And now it's time for the quintessential journal entry about driving on the other side of the road.  Sometimes the advice that actually ends up sticking with you comes from really random sources - like the cell phone guy who sold us our unlocked cell phone.  He just happened to be from New Zealand and said when driving on the "wrong side" of the road, just make sure the steering wheel is always towards the center of the road.  It works!  Think about it!

Without a doubt the most confusing part is that the turn signal is on the wrong side.  We are constantly turning on the windshield wipers by accident, and then cutting somebody off without signaling.  I'm sure they are probably used to seeing wipers on in the middle of a sunny afternoon and put two and two together.  Anyways, no accidents yet but we'll keep you posted.

That's how I was taught to remember that stalactites are the ones that come down from the ceiling, and stalacmites are the ones that come up from the floor.  Why does this matter you ask?  Because you'll look really smart knowing that on the glow worm caves of Waitomo tour.

While the tour is worth doing if you're in the area, I will say that I wasn't floored by it.  One problem is that you're in a group of 50 people.  The other is that the actual glow worm area is really small.  Since it's pitch black it took me a few minutes to realize the boat was just going in circles and we were looking at the same patch of ceiling the whole time.

Excuse the stolen photo from the website, but apparently it's a "sacred" place so we couldn't take pictures.  I guess exceptions can be made for advertising materials.

Okay, this really is one of the coolest things ever.  Reading about it, watching little video clips, and even hearing from the person who just went down before me, didn't come close to doing justice to how much fun Zorbing actually was. 

When you first arrive to the reception area, there's a menu of options of how you can do it - tandem, strapped in to a harness, straight down, zig-zag, dry or wet.  It's kind of overwhelming since you don't really know what it all means.  We opted for the tandem, and just hoped for the best. 

We hopped into the back of the van which drove us to the top of the hill where the adventure would begin.  They fill just the bottom of the Zorb with some warm water, enough to basically lubricate the whole thing so you don't stick to it.  First Jason dove in head first into the small opening, next me, and then it's zipped close. 

1,2,3 the gate was opened, and off we went rolling down the hill.  Water splashing everywhere, our bodies flailing all over the place, and endless laughter sums up the scene from inside the Zorb. 

When we got to the bottom we both looked at each other and instantly knew once wasn't enough  We splurged for the 3 pack giving us two more times each.  We decided to go solo, once on the zig zag track, which the above video is of, and lastly on the straight track right down the hill.

What an awesome experience.  If you ever get the chance to Zorb, do it!  Jason actually has it in his head that they should start up Zorbing in SF down Lombard Street.

So it turns out my mother has a first cousin that lives in Havleock North, a beautiful little town in the heart of Hawkes Bay wine country.  Apparently only "my side" of the family calls him Danny, which he hates.  Anyways, we had a super killer time.  We had dinner at a winery down the street from them, and in the morning they stuffed us full of breakfast and gave us a tour of the town. 

Dan's wife Judy was hilarious and a lot of fun to hang out with.  I guess the three bottles of wine we polished off at dinner didn't hurt the jovial vibe.  It was a bit like hanging out with Sharon Osbourne and Jeffrey Tambor.  Hopefully we'll get a chance to see them next time they visit the states!

It's not often things freak me out, but this one had me a bit on edge.  It wasn't so much the idea of hurling ourselves face forward off the edge of a cliff (called the "SupaMan"), or even the ten zillion foot drop into the river below.  It was more the idea of "Dumb" being the one who was setting us up into the harness while she trained "Dumber" on how to do it.  Let's just say neither one of them instilled any confidence in the whole process.  Check out the video - this one's pretty funny.

This is definitely one to categorize under "wow, I had no idea that was going to be so cool".  Nobody had really told us much about this little turn-off called Pancake Rocks on the way to Greymouth was going to be so spectacular.  I thought after the first viewing ledge we had seen it all, but that was only the first formation.  Others followed as we walked down the trail, each better than the last.  Check out the photo gallery to see more of the pictures I took.

