Heidi & Lily's Great Escapes Adventure

30th April - Depart Paris - Iceland - Hello NY

2010-05-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

We left Paris on Iceland Air and we flew to Iceland. We were only there for about 1 hour and the city is to far away for us to have visited. We ran around trying to buy food for the flight with the left over Euro as Iceland Air does not serve food on international flights- you have to buy it. When you attempt to buy food they are sold out of anything that you might even be tempted to eat. We ended up having a picnic on the floor of the airport. We were all concerned about the Volcano but itwas well behaved and did not interfere with our flight.
Many hours later we arrived in New York. We had to wait quite awhile at the airport for the bus to arrive- much to Bill's annoyance. The hotel was magnificant and we put our suitcases in our room and headed across the road to an Italian restaurant. Then it was off to bed. We have to meet Bill at 8.00am tomorrow for our next challenge. Our room was a full suite with a living room and bedroom. It was so palatial that when Lily first went into the room she couldn't "find" the bed because it was in a separate room.

When we went downstairs in the morning, the scores that the teams had accumulated put the winners so far ahead that no matter who won New York it would make no difference to the first, second and third place placements so Bill decided to close the game - give out the prizes and take the photographs. I am proud to say that the "Littlepage" family took first, second and third place.

Zoe and Rainey - Lawyers without Borders - took first place for the second year in a row.Heidi and Lily - 100% Bajan - took second place and Christine and Barbara - Barbara and the Barbadian - took 3rd place.

Zoe and Rainey are leaving New York around mid day. Christine - my Mum left immediately for The Zammetts house. Barbara left with her husband to attend someone's graduation so t left only 3 teams in New York. 100% Bajan, Maddogs and Indiana Roadrunners. Bill had arranged a finally dinner at a fancy restaurant and we met back at 6.00pm for dinner.

Lily and I had breakfast with Zoe and Rainey and Kit and Joanne. Then we had tearful good-byes. We had had a terrific time and it was s sad that all the excitement was over and it was time to unwind and head home.
We hooked up with Kit and Joanne and wondered around New York city so that Lily could see some of the big apple. Kit and Joanne were so kind, willing to do things from a 13 year olds perspective. We walked down to Time Square, stopping on the way to buy tickets for the matinee show of Wicked.

Time Square is so full of life and action it really is an amazing place to visit. Then we caught the Metro down to the ferry as we were hopeful to visit the Statue of Liberty. When we got down there, it was an 11/2 hour wait to get through security and that would have made it too late for our show. We took pictures of the statue of Liberty in the distance.

Lily got to see some guys who were doing amazing street dancing

Lily wanted to have her portrait done in charcoal, when the artist started with her eyes and hair I thought it ooked like Lily but find he made the bottom part of her face too heavy. She had a great time posing and walked all over the city with her portrait under her arm.

From there we took a metro to Ground Zero, which is under construction but it still gave me goosebumps to stand on the pavement and know that thousands of people lost there lives there.

Then we took another metro to The Flat Iron building. This is a funny triangular shaped building. It was actually one of the challenges that we had to do if we had done the scavenges.

Then it was time to say more good-byes to Kit and Joanne. I know we will see them at dinner but it will be different with everyone else around. They had been great fun all day and I will miss them. We had to leave so we could make it to the show Wicked in time. I really hope I will get to see them again in the near future.

I had seen Wicked before but this time we had seats in the 6th row so we could see the costumes from up close that they really are phenomenal. Lil was completely fascinated and has come home and listened to the music from Wicked all the time.

When we left Wicked we walked home, stopping to buy a drink and some coffee. We walked right pass where later we would learn that a SUV had been parked as a car bomb. We went and got all dressed up in the clothes that had been shipped to New York by Zoe's office so they were all clean and a little dressier.
Bill had a wonderful dinner. I had lamb and I have never had better lamb. The conversation was light with many funny antidotes about the trip. It was the perfect end to a perfect trip. Both Lily and I have been very blessed to have been given the opportunity to have this experience. It will change Lily for a lifetime and it certainly has given me a totally different perspective on life.

After dinner we decided to meander back down to Time Square to see it at night. The lights are so much brighter and the bill boards so much more impressive at night. Much to our dismay all of Time Square was corded off by the police as some one had attempted to detonate a car bomb but some very efficient street vendors had questioned the parked car and had alerted the police and it had been defused.

W wandered bout for quite awhile with Kit, Joanne and Rebeca. Then back to pack up and get ready for our 4.30am departure for JFK and on to home sweet home.

30th April 2010 - Last Day in Paris

2010-05-07T04:49:00.001-07:00

We got up at 6.00 am to catch the train and get to Gare d' Austerlitz. We are going to take an early morning trip down the river Seine on the shuttle called Vogueo. The weather is lovely, cool but not cold. The shuttle started at 7.00am and we scrambled on board. We are the ONLY passengers at this time in the morning but the river is lovely and the bridges that we go under are spectaular. I am so glad that we decided to make the time for this journey. You get a totally different perspective of Paris. It is kind of sleepy and still trying to wind up to full speed.

Zoe and I decided that we would go to the - Sorbonne (the university in Paris) and engage an international student in conversation.Tell them about your adventures - that was the challenge.

We headed to the train station (remember we had a 3 challenge restriction) so that was to be our second challenge. The train was on the platform and Zoe and Rainey stepped into the train and the doors closed - yup Lily and I were on the outside of the train and it disappeared into the tunnel. The next tran arrived a few minutes later and we continued on to the Sorbonne. There was no sign of Zoe and Rainey. Much to our disappointement all that we walked and everybody we spoke to NONE were students. Finally someone informed us that the university was on holiday and the students were gone. I was so disappointed so much time wasted to no avail. Suddenly a young man walked up to us and asked us if we were looking for a student. We sad yes and we discovered he was the gy that Ze and Rainey had found and seeing us with our scavenge book in hand he had approached us. He was very nice and we got our points - Hurray!!!

Next stop was to visit the Cimetiere du Montparnasse and find 3 tombs Susan Sontag, Serge Gainsbourg and Jean- Paul Sartre. When we departed the train who do we see ahead of us but Zoe and Rainey. It really is a small city. Jean- Paul was easy to find as he was right by the front entrance to the cemetery. The guy who was running the gate gave us a map and pointed out where to find the other 2 graves. Evidently when Kit and Joanne (another team) had gone, nobody knew where Susan Sontag was and they had done all the research on how to find her. By the time we got there the guy marked it on the paper for us. Even with his help she was not easy to find.

Serge Gainsbourg's tomb was covered with flowers but there were also hundreds of metro tickets thrown all over. We thought this was weird until we were told that he had written a song about the metro.

Susan Sontag was actually an American author who had spent most of her life in France, she died in New York city atthe age of 71 but as her wishes she was taken to Paris and buried by her son in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse.

Jean- Paul Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was the first person to refuse tomaccept a Novel Peace Prize and when he died in 1980 it is estimated taht 50,000 people attended his funeral.

IIt was now about 9.15 and we have check in at the hotel for 10.00am. We took off at a run to try and get to "Visit the 59th floor or Frances tallest skyscrapper"...

This building did not open until 9.30am and it was a 5 minute walk to the hotel so be thought it would be a steal to go to the bottom take the elevator up 56 floors walk the last 3 take the elevator back down and be at the hotel with minutes to spare... Think again.. We are in Paris wth the most unmannerly people in the world. When we arrived at the ticket counter to buy the tickets there was a group of about 20 teenagers with their teachers. The teachers were still trying to collect the money from their students and had not even joined the line as yet. The ticket seller would NOT sell us the four tickets until the group had paid. The clock was ticking and these adults painstakingly counting out nickles and dimes to try and get the amount they needed for the group to visit the tower. Eac time we figured great they are finished they came up short and they would go back to the group and collect more money. This went on repeatedly ... finally believe it or not they got it together. The time is now 9.45am .. we hustled on to the elevator and zoomed to the top of the world....out the elevator.... run- scramble and rush up the last 3 flights of stairs. We are all so out of breathe we can hardly breath. The view was out of this world. It is a full 360 degree out look over Paris. It was raining or the experience would have been even more breathtaking.

We took our photos ..looked around... I wish I could have spent more time there... ran back down the 3 flights of stairs....down the 53 stories by elevator and ran at full speed down the road to check in... We made it with 1 minute to spare. I thoughtI was going to be sick with all the adreniline that was pumping through my body.... We had done it all to the very last. We had gained our last 35 points in this game.

We were told we were leaving the hotel at 11.15 to get to the airport. We are flying to New York city via Ieland on Iceland Air. Hey wait a minute isn't Iceand the place tat caused all the confusion in air travel last week when its volcano erupted? What ever... I have never been there and even though it s only a 1 hour lay over at least I can see it through the window.

Lils and I ran down the road and bought some chocolate filled croissants for breakfast and the hurried back to our room to zip up our suitcases and head off to Charles Le Gaulle Airport. What a whirl wind visit of Paris.. We will have to come back and do it at a more leisurly rate.

29th April 2010 (afternoon) - Central Europe – Basal and Paris

2010-05-07T04:35:00.001-07:00

This is a small town which sits on the border of three countries, Switzerland, Germany and France. In fact we were never sure which country we were in at any time. If you bought anything i.e. eating challenges somewhere in Francs you realized you were in Switzerland and if you paid for something in Euro you knew you were in Germany and this all happened on the same street. In Basal we had to split the teams with Rainey and Zoe because of the new 3 scavenge rule but Basal is so small that we were constantly running into them or bumping into each other no matter how hard we tried to be separate. At one point we had to move our bags from the German train station and move them across town by tram to the out of the Swiss/ French station so they were in the correct place for us to catch our train to Paris. These bags are such a trial, at some point you want to literally give them to the next person you see on the street because you are so fed up with lifting and pulling them.

In Basal we only had six things to do. We had to find 2 museums in 2 separate parts of town, in fact the foundation Basal Museum was 15 minutes out of town by tram;' there were suppose to find a Rothko painting, a Monet and identify a picture he had given us. Our luck was that Henri Rosseau was on display and all the Rothkos were on loan to another museum. The unidentified painting was also out on loan so we were only able to see the Monet. This was a huge 3 canvas/one piece painting of Water Lilies. I usually like Monet's water lilies but this one was very dark and dreary. It was displayed in a huge room by itself. There was a large white sofa placed across from the work of art and the end of the room was a huge glass window which bought in lots of natural light. The view out through the window was quite spectacular as well.
We were not allowed to take photos in the museum, infact they took away our cameras.

We then had to head back to Basal and had to find the Picasso room in the KunstMuseum. This was challenge turned out to be interesting to me, even though I am not an art enthuses. At the Kunst there were many pieces of Picasso on display. On the third floor there were about 6 pieces of his work on display , then on the second floor there was 1 piece and on the first floor there was an entire room devoted to Picasso. I had only ever seen the more radical works of art that Picasso had painted. In this display I realized that Picasso's first works were quite normal, for example one of his earlier pieces was a "loaf of bread on a cutting board", he repeatedly painted this piece and you could see the "deterioration" in his work as he got older. The older work of " loaf of bread" was very unrecognizable compare to the first one. I also could not believe that I could stand in a room with a dozen pieces of Picasso's collection. It was kind of cool. I also never knew that Picasso had done so many different works of art.
We were not allowed to take photos here either but I sneeked one.

We also had to find :- the clue stated " In Munster Church one of my favorite humanist lies; to paraphrase him --- intolerance is a bummer. Find his tomb. The man was Erasmus von Rotterdam who died in 1536. We found a large marble plaque inscribed in gold in the church in remembrance of him. Munster church had a neat sundial clock on the side. If you look carefully you can see it on the side above the patterened roof.

Then it was off to the Marketplatz where, we had to buy something in the market, we bought a huge pretzel to eat on the train.

We also had to find something that represented the FC Basal Football Team. There colours are red and blue. I don't think that Basal is so proud of their team because it was very difficult to find anything from the team. We finally found a shirt but it cost $125.00 Euros so we decided to let Lily take a photo wearing it. We caught a tram back to the train station to collect our bags out of storage and get on the train to Paris.
We managed it all and caught the train again with minutes to spare. In fact Rainey stopped to go to the bathroom and we were sure he was not going to make it. In fact he would not have made it if the train did not sit for 10 minutes. We are off to Paris – that is many hours from now - but we are on our way. We are getting much closer to the end of this leg.

The train was so full that we couldn't find our seats so we sat where ever we could find some empty seats but a few stops later some people came and tossed us out of our seat. We realized that it was time to find our purchased seats. There is no none to help you, no conductor to show you where your seats are, the cars have no numbers on them. We knew we had 2^nd class tickets and when we walked all the way through the train we could only find first class cars. We were really lost. Finally someone told us that the very first car, the one 3 cars down through 1^st class was the last 2^nd class car. Who figures, so we struggled down the entire length of the train through hundreds of people to our seats and when we finally made it to our seats they were full of another family, two grandparents, their daughter and a sleeping baby. They were real spread out with their suitcases, maps, newspaper, baby pram and food everywhere. They had made themselves very comfortable and they were very disgruntled when we had the "audacity" to request OUR reserved seat. Here is a familar picture of Lily as she tried to bring her blog up to date.
When we finally made it to Paris hauling our luggage, we stopped and asked directions to our hotel by the local metro. We had to change trains four different times, each time we had to haul our suitcases, backpacks and handbags – out the train up flights of stairs down the next flight of stairs to the next train platform. When we finally got to the closest train station to our hotel and we struggled up the ""final" set of steps, we were dreaming of showers and clean clothes and an end to this suitcase nightmare, when we found ourselves in an enclosed park with a chain link fence 6 feet tall encircling it and no way out. I thought that Zoe was going to start crying because she was so frustrated but we had no other choice but to head back to the station and try another exit. This entailed carrying those miserable bags back down the steps. I had had enough, I was tired and miserable so I stood on the top step and I pushed my suitcase down the stairs, much to all the passerby's amazement. We then trundled through the station again. We finally limped into the hotel, looking very bedraggled and sorry for ourselves. We had one more surprise coming our way - we lined up at the reception to check- in to discover that there are 2 hotels of the same name in Paris and the one we really needed was close to the first train stop, four stations ago. I was so disappointed I wanted to cry. We were all at the end of our nerves, we were all ready to just throw the game and quit. While we stood there looking at each other we realized that 2 of the challenges in Paris were close by, so we checked our luggage with the bag check and headed back to the train station. The one good thing was that both the restaurant that we had to do an eating challenge at was next door and 1 train stop away was the Arc de Defense that was 50 points.

