Halong Bay: Bay of a thousand islands.

At this point in our journey, we were beginning to feel a bit tired and travelled out.  The idea of an organized day tour where all your transportation and food was taken care of sounded awfully appealing.  So we signed up for a tour of Halong Bay through APT Travel.

After a four hour ride on a minibus, we arrived at the Halong Bay pier.  The Nu’u Nghi boat was waiting for us, and minutes upon setting sail, we were presented with a beautiful seafood feast.

The perfectly timed meal ended when we pulled up to the Don Thien Cung caves, and got off the boat to explore them for about a half hour.

(The coloured lights are just for effect.  The inside of the cave is not actually rainbow.)

Next stop was a fishing village, where a small group of Vietnamese people live year-round.  There is even a school here on the water, where children attend until age 11.  After that, students leave the village to continue school on the mainland.  We were given the chance to kayak in and around the fishing village and surrounding cliffs.

It was crazy to fathom the unique challenges of living in a small fishing community such as this one.  We wondered how they felt about their existence being a tourist attraction.

As you can see, Halong Bay is a pretty stunning place.  Although impossible to capture in one photo (unless from the air), Halong Bay is comprised of 1900-2000 islets.  It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Limestone cliffs, partially covered with lush plantlife, jet starkly around of the water.  Though pictures do not do justice to the immense awe that this place conjures, perhaps they convey more than words.  We’ll leave you now with a few images to take in.

It felt kind of weird to be the tourists in the tour group, but hey, after several weeks of organizing our own adventures, it was actually kind of nice to sit back and enjoy an excursion that someone had already done the work of orchestrating for us.

We got to know Halong Bay better than we were planning to.  Left behind again by our transport, after the agent PROMISED we would not be forgotten, we got to spend a bit of extra time hanging out in Halong Bay.  (But of all the places to be stranded… we suppose it could have been much worse.)

The town itself didn’t have a lot to offer, but we spent some extra time chilling out by the water.

The beach is where Halong Bayers seem to flock to in the evenings.  And why not?  It’s beauty is hard to ignore.  Young and old alike go for a dip to escape the heat.

It appeared that some organized swimming lessons were going on.  This was definitely the busiest beach we encountered throughout our time in SE Asia.

We highly recommend you visit the world wonder of Halong Bay if you ever get the chance!  (We heard the overnight cruises, or the ones that overnight on Cat Ba Island are pretty epic, but weren’t able to make it work.)

Thanks, Halong Bay, for sharing your splendor and beauty with us!

 

Victoria. Charmed and completely delighted.

And then, we met Victoria.

It was a long-awaited reunion with members of our NZ family, Mark & Laurel, who had become among our favourite adventuring companions and like family to us while in NZ. 

Spending time with these two was at the top of our Victoria highlights, but there is more to this city worth mentioning.

Victoria wooed us. 

With her rugged, log-cluttered beaches,

pink cherry blossoms, 

 

moss-covered trees,

lush plantlife,

and thoughtful range of cute boutiques. 

It boasts a strong coffee scene, with a few fairly established roasteries.  Fernwood, Bows & Arrows, Discovery, & Habit were among the cafes/roasteries we visited.  

We appreciated how easy it was to find parking and get about in the historic but funky downtown core.  There are a number of areas by the seawall that are lovely for strolling.

Mark and Laurel took us out to China Beach, one of their favourite beaching spots, where we set up camp for an afternoon and enjoyed the company of friends, some unexpected bouts of sunshine, and the rugged beauty of Canada’s West Coast.

The natural beauty of the provincial capital was very evident.  Rain was forecasted for the week, but still the sun shone. 

Having these amazing people to explore the city with made our time there all the more epic.

We had high expectations going in, but feel that they were met and probably exceeded.

Victoria, oh Victoria.  It is only a matter of how long we can bear to be apart.  Until we meet again!

Travel, narrative & perspectivism.

Traveling is many things: exciting, nerve-wracking, at times frightening, at times surprisingly comfortable. One thing that is affirmed time and time again through travel, is that I (we) are not from this place (wherever we happen to be at any given moment).

This happened frequently for me, whether in subtle ways like the lack of a bottom sheet in most of our hotels, or  sometimes, in much more drastic and terrifying ways like the streets of Phnom Phen in rush hour.

We can only ever be from where we are from. The perspective we bring to the world has been finely honed from our births. Altered, obviously, throughout our lives, but we are not simply able to change our past, or rid ourselves of memories and experiences that shape our particular point of view.

