Health Tips

Maui, Hawaii, United States

1st February 2010

Maui- Hawaii.

After four beautiful days at sea we finally arrived at the first of the Hawaiian Islands on our trip. We anchored offshore from the town of La Haina. During breakfast we were able to view from the window a pod of Humpback whales who gave us their own welcome-demonstrating their renowned diving, spouting and tail flicking activities which is the stuff of wild life films. The trip to shore was also made very interesting by the presence of several pods of whales who seemed to take an interest in the tender boats. Unfortunately because of the enclosed environment we were not able to get any photos so we had to content ourselves with attempting to photograph from the ship later in the day– the results were not so good.

It is not a very large town but it is a bustling with lots of retail activity- great for the ladies. Not much evidence of grass skirts but we were greeted on our arrival by a group of Hawaiian lady dancers who danced to the sounds of their local music. We went on to visit the Maui Ocean Centre, which is a rather upmarket aquarium centre housing a large number of marine mammals mostly of the ferocious kind-sharks and stingrays etc.

La Haina is a very pretty place, and well worth another visit.

Later in the evening there was a Hawaiian style deck party with lots of energetic dancing. It’s a good way to tackle the excess pounds we are putting on from all the food we eat. See Photos.

from: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rconduns/1/1265248935/tpod.html

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Landed in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC)/ Saigon right on time, cleared customs super-quickly, our bags were coming out on the carousel just as we entered the baggage pickup area, and Michael and Eija were waiting to greet us as we stepped into the arrivals hall. Good evening Vietnam!

This cheered us up no end as we’d been in a lousy mood leaving Phuket. Firstly checking in our baggage was quite stressful: We’d packed and re-packed our bags and weighed them at the hotel to make sure we weren’t carrying excess as Air Asia only allows 15 kilos. After packing as much of the heavier stuff as possible into our hand baggage and wearing as many layers of clothing as we could bear, we got them down to just under 16 each which we were pretty sure would be OK. At the airport we again found some scales and double-checked the weight, but upon check-in were told that we were both 2 kilos overweight. Eek! We kicked up a polite little fuss, protesting that the airport scales we had used 30 minutes ago read differently. The check-in girl fortunately took pity on us and allowed us to triple-check on another set of scales. We were still a bit over but she let us off without charging for excess. Phew!

Then our luck ran out. We learnt an expensive lesson at passport control – we’d overstayed our visas by 8 days. Arrgh! For some reason we’d thought we were allowed 90 days and never thought to check until passport control pointed out the bit on the stamp in our passports that says clear as day that they were valid only until January 29th. Duuuh! An 80 quid fine each. Ouch. Definitely checking our stamps thoroughly from now on.

But back to Vietnam…

It was great to see Michael and Eija at the airport. They’d booked us into the (very nice) hotel they’re staying in and a cab was waiting to take us there. After dumping our bags went for a wander around the local area. The whole country is gearing up for Tet, the new year celebration taking place on February 15.There’s a park near our hotel full of vendors selling an impressive array of plants and flowers – all sorts of bonsai trees, fruit trees, orchids, massess of yellow chrysanthemums (yellow is a lucky colour here), and even animal-shaped fruit sculptures, all for Tet.

By the time we’d had a good catch-up over a tasty Vietnamese dinner of rice noodle shrimp spring rolls and noodle soup in the market, followed by a drink in a local bar, it was gone bedtime so we headed back to the hotel. There Michael and Eija presented us with a mini suitcase full of stuff from home. We’d asked for a few bits and pieces – the most important being proper some tea bags and some sunscreen (the stuff they sell here all has ‘whitening’ stuff in it, eurgh). We now have a selection of over 500 English Breakfast, Earl Grey and Chai tea bags, and about 5 litres of Factor 30. Also a load of goodies including chocolate, licorice, Hobnobs and M&S Percy Pigs which should keep us going for a while (thanks parents and Elisa! x).

After a good night’s sleep (dreaming about opening up an English tea shop with a tanning salon on the side in Saigon) we had breakfast in the cafe next door, Michael advised us on where to go and what to see in HCMC, and we set out to explore the city.