We visited the arch, took the train back and did the mandatory eating at St. Georges, had dinner and then called a taxi to carry us to the right hotel. $150.00 euro later we had driven through the whole of Paris on our way to the right hotel but it gave Lily the opportunity to see some of the famous sights as they whizzed by. We finally got to our correct hotel at 8.00pm.
We had arranged to go to the Moulin Rouge Show for 10.30 pm and to meet up with Zoe and Rainey there. Lily and I were suppose to go out and scavenge. Scavenge what! Lily and I had long hot showers and she spent an hour getting ready for the show. She was so excited that she could hardly sit down. She did her hair, put on a pretty dress and we set off looking like humans instead of bums for the show, feeling quite proud of ourselves. We arrived at 10.30 and watched the show. It was an experience to watch Lily's face, she was so enthralled with the costumes and dancers that she was more fun to watch than the real show.

After the show was finished she did a Moulin Rouge dance on the steps which I videoed for points. It was about midnight at this point and we had plotted that there was a weird or different sculpture very close to Moulin Rouge in the Montmatre Square. We found a statue of a man climbing out of the wall. Someone had even painted his fingernails red. Lily discovered that there was an air vent in the ground and if she stood on it we could take a Marilyn Monroe photo.

It was very dark and a little scary as there was a tent in the corner of the square where people were living. I was praying that I would find a TAXI in this remote part of town, as the metro closes at 12.00a and as luck had it, one minute later a taxi cruised by and we jumped in and set off to do 2 mre scavenges. We ran around the Paris until 1.30 collecting some points, we drove through the famous fashion district with all the Dior and Channel etc stores. She was in her element and kept wishing that Savannah was present to see all the high fashion.

We visited the Flame de Liberty which sits above the tunnel where Princess Diana met her demise. People are still leaving her flowers as tributes. We had a spectacular view of the Eiffel Tower all lit up at night from that bridge. Then we headed back to the hotel where we ordered room service and had "dinner"

We are meeting Zoe at 6.00am in the lobby so again it was a night of 3 hours of sleep. Our bodies are getting so accustomed to little sleep that we will have to relearn normal sleep patterns when we get back home.

23rd April - Sri Lanka -Kandy and Nuwara Eliya

2010-05-05T20:18:00.001-07:00

We stayed at the Queens Hotel next to the Temple of the Tooth, across the road from Kandy Lake. Very old English style, little run down but quaint. I think this is the answer to one of the challenges. It says: Who lives in Queens House. We think it is visitors.
The challenge was :- Take in the daily pujas near The Temple of the Tooth. Puja is the entire ceremony where worshipers bring their gifts and offerings and lay them on the altar. This ceremony starts at 5.30 am. While we were standing in line without an offering other worshippers in the line gave us these locust flowers to use as offerings. They had a wonderful smell.

It is believed that one of Buddah's teeth now resides in this temple, the ownership of this "tooth" has been both political and religious through Sri Lanka history. Whichever city had ownership of the tooth had control over the country. Once a year the tooth is paraded through the streets on the back of an elephant with lots of pomp and circumstance. We had visited the first home of the tooth in Polounawara.

Loud drums beat and pulsate through this ceremony. At one point the temple door to the tooth area was opened and about 20 people were allowed to go into and inner sanctuary, the door closes and everyone else is left outside. The Sri Lankans really take their worship seriously.

We then went out of Kandy to visit the Elephant Orphanage. This is where they take hurt elephant and help them get recovered, they are not rereleased into the wild because they are too friendly to people. There are many wild elephants in Sri Lanka, their biggest enemy is the human and visa versa, every year many villagers are killed by elephants and many elephant hurt and maimed by villagers. One old boy was called Simari, he only has 3 feet as he stepped on a land mine and blew off the other. He looks very old and some of his skin looks like it got scorched but he is there in a safe home with 80 more elephants in his pack. If you look carefully you can see that Simari's front right foot is missing his toes and the bottom part of his foot. He does not put weight on it, he limps along.We were there for feeding time of the baby elephants and got to hold the bottles and feed them. How cool is that ?? This is Zoe feeding the baby with an enormous bottle. This was definitely a highlight but anything with animals always is for me.. It is so unbelievable we will be driving down the road and coming towards you is an elephant or swimming in the rivers below the bridges is an elephant. It's all so neat!!
We took the train down to Nuun Olyb which is very close to Nuwara Eliya. This town is also called Little England. It is amazing in the middle of nowhere in Sri Lanka is an English village with red double decker buses, Tudor house, strawberries and potatoes growing and acres and acres of tea. We are in the Ceylon Tea section of this island. We visited a Pedros Tea factory and the guy showed us which tea leaves to pick.

We posted a card at the post office and had tea at the Hill Club. To be allowed in we had to buy membership for the day.

They were a little reluctant to allow these rassy people in especially Lily as she is under aged. But with a little persuasion in we went to the Old English sittingroom decorated with a fireplace (which they offered to light for us) and pictures of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip hanging on the walls between stuffed and mounted animal heads. Again a very surreal experience. The temperatures up here at very much cooler and it is damper just like England.

Collect another TAXI to drive us to Adams Peak, which is a mountain about 3 hours away. When the TAXI driver discovered he had to travel so far he asked if he could pass home. He needed to get some supplies and a warmer jacket for the drive. He was a Tamil (one Hindus, this country has been in turmoil for many years as the Tamils and the Buddhist fought, I always thought that the Tamils were scary) in a Buddhist country. When we got to his house he invited us in (I did not know that Yoga was a Tamil until after we left his home) and gave us some dinner of rice and some kind of chopped up meat and vegetables.

There was no running water in his house but it had electricity and an older TV set and a sewing machine. They cooked on a wood stove in the corner of the kitchen. His family were so lovely and gracious. We were sorry to leave but we have to be at Adams Peak by 10.00pm because we are not allowed any intercity travel between 10.00 pm and 5.00am so we have to be in place in a rest house at the bottom of the mountain before 10.
We are to climb Adams Peak tomorrow. I am terrified, it is 4800 steps both ways. You have to climb it before dawn. I hope to get to the top. We have just spent hours on a train getting down here with all the people around us telling us the horror stories of climbing this beast. The climb is worth 400 points and we are going to give it a try. I hope I live to tell the tales of this scavenge. I think I am crazy to take Lily up there but she is determined that she can make it and wants to try. So it is Adam's Peak tomorrow in the middle of the night. Pray for me.

29th April 2010 - Central Europe - Freiburg

2010-05-02T13:37:00.001-07:00

When we first looked at the train schedule we thought that we would have to be in Freiburg until 1.30 pm so we could sleep in. But I finally discovered that if we could leave the town by 10.15am we could actually fit in another town called Basal. Freiburg is a bonus city which had about 4 or 5 parts to it. If you don't do all you lose all the points but because it is technically one challenge the two teams could do it together.
The only think that had a time limit was climbing the bell tower of the church. That did not open until 9.30am, could we climb it, run back to the hotel, collect our bags and be on a 10.15 train? Well we decided to try. The first part was to get to the top of a certain walk, see what was there and visit. Well this was a 20 minute hike up hill at the top was a spiral staircase, ice-cream cone shaped tower with 200 steps to the top. Well we huffed and puffed up the hill through the woods.
This was a lovely experience early in the morning. The woods were green and crisp with the dew still sitting on the leaves as the sun had not come up as yet to burn away the dew. The climb up the tower was a little stressful on the legs after the uphill climb but if we wanted to catch that train we had to book it to the top and back down. The tower was very neat from an artistic point of view as it ws a spiral stainless steel staircase being support by these enormous, extremely long and thick tree trunks.

We took a different path down hoping that it would bring us out close to the city gates, the bachles and the church. On the way down we passed this cross just randomly standing there, it was so beautiful backed by the brilliantly blue skies.

We then walked and found the city gate as was required. We had to find some bachles, these are the small little steams that wander through the town . We were also required to learn the legend of the bachles asn as legend has t, if you dip your foot into the backles ( stream) you will marry and remain in Freiburg forever

. We made sure that Lily only pretended and she did not actually get her feet wet, we don't want to lose her to Freiburg:)

Freiburg houses look like something off of a postcard. They have the little streams, the climbing literia flowers and the pastl paint and the shutters etc. So peaceful looking.

The church was still closed so we sat in the town square as the morning market was being set up and eat the food mandatory of currywurst sausage in bread.
We were the first in line to climb the very narrow spiral staircase the 350 steps to the top. The church actually has 3 levels of which you can choose how high you can climb.

We had decided to go all the way to the top to be on the safe side but the church is under restoration and the last section at the top of the steeple was closed. The view was still stunning .

We ran down the steps and ran back to the hotel and caught the train with 2 minutes to spare but we were now on our way to another town called Basal where we could pick up some more points. This day is just clicking together absolutely like clockwork. Basal here we come, suitcases, backpacks, cameras and all!!!!!

28th April 2010 - Central Europe – Munich

2010-05-02T13:35:00.001-07:00

We arrived so late in Munich; we were tired and miserable and had to find somewhere to stay for the night. We walked out of the train station and tried a couple of the places nearby... One wanted to charge us $300 euro for the night. No way, Bill will actually reimburse up to $200.00 US per night. The second place had no rooms available and finally the third had 2 rooms for $85.00 Euros each including breakfast, but no air-conditioning. Outside was very cool so we left open the windows and were extremely comfortable. It in fact had in 3 beds. I guess this is used by backpackers and groups. The beds were comfy and the bathroom clean with lots of hot water. What else can anyone ask for?

Lils and I went to sleep. In the middle of the night, Lily gets up calling out for e, telling me we have missed the bus and she opens up the hotel room door and starts to head off. I jumped out of bed, hauled her back in and settled her back down. The game is getting to her. She got up again in the night worried that she was late for Zoe. It was so funny and she knows she got out of bed in the night but she can't really remember what she did. It was funny but also scary.

We got up early next morning and went all altogether to visit Dachau the infamous Nazi concentration camp. We rented audio guides and walked around for hours reliving the horrors of the war that took place there. How can any human treat another human in this manner is besides me. Below is the memory wall with the promise for all nations that this monstrosity will "never Happen Again", in he square box in front of Lily is the cremated remains of an unknown Jew who lost their life at Dachau.

There is also a photo of the gate of no return, once you were matched through this gate you lost all of your dignity, property, rights and ultimately your life.

Then we went back to the city centre of Munich, had lunch together and encouraged a bunch of people in the beer house to first teach us a beer house song and then to sing the Barbados National Anthem with us. We laughed so much that tears ran down my face. It was so funny to see a bunch of Italian young men singing along with us. unfortunately all of my pictures are in video form. We had to eat the mandatory weisswurst sausage. It looked so unappetising when it first arrived. It looked like 2 white intestines floating in clear water. It tasted better than it looked but still very very bland.
We ate and sang in the oldest and biggest Beer house in tow. This was where Hitler held his first meeting back in the 1940's. Evidently back then around the base of the chandeliers were painted with the red Nazi symbols but those have been painted over with Bavarian scarves. If you look you can see that the scarves do follow the lines of the original Nazi symbols.
Once again because of the rules and regulations we split up and scavenged the city separately. Lily and I walked for miles and miles. One of the challenges was to find all 3 old city gates, well by the time you find all three you have circumnavigated the city. We visited ST. Peters Church and we climbed up 14 flights of stairs ( yes up more steps) up to Old Pete's bell tower which gave us a crows view of the city. Where we could see all the clock towers in the area plus the entire city.

We watch the dancing clock turn midday in the town square. We bought the required items in the market and finally found the staute of Julia ( Juliet from Romeo and Juliet's) statue. This staue was given to Munich as a gift from the city of Veronna.

We lost a lot of time searching for a museum of odd collections which we finally discovered closed about 18 months ago. We visited "the devil's footprint in Frauenkirche church.

We finally visited the Dutch Museum and had to locate one of the earliest globes of the world made by Christopher Columbus , there is one big mistake on the globe and that is it is missing the Americas because they had not been discovered as yet.

When were ready to get a TAXI back to the hotel to meet Zoe and Rainy there were no Taxi's in site so our poor tired feet had to walk another mile or so looking for a TAXI. We were supposed to rent bikes and ride out to a park but we could not find any where to rent the bikes from. Had we rented bikes we would have saved our poor tired feet and made more points. We saw Kit and Joanne on one of our walks. We think they are so neat and are fun to hang out with whenever we get the chance, which isn't often as we go off in different directions every day.

Well we haul all of our luggage back to the train station and off we set to the town of Freiburg. We will again get in too late to scavenge but we will be in place to get going early in the morning. At this point our plans are to leave Freiburg and head for Paris. If we stay in a hotel that costs less than $100.00 tonight we will get 150 points. Freiburg is many hours away by train.

When we arrived we managed to get another hotel for $83.00 Euros which makes us the bonus points. Tonight it is me that gets all confused. When we got into the room the window that we had to leave open was very big and I was worried that Lily might have another dream and climb out so I barricaded it with chairs, suitcases and back packs. Because the windows are open you can hear the trains, people talking and cars going by. I like to hear the sounds so that does not bother me. In the middle of the night I woke up and thought I heard Zoe and Rainy outside the window, so I scramble over the barricade and look out. Three stories down is a blonde woman and a dark headed man putting their luggage in a Taxi. I was so confused that my confuffled brain decided that it was Zoe and Rainey and I started to scream at them through the window asking them if plans had changed. Lily jumped up at all of this commotion and the poor couple down below looked up at me like I was a crazy woman (which at the moment I certainly was). I guess this game is getting to me as well.

27th April 2010 -Central Europe – Linz and Salzburg

2010-05-02T13:34:00.001-07:00

Linz is a beautiful city very picturesque. It was one of Adolf Hitler's favorite places and he spent his school days there. His Nazi movement built a massive iron and steel works there which still employs many of the locals. It is a very prosperous town.

We were only in Linz for about 1 hour. We had to go to the middle of the city and take a photograph of the Dreifaltigkeitssaule or Trinity Column. This is a 2o meter tall column of Marble that was carved in 1723 to celebrate the town's deliverance from war, fire and plagues. It is carved into a spiral shape and covered in little angels and creatures. So not what I had expected. It is very whimsical.

We got a bonus in experiences because also in that square was an large art piece that as erected by the Art School in Linz as an example f there work as they have open week at t5he institute next week. This was a huge piece that looked like an eye; the unique thing is that it was made out of T-shirts. Thousands of T- shirts in different colors were hung to create this art. We thought it was so neat the cab driver thought it was an

abomination

.

Salzburg – the land of Mozart and Sound of Music
We hustled back to the station and went on to the city of Salzburg. One of our Bonus challenges for big points was to cross the border between Austria and another country and prove it. Well when I was reading the guide book I found the neatest thing. It is a tour of a salt mine in Austria that stretches in Germany and during the tour you take a small boat across a lake and into Germany 300 meters below the surface of the earth. So we decided that was neat plan and off we set after a 2 hour train ride.
The most important industry in Salzburg between the years 1587 – 1612 was the mining of salt from the salt mines. This business was run by the most influential archbishop Wolf Dietriech von Raitenau. He fell from power when he lost a dispute with Bavaria over the salt mines. He died a prisoner. We were worried that the salt mine might have been closed when we got there but for once luck was in our favor and we did the tour.
The first thing we did was put on our white Oompa Loompa style boiler suits on top of all our own clothes. The mines are 10 degrees in temperature so these outfits help keep you warm and stopped the dripping salt from wetting your home clothes. Then we got on these funny little trains, they looked like a toy train and descended into the bowels of the earth.