The excuse "I was trying to clean a dead bug off of my windshield and lost track of how fast I was going" didn't go over super well.  I was about to try "I still don't know the difference between kilometers per hour and miles per hour" but 133 mph is considerably worse than 133 k/hr so that wouldn't have been better anyways.  Luckily it doesn't really matter since I'm not planning to come back to New Zealand any time soon.  Thus there's no reason to actually pay the $300NZ ($200US) ticket.  It does make a lovely souvenir of the thousands of miles we've driven here though.

 

It can be tough when traveling to have a Big Night Out since you're constantly in different places and don't know the "scene".  That's why it's important to talk to the locals and find out what's up.  One of the best ways to do this is to start the evening out at a hip bar to grab a drink and talk to the bartenders/owners.  This usually starts you down the path of where to have dinner, where more talking with the wait staff leads you to your next destination, etc.

Our evening started out at Ginger, what beyond any doubt was the best cocktail bar we have ever been to.  The drink menu was nearly 50 pages, and each one looked amazing.  Here we met Alex, the owner, and managed to sample 6 of her wonderful concoctions.  She told us all the best hidden bars and clubs, and even drew us a map!

After the drinks we wandered up and down the rest of Brunswick Street, which is eerily similar to the Mission in SF.  A very eclectic mix of upscale restaurants, cool bars, and low income housing.  Definitely a hot area (literally, since it was 95 degrees that night).

A few more drinks, a few more bars and we were back out wandering the street.  That's when we saw a weird little stairway up to the second floor of a building simply called "Rust".  When we got up there only a few people were sitting around on couches so we turned around to check out the next place.  That's when somebody called out "what are you afraid of?".  Naturally, we turned right back around and headed in.

We ended up hanging out with Anton the owner, and Ash one of his friends.  As well as a host of others, as by the end of the night the place was completely packed.  It was a blast, and we finally felt like we had a group of friends again.  We're really missing that!  Towards the end of our evening  the 3 Minute Angel that we met at Ginger even came in!  We wrapped it up with what is apparently a Brunswick Street tradition of a doner kebab at 3am.  Just like having a burrito in the Mission.  Delicious!

So I have an Australian aunt (Diane, my dad's brother's wife) who has a first cousin named Len Lotz that lives in Brisbane.  What better way to see the area than to get him to take a day off of work to show us around?  Australians are extremely hospitable, and Len wouldn't hear otherwise about spending the entire day during a very busy period to drive us up and down the coast.  He picked us up at our place in the city and took us south about 40 miles for our tour of the Gold Coast.  It's a very cool area, reminiscent of Miami Beach.  Lots of high rises, tons of development going on, and of course beautiful beaches.

We spent the day slowing making our way up the coast, seeing all there was to see.  It was perfect since we only had 3 days in Brisbane and really wanted to see the Gold Coast.  We stopped back at our place for a quick freshening up, and then we were right off to a BBQ dinner with Len's daughter and son-in-law Jason and Danielle.

If I ever moved to Australia, I would have a best friend all ready to go.  Jason and I (in addition to sharing a name) were like two peas in a pod.  Straight down to finishing the evening with a bottle of fine Scotch.  We dined on bugs, a weird cross between a crayfish and a prawn that only exists in this area.  Good stuff!!  The only flaw in the evening was when Joy saw a ginormous spider on the wall and flipped her lid.

Then the Daintree Rainforest is the place for you.  Located about an hour north of Port Douglas, where we're staying, the Daintree is the oldest living rainforests on earth.  And it has a ton of things that love to either bite you or eat you entirely.  We decided to go on a day tour so we would actually be with somebody that could tell us what the heck we were looking at, and save us from doing anything too stupid.  We really picked the right one this time, helping make up for our Fraser Island mistake.

