SAMOA

I'm sorry for not being able to keep the blog updated this year but I had very limited acess to Internet and it was just not possible. And... I've been VERY busy enjoying life and having fun while hippy-gypsy touring in a campervan around the South island in New Zealand and couchsurfing in Samoa (Thank you Pietro for hosting me!!)  

I hope you don't mind if I decided to write about Samoa first even if I have to post something about Sidney and New Zealand, that happened before. I'm just too excited about it and wanted to share some emotions and insights.

Samoa....unexpectedly beautiful, gentle, romantic. This is definitely the nicest place I've visited on my tour. It was love at first sight.

I landed at the international airport Apia-Faleolo, about 45 minutes drive from Apia. The first thing you see from the aircraft are palms and blue water. Just beautiful. Like in the pictures. It is hot and humid (around 30°C) but you get used to the climate immediately. Everything is nice and gentle. Even the taxi drivers offer fair prices but you can take a bus for a much cheaper price and it takes you wherever you want. I was alone in my bus (it cost me about 8€) and I got a lot of information from the bus driver and even a banana (the have the best bananas I ever had. just amazing!! and many different kinds). The first thing he said is: "Samoa is a romantic place. You should not be here on your own!". And I took his advise seriously ;-). He also said I have to go to church on Sunday but, even if I tried to, it just didn't happen. You just can't do everything they tell you to. Right? ;-)

the main church in Apia (but they are all that big and even more)

This is the most religious country that I've ever seen. They live in big groups in poor houses and fales (the house with just a floor, pales and a roof), with usually the toilets outside and a lot of nice grass and flowers around the houses (they keep their gardens really in order), but they have big churches everywhere. This is one of the first things that you notice since you see one every couple of kilometers. Tents of churches and hundreds of young playing cricket, volleyball and rugby outside. Sundays are completely dedicated to the church and they go to the function (even twice) all dressed in white. Everybody has to be quiet that day and alcohol is prohibited (so no Vailima for the boys ;-) - the only Samoan beer and the most common drink here ).

you can have this in your fridge only in Samoa!! ;-)

They have big family meals with oka (my favourite Samoan food: pieces of row fish with cucumber, lemon and I don't know what else in coconut cream. delicious!!!), chicken, tuna, taro (like a big potato, a bit sweet)....


this is the huge plate of food that we received from a family on Sunday. 3 of us ate and didn't finish it

 Another great food is palusami (baby taro leafs - similar to spinach but different taste - in coconut cream, baked in vulcanic rocks). You can buy it in restaurants and at the food market and eat it with bread fruit. Soooo good.

the food market in Apia

The first thing you need to buy when you get to Samoa is a lavalava (a squared shape piece of coloured clothes that you wear and use in every occasion). You can do everything in your lavalava and even go out for dinner. Both man and woman use it and it is really handy. You don't need really much clothes in Samoa and definitely nothing fancy (and everything get quite ruined by the humidity and the washing). Life is very laid back here and nobody cares about fashion. All you need is a lavalava and a flower for your hair which serves also the purpose of communicating to the man if you're available or already married (on the left side for the singles and right for the married ladies).

me in my lavalava (actually Pietro's, later I bought one)

Everything is clean and nice. If you don't find the garbage bin someone will come to you and take your garbage. If you ask for a toilet, if there is no public toilet available somewhere close, they will offer you their private one. Samoans are so nice that is hard not to feel welcome.
I based myself in Apia and stayed there much more than I planned before coming. At the end I felt at home there and it was great fun. 

Apia's waterfront



The watch tower in the center of Apia

The first week-end we went in a big group, all people working like Pietro in international organizations, at Sa'moana, a very nice resort in the south if the island. It was beautiful and even the weather was nice (you have to consider that it's the rainy season). Great people, nice fales, golden sand, black lava rocks, huge waves breaking on the coral reef not far from the coast line, crystal clear and warm water, coconut trees for the shade, hammacs to relax and read a book, a natural infinity pool to chill out and party (can't believe I forgot to take a picture of it, was too busy using it probaby), great food (I had pankaces for breakfast - yummi), canoes for a bit of fun and surfing the waves (almost got smashed on the rocks but was great fun).... It was just perfect :-)

The rocks are amazing and it is possible to recognize the lava flow in many places. The contrast between the colours make this place even more beautiful. The waves breaks on the coral reef so the oceans calms down before reaching the shores. You can take really nice long swims or snorkle and find beautiful stones, corals and shells on the beach.

　
Another great trip was the one in Sawaii, the big island. It is less inhabited and more wild then Upulu (the smaller but main island) and we (some new american friends and I) toured the island all around, on the only road, in a van that I drove since I was the only one to have the temporary Samoan driving licence. A really nice adventure. We went first to the dwarf's cave, through a path in the rain forest and explored it with a local guide and  just the light of our torces. There was water everywhere.

Then we decided to visit a friend, a peace corps guy that teaches in a village and has hosted us for the night (thank yo again!) and shown us the school.