Once we got off the train our guide told us some of the history of the mines and showed us a movie about the archbishop. Then we walked a distance and had to slide down these funny wooden slides. This slide was 27 meters long and looked scary but they were fun.

Then we walked some more and climbed onto a boat on the end of a small lake way down below the earths surface. This boat slowly glided across the lake and into Germany. The lady guide teased us and asked if we had our passports.

Then it was a couple more movies, another 47 meter slide which slide us back into Austria and then back on the funny train to the surface. This was a wonderful experience. It was so well done. I was very impressed. We also saw a replica of a man that they had found buried in the mines. He had been perfectly preserved because he was pickled by the salt. They removed him and took him out of the mines and within days he started to decay and smell. Well they have cleverly replaced a replica in the mine and tell the story.

We drove back to Salzburg city center and split up the teams to scavenge and made arrangements to meet at the required mandatory restaurant for dinner. Lils and I managed to visit the St. Peters Church, ride the funicular up to the old fort, find the chess game in town, took a picture of Lily holding up the world, tried to visit Mozart's house which was closed because we were too late, found some banks and found the first restaurant to eat apple strudel but they were sold out so went to the next for dinner. We met up with Zoe and Rainy, had dinner and then back to the train station to catch a train to Munich. We will get in too late to scavenge tonight but we will be in place to start first thing in the morning...

26 - 27th April 2010 -Central Europe – Vienna Austria

2010-05-02T13:33:00.001-07:00

This is another 6 pointer leg of the competition. At present Lily and I are in first overall in the competition but we are only ahead by 1 point which will not save us in this leg. This leg is where we are given 100 odd challenges and 5 days to make our way across Europe from Vienna Austria to Paris France. We have to be in Paris by 10.00am on Friday. Bill does not mind how we do this but we cannot use an airplane or a private car, no car rentals, no helicopters and we must travel between cities by public transportation i.e. bus or train NOT by TAXI.

When he handed out the booklets in Austria he put a limitation on us and said we were not permitted to start scavenging until 4.30, we had to sleep in that hotel that night. We could not check out of the hotel before 8.00am and we had to have a photo of the clocks behind the reception area to prove we had left after 8.00am. We didn't check out until midday so it was a moot rule for us but we still had to take the photo if not he was docking 300 points. We wait until the required 4.30 pm and set out to find a guide book and a train map etc. We took a TAXI down to the city centre by St. Stephens Church, we werfe suppose to visit either the bell tower or the catscombs but both were closed. The guide book said they closed at 6.00pm but they actually shut at 5.30- zero points. Then we went to Secession museum – closed. The Museum Café – closed in fact it had gone out of business. Then the Kunsthauswein which stated it closed at 7.00pm- you got t it was closed as well. We begged and begged but to no avail. In there was so different it had wavy floors and walls that were covered in bright mosaic art work. The people there were so rude. The problem was that all of these things were mandatory so if we didn't do them we couldn't get the points.

We decided to go to the Fairground nearby which has a giant Ferris wheel, similar o the London eye, called the Riesenrad. This was built in 1897, weighs 430 tones and takes 20 minutes to make a full circle. The cars that you sit in look a lot like train cabooses and the view of Vienna was outstanding with the river Danube running through it. It evidently became famous after the movie "The Third Man" was filmed on it.

We headed back into the city centre and manage to find another mandatory called the Ankeruhr clock. This was very unique created by Franz von Matsch in 1911. The clock does not have hands that tell the time, across the top turns a wheel which carries Roman Numerals and those depict the time the history of Vienna is told by the moving figures that change every hour. Evidently at 12.00 noon all the figures march around and the organ plays. We only saw it change on the hour of 7.00pm. It was very neat.

We called it quits after this because every single thing we tried to do was closed and we were only spinning top in mud. We set out to find the Naschmarket. This is a mile of restaurants so we decided to do our eating challenges there. We had .wiener schnitzel which is a breaded and fried piece of veal (this use to be Zoe's favorite when we use to go and ski in Lech as children) and a non alcoholic drink called Almdudler which is a washy washy tasting drink that is a cross between ginger beer and lemonade.

That ended our frustrating day and we decided to call it quits, head home to bed and start again in the morning. I forgot to tell you guys that we have only been given 3 scavenges a day to do with another team on this leg so Rainy and Zoe and Lily and I are going to scavenge the city until 12.00pm separately and then meet back together to catch a train to the town of Linz. It felt so good to get into bed and know that we could actually sleep without worrying about a wakeup call.

We got up had breakfast and set out at bout 7.30am. Lils and I started by going to the Brunnenmarket which is a Turkish market. It was supposed to open at 6.00am but it was most certainly still being set up while we were there. It had stalls of cheeses, spices, Turkish candy, flowers, breads etc. We had nowhere else to go that early that would have been open so we hung around for awhile and then took a train back to the town centre.

We took our ride on the tram that was a challenge and went back to the Secession to try and get in to see Beethoven's frieze, we were a little early so new sat and waited. About 9.30 we saw some ladies putting up a sign on the top step and went to ask some questions to discover that the museum was closed for renovations and it was not going to open. This was big trouble for us because the clock was ticking and this was one of the mandatorys. I talked and talked and talked to the lady and begged her to let me in. Finally she did and boy was inside a mess of ladders, paint tins, carpet padding etc. She took us down to the basement and showed us where the frieze was but it was covered for its own protection during the renovations. She wrote us a note verifying that we had been in and downstairs. Thank goodness now all our other points will count.

From there we went to the Haus de music. What a wonderful place. It is an entire museum of hands on things for you to play with and make music. We spent "too long" there just having fun. This is a place that Lily will never forget. She got to "conduct" the Austrian Viennese Orchestra. She messed up the first time but actually completed the entire song on her second try. We saw Bill there and he was impressed with her effort as well. I also tried conducting as the below photo shows....

We had to visit to visit the Kunsthistorishes museum and find the painting in room XI to do with Good Friday. It was a painting of the Lamintations, it depicted Mary holding Christ after his body was removed from the cross. It was painted by Casper de Crepe somewhere between the dates 1649 - 1656.

We scurried around and saw a couple more museums; we walked miles to accomplish this. During our walk we came across the discovery of a Roman city that was buried beneath the city of Vienna. How does an entire city disappear and diapper to the point where another whole city is built on top? I find this fasciating.

Then we hailed a taxi and hustled back to the hotel by 11.30 to meet up with Zoe and Rainy to take the train to Linz. They were running a bit late but we still managed to make the train.
We had so much fun and Vienna is really beautiful.

24th April 2010 -Sri Lanka – The Missing Day

2010-05-02T13:30:00.001-07:00

As my last Sri Lanka blog said we are going to attempt the following Bonus which is worth 400 points. I had to put a few days between this experience and my blog so that I could regain some perspective on the situation!!!!
Adam, Alexander the Great and Buddha are said to have done it but Idn Batuta and Marco Polo did do it!! Climb Adam's Peak and explain a foot prints on the rock at its summit. (Note the stairway to the top is believed to be the "longest in the world"
The guide book says: - Adam's Peak is the 5^th largest mountain on the island standing at 2,243 meters (7,360 ft). Adam's Peak is easily the most dramatic, rising in solitary splendor above the surrounding hills. The strange impression on the bare rock at its summit is claimed to be a footprint made by Buddha himself during one of his legendary visits to the island. Thousands of pilgrims haul themselves up thousands of steps to pay devotions to the footprint. ….."Men, women, old and young some almost decrepit, some who actually die on the way, many have to be pulled or carried up…. People from every way African, priests and laymen, princes and paupers, may be seen striving, toiling, perspiring upwards...The climb is done at night in time for dawn, one has the best chance, weather permitting, of seeing the extraordinary sunrise and the associated spectacle known as the "Shadow of the Peak", whereby the rising sun casts a perfect triangular shadow of the peak's summit, which hangs miraculously suspended in m id – air for 20 minutes or so. This bizarre phenomenon has yet to be satisfactorily explain… but visiting Buddhist take it as proof of the mountains extraordinary supernatural qualities.
You can't read this clearly but the number that followed the Adams Peak line is 4800 steps.

The hotel rooms were clean but definitely different. It was also extremely hot as I was afraid to open the windows, our room was below ground level but you could walk up to the window and climb in easily. There were no fans and some mosquitos so we pulled our mosquito nets which ade it even hotter. We had normal toilets and hot water. This still scores a high grade in hotels for me.

Well the guy who was suppose to wake us at 2.00am never knocked, thank goodness Rainy awoke by himself and in the dead of night in pitch blackness we departed the hotel to find the start of the climb. Needless to say it was cold and yes you guessed it, it was raining just a fine drizzle but just enough to make things slippery. When you looked up the mountain you could see in the distance the path out lined in lights. We stopped and bought some cheap (rain coats – they look like a garbage back but one 2 sides are cut open. You place your head in the bottom corner or point which made the hat and then jus wrap yourself in the rest of the plastic). It was a fashion statement these purple rain coats

Well we started to walk; nobody tells you that for the first 3 miles you walk in through a small "village" of shops etc and yes you guessed it that walk goes down to the bottom of the valley of Adam's Peak. So when you see photos of the mountain understand that the climb starts at the very bottom in the valley. About 10 minutes after you start the steps start and at first you very gently start the incline upwards. At this point I was last in the pack with Lily and Zoe out front, Rainy in the middle and I bringing up the rear. I knew that if I was ever going to complete this challenge I would have to pace myself. Once the steps started I started to count in groups of 100. Needed to know how far I had gone when I couldn't go any more. I didn't want to quit 10 minutes from the top of something. We knew that it was suppose to 4800 steps. Very quickly I pulled into the lead with the others lagging. I was just counting and climbing. I was determined to get to half way before I took a break. At around 2000 steps the group started to lag and by 2400 steps Lily started to panic. She was nauseous, dizzy and very afraid that she could go no further. Zoe was also very exhausted and Rainy later admitted that he didn't think he could possible make it either. I sat Lily down (n we had done about ½ the climb in 1 hour and we had 2 more hours to dawn when you had to be at the Peak. We could slow down I gave her water, some crackers and as Lily calls them "miracle beans" or sports jelly beans, very sweet and she uses them on marathons. We all had 2 beans and I made a deal with Lily when she started to feel better. We would go up 100 steps at a time and we would take a break. The steps vary in size, some are parts are harder because they are very deep and steep and others are shallow and shorter, some are slippery stones, parts are gravel, parts are muddy and some are concrete. So some areas are easier than others, but all are hard. We started back our climb with me out front like the rabbit. I would go ahead and count 100; the rest would come behind, depending on how difficult the area was sometimes I would push to 125 or 150. Sometimes the places we wanted to rest were filthy and we would aim for a little higher or Lily would decide she could make it to the next light pole. We helped encourage and drag each other up this beast. It was grueling, we had to buy numerous bottles of water, we were all soaking wet with sweat even though the night air was cool.

The sobering parts was as hard as it was for us, if you looked around they had all types of people attempting this pilgrimage. One lady was going up on all fours- that's right on her hands and knees. I think she must still be up there. The elderly are being helped up by the young. Men with only 1 leg were climbing with crutches. Some people take days to do this climb. The closer you got to the top the narrower the staircase became and the more crushing the crowd, in fact it was very claustrophobic at times.

The good news is that we reached the last stair case as dawn started to break out in the east. At this point we were actually climbing through clouds.

We got to the top WE HAVE DONE IT!!!We reached the TOP of THE WORLD. I never seen such a wide grin on Lily she was so proud to have actually make it.
We finally pushed, shoved and got to the top in time for the punja ceremony start. I had taken 3 hours to do this very arduous climb. Some pilgrims carried bottles of water up the steps and when they got to the top they poured it over a flame as seen below. This is the second time I have seen this in action I just don't know the significance.

The drums started to beat, people started feeding the monks and we realized that we had another narrow staircase to climb to pass by Buddha's footprint. This picture is taken on the exit before the shoving started.

The people on that staircase were so aggressive. They shoved, pushed elbowed you and squeezed until you felt you couldn't breathe. It was NOT a pleasant experience. When we got to the top to see the footprint, a monk forced you to your knees and shoved your head down on the ground 3 times ( as respect to Buddha) the problem was that the footprint was covered with a cloth. You see people through money on the footprint and to prevent it getting damaged they cover it in a cloth. 4,800 steps later and the footprint was covered and the cloud coverage was so heavy that the sunset was minimal and not enough to create the "shadow of the Peak" I was so disappointing. The view was fabulous though so we had a small trophy for our climb. Then guess what 20 minutes later we had to go back down all 4,800 steps. I really had anticipated that the down climb would have been much easier, not so at all. In fact I rather climb up. There are very few hand rails and the steps are so uneven and deep that it was absolute hell on your knees. My legs were trembling and shaking and half way back down is when I finally felt I had reached break point. Lily, Zoe and Rainy managed to get much further ahead than me so I had no encouragement from the. Every so often I sat down and felt I could go no more but that is when the strangers in strange lands became my encourager. Every time I felt I was finished someone would come along, touch me on the head and pull me up and encourage e again. When I finally got to the bottom of the valley the final 3 mile walk out of the valley seemed to like one of those nightmares you have when you can't ever get to the end of a task. Every time I thought had reached the road twisted and turned again. On the way down a monk blessed Lily and Zoe, he gave them the red dots on their foreheads and tied a red string on their hands which you are not suppose to remove, you are suppose to wear it until it drops off. Lily is still wearing hers. This photo is taken at the END of the entire ordeal.
I had not even remembered that we had walked that far the night before. Finally almost exactly 5 hours later our ordeal was over. We were back at the storage little guest house, having a shower and breakfast while we started at the mountain in the distance that we had just conquered. I learnt from this experience 2 things I climbed that beast twice, the first and the last time. And I CAN do ANYTHING that I put my mind to do. I am STRONGER than I think. I CLIMBED Adam's Peak in 5 hours from start to finish another young girl at the hotel said she took 12 hours to do it. So I felt like from now on nothing can get the better of me.

We packed up from the hotel and started our 4 hour drive back to our hotel in Colombo. We stopped and watched a street cricket match and took a photo with the team that was a scavenge.

We tasted the wood apple fruit. This fruit is rock hard on the outside, it smells like a sapodilla on the inside and tastes like a tamarind. The shell s so hard that you have to crack it like a nut to get inside to taste it.

