cruise halong

things i did in halong bay

• ate squid, shrimp, crab, scallops, and fish caught fresh fromt he waters on which i sailed.  it doesn't get any tastier than that.
• on the topic of food, i ate all my meals with a chinese family who were wonderfully pleasant.  my western manners had to take a back seat amongst all the slurping, chewing, and burping though.
• more with the food (it really was very memorable!), our chef created table decorations out of food each night that we were encouraged to take photos of.
• i sipped countless iced coffees and halida and tiger beers on the top deck of our boat, the lagoon explorer.
• visited a photogenic fishing village of 40 families and 150 people who live, work, go to school, and play on the water.
• when i asked why there were so many dogs in the floating village and if they were for protection, the guide told me that they were pets and 'sometimes for eating.'  well, of course, thinks the silly white girl.
• had a great guide (clad in his Ramani shirt) who wasn't pushy, wasn't trying to be my friend, and who studied tourism at the uni in hanoi.  very professional.
• kayaked amongst the karsts and had a few thoughts of being all absolutely alone in the bay and how rare you get to have that experience.  i wasn't panicked or worried, just calm.
• took a tonne of photos.  even took my camera off the green idiot box setting and played around with what i learned in my photography course.
• thought and thought and thought and managed to set some goals for my future.  i've already set some pretty concrete goals for my 29th year, but i really didn't know where i wanted to be in the future.  i am still not 100% sure, but i have a better idea.
• got a titch of a sunburn on my shoulders and legs.  i broke the cardinal skin care rule - put sunscreen on even if it is overcast!
• slept soundly for 2 nights in my cabin as the gentle rocking kept me asleep and i woke up to the birdsong outside my open cabin window.
• i learned and observed how squid are caught and touched them when they were still alive to watch them release their ink.
• did i mention the food?!  my favs were the shrimp, tomato, and mushroom soup, the egg fried rice, the fish, the BBQed shrimp, and the pumpkin soup.  oh, and the crab, which the waitor needed to help me with as he expertly ripped the shell off it in one fluid motion.  i'm not sure if this is typical vietnamese cuisin, but my suspicion is that it is luxury vietnamese food because i can't imagine anyone eating that amount of protein unless you've signed up to the atkins philosophy of weight loss (and heart disease).
• collected fabulous shells, much larger than i've seen elsewhere.  i rinsed them in my bathroom sink to make sure i'm not bringing any critters back with me.
• crawled around a cave where 'foreigners' had broken off stalagtites (or mites?) to make into decorations to sell before the area was declared a UNESCO world heritage site, but the cave was still pretty neat and outside there were wild orchids growing and friendly dogs that i couldn't imagine eating!

floating

why oh why can blogger not remedy their photo uploading issues so i can post this nicely formatted with photos prettily placed throughout the text?

moving on...

hot air ballooning is amazing. i had been once before (when i was in egypt and all hyped up on generic egyptian anti-malarial drugs to treat the malaria that i contracted on the coast of kenya) and had thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of floating weightlessly in the winds.

this time was no different. i woke up at 5am (which is about 5 hours earlier than i normally do. just kidding! sort of) and made myself some coffee in my go mug to drink while i waited for the pilot in a random parking lot in east calgary. (i feel it is important to mention this because somehow, someway my mini bladder did not scream at me as i was stuck in a basket with 7 other adults).

after meeting up with our pilot and fellow air ballooners, we got to 'help' set up the giant size balloon (7 stories high!) and watch science at work as it inflated with warm air. after jumping in the basket and releasing the rope tying us to the truck on the ground, we quickly ascended, leaving the streets of calgary behind to see the city with a bird's eye view.

we had taken off (do air balloons really 'take off'?) from a field in west hillhurst and the day couldn't have been more perfect for a morning of floating in alberta - there was not a cloud in the sky, the sun was bright and shiny, and there was the slight crispness of autumn in the air.

apparently, they said we were very lucky in that we had a great flightpath. the thing with floating above the city is that you really are at the mercy of the winds and you can only move in the direction that the winds take you (although you can move up and down to enter different zones of wind to change your direction). we got to fly past downtown, over mount royal, above the river, across the industrial area, over rush hour traffic, and residential neighbourhoods and golf courses.

the best part of a hot air balloon is how peaceful everything seems at that altitude. and the perspective that you see things at cannot be beat (except for perhaps if you were in a helicopter, but i honestly don't think there would be another way). it puts a different spin on existential ideas like privacy and space and it was nice to be lost in my thoughts with that view on a thursday morning.

and to think, this was for work! i still think someone better pinch me, because it just shouldn't be this easy!

gorilla gorilla!

