Category Archives: Travel

Gunung Mulu National Park

January 16, 2013 duckie Leave a comment

Day 15 – Gunung Mulu National Park
After a bit of a sleep in we wandered into Kota Kinabalu town centre to check out the Sunday market…it was overcrowded, there was nothing original and it was pretty awful seeing all the puppies and kittens crammed into cages (also scary how many people were taking photos of all the cute animals). So after walking through the market we wandered off to the mall, where Mark got a funky new pair of shorts. By then I was rather peckish so we stopped in at a cafe for some lunch and drinks.
Before we knew it, it was time to get back to the hostel to catch a taxi to the airport.
Waiting in the departure lounge we were surprised at the lack of people on the area. Boarding the plane we soon discovered we were the only two passengers! The air hostesses were pretty cool: “Are you familiar with aircraft safety procedures?” We said yes, “so is it ok if I don’t go through them with you?” And again a yes from us! They also have us a few extra packets of peanuts. Yum.
Descending into the Gunung Mulu National Park was pretty beautiful, dense, lush green vegetation with mountains sticking up at random.
We got off the plane, went through ‘immigration’ and caught a shuttle bus to the national park headquarters to register in the park and check in to our accommodation – pretty awesome to have to walk across a suspension bridge to access the place!
We have a lovely little bungalow that is surrounded by jungle and accessed via timber walkways – at night the animal sounds are almost deafening, but nonetheless cool.
Upon check-in we had to organise all the tours and activities straight away, and we designed a pretty fun few days.
As the sun began to sink in the sky, we managed to cram in two non-guided activities.
Firstly we headed up the Tree Top Tower to see of there was any wildlife to watch – we could see movement in the trees from a flock of birds, but not a great deal else.
Secondly we continued further down the track to see the ‘Bat Exodus’. Along the trail we saw some awesome miniature squirrels. They were probably about 15cm long from head to tail. They are such funny little creatures, dashing from spot to spot with their tails in the air as if they are being chased, then stopping suddenly and chilling out for a bit. We also saw a number of little lizards, butterflies, and Mark’s favourite, a stick insect. We had seen this particular stick insect at the butterfly farm in Penang – they look like a 20-25cm long twig, apart from the two little arms, it’s nearly impossible to say that it isn’t a twig!

At the end of the trail was the by observation area. Between 4 – 6pm the bats exit the caves in search of food. We were quite some distance from the exit point, but you could see swarms of bats buzzing around the cave exit, then suddenly a stream of hundreds would leave the cave in one go and form a river-like stream across the sky. A few seconds later another stream of hundreds more bats would cross the sky. Sometimes the swarms would fly in circles and it looked like there was a black donut in the sky. Pretty amazing/interesting to see.
Around 6pm the bats appeared to all have made their exit, so we walked back to the national park headquarters for some dinner, and then a chilled out evening in our bungalow, reading books.

Day 16 – Gunung Mulu National Park

We started the day with a guided canopy walk. Our guide Francesca taught us a little bit about the area, as well as showing us more of the wildlife.
Along the walk we saw a vibrant green viper, a bright orange kingsfisher, various different insects and birds and my favourite, more Pygmy Squirrels (so the squirrels we had seen earlier weren’t baby squirrels, they were duly grown Pygmy squirrels…so cute!) I tried valiantly to get a photo of a squirrel but I am yet to find out if I was successful, those little guys dart about so quickly!
The canopy walk was suspension bridges about 20-30metres above the jungle floor. It was lovely an peaceful up amongst the trees, unfortunately though we didn’t really see any new or different animals.
One thing I learned during the walk that I found interesting was that the area is named Mulu by mistake. When people came to discover the area they recorded the name of the area as M. Ulu. Ulu means “up river” and mountains was marked on the map as M. so it was “mountains up river”. By the time the notes and maps made it back to the map makers in England, the text was not as legible as when it was written and the area was named on the map as “Mulu”.
After our morning tour we had some time to fluff around, so we checked out emails, read our books and had some lunch.

At 2pm we set off on our afternoon tour to Lang Cave and Deer Cave with our guide Esther and 4 other tourists (including a loud, annoying American). We walked the 45minutes to the cave entrance and had a 20minute breather before heading in.
We started with Langs Cave, which is actually a portion of Deer Cave. We walked a loop of Langs Cave before going out and entering Deer Cave. Deer Cave was so called because many deer used to come and drink the water that passed through the cave as it was nice and salty from all the bat guano and bird droppings. Deer cave is the largest cave passage in the world.It was quite wide an had very high ceilings, large portions of the ceiling in specific areas are solid black with millions upon millions of bats. Both Langs and Deer caves had the usual suspects: stalactites and stalagmites, but I didn’t think any of the formations I saw were particularly amazing.
Apart from the astounding size of the caverns, the highlights of Deer Cave were the entry point where the wide mouth of the cave opened out to the lush green rainforest (which of course was experiencing a downpour) and towards the back of the cave there was an area called “Garden of Eden”, as well as an Adam shower and an Eve shower. The Adam and Eve showers were like enormous stalactites that were hollow, allowing all the rain from outside to flow through as a shower – they looked pretty awesome, but I don’t think the photos show the water pouring through them. The Garden of Eden was a beautiful lush green, untouched section of the rainforest that could be seen through an opening in the cave.
It was pretty awesome to see the two caves and it will be interesting to see how the other caves in the area differ.
Leaving the cave was pretty unexciting as it meant a walk back to the bungalow in torrential rain. We walked as fast as our little legs could carry us, but still returned soaked through all layers..we wrung out our shoes, socks, shorts etc and headed indoors to get dry.

Day 17 – Gunung Mulu National Park
After nearly 11hours of sleep we got up and organised ourselves for our tour-free morning. We checked all our gear from the previous day…it was all still wet. With the humidity here it takes days for things to dry, which is a little frustrating when you need things like shoes.
So we decided to do the walk out to Paku Waterfall, we registered departure time and expected return time with the main office and got ourselves sorted. We decided to wear sandals so that our shoes would have a bit more time to dry before the afternoon caving a tour, and I put on my wet shorts…thankfully they weren’t soaking, just a bit damp. Within half an hour of walking they were already dry. (Quote of the day: “what is rainforest? Damp underpants”)
After walking for around 1.5km on the boardwalk, we split off into the waterfall track which was 1.3km. The track was narrow and at times quite muddy, the worst part is the walk was that every few seconds you would walk through yet another spiderweb. Our faces, arms and legs were covered with fine cobwebs and it felt awful!!!
After walking for about 30mins we got to the waterfall and it was…. unimpressive. We took a few photos and then headed back to base camp for some lunch before the afternoon tour.

On the afternoon tour we had a group of 8 people including the guide: two guys from Sweden, a Brit, a Yank and a chik from Bulgaria. We caught a longboat upriver to the cave entrance where we put on our helmets and switched on our lights. Like Deer and Langs caves, Racer Cave was a series of enormous caverns. It had some narrow parts where we had to squeeze through, but it wasn’t a teeny, squashy rabbit warren like I have experienced in other caves. There were a few rope climbs to be done, a few rock climbs too, but it was mostly walking inside the cave. The cave hosted bats, birds, spiders, crickets and millions of other bugs. I’m not sure how far into the cave we ventured, perhaps a kilometre…it probably took us around 2hrs going into the cave and roughly an hour to return. It was heaps of fun!!
We finished our day with a tour called “The Night Shift”, which as you can imagine was a night tour. We hoped to see lots of cool nocturnal creatures, but unfortunately they can all hear us coming from a mile away and opt not to stick around for a visit. So what we did see was a huge variety of spiders, stick insects and snails. We also saw a number if different types of geckos – those little guys are so cute!!
By the end of the tour we were pretty knackered from such a full day…so it was time to head back to the bungalow and catch a few zzz’s.

