The End

Okay, so you know how I wrote that I'd do a final update on the blog in early January, in Ontario...well that didn't quite happen.

It's now February and I am writing this from our new apartment in Vancouver, but better late than never as the saying goes.

We did indeed make it safely but very, very jet lagged to Montreal on New Years Eve where my parents kindly picked us up. The only bad moment was that the line up to the Tim Horton's at the Airport was really long and the staff were really slow, so after 6 whole entire months of no Tim's, I had to wait in the slowest ever Tim's line up - NOT COOL. However, in the end I got my Tim's and man was it ever good. (For the curious among you, I'm at 37 cups since we returned to Canada!)

We spent a lovely week in Williamstown, most of which was spent sleeping and being spoiled by my folks. I also got to visit with quite a few old friends in Ottawa and close to Williamstown, which was great. The highlight, of course, though was getting to see Mishka again - what a cute cat he is! Then it was off to Toronto for a few days to visit my sister; the visit was lots o' fun, but man the Sunday morning after spending Saturday night catching up with Dakin was rough, man, rough...

Then on the auspious date of January 9th, we flew back to the city where it all began and completed our full circle...well, not really a circle, more like a really oddly shaped octagonal parabola...beautiful Vancouver. Aaahhh...for the first few days we just revelled in the fact that we were in a city where we did not need a map or a tourist guide or to act random strangers for directions. It was such a relief. We mooched of Caelem and Hannah's good graces for about a week, but were able to find an apartment with surprising ease! We now are living in a two bedroom place in downtown Vancouver, so all the cool kids whom we met while traveling are officially invited to come visit.

And now onto the fun stuff. Here are my Top 10 Lists for the trip>


Top 10 Best Moments
1) Watching the sunrise over Mount Sinai in Egpyt
2) Landing at the brand new and shockingly clean airport in Bangkok, Thailand (after a month of being in dirty, dirty, dirty India)
3) Seeing the Taj Mahal and the Ganges River in India
4) Climbing the glacier in Finse, Norway
5) Meeting an elephant face-to-trunk and getting to pet it and feed it bananas
6) The goat on the bus in Pushkar
7) Seeing the Jungle Temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia
8) Going to Paris for 9 hours (especially the coffee at the Arc de Triomphe)
9) Swimming in the Nile
10) The Brewer's Tours 8 hour walking tour of Berlin

Top 10 Worst Moments
1) Being sick in Turkey
2) Being sick in Egypt
3) Being sick in India
4) Driving in a tuk-tuk in Varanasi, and seeing the guy hauling 14 canisters of propane almost get hit by a bus
5) Driving in a tuk tuk down the very, very steep hill from the Monsoon Palace in Udaipur with the driver who didn't believe in steering or brakes because 'it is all up to God'...
6) The goat on the bus in Pushkar
7) Visting the Tuol Sleng museum and the Killing Fields in Phenom Penn, Cambodia
8) Crossing the street in Cairo - it was a life an death experience every single time
9) Brad getting lost in Athens and consequently nearly missing the flight to Bahrain
10) The truly disgusting accidentally ordered seafood pizza in Munich


Top 10 Most Surreal Moments
1) Touring around the Haw Par Villa in Singapore - words cannot explain, you just have to look at the photos from the Singapore blog entry
2) Listening to our Vietnamese tour guide encourage tourists to climb on the American tank that had killed many of his countrymen during the war because 'it makes a great photo oportunity'
3) The Vodka Breakfast in Volgograd with Olga's grandparents
4) Standing on the platform of the train station in Varanassi as about 3 dozen Indian gentlemen all gathered round to stare at the strange white folk
5) Stepping out into traffic in Hanoi, Viet Nam for the first time; it felt euphoric afterwards, because we were so amazed to still be alive
6) Being offered student cards by our official Egyptian Tour Guide, as "the Egyptian Government wants you to be able to experience all Egypt has to offer"
7) Just being in Transylvania
8) The Dairy Queen Peanut Buster Parfait (without the peanuts) in Bahrain
9) Seeing the line up to get into the Gucci store in Singapore after having spent 3 months in third world countries, where the cost of one item at said Gucci store would have fed a family for a month
10) Being back and realizing that this all acutally happened and wasn't just a pleasant dream

