Driving a Campervan Wasn't Exactly What I Expected...

For the last week, I was supposed to have been taking it easy. It was a vacation after all. My plan was to drive up the Eastern coast of Australia and see stuff along the way. Rather than simply renting a car and doing the hotel thing, I figured I would try the camper van approach. The benefit would be that I could stop where I wanted or stay the night in a caravan park. It turned out to be exactly like and nothing like what I expected.

Its definitely true that one has, well, different choices when it comes to deciding where to sleep. I don't want to say more choice because it turns out that that is not quite true. A lot of the places you would like to stay for the night have signs saying no overnight camping. So the main places you are left with are the rest areas along the Bruce Highway. But guess what? They are scary places.

In the day time, they are just fine. For a quick toilet break or even a brief nap, they do just the trick. But for an overnight sleep, they are downright terrifying. The problem is that when your camper's curtains are closed, you have no idea what is going on right outside your window. Although its probably quiet and still, your mind (OK, my mind) is racing…thoughts of the many ways some crazed trucker is going to rape and mutilate me. When I stop and think about it, I realize thats just crazy talk, but when the eyelids start to close, all logic goes out the window. Thats the time of dreams, or in this case, nightmares.

Every cracking branch is a dingo about to rip me to shreds. Every rustling leaf is the bouncing step of a rabid kangaroo. Every truck leaving the rest area just dropped off an insane knife-wielding hitchhiker looking for his next free ride.

I survived the night and I am here to tell you about it. I only tried it the first night, and then used caravan parks every night afterwards. Now you might be thinking that I should have tried caravan parks from the beginning, and that was my intention. I ended up not having any choice about the matter that first night. You see, Australia likes the idea of roaming the country in a camper. But the people who run the caravan parks would rather you not bother them by using their services.

That first night I stopped at a reasonable time based on previous travels in other countries. I pulled into 3 different spots, big and small, but all were closed. It was 10PM and every hotel I passed still had a light on, but the camp sites were all shut. And its not like I just barely missed their closing time. They had been turning away new guests for at least FIVE hours. This had a significant impact on how I would be spending the days of my trip.

I had planned on doing tourist things during most of the daylight hours, then put in 5 or 6 hours of driving until about 10 each night. This plan would have worked perfectly had I been in a car and stayed in comfortable hotel beds each night. But because I was carrying my bed with me, I had to blow the best hours of the day on covering the miles to get to my ultimate destination.

I ended up seeing much less of the country than originally planned. If you are thinking about doing the same thing, stop and think about what you are going to do. Think about how much time it would take to relaxingly cover that amount of distance. Now because Australia is so against the touring camper, you are going to double, or even better, quadruple the amount of time it will take. The added benefit of taking that much time is that the camper van approach might actually make financial sense compared with driving to hotels because if you have only a week, its definitely the more expensive route. 

Days 7–12 – Jiri (The Walks)

Although my sister was in Jiri for work, I was there just for vacation. So I went on a few walks in the area. There is a hiatus for some of the projects at the clinic right now, so some of the workers are without a job until they start up again in a few months. So Chatra was available to take me around a few days. Although Chatra is in his 50s, he is far more energetic than I was in my 20s. And since he has always lived in Jiri, he knows everyone. Before working for my sister he took tourists on longer treks all around Nepal, so if you need a guide anywhere, Chatra is a good choice. If you need to contact him, let me know an I can get you in touch with him.

My first day in Jiri, I actually wandered a bit on my own. Just down to the town at the bottom of the road and into the hills a bit. Its a 2km walk down (and 2k back up) but in this heat, it is extremely tough. The views along the way though are stunning. This is a deep green valley filled with trees, steep mountains at its edges, and houses scattered along its walls. I ended my walk out at a bridge a short way up the hill where I did one of my HDR panoramas. And then walked back up to the clinic. By the time I arrived, my shirt was drenched with sweat and my sister thought I was about to peg out. I was completely exhausted but it was a wonderful walk.

