Hong Kong: Our last spot on our long honeymoon!

Then it was time for our last stop, Hong Kong and the end of our trip was near. We had some problems with Markus' board at check in from Vietnam to Hong Kong. First they wanted 100 USD for oversize baggage but suddenly it was ok and we didn't have to pay extra. We arrived to Hong Kong late in the evening and we took an Uber from the airport to Kowloon where we had our accommodation. It was raining a bit and the building where our guesthouse was located, had maybe seen it best days... The room was tiny but we managed to squeeze in our luggage! 😅  

Inner yard of our accommodation 😂

 Our big room 😉

We had planned to go to check at least Big Buddha and Victoria's peak. When we woke up in our luxurious room, we had first to go and find a breakfast place. We ended up to Starbucks because we didn't find any other cafés in the morning. Edda had reserved a free walking tour for us so we went to the harbor to wander around before it started. We had to buy umbrellas because it was raining on-off all the time. Luckily the rain settled before the walking tour started. It was a young local girl who had been studying in Europe and participated there in free walking tours so she wanted to give those in Hong Kong as well. The company is called "HK Free Walk". Our guide told that the buildings on the other side of the water, on Hong Kong island, are having some kind of war going on. Mainly the bank buildings such as Bank of China, HSBC and some other. Bank of China's building is like a sward ready to cut HSBC and HSBC has cannons pointing towards Bank of China. We found that quite hilarious! 😂 But, it's also good for the architects when they can be creative with the buildings! 

Stairs can be turned into art 😊

The same stairs from above

The building with cannons is under the helicopter and the sward is on the left with zigzag 

Our guide, Michelle

Sometimes people with a hectic and busy life need a nap 😅

After a short history lesson we started to walk around Kowloon area and our guide told about some restaurants and that everything is not as it seems. One smoothie/juice/dessert bar had one herbal jelly with something. Sounds good, BUT! The herbal jelly was made of sea turtles! 😠 They actually use endangered turtles to make jelly! How selfish can people be??? The same place had also some other dessert that was made from female frogs' genital areas fat. Weird stuff!!! We continued and went through a restaurant area that had many restaurants but looked a bit dirty and maybe not so vegetarian friendly. 😜

The entrance to the restaurants

She took us also to a small temple that we would never had found by our self. It was a really old temple and it was made to worship the god of earth. The leaders of Hong Kong had almost demolished it to be able to build new business buildings but destroying a temple brings a lot of bad luck so nobody wanted that and that's why it is still there.

 Entrance to the temple

We were also told about the prices of the apartments in Hong Kong. Totally crazy! The prices vary usually between, wait for it.... wait for it! 15,000 - 25,000 USD per square meter! You have to be a millionaire to buy an apartment in Hong Kong. Well, if you look at the cars on the streets, it looks like there's a lot of millionaires living in Hong Kong. We saw Teslas every third minute and a lot of other expensive cars. We saw during one day more Teslas in Hong Kong than we have seen during our life elsewhere. Later on, we went to have dinner with our guide. It was quite nice and also tasty. The sad thing with Hong Kong restaurants is that many of then offer shark fin soup! 😠 Once again, why are people so selfish and unconsidered!?

Many local foods

Later in the evening we went to see the "famous" light show to the harbor. Our Uber driver told that it's nothing spectacular, but when you are in Hong Kong you should see it. He was right but it was still worth to see it! We enjoyed it even in a light rain.

The next day we had planned to go to Big Buddha in the morning and then to Victoria Peak. We noticed that it wold take around 2 hours to get to the Buddha so we decided to skip it. We went to No1. Coffee for breakfast. They had good coffee and quite good bagels as well. After that we were ready for the Peak. We took the ferry to Hong Kong island (around 3€ one way) and a bus to the top. It was a steep and winding road but we had good seats. Front seats n the second floor! 😊 The views from the top were amazing even if it was not a clear day. There was quite a lot of pollution smoke in the air so it looked like fog. We went also to see the Governor's garden. It was nice to be in a really green without sound of humans. In Hong Kong it's rare! It was also a really hot day and we were sweating again like pigs. On the top we enjoyed the views for a while and saw many couples taking wedding photos. When we had enjoyed the views enough, we took the Peak Tram down. It's an old cable tram that takes you up or down from Victoria Peak if you don't want to take a bus.

