A Chronicle of Amy and Sean's World Travels

When you look up awesome in the dictionary, you’ll find New Zealand.

Posted by Amy on Apr 14th, 2011 in Australasia/Oceania/Zealandia/Whatever You Call the Continent Way Down Under, Look! Something Pretty, Money, New Zealand, On the Road, Travel Musings, Yummy things | 1 comment

So our love affair with New Zealand continues, although our shock over the New Zealand prices has not yet subsided. I fear the price shock is causing us to spend more than planned. Because now when I see a $3 cookie, I can rationalize it by saying it is $3 kiwi dollars, which isn’t really $3 actual dollars, and if you don’t do the math, you never have to figure out that it is a really overpriced cookie. But let’s not dwell on that, because guess what kind of overpriced cookies New Zealand has? Cookie Time cookies, for serious cookie munchers. And what am I but not a serious cookie muncher, especially after months of being deprived? In Queenstown, the Cookie Time serves chocolate chip cookies warm, with milk from a draft pump. How awesome is that? Clearly worth any amount of kiwi or U.S. dollars.

So far we’ve learned that if something is marked as a scenic route in New Zealand, they really mean super scenic route, and if it is not marked as a scenic route, chances are it is going to be a scenic route anyway. We pretty much spend all of our time cruising around in our campervan, stopping every five minutes for yet another photo. Our vocabulary consists of ooh and aah and wow and amazing and awesome and other such words. Because New Zealand? Is totally deserving of all of those words and many more. Not only is the scenery consistently beautiful, the country is totally neat and organized. There’s absolutely no litter, every lawn is immaculately landscaped (doesn’t anyone have a trashy overflowing front porch in this country?), and all of the roads are nicely paved with scenic lookouts just where you want them. Every town has an information center brimming with free information; I hope someone reuses or recycles the zillions of brochures that are threatening to take over our campervan. The Department of Conservation has conserved land all over the country, and each area is well signposted with historical, ecological, and logistical information. I hate to keep making unfair comparisons to Asia, but the differences between New Zealand and Asia are so wide, so profound, I can’t help myself.

I’ve been trying to figure out why New Zealand is so scenic, and I think I’ve come up with two explanations. First, there’s just not that many people here to screw things up or even to get in the way of your fabulous photos. The people are crowded into little towns and cities with tons of trendy cafes and wool shops galore, which much of the land is undeveloped and untouched, or touched only by sheep farms. Which brings me to point number two. There’s a ton of sheep here. We were certain there had to be more sheep than Ireland, and it turns out we were right. There are 8 million sheep in Ireland, but there are 40 million sheep in New Zealand. And you all know how I love sheep. Unlike Ireland, most of the sheep here are unpainted. And super fluffy. I’m thinking it is because it is almost winter, but who knows? All I know is the high fluffy sheep density is reason number 433 why I’m loving New Zealand.

We’ve covered a lot of ground already; we didn’t listen to our wise buddies over at the Road Forks and are trying to cram both islands into a month. Luckily New Zealand keeps you moving; no matter how much you’re enjoying where you are and no matter how much you feel like you could stay forever, you feel the pull towards the next amazing place around the corner. We’ve visited the little French town of Akaroa on the gorgeous Banks Peninsula; cruised down the east coast to the historic town of Omarau; stopped by the Moeraki boulders at low tide; ate a tasty but pricey blue cod lunch at Fleur’s Place by the ocean; explored the Otago peninsula but passed on pricey penguin and other wildlife tours; hung out in the college town of Dunedin and got some tasty produce and treats at its Saturday farmer’s market for cooking up in our campervan; meandered through the sunny Catlins coast and Southern Scenic Route; sped towards Curio Bay on zero gas in time to catch the yellow eyed penguins come ashore there for free; stayed in a campground wedged between two gorgeous ocean bays with a sea lion visitor; saw an amazing sunrise over our campground in Te Anau; cruised through the Milford Sound and explored the Fiordlands in the pouring rain and fog; gawked at impossibly gorgeous sunny Queenstown in fall, in April; gawked at others jumping off bridges and the like but opted only for the tamer jetboating through the Shotover Canyon; tasted a fantastic blackberry and chocolate muffin along with a long black at Ritual Espresso Cafe in Wanaka; drove through the Haast mountain pass, again in the pouring rain and fog (what is with this, New Zealand?); detoured to Jackson Bay to eat perfectly battered fresh fish and chips in a trailer by the sea; and now we’re in Fox Glacier township, about to explore a real creeping glacier tomorrow. Whew!

p.s. New Zealand is toying with our weather emotions. One day it’s freezing cold and winter-like; the next it’s a sunny fall day in April; the next it’s back to rain and fog. The weather really better pull itself together; from here on out, we’re northward bound. And in this upside down world, north is like south. So I expect sunshine; you hear that, New Zealand?

p.p.s. After all this talk of gorgeousness, I bet you’re wanting some pictures, huh? Fear not; there’s so many, I’ll have to break them up in future posts. But if you can’t wait, you can see all of them through yesterday here because I am a photo processing rock star and current on my photos for the first time during the whole trip!

