Waitomo Caves and Rotorua

NOTE TO EVERYONE: I promise pictures again as soon as one of the computers has uploading capability.....

We are visiting Waitomo now and went into two caves with the Spellbound tour yesterday. The first was really cool and had glowworms all over the roof. It looked like constellations over the boat. We floated in a boat down a stream about 50m underneath the surface. We were floating along an underwater stream in a rubber dinghy. There were 9 people altogether, but no one talked hardly at all, and then in hushed tones. We had no lights and were travelling with only the glowworms lighting up the ceiling. It was just the kind of place where you are naturally quiet, I guess.

We then went into a second cave which had a much different feel. It was much more of a normal tourist cave with electric lights through and a man made walkway through the whole length. The interesting aspect was that there were three places where there were holes up the 50m to the surface where you could see the forest above. Apparently the whole area is riddled with 300 cave systems and there are these holes in the forest which would give little or no warning to any animal or human. There were several sets of old bones in the cave including one of an extinct Moa bird. There are other companies where you can repel down into caves then go on inner tubes. You have to be 12, so Heather being 10 saved us from that! There are also companies which take you into much more adveturous, actual spelunking caves -- for these you have to be 15. We enjoyed the ones we did, but you can't help thinking about all the other companies and whether they take you into better caves......

Today we are in Rotorua and we spent the day at the Agrodome. It was good for a spinner like me to see 19 different sheep breeds on stage at once. The commentator also sheared a sheep on stage. There was a hokey show to go with it that the kids lapped up. They also had a 100 year old carding machine from Huddersfield in Yorkshire, England. We hung around and watched them fire it up. It could apparently process an average fleece every 15 minutes, 24/7 in it's youth.

The real highlight for the kids was the ZORB. It is basically a human sized hamster ball full of water that they roll you down the hill in for a mere $30 ($77 if three people go in together). Alan, Jacob and Heather went in. I am suffering (AGAIN) from dysentry so I didn't think my stomach could handle it. We paid for the photo CD for another ($25) -- another reason I would like to upload pictures to defray the cost by amusing some of my friends and family...

Auckland

We have been in Auckland for three days. The first day we were recovering from the 10 hour flight with a 5 hour time change. We switched from the airport hotel we had found at 2 in the morning to the youth hostel downtown. When we had settled into the hostel we walked down to the Skytower and watched crazy people do the skyjump. They jump off the tower and pass the observation deck on the way down. They have an option of braking and hamming in front of the amassed viewers. There is a little screen inside which tell you 5 minutes, 2 minutes and 30 seconds before each jumper. We whiled away a bit of time watching them go.

We got to the skytower at 4.30 but no one wanted to go and come back for sunset. Jacob and I stayed up for 4 hours (he played with his gameboy) and watched the sunset. It was actually a pleasant place to watch the city and plan our 3 days here. I read the guidebook and pamphlets and had a pretty good idea by sunset of the sights to visit yesterday and today. Apparently we missed feeling an earthquake because we were in the quake proof building. I don't think it was a big earthquake anyway....

My mission for yesterday was to get some wool to start knitting. I will be making either mittens or socks by the time I get on the MAGIC BUS tomorrow. We will be taking the bus around New Zealand for the next three weeks. It took about 2 hours to book each stage of the journey and the Youth Hostels along the way, but now we have it all organized. I had to take a ferry over to a suburb to get the wool. Heather came with me and I made a lucky escape from having to go to the maritime museum with Alan and Jacob. After 25 years with Alan, I have seen enough boat museums to last me.

Today we all went to a historical museum called Howick. It is like Upper Canada Village but it is on a much smaller scale. They have about 30 buildings but they are not all restored. The whole site only has 2 costumed interpretors at any one time. One day a month they have a lot of volunteers who come in costume for special theme days. Sadly, today was not one of those days.

It was very interesting to see the differences in approach between the two villages. I think visitors get much more out of a village with more interpretation. Apparently there are not very many open air museums in New Zealand, but there may be two more that we can see possibly. The kids liked it. It has been a while since we went to any except Upper Canada Village. They got really burned out on historical museums two summers ago in the maritimes where they are thick on the ground and we went to at least 5 that I can remember.

Flying to the land of the rockingest little flightless birds ever

We are at Changi Airport in Singapore (AGAIN!!!). The way our trip works is we are basically using Singapore as a hub and every time we change countries, we come back here and out again. It is sort of a pain because it is always two flights instead of one, and more often than not on separate days. Last time we came through we crashed on the floor of the airport. Jacob did not sleep at all and ended up throwing up. Not a pretty sight really. This time we have stumped up for the Transit Hotel inside the terminal. They rent rooms in 6 hour blocks, so it is costing us $156 for 12 hours. The upside is the room is HUGE. It is more like an apartment with the kids having 2 single beds in an alcove and Al and I having a king size in another part of the room. It is the first bathtub we have seen in two months, so Heather is soaking while I am enjoying one of the hundreds of free internet connections spread throughout the airport. We have a great view of the tarmac and they are unloading a plane right outside the window. I find the soldiers walking round the airport with knives, pistols AND machine guns disconcerting. They walk REALLY slowly which is what gets me most.

