in the low terrain. There are salt flats at the lowest point in the park and because everywhere is so white we made some funny pictures using a Vitamin Water bottle.

We returned the van to LA as our only other option was Vancouver, but that was slightly too far to cover in 10 days. We spent a day on the beaches around the city before returning our van as LA is not a pedestrian friendly city. We went to Santa Monica and the famous Venice Beach. With Hollywood being in LA there are alw

ays films being made and on that day we interrupted the set of the latest Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anson movie, (though unfortunately we didn’t see them.)

We hired a couple of cruiser bikes and cycled down the beach seeing all the crazy sights. Muscle beach is where all the body builders of the area work out in the open, getting adoring/strange looks off the public.

The next day we flew onto Sin City; Las Vegas! All in one city you can see;

1/3 size Eiffel Tower
Dolphins
White tigers
Lions
Gondolas
Rollercoaster
Sharks
The Collusseum
Medieval Jousting
A Pirate Ship attack
The Statue of Liberty
300m long fountains that shoot 70m into the air (all to music)
A Pyramid including a sphinx
The largest Tv screen in the world (spanning 1,500 feet in length the size of five football fields)
A drive in chapel with your vows done by Elvis
The world’s highest thrill ride at 1000 feet in the air (the Big Shot)
Circus Acts
30 full scale shows including comedians, magicians, singers including not 1 but 6 Cirque du Soleil acts!

The 4 mile strip is made up of many of the largest hotels and casinos in the world; nineteen of the world's 25 largest hotels are on the Strip, with a total of over 67,000 rooms. These billion dollar properties put a lot of effort into bringing you into their casinos to take your hard earned cash and make it very difficult to get out again. Either by entertaining you by their shows/rides and décors or by hiding the exit signs, blocking out all natural light so you don’t know what time of day it is, so what time is it? Gambling time!

We were joined by Cara’s sister Lucy, Mum and Auntie and we were spoiled for a whole week. We stayed in the Venetian, an Italian themed hotel and casino with a 400m long Grand Canal like in the real Venice, complete with gondolas and operatic singing… ‘Just one Cornetto, give it to meeee…’

Now all the party was over 21, gambling was on the cards…literally! Each hotel has massive areas of slot machines which are very hard to pass by without a quick spin. Sophie’s idea of fun was ‘all on black’ which only occasionally worked on roulette (as the odds suggest).

After a tearful goodbye to the family and both realising we are just about ready to come home we headed off to Arizona in a hire car in search of one of the seven wonders of the world; the grand canyon!

We got the smallest cheapest car we could find, a beautiful white Toyota Yaris and with a full tank cost $23 it was a total bargain in terms of fuel economy. Sophie was much more happy driving a “Mickey” sized vehicle than the campervan giant! Though being white it didn’t do too well in the desert and with road kill; we ended up looking like a Dalmatian.

We stopped briefly at the Hoover dam which was completed in 1935, the main freeway actually travels over the top of the dam leading to miles and miles of traffic jams. At the moment they are in the middle of completing a bridge over the dam which should give a magnificent bird’s eye view of the site.

We got our kicks on route 66 for a short while, one of the only sections left of this infamous road is in Arizona, it was one of the first interstates built in the country which connected Chicago to California.

We journeyed to Flagstaff, the biggest town closest to the Grand Canyons South Rim. Here we planned to do an overnight stop in the base of the canyon, but because of the popularity this trek the ranch is booked out a year in advance. Conveniently this gives us an excellent excuse to re-visit this amazing area!

Guide books and visitors centre’s told us that to trek down to the base and back in one day is unachievable. So one day we did an 8 mile hike along the South rim which gave spectacular views of the mile deep canyon. It would’ve been nice to get down to the bottom to get a real feel for the height of it but alas we will save that for next time.

One thing we immediately noticed about Flagstaff was the amount of snow still around on the ground, even in April. Flagstaff is situated on higher ground than the canyon and its highest mountain reached over 11,000ft in elevation. This mountain by complete coincidence had a ski resort on it called ‘The Snowbowl’ and was having its last weekend of skiing the few days we were there.

Sophie of course couldn’t pass up the opportunity to hit the slopes and having played the poverty card, the kind staff gave her a lift pass and equipment hire for a mere $25 dollars who was I to stop her. Europe definitely needs to take some tips from the US on this front! The Snowbowl had 25 different runs but the beginner slopes were not open so unfortunately I didn’t give it a go. But because of the friendliness of the town Sophie was never alone on her runs and made some good friends who we sat and had a beer with afterwards.

I of course was enjoying the off-piste action without ever setting foot on the piste. The camaraderie on the slopes was great, with less of the snobbery found in some European resorts. As it was the last weekend everyone was having a fun time, it was more like a stag/hen party on the slopes with fancy dress/nudity being the norm.

Flagstaff was our first time to take part in a new experience; couch surfing. The couch surfing network is made up of millions worldwide; you can participate by offering your own couch/sofa bed/spare room to those travelling in the area to stay on. In return when you travel the theory is that the favour is repayed allowing cheap holidays for all and of course the chance to meet great people and get some insider knowledge.

In face value it gave us a free place to stay though in return you have to be able to connect with your hosts, swap stories and share experiences. For the three nights we stayed in Flagstaff with stayed in peoples houses found on the Couch Surfing (CS) website. All profiles on CS are verified and checked; also everyone who has stayed with the host leaves feedback so it eliminates any risk. We met an English couple, Holly and Richie in Fiji who told us about Couch Surfing, they had travelled 9 weeks in US and only paid for 4 night’s accommodation. Though the strict rule about CS is not to spread it around too much as everyone will want to do it!

Night one was spent with a university student called John who had recently moved from Las Vegas to Flagstaff. Unfortunately hadn’t updated his profile so instead of sharing a house with 2 others and having a free sofa bed he had now moved into a motor home. We only found this out late at night and so decided to still stay with him, he was a really nice intelligent guy, who’d travelled far and wide. But there was only one fold down bed so Cara slept on the floor. He took us to the observatory, which is a real locals’ secret, one of the advantages with staying with a local. Flagstaff is an international ‘dark city’ which means that street lights etc have to be dimmer than usual and so from the observatory we could see the stars very clearly. Flagstaff’s claim to fame is that this is the observatory that discovered pluto.

The next night we moved up in the world and stayed with the very sociable Daniel, who at the time had two surfers with him already. Luckily he had lots of sofa beds and puppies (!), so we were very happy. The puppies in the picture are Red and Love who decided it was great fun to chew on Cara’s toes in the early morning and eat Sophie’s hair while she was asleep (even if she didn’t notice), but with faces that cute you can’t get mad for very long.

Daniel gave us a good Yank inspired feeding! The best strawberry, banana, chocolate and pecan filled pancakes, enough popcorn to feed and army and set us up with all the skiing gear for our day at the Snowbowl. Sophie declared if flights were cheap enough to Arizona it would be cheaper to ski there than in the south of France and Daniel would not bat an eyelid to put us up for a week!

Moving further up in the Couch Surfing ladder our last night was spent with Isaac (minus his wife Marguerite), who are widely known as one of the CS master’s of Flagstaff. We had our own room in their fabulous house with the best shower ever known to man. The only reason we got in stayed the CS master was from a personal reference from Holly and Richie our friends in Fiji as they rarely let young people stay in their luxury abode. These couch surfers now have to be highly selective as they have people staying approximately 5 days a week, and even have their own house manual as would a hotel!

At the moment it would appear we are just taking from the Couch Surfing organisation, but we gave another Couch Surfer a lift to the Grand Canyon and so have given a little back and hope to host when we are back in the UK.

So three nights in three strangers’ houses, including 8 dogs, one floor, one sofa bed, one double bed, a few hiked miles, a few skied miles and we headed back to Sin City to catch our onward flight onto Orlando.

This return journey however was not as straightforward as it perhaps could have been. We had allowed plenty of time for the 250mile trip, ready to arrive back in Vegas around noon. Surely this would be a breeze in a car that did 400 miles to a $23 tank. In fact, as we learned in the middle of the Arizona desert, the petrol consumption at the latter end of the tank is less impressive. We were on a dual carriageway, plenty of cars around, and had enough petrol for about 100 miles. Not a problem we thought, there will definitely be a petrol station before then. Oh how wrong we were! 30 miles from civilisation, pedal still to the floor, the speedometer began rapidly decreasing. Sophie quickly pulled over to the hard shoulder; a few profanities were expressed by both parties and then plan B was put into action!

We locked away our valuables, armed ourselves with water and money and stuck our thumbs out on the side of the highway anxiously ready to dodge any traffic that might veer towards us. It was a matter of minutes before a truck the size of England pulled up and we tentatively approached the cab window. We were met by a lovely Fijian, Singh, who advised us that he always carries a spare 100 Gallons when he’s on a long trip (if only we had thought of that in our little Yaris)! Part one complete, we reached the petrol station after half an hour and $40 later with two canisters of petrol we set about trying to get back to our little car (hoping that someone wouldn’t run it off the hard shoulder as it wouldn’t even start to move it further off the road). This time we were picked up by Eric, who was driving back to Tennessee (40 hours) and we think was pleased to have some company for a small portion of the journey. Eric drove us all the way back to the car and made sure we got on our way for which we were very grateful. Needless to say, plenty of excess petrol was bought that day in fear of a repeat performance, I’m sure the rental company was pleased that the car was returned half full rather than empty as was specified!

The moral of this story is, never; ever assume there will be petrol stations in America at regular intervals. It is huge hence the sporadicity of such facilities. Secondly, if you are going to run out of petrol, do it in the daytime, with a friend, in spring. Oh and always have plenty of rations with you just in case!

We had a couple of days in Las Vegas and so found a very cheap hotel on the strip called the Excalibur and on lastminute.com it was only £20/night, a bargain! The Excalibur is a castle themed hotel complete with turrets and damsels in distress. It’s based at the south end of the strip so it was nice to be at a different end than before. But because we are back on the travelling budget (no taxis allowed) it was about a 2 hour round trip to the Venetian where we stayed before (and where our complementary breakfasts, left over from the previous trip were!)

With pretty much every casino/hotel/free show covered in the previous week we decided to take advantage of the discount tickets and we saw ‘Defending the Caveman’ a comedic monologue from Broadway which discussed the differences between the sexes and the awesome ‘The Price is Right.’