Grant, from Daintree Discovery Tours, picked us up promptly at 7:50.  It was just us and one other couple from Ireland, Eddy and Bernadette, who we got along with famously.  We headed up to Cape Tribulation, got into sea kayaks, and paddled our way to some amazing sights.  From there we headed to the rainforest itself and got to swim in a truly beautiful watering hole.  Very refreshing since it's hot, humid, and pretty much uncomfortable all around.  And combined, we probably have about 40 different bites on our bodies. But we got them back - there's a strange ant with a green butt, and if you lick it, it tastes like lemon sherbert.  Check out Joy giving it a try - Delicious!

We had a picnic lunch at a nice spot in the forest, hiked around for about an hour, took another dip to cool off in the swimming hole, and then headed out for some ice cream made from the fruits of the local groves.  Waddleseed ice cream tastes a lot better than it sounds, mysteriously like cookies 'n cream...  We ended the tour with a cruise down the Daintree river to look for crocs.  We did see 3, but they were all pretty small.  But not so small that I would want to go swimming in the river.

One of the great daytrips from Sydney is taking the ferry over to Manley Beach.  Great shops, fun area, and as promised another gorgeous beach.  We went on a Saturday so it was a little bit crowded, but the beach is so big there's plenty of room for everybody.  We spent the day soaking up the rays and playing around in the huge waves.  Then it was time to take the ferry back (about a half an hour ride) so we could get ready for dinner wtih Pat and his girlfiend Jess.

When Joy's brother Jacob moved to Sydney for a few months back in '04 he made friends with a super cool bloke named Pat.  When Pat visited SF a bit back we all hung out and had a big evening on the town.  Now it was Pat returning the favor.  He took us to a killer restaurant set on the water directly between the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.  We followed that with a trip to a German bar that played 70's American music.  It was tough to believe we were still in Sydney!  As is the tradiion, we wrapped up at about 2am with a doner kebab.

Let’s put it this way – within 12 hours of being here we had already changed our plane ticket to stay an extra week. Tokyo is everything we imagined it to be and more. The vastness of this city is incomprehensible. Nothing in the US, not even Manhattan, is remotely comparable. Just check out this map of the subway system. Of course, getting to your stop is only half the battle. Many stations have over 100 different exits, so even if you get to the right one you could still be a mile away from where you are trying to go.

It is also the first place we’ve been that truly does not embrace English. Occasionally the English letters for a subway stop or store name might be included, but generally not. And almost never in restaurants, where it’s rare even to see a picture of the food. You’re basically on your own to point at the strange characters you think look the coolest and hope for the best.

So how does a city with nearly 13,000,000 people function? Perfectly. In a culture where politeness is held above all else, where people are impeccably dressed at all times, where cleanliness is godliness, and respect for others is uncompromised an urban utopia is created. It’s the exact opposite of Bangkok. Men offer subway seats to women and the elderly, litter and graffiti do not exist, cell phones are rarely spoken on in public (texting is king), and fashionable dress is the norm not the exception.

Which brings me to my day of shopping. The “dressy” black shoes I brought weren’t fitting me right so I ditched them in Australia somewhere. Plus I don’t have any decent pants for going out in. Since that is quite frowned upon here, I decided to take the day to wander around Shinjuku and see if I could remedy this situation. Apparently all Japanese men are actually born metrosexual. It’s not uncommon at all to see groups of straight guys giggling like schoolgirls over the latest spring lines. Unfortunately for me, they’re all built like Kate Moss. I went through dozens upon dozens of floors of shopping and did not once, not ONCE, see a waist size over 32. The vast majority of pants are size 28 – a size I haven’t been since I was four years old. I resorted to going up to store clerks and asking “you have fat man sizes?”, to which the answer was always a shake of the head no and then an akward glance down at the floor. One clerk was kind enough to go in the back and find me the one pair of something spandexy he thought might fit me, but I couldn’t get it on past my knees. I ended up at a Timberland store getting a pair of imported khakis.

Tonight we are staying with Yukiko and Ryo, friends of Dave and Belinda who are watching Hank while we are gone (and saving our butts). It will be great to spend some time with locals and learn more than we are able to pick up through the osmosis of being here and making mistakes. More on that later.