With him we went around all together the 4 of us, and a nice thing we've done was the conupia tree walk: a huge tree that is higher then the rest of the rainforest and has a small wooden house, roofless, in which you can sleep. You reach it by steps and bridges. Very nice and exciting.

Another amazing experience was to visit the village destroyed by a cyclone in 1990. It was an apocalyptic scenery. This is what is left of the church, the most solid building...

To make my stay in Samoa even more exciting, cyclone Wilma decided to head directly here and in the last moment it just started changing direction and went around the island creating just limited damage. We were really lucky even if I have to say that we were quite excited about the idea of experiencing a cyclone. We bought some cans of food, water and prepared our basic needs in case of urgent evacuation but at the end everything was ok and there was no need to move from our place uphill. We flooded twice but that was quite interesting, too. The good thing is that thanx to the cyclone we had a great cyclone party at a friend's house uphill (and ended up to spread in another friend's house just next door). We were recommended to stay all together (by "we" I mean the people working for international organizations that I met and since I was a guest of one of them they have been so nice to include me, too) and we decided to do what the bosses said ;-). Was great fun. And I got an extra day in Samoa as my flight was cancelled and I left one day later (plus I got an extra day when I arrived as I crossed the line of date change so I arrived one day before I departed from NZ. All this with just 3 hours and a half of travelling and it is one extra day in your life in a Pacific island! that's quite a gift)

This is just a short story about Samoa. It was sooooo amazing that I could talk for days about it. I think you should go and check it out yourself one day :-)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

This is my Christmas blog :-)

I know I have still to update you about Sidney and New Zealand but this is a very busy period of the year...Christmas dinners, shopping... very busy here ;-)

Through a collectection of pictures along my travel I want to send you my Christmas wishes.
In some places you don't really feel Christmas at all and you find only very limited signs that remind you of what period of the year you're in... but still beautiful...

Dubai

Hong Kong

... and it seems that many times Santa is more important then Christmas and in places like Thailand, Santa seems to be the only connection in people's mind with this holiday that is so important for us. But, on the other hand, what do we know about their culture and uses?
 

Santa in Hong Kong



Santa in Auckland: he was moving his finger last year. Not now.

 A lot of people think mostly about Christmas shopping...

Orchards road, Singapore: the main shopping area



Singapore - a special wish for all my friends that love shopping

Nothing bad about it if we manage to keep the priorities right and we don't forget what is really important.

Anyway, we have the freedom to think and do whatever we want for Christmas but it is definitely a beautiful time of the year. With music on every corner....

Auckland - Christmas jazz

...and Christmas trees and decorations that make us (at least me) more cheerful and happy...



Singapore



Singapore



Sidney

Sidney

Different places, different cultures, different uses but at the end I wish you all a Merry Merry Christmas, to spend with your beloved, and an amazing 2011 that seems to be a very important year of changes for many of the people I met in this period. I wish your dreams come true, but...be careful what you wish for :-)

A special wish from Orlando and me, with our kiwi paper crowns (you get them in the New Zealand cracker - a local use for Christmas: two people pull to break a paper box shaped like a candy and the one that get the longest end gets the present). Merry Christmas!!!!


 And Happy New Year! Cheers to all!

HONG KONG

Hong Kong is exactly what you expect (at least for me) and more. It is a vertical city, full of people, lights, shops, street markets, restaurants...everything. Almost every street you go it is crowded and all that people move at superslow mode (that's the crazy thing about HK!). It is really difficult to get into the rhytm. 

You don't really feel the recession in HK, especially when you see Chinese people quequeing in front of one of the many huge Luis Vuitton or Gucci stores. You can definitely find anything you want (real or a good copy) in HK. And if you look inside one of the many jewelries, you'll see them all crowded and busy. And it is not particularly cheap and it is quite common to see 30.000€ or more expensive jewels in the shop windows (in some even more the 150.000€ diamond rings!).

Except for this famous names, Hong Kong has quite an interesting fashion and I defnitely enjoyed looking at the style of the girls around here...completely different from what we wear in Europe (with a lot of fluffy things, fur everywhere, big fluffly boots, a lot of "chinese schoolgirl" style....). I almost bought this piece, but I resisted. Please, girls, notice the super fashion ears :-)

Hong Kong is famous also for the numerous street markets and the jade market (one street with shops selling only jade). They have a lot of manufacts and jewels made of this beautiful maninly green stone, but you can see it also in white or grey.

Hong Kong is full of neon lights and colours. All the street are very lively and colorful. The traffic is intense but fluent and the crowd disciplined. All together: a very oredered chaos :-).

At night, all this is even more beautiful to see

A funny thing, is the bamboo structure they use to work on the buildings. It looks quite scary but it seems not to be more dangerous then what we use.

Hong Kong has also a lot of green areas and parks. At Sunday Victoria's park (on HK island side) is full of young people, mostly girls, sitting on the ground is groups and enjoying a snack, playing a game or jusy chatting. They play guitar or perform. I like this typical Chinese performance very much. It was a dance in costumes with a traditional Chinese music, like a lullaby. It was probably telling a story but I can't tell you anything more about it. It was in Cantonese (at least I suppose) :-).

