Tag Archives: travel

Canada and Alaska: I Win a Silver Salmon

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I’d read on a blog that the Rocky Mountaineer holds a poetry competition so on the second day I started writing a poem. Halfway through the day nothing had been mentioned so I asked Cleo, one of the staff, if it was happening. She said it only usually happens on the longer routes but I was welcome to get up and read mine. I was immediately filled with terror but I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t, so at the end of the day I got up and read it for our carriage. I got a few laughs for mentioning the things that had been annoying us, like the trees always blocking the view. When I finished they gave me a silver salmon pin and said that if I ever saw anyone wearing one I had to give them the secret salmon handshake, which I will demonstrate for you if I ever see you in person!

There were many stops along the route on the second day to let goods trains pass, so we also had a little quiz sheet that Mum and I also finished first so we really scooped the pool. I never win anything so it was quite thrilling for me!

Here’s the poem I wrote. As you can see, it’s nothing special but I do quite like the way it ends.

Oh Canada, oh Canada

Your home and native land

Is filled with trees, so we ask please,

A chainsaw we demand.

Don’t cut them all, just make them small,

So better views we’ll see,

My camera’s filled with blurs of green,

It looks quite like the sea.

T’wixt train and mountain,

Track and shore,

they block all sight of land

Fine far away, but close I pray

For gaps a camera’s span.

I don’t like to moan, you’ll send me home,

Everything else is grand.

Your food, your smiles, your bear-filled wilds,

Smoked salmon on demand.

Cleo and crew know what to do,

To keep us all well-fed and happy.

Giving us facts and plentiful snacks

Their service is anything but crappy.

We’ve laughed, we’ve snoozed

We’ve barely boozed,

We’ve travelled, young and old,

We’ll come again, just tell us when

On your Rocky Mountain gold

Canada and Alaska: The Rocky Mountaineer

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Well, it turns out a million Canadians aren’t wrong, this does indeed seem to be one of the world’s best rail journeys. Today is day 2, we spent all day on the train yesterday and have just reboarded this morning and had our breakfast.

A few facts to begin. The Rocky Mountaineer isn’t just one train. There are four routes and the one we are on started in Vancouver, stops for the night at Kamloops (don’t worry, we hadn’t heard of either) and finishes in Jasper. There are no beds on the train so we were bussed the four blocks to the Hilton.

The journey starts at the dedicated Rocky Mountaineer Station in Vancouver. There’s a vast number of people milling around and drinking free tea and coffee before a bagpiper starts playing and they have a short welcome speech.

The train is quite huge when you first see it. About 13 carriages, half of which are ‘silver leaf’ single-storey and the other half are ‘gold leaf’ double storey. Gold leaf is the way to go! We have a glass-roofed car and the dining area is on the bottom level. The seats upstairs are lovely and wide with nearly a metre of leg room. It’s lovely!

Our whole tour group is in one carriage and the other people in the carriage are almost as rowdy as us so it’s a great atmosphere. We can see into the cabin behind and they all look like they’re asleep so we feel a bit sorry for them;-). One of the other people in our group just came by and said that people at the front of our carriage complained yesterday that we were too noisy which has made us all determined to be even noisier today.

The food on the train has been lovely and our tour director, Carmen, said the staff on the train will ‘hug and kiss and slobber all over you’, which was something of an exaggeration, but they are all very lovely. Breakfast is two courses and lunch is three. There is a menu and a nice range to choose from. The carriage goes down to eat in two groups, which gives the other half of the carriage a rest from all the cackling that our group does. On the first day we were in the second sitting and today we ate first.

The view from the train begins with green fields of corn, blueberries and gigantic blackberry thickets. The route follows rivers most of the way and eventually the scenery dries out until the mountains become quite bare. The colours of the rock faces change from grey to sulphur yellows, purples and pinks in places. We passed a place where The X Files did filming and a few other movie locations. We’ve seen about a dozen eagles, some beaver dams, osprey nests on dummy telegraph poles (the nests can last for hundreds of years and grow to the size of small cars but ospreys prefer to build on man made structures because… they’re jerks? No one really explained the reason. What they did before people built telegraph poles I do not know) and big horn sheep and a few deer.

They can never tell you, at the beginning of the day, how long the journey will take because there are an enormous number of enormous goods trains using the lines and, as a tourist vehicle, we need to stop and wait when those trains go past. I counted 150 containers on one.

As we go along the crew give us interesting facts about the places we pass. One little town we just went through is home to a helicopter-skiing business with a lodge that could be hired for $100,000 a week. It provides chefs, cleaners and unlimited helicopter drop-offs to remote snow fields for up to 12 people. Bargain!

We are lucky to be travelling in the first of the gold leaf carriages, which means we get a view out over the front of the train, so we can take photos that make it look like we’re standing on the roof. 