 Buildings on the way to the Peak

The view from Victoria's Peak - we were not sure if we saw mist, clouds or pollution...

 Governor's garden and a wedding photo shoot

The train to/from the Peak 

 Big modern skyscrapers surrounding an old small building 

Kowloon area from the sea

When we came back to Kowloon we were hungry. Edda had seen few vegetarian restaurants so we went to find them. The first one we didn't find but the second we found after a while. We got the menu and started to check it. Hmmmm, interesting! They had beef, fish and other meats but also this place offered shark fin soup. They had also crispy vegan chicken! 😅 We didn't stay there and ended up in a Mexican restaurant. Not bad and both of us were full! We had bought few natas for dessert at our guesthouse. 

Burrito and tacos!

We had planned to go to Hong Kong Space Museum to see some movies the next day before we would go to the airport. We woke up to a big thunder! It was also pouring like hell. It was still 7 AM so we hoped it would stop before we wake up. It didn't. We decided to go straight to the airport because it would be too complicated and wet with all our stuff to go around the city. We took our stuff and went just across the street and we had even umbrellas but we got soaked anyway. It was a heavy rain! Then we had a nice 12 hour wait at the airport. We had first to wait around 8 hours to be able to check in our baggage and then we would get to Quantas lounge to enjoy some refreshments. We got some good food at the lounge and it was a really nice experience to fly in business class. Tasty food, wine, chocolate, we could even lie down like in a bed! A good way to end our traveling! Edda had got enough flying points so she upgraded us for our last flight to business class.

 Trying to write on the blog and killing time

Finally at the lounge

Well, what can we say!? It was a long and amazing journey! Once in a lifetime thing. It is both nice and sad that our travel came to an end. We have got so many good memories, visited amazing places, met wonderful people and had fabulous food! Sometimes it was a bit hard, but together we managed to keep the spirit high and overcame all the obstacles we met!

Here's how our rout looked 😊

Thank you for reading our travel blog and we hope you liked our trip and the things we shared. We wish you all the best! Now we go back home and try to start living again as normal people do! We just arrived home yesterday and we hope that the summer begins and we would get a bit more than 17c degrees! 😅 

Over and Out! 😉 

Things to do in Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon in 3 days

Our last city in Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh City or as most call it - Saigon. As we mentioned in our previous post, we went there one day earlier than planned, which then turned out to be a good idea in the end. There was quite a lot to do in Saigon. One thing everyone does is visiting the Cu Chi tunnels that were used during the Vietnam war. We will return to this later on in this post, but below you can see one hole that was used for hiding. It is made a bit bigger now so that tourists can get inside as well 😃

We stayed at LaLuna Saigon, because we had found a good deal online. We were upgraded to a bigger room, which was nice! The place was clean and staff friendly, but we were quite unfortunate to have a road work next to the hotel. It wouldn't be that bad if they would use same working hours as in Finland for example. But these workers worked every night until 1 or 2 AM and started again at 5 AM. Not cool.

Phan Rang: The sunny and windy town without sun or wind ;)

We had a lovely two weeks in Hoi An but now it was time to go to Phan Rang (Thap Cham), the city of sun and wind. Yes, we were going there for a week long kitesurf camp! 😎 Markus had ordered already in Cambodia a new kite board from Core Kites. FedEx was delivering it but they are not that good at delivering stuff in time. Markus' board had got stuck in the customs but FedEx told about it after it had been there already for 9 days... They told that Markus has to pay import taxes and that he needs a licence for some aircraft things because of the kite. Which kite? There's a board not a kite! FedEx was supposed to deliver it to Hoi An but failed, so Markus gave a new address to Phan Rang. He started to be fed up with FedEx! He thought: "Let's hope it is there when we arrive in the evening."

