A jaunt across the channel to Belgium, August 2012

A little while after settling into our new flat in London, we popped across the channel to Belgium. 

The Eurostar was fantastic – so easy and relaxing, and we were in Brussels in around 2 hours. As well as visiting this great little country, I also wanted to visit my host family who I stayed with for a year in 2003. 

We spent a few days in Brussels, where I tried to act as guide and show Kylie the sights, sounds, and especially, tastes of the city.

Highlights of Brussels for us included the Tintin museum, the royal palace, la grand place (Brussels’ central square), the great architecture around the city, and the Cantillon Brewery.

This brewery was really interesting and also had the advantage of being close to the gare du nord (from where you take the eurostar). They don’t offer brewery tours as such; instead you’re given some key info, and a detailed pamphlet, and you can wander around the brewery at your leisure. This is an old family brewery which makes a selection of lambic beers. Lambic beer is produced by  spontaneous fermentation; it is exposed to wild yeasts and bacteria in the air. The attic of the brewery therefore has slats which can be opened or closed depending on the weather, temperature, and its possible effects on the beer.  Included in the price of admission (6 euros) is a welcome glass of beer. Highly recommend visiting this brewery for an unique insight into traditional brewing methods, and the beer is tasty too.

Spontaneous fermentation

It was good to use my rusty French, although a little frustrating at things I kept forgetting.

Next stop was Louvain-la-Neuve, and the lovely Kreit family. Louvain-la-Neuve, or LLN to the locals, was built relatively recently – around 40 years ago. The story goes that both French-speaking Belgians (Walloons) and Dutch-speaking Belgians (Flemish) once attended the Catholic University of Leuven/Louvain together – in the Flemish region of the country. Disagreements between the two groups led to the Walloons creating their own version of Leuven/Louvain, hence ‘Louvain-la-Neuve’ (‘the new Louvain’), and their own university as well.

During my time in LLN in 2003 it was very noticeably a student town, and it felt quite deserted in the summer months. In 2012 however a lot had changed. There is now a brand new shopping complex. More people, families especially, have been moving to the town, and there was a lot of life in the town, although the middle of summer (which had previously felt deserted as the students went home or in search of summer work elsewhere). 

In LLN we stayed with my host parents Véronique and Jean-François, and managed to see host sisters Marguerite and Evelyne, as well as recent addition to family, Evelyne’s daughter Lily. It was great to catch up with them all – although my host parents visited NZ a few years ago, I hadn’t seen the others for 9 years!

la famille Kreit

From LLN we headed back to Brussels, where we met up with Monique, a friend from NZ who was living in Brussels at the time. Monique kindly let us stay in her studio in Brussels, took us to the reputedly best ‘friterie’ (fries shop) in the city (Antoine’s), and gave us some local tips.

Royal Palace

We took some day trips to Leuven and Ghent in the Flemish region, enjoying the great architecture, and local tastes.

London, first impressions, July

We arrived into London on 13 July. Since it was summer, we expected mild, or perhaps even warm, temperatures. However, having been swanning around in temperatures upwards of 35 degrees Celsius, the 15 degrees we stepped out into was a definite shock to the system. We spent the first few weeks staying with my brother and his wife, who both thought we were ridiculous for bundling up in our winter coats, jeans, and gloves. In all fairness though, when I skyped family back in NZ (where it was mid-winter), it was actually 15 degrees over there too.

The tube ride in from the airport was fascinating for us newbies. With our big backpacks during rush hour, we must’ve annoyed a few commuters. It was so strange seeing so many people in suits, and all staying completely silent throughout the journey. In our SE Asia backpacking clothes, we definitely stuck out like sore thumbs, especially alongside people in what seemed like incredibly trendy clothing. Trying not to stare, we also looked out the windows, and all the brick houses we passed looked so pretty and quaint.

At the time, my brother and his wife were living in Finsbury Park/Hackney in North London. As the last leg of our journey was spent in bustling Bangkok, the streets in their neighbourhood seemed so quiet.

I remember wondering what an ‘off-license’ was – I just thought there were all these liquor shops everywhere. For those not in the know, it’s actually like a corner store/dairy/four square; the place where you pick up your milk, bread, etc.

Another surprise was just how multicultural London is. Just jump on a bus and you’re bound to hear a multitude of different languages and see a multitude of different ethnicities. At times, coming from New Zealand just seems so downright boring in comparison. Although NZ is quite multicultural, the mix is quite different.

