Ninh Binh- by Elise

Ninh Binh

These are sum of the experiences that we had in Ninh Binh. Ninh Binh is in North Vietnam.

We stayed at a Homestay with a lovely family in Ninh Binh. We had a delicious meal that the owner of the Homestay had made for us.

Are family rented motorcycles. We went to the Muha caves and took lots of pictures. We went to the big pagoda and the big Buddha. We saw the tallest pagoda and the tallest Buddha

We went on a boat for 3 hours. We went threw 3 caves and one was a km long. The boat people were paddling with their feet. We went to a lot of temples on the boat ride

Cat Ba, Vietnam- By Anna

Cat Ba was beautiful! On Tuesday, we took a boat to Cat Ba, which is an island right off of Hai Phong. When we arrived, we took our luggage to our hotel. We rented scooters and we drove to the Cat Ba National Park. It was beautiful. We stopped at the Hospital Caves, which were caves that the North Vietnamese built so that no one could find their hospital and the Southern Vietnamese couldn’t bomb them. It was really different and interesting to visit the rooms like the operating room, the old office and the meeting room. We saw couple of pictures of the hospital during the war and saw the actual equipment they used. After the Hospital Caves, we rode up to the beginning of the Cat Ba National Park hike. It was a bit of a confusing hike but well worth it. At the top, the view of Cat Ba was amazing. We took a couple pictures, then we began our hike down. The next morning, we had a boat tour of Halong Bay. Halong Bay is one of the most well known places in Vietnam. After a little bit of boating, we took double kayaks out onto the water. Amelie and I were together, Elise was with my mom and my dad was with Joe, from Germany. We kayaked through caves (sometimes got stuck). It was blast and Amelie and I killed it! After kayaking, we walked around the fish farm and we saw a giant fish that was the length of me but the weight of my dad. Then we all got back on the boat and we went swimming. It was definitely cold but freezing for my mom. It was fun because we could jump off the top of the boat. Lunch was amazing, there were spring rolls, red snapper, fish cakes, tofu and a veggie salad.That night, we went out for a Hot Pot at a restaurant were this young boy around Amelies age served us dinner. A Hot Pot is a burner that sits in the middle of the table with boiling broth, which is served with raw meat, seafood, noodles and vegetables for you to cook. We went to cannon fort for the last day. It was really cool to see the old cannons and the old uniforms they used to wear. It was really rainy ( and yes I did say rain! first rain in two weeks). At the hotel, Amelie and I finished our Buddhism project. That night we presented it in front of our parents and Ellie. Elise was our facilitator. For dinner, we went to this really loud bar and we played a big round of our card game called” Five Crowns”. The next morning, we had to go so we took a selfie with the brothers who owned the hotel and then we took the boat back to Hai Phong. The views in Cat Ba were something I’d remember for a long time!

Hoi An- By Elise

Wen we rented motorcycles in Vietnam. It was really fun! Amee my dad and I rode on one and my mom and Anna rode on another. And we went to a really big Buddha.

We went on a bike tour. We went on a bamboo basket boat. We had a Lunch at a Vietnamese Family’s house. By the way l rode my own bike. One of are stops were seeing people making carpets.

We got bikes from are hotel, I rode on the back of my mom’s bike a lot. We saw a famous bridge that had a dragon on it. We saw lots of lanterns. We went to the beach and had lunch.

I REALLY LIKE HOI AN!!!

Chiang Mai, Thailand- by Anna

Our family reunion in Chang Mai was so amazing! When we arrived in Chang Mai, we all hopped in a red van ( which is like a taxi in Thailand) and we drove to our guesthouse. After settling in, our parents told us to come to the guesthouse restaurant for a drink but surprisingly, we found our Aunt and her partner, Cody, sitting at a table in the restaurant. It was one of those moments that you would remember forever since we hadn’t seen a family member( not including each other) in six months. We sat down at the table with them and shared stories. It turned out that they were travelling around Thailand so we changed our travel itineraries to see them and we were never actually going to go to Thailand. That night, we all went to the hawker stalls for dinner. We tried scorpion on a stick and crocodile I preferred the scorpion because the crocodile was to chewy. It was hilarious to watch a boy around my age try scorpion because he had watched us first so he thought he could do it but ended up gaging. For desert we ate rolled ice cream and it was really cool to see how they made it.

