a hungry traveller

Humbled in the Jungle (Sinharajah Forest Reserve)

2015-03-19T13:30:00.000+08:00

The Sri Lankan coast was proving far too enjoyable. Beers on the beach, working on our tans, eating super fresh seafood... Bah! I'll take Nix back to the jungle, she loves it there.

The UNESCO listed Sinharaja Forest Reserve is the last main undisturbed area of rainforest in Sri Lanka and sounded to me like the perfect place to end our journey through this magical country.

Upon arriving at our guesthouse (Deniyaya National Motel) in Deniyaya, one of the main towns nestled alongside the forest, the owner, Sidney, immediately shoved us in a tuk-tuk and sent us up the mountain given the day's good weather.

We pulled over on the way up for a couple of photo ops over the gloriously lush mountainside.

We also paused on the way to view this chubby little skink who was very nearly decapitated by some anti-skink hooligan on a motorbike.

And about halfway up we stopped at an old temple to observe more different species of moths than we think we'd collectively seen up to that point in our lives.

Hairy guys.

Horned guys.

These speckled dudes.

Moths on Buddha.

So. Many. Moths.

Sri Lanka engages you with the environment like you never thought that you could be. We're truly in love with this country.

After Mothdom we headed to the top of the mountain and went for a walk through some forest and a tea plantation.

The highlight was finally laying our eyes on the Purple Faced Langurs. These monkeys have thick, woolly fur for the higher altitudes that they live at and I've signed up to become a poacher so that I can take one of them back to Oz to keep me warm in winter.

The following morning we awoke bright and early and headed off in search of a waterfall for our morning bath with directions that went like this - 'take your first right, don't cross the new bridge, cross the stone bridge and then turn right at the concrete building' - oh yeah, doesn't sound very ambiguous at all.

We found the "waterfall" and had the place to ourselves.

Sitting quietly in the cool morning air we heard a Barking Deer barking from somewhere in the scrub and then watched it come down to the water for a drink, watched a giant squirrel cross from one side of the river to the other and watched monkeys bouncing around in the trees.

We walked back to a chorus of Jungle Fowl making their presence felt and finally caught sight of the Sri Lanka Grey Hornbill. He's a little bit less horny than his more well known relatives but no less cool.

On our final day we again woke early and took a tuk-tuk out to the rainforest on dirt tracks that become increasingly treacherous the closer we got. Half an hour later we'd made it, picked up our guide and off we trekked.

Wildlife sightings included the Hump-Nosed Lizard,

Green Pit Viper,

"Sri Lankan Kangaroo",

more Purple Faced Langurs and the possum-like Western Giant Squirrel,

and these creepy crawlies.

At the midway point we'd worked up quite a stink so it was time for a dip.

Given this was only the shorter trek and essentially just a taste of the jungle (I can be a good husband sometimes) we then turned around and set a cracking pace back to the exit, the guide was clearly done for the morning.

Speaking with our guesthouse owner I learned about his passion and love for the rainforest and commitment in trying to preserve it for future generations. The threats of over development, government corruption, animal poaching and gem stone trading are but a few of the issues he must attempt to tackle. He's using profits from the accommodation and tours that he offers to fund his campaigning efforts and is in the process of getting all his ducks in a row before tackling the issues head on.

So, what can you do? Just by staying with Sidney you'll be helping his efforts but if you're looking for a really amazing place to volunteer, helping out at his jungle camp and in the organic garden, get in contact with him and go and spend some time there. You would not regret it - spending days bird and mongoose watching in his garden are reason enough.

And that's the end of our time in a county that delivered everything it said that it would and so, so much more. Lovely people (who have a shared disdain for the "mother country"), phenomenal food, wildlife that you couldn't escape if you wanted to and transport that's so much fun and so ridiculously cheap. Sri Lanka really is the full package and we feel like it's only a matter of time before we return to explore it some more.

Life's a Beach (Marakolliya and Mirissa)

2015-03-16T13:30:00.000+08:00

You must really feel for us sometimes. It's been a hectic couple of weeks in Sri Lanka - climbing mountains for spectacular vistas, chasing animals around Jungle Book conjuring national parks and traipsing through tea plantations. Never fear, we decided to kick back on the Sri Lankan coastline for a while to recharge the batteries. First stop: Marakolliya Beach.

Awaiting us was the smartest beach bungalow we've stayed in complete with a bathroom trap door, a showerhead made of a shell, polished wood everything and a massive, super comfortable four poster bed.

The nice bungalow came at a cost though - the sWANK dial was turned right up.

The staff had been carefully moulded into droids devoid of anything that resembled a personality, other guests would do absolutely everything within their power to avoid eye contact and communication (f*cking fancy office workers on holiday hey...) and even the dogs were grumpy and ignored our affection enticing whistles, clicks and every other noise that a dog has ever responded to.

Our days were spent down the beach with Brahminy Kites and the odd Fish-Eagle circling overhead watching us get smashed by waves. The respective highlight and lowlight were Nicola getting smashed so hard by a wave that she swallowed sand and came up to give me a look like 'woah, what just happened, I haven't been smashed that hard by a wave in about 15 years' to then go on to get smashed again three times over and almost give the beach an eyeful in the process, and one dastardly wave pounding me and then sucking my wedding ring clean off my finger. I sold that as, "At least a part of us will forever exist in Sri Lanka now."

We then undertook the gruelling 300m hike to our next accommodation that would be set on a lagoon rich with bird life.

The lagoon left a bit to be desired, as you can see.

It was a fair trade off. Sitting on our balcony we watched this skittish little part rodent, part Chihuahua Mouse Deer creeping around in the garden along with the veritable bird park flying in and out of the trees in front of us.

Spent our nights being watched over by two guard frogs who would scuttle up the wall nightmare inducing Exorcist-style.

And were awoken one morning by an elusive Jungle Fowl crowing (if you can call it that) at the top of his lungs. That awesome little bird has skyrocketed to the top of my favourite birds list and the top of both of our favourite bird noises list.

Next up was Mirissa, a beach that gets a bad rap from being too touristed and crowded and not worth a visit by any real 'travellers'. However, we quite enjoyed it. Happy Hour beer prices were cheaper than anywhere we've found and that's for a beer with your toes in the sand and the waves literally lapping at your feet.

The free entertainment was world class too watching foreigner upon foreigner who were clearly very inexperienced when it comes to rough seas getting ploughed over and over by massive waves. 'Nix! Look.. Look..', BAMM!

However the key factor that allowed us to look past the recommendation of people we'd met to avoid Mirissa was the potential to see one of Mother Nature's most impressive feats - a Blue Whale. Growing up most kids loved dinosaurs, amazed by the idea of these massive blood thirsty creatures that once roamed the earth. I thought dinosaurs were cool but as far as I was concerned they hadn't existed for millions of years and the closest you would ever come to them was a pile of old bones in a museum. The Blue Whale on the other hand still lurked in the depths of the ocean and seeing an animal that is bigger than a bus, and any dinosaur for that matter, is what truly piqued my interest - I even constructed my thoughts using the word 'piqued' when I was seven years old.

So we signed up for a tour and by 630am set off in search for that serious creature of the deep.

The boat took an easterly direction along the coast and a few hours passed in which we saw a pod of dolphins (nature's contribution to the sea when it couldn't be bothered making whales any longer) and a handful of flying fish. By this point the entire boat's sea sickness tablets had kicked in and everyone was a drooling, drowsy mess and the boat turned around for home.

The crew then went into overdrive trying to spot one but we saw nothing more than the odd crashing wave give off what looked like a spurt from a whale's blowhole.

The crew announced that you could get half your money back or go for free again tomorrow. The thought of another seven hours at sea, drugged up to her eyeballs, didn't really appeal to Nix so she took the following morning off but my belief that patience and persistence are rewarded meant that I felt I had try again.

Going solo for one of the rare occasions of the past 18 months I headed off, egg rotis in hand, prepared for another fruitless seven hours at sea. The boat headed straight out into the depths with the crew desperately hoping that it would get paid today. We pushed through rougher seas than the day before and one bloke spent the whole time bringing up his dinner and breakfast as I chowed down on my roti but despite seeing those effing dolphins again we had no success until we'd almost made it back to the port.

A group of boats were huddled around something and were very excitedly pointing and snapping photos and I thought this was my big moment. We edged closer, trying to keep a reasonable distance between us and whatever had been spotted, to finally lay our eyes on...........a Whale Shark. Oh come on... Really? Are you taking the p*ss now ocean?

All of these people leaning out of the boat to see a Whale Shark. Haven't you been to that still unnamed island in the Philippines where they congregate in a group of 20? Sheesh. I received the whale booby prize.

And that was it, I arrived back at the port having spent 14 hours at sea to no avail.

The consolation was Nix's refund went towards a Red Snapper for dinner that blew our socks off. Cooked and spiced to perfection it made the Blue Whale nonevent much easier to swallow.

After a week and a half at the beach I felt it was my obligation to take Nix back to one of her favourite places.

Bundala National Park, Bird Nerd's Wet Dream

2015-03-12T13:30:00.000+08:00

The alarm goes off at 4.45am, time for some extreme birding action at Bundala NP.

Despite not being known for non-bird sightings we still spotted an elephant on his morning stroll and nom,

land monitors and a baby land monitor,

heaps of grey langurs and toque macaques and

crocodiles.

But the birds were where it was at.

Nicola weed a little bit when she saw her first purple marsh hen. "Look, it's a purple marsh hen" she beamed as she just about fell out of the car.