Nothing beats a big night out, especially in a city like Tokyo. And thanks to our friend Yuki, ours came complete with an entourage. We first met at Yuki's friend Suji's restaurant, which she opened just a couple months ago. Coincidentally, it was an American themed restaurant, so we fit right in! We were joined by several of Yuki's friends, including Saori who actually went to The University of Arizona at the same time I did and had the same major. Although we didn't actually know each other, I'll consider that strange enough given where we were.

We were soon joined by Asuko and Shane, my friend from New York, strolling in a fashionable hour and a half late. To know Shane is to love him. Needless to say tequila and vodka were passed around, shots were had, and further needless to say (at least in Japan) karaoke was sung. The video really speaks for itself.

When we arrived in China and had a relatively easy time getting through customs we began to think maybe this whole "communist" thing was overrated. Sure there were a few more guard-types around than other places, but it didn't seem out of the ordinary in any way. Until we tried to get onto our website to post a journal entry.

China has what is known as "The Great Firewall" - it blocks access to millions of websites, anything that can possibly say something bad about the government. Apparently they decided ours was one of these. Yet it is a very random selection - while BBC, Wikipedia, and Reuters are all blocked, YouTube, CNN and USA Today are not. In reality, it is not our website specifically that they have an issue with, it is most likely our hosting company, which probably has some users with questionable content.

So that means for you, our unlucky reader, that we will not be able to create our normal easy-on-the eyes content. While there are ways around the firewall that at least allow us to view websites, because of the complexity of how the blog functions we'll be limited to posting by email and hopefully at least putting some links to our pictures and videos to outside sources. When we get to Vietnam in a few weeks we'll go back and update our posts with pictures and videos, do the galleries and maps, etc.

UPDATE: I have since found a way through using anonymizing proxy servers to do just about everything. While it runs considerably slower (and thus makes doing all the little things to make this website work an extra big pain), we can now pretty much do everything except insert pictures into posts.

Like many of you who will be reading this post, both Jason and I had always heard how amazing the Great Wall of China was, yet we could never fully comprehend the sheer magnitude of it all. It's of course one thing to read about it, see pictures or movies, or listen to stories about it - and another thing to have experienced the glory of the Great Wall. Hiking the Great Wall of China was a sublime moment for us in our lives, physically being on this piece of history, in the middle of nowhere, in utter serenity.

The first thing we did right was NOT travel to the wall with a tour group to one of the more popular, aka "touristy" locations. Rather, we hired a private driver to take us to Jinshanling, a much less traveled part of the wall, where we would be able to hike to Simatai and get picked up from there.

It was certainly no easy feat hiking the 7 miles from Jinshanling to Simatai, as many parts of the wall are completely deteriorated, making it difficult to get a solid step. By far the most intense parts were the practically vertical climbs up stairs that felt like they went on for hours. The easiest way to sum up many of the parts of the trek was like being on a stair master on steroids for hours. Considering both of us have knee issues, we were amazed we were able to actually complete it without too many aches and pains (thanks to lots of ibuprofen!!)

It took us a total of 4 hours to complete the hike at a very leisurely pace so we could take in every moment of the scenery. The rolling hills and blooming cherry blossoms were spectacular, and there was something so magical about the whole area. The lack of people around was also quite surreal, considering how overcrowded China is. Of course, we couldn't avoid the hawkers trying to sell their goods on the wall, but they were pretty easy to shake if you firmly told them NO!.

We did however meet up with a couple of great people to stroll along the wall with (and who happened to be staying at our hotel). Kath and Jake were wonderful company to share the amazing experience and tranquility of the Great Wall of China with. We even all indulged in the flying fox zip line at the end of our journey (as well as drinks at the hotel after), which was an adventure in itself (and it also saved us a mile in walking from the end of the wall to where our car was waiting).

By far trekking on The Great Wall of China will be one of those awe-inspiring experiences in our lives, which we know we will always look back on with moving memories. Since we can't insert pictures into posts while in China, click here to see them!