The Price is Right was set up exactly like the TV show; everyone registers their name and then at random invited to ‘COME ON DOWN!’ It would’ve been nice to win $2000 or a holiday to Mexico but we got really scared when the presenter actually said ‘Carla, come on down.’ It wasn’t a spelling mistake the real Carla was there.

There was little gambling done as it wasn’t as fun when we were losing our own money; ‘all on black’ is not a very clever tactic. So now onwards and upwards, well really just eastward to Orlando and exploring the East Coast. Hopefully the Iceland volcano won’t hold back an Acarnley reunion; Sophie has already shed a few nervous tears. Fingers (and arms and legs and toes) crossed! Izzy Acarnley needs to meet her favourite Disney Character….Sophie Acarnley!

We are in Orlando for 2 weeks before heading to Washington DC for no doubt some patriotic overload and culture. Thanks again to the Magoos for an amazing week in Vegas; Sophie is well and truly aboard the fan club bandwagon! 6 weeks until our return-eek!

Cara and Sophie xxx

p.s. Be prepared we now have puppy fever and may need to indulge when we get home!

Aloha, aloha, aloha, mahola! – roughly translated; Hello, I love you, goodbye, thankyou!

2010-03-28T20:32:00.001-07:00

Our short time in Hawaii is over and we are now on the move to mainland USA.
Sophie had her first introduction to the land of the fatties, where fast food is not only the norm but convenient and cheaper. (See parade picture and following her a man on a trombone aka Family Guy). We stayed at hostels where we could cook our own food but never did. Our attempt at a cheap sandwich buying in bread and ham from the supermarket cost $12 but going down to Subway you can get a foot long sarnie for $5! Lunch specials are usually half price and with portion sizes big enough to feed an entire army we’ve eaten well (usually sharing one meal).

One amazing invention, which hopefully isn’t just from Hawaii; we found a DVD vending machine, for only $1/day ($1.05 inc tax…grrr) you can hire a movie. These vending machines are in most supermarkets, just pick, pay, receive watch and return….AMAZING!!! Anything to make it easy to sit on your bum all day!

Another amazing company is Yoghurt Land! They sell frozen yoghurt by weight for 42c/ounce! Chuck in as much fruit and M&M’s you can eat and you have a meal!

We landed in Honolulu on one of the larger islands of Oahu and stayed in the famous surf resort of Waikiki. Still being in Hawaii, Waikiki does have a beautiful shoreline but being a main tourist resort it does look a lot like a large Spanish resort with skyscrapers dominating the skyline and bodies on the beach sweating side-by-side, but the sunsets were still beautiful. The metropolitan feel didn’t wear thin on us since we had come from Fiji. Hot water running freely and as much shopping as Sophie could manage!

As being occasional surfers we thought we would try our hand at it on the Hawaiian seas, but being such a popular resort there were hundreds of people in the water in Waikiki and battling for waves rather than catching them seemed a bit too much like hard work.

We did the ultimate tourist trip and went to Pearl Harbour, where all Americans get a bit misty eyed and weepy over the only war ever fought on US soil. The remaining submarines and torpedoes are fairly impressive, though I think our time in Vietnam has left us very sceptical. 2000 men died that day which is a disaster but in Vietnam over two million died and are still dying from the ‘American war’ so apologies for us not weeping profusely and saluting the stars and stripes like the other Yanks visiting.

Highlight of the day was Sophie chatting/getting chatted up by a 84 year old war veteran. When he heard where we were from replied, “well that can’t be right where’s your umbrella and pleated skirt, chuckle chuckle, have you got a boyfriend?” A very cool guy who spent his youth surfing the waves in Waikiki and was there that fateful day, close enough to see the eyes of the Japanese flying the planes.

Apart from all the massive amounts of food and American patriotism being rammed down our throats Hawaii really is a beautiful country so much so it’s used for many film locations. We went on a film tour around the north east side of Oahu and one road is used for Jurassic Park, Pearl Harbour, Lost, Godzilla, You me and Dupree, 50 First Dates, South Pacific, unbelievable that nobody has noticed it’s all filmed in the same place. The never ending TV series Lost is filmed on the ranch we visited and was being filmed that very day!

It’s the iconic scene in Jurassic park where the characters go over a hill and see all the dinosaurs for the first time, there’s lush green grass (a benefit from the rain that falls even when its blistering sunshine), and majestic mountains which is why directors keep coming back.

The log from Jurassic park is still there, though because of the cyclones over the past few years it’s not quite the dinosaur saving trampling device it was before. The Godzilla footprints are still there from the film, though they did used to be a few metres deep but since a few wandering cows in the night fell to their deaths they are now pretty shallow!

We enjoyed St. Patricks Day American style, where everyone actually does thinks they’re Irish! All the beers had green dye in and everyone got their Irish dancing on.

After a spat with a Go Airlines Service Manager we travelled over to Kauaii one of the smaller islands the last in the chain of islands that makes up Hawaii. Apparently when the Service Manager says "final call, one minute remaining" and we were stood by the gate, that actually means flight closed. Bit of a nightmare but we made it on with the other 5 passengers, after ranting and raving, how they didn’t know we weren’t on it….?!

So we made it to the pretty island of Kauaii, (said like Hawaii with a K.) We hired a car and found a pretty B&B and struck a deal with Dominic the owner. Instead of paying the $100 extra a night over our budget we told him we would be great houseguests/friends for the next 4 nights, luckily he agreed. Dominic was a Californian who moved to the islands to escape, a trained pilot, scuba diving instructor and accomplished musician he was a lot of fun to hang around with and showed us how the locals see the island.

When asked why he chose Kauaii, his answer was that the island chose him. Our journey to the island was a nightmare and then the extortionate car hire costs it seemed like the island was against us but it did win us over.

We hired coaster bikes for a morning, which are deep seat, laid back comfort bikes made for the ladies! They were a breeze to ride though they didn’t have hand brakes, to stop them you have to pedal backwards…?! Luckily we never had to stop in a hurry because it could have been crash number two!

The last thing we want in this country is any trip to the hospital, to see a doctor is $450 and an ambulance is $600 all have to be paid upfront. Our little dally with the Vietnam roads seems like nothing in comparison. Obama’s ‘healthcare for everyone’ debate has hit full pelt here with it just being voted in. But now 20 states are now suing the president, not good news when nearly 50% of the country are against the new bill.

Enough of politics and back to travelling! Our last stop on Hawaii was back on Oahu and onto the North Shore which is the place for surfing in the world. Waves here reach 50ft in the winter and even in summer they were bloody massive! The frequent warnings on the beach from the lifeguards is only experienced boarders allowed in the water and on rough days the police are brought in to enforce keeping newbies out.

We know that good surfers are a mix of fitness, skill and sheer stupidity and that came to head on the North Shore. We watched a guy bodysurfing in the shallows one sunset evening. Bodysurfing is basically getting smashed about and trying not to drown without any buoyancy equipment. This particular gentleman had obliviously done it for so long his brains had been washed out, you can see by the picture the waves are about 15 times the size of him.

We are currently on the flight onto LA, quick travelling note for all you wanna-be Sophie and Cara’s; never travel with American Airlines or Air Pacific, what current airlines on 6 hour flights don’t provide food or films? Cannot wait for the BA flight home, the British know how to fly, we created Concorde! Luckily with all our travelling we have enough points to fly free from Las Vegas to Orlando and now every flight we are at least bumped up to exit rows, I think the hoodies mean we aren’t quite first class material.

We found some cheap flights and so our USA itinerary has grown and now slightly resembled the ambitious plan we had before we left. After Florida we fly to Washington and then travel that coast up to New York and onto Boston where we then fly back down to San Diego, dip into Mexico and then track back up to LA for our flight back home. Even though we have two months left of the trip it does seem like the beginning of the end, home, family and jobs are finally being discussed.

It will be good to see the families very soon, can't wait!!!

Bula from Fiji

2010-03-17T00:39:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I last wrote a blog and it feels a bit trickier to get back into it. Since Sophie has had her ‘bad eye’ from the paddleboard incident we stayed and played in Auckland for a week and then moved onto pastures and countries new.

In Auckland we moved into our new home away from home and had a holiday away from our holiday and lived it up with the mighty Thomsons. Their amazing house came with beautiful hospitality from possible the best Kiwis in the world. A big thank you from them for giving us 5 star luxury to crash in and the hot chocolates on tap.

We saw the sights in the City of Sails and climbed up the harbour bridge (in between lying by our pool that is!) It took us back to our leaving party at the Church as aviators and hard hats were part of our safety gear.

In month 5/7, our journey then took us onto Fiji. We spent one night on the mainland; Viti Levu in one of the main towns Nadi before heading off to the Yasawas – a large stretch of island supposedly the most beautiful in Fiji. We were not disappointed; our resort was called Manta Ray and had amazing coral a few metres off the beach.

We saw a 2m long reef shark in the shallows and finally Sophie saw her angel fish (Nemo). Our days were spent snorkelling, lazing around and focused all around the delicious meals. One day on Manta ray was spent making a coconut bracelet. When we saw ‘bracelet making’ on the list of activities we thought of idle chit-chat around a table with some beads. What we got was; a trek into the jungle, a climb up a coconut tree, sawing a coconut then sanding it for countless hours until Si (slave driver/activity man) was happy with the finished product, which incidentally was too big for our wrists and ended up being an ‘upper-arm piece of jewellery’. ‘Sanding’ involved a rock, some sand and some water, stir all together and rub coconut frantically until sweating profusely. Anyways the finished product probably wouldn’t be sold in the gift shop but it worked very well for our tribal costumes on Robinson Crusoe.

After 3 nights on Manta Ray it was time to move onto another island off the south west coast of the mainland called Robinson Crusoe. This island was entirely different from the sparkling water and calm nature of our previous island. The moment we stepped onto the island we were greeted by a fire show and 80 other guests.

These guests left the resort later that night leaving only us islanders; the overnight stayers and the staff with whom we became great friends and a large family. Many a fun night was had. One night in question was Tribal Night which was our initiation into our island family. In the day we scoured the jungle in search of vines, coconut leaves and flowers to make our costumes. The rest of the day was put into preparing our outfits for the nights activities. Me and Sophie being costume experts (comes with being in a hockey squad) set about with great enthusiasm.