(march 23, 2008)

i woke up at 5:30am to meet my driver with whom the only language i shared being kiswahili. he brought me to parc national des volcanes headquarters where i wished i had someone to chat with as i waited to be assigned a group nursing my rwandan coffee and fighting off a nervous pee while everyone else chatted with the people they came with. damned travelling alone.

but a nice australian lady befriended me in the loo queue and we ended up being in the same group with our guide, a man named patience. (gender specific names are apparently not so important in rwanda.) we went through the generic platitudes of new group formations and i was happy to find out that we were just 6 people, 2 of which were fellow solo travellers.

i thought we’d get on with hiking then, but we had to drive another 30-40 minutes to the base of the volcano we would climb on some of the worst roads my bum’s experienced. but the countryside with houses constructed with mud and wooden skeletons and the women walking along the road wrapped in brightly coloured fabrics was enough to keep me distracted. it is quite a different picture than kenya, where there are always signs pointing to some ngo or evangelical organisation down each red dirt road. but the children in the villages we passed are already realising there is money to be made in the increasing numbers of tourists; pens and sweets to be collected from the foreigners passing by in their safari mobiles as they run alongside the car trying to sell you their drawing of a gorilla or a flower they just picked.

before long, we arrived at our starting point, a stone’s throw from the border with the drc, where we met out porters and were convinced we needed them to carry our things. but being the control freak that i am, i insisted i could carry my backpack. you pack it, you carry it, right? i had thought very carefully about what i would pack and had made home roasted cashews and maple granola as well as brought along 4 extra pairs of socks in ziploc bags (paranoid?!) in case my feet got wet and i wanted my stuff to hand.

the hike itself was uphill, was very muddy, was full of stinging nettles that went right through my two pairs of pants, was led by a machete-wielding porter to cut away the rainforest so we could pass through, and was chaperoned by armed rwandan soldiers because i guess they don’t like to take chances that there are still hostile poachers in the area, especially with instability in the drc.

but all of it was forgotten when we turned a corner around some forest and saw the first gorilla. there were a group of about 10-15 of them sitting in an area where they’d squished the trees and leaves and were so close the only thing keeping me from touching them was the rules not to. they regarded us as we approached and then carried on doing what they had been doing previous to our expected arrival: the baby gorillas played and turned somersaults down the hill, the silverback groomed one of the females, some sprawled on their backs and just relaxed, and the mama gorillas cradled their babies.

one gorilla, a middle aged female, was not thrilled with our presence and challenged our guide, who she knew and who grunted at her to let her know he wouldn’t back down (or she would charge) and told us to ignore her so as not to encourage her, as if he was talking about a misbehaving child. it worked, and she walked past and behind us to find some trees to swing on while we sat with the rest of the group.

how many other ways can i say amazing?

once the silverback decided it was time to move, they slowly followed him out of the nesting area and we slowly followed them through the bush. that female who had earlier been asserting her authority must have decided that she didn’t like being on her own after all and came barrelling through the bush and walked RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, which scared the living bejesus out of me and like a human with a natural fear of a wild animal twice her weight, i turned and ran right into the austrian man in our group while reminding myself not to scream. oh, i am such a natural animal trekker...

we followed them until we reached a ravine that was not human-friendly and watched them disappear into the forest.

worth $500 for the permit? in a word, yes. would i do it again? absolutely. the chance to spend more time with the gorillas would draw me back to this country even if the fried bananas don’t.

the trek to the trek to the gorillas

(march 23, 2008)

i have not been as nervous or excited for anything in a long time. the kind of childlike excitement that keeps you awake at night and makes you ever so slightly nauseous with anxiety about what is to come. i had done my last minute preparations before leaving nairobi, packing clothes suitable for hiking, bagging high energy snacks, and throwing my swiss army knife in my backpack for good measure. i had heard that trekking with the gorillas was a once in a lifetime experience not to be missed whatever the price and that it was surreal even if the hike up the volcano is tough.

to get to ruhengeri, the village close to the parc national des volcans, i took a bus from kigali (that was more like a matatu) and sat between 2 sweaty men where we had to fold our shoulders like accordions to fit 4 people across the seat. I thought at that moment that it is a good thing i don’t take up a lot of space and that rwandans tend to be thin people.

the 2 hour drive was on paved roads without potholes and with guardrails, both of which have become novelties to me. the views of the countless hills and valleys draped in all shades of green were stunning and made the numbing of my bum worthwhile.

my complimentary thoughts on rwanda and rwandans were temporarily suspended, however, when someone on the ‘taxi’ began a conversation, that soon involved everyone of the 18 passengers and driver, about the mzungu that continued for awhile in kinyarwanda with people looking in my direction every now and again without ever explaining what they all found so conversation-worthy about my existence. annoying.