We are unable to see things through any eyes but our own. And as you travel, you are able to get a glimpse, albeit a small one, of the insane amount of eyes that there are out there who are equally unable to grasp your perspective as you are unable to grasp theirs. Fully grasp, that is. Partial grasping is defiantly possible, due to the amazing similarities throughout human civilization. Perspectivism is what James McClendon names this phenomenon.

The fact that we are unable to see from other perspectives (but by the imagination), is a bit unnerving. It leaves so much misunderstood, or unknown, which has an uncomfortable effect on you (well me at least).

I found my self in Hanoi, Vietnam, in a leftist cafe, displaying old propaganda posters from the Northern Vietnamese during the war. While there, I read a interesting article in a magazine which brought on some of these questions. It was about a Westerner (Australian I think) whose father was a reporter from the end of WWII through the Vietnam war. He had leftist leanings, and was well respected by the communist groups for this fair reports of what was going on. This lead this man to grow up with a perspective that from the Western world would have seemed backwards. To him, the Communists were the good guys and Capitalism was bad. For him, the chaos of Asia, and his family etc. combined to lead to a perspective from the other side. He later moved back to the western world, but this perspective stayed with him.

I found my self thinking after I read this article, what it would be like to have a perspective from the other side… Or like the man in this article, to be able to see things from both sides.  In what ways are my perspectives shallow, or odd?

Siem Reap: Bicycles and back alleys.

And now, picking up from where we left off in our travels… Cambodia.  Siem Reap, to be precise.

When people have asked about our most memorable moments from our recent SE Asia journeys, this would definitely be one of them.

A highlight from our time in Cambodia that will be forever etched in our memory unfolded one evening as we were riding bicycles through a back alleyway in Siem Reap. It was an experience which is hard to put into words, as it was one of those qualitative experiences which surpasses our words’ ability to capture it.

It was dusk, and the light was hazy pastel peach.  We had rented some bicycles earlier in the day from The White Bicycles, and were headed across the city to a restaurant we had picked out for dinner.

We rounded a bend and all of a sudden found ourselves surrounded by a flood of children who, evidently, had just been let out of school for the day.  Children on bikes and children on foot, all of them smiling and full of life.

As we continued to ride down the street, next to and amongst this bustling community of friends and families, living their regular life, we saw it as a bizarre and wonderful existence.

Busyness and bustle, of the usual, with the two of us Canadian adventurers being the most foreign thing in the picture.

The most priceless moments were ones where smiles were shared.  It was such a surreal experience to be journeying down the road next to all these beautiful Cambodian children.

The experience could have been perceived as chaotic, but it really wasn’t.  Even though there were people going every which way, there was a genuine sense that people embraced the fact that they are not alone on the road, and were more or less looking out for each other.  A sense of rush was absent, and people were just riding, or driving, as if a single biotic organism. Moving and reacting to one another, each sharing the responsibility of the chaos.

Though we had moments of fear because of not being trained in this environment, the experience of riding bicycles through the back alleyways of Siem Reap painted for us a truly beautiful picture of community.

Hearts unmapped.

It’s official- we are moving back to Canada.  To those of you who have journeyed closely with us, this is no surprise.  We have always known that our time here in NZ would be temporary.  Despite many attempts by friends and co-workers to get us to stay, we are keeping our promises to return to our families and friends in Edmonton.  Do we love NZ?  Yes.  We have absolutely loved and cherished our time here.  Although we are sad to see this chapter of our lives come to an end, we can look back with no regrets.  Having visited almost all regions of NZ, we feel very blessed and satisfied with what we have been able to accomplish here, and how we have lived our lives.  There are people who have etched their way into our hearts, and whom we will be very sad to leave. This place will always be special to us, and we will probably always reminisce about the days shared in this land of beaches, flat whites, and Pohutukawa trees.

As we begin to wrap up our time here in New Zealand, we look forward to things to come.  Our hearts are overjoyed to once again be in close proximity to our family and friends in Alberta, and we are delighted to reacquaint ourselves with the fine city of Edmonton.

Upon our return in early summer 2013, Brendon will continue his thesis writing from there, and Mel hopes to find some sort of summer employment, and hopefully secure a teaching job come September.  We’d love to find a cute, little apartment (hopefully in a somewhat central location) to call home, and we look forward to exploring our home city with new eyes- more thoroughly this time.

It all feels a little strange at the moment- the thought of leaving, and the thought of being back in Canada.  Perhaps this whole experience will seem like some crazy sort of dream once we return…

So the journey is not ending; it is continuing.  Hence, the new name: hearts unmapped.  Although we will no longer be living “abroad,” we hope to continue to live with the same mindset of taking full advantage of the moments we find ourselves in and opportunities that are put in front of us, regardless of what continent we find ourselves on.