Christmas and on the road again...

Happy New Year to all of you who might wonder what happened to this blog!

The plan was to have a mobile internet connection while travelling around, but Telstra (the biggest Australian internet provider) have let us down. This means that I don’t have internet at all times, and I have had to prioritize getting some work done whenever I get internet.

But finally, a little blog post is coming your way again! Still in Australia, but only for 8 more days now. Since last time I wrote, we have celebrated Christmas in the most Australian way we could. This included crackers, duck and Christmas pudding on Christmas Eve. We were invited for dinner at Alistair’s lovely parents, and got to meet the whole family, and experience the Byrom banter!

Christmas day we spent the morning around Joanne and Roberts (Alistairs brother) place, having champagne breakfast, with fruit, croissants and homemade muffins. There were opening of presents by the Christmas three, and lots of happy children with brand new stuff. Later in the day we had lunch with friends of Alistair, Bryan and Heather and their two sons Lloyd and William. There we were served lovely cocktails and amazing seafood. For pudding we brought Norwegian Success Tart, and it was a great success…..

On Boxing Day it was raining cats and dogs, but that did not stop Alistair, Rupert, Torkild and Erlend from taking part in the yearly Boxing Day Bash, which is a BMX bike race in the park. This involves racing down hill, without being allowed to pedal along the way. There are heats of two competitors, and then at last the big final. Torkild made it to the quarter finale, competing against grown men who take their cycling seriously!! However on this day, it is a fair amount of beer involved as well (not for the kids).

Christmas was definitely different, and I had a few moments of missing the winter wonderland, and the family at home, but we were so well taken care of by our friend Alistair and his family and friends that we could not have had a better Christmas in Australia!

While we were waiting for the rain to stop in Brisbane after Christmas, we checked out the city, and escaped from the weather by doing an art gallery round. I don’t know if the exhibition we saw at the Gallery of Modern Art is travelling the world, but if it is, check it out http://qag.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/21st_Century

Around new year we had a couple of beautiful days in Girraween National Park, a popular hiking area with the Australians. Fantastic rock features are spread over a huge forest area, creeks and waterholes are there for us to cool down and have some fun in, and there are some bigger rocks to climb as well. I did my first climb outside in about four or five years, and I can still do it!! The boys had fun too, venturing into caves, jumping from one rock to another, sliding down a creek, checking out the cicadas “humming” away, and discovering giant ants.

Happy New Year to all of you who might wonder what happened to this blog!

The plan was to have a mobile internet connection while travelling around, but Telstra (the biggest Australian internet provider) have let us down. This means that I don’t have internet at all times, and I have had to prioritize getting some work done whenever I get internet.

But finally, a little blog post is coming your way again! Still in Australia, but only for 8 more days now. Since last time I wrote, we have celebrated Christmas in the most Australian way we could. This included crackers, duck and Christmas pudding on Christmas Eve. We were invited for dinner at Alistair’s lovely parents, and got to meet the whole family, and experience the Byrom banter!

Christmas day we spent the morning around Joanne and Roberts (Alistairs brother) place, having champagne breakfast, with fruit, croissants and homemade muffins. There were opening of presents by the Christmas three, and lots of happy children with brand new stuff. Later in the day we had lunch with friends of Alistair, Bryan and Heather and their two sons Lloyd and William. There we were served lovely cocktails and amazing seafood. For pudding we brought Norwegian Success Tart, and it was a great success…..

On Boxing Day it was raining cats and dogs, but that did not stop Alistair, Rupert, Torkild and Erlend from taking part in the yearly Boxing Day Bash, which is a BMX bike race in the park. This involves racing down hill, without being allowed to pedal along the way. There are heats of two competitors, and then at last the big final. Torkild made it to the quarter finale, competing against grown men who take their cycling seriously!! However on this day, it is a fair amount of beer involved as well (not for the kids).

Christmas was definitely different, and I had a few moments of missing the winter wonderland, and the family at home, but we were so well taken care of by our friend Alistair and his family and friends that we could not have had a better Christmas in Australia!