Tomorrow we are flying to Auckland and I am really looking forward to most is visiting a wool shop. It has been two months since I knit anything and it is driving me nuts. It's 3 weeks in the land of the rockingest little flightless birds ever, then off to Australia for another 3 weeks.

The Killing Fields Museums

Today we went by car to the two museums commemorating the Genocide of the Khmer Rouge in the late 70's. It was very disturbing. The kids didn't go to a lot of it because it is just too much. We thought it was important that they see it, but not every detail. It is difficult to comprehend. I don't know if my mind was allowing myself to believe in it all because you are walking around in what is just a field with some holes in it. There are chickens scratching around like nothing is wrong. The signs tell you of the buildings that were there. I suppose because they are not there anymore, it is hard to imagine them actually being there. What went on in them is really beyond belief. The temple in the middle of the field is full of skulls, so that is the reality check.

Into Cambodia

We are in Cambodia for a week. We decided to come here instead of spending a 4th week in Thailand. I am glad we came. It is very easy for tourists here, just like Thailand. There are aspects that are more like India. We went to a great market yesterday. Lots of food, but other things too - clothes, bicycles. The kids were a bit freaked out by the pigs head and the roasted whole birds on a stick. They were a bit bigger than sparrows. Today at a temple we saw baby turkeys and we figure that is what they were. Someone must eat a passle of 'em, they were stacked up like cordwood.

Today we did the Ankor Wat and surrounding temples...oops I started this post a few days ago.

We went on the temple circuit of Ankor--Ankor Wat, Bayon, Ta Prohm. By the time we were finished with them everyone was sweating like proverbial wheels of cheese and the kids had had enough culture. Luckily our $21 US (with breakfast) hotel had a swimming pool so the kids forgot their cares within seconds of returning home. There are lots of other temples and adults could probably happily spend a few days going around them, but we have found the kids will only tolerate so many temples per country. Fair enough I suppose. Too much of a good thing and all that...

We travelled by bus pretty much all the next day to get to Sihanoukville on the south coast. It is like all beach resorts the world round. Luckily kids and families the world round love beach resorts so we have spent a happy couple of days here. We went on a snorkelling trip today. The reefs are pretty much totalled round here because they often fish using dynamite. The kids have never seen coral before so they were impressed. It is a good thing we haven't gone to the Barrier Reef yet. It was nice to spend a day on the water on a rustic boat (albeit with 14 other tourists). We visited two snorkelling spots and had a barbeque barracuda lunch on an island.

Off to Phnom Penh tomorrow....

The " Moss Mottos" of Thailand

When we went to the flower festival on the weekend, it was really interesting because at the end of the parade route they parked all the floats and you could walk up and see them up close. I did not get all the pictures I wanted because the memory card was full and I could only get Alan to (grudgingly) erase a few pictures so I could get some close ups of the floats. I was struck by how similar they are in some ways to the moss mottos of Upper Canada Village. The ladies of the domestic unit there should be interested in a couple of types of flowers that were the mainstay of a lot of floats. They are the same flowers that are a used for a lot of the detail work on the UCV moss mottos:























I thought that they may have used these so they could do some of the work ahead of time. Huge areas of the floats were done with daisies and mums. Their floats only had to last 2 days for the festival, but they were so detailed and huge that they must have needed to use flowers that look good for a long time in order to get them started. Below is an example of some of the detail that they had. Below is a picture that was about 1/3 of the side of one of the floats. (see some pictures of the finished floats on the post by Alan a couple of days ago)



















I was staggered by the scale of the undertaking. Luckily for them, they were not restricted to the technology of 1866 and I saw lots of evidence of the use of styrofoam, hot glue and even a nail gun. On one float each of the fresh flowers had a nail right through the center. I could think of one or two people who might derive satisfaction from using that nail gun to put the flowers in place!

More pictures

More pictures, so far just from India, can now be found on Flickr. I'm afraid the quality leaves something to be desired. I haven't had time to do any processing on them and many (most?) weren't great to start with. They are there though

Weekend activities

On Saturday we went to see the Chiang Mai Flower Festival Parade. We actually only saw part of the parade as it was already going past when we arrived and still going past when we went off to eat breakfast. Lots of flowers, of course, plus marching bands. Later in the day we went down to where the floats, flowers and prize plants were on display.





















The other big event of the weekend was the ASEAN Cup final between Thailand and Singapore. On Sunday night the streets were, if not exactly deserted then certainly less busy than usual. Everywhere you went there were people clustered round TVs. We popped into a pharmacy to find the lady behind the counter busy watching the game. When we got back to the hotel the night watchmen, usually in the parking lot, was in the lobby with everyone else watching the game. In the end Thailand lost, sadly for everyone round here.