Local fisherman is happy about the no-wind-day

Hoi An, Vietnam, part 2: Marble mountains, My Son ruins, more food, cooking class and full moon festival

There is a big market in Hoi An old town and some parts really don't look that inviting (you will see that later in this post), but the fruit section does. Edda had asked from a local guy how much he thinks mangosteens cost per kilo. He said he had paid 7 USD for one kilo two days earlier. He said they are expensive because it's the beginning of the season. Well, we went to one seller and asked for the price. It was 4 USD/kilo. Jiihaa! So, we bought some mangosteens, mangos and purple dragon fruits. Yammy, they were good. We also learned to see the difference between white and purple dragon fruit: purple dragon fruit has a bit darker skin and the green parts on the outside are a bit shorter.

Hoi An, Vietnam, part 1: delicious food, biking tour, lanterns at night and choosing a tailor for some clothes

When we asked for tips on where to go in Vietnam, everyone always said “Hoi An” first. It should be a nice, cozy town with a river and lanterns that light up in the night. We also heard that it’s the place for tailor-made clothes in Vietnam. Our original plan was to fly to Hanoi and come all the way down to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) but we are really tired of changing places all the time. As wonderful it would’ve been to see the entire country, we decided to stay in three places and in Hoi An for two weeks. Usually people stay there for 2 - 4 days, so all locals were always surprised when we told how long we stay in Hoi An. 

Hoi An at night

We had decided to stay in some relaxing place and did quite a lot of research online. Then we found Villa Azumi which is a new villa hotel in Hoi An. This is the first place that really made us feel special for our honeymoon and we maybe also because we stayed there for two weeks. When we came, a beautifully set up room waited for us with food and wine, we were given a 20 minute foot massage and we had a free minibar for two weeks. Cool! The hotel area was relaxing and beautiful as well. It was next to rice fields and we could watch local workers harvesting rice during our stay.

What to do in Siem Reap in 4 days

Then it was time to change place again, this time to Siem Reap, the city of temples. We had planned to visit Angkor Wat, Angkor Tom and some other temples. The sunrise and sunset at the temples should be the thing to do. 😉 

Sunrise at Angkor Wat

We had bought bus tickets from our hotel and the travel time was estimated to be about 10 hours. First we jumped in a small van that took us just a bit before we changed to a another van. Luckily this had air condition because the first one didn't and it was really hot in the van. It took about four hours to Phnom Penh where we had to change to another buss. There was a Dutch girl, Abi, in the same bus and she was also going to Siem Reap. When we arrived to Phnom Penh, we were taken to a bus station and put to a local bus. It looked like it would break down any time. Well, we had been driving for two hours but managed to get further only 50 km, and, YES, the bus broke down...😈 

Kampot: Abandoned buildings, pepper farm, kitesurfing, celebrating birthday and a lot of rubbish everywhere

We had a bit difficulties in deciding our second destination in Cambodia. We knew we would end in Siem Reap but where to go after Phnom Penh? We had received recommendations for the island of Koh Rong Samloem and we checked that out. It looked beautiful, no doubt about that. But we didn't find any accommodation that we wanted to go to in our price range... People were complaining a lot about generator noises, power cuts and other things. Had we not been on Gili Air earlier, we might have gone there to experience the island life for a while but we didn't feel the need at this point. We started googling and came across a river town, Kampot. It seemed that there could be some things to see and do, so we decided to go there. We left Phnom Penh in the middle of Khmer New Year (it lasts for 3 - 4 days), so there was very little traffic and our trip in a minibus took maybe 2,5 hours from Phnom Penh to Kampot. We arrived in Kampot and the first thing we saw was a gigantic durian fruit statue in the middle of a roundabout. Quite cool, actually!

We stayed in Kampot for six nights. Originally we had planned to stay five but then we would've used Edda's birthday for traveling and that didn't sound that fun. 😁 Edda had found some restaurants on TripAdvisor and one of them was Riki(tiki)tavi. It looks very nice and inviting from the outside, as you can see in the picture below. Kampot is known for its peppers and Rikitavi had a Kampot pepper burger that Markus had to try. It was very good. Rikitavi also had happy hour every day from 5 to 7pm and we tried their Kahlua ice coffees. They were delicious! And when you get two for 3,50 USD, it's even better!