Spoonbills have been declared as soooo 2014 as well - Asian Open-Bills are the bird of 2015.

We also spied our first and only Sri Lankan Jungle Fowl, the country's national bird. Google it, it's like the coolest rooster that you've never seen.

Other bird and scenery highlights were the following.

Purple Heron with
a fish in its throat

The early start and breakfast consisting of an omelette in white bread were worth it. Bundala NP was much more peaceful than Yala NP and a nice note to end our run of nationals parks on.

HOWEVER, the animals experiences didn't end there. To access Yala and Bundala NPs we stayed at a super smart little guesthouse called River Face Inn (www.yalariverfaceinn.com) that's set on the river and was essentially a mini national park in itself.

Over breakfast and during the day we spotted heaps of palm squirrels, Sri Lanka's national animal the giant squirrel, tortoises, a snake, land monitors, heaps of birds and at night thousands of fruit bats would fly overhead in search of that night's dinner. The food and staff were also brilliant and made for one of the best accommodations we've stayed at.

Bird Nerd Notes

Asian Open-Bill
Black Headed Ibis
Black-Crowned Nightheron
Black-Winged Stilt
Bluetailed Bee-Eater
Brown-Capped Woodpecker
Cattle Egret
Chestnut-Headed Bee-Eater
Cormorant
Eurasian Spoonbill
Great Thick-Knee
Greater Coucal
Green Imperial Pigeon
Grey Heron
Grey-Headed Fish-Eagle
Indian Peafowl
Indian Pond Heron
Intermediate Egret
Lesser Whistling Duck
Little Green Bee-Eater
Orange-Breasted Green Pigeon
Oriental Darter
Oriental Magpie-Robin
Painted Stalk
Pheasant-Tailed Jacana
Pied Kingfisher
Purple Heron
Purple Swamphen
Red-Wattled Lapwing
Spot-Billed Pelican
Sri Lanka Jungle Fowl
Sri Lanka Spurfowl
White-Throated Kingfisher
Yellow-Wattled Lapwing

YOLO in Yala National Park

2015-03-09T13:30:00.000+08:00

Seeing a leopard in the wild. Who doesn't want to see a leopard in the wild? No one, going by the number of Jeeps that clog up the roads through Yala NP everyday.

There's a 60% chance that you'll see one of the, approximately, 30 leopards in Yala NP. We were driving along in a quite measured fashion when up ahead on the track, after another Jeep had just passed through, I spotted what I thought was a leopard. For a couple of seconds my brain went into overload/overdrive squeezing out a, "Leopard!!" to Nix and then not being sure if I should take a photo, focus the binoculars or alert the driver. I managed to do none of those things successfully but as it rounded the corner we finally got the point across the our driver. It was then that we realised what the afternoon was going to be about.

The driver sped off like a madman in a way that would have caused any leopard within 10 kilometres of us to flee. We flew around the bend, still hopeful that he was just walking down the road, but he'd disappeared. Those moments made us realise two things - leopards are not just a figment of nature documentaries and kid's books, and this was going to be no pleasant, leisurely affair like Udawalawe NP.

Our driver now had the taste for blood so we began to fly around the park at breakneck speed and he'd occasionally let us stop to see something that wasn't a leopard.

Grey Langur

Painted Stork

Indian Mongoose

Wild Boar

Land Monitor

Black Naped Hare

Spotted Deer

Little Green Bee-Eater

As we came up to a clearing we noticed about 20 Jeeps clustered together with everyone peering into a bush which meant one thing - leopard. Trying to find an angle through another Jeep and under a fat bloke's arm we spotted him (excuse the pun) sat regally in a hole in the scrub. Wow..... There he was in all of his glory just looking back at us fools and judging like only a cat can.

We left him and headed off for another drive that was fairly fruitless apart from this scene. You won't be able to make much out but in the background is a herd of elephants and up front there's a crocodile and a kingfisher, there's a painted stork in the tree and heaps of other birds all around. Like a real life Where's Wally.

And then we were back with our leopard friend. This time he was hanging limply from a tree and we watched a herd of buffalo go over and make themselves known to him before we sat and waited for him to come down. We waited and we waited and we waited... AND THEN, he yawned, he began to clean himself and then casually, with all the swagger in the world, he climbed down out of the tree, walked up to that old tree stump and perched himself on top of it to, again, watch and judge. Truly epic.

Apologies for quite possibly the worst photo that has ever featured in this blog.

By that point all Jeeps had maxed out their time in the park so it was again time to drive with no consideration for anything but yourself (stuff the leopard that may run out in front of us, WE need to leave). But the meat market had one final act.

A family of elephants was spotted in the jungle so all the Jeeps roared around the corner to block their path and whilst it was nice seeing two baby elephants that could hardly stand yet, if we didn't have a sour taste in our mouths already we really did now. Drivers yelled at each other, us and the elephants had an early dinner of diesel fumes and it meant we had to drive even faster to exit the park on time.

Travel is sometimes quite paradoxical. I sit here and complain about the experience but it's because of people like us wanting to see a leopard in the wild that the meat market atmosphere of Yala exists. #FOMO

My advice? Do a couple of safaris at Udawalawe NP (where wildlife sightings appear to be better in general anyway) and keep your fingers crossed that your decision to not contribute to the problems of Yala NP result in your good karma providing a leopard sighting at Udawalawe.

Bird Nerd Notes

Alexandrine Parakeet
Black Headed Ibis
Black Headed Oriole
Black-Winged Stilt
Bluetailed Bee-Eater
Cattle Egret
Cormorant
Eurasian Hoopoe
Greater Coucal
Indian Peafowl
Indian Pond Heron
Intermediate Egret
Lesser Whistling Duck
Little Green Bee-Eater
Oriental Darter
Painted Stalk
Red-Wattled Lapwing
Stork-Billed Kingfisher
White-Bellied Fish-Eagle
Yellow-Wattled Lapwing

Oodles of Elephants in Udawalawe National Park

2015-03-05T13:30:00.000+08:00

When you can see wild elephants from the bus as you arrive in the township nestled alongside the Udawalawe NP, you know that you're in for something special. For a few hours we cruised around the NP in our new favourite method of transport - the safari Jeep - and had seriously up close and personal experiences with one of nature's most splendid creatures.

And if you haven't seen enough yet, here's a video.

When we weren't spotting elephants we were weaving our way through the park, pulling up at watering holes and taking in a staggeringly diverse range of other creatures (our camera apologises for not taking better photos).

Sri Lankan Jackal

Yes, that's a tortoise on his back

Changeable Hawk-Eagle

Feasting on a lizard

I promise you that's a pair of Hornbills

Painted Storks down below and
a Grey Headed Fish Eagle up top

Blue Eared Kingfisher

A leopard had been seen that afternoon but we weren't lucky enough to see it so all our hopes were pinned on seeing one in a few days time at Yala NP.

Udawalawe NP was stunning enough that even if it wasn't crawling with wildlife you would still make the trip there to take in its supremely beautiful landscapes.

As we left the park at closing time it began to rain lightly and that unmistakable smell of rain on a hot summer's afternoon left us with the sweetest taste in our mouths and finished off a really classy safari in the most glorious of ways.

There is one guesthouse and one Jeep driver that you should consider when visiting Udawalawe NP - Silent Bungalows (www.booking.com/hotel/lk/silent-bungalow.html) run by Sudath and his lovely wife. Their guesthouse only has a few rooms that are set in a heavily forested area, they cook up amazing Sri Lankan food and Sudath's safaris are informative and interesting and whilst you get within touching distance of some animals you never feel like you're being intrusive and you know he has a genuine interest in and love for the environment.

The Bird Nerd Notes

Alexandrine Parakeet

Barred Button-Quail

Black Winged Stilt

Blue Eared Kingfisher

Blue Tailed Bee-Eater

Brahminy Kite

Brown Fish Owl

Cattle Egret

Changeable Hawk-Eagle

Common Kingfisher

Eurasian Spoonbill

Grey Headed Fish-Eagle

Indian Peafowl

Indian Pond Heron

Little Green Bee-Eater

Malabar Pied Hornbill

Painted Stork

Pied Kingfisher

Red-Wattled Lapwing

Spot-Billed Pelican

Stork-Billed Kingfisher

White-Bellied Fish-Eagle

Yellow-Wattled Lapwing

Ella, Where Babies Come From

2015-03-02T13:30:00.000+08:00

After my sook last post about hanging out with too many tourists in the train's second class we instead went third class to Ella, in a carriage full of Chinese... Awesome. It was another stunning journey that at one point forced a huge chorus of "Waaaaaaaaa!!" from the entire carriage. It was all worth it for that.

Ella itself is a nice little untouristed town set high up in the mountains with just a couple of shops for supplies and a nice laid back feel. Well that's what it would have been like ten years ago. Now the main strip is full of overpriced eating and "chilling" establishments charging more for a pot of tea than we've been paying for entire meals. Ella did provided us with some nice memories though.

The first night we headed to the pub for a couple and our casual conversation took an interesting turn when an Arrak-ed up Sri Lankan sat down with us for a few minutes. In broken English he asked and then reconfirmed about five times over if we had a baby and then took it upon himself to do something about us not having one. He began chanting a prayer at Nix's stomach (that's where babies come from yeah?) for her to soon become pregnant. Beers and a baby, nice one pal. And then we got photos to commemorate the moment.