Day 18 – Gunung Mulu National Park / Kuching
Our start to the day involved packing our bags and storing them on the luggage room before doing our last cave tour.
Our tour was a bit bigger this time and two longboats took us upriver, first to visit a local village to check out their way of life and possibly buy some handicrafts. As most of the handicrafts are made from plant materials and wouldn’t be allowed to be brought back into Australia, we didn’t look too closely at what they had to offer.
The next stop was a bit further upriver, Cave of the Winds. It had more stalagmites and stalactites than the previous caves and many of the walls were textured with a white substance they call “moon milk”. At the end of the cave was a a chamber called “Kings Chamber” and using your imagination you could various things in the formations, such as a king, the titanic, a dragon and a hand dangling from the ceiling. After a good look around we headed yet further up the river to Clearwater Cave. We had to climb 200 steps to get to the entrance of the cave, and once we did, we realised it was actually two caves. The entrance on the right was Ladies Cave, which we visited first, on the left was Clearwater Cave.
Ladies Cave was so called because the shadow of one of the stalagmites looks like the Virgin Mary. The cave was really lovely, many beautiful shapes. In the centre was a section where the ceiling had collapsed and you could look outside to the lush green rainforest above (and hopefully not get drips of water in your eyes as you look up!)
Clearwater Cave was fairly similar to both Wind Cave and Ladies Cave, just a greater variety of different shapes and formations, as well as a crystal clear river running through it.
After visiting the caves, we descended the 200 steps and changed into our togs for a swim in the river. It looks like a nice swimming hole, rather than a river, but at one end there is actually quite a strong flow of water as it exits the cave river to meet with the normal river. You weren’t able to determine that this flow existed until you were actually swimming, as it was under water, and felt the strong current. As you can imagine, the water from a cave river was rather fresh! While I found it quite refreshing, I didn’t stay in for very long.
After our swim we headed back to National Park headquarters for some lunch, before our flight to Kuching (southern Borneo).
The flight to Kuching had HEAPS more people on it than the flight to Mulu. There were a grand total of 14 passengers! The flight was 1.5hours and went pretty quickly.
When we got to Kuching we checked into our hostel and found places around the room to hang out all our wet gear from the rainy rainforest. Then we put our shoes back on (you have to take your shoes off indoors everywhere you go) and headed out to explore.
Kuching is fairly small it seems…we wandered down one of the main streets, along the waterfront to the end point and back again. Stopping for some dinner on the way – I had a very tasty Sarawak Laksa.
Random info: Malaysia appears to broken into states, the top part of Borneo is Sabah, the lower part, where we are now, is Sarawak and the other chunk is peninsular Malaysia (not sure if it has another name). Interestingly you need to go through immigration when travelling between the states.

Travel

Brunei

January 12, 2013 duckie Leave a comment

Day 13 – Brunei

Our last morning in Sandakan was a reasonably early start. We headed to the airport for an 0830am flight to Kota Kinabalu, where we sat, had coffee and wrote postcards until our flight to Brunei at 1230pm.

We arrived in Brunei and took at taxi to our hotel: The Empire Hotel.

The Empire Hotel is one of the world’s few 7-star hotels. It was originally built as lodging for guests of the Royal Family. As construction costs exceeded US$1.1billion, it was quickly transformed into a fancy hotel to regain some of the costs. Some crazy facts about the hotel: all bathrooms are clad in 20mm thick marble slabs; the nine swimming pools use 12,285,000 litres of water to be filled; the carpets are all hand tufted and made from the finest New Zealand wool; many of the gold fittings have a 21K gold-plated finish; only the best marble from Italy was used; and the furniture is mostly from France and Italy.

So we checked in to our fancy-pants room and took turns taking flying leaps onto the ENORMOUS bed (a bit annoyingly they gave us a king sized bed instead of twin beds – but considering how big the bed was, it wasn’t an issue). After checking out every aspect of the room, we put on our togs and headed to one of the swimming pools. We went to the main pool, with an infinity edge and view of the ocean. Poolside we settled into sun loungers (we had one each and they were about 2mX2m) for some sunshine and reading. As we started to get thirsty we jumped into the pool and swam up to the poolside bar for some Mocktails, or as I like to call them, Juicetails (Brunei is an alcohol free country…so no poolside cocktails for us!)

After a few hours by the pool we headed back to the room to shower and change before heading to the Spa for our Balinese massages (since we were splurging on this crazy fancy hotel, we splurged by getting the spa package which included breakfast and massages in the room price). Considering the grounds are 180hectares we needed a golf buggy to drive us to the spa!

The massage was phenomenal and I didn’t want it to stop!!! But as we know all good things come to an end, so the staff called us a buggy to take us to the restaurant of our choice, where we had a brilliant Chinese meal. Then it was time for bed…seriously the bed was so big, we could have both slept in a starfish position and still not bumped each other!!

Day 14 – Brunei

After the comfiest night so far, we got up at a reasonable time and started the day with a swim in the Lagoon Pool, which was basically directly outside our room.

After our morning exercise it was time to replenish our energy supplies with a massive buffet breakfast and… .normal(ish) coffee!

Knowing we hadn’t seen any of Brunei itself we organised an afternoon tour before wandering more of the grounds of the hotel. It was so hot wandering around outside, that after a while we had to head back indoors for another Juicetail (I had an Empire Martini) and a macaron.

At 1330pm our guide, Zul, collected us to head into Bandar Seri Begawan, where he pointed out all the important sights as we drove through. The dome things at the top of all the mosques are made of 24K gold imported from Australia!!!!!! Crazy!!!! And then the river flows through the city and on the other side of the river to the mosques are crappy, run down stilt houses; such a contrast!

We hopped in our water taxi and headed across the river to Kampong Ayer which is the general name for the water village. Within the water village however, are various communities, and each community has a different name for their region of the water village. We zoofed up and down the river and amongst the houses, before hopping out of the boat to wander the ‘streets’ (wooden walkways) of the village. It was pretty interesting to see the contrast between the new government housing and the older houses. As you may expect, the older house have much more character! It was pretty cool to wander around and look at these places and how people live. Something I learned was that Brunei has a monarchy and one of the rules is that every house must display a photograph of the current Sultan and next to it a photograph of his wife.

Pretty soon, the tour was over and we had to make tracks to the airport for a flight back to Kota Kinabalu (unfortunately there weren’t any direct flights to our actual destination of Mulu, so we need to go via KK, spend the night there and then fly out to Mulu in the morning)

Perhaps I should start looking for a husband who could support a lavish lifestyle….since I LOVED staying in that fancy hotel!!!

Kampong Ayer Water Village

Main hotel lobby

Using the buggy to get from place to place

Eating lunch by the pool

Empire Hotel

Travel

Sandakan

January 10, 2013 duckie Leave a comment

Day 10 – Sandakan

We had a crazy early 4:30am alarm set in order to catch our 7am flight to Sandakan. The flight was a quick 45minutes and provided a GREAT view of Mt Kinabalu. Looking at the track up the side of the mountain, I was pretty horrified to realise exactly what I had walked up, and am astounded I even made it!

Arriving in Sandakan we took a taxi to the hostel where we attempted to check in, but as our room wasn’t ready, we just put our bags into storage before catching a taxi out to The Sepilok Orang-Utan Rehabilitation Centre.

We quickly bought tickets and headed in for feeding time, headed in the same direction next to the track was an Orang-Utan, as I attempted to film it, my camera battery went flat! I was pretty annoyed with myself that I hadn’t checked the battery and the spare I had was locked away in a locker! So I was relying on Mark to take some pictures while I enjoyed the monkeys.

A person came out to the feeding platform and dumped a basket of fruit out for the Orang-Utans. A handful of Orang-Utan slowly but surely swung and climbed along the ropes onto the platform and started munging on all the tasty fruit. Some sat on the platform picking and choosing what to eat, where others swung in, grabbed some fruit and swung out. One of the smaller ones grabbed his fruit and then dangled from the rope to eat it. Two bigger Orang-Utans grabbed their fruit and then climbed up to a slightly higher platform to sit down and cuddle/play.

It was surprising to see just how flexible these guys are…often dangling from a rope with their hands and feet on the rope and their butt towards the ground in a little V shape. Also it was interesting to see their body shapes and their muscles…you can really see how their DNA is 96.4% the same as ours. They are like hyper-mobile furry little people!

As the Orang-Utans finished up with the fruit, their place was quickly taken with sneaky little Macaque’s. These are the guys you see everywhere, who like to steal people food and bags. One of the Macaque’s turned up before the Orang-Utans was done, and it was very entertaining to see him sneak around one side of the tree to steal some food and get swiped at by the Orang-Utan, so he would sneak around the other side of the tree and get swiped at again. He kept going back and forth, but did manage to steal some fruit…very entertaining to watch.

Soon enough, feeding time was over and we wandered back to the reception centre to have some lunch of our own and wait for the next feeding time.