Of course as with every single country we’ve been too we had a little accident! Whilst making Sophie’s coconut bikini, yes everything we put our minds to is given 100%, the Swiss Army knife she was using slipped and she took a chunk out of her finger. So even with a large bandaged finger, Sophie still won first prize (I think it was a sympathy vote!)

I think Sophie’s accident was punishment for me bringing in my penknife into the country; I used my Swiss Army knife in our campervan as a tin opener and then forgot to stow it in my hold luggage when taking our flight to Fiji. In customs after being x-rayed I was pulled to the side and asked if I had any dangerous weapons on me. After some rummaging I found the offending article in my hand luggage, I profusely apologised and somehow hoped I could get it posted home as I knew it would be confiscated. But oh, no… the security woman simply whipped out the largest blade, held it up to a ruler and stated that as it was under 6cm it would be fine to take onto the plane!!! We have defiantly have had a fork taken of us on our travels, but a 6cm long penknife is fine…

As we were staying in cheaper resorts we had fairly rustic facilities, dorm rooms with 35 others and cold showers but really, that just added to the charm of the islands. Our favourite was the bucket showers at Robinson Crusoe; due to Cyclone Mick who hit their shores a few years ago the island no longer had running water from the mainland. So they had to ship fresh water everyday so water was rationed to a bucket per day each. The bucket shower had to be pulled down and then filled then hoisted back up and there was a tap welded on the underside. This was perfectly enough water for a shower and I realised how much could be wasted by not turning off the shower in between lathering etc.

Our discoveries from Fiji are; Fijians are all amazing singers we were serenaded when we arrived and when we left the islands. Also all Fijians are built naturally like tanks. Old traditions of cannibalism gave the eaters the power that was stored in their enemies’ body, so it was fight or be eaten so only the fittest survived. Bringing now a nation of giants and coincidentally a coconut looks a lot like a rugby ball which is why they have such a talent in that sport!

We are now in Hawaii living the American dream, Saint Paddy’s day tomorrow which the Americans are going crazy for so hopefully should have plenty of craic to report back on.

Love from Cara Magoolagan-Thomson and Sophie Acarnley-Thomson

2010-02-25T22:15:00.001-08:00

From the west coast we headed inland and hit the Tongariro National Park, home of the carrot! Where the majority of carrots are produced in New Zealand, the place is carrot crazy. They hold a carrot festival every year where the population of the town increases from hundreds to thousands.

The Tongariro National Park is dominated by four 2,000 metre and upwards high dormant volcanoes, the most famous of these is the conical shaped one used as Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings. As we saw the bad weather staying behind us we used the opportunity to go mountain biking on the famous ‘Old Coach Road.’ The road was part of the main route from Auckland to Wellington, though in those days the journey took a few months.

For us it was an uphill struggle for around an hour to reach our target; a viaduct which spans a deep valley. This bridge was the first one AJ Hackett used for his commercial bungee before it was deemed too dangerous (jumpers had to cross four train tracks to get to it, not in the jump off go splat sense!) It was then moved to Queenstown, (incidentally the same one where did mine.)

The original rickety tracks still remained, though fortunately for us there had been some additions and a safety fence and new footpath put either side. The gruelling uphill ride turned into a 8 minute superfast downhill section and was very rewarding.

The next day all three of us decided to hit the famous Tongariro Crossing, this is a 17km walk taking an average of 6 hours. It goes up over the top of one of the smaller mountains and beside the rest. It is one of the most popular one day hikes in New Zealand. After a few scary moments reading posters in the information office; sturdy walking boots a must, first aid kit, 4 – 5 warm layers of clothing (it was 25 degrees at the bottom.) We were then told this is to stop tourists going up in jeans and flip flops, or high heeled shoes as one Chinese lady thought was a good idea.

So the next morning we got the 8am shuttle to the top and began our ascent. The crossing is so famous it was a bit like Piccadilly Circus! There were hundreds of people walking, which did give it a bit more security in case something serious did happen. We started the first ascent up the devils staircase, steps put in by the national park because of the amount of people walking the track. After a gruelling few hours we trekked up to the highest point; 1,900 metres. There were other walks to the top of the other mountains but we felt the view was good enough from where we were!
The weather was good when we started but when we reached the top it closed in very quickly so the views were a bit limited but on our decent down we saw some beautiful lakes. We set off at 8:15 and got back at 3:50 so it was a very long day but well worth the few blisters between us.

Next we headed to Taupo; the extreme capital of the world, (although I may have said that about Queenstown!) I’m pretty sure New Zealand is the extreme country of the world so it may have a few extreme towns in it!

So I would have a few extreme stories to tell if I had partaken in any such activities but unfortunately it was my comrades who did the 48m high bungee over water and 12,000 feet skydive. But I will tell their stories from my point of view.

Sophie’s day began on an overcast morning (bungees are cheaper before 11am, yes we are stingy even on our extreme sports!) After being checked in and weighed she was then taken to the end of a platform 50m over a river and VELCROED to what really is a long elastic band. They have a section of the cord in the booking office for ‘piece of mind,’ which is basically your normal office elastic bands, hundreds of them twisted together.

I’ve emphasized the velcroed part as when I did mine I had a harness on my waist and the cord was then thread through my feet so I ended up the right way, or rather the wrong way up. The only other person I’ve heard having their feet velcroed together is CJ in Thailand, not very hot on its health and safety. But Sophie came out in one piece so I can’t use Velcro as one of my bungee horror stories, on this list is naked bungees (do it naked and you get it free) and (Leanne’s) James being asked ‘what’s more scary than this?…THIS!’ [James is then pushed/rugby tacked unsuspectingly off the top.]

I was contemplating doing a bungee swing, a variation of the vertical bungee, the ‘bunger’ is dropped and then swung into oblivion. This can be done in a multiple of positions; sitting, backwards, mid flip etc, but common sense got the better of me and I declined. My final bungee horror story is from Sian doing this bungee swing, she was positioned to fall off backwards (apparently less scary!) and as she was falling off all the guys on the platform started yelling ‘NO, STOP, you’re not attached’ – not exactly the words you want to hear as you are falling off a 50m high platform. So understandably enough Sian starts praying, life flashes in front of her eyes and starts scrabbling wildly to try and save herself. She manages to grab hold of a piece of rope and then realises what it’s her bungee cod and then hears the guys above her cackling like hyenas.

Anyway, back to Sophie. Sophie performed her jump admirably, she decided against having a water landing (please see jump menu attached). She was advised on her arm position so to stop jumping straight off the platform like a frog aka. Gini, or like diving off a diving board and having your hands straight in front of your face so that when you hit the water you give yourself black eyes aka. Sally (Sorry that really is my last bungee horror story!)

Sophie did really well, no hesitation, bouncing and dangling gracefully into the rescue boat.

In the same morning we then moved straight onto the airport for Holly’s tandem skydive. She flew up to 12,000 feet, had a 45 second freefall and then glided the other 4,000 feet. Falling 8,000 feet in 45 seconds is pretty immense, followed only by Sophie’s 48 metres in 3 seconds, Cara on the other hand just walked around normal pace all day with no falling L !

Luckily we were told the out of the 8 people up in Holly’s plane only Holly had a blue jumpsuit, so from the outset we could see her and took some pretty good photos. We saw some pretty ropey landings, some landing hard straight on their bums, but Holly’s was very smooth. When asked how it was, Holly’s answer (for everything) was ‘it was alright’…!

While in Taupo we stumbled across a body painting festival and unlike another broke traveller from Preston we didn’t take part! Some of the models were pretty amazing and it made a nice change to hang out in the city with its residents.

We then moved onto Rotarua and saw a Maori concert. Although it was set in a hotel we still got a feel for the culture and friendship between the Maoris and got an amazing dinner. Even though the Haka was performed in forced circumstances it still had the desired effect and made everyone’s hairs stand on end. Maori warriors used to use poi (weighted balls on strings) to strengthen their wrists before battle, now they are used more with the women as a object for entertainment. Both me and Sophie got up on stage to have a go and they looked far harder than imagined!

A trip to Rotarua wouldn’t be complete without looking at the geysers, the town didn’t smell as bad of eggs as is advertised everywhere and we used it as a launch pad to travel up to the Coromandel.

After a brief stop and a surf at Mount Manganui on the East Coast we made it to the town of Whangamata (said Fangamatar). Here the surf was amazing and both me and Soph tried our hands at SUP ‘stand up paddle boarding.’ These giant surfboards with extra grip are stood on and paddled. It was great to cruise up the river, which was flat as a pancake, making no noise apart from the occasional splash of the paddles. Though our activity wasn’t without mishap; we moved into the sea to try and catch a few waves as our instructor said we were naturals.

We were told it was easier than surfing because standing up is the hard part, but as soon as we hit the waves we both hit the water! Unfortunately Sophie fell off and while trying to jump back on she was hit in the face with her board and as with all cuts on faces it bled ferociously. But she battled on like the Maori warrior she is and we still had a great morning. A black eye and a few steri-strips later and it’s slowly getting better.

We’ve travelled around the whole of the Coromandel region with its stunning beaches and breathtaking cliffs and now in the final few days of our beloved van. We have 4 days left of the Cocaine Mobile. We are heading to Hamilton then to the east coast surfing town of Raglan then up to Auckland to return our van.

Our adventure seems to be stepping up a gear; in a week we will be in Fiji, in two; Hawaii and in a month mainland USA. We are now looking into getting another Wicked van in America as it seems to be the cheapest way to travel around and they are pretty cool.

Talk to you soon

Kofi x x

Onwards and upwards

2010-02-19T14:15:00.001-08:00

So we’ve hit the road! We’ve hired a 2/3 (emphasis on the slash) berth camper van. They are small vans which have been adapted to fit a “kitchen” – sink, shelves, camping stove and a table and chairs which then turns into a double bed at night. It’s a bit of a tight squeeze with three of us in, but boundaries have been broken pretty quickly and we are now all bezzie mates!

‘Wicked’ the company we hired our van from, have 300 all over the country, we did ask for a nice one and which they replied with one which says ‘sniff more coke’ and ‘enjoy cocaine’ so we’ve had a few funny looks along the way! Although on the back it does say ‘hugs not drugs’ which is always our moto! But we’ve seen quite a few more dodgy ones than that, so I think we’ve been lucky!

From Christchurch our first adventure took us to Kaikoura home of whales and dolphins. The Kaikoura coast has a large deep canyon a few miles out to sea and so it can support the resident whales and dolphins all year round and it’s the only place in New Zealand that has this.

