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