We had some tasty lunch, went for a wander and adopted an Orang-Utan. There is a UK company that works together with the SORC in rehabilitating the Orang-Utans. Usually it’s baby Orang-Utans whose mothers have been poached and the babies have been found in poor health, so they are brought back to the centre where they are cared for and taught by other Orang-Utans (with human assistance) how to live in the wild, and over a number of years are slowly released back into the wild. The adopt-an-Orang-Utan money goes towards things like Vets, Vaccinations etc. So I adopted a baby Orang-Utan called Chikita, ad every 6 months will receive photos and an update on how she is doing, as well as updates on how things are going at the centre in general.

After lunch time there was the afternoon feeding..this time I had a fully-charged camera battery. The afternoon feeding was much quieter than the morning, both in the tourist population and the Orang-Utan population. It was not as good for taking photos, but it was much more relaxed and pleasant. Being ‘amongst’ the Orang-Utans for a day really was fantastic, they are such beautiful animals!!

Day 11 – Sandakan

We booked a day trip for a wildlife cruise down the Kinabatangan River – something we had heard a great deal about from other tourists. We were collected from our hostel at around 11:30am and had a 2.5hour bus trip to get to the river, this also meant a 2.5hour bus trip back to the hostel in the evening. Word of advice – if you plan to go to the Kinabatangan, it would be better to do one of the overnight packages, rather than a day trip. Once at the river there was an hour to spend waiting for the cruise to start, so we found a nice peaceful spot to sit by the river and appreciate the serenity of the jungle/river environment.

The Cruise!!! About 10 of us were loaded into a long speed boat and we headed up the river with the aim of spotting wildlife. We looked and looked but didn’t see anything, then every now and then our boat driver would pull across to the riverbank to spot things he had seen..like a Pied Hornbill, a Monitor Lizard, a Macaque monkey, a Rhinocerous Hornbill. No idea how he could spot these things in transit, but we were grateful that he could! As the sun lowered in the sky, things became more interesting. There were three main highlights…

3. The Proboscis monkeys started to arise from their naps and head into the tops of the trees

2. We saw a wild Orang-Utan swinging through the trees. We were VERY lucky to see this, as they are such shy creatures, it is very rare to see them on these cruises.

1. A herd of Pygmy elephants came down to the riverside to much on some plants and play around. Again we were incredibly lucky to witness this, and unlike the Orang-Utan who swung off quite quickly because of our presence, the phlumps didn’t mind us at all. So for a solid chunk of time we just got to sit and watch and take photos at a distance of 5-10metres away. It was absolutely FANTASTIC!!!!!

Unfortunately though we had to leave at some point, so the boat driver started the engine and took us back to the starting point for a buffet dinner, and then our driver collected us, to bring us back to Sandakan.

So 5 hours worth of driving for a 2 hour wildlife cruise (all up we left at 11:30am and arrived back at the hostel at 10:30pm)…it was worth it for us and we saw some amazing things, but as I mentioned, it would be better as an overnight package.

Day 12 – Sandakan

Another early-ish start for a day trip out to Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary. I am in two-minds about the sanctuary, it is much more commercial and less natural than the Orang-Utan sanctuary, but at the same time, the monkeys still come to feeding time of their own free will and are not restricted to the sanctuary in any way.
One of the weirdest aspects, was that you had to drive through a palm oil plantation to get to the sanctuary. What happened was hat there were two brothers that own 1000acres of land and they were developing it into a plantation, when they came across the monkeys, they decided the reserve a portion of the land as a sanctuary for them, rather than destroy their habitat and kill them…good choice!

So as with the Orang-Utans, we attended two feeding times, but here there were two separate platforms, they were about 5km apart. The first platform wasn’t very nice as there was about a 5metre section of dry dirt and dead trees were they came to feed, where the second platform was very much on the edge of the jungle, so they could sit in the trees as they ate.

The proboscis monkeys are a bit funny looking, the male has a big, bulbous nose and basically a permanent erection, and the female also has a long-ish nose, but it’s upturned. The babies are SUPER CUTE!!!

At this sanctuary we got within 30cm of the alpha male who was just chilling out on the deck of the viewing platform, which was kind of crazy. He wasn’t at all fussed by our presence, and just let people get up close for photos while he watched us carefully.

So having had two full days of monkeys and some amazing wildlife sightings we felt happy that we had seen some amazing things and it was time to leave Sandakan for another new experience.

Travellers Tip – If you are headed to the Sandakan region to see the monkeys and the river, stay in Sepilok as it is more central to all the activities (it would have saved us 45 minutes of transit time each direction every day)

Travel

Kota Kinabalu

January 7, 2013 duckie Leave a comment

Day 5 – Penang to Kota Kinabalu

We got up early and our driver from previous day, Durai, picked us up to take us to airport, he gave us a copy of the daily newspaper (English version of course) and took us out to catch our flight.

Flight was at 10:05am, when we checked in we were surprised to see boarding time as 09:05…so we headed straight to the gate AND there was no plane…so we sat in the boarding lounge till about 09:55, boarded quickly and off we went (we think perhaps the early “boarding” time was to ensure dawdlers make it to the gate in time)

The flight was 2h 45m so I read a bit, ate some jelly beans and had a nap.

On arrival in Kota Kinabalu we checked into hostel before grabbing some lunch and doing a quick explore. Apart from shops and the night markets, there didn’t seem to be many suggested sights. So we went to check out The Atkinson Clock Tower, which was quite nice but not exactly amazing. Then we headed up to the Signal Hill Observatory – this was basically a viewing platform to give a view over the city. It was quite nice too, but as it’s not all that high, you see a lot of buildings but can’t see past them to the coastline.

The way up to signal hill we walked up the road as we hadn’t seen a track marked on the map, but heading back down we spotted a track and quite happily started wandering through mini jungle. Suddenly there were all these monkey squawks and monkeys all over the track…there was a really big one on the railing and it started advancing towards us. I of course was scared stupid and could be found cowering behind Mark, clinging to his backpack…we quickly retreated and walked back along the road.

After our monkey fright we headed to the city where we wandered around, checked out some shops, had a drink, then grabbed some dinner from the night market and ran back to the hostel through the rain to pack for our hike.

I am of course crazy nervous about attempting a 2 day hike up a mountain on a tropical island that is leech ridden, not to mention the variation in temperature, it is 30 degrees in KK and will be 0 at the peak of the mountain….can someone remind me why I agreed to this?

Day 6 – Mt Kinabalu

At 6am the alarm buzzed and we quickly showered, dressed and had brekky; it had been pouring with rain all night and didn’t look like stopping, so we were pretty nervous about the hike. Despite the rain our driver turned up on time and we headed off to Mt Kinabalu, collecting a few people along the way.

The drive took around 1.5hours, on arrival to Kinabalu Park we had to sign in and get hiking permits, and meet our guide Iging. Our driver then took us a little further up the hill to the starting point, Timpohon Gate (1,866 metres). We hoisted our backpacks and off we went – the walk started with a gorgeous little waterfall – kodak moment! Before we knew it we were already at the 0.5kms mark and I thought we were making great time. The rain had mostly subsided and was a light drizzle, which cleared up after a couple of kms. The further we walked the steeper the track got, and the greater distance it seemed to be between 0.5km distance markers. At 2km we stopped briefly at a little hut to eat a muesli bar…which a squirrel promptly started to eye off and was tried (unsuccessfully)to figure out a way to steal it from me! At 4km we stopped a little longer to eat the packed lunch our tour company had provided. From 4km-6km the track got steeper and the rain came back, luckily it was not quite the torrential downpour that it could have been, but it certainly was a bit heavier than drizzle and required us to wear our raincoats.

Feeling a little bedraggled, with 1km left to go.

Feeling soggy and bedraggled, after walking 6km in 5 hours we finally arrived at Pendant Hut (3,280 metres). Here we took off our damp clothing and put on some dry, warm clothes and attended our safety briefing for the Low’s Peak Circuit, Via Ferrata we would be doing the next day. They basically explained where the path the via Ferrata would take, where the meeting point would be and what time we had to be there, how the equipment worked etc.

After the briefing we headed down to a neighbouring hut, Laban Rata, for our buffet dinner (only people who were booked in to complete a Via Ferrata were staying in Pendant Hut). We ate as much as we could pack into our bellies, had great chats to fellow travellers and watched a beautiful sunset out the window.

Heading back to our own hut we put on head torches and trundled up the little track, by 7:15pm everyone was in bed and it was time for lights out. We were all pretty tired, and nervous about the 2am wake-up call.