Super Scooters

Posted by Amy on Apr 14th, 2011 in Asia, On the Road, Vietnam | 1 comment

Out of any country in Southeast Asia, scooter-mania is biggest in Vietnam. Scooters are everywhere you go, in all directions. There’s a practical reason: there’s a lot of people in Vietnam, and cars are prohibitively expensive in Vietnam compared to scooters. A fun fact we learned while watching the Top Gear Vietnam episode. Like the locals, the guys had to buy scooters for their challenge to stay on budget. Cars haven’t been around that long, meaning there’s no used car supply. As they put it on Top Gear, cars haven’t had the time to get cheap. So the scooter takes over. They are the taxis, the family sedans, the pick-up trucks, the moving trucks, and the freight trucks all in one.

We tried to capture as many crazy scooter sightings as we could, but because they usually are whizzing by before we had time to whip the camera out, we missed some of our favorites. Like the guy carrying an enormous sheet of glass in front of his body, making us – and him, I’m sure – pray he didn’t have to stop suddenly, lest the glass shatter all around him and anyone in his path. Here’s some of the other ones we caught on camera, making our wondering at how we’d fit on a moto-taxi with a driver and our bags seem ridiculous. (By the way, all but the first one is from Hanoi, a city where we pretty much just walked around with our camera out at all times to capture all of the craziness surrounding us!)

Saigon vs. Hanoi

Posted by Amy on Apr 13th, 2011 in Asia, On the Road, Vietnam | 1 comment

Vietnam’s two largest cities – Ho Chi Minh City in the south and Hanoi in the north – are quite different from each other, perhaps reflecting differences in the north and south themselves. Saigon (which hasn’t been the proper name since the war but it’s the one everyone uses) is open, wide, and buzzing with modern energy; Hanoi’s older, more traditional, and chaotic.

Saigon’s wide open boulevards are lined with trees. Remnants of French colonization like the cathedral and post office dot the city, but many of the buildings are more modern. It is easy to turn away from a buzzing traffic circle, and find yourself wandering down a narrow alleyway where people live their lives at street level. Saigon’s got a rather lively nightlife. Besides the bars filled with foreigners, teenagers spill out from cafes and frozen yogurt shops and young people sit on their parked scooters in Saigon’s green spaces to scope the scene.

Hanoi’s streets are narrow, twisting, and filled to brim with scooters and food stalls. The trees that line these streets wind upwards while their roots twist downwards as they have for many years. Instead of drinking at modern bars or clubs, most people have their beers at the corner bia hoi, where homebrewed beers are served for 33 cents. The buildings are old and full of traditional shops; in the Old Quarter, each street has a theme. Music shops sell instruments on music street; sewing shops sell thread, ribbons and fabric on sewing street; silk shops sell traditional silks on silk street. Hanoi feels solid and practical; no space is wasted. While we ate bun cha on the street, a street beauty salon was in full effect next to us. A women got a manicure, another was having her hair washed.

In a showdown, I’d have to give Saigon the edge for weather alone – it was warm, sunny, and bright while Hanoi was cold, rainy, and overcast. When it comes down to shorts and flip flops versus rain gear and fleeces, Hanoi doesn’t stand a chance. But if we’re talking food, it changes things. We had some tasty eats in Saigon, like traditional Vietnamese country cooking in a trendy architect’s home. But although I suspect Saigon has it available, just perhaps located in a different area from where we stayed, you can’t walk down the street in Hanoi without encountering a food vendor every two steps. Crouching down on stools several inches off the ground to eat adds that cultural flavor you just don’t get when eating at a proper table and chairs inside. We devoured all of what Hanoi had to offer and only had to part with minimal amount of dong, making Hanoi the winner in the food category.

In the end, we’re glad we got to see both cities. Hanoi was frustrating but fun to visit, and Saigon’s the all around pleasing city you could see yourself living in.

Saigon