Unfortunately all the smoke from the forest fires has reduced visibility and we didn’t get to see anything of Mt Robson, Canada’s highest peak. Still, all the trees and rivers were very pretty.

Next: I win a poetry competition that I suggested and was the only entrant in!

From Hoi An to Bangkok

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It came time to depart Hoi An and head to Bangkok. We would be flying there from Da Nang via Ho Chi Minh City. It was more eventful than we’d expected.

A few days prior the resort manager approached me to offer his thanks to our group for being such great guests, and kindly offered us a free airport transfer for our departure. Maybe he felt it was the least he could do after spending so much money at his resort’s bar day after day. As our flight left at 9:45am and check-in began at 8:45am, he suggested leaving at 7:45am. I made it 7:30am – never hurts to have an extra 15 minutes up your sleeve at an airport, especially with a group.

After an early breakfast, we finished packing the last of our gear, all wrote on a card that Matt and Michael would give to Tin later in the day, and took some group photos out the front of the resort. We piled in to our van and got underway as the resort staff waved us off.


We made good time to the airport and waited to check-in. When we got to the front we were told we were in the wrong line. Fortunately no-one was in the other queue yet so we went straight to the front. Unfortunately when we got there we were told our flight had left an hour ago, and we’d been advised of the time change by email two days prior.

We hadn’t thought to check the flight’s status, and throughout our nine months of travel a few years ago, none of our flights ever got changed. We quickly purchased tickets through another airline but then had to scramble through check-in and security, having to jump straight to the front of both queues, just to make the flight on time. If we’d left 15 minutes later, we may not have all made it on the flight.

After arriving in Ho Chi Minh City we had some time to kill before our next flight. Quite a bit of time, as it turns out, as nearly all the flights out of that airport had been delayed due to some kind of system error. Our two hour layover turned in to four hours, and we later heard some people had been delayed even longer than that.

I found this article regarding the delays in the paper the next day.

After another quick flight, we finally touched down in Bangkok. We found our driver (who filled us in on how bad the delays had been getting throughout the day) and got underway. For most people in our group, it was the first time they’d been in Bangkok, and it’s always an impressive city to drive through at night with its myriad of huge advertising billboards and well-lit buildings.

We arrived at Lebua at State Tower and started the check-in process. While we waited we enjoyed the lobby’s piano player, who was belting out a medley of random songs. I wish I’d got some footage of this guy, he was really getting in to it! We all tried to figure out each song as it came up. Certainly helped pass the time quickly.

Once we were checked in, we went to take a look at our suite. Kupp greeted us as we walked through the door, as he’d arrived a few hours before us. The place was massive. A huge lounge and kitchen area was flanked on either side by three bedrooms, with two on one side, and one on the other, that one alone being as big as the suite we’d stayed in the last time Amanda and I were there.

The living room! Kitchen to the left, and those doors lead to two of the bedrooms.

After kicking Kupp out of that room and taking it for ourselves (sorry mate! I promise that when it’s your birthday you can have whichever room you want!) we went downstairs to catch up with the others. It just so happens that they had managed to score the Hangover Suite. It is ostensibly the same as every other suite, but it has photos from the movie up on the walls, and other decor that references the film. For those not in the know, several scenes from The Hangover 2 were filmed at Lebua, and they’ve capitalised on this in their marketing. Nikki and Leigh surprised Amanda with an expensive bottle of champagne to kick off the celebrations!

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After spending some time catching up, we all decided to spend our first night up on Lebua’s roof at the Sky Bar. Just as we remembered, the views were as incredible as the price of the drinks ($15 AUD for a glass of beer). Still, it was a great way to kick off the Bangkok Birthday Bash!

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Here Comes The Planet 51 to 53 – Amanda’s Victorian Roadtrip

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We break from our 2013 travel videos to bring you something closer to home.

As you may have read on the blog, recently Amanda and her mother Jen went on a “classic Australian road trip” around Victoria. Now that the exclusivity contract I had with the video’s producer has expired (“Don’t put it online before we show it to mum at Christmas!”) we are pleased to present this epic journey to you at last.

Split over three parts, we start just across the Victorian/New South Wales border in Albury, with its “iconic” Hume Dam. Also in this episode, a cruise up the Murray River on the Emmylou paddlesteamer in Echuca.

Also, you’ll all be happy to know we’ve started writing* a new horror film based on this episode: “Cry of the Cockatoo”.

* We haven’t.

Continuing the road trip, Amanda and Jen visit a pheasant farm in Swan Hill, as well as a deserted winery.

Also, we learn some fun facts about birds!

Concluding the road trip, Amanda and Jen travel from Swan Hill through to Castlemaine and back home to Melbourne, stopping at gardens and historical houses along the way.

Also, there’s a big fish.

What did you think of their road trip adventure? Have you been on any epic family road trips yourself? Let us know in the comments. 😉