Phnom Penh: Killing fields, rooftop pool, food and Khmer New Year

From Bali we continued to Cambodia. We flew through Kuala Lumpur and had to stay overnight at the airport. We had slept already many times at airports so we decided to take a room from an airport hotel that actually was inside the terminal. It was just a 30 sec walk from our arrival gate! 😁 Then one more flight and we were in Phnom Penh. We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel. The traffic was chaotic and it looked like the whole city is under construction. Our hotel, Aquarius Hotel, was very nice and it had a cool rooftop pool to relax in. They had even upgraded us a bit so we got a room with a balcony. 😉

Nice view from our pool

Bali, part 3: volcano hikes, toxic sulfur smoke, dolphins at sunrise and meeting up with friends

One night we were hoping to find something to help our sweet tooth. 😋 We drove around with our scooter and checked menus of different restaurants. One had a massive list of different types of cakes and we decided to give it a try. The restaurant is called Cafe Batu Jimbar. We ordered some chocolate mousse cheese cake and coconut pie (never seen that before) and both were so delicious! Edda couldn't stop thinking about the chocolate mousse cake for the next few days!

Then, all the sudden, it started to rain heavily. We were wondering whether if we would wait or go. Well, the rain might take a while so we decided to go. In the video below you can see that in just a short time the streets were covered in water! (sorry about the bad quality in the video)

New Year 1939, monsters, crazy traffic, stealing monkeys and more in Sanur-Bali

Then it was time to go to Sanur. We had heard about Ogoh-ogoh festival and Nyepi (the silent day). It was the Balinese New-Year and it was just after few days from our arrival to Sanur. That was going to be interesting.

One of the monsters we saw during Ogoh-ogoh festival

We had bought bus tickets to Sanur for just over 3€/person from the tourist info in Ubud. We were a bit early at the bus station so Edda got an brilliant idea, lets buy some ice cream while waiting! 😂 When our ride came, it was a bit of a surprise. There was no bus, but a jeep. Well, that suited us. It had a good ac and it's smaller than a bus so it gets easier through traffic. It took us about one hour from Ubud to Sanur. The "bus" ticket was only to the center of Sanur, even if the driver had to drive by our place to get to the next one. Well, it was not that expensive to get the driver drop us to our Villa, about 3€. 

Ubud: earthquake, rice fields, temples, rafting and more!

So, after island life on Gili Air we headed down to Ubud, a city in Bali inland. We had heard from many people that it would be a nice city with a lot of yoga and good restaurants. We went there for five nights to explore what the surroundings would have to offer. 

When booking hotels in totally new places, downside is that you don't know which location would be the best one. We booked a room at Pajar House Ubud because it had received good recommendations and it looked nice in pictures. The downside was that it was rather far away from the city. BUT, the hotel had a brilliant shuttle system. When we came to the hotel, we got an old Nokia mobile phone (Edda even remembered how to unlock it! 😂) and we could always call their reception or driver when we needed something. E.g. every time we were in the city, we called the driver when we wanted to come back and he picked us up. For free! Cool.

Vacation from traveling! Indonesia: Gili Air

Hooooolidaaay! Ceeeeelebrate!.... 😂 After six weeks changing place every second day in NZ and few days in Sydney, and long flights, we arrived to Indonesia! Our holiday destination. We had decided to stay only in three different places here. We are going to just relax, take it easy and enjoy our stay!

When we arrived to Denpasar, the capital of Bali, we started to hear "taxi", "taxi, "taxi"... We had checked that an airport taxi would cost around 30€ - 35€ to Sanur. That was way too much. Our friend Minna, who "lives" in Bali for the moment told that the blue taxis are quite cheap but we would have to walk a bit out from the airport. Then there was Uber, but we needed internet so we bought a local prepaid sim card. Luckily they hadn't blocked Uber from the airport as many places did in Latin-America.

Few days in Sydney: KOI dessert bar, coastal walk, walking tour, swimming and "inte gå" ;)

Since our flight from NZ to Indonesia was through Sydney, we asked Kilroy Travels whether if we could stay few nights there and it worked out fine. That was nice since Edda had never been there before and Markus' last visit was a long time ago. We didn't have any expectations for Sydney - we just wanted to walk around and we looked forward to seeing Edda's friends, Anki and Jocke and their son Theo. 😄 

 Teaser for this post 😀

When we first arrived we went to Judith's place - the Dutch girl we met in NZ. She is staying in Sydney for a while and we decided to walk around the city together. And we got to put our luggage in her room for the day which was great! Judith showed us where to buy a metro/bus/ferry card and showed us a bit of the city center. 