but my limited kiswahili was useful in explaining where i wanted to go and soon realised that the person who bought me my ticket purchased the wrong one. makes me want to reinvigorate my swahili study, not to mention learn french once and for all. (but let me say now that the languages in rwanda are a bit of a smorgasboard of french, english, swahili, with nearly everyone speaking kinyarwanda – many of the people living in rwanda today grew up in kenya, uganda, tanzania, or further afield in the us or canada and so speak english or swahili instead of french, even though that was the official language for decades).

my guesthouse in ruhengeri was friendly and cozy enough. i was contented that it had warm water, and mosquito net (less because there were mosquitoes and more just so i could rest assure the creepy crawlies who neither creep nor crawl on my during the night), and a pillow. i’m afraid i may have offended the hotel staff though, when i didn’t eat much for dinner and wasn’t interested in indulging in friend bananas for dinner. but i managed to get to sleep in spite of my excitement and only woke about 5 times during the night worried that i had overslept.

expats in the face of danger

(october 21, 2006)

i arrived in jomo kenyatta international airport rather exhausted from having been sat between a rather large irish catholic missionary and permanent resident of kenya and the daughter of a dutch diplomat returning home to dar es salaam (i learned this from being nosy as she filled out her visa application form), which did not allow for much meaningful sleep. normally, i pride myself on my ability to sleep in confined areas and to be sleeping before a plan takes off, but not this time. with a stroke of luck, i began getting sleepy about ¾ of the way through the da vinci code so i turned it off and tried not to touch the man who was by this point spilling over into my seat space as i closed my eyes and tried to prevent my head from falling every time i approached sleep sitting upright.

and this was after a small delay at heathrow where they were not sure that i was going to get a seat as they had oversold the flight and were trying to squeeze 11 people in while reassuring us left-overs that on average 20% of people do not show up for flights. now who can afford to be paying this kind of money for intercontinental flights and then not show up? i believe it was this little kink that was responsible for my trying seating arrangement. but more than the uncomfort of having someone in my space while i am trying to sleep (or watch the da vinci code – and by the way, what is with me sitting next to a catholic priest on a flight where i chose to bring the book to read and then this time next to a catholic missionary where i decide to watch that movie?), was the inconvenience and lack of duty free shopping time that this hiccup caused me. i had a serious shopping list to tackle whilst at heathrow that included a travel hair dryer with a uk plug and Birkenstocks for only £25. i am still without either. damned british airways.

a friendly driver from the organisation i am working with was there to greet me with my name (albeit missing a few Rs) on his sign negating my fears as i was terrified i would have to navigate the mean streets of africa’s most dangerous city alone at 7:30am on a national holiday. i must admit that it was quite nice being picked up rather officially in a range rover with the organisation’s logo on the side. before we headed into the city, i noticed that the areas surrounding nairobi look exactly like photos, flat with hills in the distance, everything a dry-looking yellow with baobob trees dotting the horizon. pretty amazing.

i came to the apartment of a co-worker’s flat (whom i have never met and who is away on vacation for the long weekend) and promptly slept for 7 hours. i woke up, and as it was getting dark, was terrified. of what, i don’t know, but enough people warned me about going outside after dark that i figured i was in just as much danger being inside. besides what sounded like a monsoon rain (although i suppose nairobi is much too high for the monsoons to reach us), a few fireworks nearby, and the guard dogs in the apartment complex periodically barking like mad, i survived my first night.

today, a rather nice belgian fellow from the office called me and asked if i wanted to come out with him to do some shopping, which i of course said yes to, because there is no possible way that any excuse to stay inside for fear of all that awaited outside the front door would fly as there was no way i could possibly have had any other plans. and, well, i did want to leave the house and was happy to have some company in doing so.

i learned today that the expat lifestyle is a good one. we had lunch at an american-run restaurant that served fantastic coffee and delicious guacamole, bought some cheap groceries and seasonal fruit that would make anyone’s mouth water at home, and returned to my new friend’s house, which is really more like a mansion. well, not quite, but it is located on a compound full of southern californian-like houses, jacaranda and bougainvillea trees, a swimming pool, a playground, a gym, and is chockablock full of diplomatic license plates on vehicles.

it was obvious after one day out and about in my neighbourhood that there are many different nationalities living and working together. i was even invited to a party in the complex by a neighbour who was trying to sell the idea on there being some italians and some americans in attendance, an invitation i politely declined as i need to read about what the hell my job is all about tonight and tomorrow before i start on monday. i did see the office today and i didn’t realise that it is actually a refugee processing site as well as the regional office. my office looks very workable and i have a lunch date for monday, which will hopefully take away all the awkwardness of having to find a place to sit amongst people who know one another. i have always hated lunch hours at new jobs.