After enquiring at the dolphin swimming centre and told they were booked up for 6 days and our only option was a 5.30am share swim in which we could only go into the water when someone else had completely finished. So kitted out with our two layers of wetsuits, hoods and snorkel gear (that we might not use!) we headed out on a search for the sometimes 500 strong pod of dolphins. These (pesky) Dusky dolphins are smaller than the more common (hence the name) Common dolphin and are very inquisitive.

Fortunately for us the water was 15 degrees and so there were drops outs early on. The swimmers were designated 40 minutes swim time and so it was highly likely that we would get in. We were instructed to make noises through our snorkels and dive down (very difficult with the temperature and buoyancy of the wetsuits,) to try and get the dolphins attention. The first few times we jumped into the water the pod of around 30 just swam on, but as we move around the coast the pods all joined together and we swam with at least 200 individuals! Making stupid noises and actually looking the dolphins in the eye you can engage them, spin around with them, make them dive down, where they will mirror image you by swimming with their belly up to yours.

An incredible experience, the water temperature forgotten within about a minute!

After Kaikoura we travelled to the northern part of South Island and travelled around the coast. Following our noses around the wine trail of Marlborough Sounds. In the Abel Tasman National Park we divided and conquered, Holly took to the seas with her kayak and me and Sophie the mountains on bikes. On a very rare blue skied day we were driven to the top and taught a few skills before being unleashed down skree and stony tracks. Apparently balancing on your pedals, off your seat, then squatting down behind your saddle is the way forward, or rather down when mountain biking downhill. Also go as fast as you can, ‘momentum is your friend’ – guide/devil woman Anna, so if you feel like you’re wobbling, go faster! Hmmm…

Well it was very enjoyable, even if I did get off and walk down a few hills. We were shown around old marble mines, which were used in the buildings in Wellington, this leads us on nicely to the next part of our journey. We crossed the three hour ferry from Picton and came to the capital city; which compared to the other smaller, one road towns we had come across was really like a metropolis.

Rugby fever has really hit the country with the 2011 world cup being held here. New Zealand are high up in the IRB rankings as well as being the top international 7s competition at the moment. We visited the rugby museum which was very small but informative, though with an extra 50,000 people are expected during the world cup it had been given a $800,000 grant for improvements. Being big sports fan’s we went and watched ‘Invictus,’ the new rugby movie set during the SA world cup at the start of Mandela’s reign. Truly a great movie but we were torn during the ending with the NZ vs SA final being surrounded by Kiwis, emotions stirred to the maximum with the Haka being performed in wide screen, Joana Lomu practically spitting at us from on screen. (Who I incidentally met in the toilets of the Rugby Museum, slightly off putting have a cardboard cut out of him leering at you on!)

So far we have covered around 2,500 kilometres and there is still Taupo upwards yet to do, our van is still in one piece and so are our friendships, though mainly due to Scrabble, Denominations and Rummy. We covered the Surf Highway of the west coast which due to poor weather and bad surf led us to no time in the water and chased us inland in search of clear skies. The summer weather here is the worst it has been in years and everyone is hoping for a change before autumn properly starts. We are now hoping for some walking tomorrow if the weather holds in Mount Doom country. We have the van until the end of the month and we hope to cover a few more miles and get a bit more sunshine.

NZ with the parents!

2010-02-15T19:08:00.001-08:00

Sorry this is a bit delayed, the internet is a bit dodgy here in NZ and so no where has fere wifi :( Here is what happened when we met up with my parents, pictures hopefully will be added later

It’s been two weeks since the last entry and A LOT has happened since then. I didn’t want to waste time writing while my parents were still here, so now that they’ve gone (bad times) I shall try and recollect the last two weeks (good times).

Even though Asia was a whole lot warmer than NZ we’ve been surprised by the warm weather and how long the days stay light. In Asia it was in the high 20s everyday, but here we have had sunlight from 6am until 9pm which makes a really nice change.

The landscape has been spectacular and I think both of us have fallen in love with the towering mountains matched with the most unbelievable blue lakes.

We all flew into Auckland and began our journey north to the Bay of Islands. Here we came to Pahia for a spot of dolphin watching and swimming. I had done some dolphin swimming on my last adventure in New Zealand; it involved us chasing a large pod and then jumping in the freezing water. To catch their attention we had to spin around making noises through our snorkels, very amusing to watch from the boat – 30 snorkelers splashing and flailing all whilst trumpeting and trying not to drown.

That was in Kaikoura one of our future destinations. Unfortunately in Pahia there are strict rules about swimming with the dolphins; one being no one was allowed into the water when there was a baby around. This is because they feed so regularly that if we were to dive in and distract them, they might miss a few feeds and not recover. Unfortunately this was the case for us, one of the little buggers was spotted in the water so no swimming for us, but like I said our next stop is Kaikoura so hopefully we can get into the water there.

Our next stop along the northern most tip of New Zealand was 90 mile beach; exactly what it says on the tin (although 90 kilometres is more accurate.) This beach is so expansive that cars could drive 5 abreast and still be fine. We drove in our 4x4 and didn’t have much trouble (apart from the large log that Dad “didn’t see!”)

We also made it to the geographically (although not actual) most northern point of New Zealand; Cape Reinga. Here you could see the clash of the titans; where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet and on stormy days these waves can reach up to 10m. We also enjoyed a spot of sand boarding; an idiotic sport achieving a high consumption of sand and burnt feet. In the Te Paki Recreational Reserve there are incredibly scenic (incredibly high) white sand dunes. Me, Soph and Holly grabbed a body board and ascended to the top of these slopes. Here we slid down using our feet as both a steering wheel and brakes, very exhilarating and scary sport.

This part of North Island we found was highly populated with the Maoris and their traditions and beliefs. In the Waipoua National Forest we saw Tane Mahuta (God of the Forest) a massive tree with a height of 18m. These once extensive Kauri trees are sacred in Maori Cosmology and from their sheer presence you can see why. We also saw Te Mahua Ngahere (Father of the Forest) although not as tall as Tan Mahuta was over 16m in girth; take 8 people holding hands in a circle to get a slight idea… In the picture you should be able to see my Dad in the bottom right of the picture to get an idea of scale.

After our jaunt in the North Island we flew down to Queenstown; extreme adventure capital of the world. It is the site of the world’s first commercial bungy (where I did mine four years ago) and two other’s including the 134m high Nevis Highwire. After a scenic ride up a hill side Gondola we threw ourselves down the Luge track on slightly modified go carts. IMG_3139 There are only three countries with Luge tracks in the world; New Zealand, Singapore and Canada…two down one to go!

As a continuation of the action yet to come in South Island we moved to Shot Over Canyon to ride at 80km/hr down a narrow canyon on a “Shotover Jet”, narrowly avoiding the sides and doing 360 degrees turns along the way!

Another day, another long drive for Dad took us to Franz Joseph and beautiful glacier country. Complete with waterproofs, walking boots and crampons we set on a 4 hour hike up the glacier with a guide. Following freshly cut steps made by our guide and a pick axe we wound are way up the glacier taking in the valley and rainforest views – it is one of two places in the world where you can do this. The glacier was spectacular and a really worth while climb.
We moved onto Greymouth were me, Dad, Holly and Sophie we let loose on 300 acres of land with four 600cc quad bikes. After a brief introduction/lesson and donned on gumboots, waterproof trousers and hairnets (apparently for hat hygiene?!) We headed off though large puddles and didn’t get stuck once!

Me and Sophie had a brief fling with some horses in Punakaiki, Sopie’s horse CB (Charlie Brown) should really have been called CC (Copy Cat) as he just did exactly what the horse in front did. I had a part Arab scaredy cat, who wouldn’t cross bridges but when it came to galloping on the beach left the others for dust.

In Hanmer Springs me and Sophie got back on bikes of two wheeled variety (without a engine I hasten to add!) Dad loved getting back on his bike after being snowed in for three weeks back in England. After an energetic cycle we headed to the natural hot springs what Hanmer is famous for and moved from spring water of 25 degrees to sulphur smelling baths of 42 degrees (didn’t stay in them for long) .

Apologies for such a quick round up, we have done so much in such a short space of time that it’s hard to put it all down in this blog. We are so thankful for spending time with Mum and Dad, it has been incredible, in an amazing part of the world. They now have begun there 5 flight conquest back to Yorkshire and we now have over a month of New Zealand left to fill. We have booked a camper van for the three of us for 3 weeks which should be great. Surfing in the nearby beach is first on the cards and then onto Kaikoura for a spot of dolphin swimming. Sophie is planning to fly over to Melbourne to see a new Aussie arrival for a couple of weeks.
So over and out from Car-ie, I’ve changed my name its not in keeping with the Sophie/Holly combo. Also Amy, Lucy, Holly….Cara – what went on there?!
xx

2010-01-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

So when I just began writing this current blog we had come full circle and back to KL after a holiday away in Sri Lanka. After a three hour flight to Colombo and going back in time we found ourselves with the lovely Acarnley’s in the famous Galle Face Hotel. ‘Asia's Emerald on the Green ... since 1864,’ very quirky hotel with signs on the walls like the one in the picture.

Our main purpose for going to Colombo was to witness the wedding of the now Amy and Ben Hunt, Ben’s parents are old friends of Liz and Patrick. The whole wedding wasn’t without its Sri Lankan traditions, an unreliable priest, no rehearsal, a beggar walking down the aisle in front of the bride then singing loudly while the vows were being said until he got paid to leave. All in all a very memorable day, in a very beautiful setting.

Some more pictures are on Facebook of the wedding, please click the link below;

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=139870&id=503754742&l=c01cbe48f6

After five days in Colombo we drove three hours down the coast to the beach resort town of Hikkaduwa. Here me and Sophie were in surfing heaven, board hire started at 2 pounds an hour and the waves never disappointed. The town is well known for custom-made boardies (3 pounds) and rashies (5 pounds) so we went shopping to our heart’s content. Our villa we stayed in was a great modern build with a sofa (! – first one in ages!) It is owned by a English women so had been furnished to a high standard and was nice for us to have a proper base for more than two days.

During our time there we witnessed a surfing competition held by one of the surf schools. The competition was to a very high standard off the large reef break to one side of the beach, where we actually saw a few barrels (not were we usually surfed!) At the time Hikkaduwa had been infiltrated by the Welsh, 30 beach bums had come for a 6 week holiday, but none of the Welsh could beat the Singaliese talent.

