The J Spot

We kicked off Thailand with a bang! The day we arrived in Bangkok was the very begining of the Thai New Year, Songkran, which is celebrated traditionally by pouring scented water over elders' hands and shoulders. In large cities, it has become something a little different. It is now a Coca-Cola/Heinekin sponsored event where anyone and everyone is a participant in an out of control water fight. Our first day in Bangkok was celebrated with fevor, dancing in the street soaking went with large bottles of beer and not another farong (foreigner) in site. It was great fun, but by the second day people attacking us with clay and water got to be a little much and we made our way north to Chiang Mai. On the way, we stopped in Lopburi to see the infamous monkey town.

This town has been taken over by crazed monkeys who bite and snatch food at will. It was the last day on Songkran while we were visiting Lopburi, and being the only farongs in town we were treated as celebrities (ie targetted with water and clay, again).

We took a night train to Chiang Mai and promptly got a room at a hotel with a swimming pool (did we mention it is the "hot season" here? swealtering, staggering, unavoidable heat). The next day we decided to visit a sacred wat in the morning, followed by a pleasant hike to a Hmong hilltribe village. Little did Jess know, this turned out to be quite the expedition. Jenny had forgotten how intense and lengthy the journey was (as she had done it once before) with unrelenting heat, no signs, and extensive hills. We made it out of the jungle, but just barely, perhaps nearly escaping attack by a small asian black bear.

Chiang Mai is known for its cuisine and offers a variety of cooking classes, so we decided to partake. It was fabulous. Our class included a market tour and step-by-step instructions for the preparation of 6 delicious dishes. Everything turned out great except for our Pad Thai, which was terrible as we both managed to burn the egg.

We spent the next couple of days having fun around town before heading to the northeast.

We started out in the town of Khorat, Jess unfortunately stuck in the room with sickness. Jenny had fun exploring a historical park by motorbike with an overweight 12 year old driver. From Khorat we headed to Khao Yai Nationaly Park and happened to have the most amazing experience of our lives, led by our insanely enthusiastic guide, Lek. We saw creatures from every walk of life.

Mountain hawk eagle

Serpant eagle

giant forest scorpion

white faced gibbon

giant hornbill

water monitor lizard

barking deer

red headed trogon

white lip pit viper

wild asian elephants

The day was so amazing its hard to put into words.

From there we headed to the little town of Surin from which we could cross the border from Thailand into Cambodia. We showed up at the train station mid-morning which assured us a spot on a third class train with no air conditioning, which we don't really mind at all and often times prefer. One of the highlights of being on a third class train is that street vendors come aboard with food, treats, drinks in bags, etc. Lunch time rapidly approached and we were famished. Luckily a street vendor happened to pass with our favorite, grilled chicken on a stick and sticky rice. Oddly he kept trying to convince us to buy the larger pieces of chicken but we declined in favor of the smaller sticks. He reluctantly handed them over. We were eating rat. It didn't taste right, it was really boney, dark unfamiliar meat. After a couple bites we threw it out the window to the dogs. It took three days and French man showing us pictures of grilled rat, as a local favorite, to realize what we had eaten. Rat. Rat. Rat.

We made a detour to Melbourne to stay with Jenny's friends Marisa and Regan for a week. They were excellent hosts and drove us all around many sites of Melbourne, we even got to stay in our own cottage in the backyard (a huge upgrade from the crowded hostels in NZ).

Our favorite things about Australia - other than Marisa, Regan, and friends - are TimTams and meat pies. We discovered meat pies in New Zealand but didn't fully appreciate them until we arrived in Australia. They are incredible and we are thinking of opening up a shop in the States, it would surely be a success.

We started off our week in Australia wine tasting, which was a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon. That night we went to a crazy hat party, not knowing about the hat part, and were particularly pleased with a motorcycle helmet with a baby duck taped to the top. At first it caused quite the fright because it looked so real, but alas it was just a plastic doll.

The following morning we went for a walk around a lake, hunting for wild wallabies. Marisa keenly spotted one in the brush, which we would have surely missed ourselves. It was so cute and didn't seem to think much of our presence.

Braving her greatest fear, Jenny heroically participated in feeding wild [venomous] birds. Jess was all about it but only managed to get one to land on her and survived finger mutilation from a large white cockatoo.