Pictures of India 2: Jaipur

Pictures of India 1

We've had our pictures copied on to CD so we'll be able to upload them. Of course, this means there is a bit of a backlog, since we didn't post any of the pictures from India. Here's are some to start:

The apartment where we stayed in Bhubaneswar:















People going by in the road below:



















Jacob writing on the roof:

Tourist Stuff in Chiang Mai

We have been on a tourist tour of Chiang Mai this week. There are lots of people who have decided to cater to the large foreign contingent that passes through Chiang Mai. In India, it was quite rare to see other tourists except at the real drawing cards like the Taj Mahal. Here there are lots of foriegners everywhere and restaurants and bars catering to western tastes all over the place.

We have had a busy week. We started the week with a day at the silver shop. We were picked up at our hotel and taken to a silver shop where we bought pure silver (200g for $100 canadian). We were then taken to the silver shop where they melted our silver for us in a crucible then made an ingot which they ran through a press to make it into a thin sheet. They gave us a pen and paper and told us to design something. The pencil and paper method has never been my design style (much to the chagrin of my hand building instructor at George Brown who felt every pot should start with a drawing). We persuaded them to show us some examples of work so we could see the kinds of things you could actually produce, then we started in. The kids actually used the pencil and paper and drew out designs. Heather did a monkey and Jacob started with a cat. They then drew their designs on the silver with a pencil and used punches to transfer the designs to the silver sheet. I started with a leaf and then made a fish. The Alan and the kids made rings and Mum made bracelets for my sisters Melanie and Penny's daughters. We broke for lunch at one point and then came back and finished up the silver. The scraps were melted down and Jacob and Heather each got a little ingot pendant. Everyone loved the day. It was pricey ($300 for our family for the course and silver for the day) but everyone really enjoyed it.

On Wednesday we went on a trip which included an elephant ride, a bamboo raft trip, an oxcart ride and a trip to an orchid and butterfly farm all for the low low price of $25 per person with lunch. It was a real tourist factory. You arrived at the elephant place where they were selling you bananas and sugar cane to feed the elephants. I thought it was quite brilliant on their part to get the tourists to pay to feed the elephants who apparently eat their way through upwards of 250kg of food/day. We watched the elephants take a bath in the river then they had a show where the elephants demonstrated how they used to work in the Thai logging industry and then performed circus tricks including painting and kicking elephant sized footballs. After the show we went for our 45 minute "jungle trek". This was a circuit around on the other side of the river past a "traditional Thai village" where people were selling you elephant food and handicrafts from raised platforms.

We returned to the "elephant camp" and then walked 2 minutes upstream to the bamboo raft dock. They handed us authentic Thai hats to wear down the river and they polled us downstream for about 20 minutes. It was pleasant enough I suppose in our flotilla of 25 rafts each containing 4 tourists. One interesting touch was an advertisement on a log on the side of the river for cold drinks followed about 5 minutes later by a guy wading up to his armpits in the river pushing a styrofoam cooler containing said cold drinks. He was accompainied by a few wading women trying (successfully in Heather's case) to sell us hats, water bottle covers and friendship bracelets. We put in at a landing and transferred to ox carts for another spin round a well rutted track leading to a resort where there was a buffet lunch. Over lunch, our guide persuaded us that we had time for an extra activity to round out the day and offered us a choice of monkey show, snake show or extreme sport (bungee, pistol shooting, go carts). Our group plumped for the monkey show. I had had enough of an animal exploitation experience for one day after the elephants and oxen so sat outside. Heather LOVED the monkey show but she was too young to notice how they were treated. Alan and mum said I had made the right decision, if I had gone in I would have probably caused a scene. We ended up the day with a trip to the orchid farm. It was very nice and would have been totally impressive if we hadn't been to the Royal Flora show two days before. We wound up back at the hotel after full day then went to a restaurant with 500 people all cooking at their own tables in hotpots from a huge buffet. It was the one restaurant we have seen where there were real Thai's and we were amongst only a handful of foreigners.

Yesterday we went to the Chiang Mai Thai Cooking School. It was a really pleasant day and the kids liked it as much as the adults. We were "taught" how to make 6 different dishes which we made ourselves. All the prep had been done for us so we only had to chop a bit and fry up the dishes. One good thing was that we each prepared our own so mum and Heather left all chillies out of theirs and ended up with food they quite enjoyed. We will probably go back next week for another round since it was such a nice way to spend the day.

Today we went on a real tourist route. It is a stretch of road outside town with "factories" which show handcrafts being done and sell the products. Some were interesting, especially the cotton and silk spinning/weaving places and the ceramics factory. We also went to papermaking, lacquerwork, umbrella and fan making and probably some I am forgetting. It is really set up so you can spend one heck of a lot of money. Huge showrooms full of stuff with a small "factory" attached where probably 1/10th (if that) of the products are made. The factories are just there to show how it might be made, I think. Most of the stuff is probably made in huge factories elsewhere. I got some nice pictures of spinning and weaving though.

We are going to take it easy for a couple of days now after a full week of touristing.