One day we visited a Turtle Farm and Hatchery which was an enlightening experience; In Sri Lankan turtle eggs are viewed as a delicacy and so people actively search for turtle tracks and nests to claim recently laid eggs. The farm we visited finds these eggs and hatches them in safety and then releases the day old baby turtles into the sea en-mass to give them the highest possible chance of survival and even with that they only have a 1 in 1000 chance of surviving due to other sea creatures and birds. They had some day old babies (which Sophie tried to steal!) At the centre they also rehabilitate injured or sick turtles with the hope to release them at a later date.

We also had the privilege of meeting two of the biggest wild Ridgeback turtles I have ever seen, they were easily a metre long. They are wild turtles although are lured into the shallows most mornings with some seaweed, *Caution when feeding turtles or tortoises, their teeth/beaks are sharper than they look!* As well as seeing these turtles in the shallows nearly ever day while we were surfing we would see the odd head pop up in the surf or glide along in a wave, a very cool experience!

If you want to see more photos from our time in Sri lanka pus more cute turtle ones, please click the link;

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=139878&id=503754742&l=c8ec6af5b2

As on Phi Phi the stories of the tsunami were still as raw as ever. The owner of the farm Nimal, had lost his wife, sister and daughter in the disaster. Hikkaduwa town lost 1,200 people on one train after it was swept inland and over 50,000 people died in Sri Lanka alone. Our Welsh contingent on Boxing Day joined in a memorial service in the sea. Fifty-some surfers gathered in a circle on their boards and laid petals in respect for their brothers lost. Talking to friends we made the actual area we stayed in wasn’t so badly affected as the reef there took most of the impact and they only suffered from high water levels, whereas further up into the town there was more damage. Someone suggested this is because they have pulled up their reef to sell to tourists so had no breaker, true or not it is a example as to why not buy and take coral or shells from your holiday.

We heard many other sad stories from survivors; One man we met escaped only by climbing to the very top of a coconut tree with a broken leg and clung on for dear life until the water levels had dropped. Another one of our favourite beach sellers had suffered a lot of injuries after the water came into her house and left her with inches of air by the ceiling. She now even five years on has trouble sleeping. It just makes you think it was an ordinary day for ordinary holiday makers and locals. It appears the government has learned from this disaster, all the houses previously built on the coast have been moved inland, but the ruins of the homes are still there as an ever present remind to the tragedy. If my parents had fallen in love with Sri Lanka or Thailand instead of the Seychelles mine might be a very different story.

Although we had sadness in our time in Sri Lanka the good times and the amazing people bowled us over. We met a very nice Tuk Tuk driver and his family who gave us possible the best dinner of our entire trip. Lonely Plant also agreed that this was the best way to sample Sri Lankan cuisine. The whole family is geared around getting their daughter, who has dreams of becoming a doctor, the best education possible. The schooling although free in Sri Lanka isn’t great; the teachers even hold private lessons after school which parents have to pay for, which does bring up ethical issues as to whether they hold back teaching in order to get paid more in extra tuition!

So we have begun our 6 day journey to New Zealand to see the folks! Two days were spent in KL where we found possible the best hotel in the world! For a bargain price of 17 pounds a night (relatively unheard of in KL,) we stayed in the AirAsia hotel. The entire place is a walking advertisement which is how they keep their costs down. It was like staying in halls again though my room at university didn’t have a sign above the bed; ‘McDelivery 24 hours a day – NO MINIMUM ORDER!!’ It was hard to resist having a MacDonald’s brought to our bedside but we managed it, no wonder Malaysia is full of fatties!

We spent a brief day in Singapore with our new Kiwi friend Larnie, who we met in Southern Thailand. We wandered around the city in awe, the streets were clean and quiet. The public transport system worked and people didn’t drive cars like they are being chased down the road by Godzilla. Possibly the nicest city we have visited on our travels, although more expensive than we are used to, it was still cheaper than London…and did I mention quieter…and nicer...and everything worked…and the weather was hot! There are actually signs up saying ‘low crime doesn’t mean no crime, please stay vigilant’…! Not the London equivalent; ‘keep hold of your personal belongings as you're about to get mugged!’

We visited the world famous zoo and Sophie saw her nellies so all was right with the world. We also went to the newly renovated Sentosa island where a new Universal Studios is being built, we had great fun on the rides and attractions currently there, including a man made beach (see again better than London!) We all went on the Luge and our picture of using going to the top is pretty funny (none of knew there was a camera there!)

So in short the past two weeks have been amazing, a massive thank you to the Acarnley’s for putting up with us and for taking back 15kg of our stuff (aka rubbish!) We gained an amazing experience going to Sri Lanka, a country we probably would never have visited and also loads of toiletries, a bottle of gin and champers! We are looking forward to meeting the Magoo’s although not so much the 20 degree weather of NZ!

2010-01-02T02:22:00.000-08:00

After parting ways with Sophie we met again a 24 hours later on the island of Koh Samui, the most southern of the three main islands of the eastern coast of southern Thailand. A very popular island because of its major airport, the beaches were a little crowded fill with door-to-door resorts. Because we arrived so late in the evening I prebooked us accommodation, though the website neglected to state that it was right next to the Muay Thai boxing arena. This martial art, not unlike kickboxing involves bare feet and fists and very painful knees to the ribs. Every night we were greeted by a Thai Tim Westwood who kept repeating every third word…’tonight, tonight, tonight, the greatest fight of the year, the year, the year!’ Well it can’t be THE greatest fight of the year every night! Every night there are around 8 fights starting with under 8’s then under 10’s. With crying children in the ring and screaming parents in their corners it is an event to be missed. Because of the lack of beaches and lack of sleep we moved on very quickly…

Koh Tao, well known for its amazing diving was our next destination. Here we met up with some friends we met in Vang Vieng, Laos and spent 5 days swimming, snorkelling and joining in with the night activities when all the divers returned from their trips.

We were booked for 5 nights on Koh Phanghan from the 22nd to 26th, although we were anticipating absolute chaos and mania we were presently surprises by the beautiful beaches. Every month around 5,000 people descend onto this island for the party which takes place when there is a full moon party. For the first time in 80 years actually lands on New Years Eve, so the party goers are expected to be around 50,000! They put on a fake full moon party on Christmas day which we joined in, alot of fun where the bars are vying for your attention and Baht by putting on firework displays and fire shows. Christmas day unfortunately just felt like another day, although we were in paradise it would’ve been nice to fly home to see friends and family for the day. We cheered ourselves up by hiring a red Jeep (called Rudolf) and going to the only English pub on the island to have a great roast dinner (and a snakebite!) We both got to talk to our families on Skype around Christmas day which was really nice, although it did seem like there was more staring at us than talking!

On the 27th we made the 8 hour journey due south to Krabi in Southern Thailand, the next day we hopped onto a boat and went to Phi Phi island. Phi Phi is where Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘The Beach’ was set and every man and his dog capitalises on this. The beaches are white sand with magnificent limestone cliffs surrounding them. We took a day tour around 8 of the islands in a longtail boat with 10 other people. Once again we attract misfortune; whether our boat was overloaded, the captain lost control or something entirely different, we managed to crash into one of the cliff walls of an island and come aground on the coral underneath. After we were pushed off from the wall we discovered the engine had failed. Trying to stop numerous luxury speed boats, as was our preference to carry on the rest of the journey on them, none stopped and some even just waved back. Another long boat came to our rescue and when the battery was finally jump started off we went missing half the front end of the boat. When we made it to Maya beach, where ‘The Beach’ was actually filmed; ‘Leo actually stood here!’ [Sophie]. We were met by hundreds of other tourists and their boats. It was undisputedly beautiful though this was spoiled by everyone else being there.

Our time on Phi Phi was humbled by its history and resilience. The island was hit by the Tsunami nearly exactly 5 years ago and was completely wiped out with masses of casualties not just Thais. Five years ago, hundreds of boats were out cruising the islands just as we were and thousands were sunbathing on the beach and this monstrous wave came and decimated it all. You can see by our pictures we took from a high viewpoint how low lying the town is so would have been completely covered in a matter of minuets with little warning. Now the town has been rebuilt with escape routes and a warning system.

In Koh Lanta we met up with our good friend Sarah who we worked with at CNCF which was really nice. The plan was to ‘rave it up’ on New Years but unfortunately Sophie got really ill so it was a quiet evening in.

We flew to Kuala Lumpur early on the first so it was a good idea we had an early night, we’ve done a whistle stop tour of KL ready for an early morning flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka for a Acarnley reunion and some English goodies.

2009-12-18T01:51:00.000-08:00

Just for an update, me and Soph are back together after oe lonely day apart, so no need to worry!

Our elephant photos are now up if you want to have a look, (again no need for a Facebook account, just click the link below)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022141&id=220700053&l=e159c3b23e

2009-12-13T18:19:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the lack of blogging but not a lot seems to have happened since our last adventure, mainly due to having to ‘take it easy’ as advised by the doctor. We spent a few days making our way from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to the southern part of central Laos. After a border crossing involving a bus, a stamp, another bus and a tuk tuk we came to the very French looking capital of Vientiane.

In Vientiane we spent a few days sampling the excellent bagels and pizzas and having our first carafe of (nice!) wine in over two months. Sophie recently acquired a new SLR so we many a Wat (temple in the city); “What Wat is this?” So you should be able to see may of the spoils of our photography. Our main aim of our trip to Laos was to visit the tourist destination for Vang Vieng which is well known for its tubing down the river there.

Vang Vieng in one word is… tour! (A few of you will know what I mean!) Tubing is the activity of floating down the river in a large floating doughnut. Along the 4km stretch of river there are a superfluous of bars, rope swings, slides, trapezes and other such delights (and no me and Sophie did not do any other them!) There was body painting, acrobatics and general drunken antics. The river itself is set in beautiful surroundings and at low season (when we were there) it was very slow flowing with few rapids. In high season it takes only 2 hours to do the 4km stretch and with a mixture of alcohol fatalities are unfortunately heard about often. There are people who have arrived to Vang Vieng planning to stay one day and have stayed (the longest record) 3 years!