We took a tour of Phillip Island which included wine tasting, a wildlife sanctuary, and penguins. It was amazing. At the wildlife sanctuary we got to feed wallabies, emus, koalas, and kangaroos.

Along the tour we stopped for a view of some beaches, blow holes, and seal colonies (we saw no seals), and a single moulting penguin. We were attacked by a group of non-English speaking women who wanted their picture taken with us. We don't blame them, but still found it a bit odd.

We couldn't take any pictures of the penguins coming up to the shore to nest, but they were truly adorable. They were Little Penguins, the smallest species on Earth, but they sure were loud. We shared our observation of them with 900 Chinese tourists who would scream any time a penguin started to come out of the water, sending it swiftly back in. It was great fun.

We spent the next couple days exploring Melbourne. We went to a comedy show, the Melbourne Aquarium, a brewery tour, and many other things we can't remember. Melbourne is a really cool city and Marisa and friends really showed us a good time.

Luckily we were there for Marisa's birthday and celebrated at the best dumpling restaurant in the world, run by a terrible little man, similar to the Soup Natzi. The terrible treatment was well worth it and everyone had a great time. Our night ended at a bar called Hell's Kitchen where we promptly took over. It was a fun bar but the bartenders were perhaps aliens. Andrew, Marisa's brother, pleased the crowd with a zombie dance to end the night.

We had a great time in Melbourne and want to thank Regan and Marisa again for their amazing hospitality. We are demanding a visit to California where we hope to show them just as good a time!

We apologize for lapse in blogging. We aren't really sure what happened, but we're back.

We spent the last couple weeks in New Zealand on another farm and traveling around the South Island. Our second farm was a little different, to say the least. We spent a week at Aroha Organics (which means love in Mauri) working roughly 8 hours a day, much more than our first farm.

List of characters on Aroha Organics:

Nathan - Manager of the farm, super intense work-a-holic who lived primarily on garlic and assumed everyone was as obsessed with the farm as he was.

Steph - Nathan's organic crazed, English wife who met Nathan while wwoofing on Aroha.

Hero - Japanese farmer in training who loved cheese and was very eager to learn. He always managed to smell nice and clean even when everyone else was sweating.

Emma - Friendly Irish girl who only had one set of clothing and no guidebook but loved to work as much as Nathan.

The children - A trio of Jack Russel terriers that sometimes like to snuggle in bed with us, dirty and covered in piss and mud.

The chores:
- picking strawberries
- weeding strawberries
- sorting strawberries
- packing strawberries
- irrigating carrot patch
- feeding chickens
- picking beans
- illegally picking apples
- cleaning jars (hundreds)
- watering seedlings

That pretty much sums up our stay. We had a really good time but decided our wwoofing days were over.

From Aroha we headed south. We spent a day hiking around the Catlins but then had to go back up to Aroha (roughly a three hour drive) because Jess forgot a shoe. From there we visited Fiordland National Park, a true highlight of the trip. We took a cruise around Milford Sound and then hiked to Key Summit in the rain. Unfortunately the summit was surrounded in clouds and the magnificent views were nothing but a big wall of white. Upon returning to our vehicle we ran into a little problem. Jenny left the lights on and the battery was very much dead. This would not have been such a bad problem except for the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere. Eventually it all got sorted out and we were on our way.

We drove to Queenstown and had a big night out then headed up to Franz-Joseph Glacier. The following morning we hiked to the base of the glacier and then continued north to catch our flight in Auckland. Before heading to the North Island we spent an afternoon kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park where we were almost shipwrecked in a pirate cove.

We managed to make our flight even though many Kiwis told us it was impossible to drive so far in just a couple days. We were off to the land of kangaroos.

We just got back from a week in the Marlborough Sounds doing some of the most random things one can do in the span of 5 days. We headed out in the sounds with the mailman. This was not just any old mailman, this particular mailman delivered his goods once a week via boat. As we found out, it was also a huge tourist attraction when we just thought it would be a free ride to our farm. As our four hour journey neared an end, we gathered our belongings and prepared to leap from boat to deck with heavy packs in tow. We became instant celebrities. Everyone surrounded and bombarded us with questions - "What are you doing?" "Do you know these people?" "Is this safe?" "What if you don't like it, you're stuck!" We calmly reassured them that we preferred to farm in the heat with vicious sandflies atttacking every bare patch of skin rather than taking a scenic mailboat cruise ending in a posh hotel.