The following day we set off up Little Adam's Peak, the little brother of Adam's Peak. A nice stroll through tea fields and epic 360 degree views at the top made for a fairly easy but very beautiful trek.

The pooches at the top were also very welcoming.

We continued on to Newburgh Tea Estate. Woo, more tea. This time green tea as well, oh boy.

Despite only wanting to try some of their tea we got sucked into another tour. At least this one finished with a sampling of each of the different green teas that they produce. The other two tours have gone into excruciating detail to inform you that a cup of tea is never just a cup of tea and detailing the different varieties that they produce for them to finish the tour by saying, "and now I will get you a cup of tea", and not providing any information on what specific tea is in your cup.

Anyway, the key difference between green and black tea is that green tea doesn't go through a fermentation stage like black tea must. There you go, you don't even have to go to Sri Lanka now.

The highlight of our few nights was a Sunday spent watching the Ella cricket team battle it out on an old cracked clay pitch against local rivals Uva. Dogs, mopeds and trucks on the field were fair play and there was no d*cking around hitting singles, it was go big or go home.

Goodbye hill country, thermal necessitating weather and tea. Goodbye forever, tea!

Ceylon Off World's End

2015-02-26T13:30:00.000+08:00

Against everything we've learnt and against our instincts we travelled by train to Nuwara Eliya in second class. The issue here was not that we weren't in first class but the fact that we weren't in third. First is full of wanks, second full of nervous, needy "travellers" and third is locals.

At least in third the locals are used to being in confined spaces and work together accordingly. In second, everyone is used to having one seat for their bag and another for themselves and expect a level of service and space in line with a $160 ticket, not a $1.60 one. After a couple of hours of standing we finally secured the open doorway and everything was good, away from the adventurers.

The first morning in Nuwara Eliya we were out the door by 5am headed for Horton Plains, an undulating plateau 2000m above sea level that's covered in wild grasses and patches of thick forest including the mystique inducing 'cloud forest'.

An overzealous driver and husband meant we were the first on the trail and we had a few minutes of the main event's precursor - Mini World's End - to ourselves.

It also meant we had the main event to ourselves - Greater World's End - where we managed to find a track leading away from the main platform and could take in the spectacular vistas unencumbered by tourists whose soul intent was to take away from the peace and serenity of the place. The sheer 880m drop off forced more than one, "Please be careful."

The trek continued with a stop by Baker's Waterfall and wildlife sightings that included samba deer, yellow eared bulbul, three red-backed woodpeckers and a mongoose. A v productive morning.

The following day's adventure was a trip to Pedro Tea Estate packed so tightly into a bus that sardines would have scoffed. The ticket collector played human tetris at each stop directing where people should squeeze in to. I spent most of the journey with a breast pressed against my face.

We did a quick tour of the working tea factory decked out in groovy hair nets and aprons.

At least this time we could sneak a quick whiff of the dried tea leaves. And again, you know it, we finished with a cup of tea.

After that fan-tea-stic tour we went for a stroll through the tea fields ending up at Lovers' Leap waterfall.

It was then time to get back in the sardine can.

The food entry for this post is not so much a what but a how. We've fumbled our way through eating with our hands in countries like Morocco and Laos but Sri Lanka has upped the ante. The various Sri Lankan rices we've encountered have been light and fluffy and beautiful but exhibit no ability to bind like couscous or sticky rice. Chuck a couple of wet curries on top and eating with your hands becomes an exercise in shovelling and hoping, and covering yourself from fingertips to elbows.

After our first pathetic attempt and thinking surely we must be doing it wrong we went home and Googled it which offered hardly any assistance other than a few 'rules'. So next time we just kept an eye on other people eating and gladly discovered that whilst those rules are loosely followed, covering your hands and face in curry and rice are just how it's done. To show you an illustrated example of the shovelling act in full force I'd taken a selection of flattering photos of Nix. I was however strongly advised not to show those photos and to only show this one. You get the point...

Kandy, Kandy, Kandy I Can't Let You Go

2015-02-23T13:30:00.000+08:00

You know you've arrived in Sri Lanka when you walk into the arrival hall of the airport and every man and his son are sat around a TV watching the cricket. After an obligatory score check we were on a bus to Kandy, crammed in with the rest of Sri Lanka.

An 8.8% Sri Lankan stout in a dingy locals' bar was in order to wash away three days of travel and two nights in airports.

We hung around in Kandy for a few nights coming to terms with a part of Asia that we haven't ventured into before. SE Asia feels like home now but this was a whole new kettle of fish. Super smiley friendly people, delicious food and animals running around everywhere meant we were pretty happy with our surroundings.

Kandy is positioned around a beautiful lake that's teeming with wildlife despite its proximity to traffic and its fumes and tourists and their selfie sticks.

Tortoises, monitor lizards, funky birds, fruit bats, spotted catfish things... Hours of viewing pleasure.

You can also find moneys down at the lake. The friends of those monkeys could be found running amok near our guesthouse. A common theme throughout this trip has been me being woken up to Nicola fretting that something was in our room. Not once has anything actually entered our room. (Note from Nicola - this statement is not true) (Note from me - maybe we've had the odd giant gecko, skink, massive spider, strange insect, cat, dog, mouse, hermit crab in our room)

This time however we both woke to a bang on the roof and then Nix saw our curtain billow and in a daze sat up and looked to the floor to see a monkey staring back with a look of shock that mirrored hers. "Oh no... Brim! There's a f*cking monkey in the room!!" Once I'd been called to action Nix hid under the blanket whilst I waved my arms and did my meanest kkkkssssss to get him out. He bolted out the window and grabbed some rubbish from the bin on the way out as as a keep sake. These particular monkeys have a geeky looking centre part that managed to make the ordeal even more comical than it already was. Funny little bastards...

Keeping on with the wildlife/nature theme we hopped on a bus to the Royal Botanic Gardens which are famed throughout not just Sri Lanka but the region. They were OK. The palm lined boulevards were nice,

the cannonball tree was a cool new discovery,

and I finally got to continue my love affair with sleeping in parks but the highlight was the fruit bats. Tree upon tree filled with thousands of bats that were very active given it was three in the afternoon. We'd read that Sri Lanka was going to be wild - it was living up to its billing.

The following day we had a Tea-rrific time at the Ceylon Tea Museum. Seeing the machinery and learning about withering and drying and such. Wow, what a roller coaster of emotions.

The tour culminated in, you guessed it, a cup of tea.

In all honesty it was a decent tour and provided a good platform for a month of drinking the stuff by the gallon and actually learning how you go from leaf to cup.

Food and drink - you didn't think you were getting away that easily did you?

Faluda (a super sweet rose syrup/vanilla icecream dessert) and buffalo curd with treacle (buffalOMG - he knows who he is).

Woodapple juice (like a fizzy tamarind juice with off blue cheese blended through it - actually really good).

Red rice with curry.

And so much other stuff that we shoved down too quickly to get photos of. Hoppers, string hoppers and simple things like dhal curry and sambols have us falling head over heels for Sri Lankan cuisine.

We're off to a cracking start, we really hope this place keeps it up.

Our Happy Place

2015-02-16T14:00:00.000+08:00

Paradise is a word that's bandied around all too often. I admit to using it too many times in this blog. I retract all previous uses of the word paradise in order to use it one last time as we have most certainly (with great sadness) just left it.

You'll find paradise somewhere in the Visayas in the Philippines. It's a place that doesn't shove a souvenir t-shirt up your nose, where locals still greet the few tourists that visit with a smile, if you stay at the right place you'll be looked after like family, it's where you can snorkel off the shore and swim amongst beautiful hard and soft corals, turtles and a kaleidoscope of fish, (if you're lucky) you'll have encounters with a couple of the ocean's creatures that couldn't be any more pure even though they appear staged and you'll drink rhum, HEAPS of rhum, with a type of people that seem to have some common personality trait that draws them to the island to begin with and then allows you to become lifelong friends with ease.

Let me expand on a couple of the things that made this place one of our trip's true highlights. Firstly, let me set the scene.

We were staying in a tiny nipa hut just a few metres from the shore surrounded by friendly pooches and trumpeting roosters. Life was simple, life was good.

Dolphins

I find dolphins boring. I think most men find dolphins boring. They're definitely a woman's animal.

Enter the spinner dolphin. So named because of how it acrobatically spins as it leaps out of the water. Interested yet men? I'm not, they're still a bit boring.

However, take me out in a boat as the sun rises up over the ocean and surround it with more than a hundred spinner dolphins launching themselves around you and even through bleary eyes it's hard not to get a bit excited.

Throw in your hut's owner (also your dinghy's captain, Junior) still taking pleasure from seeing this spectacle of nature, despite seeing it every morning, and you're suddenly sold on dolphins. Unfortunately all other dolphins are now most certainly very boring in comparison.

I almost forgot the best thing about the tour - these hats!

Whale Sharks

At the right time of year you can head out in a small pam boat as the sun goes down and snorkel with whale sharks.

When we arrived on the island a Dutch guy had been out seven nights straight looking for the whale sharks but they just weren't around yet. He left the day after we got there.

The night after that a fisherman had a spotted a couple and let Junior know which sent everyone into a frenzy pulling on bathers and grabbing snorkels before piling into the dinghy and flying out to find these creatures of the deep. We looked hard and checked with a couple of fishermen that were on the night shift but it was too late and too dark and we forlornly cruised back in. That disappointment was quashed by Junior's optimism proclaiming that this was a sign that the whale sharks had arrived and we'd see them the following night.