While we were waiting for the rain to stop in Brisbane after Christmas, we checked out the city, and escaped from the weather by doing an art gallery round. I don’t know if the exhibition we saw at the Gallery of Modern Art is travelling the world, but if it is, check it out http://qag.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/21st_Century

Around new year we had a couple of beautiful days in Girraween National Park, a popular hiking area with the Australians. Fantastic rock features are spread over a huge forest area, creeks and waterholes are there for us to cool down and have some fun in, and there are some bigger rocks to climb as well. I did my first climb outside in about four or five years, and I can still do it!! The boys had fun too, venturing into caves, jumping from one rock to another, sliding down a creek, checking out the cicadas “humming” away, and discovering giant ants.

Someone knows how to relax on the top of a mountain

Torkild doing a bit of rappelling.

After our trip to Girraween, our time in Queensland was over, and we rented a car and set off in the direction of Sydney, with a few stops planned on the way. Our new friends from Christmas day, Heather and Bryan had greatly recommended a coastal holiday place called Yamba. We have just spent two lovely days there, and could have easily stayed for a week or two if time allowed. Yamba has about five gorgeous beaches, and surfing at all levels, cute little shops, lovely food and a nice vibe.  We had our best day surfing in Yamba, and we did not want to leave. When I find a pretty little town in Europe, I always leave with a feeling that I can always come back, when we left Yamba we were sad that we might never come back again.

Evidence: I can surf!

Erlend makes surfing look easy!

Rupert can do it too!

Time to head for the mountains now. The Blue Mountains are our next stop before we end our journey in Sydney.

Erlend made a new friend in Brisbane.

This guy came to see us in the garden.



Finally we got to see a Cassovary.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !



Sand, Sun and Surf

After days of sun, sand and surf, the rain finally caught up with us in Australia. It really doesn’t matter much as we are nicely settled in Alistair’s parent’s holiday home, a couple of hours north of Brisbane, in a little town named Coolum.

This has been the perfect place for the Hanna family to do our third session of surf lessons. So far we have tried the surf in Norway, Portugal and Australia, and it is only getting better. Looking forward to more surfing after Christmas, as we are all getting the hang of doing some small turns now. Of course where there is surfing there are also the surf shops. With a 20% sale on before Christmas, we have spent some of our Christmas money on stylish surf clothing, so it was a good thing we decided to head out of here for some adventures on Fraser  Island, before all our money is spent.

Fraser Island is the world’s biggest sand island. The sand comes in many different beautiful colours, and it also sticks to everything you wear and everything you bring! We had a wonderful time on Fraser. The driving is an experience in itself, and you can only go there by a sturdy 4 wheel drive. Fortunately Alistair was able to borrow his parent’s land cruiser, so we could have some fun. The beach is the motorway, and the inland roads are deep and bumpy sand tracks. Alistair knew what he was doing, Ru soon got the hang of it, and me and the boys enjoyed being passengers, although I did worry we were going to be swept off to sea at times, or that we would have spinal injuries from all the nasty bumps.

Except for all the sand, Fraser is known for its beautiful inland lakes.  We visited 3 of the lakes, and two of them only reachable by foot. It was gorgeous swimming, but I must admit we got as soaked walking there, from sweating, as we did from jumping in the lake. Walking in sand is hard work!

Seeing the lakes makes it easy to understand why the aboriginals called the island “paradise island”. Now the area is called Great Sandy National Park. Isn’t it a lovely name? Great SandyJ

Our meeting with Australian animals continued on Fraser, as the island is the only place in Australia which still has pure bred dingoes. Unfortunately the dingoes are known to go after human scraps, and have become quite aggressive at times as they want to dominate humans and especially children. Luckily our encounters were only through the car windows as we drove along the beach. Lovely looking dogs, but I wouldn’t like to meet one with a sandwich in my hand.

                                                GOD JUL !  MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Fraser highway

Ru and our generous host Alistair :)

Ru enjoying the sandblow

Boys running for the lake

Amazing clear water

Family photo with sensible hats!