Our time there was really good fun, (Sophie is still getting the St George’s flag which was spray painted on her back off!) We met a really nice group of Americans who currently teach in Bangkok in our guest house who we stayed with us to our next location of Luang Prabang.
The journey to Luang Prabang was eventful; the journey time was 8 hours so we decided to make this journey overnight, though it wasn’t the sleeper bus with beds like in Vietnam. We were travelling on the ‘newest road’ in Laos but this still included every turn being a hairpin bend so it was the most comfortable of journeys. The entire journey was 180km and took 8 hours so you can guess at the condition of the road.

In Luang Prabang we had the first task of trying to figure out how we were going to make our way back to Chiang Mai for our elephant project which had been delayed by 10 days due to our injuries. Our orginal plan was to go by bus or boat (trains do not exsist in Laos) but the journey by bus was over 20 hours so we wouldn’t get there in time or the boat option was basically a canoe with a large propeller attached which did the journey in 6 hours along the Mekong River! Unhappy at the prospect that we would miss our elephants we paid a substantial amount to fly with Laos airways, (who according to Lonely Planet haven’t released their safety records publicly because of a bad safety record). Our way back to Chiang Mai wasn’t going to be without incident or so we thought! It turned out that Lonely Planet was behind the times and the plane we took was very new and clean and we had a excellent free meal – something very annoying about Airasia!

After a day detoxing in the very scenic Luang Prabang (see picture of Sophie) we said good bye to our American friends and headed to the elephants!

The Thai Conservation Park houses over 60 elephants; some are rescued from circus or donated after being neglected because machines have replaced them in the logging industry, some are orphans or injured, some have been born and raised in the centre. The baby elephant in the picture is the newest newborn the centre has, she’s only 6 months old and very mischievous. The important factor to remember about Asia elephants are that they would have become extinct if they weren’t trained to be used in the forestry business. Unlike their African relations there aren’t large parts of Asia where they could migrate to or even populate. Although we were part of a ‘show’ twice a day it was used to educate the Thai and tourist audience in the past uses of the elephants and how their natural skills and strengths could be put to use. This did not include balancing on one leg on a podium, spinning around, playing football with a monkey etc etc as I saw in Vietnam in the circus.

On our first day we were designated a elephant and a mahout (the elephant trainer, who works with the elephant usually from birth). I was given Pritheeda a 16 year old male, who was bloody massive and a very friendly, very giggly Mahout called John. Sophie’s elephant was a smaller female called Wan NAAAA (emphasis on the Na is very important apparently) and a Mahout called Mao, though Sophie tended to say Meow much to his delight…!

Our time with the elephants consisted of collecting the elephants at 6am from the forest, very early very cold starts but the elephants were always glad to see us especially with a banana or a sugar cane in hand. The centre has massive of forests of their own where the elephants are put every night. Unfortunately they are chained up, but this is for their own benefit to stop over breeding and so they are forced to graze and not walk off. Elephants in the wild eat all day and because these elephants work between 7 and 4 they need to eat the rest of the time. The elephants did have about 20m of chain so they could still wander around (and still leave a wake of destruction!) The picture shows Sophie’s elephant where we left her at the end of the second day.

We rode the elephants back to main area and we would go off and have breakfast and be back in time for the 10am show. These public shows demonstrated all the skills as I mentioned before and we got to take the elephants for a bath in the large lake. This was the favourite part of everyone’s day including the elephants where they splashed and played and sprayed each other and us without encouragement. My elephant was undisputedly the best at water cannoning, as the picture shows; many a mahout cowered in our wake…MWAHAHAHA!

In the show we have to show off our talents as Mahouts by showing how we got on and off the elephants, throwing objects for the elephants to pick up, generally have a bit of fun. The picture is of Sophie demonstrating getting on/off her elephant; you can see Wannalee Leanne’s elephant she had earlier this year in the photo.

This whole process was repeated again after lunch and then we rode the elephants back to the forest. We had great fun over the three days and learnt a lot of non-transferrable skills (it might be a while before we meet Thai speaking Asia elephant that we need to get our flip flops down from a tree!) It was amazing how much they listened to their Mahouts (their real ones not us!) My elephant was a giant beast who could strip a corn on the cob from its leaves faster than I could using only the dexterity of its trunk. The picture is of Wanna lifting up her Mahout.

I am currently sat on an overnight train (with beds, thank goodness,) down to Bangkok to pick up our other rucksack we left there as our original plan was to fly to Sydney from there. Now we are flying from Colombo (Sri Lanka) to Auckland (New Zealand) instead (via Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Brisbane) so I’m heading down by myself (yes me and Sophie have separated ways for the first time since we left!) I will be meeting Sophie in Koh Samui in a few days to start our Christmas festivities.

Hope that these are getting long enough for you Nick Magoo, and you now agree with the colour changes Mr Acarnley! We can’t wait to see the Acarnley’s in just 3 weeks and the Magoolagan clan in just over 5! Please look out for our article in the Craven Herald, they’ve only just contact me after asking them three months ago!

2009-11-28T02:57:00.000-08:00

So the past week has involved a few tears; first it started when we came back (home) to Saigon and our favourite Thai restaurant had run out of our favourite curry. The week ended when we made it to Bangkok in one piece and had our first Macdonald’s in 3 months, yes that is worth tears of joy!

We went with a friend to Phu Quoc island for the weekend. This is the island situated 2km south of Cambodia, though officially still Vietnam. The first day we arrived it was beautiful and sunny with crystal clear waters. The next few days were a little overcast so our original plan of sitting on the beach sunbathing with a few gin and tonics altered slightly.
On the third day our friend Caoimhe suggested we hire some motorbikes to explore the island. A great idea, the whole way down the country we had hired them as they are the best way to see the real unaltered Vietnam.

On our way to the most northern point of the island 30km from our hotel on a deserted country road we hit a large pot hole, resulting in us falling off and arriving a few meters down the road on the opposite side of the road. Luckily we did have Caoimhe and we were wearing helmets so there was no real damage. Although Cara realised she had a rather large hole in her knee (about a penny wide and cm deep – all the way down to the gooey fatty centre!) Luckily for us a fish truck came down the road, scooped us off and took us to the nearest local “hospital,’ and towed our bike for us, very charitable (or so we thought!)

At the ‘hospital’ we were greeted by a doctor who was ‘very busy doing paperwork and would be with us when he had finished’ so we waited 15 mins (with a big hole) whilst drawing a crowd of about 20 villagers who thought it was great entertainment.

We were helped out by a local student, Bang, who’s English was pretty good, luckily for us again, who negotiated an ambulance to ship us back to the hotel with instructions to go to another hospital the next day. This ambulance was really a white van with a red cross painted on it which needed a push to start it. The one good thing that came out of the experience was that we gave a ride to a very sick woman who was in the hospital when we arrived and would’ve been stuck there as she couldn’t afford the ride to the main hospital on the island. Everyone involved in the ‘excitement’ was given a payout, from the fish truck driver, to Bang’s uncle who towed the bike.
The next day back in Ho Chi Minh we visited an international hospital and were checked out thoroughly. It took over 40 mins and over 2 litres of saline to remove the original bandages from our grazed skin. Our favorite nurse was a Phillipino lady called Therase and she couldn’t believe what the local doctor had done to patch us up. Three days later Cara had a couple of stitches in her knee as it wasn’t clean enough to stitch before, they weren’t cheap at $20/stitch! Sophie is icing herself as we speak to relieve her blood clots caused by the impact of falling off the bike (and from Cara falling on top of her!)

We are fine now 5 days on, with grazes that require redressing everyday. We will definitely never get on a bike ever again and have been advising every traveler we’ve met not to either. The doctor (and Sophie’s mum) advised us not to get in dirty water and Cara can’t bend her knee so the elephant trip has been pushed back to the 10th of December where everything should hopefully be healed up.

We are now in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand so are planning to travel around the area and onto Northern Laos before coming back to the elephant conservation centre.
This afternoon we took it easy and went and watched 2012 in the cinema, at the beginning of the showing the audience leapt to its feet when the national anthem and patriotic images of their King were shown on the screen. We pondered whether Queen Elizabeth II would get the same reception in an English cinema!

Sophie finally got her new SLR camera so expect some snazzy shots to come soon, Cara got a free disposable waterproof camera so don’t expect anything snazzy from her! (The pictures of babies from the centre our friend Sarah took with hers) Tonight we are going to see some Thai Boxing maybe people will think we are tough boxers with all our bandages!

Both the Vietnamese and Thai don’t seem to empathise with our war wounds and either laugh when they find out it was a motorcycle accident or assure us that they (on their bike/tuktuk) won’t crash if we took a ride with them!

Sophie spent two days at the centre before we flew to Bangkok, Cara unfortunately could only do an afternoon. But all the kids are still great and all a lot bigger with the exception of little Mai in the first photo (above left) who isn't too well at the moment. We are waiting on Gokky's (Ngoc) sponsorship to get that moving.

Hope everyone is still good back home (and still in one piece). Congratulations on new auntie Sarah and happy birthday to Holly Acarnley today.

S & C xx

Lost Phone

2009-11-24T04:39:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, we've lost our english phone so now have a Vietnamese number 00841212307431...Bear in mind our number will change frequently as we travel across SE Asia! Watch this space. Longer blog to come soon, Soof xx

And then... and then... and then....

2009-11-20T19:45:00.000-08:00

So we are now pros at surfing (our new Russian friend told us so!) Both of us moved onto smaller, fibre glass boards, (so we are now no longer using oversized plastic pens; i.e Bic - sorry surfer joke!) The surf was veryreally good and for about 3 days we hit the surf around 7am for a couple of hours.

We are now in Phu Quoc a small island off the coast of Cambodia, though still belongs to Vietnam, its one of our last destinations in Vietnam before we head back to the big city then on to Thailand. Its one of the least populated parts of the countryside with a large national park and untouched beaches. The water are so clear it’s the only place left where you can scuba dive, all the other locations in Vietnam have bad visibility due to it being the monsoon season. Open Water qualifications start at $250 so Sophie was going to see about doing hers.

We spend 3 days having another ‘holiday away from our holiday’ in Phu Quoc before going back to Saigon where we are going to work for 3 days at the centre. We had some great news on our arrival back, one of the younger girls; Hien has been adopted by a French couple so in about 3 weeks she makes her journey to her new life in France!

We are booking into a elephant conservation place in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand on the 29th November and after that we will make our way through Laos and Cambodia before descending into Southern Thailand for Xmas. Our new flights are booked to arrive in Sydney on the morning of the 31st December.