Talk the following day was all about the whale sharks, would we see them? How crazy would it be? Should I surf it?

Four thirty arrived and having dreamt about them during my afternoon nap I told Nix I was full of confidence, for some reason she had more faith in Junior's confidence. So about twenty of us were slowly paddled out in fifteen pam boats by increasingly desperate boat drivers (they'd been coming out for weeks and it's only pay day once you find them). This was a team effort on many levels.

We pushed out into the deep and my luck had come in as I'd landed the hardest working boatman on the island (or the one with most at stake back at his hut, if you know what I mean). After about 15 minutes one had been spotted in the distance by a motorboat and the race was on. I received my cues, "Snorkel ready!!?", "Snorkel on!", "Now!! Go! Go! In!!" and I was in, face to face with the ocean's biggest fish. My heart was racing as I dived in and pumped harder and harder as I tried to keep up with the immense animal but it eventually descended back into the depths.

I jumped back in the boat, heart still racing and feeling pretty bloody blessed that I'd swum within touching distance of an animal that many would spend their entire lives dreaming to see.

It was getting late and the sun was beginning to fall beyond the horizon. I was starting to worry that not everyone was going to see one, in particular my non snorkeling wife.

We bobbed around for another twenty minutes and then out motored the local king of the ocean, part man part fish, Junior. It was then that a few huge fins appeared in the distance and the race was on again. What happened next, I don't think any of us expected.

My new best buds, plankton, were out in force, dancing across the surface of the sea and bringing with them an s load of whale sharks.

What would you say is a lot of whale sharks in one group? Five? Higher. Ten? Bit higher. Fifteen!? Higher still. TWENTY!? Yep, about twenty whale sharks had congregated to put on a show that your wildest dreams could not conjure up. Huge gaping mouths breaching the surface in all directions, massive fins intimidatingly cutting through the water and tourists sh*tting themselves wondering whether they really wanted to get in the ocean with what was a plankton blood bath on top of it.

The energy felt by the group was something else. We were all connected in the moment knowing that we were seeing something truly special, truly wild and nature at the absolute top of its game.

We've seen some great things on this trip but think that that experience takes the cake.

Cockfighting

Cockfights are a Sunday event. We'd been in the Philippines for three other Sundays before finally deciding to head along - partly having not had the chance and partly because I think our mind was subconsciously asking, 'Do you really want to see that?'

Junior led us through the village and to the community's main weekly gathering. A couple of hundred people were milling around a large grassed area that's dotted with palms for shade from the sun where everyone's chowing down on chicken bits (what else?) and waiting for the fights to kick off.

Before two cocks face off in the cockpit their owners go through a long deliberation process in order to determine who they'll be happy to put their pride and joy up against. After a good three quarters of an hour they'd found a match up and we were off.

Us foreigners (about 9 of us) all huddled around a corner of the cockpit and after the formalities (like getting your rooster to bite the others wattle and strapping a blade onto its foot) we were away.

You're immediately transported back to a bygone era. The crowd goes nuts (kids, women and grandmas included) and it's brutal. When placed down to start the fight both roosters' instincts take over and they begin to peck around looking for one final meal. The crowd however wills them together and all of a sudden they look at each other and it's on. Feathers fly, blood is spilt and in an instant it's over with one rooster limply flopped on the floor - tomorrow's Chicken Adobo.

After that first fight I went holy shit, Nix went holy shit and people began to split realising it was far from their cup of tea. It shook us a bit but we got it. We understood the tradition and during the weeks before had seen the love for and connection with that men have with their roosters - this is blood sport but it's not brutality for the sake of it.

Us and a Dutch guy stuck around and we began to bet, began to sink rum and began to get those sideways glances from locals that said, 'Wow, they're actually enjoying it and hanging around.'

The end result was one hell of a cracking afternoon, getting right in amongst it and drinking way too much rhum and then even more back with the crew. Things got messy, we did Australia proud.

The Peeps

But the glue that held all these great experiences together were the staff where we were staying that would provide three delicious meals a day (the best food we'd had in the Philippines) always with a smile on their faces and the guys that we spent our days and nights with.

Two Australians, Two Israelis, Two Danes, an Austrian and a German plus beers and four bottles of rhum are evidently a very lethal combination. This one night started off tamely enough but then the booze began to flow, as did the conversation with someone remarking at one point that they didn't know where to listen as everything sounded weird or interesting.

The night culminated in a beach relay between the men explained in excruciating detail by one very merry Dane. Team Austrialia came through with the goods and I was smothered in a very ecstatic Austrian man. There's a photo. Trust me, you don't want to see that photo.

It was five nights filled with a lot of highs shared with some really great people. It really peaked on the final night when Boris (my Austrian comrade) proposed to Heike (his lovely German partner). "She said yes!!", he yelled from the beach to let us know he'd succeeded. As I said, a special place.

But the name of this special place? You'll have to figure that out for yourself...

The Turtle Sardine Sandwich of Moalboal and Apo Island*

2015-02-09T13:00:00.000+08:00

We bussed down the length of Cebu Island to get to Moalboal.

Moalboal is one of those places that makes you feel like you're venturing into the great unknown. You see no foreigners during the approach and the main strip is just a limestone track. That all changes once you pass as many dive shops as there are locals.

There's a reason why divers and snorkelers flock here - tens of thousands of sardines hang in massive schools just twenty metres off shore. Before I went in Nix asked me if they would make shapes like an arrow pointing out an incoming shark, they may not have been that creative but they were pretty immense.

Quite skittish, they'd move like one giant organism and whilst snorkeling above them was fun, diving in amongst them was quite special watching any disturbance send them into a lava lamp like swirl of glinting silver.

The other noteworthy event of Moalboal was saving a pup from possible death after finding her stuck in a hole devoid of energy following repeated attempts to get herself out. We brought her to our bungalow, gave her some water and removed a couple of ticks before marching her around trying to find her home. We had success and are hopeful that she's now OK.

Each evening was spent waiting for nonexistent sunsets, trying to spy the odd turt head and watching a thousand sparrows come home to roost on moustache boat.

Our next stop was Apo Island - one of the world's best diving sites.

Nix was a diving/snorkeling widow again as I fluffed around for hours in the water leaving no ledge unperved and constantly cursing 'sh*t I wish we had an underwater camera, why does f*cking everyone have a GOPRO'. Nix wasn't too sympathetic to my material wants.

The dive highlight was a night dive from shore where I spotted a school of baby cuttlefish, a smallscale scorpionfish hiding itself away in the sand, a painted cray, a velvety black Spanish Dancer, heaps of prawns and cleaner shrimps and got to muck around with fluorescent plankton and some strange jelly like vibrator thing that would light up when umm, given a bit of encouragement. A seriously good dive.

The accumulation of seeing things that I hadn't seen before or never knew existed is what made diving Apo so enjoyable.

What made snorkeling Apo so enjoyable was the 100% guarantee that just 5-10 metres off shore you could swim with sometimes more than ten huge green sea turtles. Swimming with that many turtles was one of those times that you just knew nature was taking the p*ss.

After Apo and still not done with the diving caper we dropped in to Dauin for a night before leaving the Negros region. Over the last month I've become obsessed with wanting to see a frogfish under the water and apparently Dauin was a good bet.

Among a heap of strange creatures living in the sand and enough ghost pipefish to last me a lifetime, I spotted my frogfish. He may have only been half the size of your pinky's fingernail but I've at least seen one now. The quest to see an adult has commenced.

It now might be time for me to spend a bit of time out of the water and with my wife. However given I'm now shrivelled up like an old man's ball sack Nix may be happier with her life as a lady of leisure.

*Please note that no turtles were harmed in the writing of this post

The Bantayan Diet

2015-01-29T14:00:00.000+08:00

Sometimes a place is appreciated just that little bit more when getting there involves a life threatening leap from one boat to another in seas that are hardly fit for a big boat let alone the little vessel that came out to transfer us to the shore of 'main land' Cebu.

I watched in horror from a couple of people deep as Nicola dangled over the edge of the big boat, hesitated and then jumped across to the small boat as it shifted out of reach. She hovered for an age between the boats and I think we both thought she was going for a swim. Sh*t Nix, the tablet's on your back for god's sake. She managed to walk on water and made it on.

I can confirm that she squealed. Naturally it was my fault as I wasn't there to offer any "words of wisdom". Apparently I have those.

Anyway, Bantayan, that death defying leap plus two other boat trips, a bus and a cyclo took us 40 kilometres as the crow flies to land on our next island paradise. This one even better than the last.

But what about the Bantayan Diet I hear you ask?

Forget the Paleo diet, vegan, vego, Atkins, I Quit Sugar*, South Beach, whatever. No, no, no, this is no fad diet. The Bantayan Diet (as certified by myself, Dr Brimson) is the one for you. Coconuts, mangoes, roast pork and 1L San Mig's are the four cornerstones of my diet.

Not only will you look great down the beach, it also tastes great and is scientifically proven to contain no calories, and is sugar, fat and alcohol free.

I mean look at the guy, don't you want to look like that?

When you do drag yourself away from your cottage's view, hanging out with Coconut Joe and really committing to that diet...

...you get to laze about on a blinding white beach like this (that's your exercise component).

Check out this endorsement from Nicola Brimson.

Another satisfied customer...

*take note Corinne, you've been doing it wrong

Threshing Around in Malapascua

2015-01-26T15:00:00.000+08:00

In what's almost a new record for us, four buses, three flights, two taxis, two metro rides and two boat trips landed us on Malapascua Island, the tropical island of your 9-5 dreams.

