Team Spiers World Travels

We Are Halfway Done Our Trip Already? (Feb 2009)

Unfortunately we have just passed our halfway mark on our trip and it only seems like yesterday that we departed.  I do miss home lot but at the same time I LOVE travelling and don’t want it to end. On our half way anniversary of our trip, I just wanted to share with you some of our family’s favourite and notable moments.

Favourite Adventure

Our favourite adventure was caving in Khao Sok National Park Thailand . We walked about 30 minutes and it was pitch-black so we had to use our headlamps. It came with hundreds upon hundreds of bats, and those bats dropped a lot of smelly guano (bat poop). And a lot of bat poop attracts a lot of bugs and also including a couple of scorpions. And did I mention there are spiders in there that make the tarantula look like a baby. We then had to go into a stream because the path ended. About half an hour of walking in the stream we found ourselves on top of a 3 meter waterfall. This is when our guide tells us that we are going to rappel down the water fall. After the water fall it was just another 15 minute walk to the end of the cave. And that was our crazy adventure.  

Funniest Sight

Well my family and I all agree that our funniest sight had to be  in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. We were driving in a tuk tuk, on these incredibly busy streets, I looked beside me and I saw a man on his little moped with a full size fridge strapped to his back.  

What.?.. it's just a fridge.

All I could think about was  how the heck he is going to get that off his back without falling. Another time we saw a family of 7 on one bike, and another time a full pig strapped on.

Craziest Sleeping Arrangements

Winner of the weirdest sleeping arrangements goes to….. Khao sok , Thailand on the paddle Asia tour. We were sleeping in the national park in a place that you can’t believe anyone else has ever been.  Nothing but trees. And we pulled up to our sleep arrangements which were floating bamboo huts on the side of the lake, with palm tree roof, about 5 feet high and 7 feet in length, with a mattress on the floor and a mosquito net. Other “free” items that came with or room were spiders bigger than my hand, some cockroaches and our favourite and familiar friend Mr. Gecko.  Our alarm clock was the screeching sound of Gibbon Apes playing up in the trees just a few hundred metres away. Very cool indeed.

Weirdest Thing We Saw Eaten

Now I am going to talk to you about those things that make you gag. The weirdest and grossest things that people ate. Well this was a tough one to choose. I couldn’t decide between the sushi flavoured chips, or the duck tongue salad or maybe the scorpion shish kebob. We saw whole squirrels for sale in the market and dried smoked rats on a stick but never did see anyone actually eat them so does that count? But the deal was sealed for me with the introduction to BBQ bull testacies in China…..yumm

 Goriest thing we have seen

We signed up for a cooking course in Laos which included a morning market tour. The vegetable part of the market was great but as soon as you turn the corner to the meat section a huge gust of stinking meat hits you right in the face. In was a mess, we saw fish being killed as well as buckets of them rotting which makes the famous “thai fish sauce”. Then on to the condensed pig blood. Lets just say it was not a pretty sight. We were walking and I turn my head and then I see it…. duh duh duuuhhh, a perfectly decapitated pigs head. Seems that all the parts of the pig were there (feet, tail, ear, intestines, etc) except they were at different tables.

Our Favourite Food

Now let us turn our focus to more pleasant thoughts on what did the Spiers eat? Well we survived on night markets, and asian “food courts”, (not at all like food courts you are thinking of.) No matter where we were, we found roadside pancakes made on little carts almost like a hot dog stand at home. These are the best thing invented, and I imagine like cigarettes, once you have one you’re hooked. My favourite type was nutella and banana. We became regulars every night and the problem was as soon as we had our first one in Cambodia we found them all throughout Laos and Thai land.

 Well that’s all for now. I will try to write again before the next half goes by! Oh and by the way I kind of forgot to wish you guys a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and hope they were.  And Happy Chinese New Year which we celebrated here in Thailand just a few days ago.

I hope you are all well and send an extra special shout out to my Nan. Get better soon Nan!

I LOVE LAOS (Nov 2009) 

I know I am a few countries, behind so I will ask you to find out what we are up to by reading my Mom’s blog. I am embarrassed that I told you I would try to keep up but I haven’t. So I have decided to jump ahead and write about Laos.

We first landed in Southern Laos in Pakse were my family’s mouths dropped to the ground because it was like a ghost town after being in such a noisy city like Ho Chi Minh. We couldn’t believe we could not only cross the road, but we could WALK down it without getting hit!  Pakse was ok, but there is not that much to do there so we decided to go to a eco lodge about 1 hour drive to no-where’sville.