First impression of HCMC: motorbike madness! There are about 4 million scooters and motorbikes in Saigon and they rule the roads, and the pavements, in every direction. They flow like a liquid, filling in every nook, cranny and gap in the street. People carry everything on them – we’ve seen them piled high with shopping bags, suitcases, rucksacks, crates of eggs, clementine trees, full length doors, boxes of foodstuff, and entire families. A family of five squeezed onto one bike is the record so far.

Road markings don’t count here so cross a road one must take a deep breath, step out into the road, make eye contact with the oncoming traffic and hope they manouvre round you. Seriously – being a pedestrian in this crazy city is an extreme sport.

We’ve so far survived almost 24 hours in HCMC so so far so good…

First sightseeing was the War Remnants Museum, formerly named the Museum of American war Crimes. A real eye-opener. We knew the Vietnam War was an atrocious affair – seen Apocalypse Now a zillion times, been reading Dispatches, etc etc, – but nothing prepared us for this. The museum documents the brutality of the war, the hideous torture and sickening human rights abuses that took place, and its legacy today – not so many years on.

Outside the main museum building are replicas of the ‘tiger cages’ used to torture Vietcong prisoners, a French guillotine introduced to execute them, and a collection of retired artillery pieces. Inside – US planes, choppers and tanks. Inside the main museum building there’s an incredibly moving collection of photographs, ‘Requiem’, taken by 134 war reporters killed covering the war; heartbreaking pictures of the masses of victims of the war – victims of torture, and those born with horrendous birth defects caused by Agent Orange and dioxin; an exhibition of international solidarity with the Vietnamese people and against the War, including pictures of demonstrations held in London; and a ‘War & Peace’ children’s painting collection.

It was an emotionally exhausting but hugely worthwhile visit and has definitely given us a deeper appreciation of the absolute horror of war and the impressive resilience of the Vietnamese people.

Then took a stroll past the Reunification Palace and through to the old French/government quarter where the red brick Notre Dame cathedral, the beautiful central post office building, and the Peoples Committee Hall with the statue of Ho Chi Minh himself infront all sit.

Carried on down to the riverside, looped back up to the HCMC History Museum where we spent a bit of time looking at the displays housed in the pretty Sino-French building sitting in the grounds of the botanical gardens and city zoo, then to the Ngoc Hoang pagoda, or Jade Emperor pagoda, a functional Cantonese temple filled with colourful papier mache statues of both Buddhist and Taoist deities.

By that time we’d worked up quite an appetite so made a final stop at the bustling Ben Thanh market for a bite to eat before heading back to the hotel. Had a rest, Skyped home, watched some telly (such a novelty after a month of no telly), popped out for dinner at a Mexican cantina of all places, re-packed our bags, and are now all set for a 6.30am wake up call and a 36 hour bus ride to Hoi An in the morning.

from: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ristohannah/1/1265565992/tpod.html

Beijing, Beijing, China

Around 7:00am the speakers came alive with the sound of AM radio static. I can hear what sounds like a newsbroadcast fazing in and out, and I wonder how many years it will be before they realize how annoying that is to wake up to. The morning radio fuzz really brings out the aspect of Chinese culture that I find most annoying, the lack of choices. You have no choice whether you want to listen to the radio or not. You have no choice what the radio plays. You have no choice whether the light is on or off in your bunk room. Even if everyone in your bunk room is asleep, the light stays on until 10 and does not come on the next day. Oh well, the train runs rather smoothly, so I can’t complain too much. I suppose things are easier in such a crowded country when everyone knows what to expect.

Once the train arrives, I get off and moving into the exit hall. The exit hall is one gigantic herd of people. They’ve optimized the hall in Beijing for such large groups by changing the stairs into long ramps. All I can see around me is people, people, people. The weather today in Beijing is what would probably be called really crappy. The entire city is covered in a thick fog, which is probably exacerbated by smog. It’s overcast, and slightly chilly. All I have to do is think of how much I sweat standing still in Malaysia, and the day seems like the best day I could ever hope for. Knowing where I am going, I deflect all the touts and head north up some street. On the train, I thought it would be Monday before I could finally get my hands on some kind of ice-cream oreo dessert. Unlike HongKong and the rest of the world, none of the McDonalds in China have the “Oreo McFlurry” item available. It’d been a sad couple weeks without my dessert. I about fell out of my shoes as the first thing I saw on the street was a DQ. LoL, screw McDonalds, I’ve found the good stuff. It’s 8:30am on a chilly October morning, and I’m spending $1.50 on an Oreo blizzard. I feel like an alcoholic buying a beer on Sunday morning after St. Pat’s. It’s a spectacular dessert, and I head on up the street to my hostel amongst the Hutong districts.