Day 7 – Mt Kinabalu

Though we were woken up at 1:50am, I don’t think anyone actually really slept much. We all got up, dressed (only cold showers there, and when it’s only 5 degrees outside, no one is keen to get close to the showers!), we ate our toast with jam for brekky and then we were on our way up to the summit with our guide. The 2.75km walk up sheer rock faces at night with a headlamp was actually the least strenuous part of the whole hike for me and strangely enough I was quite chipper all morning!

Well, chipper until we got to the summit (4,095 metres) and had to sit in the freeing cold for around 40 minutes waiting for the sun to rise.

So the highest point of Mt Kinabalu is called Low’s Peak it is 4,095metres above sea level and 8.75km from our starting point. The summit is all granite, without any signs of greenery (I’d say without signs of life, but there were rats trying to get into our backpacks to steal food while we were all huddled around waiting for the sunrise), the rock faces are quite sheer in places, and jutting out in various different directions, creating all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes.

Finally the sun started to rise and we saw some lovely, vibrant yellows, oranges and reds. It was interesting to see what the summit actually looked like (obviously a head torch doesn’t give you a great overview), and it was beautiful to see the sun’s rays highlighting the cloud bank below.

All too soon (well, not really too soon, because it was so cold I was shaking all over – even in thermals, a down jacket, a rain coat, beanie and gloves) it was time to head down to our meeting point (7.5km marker) for the Via Ferrata.

There were six of us doing the Low’s Peak and we were split into two groups of three. Mark and I were teamed up with a Canadian lady called Hana, and our guide for this part was a guy called James. We geared up with harnesses and helmets and were then all attached to each other with rope.

"I'm on top of the world!" — “I’m on top of the world!”

If I didn’t already explain, Via Ferrata is Italian for ‘Iron Road’ – this meant that there was a steel cable running down and across the mountain face which we connected to with caribiners and rope. While attached to the cable, we sometimes climbed steel ladders, hopped along footpegs, crossed suspension bridges and balanced on tightropes.

Hana found the whole experience rather terrifying, so we didn’t move particularly quickly through the circuit…but man was it fun!!!! I hung from my harness without holding the cable, dangling precariously over cliff edges and LOVED IT!!!!! To top it off the whole day to that point had been perfect weather, dry and sunny with good visisbility.

The Via Ferrata took us 5 hours and by the time we got to Pendant hut to have second breakfast before starting the walk down to the base, we were KNACKERED!!!!!!! We ate a few bits of toast and begrudgingly put our hiking shoes back on to start the 6km descent back to Timpohon Gate.

Just as we we’re leaving Pendant Hut, the rain started, and not just a drizzle this time. So we walked as fast as we possibly could, the longer we walked the more water covered the track – the track was at least 10cm under water in places. I think my trousers were soaked right through by the time we had walked 2kms and my shoes and socks were squelchy after 4km. By 4km I was in so much pain I thought my legs were going to collapse out from under me, scared that if I stopped I would not be able to continue, I keep trudging along with less and less muscle control each step I took. Finally after 3hours of walking down in the wet and cold, soaked through all layers of clothing, we finally made it, 14 hours of walking with minimal breaks and minimal food and I was completely shattered!

Our driver was at the bottom of the mountain ready to take us back to our hostel, and had thankfully collected our certificate of achievement for us. The drive seemed to take forever and I spent a great deal of it shivering as all my clothes were wet and I didn’t have dry ones to put on. Once we reached the hostel we struggled to walk in and up the stairs, but did manage. the first thing we did was have long hot showers and put on dry clothes…it was an AMAZING relief! Since I was such a wreck Mark was nice enough to go get some take-away dinner, which I scoffed down and went straight to bed – I think I was snoring within seconds of my head hitting the pillow (and I do believe Mark will testify to that!)

Day 8 – Kota Kinabalu

After a good solid 11hour sleep, we very painfully got our stiff and sore bodies out of bed, we had some brekky and made a big pile of all our stinky clothes to take to the nearest laundromat. After our laundry drop-off we slowly and cautiously wandered out to Jesselton Jetty where we caught a ferry out to Manukan Island for some snorkelling ad lazing on the beach in the sun. The ferry trip was only a quick 15 minutes and the Island was quite pretty and appeared to have some pretty fishes . We got ourselves some snorkelling gear and beach mats, and found a shady spot to set up camp in the shade of some trees.

Eating fruit on the beach of Manukan Island

Masks and snorkels in, we jumped into the water, even though I whinged about it being cold, the temperature actually wasn’t too bad. There was some coral and some pretty fishes – though everything appeared to only be in shades of grey (at this point I realised just how spoiled we are in Tassie with our clean water, white beaches and brightly coloured sea life). After being in the water for only a few minutes, I felt a sting, then another and another…in a flash I was outta there!!! I had a number of little red welts on my body from jellyfish stings, so I went and had a rinse off under a shower and decided to spend my time sunbaking/napping instead of snorkelling. We lazed on the beach for a few hours,had some fresh fruit, went for a little wander, and then it was time to head back to KK, where we caught up on some emails in the hostel before heading out for dinner and to check out the night markets. It turned out that night markets aren’t really open on a Sunday, so it became an early night.

Day 9 – Kota Kinabalu

Still feeling very stiff and sore we dragged our tired, sore bodies out of bed for a 9:20am pick-up to go on a tour we had booked to the Mari Mari cultural village 25km out of town. The village was one they had created to demonstrate how the tribes of Sabah used to live. We learned a bit about three headhunter tribes and two non-headhunter tribes. We were shown how to make rice wine, vests out of bark, rope out of bark, how to start fire, use/shoot blow darts and other similar things, as well as being given henna tattoos. We were also shown some traditional dancing and given the opportunity to join in with the bamboo dancing (you dance between sticks of bamboo that are being slammed together – kind of scary!) I really enjoyed the cultural village and it was a relaxing and informative way to spend half a day. When we got back to KK we organised flights and accommodation for the remainder of our holiday, we got our bags packed and headed back to the night markets to get some food and check out the handicrafts.

I finished off the evening by blogging – next blog will be from a new location!

Travel

First stop….Penang!

January 2, 2013 duckie Leave a comment

On December 29th, I got up at 3:50am and headed to the airport for Mark and I to catch our first flight of the day. We had a few hours stopover in Melbourne, then a short stopover in Kuala Lumpur before finally arriving in George Town, Penang, Malaysia. By the time we got to bed we had been up for 18 hours and we were knackered!!!

Day 1 – Penang
After a slow start (tired & with a headache) we set of to stroll the streets…
In our wanderings we checked put the mosque, Khoo Kongsi (an old clan house), Little China, Little India, the Clan Jetties, (many clans each had their own jetty, each jetty had a series of stilt houses along either side, and it was very interesting that you could see difference between the house styles of each of the different clans), the end point of the day was a stroll along the esplanade, where we stopped for some dinner as the sun went down. The highlight of the day was following the murals of Ernest Zacharevic…spread out around city are his murals, many of which depict a scene but include an actual item. Eg. Kids riding a bike – kids are painted on the wall an the bike is attached to the wall. Very cool…we managed to see 7 out of 10 of his murals.

Day 2 – Penang
Sleeping in a dorm room with no windows, it becomes difficult to have any concept of time, after 12 hrs sleep we suddenly realised it was 10am and we quickly got up.
The aim of the day was to see the Botanical gardens, walk to Penang hill, then walk to Kek Lok Si temple…however, that plan didn’t quite happen.
After shower and brekky, we headed out the hostel, only to turn straight back and collect our raincoats. in a light drizzle we wandered down the the bus station to get a bus to the botanical gardens. We waited about 45 minutes for the bus to turn up, the bus ride also took about 45mins, so around lunchtime we got the Gardens. The atmosphere there was lovely…tropical plants, lush and green with a bit of a fog. There were some monkeys to be seen…but some annoying teenagers were feeding them junk food, so they were getting a bit agro (with agro monkeys on the loose, we didn’t hang around too long to get pics). That was about where the gardens stopped being lovely…we headed to the upper end to see the waterfall..no waterfall to be found, tried the cactus house, it was locked up, orchid house, bromelliad house etc all locked up!
So we went to grab some lunch, but there were no food stalls…we did find some fruit & ice cream though, so that became our lunch. Then we were aiming to travel to the next destination. It was too wet to attempt the walk to Penang Hill, so we started looking for transport, we hadn’t seen any buses, so aimed for a taxi & for about 20mins we couldn’t find a taxi either.
Eventually we were successful, and caught a taxi (we’re pretty sure he actually wasn’t a registered taxi driver, but just someone driving for money) to Kek Lok Si temple.
The path up to the temple was full of hawkers. Near the top it splits into two parts Kek Lok Si & the big Kuan Yin statue.
We decided to start with the statue, it looked quite cool, but couldn’t actually get close to it. Opted to get ‘inclined stairs’ up to statue & thought there’d be a walk down, but there wasn’t & we had to walk long way down road. By this stage they were closing up, but being so far out of city we were determined to also see Kek Lok Si Pagoda, so we ran back up the stairs & were he last ones in before they closed the doors.