Top 14 People to Thank
1) Jason and Sveta for the driver who picked us up from the airport in Moscow, the accomodation and the beer.
2) Olga and Olga's relatives in Volgograd for being so welcoming when we showed up for the wedding, and of course, for the unforgettable Vodka Breakfast.
2) Toby for the incredible glacier experience, the unforgettablely painful 60 kilometre bike ride, the best bread ever made anywhere, the accomodation, and one of the best parties of 2006
3) Valerie for the vegetarian food from Marks & Sparks, the accomodation, and of course the Scrabble
4) Christa and Craig for the coolest accomodation anywhere in Scotland, the packed lunch for our train ride and the Kicking Horse Coffee
5) Malcolm and Jennifer for the Cypriot coffee, the swankiest accomodation of the whole entire trip and the best mini-golf experience ever
6) Mustafa, our guide in Egypt, for being so amazing, so interesting and so willing to answer our bazillion random questions
7) Andreas for the accomodation in Berlin, the yummy breakfast, and the rock climbing experience that we will certainly never, ever forget
8) Klaus, Stefanie, Peter and Anna Dippe for the tour of Dresden and Saxon Switzerland, the great lunch and supper, and for the the 'Whiskas' comment
9) Margarita and Alfonso for being the best Madrid Tour guides, all the food and the beer and the entertainment, and for the 'Germans up your nose' comment
10) Dia and Dia's family in Athens for the accomdation, tour guiding, climb to the lookout point over Athens and the entertainment
11) Jitu for being the most amazing and understanding tour guide in all of India and for the birthday cake
12) Andrea and Eric for letting us recover in the swanky-ness that was the apartment in Phuket - man, did we ever need it
13) Michael, Mylene and Morgan Jane for a truly lovely Christmas, the waterfight on Christmas Day and all that wonderful cheese
14) Simon for showing us all over Sydney and all the coffees and beers

Endings and Beginnings

Hello all,

Well it's New Year's Eve in Sydney and Brad and I are catching a cab to the airport in about 10 minutes. We will be spending the next 20 odd hours in the air - shudder - and, defying all laws of physics, time, space and quantum mechanics*, we will be landing in Montreal also on New Year's Eve...Weird! NB: we are transiting through LAX, which is one of the 
worst airports in the world, and is located in the USA, which is THE most security conscious country in the world, on New Years Eve, which is one of the busiest travel days of the year, so chances of us having an adventure or two while there are quite high...

However, I'm sure that we will end up in Montreal sooner or later and so will end our trip around the world. It has been a wonderful adventure and we can't wait to bore you all to tears with our stories. 

I will update le blog again once we are in Ontario, as I plan to spend 
some of the three dozen hours in the air writing out Top 10 
Lists from the trip, ie: Top 10 Best Moments, Top 10 Most
 Surreal Moments, Top 10 Coolest Fellow Travellers, etc, etc, etc. 

Happy New Year to you all.  I hope 2007 is loads of fun and that we are part of it:)

TK

*Okay, I do understand that we aren't really defying any laws of physics, but you have to agree that it's decidedly bizzare to leave one country at 3pm, fly for 20 hours, and then land in another country at 9am...

I'm Dreaming of a Sunny Christmas

Merry Christmas from a country where it's 30 degress in the middle of winter!

- Ho, Ho, Ho from Michael, Mylene and Morgan Jane, the Australian branch of the
Keefe family. 

Stargazing on Fraser Island

Have I mentioned how much there is to do in this country yet? It's crazy fun.

Here are some photos of our camping trip to Fraser Island, which is actually not an island, but the world's largest sand bar. What makes it even nifftier is that is has an honest to goodness rainforest growing out of it, even though it is composed solely of sand and not soil.

- Sunrise above the water. (Brad gets credit for these pics as he was the only one who dragged his butt out of bed, well, out of tent, at 4:30am to see the sunrise).

- Our super-cool Team Canada Group loungin by a fresh water Lake Wabbi in the middle of the island.

- Relaxing hard by the Campagne Pools:

Sailing around the Whitsundays Islands...

Hey hey,



Well, as you should all know from the email the other day, we are heading home soon...just three more weeks of living out of a backpack, and then it's back to Canada. The culture shock is going to be something wicked, I'm sure. However, I have no doubt that copious coffee sessions at Tim's while catching up with long lost friends will go far to assage the weirdness of being back home:)



In meantime, we still have about two weeks in the wonderous and wonderful land of Oz and man are we ever enjoying the last legs of this amazing vacation. As I noted in my last blog, Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef was amazing. I thought nothing could match that water and weather, but the Whitsunday Islands were just as awesome. We went on a 3 day, 2 night sailing trip around the Whitsundays and it was surreal it was so beautiful. Yet another cool crew of people on the boat with us made it even better. The water was turquoise blue and the sand was pure white and so soft it felt like flour or icing sugar under our feet. Such a rough life I lead, eh? Sleeping on board the sail boat was a fantastic experience as well.



Check out these photos of the water and the beaches:







- Can you believe there really is water this colour?

- On Whitehaven Beach; the sand was magical

I

- On board the Eureka II - living the hard life:)

Hope Santa brings you everything your hearts desire.
See you in Jan.
TK

AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!

Ohmygoodness!

!!!I went scuba diving today!!!

Shocking, I know...this is not an activity I ever thought I would try, but hey 'never, say never' right? Brad and I went out on a day long Great Barrier Reef trip today, which was absolutely AMAZING. We were intending on just going snorkling, but the guys running the boat trip were so good and nice and professional that we decided to take the plunge (pun definitely intended) and go for a dive.

It was amazingly easy - all I had to do was sink and then breathe. And now I understand what all the fuss is about! So, Leslie and Phil, next time you are planning a diving trip, let us know! Although, having one's first dive trip on the Great Barrier Reef might not be such a good idea, becuase, seriously, what could possibly top these photos:

- Me, with duck feet!