 

Hong Kong is a mixture of beautiful glass skyscrapers mostly dedicated to office space, lights and colours and the old, but still tall, buildings that are mostly residential. I haven't seen any apartment but I heard that they are very small and considering the size of my bed there (not even long enough to make me fit in...chinese size bed) and of my room, and of the bathroom.....it is not difficult to believe it ;-).

In the middle of this sea of tall buildings.... (this is the view from the Peak, that you can easily reach by tram)

...there is the small temple of Hong Kong, on HK island side. It is located in the hearth of the old city, but still surrounded with tall buildings. You can feel in the air that you're getting close to the temple, as they burn so much incense inside it that the air around looks foggy. Going inside made me think of how poor is our (or at least my) knowledge about Chinese culture.

It is really an interesting city, with a lot to see and a lot to do. The food is good and it is safe toeat it even in the street cheap restaurants. The only problem of the least, is that you might get toilet paper when you ask for napkins ;-)

But the food on that plate was really good and the toilet paper made me have a good laugh, so all good :-)

The most beautiful thing I've seen in Honk Kong is definitely the "symphony of lights", the largest permanent light show in the World in which the buildings from the HK island side partecipate with laser and other types of lights. It starts at 8pm every day and you can watch it from the Kowloon side, sitting on a terrace in Tsim Sha Tsui, by the ferry station and the watch tower. If you want take a look to this link to have a better idea of what I'm talking about:   symphony of lights video, from youtube

It was just fantastic and I went to see it twice :-)

PHI PHI and PHANG NGA, THAILAND

I'm already in New Zealand but I had not time for writing at all so I'm very late in my updates. This post has some pictures and comments about the beautiful places I visited in the Phuket area.

Phi Phi islands...a real Paradise on Earth.
The islands have been totally devastated by the tsunami, and there are signs everywhere that remind you of that tragic moment, like i.e. the best directions for escaping in case it happens again...

The island Phi Phi Don has been totally reconstructed and you could not even imagine that it has suffered so hardly from the consequences of the tsunami. It is really a shame that the opportunity to rebuild the village of Phi Phi Don following the principles of sustainable tourism and making it an eco-village, that would be an example for the World, was not used and it was preferred to choose a strategy of fast reconstruction to restart immediately the huge tourist industry. Tours and rooms are offered everywhere, at quite affordable prices (even if more expensive then the rest of the area) and the place is full of restaurants and small shops.

The guy on the pic is taking the luggage to a hotel. This is the only way to do it on the island since there are no cars or other veicles except from bicicles. They come to pic you up from the hotel...walking :-).
I rented out a bungalow at Godlen hill, a cheap but nice accomodation (some places are very expensive)

Lots of frogs at night in the fresh water in front of it (plus an incredible number of mosquitos!) and a small cute froggy in my bathroom :-).  I really enjoyed the place and I was only 5 minutes walk from Long beach, where I went directly the first day and relaxed listerning to the music from the bar (very happy to hear the whole cd of Jack Johnson) where I enjoyed some nice fruit shakes, decorated with orchids.
 

You can take a boat tour and go to visit the most famous beaches and snorkle on the coral reef or do something more adventurous as dive with the sharks, jump from an 18 m cliff, climb the limestone rocks, camp on the beach..... And there are many bars that gets crowded at night. I decided to relax and went on a longtail boat tour.

The first destination was "The beach" from the movie with Leonardo di Caprio. It is in Maya bay, a quiet bay closed by hilly land so very protected from waves and a wonderful place for snorkeling becouse of the coral reef and a million of colourful fish.

Another lovely place where we stopped was Monkey beach, where you can meet a lot of monkeys and they come close to you as they are so used to people.

After Phi Phi, I decided to visit PHANG NGA, in the Krabi province (about 90 minutes by bus from Phuket). Another great place to see and another great tour by boat.
I first visited the attraction of the land and I couldn't believe the beauty of the temple in a cave with a lieing Budda. It was really special.

Another thing that I couldn't believe is the fortune telling machine, with sounds and light more suitable for a casino in Las Vegas, that crazy Thais have placed there just opposite to the Budda. You insert a coin and the wheel of fortune starts going and stop to a number. That's the number of the message for you, that you pick from the wall full of different messages. I had very interesting prophecies ;-).

By boat, we went to see the mangrove forest. It was really amazing to see that dense forest of trees with their flying roots

It seems that Thai people like movies a lot so we went to James Bond island, the island from an old JB movie, that is very popular now even if the movie is from the '70. Try to imagine (or remember) a missile coming our of this small island to destroy the planet :-)

The area is famous for the limestones and the geomorphological conformations. I really liked that one.

To end the tour in this beautiful archipelago we went to the muslim fisherman's village, where you can just take a walk in the small bazar or even stay fot the night. It was definitely worth seeing.