The next morning was our Thai cooking class. Chang Mai is known for cooking classes so we thought we ought to go. We started off going to the food market and picking out all sorts off different spices, ingredients and veggies for our cooking class. After that, we picked out what six different dishes we wanted to make in the class. I picked: fried veggie spring rolls, pad Thai, sweet and sour prawn soup,Mussuman curry, prawns baked with vermicelli and sticky rice with mango.Our first course was the spring rolls. They were the best ones yet! There was tofu and veggies in it. Then we made the prawns and the pad Thai. It was all so good. After that we made curry, curry paste, the soup and then lastly we made the sticky rice. After the course we were so full we had to roll home. It really was the best food I’d ever had! That night we headed to the markets to get a bit of exercise. The next morning we had to say goodbye to our Aunt and Cody. It was tough. Then, we walked around the old city and we visited a Buddhist temple. At 7pm it was time for our first massage. It was absolutely amazing. We did a Thai massage, it was a normal massage until she started to stretch me like I was a peace of bubble gum. It was hard not to scream but it was totally worth every single minute by the end. I would totally go back to Thailand!

Visa issues and Ba na hills-by Amelie

Most of traveling is easy, but there can be some difficult times too. Here is one of them:

To enter Vietnam you need a visa. When we got our visas, our entry place was written on them. After we got our visas, we decided to fly into a different city in Vietnam. We thought it was okay to have a different port of entry, because it was in the same country, but the airline proved us wrong. When we got to the airport, the airline said we had to have the the exact port of entry written on it. We had to rebook our flight so we had enough time to buy another visa and then we could go to Vietnam. We got our pictures taken, but by accident we put in my birthdate wrong, so we had to pay for another visa. We thought it was okay after that, but when we got to the airport the airline said that on my moms visa there was one wrong number. We had to buy another visa! That’s twelve visas we had to buy in two days! We finally got on the airplane and went to Ho Chi Min. There was a layover in Ho Chi Min city, and the airlines said that they had not rebooked our second half of the flight. They had to rebook it… AGAIN! We are no longer flying with that airline! I think all that was worth it because Vietnam has been amazing so far!

“Ba na hills” is a popular hill in De Nang. From Hoi an it takes about one our to drive there. When we got there we took the longest gondola in the world and actually the longest one, that was about 45 minutes and 5 km long up to the top of the mountain. At the top of the mountain we walked around, saw the big Buddha and went to an old French wine cellar. We also went to the Golden Bridge which was so cool because there are hands made of stone holing up a Golden Bridge. It was hard to take pictures tough because there are so many people. After that we took another gondola down to fantasy world (kind of like a amusement park). We waited in a very, very, long line so we could go on this super fun roller coaster where you are in charge of the brakes (I went at full speed). We also went on a fun spinning ride and went to a Jurassic place were you see dinosaurs. We went for lunch at a restaurant in the French colony and got western food (i will not put in exclamation point after that because I prefer Asian food). We also took some funny pictures while my mom and dad went to a beer plaza. After it was time to go back to Hoi an.

Indonesia-by Elise

We were in Sumatra, Indonesia. We stayed at green hill lodge for 3 nights and we stayed at the jungle house for 2 nights. We saw orangutans and monkeys.

my family swam in the river and jumped off really big rocks into the river. We also went river rafting and it was really fun!

I liked the food at green hill and We had really good food at the jungle house to.We ate Nasi goreng by the river.