- By far the best picture of Brad ever taken!!

- Green Island

- Me. Just before the dive. Not freaking out. Really...Totally calm...

- Actually in the water! We dove to about 6 metres; we saw clown fish and parrot fish and all kinds of amazing creatures living on the coral. It was AWESOME.

- Sean, Benny, Aiden and Captain Robbie (not shown) - the fantastic crew of the Ocean Free. If you come to Cairns, which you should, you MUST go on a boat ride, and snorkel and dive with this company. Perfect day out!

Lions and Tigers and Demons from Hell, oh my...

One more brief blog about our adventures in Singapore before we start having adventures in Australia.


Here are photos from our wonderful all-day visit (seriously, we spent 11 hours there) at the zoo.

And here are photos from a place in Singapore called Haw Par Villa. It was built in 1937 by businessman Aw Boon Haw for his brother Boon Par - these are the two guys that made millions off Tiger Balm, and this is how Aw Boon Haw decided to spend his profits...The family was Chinese, so this tourist attraction is bascially a massive scale model of all the main figures and stories of Chinese folklore. Most interesting among the models, is the massive exhibition hall that features the 10 Courts of Hell, which depict in violently graphic detail what happens to sinners. Apparently, it is very common for Chinese people to bring thier children here, and man, I don't blame them: I would've been such a well behaved child if I thought some of the below things would happen to me if I misbehaved!

For example, disrespect of elders results in having your heart cut out; lack of filial piety causes you to be ground into mush by a large stone; if you demonstrate lack of filial obedience or cause trouble to your parents you will have your intestines and internal organs pulled out; and last but not least rumour mongering to cause discord among family members results in you being dumped into a wok of boiling oil...

Look at the photos below and be shocked and appalled:

Brad with Crazed Dragon and Psycho Pig

- Crazed Dragon and Psycho Pig's friend - Skitzoid the Seal and Panic the Panda...

- Oh kay...let's be serious here...how many hours of psycho therapy do you think it would take to counteract this image if seen at the age of 3 or 4? Medic rats, carrying a mutilated rat with its paws blown off...what this could represent, I really have no idea.

- Me standing at the gateway to the courts of hell, in between 'Horse-face' and 'Ox-head'. Yes - those are really their names.

Vegemite, Poisonous Jelly Fish, and Expensive Flights

Yup, you guessed it: I am writing from Australia.

How very odd it seems. All this time, all these countries and we have finally reached our last destination! We flew from Singapore to Darwin last night, arriving at about 3 o'clock this morning. We slept a bit and then spent much of this morning at the local Flight Centre trying to figure out how on earth we are going to get back to Canada for less than a million dollars....seriously, the one-way flights to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are coming up at more than I used to sell round trip tickets for...humph...oh well, thank goodness for Mr. Visa, because he will certainly be coming to the rescue today.

Now, we have heard and read from lots of people that Australia has a wide variety of animals that seem to be specifically designed to maim or kill humans...I thought people were exagerating, but that doesn't seem to be the case because we have been in Australia for about 8 hours (4 of which we were asleep) and no less than 6 people have warned us NOT to swim, wade or paddle our toes in the water because of the plethora of Box Jellyfish that like to float near the shoreline and sting people. And, "they will kill you"...not 'maybe' not 'potentially dangerous' but "they will kill you" is what we've been told!

Welcome to the Land Down Under, right? :):)

We will be be tooling about Australia for two to three weeks and then hopping a flight back to the land of Tim Horton's and snow...all quite exciting.

TK

Cool South East Asia Photos

- River Boat on Tonle Sap, the biggest lake in Asia








- Brad and I working on earning some good karma by giving pencils to Cambodian school children












- And I thought the big yellow Ontario buses were a bad way of getting to school...












- Proof that capitalism is taking over the globe: small child selling us cans of coke and beer in the middle of Tonle Sap Lake












- A few pics of the AMAZING Jungle Temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The trees have grown up, over, through and along the ruins of this 900 year old Hindu Temple.

- Brad earning a metric tonne of good karma at the blood bank in Siem Reap. I tried, but apparently, I am a vien-less freak and the nurse could get no blood out of me...d'oh...

- The not so beautiful sights of Cambodia: the below two shots were taken on The Bad Day in Phnom Penh.

- Our great and shockingly cheerful Cambodian guide, Sareoun, and the rest of us having an excellent home cooked meal.

- Enroute to VietNam, this is an old-school river barge floating down the Mekong.

- Me on a motor cycle in Chau Doc, Viet Nam. Who needs helmets anyway, right?

- Brad making friends (read mooching beer) with the locals!

- Enroute to Ho Chi Minh City; ferry passenger taking a, no doubt, well earned break.

- This one is for you Dad! Do you think the total absense of rails and life jackets would meet Transport Canada's safety requirements? (Note: I am standing on the top deck of the ferry, so the drop to the water is about 10 feet down).

- View of Ho Chi Minh at night from the Sheraton....great view and great Singapore Slings!