When we got back to Colombo, Lily and I went to take our bags back to the room and then took a variety of tuktuk to complete a few more challenges in the city e.g. visit Pettah market and find 3 streets and tell what is sold on them. It is spices, jewelry and whole sale.

Visit the Dutch museum. Find Cargils which is a department/supermarket and then Lils and I went back to the hotel so we didn't miss check in at 4.00pm. Bill had us for an Italian dinner and it was wonderful to sit and eat "normal" food. What a day. What a night!!! We were told that we were off to Amman – Jordan and we were leaving at 2.30am.
The Adam's Peak climb is like childbirth when was in the middle of the climb it was the hardest thing I had ever done physically in my life but as I look back now I having bragging rights for climbing it but the experience does not seem as nightmarish as it did at the time.

24th - 26th April 2010 - Amman Jordan –I skipped last day in Sri Lanka but I will do it later

2010-04-29T17:27:00.001-07:00

Amman – Jordan
We have flown in hours and hours over miles and miles of desert. Every now and then you see circles of green patches in the desert where it is being irrigated to grow vegetables but other than that the area approaching Amman is very barren. Amman is to the south east of Isreal. The funniest thing is that NO maps in this part of the world say Isreal; either the country is left blank or referred to as New Palestine.
The biggest surprise to me is that Amman is very cool. I was expecting hot and dusty instead we got cool and dry. It is impeccably clean in comparison to Sri Lanka which is hot, dusty and dirty. What a pleasant change.
Once again after we arrived we met with Bill and got our scores and our scavenger booklets. Lily and I placed second in the Sri Lanka leg. I am so proud of Lils. We plotted our plans and set off into Amman. The first thing we noticed is it the first place that we have been that there is zero signs in English and everyone we stop in the street to speak to cannot speak one word of English. We can't find an English speaking book store and basically we are spinning top in mud. Finally we decided to just fly by the seat of our pants and start the challenges.

Our first stop was to visit the Abdullah mosque in the centre of town. This is a new mosque (thank goodness we moved away from the Buddhist temples now we are in Muslim country)) this mosque is relatively new built in the last 10 years or so. It has a blue dome that can be seen from miles away. We attempted at first to just enter the building but we were quickly stopped by the guard, you see women cannot enter unless they are fully covered from the tip of their heads to the floor. They took us downstairs and gave us long black gowns with hoods to wear. When I say us I mean the women, there is no dress code for the en except to remove their hats while in the temple.

After this we set off for the ancient city of Jerash. What an amazing place. It is an entire Roman city that has been excavated. The people back then where definitely terrific architects. The city was well laid out and we had certain buildings and temples to find. Remember last night we walked Adams Peak. Everything is a little sore and needless to say the Temple of Artemis was the furthest away and guess what? It is up 100 steps. Once again I say. Thanks Bill. I say that but the temple is beautiful and so ornate I was glad that I was encouraged to walk and see it. We met some very friendly kids on the steps who were excited to practice their English.

Everyone in this country is so nice. I had some preconceived ideas about the people here. I knew they were of Arab descent and was expecting rude and arrogant people. I couldn't have been more wrong. They are so nice, gentle and helpful
We left Jerash and headed back to the hotel. Once there we changed TAXI's and headed out again. This time we set off for Mount Nebo (where Moses arrived with the Israelites. The place where he looked across at the Promised Land and where he was never permitted to see. Moses is actually buried on Mount Nebo. The view is spectacular and as I said it looks at the river Jordan, Israel and the Dead Sea.

Next we went to Madera to St. George's Church. To our disappointment when we got there the church was closed. Our TAXI driver had had difficulty finding this spot and we had arrived later than expected. Well to my astonishment the driver jumped out and started knocking on this huge metal gate. Suddenly the centre of the gate opened and a young boy/man peered out and asked if he could help, he spoke perfect English. We explained our predicament that we had to see the Biblical mosaic map. He invited us in and shepherd us into the dimly lit church. All of us were peering around to see if we could find this map and leave quickly so as not to disturb the boy any longer. Again to our amazement he bent over and rolled up the carpet on the floor and revealed this amazing map of the biblical lands that had been tied into the floor. Madaba was the home of the Moabites back in the Old Testament. As I told you these people are wonderful and are so delighted to help you out. We tried to give him a tip but he refused it so we dropped it into the collection box.

We went around the corner had dinner in the required Alloyah Café and tried to smoke the "Hubbly Bubbly" that was another challenge. We chose apple flavor and we all choked and coughed our way through the first puff. YUCCK!! It actually left me feeling nauseous afterwards. We headed back home to get some sleep. Tomorrow is another very early morning. We are off to Petra. Bill put a curfew on us, we had to be in the hotel by 10.00pm and we could not leave the hotel until 4.30 am so guess what we are off at 4.30…..

Day 2 -Started at 4.30am

Zoe is not going to scavenge today as she has a lot of work to do for the trial she is going straight into when she gets back to USA. It seemed unfair for Rainy to stay home when he had paid to be on this trip so we begged him to come out with Lily and me today. We are off to the lost city of Petra. This is a city that was completely carved out of a mountain. The buildings are made out of one solid piece of rock. I have only ever heard for Petra and we are excited to go and see. It is a long long drive to Petra and our rules say we have to travel on "the King's Highway" either into or out of Petra. The Kings Highway is the same route as was travelled by Moses back when he was leading the Israelites. He asked the King if he could travel on the Kings Highway but he promised he would turn neither left nor right off of it". This Highway is much longer and windy that the new highway. We opted to travel into Petra on the Highway and leave the Kings way. It was a lovely drive and I watched the sunrise over the mountains while Lily and Rainy caught up on their sleep.
We had to travel into 'The Treasury of Petra" by horse drawn carriages. These carriages supposedly look the same as the ones made back before Christ. Well we call them the shake and bake carriages. They travel very fast but they shake up your gizzards, there is no way to take a photo while on them because it would be a shaken blur. We hustled through close caverns and openings in the rocks to reach The Treasury.

When we got there it took your breath away. The Petra rocks are pink in colour and the craftsmanship and detail cannot be described. I thought the Roman city the day before was awesome but that was made out of different stones and put together. This place has no joins; it is all carved out of solid rock.

We meander through the old roads and made our way to the other end of the city where we had to ride donkeys up to the Monastery. Fool Bert here thought we were going to ride up on a mountain path. Well no such luck, the donkeys climb up over 900 worn down, broke steps and along the way on both sides of you are very far drop offs to rocks below. Up and away we went clinging on to the donkeys for dare life. I am thinking, donkeys are very sure footed animals and all will be well. Well what goes up, must come down so not only did we ride the donkeys up but back down as well!

The Monastry was another amazing wonder to see. It was enormous as Lily says when we took pictures in front of it we look like ants in comparison to the size of the structure.

Well if I thought riding donkeys up was scary well there is nothing to describe coming down. They actually "jump" over the rocks and steps. Yes I said jump and here I am struggling to stay on. Well again I comforted myself that these donkeys do this all the time so we are safe. So we get down the mountain safely and we are riding along on sand when suddenly I see Lily's donkey stumble and fall over and Lily is a heap on the ground. She was so brave she scrambled back up and assures all of u s that she was fine. She did not want to ride again, she felt sorry for the donkey but we were a far way from where we needed to go so after a couple of minutes she rode the donkey up to the Bedwin camp.
Then we set off for Wadi Ram where we had to ride camels like Lawrence of Arabia with headdress. So Lils tied her head up in a kaffiah and we rode camels.

Then we drove into the dessert to have some tea and cool water at the base of a spring in a Bedwin tent. What a neat experience. Out there is also the rock formation called The Seven Ancient Wonders. It was a long way to go but we had fun.

Our next scavenge was to go and swim in the Dead Sea and take a picture reading the newspaper while we floated. If we walked up Wadi Mujib Gorge we got more points. Well we drove for about 4 hours looking for this gorge with a TAXI driver who insisted on stopping at every vegetable stand on the way to buy sacks of vegetables. We came to the conclusion that he must have a vegetable stand at home or something. We were getting more and more harassed as he stopped about half a dozen times to barging and purchase these vegetables. By the time we were getting close to Mujib we had decided we were going to let him go (for rules purposes) and go on and try and do a few more scavenges. Well the travel imp had it in for us because in the middle of nowhere our TAXI broke down. Yes we had another broken TAXI but in the middle of nowhere.

We have the Dead Sea on our left and huge mountains on our right and an empty highway for as far as you could see. What next. Rainy and I had to get out and push start the TAXI. At the next stop the dumb dumb head turns off the TAXI and once again we had to push start it.
We decided after walking up Mujib Gorge to cut our losses. We went to a guest house along the Dead Sea. Begged them to call a new TAXI and we went "swimming" or should I say floating in the Dead Sea. Great experience with lots of laughs. By the time we could change, swim, paint ourselves in black mud, swim and get bathed and dress the new TAXI had arrived.

Last stop was we had to go to Allamby Bridge to see but not to cross. Well the trick to this is the Bridge is called Allamby Bridge from Israel to Jordan but called King Hussein's Bridge from Jordan to Isreal. Not much to see as there is immigration police on the border and we could not get close enough to even see the bridge. We went and did our eating scavenges and then rolled home tired and exhausted but thrilled with how much fun we had that day. I am absolutely dead on my feet.

22rd April 2010 - Day 2 in Sri Lanka

2010-04-25T18:43:00.001-07:00

We started out late, we didn't leave until 6.30am because our TAXI driver over slept and arrived just as we were trying to get another one. We deliberately chose him because he was one of the few TAXI;s that have air-conditioning or so we thought….. The bonus challenge has 6 sections the first was
You MUST take the train one way , either to or from Anuradhpura. Which we had completed the night before
Locate and visit the sacred tree of enlightenment. When we arrived here Lily, Zoe and Rainey were all in trouble for the way they were dressed and had to go and buy long scarves and tie them around them as clothes.

This a also known as the Sri Maha Bodhiya. This tree sits outside the Temple and is suppose to be 23 centuries old. It has some of its limbs propped up by metal poles and wooden poles to support its weight. The story goes that the "mother" or original tree was the one under which Buddaha died and received Enlightenment or Nirvana under. A sapling was taken from that tree and planted in this spot. The tree is taken care of diligently. People have tied hundreds of streamers and ribbons on and around the tree so it looks very festival. There was early morning service going on in the small temple next to the tree.
iii)walk from the Sri Maha bodhiya past the Brazen Palace to visit he Ruwanwelisaya, be respectful.
This was an amazing white bubble of a building being held up by hundreds of almost full size elephant statues. All around the Stupa were monkeys at play. They are quite large monkeys with pink faces. They are also very brave around people and come and walk all between you. See the elephants, there are hundreds that hold up this large stupa.

It was once the third tallest structure of the ancient world after the Great Giza Pyramids – visit it and explain.
This is an enormous terracotta stupa sitting in the middle of "nowhere" Again it was a playground for the monkeys.

Find moonstones and explain,
Moonstones are semicircular stepping stones that are very carved and ornate at the foot of most stairways in this country. They are very old and many are so worn that the pattern is almost rubbed away. They are lots around and they are very pretty.

Take in the view a top Mihinitale (Note stairs) get a team photo. This is an area where a king devote the entire area to Buddha. On top of one hill is a large white statue of Buddha himself, then there is a large white stupa on another hill and then the Mihintale rock itself, This is a huge rock that you can climb to the yop to see the view. We had already climbed about 800 steps to the base of the Mihintale area, then we had climbed up to the top of the stupa about another 200 steps then we realized that to complete the challenge we had to climb the rock. Zoe was miserable about this discovery but up we went to the top. The view was spectacular and it was so lovely and cool up there.

Then we scrambled down and set off for the next challenge about 2 hours away.
Once again the travel imp struck because on the way to Polonnaruwa our air-conditioned car ( which blew hot air any how and we were cooler with the windows down) over heated. The radiator had busted and here we were in the middle of nowhere and 1 hour from our next destination we were stranded. We scrambled out of the car and I started trying to flag down passing vehicles to give us a lift to the next town to get transportation. The first thing that stopped was a big dump truck filled with gravel, we were about to get on board on top of the gravel when I got another covered van to stop and give us a ride. This van had 2 men in the back sitting on bags of rice so we climbed in and made friends. In the next town we managed to procure a new TAXI and continue on our way. The only problem is that this rural taxi did not really know his way in the town. We were constantly going wrong and having to ask directions because he was clueless.
Six out of the seven challenges in Polonnaruwa where in the "Old City" This is acres of land that was a city in ancient times. It was huge and very difficult to find the scavenges. It was so hot that you could hardly think and we took so much longer there than we expected. What is absolutely amazing in the Asian countries is how Old their history is. This city dates back 2-3 hundred years before Christ and the frescos are still visible and some of the monuments. Churches, crematoriums and the areas that had trade stalls etc. are in near perfect condition.

In Polo.. we also had to locate any part of the 900 year old irrigation system still working in this area.
Can you believe that 900 years there was a ruler who had the foresight to build a 6000 acres reservoir to feed the city. His motto was not a drop of water that fell from the sky would be wasted. This water was used to keep the rice fields wet etc.

Then it was on to Sigiriya, where once again we had to climb over a thousand steps to the Sky Palace through the "jaws of a lion" We also saw the frescos that were painted in the cave. These frescos date back to BC. It is amazing to see how well preserved they are.

It was 3.00ish in the afternoon and the hardest part about this climb was the heat. My goodness I thought I was going to melt, but we didn't we managed to crawl to the top on platforms that clung to the side of the mountain (hundreds of feet suspended above ground)to see what was left of the Sky Palace. This was a palace built on top of the mountain to keep a king safe. Unfortunately he died in battle when his elephant caught fright and ran away.

This is how we looked when we got to the top. Absolutely exhausted, but we had climbed and conquored the Lion Rock!!

We finally made it down, very thirsty, hot and tired and we tried to buy some drinks from a vendor at the bottom of the climb, this vendor wanted us to pay about 5 times the price of the drink. Zoe pitched a fit and gave all the drinks back very aggrevated and miserable.
Then it was on to have a drink at Hotel Sigirya, thank goodness we had some cold drinks, dipped our weary feet into the pool and changed TAXIS again and off to the Dambulla Caves.

It was going to be close call as to whether we could make it in time before the caves closed, we had to drive in that direction anyway so we decided to stop and try anyhow. We got there with about 30 minutes to spare and were blessed to watch the sunset from the entrance to the caves. These are 5 caves side by side on a hill top. They were very elaborate and each cave tried to outdo itself with lavish statues, frescos, other ornamentation. I was in awe of them. The Buddhas in each cave are enormous his feet are almost the size of a human.

In most he is lying on his side. We were there for evening prayers and left as the final bell was ringing.

Back down the numerous stairs to the TAXI and on to Kandy for the night. On the way down we passed a man who had a small basket under his arm. He sat down on the pavement and Lily bthought he had sat down to eat his lunch, imagine her surprise when he lifted the cover of the basket out popped a cobra snake. She was passing very close and she leaped back in surprise.