The second day was my first with Chatra. We decided to go to the monastery at the top of the valley. The first part was a repeat of my walk from the day before, but we kept going after the bridge. And going, and going. And at the top was a small building that didn’t look all that special from the outside. I removed my shoes and went in. There were 20 or so monks chanting away, occasionally breaking to blow the horns at various intervals. I had never seen such an amazing thing. Locals came in and out for a moment with the lama at the corner of the room. They prostrated in prayer in time with the chants. Incredible. And I was very thankful for having a camera that could handle a high ISO with minimal noise, and the 50/1.4 for low light photography.

The third day was a walk to the top of the valley. It was a shorter walk but very much steeper. As we walked up the clouds started rolling in and by the time we were at the top we were completely enshrouded in fog. Thankfully we stayed at the top for a while because after about 30 minutes, the clouds cleared and we had a great view of the valley floor. At the top, there were some small structures marking the sites of ashes of some of the dead. This was a place where they burned the remains of people who had died in the area and it was almost exactly as it looked 15 years ago when I came up here on my own. There was also a memorial for three photographers who had died very nearby.

By the end of that day, the skies had completely cleared and we were given some fantastic views of the valley from the clinic. The weather here can change drastically every hour, so when the skies clear during the monsoon season, its good to capture it while you can.

I really enjoyed my stay in Jiri and look forward to a return. Hopefully I wont wait another 15 years to see it again.

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Days 7–12 – Jiri (The Stay)

We spent four full days in Jiri plus the 2 full travel days there and back. I had been there 15 years ago and was surprised both at how much things had changed and how much things had stayed the same. Jiri is an amazing place 60 miles east of Kathmandu. It used to be on the route to Everest before helicopters took trekkers all the way to the mountain. The Swiss saw Jiri as a wonderful place to invest in and built a hospital and a cheese factory. Over the years it has grown quite a bit. Many years ago, my sister started a project there to study infectious diseases. I am sure there is a lot more to it, but it is way over my head. She still goes out there to help manage the project, and has funding to continue another few years with various other projects.

In the fifteen years since my last visit, the town has grown immensely. There are so many more houses along the road down to the town at the bottom of the valley. There are many new businesses that have started to buy supplies, house visitors, and more. Its really incredible to see that. What hasn’t changed all that much is the basic infrastructure. But that isn’t limited to Jiri as you can see the same lack of progress around the entire country. Most of the homes in Jiri have a single bare electric lightbulb for light. Power goes out at various times throughout the day. Kitchens are basic with one or 2 portable gas burners. Toilets are often outside with limited or no running water.

My sister’s clinic is quite advanced by local standards I think. The bathroom is actually indoors. There is a tap in the bathroom that can be used to fill the bucket required to flush the toilet. Its a crouch over kind of toilet, but that is standard in many countries. Whats really amazing for us is that there is now an shower in that room. Its not a Western shower, but it does occasionally get some warm water for a few minutes so if you time it right, it can be almost perfect. You should not expect that kind of luxury in most lodgings in the area. They will all promise it, but you rarely get it. The clinic is also unusual in that when the power goes out, there are generators that can kick in to keep things going.

The ground floor of the clinic is used for health care activities. There is a small office to do initial diagnosis, a back room for more private assessing and an x-ray room used for some of the bones studies. When more light or room is needed, they just step outside into the sunlight, assuming its not raining. While I was there, they needed to set a badly broken arm someone came in with, so that was done on the driveway. Thankfully I broke no bones during my stay, because I would probably not been man enough to stand it.

The next floor up is the living quarters and lab area. There are two rooms for guests who stay over. My sister took the front room and I took the back for a couple nights. The back room was also the main living room. The lab is on that floor, as well as a few small offices and the bathroom. One more floor up is the kitchen and dining area.

Dining at the clinic is wonderful though a bit repetitive. Morning is a fantastic spicy omelette, some curried vegetables, and roti. Lunch is some Magi-noodles (I think they are the local brand of Ramen Noodles) mixed in with fresh onions, peppers, and other vegs. And Dinner is rice, yellow dal, curried veg, and something really spicy that I couldn’t handle. Repeat that menu every day and that was dining in Jiri. The big change over the last time I was here was the variety of the available vegetables. Pumpkin, cauliflower, and more are all grown locally. And they use not only the pumpkin, but also the pumpkin greens which taste wonderful. Groceries are easily available so there is less need to store in-house for several days like before.