  

Atherton Tablelands

Never heard of the place. The Tablelands?! But again we have landed in paradise. It’s green and lush, and it a place full of volcanic craters filled with water. We stay in a camp site by Eacham Lake, and we have driven through charming little villages with adorable names like; Youngaburra (where Solli ended up doing some speedy wine tasting, and buying a bottle of Emu’s Wish), Mareeba, Malanda and Millaa Millaa.

Yesterday we explored deep craters, pretty waterfalls and small and large lakes. On a short stroll looking for tree kangaroos we came across a tiny lake full of turtles. They were obviously used to being fed, as they all swam towards us as we stood on the edge. They were tiny turtles with cute little heads sticking out of the water. I love turtles, and seeing them in the wild, made my day.

It’s difficult being outside (or even inside) without coming across some, for us new and exciting animals or insects.  A kangaroo crossed the road while we were driving today, a pelican swam on the lake we went swimming in and insects attack us all the time. We quickly decided not to buy any sugary cereal again when we saw the numbers of sugar ants that were feasting on our honey roasted muesli one morning.

As we arrived in the campsite we are staying in now we had some serious animal action. Torkild came running to the cabin from the reception area, “ they are catching a snake! come and look” . We headed towards the reception, but unfortunately we missed the real action as the snake was already in a bucket with a lid. The camp site manager had caught a snake by the communal bathroom. He said he normally deals with small snakes and pythons himself by stepping carefully on them, and picking them up behind their heads. We had a little look at this one in the bucket, and then it was driven off to a new territory in the forest.

Just got offered to stay an extra night for free at this wonderful campsite !!!That means getting up really early tomorrow morning to travel to Cairns airport, but it also means that we can spend the money saved on going out for a meal. A bit fed up of home barbeques now:)

Going to see our friend Alistair in Brisbane next, and hoping for some good surf!

Our cute cabin, with no snakes or spiders...

...but plenty of these lovely creatures.

Ru and Erlend playing at Mossman Gorge. Very strong current after a thunderstorm in the night.  

This Brush Turkey is looking for food among our stuff.

Boyds Dragon 

I want more butterflies in my garden!

Very deep vulcanic crater. Did not go swimming here...

Millaa Millaa waterfall. We went for a swim here :)

Reef and Rainforest

A week and a half into our Australia journey, and we have done so much, and spent sooo much money. I don’t know how we can ever top our experiences here, or how we can cut down on the spending.

Great Barrier Reef was more than I ever expected. I have never really done proper snorkeling in the past, so having this as my first experience was maybe not wise, as it will never be the same anywhere else. The colours, the corals, the fish, it was breathtaking (and sometimes forgetting I was snorkeling, I did smile under water or open my mouth in amazement, and then very quickly out of breath…).

I did not know that fish came in so many of my favourite colours; blue, turquoise!,, blue-green… Beautiful! At one moment I was thinking, maybe I should have a fish tank at home, but no, luckily I came to my senses, it will not be as good. And of course a fish tank will not accommodate the two big sharks we swam over at one of our snorkeling sites. I was guessing they were about 1 metre long, but talking to the biologist onboard the boat, he confirmed that these sharks were between 1,60 -1,70 m long. Torkilds size in other words!

Talking of Tork, he did his first dive on our day at the reef. He had to go through a long info session about how you can easily make mistakes, and basically kill yourself while diving (he keeps talking about how easy it is to puncture one’s lungs while diving…), but he still dived in style!

Just back from a two nights stay in the Daintree Rainforest. To have a bit of contrast we went from staying in an apartment at a resort with 3 swimming pools, to staying in swag tents in a cheap campsite. Interesting experience, especially wading through the cane toads to go to the communal bathrooms at night. But the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation was all worth it. We did a day of homeschooling at a discovery centre, on canopy walks, learning about some of the different trees, plants, vines, birds, butterflies, and we kept looking out for the local Cassowary. We did see some amazing butterflies; Blue Ulysses, Metallic Starling, White lipped Green Tree Frog, big unidentified lizard, but no cassowary. The Cassowary is a huge bird, similar to an Ostrich, they can be as tall as 2 meters, and weigh about 60 kilo. They are endangered, and local to the Daintree Rainforest. They also tend to run out onto the roads, just like our elks, so there are warning road signs everywhere.