Another long long drive (this island is the size of England) through the windy mountain trails, but we are in Kandy ready to get up early tomorrow….. What a very long hard day with so many steps to climb.

20 - 21th April 2010, Colombo, Sri Lanka

2010-04-25T13:05:00.001-07:00

We arrived here in Sri Lanka late last night. The first sign that greets you in the airport is "It is illegal to carry drugs, it carries a death sentence". Quite an eye opener. We are staying at the Hilton Colombo and we are here for 5 nights. It has beautiful grounds. There were black swans swimming in the fountain shown below

We met Bill at 10.00am this morning and he handed us our challenges and has given us 5 days to complete the. We have to check back in with him on Friday 24^th at 4.00pm. We are not permitted to travel the countryside between 10.00pm and 5.00am. So we collected our scavenge books, pack a backpack and have set off to see and learn and immerse ourselves in the culture of this island. Very quickly I have learnt that the country is beautiful but people are very poor. Sri Lanka has been under Tamal Tiger rule for the last 25 years. It was very dangerous for people to visit but 1 year ago they manage to kill, imprison or change the minds of the Tamal tigers and finally the country is under democratic rule. They had their first elections 1 year ago and 2 weeks ago they had their parliament elections. The country is now deemed stable thus here we are.

It is extremely hot so hot I can't describe how hot. It is 104 degrees F. We spent the first part of the morning trying to buy a Cultural Triangle Ticket. This is a ticket that permits you into some historical sites and towns. We were first taken to the National Museum to but them, which was the wrong address but it was one of our challenges. The challenge read:- Visit the National Museum; locate vthe Kings of Kandy goodies . And locate General Zheng He's tablet and explain.
Well we found the room with a huge golden throne and other possessions that had belonged to the Kings of Kandy and the large stone tablet belonging to Zheng so we completed our first challenge for 25 points.

After that we bought our Cultural Triangle Tickets (another 10 points) and we set off to the next challenge.

Visit the fish market in Negombo then take a short boat ride on either an outrigger canoe or a wooden oruwas in the lagoon area. Don't forget to eat something. Why is Negombo referred to as Little Rome? All this sounds easy but Nagombo is a 1 hour taxi ride away from Colombo. When we got their we had to find the fish market. Not as easy as it sounds. We went to the old market. It was very very old and the women were peddling their fish sitting or stooping on the ground

The biggest challenge was getting a ride in an oruwas, these are small canoes attached to a couple of floats and topped by a huge square sail. This was so difficult as all the fishing boats were out fishing. We were lucky to find some fishermen who had just come ashore and they were on their way home, we begged them to take us for a ride and they agreed to re-rig their boat and let us get on.

The boats are so weird. The actual boat is a only about 18 inches wide or smaller, it is very difficult to fit between the two sides.. We sat on the outrigger on s platform. The men were dressed in traditional dress and I found them beautiful even though they were dirty from a day's work.
Note how narrow the boat is.

We bought some candy from these people in a shop, the shop really sells whole ssale rice etc but they did have candy. These poor people thought that insane people had decended as we rushed in quickly bought the sweets, took their photo and rushed out again

as we had a train to catch and hurried back to Colombo to catch a 4,20 train to Anuradhapura. This is a 5 part 500 point challenge. I am presently sitting on 4 our train ride through the countryside of Sri Lanka, writing this blog. I have just taken a beautiful picture of the sun setting over the rice fields.

We pass through small settlements of mud house.Yes they seem to make a shell out of sticks and then coat the sticks with mud, some have thatched roves but most have galvanize. There is No electricity or running water to these homes and the floors are also made out of mud. As I fly by in my seat on the train I ponder how different my life would have been had I been born a girl in one of these mud huts in the wilds of Sri Lanka.

The train ride seemed to last forever as we swayed, clanked and screeched our way up through the mountains until we finally reached the town or city of Anuradhapura. We arrived about 9.00pm in the pitch dark. We took an old TAXI fan to Nuwarawewa Rest House. It was a very basic hotel, but it had lots of hot water, sitting toilets (not stooping ones), air-conditioning (thank goodness, it is 95 degrees at night), clean sheets and a restaurant. As Lily says "What more can you possibly want, this is better than some houses at Cattlewash because they don't have hot water". Zoe was much more squeamish about her room.
We were fine and grateful to be able to lie down in a reclined position. We went to bed by 10.00mpm because we arranged to have a TAXI collect us at 6.00am tomorrow to start our scavenges. Good-night!!!

19th April 2010 – Last Day in Chiang Mai.

2010-04-25T12:59:00.001-07:00

We got up before dawn again today at 5.30am so that we can leave the hotel at 6.00am. Lily is feeling awful because she is still sick but she is a trouper. We took a TAXI to the Doi Suthep temple. Lils slept on the way.

When we arrived, even though Lily and I had on knee length shorts it did not satify the resident monk so he lent us the pretty skirts that you see in the photos.When we got to the temple we were in time to see the sunrise. Quite spectacular!! The entire temple is quite spectacular.

We had to take a funicular up to the temple and we walked around. Everything is so ornate and the temple is quite extensive, every corner you turn has something more simulating to see.

We also saw the feeding of the monks as they carried their bowls. There was one very old monk, he was walking with the aid of a stick. My heart went out to him. He seems so peaceful.

We also watched another ceremony where there was this row of cups filled with oil. In the centre of each cup was a burning wick. You have to take a spoon and pour oil around each wick. There were about 10 cups in a row. Could not find any one to explain this ritual.

We walked down the serpent staircase of 340 steps. It was so neat to be there in the cool of the morning, the sun rising out over the city and hearing the chanting of the monks. Once again I find it feels surreal.

We left and went to a cooking class. We arrived early and they allowed us in to st on the floor, as is their custom, while we waited on the teacher. Once again Lils napped as she tried to help her body heal. The first part of the class was a walk to the nearest market where we were taught how to choose the produce. See us walking down the back streets of Chiang Mai, swinging our woven shopping baskets to go and buy our cooking ingredients.

Then back to the house again. The classes are given in people's homes not a school. We were given menus to cho0se what we wanted to cook and then we started We made 1) spring rolls, 2) Red Thai curry noodles, Fried Banana and stir fry chicken and noodles. We stopped and eat each course as we finished cooking it. This was great fun. It was a peaceful morning and a great day for Lily to handle as it was very slow paced.

Back to the hotel, packed up our things and off to Sri Lanka we go… I don't even know where Sri Lanka is on the map…. But that's where we are going!!!!

18th April 2010 – 2nd Day in Chiang Mai

2010-04-25T12:57:00.001-07:00

Once again an early morning we left the hotel at 6.30am. Lily is definitely getting sick. I am praying hard that she can make it through today.

We set off to Bonus Challenge D it had many parts and was far out of the city

It stated: - Get to Lampang and do all of the following
Take a horse carriage ride of the village
It was Sunday so the town was very sleepy and not many things were opened when we first got there but we found 3 horse carriages hanging around in the centre of town. We arrange for the driver to take us around the small town and to carry us to Wat Ming Meug.

Wats are temples and by the end of this day I think we actually visit about 8 in all. I am not going to go into great details about all.

Buy a small piece of locally made pottery. This village is famous for blue and white pottery. It took some time to find a shop open but we managed to buy a small dish.
They were a couple more challenges here but keeping with time I am going to skip to our second scavenge for the day and the best so far in this trip
Visit the Elephant Conservation Centre! What is your mahout's name? Hoon Nah

This is the most amazing place. It had an elephant show where the elephants played musical instruments, they danced, they responded to voice commands and then the highlight. Three elephants painted pictures; yes I saw them paint the pictures with my own 2 eyes. One paints elephants, from the front, the side or behind.

Another elephant paints flowers on a bush, he manages to shade the flowers and the leaves and the last elephant paints abstract. The mahout helps get the paint on to the different brushes and then they paint real pictures. I bought the one of the flowers and Zoe bought the elephant one.

This Conservation Centre has the "Only elephant hospital" It was so neat little did we know that we were about to have big troubles. On Great Escapes there is a 2 stop rule. Your mode of transport can only take you to 2 places then you have to change drivers. Well we had left the hotel with one driver that took us to Lampang and to The Elephants well we had to send him away. Little did we know that there is NO, ZERO transportation from this point. There was a bus but being Sunday it was running every hour and nobody knew what time to expect the next bus. The bus hut was across a highway with a concrete barrier in the way, no way to cross over safely. Well yours truly started to beg people in the parking lot for a ride but remember there are four of us. Finally a lady with a pickup truck offered us a ride to Lamphun

It was so hot; the pickup tray was painted black. It was so hot that it burnt the back of Zoe's thigh. I was worried about Lily in the heat because she was starting to get sick and I knew that that amount of heat was not good, but there wasn't much I could do about it.

The lady who was driving the truck very nicely dropped us to the next WAT we needed to find. This is the nice lady who drove us to Lamphun, Bill always encourages us to "Trust strangers in strange lands" and this was one of those challenges.

We scavenged all over Lamphun, which was very difficult because Lamphun has NO modes of transportation. We beat the largest gong....

They are a couple of rickshaws, the bikes with a basket behind for its passengers but they only hold 2 people and there was 4 of us so we had to walk, poor Lily was feeling like hell. We kept stopping and giving her copious amounts of water. We had planned to go zip lining from here but there were NO TAXIS we took the blue bus (the only bus) back to Chiang Mai.

This took well over an hour so Lils got some sleep and we split up from Zoe and Rainey and completed just about all the challenges that afternoon

Here is a brief list of things:-
i) Lily climbed a rock wall; she got almost to the top the first time before she fell and made it all the way to the top the second time. Well done Lils!!!

ii) Went to 3 different markets; - Sunday Market, Tonlamyai Market and Waroro Market

Went to Khamtien plant market and we found the Balinese style gardens. Once again we let our Tuktuk go and could not get another. We had to walk far to a main street before we got one.

Visited the oldest Wat

Visited the oldest Buddha

Went and spent time talking to a Monk, this was our last for the day and we spent a long time with him. Lily asked him lots of questions about Buddhism as she has a Religious Knowledge exam to take shortly after returning home.

We went to the night Market for ME to eat Bam Boo worms and fried maggots YUCK!!!

Finally we were finished with our challenges for that day. We walked around the Night Bazaar and tried Fish Foot Spa. It is the craziest thing. You put your feet into a fish take full of little fish and they come and suck on your feet and eat off the calouses etc. Well it felt indescribable at first. The fish rush at your feet and it tickles beyond description. When you can get a hold of yourself and just leave your feet in the water it starts to feel like thousands of bubbles. It was a crazy thing to try but when we were finished our achy tired feet felt rejuvenated.

Then we went for foot massages. That was wonderful. Then home to say good-bye to Aril and Travis and then bed!!!

17th April 2010 – Chiang Mai, Thailand

2010-04-19T18:54:00.001-07:00

We arrived in Thailand without any mishaps. The bus collected us from the airport and we went to the Shangri- La Hotel. Once again it was very impressive. We had about 1 hour to put our stuff down, organize ourselves and then we were given our scavenger book. It had in 25 scavengers and 6 bonuses most of which had 5 parts to complete.

Once again we hit the ground running and our first stop was a restaurant called Aroon Rai. It reminded me of a Marshall's or Lemon Arbour at home. Good local food but not in a fussy restaurant. We were lucky because we managed to eat both of our mandatory eating challenges in this one restaurant. The challenge stated the following ;-

1)Try some khau neow mamuang .

Which is mango and sticky rice. They eat this as a desert. It has something like condense milk poured over the mango. This tasted very good.

2) Have some khao sawy, at Aroon's

This is fried noodles on top of boiled noodles in a broth. Its hard to describe but it was also delicious. Eating challenges are mandatory and are often the hardest thing to do in the challenges. We had to complete 2 out of 7 on this leg and finally they were things you could actually eat and enjoy. If you don't complete them none of the other points count. We were lucky on this leg.

We left the restaurant and took a "red taxi" kind of an open back van with a bench that encircle the back but you tell them where to take you. We went to a Wat or temple. The challenge stated the following:- Approach and talk to some bhikku's or mae chil's and learn something about what they study. Learn what metta means. Let them explain what are the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism are?

Ok. A bhikku's is a Monk a Mae Chil is a Buddist "nun". They are hundreds of thousands of monks in Thailand but only 150 mae chils. Metta means kindness and the four Noble Truths are 1) suffering, 2) cause of suffering 3) Cessation of suffering and 4) the way to end suffering. The Mae chil wear white clothes and the monks wear bright orange. Monks can never touch a woman and it is a great insult if a woman attempts to shake their hand. This is to prevent temptation. The girls children are taught to hold out their hands with flat palms to receive gifts from the monks to insure that there is no physical contact.

When we left this Wat we walked through a lovely craft market and rented a turbo charged TukTuk. You have to have seen this thing. It had disco lights, Karaoke microphone and music, it had a TV and it had disco music. We drove like celebrities with a light on inside for all to see. On top of this his tuktuk was supped up and was so fast that it passed out all the cars. The owner is so proud of his tuktuk

He took us to the Night Safari. This is a oo that is open only at night. During the day the temperatures are much too hot so the animals do not come out for people to see. We got on a tram and it drove you through the park. The animals are trained to come when they see the spoyt lights, the guide throws treat to them. It was a unique experience. We saw, giraffes, zebras, rhino, hippos, lots of different deer like things. It was great. After the tour was over we went and held baby lions and had our photo taken. There was also a demonstration of Thai dancing. It was a wonderful experience. Our Turbo TukTuk then took us to the "Simon Cabaret" except the show has changed its name to "The Playhouse" We had a buffet dinner, compliments of the owner David and then watched the show. It was a very good show of dancing and singing to Broadway Hits. The "different" thing about it is that all the performers are men. They look and dress like women but they are men. They are all so beautiful it seems impossible that they weren't female. Lily knew all the songs, she sang, clapped and danced her way through the show. Afterwards she went and asked all the dancers for their pictures.

We went by a new tuktuk to the Night market. We were supposed to do the following:- Visit the Night Bazaar locate the eatery that specializes in insect entrees and enjoy (try) two house specials. These eaters sell bugs and insects. We went too late and couldn't find any bugs to eat so will have to come back tomorrow. Yummy!! Seeing as Lily does NO eating challenges this one is up to me Yuck !!Yuck !! Double Yuck!!!

It was bed time so we went to sleep we have to get up 5.15 am tomorrow so we are ready to leave the hotel by 6.00pm. The rules on this leg is we cannot go outside the city between 10.00pm and 6.00am.

Good- night.