What is Malapascua good for?

Magical sunsets.

Beer in 1 litre bottles.

Sunshine.

Friendly beach dogs.

And diving. HEAPS of diving. On a couple of dives I saw five white tip reef sharks sleeping in a cave, sea snakes, a pygmy seahorse, innumerable lionfish and scorpionfish, juvenile moray eels, gigantic starfish, a stonefish, clownfish protecting their miniscule young and heaps more that I didn't recognise.

Oh yeah, and on one dive I saw these guys.

Monad Shoal off Malapascua is a cleaning station that Thresher Sharks visit in the early hours of the morning looking for obliging smaller fish to clean them of bacteria. It's the only place in the world where you're pretty much guaranteed to see them and it's one hell of a surreal experience.

We sat on the bottom for a few minutes and were about to move to another spot before two cruised by and then the two in the video proudly swum past close enough that I wish I could've paused my life at that moment and admire them for a few seconds longer. I'll take what I can get though...

Leaving Vietnam, so Hanoi-ing

2015-01-22T14:00:00.000+08:00

Hanoi is a love it or hate it kind of city. We met people along the way that couldn't think of anything worse than another minute in the place. It's fast paced, intimidating and doesn't wait for anyone. We fell in love at first bite (and first bia hoi).

Bia hoi. Oh my what a beverage. The direct translation to English is 'fresh beer' as it's beer that's brewed the night before and served fresh the following morning. During that time it reaches a strength of 3-4% and at just 45 cents for the branded bia hoi (you truly taste the difference from the cheap stuff sold in the tourist area) it's impossible to walk past a bia hoi joint and not stop for a couple, which in Hanoi is a bookable offence anyway.

You don't even have to use the excuse 'it's five somewhere in the world' to have one with most places having a cluster of regulars draining the freshest kegs from early in the morning. We've visited many places with strong beer cultures but Hanoi's just about takes the cake. There's no pub squash or pre-mixes here it's beer all the way and you down it like there's no tomorrow. If you need an extra kick you call over the communal bamboo tobacco bong or order a bottle of Viet vodka.

Of course no post on Vietnam would be complete without a mouthwatering set of food photos.

There were these.

Bun Ca - crispy river fish soup

Bun Moc - a clean pork broth with pork balls

Duck Hotpot - shared with a sewer rat by our feet

Bun Bo Nam Bo - beef noodles in a sweet peanutty sauce

Hahn Cuon - super delicate rice flour wontons with pork

And then there were these.

Dau Phu - deep fried tofu that's beyond crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside

Bun Cha - a classic Hanoi dish of pork served in a sweet oily broth that you then add your noodles and greens to and dunk your crispy spring rolls in

Pho Ga - served from a simple little street kitchen on Hang Dieu with more pots on the go than stools. This is the benchmark by which all chicken pho should be measured and all chicken soups, broths, anything for that matter. This pho was dinner three out of five nights in Hanoi

Tang Yuan - glutinous rice balls filled with black sesame or mung bean paste that swim in a potent sweet ginger soup. Only a hundred metres up from the pho ga lady, sat in a semi circle around the serving pot, you would get presented with the night's encore

In between bia hoi, ca phe and food stops we'd just swan around the city taking in the sights and the smells, the weirdness and the intensity, and what is by far the best Asian city we've been to and possibly the best city we've been to period.

Coffee, beer, food and weird. All four boxes get emphatically ticked. Most of all it's the people and their no bullsh*t approach to life that we love getting swept into.

Normally we're ready to leave a city and country in search of the next adventure. However leaving Hanoi and Vietnam has us feeling very hollow. Nicola shed a couple of tears the night before we left, such is the love we have for Vietnam. And that's a first for a woman that's the dry eye in the house when there's not a dry eye left in the house.

When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro. in Hanoi

2015-01-19T14:00:00.000+08:00

More on Hanoi soon but firstly let's get down to what makes its food scene truly unique - it gets weird, real weird.

Dog meat is a special occasion dish, cat is the healthy option, semi developed duck foetuses are a breakfast item and pigeon,

frog

and eel soup are comparatively quite normal.

Snail soup is a much loved breakfast choice.

And snails fished out of their shells, using a pointy little metal implement, get dunked in a fish sauce, kumquat, chilli, ginger and kaffir lime concoction for a tasty pre-dinner snack.

Even drinks get a bit weird. Take a raw egg, whip it and pour it over the top of your coffee for a ca phe trung - a speciality of Hanoi.

But that's not the half of it. Over a thousand years ago a man rescued the king's daughter from a king cobra and rejected the king's offer of half of his land instead requesting that his village be recognised as the snake village of Vietnam, given snakes were the village's bread and butter. To this day snakes are still the village's bread and butter with 80% of it still involved in the farming, capturing and serving of the reptilian delicacy.

After reading too many articles and watching episode upon episode about the experience that awaits you in Le Mat village it was the one key goal of our time in Hanoi. We arrived at The Hung Snake Restaurant for lunch and what ensued was one hell of a strange affair.

Thuy met us out the front of the restaurant and immediately pointed out the finger his dad had lost to a cobra bite. His dad then promptly fished out a cobra from one of their little hidey holes whilst Nicola did the calculations as to whether a dash up the stairs or just streaking down the road was her best method of escape.

Thuy then took us upstairs to watch our selected cobra meet it's fate. First the still beating heart was cut out, its blood poured into a cup and off came the head (still snapping and writhing around in the bucket). Then the stomach was expertly extracted and the bile drained into a bottle of rice wine. What was left of our little pal was then taken out into the kitchen.

WARNING: the video is a wee bit graphic (but that's why you should want to watch it)

It was then time for a couple of pre-lunch aperitifs. As the man, the still quivering heart was all mine. Make me strong.

Then it was a shot each of the blood mixed with rice wine and then about four shots of the bile with rice wine. Better than they sound but really that's not hard is it.

Then came course after course of snake-centric dishes.

In no particular order or preference was egg and snake soup, snake congee, boiled snake, grilled snake, sauteed snake, crushed snake bones with rice crackers, snake spring rolls, snake bits wrapped in la-lot leaves, snake offal with pineapple and sticky rice infused with snake fat. The bones and offal were the picks of the bunch.

Shots of rice wine aged with an entire king cobra (venom and all) and some sort of root kept the weirdness going.

After lunch we went down into the kitchen to play with a bamboo snake and marvel at how normal fishing a snake out of a bag of thirty was to Thuy.

It was an experience for the ages and one the grand kids will be sure to hear about. Hopefully we'll be back for a king cobra one day. Until then we'll feast on some pretty bizarre, sort of twisted memories.

At least we didn't have dog meat hey mums...

For more videos check out our Instagram - @brimnix

I See a White Chicken and I Want It Painted Black - Sa Pa

2015-01-14T15:54:00.000+08:00

Another overnight train and again it was worth it.

We arrived in Sa Pa to 360 degree views of stunning emerald green rice terraces, went on a life changing trek through various hill tribes and soaked our weary bones in one of the region's famous herbal baths.

CORRECTION. We saw f all for four days due to persistent mist/clouds that you could literally watch roll past your window, rain a bit heavier than a drizzle fell for about 72 hours straight and it was cold. So f*cking cold.

We're told there's a nice view there.

The temperature got up near 8°C a couple of times and we remarked on how much "warmer" it felt. Travelling with just a single pack we are not prepared for this kind of weather, we're hardly prepared for temperatures below 20 let alone close to zero. Oh yeah, and it snowed. In Vietnam it snowed.

So the trek was off and we instead had to drink red wine and stay warm in our room. It was a challenging few days.

This was our view for five minutes.

And this is what we could see for the rest of our time in Sa Pa, minus five minutes.

There is, however, always one saving grace in Vietnam - food. We ventured away from the tourist zone (shock horror) and found a strip of simple restaurants roasting whole suckling pigs and a range of skewered meats and veggies. Most importantly, they had ga den on the menu - the elusive black chicken. Despite attempts by the waitress to point us in the direction of the normal chicken we were presented with this little baby.

Super moist and fatty, a little bit gamey and 100% delicious. The bird was all it's clucked up to be.

And finally, we may have inadvertently had dog sausage. We picked a sausage off the rack and what came out cost about four times what you'd expect to pay for a sausage, had a strange astringency to it and Nicola now howls at the moon before going to sleep... Woof woof.

Ha Long Bay in Pictures

2015-01-08T15:55:00.001+08:00

Local Vietnamese legend declares that many centuries ago a family of dragons flew down and deposited a couple of thousand huge rocks off its north eastern coast line to protect the country from the constant threat of invading Chinese ships. Those dragons saved the day for the Vietnamese with many of the ships meeting their demise within the dense network of islands that the dragons created.

Now in present day the Vietnamese are still very thankful for those dragons as every day hundreds of tourists pump thousands of dollars into the economy coming to see this true wonder of the natural world.

It's hard to put into words and capture in photos what it's like cruising through Ha Long Bay but hopefully these photos begin to do it a little bit of justice.

We had a v memorable few days kayaking around the islands, sleeping in rooms with views that are second to none, chowing down on seriously fresh seafood and even braving a night swim despite water temps that took your breath (and balls) away.

For anyone that's interested, we went with Vega Travel who's based in Ha Noi and come very highly recommended.

Hue, Where Every Day's a Sunday

2015-01-05T14:00:00.000+08:00

People come to Hue to visit the former imperial city or the Nguyen emperors' opulent but decaying royal tombs. We found it to be a good city to just be.