 Aside from being cold and discovering new wondrous things like oversized notes that won’t fit in a standard wallet, we spent the first few weeks in London flat hunting, attempting to get bank accounts, national insurance numbers, and in my case, job hunting.

Kylie had enjoyed unemployment so much that he didn’t fancy going back to work straight away, and so he took a much more relaxed approach.

Looking for a flat is not an easy task in London, particularly when you’re new to the city, and have no idea what different parts of the city are like, and how much to expect to pay.

I heard recently of someone who advertised a room to rent and within the first 24 hours, they had received 150 emails. The demand is simply so high that getting a room is extremely competitive.

It didn’t take us too long to sort out a place however. We are now living in Brockley, in South East London. We share a terraced house with four others; an Australian and an Italian girl, and another couple, he a Londoner, and she Indian.

Home sweet home

Chapel in Brockley Cemetry, near to our flat

Many had told me that although it’s cold in the UK, the houses are actually insulated and aren’t damp – something we’d lived with in many flats back in Wellington. Unfortunately, this did not turn out to be the case for our humble abode. I’m told that after the war and the damage it caused, there was a need to erect housing quickly and cheaply, and so terraced houses came to be. Corners were cut and small matters like insulation were clearly not high on the priority list. Our lovely landlady also seems to be a fan of ‘repairing’ things in an interesting fashion, but that’s another story for another time.

Koh Tao, sometime in July

We arrived into Koh Tao somewhat worse for wear after a long night bus and ferry ride from Bangkok. The package we booked in Bangkok included several nights’ accommodation and the PADI Open Water diving course at Coral Grand Divers, one of many dive operators on the island.

Later that same day, we started our Open Water course. I think we were pretty close to dozing off as we watched a video covering some of the theory.  We were then given our own course books, and dive tables, and prescribed a few chapters to read that evening.

The whole course was four days long, involving much more theory than I had anticipated. On the practical side, we started off with two practice dives in the swimming pool, before moving to the Ocean, and completing four dives at various dive locations off the island. To complete the course, we needed to pass both a theory test and have completed all the necessary skills during our dives. Naturally, we passed with flying colours J, although were quite tired after all that – the course is quite compacted, a lot of information to cover in such a short space of time.

Kylie seemed to take like a fish to water with the practical skills, while I took a little longer to get the hang of things. Removing my mask and holding it, before replacing I found quite tough, as my natural instinct was to breath in through my nose, meaning I would then take on water; but I got there in the end.

Our instructor, Coco, was really fantastic. She was very thorough, super friendly, patient, and you could tell she was really passionate about diving and conservation of the marine environment.

After completing the course, we also did a few fun dives. It was so great to be able to just chill out and really enjoy the dive, checking out all the amazing sea life, rather than concentrating on the various skills to complete. Some of the most memorable things we saw were; giant grouper, puffer fish, trigger fish, and a stingray.

In between the course and the fun dives, we had taken a few days off from diving and explored the rest of the island on motorbike. As a warning, some of the roads, particularly down to different beaches, were quite rough, but it was definitely worth it.

As with most of the islands, Koh Tao really seems like a place apart from Thailand itself. Towards the end of our stay the island really started to fill up as revelers from the infamous Full Moon Party on nearby Koh Pha Ngan drifted in. The bars and restaurants are therefore set up to cater to this crowd, with predominately western or westernized food being served. That said, we did manage to find a couple of places serving delicious, authentic Thai food.

Bangkok, late June - mid July-ish

From Hanoi we flew down to Bangkok for the last leg of our South East Asia journey. Having visited Bangkok a few years ago and seen some of the key sights, such as the Grand Palace, we took a relaxed attitude towards sightseeing this time round.

We did visit the National Museum however, which was quite good and informative. It’s set in the former grounds of the 18^th Century Wang Na Palace so the buildings themselves are also beautiful. We found the Thai history gallery the most interesting, spending less time on the sections dedicated to King worship.

Having experienced so much more of Asia this time round, Bangkok seemed far less daunting, and much more tame than the first time we visited.

While in Bangkok, we spent a bit of time in some of the massive, beautifully air-conditioned malls. The extravagance of some malls is simply astounding; one we visited had an actual Lamborghini dealership, with three cars on display.

We arranged a trip to the island of Koh Tao to do some diving (see next post), and then returned to Bangkok for a few days before flying out. For our second stint, we again met up with Mike and Torika, and enjoyed spending time shopping and eating together.

Ha Giang – Dong Van 22nd - 24th of June

After our bus ride back from Halong we had told Viet how after Halong bay we didn’t want to do Sapa and be in another of Vietnam’s hotspots for tourism. 