15th April -17th April 2010 Luang Prabang – Laos

2010-04-18T09:39:00.001-07:00

We flew in Luang Prabang on a small prop plane. Poor Travis, he is an ex- Lakers basket ball player who is travelling with April. He is only 7 foot tall and keeps a lot of attention wherever he goes especially in Vietnam where everybody including men are only 5 foot tall. Travis usually books the bulkhead seats on planes. Well in this case that was a BIG mistake. The first seats in the plane are only 4 inches from the bulkhead , absolutely no way for Travis' legs to fit. He curled up on top of 2 seats and offered the guy in the aisle seat of the emergency aisle $20.00 for his seat. He would not switch ( we later discovered that the guy himself did not have an emergency seat either). Long story. We worked it out.

Luang Prabang is translates to "The Sleeping Beauty" and was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 and has a serene and gentle atmosphere. It has a very French flair as it was ruled by them at one time. At the airport we discovered that it is the year 2553 here not 2010 like in the western world and it was The Festival of Pimai or the Lao New Year. This occurs every year form 13 April – 15 April. The entire country comes to a grinding halt. April 13^th is officially the last day of the old year. The 14 April is empty, belonging to neither the old or the new year. The 15^th is the official start of the New Year, or Pi Mai Lao. This is the time to "wash " away the past and wish for a good future. Lao people symbolize this by throwing water at each other. –Lots and lots of water ( I will come back to this) for mutual purification and blessing. One again we checked in and were given our challenge book. We were allowed to only do the eating challenge that night and we were NOT allowed to leave the hotel before 6.00am next morning.

So off we set to find one of the eating challenges. We hit our first road bump as most restaurants close by 11.00 and the one we were looking for was very illusive. Finally we stopped at the Coconut Garden and ordered Jaew bong and a Beer Lao. Well Jaew Bong is a condiment kind of like a "hot chutney", which tasted great with my spring rolls.. And the Beer Lao came in super big size. It was late and we took a Tuk Tuk back home.
One of the challenges was to rent a bike and ride to 4 scavenges. Once again we arranged to meet at 6.00am downstairs. When we went down to rent bikes, Zoe, Rainy, Lily and myself we could only get 3. So Zoe sent Lily and I along to get started and we would meet up in town somewhere, it is too small a town not to bump into each other ALL the time.

The challenge stated:- Participate in the sacred Tak Bat ceremony at dawn discreetly. Note b be respectful : don't offer substandard offerings

This was so amazing. Tak Bak is the parade of the monks, all the monks walk through town with their ""begging bowls" and the people of the town line the streets with their offerings to put in the bowls. The monks varied in age from men to quite small boys, ad they wear bright orange robes. One lady called Lily and I over, put us on a plastic sheet and handed each of us a plate of something that looked like miniature "conkies",( inside had a purple looking paste). You have to sit on your heels and as the monks pass place one of these banana leaf wrapped packs in each bowl. The monks in turn give back some of the offerings to the kids and the poor as they pass. It was quite a sight to see. All along the roads there are offerings that you can buy, from tiny little birds in cages that once you purchase, they are freed and they fly away, to beautiful cone shaped flower arrangements. Then morning pray took place in a big monastery on the street.

Next we did this challenge:- Visit the morning fresh market Ban Pakam and see how many types of live creatures are for sale.

This was a bustling market full of fresh food for sale. Everything from rice, to dead ducks, to fish, vegetables, fruit etc. Most things were not alive. We saw a variety of smaller fish swimming around, some live beetles and bugs, and the small birds in cages for sale but mostly everything was ready to cook.

As expected almost at the end of the market we butt up with Zoe and Rainy and we set off to a travel agency to try and arrange to do the bonus tours. We arrange for a TAXI to come and take us to the first venue. While we were doing the negations "Team Camel" arrived and we agreed to scavenge with them. With that arranged we went to take care of one of our mandatory eating challenges. Find and enjoy a typical French Breakfast. Had to do this challenge before we left because breakfast has to be eaten at breakfast time. The six of us had breakfast at Café de Artes. Quaint! Lovely croissants and café con leche. The TAXI picked us up and we were off on our exciting Bonus.
Bonus question:- Make a pilgrimage upriver to gain merit by ritually bathing the Buddha's at Pak Ou caves. Note: It will be busy during this festival.
Pac Ou Caves are located about 25 km from town where the river Nam Ou meets the Mekong River. We set off in the TAXI for the tiny poor village of Pac Ou on the other side of the river from the Pac Ou Caves, suddenly we come around a curve in the road and we find a "Road Block" literally a tree had fallen across the road and the car could not pass. So out all these "crazy white people" scramble out of the car and start to try and move this tree. Thank goodness that a few minutes later another car arrived on the other side with 2 men and they actually had a small cutlass in their car so between them chopping and us pulling we finally managed to clear the road. The process took about 20 minutes. When we got back in the car Brain proceeded to tell us stories about men who deliberately block roads to rob you. Thank goodness that was not the case here.

Pac Ou village is very poor. The houses are small, they have small vegetable gardens, they sell souvenirs and we saw some pigs and chickens. It is very poor. We could see inside some of the houses and here in Laos furniture definitely does not seem necessary. The house have NO furniture inside. Most of them have a TV, a mat on the floor for sleeping and some stools and a table outside. The cooking seems to be done outside as well. A furniture shop would not do well here.

We slipped slided our way through the mud to the river's edge where we rented a pirogue to take us to the other side. These boats are long and thin. You sit on short stools in the centre. They are very "tippy". It was absolutely gorgeous. The scenery is very undisturbed and serene. Once again it was lots and lots of steps. They are 2 caves , the first is reached by a steep staircase but the special Pac Ou cave is much higher up lots more stairs and this cave is much deeper and absolutely dark. We had to use our flash lights to see anything. Between the 2 caves there are over 4000 Buddhas, most are covered in gold leaf. When you make this pilgrimage you have to do the ritual bathing of the Buddha's. to accomplish this we bought a bottle of "holy" water and you pour some over the Buddha and wash off the dust.

First we were given 3 sticks of incense to light, then you had to "stick" the small candles on to the rock. More difficult than you think because everything is covered inn dust and candles don't stick to dust easily and then you "wash"" a Buddha of your choice. We were lucky because we got there early evidently it got quite crowded later.

Next it was on to our next challenge. Take a trek through a teak groove at Nam Kham atop a gentle giant.
Yup time to go elephant riding!! Yipeee!!!! On the way we stopped through a small village where they make whiskey. Yup in each bottle they decorate the inside with either a real scorpion, a green snake or a cobra. Yes before they pour in the whiskey they arrange these creatures inside the bottles and fill it up with whiskey. We tasted the rice wine but "not I said the fly when it came to the added flavor of the dead animals".

While we were sitting there waiting on the guys to have a drink a "gentle giant" just plodded by with a young boy sitting on his neck. It was so surreal!.

We stopped and bought 3 big water guns so that we armed for the forces for when we were "blessed by the locals" with buckets of water. We are still in the TAXi but we hyave to change to a Tuk tuk at the elephants and we know that we will be sitting ducks so we were getting prepared. Lily is so excited about this. Infact I don't know who is more excited Lily or Brian and Rainy.

Time to ride an elephant. This was so amazing. 2 people ride one elephant with a mahout or driver. We wondered about lazily in the teak forest as the elephants tore up leaves and leisurely ate them. Lily and my elephant was 27 years old. She was so gentle. Part of this experience is the elephants go down into a pool at the bottom of some small waterfalls. I think this would have been magnificent but Laos has been suffering like Barbados with drought and there was not ONE drop of water all the waterfalls are dry. Great experience. Lils thinks we should get an elephant for a pet!!!!

Now on to the Kuang – Si Waterfalls. These were gorgeous. It is many many different waterfalls. So beautiful, it was full of people because of the New Year. Lily went swimming and she also swung on a rope and dropped into the water. Very pretty. I don't know if I can actually do justice with words to the experience of "water washing" for the New Year. Basically we were riding in the back of a Tuktuk and everyone throws water on you, buckets and buckets of water. Or perhaps they will wash you with a hose or better still through red dyed water at you. Both Lily and my clothes are permanently stained with red dye. We got many back too with our water guns. It was like playing war on a big time scale. We laughed until we cried. Lily is planning on coming back "every year" to do this again. By the time we got home we were very wet. Very cold and Very hungry that croissant at 8.00am was a very long time ago.

What a wonderful place. Very friendly people and we did great challenges. I loved the elephants.
Lily and I have place 2^nd in both of the last 2 countries- Hong Kong and Vietnam but I am expecting to fall back to 6 place after yesterday. We had lots and lots of fun but we did not do very many of the challenges. Many of the places were closed because f the holiday. When we got home at 6.00pm we were cold and my main concern was to get Lily warm and dry. We have many more days on this trip and I don't want her sick. We got bathed, dry and dressed. It started to rain harder, with thunder and lightning. We waited around a bit and decided to take the trek into town and see if we could accomplish a couple more points. The town was in darkness because the storm had knocked out a transformer. We were tired and hungry and made a team decision to head back to the warmth and the light. We had the post fun in this town and we will take the memories with us forever, regardless of how many points we accrued in challenges.
Today is also my 22nd anniversary and I was a little homesick for Drew and Savs, and missing Clo in Miami. Happy Anniversary, my love. Am so sorry that I couldn't tell you in person. I am also not sure how long it will take to get tis blog posted as the storm also knocked out the internet. I will keep trying . At 10.00pm was our deadline for turning in our scavenge sheets. And we now know that we are off to Chiang Mai – in Thailand. I am so excited as I have always wanted to go to Bangkok and never got there. I never expected we would go to Thailand on this trip because they went to Thailand last year but we are going to a different city. Can't wait to get there!!!!
We never got to do the visit the orphanage scavenge yesterday and I was so disappointed in that. April and Travis had travelled with a bunch of Beanue babies and kids T- shirts and she wanted to take them to an orphanage so Lily and I went with her. It was so overwhelming how well behaved thos kids where. It was an SOS Orphanages, which means that a Scandinavian company owns, and operates these orphanages all over the world. They are beautiful and if I had enough time I would explain about it in detail. Either Google it or ask me when I get back. Every time you give the kids something they put their hands together in the praying position and bow. There is no pushing or shoving or begging or complaining about who got what. They were so disciplined. They loved having their photo taken with a digital camera because they can see themselves on the screen, so I took lots and lots of photos.

We went back to the hotel, packed up and left for our next destination, thank goodness that the storm is nover because them we would have had to do a 12 hours bus, train and boat ride instead we took the easy way a bus ride. We arrived safely in Chang Mai, Thailand and we are staying in the world famous Shangri-la Hotel. We are so spoilt when it comes to hotels…. I am going to put in the pictures and post this blog. The pictures take forever but I think they tell the story better. Miss all of you. Thanks for the comments. I can't comment back because I just don't have the time. If I ever get a day off I will try….

15th April 2010 – Hanoi Day 2

2010-04-17T10:03:00.001-07:00

Lily and I got up early, had breakfast and were ready to set off and to do a day of challenges. We had not gotten all done the day before so we were raring to go and collect the most points that we could holy Moly was it ever cold when we stepped out of the front door. The temperatures in Vietnam had plummeted the night before and it stayed cold all day.

We shared a TAXI with Zoe and Rainy out to President Ho Chi Mein's Palace, Mausoleum and House. It was quite a procedure to be permitted into the Presidential grounds. Lily was almost not allowed in at all because her shorts were above her knees in length. Rainy, the always prepared "boy scout" lent her a pair of his shorts.

Yes they were really big but they did the job. We had so many steps to do to be permitted to enter here 1) Check in your back pack, but before you do remove your camera and wallet. Lily had to put on shorts. 2) Walk single file down an open corridor. 3) Stand in line single file until permitted to walk another 100 feet. 3) Remove camera from case. 4) Walk another 200 feet. Go through security scanner. 5) Place camera back in case and put into small red bag with handle. Hold the bag in front of you with two hands. Walk another 100 feet 6) Give bag with camera in at window 7) Walk double file. 8) Hands have to be at your side in military fashion. No hats on head……….and the list goes on and on. Sorry.. I guess the government needs to make jobs for people. I know very long lengthy description I was just trying to make a point.

When we finally got into the Mausoleum, Ho Chi Mein was lying in state in a khaki uniform, hands on his thighs. He died at 79 years old and he is in perfect condition. He looks like a man in his 50's just sleeping it is almost unbelievable that he has been dead for more than 20 years. His body is removed 1 a year for 3 months as they re-preserve him. We toured his, 3 different houses and his garage with his cars. He lived very starkly and simply. He never got married or had any children.

We scrambled about and did the following challenges….

One Pillar Pagoda, This is a pillar that was built by a King after he had had a vision that would have a son. In his vision there was a locus flower so the pagoda was built with one pillar in the shape of a Lotus flower. as a thank you to the god.

The clue was .. It was shot down during the Christmas bombing raids on December 19, 1972. What is it? Where is it? This was a very tricky question. And am proud to tell you we found it. The answer is A B-52 bomber which crashed into a small pond. Most teams thought that this bomber was in the Military Ammunitions Graveyard. The bomber was left in place as a reminder to the country that the war occurred.

Another clue was …. Founded in 1070, it may be the oldest University? Find it and visit it. What is its apt name. Answer was the Temple of Literature. Today was the day that all the bschool are visiting all the different monuments on school trips. These kids were fascinated with Lily. They all can say "Hello".

This was where Lily and I had fun we left here on the back of a "hugging TAXI" which is a scooter built for 2 but we squeezed on 3. It was both exhilarating and terrifying. Remember we are in Hanoi with millions of other scooters, who have NO traffic laws. Lily said it reminded her of Jet Skiing. I spent a lot of the ride with my eyes closed and saying my prayers. It was the driver "hugged by Lily"" and then I was on the back "hugging Lily". I will never forget this experience.

Lily and I also figured out another tricky clue. It was Whose statue sits in Indira Gandhi Park? The answer is Ly Thaito. The park "WAS" Indira Gandhi Park but it changed its name in recent years. The young people have never heard of it. It took an older gentleman to explain it to me.

One of our other challenges was to have a picnic in a park. So we took a wash cloth from the hotel, 2 small croissants, a granola bar, a bottle of water, some nuts and Oreo cookies to the above Ly Thiato Park and had our picnic.

We had check in at 12.00pm and we are off to Luang Prabang in Laos. I have never heard of these countries but all the other teams are very excited to go. I am also excited. I wonder how different it will be to Vietnam? I did not really find that the people in Hanoi are friendly, I hope the people in the next place are friendlier.

By the way did I mention that for a few days I was a millionaire in Pongs? The Vietnamese money is the Pong and it is US $$1.00 = $18,705.00VND or pong. If only it was really worth something!!!!

Gone to catch my plane to Laos.