Today we went on another scary adventure. Crocodile Safari! The banks of the Daintree river were searched for any signs of crocodiles, and we got lucky. At the end of the safari we had spotted 5 crocodiles, from a small 20 month old baby, to a 4 meter long female. All of them staring straight at us from the river edge a few meters away. As an extra bonus we did see a little python snake curled up on a branch just above our heads.   

While we are counting animals, I must not forget that on our little stay in Melbourne we actually saw 1 Koala and about 15 Kangaroos without going to the zoo. Did not expect that on our little city break in Melbourne, but on a Sunday walk just outside the city, that is apparently quite normal!



Erlend in his stingersuit.



Sol ready to snorkel.

Tork is taking learning seriously in the rainforest.

Our swag tent.

T

Legg til bildetekst

Cape Tribulation.

Spot the crocodile!

Ru cooking kangaroo!

It is hard to find the words....

Angkor Wat at sunrise. It was only us and 1000 other people there!

….to describe Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. One fact is that Angkor Wat is the worlds biggest religious building. We were all really impressed, and after 7 hours we were also really “templed out”! A beautiful day in amazing surroundings. We will let the photos speak for us.

Outside Bayon.

Bayon. We really liked this temple. The king who had this made loved himself. He preetnded all the faces were of a god, but really they all portrayed himself.

Ta Phron. Where the jungle is moving into the temple.

Business trip to Paradise Island - (with mosquitoes..)

In Cairns, Australia now, but continuing with the backlog of post, as I have internet at the moment. Off to Great Barrier Reef tomorrow….

My first ever visit to a volunteer conservation project was to the island Koh Rong Samleom.  In the Lonely Planet described as “ a paradise with mosquitoes”.

At Koh Rong Samleom the volunteers take a diving certificate within their first week, and then they are ready to take part in the marine research project. The project focuses on documenting reef-bleaching, population counts of sea horses and identifying fish and other sea creatures. Since the start of the project three years ago, the volunteers and project staff have identified 94 new fish species and added them to the official Cambodian register of sea species. The project has also successfully pushed the government and local authorities to protect the reef from fishing with nets and other harmful fishing methods. Hardly any of the volunteers have a science background, but they are still able to contribute amazingly on the project, with a little bit of training along the way. I am very impressed!

Only staying  for 1,5 days, we did not have a chance to learn to dive or to do any research ourselves, but we put some snorkels and masks on and swam out to the reef. No wetsuits needed as the water held 29 c degrees. We had been warned of the scary sea urchins, and of course the first thing we encountered was a huge spiky sea urchin! Getting over the initial scare, we enjoyed the tropical fish and a beautiful blue clam embedded in the coral.

On land we hung out with the volunteers, had a beer and coke in the small village (population of 200), kept huge geckos for pets in our bungalows, saw a newly slaughtered dog!, had bucket showers, slept under mosquito nets, but had plenty of mosquito bites!

Wish we could have stayed for longer, but  I am not complaining, as a business trip does not get much better than this.

The fishing village

Our pet!

Our neighbourhood. Tork and Erlend outside their bungalow.

The Orphanage Visits

Ok. Finally some working internet connection. Our first post now, and maybe I can post a bit more tonight when we have a short sleepover in Thailand:)

Finally got some time to write. Sitting on the Mekong Express Limousine Bus service to Siem Reap. The Cambodian romantic music videos are playing on the tv screen, the air con is a bit too cold, and we have eaten our second breakfast , a deep fried sausage roll and a greasy muffin.

So far our stay in Cambodia has been a lot of travelling from place to place. Finally we are headed for the holiday part of our trip here, as the last few days have been work for me, with husband and boys tagging along.