Since there are several projects going on, mostly by researchers at my sisters institution, they needed a second building. So just up the street is another house where I stayed the nights I wasn’t in the main clinic. The benefit to me was that this had a real bed. It wasn’t very comfortable, but it gave me a bit more space to spread out. Now let me be clear. I don’t mind roughing it so an uncomfy bed is OK. But a ThermaRest pad on the ground would be an upgrade. Its hard to believe my sister stays here 3 or 4 times a year up to 2 or 3 weeks at a time.

But when staying out in Jiri, you have to plan a significant amount of time for travel. Although i mentioned it was 60 miles away, that is a full days journey. It really does take 8 or 9 hours to drive that distance. And the road is rough. VERY rough. Often it is a single lane with huge buses flying toward you from the opposite direction. On every bend you have to honk many times to let the other driver know that you are coming and they do the same (usually). If you run in to each other, the only escape is to fly off the edge and often its a long way down to the valley below. In the last 15 years, this road has improved immensely. It is paved almost the entire way, though there have been a few landslides that have taken out small sections.

At one of the higher points in the road, it gets very bumpy. Its a stretch of about one or two miles and it takes about 15 minutes to traverse. Its all rocks and its the bumpiest ride I have ever seen. I took a movie of it so when I get to a faster connection point, I will be sure to upload it somewhere. Thankfully that is the only point where it is that rough.

Jiri has fallen off of most tourists’ maps which is unfortunate. In my next post, I’ll talk about what makes Jiri such a nice place to visit. There are quite a few things to see here that are amazing.

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How I did on my vacation checklist

Its over!!! My month long vacation ends tomorrow when I have to wake up before 10 for the first time. 30 days ago, I created a list of things I was going to do. Time to go through that list and see what I actually did. I think it worked out even better than I planned and I'll tell you why afterwards:

• Tweak this site - come up with a blog design that I really like and that isn't broken in some spots. Make it easier to update and friendlier to you - Well, I tweaked it a bit, but not a whole lot. I had some fun with it.
• Read some books I have bought in the last few months (and put them into action)
• CSS Anthology - Yeah, I flipped through it a bit
• Principles of Beautiful Web Design - I read it, but didn't really take it to heart
• Windows Powershell in Action - Didn't even touch it
• Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# - Touched it, but didn't crack the cover
• Organize my life -
• Get rid of some of this extra crap in my apartment - I bought some more crap instead
• Get rid of the extra feeds I don't really read in Google Reader - They are all too important
• Get rid of the extra crap on all my PCs, etc. - Nope, didn't do that either
• Every time I have seen something interesting on the net, I added them to my del.icio.us account. Now I can actually look at them. - OK, good in theory, but didn't quite get around to it
• Prepare for my new apartment - Be a bit more involved in the renovations as they come closer to completion. - It was certainly easier to do when work didn't get in the way, but I wasn't any more involved than before
• Write up some reviews of amazing software I use everyday and that I can't live without
• Dash - No, but I still love it
• ClearContext - A review would have given me a free license, but I just paid up instead to upgrade
• SpinVox - Did that one
• Trog Bar - No, but its really cool...did that count?
• Learn about new and interesting technologies that I haven't had a chance to really focus on yet (I could probably spend a month alone on each of these):
  • Sharepoint 2007 - I am still riding on the memory of my time as a Sharepoint PM at Microsoft...didn't touch it this month
  • Facebook and Facebook development - Nope, but I played plenty of Scrabulous on Facebook
  • Windows Vista Sidebar development - Nothing here
  • Firefox and Thunderbird addon development - I briefly looked into Chrome dev
  • The new stuff in Visual Studio 2008 - Never even launched VS
  • LINQ - I can now spell it correctly
  • Windows Presentation Foundation - No
  • Windows Communication Foundation - Nada

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A new theme in the works...posted now

So I am updating the theme on this site. Its not done, but there are already a lot of changes I am pretty excited about. Its still not perfect, but I have a bit of time on my hands right now.