14th April 2010 – Hanoi, Vietnam

2010-04-15T01:07:00.001-07:00

I can’t believe how different this country is from Hong Kong. The drive in from the airport was crazy. The mode of transportation here is Motorbikes, scooters and bikes. They do have cars but they are few and far between. These people put 5 and 6 people on one motor bike, they build crazy baskets and carry everything behind them from chickens, to pottery pots (50 at a time), dead pigs – everything and anything. There also seems to be NO traffic laws green and red traffic lights means absolutely nothing. Crossing the streets is a night mare as NO one stops they just swerve around you. It is so crazy. At rush hour the amount of people on bikes in the streets is staggering. The amount of people in this country is staggering.

We are staying at The Hotel Metropole which once again is lovely. I was very intimidated to start this challenge because we were first given our challenge book at 7.00pm and told to go out and start now.

All the all female teams were a little reluctant at first but we decided to ALL go to dinner together first and get rid of one of the mandatory eating challenges – we have 3 this time- Not fair Bill. That way when we first left the hotel we would have security in numbers. By the time we had found the restaurant all the fear had left and we scavenged until 10.00 and then back to the hotel. The eating challenge was Cha ca which is steamed fish in a clay pot. We ordered one to try and other food as well. Joanne ordered scrispy chicken. It came with the entire chichen head cut in half and fried.

Poor Lils was so exhausted that she feel asleep immediately in all of her dirty clothes. One of the scavenges was to go to the Night market at 2.00am. I did not want to do this alone so I roped in Mummy and Barbara to go. S at 1.30 am I woke Lily up and took her to the market. On the way there the driver in error took us to the Flower market. This was acres of fresh flowers eing sold wholesale. This was very busy and interesting to see with all the different colours, shapes and smell of the flowers. Not intimadating at all. Did I mention that it was also raining?

The "Long Bien Market" or night market on the other hand was a totally different experience which was both a wonderful experience and a very scary experience. I would NEVER go back and thank Goodness we went with 4 of us. This market is so busy words can’t describe it, most of the merchandise is moved by 2 humans with a pole on their shoulders with the heavy good suspended between them. These human “carts” do not swerve out of your way. They will literally walk over you if you are in their way. And there are hundreds of these teams hustling everywhere. Then you add the trucks, the motor bikes and the stalls to the picture and you have a “mass confusion”. One man targets us. He was up to NO good and he trailed us very closely and we knew that he was a treat. We needed to find “the hot pink dragon fruit” not easy in this environment. We has just decided to throw this challenge when we found some. The people in this market where very “hostile” which I found surprising as everywhere else they are very friendly. I was very glad to get back into the safety of the TAXI and head back to the hotel. Whee!!!

Not sure if that adventure was worth 30 points. I certainly would not attempt that again .It is now 3.00am and we have to meet Zoe at breakfast at 6.15am.

We are off to do another Bonus. You can team up for Bonuses which means we can spend time together. Also bonuses are hard but usually have a great thing for you to see.
We are off to the Perfume Pagoda. A Buddhist temple almost 2 hours away by TAXI. The guide book would put you off of this but it was wonderful. It took long and we got rained on so we were wet all day. These greatest travelers left home our raincoats. Smarty pant!!! After we arrived at My Duc we bought tickets on a “swung” or boat. These boats are about 3 inches from the edge of the water. Not much room for error.

The 1 hour paddle down the river was spectacular and reminded me or all the foggy, smoky photos you see of Vietnam. The other boats had people making pilgrimages and they were singing as they went by. Very peaceful sounding.

The sights and sounds of the village at the base of the Perfume Pagoda will never be forgotten. The most memorable will be the smoked ( all the meat seems to be smoke to help perserve it in the heat) dead dogs hanging in the doorways waiting for people to buy pieces and have it cooked. It left me feeling very upset. GAD!!!! Jen, this photo will be hard for you. It upset me for hours.

The Temple was very amazing as it is inside of a huge cave. They say the cave represents a dragon’s mouth and inside all the stalagmites have been described as different forms ie a turtle, Buddha riding an elephant, 3 Buddha etc. It really is amazing to see how other people worship their god. Burning incense, leaving money, leaving fruits and vegetables. Very educational and almost an over load on my senses. The smells, the colours, the praying, the people. It was a very different experience. One that I am glad we got a chance to see.

We had a female guide and she was terrific. She “Bin” bought us green “apricots”, she held our hands in the slippery parts, she encouraged us in the difficult hike up hill. She was great. This is an example of an offering to Buddha.

The bathroom situation around here is to be seen to believe. Not in the main city but outside. First you have to pay to use it. Then it is a “toilet” embedded in the ground where you have to squat over. Most women are not good aimers. That’s all I have to say. Lily was very “fascinated” with these.

I cannot describe everything we did. I will again list a few. We visited the “Hanoi Hilton, where John Macain imprisoned while in Vietnam. More markets, we rode in cyclones ( like a rick shaw), ate more mandatory food.

The final thing I will describe is our visit to a “restaurant” called O sin. We were to eat tit ran at O Sin. O Sin actually appeared in our guide book. Well when Zoe, Lily, Rainy and I reached this restaurant all we could do was laugh. It was a tiny probably about 12 foot wide 3 storey building. It is someone’s house. Their “Living Room” is on the pavement. When we walked into the door, the grandfathers bedroom was in the same room and he was in his pajamas ready for bed. We were then escorted out into the back yard to choose our own SNAKE out of a sack to be killed and cooked for us. We were then sent back into the “Living room” to wait on our snake to be “grilled”.. We were then escorted upstairs to the “dining room” which contained only 1 table- Ours!!Rainy was offered the specialty of the house the snake blood mixed with some alcohol – the drink is called Snake blood wine. Evidently very good for the men’s stamina. We politely refused. One of the other teams actually drank the drink. YUCK!!! Our grilled snake arrived as something looking like “meat balls or fish cakes”. It actually tasted fine. If you didn’t know that it was snake it would have been easy to eat all of it except they were full of red hot chopped pepper as well. I actually ate 2 balls. Poor Lils. She is really is not a scornful kid but when she sat down at the table she promptly took out her wet wipes and started to disinfect the area. Her wipe turned gross!!. Well we laughed a lot, we experienced more and we will NEVER forget O SIN!!! I promise!

12th April 2010-Hong Kong – Day 2

2010-04-15T00:32:00.000-07:00

We started this day by doing another bonus for 250 points.

The bonus read – Take a ferry to Macao island and do four things. Macau is an island that’s main source of income is from gambling in the casinos. Evidently it makes the most money in the territory. The casinos are very large and grand but many people still live in slums.
I will tell you the 4 things that we decided to do. We did this challenge with Zoe and Rainey. Mum and Barbara were to go with us but they had some passport issues and had to take the next ferry.

1)Get a Team photo at Sao Paulo Church – This was a Catholic Church that had burnt down. It is very amazing as it is highly ornate on the side that we took our photo but absolutely blank on the opposite side. It had a lovely view into some lush gardens and down a steep set of steps to the town below. Our Team photo was taken with “ all our family members

including Ben, so Savannah, Chloe, Drew and Ben know that you are travelling safely with us”

2)Obtain a casino chip for me from either Casino Lisboa or Wynn Macau – This was easy. We took a free shuttle bus to the casino and bought a $50.00 Hong Kong dollar chip as that was the cheapest Lisboa sold. The Wynn had $5.00 ones but we didn’t know.

3)Erected in the second half of the 16th century, it became known as the Portas de Cerco --- visit it and explain it . These were the border gates from China to Macau. It is like immigration. Now there is a big new facility but we had to find the actual old gates. Trickier

than you think.

4) Have a nosh at Riquexo – One of Bill delightful eating challenges. It was in a very obscure part of town across from a supermarket. It seemed to have had strange opening hours it was closed when most of the teams tried to eat there, we were lucky it opened at 12.00 and we arrived at 12 and were the first served. It serves Portuguese style food and was very good.

Lily and I then scavenged all over the city. My goodness we walked miles and miles but did lots of challenges. I will tell you some but not all.

We went to the High Court to see a court case. I was sure this was going to be one of Bill’s favorite red herrings but we tried anyway and were amazed that we actually allowed in our scruffy state into one of the court room. It is still very British in rules. The judge and the lawyers all wear long robes ( the judges own is red and the others are black) and the white curly wigs. I have no idea what the case was about as it was in Mandarin but they had 4 male defendants behind a “cage”. Seven people sit on their jury. It was really neat.

We purchased a Chinese Chop from Chop street. A chop can be made out of bone, jade, soap stone or ivory. This is a stamp or seal. We had one carved with Lily’s name.

The hardest one that took the longest and was definitely undesirable was one of the mandatory eating challenges. That was to select a meal at Lei Yue Mun Market. It was very difficult to find, very far away by train and then a 15 minute walk. This market is a sea food market. For those of you who think you like sea food you have NEVER seen some of the things that were alive and swimming in this place. The smell was out of this world. I thought Lily was going to throw up as she ran for the door. We actually fund somewhere selling a hotdog but even that was difficult to eat because of the smell that surrounded you. I was upset with how long this took because we had to miss out on other things I would have preferred to do.

One of the neatest things was we had to go to the FCC building ( this is the Foreign Correspondence Club. Yes Club you have to be a member and took a photo of Hughes Vanes photo of the last helicopter leaving Saigon. It really is an amazing shot.
Lily and I also scored ½ points on one of the Bonus challenges. The challenge read The Team that gets to the highest point in any building and can prove it will earn the points. If other teams get to the same height the points will be split. Lily wanted to do this desperately and in fact we tried for both days to do this. The tallest building was IFC ( International Finance Building 2) which is actually 88 stories tall. On Sunday it ws closed but on Monday we got our security clearance with our passports and travelled up to the 55th floor which is the highest visitors are allowed. I was sure everybody had done it but one our Team and Team Camels managed to get there. What luck for us- Good Girl – Lils.

The night market was interesting with lots of clothing, bags, belts, you name it they had it. We took The Peak tram to the top of Hong Kong and the view was spectacular. We saw the Symphony of Lights ( not very spectacular that night because it was foggy. We tried for Lily to sing Karaoke but we loss those points as the place was closed.
We are off to Hanoi in North Vietnam tomorrow!!!!!!. I can’t wait.

.

11th April 2010 – Day 1 in Hong Kong

2010-04-12T12:50:00.001-07:00

11^th April - Hong Kong

We have just endured a 14 hour and 20 minte plane ride on a flight that did not have one empty seat. No I have not missed a day on purpose we just lost one as we crossed over the date line. It s now Sunday 11 April at 6.30 am but it is Saturday 10^th April at 6.30pm. We are exactly 12 hours behind you guys.

We arrived at the Harbour Grand Kowloon Hotel. It takes after its name and its very Grand with an entire vista of the sea. Gorgeous. We were given a couple of hours to bathe and change, after all we had just had a 14hour 30 minute flight. We needed to ease out the kinks. Pamela I am so sorry that I didn't know you were leaving us. I really wanted to spend more time talking to you. I look forward to you rejoining us at some point.

At 11.00 am we were given our Scavenger Hunt books and we set off. I never dreamt that it was going to be so tough, don't get me wrong we had a terrific day but boy was it difficult and long.
We had to be back by 10.00 pm. What a long day we walked miles.

These were the Scavenges that we did:-

1)Locate and visit the Noonday Gun – at noon! (25 points)

2) Visit the Hong Kong Museum of Art and become an instant art critic by creating a 15 second video short explain the piece – have fun! (35 points}

3)Today is Sunday, take the Start Ferry ( upper deck) go and engage some of the groups of ladies picnicking about the Star Ferry terminal area in Central. Why are they there?? Who are they? Get a team photo with a friendly group. (25 points)

I thought that this was a fun one. Most of the nannies and housekeepers in Hong Kong are from the Philippines, they come over here and live in the house with their families but Sunday is their day off. They don't have homes to entertain each other in so the ladies get together and have picnics. They are hundreds of these women sitting in groups, playing cards, eating, listening to music, chatting, watching DVD's. I mean hundreds and hundreds. It is amazing. They are NO men evidently they stay and work in the Philipines.

4)Have a traditional dim sum lunch at City Hall (25 points)

Doesn't sound hard except on Sundays there is a 1 hour wait for a table. Here is Lily eating the din sum

5)Explain the wounded beasts at the base of the HSBC building (25 points)

These are 2 big bronze lion sculptures that were made in 1935, one is named Stephen and the other Stitt. They have bullet wouds in them from the battle of Hong Kong in 1941. If you look over nLily's shoulder you can see one of the ""wounds".

6)Take a poll by asking 5 locals ( not people at any hotel) whether or not they are interested in letting Beijing rule them totally? Or do they want to be free, independent and democratic nation? (35 points)

This was tuough because in a communist country everyone is afraid to talk about their political beliefs. We polled 5 younger people and they all said unanimously that they wanted to stay under Beijing Rule because of the economic tragedies in the rest of the world and that China was in a strong position and so Hong Kong will remain strong. They find it is better the devil you know than a new government who they don't know if they can trust. Mummy team got 5 who wanted Independence and Zoe got 3 who didn't want Independence and 2 who did. A very big difference in a very small survey.

7) Take a ferry (either there or back) then the new "lift" up to visit the "world's biggest outdoor Buddha". How many times do the bells around it ring? (150 points)

Comment: We took a ferry out to Lantau Island. This took 1 hour, it was very rocky but Lily and I survived fine. We then went up to the Big Buddha better known as Poi Mo, by Cable Car. This was quite an experience. It was a very hazy day and the wind was howling around the car. It took another 30 minutes to reach the top. Plenty of time to appreciate the views, ogle that some opt to walk up, I think it would take me 1 week to walk up there. When we finally got there we then had to climb up some very steep steps, probably 300 or 400 steps to the foot of the Big Buddha. He s very awesome, nothing I can say can prepare you for quite how large he is, unfortunately due to the cloud coverage most of the time you could only just see his silhouette but we were lucky because just briefly the clouds parted and we could see he clearly. Thank you Lord. The biggest challenge was getting back off the top of the mountain. We stood in line for almost 2 hours to get back in the cable car. But it was still worth seeing

8) Have something daring at She Wongs Yee's- Causeway Bay (35 points)

This restaurant is famous for its snake soup. We passed on that thought especially after seeing what it looked like. We order barbeque pork and chicken. The pork was like real Chinese pork. I enjoyed it. The chicken on the other hand was cold out of the fridge covered in a yellow orange gelatinous layer of YUCK and when we cut it to try and eat it the inside was not cooked. It was not a favorite at all.

9)Take a ride up to the top "the world's longest escalator". I want video (25 points)

Comment: When they say longest they really mean longest escalator. It takes about 30 minutes to reach the top. It breaks every now and then so people can get on and off and you have to walk a couple of steps and then off it climbs again. We did it about 8.00pm and Lily and I ran up it the entire way. We had a check in at 10.00pm and if you aren't there in time you lose points. But what goes up then has to come down the problem is that it is electrical on the way up ( don't mind Lily and I ran it very out of breath). But coming down it is only steps. So we then had to turn around and walk back down thousands of steps. It was fun going up but very tedious coming down.