The incessant drizzle and multiple layer worthy temps were quite conducive to sauntering between street side ca phe, nestled in with the men playing Chinese checkers, to a beer or some cracking local food.

The fussy emperors are to thank for Hue's food scene where Bun Bo (Pho's lesser known, spicier sibling), clams, sticky, gelatinous rice flour dishes and trai va (a fig that's unique to the region) are but a few of the stars.

Load up that Bun Bo

Com Hen - a real "huzzah" moment

Banh Nam - mmm, so appetising

The trai va at play with Nem Lui

Now might be a good time for me to justify why our posts have become quite food-centric again. Eating is never just eating in Vietnam. It's a science and an art form.

Many Vietnamese dishes incorporate five taste senses: spicy, sour, bitter, salty and sweet which then correspond to five organs: the gall bladder, small intestine, large intestine, stomach, and urinary bladder. These all also correspond to a balancing of five elements: metal, wood, earth, fire and water.

There's consideration given to five types of nutrients: powder, water or liquid, mineral elements, protein and fat and, of course, five different colours: white, green, yellow, red and black.

And don't forget the five senses: the arrangement of the food attracts the eyes, spices are detected on the tongue, sounds come from a crunch component, herbal aromas stimulate the nose and even touch is perceived when eating something with your hands.

This may all just sound like food wankery but next time you sit down to a Vietnamese feed remember a bit more thought has gone into it than your cheap cut of meat and potatoes in front of the telly on a weeknight.

We wandered around the outside of the Citadel as the throngs of tourists and $6 entry fee (geez that sounds cheap) were enough to deter us. We got enough value watching the men fish in the surrounding moat alongside a couple of Kingfishers and trying to spy whatever else was living in the water.

We also rang in the New Year in Hue. Where last year was spent downing shots of Palinka and a dodgy bottle of "champagne" whilst watching youths run amok, lighting fireworks around the Octogon (link) this one was a little more sedate drinking beers with locals who thought us cheers-ing with 'mot, hai, ba, YOOO!!' was novel until they clicked it was our New Year's Eve. From then it was all "Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Cheer!! Cheer!!" in between trying to ascertain whether Nicola was spoken for or not. It was a different kind of NYE celebration at the least.

NYE celebration dinner was a plate of snails with lemongrass and garlic as, outside of chicken and fish, oc (snails) was the only word Nix recognised on the menu.

We did (sort of) have the intention to see some of Hue's sights but after a couple of hours walking the streets we soon realised it was our kind of place to do SFA and just be part of a city where every day feels like it's Sunday. The real culture of a city or town is always in its bars and street stalls, not the tourist sites. Werd.

No Risk of a Tan in Hoi An

2015-01-01T12:46:00.000+08:00

Seventeen hours on a train, shoved in a space barely big enough for a backpack. It's one of those things that sounds so much better in theory when you're booking it until the train pulls in and it dawns on you where you'll live your life for the next three quarters of a day. Throw in seven other bodies on four more beds and you've got a full blown slumber party, nana and granddad included.

And then we arrived in Da Nang to jump on a local bus that would get us to Hoi An an hour later for a bit over a dollar each. Instead a bus that was finishing its loop from Hoi An scooped us up and despite our best efforts charged us two and a half times the going rate "because you foreigner" to sit on the bus for close to two and a half hours. After an hour on it and having sat out at the bus station for fifteen minutes, waiting to begin the loop again, we crawled by where we'd originally been picked up.

AND THEN we arrived in Hoi An to drizzly rain and temperatures well below what we've acclimatised to. What the actual f*ck. FML. #firstworldproblems

Lucky for Hoi An, its pretty UNESCO listed old town, awesome food (including a heap of local specialities), ca phe with questionable characters and 17 cent fresh beer (more on that in a future post) did enough to turn that frown upside down.

The old town is all about (that dreaded) French colonial architecture, mustard yellow walls, lanterns and bicycles. It's quite a stunning place really.

The picks of the food were: shredded chicken and rice (com ga) from an old lady on Tran Cao Van;

DIY rice papers rolls at Dung Bale Well that you shove an entire deep fried spring roll and skewer of BBQ'd meat into before dislocating your jaw and jamming it down your pie hole;

Cao Lau, a dish of pork, mixed lettuce, micro herbs and deep fried batter on chewy noodles made using water from a local well. Cao Lau isn't real Cao Lau unless you're having it in Ha Noi with those particular noodles; and

a Banh Mi from Banh Mi Phuong approved by Mr Bourdain himself full of three different kinds of pork and a coarse pate among other delectable sauces and veggies. "Best Banh Mi in the world"? It would be up there...

Dishonourable mentions go to alleged local specialities, White Roses and Hoanh Thanh Chien (fried wontons), at Bong Hong Trang. The White Roses whilst texturally pleasing lacked any real flavour and the fried wontons, billed as Vietnamese pizza, should be a reminder for the Vietnamese to stick to what they're good at - which is a lot and this dish should be erased from annals of Vietnamese culinary history.

If Nicola produced that dish for dinner I wouldn't bother sending her back to the drawing board, it would go straight to the top of the scrap heap.

Back to the good stuff. As I said, coffee with these two.

And fresh beer that's sold at 17 cents a mug and 69 cents for six if you find a three for two deal. 69 cents for six beers = liquid sex. Wink wink.

Laterz Hoi An...

Saigon for Christmas, Welcome to Viet Nom!

2014-12-29T19:13:00.002+08:00

One of the harsh realities of travel is that places change and quite often it's not for the best, at least not for us.

We were in Saigon two and a half years ago and whilst we were only staying 100 meters from one of the city's main attractions - Ben Thanh Market - we were still able to find a cheap beer in a dingy dive bar and an even cheaper soup close by. However unfortunately for us (but fortunately for the polo/loafer types) that dive bar now has a sign, a menu in English, staff wearing uniforms and it's now normal for foreigners to stop and eat there whereas before we got looks of check out those guys, they're out there!

Those tiny centers of sanitation that previously existed have now expanded and connected and the centre is now clean enough for the people that thought it was too grimy before and not dirty enough for the people who once loved it for what is was.

Our first 24 hours was spent revisiting some old favourites from last time around:

Banh Xeo

The Lunch Lady

Duck Congee

It was at that point that we realised that maybe we'd changed a bit too and would have to push outside of what we knew and loved from last time.

In amongst the following little beauties we also accumulated a couple of good food related anecdotes.

Goi Du Du

Banh Beo

Banh Da Xuc Hen

Bun Bo Hue

Our Christmas lunch of half a suckling pig and some pumpkin flowers cooked in a veggie patch full of garlic also included a plate of conical shelled snails served in a coconut and lemongrass sauce.

We spent the first half of the plate trying to work out which end to suck the snails from and then when we'd finally worked that out, spent the next half trying to get over the trail of stringy snail slime that pulled out of the shell like melted cheese on pizza. Mmmm, yum yum....

We searched far and wide for deep fried Elephant Ear Fish with rice paper rolls in Chau Doc only to receive strange looks and laughs. We'd even downloaded a photo to our phone and were marching in between restaurants pointing to it maybe just a bit too exuberantly. We finally found it in Saigon and would've been pleased enough with the dish but this was dinner and a show.

Our waitress took it upon herself to individually create and wrap each roll for us until it got to a point where it was just plain uncomfortable but then took great pleasure in ripping the head off the fish and placing it in the empty Saigon Export vase. Home decorators take note. Not only does it look great but it keeps the house smelling fresh and fishy.

And having spoken about it for far too long, after a couple of beers I determined it was time to have Hot Vin Lon - the semi developed duck foetus that is so highly prized in this part of the world. We sat down and I ordered through Nicola trying to say, "You just get one and I'll have a little bit". Wrong. Nice try but we're in this together.

It wasn't really that weird to be honest. You break a small hole in the top and suck out the eggy broth, break away some more of the shell and eat the yolk (which consumes most of the space within the shell) and then nibble on your tiny duck foetus - the minuscule rubbery breast and crunchy skull remind you of what you're eating. We've worked out that next time we need to have older Hot Vit Lon as there wasn't enough foetus about our duck foetus. Job half done.

Other highlights were the banging Christmas Eve party that that our hotel put on.

Heading back to our first beer stop in Saigon from last time - the opulent Rex Hotel - and aside from realising that it had also changed for the worse we had to pay about $22 for two beers. That's half our daily budget and approximately 1000% on what you pay in a restaurant down at pleb level. But it was all worth it for the photo.

My Christmas miracle - watching a pair of Hornbills fly past our window. I've spent almost a week in the jungle since we hit SE Asia and seen four Hornbills total flying in the distance. I shouldn't have bothered. I should've just looked out my window in f*cking Saigon and watch them fly right through the dead centre of the city.

And stopping for beers as the rain bucketed down.

The lowlight of Saigon was the War Remnants Museum. Aside from dealing with the masses making comments such as this, "Don't bother reading anything hunny, just look at the pictures." - because sh*t, you wouldn't want to learn anything would you - the museum is a lesson in the lengths people will go to to get what they want. The stories that were fabricated to brainwash the world and the methods that were used to force the desired outcome left us both, literally, speechless.

The Vietnamese sometimes get a bad rap with some people saying that they're too hard and all they want to do is juice you for every cent you're worth. Spend a few minutes surveying the photos of the innocent victims whose lives have been ruined by Agent Orange and Napalm and you'll soon reach the conclusion that the Vietnamese people could be the biggest arseh*oles on the planet and they'd have just reason to be so.