We went for a lot of hikes and went to the bat caves. We saw rubber trees and I never new rubber was made from trees.

are mom lost her bank card in a ATM but she had to go back the next day and she got it back!!!

Singapore- by Anna

We landed in Singapore late Friday night. Our driver was waiting for us, so we all hopped in a van and he drove to our hotel. The next morning, we went to the Botanical Gardens. All the plants were so pretty and the weather was just right. Next, we went to Marina Bay Sands which is a bay with the Merlion, the Marina Bay Sands hotel and a big shopping center. The hotel was beautiful, there were three buildings in a row and it looked like a huge, huge boat was laying across them. First, we went to the big shopping center. It was like the future of all the malls in Vancouver. There were some really expensive stores like Versace and Gucci and a little river that went right through the mall. There were people going down the river on little boats. It was so cool! After lunch, we went for a walk around the bay, took nice pictures and ate fried ice cream for the second time on this trip. When night fell, we took a lovely boat ride down the Singapore River to see lights. They were beautiful because they lit up the entire city. After the boat ride, we went for one more little walk before returning to our hotel to go see the……….Merlion! It was all lit up and so beautiful. We took a couple pictures then we went back to the hotel. The next morning, started off with a lazy morning then we decided to go do the Cloud Forest. The trees were so tall and the view from the skywalk was so nice. The weather started to turn against us, so we hurried indoors to a dome with a gorgeous waterfall. We also learnt about pollution and global warming. After watching some upsetting videos about pollution, global warming, plastic and wasting water we suddenly felt that we should make a difference.

Here are some things that we can do to help the earth:

-cut down on plastic and styrofoam that doesn’t biodegrade

-eat less meat and more veggies

-take shorter showers

-turn off lights when your out

-don’t drive when you could walk or bike

After that, we took a subway to the Singapore Night Safari. It was so fun. We got on train that took us around the Zoo. We saw some amazing animals like the White Asian Lion, Malay Tiger, Sloth Bear, Taipir, Asian Elephant, Spotted Hyena, Hippopotamus, and Rhinoceros’. It was cool to see that the animals had a lot of space to run around and only a little fence to keep them in their habitat. After the train ride, we were gonna see a show but we missed it so we just got back on the train and did the entire thing over again. After, the night safari we headed back to the apartment. Singapore made me realize what Vancouver could look like if we tried real hard to cut down on plastic and water. Singapore deserves a 10/10!

Food in Asia-by Amelie

In Asia, you will never run out of food options. If you go to the hawker stalls there are little food trucks that have all sorts of different foods. Indian, Thai, Chinese, Malay, Indonesian and even western food. My favourite is butter chicken, because I don’t like spice and i like chicken. Anna really likes curry. Elise also likes butter chicken. My mom likes laksa (noodles in a curry coconut milk, or if you were my mom you would call it “pure deliciousness”). My dad likes Nasi Kandar (a bit like a Indian buffet). If you like spice you are in luck because almost every thing is spicy. Here are some other foods we tried:

Mee goreng (fried noodles)

Nasi goreng (fried rice)

Wanton soup (soup with prawns or meat)

Tons of different naan breads (garlic, cheese, butter, extra cheese)

Spicy soups

Curry (vegetables, chicken, tofu)

Sticky rice (sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf)

Steamboat (a lot of different meats and vegetables you can boil your self)

Chicken dishes (chicken with rice, butter chicken, peanut sauce chicken and of course spicy chicken) and tons of other delicious foods.

Our family loves Asian food!!!

