Climbing the wall and a few albums

Although I have been continually prodding MC to get some posts together, my computer monopolizing ways are shining through. Hopefully some of her insightful remarks and observations will be coming shortly. To keep you entertained in the meantime her is a video of some fun we had while out visiting our brothers out in Montreal a couple weekends back.



We also have some new pictures added to our photo site. Check 'em out!

Clogs, Brothers and Kangaroos

A treat

They always said that San Francisco is a treat. Or was it some type of instant rice (Rice-A-Roni) that was a San Francisco treat? We have just arrived in the land of sour dough bread from Sydney. We are here for a few days and hope to take in some of the sites. Check out our pictures from Sydney, Cairns and the Outback.

Ciao for now.

Same Same But Different

We heard the phrase so often in Southeast Asia that we started using it ourselves. And cringing.

Australia and Canada: same same but different. Tomato sauce: ketchup. Quickies: Tums. Big W: Wal-Mart. The place is crawling with 7-11s and coffee shops. It's difficult to find regular coffee here but espresso drinks abound.

What I missed while in Asia: drinking tap water and eating whole wheat bread. I'm now fully sated. Mmmm... chlorine water. Best water there is!

What I first noticed when I arrived in Australia: all the extra space! The country and the streets seemed empty after China and Southeast Asia. I've become used to it now.

Some things are expensive in Australia. A 500 ml bottle of coke is $2.50 and up. Accommodations is a lot more than what we paid in Asia.

Aaron, Adam (Aaron's bro), Yindee (Aaron's bro's partner) and I drove from Sydney to Brisbane over the last several days. We saw a lot of coast, wineries, some really cool sand dunes, kangaroos (!) and koalas (!!). Adam and Yindee have now headed back to Sydney and Aaron and I are flying to Cairns tomorrow.

Angkor Wat photos

We've just added photos for Cambodia. If you missed them, we have Northern Thailand and Laos photos up as well.

I hope to convince MC to relax in Ao Nang for a couple days before going to Ko Phi Phi.

Hmmm, I don't usually post on this blog. I am working behind the scenes though. Honest.

Luang Prabang

Yesterday's cooking class wasn't quite as good as the last one. It was more of a watch-your-meal-be-cooked kind of class. Oh well. The food was still delicious and we did learn about some of the ingredients used in Lao cooking. Some ingredients come from the jungle. Like spicy wood. Add it to a stew and it gives a spicy flavour to the dish. I don't think we'll find that wood in the jungles of Ottawa.

After cooking class we hopped on a tuk-tuk with some friends and headed to a nearby waterfall. If you haven't been to Southeast Asia, tuk-tuks are the taxis of this region. In Laos, they're small pickup trucks with seats in the back. Our tuk-tuk had to stop once on the 30 km ride to the waterfall for some roadside repairs. But we did make it to the waterfall and back. We swam in the turquoise pools below the waterfall. So beautiful. Unfortunately, our batteries died on our camera and we weren't able to photograph it.

Sign seen at the waterfall:

What's out.
Slipperyway.

It's raining today so we will probably hit the museum in town.

Luang Prabang's architecture is French Colonial. Quite pretty. We'll post some pics of the town soon.

We'll be in Laos for a few more days before flying to Cambodia.

Bangkok Shock

Bangkok surprised us. First came the heat. Hot, humid heat. We expected that. What we didn't expect were the hordes of tourists. We hadn't seen so many white sunburned faces in a long while. We spent our first night in tourist ghetto then moved on to a more secluded area. I pined for China during my first few hours in Bangkok. But then Bangkok slowly revealed itself. It may have been the public transport boat rides on the river. Or the street-side stalls and small shops. And just as I started to like the city, we moved on.

We flew to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand today. We're doing a Thai cooking class tomorrow on a farm just outside of town. It should be fun.

Weapons

I forgot to mention that on our hike up the mountain, there were people selling food, drinks and other goods all along the hike. We could have bought a handcrafted slingshot, a crossbow and a wooden sword... but we didn't. Then we wondered, are these mountains safe to hike? Should we be armed?

Tapirs!