Whats working and is pretty cool:

• Current Twitter Status - ok that was there before
• Upcoming Travel from 30Boxes - Its grabbing my future travel schedule from 30B. When a date goes past, it will no longer show up on the page...automatically
• Recent Del.icio.us Tags - Its grabbing the last 5 or 6 days worth of links I have tagged.
• Captaris Developer Program Posts - I also occasionally post to the Captaris Developer Program. This is a list of all of those posts. As with the above items, this is dynamic.
• Blog Flare - Took a while to figure this out. Each post can be added to Digg, Facebook, Technorati....ok, they won't, but they could.
• Full vs Excerpts - The most recent 3 posts are the full post. Then there are a bunch more that are just excerpts.
• Cool icons from FamFamFam: Silk
• Simile Timeline - This is one of the coolest new features. Rather than a traditional calendar of previous items, I am now showing an interactive timeline of all blog posts here.

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Taking on a new challenge after next week

At the end of next week I am taking on a new challenge. Its something I have never tried before. That's right, I have to move on. Wait...no....not that....I am talking about how I take vacations. Every time I have taken time off in the past, I have gone somewhere. My last few vacations I have spent in Vietnam, Cambodia, New Zealand, Croatia, and other great spots around the world. But this time I am going to try something new. I am going nowhere!!! I am just going to stay in Amsterdam. I am going to be able to do all the things I have been wanting to do here. But I don't want to just sit on my ass and stare at a wall. So I am trying to come up with a list of things I want to do. I will have plenty of time since I have pretty much the entire month of December. So here is my list so far. Its in no particular order other than the order they came out of my head. Now some of this may look like work, but it isn't. I just happen to have a job that covers the topics I genuinely enjoy working on.

• Tweak this site - come up with a blog design that I really like and that isn't broken in some spots. Make it easier to update and friendlier to you.
• Read some books I have bought in the last few months (and put them into action) - CSS Anthology, Principles of Beautiful Web Design, Windows Powershell in Action, Pragmatic Unit Testing in C#, etc.
• Organize my life - Get rid of some of this extra crap in my apartment, get rid of the extra feeds I don't really read in Google Reader, get rid of the extra crap on all my PCs, etc.
• Every time I have seen something interesting on the net, I added them to my del.icio.us account. Now I can actually look at them.
• Prepare for my new apartment - Be a bit more involved in the renovations as they come closer to completion.
• Write up some reviews of amazing software I use everyday and that I can't live without - Dash, ClearContext, SpinVox, Trog Bar, etc
• Learn about new and interesting technologies that I haven't had a chance to really focus on yet (I could probably spend a month alone on each of these):
• Sharepoint 2007
• Facebook and Facebook development
• Windows Vista Sidebar development
• Firefox and Thunderbird addon development
• The new stuff in Visual Studio 2008
• LINQ
• Windows Presentation Foundation
• Windows Communication Foundation
• Windows Workflow Foundation
• Silverlight
• YUI
• Everything else in .NET 3.5
• System Center
• Actually start to use Powershell more often so that I don't have to relearn it every time.
• Maybe see a little bit of Amsterdam and the Netherlands. There is so little I have seen of this place. This guide might help.
• Sleep - I plan to sleep a lot. I haven't been getting much of that for a while.

OK, so I think I may have a bit more to do that a single month will allow. But that may be a good problem to have.

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Does it get any worse???

I am typing this in the middle of the worst journey of my life. The overall trip has been great, but this leg, or set of legs, is painfully bad. It started this morning at 6AM at the Le Meridien in Siem Reap in Cambodia. Thats when I checked out of my fairly opulent hotel and got onto the free transport provided by the boat company. The plan was that this van would take me to a small boat. Due to the low water levels, this small boat would take me to a bigger boat that would go all the way to Phnom Penh. But I am already getting ahead of myself.

