Category Archives: Uncategorized

Mirissa and farewell to Sri Lanka

September 5, 2014 richardpieper Leave a comment

The thing I didn’t mention about Galle was the sea turtles…from atop the walls of the fort…at around sunset…the sea turtles come in to shore and feed in the shallow waters. We spent about 30 mins watching the turtles in the shallow waters near the fort wall. The next morning we hopped a tuk tuk and did the 30-40 kilometre schlepp to Mirissa our next port of call. Our ride was 30-40 Kms, plus driver, plus stops all for 2000 rupees…less than $20.

Along the way we stopped at the touristy bits…the first of these was the sea turtle hatchery which is a small place that rescues and saves both the eggs and the munty turtles. So there were a bunch of rescued munty turtles along with the eggs at had been liberated from the beaches (away from the poachers). We stopped at an inland lake, and a bit further on to get a photo of the traditional pole fishermen. It was staged for the tourists but hey…this was how it was once done. Needless to say that the seafood here is good, fresh, plentiful and cheap.

Our time in Mirissa was merely to be a beach holiday on the southern part of the Sri Lankan island…almost. The other gem that I have been holding back for the uninformed (like I was)…is that Sri Lanka has a whale migration similar to that which happens along the east coast of Australia. In Australia we get the humpback whales…in Sri Lanka they get the sperm whales and the blue whales. Now the blue whale is the largest animal known to ever inhabit our planet..including the dinosaurs.

An average blue whale is (thanks wiki) about 30 metres long and weighs about 170 tonnes, which is around twice the length and 4 times the weight of the humpbacks we see back home on the east coast. Alas the blue whales do not put on the same sort of show as the humpbacks (jumping, leaping and fin swatting) but rather just cruise on past with the odd blowhole burst. The experience was not what I had initially hoped for but we did get to see a whale along with some dolphins and flying fish…which was a first for me. I was hoping for some awe inspiring photographs of the whales but the roughness of the seas and the brief glimpses of the whales meant that our cameras and ourselves were not up to the task.

The majority of time in Mirissa was spent lazing by the swimming pool trying to even out the tan lines on our feet from wearing sandal style footwear for so long. Jill’s feet had some strange tiger pattern going on while mine were blocked. The other thing was to use the salt water and sand as a natural loofa as we had both been in need of some general pedicure style maintenance.

Mirissa was the last of Sri Lanka as we headed back to Colombo before flying out to start the Vietnamese leg of our journey. We would have a day and a bit and a catch up with Ruwan in Colombo but generally that was it. Jill did some prep work for her next assignment. Leaving Sri Lanka allowed us to witness possibly the greatest act of stupidity that we have seen since departing Australia, over 10 months ago. A small child (3-4 years old) was running around the departure lounge of the Colombo airport squealing furiously…ok…annoying but the kid is too young to really stop it…and the parents were trying to calm it down and shut it up…to no avail.

Enter stupidity…Dad was about to have a drink and the child threw a minor tantrum at wanting some…rather than say no they caved and I looked up to see a 3 year old swigging from a red bull can…fast forward 10 minutes… Any idea what red bull inside a brat 3 year old does. The entire airport lounge (and later the plane) was taken over by the shrieks, cries, tantrums and general bratdom of a kid who had been fed red bull and was buzzing off the walls on caffeine.

Thank god that Air Asia X offers a quiet zone for just a few dollars extra…this is just behind business class but is curtained off and children etc are not allowed. And my darling bride has booked us these seats for almost every leg to follow. This transit saw us leaving Colombo at 4pm and arriving in Kuala Lumpur at around 10 pm local time (but only 7 pm Colombo time) where we would crash in the airport hotel before catching an 11:15am flight to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

This meant we were trying to go to sleep at 8pm to try to catch 6 hrs sleep before being inside the airport once again. Anyway we woke tired and commuted through to Ho Chi Minh arriving there at around noon local time (with another time adjustment).

Overview

I had never previously considered Sri Lanka as a holiday destination but having been here…I will come back and would highly recommend it for anyone reading. This place is fantastic. The people are lovely, the food is great, you don’t have to fight all day haggling with tuk tuk drivers (or anyone else for that matter) trying to rip you off. The beaches are clean and the water is swimmable, the seafood is freshly magnificent and everything (that the government doesn’t control) is cheap. Our 4 days on the beach cost us about $35 a night for nice accommodation with breakfast included. The food and drink bill ran to about $65 for the whole time…this included 2 meals a day (breakfasts were included in accommodation), all drinks. And when you factor in that our meals were generally fresh fish and prawns, this is seriously good value.

