Back to the developed world - New Zealand

And so we have arrived in NZ. After a flight cancellation and a lot of buggering about in Thailand we made it back to the developed world only to be accused by some po-faced witch at customs of being hippies and drug smugglers - not quite the welcome we'd expected. However on the other side of the 'nothing to declare' barrier we were met by Martyn's Dad John and Auntie Rose - a sight for very tired and sore eyes. We were whisked back to Rose and Pete's fed and watered, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep while John and Martyn burnt the midnight oil over a few drinks and a long overdue catch up. The next day we headed down to Sunny Downs Farm, Gapes Valley, Geraldine to be greeted by Annie and the farm, both a wonderful sight.
Well, we've been here for about a month now and things have slowed down to a very chilled out pace. First stop was to Wanaka via a spectacular drive taking in Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook along the way.

Thailand Family, birthdays and FIsh

We landed in Bangkok at midnight and caught a cab to the infamous Khao San Road, it was time to see what all the fuss was about. True to form it was rammed with street stalls selling the obligatory travelers uniform and paraphernalia, said travellers weaving around the streets in varying stages of inebriation and touts abound. In a way it kind of felt like coming home – there’s comfort in the predictable. We hung out here for a couple of days preparing for the arrival of ma and pa Tribe. For Mum’s 60th birthday my Dad had shouted he and she a trip out to Thailand and a couple of nights at the (Ooh Ahh) Shangri-La en famille. Marty and I took great pleasure in rocking up to the front doors of this establishment in a tuk-tuk looking like we needed a bath. Having been watching our backs like hawks for the last 9 months we both almost thumped the porter when he made a move to take our bags away, realising our indiscretion we backed off and pulled out our wallets instead to give the would be thief his much anticipated tip. It dawned on us how far removed we had become from refined culture.
Enter stage left Ma and Pa Tribe, I was spying on them through the peephole waiting for them to walk down the corridor to pounce on them. I’m not sure if they needed this after a 14 hour flight but it’s difficult to resist… and in any case a bigger surprise was on it’s way in the form of my elder sister, on her way from the States. Fast-forward to the next morning at breakfast – Susan was sat at a table opposite hidden behind a newspaper with the obligatory spyhole cut-out, Mum gets up to pour some coffee and Susan sits down in Mum’s seat – Mum turns around to sit back down and has a coronary when she clocks who it is sat in her seat. Most amusing. Never in the history of the Tribes have we EVER been able to pull one over on Mum – happy birthday old gal! So The Tribe are out in force spending the next few days tearing around Bangkok whizzing up and down the Klongs on boats and having a jolly good time.

Marty and I become bloated on copious amounts of wine and incredibly good food and then, we all climb aboard the Koh Samui express and head to the beach. We all get to spend a few days together soaking up the sun and good vibes having a generally excellent time.
All too soon it is time to say goodbye, as we wave first Susan off and then a few days later Mum and Dad it seems it has hardly started before it’s all over. Before we let ourselves dwell on things too much Marty has a birthday surprise for me. We’re off to swim with the fishes.

Beijing

We said goodbye to Iain on the platform – he was off to walk the length of Japan, and Marty, Thibaud and I jumped aboard the Trans-Manchurian Express, next stop Beijing. Post Olympics and pre Para-Olympics meant the city was in mint condition. The majority of the signs were bilingual Chinese and English making life a lot simpler for ill-prepared tourists, and it was unbelievably clean. Weirdly clean, there wasn’t a blade of grass out of place or a building that hadn’t been recently re-plastered and tarted up. The peculiarity of Beijing came more from a lack of something than anything obviously apparent – there wasn’t one single beggar, a strange thing in a capital city – where were they all? I got the feeling there were things going on behind closed doors, what they were I’ll never know unless I spend a lot more time there and learn Cantonese.

We spent the whole week eating the most incredible street food and riding around on a couple of the fabled 10 million bicycles.

Peking Duck

Chairman Mao

Thibaud & Marty

UB, gold medals and the Chinese visa chase

So we hit Ulaanbaatar, which was a weird city. I don’t think the locals appreciate hoards of mouthy tourists descending upon their city for the short summer months. We heard numerous stories of people being robbed or beaten up, I got soaked by a bunch of kids who thought it would be hilarious to upend a tarpaulin filled with rainwater on my head (which was actually pretty funny in a happy-slapping idiot kind of way). And then there was the dead man lying in the middle of the pavement face up looking like he was having a really uncomfortable kip – one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen – the police standing around him having a casual chat added to the oddity.

Aside from this, we were lucky to be in town when Mongolia won their second ever Olympic gold medal for wrestling(the first being a couple of days before for Judo) the whole city erupted, there was so much glee everywhere you turned, the whole city turned into one massive smile – for about 12 hours the roads were clogged with people cruising around whooping, hanging out their car windows waving flags, drinking and celebrating – it is true that the best parties are the ones that aren’t planned, and helped to also prove that where there is bad there will always be a whole lot of good.

That being said and done, Marty and I were sick of the city – we didn’t bust our chops to get to one of the most isolated countries on earth to hang out in another city where there’s too many people to be able to an meet any. We’d scored our Chinese visas finally and bumped into Iain and Thibaud (last seen heading into the sunset on some dubious looking sidecar motorbikes - it turns out they didn’t get much further than Boris and had a similar hitch-hiking experience once their bike had shat itself) who were feeling as disenchanted with city life as us, so we figured we’d return to the vast nothingness outside the city limits one last time before visas ran out. So we did.

We had another horrible van 24 hours cross country. All I can say is we are very stupid and don’t ever learn our lessons. We finally got to the village nearest our destination, only to be sat down and given some horrible food (which neither asked for or wanted) to have a discussion about the fare which had almost doubled for no apparent reason and the entire village throwing in their opinions for good measure – English and Mongolian sign language does not equate to the same thing. By the time we’d figured out a compromise it was dark and sheeting down with rain and we didn’t have anywhere to sleep. Cut a long story short we eventually made it to the White Lake after much wrangling and this is where we slept...

All’s well that ends well.

A couple of wicked days hanging out here we had to head back to UB to catch the train to China.