Our time on the farm was amazing. Our hosts were Kathy and Gus, two amiable Kiwis who enjoy the drink and live almost completely off the land with a small family of obnoxious penguins living under their house.

We constructed an oyster farm, planted cabbage, saved an apple tree from two evil oppossums, dug a trench, erradicated an unwanted patch of bush, scapred old paint off a boat while staring at hundreds of jellyfish, and laborously cleaned mussles in preparation for a delightful dinner.

We loved every second of it even though we are still sore and Jess walks with a limp. We did all of these activities alongside a very interested Israli girl named Yara (Honeysuckle) who was extremely, hm how do we put this lightly... talkative. Let's just say she made a mean cup of tea.

We finished off our week with Kathy and Gus at the annual Havelock Mussel Festival where we stuffed ourselves with
-mussels
-shrimp
-scallops
-ice cream
-donughts
-mussel sausages
-wine coolers
-beer, and
-dry chocolate cake that cost jenny a bumble bee sting. The bee sting was a blessing in disguise for it allowed us to come across a very sad, crying, beast of a clown that too been stung by a bumble bee. Although she showed no symptoms, she was convinced that she was on the verge of anaphylactic shock. A very sad clown indeed.

The festival was amazing. dDub, our new favorite NZ band, ended out the festivities. Little did we know the best was yet to come. After some quality sober bar time, as we were the DD's for Kathy and Gus, we headed out to a house party with their friends. We were forced to dress in the most ridiculous outfits ever created, danced to girls just wanna have fun, and, best of all, intently interviewed the man who caught the largest collosul squid in the world (for real!!!!). They all thought we were marnie biologists...we did little to discourage the rumors as it provided us with some much needed credibility and one on one time with the infamous squid man.

We have continued south to Christchurch, stopping along the way to see numerous seal colonies and their pups.

We plan on staying at another farm later this week. Wish us luck, for we have found that anything can happen!

So far so good on the meningitis....thought our next journey required facing more than a few of our fears.

Our night in Rotorura continued at the Pig and Whistle where there was a "hardcore" coverband. We didn't quite know what to expect when the bassist approached the stage wearing a kilt and a tank that said "I like boobs". They started out with a lovely ballad by Lifehouse and continued on with Creed, Sweet Home Alabama, and the worst rendition of "What I Got" either of us had ever heard. The audience was loving it.

We left Rotorura early in the morning after walking around town.

From there we headed to see the worms. These were not just any worms. These were the worms Jenny had flown across the world to see. GLOW WORMS! We signed up for a 3 hour blackwater tubing adventure through eel infested caverns to see the little guys. Jenny is claustrophobic and Jessica is afraid of heights and freezing cold water. Not good fears to have when tubing through freezing cold water in tiny pitch black spaces and jumping off waterfalls backwards. Luckily neither one of us freaked out and it was incredible. The glow worms are actually the larvae state of a fly that light up in order to attract their prey. They were all along the ceiling of the cave and looked like bright green stars.

We then returned to our hostel in Waitomo and were greeted by hoards of hideous backpacker kids taking over. Ok they were a lot like us, but it left us with a bad night's sleep for our long journey the next day.

Sunday morning we woke up and drove 8 hours to the tip of the North Island in order to catch a ferry in Wellington to the South Island. We had time to kill so we walked around the botanical gardens.

Our ferry departed around 6:15 pm so we were hoping for a romantic sunset cruise, instead we had drizzly freezing cold weather before darkness. We tried to appease ourselves with a cold beer but could only afford the kiddie cup size. We arrived on the south Island in Picton and spent the night in a dorm room with 6 snorers.

Today we went for a wine tour in New Zealand's biggest wine area, Marlborough. Our tour guide was an exciting 75 year old man who knew a lot about the area. We went to 4 wineries and a chocolate factory. We were accompanied by thee people from France, two from Ireland, two from Australia, and two non wine drinkers... yeah we thought that was weird too. Everyone was friendly and the French winemaker bought us all a bottle of champagne for our last tasting. Ohhh the French, always trying to make everyone have a good time.

Tomorrow we are off on a mailboat, which will deposit us on our first farm. We are working on a couple of organic farms while in New Zealand in exchange for a place to stay and meals. Our first farm is has aquaculture (mussels), vegetable garden, sheep, and orchards. We can't wait to get dirrrrty.