We almost forgot to add this video online. It's from ages ago (2 weeks) when we were in Beijing. I don't have audio on this computer but I'm sure the video includes witty commentary.

Last days in China

While in Chengdu we dropped by to see some pandas.


We then took the train from Chengdu, Sichuan to Yunnan, Kunming aka the bottom of China. Yunnan is pretty cool, very eclectic. We met "my uncle" on the train. He was one of our cabin mates. We called him my uncle because he had the same gruffy voice as my uncle Gaston and the same curiosity in people. He would write us little notes in Chinese thinking it would help us understand him (it didn't). We still managed to have a basic conversation with him and his friend using the four pages of Chinese from our guide book. Aaron and I provided the best entertainment on the train: a chance to watch foreigners eating, playing cards, reading.

The food in Yunnan is still spicy. Plates are always peppered with little hot chillies. We had the best fish dish ever yesterday in this tiny restaurant. The menu are the ingredients displayed on shelves which you point at. Very fresh.

Yesterday, we went on what turned out to be a 16-kilometre walk up a mountain. Monks a while back carved caves up a sheer cliff so they could go from the bottom to the top of the mountain.

Tomorrow we fly to Thailand.

Train and Bejing

This just in - our pictures for the train trip from UB to Beijing and Beijing pictures have been added to our Picasa site. Click through for fantastic images! You will be wowed!

Dulaankhaan or the story of Billy's unfortunate end

Once upon a time (last weekend actually), a group of 14 dedicated volunteers (and spouses) descended upon a quiet little town named Dulaankhaan. Dulaankhaan (translation: Warm-King) is about four hours north of UB towards the Russian border. Pete, one of the 14 volunteers, had once lived in Dulaankhaan and was now playing tour guide to the other 13. Pete had worked there helping a group of women start a jam cooperative.

We stayed at Dulaankhaan's newest and only hotel which also happens to be the only building in "lower" Dulaankhaan with a second storey. A family runs the hotel, a convenience store and the public transportation to and from Darkhan, Mongolia's second largest city about an hour away.

The highlight of the trip was to be a horhog party on the Saturday with the women from the jam cooperative. A horhog is a Mongolian speciality consisting of meat (usually mutton) cooked in a pot with hot stones. It's usually done outdoors in the summer but ours was done inside.

We met Billy on Saturday. Billy was a nice three-year old goat who was kind enough to sacrifice himself for our party. One minute after I petted his nose, Billy was on the ground, hooves up with a man's hand deep inside his chest snapping off the main vein (or was it the aorta?) from his heart. Billy died to an audience of shocked foreigners. The man attached to the hand then brought Billy inside, skinned him and removed the internal organs. While Billy was being cut into pieces, the women were preparing blood sausages and cleaning the stomach and intestines. Mongolians eat just about everything on a goat. It was all quite quick. And bloodless. Not one drop of blood was spilled. Finally and again to the shock of the foreigners, Billy's head went into the freezer for future use.

Billy was cooked with hot stones in a big pressurized pot. He was joined by potatoes, onions, garlic and spices. We ate, we sang and then danced. The women tried to teach us the tea cup dance. The dance is all in the shoulders but our shoulders didn't want to listen.

It was relaxing to be in the countryside away from the city. Deadly quiet too. Hours can easily go by without a car driving down the main drag in Dulaankhaan. Most residents walk or ride their horse to get around town.

I'd go back to Dulaankhaan in a second. Perhaps not to live but another weekend there would be nice...

Another Japan video, pictures and more

It took us a little while but we have gotten up two albums of pictures and another video of our trip to Japan. It was a great trip, but it's nice to be back home.


I have been busy since being back in Mongolia. I now have a contract with the WHO in Mongolia to assist with IT on several of their projects. My placement at the Chingeltei hospital consists of only 8 hours of work a week now. With the WHO I will be going to the far eastern part of Mongolia (Choibalsan) in a couple weeks to help them with their IT infrastructure. I think MC will be coming along. With only just over a month left in my contract with VSO (yes I am still working with under VSO for the WHO contract) we are starting to look into our plans of travel. I think Thailand is at the top of the list.