New Years Eve on the Esplanade in George Town

The pagoda was beautiful & had lovely little surrounding gardens with a water & turtle theme. Feeling as though we were about to be locked into the temple complex, we ran to very top of pagoda, quickly took pictures & ran back down. The nice people let us out, but the main passage out of the complex was locked…so we had to revert to using the road…a long, windy, roundabout way back to town. From there we managed to cram into a bus like sardines in a tin & we were stuck in traffic jams the whole way back to the city (apparently George Town is a very popular destination for New Years!)

Back in George Town we headed to the Esplanade, where we had dinner and watched New Years entertainment down on the esplanade. The funniest part was when the New years countdown timer broke and stopped counting at 6!!!

Day 3 – Penang
We got up and were yet again faced with some drizzle, but not letting this dampen our spirits (as well as our clothes) we wandered to the bus terminal and caught a bus to Penang Hill. From the base of Penang Hill we caught a funicular train thing up the super steep hillside. From the top it was still a little drizzly and hazy, but it didn’t take long to clear and and there were beautiful views of Penang to be enjoyed!

At the top we wandered around & checked out some gardens, monkeys, temples, had good lunch. At ‘monkey cup’ garden we saw all sorts of carnivorous plants, we got to see a Venus fly trap eat a fly. We also got to see a giant millipede, some weird leaf frog & enormous scorpions. Mark was game enough to hold the millipede and scorpion!!!

P1010680.resized — Mark holding a giant scorpion

Monkey Cup is so called because of the pitcher plants that collect liquid…the perfect size for monkeys to drink from!

We headed back to George Town around 5ish, where we wandered around Main Street to find the last pieces of artwork. Then we pulled up some chairs to enjoy happy hour cocktails were buy one get one free…only we assumed if I got one, Mark would get one free….so we both ordered a cocktail and then we each received 2 cocktails!!! 4 between the 2 of us…oops!
After cocktails we wandered off to get some dinner. After dinner we discussed some more of our travel plans before heading to bed.

Day 4 – Penang
For our final day we planned to head a bit further out of the city, so we hired a driver for the day. We started with a visit to the Butterfly Farm. I was not overly interested in seeing the Butterfly Farm, but it kept cropping up as recommended thing to do, and I am glad we did. There were so many beautiful butterflies, and we learned a great deal about a variety of insects. It was such a lovely way to spend a morning. While the morning was slow paced and reflective, the middle of the day was a bit more adventurous. We headed to the popular beach destination of Batu Ferringgi, where strolled along the beach enjoying the sunshine before taking off attached to a parachute, behind a speedboat! we each had a go at Parasailing, which was heaps of fun and provided a great view! Mark chose to have his feet dipped in the water along the way, and ended up with damp shorts, I was a little less keen and kept my toes nice and dry.
After this adventure we enjoyed some lunch, before seeing a few pretty buildings on our way back to George Town – the Floating Mosque, the Thai Temple with a really big reclining buddha and a beautiful decorative Burmese Temple.
We spent the afternoon of our final day in Penang eating fruit and drinking beer on the porch of the hostel.

Travel

Family stuff in The Netherlands and another quick trip to Belgium

June 23, 2012 duckie Leave a comment

The Netherlands

After three short trips away, by the time we got back to The Netherlands it was time to take things easy for a few days.

I started off spending a day at home downloading the pictures of my camera, editing them and uploading them to my Facebook, writing my blog, and doing the mundane stuff like catching up on some washing.

That afternoon I was already ready for some more excitement. My cousin Quinty had organised something for all the girl cousins to do…but it was a secret. So dressed casually, ready for anything and toddled over to Quinty’s place. I soon learned that the afternoon schedule involved a cake decorating workshop followed by dinner with all the cousins and partners.

Starting our workshop we all had the choice of what cake shape to work with: round with a flat top or a dome. Considering the lady told us a dome shape was easier I put my hand up for that! We started by cutting our cakes into layers, then putting flavours into the layers, covering the whole cake in buttercream icing and putting it in the fridge to cool. By covering the cake in buttercream icing, it would make it easier to smooth a layer of marzipan icing over the cake. From there we had to decide how to decorate our cakes, and true to my name I decided to make a duck cake. I started by colouring and rolling out a light blue to cover the whole cake. Then I drew a duck on paper as a template, cut out my duck and then used this template to cut out a bunch of little ducks. I added little orange beaks and teeny tiny blue dot eyes (the person running the workshop made me an awesome duck to put on the top of the cake). By the time I put my ducks on the cake we were starting to run short on time, so Quinty, having finished her cake, helped me out with the waves and the clouds to finish off the cake. Consider I am not at all artistic and I really suck at cakes..I was incredibly proud of my efforts!!
Quinty’s cake had branches, leaves, flowers and birds; Maricia made a cake about her and Jeroens upcoming wedding, with champagne glasses, rings, the wedding date and their names on it; and Lianne made a hot orange cake with a Dutch flag in support of the European Championship football competition due to start that week.

blog_2 — L-R Clockwise: Maricia, Quinty, Lianne, Duckie

Happy with our cakes we packed up, put the cakes in the fridge and headed out. With all the cousins together (most anyway, Pat and Anna were visiting Ann’s family) we went for dinner to an Italian restaurant in Papendrecht. We all ate delicious food and had a fabulous evening enjoying each others company.

Mum and I headed to Rotterdam the following day for a spot of shopping. I had been very restrained so far!! I got some awesome jeans, chinos, sneakers and few other odds and ends. With our bags full we jumped on the train back to Sliedrecht where my aunt Marjan collected us and we all headed to Ikea in Barendrecht. Ikea is totally my most favourite shop ever!!! So I bought a few bits and pieces but not too much..very aware of baggage limits when flying!

On Tuesday Anna was a little bit disappointed that I had gone to Rotterdam without her, so I went again, with Pat and Anna this time. The market happened to be on, so we ate some yummy hot chips, drank slushies and filled the last little gaps in our bellies with freshly made super stroop wafels. Anna had waited three years to finally try a fresh super stroop wafel, so she was pretty happy!! We also had a look at the cube houses, checked out a few shops and then realising the time quickly jumped ont he train back to Sliedrecht. That evening we had a family dinner with everyone on mum’s side of the family. We went to an all you can eat sushi restaurant called Shabu Shabu. It was actually pretty awesome. There were 4 rounds and each round each person could order 5 menu items. It was great fun, and so tasty! Also surprisingly filling, we all crashed and burned after round three!! At the end of the evening as we all waddled back to our cars, we grabbed a quick family photo. The first time in 20 years that we have had a full family photo! (Sorry it’s not actually the best quality picture in the world..but at least we are all in it!)

Some other things we crammed into that week included a guided tour of my uncle’s shackle factory. Mum, Anna and I had an afternoon in Dordrecht, eating poffertjes and checking out the shops. Pat went out on the boat in the Biesbos with the boys. We all checked out the local market for fresh bread, cheese, meat and of course….super stroop wafels! One night the Stam Clan and Ineke went to Quinty’s place for dinner.

Before we knew it, it was Friday June 8th. The big day for Maricia and Jeroen!
Maricia had spent her last night as an unmarried woman, in her family home (where Pat, Anna and I were staying). In the morning the make-up person and hair person arrived to make her look all pretty. Then Marjan and I helped her put on her STUNNING wedding dress! We laced up the back and then stepped back to look at the huge grin on her face. She looked amazing and was super excited and anxiously awaiting the moment when she would see her groom. She didn’t have to wait long before there was a knock on the door. Jeroen had turned up in a spunky white porsche to collect her.