The ability to see elephants and leopards in the wild, the conservation efforts and the rebuilding after years of warfare is truly encouraging. The natural scenery is stunning, and the attitude and friendliness of all you meet will amaze you. The only detractor is the facilities run by the government which seem hellbent on bilking the tourist out of every cent that they can.

Sri Lanka is definitely the jewel of South Asia and should be placed high on any list of places to be experienced. The war is over and the infrastructure is improving and this place will only get better. I hope that they keep their current trajectory of encouraging tourism without cheapening the experience. I would hate to see this turned into a tourist hell hole, because quite frankly the place is stunning as it is. While we did not make it there…the locals tell us that the beaches on the eastern side of the island are even more pristine and less crowded.

If that is the case…bring it on.

Sri Lanka, Uncategorized

Colombo – Sri Lanka

August 28, 2014 richardpieper Leave a comment

While travelling through China we met a lovely Sri Lankan couple who spoke highly of the place and our visiting. We had kept in touch through Facebook and when we decided to come they could not have been more helpful.even to the point of getting cricket tickets for us for the second day in town. Alas our journey to Sri Lanka started with disappointment before we even arrived. The original plan was to attend a ODI cricket match in Colombo between Sri Lanka and Pakistan but weather set in and they moved the date forward and changed the venue meaning that we missed out.

We arrived in Colombo after a 22 hour transit from Beijing via Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Air Asia X provided a good cheap flight option that was very enjoyable but sadly was ruined by Jill’s bag being all but destroyed, when she went to complain she was told it was minor damage that they would not even take a report for…and that she should claim it on travel insurance. After a rant about customer service she left unsatisfied and ignored.

We got in to Sri Lanka and were immediately struck by how unlike India this place is. It is clean, tidy and people have pride in their surroundings and the environment in general. We were picked up, driven to the hotel, got our local phone, had a meal and some local beers and met up with Ruwan (our Sri Lankan mate from China) all within 90 minutes of being in country. A bunch of tuk tuk rides later and a foray into local street food (shrimp including the shells and heads etc mashed into a paste, made into a rissole, deep fried, smothered in chilli, topped with onion) we had seen Colombo by night and plans were made for the next day.

The day started with meeting up with Ruhan outside Town Hall near the Buddha statue and a walk through Viharamahadevi park which is opposite. This was a really pleasant walk in the shade. Sri Lanka is hot but not excessively so…Colombo is blessed by awesome sea breezes almost all day so the heat is immediately bearable. We hit the National museum which was ok content wise by museum standards but the building and the grounds were spectacular. There were massive Banyan trees throughout the grounds that must have been many centuries old and even for a botanical heathen like myself they were the highlight.

Having headed out we did the tourist schlepp chauffeured by our mate and hit Independence Square, Beira Lake, slave island, the lighthouse, Sambodhi Chaitiya dagoba, a market for some shopping and a massive lunch, Gangaramaya Buddhist Temple, old Dutch hospital, Hindu temple, grand mosque, Parliament House. We stopped for cold drinks and fresh juices throughout the day and generally had a really pleasant time. No harassment, no filth, no drama.

At sunset we headed to Galle face green which is a magnificent stretch of green lawn directly fronting onto the beach, with sea breezes and throngs of people day or night. The place has the Sri Lankan flagpole and at sunset the military ceremony of the flag lowering, combined with the sun going down over the Indian Ocean is not to be missed. As the breeze blows permanently off the ocean the area is full of parents flying kites of all varieties with their kids.

On the food front we have been absolutely spoilt. The main dish is Kottu or “Koththu Roti” which is a Sri Lankan version of left overs in a fried rice. While notionally leftovers it is made fresh almost everywhere with your choices of fillings but vegetables, egg, shredded roti, onions and rice are the staples and you pick and add the bits you want added. This is generally done on a flat BBQ plate and the clatter of flying metal scrapers as they chop and mix the concoction is both mesmerising and deafening.

My favourite both before I came and since being here is the egg hoppers. Wiki tells me that “hoppers are made from a fermented batter of rice flour, coconut milk and a dash of palm toddy”. The unique part is that hoppers are cooked in small “wok” like rounded pans so the dough cooks thick and soft on the bottom, and thin and crunchy around the edges. Add to this the string hoppers and the plain hoppers with some of the ever present pickles, chutneys and sambal and you have for yourself a great feed.