Hope everyone is well, please send us any news. Vietnam being the communist country that it is, has now, along with China, banned Facebook so we feel devoid of the outside world! Hopefully this will be turned over though its not long until we leave. Ciao for now x x

From North to South Vietnam

2009-11-17T20:12:00.001-08:00

To start our journey from North to South Vietnam we took a 12 hour night bus to Hue, (A night bus here is around 30 semi flat seats, we’d been told to avoid the back as it was the bumpiest and hottest as over the engine and to not go on the second row of beds as you’re likely to fall out – hopefully you can see by the picture what I mean) What was supposed to be 12 hours ended up being 17 as the bus only went 40 km/hour. But on the plus side we managed to get quite a lot of sleep as the back row had 5 beds in a row so no falling out.

Hue is the cultural capital and we spent a day there seeing the sights, tombs, palaces, temples and pagodas. It was destined for ruin until in 1993 it was given world heritage site status and the restoration and preservation work is still going on today, so now it’s a cultural Mecca for tourists and nationals. We took a Cyclo (a human powered tuk tuk) around the city which was one of our main highlights.

We moved onto Hoi An the next day. Hoi An is traditionally the highlight of any Vietnamese trip due to it being rich with history having escaped the destruction of the wars going on around it. It’s built on the river and has much more class and Mediterranean feel whilst still being cheap and warmingly Vietnamese. Hoi An has its own special food delicacies which we sampled on many occasions. Hoi An is very well known for its tailoring industry, shortly after arriving we were invited into a shop where we perused the latest Next catalogue/ Vogue to chose any design made with any material you could imagine. We’d discussed getting dresses made for Amy’s wedding and I found a nice design in a magazine, picked a colour, material was measured and the dress was finished 24 hours later after 3 fittings. Hopefully it will still fit after 3 months in America!

After we had spent all our money on shopping we moved onto Nha Trang, one of the main seaside resorts in Vietnam. Although we had a great time there on the beach, getting alcoholically persuaded on an intentionally innocent boat trip the town was full of “holidayers” and so its Vietnamese charm was neglected.

We travelled the 6 hours to Delat to get a bit of reprieve from the hot beach weather. Delat is situated in the mountains, we knew only about its famous wine which is for sale all over the country. Its only 40,000 Dong and at just over 1 pound as you can guess it’s not the best! As Delat is considerably cooler and has more mountainous terrain they offer all different outdoor persuits. We decided to take up canyoning and trade in our bus ticket onto Mui Ne for a 70km cycle down to the coast.

Canyoning is the way by which you travel through a canyon by any means. Mainly for us this was abseiling down waterfalls. There were rock slides, cliff jumps and all other scary activities, but on the whole the day was very fun.

Very early the next morning, still sore from our previous day activities we headed off to Mui Ne. There was only us two, Thao; our guide and our driver in the support vehicle. Our bikes were imported Giant mountain bikes from Singapore, though had very hard small saddles which were fairly unbearable towards the end of the trip. We started cycling around 9:30 and finished about 2:30 and covered 57 km in total. The best part on the bike was covering a 14km downhill section in about 20 mins – very good fun! We stopped for lunch in a minority village which was very interesting.

The day was tiring but very enjoyable, every single child we passed would run out into the road to wave at the crazy white girls pedaling manically on bikes and shout a happy ‘Xin Chao’ (hello) to us.

Thao our guide was a really nice guy and we found out was only paid about $8 for the day and our driver would’ve been even less. We did tip him; it wasn’t very much for us but for him would cover half his rent. He had moved from Nha Trang to go to Delat university and now he works in a adventure company with all his mates, sounds like a good job to me but maybe not paid enough!

I’ve always noticed that the Vietnamese always put salt and pepper on their fruit, I thought it was a matter of taste, but from talking to Thao he said that it was because the Vietnamese know that a lot of sugar is bad for their teeth and fruit has a lot of sugar in it they counteract this by putting salt on it…crazy!

Another adventure we had was our trip to the hospital one night in Delat. Sophie hurt her ear (suspected burst ear drum) from jumping off the boat in Nha Trang. We were directed to a new hospital where we hoped someone would speak English. Unfortunately no one did and also there were no doctors around. After conveying what was wrong with Sophie through the medium of Charades/Pictionary (I’ve still got the note – very funny) the nurse looked down her ear with a torch and we gathered we should come back in the morning when a doctor might be around. In the end, her ear seemed fine so we didn’t go back.

We are now in Mui Ne until 19th,, which is the surfing capital of Vietnam. We’ve managed to catch a few waves this morning whilst trying to avoid the kite surfers. I’ve been told to look on You Tube for ‘kite surfers and Mui Ne’ because in high season you can’t move for them!

We’ve now changed our plans to spend Xmas on Kho Phangan Island in Southern Thailand as our time to travel the rest of Asia seems too short. Also we have a few more days at the centre next week which will be really nice to go back and see the kids.

Finishing at the centre and onto Central Vietnam

2009-11-09T02:31:00.000-08:00

Well now we have finished work at the centre, a month has flown by but our connections there are by no means over…

The last couple of days in the centre have probably been the most rewarding. I was working closely with Swin the Physio; there are two kids with M.E down one side of their body and their main need is to be able to walk unaided. This means independence and ultimately a higher chance of a job after leaving the centre. These two characters are (little) Hoang and Chi (both their pictures are left from when they were hand painting), both around 3 years old and very cute. Chi can walk around holding someone’s hand and just really lacked the confidence to do it by herself. But with a little bit of guidance and a few distraction techniques we got her to walk by her self on Thursday and after that she was going it alone, a very proud moment!

Unfortunately this achievement was marred by the news that Swin gave us; all government paid workers are made to retire at 55 whether they are able to work or not. The centre has half its staff paid for by the government (healthcare, carers, kitchen staff) and the other half are paid for by voluntary donations (administration, sponsorship team, directors etc). So Swin very soon will be told to leave her job, she makes around $80/month – yes a fully qualified Physio who has been working there for over 20 years only on around 11 pounds/month! Though there are other problems, she unofficially adopted a girl, now a teenager from the centre who lives with her and she believes that she will be taken away from her as she will have no stable income. At the moment us volunteers are trying to find a solution for this, as to whether her income can be paid for by CNCF or by fundraising and paid to her directly so she can carry on her work as a volunteer. As you can see by the achievements she makes daily like those with Hoang and Chi, she is a vital part of the organisation.

We had a few creative days with the kids, we made a big a footprint mural, which took me back to my Ottley Street Nursery days. Pick up child, put paint on foot, stamp foot, run to sink to wash and repeat… Very good fun if a little messy, me and Sophie made a display with the footprints and photos from the day to go up in the centre so they can never escape our ugly mugs!

Another creative day we had was to make masks for Halloween; honestly I’ve never seen so much glitter thrown around and I’ve been to Nottinghill Carnival! It was in hair, ingested and left stuck all over the floor which means the lino now has that expensive glittery marble look! But again it was all good fun, the masks were for our final day Halloween party, which unfortunately got rained off. (The picture left is of Vy, she's aged around 5 and has Cerebral palsy.)

Halloween night itself didn’t go without a few shenanigans; the expat community here (mainly Americans) went crazy over the day with us Blue Petering it up with a white sheet to make a ghost and a mummy outfit. A few lashings white facepaint, a heavy bout of food poisoning for me, a 630am stumble home for Sophie meant it was a memorable night had by all! (the picture left is of all the other volunteers from the centre, me, Sophie, Jamie, Caoimhe and Sarah)

Back to centre life…. I requested a leaving interview with Helena to discuss our thoughts and feelings on the centre. The main point of the volunteers is not only to aid the carers but to also bring a fresh perspective on the centre with a few western ideas thrown in to the mix. One of my concerns was a need for a dentist, we had the joy of cleaning everyone’s teeth everyday, some like experience and use it as an excuse to eat as much strawberry flavoured toothpaste as possible, others absolutely despise it. I named a few of the kids who had awful teeth and we asked whether they saw a dentist. Helene’s response was that it wasn’t a priority and the kids that we had mentioned were ones from out in the provinces where there is no education about teeth care, so they probably hadn’t brushed their teeth until they arrived at CNCF. She mentioned that at the moment the government has campaigns on to advertise this necessity out in these areas. Sophie’s idea was to have a dentist come in twice a year to blitz everyone’s teeth, so if anyone knows a dentist with some spare time, a travel kit and a big heart send them to Vietnam!

We decided to fly north and work our way back south over a couple of weeks and then spend a few days back at the centre delivery the items we promised. One is a bike for Hoang (pronounced Wang, I think I’ve spoken about him before and his new white trainers). There are no larger bikes for the older kids at the centre and there isn’t one without stabilisers so we are going to get one of them for him and hopefully teach him to ride it before we disappear again.

There was some good news just as we left, the ban on going out of the centre has been lifted, very annoying just as we leave! The government have now placed the responsibility on establishments to control swine flu and CNCF has decided it is unnecessary to keep the kids quarantined in (and no face masks!) The kids are being taken to a water park on Friday and hopefully when we are back we can take a few swimming as that was our main wish when we started.

We spoke to Helena about Nhi’s wheelchair, one will have to be imported in from a more developed country so it will be higher quality as in Vietnam they are a bit dodgy. I’ve begun researching this, we can get a specialised children’s chair for a couple of 100 pounds but there’s quite a bit of red tape to get through, it all has to be approved by the head doctor of the facility, but my plan is to get it shipped in before mid December so we can pop back and see it in action before we head to Australia.

Also more news on Sophie’s little) friend (/Izzy replacement); Ngoc, from that meeting we found out she is one of 10 siblings and her mother couldn’t cope which is why she is in the centre. We are hopefully going to get her family signed up to the sponsorship program where they get an amount every month towards schooling and we should hopefully be able to help her. All this little girl wants to do is to go home and be with her family and hopefully we can help her achieve this. It’s around $15/month to support her and Sophie already has plans to send her to uni, she’s only 2! (She has already researched it’s around $1000/year in HCM, so Dr Gokky here we come!)

As I said before we have now flown to northern Vietnam, to see a bit more of the countryside and hopefully some spectacular landscapes. There is a big north/south divide, mainly due to one half originally being republican and the other communist. The southerners we met in Ho Chi Minh said that northerners were stingy with money, it was always cold and rainy and they all work in mines (I made that last bit up but it does seem to resemble home a bit!) If Sophie decides the South is better and I like the North it will be like we have never left!