They sped off to some stunning locations for their photos before returning to greet their guests. Together we all walked to town hall where we witnessed the official ceremony. The ceremony was really lovely and very personal, the celebrant had gotten to know them well and shared some great stories.

After they had exchanged rings and kissed…of course with much applause from us! We all walked down the street to restaurant Bellevue for the wedding cake/cupcakes and coffee. This was also the time we had for group and family photos.

Soon it was time to catch the party bus to the Hipper in Gorinchem, where we enjoyed a delicious BBQ buffet dinner. We were kept entertained by some nice poems about Maric and Jeroen as well as a powerpoint presentation with pictures. By the time our food had settled, the evening guests (everyone else who was invited) turned up to the reception to congratulate to the couple, celebrate their wedding and party on and have a boogie to the band’s great tunes!

A fabulous night was had by all…especially Maricia and Jeroen!

The day after the wedding there was no time for us Stam’s to relax, it was time for another family reunion. This time we caught up with the entire Stam clan (Dad’s side of the family) for the first time in 20 years!!

We started our Stam day at my aunt and uncles place for coffee where we met everyone. I think I had met almost everyone before; but for Pat and Anna it was a pretty steep learning curve trying to absorb so many new names and faces. After our coffee and introductions, we hopped onto our bus and headed out to a place called Hooghei. It is an activity centre, where they offer all sorts of activities for young and old, as well as offering buffet style meals. On arrival we started with some lunch, build up some energy stores before the games to come!

a_020 — At hole 1, ready to start football-golf

The first game of the day was 18 holes of football-golf (by football, I mean soccer). It was pretty entertaining, there was such a huge variation in skills level. The young ones had completed all the holes before we were even halfway through! I accidentally kicked my ball into a small canal…luckily Patrick helped me fish it out without getting wet! Some of the other boys had less luck than I did, kicking their ball into a big canal, which required stripping down to their undies and going for a muddy, cold swim to retrieve it!

a_022 — Stretching to fish the ball out of the canal

Unfortunately for us, the field where we were playing had about 10 centimetres of water on it, so by the end of the game we all had soggy, cold toes. This certainly didn’t stop the Stams! Off we went for some farmers games: team football, three people per team, tied to each other, playing as one…that got a bit messy!; wheelbarrow races; the thing where you throw horse shoes onto pegs, pitchfork throwing into bales of hay to pop the balloons and a few more. We calmed down from all this excitement with a horse and cart ride. We finished the day with a tasty buffet dinner while we watched the first Netherlands game in the European Championships football. Once the game was over, with a not-so-favourable result, we took the bus back home.

Before we did that, we did manage to get a quick snap of the whole family.

After so much busy-ness, Pat and Anna had no time to slow down, they packed their bags and took a train to Frankfurt to continue on the last leg of their round-the-world trip. Their final destination was a second honeymoon in the Maldives. Though I was sad to see them go, I knew it would only be a few short weeks till we were all back in Tassie together, so determined to make the most of my holiday, I packed my bags, collected mum and off we went to Belgium.

Belgium

Mum and I drove the short 1.5hours to Brussels, we found our hotel, parked the car, checked in, and set off to see the sights!

Brussels is cute little city, though I am sure we didn’t even see very much of what it has to offer. We wandered past some amazing old churches and watch towers, through the fish market, briefly checked out an outdoor concert/jazz festival and nibbled on some sugar dusted apple beignets. We continued our wandering and found the city center and the marketplace, with many cute cafes and beautiful old buildings, of course the streets were lined with chocolaterie’s offering so many tasty treats..this is where we had our first Belgian pralines. We wandered into a little store and asked “Which one is the best?” and that was the one we had. Using this method, I never got a dud!!

Before going too far, we sat down for some late lunch. What does one eat in Belgium?? Well, if you didn’t already know, I will tell you now, Belgium is known for several things: Chocolate, Waffles and Beer. Having already had chocolate, our lunch consisted of waffles and beer. I had waffles ‘mikado’ with ice cream, cream and chocolate sauce, I made sure to support the locals by selecting a local brew, Tongerlo.

Bellies full, off we went, exploring more streets at random, seeing more lovely old architecture. In our wanderings we of course tried some more chocolates and also visited one of the landmarks of Brussels: Manneke Pis. The statue of a pissing boy – who knows why that was ever famous, but the crowd surrounding the small fountain/statue was crazy!

Another thing that surprised me, were the Tin Tin murals I spotted on random buildings throughout the city. Very cool though!

After having explored many of the streets and soaking up some of the culture, also having walked off our food, it was time for dinner. We found a lovely little restaurant near the old fish market we had some amazing truffle ravioli with a fresh tomato sauce, and of course accompanying this meal was some beer. It was here that I found my most favourite ever, Pecheresse: peach beer. It was divine!!

The following day we had another bit of a wander around Brussels, enjoyed a few more chocolates and were even so generous as to buy some extra chocolates for friends back home. (Do you think those chocolates made it back to Tassie?)

By around 11am, we hopped back in the car and made the short 45 minute drive to Bruges. Again we found our hotel, checked in and set off to explore. Within a few minutes of leaving the hotel the rain started, it became a torrential downpour and we found a bridge/gate to shelter under. (The center of Bruges is a walled city, and this entire city centre is Unesco world heritage listed..it was under one of the gates to the city that we were sheltering) In the 10 minutes that we stood waiting for the rain to slow, I saw the water it the gutters build up and build up, until it was a third of the way across the road. The cars that passed slowed down and swerved to avoid the pooling water…all except for one… a range rover sped through the puddle, and we were showered in filthy street water! Soaked right through, we no longer had a need to shelter under the bridge and we continued our walk into town. Thankfully it was not too long before we found a nice dry cafe to sit, warm up, dry out and enjoy some lunch.

Having sat in a cafe for close to an hour, we were still a little damp, but the rain had stopped and os spirits high we went off in search of pretty sights. The first thing we spotted was the Belfry. The big tower at the central marketplace. (this is the tower featured in the movie In Bruges). I’m always a fan of climbing towers and checking out the view. Mum decided to sit this one out and sat in a cafe for a cuppa. Off I went, climbed 366 steps to the top and even with the rainy-grey sky it still had a pretty good view. Just as I was about to head back down, it must have ticked over to the hour because the bells began to chime. It was insanely loud and a terrible tune, I assume/hope that those things sound good at a distance when they sound so bad close up. The last bell chime was more of a resounding ‘clang’ ..the kind that vibrates through your whole body and deafens you! I was definitely ready to head back down!

When I met up with mum we resumed our wandering, stopped for a chocolate or two along the way. We went for a boat ride through the canals and learned a bit about the city. Such a beautiful old city! In our stay in Bruges we saw many beautiful buildings and experienced many different things: We saw Church of Our Lady which housed Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child, one of his only works to leave Italy; we learned about the history of chocolate, and got a taste test at the Chocolate Museum; we tasted some interesting beer and learned about the brewing of beer at the Half Moon Brewery.

a_037 — View of some old buildings and the Belfry, from a canal.

The Belgian people are very particular about the beers. You will never find a Belgian beer that is in a can. Also every beer (I do actually mean every beer) that is brewed also has a glass designed to match it. The brewmaster designs the glass to accentuate the flavour and smell of the beer, I assume he also factors in the look and the amount of head that the beer produces when poured into each different shape glass.Once the glass has been designed to match the beer, it is then also labelled with the name of the beer, so as not to confuse the drinker. No beer is ever served in the wrong glass!

After 3 days enjoying Belgium it was time to head back to Holland, pack our bags and head home. So I said “Proost” to a fantastic holiday!

a_041 — Drinking the ‘Brugse Zot’ at the Half Moon Brewery.

Travel

Belgium & Barcelona

June 3, 2012 duckie Leave a comment

Belgium

Over four car loads (13 people), most of mums side of the family drove to a region in Belgium called the Ardenne, which is mostly known amongst the dutch for action adventure sports. My uncle rented a 12th century castle for us all to stay in, it was called Chateau de Rolley. It had something like 7 or 8 bedrooms, there was a living room, sitting room, kitchen, dining room, chapel and an armoury..of course containing a few suits of armour, spears and trumpets! I had planned on sleeping in a room by myself, until I found a secret door in my room leading to a bathroom, which also had a secret door to another little bedroom and yet another hidden door into an attic/storage space. After finding weird stuff stashed in there I was too creeped out to sleep in a room by myself, so I made my cousin rob sleep in the other bed!!