We headed out to Livinia Beach for a flash feed with Ruwan and his wife. It was a Chinese restaurant (of all things) right on the sand. The setting was spectacular with the lapping of the waves but the food was trash. This may be an ongoing issue for us as we cannot go to Chinese restaurants anymore as they will not be authentic. We already have our doubts about how authentic the Australian version of Indian is…we are now adding Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand to the mix…we may be screwed on future take out options. Now the food at this restaurant was tasty enough but nothing like what we expected when we ordered.

Hong Kong, Uncategorized

Hong Kong and Shenzhen

April 1, 2014 richardpieper Leave a comment

The order of this post is a touch out of order as we are heading back to Xiamen for Jill to do her assignment but nevertheless on we go. We took our first flight with dragon air which is a Cathay pacific affiliate and other than huge delays due to Hong Kong weather and air traffic control it was pretty good…newish plane, smooth flight, pleasant flight attendants, nice tasting food, range of entertainment options.

Got into HK and went cruising around town, doing our usual mix of sightseeing and eating. It must be said very early on in this post that Hong Kong is incredibly expensive when compared with the rest of China. It remains about half of the Australian price but is a lot more than what we have been paying for everything on the mainland. Food is about 4-25 times more expensive depending upon which joint you hit.

We headed over to Kowloon to get our backpacks mended (due to some damage inflicted by dodgy Indian baggage handlers) and generally just poke around. After our chores we hit Nathan road which is a major shopping district on the Kowloon side then on to the park, the mosque (interesting to note that after dark near the mosque the streets turn into markets selling vibrators and ice pipes), then down to the water for a walk along Tsim Sha Tsui, the city light show and the avenue of the stars walk.

PAUSE – We paid a lot of money for our Osprey brand backpacks and the experience of having them mended justified the expense. Jill’s bag had violently skidded across every Tarmac in India and had a couple of minor holes from intense scuffing and my trolley handle catch was not releasing properly. Two emails each way and all sorted…no fuss no bother…no cost. The extra money buys you top quality and customer service.

The next day we headed back across to mainland China to the city of Shenzhen where we caught up with Chris Rea an old rugby friend and Laurie’s boy who had spent a long time living in Asia. We wandered the city and saw how easy life could be if you had the language skills that Jill and I are still struggling to manage (I swear that there is a switch in your brain somewhere that we just can’t find). We all headed back to HK together for the rugby the next day (rugby gets its own post).

On day 2 we were joined by Jeff and Bec Ballinger long time friends dating back to school. The boys went to the footy while the girls apparently went to the Chi Lin Nunnery, the Nan Lian gardens, Hong Kong park, hit the computer market, and had high tea at the Azure hotel. Then we all hooked up for a lottery dinner and a few drinks at the end of the day.

Sunday was all about the football for the boys and Bec for the early part then she bailed on us and went with Jill to see the Bruce Lee exhibit at the heritage museum the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery.

Monday was a group day where we wandered town stopping for yum cha brunch at the oldest place in town (Lin Heung Tea House). There is a Michelin star rated dim sum place in HK that is the cheapest Michelin star restaurant in the world but alas we never got there.
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We caught up with Chris again in the afternoon and all had a farewell drink before Chris headed off to china that evening, we returned to Xiamen the next morning and Bec and Boof were due to head back to Rockhampton the day after. A great week, good times and awesome friends.

Taiwan, Uncategorized

Taipei, Taiwan

March 23, 2014 richardpieper Leave a comment

Wasn’t expecting much from this as the travel sites did not list masses of things to do in Taipei, or all of Taiwan for that matter. We ended up here as it was cheaper to get flights with a stopover here than it was to fly directly to Shanghai from India. So be it…we will have 4 days in Taipei then. The smog here is comparable with Beijing and Shanghai. Having arrived we love the place. The people are really friendly, super helpful and have much better English than most of China. The food is fantastic and the longer term western influences have meant that the hybrid restaurants do not have that weird fusion taste that we have had throughout India and China… we have been eating ourselves silly.

Our first major tourism foray was to hit the Raohe Night Market which is one of about 8 major night markets that operate throughout Taipei. Our market happened to be the foodie market (purely by coincidence) with a little bit of shopping. We had not planned this and had eaten before we arrived so it was a little wasted…but we came back the next night to fully sample the magnificent wares on offer. Whole suckling pig, every type of seafood imaginable, grilled goodies, fried titbits, fresh juices, noodles aplenty, local sausage and dumplings at every turn.