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-by Anna

After an amazing 51 days in Australia and New Zealand, it was time to move on to some Asian countries. We landed in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, on the 27th and we took a taxi to our hotel. When we arrived, Jodie and her family were waiting for us in the lobby. My mom and Jodie went to N.Practitioner school together and coincidently both came up with the same idea to travel the world. Jodie and her husband, Scott, and their kids Grace,10, Finn,12, and Jack,14, had been travelling the world but the other way. They started off in Europe and are ending in S. America. That night we went out for dinner and everyone sang happy birthday to me. It was a fun night! The next morning we went swimming in the most amazing pool I’ve ever seen. It overlooked the city. Later in the afternoon, we went out for lunch and tried these Chinese doughy buns. They were surprisingly good, but interesting. After lunch, we walked around the city and then we went to a temple and checked out the Twin Towers. We also went to a market and bought over ten different flavours of pop corn including an interesting type called salted egg. It tasted strange. The next day started off with homemade crepes. Then, we went out for lunch with Leelin, from Malaysia, who we met on the Cocora Valley hike back in Columbia. I ordered a prawn noodle dish. It was so good. The next day, we went up the Twin Towers. The Twin Towers are towers that were conjoined by a hallway 170m off the ground. It was so nice and the view was incredible. Then, we took the subway home and had a very traditional Malaysian dish called spaghetti. Spaghetti is pasta with tomato sauce. Just joking we just wanted a break from Malaysian food.The next morning, we had to say goodbye to Jodie and her family. Then we left for…………… Cameron Highlands, known for their strawberries.

New Zealand and Australia-By Leane

After 3.5 months in Central and South America, we arrived in New Zealand and struggled to shake the feeling that we were cheating. We guzzled tap water and snacked on raw vegetables without fear of becoming ill. We took transportation and bought tickets without issue, and understood the surrounding signage. If that wasn’t enough, the exorbitant cost of everything reminded us that we were back in the Anglo world.

While our time in South America was about connecting as a family, New Zealand and Australia were about reconnecting with friends. I spent key years of my youth in Australia, both as a Rotary high school exchange student in Eden, NSW, and as a new graduate nurse in Brisbane, QLD. Steve and I lived in Melbourne for a year in 2005 while he completed his fellowship and I worked at the Royal Children’s. We made special friendships during these years, friendships that have withstood the test of time and distance.

New Zealand was a quick stop. We knew we couldn’t travel this far without dropping in to see our good friend David Bettany, a fellow psychiatrist who worked with Steve back in Melbourne days. We didn’t have time to venture through the beautiful and adventure-filled South Island this time around, so we stayed close to Auckland and explored the area. Local Waiheke and Davenport were great day trips from the city before venturing south to Tauranga and finishing up with a long weekend on the beach at Mangawhai Heads, north of Auckland. We did mange to sneak in a few visits to local wineries with minimal grumbling from the back seat. NZ Sauvignon Blanc continues to be a fave.

Back in August, in Costa Rica, we began reading The Hobbit as a family. Bilbo Baggins entertained us during the road closures in Costa Rica, long bus rides in Colombia, the Amazon in Ecuador, and in the desert in Atacama. As we neared Hobbiton, we were closing in on the final chapter. The long awaited Hobbiton Dinner Feast did not disappoint. Our tour through the shire was just as we had envisioned, and the lantern walk late in the evening was magical. The superfans kept me entertained all evening. An American dressed as Bilbo spent the entire night barefoot as he wanted to experience Hobbiton as a true hobbit. We only realized he wasn’t a paid character after making him pose with our children for half a dozen photos. Another fan brought his girlfriend to record his reenactment of entire scenes from the movie, complete with props he had carried with him from Australia. The dinner was a true feast, and we were encouraged to eat like hobbits and indulge in seconds and thirds. Fortunately, the Mathias girls all inherited my “dessert stomach”, as the second spread was almost as spectacular as the main.

We couldn’t leave without a quick lesson on the Maori culture, so we stopped at the Auckland Museum en route to the airport. It was valuable for the girls to see a country that has embraced it’s indigenous heritage and integrated Maori language and culture into the community and school system. This was a sharp contrast to the devastating histories and even the genocide of some indigenous groups throughout North and South America.