So the action adventure aspect of the weekend included two full days of activities: a high ropes course, archery, team challenges, rock climbing, abseiling and canoeing. The team challenges were pretty fun and hard! Things like getting the team from one small platform, via a central platform, to an end platform, using only two planks of timber and no one is allowed to touch the ground! Also things like tightrope walking, and rope swings. Hilarious!! I have a few scrapes and bruises from it all. But it was well worth it.

In the archery we also had individual competition. Six arrows each, best score wins. I was equal last with a few others on 10 points. Pat was the winner on something like 95 points. The canoeing was down L ‘Ourthe river and was the most amazing scenery. It was really pleasant to paddle down the river slowly and soak it all up. The serenity was occasionally disturbed by some evil cousins, Rob and Roel, who had an absolute blast splashing everyone with the icy cold river water!! Eeeek!

a_europe_050 — Priest Rob, with the happy couple Maricia and Jeroen

Around the castle we also wandered around the lake, explored the castle grounds and the castle itself and sat around chatting in the sun (of course I took every given opportunity to enjoy some rose beer). At one stage Pat found a random old wedding dress, so Maricia tried it on, then Jeroen (they are the two getting married next week) found a random priests outfit and put that on. My cousin Rob put on another priests outfit..then we had a pretend wedding and took photos in the old chapel. It was hilarious!!!

We arrived back in NL Monday evening, quickly did a bunch of washing and went to bed, as Pat, Anna and I had to get up at 0530 to get ready for a 7am flight to Barcelona.

Barcelona

It was a quick 2 hour flight to Barcelona, then we checked in at our bed and breakfast (brilliantly clean room!! always a bonus when you travel) After dumping the bags we started exploring. We started by looking at Sagrada Familia which was only a few blocks from our accommodation, it is a famous cathedral designed by Antoni Gaudi. The building was started in 1882 and is projected to be finished sometime between 2020 and 2040. Gaudi got hit by a tram in 1926, so after that obviously other people had to take care of the project. It is solely funded by donation (my guess is actually that that means its funded by ticket sales).

Gaudi was an architect that designed some amazing weird and wonderful stuff, that was well ahead of his time. I really love his architecture, so visiting Gaudi works was pretty high on my list of things to do and see.

We spent quite a while at Sagrada Familia..it was all pretty amazing! And really interesting design, an amazing level of intricacy.

barca_1 — Model of the Casa Batlo lightwells

After Sagrada Familia we went to Casa Batlo. Casa Batlo was also stunning!!!! It had a sea theme, and it could be seen in everything, the shape of the walls and ceiling, the colours, the window and door shapes etc. The way he designed the lightwells was probably one of the most fascinating aspects, and demonstrates some very clever forward thinking. A light well (like a stairwell but without stairs) is open to a skylight at the top. Obviously the higher up floors get more light as they are closer to the top and lower floors get less light. So Gaudi designed the windows of the lower floors to be the same shape, but bigger than the higher floors, each floor you went up the wnindows got slightly smaller. This way the rooms would appear to receive an equal amount of light no matter which floor they were on. Another aspect was that the lightwell was tiled in shades of blue. The top floors that receive the most light were darker shades of blue (with the light buncing off them they would appear quite light in colour) and the lower floors a very pale blue (less light bouncing off them, they appear darker than they are). In theory this would also mean if you looked down the lightwell from the top, or up from the bottom, it should appear as the same shade of blue all the way. Pretty cool!!

I also saw more Gaudi works incl. Palau Guell, some lamp posts in Placa Reial, Casa Mila ..otherwise known as ‘La Pedrera’ and together with the three of us we went to Parc Guell. I loved it all!!!!!!!

At one stage Anna had a shopping day, and Pat and I had some brother-sister time. We did a walking tour of the Gothic Quarter and saw where the old roman part of the city was, learned some history of Catalonia and of some of the artists who came from Spain, like Picasso. (Catalonia is the area of Spain where we were. The people that live there will tell you they are Catalonian, not Spanish. and many are voting to be separated from Spain to become their own country). That afternoon we spent some time chilling at the beach and writing postcards. It was interesting to sit there and appreciate the beach, having just learned that the whole 5km of beach was man made using sand imported from the Sahara Desert. The Beach Promenade (as well as some other areas in and around the city) had beautiful palm tree, these are not native to the area and were imported from the Canary Islands. They imported so many palms that at one point The people from the Canary Islands had to say “No more” and the remaining palms were imported from Hawaii!! (these things changes to the city were completed to improve the city in preparation for the Olympic games held there in 1992)

For lunches and dinners we enjoyed quite a few different tapas…some good, some not so good. But I think the biggest decider in that was the restaurant itself. The Galician Octopus was the definite winner! Not sure how it was prepared but it was the most tender and tasty octopus I ever ate!!

Our last full day in Spain was spent on a ‘Dali’ day tour. Salvador Dali was the artist who painted the melting clock. The trip started with a 1.5hour drive to the Dali museum in Figueres. This was also where he lived in his last few years and died there. His tomb is in the center of the museum. There were some pretty awesome works in the museum. But it didn’t have as much of the colourful artwork and random sculptures as I had hoped for. Then we drove another hour to the coastal town of Cadaques. We stopped there for lunch. There were two other people on our tour, a mother and daughter from Texas. They had a cousin who lives in Barcelona who is a food writer, and he had recommended a few good restaurants in that town, so the 5 of us went to one of them..it was AMAZING!!!!!!

We had a welcome drink. A champagne cocktail with some frothy pink stuff on top. We ordered a few dishes to share…including juicy lobster paella, catalan tomato bread, “he best ham in the world” – joselito ham?!, poached egg in creme with black truffle oil, razor clams and croutons, rabbit ribs and some other stuff. All amazingly tasty!! We waddled back to the bus!

We got back to the bus a little late and our guide totally panicked that we would miss our appointment to visit Dali’s beach house in Port Lligat. So she hoooooned through all the back streets, and then we had to jump out of the bus and RUN to the beach house. Thankfully they still let us in!

barca_4 — The poolside seating at Dali’s beach house

The beach house was pretty interesting, he had developed it over a number of years. Every time he had enough money he would buy another fisherman’s cottage and then connect it to the other cottage(s) that he already owned..slowly developed it into a pretty big house. I think it was made up of 7 cottages all up. Part of what is interesting about his beach house is that there are two unfinished works there. When his wife died, he put down his paint brush and left the beach house never to return. She died at the beach house, but wanted to be buried in the tomb Dali designed in the castle he built/bought?? for her, so when she died he sat her up in his Cadillac and drove through the city, so people could see her ‘alive’. Then he took her to the castle and buried her in the tomb. It was designed so they would be side by side, with a little tunnel between them so they could hold hands.

Just before Dali died in his museum in Figueres, he had a private chat to the mayor of Figueres. After this discussion and Dali’s death, the mayor claimed Dali wanted to be buried there in the museum. As it was a private conversation..who knows if that is actually what Dali wanted?!

To end our day we drove to the lighthouse at Cap De Creus. This is the eastern most point of Spain, it also happens to be the point where the Pyrenees ends. It was quite a pretty area. After that we drove the 2.5hours back to Barcelona. I think most of us slept because we were so knackered! We left on the tour at 8:30am and got back to Barcelona at 9:30pm! We were so tired we just grabbed some maccas for dinner and were in bed around 11:30.

In Barcelona it is pretty normal to eat dinner around 10pm….so our bed time got later and later…but we didn’t end up sleeping in much and with all the stuff we crammed into each day we just got more and more tired! However tired we are, the adventure is all still worth it!!!

barca_5 — The boats in the bay outside Dali’s beach house

Travel

Time to explore the northern Netherlands

May 24, 2012 duckie Leave a comment

Sunday

After a rather uncomfortable and long flight we arrived in rainy Holland at 6:30am, thankfully for the family who love us and came to the airport to pick us up. It’s roughly a 90 minute drive to Sliedrecht from the airport, and when we arrived, we went straight to my cousins Maricia’s house for a cuppa (this was the first time we got to see her new house, and it is really beautiful!)

After a caffeine hit we dropped mum off at my aunt Inekes place and I went home with my aunt and uncle. We spent the day just chilling out, sitting around drinking coffee and chatting which was really good. By midday the weather was sunny and warm.