And that was Saigon. A mixture of disappointment, new finds, great noms, too many techno Christmas tunes and sadness.

Gooooooooood Morning, Chau Doc

2014-12-24T14:38:00.000+08:00

We arrived in Vietnam and all the memories of why we loved the place so much the first time came flooding back. The vivid, sprawling emerald greens of the rice paddies, the old ladies trundling along on their bicycles sheltered from the searing sun by their non la, the Mekong Delta splaying out in all directions.... Who are we kidding?

It's the fact that you spend your time with your eyes glued to the streets watching cart after cart after cart serving up the freshest, tastiest food you've ever had, it's the waft of something delectable coming in from the street not leaving the bus for the three hours that we were on it, it's the old lady that made sure Nix's pants didn't catch on the rusty old bus seats as we got off, it's the personal jokes I share with Vietnamese men with them pointing at me, pointing out the window, firing a few sentences at me and then bursting out laughing with the expectation for me to join in despite me having not the slightest idea what we're laughing at and it's the madness that a million and one mopeds weaving around you creates. We're back and we sort of feel like we're at home.

**As I write this, now on a different bus, a lady has just handed Nix a mandarin. A lady that we hadn't made eye contact with up until this point. And here comes a second one...**

About Chau Doc. We had one night there on a tour a few years ago but we were in the teeth of those dreaded Malaria medication side effects and didn't see much more of the city than the hotel room. It deserved another chance and presented an opportunity to adjust to the rhythms of Vietnamese life.

Our time in Chau Doc was spent wandering around going from ca phe to pho to sugar cane juice saying hello to every kid under ten and even having 18 year olds waving and yelling hello.

We had a tiny little girl one night pointing to the different pictures on a drinks menu and demanding that we pronounce them properly in Vietnamese in between bouncing her rabbit puppet around in front of us and trying to press our noses down flat in an attempt to make us look more normal.

We woke up early on our final morning and in a sleepy stupor remarked how nice everyone had been here, in particular the old man who had crossed to road twice to point to Nix's tattoos and say, "very beautiful!." As we walked down the street looking for breakfast a couple of stall owners sort of made an attempt to get us to sit down but one from across the road started yelling very intently in our direction. It was the old tattoo man again.

He sat us down and soon Nix had a fishy broth complete with chunks of succulent Mekong fish and super soft udon-like noodles but I had nothing. I waited patiently and out came my breakfast - a strong ginger gruel laden with bits of congealed blood, strips of pork, some strange sort of pork cake and the strongest, most bitter pork intestine I've had. All the world's ginger could not have masked the flavour of that intestine. It turns out the fish noodle soup is for the woman and the offal gruel for the man. Make me strong ;)

The fun didn't end there. He brought out coffees and demanded that Nix put in more and more sugar, ran into the back of his shop to bring out a pink lily for Nix and a chrysanthemum for me, again for the woman and the man respectively and then made another dash inside to to find some Buddhist beads to place around my wrist. So yes, the man that took convincing to wear a watch and a wedding ring now also wears a bracelet.

It's moments like those why we love to travel and it's people like that that make this part of Vietnam so endearing to us.

Crabs, More Crabs and Tropical Disease Symptoms

2014-12-22T15:00:00.000+08:00

There is no greater travel reality check than leaving paradise (link) and arriving in Sihanoukville. We had two hours in Sinville before our ferry to Koh Rong Samloem departed and that was two hours too many. Enter fat Poms strutting around with their shirts off, women offering us pamphlets to join their full moon party (definitely misjudged her audience there), Khmer youths that had been corrupted by attempting to imitate the knobbish Westerners that hang out there and puppies, that were too young to even know what they were doing, humping other puppies (we also blame the Westerners for this).

So after two hours that felt like ten we were on our way to Koh Rong Samloem, another picturesque island off the Cambodian coast.

Koh Rong Samloem

Apart from taking in a bit of island village life and soaking up some more sun, I was on KRS to complete my Advanced Open Water Dive ticket. I nailed it, naturally.

Highlights of the course were:

underwater rodeo which involves taking off your tank and BCD and riding it like a bucking bull;
seeing three seahorses and setting a new AOW record in the process;
a night dive on Papa's Boat which was crawling with fish and a myriad of crabs; and
playing ping pong with an egg yolk at 29 metres that doesn't break up due to the pressure that's exerted on it at that depth. Mind = blown

Highlights of Nix's time on KRS were:

hanging out with SparkleD*ck and Bobo;

reaffirming her title as Gecko Queen spending her days with a family of seven Giant Geckos (all at different stages of their development ranging from tiny to foot long); and

getting some quiet time away from me.

But the most interesting observations from KRS were the things our gecko friends would get up to at night:

we watched the big daddy shed his skin by peeling it off with his mouth and eating it;
we witnessed gecko sex which was surprisingly consensual; and
saw two geckos fall off the roof in an attempt to get an insect and live to tell the tale of their four metre plunge.

Kampot

~~We dropped in to Kampot to visit one of their famous pepper plantations and chow down on all things pepper.~~ We spent four nights holed up in our room whilst Nix suffered through what appeared to be the onset of Dengue. We had one decent meal of pepper squid, saw the giant durian roundabout and I had some Cambodia-wide famous but ultimately disappointing ribs. Nix's symptoms cleared up after a few days (clearly only the best of us get the real dengue) and it was time to move on.

Looks like someone made a full recovery.

Kep

Pretty little seaside Kep. It has a white sandy beach, is small and peaceful and is a popular hangout for Cambodians. Oh, and it had crabs. F*CKLOADS of crabs. More crabs than you can poke a claw at. Crab shells litter every corner of the beaches, streets and parks.

There are two main ways for you to acquire your crabs.

The first is at the Crab Market where the ladies down by the water's edge haul their crab pots out of the ocean and you barter your way to what seems like a reasonable price for a kilo. We read a "guide" before we went on how to barter for you crabs. Don't bother reading that guide. People throw numbers and laughs and quizzical looks at you in rapid succession and anything you've read that says "make sure you select your own crabs", "you a should never pay more than X amount", "the optimal size for a crab is three and a quarter inches". Forget it.

Get in there, don't get ripped off, get stuck into your bag of steaming hot crabs.

As long as you keep a smile on your face the Khmer people will pretty much take them from the pot and put them in your mouth. For less than a tenner you'll get a kilo of crabs, half a kilo of prawns, lime and pepper dipping sauce, and two sugar cane juices. You can't beat that for a feed.

The other option is one of the crab shacks complete with menu and a tenth of the crab for the same price. Nahhhh...

Rabbit Island

Before leaving Cambodia we slummed it for a couple of nights on Koh Tonsai in a $6 a night bungalow.

The wind blew its arse off, the sun never really appeared and on both boat crossings everyone got drenched but hanging out in a hammock and being adopted by the local dog pack (to the point that we'd get de-flead like the puppies by mama pooch) made leaving the little island paradise very, very tough.

But now it's time for Viet Nom!!

Here's our Cambodian journey in map form.

Survivor: nomad's land, Koh Totang

2014-12-18T15:00:00.000+08:00

A dodgy moto ride and a mini bus packed to the gills with rice wine and gunja supplies for the construction workers plonked us opposite our island paradise for the following four nights. We were picked up in a little runabout, introduced to our fellow contestants and spent the next four gruelling days and nights duking it out against Germans, Poms, Frogs and Sepo's. It was a battle to the death, here are a few actions shots from our four nights at nomad's land on Koh Totang.

Outbungalow

Outhammock

Outkayak

Outgrunt

Outselfie

Outsnorkel

Outread

Outsunrise

And it was at 0945 on the final morning that the Germans sped off and we'd Outwitted, Outplayed and Outlasted all contests. Aside from the ten or so villagers, the owners of nomad's land and its four volunteers, we'd claimed the island for ourselves. Time for a beer, "barman!!".

Chi Phat According to Nicola... A Confession

2014-12-15T15:00:00.000+08:00

Every time we end up in the jungle and I complain about the spiders in my personal space, freaking out about possibly having to attempt to pee in the middle of the night and accepting that the amount of sleep I'm going to obtain might as well be zero, well it turns out that these are generally my ideas. For some reason I feel the need to suggest we go to the jungle for god knows what reason and a few months prior I agree it will be fun... Until I'm there and thinking to myself for f*** sake why is this happening AGAIN!!!

Chi Phat is located in the south west of Cambodia and whilst the village used to make its money from logging and poaching, it has completely turned it around to focus on eco tourism and protecting the surrounding jungle and its inhabitants. Someone explained the place to us as 'a real Cambodian village that tourists happen to come to as opposed to a village for tourists' and it is exactly that. After jumping off our bus literally on the side of the highway, we took a two hour boat up the Preak Piphot River to reach our home for the next five nights.

Accommodation options here are simple - you either stay in a family run guesthouse or you stay in a family's home. We were extremely fortunate in that having located the "pub" and helping ourselves to a beer from their esky, we realised they had rooms in the back yard available and knew it was the place for us. This family were so incredibly friendly, inviting us for lunch and dinner each day, being adopted by their pooch Leup who slept on our doorstep and growled if anything came near, and making friends with their three year old daughter Teda, teaching her English and new games.

We were made to feel like one of the family and were lucky enough to be included in a rice wine fuelled lunch (the first shots downed at 10.30am) with the extended cousins and uncles and somehow held our own.