Securing christmas in Queensland was the first step in planning our year away. The direction of our travels, timing, countries, etc. all fell into place from there. Nerissa, Sue and Ian hosted us at their home on the Sunshine Coast and Christmas week was a lot of back and forth between the beach and the pool. Insert multi-family volleyball games, a round of golf, and some fantastic evenings with good friends.

We discarded our idea of hiring a camper for the month when our friends started reaching out with offers to host us during our time in Australia. These stops stretched from the Sunshine Coast in Queensland all the way down to Melbourne, and we couldn’t imagine missing out on any of them. So, we rented a car and embarked on an epic 4000km road trip. The girls thought this was fantastic, they made new friends at every stop along the way. They traded email addresses and Instagram handles, and the next generation of friendships began. The girls learned Aussie slang and summer holiday pastimes. Anna caught the surfing bug. She was a natural and left Steve behind as she caught wave after wave during their lessons together. Amée and Elise spent hours boogie boarding and building epic sand castles.

The far south coast of New South Wales holds special memories for both of us. Not only did I spend a year as an 18 year old exchange student, but I brought Steve back in 2004 to meet my friends and host families. We returned for one final visit at the end of 2005 before moving back to Canada, and we were engaged during that visit on a rainy day on Asling’s beach. It was emotional for us to bring the girls to Eden/Merimbula and share with them our stories and introduce them to friends and family who have been such a big part of our lives.

We settled for awhile in Melbourne. Steve cracked open the computer and headed off to work for a good part of two weeks, learning from the crew at Headspace Australia and Origin, and sharing stories of Foundry with Australian colleagues. Our time in Melbourne was perfect- the weather was warm (Hot! Like, hottest day on record HOT), the people were on holidays, and the tennis was on. Family day at the Aussie Open is held two days before the tournament begins. The concert stage was in full swing, the kids had a chance to have have a hit, and the players were warming up and wandering around the grounds. The girls found a big yellow tennis ball and a pen in the gift store and spent the afternoon watching the stars practice and catching their signatures as they left the court. By the end of the day, they had caught the tennis bug. They were all in and the tournament hadn’t even started. They loaded the AO App and learned the players and their statistics. We spent most of the week cheering on the Canadian players with our grounds passes. Steve and I had a night out with Ryan and Lori (thanks, guys!) in Rod Laver Arena and will not soon forget watching Tsitsipas eliminate Federer in an epic 4 hour match.

When we weren’t at the tennis, we were barbecuing, picnicking and dining our way around the city as we caught up with old friends. We introduced the girls to beach tennis in Port Melbourne, a game that kept us in shape and introduced us to some of our dearest friends back in 2005. Steve and I hit some of our old running routes around the port (why did they seem so much longer this time??).

Melbourne was supposed to be the end of the road trip, but the girls had other ideas. Back at school in Costa Rica, they had become fast friends with three Australian sisters who were abroad for a year in Samara. They had returned in December to their home town of Mount Gambier, South Australia. The Mathias girls put their foot down. They wouldn’t leave Australia until they had visited the Attiwell sisters, and they promised not to groan ONCE about the travel time it would take to get there. So we added an extra state to our list of places traveled. It was worth it to see the girls have so much fun and rekindle their friendships. We couldn’t venture in that direction without travelling the Great Ocean Road and seeing the 12 Apostles (now 7 or 8). Even in record setting 47 degree heat, that drive is breathtaking and wonderful.

My love affair with Australia has not faded after all this time. Life in Vancouver is wonderful and I have no regrets about our decision to settle in Canada, but there is, and always will be, a part of me that belongs in Australia.

To all of our amazing friends in Australia and New Zealand: Thank you for opening your homes to us. Your hospitality was above and beyond in every way. The Christmas season could have been a difficult time for the girls to be away from their friends and relatives back home, but you made them feel like family and had them so involved in friendships and adventures, they didn’t have time to notice. The meals, the wine, the laughs, and the stories- we will never forget our visit. Thank you.