In the evening we had a family dinner which was great, with the aunts uncles, cousins and partners. To stay awake for the last part of the evening, I went for a ride on the tandem with my cousin Lianne. It was hilarious!!! It involved much squealing until we got the hang of it (which thankfully didn’t take too long).

Monday

Mum and I had a really chilled day, more coffee, more chatting, we also wandered around the neighbourhood and did a bit of sticky beaking in the shops. We weren’t particularly jet-lagged but had a chilled day anyway. The weather really took a turn for the good and we enjoyed mid 20s weather sitting outdoors.

Tuesday

In the morning mum and I headed off on a road trip to the north. I was pretty apprehensive to start with, driving on the highway on the right side of the road, but was feeling pretty good after only a short time. It is pretty crazy how people drive here. Flying down a 5 lane highway, I was doing 110km/h in a 100 zone, but being overtaken by EVERYONE!!! So the standard highway speed seems to be about 120-130km/h.

The days adventures mostly entailed seeing some of the older more traditional towns. we started with Marken, that has lots of old beautiful timber houses and a few people wandering around in traditional dress. After a few hours wandering around Marken we headed to Volendam, a similar old city along the water. We stopped for some lunch there and I took the time to enjoy a rose beer (delicious fruity pink beer!).

From there we headed to Edam where I was super keen to buy some Edam cheese. Sadly I discovered that Edam cheese is not actually made in Edam, so I had some locally made cheese instead. Still very tasty.

After Edam it was starting to get a bit late in the day and we decided to head to the island of Texel since it was fairly close by, and I had never been. We were pretty lucky that we got the ferry terminal perfectly in time to drive onto the boat and head off. It was about a 20 minute trip and then we headed to the ‘capital’ of Texel, which of course was a pretty small town but of course very cute with the paved streets and little houses with gabels. We drove around the whole island, checked out the beaches and lighthouses, had some delicious dinner and then found a place to stay the night.

Wednesday

After an early start and some brekky we jumped on the ferry back to the mainland, then drove across the Afsluitdijk.

The north sea used to flow into the zuiderzee, but this regularly flooded the area. So donkeys years ago they built a dam (its called a dijk, but its technically a dam because there is water on both sides), called the afsluitdijk which is 30km long.

After crossing from one side of the land to the other we ended up in a region called Friesland.

Friesland (Fryslan) is actually kinda weird because even though it is part of Holland they have their own language, which I can’t understand at all! We headed to the city of Leeuwaarden (I wanted to go there because I just love the name of the city). We didn’t really do a great deal here, wandered around the city, went to climb the church tower, but it was closed.

From there we went to a town in the middle of nowhere called Hegebeintum (the navigation system couldn’t even find it, it was so small). That was where we went to see Holland’s highest terp. A terp is basically a big mound of dirt which is a place you evacuate to when it floods (remember the afsluitdijk has now prevented flooding in this area). So the terp in hegebeintum is8.8m high. It has a church, graveyard and a few houses. It was interesting but only took a few minutes to see really.

We had a 4:30 appointment in Grootegast, so from there we hightailed it through lots of narrow little roads, following canals, through to the city (piss tiny) of Grootegast where we met some people regarding something mum does with the dutch australian society. There we had this meeting and chat, and they took us out for dinner. While I found it all pretty awkward to start with, it actually ended up being a really pleasant evening.

After that we zoofed straight through to Groningen. A bigger city. We crashed there the night.

Thursday

We started our day sitting in the sun with a tasty brekky and a coffee at the base of the Martini tower. After brekky, I went sticky beaking around the city, climbed the Martinitower and did a little bit of shopping. While I explored the city, mum had a meeting at a school regarding a student exchange program. After that we headed back to Sliedrecht, we had some dinner then picked up Pat and Anna from the train station (first time we have seen them since late January, so it is pretty awesome to catch up!!).

So that’s the latest and greatest. Tomorrow morning we head off to the Ardennen in Belgium for an adventure weekend away with the whole family.

Home Life, Travel

Counting down the days

May 16, 2012 duckie Leave a comment

I have submitted my last uni assignment, planned all the lessons for the classes for the last two weeks of term (and caught up with the relief teachers to discuss it) and even packed my bags!

So I am ready to go! I have a very busy last few days and then fly out on Saturday morning (thankfully not on a red-eye)

The next 4 weeks are going to be heaps of fun, but crazy busy. I plan on blogging while I am away, so stay tuned for the adventures to come!

Home Life, Travel

Study Stress!!!

March 5, 2012 duckie Leave a comment

So I’m really happy with all my amazing plans for the year and so far everything is going well. Only I am definitely having to be very effective with my time management. The workload and stress is slowly starting to build!

Work Plans

The Computer Science students so far seem to be responding well to the new, interactive course design.

I have made a bunch of YouTube tutorials (not finished yet) and have a number of subscribers, some are my students and some are complete strangers. It’s really exciting for me to have complete strangers ask for my help and value my response!

My students are responding really well to lesson blogging and often turn up to class having already completed the lessons activities!! That level of interest and enthusiasm is fantastic! Even if it does make it a little awkward to teach something they have already gone ahead and done for themselves! (Still have to teach it, because there’s also a large percent of students who don’t work ahead..surprise surprise).

OneNote proved a lot more challenging to get setup and syncing properly than anticipated, but almost the whole class has got it going now (I have learned a few lessons and in future years I will know what not to do!) I am yet to form an opinion on whether or not it is successful, as we have only just got the syncing sorted.

My workload in general has bumped up to 0.95 which financially, is awesome! I gained a new bus driving role this year.
With the study on the side, I am freaking out a bit about how much time there is in each day!

Study Plans

The course with Udacity, all online, is brilliantly designed. It’s very interesting content and the short videos supported by quizzes are very engaging. The fact that you immediately have to learn to apply the knowledge you have just gained is very effective in reinforcing your understanding of the concept. I wish I had the time and technology to do this with my own course..I don’t, so I will just make do.

I’m really loving the Udacity stuff, but even so there is such a huge volume of content, that I am very glad its only running for 5 more weeks!!

My course at UTas started a week ago, and while it doesn’t have the huge volume of work that Udacity does, it certainly does require time and brain power. I am hoping that I have finished my Udacity stuff before my big UTas assignments. The topics so far are really interesting, and I am currently working on the module about ‘synchronous and asynchronous discussion and community’. We’re starting to get some pretty interesting comments on the discussion forum.

Travel Plans

In the few breaks I have had from work and study I am finally sorting out all the details of my Europe Trip.

Flights to/from The Netherlands has been sorted for a while now, and I have been looking at how to split up my time over the four weeks.

The plans include:

An awesome wedding!!!
A four day family holiday with mum’s side of the family
A one day family event with dad’s side of the family
I have booked a 5 day Barcelona Trip (at this stage I’ll be going by myself..but who knows if someone decides to join me at the last minute?!) I will have 2 full days and two half days in which I want to explore Barcelona. I’d love to see a heap of the Gaudi architecture: Park Guell; Sagrada Familia; La Pedrera; and Casa Battlo, perhaps taking a cooking class, go see some flamenco dancing, maybe visit the Picasso museum etc etc. I also have booked a full day trip to visit the Salvador Dali museum in Figueres, and his beach house at Port Lligat.
Salvador Dali is an artist…you have probably seen pictures of his melting clocks…
Mum and I are probably also going to spend a few days in Belgium checking out Brussels and Bruges..since its only a short train trip, I’m sure we can go exploring for a few days.
I haven’t told her yet but I would really love to take my sister-in-law to the theme park we used to frequent as kids: The Efteling. It’s not amazing for rides, but it is a bit of a traditional dutch children’s theme park, and I have so many childhood memories of visits there. I’d also like to show her around the area a bit, places we grew up, spent time.
I’d also like to spend some time in a few Dutch cities that I haven’t spent a great deal of time in. First on my list is Utrecht, maybe Leiden and Maastricht. That’s as far as I have gotten so far..

So all in all, the year is off to a good start, but I am certainly starting to feel the pressure from the amount of study I have taken on. Please keep your fingers crossed for me, that I can keep up with the workload!!

Little Duckie's Adventures

Category Archives: Travel

Gunung Mulu National Park

Brunei

Sandakan

Kota Kinabalu

First stop….Penang!

Family stuff in The Netherlands and another quick trip to Belgium

The Netherlands

Belgium

Belgium & Barcelona

Belgium

Barcelona

Time to explore the northern Netherlands

Counting down the days

Study Stress!!!

Explore the world with me!