The key thing that they managed to do was to revolutionise the “Dagwood Dog”…that battered sav on a stick dipped in sauce sold at every royal show, easter show, ekka… whatever you call your version…step one…add a spiral of batter all the way up to catch more sauce… brilliant…step two… wedge French fries into the gaps formed by the spiral…How are we not funding this.

Taiwan is built amid the mountains with high rises and green areas aplenty. The population on this small island equals that of Australia but despite the population density there are forests and heavily wooded areas everywhere. The roads are magnificent wide, efficient and multi-layered. We took the Maokong Gondolas to the top of the local area for some great views of the city. The one obvious standout here is Taiwan 101 the 101 storey high rise that was the world’s tallest building between 2004 and 2010. Add to this the zoo which claims to be the biggest in Asia and you have a pretty full day. The ever present smog plays havoc with the concept of photo taking but so be it.

A change of hotel and a wander around town saw us hitting the peace park and the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall and gardens. that night we headed to the biggest of the markets (the Shilin Markets) but found it was mainly jammed with locals and tourists shopping for knock offs and playing sideshow style games (shooting, darts, clowns etc). This made the walking almost impossible and my attention span is greatly reduced when it comes to ambling and meandering crowds. So we had a quick bite of soft shell crab, dumplings and off we went. It is spring here and is relatively pleasant with 28 degree days and a fair bit of humidity. The one thing that concerns me is just how hot does this place get. The locals are walking around in fully quilted jackets in 28 + humidity.

The long awaited beer blog…I have been capturing the images and keeping notes of the various beers I have been trying, but my website skills are not up to loading this in the manner that I want them. I am hoping to have these in a sortable format across multiple columns so it can be ranked by my rating out of 10, country, name or alcohol content. Thankfully “the boy” in Canada does have some skills so I will be forwarding my excel spreadsheet to him to see if he can establish a separate page for the various beers that we have been taste testing. So far we do have a clear winner and a clear loser…surprisingly both come from India.

Jill added a new tab for those who haven’t noticed yet and it is the travel tips tab. These are some tips that we have picked up along the way in our travels. Some just handy to know for any sort of travel trip and others specific to the countries. Simple things like before we left we spent a fair amount of money in getting several universal travel adapters…in hindsight we could have saved money and been more efficient if we had bought one adapter and a cheap power board with Aussie plugs (in fact the boys meeting me in Hong Kong are bringing us just that). Needless to say that with the current level of technology there is an app for just about everything…but not all apps are created equal and Jill has been road testing them and shares her not inconsiderable knowledge.

On the positive side I got severely hassled by the immigration officer while attempting to leave Taiwan. He questioned me for what seemed like a very long time and having let me pass he then came and tracked me down 20 minutes later, inside the terminal, to recheck my passport and any other forms of ID that I had. His issue was that since I have left Australia I have lost a fair amount of weight and have picked up a tan and I did not look like me. In his defence I had been living in the ACT for 8 years prior to leaving so was sporting a Canberra tan, and when we left both Jill and I were the fattest we had ever been. Our trekking and travels have seen us both ore tanned and skinnier. Lets not be silly here I am still carrying too much weight but we are both headed in the right direction.

Uncategorized

Latest News

October 10, 2013 richardpieper Leave a comment

The final preparations are in full swing…

We have packed up the house and filled the storage shed with the items that would not sell (or the ones that we wanted to keep). Our lives have been reduced to two backpacks and a 3×3 metre storage shed. We hopped in both cars leaving Canberra in the rear view mirror and did the drive to Brisbane in time to celebrate Jim’s (Jill’s Dad) 70th birthday with him.

We broke the news to both families advising them of our planned 2 year hiatus which was received surprisingly well, but I guess both families are used to last minute news of big events from us. We actually only gave them 16 and 20 hours respectively notice of our marriage.

We have sorted our money access, exchanged currencies, got international drivers licences, sorted logistics, caught up with friends and families. We have a couple of more friends to see before our Sunday departure and then the adventure begins.

The first port of call will be the Philippines with a 3-4 day stop in Manila (Makati) then on to Beijing to see the Great Wall etc… After that the plans will be remarkably more fluid with the only other planned move being in late November when we are due to fly to New Delhi from Guangzhou…how we get to Guangzhou is a matter for discussion once we get on our trail…

Next post from Makati…

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