Blogs from Asia - page 14780

Bus rides, crazy 'speedboat' adventures, World Heritage Cities, night markets, hopes and dreams dashed... read on for the latest instalment... Ok, prepare for a bit of a ranting tirade here. I'm actually in low spirits right now because we took a gamble that didn't pay off. We heard about the Gibbon Experience in Nam Tha (Bokeo Province, Laos) that sounded amazing. It's only been operating for a year and a half, is remote and is home to a type of gibbon thought to be extinct until they found them there. There is about 70 left in the world. The project is run by a frenchman who set up a few treehouses in the jungle canopy and a network of ziplines to get around. They carry you 150mts off the ground and some go for 400 mts. ... read more

Final stop before the Vietnamese capital was the old capital, Hue, previously home to the countries imperial leaders. Perhaps a minature version of China's forbidden city, was the Forbidden Purple Palace. The place had been left mostly destroyed after centuries of neglect and a ferocious series of attacks from the Americans during the war, however what has survived or been rebuilt was quite stunning. Culturally and spiritually the heart of Vietnam, many people performed the pilgramage to the city to see the place and visit the countless pagodas. This worked for us, as the high concentration of pagodas meant vegetarian food aplenty. During our stay we litterally stumbled over our Swiss friend Alaine on our ramble home one evening through the quiet streets. Together and with another friend we explored the city. Our final 14 hour ... read more

Hello everybody! On this day, we were invited to go strawberry-picking with some of our friends. The other people in the pictures are Elizabeth (a fellow Ariel), Missy (a friend that works behind the scenes for "Under the Sea"), and Daisuke (plays Flounder in the show!) Missy, who put the whole trip together, actually referred to the trip as "Strawberry-Hunting," which we thought was REALLY cute! After hopping into the rental car we had for the day, we drove about an hour and a half to the popular strawberry-picking grounds in Japan known as Naruto. Here, we each paid 1,000 JPY (or about $10.00) to eat ALL-YOU-CAN for a half hour. We went to town! The strawberries here were divided by row into two different types, and were absolutely the most tastiest strawberries we both had ... read more

it's 3 in the morning here and i'm wide awake. It's my own fault...i haven't been able to stay up past 7 since we got here. we leave for the airport in about 4 hours.....off to lhasa woo hoo. Chengdu isn't exactly the most beautiful city in the whole world, but it's not the worst i've seen either. it's kind of stuck in mediocrity. There are lots of people, lots of tall buildings.....so original for a city. For some reason the really young kids here have slits in their pants. we saw a little boy being carried around on a chair of some sort and his pants had a hole cut out for his unit. i guess it's more eco friendly than diapers? People here don't believe in planting things. From the road medians to the ... read more

We flew from Auckland to Singapore (via Brisbane) and landed in Singapore at about 3am. Tried to find somewhere to sleep at the airport and couldn't so ended up waiting for the first train to start at 5am! We went across to Malaysia (after waiting in a traffic jam with 10000 scooters!) and caught a bus up to a place called Mersing (probably equivalent to the Huntly of New Zealand ... but still very interesting!) Stayed in a backpackers in Mersing for the first night and then caught a ferry to Pulau Tioman (where Survivor was filmed I think) where we stayed at this little resort for a couple of nights. All the Malaysian's can't have seen many New Zealanders because we must of had about 100 photos taken of us ... all very funny :-) ... read more