10) Buy a copy of the South China Morning Post. What is Hang Seng and how many participate in it? (10 points)

Comment: Hang Seng is a bank that also is part of the stock market with billions of dollars in assets.

9th August 2010 – Tour of San Francisco and Meeting the Great Escapes Team

2010-04-12T12:46:00.001-07:00

It's the big day. At some point today they will tell us where we are off to. Lils is so excited because it is cold. She has decked out in all her warm weather gear beanie and all. We took a brisk walk down to a small cute café called Tart and Tart and shared a variety of things for breakfast.

From there we headed off walking to China Town. China Town gates are a 6 minute walk from the hotel. Mum ( Granny) met us there and we walked through China town

and then took the Hop On Hop Off City Bus tour. This is on a red double decker English bus. We sat upstairs the wind was cold but the sun was hot so it was lovely.

Our first stop was Fisherman's Wharf where we could see the island of Alcatraz,which use to be a prison until the 1960's now it is used as a place for filming movies etc.

We walked along the pier and saw the sea lions that were honking very noisily. We were lucky and managed to get down and really close to 4 of them who had climbed up on a pier where people dock their boats. This is behind a locked gate but one of the owners allowed us brief access so we could see them up front and personally. There are not as many as they se to be and the town folk say that they arrived in the droves after the 1989 earthquake and some surmise that they are leaving because they know another big earthquake is coming. Only time will tell.

Granddad we could see the Golden Gate bridge in the distant but we took a drive over the bridge and back. The gates are not gold in colour but as they call it a "burnt orange". The view is very spectacular and we took a photo of Lily placing her finger on top of the uprights. It really is unique.

We drove by the windiest street which s Lambard and took a photo of the trolley on the hill in the exact location where the ad for Rice A Roni was filmed. San Francisco really was delightful. We saw quite q lot of it before we had check in with Bill and Pamela for them to tell us the do’s and don’ts expected of us.
We then had 2 hours to get ready for dinner at an Italian restaurant called LuLu’s. The food was delicious we started with mussels and pizza, moved onto Steak and Salmon accompanied by roasted vegetables, salad, fries and risotto rice. Then there was an assortment of deserts. The food was delicious, thanks Bill and Pamela. At the close of dinner Bill got up and announced we were off to Hong Kong. We all clapped and cheered and we very excited some hustled back to the hotel, frantically packed our belongings and headed for the airport. Hong Kong here we come.

8th April - Good-bye Houston – Hello San Francisco

2010-04-12T12:21:00.001-07:00

Got up early and finished packing our bags for the final time. We said our sad farewells to Ben, Jords and Dad and we set off for the airport George Bush International Airport, where Rainy met up with us, our destination was San Francisco. I was so excited as I have never been there before and had heard so much about it. Got off of the plane and it was a shocked to discover how cold it was. Much colder than I expected I have always thought of San Fran as a warm destination.

We had dinner at a Hunan Chinese restaurant close to the airport and my Mum met us there. Her flight had come in much later than ours.

We stayed at "The Palace Hotel" The Luxury Collection On New Montgomery Street. It was very posh with huge crystal chandeliers etc. Lils was very impressed with the surroundings. We went to bed early so we could have an early start next day. We have as much as San Francisco to do as we can before we have to meet with Bill at 3.00pm. Night Night.

7th April 2010 -Houston

2010-04-12T12:16:00.001-07:00

Spent the day with Dad and the rest of family. Had a lazy day. We went out and had a nice Japanese dinner at Miako's. Jodi came and had dinner with us, it was so much fun getting caught up on all the news and the plans for her wedding in June. I am so excited for her.

Monday 5th April – Southernmost Point of the USA

2010-04-09T07:13:00.001-07:00

Drew and I got up early and walked to the bike rental place to organize having the bikes unlocked and returned to the owners. It was a lovely early morning walk. The bike lock was quickly cut off and we rode the bikes back and that episode was now officially over as well. We stopped and had breakfast at a quaint café called Café Joes and had a delicious breakfast wrap and wonderful coffee. When we g9ot back home the household was now rising and getting ready for the day.

This was the day to walk around Key West and see everything up close. We wondered around and walked the whole length of Duval Street, (Also known as the" longest street in the world", not because of its length but because it runs from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico) stopping occasional to look in the different stores, talking to the guy who was riding by with a huge snake

around his neck and the infamous pet shop. We stopped to look at the cute puppies. When we all departed, Jordan did not. About 10 minutes later Zoe says "Where is Jordan?" Understand there are 9 of us walking single file down a pavement. Every so often there are cross streets with lights, some of us make it through others don't so we are kind of dispersed. We can see each other if we look and Jords is the smallest of the party. But when we checked Jords was gone. Zoe in panic set off running back down the street, Drew crossed the street and starts hunting that side, Chris and Lily run ahead to see if he was in front. We have panic in the camp. When Zoe is half way down the street she gets a call from her office telling her the police have called and they have something of hers and to call them back. The office thinks they have some of the stolen goods, Zoe is hoping it is Jordan because they would not disclose what they have. Within minutes Zoe is back at the Pet Shop with a shaken Jords and 4 police ( thank goodness 4 different ones of they would have really thought we were crazy tourists ( which we are). Jords did everything right. He walked onto the pavement looked to see if he could see us. Went back into the store and asked the store clerk for help. She called the police. When the police came Jords did not know Zoe's cell number but he knew the office number and the rest is history.

We walked to the Southernmost Point of the USA. The point where the poor desperate Cuban refugees try to make it ashore. The kids were hoping to see some Cubans make it ashore but there was no such excitement. Key West is only 90 miles from Cuba but 150 miles from Miami so it is relatively close to Cuba that is why so many attempt the dangerous crossing looking for a better life.

It was a beautiful day. The sea was cold but kids were still swimming. We had lunch at the Southernmost Café and then visited the Butterfly Conservatory. They are so many different types of butterflies and moths. They are really fascinating to watch as they flutter around noiselessly. One butterfly hickhiked on Jordan for the entire visit and flew away as we were ready to leave. Jords felt very special. Do you see the size of the month? It is in a hibiscus plant so you can compare to the size of the leaves. It was about the size of a dinnerplate. Quite awesome.

We went to see the movie "The Last Song". It was quite a touching story and there were many sniffles and tears by all and sundry. We drove away from the Keys and back to Miami arriving very late at night. All in all we had had a terrific but eventful time in the Keys…… but we had managed in 3 days to 1)leave passport and money in safe, 2) Get robbed 3) lose the bike keys 4) Lose Jordan. We really had a terrific time despite all the woes. Lots of stories to tell.

4th April 2010 – Easter Sunday

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HAPPY EASTER everyone. Got up early to stuff the plastic Easter eggs for our Easter egg hunt. Everyone was still fast asleep so I tip toed around and decided to fill the eggs on the front patio. Imagine my surprise when I went to open the door and I discovered that the door was not locked. I had watched as Andrew checked the door the night before so I know that it had been locked. I didn't think much about it and set about getting my Easter egg hunt organized. Jords has never had an egg hunt so he was very excited and I didn't want to disappoint him.

Chris was the next one awake and he came to ask me if I had his IPhone. No not I. I thought that Jordan might have taken it upstairs the night before. One by one as the household of 9 woke up Chris kept repeating the question "Anyone seen my phone? I left it charging on the counter last night." Finally it dawned on me and I said his perhaps it was stolen". He said," no way ! It was sitting right next to my wallet and my wallet is still on the counter". Guess what! You got it all of his money was gone. So we all started searching our handbags etc and guess what ALL the cash was gone. All of mine (m y handbag was in the bathroom and the thief left it in the living room). All of Zoe's cash was gone, all of Chloe's was gone. We are convinced that someone with a key came into that house sometime between 2.30am and 7.00am and cleaned us out. He was very good. He searched every handbag thoroughly and found every cent that was hidden. We believe he took the items into the bathroom, where we had left on the light and searched very methodically and carefully. He took NO Barbados cash. Only USA. See how God is good. If I had not left my money in the safe in Miami, he would have gotten a lot more. Instead it was safe.

We spent hours with the rental caretaker (who had all the locks changed). Ben got to make his first 911 call as we called the police. We then had visits from 3 police officers and a detective. Finally we were able to start our day.

We rented bikes, rode all over the island, eat delicious key lime pie, were entertained by the street artists at Mallory Square, waved good-bye to the Disney Cruise Line and then the travel imp struck again. When we were ready to leave we had lost one of the bike lock keys that had locked up 2 bikes. So 2 of us had to walk back home.

The next highlight was the Ghost Tour. We went through houses where we were challenged to take photos 2 at a time. It was really crazy because some photos are clear and the next one has white orbs floating in it. Really freaky. I dare you to look up Robert the Doll on Youtube and hear for yourself the weird story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCWeA6mv0XY&feature=PlayList&p=F9B41BB6FD56974C&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=31

The real fun started when we got back home. The kids were freaked out and nobody wanted to sleep downstairs incase our "visitor" from the night before returned. So they carried up all the mattresses from downstairs and barricaded themselves into the bedroom with chairs shoved under door handles. Downstairs we barricaded the front door and Andrew wandered about all night checking and double checking all the doors. Nobody slept well. Infact we made the decision to leave the Keys one night early.

3rd April 2010 – Key West

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Today's the day we are heading down to Key West. Zoe rented a villa called Secret Villa on Three School Lane and we are eager to set off on this new adventure. http://www.findrentals.com/23186.html

First we headed up to Fort Lauderdale to have lunch with Denis, Trudy and Leah. Congrats on your new bundle of joy Truds and Den, she really is squinchy and cute. By the time we see Miss ( Charlie, Charlotte, Che Che,) again she will be walking and talking.

Then we set off to Key West. Well the first calamity we encountered was half way to our destination I realize that our travel documents and money that we were so careful to put in the safe was guess what still there. Very safe and sound but NOT with us. We arranged to have the documents collected and we would get them on the way home. Zoe's reaction was "Well at least we got that one out of the way here instead of in some " obscure country".

On the way we stopped at Robbie's Marina to feed the tarpon. These fish are enormous. We bought a bucket of dead fish to feed them but you had to watch out for those greedy pelicans. Lily had a run in with a pelican that she swerved away from and almost fell into the sea. Then Lils got soaking wet when the tarpon jumped out of the sea and splashed salt water all over her. Great experience. Thanks Clo!

The drive down was uneventful. We saw some huge lizards (I think they were iguanas), some deer and a beautiful sunset.

We arrived at Secret Villa around 10.30pm, after we had stopped for dinner and groceries. The house was lovely. Very secluded with its own swimming pool. It had 2 bedrooms upstairs, 1 bedroom downstairs and a huge living room with a pull out sofa. Perfect. We could ask for nothing more. We blew up the mattress for Chris, made the sofa bed for Lily and Ben and went to sleep. Perfect end to a perfect day.

2nd April 2010 – Zoe and Boys Arrive.

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The girls are very excited as "Aunty Zoe and the boys" arrived in Miami. Unfortunately they did not get in until very late. But the excitement started much later that's all.

The girls went to Youth Group at Wayside Baptist. They were warmly welcomed by all their friends and can't wait for the summer when they come back to go to camp with Wayside. They always come out so fired up and excited after a youth session with Todd. Thanks all you guys for being you.

1st April 2010 – departing Bim for Miami

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We (Savannah, Lily and I) left Barbados bright and EARLY this morning. We are off to Miami to shop for clothes, running shoes etc. for our Great Escapes trip and party clothes for Nans as she is finally 16 and can go out. Couldn't wait to see Chloe, she picked us up from the airport. It really is tough sending your kids away from home to school but it is doubly wonderful when you get to see them unexpectedly.

We had dinner with a bunch of her college friends. I love being surrounded by a bunch of young people. They definitely are full of different ideas, dreams and expectations. Seems like such a long time ago that I was that age but yet sometimes it feels like yesterday. Clo, has a very nice bunch of friends and we look forward to seeing them each trip.

Then it was back to the airport to collect Andrew who came to spend Easter weekend with "HIS GIRLS". He is very out numbered in our home.

Introduction

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My name is Heidi Hutchinson and I am travelling on "this blind date with the world" with my youngest daughter Lily. I am from the little island of Barbados, better known as "The Gem of the Caribbean" where I live with my wonderful husband, Andrew, my three beautiful daughters, Chloe (20), Savannah (16) and Lily (13). We have a menagerie of animals 3 dogs and 3 cats which are most definitely part of the family as well.

When I was a child my dad was a Pan American pilot and from as far back as I can remember I travelled all over the world with my parents and my younger sister, Zoe (who is also on this adventure). This created a great love of travel and a desire to visit different destinations all over the world. Over the last few years I have been blessed by being invited on my incentive trips with my husband's work place and have been to some amazing countries. But the more travelling I do the more places get added to my bucket list, the list does not seem to get shorter only longer.

Last year when Zoe competed in the "Global Scavenger Hunt" I sat at home and waited anxiously for the next blog update. I checked and rechecked my e-mail just longing for the next update and story to unfold about her travels. I so wanted to be there wherever she was and seeing the amazing things she was seeing. Imagine my delight when she told Lily and I to apply for this trip and if we were accepted that she would sponsor us. I was so nervous about my interview with Bill. I so wanted to join and was afraid not to get accepted. Then we were accepted…….. my goodness what an excitement.

Our next challenge was to get Lily permission to miss almost 3 weeks of school. Barbados works on the British education system and Lily goes to one of the best ( I think it is the best) public school in Barbados. Unlike other countries where kids get better education in private schools, it is the opposite in Barbados. I expected the school to say no to this venture but Mr. Perkins (the principal) was wonderful and gave his permission immediately. We were definitely going……Hip Hip Hooray.

I am so excited one minute, a little daunted the next and then very excited again. I can't wait to meet the other teams. I can't wait to meet Bill and Pamela. I can't wait to find out where we are going to first. Can you tell I am just so excited…. I have never blogged in my life and I had to get lessons in how to make things work. But here I am posting my first blog. One of many firsts over the next 4 weeks.

Please keep in touch. Comment on our blogs so that we feel the love from home. Miss you guys. See you in 1 monthJ

Getting ready for the trip...

2010-03-28T16:33:00.000-07:00

Yes - Heidi and Lily are ready for a BLIND DATE WITH THE WORLD (or at least they hope so).

Testing out their new blog - and writing this first entry - is Zoe Littlepage, another competitor and Heidi's sister and Lily's aunt. Heidi and Lily Hutchinson live in Barbados in the Caribbean and Lily got special permission from her school to miss three weeks of this semester to head out ... and see the world. They are nervous but downright giddy with excitement. The countdown is on... less than 2 weeks left until the start of the trip in San Francisco.