We'd walk down the road for our morning noodle soup to have one year olds tearing out of their house to scream hello to us, little boys swarming to show off their fight moves, dogs somehow knowing that we were happy to give them some lovings and a sugarcane juice lady that always appeared as soon as I was craving one. Chi Phat is a pretty awesome village!

We tried our hand at "lobster" fishing, or so it was referred to. We headed out on a boat at about 8pm with nothing but a five pronged spear and a head torch. We cruised along the banks until our guide somehow spotted one and then pow! there was our contribution to tomorrow's lunch. More like a prawn with nippers than a lobster, but still delicious. Excuse the shocking photo.

And then it was time to head to my favourite place... The jungle. Up at the crack of dawn, we took a motorised boat for two hours and then a row boat for 40mins in the hope of some bird spotting.

FINALLY I caught sight of two flying hornbills, one of my favourite birds. Decked out in our finest jungle attire, we were ready to commence the trek.

It was humid and thick, but the best part was the fact that the leeches had decided to go on a feeding frenzy thanks to some heavy rain a few nights earlier. Every five minutes I'd check out my shoes to have to flick off ten of the bastards, our jungle assistant helping with his machete. You'd look at the ground and you could see them reaching out for you - you can definitely see where some horror writers would get their inspiration from! This meant that stopping for a break wasn't so relaxing given you couldn't keep your feet in the same spot for more than a minute. This is the result of the little shitweasels making it through your socks.

We carried on through the jungle to the awesome sound of the gibbons. Still no sightings but they were very close in the tops of the trees. We skipped our lunch stop given our lightening speed and carried on to our camp for the night where we feasted on pumpkin stew and green tea. We had time for an afternoon nap in this delightful set up. Even I had to admit it was super comfortable.

Then in the evening we made our way to a shelter built by the waterhole in the hope of spotting some wildlife. Unfortunately as is so often the case we saw zip. Nothing but a few teeny birds flapping in the undergrowth and getting our hopes up.

At dinner our guide kept flashing his torch underneath the table then proceeded to warn us to watch out for snakes if we go to the toilet during the night (not an issue for me given I'd already spotted a few massive spiders at head height so was not venturing there again, however the alternative of a bush squat meant the likely possibility of having leeches on my bits... Not really liking my options here!). If the king cobra was to bite us then we were literally dead meat because help was too far away, but if it's a normal cobra then don't worry because you just have to get back to the village (ummm... How?) then take a two hour taxi to Sihanoukville where they have the anti-venom at the hospital. Fantastic.

Tucked up in my cosy hammock listening to the jungle was actually nice and the best jungle experience I've had, however due to the bathroom issue I was awake most of the night with a sore stomach and hammocks really aren't made for stomach sleepers. I ~~awoke~~ watched dawn break to the sound of gibbon howls and the flapping of hornbill wings. We set out into the jungle again to make our way back to Chi Phat and the welcoming embrace of Leup.

In order to leave Chi Phat I had to endure another of my favourite pastimes... Riding on the back of a motorbike. My driver was a teenager on a bike with a broken speedo and obviously no helmets. Within the first two minutes we had gone up and down a ramp that I thought there was no way a bike could physically accomplish and then when Brim's driver stopped mine continued to fly onto the one plank ramp to get us onto the river crossing. Sometimes I really dislike travelling.

After the crossing it was a hair raising fifty minute ride on dirt tracks... my butt losing contact with the seat on multiple occasions, my driver covering his eyes so the dirt didn't get in them (who cares about seeing where we are going), dodging potholes and then flying at a ridiculous speed when we finally got to the highway for the few minutes until our destination. I got off that bike with numb cheeks, sweaty palms, shaky knees and trying to somehow blame the whole thing on Brim.

The morals of this story is that I will be purchasing some Air Force grade hammocks when we get home and will be trying my best in the future to NOT make stupid suggestions about sleeping in the jungle.

Ecstatic Pizzas, Cult Temples and the Killing Fields, Welcome to Cambodia! (Part I)

2014-12-12T12:53:00.001+08:00

We had six days to go from Si Phan Don in southern Laos to deep inside the Cambodian jungle. All we had to do in that time was see everything that Cambodia's two largest cities have to offer, check out a temple complex that's way off the tourist trail, pay our respect at the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre and Tuol Sleng (S21) Museum, sort out visas for Vietnam within a day, squeeze in 24 hours of travel, keep you needy lot updated on our movements and sleep, eat and have the odd beer.

We arrived in Siem Reap way beyond beer o'clock and broke one of our main travel no no's - eating dumbed down local food at foreigner prices at your guesthouse. However, after thirteen hours of travel a cold Angkor was a slice of heaven and helped to soften the blow.

After less than a day in Siem Reap we were nailing it. We'd seen markets, eaten some great street food, organised a tuk-tuk to go and see that little temple the following morning and had bus tickets to get us to Phnom Penh the day after. We were nailing it until this guy sucked us in.

It was mid afternoon and we had time up our sleeve to squeeze in a pizza, chill for a bit and then head out at night. Unfortunately for us the restaurant owner had different ideas. He took a bit of a liking to us and wanted us to be happy that day. EXTRA happy in fact. "Have good sleep", he beamed as we began the journey back to our guesthouse.

6pm came and went. 11pm came and went. 4am came. Oh no, 4am!! Time to get up, time to get up, time to get to Angkor Wat for sunrise. "Nix? Nix!! You getting up?" A little green monster rolled over and stared back at me and I knew Angkor wasn't happening. You go back to sleep my love, I'll go and have a conversation with our driver and try to explain that you're not well, at four in the morning, through extremely broken English.

Time to reconsider that grand plan.

The temples of Angkor would have to wait until the following morning. They haven't gone anywhere in a long, long, long time so that was fine. But Phnom Penh would need to be compacted down into one very hectic afternoon and night.

So, we again woke at 4am and this time it seemed infinitely easier to get out of bed. And safe in the knowledge that we were getting up for this -

it was a breeze.

And we pretty much had the sunrise to ourselves so that was nice.

After witnessing one of the world's most famous sunrises we spent some time wandering around Angkor Wat taking it in in the cool morning air where despite the grandeur of the temple, it was the macaques warming up to a day of mischief that stole the show.

Oh the pleasure in watching a tourist with no understanding of the type of monkey that they had on their hands steal their Oreos from their unsuspecting, weak as a wet hankie, grip.

Next stop was Angkor Thom and Bayon - the one with all faces

We found our fearless tuk-tuk driver, Mr Dorn, amongst an ocean of tuk-tuks and off we went. The approach to Angkor Thom is quite surreal with 54 gods and 54 demons facing off on the bridge over the moat and it was made all the more surreal by the elephant sauntering along alongside as us we crossed.

Here are some pictures of serene Bayon.

Final stop was Ta Prohm - the jungle one. The one that was used in Tomb Raider

Ta Prohm has been left to continue its battle with the jungle to the point that some trees within the temple are the sticky tape and chewing gum that hold the place together. Some of the roots of the centuries old trees have more heft about them than most other trees can ever aspire to.

It's a lovely, green temple and was a nice one to finish on. Those three epic temples are part of the Small Circuit and to temple buffs it's pretty much sacrilegious to only do those three and to only spend a day at the complex but to us non-temple buffs that was enough. "The Eighth Wonder of the World" (hmm...) had lived up to its billing and we were more than satisfied with our experience. Time for another ice cold Angkor.

CLICK HERE for Phnom Penh and the Killing Fields.

Ecstatic Pizzas, Cult Temples and the Killing Fields, Welcome to Cambodia! (Part II)

2014-12-12T12:46:00.000+08:00

For the third straight morning our alarm went off well before day break and we boarded a bus bound for Phnom Penh. Typically it was an hour late and that squeezed an already tight afternoon schedule even more.

First stop was Lucky Motorcycles - the best place in the city to get an expedited Vietnam visa. Literally a visa service in the back of a moto mechanic. It makes sense here, OK.

Next stop, securing a bus ticket for tomorrow morning and finally, dumping our bags at a cheap hotel.

Now came decision time as we only had time left in the afternoon for one of S21, where prisoners of the Khmer Rouge's brutal regime were held, tortured and dehumanised, or the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre, more bluntly known as the Killing Fields and a place, like roughly 300 other similar centres across Cambodia, where it's estimated that 3 out of 8 million Cambodians came to their unjust end.

We jumped in a tuk-tuk, donned a face mask at the advice of our driver and prepared ourselves for the horror that awaited at Choeung Ek.

It's the contrasts that get you at Choeung Ek where just under forty years ago Cambodians were bludgeoning fellow Cambodians to death in the name of Angka and Pol Pot's deranged regime now exists a peaceful reserve where birds chirp happily in the trees and children laugh and play at the school next door. Those sounds break through the audio commentary of a man who survived the regime and the Killing Fields and each could not be in starker contrast to the other.

For two hours we numbly floated through the Centre trying to imagine and comprehend the atrocities that were committed here.

Some of the lowlights of human existence are the memorial which houses the skulls of those who were killed,

the Magic Tree from which loud speakers hung and would blast out Khmer Rouge songs to mask the sound of people being slain at night,

the mass graves where you can still see shards of bone and human teeth if you look close enough and

the one that really stops you in your tracks, the Killing Tree, which babies skulls were smashed against and they were then unceremoniously thrown into a grave, whilst their mothers watched. As I said, lowlights of our existence.

And on that solemn note we departed Phnom Penh for something, hopefully, a lot brighter.