So he recommended another place in the north where western tourists are few and far between, so all four of us decided to take the night bus to Ha Giang in the north of Vietnam.
After the night bus we arrived in the middle of nowhere at 4am looking in our guide books and wishing we had done some pre planning – we weren’t even sure we were in Ha Giang. After some sleepy taxi drivers asking us where we were going we ended up going to a small “resort” on the edge of town.
We must have caught the resort by surprise because they had to make up the rooms for us; once our rooms were ready we had a quick sleep.
Later that morning we hired some motorbikes and went off into town looking for some coffee and local food. We knew that when we visited Dong Van that we would need a permit to be in the area of Meo Vac as it is so close to the border of China, now there isn’t much information about how to get this permit so we spent most of the day riding around town trying to find the tourism office, we never found it. 

Route Ha Giang to Dong Van

Our resort rung a hotel in Dong Van for us and organised a room, and informed us that they would sort out the permit on arrival. As our resort didn’t have a bar we decided to have a poker night, so we rode all around down trying to find cold beer and some food. Turns out cold beer was hard to find, we stopped off for some Banh Mi to take home and the guy said the woman across the road sold beer, she had set up a small footpath bar which locals stopped off at for a beer and some peanuts. We told her we wanted around a dozen beers, so with a quick phone call a guy arrives with a crate of beer and some ice. With our supplies carefully balanced on the bike we headed back for poker night, we didn’t have any chips so we used piles of candy. 

The next day we were given two motorbikes and some dodgy helmets one of which was bashed in, they obviously only wear the helmets as it’s the law, not because it will save your head from being caved in.
We found a route on google maps and headed off, we were not even 5 minutes out of town and we got our first view of the amazing northern country side, we knew that this was going to be a great ride. We rode through open farmlands with rice paddy as far as the eye could see, over mountains (on a 100cc bike this is a very slow process) along rivers in valleys and through small villages.

We became quite the sight in the countryside, as locals would stop whatever work they were doing and stare at us as if we were the first westerners they had seen. We went through some road works and after getting some looks from the workers; Ylan chuckled and told us they had exclaimed, “white people! And look they can ride motorbikes!” After around 7 hours, lots of photo/bum rest stops. 

We had arrived in Dong Van, a small town where the surrounding Hmong people come to the morning market and sell their produce. We booked into our room and went to border control with our passports, after some money changed hands and we filled out a form we received our permit to visit the area.

Ylan had seen signs advertising duck foetus eggs, Jerry decided that we must try them, so we sat down and got a few beers, Ylan dived into the bowl of eggs and gave us a demonstration. The words membrane and juices were mentioned far too often, it turns out there is quite a technique in eating a partially developed duck. I found it wasn’t as bad as I thought, the egg itself was over cooked and the white was chewy but with a dollop of chilli the whole experience wasn’t that bad. We must have looked quite funny with the odd looks on our faces while watching Ylan and our careful approach. 

We headed out and found a hot bowl of noodle soup and went to bed, the next day our bums still a little sore we visited the local market, which was teaming with activity. A sea of colourful Hmong clothing, pigs squealing, people sell rice cakes, veges, meats and of course table after table serving up noodle soup for breakfast to all the hungry locals. 

We sat down among the tables and ordered some soup and just sat there watching the market, not a tourist in sight, no one trying to sell us tacky wares, just people living their normal lives. It was so refreshing being able to just wander and take in the surroundings as we navigated around the market. But we knew that if we wanted to get back to Ha Giang by dark we would need to leave Dong van before 10am, point to point the ride is only 150km but the winding roads and step mountains meant that is took around 6-7 hours, especially with all the bum rest stops and photo ops. 

The we got back to Ha Giang and we would be glad never to see a motorbike again. That night we had to get back to Hanoi as Ylan had to get a flight the next morning. We had found all the buses full and decided to use a local taxi to take us the 7 hours back. We thought “well this will be more comfortable than the bus”, but with 3 of us in the back and 1 in the front of a Toyota corolla we soon decided it wasn’t as comfortable as we thought. We left at around 9pm and finally got into Hanoi at 4am looking like zombies.
We arrived back at our favourite hotel finnegans greeted by Viets younger brother and were given a room and we all flopped on the beds and fell asleep, unfortunately for Ylan she only got an hour sleep or so before having to get up and catch her plane.
Myself Hannah and Jerry went to the supermarket brought some junk food and spent the day in the room watching telly nursing our sore bums.

A trip to remember