Last 3 places in NZ: Hanmer Springs, Akaroa peninsula and Christchurch

We are a bit late with our blog. We are now sitting in a plane flying through Kuala Lumpur to our next destination, Indonesia, and still writing about NZ… Well, it’s actually a quite tough job to write, especially when we have been changing places quite a lot. Now we are going to have some holiday from traveling and just relax in Indonesia. But now back to NZ. As we wrote in the last post, we were making knives and that we were a bit worried how long it would take to finish them because of the power cut. We had still to drive to Hanmer Springs that night. We finished early enough so that we manage to arrive to HanmerSprings around 9 pm. We checked in to a really nice hostel, Hanmer Backpackers, and had dinner.

Turquoise river in Hokitika and Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki and a lot more!

After visiting Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, it was time to continue our trip on the West coast. There were again fantastic views on the way! We stopped at one bridge where the water underneath was turquoise again. We saw other people who had also walked on the bridge to take some photos of the river. We were wondering why all of them ran back. Well, we walked on the bridge as well and then we understood why they ran. Sandflies! So many sandflies! We ran back too!

One place we wanted to visit along the way was Hokitika George. It is a river so turquoise and milky, it's hard to believe if one doesn't see it oneself. We walked a short bit in the forest and crossed a bridge and came to the beautiful river. We had heard that there would be a lot of sandflies as well, but we seemed to be lucky. We maybe saw one. We sat on the rocks and just watched the river because we knew that it would be the last turquoise river we would see in NZ. 

Wanaka, Glaciers and a bit of West coast with the #¤*@%§! sandflies!

When we came in the evening from Tekapo to Wanaka, we knew that we probably would have to sleep in the car because we had thought we would stay in Tekapo. In Tekapo the situation was the same, no accommodation under 100€. We drove close to Lake Hawea where we had our next accommodation. We found a nice spot next to Havea lake away from the town. Markus fixed our mosquito net to one car window so we would get fresh air. It was a quite warm night, 20c. We had a nice view over the lake but it was a trap! In the morning after our breakfast, we brushed our teeth and spitted out from the car. We had the door open for about 10 sec and we were immediately attacked. We got about 40 sandflies inside the car! A small panic started to grow! We moved the car away from the grass, jumped out and sprayed the car from the inside. We waited for a while outside but it was quite challenging because of the million sandflies. When we had "won" the fight with just minor injuries (just few bites) we headed to our next place where we had a bed! 

 Our equipment for the night in the car 😜

Beautiful Milford Sound, breathtaking Lake Pukaki and Tekapo and majestic Mt Cook

We were in Cardrona and we were thinking whether if we should drive to Milford Sound or skip it entirely. It was still about 4,5 hours of driving one-way without any stops. And we knew there would be many stops along the way. We had heard from everyone that it's a beautiful place so we decided to make the drive! So we started to drive towards Milford Sound, which again, is not a music festival, even if it sounds like one. 😄 It is a place with fjords and mountains. We had booked a boat tour including a kayak tour and a tour in an underwater observatory. We will come back to these later. On our way we stopped here and there, because the road from Te Anau to Milford Sound is filled with sights. But first we stopped when we saw a river and we thought it would be a perfect spot for lunch. This time - cold rice and peanut butter sandwiches. 😝 We might have a break from peanut butter after this trip! But luckily they sell the ones that don’t have sugar or salt in them here!

Family time in Arrowtown, Queenstown and Cardrona

After Dunedin it was time for Queenstown and spending time with Markus’ parents. We had tried to find accommodation in Queenstown with no luck. It’s almost impossible to get accommodation within two weeks from there. Luckily Markus parents stayed in Arrowtown, a small city next to Queens and they had space in their room so we could sleep there. Unfortunately there was space only for one night so we had to find another place for the next night. We found only one place for four people in the area. It was in Cardrona, 40 min drive from Queenstown. Crazy, we would say!😵

A dam on our way from Dunedin to Arrowtown