NORTH ISLAND PART 1 NOV 9 TO NOV 22, 2008 And so we headed off in our bright orange “Spaceship”, called Yuri, from Auckland on Nov. 9th with Al driving and me repeating our mantra “stay left; stay left”! It feels very different when everything is opposite! New Zealand has about 4.2 million people and about 50 million sheep. Each time we round a bend, there is yet another incredible and spectacular view and more lovely sheep. I am still very excited when I see the sheep and am trying for the ultimate sheep picture. Al got a really good one! [View Full Entry]

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THE BEAUTIFUL COOK ISLANDS Oct. 26 to Nov. 4, 2008 Kia Orana - Hello! And meitaki (thank you) to the wonderful and friendly Cook Islanders who gave us such a beautiful holiday time on Rarotonga and on Aitutaki! Thank you Logan and Betty and Bruno for recommending we visit here! It was a fantastic 9 days! We flew on Pacific Blue from Auckland to Rarotonga on Oct. 26th and crossed the date line so had Oct. 26th all over again, this time on the hot beach! Jake Numanga was playing the ukulele to welcome us (amazing man who meets all incoming [View Full Entry]

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND Welcome to Aotearoa - land of the long white cloud -New Zealand! We are here! We flew from Manila to Singapore to Auckland and arrived here on October 20th. Immediately we encountered the famous Kiwi hospitality. Grant, who was sitting beside us on the plane, drove us from the airport to our hostel! Fabulous kindness! Thank you Grant! And thank you Betty and Bruno for recommending Bamber House in Mount Eden. It was a wonderful hostel and a great location in Auckland. We walked and explored and took the bus and took the ferries. Auckland truly is the [View Full Entry]

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NORTH TO THE CORDILLERA OCT 12 to 19, 2008 Although it was hard for Al to leave the warm water and snorkelling, we did head north to the Cordillera and the Luzon area of The Philippines. What magnificent beauty! We flew from Puerto Princesa to Manila on Oct. 12th and immediately took a taxi to the bus depot to check out buses to Baguio and there was one leaving in a half hour so off we went, heading north. It was a winding 7 hour trip through the mountains; felt a bit like our BC mountains. The lights of Baguio appeared [View Full Entry]

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Palawan, Philippines - October 3 - 12, 2008 Only 9 days here but this incredible paradise deserves a chapter all to itself. We flew to Puerto Princesa from Cebu City and were immediately impressed with an efficient little airport, a clean city and a courteous and helpful tricycle driver (what they call tuk-tuks here). Very high quality crafts and two excellent restaurants here. We toured Honda Bay on an island hopper and did some snorkelling that was only OK due to cloudy water. But we saw some interesting fish and the beaches were superb. We then headed to The Underground River [View Full Entry]

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The Philippines - Manila to Apo Island - SEPT. 19 to OCT. 2, 2008 The Philippines -about 90 million people living on 7000 islands, voted the happiest people on our planet in a 2005 global survey (reference -The Lonely Planet -who else?!). 90% are Christian, mostly Roman Catholic, and 5% are Muslim. As we travel around the country we have seen a distressing number of signs of varied Christian sects including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and Baptists. On the flight here, we also read in the Philippines Star Newspaper that the Philippines is the Capital of Text Messaging! And we have [View Full Entry]

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Bangkok to Hanoi in 15 days - July 17 to July 31, 2008 Oct. 3, 2008 Hello Everyone! Time for some catch up on our Blog, writing from Cebu, Philippines! We had an amazing amazing 15 day trip with Intrepid in July in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. Intrepid does small group tours, taking a maximum of 12 - ours was a group of 8 - our leader, Siam from Chiang Mai, Thailand, Julie from England, Darren from Australia , Svein from Norway, Paul from Ireland, Dan from Wales and Al and me from Canada! Here are some highlights… BANGKOK We began [View Full Entry]

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Hong Kong - the New York City of Asia! Energy buzz, stimulation plus, stores galore of every designer name you can think of, tall buildings, people everywhere (7 million people live here!) …and winding mountain roads and beautiful green spaces. We had two full fun fabulous days in Hong Kong and we walked until we dropped! Our hotel was in Kwun Tong in Kowloon, a bit of a distance but it is easy to travel by public transit in Hong Kong and we quickly learned how to get to Victoria Harbour. From there we walked and boated and looked up and [View Full Entry]

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The great city of Bangkok. A catch up blog on a city that we visited three times. We spent a fair bit of time here as it was a hub for other travel in the region. We both arrived there on May 25 after leaving KoTao and from the fishing port of Champhon after travelling all day on a very nice bus. We were incredibly lucky to have some good friends Scott (an old Architecture school buddy) and Tiss, living in Bangkok in a very swank apartment on the river. So nice to have all the amenities again for a bit. [View Full Entry]

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BATTAMBANG AND BACK TO PHN0M PENH SEPT. 9-13, 2008 So we decided to go see more of the country side around Battambang in Western Cambodia. We took the bus which ended up being a mistake as the road was under construction almost the whole way. Boats do run daily between Siem Reap and Battambang and we heard later from travellers who chose this route how very wonderful it was. Next time we’ll choose the boat! An interesting moment en route was the pee stop (a kind man translated this for us -though the evidence was soon there). We were at the [View Full Entry]

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