The van that picked me up had room for maybe 8 people plus a driver. So for the two people already on board plus me, it was a spacious ride. After my hotel we stopped at another to get two more, then two more at another hotel. Two more....two more...two more. Yeah, I know....thats 13 plus luggage and I said there was room for 8. Well, we stopped again to get the last person. Then we drove down a very bumpy road for about 30 minutes to the dock. Now when I say dock, i may be exagerating just a bit. Maybe mosquito-infested sewage dump is a better description. They checked our tickets and we got on board this tiny boat, but as I mentioned, I was expecting this.

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On Vietnam

I arrived on Friday, a bit later than I planned, but then I am leaving a similar amount of time later today so i guess it all worked out. When I got to the airport I was told I just missed check-in time. Yeah, even though every sign in the Kuala Lumpur airport mentions a crazy 10 minute limit, I was subjected to a more internationally accepted 45 minute limit. So I had to change the ticket...100 Euros. OK, no big deal, except the average Malay seems to be paying one tenth that for an entire round trip ticket. So I change the ticket and get ready to wait an extra 6 hours in the airport.

Waiting that long was especially tough as I have had such little sleep the past week while working the Captaris International Partner Conference. Its all over now and my vacation starts with a 6 hour layover. I took some pictures of the airport, then hunkered down in a lounge for the wait. At boarding time I was joined by a few dozen Korean teens on some sort of school trip. As soon as they saw the security line at checkin open, they created this Great Wall of bodies, interconnected chest to back for 30 feet. It wasn't until their chaperone interceded that I had a way through to the metal detectors.

Inside the waiting area, I watched these kids keep themselves amused. They all had different variations of messy Bruce Lee haircuts and a few were bigger and possibly older than the others. You could see that everyone took their lead. These leaders were the best at the "flick a playing card with two fingers and send it flying across the room" skill and all the others were trying their best to achieve their results. There were cards hovering all over the place. When a card nearly hit me, everyone huddled to figure out who would have to get it. Eventually one sheepishly approached, apologized profusely, grabbed the card and crept back to his group. I felt like asking him to show me how to flick the card like that, but then boarding time was called and the rush to the plane began.

The flight itself was uneventful and after an hour and a half we reached Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. The humidity oozed into the plane and I was sweating almost before I could get out of the cabin. The airport is a simple one. Exit the plane and join either the line for transfers to Cambodia and other places, or join the one for immigration. Both lines were within 50 feet of the plane. So I went to immigration. After waiting quite a while in line, my immigration agent looked over my passport very carefully. All his concentration went to figuring out why I might be a bad guy and should not be admitted to the country. The one thing that broke his focus, along with all the other agents, was the American woman with the almost see-thru top walking past. It was like a line of 10 smiling bobbleheads turning to follow her. Eventually she passed and I was allowed to leave. I got a cab into town and arrived at my hotel: The Sheraton Saigon.

Although the name of the city officially changed to Ho Chi Minh, everything here geared towards tourists seems to be named for Saigon. It certainly rolls off the tongue a bit more easily. The first thing I noticed was that drivers here rely on three car features more than any others: the accelerator, the steering wheel, and the car horn. And the horn needs to be easily activated with a single thumb since it will be used so much. As you enter an intersection, come across another obstacle, or simply every 20 feet, you honk. Its just the thing to do apparently if you want to survive a trip. Everyone is honking...constantly. And all driving rules appear to be merely suggestions. A one way sign means it is suggested that all traffic go in a single direction as indicated by the arrow. There are plenty of cars that ignore this suggestion and everyone gets out of the rogue driver's way. A red light is a suggestion to stop, but plenty of cars speed on through, knowing that a honk is good enough to guarantee safety. I am amazed that anyone survives, but after 2 days I have yet to see an accident.

My first order of business upon getting here was to arrange transport to Siem Reip in Cambodia. I just missed the last seat on the last bus out on Sunday. My next opportunity to get a bus ride would arrive in SR on Tuesday afternoon. No good. My only other choice was a flight with Vietnam Airlines. I am a bit worried about this flight but its a big

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