Well hope everyone is well and thanks again for all the contributions we’ve received. We saw a lot of the medical supplies taken to the hospital the other day, most of our stationary and pretty hair clips etc were bundled up in preparation to be taken to the boys and girls shelters, so they’ve all found good homes, thanks again for that.

We started our adventure with 68kg between us, now unloaded with our CNCF donations we’ve had a bit of a blitz for our journey north and only checked in 10kg between us on our Vietnam Airlines flight. Dads are always right; you only need a t-shirt, pair of shorts and your swimmers and you’re away!

(I wrote the above a few days ago from Hanoi, since then we have been to the beautiful hills of Sapa and the coast of Halong Bay - pictures below)

We are now in Hue, after a monstorous 17 hour bus journey from Hanoi, it was only supposed to be 12 hours but its always good to add an extra 5 hours due to traffic in Vietnam. It was a sleeping bus so had beds so we did actually get quite a lot of sleep (picture right). But no rest for the wicked we have gin and tonic buckets calling and a 7:30am 6 hour bus ride to Hoi An.

Hope that’s long enough for you Dad! Up the Clarets (10th in the table get in!)

New Photos

2009-10-26T05:52:00.001-07:00

Hey, I hope this works. Sophie's uploaded some photos just should just be able to click on the link;

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=114938&id=503754742&l=4bda43e88b

Thats some from the centre, and this one is from our time in Bangkok, hope you can see them!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=115379&id=503754742&l=967301fdfc

Will write soon x x x

Me and Nhi

2009-10-22T04:49:00.000-07:00

We've just finished our second week so half way there now. Our good friend Betty has just left, she's 68, an Aussie grandma who swam for an hour everyday while we lazed by the pool! It’s her third time volunteering for CNCF, a great woman.

Just writing to keep you up to date with our activities this week.

Me and Soph made an impromptu visit to the hospital, (even as injury prone as we both are it wasn't for us!). Because of language barriers we had no idea where we were going on what was going on. We were given a baby each and lead into a taxi - not very health and safety conscious as we were driving through town with no seat belts or baby seats. We seemed to be fast tracked through this paediatric hospital with hundreds of kids and parents waiting. Interestingly we were each handed a record book for each child and then we found out who was a boy or a girl from the colour! Sophie had Kui who we always call Tufty and I had Kaa who was named Elmo for the day - far easier to remember! So we eventually figure out we were there for vaccinations, they had them very quickly and efficiently and we trundled back to the centre.

I went to a cultural park last Thursday with some kids from the Sunshine School. It’s a primary school set on the ground floor of the centre. It has 3 classroom and 127 kids who go everyday in 3 different batches. Most Vietnam schools are free but if the parents can't afford the uniform then the kids can't go. The difference with the Sunshine School is that the uniform is free so no-one is excluded. We took 15 kids to this theme park/zoo for the day. Some kids dressed in their finery, the majority stayed in uniforms, I was later told this was because that is their 'best' item of clothing. The park like most things in Vietnam (roads, music, fashion) was 20 years behind the time, we saw performing monkeys, elephants and even bears :( no very nice. But it was great to take the kids out and give them a proper meal and ice cream. We still haven't delegated any of the money yet and we only have a week left. I'm looking into getting a wheelchair for a little girl called Nhi (in the picture above). She's very beautiful and looks a lot like a younger Cara. Her legs don't work from the knees down, she stays at the centre in the day to get some respite from home. Her future will be shuffling around on the floor or using a makeshift skateboard when outside like we've seen some of the vendors use when they are selling on the streets. But obviously need to look into her home life and see if it’s appropriate.

Soph should hopefully be writing soon, she went to one of the CNCF province centres for blind children and no doubt she will talk about Ngoc (or Gokky as Soph likes to say) her new friend.

Agent Orange

2009-10-12T04:48:00.000-07:00

So we had a great party on Thursday, pin the tail on the donkey was very popular! The kids were on their best behavior in their (all matching) party clothes. It was such a special treat for them to have fruit, crisps, coke and birthday cake - something we all took for granted at our own birthdays. (The kids have one en-masse birthday celebration for all over them in the year.) We did pay the price the next day with all the kids grumpy from coming off their sugar high!

In the evening we headed to do some Karaoke, a massive thing over here. They charge you to rent a private room with a massive screen (but unfortunetly no Elton John and Kiki Dee!)

We've had a sight seeing weekend going to the War Remnants Museum, where we saw the horrific aftermath and was happened and is still happening to the people of Vietnam during the war. The main thing to hit home was 'Agent Orange' this was where the Americans literally crop dusted thousands of miles with horrific chemicals. These chemicals are still in the soil and water in some areas even 20 years later. Because of this some of our kids in the centre were born with disabilities, its still affecting the people here.

We also went to the Chu Chi tunnels where 16,000 Vietnamese lived in 200 kilometers of tunnels under the America's noses. There tunnels were so intricate and clever with traps, dead ends and some so small in size they had to crawl on their stomachs to travel around and they lived down there for 20 years!

We've had some thoughts on the generous donations we had. None of the children own anything of their own, the oldest resident Wang, aged 9 was given his own pair of trainers yesterday and went mental about them! Also all of their shoes need replacing. Because of swine flu we aren't allowed to take them out of the compound and the only outside area doesn't have any toys so we are looking into that as well.

Hope everyone's ok, take care x x

Met Christina Today!

2009-10-07T03:31:00.000-07:00

Well we met the woman herself today (and Sophie got thrown up on, but that's another story!) Christina Noble was in the centre today doing some filming for a feature length documentary. She's a very charismatic (and very Irish) lady. First thing she said to us was, "what do you hope to bring here...? You're gonna love the babies right? You know love is the most powerful weapon you've got, use it wisely..." Stuff of dreams my friends, the stuff of dreams! Love to everyone and you can now leave comments so feel free to do so xx

A week into the big adventure...

2009-10-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

897 views, thanks everyone for supporting the blog!

So its just over a week into the big adventure, we reached our destination of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) yesterday with an early flight from Bangkok. No upgrade this time but a helfy 7956 Baht fee for our extra bags ( I'll let you work that one out!) Serves us right for booking with a budget airline - thanks AirAsia! But aside from that we are now both millionaires: its 20,000 Vietnamese Dong (VD) to the pound!

We've had our first morning in the centreand I sat and wrote this at a very luxurious pool chilling in our lunch hour (11 - 2, beat that Paddy!) for the whole sum of 20,000 VD each!

We are now decked out in our CNCF t-shirts (Sophie is all about the uniform) and our facemasks; the government have stipulated our need to wear them because of swine flu. Which isn't too comfy in the 30 degree heat but the kids can always tell when we are smiling. Also mine was pulled off by a baby 30 secs into helping out in the creche!

We were first introduced to the babies; there were around 30, playing in a pen, others lined up in seats, some in their cots. They are brought in from the 300 some projects in the country becuase they need extra healthcare or are malnutritioned. Some are orphaned and will go back to the orphanges, few are picked up every weekend to go home.

Our roles basically are to play, cuddle and assist with the role of the full time vietnamese employed carers. We help feed, change (reuseable) nappies, brush teeth and put to sleep. There are a few characters emerging early on but we are under strict instructions not to become attached to just one child as when its time for us to leave it brings further disruption to their already hard lives.

We have been shown the middle floor where the children aged 2 - 4 stay. They have a lot of toys, the facilities are very clean and modern. It seems amazing that this was all created by one womean over 20 years ago (hope you've all had chance to read the books...)

Our volunteer co-ordinator Helene was astounded by the bags we brought. We are both glad that they made it to their final home in one piece. Each individual item is registered then delegated to the 300 projects to who need them most. We took out the essential party gear; baloons, bubbles, streamers etc as it is Sophie's and another volunteers birthday on Thursday! We are having a birthday party with the 3rd floor children; the kindergardeners, with games, food, the works - very excited and also it will be such a treat for the kids. It will be maybe the only oppertunity to take photos of the centre as that is prohibited unless its a special occasion. THis is ebcuase there are so many visitors it wouldn't be fair on the children.

That's what we've got to look forward to as well as the 3 hour lunch breaks by the pool! Hopefully I should be able to post photos up soon.

Thanks again everyone, we sill can't belive we are here!

Please visit http://www.cncf.org/ if you want to donate to the charity and also for Sarah's birthday she is donating all her birthday money to buying a bounce for the centre for the babies (to help strengthen their legs) her website is; http://www.justgiving.co.uk/buyabounce/

Bangkok

2009-09-30T22:26:00.000-07:00

So We've made it to Bangkok with 4 hours of delays but even at 7pm it was 27C! It hasn't stopped raining since we got here - you can take a girl out of Yorkshire, but you can't leave the Yorkshire rain at home!

Just wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone involved in this trip;

Our understanding parents who have (begrudgingly) let us take a second gap year each to expand our horizons.
Our beautiful friends who gave us amazing presents, we will never forget you. Rock on the mighty Fours!
The hardcore troop who made it to the airport, our last beer at Spoons was surreal.
James and Leanne for their great knowledge... Fan-TAAAA
Thank you to all involved in our fundraiser, we were astounded by the generosity of everyone. We raised over 800 pounds that day and had enough toys, books and clothes etc to fill two extra 23kg bags which Qantas took unquestioningly and upgraded us in the process! So big thanks to them - best flight EVER!

(In Premium economy Sophie was like a child in a sweet store, or me all over a plate of potatoes - it was embarrassing!)

With us we took;

32 tennis balls
17 pairs of socks
15 bottles of bubbles
72 pencils
enough cash to buy 27 bikes, so 27 families lives will be changed because now they have transportation and a way to set up a business.
Finally we took enough toothbrushes and toothpastes that when the children of Ho Chi Minh smile the whole world will see it.

As for Bangkok we are looking forward to exploring the city for the 4 days we are here, we move onto Ho Chi Minh on Monday 5th to start work in the Christina Noble Social and Medical Centre.

Thanks again everyone, and another update coming soon, Sophie & Cara...over and out! x x

Ok so our plan is to travel the world in six different stages..

2009-07-23T07:05:00.000-07:00

Asia
Oz
Nz
Fiji
Hawaii
USA

And this is our current plan of touring USA....