My hostel is in the Shijia Hutong, one of innumerous one-storied grid-like residential areas that fill Beijing up. I don’t even check the place over as its a IYH and recommended by Zoran, the Croatian from Nanjing. After getting cleaned up, I head towards the nearest Internet cafe on my map to start my search for a future job here. Amazingly, Beijing has the most marked buildings I’ve ever seen. Each shop has a consistent red sign giving it’s full address. Well, this said, the address corresponding to my cafe was no longer a cafe. So, I head to the second one, about a kilometer away. I have to walk through a couple Hutong districts to get there. It’s a mostly quiet street with mostly small alleyways and restaurants on the sides. At one point there is a gateway indicating the entrance to a private Hutong where only residents are allowed. I guess too many tourists and thieves wander in there otherwise.

I make it to the cafe and am surprised once again that the workers all have a basic understanding of English, at least enough to have no problem explaining what is going on. After spending some time configuring my laptop for their system (which was amazingly easy, the girl even knew which screen to bring up for me to copy the addresses down from their computer), I settled down into a big couch for the next 6 hours to search, search, search. I circled many times through many websites gathering as much information as possible and sending out dozens of emails to local universities and recruiting places. I even manage to talk to a couple of recruiting people using instant messages. Surprisingly (isn’t everything surprisingly or amazingly? I guess if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t mention it), one of the recruiters said they had a job in FuZhou that would pay me Y15,000 to Y20,000 (somewhere around half of what I was making in the USA) to teach computer science classes. Wow, that would be insanely cool, except I want to work in Beijing. Hmm, still it sounds too good to pass on so I may find out more about it later. I got one reply saying they had no positions for Beijing, and another reply saying that they wanted English majors to teach English, but they would be interested in my teaching computer science classes. Clearly, I’ve been searching for the wrong teaching positions. Tomorrow I may start searching for CS teaching opportunities.

It’s growing dark as I leave the cafe and the manager recommends I go see Tiannamen square at night. I head in that direction and stop by a few stores along the standard “pedestrian mall strip”. I find a huge bookstore with more books than I can handle in languages I can’t read. I do find a copy of “The Jungle” for Y25, so I grab it for the airplane ride to Sydney this weekend. Around 7pm, I reach the “Gate of Heavenly Peace” with Mao’s famous portait hanging in front. I wonder if someday there will be another big confrontation right in the spot I am standing under Mao’s portait. Only time will tell. I wander through the gate, and then back out to go check out the square. In the underpass, I find guard blocking the entrance. It seems that the square closes sometime before 7:30 and so I have to walk along the adjacent street looking at it. It is rather large, but I have a hard time believing it’s the largest public square in the world. At the end, I decide to try out the subway system.

The Beijing subway is without a doubt the most laughable subway system I have ever encountered. They don’t have ticket machines, because they don’t have machines that read tickets. Even though it is a flat fee of Y3 to ride the subway, you must buy a paper ticket from a desk, and then hand it to another person who is waiting at the entrance who tears it in half. I somehow hope that they have some kind of drastic improvement on the way before the Olympics or else the city is in for a large embarassment. The train’s are rather ragged, but they work. It’s really the ticket counter that blows my mind. I would have never guessed that any subway in the world had less than even a basic token/turnstile system, let alone a city hosting the Olympics less than 3 years.

Oh well, back at the hostel, I’ve written up the last two days events. Tomorrow I plan to hike back to the cafe and continue my search in the morning. I hope to actually visit some local universities in the afternoon to see what kind of situations I may be getting myself into come springtime.

from: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ditchthecube/5/1265663592/tpod.html