Projects Abroad works with several orphanages, schools and organisations in Phnom Penh. I was taken on a round of three orphanages. On my first day I was picked up by the director in Cambodia, Pises, to go and see the apartments where the volunteers live. I was pleasantly surprised by the facilities. They have their own cook and security guys, and best of all a roof terrace to chill on those hot evenings. From there I was taken by a moto  (small motorbike or moped) to go and see the first orphanage. I was told the volunteers had a choice of going by moto or tuk-tuk , and that it was mostly the middle aged volunteers that chose tuk-tuks. Still in my thirties, it had to be by moto for me!

The traffic!! Total chaos at first, but after a few minutes  on the back of Sophans moto, it becomes clear that even if there are no rules to be followed, there are some unwritten traffic rules. Rule number one: Lexus SUV’s always have the right of way. There are quite a few of those big monsters in such a contrast to the tiny motos with complete families sitting tightly together. But the big cars are excellent for using as a shelter when crossing a junction in the same direction.

The first orphanage I visited was a huge state run orphanage with 118 mostly disabled children and children with hiv/aids. It was clean, tidy, the children had beds, looked clean themselves, and both children and staff looked happy. The director told us that the reason why they ended up with so many disabled children  was that the privately owned orphanages and NGO’s did not have the resources or funding to take care of children with special needs. The day before they had just received two more children after the social services had called nine other homes to ask them to take in two small children who were found walking the streets on their own, but none of the other homes would take in more children at that time.

This home has a physiotherapy department where the disabled children receive regular treatment and training. A lot of the children have cp and need training every day. I met some excellent physio-volunteers doing a great job, and exchanging their skills with the only two physioteraphists employed by the home. Some long term volunteers have even set up a sensory room for the children to enjoy! Most of these children are not orphans, they are abandoned. Parents choose to give up their children out of lack of resources, whether their child is disabled or not.

At the next orphanage I went to I met a four month old baby who was abandoned by his mother only two hours after he was born. She left him at the maternity clinic. It is assumed that she could not pay her hospital bill, and walked out leaving her baby behind. This orphanage was much smaller. 44 children live there and in addition the NGO which has some funding from the Netherlands does social work among prostitutes and young people with hiv/aids.

At the last orphanage I visited, I took Rupert and the boys along. This looked like the poorest orphanage out of the three. They have no permanent funding, so there is a constant struggle to provide for the children. The home was run by one man and his wife, and a few staff with the help of a couple of volunteers. I asked the director, who owned the orphanage, and he told me it was his own NGO. He grew up in an orphanage himself, and he was allowed to go to school, he felt he had a good life, and when he met Jesus, he felt so lucky that he wanted to help children himself. Now he lives and works day and night at his own creation. He has no money, but there was a sparkle in his eyes when he was talking about how he managed to send all of his 77 children to school.

Two Dutch girls were volunteering at the orphanage. They had done some fundraising at home and collected money for a water filter system. Now it was hanging on the wall, bright and new, and the hope is that fewer of the children becomes ill, as the girls were saying that the children were sick regularly, and that there is no money to take them to a clinic. Often the volunteers will pay out of their own pockets to take children to see the doctor. The volunteers and the girls had gone to buy the filter system together, and with some negotiation they managed to get two for the price of one. There were lots of happy children drinking water  from the new system on the day we visited!

The boys handed out some sweets for the children, they played with marbles with some of the boys , we had some photo sessions, looked at the bedrooms, and within an hour we were out of there. I think it is difficult for my boys to grasp the reality that these children live in. They were happy children when we were there, but there are not enough beds for all of them.  I only noticed one bag of rice and the chickens rummaging around hardly had any meat on them. We spoke about the bathrooms, three bathrooms to share between 77 children. At our house we are four, and we fight over minutes in the bathroom in the mornings. The boys spending far too long in the shower, me wanting to put my make up on and the boys bickering over space in front of the mirror when putting their hair wax in. We agreed that there was no time or need for hair wax in these conditions.

Hmm....should we take one home?

No need for common language to play with marbles

Rupert learning the marble game

Torkild and Erlend love the tuk-tuk rides!