The eco Lodge was about 50 miles away from Pakse and about 10,000 miles out of my comfort zone. First our room was a grass roofed bungalow, which I could see through gaps in the walls that any animal the size of a cat could climb through. So it was no surprise that we found a huge spider in there that was hairy and about as big as my hand.  Thank goodness the rooms had mosquito nets! And who cared about mosquitoes! I wanted to keep all the other critters off me!

All in all, I still liked it . The resort was situated on the wetlands, so during the day I liked sitting on my hut’s veranda, or at the restaurant and looking at the water buffalo roaming freely with many cattle birds, and Ibis hanging by.

Nothin' but Wetlands from my Balcony

But when night came it was a different story. There were tons and tons of bugs. And during dinner we entertained ourselves nightly by watching tens of lizards or gecko’s roaming the walls of the outdoor restaurant. And these that make the geckos made those in Cambodia and Australia look like ants. Little bugs that have a lifespan of like 2 minutes and they come in the thousands. The weird part is that they just appear to die while flying, falling lifeless you. Those I can handle, but the things I can’t are the cicadas. They are huge. Like Brittany Spears with wings, they are ugly, stupid always right in your face, and they sound terrible.  

The eco lodge is truly in the middle of nowhere, and connected to a small village where there are many shacks and rice fields (as mentioned it was wetlands). The villagers work so hard from sun up to sundown.  One thing that stands out about this village, is it has elephants in it. There are 11 in total and each one is owned by a different family, and has been raised by the family since birth. It is funny to walk around a village and see an elephant tied up in the yard, by a chain to the house. (Bet if he wanted to, the whole house would go down the road with “Elmer” leading the way.) The relationship between the mahout, (elephant keeper) and the elephant is special. The elephants were used for heavy farming and building years ago, but that use has been replaced by some more semi-modern machinery (still haven’t seen a real tractor though). 

Elephants of Pakse

They take tourists on rides (and we took one) for about 2 hours up a mountain. I felt bad for the elephants because it was such a hot day. Thank goodness we saw the mahout take the elephants to a pond for a swim after. They looked like they really enjoyed it.

After 4 nights at the lodge we made our way back to Pakse, where we then had to catch a sleeper bus which was not like anything I could prepare for. They tried to squeeze my mom and my dad on to one bed not even big enough for one of them. Same with me and my brother. It was hilarious (NOT) that two people could fit on this less than twin size bed and grown men, total strangers were pushed together on these things. Mom was peaking, because when we bought the tickets 4 days earlier and saw the bus she had tried to confirm that we would EACH get a bed. But this is not the first, or probably last bus nightmare story, so whatever. Anyway, the manager of the bus came to us and said that there was a bed for four in the back, on the bottom.  Mom and Dad said no way, it was like a cave back there. Me and my brother decided to brave it and took flashlights, and  went back there only because there was close to a king size bed for the two of us, and no one else would be placed there. As soon as we finally got settled in Mom scooped out original bed, so then we were all comfortable. Until two large (I mean XXXL) guys walked on the bus. The manager put them in the same bunk as us. In my head I was thinking “boy oh boy that little liar”. We some how survived the night but we didn’t get that much sleep.

When we got to Vientiane we did  pretty much nothing the first day but eat and sleep, because I was so-o-o tired. We met up with some of our new travel friends that we had met back in Vietnam. After Vientiane for a few days we took ANOTHER BUS (4 hours) went up to Vang Vieng which turned out to be my favorite place in Laos because of these reasons.

1. They had these restaurants that I called Heaven. In place of regular dining sets, they have beds with low lying tables where they serve your food and the best part is the have the show “Friends” playing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! You have to see it to believe it
2. They have tubing where you float down the river with the current, through the mountains in a inner tube for over 3 hours. Along the side there are restaurant bars and if you want to go to that bar they will throw you a rope a pull you in to shore. It is a really popular “backpacker” thing to do. We actually stopped at a couple and Aaron did the zip line into the river, and we both did the rope swing which my Mom estimated to be at least 15 feet above the (shallow) river. It was freaky, but once you did it, you wanted to keep going.
3. We stayed at really nice bungalows that are on the river with breathtaking mountains right in front of you. Sitting and having breakfast in front of the most incredible scenery is a great way to start the day
4. We got to sleep in the best beds since we left home.
5. Me and my mom went riding a motorbike and I convinced my Mom to take a detour to go see some caves. But to get there you had to go through a farmer field. My Mom thought we could make it but we got caught in the major mud and we lost control and dropped the bike and US in the mud.  It was hilarious, and a miracle somehow as I managed to stay clean. Mom was another story. (Too bad we didn’t get that on film!)

And I don’t know about you, but doesn’t that sound like the best thing in the world! Well so far, it is… but there is still more world to see! So stay tuned.